Issue 17: Transparency is a multiplier
What giving your team a view into the bigger picture really unlocks.
Early on in my career as a manager, I assumed those behind-closed-doors conversations about business shifts, roadmap changes, and performance were meant to stay at the leadership level. My job was to cascade information if and when it became necessary.
But here's what I learned the hard way: when your team operates in the dark, everything becomes a “design emergency.” Priorities shift without warning. Deadlines move overnight. Work gets scrapped after weeks of effort.
My thinking changed when I understood that sharing business context can be a multiplier.
The more your team understands why something is happening, not just what, the better they can adapt, prioritize, and lead from where they sit.
As a middle manager, you're often caught waiting for someone to give you the green light to share information—but that permission might never come. The difference between sharing context early versus waiting until decisions are final changes everything about how your team shows up, and how you show up as their leader.
Information that’s often discussed at the leadership level might include:
Business direction or shifting priorities
Planning tradeoffs and roadmap changes
Progress toward adoption or revenue goals
Headcount changes or org reshuffles
Timing for reviews and performance cycles
Compensation decisions
The “Protecting the team” trap
On the surface, it’s easy to say: “ICs don’t need to worry about that.” And it’s even more common to fall back on the well meaning cliché of “protecting my design team from the politics.”
But let’s be real; most of these decisions do trickle down—sometimes in the form of unclear priorities, shifting deadlines, or changes in focus due to market dynamics or business need. Protecting your team from politics doesn’t mean shielding them from context. It means giving them the clarity and tools to navigate the organization with confidence.
Many times I saw this information held back until two or three weeks after the decisions were made because a manager was uncertain if there would be a clear yes or no to distribute this information. In some cases, adjacent teams like marketing, product, or engineering were already operating under the new context, while design teams were still executing against the old directives.
It was almost like waiting for the train wreck to happen.
By the time ICs learned what had changed, it was often a surprise met with confusion, frustration, and anxiety. The work they’d poured hours into suddenly no longer aligned, and they had to pivot without warning.
The feedback would show up to the dismay to managers once performance review season comes around because their directs felt blind-sided and unsupported.
This is a patten that happens all to often when design functions are often the last the receive information.
If you’re already in the room, you have a choice; you can wait to react, or you can use that context to lead.
Practical ways to share context
A few practical examples:
Business direction: If something is deprioritized until next quarter, let your team know early. It helps them recalibrate expectations and energy.
Review season: Even if the company is sending broad comms, your team wants to hear from you. Remind them of timelines and expectations.
Roadmap shifts: If you sense a change coming that may be disruptive, give them a heads-up. Don’t wait for confusion to set in.
Adoption goals: If you're hearing about progress toward growth, adoption, or revenue targets, work with your team to connect the dots to their experiments or design focus.
Some rules of the road:
Confirm primary sourced information before you communicate (hearsay helps no one).
Don’t share sensitive or confidential information.
Frame context as an enablement tool, not a stressor (more on this below).
The strategic advantage: Better upward communication
When your team understands the broader business context, something powerful happens, they start spotting risks and opportunities that you might miss from your higher-altitude view.
For example, when your designers understand both the business timeline and the user research findings, they might flag that a proposed launch date conflicts with critical usability testing phases. Instead of discovering this conflict during a tense stakeholder meeting, you have weeks to negotiate realistic expectations and propose alternative approaches.
This early risk identification creates what I call "strategic leverage", the ability to influence decisions while there's still time to course-correct. Being the manager who surfaces problems early, complete with potential solutions, positions you as a strategic partner rather than someone who just executes directives.
The timing of when you raise concerns fundamentally changes your influence. Flagging a resource constraint three months out opens up conversations about priorities, scope, and creative solutions. Raising the same concern three days before a deadline only creates panic and blame.
When your team has context, they help you understand how leadership decisions will actually play out in practice. They might point out that the "simple UI change" being discussed in strategy meetings actually requires a fundamental rethinking of the user flow, or that the aggressive timeline being proposed conflicts with known technical constraints they've encountered in previous projects.
This creates a valuable feedback loop: you share context downward, and your informed team helps you communicate more strategically upward. You're not just passing along information, you're building a network of informed contributors who can help you lead more effectively.
Richer 1:1s and stronger partnerships
When your team has context, they don’t just execute, they own.
They start connecting the dots between their work and the broader business. They begin to anticipate needs rather than react to change. They operate with more clarity, trust, and confidence.
Additionally, you may be able to communicate any risks that may arise from these things and communicate them upstream that’s much more timely and ultimately when you have more chips to bargain.
You’re not just giving them information.
You’re putting yourself and your team closer to the driver’s seat when it comes to strategy, influence, and outcomes.
And here’s something else: your 1:1s get a lot more interesting.
With empowered designers who understand the bigger picture, you’re not just reviewing tasks, you’re exchanging ideas. You gain a thought partner on the ground, ready to drive new thinking from within the work and context of the organization.
Technically Speaking is where I share reflections, insights, and conversations to help you lead with confidence, clarity, and community. Are you looking to level up your design leadership and management craft? Schedule a free intro call for 1:1 coaching to help you thrive in your role.