Hamlet’s dilemma— to protect or to integrate design. A conversation with Scott Belsky
I had the opportunity to meet Scott Belsky at an AUTHORS event hosted by Company’s CEO Matt Harrigan. Belsky shared a candid perspective about the journey of entrepreneurs. He discussed how the industry in general showcases the beginning and the end as the highlight points. However, the valuable lessons learned are in the journey, the messy middle, as he refers in his book — The Messy Middle: Finding Your Way Through the Hardest and Most Crucial Part of Any Bold Venture.
Insights from direct customer exposure have no substitute
As an entrepreneur or a leader in a large organization, Belsky made emphasis on experimentation and testing as critical to a product’s success.
He highlighted the fact that some impactful methods are not scalable. He shared an example — as a founder, you may choose to outsource research with end users to ensure you get a large sample. However, he argues that a few hours with direct exposure to a single user may give your leadership team and your organization more valuable data than a few hundred users from an outside agency report. At the same time, from an enterprise perspective, he mentioned that you could call 100 users to find out why they stopped using a product. In reality, this is not a scalable method, but it is a sure way to find the answer — why?
Scaling design in an organization
I asked Belsky about the overwhelming challenge that designers face nowadays. As design leaders and practitioners, we work hard to make strides inside our own organizations. How can we scale our impact? How can we go to the next level?
Belsky has a practical perspective. He splits it into two parts:
First, if your organization does not value design, you have to have your designers unionized and protected. They have to have a leader at the top who understands design and who will fight to protect the design team.
Second, if the organization values design, there is no need to unionize designers. They can be integrated into different product teams. However, there is still the need for a central team that would advocate for the design practice, maintain core assets, programs and produce the design system to ensure that designers across the organization concentrate on what is important — solve the business problem, instead of worrying about the basic elements, processes or tools they need to get their job done.
Get your f*cking job done
Belsky left us with a critical message. You could choose to accumulate organizational debt when you postpone tough decisions. The problem when you do that is clear. You hurt your organization, your team, and it eventually will cost you a great deal. He said that as founders and leaders we simply need to get our f*cking job done.
More information about Scott Belsky
About his latest book
