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Culture Change at Scale: How Design Gym Transforms Organizations by Talking to Employees | Andy Hagerman
01:12:21
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- [00:04]
A
There's a lot of polarizing topics in the employee employee relationship right now. Cost of living, skyrocketing diversity, inclusion, racism, safety. No one is feeling that more in your company than the folks who are standing on the front line Understanding how those risks and these polarizing topics actually show up through the lived experience of your employees. It gives you such a more grounded view for understanding how to take action on them. I think in moments of complexity and change and ambiguity, which we're all squarely in the thick of right now, getting closer to your people is the best path forward to navigating a lot of that.
- [00:45]
B
Welcome to the Work for Humans Podcast. This is Dart Lindsley. As co founder of the Design Gym, which is a design consultancy, Andy Hagerman has spent over a decade applying the tools of design to the challenge of creating work that aligns employee needs with business strategy. In the last 10 years, his consultancy has trained over 20,000 individuals and partnered with over 300 organizations including Global leaders such as Marriott, Kellogg, Cisco and hp. In this episode, Andy and I talk about the Design Gym's work in general, but in particular we dive very deep into Andy's latest case study, which is all about designing the experience of retailers for a major brand. We discuss key tools and principles of employee design research, integrating employee life outside of work with working hours, insights from research, journey mapping and shadowing, how retail experts drive business success, alternatives to product managers, as well as many other topics. If you enjoy today's episode, make sure that you subscribe to hear more content like this. And now I'm very excited to present my conversation with Andy Hagerman. Andy Hagerman, welcome to Work for Humans.
- [02:13]
A
Thanks so much for having me. Dart. Excited to be here.
- [02:15]
B
I'm excited to have you here. In particular, we're going to be getting really deep into the design of work. You're the co founder, the managing partner of the Design Gym and the Design Gym is a design house that has been establishing a work experience design practice. And so we're going to look at some case studies and it's not going to be theory, we're going to talk a lot about methodology because that's important to how we roll these sort of things out. But we're also going to be talking about specifics of the methodology. So I'm very excited about what proportion of what the Design Gym does is work related.
- [03:01]
A
It goes in parallel to kind of our journey as a company. So we've been around for about 13 years and our journey I think tracks very well some of the points of view and the articles you've written in terms of this two sided business model and bringing tools from product design into workplace design and employee experience design. When we started it was explicitly, probably zero percent. We were really focused on training on design thinking tools and creative leadership and facilitation. But it was almost always in service of creating new products, new growth mechanisms, new service design. And that was what carried our business for probably the first half of our life coming into the late 2010s and such. And over the past seven or eight years, I think we've really seen a transition towards more work, focused work. And it's been very organic and exciting for us. But it's also where we've seen the biggest challenges and the biggest opportunities is less on the outside of the house of creating new products or technologies or experiences for customers. And it's more about what is really blocking most organizations on the inside. So I would say today, Most probably about 70 to 80% of our work is focused on the inner workings of organizations, often in service of business outcomes. I think that's something that we're very mindful of is it's never work design or culture for work design or culture's sake. It's always in service of where the business needs to go. But the vast majority of our work is focused on the inside of an org today.
- [04:32]
B
And was the entree into that, from the traditional customer to the employee customer, was it through service design? And the reason I ask is that product design doesn't automatically think this way. But service design has been very clear for a couple of decades that great service comes from happy people in the workforce. And so I'm wondering if that was the doorway.
- [04:59]
A
I'd say that movement, it was an interesting moment in the 2015, 2016, and right around we were getting started, the world of corporate innovation and design, I think were really experiencing their moment in a very exciting way. And particularly in New York, where we were getting started was just a really vibrant scene of folks really curious about how to rethink the work they do. When we got started, there wasn't really great language applied to it. That's where we started, was teaching workshops on some of these concepts, design thinking, service design, systems thinking, things like that. But we were getting folks from all stars and stripes who were coming into our workshops and we literally had, I remember our first session, I'll never forget it. We had a brain surgeon from Memorial Sloan Kettering and a VP from JP Morgan and a seventh grade math teacher all sitting in our first Workshop and we're like, what are you guys doing here? What an eclectic mix. And they came from such different backgrounds and none of them had design in their title by a long shot in any form. But they were all really curious about how to rethink their work in more creative and collaborative and dynamic ways. And it's funny because I think that's really come full circle for us where the emphasis on product was really maybe a foray into it and corporate innovation was experiencing that and driving that. Service design, I think is a good conduit though, as we started to get into it and I think as we started to look at tools like journey mapping and Service blueprints and Moments that Matter and Personas and all of that stuff that goes along with that type of work, that was the toolkit that was and still is most obvious when we're starting to make the leap internally as we look towards process design or process redesign or value stream mapping and all these types of things that are so closely related. But this designer's toolkit hasn't actually been applied to those challenges very much at scale at least. So I think that was a good language that forayed us into that place.
- [06:56]
B
That makes a lot of sense. I want to jump right into a case study and I want to walk through the steps that you went through in this case study and ask questions about both methods and findings. And so this was a retailer and the problem statement or the challenge was how might we better understand the lived experience of our frontline employees to better inform our 10 year business and people strategy? There's so much even in the sentence.
- [07:32]
A
It'S a mouthful when you play it back. But yeah, there's a lot baked in there.
- [07:36]
B
But the main thing was the lived experience of our frontline employees because it's big. It's not their experience of HR services or facilities or something like that. What was the scope of what was being attempted here of lived experience?
- [07:57]
A
It's a bold and ambitious one and I'll maybe set a little context that led us up to that. So our work at the design gym, we really position ourselves as a strategy, culture and change consultancy. We're a boutique consultancy. We do very bespoke custom work for all sorts of organizations from HP to Marriott Hotels to Pfizer to Capital One to Cisco Systems. And our belief is that culture and ways of working look very different from organization to organization and should look very different. They deserve that designer's intentionality and rigor to really understand how to create those things that work best. For that organization. So we get to see inside of lots of organizations with this particular story, with this retailer. They are a bit of an extreme example. I'd say they were one of the rare breeds of companies who has the foresight to understand that the power of their people and investing in their people is always the best long term strategy. And that when you can get that right and you create that product market fit for your customers and your employees, that dynamic ecosystem that gets created is the best long term strategy that you can invest in. So when they talk about understanding the lived experiences of their employees, that really was the ambition they have. And I think at the heart of that is around closing the gap between who they say they are and how they show up in the world and understanding that to be able to do that well and authentically, you have to start with deep listening. And I give a lot of credit to their executive team and their chief people officer who we partner closely with, because that is truly their philosophy. And it takes a leadership team with that intentionality to tackle a challenge at that scope. So that's really what we set out to do. And I think the connection, why I brought it back to the strategy part of our framing is again, it's never just listening for culture's sake. It's never just listening for employee experience sake. We'll talk more about this, I'm sure, as we get into the details. It's really about also marrying that with where the organization and the business is going and what challenges are they facing and what big ambitious goals are they chasing in the next decade and how do we marry the lived experiences and the real world realities of their employees with some of those ambitions so they can both fuel and support one another. So that linkage is really where we were focusing in this.
