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Head of Design at Kroo. Formerly at Sony, Samsung, and Nokia. Author of “Design Management: Create, Develop, and Lead Effective Design Team”
Listen in as groundbreaking leaders discuss what they have learned. Discover the books, podcasts, presentations, courses, research, articles and lessons that shaped their journey. Hosted by: Kevin Horek, Gregg Oldring, & Jon Larson.
Intro / Outro: Welcome to the learner.co show hosted by Kevin Horek and his fellow learner. Co-founders listen in his groundbreaking leaders, discuss what they've learned, discover the books, podcasts, presentations, courses, research articles, and lessons that shaped their journey to listen to past episodes and find links to all sources of learning mentioned. Visit learner.co that's learner with two L's dot co.
Kevin Horek: Welcome back to the learner.co show. Today we have Andrea Picchi, he's a human centered problem solver and author guys. What are you looking forward to learning from Andrea the most today? Maybe we'll start off with you, John.
Jon Larson: Oh, I'm really excited about this interview. Andrea has worked with some incredible brands well-known brands and in design and leadership, and he's, he has an upcoming book on design leadership. I'm really interested in his approach to design as well as his approach to managing and leading design teams.
Gregg Oldring: I'm pretty excited too, because what he does, the kind of work he does is just kind of universally cool. Like he creates things and he solves problems. That to me is just like the most fun kind of stuff. The, yeah, the thought that he brings to it and obviously the, that people appreciate as the thoughts that he has on the subject of design and creating. It's pretty exciting that we got them on the show and I'm fascinated to hear what he's got to say.
Kevin Horek: All right. I'm going to show tower things. It's been a number of years since we last chatted.
Andrea Picchi: Yeah. Couple years ago. It was it Sony, right? It was 2016, I guess.
Kevin Horek: Wow.
Andrea Picchi: Yeah, it was yeah. Quite some time ago. So yeah. What can I say? Let's see here. What's about you, Kevin.
Kevin Horek: Yeah. It seemed just been kind of, I guess, since we last been through kind of idea to acquisition working on a couple of other startups now, including learner like John and I are working on with one other partner and yeah, it's been fun, man. It's, it's been great. So, and I'm curious to learn what you've been up today. I'm curious to cover your upcoming book and obviously you have tons of schooling and experience in kind of design and design thinking and innovation. I think selfishly the reality is being a fellow designer. I think in a lot of cases, design is what's really gonna make or break a lot of companies these days because the technology underneath a lot of stuff is yes, it might take time and effort, but the reality is most things have been done these days. No code I think is coming in heavily and what's really going to separate people apart is the actual design and user usability.
Kevin Horek: Do you agree with that?
Andrea Picchi: Yeah. Well, I frame it in a slightly different way, but 100% absolutely love receiving the.
Kevin Horek: Award so we can dive into that.
Andrea Picchi: Yeah. So absolutely. I stopped using design thinking quite some time ago, I guess probably at the time we had that conversation, right? When was it Sony? The reason is as I started to develop into more senior roles and as part of my remit was things like bringing a design or the high level of the company over the organization. What I tried, what I found out was that we know that was a fact perception, right? One of the first things that you learn when you did the school at Stanford is that design thinking is not just the only way of thinking. It's very good for certain things, but it's not that good for others. As a matter of fact, there are wheelchairs to engineer things, thinking business, thinking, research, thinking they all works in slightly different ways. Okay. Not show what, first of all, let me say, let me wrap up this concept.
Andrea Picchi: And then we can jump into that. I feel like it, as I started to try to elevate design thinking, let's call it that way for a while. What I realized was that people were in that open to the idea because it didn't resonate with their mission, right? If you are, for example, A developer and maybe you are a CTO engineered director, you may say, well, why should I just embrace design thinking that doesn't feel to me that it completely propelled my vision. To some degree, it can be perceived as, oh, you want me to jump on board on your own vision, but what is what is in for me? Right? It doesn't feel like something that is really necessary for an engineer, at least not to the very daily activities, right? We want to be designed last, blah, blah. Again, if you try to win people over the, the word design lad, you will always have to face some degree of rejection because in the same way that we love everything that we connotate with, the word design engineer, they have the same for the word engineer development.
Andrea Picchi: Right?
Kevin Horek: Fair enough.
Andrea Picchi: Interesting. You start to throw her ahead of you hurdles that you don't really need. What I went through was, okay, what do I mean by design lab? What do, what is really design thinking? Because it's not a secret design thing has been coined by the Kelly brothers at Stanford when they want to choose a repackage human centric design. I'm not saying that they say that. Eddie, what it is human centered design. What I started to do was to sell human centricity and value for people for the user instead of design thinking, because I don't really care about empathize, define blah, blah. Don't really care about that. I care. Well, I do when I'm winning with my design team, right. When I speak at the, at a board meeting or maybe with other people, I care about Watson results. If the results is human centric and fulfill and propels the business model in a sustainable way, I'm happy.
