#16: IDEO's Tom Kelley is Design Thinking's ultimate disciple, he makes the case as to why.

hey welcome to high resolution my name is Bobby Ghosh and I'm Jarrod or on dude oh my god today big one I'm trying not to fan boy my boy bad boy fan boy okay today we've got an amazing guest you know this series has 25 masters of design this is one of our 25 masters so what you guys don't know it's about seven of the Masters that we've spoken to we're trained by this guy is that right yep look at that number right it's right oh my goodness who are speaking to that's Tom Kelly he's a partner here at idea he's going to tell us what innovation actually is how to build your creative confidence and how to Shepherd the next generation of design leaders how many times you guys get to sit down with someone like Tom Kelly hi what we'll be right back they could stick around we're gonna come right back to this episode for decades design has impacted how we live now it's beginning to shape how we work here at IBM design thinking has given us a new framework for teaming for co-creating with our clients and users it's helping us make decisions faster and it's keeping humans at the center of everything we do [Music] Bob thanks for joining us sure my pleasure so first question what's one thing about design that's clear to you that you don't think is clear to other people yeah one thing my design is I think it's I think it's really helpful to think of it as a mindset as opposed to a thing right as soon as you think of design as a thing then you get into the word designer as in designer light switch designer coffee cup right and and so it's this thing and it boxes design into a pretty narrow space or is if you think of as a mindset or even a tool set but a kind of a mindset that you use to focus on any kind of problem or challenge in the world then wow it opens up designed to do a lot more than you know making nice coffee cups well see you're a partner I do I do is known for innovating it's an innovation is kind of a big standard term that we use around here I wonder what you think innovation is cuz I hear this a lot the industry companies say they innovate all the time and I feel like they faint it or other than not yes so what what is innovation here yeah so innovation as a word perhaps has gotten overused it certainly applied to things that our innovation in my opinion but so you know what is it I mean it's really at its fundamental levels its fresh idea doesn't have to be brand new to the world in the history of the world those are rare fresh idea plus implementation talking about it doesn't work you go to actually do something that adds value right if you got those three things the the freshness the implementation and the value then that's pretty much an innovation mmm I you know in 2007 and I book was released in 2005 I believe ten phases of innovation in the book that you wrote by the way if you guys haven't read please do I read this in 2007 okay it has the first time after I read your book it was the first time I truly started understanding the word innovation right beyond the dictionary term and how you can actually bring it into the workplace nice now for people that don't know the ten phases of innovation I want to quickly go through the ten and then I would question for you okay so here that you're the ten phases of innovation you've got the learning phases you've got the anthropologist the experimenter the cross pollinator got the organizing phases you've got the hurdler the collaborator and the director then you've got the building phases the building phases are the experienced architect the set designer the caregiver and the storyteller and I'm curious which base you think you are so this thing about phases there's not a one-to-one comparison or whatever we can talk about that in a moment if you like but as far as which is my favorite phase I would say definitely it's the anthropologist okay and the reason I say that is I kind of have the Facebook convert on this one you know the Anthropology came to I do and by anthropology I mean design research I mean human factors research right but it came to us kind of all at once in 1991 and at the time I'm kind of a little I admit skeptical about it because prior to that you know our work was much more engineering focused right we bring in these people from the you know the soft sciences you know so it's a social science anthropology sociology behavior science things like that and I said to my brother I'm not proud of this but I did say to my brother at the time you know we're from small town Ohio and I said this anthropology I said it's kind of California don't you think by which at the time as a small town Ohio boy I meant you know of questionable value you know like best discussed in a hot tub or something right and so I was skeptical and and I it took me a little while to come around but now I flipped 180 I mean I completely believe this is the essence of what makes Design Thinking work is you start with humans of course you've got great technologies of course you've got business goals but you start with human to say okay we got some humans in the system here and they could be our employees and it could be the general public they could be students in a school they could be customers or clients right and say okay what is going to make their day what is going to get them promoted what is going to take you know disarm their fears so that they can move forward and and you start from there and it unlocks all kinds of opportunities and so because of that I fell in love with the anthropologist role and I still to this day think it is a very very valuable role here at IDEO but also in the world at large what does an anthropologists do an idea on a budget well um first of all you know we have a few people who actually have a degree in anthropology but it's not required and in fact pretty much to to work on a project at I do you need this skill set you need the ability to carefully observe to listen well to people to get insights from from personal observation right but what do they do a lot of what they do in the early phases what they do is they create you know they find they discover a new insight that that takes us on off in a new direction right and so our engineers for example and and and other types of designers are very very good problem solvers but kind of know what problem to solve right and in the early phase of project this role called the anthropologist right regardless of the background of the person practicing that role points us to a new problem like hey look at that ooh there's a person struggling or there's a person who doesn't understand well there's a person's trying their best and still is getting confused let's solve that problem right and so it takes us in this new direction you know later in the project sometimes they're the spokesperson for the humans in the system you know you you you you observe these humans you know Rebecca Maria you know John and they say well I'm not sure Maria would like this you see how this would confuse Maria or this would make her worry right and so you you keep the voice of those humans either active through the whole project so the role definitely sounds very interesting and I can obviously see the value of doing that research in front so that you know what problem you're trying to solve right but I'm now period after the anthropologist has gone off done all this research and discovered a new direction right how are they presenting their findings to the rest of the team well this is a really important question it is absolutely best if you don't have to present it what we discovered early on is if we go up even if we take pictures and video clips and things like that you go back to the experts right the people have been immersed in the industry for decades and and they distrust