- [10:25]
B
Now I want to call out something that we're doing in this conversation, which is we're not naming the organization and I just want to say why that is. Is that the more we say about the organization, the less we can say about the work. So that's one of the reasons we're being deliberately opaque about that. Was this a B Corporation?
- [10:41]
A
This was a B corporation. It was eye opening to me. We worked with a number of B corps. Our very first client was Applegate Farms and they were a notable B corp in the food space. But being able to see on the inside of a B corp is really something special because you do really feel that ethos and that value set and that accountability showing up at every single level of the organization from the Boardroom, which we've been in to the front lines of their retail stores, you see that ethos really shining through. And I think there's something there that's really special. So this organization definitely was mapped into that value set.
- [11:19]
B
First of all, that's good to hear. And it's certainly what B Corps are supposed to do. I've often seen suspected that although they had the right intent, they didn't always have the right tool set to really treat employees as a full stakeholder. And so the idea that it's B Corps that are often calling you in to say, let's work on this experience is not disappointing, which makes me very happy.
- [11:49]
A
Yeah, it closes the gap. I think you could apply that to most organizations. I think sometimes the intention can be there, but knowing what to do about it is a different question. And I think that's where organizations like ours or thought leaders who are out evangelizing some of these new models are super important.
- [12:07]
B
So in this particular case, your main contact or the person who hired you was hr, head of HR or whatever HR is called there.
- [12:15]
A
Yeah, in this case, it was a chief people officer. And we partnered intimately with their team and the employee experience. But I think when these programs work at their best, usually HR is kind of our conduit into the organization. And I say that intentionally and deliberately because I think it's important for HR teams, and the best HR leaders know this. But bringing in other advocates and allies and influencers very, very early in the process is the only way that programs like this stick and sustain. So a big part of our approach is also stakeholder engagement and not just trying to spread our wings within an organization, but actually enroll important folks in the body of work so they understand the ethos and more importantly, bring them out into the work with us. So we partnered really closely with the C Suite, the CEO, the internal communications teams, which is pretty common, very closely with the head of retail and North America and Global legal was involved at various places. The CFO was involved quite deeply. That type of stakeholder mapping is just absolutely critical. And I can't state that enough where you can have the best employee experience or culture program in the world. But if you don't have those other folks also understanding the value of it, none of it really matters.
- [13:34]
B
Yeah, that's going to be a question I ask toward the end of this case study, which is, how do you get the findings into the body and into the heart of the organization? And you started to answer it there, which has involved them. But we'll get there. So I'm going to wait. I'm going to wait on that. Well, maybe I'm not. And I'll tell you why. Because the very first step of this case study is discovery. And in discovery, it's all about alignment with the purpose of the company. It's all about, as I understand it, we're not just going out and talking to people, talking to people in the context of this business and their strategy. So that question that I was asking about, how do you get that involvement across all the stakeholders could start right there?
- [14:21]
A
I think so, yeah. I mean, it's an interesting trend we're seeing. You know, another thing, part of our work at the Design gym is we host a monthly dinner series and it's a bit of like a air quote secret society for HR leaders who are really thinking about the future of work in a meaningful way. And kind of these rebellious leaders who are extremely smart with business but also very passionate about making work better for all of us. So we use this as a bit of a listening community for ourselves. And I think the one thing we found is that kind of an insight that is resounding amongst this group is that HR is going through a transformative moment right now and they are in the midst of redefining themselves and restructuring to really take advantage of the value that they can bring to an organization. And a big piece of that is understanding the language of their business. And I think that's one of the big trends we're seeing with a lot of our clients. And this one for sure is does HR, and particularly the CHRO and the CPO understand the dominant language that moves that business forward? It might be an engineering language, it might be a sales language, it might be a marketing business, a brand business, a growth business. But understanding what that language is and then making sure that your HR organization really understands how to speak that well is absolutely critical. So that's one thing that we started paying attention to really early in this journey. And some of the nuances we were looking out for are where is the business at, what's performance, where are they going? And really getting deep into the business side of their organization. Because without that in place, none of the other culture or employee experiences are going to be able to thrive without that thriving and understanding where that's going. So that was really critical starting point. So I think that's where it starts, I think really early on is you'll probably hear the word co creation a million times in this interview and in any other thought leadership you see of mine. Is I truly believe that co creation will be the dominating factor in the world of work over the next five to 10 years. And that's co creation, both with employees and customers, and hopefully increasingly communities within which organizations operate. So we really channel that ethos in our approach as well, so that whenever we show up to do work, we're bringing over a decade of experience and our tools and our methodology and our approach. But we always walk into the room very humble, knowing that there's a lot of extremely smart folks in that room who know their business far better than us. So we leverage a lot of co creation in our approach to right off the bat, start to bring those leaders together and really practice deep listening with them. And the same way we would do with their retail employees a few months later is really just holding space for them to ask the hard questions, name the elephants in the room, share with us what's keeping them up at night. And I think the more we can understand those vulnerabilities and let them know that they are operating within a safe space and that this is their body of work to move forward. That's one of the really early places that we start to bring that to life. Shortly thereafter though, is as we're getting into project planning, this is like week one. We're immediately looking for places where we can take some of those stakeholders, whether they're leaders or informal leaders, culture influencers, and bring them into the process. So the entire way through this six month project, we've got their team hand in hand with us. And by the end of the project, if we've done our job well, we always joke we're the proud parents standing in the back and it's actually their folks who are the ones presenting the insights and talking about how impactful that research moment was or that problem framing workshop was for them. And that's like nirvana for us. That's when we know we've really hit something.
- [18:02]
B
There's a role that could be missing and I don't know if it's necessary. I think it's necessary. And that's the product manager. So if we were building a software product, there would be a product manager and there would be designers and then there'd be some engineers. The product manager. One of the things the product manager really, really, really needs to understand is the business context. And that's exactly what you were just describing is the need to understand the business context, to know how money is made in the organization, to know about profit and loss, and to understand that context. The second thing that they really need to know. They really need to know the customer. They need to know the customer so well that at some point they don't have to ask the customer anymore, that they have a model in their head of the customer that they can reliably turn to for decision making. But the question was whether you found a reliable counterpart who could own the product after you're done.