Andrea Picchi: Right? What I start to say is that how can we elevate human centricity at the highest levels of an organization? Right? That's as my question, I just abandon it completely like the word design thinking. I don't think it's of any help when you go, when you pass that point and you start to talk with non. Until you are UX manager, design manager, whatever it is, maybe even have the design. If you don't have, if you don't get exposed by more to more senior people, but then it's just a, maybe, I don't know, VP of design, maybe chief design officer. Well, it's, you just don't want to speak using those words. That's my personal experience was the fact, the perception is not what is a fact. I mean, it just, the way I felt was better and either got to the design thinking just to maybe come to a conclusion in terms of that concept, is that at the very least we have the design thinking, the engineering thinking and the business thinking.
Andrea Picchi: The business thinking works much better when you already have the solution, right? Let's, let's talk and think in terms of problem and solution and what you have to do to connect those two entities, right? You already have a problem and you already know the solution, the business thinking usually is optimized its way through. You G you have the solution and find the ways to elevate that solution, right? Once you have the solution, that's the best way. Give an example. If the something is ready, successful on the market, right? You don't want to go through the entire design thinking process because you already have the answer, right? People want to do like a discovery for what, right? You, you have the answer, right. There is another instance of thinking, which is the engineering thinking, which is solves it's is it's way through. So, which means that when how to solve a problem, technically we call it pain problems, which is probably the right happened in the past, which is the function of a static domain.
Andrea Picchi: I'll give you some example, because I know that can be abstract by, a song, something upfront and example, I live in London, we have the type of bridge, and let's say, we want to build another tower bridge as crazy as it may sound, right. What just want to do it like 20 feet away, 100 feet away from the original one, right? You can go back to the old engineer and say, okay, tell me all the problem that I have to face like the river, the terrain, the lane, the materials, the connection, everything, the architectural challenges. You can take that solution reapplied because it's very much on the same problem and you can solve the problem. Again, she no need to design thinking, connect to the user discovery, try to understand what that uncover needs is the same problem. Another stupid example, the fridge is empty.
Andrea Picchi: You know the solution, right? You, you take your wallet or your font. You go to the supermarket, you buy food, you come back, you throw them into the fridge. You, you didn't, you don't just sit at the table and say, okay, what do we think? Are there, are they hit the needs here, right? Should we talk with the people within the house? F**k you, right. Go to the supermarket, get some food, come back. We throw in the fridge because we know what as the solution and what is the problem. Every week we will have the same problem and we will apply the same solution. It is, this is where the developer does start to freak out. When the people change their requirements, they always say, well, we don't change the requirements during this sprint, right? Because they operate with an engineering thinking. So they locked down the solution, right?
Andrea Picchi: And they define the requirements. They jump into the sprint and they don't want to. Other people say we changed the requirements. So then you have to evaluate everything. In January thing is solved is way too upfront. You have all the categories of problems, which are call it like a week at Providence. So, which is a function of a dynamic and domain. For the most part, they also include humans, which is by definition, the more volatiles element or any problem Eastern is the gate you can find. And those requirements are dynamic. Just to remain the same lab, all of the tower bridge, imagine like your bond design. Now we are in London and we will fix the traffic problem that we have Piccadilly circus, or maybe Westmead say it doesn't really matter, right? Yup. We get together, we look at this problem and it's very dynamic.
Andrea Picchi: Because you have people, you are, you have different connection, different types of streets. And, and the city also evolves, right? The city London 10 years ago is completely different London compared today. As a matter of fact, it would be a completely different London compared to 10 years in the future, right? So we get prominent. The state, they never high definition instead of pain problems, they have an understate it's just start to finish. You can move to the next one that probably will never move in any other direction. Right? We could, problem is if you fix the you bond design challenge in London, then you cannot take that solution and go to talk. You. We applied that very insane solution to talk to you. Why? Because the requirements are different. The viables are Dima dynamic while instead we tame problem. If this is a guess, is the more distant the differentiator in terms of characteristics between 10 and weekend solution is reapplied bubble.
Andrea Picchi: While we cannot really be reapplied. In that case, you need to use design thinking that prototypes it's way through. So never strive to find an understate. It says, okay, what are, what I am today I'm here, right? Was the best informed decision that I came, may it based on what I know today. You talk to the user, you explore, you try to uncover needs, blah, blah. You plant an ax that you don't plan for the end. You don't even see the end. You plan the next step. You make this step. You reassess, you re evaluate the situation. We Daniel information, you plant the staff and plus one, right? And you move like that. So, which is different w w with the same problem, because you can put on paper, they want, they act that's the end of the project. We will pretty much complete within that.
