Audrey Cheng

Episode 85
Brave UX

Resolving the Tension Between Product and UX

In this episode of Brave UX, Audrey Cheng shares her journey from lab scientist to CTO, why she redefined career success, and how UX and product can work better together.

Highlights include:

Why did you have to leave redefine career success?
Should product leaders be leading design orgs?
How do you involve stakeholders in UX design, in a meaningful way?
Should designers seeking influence consider a move into product?
How do you handle demands for features from stakeholders?

August 9, 202201:14:09

Listen on:

Who is Audrey Cheng?

Audrey is the Chief Technology Officer at Imagr, the first vision-only, white-label, autonomous checkout solution that retailers can own, operate and scale themselves.

Before joining Imagr, she was the CPO at SnapComms, an Everbridge company. At the same time, Audrey was also the Head of Global UX for all of Everbridge’s products, working closely with the CTO - Dr. John Maeda.

Prior to Everbridge, Audrey was the VP of Product at Pushpay, the world-leading digital engagement and giving platform for churches.

In 2019, Audrey was recognised by Leading Women in Product, as the Product Leader of the Year for Australia and New Zealand.

Transcript

Brendan Jarvis:
Hello and welcome to another episode of Brave UX. I'm Brendan Jarvis, Managing Founder of The Space InBetween, the home of New Zealand's only specialist evaluative UX research practice and world-class UX lab, enabling brave teams across the globe to de-risk product design and equally brave leaders to shape and scale design culture. You can find out a bit more about that at thespaceinbetween.co.nz. Here on Brave UX though, it's my job to help you to put the pieces of the product puzzle together. I do that by unpacking the stories, learnings and expert advice of world-class UX, design and product management professionals. My guest today is Audrey Cheng. Audrey is the Chief Technology Officer at Imagr, the first vision only white-label autonomous checkout solution that retailers can own, operate and scale themselves. Before joining Imagr, she was the CPO at SnapComms, an Everbridge Company.
At the same time, Audrey was also the Head of Global UX for all of Everbridge's products, working closely with the CTO, Dr. John Maeda. Prior to Everbridge, Audrey was the VP of Product at Pushpay, the world leading digital engagement and giving platform for churches. A huge supporter of the New Zealand product and tech communities. Audrey has been a co-organizer of Product Tank Auckland, facilitated product workshops for startups through New Zealand Trade and Enterprise, and served for several years as the Vice Chair of the New Zealand High-Tech Awards. In 2019, Audrey received her own award recognized by Leading Women in Product as the product leader of the year for Australia and New Zealand. And yes, they are two separate countries. A clear communicator and a passionate product person, Audrey has been invited to deliver talks at UXDX Asia-Pacific and Mind the Product and has been a repeat guest on the Fearless Product Podcast. And now she's here with me on Brave UX. Audrey, welcome to the show.
Audrey Cheng:
Hi Brendan. Thanks so much for having me. That's so great to be here.
Brendan Jarvis:
It's really great to have you here, Audrey. And of course we are both Auckland residents as far as I'm aware still. Yes, and we are. That's unusual and this is a remote conversation even though we both live in the same place. Maybe we should figure that out for next time. But it's really, really good to have you here. I was curious about the move that you've recently made. You've gone from a CPO role into a CTO role. Is that a meaningful difference in the day-to-day reality of those titles? Is there anything that is massively different from one to the other?
Audrey Cheng:
Yeah, I think the main difference they see is caring for a much broader group of product develop, like product developers, product builders. And I think I've worked really closely with engineering in all my past roles and had a really fantastic relationship. And I think now I have the opportunity really to do something that I really love, which is actually forming and helping to build a cross-functional relationship between all of those groups of product design, product management and engineering. And I think that's really what this role sort of brings together is really helping imager to build a really strong team that can work really well together as we see our growth going forward into the future. And I think that's a really exciting thing. And I think moving from product to technology and overseeing a lot of broader scope is really definitely a challenge for me and some learning for me as well.
Brendan Jarvis:
You've been in the role now, I think you said around four or five months when we are off here. What have you found has been the biggest learning or hurdle that you've had to overcome moving from that product context into that wider technology context?
Audrey Cheng:
Yeah, I think working with engineering and then caring and maybe stewarding and shepherding engineering is quite a big difference for me. And I think what I learned is that having such strong relationship with engineering and having such wonderful friends in the engineering space has helped me to learn and also understand what creates great engineering culture and help to drive and build upon that culture here. Atr I think it, what's been hard and surprising I think, well I think the tech stack is quite different. I've never not worked in a hardware product before and I think learning the diversity of the technology is definitely a learning curve for me, but one that I'm really enjoying and I have a really fantastic and capable and experience team that I'm loving working with.
Brendan Jarvis:
So I mentioned in your intro that images focused on that smart cart experience for retailers and it's a white label which they can own and deploy themselves. How much of your attention as the CTO is focused on the present versus the future of where the business and the technology within the business is going?
Audrey Cheng:
Yeah, I think you know, always have to be thinking about the future. And I think that's one of the important things with product management. And I think not getting into, I guess what Marty Kagan and OV talk about is the feature factory. And I think it's an idea that you have to be thinking and you really need to align your teams on where the product is going so that as we think about what you're capable of doing today and unlocking for your customers today, what's the next step for you and where are we headed as an organization and where are we headed to or what problems are we planning to solve for our retailers and our customers as we head forward into the future? So I think there is a balance between the two. Yes, as a startup you need to execute today. There are milestones that you wanna hit, there are things that you need to accomplish today and problems that you need to solve today. But I think that you need to be planning and thinking about solving those problems with the future in mind. And I think that's important no matter what stage of product development or maturity you're at.
Brendan Jarvis:
Mm-hmm. We were speaking about the future just then. I wanna actually speak about the past a little bit. Your past now, you've worked in tech now for about the past 15 years or so, but it's not the first sector that you worked in. You when you left uni, you actually went to work as a lab scientist and then you moved into customer support roles and you even did a bit of a stint in product marketing and all of those were in healthcare. What changed for you? How did you end up getting into technology, into product and into UX?
Audrey Cheng:
Yeah, I guess that's a common question cuz I guess it's quite an interesting background. I think my background through university is in science in biology and zoology. And a lot of the reasons I ended up studying those is cause I was just really curious about how things are made and I'm just, I think by nature just a really curious person. And I think that's why originally starting out as a scientist was really interesting to me. Cause it's that space of technology problem solving and helping people. And I think those are the things that I still carry with me today. And even when I think about that career and all those moves, I really just took opportunities that I thought were actually really interesting to me where there were problems and I was curious about how to solve things or curious about what that might be like.
And I think having been in customer service, you really get to understand pain points of your customers. You get to be on the pointy end of someone who is unhappy or is facing some challenge with your service. So your product. And I think it really gives you a lot of empathy and I think that's really helped me as a product manager now really be able to be thinking about what the decisions that we make today and how they really impact other people. And that it's not just a decision of one thing or another, it's actually something that could potentially affect someone else's life, make it better or make it worse. And so I think when you're making decisions, it helps you to be a little bit more intentional when you have some empathy for who you're building for or can put yourself in those shoes or been on the pointy end of your customer service team, who are the ones that are going to field the questions, who are the ones that are going to be supporting your product at the end of the day?
