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Welcome to The Design Psychologist. I have a very, very special guest on the

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show today. It is Indi Young.

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She started her career as a software engineer, but quickly became a UX practitioner,

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UX consultant, product strategist.

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Over the course of her career, she's accumulated a lot of success stories.

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She was the founding partner of Adaptive Path, which got acquired by Capital

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One. She is a speaker, thought leader.

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She is the author of three books, one of which we'll be talking about today, and five courses.

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Her three books are Mental Models, Aligning Design Strategy with Human Behavior.

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Practical Empathy, The Collaboration and Creativity in Your Work,

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and Time to Listen, How Giving People Space to Speak Drives Invention and Inclusion, assumptions aside.

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So today she works independently as a problem space researcher,

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a coach, a consultant, a qualitative data scientist.

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Indie Young, thank you for being here today.

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Woohoo! Thank you. Thank you for inviting me and thank you for doing this new podcast. Very fun.

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Yes, yes, absolutely. So why don't we start off with,

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is there anything that I should also highlight about your

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career in terms of your path into research specifically and

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you know some of the things that brought you to where you are

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today uh sure i could i uh

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the i have you know sort of the the story that forged me um which was the i

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mean i had already been when i was a software engineer it was before the recent

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was even the term user experience um.

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And in the early 90s, I got hired as a contractor by Visa, the credit card company.

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And they're all like, okay, okay, we're going to go switch all these green screen

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terminals out of our call center.

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And we're going to have the reps using the, you know, the windowed system with

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a mouse and everything. Now, Visa, when I, they were just going through this

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point where they got email.

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And when I was working with this team, they still had the little room on the floor.

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There were actually two rooms on the floor of each floor of this giant building

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that was so wide that it had to have two rooms.

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And in that room was the Xerox machine and all the little cubby holes with everybody's

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name on them. And you would go in and make your memo.

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You know, you could make your memo on your computer. You'd go print it out, then Xerox it.

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Taking it back put it in all the little cubby holes yeah so

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it was this time and they were excited about

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email and the idea

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that email could save paper right so not

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only that they were excited about computers in general windowed systems and

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mouse systems and they thought oh we need to update everything in the call center

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where these reps are trying to

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help people who have lost their traveler's checks. Do you remember those?

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Or their card, their credit card.

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And they call in and they're in a panic usually. And the reps were really good

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at helping them get a replacement.

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Now, when they said, oh, we're going to switch out of the green screens,

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I, having a background in computers and understanding how these things are used,

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I'm like, oh, these reps are not going to like this.

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This is not going to be a happy change for them. It's going to make more physical

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movement of their hands, more time to get between these fields they're trying to fill in,

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and more distraction from the person on the phone that they are focused on.

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So I'm like, okay, I convinced the bank that I needed to go and talk to these

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reps and find out, you know, how they're doing things. And that was basically the beginning.

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I needed a way to, I was working on this big team where there was another part

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of it doing the architecture, the software architecture.

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There was another group who were doing the database design.

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There was another group. I was just doing the front end. There was,

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you know, a bunch of different groups who were working together.

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One was doing like sort of the business rules of it. And what I did was I,

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after doing a few days worth of, you know.

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Following these people around and, and watching them interact with each other

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so much, like, hey, Bobby, didn't you have someone in this teeny town in Italy?

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Where did you send the replacement? Oh, yeah, yeah. It was, you know, blah, blah, blah.

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And they had their atlases at the end of the aisle of cubicles.

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Okay, this is before maps.

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And so they would run down to the Atlas and try to find that thing,

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figure out the street address, blah, blah, blah.

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So there was a lot of interaction. There was a lot of knowledge sharing going

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on outside of the digital realm.

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And I'm like, okay. Yeah, go ahead. And that was well received.

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Right. So so back then, this is before, you know, for the audience that,

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you know, long before, you know, usability is like a known thing.

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It was kind of like in its early stages, nascent stages.

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And the even a big institution like Visa, were they was it a hard sell to say,

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hey, I need to do these naturalistic observations and follow people around?

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Um no because i couched it you will laugh i couched it as a state machine,

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okay so a state machine is supposed to represent the

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states of a computer i used it to represent the states

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of the reps i included in it the way that they're interacting with each other

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or interacting with the map atlases and all of that sort of thing um and i included

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in it kind of these little rules that they were helping themselves solve these problems with.

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So because I made it into some process, it was not a hard sell.

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And in fact, more than that, the other teams, the data design teams,

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they're like, oh my gosh, this is the database design.

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The software architects are like, okay, this makes our job a lot easier. Now I can see this.

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Everybody was like, Thank you for doing this, Indie. You just saved us like

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three months' worth of work.

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So that was my launch story. That's kind of how I got really interested in,

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Being able to represent real people and bring value to them,

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to their way of thinking.

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Now, at that point, I was still thinking of the reps as a monolithic group.

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There might have been reps in there that were doing things differently than the other reps.

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And now what I do is I pay attention to those different thinking styles.

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Because even though we are all trying to do the same thing, we may bring different

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thinking or personal rules to it.

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We still get it done in an acceptable way.

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But the thinking styles are the things that I want to try calling the org's attention to.

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There's so many apps out there. I was just writing to somebody today about this

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example where they've designed the app for themselves.

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They've designed the app. So let's take Google Maps.

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It is an app designed for you to get to a destination, an address hopefully,

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very specific point as fast as possible.

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There is no option for saying, hey, you know what?

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I would like to get there, but see all the scenic monument or historic monuments along the way.

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I've got a cousin who's driving from Canada to Arizona.

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There's no way, I mean, you can do that in other ways, but not on the map, right?

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There's no way to tell the map, hey, I'm walking there and I would like to take

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the shadiest route because it's awfully hot out, right?

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There's no way to say, hey, you know, I'm walking there, but it's a city I've

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never been in, and it would be fun to walk past a park or to walk past this,

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you know, thing that I would like to see on my way to my meeting.

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There's no way to do that. There's no way to tell it, hey, if I'm driving, I want a calm route.

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Like one that's not going to be like right downtown where people are trying to park or,

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you know something like that there's no way also to avoid

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that address to say hey i'd like to

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take 19th avenue back to the bridge route

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me that way you can't say something

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like that right so which

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goes to your what you write about with purpose and that's that's one so that

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opening story I love because it really touches on that kind of business touch

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point between what we're trying to do and what the business is capable of understanding.

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Right. And so that's not always. And so when I picked up this book,

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Indy, I was expecting it. You know, I was kind of like, well,

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You know, it's a research book. It's probably about, you know,

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conducting interviews.

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I'll probably gain some insights on, you know, better question asking and,

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you know, how to conduct it better.

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I was not expecting to have a whole paradigm shift in a whole minute.

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You caught me by surprise with that.

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And that's one thing I want to say. And another thing is I'm big on quotes and quotables.

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And, you know, I can't go two pages in this book without coming across a good quotable.

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You know, like, is this one of I think this is one of them.

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When an organization puts resources toward user research, usability and big

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data, they are only covering their own perspective.

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They are looking at people through the lens of their products and services and

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distorting reality to suit the organization's perspective, communicating and

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listening deeply with actual people in listening sessions.

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By contrast, focuses on the person's purpose. And that introduces a bunch of ideas.

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So I just am just really blown away by this.

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I think it should be definitely required for researchers, especially qualitative researchers. Yeah.

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Yeah, I mean, it does have a whole chapter in there about how to ask better questions,

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but everything is sort of focused around reframing from the solution,

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from the org to the person, what they're trying to address,

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and understanding that more deeply.

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I kind of sometimes think about it like that's the stake that I hammer through

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all this sort of scenario, context, person,

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approach, thinking style, all of this.

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I put this stake through it, and that's the thing I hold constant.

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So I'm going to hold constant, what is it the person's trying to get done?

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And then I can change all the types of people, the thinking styles of people,

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the speed at which they're doing it.

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I can change the demographics around it.

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I can change all of that so that I can let the org see that the true patterns

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are not necessarily based on demographics frequently. They're based on thinking style.