Andrea Picchi: Right? If you go with, that's, why as, as a leader, you are, you have to understand the problem that you are talking, right. If you go with full human centered design, thinking, whatever you want to call it for, and you try to solve a theme attain problem as just a huge waste of resources. And, and it doesn't even, it doesn't even optimize the speed and the pace of the design operations. You have to recognize the problem luckily, or well, to know if it's likely, but the majority of people or problems they involve, people can be defined as a weak problem. Even if you have like a, an app, which can be resected into small team problems, but then you have different stakeholder. You have a move traditional priority in it type of investments in terms of desires. That's three good and evolution towards like a weekend promise.
Andrea Picchi: If you don't know distinction, and you assume that everything is a weak problem, you can be right in the majority of times, but the few wants that you are wrong, you can be like crazy wrong. Right, right. It's always important to see the distinction.
Kevin Horek: No, I, I think that makes a lot of sense and I, a hundred percent agree with you. It, it's interesting, but maybe before we dive deeper on some of that stuff, I want to circle back and talk about your educational background and then your career, maybe some highlights along the way, because you have a ton of education and you've worked for some of the biggest companies on the planet doing design and leading their design. I really want to talk about some of that. Do you want to maybe just give us a quick background on your education and your career?
Andrea Picchi: Yeah, absolutely. I'll give you a very high level overview, and then you tell me what you want to discuss. You are your doors, right? You lead the conversation. I start from neuroscience and cognitive psychology. I wanted to be as colleges and adjust had that passion for people. I was like a little kid, which was born with a Commodore 64. So, I mean, we all develop that passion, right? It was something that we didn't even him UNderstood completely at the time. So it was fascinated. I went through that first five years in psychology neuroscience, and I say, what? I just want to try we computer science. If something doesn't or something will not work well, I can always jump out and do and be a psychologist. I went through that new career, computer science, five more years, then I moved abroad. And, and we then that element of psychology and an element of computer science, I start to put everything together at Stanford, with human computer interaction.
Andrea Picchi: After that, at the time, not many people at those duality in their brain, but from an educational perspective. I ended up working in apple and Google and Dan, and just move it around working for Sunstone Nokia a few years ago, when we had our first conversation at Sony, also in the middle, I tried to move back to Italy and I taught a day, a university for a couple of years while working for a design agency in Italy, cool teaching design, and also advanced programming, which is, I mean, you have very few people that can do that. I move abroad again, Samsung, Nokia and Sony. In the past few years, lad, the re was a rebrand, like a brand refresh of British airways, right. I seem like an old friend, which he was in charge of the whole design team. I created like a here in Europe, Esquire is quite well known.
Andrea Picchi: It's called a Bobby don't help, which is the company they created. The first artificial intelligent doctor is there. They moved to the U S and I mean, Google has part of the shares. So it is a very strong company. It's very well known. We, we secured the largest funder rounding in Europe in terms of like investment for a healthcare startup at the time. Now I'm in banking trying to do something completely different, but, well, we'll eventually talk about that. Bank is not as sexy. So I know that I understand,
Kevin Horek: There's lots of design problems to fix in that space. And even in the FinTech space, right? Like a lot of banks and even just bank, a lot of bank mobile apps are so archaic and terrible. I think banking is actually one of the best industries for designer to go in as the caveat to that, though, as long as you have the freedom to actually fix it, because I've known design friends that have gone to work at a bank and their hands are basically tied to do anything innovative because of whatever. Right. So,
Andrea Picchi: Yeah. I know what you mean is one of the person that I estimate the most, sorry, they are respect the most. The one, I mentioned the name, because this is very famous one. He worked in banking and he laughed after few years, he had like a great success in that bank. He brought design of our high level and it's very well known. Well, he made for, for design and for designing banking, but now he's doing something completely different. I can tell you what, otherwise, everyone will understand who he is. He always used to do to say like good luck, right? If you try to change banking by your right. Where I am at the moment is a startup. I feel that if there is an opportunity in banking to achieve some change is these types of contexts. So you join a startup. As a matter of fact, that join the company before receiving the banking license.
Andrea Picchi: At the very early stage, and there is a couple of two co-founders with design background. I don't know if it will make it honestly, but if we will, I think that's probably the best scenario that I can envision, right. For me. So, but in banking, and again, I think we're probably, we're better off going back to other types of challenges, but it can be interesting. I just want to say that for banking is the main is beyond the usability of those things, which is quite terrible. As you say, Kevin, you're completely right. The challenge is that to deliver a different type of value. That was one of theme that brought everywhere in the past year, speaking at a conference, and I mean, life, you have five main different type of value to our quantity. Financially functional. Two of them are qualitative, emotional identity and meaningful, which is actually is a super category composed by 15 car mechanics, like security, connectional wander all those things.
