The Conversation Factory

Today I'm sharing an interview with self-described On-Air Personality on SiriusXM and Idiot Grand Random.

Grant has had a long-time career in radio: In college he was hired to board op Christmas music for WLS-FM in Chicago when it was transitioning from Talk to Country music. He was at the controls the day the station flipped to "Kicks Country," which was really cool in a geeky radio kind of way.

He now hosts on SirusXM's Octane channel.

Grant has interviewed some big names: from Billy Corgan to Marilyn Manson and many, many in between so as I transition the show into its fourth season, I thought it would be awesome to sit down with someone who interviews people for a living! We all need to get amazing information from people at work and in life...and doing it in a way that makes people feel comfortable and excited to share that information is a tremendous skill. So even if you don't work for a radio company, I suspect you'll find some gems in here...or at the very least enjoy Grant's sparkling personality.

Grant was kind enough to host me at Sirus XM's amazing studios in Midtown Manhattan and share some insights on how to interview people like a rockstar.

Spoiler alert: Ask interesting questions, prepare...and do it, a lot!

Enjoy the conversation...

Show Links

Grant Random on the Web:

https://twitter.com/grantrandom

https://www.instagram.com/grantrandom/

Grant and Marilyn Manson text Justin Beiber: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fQbAwXgPphw

Daniel's Conversation OS Canvas: https://theconversationfactory.com/downloads

Full transcription at https://theconversationfactory.com/episodes-all

Today I share my deeply lovely conversation with the amazing Esther Derby, Author, Coach and author of, most recently, 7 Rules for Positive Product Change.

Esther started her career as a programmer, and has worn many hats, including business owner, internal consultant and manager. From all these perspectives, one thing became clear: our level of individual, team and company success was deeply impacted by our work environment and organizational dynamics. As a result, she has spent the last twenty-five years helping companies design their environment, culture, and human dynamics for optimum success.

She's a founder of the AYE Conference, and is serving her second term as a member of the Board of Directors for the Agile Alliance. She also was one of the three original founders of the Scrum Alliance.

Esther has an MA in Organizational Leadership and a certificate in Human System Dynamics.

We discuss Systems thinking in problem solving, Clock time vs Human time, the power of invitation, Ritual vs Ritualistic thinking and how forests are a better metaphor for change than installing a new OS.

Enjoy the conversation!

Show Links

Esther Derby on the web

https://www.estherderby.com/

7 Rules for Positive Productive Change: https://www.amazon.com/Rules-Positive-Productive-Change-Results/dp/1523085797

Back when it was 6 rules!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDyoUdVHwbg

Kairos vs Chronos: Clock time vs living time: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kairos

Forest Succession as a metaphor for change: https://www.khanacademy.org/science/biology/ecology/community-structure-and-diversity/a/ecological-succession

"People are easy to see. People are easy to blame. Systems are hard to see and you can't blame systems."

The Laws of Open Space:

https://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Open_Space_Technology

Ritual vs Ritualized: The Power of Ritual to create a safe container

Esther on Retrospectives:

https://www.estherderby.com/seven-ways-to-revitalize-your-sprint-retrospectives/

https://www.amazon.com/Agile-Retrospectives-Making-Teams-Great/dp/0977616649

How to facilitate Safety:

"I have people fill-in-the-blank in two different index cards. And the first index card says, "When I don't feel safe, I fill-in-the-blank," and then I collect all those, and I have them do another index card that says, "When I feel safe, I..." They fill-in-the-blank and I collect those, and I shuffle them all up, and then I read all the ones about, "When I don't feel safe, I..." Sometimes I hand them out to people in the room, just at random and they read them.

Then I have people read the ones about, "When I feel safe..."

Then I say, "What do we need to do at this time, in this meeting, so we can live into this?"

The Use of Self in Change: "The success of an intervention depends on the interior condition of the intervenor" – Bill O'Brien, former CEO of Hanover Insurance

Radical Participatory Democracy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radical_democracy

Virginia Satir: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virginia_Satir

Influence and Leadership aren't things you turn on and off...it's a muscle you have to practice all the time. And while being "on" all the time might sound exhausting, Stacey Hanke, my guest today, suggests that the key to leadership is being consistent. Leadership and influence is something you practice "monday to monday" and every day in between.

Stacey is the author of Influence Redefined and Yes You Can! … Everything You Need From A to Z to Influence Others to Take Action. Her company exists to equip leaders within organizations to communicate with confidence, presence and authenticity, day in and day out.

One thing I really heard from Stacey is that in order to grow it's critical to see ourselves from the outside. That can mean recording yourself speaking or presenting or it can mean having a coach or trusted advisor who can give you honest feedback - and that you have to prepare for that feedback. If you want to dive into how to develop a culture of critique and feedback about your work, check out the show notes for my interview with Aaron Irizarry and Adam Connor, authors of "Discussing Design".

One of my favorite questions in this episode came from Jordan Hirsch, who was in the most recent cohort of my 12-week Innovation Leadership Accelerator:

How do you lead from the middle, without formal authority? Stacey had some solid, down-to-earth advice:

1. Don't waste anyone's time - be brief and clear in your communication
2. Have your message clear and crystallized so you can speak to it without notes
3. Be clear on how you want to be perceived and how you are currently perceived
4. Deliver value, consistently
5. Show up for others - listening deeply means you can respond deeply

If you want to connect with a community of innovation leaders keen on growing in their authentic presence, you should apply to the upcoming cohort at ILAprogram.com

One other fine point I want to pull out from this interview is how influence shifts depending on the size of the conversation you're holding space in.

1-to-1 : It's easy to adapt and influence one to one: Stacey suggests that we listen deeply and get our conversation partners to do most of the talking. Also, mirroring their body language can create connection as well.

Groups - if it's more than five people Stacey's rule is to get on your feet. You'll have more energy and the group will feed off of that.

Large Groups - be "bigger" - use more of your voice, and use the whole stage. Connect to the whole room, purposefully, with your eyes

One side note: I misquote one of Newton's Laws. The Third law is about how every action creates an equal and opposite reaction, not the second law! How embarrassing!

Check out the show notes for how to find Stacey and her work on the web as well as links we mentioned in our conversation.

Show Links

https://staceyhankeinc.com/

The trusted advisor

Ed Sheeran on giving up his phone: https://www.teenvogue.com/story/ed-sheeran-doesnt-have-cell-phone

Deep Listening on Ian Altman's Podcast: https://www.ianaltman.com/salespodcast/deep-listening-impact-beyond-words-oscar-trimboli/

Developing a culture of critique: Designing a Culture of Critique http://theconversationfactory.com/podcast/2018/9/2/culture-of-critique

Today's conversation with Dorie Clark taught me some essential lessons about how to build a following around one's ideas - which is no surprise - Dorie has given several excellent TEDx talks on just this topic, and I'll summarize my insights from our conversation in a moment.

I learned something more surprising during my conversation with Dorie - that she is living her principles, constantly. I also learned that she's into musicals, big time. I wasn't expecting to learn this about Dorie, but I followed the conversation, as you'll see.

Dorie is the author of a trilogy of books all about reinvention.

Starting in 2013, Dorie wrote "Reinventing You: Define Your Brand, Imagine Your Future" which she followed up in 2015 with "Stand Out: How to Find your Breakthrough Idea and build a following around it" which was named Inc Magazine's #1 Leadership book of that year. Most recently, in 2017, she penned "Entrepreneurial You: Monetize Your Expertise, Create Multiple Income Streams, and Thrive."

Maybe I'm just a cynic, but I often expect people who have this much time to write about their ideas to have less time to apply them. Dorie walks her talk, however. The opening quote is about Dorie's dream to learn to write and produce musical theater...and how she's going about it - slowly building skills, insights and networks, long before she plans to tap them. If you take nothing else away from this episode, that alone is a solid gold lesson.

This approach makes logical sense - you have to plant before you can reap - and networks are no different. What I loved learning about Dorie is that she's not sitting still - she still has dreams of constant reinvention and she's working to make those dreams possible, steadily.

In the last several years in hosting this podcast, I've come to see conversations in a new light - sometimes they can seem like a wave, building, cresting and receding. Dorie certainly treats her own musical reinvention in this way - like a conversational wave she needs to build. But I've also learned that conversations also have key sizes that act differently - small, medium and large conversations are all essential to master, as a leader or facilitator, and with reinvention, this is still true. Dorie takes me through three key conversational size "phase transitions" in building a following around a breakthrough idea. You don't get to massive impact overnight.

Zero to one: Start talking about your idea. It may seem obvious, but many people just keep their ideas and their dreams in their heads. Getting it out of your head is like Peter Thiel's Zero-to-One innovation and gets the ball rolling.

One to Many: Finding ways to get to talk to many people about your ideas at once, like writing for a publication or speaking to a group.

Many-to-Many: The goal, at the end of the day, is to develop a many-to-many conversation. You don't want to be the only person talking about your idea. For me, the more people who see conversations as something worth designing, the better it is for me and for the world (at least, that's how I see it) - which is why I keep making this show!

This episode is full of other insights, like how to write a great headline or choose a collaborator for a project. For the show notes and links to Dorie's books and videos, click over to the Conversation Factory.com

Show Links

Dorie Clark on the Web

https://dorieclark.com/

How to Build a Following Around your Ideas:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3fQ92UVoXqc

Zero to One innovation: https://www.amazon.com/Zero-One-Notes-Startups-Future/dp/0804139296

Questions need silence. Great questions are provocative. Great questions defy easy answers. Answering them takes time - they can be the work of a lifetime or a workshop. A great question can guide an organization, a Design Sprint or an educational program. Great Facilitators ask great questions - on purpose.

In this episode I sit down with the effortlessly scintillating Nancy McGaw, Deputy Director of the Aspen Institute Business & Society Program (Aspen BSP). Nancy also leads corporate programs designed to cultivate leaders and achieve Aspen BSP's mission of aligning business with the long-term health of society.

In 2009 she founded (and still directs) the First Movers Fellowship Program, an innovation lab for exceptional business professionals who have demonstrated an ability and passion for imagining new products, services, and management practices that achieve profitable business growth and lasting, positive social impacts.

I would suggest you listen to this episode at 1X speed if for no other reason than it's good to slow down sometimes - it's a point that Nancy makes early on in our conversation.

Nancy and I meditate on the power of questions: Asking instead of telling lights people up and will surprise you, the asker, if you design your questions with care.

Nancy shares three of her favorite questions.

1. Tell me about a time when you were working at your best…?
2. What would have to be true…?
3. Why do you do the work you do?

Starting with Stories

The first question shows the power of Starting with stories. Any user experience researchers or Design Thinkers listening will know this to be true - if you're talking to a customer or a client, the best way to get rich and detailed information is to ask a "tell me about a time when…" question. Stories light up our brains in ways facts cannot, and starting our gatherings with a story is a luxurious and powerful way to generate energy and connectedness.

Appreciative Inquiry

This first question also connects to one of the most important ideas in this episode - even though it's mentioned only briefly: Asking with focus on the positive and the functional over the negative and dysfunctional. Appreciative Inquiry is a rich body of work and a unique approach to change.