your data oh no you didn't see that well here's a picture oh yeah but right and you get into this whole he-said she-said kind of thing and so it is much much better if you take them along right I mean of course you can't take all of them but we take people on yo and AG Lafley with CEO of Procter & Gamble you know mega billion-dollar company AG went with us we took AG out he came to California we took him out as an individual we watched a single customer you know a six-year-old boy brushes teeth right because then they see it's like yeah we did we did see that right and so so you have sidestepped that whole issue of course you can't take everyone along and there's where the power of storytelling comes in and here's where if you do video cut but when you do that what we found in a consultancy role is we've still always got somebody from the client team who says yep I was there salt with my own eyes this is what's happening but in in lieu of that though because there are companies where I mean when tom says hey you know Procter & Gamble folks come with us into the field there if there's a lot of gravity to that right right cuz you've got the namesake with good idea there are companies that can't do that per se and so they need to resort to not pulling people along but maybe videotaping it or something right right and so what we found throughout our work is if you there's data and then there's humans right and so you need to present data but if you personify it right and so we'll take pictures of our the personally observe that sometimes call them user right and then we often will blow them up life-size what we found is in sometimes in projects we will we will take a full-size photo of them and we'll cut it out on a piece of foam core and they will be literally with us in the room through the project in you know in is a foam core cut out and then you go start to say what's car all going to say you know Carl's not going to like that idea you know Carl's not going to know where to begin or and so it keeps people on in the process right and you know when we stumbled onto this idea you know a few decades ago about human centered design a great thing about it is everyone can agree on humans right you've got somebody who's you know got a technical background you've got somebody who's you know more of a business person got all these things and they all have their points of view but we we do share one thing in common which is humans right and so you can kind of rally people around the kind of human side of the innovation process more so than almost any individual discipline for for teams that are very small there may be perhaps even only one designer yes right yes does not have an anthropologist degree what principles and behaviors can they bring to their team today to actually start playing a role sure well first of all the idea about the anthropology degree 99.9% of ideas do not have an anthropology degree right yes when in fact you know I I was hanging around several years ago with a very prominent anthropologist that guy's name is grant McCracken and he's probably the most famous anthropologist in in Canada where he is from he was on Oprah show as an anthropologist right he's well known in his field and he said something to me that I've like taken to heart and told many people at idea which is he says hey come this Anthropology stuff is way too important to be left to the anthropologist right and so we are all practicing this you know my background is in political science but I'm practicing the anthropology role all the time and so there's no issue about can you afford an anthropologist everybody can do this and I've written three books that I hope would help people get they have at least some of the tools to do it and so absent the anthropology degree you practice this role in a bunch of ways one is you figure out who to observe but really important is you go out into the world without an agenda you don't say oh I bet we're going to see a bunch of people doing this because if you say that before you go yeah yeah you'll see that you'll keep watching until you see that right but but instead of that you say okay here's a group of customers that's important to us Millennials right every financial services company in the world apparently because it sends a lot of time overseas is curious almost confused about how to speak to Millennials right and so you can't go out in the world saying okay let's watch the Millennials you'll watch they'll do this but you say okay here's some humans we care about let's see how they behave right and so if you can do that and if you pay close attention and then if you kind of synthesize what you see pretty well then then you start to get to those insights you talked about anthropologists having the art of beginner's mind right they look at something and they could see the same thing a thousand times for the first time right that really is an art how do you train that side so that they're probably startups right now that want to try just going on a deal and observing people I find there two problems think the first is you've got an inherent personal bias so you walk in with some paradigm shins before you watch anything yes but then the second problem which I might actually might argue is a harder problem to solve which is how do you know what to look for and what to listen for and how do you know that you've actually found something worth paying attention to sure so there's a few questions there let me start at the beginning about the beginner's mind part right and this is this is easy for beginners right so we talk to our you know our new team members come on it idea we'll ask them their impressions of things because they may have beginner's mind by definition this is hard for the experts right and so when we're dealing with seeing your people will even just take this on directly and say look you're the expert right you know more about your company know more about your industry than we are ever going to learn and for purpose of today you want to be a good anthropologist today we need you to set aside some of what you know and there's actually an expression that we use sometimes for this it's not it's not coined by ideal we borrowed it from a presser at Stanford who in turn borrowed it from a stand-up comedian from a long time ago but it's still quite a useful mental you know phenomenon and it's the opposite of deja vu right deja vu is when you've been there if the feeling you've been there before we want the that and so we call it booyah day and booyah day is when you're in a place you've been a million times before like the lobby of your own building or the front page of your website or things like that and you start to see with fresh eyes you see it the way a child would see it or a first time customer would see it and you look for that new thing oh my God look at that you know why do we ask him that question you know why do we make this so difficult right and if you can practice that a little bit then you start to see the things and what we've learned from experience is first practice it on other people's businesses right because you've got a lot of baggage about your own because you have the curse of knowledge about your own business so you kind of exercise that muscles looking at other people's business then you say okay now let's do it oh it's like aha look at that right and and yes it sometimes reveals opportunities really hidden in plain sight so in your second book well technically your third book the one you wrote with your brother oh yeah that would definitely be the third one yeah that's right I have created one leaflets these books take like one to two year chunks of your life so you don't believe I'm at all and this was number three yes but I loved the book and in the book you and your brother argue in favor of the fact that