Andrea Picchi: Once you have the quantitative value, functional and financial, on the other side, you have the quality value, the intangible one emotional identity and meaningful. For the new banks, the challenge is to shift the focus from purely functional financial quantitative and start to deliver, generate and deliver in tangible quality value. Right? That's the challenge which opened like hours and hours of conversation about as a, that's what I am about. I mean, happy to go back and talk about more sexy stuff.
Kevin Horek: Nope. Very cool. So, well, I think we should dive into your upcoming book because I think that's going to be, I think the future in a lot of cases, and you kind of already talked about that. What's the book about, and what's the book called?
Andrea Picchi: It's published by Springer our process Springer and is called design management out to create, develop and lead effective design teams. Sure. In my mind, th the best title was managed like a leader, and that was supposed to be, but for CEO purposes and all those things, design management was probably stronger. So, but the concept is really managed like a leader. There the sentiment while actually all the strong mess such that actually encompass the entire manuscript is one side. You have the leadership abilities. On the other side, you are the managerial abilities. If you don't have boat, you cannot succeed because the leader will it leadership. It's about coping. We change. It's about define a vision, put together a strategy, achieve the strategy. Set the direction, but then, well, that's can be three years, five years, 10 years in the future, right? If you want to get there, just pointing the finger, or maybe articulate a while story, it's just not enough because the people will never be compelled.
Andrea Picchi: I mean, for five years to follow you, right? You have to understand how to manage people, which is managing it is about coping with complexity and that party, it, what allows you to rally people for five years? And of course it's a balance, right? It's never black or white. It's just the, in demonstrated elements of leadership and managerial ability at the same time. Sometimes you have some visionary person that joined a team and makes everyone excited. If you look at LinkedIn, you see that person just leaving off, there may be some time and not being able to achieve anything like achieve through change. That's probably because the managerial side is just of locking and maybe the other one is very strong manager, but is not able to get any traction or momentum and is now able to excite people or maybe even articulate what is in his or her mind.
Andrea Picchi: Right. It, the core message is that you are too precise and it's very much research based. What I want to do was to bring neuroscience, psychology and sociology into the discourse, because I feel that there are very, or that a lot of topics that has been discussed from a too high level. And, and I can give a couple examples, but I'm going to hold now. Yeah. But that's an unnatural. Okay.
Kevin Horek: Well, why don't you give some examples and then I'll ask my question.
Andrea Picchi: Yeah, sure. What are the examples that are really cared about is, well, first, just to give you a sentiment in terms of content, and I'll start from the last sexy one, for example, when you sat the objectives for the team, right apart from derive those objectives from the purpose of the company, the team, and, cascading those things right. In, in a meaningful way so that people can see the connection is about managing stress in an unhealthy way. And, and the reason is because stress is not all negative, right? Actually stress is divided into like a three category, starting from the comfort zone where the stress is low. You have another step, imagine like Anya, right? One step forward when you have something called you stress, the people like the vernacular way of framing is like a good stress. You have another step, which is the distress, which is the toxic one, right?
Andrea Picchi: As a manager, you don't want to be in the zone. You don't want to be the friends of everyone, because that's an, all your goal. Your goal is to get the best from people, right? You want to push people into that EU stress zone. In order to do that, you have to understand how, for example, Trek, stress develop, which is quite standard across male and female and different ages. So we know what's your response. As a leader, and as a manager, you have to understand what are the responses to stress. You can adjust the, let's just say type of objective that you allocate to people, right? You went from, yeah, well, we have objective and there needs to be like a function of the company's vision to, well, again, we should look at the people and understanding how to manage the human side of people.
Andrea Picchi: And, and you became of a psychologist. That's my way of presenting the things, just because my background and what I believe is important. Right. That is the only way I think it's one very good way of doing it. This is another stupid example, but another one is, for example, there's this concept of everyone can be a designer, which is absolutely false. And, or maybe, well, designers should be facilitators, right? Like, if we don't bring Janet into the table, apart at the know, like be a moderator, right. Which is absolutely false. And, and the reason is because there is a quite complex creative process behind the scenes that not many people understand. To the point that they can't even in their favor, when they say, well, we shouldn't just be like a facilitator. Right. Actually we bring skills. So, and I started from the definition of creativity, which is quite well opaque to many people, for example, in order to be creative, something needs to be original and appropriate.
