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The Intersection of Lean and Design
Summary
On January 10th, lean expert and author Jeff Gothelf joined us to take your questions and talk about the intersection of lean and design in general.
Key Insights
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Dedicated designers on teams are essential to avoid conflicts and delays caused by split priorities across multiple teams.
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Sustaining UX teams through organizational regime changes requires leadership alignment and embedding design in organizational DNA.
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Scaling UX efforts in large enterprises benefits from linking team OKRs directly to top-level strategic brand values.
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Effective OKRs measure changes in user or customer behavior, not just technical or output metrics.
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Leadership buy-in is critical in ensuring user experience considerations influence technical platform decisions.
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HR functions, especially Learning and Development, are powerful enablers of enterprise-wide cultural and organizational change.
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Proactive transparency—regularly communicating UX work and findings—builds credibility and partnership within enterprises.
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When leadership resists UX insights, involving them directly in research activities and quantifying UX impact can help shift perspectives.
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Changing team missions from output delivery (e.g., building an app) to outcome achievement (e.g., increasing mobile commerce) encourages experimentation and innovation.
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The term 'Lean UX' may have limited the reach of organizational change efforts by being perceived as a specialized discipline instead of a broader mindset.
Notable Quotes
"If you put one person across three teams, every day they have to decide who they’re going to piss off."
"When you have a dedicated designer, you see faster learning, iteration, collaboration, and agility."
"The hardest part is changing the measure of success from output to outcomes, specifically changes in customer behavior."
"The leadership gave five million bucks and said show me value in six months or we won’t give you the rest."
"HR, especially Learning and Development, holds the real power of organizational transformation."
"The only way we know we’re delivering value is if somebody changes their behavior."
"You want to move from ‘make me a thing’ to ‘change customer behavior.’ That’s where the magic is."
"Proactive transparency about UX work draws attention and eventually makes people come to you proactively."
"If a new regime doesn’t value design, you’re still going to get design, it’s just going to suck."
"Calling it Lean UX might have limited its impact because people think UX is just for 'those people'."
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