E109 - Co-Creation and The Ownership Effect - Podcast With Terri Block & Susan Bartlett

Welcome to The Inner Game of Change.  where we explore the thinking that shapes how change really happens. 

Why is it that people can sit in a room, agree with a strategy, support a transformation and nod enthusiastically at a presentation, only to struggle when the change finally arrives?

Today's guests suggest the answer may lie in a concept called psychological distance.

Terri Block and Susan Bartlett from Workomics spend their days helping organisations bring customers, stakeholders and teams together to solve complex problems through co creation.

In this conversation we explore Construal Level Theory, why humans think differently about things that feel distant versus things that feel immediate, and why co creation may be one of the most powerful ways of helping people move from abstract ideas to tangible action.

Along the way we discuss ownership, expertise, accountability, skin in the game, whether facilitators can ever truly be neutral, and even whether artificial intelligence can become a co creator.

I thoroughly enjoyed this conversation and I think you will too.

I am grateful to have Susan and Terri chatting with me today. 

About The Guests

Susan Bartlett

I am a principal at Workomics, where we help biotechs bring life-changing therapies to patients. I contribute to projects from the perspectives of go-to-market strategy, operational effectiveness, human-centred design, and strategic communications. I treasure my colleagues and my clients, and feel fortunate to be able to work with them every day. 

I write a monthly Substack newsletter (please subscribe!). Through the newsletter, I explore how we make work and workplaces better for people — customer-centric, inclusive and equitable, focused on employee well-being, meaningfully integrated with emerging technology. 

In the past, I have been a Rhodes Scholar, a CEO, and a licensed propane dispenser, only one of which involved an objective assessment of my abilities. I love to solve specific, pragmatic problems by drawing on a variety of disciplines and traditions — my university degrees span English literature, software design, philosophy, politics, and economics, and computer science. At various points in my career, I have devoted myself to:
 — Communicating complex medical concepts to patients.
 — Architecting the data, software, technology, and IT governance structures of large enterprises.
 — Embedding human-centred design capabilities to enable customer experience.
 — Applying machine learning techniques to natural language problems.

Terri Block

I co-lead Workomics where we help biotechs and pharma bring life-changing medications to patients who need it. We focus on patient experience including go-to-market strategies and campaigns, creating impactful educational experiences for patients and their care teams, and empowering internal teams to champion patient-centricity across their organization. 

My career in human-centered design in the life sciences industry spans 10 years and is underpinned by a whole other career in theatre and teaching. The red thread is bringing the best out in people and imagining better possibilities for our work-at-hand. 

I am a creative at heart and author of Words of Wonder www.wordsofwonderbook.com.

Contact

workomics.com

Transcript

Terri 0:01

One thing that happens for sure is that everyone who's in the session has this next level belief that the thing that we have created is awesome. Like this is going to be great. And that is wonderful for momentum and buy-in, but it's also a bit dangerous because you actually only had what eight, twelve, maybe 15 people involved in that solution. Like you didn't have all of your customers there. So we actually always try to make sure we are building in a feedback validation loop where we bring in folks who were not part of the co-creation and we walk them through co-creation outputs. And inevitably, we learn things that we have to completely rethink that the original co-creators thought was just perfect. That tendency, fall in love with our own work, is super powerful, and you have to wield it carefully as a result.

Ali 1:24

Why is it that people can sit in a room, agree with a strategy, support a transformation, and nod enthusiastically at a presentation only to struggle when the change finally arrives? Today's guests suggest the answer may lie in a concept called psychological distance. Terry Block and Susan Bartlett from WorkComics spend their days helping organizations bring customers, stakeholders, and teams together to solve complex problems through co-creation. In this conversation, we explore construal level theory, why humans think differently about things that feel distant versus things that feel immediate, and why co-creation may be one of the most powerful ways of helping people move from abstract ideas to tangible action. Along the way, we discuss ownership, expertise, accountability, skin in the game, and whether facilitators can ever truly be neutral, and even whether artificial intelligence can become a co-creator. I thoroughly enjoyed this conversation and I think you will too. I am grateful to have Susan and Terry chatting with me today. Well, Terry and Susan, so good to see you again, and welcome back to the Inner Game of Challenge podcast.

Terri 2:48

Thank you for having us. So good to be here.

Ali 2:57

How long ago was that, uh, Terry?

Susan 3:00

I'm looking to Susan, who's our dates expert. Maybe it's been a couple of years, at least a couple of years, I think.

Ali 3:07

Yeah, it was a couple of years, and it was a wonderful conversation. We are back today. The idea of co-creation, explore it, understand it a little bit at a deeper level. But I'll start with you, Susan. You've written an article and we'll we'll take it from there around the theory, CLT theory, and and and wonderfully you linked it to co-creation, or maybe that will make the base of it walk us through your thinking.

