Solving the Right Problem: Design Thinking for Leaders and Resilient Teams with Kat Mather

“Design thinking is conscious decision-making.” - Kat Mather

In this episode, I discuss design thinking with Kat Mather from Design Linking, a design professional with over 25 years of experience. We explore how design thinking helps teams address root causes instead of surface-level issues, enhancing problem-solving. Kat shares her transition into facilitation and the importance of balancing divergent and convergent thinking. 

We delve into the five phases of design thinking—empathy, defining the problem, ideation, prototyping, and testing—and the critical role of prototyping in fostering learning. The conversation highlights strategies for creating collaborative environments and emphasizes cultivating healthier organizational cultures through design thinking for lasting impact.

Key Takeaway Insights and Tools:

• Design thinking = conscious decision-making: uncover the root problem, map system impacts, and keep humans at the centre. 
• Use the five phases—flexibly: Empathize → Define → Ideate → Prototype → Test; don’t rush discovery and don’t treat the method as rigid steps.
• Prototype to learn, not to impress: a sketch, a model, or role-play—share ideas early, get feedback fast, iterate.
• Balance divergent ↔ convergent thinking (Double Diamond): open wide to explore, then converge to decide—without letting the boss or loudest voice dominate.
• Mindset over mechanics: optimism, empathy, curiosity, growth, collaboration, risk tolerance; progress matters more than being “right.”

Bio:

Kat Mather is the founder of Design Linking, helping leaders and teams solve complex collaboration and communication challenges through creative problem-solving and facilitation. With nearly 30 years of experience spanning design, communication, and cross-departmental teamwork, Kat helps organizations unlock clarity, ownership, and action in even the most high-stakes environments.

She designs and facilitates bespoke workshops that blend creativity with strategy, drawing on Design Sprints, design thinking, and systems mapping to spark innovation and drive change. Known for bringing structure to complexity while keeping things engaging, Kat shares insights through her Design Linking blog and speaking engagements—expect energy, fresh thinking, and a touch of maverick spirit as she explores how design helps teams thrive.

Links:

Website: https://www.designlinking.no/
Substack blog: https://designlinking.substack.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/designlinking/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/katmather/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/design-linking
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61579423581534

