June 13, 2024 • 35 mins
Embark on a transformative journey where failure paves the path to innovation, and empathy maps the way to understanding. Together, we navigate the startup ecosystem, championing the 'fail forward' mentality and the essential quest for product-market fit. Drawing inspiration from Andy Jassy's wisdom on mitigating the risks of unsuccessful endeavors, we share personal stories that highlight the resilience and adaptability required to thrive in the startup arena. Our conversation takes a deep dive into the practicalities of validating business concepts, leveraging design thinking and lean startup methodologies, and utilizing social media analytics as a powerful, cost-effective gauge of consumer interest.
Step into the user's shoes as we dissect the intricate process of product development, magnifying the importance of truly grasping user experiences. We unravel how personas and empathy mapping can align your product with your clients' unspoken needs, fostering a user-centered design that propels innovation. By sharing real-world examples, we reveal the profound impact of empathy on organizational dynamics, transforming assumptions into actionable insights. Our dialogue sheds light on the nuanced art of crafting compelling user experiences, which can spark opportunities for product evolution and redefine your approach to problem-solving.
Unlock the secrets of collaboration and ideation in this episode, where psychological safety and collective creativity take center stage. We explore the power of play and the rules that guide it, demonstrating how constraints can ignite creativity and mutual respect. The episode reveals how simple acts of kindness, like the distribution of chocolates, can significantly boost performance, illustrating the role of happiness and safety in fostering innovation. Join us for an enlightening conversation about the transformative power of empathy, collaboration, and play in the workplace, and leave equipped with actionable strategies for igniting creativity in your team.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Nicholas Jayanty (00:00):
Create a safe space to allow people the safety
to fail to come up with thatwild idea.
We borrow some practice fromimprov, like yes, and is
something that we'll do a lotwhere we don't discourage ideas
that perhaps are unfeasible.
We're like, yeah, let's playthat out.
So that space, this space thatyou're socializing in, is very
much a possibility space.
(00:22):
It's a yes space.
John Kundtz (00:24):
So I want to shift gears a little bit to the world
that I spend on my sort ofvolunteer time, which is I try
to work with a lot ofentrepreneurs and startups and
sort of especially in theMidwest, a little bit.
You know, one of the things inthe startup world is about 90%
(00:47):
of startups fail right, and theytypically fail for one of the
top three is poor market fit.
And in the Midwest and, moreimportantly, unlike the coasts
where startups sort of find aneed and fill it, in the Midwest
people come up with a good ideaand then go try to sell it and
I don't know if there's any justprobably reasons for that, but
it's just sort of what I'veobserved.
(01:08):
And so what I keep trying totell and I love your perspective
like an advice to some of thesesmaller companies we have a lot
of those that listen to thispodcast is like you know you've
got good ideas, but at the endof the day, will anybody
actually buy it?
Right, and how design thinkingmight help them.
Bring those two answerstogether, if you will.
Nicholas Jayanty (01:31):
Yeah, no, it's fascinating.
You know, I think that the sameprinciples apply if you're AWS
or if you are a smaller group,and you know, I think the CEO of
Amazon Web Service said this.
His name's Andy Jassy, said.
I'm gonna paraphrase this butevery company wants two things
One, to try as many experimentsas possible and two, to suffer
(01:53):
as little collateral damage fromthe experiments that fail.
It's the whole, you know,start-up mentality of fail early
and often, right, and I'd liketo reframe that and say learn
early and often.
You know, if you're not beingclear about what you wanna learn
from whatever you put into themarket.
You know, even if it's a kindof a you know even a splash page
, right, just kind of seeinglike who is might be even
(02:14):
interested in that.
That if you're like borrowingfrom like kind of the lean
startup methodology where you'rejust doing the splash page and
connecting emails, right, how doyou burn through those
experiences as quickly aspossible to figure out what that
product market fit is beforeyou invest in engineering?
One of the beautiful thingsabout you know having a robust
design capability is you cantest ideas in a clickable format
(02:34):
and not spend a dollar on code.
You know, one of you know, theIEEE had this great article as
to like why software fails andone of the main reasons that
software fails is badrequirements and bad
requirements, what you know.
You can interpret that to meana lot of different things, but
one of the worst requirements ismaking a product that nobody
wants.
So how do you test these ideas?
(02:58):
You know, test a lot of themand then spend that money
smarter.
I mean, that's a startup.
You know every misstep will setyou in a rough spot.
In my own experience before I,you know from the film space,
you know we brought a startupmentality to the business work
that we were doing.
Right, we were like, let'slearn from startup culture and
apply this to an entertainmentstartup.
(03:19):
And you know, the firstbusiness that I launched was you
know, we had this idea that wehad this offering that people
would want.
There were so many reasons thatthey didn't want it.
And if we had just kind of setup a website and just kind of
like marketed kind of theoffering and just given it like
three months and kind of beenreally disciplined with
(03:40):
ourselves and say, okay, if wedon't make a dollar in three
months, we're gonna kill this,we would have saved like four
years of our lives and probablya lot of money that we kind of
kept pumping into this effort.
I think the opportunity to kindof you know, learn fast and
learn quickly and leverage kindof lightweight capabilities to
figure out what that productmarket fit is before you invest
more heavily.
It's one of the superpowers ofhaving design capability within
(04:02):
your organization and justenables kind of those larger
goals for really creativestartup founders.
Which is what are those?
What are those things that Iwanna try?
Jan Almasy (04:10):
Something about the way that you just phrased that
last little bit of theexplanation.
There.
You said lightweightcapabilities Coming from the
startup world and for those ofyou that this is the first time
you know kind of listening towhy I'm even, you know, here
outside of the fact that this iscurrently on kind of the apexes
segment, but me and John metwhen I Was initially coming up
(04:31):
with the idea for what wouldthen become apex communications
network Right, where we use alot of these tactics that you
and and John are going tocontinue to explain throughout
this episode to help people youknow more accurately identify
problem statements online andthen use that to guide their SEO
strategy and a lot of theiranalytic strategies.
And Essentially, what I didn'trealize we were doing is helping
(04:52):
them launch new revenue streamsor new products or develop
services to offer to their theircustomers.
So for a long time I thoughtthat that beta testing something
or getting an MVP out and MVPfor those views, that's
minimally viable product rightand Getting out these things had
(05:12):
to be, you know, a month ofresearch and and a whole bunch
of thought that goes into it andputting all Of these things out
.
And then I started to realizethat an example of a lightweight
version of what you could useto really connect with your
customer.
We put out a single clip overcoven and all it was was a
step-by-step of me clickingthrough a Facebook FAQ on how to
(05:35):
know whether or not yourwebsite had a Facebook pixel
Installed on it.
