September 29, 2024

Welcome to The Merholz Agenda

I’m excited to present the first issue of The Merholz Agenda, my (semi-)weekly newsletter where I share my perspective on matters of UX/Design leadership and organization design. Each issue will contain some mix of short thoughts, longer thoughts, and links to stuff I’ve found.

I’ve been seeking a venue less formal than the posts I write on https://petermerholz.com/ (which are meant to be evergreen), but more robust than just tossing out ideas on LinkedIn. I’m also hopeful that over time this can serve as a gathering place for a community of folks with shared interests.

I’m sure it will take a few issues for me to figure out just what I’m doing here, so bear with me (and I hope you enjoy the ride). Please don’t hesitate to reach out, either by replying to this, or using my Contact form.

What is my agenda?

I’ve titled this “The Merholz Agenda” to reflect my professional ideology and mission. Since 1998, when I first wrote about working in user experience, my north star has always been on how do we create the best user experiences for people. I’ve shifted from UX/Design practice to organization design so that I can influence the conditions that enable the delivery of improved user experiences.

I believe at the heart of this is humanism: a recognition and celebration of those things that make us human. Humanism is the undercurrent that enables great experiences:

UX/Design, at it’s fullest, is a humanistic practice, drawing on social science, creativity, and the intentional use of language.

Authentically seeing our users/customers as people, and not just the ‘human factor’ in a system, demands that we respect them, their various abilities, and seek to provide them what they need.

Practices like Design Thinking simply help other organizational functions apply humanistic practices to their work.

And when you treat employees humanely (as adults, with agency and autonomy, acknowledging their whole selves), they, in turn, will do so for their customers.

Links

Just a couple for this first newsletter:

Why UX and Agile Still Don’t Get Along, by Charles Lambdin. Adaptive Path’s book Subject to Change has a whole chapter devoted to agile, because when we wrote it, in 2007, the alignment was strong between agile philosophy and the user-centered, iterative mindset of UX. Since then, “agile” has curdled into an overengineered process, and Lambdin’s article shares why it doesn’t work with solid UX practice.

Toxic Leaders, Performance vs Trust, by Simon Sinek. In 2 minutes, Sinek shows why toxic people are promoted. This really hit home for me, as it sits at the intersection of org design (performance management) and leadership.

Where I’ll Be

As of now, my only planned public appearance is 11-13 November in London, for the Design Leaders + event. I’m giving a talk and teaching a workshop.

Thank you!

That’s a wrap on this first issue. Let’s see how this goes!

—peter

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