Chapters

• 0:16 Introduction to the Podcast
• 1:42 Practical Tips for Everyday Challenges

Transcript

0:04

This is It's an Inside Job, and I'm your host, Jason Lim. This is the show where we explore the stories, strategies, and science behind growing resilience, nurturing well-being, and leading with intent. Because when it comes down to it, it's all an inside job. Well, welcome back to It's an Inside Job. This week, we're going to dive into the world and discipline of design thinking. And I think it's a very important subject to tackle. I mean, have you ever been in a meeting where it feels like kind of everyone's rushing around trying to fix the problem? But you find out it's the wrong problem. You know, the whole team puts in time, energy and effort into solutions only to discover later, unfortunately, that the root issue is never really addressed. I mean, what would it look like if leaders and teams slowed down, where they asked better questions and actually designed their way towards solving the right problem? Well, today I'm joined by Kat Mather. She's a seasoned design professional with over 25 years of experience. You know, she's moved from traditional design roles into helping leaders and organizations apply design thinking to untangle complex problems. And through her work, she's guided leaders to look beyond symptoms. And to uncover what really needs attention. So today we're going to talk about a number of things, how to use prototyping, whether through sketches, models, or even role play, as a tool for testing ideas and learning faster. Also, why balancing divergent and convergent thinking, and what that is, of course, can keep teams both creative, pragmatic, and focused. And we're also going to talk about some practical ways leaders can create safe, collaborative spaces that draw out their team's best thinking. And stick around to the very end because that's when I will share the single most important shift Kat believes changes everything for leaders who want to tackle complexity with more clarity. So now let's slip into the stream and meet Kat Mather. Hey kat welcome to the show perhaps we could kick off by you introducing who you are and briefly what you do sure okay so for the last 25 years or so i've been working in the world of design. That's been creative teams or agencies, marketing departments, and even touching on crisis communication. I've kind of often been the translator or the bridge between design and marketing or technical or communication operations. And yeah, that's kind of what I've been doing and now I'm taking that like another step forward so in, a couple of years ago a few years ago three years ago or so I started on a kind of transition pathway where I realized the power of design to help solve more complicated problems and I was looking for a way of um of making that happen or helping others to see it and i came across facilitation and i trained in facilitation and now what i'm trying to do is use um my knowledge of design and design thinking and the design methods to help leaders solve the challenges that I've seen in my work and the frustrations that I've seen in my work. You know, people or, you know, I've definitely been there myself where you're in a situation you work really hard, but you're frustrated over how things are going maybe and not being listened to and, you know, You need help to collaborate, actually, and the challenge comes down more to collaboration and communication through leadership. So now what I'm trying to do is help bridge that gap using my knowledge in design and facilitation. And, you know, this idea of this episode came to me after some of your clients have actually been some of my coaching clients and they're managers of teams and departments. They've spoken highly of how you've helped them to design specific solutions to certain problems but you've had a discovery process of that problem to truly what is the problem we're trying to address and it's through that even though they are engineers and operations and managers themselves they lack that particular competency that you bring to the game and that really helped them deal with the problem. And that's what I want to explore today, because I think any organization who wants to be resilient, who wants to be able to meet the challenges, the complexity of today's environment. Well, maybe 80% or 70% should go into figuring out what the true problem is. And that's where your talents come in. So we can kick off by you defining for myself and our audience today what is design thinking that's a great uh start i think i mean i've spoken to lots of people over over time and i've been really conscious of this jargon uh actually and asking people you know what did you think of when i first said design thinking and uh what do you think it is and you know often i get the answer oh i just thought pretty pictures you know that's not for me uh so i realized that i really had to find a way of talking about it but at its real core uh i would actually just first um define design because design uh the way i think of design um and what my definition of design would be uh is conscious decision making so we all make decisions every day but are they by design are we actually consciously making those decisions so if we take that a step further than what is design thinking there's three key principles so. Firstly it's about solving the root problem so uncovering that discovery that you mentioned uncovering what is that root problem really, peeling back the layers, right? Because we often jump to that, what we think of the problem, like the idea of going to the doctor and getting some pills for your headache, when really you need to do some more discovery to find out what the cause of the headache is. So that's the solving the root problem. And then you have the bigger picture. So understanding what's connected, how are things influenced? If we change one thing, what happens with the other thing? What are the other things? How do we map them out? How do we understand this sort of ecosystem which we're affecting here? Because especially now in the times we live, everything's connected. You change one thing, something else will break. Um, and then the third, um, the third part of the third key principle of design thinking is the human and putting people into the center of the inquiry. So it's, um, or the solution or the problem framing or whatever it is you're doing, it's about putting, um, putting the, the lens of human on it. So how do we make this about the human rather than the tech? You know what's it's not about features it's about the needs and the problems that it solves that kind of thing and really you know moving on from that the cornerstone of design thinking is empathy it's about being able to put yourself into someone else's shoes it's about listening skills it's about interpretation it's about reading between the lines and I've done that a