And so, for those of you thatare not familiar with that space
, a Facebook pixel basicallyallows you to connect your
Google analytics to yourFacebook so that you can see,
like, where those userscrossover, and it kind of mixes
data together so you canretarget for ads and you know
all this other stuff.
(05:56):
But it's it's.
It's something that wasextremely functional and and
super useful.
But a lot of businesses that Iwas around in the Midwest like
we thought that maybe they wouldwant help with a Facebook pixel
, but we weren't sure right.
So we were gonna develop thisservice to help people, and so I
was like you know what?
Let's?
Let's just put out a post andjust educate people on how to
(06:17):
check and see if they have oneand the reasons why they should
have one and, if they don't, toask their agency why they don't
have one.
And we just put out this littleclip and it just showed people
how to audit it.
And we ended up getting five orsix responses from people and
said, hey, I saw this video.
I ended up asking my agencyabout it.
I have no idea why we don'thave one.
(06:38):
You know, this is something wesell products on, facebook and
all this other stuff and it waskind of that little confirmation
that was enough for us to say,hey, okay, maybe we focus on
this a little bit.
We got six responses from peoplein our area that immediately
recognize the need, whereas whatyou guys are saying correct me
if I'm wrong but if you go backand try to just develop that
(06:58):
whole Facebook service, we wouldhave spent a month maybe
figuring something out and thenput it out and had absolutely
nobody respond to it, whereasthe way that that happened is we
put out a post, you getresponses and then develop the
service after you actuallyengage with the customer.
Is that?
That's kind of the landscape asit is and it's beautiful
because, like you, have theselightweight capabilities with
(07:20):
the internet To be able tointeract with users at a large
scale, whereas previously, Ithink John said you know you're
selling like it's 1985.
You couldn't do that in 1985,but it was a lot more difficult
to reach those that many usersthat quickly well, you know
things were a lot slower, right,I mean the pace of change over
the last 30 years.
John Kundtz (07:41):
His is just Exponentially gone faster and
more disruptive.
I mean I you know in all myyears, this last few years, the
amount of Change and amount ofdisruption by businesses coming
in and just upsetting thing, anda lot of it, is that the
technology has Equalized peopleright, so the barriers or entry
are down.
But what I'm the reason I bringthat up is because you don't
(08:04):
have I've seen a lot ofcompanies that they want to have
.
They want to spend a lot oftime and a lot of money Trying
to get something that they thinkis perfect before they go out
and unfortunately, by the timethey do that, in many cases the,
the Reasonable requirements,are no good Neclases because
they've changed.
They might have been, you know,they might have been
(08:25):
appropriate six months ago or ayear ago, but but.
But if you take 18 months todeploy something, the odds are
that the, the business'srequirements, the user's
requirements, are going tochange just because the world is
moving so fast and going backto the quote that you flashed
earlier Right, the last bestexperience that anyone has is
the experience they expecteverywhere.
So that actually takes me intomy, my sort of next piece of
(08:47):
this that I want to talk about,and you alluded to it and I'm
going to share my screen in asecond.
But you know, I want to get intothis idea and I think, john,
you alluded to it right, whatyou were doing was you were sort
of co Collaborating,co-creating with your potential
customers, and, and so one ofthe things we that's sort of
(09:10):
this, this process, and and someof the one of the takeaways I
want to give to the audience isI want to share this sort of
five-step process of Nicholas,and I've sort of I sort of
started and Nicholas helped me,sort of perfect, so to speak,
and I think it's very relevantto sort of discussion of for,
especially for entrepreneurs andothers, and so, and then, what
(09:32):
Nicholas, I want to do is I wantto, you know, get you to sort
of the deep dive into some ofthis.
So, of course, you've seen thischart before.
I've cleaned it up a little,I've changed a little bit, but
one of the I want to start witha concept of the double diamond
right and, and I want you to getyour perspective on this sort
Of diverge, converge, diverge.
This is something I've actuallystarted using because I think
(09:55):
you probably showed it to me,and then we'll go into these
sort of five steps after that.
Nicholas Jayanty (09:59):
It's really helpful when you're dealing with
a very diverse and empoweredteam Right, where you have a lot
of strong opinions and a lot ofstrong expertise.
How do you get as moat, as muchout of that group that you're
working with In the time byletting them diverge and work
independently, and then, whenyou're converging right, you're
bringing that back together, andthat's about prioritization.
And so, as you kind of movethrough this kind of this, this,
(10:23):
this process right, you'recontinuously working together,
separating and then coming backtogether, and it ultimately
allows you to kind of grok whereyou're at in the process and
perhaps what might be a goodnext step.
You know, and these steps, Iwould say, are not linear, right
, I think they're representedlinearly, but you can get
dropped in at any point of thisdiamond and start there, so you
(10:44):
could start with a prototype,put it in front of your user
base, just like yandere, right,he's like we weren't sure if the
service was gonna work.
So we made something, we put itout there, we're gonna make to
learn, we're gonna put thisartifact in the world, we're
gonna provoke group of people torespond to it by this thing,
and then we'll kind of land backon that, observe and define
stage, now that we have a betterunderstanding.
(11:04):
Oh, there might be someinterest.
You know we're observing thatpeople are responding.
Now how do we kind of refinethat and define kind of what
that offering might be?
So what that could look like afollow-up step to those six
respondents is maybe let's setsix conversations up like 30
minute to An hour long interviewand talk about what their unmet
needs are around this.
Perhaps that might expose kindof what their unmet needs are.
(11:26):
Perhaps I might give you someother feature opportunities or
additional requirements just bytalking to them.
Sometimes you can invite themto kind of say show me how you
might use this data Like whatdecisions are you making with
the information that you're?
You know, how do I use thisFacebook pixel data?
You know what questions am Iasking the data?
And by learning that now you cankind of further define the
problem statement, the actionwant to solve for these
customers.
(11:46):
Because and even just theresponse is like there's
interest, right.
But now I've got a really kindof dig down into that interest
and figure out what's that painpoint like what's the why?
Why are these people interested?
What value does understandingthe relationship between
Facebook and Google Analyticsand that kind of visibility.
What value does that provide mybusiness?
And then, by understanding thatvalue that you're providing to
(12:08):
those potential customers, nowyou can kind of shape that
offering a little bit morethoughtfully to kind of reach
that product market fit thatJohn's described.
John Kundtz (12:15):
So the idea is, we started with sort of at the end,
with this idea of a problem.
What's the problem?
The client?
So my, my advice toentrepreneurs is what is the
problem that your product orservice sells Right or it's
trying to solve?
Excuse me, you know.
And and then the first step isjust what we said is you know,
understanding your stakeholdersor personas?
(12:36):
So give me your perspective,nicholas, on sort of how you
know you.
You, you're the one that reallygot me in depth of
understanding the value ofpersonas as Mapping in, mapping
personas.
