The top 3 factors UX leaders need to evaluate prior to joining a corporation
By: Philip Hillman
Tags: Ux Maturity, UX Research, UX, UX Design, Ux Leadership

About this series

This series is divided into three parts which will be made available over consecutive weeks. Last week we discussed the importance of how the corporation measures performance (link below).

This week in Part 2 we shall discuss how the structure of the corporation and your team’s placement within that structure can influence and impact your team’s working relationships, your team’s scope, and remit, and its funding sources and challenges.

So, let’s continue…

Part 2. Structure and leadership

Question

Where is the team structured within the business? Does it belong to a business unit or a corporate function?

Who to ask

The hiring manager (your future boss).

HR recruitment representative.

Follow up question(s)

Do similar design and research capabilities exist elsewhere in the organization? If so, what is the relationship between the capabilities? how do they work together?

How is the overall organization structured? Is it structured as a centralized, decentralized, or matrix organization?

Rationale

For many years I personally underestimated the importance of the position of the team within the overall organization structure and more importantly how the parent function as a whole is expected to bring value to the organization. In hindsight, It is now clear that upfront knowledge of the placement of the team within the organization can set a clear expectation of what you are likely to experience leading and managing it.

So the answer to these questions may clarify aspects of the team’s role and relationships within the larger group, more importantly how it is likely funded, and opportunities for the team to grow and prosper, and likewise potential risks to its survival.

Red Flags

Belonging to a corporate function in a decentralized organization.

In large organizations, the traditional role of a corporate function is to provide economies of scale and improve efficiency. They achieve this by centralizing shared capabilities and functions such as HR, IT, facilities management, risk management, and compliance, with an aim to reduce duplication of effort across business units and reduce overall costs. A corporate function is funded by business units who each pay an annually agreed financial contribution to support the essential foundation activity that they rely upon to function.

It is essential to understand that the corporate function is a cost center that is responsible only for costs. In contrast, the business units are profit centers, which are responsible for revenue (including profit and loss) and costs. It is this combination of funding and responsibility that can produce a risk over time.

For example, during the lifecycle of corporate function, it will grow in size and influence, and naturally, explore manners in which to save further costs by centralization. Their mandate and their ambition will inevitability lead them to want to be involved in more of the business unit activity such as strategy and projects. This can lead to the business units feeling that the corporate function has become bureaucratic and is now interfering in their activity. Ultimately this can lead to stressed relationships, and potentially the funding of the corporate function being challenged by the business units, resulting in a reduced mandate, and a risk of a smaller headcount.

This political barrier to business unit activity and projects can impact your teams’ ability to directly connect their achievements to quantifiable profit and for the organization and make calculating a firm ROI (return on investment) challenging. The growth cases and justifications for a UX capability located within a corporate function need to focus on savings and efficiency brought by the internal team and overtime this can be more difficult to justify as opportunities such as the efficiency of internal team vs external agency costs, dry up. This complicates team business growth cases and proposals and can place a greater emphasis on survival than prospering.

Also, the presence of other UX capabilities within business units can lead to your team being provided and granted access to a series of poorer quality projects, and over time, this will create team member motivation issues and retention challenges.

If you find yourself discussing a position within a team that is in a corporate function it is key to understand how it supports the business units. Is the team supporting the organization's design community at scale across the group by providing services such as design systems, training, governance, and quality assurance, that provide the means to deliver quality experiences? or are you a project team with scope to only support corporate function owned touchpoint experiences such as HR and Compliance platforms?

Proceed with both an open mind but with caution.

Green Flags

Belonging to a business unit or function.

Let’s assume the core measurable value you can attribute an ROI to a UX function’s work are; Customer lifetime value, Customer conversion rate (revenue vs cost), Traffic of customers/users, Returning customers/users, Customer/user satisfaction (NPS, etc), Customer/user effort (CES, etc), Frequency of Customer/user visits, and then efficiency gains such as Customer/user time on task, number of tasks completed per x period, etc.

Being structured within a business unit will typically provide a better opportunity to work on projects that are directly connected to profit and business generation. If your team is successful, this direct connection to business value can provide a strong case for growth and recognition, which can then lead to career progression. Also, being center stage rather than behind the curtain will make any cultural change management required for successful adoption of design thinking and user-centric design easier due to the direct relationship between your team’s successes and the business outcomes.

Once the business recognizes the value your team offers, you are likely to be provided access to more interesting projects, which in turn will generate further value for the business which you can reference in future growth cases.

Critically, in organizations where design is more mature, you will have the opportunity to influence fundamental business strategy.

Some further considerations would be in the event that a UX capability does also exist in a corporate function, what influence does it have on your teams work? How is your team likely to work with the organization's design community?

Overall being structured within a business unit provides the best opportunities to work on exciting projects, to experiment, and receive recognition for your outcomes.

Further reference

Why Corporate Functions Stumble —

Harvard Business Review

To learn more about the four stages a corporate function experiences during its lifecycle I highly recommend reading about this article.

https://hbr.org/2014/12/why-corporate-functions-stumble

How to Calculate the ROI of UX —

Medium

A great article on how to traditionally link the work of your UX function with an ROI aligned with business leadership. Note the issues and challenges of being in a corporate function.

https://medium.com/@wardandrews/how-to-calculate-the-roi-of-ux-6dbb7464bd4e