Build Your UX Shield: Policies That Deflect Drama and Defend Standards

Let’s be honest. Policies and procedures aren’t exactly the stuff of design conferences or portfolio showpieces. But when it comes to influencing your organization at scale, they’re one of the most powerful tools you’ve got.

In fact, if you do nothing else from this course, implementing even a handful of UX policies will make your life easier, your decisions more defensible, and your stakeholders more cooperative.

Let me show you why.

Why Policies Matter More Than You Think

Policies give you a way to shape behavior without having to show up in every meeting or fight every battle. They're like pre-agreed rules of engagement that help avoid awkward conversations or power struggles.

Without them, every decision becomes a negotiation. With them, you shift from arguing your opinion to simply pointing to shared expectations.

Here's why they’re so effective:

• They’re one step removed – Policies let you avoid head-to-head conflict. You're not saying no, the policy is.
• They aren’t personal – They remove emotion from decisions. It's not about you, it’s about following a standard.
• They demonstrate professionalism – Having documented policies signals maturity and reliability. You’re not just winging it.

Two Types of Policies, Two Types of Power

Not all policies are created equal. Some you can implement today. Others require broader buy-in.

Here’s how to tell them apart:

Working Policies

These are about how you work: your own internal guidelines and expectations. You don’t need permission from the wider organization to adopt them, just support from your line manager.

They might include:

• How stakeholders should request work from you
• What project stages you follow (e.g., discovery, prototyping, testing)
• What kind of research or testing you always include
• How feedback is gathered, resolved, or escalated
• What stakeholder involvement looks like (e.g., mandatory participation in user research)

These help you define boundaries and manage expectations, especially when requests come flying in from all directions.

Organizational Policies

These affect others more directly, and you'll need buy-in from leadership or cross-functional teams to adopt them.

They could cover:

• Minimum UX testing before product releases
• Content rules or accessibility standards
• Who gets to make design decisions (and on what basis)
• Prioritization frameworks for UX improvements
• Research or compliance requirements

Yes, these take longer to get approved, but they provide long-term benefits. They embed UX best practices that last beyond your team.

How to Write a Good Policy

Policies don’t need to be long. In fact, the best ones are short, sharp, and based on logic everyone can follow.

A simple if–then format works beautifully:

“If a stakeholder hasn’t observed user research in the past 6 weeks, then they cannot act as a primary decision-maker on the project.”

That’s an actual policy used by the UK’s Government Digital Service. It’s clear, fair, and easy to enforce.

Once you’ve drafted something in plain language, you can always use ChatGPT or similar tools to polish it into more formal language if needed.

Don’t let perfection get in the way of progress. A rough Google Doc of 3–5 working policies is a great start.

Outie’s Aside

If you run a freelance practice or agency, you might think policies sound a bit bureaucratic. But they can be a lifesaver, especially when dealing with clients who want everything yesterday and expect UX magic on demand.

Try developing your own internal working policies, like what you require from clients before starting work (e.g., user interviews, existing data), or your process for revisions and testing. These help you stay focused and reduce friction.

You can also use policies to educate clients subtly. Add a policy to your proposals or onboarding docs that says something like:

“All new features must undergo at least one usability test before release.”

It’s not a demand. It’s how you work. And it positions you as the expert, not just a designer-for-hire.

Your Action Step

Pick one area of friction in your work (maybe it’s rushed feedback or lack of research involvement) and write a working policy for it. Keep it simple. If–then is your friend.

In the next email, we'll look at probably the most powerful policy of them all: how to prioritize your work. It's one of the most powerful ways to stop reactive work and start being more strategic with your UX efforts.

Talk soon,

Paul

Ever notice how every other department has policies and procedures, but UX rarely does?

There are rules for procurement. Rules for budgets. Rules for installing software. Even rules for when you’re allowed to eat fish at your desk (I wish I was joking). But ask someone for the rules around UX, and you’ll probably get a blank look.

The difference? Most teams have taken the time to write theirs down. We haven’t.

That’s what we’re going to fix.

We’ll start with one of the most accessible and impactful types of UX guidance you can create: design principles.

What Are Design Principles, Really?

