Being selfish during stakeholder interviews
Digital strategy is about collecting business, user, and platform insights to simplify things for your client and your design teams. Just don’t leave yourself out.
I often work with companies that have big, honking, complex business models with long sales cycles, high-consideration content requirements, and multilayered sources of revenue. A big part of a strategist’s responsibility is getting stakeholders on the same page.
Then the more important thing is to inform design teams on what they they’re creating for the business. If you’re like me, you hope by the time you’ve wrapped up stakeholder interviews you’ve been diligent enough in understanding the business problems, gathering (pre-research) user insights, behaviors, and how customers use different platforms through analytics.
Then you’ve thoroughly inquired, sifted, and crystalized the findings in an actionable way for product design. User research protocols go off pretty smoothly. Your strategic briefings go well. The design team and client frequently refer back to your work. You’ve done a good job, right?
Not always.
Sometimes it’s hard to remember that building your own understanding is arguably as important as that of your client or your design team. You have to be locked down in what you know about the business and its customers. That way you can go out and talk to the right kinds of users and share the right insights with designers.
Your role shifts during design review: you should be the one of the finished product’s strongest advocates and defenders. If you’re not clear on what you’ve heard from all sources you will fail your designers and ultimately your client.
So don’t be afraid to be selfish during interviews. Pause often. Take your time. Ask stakeholders to slow down. Tell them when you’re not ‘following’. Admitting you don’t understand something can clue your interviewee in that their customers might not understand them either. That can even help build the case and budget for proper user research, content review, and better content creation.
I’ve joked with my clients that my professional superpower is that I’m actually kind of slow and need things explained simply. Give it a try. See if it works for you, too. There’s nothing more confident-looking than admitting a little self doubt in pursuit of design clarity.
