Some people just do things differently. Data analytics expert and advisor Donald Farmer is one of them. Donald works with Barry O’Reilly at Nobody Studios where he serves as the Chief Innovation Officer. With his company TreeHive, Donald advises enterprises and non-profits in emerging economies on innovation, strategy, and the uses of data. His career has taken him around the world and into a huge range of industries, from fish farming, to managing a village nursery, to being the face of business intelligence for Microsoft. He and Barry talk about creating a better world for the people who live in it through technology and innovation.

Different, not Better

“I’ve never been interested in computers for their own sake. I’m really interested in what I can DO with it.” Donald tells Barry, “I see the machine as an intellectual lever that allows me to do more – that’s what’s interesting to me.” This leveraged power is important because there is a lot in the world that needs changing. A guiding principle of Donald’s work is that each individual is unique – humans can’t be aggregated into categories for whom one solution will work all the time. By moving away from the industry standards of incremental change and towards exploring alternative solutions that make things materially better for people, Donald is able to ask how a new company or idea will help change the way things are done. 

A Pivotal Moment

Barry wonders about the choices Donald made that really clarified this perspective of focusing on humans above all else, and Donald shares a story about a fish farming tech startup he developed while doing some consulting work in the Scottish Highlands. He formed a company that productized the data around fish weights and measurements and aided in the complex calculations needed for transporting and exporting and so on. Eventually, they sent the product to Japan, where it was extremely well received, except for one major issue: the computer beeped when a data entry error was made. Now, in Scotland, no one cared about this, but in Japan, the public announcement of errors was intolerable. The context of the technology was different, so the product needed to be. Barry notes that you can execute an algorithm correctly, but when we’re talking about people using a product – the things that make them feel good can vary.

Don’t Solve Problems. Eliminate Barriers to Happiness.

So much of software design starts from trying to understand the user problem. This sounds great, but Donald wants to start with what’s good in someone’s life – their job, their business, etc. The first step in modeling a problem is to model a positive situation, and look at how to make it easier to achieve that. Barry adds that when you’re constantly looking at the problems, you’re often overlooking better approaches: What does great look like? Problems are the obstacles in the way, so let’s design for the aspiration – you’re thinking bigger, you’re creating more options, etc. It’s an interesting way to look at the world – especially in startup space where people are always talking about the problem they’re solving, not the great world you could be creating.

Nobody Studios

The vision of Nobody studios is to rapidly build a very large number of startups, but very differently from the traditional venture model, which is extremely broken. Venture startups are usually built with a financial and technical imperative – no one asks if it’s good, valuable, sustainable, or responsible. This means that a lot of ideas that might not tick those tech and finance boxes never get a chance – and that’s what is so exciting about Nobody – it’s a lighter touch focused on human, social, and personal values.

Go to BarryO'reilly.com for full show notes.

Resources:

Donald Farmer: Twitter | LinkedIn

TreeHive Strategy

Nobody Studios

Bill Gates is a fan of The Innovation Show, hosted by this week’s guest, Aidan McCullen. It’s also one of Barry O’Reilly’s favorites, because of the meaningful conversations Aidan has with guests, and because of Aidan himself, whose lifelong journey of reinvention is inspiring. Aidan played professional rugby for 10 years for the 2 most successful teams in Europe in Ireland and France before transitioning into the business world. He is an acclaimed consultant and advisor, with expertise in team transformation, innovation and team culture and leadership. He has also developed and delivered modules in Emerging Technology Trends at Trinity College. He and Barry talk about his recent book, Undisruptable: A Mindset of Permanent Reinvention for Individuals, Organisations and Life, as well as the mental models he learned and unlearned that helped him become who he is today.

Moments of Change

“Difficult moments are always growth points,” Aidan remarks. “They’re inflection points where you can reframe them… as milestones rather than millstones.” Success is more about pushing through challenges and working hard to accomplish your goals, and less about how much talent you are born with, he tells Barry. The secret is to just keep going, and give it your all: “When I get out of this I don't want to ever turn back and go, I should have done, I could have done… I never wanted to walk away with something and have a regret.”