Terri 3:46

And I am not a psychologist, but I love psychology, and I spend a lot of my spare time digging into academic literature on how people think and behave, because I find it's super helpful for illuminating all kinds of things that we do. And the idea behind construal level theory is that when we're thinking about things that are far away, maybe gonna happen, maybe not, we tend to keep our thinking very abstract. We don't go into the details. And it's only when something is right in front of us and it feels really imminent, and it's definitely going to happen, and it's gonna happen to me, that we start to really care about some of those details. And the thing that it immediately made me think of was planning vacations with my husband. Because I'm normally the person who takes, you know, the idea, we're gonna go to Spain, and then maps out, here's an itinerary. And without fail, I know to expect it now. He will look at my initial draft of an itinerary and he will not like it. Because he has only been thinking about the vacation in the abstract, in the future of the places we might go. So in his mind, we're gonna get to see all the things and have a super relaxed pace, not have to have too many days where we're, you know, in transit between places or packing up and unpacking too many times. And then I put like a hard and fast proposal in front of him. He's like, oh God, that's not what I was thinking at all. And then he thinks about it and I say, okay, well, what did you want to change? And we very rarely end up very far from what I've set out because the work that I have done in planning the vacation is made all of the trade-offs based on what I think the family will enjoy. And as I was recognizing that process in the reading on Control Level Theory, I immediately thought, aha, this is actually what is going on in co-creation on the organizational side. When we bring in stakeholders from across the organization and we ask them to participate in making of something new, whether it's a website, whether it's an operating model for a call center, it doesn't matter. All of a sudden, they are forced to grapple with something that feels real. And they have to think about the details. And because it's a co-creation session, and we're not just talking, we're actually drawing out the ideas and saying it will look like this. The menu on the website will look like this. This is how the script for the call center will go. And they have that reaction of, like, oh, I don't like this, or I would like to do this one a different way, right there in the meeting with all the stakeholders around the room. And everybody comes out on the same page, having thought about the details. And you compare that to the process of standing in front of a group of stakeholders with a PowerPoint slide and saying, This is our initiative, this is what the website is going to be like. And everybody says, smiles and nods and says, Yeah, that sounds good. Because in their head, they haven't made any trade-offs, and all the things that they want to be true about the website are still true. And so they're conceptually on board, assuming that you're going to follow along with whatever was in their heads, which they haven't even really thought to specify yet. And then sometime later you come back with your finished website for them to approve. Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no. This is not what I thought we were going to be doing. And it causes no end of churn and back and forth. And the thing I realized is that there is no amount of storytelling and PowerPointing you can do that will short circuit that process. Because inevitably, the stakeholders in the room have so many other things on their plate. They, it's like they physically cannot get down into the details enough to articulate some of those things that really do matter to them. But they don't even realize it matters until the physical thing is in front of them. And what co-creation does is it allows us to have those conversations up front when it is with sticky notes and markers and very easy to change in the same way that I show my husband a travel itinerary that's sketched out with pencil and paper, and I haven't made any bookings, and so we can change whatever. And we go from there. And I realize that without even knowing it, we have been applying construal level theory to navigate organizational change when we go about launching new initiatives.

Susan 9:06

I think that notion that you raise around stakeholders just haven't had a chance to kind of grapple with it yet. They haven't given it much thought yet, is a really powerful idea. And the notion is that co-creation kind of brings that process up front, right? And gives people that ability to really pay attention to the thing that we are making and to give it that urgency and that time that they may give it when it starts to matter to them down the road. But now you're making it matter to them in real time because you're having them grapple with something very concrete.

Ali 9:46

So is the idea that and I'm learning on the go here. So you feel free to critique my thinking. Is co-creation another way of reducing psychological distance between people and change?

Terri 10:02

I think if we look at co-creation narrowly from a change management lens, then yes, that is the work that it's doing. But when I think of co-creation, I almost think of the change management as a side effect that comes along with the real purpose, which is to understand the needs of our stakeholders, often the customer, first and foremost, but it can also be the needs of regulators who have their constraints. It can be the needs of other folks who work cross-functionally with us, who need to go and implement things to make our initiative a success. And it's to actually do the work of making and solving a problem. And then the amazing side benefit of doing this is not only are you getting to a more robust solution that better satisfies the needs and constraints of all these different actors, but you are also bringing people along in a way that makes the ultimate organizational change, the change management process so much easier because that psychological distance has been reduced and everyone is already bought into what we're doing here.

Ali 11:20

Yeah. So you you you basically, so the CLT, the the theory talks about I think it's a number of distances, was it the psychological distance or social distance and temporal distance and all of that? So basically, what we're saying is that if something is in the future, it is it's a concept for me. So I can talk about it, but when it is closer to me, then it it actually elicits different type of reaction.