Design principles are a set of high-level guidelines to help your organization make consistent, user-centered decisions. They provide a north star for teams as they navigate the thousand tiny choices that shape your user experience - from interface copy to onboarding flows.

Done right, they:

• Keep people focused on what matters most
• Ensure UX is considered across the board, not just by your team
• Help settle disagreements without calling in the UX police

In short, they make your life easier and your users’ experience better.

Why You Can’t Just Make Them Up

You may have heard about design principles before. You may have even created your own. However, if you don't create them in the right way, they will rarely succeed.

This is because if you try to create them in a vacuum, nobody will follow them.

It’s not enough to draft a list of nice-sounding statements and post them on the wiki. People will (rightly) wonder where they came from and why they should care. You need to build buy-in from the start.

A Simple Way to Create Design Principles That Stick

Here’s the process I use with clients:

1. Start with inspiration

Go to principles.design and collect around 30 existing principles that could work for your organization. Choose ones that reflect the values you want to promote, and that you’d personally stand behind.

2. Involve stakeholders early

Share this shortlist with a broad group of colleagues. Ask them to vote on the principles that resonate most. This gives them a voice in the process and gives your final list credibility.

Note that because you pre-selected principles that could work for your organization, you prevent stakeholders from choosing inappropriate options while still giving them meaningful input.

3. Narrow it down

You don't need 30 principles. Nobody will remember them. Based on the stakeholder voting, narrow down to the 6 to 10 most popular options. This gives you enough to provide structure, not so many that they become white noise.

4. Share and promote

Once you've finalized your principles, don't just email them out and move on. Introduce them in team meetings. Refer to them in design critiques. Use them as criteria in design reviews. Make them part of how work gets done.

Later in this email course, we'll come on to look at marketing and promoting the work that you do internally within the organization, and that will include more on how to use design principles.

Outie’s Aside

If you’re a freelancer or agency owner, design principles are still worth having, just framed a bit differently. They can be a powerful way to:

• Show clients what you stand for and how you work
• Guide internal consistency across your projects
• Create a shared language when collaborating with partners

You might even consider turning your principles into a short onboarding doc for new clients. It sets expectations early and helps position you as a strategic partner, not just a pixel pusher.

The Bigger Picture

Design principles are powerful, but they’re just the start. If we want UX to be taken seriously across the organization, we need more than good intentions; we need policy. That’s what we’ll explore in the next email: how to create lightweight, flexible UX policies that help guide work without grinding things to a halt.

Until then, have a think:

What’s one design decision your team has debated recently that a shared principle could’ve resolved?

In our last few lessons, we’ve been building out the ecosystem that supports a scalable UX strategy. We’ve covered services, tools, design systems, and even preferred suppliers. But there’s one more piece of infrastructure that can have a surprisingly big impact; your user research repository.

If you want to empower others to take on UX work without losing too much quality, you need to give them a solid foundation to build on. That means they shouldn’t have to start from scratch every time they run a project. And they certainly shouldn’t have to repeat the same user research over and over again just because nobody saved the results.

That’s where your repository comes in.

What a UX Repository Actually Is

At its core, this is simply a central, searchable place to store past user research. Not just what you have done, but what anyone across the organization has conducted.

This could include:

• Personas or audience segmentation
• Journey maps
• Surveys and interview transcripts
• Usability testing results
• Analytics insights, heatmaps, and recordings
• Notes from field studies or observational research

It’s your institutional memory. A UX library, if you like.

Why It Matters

A well-managed research repository offers a ton of practical benefits:

• Saves time and budget by avoiding repeated research
• Improves consistency in how decisions are made
• Reveals patterns and trends across multiple teams or time periods
• Encourages adoption by making research feel more accessible and less mysterious

And just as importantly, it gives your colleagues the confidence to use research in their own projects. When people know they’re not starting from a blank page, they’re far more likely to engage.

What to Include (and How to Organize It)

You’ll want to organize your repository around two primary themes:

Audience Research

This includes everything related to your user groups:

• Personas (or audience profiles)
• Journey maps
• Survey results
• Interview transcripts

Service Research

This is about specific products or experiences:

• Task completion insights
• Usability testing results
• Analytics dashboards
• Hotjar or Microsoft Clarity recordings
• Conversion funnel analyses

Use tags and categories to make these easy to find. Things like project names, audience types, dates, and tools used.

