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Ben Swire: Author of "Safe Danger" on the hidden reason team building efforts fail
00:50:20
In this conversation with author Ben Swire, we explore why team building desperately needs reclaiming, how an introvert ended up running a team building company, and why the quality of your relationships at work matters way more than you think.
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- [00:01]
A
You make it okay to take a risk and not succeed, but to learn something from it that's going to make the next project better. That's how you begin to build trust in a culture and in a team where people feel like, okay, this is not all hinging on success, it's hinging on progress. It's hinging on pushing our ideas. It's if this one didn't work, the next one will. That takes practice.
- [00:27]
B
As an educator, I've grown wary of the term safe spaces, especially when what many is a space to engage with dangerous ideas. But true dialogue doesn't begin with risk. It starts with trust. Our guest today, Ben Swire, wrote the book Safe Danger, which offers a thoughtful, practical approach to building the psychological safety that allows curiosity, connection, and even productive disagreement to flourish.
- [00:51]
C
Ben's career took him from the buttoned up world of financial marketing to ideo, a shift that he describes as going from Kansas into Oz. At Ideo, he discovered that world class work could be fueled by something very different than what he'd experienced everywhere else. That discovery led him to spend years exploring a deceptively simple how do you get people to fail but actually enjoy doing it? The answer became the foundation of his book and his work. It's a concept that he calls safe danger. It's that sweet spot where people feel safe enough to leave safety behind, but challenged enough to grow. In this conversation, we'll explore why team building desperately needs to be reclaimed, how an introvert ended up running a team building company, and why the quality of your relationships at work matters way more than you think.
- [01:45]
B
This is Design Better, where we explore creativity at the intersection of design and technology. I'm Eli Woolery.
- [01:51]
C
And I'm Aaron Walter. At DesignBetter, our primary mission is to produce work that helps people, people like you, refine your craft, improve your collaboration skills, and get inspired by the creative process of others. If you enjoy what we do here, the best way to support us is to become a Premium subscriber@designbetterpodcast.com subscribe. We'll return to the conversation after this quick break. Design Better is brought to you by WIX Studio, the platform built for all web creators to design, develop, and manage exceptional web projects at scale. Learn more@wix.com studio and now back to the show.
- [02:49]
B
Ben Swire, welcome to the Design Better podcast.
- [02:52]
A
Thank you for having me. I'm really excited to be here.
- [02:55]
B
It's really nice to have you. We used to be colleagues at Envision. In fact, Aaron and I have been doing a Kind of little book tour with other colleagues. We had Alison Rand on recently for her book.
- [03:04]
A
Lovely.
- [03:04]
B
Yeah, yeah. So it's been really fun to reconnect with folks. I'm also honored because I actually got to provide a little blurb for your book along with some slightly better known people like Seth Godin et al. But thank you for choosing me for that. I really have been enjoying the book and I think it's got some important stuff for folks, whether you're trying to start your own thing or working on a team right now. So we'll talk about all that and maybe the place to start is just what gave you the impetus to write a book. It's not an easy undertaking.
- [03:34]
A
So I spent much of my career in financial marketing actually, before I ended up in the design world. And that was always a bit of an odd fit. You know, I've always been a sort of creative platypus in some ways. Part philosophy, part psychology, part physics, part art, all these sort of different things. And there's not really a straight career path for a duck billed personality like that. At least that's what I thought until I ended up in the design world at this wonderful design firm called Ideo that many people may be familiar with. But that was like going from Kansas into Oz. For me, it was just an opportunity to completely reset my expectations of what work could be, what creativity could be, who I could be. And this book is really sort of a culmination of all of what I learned from IDO and then later from the business that I spun off from IDO about doing team building. And all of that sort of came to a point where I was just running into people in different companies that they should have known better. They weren't taking care of their people in the right ways. They were sort of running up against problems that they shouldn't have had. And so it felt like this book would be a nice way of helping people sort of get out of their own way. It's meant to be a book for people that know that they are ready for a change, but might be uncomfortable rocking the boat and need to find a way to be able to do that comfortably.
- [04:56]
C
Ben, you think of teams and company culture as a design problem. Where does that perspective come from?
