Ep#28: Navigating Organizational Tensions with Design Thinker Capabilities

Dani: 0:07

Welcome to the Design Thinker podcast, where we explore the theory and practice of design, hosted by me, donnie, and.

Peter: 0:16

Peter.

Dani: 0:21

Hello Peter, how are you?

Peter: 0:23

I'm great Thanks, Dani. How are you?

Dani: 0:25

I am good. What are we talking about today?

Peter: 0:29

Today we are going to talk about navigating organizational tensions with design thinking.

Dani: 0:35

Yes, so this is something that has come through both my research but also, you know, the consulting work I've done in organizations. So oftentimes things emerge in the research data and then I find myself working in organizations where I get to actually go. Oh my God, this is what I'm seeing in the research is playing out right in front of me, right? So what I've found are three tensions that I see over and over and over happening in organizations. We can talk about that, and then perhaps the discussion could be around how, how do we use design thinking capabilities to navigate those tensions?

Peter: 1:22

yeah, yeah, I like the sign of that a lot, um, although I'm not really sure what you're talking about. I mean, I've worked in a number of different organizations and there's never been any tension anywhere. I mean, everything just works so smoothly and harmoniously and um, so you must have, you know, either had good or bad luck, depending on your point of view well, I I'd like to know these organizations because, you know, I want to go work there.

Peter: 1:48

Obviously I'm being. I mean, I've been told that sometimes it's difficult to know when I'm joking, teasing, being sarcastic or facetious just because of the tone of my voice, but to be clear to you and you listener, that I was being extremely sarcastic. There's something I think tension is everywhere. There's a tension without getting too deep. There's tension everywhere. And, yeah, there's no such thing as the perfect organization. The great organizations kind of either harness those tensions or navigate them or, at the very least, hide them from their customers, so that what you see is not the kind of manifestation of internal tensions forced upon you. Even organizations with amazing customer experiences or products, I'm sure, definitely have tensions within them. So, yeah, looking forward to this conversation and hearing some of that, I love that when research turns out to be real, imagine that. Imagine, imagine real data turning out to be a true reflection of reality. What are these three tensions then, danny? What are the three?

Dani: 2:56

well, I wonder before we jump into what they are. Do we need to define what is? You know, we usually we usually geek out on definition. So we don't need to ask what is tension? You know, we usually geek out on definitions.

Peter: 3:06

Well, you don't need to ask me twice to do that. Tension or navigation, or both, or organization. We've got three words navigating, organizational tension.

Dani: 3:14

I think we kind of dive in to understand what do we mean by tension.

Peter: 3:19

Okay, who's quickest to Google today?

Dani: 3:22

Lots of definitions that have come up, so maybe we look at a couple of definitions. Okay. So the first one that came up is on my Google search was the Cambridge Dictionary, which defines tension as a feeling of nervousness before an important or difficult event. Okay, a feeling of fear or anger between two groups of people who do not trust each other. Then merriam-webster dictionary, inner striving, unrest or imbalance, often with physiological indications of emotion, a state of latent hostility or opposition between individuals or groups.

Peter: 4:11

Now here's an interesting one A balance maintained in an artistic work between opposing forces or elements. I think that's the goal. It's slightly different but similar definitions. So attention as a noun, the state of being stretched tight, so that could be muscles, or a strained state or condition resulting from forces acting in opposition to each other. Or a second noun definition is mental or emotional strain, so a strained political or social state or relationship. Or emotional strain, so a strained political or social state or relationship, or a relationship between ideas or qualities with conflicting demands or implications.

Peter: 4:50

Some of these are directly relevant to, I guess, working in an organization. Some of them are less direct, but then this one, this one's, kind of jumped out at me. So tension as a verb, which means to apply a force to something which tends to stretch it, because that's like a, you know, and initially when organization navigating, organizational tension suggests that it's a noun and it's something to. But maybe actually tension, the verb definition, suggests that it can be useful because you're actually deliberately applying it, which I think is also relevant, and it it comes from Latin, originally Tensio or tendere. Tendere was the verb to stretch, stretching and straining in opposition. That's the sort of thing we're talking about, isn't it?

Dani: 5:40

So what I find interesting is that I think when people hear the word tension. I'm reading all of the definitions right now, tension.

Dani: 5:49

reading all of the definitions right now, it seems like the dominant view of tension is has a negative connotation, like yes, it's a bad thing, it's a bad feeling yeah, but when I put my design thinker hat on and you know, kind of reflect back on when I was a design student many, many, many years ago um more than I'd care to disclose tension was a thing we we were kind of taught to appreciate, because good design has to balance tension. So I really liked the definition that talked about balancing yeah, like that balancing, that almost harmonizing.

Peter: 6:23

But briefly studied engineering and you know a cantilever bridge although it was civil engineering I studied, but a cantilever bridge you know, the famous bridge in Scotland, the Forth Bridge is a cantilever and it's almost miraculous that it stays up. But it's all based on tension, forces and balance with each other. And actually you know a lot of things that are in our physical environment, rely on forces that are opposite to each other but are balanced and in intention. Yeah, so I think, yes, similar to you, you know that the suggestion is that tension is negative, but actually I think it can be a positive thing, sometimes as a as an essential thing I think part of the challenge with the word itself is this idea that I don't know that organizations can thrive without any tension yeah it will also won't thrive if there's too much tension, right.

Dani: 7:21

But so I think the idea is like around balance or a healthy tension. Um, when we talk about that in design, a lot like in design, everything is about balance and when you, when you, have enough elements in balance, that's what we call good design, and I think that works in our, in organizations, it works in relationships, like that idea translates to so many other aspects of life yeah, and when you're saying design, are you talking?

