[00:00:00] Dan: Hello and welcome back to We Not Me, the podcast where we explore how humans connect to get stuff done together. I'm Dan Hammond.

[00:00:13] Pia: And I am Pia Lee. Dan Hammond. Had any good ideas recently?

[00:00:20] Dan: Always, always. They're always bubbling away. Bubbling. That is today's topic. Innovation, innovation, innovation. And I'm really excited actually to be talking to Adam today, Adam Billing of Treehouse Innovation and Sprintbase. Because this has been sort of lurking in my mind for a long time, this topic, which is that, since i, led a leadership program with a big tech company, about 10, 12 years ago. And it was a traditional, you know, back in the day when we used to fly people around the world and we'd fly to Silicon Valley and do development programs. We went to hotels, airports, rental cars, m and ms. on the table. Yeah. All manner of inappropriate snackage. Um, so it was, it was just a different, different era.

[00:01:05] Dan: But the content that they wanted us to cover there, and actually the content that people often came up with in leadership programs then was, was really about you as a person innovating. And it always made me, I, I've never, you know, sort of how you can be a brilliant innovator. So the skills that you can have. And, and I've. Felt that, that there's been the wrong emphasis. Even some of the really big thinkers who've written books at Har Harvard, it's about you as an innovator. Whereas, I strongly believe innovation is a team sport and design thinking that, uh, he's gonna be talking about today is just. Is a team, is a team activity. So I think this is a great thing for any team who needs to innovate. And I think that's pretty much every team now.

[00:01:55] Pia: And, probably not as easy to implement as it seems, so it'd be really interesting to hear.

[00:01:59] Dan: Exactly. Exactly. So while these things look like a bit of a process, the, um, the, i, I have a hunch that is going to lean very heavily on awesome teamwork. So let's go and hear from, uh, from Adam now on a sunny morning in London. Adam, thank you so much for joining us on We, not Me. It's lovely to see you.

[00:02:22] Adam: Hello, Dan. It's an absolute pleasure to be here. Uh, Pia as well. Great to see you today. Yeah, really looking forward to our chat.

[00:02:29] Dan: Well, despite the accent, Adam, you're, you are in sunny London, aren't you? You're London based.

[00:02:35] Adam: That's right. Been here for, uh, been about 16 years now. Unbelievably, 

[00:02:40] Pia: wow. 

[00:02:40] Pia: The accents go 

[00:02:41] Pia: well. 

[00:02:42] Adam: Oh yeah. Holding on it. Holding on,

[00:02:44] Dan: Excellent. Yeah, keep it great. Originally from where Adam, we'll hear a bit more about this and where it from?

[00:02:49] Adam: Uh, Cincinnati, Ohio. we're the places everyone goes to on holiday because

[00:02:54] Dan: Yeah, every time we, we'll hear a bit more of the Adam backstory in a moment, but first of all, as as usual, we start with the conversation starter calls, and I'm gonna select, oh, here's an interesting one. So your conversation starter card is, the worst thing I did at school was.

[00:03:12] Adam: Well, I'm clearly not gonna tell you that,

[00:03:15] Dan: No, of course not. What's the second or third or maybe the 50th 

[00:03:19] Adam: up, up, the list, um, a little while. Let's see. I, I, I think the stupidest thing I did while in school and as, um, we, we used to live right by the big stadium, like the big football stadium, for, for the university. And uh, uh, a friend, we were out one night and a friend said, you know, I think they leave it unlocked. I said, well, that's insane. There's no way they leave this massive state unlocked. We had to check it out. So we, we walked over and sure enough, the doors unlocked and we walked right out into this massive football field in the middle of the night, completely only people in this stadium that would hold about 70,000 people or something. It was ridiculous. But then we got arrested, 

[00:04:04] Dan: Okay. 

[00:04:05] Pia: short-lived. 

[00:04:06] Adam: Uh, we were all charged with trespassing.

[00:04:10] Dan: That's a pretty good answer to the question, I think. Yeah. That glorious moment, um, was curtailed by the Cincinnati Police Department by the sound of things.

[00:04:19] Adam: More, more or less, more. They, once they understood that we were, we meant no harm. We did no damage. We were, we were innocent. They, they, they let us go in our merry way, but it was, it was a little touch and go there.

[00:04:30] Pia: Weren't, you didn't end up with a on a prisoner swap program, and that's how you got into the UK.

