If you’re feeling pushed around as a design leader, there’s a very good chance that it’s your product partner that you feel pushed around by.
Though it might feel that way, it’s more likely that you’re both being pushed around by the context you find yourselves in, according to product management consultant John Cutler in our conversation in the Season 5 premiere of Finding Our Way, the design leadership podcast I cohost with Peter Merholz.
If you follow John’s writings, either on LinkedIn or through his popular newsletter, you know he is continuously questioning the conventional wisdom about how digital products are made. In his view, what can look from the design side like a bad actor is often simply a PM responding to impossible demands within a structure that doesn’t set them up for success. Sound familiar?
The strategies John recommended in our conversation frequently returned to empathy, bridge building, finding common ground with your partners, and being patient with the pace of organizational change. “What a lot of these large organizations are experiencing are actually their strategy has changed, but their org structure and architecture have not changed yet,” he says.
There’s much more in the whole conversation. Thanks John and Peter!
Jesse James Garrett 