Discipline Is the Magic Word

Aidan succeeds in rugby and in life because he just keeps showing up. “Discipline is like this force that you can use and point it at anything to use it for positive,” he tells Barry. When you do the work, Barry agrees, you set yourself up to get the best out of yourself and the situation. It’s what separates people who excel from those who are just ‘winging it’.

Lessons to Unlearn

Barry asks Aidan to share some lessons he had to learn and unlearn. Some of the lessons Aidan shares include:

“There's always a high and a low at the same time. They're always coming in succession. The trick is to enjoy the highs but know there's a low coming, so prepare for it. And when you're in the low, understand that there's a high coming again [so] you'll get through this.”

For every Batman, there has to be a Joker. The anti-hero gives contrast, which you now have to manage. Someone has to play that role so you can push through your boundary. Seeing them from this viewpoint spares you from feeling angry at them; it also helps you use that energy to move on with your goal.

Don’t fall into the coconut trap. Let go of things that no longer serve you. Don’t over-identify with your jersey - you’re just its custodian for a time then you have to pass it along to the next person. 

Looking Ahead

Aidan is always learning and finishing up a course in executive coaching to “add some discipline” to his existing executive coaching practice. His own workshop, The Permanent Reinvention workshop, is doing very well, he tells Barry. He is humbled to see the impact his course is having on how teams communicate and collaborate. He also coaches senior leaders on thought leadership writing and executive presence. Another project he is passionate about is Edge School, an idea he conceived and is developing in collaboration with Alexandra College and the Learnovate Centre in Trinity College. Edge School will give students the opportunity to gain real world experience in emerging fields such as AI Ethics, cybersecurity and communication skills. This is not about making money, he tells Barry; it’s a legacy that he hopes that the school will use to create a template which they can share with other schools.

For full show notes, go to BarryO'Reilly.com

Resources

Aidan McCullen on LinkedIn | Twitter 

Undisruptable: A Mindset of Permanent Reinvention for Individuals, Organisations and Life

The Innovation Show

Soumeya Benghanem is a product management leader at VMWare and the creator and curator of a thriving product manager and builders community on Clubhouse. Soumeya is an inspiring member of the product industry – she shows up with passion, resilience, and adaptability to everything she puts her hand to. She and Barry discuss the different kinds of cultures you run into in the tech industry, how to handle mistakes – your own and those of your team, and the value of community.

What’s Different about Start-Up World

Soumeya got her start at large companies and in the start-up world – this is important because what works in large companies and in smaller ones are not always the same. There are systems and values that are constant, but how they are applied in different cultures is different. The amount of risk you can take in a startup compared to a large established business is quite different, for example. Barry concurs, and notes that one of the classic traps you can fall into is that as a consultant, you can coach and guide teams towards solutions, and people will be able to take that and run with it. In a startup, you often need to get right in there and do it.

Making Other People’s Mistakes

It is very hard to make mistakes that you know other people have already figured out the answers to. Soumaya thinks that it is important to make them anyway, to keep the wheels moving, and to make sure you’re really learning. Barry points out that there are so many ways to do things the right way, and you just need to commit to one. It is also possible to make the same mistake over and over again without ever knowing what you’re doing. Barry notes that this is quite a common problem and shares his own repeated mistake – and the solutions he has developed to make sure there is better visibility and collaboration on small teams. 

Team Retrospectives

Soumeya’s team has a meeting called the Weekly Retro where they talk about what has gone on, what has been great, and what’s been difficult. This is incredible for creating awareness and taking advantage of the team memory of the big picture. Barry accuses Soumeya of mind-reading and talks about the Retrospective meetings that his start-up studio has instituted as well – something he considers the most powerful meeting you can have. They are open spaces to talk about concerns, and issues and successes, especially when working on new and innovative projects. Soumeya and Barry dig into the nuts and bolts of running retrospectives, and different ways they’ve proven themselves useful.