Nicholas Jayanty (12:48):
Oh, wow, it's a personas.
So how would I say this?
Not all personas that you'llencounter in the world are
creative.
The same rigor, a lot.
You know if the definition Iuse for persona, persona is.
It's a qualitative data modelthat captures what users kind of
(13:09):
key goals are, what their painpoints are, what their behaviors
are and what their unmet needsare.
You can create those personasin a number of ways.
Ideally, primary research isyour primary method of data
collection when you'recollecting the information
that's going to inform thatmodel.
(13:29):
You can use these qualitativedata models, or these personas,
in a number of ways In thesoftware space.
We'll use it right when we'rekicking off a new feature, to
figure out who is the potentialend user of this feature, what
value do they expect from thisfeature?
When we go out to test this inprototype, are we recruiting the
(13:55):
right people that arerepresentative of the persona to
make sure that we are testing asolution with the right group?
We can use our personas to helpanchor people in a user
experience.
For example, when you thinkabout the behaviors of a
developer, there are behaviorsthat are developers that are
(14:16):
developing in the Cloud.
There are developers that aredeveloping locally.
There are developers that areusing command line interface and
then there are developers thatare using graphic user interface
.
By having that segmentationacross your different user group
and having two personas torepresent those different
behavioral characteristics, nowyou've got more experiences that
(14:37):
can be created.
What's the command lineexperience for Jim, the
50-year-old Sissedman who's beenprogramming in a data center,
who's working in a data centeror in a knock his entire life?
He just loves the command line,doesn't care about GUIs, versus
like Jane, who's like a23-year-old developer, just
wants to write app code, doesn'teven want to open up the
(15:01):
command line, wants all thatstuff to be handled for her and
she just wants to click a fewbuttons to get an environment
that she needs so she can code.
You've got two great opportunityspaces just by understanding
that segmentation.
Another place that I've seenpersonas be used in a really
interesting way is when youstart to think about ability,
(15:22):
people with varying abilities,and you can think about that
across a spectrum.
There are people that arepermanently living with
disability, for example, someonewho doesn't live with the
ability to see versus somebodywho is situationally unable to
see because they just went tothe doctor and they've got their
eyes dilated.
When you think about thosepersonas in the extreme and you
(15:43):
come up with that experience forthem by deeply understanding
this person's ability, it opensup the aperture of the types of
experiences that you can use todifferentiate.
By deeply understanding some ofwhat we call the extreme users,
you start to get at new spacesand new opportunities for
product innovation as well.
You can use personas in a lotof different ways.
John Kundtz (16:05):
Nicholas, one of the things I was thinking is
also what I've noticed in thisworld like you've got a lot of
great points and now that wetake that over into a seller or
a founder trying to sell theirproduct or service, I see we see
a lot of work done aroundbuying personas, but what I
didn't see was a lot of work onthe people that are actually
(16:27):
going to use the problem persona, if you will, the person that
has the problem.
That takes me into step two,which is one of my favorites, is
the empathy mapping.
I actually took Jan through anempathy mapping exercise early
on in his journey.
Tell us about empathy mappingfrom your perspective.
Nicholas Jayanty (16:50):
Yeah, absolutely.
I love to use empathy maps in acouple of different ways.
I think one of the best waysI've seen empathy maps employed
is when you have a group ofdifferent stakeholders that
perhaps are saying, maybe, yes,this is our user, but perhaps
they think about that user alittle differently.
So the first thing it does isjust gets all the assumptions
(17:11):
about who you're serving on thetable.
It gives you a place todocument them.
It gives you an opportunity tospot the tension within the team
.
It also gives you anopportunity to reveal gaps in
what you don't know about youruser.
So you can use an empathy mapas a way to build your research
hypothesis and then also informyour research planning as you
(17:31):
more deep in your understandingof your users.
John Kundtz (17:34):
You're stepping in the shoes of your users or the
people you're selling to.
Nicholas Jayanty (17:39):
Yeah, and we were really lucky because,
instead of us proxying andimagining what these end users
are saying, doing, thinking andfeeling, we actually would do
this activity with the end user,where they would populate it
themselves.
They're like this is what I do,this is what I do, so it
removes all the speculation andconjecture.
One of the keys of designthinking and enterprise design
(17:59):
thinking is that our users alignus with reality, and when
you're in the office and you'renot getting out of the building
and you're not talking to yourend users, we get a lot of head
trashes I think John has usedthe word which is a lot of
assumptions, thinking.
A lot of energy gets investedin negotiating with your
teammates as opposed to bringingsome data to the conversation
(18:20):
that is going to remove all thatkind of conflict and
immediately give everyone adirection to go with.
That's the other thing that alot of the value that you get
from talking to your users is isit prevents burnout.
If you have a strong team withstrong opinions and they're
investing an hour to three hoursto four hours a week
negotiating how one thing shouldlook, you're creating churn.
(18:44):
You're not necessarilyempowering those people to be as
effective as possible because,instead of understanding their
users and taking those fourhours and talking to some
customers, they're spending fourhours arguing or debating or
negotiating.
So that's kind of a litmus testactually for those of you out
there that if you noticeyourself in a meeting multiple
times having the sameconversation, that's probably a
(19:05):
good opportunity to get out ofthe building and go talk to your
end users and save your teamsome time.
John Kundtz (19:09):
One of the things we learned was that when we got
a group of people in the room,everybody knows something about
the personas or the people thatwe're working on, but they
learned a ton about each other,right, and they really were all
of a sudden realizing and this Ithink COVID brought this out
people really started toempathize with the people they
were working with and theyreally started to realize how
(19:31):
they sort of all wereinterconnected in essentially
running the business, so tospeak.
Nicholas Jayanty (19:38):
Which, to go back to what you're talking
about, which is like how doesempathy become transformation?
Right, that's the catalyst,that empathy for one another,
where you start to see how oneaction that someone you don't
even talk to is not in the samedepartment as you, they take and
that impacts you downstream.
A lot of times there's novisibility into how the choices
(19:59):
that you're making impact otherpeople within your organization.
I've been in workshops wherethe front of the house and the
back of the house of thisbanking organization.
They were so upset with eachother because the back of the
house needed this one piece ofinformation and the front of the
house continued to not provideit to them.
So this back of the houseemployee was just trapped and it
(20:20):
didn't come out until they werein the same room that the back
of the house and the front ofhouse.
People realized that the fieldthat the back of the house
person needed populated wasn'teven in the front of the house
person's interface.
They didn't even know andthere's just like animosity
between these two departmentsand it was just this one field
that just wasn't showing up inthis one interface, that was
(20:41):
just like hamstring in an entiredepartment and that was just,
that was nobody's fault, thatwas bad user experience, right,
that's nobody's fault.
