Empathy as a Business Strategy

One of the clearest lessons from my career is that the empathy that matters most in product work isn't between designers and users — it's within the team that builds the product. UX folks who are deeply connected to end users but disconnected from their engineers, product managers, and stakeholders will rarely ship something great. The collaboration required to build something excellent demands a certain quality of relationship that you can't manufacture. People of different roles can't afford to act like consultants to each other. They need to actually trust one another.

A team that has that quality — where people genuinely care about each other and about the shared outcome — produces better work. Not marginally better. Dramatically better. This is the kind of care you see in a high-performing sports team, where trust is built through sustained shared effort, stress, and discomfort. Where people know they can depend on each other when it counts — in real-time on the playing field when the stakes are the highest. Take that mindset from the field to the office and see how well it works.