- [19:05]
A
That is such a good question. Yeah, it brings up a couple thoughts. So I think that, you know, the short answer to answer that question is yes. We found a few folks who very much played that role for us. And with us, the more honest answers, it was an ecosystem style effect. So I think there is like in this moment, the CFO and the head of retail, even down to cultural regional leadership at the retail level, became really important stakeholders for us and contributed deeply to the design of the program and how it came to life. And we even got down to the general manager, assistant store manager level at the store level. So I think that level where they understand intimately the business model, it was almost easier in some sense. At the store level, it became more complex at the headquarters level. Some of the roles that were really important, the CFO and having that financial guidance was powerful. And finding the right CFO who can be a creative instigator and provocateur and also be mindful of the business and fiduciary responsibilities of the business. Those people are the best. They're worth their weight in gold. And we had one of those in this program. And then we had an employee experience design team in house, which was a team of one. We were kind of augmenting that person. And she had been with the company for a long time and was just instrumental in connecting dots for us. And if she didn't know the answer, also exhibiting vulnerability and immediately connecting us with the person who did. So I think she played a bit of that role. But I think it's a really interesting prompt of in three years or five years, or hopefully not 10 years, but maybe 10 years, will there be a new role that emerges on the employee side of this equation that plays a similar role as the product manager? And I think that would be powerful.
- [20:53]
B
Definitely my proposal. That's definitely what I'm arguing for. And the question is, where should it reside? I argue that there should be a work experience design function that reports directly to the CEO and may or may not be a component of hr. Depends on the org who is designers and product managers. But there's this question of how distributed is the product management or the product design activity, should it be in the hands of every manager too? And so we'll get into that because as we go through, we're going to get to, okay, well, what are the expectations now of store managers? What are we going to expect of them? That's different. After this research that you've done.
- [21:41]
A
Yeah. Can I interlude one thing?
- [21:44]
B
Oh, yeah, please.
- [21:45]
A
The one trend I think we're seeing very consistently, even just over the past six months in this past year, is that there is unarguably a trend of organizations who are trying to understand how to create greater awareness and depth of understanding on the business model and the operating model of their company across their employee base. And that's so much not an HR driven exercise. It really is. I think we're seeing it come from the CEOs of saying, like, if you asked any random employee across our organization how we make money, where do we make money, what are the biggest challenges, where do we lose money, where do we spend? Most people don't know how to answer that. And I think that's becoming increasingly alarming, but also a massive opportunity. What could it unlock if we created that awareness and transparency and then empowered our employees to actually do something with it and figure out what aspect of that equation they can influence? And I think that's a big trend we're seeing right now. For sure that validates your vision, but.
- [22:46]
B
It extends it, which it does argue that if managers, and let's say in this particular case store managers are going to have a product management role, like a local product management role, they're going to need to have the tools of a product manager, one of which is business acumen and one of which is a true all the diverse stakeholders and an understanding of what all of them want. So I, I hadn't really thought about that before just how much of that knowledge now needs to be distributed and on the front line.
- [23:19]
A
I think it's everything. I mean, I really, I believe that and we've worked with a number of retailers and I get most excited working with organizations who have larger frontline populations. But I think the ethos carries across most organizations that when you can create better transparency and autonomy at all levels of the organization, I think that opens up a whole lot of opportunity now within boundaries. I think that's the other part that we haven't talked about yet is what constraints do you put on that? So that, and this is my insights coming from the world of innovation is you don't want the whole company out innovating on everything that's an unproductive model for moving forward. But when you can really clearly define here are the one challenge or the three challenges where you in this specific role can help us advance and leapfrog where we are now so that we're not just relying on a group of 30 or 40 top executives to try and figure this out and roll it down to you. I think when teams learn how to create really tight rigorous design briefs or project briefs and invite employees from all levels into solving that with them, that's where I think the untapped opportunity is both for business and and for employee purpose and meaning. Because they know exactly how they're contributing to something bigger than themselves. And that's something that most humans crave in their work.
- [24:39]
B
That's interesting. It's the idea that when we're designing the experience of work, part of the experience of work might be designing the product for customers, right?
- [24:49]
A
Absolutely.
- [24:50]
B
It's that engagement in it. So you get through the part of the project where you've done discovery, you've scoped it, you have stakeholder buy in from the right parts of the company. You go into design and the first thing you do, I'm going to go through the parts that I think are self explanatory because I don't think we have to dive into them. But you develop a research plan and I assume that you're going in very grounded so you have a scope of what you need to figure out. But beyond that you're trying not to have an idea, right?
- [25:26]
A
Yes, for sure.
- [25:28]
B
You're there to listen. And then there's employee design research. One thing it is not is surveys, it's not pulse checks. Right. It's not a lot of the traditional stuff that you'd find HR organizations doing partially because they need to scale. And it's very challenging because you've got this large organization. What are the tools of employee design research?
- [25:51]
A
My background prior to this, I came from a world of doing a lot of design strategy and specifically design research and ethnography. That's where I really fell in love with this way of working. And I think where I get most passionate. So I'll try not to get on too much of a soapbox. But I think when I share stories like this with HR leaders or even any executive leader and they hear some of the methods we've been using, they're just like, whoa, that is so different than how we approach employee listening and activation today. Tell me more. And I think for me there's a really exciting opportunity here. So when we were thinking about the research for this, pulse checks and surveys and all of that. I mean, those are great for often telling you what is happening, but very rarely are they able to tell you why something is happening. So we'll use that as part of our discovery process. Like, what are the pulse surveys? What are the results? What have you been hearing at town halls? These mechanisms for listening that can maybe point us in some directions of things we'll want to poke deeper on. But our job as design researchers is really to lift up the rocks or lift up the hood and say, what's going on under the surface here? Why are these things actually happening?
- [27:00]
B
One of the things is, though, that poll surveys already have limited the range of answers because they've limited the range of questions. And when you go in as a researcher and you're just like, no, I'm just going to follow you around, if that's okay, and I'm going to wait for the patterns to emerge, it doesn't have all the assumptions baked into it already.
