#102 How to win against pushbacks in UX industry?
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I think you just have to understand their language, their vocabularies. Leadership talks in numbers, like here's how profit will move. Developers talk in sprints and t-shirt sizes.

and product managers talking whatever product features. So if you understand how to tap into their vocabulary and their expectations of what success means for them, then you can use the success language, verbiage for them and then try to say things such as like, okay, I know we want the profit to be 10 times higher. If we do this feature like this, we're going to get it to eight times higher. Tie your reasoning into their goals, their success definition. ♪

Hello, everyone, and welcome to a new episode of Honest UX Talks. As always, I'm joined by Anfisa, and today we will be answering one of the questions that came up in a Q&A in Ask Me Anything sticker that I posted on UX Goodies a couple of weeks ago. It's a question from P. Kares. It's the Instagram handle. And the question goes like this. How to handle pushback after my arguments for top UX stakeholders keep their ground?

It's a very interesting topic. I think we've all dealt to some extent with getting pushback, getting our point of view ignored, getting the executive decision kind of vibe. No, we're doing it like that, even though you made all your points. We're not going to go for that solution. We're going to go for it.

own solution. It's something that typically happens. It's one of the most frustrating parts about being a UX designer. Sometimes you are just not in charge on the decision that's being made and you put a lot of work and research and effort into discovering what the best solution would be and then you just get a big no and however much you try to get your arguments across, sometimes that's impossible and it fails. So how do you handle that? This is what we're going to be unpacking today but before

Before we do that, I just want to ask Anfi how her past week was. Yay! Hello, everybody. Welcome back. Happy to have you here. My last week or two, I guess, were quite busy, honestly, because I think I mentioned in the previous episode that I started working part-time back then.

my office job. And some things are kind of escalating in terms of how much things I'm handling right now. So morning, I'm still sitting with the baby. Then we have a part-time job with a bunch of projects and we're still figuring out the good balance because in the scale-up, it's not expected that you work part-time. In scale-up, a lot of things are moving. And if you have knowledge, you're needed there. And so there are a lot of times when you just cannot say, sorry, my time is out, right? It's not so balanced out. It's all exciting. I'm not

complaining. I really love the passion that people have and a lot of projects that people are initiating and you want to be a part of that. So you kind of have this natural form of not being able to participate in some projects, but at the same time, it's all exciting and it's not the stuff that you don't want to do, but you have to do and stuff like

that, right? So in a way, it feels like you're missing out the fun. So I'm still figuring out my balance on how to not jump on multiple projects. And we have this sort of discussions around the project management rituals. Our design team is growing. So yeah, we're establishing right now processes and rituals. And it's a good timing because now you can still participate in the discussion.

The rest of the things, it's definitely community. So in the evening, I'm still having the community events. I'm changing things around in the community because I want to make it more relevant. So before we had like a stable plan every month. Now I'm adding more variable events, inviting more guests, asking people what's up, what's the topic that I'm interested in, adding more topics that are more ad hoc, but yet

relevant to this point. Like recently we had a Framer event where I was sharing how I built my portfolio and everybody was like super excited. And I feel like I have converted a couple of people to start building their portfolios on Framer. And then I'm planning more exciting games for the community, for example, accountability group with the workshop to kick off your portfolio building. And then the accountability partner will support you and give you the feedback and vice versa, as well as possibly a little program on checkpoint

points with the portfolio building. So you'll receive some sort of information points, what you should be doing next thing and essentially be guided throughout this process. So a lot of things are in the cooking, but I don't think I'll be able to push them until June. Meanwhile, until June, there is also a lot of things going on because I'm preparing for my very first ever live conference talk at the stage here in Prague.

I'm definitely nervous. I know, Joanna, you were doing it last year. I cannot imagine how you handled the stress for the first time. I'm very stressed about it. Like everybody's telling me, oh, it's going to be fine. You're doing great. La la la. And I'm like, no, it's just going to be me fainting on the stage. I know myself. I'm always like getting nervous and speaking faster and just can't control myself. And I remember the first talk I gave for a smaller meetup here locally after the COVID. I remember I started talking, I've been nervous and then it's finished.