- [05:03]
A
I mean, it comes out of my experience at ideo. IDEO treated not just the projects as a design thing to be worked through, but also the teaming of projects and the way that we work together. One of the things I noticed when I got there was that this was a place that was doing world class work that was fueled by trust and connection rather than incentives or fear, which is what everywhere else I'd ever been to ran on. And so I started talking to people about it. I was just fascinated by this, that they were able to achieve what they were able to do. And it was just a completely different way of thinking about things and looking at things. And I noticed that at the heart of it all were things like, as I said, trust and connection. These are not things that you can just hand out with bullet points and tell people, okay, now you're going to trust each other and this is how this is going to work. It's all done through experience. You know, you have to feel trust, you have to feel vulnerability to really understand it and to lean into that. And so while I was there, I started this series of sort of creative play dates that I thought of. And they were my sort of personal design challenge as I thought about how to bring this community together. And the challenge was essentially, how do you have have people fail but enjoy doing it? How do you get people to take risks without fearing the consequences, but still feel the depth of that risk? How do you find this sort of balance? And that eventually became this approach that I have which underpins all of the team building work I do with my company. Make Believe Works and became the premise and title of this book called Safe Danger. Safe Danger being essentially this sort of emotional balance, the sort of sweet spot between when people feel safe enough to leave safety behind but challenged enough to grow as a design project. It became how do I create activities? How do I rethink what team building can be to actually allow people to experience these things, where it can be practice for getting vulnerable, but without feeling exposed, where people can feel seen without worrying about being judged. What I saw at idea was that the teams were able to function in a way where they were able to ask bad questions with the confidence that they wouldn't be judged for being ignorant, but rather, if anything, respected for questioning the obvious, where they could offer bad answers with the confidence that people would take those and make them better instead of dismissing them as half assed. So these activities for me just became a way of practicing that, of building that emotional muscle memory.
- [07:36]
C
Ben, can you help our listeners just see a more concrete contrast between what you saw at ideo where there's this creative confidence and trust and kind of a welcoming environment versus what you described as what most companies, the way they operate is with incentives and fear. Are there examples that would help people see like, okay, this is how companies typically operate. Here's a different approach.
- [08:04]
A
One of the most telling differences was in how the community approached asking for help. Typically, in the corporate environment, you're always encouraged to ask for help, and nobody ever does, because they know that the moment they do, it's either marking them as incompetent at their job or they're imposing on somebody else. It's read as weakness, no matter what the words on the wall say. And when I went to Ideo, it was the complete opposite. Asking for help was a way of signaling that you wanted the best for the project and you weren't going to let your ego get in the way. Asking for help from somebody else wasn't imposing on them or burdening them with extra work. It was the highest form of respect that you could give to them. You could say to them, your insight is so valuable to me that I'm coming to you and asking for your time. And it was treated like that. And it was just a complete inversion of the way that basically the beginning of my career had been set. Another thing was just how they trusted their employees and their colleagues, the people they hired. So, for example, when I was at Morgan Stanley, I was a writer, and at some point, I counted the number of eyes that had to pass over a postcard that I wrote, and it was 60, 60 pairs of eyes before that postcard could get a stamp. Because it was a combination of making sure that the tone was in line with the branding, that it was legally and compliant enough. And then, of course, there were all the different hierarchies that needed to have their fingerprints on it to justify their presence. When I went to Ideo, I was put on a project with a major, major client, and I was asked to create a presentation deck of all the work that we'd been doing. And I did. What writers do you ask for? You know, what's the brand voice, what's the tone? Can I have see some past examples so I can fit it in? And my project lead just sort of looked at me and said, your voice is ideo's voice. That's why we hired you. And that shift of where they didn't want me to blend in, but they wanted me to help them stand out, put such a different mindset and spin on the work that we were doing. It made it part of my purpose, and it allowed me to really grow my own vision and point of view and voice all that, instead of sublimating it to the bigger corporate brand. And that just made all the difference in the way I approached design, the ideas that I offered up, the quality of the solutions that we reached, all of that, because people were encouraged to bring their full selves to the work. As I said, they weren't asked to fit in, they were asked to stand out. And the culture was open enough and curious enough that that could work.
- [10:44]
B
So I spent roughly a decade and a half of my career almost in academia, and there are some ideas there that I think are worth examining, if not reevaluating. And one of those is the idea of a safe space where oftentimes certain topics and ideas are almost barred from discussion. And there's a social psychologist named Jonathan Haidt that talks about this in his book the Coddling of the American Mind. Folks are interested in that topic, and I think the intent of these spaces is always good, but the consequences are not always good because a lot of graduates that go through these experiences come out and aren't able to debate topics they don't disagree with or maybe even take the opposing side of an argument to try to gain empathy for the other side. Maybe you could talk a bit about how some of the principles in your book address this idea.
