The Umami Strategy for Leaders - Aga (Agnieszka) Szóstek

This episode of Accessible Disruption features Aga (Agnieszka) Szóstek, an author of "The Umami Strategy" and "Leadership by Design," who shares her journey into experience design and strategic thinking. She describes how her background in user system interaction and industrial research led her to focus on the "experience of things" beyond technical problems. Szóstek highlights the frustration she encountered when businesses viewed experiences as mere add-ons rather than strategic differentiators, prompting her to develop and document "The Umami Strategy" to help companies integrate experience design at a strategic level. 

A significant part of the conversation revolves around the challenges of change within organizations, particularly the human brain's natural resistance to it due to perceived energy costs and psychological safety concerns. Szóstek emphasizes that in complex systems, especially those involving people, experimentation is the only way to understand what will work in the future, as past successes do not guarantee future outcomes. She advocates for "nano-experiments" in leadership and organizational change, suggesting that small, consistent changes are less daunting and allow for continuous learning and adaptation without triggering strong negative reactions to large-scale transformations. 

Furthermore, Szóstek discusses the application of experience design to leadership, noting that many leaders lack clarity on the type of leader they aspire to be. Her book, "Leadership by Design," aims to guide leaders through a process of self-reflection and questioning rather than prescribing an ideal leadership style. She stresses the importance of commitment, accountability, and consistent "nano-experiments" for leaders to evolve intentionally. For organizations serious about experience design, she advises a foundational approach that includes a clear strategy, robust processes, and developed competencies to ensure successful and lasting change.

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Aga (Agnieszka) Szóstek: [00:00:00] If you are in a complex system and when people are involved, you are most likely in a complex system because we are weird, like for a number of reasons. We are very, very weird as creatures, as humans, as thinkers, as actors. Yeah, we are. Yeah, we are. Strange.

Podcast Host: The world is changing. For most human beings, change is uncomfortable and challenging to address. Whether you are a startup working on agile processes or a mature organization, navigating change with an existing complex structures, the mindset and skills to adapt has never been more vital. The team from the strategy table want to help the wider world understand the need and approach to meaningful and impactful change management, helping organizations navigate disruption and make change accessible to everyone.[00:01:00]

This is Accessible disruption.

Anthony Vade: Welcome to the first episode of our. Second season of accessible disruption where we explore change and how organizations can build resilient, adaptive, and collaborative teams. Before we jump into this episode, I wanna remind everybody to subscribe and share this episode. If you find it interesting, which we are sure you will.

We see you listening on our various podcasting platforms, but we are not seeing a lot hitting subscribe, which is a really curious thing. Everyone's listening regularly. Coming back, but you're not hitting subscribe yet, so please hit that subscribe button. It really helps us out and share it within your communities too.

I'm Anthony Vade and I'm one of your co-hosts and co-founder of Strategy Table. And joining me on this episode is my fellow co-founder and author of our KPI Is Joy and [00:02:00] Intentional Event Design. It's Tahira and welcome back. Tahira. What are we gonna be talking about today and who have you brought to the table?

Tahira Endean: Well, we get to talk today to one of my favorite authors, AGA ick. So I was so happy aga, when you accepted our invitation to come to the podcast. We have been working for quite a long time in the areas of change leadership and experience design, and bringing those two things together. And of course, both of your books, the Imami Strategy and Leadership by Design really delve into both of those topics as well.

So are using them as a reference for other, uh, leaders that we're working with, um, which were. Really excited about just because it breaks it down so clearly. Good pathways to follow forwards. You've been in this space for a long time. So tell us a little bit about what you've been doing and what inspired you to write your books.

Aga (Agnieszka) Szóstek: Hmm. So first of all, thank you so much for having me. Such a pleasure to have a conversation with you and talk about this stuff because it's like, you know, this is my daily bread and butter, [00:03:00] so I'm super happy to share my thoughts. Uh, so actually. What brought me to experience design was, I would say fate, uh, or destiny, maybe even better.

Uh, so actually I, uh, years ago, I'm not going to say how many because then I start feeling old. But many, many, many years ago, I, uh, moved, I, I did my masters in Poland. I moved abroad to the Netherlands, and I. Uh, bumped into a program which was called User System Interaction, uh, which was a very unique program at the time, like second masters, uh, that was created by.

I uncover University of Technology and it was meant to supply today we would say UX designers to Philips research. It was long before UX design was called UX Design. So I did this masters, started working on things that were, you know, interaction design, things [00:04:00] like this. And then very quickly I ended up, uh, in industrial research where you work on stuff that's like 20, 25 years further ahead.