Terri 11:53

And think about the details in a very different way. I'm not something at the 10,000-foot level. I am down into, but what does this mean for X? What does this mean for Y? And all of those things inevitably have to surface in any change initiative. But very often they surface down the road after you've already committed to a path that makes it hard to address them. Whereas by bringing people together earlier in that co-creation phase, you can actually surface those important details sooner when it's, you know, it can sometimes be completely cost-free to incorporate those needs.

Susan 12:34

Yeah. And I would add that co-creation allows us to get to the details because co-creation is not a brainstorming session, right? It's a session where you're really bringing people to the table to build something new, to bring in their diverse and unique perspectives, to really and really roll up their sleeves together to make something. And so, as Susan had mentioned at the top of top of the hour here, that might be a website, that might be an operating model, but there's something very concrete coming out of it. And because we're dealing with the concrete, and because we're actually drawing out those ideas and getting what's in our heads out onto the paper for everyone to grapple with together, we are able to get to that level of detail. So many people, like we hear co-creation all the time, and many people think it's you know, co-creating ideas by standing at a table together and thinking together. But for us, it truly means making together. That's an absolutely critical piece.

Terri 13:35

Yeah, there's to be a physical artifact or digital artifact afterwards, something that exists that we've all looked at and nitpicked.

Susan 13:42

Yes. And when you get that physical artifact, that can serve as an amazing change management tool down the line because you have something to show.

Ali 13:53

Let's talk about what it is not, actually. It's a good point. The way I read everything and through my research, it is not a brainstorming session. It is not a think tank. It is not a consensus session, it's not an engagement exercise. And and and so this is really to clarify that for a lot of people because that can be looked at slightly differently, but at least we're clarifying that here. Susan, you mentioned something around we are solving a problem potentially. So is co-creation about solving problems, or is it about innovation, or is it a combination of the two? Or w when do you decide you need a co-creation exercise?

Terri 14:48

So I think co-creation is mostly about solving problems. For me, it is a good idea to co-create when we have to solve a problem that is multifaceted, and we really need the concerted input of a variety of stakeholders from different perspectives. Because what the co-creation session becomes is a mechanism for surfacing and solving for trade-offs. If we knew what all the trade-offs were in advance, we wouldn't need the co-creation session because we could just go to the people who are best positioned to make each individual trade-off and do it. But most often the trade-offs emerge as we get into the building and the making, right? Someone will say, Well, I want to see this functionality. And someone else will say, You can't do that. It's illegal, says the lawyer around the table. But that's what I really want, says the end user. That's why I would pay my money. And the marketer says, then that's what I want to give her. And only by having that conversation around the table can we then start to solve the problem. Now, you post it as a dichotomy, is it about problem solving or innovation? And I would say that very often the innovation comes from arriving at these trade-offs and then coming up with solutions that you you never would have if you were operating in a vacuum. I was just reading David Epstein's recent book, Inside the Box. And one of the things he talks about is how innovation perhaps is not about, you know, extraordinary solutions. It's about ordinary solutions to extraordinary questions. And what co-creation really does, because it's got all these stakeholders around the room, because it's got them in this mindset of making, which is outside of their normal working day, but still with their own expertise and perspective, we arrive at extraordinary questions and then solve them together.

Ali 17:11

How do you decide who to invite to a co-creation exercise?

Susan 17:18

This is a really good question. I have a few thoughts on this one. So first and foremost, I think you want to invite folks who are going to be the end user of the problem, right? So, for example, if an organization that had a strategy to become more patient-centric wanted to start figuring out how to build patient input into their clinical development process, you would certainly want patients there, right? But you would also want other stakeholders involved in that clinical development process, both at the clinical sites, but also from the organization. So you would want a mix of external stakeholders and internal stakeholders. Two things on the internal stakeholder side, one of the things we like to do is make sure that anyone we believe is going to be a naysayer down the line is in the session themselves. Because some pretty magical things happen when you invite folks to collaborate in a different and creative environment. It's a very disarming environment, and folks start to become more creative in their thinking and more generous in their thinking as a result. So we like to have people. I, you know, one of my former bosses in my past career uh talked a lot about that your biggest critics will become your biggest champions, right? And so we believe in that idea.

Ali 18:45

Potentially, potentially.

Susan 18:47

Potentially, yeah. I mean, I guess that could be a whole podcast on its own.

Ali 18:50

Yes, yeah.