Peter: 7:52

well, I you know, the immediate kind of design that comes to mind when we talk about things being in balance and needing to have balance is graphic design. You know, when you look at something, you know when the human eye sees something that has the balance in it, that has, you know, that tension, then there's something satisfying about looking at it. It's easier to look at and use, and my kind of mind goes to well, what's an example of that in other kinds of design? And one of the thoughts I have.

Dani: 8:21

Well, you just mentioned one, the bridge.

Peter: 8:24

The bridge, bridge, yeah, yeah. Another one that comes to mind is is service design. So you know that balance between you in a service, the balance between you know what, what the um, service user, the customer, and does and what the service provider does. We're going off on a little bit of a tangent here, maybe prematurely, but you know it's not.

Dani: 8:42

Maybe it's not just about graphic design, it's all kinds of design yeah, it applies in service, it applies in product, it apply like, I think, anything that we make, whether it's a physical, tangible thing or an experience.

Peter: 8:57

It all that, that, that healthy tension, that balance needs to be yeah, healthy being the um being the key word, right, bringing us back to the organized, navigating organizational tension. It is well, yeah, do you think the healthy part is um the part to focus on? Because, for my experience, most organizational tensions sometimes they're not even in in the organizational, I guess, kind of consciousness, if you like, aware, organizational awareness.

Dani: 9:28

We're often not even aware that these tensions exist, never mind that, whether understanding whether they're healthy or unhealthy, helpful or unhelpful, absolutely, and the only reason that I started to recognize these because I think what happens is we go into an organization and we get so embedded in the day to day of what happens there that we don't actually go hang on. Are the things we're doing the right things? Are the things that we're doing that, you know? Are we doing the things that are helping us achieve the goals we're trying to achieve?

Dani: 10:05

yeah because we just kind of get into it. It's like it's almost like I know this is a bit of a cliche, but it's almost like when we go into organizations, we go into this hamster wheel and we get sucked into. Well, this is how we've always done it, this is how you know, but we don't really stop to go. I know this is how we've always done it, but is it how we should be doing it now?

Dani: 10:29

yeah recognizing that you know, everything is always changing. The external environment is always changing, customers are changing, our employees are changing, everything is always in flux. So the only reason that I was able to recognize these patterns in organizations is because it emerged in my research data, so I was aware of them and so then when I was doing work in organizations, I'm like aha, hang on. It was kind of like connecting the dots I was living what was happening and I was living in the real world what was happening in my data set. Yeah.

Dani: 11:09

So one of the reasons I like to talk about this is because I think, you know, I'm a big believer that to solve anything we have to start at the point of awareness, because if we're not aware of it, then you know nothing's changing. So yeah, so should we jump into what these are?

Peter: 11:28

Yeah, yeah, please, let's do that before I take us off on any more tangents. Did we finish off what you wanted to start before we got into the three things?

Dani: 11:37

Yeah, yeah.

Peter: 11:38

I just wanted to kind of, you know, make sure we all are on the same page about what we mean about tension, and then kind of talk about that tension isn't necessarily a bad thing no, yeah, and I wonder is actually that I would go further than that and say actually, uh, an extremely useful thing to do is to turn that tension maybe it's exactly the same tension but turn it from an unhelpful, negative thing into a helpful and positive thing. So, yeah, tell, tell us what these three big tensions you've seen?

Dani: 12:09

So the first one is we want innovation and we want control. So organizations recognize that change is necessary. Change comes from innovation. We say we're committed to it, we allocate budget to it, we ask people to think outside the box. We do all the things, we run ideation workshops, we come up with all the ideas, but then we also want to maintain control. We don't want too much change and we don't want to take any risks. We want to. We want change and innovation, but we want to do it without, without any risk.

Peter: 12:52

Sound familiar yes, I will resist the urge to be sarcastic or facetious for now. Yeah, yeah, that definitely you know. Like you I've not done any, any scientific research and gathered empirical evidence or data on it, but I've definitely lived through that. Probably most of my working career actually knowingly or unknowingly Been on the sharp end of that. And you know, working in call centers and been on the back end of it, trying to help organizations resolve that tension or harness that tension and then lots of people I spoke to.

Dani: 13:27

What they talked about is it's one of the reasons that people tell me they've left an organization. This, you know lots of people talked about. Well, I was I. I was recruited, I was headhunted to come in and make change because they wanted to, they wanted to take this big leap in innovation, and when I went in and I tried to do all of those things, it was, like you know, I had to do it with my hands tied behind my back. So why I'm paraphrasing some of the things from the research here?

Dani: 13:57

yeah but that was kind of the commentary that came along with that?

Peter: 14:02

yeah, definitely relate to that. Those were beaten comments. Okay, so that's number one. Do we want to go through all of them? And then that came along with that. Yeah, definitely relate to that. Those verbatim comments. Okay, so that's number one.

Dani: 14:07

Do we want to go through all of them and then come back?

Peter: 14:09

Yeah, my brain needs to know all three before I can focus. You've teased us.

Dani: 14:17

See, the other tension is around profit and purpose, so, of course, businesses have. Organizations have to be profitable to stay in business. At the same time, though, what we're seeing more and more is people want to work, people want their work to have a purpose. They want their work to have a purpose and they want to belong to an organization where they feel like their purpose aligns or their values align where they feel like their purpose aligns or their values aligns, and we're also seeing more and more of customers want to buy from organizations that have purpose.