Time, uh, time-wise. And we started working on things that were called experiences. So like we are trying to figure out not how to solve a technical problem of like how do you do certain things, but we really wanted to get to the experience of things. So, uh, two years later, my company decided, get this, that software is not the future.

So they closed our research lab. Yes. Uh, they then had to sell themselves five years later. So, you know, kind of proves the point how wrong they were. We are trying to persuade them that that was like the stupidest, absolutely craziest idea that they, they could have thought of, but like, they didn't listen.

You know, like we've got the hippo effect, like the highest paid person opinion being the one that mattered. And, uh, I went back to, to my University of Technology in [00:05:00] Eindhoven to do my PhD. And there I got like, completely sucked into the topic of experiences because a friend of mine, Avan Carano, who was sitting just opposite to me, he was working on the definition of experiencing and experience and how do you perceive experience over time.

Uh, and you know, like all these crazy things. I was working on something else, but basically we used. Spent the next four years discussing the topic, and that's how you get

Tahira Endean: into it. I think that that is exactly how Anthony and I ended up in the place that we're in of after, you know, at least four years, more like a decade of discussing experience design.

Like how do we apply what we know actually just beyond events and, and into organizations as well. So how are people applying, you know, leadership by design or the umami strategy into their business strategy?

Aga (Agnieszka) Szóstek: Both of them are very, very different. Uh, so, you know, like I wrote the Umami strategy as a response to my professional frustration.

So like I spent all those years in the [00:06:00] Netherlands working in research, then I moved back to Poland and I, for a number of reasons, got invited to join and start helping businesses. I. So I got there, you know, like everybody was really excited because like nobody was doing this like crazy stuff, like experiences and stuff.

So we were doing a lot of crazy projects. Basically, I got invited to join business for a number of reasons, and I started doing all this cool projects where like we are designing things that were like super innovative, bringing like new solutions to the, uh, service market. Uh, but I was getting frustrated because I saw that nobody was thinking about experiences from a strategic perspective.

So it was being seen as a nice add-on, a cool feature. I managed to even get to the point when companies started seeing this as a competitive advantage where you can actually get people to understand, like to, to get more loyal to your company because you're doing all this stuff, but not nobody was thinking about it strategically.

So [00:07:00] I've been talking to one of the CEOs, I've been working with, uh, Jorgen Bang Sen, uh, a Danish, CEO, working for a Polish telecom play at the time. And I, you know, I was like super frustrated and I asked him like, Hey, why can't we apply this on a strategic level? And he looked at me and he said, look, when I was, you know, like tenure as a CEO, I've been taught about technology, I've been taught about business finance.

Hr, you know, compliance law, things like this, but nobody, nobody was talking about the stuff that you are talking about. And I remember that I came back home and I sat on a chair or on a sofa and I said, okay, like I can be frustrated about it for the rest of my life, or I can do something about it. That's you, a person who does things rather than, you know, complains about things not being done.

I went back to him and I asked him like, Hey, I would love to convince you that it makes sense to make it strategic. And [00:08:00] I asked him, okay, like, can we, can I experiment? Like will you give me the money to experiment? And he looked at me and said like, sure. And I started doing this stuff. So like I was, I, I didn't know what, what's gonna work, what's gonna be convincing, you know, like I came from research, I came from technology.

So like, I didn't understand business. I didn't understand the, the concept business concepts of like, you know, like the BDA or arpu or you know, whatever grove you can imagine there. So I started doing my stuff and, and I could see that step by step. Him and other companies that I was working at the time, uh, with, they started getting it and they started like seeing, hey, if we, for example, understand.

The emotional part of how our customers think about us, we can actually influence it. Isn't it cool? So we got to the point where, uh, where we created the strategy. Then the, the, the [00:09:00] situation was that the company decided to go IPO. So of course, like, you know, like that's a difficult time to actually get a new strategy running.

But I managed to come up with the whole process at the time, and I didn't realize that I did this. Actually, I. So a friend of mine came to me, I was at the conference talking about it and he came to me and said like, Hey aga, could you tell me a little bit more about your approach? And I said, like, what approach?

And I said like, you know, like, you may not realize it, but you actually have a really cool approach. So I wrote it down, uh, and started like, you know. Using it and then wrote the book. And you know, like then everybody was talking, Hey, aga wrote this book about experience strategy. And suddenly, uh, you know, a lot of CEOs started talking to me.