You’ll also want to note the age of the research. Outdated insights can be misleading, so having a simple “last updated” or “research date” field is a big help.

Tools That Can Help

There are purpose-built platforms like Condens or Dovetail that do this well. But if budgets are tight, a shared Notion workspace or Microsoft Teams library can work just fine, what matters most is that it’s:

• Easy to search
• Clearly structured
• Openly accessible (with appropriate privacy controls)

Don’t Forget Recruitment

Related to the repository, there’s another simple asset that can massively speed up research across your organization: a user mailing list.

Maintaining a list of users who’ve opted in to participate in testing, interviews, or surveys can save hours every time someone wants to run a study. You can build this list by:

• Including a research opt-in checkbox on forms or newsletters
• Promoting it in email footers or product dashboards
• Asking customer service teams to flag helpful users

In large orgs, you may need to gate access so users aren’t bombarded. But in smaller teams, making the list available to trusted colleagues can really encourage adoption.

Outie’s Aside

If you’re running a freelance practice or small agency, this applies just as much to you. But instead of organizing internal research, think about what you can package up for clients.

You could:

• Compile insights from previous similar clients into a reference deck
• Offer templated journey maps or personas as part of a discovery phase
• Maintain your own user panel for fast, lightweight testing on behalf of clients

Over time, this builds intellectual property that adds value to your services. It also makes you faster and more credible in the eyes of prospective clients because you’re not just winging it. You’re bringing tested insights and proven patterns to the table.

The Takeaway

If you're serious about scaling your UX influence, a research repository and user mailing list aren’t just “nice to haves.” They’re part of the invisible infrastructure that lets good UX practice flourish without your constant involvement.

We’ll talk more next time about how to keep quality high as more people start running their own research. Because empowering people is one thing ensuring they do it well is another.

You can give people all the resources and training in the world. You can even get them fired up about UX. But let’s be real; there will always be times when they simply don’t have the time, energy, or skills to do the work themselves.

In the past, they’d come to you. And you’d do it for them. But we’re trying to get you out of that cycle. If you're going to scale your impact, you can’t be the one personally delivering on every single project.

That’s where a preferred supplier list comes in.

Why a Supplier List Is a Strategic Asset

It's tempting to let stakeholders find their own vendors. After all, there's no shortage of freelancers or agencies out there. But this approach risks quality and consistency. Not all suppliers will meet your standards, and some may be overly influenced by the stakeholder who hired them.

Instead, create a vetted list of suppliers you trust and make this list easier to use than finding vendors independently. Using your pre-approved list should feel like the obvious choice for everyone involved.

When you create, maintain, and make accessible a trusted supplier list, you:

• Ensure quality: You've already vetted these suppliers. You know they care about user experience and meet your standards.
• Avoid procurement headaches: Pre-approved suppliers make life easier for your stakeholders. No need to jump through hoops every time they need outside help.
• Speed things up: With an established list, teams can move quickly. No more weeks spent gathering quotes or drafting RFPs.
• Keep costs predictable: Many preferred suppliers offer discounted or fixed pricing in return for ongoing work. That saves money and makes budgeting simpler.
• Expand your capabilities: You can include specialists; people with niche skills like accessibility, SEO, or advanced user research. That fills gaps you and your team may not be able to cover.
• Maintain strategic control: When you control the list, suppliers know they're accountable to you, not just the individual stakeholder hiring them. That means they'll come to you if something feels off, and they'll uphold your UX principles throughout the project.
• Make the right choice the easy choice: When your list is well-organized and readily available, teams naturally gravitate toward using it rather than spending time finding their own vendors.

What to Look for in Preferred Suppliers

If you're going to stand behind these suppliers, choose carefully.

• They must get how you work. Your suppliers should follow your expectations and ways of working even when dealing with someone else in the organization.
• They need to be pre-approved. Work with your procurement team to get them set up in advance. If it’s too hard to hire them, stakeholders will just bypass the list.
• They should understand the politics. A good supplier knows not to say yes to everything just to win favor. They keep you in the loop and help hold the line when a stakeholder pushes for something questionable.