Being the Squeaky Wheel

Asking for help, when you’re in an ecosystem that’s willing to provide it, is a point of strength. It may be counterintuitive, but the teams you can trust the most are the ones who are open about saying “we’re having difficulties, here’s what’s happening and what we’re doing.” Soumeya goes on to note that even during planning, you often don’t see any disagreement or idea conflict – and that is an indication to look for two things: are people able to prepare in advance and think through different scenarios? And that there might be unhealthy team dynamics that need closer examination. Soumeya talks about the XP (Extreme Programming) methodology she uses to address these problems.

Looking to the Future

Soumeya is looking forward to making the jump from achieving product and market fit to scaling – and getting through the awkward and painful canyon that is often in between them. It is this gap that Soumeya finds fascinating right now, and wants to work in.

Read full show notes at BarryOReilly.com

Resources:

Soumeya Benghanem on Twitter | LinkedIn

VMWare

Clubhouse

“If there's one thing we love on this show,” Barry O’Reilly tells this week’s guest, “is people just speaking from their heart and what really matters and what they believe in; and I can't think of anyone who better exemplifies that than you.” JeVon McCormick's story is certainly a testament to the value of believing in yourself and taking consistent action despite the odds. JeVon persevered through every setback, vowing to never stop until he achieved his goals. He and Barry talk about his inspirational journey and how to keep going even when the decks are stacked against you.

Possibility Opens Your Eyes

You can only aspire to what you see and know is possible, JeVon tells Barry. He shares that a drive through an affluent community as a child was the beginning of his mindset shift. “It showed me possibility, and that was very key,” he comments. A big problem in lower economic communities is that many people there don’t know all the options that exist. “When I was shown possibility, that was game-changing for me; even though I didn't know how I was going to get there, it showed me possibility, and it was up to me to go figure out [how to] make that happen,” he says. [Listen from 2:00]

Be Consistent

In a society of instant gratification, the importance of consistency is often downplayed. However, JeVon tells Barry, what helped him improve his circumstances and his life overall was his commitment to never stop trying. “The biggest thing was I was always consistent,” he remarks. He kept learning from his mistakes and improving on his strengths. He posits, “I truly believe you only fail if you stop trying.” Barry adds that society rarely talks about the hard part of consistency: getting back up after getting knocked down, or holding on when it seems more sensible to let go. [Listen from 8:35]

How Conscious Capitalism Can Change Lives

Barry sees JeVon’s work in conscious capitalism as a great juncture of his ethics, mindset, and entrepreneurialism. He asks him what inspired him to get involved in the space. Society demonizes capitalism, JeVon replies, but it has tremendous power to change lives: “Capitalism has provided me with the life that I have right now, and I truly believe that if more people from the lower economic communities that I come from knew the power of capitalism, that it could also change their lives.” Conscious capitalism is about taking capitalism to the communities where it can really make a positive impact. He shares an example about how retailers like Whole Foods could help change generational poverty by opening stores in lower-income neighborhoods. More than just creating jobs in these communities, they would be creating possibility, so younger generations would now have more to aspire to. [Listen from 22:20]

Looking Ahead

JeVon is excited about doing his part in making a racially just society. He explains why he now goes by JeVon instead of JT. “I made the decision for every kid named RayVontae, Martavias, Lawanda, Lacresha; and I did it with the intent - in the belief - that one day when they hit corporate America, that maybe they can work next to a JeVon and not just a JT.” He’s about creating real, tangible change: not just attracting diverse persons, but creating a culture of belonging so everyone feels welcome and respected in the workplace. Barry comments that we have to call out inequality, talk about it, so we can start the change. [Listen from 33:55]

Find complete show notes at BarryO'Reilly.com

Resources

JeVon McCormick Website | LinkedIn | Twitter 

Charles Marohn Jr - Strong Towns: A Bottom-Up Revolution to Rebuild American Prosperity

Casey Rosenthal is the co-founder and CEO of Verica and the former Engineering Manager of the Chaos Engineering team at Netflix. He is an author and thought leader in chaos engineering, “a discipline of experimenting with software systems in production in order to build confidence in the system's capability to withstand unexpected and turbulent conditions.” Casey was an early engineer and champion of chaos engineering, bringing together people from companies like Netflix, Google, Facebook, and Amazon to explore the field. In this week’s Unlearned Podcast, Casey and Barry O’Reilly talk about the chaos engineering domain and how to apply its principles to build high-performance teams and businesses.