Andrea Picchi: So, which means that originally in the sense that the solution is solves the problem in a meaningful way, which is more often than not is different from past solutions, right. That's the originality. Right. The other one is the appropriateness, which means that it needs to be appropriate, which means that it needs to solve a real problem. Right? Yeah. Those are the two elements and sometimes you can push one or the other, but there is another important element to, during that process, that which connects with so many different things in terms of creating collaboration, you never invent anything. Right. Never, never, it just doesn't exist. So, and also you not see reality for what it is. You just don't. So I don't see reality. You don't see reality. John doesn't reality. We just cannot do it. Well, I explain the book and it comes from perception.
Andrea Picchi: Like our perception works. What are the limits of perceptions? What happened during that process is that we created something like reflecting assumptions is some of the things that we do in order to perceive the external world. But those reflective assumption are based. That is like a catch 22, our base, or what has been useful in the past. You see that if you only see things that has been used in falling in the past is really hard for someone to see something that is even new. Right. That's one of the ability to design is to push the thinking, to reframe some of the things they already exist into something that it didn't exist. So it's just to reconnect elements. And, and that's why there are like three functional, main functional one is Blanding, banding, and connecting things by, you never create something out of anything. Right?
Andrea Picchi: This concept is the message of this concept is like two folds or one side. Well, if you cannot see reality, you have to collaborate, right. You need, you need to create a group because alone the lone Wolf, it just doesn't exist. Because if you cannot even see the reality, how can you have the audacity to see that you can solve a problem comprehensively, just ULR. Right. Right. And, and the other one is that is true, like innovation, or that thinks, that seems to be like a work like magic. Actually it comes from something that already existed in the past. So, and that free you up in Panza creative thinking from the burden of, I have to just be the person that brings something new to the conversation while in study is more about see the world in, through different lenses. That's why, if you talk with great design leaders, like people that really achieve a lot, they all say something like, if you ask a question, what's the best thing that I can do for me in order to develop as a designer.
Andrea Picchi: Right. They will tell you travel, see new things, make new experiences. You see, well, but I just talking about design. So we probably, no, no. Just making new experiences. Because when I mentioned that we had war, like what, like reflect the assumption, right? Those are the things that you connect in your brain in order to interpret the word. Right, right. When you do that, and if you think that's is really the only way that you can do that, this is based on the knowledge that you are ready having your brain. That's the only way that it cannot be in any other ways, because you are like a self-contained organism. Right. So right. When you look at something, for example, let's say you, you have your laptop in front of you, right. Let's say, but if you just take what, get a time machine, you go back 200 years and you show that to someone, that person will not understand what it is.
Andrea Picchi: Right? Right. The truth is not in the object. The truth is in your brain because what it is. Well, that object is. You connect the dots in a way that is usable for you, but that person never saw a laptop before. So he cannot make the same connection.
Kevin Horek: Right. Interesting.
Andrea Picchi: So that's why great successful people. They always tell you this, for the most part designed by pretty much everyone, they say make more experiences because some of them, they are aware of that. Even the people they are not aware of, that they intuitively understood that lesson. The more you put in your brain, in the form of memories, the more reach will be your perception of the word.
Kevin Horek: Interesting. No, I actually think that's really good advice, but I'm curious. Okay. Your leading design team, how do or what's your advice when dealing with the engineering side of, an app or your startup or whatever it is because obviously design wants it to flow and work, how they want engineer. The engineering side is trying to replicate it as best they can sometimes based on timeline, budget, how things were maybe written in the past, where your art, your startup, the list goes on and on. How do you bridge that gap to get good design and kind of that's actually executionable or executable, sorry, because I think that's a real challenge for a lot of startups, no matter where they are, whether it's like, they're in their first lines of code and trying to implement design, or they have this thing that's been around for a number of years.
Andrea Picchi: Yeah. So that's a very good question, Kevin. Well, here we move into the manager side of the game, into the political one.
Kevin Horek: Okay.
Andrea Picchi: I'm using that word, the novel Greek sense. No, like, oh, you are a political I'm in no interest in political conversations. Right. Right. Really is that is their ability to get s**t done pretty much to navigate the ultra sociality or groups. Right. Right. Not, not th the, the marijuana that develop from politicians. Right. So, so every company is different. We also have to say that. We know from what we mentioned before, that we have people involved. Is by definition a weak at problem. Which means then if you had success in the company, you cannot reapply the same solution. Right? Every environment is different, but the best things, the best thing to do is to find something that aggregate different people across the company and that what they initial idea of human centricity comes from. Okay. So they don't care about design. Let's be honest. We don't care about engineer.
