One of the biggest traps for design system teams is trying to scale chaos.

I see this all the time:

An organization has 10 product teams all doing things differently.

Leadership finally says, “We need a design system to fix this mess!”

So the system team tries to roll out a big, top-down solution to standardize everything, all at once.

What happens?

Pushback. Confusion. Half-baked adoption.

The chaos doesn’t shrink. It just gets hidden under a new set of rules that nobody feels invested in.

A better way: small system, proven first

A design system isn’t a mandate. It’s a promise. The promise is: Use this, and your life will get easier.

If your promise doesn’t deliver fast, no one sticks around to trust it.

Start with a “minimum viable system”

Here’s what I recommend:

1. Pick three teams who want help.

2. Identify their biggest pain point: Is it inconsistent spacing? Duplicate components? Accessibility headaches?

3. Solve that pain with the system, and prove the value quickly.

System scale follows proof

When people see real benefits—saved hours, cleaner handoff, better experience—they spread the word. Word of mouth does more than any big launch event ever could.

The best design systems don’t spread by forcing compliance.

They spread by being too useful to ignore.

Build the system first, then scale when it works

Don’t announce a system that hasn’t solved a real problem yet.

Prove the value on the ground. Show it saves time.

Then scale up.

That’s how you win trust and adoption for the long haul.