And but bringing these peopletogether in the room, you know
they're like why, oh, you're sofresh.
They wouldn't even talk to eachother at the beginning of the
session, you know there was somuch tension.
And then, as they started tounderstand what the data that
matters, one of the people inthe front of the house clicked
(21:02):
and they're like oh wait, thissounds like this is really
critical to like you, you all,being able to do these parts,
and like one of my reasons thatI'm frustrated with you all is
because it takes so long to getthis task accomplished.
What I'm hearing you say iswe're not actually going to need
the information you need.
And the person was like well,yeah, and he's like, well,
that's interesting, because ourinterface actually doesn't even
ask for that information, so Ididn't even know that you needed
(21:23):
it.
And they both looked at eachother and like I swear they
wanted to hug.
Like because they were like, oh, my goodness, like we've had
all this tension, like and nowwe realize that, like this is
technology problem, out ofpeople problem, but it wouldn't
have happened until they kind ofdeep dive into one another's
empathy maps and deep dive intoone what each other were doing
and even like kind of a littlebit more important, like what's
(21:44):
the data that matters to each ofthese different people and how
do we make sure that thatinformation is exchanged in the
way that everybody needs to findit?
Jan Almasy (21:51):
I've been like super , super obsessed recently with
the right and the lefthemispheres of the brain and why
they're separated by the corpuscallosum, right.
So for those of you that, likeI'm going to get a little bit
anatomy here to just kind of setthe stage, but so we have this
thing called the corpus callosum, or corpus callosum, running
through the right and lefthemispheres of our brain and
(22:13):
it's basically its entire job isto prevent electrical signals
from crossing over right.
Because if they start to dothat and everything starts to
spark all at once, it's calledepilepsy right.
Like it's, your brain is havinga seizure, everything's, you
know, connected all at one timeand it just provides information
or below.
But what you're describing,what I think is really cool
about as you guys are walkingthrough this process and we're
(22:34):
talking about empathy totransformation, right, there's
actually a lot of likeneurochemical triggers that you
guys are triggering in peoplethat will bond them to make
future innovation possible.
Because, like you said at theend of that, like I swear to God
that they wanted to hug rightIn that moment, they're getting
such a large rest of serotoninand oxytocin and dopamine right
(22:55):
that they're just in this placewhere they now feel bonded to
this person, right, so they'renow, in the future, are going to
communicate.
You've not only identified aproblem, you've destroyed a
communication barrier, which Ithink is you know.
That's really part of where thereal value comes in.
So what's, what's fascinatingabout the way that you guys, you
know this double diamondapproach is in the left part of
(23:16):
our brain.
We really anchor things downright, like a good example is
like for most people they'reright-handed, so the left part
of your brain guides the righthand and that's like you're
grasping right, so you'repicking things up.
That's a tangible idea.
That's something that you havea hold of, whereas the right
brain kind of has this.
Its job is to perceiveeverything else, like I'm
(23:38):
talking to you guys right now,so I'm very focused on this
conversation.
That's my left brain kind ofguiding my perception here.
But my right brain is tellingme that I know that there's
other things going on in myapartment.
If I heard a door click, Iwould turn right, but that's not
the immediate part of myperception.
But the way that the diamondforces you to go is that it
forces people into that rightbrain thought where it's like
(24:00):
okay, what are all of the otherpossibilities of things that
could potentially be causingthis to be disrupted.
And let's take it and thennarrow it down into something
where we can actually graspsomething and then, like you
said, that light bulb momenthappens.
But it only happens when you getinto a right brain space, where
the right brain is really goodat pattern recognition, and
(24:21):
it'll recognize a pattern andthen, as the conversation
continues, that pattern willstart to get more refined,
things will start to happen andthen, somewhere along that
continuum, there's a thing rightand then it transitions over
into this left brain thoughtprocess that now fills in all
the details and understands theprocess and can actually
tangibly grasp something likethat problem Right.
(24:41):
But that wouldn't happen if youdidn't get those two people
into the room at the same timeand create that conversation or
that space.
You know I always talk aboutcreating creative space to allow
people to have thoseconversations.
So, like doing that, I'm justlike fascinated with all of the
actual biological triggers thatyou guys are hitting throughout
this process.
(25:01):
That's what I've been reallyfocused on learning a lot about
recently, so I just had to throwthat in there for all of my RNs
and science people that.
John Kundtz (25:07):
Listen to the APEX that's the ICU nurse coming out
of you.
So, nicholas, give us yourperspective on sort of that next
phase.
Right Once we've worked and wesort of lived the world, we
start to now try to from a salesperspective.
I'm now trying to identifythings that the unmet needs of
(25:29):
the client or the prospect withmy product or service.
Nicholas Jayanty (25:33):
It's always good to design with the end in
mind and I think in the contextof some of the work that John
and I were doing is like we knewwe needed a phased approach.
We knew we needed to be able todeliver value within 90 days,
like that was what we werelooking for.
It's like where do we start?
We've got all theseopportunities now We've bubbled
these all up, we have somehypotheses on where to start
based on what we're working inthis context many times.
(25:55):
But now we're seeing if thecustomer's gonna arrive at some
of the same conclusions thatwe've kind of already
hypothesizing about.
So if the goal is to kind ofget to this 90 day proof of
value or minimum viable productand you've gone through the
activity of understanding theempathy map and where those pain
points are, now you need to getsome prioritization right.
(26:18):
So once you kind of havearticulated some of the pain
points, we'd work with ourcustomers to kind of articulate
value propositions or usercentered statements of intent
with a measurable outcome that'scompelling and differentiating.
We call them hills in enterprisedesign thinking and we have
(26:39):
those participants of theseworkshops actually articulate
what value and success lookslike to them in their own words.
So we'll go through thisactivity where they'll craft as
many kind of value statements tothis particular user as
possible, and then we prioritizeit right.
And we prioritize it by impactto that end user and feasibility
(27:01):
of the solution.
Meaning is, what do we have onthe truck aligned with what the
customer's seeking in thatpriority, and so the feasibility
of us being able to deliver itand the prioritization of that
value by the customer helps findkind of where that then diagram
of success looks like and givesus that kind of starting point.
So you know, from three to fourto five, right Five is the kind
(27:23):
of the output of kind of seeingthat then diagram and then you
figure out what you're going todo for a second third.
But that prioritization happensin step three and then that
mapping happens in step four.
John Kundtz (27:33):
If you plot those two.
What's important to the clientand what's available to us is
our product and service.
You will again create a magicgardener's perspective.
Nicholas Jayanty (27:47):
Which helps you prioritize.
You know it's like, okay,everything in the top right
corner, let's do that first.
John Kundtz (27:52):
Right, high priority, high value or high
capability, high value to theclient.
