Dr Dani: [00:00:00] Hey Peter. 

Designer Peter: Hi Dani. 

Dr Dani: How are you? 

Designer Peter: I'm great, thanks. How are you today? 

Dr Dani: I am great. 

Designer Peter: Awesome. 

Dr Dani: What are we talking about? 

Designer Peter: Today, Dani, we're gonna talk about what to do if your organization doesn't want anything to do with design thinking. 

Dr Dani: Oh. That sounds very gloom and doom. 

Designer Peter: That's a bit, that's maybe why he chose me to say it.

Dr Dani: This is a question that people sometimes ask me that, they really want to embrace and use design thinking in their work, but they're working in an organization that either doesn't want to use it or doesn't understand the benefits of using it, or someone feels like I just can't get people to understand why we should use it.

I wonder if the question is, can you be a design thinker? In an environment that isn't embracing design thinking. Can you be a [00:01:00] lone design thinker? 

Designer Peter: Yeah, that's a good that's a good question. Yeah. I like it. 

Dr Dani: It still feels very dooming.

Designer Peter: Maybe it does, but it could be the shortest episode ever, Dani. 'cause my answer to that question is yes. 

Dr Dani: Alright, thanks for listen.

Designer Peter: Then the next hour would be full of advert.

Dr Dani: When I said, you know it, can you be a design thinker alone? What I was picturing is a cowboy in the desert. 

Designer Peter: Oh yeah. Ah, okay. 

Dr Dani: Barren land. Okay, so your short answer is yes. Do you wanna tell us why? 

Designer Peter: Oh, goodness. We're throwing our structure out the window.

I think maybe yes, but with the caveat of for a duration and not and I don't think that duration, that period of time is particularly long. I think you can be but you relatively quickly probably need to find, and we've talked about this before, your first [00:02:00] follower. And therefore start a movement.

You, we've definitely talked about the Derek Severs YouTube video where here describes, how to start a movement. And it's the guy dancing. There's one guy dancing in a looks like an outdoor festival or dance rave or something. He is dancing in the middle of the field, in front of the stage all by himself.

Most people are looking around and he is quite an enthusiastic dancer. He is pretty determined that dancing is the thing to do to this music in this field, and he is having a great old time to himself. I don't think he's even bothering trying to get people to join him. Does occasionally look and point at people?

I think most people like it's fact, everybody's watching or everybody's on the edge of the field. Some people are watching him. Eventually somebody decides to get up and join in. So he's got his first followers, he's got the first, first dance partner and they start dancing together.

And then slowly but surely more and more people join and the rate of people joining goes like a hockey stick. It goes exponential until essentially the message is [00:03:00] that there's more people dancing than there are sitting on the sidelines watching. And therefore it becomes socially unacceptable to be sing on the sidelines and you need to start dancing. Everyone joins in. And it all started not with the person dancing, but with the person that joined them for the first time, the first follower. So I think in my mind that the, you can be a lone design thinker. We can cover off wellbeing and mental health later on in the conversation.

But for as long as you, it takes to either get a first follower or you to decide that actually this isn't the place to for you. 

Dr Dani: I love that we come back to that dancing video 'cause it's such a impactful thought, that one person can start a movement. 

And I think it also is a good illustration of this idea of collaboration. 

Where you. You just need two people to then start a movement. 'cause the one person doing it is a bit odd, but then a second person starts doing it and it becomes a thing and then more people wanna be part of that thing.

Designer Peter: Yeah. 

Dr Dani: [00:04:00] I. And I agree with you also in terms of the timeframe, where lots of people struggle is you go into an organization to do something like design thinking or change or what, whatever it is that you've come in to do that is different than what's happening in the organization.

And it takes a toll on you, right? 

Because you're constantly fighting a system that doesn't want to do the thing that you want to do, even though it recognizes it needs the thing you want to do. And so after a while it does take a toll on the individual. 

So I'm sure if, if he was up there dancing for three days on his own out for a while, he's 

Designer Peter: Yeah. 

Dr Dani: Maybe I need to sit down now. 

Designer Peter: Exactly. Yeah yes that's all true. And I think also there there are situations, and this is, I guess part of my story is that you might find yourself in an organization doing a job, discover.

And, doing that job and seeing how things work in the organization, have a point of view that it could be done [00:05:00] better. Whether you're frustrated with the friction or the sludge in the organization, or whether you just see. Things that, like I said could be done better.

And you discover design thinking and that there could be a fit and you decide that's what you're going to try and start doing. Or taking a design thinking approach to your job. Just to, you can arrive into an organization having been asked to do it or you can grow up in an organization and realize that there's an opportunity to use it.