[00:04:35] Adam: Exactly, that's, you know, you, you, you kinda cut right to my, uh, my origin

[00:04:41] Pia: Yeah, that's it. So I thought we'd start the bio that way. Actually. Let, let's come, come back at it from, from your prison

[00:04:46] Adam: convicted Adam Billing. 

[00:04:48] Pia: I, I'd love to know a bit, a bit about you Adam, so to kind of we're. We're here to talk about design thinking, but you weren't born a design thinker, so don't, well, you may have been, but so yeah. So what to, so give us the backstory.

[00:05:04] Adam: You know, not, not long after the arrest, I, uh, I graduated from this university and, um, And, and I got a, my first job was at Ernst and Young Consulting. You know, this is sort of late nineties, and I was in the Cincinnati office where everybody worked for Proctor and Gamble, and you just became a staff consultant working for Proctor and Gamble. And I said, what you did at Ernst and Young, but I, I got incredibly lucky, um, because there was a partner out in San Francisco, a guy named Kevin Kevin Pool, actually. And, um, he's on our advisory board still today, which is amazing. He tapped me. We said, Hey, you know, come over here. We're doing some really cool stuff out out here in California. And that's where I was introduced to a lot of these methods that now are kind of, you know, every everyday work, you know, for us. But things like, um, design thinking, got to know ideo if you, if you're familiar with those guys. Spent most of my early career flying back and forth from Cincinnati almost every week. This is now, now looking back, that doesn't seem like the most sustainable, uh, way to start one's career, but, but in the late nineties, that's how it was done.

[00:06:15] Dan: Yeah, indeed. And so play playing forward. Talk us through to the current day. What do you, um, what happened and what are you up to?

[00:06:23] Adam: Oh, very, very much fast forward. Um, so worked at EY for a while. They were bought by Cap Gemini, one of the, uh, partners in E and Y in the UK, left. There was a lot of, lot of, lot of people changed, um, when that, when that, uh, acquisition took place. And, um, so he was the senior partner, um, at EY in the uk and he was basically rounding up people that he knew and trust who had also left EY or Cap Gemini at that time and was putting together a, a, a company that was working with the University of Cambridge to establish their executive education, uh, business.

[00:07:02] Adam: And yeah, I had through that network, I, I, you know, got the call, said, Hey, you know what? Come to the uk, come to London for, might be a year or two, who knows? Now the big, fast forward 16 years later, wife, kids, house, business, you know, basically British except for the documentation and I guess the accent. But yeah, and, and started Treehouse in, in 2010. And in, in a nutshell, it's really continuing on from a lot of that work. That I did in the early days. Basically, you know, we're an innovation consultancy, help people design new product services, strategies, businesses, and then we also teach people these methods that we use and give 'em all kinds of tools to help them do it themselves without us. 

[00:07:47] Dan: Great, great backstory. So, there's a lot of talk about design thinking, human-centered design and so on, but, uh, we hear it in the, uh, on around the traps, but can you give us a beginner's guide in case people are thinking, what is that?

[00:08:00] Adam: Right. It is. I mean, it is, it is not rocket science. It is, it's, it's, it's basically a, a few fundamental principles tied together about how someone approaches a problem, right? So it's, it's a, it's a problem solving philosophy, if you will, with me is a good word for it. It basically involves starting with deeply understanding what your customer or your teammate or whoever it is that you're designing for, it's about deeply understanding what they care about. So not just the things that say the customer is asking for, but with design thinking. You try to gain empathy in order to gain insights into the, the needs that they might have that they, you know, possibly aren't even able to express yet.

[00:08:46] Adam: And then once you've got that understanding of an insight where there might be an opportunity, you invite lots of people. Di diverse perspectives to help generate a lot of ideas, create lots of choices, and then through prototyping and experimentation, really, you know, kinda rough ready prototypes just to learn quickly, you try to move those ideas very rapidly towards solutions that are actually gonna land and be successful because going back to the beginning, they were grounded in those insights about what people really care about. 

[00:09:18] Dan: You boiled it down to three stages by the sound of it, it's um, I've seen different ways in which this can be sort of set out. I imagine there are different schools of thought. Are there even idea that you mentioned just now? What's the.

