S01E07

Whether you’re internal or a consultant, we chat about when it’s appropriate to push back on the decision-makers and how to go about doing it.

Transcript

Matthew: I’m on antibiotics for the next five days and then.

Matt: What do you have against Biotics?

Matthew: They know what they did.

Matt: So yeah what we’re gonna talk about pushing back on clients I think in general, giving clients feedback to their suggestions that might not be in line with what our suggestions or recommendations would be. If I could give a little background on where this topic kind of came from for me.

Matthew: Yeah.

Matt: During a workshop teaching a class with some folks last week. And it was all internal, they all work for the same company we were talking about well lots of things but, we were talking about UX design specifically and these were not trained experienced designers but they’re kind of transitioning into that role and they’ve had a lot of issues in the past and they’re good, they’ve got good instincts and they’ve had issues in the past pushing back on clients. Clients want the interaction to be a certain way and the design in their web based software and these guys would push back and the clients would basically railroad them and say no it has to be this way and they didn’t have any backup if you will, they didn’t have a leg to stand on in their arguments.

Matthew: The clients you mean.

Matt: Yeah my participants, my students to their clients. And what I’m asked point blank in the training like what are some techniques, how do you do that effectively? It was a really good question and when you’re asking it from a position of inexperience, you’re in for lack of a better word, a weak position to argue I think. And that how they felt like they didn’t have the confidence and the background to have to put up a good argument even though what they were saying they felt was right and from what they told me they were valid arguments. But the client just still feel, the client still kind of bullied them into what they wanted right or wrong. And with those cases it sounds wrong. So I hope that’d be a good topic for us to expound upon. Some techniques, ...

Pushing Back on Execs