But in both situations, you'll almost definitely find either probably not so much active resistance, but more apathy or people won't come knocking on necessarily. Not everybody's gonna come knocking on your door straight away. And I think, yeah, that, that's where for me, I think it, it's, you need to be really conscious and aware of your energy, I think is the word I would use to describe it. Like how full is your bucket and make sure that your bucket never gets empty. Look for ways to keep it topped up as much as possible because you will expend energy trying to get people [00:06:00] to come and dance with you.

Wow, 

Dr Dani: we've 

Designer Peter: gone pretty far and deep quite early on in this episode. Dani, I. 

Dr Dani: So should we take a step back? 

Designer Peter: Yeah, let's take a step back and give a better framing and context. 

Dr Dani: So our framework is usually the what, the why, the how, and then takeaways, I don't know that there's any dictionary definitions for this, unless words that you're, unless this word that you're just , oh, we need to define these, 

Designer Peter: maybe in the medical dictionary for the people who choose to do this.

Certainly the Apple advert the, or the quote, the Steve Jobs, the ears to the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the ones who think, they can change things.

Dr Dani: I love that quote. And it's one that I come back to often we just jumped into, what do you think? Can somebody be a lone design thinker? My view is that you absolutely can, and [00:07:00] my view is biased because for a lot of my corporate career, I was a lone design thinker. I just didn't know it. So when I left, the design world and I went into corporate, I was still a designer, just.

Kind of randomly assigned to solving business problems and not design problems. But I only knew how to solve problems using a design process, right? So I was being a design thinker, just not intentionally going, oh, I'm a design thinker. 

So I think it is possible to be a lone design thinker. I think in the process of doing that, though.

And this is where our experiences try to merge in the process of doing that. And when people start to see what you are doing, you'll still have the people that think you're crazy and what is she on about? But then you'll also have people that start to see the value that you're delivering.

Designer Peter: Yeah. 

Dr Dani: [00:08:00] And then. And then you start to build a little bit of a movement and people are like, oh why don't we try it? Dani did this way and it worked. Why don't we give that a go and see if that works? So you start to build a little, some momentum around that. 

Designer Peter: Yeah. 

Dr Dani: Yeah, I, I think that is absolutely possible.

The challenge with going out and doing something like that on your own, it takes a lot of courage to go, actually this is not an environment that thinks this way or operates this way. But I really believe that takes a lot of courage to be able to to make that kind of stance and 

And it's also you make that stance, but you're also doing it a little bit silently. So how do you take a stance. Silently. 

Designer Peter: Yeah. It's a bit of a paradox, isn't it? Shouting silently from the rooftops, this is the right thing to do. Yeah, I think that part of the answer to that in my experiences, [00:09:00] it's it's actually not being, it's the opposite of shouting from the rooftops. It's go going underground and creating a network within the own organization. Of friendly contacts. Slightly embarrassed about the underground spy network analogy, but that is what you need to do. You wanna make contact with them, the friendlies in parts of the organization where they are. Trust us everyone that they are there. People who think and think like you and have your values and see things the way you do.

There's lots of us. This sounds really conservational it, but there are lots of us out there. In fact everybody is one of us. Most people just don't know it yet. But there are people who are actively thinking and getting frustrated in the same way that you are. So it's finding, for me, the first step is just finding the ways to.

Meet up with them, finding the ways to find them. It's and. That sometimes comes in totally random ways and informal ways. It's like bumping into somebody in the coffee machine, in the [00:10:00] lunch room or sitting down for lunch with somebody or being in a meeting and hearing what somebody says and picking up on the fact that they're asking a question or challenging something.

And then after the meeting, stopping back, Hey, I heard you said that thing. And what do you think about this? Yeah, you sound like you think like I do, and maybe we could have a coffee and you start to build a relationship with that person and you start to understand each other. And if it's one person, then you've almost got your first follower.

And once you've got a few people together, then that's almost a workshop. And then all you need to do then is just find a problem to work on and solve. And that's where your kind of thoughts. Second thing margin with mine is that looking for the right kind of business problem to solve together.

With a like-minded group of people using a design thinking approach, that can be the kind of tipping point. And by the right, for me, the right kind of business problem is one that's. It is just important enough that if you solve it, it'll get attention, but if you start working on it, people will shut you down.

Or that [00:11:00] the, I guess the cost of failure is is just big, no, that's not the right phrase. But the, yeah. The cost of failure is not so high that people are gonna stop you or pay too much attention to you playing around. 

Dr Dani: It's a tolerable. Tolerable, 

Designer Peter: thank you. Yeah. Yeah.

Tolerable. Think of appetizing, it's failure. Appetizing. 