So I think in terms of my journey, as I said, I think I just took things that I thought were interesting. I don't know that maybe I didn't start out other people who were desperate to be a particular profession. I think I really found it hard to figure out where I should land I guess. And so a lot of my earlier career was really about finding things that I was interesting in and taking opportunities that presented itself and I, I guess for other product managers, funny enough, it's the way that I became a product manager. I joined a tech company who needed someone on their support desk to support their customers and when the product manager decided to leave, they looked at me and said, Hey, well you wanna give it a try? So that's how I got my first opportunity to become a product manager. And obviously having done it for more than 10 years now really fell in love with solving problems and really helping people. And I think that's really at the heart of building products.
Brendan Jarvis:
Well, it's obviously something that you do very well. And recently of course you've changed scope of roles up into the CTO role as well. So you're clearly this is an excellent trajectory that you've been on that you spoke about taking opportunities early on in your career that were interesting to you, which sounded to me perhaps the path wasn't always clear. Did you ever feel, if you reflect back on 20 something year old Audrey, did you ever feel lost or unsure or unclear what that next move should be and where it would take you?
Audrey Cheng:
Yeah, to be honest, I felt like that for a lot of my earlier career. I think because really when I was in school I really was interested in science and I think that just the whole I, I just really loved and really wanted to understand how things were made. And I think if you think about physics, biology, chemistry, a lot of that foundation is really, I feeds that curiosity perhaps. I think looking back, if I had a little bit more direction, maybe I would've gone into something that fed that but also ultimately led me to down a career path rightly or wrongly I guess. Yeah, I think it's hard. I think when you're younger and people are expecting you to define a career for yourself, how do you make that decision when you haven't had exposure to the possibilities that are out there? I mean, you have a lot of interest, you probably have a lot more potential than you realize at that time.
I don't know, maybe some people have it all figured out but I certainly didn't. And I think it took me a while to figure out what I was really interested in actually to find an opportunity that actually fed I guess the things that I really love, solving problems, my own just genuine curiosity and obsessiveness around figuring out how things work as well as helping people. And so yeah, I think that's ultimately where I ended up. So I do end up talking to a lot of maybe graduates that are asking about where their career should go, what should they do next. And I think it's always a hard thing, but I do feel like even no matter where you are in your career, I think we're so lucky that with technology the way that it is, this is a time for reinventing yourselves. Jobs are emerging all the time, new roles, new professions are emerging.
There was a time where it was very little, was known about product management in tech unless perhaps you were in the valley or very big tech centers. And I remember when I started out as a product manager, there was very few people that I knew of to turn to. I mean I was lucky that, I mean maybe a couple years after I started in product management, the product community start up a little bit and I could find some online blogs and resources, but I definitely, I definitely think that we obviously have Marty Kagan and Rich Mironov who were those early thought leaders in the space, but there definitely wasn't as much reach and much understanding and certainly within organizations I don't think there was very much understanding about the value of product management.
Brendan Jarvis:
Yeah, it certainly has exploded recently I think I was talking with Carlos who's the CEO of product school last year, and clearly his organization and the range of other organizations like that in the product space are experiencing massive growth. You also talked about the questions that graduates would ask you about what should they do for a career and how should they go about that? I couldn't help but think that it's almost as if we need to encourage them to ask better questions and to think more deeply about what it is that they might do with their career themselves. Seems like that sort of need to have some clear direction from someone who's perceived to be more experienced or whatever is sometimes to the detriment of people actually sort of sitting on their own figurative mountain and figuring a few things out for themselves. But totally understandable as well.
I think I would've done a similar thing when I was a graduate as well. So have some empathy for them. Sitting on the figurative mountain though is something that you've actually done throughout your career and I was listening to something that you were talking about and reflecting on your time at Pushpay, and I'm just going to quote you now. You said the most important lesson is really about your own growth and the growth of the people around you and really challenging what your ideas of success look like. You really have to challenge the way that you are working and what you prioritize. So what did success look like for you when you first started at Pushpay and how did that change what was behind what I just quoted saying? What was the thing that made you realize that there needed to be something different going on here for you?
Audrey Cheng:
Yeah, absolutely. I think your idea of success is that you could all, well, my idea of success was always that no matter the challenge, how hard it is, you just work a little bit harder or just put in a little bit more and you'll come out the other side. But I think that the challenge with Pushpay, it went through hypergrowth, right? There was no plateau where you can recover from putting your foot on the gas. And I think the more you put on your foot on the gas, at some point you realize there's a floor and that the pedal doesn't go down any further. I think you can. And I think if you get through the difficult things is I'll just put in a little bit more, it's okay, I'll just work a little bit harder and see it through. You soon realize that there actually not enough time and that there actually is no reprieve, right?
Because the challenges get tougher. The workload is piling, people are waiting for you and in product people are waiting for your analysis, they're waiting for your requirements, they're waiting for you to give them context about the problem. You're feeding a team of engineers, you're working with a team of engineers. In those really early days, it was really you, maybe one other, and you're all trying to wrangle some sense into the roadmap wrangle and get the work ready so that people understood had good context for what they were building, why they were building it, and what were the things that we abs the absolute scope that we needed to include apart. And in addition to that, you're also trying to grow a team. So there's all these competing priorities that are happening and I think you've see realize that your method of success of getting to success, of working harder doesn't work anymore.
And I think you I've spoke before about that sometimes you hit a wall that you realize actually what I'm doing isn't working and I'm just drowning now or start, I'm just treading water. And I think it's just reeva and it's that moment where you're reeva really reevaluating yourself and thinking about, Hey, how am I going to overcome this? What am I need to do? I'm either going to quit or I'm going to find a different way of working to get to overcome that challenge and overcome that barrier to get to success. And I think Pushpay was a really amazing opportunity for me to learn because I think it really pushed you to your own limits and at those limits and you realize actually I need to change because what I'm doing isn't working. So I fundamentally needed to change the way I was working, how I prioritize what did
Brendan Jarvis:
Change. Yeah, ok, yeah, you prior prioritizing time.
Audrey Cheng:
Yeah, prioritize, you have to let some fire actually where my good friend said, you have to choose which fires to let burn, right? Everything's on fire, everything's a priority. So you need to choose, you need to make the choice now of which fires you're going to let burn. And eventually that's what you end up doing is you end up saying, what's the most important thing that I need to tackle? What's the most impactful thing? And you end up doing that and you have to allow some things to fall by the wayside and know that. Or if you're perfectionist, maybe perfect isn't what you need to do. Maybe there is a point that is good enough and it's just perfectionist,
Brendan Jarvis:
Audrey,
Audrey Cheng:
I would say that I once was, but I think now it's a balance between what's optimal and trying to get the best result. So I think there's a little bit of balance, but of course there is a little bit of wanting things to be perfect. But I think as we all know, in building product, you never build out, build what you actually said set out to build in your mind, I guess, or what you had originally thought about.
Brendan Jarvis:
So it sounds like you can now sleep while there's a few fires burning
Audrey Cheng:
Depending on the fires.
Brendan Jarvis:
Well like you said, you get to choose what the fires are that you let
Audrey Cheng:
Burn. Yeah, exactly. Doesn't mean that even if you're tackling doesn't mean you don't worry about them.
Brendan Jarvis:
Yeah, it's one of those things that I think high performers suffer from, not just the perfectionism, and again, I'm generalizing here, but there's actually a chemical reason why we enjoy the work that we do. And you can continue just to churn out more and more work and move on to the next thing on your list. And you get a little high from it, but you have been talking about it starts to come at a cost, not just to yourself, but also the people that are around you. And I was curious around this time where you came to this realization about which buyers you needed to let burn. What role, if any, did your relationship and being a mother play in your decision to reevaluate how you were working?