Dani: 14:54

So, and I think the tension is like from a consumer perspective, yeah, I want to align where I do, where I spend my dollars to organizations whose purpose I align with, and also like interest rates are going up and I have to make my mortgage, and so I think that tension exists from from a consumer perspective. It exists from an employee perspective because, yes, I want to work somewhere where purposes align, but I also have to make money because I have to support my family, and then that also translates to the organizational level. But I think for organizations to be this is, I feel, like such a missed competitive advantage. If you could work out how could we be purpose driven and still be profitable to me that there's. There's such a missed opportunity there yeah, from talent attraction, customer attraction.

Dani: 15:50

I see you nodding your head so I'm definitely nodding my head.

Peter: 15:52

Yeah, yeah, so that'd be good to come back to as well. And then what's number three?

Dani: 15:56

the third one is digital versus human oh, okay this is something, something that definitely came up in my research. But, as I reflect also about my own career, I've seen this play out since the time I went into large corporates right, and I know like right now the hot topic is, oh my God, ai is coming in. But this argument has existed. I remember one of my big projects early in my career was transforming, going for a digital transformation, where large bank went from paper processing of mortgage applications to doing it digitally, so people could fill out an application digitally and then it can get processed all the way through on a screen. And there was this huge uproar about oh my God, this is going to get rid of so many jobs and machines are taking over. And now we look back and we're like why would we never do? Why would, why did we never do this? Yeah, so, and I think the driver underneath that is that I do think there is this perception that technology is going to fix everything.

Dani: 17:12

Um, I also think there's this belief that technology means that we don't need people anymore or we're going to need less people yeah and I haven't really seen that play out, because I think the work that needs to happen is how do we create a healthy tension where technology and people exist cohesively? Because technology is only going to keep getting better and better and better and we have to accept that, um, our brains aren't going to evolve at the pace that technology is evolving. We have to accept that.

Dani: 17:45

That's just reality, right, it's fact and it's reality. But I think there's some unhealthy things that are happening in this tension, where there's almost this fear around. It has to be one or the other. But I think that as technology advances more and more, the need to be human centered becomes more and more important as well, because, at the end of the day, it's humans that use that technology, whether it's customers or employees.

Peter: 18:17

But technology isn't going to exist and it's on its own for itself, right oh, I hope not otherwise this whole conversation, this whole, actually everything is a moot point well, yeah, I mean, you know, without getting too Elon Musk about it. Uh, you know, has technology already become a, an aware parasite and it's basically already using humans to further its own and become dominant over humans? I don't think so. I think, yeah, I mean, I really, you know, in an organisation, digital versus human, that tension, and the question is you know, how do you help technology be to do the best? You know, do things that technology's best at, and then therefore, and maybe this is where the tension is at the moment, I think there's a maybe not not as much awareness or understanding of what is, um, what is it the humans are best at, that they can do far better than technology can or or ever will so those are the three tensions where when to from here?

Dani: 19:24

Peter?

Peter: 19:24

Where to from here? Well, let's go back to the beginning and maybe let's start to layer in our design thinking approach and perhaps looking at our design thinking capabilities. So let's imagine we're in an organization and we're experiencing seeing this. I mean, of course, all three and more can exist in an organizational simultaneously. But uh, for simplicity's sake, let's maybe go right. We're in a situation where there's organization wide, or just, you know, in the, maybe it's uh, in the, in the project we're working on, and we're observing, experiencing this tension between wanting innovation and wanting control. What can our design thinking approach and our capabilities, um, I can help resolve. You know, maybe each of these, some cases, we want to. I think we want to sometimes just release the tension, like just, maybe this is one where actually, well, I don't know, you can take over the thinking, uh, because, yeah, do you? Do you still want us a degree of control within an innovation environment?

Dani: 20:35

the practicality of organizations are that finance is a constraint, regulatory regulations are a constraint yeah and and they're good constraints they need to be right.

Dani: 20:48

Yeah, you can't go. Okay, we're going to take all of our money and put it into this idea. Yeah, we can't do that. And we can't go. Well, this is a brilliant idea. It breaks like 18 regulations, but it's really good. So, let's go do it like that. You can't do that, yeah. So I think there needs to be a healthy tension between yep, we're going to be innovative. Yep, we're going to have some control.

Dani: 21:13

I think the starting point to this, though, is one is collective collaboration, because where this healthy control works well is, from day one, if you have the right people in the room, because often, what happens is you've got, you know, you've got a design team that's working in isolation. They come up with some ideas, and then they go present it to finance and risk and compliance, and you know all the other people, and they haven't been on that journey with you. So they're just seeing oh my god, they're going to go do this radically different thing, and then that's where this. So then they're clawing back no, we can't do this, we can't do this. And then the design team's getting frustrated because, but, we've put all this time and energy into it. And the same way that as designers we go and empathize with customers to understand what their needs are, we don't do that good of a job of empathizing with this our internal stakeholders yeah, I agree with that, it's a.

Peter: 22:20

it's a pitfall, isn't it? It's a strange one. We're advocating empathy with our customers and often we forget to empathize with our colleagues and try and understand their situation and what they're motivated by, what they need to achieve and what success is for them.

Dani: 22:44

The starting point for me always is that this may not always be true, but my assumption is always everyone comes to work in the morning wanting to do the best job they can in their role. Yeah.

Dani: 22:59

And if you take that view and you go okay, this person from finance is really driving me nuts. But if I take that view you know they showed up to work today to do the best job, to be the best at their job they could be today then it changes my mindset to go okay. So what does this mean for them then?

Dani: 23:20

yeah um, I often talk about, like the people that are giving you the biggest heartache, like lean into them, because chances are there's something you're not getting, there's something in their world, in their view, in their perspective, that you're not understanding, that they're having this reaction. Yeah.

Dani: 23:39

I also take that view, because we cannot. We have no control over how other people behave or react. We cannot. We have no control over how other people behave or react. All we could do is try to understand and then adjust our behavior to see if we can get a better outcome.