Dr Dani: I wanna take a little bit of this 'cause I think we're going into how territory here. 

Designer Peter: Yeah. Okay. 

Dr Dani: So I wanna take a step back. Yeah. The other reason that you can be a lone design thinker, and this is where we've lost the plot, design thinking has become very mainstream, which is a great thing because there's a lot more awareness about it.

But what has become mainstream is that the view is that design thinking is a process. It's a methodology. And what we've lost track of it. Actually, design thinking is also a set of capabilities. 

Designer Peter: Yeah. 

Dr Dani: And the capabilities are an individual thing and a team thing. And an organization thing, 

but individuals have these capabilities and because design thinker capabilities sit within each [00:12:00] individual. You can actually be a design thinker in your own element. 

Designer Peter: Yeah. 

Dr Dani: Because those capabilities sit within you. 

Designer Peter: Yeah. Yes. Yeah.

And , we have a belief that those capabilities those capabilities do sit within each of us which is what I was kinda referring to earlier. Yeah. I love that. Dani, so it's a. Yeah, nothing more to add. 

Dr Dani: The agreement here is yes, you can be a. Design thinker on your own. 

Designer Peter: Yeah. 

Dr Dani: There are some cautions. One caution is there is a risk to your wellbeing that you need to be mindful and protect. 

Designer Peter: Yeah. 

Dr Dani: And then I think the other, and around that is maybe putting some timeframes of like, how long am I willing to suffer this to bear this cross 

Designer Peter: then, 

Dr Dani: Was there a third one? 

Designer Peter: I'm not sure if we've mentioned it, but I think there is a third one and that's defining what's the purpose of it?

 For me there's two sides to the purpose. Equation what's in it for you? It's important, but also [00:13:00] sometimes it's actually more important to go what's in it for other people, because that can create a nice virtuous cycle of, if I'm doing this for other people, then it's gonna help me stay energized and well.

But yeah, the third thing for me is like, what is why, what's the why? If that makes sense. , and in my experience the why can begin without wealth. Like I said earlier, things could be a lot better around here. So I think this is a way that we could make things better. And for me, again, that's enough to get going.

But then when you get to the next way point on your journey, then be thinking what's the bigger why? What's the, what's next? 

Dr Dani: Yeah, I agree with that. It's stacking the why's to keep momentum going, right? Like the why to get you started is gonna be very different than the why to keep you going.

Designer Peter: Yeah. Nice. 

Dr Dani: Shall we move into the how? So if you are out there and you're like, I really, want to give design thinking a go, I think it can help our [00:14:00] organization, but I'm really struggling with getting my organization to buy into it or believe in it. 

Designer Peter: Yeah. 

Dr Dani: What are some ways that people can get started with design thinking without having to sell it to your whole organization or having buy in from your whole organization?

Designer Peter: Yeah, great question. I think not to labor a point, but it does begin with one other person. I think 

Dr Dani: so find a collaborator. 

Designer Peter: Find a collaborator. Yes, fi find a collaborator, I guess is the kind of the goal or the outcome or the thing you're seeking. But start conversations and I think starting conversation with the people you're already working with, 

a way to, to try it is to have a conversation with your leader and hey, we're, we've got this problem. Or maybe it's, I've got this goal what I'd like to do is take maybe a slightly different approach or incorporate some different approaches into this piece of work.

What do you think about that? And you then describe what design thinking is and what the approach you might [00:15:00] take. By having that conversation, especially with your leader, you're getting an immediate sense of is this person open to me trying different things or not?

You've had a conversation to test a idea that you've had, you've got feedback on it. You've discovered that the person you thought might be a user of that prototype, AKA different approach. Won't be. The first step is to getting somebody to support you in your intent. 

If it's not your leader then finds, almost doesn't matter who it is. You just need somebody shouting you on from the side of the dance floor who's gonna be there for you. Maybe they'll join you, maybe they won't, but at least they know what you're up to and you can talk to 'em about what you're doing.

What do you think? What's what's your thoughts on that one? 

Dr Dani: I love the idea of testing it, and it's so designed think curly, right? Because that's what we do. We test out ideas and it gives us feedback and then that, and then we can adjust what we're doing and how we're doing. We're

those lines. What I have found. Sometimes it's easier to show than to tell. 

Designer Peter: Yeah. So 

Dr Dani: if, if [00:16:00] the leader responds back with, oh I, whatever their negative, I'm not really on board with this. I'm a big fan of the first rule of design thinking should be to not talk about design thinking.

Designer Peter: Do know the name of this podcast, don't you?

Although I suppose Fight Club was called Fight Club a movie okay, I'll give that lay off. This episode is just twisting my head. 

