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Pitch User Research to BAs as Risk Mitigation

I've watched so many user researchers try to win over business analysts by talking about understanding users, empathy, better experiences. And I've watched those same BAs completely ignore them. Because BAs fundamentally don't care about users. At least not in the way UX people do. BAs care about risk. They assess business benefits, development risks, organizational factors. They're looking at whether a project will fail, not whether users will love it. So if you want BAs to actually engage with user research, you need to speak their language. Don't talk about users. Talk about risk mitigation. Don't talk about insights. Talk about evidence that backs up their assumptions. Frame user research as the missing piece of their risk assessment. They're already evaluating business risk and technical risk, but they're not evaluating user adoption risk. That's the gap you're filling. If they feel confident about what users need, position research as protecting them from being blamed if their assumptions turn out to be wrong. It's due diligence. In my experience, this reframing can turn defensive, territorial BAs into people who actually want you involved. Because you're no longer threatening their expertise. You're covering a risk they hadn't accounted for. It took me years to figure this out, so maybe I'm not the best person to be giving advice. But I've seen it work when nothing else did. #UserResearch #UXPractice #StakeholderManagement