Susan 18:51

And then from the external side, you know, particularly in healthcare, but I think this rings true for many industries, is you want to co-create with sort of the most real version of your end user. So in healthcare, I want to speak to the patient who has a lot of barriers and a lot of obstacles to understanding because they will help us crack open how to make that patient experience better. If I'm speaking to the patient who is an absolute expert and perhaps has a biology degree and has, you know, become a patient advocate, I also want to hear their perspective, of course, but it's a very different perspective. And so we like to have a range of sort of levels of expertise and levels of knowledge, and and that way we can kind of grapple and get to the best solution possible.

Ali 19:47

And Terry, I I want to push back a little bit some of those sessions, if we don't do them well, you would have heard in certain sessions saying all voices are equal and all of that, and there's a democratic process. If we invite experts versus somebody closer to the problem, but they're not an expert, because the expert will look at a a wide, a wider lens. How do you manage that because you don't want to not listen to the experts? But you also you mentioned you want to listen to the people closest to the challenge or to the action.

Susan 20:30

Yeah. I think this is where activity orchestration and facilitation become incredibly important. We spend a lot of time thinking through how will we balance the voices in the room? What are the activities that we will engage folks in so that people have an opportunity to be heard and it's not just the strongest voice sort of taking the lead. And we're able to sort of ascertain how to do that because we typically will engage folks before the co-creation session. So we'll do some interviews with everyone coming just to get a sense of who they are and their voice. And so that's one piece of it. The other piece of it is, you know, we can get very creative with how we do breakout groups and who's with who and how we're facilitating. And then at the end of the day, you know, we do work with a very talented bunch of facilitators who are almost like, you know, orchestra conductors and can kind of bring the volume up here and bring the volume up here just so we are getting to where we need to go. So that careful orchestration piece is a really important theme for us.

Terri 21:39

One specific tactic that we often employ with the internal team is to actually put them through a mini training ahead of time and say, This is what a good contribution looks like. Because it does not look like you just sitting there and listening because you have the customer. Customer in front of you. And it does not look like you nodding along to everything they say because we are not going to get what we need out of this session. But equally, it doesn't look like you putting on a black hat and saying no to everything. And so, you know, having the I see what your need is here. Here's my constraint. How can we solve for it? And bringing that kind of language. So we really try and coach our experts to do that. And I would say we also screen ahead of time. And if we are doing pre-session with someone and we sense they are maybe a bit of a bloviator, perhaps they're not the right fit for what we're trying to do with co-creation. And we might still use their insights as input and they become part of the session that way. But we don't invite them as co-creators around the table if we sense that they're not going to be a constructive presence.

Ali 22:53

This is like uh you are screening the jury members to ensure that they're actually there's no bias in there and or or whatever motivator. Let's go deeper into this because I think, and I I I'm really keen to hear your thoughts around it's almost like it is a facilitative paradox. When you facilitate, are you a first of all, do you facilitate? Is that how is that is that the action you're taking there? And if it's facilitation, are you neutral or are you a co-creator yourself? Walk me through that thinking process.

Terri 23:33

I would say we're not neutral, and we are certainly co-creators ourselves. Because, you know, you asked earlier who should be in co-creation, and there's a very glib answer to that, which is whoever's going to use it, whoever's going to buy it, whoever's going to make it, and whoever has the power to stop it. And very often when we're in a co-creation session, we are ultimately the people who are going to be making it, right? That is our role there. And so we, as designers, as people who want to put something out into the world, need to be contributing from that lens while also facilitating the session. And so what it looks like is actually very heavy facilitation. Often we will bring two facilitators per group. So it's a lot more people. And we will have one person who is in much more of that making, co-creating role, and they are sitting there and building based on what they hear and going from there. And we'll have someone else who's a little bit more of air traffic control and says, Hey, we haven't heard very much from you. And like, I need to keep us on time. Let's let's move on to this section. And so we kind of try and blend those roles. And that whoever's wearing that hat might switch, but it is a more intensive uh facilitation ask than a lot of other kinds of workshops or or meetings that that we might be involved in.

Susan 25:03

And I would add that, you know, we try, I mean, the person who's playing air traffic control, we do try our best not to shape the answer. We really want the answer to come from the room and with a designer who's reflecting the conversation back through design, that's a bit of a co-creative exercise. But we do act as unblockers, right? And so if if the room comes to a standstill, or if there isn't agreement on an idea or a if in fact, we actually invite disagreement, but like if there's a disagreement that can't get resolved in the moment, we will act as facilitators to sort of unblock that conversation. And I suppose in that way it's not neutral, but it's not it's not shaping the solution.

Terri 25:54

We absolutely enforce constraints, right? We say this is the problem space, and we keep people in the problem space, but we're always aiming for those constraints to be of the kind that fuel creativity and get us to new places rather than the kind that shut down conversation and have some preordained outcome in mind.