Dr Dani: Or maybe we should rename our podcast the, 

Designer Peter: not the Design Thinker podcast. This is definitely not a design thinking podcast. 

Dr Dani: Yes. Let's name it that.

So 

Designer Peter: see CPA and Bud Design thinking, sorry to any French listeners. 

Dr Dani: Because I think sometimes when we get excited about something, we tend to be, we're so enthusiastic and we learn about it, and we just wanna talk and share everything we know about this topic with people. And people don't care.

They don't. 

What people do care about is. Their pain points, their wants and [00:17:00] needs, right? 

Designer Peter: Yeah. 

Dr Dani: So if you can deliver a solution that solves a pain point for your leader 

they're going to care less about how you got it done, assuming you haven't broken any laws or cost the company billions of dollars.

Generally, if you solve a problem for somebody. They care more the solution and the pain going away than they do about the method that you used. 

Designer Peter: Yeah, 

Dr Dani: so I think another way to get started with design thinking is to just do it. Don't talk about it, don't tell people what it is, just.

Bring in elements of design thinking into the work and let people experience it. And then people will ask, 

Designer Peter: yeah. Nice. And another, I guess is maybe another version or something strongly related to show don't tell is, I think joining people or meeting people where they are.

It is also a really great thing to do. Show up where they are, where they're having the pain point or and [00:18:00] think about meeting people where they are and all the different ways that you can. For example one of the organizations I worked at we had a a workshop space and a workshop approach.

We gave it the same name as other workshop spaces and other workshop approaches that weren't quite the same as what we were doing. But similar enough, we gave it the same name as was familiar around the rest of the organization. Which meant that it was instantly it was part of the language already.

We weren't introducing new language. It was something that was recognized, something that happened to be favored by senior leadership. So we, borrowed things a little bit. But I think of that as we, we met the organization where it was we, and it's the same thing, meet people where there and trying to solve a problem.

We're going a bit deeper into that here, but there's a, I think that lots of times, especially when you're getting started you'll find, and part I imagine a lot of people's frustration why they might be turning to something like design thinking is because what they're seeing is things being implemented with.

Not enough or no, [00:19:00] or not much thought being given to what the problem is trying to solve is, or how somebody's gonna use it when it's actually deployed or implemented. That usually means that a good place to meet people is in the kind of prototyping mindset. So they're about to they're probably through designing, developing something help people think about how they could turn what they've.

Thought about into a prototype and really quickly start testing it with users and then use that as a starting point for a for your design thinking work. I guess I'm saying that in contrast to, when you learn design thinking to begin with as a process, often more often than not, we start learning it by thinking about our users and empathizing with them and doing lots of different things to, to start understanding that.

I think that's also a really important point, especially if you're in an organization that isn't doing a lot of that. But sometimes you need to start somewhere else and come back to that or go forward to that, if that makes sense. 

Dr Dani: Yep. I'm a big fan of starting meeting people where they are. 

And I have so one example I have from the real world is. There's been a couple [00:20:00] of organizations that I've worked with that are very reluctant to engage with customers or they don't see the value of it, or they're like, we just don't have time to go out and talk to customers. 

And I, one of the things I have them do, which they can do pretty quickly is I have them be their own customer.

Okay. Then try to buy something from your own company. Yeah. Try to buy something and try to return it. See what that's 

Designer Peter: yeah. 

Dr Dani: That feels to a lot of people okay, that's not as scary. 

Yeah. Nice. Nice. So that's an example of how you can and actually I did this with with an HR team.

I had them apply for a job at their own company , so that they could really feel what, and then they started to go, wow, this is pretty shit.

Designer Peter: Hope, hopefully not So shit that they didn't want to work there anymore. 

Dr Dani: No, but it gave them enough inspiration to this is almost, this is embarrassing. Like we need to do better, right? 

Designer Peter: Yeah. So 

Dr Dani: This is where I don't believe in design thinking as this end-to-end process.

We have to follow from start [00:21:00] to beginning. And because that just doesn't fit into the way that organizations work, and the cultural and political dynamics of an organization. So it's figuring out, okay. Fundamentally, the concept in design thinking is we have to engage with our customers and we've gotta understand their point of view, if that is the fundamental principle.

But we know that we're in an organization that isn't going to allow for going out and engaging with customers. What is another way that we can. Do that to prove a point to then get the organization to a point they are engaging with co, with customers. 

Designer Peter: Yeah. A lot ing And that won't 

Dr Dani: stop there, 

Designer Peter: no, 

Dr Dani: Don't go and, be your own customer. Buy something for your own company and go, this is now the be all, end all. 

Designer Peter: Yeah. 

Dr Dani: But you use that as a stepping stone. 

