Persuading Stakeholders, Gaining Influence, and Levelling up Your Design Career, With Ryan Scott (ex Airbnb, Doordash, Salesforce)
Jan 31, 2024
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Product and Design leader, Ryan Scott, discusses gaining influence and persuading stakeholders in design careers. He explores the importance of connecting design to business metrics, tailoring tactics to specific environments, and assessing team quality. Ryan also shares insights on his new business, Accelerate Design Company, and the benefits of mentorship and continuous learning.
Connecting design to business metrics enhances credibility and influence.
Embracing disruptive changes can lead to significant improvements in product design.
Adapting to the specific needs of the business is crucial for design success.
Deep dives
The importance of stakeholder management and business skills in mid-career
In this podcast episode, the speaker emphasizes the significance of stakeholder management, communication skills, storytelling, and business understanding in the middle of one's career. The theory presented is that there is a lack of resources to help people bridge the gap in these areas. Design discipline is highlighted as a crucial element in building great products, and more companies are recognizing its importance. The episode explores the need for designers to develop business skills to have more influence and meaningful careers.
The value of connecting design to business metrics and financial outcomes
The podcast episode delves into the idea of gaining credibility by linking design value to business metrics and financial outcomes. Designers are encouraged to go beyond customer outcomes and connect their work to broader business outcomes. The importance of tying design to the financial impact is discussed, emphasizing that designers should understand how their work contributes to the overall success of a company. The episode also highlights the need to articulate the unique perspective and value of design to stakeholders and business leaders.
The benefits of thinking beyond incremental optimization and embracing disruptive changes
The podcast episode presents a case study from Airbnb to illustrate the benefits of thinking beyond incremental testing and embracing bigger changes. The speaker describes a project where the team decided to redesign the entire mobile website rather than making incremental improvements to the existing design. Through research, customer feedback, and stakeholder collaboration, the team realized the value in starting afresh to create a step-function improvement. The episode emphasizes the importance of considering disruptive changes and challenging the status quo to achieve significant impact.
Tailoring tactics to be successful within your specific environment
Being sensitive to the needs of the business and developing a greater awareness of the business's variables and approaches is crucial for success in design. One-size-fits-all approaches may or may not work, depending on the alignment with the business's deeper needs. Adapting and being successful requires understanding the specific needs of the business and adapting accordingly.
Going to market with changes that help design succeed in your business
Creating change in the organization to support the influence of design is essential. A go-to-market strategy is necessary to identify early adopters of the desired changes and gain their support. By identifying the intersection of the backlog of changes to make the business more design-friendly and the needs of the business, designers can identify what changes are most likely to succeed and find allies within the organization to drive adoption.
Ryan is the founder of Accelerate Design Company. He's a Product and Design leader who brought food photography, live-order tracking, and remote driver training to DoorDash, launched step-function improvements to Airbnb’s checkout, messaging, search, and host calendar products, and launched products at TechCrunch Disrupt, Dreamforce, and WWDC. Ryan has led teams of all sizes, from two to 200, and is now advising companies on product management, design, and go-to-market strategy, as well as helping mid-career designers develop business skills to do more influential work and have more meaningful careers.
Timestamps:
00:00 – Intro
02:39 – Ryan's career and his thoughts on design education
08:03 – Describing the ROI of Design – his course for designers
14:57 – Gaining credibility by connecting design to business metrics
24:17 – Tailoring tactics for your specific environment
28:28 – Pursuing stakeholders through building good relationships with them
30:45 – How does Design work at the different companies he worked
39:00 – The befits of scrapping incremental testing
43:34 – Assessing the quality of a team before joining
47:15 – On Accelerate Design company, his new business