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Right. Right. And so getting into this, you know, one more comment I want to

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make about this is that it's a book that achieves this rare balance of high theoretical value.

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Value that's the the mind shift stuff and getting

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you to think about this just very differently and high practical

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value so like you mentioned you have whole chapters talking about

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the nitty gritty this is what you do and this

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is kind of how you do it so it's like like i would say like i don't

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know it's kind of like the second half of the book or the last third

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of the book is very much can be used as a reference guide

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so you read it and then you're about to do your research and

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you can like check back with it um yeah yeah

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i'm kind of a uh you know uh a trees

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for the forest kind of person or rather a twigs for

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the forest type of person so it's it's with

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great joy that i hear you say that it has the theory

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to it um as well because i end up

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i'm more uh apt to talk about

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the details of how to do it um and

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that i think is what i'm focused

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on right now is helping lots of people around the globe understand those details

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of how to pull it off in a way that is like creates this super valuable knowledge

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that then an org can use for the mindset shift.

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Yeah, exactly. And so one of the big pieces of that mindset shift is average

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and the concept of average people.

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Now, I've read some stuff in the past, you know, The End of Average, right?

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The book about that. And it talks about, but, you know, you talk about the early

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human factors and some of that stuff.

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So what, you know, should listeners know about just the concept of,

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oh, we need to understand the average user and build this for the typical user?

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Well, the average user is a myth. No one is average, right?

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Everybody's sort of like some distance from average.

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And there's a great percentage of your market or a great percentage of the employees

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that you're trying to support or a great percentage of the citizens that you're

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working to support that are a great distance from average.

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Um and those people get ignored um so

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like you know the the person who wants to take the calm route through the city

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um and not get scared by people like backing out into the lane of traffic or

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something um they are completely ignored they are unsupported they will never

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be supported unless someone speaks up for them.

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Because the people who are driving

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the product tend to think in this thing called cognitive bias, right?

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They tend to think in terms of their own experiences or the experiences that

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they've heard from their brother or their mother or something like,

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okay, I can stretch my mind to understand that.

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But to be able to stretch your mind to understand And a very different approach,

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one that's much farther away from average, but is just as valid as those that are close to average.

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That takes, it almost takes regulation, right?

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That's how we've done it with respect to accessibility and curb cuts and things like that.

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It took regulation to get there because the people who are doing the design

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can't stretch their mind that far.

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Now, we're also talking a lot about cognitive bias.

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Lately, we've talked about equity and things like that.

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And people are like, okay, I know that equity is good and I need to be aware

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of it. But kind of like that elastic is almost snapping back in a lot of places.

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So we almost need regulation so that we can get people to really take the time and pay attention to it.

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The way that I look at it, like that book, the way of looking at it,

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the method of looking at it is really doable.

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It doesn't take a lot to convince your org or your team to see where the value is there.

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To see, all it takes is a couple of examples where you can say,

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oh, my gosh, this company over here.

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Their app worked great for this particular group of people, this particular

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approach, but not for the other one at all.

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And in fact, they were maybe harming that other one or causing the other one

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to feel shame or to feel emotionally triggered or something like that.

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And that harm costs the org.

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It costs the org yeah because we're like there's

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churn there's attrition there's the

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amount of effort that you took to get that person to come

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to your solution and have that

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damage done to them or that harm done to them and then

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they leave right right and then

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in that early part of the book you ground the user

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the reader in this problem in helping

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folks understand it and it's that you're leaving people out

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and you're supposedly creating this solution

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and then we get the problem versus solution um uh

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for people but people are just wildly left

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out because you're thinking too much about your solution and i

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love how you recontextualize the concept of

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harm and there's a range of

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harms of different types and different intensities

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and it's not evenly distributed um it

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can be kind of like systematically distributed so um

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you know i think that's sort of a powerful way to communicate why

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we're caring about this it's so so important to care about it especially now

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when we've got everybody pounding down the door to try to get like quote-unquote

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ai trained ai is being trained on data that has cognitive bias in it we train

00:20:38.206 --> 00:20:40.826
it That way it becomes part of the system.

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Our system then is in equal, right? It does not have equity.

00:20:47.429 --> 00:20:49.069
In equity, is there a word for that?

00:20:50.189 --> 00:20:52.129
I think that's the word. Yes.

00:20:54.049 --> 00:20:58.269
Anyway, so the idea though, is that it gets baked in and we don't want it to get baked in.

00:20:58.949 --> 00:21:02.389
I think AI even, it kind of makes this topic more timely.

00:21:02.749 --> 00:21:06.009
You know, one of the things I think about India is like, okay,

00:21:06.229 --> 00:21:12.449
as AI is kind of replacing a lot of the work that we do, it might not replace

00:21:12.449 --> 00:21:15.529
whole job roles yet, but it replaces a lot of the work.

00:21:15.889 --> 00:21:20.169
And it's being kind of celebrated by, you know, executives as an opportunity

00:21:20.169 --> 00:21:22.589
to get more work done with robots.

00:21:22.749 --> 00:21:26.869
Then it makes me think, well, how do we market ourselves as humans?

00:21:27.289 --> 00:21:30.309
It's going to be stuff that humans are good at if you want to

00:21:30.309 --> 00:21:33.909
be able to get paid for your labor and and

00:21:33.909 --> 00:21:37.089
i feel like with this book it kind of leans very

00:21:37.089 --> 00:21:41.449
much into being human into communicating uh

00:21:41.449 --> 00:21:45.189
with humans and extracting value

00:21:45.189 --> 00:21:54.769
out of those human interactions i think that that's so i've had conversations

00:21:54.769 --> 00:22:04.209
with people lately about what's the future for us in design or product strategy or even research.

00:22:04.709 --> 00:22:09.369
And the future, I think, is richer and deeper.

00:22:09.669 --> 00:22:16.509
For us, the labor that we can provide that the executives can concede that,

00:22:16.649 --> 00:22:20.549
hopefully, the AI can't do, is to listen deeply.

00:22:20.769 --> 00:22:23.649
It is to recruit better.

00:22:23.929 --> 00:22:29.509
We are letting people recruit using database tags.

00:22:29.889 --> 00:22:31.769
That's not how to recruit.

00:22:32.789 --> 00:22:40.389
We can be the people who look at the resulting patterns and compare them with

00:22:40.389 --> 00:22:46.109
the existing solutions and say, let's measure the harms, Let's measure the health.

00:22:46.309 --> 00:22:49.209
Let's just measure it. Let's measure in a different way.

00:22:49.429 --> 00:22:54.549
So let's do our evaluative studies by thinking style, by a certain subset of

00:22:54.549 --> 00:22:58.969
things that people are thinking about as they're trying to dress something.

00:22:59.771 --> 00:23:06.631
And then let's put, you know, one of those, I've got the sort of rainbow of

00:23:06.631 --> 00:23:08.211
harms. We've got mild harm.

00:23:08.351 --> 00:23:10.871
We've got serious harm.

00:23:11.111 --> 00:23:14.651
We've got lasting harm. And then we've got systemic harm.

00:23:15.051 --> 00:23:21.431
And under there are each one of those four are like ideas. And I made that up. We can change that.

00:23:21.831 --> 00:23:29.111
I'm inviting people to change it and help increase the resolution.

00:23:29.771 --> 00:23:35.151
I guess, of it. But we had nothing. The only kind of harm we talked about before

00:23:35.151 --> 00:23:40.331
is like, oh, the user's frustrated or the user's not delighted or they're confused,

00:23:40.551 --> 00:23:42.191
right? And that's all mild harm.

00:23:42.691 --> 00:23:46.271
Most of it you can recover from being confused about.

00:23:46.931 --> 00:23:53.631
But the lasting harm is that you lost for hours trying to solve something that

00:23:53.631 --> 00:23:55.651
was a bug that shouldn't have been there.

00:23:55.651 --> 00:24:01.331
It wasn't designed right or something right that's you'll never get those four hours back.

