Connecting the dots in business strategy by applying UX
When working on products, we need to look at how they are connected together, rather than just individual products.
Most of the time, there are many new ideas being thrown around in meetings, especially in startup companies. Executives and the board are constantly attracted to the most shiny things because they think that will help their business take off like Amazon, Google, and Facebook. Little did they know that they often neglect the most important assets they have — those who make up the company — the people.
My experiences so far
Through my years in engineering and UX careers, I’ve had the opportunity to dive deep into each product (either physical or digital) to understand the nitty-gritty details of what the products are, how and where they are made. During the time I’ve been at these startup-sized companies, I’ve also had the opportunity to work on almost all the products within each company.
For huge established companies (10,000+), however, it was nearly impossible to do that unless you are in the director or VP level. Even at that level, you may not have the chance to dive deep or know the details of every product within the company. When you’re at that top level, you would need to rely on each department head to partner up with you so that the entire company would work smoothly together, with checks and balances.
Unfortunately, I have yet to join a company with leadership who I truly admire. I’m still hopeful that maybe one day I will, but I’m also aware that grass is not always greener on the other side.
Exploring the problem space
When I was in grad school for HCI, I was taught to explore the problem space in one of my courses — little did I know that this concept is so practical and valuable in the real world.
I’ve seen leadership teams jump into solutions right away without really understanding the problem or the target audience in front of them. This could be extremely dangerous because you’d be risking building something completely useless in the end — I’ve stopped quite a few people (yes, leaders included) in meetings from moving forward with clueless assumptions, and 99% of the time, I ended up being right. For startups, I understand that time and resources are not always available; however, I will always follow this mentality:
Some research is better than no research.
I’ve encountered many management and executive teams who focused on the wrong paths, and have seen failures because of it. Often, leadership teams I’ve worked for were reactive, not proactive. They literally couldn’t connect the dots to see the big picture until something bad occurs. And unfortunately, when that happens, it honestly would be too late.
Diving deep & connecting the dots
While I was working on both the depth and breadth of various products, I was able to see common patterns between the different products within each company, and connect them from a high-level perspective.
The trick to connect the dots is to discover any hidden patterns that’s not obvious on the surface until you make effort to study the elements within each product. Also, understanding how users (both internal and external) communicate between different products is another trick to find their commonalities. So two elements: patterns and commonalities:
Pattern is defined as the state of sharing features or attributes.
Commonality is defined as an arrangement or sequence regularly found in comparable objects.
Even though there could be different product lines within each company, there has to be some type of patterns and commonalities between them. Once you can find these two main elements, you can start connecting the dots and see how they should be connected and related as a whole.
How lack of strategy affects everyone within and eventually the customers
Harvard Business Review (HBR) had written a really good article about how executives must review and understand how to optimize the whole business, rather than just individual each part of the business.
Teams unfortunately often work in siloes, especially when companies get to a larger size. This is inevitable, because each team’s leader is busy trying to meet their own goals and metrics. This is why every company need someone who has the ability to evaluate the needs of every team to connect them together, and align their needs with business objectives.
Coming up with business strategy by applying UX
There are many ways to come up with a business strategy that fits a company’s core business. After understanding how things are related to each other, I start to look at company’s effectiveness and efficiency, while keeping in mind the business implications that could help business thrive.
From my experience, I try to look at it from a 20,000-feet high level and make decisions holistically.
I try to see the business as a whole.
My curious personality makes me want to know about everything, so I can make a more informed decision before I change/create anything. I do proper risk and impact assessments to ensure that people in one or more teams will not be negatively affected by the changes/implements I would make —
sometimes, this is as simple as just taking some time to talk to the people in different teams
I always let them know what’s coming or what I’m working on, even if it’s an email, a slack, or a short meeting. This little effort will always save many months worth of work. It’s quite surprising that many people don’t usually do this, even though it’s common sense. It’s what corporate culture called “communication issues”.
The main tip for coming up with business strategy is to apply your day-to-day UX process such as user research, ethnography, user journey to really understand what the gaps are within the business units.
By exploring how teams work together, or lack thereof, ideas and potential solutions will naturally flow to your mind as you start uncovering underlying problems.
No matter what the strategy is, it’s all about the people
Afterall, a company is made up of people. No matter what the product is, how the product works, and why the product is important, people are the ones who come up with the ideas, and people are the ones who keep the business running.
Without people, there is no company.
People should always come first. When you take care of your people (employees), they will take care of your business. This is often neglected in the businessworld, but we have the responsibility to change that when we have the opportunity to do so.