- [27:22]
A
That's exactly right. I mean, that's where, as designers coming in, we're really trying to embrace the fresh perspective and the open eyes, open ears type of mindset. So when we were looking at this, we created our research plan, which might look similar to a lot of research plans. And just like, here's what we're trying to learn, definitely some surprises and nuance to that. But the real magic comes in how we then activate some of the methods that we're picking into. So there's a couple of things that we decided to lean into here to guide this. We actually created a set of research principles of how do we want to show up as we're doing this research? And this is an interesting step because it's a moment for us to fuse together the best of what we know as practitioners and consultants and experts in this space and also infuse it with the values and the ethos and the culture of the organization. And for this organization in particular, that's everything. So that's a hesitancy where it's not just for the, hey, we want to infuse your values, but for us to actually be successful in this and to go into your stores and ask permission of your employees to get vulnerable with us, we have to be representing that we're showing up as an extension of your team to create that safe space. So we had a bunch of principles. Some of them were around. Being relational was one. So we wanted to form deep relationships, not just surface relationships. We wanted to make it storyful. So storytelling was an epic part of this and that came out of that. We realized that storytelling actually is what creates change and moves the organization in the most efficient and effective ways for this particular company. So we knew that from the get go we needed to be both sharing and receiving and capturing lots of stories. Throughout the context of our research we wanted to make it collaborative. So we knew that just leaning on one way research methods was not going to be effective. That we needed to activate two way dialogues and in some cases multi stakeholder collaboration and co creation sessions. So that really helped ground us and it also gave our clients confidence to present some of the more dynamic methods we used. So we ended up going out into a number of their different retail stores or markets. We visited I think five stores across three regions and were really dropped in for an entire immersive week. This is like an all in week within their store contexts. Very intentional about planning which markets, which stores and why we go to them. Some are high volume, low volume urban environments. Particularly among the election. We're going to different political dividing criteria to help understand how that shows up. We went to outlet stores and pass through stores to get that understanding. So it was really intentional to kind of select these markets. And then during that week that we're there is we are exhibiting, you know, we've got a team of. To get real tactical, we've got a team of about three researchers from our team kind of at the design gym. And then we've got anywhere from one to three folks from the client's team, this retailer who are actually coming along.
- [30:25]
B
With us per store or per town. Because that's a lot of researchers for one store.
- [30:35]
A
Yeah, it's interesting. Two of the markets we went to, there was just one store, one to two stores that we were talking to. And then we went to a large coastal urban environment where there were multiple stores. We had a slightly larger team there of about six to eight folks between our team and our client's team.
- [30:53]
B
Okay, you were going to say who came along from the client's team and I interrupted.
- [30:57]
A
Yeah, no, I'll explain because it is a big research team. But I think it comes to life when you understand the breadth of research activities that are happening. So we'd have three researchers from our team. We have generally our employee experience lead from our client partner who's our right hand person and we're an augmentation of their work really. And then we've generally got one to three other folks from across the organization who are coming along to really immerse themselves into this experience so they can feel the power of this way of working and also hopefully evangelize some of these stories and amplify these stories as they get back into their roles. So these are folks from internal comms, these are folks from finance, these are folks from the executive team, these are folks from the head of retail, the retail division and retail leadership. So obviously being mindful on dynamics there of vulnerability and things like that, but so powerful to have those folks riding along and also giving us permission to enter some of these stores. So that's kind of the team makeup. When we get there, we're really laying out like a five day kind of immersive research experience. And day one we're going in, we're shaking hands, we're meeting folks at this point, I should mention we've already been interacting with the store's management team for weeks leading up to this session. So we're building trust with them. We're really getting their voice on what's going to make this effective, what's happening that week, what are high volume moments or stressful moments that we don't want to get in your way. Really understanding how to make this work for them. And then so when we get there, we've already got some of that rapport built up and that manager's already been advocating on our behalf in some form. From there we've got a variety of research methods that kind of unfold throughout the week. So we'll start generally by and why we have so many researchers. We'll start by doing stuar shadows. So we're, we're walking around the store, we're behind the house, we're front of house. In some cases we're actually helping to fold stock or sort stock or even just observe from afar what interactions are showing up. And also starting to meet the team members a bit from there we're starting to pull folks off. We're doing in depth interviews so anywhere between one and three hours with different folks depending on levels to really get deep on their lived experience, not just within their work context, but how this work and job fits within the larger context of their lives. And we're doing approximately four to six of these per store is the general throughout the course of the week.
- [33:29]
B
Couple things here. The medium in which you are going to create the experience later is not necessarily software. And I bring that up because so often when we do design exercises about employees, we're like, let's fix the benefits portal. This is not that the medium of design in this particular case is life. Right. It's your day, it's the air, it's the light coming in the windows, it's the traffic on the way to work. I want to lay that out as the scope. Right.
- [34:06]
A
Yeah.
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B
Which is that this is what's it like to stand right here in this building and mess with this cash register or fold clothes or keep people from stealing stuff.
- [34:18]
A
And that's where it starts. I mean, we do have some. At this point, as the researchers like, we've got a number of topics that we want to learn more about, including things like benefits and scheduling and interpersonal dynamics and personal development and growth. We do have some areas in the back of our head that we know we want to guide and eventually learn about. But we're also very much going in excited and curious to see what emerges. And it's a very emergent process in that way. And I will mention, I'm sure there's a lot of people listening right now who are like, holy smokes, my organization would never commit to this. We don't have the budget for something like this. That is totally understandable, and I think this is a benchmark example. But starting here offers a lot of places for experimentation that I truly believe any team in any organization can and should be experimenting with, both in service of keeping their employees engaged and retained, but also unlocking these levers for business success. And I think we'll get to that later in the case study. But this is kind of a benchmark example, so don't get scared away yet. I can share examples of lower form factors of this that meet organizations, I think, where they're at now with limited budgets and scopes.
- [35:39]
B
Hey, everyone. I want to let you know about some upcoming speaking events if you happen to be in the Great lakes area on September 30th. I'm keynoting the HR track at the UWEBC 27th Annual Emerging Best Practices in Technology Conference in Madison, Wisconsin. The conference pulls in some fabulous speakers to discuss topics across all of business, not just HR. Also in Oakland, California, September 17th and 18th, two of our past guests and and work for humans will be speaking at the Responsive Conference. Bree Grof will be talking about her sparkling new book Today was Fun. And Simone Stolzoff will be talking about his next book. So check it all out@revolutionive.org use promo code elevenfold. That's eleven fold to get a substantial discount. All right, hope to see you there. Yes, and I want to paint a picture, too, of what the interviews probably look like. Probably have A camera. You probably have a note taker, you probably have an interviewer. You probably have a set of standard questions that you're asking. That's a part of a script that you developed in your research plan, right? It's structured and it's memorializing the events for purposes of communication later, analysis and communication later, right?