00:24:02.111 --> 00:24:06.071
Now you have to like work on the weekend to

00:24:06.071 --> 00:24:09.011
make up those four hours and you don't get the time

00:24:09.011 --> 00:24:12.071
to spend with your um you know your elderly

00:24:12.071 --> 00:24:14.731
father or something you're never going

00:24:14.731 --> 00:24:20.211
to get that time back so that's lasting harm and so if we're able to look at

00:24:20.211 --> 00:24:28.931
the the effects of our ignoring people or our lack of support for certain thinking

00:24:28.931 --> 00:24:33.271
styles in a different way and label it differently,

00:24:33.271 --> 00:24:35.911
I think our executives can pay better attention.

00:24:36.798 --> 00:24:40.158
Now, what does this all have to do with purpose? Yeah.

00:24:41.358 --> 00:24:44.598
So purpose is that thing that I hold constant.

00:24:45.658 --> 00:24:52.198
And if you're an org like a bank, you're going to be serving lots of purposes

00:24:52.198 --> 00:24:54.178
that people have, right?

00:24:54.438 --> 00:24:59.998
You might say, you know, so a purpose can be any level.

00:25:00.178 --> 00:25:06.278
It's like a Goldilocks thing. It can be the mama bear or the baby bear or anything in between, right?

00:25:06.798 --> 00:25:13.938
And the thing is, is that that is where if we frame by purpose,

00:25:13.938 --> 00:25:18.358
we're going to get data that we can use,

00:25:18.538 --> 00:25:22.758
patterns that we can actually use in our decisions.

00:25:23.358 --> 00:25:32.158
So let's do an example to sort of help get this theory down into reality.

00:25:32.158 --> 00:25:37.978
And that is, let's say that we wanted to do a super broad purpose for a bank,

00:25:38.198 --> 00:25:45.478
which might be for, let's just say, commercial real estate, right?

00:25:45.638 --> 00:25:49.878
That might be the division in a bank, commercial real estate. That's very broad.

00:25:50.698 --> 00:25:55.078
Maybe you don't quite know what purposes people have within that area.

00:25:55.318 --> 00:26:02.398
So you do like a scenario setting or landscape setting kind of study to understand

00:26:02.398 --> 00:26:06.558
a little bit more about all the variety of things that people who are doing

00:26:06.558 --> 00:26:12.038
commercial real estate and needing financial support for it have in mind.

00:26:12.038 --> 00:26:13.078
What are they trying to get done?

00:26:13.198 --> 00:26:16.478
Well, obviously, like loans are probably going to be one of those things.

00:26:17.598 --> 00:26:24.278
But there might be something like loan, like games you play with loans where

00:26:24.278 --> 00:26:25.818
you're mashing loans together.

00:26:26.798 --> 00:26:31.278
I'm sure there are a lot of very wealthy developers who know a lot of games

00:26:31.278 --> 00:26:35.658
to play with their money sources.

00:26:36.138 --> 00:26:39.878
Loans might not be the only place where they get money.

00:26:39.898 --> 00:26:43.718
Maybe it's not always a bank that's offering it.

00:26:43.718 --> 00:26:49.338
Well, as a bank, I would want to know where the other places are that this commercial

00:26:49.338 --> 00:26:54.318
developer, real estate developer is getting their funding so that I can understand

00:26:54.318 --> 00:26:55.478
their thinking around it.

00:26:55.478 --> 00:27:03.478
So maybe we narrow that purpose down to just getting funding and maybe we narrow

00:27:03.478 --> 00:27:09.738
it more so we can get somebody's thinking into what went through your mind as

00:27:09.738 --> 00:27:15.018
you were setting up funding for the last few projects that you did this year.

00:27:15.760 --> 00:27:20.160
There might be two or three. There might be just one. But everything that went

00:27:20.160 --> 00:27:21.920
through your mind as you did it,

00:27:22.420 --> 00:27:28.140
what you're going to hear is little personal rules that people set up for themselves

00:27:28.140 --> 00:27:33.240
based on some other thing that they were involved in that maybe didn't go so well.

00:27:33.240 --> 00:27:37.460
And so they don't do, you know, a certain thing anymore, or they avoid a certain

00:27:37.460 --> 00:27:43.360
person or a certain, you know, bank or a certain style of loan or money source.

00:27:44.300 --> 00:27:48.100
You're going to hear about how they can network with people.

00:27:48.520 --> 00:27:53.160
You're going to hear about how, I don't know, they make deals with people.

00:27:53.740 --> 00:27:58.740
I have no idea, over lunch or on the golf course or, you know,

00:27:58.840 --> 00:28:04.120
whatever other cognitive bias kind of idea we have about how these people behave.

00:28:04.700 --> 00:28:10.520
But instead of just having our cognitive bias idea, we're doing listening sessions with people.

00:28:10.760 --> 00:28:14.360
We're trying to understand what went through your mind as you were doing this

00:28:14.360 --> 00:28:15.420
the last couple of times.

00:28:15.720 --> 00:28:19.320
Now, we could narrow it down even further.

00:28:19.960 --> 00:28:23.440
We could expand it out. We could jump to a different realm.

00:28:23.600 --> 00:28:27.040
It could be still within commercial real estate, but it has more to do with

00:28:27.040 --> 00:28:29.280
construction, sourcing.

00:28:29.560 --> 00:28:33.400
Maybe it has more to do with building green, right?

00:28:33.520 --> 00:28:37.540
That might be a thing that we would be interested in trying to get our heads

00:28:37.540 --> 00:28:40.820
around as a bank in terms of funding, right?

00:28:41.080 --> 00:28:45.440
Green building or whatever. What are the rules around it? What are people considering?

00:28:45.760 --> 00:28:49.180
How do they make deals there? Because I'm sure they're making deals there.

00:28:49.360 --> 00:28:54.360
They don't want to just, you know, put extra money into it because it makes them feel good.

00:28:55.440 --> 00:28:58.780
So there's an example.

00:28:58.980 --> 00:29:03.120
We're like, we're changing and shifting. And that one bank is going,

00:29:03.760 --> 00:29:05.120
you know, they could throw up their hands.

00:29:05.220 --> 00:29:08.640
I don't know how there are too many purposes that we could serve because we

00:29:08.640 --> 00:29:11.720
could do all of this for business loans and business, you know, whatever.

00:29:11.940 --> 00:29:15.440
And all of this, again, for home loans for a person, et cetera.

00:29:15.720 --> 00:29:17.020
And I'm like, yeah, that's fine.

00:29:17.320 --> 00:29:21.480
You will do it once. You're not going be doing this kind of research all the

00:29:21.480 --> 00:29:24.640
time. You will do it once. It's going to last for a couple of decades.

00:29:24.880 --> 00:29:29.320
You will add to it as you need more information in certain areas.

00:29:30.500 --> 00:29:35.340
But you're probably going to have, I don't know, maybe as a bank being very

00:29:35.340 --> 00:29:39.700
large in terms of serving purposes, you might have 10 of them, right?

00:29:40.880 --> 00:29:45.460
Right. Right. Yeah. I mean, this quote from your book on this,

00:29:45.460 --> 00:29:48.160
people exist in their own context.

00:29:48.240 --> 00:29:50.620
They are centered in their own worlds.

00:29:50.800 --> 00:29:55.480
Your product, if it appears in their world at all, is one of the tools they

00:29:55.480 --> 00:29:59.120
are using to make progress on their own purpose.

00:29:59.320 --> 00:30:03.180
And it just nails it so much because we're research the task,

00:30:03.360 --> 00:30:05.860
research the goal, research the jobs to be done.

00:30:06.060 --> 00:30:09.200
And they're all segmented. That's not what they're trying to do.

00:30:09.400 --> 00:30:13.700
I think it nails it in a number of ways because from this sort of,

00:30:14.320 --> 00:30:17.680
From kind of like a holistic humanistic side, it kind of nails it.

00:30:18.260 --> 00:30:24.220
Then there's when you look at business theories like Blue Ocean that try to

00:30:24.220 --> 00:30:31.080
say, okay, here's how you can systematically get to the next big innovative idea.