Designer Peter: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. The stepping stone, that's the key that might open the door or, I think of quite [00:22:00] if you're going to embark on this journey, then the early feeling you might get is that you're pushing against a door that's locked or that certainly lots of people are buying, stopping you opening.

This is. An experience that I've had and slowly but surely you'll get the door open a tiny sliver than a crack. The first milestone is when you get the door open just enough to put your foot in it so that nobody can close it again. You have to have strong shoes on. And then eventually what will happen is you'll push on the door and it opens fully. So my, my word of advice when you get to there is think about that beforehand and what are you gonna do when, because so far we've been talking about resistance and finding ways to do it, but there's something hopefully along this journey that you'll experience, which is an absence of resistance.

And yeah, just be. Thinking ahead to what you're gonna do then. Yeah, and just going back, I love that genius idea of being your own customer. Always a great move. And just to be clear in case it isn't, that means being an actual customer, not using your company's internal processes to, yes.

Get, go through the [00:23:00] internal recruitment process or the internal way of, getting a new phone or a car or a bank again or whatever. 'cause they're often set up to remove some of the friction that's unintentionally built into customer experiences. 

Dr Dani: Yep. It's actually being a customer, yeah, definitely. What else what are some other ways that. People can get started with design thinking. 

Designer Peter: So we've talked about finding another person. I think that is a really important step. And whether it's a confident or the first member of your design thinking cabal or I would say ideally your leader who's gonna kinda open doors for you and be a supporter and a sponsor of your efforts and you can work with them to set things up in an experimental way and learn together.

But even before that, actually, you can you can start prototyping things. There's three almost immediate things that anybody can do individually that gets you [00:24:00] into a design thinking frame of mind. If I can describe as that first one, if you're in an organization.

Everyone and anyone has got customers of what they do. There might not be actually external paying customers, but somebody in your organization uses the work, uses the work that you do to do something somewhere in the value chain. So you could go and speak to that person and understand more about them, who they are as a person, what they like about their work what some of the.

Problems they experience in their work is, do any of them relate to the work that you're doing? And start to empathize and understand that an interesting first step could be a shot in the dark because maybe there's nothing there. Maybe they're not experiencing any problems that you can help them with.

Probably not, though. I think there could be something there. The next one is, a common almost default kind of behavior in most organizations, certainly any I've worked in is we tend to jump to, [00:25:00] conclusions or fixate on the first idea that we have in response to a situation.

Whereas within our design thinking mindsets, capabilities, and our toolkits is of ways to just pause for a very short period of time. And come up with more than one idea. And we can do that by ourselves. We can set ourselves an ideation challenge to say instead of, coming up or doing instead of doing something the way I've always done it, I'm gonna pause here for 10 minutes.

I'm gonna come up with 10 different ideas around how I could do this particular task differently. So you can experiment with, divergent thinking in there and then choosing one of those. And that leads me onto the next thing, which is the next kind of entry point individually, I think is prototyping.

Where anything can be a prototype. You can create a prototype of an email. You can pro create a prototype of a. A PowerPoint deck or a, a Miro board. If your organization is starting to use Gen ai, then you could probably create some prototype way or experiment with ai. And I guess the point of a [00:26:00] prototype unlike is to show it to somebody else and get feedback from them.

And I think prototyping is a great end because often, some of the sticking points in organizations and with ourselves as individuals is we're not doing the best work we could because we're and we've talked about this in a previous episode, we're talk, we're held back by some degree of internal perfectionism, which means we think we need to show our boss, for example, our finished work.

Whereas I think if we take a prototyping approach to it, in my experience at least you can show them your very earliest work in response to the request that they've given you. Has all sorts of benefits. Your boss asks you to create a, a spreadsheet showing X, Y, and z or PowerPoint deck, which outlines a proposal.

You've got a rough idea. What your boss is looking for. You could spend three weeks creating what you think is the perfect thing. Take it to them, say. Tell you that you've completely misunderstood the brief with instructions and you've wasted three weeks, or you could spend three hours and take them the very roughest readies prototype of [00:27:00] what you're thinking, get their immediate feedback and just keep iterating from there.

Yeah, prototyping great and individual ideation can be really helpful. And , empathizing with your internal users or customers or the people who use your output. Three starting points as that you can do as an individual on your work that you're doing. 

Dr Dani: I agree with all of those. There's also an opportunity here within the three things that you just mentioned to role model. Yeah. So like in the situation that you talked about, you're right. We often tend to, when we're problem solving, go with the first idea that you've come up and say, that's brought up in a meeting and somebody mentions an idea and everybody wants to go with it.