- [11:30]
A
Yeah, I mean, I absolutely agree. I think many companies, many organizations, much of our culture at this moment has confused comfort with safety. Leaders often assume that if people look happy, if they're smiling in the meetings, if they're enjoying the perks and not rocking the boat, then the culture is safe. But comfort is not the same as safety. Real safety is when people can speak the truth, their vision of things. They can challenge an idea or admit that they don't know something without fear of backlash. The culture is strong enough to support a multitude of voices. Creativity and innovation all comes from friction. It's a carefully cultivated type of friction. You know, we only want people to burst into flames and, you know, devolve into arguments, but it comes from different ideas, ping ponging around and pushing each other and growing and all of that. I once worked with a company that had gorgeous offices, free meals, meditation pods, very comfortable emotional culture. You know, everybody was to be respectful no matter what, which was a lovely sentiment. And on the surface, it looked like a perfect place to work. But they came to me after a product launch had failed and they learned that several employees had seen problems with it or flaws or things weeks earlier, but had stayed silent because, as one person put it, that's not how you get promoted around here. So the company had built comfort, but not safety. And the cost was innovation that never made it to daylight. In my book, part of what I talk about is how to practice that friction in a safe way that is productive and gets you to the next level without sort of lulling people into too much safety, which I think is a great, great danger, because it means that you lose your edge, you lose what makes you you. Part of the idea in the book is finding that balance. Creating an activity or creating a culture have enough trust, have enough curiosity, that when they disagree with people, rather than taking it personally or attacking, they ask, why? Why do you think this way? Explain it to me. And that conversation can happen in a way that's really productive and leads to new insights and leads to pushing either people into new ideas or helping them understand their own better.
- [14:02]
C
Can you walk us through how you think about safety and risk? Because there's this dichotomy that's at the heart of your philosophy and the book. You're talking a bit about safety and why it's so important and how it can. If it goes off the rails, it can be a big problem. What we haven't touched on yet is risk and how these two things fit together. How do you think about the complementary nature of these two forces?
- [14:26]
A
I think of risk on a spectrum, and I try to come up with risks that are personal but not threatening. So I'll ask people to share personal anecdotes and stories from their past, but that while they are reflective of who they've grown into and who they've become, they're not invasive or intrusive. We have, you know, an activity that is built around the person who inspired you to become who you are. Essentially, I have some giant Eames cards, and I have them tell the story of this person in two ways, with words and with images that they put onto these giant slotted cards. They put all these things together, then we use those cards to create a sculpture. And then we get people to talk about these people that inspired them. And what we find when we do that is what comes out are they think they're talking about this image that they've drawn or the card that they've made, and what they're really sharing are their values and their perspective on life and their priorities. You start to come out, who do they admire? Why did they admire that person? Have they been able to live up to that person and the example they gave them? Have they been able to implement that in their own life? That's the kind of risk that brings out stories. It brings out a degree of exposure from people that they're not used to experiencing at work or with colleagues that usually it takes a little while to get to those levels. So we try to push them into that. They're stepping outside of their comfort zone, but they're not in danger of anything. And it's that balance that we have found is really useful and helpful. And the premise of the book is not that you should avoid all risks or you should take all risks. The premise of the book is here are some ways of practicing taking risks so that you can find your own line when it's too much and too little. So that when risks actually do come and face you in the real world, you're not caught off guard, the muscles are strong, you know what you're willing to risk, you know what you're willing to take, and you can go forward. So the whole idea here is about practice. How do you practice these things?
- [16:30]
B
You've mentioned trust a few times and there was a study done by Google probably over a decade ago called Project Aristotle, where in a kind of typical googly fashion, they tried to quantify like what makes a high performing team. And they came up with an answer that I think most of them didn't expect at the time, but that it's actually trust and sense of psychological safety that makes for a high performing team. So it feels like certainly once you've developed that trust that some of these activities and practices would, and as you mentioned, it's sort of an iterative thing, would become easier over time. But if you're new to a team or a team is just getting started with these types of practices, what are good ways to start building trust?
- [17:08]
A
Project Aristotle is one of my favorite case studies. I just find it fascinating. And it starts with a mindset shift. You know, I think most places celebrate what people do, not who they are. And that's efficient, but it's really brittle because if your value depends on flawless output, then everyone's going to hide their messier truths. But it's those truths that the exact same things that people need to share to really collaborate and innovate and grow. So if you're trying to build trust, it means helping people show up on a different level so that they can share sooner and ask the naive question. So one of the things about that is to rethink how you reward people. You know, I've worked with lots of different organizations and they want more innovative cultures and they want more collaborative cultures and we put all sorts of things into place and then we ask them, well, how are you rewarding people, how are you promoting them, how are you recognizing them? And it's always essentially based on success, which makes perfect sense. But it's the equivalent of only rewarding the people who hit a home run and nobody else for anything on the playing field. And unless you're able to figure out a way to reward the people that are assisting, those people that are adding to it, that are contributing to it, that you make it okay to take a risk and not succeed, but to learn something from it that's going to make the next project better. That's how you begin to build trust in a culture and in a team where people feel like, okay, this is not all hinging on success. It's hinging on progress. It's hinging on pushing our ideas. It's if this one didn't work, the next one will. That takes practice.