I can't remember everything. So I'm blanking out. And I know it's going to be the same type of experience. So I'm trying to prepare myself and doing some dry run, rehearsals, asking for feedback. And I feel like it really helps because building the confidence before you speak out helps to build the confidence and being sure that everybody's getting you. It's just you need to focus on the words you're choosing rather than on the reactions that people are giving you. We'll see how it goes. My talk is in two and a half weeks.

And then, yeah, I also first time ever participated in like a donation campaign for Ukraine. Also very stressful because I don't love to collect money. I don't love to do sales or anything like that. I hate this, but it's very important these days. And yesterday was my first ever Mother's Day. So I used this as a good occasion to promote a free mentoring session for a donation for Ukraine. Because today in Ukraine, moods are changing, as you might have noticed. And there are a lot of people who are not

people forgetting about the actual war and not many people are donating today and it's getting worse and worse and worse. So things are changing and I think people need to start stepping up a little bit more. So that's all on my side. I know you have been traveling. How about you? How exciting was your last one or two weeks?

It was actually pretty chill. It was more of a semi-planned, but a break that I made a bit longer than it was planned. My daughter was on holiday. I also had a short planned holiday to Paris where I went to see the Pompidou before they closed it for five years. It was not as exciting as I thought it would be.

But then I discovered this other museum in Paris, which was still with contemporary art, but much more interesting. I think it's the Bourse of Commerce Museum, the Pinot collection, if anybody wants to go there. Anyhow, that was a much more interesting contemporary art display. I'm not sure if I shared this before. I'm in these couple of months where I'm doing the art tour of Europe. I've been to London to see Tate Modern, Saatchi Gallery. I also went to a museum with interactive installations and my next

travel is to Venice where I go to see the Biennale of Art and yeah this is what I'm up to these days trying to do something other than design but that sort of informs my design thinking and I think it profoundly has an impact or at least it gives you a higher level like bird's eye perspective on life and what matters and what people want and so it really helps me recalibrate and get out of the weeds and trenches and then just think about the bigger picture of everything I'm doing and

it's a really interesting process just getting closer to art. And for the past couple of weeks, I've been exploring this, let's say, interior path or potentiality for doing even less device tech work and more craft, if that makes sense. And I'm looking to find a place that I want to rent and start doing art with my hands.

We'll see how that goes. I just feel that there's a lot of internal noise and in a way energy. And it's just a mix of anxiety and enthusiasm and creativity, I guess. And sometimes I manage to infuse it in the UX work I'm doing. But other times UX is not very creative. Most of the times it's not to anyone who's wondering. It's in a way not very scientific.

You still use intuition a lot, but you use data to inform decisions you're making. So you don't have the place. I mean, you can go wild in some places and UI, let's say, go more brutalist. And it's also strategic, which also doesn't give you a space for like creativity. And so I'm starting to feel this, like being exposed to art so much lately, I feel that what if there's something else I can do with a

part of my time, that would be more rewarding and would help me express myself and would just make me be a more balanced person. Because sometimes I feel that all this energy gets misplaced or it just drives random, agitated, the state of being restless. So I think that I'm going to explore those art. And I have some concepts that I want to start with. We'll see where that goes. I was also contemplating maybe going to study art at school.

but not that it's too late I don't think it's ever too late for anything but I feel that maybe since I'm not gonna make a career out of it but I mean who knows it's really interesting to just see where my own path takes me and when I will run into a wall that I want to paint something and I'm unable to paint it in the way that I want and I need to go to school for that I'll cross that bridge when I get there but for now I just want to freely explore more art yeah and I just want to make a

quick point on your anxiety around talking in public. When I gave my first talk in New York last year, I was on the same stage with Chris Do and we got to hang out together and we had a conversation the night before my talk and I told him that I'm eerily chill. I don't know why am I not stressed?