Origins of Chaos Engineering

Netflix’s migration to the cloud, in particular the sudden outages and service disruptions that would occur, spurred the creation of a program they called Chaos Monkey. “So Chaos Monkey would for each service inside Netflix, every day it would randomly choose an instance and turn it off,” Casey tells Barry. The underlying principle was that once engineers knew a problem existed, they would fix it. “It changed their behavior by aligning the organization around the business problem that needed to be solved,” he remarks. He shares the early Chaos Community Days, bringing colleagues together from leading tech companies to build the discipline they would call chaos engineering.

Navigating Complexity

Chaos engineering assumes that you already have complexity in your system. “This is engineering to navigate it, or to surface it so that you’re aware of it,” Casey explains. Once you’re aware a problem exists, you can take steps to fix it. It’s a proactive approach to improving availability and security, which improves your system overall. He shares an example of how United Health Group was able to discover a system vulnerability they didn’t know they had, and allocate appropriate resources to strengthen their position. Barry comments, “The thing that’s very contrary with this is that it's not about people trying to predict the future, it's about them having the data to understand how the systems are performing and then taking action based on that.”

Relearning Leadership

“Unlearning management is relearning leadership”, Barry says. He asks Casey to share lessons he learned that he is bringing to his new company. Managers are creatures of habit, and that holds them back, Casey responds. “Most of us think we're making decisions when we're not; we're just following habit.” He tries to formulate his own management principles and strategies in his company, instead of following traditional ideas. He believes a manager’s job is to ensure their team has the context they need to make the right decisions. His litmus test is this: if your employees can explain why what they’re working on is the most important thing they could be working on for the company right now, then you are a successful manager.

Read the full show notes at BarryOReilly.com

Resources

Casey Rosenthal on LinkedIn | Twitter 

Verica.io

Sejal Thakkar is on a mission to educate and empower others to create a world where everyone is treated with dignity and respect. She is a former employment law attorney, a TEDx speaker, and the founder and Chief Civility Officer at TrainXtra, where she helps her clients create positive, safe, and respectful workplaces through customized training and coaching. She also recently joined Nobody Studios as Chief Culture Officer. Barry O’Reilly welcomes her on this week’s Unlearned Podcast to share her story of unlearning how to shift her own biases and beliefs.

Check Your Biases

It’s difficult to acknowledge your biases because they often portray a vision of you that is the opposite of what you believe of yourself. Sejal had to check her own biases in order to do her job as an attorney, representing persons accused of discrimination and harassment. “I had to do a lot of my own inner work to recognize my own bias so that I can do my job because there's no way that I can represent people unless I checked my own biases,” she remarks. Our biases often stem from our experiences, and they don’t make us bad people. The key is to slow down and recognize when we’re letting our unconscious biases affect our decisions and use strategies to combat them. She has changed her language: she no longer refers to them as biases, but beliefs. She shares an online tool listeners can use to discover their unconscious beliefs. She also advises leaders to have an accountability partner who will tell them honestly if they’re letting unconscious beliefs influence their decisions.

Unlearning Preconceived Notions

Practice active listening, Sejal advises, and you’ll start picking up on your own preconceptions and judgments. Barry reminds listeners that we’re all programmed to have automatic responses in some situations. However, we can reprogram our brains once we become aware of our negative hidden beliefs. He and Sejal discuss their own blind spots and the importance of being humble and willing to learn and grow. “I've spent my whole life up to this point learning, and now the rest of life is unlearning,” Sejal comments. It’s about taking small steps in the right direction; eventually “everything else will start to roll”. “The ability to adapt is so powerful,” Barry agrees; “...just do small steps and learn your way through it.”

Where Culture Starts 

“Your culture starts the moment you hire the first person,” Sejal tells her clients. Building a healthy, respectful, and diverse culture means maximizing the skills, talents, and contributions of every employee. You have to know what your employees want: ask them and listen to their feedback. “If you're too afraid to know about what problems are going on, how can you fix them?” she argues. Nurture an environment where people feel safe to speak up so that you can deal with problems before they become a lawsuit.