- [18:46]
C
What does vulnerability look like in a design review or a design sprint or a retrospective? These kind of common team rituals that are in most companies these days, they.
- [18:59]
A
Have become very common. And I think the difference between a good one and a less effective one is exactly vulnerability and trust. I think there are these sort of sprints and these brainstorming things. In cultures where people think up their ideas ahead of time and they come and they all bring their best ideas, that's less collaboration and more like a potluck. You know, it's everybody sort of bringing their best things. I think what really works is when people bring their various ingredients and they're vulnerable about that, so that you can make something together that nobody would have seen ahead of time. And that vulnerability can take different forms. It can take the form of either being comfortable saying, I don't know where this goes, but this keeps making me think about the lost city of Atlantis. I don't know why, but I'm thinking about legends and things grow, whatever it might be, that you're comfortable not knowing where things are going and offering those up, and that everybody else respects you for taking that risk. And then there's also. What I have found to be much more powerful is the deep vulnerability of sharing your own sort of dents and scratches that have made you who you are over your life. Nobody gets through adolescence unscathed. We are all carrying our own baggage, and most people learn in middle school mostly to hide that. We learn to sort of sand down the edges of who we are and to treat that damage and those problems as liabilities that are to be hidden. But what I found was in doing design work is that they're often our best source of insights, of creative solutions, of meaningful connection. The poet rumi has this lovely line that the crack is how the light gets in. And so a big thread in my work is helping people value rather than hide, those parts that they've apologized for or been told are weird. So, you know, I did a project once that was for a conference, and I am a deep, deep introvert. I loathe going to conferences. I find them emotionally exhausting. The constant small talk, the handing out the business cards, it is just the worst for me. And I vented about that at some point. And I started saying, you know, I want something meaningful. I don't just want to leave a conference with a series of business cards that I could have gotten anywhere else. You know, if I'm going to talk to somebody, I want to understand them. I want to know what the real motivation is, not what they've been told to say or their party line. And so the team that I was with, unbeknownst to me, all felt the same way. None of us had said anything about this, but it all started coming out of like, yeah, we all know what we expect when we go to a conference, and it is superficial, and how do we change that? And so from there, we designed an entirely different experience. We had a bunch of different tables, but it was all about helping people reveal something that was meaningful to them. One of the things we had was a sort of secret panel that people could slide around and they could write down whatever they were really honestly feeling in this moment, or the truth that everybody in this room knew but wouldn't say, or the thing that they wish somebody would say, whatever it was. And then we broadcast it on these screens. We anonymized it so no one could tell whose was whose. But the things that came up were fascinating. It was a conference for people that were city planners essentially involved with that. And some people were lamenting the lack of art and beauty in their life. And somebody wrote, my job is to lie to the right people, and I'm good at it. Somebody else wrote, we're all dying day by day. Why are we wasting our time not doing our best work? All of this stuff started coming out, and it was much more poetic. It was much more personal. It was very unexpected for people walking around the floor of this thing, but it was different. It was a completely new experience. And people flocked to our place because it was such an unusual thing. And that all came out because our team was willing to be vulnerable about where they were coming from.
- [23:01]
C
We'll return to the conversation after this quick break. Design Better is supported by Miro do you know what is the most difficult aspect of a career in tech? It's getting people to collaborate effectively. But there's a way to make it easier. Miro is the smart canvas that brings everyone together to explore product ideas, lay out marketing plans, and sort through the details of all your product releases in one space, no matter where they are in the world. Miro AI can turn unstructured data, like sticky notes or screenshots, into usable diagrams, product briefs, data tables, and prototypes in minutes. You can also generate roadmaps, diagram tables, content, and more with Miro AI dropping it all into a collaborative canvas. Whether your role is in ux, design, ops, product management, marketing, engineering, or anything adjacent, Miro will help you be better at your job because it makes it easier to work together. Help your teams get great done with miro. Check out miro.com to find out how. That's M I R O.com and now back to the show.
- [24:21]
B
I have a few hobbies like surfing and diving in our area that have a certain amount of inherent risk, I guess you could say. Water's cold. There are big animals swimming around from time to time, especially this year, with sharp teeth. But I do find that participating in those activities really focuses me and actually maybe counterintuitively releases anxiety or relieves anxiety. And I know Aaron has a practice around martial arts that maybe does some similar things for him.
- [24:48]
C
Very much so, yeah.
- [24:50]
B
So, Ben, do you think having a sense of danger in a work or team environment in these sort of smaller controlled doses achieves a similar outcome?
