The trick to get leadership buy-in
Think back to the last big review you were in. Were people eager to speak? Or was there a long pause, with everyone looking to leadership to see if they were in favor? Maybe leadership was trying to hold off and hear from others first.
The first person to speak in a review sets the tone for the rest of the meeting.
René Girard, French philosopher and anthropologist, calls this mimetic desire.
We make many of our choices according to the desires (and responses) of others.
If we choose something that nobody else seems to want, we begin to doubt that we made the right choice. Think about dating — if you start dating someone that none of your friends express even the slightest interest in, you grow insecure. You begin to wonder whether you’re making the right choice. And that’s because we seek validation in our desires. We look for social proof.
If we say an idea is great in a meeting and everyone else disagrees, we grow insecure. We’ll see this with voting in brainstorms too. Once an idea is upvoted, people tend to add votes to that same idea, especially if it’s your boss’s idea.
This is what social media algorithms do too. They determine based on early engagement, or the lack of it, how much to prioritize and circulate your content.
Before the meeting
So the trick to getting leadership buy-in is to find the people that leadership respects and get them in your corner, before the meeting. Build consensus. Go into the meeting with advocates for your solution.
Have early reviews to get their input. See what their hesitations are. Incorporate their feedback.
More often than not, leadership is risk-averse. They’ve reached the top and don’t want to fall off the mountain. A great leader is also looking to the working team for their expertise.
So remember, the way we value things is not objective, it’s subjective. And that subjective value is determined mimetically, based on our relationships with others.
As I work on a project, I think about this quote from Luke Burgis’s book Wanting:
“Desire doesn’t spread like information; it spreads like energy. It passes from person to person like the energy between people at a concert or political rally. This energy can lead to a cycle of positive desire, in which healthy desires gain momentum and lead to other healthy desires, uniting people in positive ways; or it can become a cycle of negative desire, in which mimetic rivalries lead to conflict and discord.”
Think about the energy you’re bringing to reviews. We all love to hear “Great question!” and “That’s an awesome idea, I’ll make that change”.
Co-create
A great UX designer isn’t solving everything on their own. Instead, they’re co-creating. They’re talking to customer service and learning what common problems people call in with and how they remedy the situation today. They’re talking to the sales team and learning what resonates with customers. They’re talking to engineering to learn what would optimize the experience. They’re talking to leadership to understand what metric(s) they’re focused on. They’re talking to the customer to learn about their wants and needs. A great UX designer brings it all together.
It’s one thing to love your idea and be confident in its value. It’s another to have the people in the room championing your idea. Find the people that leadership respects and get them in your corner, before the meeting. Then leadership will be more likely to buy in.
Book Club — Must Read
Book: Wanting by Luke Burgis
Article: What is Mimetic Desire? by Luke Burgis
Favorite Quote and Photo(s) of the week
“I would maintain that thanks are the highest form of thought; and that gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder.” ― G.K. Chesterton
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Until next week,
raika
Agree that buy-in before a review is a solid way to not only help your own cause at the review stage, but can also bring forward additional perspectives and thoughts at an early enough stage to positively impact the direction you are taking with your design.
That being said, if leadership feels strongly enough about a design decision or perspective that goes against what you've brought forward, your advocates can and will drop off knowing that this isn't their task at hand, and they may be reluctant to put their neck on the line to bolster the case for something that is your battle to fight (even though they will gladly support you in calmer waters). So while the more advocates you have in the room the better for a multitude of reasons, an in-line perspective from your leadership representative (pre-review check-in) is going to ensure the best possible outcome.
Other factors that could impact your design is technical feasibility or other challenges (time, sources, going back to client to propose this approach) of your design vision, both of which your advocates may not have insight into. You could have the best possible solution to a problem, but if another 'good-enough' approach gets the job done with half of the resources or challenges, that will be a hard battle to win that you might have to fight on your own once again.
Great newsletter edition (as always!). Three things:
I take it you've seen this? https://youtu.be/1T79KLUyXqs David Perell and Jonathan Bi did a whole lecture series on Girard (I haven't watched that yet).
I really loved the part about getting people in your corner before the meeting. It's part of our sales training–identify sponsors, turn them into champions, know everyone's interest and try to get ahead of them so that the actual meeting is really a conversation about the vision and the upside (because you've already tackled all the thorny issues beforehand). This is an underrated skill.
I've been listening to this episode of the Tim Ferris show https://tim.blog/2023/03/01/matt-mochary/ It has a section on how to run effective meetings that I think you may like. It's also a great episode overall.