- [37:01]
A
Yes, yes. And you can imagine, I think, all the things you mentioned. You know, we've got a tech kit, we have portable backpack, you know, documentation and tech and recording kits. So we're doing lo fi recording, photos, video, audio, and written notes as we're going through all this. And I think that notion of deep listening, anyone who's done interviewing like this, or deep listening or coaching, even understands the power of what this can feel like. And this was an outcome that was really critical that we did design for from the beginning that if this goes well, this should boost trust and loyalty in the organization at large. And that was very consistent with what we found going out and doing this type of work. We heard feedback like, wow, I've never felt so heard in my career before, or wow, this is the first time I really feel like folks are coming out to hear my needs, and I feel confident that they're going to get incorporated into what comes next. Wait, you're here to hear my ideas and insights? I've got so many of them that I've never had the right outlet to share with you. And that's not just from this client. But I think that, aha. At the end, where you have actually modeled what it looks like and feels like to do good listening, it changes someone's trajectory of how they feel about their company. And that, I think, is a huge unlock that. You don't need an expensive consultant or big program project to make that happen. Those are everyday behaviors that any leader can and should be exhibiting. But it is a skill set that you need to learn.
- [38:35]
B
That's a fantastic point. And I think it spins into something else, which is that there may be people who arrive at this company a year from now and experience the design that you helped to create and say, wow, they listened to me before I even got here. I feel like they were already listening to me because it's embodied in the design. I always feel that about OXO Kitchen Supplies. When I pick it up in my hand, I'm like, oh, they thought about me. That was really nice. They knew I want to talk about day in the life shadowing. What is it and where does it start in the day and where does it end?
- [39:15]
A
So, yeah, I can paint a picture for you of waking up at around 4am one morning in New York City and taking a subway for an hour and 15 minutes up to the North Bronx and to knock on someone's door right at around 6:15, which is when they told us they wake up and we are there with a cup of coffee and a breakfast sandwich that is their favorite. And we say, all right, let's get started. Day in the life is a really enticing research approach because it's, I think it's novel. It's very common in the product design and service design world. But when it comes to employee experience design, it's nearly unheard of. And I think it's so, so powerful. So what we're doing is we're essentially waking up and traveling into work with some of the employees, or we are finishing their shift with them and going back to their home at the end of the day. And what that does, it's kind of creating these conversations in the margins where it is really immersing ourselves into the spaces and places and headspaces where they are making that connection between their work life and their home life. And in the world of research, when you can interact with someone and learn from them in those marginal spaces, it's often where you get the most illustrative and insightful and empathic responses and conversations as you're unfolding. So we had a number of different experiences all across the country where we're out walking their dogs with these folks. We're getting tours of their apartments. We are riding the subway home. In one case, we went grocery shopping because this gentleman was cooking dinner for his daughter and he was about to meet her boyfriend for the first time. I mean, these are like the little glimpses, and those sound fun. You're like, how does that relate to work? It all relates to work so deeply because what you're actually starting to learn about is where do they choose to shop? Why are they shopping at that place? Tell me about the apartment. How long you lived here. How does cost of living actually influence how you're thinking about this? And we're not even probing at that depth, but that interplay between what this work and this job, the role it plays in their broader life, is everything. And that allows us to then go back and start to say, where are we currently meeting their needs in ways that we don't even know about and we're not talking about, but we should be proud of ourselves and double down on it because we saw it made an impact. Where are the Places where there are unmet needs, where we need to make a decision, where we can play a bigger role there, or we need to be deliberate. And maybe there's some places where we don't prioritize making that investment in those places. But those conversations are incredibly enlightening and just bring a lot of color to the beauty of the workforce as well. I mean, just so many beautiful humans that are tucked within these large organizations, and their stories are never shared or recognized in the ways they could. And that empathy and that story capture and then going back to showcase that at the organization just opens all sorts of new curiosities. And curiosities often are good conduits for unlocking change.
- [42:30]
B
Well, and great products fit into your life.
- [42:34]
A
Yes, yes.
- [42:36]
B
This coffee mug I have right here, it's a good coffee mug, but it doesn't fit in the car coffee holder. And so it's kind of not the best product ever. And so I tend to spill it on my gear shift and stuff like that. And so great work. First of all, it's not a coffee cup in your car. It's a huge chunk of your life, and it needs to fit into the rest of your life. And knowing the shape of the rest of the life and how it fits and doesn't fit, is it displacing? The dog walk is important.
- [43:05]
A
It's interesting. Two big outcomes that came out of this body of work is, I mean, that type of research format specifically. One is that there's a lot of polarizing topics in the employee, employee relationship right now. And that's no shocker to anyone. I think with cost of living skyrocketing, particularly for retail folks across the country, especially in urban environments, that's a huge topic. Thinking about diversity, inclusion, racism, safety, misogyny, sexism, all these topics that no one is feeling that more in your company than the folks who are standing on the front line understanding how those risks and these polarizing topics actually show up in the eyes and through the lived experience of your employees. It gives you such a more grounded view for understanding how to take action on them. And I've sat in the executive, the C suite rooms where people are talking about how to handle these topics and they're hypothesizing based on their lived experience, which is nothing like the lived experiences of most of their frontline employees actually going out there into the world and hearing from your employees how they feel about it and ideas that they have. It showed up in two ways. We uncovered a lot of topics where we're like, whoa, this was under the radar. We hadn't even realized. This was an escalating tension that needs to be looked at faster. We also had a lot of ones that we thought were like a level 12 on the emergency radar that we got in there. And we heard all these incredible stories about how employees are already navigating these and building systems for really productive, healthy ways of creating safety and creating community and creating conversation on the ground level that we could scale easily to other stores and other, even up to headquarters that can really reframe how we're thinking about some of these tough topics. So I think in moments of complexity and change and ambiguity, which we're all squarely in the thick of right now, getting closer to your people is the best path forward to navigating a lot of that.
- [45:09]
B
I really feel like a lot of the failure of work experience has to do with distance and the fact that I can stand so far away from my workforce that I can turn them into numbers as opposed to seeing them as people. And so this is an antidote to that, and it is a way to see. One of my favorite parts of this kind of research is looking at artifacts. And many times they are the kludges that people have put together to cope with the fact that the out of box experience of the product is no good. So what are the artifact share outs and how do you use that to learn?