- [24:59]
A
Absolutely. It's the exact same practice, just on a different level. It's about pushing yourself a little bit. You know, every time you take a risk, whether it's diving or martial arts or in the conference room, your nervous system updates its assessment of the situation and says, okay, this place is a little safer than I thought it was initially. And that's why we found that this sort of practice and these sort of activities really work because they rewire fear into trust little by little. And it builds over time. Every time you take a little step forward, the next time you go, you start from a little farther forward. And people learn that it's okay to open up. They learn that it's okay to share a little bit of themselves. It's okay to be a little unconventional. And when that's rewarded or acknowledged by a team leader or a community, it allows them to go even farther. And I think that's a big piece of what makes the difference between enjoying your work and just waiting out the clock. Your examples were about, you know, hobbies and pastimes and things that you love to do and are passionate about. But I do think that can also apply to work. If you have a sense of purpose in what you do, if you can find a sense of where you matter, where what you're doing matters, where you feel valued, not just for the work that you contribute, but for yourself, what you bring as a person. And so being able to create a culture where that is valued, as I said, where people are valued for who they are rather than just what they can do on their resume, it does begin to blur those lines between a place that you clock in and clock out to a place where you get to be your best self and you get to flex the muscles that mean something to you.
- [26:46]
C
There have been multiple times where I have seen a leader, in particular, somebody in a leadership position who chooses to be vulnerable, chooses to put something out there, and it's like a little too much. It's like too much information with the intention of trying to create trust and empathy and like, hey, I'm just like you. It ends up undermining their credibility as a leader. How do you know the limit? This line where danger and risk that you describe has tipped from productive discomfort into harmful territory.
- [27:24]
A
It obviously varies from workplace to workplace and industry to industry. If you're in medical bioscience, you know, there's a much less forgiving margin for making errors and things like that. And that is one of the questions that I get most from leaders, which is how far is too far, how open is too open. You know, they need me to be a center of gravity. They need to trust that I know what I'm doing. And if I share too much about what I'm nervous about or scared about, then that's not going to work. What I've often suggested with leaders is that they start with things that don't really matter, but that does broadcast a point of view. It's not necessarily about big confessions or being a completely transparent human being, but it's more about, I think, creating daily signals where you invite dissent. You admit some mistakes. You frame experiments as learning opportunities to show that risk is welcome and that failure isn't fatal. You know, a VP I worked with once had told me that she'd started a new ritual where at the beginning of each week's meetings, you know, their Monday morning meetings, she would share just one thing that she'd gotten wrong the past week, a misstep that she'd misspoken in a meeting or she'd missed a train stop. These were not big confessions, and at first people weren't quite sure what to make of it. But she said that over time, the consistency of that really shifted the climate, that people began offering up their own missteps, and that opened the door for sort of faster learning and sharper debate, and that eventually, over about a quarter's worth of this work, she saw a noticeable shift in the way that the team solved problems, worked together creatively, and that there was just a bit more boldness in the way that they showed up to work.
- [29:11]
B
We're in an era right now where the tech industry is kind of being upended by AI and other factors. And what was maybe once considered a safe path, getting a job at a Google or a Facebook is no longer so certain or so predictable. In addition to team building, do you think the principles in your book can help people that are looking at maybe an alternate career path?
- [29:33]
A
I hope so. I mean, the book is about team building and how to use that to help people really uncover the parts of themselves that they've buried. But it is also meant for individuals. It's meant for people to read through and to help them figure out who they really are, what they really want to do, what's really important to them. And I think that is going to be incredibly valuable, especially as AI gets better at doing some of our more repetitive tasks and more programmable tasks. That ability to, again, embrace the dense and broken parts of yourself that make you unique and give you insights and perspectives, that's something AI can't fake. It can't do that. It doesn't have, you know, for lack of a better word, it doesn't have pain, it doesn't have a history to draw from and say, how would I do this differently? AI is really great at converging on best practices. What it's not great at is diverging based on hunches and looking for surprise. You know, if you fed it the first, you know, three albums of the Beatles, the next one wouldn't be Sgt. Pepper's. It wouldn't know how to get there. You need personal experience to be able to create surprise, to really surprise yourself, to surprise the others, to jump the tracks of thought. And so I think as people are able to come to terms with the parts of themselves that they've been hiding or have been scared to share, as they get more comfortable speaking their own insights or admitting what they're really feeling, I think that makes them all the more valuable in the workplace because they stand out as human beings with unique insights and perspectives that can't be mirrored by an algorithm.
