Advocating vs. earning

I had the whole case. I led with the design instead.

We were deciding what version 5.0 of Fly Delta would be. The concept was good. A trusted travel companion, a dynamic expert in your pocket that knew the next right move no matter where you were in the trip. Underneath it sat a year of research, and the research was unambiguous. Users got lost at specific points in the journey, wanted clarity, longed for something simpler. We’d modeled what fixing it was worth: the CSAT lift, the revenue a simpler experience would unlock.

I showed none of it. I walked in with the solution.

It stalled. Without the case under it, the bold version had nothing to make the room brave. So we did the comfortable thing. We changed how the app looked and left the technology and service problems underneath it untouched. Delta held a leadership position in that space at the time. The conservative path didn’t defend it. The lift we’d modeled never came, because the thing that would have moved it never got built.

That’s advocating. It says: we deserve to be here, trust us. Earning says something different. Here’s the confusion, here’s what it costs, here’s the case, already made. One asks for the room. The other doesn’t need to.

I had earning sitting in the deck I didn’t open. I treated a year of uncovering as the warm-up and led with the answer, because the answer was the part I trusted. The design was the craft. The case felt like what you said before the real work started.

It’s backwards. The case is the work. The design is what you’ve earned the right to show.

Nobody teaches this in design school. It isn’t in most career paths either. So I went looking for the people who’d already crossed over. Designers who saw the same gap, left to get MBAs, and came back to teach the rest of us. I took their classes on purpose. The business education designers don’t get, taught by the designers who went and got it.

I still feel the pull. The design is the part I want to lead with. The case is the part I make myself make first. The classes didn’t change that. They just made me slower to open with the thing I’m proudest of.