I was laughing that I was the same aga before the book and after the book with pretty much the same knowledge. But you know, like the book makes the difference, like opens the doors for you. So, um, what, what is happening right now is that companies come to me. And they ask, they actually ask for experience, strategy, or [00:10:00] at least they ask for differentiators.

So this is like, I think that of all the concepts that I'm writing about in, uh, the umami strategy, the concept of a differentiator that makes you stand out in a market and be different from your competition as difficult at is as it is sometimes for companies to understand because we run into like different troubles like getting.

Them to understand that differentiator is something that they are very low at, which sometimes they are like really upset about. We say like, yeah, but if your competition is really low there as well, you actually have a potential to grow. And they are not seeing this. So like, you know, like this is their blind spot, which can be your advantage.

And things like this. Then, for example, the other thing that I always get companies confused, they ask me like, should we choose one differentiator? Like should we focus on one? And then on the second, like no. If you focus on one, you are going to create solutions that are easily copyable. So your competition will eventually catch up with you.

But if [00:11:00] you have three of them or more, like, I usually go for free because I think that this is a good combination. Easy, easy to enough to remember and apply, and at the same time. Complex enough for others not to really understand what you're doing. And only then you can really become somebody that's different from everybody else without having solutions that are very easily copyable by others.

And the the third concept that's like super difficult is that you don't compare yourself to others really. You compare yourself to yourself from the past, and that's really hard. But I'm, I'm working with a bunch of companies. We've got, uh, uh, I think that because I'm polished, like, you know, like this approach became pretty popular here.

So I've got a lot of different companies using it, applying its smaller, bigger, medium, you know, restaurants, hotels, banks, uh, insurance companies and so on. So like. It, it's really interesting to see that it actually works in any kind [00:12:00] of business, which is fantastic. You know, like it works in any kind of business and everywhere you can really create this difference.

And it's not about touching, often touching your core business. So like it's not about like if you're a bank changing your financial schemes, it's about creating this layer of micro experiences that make. Your customers want to choose you. So this is one part and very different stories with leadership.

So leadership by design, I wrote it because a lot of leaders came to me and asked me whether they can apply the mommy strategy to their leadership. I. And I was thinking like, why would you, you know, like, and then I started investigating and I realized that leaders don't know what kind of leaders they want to be, or they're supposed to be.

They think that there is this ideal leadership of sorts, and only if they get there they will be [00:13:00] successful. And, you know, like that their, their, their future will be bright and fantastic. And you know, with all my experience, I realized that. That's not true, that this is more journey than a destination and that that journey will change if you change a company, if you change yourself, like if you grow up, uh, mature and so on and so forth.

So what I wanted to do, I wanted to write a book that's not telling people how they're supposed to be as leaders, but writing a book that asks a lot of questions that makes them think. And I think that was the goal. Yeah.

Anthony Vade: Amazing. Uh, you've, you've managed to hit on a lot of my positive trigger words. Um, we, we say trigger words and we normally think negative, but sometimes I hear words and I get super excited.

Uh, and I get a lot of energy from those words. And they're my positive trigger words, and I'm gonna hit you with three of them, and perhaps we can explore them a little bit more deeply. Uh, one of the early things that you studied was systems. I think it's really interesting, and I find that for the [00:14:00] most part, human beings are pretty.

Inept at thinking in systems. We like to think of small, simple systems, but the more complex the systems get, the harder it is for us to understand them generally. I'd love your thoughts on that. I loved the experience design leadership. That's fascinating. Uh, as a concept. 'cause I, we work with a lot of leaders in our practice as well, and that self-awareness of their experience design can be, or lack of.

Design can, can be an interesting thing. And then the third trigger word that was magic for me is experiments. Because often experimentation can be scary and intimidating. Uh, and uncertainty can, can, can be really hard. So with those three areas, systems, experienced design, leadership and experiments, what are the roadblocks that you've come across within leadership teams or organizations that, that make those things inaccessible to, to both the leaders and the organizations as a whole?

Aga (Agnieszka) Szóstek: So let me [00:15:00] start with systems because I know that like a lot of people follow the ideas of systems thinking I'm more in a I'm, I'm a more finding myself in a, in a theory of complexity and complex systems where if you are in a complex system and. When people are involved, you are most likely in a complex systems because we are weird, like for a number of reasons.

