Since I started to get the UX team to document everything from sketches on paper, meetings with devs, and final designs on a confluence page, we have seen a massive reduction in meetings to refine and communicate ideas. This workflow was quickly adopted by the team and also enhanced their thoughts as they can look back on where they started and get back to the main goal, which is the business case of the problem. We also found that by having this page, the technical handover became much easier for the teams who pick up development requirements later on, and sometimes the designers even forget what they do. Still, by having this page, the confluence pages solved the problem_
Communication and collaboration are vital for a team to grow and expand. You need to invest time in the group to work and collaborate on ideas outside of their everyday work. The ability to communicate freely allows them to keep expressing ideas freely to one another, learn the art of negotiation, and vote on ideas that seem fit for the purpose. I will always allow the team to collaborate during our DesignOps sessions as they are the ones who are voting on concepts and processes that work for them. I will suggest ideas on their processes, but the team will always make the final decision. Sometimes even my thoughts don't get through to the end as the team might see another way that fits for them_
Understanding the costs of your department and others is crucial for any UX manager to negotiate ideas through the pipeline. My designers have many ideas that they can bring to an application, but it means nothing unless I have some costs behind me to negotiate with the business. If an idea costs a certain amount and brings no return, then no one will listen. When stakeholders love to bring ideas that have no value, the best way is to evaluate the costs that occurred to design, develop and test and then see if they are interested in pursuing it further once the costs are outlined to them_
Get your team to agree on naming conventions because this is important to the team's communication across the company. Once you have that decided, make sure you communicate these names as much as possible so that other departments are also aligned when talking about the same subject. Even though this detail is tiny, it brings so many problems when people are using different terms t fit them and cause many issues, as I have seen before. Ensure that the name is not taken by someone else and is also on what you have labeled your subject about. I have often seen teams using words for entirely unrelated topics, and even though they communicate this naming convention, people are still confused when it is not subject-related_