UX Leader as Sales Agent?

It takes work to understand what our organizations need and how we can help them deliver tangible value. Even if User Experience already plays an active role in defining our organizations’ standard practices, we still need to continually deliver assets that help them invent a new future that stimulates growth. If we don’t, we risk losing credibility—perhaps without realizing it until it is too late. I’ve seen UX leaders who are much smarter than I am take their positions for granted and get axed. Or maybe they were not sufficiently vigilant and did not read the signs of culture change that required them to reposition their groups’ value. We have to be consistently watchful to ensure we create and sustain the value of User Experience.

Of course, I’m not saying our teams can always work on the cool and exciting projects. Most of the time, UX professionals engage in fairly mundane efforts. But I don’t find the coolness of the work to be a key factor in whether we can excite our employees. As leaders, we can—and need to—engage our employees’ imaginations and emotions and make sure they’re invested in their teams’ success. Emotional engagement is what makes people do their best work. It’s what makes them stick around and support their teams even in tough times. It almost doesn’t matter what people are excited about, as long as they feel in their gut that they are making a difference.

As UX leaders, we should help our people understand the importance of the work they’re doing, how it ties into our organizations’ larger vision, and how it can potentially improve both our companies’ fortunes and people’s lives. If the work doesn’t tie into a larger vision and does not improve our companies’ value, we need to reconsider the value of the effort.

At one point in my career, I made a conscious decision to help move a team to a higher level of impact and visibility. But I also realized that, in raising themselves above the radar, my people would, in fact, be making themselves potential targets as well. I remember pointing out that I believed this team had the ability to transform our company, and if we put our minds and talents to work, we could accomplish anything. Of course, I believed this deeply. A good leader always means what he or she says. I wanted my team to understand the risks and the rewards and buy into the decision themselves. I wanted to make sure I had the hearts and minds of every employee dedicated to our mutual vision of turning our company into a UX-driven organization. After conveying my belief in the team and expressing my dedication to our vision, I asked the entire team to share their perspectives. In the end, each of us wanted to take the chance and believed we could execute on our vision. The result? We did successfully transform our organization, and I believe our company as well. Was it easy? Not a chance. After a few years, I still feel the bruises. Was this risk worthwhile? Yes. Should UX leaders always take such risks? Absolutely not. In our case, though, while we knew it would be very, very difficult, we were confident we would succeed.

UX leaders need to continually reassess whether following our vision continues to make sense when our cultures, leaders, or rules change. Organizational lifecycles have a beginning and an end, just like human relationships do. Organizations and markets are always in flux. They grow, change, and are never static! I’ve seen experienced UX leaders falter by making the mistake of relying on what they’ve done in the past—long after that chapter has closed and an organization has moved beyond the phase during which their vision held value. For example, leaders who once supported our UX organizations might leave. Market conditions might change. Company priorities might change. When any of these events takes place, as leaders, we need to ask ourselves whether our vision for User Experience is still sufficient to instill excitement in both our business leaders and our UX personnel. If not, we need to start the process of envisioning a brighter future all over again.

I mentioned earlier that I don’t believe in using generic ROI arguments. (I think we should go out and show our great work, not just talk about it.) However, that doesn’t mean we don’t need to produce financial arguments. When we do, I like to sell my partners in the Finance and Operations groups on the veracity of my team’s ideas, so they’ll want to become engaged in producing our financial arguments for us. When we try to produce financial arguments ourselves—even those of us who have MBAs—it’s doubtful we can fully understand all the financial and organization-specific jargon and the cultural factors within which finance folks maneuver daily. UX professionals often argue that other disciplines without UX design expertise, such as Engineering, should not try to design products. We like to complain that everyone seems to think they can design great products—the sweet spot for UX professionals. Why, then, should we try to play a role outside our own expertise and attempt to create our financial arguments ourselves? Get the experts to do it! I’m not saying we can’t conduct any financial analysis ourselves, but when the Finance organization produces our numbers, executives find them more convincing than when we produce them on our own.

If you still don’t believe UX researchers and designers are or should become salespeople, think about the selling we have to do just about every day. As researchers, we must convince our organizations that our analysis is correct and persuade them to act on it. As designers, we’re continually selling our designs. When we present our designs in design review sessions, we’re not trying to put anything over on anyone. We’re simply conveying how our designs solve user challenges and, hopefully, can delight users. This seems like such a natural activity, we don’t even realize we’re selling. Although we do sell our designs, hopefully, we also have the humility to accept our teams’ feedback and use it to improve our solutions. Is selling our research findings and designs a bad thing? Of course not. We need to sell to persuade our organizations to pursue our visions. And when we go on job interviews, we sell ourselves.

Selling should never entail exaggeration or deception. Instead, it should align the true value of a person, product, or service with a need. Consultative sales and user-centered design follow similar patterns. If we can understand the needs of both our organizations and the other disciplines on our product teams and envision solutions that help them succeed, we’ll create a virtuous cycle that excites both our business leaders and our employees. Give it a shot! And please let me know your thoughts.