We are very, very weird. As creatures. As humans, as thinkers, as actors. Yeah, we are. Yeah, we are strange. So basically complexity helps you to understand that whatever worked in the past may not necessarily work in the future. And if I get, and when I get that point across, I manage to get people to understand that in a complex system, the only way to see whether something is going to work or not is experimentation.

So [00:16:00] basically you need to experiment. Otherwise you are going to make a lot of mistakes. And the mistakes are, are going to feel like they are no mistakes simply because they worked in the past. So like the historically, you will feel like they should work. And they won't actually, I have a, I've been working with, uh, years ago with, uh, one director and he did an amazing experiment, actually experiment analysis I would say.

So basically he took all the projects that customer facing projects, digital customer facing projects to be precise, that they did over one year. And he, he listed those projects and he went to the customers and asked them which of those projects were making them feel positive about company, and thinking that they, they brought value, which of them felt n neutral and which of them were detrimental to the experience?

The results were. Carry. So actually [00:17:00] 20%, only 20% of the projects were perceived as bringing positive value to the experience of the customers. 30% of the projects were seen as detrimental to to that experience. 50% were seen as neutral. But if you look at what happened. Within the company, about 70% of those 50% were done or made to fix those.

The, the 30% that was detrimental. So if you think about it, they spent, if they spent 50% of their time on the right projects, they would have had a better result than what they had otherwise. It's crazy, right? It's just, it's, it's insanity. And yet what was happening. I would, I would have a, a, a manager, a PM coming to me saying like, Hey, aga, could you please help us create a loyalty program?

So I said, okay, like, let's give it a try, but let's first see whether this program makes sense. So we [00:18:00] did some research, uh, we explored the topic of. Loyalty and loyalty programs and the, the message from the customers was very clear. They don't want one, like, you know, like they've got enough, they just don't want this.

Like, you can think of something else, but we don't want another loyalty program or card or what, whatever it was. So I told her like, go to your bosses and tell them that this is a waste of money. And you know, like there was huge budget on this project. And she said like, I cannot, because my boss promised his boss and his boss promised his boss, who is the member of the management board, that we are going to make a loyalty program.

So we have to make a loyalty program. So of course they made it, they spent bags of money on it and nobody used it. Nobody. Right. And so, so actually, you know, like when, when, when I'm talking to, especially when I'm talking on a level of management board, I'm, I'm bringing this example like a, you know, like a crazy person [00:19:00] because I think that it proves the point that the, the, from the top of the management.

People are not taught to think in experiments. And then when it comes to leadership itself, it's the exact same story because you know, like, I don't know how it's happening these days in the US but in Poland you often sort of get promoted to the leadership position and there you are, you know, like you.

Often you, you, you get promoted from the expert position. You barely re let teams, maybe a few people at most, but otherwise you have very little experience of what, what people do. They repeat the style of the people who are their bosses, their their leaders. And then you make all the mistakes because it either doesn't fit you or this is not really the way, you know, things should be.

You know, we have a lot of weird experiences when it comes to leadership. And, uh, and if you don't have any, any reflection on it, and if you don't try to change [00:20:00] things, you will keep on repeating the same story over and over again. I heard once a beautiful state like phrase, somebody said that people say that they've got 15 years of experience, but actually they have one year of experience repeated 15 times over.

And I think that this is often what happens with leaders, right? They keep on repeating the same. Patterns and only when you start experimenting you can, you can change something. And the thing is, when you think about experimenting with your leadership, it gets very scary very quickly because you think about the huge, you know, like loyalty program kind of experiments.

So what I'm calling them, I'm calling them nano experiments change just one thing. Like for example, I've got a very rewarding program that I run for one of my clients. Uh, with women leaders from, from their organization. And we just finished, uh, a program. It lasts for like three months. And one of the small experiments that they were doing is like, I'm gonna have a lunch break.

You know, [00:21:00] like, I'm going to eat outside, like, you know, away from. Screen and then actually what they re they reported at the end said like, okay, like I was away from my screen, but I was still watching it from a distance because it was standing on a different desk. So like, what's wrong with me? But, but basically, you know, like you, you only then if you, if you tell to yourself like, I'm gonna to experi, I'm, I'm gonna, to consciously, I'm going to consciously change something, you are going to be able to observe how you are vis-a-vis that change.

And otherwise you will never know. So. You might change, of course, like we all change eventually, but it'll be random rather than controlled by design. By design. Exactly. You know, I'm a design by a designer, by profession, so you know, like a, like a person having a hammer. I, everywhere I see nails, so like I get, I think that everything can be solved by design.