You Stay in the Driver’s Seat

A preferred supplier list doesn’t remove you from the picture; it actually keeps you more involved. You’re still part of the process, just from a higher level. You’re the gatekeeper. The advisor. The one who shapes how UX is delivered, even when you’re not the one doing the work.

And that’s exactly where you want to be.

Your Next Step

If you don’t already have a supplier list, start small. Identify 2 or 3 people or companies you’ve worked with before and trust. Add them to a shared Notion page or spreadsheet with their contact info, specialties, and any pre-negotiated rates.

Even a rough list is better than leaving stakeholders to guess, or worse still, go their own way.

By now, we've talked a lot about moving from being an implementer to someone who empowers others. You've started offering supportive services and built out a design system to help teams move faster. But if we're serious about scaling UX across an organization, we need to go even further.

We need to make sure people have access to the right tools.

Because even with a design system, your colleagues won't be able to do much UX work unless they have the means to run surveys, test ideas, analyze user behavior, or check accessibility. And if they're left to figure that out on their own, they'll waste time, pick poor tools, or give up altogether.

Why a UX Tool Suite Matters

If you want your colleagues to take on more UX tasks themselves, you can't just leave them to it. You have to make it easy.

Providing a pre-approved, easy-to-access set of tools helps in several ways:

• Saves time: No more researching dozens of survey platforms or testing tools
• Ensures quality: You know the tools work and produce reliable results
• Makes training easier: Everyone is using the same toolset, so onboarding is simpler
• Improves collaboration: Results are more consistent, making it easier to share and interpret findings

You're not just giving people tools. You're removing friction. And that makes adoption of UX practices far more likely.

What Tools Should You Include?

There's no single "perfect" toolkit. What works for one team may not work for another. But in general, you'll want to support the following areas:

User Research

Surveys, polls, and feedback tools. Things like Typeform, Google Forms, or UserTesting for more in-depth work.

Data Visualization

Tools to create personas, journey maps, or visualize research insights. Miro, UXPressia, or Figma's FigJam are good options here.

Usability Testing

Remote or in-person tools like Lookback, Maze, or even moderated sessions using Zoom and screen sharing.

Prototyping

Figma is the go-to for many teams, but simpler tools like Balsamiq might be better for beginners. Adobe XD or Axure offer more advanced options. Pick what fits your team's needs and existing skills.

Analytics

Heatmaps and behavior tracking via tools like Microsoft Clarity, Hotjar, or Google Analytics.

Accessibility

Basic checks can be done with free tools like Axe DevTools, WAVE, or Siteimprove.

It doesn't matter whether you go with an all-in-one platform or mix-and-match a few niche tools. The important thing is that the tools are:

• Easy to learn
• Already available
• Approved through procurement
• Clearly documented, ideally with how-to guides or short training

Make It Easy to Say "Yes"

The best way to roll out a toolkit is to make it dead simple for people to start using it. That might mean:

• A Notion page listing your approved tools, with links and login info
• A 15-minute intro video explaining what each tool does
• Templates for common tasks (like a usability testing plan or survey structure)
• Short drop-in training sessions to help people get started

When you lower the activation energy, you increase adoption. It's that simple.

You're Not Just Providing Tools. You're Shaping Behavior

This isn't just about giving people tools. It's about shaping a new culture.

By equipping others, you're embedding UX into their daily practice. You're helping them build good habits. And you're removing one more excuse for not putting users first.

It's one of the clearest ways to expand your influence without burning out.

Outie's Aside

If you run a freelance practice or agency, this applies just as much to you. But in your case, your "colleagues" are your clients.

Most clients want to do the right thing. They just don't know how. By giving them a simple toolkit, you make it easier for them to run with your ideas even after the project is done.

Here's what that could look like:

• Provide a shortlist of free or low-cost research tools they can use between engagements
• Create a reusable testing script they can adapt
• Offer a client dashboard (Notion, Trello, or similar) that links to helpful resources
• Record a short Loom video showing them how to run a simple usability test

That small investment makes you more valuable and deepens the relationship. It shows you're thinking long-term. Not just about the deliverables, but about their ongoing success.

