Great work doesn’t speak for itself

Why you’re getting this: I'm Cat. 20+ years in Design, currently at Amazon. This newsletter is honest advice on design, influence, and career growth in big tech.

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I recorded a podcast back in May with Beyond UX Design. The episode is called “The Execution Trap Nobody Warns You About,” and it’s the most direct I’ve been about the years I spent doing beautiful work that nobody noticed.

After twenty years in UX design—from startups to Amazon—I learned that the designers who shape business decisions aren't the ones who work hardest. They're the ones who make their work impossible to ignore. I discovered this the hard way: burning out while working three times harder than my peers, delivering excellent work that was invisible because it wasn't aligned with what my organization valued. That experience taught me that execution excellence alone is a trap—it makes you the workhorse, not the visionary.

Breaking out of that trap requires a different approach, which I've distilled into five tenets.

First, smallest testable truth over comprehensive plans—ship something learnable instead of endlessly preparing.

The 5 Tenets

1. Smallest testable truth over comprehensive plans.
   When facing ambiguity, resist the urge to map everything before moving. Find the smallest version of your idea that can generate real signal, a concept, a conversation, a prototype and let evidence build conviction. Comprehensive planning in uncertain spaces is often procrastination disguised as rigor.
2. Customer truth is the only tiebreaker.
   Opinions in a room are just louder opinions. Data settles what conviction alone can’t.
3. Achievable now beats perfect later.
   When new technologies, expanded scope, or “dream state” visions threaten to stall progress, ruthlessly descope to what’s shippable. Momentum creates clarity; waiting for perfect conditions creates drift. You can always iterate toward the vision, you can’t iterate on something that never launched.
4. Alignment is shared problem definition, not shared solution agreement.
   Don’t try to get everyone to agree on how to solve something—that’s often impossible across orgs. Instead, invest in aligning on what problem you’re solving and for whom. Once stakeholders share a problem definition, multiple solutions can coexist and compete on merit.
5. Invisible problems are the biggest opportunities.
   The most valuable work often looks like questioning assumptions everyone else has accepted. If a problem feels “normal” or “just how things are,” that’s a signal to investigate. The billion-dollar opportunities aren’t hidden—they’re sitting in plain sight, unexamined.

How the Tenets Create Tension

The reason tenets work is they tiebreak, forcing you to choose. Tenets tell you what to prioritize. But you also need to know where to focus and that requires knowing which altitude the current problem requires.

Tenet 1 vs. Tenet 2: ‘Should I ship fast or research more?’ Ship something that generates customer truth, not just internal opinions.

Tenet 3 vs. Tenet 5: ‘Should I execute on the known problem or explore the invisible one?’ Depends on your leverage. If you have momentum, ship. If you’re between initiatives, investigate.

Tenet 4 vs. Tenet 1: ‘Should I align stakeholders or just start testing?’ Start testing if alignment is stalled; use the results to create alignment.”

These tenets shifted me from executing other people's visions to defining problems worth solving—including one with $7.8 billion in projected impact that anyone could have seen if they'd just looked.

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Have a great week ahead,