[00:09:30] Adam: Sure. I mean, you got it right. You'll see uh, three step, five step six step, 10 step, 12 step across. And, they're all, they're all basically the same thing. They're just different manifestations of the same thing

[00:09:43] Adam: and I think the most important thing to, just to mention here though, is that design thinking while you can do it as a process. So we've. Done loads of, of, of innovation and design projects where someone says, Hey, we want to improve the patient experience, or we want to, you know, design something for a certain demographic in our, in our, you know, for target audience. And we'll go through a process of conducting lots of interviews, doing ethnographic research, lots of rounds of brainstorming, lots of rounds of prototyping and experimenting, and we're very mindful of that process. But I think the important thing to keep in mind is those tools and methods and skills that get practice along that journey can also be completely decoupled from that process and integrated into everyday work. And that's actually where we see the biggest impact of design thinking is when you're using those methods in a kind of ad hoc integrated way.

[00:10:39] Pia: So if, if you went in and there was a 180 version of that, that isn't design thinking, which teams and businesses might be doing.

[00:10:48] Adam: I think it's, it's, uh, a lot of our default settings as humans are the opposite of design thinking. So to just give you an example, I think, um, I always talk about design thinking as something that kind of protects us from some of our worst inclinations and from our worst habits. You know, it is so common and so easy at the beginning of a problem solving process, like come up with an idea and very quickly get attached to that idea. And this is especially common if you are someone who's very experienced in your field. You're an expert, right? You should know your customers. You should know what they want. So you know why? Why would I take this step of standing back and trying to empathize and take this new perspective when I, when I already know it? So it's that sort of leading with your own assumptions and ideas quickly. Again, not involving that diverse group to, to generate ideas because you would rather get those experts, the people that understand it well. You feel like that's the kind of right thing to do.\

[00:11:51] Adam: And then the biggest sort of antithesis of design thinking, and also one of the most common things that we see is once you've got an. As opposed to systematically testing your assumptions very early on to learn, you kind of take it out, you try to pitch it, you try to convince others how marvelous it is, and you build and you build, and you build and you build, often to find later that there were a lot of assumptions baked in about what people would really want or value about this idea that you didn't test early enough because you were so confident it was gonna be so successful. 

[00:12:29] Pia: And sometimes my experience too is, is that that level of expertise can be a bit of a bias, can't it? I think that's what you, you don't really get to, to ask the deep questions first to get that empathy. Instead, you're actually just trying to, in a pressurized world, shoehorn an a, an outcome, and, and there may be political intentions as well in a team that goes on.

[00:12:53] Adam: You got it. You got it. And, and so many things are done in the name of speed and, and you know, it is one of those classic moments where you have to go slow to go fast, and that is a very hard thing to, to kind of just accept as a human being, we do feel like, oh, we can just skip that step and we're gonna get there faster. I'm sure. But that often bites us, and then that slows us down far more than if we had just made sure our idea was really grounded in sights, got some diverse perspectives and tested those things, right?

[00:13:26] Adam: And you're, and you're a hundred percent right about the, the politics of it. You know, life inside a modern organization isn't really set up in most companies to create the space and the conditions to, to work this way. You know, people aren't necessarily measured on how much they learn about an idea before they implement. 

[00:13:46] Dan: And on the subject of complication, you know, we're all about how humans connect to get stuff done together here. So what you just described could, could, I'm exaggerating slightly. It could look like steps of a process you have to walk through as a team. But clearly the team has to be functional, I'm guessing, to make that work. What, does a team, what attributes are required of a team to really make this work properly? 

[00:14:07] Adam: There's a few things, we'll, we'll, we'll put in two, two categories. I think first would be the kind of the rational elements of that team, sort of like this concrete things like the skills and the disciplines brought in. And then I think there's these sort of emotional dynamics of the team, the interpersonal stuff.

[00:14:25] Adam: So starting with the, with the, the, the kind of concrete, rational stuff. I think a great team to do this type of work, definitely multiple disciplines brought together. If you bring, you know, if everybody from the engineering department gets together to solve a problem, you're gonna get engineering driven ideas, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. But if we're talking about innovation, if we're talking about trying to get new thinking in, that diversity is, is is where that gets unlocked. So real diversity, perspectives, disciplines coming together, uh, seniority level is, is, is a tricky one because you, you know, it's, it's, it's great to have people in that team that can get things done, but you also have to balance that with the team dynamics where it's, uh, you know, if one voice becomes too loud because of that seniority have to have rules about flattening.

[00:15:17] Adam: As far as the, the kinda interpersonal. You have to have people who are up for that collaboration, right? So you have to have people who are, are willing to, to come into a situation where they are, where they might be wrong, where they might not succeed right away. And I think the key to to, to a lot of this though, this is sort of the interaction is, is a self-awareness, right? Being aware. You know, you, you're gonna come into this with certain biases and being able to name them, spot 'em, and then try to control against them.