Curating a suite of UX tools might seem like a small step, but it can have a huge impact. When you remove the guesswork and make it easy for people to do good UX work, you unlock progress across the whole organization.

It’s one more way you move from being the person who does UX to the person who enables it.

In the next lesson, we'll look at creating a preferred supplier list - another essential resource that helps your colleagues stay on track, even when you're not in the room.

In the last lesson, I talked about the four types of UX resources that can help you scale your influence across the organization. This time, we're going to zero in on one of the most powerful tools at your disposal: the design system.

If you want to move from being an implementer to a UX leader, someone who empowers others to create better experiences, a good design system is your best ally. It makes user-centered design easier for everyone else. That, in turn, frees you up to focus on the bigger picture.

Let's talk about why that matters and what makes a design system truly useful.

Why Design Systems Matter (Even if You Think You've Got One)

I'm not just talking about a Figma file with some buttons and colors. I mean a real design system. One that's robust, well-documented, and tightly integrated with your development process.

Because, people across your organization need to visualize, prototype, and test ideas quickly. If they're constantly reinventing layouts or relying on you to build everything, you become the bottleneck. A good design system short-circuits that by giving them the building blocks to create user-friendly interfaces without needing to be UX experts.

That helps in several ways:

• Speed: Reusable components make it faster to go from idea to mockup
• Consistency: Interfaces follow the same design logic, reducing confusion and friction
• Scalability: Teams don't need to wait on you to build every screen
• Built-in best practice: Accessibility and UI standards are baked in

But for any of that to work, you've got to go beyond just handing over a Figma file.

What Makes a Design System Effective?

It's easy to underestimate what goes into a good design system. But if you want others to use it correctly and confidently, it needs to tick a few critical boxes.

Clear Documentation

Think brand guidelines, but for components. Your team needs to know how and when to use each item. That includes the "dos and don'ts" and examples of what not to do. Misusing components is common. Like placing white text on pale backgrounds or combining elements in awkward ways. A few screenshots can save a lot of confusion.

Developer-Friendly Integration

Design systems shouldn't just work for designers. Developers need to be able to take what they see in Figma and translate it into code. That means making component names and logic consistent between tools. Ideally, it also includes code snippets they can copy directly.

Reusable Code Components

If you've got a design system in Figma but no matching code components in your front-end library, you're only halfway there. Work with engineering to make sure each design element has a reusable, implementable counterpart in code.

Modular and Maintainable

Your system needs to grow with your organization. Whether you're rebranding or adding new features, your design system should make updates easier, not harder. Modular components help with that and make it easier to iterate as standards evolve.

Governance and Ongoing Ownership

This isn't a "set and forget" resource. A design system needs love and maintenance. Set up lightweight processes for reviewing and updating it regularly. That might mean assigning someone ownership or scheduling a quarterly design system review.

You Don't Need to Build It All at Once

A solid design system is a powerful investment. But it doesn't need to be perfect or comprehensive from day one. Start small. Pick a few high-use components like buttons, form fields, and modals, and document those well. Build from there as your needs and capacity allow.

The important part is getting something usable into people's hands as early as possible.

Your Action Step

Start by taking inventory. What components or styles are you re-creating over and over again? Could you package those into a starter design system for others to use?Next time, we'll talk about the tools you can provide that make research, testing, and prototyping much easier for your colleagues.

So far in this series, we've been shifting your role from implementer to advisor. You've worked hard to win trust, define a strategy, and begin shaping the way your organization approaches user experience.

But, just because people agree with your strategy doesn't mean they're ready to run with it.

Most stakeholders are busy. Many aren't confident doing UX themselves. And now, you're asking them to take on tasks you used to handle like research, testing, or prototyping.

That can feel like a lot.

Reduce Friction, Increase Adoption

If you want others to embrace user-centered practices, you need to make it as easy as possible for them. That's why one of your most valuable contributions as a UX leader is to create resources that lower the barrier to entry.

These resources act like stepping stones. They make it easier for people to do things the right way without needing to start from scratch or second-guess themselves.