Nicholas Jayanty (27:57):
And what's cool about this is that it's
emergent right.
It's not like a group of peopleleaving the room and coming
back and telling you everybodythat's participating can now see
it happen in front of them.
So they know that like the onlybias that's being filtered into
this process is the bias of thepeople in the room.
So that emergent kind of momentis very much an aha for
(28:18):
everybody involved becausethey're like cool, it gets real
clear, real fast.
Jan Almasy (28:22):
One thing I want to add before we move into the next
you know section here is I wantto anchor that down and like
how powerful that moment ofrealization is for the group for
the future, of the way theyapproach problem solving Like
the human brain.
I mean, they talk about all thetime training military units
(28:43):
before they go overseas right,and there's a reason why they
put them in high stressfulsituations and put them into,
you know, kill houses, as theycall them, to learn how to clear
houses and get timing and allthis other stuff and put
pressure so that when they goout into the field and they
actually encounter pressure, thebrain has already encountered
pressure similar to it and isable to cope with it easier,
(29:07):
right?
So when you get that person,even if it's just one time, they
experience that light bulb,they're forever going to
understand that the only biasesthat are present are the ones
that are in the room.
And to get out of that thinkingand escape kind of the box, go
out into the unknown and thechaos, you can grab the
(29:28):
different things that are outthere and bring it back down
into order.
But until they go through thatexperience at least one time,
you know they may not ever havethat realization, but once that
happens it is valuable all theway across the span of the
organization for the existenceof that employee who experienced
that workshop.
Nicholas Jayanty (29:46):
It's really interesting, you know, because a
lot of people don't work thisway.
You know, we're conditioned inlike a capitalist kind of
society that there's one personwho does everything and the team
is often obfuscated.
You know, like it's called thegreat man theory of history,
right, where there's one founderor one visionary, and in all of
these contexts that John and Ihave worked in, it's very much a
(30:08):
team collaboration.
There's no ownership assignedto the ideas that come out of
this workshop.
It's owned by the group, whichis very collective.
One of the things that weinvite people to do in order to
keep the space collaborative andinclusive is we invite people
to ideate silently first, whichkind of neutralizes the loudest
voice in the room, because we'rebringing in people that are
(30:28):
kind of the intern as well asthe executive and we need them
all to work together.
So what are different thingsfrom a facilitation standpoint?
Can we inject into this room tocreate a safe space, to allow
people the safety to fail tocome up with that wild idea?
We borrow some practice fromimprov, like yes, and is
something that we'll do a lotwhere we don't discourage ideas
(30:52):
that perhaps are unfeasible.
We're like, yeah, let's playthat out, let's play that story.
So that space, this space thatyou're socializing in, is very
much a possibility space.
It's a yes space, and so ourrole as facilitators is to
create that level of comfortamongst the participants and
facilitators to help them getthere right, that ideation phase
(31:18):
.
If you're not feelingcomfortable and confident, the
ideas that people are going toput out are not going to be as
creative as if they're in agreat headspace.
There's a study that HarvardUniversity did on happiness and
there happens laboratory and itwas with physicians and what
they did was they had theircontrol group and it was a group
(31:38):
of doctors, and then the testgroup was a group of doctors
that got a piece of chocolatebefore they went and saw their
patient.
And so they baseline thedoctors that didn't get the
piece of chocolate in terms oftheir accuracy of diagnosis.
Then they looked at the groupthat was given a piece of
chocolate and looked at theaccuracy of their diagnosis and
they saw an exponentially betteraccuracy in the diagnoses that
(32:01):
the doctors that were given apiece of chocolate before they
saw the patient were than thecontrol group.
And what they realized is thatwhen people are in a good place
and feeling safe and confidentand happy, their creativity
increases exponentially.
You're going to get a betteroutcome and a better output from
them if that space ismaintained and curated the right
dynamics.
(32:21):
So the psychosocial piece ofthis, jan, is very relevant and
it's not something that John andI really index on very much
when we're talking about abusiness standpoint, but on a
human-centered standpoint.
And how do you get people toengage in this new way of
working and not detract andparticipate?
Very much happens in how youset these introductions up, how
you set these activities up andthe space that you curate to
(32:46):
invite people into thiscollaborative environment.
Jan Almasy (32:48):
Oh yeah, and that's the spot that I'm most
fascinated with right now is OK,what types of activities bring
people in?
I was in an improv group incollege and it's super
interesting the way that youkind of gamified that ideation
process using improv.
Because games we understand howto play games if we're properly
(33:12):
socialized children at a veryyoung age.
You're a three, four orfive-year-old and you start the
process off and you're justmimicking.
And then there's thistransition period and it might
be a little bit earlier thanthat.
I'm sure somebody will commenton the stages but you start out
(33:34):
with mimicking what the rulesare and you don't even really
understand the rules.
But as long as everybody agreesthat the rules are the rules,
you can run around in circlesand have a great time.
But then you get to this pointwhere it's like why are the
rules the rules?
But then when you gamifysomething, it takes people back
to that childhood mentalitywhere it's hey, as long as we
(33:56):
all agree that this is what itis and we respect that, it
automatically becomes a safespace because it's so deeply
ingrained in how we operate aspeople.
That's how we learn to navigatethe world at a really early age
.
It's basically like OK, I haveempathy for this person because
they're playing tag.
If I break the rules, thatmeans that I'm disrespecting
them and all of this other kindof stuff.
(34:17):
But it kind of gives thisparameter set within which to
operate, which makes peoplecomfortable.
And then you just allow them tokind of continue a story and
improv stuff and holy.
I can't even imagine the typesof beautiful answers that come
out of a structure like that.
That's super, super interesting.
Nicholas Jayanty (34:33):
Well, even play has rules.
That's one of the reasons thatplay works is because everyone
follows this set of rules andyou've created these constraints
.
And those constraints aren'tlimiting.
They're freeing in a lot ofways, because there's certain
things you can't do.
But working within thoseconstraints often leads to stuff
that you never expected.
Create a safe space to allow people the safety
to fail to come up with thatwild idea.
We borrow some practice fromimprov, like yes, and is
something that we'll do a lotwhere we don't discourage ideas
that perhaps are unfeasible.
We're like, yeah, let's playthat out.
So that space, this space thatyou're socializing in, is very
much a possibility space.
(00:22):
It's a yes space.
John Kundtz (00:24):
So I want to shift gears a little bit to the world
that I spend on my sort ofvolunteer time, which is I try
to work with a lot ofentrepreneurs and startups and
sort of especially in theMidwest, a little bit.
You know, one of the things inthe startup world is about 90%
(00:47):
of startups fail right, and theytypically fail for one of the
top three is poor market fit.