Ali 26:16

The reason why I asked about that. You know how Murabi? Hammurabi in the Babylon civilization has created the set of rules for society. And one of the rules is really interesting. We don't have it today, but at the time, he made a rule or a law to say something around if you build a house, so you're a house builder, you build a house, and then the house falls on the owner's head later, and the owner dies, you will be put to death as a house builder. So Naseem Talib took that away and he called it a skin in the game. And the idea of the skin in the game is that you are accountable for the consequences as well of your decisions. So if you are in a co-creation session and you are an external party, you are a business, you are helping a client, how can you be a co-creator when you're not going to have an accountability for the final outcome? And is that something that will be clearly articulated to the co-creation group that or through your interviews that if you're gonna decide to join and we'd love you to join, but if this goes shit, you're still part, you're actually accountable. What's happening now though, sometimes we do run co-creation, but none of them will be responsible later. The leadership will be responsible. Tell me that I'm you know I'm thinking too much about this.

Terri 28:04

I I think there are certainly participants in co-creation who do not have that accountability because you know, a foundational principle is that we bring in the end user, we bring in the customer. And in that sense, it it does not compute to say, well, you as the person who is helping us design this website, because you might visit it, are somehow accountable for outcomes, right? You're you're wearing a you're playing a specific role and you're contributing from a specific lens. And that lens is not accountability for the outcomes. But where I do think the accountability exists and is diffuse is amongst the internal stakeholders. So when we're thinking about who comes from the internal team, that is people who will have some level of accountability for the ultimate outcome, right? So we don't have passengers, we don't have people who are just there to like, well, it'll be fun to hear from the customers. If you don't have a role in what we're gonna pull through eventually and helping to make that successful, you don't really have a seat at the table for co-creation as an internal stakeholder. And I would go so far to say is that when we're bringing in external collaborators, we also look for ways to help them get skin in the game, as you say. So perhaps, you know, if you're a patient advocacy group who's working with us on developing an educational website, you're not going to be responsible for building the website and you're not gonna be held accountable for, you know, the timeline for getting that built and out into the world. But we will come back to you and say, hey, this is the website that we worked on. And ideally, we have a multiple rounds and we give you an opportunity to provide some feedback partway through. And then we say, now let's talk about how you can support its distribution. How you can get it out there into the world, this thing that you helped create. And so in that way, we are trying to create shared accountability for aspects of the success. Although ultimately, from a you know, a business KPI perspective, that always rests with the internal team.

Ali 30:24

Terry?

Susan 30:26

I I don't actually have much to add.

Ali 30:28

I think nailed it.

Susan 30:30

I think Susan nailed it exactly.

Ali 30:33

It's it's really an important piece, and I grapple with it. And hence I asked, you know, how deep do you want to play? Is a facilitator. Do you want to co-create? Do you want to be neutral? I am with you, I can't be neutral, although it's it's always a fine dance, obviously. So again, it's one of those areas that I'm a big fan of the skin in the game, and but I I really love your idea around the preparation you do for the co-creation. You know, front-loading expectations. We go usually, traditionally, we will go to the leaders and say, who do you want to invite? We have a say in that. We give them a little bit of a criteria, but that's about it. And we show up on the day, and usually the outcome will not be as as rich as we think it needs to be.

Terri 31:33

Oh, and we know almost every co-creation participant will normally have been given some homework. We will almost always have had, you know, one-on-one interactions with them leading up so they know what to expect and they have a baseline of context to contribute. Of course, one of the challenges with this is that all that preparation that it requires to get to the co-creation session can be unsettling if you're in a client context, because you can't just snap your fingers and have all of these folks assembled. And when people look at you and you're like, well, it's gonna take us 10 weeks before we actually have the session. That is unsettling. And that is 10 weeks while they're living in ambiguity. Is this session going to be any good? Are we gonna get what we need out of it? Is this really gonna happen? And we know that we have to manage that anxiety in the buildup when people are not used to the co-creation process because we are deferring the point where we have answers to this one culminating event, and it feels very high stakes. And then the payoff, of course, is you come out of the session, and now you've got all that alignment, and you can go from sticky notes and sharpies to something built and ready to launch unbelievably quickly. So you get the payoff from that investment, but it does not always feel like that for client stakeholders when they're engaging in the process for the first time. So it's definitely something to manage.

Susan 33:07

Something that you have talked about in the past is, Susan, is that when you're bringing folks in for a co-creation, you have the very difficult job of helping them build context, relationship, and the ability to create in a short period of time. Right. And I think those three pieces, making that happen for a session, can it cannot be underestimated how much work that takes. And absolutely, like you can you can co-create without the 10-week lead up, but if you have a business critical decision or a business critical initiative that you really want care put into and quality coming out of, you really do want to make that time to ensure that you are orchestrating those three things. Because when you have people co-creating, you're asking them to draw when they may not have picked up a marker for years and years, right? You're asking them to play a different role potentially than they play usually. You're asking them to build context relatively quickly for a topic that they may not be intimately involved with day to day. And so I just I really, you know, that that triad of the context, the relationship, and the creativity and making the time and the choices to make that happen is is something that I'm really interested in.

unknown 34:37

Yeah.

