Baking UX into the DNA of Your Organization’s Strategy

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Baking UX into the DNA of Your Organization’s Strategy

3d ago 6:28

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In the previous lesson, I asked you to take an initial look at your role, your resources, and your reach. Now, over the next three lessons, we're going to dive into those three areas in more detail, starting with your role and how it aligns with something much bigger: your organization's goals.

Because if you want UX to be seen as more than a support function, you can’t define your role in isolation. You need to connect it to the outcomes your leadership team is already striving for.

Why You Shouldn’t Ask for a Job Description

One problem I often see is that UX practitioners implicitly wait for their manager to define their role. Maybe they don't directly ask "What should my role be?" but their behavior suggests they expect management to take the lead.

The intention is good. The outcome usually isn’t.

Most managers don’t have the time (or the context) to define your role in a meaningful way. They don’t know your full skill set. They don’t always understand UX deeply. And they’re juggling a dozen other priorities. So what do you get in return?

Either something vague and generic. Or a polite but firm, “Just keep doing what you’re doing.”

That’s not leadership. That’s maintenance.

Instead of asking what your role should be, come to them with a proposal. Show that you’ve thought about where you can add the most value. Frame it in terms they care about. Make it easy for them to say yes.

This isn't just a UX tip; it's a universal rule for working with leadership: never go to management with a problem unless you also bring a potential solution.

The Secret Weapon: Your Organization’s Strategy

Every organization has a strategy document floating around somewhere. It might be a PowerPoint from the senior leadership team, a CEO memo, or a PDF in your company wiki that nobody’s opened since it was uploaded.

Dig it out. Read it carefully.

These documents are more than corporate fluff. They’re your map to influence.

Inside, you’ll usually find the goals that matter most to leadership over the next 1 to 5 years. Things like:

Reaching new customer segments
Increasing revenue per user
Improving employee productivity
Strengthening brand loyalty
Reducing operational costs

These aren’t just executive priorities. They’re your starting points. Because when you tie UX to goals that are already considered urgent and important, people stop seeing your work as “nice to have.”

Find the UX Angle in the Business Goals

Take each goal and ask yourself: How could UX contribute to this?

You might be surprised how often the answer is “quite a lot.”

For example:

If the goal is to improve employee satisfaction, you might look at the internal tools staff use every day. Could they be more intuitive, faster, or less frustrating?
If it’s about growing market share among Gen Z, consider whether your digital products align with their expectations around speed, personalization, or visual language.
If leadership wants to reduce support costs, you could examine the onboarding experience, help content, or navigation to reduce friction and prevent confusion.

Now, not every goal will have a clear UX application. You don’t need to force it. Your job here is to find the intersections—where user experience has a natural role to play in business success.

Prioritize Where You Can Make the Most Difference

Once you’ve mapped out a few potential connections, it’s time to focus.

Ask two questions:

How important is this goal to the business right now?
How much influence do I realistically have over it?

Goals that rank high on both fronts should be your top priorities. That’s where you’ll have the best chance of delivering visible results and earning trust.

Also, consider the feasibility. Some goals might be technically within your remit but would require fighting through years of legacy systems or organizational red tape. Save those for later. Start where you can move quickly and show value.

Write It Up as a One-Page Role Vision

With your priorities in place, draft a simple one-page proposal. This doesn’t need to be formal or fancy. It just needs to show your thinking.

Structure it like this:

Your Understanding of Company Goals: A brief summary in your own words.
Where UX Can Contribute: A few bullet points on how user experience can support each goal.
Your Role: A description of how you propose to spend your time and focus your energy.
Next Steps: What you’d like to do next, and any input or validation you’re seeking from your manager.

Here's a simplified example focusing on just one goal (you'll want to do this exercise for each relevant business objective):

Company Goal: Increase first-year customer retention by 15%. UX Contribution: Redesign the onboarding experience, improve clarity of initial comms, run usability testing on account setup. My Role: Lead a cross-functional initiative to streamline onboarding and reduce user drop-off within the first 30 days. Next Step: Kick off initial discovery sessions with Customer Support and Product next week.

This is just a basic example - your actual proposal should be more detailed and cover multiple goals. You can present this informally, over coffee, in a 1:1 meeting, or as a short follow-up email. The point is to shift the conversation from "What should I be doing?" to "Here's how I believe I can help. Does that align with your thinking?"

Outie’s Aside

If you’re an agency owner or freelancer, you might be thinking, “Well, that’s all fine for in-house roles, but what about me? I don’t have a strategy doc to refer to.”

True; but that doesn’t mean you’re off the hook.

Instead of aligning to an internal strategy, your task is to identify the recurring goals and pain points your clients face and then position yourself as the answer.

Start by asking:

What business outcomes are my clients struggling with?
Where does UX have the potential to make a measurable difference?
What problems do they know they have... and what problems don’t they see yet?

You might notice patterns. Perhaps your clients struggle with onboarding new users, reducing bounce rates, or turning traffic into leads. Or maybe they’re failing to stand out in a saturated market due to poor brand consistency or a clunky experience.

Once you know what they care about, you can define your own role in relation to those needs. For example, instead of simply offering “UX design,” you could describe your service as:

Helping SaaS founders reduce churn through better onboarding
Improving donation flows for nonprofits to increase conversion rates
Creating design systems that cut dev time and speed up feature rollouts

This isn’t just about writing better sales copy. It’s about clarifying your role so that potential clients see you as a partner in their success, not just a pair of hands to execute wireframes.

You’re not waiting to be told what to do. You’re bringing insight, clarity, and structure, and that’s something clients will pay a premium for.

The Bonus: Educating While You Align

This process does more than define your role. It helps educate your manager and colleagues about the value of UX, without lecturing them or asking them to read articles.

It also gives them a sense of ownership. Because you’ve involved them in shaping your priorities, they’re more likely to defend and champion them when needed.

This kind of soft influence builds credibility fast. You’re not just seen as “the designer” anymore. You become someone who helps the business solve problems.

Coming Up: Getting Real About Your Resources

So far, we’ve looked at aligning your role with what the organization wants to achieve. Next time, we’ll talk about what you can realistically achieve, given your current resources.

Because defining your role is one thing. Delivering on it is another. And we need to make sure your ambitions are rooted in what’s actually possible.

In the meantime, see if you can track down your company’s strategy doc. Read it through and highlight 3 to 5 goals that UX could directly support. If you find something interesting or surprising, hit reply and tell me about it. I’d love to hear.

Talk soon,

Paul

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