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Slide Notes

As an individual contributor, we tend to say, "When I'm in charge, I'll do things differently." But the fact is, most individual contributors are never trained in leadership or people management before they get promoted. That's why many of our bosses are so good at UX but need to learn how to be an effective manager.
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The Hard Way: UX Leadership Lessons

Published on Nov 19, 2015

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PRESENTATION OUTLINE

THE HARD WAY

UX LEADERSHIP LESSONS
As an individual contributor, we tend to say, "When I'm in charge, I'll do things differently." But the fact is, most individual contributors are never trained in leadership or people management before they get promoted. That's why many of our bosses are so good at UX but need to learn how to be an effective manager.
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PRIORITIES CHANGE

I triage every project every week and assign values for importance and urgency. From this I create a priority order and share with the team including my boss. This system helps everyone understand what we’re working on and why.
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LEGAL DOESN'T KNOW UX

You can't depend on the legal team to make sure a contract has what you need. Legal doesn't know what combination of deliverables and metrics will make your project a success.

Ask yourself what could go wrong with a project, then look at the contract to see if it provides protections in those circumstances.

TOOLS MATTER

Don't be a SaaS Slut. Select a tool that works for all parties (UX, IT, stakeholders, agencies). Then add incentives and penalties for use or disuse of the agreed-upon tools.

No tool will be a perfect fit for everybody, but it beats having your deliverables spread across a dozen different systems.

MONEY MATTERS

As a manager you need to know exactly what everyone on your team gets paid. You then need to evaluate those numbers against the performance of the team member and make sure they match. It's your responsibility to make sure that your top performer gets compensated appropriately.
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YOU'RE NOT CONGRESS

Every year it's the same - we scramble at the last minute to piece together a budget based off of what we think we spent past year. Plus a little pad...

What would happen if you treated your budget as a strategic advantage? What if you decided where you were going to spend money rather than try to figure out where it went? What if you could tell your boos you reduced operating costs or got more value out of the money you spent?

These are numbers that are more likely to impress your boss than how you applied Fitt's Law to the primary call to action on the page design, especially if your boss isn't a UX practitioner.

HE WHO WALKS WINS

I had a boss who, when we were discussing inter-department conflicts or issues, would abruptly stand up and say, "let's go talk to them."

This would catch me off guard because I wasn't necessarily ready to go talk to the other parties. But I noticed that they weren't either. Getting out of our chairs and walking in gave us the initiative and a significant upper hand in conflict resolution.

Best of all, it saved hours of emails sent back and forth by simply addressing the problem head on.
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YELLING DOESN'T WORK

Most people don't respond to his particular brand of leadership.
UX leadership frequently means getting people who don't actually work for you to do what you need them to. That is the true Art of Leadership. That is the difference between a leader and a mere manager.

Build people up by identifying their strengths. I highly recommend the Strengths Finder and Strengths Based Leadership books (http://www.strengthsfinder.com/home.aspx) to create a shared language around employee achievement and development.

To be an excellent leader you can't just reward performance. You have to correct non-performance.

Consider using the Prescriber style of leadership. Prescribe every step of every action in great detail to make the employee demonstrate that they know what is expected of them. This feels like punishment.
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HAVE A CLOSED DOOR POLICY

I believe that a good manager works for his team. It's important to be responsive and involved, but you also need time to get things done.

One great way to give yourself some margin is to have specified office hours where your team can come to you and know they aren't interrupting.

COMPROMISE = WINNING

It can be frustrating to have your pristine user experience cluttered up at the last moment by one of those "business" types.

But remember that the organization exists to bring goods and services to the customer, and that profit is generally a very important ingredient in that cake. You can generally make these interactions with stakeholders go smoother by proactively addressing the business goals in the design. But sometimes you're just going to have to make the logo bigger and make the button red.

When your product ships, if you've put something into the world that benefits the user and your organization, that's a good day. Celebrate your victories, no matter how small.
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