Anthony Vade: I feel like Tahira's gonna want to unpack that statement to sign a [00:22:00] little bit more. But we will take this opportunity now to take a quick short break. Uh, don't forget to head over to strategy table.co and subscribe to get your seat at the table where you can listen to unedited extended versions of this podcast and other podcasts like it, and of course, ad free as well.

So we are back and we want to kind of uncover a bit more around this by design. Uh, at Strategy Table, we, we are firm believers that innovation, experimentation, and design are practices that organizations need to apply. It's not that you do it once and then you come back five years later and apply those things again, but it, it's sort of a continuous cultural aspect of an organization that they need to foster.

They need tools, methodologies. Processes in order to help them collaborate through that culture of experimentation and innovation, that statement of [00:23:00] intentional and by design and all of those great things, uh, I, I saw a positive trigger, uh, into hear her eyes lit, lit up. Um, I. What we were chatting about before we took a break there to hear, is there any thoughts that you have on this intentionality of the design and, and, and what leaders can do?

And, and my little statement about our belief in practice.

Tahira Endean: So I do obviously clearly believe that we should be doing things by intention and with, and with design and giving people the tools to do that. And also the, the psychological safe. Space to run experiments. I think that that is the, the hardest thing.

Um, I love that you say that we have a lot of weirdness. Yes. People, everybody shows up as their own selves. And if you, uh, are creating an organization that makes space for those selves, uh, to bring their best, uh, you can actually create those differentiators that you talked about. And I think that that is really important because it's, you know, when you start just competing and saying, I'm selling this [00:24:00] apple and my apple is clearly better than that apple and that apple and that probably shouldn't use apple as the fruit, but I'm thinking of a fruit.

So you know, it's, but it's a pear. Let's go with a pair. Right? Let go pair. So my pair is better than, their pair is better than their pair, but ultimately it has to be about how can I make. The best pair. And then how can I share our unique story about why this is the best pair, why it had the most love and has the best shape and is all of these things.

But if you don't have people aligned on North Stars and I. And also truly believing that this is the best pair because they've all contributed to it being the best pair and that they don't have to fight for the space to internally for people to tell that story. But instead, we can work collaboratively.

And then not only can we have what is currently the best pair we can continue as the world evolves around [00:25:00] us. And new pear trees grow. And, um, we can continue to have that and to be those organizations that stick around for a long time and create things that people can need, can use that make the world a better place.

And who doesn't wanna do that? So I think that there's so much that we just let happen because that's the way it's always happened, or that we just let it happen because oh, it's gonna be so hard to change it. Well. You know, who wants to just stay where everything is stagnant, but it does require systems and tools and processes to be able to do that.

And also the thing about, you know, having people come in to, to help implement and design those systems and processes is really important because it is. Quite often, not only is an external resource more listened to because we're humans and that's what we do, it's also sometimes just good to have a different lens [00:26:00] on what we're doing and to highlight the things that are great and to point out or guide towards the things that could be, um, improved, changed, or let go of.

Anthony Vade: Amazing. Aga, I'd love to hear your thoughts on practice and fruit salad for that matter. If you like fruit salad, is there any fruit in particular we should be trying that we haven't tried? Uh, but, but mostly about the practice.

Aga (Agnieszka) Szóstek: I'm a vegetarian, so like fruit is my, you know, daily, daily meat. Daily meat. I would say.

Let, let me start with one thing that you said, Tahira, because I think that a lot of things take root in this. So you said that like people. Should want change because being in a the same place is stagnation, but change is like really difficult. Our brains hate change of all the humans and all the plants, all the living creatures in this planet.

Humans are the least keen for change, really, like this is [00:27:00] biology telling us birds change faster than us. Plants change fast, faster than us. We are stuck. And we are stuck because our brain. That's one thing really, our brain figures out how much energy the next thing that we are going to do is gonna cost it.

'cause it's, you know, it kind of consumes all the stuff that we ate and, you know, it just, it just costs us. So when you are at work and you are doing the same old, the same old. Your brain is happy because first of all, it knows what to do. So like, you know, it can predict the energy consumption pretty well.

And also if you are to experiment. It just gets anxious. It feels like this is a danger zone. And this is another thing that we, we have troubles as humans because our brains, they don't differentiate between the physical and psychological safety or danger. So basic, basically, if you bring [00:28:00] change to a company, people start feeling unsafe.