What you could actually say is that is a great idea, but how about if we just take five minutes and see what other ideas that might come up and, yeah. And then you're inserting an element of design thinking into a small moment, but that's also role modeling what ideation could look like.

'cause there's a lot of misconception that ideation is, oh, it takes a [00:28:00] lot of time. It's about post-it notes, it's about this, it's about that. And it's actually not, it's actually just pausing to go. What else? 

Designer Peter: Yeah. I love that, Dani. Yes. Building a picture up here, it's kinda radiating.

I think this starts with a, with an individual. It starts with you. You're deciding you're going to embark on this journey and see where it takes you. Like we've said, it starts with at least one other person, and then you're starting to radiate outwards and role modeling's. Awesome. You could almost see as a form of prototyping.

You prototyping a behavior and seeing how it fits with the organization is telling you the response to that is telling you where you might what, where you might go next. And yeah, really quickly. And again, meeting the organization where it's at in a meeting that exists already, not setting up anything new.

It's showing rather than telling. Yeah, and if that's successful, then you have a small group of people who've experienced it. It's like the rippling the next wave and the rip is a bigger group of people. Yeah. And before you know that you'll have somebody saying, can we maybe put all of this together and try and tackle a problem?

Dr Dani: The other way with [00:29:00] ideation is, let's say you could do that on your own, so let's say you're working on something you could go to somebody and say, I'm trying to do this. Here's five ways I'm thinking about going about this. What do you think? 

Designer Peter: Yeah. Yeah. And then 

Dr Dani: maybe you take those five things to five people.

Designer Peter: Yeah. And 

Dr Dani: what you're doing there is you're actually demonstrating, oh why did Dani come up with five ideas and ask me versus two ideas? And these, again, these are little micro things, but if you consistently do these things, then it starts to have an effect on other people. Yeah. 

Designer Peter: Yeah. I love it.

And building on your idea five ideas and making I, this is the way my mind works, but I would make at least one of those five ideas. Something, choose your own word. Radical, outrageous, a bit silly, potentially something that seems completely out of the norm that gets people's brain going, what?

And challenging it. And the reason I would do that is because their brain will actually, I. [00:30:00] Take that idea and do something with it. And it's often the case that we haven't done that with our brains at work. 'cause we're too used to seeing kind of run of the mill fairly standard normal ideas.

We're not used to that dopamine rush of a new idea and our brains doing something with it. And often what our brains do with those silly, radical ideas. It's maybe not that, but maybe it's something a bit more realistic. So yeah, it's a dope rush for our colleagues. 

Dr Dani: Yep. 

Designer Peter: The gateway drug. Maybe that's how we should it's not like a war metaphor.

It's like drug dealing where setting up a.

Dr Dani: This is the design thinking version of the wire. 

Designer Peter: Yeah. Standing on the corner. Outside the, to be fair before smoking became less or less socially acceptable a lot of communication in organizations I worked at, there was like the smoking shed 

Dr Dani: a lot of decision made in the smoking shed.

Designer Peter: Oh, yeah. Few, yeah. Most definitely information swap [00:31:00] shared. Yeah. 

Dr Dani: The other thing that happens when you start taking your ideas to people and getting their feedback, what you're also role modeling is collective collaboration. 

Designer Peter: Yeah. 

Dr Dani: Yeah. 'cause then if you start going out to people and saying, Hey I'd like to get your take on this.

What do you think about this? You are normalizing that behavior. And then when they're in those situations, hopefully they're like, oh, let me go ask Dani and Peter what they think. 'cause they always come to me to ask me what I think. 

Designer Peter: Yeah. Love it. Nice. 

Dr Dani: What else? 

Designer Peter: We did mention it a couple of times before about your own personal wellbeing. Maybe let's spend a little bit of time talking about that, about ways to keep ourselves energized, fueled in the right ways during this journey that we set off on this adventure, whatever you want to call it.

Dr Dani: So when you're trying to do something different and people have reactions to it, one of the ways to preserve your wellbeing is you cannot take their [00:32:00] reactions personally. 

Whether the reaction is positive or negative, you cannot take it personally. Just remembering that and arming yourself around, that can go a long way to preserving your. Wellbeing. 

Designer Peter: Yeah. I love that. And especially your mention of the positive 'cause. Yeah. It's easy to start, feeling the good vibes and thinking it's all about you. But neither positive nor negative. Don't take it personally. Yeah. Great reminder 

Dr Dani: People are gonna have the reactions they have and that is a they thing. It's not a you thing, so remembering that. What else in terms of wellbeing

Designer Peter: I think you need to have some sort of buddy or confidant or mentor or coach or, your leader. If they represent that sort of person to you to. Have conversations with about how things are going, not well or not going well. I think other things to do are to stay fueled up with inspiration and [00:33:00] often to begin with that's from elsewhere. You listen to podcasts about other people's stories. People, especially in, for me, it's like really early on, like you said, that role modeling, it's the got to see it to be it.