- [45:49]
A
Yeah, I'll hit both of those actually, with one response, because I think what you're getting to, these are all just different methods for eliciting deeper forms of emotion and needs, finding and exploration in the conversation. And again, what we're really curious about as researchers in a project like this is understanding what are some of the root causes, the beliefs, the behaviors and the mindsets that inform how you show up every day. And whether that is then in support and in alignment with the organization, or potentially in opposition of the organization. And the organizational part comes later. But I think the notion is really just being curious. So that's often really hard for someone to dictate. Classic Henry Ford. You ask them for a faster horse. Everyone knows that sentiment. But as researchers and designers, you're constantly thinking like, what else can we use then to provoke some of that exploration with them and to help them find words and sentiments that they might not be able to verbalize. So two methods that we use, the artifact shares and the card sorts, are both really simple, free or low cost options that you can do on your own at any moment, by the way, are two methods that we tapped into here. So card sorts, very simply is a mechanism for visualizing and sorting and prioritizing against any topic that you might be trying to better elicit. So we did versions of card sorts where Here is the 20 benefits that we currently offer and 50 other ones that we could offer. We're going to lay them all out and have you help us sort them for us. And what's most valuable to you? The beauty here is that it's not actually as interesting of how they sort it. It's actually the stories that you're getting them to elicit as they're sorting it. So it's like, oh, I noticed that you mentioned childcare immediately. You went right there, you know, three seconds. Childcare was first right on the top of your list. Tell us about that. Why is that coming up for you? How does that show up in your life? It's just creating a provocation for us to explore and gravitate towards the topics most important to them. So we create these card decks. We've always got them in our research kits. We've got some standard one we use. There's actually a bunch on our website you can download for free. But those little card sorts, they're really simple mechanisms to elicit emotions. Artifact shares are the same. So before we went into each store, we sent out a prompt of bring in an artifact that best represents your relationship with this job. And we kind of leave it intentionally ambiguous, very high level, and you'll never be more surprised than the variety of things that come back. So we use those in a few ways. So we had folks bring those to their one on one interviews. We use them as stimulus to say, why does this represent? What metaphor is this sharing for you? What role does this play? We also created round robin share outs and group dynamics. So it allowed us in the morning, stand up in some of the retail stores to actually go around and for them to hear from one another. Which again, back to our communal principle for how we do this research, allowed them to more deeply connect with one another. The final mechanism is we actually created two way dialogue, which was another principle. Back to the headquarters team, where there's a really beautiful like archive space there and it tracks the history of this retailer since their inception. So we actually brought our own artifacts. We had the head artifice there curate a whole bunch of beautiful things from the history of the company that are these iconic things that anyone would recognize who works there. We took them to the store and actually let folks engage with them. And then we also took some of their artifacts and pictures and documentation back to headquarters to punctuate all of this body of work so that their input was actually memorialized in the archives as well. So artifacts having something physical there just really brings to life a lot of the sentiments we're talking about.
- [49:39]
B
It's not what I thought it was, which is super interesting. I mean the thing about artifacts used that way is that they can be metaphorical and metaphors can actually contain more information than words. And so this is a metaphor for this job for me, which is what I was thinking it was going to be was at Cisco Systems we rolled out these really nice European designed phones for, for the first time, IP phones. I was a recruiter during the rollout and they didn't work. I'm just gonna say we tested them on ourselves. This was a very hard time to be a recruiter. But once they were working, one of the things that turned out is that you couldn't find what your telephone number was. It wasn't on the display. And so you'd walk around and you'd see that everybody had taken out their Sharpie and written on these beautiful European phones the phone number of, of the phone. It was an artifact of a gap in one manager work practice study we did. Which is by the way why I recognize so many of these tools is because we did something very similar at Cisco Systems with Sapient. I don't know if you are aware of them as a company. Yes, every single manager in the company had this one 8 and a half by 11 sheet of paper that they'd printed out and put on their wall about leadership. And we were like, look at that. This seems to be solving a problem for everybody. That's an interesting tool. I like it. It's a different tool than I thought. But this idea of disrupting simple language based ways of communicating and looking beyond them.
- [51:16]
A
We were doing a lot of more as you're highlighting it, like the artifact documentation, I guess that showed up in two ways. One was we've got literally thousands of pictures from this research trip that we curate down and that's really helpful for us because you start to see the patterns of from like an operational or a systems or staffing, like starting to see some of the hacks that folks are making at the local level that were incredibly useful for specific teams. Back as we were doing some of the share outs and stuff like that. It also started to elicit in some of the insights that came out of it is elicit where are the pockets of the organization where they are just harnessing Incredible pockets of knowledge and innovation that are not currently being tapped to their full potential. And these are things where design, for example, we met some incredible designers, visual merchandisers who are working part time in one store. And this is just their job, getting through college, but incredibly talented and decorated as professionals. We met incredible storytellers, we met incredible technologists thinking about. We met one guy who had already built, kind of hacked together an AI model that he felt could improve staffing across stores in a more dynamic talent marketplace, and assistant manager in one of the stores. And we're just like, whoa, this is. Every major company is actively trying to solve this and paying a lot of money to a lot of people to try and solve it. You're just out here building the prototype. I mean, little pockets like that. You're like, whoa. It really opens up what can happen when you invite your employees into some of those challenge areas.
- [52:53]
B
Right? And people are solving problems that the corporate function has not, and they're solving them locally. In one study, we found that one engineering organization had completely reproduced the performance management system. It was identical, except for a slightly different data model for how teams were structured. They couldn't get the regular one to do it, so they built it themselves. And then at the end of the day, they would just port the data over.
- [53:25]
A
If I was an executive in a large organization like that, I think there's a shift that I hope happens at more scale in the coming years where so many leaders look at these big, bold challenges of our time and they feel that weight on their shoulders and they feel. Feel that weight on their C suites shoulders and their direct leadership. And it's a false narrative that they need to solve these really complex challenges on their own. And meanwhile, they've got a small army of thousands, if not tens of thousands of people behind them who are either already solving it or have the knowledge to help you solve it. And they've got two hands and a brain and the ability to go there with you. It's just a massive untapped opportunity that I think should create relief within most leadership teams. But right now I think it creates a bit of fear. And I think. I think that's a shift that I hope we can influence in years to come.
- [54:13]
B
I like that you've gone out and you've done all this research and you've listened and you've soaked it up like a sponge without forcing it into any shape. But at some point you have to transform this into a message. You have to transform it into something that is condensed enough that it can be communicated. And so how do you do that and how do you do it in such a way that I, who was not necessarily a member of the research team, am going to feel it in my heart?