you argue for two things first that we lose our creativity or the notion that we are all creative at a younger age and then you argue for the fact that creativity is a science and something that you can you can bring back if you practice Jeff what are some ways that you found are good ways to bring creativity back to people on the business side not people that are considered creative but people that are on the business sure yeah it's there in everybody you know in my evidentiary proof that would be kindergarten right like everybody's in creative like me me I'm creative right and so in business people you're not actually kind of bestowing creativity on you just kind of unburying it right and so there's lots of things you can do one of our favorite things to do is to get people to realize that they're already having creative thoughts right so if you ask was kind of a three-step process or whatever first ask people when when during a day might you be most prone to having a creative thought and if they're not sure of that then what we do is we have to be mindful for like a three or four day period of like when did you have creative thoughts and that they fall into patterns you know in the shower I think number one answered that and I know why no email in the shower no you know no Angry Birds no distraction basically and so your mind gets the wander right in the shower during my commute want to go for a walk whatever so so we ask them to first discover that time and then the second tip is be super protective of that time right if it's during my commute and say I don't say I say have a car commute then don't listen to the radio certainly don't look to listen to you know audiobooks during that community because that time is super precious right so protective right and the third element is capture ideas during that time right and so there's the issue in the shower of course right you're in the shower how am I going to capture it well you know my brother David by the way for me it's not in the shower its first five minutes of the day but if you're in the shower do what my brother does he's got a whiteboard marker in there idea come to him in the shower he's got a he's got a glass wall and a shower right sit down it's erasable what the heck right and so the great thing about that is it makes people mindful of the fact that you know what I do have creative ideas it's just that the short-term memory my brain is always dusting and cleaning so I'm getting rid of those creative ideas and so at the end of the day they say what was your most creative idea today it's like no didn't have any what you did you you forgot about them and so if you get in this capture mode all the time and then you don't look at them all the time but we would suggest once a week or once every two weeks then sit down with whatever capture mechanism you've used and look at all of your ideas that someone would be terrible some of them you won't be able to aid your handwriting by the way if you write them by hand the way I do right but then you realize wow I did have a few good ideas and I'm going to do this one right and so it kind of disarms a little of that like oh no I can't I don't I don't come up create it I guess everybody does it's like everybody dreams but our brains want to forget our dream like five minutes after you wake up in the morning most people have forgotten their dreams it was there you have these wildly creative dreams right if you care about your dreams you keep a dream girl people do that but I care about my creative ideas and so I keep the creativity log I'm curious with you what happens like between childhoods I can't in the garden every year and wants to draw everyone has ideas and adult it like what it right is it a bunch of things going on I think the single biggest thing is you start caring too much what other people think right it tends to happen around the 4th grade in kids in American school system because everybody's a joyful artist in kindergarten and then suddenly you realize some people are better than you like who cares some people are better you know because they probably cuz they draw more they spend more time on it right but you start caring more and then there are some physiological things around that same age this part of your brain the prefrontal cortex starts to mature it actually grows in size and it's kind of the executive center of the brain like I'm in charge here and the nice thing for teachers in public schools is the it controlled behavior a little more right kids start to act a little bit more quote like adults but the bad part is it can tend to suppress creativity this is why my creative time is first thing in the morning right think about it at night your creative brain just runs free you fly to the neighborhood you show up at meetings without your clothes on you know like crazy stuff haven't your dream and then for me and other people may have different experience for me I feel like that part of my brain that that executive center takes a little while to click in in the morning it's kind of like a teenager slow to wake up right and the the creative part of my brain has a little bit of momentum still going for my dreams right and so that's I think part of what happens to kids as they grow up I look so good and focusing on non-designers now right so you know they've created that space for themselves they've been a bit more mindful right they've captured their idea right now they're in a meeting wrench a designer yes and you know this goes back to caring too much about other people think everyone around you can draw better than you right what are some things that they can do to increase their confidence or an ideation and actually share those I serve again well well maybe we should come back to the drawing topic because it seems an important one but the this question but what can you do so here's the thing so you're in the room with a bunch of people who are maybe degreed professionals in design right and so maybe find that a little intimidating here's we're doing observation is really helpful but if you are working on some of the Millennials and over the weekend you spend time hanging out with them or observing them or whatever the designers have their skill set but you are the world expert on your own experience so now you are bringing data to the meeting right you say well I'm not sure about that but just this weekend I was hanging out over at you know so-and-so and here's what I noticed right no one can know one can argue that point you saw it with your own eyes right and so you get to speak from your personal experience you know on a topic that is relevant to the topic being discussed and so that's one thing where you you bring your own unique knowledge because it was some first-hand experience and so that's that's one element of it it sounds like I mean honestly that we had like the designers as well it is a confidence issue sometimes someone in the ring has their own idea but she doesn't feel like they can share it well steam is conferencing let's go back to the drawing thing because it is the kind of lightning rod for this when people say to me oh I'm not creative the first thing they say after that is yeah I can't draw at all right and it's like who cares you can't draw of course you can't draw because you you're not taking drawing lessons you can't play the piano every either like who thinks that you can play Mozart concerto without taking piano lessons nobody right so drawings the same way it's a it's a skill you you you practice it had this experience with two of our interns summer where they both said to me they're reluctant to go to the white board and and draw something it's like oh really tell me about this there's these two interests they both just finished reading the same book and they both said the same thing and the first one