- [31:14]
C
When I think back about my career and some of the hard conversations or the moments where I maybe had some disagreement with leadership, I think that my tendency was I've never been a shrinking violet. I've always sort of spoken up. But there were definitely times where I think I could have spoken up more vocally and pushed back on leadership. But something a colleague told me at one point, sort of a growing experience like, okay, you might think that's a better idea, and it is a better idea, but that person is the CEO, and that's what's going to happen. It's sort of the brute reality. How do you think about pushing back on leadership? I mean, they hire us because we have ideas, not just because we're the hands to do the work, but because we have input and experience and talent. How do you think about pushing back on leadership in a way that's respectful and can be heard?
- [32:15]
A
First of all, I think the key piece of that question is be heard, because a big piece of that depends on the ears that you're speaking to. There are leaders that just don't want to hear it. They're the equivalent of parents who say, because I said so. And that can be a hard mentality to break. But if you've got leaders that are open, that are thinking about it, I've always found that curiosity, as opposed to confrontation, is the best way of going. It may be as simple as saying, what if we're missing something? Or what else might be true. The best leaders I've ever been with have always said, let's carve out three possible paths before we make a choice, and let's see where we could go with this. But by opening questions themselves and pushing before they rush to solve, you know, it gives the team permission to do the same, to bring their voices through. And good leaders recognize that if you want to get the most from your people, you got to let them speak from the people side. As I said, I think curiosity is the most powerful way of pushing back while being respectful, because you're asking to understand what it is that you're missing. And then you can both find a way to disagree. Say when you're both on the same level playing field, you say, well, I like chocolate and you like vanilla, and we're never gonna see the same, but I can at least understand what you like about chocolate and what I like about vanilla. And then, okay, now we can make a choice that's informed and we can move forward without feeling that we've been ignored and resented.
- [33:38]
B
I wanted to talk for a minute about making the book. So we got an early copy which unfortunately did not yet have the illustrations in it. But from what I understand, you worked with a wonderful New Yorker cartoonist to do the illustrations. And Aaron and I have collaborated with a different cartoonist named Jason Chatfield on some projects illustrations, which was great. So what was that process like and what did you learn from it?
- [33:58]
A
So, yes, I collaborated with a wonderful cartoonist, Juan Estacio, who's also a designer, and I met him through idea. We used to be on teams together before he went to be a cartoonist full time. It was a really useful and fascinating process because his mind works very differently than mine. And what I was hoping for from the cartoons was that they would bring some of the ideas that were more intellectual. You know, the whole point of what I do with the team building with the book is trying to make things experiential. Trying to move insight from being information in your head to being behavior in your body and your natural behaviors, your first answers to things. And that's hard to do when you're just writing a book and it's all words. So what we were hoping to do with our cartoons was make it more of an intuitive, experiential way of absorbing some of the key points in the book that with humor and laughter. If anything, that might be the headline that you take away. And then the writing in the book just sort of breaks it down and explains what we're talking about a bit more. But ultimately, so that when, you know, if you ever find yourself in a board meeting where somebody's saying one of these things, you can think to yourself, oh, I've heard this before, and I'm not going to just take it at face value that it would create some distance between the behaviors that we're also used to and the idea that there might be other ways of looking at it. I think that's the value of humor and play is that it does open up the possibility for new ways of thinking. And so working with him forced me to really distill the point that I wanted to make and then do it in a way that could be absorbed quickly. And with his wry sense of humor to give somebody an experience that they felt in their body, that they would laugh at, that it would surprise them. And like I said, then they can read the chapter as long as they walk away with the learning. That's what we're hoping to share.
- [35:52]
C
You talk about seven qualities in the book. That drive connection and innovation. And those seem like a really important part of your philosophy. Could you walk us through those?