00:30:31.340 --> 00:30:37.100
You've got to do a Blue Ocean and here's the Red Ocean with all the competition and blood in the water.

00:30:37.300 --> 00:30:39.640
And then here's the Blue Ocean you want to navigate there.

00:30:39.920 --> 00:30:43.060
But then, you know, that's all about navigating to the purpose.

00:30:43.240 --> 00:30:47.600
Let's say, you know, they give you examples like Cirque du Soleil works because

00:30:47.600 --> 00:30:51.620
it's satisfying the purpose of, I just want to be entertained tonight.

00:30:51.900 --> 00:30:55.140
Not, I want to go to a circus or I want to go to a movie.

00:30:55.560 --> 00:30:57.960
It kind of gets in between right to the point.

00:30:58.420 --> 00:31:01.880
And I think that this is, it just, uh,

00:31:02.060 --> 00:31:06.660
I think this really um empowers user

00:31:06.660 --> 00:31:10.360
researchers user usability practitioners to

00:31:10.360 --> 00:31:14.020
better communicate how doing

00:31:14.020 --> 00:31:19.980
research in a better more thoughtful manner truly maps on to greater business

00:31:19.980 --> 00:31:29.420
opportunities yes absolutely the um so i i tend to look at the business opportunities

00:31:29.420 --> 00:31:30.680
in three different ways.

00:31:31.060 --> 00:31:37.580
One is measuring how well we're helping someone accomplish their goal.

00:31:37.880 --> 00:31:42.620
And when you said humanistic there, a lot of the time when I talk about a person's

00:31:42.620 --> 00:31:49.180
purpose, I talk about it in terms of them using a lot of different tools, such as memory.

00:31:49.420 --> 00:31:53.580
Memory is a tool. Such as running next door and talking to somebody about it.

00:31:53.780 --> 00:31:56.780
Talking to somebody about it is a tool. such as

00:31:56.780 --> 00:32:00.060
looking it up in a book that's a tool such as

00:32:00.060 --> 00:32:03.020
or online right or remembering some course

00:32:03.020 --> 00:32:06.100
you took about it and it's there are so

00:32:06.100 --> 00:32:09.160
many different tools there are mechanical tools there are manual

00:32:09.160 --> 00:32:14.460
tools and there's digital tools certainly but it's not the only thing we're

00:32:14.460 --> 00:32:20.600
using all all our tools not just the digital tool and i think we lose sight

00:32:20.600 --> 00:32:28.320
of that fact when we are so focused on the solution that we're trying to make as an organization.

00:32:28.660 --> 00:32:35.740
And by being so myopically focused, we lose the idea that,

00:32:35.980 --> 00:32:40.580
here's the analogy that I like to use, we're sort of focused on a fire road

00:32:40.580 --> 00:32:44.060
that we're hiking down, right, through this landscape.

00:32:45.018 --> 00:32:48.758
And all our competition is either behind us or in front of us, right?

00:32:50.118 --> 00:32:54.938
And we lose track of the fact that there's all this landscape around us that we can walk through.

00:32:55.478 --> 00:32:59.658
We can make our own trail. That's innovation. So that's the second way,

00:32:59.838 --> 00:33:06.778
is that they're not only measuring value and seeing what those gaps are and

00:33:06.778 --> 00:33:11.678
what those harms are, but just purely using this knowledge to like,

00:33:11.778 --> 00:33:13.798
okay, I'm leaving the fire road.

00:33:13.798 --> 00:33:16.658
There's another thing I could be doing here and I

00:33:16.658 --> 00:33:19.558
see it there was a company Qualcomm that

00:33:19.558 --> 00:33:22.438
um that saw it so clearly when we

00:33:22.438 --> 00:33:25.138
were doing some work and they're like we're going

00:33:25.138 --> 00:33:28.678
to start this whole new division because this thing

00:33:28.678 --> 00:33:34.378
could you know this thing could be our next big uh I don't know money maker

00:33:34.378 --> 00:33:39.738
um because it's just not being dealt with and everybody talked about it and

00:33:39.738 --> 00:33:45.778
then And the third way is what we sort of started talking about is like,

00:33:45.958 --> 00:33:49.438
yeah, you've created a solution. That's this fire road.

00:33:50.218 --> 00:33:55.818
But there are other approaches. And so like the person who wants to walk to

00:33:55.818 --> 00:34:01.458
their meeting through the city via a shady path because it's hot out,

00:34:01.738 --> 00:34:03.978
that's like a little parallel trail.

00:34:04.458 --> 00:34:08.198
It's not going to go shooting off into like some innovative different hill.

00:34:08.198 --> 00:34:13.318
Is a little parallel trail that we're ignoring that even though it's following

00:34:13.318 --> 00:34:17.058
the same thing, it's not being trod upon by our competition.

00:34:18.110 --> 00:34:21.470
Mm hmm. Right. And it could become its own fire road. Right.

00:34:21.970 --> 00:34:27.250
No, when you're doing. Yeah, exactly. And so when you're doing listening sessions,

00:34:27.590 --> 00:34:35.290
you know, one part you talk about how the lack of embarrassment when you're asking questions.

00:34:36.250 --> 00:34:40.270
And a lot of times in business meetings, especially we want to not seem ignorant.

00:34:41.730 --> 00:34:46.650
And you say, we keep quiet or at least come up with some guesses.

00:34:46.850 --> 00:34:52.030
So you say, a deep listener must get past this habit and ask the participant

00:34:52.030 --> 00:34:54.350
about things that seem obvious.

00:34:54.610 --> 00:35:00.850
Remind yourself that there is no way to understand someone's mind in advance.

00:35:01.230 --> 00:35:05.790
And this is a really important lesson for us all. And here's something that

00:35:05.790 --> 00:35:08.690
I'm trying to figure out on these lines is,

00:35:08.690 --> 00:35:11.670
you know if you're in a

00:35:11.670 --> 00:35:15.070
situation where you're representing the business and you're representing

00:35:15.070 --> 00:35:18.030
the research there's this pressure if you're

00:35:18.030 --> 00:35:20.890
representing things on the business side to not seem like you

00:35:20.890 --> 00:35:24.150
don't know about things and you when you're

00:35:24.150 --> 00:35:26.810
talking you have to like as a consultant you have to make it

00:35:26.810 --> 00:35:29.890
obvious that yes i understand this and you

00:35:29.890 --> 00:35:32.810
know you kind of get in this habit maybe of like completing the sentences

00:35:32.810 --> 00:35:36.070
and you're showing that you know your stuff but

00:35:36.070 --> 00:35:39.350
when you're wearing a it's a different hat from the researcher yeah

00:35:39.350 --> 00:35:42.470
right and and so what do you think what is

00:35:42.470 --> 00:35:45.670
the balance there is it to make sure that you're separating the

00:35:45.670 --> 00:35:51.490
business representative and research roles is there are there other things what

00:35:51.490 --> 00:35:54.790
should we be thinking about there i think what we should be thinking about there

00:35:54.790 --> 00:36:02.850
is building trust with the person so we want to go away from this idea that

00:36:02.850 --> 00:36:05.530
we are the researcher and they are the subject.

00:36:06.230 --> 00:36:12.070
We want to leave the idea entirely that we're an explorer and we're going into

00:36:12.070 --> 00:36:15.790
their mind and we're finding the little gold bits and we're bringing them back to the team, right?

00:36:16.010 --> 00:36:24.230
This is very much based on sort of this empire building kind of a mindset, right?

00:36:24.570 --> 00:36:27.790
Colonial mindset. We're going to go, we're going to grab what we want,

00:36:27.790 --> 00:36:30.090
And we're going to go away with it. No.

00:36:30.690 --> 00:36:34.830
What we really want to be doing is supporting that person, giving them better

00:36:34.830 --> 00:36:43.230
value, something that they will find of value, right, in the thing that they're trying to get done.

00:36:43.370 --> 00:36:46.810
In order to do that, we have to understand them. In order to understand them, we have to build trust.