was a Harvard MBA was between years of his MBA and he said well he said I'm more of a business guy says I don't really have the drawing talents of these people that I do and so when I go I'm afraid that people will judge my you know kindergarten drawing skills it's like oh okay yes that I've heard that before but the one that blew me away was the second guy says yeah I go to school arts you know in art school Art Center in Pasadena California he said I know that if you give me time I can draw something good enough to appear on the cover of a magazine but when I go to the board I got like ten seconds to draw you know because people going to be impatient he says I don't read I don't want to be judged by my ten second drawing I want to I want to have a chance to do you know my actual drawing abilities it's like oh my god you're both reluctant to go to the board one guy who's not good enough one guy is too good like let go of it right and so one of the things we try to do it I do and there's there's whole you know books on this out there is let go of the whole drawing as a as something you judged on and just focus on drawing as a way to communicate and anybody can do the drawing as a way to communicate it sounds like anyone I da ting or sitting in a room brainstorming sharing ideas it sounds like everyone needs to be complicit in this idea that it's okay that we make mistakes it's okay that we might not have the answers right do you I think there's another muscle that businesses that the making mistakes muscle is like a muscle that businesses don't flex enough or exercise enough I wonder how else you might tell people in a business to lower their bar lower their expectations sure in order to actually push forward or breakthrough on new ideas well of course you know we talk a lot about failure and failure still sucks don't get me wrong either like no one actually once torial but I mean if you can from the beginning structure things as experiments and do your failures as quickly and as cheaply as possible which means more failures early on and fewer failures later on I think that's a that's a good skill to have it's a good practice to have right and as a unless you're the CEO there is this skill that is quite useful which is structuring everything as an experiment right even for CEOs this comes in handy but imagine two scenarios one where I run into my boss's office as a boss boss I got the greatest idea ever right and from a storytelling standpoint by the way never say oh this is the funniest story you ever write because right away people say well I'll be the judge so scenario one you go in and say I got the best idea ever right scenario two turns out to be really effective for career management impression management you know failure management is hey boss like to propose the following experiment right it's an experiment already you've reduced the cost of failure right it's an experiment of course experiments are supposed to fail some of the time right and so that more than anything else I think that's part of the key to it but of course when you're when you're setting up the experiment what you want to do it is make it as quick and cheap as possible so in order to do that you have to just test one thing you're not trying to win over a customer and press our people a distribution channel and get my boss promoted and though this is it's like okay boss here's the experiment here is exactly what we're going to test with this experiment like try to screen everything on and as soon as you make the experiment narrow enough then it gets a lot cheaper and a lot easier to to structure right and so we're always kind of test kind of where's wherever we can one thing at a time for the stakeholder who is overly fixated on the big ideas though right okay guys this sprint or this month we need to go big we need to go right how do you actually pitch them on this path with small experiments and small questions like especially if they think it's cute too little well up so the two little I mean the purpose of the experiment is not to do little the purpose is to do many small things quickly to do something big and so my best illustration of that you know here we are sitting in our steel case chair so it makes me of these chair yes so makes me think of a story that I heard from Steelcase a long time ago so back when Jim Hackett was CEO Steelcase he wanted to make a big change he wanted to take his senior executive team out of their private offices and bring them out into the book we call it open air leadership community and you know use the products they design right they're the biggest maker of system furniture in the world right but they were in these offices with the closed doors and things like that so he says to me Tom at that point I got two options right and by the way he's the CEO he has the authority to make any changing one and still in the 21st century better to use small experiments than even your your authority of CEO right so because option number one I can do big change I can say to my senior management team ok I'm blowing up your old offices you're going to move out into those open spaces and you're going to like it you could say something like that right he said have seven direct reports I'd have also have another one at a time come into my office probably spend one spend an hour telling me why they were special why this couldn't work right big change always scary office space especially always scary always political don't know why right so big change scary he says that's not what I did he said I got my leadership team together and said I proposed the following experiment night already people are calling it right I propose the following experiment he says I will keep your offices intact see that that's not scary right but for the next six months he said I'd like to you to join me so he's in on it join me in the open air leadership community and he says all I ask of you is you give this an honest try for the next six months so also not hard right and then an important thing especially you know at that level he said and my promise to you so Jim is this guy of deep deep integrity everybody takes his word he says my promise to you is that what's not working six months from now we will address he never said and you get to go back their office he didn't but he said we will address right so he says do you think you could give this an honest try for the six months every single person gave it an honest try zero people came into his office complaining explaining why his conduce the idea stuck they did give it to the offices they are still probably 20 years later now they're still in the open-air leadership community right and so we made big change I mean uh getting the senior executive team of a large corporation in America to give up their offices and move anywhere let alone into you know open air spaces that's a big change he did it with little experiments it seems like one of the key pieces there is how Ukraine frame it well frame it's really important and this is why I'm saying always framing thing is as an experiment really helps it has to genuinely be an experiment right you can't you get like lie about it right like here's an experiment we're going to blow up the oh yes that wouldn't work but um but yeah and so big change could happen but you you do a kind of one little experiment at a time well when you deploy these small experiments my guess is you're probably looking for small wins along the way yes because that compounds into the bigger chip what a small wins look like for I guess it depends on the experiment what is what a small wins look like for non non designer people like what kind of stuff are they looking for well you know a small win is is you know kind of define in advance what it's going to be you know sometimes it's we just get people to show up for our