Learn to Speak CEO

Business Fluency for Designers

Jess McMullin
UXLX
Lisbon, Portugal | May 24, 2018
@jessmcmullin | jess@situ.org
Many thanks to
@harrymax
A story:
Bruce & Chad
Business
Fluency
Conceptual &
Cultural Fluency
 Houston, we
have a problem

CC:BY http://www.flickr.com/photos/cckaiser/3917277027
How come projects look like this?
Instead of like this?
CC:BY http://www.flickr.com/photos/jurvetson/253409227
 The CEO
Design Crit
“I don’t like
green”
So…
 They
don’t get it…
The Design 180
I had a personal realization…
“Getting it” is just the degree that we share the
same frame about something.

“They don’t get it” is actually code for “I’ve

abdicated my power to make change”.

If they don’t get it, you don’t get it (yet).

But there’s hope:
I believe designers have a natural
advantage working inside
organizations.
The same skills we use to
understand customer needs,
context, and success applies just
as much to understanding our
colleagues and senior leadership.
Pivot Skills
Business Fluency
leads to
Business Empathy
 To become better designers
we don’t just need better tools for
design, we need better tools to
work with business.
Priority Grid The Pyramid Hypothesis Funnel

THREE TOOLS
Part 1

THE PRIORITY GRID

What keeps
senior leaders
up at night?
The Big 6
• Making & Saving Money
• Hiring, Retaining, and
Developing People
• Setting, Working On, and
Tracking Goals
• Delivering Customer,
Shareholder, Employee
Value
• Protecting & Building
Reputation
• Managing Risk
Big 6
perspective
and priorities
change between
people and projects
Making and Saving Money
Hiring, Retaining, Growing People
Planning, Acting, Reporting on
Goals
 Delivering Customer, Shareholder
and Employee Value

CC:BY http://www.flickr.com/photos/pinksherbet/3398923323
Protecting and Building
Reputation
Managing Risk
How do I
apply
Big 6
the ?
How does a microscope work?
CC:BY http://www.flickr.com/photos/rinzewind/133720761
Objective Lenses
1. Time Timeframe & Tempo
2. Confidence & Health of the Company
3. Degree & Rate of Change
4. Mindset & Mode of Working
5. Competition & Markets

http://www.flickr.com/photos/etharooni/3276254742
Timing and Tempo
• How long? What is our time horizon?
• How fast? What is our pace?
Acceleration?
Confidence & Health of Company
• Are we feeling strong or weak?
• Are we actually strong or weak?
Degree and Rate of Change
2016
1965
Mindset and Mode of Working
• What is our attitude or paradigm?
• How do we need to work?
• How does this contrast to defaults in our
org?
Competition and Markets
 Timeframe & Confidence & Degree & Rate of Mode of Working Competition and
Tempo Health of Co. Change /Mindset Markets
Short vs. Long Survive vs. Thrive Familiar vs. Diverge vs. Red Ocean vs.
term Unfamiliar Converge Blue Ocean
Pacing Scarcity vs. Dependencies Either / Or vs. Grow Share vs.
Abundance And Enter New
Market
Pipeline, Topline vs. Reversability, Frame vs. Solve Offense /
milestones, stage Bottom line Undo, Plan B Defense
gates, sprints
Key dates, points Maslow’s Shifts in power Complex vs. Market size,
of no return Hierarchy and influence Complicated growth forecasts
1h, 1d, 1m, 1Q, Big Bets vs. Threshold of Optimize vs. Build vs. Buy
6M, 1yr, 3yr, 5yr, Small Bets Change (how Innovate vs.
10yr, 20yr, much is needed) Transform
generations
Status, tracking to Risk Tolerance Punctuated Quality vs. Leader vs.
schedule, phases Equilibrium Efficiency Follower
The Big 6 + Objective Lenses
= The Business Priority Grid
The Priority Grid

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Money

People
Which intersections
Goals are important for your
current conversation?
Value
Clarify the priorities for
one or more of the Big 6
Reputation using the objective lenses

Risk
The Grid

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Money

People

Goals

Value

Reputation

Risk
Use the grid to help
bridge between you and your
team’s needs and the needs
and priorities of your executives.
Scouting Ahead
1. Need to understand current priorities,
mindset for senior leaders, product,
engineering, business analytics, etc.
2. This is design research, inside the org.
3. Pick your top 3 intersections on the grid
to lead with, but be prepared to address
others (not every single intersection).
If you are off the grid, you are
likely not having the right
conversation yet.
Part 2

THE PYRAMID
How do we handle information
overload in the world?
Abstraction,
Sanity, and
Risk
Lead, Manage, Execute
Scale of Impact & Decisions
The more important the
decision, the less the person
making it will know about it.
- Dave Gray
Different levels
use different
language
The language of
getting things
done inside
organizations.
People, Projects, and Money
provide the vocabulary for
conversations on the grid and
across scales of decision.
The
Pyramid
The Pyramid
The Pyramid

LET’S LOOK AT DIFFERENT

LEVELS FOR PEOPLE
People as Customer
Markets
Segments

Customers
People as Org
Division
Capability & Capacity
Team
Role
Employee
People as Investor
Preferred Shareholder
Shareholder
Sponsor
Supporter
Three Pyramid Strategies
Triangle strategy – Connect your People issue
to Projects & Money to get full Triangle.
Slipstream strategy – follow your idea behind
larger (but related) ones. Stepping stones and
adjacencies.
Tether strategy – connect your on the ground
need to the 50,000 foot need. Jump levels.
Part 3

THE HYPOTHESIS FUNNEL

A canvas is a
tool to help
structure a
conversation.
That is exactly what the world
needs, another canvas tool ;-)
- Kevin Hoffman
The hypothesis
funnel works to
structure the
translation from
business to design.
Behaviour is the
Rosetta Stone
for translating
between business
and design.
The
Hypothesis
Funnel
The
Hypothesis
Funnel
Hypothesis Funnel
Walkthrough
The Grid, the Pyramid, &
the Funnel give us tools
for empathic advocacy
Invert Advocacy, Inquiry, Empathy
Typical Advocacy

80
60
40 Typical Advocacy

20
0
Advocacy Inquiry Empathy
Invert Advocacy, Inquiry, Empathy
Empathic Advocacy

80
60
40 Empathic Advocacy

20
0
Advocacy Inquiry Empathy
Business Fluency, Design 180,
The Grid, The Pyramid, Funnel
Empathic Advocacy are a start
 Thank you!
jess@situ.org
@jessmcmullin
situ.org

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Good luck as you grow your business fluency!