00:36:47.692 --> 00:36:52.672
Which means we need to show them that we are not there to bring things back

00:36:52.672 --> 00:36:59.612
to our team and take them away and sort of, like, use the ideas that that person gives us, right?

00:37:00.172 --> 00:37:05.892
If this person is going to give us an idea, we're going to, like, pay them for it.

00:37:05.972 --> 00:37:10.652
We're going to give them royalties for it or, you know, that kind of a mindset. it.

00:37:11.132 --> 00:37:18.272
So the idea is that when we're building trust with someone, it's not something

00:37:18.272 --> 00:37:23.112
that like you can click it and it's on and then it'll turn off when you're done

00:37:23.112 --> 00:37:24.172
with a listening session.

00:37:24.352 --> 00:37:29.192
It's something that is like a needle and it moves back and forth all the time

00:37:29.192 --> 00:37:31.952
throughout the session based on what you're saying to the person.

00:37:32.192 --> 00:37:39.972
So one of the chapters in here is about safety and trust and how a person feels

00:37:39.972 --> 00:37:43.472
and how they think about what they want to say to you,

00:37:43.652 --> 00:37:47.892
how much they want to tell you about their inner thoughts. Inner thoughts are personal.

00:37:48.272 --> 00:37:50.732
We don't talk to people about them very much.

00:37:51.572 --> 00:37:55.212
That in of itself is a reason why these things work really well,

00:37:55.232 --> 00:37:57.652
because it feels so good to be heard at that level.

00:37:57.652 --> 00:38:01.872
Um but when so

00:38:01.872 --> 00:38:06.772
so that idea of building trust is that

00:38:06.772 --> 00:38:10.292
it is built on that idea of being a person

00:38:10.292 --> 00:38:14.732
only coming there to understand someone's interior

00:38:14.732 --> 00:38:17.612
world i know i'm not taking

00:38:17.612 --> 00:38:20.972
any insights back to my team there will be no report after

00:38:20.972 --> 00:38:27.292
this listening session the insights come a few weeks later after we build patterns

00:38:27.292 --> 00:38:32.392
across the listening sessions based on the inner thinking emotional reactions

00:38:32.392 --> 00:38:37.052
and personal rules that people are telling us and how those play together in

00:38:37.052 --> 00:38:39.312
terms of their focus of mental attention.

00:38:40.172 --> 00:38:43.672
Yeah. Yeah. No, I'm sorry. Go ahead. I was just going to say,

00:38:43.772 --> 00:38:46.972
one of the things we're doing is when we're doing the data synthesis,

00:38:47.192 --> 00:38:49.072
we're doing it in an emergent way.

00:38:49.292 --> 00:38:51.872
So we're trying to avoid, we're trying to resist.

00:38:52.432 --> 00:38:56.352
We won't ever be able to do away with our cognitive bias.

00:38:56.492 --> 00:39:02.092
Our cognitive bias is always present because we're human, but we want to resist it as much as possible.

00:39:02.252 --> 00:39:06.412
So our data synthesis has to be emergent. It can't be top-down.

00:39:06.932 --> 00:39:11.672
And to be emergent, we need to pay attention to where was this person mentally?

00:39:11.932 --> 00:39:20.332
What were they focused on? What are they trying to decide or move in their mind

00:39:20.332 --> 00:39:25.332
or move forward on what they're trying to address with their purpose?

00:39:26.357 --> 00:39:32.697
So to pick that apart, so I, as the listener in a research session,

00:39:33.377 --> 00:39:37.137
am letting the person lead the conversation.

00:39:37.997 --> 00:39:45.677
And being aware of my own biases, that's important because it helps me guide

00:39:45.677 --> 00:39:47.757
things correctly and capture things correctly.

00:39:47.977 --> 00:39:51.877
It helps you not try to show the other person that you understand.

00:39:52.497 --> 00:39:57.797
So I do a lot of listening sessions, like say with a chemist, right?

00:39:58.517 --> 00:40:02.897
And all my other research peers would say, oh, I have to go and understand the

00:40:02.897 --> 00:40:04.357
chemistry that they're using.

00:40:04.657 --> 00:40:07.717
I have to understand the industry that they're working in.

00:40:08.237 --> 00:40:13.237
I'm like, no, because we're going to be speaking to them at a human level.

00:40:13.437 --> 00:40:15.917
We're going to be speaking to them about their inner thoughts.

00:40:16.137 --> 00:40:19.937
We don't need to know the chemistry. The chemistry is unimportant.

00:40:20.297 --> 00:40:23.497
The thoughts are important. the emotional reactions are important.

00:40:23.977 --> 00:40:27.977
The personal rules are important. And being able to pick those out and make

00:40:27.977 --> 00:40:31.497
sure that we're getting to that level, as opposed to staying sort of at the

00:40:31.497 --> 00:40:35.797
surface explanation level or the surface,

00:40:36.057 --> 00:40:39.717
just below the surface, we get at opinions and preferences.

00:40:41.017 --> 00:40:47.797
We want to get past those because that's where our usual listening set or interviews stop.

00:40:48.097 --> 00:40:51.777
It's like, oh, you can explain to me how you do it. Well, I don't need someone

00:40:51.777 --> 00:40:53.737
to explain to me the process necessarily.

00:40:54.277 --> 00:40:59.977
I need someone to explain to me their thinking as they execute this approach

00:40:59.977 --> 00:41:05.237
that they're using and what are their personal rules and what are their emotional

00:41:05.237 --> 00:41:10.757
reactions and how am I going to find differences of thinking style?

00:41:11.597 --> 00:41:14.397
Okay, so let me try to throw an example out there.

00:41:14.577 --> 00:41:17.937
And if this example doesn't work, then you could use the chemistry so let's

00:41:17.937 --> 00:41:20.937
say the primary user is going to be a chemistry,

00:41:21.677 --> 00:41:27.777
chemical engineer and they're using a software to maybe guide the balance and

00:41:27.777 --> 00:41:32.437
the mixing of chemicals and but they're also using all those other tools to

00:41:32.437 --> 00:41:36.577
guide the mixing and balancing of chemicals that's true yeah well then i would

00:41:36.577 --> 00:41:40.477
say that um by default as a researcher would say okay,

00:41:40.617 --> 00:41:45.417
well, I want to understand chemistry because then I can ask better questions.

00:41:45.537 --> 00:41:47.317
You're not going to ask about chemistry.

00:41:48.476 --> 00:41:55.956
Yeah. So let's say, so the example is, it was a bunch of people who were using

00:41:55.956 --> 00:42:00.276
a particular chemical to build other things.

00:42:00.276 --> 00:42:03.716
This particular chemical was silicone.

00:42:03.756 --> 00:42:07.516
It apparently makes things sticky or slippery.

00:42:07.756 --> 00:42:10.636
And so they're building things that are either sticky or slippery.

00:42:10.916 --> 00:42:15.256
I spoke to people who formulate shampoo, who formulate paint,

00:42:15.456 --> 00:42:19.856
who formulate rubber, all sorts of different things that they're building.

00:42:20.276 --> 00:42:26.536
They're trying to come up with a new thing in their process or a tweak to their thing.

00:42:27.496 --> 00:42:30.596
As they're describing things to me, I'm like, oh, this is, you know,

00:42:30.656 --> 00:42:34.096
in my own mind, cognitive bias is like, oh, they're kind of like chefs.

00:42:34.596 --> 00:42:37.956
You know, they're trying new things, different ingredients, a little bit more

00:42:37.956 --> 00:42:42.756
of that or hotter, you know, whatever reagent or time or I don't know, right?

00:42:42.976 --> 00:42:49.716
I don't need to know these actual, I don't need to be a chemist to understand

00:42:49.716 --> 00:42:50.776
where they're like, oh, yeah.

00:42:50.936 --> 00:42:53.676
And then I realized that it was coming out too soft.

00:42:54.076 --> 00:43:01.056
And so I decided that I need to put it through the process longer because that'll

00:43:01.056 --> 00:43:02.216
make it a little bit more rigid.

00:43:02.936 --> 00:43:06.676
Okay. So it's a little bit of explanation. That'll make it a little bit more rigid.