- [54:51]
A
Yeah, I appreciate you teeing it up that way because I think that is really the task at hand for a project like this is that we're not creating necessarily the very concrete new product or service or even the strategy at this stage of the game that has come to follow after this initial phase. But at this phase we're really trying to highlight what to pay attention to back to the organization and make these insights and stories as useful and actionable as possible. Both at the 10,000 foot view of where are we going as a company? And how do these insights inform that, but also so that each person in these shareouts and we're presenting back are saying, whew, that's like one very concrete thing that I can change tomorrow because I send out our monthly newsletter to all employees and here's a little thing that I can test as a result of that. So I think we're trying to create synapses at both levels and that's not always easy. The planning starts before we even go out in the field. So as you mentioned, how we're documenting, how we're capturing is really critical there. And then as we're out in the field, we're doing synthesis often in the edges of where we're doing the research is actually starting to really capture some of those stories and do pattern finding and dot connecting while we're out there. So the output of this is really an experience. There's definitely deliverables that go with this. So we've got our kind of insight summary, we've got employee journey maps we've created that highlight high points, low points, moments that matter across that journey.
- [56:30]
B
Can I ask one question about the journey maps? Because we didn't touch on this earlier, the journey maps in this particular case are not, I assume, hire to retire journeys. And so this is something I often see HR organizations do is they say, we're going to talk about your journey from hire to retire. A lot of these are journey from 6am in the morning until dinner. Again, I'm thinking about what's the cut of those journey labs.
- [56:56]
A
We did both. So we did vignettes at the daily or weekly scale and that was helpful, particularly on thinking about new ways of designing the work from like an actual tactical staffing, comp store management type of decision making. So those types of variables were really valuable out of that. That level of detail really elicited some of these employee. We called them employee portraits, but most similar to a Persona or Persona board that you might imagine. And that was actually very helpful for illuminating different sets of needs. And we accumulated several different employee Personas and they actually had different sets of needs and a lot of aligning needs, but different orienting mindsets and needs. And that's really helpful for understanding then how can we strategically best speak to those employees and the needs that are most important to them when it comes to things all the way from hiring to recruiting to staffing, to growth and planning, even to leaving the organization and moving onward. Huge implications there. That said, we also then did do the 10,000 foot view, which is kind of the hire to retire and also the pre hire and the post retire. And that's really valuable looking at the overall employee experience design. Because when we map the highs and lows on that level and then identify these key moments that matter, what that does is that starts to inform them the roadmap for their people strategy and thinking about where the places where this is most broken or creating the most impact or having the biggest opportunity to create impact and allows us to start prioritizing in that way. And that kicks off other work streams of design sprints and projects and things like that.
- [58:42]
B
Okay, that makes a lot of sense to me. And part of the reason it makes a lot of sense is that sure, I can study your week, but the week there's a death in your family, that's a moment that matters in a way that's different from how you walk the dog. You need both.
- [58:56]
A
Yeah. And there was a key insight even around that of showing up in times of crisis and things like that and lots of stories around that. So those are great moments where this organization, they do it impeccably well already. Those are moments where we're actually celebrating things that are already going well. And that's very helpful for leadership to see as well. Even it's a little bit of ego stroking. But also you should be congratulated when you're doing good work and setting a benchmark for the rest of the world. So I think those moments are really, really critical to call out as well. So we had some concrete deliverables, but we also created a very immersive experience on their campus that if you weren't able to join on the research, when you walked into this room, it felt like you were alongside us. So that's where all of the pictures we had interactive moments for a number of the Share outs. We actually had folks from the stores call in and do little mini interviews over video chats. So it was emulating the experience we got to have with them in person in stores. But for the rest of the leadership team who couldn't do that, we did do a mini 30 minute or 60 minute interview where they actually did get to feel that from someone who was a really emblematic version of some of those employees. So little moments like that went really far. And then of course by that point, that's where the proud parent moment comes in is at this point we're actually tapping some of our counterparts within the organization to lead portions of the share out, to share their stories of being in the field, to exhibit their passion, which no matter how good of a partner we are, it'll never be as powerful as when it comes from one of your people advocating for your other people and service of the business success. That's where it unlocks. So that was a very intentional part of our wrap up of this project.
- [60:36]
B
I'll tell you, one of the things that does too, that I think is really important is it leaves a lot of skills and best practices in the people who are in the organization going forward.
- [60:48]
A
Yes, that's an emphasis for us because we started as a design thinking and training company. The ethos of facilitation and training is in our blood. But I think we realized just doing trainings over and over isn't creating the impact we wanted. Getting closer to the business results and the outcomes is the best way to influence change. But if we can leave a breadcrumb trail of new habits and behaviors and tools and skill sets and confidence after we leave, that's our commitment to the organization, is to make them stronger as a result of us being there. Not just the project outcomes.
- [61:23]
B
Were there any, I'm going to say aha's or real surprises that might be useful? And I'll just parenthetically say this sort of thing like, well, this is an example. This would be an aha for me. I have a friend, a relative who worked at Pete's as a store manager. One of the most important relationships she had was with the cops. Because you get some real problem people coming in the store and abusing the staff. And it's the sort of thing you would never know. You would never know. But that turns out that having that good relationship was a big part of her job. And so I'm wondering if there were things that you discovered that were just like, wow, I just did not see that coming.
- [62:06]
A
Yeah, so many I'll try to distill maybe some of the ones that stick out the most. So one I think that really sticks out, that I've been processing a lot, is I think folks at the retail level. I believe there's an assumption that retail is a passing job. It's something that can meet people in between career shifts or coming out of college into career, or help you when you're in a tough moment. And that couldn't be less true. The commitment and passion of folks who work in retail is just, bar none. I mean, these folks really understand the ethos of the brand in a way that you rarely find at the senior levels of an organization. And there's something really powerful there that deserves to be tapped into. And I think you see that you can feel it when you walk into it. When I walk into a sweet green, most of the time, I can feel that there's a different energy in there than when I walk into a McDonald's. It just feels different to me. And I'm not speaking on behalf of either of those companies.
- [63:06]
B
Yeah, no, that's a really interesting point. That's a really interesting point because recently I was in An American Giant in Manhattan, and so I started doing design research with the solo employees. So this is an employee all alone in a store in Manhattan. I don't think he ever has anybody else working with him. And so I started talking about this retailer I knew about who'd done research on experience, and I started talking to him about his experience. Well, he'd worked at a series of retailers, and he was able to say, well, let me tell you why American Giant is a better place, place to be a retailer for. And he was a professional retailer who had experiences at these other locations and knew the difference. He was a connoisseur of retail sales experiences.