[00:15:54] Adam: So all of these habits that we just talked about before that we're trying to avoid, like leading with our own ideas, leading with assumptions, you know, running with the first idea and, and building it before we, we, we test, I think for a team to do this well, it's really important for them to first be grounded in what those good behaviors look like and start to develop self-awareness. Of when they might be stepping outside of those behaviors and have a culture of sort of permission within that team for others to sort of guide them, guide each other gently back toward those good behaviors that we know are gonna help us get to the best solution fastest. 

[00:16:33] Pia: I mean there's a certain amount of humility isn't there in design thinking that whilst you're all working to get the best outcome you are, you're probably. Really open to the fact that if you hold too tightly onto your own idea, it's unlikely to, it's unlikely to work. So you've gotta, you've gotta be open to that whole co-creation, which is quite, again, takes time. It takes trust to be able to do that.

[00:16:58] Adam: 100%. 100%. And baby, you, you, you've nailed, you've nailed it there. I mean, humility is absolutely essential. Um, egos will trip you up every time when trying to do this kind of work well. And trust within that team to know that if your experiment does not, you know, validate your hypothesis, then you know there aren't gonna be repercussions. There aren't gonna be, your team's not gonna, you know, shun you. And it's not, you know, being anathema.

[00:17:30] Adam: Is, you guys really are like the experts on, on, on what makes for a healthy team. How, how, I'd be really curious to hear how the kind of conditions that I just talked about for design thinking square up to overall team effectiveness.

[00:17:48] Dan: You know, one of the things we've explored a lot here and in our work with teams is how you can build an inclusive team, a diverse team that is inclusive. So, so, so when the diverse team that is not inclusive is the poor performing team. And we, and, uh, Marsha Ramroop talked a lot about this on a recent episode. So I think that's the first thing that strikes me is that as soon as you build diversity to get that range of opinions, that range of views, weirdly, you present yourself another challenge, which is how do you make sure it's inclusive? And that is sort of, because otherwise it can be worse. Everyone's just sort of not saying anything. They don't feel safe. So how do you build the, bring everyone in and build safety so that people can do that? So we, we definitely see, I think that's one piece I would say that is absolutely a cornerstone of good teamwork that it sounds like you really need in this situation. 

[00:18:42] Adam: Yeah, and safety is, without it, you will not find a team that is willing to experiment, that is willing to trust, is willing to, you know, even take those small risks. You know, as we said at the, at the outset, that a lot of these practices aren't the status quo inside a lot of corporates. So why do we think, you know, when you send people on a innovation or design training, why would we think that they would try these things out if there's a risk that it could blow back on them, whether it was from their team or from leadership?

[00:19:17] Adam: And, and you know, not to put everything on leadership, but leaders are so critical in creating that culture where that inclusivity is, is is there to support, you know, effective diversity and creating that safety where people know that there's air cover, you know, for, for, for this kind of work that may not, and you know, often doesn't, you know, result in that, you know, home run, right? That's just the nature of, of innovation. You don't, you don't, um, you can't guarantee the outcome.

[00:19:50] Dan: Yeah. There, that's a, and that's a tricky one. I was thinking about each of those three steps where, as you say, our default settings and our settings in teams are not, are often not helpful. So, you know, that empathy piece where you're trying to understand what customers care about, you've, there's gotta be a lot of, I don't know, in that I don't, you've gotta be really vulnerable and sort of allow space. That's not really, that has traditionally not been conducive to a successful career. Then you've got your ID ideas stage, you know, and I've gotta put loads of ideas. And people say No bad ideas. Well, there are bad ideas and I might have one. Am I going to share one so that we can actually really drive the thing? And then finally in the prototyping and testing, you know, that experimentation piece again, as you say is my hypothesis, right? Am I ready to say, put something out there? Didn't work. There's just, it just loads of bear traps along the way for an un, for an unsafe team.

[00:20:46] Adam: And I'll throw one more in there for you. you know, One thing that is. Absolutely just, it's, it's rocket fuel for, for uh, uh, an innovation team is inviting your clients or your customers in, right? So whether that is engaging really closely with them in the, you know, at the, at the empathy stage where you're maybe bringing some, kinda, we felt like, talk about sacrificial concepts. So like, here's some ideas. What do you think of those? And using that as part of your research or actually for ideation or, you know, as soon as you have an idea, you bring them in or go to them and show them these rough, probably terrible ideas in some cases that they're not gonna like at all. But that, like I said, that's absolute rocket fuel for, for doing this. But the, I mean, you can talk about risk and safety. Oh my gosh, what if our customers see that we're not perfect and we don't have all the answers?

