Get credit for strategic thinking

And avoid vampires who speak weird languages

This topic won last week’s vote, but in writing this essay I realized I hated the title. Why? It’s backwards! The better question is why aren’t you getting the credit you deserve? And that’s what this essay is about.

It’s a much better title. Why? Maybe you’ve been lazy these last few weeks and there are good reasons you’re not getting credit (you don’t deserve it!). We’re all a little lazy sometimes and there’s no shame in that. Or it could be you work for a gang of Esperanto speaking vampiric psychopaths who have dedicated their (infinite) lives to making your design career as painful as possible. In which case lack of credit is the least of your problems.

Since there are many possible reasons you’re not getting credit, I’ve reframed this essay to address the likely ones. However, if the vampire thing is real I doubt I can help much, other than advising you to learn Esperanto and to eat more garlic.

Why wouldn’t you get credit?

If you are not getting credit, there are three likely reasons why. They are:

1. You didn’t do any strategic work

2. You did the work, but leaders didn’t like it

3. Someone took credit for your efforts

Here is my advice, one situation at a time.

1. You didn’t do strategic work (yet)

What is strategic work? Strategy is a funny word and I don’t want to get into the weeds of debating its meaning (what is a tactic vs. a strategy is a matter of perspective). Instead I’ll give a simple and actionable definition:

strategy is the planning above and around you that you want to influence

Can you live with this definition, at least for now? If you can’t, and you’re a VP or a super powerful designer whose daily job is to define strategy all day long, let me know and I will write a different essay for you. But for most of you reading this, strategy is what you wish you were more involved in, right?

It’s true we have the term Design strategy but I don’t like it. In theory it means a person who comes up with plans that span months or years. My complaint is it suggests every role has a strategy (engineering strategy, marketing strategy, product strategy) and that they are somehow divided from each other! It’s a kind of narrowing and overspecializing only a giant corporation could justify. As a counterpoint, a good UX designer at a startup probably does more strategic decision-making than a Principal Lead Design Strategist at a MegaCorp.

But enough griping about definitions and job titles. To do strategic work you must:

1. Study the current business strategy for your project/organization

2. Find ways to improve the strategy

3. Communicate those improvements persuasively

That’s it. It’s not complicated. The rub is that strategy is hard. Not everyone is good at strategic thinking. Some designers struggle with strategy because making better products is only one of many strategies that an organization can choose, but it’s the only one designers understand well. Often businesses have strategies that center on positioning, partnerships and promotion, which can succeed with mediocre products. That’s just the nature of strategy!

And this is where many designer get stuck: they want to transform their entire organizational culture and structure to suit their personal preferences, instead of appealing to the existing preferences of company leaders and creatively persuading them on your ideas, but with their own stated values. Good design can raise profits, lower costs and improve customer satisfaction, but you have to persuade leaders that good design is a better way to do achieve those goals than the alternatives.

For #1, I strongly recommend finding someone involved in the current strategy who is patient enough to answer your questions. Have coffee with them. Be genuinely curious about why the current strategy is what it is and which leaders currently support it and which are against it. Strategy is a landscape of powerful people and their preferences and if you don’t know where the hills and valleys are it will work against you.

2. You did the work, but leaders didn’t like it

Lets say you did all the steps listed above. Good job. But… they didn’t like it. Boo. It might be time to eat more garlic.

But first ask: why didn’t they like it? Here are the likely reasons, with advice:

1. It was good, but not good enough. Strategy is competitive! Everyone has strong opinions about it. Your ideas may have been good, but were not convincing enough. Of course you should get credit for this, but you might be reading this post because you want to get more credit than you currently get.

2. They didn’t understand it. Think of leaders as users: you work really hard to use language and metaphors customers already know in your designs, right? Did you do this in your strategy arguments? Make sure to anchor your message in their world, not your own. Reuse metaphors and frameworks from the strategy documents leaders have used before. Good pitching is mostly about studying who you are pitching to, and what their preferences are.

3. They don’t trust you yet. A strategy failure can get a VP fired. This is high stakes decision making. They might have liked your idea, but don’t know you or your work well enough to bet their career on it. And the bigger your ideas the scarier they are. Pick a smaller, safer suggestion and focus on it, and when you deliver what your promised you’ll have earned more trust for next time.

4. Leaders don’t agree. Often our ideas are just along for the ride in the stormy seas of leadership negotiations. If five leaders have to agree to adopt your ideas, which of the five supports you the most? The least? You need to know this before you pitch your ideas. Getting allies behind you, and incorporating early feedback from your detractors, can make all the difference it getting your ideas approved.

3. Someone took credit for your efforts

This happens two ways: unintentionally and intentionally. Both are frustrating, but there are things you can do to make it less likely.

In Why Design Is Hard, I explain that whoever presents an idea is naturally seen as its representative and will get more credit for it. Often project leaders are asked to do the presenting and higher visibility comes along with it. Better project leaders go out of their way to acknowledge the key contributions of people on their team (it’s in their interest to do so), but when presenting to executives there is significant time pressure and it’s harder to get those nuances across.

My advice to designers is that it is important to become comfortable presenting your own work. You should want to be visible when it comes to your ideas and efforts. Many designers avoid attention but this works against you and your career. Presenting, writing, making demo videos, are all skills that you should see as essential parts of your profession. It’s harder for someone to get credit for your work when you are a strong and clear communicator.

Coming up with ideas is at best half the work of being a creative professional. The other half is persuading other people to use those ideas and helping them use them well. Ideas almost never speak for themselves, and when they do speak up, you want to make sure the voice people hear is yours. Or at least the voice of a trusted collaborator who will return the same favor to you.