The Art of Possibility

Nancy's second question is an excellent act of conversational Judo. Asking "What would have to be true…" can transform conflict into collaboration...or at least, honest inquiry. Asking this question can allow skeptics to dream a little and open the door into possibility.

That question came out of another question, from Michael Robertson, who attended the recent cohort of my 12 week Innovation Leadership Accelerator. He wanted to know if an "us vs them" mentality is ever appropriate when trying to lead deeply important change. Nancy's answer is profoundly empathetic. As a side note, the next cohort of the ILA is in February - we're accepting applications through January. If you want to dive more deeply into your own personal leadership, head over to ILAprogram.com to learn more and apply.

Why over what

I love the idea of asking people "Why do you do what you do?" without even knowing what they do. This question also points to understanding people's history, which is one of the key components to change - how did we get to now? What was the arc of the story?

Nancy has added some amazing books to my reading list - check out the show notes for links to them all and enjoy the episode!

Nancy at the Aspen Institute

Business and Society Program

First Movers Fellowship Program

Edgar Schein's Humble Inquiry

The Four Quadrants of Conversational Leadership

Appreciative Inquiry

John McPhee's Draft No. 4

The Four Truths of Storytelling

Carmine Gallo's Storytelling Secrets

Rosamund and Ben Zander's Art of Possibility

Leading change with and without a Burning Platform

Hal Gregersen's Questions are the Answer

Elise Foster's The Multiplier Effect

Full Transcription at

https://theconversationfactory.com/podcast/2019/12/24/leading-through-asking

Daniel Stillman Interviews Ian Altman

I am so thrilled to share this conversation with author and speaker Ian Altman about a conversation we all have to contend with one way or another - sales! Everyone sells something at some point, whether it's in a job interview or a client presentation...and at some point everyone is going to be sold to.

Ian's book, Same Side Selling, asks "Are you tired of playing the sales game?"

The most widely used metaphors in sales are those related to sports, battle, or games. The challenge with this mindset is that it means one person wins, and the other loses. Instead of falling victim to a win-lose approach, what if you shared a common goal with your potential client? How might things change if the client felt that you were more committed to their success than making the sale?

As Ian says in the opening quote - it's not about a series of tactics, it's about selling something you care about that helps people solve real challenges that you also care about!

I wanted to share my own takeaways form Ian's approach that have helped me facilitate deeper conversations with my clients and potential clients.

1. Stay in the problem space slightly longer than feels comfortable. My listeners with Design Thinking experience will not be too surprised to hear that jumping from problem to solution quickly is not any more effective in sales conversations than it is in innovation conversations. Staying in the problem space means listening longer and more deeply to people before you share your amazing solution to all their worries. Ian's "same side quadrant" notebook has actually been a helpful reminder to do just that.
2. Ask "what's the cost of not solving this challenge?" Make sure you understand not just the problem today, but the cost of not solving the problem in the near future. This conversation can help you both understand how to measure the impact of any effort you make to solve the problem.
3. The Cost of your solution is often irrelevant in the face of the cost of the problem. Once you really know the cost of the problem, talking about your fees can feel less challenging.

What is particularly interesting me to are the wider implications of Ian's metaphor driven-approach. What metaphors are driving the key relationships in your life? Those metaphors are narrative threads that link (and color) each and every moment of the relationship. The simple shift from a game to be won to a puzzle to be solved is a profound one. If you think of your marriage as a battle or your job as circus, the way you name the game will affect how you play it.

I'm really grateful to Ian for this new metaphor - and I think you'll enjoy it too!

Ian's Same Side Sales Podcat: https://www.ianaltman.com/same-side-selling-podcast/

Your Chocolate is in my peanut butter: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DJLDF6qZUX

Same Side Sales Journal: https://www.ianaltman.com/store/Journal/

Full Transcription at

https://theconversationfactory.com/podcast/2019/12/04/what-is-your-sales-metaphor

Today we are talking to my friend and client Jason Cyr, Director of Design Transformation at Cisco. We have a wild and rambling conversation about designing conversations on at least three scales: as a facilitator of workshop experiences, a designer of design processes and as a leader of a transformation effort in a larger organization.

Like anything else, conversations can be designed with a goal in mind: speed, effectiveness, clarity, joy. How do you intend to proceed towards your goal?

The very first story that Jason tells us shows how knowing your conversational goal is key: Jason tells us about his Uncle Rowley and how Jason's mother pointed out the ways in which Uncle Rowley was as talented conversation designer. It seemed like he designed his conversations with an overarching purpose, regardless of the objective of any individual conversation. His purpose, his higher goal was to make people feel good. Did he do it in order to be successful, or was that an outcome of his purpose? Sadly, we can't ask him...but there was clearly an aspect of his way of being that enraptured Jason as a boy - he wanted to be like him.

As an aside: One of my favorite topics in conversation dynamics is about how power shows up...the type of power Uncle Rowley exerted over young Jason is called Referent Power - the power of charisma.

Jason is now responsible for designing a much bigger conversation at Cisco - how teams work together and how teams of teams communicate and collaborate. One key way he's doing that is through enabling his organization to apply the tools of Design Thinking to their internal and external challenges.

What my conversation with Jason highlights, is that this conversation takes a long time....the cadence of transformation is not the quick rat-a-tat-tat of a stand-up meeting. It's a steady drumbeat of regular workshops and consistent follow-through. It's a healthy reminder that change takes consistency, clarity...and time.

Jason has a simple three step transformation process that he shares:

1. Start with the Coalition of the Willing
2. Make more evangelists
3. Craft stories that share themselves

How does Jason pull people into that conversation? It seems like he uses the same skills he learned from his Uncle - making them feel good, like they are part of a bigger narrative arc - a growing capability and practice inside the organization, one that can and does deliver value to the organization...even if it takes 6-9 months into the effort. This is charismatic power on an organizational scale. People want to be part of a positive story.

How does Cisco design the design thinking conversation? Jason shares four principles of Design Thinking at Cisco and they are so delightfully on point that I wanted to repeat them here:

1. Empathy. We are always designing for someone else's benefit. Somebody else is going to consume the thing or the thinking or the product that you're making. Do your best to understand that person so that you can build something desirable for them.
2. Go wide before going narrow, whether you're trying to choose a problem to solve or whether you're trying to find a solution to that problem, explore a little bit before making a decision. Try and reframe that problem and dig into that problem before tackling it. Try to generate multiple solutions before picking one. And it doesn't have to be a lot of work.
3. Experimentation. As soon as you think you have a good idea, how quickly can you figure out what's wrong with that idea? We do that by experimenting, putting it in front of people, having them react to it.
4. Diversity. Be thoughtful about who you bring into the conversation around the problems that you're solving. Make sure you have the appropriate definition of diversity and make people of all genders and colors feel welcome. Jason also asks: are we including the right people from across the organization, ie, engineering and product or design? Maybe we should be including sales. Maybe we should be including other parts of the business.

I'm so grateful Jason took some time to sit down with me and share some insights on how to lead a design transformation in an organization and keep the conversation on track, moving towards it's ongoing goal...I hope you enjoy the conversation as much as I did! Also, be sure to check out the episode Jason referenced, where I interviewed Jocelyn Ling from UNICEF's Innovation team on Disciplined Imagination.

Referent Power: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Referent_power

(one of my favorite types of power!)

The six types of power

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/six-types-power-leaders-john-prescott/

Jocelyn Ling's episode on Disciplined Imagination https://theconversationfactory.com/podcast/2019/8/27/disciplined-imagination-with-jocelyn-ling

10 types of innovation: https://doblin.com/ten-types

The book: https://www.amazon.com/Ten-Types-Innovation-Discipline-Breakthroughs/dp/1118504240

All process is the same

https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/article/5-stages-in-the-design-thinking-process

https://www.ibm.com/design/thinking/page/framework/loop

POST method: Purpose, Objective, Structure, Timing. Adjust your ST based on your evolving understanding of PO.

Facilitation Means design experiences and conversations: https://medium.com/@dastillman/facilitation-means-designing-conversations-24bac966076e

Creating Change in three steps:

1. Start with the Coalition of the Willing.
2. Make more evangelists
3. Craft stories that share themselves

Full Transcription on the website

Hey there Conversation Designers! Today I'm talking with Author, speaker and advisor Greg Satell about going beyond innovation to driving transformation. His recent book, Cascades, is about how to create a movement that drives real change and he's teaching a workshop in Austin November 21st with my friend and podcast guest Douglas Furgueson.

Greg is also the author of Mapping Innovation, which was all about stepping back from a monolithic idea of innovation and turning it into a conversation - what do we mean when we say innovation? And by we, I mean whoever is coming together to make a change. A team, an organization, has to define for itself what change and impact means to them.

And this is the essence of the conversation Greg and I had - the importance of empathy across the board - not just with customers but with your internal stakeholders. It's only through this kind of "mass empathy" that we, as change agents, can begin to find the shared values that will power change.

While we didn't use these terms in the interview, the act of empathy and seeking shared values means you can shift your transformation from a "push" effort to a "pull" effort - in other words, leveraging Invitation rather than Imposition. The core of any productive conversation, of any communication is invitation: the choice of all the participants to actually choose to participate.

There is one other idea I want to explore and that is making problems okay to talk about inside of a culture. In many of the transformation cascades Greg talked about in this episode, broad silence about a challenge was followed by everyone pulling in the same direction. What changed?

Some suggest that change only happens when we all feel like we're on a burning platform, a phrase coined by John Kotter in the late 90s. But Greg is talking about change being driven by shared values, not just fear and panic. What seems to be happening in each of these instances is that stakeholder groups who initially thought that they had different goals and values suddenly saw a shared goal and shared set of values.The burning platform just makes the act of finding shared values easy - the need to focus on survival is a powerful motivator. But understanding that the fear is just one type of motivation is clarifying. This makes the job of a leader of change simple - or rather, one of simplification. Change is about making the choice simple - simple to see (through storytelling) and simple to make (through clear shared values).

You can learn more about Greg's work (including seeing the entire eight-step cascades process) and the upcoming workshop in Austin @ GregSatell.com Enjoy the conversation!

full transcript and show notes can be found at https://theconversationfactory.com/podcast/2019/10/28/from-innovation-to-transformation

Have you ever found a framework, a diagram, that perfectly summarized an important and subtle idea? That somehow made that important idea concrete and easy to talk about?

That's why I'm really excited to share today's conversation with Emily Levada, Director of Product Management at Wayfair. We'll dive into a Trust/Communication Map that, as a manager of a huge team, helps her navigate an essential question - is our team talking too much or not enough?

On the conversation design, meta side, I want to point out this important idea: The power of a visual to focus and shift a conversation. All conversations have an interface - either the air, a chat window or a whiteboard - a *place* the conversation actually happens.

A diagram creates a narrative space for a much more clear and focused conversation to take place - the diagram triangulates all of our individual inputs and ideas.

I stumbled across Emily's medium article where she breaks down this trust/communication trade off using this simple visual map. She points out that the map we talk about is commonly attributed to technology entrepreneur and venture capitalist Ben Horowitz. In his book The Hard Thing About Hard Things he writes,

"If I trust you completely, then I require no explanation or communication of your actions whatsoever, because I know that whatever you are doing is in my best interests."