Audrey Cheng:
That's a good question. You know, reach a point where I think at that stage it's really, there's a point where your work does bleed into your personal, personal life. I mean, how you're feeling, what you have actually capacity for in your personal life. And I think when you realize that, actually I remember even my first day at Pushpay working probably till one o'clock past midnight anyways. And my husband was like, it's your first day at work. I was like, I know, but
Brendan Jarvis:
This isn't starting well.
Audrey Cheng:
But I think knowing that you have to have capacity for the rest of your life as well, your family, your relationships, I think those things become important. But I think also probably while that is really important driver, I think the question is really are you going to face the challenge or are you not going to face the challenge? And if you're, then you definitely know it's not working. And I think there's a decision point there that yes, you need to get that balance in your life, but there's many ways to get that balance. The balance could be tap out, the balance could be keep going at what I'm doing and see if it works out, or let's change the way I'm working and see if we can tackle this challenge differently to get a different result or to get that balance. So I think there are decisions, and I don't think that any one of those is necessarily wrong. They could work for different people, but I think that that is a choice that you need to make is, is this the right opportunity for you? And if not, then it's okay to tap out to
Brendan Jarvis:
Have you set yourself any boundaries. You're an executive leader now of technology, which is encompassing, like you said, product and engineering and design. In that C-suite role, do you now have clearly understood personal work life boundaries that you stick to? Or is this something that you regularly reevaluate and it's more of a feeling that you check in with yourself on?
Audrey Cheng:
Yeah, I think it depends on, it really depends on the organization and I think maybe what the needs are and trying to balance that with my own personal life. I definitely know that. I think that you need to set boundaries. And there was a time where in the first startup that I worked at, I was pretty much working almost seven days a week because of the hours of support for our customers. I'm working really long hours because we were here in New Zealand, we had customers in Europe, in the UK as well as in the us. So I'd find I'd be working till midnight and then up early and then also working on Saturdays because we had us customers who wanted support. So you end up finding that you don't end up with any work-life balance because everything and the demands and you obviously striving for success in your organization, those demands sort of are bleeding and aren't nine to five. And so they do bleed into your personal life. In that instance there I kind of set a boundary that I'm going to close my laptop at Friday night and that's it. Be honest. What time?
Brendan Jarvis:
Friday? Friday, yeah.
Audrey Cheng:
But and if there was an emer or something urgent on a Saturday morning, I would take care of it. But I think essentially saying, hey, the boundaries here. I think with Imagr for example, they're like, we are pretty much opposite schedules in terms of working hours. And so being available and being able to collaborate with my team over in Europe is really important. And so it's more around setting dates that are generally for me to take meetings and dates, days where I say, actually these are the days I typically like to have off. So one, I can spend time with my family or two, I can catch up with my friends and people in the community, which is also really important to me. So it's just really about balancing and setting those expectations so that people don't drop things in my calendar on days that I'm not, I really want to be doing something else. And so it's just really trying to set those boundaries and making exceptions when you need to. And likewise making exceptions on those other in the reverse as well.
Brendan Jarvis:
Not being too rigid about it, but actually knowing what you need to feel good about yourself and the work that you're doing and give your best to everyone, not just at work but also at home. I do wanna come back to Pushpay again. I'll touch on Pushpay a few times cuz I feel like Pushpay was for you, and correct me if I'm wrong, but I feel like it was quite a formative period of your career and which you experienced a lot of growth in a compressed amount of time. And you were saying you were reflecting on your time there again, and I'll quote you again you said, when I took the responsibility for the first time of overseeing the UX research and UX design practice, being a product manager, I really didn't know how to lead the design team. I didn't know what was meaningful in their work. I didn't know what they valued. How did you go about clearing up that blind spot?
Audrey Cheng:
Oh yeah. So that was really daunting because I mean I had worked alongside many amazing UX designers but never really formally led a UX team. And I think the responsibility of caring for so many people, not only in what they're going to do day to day, but actually helping them grow their careers is really quite a responsible task. And so the thing for me was one was getting involved in the community. So I really embraced and the community embraced me, the UX community in Auckland. So joining the meetup groups, making a lot of friends and having a group of really close friends that were of the discipline and also having a lot more one-to-ones and trying to build relationships with my designers directly. And I think that was a thing that really helped me a lot. It was a lot journey that I went on.
I'm still on it, what I mean, still trying to learn and still trying to make sure that I can support people in the proper way. But I think it was through a lot of that going to meetups, meeting with people, talking to people about what was meaningful, listening to the topics that were coming up, being part of those panels as well, providing the product management lens and then listening to the UX lens. Those things were really important to me to actually have to build empathy for my team and really try and understand what they needed in order to be successful within our organization. And I think it really changed the way that I practiced because I didn't realize at that time, time how much was needed in terms of what the challenges really were, which were how do I get the things that I'm concerned about that I've uncovered on the roadmap?
How do I get involved in problems earlier? I'm handed things. These are typical problems that I think we see through all well, not all, maybe less mature UX organizations with less mature UX practices. And so there was a lot of work to be done there still in terms of like, Hey, how do I find a voice for my team? How do I get them a seat at the table? And I think the great thing is when you already have a seat, it's much easier to create space for your team. And I think that helped a lot I think in terms of bringing those voices, bringing the value of UX into the fore within our development team, within our technology and development team and then with the broader organization. So it was a really interesting journey and still something that I work hard on and still, but I very, very much value the experts I've had worked with so many amazing people through the years, got coaching for my team, all of those things, knowing that I have deficiencies in this area, I know that I've not studied, I'm not the expert, that expert leader I guess that a team would love to have.
But the thing I can provide is opening the doors to those opportunities to bring expert coaches in, to bring experts in to actually provide resources to suggest training. And I think having a rich community of people surrounding you and supporting you means that you have access to help when you need it. And also suggestions as to how you might tackle some challenges.
Brendan Jarvis:
All right. This might be an unfair question, so you can tell me if it is, but I was thinking about this, I was thinking about someone moving from product into leading the design org or vice versa, but in this context, the one that you are operating in, and I realize that you've got a life experience of one here, but I'm still very much interested in your perspective. Should a product person be leading the design org or should a designer be leading the design org?
Audrey Cheng:
Yeah, I firmly believe that ultimately I would love to see a designer leading the design org and have their very own seat at that executive table. It doesn't always happen though. And I think it, it's a journey and I think what I feel that I can provide is an opportunity to create space to create growth within the organization maturity and understanding. And your hope is always that one day to allow that UX organization to grow and be independent on its own in an equal partner. And that is always the hope. And I think that you find though if that is not, or that if that is not already there and that you don't have a designer, UX practitioner at the table is very hard to put someone in there without support and without a pathway. And so I think the idea for me is always that when I am trying to champion and bring UX in, it's really to create that pathway.
