#67 Find Your Champion

Inspired by Dieter Rams

Photo by Nik Shuliahin on Unsplash

Today, the word champion conjures up images of superstars like Michael Jordan or Lionel Messi, but that wasn’t always the case. In the Middle Ages, a champion was someone designated to defend the honor of another. When you could not fight for yourself, a worthy replacement was brought forth to represent you in combat.

The champion was a defender, and they are needed as much the inside companies of today as they were in the 1500s. As we work to bring our ideas to life, our days are consumed by detailed work - heads down at the workbench. In that mode, it’s easy to lose sight of the fact that we are operating inside an organism with competing interests. Just as the human body must decide how to share finite energy between hungry organs like the brain and the heart, so too must companies allocate resources amongst people and projects.

Competing interests, explicit or not, are always operating. The shifting sands of corporate priorities will happen, and most often, outside your awareness and control. As much as you think your work will speak for itself and win over the naysayers, you still have to survive long enough to test that theory. That means, in the meantime, you’ll need a champion.

A good champion is hard to find. They need to have enough authority to influence the use of resources while being involved in the day-to-day conversations of the leadership team - they have to be in the room where it happens. The champion’s voice must also carry weight, respected for their earned opinion more than their title. A good champion is also confident in the safety of their own post, else they will lack the courage to extend their social capital to something risky when it counts. Backbone required.

Whoever you find to advocate for your work, they have to believe in the mission you are embarking upon. Not just agree. Not just like what you’re doing or think it’s interesting, but believe. An emotional bond to the work has to be formed - their imagination must be stirred. No felt excitement, no support.

When I look back on successful projects, it wasn’t my heroic effort, nor the long hours of the team that made the difference. Doing great work was essential, yes, but in each case, there was another equally important factor at play - the guidance and protection provided by a champion.

“If you don’t have someone who stands behind you, then you can forget it.”

— Dieter Rams on his brief tenure at Gillette.

The advocates I’ve had in the past may not have been pushing pixels at 2 am, but they often shaped our internal narrative, pointed out dead-ends, and when it counted, in rooms where the team was not, stood firm. They parried attacks we never saw and when needed, came forth in public to defend the team and its cause. And that has made all the difference.

If you’re operating at the edges, pushing the envelope, doing work that feels risky or outside the norms of your organization, let go of ego and accept that you won’t succeed on your own. What you ship matters, but as important is surviving long enough to ship, and for that, you must find your champion.