event right you know we do a lot of work in developing countries right and just getting people to show up when you're going to explain about the germ theory of disease or you're going to talk about reproductive rights or things like that you know if you if you decide in advance that's that's a win then that's a win right but what would do so typically in a in a design thinking oriented project we'll start with something very small that that we're going to try to experiment with one quick change or something like that and and once we go through it we'll say okay how is that for you right and people say well that was kind of fun wasn't it and then a really important thing we'll do and we try to get their boss in the room when we ask this question we say well what would cause not to do this it this way all the time and then they start talking about rule well there's a rule that you can't do that without a supervisor there's a rule and sometimes the bosses will say well we don't really have that rule right and so you're kind of unlocking the innovation capacity of the of the organization but it's nice to you know to have people show up your event to have a small change that people like and things like that come here should every decision-maker and stakeholder on a project be part of the design process and depending on your aunt waters give that actor great sure I don't think a design decision is different than any other decision that gets made right I'm not trying to hold design up on a pedestal saying it is better than all things I would say you know design thinking is an alternative to or a supplement to analytical thinking which you know the MBA schools have been so good at teaching the last hundred years and so yes you want you want any project team to be collaborative and you want to involve the the right decision makers because in large companies you need you need to line up a series of decision makers but not design more so than other things and so as soon as you tell me all decision makers then I'm thinking oh it's going to grind to a halt right so yeah you don't have to win over every single person in the company and around what number I know this is going to vary from comparable company in project project but round with number do we start getting into the territory of like diminishing because number of people of people on a team job well the size of the team of course depends on the complexity of the the project right I just watched the hidden figures movie last night and NASA if you're sending you know humans into space big big big team right and I do our typical project team is three to six people right you can make change with a pretty small group but of course it depends on the you know the complexity of the task at hand for decades design has impacted how we live now it's beginning to shape how we work here at IBM design thinking has given us a new framework for teaming for co-creating with our clients and users it's helping us make decisions faster and it's keeping humans at the center of everything we do of course we're inspired by our design program which is over 60 years old but today IBM employs more than 1300 professional designers and we've certified more than 60,000 IBM errs in the practices of IBM design thinking the result diverse teams working more closely than ever with our clients their users and our partners to create modern solutions that provide differentiated human centered outcomes to the world we'd love to share this story more closely with you and I hope to see you soon at one of our IBM Studios worldwide we'd also like to thank our friends at envision for their support envision is the world's leading product design platform powering the future of digital design through their understanding of the importance of collaboration they're used by some of the most innovative companies in the world like Facebook Capital One Netflix and Airbnb I work with remote teams all the time and I found that keeping a healthy dialogue is really important without it building strong work relationships gets a lot harder and that leads to poor collaboration I've also found that prototypes are a great way for me to show my full vision for a design and this helps cut down a lot of back-and-forth envision makes all of this really easy you can rapidly prototype your designs and collaborate across every stage of your project taking your ideas from concept to code it simplifies virtually every aspect of the design workflow it makes collaboration a core part of the process for everyone from project managers to designers developers and writers teams that build digital products are at a serious advantage when they use envision suite of prototyping and collaboration tools it's the best way to get everyone on board visit envision ascom slash high resolution for three months free what role do you think personal projects and labors of love play in the lives of busy people with 95 jobs sure you know in the creative confidence book we talk about a job a career in a calling right the job is something to do for money you know career is where you're kind of climbing a ladder you know because that's an achievement level been put out in front of you but a calling is when you just truly love your work right and you you would do it for free except you know it's nice that people pay you and things like that and you think about it when you're not at work and it's just you know it's it's really challenging interesting to you right but not everybody is lucky enough to have found their calling at work and so I think it's important for people to have passion in their lives somewhere right and what we found it is sometimes when people have passion some other part of their life it spills over you know we have people who you know make videos you know on the weekend there's a guy in our Tokyo office who's a filmmaker who someday wants to go off and do that full-time but in the meantime Wow we love that he's spending his spare time developing a skill that we do actually get to use that idea even if he's not you know we didn't hire him as a videographer cinematographer but when we need that capability on the project he's great at it but even if it's not work-related I think people need something that really engages them and so that kind of passion whether it's you know collecting cars or watching movies or you know playing bridge or whatever it is that people do in their spare time I think I think that's you know it makes them have richer lives I want to dive deeper into the job career call here like that's a beautifully laid out YES on what are some of the questions people can ask themselves to identify which one they're in right now see I think a lot of people know when they're en I have I have two relatives probably best not to identify them directly both jobs both jobs in fact they've both recently quit their jobs on this basis where they hate it they drag themselves to work you know they they work for the weekends right and so people in the who have jobs I grew up in manufacturing jobs right I grew up the factory town Akron Ohio and the factory job I've worked in a number of factories and it tends to you one minute after you leave work you're done with it you know it doesn't it doesn't follow you at home at all and so those are pretty easy to to tell I guess it we're blurs a tiny bit is between the career in the calling right the the the career can be quite engaging it's like well I'm an assistant vice president if I put in three more years and I get good firms and I'll be a vice president and that um that is that kind of challenge some people really latch on to that and that's great but if you step back from it you say well but do you love it well I love the achievement of it right you're you're uh you're kind of clicking off goals and checking off boxes and things like that