With Communication on the Y axis and Trust on the X, you clearly don't want your team in the lower-left quadrant - low trust and low communication. Things will get pretty rocky there, fast. Increasing communication can help, but wow, will your team get burnt out, fast. The upper right quadrant, from a manager's perspective, is waste - in this region, we're having too many meetings. We can likely decrease communication, slowly, until we find a perfect balance - low friction, high trust teams.

Emily, at the end of the episode outlines how she uses this diagram to have this crucial conversation with the teams she manages: Where does each member of the team feel we are on this chart? Are we spending too much time talking or not enough? If you use this diagram with your team, please let me know! Email me at [email protected]

As Emily points out, when there's total trust, there's a sense of safety - When my collaborators trust me to make things work, I feel empowered to find my own way, even if I take the long path, down some blind alleys.

Psychological safety is at the absolute core of teams that can make great things happen. We need trust and safety to make good decisions. Amy Edmonson, who coined the term Psychological safety, opens her book "The Fearless organization" with this amazing quote from Edmund Burke, an English philosopher from the mid-1700s

"No passion so effectively robs the mind of all its powers of acting and reasoning as fear."

With the right balance of trust and communication, teams can feel safe to act, learn and iterate.

For all of this and a lot more, listen to the rest of the episode!

Show Links

The Trust/Communication Curve

https://medium.com/@elevada/the-trust-communication-trade-off-4238993e2da4

Agile at a large experience design organization

https://medium.com/wayfair-design/the-agile-methodology-of-a-large-experience-design-organization-178eccbb73c8

The Agile manifesto

https://agilemanifesto.org/

The Five Elements of User Experience from Jesse James Garrett

http://jjg.net/elements/pdf/elements.pdf

Minimum Viable vs Minimum Lovable Products

https://themindstudios.com/blog/mlp-vs-mvp-vs-mmp/

Making Time in the Morning

https://www.jeffsanders.com/the-5-am-miracle-podcast/

Project Aristotle and Psychological Safety

https://rework.withgoogle.com/print/guides/5721312655835136/

Amy Edmondson, The Fearless Organization

https://www.amazon.com/Fearless-Organization-Psychological-Workplace-Innovation/dp/1119477247

The Learning Zone

https://hackernoon.com/great-teams-5f15cb718c20

The Trust Equation from the Trusted Advisor

https://trustedadvisor.com/why-trust-matters/understanding-trust/understanding-the-trust-equation

High CUA Organizations, from High Output Management by Andy Grove

https://www.amazon.com/High-Output-Management-Andrew-Grove/dp/0679762884/

Helpful summary is here:

https://charles.io/high-output-management/

Full Transcription

Daniel: Emily, we're going to officially welcome you to the conversation factory. Thank you for making the time to do this and for waiting for me while I fixed all of my technical difficulties.

Emily: Thank you for having me.

Daniel: Awesome. so you can you tell the listeners a little bit about who you are and what your role is?

Emily: I can start. Sure, sure. I'm a director of product management at Wayfair. I own a set of technologies that sit at what we call the bottom of our purchase funnel. So when you're shopping on Wayfair, that's the product detail page, the page that tells you about the things we sell, ah, they cart and checkout experiences. And then some other things like customer reviews or financing, how you apply for financing, understand financing on our side, our loyalty program. And I run a team of product managers doing that.

Daniel: Yeah. And so we talked a little bit about how do you get a hundred designers to all talk the same language. Like, cause you've got to, you have a big team. How do you get them all pointed in the same direction as a word? Like tell us about managing that conversation cause like you literally can't have a conversation unless you're speaking the same language. And so like there's that step back that you're working with.

Emily: Yeah. So I just shared an article that my design partner had written about our written design process or design toolkit as you might say. I think, you know, in any organization that scaling how you build the mechanisms for people to build shared vocabulary to be using the same tools. It's one that we invest time in. I don't know that there's any magic to it besides you know, making the time to have the conversation of what's the language that we want to use.

Daniel: Yeah.

Emily: ...And being really intentional about it, right? What's language we do want to use, what's the language we don't want to use? How do we want to talk to new employees about these things in ways that are simple and digestible for them. And then they can build on over time. And then creating the mechanisms to make sure that coordination keeps happening. And you know, I think as we get more into this, you'll see that for me, how, how people communicate across the organization is a big part of what I spend my time thinking about.

Daniel: Yeah. I really enjoyed Jessie's article. We'll definitely link to it. One of the things that kind of blew me away was this idea that because I've worked with organizations where they're having a sense that, oh, we should have our own proprietary design thinking process. We should have our own flavor of agile. And he's like, we wanted something that anybody coming in would generally recognize. And so it's like, yeah, it's nothing. Here it is, it's kind of the double diamond. It's, it's the basics of design thinking, but doing it is the hard part.

Emily: Yeah. And I think one thing that's interesting is that we're actually not that dogmatic about how those things get applied. So really there's a lot of license to do what works best for your team. Right. Designers are part of a cross functional team with engineers, and analysts, QA, product managers and the designer should bring the tools to bear that are gonna help us understand customer problems and talk to our customers and prototype and test things. But we, but we're creating a toolkit that designers can pull from in order to do their work effectively.

Daniel: Yeah. It seems like a lot of work went into, into building that, that toolkit that they can pull from, but also like, I mean, this is the, this is the essence of agile, right? It's, it's, it's people and interactions over processes and tools or am I misquoting it? That's embarrassing. It's something like that. So like, let's talk about your origin story. Like how did you get into this work? How did you get your start and you know, where are you hoping to sort of ...what's next on your journey with, with the work that you're doing? Sure.

Emily: More so. I, rewinding to, let's say college I have two degrees. I have a degree in psychology and a degree in theater production. I'm a theater kid.

Daniel: That's amazing. I could see how that could prepare you for many, many, because everything's a circus and you know how to put on that. Let's put on a show like you know how to do that.

Emily: Keep the drama on the stage, we say yes. I actually, there's a tremendous number of parallels that I think are really interesting. But psychology and theater, they're both studies of how individuals behave. One scientific and one's artistic, but that's a common theme. And as I transitioned in technology and got an MBA, I fell in love with the idea of customer insights. So that we could understand it and influence people's behavior with the technology that you build. And so that's kind of one thread that pulls through here. And then that, that also fuels a passion for organizational behavior. How do I understand the behavior of the people around me and how we interact with each other in the conversations that we have in our organization? And then I think the other interesting thing about theater, well there's a, there's a product management tie. Building theater is cross functional. You have designers, you've technicians. I've learned over the years that the conversation that happens between a set designer, a stage carpenter and a scenic painter is no different than the conversation that happens between the UX designer, a backend engineer and a front end engineer.

Daniel: Okay. Can we, can you break that down? Cause like I don't think many people know those roles in maybe, maybe those words in either context. Yeah. Lay those out. Cause like this is the difference between like the, like the skin and the concept and how it works, Maybe....

Emily: Right...Well, so, so in both cases you have someone like a designer who's coming up with a concept or understanding maybe it's user behavior or the story that we're trying to tell. The content that we want to have in what we're publishing. And then but having the concept or having the vision is different than having the executed product. And so then you have a technician, right? You have engineers you have carpenters and painters and, and then really that's really just specialization, right? Those people are delivering on the thing that's been designed. And and they may have different types of specialization. And then I think where the thing that's the same in my role about that is that what you deliver is never going to be exactly the thing that you designed. And there's a constant process of learning and discovering the unknown and prototyping or having to cut to meet a budget or a timeline changing scope.

Emily: And that's the same, right? It's actually the same conversation. So I found a lot of skills in software development, product management that were skills that I had had developed earlier and loved that, that managing that conversation between those people and that translation between the functions. And then the other thing that I think is super relevant to the trust part of the work that I do is that the theater is a space and it's a workspace where coming to work emotionally available every day is part of what allows you to deliver the work. Like my, my early career, my conception of a business meeting was a bunch of people get in a room, we'd watch, a play. And if at the end of the business meeting everybody wasn't crying or laughing or right, whatever it was then like your product was not delivering the emotional experience that you need it.

Emily: And so your ability to then work through you know, how do I build something that resonates more emotionally, it was a, it was a critical part of that experience. And so I think that in the business world that translates into being, you know, high EQ, whatever that means. But there are some notion that that idea that you sort of come to work present and authentic and kind of with your emotional switch "on". That is something that I'm just really interested in and passionate about. That's kind of the way that I'm built. And and so how that translates into a different, you know, range of the world that I'm in today has been interesting question. I mean, so like, let's, let's dig into that a little bit because I think the idea that our product should turn the customer on like that it should hit

Daniel: Them and the gut the way like a great production should is a provocative one. And then like, so there's, there's these, there's that level of the, it should have that effect on our, our end user, but we should also be excited about doing it. And then I also need to sort of manage myself through that whole process of, you know bringing my best self to that dialogue, the interaction with all the people who are supposed to be making this thing. But there's a lot of, there can be a lot of conflict intention in that black box of making something that people are gonna love.

Emily: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I definitely, I think sometimes it's surprising to people that even just this concept of, hey, I want to build something that people love, that hey have emotional reaction to that, that I might talk about ecommerce that way. Right. Can we stupid. You're selling stuff, right? Yeah. But we all have to buy stuff, right? You right. You still want an experience that people really love. And also, you know, your home is intensely personal. And so for us, the experience of finding the right things for your home and crafting a space, crafting an environment that is a backdrop for really important parts of your life and your family and your friends your kids that's very emotional. It's a very emotional process. And so you want the tools that you're giving people to, to, to go through that journey to be emotionally resonant for them.

Emily: You know, I think this is, there's lots of conversations about this in the product world. This is sort of, you know, you're aiming for a minimum viable product versus a minimum lovable product, right? Yeah. It's that that difference. But I think for me the organizational side of it is equally as important. You know, we, we know that we, we all want to have teams that are creative, that are risk tolerant, that move fast. And then we have these really complex organizations and at the end of the day, like how do you build teams that can do those things? My point of view is that you really need to have the emotional component in order to build teams that can, can embody those qualities.

Daniel: Yeah. So I want to go back, I want to, I want, I want to go deeper, deeper into the trust and safety piece because that's, that's important. But I was trying to find this diagram that I just sent to you. And the chat window, I need to find who originated it. This was like one of my favorite diagrams when I was getting started in UX, just to like talk about the difference between like vision and concept and details. This is another version of it. Product is functionality. Product is information. There's so many versions of this just the idea that like, there's all these different layers in the process of making something real and my own sense that like everybody wants a seat at the table, right? Cause like even those people are highly specialized where they're like, oh, I'm just gonna make an "x". If they don't understand the vision and if they're not bought into the vision, people feel excluded. Yeah. People feel like, oh, I'm just a doer. Like, so I guess my question is like, you as a leader, how do you make sure that the people who are part of creating that vision feel like they're all included? Like how do you create inclusion?

