This is HCD – Human-Centered Design, UX & Service Design Thinking Podcast

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The metrics-driven leader isn't your enemy — but they might be your biggest unlock. Gerry shares a practical approach to translating qualitative insights into the language of KPIs, OKRs, and cost savings, and why winning over this type of leader can amplify your impact across the whole organisation.

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Creators and Guests

Host
Gerry Scullion
Gerry Scullion is an Irish-born, globally recognised service designer, educator, podcaster, coach, and founder based in Dublin. With 22+ years in design, his career spans roles in interaction design, UX, and leadership positions—most notably as Head of Design at Myspace Australia/NZ and later serving clients like Cochlear, Microsoft, Aer Lingus, and government bodies  . He’s the Founder & CEO of The Human‑Centered Design Network and the voice behind This is HCD, a popular podcast and design community with over one million downloads . A committed educator, he has developed several online courses—spanning UX fundamentals, journey mapping, stakeholder mapping, prototyping, and service blueprints—as well as authoring “Service Design for Executives” on Pluralsight . A passionate keynote speaker at events like UX Scotland and Service Design Days, he shares his insights on resilience in design, ethical frameworks (“do no harm”), and embedding design within tech-led environments . Gerry is also Co‑founder and Director at Humana Design, a Dublin-based agency focusing on design research, consultancy, and enabling design transformation . Beyond design, he’s a coach and mentor to designers worldwide, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, and a former Councillor for Ireland . In his personal time, Gerry is a musician, barista-in-training, gardener, and family man living by the sea in Clontarf, Dublin

What is This is HCD – Human-Centered Design, UX & Service Design Thinking Podcast?

Welcome to This is HCD – Human-Centered Design, UX & Service Design Thinking Podcast, the global show for designers, innovators, and changemakers who want to create better products, services, and experiences.

Hosted by Gerry Scullion, with over 1-million downloads worldwide.

Each episode dives into conversations with leading voices in service design, UX design, interaction design, customer experience, and design strategy. Together, we explore the methods, mindsets, and real-world stories that bring human-centered design and design thinking to life.

Whether you’re a UX researcher, service design practitioner, product manager, or design leader, you’ll find actionable insights, practical tools, and inspiration to elevate your practice and drive meaningful change.

Tune in and join the global human-centered design community — learn how to design with purpose, create inclusive solutions, and shape a more thoughtful future.

Speaker: So you've done incredible
research, real stories from real people.

And your boss leans over and looks at
you and says, but what's the ROI of that?

Jerry?

Today I want to talk to you
about what to do when your

leaders only think in numbers.

Welcome to this is eight CD folks.

I'm Jerry Scullion, and this is your
daily dose of human-centered design.

Let's get into it.

I try to keep these
episodes under five minutes.

Intentionally.

'cause I know we're all busy.

The world is, you know, getting a
little bit more crazier by the day.

But I, I want to try and give you
something to kind of lean into, to

try and help inform that change.

This is one of the most common challenges
I hear from designers and change makers.

You know, working with a
leader who lives and breathes

spreadsheets, KPIs, OKRs, ROI.

Everything needs a number attached to
it or it does not exist in their world.

And honestly, I have a lot
of empathy for that person.

They are not really being difficult.

They were trained this way.

They were rewarded this way.

Their entire career has reinforced
the idea that if you can't measure

it, it really doesn't matter.

They don't get anything
else at the end of the day.

For doing anything different.

They just want to make sure that
they're gonna bump those numbers.

So when you walk in talking about
empathy or lived experience or

qualitative insight, you are speaking
a language that does not register.

It is not that they disagree with you
folks, it is that they're literally do not

have a category for what you're saying.

They just don't have it in the toolkit.

So here is what.

I have seen work, and first of all,
stop asking them to care about empathy.

I know that sounds really
counterintuitive, but start with what

empathy saves, not what empathy means.

Connect your research findings to
the metrics that they already track.

Reduction in complaints, call
volume, rework costs, time to

resolution, et cetera, et cetera.

Even cost per transaction
or cost to serve.

If your research has really uncovered
that users are confused by a

particular step in a service, do not
present it that users are frustrated.

Present it as this step generates 40% of
our inbound calls, and each call costs

the organizations 12 Euro to handle same
insight, but just a different framing.

And that framing is something
that they can actually act on.

Second, learn their language before
you expect them to learn yours.

Sit in their meetings, read their reports,
and understand what they're measured on.

And when you can map your findings
to their world, everything changes.

And third, remember that this
leader is not your enemy.

They are actually your best translator
once you have won them over.

Because when a metrics driven
leader starts putting design

outcomes into numbers, everyone
else in the organization listens.

They carry the credibility that
you as a designer might not

have just yet in that context.

Just yet, the goal is to not make them
care about design the way that we do.

The goal is to make design visible in
the language that they already trust.

Now I wrote about the five
leadership types that you'll

encounter in the newsletter.

The metrics leader is just one of them,
and the link is in the show notes if you

want to learn more about the other four.

And that's it for today.

If you found it useful, share it
with someone who needs to hear it.

And if you're not subscribed to a
newsletter, go over and check out that

brand spanking new website at www dot.

This is hcd.com

and I'll talk to you tomorrow.