And in the Midwest and, moreimportantly, unlike the coasts
where startups sort of find aneed and fill it, in the Midwest
people come up with a good ideaand then go try to sell it and
I don't know if there's any justprobably reasons for that, but
it's just sort of what I'veobserved.
(01:08):
And so what I keep trying totell and I love your perspective
like an advice to some of thesesmaller companies we have a lot
of those that listen to thispodcast is like you know you've
got good ideas, but at the endof the day, will anybody
actually buy it?
Right, and how design thinkingmight help them.
Bring those two answerstogether, if you will.
Nicholas Jayanty (01:31):
Yeah, no, it's fascinating.
You know, I think that the sameprinciples apply if you're AWS
or if you are a smaller group,and you know, I think the CEO of
Amazon Web Service said this.
His name's Andy Jassy, said.
I'm gonna paraphrase this butevery company wants two things
One, to try as many experimentsas possible and two, to suffer
(01:53):
as little collateral damage fromthe experiments that fail.
It's the whole, you know,start-up mentality of fail early
and often, right, and I'd liketo reframe that and say learn
early and often.
You know, if you're not beingclear about what you wanna learn
from whatever you put into themarket.
You know, even if it's a kindof a you know even a splash page
, right, just kind of seeinglike who is might be even
(02:14):
interested in that.
That if you're like borrowingfrom like kind of the lean
startup methodology where you'rejust doing the splash page and
connecting emails, right, how doyou burn through those
experiences as quickly aspossible to figure out what that
product market fit is beforeyou invest in engineering?
One of the beautiful thingsabout you know having a robust
design capability is you cantest ideas in a clickable format
(02:34):
and not spend a dollar on code.
You know, one of you know, theIEEE had this great article as
to like why software fails andone of the main reasons that
software fails is badrequirements and bad
requirements, what you know.
You can interpret that to meana lot of different things, but
one of the worst requirements ismaking a product that nobody
wants.
So how do you test these ideas?
(02:58):
You know, test a lot of themand then spend that money
smarter.
I mean, that's a startup.
You know every misstep will setyou in a rough spot.
In my own experience before I,you know from the film space,
you know we brought a startupmentality to the business work
that we were doing.
Right, we were like, let'slearn from startup culture and
apply this to an entertainmentstartup.
(03:19):
And you know, the firstbusiness that I launched was you
know, we had this idea that wehad this offering that people
would want.
There were so many reasons thatthey didn't want it.
And if we had just kind of setup a website and just kind of
like marketed kind of theoffering and just given it like
three months and kind of beenreally disciplined with
(03:40):
ourselves and say, okay, if wedon't make a dollar in three
months, we're gonna kill this,we would have saved like four
years of our lives and probablya lot of money that we kind of
kept pumping into this effort.
I think the opportunity to kindof you know, learn fast and
learn quickly and leverage kindof lightweight capabilities to
figure out what that productmarket fit is before you invest
more heavily.
It's one of the superpowers ofhaving design capability within
(04:02):
your organization and justenables kind of those larger
goals for really creativestartup founders.
Which is what are those?
What are those things that Iwanna try?
Jan Almasy (04:10):
Something about the way that you just phrased that
last little bit of theexplanation.
There.
You said lightweightcapabilities Coming from the
startup world and for those ofyou that this is the first time
you know kind of listening towhy I'm even, you know, here
outside of the fact that this iscurrently on kind of the apexes
segment, but me and John metwhen I Was initially coming up
(04:31):
with the idea for what wouldthen become apex communications
network Right, where we use alot of these tactics that you
and and John are going tocontinue to explain throughout
this episode to help people youknow more accurately identify
problem statements online andthen use that to guide their SEO
strategy and a lot of theiranalytic strategies.
And Essentially, what I didn'trealize we were doing is helping
(04:52):
them launch new revenue streamsor new products or develop
services to offer to their theircustomers.
So for a long time I thoughtthat that beta testing something
or getting an MVP out and MVPfor those views, that's
minimally viable product rightand Getting out these things had
(05:12):
to be, you know, a month ofresearch and and a whole bunch
of thought that goes into it andputting all Of these things out
.
And then I started to realizethat an example of a lightweight
version of what you could useto really connect with your
customer.
We put out a single clip overcoven and all it was was a
step-by-step of me clickingthrough a Facebook FAQ on how to
(05:35):
know whether or not yourwebsite had a Facebook pixel
Installed on it.
And so, for those of you thatare not familiar with that space
, a Facebook pixel basicallyallows you to connect your
Google analytics to yourFacebook so that you can see,
like, where those userscrossover, and it kind of mixes
data together so you canretarget for ads and you know
all this other stuff.
(05:56):
But it's it's.
It's something that wasextremely functional and and
super useful.
But a lot of businesses that Iwas around in the Midwest like
we thought that maybe they wouldwant help with a Facebook pixel
, but we weren't sure right.
So we were gonna develop thisservice to help people, and so I
was like you know what?
Let's?
Let's just put out a post andjust educate people on how to
(06:17):
check and see if they have oneand the reasons why they should
have one and, if they don't, toask their agency why they don't
have one.
And we just put out this littleclip and it just showed people
how to audit it.
And we ended up getting five orsix responses from people and
said, hey, I saw this video.
I ended up asking my agencyabout it.
I have no idea why we don'thave one.
(06:38):
You know, this is something wesell products on, facebook and
all this other stuff and it waskind of that little confirmation
that was enough for us to say,hey, okay, maybe we focus on
this a little bit.
We got six responses from peoplein our area that immediately
recognize the need, whereas whatyou guys are saying correct me
if I'm wrong but if you go backand try to just develop that
(06:58):
whole Facebook service, we wouldhave spent a month maybe
figuring something out and thenput it out and had absolutely
nobody respond to it, whereasthe way that that happened is we
put out a post, you getresponses and then develop the
service after you actuallyengage with the customer.
Is that?
That's kind of the landscape asit is and it's beautiful
because, like you, have theselightweight capabilities with
(07:20):
the internet To be able tointeract with users at a large
scale, whereas previously, Ithink John said you know you're
selling like it's 1985.
You couldn't do that in 1985,but it was a lot more difficult
to reach those that many usersthat quickly well, you know
things were a lot slower, right,I mean the pace of change over
the last 30 years.
John Kundtz (07:41):
His is just Exponentially gone faster and
more disruptive.
I mean I you know in all myyears, this last few years, the
amount of Change and amount ofdisruption by businesses coming
in and just upsetting thing, anda lot of it, is that the
technology has Equalized peopleright, so the barriers or entry
are down.
But what I'm the reason I bringthat up is because you don't
(08:04):
have I've seen a lot ofcompanies that they want to have
.
They want to spend a lot oftime and a lot of money Trying
to get something that they thinkis perfect before they go out
and unfortunately, by the timethey do that, in many cases the,
the Reasonable requirements,are no good Neclases because
they've changed.