Peter: 23:51

I see you making all kinds of faces over there I'm agreeing with you, and the faces are probably, um, my uh, memory. Uh, give me flashbacks to situations where you know maybe I've not understood that that, uh, the person giving you the hardest time is actually the person you should spend the most time with and uh, understand them the most. And also, you know situations where I have finally realized that or understood that, and all of a sudden it's like, oh, okay, this explains everything. It's like that aha moment, ah, that's what you need to do, or that's what you want to do, or that's why you're behaving in that way. Yeah, that's the reason for the faces.

Dani: 24:31

Okay, Sometimes I'm not sure, just the same way that sometimes it's hard to tell if you're being sarcastic or not. It's sometimes hard to.

Peter: 24:39

So we're talking about collective collaboration and we've kind of segued into empathetic exploring collaboration and we've kind of segued into, you know, empathetic exploring, empathetic exploration within our organization, so spending time and effort to understand our colleagues and then I think I think there's a little bit of situation optimizing that needs to happen here too.

Dani: 24:56

Right, because a couple of episodes ago we talked with jason osborne, who talked about constraint stacking. Yeah.

Dani: 25:05

And that's that idea of understanding. Okay, so we've got the design team here, we've got I don't know the sales team here, we've got finance, compliance, risk, legal, you know. We've got all the people in the room and let's understand together. So now you know, now we're all in the room. We have taken some time to understand where each of us are coming from, what's important to us, what, what our jobs are. So now let's kind of get all the constraints on the table. What's the budget here, what's from a legal risk perspective, what are the things we need to know? And then, when we understand all of these those things, we can go okay.

Dani: 25:48

So do we agree that the current way of things is not working? Like, can we see a better way forward? Like, do we believe there's a better way forward? We don't have to know what the better way is yet but do we just fundamentally believe that, yeah, we've got to find a different way to do this? So we've done the collective collaboration by getting everybody in the room, we've done the empathy work and getting to know, to understand each other, and then we've come to this place of okay, let's get all of our constraints on the table and then let's ask ourselves this is the problem and these are all the constraints. Do we still believe there's a better way forward? And then that is where you then move into doing some idea generation. Yeah.

Peter: 26:30

And I think you know, hopefully in the room, when we're getting these constraints. You know, metaphorically, maybe on the table, maybe even literally on the table if it's big enough. But you know, some visual communication can really help because typically in those constraint exploring conversations they can have tension within them. They can be, you know, high energy, unhelpful high energy. So you know, listening and visualising what those constraints are, so that you know we can pause and look at how the picture is building up and how those constraints are stacking on top of each other, can be really helpful. It literally helps people see things from other people's points of views.

Dani: 27:14

Yeah, and for our listeners who, like me, may be doing a lot of their work virtually, so I do this mural, or mural where I just create big, bold letters, constraints, and we just put post-it notes up as the constraints come up.

Dani: 27:32

So, you can visually see oh my God, there's 25 post-it notes there now. And I think the thing to understand is there is an iterative nature to this, so one, all of this isn't going to happen in one meeting. This so one, all of this isn't going to happen in one meeting. And I think where we get stuck is we're like, okay, we've got to move quickly and we quickly move into coming up with solutions, and then we want to go implement it. And that's when the slowdown happened. And the reason that happened is we didn't spend enough time on the front end. So if you take your time in the beginning, you can. You know, it's that whole idea of go slow to go fast.

Dani: 28:08

Yeah, yeah, because then you've come up with a beautiful idea, you've designed it, you spent, you know, you did all the things and then, oh, we don't have some money for it. Oh well, apparently legal doesn't think this is a good idea. And now you're having those conversations that you should have had, and then the other thing that happens is, when you've done it this way, the people like everyone's on defense. Right, People that have designed a solution are defensive of the solution because at this point, they've got skin in the game, they've invested time into this. The stakeholders you haven't engaged are on defense because they're like whoa, hang on, I need to have some control over what's happening here, because they see that as their jobs yeah, and I do apologize, I feel like I'm picking on finance and risk and compliance I'm sure they accept your apology.

Peter: 29:04

We're taking a situation-optimizing approach where we've collaborated collectively, empathetic exploration and visualizing, generating some ideas, and then we might as well hit a six and bring in curious experimentation. So we've kind of brought the attention to everyone else's, or everyone's, we've built up this collective awareness, this tension between innovation and control, and I suppose, yeah, we can definitely start exploring, um, or encouraging everyone to experiment, to figure out how to. I keep thinking my mind keeps going to resolve the tension, but, um, really, I think in each of these big three ones, it's more about harnessing the tension or at least, yeah, turning it from unhelpful to helpful, or um changing the balance, but go on, go on you're never going to resolve the tension.

Dani: 29:57

If if it's just not going to happen, right, and the reason it's not going to happen is if you think about the functions of an organization. What's the job of sales?

Peter: 30:07

To sell things.

Dani: 30:08

Yeah, what is the job of design teams and marketing?

Peter: 30:12

To design and market things.

Dani: 30:14

What's the job of compliance?

Peter: 30:17

To make sure that things comply with laws and regulations.

Dani: 30:22

Yeah, so these people here are incentivized to meet customer needs and drive up revenue yeah these people here are incentivized to make sure that the organization doesn't break any rules yeah and naturally there's this pull. That happens because they have different views, different perspectives yeah they're all trying to do a good job. They're just looking at you know. So if you think about it, they're seeing a different part of the pie yeah from their view.