In my experience, four types of resources offer the biggest return:

A Design System

A design system helps teams move faster and more confidently. It bakes UX best practices into the UI itself, making consistency and usability the default. It's an especially powerful tool for anyone prototyping pages or building new features.

We'll go deeper into this one in the next email.

A Suite of Tools

Your colleagues don't have time to research survey platforms, testing tools, or recruitment services. Save them the hassle. Offer a curated list of tools that are easy to use and fit your organization's context. Even better, give them a bit of guidance or training to get started.

This helps people act quickly and correctly without needing to consult you every time.

A Preferred Supplier List

Sometimes stakeholders simply can't do the work themselves. That's okay. But when they turn to external help, they risk choosing vendors who don't share your UX standards.

A vetted list of trusted suppliers ensures quality, avoids procurement headaches, and saves everyone time. It also reinforces your role as a strategic advisor, not just a service provider.

General User Research

If people are running their own projects, they need to start with some understanding of who your users are. Providing a library of existing research segmented by audience, goal, or product line gives them a head start. It helps avoid duplicate effort and ensures that teams aren't working in the dark.

They'll still need to run project-specific research, but this foundation gives them something solid to build on.

You Don't Have to Build Everything Overnight

I know this can sound like a lot. But don't worry we're going to unpack each of these in the coming lessons.

For now, think of this as the blueprint for your next phase of influence. These resources are how you go from supporting a few projects to shaping how your entire organization delivers user experience.

They're also the key to breaking the bottleneck. If you've been stretched thin trying to "own UX" on every touchpoint, this is your way out.

In the next email, we'll dive into the first resource on the list: your design system. It's often the easiest place to start and can have an outsized impact very quickly.

Until then, take a moment to reflect:

Which of these resources already exist in your organization and which ones could you start sketching out?

Drop me a reply if you're unsure where to start. I'm happy to help you think it through.

Talk soon,

In the last email, I talked about shifting your role from implementer to advisor. I know that can feel uncomfortable, maybe even a bit risky. Letting go of direct control means trusting others to do UX work, and let's be honest, at first they probably won't do it as well as you would.

But, they don't have to be perfect. What matters is that they start. Because once you begin enabling others, equipping them to think about users and make smarter design choices, you move from influencing individual deliverables to shaping the broader user experience across your organization. That's how real change begins.

So how do you support that shift in practice?

Let's talk about the kinds of strategic services you can offer that allow you to touch more projects, without becoming a bottleneck.

Project Validation with SUPA

One of the biggest challenges I see is that projects often launch without proper validation. They're built on assumptions rather than user needs. And if the foundation is flawed, no amount of UX polish will save it.

That's why I often recommend introducing something I call SUPA: Strategic User-driven Project Assessment. Yes, the acronym is slightly cheesy but it works.

SUPA is your entry point. It's a lightweight assessment that helps determine whether a project is even worth pursuing from a user experience point of view. Think of it as a UX pre-flight checklist that keeps bad ideas from taking off.

Here's what it covers:

• Audience: Is there a clearly defined, high-value group the project serves?
• Needs: Does the project solve a real user problem or meet a known goal?
• Feasibility: Are there the UX resources and planning needed to execute it well?
• Design Risks: What could go wrong, and how can we reduce that risk?
• Recommendation: Should the project go ahead and if not, what needs fixing?

SUPA doesn't replace traditional business analysis. It complements it by adding a crucial user-centered lens. If you're in a large organization, this might sit nicely alongside what business analysts are already doing. And if you're in a smaller team, this can be your way of steering things before they get too far down the wrong path.

Coaching, Not Commanding

The other half of your service offering is ongoing coaching, being a supportive presence on projects without needing to be in the weeds every day.

You could provide:

• 1:1 coaching with project leads, offering regular check-ins and advice.
• Group coaching across projects, where teams learn from each other's challenges.
• UX reviews and audits, where you dip into projects periodically to keep them aligned with best practices.
• Office hours, using tools like Calendly so anyone can book time with you.
• Targeted workshops, when a team hits a UX roadblock and needs help unblocking it.

This isn't about inserting yourself into every decision. It's about creating space for others to grow their UX capabilities while you stay focused on higher-level guidance.