They might have been, you know,they might have been
(08:25):
appropriate six months ago or ayear ago, but but.
But if you take 18 months todeploy something, the odds are
that the, the business'srequirements, the user's
requirements, are going tochange just because the world is
moving so fast and going backto the quote that you flashed
earlier Right, the last bestexperience that anyone has is
the experience they expecteverywhere.
So that actually takes me intomy, my sort of next piece of
(08:47):
this that I want to talk about,and you alluded to it and I'm
going to share my screen in asecond.
But you know, I want to get intothis idea and I think, john,
you alluded to it right, whatyou were doing was you were sort
of co Collaborating,co-creating with your potential
customers, and, and so one ofthe things we that's sort of
(09:10):
this, this process, and and someof the one of the takeaways I
want to give to the audience isI want to share this sort of
five-step process of Nicholas,and I've sort of I sort of
started and Nicholas helped me,sort of perfect, so to speak,
and I think it's very relevantto sort of discussion of for,
especially for entrepreneurs andothers, and so, and then, what
(09:32):
Nicholas, I want to do is I wantto, you know, get you to sort
of the deep dive into some ofthis.
So, of course, you've seen thischart before.
I've cleaned it up a little,I've changed a little bit, but
one of the I want to start witha concept of the double diamond
right and, and I want you to getyour perspective on this sort
Of diverge, converge, diverge.
This is something I've actuallystarted using because I think
(09:55):
you probably showed it to me,and then we'll go into these
sort of five steps after that.
Nicholas Jayanty (09:59):
It's really helpful when you're dealing with
a very diverse and empoweredteam Right, where you have a lot
of strong opinions and a lot ofstrong expertise.
How do you get as moat, as muchout of that group that you're
working with In the time byletting them diverge and work
independently, and then, whenyou're converging right, you're
bringing that back together, andthat's about prioritization.
And so, as you kind of movethrough this kind of this, this,
(10:23):
this process right, you'recontinuously working together,
separating and then coming backtogether, and it ultimately
allows you to kind of grok whereyou're at in the process and
perhaps what might be a goodnext step.
You know, and these steps, Iwould say, are not linear, right
, I think they're representedlinearly, but you can get
dropped in at any point of thisdiamond and start there, so you
(10:44):
could start with a prototype,put it in front of your user
base, just like yandere, right,he's like we weren't sure if the
service was gonna work.
So we made something, we put itout there, we're gonna make to
learn, we're gonna put thisartifact in the world, we're
gonna provoke group of people torespond to it by this thing,
and then we'll kind of land backon that, observe and define
stage, now that we have a betterunderstanding.
(11:04):
Oh, there might be someinterest.
You know we're observing thatpeople are responding.
Now how do we kind of refinethat and define kind of what
that offering might be?
So what that could look like afollow-up step to those six
respondents is maybe let's setsix conversations up like 30
minute to An hour long interviewand talk about what their unmet
needs are around this.
Perhaps that might expose kindof what their unmet needs are.
(11:26):
Perhaps I might give you someother feature opportunities or
additional requirements just bytalking to them.
Sometimes you can invite themto kind of say show me how you
might use this data Like whatdecisions are you making with
the information that you're?
You know, how do I use thisFacebook pixel data?
You know what questions am Iasking the data?
And by learning that now you cankind of further define the
problem statement, the actionwant to solve for these
customers.
(11:46):
Because and even just theresponse is like there's
interest, right.
But now I've got a really kindof dig down into that interest
and figure out what's that painpoint like what's the why?
Why are these people interested?
What value does understandingthe relationship between
Facebook and Google Analyticsand that kind of visibility.
What value does that provide mybusiness?
And then, by understanding thatvalue that you're providing to
(12:08):
those potential customers, nowyou can kind of shape that
offering a little bit morethoughtfully to kind of reach
that product market fit thatJohn's described.
John Kundtz (12:15):
So the idea is, we started with sort of at the end,
with this idea of a problem.
What's the problem?
The client?
So my, my advice toentrepreneurs is what is the
problem that your product orservice sells Right or it's
trying to solve?
Excuse me, you know.
And and then the first step isjust what we said is you know,
understanding your stakeholdersor personas?
(12:36):
So give me your perspective,nicholas, on sort of how you
know you.
You, you're the one that reallygot me in depth of
understanding the value ofpersonas as Mapping in, mapping
personas.
Nicholas Jayanty (12:48):
Oh, wow, it's a personas.
So how would I say this?
Not all personas that you'llencounter in the world are
creative.
The same rigor, a lot.
You know if the definition Iuse for persona, persona is.
It's a qualitative data modelthat captures what users kind of
(13:09):
key goals are, what their painpoints are, what their behaviors
are and what their unmet needsare.
You can create those personasin a number of ways.
Ideally, primary research isyour primary method of data
collection when you'recollecting the information
that's going to inform thatmodel.
(13:29):
You can use these qualitativedata models, or these personas,
in a number of ways In thesoftware space.
We'll use it right when we'rekicking off a new feature, to
figure out who is the potentialend user of this feature, what
value do they expect from thisfeature?
When we go out to test this inprototype, are we recruiting the
(13:55):
right people that arerepresentative of the persona to
make sure that we are testing asolution with the right group?
We can use our personas to helpanchor people in a user
experience.
For example, when you thinkabout the behaviors of a
developer, there are behaviorsthat are developers that are
(14:16):
developing in the Cloud.
There are developers that aredeveloping locally.
There are developers that areusing command line interface and
then there are developers thatare using graphic user interface
.
By having that segmentationacross your different user group
and having two personas torepresent those different
behavioral characteristics, nowyou've got more experiences that
(14:37):
can be created.
What's the command lineexperience for Jim, the
50-year-old Sissedman who's beenprogramming in a data center,
who's working in a data centeror in a knock his entire life?
He just loves the command line,doesn't care about GUIs, versus
like Jane, who's like a23-year-old developer, just
wants to write app code, doesn'teven want to open up the
(15:01):
command line, wants all thatstuff to be handled for her and
she just wants to click a fewbuttons to get an environment
that she needs so she can code.
You've got two great opportunityspaces just by understanding
that segmentation.
Another place that I've seenpersonas be used in a really
interesting way is when youstart to think about ability,
(15:22):
people with varying abilities,and you can think about that
across a spectrum.
There are people that arepermanently living with
disability, for example, someonewho doesn't live with the
ability to see versus somebodywho is situationally unable to
see because they just went tothe doctor and they've got their
eyes dilated.
When you think about thosepersonas in the extreme and you
(15:43):
come up with that experience forthem by deeply understanding
this person's ability, it opensup the aperture of the types of
experiences that you can use todifferentiate.