[00:21:42] Adam: And I say I have to, just a really quick story. I have to give incredible props to, to, uh, one of our clients. Um, we work with a, a global law firm, DLA Piper. And we've been working with them for about five years now, four years, five years, helping them establish their own innovation function in-house. And they have done such amazing work in, in really pushing the envelope for legal services. I mean, if you wanna talk about a, a risk averse, um, uh, think about what the, the purpose of that profession is to eradicate risk from. And it's all about certainty, right? And you know, they are the experts, 

[00:22:21] Dan: And it, and it attracts people who like to understand complex situations and ra and dry them and rationalize them. And doesn't it? So you, I imagine your raw material of people is, is, is drawn from a certain useful part of, part of the community,

[00:22:37] Adam: Yeah, I mean, I think just in, in general, I mean we, we, we work with more lawyers, I think, than most, most innovation businesses do. So my experience has honestly been that, you know, you get some of the smartest people, most resourceful kinda natural problem solvers really, who, when you give them a process and some tools to work through it, it tends to unlock some creativity that they didn't know was there.

[00:23:01] Adam: But as far as bringing clients in, so we've encouraged them to do this, and that was definitely met with some skepticism. It was like, Ooh, is this wise? And from the first time it was tried, the feedback they got from clients was just over the moon positive. Clients really value that. They don't expect it from a law firm. And then when a law firm does, it invites them in for this sort of engaging interactive experience that's all about understanding them better so they can serve them better, clients feel that it changes the dynamic and it creates loyalty and just a deeper relationship that's, that's a lot harder to get, in other ways.

[00:23:46] Pia: We've talked about this before with customer centricity, you know, putting them in at the heart of what's, what's really important. And I think there's a real act of, yeah, I think authenticity by going, well, let's get you in the room and let's hear it. Let's give you a voice to be able to do it. And I think that's a really, let's a key part.

[00:24:03] Pia: What's the pre-work sometimes that teams need to do just to be on the right page to be able to do design thinking? Cuz they may think they're able to do it, but you are looking at 'em going, no, no, no, you are not quite ready. And so you have to do something in advance. 

[00:24:20] Adam: Uh, that's a great question. Um, so with a lot of, I mentioned upfront at Treehouse we kind of do broadly two types of work. We do innovation consulting projects, right? Where the goal is to design, you know, new service, new product, new experience, and then we do sort of the, the, the training and development where the goal is to build that capability inside of our clients, within their own teams and people.

[00:24:43] Adam: Now, whenever we are about to do a project with one of our clients, we always put together a core team on their side too, right? So it's never just us coming in and doing it and handing over the outcome at the end, it doesn't work. People don't like the outcome if they haven't been part of creating it. It's just, it's, we've learned that over time. You have to be part of that journey. And, and most of our clients really want to be as well. So it's, it's, these become joint innovation projects where so few of us and a few of them come together over a few months to create these things.

[00:25:16] Adam: Now, before we set off on that journey, you said it right, we, you need to have some basis, some pre-work to kind of get that team kind of ready to roll, you know, when I'm starting completely cold. So sometimes we will do, uh, some trainings, like even if it's like a half day. Um, we love that, uh, partners of ours, uh, experience point, have a half day experience called, uh, um, um, experience innovation, learn. It's great. It's half day. Run that. It's a great sort of, uh, introduction. Uh, there's all the basic methods process, so people, kind of common language established. And then speaking of the skills and behaviors that that team needs to possess, we've partnered with a wonderful academic, uh, by the name of Jeanne Liedtka, and she is based at the Darden School business, uh, University of Virginia. And we developed with her a, um, assessment. It takes about 10 minutes to complete it, and it is these 44 behaviors across five skill areas that are critical to effective innovation and actually just effective creative collaboration, full stop. Um, so by administering that, that really builds that self-awareness of sort of what good looks like and where there are gaps. And it, you know, gives you a handy report to show you exactly where those gaps are and what you might do to, to improve those. And that gives, that gets a team off to a running start.