So you need to see what other organizations have done, how other people in organizations have done what they've done, how they've done it what success that they've had. Yeah, that's that's important. Maybe, I guess coming back to the. The people's responses, I guess your own response to things.

I think we're getting quite deep in philosophical now, but this, I think for me is probably pay attention to the journey as much as the destination. And that's why I mentioned earlier on , be aware and think of what it is that you're doing this for. Want to do your best to avoid the situation where you get the achievement or accomplishment, or you solve the problem you thought you were gonna. It could end up being a bit like as apparent a lot of Olympic gold medalists have post Olympics depression, but the gold medalist especially 'cause they think they're gonna feel and be differently the day after they've won an [00:34:00] Olympic gold medal, but it turns out they're exactly the same person.

They just happen to have won Olympic gold medal. But if they're clever and careful along the way, they've turned themselves into the best possible athlete they can be. They've enjoyed the journey. And they're all of those things and they happen to have won an Olympic gold medal. I think being really aware of your purpose and the journey so that you know when you. Do start making the changes that you had in mind to begin with, and you do remove some of the frustrations that you saw and you do help people start to collaborate and work on things and solve problems in a really enjoyable, satisfying, and way, then that's more than enough for you.

Dr Dani: This also comes back to the importance of taking breaks. For some of us, when we're so focused on a goal. And things get hard. Our natural inclination is to think we've gotta lean in and push harder. And sometimes that is the answer, but sometimes the answer is, [00:35:00] actually, I need to take a break. I need to walk away from this for a little while. Yeah. 

Designer Peter: Yeah. Nice reminder, Dani. If you'd listen to the, episode my skydiving life. And you might understand why, but I completely a hundred percent agree with you. I think of it as, as rest as being part of training. Again, going back to those Olympic athletes, whether they've won a gold medal or not. They've all, rest breaks are part of performance. And I think that's a in the business world, certainly my experience that, that's counterintuitive to most people. Most people and organizations and cultures think, when things get tough, you keep going. Actually, when things get tough and you start to the benefits come in the break and especially knowledge work that, we can all relate to this. Think of all the ideas you've had when you've not been working. Like whether it's doing the gardening or in the shower or driving along, you go, oh, there's the there's the answer to that problem.

I was thinking of, it just popped into my head. So yeah, breaks completely under percent essential, yeah. So maybe extending from that, it's, yeah I think it's [00:36:00] difficult to build breaks into things ahead of time, especially when you're doing this, but it's starting to be being, I dunno, building signals into yourself that tells you when you need to break or again, coming back to that other person having them pay attention to you and telling you need to take a break. And when we're saying break, we've done a whole episode of this, haven't we? The power of the pause could be five minutes, it could be five days. 

Dr Dani: Exactly. And remembering that because you're taking a break doesn't mean you're giving up. It's just that's what it is, right? Yeah. It's a break. It's a pause. It's a I need a minute. 

Designer Peter: Yeah. And it's better to take a break that you decide to take than end up having to take a break without having a choice, 

Dr Dani: ending up taking a break because you're in the hospital yeah. Another thing that I think is important is looking back. So when we're working on something, we tend to always look at the goal and how far the goal is, but we never look back and go, wow. Look how far we've come. 

Designer Peter: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I love [00:37:00] that. Yeah. I have just got my takeaway for this episode. 

Dr Dani: Oh,

Designer Peter: that was a silent moment. 

Dr Dani: There's this impression that, and I blame Hollywood movies for this, like there's this impression that epiphanies and big change happens in this big way and with a lot of things change happens in very tiny incremental things that stack up over time.

So if you don't stop and look back. If you don't stop and reflect, if you don't, stop and go, where are we now compared to where we were a month ago, two years ago, whatever that is. If you don't do that, then you miss those little incremental things because as you're going through it, you don't feel it.

Designer Peter: Yeah, I'm gonna say it. I don't know what the positive flip version of this, but boiling a frog, the frog doesn't. Help me. I, Dani, what's a positive version of

Dr Dani: oh my goodness. So I don't even know how to, I don't even know [00:38:00] how to take this into, maybe we just need to go with it, but I thought it was a lobster. 

Designer Peter: Oh it would be the same thing, except that at least a frog. This is getting a bit grim, isn't it? But a frog could potentially crawl out of the pot that it's being boiled in versus a lobster unfortunately.

Dr Dani: But the reason that the frog doesn't climb out of the pot is that it doesn't know that it's heating up and boiling. 