Andrea Picchi: Let's be honest. I mean, not to the same degree that we care about what we love. Let's put it this way. Right. I mean, at the end of the day, it is what it is. Right. Let's not so sure. There is something that we all care about, right. Doing something good for the people that we serve based on the company that we are working for and the business model developed by the company, whether it be a bank, whether it be apple, Google, whatever it is. And you have to leverage that. I know things that need to be mentioned. There is a lot of like premises, because really it's about people and people are messy. You need to hide people there. We derive mindset. Otherwise, forget about it. You just can't do it. You just can't do it. Imagine like you want someone to love you very much.
Andrea Picchi: Can you do it? Do you think is doable, like force people to love you? I don't think so. Right. Because of the day, the people, they do whatever they want. If you have engineers that they have not intention to find a common ground, you just don't go anywhere. It should just change company. I think that's really good advice, but keep going. Yeah. Now I have to make that premise because otherwise we came across as the naive guys like, oh, everyone is good. We can make it just think positive, right? I mean, lots is messy. It's unfair. You'll fail off and get used to, but you can keep receipts. Eventually you can achieve if you connect with the right people. Let's say we have the people and we just have to work right. On some of the social friction and some of the conflict of interest that we have across the company, which is if they remain within a certain degree are very healthy because you have people pull in different directions, right?
Andrea Picchi: You have the development engineer, the design, the marketing, the product. If everyone is on the same page on delivering great value for the user, and they're open to find a middle ground, because I the want to say compromise, but I want to say, it's like, when you are in a relationship, you have to be able to find a common ground, right. When, when it comes down to certainty, right? If you are not open at all, the relationship can only be one way as simple as. If you have that, having human centricity is what is work very well for me in the past, because now you can say, okay, how can we be human centric, right. Maybe the design and can say, well, we need to do more research. And, and the developers, maybe they can see all, we want to be more involved early in the process, or maybe we want to be part of the testing phase, right?
Andrea Picchi: Or we want to maybe have an extra conversation before starting driving code. If those people really care about that, then you will find it just a matter of having enough experience to see what can be the best solution. Right? If, if you are senior as a director head off and you are there a few experience, then you can understand how to navigate that. You need to have the right people. Otherwise, it just doesn't happen. Let me divert for one second is the same things. It's about something that is very much front of mind in 21st century, which is diversity, right? Yeah. Diversity, when we say, well, diversity, it's an asset for creative collaboration. What any of you say like that? I have to say yes, but there is like a giant box, right? The group needs to achieve what is called psychological MBO, behavioral synchrony, which means that if you have like a team, let's say a tan.
Andrea Picchi: So, and if we talk about diversity, which means that we have people with different, let's say backgrounds, whatever that means, whether it is a cultural, social, a past experience, it doesn't really matter. They come a day, John, the group, we as slightly different idea on pretty much everything, right? Yep. The naive part that, well, you just need to add diverse group of people. Those people will get to get it very well. No, that's absolutely not true. Actually like a non diverse people, they perform much better when there is like no management at all. Like there is no willingness or effort into achieve what is called is psychological or behavioral synchrony. If you want to have a diversity, you have to, for example, one of the things that you can do, you create, you can create like a principal, you can create retool, you can create roles, you can create a lot of different things, which is basically it develops a culture that is a function of all the difference and nuances that everyone brings on the table.
Andrea Picchi: That said, it doesn't mean that are not roles and everyone can do whatever they want. So, and, and that's is it connects to the other one, right? It similar bodies is, is a symptoms are, but there is some connection right there. Again, I think that to you, we can go in any direction you want.
Kevin Horek: No, it's interesting how much you've talked about getting the right people with the right mindset, trying to solve the real problems of the company, right. From a design perspective, from an engineering perspective, from the business side, and then from the customer side. Right. If you don't have the right people, you're just going to end up chasing your tail. Right. I guess just bringing on people to fill a role, doesn't help you at all. If you don't have support from above or, leadership, it's, you're going to go nowhere fast.
Andrea Picchi: Yeah. So, but I think a very practical way of managing that part, which is there's a chapter in a couple of chapter, one is created the team. Another one is developed. The team is about creating descriptive and prescriptive norms as a part of your endeavor. Well, aim to create a design culture. Right.
Kevin Horek: Right.
Andrea Picchi: And, and this implies create and define behavioral standards. Once you did that, then you, Daniel hired based on that. You are you high based on behaviors, which is, I mean, you have to define in, in a good way, but that's is the unifying factor, right? We hired for behavior, irrespectively of the culture, the nationality, the language that, the speak, right? If you say, for example, you that's a stupid, but usually it's framed in the quiet, compelling way, but that the subject can be curiosity. Right? You need curious people. One of that's the reason why we always say you need people that demonstrate curiosity is because if you think as a manager or leader, there, you can engender intrinsic motivation. You're just crazy. You just don't understand how the things works, because you can add of extreme intrinsic motivation, like a good salary, maybe a good package.
