Scott Guirlinger
Product Design & Organizational Leadership
Product Design & Organizational Leadership
Challenge
Design and UX organizations often struggle to earn a seat at the strategic table — not because their work isn't valuable, but because they haven't built the language or the evidence to make that value legible to executive decision-makers. At Hexagon, I faced a familiar challenge: how do you move a UX organization from being perceived as a delivery function to being recognized as a trusted strategic partner?
Without executive alignment, UX is often brought in after key decisions have already been made, limiting its ability to influence product direction and business outcomes.
Approach
Empowering proactive ownership
When I arrived, most UX activities were strictly driven by requests from other teams. Designers and researchers often waited for requirements, tickets, or formal assignments before engaging. I encouraged the team to take greater ownership of the customer experience by identifying opportunities, initiating work, and creating their own backlog items when they uncovered issues or unmet needs.
Over time, this shifted the team's role from a downstream participant in a linear process to an active contributor throughout product discovery, planning, and delivery. Rather than reacting to decisions after they had been made, the team became increasingly involved in shaping them.
Establishing accountability through measurement
Previous objectives were difficult to measure and loosely connected to business priorities. I led the effort to define a KPI framework with UX leaders and stakeholders centered on quality, efficiency, compliance, innovation, and talent. These measures became the foundation for annual goal setting and executive reporting, creating a clearer connection between UX activities and organizational outcomes.
Representing UX in governance structures
As a member of Hexagon's divisional Quality Management System (QMS) governance team, I helped define annual UX objectives, establish measurable success criteria, and report progress through semiannual executive reviews with the CTO. This connected UX performance to broader divisional priorities and ensured customer experience considerations remained part of organizational planning and decision-making.
Challenge | Action | Outcome |
UX operated primarily through assigned work | Empowered designers and researchers to identify opportunities and initiate work | Increased proactive engagement and earlier influence |
UX goals lacked measurable outcomes | Developed KPI framework | Clearer accountability |
Limited business-oriented reporting | Connected UX metrics to business priorities | Improved executive visibility |
Objectives disconnected from divisional strategy | Rewrote annual goals around measurable outcomes | Stronger strategic alignment |
UX goals were disconnected from organizational governance | Established measurable objectives and executive reporting through QMS | UX metrics included in divisional semiannual reviews with CTO |
Results
- Expanded UX influence upstream, as evidenced in increased participation in discovery, roadmap discussions, and strategic planning across key product areas
- Established a UX KPI framework aligned to quality, efficiency, compliance, innovation, and talent, creating greater accountability for organizational outcomes
- Shifted annual UX planning from activity-based goals to measurable business outcomes connected to divisional strategy
- Elevated UX participation in divisional governance, establishing measurable objectives and reporting progress through semiannual executive reviews
- Established a culture of proactive ownership, empowering designers and researchers to identify opportunities, influence decisions, and contribute beyond assigned work
Strategic alignment isn't a presentation you give once. It's a relationship you build over time — through consistent delivery, honest measurement, and a willingness to speak in terms that matter to the people making decisions.
Leadership Reflection
This experience reinforced a lesson that has shaped my leadership approach: influence is rarely granted because of expertise alone. It is earned through trust, shared language, and a consistent ability to connect customer outcomes to business outcomes.
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