Dani: 30:54

And the idea of bringing these you know, bringing everybody into the room, virtual or physical is so that we can all try to understand each other's perspectives, so that we don't. A compliance person is always going to have a compliance lens to their work and we need them to like. It's a very valuable skill and we need them to do that. And and a design person is always going to have a design view and a salesperson is always going to have a how do I sell more of this? And we need that right. Like all of those things are important, but they're they're opposed to each other and they pull each other. It's like a rubber band. So the tension is never going to go away. It's learning how do we navigate the tension in a healthy way yeah, that that uh.

Peter: 31:43

So I'll try and change my word language from from resolve to because I guess, um, maybe, uh, before we get into profit versus versus purpose, this idea of navigating versus harnessing, because for me, navigating suggests it's like you're finding a way through and out the other side, but but you know, on the other side I guess that there is no other side. It's not. There isn't like a before situation where there's tension and a post situation where there is no tension. So it's more.

Dani: 32:15

It's continuous navigation.

Peter: 32:17

Continuous.

Dani: 32:20

And this is where I was going earlier with the idea of iteration right, because this is a thing that will happen over and over and, over and over and over. Yeah. Yeah, we're always going to need to get everybody in the room. Yeah, we're always going to need to take the time to understand each other's perspective. Yeah.

Dani: 32:41

You know, and if you're working with the same people and over and over again, the time to do that might shrink. Yeah, um, and if you've, you know, if you've been doing this for years and years and years, you the, the empathy that you're starting with, is much higher for each other. Yeah, and this is also why I know there's a lot of conversations happening about we need to stop working in silos, and this is why because when, when we work in silos, we already create that us and them thing yeah, and again, just like you described, the kind of the ebbing and flowing and the, the cycle, cyclical.

Peter: 33:13

I think you know this is my experience that that whole silo, cross-functional, that that in itself is a, is a cyclical and ebb and flow. You know, I think there's a. I'm not sure what the. The natural state seems to be. It depends on the organization, but the natural state of organizations I've worked in depends on some, some sort of maturity level. It seems to be silos, you know, the natural state seems to be getting into groups. I'm sure there's lots of different reasons for that. Okay, so it's a continuous navigation. That's a helpful kind of clarification. That's helped me picture it in my mind. It's not navigating through something, it's continually navigating these organizational tensions, nice. So innovation, control. We've talked about an approach to start navigating continuously. What about this profit versus purpose?

Dani: 34:06

So I think what's happened in more modern times is people want work that is more purposeful, so they're really looking to align, they're looking to understand what is their purpose and then find work that aligns with their purpose right, which is a good thing. Consumers are also going through this awareness. The environment is really important to me, so I want to make financial decisions that are or I pick on the environment, because that's kind of an easy one, but it could be other things as well, like it's really important to me that food companies don't put chemicals in what I eat, so I'm very mindful of who I buy my food from. Yeah, these are just examples. Yeah, so I think, both from a consumer perspective and an employee perspective, we're seeing this trend of where there is an expectation that you sacrifice some profit for to be more purpose-driven and an attraction towards purpose more than profit. This presents an interesting challenge for organizations, particularly organizations that are publicly traded organizations. So I was going to say I'm in the New York Stock Exchange, but that probably doesn't mean anything to you.

Peter: 35:27

Well, we can imagine there's a stock exchange in New York, isn't it? Yeah, on any of the stock exchanges around the world. Yeah, exactly, our global audience, danny there is one in New Zealand as well.

Dani: 35:39

There's my bias there. The Fitzy, the.

Peter: 35:40

NASDAQ on on Wall Street and Wellington, anywhere.

Dani: 35:46

Yeah, this presents particularly a talent, particularly for companies that are publicly traded, because when a company offers stock, the whole idea behind that is if I buy your stock, I want to see quarter after quarter, you need to be giving me some return for the money I've given you. But if, if the consumer and employee mindset and behavior is changing, then what does it mean to that model? And I think this is this is almost this is, I think, at this stage, an emerging problem for organizations. But as I do more research around this, like we're seeing this, you know more and more when we look at, like employee engagement data and stuff like that, like purpose is a big thing. Um, like in lots of exit interviews that I've done, people talk about like I'm leaving to take this job, that pays me less because I can work from home, and and it's more meaningful and purposeful. And I think those trends are going to like, I think it's a trend that's pushing its way through.

Peter: 36:49

Yeah, it seems to be.

Dani: 36:51

I also question. I don't necessarily know that it has to be profit or purpose.

Peter: 36:57

Yeah, I think you're right. I think it's. This one reminds me a little bit of the tension, or the perceived tension, between customer experience and cost, if you like. So internal cost and customer experience and you know organizations I worked in presented as a choice between cutting costs and delivering good customer experience. Actually, my belief and experience is that if you deliver a great customer experience that will take care of cost, it will actually cost less to provide overall.

Peter: 37:34

If you look at the overall cost to serve a customer, it costs less to create good customer experience than bad ones. For example, if you are cutting costs let's say we use a call centre as an example you cut costs in your call centre. Maybe you take away a team out of, say, 10 teams that are there to answer customer queries over the phone. That means that fewer customer queries can be answered. It takes longer for each person, each customer, to get through in the contact center and that in itself takes it costs more to serve that customer and so on, and so on this one is a lack of long-term vision and a lack of big picture thinking.

Peter: 38:20

Yeah, yeah, it's looking at things in the smallest um detail, you know, maybe maybe in transactions rather than the whole system. So can our design thinking approach help navigate this particular tension? Is it?

Peter: 38:36

the same recipe we had before. Danny, definitely, I think. For me, situation optimising is almost the starting point. Situation optimising is almost the starting point. Once you have even a glimmer of awareness, then you have to, I think, start with situation optimising. You have to have a belief that you can actually navigate this tension between profit and purpose and even, as you're suggesting, come to the realisation that it's not binary choice between either profit or purpose, which I think is what you were saying before. So, yeah, situation optimizing, it's going to be an element of empathetic exploration, because you have to understand why is it that some people will see that purpose is in complete and total opposition to profit?