And it feels for them, like, you know, like their vagus nerve gets tense and things like this. You have a reaction as if a, a tiger was like chasing you through a, uh, through a prairie. People need to understand that. I, I read somewhere that there's like between 10 and 20% of people in the world who are like the revolutionists, the people who want to change things, and the rest, they're more conservative.

They want to keep things, which makes sense because if only revolutionists. Were there, the whole thing would be destroyed over and over again. Exactly. Nothing would stay. So it kind of, the proportion makes sense to me. But at the same time, all these people who are trying to hold the fort, they are like, they are freaked out about the people who say, Hey, we are gonna to do things differently now.

Tahira Endean: I think that's where that becomes incumbent upon having the resources that can help people through that change, because that's, it is actually the worst thing when somebody just get dropped [00:29:00] down, like, okay, now we're gonna do everything differently. It's like, no, no, you're right. It is like being eaten by a tiger.

It's the worst. So it is about putting in the steps so that people can. Be invested in supporting the change and not in, dear God, what just happened and why is this happening?

Aga (Agnieszka) Szóstek: I think that what would be even better is that people don't even notice that they are in a change process and here comes like, you know, like I have this leadership and experience, but they're really interlinked because we have something which is called as humans.

All humans, we have a mechanism, a psychological mechanism, which is called adaptation. It can be negative adaptation. If something bad happens, then we adapt to it. Uh, like COVID was, was an example, you know, like at first we were all like having a tunnel vision thinking, okay, like, oh my goodness, what's gonna happen?

And then we kind of took our, took up our lives and we were like continuing doing things. Uh, you know, maybe not the old way, but a way which was not very different [00:30:00] from how we were operating before. And we also have a mechanism, which is called the positive adaptation. So something that was like super exciting yesterday becomes a new norm to today.

So with experiences when it comes to customer experience, we have this thing that, you know, like you can be working on this huge change for your customers. You bring it to the market. It's exciting for a week. And then people think like, okay, like that's, that's the new norm. This, this is the normal way of operating.

And suddenly you spent, again, time, money, you kept all the secrecy about it. And people think like, okay, like that's, that's how things should be. So like, what's the big Fs about it? Uh. The same stories with the change management within the organization. It's just the negative adaptation happens, right? So like people, they kind of go into a, like if you bring like a design change or agile change or like, you know, like whatever other.

Change that you are [00:31:00] thinking about, and then you throw it at people. People say like, okay, now we are going to sit and wait for it to pass, you know, and, and it passes eventually, a lot of times because it's being brought as this huge. Big blo that's being dropped at the organization. And now what I'm talking about when I'm designing, I'm teaching companies design experiences.

I, I, I'm, I'm always trying to tell them design small things. First of all, people will be surprised over and over and over again. So like you will trigger them on this process and that app and that solution and that little communication piece and so on and so forth. So they will be triggered. To notice that you are changing, that something is different, and then, uh, because you do this, the positive adaptation is, is not being triggered as much.

So like, of course, like people get used to certain things, but they will be still prone to, to notice that something is changed, something is [00:32:00] changing in a positive way. And the same thing is with the organizations. You can bring this big change about and have this negative adaptation of like, being kind of reserved and like trying not to do too, too much, hoping for, for, for all of it to pass.

Or you can start bringing this in small pieces and then people will learn certain things without really realizing that something changed. And if we call, you know, like. I've noticed with with a lot of companies that they say like, okay, we are doing this, this transformation and that transformation, and.

You know, like people get scared and if you say, Hey, we are changing three things in the way we operate, we are going to do more experiments and you're not going to be punished for them. You know, you can have this huge story about the, the, the agile transformation or design, transformation, whatever other transformation.

Maybe you don't have to talk about [00:33:00] it too much. I dunno if it makes sense, but that's, that's how I think about it.

Anthony Vade: I feel like this could turn into a three hour podcast marathon. I, I could talk with you all day, but, and, and I'm, I'm gonna give both of you a chance to wrap it up in a second. Unfortunately, we're gonna have to have you back. That's what it comes down to.

Aga (Agnieszka) Szóstek: Will be my pleasure.

Anthony Vade: What I heard in there that was really interesting is the way that you are using that, that innate desire for novelty.

And our ability to sustain that feeling of novelty or not, and actually mapping that out for incremental change over an experienced journey. Plenty of geeky jargon used just then, but this idea of leaders and organizations mapping the experience journey that whoever they're interfacing with, you know, their employees, their customers.