And he said that he's stressed every time he gives a talk, even though I think it was his fourth hundred talk or something. And he says that he still kind of stresses before. And I was like, maybe I'm insane. Why am I not stressed? And I felt more enthusiasm than stress. And his point was that you like it. You like to talk about this topic. That's why you're not stressed because you're talking about

which you like about a topic that you like. And so when I made that framing, it kind of stayed with me. Look, I'm going there on stage and I'm going to talk about a topic that really excites me. And it's possible. And sometimes that happens. There are some people in the audience who will find my content not impressive or dull or mainstream. I've seen that. I've read that. And some people will be like, oh, my God, that makes so much sense. I haven't thought about it like that.

that. And when you talk for 30 minutes, some things will resonate. Other things will not resonate with different people from your audience. And what's the worst thing that can happen at the end? Someone will say that was boring, but some people might say that was super great. And that's what reassured me. Yeah. Maybe some people will not like what I'm going to say there. It

That's what matters. And my last point with this very long intro, sorry, I was listening to a podcast by Rick Rubin, where Rick Rubin was a guest. And he said that if you want to do something very creative and authentic, you have to like it yourself. So you have to do something that you like. And if you like it,

If other people like it, if it has commercial success, all of these things become secondary because you like it and you believe in it. And I think it's the same with talks. Like if you're excited about the ideas you're going to share there, if you're excited about your walkthrough through that particular journey in that topic, then that's all that matters. And OK, I'm going to stop now and ask the first question. One point. Wait a second. Now I have to answer it.

Sorry, guys. Sorry, guys. You know, it's an honest talk. So sometimes we're getting a little bit else way. But what I wanted to say is that I feel like a lot of those insecurities are coming from our very, very, very popular designer's disease called perfectionism. Especially when you're doing something for the very first time, you're like, I'm going to do my very best.

you know, I'm professional. I'm going to figure out the best visuals. I'm going to figure out the best story. I'm going to figure out the best progression of the story and examples and everything. And you're obsessing with making it so perfect. It's like in your head, you're imagining everybody's clapping and hooray. And then you're obsessed with it so much. You raise the expectations so high. And when you're staying there on the stage, you're very possibly failing just because you're sabotaging yourself. So that's my biggest problem. And

I know that problem, yet it doesn't help me overcome it. So I'm definitely dealing with a couple of strategies. I'm overpreparing myself. I'm trying to focus, like you're saying, enjoying the process in a way. But yes, it's still not going to easily help me. I don't know. I'm definitely more of this person that will be nervous rather than excited. And I know a lot of people say that's the same chemistry. So you just have to change the frame here and focus on being excited rather than nervous. I'm going to report back how it went. I'm pretty sure it's not going to be as easy.

And I also wanted to say that I love that you are more into art these days. I feel like a lot of people, especially in tech industries, and we've talked about the tech burnout sort of syndrome, a lot of people turn into art these days. And I feel like a lot of my friends, also developer friends, are really becoming more and more interested in the arts. And I see a lot of art schools going on. We have this art and wine kind of Wednesdays where people are drawing and drinking, sipping wine in the evening of Wednesday. And then people are doing art tours and walking art tours and et cetera. And it just sucks. I love it.

I'm happy to see people finding a little remedy in it. Yeah. So let's talk about the topic. So let's go for our usual structure where we start by unpacking our own experiences on getting back.

and definitive pushback. And then we can go into the larger themes, like what are some common reasons for which stakeholders push back on the design vision? And what are some tips and tricks for continuing to navigate that as it unfolds? So the first question is,

Do you remember what were the toughest moments in your career when it came to getting pushback from stakeholders, despite giving your best set of arguments and presenting your vision in a way that you were confident about and then getting a no?

We're doing it in a different way. Sorry. How did you handle that? Can you share some stories maybe? Definitely. To be honest, I was hurt by kind of building my high level perspective and outlook on the situation. I do have a couple of examples and I would say that they are so dependent. It's very hard to match my experience to everyone simply because, well, it always depends, right? As designers, I must have to start my answer with, it depends.