lot you know when clients come to me over the years and ask for something um and. I've been labeled for asking too many questions, but I have this inner drive to understand and to really pick a way and find out what's really at the core and look at how we solve that. So maybe the solution isn't exactly what the client came to me for, but it solves the problem that they had. I think one of the most powerful discovery tools that we can have are three things. I think it's the questioning, as you've said, and it's good questioning. And from design thinking, obviously, with three decades of experience, you know how to engineer those questions to seek the right answers. Not the right answers, but as you said, peel back the layers to try to find what is the core need of the, if it's human centric per se. I think it's also the listening ability. You know, what you bring to the games, the ability to hear when people are being maybe too abstract and then going even more surgical with your questions. And I think what it also sounds like is that silence is also a very part where you allow the person to process and to think about the question. Because we've talked many times on this podcast, you know, from my background in clinical psychology and the cognitive sciences, especially when I used to do therapy per se, and even coaching now, silence is a very powerful tool. It's allowing people to process the questions and really truly think about, you know, what is it that that question you've asked, Kat, you know, what chimes in them? I think that's part of the discovery process that you said. And I think that's a very part, very salient point you've made. Yeah, it's interesting that you're touching on it now is this idea of silence, right? Or this idea of creating space for people to have those thoughts, to be able to reduce the pressure as well. And when I'm in a workshop situation, what we're looking at there is a group dynamic, you know, many different types of personality. And the need to create a space so that people can reflect and process things at their own pace because we are all different, right? So we're trying to slow down the fast thinkers and create space for the slower thinkers and create also a level of patience for each other to to be able to do that uh to be able to harness that group uh knowledge experience. Um and um you know that the ideas give everyone the opportunity to come up with good ideas because ideas don't just come from the loud fast people yeah yeah because i think also something it was i think it was step two how are things connected you use the word ecosystem you know it's almost like billiard balls you hit one ball how does it affect everything else on the on the table per se but from your experience doing this for as long as you have do you find that sometimes people get too surgical too fast and they focus on one problem and they don't really think about the consequences of making shifts to the left right up or down kind of thing well yeah i think also i mean if i go back to this thought of the the fast and slow thinking i'd probably categorize myself as a slow thing probably ultra slow actually um i have a good story i told um. I had a workshop about a year ago where I'd been on a facilitation retreat. I think I'm diverting now. But the point was that I'd been on this facilitation retreat and it was, you know, other facilitators there. And I ran a workshop and other facilitators run workshop. And then when others are running, you participate. Right. And it's great for a facilitator to participate because that's an important experience to understand how the user experiences, right? It's all connected. Meta. And the facilitator said, oh, we're going to do this. You've got to go away. Think of a question. Then get into a pair. And she thought, okay, I'm talking to a bunch of facilitators here. This will be fine. I'll give them all the instructions and then they can go away and do everything. And i'm sort of processing all this information and thinking okay i've got to think of a question, it's got to be you know meaningful i've got to think of something meaningful here um and then i'll get into a pair but as soon as she broke up after the the explanation and i'm still thinking okay i've got to find a space in the shade so i can think the lady next to me turns to me and says right are you ready to pair up i'm like no no and i panic because you know i'm like put under this massive pressure all of a sudden and and she's okay so we go and sit down and as soon as we sit down and i'm and you know i say i just need time to think another pair walks over are you ready to get into a four now and i'm like no so i really recognize this problem of you know taking time to think and i think that that's what i have and in in design thinking there's quite uh if we go back to the definition or the methodology please there's the really clear sort of five phases of design thinking and it sort of. If you adhere to it, if you follow this principles or this methodology, you force yourself to stay in the discovery phase before you go into ideation. And I think it's my job as a facilitator to make sure that we don't jump into solution space too quickly. So let's go through those five phases of design thinking. And that first one is empathy. So that's this questioning. That's the discovery that's where you're uncovering insights and maybe you're doing it through interviews or maybe it's just like in a group scenario with lots of post-it notes and a little bit of time alone to think and um and then sharing in a in a group scenario depending on you know what what the project is and then you have the second phase which is about defining the problem right and that's a whole phase in itself where you think about okay which which of this mess of information that we've collected is important um how do we categorize it how do we how do we reframe it to a human-centered question or problem you know it's not just about how do we make something work it's like why we want to make it work um who's it for what do they need how do they feel about it right so and we're putting that into that definition space and then we can ideate and there's all kinds of tricks for ideation uh and one especially i love is flipping the question completely and asking yourself what would be the worst thing to do right so it's called anti-problem so what would you do if you really wanted to mess it up because it sort of feels silly. Okay, but then you come up with lots of different stupid ideas, but then you can ask the question, okay, okay, That idea, what's the opposite of it? And then you get into really interesting territory, right? So that's the ideation phase, and that's just like a little example there of that. And then a prototype phase, and that's the prototype is this prototyping. Perhaps we should also define prototype. So a prototype is one of three things. It's either a sketch a