Session Notes: The Alignment Trap

—  Hello and it’s wonderful to be here, and the title of my talk is called the Alignment Trap

— First a bit about me
  • 1.5 years as a formal UX researcher
  • But majority of time has been as product manager, business analyst
— Did game design and development
  • Involvement has been in supporting teams as product manager or coach
  • Best way to get in touch is LinkedIn or sign up for the newsletter in the slide above

 

— I had other titles in mind for this talk, listed in the slide above
  • Kryptonite as executive is putting it into three bullets
  • Designer friends as acting kind of authoritarian
— Let’s start with my personal journey, as this talk is a bit of catharsis for me

 

— Over years, I have dug into personal ‘just’ journey and got into kick of
  • ‘Just defining terms’
  • ‘Just aligning on goals’
  • ‘Just figuring out the North Star’
  • ‘Just surface all perspectives’
  • ‘Just understand each other’
—  Going on for two decades , and I’m ‘just’ starting to pull out of this

 

— Still deep in this  obsession with mapping things out (see the Miro board from my current job)

 

— But have been noticing something out there, in that it is hard out there , with a lot of things changing at the moment and that we are in a VUCA world
  • Things are difficult now
— ‘Just’ tendencies have been ratcheted up amidst all this uncertainty
  • We are asking for a RACI to figure out who is responsible for solving the problems
  • When things uncertain we want people to align to move forward and tension in community

 

— I self-identify as glue person ( and have beenfor 20 years)
  • The current economic climate is highly unfriendly to glue people, with so much ambiguity and companies down-sizing people
  • Companies are noticing value of glue-person only when things break
    • Glue-people sit at joint of things and glue things together
    • In times of change, we internalize stress and tension of environments
  • Is it healthy at this moment?

 

— For design leaders we have said  we would be getting a seat at the decision making table, and then align people in organization
  • But now, half of the people at the table got fired, and the other half is in a new power-center in organization, with radically different rules on how to operate
  • So it’s not working out
— This context is the backdrop for talk

 

— My thesis for this talk is that we need less time working to align people and being the glue person, and shift to be like the Warhol Factory
  • Andy Warhol invited people to his loft, where he stepped back, and let coherent and aligned behavior emerged
  • We need to adopt strategies less like someone glueing people, and foster environment for more coherent behavior to emerge

 

— Here are traps that I fell into
  • First one is ‘words’ and insisting on defining common terms

 

— I have battle-scars for defining quality or value didn’t work out
  • Defining ‘quality’ proved harder than expected
— For example, I put the first quote on the screen in workshop, but attendee pushed back to say ‘How does this help us?’

 

— Don’t think it is worth it to get people to figure out what all words mean

 

— Second will-o-wisp is trying to get people to see the right model to agree on it

 

— But here’s the difficulty of trying to abstract a problem

 

— Two strategies are present
  1. Start with the mess and then try to affinitize things with three high-level bullets
    1. You risk losing the mess and having bullets that mean nothing
  2. There’s also starting with general bullets that are too simple to understand what is happening
    1. Executive processing is limited to nine things
    2. These abstract points break down and can’t capture complexity of  what is happening

 

— This is reflected in my own history of trying to create ladders of abstraction from 2019-2022
  • I swung from one extreme to the other

 

— This went on, until the manager succumbed to cognitive load, and couldn’t go farther

 

— The next will-o-the-wisp is trees, pyramids, and lines

 

— Misael Neto tried to create theory of product alignment and management, and incorporated mnay frameworks to do this (but from men only though)
  • He put it online, but the theory didn’t feel real to practicioners
— Historical trend with Hieronomyous Bosch trying to capture all levels of earthy delights
  • Didn’t work then and now

 

— Our work is far more dynamic, think John Boyd and the OODA loop
  • With a bunch of feedback loops feeding into each other
    • Every circle or node has multiple lines into it
— I have started creating flywheels of my own, like:
  • Perpetual cone of uncertainty
  • Double-diamond turned rectangle
— Unfortunately, the process is too non-linear