Emily: Yeah. I mean it's interesting because yes, they want to feel included, but I would actually go so far as to say that they need to be included if you want to get the right product. Because if you tell people what to build, they'll build you what you tell them. If you tell them why you want to build it, they're going to build something better than what you asked them to build.

Daniel: Yeah. I'm just...that's a solid gold quote right there.

Emily: Uh and so I think that the question then very tactically becomes when is the right moment in the process to involve which person, what pieces of information are you giving them? But I think really it is about orienting around why, why are we here, what outcome are we trying to drive, not what are we trying to build. And you know, ultimately the conversation shifts to what are you trying to build. But I think partly there's a, there's also a listening aspect here, right? You listen to the conversations that people are having and if people are getting stuck and you start listening and are having conversation about the what you try to back them up to the why, right?

Daniel: Yeah. No I agree. Yeah. I mean there's so many avenues to go down because in a way like there's another piece which is like how are you seeing the patterns and all of that and all of those conversations that you're, you're, you're pulling together cause you're, you're looking at this at an organizational level as well, right? Like you're in a lot of different places and listening to a lot of different things. Like how do you make the time to start to weave it back together for yourself and to a clear narrative like "this is What's happening?"

Emily: Some of it is I think about pattern recognition, right? This is true of all feedback. So one thing that I say about feedback a lot is that you know, any feedback, whether you're giving, receiving feedback, it's a data point. And if you, if every piece of feedback you get, you took immediate action on and treated as equal to every other piece of feedback, like you'd go mad. And so when you get feedback or when you hear a thing, it becomes a piece of data and then up to you to look at all of the pieces of data, have you got and, see the patterns, prioritize which things you want to act on and then go act on them. And so I think, you know, as an organizational leader, as I'm doing one on ones or doing skip level meetings or listening to questions, people are asking in various forums or listening to the water cooler talk. It's sort of data that goes into the pattern recognition machine, right?

Daniel: Which is your brain. Are you using a whiteboard or a like a dashboard or anything to track that? Or is it just really like just filtering …

Emily: Yup. I have some, I have a notebook that I you know, clutch very tightly and carry with me everywhere I go. That I think is my primary, you know, hey, I'm just gonna write down things that I see or observe. I have a window of time. I get to work very early in the morning. I get to work at seven. And so from seven in the morning until nine when the kind of meetings start is my time to really kind of step back, reflect on what I'm need to do or what I've heard, what's new, where things are and get some focused work time. And so I think being able to just carve out the time to sort of step back and say, okay, is there anything here that I, that I need to be paying more attention to or taking more action?

Daniel: I have to say like in so many of the interviews I've done, one of the insights for me is that of all the conversations that we have to manage and maybe design the one with ourselves is maybe the most important one. And so having just, just having a notebook is like, like that's, that's huge. Right? Yeah. Really amazing.

Emily: Yeah. You know, I'm also very lucky, I have a wonderful set of people around me who are great sounding board for all the Times that I'm like, Hey, I think maybe there's a thing here, but I'm not really sure. I let me just say it out loud to you and play it back for me and you know, help me see if there's really a pattern or not. Yeah,

Daniel: Yeah. Analysis through dialog. Super important. So I think it would be useful for us to talk about like, so I found that this medium article that you wrote using this, you know, don't I just love visual frameworks of trust versus communication curve. And how did you, like where did that how does that framework filter into your life? Where did it come from for you and how do you, how do you actually apply that in your own work you use? Just talk to us a little bit about that little knowledge chunk and then we'll, sure, sure,

Emily: Sure. So we, we first introduced the concept of psychological safety, which related but not the same in 2017. I actually, so psychological safety I think was popularized based on Google work, Google's project Aristotle. There's a New York Times magazine article about it that profiles a woman who's on Google's people analytics team. And she was a classmate of mine in my MBA program. And so I had been following the work and thought it was really interesting. And we actually introduced a concept of that is one level higher than the psychological safety concept, which is the learning zone. So the, the researcher who, who came up with the concept of psychological safety actually has a framework that's two axes and psychological safety is one access. And the other access is accountability, accountability to results. And, and when you have both of those things, you get this magic thing called learning.

Emily: And I think that what was really important about that, cause you ain't swim it cause like I'm looking at that as a two by two from like very accountable and very safe means I've learned something. Yeah. Put that together for me. Yeah. So, so very accountable means like there's pressure, there's pressure to do, right? Like you, you, you're gonna run fast because there's pressure. But if you have high pressure and low psychological safety, you get anxiety, you get fear of failure, right. That, that and that is a killer, right? Especially in an agile process where there's a requirement to like take risks and try things and it, you know, that every single thing you do is not going to be a win. What you want is for every single thing you do to teach you something, right. The, to be another step on the journey to understanding where you're going.

Emily: Oh, this is incredibly important in spaces where I remember it's it's Andy Grove. It's from high output management. He has this concept of, high CUA organizations or tasks that is complexity, uncertainty and ambiguity, right? So you don't have a roadmap. You don't know where you're going. You have some idea where you're going, but you might be wrong. You don't really know how you're going to get there along the way. And there's a high degree of complexity that you need to be able to fail and you need to be able to challenge people's ideas. You know, we know that the creative process, it's not that people just have brilliant ideas, they actually have not great ideas that then other people add slightly less, not great things too. And then, you know, you build, you like you, you build on top of each other and you make connections and then all of a sudden there's an Aha moment that you, you've landed on something that has value, right?

Daniel: So I would say that these CUA things can only be done through conversation. It's only through like one person can't do it by themselves. Through that, you have to…

Emily: Right, right. And so you have to have a group. And that group has to be willing to say stupid things and to say that they disagree, to challenge the status quo. And you can't do those things if you don't have psychological safety. If you're afraid that you will be judged for what you say or for challenging, then you don't get any of that behavior. And so, so when you have psychological safety, that's when you get... And performance pressure. That's when you get, okay, we're going to try something and then we're going to learn from it. And so learning becomes the kind of cornerstone to continuous improvement with that flavor of, hey, we're willing to take risks.

Emily: We want to move fast. We're listening to each other. We understand that the solution we get you together is going to be better than the solution any of us could come to individually. And so that, that, it was a few years ago that that really became an important piece of how my department was thinking about the culture that we wanted to build. And, and in that I was thinking about, okay, what does this mean for my teams and how do I figure out when my teams are feeling that anxiety and how can I help them have the right conversations to get them back into that learning zone? And one of the observations that I had is that we spend a lot of time talking about how we talk to each other, right?

Daniel: Amazing!

Emily: I say to the conversation designer but, but that in the organization that often takes the format of, you know, do we really need to have this meeting? We should add this meeting. We should remove this meeting. I think we should write a new update email. We're getting too many emails. I, everybody needs to go into this spreadsheet and fill out this information. And there's just this, there's a cycle of "add a bunch of communication and process and then think there there's too much and take it away. And then I think there's too little and add more."

Emily: And there's a justification that, that sort of a natural cycle. And the observation that I had a, and I talk a little bit about where those pieces came from, but the kind of connection that I made in my brain at some point in doing this is that the amount of communication that you need is the dependent variable. The independent variable is how much trust you have. It's not an objective, hey, in order to do this thing, I need this amount of communication period.

Emily: The amount of communication that you need to be successful is dependent on how much trust already exists between the individuals doing the work. And so for me the interesting moment was, hey, let's reframe all of these, communicate all of these conversations that we're having about communication into conversations about trust and what does that look like? What would that mean? Yeah. And that actually you, you these, the costs of all of this communication, we call it coordination cost often. Yeah. That it's, that it's not a given. Like as your organization gets complex, you will need more communication. That is true.

Daniel: So I'm going to, I'm going to sketch, this diagram just for the listeners. So they don't have to go any place else like okay, it's the, the y axis is amount of communication required. The X-axis, is access trust between team members. And in a way what you're implying is that there's a, a curve, a line that goes from the upper left to the lower right where basically the more trust you have, the less communication is required.

Emily: Right? That's exactly it. To accomplish any goal, the amount of trust that you have and the amount of communication that you need or inversely related. So if you have very little trust, you need a tremendous amount of communication. If you have a lot of trust, you need way less.

Daniel: Can I push back on this concept? Just like, cause I feel like in a way like when there's a lot of trust, communication flows really freely to be like I can see on the graph anything that's above the line is inefficient use of resources and anything below it creates like friction of confusion or like, and I've seen this in projects where you're like waiting for someone else to like tell you it's okay to do what you think needs to be done. But at the same time I feel like my fiance and I talk a lot, you know, we, we have a lot of communication. There's also a lot of trust. Like I'm checking in with her and telling her my evening plans, not because I think she's worried that she doesn't, you know, where are you off with? She just wants to know and I want to tell her. So like maybe that's, maybe that's different cause it's, it's a personal context. I don't know.

Emily: Yeah. Maybe trust and communication are actually self-reinforcing. And so when I say you have high trust and low communication that that implies that you actually have a higher degree of communication. I think, you know, maybe you could think about this as sort of additional communication or required communication, formal communication, right? And there are lots of different ways you could cut that. Although I do think that you actually just see less communication partly because one of the primary pieces of that is if I trust you, then I trust that you will understand when I need to be involved and you will proactively communicate to me and therefore I don't need to be doing the inbound communication to you. And so you know, you, I do think that there's an opportunity. I think the, and the really important piece of that is that we think we spend a lot of time talking about how we can add or subtract communication. And my thesis is that if you actually invest in building trust in teams, you can run more efficient organizations because you reduce the amount of communication that everybody to do.

Daniel: Wow. So that upfront investment pays off. And your, I mean this is the classic go slow to go fast. Like you're like definitely has proved for you.

Emily: Well yeah, I mean you, you, you invest in trust that allows you to pull out this communication. It certainly makes people happier and it gives you more of these other things like a willingness to take risks. You know speed to delivery risk tolerance. Yeah. Some of those other components that I think are really important.

Daniel: So can we talk a little bit about the mechanisms, cause you, we talked about this in the pre-talk, like what are the mechanisms of creating value for the company through that, but then there's also the question of how do you actually, what is the process by which you create this kind of trust and psychological safety in your teams? So this is like the two side, like how do you do it and then how do you show that it's, how do you prove that thing that we, we were just talking about that it's, that the investment's worth it. Yeah. Cause people ask me all the time and I have a mixed answers for that.

Emily: Yeah. I think, you know, I do think it's hard, right? It's hard. This is why the, some of these concepts like psychological safety and trust and vulnerability and Kulik they feel squishy cause it's hard to understand the value. But I do think that one of the things that's been interesting about this framework is that it is pretty easy when you start to look around and you start to diagnose, okay, where are my teams? And you start to actually selectively pull levers like, okay, I'm going to add communication here or I'm going to just remove communication here. That as a manager, having a framework like this just helps you be more active in how you manage those things, right? So if, if a manager can, if having this framework and diagnosing where their teams are effectively allows them to pull, you know, just a handful of pieces of communication out of the system without impacting the result, it's being delivered. You're delivering value right now. If you pull that communication out in a place where you don't actually have their trust, then you, you risk poor execution on the work. Right? And so the ability to make good decisions about where you can do that and where you can I think is what I'm trying to help managers do. I think in terms of actually building trust I have one go-to tool that I share. Although there's really many, many different ways to think about this. I'm a big fan of the trust equation, which is from the book the trusted advisor. Yeah. The trusted advisor is really about building trust in client relationships. But there's this concept in it called the trust equation, which is just a one way of breaking down what does trust really mean? And that trust equation says that trust is needed before components.