model or a role play and they all prototypes fall into that i think there's a misconception that a prototype is a digital interface which is not true the digital interface would be um a type of sketch actually and a prototype the purpose of a prototype is to share your ideas and to learn two things share your ideas and to learn that's the point of a prototype so there's a whole phase around prototyping so that's about you've got your ideas from the iod8 phase and now you're trying to put them into something that you can share and learn from so in prototyping you said there was sketch model and role play or role play yes what do you mean by role play if i may be a little more specific or you may yeah great so not that long ago i did a series of workshops where –. We were looking at projects and how we work within projects and we mapped out what would be an end-to-end project flow right and then what I did within the workshop is with help of the the owner is create scenarios and in groups in the room we were able to uh role play out the scenarios and there's no like i'm i have to admit right and so i'm not the amateur dramatics type at all it makes me fully cringe um so i call this assisted role play um and it's it's not supposed to be cringe because you we i use cards to help people sort of say well then we do that and then And we do this and a bit more hypothetical in terms of a role play. So that's one example. Another one that I've done actually is been where we've also similar situation looked at like a service and the flow of a service. And one of the prototypes was just to quickly write out some standardized emails. So if you were solving different types of challenges, what kind of standard texts could you write? That's maybe not so much role play. But in a sense, role playing is one of the models of prototyping to see how people would react in certain situations or what they would say or what the responsibilities would be. Yeah. And those would be three. And so the sketch is sort of a rough idea of how this would look. Well, a sketch could also be that Figma interface, you know. So for all the UX or UI designers out there, creating a digital interface that isn't the real thing is a sketch. Whereas a model might be when you move all the furniture around in the reception to see what it would be like and to test out, right? Because the next phase after prototype is to test. So you create the prototype and then you test with it. Right. So you're getting feedback. That's the learning part. So a really quick way to prototype a new office layout is to take a corner of the office and move the furniture around, for example. But I guess it would also be sort of organizational structure. Who should report to what? Like how should a hierarchy sort of in a department or a team work per se? That I could also see being very pertinent to design thinking. How should, where should reporting lines be or dotted lines be and kind of going through that process? Yeah, absolutely. There's nothing to stop you. I mean, this is the mindset is to, as a bias to action, right? So it's about not being so precious. And I think I write a blog. I started my blog over a year ago. I would never have started it if I hadn't thought of it as a prototype. You know, I've just I've always been this kind of a bit too precious and perfectionist. But when I when I switch my brain to prototype, it's just a prototype. I tell myself, it's just a prototype. Oh my goodness, so much more you get done. You know what I could have done with your services four years ago when I started this podcast is like, okay, I'm going to build a plane. Don't know how to fly it, but got it in the air and I'm scrambling to build a plane. And I'm constantly adapting, involving this communication platform, the podcast. And I think some structured design thinking would really help me get this up and flying a lot easier and more efficiently but hey this is where i am yeah and you know you're sharing your ideas and you're learning you're growing you know if we talk about the mindsets of of design thinking it sounds like you embrace that so you know this um yeah learning by doing a bias toward action and really just getting that feedback straight away and learning and changing, adapting, uh, moving forward. And I think, you know, if you can say that in a room to a group of people, okay, how could we prototype this? How could we test this idea? Um, yeah, And it's just a test, right? So it doesn't matter if it doesn't work because then we've learned something. It's a laboratory almost, right? Yeah. And then you go, okay, that's how we started. And, okay, this part. And then, you know, and then you have to get together and you say this didn't work or that worked. And what if we do this instead? Or, you know, how might we fix that side of it? Or, yeah, then you can make progress. Yes. And this is, I think, my passion really comes into play because it's how I apply that in a slightly different world than the design world, which I've grown up in, if you like, to leadership, to teams, to these communication and collaboration problems and how you get people to sort of move a mindset to go from this. I mean, I've worked with a lot of very capable people. We're talking a lot of highly intelligent technical people, lots of ideas. But how do you get them to connect, to work together, to harness each other's intelligence and actually make progress fast as well? Can we come back to the mindset? I think that was interesting. I picked up the first. You said learning by doing, bias action. What else goes into sort of this type of mindset that really helps facilitate design thinking or exploring? I wrote them down. Yeah, yeah, great. I wrote them down so I wouldn't forget them all because it's quite a list, right? So I'll just read it out for you. So it's optimism, empathy, curiosity, the prototyping mindset, which I just talked about, growth, growth mindset, collaboration mindset, and risk tolerance. And that's, I think, that goes hand in hand with that idea of prototyping. You know, this risk tolerance is about, we'll try it. And through my career, I've been in many situations where you just have to kind of fix it on the job. You've just got to take the risks sometimes. And although I guess it's not quite the risks, you know, the different levels of risk. But it's definitely given me a bit more of an appetite for, you know, testing. I mean, all these all these words that you use, optimism, empathy, growth, collaboration, risk tolerance, all of this, they are almost words I could translate, even though we come from two different disciplines, I see a confluence in in the mindsets of when I'm working with people, you know, pushing themselves forward, leading themselves from the inside out, per se, is that all of these are required in order to do this. And it is an experimentation, whether it's the coaching session or it's a design thinking