00:43:06.836 --> 00:43:09.656
But the I decided to put it through the process a little bit longer.

00:43:09.656 --> 00:43:14.216
Well, how, you know, how long did you decide and how did you make that decision? How long?

00:43:15.556 --> 00:43:16.916
That's interesting to me.

00:43:17.769 --> 00:43:22.149
But that's entirely human. I can understand a decision to make something go

00:43:22.149 --> 00:43:23.409
through a process longer.

00:43:23.989 --> 00:43:29.809
Right? Now, so do you separate the business discovery stuff from the kind of

00:43:29.809 --> 00:43:35.049
the deep listening stuff when you're telling the business what you've learned?

00:43:35.509 --> 00:43:39.189
I'm thinking about scenarios where like you have some big company that's like,

00:43:39.329 --> 00:43:40.569
we do things a certain way.

00:43:40.689 --> 00:43:44.669
We've done it this way since the beginning of time. And the only people like

00:43:44.669 --> 00:43:49.049
who are respected in that organization just know tons of stuff about process.

00:43:49.229 --> 00:43:51.529
They know all the acronyms and all this stuff.

00:43:51.729 --> 00:43:54.789
And then like, then there can be pressure if you're coming from the outside

00:43:54.789 --> 00:44:01.249
to say like, yes, we, we know what the, you know, the JBL and the PP7 and this, the, right.

00:44:01.469 --> 00:44:05.289
But then you also want them to respect your research findings. um

00:44:05.289 --> 00:44:08.249
and you know you you kind of already partly addressed

00:44:08.249 --> 00:44:10.949
it but is do you do you

00:44:10.949 --> 00:44:14.349
separate the two or do you have maybe a point person who's

00:44:14.349 --> 00:44:17.409
this is the person who's representing our relationship

00:44:17.409 --> 00:44:20.229
between our consultancy and our business and they know how

00:44:20.229 --> 00:44:23.129
to talk about all of the jargon and and the

00:44:23.129 --> 00:44:26.329
use cases but here's the so that

00:44:26.329 --> 00:44:29.269
the researchers don't have to be burdened right

00:44:29.269 --> 00:44:31.909
with knowing all the acronyms and knowing all the

00:44:31.909 --> 00:44:35.349
processes generally in my experience that point

00:44:35.349 --> 00:44:39.089
person has been internal to the company there's always

00:44:39.089 --> 00:44:42.389
someone whose voice is

00:44:42.389 --> 00:44:45.269
strong enough and interest in humans is strong

00:44:45.269 --> 00:44:49.089
enough that they get the i

00:44:49.089 --> 00:44:52.269
don't know funding permission whatever to do some research

00:44:52.269 --> 00:44:55.169
like this it's often someone in

00:44:55.169 --> 00:44:58.909
research and development not always it's

00:44:58.909 --> 00:45:01.789
often because of like an alignment of stars oh we got this

00:45:01.789 --> 00:45:07.049
new ceo and they're interested in such and such and this just happened and our

00:45:07.049 --> 00:45:12.149
i don't know our our stock rating went down or you know something like that

00:45:12.149 --> 00:45:19.709
so like oh something has to happen that's new um that person is always internal for me uh oftentimes.

00:45:20.609 --> 00:45:25.429
The company will want to show me i'll do this with startups a lot they'll want

00:45:25.429 --> 00:45:26.369
to show me their product?

00:45:26.429 --> 00:45:30.189
And I'm like, I don't want to see your product. I don't care about your product.

00:45:32.129 --> 00:45:36.489
I really don't want to think about your product. You can show me your product after this.

00:45:36.869 --> 00:45:40.149
But I don't want to think about your product. I want to think about what people

00:45:40.149 --> 00:45:42.869
are trying to get done because I'm not here to solve your product.

00:45:43.269 --> 00:45:48.069
I'm here to solve an understanding of people and their approach.

00:45:48.509 --> 00:45:53.369
And once we understand the patterns there, we can align your product with it

00:45:53.369 --> 00:45:55.049
and see where the gaps are.

00:45:55.948 --> 00:46:01.828
A quote from page 100, chapter 4 of the book, a person's purpose plays a large

00:46:01.828 --> 00:46:09.508
role in problem space research because a person's purpose is what they are already addressing.

00:46:09.648 --> 00:46:16.208
When and if they reach for any tools or solutions, a purpose can be anything

00:46:16.208 --> 00:46:23.108
a person is addressing, doing, pursuing, making progress on, deciding,

00:46:23.748 --> 00:46:25.768
planning, or even putting off.

00:46:25.948 --> 00:46:30.688
It's their aim, intent, objective, what they want to accomplish and achieve.

00:46:31.168 --> 00:46:35.348
Yeah. Yeah. That putting off thing, I think, is really important,

00:46:35.568 --> 00:46:36.988
worth maybe a sentence or two.

00:46:38.628 --> 00:46:44.608
I've worked with people in healthcare, understanding people with chronic conditions.

00:46:45.568 --> 00:46:49.348
And a lot of the time, and I also worked in an airline.

00:46:49.628 --> 00:46:55.968
Same thing happened. And a lot of the time, there is a point or a mindset that

00:46:55.968 --> 00:46:59.748
people fall into and thinking styles like, oh, this can't be happening.

00:47:00.088 --> 00:47:02.888
Undo. I don't want this to happen. Right?

00:47:03.648 --> 00:47:08.208
And with respect to chronic conditions, the whole medical community wants them

00:47:08.208 --> 00:47:10.508
to just get on with the treatment.

00:47:10.928 --> 00:47:14.908
Right? Change your lifestyle. Stop smoking. You know, whatever it is.

00:47:14.968 --> 00:47:17.468
Just, you know, you're bad. I'm judging you.

00:47:18.068 --> 00:47:23.148
I'm not supporting you. And I'm not here for you in that totally valid mindset

00:47:23.148 --> 00:47:26.948
of undo, right? No, no, this can't be happening to me.

00:47:27.753 --> 00:47:33.133
But if you support them, if you had done listening sessions through that,

00:47:33.373 --> 00:47:37.453
you will hear people telling you they're thinking. Like one,

00:47:37.673 --> 00:47:38.713
I will never forget this.

00:47:39.213 --> 00:47:43.613
The thing that got this person over that hump was, and I shouldn't even call

00:47:43.613 --> 00:47:46.033
it a hump because it was a totally valid mindset to be in.

00:47:46.133 --> 00:47:51.893
It's like, well, I want to be here for my grandkids in 10 years because that's

00:47:51.893 --> 00:47:53.993
when they're going to be graduating high school or whatever.

00:47:53.993 --> 00:47:58.273
And I want to be there. I want to take them on this trip that,

00:47:58.413 --> 00:48:02.033
you know, I could take them to that city that they always wanted to visit or

00:48:02.033 --> 00:48:04.573
that, you know, climb that mountain that they wanted to climb.

00:48:05.973 --> 00:48:09.653
There's always something. And it's different for everybody.

00:48:10.153 --> 00:48:15.373
But there are patterns of thinking around it that we can support.

00:48:15.893 --> 00:48:18.753
Right? Wow. I think a lot of psychologists know about that.

00:48:18.873 --> 00:48:23.713
The same thing happened with the airline. There is a state of mind that you

00:48:23.713 --> 00:48:26.853
get in when, some people,

00:48:27.073 --> 00:48:32.073
when something has happened and your plans aren't going according to the timing

00:48:32.073 --> 00:48:34.233
that you had lined up, right?

00:48:34.433 --> 00:48:38.093
Or according even to the meal that you had lined up.

00:48:38.833 --> 00:48:46.693
Something went awry. Something isn't going how you hoped. And you've got an emotional reaction.

00:48:47.733 --> 00:48:54.713
And oftentimes, you will want to try to correct it and insist that it can be corrected.

00:48:55.173 --> 00:48:58.193
And, you know, the gate attendants are all like, oh, my God,

00:48:58.333 --> 00:49:01.373
lady, there's a snowstorm. Right?