Why This Matters

By offering services like SUPA and coaching, you stop being the person who just "does UX stuff" and become the person who shapes how UX happens across the organization.

You also avoid the burnout that comes from being pulled into every project. You're no longer fighting a losing battle trying to control every touchpoint. Instead, you're building a system that scales, one that allows you to have a bigger influence with less stress.

In our next lesson, we'll explore how to support these services with the right resources and tools, so your colleagues can start doing UX work with more confidence and less friction.

Until then, think about this: If someone from another team asked for your help tomorrow, what kind of support would you want to offer? What would make the most impact without dragging you into execution?

Let's get you out of the weeds and into a role where your influence can really take root.

In the last email, I talked about presenting your UX vision to stakeholders and leadership. We looked at how to focus on the value you offer and how to tailor that message to your audience's specific needs. But, successfully driving through your strategy involves more than just a well-crafted presentation. It also needs a strategic approach when you are in the room with those key decision makers.

I want to share some additional thoughts on that today.

The Problem with Asking Permission

One common mistake I see is when UX practitioners pitch their strategy as something they need management to sign off on. This can trigger a cautious mindset in people. They might start thinking, "Is this going to cost me money?" or "What are the implications for me?" and the conversation quickly becomes a critique.

A Better Approach: Ask for Help

Instead, I recommend going in and asking for their help. Explain your goals clearly. Tell them you're trying to improve in specific areas and deliver on the goals they care about. Then, explain that you believe your strategy is the way to achieve this. Crucially, ask for their perspective. Ask if they agree with your approach and what they think about it.

Why This Works

This approach of drawing them in and asking for their feedback does two powerful things.

First, you're appealing to their ego a little bit. You're saying that you value their opinion and believe they can help you. People are generally quite receptive to that.

Second, if you can genuinely take on board their comments and tweak your strategy based on their feedback, they've essentially given you permission already. If you've incorporated their suggestions, they are more likely to be happy with it. People like to be consistent with their previously stated views, so it becomes very unlikely they will reject it. Even if you don't apply all their recommendations, having a dialogue about it means they feel a sense of ownership over your strategy.

Find Your Allies

It also helps significantly if you do some preparation before you speak to management. Go and seek allies. These are other people who are excited by your strategy and vision and are willing to support you in your conversations with leadership by saying, "Yes, I'm behind this too." The more voices you have, the more momentum your strategy picks up. This means management is much more likely to approve it. It's really worth trying to create excitement around your strategy before you try to make it official.

Start with Design Champions

When looking for potential allies, start with the obvious people. These are the individuals who already value design and UX within your organization. You likely know who they are. Even if they don't use the specific term "user experience," they are certainly affected by the negative consequences of a poor user experience. Typically, these will be people in marketing or customer service.

Find Change Advocates

Next, look for those who are dissatisfied with the status quo. Your best allies are often those who are unhappy with current processes and want things to change. For example, product owners who feel frustrated that the UX team has become a bottleneck, or that you can't contribute as much as they'd like, can often be useful allies.

Prepare for Objections

When you start talking to potential allies, senior management, or any colleagues, you need to be ready for objections. There will be many thrown at you, and you need to have responses prepared. While I won't list every possible objection, here are some common ones you might hear:

• Red tape: "We need to go through procurement for that." This is especially common in larger organizations.
• Resource constraints: "We haven't got enough people to do this."
• Risk aversion: People don't like to do anything different because it might be dangerous.
• Lack of evidence or data to support your proposed approach.
• Return on investment (ROI).
• The objection of others: "That's a great idea, but you'll never get it past so-and-so."
• Change fatigue: People are tired of changing their behavior.
• Poor market conditions or economic situation.

Broadly speaking, I have three different tactics for these situations:

• Minimize the impact: Emphasize that what you're proposing will impact others very little. As long as people don't have to do extra work, they are normally more open to change.
• Stage the rollout: Suggest a trial period. Implement changes in stages while monitoring to ensure they are having the desired effect.
• Don't ask for anything extra: No extra money, people, or time. This gives people very little room to object since you're not asking anything of them.