lab per se. It is a laboratory where we can try different things out and see what works, what floats, what sinks per se. And so it's very interesting as we come from two different disciplines, but I can see the same sort of mindset or the foundational blocks of that mindset is very important. Can we just take a step back? I guess the prototyping, I found that also very fascinating. What were the elements of that mindset? As you said, learning by doing, bias action. I think there was a third or a fourth point you said. So there was the definition of the prototype was the sketch, the model, or the role play. The purpose of prototyping is to share your ideas and to learn something, right? And the mindset is really about a bias towards action, is what I said. Bias towards action. And it's this idea of small experiments that... Yeah, small experiments to test, sort of low-hanging fruit. Things are not so consequential, per se. Yeah, and I think this idea as well of making progress is more important than being right. So this idea that you don't have to be precious about it. It's okay to make it. I don't like to say it's okay to fail because I never think of it as failure, right? Because you learn something. I think that's important. It's the progress because sometimes you may take two steps forward, but then you need to take a step back and then you move forward again, right? It's better to have some sort of movement forward, some progress, because you can always backtrack and find a slight deviation or a different orientation towards moving forward, right? Than just staying stuck and thinking and thinking and not applying anything to action. At least that's what I understand you're saying to me, or as I interpret it. Yeah, absolutely. And I think as well, you know, the design methodology, the design thinking methodology that I've described, these five phases, they don't have to be in that order either. And so I actually have experimented with prototyping first, because sometimes we come into a situation where we've already got some ideas. And actually, the best thing you can do is just start testing those ideas that you already have, because the only thing that can happen is that you'll learn something, you know? Because I think that's interesting also, where you can sometimes shift. You don't have to follow a fixed methodology, it can be a little more fluid. Because I think maybe very technically or pragmatic type of people are thinking, well, how do you find the balance between creativity and practicality? Can you have both and are both innovative and sort of workable, right? It's trying to strike that right balance. Yeah. And actually, I think you touched on something there, which is this idea of divergence and convergence, right? And often, you know, if we go to the jargon side and the sort of theoretical side, this design is often portrayed as the double diamond, where you open and close two diamonds. And you have this divergence thinking for discovery, where everything is open. And then when you define it's convergence thinking and then when you develop it's again it opens up into divergent thinking and when you deliver uh the end product or whatever you're delivering it's converged again so this is about balancing the the freedom to open and to discover. And then finding ways to focus and to make decisions and to move forward right and I think also we are conditioned to move through the ideation phase or that divergence phase very quickly and to come to some kind of conclusion but it's very difficult to diverge in groups Right. Because you always have, you know, unless you're in a workshop situation with a great facilitator, you're likely to find problems like, you know, that the loudest people are the ones that get their ideas heard. So how do you create space? And I've talked about that before, you know, to be able to diverge. But then also making decisions in groups is also super difficult, right? We experience that a lot. I've seen that a lot over my career where, you know, it ends up being the boss's decision sort of thing, which is okay. That can be great, but it's not always necessarily the right decision. Or you know you're not taking the benefit of everybody or you know or simply that you get stuck and you end up going round and round and round and round in circles and not making any progress because you're you're not trained to converge. In the first part of a conversation Kat talked about her journey her sojourn from traditional design roles into the space of leadership and problem solving. She spent 25 years working in design and what she's learned in the design thinking isn't just about creating products or visuals. It's about conscious decision making. She framed design thinking as a way of slowing down to ask, are we actually solving the right problem? So instead of reacting to surface level symptoms, she pushes leaders to dig into the root issues to see how problems connect across systems. And to always keep human needs at the center. What also really chimed with me was how Kat spoke about empathy, questioning, and reflection. For her, these aren't soft, nice-to-have qualities. They're the hard edge of effective problem-solving. So if we don't create space to ask the deeper questions and sit with them long enough. We end up building solutions that don't stick. She described how the part of her work is helping organizations uncover what's really going on beneath the surface, so that fixes are sustainable and not just quick patches. We then shifted into talking about the phases of a project and the role of prototyping. She broke it down in a way that was refreshingly clear. A prototype can be one of three things, a sketch, a model, or a role play, she said. Each one is simply a way of sharing ideas early, making them tangible enough to test, and then learning from that process. What I appreciated was her insistence that prototyping isn't about perfection, it's about exposure and feedback. For instance, a sketch on paper can reveal gaps in thinking, a physical model can test usability. And while roleplay, it can simulate real-world scenarios to see how people actually respond. When I asked her to expand on roleplay, she described it as an opportunity to step inside the problem and act it out, making it clear how powerful it can be in surfacing blind spots. We also talked about design thinking methodologies more broadly. She emphasized three key principles, prototyping, a bias towards action, and balancing divergent-convergent thinking. And what she meant was that design thinking thrives when people feel safe enough to explore widely. And that means to generate as many ideas as possible, and then have the discipline to narrow those ideas down to what is workable and aligned with the problem at hand. She stressed that it takes growth mindset, collaboration, and a tolerance for risk to work this way. That's the whole point, really, of