Looking Ahead

Sejal is excited about being part of Nobody Studios and helping to build the company culture from the ground up. “The key is the learning is never gonna stop,” she tells Barry, “so I'm excited about the fact that I get to learn about and challenge myself in ways that I never have.”

Read full show notes at Barry O'Reilly.com

Resources

Sejal Thakkar on LinkedIn | Twitter 

Implicit Association Test

Rich Sheridan, world-renowned entrepreneur and bestselling author of Joy, Inc. and Chief Joy Officer, is on a mission to inspire organizations to create joyful cultures. He is the CEO and Chief Storyteller at Menlo Innovations, recognized by Inc Magazine as the Most Joyful Company in America. People from all over the world have visited Menlo to see firsthand the unique culture and systems at the company. Barry O’Reilly welcomes Rich to this week’s Unlearn Podcast to talk about how leaders can inspire joy at work.

Listen to Your Intuition

Rich’s experience at “one of the highest-flying entrepreneurial tech firms” motivated him to listen to his instincts. He tells Barry that they were so far removed from what their customers wanted, that he knew instinctively they would not survive. His intuition proved correct. “They weren’t learning anything,” he remarks; “...they were only applying what they learned from years past.” He vowed to do things differently in his own company so that they didn’t make the same mistake. “All of us have that little place in our guts when something goes wrong… I just learned to pay attention to that signal,” he tells Barry.

Look For the Opportunity

When things aren’t going well, that’s where the opportunity is. Many systems exist because they helped you get to where you are, but “there are bits that calcify”, Barry says; leaders need to be true to themselves and see where changes need to be made. Rich points out that when things are going wrong, the leader must become a student again. He recommends going to books first: read the first 30-40 pages, and if it resonates with you, keep reading. You may discover a new idea or an opportunity that will help your company grow.

Experiments Over Meetings

“Let’s try it before we defeat it.” This simple change of approach has inspired dramatic change in many organizations, Rich says. Ideas need a chance to be proven before being discarded, because only then would you really know if they work. “I think that word ‘try’ is probably one of the most underutilized but most important behaviors for companies to do innovation,” Barry argues. “Take an approach that says take action versus take a meeting,” Rich agrees. He and Barry discuss the benefits of doing small experiments. When you create a culture of experimentation, your systems will always evolve. The leader’s job is to foster that culture by driving out fear: “My role as a leader [is] to pump fear out of the room,” Rich emphasizes. He shares how his daughter inspired him to unlearn leading through fear. It takes self-awareness and a good dose of humility to acknowledge where you’re going wrong and to course correct, Barry comments. He tells Rich that he has learned to be more intentional about who he chooses as role models because our own leadership behavior is conditioned by our models.

Looking Ahead

The biggest challenge of the pandemic is loneliness and isolation, Rich says. However, coming back together will likely be as difficult as the separation was, and it will take a while to get over the anxiety. He believes we will continue to embrace the new ways of working we learned during the pandemic. He and Barry agree that we see each other as whole persons now, because of this experience. As such, we will continue to be more empathetic and see each other’s humanity, building deeper relationships and a stronger culture. The past year has also reinvigorated his entrepreneurial spirit, Rich says.

Full show notes can be found at BarryO'Reilly.com

Resources

Rich Sheridan on LinkedIn | Twitter 

Rich Sheridan books

Menlo Innovations

Chatter by Ethan Cross

Margaret Molloy and Barry O’Reilly connected by following each other’s podcasts and work. Margaret grew up in Ireland, and attended Harvard in the US. She currently serves as Chief Marketing Officer at Siegel+Gale, a leading brand strategy and design experience agency. She is a recognized leader in diversity and inclusion, and has built a global community around her How CMOs Commit podcast, as well the popular panels she regularly convenes.