And intentionally dropping in [00:34:00] moments of incremental novelty to keep people's attention, keep their heart and their soul. I think that's really an interesting way to develop that practice based culture because it is over time, and the more we practice, the easier change gets. And so I, I'm interested like what's the first.

Starting point that a leader can take to better understand these journeys. How would you recommend they shift their leadership practice to, to adopt some of these new approaches? Is there anything they can do to fast track that for themselves

Aga (Agnieszka) Szóstek: with leadership itself? Um, I honestly think that you, you just need to decide that you want to change it.

It's as difficult as, as simple as that. I've been like, I, I've, I've got a lot of comments from people, uh, doing the, because it's not reading the Leadership by Design, but more going through the process that Leadership by Design proposes and, uh. What [00:35:00] they, what they tell me is that they are, some of them just read it and that's the, it's of course it changes their, the way of thinking, but it's not extremely successful, I would say.

But then I've got a bunch of people who either find a buddy or they find, um, a coach, uh, who is helping them go through the whole process. And I've been, uh, talking to one of them, uh, he's like, well, right now he's like. Top, top director somewhere, uh, in Europe, uh, in a big company. And he was, he was, um, a UX director actually.

And he told me that he did two things, so he got this mentor. So like, you know, like you have to be accountable, be responsible towards somebody to make the change. And you know, like with leadership, you need this because otherwise. The reality of everyday task will just eat your time up completely. So what he did, he had this coach, but he also told his entire team that [00:36:00] he's going through the process and he would be bringing the book to every single physical meeting that they've got or digital meetings and they would show that the bookmark moved from one chapter to another.

And he told me that the change that happened in him was crazy because like one thing that he finally got that leadership is about people and not about content. He grew from being a a designer and he would always be invited to meetings. For his team members. He got a pretty big team, uh, because we were laughing that he would have to throw the shadow of power over his people, so the other people from other departments would listen to his people.

And if he wasn't there, then it wouldn't work as effectively. And at some point he realized, okay, like I'm going to cancel all those meetings. And my job is to teach my people how to throw the shadow of the power and not me being there doing the job for them, because otherwise my time is wasted on just sitting in [00:37:00] meetings that are of no interest to me.

You have to commit yourself to, to the change and start small. I've got all those leaders who come up with experiments that cannot be done for another month because they're not meeting a person or like, you know, not in a situation that they envision the experiment for. But if you start small and if you start with just making.

This mental exercise of imagining what kind of leader you wanna be. This, this is amazing. I've got this lady who came to me and she said like, you know, like I created, like based on your book, I created the three sort of differentiators, like the descriptors of, of my leadership. And then she said, and you know, like I had to take this like very difficult decision and I didn't know there were like 50 50 chance, which way to go.

And then I applied those descriptors of my leadership and I knew what to do. This is pretty amazing. And then when it comes to experience design, it's a whole different story because of course you can start with with [00:38:00] experimentation. But what I've learned over time is that there is a lot of people within organizations who get excited about design approach.

They do design thinking courses that they start doing certain things within their organizations and eventually dies and it dies because they cannot, I. Create enough momentum within the organization for a number of reasons, like different organizations, different reasons. So what I've realized is, especially with companies that want to be serious about experience design, that they have to start with two things.

They have to three things. They have to start with strategy. It absolutely makes sense to actually tell yourself which way you wanna go and what kind of experience you wanna create for your customers. Be it B2C, be it B2B, be it internally, like employee experience from hr, you know, like. Whatnot, but then you need to have process and competencies if you have, if you don't have either of those or neither of those.

It's just not gonna [00:39:00] happen.

Tahira Endean: It is one of those things where you do have to start with a strategy. It's, you know, there's just no way around that. You need to know what your desired outcomes are gonna be, and then you need a pathway to get there. Part of that pathway is having the right people in the right place to do the right thing.

So process and competency, and we often get so lost in the middle of that. And we don't step back to look at where we're starting, where we need to go and how we're gonna get there. So being able to step in and stop as a leader and think about those things, and then make sure that you are building the right team so that they can feel successful.

There's nothing worse than having an outcome, but not having the ability to do it. So, you know, and we, we do see that happen when it shouldn't happen. And that's where you start to get, you know, people get frustrated because you know, oh, that person's not pulling their [00:40:00] weight. But if that person doesn't even know that they've been given a sled, how can they possibly pull it anywhere?