Emily: There are three things that create trust, credibility, which is I trust your words. You know what you're talking about. You say, I don't know. When you don't know what you're talking about. That's one. Reliability is you do what you say you're going to do. So I'd say trust your actions. And then the third is they use the word intimacy. That can be a loaded word in business contexts. I tend to think of that as discretion is, is probably the closest thing. Like I, I trust you with a secret. Or I trust your judgment. It can mean I, it can mean you sort of know me personally. And then there's one thing that is sort of the great destroyer of trusts, which is self orientation. So if I believe that you will act in your own self interest instead of in my best interest then I don't trust you if I believe that you will take into account my best interest and think about my point of view, then we build trust.

Emily: And the really important thing or the reason that that's my sort of critical tool is because it allows us to give feedback about trust that's much more specific. So it allows us to give feedback, allows me to give feedback about communication that's happening in the workplace. That is feedback about trust, but using those underlying concepts. So, Hey, when you well... Shit your way through the answer to that answer in that meeting and then had to go back and admit that you didn't know what you were talking about, you damaged your credibility with that stakeholder. Yeah. Right. Or when you didn't respond to that email, you damaged your reliability yeah. Or, right, then and then the positive version of that to hey, the fact that you thought to include that person in that meeting showed low self orientation and helps you build that relationship. And so more than anything that's just given people the vocabulary to have a conversation about trust without using the squishy word of trust.

Daniel: Yeah. Breaking it down into components. Use the word levers, which I like. I talk about that a lot in my conversation design work, which is like, wow, how do we actually grab hold of this squishy thing and say like, oh, how do we manipulate it? How we actually move in? And you're like, at least you and you can focus on reliability, credibility, intimacy and intimacy is important. Like, I, I've begun to realize like the importance of actually spending time getting to know people. Like you forget this, otherwise people think it's just transactional. And that's, that's really, really critical.

Emily: Right? And, and I think that also sorry, I just lost my train of thought for a moment.

Daniel: I mean it's amazing by the way, like, I don't know like that you had the trusted advisor equation in your, in your brain. Like, so you get, you get a tunnel pass, it may come back to you.

Emily: It meant that's okay. We can keep going.

Daniel: What's that?

Emily: I said we could keep going...

Daniel: Oh, so we, yeah, we are actually getting close to our time. So like I usually ask the, what haven't we talked about that we should talk about, which may or may not jog your memory…

Emily: I remember what I was thinking.

Daniel: Yeah. There's the key - distraction!

Emily: So the other thing about the trust equation is that it's actually true that different people value different parts of that equation. Well, the other thing that it allows you to do is have the conversation of saying, you know, sometimes like I've had situations where I'm kind of not connecting with someone or we just seem to be missing each other and not building the kind of relationship that I want. And then the ability to have a conversation that's like, Hey, I, what I'm looking for really is, you know, intimacy. And the other person says, well, I really want reliability and I don't really care about intimacy in this relationship that that allows you to figure out what matters for trust in that relationship more effectively.

Daniel: It does. And so when you, you talked about how you spend a lot of time in your team talking about conversations like this is, this is the conversation about what matters to you in your conversations with the conversation about how often you want to be talking, the conversation about all of these different pieces of it. And I just did an interview with my dear friend Jocelyn Ling. We'll publish soon as well. She was the first person who ever I sat down in a meeting with who said, let's talk about how you like to work. Are you a calendar person? I mean this was almost 10 years ago, so there was no Skype, there was Skype, there was no slack, there was, there were fewer tools, but it was still an important conversation to have.

Emily: Right, incredibly.

Daniel: Like I have a calendar/ spreadsheet orientation and that's like if somebody is making something in a word document that could be a spreadsheet. It, it, it, you know, cause me hives.

Emily: Right, Totally. And you know, it's important to know if you're working with someone who really needs time to digest before they get into a room, then writing that preread is going to be that much more important. Right. Or if you know, obviously understanding the intimacy part, understanding what parts of the day are more difficult for people. You know, for me, I get in super early, but then I leave, I need to get home to my kids. And so, you know, if you catch me while I'm walking out the door, I'm not going to be, no,... I'm less likely to take the time to stop and have that conversation right.

Daniel: And don't have an extra five minutes!

Emily: I really don't. Yes. So I think that that's, those things are super important and, and actually just giving people the ability to have those conversations really openly, really directly or giving them tools to do that.

Daniel: That's awesome. So is there anything we haven't talked about that we should talk about around trust, psychological safety, organizational conversations?

Emily: Yeah, there's, there's no one big thing. I think, you know, my, the thing that I hope is just that people feel like this is a tool that they can use and, and to really think about that the next time they hear somebody having a conversation about communication, to think about, hey, are we really having a conversation about, about trust? Right? So somebody is asking you for communication, is it really because they don't, they don't trust some piece of this, they don't trust you're going to deliver something or we've missed an opportunity to, to keep them informed and vice versa. If people are complaining about having too much communication. Is that really because there's more trust than you're building credit for and how do we, how do we change the conversation more?

Daniel: Yeah. Well that's awesome. We, I guess, I mean I'm, I'm going to try and squeeze in one more question cause like I said, I'm looking at that framework and I'm thinking to myself is that a framework for Emily to think more clearly and to talk with another manager about stuff or is it a conversation that a team can have? Like it's not like a two by two matrix. I'm not looking at it as like a importance difficulty matrix where somebody is doing an exercise with it. It is, it is both. So there's definitely, yeah, only a piece

Emily: Of it that is as a manager, I want to have a sense of where my team is or where different project teams that I work with are and be able to actively manage. But there's definitely a team component here and I think it's a really interesting exercise to do. It requires a really good facilitator, which is get your team in a room, draw the framework on the board, two axes and a line, right? Make sure people understand it and then say, everybody grab a marker. Where do you think we are? Or, or if you don't think your team has enough trust to do that, everybody grab a sticky note and draw the framework on your sticky note and fold it up and hand it to me, right? We'll do this sort of anonymously and then you plot on the graph like where does the team think we are?

Emily: And the interesting conversation is not about coming to objective alignment that "we are here today", but actually that some of your team members think your team has a high degree of trust and some of your team members go, right. And how do we, you know, some, some team members think that we've got too much communication and some think we have too little because they actually have different communications styles. And, and communication isn't connecting on the same for everybody. And then how do we use that as a lead in to this conversation of, hey, how do we work more effectively as a team?

Daniel: I'm so glad I asked that question because I think that's a really, that, that's a, it's a classic visual facilitation move of where are we, where do you think we are? And then the, the benefit is not, oh, we need to get into the same place. It's like, Oh wow, you think we're here and I think we're there. Let me hear more about what you think, why you think that. And you talked to the other person about why they think they think that's what they think. That's awesome. Okay, then we're definitely out of time now, Emily, I really appreciate you making the time for this. This is really delightful conversation. I think this is super duper important stuff for everyone to get a grasp on.

Emily: Thanks for having me!

Daniel: Awesome. And we'll call it "and scene!"

Today's conversation is with my dear friend Jocelyn Ling, a tremendously talented Business Model Specialist in the Office of Innovation at Unicef. She's currently on sabbatical from the Organizational Innovation consultancy Incandescent. She's been an interim biotech CEO, an investment consultant at the International Finance Corporation, the private investment arm of the World Bank Group, and even an instructor at Stanford's DSchool.

The Show Notes section of this episode are pretty epic, since Jocelyn dropped a lot of knowledge and wisdom on me and you - frameworks aplenty for you to get a handle on designing the innovation conversation and leading the process, with, as she says, healthy skepticism, suspended judgment, and disciplined imagination.

I wanted to give that Hubble quote it's full space to breathe, because it's so lovely...I'm going to read it in full here:

The scientist explores the world of phenomena by successive approximations. He knows that his data are not precise and that his theories must always be tested. It is quite natural that he tends to develop healthy skepticism, suspended judgment, and disciplined imagination.

— Edwin Powell Hubble

There are a few subtle points that I want to tease out and draw your attention to as this all relates to conversation design and shaping them for the better.

Invitation

Jocelyn highlights one of my favorite ideas in conversation design - invitation. A leader invites participation through their own openness, not through force. Anyone can lead that openness to new ideas, even if they're not an "authorized" leader, through their own example. Invitations can look like asking the right questions or hosting teams or creating physical or mental space for the conversation.

Cadence

Jocelyn talks about the tempo of a team or an organization, and these larger conversions do have a tempo, just like a 1-on-1 conversation does. Leading the innovation conversation often means slowing down or speeding up that tempo to create clarity and safety or progress and speed.

Goals

Conversations start when people have a goal in mind. Each participant in the conversation will have their own idea of what that goal is and the innovation conversation is no different. Jocelyn points out, rightly, that it's critical for a team or an organization to develop their own clear, shared definition of innovation. I did a webinar recently with Mural and my partner in the Innovation Leadership Accelerator, Jay Melone, on just this topic, and you can find a link to the templates we used in the show notes...I think you'll find those helpful, too.

Narrative

Storytelling and coherent narratives are core components of everyday conversations and the innovation conversation is no different. What Jocelyn asks us to focus on is the idea of stories as memes - what happens to your story after you tell it? Does it communicate or convince? Great. Does that person retell that story and evangelize it for you? That's even better. Leading change means being able to tell the second type of story - viral anecdotes.

That's all for now. The full transcript and show notes are right there in your podcasting app and on the website.

Show Links and Notes

Jocelyn Ling on the Internet

http://jocelynling.com/

Making a Team Charter if you want a template (or just have the conversation!)

https://blog.mural.co/team-charter

https://www.unicef.org/innovation/

http://www.incandescent.com/

Michelle Gelfand's Rule Makers, Rule Breakers: How Tight and Loose Cultures Wire our World

https://www.amazon.com/Rule-Makers-Breakers-Tight-Cultures/dp/1501152939

All in the Mind Podcast:

https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/allinthemind/the-power-of-social-norms/11178124

Clayton Christensen, Disruptive Innovation

http://claytonchristensen.com/key-concepts/

Steven Johnson: Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation

https://www.amazon.com/Where-Good-Ideas-Come-Innovation/dp/1594485380

A blinkist version

https://medium.com/key-lessons-from-books/the-key-lessons-from-where-good-ideas-come-from-by-steven-johnson-1798e11becdb

Square Pegs and Round Holes in Apollo 13

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ry55--J4_VQ

Google vs Apple in One Image, their patents map

https://www.fastcompany.com/3068474/the-real-difference-between-google-and-apple

Edwin Hubble Quote:

The scientist explores the world of phenomena by successive approximations. He knows that his data are not precise and that his theories must always be tested. It is quite natural that he tends to develop healthy skepticism, suspended judgment, and disciplined imagination.