- [63:51]
A
It's incredible. And like, it's. It's really magical. I'm so grateful to have gotten to immerse myself in it, because it's an art form. The takeaway, which I think is such a important opportunity for this, is like, these are the folks in your company that are spending the most time with your customers, bar none. They are hearing the insights, they're having the conversations, they're navigating the tough ones. And it's just amazing the insights and ideas that are born out of that because they are having a faster clip than anyone else in your company. So if you're not leveraging those insights to help when you're thinking about customer experience, design growth strategy, retail environment, product design, marketing Campaigns. What a wasted opportunity. Like, it's just insane. So that was one big insight is just the craft and commitment that is involved at that level. And that varies from company to company. So I'll acknowledge that the other piece, though is their interest in driving the business. And I think this was a big insight that was exciting for me. And I've been carrying that forward is it goes back to our notion of autonomy and transparency and empowerment. When you can actually create the right levels of autonomy of transparency of goals and data to support that and then create empowerment and autonomy for folks to actually take action on some of those goals. These folks are hungry for it. And I believe this is true for a lot of employees. Where I think my hunch is that the reason engagement is so low and employee meaning and purpose is so low at the employee level is partly because of some of the benefits, design and the work structure and the complexities of the world of work. Right now. I think a big piece of it is people feel like cogs in machines and most of the time they are. And when you can connect them to actually something that is meaningful and powerful and when they have a clear role in how to contribute to it and it's going to have a positive impact on the company, so that extends their job, I think that's a really important sweet spot to focus in on. And I think the companies who start to embrace that opportunity sooner are going to have some leapfrog effects.
- [65:54]
B
Have you worked with companies that have organized in such a way that they can do this in an ongoing fashion?
- [66:00]
A
We have started to play with it. This is a pet project for me. So if there's anyone listening who's curious, I get excited and would love to do more of this experimentation. We've done some really fun work with Kiehl's, which I can talk about these case studies. We did some fun work with Kiehl's brand, who's an incredible just values led brand. And I love their work and I love their team. But actually training some of their employees around their global employees, store leaders on how to do deeper customer listening, Basic Customer Listening 101 and Insights Development. And then we built kind of a scrappy backend system that allows those folks to channel insights back up to the macro level. And we started building new rituals and ceremonies around understanding those insights, sharing those insights, asking, what is it telling us? So that was a really amazing experiment that we did with them. We've done a lot of work with sales teams. That's another place. If you don't have frontline employees. Sales are your next best opportunity because they're spending the most time with your customers. Teach them new ways of hearing and listening and asking questions and see what they bring back to you. And that's work we've done. That's probably one of the most fruitful areas where we've built these systems. We did a large body work with Cisco, we've done work with Meta, which is a very public case study we worked on. Heineken was another brand. We did that and the results there are just incredible. So I think there's hope, but I want to see more of it.
- [67:27]
B
I'm going to want to interview every single one of them. So we'll keep this going. We're going to have to end. I could talk all day. We're four minutes from the end here. And so I'm just going to ask one question that I ask everybody at the end of every show, which is, what do you hire your job to do for you?
- [67:45]
A
I knew you were going to ask this question. It's a hard one. I think where I've landed is perspective. I think is where it comes to for me is it's constantly holding a mirror on my own thoughts and my own views of the world and where I think the most impact can be had at any given moment. And that has allowed me to really ride a journey of entrepreneurship, but also in this intersection of design and innovation, but now increasingly on employee engagement and experience and org effectiveness, it's showing me what is needed most within the world of work and pointed me in different directions. And I think at each chapter of that, I've learned so much about myself and my relationship to work. And if you had asked me 12 years ago, my answer would be very different than what I share today now with a daughter and a family and not living in the city anymore. And a lot of that perspective was built through my own growth in this journey of work.
- [68:47]
B
What does it cost you?
- [68:49]
A
It's costed me different things in different ways. So I think approaching my entrepreneurial journey as a curious perspective explorer that can be at the sacrifice of business growth, concrete business growth and business decisions where there's things we were doing 10 years ago that we probably could have productized and scaled and pumped it into every organization we could find. But we knew that wasn't the right way of doing it and what those organizations needed most. So at a rudimentary level, as an entrepreneur, I think there's a trade off between impact and personal successes. And I think ideally aligning those is where the best work comes from. So that's more on the tangible side of being an entrepreneur.
- [69:33]
B
It was a design trade off that you made.
- [69:35]
A
Yes.
- [69:36]
B
There was a couple different things that the work did product could have done for you and a part of what it could have done is satisfy your curiosity and you chose a design that was leaning that direction.
- [69:47]
A
And my hope is in that journey, it's leading us to bigger and meatier challenges that also create bigger, more fruitful business opportunities. So I think it's really exciting. That's why I love this space so much is I really think this topic and all the writing and thought leadership you do. I really am hopeful and I believe deeply that this will be the dominating force factor for organizations in the decade to come. And organizations that ride this wave early on and understand the power that it holds, I think are really going to be the ones that we see emerging with growth and innovation and sustained impact long term. That excites me and I think there's going to be plenty of work for all of us to do in that ride that comes up.
- [70:28]
B
Amen. Where can people learn more about you and about the Design Gym?
- [70:34]
A
Yeah. Awesome. Well, I live in New York and specifically in the Hudson Valley. I'm in a little town called Beacon. So if anyone's around here, knock on my door, say hello, love to grab coffee. You can find Me otherwise on LinkedIn is probably my best place where I'm most active. So just Andrew Hagerman or Andy Hagerman at the Design gym on LinkedIn or you can check out our website just www.thedemewjim.com and that's where you'll learn about our services and work. And if you happen to be in New York and you are one of these HR change leaders who is really passionate about these topics, drop us a note. We are doing our dinner series and always looking for folks who are excited about topics like this to join us in those conversations and extend some of this knowledge sharing in that format.
- [71:22]
B
I will join you the next time in New York. The other thing I want to tell listeners is that the Design Gym website is full of resources. It's full of resources. It totally is clear that you started off as a teaching company because it's not just a shell, it's a place people can go to learn.
- [71:40]
A
That's our hope. I'm glad that rubbed off. It's our ethos to give more away than we take. We try to exhibit that at kind of every step of the game and the more people that know about this and are practicing it, the better it is for all of us.
- [71:52]
B
Thank you very much for coming on the show today.
- [71:55]
A
Such a joy. Thank you. Dart.
- [72:00]
B
Thanks for joining me for another episode of Work for Humans. If you enjoyed this episode, please give us a five star rating. Wherever you listen to podcasts and share the show with one person you think would get value from it, believe it or not, this really helps us grow the show and reach more people who want to build the kind of work that people really want. As always, thank you to my producer Jason Ames at 9th Path Audio for his insights into content and his high standard for quality. Final note, the opinions shared here are my own and not the views of Google or Cisco Systems. Thanks again for listening. See you next time.