The Fountain Institute is an independent online school that teaches advanced UX & product skills.
The Biggest Hurdle in Strategic Projects
The Biggest Hurdle in Strategic Projectsby Jeff Humble Dear Reader, Strategic projects can fall into a million difficulties, but one hurdle takes down more designers than any other, and the sooner you prepare for it, the better. What is the hurdle? It’s the possibility that your strategic deliverable will be ignored entirely. Why strategic projects fail…🦗We often start strategic projects with too much optimism. After bumbling around for a few months trying to figure out how to align your work with all the existing visions, OKRs, and strategic plans, you might regret calling yourself a "strategic" designer. To complicate matters, you want the whole team to adopt your plan, which is challenging even for something as small as a team-level strategy. For example, a UX strategy is easily ignored if not done well. The biggest hurdle in strategic projects is the last hurdle...the one where people start adopting your strategic deliverable. After months of work, all you get is crickets 🦗🦗🦗 What can you do? Bring your decision-makers and teammates into the strategy process! If it's a big project, they’re probably creeping on your work already.
You might as well let them in. Here are three specific tips that will help you do that: 1.) Build a coalition for the project.Start the project by building a coalition of people who care about the outcome and share the work. When people participate in a project, they’re usually more invested in the outcome. 2.) Stay a few steps ahead of the team.Even if you’re taking a collaborative approach, that doesn’t mean you must go the same speed as everyone else. Your focus should be on designing the project plan, and it helps to know what the project process looks like. Use my Strategy Canvas if this is your first strategic project. 3.) Frame the problem together.One of the biggest reasons people ignore your strategy is that they don’t "feel" the problem. Prioritize the research before the solution...just like in regular projects. Once everyone involved agrees on the problem's diagnosis, you can move on to the treatment, a.k.a. your strategic solution. Those tips should help you avoid those crickets. For more guidance, check out my strategy course if you want to improve your strategic skills.
Together, we go through the process, and I provide feedback every step of the way. It’s one of the best ways to gain experience designing strategies before you do it for real. Learn more about the course here. (This article originally appeared in Jeff's blog) Source
Until next time, y'all! ✌️
P.S. If you have feedback on this newsletter, hit reply and drop me a line! |
The Fountain Institute
The Fountain Institute is an independent online school that teaches advanced UX & product skills.
Before The Fountain Institute, there was Art School Dropout By Hannah Baker Dear Reader, In spring 2020, when the world had just gone remote, we ran a tiny experiment called Art School Dropout. It wasn’t about UX or product design. We didn’t even know that’s where we’d end up focusing yet. It was about exploring the overlap between art and design, and figuring out how to make learning online feel human, creative, and social. We weren’t thinking about building a business yet. We were just...
Ready Beats Perfect (+ four habits from Hatch Conference) By Hannah Baker Dear Reader, Last week I had the pleasure of hosting the Dome Stage at Hatch, a design-leadership conference bringing product and UX folks together to share what’s working (and what isn’t). Q&A with Iris Latour, co-founder of THEFT Studio. Photos from Hatch Conference Photographers Rebecca ruetten, Indigo Lewisohn, Not because I’m fearless, but because I’d done two simple things: I prepped my intros for each speaker,...
10 Design Diagrams To Study Instead of Staring Into the Void by Jeff Humble Dear Reader, It's that time of the year. Another boring Q3 earnings call, and all you want is to go back to the beach. You look at yourself in Zoom, and all you see is a bottomless void. Hey. Stop that. Instead, check out some of the best Jeffing diagrams on the internet. At least you will look like you are kind of working... 1. Diverging and converging in action by Nicholas Frota Designers talk a lot about diverging...