design thinking as well. You know, as I said, this conscious decision-making, you're creating, with discovery and empathy, you're creating parameters almost for success, right? So then you're understanding what it is you're trying to achieve, so you're able to measure ideas against those parameters. Yeah, because divergent, the double diamond, so the top of the diamond is divergent thinking, where you're collecting ideas and insights and observing behaviors. And whether they're silly or profound ideas, you're tabling all ideas. And the convergent part is where you synthesize your findings, where you're clustering or categorizing. But that sounds simple enough. But as you said, there are minefields here. For example, the boss. Everyone's listening to the boss and everyone wants to be in alignment with him or her per se. Or it could be the loudest voices in the room get more airplay than others. There's probably a dozen, if not two dozen different types of all sort of pitfalls or traps we can fall into. And we can, if we do this sometimes by ourselves, we can use so much more time than bringing in a professional such as yourself. I think a lot of the times it's a lot of things, whether it's learning the skiing or golfing or taekwondo or any martial arts or any type of process where you want to learn. Why not bring in the expert save the time learn the proper methodology learn how to avoid the pitfalls and mind traps per se that we all fall into that are inherent of part of this and these processes and learn to get the swing right learn to bounce the basketball or learn conscious design thinking so we can be much more efficient trying to solve a complex or challenging problem that we're facing as a team or as an organization actually i've. Got a um a download for everybody so i actually prepared um a a bit of a free giveaway thing so if your listeners are uh interested uh they can go to my website um and download my uh flash insight harvester workshop it's really simple anyone can run it it's uh shouldn't it should you should be able to do it in an hour so you could do it instead of a meeting and um it the the download you get um like a pdf slide deck and a pdf with facilitation guidelines right and it tells you what to say for each slide And basically. In that workshop, you can use it for different types of scenarios and I used it with an engineer once when he wanted to gather feedback on his product that he was developing. And he only had sort of a limited time to collect insights from users because they were offshore. And when they came on shore for this meeting, he had about an hour with them to give them an update on his piece of kit that he was designing or updating and to get their feedback. So we did this workshop just to gather feedback. But you can use it just to do a bit of a check in or to see how a project is progressing or just even to, you know, to create like an open and connected team or to help teams that are working on the same project that are from different departments, for example. To your question on converging, so the convergence here is a discussion-based convergence. So what's happening is that we're collecting thoughts, collecting opinions, collecting feedback or challenges or whatever it is, and then prioritizing them so that you can have a focused and meaningful discussion in the room. At this point of the conversation, we had some technical difficulties with one of the mics. And so the conversation continues with Kat explaining how her downloadable workshop works. A process where you can collect lots of ideas, thoughts or pain points or feedback, and then. Categorize them and then give everyone a chance to um to vote on them so we do a heat map and we use the red dots and everybody gets a certain amount of red dots and they can put the red dots on the things that they think are really important and and that simply shows you where the most frustration is or where the things are that are the most burning things that need to be discussed And then you can have a conversation. So then you can say, okay, I would go to the sticky note with the most red dots and say, I'd read it out. And I would say, okay, does anyone have any thoughts on this? And then you have to do your best sort of debate mediation almost and let people talk and when someone talks it's really important that you give others the opportunity to say the opposite even or to disagree right so does anyone have any other ideas about what this might mean or does anyone think about this differently right because it's not about being right or wrong it's about gathering insights it's about gathering different thoughts and different angles from different people and that's basically what this workshop does it enables you to have a focused discussion so half of the workshop is the sticky notes and the voting and then the other half is the the conversation around the top points that need to be discussed you often emphasize through our conversation it's about creating a safe space or safe environment for dialogue how do you set the stage so people can feel comfortable sharing openly understanding there are different roles and responsibilities within that room. Yeah. So actually, that's great. So I use storytelling to move mindsets. And so kind of like the story I told you earlier, with the facilitation retreat that I went on, and the story that I told at the workshop about that retreat, now I'm storytelling within stories here. The point of telling that story was to say, we're all different, right? And please be kind to the people around you when you're doing these activities that I'm about to ask you to do. The story did many things. The story told people that I was a professional, that I do this with other facilitators, that I facilitated for other facilitators to build my credibility. I when I first came onto this stage I said to people oh there's a lot of you here and we're all different and some of you like to talk a lot and some of you don't like to talk much at all and some of you talk to think and others like to think a lot before you talk we're all different and then I told them this story and then I sort of said you know we we're all different let's be kind I'm going to ask you to do some activities today it might feel uncomfortable, embrace the discomfort be kind to each other make space when the time runs out or when the time is still running and you've already done what you need to do don't start talking let those other people finish their thoughts and finish what they're doing and you know I think that's so that's what I meant that's the storytelling part and that's how you can with within a few minutes. Find connection with the participants the audience as a facilitator they understand who you are you've been a little vulnerable because I've told them all that I'm I'm the slow thinker and it's okay to be slow I mean we're all different and you know I've basically