- [36:04]
A
Yeah. The first part of the book focuses on safe danger itself, this mentality, this approach. And the second half of the book is about where I've seen it best applied, where you can get you the most of what you're looking for. So going back to the Google study, you know, when we talk to leaders and organizations, you know, they want things like productivity and they want innovation and they want a more collaborative culture, but they don't really know how to get get there because they keep telling people to be more productive, but they don't know the mechanisms that are going to get them there. And what I had seen working with IDEO and then later with make believe works were that a lot of these qualities they were after were actually fueled by very sort of counterintuitive things. So I tried to pull out the most counterintuitive insights that I'd seen that I'd seen be most useful and pair them. So if you want to inspire productivity, what I've seen be the most effective to that is to inspire joy, is to fuel joy. So I'll talk about that in the book and describe where it's been, how I've seen it, where it's come from, and then how you can bring some to your workplace. It's not that every place is going to be Willy Wonka's factory. There's all sorts of jobs and some of which are not particularly inspiring. But it doesn't mean that the jobs themselves have to bring you joy, but the community around you, the place that you're in, there can be lots of different levels of joy. When we talk about innovation, it's not about just having more brainstorms. It's about teaching people how to be curious in a way that's often deeper and more revealing than they're used to. It's not just about asking the questions, it's about even realizing that there are questions to ask. And that takes a degree of humility. I talk about vulnerability, which we've chatted about in here already. And you know, I think connection is one of the big ones. Meaningful connection with other people, that's what really makes the difference. When people feel seen by the people around them, that's when you really build a community of collaboration and trust. One of the trickiest ones that I wrote about was about optimism. I think optimism generally gets a bad rap. People think about glasses half full, glasses half empty. It's sort of often conflated. With a sort of naivete or just a wishful thinking or denial. But the kind of optimism that I saw really build resilience, which is what I hear from clients often looking for, is the type of optimism that recognizes that just because you're in a dark tunnel doesn't mean you're never going to get out. It's the kind of optimism that can think back on other liminal moments when you were between things or unsure of where you were going to go and recognize that you've gotten out of this before and that that's not a guarantee that you're going to get out of it this time, but it is a promise that you had the skills last time and that you still have them, and that those things, you can apply them, that you are not beholden to the whims of whatever else may be coming your way. I talk about trust in the book, and we've talked about that and how important I think that is. And then the last chapter is about creativity, because one of the questions that I'm often hit with is I want people to be ready to go even if they're hit by something they don't expect. To me, the best answer to that is having a team that knows how to think creatively. It's not about somebody who studied the manuals or knows best practices, because the whole thing about the unexpected is it is unexpected. It's not expected. It's not the things that you planned for. So having a mindset, having a community that knows how to take leaps, to think laterally, to push beyond the obvious, to question the obvious, to explore, that's how you best prepare yourself for the curve balls coming. Because you've got an adaptive culture full of elastic minds that know how to adapt when things go sideways.
- [39:48]
B
We've talked a little bit about some of the activities that are in the book that you say are important to shaping culture and behaviors. Maybe you could share an example activity that somebody might find when they read the book.
- [39:58]
A
One of the team building activities we do is called Homegrown Heroes. And the premise behind this is that, as I said, we all sort of bring more to work than just our resumes. Alongside the things that we've studied and think about, there are also these sort of emotional superpowers that we've all gained because of our own unique lives. You know, for example, I have a friend who's really great at dealing with difficult people, and that's because she was raised in a really difficult household. I have another friend who's Great at making new friends wherever he goes. Because his was a military family, they moved around a lot, and he just had to learn how to connect very quickly. But regardless, everybody has these in sort of different ways. And the point of this activity is to help people share those with each other at work, which they don't usually do. So what we do is we put people into small groups of three or four, and we have people share one of these emotional superpowers of theirs and their origin story. So not just I'm really well organized, but I'm really well organized because I'm the oldest of six kids, and it was up to me to make the peanut butter sandwiches and get everybody into the bath on time, whatever it may be. But after they've shared those, we give it this playful twist, and we ask them to turn that emotional superpower into a comic book superpower. So, you know, my friend who's good at dealing with difficult people, she's really hard to offend. So maybe her comic book version of it is bulletproof skin or Teflon skin, where everything slides off her like water off a duck. If your superpower is empathy, maybe that becomes magic glasses that let you see through someone else's eyes. Regardless, everybody comes up with their thing. And then what we do is we have the groups combine their powers into a single superhero, and they build an action figure using sort of artist mannequins and craft supplies. And they use these materials as a way to think through the nuances and implications of all these emotional qualities that often were hard earned through challenging times in their lives. But in this context, they become something to celebrate and be proud of and to show off. If anyone wants to, you can go to our website, makebelieveworks.com and see some of the images, some of the things that people have created. And they're marvelous. They're just playful and fun. And beneath that, though, is this deeper thing that's happening, which is people reflecting on their own lives and their own behaviors. And it allows people to get vulnerable in a really safe way and to recognize the strengths in their colleagues that might have gone unnoticed or unrecognized. People tend to know each other in a professional sense really well. But oftentimes, these more personal qualities go unspoken or unrecognized. And this is a safe and playful way to change this. And so, by the end, the team has built this great catalog of all the unique human qualities in the room. Not just the resumes, but the qualities that the team can bring to bear as a Whole and, you know, it's amazing reminder of why collaboration can be so powerful and a great shortcut for who they might want to start with.
- [42:55]
C
Just want to acknowledge what a cool job you have. This is really interesting to be able to go into teams and, like, just help people understand one another. I've had jobs where I worked with people for nearly a decade, and at the end, when I was walking out of the building, I felt like, gosh, I don't really know those people personally. And looking back, that's a disadvantage. It's a real disadvantage. And we probably could have done better work together had we really gotten to know each other. The way that you're helping people, that's what we hope.