the people's are calling pretty much know it to write a calling and you know and I feel that way about you know my work at IDEO is like wow this is fun like wow this is interesting and you know are there hard days sure there's hard days when you're under deadlines and things like that but I I no kidding I would say more than once a week I'll just kind of look around and think wow how lucky am I to be right here right now you know I grew up in this yes with you know course with you right you know I grew up in this little town where no one was expected to reach escape velocity velocity right and you know everything was pointed towards you know in my hometown we should go to Akron University should work for the tire companies right and that's what that's what people did and and you know nothing against the people who did that but then I look at like wow and I get to do this and I get to work it out here and I get to speak you know in 40 different countries around the world like wow this is fun right and so it's also fun to work around people who feel the same way right and so in and as I talk about a creative comedy book it's not about the job itself it's about the fit between you and the job my wife was a flight attendant for United Airlines her if you've met any United Airlines flight attendant they don't all love their job let me just say you if you've flown you probably talked to somebody who doesn't love their job right my wife loved that job loved it I got to see her or just one time on Christmas Day I'm sold to San Francisco I was a passenger she was a flight attendant Ecija in action and she loved it right it was a calling for her so it's not that that job is a calling it's that it was a calling for her and so my wish for everybody I have two kids in their 20s my wish for them is that they find and I think at least one of them has already found that kind of job that is a that is a calling you know one of the one of the things that we've seen in our series is we are we're interviewing 25 guests you're one of them of course that's six to seven of these guests started their careers right here right that idea and I mean I can't help but knows a pattern that there are some really strong people that leave here they go out and they do impactful things that actually change the world right I'm way what are the principles that I do emphasizes with these designers that you guys have you know either a farm of amazing people well I mean one of the founding principles of I do you know my brother started the firm in 1978 was one a place where you can work with your friends right in fact he said with your best friends and and so I think that is a part of it you know because even if you have a have a great job or a career or a calling if you work with people too you don't trust or you don't think value that's a problem right yeah and so if you work in this this great nurturing environment that we're where people want you to succeed in fact one of our no key principles value is called make others successful right in that environment where everybody's kind of rooting for you everybody's wanting you to succeed as of course they're trying to succeed themselves I think that that really helps and so we go through this process where kind of throughout the year but especially at this time of year we have a conversation we call looking forward it's like what what do you want to do this year what how you going to build your skill set how you going to grow as a person if you kind of focus on growth all the time it does it does help you kind of dream a little bigger yeah right and we're always thinking about like how you're going to have maximum impact on the world narrow so when your brother David Kelly pitched the d.school yesterday right you mentioned that universities were client set up for deep thinking yes a particular subject area but that's the time thinking and the best ideas come from abroad make sure right so they're two questions here the first one is what how do you define the difference between deep thinking and brought like what your that actually looked like was interested and the second one is what do you think standards saw in design term that lets them investing so heavily in nature so two questions the deep versus broad so deep and I'll just describe the way David said it in an academic setting because I think it deploys almost directly to the business world yeah what David said in academia is you know places like Stanford or Berkeley or any of the great universities of the world deep is you know Nobel laureate quality researchers PhDs and scientists and you know people with with great minds in in any field going deeper and deeper in the fields and knowledge and and he said look we should not stop doing that that is very very important to the future of the world right but what he said it's Stanford and I think it applies in the business world as well if there are problems in the world today that are not going to be solved by going deeper they're going to be so big going broader getting that business person in the room with a lawyer in the room with the design or maybe an anthropologist and you know somebody from the social sciences right because these complex messy problems are so multifaceted that no single discipline can solve them right and so it's the same in the business world right of course you want to have if you're a tech based going to be one of the best engineers in Computer Sciences you can find and if you're going to win in the marketplace you also have to have great story colors you also have to have people with a human focus that can adapt those technologies to to to apply right and so I think it's that it's that balance you know the Stanford he was not saying instead of you saying in addition to the deep work that happens what what were the conversations exactly it actually led to them because I can imagine that that translate to some degree what people can say within their own businesses sure um I actually don't know what was in the mind of you know president of Stanford and in the the Dean of the engineering school that have it but I imagine it as an experiment it was not an expensive experiment for Stanford when they expressed their tremendous support for the d.school idea he also said to David and you have to raise your own money and so David did he found this founder of sa P named Hasso Plattner and it technically everyone calls it the d.school including haas oh by the way but it's technically called the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford right and so with David leading it and collecting other leaders for the b-school around it's not like she you know does it single-handedly then or now providing leadership and providing the funding it was easy for Stanford to say yes in the short term right in the long term it has worked out to be a tremendous success for Stanford and their studied by universities all over the world and they entertain visitors like every day I think at the d.school right but yes I can imagine them thinking of like hey this is a low-cost experiment for us let's try it but what do you think is the biggest idea that I do has shed light on for how people or businesses create and design well I think the biggest idea is actually design thinking right I believe we well coined the term you know we just in the world of now the world doesn't necessarily believe it it's not we're not trying to hold it tight it doesn't it's not important to us that the world give us credit for that you know we never tried to service market or anything like that yeah we right and people do try to do that all the time right and so it doesn't matter it's like when you do something good in the world like you you know say if you do something for your kids no it's not important to your kids be grateful for that because it's not the