When the ROI discussion arises it often is not about ROI. It is really about understanding what that user experience is doing, and if the person asking the question understands how he will benefit. The answer is different for people at different levels in the organization. What the general manager needs to know is different from what the developer wants to know. The problem is not that we do not have the answers; the problem is often that we are just so busy working that we forget to actually tell people what we are doing and about its impact. The manager does a little of this as he shares individual success stories and presents the work. You can have more impact if you sit back a little and think through a communications plan and align your messaging around it.

The communications plan illustrated in Fig. 9.1 consists of several parts. It includes:

When written up in more detail, you may include the messages that you want to weave through the communications as well. These may be the total cost of ownership messages, mission and vision messages, or others. The goal of this plan is partly to clarify ownership so you can make sure it is happening and does not fall through the cracks, and partly to make sure that you have explicitly thought through what you want to say and its impact. Your communication plan is the intentional part of the branding you create.

In some ways, every contact people have with your UX team forms a kind of brand identity around the team. You are arguing that there is something unique and special about what you provide the projects you support, and the people who engage with you can have specific expectations about excellence, creativity, timeliness, or the attributes of the vision in your strategy.

A common milestone is naming your team. It may seem trivial, but it can be more important than you would expect. Your name becomes part of your branding. We are currently debating how to change our name given a new position within the organization. Do we want to identify ourselves as a user experience team supporting the entire division (the RXD User Experience team), or do we want to associate ourselves with a specific team inside the organization and signal that we are sharing their charter? A full name is pretty long, however, to put on posters and other communication. Often you will just want to use an acronym for your team, and possibly associate the acronym with a logo.

We have also thought about a general palette of colors and a look that can be used for our various communications. With an acronym, possibly a logo, and general stylistic elements you can create a consistent identity system. You can apply it to the various items included in your communications plan, including artifacts such as:

The brand image you associate with your team also contributes to its identity. The logo shown in Fig. 9.2 represented my Ameritech team very effectively. It connected with the new corporate brand, and tied to the ad campaign that was featuring our work and the unique approach we were taking to the design and research. At many companies teams have defined logos and the identity system for their teams, and these have brought their teams together as well as represented the team to the rest of the organization. One note of caution is that the corporate branding people often try to forbid teams from creating logos and their own branding inside the company. They argue there are already too many and that it dilutes the corporate brand.

Your name, logo, and identity, and the way you use them across your various communications vehicles should convey a consistent representation of your team. Done well, they convey the vision and mission in your strategy. They can shape the design of the space in which you work, and extend your presence into the work areas frequented by the organizations you support. They inspire your team, and like product brands set the expectations of those who view your various forms of communication.

Jeremy Ashley (2007), in a recent article, correctly pointed out, “As user experience professionals in management roles, we inevitably need to work with the top executives within our companies.” I have to admit, one of the things I am not very good at is schmoozing and politicking. One piece of advice I received from a valued boss and mentor is that I need to work harder at taking key influencers out for drinks and the occasional cigar. It probably would help if I smoked.

I am very comfortable talking with whomever I need to talk with about the importance and wonders of user experience. I developed an excellent relationship with the CEO of Ameritech (who later become the CEO of Qwest). I have talked with CEOs at several companies where I have worked, and talked user experience with people up and down the management chain. But my style is by nature and nurture to come across as more of a thoughtful and patient person. I am not one of the arm wavers and more theatrical types. I often wish I was, but I am not, so I have had to identify influence approaches that work for me.

Bloomer and Croft (1997) pointed out:

They argue it will be important to sell your message to senior managers, potential allies, developers, clients and users, and other internal groups. The senior managers are where you find the champion or angel that is the source of the funding for your program. Your allies are evangelists for your effort. Bloomer and Croft made an excellent suggestion that you need to identify the hot buttons for each group, and need to tailor your messages to address them. You need to help the audience understand how you will be enabling them to achieve the goals that matter to them. Knowing the usability myths that may be held by different audiences allows you to dispel them and make way for your positive messages. With an effective strategy targeting the audiences you are after, you are in a position to implement it and drive transformation. Keep the entire organization informed about your successes and engage them in the process. Also, keep demonstrating value and enroll people in driving and growing that value.

The advice I give to my team is the advice I try to use myself. If I do not know what people are doing, I cannot evaluate it. If others do not know what you and your team are doing they cannot value it. You need to keep your boss informed about where you are heading and your experiences getting there, as well as the impact of the results or lessons learned from the failures. I can honestly say, however, that it is as hard for me as it is for my team. I am used to being pretty self-sufficient and I enjoy being given free reign. I am confident in what I am doing and the impact it will have, so mostly I put my head down and just do it. That means there are probably too many times when my management does not fully appreciate what they have until after it is gone.