Simple is Smart

“I study topics deeply to understand them profoundly, to be able to communicate them simply,” Margaret tells Barry. Being able to distill a brand to its essence and then communicate that in clear, simple language is very compelling, she argues. COVID-19 has only amplified the value of simplicity as it removes “cognitive tax” during this stressful time. “I believe the buying public will reward brands who truly appreciate the opportunity to remove that cognitive tax... Simplicity is just another way to say removing friction,” she remarks. Barry adds, “When you can create these simple, clearly understood messages, that's what connects with people.”

Illuminating Blind Spots

It’s an act of courage and grace for someone to show you your blind spot. Understandably, it’s common for your first reaction to be defensiveness. This was certainly Margaret’s initial reaction to being told by an attendee that her gender-equal panel did not reflect ‘The Future of Branding’ as the name promised since it was not racially diverse. The experience challenged her view of herself and showed her that race was her blind spot. “Shortly after that I caught myself, and I realized I had just received probably the most constructive feedback I had ever received in my career,” she says. She had to unlearn her mental model of being color blind: she needed to be color brave. “Ever since that day I have worked to build my network and extend myself to make sure that I have diverse representation on our panels,” she points out. Interestingly, it was because someone else illuminated his own blindspot, and he learned from the experience, that the attendee felt inspired to pay it forward to Margaret.

From Defensiveness to Curiosity

It takes courage to listen to and accept feedback that’s “contrary to what you believe to be true of yourself”, Barry comments. He asks Margaret how she is able to get past defensiveness in those moments. “The heart and soul of it is curiosity, and what I've learned over the years is that curiosity and judgment can't coexist,” she responds. Taking a posture of curiosity helps you move from judging yourself or defending your position, to growth. It’s really hard to take criticism in areas where you feel accomplished, she says, but being curious helps. “The older I've become, I've actually become more curious... The unlearning for me is that you don't have to have all the answers. In fact, your impact is much more a function of your ability to frame good questions.”

Looking Ahead

Margaret believes that the evolution of brand as customer experience will continue to play out in the future. An aspect of this evolution will include how companies demonstrate their purpose and how customers discern their authenticity. She believes that forward-thinking marketers will shift focus from buyers to users in order to build community and ultimately, customer loyalty. She advises listeners to “look out for companies who build products out loud…” Barry agrees that the traditional paradigm of secrecy about upcoming product features and releases should be changed. It’s one of the reasons they founded Nobody Studios, he says.

Read the full show notes at BarryO'Reilly.com

Resources

Margaret Molloy on LinkedIn | Twitter

Siegel+Gale

How CMOs Commit with Margaret Molloy

Mark McNally has seen the upside and downside of new company ventures. He has been involved in 14 startups, as a senior executive or CEO each one building on the lessons he learned from the one before. Barry O’Reilly describes him as a “radical thinker, venture innovator, founder and Chief Nobody at Nobody Studios.” Mark’s bold vision to create 100 compelling companies over the next 5 years was so intriguing to Barry that he jumped at the opportunity to join Mark on the boldest bet of their careers. In this week’s show, they discuss the vision for Nobody Studios, as well as their lessons learned and unlearned over the years as entrepreneurs. And why now is the moment for the missing piece of the venture ecosystem .

The Bold Vision For Venture 

“...What we're about to do next is launch a venture studio together with an amazing collection of diverse innovators, entrepreneurs, and creators who want to change the way new companies are created, sourced, explored, and scaled to sustainable businesses,” Barry tells listeners. “But not only that, we're going to be the first company to make venture investing accessible to the masses by crowdfunding the company to enable anyone to own equity in the studio and every single company we create in the future forever.” 

Missing out on making simultaneously exploring companies of the future frustrated Mark. “I decided I really wanted to create a vehicle that allowed people to be more involved and more aggressive in making bets on things that aligned with their vision of the future,” the result is Nobody Studios.

People First

Nobody Studios’ founding principle is people first. If you have ideas and talent, no matter where you are in the world, the company invites you to join them on their journey. “I'm a big believer that if we focus on building up people around us, then our journey will be just fine,” Mark remarks. 

