Navigating Stormy Seas
Some thoughts on keeping a tough cross-organizational project like navigation above water.
I have been cheerily ensconced in some big navigation efforts over the last 9 months, and there have been some major wins, and more importantly, some major-er lessons.
In IA circles, we maintain a dark humor around navigation initiatives and their hairy, contentious, political nature. Naturally, I find myself on these kinds of projects in spite my self-professed "superpower" of not politicking. Partially because I don't want to, but also because I don't really know how (shhh).
So how am I supposed to captain this ship if I'm "bad at politics"?
I am going to ignore the politics for just a little while and focus on something I do know about instead: people and navigation. I'm going to navigate through people, instead of politics.
Product navigation is the embodiment of everything an organization believes about itself and its customers. It’s a shapeshifter, simultaneously abstract and concrete. It's a part of the user experience that pulls together folks from all corners and levels of the organization, many of whom have competing priorities and perspectives.
When we work on navigation, we are taking on the hopes and expectations of our colleagues. We're usually working on a temporary team that has pulled together people from far-and-wide, many of whom don't actually know each other. Then we are asking them to engage with us on abstract concepts, working across siloed teams, with limited time, on a murky problem.
This isn’t about politics – this is about discomfort, uncertainty, and fear.
The IA’s role in creating clarity goes far beyond producing deliverables – we must also attend to the emotions of those we are shepherding through the abstract world of IA. If do that, then we can safely guide our colleagues through the uncertainty and into a lighter, brighter, more confident collaboration space. In other words: we can row together.
I'm still codifying all of this but there are a few key thoughts on how we might accomplish this:
Define your shared goals and success metrics across the whole set of stakeholders. Yes, this one is obvious, yet so often overlooked.
Acknowledge when there are conflicting priorities - get it out in the open! Of course the marketing team is going to have different priorities than the content team. It's only when we hide these conflicts of interest that they create stinky cesspools of disagreement.
Develop a sense of trust with the other members of your working group. A navigation project pulls together strangers from different teams around the org. Take the time to get to know each other and figure out how you want to work together. It'll pay off when tough moments arise (and they always do).
Set a ground rule that reads something like "we will have shared, transparent conversations". One of our core principles at Microsoft is "One Microsoft". I have a colleague who phrases the ground rule this way: "One Microsoft, One Conversation". It's simple, memorable, and clear. I am absolutely stealing it for my next project.
Especially valuable in a large company: Find your executive sponsor so that the incentive for collaboration across team boundaries is obvious. Navigation crosses many organizational boundaries; trying to make change happen from the trenches isn't going to work in many large orgs (unless maybe you work for the incredibly special org where this works just fine; bully for you!).
Resources for further thought:
The Politics of Navigation by Stuart Maxwell. When I first saw Stuart present this in Seattle, I felt SEEN.
IAC20 Keynote by Abby Covert. This talk is an incredible resource for just about every challenge we face as IAs. In particular, bravery, trust, kindness, informs a lot of how I try to run a project, and Abby has given us a lot to think about there.