[00:26:48] Pia: I think it is that awareness raising piece, isn't it? That that's, you know, I think that, um, there can be an assumption that you might deploy design thinking and somehow, you're gonna get the answer without how to do all the work in the process. And, and you know, we're all, we're all, you know, it gets delivered and, and that's not it. You are really part of the solution and you've actually gotta work pretty hard, which is why, you know, you've gotta be ready for that, haven't you?

[00:27:13] Adam: Yeah, and it's, it's. that looks beautiful on paper. Whether it's the five steps, seven step, three step, 12 step, whatever. But when it hits reality, when it hits an actual design challenge, you can hold onto those principles. Like, let's not start generating a whole bunch of ideas until we've understood our customer first, right? You know, those, bits of a sequence, you know, that stays in intact, but there's no step by step magic path to, to a successful outcome. It gets dirty, it gets really messy. You inevitably go through those moments of despair where you go, oh gosh, we, you know, we've gone down the wrong road. We were so sure it always happens. And if, and if, and if it's not happen. If you're not hitting those moments of frustration and think you're probably not doing it right. You know, you're probably not pushing an envelope into any territory that's actually new novel, you know, and, and experimental, and therefore a little bit risky and uncertain. You know? So it's, it's that ambiguity that you gotta get comfortable with and, and yeah. But easier said than done. That's, that's for sure. Especially your first time going through.

[00:28:21] Dan: And can I just dive in a bit more detail on the experimentation, that prototyping piece? I think this is, um, I, I, they're, they're all clearly important, but you know, I was certainly raised on this idea that about building expertise and a sort of more, what people call a waterfall method, I guess, which is actually you have a great idea, you form it perfectly and you launch brilliant things and that's how you advance your career, actually. Um, and we see a lot of teams ourselves stuck in that way of doing things rather than being experimental. Um, so I've got two questions in one, which is how do you get people to experiment with experimentation is the first one. How do they start and are you, do you see any intergenerational shifts there? Are, they are younger people more open to experimentation, so apologies for the two questions, but that I'm really curious about that.

[00:29:13] Adam: So one thing I would say, just even before hitting those two specifics is that waterfall isn't always bad. It isn't always wrong if. I mean, and that's the thing. It's if, if you know any of the, any agile methodology is great when the solution isn't known right? And you need to explore it, and you wanna get those learning revs in as quickly and cheaply and as you possibly can, so you can pivot along the way. And that's where experimentation comes in and is super helpful.

[00:29:46] Adam: One of our, um, one of our, our main guys here at Treehouse, a fellow named Brian McCauliffe. He's a, he comes from the game design background and he's run giant studios of, of teams who build video games. He won a BAFTA for, uh, his, his, his work on the Dr. WHO game that they built. But he was talking about like if you're trying to design a new concept, yeah, you wanna make it extremely agile, but if you're doing Tomb Raider XI, you know, we know what we're building. You know, it's just now matter of building it. There's already template. We know what we're doing, we're just push that thing out.

[00:30:23] Adam: So, I guess so, you know, 0.1 waterfall, if you really know what you wanna build, what you need to build is great. It's a lot more efficient. Um, but if there's uncertainty around what that outcome should look like, then you want these more agile methods of which design thinking is, is, you know, very much part of.

[00:30:42] Adam: As far as the first steps, if we're say, assuming this is coming into an environment where it's not the status quo, this is new for someone, um, I mean, it's like all things, you start small. The, the thing that we find the simplest is to say, try to build this reflex of when you've got an idea. We all know that moment when we've got the idea, and it's awesome. Avoid that thing that we naturally do, which is let's build something really polished and beautiful. Let's get the spreadsheet out. Let's try to make the business case. Let's try to do all that stuff. Instead, sketch something really simple. We love a storyboard as a first, first iteration of an idea, right? Just show your user kind of what's the problem they have, how your solution comes in and improves it, and what that outcome for and what the journey looks like. You know, just a couple of frames and some stick figures, and then use that to start listing some assumptions that you're making. And make that assumption listing activity, that's the reflex. You know, if you can, if you can start, once you have those assumptions, then things become much easier to test. Cuz you're not trying to test the whole idea, you're not showing someone your idea and going, do you like it? Yes or no? That's not an experiment. But if in your idea it's like, will people actually do this bit? Will they actually change their behavior, you know, in order to be able to use my new solution? Well, I could probably test that behavior change more quickly than I could test this whole concept. So I think that's starting small is it, and I think the storyboard with simple assumptions is, is a great way.

