🌟 The Hidden Work That Gets You Promoted

A framework for making strategic UX skills visible

Feb 08, 2025

👋 Happy Saturday, my dear UX friends, Marina here!

Today, I want to share a question that really resonated with me, as it touches on a challenge many of us face as we advance in our UX careers:

"…I'm a senior product designer at [large tech company], and I've been struggling with something that's holding back my career growth. While I can easily show my [UI] design skills through my portfolio, I'm finding it really hard to demonstrate my strategic thinking and systems design capabilities.
In meetings, I often have valuable insights about how different parts of our product ecosystem connect, and I frequently think about long-term implications of design decisions. But these skills feel invisible compared to my visual work, and I worry this is affecting my promotion opportunities.
How do I showcase strengths that aren't visually obvious, like strategic thinking or systems design?"

This hits home, doesn't it? It's one those classic UX career paradoxes – as we grow, our most valuable skills often become the hardest to showcase.

Let me share a framework I call the "Strategic UX Visibility System" that has helped many of my mentees tackle this exact challenge.

🔥 Strategic UX Visibility System

(or “Making the Invisible Visible”)

PART 1

Document Your Strategic Process

The first step is to make your thinking visible by creating what I call "Strategy Artifacts."

These aren't your typical deliverables.

They're documents that capture your strategic thinking process.

Here's how to create them ↴

1. Start a "Strategic Decisions Log"

Document every major design decision you make
Include the context, alternatives considered, and your rationale
Link each decision to broader business goals and user needs
Update it weekly, not after the fact

Example entry in the "Strategic Decisions Log" ↴

Decision: Postponed implementing quick-filters feature
Context: User research showed users prefer thorough search over quick filters
Business Impact: Reduced development costs by 30% long-term
Implications: Creates opportunity for AI-powered search in Q4

2. Create "Systems Impact Maps"

Visualize how your design decisions affect different parts of the product
Show connections between immediate changes and future possibilities
Include potential risks and mitigation strategies

Here’s an example of a simplified "Systems Impact Map" for, say, User profile redesign ↴

Let’s break this System Impact Map down:

Immediate UX Changes:
- Simplified data input process
- Clearer progress tracking for users
- Improved information hierarchy
Technical System Requirements:
- New data structure needed to support the changes
- API updates to handle new functionality
- Changes to caching system for better performance
Future Growth Opportunities:
- Possibility to add AI-powered recommendations
- Cross-platform synchronization capabilities
- Integration with advanced analytics
Risks and Mitigation Strategies:
- Data migration risks → Mitigated by phased rollout
- Performance impact → Addressed with performance budget
- User learning curve → Solved with in-app guide system

When presenting this map to stakeholders, you would walk through each branch, explaining:

✅ How the current design decision connects to larger system components

✅ Why certain technical changes are necessary

✅ What opportunities this creates for future development

✅ How you've thought through potential risks and solutions

For example, you could say something like this ↴

“Let me walk you through the strategic thinking behind our profile redesign initiative. This isn't just a visual refresh – it's a foundational change that impacts multiple aspects of our product ecosystem.
First, let's look at the immediate user experience improvements we're targeting. We're simplifying data input by reducing form fields from 12 to 7 and introducing smart defaults. Our user research shows this could reduce profile completion time by 40%.
We're also implementing clearer progress tracking and improving information hierarchy, which directly addresses the top three pain points from our latest user feedback sessions.
But here's where it gets interesting from a systems perspective! These UX changes cascade through our technical infrastructure. The new data structure we need will actually set us up for some exciting future possibilities. By restructuring how we store user preferences and behavior data, we're laying the groundwork for AI-powered recommendations.
Think Netflix-style personalization, but for our product features.
The API updates we're planning aren't just for this redesign. We're future-proofing them to support cross-platform synchronization – something our enterprise customers have been requesting.
This means when we roll out our mobile app next quarter, we'll already have the backend infrastructure in place!
Now, let's talk about risk management. [because strategic thinking isn't just about opportunities, it's about anticipating challenges].
Data migration is our biggest risk, especially with five years of user data to handle. That's why we've designed a phased rollout strategy: we'll migrate power users first, gather feedback, and iterate before rolling out to our broader user base.
We're also conscious of potential performance impacts. Our solution is implementing a performance budget – we're setting strict limits on load times and monitoring them through our CI/CD pipeline. This ensures we're delivering a better experience without compromising speed.
The learning curve for existing users is another major consideration. Rather than overwhelming users with a completely new interface, we're developing an in-app guide system. And I don’t mean just tooltips, we are proposing a contextual help system that adapts based on user behavior and familiarity with different features.
Looking at the bigger picture, this redesign positions us strategically for our Q4 goals.
The advanced analytics integration we're enabling will give us much richer user insights, which feeds directly into our data-driven decision-making initiative.
What makes this approach strategic rather than just tactical is how we're using a seemingly straightforward redesign as a catalyst for broader system improvements. Each decision here isn't just solving today's problems, we are creating opportunities for tomorrow while mitigating potential risks.
And importantly, we've structured this in a way that delivers immediate value while building toward our long-term vision. Users get a better experience now, while we get the technical foundation for future innovations.
Would you like me to dive deeper into any of these aspects, particularly how they align with our quarterly OKRs?…”

