ASSOCIATE PARTNER | IBM
Adam Mullett
Adam Mullett spends his days helping complex organisations bridge the gap between high-level strategic vision and ground-level reality. As an Associate Partner at IBM specialising in product engineering and digital transformation, he works at the intersection of product, business analysis and human-centered design.
Before leading digital products and coaching teams in Agile and Enterprise Design Thinking, Adam was a journalist and marketer; roles where asking the right questions and uncovering the unvarnished story were central. This background shaped his core philosophy: whether your title says Business Analyst, Service Designer, or Enterprise Architect, your real job is to act as a curator of context: someone who turns chaotic human workarounds and complex system mechanics into clarity.
Adam is the author of the book From “No” to “How”: Get Buy-In and Lead Change, a practical guide for leading change without formal authority. He helps teams uncover ground-truth user realities and package them into unassailable stories that protect product scope, align stakeholders, and politely deflect out-of-place executive interference.
When he isn’t designing products or speaking, you’ll find him coaching junior rugby, practicing Japanese, or taking apart car radiators in his Perth driveway.
Presentation: Two Ears, One Mouth: how to build product your users and clients love and adopt willingly.
Are you tired of spending time, budget, and energy building digital products only to watch them sit on the shelf gathering dust?
In product development, value is only realised when real people actually use what you build. Yet, so many teams fall into the trap of relying on post-launch training, heavy-handed communication, or forced compliance to drive adoption. The truth? If users don’t buy into the change, they’ll find a way around it. The real key to long-term adoption lies in active listening, deep observation, and co-creating solutions directly alongside your end-users from day one.
In this session, Adam will share proven strategies to shift your mindset from building for users to building with them. Drawing on key concepts like Genchi Genbutsu (“go and see”), he’ll demonstrate why observation is the highest form of listening and how getting out from behind your desk to shadow users reveals friction points no survey could ever capture. You’ll also discover objective frameworks for feature prioritisation, how to foster genuine stakeholder buy-in and more.
Whether you’re a product owner, business analyst, change manager, or design enthusiast, this presentation will give you actionable tools to drive positive organisational change and ensure your next launch is built to succeed.