Have you ever said, I just want to do the design work and have its value recognized without all the politics? Maybe you’re looking at it from the wrong end.
Transcript
Intro
Have you ever said, I just want to do the design work and have its value recognized without all the politics? Maybe you’re looking at it from the wrong end.
My name’s Andy Polaine, and every week I spend my days coaching design leaders. And in these videos I reflect upon the common themes and questions that come up in the week.
And in this video I want to talk about the idea of politics being a dirty word. Now obviously with everything going on in the world at the moment, politics does not have a very good name.
Politics
But when you really think about what politics is, it’s really about aligning people and getting support for a common cause or change.
So if you’re trying to make the case of resources, some of that is going to be about connecting to what senior leadership care about. That’s going to be making sure that you’re not just talking about design and design for its own sake, but actually connecting it to something that is serving the organization.
Some of politics is about making allies and that’s about being useful for others, so in what way can you take something off their plate? And in what way is design, again, serving the organization [00:01:00] rather than this common refrain of why doesn’t the organization value us more and recognize our impact?
Politics is literally about governance. It’s about how do we go about making decisions? Who’s involved in making those decisions? What do we do when we can’t come to an agreement?
Diplomacy
But it’s also about diplomacy. Diplomacy is kind of another word for relationships, too. And diplomacy is going to be around the language you use. It’s going to be how you go about relating to people. It’s going to be around how far do you push and push back, and how far do you set boundaries.
All of those things are necessary to operate as a leader or a design leader within an organization. It doesn’t need to be a dirty word. It is just some of the stuff you actually need to do.
Outro
I hope that’s useful for you. If you’d like to check out my coaching practice, it’s at polaine.com/coaching and I’ll put the link below. If you’ve got any of your own stories or tips, please post a comment below. I’d love to hear them.
Thanks very much, and I’ll see you again soon.
