Resolving Design Bottlenecks

Organization: Infoedge (99acres)

Role: Head of Design

Duration: ~1 year

Team Size: ~12 designers

Context

Infoedge (99acres) is a large, highly valued Indian technology organization with strong engineering capability and multiple product lines at scale.

I joined to lead the design function at a point where design quality was not the concern, but design velocity and decision confidence were increasingly under scrutiny.

Initial Team Structure

• Flat hierarchy

• 12 designers with uneven experience distribution

  • A small number of highly capable senior designers

  • A large junior / early-career base

• Strong social cohesion, informal working relationships

The previous design head had stepped away due to sustained workload pressure, having functioned as the central decision authority and protective buffer between design, product, and engineering.

Observable Symptoms

Across conversations with designers, product managers, engineering leads, and senior leadership, consistent patterns emerged:

• Design decisions were frequently escalated upward

• Senior designers were heavily overloaded

• Design reviews delayed engineering execution

• Mid-level designers deferred decisions rather than owning them

• Junior designers shipped little independently

The dominant perception outside design was that design was a bottleneck, despite high individual talent.

Misdiagnosis

The problem was widely framed as:

• Designers lacking conviction

• Design being slow or overly opinionated

• Design not understanding business or engineering constraints

These explanations focused on individual capability, not system design.

Actual Issue Identified

The bottleneck was not design quality or effort.

Design was compensating for unresolved decision ownership in the organization.

• Authority was concentrated at the top

• Accountability was diffuse below

• Risk was absorbed by a small number of senior designers

• Design had become the holding space for ambiguity created upstream

Intervention (Structural Changes)

The intervention focused on redistributing judgment, not adding process.

1. Clear Hierarchy Introduced

   • Two senior designers formally designated as managers

   • Teams split by business domain (Residential / Commercial)

2. Role Redefinition

   • Top designers stopped executing design directly

   • Shifted to written and verbal direction only

   • Senior band made accountable for ambiguity resolution

3. Responsibility Reallocation

   • Mentorship moved from top designers to the senior layer

   • Junior designers paired with mid-level designers on:

     • one large project

     • one recurring deliverable

4. Exposure to Decision Forums

   • Designers sent alone to product and engineering meetings

   • No protective buffering

   • Designers required to articulate and defend decisions directly

This change faced resistance initially across functions.

Outcome

Within ~6 months:

• Escalations reduced

• Designers demonstrated higher decision confidence

• Design reviews shortened

• Designers began leading meetings rather than participating defensively

• Design-initiated workshops and learning sessions emerged organically

• Design became embedded earlier in decision-making, not downstream

Engineering output remained strong, with improved alignment rather than friction.

Key Result

Design stopped being a bottleneck when it was no longer asked to absorb organizational indecision.

The primary shift was not process, tooling, or motivation, it was structural permission to decide.

Generalizable Insight

This pattern appears in organizations where growth outpaces clarity of decision ownership, causing design to become a proxy battlefield for unresolved judgment.

Acknowledgement

I would like to acknowledge Rinchan Gupta, CXO at Infoedge, for his trust and support during this period. In a relatively short span of time, he shaped my understanding of leadership, at work and beyond. His ability to care deeply about individuals while holding high standards is rare. Even today, his instinct to check in when something feels off speaks to the kind of leader he is. Rinchan, sir, your guidance and example have had a lasting impact on how I work and how I show up. Thank you.