And my hope is for one day that they will be able to have that respect, have that understanding through the organization and be able to stand on their own much like a product and engineering are able to today. And there was a time when product, I mean, was in the same boat and we were always coming under engineering and still comes under engineering often. And so you still see the same level of hierarchy. But my personal opinion is that these all should be equal partners in the conversation because we have very different perspectives, have different experience that we can add value to that conversation and to the way that we think about our product and we think about the problems that we're solving.
Brendan Jarvis:
Have you ever considered a career in politics, Audrey? That was very good. It really was very good.
Audrey Cheng:
No politics, not for me.
Brendan Jarvis:
Hey, speaking about politics and some of the things that can go on in organizations, you know have spoken about this in the past, which is that observed tension that can exist between product and UX and this is something that plays out in various different ways for different reasons and probably none of them are actually are any good, to be honest. We're all working for one organization trying to create a great product or experience for our customers fighting. I don't see how that helps. But when did you become aware of the tension that can exist between these two parts of the puzzle? Yeah,
Audrey Cheng:
I think it's a mixture of things. I mean I think I had people reaching out from the community talking about some of the dysfunction within their teams, talking about some of the friction. I mean I never experienced to the level that maybe some of the stories I've heard some UX designers in the community had reached out and said that they actually ended up crying over a number of interactions that they've had with product and vice versa as well, where you end up with this kind of fueled tension that happens and I maybe organizations experience it differently. Not all. I mean that's probably a very extreme case. Normally this function is really about whose idea or who's going to do what or is my, I have valuable skillset and you're kinda encroaching on my area. Those are typically the friction points that I often see. And I think a lot of it comes outta misalignment in terms of the goals or the objectives and also empathy and understanding for each other's roles.
And one of the things that I firmly believe is one, if we can align on the outcomes and understand the problems together and we start kind of together then we have a better opportunity for the teams to actually be working together. Because what I often see is that this function is coming from competition with each other of whose idea is who can I be heard? You know what I mean? So it's this idea of jousting for position in a way. And I think when we have a better understanding of what each, each of us can contribute with our skillsets and experience and how that actually adds value to our common goal than we have. And I think I see a lot less of this dysfunction. Yeah, it's an, it's unfortunate, but I think you do have to start from a culture of trust. And I think if you don't have that inherent culture of trust where people are valued, then you have a much harder road to travel.
And so you need to fix that first. And I think part of that is how do you demonstrate the value of product management? How do you demonstrate the value of UX design to maybe an engineering team that's never experienced good product management or a great UX design before? But I had engineers say to me, I didn't realize that was UX design if I had known that we would've hired one three years ago. You know what I mean? So you know what I mean? I think there is often that, and I still think that there is a misconception, maybe this is not everybody's experience, but I still think that there is a misconception about what UX design is. And I still hear a lot about just the interface design and not thinking about interaction or the research component of it. And so a lot of the work I do when I'm bringing UX into an organization's educating people educating an exec team, a leadership team and engineering team about actually the value of UX design and what actually UX design is and pointing to a lot of those things and then bringing in, quite often I will bring in a coach depending on the maturity, but bringing in a proper coach to actually help people understand.
And actually I think the best one is UX research. It can bring everyone together UX research and helping everyone build a foundation and understanding of what UX research starts to help people to build an understanding of UX design practice as a whole. And I found that that was really valuable. So I brought coaches in previously to give some workshop training to engineering customer success marketing, product design itself. And so just getting that cross-functional team together to understand, because I actually think the skills in UX research are really valuable to a lot of people. I mean, how to ask really open questions, I'm biased questions. I mean these are helpful for everybody. And when people understand the methodology, then there is much more trust that is built in the practice itself and the results that you're getting and the information that people are telling you about the problem. So I found that that has been an extremely helpful tool in breaking down silos helping to form, transform maybe some dysfunctional relationships into more functional relationships through that level of understanding.
Brendan Jarvis:
You touched on UX research there and how helping a wider group of people understand the methodology and how it all works and doing that in order for them to see more clearly what the value of the research piece of UX is. And I also understand that you're a bit of a big believer in democratizing the research for that reason. Jump in if jump in if I'm putting words in your mouth here and I'm going to quote you again now you've said it shouldn't really matter who's doing the interviewing. We should feel confident that what we find and what we observe and what we document is of good quality because we've aligned on our practices. So there's a lot in there. Actually. I'm tempted to go down the track of whether it's a good or a bad thing to democratize research. And maybe we'll come back to that. But where I wanted to go first was what does being aligned on practices look like and how have you helped your teams to get there previously?
Audrey Cheng:
Yeah, I think again, I think there's misunderstanding about research. People think you just create questions and you go out and you ask people those questions, random people, and then you go, great, look at the results. I go, oh look, this one guy told me this. You know what I mean? And I think that there's a misunderstanding again on what UX research is and what a proper practice is. And so there is a craft here. And so I think my statement is maybe I do believe in democratized research, but I do believe that there are experts and we need those experts and there's not enough of those expert researchers. And so what I mean about that is that there is a craft and we all need to understand what that craft is. We don't all need to be experts, but we do need to understand that is a craft with experts.
And my thought is always that I always hire someone, an expert to come in and actually run their practice. But because there's not enough people, I believe that we can train people to actually be better interviewers, to actually learn how to write a protocol, to actually learn how to synthesize. And we're not, people aren't going to practice perfect out of the gate, but if we're able to share that knowledge and have experts train people, then we can get better results. We can reach more people. The more people we have that can ask better questions, that can follow a protocol, that can follow a practice that we can believe in. Now they might not be expert interviews, some interview degrees are amazing. They know how to take a conversation, pinpoint something that's really interesting and then take the conversation that way. But not everybody's going to be at that level of maturity.
But if we can say, Hey, let's write a script together, let's like work through how we might interview somebody the right way to do this. And so typically I will bring in an expert coach. I've usually shy before Matt Gold, who's amazing, he'll come in and train the team. So we might train a cross-functional team because product managers want to talk to customers as much as UX designers want to talk to practices. How do we resolve this problem? How should own the customer who should be talking to them? Well we can all be talking to them, but let's align on how we think about talking to them and what the purpose is, right? Product managers talk to customers for various reasons. Might be for product discovery, might be for understanding the user's perspective and the challenges that they face, but it equally might be a sales conversation.
Now, sales conversation and a research interview are completely different things. One is a very biased conversation where you're trying to convince a customer about why your product is the way and how amazing it's, and the other one is more about learning. And it's not that you can't learn much from a sales conversation. You be learning different things. And so I think learning that distinction, that one conversation is not equal to another is really important. So I really try to just align people on understanding that there is a practice here that in order to get good results, you have to align on a process. You have to respect that this is actually a profession, a craft with experts. And that's why it's important to have those experts guiding coaching and helping people to lift their skills in conducting interviews. So what I also mean about democratizing research is really also on the results side is being able to share those results, being able to talk openly about them, not just with the product or the technology team, but with the wider organization.
