David Pereira

You cannot ensure validity, but you can gather hypothesis and test them. User research isn’t a step before development. It’s an iterative approach that enables you to use available knowledge to uncover hidden value drivers. Don’t try proving yourself right. Try uncovering what you don’t know. Make incremental investment based on evidence strength. For example a survey result is weak evidence while a pre-payment is strong enough to build a solution.

Too much emphasis on stakeholder management is wrong. It’s about partnership instead. Instead of creating prototypes to communicate, do the following: - Align on goals - Explore opportunities - Evaluate trade-offs - Agree on what success looks like With the above, you can thrive. Without that, you will ensure miscommunication no matter what you do.

If life gives you a lemon, make a lemonade. Layoffs will have a toll if you let that. Many times, you can step back and reflect on what future you want to create and define what to do. Be humble. We often lack skills, but that doesn’t need to be the end state. A core part is to network with those who’ve done what you aim for. Learn from them and shape your journey. A positive mindset will lead to great results. While a negative one will not get you anywhere:

A belief that emotions should be out is wrong. Hiding or controlling our emotions won't improve collaboration; it will cause us to overthink the past. A better way is to mindfully share our emotions with those whom we work with, but with a caveat: Stay with yourself. Don't do the following: - You make me angry with your stupid questions - Your design is horrible. Nobod'll like it - You're late again, that sucks The above represent attacks, and they will escalate. Instead, you can share your emotions by pointing to the situation, not the person: - Your last question disturbs me - The presented design doesn't resonate with me, particularly because of A & B - I feel disrespect when you arrive late without giving a reasonable heads-up

The bottom-up approach is a double-edged sword. It will create frustration when teams lack strategic clarity. If that is misaligned with the direction top management wants, they may come up with something they are motivated to and receive cold water bucked on their faces. When leaders share where they want to land and their current business goals, teams would be better equipped to prioritize what could enable them to get there. In summary, if leaders do their job, bottom-up prioritization works. Otherwise, it's nonsense.

Don't panic. First, prioritize because not all problems require solving. Questions to reflect on: - What's the real problem? - How often does problem happen? - How many customers are impacted? - How much does the issue disturb them? Solve problems that are worth solving. Not all problems deserve your attention. It's not because a customer is shouting that you should panic.