embodied the behavior that I want to see in the room I have been the behavior I want to see in the room so we model behavior We don't give people rules to obey. We invite and we role model. I really like that because when you started addressing the room, you were also addressing the elephants in the room, saying that there are some people who speak a lot and there are some people more quiet. There are some people who just speak their minds and others that think a lot. And everyone knows that we have that but by addressing that it also sets it's permissible to be that way it's permissible to be to show up as you are to contribute when you set the expectations that way it makes it much more pliable and much more open and cordial for people to have the discovery or the dialogue or the discussion around it it's a very simple very but deeply elegant way to get people to play ball. Storytelling is a great skill. I mean, you give people the power to put the finger on something to say, oh, no, you're doing that now. Can you stop doing that? You give people permission to call it out, you know, when it happens as well. Yeah, for sure. I guess there are also things you've talked about in our pre-episode when we were talking about how to put this together you were talking about sort of pitfalls and things to kind of avoid i know you mentioned some of them uh like some people dominating the discussion i was wondering if we could spend some time exploring that okay so one of the things i was really thinking about as well in terms of facilitation is this idea that you are the purpose of a facilitator is to make something easy. The word facilitation or facilitate comes from the French word facile, which is to make easy. The main goal, I think, of the facilitator is to both guide the group through a process that's carefully orchestrated to get to the results they need to get to. But it's also to recognize that who has the power over the results, as it were. So I'm quite conscious that when I work, I am doing it for the benefit of the participants, right? So it's not if the owner or the leader comes to me and says, I want them to arrive at this conclusion. We're not going to work together. Do you see what I mean? This is not about them getting to where they want to be. This is in terms of an output, right, or an outcome that's predefined. This is about recognising what the people in the room need and helping them move through. So I would say like what that would be a pitfall would be to make sure that you're at the service of the participants so it's a balancing act between the the client or the the owner of the the team retreat or the the leadership retreat or the the project workshop that you you're asking those critical questions to to find the best way forward not to appease the client as it were, um i would also i mentioned it earlier this idea of invitation so inviting people's participation. Um and not necessarily expecting it so this idea that we all we all have good days and we have bad days um and and you know we don't always show up how we'd want to show up if we've had a difficult night or that you know the kids have been puking up all night long or something then we're not at our best and we should make space for that and allowance for that um and in the same way. We invite participation uh and create space for people to say i'm sorry i don't really feel like it right now or i i just don't have the i just don't have anything to contribute right now we definitely do not put people on the spot we don't point to people and say let's start with you we say who's feeling brave enough to go first so it's it's about participation by invitation this is uh we you don't make progress when you um force people into anything i think many of us can recognize these these pitfalls in a lot of conversations we've had especially when a leader says let's have a creativity process to try to find a solution but he or she already has to redefine things and it's just like everybody understands this and that okay we're just going through the motions to look like we're trying to find a discovery process you know leaders that do that i i can understand they're probably well-intentioned but their credibility is just hit so hard and i i the other point you're saying is also putting people on the spot. That does nobody any good by embarrassing people, by, you know, whatever. Again, I'm sure the intentions are noble and the intentions are well met. But unintentionally, you're setting, you're just creating a very toxic environment, right? People are not going to show up. What's going to happen the next time you have a process like that? People are just going to shut down because they don't want to be, you know, put on the, in the spotlight, in a negative spotlight and say. So I think these are very salient points you were making. I think it's interesting what you're saying there as well. I think that leaders feel that they need to have the answers. And I don't believe that's true. I think leaders need to create space for their teams to find the answers together. So, you know, I think that creates much better cultures. And I think it also, you'll get much better answers. You're utilizing the whole team's expertise then so and you know and as a leader that must be a little bit of a relief i think there's quite a lot of stress probably related to needing to know and have all the answers right this or that that mindset would be yeah yeah for sure kat i mean that's something that comes up quite often you know when someone becomes a manager or leader irregardless of age and then maybe their first leadership role they think they need to i mean I mean, almost the default setting, and I can understand where it comes from, it's like, I need to know it all, but the reason they have a team, logically, they know this, the reason they have talent under them that are their direct reports is because they are the experts. As a leader, you don't have to know all the answers. The whole point is to tap into the team, right? Draw from their expertise get them to feel that they're collaborating and add value and as you said so succinctly adding their knowledge and their experience to the mix in order to find a solution or even just to identify the real challenge or problem yeah yeah absolutely i'm really you know keen on bringing this design thinking into that arena I think it's under-recognized as a methodology and the mindsets, or maybe not under-recognized, but it's a jargon, I suppose. And applying it to these sort of communication and collaboration challenges, because I think they build much healthier organizations, much more resilient organizations. Much more helpful organizations. You know teams where you thrive and you really enjoy and you you're not firefighting all the time and getting frustrated and yeah all of those kind of challenges are are you know really helped by this kind of co-creation