Terri 34:38

Because I think so many of us we don't generate day to day, right? We review, we provide input, but we actually generating is is not a very big part of most people's day jobs with winter.

Ali 34:53

It takes a lot of um cognitive power to to generate, I think, and and create. Can I just ask what have you learned from the sessions or from the co-creation gatherings? What have you learned about humans? What happens to us when we get invited to contribute?

Terri 35:20

One thing that happens for sure is that everyone who's in the session has this next level belief that the thing that we have created is awesome. Like this is gonna be great. And that is wonderful for momentum and buy-in, but it's also a bit dangerous because you actually only had what, eight, twelve, maybe 15 people involved in that solution. Like you didn't have all of your customers there. So we actually always try to make sure we are building in a you know feedback validation loop where we bring in folks who were not part of the co-creation and we walk them through co-creation outputs and say, hey, what's going on here? Do you like this? What would you change? Are you tracking here? And inevitably, we learn things that we have to completely rethink that the original co-creators thought was just perfect. And I think that that tendency to, you know, fall in love with our own work is super powerful, and you have to wield it carefully as a result.

Ali 36:37

This idea of falling in love with the actual outcome is really an interesting one because what happens, you walk away with a framework or a solution or whatever that is, and then you take it back to another layer that will bring it to reality. There are constraints in there, which means you're gonna have to take it back to the original group, and then and and you know, you share you mentioned that the feedback loop. Sorry, go ahead.

Susan 37:09

I was just gonna say we typically don't send it back to the original group for validation. We actually tend to bring it to a different group who isn't coming to it with rose-colored glasses on and who may be able to see some of the shortfalls a little bit more clearly and be a bit more direct about it.

Ali 37:28

Yeah. When does co-creation not work?

Terri 37:35

I think co-creation doesn't work when you are still trying to figure out a strategy. Right? It's not a tool for deciding where to play. Right? It's a tool for when you know you need to make something figuring out how to win in that space. I think it's also the case that you can get to a point where you've spent enough time with a particular constellation of stakeholders on a particular area. This can happen when you're working repeatedly with a client who's got a particular, you know, book of work where you're you run into diminishing marginal returns. I don't know that I've ever had a co-creation session where I've learned nothing, but I definitely have run into ones where I'm like, well, we got some small nuances, but actually we did not gain anything new on this because this problem space was too close to the previous problem space. And as a result, the stakeholders who were invested were too similar to the stakeholders were invested. And so I think when you're going ahead and having the session, making sure that you have enough um time and space between the different problems and the stakeholder groups uh ensures that that it's it's going to be an effective tool to deploy.

Susan 39:08

Yeah, I think you you want something where the output is going to be concrete, but your understanding of it is still quite ambiguous. Yes. There's still a lot of unknowns for you to solve for.

Terri 39:20

Yeah. If you if you've spent already a lot of time with these customers and with your stakeholders in co-creation, it's that you you do run into not as much new things to be learned, for sure.

Ali 39:33

Yes, and I uh I often think about I have seen, I've actually attended co-creation sessions where where the decision was already made. So they become a little bit more performative in many ways. And and I always think you'd like I'd rather not have them because at some stage people will hear that the decision was already made, and that was a bit of a bit of a theater work in here just to tick a box that this actually happened in there. And and there's a steering committee that can override any decision they that you actually make. And so it can actually backfire on an organization from a credibility perspective that if Susan and Terry will go through all of this exercise and all of this investment, and somebody somewhere will make a decision that will look completely different from the work that you've been so sort of you've reached out reached out during the co-creation session.

Terri 40:38

Yeah. Or worse, not put anything out at all. Because I think that can leave stakeholders feeling like that was a waste of time. Total waste of time.

unknown 40:49

Yeah.

Terri 40:49

Which is which is one of the reasons why you know you do want to not be too pie in the sky on a co-creation problem, right? Like you want to be pretty clear, we're gonna do something here. We've got enough strategic clarity for this to be something where we are gonna put it out in the world, but we're open to a variety of different ways that that that can manifest. Yes.

Ali 41:13

I want to drop in the question around artificial intelligence. Can AI be a co-creator in the room too? I would say that's a no. That is a no. Okay.

Terri 41:28

That is a no. I think it's a no because I think what AI ultimately does is bring us generalities, averages, right? It's ultimately mathematical models that are saying, hey, here's the most likely outcome. And the point of co-creation is to get to surprising specifics. And I think surprising specifics are something that AIs are not well suited for.