nature of your relationship with your kids but it's like it's really nice to know you know yourself that you've done and so I feel that way about design thing I mean it has spread across the world and and people are using it in all kinds of settings right in academic settings and you know social innovation and things like that and so to put that out there it's been it's really been just fun to watch it is a bit of a double-edged sword though because I feel like a lot of the companies that we've spoken to definitely adopted the concepts of Design Thinking some of them even call it design thinking here of course right it's strong brand yeah but it feels like to a degree even though it's not fully been realized across all businesses today that it is getting commoditized and I actually wonder sure you agree with that but more importantly I wonder what is the next thing that I do is working on that will help change the way we build and create sure um come on okay Zoey I wouldn't say that necessarily I mean I think it's got a very good long-run still ahead of it but um but it is true that some people are practicing it better than others I mean it's like any idea you put in a lot in the world some people going to going to say they're doing it and they're really doing it and they're doing it really well and then other people are going to say they're doing it and they're either not doing a goal or they're doing it poorly that I mean that's the nature you can't there's no there's no getting around that you either if you if you want to have that kind of perfect world where things like you're destined to did be disappointed right but where's I do the words I do innovating next door well I mean we're really really interesting social innovation as you may know we have a non-profit now called I do org it's been out there for five years it's been doing really just stuff we're so proud of out there in the world and so I think I think there's still a lot of room in that space you know our CEO Tim Brown goes to the Davos World Economic Forum every year and has for a decade and so there are these really big thorny social problems you know I could name any of a dozen but you recidivism in the US prison system proof Wow really really hard far far beyond you know design you know in the narrow definition of his wife said at the beginning that it's a mindset it's certainly not an object anymore I think that there are the most complex problems in the world still will benefit from the application design thinking and there's of course millions of those still to be addressed and so I think there's plenty of runway left to design do you think still the big thing it's still the big idea well um it's it's just like saying what's the madam sorry I'm pretty sure is going with us forever right and so yeah so it's not necessarily all the process I mean we're looking at things we're looking at how do you blend big data with design thinking how do you blend a behavior of science with design thinking or things like that and so the the methodology itself will evolve but the the types of problems to be addressed by design thinking and its future descendants are infinite and so I'm not worried about running out of problems to apply this to so one question that came up a lot have we announced who you're going to interview you yes and this is much on a lighter side yeah is what this I do right on all those postings about every picture there's audio up yes well I mean it's that the great thing about opposed to notice it's unintimidating right if you give me like a blank notebook it's like oh my god what am i doing right where's the the kind of increment of you know amount of work to fill the post note it's really it's not intimidating at all we have this this thing that we use with business people sometimes called draw your partner right in which we force them it takes a little cajoling but they actually always have fun with it in the end you do draw the person next to you but really important start with a post-it note because if you if you're drawing it's only going to be this big it's way it's already less intimidating right and so if you just think of a post-it note is like a pixel right it's just it's small it's not intimidating I oh I can feel one of those I have enough of an idea to fill a post-it note as opposed to a blank canvas or a blank whiteboard or whatever and so every idea that we have ends up on a post-it note in one form or another I think I do is probably keeping three em afloat yes on a per capita basis have you got precedent usage a very high and you know we've spoke about some awesome principles various conversations welcome to a beginner's mind our money comes anthropology small experiments cetera but I'm curious what skills are responsibilities do you think designers overlooking today that might be costing them credibility in your businesses well you know we've always said that that the when you're creating something new in the world you know in the business world you've always got to keep in mind these three factors you know the the technical factors you know is it is it technically feasible the business factors is it viable and then the the human factors is it is it desirable right and and so as design thinkers we're always approaching things from the human side but the thing I think the designers had need to keep remembering is the circles are approximately the same size it's not like the human circle is the only one important circle it's in ten with the others the reason we emphasize it so much is that that the MBA programs of the last hundred years and our client organization for the most part are already so good at the other two and so the third circle maybe needs a little more emphasis but to just remember that those other two that when we come to market or when an idea regardless of whether it's in the profit for profit world but not for profit world gets launched on the world it's got to have all three even in a non profit world it's got to have those business backers it's got to be able to the ideas got to be able to sustain itself out in the world so this idea of kind of being on equal footing not more important than the business people not more important than than technology that that all three have to be kind of held together at one time I think that's that's worth remembering for people Tommy reached out to our community and we have five final questions for you let me know through these as quickly as you'd like okay but this is what's burning up in their mind right now okay which community is this that we're talking to design community okay so your digital design product is certain that community okay that's a good question by the way thank you can asking that okay so the first question is how should design designers explain the role of design to people in their company sure I mean this is where storytelling comes into play right that it's best to tell the story of design in a way that that relates to the person who's listening right so if you're talking to a business person tell them a story about how design at Intuit you know made the difference between you know the products and being not so great and this big breaks it into they call it design for delight right about how design for them equalled profits right because you're speaking to a person who's interested in in in profit is like top of top of mind for them but when you're speaking to someone in the nonprofit community right speak about impact you know and and use examples of design change behavior or design you know change the quality of life for people in the world and so I think if you you know kind of meet your listener halfway and speak in the language that they value that that's that's really useful the second question is have you noticed any patterns on how design teams are organized when consumption