Range of execution and influence in UX

I’ve been mentoring young designers for a long time, and a recurring question I get from them is how they can grow in their professions. Young leaders, too, want to know how to be sure when someone is ready for a promotion.

Well, there is no unique formula to identify when someone is ready for the leap.

Even though some companies have entire career promotion systems to measure soft skills, technical abilities, time within the position, or cultural fit, the reality is that it all goes beyond metrics. Only people decide whether to make the call.

So, what is it to be a senior or a leader? Is it the quality of your design deliverables? Is it your capacity to lead projects and people to make accurate estimations? Yes, these factors sure elevate you to the next level.

But there’s more to being a senior.

Beyond good metrics that back up your good performance, two aspects might influence your potential: how you execute something (expected in any position or industry) and how you generate influence in your team and work (sometimes overlooked in companies).

So, whether you’re in a leadership position or an individual in a design team, this blog will introduce you to two key ideas for your UX career — the range of execution and influence.

Execution in UX

This first aspect of execution in UX refers to everything you need to build or create in time and form within your responsibilities—whether mockups, concepts, research, or user flows.

This is the most common and recognized by all designers. All our careers start from there. When we are young designers, most of our actions are to deliver things, sometimes without having the big picture of the projects. Over time, we start to master execution, depending less on a leader’s approval.

Depending on our potential, we might get an invitation to participate in bigger decision spaces (influence):

What happens if we only execute?

If your work only depends on execution, you might miss a significant portion of the action. It all depends on what you want as a designer, but staying in this dynamic for a long time can be repetitive and frustrating and does not generate a unique value.

I know many good designers who are comfortable staying in this dynamic, which is good because it responds to their professional aspirations and happiness. But if you want to transcend your work in design, you should pay attention to how to start making a difference beyond just crafting.

Perfect execution is the basis of influence, and together, they create a game of opposites that reflects our evolution as designers.

Anecdote: Influence of execution on UX

I remember disagreeing with an ex-boss a few years ago about deciding to promote a brilliant designer on my team before he completed the expected time in his position. To him (my boss), this person needed to stay a couple of years more doing regular semi-senior duties because the company demanded that he complete a time requirement before being considered to take the next step.

My arguments at that time showed solid evidence of how teammates and prominent stakeholders were delighted with his performance beyond all his expected responsibilities and seniority. To me, he was ready to take on more significant responsibilities.

When I was collecting evidence of this talented designer, I found a unique phenomenon around the team where the designer was working — all the conversations around the work sparked new ways of facing challenges and also opened new ways to build new products.

Innovation was served, and it was delightful to watch.

After a lengthy discussion that did not result in an agreement, my boss decided to keep this designer in his current position for two more years. After a few months, the designer received a job offer from another company and left; we had to let go of a great talent.

What I learned from this situation was eye-opening — beyond company metrics, there are some factors from the people side to consider when deciding to elevate someone to the next level.

How you influence and impact the company through your work is highly relevant.

Influence in UX

The designer’s story I mentioned was about fulfilling job expectations and going beyond. Influence in UX is when, through your work, you start to change established things, people dynamics, and mindsets.

Can we do something similar from our position? How do we get there?

A few skills expand one’s range of influence beyond one’s seniority. These skills can be present and developed in any design job position, from junior analysts to high management profiles:

• Exemplary execution — The quality of deliverables should be high, and the companionship should be low (autonomy), even though the position of seniority demands a leader’s supervision (see the evolution of a deliverable over companionship)
• High communication skills — A high-quality deliverable is insufficient without a perfect design speech. Innovative and effective storytelling might make your design insights and solutions even more robust and confident. Stakeholders may understand your solution better and provide exciting feedback
• Planning — Beyond envisioning a solution scope, showing the steps and planning UX projects creates ownership and a deep sense of progress, which generates reliability among teammates
• Innovative mindset — There’s no need to invent rocket science to show a design approach every time. However, if you add new and fresh ideas to tackle a problem, all your peers and stakeholders will remember that ingredient of your work
• Open to feedback — The final wrap-up of a conversation is crucial, so the ability to gather all the information, iterate, and evolve a solution shows how mature you are as a designer

All these qualities reflect a high seniority in a design position. So, the level of influence might be higher than a position. And that’s a factor that should be more prominent in the promotion decision-making.