00:49:02.813 --> 00:49:07.713
Get out of my face. And the whole airline thought of these people as grumblers.

00:49:08.373 --> 00:49:13.533
And moreover, they thought that these people would also yell at other cars in

00:49:13.533 --> 00:49:17.013
traffic and yell at their kids when the kids weren't doing things wrong.

00:49:17.153 --> 00:49:24.813
And I'm like, no, it is very contextual to this experience having to do with

00:49:24.813 --> 00:49:28.833
an air flight, right? A trip, even just one leg on a trip.

00:49:29.626 --> 00:49:34.826
It is perfectly valid, and it deserves support.

00:49:35.766 --> 00:49:40.026
Right? Yeah, so I get attribution by it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.

00:49:43.766 --> 00:49:47.846
They just thought they were grumbling. That's such a demeaning way to,

00:49:48.006 --> 00:49:53.086
oh, they're just people who, they are the kind of person who would grumble at everything.

00:49:53.446 --> 00:49:58.466
Yeah, yeah. So this is the point at which I want anybody who is listening this far,

00:49:58.466 --> 00:50:01.486
thank you but if you ever encountered

00:50:01.486 --> 00:50:04.746
any personas any set of personas in an

00:50:04.746 --> 00:50:07.826
org and one of those personas everybody loved

00:50:07.826 --> 00:50:13.506
to hate this is this is what's happening right now while we're crushing ideas

00:50:13.506 --> 00:50:23.746
how about the five whys why is that so so i i want us to be able to ask the

00:50:23.746 --> 00:50:26.886
obvious question just like a toddler does, right?

00:50:27.366 --> 00:50:32.486
A toddler's going to ask you why until you say, because I said so, right?

00:50:33.066 --> 00:50:38.286
So that is admirable, but it's not because a toddler knows how to ask why.

00:50:38.426 --> 00:50:41.526
It gets really annoying to be asked why all the time.

00:50:42.166 --> 00:50:48.766
It's admirable because the toddler doesn't know that they're supposed to know.

00:50:48.966 --> 00:50:51.466
They don't care that they don't know it.

00:50:51.866 --> 00:50:57.306
They have this idea that I'm just absorbing information, and it's okay for me

00:50:57.306 --> 00:51:01.386
in this time in my life to ask a bunch of questions so that I can learn.

00:51:02.426 --> 00:51:05.586
That's what's admirable. So I would never say ask five whys.

00:51:05.706 --> 00:51:07.066
People are going to punch you in the face.

00:51:08.746 --> 00:51:13.626
And for the younger audience members who might not know, five whys is this idea

00:51:13.626 --> 00:51:19.086
that if you're in a kind of a business discovery context, if someone says something, you say, why?

00:51:19.346 --> 00:51:22.786
And there's an answer to that, and you say, why again? And you do it five times.

00:51:22.786 --> 00:51:26.006
It's supposed to be this way that you get to the truth.

00:51:26.226 --> 00:51:31.086
It kind of appeals to lots of business thinking that wants to boil everything

00:51:31.086 --> 00:51:35.306
down to extremely simple heuristics where all you have to do is this,

00:51:35.386 --> 00:51:39.546
you know, just open this box and unzip the bag and you have this magical thing.

00:51:39.746 --> 00:51:45.166
Like, no, there's a kind of a skill that has to be built in a mindset and a framework.

00:51:45.606 --> 00:51:48.506
There's another human involved. involved and you're

00:51:48.506 --> 00:51:51.786
gonna you know that little that little um needle

00:51:51.786 --> 00:51:54.966
about trust oh man it's gonna flat line right

00:51:54.966 --> 00:51:58.026
yes like prompt engineering for

00:51:58.026 --> 00:52:00.986
humans like like s why five times then

00:52:00.986 --> 00:52:03.966
it's this hack and you'll get and you'll get to that and so

00:52:03.966 --> 00:52:06.886
you know getting toward the end here and one of the things i want to highlight here

00:52:06.886 --> 00:52:09.586
about this book and you know you could comment on any

00:52:09.586 --> 00:52:16.486
one of these but you build this really clear organized architecture of concepts

00:52:16.486 --> 00:52:21.546
and i'll just just running through them uh some of the things i jotted down

00:52:21.546 --> 00:52:28.966
knowledge making and knowledge providers deep listening which is a subset of active listening.

00:52:29.815 --> 00:52:35.835
Germinal questions, germinal as in germinate, concept, and you treat the concept

00:52:35.835 --> 00:52:40.075
as something that you find in these conversations, and it has a certain,

00:52:40.175 --> 00:52:41.995
it's a unit of information.

00:52:43.955 --> 00:52:47.895
Information session versus a listening session, right?

00:52:49.175 --> 00:52:53.515
Permeable perimeter, that took me back to the fifth grade bio class,

00:52:53.575 --> 00:52:58.155
but it's, oh, you veer in and out of the topic, but then that's okay because you're, right?

00:52:58.155 --> 00:53:06.715
Pull tabs, micro-reflections, and I think really the core one is interior cognition.

00:53:07.735 --> 00:53:12.675
Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. All of these things. There's so many different

00:53:12.675 --> 00:53:20.375
ways or ways in which this is different than you might have learned how to do research.

00:53:20.855 --> 00:53:24.755
Mainly because the way you learned how to do research was through the lens of

00:53:24.755 --> 00:53:30.615
the solution. And you need to come out of each interview with insights.

00:53:30.875 --> 00:53:32.695
We're not doing that.

00:53:33.495 --> 00:53:37.195
We're doing something different. Our insights are going to come when we compare

00:53:37.195 --> 00:53:43.355
what our solution can do to the way that people approach things mentally.

00:53:43.355 --> 00:53:46.955
Um so this idea of

00:53:46.955 --> 00:53:50.155
concepts when we're doing

00:53:50.155 --> 00:53:53.375
a listening session with somebody we're

00:53:53.375 --> 00:53:57.555
tracking whether someone is just explaining things to us or telling us their

00:53:57.555 --> 00:54:03.655
opinions or whether they're getting to the interior the inner thinking their

00:54:03.655 --> 00:54:07.755
emotional reactions about things it's like oh i'm going to make this decision

00:54:07.755 --> 00:54:13.135
to make that that process go a little bit longer so that it isn't quite so soft at the end, right?

00:54:13.375 --> 00:54:18.415
That's some inner thinking, okay? It comes from a memory.

00:54:18.975 --> 00:54:26.315
So I try to get people to speak about specific memories. I try to pin them to a place in time.

00:54:27.160 --> 00:54:31.920
So that it's easier for them to talk about what went through their mind.

00:54:32.200 --> 00:54:36.000
The other thing is that intro session is part of recruiting.

00:54:36.580 --> 00:54:39.980
With every candidate that you have, you do an intro session,

00:54:40.120 --> 00:54:45.720
which is where you talk about, like, have you done a lot of thinking about this particular topic?

00:54:45.980 --> 00:54:49.100
Let's sort of make sure. And let me explain to you that this is going to be

00:54:49.100 --> 00:54:51.640
more of a conversation. I don't have a list of questions for you.

00:54:52.040 --> 00:54:55.840
And you're going to sort of lead me through what went through your mind as you

00:54:55.840 --> 00:54:58.520
did that thing. Is that, you know, going to be okay?

00:54:58.860 --> 00:55:01.640
And here's who we're doing it for. And here's how we're going to use it.

00:55:01.680 --> 00:55:03.920
And here's what you're going to get out of it in the end.

00:55:04.680 --> 00:55:06.560
Here's how we're going to provide value.

00:55:07.920 --> 00:55:10.580
And here's how we're going to stay in contact. You know, is this all?

00:55:10.740 --> 00:55:14.420
And then if it's something that they want to participate in,

00:55:14.660 --> 00:55:17.320
you also ask them a question, well, what's the best way to do this?

00:55:17.380 --> 00:55:21.360
Because speaking out loud sometimes isn't the best way to do it for someone.

00:55:22.040 --> 00:55:26.680
So maybe let's do it by text messages over the course of a week or whatever, right?

