Pick Your Fight

You can't make everyone happy. You can't fight for everything, too.

A conversation with a designer friend brought me to this realisation that as much as you can’t make everyone happy, you can’t fight everyone as well. You have to pick your fight well.

This friend was saying that his team is having issues with requests from marketing team: no matter how much guideline the design team provides for the design, the marketing team always breaches it. He was unhappy. When I asked him if supporting the marketing team was his or his team’s core assignment, he said no. Their primary job was to support building the core product with product managers and engineers, the marketing team was an occasional request.

So here’s the thing. Designers need to know where they are positioned, what their key priorities are, and what their primary “clients” or “needs” are in the organisation. They have to decide whether fighting for (or sweating the small stuff for) the projects or teams that they are not supposed to pay 100% attention is worth the time and effort. As a designe…