Andrea Picchi: The intrinsic motivation is always self developed. That's why you also have like a manager. Couple, they struggle because they, one of the two fields that can more intrinsically motivate the other, right? Like can make you happy or something like that, which is never the case. So it, that, that's the fact. You hire based on behaviors. That's what, that's my definition of like cultural fit, which is behavioral, psychological feat for me. Once you have those standards, then you cannot ever want from Africa, Europe, or Strala Australia, you acid doesn't really matter. That's when you can achieve like that psychological Aviara synchrony. When everyone also ready to embrace the culture. So you can see the parallel here. If you don't have developers and designer, they are ready to embrace human centricity. What is required to deliver human centricity or create a human centric company, not design lab, non-engineer lab, no marketing lab, the product lab by human centric company.
Andrea Picchi: You just don't go. You don't go anywhere in the same way that if you have someone that you say, for example, we, those are the behaviors that the people have to demonstrate in order to join the team. You have some on during the interview process that say, I just disagree. I just, I will never do it. You are anyway, is the sense, the same thing when you have like the design team or the engineer team or the marketing team that goes for a tangent and ignore the, the greater good or another way that you can frame that within the companies to create different level of KPIs. Okay. Usually you have like a departmental, like design KPI, product KPI, but those KPIs are always a function. One degree of one or the last less important compared to the one KPI, which is shared by everyone, for example, something that we did in the past one on the company that we mentioned before was we had a couple of KPIs for human centricity, but also how the people felt that the product was really human centric for them.
Andrea Picchi: That KPI was responsible to deliver the bond was across the company. If you work in marketing, you get the bonus based on that. If you work on design, you get the bonus. Besant that if you work, if you're an engineer, you get the bond is based on that. You have a second layer that say, well, maybe I don't know, code the refactoring, or maybe, or the staff, right. That usually develop engineer you as a KPI to measure their work. Right. That is just to assess or manager, the engineer operations is know is not a proxy to assess success. You have that lower order or KPIs that is for the head of engineer director to just manage it. The operation operate, optimize that phase. We have everyone within the company that is evaluated on the very same set of human centric, KPIs that's for example, a strong message that can only comes from the top of the company, but it's very useful and efficient.
Kevin Horek: No, I, I think that's really good advice, but I'm curious, how do you stay current and continue to learn and stay up on these topics and trends because they are changing. They might be repackaged a bit, but they are changing quite a bit,
Andrea Picchi: But that's a great question. Well, first of all, you need to have some passion for what you do. Right. Right. And, and I have very few, well, I like Manny and different things, but only read about two, three subject. One is video games. I like them. Right? Yeah. So, yeah. I'm like a tactical shooter, gamer guy, insurgency and all those things. Right. Dan is all about psychology and design. That's what I read. Right. It created very strong hobbies during my day, which is just before going to bed lunchtime early in the morning, I just do it because I enjoy it. Right. I, I feel that, so there are a few people that actually drive the field.
Kevin Horek: And,
Andrea Picchi: Not everyone is just born to drive things and we just need to accept it. Right. Someone say, I have a lot of people that a lot of my friends are great designers, but they said, look, and I just don't care about managing the team. I don't even care about very, very senior the money I get a good for me. I mean, I'm happy for getting more, but I don't have that hunger. There may be other people ha or demonstrate to just push for what you're on development. At the end of the day, they're not doing anything wrong to anyone. So you have to accept it. You have to look yourself in the mirror. I believe everyone has a responsibility to develop for you and the people around you. I, life is really easy, Johnny, of getting the best version of yourself. If you decide to not embrace that's your choice, right?
Andrea Picchi: There is no secret sauce in that sense. It's just about hard work and dedication. If you are lucky and you don't really feel the pain, because sometimes it's painful. Sometimes that maybe I want to sleep. I'll give you an example for many years. Even these days, what happened in DVD? My girlfriend, we live together. She goes to bed. I stay hop and read.
Kevin Horek: Okay,
Andrea Picchi: That's it right. She's brilliant. She's like a brilliant architect, but you're just different people. She said, well, I just want to go and sleep. I mean, do whatever you want. Right. I just need to sleep for me. If I have a problem that I wasn't able to solve it, I have to just to crack it. Or maybe there is this new trend, or maybe I know that I need to get better. I never saw it because next year I want to write a book. And, and now for example, I just finished the book, right. I'm just thinking about what I can do next. When my girlfriend, we had the joke like, oh, once you finish the book, we can do something more like, and, but she knows that I'm jumping on my neck on the next thing now, even if I'm not paid. Right, right.