and I would say as well I was thinking about just before but the when we when you tackle things in this way you're you're doing thing you're doing two things at the same time so you're tackling an actual uh challenge a problem maybe it's to do with a project or a strategy or you know the way you work processes or roles and responsibilities but at the same time with the the facilitation and the storytelling like i've i've told you about you know those together you're creating the culture so it's like a it's a double prong attack if you like you're doing both at the same time. Yeah, you're instilling such a healthy culture. I mean, just back to some of the words you're talking about, experimentation, optimism, empathy, growth, collaboration, risk tolerance, you know, all of these things where people feel they're involved, they feel they can collaborate, they can add value. But at the same time, they understand that not all of their ideas are going to be always accepted, that some will be parked or just eliminated altogether. But the fact that you create an environment where people can contribute and speak up. And as you said, that when you were facilitating that workshop where you sort of address all the elephants in the room and that people are not expected but are invited to participate. I mean you're creating a very psychosocial emotional safe environment in which to generate ideas which are both creative but pragmatic to try to solve a current challenge or conundrum of teams facing. Yeah yeah and actually in that workshop as well it was like 120 people um so it was it was a bit on the massive side and what we did was we sorted out a table plan for each um half day so we or. Or day and rotated people depending on what we were doing and how we so we quite by design in fact um um created um cross-pollination right so you you do something with a certain group of people to begin with and then you split up and you reorganize them so that they're. Cross-disciplinary for example and then you have they've already done something with their discipline so they're kind of aligned and they're on the same page and then you spread them across the organization and they're they're um infiltrating if you like with the with this kind of um common understanding looking back over your 30 years three decades not to age you or me what's one lesson about problem solving solving that you wish leaders knew more about or understood i i wish we would do more divergence right i wish we would understand better uh what the problem is we're trying to solve and i you know that i think that's probably it are we sure we're solving the right problem um because it costs a lot of money to solve the wrong problem and i i believe i see it. Um time again where we think we're solving the right problem but we haven't actually spent the time to figure that out um we're making an assumption um and perhaps we should question our own assumptions more to make sure that we are both solving the right problem and having the right effect when we take the actions to solve that problem. Kat, we're coming close to the top of our conversation. Is there any last thoughts you would like to leave with our listeners today? Last thoughts well i just hope that people have um a better understanding of what design thinking is that it's demystified, the jargon a bit and that people feel a bit more like do you know what prototyping that people feel a bit more like they could just... Prototype a bit more think of things in a prototyping way i think that that would be like a key takeaway as well just to feel a bit more like it's okay if it's not completely right let's make some progress and let's be open and honest about it let's be humble and and willing to try kat maybe you could mention your company's name and if people are interested in getting to tap into your competence to be more efficient at tackling the right problem identifying it and creating that cohesion which will influence their team's cultures down the road definitely through how you facilitate how can they get in touch with you and what's your company's name again yeah so my company is design linking uh little play on design thinking linking um and you can find my website at www.designlinking.no. And I'm on LinkedIn, reach out, connect with me, send me a message on LinkedIn or fill out the form on designlinking.no. Don't forget to go there to download the Flash Insight Harvester workshop and test it out. And I'd really love to hear if you do. So make sure you tag me as well in all kinds of social media and let me know how it went. I'll be sure to leave all those links in the show notes. Kat, thanks for a brilliant conversation. It highlighted a lot. I thought I knew design thinking. Obviously, I didn't because there's so much more depth and there's a range and breadth of tools that would be awesome to invest in trying to crack a conundrum or complexity that most of us are facing as teams or organizations. Thank you so much, Jason. It's been an honor and a pleasure. Thank you. Well, folks, that was the brilliant and vibrant and vivacious Kat Mather. And here's the insight I promised you at the start of the episode. Real progress begins not with the answers, but with the courage to sit in the problem long enough to understand it fully. And you're asking, well, why does this matter? Well, because too often, most of us, all of us, well, we jump to solutions under pressure. But when we slow down and question and listen and we uncover the root issue, well, that's when design thinking stops being a buzzword and it becomes a practical way to lead and tackle and solve problems. I mean, think about your own work. The next time you feel tempted to rush toward an answer, maybe stop up, observe, and ask yourself, have we actually understood the problem yet? That pause might save you weeks of wasted effort, energy, and money. And it'll lead to solutions that actually stick. Kat, a warm thank you to you for bringing your experience, your stories, and your generosity to this conversation. Folks, if this episode got you thinking differently, I'd like you to share it with a colleague who might benefit and reflect on one area where you could apply design thinking. Folks, if you find you're kind of spinning your wheels and you find no traction on your team, in your organization, in your department, I highly recommend you reach out to Kat. I've seen her at work and she works with many of the clients that I have and they speak so highly of her. Not as compliments, but as observations of the competency and knowledge she brings to the environment, to the space. I will leave all her contact information in the show notes. And remember, she's got that free download or that workshop PDF you can find on her site. Well, thank you all for showing up. And I appreciate spending some time with you this week. And until next time, keep well, keep strong, and we'll speak soon. Music.