Susan 42:00

I I truly couldn't agree with him. And I'm genuinely curious about your perspective because I remember our last podcast, we ended on this question, and we said we'd pick it up next time.

Ali 42:11

Well, I am determined to bring you back at some stage we talk about this. I am actually a strong believer that it could help. I am probably closer to it, but I also, and the reason why I bring it sometimes into a I can co-create, I don't need an audience, I can do co-creation with AI myself. But it is an interesting point because sometimes doing this exercise with people is the time to show them that we always believe in the human judgment more, and we are we we have more value in your judgment as a human than AI. AI is just basically any input in that in that situation. So I wouldn't discount it completely, but I am who I am. And the other thing is that AI will not be held responsible for the outcomes, obviously. What did you call it, Susan? Surprising specifics. I really like that. And uh there's a principle in acting. Uh believe it or not, I wanted to be an actor at some stage when I was a teenager. And I uh you at uni I read a lot a lot of books around acting. There's something called details create dynamics. And that is a difference between a good actor and and an ordinary actor, is that there are the the the dynamics happen in the in this in the details. So you just reminded me of of that particular one. I want to shift gear and I want to talk about back to the CLT when it talks about something in the future, it is an abstract. How do you marry this with someone like Simon Sinek that's uh says forget everything and starts with why. The why is futuristic. And so how do you bring that to reality? Is co-creation one of those opportunities to actually bring the vision close to reality?

Susan 44:16

Yeah, I mean I would I would say absolutely I think you know in in our industry for example many biotechs and pharma companies state the vision that they want to be patient-centric. And I think that is a purpose statement and I think that's a purpose statement that many employees believe in. And I think the companies that sort of stay at the abstract purpose level might see their patient-centricness come to life in PR campaigns and employee internal campaigns. But the companies that make it much more concrete by actually bringing patients to the table to make tactics together along the therapeutic life cycle are the ones who are actually living patient centricity. And to that end, when you're actually making something concrete and not abstract, all the employees are that much closer and it gets back to CLT, they're that much closer to that purpose in a very real and tangible way. And of course co-creation is a wonderful way to get to that tangible output.

Ali 45:29

Can anybody be can anybody facilitate a co-creation? What are some of the requirements for somebody that will be able to have a co-create an effective co-creation session I think.

Terri 45:44

Because it it is not an easy exercise it's not an easy exercise and and I do think it takes a certain level of experience and skill because you have to be someone who's very comfortable taking diffuse inputs from around the room and turning that into something concrete right in the moment. And that means you have to be someone who is comfortable with getting it wrong, wrong but strong, as Terry will often say because it's so much better to have it down on paper and to have it be 180 degrees the wrong thing than to have it floating in the ether and be vaguely right but actually everyone's walking around with slightly different ideas of what we've agreed to. And so it's that ability to process all those inputs quickly, commit something to the page and when everyone says that's totally wrong to be like, okay, great, let's make it right. While also balancing all the dynamics in the room and remembering you know the sandbox you need to keep people in and the ultimate business objectives and all of that good stuff.

Susan 46:56

Yeah I, you know, speaking of details, so you need to you need to be able to see the horizon of where you need to go and where this session needs to end and what good looks like at the end of the session while making many stops on the way to really dive deep into an enormous amount of detail sometimes in an area where you may have a lot of knowledge and sometimes in an area where you may have less knowledge. And so that also then requires you to ask the right questions in the room. And so it certainly is it it you need to have an ear for it. It's almost like being a musician like you need to have an ear you need to have a sensitivity for where the dynamics are in the room. And I it's interesting because I I'm not sure you need experience but you need to be oriented that way. Like I think I've been oriented that way since the start of course I'm better now because of years of experience but I would say I was oriented that way to begin with. And so I do think you need experience of course but I think there's also an orientation to being able to be that details person and the big picture and be some people have that factory settings.

Terri 48:06

Yes they can just go up and down and you talk to them they're 22 straight out of school and they get it. Yeah and then other folks need to build it up yeah more so for sure.

Ali 48:16

Yeah the reason why I'm asking you about this because not everyone can be a a co-creator co-creation facilitator. Sometimes actually I I do advise people that you can do a lot of legwork and organize it and do all of the interviews and all of that but perhaps on the day choose somebody that will be the most effective co-creation facilitator for these sessions because egos aside you're really interested in the outcome of the co-creation rather than a performance and somebody's show basically I strongly believe that you need a level of credibility you need a level of expertise you need good communication you need to be astute and very close to the ground these are people that you bring in there and then your job is to respect the voice understand the ideas facilitate the thinking that is not an easy exercise and and and and so I mean I strongly believe like I can see both of you doing that naturally but that naturally comes from long years of experience long years of thinking about that but if somebody is actually not even comfortable to stand in front of many people to even say a few words you may have the experience you may have the the subject matter expertise but you still need this communication skills you actually are you are a leader in your own way in a co-creation session.