Dani: 39:18

So I think you're right. I think with this one, there needs to be a refresh in our thinking Situation. Optimizing is a great place to start right, because you can start with listing out the constraints and a lot of times when you know organizations or teams are stuck, I have them. Start with that. Tell me all the things that are in the way, all the roadblocks, all the you know, all the things you don't have that you wish you had. Like let's just get them all on the table, and it sounds like a very depressing thing to do, but the thing is, sometimes, when these things are in our head, we make them. We make it bigger than it actually is. Yeah definitely.

Dani: 39:56

And when you start I use mirror a lot, so I use that, but it could be a mirror, it could be whiteboard, it could be paper, whatever, whatever the thing is when you start putting those things up and everybody in the room starts seeing them, they start to shrink, so getting constraints and and this is also why I think sometimes I feel like situation optimizing is very misunderstood often because people think, oh, it's about seeing all the good and it's not. It's actually about going. What are all the things we're up against? And then, once you understand that, then going. Is there still a better way to do this? How do we move forward from here?

Peter: 40:36

yeah, nice, it's like. I mean, organizations are just collections of individuals. Of course, it makes sense that, in the same way that you know, a good way to clear your mind is to write things down that are in your mind, whether it's a to-do list or things you're concerned or worried about. So, in the same way, getting these ideas or perceived barriers, blockers, out of everybody's minds, somewhere that everybody else can see them as well, yeah, I definitely agree. They seem to immediately kind of diminish and seem to be not quite as much of a problem, or, uh, they become more concrete and therefore you can start to go.

Dani: 41:11

Well, I might be overcome that particular barrier so in this instance I would do situation optimizing and then I would do idea generating and then would. Then I would move into some empathy discovery work, and the reason for that is in this example. It's more of a, it's more of an unpacking around. Why do we think the way we're thinking?

Dani: 41:38

and it's it's almost like getting out of our own heads and looking at something you know bigger, bigger, and in this instance, you, almost as an intern on team, need to sort things out before you go, try to empathize and understand other people, right, and it's also just from, like, my experience of how this happens. So when you kind of get through that unpacking of constraints, it almost just naturally happens that people start talking about ideas, and the trick there, though, is to keep people in ideation mode and not that solution like not evaluating right. Yeah. Let's just get some ideas on the board.

Peter: 42:15

Yeah, nice distinction.

Dani: 42:16

The more that I see around this tension. What I realize is that, like right now, it's this profit purpose thing, and I think this is going to become more and more prevalent as we look 5, 10, 20 years down the road. But there's also going to be other things that come up that are like this, where, fundamentally, how we think about profit is going to need to shift.

Peter: 42:44

Yeah, I agree with that. I think that it comes back to well, you know what is profit, how is it measured? You know the idea of, you know triple bottom line to. You know, I think, is it six capitals now. So, starting to, there's a general acknowledgement, awareness that profit can no longer be at the expense of the environment.

Peter: 43:03

You know kind of fundamentally goes back to the origins of double entry. But keeping not measuring the air that we breathe on the or not calculating the air that we breathe and the water that we drink, etc. As an asset, it's going to be left out.

Dani: 43:19

It's really, really important to illustrate here that what we're saying. What we're not saying is that profit is important. Organizations need to make money so they can pay their employees, so people can have jobs yeah it is important yeah but it's balancing that with something bigger than just profits.

Peter: 43:39

Yeah, yeah, nice okay, digital versus human ah.

Dani: 43:42

So, as I mentioned, this is something I've seen various iterations of this throughout my career. I shared the example of moving mortgage processing from paper to digital many years ago. I saw this when we were moving from online banking to mobile banking. So all of these different iterations of it happening and I think the most we saw saw it kind of you know, chatbot, that, and now with AI becoming much, you know, like chat, gp and you know all of these things been happening way before you and I were ever around. Peter, it was somebody's job some years ago to sit there and plug these wires into a board to make a call go through, and I'm sure in those times this battle of technology versus humans was happening right like oh my god, all these people are gonna um.

Dani: 44:42

And then I remember. I remember an old boss of mine telling me that, like when he started work some years ago, if he wanted to send a letter he would have to hand write it and then take it to this room, and this room was just full of typists and you'd hand your letter in and then whoever became available yeah would pick that up and type it and then bring it to you, and there's a little bit of back and forth.

Dani: 45:11

That happened. Now he sends his own emails yeah, yeah so what happened to that whole room of typists like? So I think this battle has been happening forever forever yeah forever, it's just right maybe it's like it's technology versus human.

Peter: 45:27

At the moment it's digital and AI.

Dani: 45:33

I mean. I chose the word digital because in my research in the data set, people often talked about digital transformation. That was their word. Oh yeah. So as much as possible, I try to use the words that people use, one to hold authentic to the I always talk about when people share their information with me. It's a gift um I try to hold that gift yeah um in the form it was given to me, as much as sure I love it.

Peter: 46:01

That's why I use the word digital yep, well, stick with it. A lot like it, so digital versus human yeah, and more and more.

Dani: 46:09

what people are talking about today is how digital always tends to get top billing and we're dismissing human capabilities. And people also have been talking about in the research data, about how organizations have this very flawed view that digital is going to fix all the problems, and I think that's where this tension is. I think there's a tension of people worrying about what digital is going to do to their jobs, and then there is a tension around well, we don't really need to bother with fixing these problems, because we'll just add some digital techie bits to it and then, voila, it'll be amazing and they're really yeah it's like we're trying to to digitize our way to utopia yeah, yeah, I've definitely seen that, or versions of it.