So there's, there's just a lot of things to think about with organizations and how they can get to be their, their best selves essentially. And, uh, I love that you've. Given, um, the world, some frameworks to work through that. And it's, you know, it is for us as well. It's something that, you know, we've all spent a lot of time on the, on the experience design side, on the, looking at the processes, on working through all of those things.

And it's just, it's so fun too. It's, it's really so fun to listen to somebody who's really so aligned with how we think, and that's why we're so excited because it is just, you know, it's like glimmer, glimmer, glimmer, glimmer, glimpse. Oh, this is amazing. But it is really, it is aligned so well and uh, like that is the reason that we, you know, have umami strategy in particular, really from that process point as one of the tools that we are, that we are offering to people.

So, [00:41:00] thank you.

Aga (Agnieszka) Szóstek: Fantastic. Oh, I'm so happy to hear it. Like I wrote them to be used, you know, to be practiced. Yeah. Both of them really.

Anthony Vade: I love it. Very, very powerful and useful conversations and, and it all starts with conversations like this. Uh, I ran a workshop down in Louisville the other week and, and, and I did my usual trick with them.

Where I got the whole room to start designing together and they were doing some experience design mapping and, and at the end of the first sprint, I turned to the, the room and said, okay, who here can tell me how you decided how you were going to design together? Outside of my little bit of instruction, which was very vague and not a single hand went up, they just jumped into it and never talked about how they were going to work together.

And so they were kind of lost in that, in that first sprint. And then we gave them some structure. So that conversation about, okay, we have challenges, we have change, we have a, a need. The first question I think that's very valuable is, how are we going to address this together? Not what is the solution, but how will we gonna [00:42:00] work together as a team to collaborate to find these opportunities together?

And then how will we apply that, whether it's design or that experimentation, culture, whatever it might be. Aga, I'd love you to wrap this up for us. Is there any closing thoughts, uh, anything you'd like to put out to the listeners, and is there any way that they can reach out to you that, that you'd prefer?

Aga (Agnieszka) Szóstek: So, uh, I have to go to this, uh, fruit salad thing, right? Please. But actually I am not going to give a, a recipe of a fruit salad, although if you. Ever if you never tried something, which is a Swiss invention, which is called a beer term, Mosley, look up the, uh, the recipe online. It's amazing. I spent some, some time in Switzerland and that was my breakfast every day.

But what I wanted to say, to your point, Aira, about the, the per, I've been like in, in Europe we have a company which is called Crowd Farming. Which is like an online platform [00:43:00] for farmers to sell their produce directly to their customers. So without the all the supply chain that that goes between, but therefore you get, first of all, it's about sustainability.

You've got all the fruits that are either organic or like turning into organic, but you also get the fruits that are real fruits and not the well shaped bananas and you know, like the right size of oranges and whatnot. What I love about what they are talking about is, of course, like you, you get a beautiful fruit and the product, the pear should be beautiful.

But the whole story around it, the way they do it, the way they approach us as customers, like, you know, like every now and then I get, uh, a survey where they ask, okay, like, we have these ideas, which ones you think are more valuable for you? And then you can see that these things are being implemented. So there are ways to create those experiences, both as leaders, as as.

And also as companies that focus on experience [00:44:00] design, you know, that will make people just smile and want to be with you. And I will want to wish everyone, including your company to actually have, have that.

Anthony Vade: What a fantastic way to close things out. We're gonna share some links in the description so you can find out more about the books.

Uh, start reading them. We highly recommend them, of course. Uh, and there's some additional resources on our website that we've already, uh, been all over the internet seeking you out and finding out your other podcasts so you can find. More content about aga and the books and all of those elements w weird in our website 'cause we're more than happy to continue sharing, uh, this great work that you've been doing.

'cause you're, you've inspired us so much and we look forward to see the work that you do in the future.

Aga (Agnieszka) Szóstek: Thank you so much for having me.

Anthony Vade: And with that, that's a powerhouse episode for our first episode of Season two of Accessible Disruption. I'd like to thank you both for joining today on the podcast, and of course, shout out to the listeners out there to, [00:45:00] uh, check out those additional resources and you'll listen to us on the next accessible disruption.

Tahira Endean: Have to take fruit salad.

Podcast Host: Accessible disruption is written and spoken by Tahira and Dean. Ryan Hill and Anthony Vade. All content is developed in collaboration with the team at Strategy Table Podcast. Production by Experience Design Change, Inc. An association with the change lead network. Find more [e-mail].