Be Patient and Persistent

With all of this, you need to be patient and persistent. Don't just make a one-off attempt. Follow up and keep the conversation going with updates and additional information as needed. That's why you want to avoid a situation where management simply says no. By talking about getting their help rather than their permission, you create opportunities to follow up and continue providing information gradually.

Stay committed. Perseverance is not only important to achieve your goal. It also shows dedication to your vision. This can persuade people over time that your strategy isn't just a passing idea but something you are committed to and believe is important. It's important to recognize that shifting your role and strategy is a marathon, not a sprint.

Next Time

That's all I want to say about defining your role and strategy for now. In the next email, we're going to look at how you can have a much bigger impact on projects within your organization, even with limited resources. This is where we'll really begin to unpack some elements of that strategy and how it can help you have a bigger impact on projects. But that's for next time.

In the last email, we talked about sketching out your UX strategy. Not a polished final document, but a draft that clarifies your direction and invites collaboration.

But that strategy is only useful if people buy into it. And that means you now need to switch hats: from strategist to storyteller.

That's what this week is all about: how to present your vision in a way that gets your colleagues and leadership on board.

Don't Just Present. Involve.

The biggest mistake I see people make is showing up to stakeholders with a "here's what I'm going to do" approach. Instead, try:

Here's what I'm thinking. What's your take?

That small shift does two powerful things:

• It invites others into the process, giving them a sense of ownership.
• It makes it harder for them to say no later because they helped shape it.

A strategy that's co-created is much more likely to be supported and championed. But to create something together effectively, you need to truly understand who you're working with.

Understand Your Stakeholders Like You Understand Your Users

We're great at user research. We'll run interviews, analyze data, and build personas to understand end users.

But when it comes to internal stakeholders? We often just... guess. Or worse, we get frustrated when they don't see things our way.

So flip the script: do your research. Talk to stakeholders one-on-one. Ask them what their priorities are. What challenges they're facing. What success looks like for them this quarter or this year.

Then map your strategy to those things. This leads us to an important realization: your strategy needs to be flexible enough to speak to different audiences.

One Vision, Many Versions

When it comes time to share your strategy, don't use the same pitch for everyone.

A marketing lead wants to hit quarterly targets. A finance director cares about cost savings. A project manager is drowning in dependencies and missed deadlines.

So don't talk generically about improving the user experience. Talk about:

• Reducing churn (for marketing)
• Cutting support call volume (for finance)
• Smoothing collaboration (for project management)

Make your strategy speak their language. The more personal the value, the more likely they'll back your plan. And speaking of personal value...

Solve Their Pain, Not Just Yours

Another powerful approach is to speak directly to pain points.

If your UX team is seen as a bottleneck, talk about how your strategy empowers others to take on basic UX tasks themselves. If product managers are stressed about missing targets, show how better UX will help users complete key tasks faster.

The question to answer is: what's in it for them? And sometimes, the best way to answer that question is through storytelling.

Tell a Story That Sticks

Let me give you a quick example. I once watched a waitress struggle to take our order on a clunky app. It took ages. So I started calculating: how many seconds lost per table? Per day? Per restaurant? Across the entire chain?

It added up to hundreds of thousands in wasted wages.

That's the kind of story you can tell. You're not just saying "bad UI wastes time." You're showing how much money is on the table.

If you can connect your UX strategy to tangible outcomes (even if they're estimates), it will land so much better with management. But remember, while stories are powerful, timing is everything.

Mix Short-Term Wins With Long-Term Value

Let's be honest. Most leaders are focused on next quarter's results, not next year's vision.

So give them both.

Yes, your UX work might improve retention or reduce churn, but also talk about what you can do now. Can you run a quick usability test that reduces support tickets? Can you tweak a key flow that lifts conversion rates?

Make it clear your strategy delivers both immediate impact and long-term value. Now, let's put all of this into action.

Your Action Step

This week, identify 2 to 3 key stakeholders.

Book a quick chat with each one. Ask what they're working toward. Listen for pain points.

Then write down:

• What they care about
• How your strategy helps
• The best way to frame your pitch to them

We'll build on this next time when we dive deeper into how to present your ideas to management effectively, especially when things get political.