- [43:29]
A
I think there's this mentality that Covid broke culture, and we need to get back to the office to bring culture back together. And if I'm being honest, I don't think we lost that much when we lost the water cooler. I think that was about talking about latest episodes of Game of Thrones and what the weather was gonna be like over the weekend. But people sharing and connecting is hard because it does ask you to risk something. It asks you to be vulnerable. It's helpful to have a container. That's why we like to use play for this. It lowers the cost of that risk. It changes the equation and creates a space where the stakes are lighter and people can experiment and improvise and open up a little bit more than they might otherwise. I think of play and creativity is sort of like oven mitts with my teams. You know, it's a way of handling dangerous material so that you can really get somewhere with it. It's a pretty cool job. It's also a bit of God's joke on me because I am a deep, deep introvert with a pretty deep cynical streak.
- [44:30]
C
And not anymore, you're not.
- [44:33]
A
Yes, this is very much. I really resent the sitcoms of my childhood because I had been led to believe that by the time I was 35 or Stephen and Elise Keaton's age or whatever, that I'd have everything f figured out. And the fact that I still have to grow and still have to learn and still have to stretch my own boundaries. There's a big part of me that resents that, that feels like, come on, haven't I done this enough? But on the other hand, it's been marvelous. My experience at ideo, my experience writing this book, has been one step out of my comfort zone after another. The fact that I'm running a team building company right now where I walk into a room and I'm responsible for other people's energy and guiding them through this. As I said, it is not what I had planned, but it is really the culmination of all my different platypus elements come to bear. So I feel a sense of purpose and a sense of joy every day that I hope for everybody else.
- [45:30]
B
Ben, what are you currently reading or watching or experiencing that's particularly inspiring to you right now?
- [45:38]
A
I'm currently re watching Lost with my youngest who's 13, which is a fascinating experience because it's reminding me of what it's like to watch somebody be exposed to mystery and challenges and not know how to get the answers. So there's this patience, there's anticipation, there's deep curiosity. And watching how those characters are structured to make you care about them is also something that I take away when I think about. Okay, what's the next activity I'm going to add? And it actually has inspired one. I'm thinking right now about how most people find themselves in a transition moment. It may be that you're in a new job, it may be that you're about to become a parent, maybe that your kids are leaving. It may be that you're. Whatever. Everybody is in some form of transition and that's causing them stress. And so trying to think about how to pull that out and use that and tell that story was sparked by some conversations that my 13 year old and I had about the dynamics between Locke and Sawyer and Jack on that show.
- [46:37]
C
Ben, have you already broken it to your 13 year old that this leads to grave resentment and disappointment?
- [46:44]
A
I haven't. I'm curious to see how that shows up too. That's part of my parenting style, is to let them fall and then watch how they cry.
- [46:54]
C
Isn't this great? Oh, it's terrible at the end.
- [46:58]
A
It's part of the fun, definitely.
- [47:00]
B
I'm doing a similar thing with Stranger Things, which I had already rewatched with our daughter, who's now 14. But now I'm rewatching with my son, who's 10. As the seasons go on, it gets a little bit more mature and scary. And so we're, I think, on the third season now just a bit scarier than the prior one. I'm always like, this is a little much for a 10 year old, maybe, but he seems cool with it, so keep forging.
- [47:21]
C
As long as they sleep at night, it's worth it.
- [47:23]
B
Keep going. Yeah, exactly.
- [47:25]
A
It is. It's marvelous to watch a mind suddenly imagine things that it hadn't occurred to it. And kids, especially at that age, I think it's so much more important to keep that going. That 13, 14, 15 year old age is when the brain starts switching from an explorer mindset to an exploit mindset. What they call like their brain structurally shifts and you begin limiting your options and sticking with the stuff you're good at and cutting off all sorts of avenues. But what I hope and what I believe is you just have to keep feeding that skill set in those kids to help them remember how to be explorers and how not to completely relinquish that mindset as their mind physically shifts and changes. So that's been fun too.
- [48:10]
C
Ben, where can people learn more about you, the work that you're doing, and your new book?
- [48:15]
A
MakeBelieveWorks.com is the hub of everything that I do and love. I also have a website, benjaminswire.com if you'd like to learn a little bit about me personally, but make believe works is the best way to go.
- [48:30]
B
Awesome. Ben well, thank you so much for being on the show and thanks for creating this book.
- [48:33]
A
Thank you so much for having me. This was just a delight.
- [48:41]
C
This episode was produced by Eli Woolery and me, Aaron Walter, with engineering and production support from Brian Paik of Pacific Audio. If you found this episode useful, we hope that you'll leave us a review on Apple, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to finer shows. Or simply drop a link to the show in your team slack channel designbetterpodcast.com it'll really help others discover the show. Until next time.