Summary
Product managers and designers have something in common. We are all in the coherence business. We need to make sense of things long enough to make progress. We express this in different ways, which can often cause conflict and misunderstanding, but the underlying need remains the same. In this talk John Cutler will explore what alignment really means in the context of complex unpredictable work, where we are constantly dancing between different levels of abstraction, frames, and perspectives.
Key Insights
-
•
Obsessing over perfect alignment often leads to burnout and is less effective in today's volatile and ambiguous environments.
-
•
Executives typically can only process about nine information units, often limited to three key bullets, due to cognitive load.
-
•
There is a critical difference between limiting constraints, which hamper movement, and enabling constraints, which foster purposeful action.
-
•
Retaining a path back to the complex mess behind simplified models is essential to avoid losing important signal and context.
-
•
Stories and narrative artifacts allow individuals to assign their own meanings and align organically rather than forcing agreement.
-
•
The traditional quest for flawless abstractions or linear models of product work fails in complex, dynamic contexts.
-
•
The role of the 'glue person' is now more fragile; being a catalyst who enables information flow and adaptability is more valuable.
-
•
Powerful strategic statements that are both specific and high-level can set direction more effectively than exhaustive alignment.
-
•
Designers and product managers should focus on creating environments that encourage coherent behavior over controlling exact outcomes.
-
•
Self-care and acknowledging ambiguity in alignment efforts are crucial for maintaining sanity and sustainable teamwork.
Notable Quotes
"I never thought I'd say this, but can someone please for love of God just make a RACI, please, please."
"Quality is value to some person who matters."
"Executives only like things in threes, but if you do a three by three, you get nine boxes—the max they can handle."
"You only notice the value of a glue person when things break."
"What would it look like if we could ask, how do I make this the absolute best environment for complex problem solving, instead of how do I take away all the annoying hard problems?"
"A story doesn’t ask everyone to align; it lets people assign the meaning that’s powerful to them."
"It’s much more important to align on one or two enabling constraints than on a hundred limiting constraints or specs."
"If you thought you’d be indispensable by being the glue person, you’re more dispensable than you think."
"We need to design environments that generally encourage beneficial behavior moving in the right direction in ways that keep us sane."
"The highest leverage thing you can do is design statements that capture the essence of what you’re doing in ways that can set sail a thousand ships."
Or choose a question:
More Videos
"I wish I could tell my 22-year-old self what to stop doing and what to embrace to be a better designer."
Adam Cutler Karen Pascoe Ian Swinson Susan WorthmanDiscussion
June 8, 2016
"UX directors often feel like this poor person in the middle here getting pulled in all these directions."
Peter MerholzThe Trials and Tribulations of Directors of UX (Videoconference)
July 13, 2023
"In the automotive industry, most safety standards only became mandatory after governments intervened."
Lisa WelchmanCleaning Up Our Mess: Digital Governance for Designers
June 14, 2018
"Sustainable practices are not just a luxury; they are a necessity for our survival."
Vincent BrathwaiteOpener: Past, Present, and Future—Closing the Racial Divide in Design Teams
October 22, 2020
"OKRs are a tool for each of us to tidy our house and focus on what’s important."
Brenna FallonLearning Over Outcomes
October 24, 2019
"Hip hop proves that we can re-animate spaces with highly generative communities that weren't built for us."
Tricia WangSpatial Collapse: Designing for Emergent Culture
January 8, 2024
"If you don’t bring stakeholders into the research journey, they won’t believe or use the data."
Edgar Anzaldua MorenoUsing Research to Determine Unique Value Proposition
March 11, 2021
"We manage the environment in which knowledge distribution takes place, not the process itself."
Designing Systems at Scale
November 7, 2018
"If my experiment made front-page news tomorrow, what would the headline be? Would my mother be proud?"
Erin WeigelGet Your Whole Team Testing to Design for Impact
July 24, 2024