— Edwin Powell Hubble

In Commencement Address, California Institute of Technology

10 Jun 1938

More on Hubble:

https://www.spacetelescope.org/about/history/the_man_behind_the_name/

The Innovation/Ambition Matrix

Core, Adjacent, Transformational

How to have the Innovation Conversation:

https://blog.mural.co/innovation-leadership

The 21st Century Ger Project:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/unicefusa/2018/07/05/redesigning-the-mongolian-ger-to-help-solve-a-health-crisis/

Doblin's Ten Types of Innovation:

https://doblin.com/dist/images/uploads/Doblin_TenTypesBrochure_Web.pdf

Six Sigma and the Eight Types of Waste

https://goleansixsigma.com/8-wastes/

The Forgetting Curve (Distributed Practice!)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forgetting_curve

Behavioral Design with Matt Mayberry from Boundless Mind

http://theconversationfactory.com/podcast/2018/6/6/behavioral-design-in-the-real-world-with-matt-mayberry

Transcription:

Daniel:

I'm going to officially welcome you to the conversation factory. So we're going to start the real, quote unquote real conversation now. Um, because I feel like every conversation we have is like, is interesting and insightful for me and it's never on the record.

Jocelyn:

Lets make this on the record!

Daniel:

We're going to make this on the record! And if you ever want me to, if you want me to take any pieces off the record, you just let me know. I think the reason why I wanted to have this conversation with you about innovation leadership is, I'm going to go way back. One of my earliest memories of you is back when we were co-designing early, like an early iteration of what the design gym was going to be. we were sitting down with, you Me... Maybe it was Andy, it was probably Andy and you were like, let's have a conversation about our working styles.

Jocelyn:

Oh Wow. I don't ever remember that. Yeah, that does sound like something that I do and I did. I still do it till today, with any new team

Daniel:

Yeah. Well, so like that was my first time somebody had invited me into that conversation and it blew me away because I'd never really, I mean this is going back. I mean this is 2012 I guess this is a long time ago. I had never really thought about how I work. Nobody had asked me that question. I'd never had that conversation about how and where do I like the, what I would now call the interfaces of my work conversations to happen. And I'm just wondering like, who introduced you into that conversation and where did you learn some of these soft skills? I mean, this is a quote unquote soft skill. Where did you learn some of the soft skills that you do in your work that you use in your work?

Jocelyn:

That's a great question. I think that probably learned a lot of my soft skills through day to day interaction. I think I've had the privilege, like in my job, given that I was an investor before, as well as in consulting to have exposure to a very broad range of working styles and leaders. And particularly so in the consulting world, you are especially attuned to how clients work. And so I always try and make sure that I am not only understanding how teams come together, but also how individuals work because as a consultant it's up to me to match and really tap into what is an invitation into their world. So I think that's how I survived, absorbed it over time. I think specifically maybe at that point in time and I continued to refine how I work with teams over the years, but maybe back in 2012 likely from, um, a really wonderful mentor in Boston, mine who I worked at International finance corporation at the World Bank. Um, my boss at that time, BG Mohandas is and continues to be an amazing person in my life. Uh, probably taught me that specific question and style.

Daniel:

That's amazing. And like, do you ever feel like, um, that that's an unwelcome conversation or is it ever hard to bring that topic up for you?

Jocelyn:

I often find it's as easy and very welcomed conversation and that is an investment of even 20 minutes with a new team member goes a very long way to setting the tone for their relationship and for the partnership.

Daniel:

Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting this idea of, of a pattern matching like perceiving patterns in somebody else's behavior and then making that effort to sort of like alter your own.

Jocelyn:

Oh, absolutely. I think that, um, and this is something I learned in my incandescent work. It's like the concept tempo. And I think you and I might have even spoken about it before, that not only understanding the tempo of an organization and by tempo I mean like the speed of how a team comes together and moves and how an individual does work. So you can imagine and overly generalize and say a startup has a really fast tempo comparatively to a larger fortune 500 company, which runs a little bit slower. And it's in the more that you're able to understand what Beat and Tempo you're stepping into, I think the more than you can learn to be effective in the kind of work that you want to achieve.

Daniel:

Yeah. Well so perceiving that tempo and then the ability to do something about it. I was literally, I'm bringing it up right now, so I'm just listening to a podcast, um, called all in the mind and they're interviewing. Who are they interviewing? Why is it so hard to find the show notes on these things? This is ridiculous. I can't believe I'm doing this on the phone. Um, Michelle Gelfand, she, she wrote a book, um, about um, making and breaking cultural rules and she has this idea of tight and loose cultures like cultures where social norms are tight and people follow all the norms and loose cultures where people don't. So I love the idea that you're also noticing, you know, there's, there's probably tight and loose work cultures but fast and slow ones. Right

Jocelyn:

Absolutely.

Daniel:

I'm wondering, this seems like a good time. I feel like I have a tendency to like plop people in the middle of a conversation. Um, if you want to backtrack and tell the folks in radio land a little bit about your career journey, like what you're doing now and what brought you into what you're, what you're doing now.

Jocelyn:

Yeah, sure. So my background, it's sort of like a combination of different things. Um, I like to think that, um, any exploration that I take always leads me to another interesting opening. Um, I started out my career in finance, um, with the Royal Bank of Canada and then followed a slightly untraditional path in that I then moved, um, from where I was living at a time from Vancouver and I moved to New York to then, uh, be in full exploration and ambiguity mode. And that's when you and I met Daniel to start this, start the Design Gym, which was something completely new, entrepreneurial in a new field. And that's also where I got introduced to the world design and absolutely fell in love with it. We started an accidental company together.

Daniel:

Yup.

Jocelyn:

And then along the way ran into visa issues. And got kicked out of the United States, if you remember that, too!

Daniel:

I do!

Jocelyn:

And then found myself in Kenya where I then work in impact investing with an amazing nonprofit and then later on the World Bank and then found my way back to New York. The US couldn't get rid of me that quickly! Came back to the US legally with a visa in hand and, uh, worked for a strategy consulting organization, design firm called incandescent. And I've been there for the past, uh, five plus years now and, and right now I'm on sabbatical with the firm and have taken up residency at a UNICEF innovation team. So it's been a meandering path, but all for wonderful teams and causes.

Daniel:

So not everyone will know this, but like, I feel like, um, you are amazingly one of the many people try to get in touch with you through me on Linkedin. Um, when they're, when they're interested in organizational design and organizational innovation...incandescent, like is, uh, is a decent player in that space. Um, I don't know how they, how they managed to build their name. Maybe it's...I'm assuming they do good wor

Jocelyn:

Oh, I hope so!

Daniel:

I don't know none of it from firsthand, but like five years. Can you tell me a little bit about what, what organizational innovation and uh, and some of the tempo work that you're doing with that you did that incandescent? I'm asking you to sum up five years of work!

Jocelyn:

I'm going to reframe your question slightly because I think that what might be more interesting instead of me naming off projects for folks is to share some first principles of how we work, which could be interesting cause we bring that into every single client engagement that we do. So Indandecent was founded by a man called Niko Canner, a wonderfully brilliant individual, also a mentor in my life. Um, and I've learned so much from him and joined the firm when it was just him and another individual. So I was his second hire. Um, and it was found with the focus of how do we understand, how do, how do we build beautiful businesses? Um, and how might we build this in an intentional way that you're really looking and thinking about the whole system from the start? So that's one of the principles of how we look at things.

Jocelyn:

It's like how do, how does a organization as a system work together? I think oftentimes when consultants like step into a project, their worldview is a very specific task or project that has been carved out for them. When Incandescent steps into a project. We always ask the question, how does this touch our other things and how do we ensure that all of the nodes that it touches works together? So they were designing something that sustains and lasts and not just some designing something for in the moment.So that's one, one of the mindsets and principles are how we bring, um, things in l

Daniel:

Long term thinking!

Jocelyn:

yeah, absolutely. Long term thinking. The second one would be, um, we literally do our work in principles. We will spend a lot of time upfront, um, whether we're designing, uh, how a team comes together, whether we're designing a strategy. A lot of it, a lot of our time that's invested upfront is in what are the principles of how a team would work together, what are the principles of strategy? Um, and once you clarify that, it just unlocks so many things. It has a waterfall effect, um, in terms of just like designing everything else from that. So I think that's another way of how we work. And I think the third is probably a high amount of, um, intentionality and co-creation. So we always designed something with the client. Um, and I think that part of that then hopefully leads to really great work because we're not designing in a vacuum.

Daniel:

Yeah. So a lot of it goes to like, this is, uh, I've, I've just recently been reintroduced to the term prejecting. There's the project and then there's the preject. But it seems like the prejecting phase where you really think about the whole system and the team principles and Co creation, a lot of that just sort of falls, falls into place from that, right?

Jocelyn:

Yep, absolutely. And let me give an example of that, just to bring it to life. So about two and a half years ago, we were approached by three major foundations like the gates foundation, the Hewlett Foundation and Ciaran investment foundation and they came to us were referral and they said, we're interested in designing, we're interested in putting together a conference in the world of adolescent sexual and reproductive health and to bring together designers and global health folks and put them a conference together and on the call with them we set food. That's really interesting, but we're not really just conference folks and event planners. There are many people who do that, but if you're interested in what the representation of what this conference is, which is if you see this as a watershed moment for how design can be brought into the world of adolescent sexual reproductive health, let's talk about that

Jocelyn:

Let's talk about like what this conference is enabling a strategy which hopefully the three foundations would might have or is interested in doing and the three program officers were really interested in having a conversation. They had an Aha moment on the call and said, we want that. You want to think about a larger strategy and how us as funders can come together. And um, that kick started two years worth of work where we did end up designing a convening and a conference. But we also ended up really bringing to life a strategy that, um, was unique to the field. And that was very much co-created with these three program officers through lots of working sessions remotely and we were all in different locations over time. So hopefully that example brings to life some of the things I think I've spoken on before.

Daniel:

It does. And it also like is a wonderful case study of reframing and engaging stakeholders in conversation. Like not starting from a no, but starting from a, Oh, isn't that interesting? Or Oh well why is that important to you?

Jocelyn:

Yeah, it's like my favorite Albert Einstein quote, it's like if I had 60 minutes to save the world, I'll spend 55 minutes defining the problem and five minutes coming up with a solution. So like if you're solving for the wrong problem or if you don't even realize what you actually really want. I think there's a lot of room to think through that together.

Daniel:

Yeah. Well, so I mean this goes to this, this question of like what innovation even means, what problem solving means and it seems like it's really attached to systems thinking for you and at least in your working in Indandecent like defining what the boundary of the problem is is really, really essential. In that sense it almost makes a like a linear or simple definition of innovation really hard I would think.

Jocelyn:

I mean innovation is such a complex topic of which there are many, many definitions. Like you can range anything from Clay Christensen's disruptive innovation definition to um, I don't know, Steven Johnson's book, which I really like... Where good ideas come from. He defines innovation in a different way. And all that really matters is that the organization that you work for and the team that you are on has one single definition of which all of you agree on. And that's clear.

Daniel:

We'll wait, hold a second.

Jocelyn:

There are so many!