Why do we wanna do this? Is because we want everyone to have the same understanding that we have about our customers and our users. And it also demonstrates actually the value that understanding of our customers and the results that we get by making better decisions throughout the organization means that we all perform better as a whole organization. And in addition to that, it helps build confidence in the practice itself. I guess maybe, I dunno if that's a long answer, but I guess that's the way I think about user research. One thing that we have done specifically at Pushpay was because we had practice from the beginning and I learned a lot from Jasmine Wilkinson and we had a really amazing UX practice there was that over time we were able to train our customer service team, our customer success team, really on how to ask better questions.
Cause we were always getting the customer wants x, y, Z feature. And it's like why do they want it? I don't know. It's just like, okay, well we can't really do anything with that. So you need to go and find out why they want the feature. And you end up with a feature list. Everything that's logged is always about features. And so you're always, the first question is why do they want it? What are they doing? How are they doing in that today? These are all the questions that came up. So we started to train our customer success team to ask why to ask, Hey, why? Well, why do you want that? What are you doing today? How are you handling it? How are you overcoming that today? Oh, okay. And sometimes what they're asking for is really a bandaid to another problem. And so it's just that idea of can we get people to ask better questions, understand that there is a proper the more that we can get people to ask better questions, the more understanding, better understanding we have within our organization about who we're building products for.
Brendan Jarvis:
I really like that. And that's something that has come through loud and clear on some of the previous things that you've put out there. I'm curious to go into the communication of the findings from research, regardless whoever of whoever's actually run the research that you've done in orgs where you've had senior leadership or other departments, maybe it was engineering, I know your time and Pushpay engineering was under another VP or managed elsewhere. How did you structure those? Are they presentations or were they conversations? How did you set the stage for them? And was there any difference in the way in which you would communicate interesting insights or findings from research depending on who it was that you were talking to?
Audrey Cheng:
Yeah, I think yes. So I definitely think the audience, it matters, I guess what you're going to surface up and how long you'll have their attention span for. But certainly for engineering, I guess, which is one of the main drivers of the reason why we're conducting research is to build better products. We always invited engineering one to sit in and be observers in our interviews so that they could listen firsthand to how customers or users were feeling about our product or about a problem just trying to bring everyone closer. Now that's a data point in isolation, but what we're talking about is when we do the synthesis and we have the final results, we typically would do a presentation talking about who we talked to, who is in the group, what were we trying to accomplish, what our methodology was, and ultimately what those outcomes are, maybe what the recommendations might be, what problems we might solve from there.
So we definitely do a wider presentation, definitely not locked down. Often we would share some of this with our customer success team, keeping their users anonymous, but sharing the insights that we found as a group, what patterns we saw, what problems we think we might solve. We thought it was equally important for the team who are supporting our product to really understand what insights we were getting from these interviews. And they were quite often helping us recruit people. So we wanted to for them to see the fruits of their labor too. And I think then you get a really engaged organization in helping you build a really strong research practice. So from there, sometimes we would go into after sharing sometimes we would take those and go into co-design, which is another great method method that I love because it really engages people in thinking about the possibilities.
Now they're not designing the product, we're thinking about how might we solve some problems. And these are really just pers different perspectives from different groups from how they see the problem. We've had data scientists there, engineers there, and we've done this also with our CS team as well. Having product managers and a mixed group of people really to see what ideas come to the fore and to talk about why did we think about solving the problem that way. It's a really interesting way to get people engaged in the problem and the context and really thinking about broadening, broadening the perspective on what solutions actually come to the table. So I found that those methods were really helpful in sharing the insights, sharing the problem by sharing the burden of how we might solve those problems
Brendan Jarvis:
That co-design, working with other departments or experts within the business to help imagine what the future of the product might look like. And that context that you were just speaking of, how did you take the outcomes from those workshops? Maybe there's one that you've done recently that you can think of and move it into something that was more tangible for product or UX to work with. So I suppose so that there was a meaningful impact or outcome and not just theater from involving these other stakeholders in the product and the design.
Audrey Cheng:
Yeah, it's typically not me who is doing the presentation or running the co-design workshops, who's usually led by our researcher and our designer leading the program of work. So it was be typically those two experts that would be working with the team on this. But I think from there, as we talked about the ideas voted on ideas, and as we thought about what we might solve and what the scope would be, they would typical, there was typically a lot of work with the product manager talking about what we must solve for and how we might solve it and incorporating those ideas. And then there's a presentation back of like, Hey, here's some ideas of what we thought, how we might solve this problem fitting into the requirements that we had made. So it's really not just design going off, but working really closely again with the product managers and then also getting consultation with engineering about how we might solve the problems.
And hey, if we wanted to do this, what would that look like? Was this feasible? And so that it's that designing together in a way in the sense of the designer is looking at what the interaction might look like, what might solve some of those problems, but then also working together with the product manager to think about, is that going to solve the problem? Are we going to hit on being able, is the user really going to get value out of this? And then also looking at the feasibility side. So I don't think it's ever this tadada moment where we're like, ah, look from the co-design, amazing, look the future, we've done this amazing design, Ella, let's go build it. It's that continuous process of collaborating all the way through. And I think when you have that openness of and that way of working you find that feedback loop is really tight and that everybody becomes aligned and there's less selling of the design at the end, if that makes sense. Or less like Taha moment in the design
Brendan Jarvis:
Listening to you talk about this, the sort of interaction with the other parts of the organization that's making me think of power dynamics. And those are things that exist in all human endeavor. There's always politics where you've got more than one person, you're going to have politics. Now I'm recalling, and I won't name any names, but a conversation I had, I believe it was on the podcast, so if anyone else is listening can remember, you'll know what I'm talking about. Someone telling me that when the VP of sales in a really large company would get pushed into a bit of a corner or not get their way with a request through the product for something that they perceived their clients or customers were asking for, they'd just turn around and ask the person who was saying, no. So how much money have you made for the company today?
Because they could tell them down to the second just how much sales had contributed to the organization's success. So I'm curious, when you are in that position of CPO and perhaps now as CTO O, and you've got someone like a C E O or someone who's running the sales org, coming to you and saying, we really need to build this thing in our product, it's going to make us more successful and keep our clients happy, how do you handle that situation? Cuz I've heard you say before that product development is not an infinite resource. So when I or someone like me, if I was in that position, comes to you and sort of throw my weight around and ask for those things, what do you say to me? Yeah,
Audrey Cheng:
I think you're exactly right. I mean, product resources finite and it's always an or. So we don't do something else in order to do that one. So we need to decide which one's more valuable. And it's not always scientific that we can just stay on the dollar amount. But I think when you do have that data in front of you, it's much easier quite often, you know, can have a list of customers who need a certain solution or want a certain problem solve. You can quantify that. And I think having that data in front, because then you're asking, that's great, looking forward to getting that deal, but tell me, is that more valuable than this other thing that we're working on that's already has X amount value associated with it? And that could be cost reduction, it could be net new sales, et cetera. Fortunately, I've never had anyone ask me, how much money have you made for the organization? Maybe you have to go back and look at all the revenue you've created for your product. I dunno, but