It really depends on multiple, multiple factors. First and foremost, company organization, which I always bring up because I feel like company organization is kind of make it or break it always. If the company organization is set up in a way where it doesn't allow you to be the best version of yourself, to blossom at your role, no matter what you do, you're just not going to have the right tools to really work things out.

And then the second part is the UX maturity, obviously, of the company, which also in a way is tied or correlated with the company organization structure. Maybe that's one of the, I don't know, implicit reasons why a lot of companies are doing reorganizations these days, restructurings. I'm not a fan of restructuring because it means a lot of layoffs. A lot of the times, a company, when they're restructuring the way they work, it could really influence the efficiency of the processes and decision-making power, dynamic change, etc., etc.,

So with that highlight perspective, I feel like it really depends. But if the company is set up the way where there is a UX maturity, at least level three by NNG, at least when it's like at least integrated, people respect UX. UX is kind of practiced across the whole organization. Everybody put the UX as the part of their planning and strategic discussion. UX is a part of this C-level discussion, et cetera. Then the things could be way better, even if it's tough in the moment.

But if your X maturity is really low and there is still a lot of education that has to be done, no matter what you do, it's just going to be a lot of fights or a lot of effort for you to change it.

Now, with that high-level overview, I want to also say that I feel like there are two levels of pushbacks from my practical perspective. First perspective is IC pushbacks. So when you're working with your sort of peers, developers, I don't know, marketers, salespeople, whoever you're working with, IPMs, there is like IC-level perspective pushbacks, which is really important.

when whoever you're collaborating with on a daily basis don't align with your decision and kind of start having back and forths on why it doesn't work, why it shouldn't be like this, or kind of make a frame saying no, especially with developers. It could be a situation when you're offering a solution

You're given the best, like, educated kind of explanation why it should be this way. And then there are different developers, right? I've worked with kind of developers that were just lazy, honestly, to implement something. And some of them are just like, that's not the best for our stack. And I'm not going to discuss it with you. I'm just going to go with my decision. You know, different types of answers. But at the same time, it's an IC perspective. And I feel like there is different sort of strategies you have to implement in order to be better collaborator on the IC level.

The second level is apparently or clearly the leadership level where I think it's so much harder. Things are becoming way more political in my perspective because it's not just about you presenting the best decision, the best set of suggestions, the best, I don't know, design choice. It's so much more about relationships,

connections, understanding the hierarchy, understanding the influencers, understanding who to talk to, how to build a case, what leverages to use. Is it the business? Is it the users? Is it the culture? Whatever. And so it becomes a longer term practice in a way. So my two first examples would be actually on those two different levels. First, from the IC perspective, and I would not say it was a tough battle, but it's just the most rememberable for me. I remember working in this big corporate company

Very waterfall, very old school. I don't know, maybe now things are different and better. But back then it was definitely a little bit more old school. And we were redesigning a huge legacy system which had more than 1 million daily active users. It had 25 years of history and thousands and thousands of customers. And so the pressure was on, but we were following this not the most seriously.

let's say, effective waterfall development model. And so we as designers did our part in our silo. We have proposed the best way of doing sort of breakpoints. So we were thinking about the scalability for the product and we proposed to go for the kind of different breakpoints and how they should behave on different sizes of the screen because the product is kind of used on all sorts of sizes from extremely small, half of your phone kind of size device to a huge TV. And you kind of just scale things up, right? Yeah.

If you're scaling the phone size of UI into the whole kind of huge television, it will look horrible. You cannot have the buttons, I don't know, 1000 pixels, right? We were proposing different breakpoints and developer we were proposing it to who was the lead tech developer basically said, oh, we don't have time for that. I'm just going to scale everything up.

And it was ridiculous, obviously, for us as designers. Again, the company was set up in a way where you just hand over your work and then developers hand over his work to QAs. And there is not so much of the collaboration or oversightment on how your designs were developed. You only see it later in the production. And that's obviously a gap in the company structure and processes, etc. And so we handed off that design. We asked to do this in the black breakpoints. And then the developer essentially had a big theme and like, no, I'm not going to do this. I'm not going to do this.

