Scaling Empathy, A Case Study in Change Management
Summary
Organizations of all sizes often struggle to reap the full benefits of change, especially in times of transformation, despite huge investments in technology and process. This is often because employees don't understand how their role is changing. It may seem simple to just clarify roles and responsibilities, but as with consumer facing products, people are unique, complex, and motivated by factors that aren't always easy to discover. Additionally, designing for the employee can also mean designing for stakeholder buy-in. This is a story about a real world approach to building practical application of empathy across multiple disciplines and reporting lines, overcoming reservations, navigating politics, with the goal of building a lasting partnership where employee UX design/execution is a team sport and never outsourced.
Key Insights
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Failing to understand internal culture and employee context can cause well-intentioned projects to fail quickly.
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Scaling empathy requires considering not only users but also multiple internal communities and their distinct pressures.
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Strategic value is realized only when empathy for users and employees is aligned and embraced by all organizational levels.
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Siloed mindsets and rigid roadmaps block cross-team empathy and collaboration.
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Creating advocacy networks or action groups helps translate and spread empathy across teams.
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Embedding team members in other teams’ meetings enhances understanding and collaboration.
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Delivering immediate value before demanding adoption of new practices encourages uptake and excitement.
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Leadership competitiveness can be leveraged to encourage broader empathy-based engagement.
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Employees often don’t perceive how new processes affect their roles without peer-to-peer translation of impact.
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Balancing investments in technology and processes with investments in people is critical for project success.
Notable Quotes
"I didn’t understand the people who would be using it, so it was not received well and shut down quickly."
"We over-emphasized technology and process information and forgot the people inside the organization."
"Everyone was just staying in their lane and focused on delivery, not seeing how their project impacted others."
"We had to connect empathy to strategic value so that executives and teams felt the impact on their work."
"We created advocacy networks that allowed directional communication and peer-to-peer sharing of how roles would change."
"We gave away the recipe with no fee for entry – immediate value first, then learning the process."
"People said, ‘I get it’ when a peer explained how their day actually changed—not from top-down communication."
"The pressures in large organizations make it hard for teams to see the value of empathy and cross-team connection."
"If we release new features too early without alignment, it doesn’t make sense to people and causes confusion."
"We have to think beyond projects to the larger ecosystem and understand the ladder of intended outcomes."
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