Daniel:

Well, let's, let's roll. Let's roll it back. Cause like I'm, my, my brain is remembering Steven Johnson's book... It's like, yeah, I think of it as like, um, that moment in a, I think it's Apollo 13 when they like dump out all these, the bucket of parts that they're like, this is what the astronauts have on board and we need to literally make a square peg connect to a round hole. Like let's figure it out. And it always felt to me like Steven Johnson's definition was the more parts you have, the more pieces you can put together. Um, it's like, it's, it's having a wide ranging mind and absorbing lots of influences.

Jocelyn:

Yeah. I mean, Steven Johnson, I think he talks about, I don't know whether he likes specifically names a concise one sentence definition, but I think he talks about the fact that innovation happens within the bounds of the adjacent possible. In other words, like the realm of possibilities available at any given moment.

Daniel:

Yeah. Right. And that we build on those adjacent possibles. So I guess maybe where I would, I'm backing myself into agreeing with you cause like I was like, Oh, do we all have to have the same definition of innovation? Um, we, we do, in order to try something we have to say like, Oh, here's all these things we could try. I think this would be more, uh, impactful. Right. And that that's a conversation that, that somebody needs to be able to dare I say, facilitate in order for the innovation conversation to proceed.

Jocelyn:

Yup. Agree.

Daniel:

Okay. Glad you agree with me! Well, so then like what, um, what, how, how can I be more provocative and get you to disagree with me? What, like what, what do you, what have you seen in terms of like a leader's ability to, uh, foster, uh, or, or, or what's the opposite of foster disable innovation inside of a team, inside of an organization, in your own experience?

Jocelyn:

Um, I mean, I think the role of a leader, I have a feeling you're going to agree with me, but I think the role of a leader is very simply to create the conditions that, that foster and support innovation. What I mean by that is openness. Um, and to extend invitations out to their teams, whether that's actually literally or even in a physical space or to, uh, lead by example. I think once you create the leading by example and the creation of conditions, there could be many other elements to that. But those two are to me, feels core to what a role of a leader should do.

Daniel:

Yeah. Well, so then this goes to the, the idea that a leader doesn't necessarily have to be authorized.

Jocelyn:

No, not necessarily. Yeah. On that note, I actually think that it really depends on the organization and, and how far the authorization can take you. So for example, if I compare contrast and apple versus Google, um, and does a really wonderful graphic of the number of patents that each organization has filed over the years. And in Google's, it looks like it's all over. You can see sort of like patterns that emerge like literally visually from all over the organization and from our authorization standpoint. Like folks are welcomed and encouraged to explore ideas and invent new things. And you see that through patents that had been filed across the organization versus apples, it's a lot more concentrated because it's a lot more centralized and they have much more of a stage gated process. I would imagine. I'm not to say that one is correct or wrong, it just, again, it depends on the kind of organization and how clear you are. Um, overall on how innovation is being fostered..

Daniel:

Yeah. Well, I mean, how, how, how does a leader maintain that clarity I guess? Is, is, uh, it's an interesting question.

Jocelyn:

That's a great question. Um, maybe they can think about in clarity in terms of creating a discipline and a ritual where, I know it sounds counter intuitive, but I think a lot of, when a lot of times people think about innovation, people think about it as serendipitous moments that come to you. I actually think that innovation comes to you in a much more disciplined way when you actually continuously put sustained effort, um, into exploring x, whatever that x might be. Um, again, very close. I'm gonna bring up Steven Johnson again. But like I think that his ideas around the exploration of the adjacent possible, unless there's sustained probing, you're not going to suddenly one day come up with a huge Aha if you've never thought about that topic. You know, for example, like I have never thought about a topic of um, the reinvention of, of uh, space rocket,

Daniel:

I love that you're struggling to think of something you've never thought of!

Jocelyn:

Right! Like...How to I reinvent a space rocker, I don't know! I've spent hardly any time thinking about that. And so it's highly unlikely that I am sitting here with suddenly come up with something breakthrough right in that area.

Daniel:

Whereas there's people who are literally pounding their heads on that boundary constantly. And of course those are the people who are going to be like, what if we...?

Jocelyn:

Yeah, absolutely. And so as a leader, if you create the space of, Hey, every week we'll have a ritual and this is just a very specific tactical example of I'm going to solicit ideas from the team around the boundaries of building a new space rocket. Then maybe it will have interesting ideas. They eventually come up over time.

Daniel:

So there's like my, there's a couple of things I want to probe on. Like one is we were talking about cadence and tempo of organizations and then you use the term ritual. Uh, and I feel like those two are really intimately related to, I'm literally working, the podcast interview I'm working on right now is all about ritual, uh, and designing rituals for people in it. And it's sort of an interesting thing to think about what the cadence of these, um, innovation rituals, uh, could be like. And, and what are you find are some, I don't know, do are, are there some that you're like, oh, here are the basics. Here are the essentials of innovation rituals. We talked about one, which was like the team.

Jocelyn:

Yeah.

Daniel:

Team alignment conversation. It's like a really powerful ritual for at least making sure that we're all working in this in, in ways that are harmonious, which is really, really valuable.

Jocelyn:

...great question. Well, one ritual that I really like is something that I know, uh, the design gym that we do. And also folks that I you does as well is that they have inspiration trips. Um, that teams would go and say, hey, we're starting something new and here's a new topic that none of us have really thought about before. How, how might we go and get inspired? And if you have that as a ritual when you start, whether it's a new project or even midway when you're stuck, I think that could be a really powerful thing to get unstuck. Um, instead of churning internally. And I really liked that concept. Um, overall to just look externally, whether it's true, take a moment and actually physically be in another location or to learn by having conversations with others that are different.

Daniel:

Yeah. Yeah. I think the, and behind that is this idea of being able to identify what the real need is. I think about it in two ways. One is like, let me go see where else this problem is being solved. Like specifically like, and then there's like, let me see in a broader sense like what other types of problems are similar to this? And, and this could be like, oh, let me, like if, if any other countries willing to share with me how they're doing rocket flight, then maybe I can learn the totality of the problem. But you can also do the thing where like, hey, let's look at what bees do and let's look at what seagulls do and let's look at other types of propulsion. Um, and so I feel like that's like that that definitely goes to the like the breadth of, of inspiration...

Jocelyn:

absolutely.

Daniel:

Well I think, and I guess that's where like, you know, cause what I was excited to talk with you about is like good leadership and bad leadership skills. And it seems like a really, really powerful leadership skill is the willingness and the interest, the curiosity, but also the willingness to sort of like look at the boundary of the possible and say what else is possible.

Jocelyn:

Yep. Absolutely. I also think that a great leadership skill in when leading an innovation team is, um, knowing what bets to place at any given period of time. So one of my favorite quotes is by Edwin Hubble. Um, and he says, and he said this in like a 1930s in his cal tech commencement speech being says that a scientist has a healthy skepticism, suspended judgment and disciplined imagination. I'm going to say those three things again because I love the combination of the three assigned. His has a healthy skepticism, suspended judgment and discipline imagination. And he talks about it specifically in the world science, but I think it's actually really applicable in the world of innovation because he describes a way of being, which is kind of strange. You're supposed to be skeptical, but you're also suppose to suspend your judgment. You're supposed to have the imagination, but this upland because you don't want me to go too wild. And I think that, um, the balance between the three of how do you actually observe ideas that come in, gathering facts, understanding it, testing your expectations against them, um, is I think a quality that I would hope anyone who's leading innovation would have.

Daniel:

Hm. That's really beautiful. I, and when did you absorb that quote that's like, it's seems really close to your heart, which is beautiful.

Jocelyn:

Um, great question. I learned here when I was interim CEO of a biotech company in incandescence portfolio, I'd taken over and I was new to the world of science, also new to being an CEO of a startup. And one of the biggest lessons I took away was that quote is I think that there is such a beautiful orientation in terms of how scientists discover things. Um, it's really their way of being. Um, and my brother actually is a scientist and I see how he thinks about problems and how he approaches them. It just, that combination of when is it the right moment to imagine something really amazing. Because a lot of scientists, they don't know what they're discovering. They're just out there. Yeah. Um, oh, when is it? The moment when you were gathering back a set of data and you're saying, hmm, does data's actually telling me that it's not that great and that is not the direction that I should go in? And just being, and really refining the balance between the three modes whenever you're faced with facts or contradictory pieces of evidence, I think is, um, something that I will always be very grateful for for my time. And as a biotech CEO,

Daniel:

something I can't say at all, I've never done that,

Jocelyn:

hey, one of my other lives, you know.

Daniel:

Well, so this actually goes back to, um, like an organization has got to have multiple bets, right? And they need to have, uh, uh, a roadmap of, you know, crazy bets and less crazy bets. And in a sense like I would, I would integrate that as an innovation leadership skill. 100% is the ability to like, uh, you know, what would you call it? Handicap, um, various items on the roadmap, but then also like to, to, to, to make sure that those bets are spread out.

Jocelyn:

Yup. Have you heard of the ambition matrix before or seen the framework of it? The ambition matrix?

Daniel:

No. Illuminate me!

Jocelyn:

so it's a pretty simple framework. Um, where I think on one of the axes is solutions. The other axis is challenge, but in any case it's basically concentric circles like moving out of core, adjacent and transformational... and where it talks about how do you actually categorize your bets in terms of innovations or core innovation is something that's very different but also very needed comparatively to something transformational. Um, and I think visualizing it that way could be really helpful when facilitating a conversation.

Daniel:

Have, have you utilized that in your, in your own work?

Jocelyn:

Uh, we are actually looking at the application of it at UNICEF right now where we're looking at how we're, how different projects could be core, adjacent and transformational.

Daniel:

Uh, can you, can you say a little bit more about that and maybe tell us a little bit about, uh, the, the role you're, you're doing right now? because I don't know too much about it yet.

Jocelyn:

Sure. I mean, and now we're getting sort of like a little bit into the new ones of like how has variation different in the world of international development versus in the world of the private sector? Um, there, there are different lenses that one might me take. Um, at UNICEF and my role is as a business model specialist on the scale team, the current innovation team is divided into three pillars. We have a futures arm where we look at what are new landscapes and markets are sort of shaping out there. We have a ventures arm which looks at um, deploying capital in frontier technologies. So think block chain, drones, all fall under the ventures arm. And then we have a scale team and that's where I sit. Um, and the way that we think about innovation is like how might we accelerate projects or programs that are demonstrating a lot of practice but need to go to scale and actually spread a lot faster than your current rate of expansion. So those are three different lenses. The very definition obviously of innovation varies depending on the lens that you take. Because like a venture's lens for example, is they're using capital...an now we're getting a little bit more into the strategy side, but were they using capital as an accelerant versus ... we are using actual internal capabilities on the scale team to uh, accelerate innovation.

Daniel:

Huh. That, that's interesting. Well, so like can capital accelerate the innovation itself or can capital accelerate the spread of the putative innovation or learning about whether or not it is in fact effective at scale?

