Touchdowns and Design Wins: How Incentives Create a Winning Culture

Jan 10, 2025

As the NFL regular season wrapped up this weekend, we saw some of my favorite heartwarming moments in sports (maybe not if you're a team owner): star players hitting their contract incentives $$$. For those not familiar, these incentives are performance-based targets like: sacks, passing yards, or receiving yards that reward players with impressive bonuses. Yesterday had some great highlights:

What made the last moment so special wasn't just Mike's personal achievement, but how his teammates rallied behind him. On the final play of the game—when they could have played it safe—they helped him make one final catch to hit his target (with maybe a little help from some soft defensive coverage).

It also wasn't just about money (although I'm sure a couple extra million bucks helps!) it was also about teamwork. When you have teammates that go out of their way to help you reach your goals, it builds trust, fosters camaraderie, and creates unforgettable moments of shared celebration. That energy is contagious, and not only gives you the support for you to do your best, but makes you want to go above and beyond to support your teammates too.

This got me thinking about incentives and how they shape behavior, not just on the field but in the workplace, especially on design teams. Good incentives don't just motivate individuals they build a culture where everyone is pulling in the same direction and proud of what they're creating together.

Design Is a Team Sport

No matter how talented of a designer you are, collaboration is a necessity. You need engineers, product managers, and other cross-functional partners to bring your ideas to life and deliver amazing experiences and value to customers. Even if you are better at working alone, you'll eventually need others to execute your plans, and that means understanding others and meeting them where they are.

I was recently reminiscing with my favorite PM pal from DoorDash, Ariel, about how our team's goofy, trusting, and supportive culture made it such a rewarding part of our careers.

Before Ariel and I started the Ordering Experience team, I had bounced around a lot of teams, and had a hard time advocating to make design fixes and things I knew would make the experience better. One key learning that made a huge difference when we started our team was everyone on the team openly sharing our OKRs.

It might seem like a small thing, but being transparent about your goals creates opportunities for collaboration and vulnerability. When you know what your teammates are working toward, you can step in to help, cheer them on, and celebrate their wins. After that, it was a lot clearer to the team why we had the goals we did, and I also learned a lot of what motivates different members of our team and we could optimize handoffs and projects around their goals.

Another great (arguably goofier and more fun example) was when we created an "Eagle Eye Award". Every week at standup we recognized an engineer who went out of their way to make something they shipped pixel perfect and had a high attention to detail. Sure, there were silly prizes like changing your Zoom background or Slack status to a majestic Bald Eagle, but the real win was having a team bonding moment where we can all celebrate together every week. As you can imagine, it started off with some skeptics, but once we gave out this prestigious award a couple times, people were beaming with pride when they received it. The best part, the product got better, and we shipped less and less bugs over time. Win-Win-Win.

When Incentives Collide

There's always going to be some levels of friction between teams and collaborators that have different measures of success and incentives. Sometimes it can cause not great team dynamics, like competing against your teammates for higher value projects that will get you promoted, or prioritizing speed & velocity over quality.

For me, I used to get frustrated when growth business goals would override design decisions creating broken and disjointed experiences. Now instead of immediately reacting (like a younger Ben would) I just take a step back, ask questions to better understand their goals, and put myself in their shoes. Once I get a better perspective on their incentives, I am able to brainstorm possible ways we can get what we both want.

One of the most common sources of tension I see is when teams have to balance business performance with user needs and experience. From a designer's perspective, it can often feel like you're at a disadvantage. While everyone else is armed with numbers, charts, and data, you're showing up to a metaphorical "number fight" with some cool pictures and pretty colors. In these situations I lean on data of my own, or user research to communicate in a way everyone can understand.

Most importantly, it is best to approach these situations with an open mind and that all parties have good intentions. It can feel like there's a lot at stake, but the reality is at the end of the day everyone is apart of the same team and wants to make an amazing product. Much like an NFL team, tensions can get high, but when it's game time, you put your differences aside and support each other.

Tips on How to Align Incentives

If you're in a situation where the incentives you believe in feel out of sync with your team or are having trouble to advocating for better experiences, here are some ideas to help create more alignment:

I am Incentivized to Finish This Post

While we all are probably not getting a couple extra million dollars for fixing alignment bugs like an NFL player, being a good teammate means being there to support others, and helping them hit their goals. Always be on the lookout for when you can be the one to throw that extra pass to your teammate and who knows, maybe the next time you won't even have to ask for help. Fostering better alignment leads to better relationships, and a better working experience for everyone! Who doesn't want that?