And good thing is that we didn't see it in production, but we have spotted that he had a huge pushback on our suggestion right on. And we started having a lot of conversations, first meeting, second meeting, a lot of arguments, a lot of negotiation. Yet the guy was very, very straight, set on, no, we have to go for a scale up. We don't have any time right now. So I'm just going to scale everything up. And again, imagine a font size of UI scaled up on the television with the UI full of buttons.

thousand pixels or something. It was just ridiculous. As in ICs, we did our best, right? We did like a couple of conversations with him. We brought in a PM. So everything was handled first on our IC level perspective, individual contributor, if somebody doesn't know what is IC.

And after like two or three conversations, we realized it's not going to work. So the thing that we did, we basically just brought it to the higher leadership. I believe it was director back then. We talked to director, we explained the consequences of this choice, and then somehow it exploded. And then the meeting, instead of being like three people meeting, it exploded to having like 50 or 60 people meeting together.

bunch of stakeholders and leadership people there. And yeah, it just came down to the directors doing the top down. The leader basically saying, this is how we're going to do this. And no matter what you guys want, we will have to go for the different breakpoint solution. And so he was basically given an order and it didn't work out as like a nice conversation where we found the compromise. It just ended up being the top down direction. That's the first example. Well, we are happy it resolved, but I think it's a lot of the times just depends on

on the people you're working with and how motivated they are. And if they're not excited about the work, they're just going to do whatever they want. And a second example is actually more recent. It is more in the leadership level. And it's a little bit related to what I've been talking a lot before last year, I guess, in this podcast about changing the status quo.

And specifically, when you see the product is not really working out very well, but it's always not the right timing, UX maturity is there. And everybody agrees the product isn't great. We have to redesign it. But it takes so much longer to get the buy-in. And so what was happening for us that the product I was working on, it just didn't ever had the priority. It was always like, no, it's kind of working. It's kind of default. We know it's not great, but it's just...

Keep it there. It's fine for now. And my case was I wanted to redesign it completely. I was building strategy, the roadmap in a way, the different design vision concepts. And then obviously partnering up with PMs, with some directors. I was getting slowly, slowly, slowly alliances all around.

and constantly bringing this up or talking to salespeople who can kind of leverage that case, et cetera. It was not structured. It was just all over the place in a Slack conversations, et cetera. But yet I was trying to kind of have my little folder with the case why we need to redesign the product and, uh,

It's still actually ongoing. We didn't have a green light for redesign. And when I left, it was already a case. Now, one year after I'm back and I see, okay, that product, we need to redesign it, but not a priority right now. We will get there one day. And I see now more and more people are getting frustrated about the state of the product. So I see now there is a momentum and I'm definitely talking to more leadership guys to collectively create that case. And my guess, because now we're having a business case and we have a lot of charts in one area of the product.

that now with that leverage of people churning, companies churning, the numbers are not as great, there is a stronger pain. And today we're kind of building again this case when hopefully in a couple of months we'll get to that redesign place. But for sure, we're still in the progress of talking to leadership, making the buy-in, et cetera, et cetera.

Well, that's all I'm going to say for now. I have always taken a lot of time by telling my stories, but I wanted to hear your stories as well. Yeah, I mean, your stories were compelling. Loved it. And I deeply resonated with some of the themes you've touched on. I've been many times in the position where the pushback came from developers and because it was an engineering driven company where engineering was very valued.

and trusted they would get to win just because of the company flavor. I've also been in the position where leadership was pushing back on the design vision just because they wanted something that was more salesy, something they could sell in terms of a solution or something that was more easy to market. And I think

My memories are pretty fuzzy around all these things, but generally how my stories went where I came up with this very well-defined end-to-end kind of solution. And then for different, most of the times I'm going to just jump straight into some of the themes for which stakeholders in my personal experience have rejected or ignored the design vision. Engineers tend to reject it because it's technically impossible.

more expensive for them to build a design solution as it was designed. And they prefer to go for the cut corners and just go for the more easily to implement solution, which I think is fair. And I think that's the main reason for which stakeholders typically give pushback. It's because it means more work for them and it's just more complicated and expensive.

