Scaling a high-performing design practice during rapid growth

As Mable entered a period of rapid growth and organisational change, I led the scaling of a remote design team working across five product squads. The challenge was to increase delivery speed and impact without losing connection to the needs of clients and support workers, in a highly regulated, human-centred care marketplace.

I partnered with product, data, and engineering leaders to introduce lean, experimentation-led ways of working, reorient teams around engagement as a shared success metric, and establish the foundations for a scalable, high-performing design and delivery practice.

Role

Product Design Manager

Organisation

Mable

Location

Sydney

Focus

Design leadership, operating model, service design, experimentation

Mable stats, Apr 2025

25M+ Care hours delivered

28k+ Active NDIS and aged care clients

21k+ Active support workers

The challenge

Mable scaled rapidly following significant investment, growing from an early-stage organisation into a multi-tribe product environment in a short period of time. A new executive team and operating model brought both opportunity and uncertainty. Key challenges included:

Scaling delivery while maintaining quality and customer empathy

Aligning multiple squads around shared goals and measures of success

Supporting designers through change while continuing to ship

Embedding design as a strategic partner and a delivery function

At the heart of this transformation was a clear business objective: enabling more care to be delivered by improving engagement, retention, and trust across the platform.

“We made experimentation part of the culture, giving teams space to test, fail, learn, and grow.

–Project reflection journal

My role & responsibilities

As Product Design Manager and member of the leadership team, I:

Scaled and led a remote design team across five product squads

Defined design’s role within a new, lean operating model

Partnered with product, data, and engineering leads to align ways of working

Co-created a long-term CX vision to guide prioritisation and delivery

Mentored and coached designers through growth, change, and increasing complexity

Embedded design and continuous discovery practices across teams

Approach & thinking

I approached this work as both a people and systems challenge, recognising that sustainable delivery depends on clarity, trust, and shared ownership.

Key elements included:

Introducing a lean, end-to-end delivery framework that balanced speed with learning

Shifting teams toward small-batch experimentation and rapid validation

Making engagement a shared “north star” to align squads across different problem spaces

Enabling squads to define their own goals using tools like Jobs-to-be-Done and Lean Canvas

Establishing regular feedback loops through critiques, retrospectives, and peer coaching

Rather than enforcing rigid process, the focus was on creating guardrails that empowered squads to adapt while staying aligned to customer outcomes and organisational priorities.

Outcomes & impact

The shift delivered meaningful improvements across the team, delivery, and organisational alignment:

Established a scalable, lean design and delivery practice during a period of rapid growth

Improved cross-functional alignment by embedding shared goals, metrics, and ways of working

Enabled squads to move faster while staying grounded in customer needs through small-batch research and experimentation

Increased design’s influence in product prioritisation and strategic discussions

Strengthened design quality and consistency through coaching, critique, and shared standards

Improved team engagement, autonomy, and retention within a fully distributed environment

Built executive confidence in design-led decision-making through regular strategy enablement sessions

“Every feature we designed, every process we improved, came back to one thing: helping more Australians receive the care they need.

–Personal reflection.