TODAY'S PRESSURE POINTS

Stephanie Leue says teams can stay really busy and still not make real progress. When there’s no clear plan, everything feels important. Teams skip research and build things without knowing if they will actually help people. 

DEEP CUT: When leaders only ask what got shipped, teams just try to make more stuff. A better question is what actually changed. That helps teams focus on fixing real problems, not just staying busy.

Bryan updated the design impact visual shifts the focus from “research” to “situations.” Through conversations with Helge Tennø, it became clear that before teams build anything, they need to understand what’s really going on. A situation is just what’s happening, who it’s happening to, and what they’re trying to do.

DEEP CUT: When teams skip this step, they build things that don’t quite fit. But when they understand the situation first, everything gets clearer. Questions get better, problems are easier to see, and the work actually helps people.

Recently, our team used AI to quickly iterate on a feature based on concrete feedback, but despite the newfound speed and new workflows, we ended up with a disjointed design where primary actions were hidden and key information was lost. We realized the problem wasn't our feedback process, but how we expressed our desired outcomes, we defined what to change, but not what was already working or why.

DEEP CUT: What teams still desperately need is the story behind what they are building.

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