And then when I see pushback from product management, most of the times it's because they want to deliver fast. They also have deadlines. They have a roadmap. They want to make sure that things get shipped. And sometimes they tend to forget that they should think about the best design experience, even if it takes longer.

But they also have KPIs and bosses and leadership to show that they're actually delivering. Because for product managers, I think this is one of the most important achievements, just delivering stuff, not having to take two years before they ship something. So they have the speed to

in mind many times. I think that's also a disease of the organization, if you ask me. But I think we should take as long as we need to deliver a good experience. And I'm not saying the perfect experience. It can never be perfect. Just ship it and learn. But let's try to aim finding a better balance.

And so for them, it's this pressure that they want to see things in production. And so if you come with a more costly and a solution that would take longer, they tend to push back on it and say, OK, let's do the simple version of that, which is a different version of that. And then there's also the leadership pushback, which is also sort of

motivated, rooted in fear. I mean, all of these are fear based, but it's rooted in the speed for delivering stuff. And then also they have these, let's say, more strategic kind of needs to be able to sell something, to be able to market it nicely, to be able to communicate it. I don't know what public event the company has, like the annual conference, blah, blah. And it has to be ready by then so they can talk about it on stage and show our investors the

Everybody has different motivations, but they sort of all them in the same place. Like we have to show people that we're doing things. And sometimes the UX design solution goes against that speed of delivery and it's more sophisticated and complicated and so on. So this has been my experience with different smaller stories within it. But most of the times, this is what it all comes down to. And yeah, let's move into the tips and tricks quickly.

What are some of the advice that you have when you're getting this very intense pushback? I'm not sure I have the intense pushback, but I think, again, it depends on the company culture. Intense? No, it didn't happen because I feel like the people I worked with were more or less professional and mostly able to have a conversation and hear me out. Yeah, I would say like if you don't have anybody hearing you out or just giving you no good explanation, I would say it's the red flag, at least for me. I would not consider staying there for a very long time.

But generally, I like your story about like iterative mindset, ship and learn. It's a part of the compromise we have to do sometimes. But the very big problem that a lot of the people forget about the iterative mindset is that it's not just ship and forget, it's ship and learn. And the learn is the missing part. A lot of the times companies have this, yeah, we're going to ship it.

and kind of learn it. But then obviously we move on to the next big shiny thing. And so I feel like, I guess it's a tip. I'm not sure, but I think it's on us designers or ICs, individual contributors, to build this kind of culture we want to be a part of. If you see people are open-minded and able to change things around, not just like sitting in their own silos, protects,

their own boundaries and protecting their own whatever responsibilities. If you feel people are generally agile and able to move and grow, then I feel like it's your job, as I see, to kind of influence the culture and sort of start talking about, you know, we didn't learn from it. Look,

back, look into data, show the data, show that it didn't work or things that we need to kind of start prioritizing. We need to iterate, not just kind of push and forget. Right. There has to be a roadmap on how you address the learnings. And that's a part of the IC work to bring in this up as a part of the conversation, as well as as a part of maybe, you know, lunch and learns or something like educational areas where you can have a space to really educate your partners on the reason why it is important.

But education is very often is the part of our role and work that we are doing. We just don't pay attention to it a lot, especially in a fast pace environments. We're just moving quickly from one thing to another. But again, it's our job to slowly, slowly, slowly changing the status quo. First, yes, you will be jumping between fires slowly as you start adding more education, more people caring about the UX and building the alliances.