00:55:26.860 --> 00:55:29.620
Um maybe it's better for someone to do

00:55:29.620 --> 00:55:32.720
a video um it depends on that

00:55:32.720 --> 00:55:36.480
person and what works for them you

00:55:36.480 --> 00:55:39.680
just need a way to interact with it to recognize

00:55:39.680 --> 00:55:44.340
when you're at the start the exterior layers of explanation and opinions of

00:55:44.340 --> 00:55:49.060
preferences and be able to ask questions use those as pull tabs to sort of open

00:55:49.060 --> 00:55:54.160
up that richer interior i love it and one of the questions i don't want to forget

00:55:54.160 --> 00:55:58.480
to ask you before we close out is you talk about,

00:55:58.720 --> 00:56:01.800
you know, there's the observational stuff.

00:56:02.140 --> 00:56:05.680
And by the way, I love the topic on the inductive versus the deductive.

00:56:05.840 --> 00:56:10.880
I just recorded a month ago, a podcast episode for this, talking about the difference

00:56:10.880 --> 00:56:13.260
because a lot of executives, okay, we have to test the idea.

00:56:13.460 --> 00:56:16.920
It's the deductive method. Well, no, there's the inductive, which is like you're

00:56:16.920 --> 00:56:19.740
building up your knowledge on that stuff.

00:56:20.180 --> 00:56:25.800
One of the things I wanted to ask you about is a lot of the methods have people

00:56:25.800 --> 00:56:28.000
referring back to their previous memory.

00:56:28.400 --> 00:56:35.060
How do you reconcile that with the observation that sometimes methods that rely

00:56:35.060 --> 00:56:43.800
on self-reporting or imperfect memories is still a strong method to use in this case?

00:56:43.920 --> 00:56:47.680
How do we talk about that stuff? It's much easier to remember what you were

00:56:47.680 --> 00:56:51.800
thinking or the gist of what you were thinking than to remember what you were

00:56:51.800 --> 00:56:53.740
doing and what buttons you were pressing.

00:56:54.000 --> 00:56:57.200
So we're not interested in how they're using these solutions.

00:56:57.200 --> 00:57:00.460
We're interested in what went through their mind, right?

00:57:00.720 --> 00:57:04.740
So I don't know what buttons they were pressing to extend the length of the

00:57:04.740 --> 00:57:09.340
process so that it would come out less soft, right?

00:57:09.460 --> 00:57:12.780
I don't care about that. I just care about the decision that was made.

00:57:13.459 --> 00:57:14.739
Got you. Okay. So that clears that

00:57:14.739 --> 00:57:17.839
up a lot. Cause yeah, the research is talking about how we don't know.

00:57:18.279 --> 00:57:22.279
We're not mapping our behaviors very well in our memory of that, but the other stuff,

00:57:22.739 --> 00:57:27.079
you come away with feelings and you have, you have a mental model based upon

00:57:27.079 --> 00:57:32.019
the path, the dragon, uh, with the, uh, everyone has their own personal dragon,

00:57:32.039 --> 00:57:33.839
which is their whole, um, history.

00:57:34.459 --> 00:57:37.399
Really love this stuff. Um, so we've got the three books.

00:57:37.519 --> 00:57:40.779
We've got the book we talked about today, time to listen, um,

00:57:41.039 --> 00:57:44.119
into young, and then your courses. Do you want to shout out the courses and

00:57:44.119 --> 00:57:46.139
how businesses can get in touch with you?

00:57:47.699 --> 00:57:52.259
Because I like to give people a lot of different ways to engage with ideas.

00:57:52.479 --> 00:57:55.559
There's the book, but there's also a course on time to listen.

00:57:55.819 --> 00:57:59.899
There's also a practice group on time to listen that I offer occasionally.

00:58:00.339 --> 00:58:03.959
Then there's another course on qualitative data synthesis.

00:58:04.259 --> 00:58:07.079
Now, this is a course that took me a year and a half to build.

00:58:07.099 --> 00:58:11.899
It's a two-part course. It's actually two courses with its own two practice sessions.

00:58:13.199 --> 00:58:19.599
And um that is a course that doesn't exist anywhere outside of university right now,

00:58:20.259 --> 00:58:23.779
it's seriously yeah it's pretty in-depth

00:58:23.779 --> 00:58:26.799
people love it and um

00:58:26.799 --> 00:58:30.699
i'm super pleased because i have been teaching that method

00:58:30.699 --> 00:58:33.319
i don't know for 25 years and it was

00:58:33.319 --> 00:58:36.599
really hard to teach and i finally figured out how to teach it now people when

00:58:36.599 --> 00:58:41.359
i do the practice sessions with them they get it the the ideas are there i'm

00:58:41.359 --> 00:58:45.899
like okay we're working it's working so there's two other classes one is thinking

00:58:45.899 --> 00:58:50.739
styles which is how do you derive thinking styles out of that same data.

00:58:51.819 --> 00:58:55.539
Aside from doing the qualitative data synthesis this is a different kind of

00:58:55.539 --> 00:58:59.879
synthesis we're coming up with thinking styles and then there's a course on

00:58:59.879 --> 00:59:04.699
framing your study which is like how do we choose what purpose how do we even

00:59:04.699 --> 00:59:08.119
understand what purpose you know to

00:59:08.479 --> 00:59:12.219
start gathering knowledge about so wow

00:59:12.219 --> 00:59:15.499
those are the courses and i offer

00:59:15.499 --> 00:59:18.659
four different price levels on those

00:59:18.659 --> 00:59:21.439
courses because i do work with

00:59:21.439 --> 00:59:24.379
a lot of people globally there are countries

00:59:24.379 --> 00:59:30.619
that do not have very much buying power in the u.s dollar and they get 90 off

00:59:30.619 --> 00:59:35.779
the regular price there are people in the world who do not have an organization

00:59:35.779 --> 00:59:41.499
um they're just working for themselves or they're a student or maybe they are

00:59:41.499 --> 00:59:42.699
working for an organization,

00:59:42.699 --> 00:59:45.499
but it refuses to give them budget for anything.

00:59:46.019 --> 00:59:49.179
You are paying out of pocket. You get 50% off.

00:59:49.900 --> 00:59:53.800
Nice. So inclusive pricing structure. Yeah, exactly.

00:59:54.540 --> 00:59:59.540
For everyone. Okay. And then they can find all of that on your website and all

00:59:59.540 --> 01:00:02.920
of the breakdowns of all the stuff you offer, the books, the courses,

01:00:02.920 --> 01:00:06.220
and all of that. And then people get in touch with you personally, LinkedIn?

01:00:07.140 --> 01:00:13.740
LinkedIn or newsletter. Newsletter is a great way to sort of like a first step

01:00:13.740 --> 01:00:16.000
to kind of get aware of some of these things.

01:00:16.820 --> 01:00:20.400
LinkedIn, I do a lot of, I do three posts a week and they're beautiful posts.

01:00:20.640 --> 01:00:22.880
They hardly get any impressions because of LinkedIn.

01:00:25.720 --> 01:00:28.820
But, you know, just get your tongue wet. Look at some of those.

01:00:29.940 --> 01:00:32.440
See what other people are saying. I get a lot of comments.

01:00:34.180 --> 01:00:38.880
And being able to sign up to the newsletter, I really should be sending out more newsletters.

01:00:39.000 --> 01:00:42.980
I've just been so busy this year because I rolled out a new website,

01:00:42.980 --> 01:00:45.920
which is meant to be sort of a community website.

01:00:47.020 --> 01:00:51.740
I haven't quite perfected it, but it's got a lot of wording on here and a lot

01:00:51.740 --> 01:00:57.460
of examples that you can use with your own manager and your own team to kind

01:00:57.460 --> 01:01:01.980
of explore these ideas and talk about how they might fit for your org.

01:01:02.740 --> 01:01:06.760
Nice. So a place to actually get involved and engage in the practice.

01:01:07.280 --> 01:01:13.160
Thank you so much, Indy, for being on the show today. Thank you so much for inviting me.