Making people part of something bigger is in the company’s DNA, he tells listeners. Transparency is another of their key tenets. “We're giving them [people who get involved] this kind of really open access to how this grows,” Mark says. Another powerful principle is learning from one another: “As much as we're mentoring people that recognize their gaps, we're also letting them mentor us.” To achieve their goal of building 100 companies in five years, Barry says that they have to build a system to get ideas to market as quickly as possible. He is excited about the unique incentive structure, where you’re rewarded for your contribution across the company’s portfolio.

Why Venture Capital Needs Venture Studios

Our purpose at Nobody Studios will be to de-risk pre-seed stage business ideas. We’ll do this by minimizing the time, speed, and capital involved in validating truly repeatable, scalable business models before significant venture investment. 

Venture capital investors usually wish they could:

Stop an investment;

Split one company into multiple companies;

Merge several companies into one company; 

Pause companies when the timing isn’t right;

Optimize talent by putting players in their best positions over time.

Making Wealth Creation Accessible To All

For Nobody Studios to accomplish the goal of 100 companies, we’ll need a tremendous amount of talent, capital, influence, and ideas. 

There's a whole array of opportunities for you to get involved:

Becoming part of the effort in some capacity, whether part-time or freelance, joining Nobody Studios itself, or one of the companies that we create. 

Investing. We're actually going to be the first venture company to offer equity in the studio through crowdfunding. 

The potential upside is pretty fantastic for anyone involved, because the equity will be spread across the whole portfolio of businesses. 

Meaning you wouldn’t be betting on just one company—you’ll have a stake in every company we create, forever! 

Resources

NobodyStudios.com 

Nobody Studios on LinkedIn | Instagram | Facebook

Kai Haley is the Head of UX Methods and Practice at Google and the founder and leader of the Google Sprint Leadership Academy. She is an expert at leading change, creating movements and creating high performance teams. Barry O’Reilly says of her, “She was one of the first people to embrace design sprints at Google and helped formulate that practice, codify it, and has coached hundreds - if not thousands - of people how to use these tools to identify product visions, drive successful user-centered products, and build cultures of innovation all across Google and outside.” She joins Barry in this week’s show to talk about how design sprints started, lessons she unlearned along the way, and the importance of designing for people first.

Looking Outside

Look for patterns and inspiration outside of your field, Kai advises. “I do gravitate towards looking outside of wherever I'm focused right now to how are people solving things over here, or what inspiration could we gain from something else?” she says. Her undergraduate study in anthropology helps her to keep the human and cultural connection top of mind in any design project. “When I'm looking outside of the discipline of design I'm keeping my eyes on the people and who this is for and who are we trying to solve these problems for,” she tells Barry.

Origin of Design Sprints

Creating a high performance cross-functional team requires a shared language and a shared idea of success. Getting design sprints off the ground meant that Kai and her team needed to bring together elements of design thinking, user research, business methods and psychology. The term ‘sprint’ was used to get the engineering team to buy in, as they were already used to ‘agile sprints’. Kai tells Barry that the first sprints were just four hours long, while other people were running longer sessions. Starting small gained her buy-in as everyone praised how impactful the exercise was, and asked for more. Her manager soon asked her to have one every two weeks. “In a very small and quick way I was able to get what we needed as a team, which was shared vocabulary, shared understanding of success, ideation, and then we could choose a direction together and then send people off to start executing against it,” she comments.

Key Lessons

Barry asks Kai to share the key lessons from her design sprint journey. She explains that every design sprint would be different, so when she trains people she doesn’t use a rigid framework. Instead she wants them to focus on the goal to accomplish; she wants them to use the tools she teaches and modify them for their unique circumstances. “How are you going to get alignment and buy in before you even get people into the room? And then once you get them into the room, how do you make sure you don't waste their time?” she asks leaders to consider. 

She and Barry discuss other key lessons, including:

It takes attention and focus to help people learn how to learn.

Nurture a culture that encourages people to try things.

Think about the humans you are designing for. Kai advocates for an inclusive co-creation approach.

“Movements are really important because they give people something to believe in.”

Share a common vision and metric of success.

Start where you can show the impact.

Focus on the people who want to change.

Read the full show notes at BarryOReilly.com

Resources

Kai Haley on LinkedIn | Twitter