Brendan Jarvis:
It's a particularly brutal question. I don't think I've heard of anyone else ask anyone that, but that is rough. Yeah,
Audrey Cheng:
It's a pretty ruthless, I think it's a really important that you can substantiate and understand how you're making decisions. At the end of the day, we're here to create value for our customers and for our business, and we need to be as product managers, we need to be assessing what that value is. The thing is that we know that our users and our customers have a lot of problems, but the ones that we need to solve are the ones that are value creating both for them and for your business. If you wanna be here to solve more problems for them, you've gotta be value creating also for your business. And I think it's really important that you're looking at the value of everything that you're building. If you don't understand the why behind it and how it drives value, then you need a question. Why is it on your roadmap?
One of the tools that I have used or that I have suggested to my teams where this has become a problem is I quite often suggest using Lean Canvas because Lean Canvas kinda tells you everything on a page just in a really summary format. But the great thing about it's, it talks about the cost and the revenue how your success metrics, which really important, and those success metrics really lead into those conversations that you're going to be having with sales, particularly when you're making tradeoffs between one thing or not. Now the thing that sales came to you with might be actually the most important thing and maybe you're going to bump the roadmap, but it's really understanding how you're going to make those tradeoffs and actually what the timing should be. Cause any, if the work is already in flight, then any disruption to your engineering team is really inefficient. So maybe you're going to say, Hey, yeah, we're going to wait till after what that done. But it's really that understanding of trying to understand the value that you're creating with what you've got on the roadmap.
Brendan Jarvis:
Earlier in our conversation you spoke about the challenge that UXs sometimes face in getting their ideas on the roadmap. How much of that challenge, which I realize is quite difficult to quantify, but how much of that challenge is actually a result of UXs inability to speak the language that product understands?
Audrey Cheng:
Yes, I think that's a lot. So I think that is probably the cause of that misalignment is not understanding how the work or the problems that they're thinking about contribute to maybe the product metrics, the outcomes that we're seeking in the product. And I think this is one thing that I coach a lot of designers on is about storytelling and about thinking about from a different perspective. Hey, who are you trying to convince? What's meaningful and important to them? How does what you're thinking about influence that? And so it's really about reframing, reframing the problem a little bit and also thinking about the storytelling. So a lot of when we uncover things, it's like how is this impactful? So great if we've got those numbers, but how is this impactful? How will it make a difference? And so it's that idea of one, how will it make a difference for the business, which is always important, how it'll make a difference for the customer.
And I think understanding those two things and trying to communicate how it moves the needle overall for the product is important. I think when you have more of a partnership model between product and design, they can work together to come up with those metrics. So UX designers don't have to feel alone if it's not an area that they have expertise in yet their product manager should be helping them like, Hey, here are the product metrics, here's the needle that we're trying to move. So we think about this journey, what do we think influences that metric? How will we drive maybe adoption? So we're wanting to get xnet new users over this time period. How does the journey that we're creating actually help us to deliver on that? And so when you look at it from that perspective, you can kind of see that the product metrics might be the overarching metrics and those UX metrics are those that are feeding into and helping to drive the overall product metrics. So I think that they're not conflict with each other, I think they're actually working together.
Brendan Jarvis:
That's really in interesting and obvious too, not in a bad way in terms of what you've said, but just in how hadn't been thinking about things like this prior. I wonder how much of the challenge that UX has in establishing that seat at the table and some perhaps mid-sized organizations is to do with product actually being the ones that are setting and in control of setting the context. So by establishing product metrics and generally being higher on the hierarchy, there's really no room for design. A full designers is coming in at a tactical level and trying to let ladder up into the overall product metric.
Audrey Cheng:
Yeah, I think to be honest, I think there's ability of influence those product metrics. When you think about the overall objectives for the organization, if design can be engaged earlier and to be thinking about those overall out and thinking at a slightly more strategic level, thinking about those overall outcomes for the business, product and design could actually be working together to set those metrics. And I think there's some really great material that I've read when I was trying to understand UX metrics and how that overall fit into the way I was thinking about metrics. Like Jared Spool has put out some really great content that really helped to shape my early thinking around UX metrics. And I think he wrote a post once about why, I don't know what it was called, something along the lines of why UX designer should speak or speak executives or something along those lines.
But it was really about metrics, thinking about those overarching metrics for the business. And when you think about what the problems that are uncovered, the insights that are uncovered in design and how those actually influence what we're trying to achieve in the overall business, you can really influence those product metrics. I don't think that those product metrics have to be set by the pm. I think that they're governing them and making sure that we're trying to move the needle on those. But all of product management, you're trying to get the ideas and get the perspectives from different groups of people to try and set where we should be targeting. And so I think that UX has that ability to help drive and set those product metrics.
Brendan Jarvis:
Maybe a couple of months ago I had a conversation with Christian k CRUK who wrote product management for UX people and he comes from a very interesting background actually, but broadly design. And in the last, I suppose decade or slightly more transitioned into more of a product-based role, I couldn't help but think after that conversation with Christian and now hearing you speak today, Audrey, whether or not designers need to be looking more pragmatically at their careers, particularly outside of big tech and sizing up product as a potential sideways or upward step in their trajectory, if they're interested in a leadership role, if they're not actually able to get it at the scale of the organization that they're currently working at, whether there's a valid role there for people who come from a design background to skill up on some of the product sides of things and actually take that forward in their career.
Audrey Cheng:
Yeah, I definitely, I can a UX designer become a product manager. Absolutely. Right. But should that be the way I'm not so certain, right? I would really love for mean, maybe I'm just being an idealist, but I would really love
Brendan Jarvis:
For go on. Why not?
Audrey Cheng:
I would really love for designers to be able to have much more strong influence by being designers than they necessarily need to be a product managers. I definitely think it's helpful to, when you have the aha moment with designers that they really understand how to work through the value for the product and work through the value for the business, then you see a lot more of design that can be, because I think you sometimes see when someone is in focused on this outcome of where we need to go and it has to be this, but not layering in actually the pragmatic side of, hey, it has to work for the business. We need something optimal. We need time to market, et cetera, et cetera. But when you see that the penny drop on, actually we need to find the best of how can we create the best interaction, the best design for the customer, and also meet time to market do with the resources that we have, all of those types of things.
Then you start to see, ah, okay, now I know how to curate my design to try and get the best outcome. And I think there is still value there. And my hope, I mean, I don't know, maybe you're right, maybe things will be different. Maybe it'll be product falling under design at some point. I dunno. But I definitely think that there is a lot of overlap, which is why I think actually there is benefit in working together and why I think you get be a good result because you already have something common to land on. So can a UX designer be a product manager? Absolutely. I think that there are skills to learn, but equally I think it would be a harder lift for me to be a UX designer.
Brendan Jarvis:
Do you think the dynamic there in terms of the hard skills required changes if you think about the next step up the ladder, so when you start in the head of product or at the true leadership end of product,