Andrea Picchi: Just that's my natural. So, and you just have to look at yourself in the mirror and say, look, if I'm willing to pay the price, I can develop myself to a very high level. But if I'm not it's okay. Right. So it's just a, B, B, okay. And happy with it. If it can not be happy, this means that you have to do it. You have to maybe work on your own motivation, set your own goal, because sometimes it's an operational issue. It's sometimes it's just a lack of motivation. That's a different story for a different day.
Kevin Horek: No, that's fair enough. There any design books or podcasts or other things though, that you would recommend people check out that really inspired you through your journey?
Andrea Picchi: Well, as you can imagine that a lot of them, right. I remember like one of the people that I respect a lot, which is Mount opportunity, which is the chief design officer at PepsiCo. It used to say like, oh, I learned a lot from many different people, but they didn't know. I said, what do you mean by that? Yeah, because I mean, if you look at our library, there is many people telling stories and I can just read everything I learned from them. Right. Of course there are manual down because everything I know today, it came from another person. We say that before. Right. I didn't invent anything for myself or for the things I know, but I want to mention a couple of them, which is one is the book, which is very good. I'm reading. I just read by and liberating at the moment, which is design leadership, ignite from attic, Quint.
Andrea Picchi: I mean, we all know, right. That's like some of the best designer in the community. Right. Which is very good if you want, I feel that he actually endorsed my book. We had back and forth on that. My, yeah, my book, it compliment his book because he's, he talks about things that I didn't touch upon. I went very down into the detail that he didn't go because he had to talk about all the important stuff. Right. I felt that were complimentary in that sense. Zani the shipping, not from adequate and the podcasts. I mean, there are a lot of them, even like, I use it, use a defender from which is a great guy, but I have to say like it reconsidering from Bob box late, which is like another great one. I don't know if Bob or his podcast, Kevin, I don't know. Oh, well that's, I mean, so that's a good one.
Andrea Picchi: I say something that you didn't know. That's good because I mean, with Eric, everyone knows Eric. First of all, I'm say that Bob, he used to be one or the design manager at the time was Steve jobs at apple. He was working on the apple store. Every time he told a, just share Steve's story, which is, I never get bought off. I mean, it's just, and Dan is a great guy, is another role model for me is very humble. He knows so much. He say that he doesn't, but he does. Right. So he's so humble. They'd say, well, no, you're great. Come on. So, and he has this pot cost reconsidering. There are a couple of his costs with Merredin black and auto Walter, which is at envision. So was great. They interviewed, I mean, Bob is another very high level. He has a strong network and interview many different people, Maria, Judy share.
Andrea Picchi: And I mean, Mandy great design. If you visit that, you have a lot of content sees a one just wrapped up that working on season two.
Kevin Horek: Very cool. But sadly we're out of time. How about we close with mentioning where people can get more information about yourself, the book, and any other links you want to mention?
Andrea Picchi: Yeah. So about myself is my website. My name, last name.it, Andrea Peaky dot I T, or they can just type my name on Google or LinkedIn. And the book. We mentioned the title design management, how to create, develop, and lead effective design teams. They can look up on Amazon or directly on the Springer website, so they will find it. I will just push it once he is available, because it would be probably in a month or so on through my socials. If they connect with me on LinkedIn or Twitter, they will be updated that.
Kevin Horek: Perfect. Andrea, well, as always, it's great to chat with you. Thanks again for doing it and have a good rest of your day.
Andrea Picchi: Oh, thank you for how many Kevin. It was a pleasure, John. Hopefully we'll speak again in the future. Thank you.
Kevin Horek: Yeah. Thanks. Good. Thanks. Bye-bye well, John and Greg, what did you guys think of that?
Jon Larson: Well, that was a great interview, Kevin, and then that, I think it lived up to all of my expectations. I was really interested in how we, how he talked about how he took lessons from other people and that's where he got a lot of the, the things he's learned is from the stories of other people who have whose path he's also followed.
Gregg Oldring: Yeah. That was a, that was an amazing interview. He is, he totally lived up to expectations and I'm really happy that I've got a real takeaway from this myself when he was talking about, wicked problems. That's where you apply design thinking and for other I've heard it called kind problems before, or I think called attain problems. But, but that's where you deserve optimizing the solution's already there, you just optimize for it. And, but if you try and apply design thinking to those kinds of easier, like solvable problems already solve problems, it'll just frustrate everybody else that's involved in it and you'll kind of lose the, was the momentum behind it. That that's such a great insight. And I loved it. I thought that was so cool.
Kevin Horek: Yeah. Very cool. I'm always happy to chat with them and I, yeah, like I said before, he always has really good advice, so I thought it was great.
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