patterns on how design teams are organized um no I mean the pattern that I've noticed the most in my 30 years in audio is that designers get invited to the table now which we didn't you know when I started I do it felt like we were stuck at the kids table right in fact I had a Japanese client many years ago sakakibara son who said oh I get it the stuff you guys do it's kind of the optional fun part of us was like oh no fun right now so we were the kids table a long time ago and now you know the designers are in the boardrooms and conference rooms of you know like companies across America in the world and so that's the biggest change that I have noticed so there are a lot of people listening right now that our either the only designer in their company or one of three designers in their company if you're on a team that small how do you convince the business of the value of design right so I think the biggest thing you can do is marshal evidentiary proof right is talk about the IBM success talk about you know into the success of design for divided into it talk about how design has created these new products and services you know and so that so that people understand that it's not designed for designs sake it's designed in pursuit of the larger goals of the organization the other thing if you're the only designers the designer in an organization I would caution people not to hold it too close right if the others in the organization think that you are there like sole protector that you want to own everything about designing organization then it becomes your idea but as soon as you invite people in it's like hey this design things not so magical why don't you help me or hey well why don't we do it like a book club on this you know my favorite design book or what I would wear you know you're you're kind of inviting people in you know in my speaking world I get to meet all these interesting people and I'm a great film lover and so I was really excited a few years ago I got to meet a Francis Ford Coppola and so I asked the organizers event we were in Buenos Aires Argentina and I said hey could I get like five minutes alone for Coppola with Coppola and they said well let me see what I could do right and sure enough I got my five minutes alone with Francis Ford Coppola and one of the things he said it was just the whole thing was magical for me but the one of the things he said is absolutely stuck with me that I think would be applicable in that designer situation you just described he says Tommy says you know you work with creative people he said so do I he said one thing I've learned over the years when you're working with creative people you don't tell him what to do he says you invite them to the party mmm right and so this idea of the designer starting something really interesting and then inviting people to party it's not my idea like I'm the design guru it's like hey we've got something really interesting going on around design and design thinking in our work once you come along where you know why don't you join me for the next meeting you can see how this how this works so invite them to the party question is how should designers measure and present the results of their work they're in business sure um the the measurement if I said is you go back to the metrics that the listener cares about right and different listeners care about different things but but how should they present it present it you know use all the power of storytelling you have and as much as possible bring those those users those customers into the room and as I mentioned we sometimes physically bring them the room in the form of you know cardboard cutout but when you're presenting so if you say you go into a meeting in which seven different people are presenting their ideas you can pretty much be sure that six of the people are going to have PowerPoint right if you show up with a story that alone can make a difference right let me tell you a story about a customer of ours in Chicago named Rebecca you last month Rebecca was trying to you know and you're starting about Rebecca that meeting is over everyone's forgotten the fifty-two PowerPoint bullets everybody leaves the meeting remembering Rebecca right so got to tell the right story make better make sure that the Rebecca story is compelling but if you're a designer and you want to have impact tell a story involving humans it makes a difference we could end with this one last final question care of it as the function and purpose of design continues to evolve what are some roles and methodologies that will emerge over the next five years oh sure this lot there's a lot coming as I said I think there's data science and the the challenge for designers will be to to collaborate well with the data scientists we call this at IDEO hybrid insights in which you take the data and humanize it or you start from humans and and and you know find data that that applies to it and so we've had some success in doing it and so that's data science we're very very interested in behavioral science you know it's the social science of behavior change when you're doing big things out in the world you know the ideals mission in the world is disproportionate impact of design you want to do big things in the world it almost always involves behavior change I mean historically it had to do with you know getting customers to buy something that's a certain kind of behavior but we're trying to get people to be true to their own values out in the world whether it's about their diet and exercise plan or whether it's it's about you know drinking the safe water instead of the unsafe water right and so combining Design Thinking with behavioral science we think is important and so it's nothing but necessarily the change in design thing itself so much as the the blending of it with other Sciences other methodologies out in the world and traffic thank you so much talking today sure thanks fun hey you made it to the end congratulations thanks for watching the episode I really really hope you liked it if you did like it please leave us a review on the iTunes Store and by the way if you have any questions that came up because of the content that we covered with our guests go on YouTube go on Twitter you can tweet us you can leave us a comment we'll get back to you we'll help you as much as possible at high res podcast that's the the screen name or the handle for Twitter for Instagram for Facebook find us talk to us we want to converse with you we're not going to leave here by the way without also thanking our friends at Sorrell video they've been an amazing partner on this entire project the sural video is a creative studio based out of Portland Oregon they've helped creative communities tell stories for over ten years they've done advertisements behind the scene footage and documentaries for companies like Google slack xoxo festival Adobe Intel they're incredible they've traveled with us through the entire country documentary stories with our guests that's incredible thank you so much sir oh listen if your startup looking to elevate your product if you're a big company looking to humanize your brand if you're someone in the creative community you just want to tell a story you've got to check out the team at several video it's Sorrell video.com se8 RLE video comm check out our friends at Sur oh thank you so much guys you guys winning a ball in this project [Music]

Channel: High Resolution

Views: 167,796

Rating: 4.9558601 out of 5

Keywords: tom kelley, david kelley, ideo, creative confidence, the art of innovation, ten faces of innovation, design, design thinking, process, strategy, leadership, ui, ux, business, podcast, education, startup, startups, university, design school, bobby ghoshal, jared erondu

Id: L1pBhHjGKvI

Length: 63min 33sec (3813 seconds)

Published: Sun May 28 2017