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.
Absolutely - those are really great points. It's incredibly risky to only bring leadership (and engineering) in at the end. Even if you're delivering their ask to a tee. Co-creating is not just to tick the collaboration box but the work benefits from everyone's expertise.
Leadership can be harder to get time with but I've found there's always a desire to contribute and we cannot overlook that. Getting creative to seek those inputs throughout the creative process always pays off.
Design is subjective tho and I've personally found when the people leadership respects spoke positively about my designs, that had a big impact on how leadership perceived my work and built credibility.
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.
Thanks Camilo! And amazing - thanks for sharing those resources! I hadn't seen either of the links. Excited to listen to the Tim Ferris interview, the title is intriguing to me. I'm listening to the Girard video now and it's very a thought provoking conversation. "There are things that each generation must learn on their own." Wow.
I think designers need more sales training :) Love your framing of it really being a conversation about the vision and upside.
Looking forward to reading your newsletter tomorrow!
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.
Absolutely - those are really great points. It's incredibly risky to only bring leadership (and engineering) in at the end. Even if you're delivering their ask to a tee. Co-creating is not just to tick the collaboration box but the work benefits from everyone's expertise.
Leadership can be harder to get time with but I've found there's always a desire to contribute and we cannot overlook that. Getting creative to seek those inputs throughout the creative process always pays off.
Design is subjective tho and I've personally found when the people leadership respects spoke positively about my designs, that had a big impact on how leadership perceived my work and built credibility.
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.
Thanks Camilo! And amazing - thanks for sharing those resources! I hadn't seen either of the links. Excited to listen to the Tim Ferris interview, the title is intriguing to me. I'm listening to the Girard video now and it's very a thought provoking conversation. "There are things that each generation must learn on their own." Wow.
I think designers need more sales training :) Love your framing of it really being a conversation about the vision and upside.
Looking forward to reading your newsletter tomorrow!