you start kind of changing it for a bit. You start bringing more people into conversation and slowly, maybe in one year from now, you'll see the reaction or the change that you have done by educating people and helping people understand and we need to come back and just start iterating. The second very important, I would say, strategic advice to anyone, no matter what level it is, either it is an IC level or a leadership level, is really just, I think you're

partly touched on this, you want to understand what people really care about. And that's an advice I got from the book articulating the design decisions. It's really about understanding what does this person in front of you that you have been in conversation with care about. Sometimes it comes down to how their success is being measured and evaluated in the company to help them to grow. If it's very corporate and sort of political environment. But very often, if you're working in smaller companies, you just have to understand what kind of person it is in front of you, what they care about. Do they care about pragmatic, just make it quick

built? Do they care about vision, beautiful stuff when you're inspiring them by showing them what it could be, right? So whatever is this person wired like, you want to leverage that. You first want to hear them. You want to talk to them. You really want to hear their story and what they mention and try to really understand who you're working with just on a human basic level. And once you understand that, you can make a note.

Or you can just be very empathetic and always keep in mind that that person cares about good experience, for example, or I don't know, fast experience, whatever it is, and use that as the leverage in the conversation when you want to achieve the compromise. Giving them what they want to see and then kind of explaining why we need to get it maybe in a more

progressive way, for example, like if you want to make it fast, this is the direction we want to go for. But let's make it fast, right? I understand we need to make it like ship it and learn. Here is the cut version. But we, of course, will have to get to the second version back to the first point with the iterative mindset when we have to educate people and start making it more progressive. But another aspect of

which is very, very important, is really building the relationship with the people. And again, making sure there is a trust and fundament based on which you can work. If you miss that part, it's very, very hard to rebuild the relationships and get to the point of trust. I will also leave a space for you to maybe have some tips you want to add for people to take

away from this conversation? Yeah, I think the main takeaways would be to, I'm just building on top of your points. I think you just have to understand their language, their vocabulary. So it's something that when I was in the Nielsen Norman two-day retreat group workshop, whatever, this was exactly what they were saying. Leadership talks in numbers, like here's how profit will move. Developers talk in, I don't know, it's

prints and t-shirt sizes and whatever, and product managers talking whatever product features. So if you understand how to tap into their vocabulary and their expectations of what success means for them, then you can use those, the success language, verbiage for them, and then try to say things such as like, okay, I know we want the profit to be 10 times higher. If we do this feature like this, we're going to get it to eight times higher.

or whatever, just tie your reasoning into their goals, their success definition of each of these roles. And then I would also advise that you could maybe explore some things like a small proof of concept or an extra study. Sometimes you just need more evidence that your solution is better. And sometimes you just need to tap into their aversion loss or just scare them if that makes sense. Like tell them, okay, look,

If we don't go for the superior version, then the profit that you want to be 10 times higher could not move at all because of customer satisfaction and whatever and engagement and so on. So sometimes you just need to understand their language and then tell them how this works.

Quicker solution will not move the needle for their success goal. And then also getting back to the smaller proof of concept or a quick research study. Sometimes maybe these conversations just need more evidence. Maybe you can ask them, why do you not trust this solution yet? Is there something that's missing from it? Do you need more arguments? Do you need more proof?

Do we agree that the best outcome for the user is what we're all aiming for? In that case, let's learn again from users what the best outcome is for them and then do another research study, which would scare everyone because it adds more time. But at least you're grounding the conversation in more evidence as opposed to kind of this emotional state where people just want to see them successful in the company. Okay.

With that being said, I think we touched on a couple of topics. I think it's interesting that maybe we should do this conversation again sometime because I feel that there's more potential to it. I would love to have a second episode on how to get your point across and complicated organizations. Maybe this should be the next topic. Like I'm in a complicated environment. How do I survive?

you establish the relationships it's complicated yeah and with that being said i just want to thank everyone for tuning in yeah and if you want us to talk about relevant stuff just send us your content proposals your questions your struggles give us a review on spotify that also helps us stay engaged with this series of conversations and amfi do you want to add anything

And if you were listening to this episode from an interesting place or context, please let us know in the Spotify stickies under this episode. It's always fun because, for example, recently I read that somebody was listening to this episode from the bathroom, basically from having the bubbles. And it's always fun to see the answers in that sticky note. So with that being said, I think that's it for today. And thank you everyone again for tuning in. Thank you. Bye. Bye.