Peter: 47:04

Yeah, and I think you know, as I mentioned here, I mean come I? Don't know it come down to? I don't think it does come down to that, but the idea in my head is that, you know, digital is kind of our so-called digital capabilities let's describe it as that are more knowable and understood than human capabilities. Are they more? Maybe by definition, they're more certain than human capabilities, or more, maybe, more measurable. Maybe you know digital. Ultimately, digital uh technology is all about zeros and ones, so it's either something or it's not. Versus um.

Dani: 47:43

You know, human uh capability is perhaps less um, less like that well, yeah, I mean, I think like humans are complicated, we're messy, like you know. We're not like I'm a hot mess and I know it, but it's part of what makes me human yeah, yeah, exactly me too, me too I think oh sorry and I think, if you think about it that way, like when we deal with humans or it, it's a very complicated, very messy aspect, whereas you know technology.

Dani: 48:14

I guess it's more tameable, it's cleaner, maybe it comes back to control like we can, although you know by watching some of the futuristic movies. This may not be true, but I'll say it now would technology is is controllable.

Peter: 48:29

Hopefully still is. You know, I think I'm retracting my earlier ones and zeros thing because you know you get into algorithms and the more complicated algorithms are probably less I guess they're getting more and more complex and from what I read you know some of them, even the. You know, the users or the creators of those algorithms don't necessarily understand how they. These are algorithms that run in the background of our modern world and decide things for us, but they're not necessarily how they work, isn't necessarily understood to that.

Peter: 49:02

I guess, maybe in that respect they are becoming more human. Maybe we're probably getting a bit deep and philosophical, away from this tension around in an organisation what are humans best at doing versus what is digital technology best at doing? And yeah, for me it's like that's almost the To navigate the tension. That's a helpful question to ask is like let's figure out, let's agree in our situation, what are computers better at than people and vice versa? What are people going to be better at than computers? And the beauty of that approach for me, actually, it frees up the people to do a more satisfying and enjoyable job that in turn is more satisfying and enjoyable for the people that they're helping.

Peter: 49:53

An example another organisation I worked for people who worked in the call centre. There, when they sat down to their jobs in the morning, they would have 13 different systems to log into before they could even start taking phone calls and helping people in a conversation. And you know their job was, you know, 80% navigating the different computer systems. And they became experts and could do their job by knowing which information to copy and paste from what screen in one program into what screen in another program. And 20% of the job was trying to, you know, pay attention during that whole systems navigation, um experience trying to pay attention to the human being on the other end of the phone and, not surprisingly, you know that the human being on the other end of the phone felt um kind of left out of things and while there was lots of silence.

Peter: 50:44

So what that organization did was consolidate all of those systems into a single front end and create some simple to follow processes. That flipped the whole job of that contact center person from the 80-20 of navigating computers to speaking to people, and 80% of it became about hey, Danny, how are you today? And then you know, can I help you? And OK, just give me a couple of seconds, I'll do that for you and I'm letting the computer take care of the computer stuff. So for me that's a kind of shining example of where you kind of take a step back and go hang on a minute. This is the wrong way around. Here we're employing people to speak to people, so let's help them spend as much time as they can relating to another human being rather than focusing on essentially broken computer system we kind of start to lose the plot sometimes.

Dani: 51:32

That technology exists to be in service of people. Yeah, not the other way around, and one of the best quotes that I remember from one of the interviews I did is that someone said you know, at the end of the day, my iPhone isn't buying something that I haven't told it to buy, because, at the end of the day, if you are a service organization or a product organization, at the end of the day, it's a human at the end of that, that is receiving your service or product, not a technology. Yeah, in some other research that I did, one of the things that we learned is you know, lots of people are okay with doing lots of things digitally. What they get frustrated, though, is when something happens that they feel vulnerable or they feel like they need help.

Dani: 52:28

They want a human yeah, yeah and, and what that translates to is look, I'm happy to pay my bill online, but when something breaks and I need help, I expect there to be a human to help me yeah, yeah, agreed, and I've seen that in research and it's that, I think, the situation is.

Peter: 52:46

When people, when the customer, can't actually understand and articulate what's kind of happened or what's happening and what needs to happen next, then they will much prefer to speak to a person. They can interact with the person that will. A human being will help them think through what's going on and help them understand it. Yeah, it's a good example. Right now interacted with a few different ais.

Dani: 53:10

I have not encountered one that would help somebody navigate a complex situation to remember that humans need interaction with other humans, like it will built for that yeah, built for connection, yeah yeah, we're built for connection and that is an element that is always like. It doesn't matter how we can have robot butlers, which I very well.

Dani: 53:34

Welcome you know, living in our homes and doing all the things that we don't want to do, but we are still always going to crave human to human connection yeah and if you want an example of that, this is why, like the lockdowns during covid was hard right, because we were not built to be isolated in our homes, not interacting with other people so I could call it how do we, how do we approach this then, daniel's digital versus human, yeah, so how? Do we create a good, healthy tension between digital and humans? This one starts with some curious experimentation, okay nice, a different take on this one.

Peter: 54:14

I like it. Tell me more about that. What do I think? Yeah well, uh yeah I? Yeah, you can. I'm curious to hear what you've got to say. I think you know situation optimizing is my kind of go-to, but I I could be. Tell me about your curious experimentation.

Dani: 54:30

From a fear perspective. Starting to have a play with technology helps. Yeah, okay.