My favorite type of manager is one who has let me chart the way, but who has both challenged me and has been there to help when I needed it. Managing upward with those managers has partly been to help them achieve their goals, as I achieve mine, and to help them see the relationship between the two. We have been able to have candid, open conversations and I have grown as a result. My team has reaped many rewards as a result of my boss’ (and their boss’) awareness of the work.

The senior management that never quite gets it, or does not like what they do get, is a problem. I have had managers who are not around to learn what we have done, but who also explicitly do not want e-mail or other communication telling them what has been done. I have suspected in these cases that the problem is even if they have a vision of what they want, it is so far from the kind of value we deliver that they would rather have UX go away. This is where you really need a good mentor, someone who can help you figure out how to manage to your boss’ priorities (or who can help you and your team to escape, if escape is necessary).

I suspect another approach is to try to find someone on your team who has a stronger sales personality, and to leverage them to influence your management team. Selfishly, you probably should make sure they are not the Machiavellian type, but assuming they are truly committed to your leadership and your team’s goals, it may be possible to leverage them to help. I have to say I am just speculating here since I have not been able to make this approach work.

Another challenge is when your management chain changes frequently. In my most recent job I have averaged more than one manager per year, and changes above my managers have been nearly as frequent. That can be very hard both on your personal career as well as on advancing your UX agenda. You have to continually be in education mode, and be ready to adjust your tactics as needed.

Ashley (2007) wrote an interesting article called “Working with C-level Executives.” He lays out five principles for dealing with senior executives, which include:

One way to drive influence is by selecting projects that are already strategic priorities for the business, and placing yourself in the middle of them. Another is to identify projects that represent the heart of your user experience vision and that you are confident will deliver business value, and advance those as well. A recent example is accessibility. The corporate accessibility team launched an updated set of requirements and a new corporate policy calling for all products to achieve the new requirements in a specified period of time. As we listened to their presentations, it became clear that while the designs my team was creating were accessible, many applications have not been as accessible as we want them to be. We began to evangelize the potential negative business impact of not being accessible, and through these and other efforts accessibility became one of the top three priorities for one of the vice presidents. A new standards board had been created within IT, so I proposed that we create a standard for how to more consistently implement the corporate accessibility requirements, and the standard was sponsored by this vice president. The CIO and CTO were clearly supporters of the effort. Through the process of creating the standard the UX vision and accessibility within it was exposed to senior executives throughout IT, and is becoming a case study of IT UX impact.

A common step in building influence with executives is sharing particularly compelling books. The books serve to educate and motivate, as well as to give you a common basis for communication. Listed here are a few of my favorite books to share with senior management:

When I started my career at AT&T Bell Laboratories we had several hundred people in the UX community across the company. While there was some contact between teams when there were shared interests (e.g., I remember my first meetings with Mary Carol Day were over her research in LCD coding when I was interested in a similar application for voice and data indicators), often people just worked in their own silos. There was a behavioral sciences organizing committee that attempted to work on cross-organizational interests. The most common one was to drive a periodic internal conference — Behavioral Sciences Days — that brought the community together to share ideas and to network. But it also was a forum where we could collaborate on specific issues that transcended any individual team. One issue was the fact that salaries for people in the behavioral sciences area were significantly lower on the average than for engineers of similar levels of experience and training. As a result of the efforts of a couple of key people, an excellent survey pulling together all the data, and an executive or two willing to listen, we were able to move salaries to be more comparable between user experience people and the rest of engineering.

At various companies I have been at we have had user experience leadership teams with many of the most senior user experience people across the companies and representation from each of the key user experience areas. Such teams work on things like the career ladder for the discipline, growing the future leadership within the discipline, and overall strategy while also sponsoring internal conferences and events, reviewing areas of common interest like the lab infrastructure, and other initiatives.

In general, user experience is often culturally quite different from the more dominant disciplines in many companies (certainly within technology companies). There are definite advantages in gathering user experience people into a community for the stimulation, networking, and mutual support it brings. Sharing as professionals contributes to a sense of mutual support and growth. While you may not have the budget to directly do many things, just working together enables you to become a voice to be reckoned with and a voice that can accomplish things that will advance user experience for the benefit of your customers, your business, and the community itself. Working together can create an atmosphere that lets each of your teams be more successful in implementing its strategy. Plus, it is often an excellent excuse to get a bunch of people together, drink beer, and talk design and user research.