Designer Peter: Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. That's the point. 

Dr Dani: Change happens. 

Designer Peter: Change happens around us, and we don't even, we're not even aware of it. And that happened to be for the frog at least. Unhelpful. And ultimately fatal change, whereas we're talking about helpful and positive change. 

Dr Dani: We've gone to all sorts of scary places in this podcast episode. Yeah.

Designer Peter: But yeah, so yeah, I think absolutely. I'm sure there's a, there's an effect or a a heuristic that would tell us more about what we're talking about. 

Dr Dani: We don't see the progress we've made. Yeah. 

Designer Peter: Yeah.

Dr Dani: Because it happens slowly over time. It's still, it's the [00:39:00] same reason that, if you have. My goodness, this is another grim one. Oh, maybe I'll start. So I was gonna say it's the same reason, if you have elderly parents like you and I have, that live far away, we tend to notice they're aging we pick up on that much faster than the people that see them. each day 

Designer Peter: yeah. Yeah. 

Dr Dani: Yeah. 'cause we've had that distance and I guess a more positive spin on that is maybe with children, right? You may not notice the tiny little changes that are happening in your kids because you see them every day. But the relatives that don't see them every day are more likely to see that. 

Designer Peter: Yeah, that's true. And that's, that, that is a nice analogy, whether it's, your own children or young people in your life that you do spend time with and have seen growing up. It is, absolutely worthwhile just taking a pause and going this, let's say 6-year-old is the same [00:40:00] being as was a six month old and just pausing and wonder at that. And I think I. The same thing with our work, especially if we're doing this sort work, we do need to just pause. Maybe that's the, again, the key word is pause and reflect and go look back to see where you started and as far back as you can, I think and, look at what the journey has been.

Dr Dani: We talk about pausing a lot on this podcast. And the more that I read about the lack of productivity and the more that I read about pausing and reflecting particularly what I'm realizing is that we can do so much to increase productivity if we actually paused and reflected more.

Designer Peter: Yeah. 

Dr Dani: But it seems very counterintuitive, right? It seems very. The solution to productivity is to do more and more. More. 

Designer Peter: Yeah. Yeah. 

Dr Dani: But doing more isn't being productive. It's just doing more. 

Designer Peter: Yeah. Yeah. 

Dr Dani: But it's that pause and reflecting that [00:41:00] helps us go, ah, okay. Yeah. Yeah. Alright, so let's bring this one home.

Designer Peter: Talking of looking back, where did we start with this episode? 

Dr Dani: We started with a lone cowboy out in the desert trying to do design thinking. 

Designer Peter: There's a snake in my boot. 

Dr Dani: And then we got into how does somebody who wants to use design thinking in an organization or an environment that isn't. Open to it. How can you get started as an individual? We had a a discussion around, can you be a lone design thinker? And then we went into talking about some ways that you can get started with design thinking on your own. 

Designer Peter: Nice. 

Dr Dani: And then we talked about looking after your own wellbeing, because Yeah, when you are trying to introduce something or change something, it takes a toll on you.

Designer Peter: Yeah, [00:42:00] definitely. Look after your energy. Cool. I love it. It's been a pretty wild and very conversation this week, Dani, but do you want me to ask you, or do you want to ask me what my takeaways are? Who's gonna go first this week? 

Dr Dani: What's your takeaway, Peter? Ah, 

Designer Peter: Surprise. My takeaway is definitely pausing, taking some time going what's the journey been? And true design thinker style. I'm gonna get a bit of e three paper and some pens and paper and draw it 

Dr Dani: nice. How 

Designer Peter: about you? What's your takeaway? 

Dr Dani: My takeaway is actually the wellbeing piece. 

Designer Peter: Okay. 

Dr Dani: I've forgotten. It wasn't even floating in my brain as a thing that should be part of this conversation.

Designer Peter: We 

Dr Dani: started this conversation. But then as we're talking about it, it's. It's something that I feel like we don't talk enough about, we talk about wellbeing as a standalone in this very general thing, but how do we talk about wellbeing in the work itself? 

Designer Peter: Oh yeah. Okay.

That's a nice, give me a second takeaway. Yeah, I like

Dr Dani: that. 

Designer Peter: Maybe that's another episode in the future, [00:43:00] Dani, after we've both done some thinking and 

Dr Dani: reflecting, 

Designer Peter: prototyping with that. Yeah. Thinking, reflecting. Yeah. Yeah. 

Dr Dani: Alright, 

Designer Peter: cool. Love it. 

Dr Dani: I think that does us for this episode.

Thanks for listening everyone. 

Designer Peter: Thanks everyone. 

Dr Dani: Thanks Pete.