Audrey Cheng:
Do the hard skills well,
Brendan Jarvis:
So you got the day-to-day of the product manager's world mm-hmm. Buried in the spreadsheets, looking at the roadmaps, prioritizing features, and hopefully doing a bit of customer discovery and research as well. But do you think that it would be an easier transition for a designer design leader to move into a product leadership role without having to go through the operational day-to-day of the PM role? Or would they not have enough credibility in that role?
Audrey Cheng:
I think it depends on the designer. I think I've seen a lot of very strategic UX designers and I think if a designer is in that vein and is really thinking and in that vein, I think they are thinking about driving value and unlocking value for both customer and business. I think that is probably someone of that elk is probably makes an easier transition into those, that skillset. I do think that actually designers also are in spreadsheets. I've seen lots of UX designers in spreadsheets looking at survey data, looking cutting data in different dimensions, looking at new data as well. No, no, I'm just saying I definitely think that designers are not I don't think that designers are not capable of being in the numbers.
Brendan Jarvis:
It's a foolish limiting belief if designers actually do believe that. And I realize it's really difficult to talk about a whole discipline in general terms. So let's switch gears a little bit now and come to what it's like being an executive level leader. So specifically your C P O and C T O roles. You've got the benefit in that position of the status that comes along with where you sit in an organization's hierarchy. Now has moving into that executor or those executive roles, has that changed the way being the hedge head honcho? Has that changed the way in which you interact with people in your team
Audrey Cheng:
Head honcho? I don't know about that, but I think you have a higher, a stronger responsibility to support your team and I think that is probably the fundamental responsibility is to help the business drive outcomes, but really support your team in being successful and unlocking opportunity for them. And I think that is the main thing that a leader can provide is clarity of context and direction and as well as pathway unblocking them. Basically you're the block and tackle or the block and tackle person. And I think what I value about being in leadership and the things that gives me the most joy is really seeing people succeed and really create, allowing people to reach their potential. I think it's abusing with when you give just a enough guidance that someone is able to flourish or able to really embrace and feel that they can embrace the challenge without fear of failure. That they have just the right amount of support to see them succeed and just enough challenge each time to reach a little bit further each time. And it's amazing to look back at someone who you maybe worked with for a number of years and see where they started and where they've become and see how much they've worked towards that. I think it's a really rewarding thing to see, to be just a small part of that growth, I think is, I don't know, in a leadership position, I feel is probably the most rewarding thing.
Brendan Jarvis:
It sounds like as you've gone higher in the organizations, there's less of a role for you to put forward your own ideas so explicitly, but you've adopted more of a, I think you used the word guidance or guiding, there's more of that sort of coaching, setting the stage for other people and giving them just enough direction to get on with what you need them to do. Yeah,
Audrey Cheng:
I think, you know, are responsible for setting the strategy, but that strategy is built in collaboration and it's really just to align everybody to what our goals are as an organization and to align the wider organization. But I think I am hugely reliant on my team to uncover the problems, to find those challenges and to communicate, hey, what should we fix? What is the most pressing thing? And how will this help us? And to articulate that value so that we can come up with a cohesive plan as to like, hey, how do we want this to play out? How do we want to support our customers? What's the most important thing to provide? And I think in doing that, it's stretching them by asking questions and it's through that questioning that people, oh okay, yeah, I didn't think about it in that di dimension. You know what I mean? So it's really about just providing enough challenge, but for the team to really be empowered to go and figure out how we'll solve it, what the problems are. You might know what the problems are, you know, think what you might need to solve, but you're always surprised at actually when you think this is the problem, actually it's a symptom of another problem of a more important problem.
Brendan Jarvis:
You spoke about how people won't always get it right. We are humans, we do make mistakes. I also know that you are a proponent of radical candor, which can have mixed meanings depending on who's listening. I'm curious about that because I was wondering, when you are practicing radical candor, what does your version or your version of good radical candor look like when the wheels have fallen off or something's not really gone to plan?
Audrey Cheng:
Yeah, I think there's two things there. I think when things haven't gone to plan, I think you wanna address that first and then I think you want to reflect and almost have a retrospective on that. And then I think you're talking about, and I think one of the things about leadership too is providing enough guidance that your team's failures or the individual failure isn't a big one. I think failure is actually a positive thing in the sense that you learn from it. And I think the role of your leader is that people don't fail too bad on the things that are really important, you know what I mean? And so you're providing enough support and guidance so that people feel supported that you have their back. And at the end of the day, ultimately all the decisions and all the things that happen in my organization are my responsibility and the accountability lies with me at the end of the day.
But I think if we've gone down this pathway and we, I think always with things that have gone incorrectly, you're always thinking of, you're always, your intent is to think that everybody's worked as hard as they can and made the best decisions they can with the information that they had in front of them. So when things go wrong, what was wrong in the process that led someone to make a bad decision? So I think when you can start from that place, then it's less about reprimanding somebody for an outcome, but really trying to understand why we led there. Now, if someone was negligent, then that's a different story then there is accountability. But I think if we're starting from the premise that everybody is working as hard as they can, as best they can, then you take a different perspective on it. Now that with radical candor, it's really about perspective.
I think in giving people feedback, I think feedback is a gift given with good. If it's given with good intent, then it's a gift because quite often I have blind spots and people have given me feedback and it's been really helpful. And I think it's the way in which you give it and whether someone is actually ready and open to receive it. So I think you need to ask, I have some feedback for you today, Brendan. Are you open to feedback today? You might say, no, I'm having a bad day. Can we talk about another day? And I'm like, ok. And I think it's really about is the person in the right mood? If you had a really bad day and now I'm going to give you some feedback that you might not be open to, is it worth me giving you that feedback? And I think with radical candor, the name is pretty harsh, but I think the thing that people miss is with empathy and with humanity and care for somebody.
So it's not like I'm saying this to hurt you and I'm trying to take the personal out of it. I maybe talk about the impact of the action. And I think it's a really, not saying, Brandon, you suck. You know what I mean? Because you did this thing and you made everyone feel horrible. I mean it's not talking about trying to make someone feel bad, it's really about saying, Hey, you might have this. Here's my perspective, you might have this blind spot. And it's not saying Brendan, you have to take it on board. It's saying, Hey, this is what I've observed and it's up to you to decide whether that feedback is valid for you or not. That's how I see feedback can see that and say, yeah, you know what? I don't think I was given with good intent. I'm going to ignore it.
You know what I mean? You don't have to take on board everything people tell you. But I think if you think about did someone give me that feedback with good intent and is it meaningful for me and is that something I've observed in myself and now someone's reflecting it back to me. So I think those are things for you to think about. But again, it's with humanity. So it's not intended to make you feel bad, it's intended for you to think about how you can elevate your performance or maybe the way your actions are perceived, which is not your intent. I've had someone before when asked a question shrug a lot, and it was more ingest than it was, but what it was doing was giving people lack of confidence in their answer. So they would go and ask somebody else because they were kind of like, I dunno if they have it or not.