[00:32:20] Adam: Is there a generational difference? I, to be honest with you, I, I, I can't, I couldn't say, I couldn't say that there really is. I, I, yeah. And I wouldn't, I wouldn't, uh, I don't think I'd be able to sign onto that. Cause I'm, I'm, I'm right now thinking about some of the people I work with that do this better than anybody and we've got all kinds of age ranges, all kinds of age ranges. I think it has more to do. I think there's some kind of, some people have a natural comfort level with it more than others. But I do think you can find more kind of consistency if you wanted to say which groups have more or less affinity or, or difficulty with it. I think that, you know, there, there are some, there's some specific roles that will find that more, more challenge and it comes down to those that, that are more, more risk averse. . I, I wouldn't say.

[00:33:13] Pia: There's hope for you yet, Dan.

[00:33:14] Dan: Yeah. Indeed, indeed. I think we're still, we are old dogs trying to learn some new tricks. 

[00:33:19] Pia: Very, yeah, we're doing a lot of jumping around in new 

[00:33:23] Dan: Flaming hoops. And Adam. Just adding a bit of contention maybe to it. Is there anyone potentially listening to this who'd say, I don't think design thinking is the right way to innovate that, it's, you know, what, what are the, what are the cha are there challenges out there to the, this all sounds really common sense, hard but simple. Um, is there anyone out there that's, has different views on this whole thing?

[00:33:48] Adam: Well, yeah, I mean, you get a lot of, I mean, first of all, we talk about design thinking and if we're, if we're really frank about what it is, I mean, we talk, it's nothing new under the sun, right? That like, you know, Ideo made that term pretty popular. And then it was kinda all over the HBR articles and it, and it became a thing, right? And then there were a whole lot of people going, well, it doesn't work, and it hasn't, design thinking is dead or long-lived design. It's nuts. It's, it's, you know, it's far as like a, you know, a management phrase or concept, there's plenty of people to tell you it's garbage and is great. But if you boil it down, understanding your customer before you start coming up with solutions for them. Coming up with solutions, with people, with diverse perspectives, and then testing those solutions based on the assumptions that are built into 'em early so you don't have to fix these things after you've sunk loads of time and resources into developing.

[00:34:46] Adam: Those principles, I think are timeless. And I think they've been around forever and I think as human beings we've been pretty crappy at doing those things naturally. You know, those bad habits I think kind of come with our hardware and I think that, you know, trying to steer around those is, yeah, I, I, I don't think if, if anybody who says it's garbage, I say, Okay, refer back to the principles and I'd be hard pressed to find anybody who would disagree that those fundamental principles, aren't, aren't gonna help you out in the long run.

[00:35:21] Dan: So, where should a team start? If you've got a listener thinking, this sounds good, what's, what's something they can do to just move in this direction if they

[00:35:30] Adam: Well, there's this wonderful website called treehouse 

[00:35:34] Dan: This sounds very, very good indeed. Tell us more about that 

[00:35:37] Adam: The shameless plug. Um, no, i, I, as far as where is, where, where to start. Um, there is so much out there now. I know when we first started out I think a lot of these design methods were sort of the domain of this elite class of, you know, innovation designing folk with, you know, funky glasses and wearing all black and stuff. But I think it's, it's become so democratized. It's, it's, there's so many free resources out there.

[00:36:07] Adam: I tell you, one of my favorite books actually is by, uh, Jeanne Liedtka who we work with. This book's about 10 years old. I'll hold it up here. Designing for Growth. I know you can't see it, but it's a classic. And also Experiencing Design is another book by the 

[00:36:24] Dan: Ah, perfect. We'll put links in the show notes for those two Adam, so perf good 

[00:36:30] Adam: Great way in, um, designkit.org is something that I am Ideo put out a few years ago. It is a wonderful collection of methods, videos, how to use certain templates, all totally free. And there's, there's tons, tons of stuff to help you get started.

[00:36:48] Dan: Well, I'm sure people want to, after hearing Adam, thank you so much for giving us a, a, a whistle stop tour of this, as you say, this transformational approach, which if more people can bring, build it into their everyday practice as you, I like the way you said it, sort of goes against some of our default settings, but makes us, uh, definitely more open and more productive and innovative. So thank you for giving us a really pragmatic, um, tour of that today, Adam.

[00:37:15] Adam: You got it. It's been an absolute pleasure, Dan pm Thanks for having me. 