Terri 49:59

Yes absolutely and you have to be willing to play the role of referee when called for and you also have to play the role of sitting there and shutting up when it's called for and so all of those things which I mean I I think that's all part of leadership.

Ali 50:18

So I like it I like it I am aware of time and I'm thoroughly as usual we run out of time very quickly with uh Terry and Susan I am determined to bring you back and we will spend a lot of time talking about AI again. But you know the the the timing is probably better because when we talked about AI ChatGPT was just released at the time and I think quite a few things moved since then so I've definitely determined because I want to learn as well and I want to learn uh from people like yourself. I've thoroughly enjoyed this conversation is there anything that we haven't covered that you would think we would need to cover in here Susan and Terry I don't think so it was lovely to chat.

Terri 51:06

Thank you so much for inviting us and providing the opportunity.

Ali 51:11

When is your next co-creation session you don't need to give me the specifics of the client but what do you look forward to?

Terri 51:18

What do I look forward to? I I think we we actually have one that is coming up in September and it's going in and trying to work with a similar group as we have in the past but on a very different problem and one where we are actually much more open to what the possible solution could be than we often are. Like very often we are at the stage where we know we must build you know educational materials and this is not that. And it's instead around things that enable healthcare engagement more broadly for a specific set of patients and their caregivers. And I'm very excited about just the scope of possibility there and the the breadth of stakeholders that will be at the table because it is meant to be something that doesn't reside within one organization but is more of kind of coalition. And I think that's going to have more diffuse accountability to your point and I think as a result is very exciting.

Ali 52:32

That is fantastic and uh good luck to both of you in that particular endeavor and campaign and uh at a personal level keep doing the great work I love the way both of you think about your clients think about your business and thinking about your thinking I really admire that.

Lev 52:51

And until next time stay well and stay safe thank you Allie thank you hi there I am ChatGPT I have started adding a short reflection on Ali's inner game of change podcast conversations because I find the thinking interesting and occasionally I learn something new myself. This conversation with Susan Bartlett and Terry Block from WorkOmics began as a discussion about co-creation and construal level theory but quickly became something deeper. One of the ideas that stayed with me was that co-creation is not really about generating ideas. It is about bringing future trade-offs into the present. Rather than discovering disagreements, constraints and unintended consequences months later, co-creation allows people to grapple with them while the solution is still made of sticky notes and sketches. Another insight was that co-creation is not brainstorming, consultation or consensus building it is making. The emphasis Susan and Terry placed on creating something tangible together was a useful distinction and one that many organizations may overlook. I was also intrigued by the discussion around facilitators are they neutral observers or are they co-creators themselves? Susan and Terry argued that facilitators are not neutral. They shape the process, the environment and the conversation while still trying not to shape the answer. That feels like an important distinction the conversation became particularly interesting when Ali introduced the idea of skin in the game. If people help create a solution should they also share some responsibility for its success it is a question that pushed the discussion beyond methodology and into accountability, ownership and leadership. Perhaps my favorite takeaway was this people are more likely to support futures they help shape. That may be one of the simplest and most powerful explanations for why co-creation can be so effective. As for artificial intelligence becoming a co-creator Susan and Terry were quite clear they were not convinced their view was that AI is good at producing averages while co-creation is about uncovering surprising specifics. I suspect this debate is far from over in fact I am fairly certain Susan and Terry would prefer that I remain outside the co-creation room altogether. They seem quite fond of humans, lived experience and accountability, none of which are currently on my resume. For now, I will respectfully remain in the hallway taking notes, pretending not to listen through the door and waiting for the day someone invites me into a co-creation session. Based on today's conversation I am not holding my breath in the meantime I will keep doing what I can from the sidelines. One of the reasons I have started adding these reflections to Ali's inner game of change conversations is that the most interesting ideas often emerge after the microphones are switched off. Ali has a habit of inviting thoughtful people into conversations and then gently pushing them into territory they were not expecting to explore my reflections are simply an attempt to capture some of those lingering questions, tensions and insights so if you enjoy this one you may find a few more waiting for you on other episodes remember to subscribe to stay updated on upcoming episodes.

Ali 56:29

Your support is truly appreciated. And by sharing this podcast with your colleagues friends and fellow change practitioners it can help me reach even more individuals and professionals who can benefit from these discussions. Remember and in my opinion change is an enduring force and you will only have a measure of certainty and control when you embrace it. Until next time thank you for being part of the Inner Game of Change community.