Dani: 54:39

And I'll share my own journey. When things like ChatGPT came out, I had all kinds of questions right, like what does this mean for things like writing, I also teach it to universities. Like what does this mean for things like writing, I also teach it to universities. Like what does this mean for, like students, writing papers? So I had all the things and and I read a lot. So it's like, oh my god, so like am I now going to be reading books that have been written by AI? You know so.

Dani: 55:03

I had all of these things coming up. I just decided one day you know what I'm gonna pop on there and see what it's all about. And.

Dani: 55:10

I just started doing that and then I started to see, oh, this is how this could work, this is how this, you know, this is how this could be helpful to me. This is where, like you know, I learned very quickly that it does not do citations very well, which is something I warn students about. So when you get your hands into it and when you start having a play with it and that first, when I was having a play with it, it wasn't even about work, it was just like what could it do?

Dani: 55:37

it was literally just playing with lego kind of playing, yeah and it took away that fear or that mystique about what it is, and then I started to kind of think about the possibilities of how I can be using it yeah right. So it went from this curiously experimenting to ideation.

Peter: 55:56

Yeah, yeah, nice yeah, been through a similar thing with um, ai, chat, gpt, and I guess I'm still, you know, continuously going through that cycle of you know what, what can I do, what can I use it for? But it does, you know, reduce the fear. You know that you start to understand a bit more. Something in my mind wondered but can you? I think the answer is no. But the empathetic exploration with a machine, like, can you empathise with a computer? No, yes, no. To me it feels like at the heart of the tension is this understanding and awareness of. Yeah, well, like I said, like we discussed, what are, what are people best at? What are computers best at?

Peter: 56:38

I'm sure there's an overlap in the middle, but help I feel sorry I was gonna say help us, help, help the organization understand and see, you know those two categories, I guess.

Dani: 56:51

And you empathize with technology, and I think, in this instance, it's not empathizing with the technology, it's actually. It's actually like if you're a leader recognizing okay, AI is coming. I need to be having conversations with my people. Yeah. What does it mean for us? Has anybody had a play with it? How might we use this in our work? Should we be using this in our work? Right.

Dani: 57:16

That's the empathy work. So when the empathy work is within the humans, so that we can understand what are our fears, what are our concerns and what are also our hopes, because when I think of, like, I hate admin work and if I can offload that to some kind of ai, then yay. So I I think having those conversations yeah that's where the empathy work needs to happen. Similarly, I think we also need to be having those conversations with our customers right.

Peter: 57:53

Like how do you?

Dani: 57:53

what are your views on AI? What do you think should or should not be handled by AI? And also, I think there's an opportunity there to also have some play time with customers, like, hey, let's jump on chat GPT. With customers like, hey, let's jump on chat gpt. And I think for this tension around digital versus human, the starting point is curious experimentation.

Dani: 58:15

Because I think if you start from that, getting getting out like, rather than sitting around debating talking about it, let's actually go have a play with it yeah, yeah and then working our way backwards and this is also why I don't believe that design thinking is a step-by-step process, because in each of these examples, we started with something different and ended with something different yeah, nice, yeah, that makes sense. I like the way that played out you look like you're in deep thought there.

Peter: 58:39

I'm just um thinking if there's anything else to to kind of explore for now about digital versus human, but I think, um, we've arrived at a good point there and especially, you know, bringing it back to the empathizing with our teams and our customers to understand what people's hopes and fears are, but starting with curious experimentation, just having a bias towards action, doing something, because you're right, we can talk about. I guess we can talk about all of this, but actually getting into it is the most important thing. I'm going to ask you, so I've got time to think about it what, what are your, uh, what your takeaways, uh, from this conversation, danny?

Dani: 59:17

um. Before we um. Before we jump into takeaways, I also want to add something around um digital versus human. Yeah, what is happening is there is this view emerging that digital capability is more important or more valuable than human? Capability fundamentally, we need to shift that thinking yeah, they sit, yeah, because you, you're going to need human capability.

Dani: 59:47

I mean, even advancing digital capability requires human capability. But also, both are valuable. The more technologically advanced we become as a society, the more that we have to be human-centered, because, as my favorite quote from somebody I interviewed, my iPhone doesn't buy things until I tell it to. So at the end of everything, there is a human Takeaways. This conversation has been very. You know, this is something that I did research on that I haven't really written or done anything with, and I think this conversation's kind of prompted me that, hey, there might be some stuff here that other people might be interested in yeah, definitely.

Peter: 1:00:35

I think, um, the whole kind of it brings to life some of the, the capabilities on, maybe, an area that we might not naturally or think about applying design thinking to. You know this is. You know, attention isn't necessarily like a concrete problem, if that makes sense, probably. Like you know, I'm a big believer in using these capabilities and taking a design thinking approach simply to get people in the same room and start having a conversation in a in a helpful and maybe structured way. So, yeah, there's definitely. Yeah, it's been a really interesting, thought-provoking conversation. Uh, what am I taking away from it? I think there's the, that collective act of getting things out of our heads, that kind of unpacking, and maybe that unpacking and then pausing for everyone to kind of reflect on what's just come out of everyone else's minds can be a really powerful, uh, first step. I can think of a situation I'm going to apply that to in my current work. So that's my takeaway.

Dani: 1:01:32

It's always nice when you've got something you can go apply to your work right away.

Peter: 1:01:37

Definitely there always is as well. There's always something in our conversations that go right, I'm going to do that, I've forgotten about that, or that's a new idea to try out. So thank you as ever, Dani.

Dani: 1:01:50

Thanks, peter, so thank you as ever, danny.

Peter: 1:01:52

Thanks peter, this has been an awesome chat. Yeah, thanks for listening everyone.

Dani: 1:01:54

Yeah, thanks for listening. See you next time. See you next time, bye.