Jocelyn:

Probably both. I think that UNICEF takes the fans that we are a catalyst in an ecosystem and if somebody else is doing something that's really wonderful, like what is the best role that we might be able to play? And in that case it could be the provision of capital. Um, in some other areas like in scale, it might be the deployment of internal capabilities and in the futures team it could be putting out a thought leadership piece on how urban innovation works or, um, one of our other projects is, you know, just to give you an example is, um, what we're calling a 21st century Ger project where we have brought together different partners in the private sector and academia. Um, Arc'Teryx, North Face, University of Pennsylvania to help us redesign a Mongolian Ger, uh, which is those Yurts that, uh, folks live in. It's a materials design project in order to increase an improved installation of these structures that folks live in, which would help with air pollution. Because right now these yurts are not insulated very well and families end up burning a lot of coal internally, which causes a lot of health issues. Um, but if we're able to actually improve the installation, then we're able to, uh, help from a health perspective for all of these different families. But that's a futures project... no one else is doing that in the market, it's pretty niche but much needed in terms of urban innovation. And we have a really fantastic set of partners that are working with us on it.

Daniel:

That's so cool. And, and what that really illustrates for me is like how many levers there are for a change. Like, cause obviously you could also be working on the combustion side, right? Or on the electrical generation side.

Jocelyn:

Absolutely.

Daniel:

And, and doing and it sounds like there's been a decision and it makes a lot of sense actually. Cause this I've known about this problem, it's like I never once thought about it from the installation side, which is really subtle.

Jocelyn:

yeah. Um, there's a really wonderful framework. I feel like I'm throwing a lot of frameworks,

Daniel:

I love frameworks!

Jocelyn:

I figured it's you, so I'll just throw out all the frameworks in the world because they know you love them. Um, if you haven't seen Doblin 10 types of innovation, sure. I would highly recommend that you take a look at that because he talks about, uh, it breaks it down into basically three large categories, configuration which is made out of your profit model and network structure process you're offering. So product performance, product system and you experience, so like your service, your cattle, your brand, your customer engagement, you can innovate along any of these things, um, and have it be a really wonderful type of innovation. Or you could even combine different categories together to actually have something more transformational. So for example, a core... Just use the ambition matrix against this new types of innovation.

Jocelyn:

A core innovation for um, a, let's see, a channel or brand could be a new campaign that they have never thought about before. And it's fundamentally, you know, people, or a brand might choose to use Instagram, which is a channel they may not have ever used before in terms of reaching a completely new segment of audience. Or they could combine different things together, like a profit model combined with product performance combined with customer engagement, which are three different things, which is the example of the Mongolian Ger project that I just gave you, which is how do we actually improve not only on the product or on the distribution on it and involve the Mongolian government to help with the profit model side and then also engage users as part of the understanding from a health care standpoint that burning so much coal, um, would affect your health x ways.

Daniel:

So this really goes back to the, the idea that this can be a discipline and Yup. And, and, and my mind is going back to, like, six sigma. Like here are the types of wastes and yeah, you could also think like, okay, well how can we improve this system? And what you're doing is you're reducing the loss of heat, right. As opposed to focusing on the efficiency of the generation of the heat. That's just really cool. Um, but at the same time, I feel like sometimes these, the, the discipline is not a replacement for somebody seeing potential. Like, so this goes back to like your skill as a business designer, which is like how did you do this? How does one decide if something's got a putative legs? You know, you're like, oh, this has got, this is there's some juice here that's worth the squeeze.

Jocelyn:

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I think that, um, on that particular project, I, I really have to credit the team behind that where it was not only the partnerships team that, so a lot of potential, but it was the futures team and also the head of the scale team that said, oh, there is something really interesting here. I think that this reframing of how we relate to heat could result in something really breakthrough. And we have a really fantastic partner arc'teryx who said, great, let's try it out. What's the worst thing, you know, in the spirit of design thinking, let's try out a prototype and see what happens.

Daniel:

Yeah. Well, so then, yeah, this, this is, we're like building out a, a lovely model of innovation leadership here. Why don't we just like a fearlessness, a willingness to prototype, but I think there's also another piece which, which we're like getting towards which is like storytelling, which is like the ability to communicate to somebody an opportunity that you perceive that maybe they don't perceive.

Jocelyn:

Yep. How do you think that, given that you work so much in the conversation side of things, how do you think that storytelling or facilitation changes with this innovation leadership lens? Does it change or does it not change from a skillset standpoint?

Daniel:

I mean, I think storytelling...you just reverse interviewed me, Jocelyn! I mean I believe that a storytelling is like really fundamental. Like I, my, my love for storytelling and narrative is like one of the reasons why I made a narrative phase in the design gym model. There isn't a narrative phase in ideas model, which I think is actually a major failing. It sort of stands outside of the design thinking process. Whereas I think that it is, it is design thinking is a way of telling stories. Um, I have to think in when we talk, each phrase that we respond to each other with is forming a story and like, what's like, if I say a non-sequitur, it's like we define a non-sequitur as something that's not linked to the rest of the conversation, it doesn't, it doesn't connect or it doesn't relate. So I think, um, great story telling makes things seem obvious, right? Like it, which is sort of like, hey, here's this amazing opportunity and here's this huge problem and we should do something about it right now. Like that's just the fundamental innovation storytelling model, right? That I know, like, I dunno what, what, what's your, what your core story telling you know, framework is like, when you want to make sure that you're communicating that value to someone else. Like what, what you, how do you make sure that rises up from all of the, the, the charts and figures.

Jocelyn:

Yeah. I don't know if I have a storytelling of framework per se, but what I do think storytelling needs to be, are powerful anecdotes that somebody else can tell the story on behalf of you. So you maybe it needs to be memorable enough. Yes. And one of the stories that comes to mind, um, and this is not a client that I've worked with and is more of an anecdote that a colleague of mine has told me is that, um, when he was visiting the headquarters of Alcoa, which is a mining company, um, and he was running late for a meeting and he was in their London offices and arrived like just on time. They made him sit through a 10 minute training video on safety, even though they were in the middle of London. There were no mines around anywhere.

Jocelyn:

They were in professional building. But you have to sit through 10 minutes of training because that was one of their core values, um, that it, that they really wanted to talk about in Alcoa. And the reason for that is when the new, and this is, um, this is definitely a couple years ago when a new CEO of Alcoa came in to take over the company. At the point in time, he decided that the way that he was going to turn around the company was through a message of safety. And so every single call that he did with his earnings, with his leadership team, um, with employees that he would meet, he would ask them, how are you actually talking or implementing safety in your teams? Um, and it's one of the safest places to work right now. Um, which is kind of insane. Well, for a mining company and even more so than than, um, other mining companies that are out there. But then he just really drove that message home by building it into one of the core values of the organization. And that culture is spread through asking that simple question and that people could retell and say, here's how a CEO and a thinks about it. Yeah. It's not really sort of like on the innovation lines, but I think it goes to your storytelling point around how the things get told, um, and emphasized upon.

Daniel:

Yeah, it's that drumbeat. Uh, and whatever you are talking about is what will be on top of people's mind and it's what will happen. It's really cool. What a great story. I'll retell that. I don't think people often think about storytelling, uh, in terms of what will happen after I tell the story. Um, yeah, and designing for retelling is definitely a really important heuristic for, for, you know, if you're going to architect the narrative for sure. simplify. Um, so Jocelyn, we're coming up against our, our, um, our time together this time together. Is there anything else that, um, that we haven't talked about that you think is worth bringing, bringing up, uh, on these topics? Any thread that we've left loose that, that's, that's, uh, sticking out of your mind?

Jocelyn:

Um, the only other thing that comes to mind is the topic on learning, which I feel like could take a whole other session on its own. Um, but I wonder whether there's anything that you would like to unpack around there because I think so much of creating a discipline in ritual for yourself is also paired from a complimentary standpoint of how does one learn and how does one practice? Because that's it goes hand in hand. You can't really create a discipline without actually practicing something. Yeah. Um,

Daniel:

well you talked a little bit about this in terms of like, uh, uh, the organizational capability is part of the innovation, but then inside of that capability are people and people, uh, change at the rate of, uh, people, human conversation developmentally happens. Yeah. I don't know, at a certain pace, um, in which case like, how can you, you know, increase that for an organization? How can you increase that for, for a person. But I think it seems like you're, you're positing and I agree with you that like, um, having some, some discipline around it, having some frameworks about can, can really help people.

Jocelyn:

Yup.

Daniel:

Couldn't agree more. We just tied a bow around that. Yep. How do you feel like you've grown in your own capabilities? Like I feel like you've, you've gone from strength to strength, your increase in your career. How do you stay focused on, on your own growth?

Jocelyn:

great question. I think, um, from a practice standpoint, I think something that I do, and I don't know how intentionally I truly do this, but definitely it's woven into, uh, my day to day is that I practice, I do a lot of distributed practice. I don't know if that's an that's an actual term. I don't know, maybe I just coined that.

Daniel:

Well, it is now!

Jocelyn:

And what I mean by that is, um, I try and make sure, like whenever I learn a new concept or a new skill set that I, I, uh, practice it sporadically and in a very spread out way. So for example, I'm not in the world of design thinking right now and neither am I a designer. There was a period of my life where I was very immersed in it and that was all I was reading and thinking and speaking about on a day to day basis. Now I have a different lens and focus, but I still upkeep my design thinking side, um, to whether that's like sporadic engagements or, um, and I teach stuff like at the d school and that's pretty nice, like longer term cadence to force me to actually think about like new concepts in design or I go to design events or read books and there isn't....it's no way near the intensity's uh, we read it, my intensity a hundred back then.

Jocelyn:

It's like now it's probably about 15 to 20% of my time and attention, but I kind of keep that on the back burner so that I don't actually lose touch of that. Um, and to also make sure that I remember a lot of the things that I've learned because I think it's easy to pick up something and just let it go and never touch it.. And what's learning something if you don't actually retain things that you're interested in?

Daniel:

Yeah. This is like, you are using the forgetting curve to your advantage. This is the forgetting curve. I'll, I'll send you a link. I'll put the link in the show notes. I, well, I interviewed somebody, a behavioral, a guy who works for a behavioral Science Company called Boundless Mind and behavioral change works with the, like if I tell you a number today like your, it has no emotional impact but you may remember it in two or two or three or five or 10 minutes, um, the odds of you remembering it next week and very slim. But if I call you up tomorrow and say, Hey Jocelyn, I'm going to call you tomorrow and I'm going to ask you what the number is, you might remember it. And then if like I call you up in, in like another week and I'm like, Hey, you remember what that number is? You're like, oh yeah, I remember the number. Or at least like what the range is like. So it's about like, just like, like, like the radioactive decay curve.

Jocelyn:

Um, oh, got it. Okay....that's the name of the concept. Not really distributed practice,Daniel:

but I like distributed, I think distributed practice is much better. But yeah, that's like, that's the idea is like you're making sure that you are being intentional about keeping it... As my father would say, a used key is always bright.

Jocelyn:

There you go. Yes. I love that.

Daniel:

Um, the, the fact that I got into a quote from my father means that it's time for us to stop.

Jocelyn:

Um, thank you so much for having me. Really Fun as always.

Daniel:

Yeah, it is. We enjoy our conversations. Likewise. I really appreciate you making the time.