…you get the idea, right?

This kind of presentation helps demonstrate that you're thinking beyond just the immediate design changes and considering the entire product ecosystem.

It's particularly effective in stakeholder meetings where you need to show the strategic implications of your design decisions.

PART 2

Transform Meetings into Strategic Showcases

Most of us undersell ourselves in meetings. Here's how to change that:

Before each meeting:
- Prepare a "Strategic Context Sheet"
- List 2-3 system-level implications of the topic
- Identify connections to other ongoing initiatives
During the meeting:
- Start with the bigger picture before diving into details
- Use phrases like "This connects to our Q4 goal because..." or "This could impact our mobile strategy by..."
- Ask questions that demonstrate systems thinking

PART 3

Build Your Strategic Evidence Portfolio

Create what I call a "Living Strategy Document" that grows with your career:

Strategic Initiatives Section:
- Document large-scale projects you've influenced
- Include before/after systems diagrams
- Highlight cross-functional impact
Product Evolution Timeline:
- Show how your strategic decisions shaped the product
- Include metrics and business outcomes
- Document lessons learned and strategic pivots
Future Vision Documents:
- Create quarterly "Future State" presentations
- Include ecosystem maps and dependency analyses
- Link current decisions to future opportunities

PART 4

Communicate Strategic Value

Here's where many UXers fall short ↴

They do the strategic work but fail to communicate it effectively.

So create a "Strategic Impact” newsletter—

Monthly email to stakeholders
Highlight strategic initiatives and their impact
Connect design decisions to business outcomes
Share insights about emerging patterns and opportunities

Example format of the "Strategic Impact” newsletter:

This Month's Strategic Highlights:
- Pattern Identified: Users struggling with cross-platform continuity
- Strategic Response: Initiated cross-device experience audit
- Business Impact: Potential 15% reduction in user drop-off
- Next Steps: Developing unified navigation framework

PART 5

Build Strategic Alliances

🔥 Your strategic thinking becomes more visible when others advocate for it:

Create "Strategy Partners":
- Identify 3-5 key stakeholders in different departments
- Share your strategic insights regularly
- Ask for their perspective on system-wide implications
- Help them understand how UX strategy impacts their goals
Cross-functional Strategy Sessions:
- Organize monthly strategic thinking workshops
- Invite stakeholders from different departments
- Focus on long-term product vision and systems thinking
- Document and share insights

Remember: Strategic thinking is about consistently demonstrating how you connect dots that others might miss.

Your Next Steps

👉 Start small but be consistent:

🗓 This Week:

Start your Strategic Decisions Log
Create your first Systems Impact Map

🗓 Next Week:

Write your first Strategic Impact Newsletter
Identify your potential Strategy Partners

🗓 This Month:

Schedule your first cross-functional strategy session
Begin building your Living Strategy Document

The key is to make this sustainable.

Don't try to implement everything at once.

Pick 1 element that resonates most with your situation and master it before adding another.

Never forget ↴

Your strategic thinking is already there, you're just making it visible to others!
You just need to create a system that naturally showcases these skills as part of your daily work, not as an additional burden.

See you next Saturday!

-Marina

P.S.

The best time to start documenting your strategic thinking was when you started your career. The second best time is now. Don't wait for the perfect moment – start small, but start today.

📌 A few more ways I can help you ↴

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