🤫 The Silent Career Killer #9
Being too ideological about "best practices" | Unmasking 50 hidden threats to your UX career | part 9 of 50
👋 Hi UX friend, Marina here!
Welcome to this week’s “Secrets to Career Success” 🔒 subscriber-only edition 🔒 of UX Mentor Diaries.
This newsletter series is my attempt to share what I've learned - often the hard way - about the silent career “sins” you may not even realize you’re committing and show easy ways to fix them to propel your career forward - as soon and as fast as possible. (What you get as a premium subscriber)
When "Right" Becomes Wrong
Every UXer has that moment when they realize their perfectly-crafted process could actually be the problem.
Too many of us cling to best practices like they're sacred, refusing to bend them even when our organization clearly needs a different approach.
I watched a talented senior designer lose all credibility with stakeholders because she insisted on running full card sorts for a simple nav update when the team desperately needed a quick win.
I've been that designer too, and if you're honest with yourself, you've probably let "proper process" stand in the way of actual progress.
The solution isn't abandoning best practices, not all!
Just learning to adapt them strategically.
The Real Cost of Process Rigidity
A recent McKinsey study found that design-led companies who adapt their processes to organizational context outperform their rigid peers by about 108% in revenue growth.
This massive performance gap shows how deadly process purism can be to both careers and companies.
When we treat best practices as unchangeable laws rather than adaptable guidelines, we create unnecessary friction that slows down progress and erodes trust.
Your commitment to "doing it right" might actually be preventing you from doing right by your users and your organization.
The key is learning to flex without breaking.
Here are some practical steps...