So I'm just going to go and check, ask somebody. And so when I gave this person this feedback, I just said at that time I was just saying, Hey, I have some feedback for you today. Are you open to feedback? Yes. And I'll say quite often I've noticed that when you're in a meeting, someone's asking you a question of, I've noticed that in your al nature you'll shrug and you'll laugh it off, but you haven't given a clear answer. And so what I've observed is that person's going to ask somebody else. And what that's creating is a lack of clarity in whether you have it or not. And I know you do, but you know what the impression it's giving is lack of confidence in somebody else. So you might want to just observe and see if you actually are doing that and seeing what the response is. And maybe just taking on and seeing is that something that you observe yourself And if that's something that you wanna change,
Brendan Jarvis:
There is a lot to unpack there. In particular, I really like the way you set the stage by asking the question, are you ready to receive some feedback today? Or something of that nature. This leadership thing is not an easy thing for most people. It's full of self-doubt and there's no guidebook really on how to do it well. So I feel like you've really shared some huge value there with that approach. And also it's an approach what sounded to me as one that's not putting you in a position where as the leader, you're falling over yourself before you actually deliver the feedback. Cuz sometimes that can be uncomfortable for people as well. Receiving feedback can be tough, but giving it equally can be tough as well. You shared with me offline and I hope you don't mind me sharing online, you can tell me, we'll take it out if you do that you consider yourself introverted.
So which personally, if you're looking at it through an outside in lens, is very difficult to see, particularly how well you articulate things like that. Giving feedback and that work context. How have you worked on yourself or who has helped you to see those blind spots that you have got or had in the past and become the person that you are today that's comfortable or at least outwardly comfortable giving that kind of feedback to people. Cuz it's really easy for people listening to podcasts and seeing, you know, speak and do all these things to look at just the surface and not realize what appears to me at least to be a significant amount of energy and effort and investment and actually getting to this place where you are comfortable in your own shoes.
Audrey Cheng:
Yeah, I'm going to have a big nap after this session.
Brendan Jarvis:
Turn the phone off.
Audrey Cheng:
Yeah, I think just to giving feedback, it is hard. And I think the first time I ever gave feedback was really difficult. I think I was really had a lot of anxiety because you really don't wanna offend people. Like your intent isn't like to make someone feel bad and I'm just going to tell them how they suck. You know what I mean? That's not what you're trying to do. If you're giving feedback for that reason, don't give it. I mean the intent of feedback is to help somebody. And I think and giving feedback, I mean it was a culture that we had at Pushpay about radical candor and to being honest and giving feedback because feedback leads to, leads to growth. And I think when you can think about that, actually I want to help you and I'm going to just give you some perspective.
You don't need to take it on board, but some food for thought for you. You know what I mean? And equally I've had that too, right? Because it was our culture that you have to be open to feedback and I'm open to feedback from my own team about how I lead them, how I lead the team, how I maybe set the strategy, whatever you have to be open yourself. If you're not open to feedback, what gives you the right to give the feedback. And so I think you have to have that culture of this is part of the way that we work and my intent, intent is about care and your growth and not about, you know, feeling ashamed. Cause it's not about that. And if it is about that, then there's no point to the feedback. So in terms of who's giving me feedback, lots of people [laugh] because I ask for it at my one-to-ones.
Also, I ask my team, do they have feedback from me? And if you do have feedback from me, please feel free to share it when you feel ready for it. And that's hard because sharing feedback with your manager is difficult. Who feels comfortable and safe to do that? And so I think when people have given you feedback and you've taken on board and you consider it and you make change, then people are more willing to give you more feedback. And I think equally, I've had feedback from engineering, had feedback from engineering leaders and I think one of the key points of feedback that I had, and maybe why I seem a little bit more energetic is because I had feedback that actually was a really bad storyteller and a really bad public presenter. And so it was something I ended up working on because I realized actually, yeah, I am really terrible at it.
I read my notes, I can't go off script. I think there was a time where I would not be able to have this conversation just knowing because it's being recorded, for example. And so I spent a lot of time actually trying to improve my public speaking, improve more ad hoc conversations, being on more panels I was really nervous about, and maybe I still am, I guess nervous about what people think about my perspective and being judged. Everybody feels, some people feel insecurities around that and I think that that is just a normal thing. Particularly I think more so if you're introverted, that what you say is you feel has meaning behind it and you worry about how people perceive that. So I did work on my public speaking for a long time. I started with just internal talks. I pushed myself to do a mine a product tank cause I was part of the product tank community to do a product tank panel, which I thought, okay, that might be easier, roughly know the questions, it'll be okay. Then graduating to more and more, increasingly more what seemed more daunting and more difficult public speaking engagements leading to more public in present onstage talks which, and even preparing today, I think there's a level of nervousness and anxiety. I think that also comes with any public speaking opportunity.
Brendan Jarvis:
Audrey, thanks for being so open and honest about how you're feeling even in this moment here with me on the show. Ho, hopefully it hasn't been too, I am wondering though, what has been possible for you in your life and your career since you made that really conscious decision to work on improving your public speaking? What's happened that otherwise probably wouldn't have?
Audrey Cheng:
Yeah, I think it really helped me actually as our product manager. I think more than anything, it really helped me as I moved into more leadership level roles to really more clearly articulate my ideas to be more, to have more compelling stories, I guess, in the way that I was trying to represent my group. And I think that has helped me more than anything is just to have confidence or a bit more confidence no matter which group I was going into, and to be able to speak and represent my group. Which I think when you're as a leader, you want to represent the amazing work of your team and you believe you've got an amazing team, that they're working hard. You wanna tell the wider organization how hard the team is working, what amazing things they're doing, and if you're nervous, you didn't get across your points.
And if you feel that you're struggling to articulate it. And I think public speaking is just really helped to help me to maybe curate my story to feel more comfortable being at Hawk, maybe be more of myself. And I think that's, that's really helped a lot. I think just that preparation and that level of, I'm going to do it anyways. I feel scared about it, but I'm still going to do it. I think that level just helps to prepare you for wider conversations that you didn't realize and to give you more confidence in different forums.
Brendan Jarvis:
Well, Audrey, it's been a real privilege to hear your story today. It's been such a refreshing conversation about the real, very real challenges that product leaders have, but also your unique insight into what it's like also leading the design organization. And I really wish you all the best for your new challenge, which is now also to have wrapped in engineering. You've finally got them all under one umbrella. It's going to be really interesting to see what happens Imagr for you there. So thank you for sharing your stories and your insights with me today.
Audrey Cheng:
Thank you so much, Brendan. It's been a great conversation. It was great to see you again as well. Hopefully we'll see each other in person soon.
Brendan Jarvis:
I hope so. I hope so. It's been my pleasure. [laugh]. Audrey, if people wanna find out more about you and the work that you are doing, what's the best way for them to do that?
Audrey Cheng:
Well, I don't post a lot these days, but I think I'll reach out have a coffee and have a conversation.
Brendan Jarvis:
Okay. If you don't mind, I'll put your LinkedIn profile at the show on the bottom of the show notes.
Audrey Cheng:
Yeah, that sounds fine.
Brendan Jarvis:
Perfect. Alright, thanks Audrey. And to everyone else who's tuned in, it's been great having you here as well. Everything we've covered will be in the show notes, including where you can find Audrey and all the great things that we've spoken about. If you enjoy the show and you want to hear more great conversations like this with world class leaders and UX, product and oh gosh, I forgot my own outro UX product and design [laugh], forget to leave a review, subscribe and tell someone else about the show if you feel that they would get some value out of these conversations. If you wanna reach out to me, you can also find my LinkedIn profile on the show notes, or you can just Google me Brendan Jarvis. That'll take you through to some way that you can find me or you can hit on over to thespaceinbetween.co nz. That's thespaceinbetween.co nz. And until next time, keep being brave.

Audrey Cheng

Resolving the Tension Between Product and UX

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