[00:37:19] Dan: So what struck me there was that this simple word of innovation, actually almost tests every aspect of teamwork or many aspects of teamwork really. It's so like a, like a pressure test, isn't it? That to do these three stages of that empathy, that ideation and the prototyping, each of those requires some sort of ninja teamwork. And if you are not good at it, if you have an, any lack of safety or inclusion, it, it's gonna find those cracks, I think, in a team. Not to say that everyone has to be perfect to do it, but it's gonna, it's a real, it's, it's a great test of a team. I think this.

[00:38:04] Pia: And I think, yeah, because what Adam talked about was that actually this is not a quick process. So if you've got slightly dodgy dynamics and a longer process, it's going to feel laborious and you're not gonna get buy-in. And you know, this is the sometimes where you just want the instantaneous gratification and we're not prepared to put in the work into it to be able to. And that's what everything around design thinking. It's this co-creation, you know, not just creation. It's like, you can have a rockstar with an awesome idea, but you don't have the rockstar team and no one owns it. You want ownership for the input. So basics, questioning, answering psych safety in the team. All those basics have

[00:38:46] Dan: Yeah and putting the ego at bay, actually that you're sort of expected to have the answers, actually sort of not knowing it's a big part of this, and learning this is what I think is gonna work in the market base, and it doesn't. And, you know, we are running a Startup. We, we've, we've, we've had to do a lot of this and a lot of sacred cows. Things that we, things that we really cherish as well, ideas that we love, you know, that, and, um, someone's gonna call, Baby ugly and you've just gotta take it. And, um, that's, that's not easy. It does, it, it, it sort of, it hits you on a number of levels, I think that.

[00:39:21] Pia: Well, I think if you're really working on the basis of what are you doing this for? And you're not doing this for an ego trip, you're doing this for the best outcome in terms of the product or for the, for the, for the, for the, um, you know, for the customer or whatever the outcome is, it's that, that is your guiding light, not you looking awesome in the delivery of a really clever idea and getting an ego trip out of it.

[00:39:48] Dan: Yeah, yeah. And who do you need to be and who do you, what do you need to do to serve that higher intent? That's a really great place to start, I think. And if you, if you're really committed to it, then you, then letting go of your own expertise is, is, is the key.

[00:40:02] Dan: And I think reflecting on my thoughts at the top of the show, a lot of that stuff, which is you have to be a great innovator, actually flies completely in the face of the, the abilities that you, what you're gonna need to actually do this. Which, which is much more about dealing with your own internal workings to be much more open, rather than just building up loads of skills to show off with. 

[00:40:21] Pia: I thought your question about generational difference was a good one. And I think that was a really good answer. And that was quite heartening too because I think we form an opinion that It's all the gen Zers all gathered around, you know, a virtual table, getting their innovation rocks off with, with design thinking. And that's not, that's not the case.

[00:40:39] Dan: Was, I was very pleased to hear that. And, and and it wasn't really, my question didn't come from, you know, us old farts can't think differently. It was the, we've been trained, you know, it's been ingrained in us for decades that we have to you know, think about complicated situations and come up with brilliant ideas and, and that's a hard habit to break. 

[00:41:02] Pia: But I think too that the fundamental concept underneath all of this is having curiosity. Curiosity to be wrong, curiosity to challenge yourself and any, and actually that is a life attribute. The more that we make ourselves right, we make everyone else wrong, and we sit on our little sort of, you know, stockpile of, of righteousness.

[00:41:24] Dan: Ever decreasing circles. 

[00:41:27] Pia: Yeah. Yeah. It's just a shocker. And I think that's what's, I think, I think there's elements of those that you could apply just in straightforward life, just trying to empathize and understand, come up with different ideas, don't, and don't put yourself into a hole of also not being able to even start, because it just looks so a ginormous

[00:41:44] Dan: because you might be wrong. And then you spend more and more time polishing this perfect thing, and uh, before you can actually even launch it. Potentially yes. Of rolling it in glitter. Excellent. A brilliant place to end the episode, but thank you to Adam for those great insights. Uh, you can find show notes and resources at squadify.net. Just click on the We Not Me podcast link. If you've enjoyed the show and I'm sure you have with Adam's input, please share the love and recommend it to your friends. If you'd like to contribute to the show, just email us at wenotmepod@gmail.com. We Not Me is produced by Mark Steadman of Origin. Thank you so much for listening. It's goodbye from me.

[00:42:23] Pia: And is goodbye from me.