Member-only story
When Your Boss Doesn’t Care About Doing the Right Thing
Don’t let unethical leadership define the limits of your work
“Anyone who doesn’t understand how free trials work is a fucking idiot. I’m sorry, but have they used the internet?”
I was presenting months of brand research to the CEO of a company I no longer work for. (We’ll get there.) Customers, employees, and members of our target market all had good things to say about our product but respondents in every category gave us low ratings on trustworthiness. Why? Our heavily promoted “free” offerings were only available as part of a short trial that required a credit card and auto-renewed.
Our business’s reliance on forced continuity was shitty and unethical, in my opinion, but that didn’t seem like a great way to open the meeting. So instead, I talked about it from the perspective of the brand and business.
We could build a better brand and stronger, more valuable customer relationships if we explored more transparent ways of offering — or at least communicating — our trial. By focusing on free products at the top of our acquisition funnel, we were attracting the wrong type of customer and missing an opportunity to communicate the value we offer once the trial is up.
I had expected resistance but not the full-blown meltdown I witnessed. Not only were customers who felt deceived “morons,” according to my CEO, but most were trying to scam us for free services. Our real customers were too important to dispute a $40 charge on their credit card if they forgot to cancel their trial. Their time — like his — was too valuable. Thus, the research I was desperately trying to share was a waste of time.
My design director assured me after the meeting that we would keep at it. The CEO had grown over the years and she had faith he’d continue to do so. “He likes to argue,” she said. So I kept at it, believing that with enough hard work, evidence, and peer support, I could make a difference.
Good designers need to be opinionated. They need to have a voice in the company. That voice needs to speak on behalf of the user.