 

— The last will-o’-the-wisp is simplicity trap

 

— Quote
  • “How do I make best problem for complex solving, as opposed to take away the annoying hard problem?”
— In quest for simple artifacts, we believe if we simplify inputs, we will get simple outputs
  • But our work is complex and lots of lines going into each other

 

— So is there a path forward?
  • I think we have some progress for those who want alignment and want certainty

 

— First one is enabling constraints vs limiting constraints
  • Enabling constraint: A forcing function that empowers people to find  solutions. It prevents a user from taking an action without consciously considering information relevant to that action. Examples include:
    • WIP Limit
    • Using only a specific programming languae for a project
    • Agreement from team on when work stops
  • Limiting constraint: Are things that limit range of movement in ways that are not effective or positive (i.e. most alignment efforts)
— Important to align on enabling consraints rather than 100 limiting constraints or requirements
  • It’s worth 100 alignment decisions

 

— Next you need an aperture to hold some things constant in complex environment otherwise brain will explode
  • Aperture lets us focus on one part of picture, but not operate within it
  • It’s a metaphorical process of leading way back to the mess
— Working on initiative while continuing to make sure not reducing all signal and keeping research and details available

 

— Next realization is with stories and games
  • At Amplitude, the design team spent month or two telling stories and what might be better for customer’s lives next year
    • Realization that story doesn’t ask people to align, but let people assign meaning powerful to them, and think of decisions they need to make to align
  • This applies for games (see the list above)
    • Notice not one of these things mention alignment
— Valuable for us to have stories where teams can find own meaning and progress in it, as opposed to just agreement

 

— Experimenting with low-tech artifacts
  • Power in artifact with storytelling technique, as too many teams are scared to show solutions
  • While an artifact can trigger discussions

 

— Think about 2×2 matrix of going from fluffy to specific, tactical to strategic
  • You can always do something with tactical and specific, and fluffy and strategic
— Statements that are powerful and strategic, can drive millions of decisions
  • i.e. For Netflix: “Be HBO, before HBO is Netflix”
  • Number one highest leverage thing you can do is design strategic statements that capture essence of what you are doing, in order to set sail a thousand ships

 

— I will end with idea of channeling inner Andy Warhol and how to design an envirionment and company that encourages beneficial behavior moving in right direction
  • Which will keep you sane, generally aligned, and not assuming the weight of all the org’s tension

 

— I’ll leave you with the four questions above, and my thoughts regarding each one.
  • My personal moment was that I needed people to understand each other
  • How to allow more ambiguity where it matters?
  • Where to get consistency in results?
  • What are enabling constraints to generally produce behaviors you are looking for?
    • You can achieve greatest alignment through fewest number of things that facilitate a particular behavior

 

— Thank you

 

Q&A
  1. What has created rejection of ‘glue person’, and what kind of designer is in demand now?
    1. People who can practice lot of self-care is number one asset
    2. Designer who is in demand, is one who can roll with level of ambiguity and provide results
      1. Ultimately a very personal question, and we need to redefine what ‘glue’ means
      2. If you are catalyst for moving info around and through you and translating into action–this is a friendly environment
  1. Who do you look for thought provocation and inspiration in your work?
    1. I’m a  full-time employee at a company, so my bandwidth is limited
    2. Books that have stuck with me include
      1. The Service Organization by Kate Tarling
      2. Dynamic Re-Teaming  by Heidi Helfland
      3. The Leader’s Journey  by Donna Lichaw
      4. Images of Organization by Gareth Morgan
  1. Executives face firehose  of information and want simple abstractions to cope, and their win conditions are not ours. How can we build buy-in for executives who get overwhelmed?
    1. There is difference between information synthesis and grouping items into key points, versus figuring out what is the one thing that will open up the conversation from lack of understanding to clarity
    2. CEOs need reduction in complexity, and looking for ‘What question do you want me to answer?‘
      1. We are often just educating an executive, as opposed to offering an answer