I can identify a few scenarios where the movement of the two aspects (execution and influence) define our evolution as designers, which I’ll discuss in the next section.

Types of profiles based on execution and influence

1. High execution and low influence range

This scenario is the most common at the beginning of a young designer’s career. It is all about delivering things in time and form, and the main characteristic is the leaders’ continuous supervising eye:

Average profile:

Junior designers starting a professional career

Main challenges:

• To master software to deliver the work properly
• To develop a work dynamic interest and start moving confidently among
• To begin creating a sense of planning to negotiate deadlines and agreements with leaders

Consideration for a promotion:

• How good are your deliverables?
• How positive can you be in crafting an idea?
• How much guidance might you need from your leader?

2. Medium execution and medium influence range

This scenario shows some equivalence between what we do and the impact of our work. At this point, design software is no longer a challenge; it can be an extension of your thought to illuminate an idea or approach. We gain more responsibilities, and our work speaks for itself:

Average profile:

Semi-senior (mid-level) designers with some years of experience in companies

Main challenges:

• To define a career path, whether management or individual contributor
• To elevate ideas to more prominent stakeholders, break team walls, and get notoriety
• To help other teammates elevate the delivery quality

Consideration for a promotion:

• How innovative can you be when facing more significant design challenges and planning solutions?
• How successful is the level of communication of solutions to design problems?
• How good is the management of projects autonomously and people under your supervision if you have it?

3. Low execution and high influence range

You may represent an area or a UX team, so your responsibility is significant. Your mission is to create a design mindset outside your team and “design” strategic solutions. This scenario is deeply tied to high-management design positions, but everyone, despite the name of the job, may expand their range of influence to move forward in their career.

Naturally, the maturity of influence manifests with years of experience and understanding of the discipline and is more evident in highly senior profiles in companies:

Average profile:

Leads and up

Main challenges:

• To lead an entire structure and seek positive results
• To contribute to the company mission through a design perspective.
• To transform the business mindset and make it more user-oriented.

Consideration for a promotion:

• How active is the decision-making process among teams or companies?
• How have your ideas brought innovation to existing dynamics?
• How has a design approach impacted overall results?

4. High execution and high influence range

This scenario was scarce years ago; now, it is almost indispensable in every start-up company. Some seed start-ups need this profile because it can adequately combine a high execution range (time and form) and make strategic decisions to make the company grow (high influence):

Average profile:

No matter the position name, what’s important is experience in the industry and the ability to build innovative ideas

Main challenges:

• To build rapid business interpretation
• To broaden the design scalability level
• To broaden market understanding
• To build solid design foundations and agile dynamics

Consideration for a promotion:

In this case, the designer’s growth depends on how the company grows. If numbers are positive, this profile starts to build a complete UX area and define some work dynamics; it is a perfect opportunity to create a design mindset from scratch.

Final thoughts

What is to grow? Is it a matter of hitting company metrics? The short answer is yes if we refer to a way to measure and track our progress in a company.

But what is it really to grow as a professional? It is all about changing things, reframing challenges, creating opportunities, and not staying still.

If you think about it, education and life are more than numbers. You may be the most brilliant alumnus of your class, but you can also lack a human touch, so in the end, that is not a good formula for success.

The same thing happens in professional life. Numbers are a solid measurement of how to progress. But they are not the only source of truth about you.

My answer to those who ask about how to know when someone is ready to evolve will be this question: How big has the impact of your work been?

Seek information on what people say about you, your execution, and how you have been part of significant changes above what is expected of you. That’s growing.