By deeply understanding some ofwhat we call the extreme users,
you start to get at new spacesand new opportunities for
product innovation as well.
You can use personas in a lotof different ways.
John Kundtz (16:05):
Nicholas, one of the things I was thinking is
also what I've noticed in thisworld like you've got a lot of
great points and now that wetake that over into a seller or
a founder trying to sell theirproduct or service, I see we see
a lot of work done aroundbuying personas, but what I
didn't see was a lot of work onthe people that are actually
(16:27):
going to use the problem persona, if you will, the person that
has the problem.
That takes me into step two,which is one of my favorites, is
the empathy mapping.
I actually took Jan through anempathy mapping exercise early
on in his journey.
Tell us about empathy mappingfrom your perspective.
Nicholas Jayanty (16:50):
Yeah, absolutely.
I love to use empathy maps in acouple of different ways.
I think one of the best waysI've seen empathy maps employed
is when you have a group ofdifferent stakeholders that
perhaps are saying, maybe, yes,this is our user, but perhaps
they think about that user alittle differently.
So the first thing it does isjust gets all the assumptions
(17:11):
about who you're serving on thetable.
It gives you a place todocument them.
It gives you an opportunity tospot the tension within the team
.
It also gives you anopportunity to reveal gaps in
what you don't know about youruser.
So you can use an empathy mapas a way to build your research
hypothesis and then also informyour research planning as you
(17:31):
more deep in your understandingof your users.
John Kundtz (17:34):
You're stepping in the shoes of your users or the
people you're selling to.
Nicholas Jayanty (17:39):
Yeah, and we were really lucky because,
instead of us proxying andimagining what these end users
are saying, doing, thinking andfeeling, we actually would do
this activity with the end user,where they would populate it
themselves.
They're like this is what I do,this is what I do, so it
removes all the speculation andconjecture.
One of the keys of designthinking and enterprise design
(17:59):
thinking is that our users alignus with reality, and when
you're in the office and you'renot getting out of the building
and you're not talking to yourend users, we get a lot of head
trashes I think John has usedthe word which is a lot of
assumptions, thinking.
A lot of energy gets investedin negotiating with your
teammates as opposed to bringingsome data to the conversation
(18:20):
that is going to remove all thatkind of conflict and
immediately give everyone adirection to go with.
That's the other thing that alot of the value that you get
from talking to your users is isit prevents burnout.
If you have a strong team withstrong opinions and they're
investing an hour to three hoursto four hours a week
negotiating how one thing shouldlook, you're creating churn.
(18:44):
You're not necessarilyempowering those people to be as
effective as possible because,instead of understanding their
users and taking those fourhours and talking to some
customers, they're spending fourhours arguing or debating or
negotiating.
So that's kind of a litmus testactually for those of you out
there that if you noticeyourself in a meeting multiple
times having the sameconversation, that's probably a
(19:05):
good opportunity to get out ofthe building and go talk to your
end users and save your teamsome time.
John Kundtz (19:09):
One of the things we learned was that when we got
a group of people in the room,everybody knows something about
the personas or the people thatwe're working on, but they
learned a ton about each other,right, and they really were all
of a sudden realizing and this Ithink COVID brought this out
people really started toempathize with the people they
were working with and theyreally started to realize how
(19:31):
they sort of all wereinterconnected in essentially
running the business, so tospeak.
Nicholas Jayanty (19:38):
Which, to go back to what you're talking
about, which is like how doesempathy become transformation?
Right, that's the catalyst,that empathy for one another,
where you start to see how oneaction that someone you don't
even talk to is not in the samedepartment as you, they take and
that impacts you downstream.
A lot of times there's novisibility into how the choices
(19:59):
that you're making impact otherpeople within your organization.
I've been in workshops wherethe front of the house and the
back of the house of thisbanking organization.
They were so upset with eachother because the back of the
house needed this one piece ofinformation and the front of the
house continued to not provideit to them.
So this back of the houseemployee was just trapped and it
(20:20):
didn't come out until they werein the same room that the back
of the house and the front ofhouse.
People realized that the fieldthat the back of the house
person needed populated wasn'teven in the front of the house
person's interface.
They didn't even know andthere's just like animosity
between these two departmentsand it was just this one field
that just wasn't showing up inthis one interface, that was
(20:41):
just like hamstring in an entiredepartment and that was just,
that was nobody's fault, thatwas bad user experience, right,
that's nobody's fault.
And but bringing these peopletogether in the room, you know
they're like why, oh, you're sofresh.
They wouldn't even talk to eachother at the beginning of the
session, you know there was somuch tension.
And then, as they started tounderstand what the data that
matters, one of the people inthe front of the house clicked
(21:02):
and they're like oh wait, thissounds like this is really
critical to like you, you all,being able to do these parts,
and like one of my reasons thatI'm frustrated with you all is
because it takes so long to getthis task accomplished.
What I'm hearing you say iswe're not actually going to need
the information you need.
And the person was like well,yeah, and he's like, well,
that's interesting, because ourinterface actually doesn't even
ask for that information, so Ididn't even know that you needed
(21:23):
it.
And they both looked at eachother and like I swear they
wanted to hug.
Like because they were like, oh, my goodness, like we've had
all this tension, like and nowwe realize that, like this is
technology problem, out ofpeople problem, but it wouldn't
have happened until they kind ofdeep dive into one another's
empathy maps and deep dive intoone what each other were doing
and even like kind of a littlebit more important, like what's
(21:44):
the data that matters to each ofthese different people and how
do we make sure that thatinformation is exchanged in the
way that everybody needs to findit?
Jan Almasy (21:51):
I've been like super , super obsessed recently with
the right and the lefthemispheres of the brain and why
they're separated by the corpuscallosum, right.
So for those of you that, likeI'm going to get a little bit
anatomy here to just kind of setthe stage, but so we have this
thing called the corpus callosum, or corpus callosum, running
through the right and lefthemispheres of our brain and
(22:13):
it's basically its entire job isto prevent electrical signals
from crossing over right.
Because if they start to dothat and everything starts to
spark all at once, it's calledepilepsy right.
Like it's, your brain is havinga seizure, everything's, you
know, connected all at one timeand it just provides information
or below.
But what you're describing,what I think is really cool
about as you guys are walkingthrough this process and we're
(22:34):
talking about empathy totransformation, right, there's
actually a lot of likeneurochemical triggers that you
guys are triggering in peoplethat will bond them to make
future innovation possible.
Because, like you said at theend of that, like I swear to God
that they wanted to hug rightIn that moment, they're getting
such a large rest of serotoninand oxytocin and dopamine right
(22:55):
that they're just in this placewhere they now feel bonded to
this person, right, so they'renow, in the future, are going to
communicate.
You've not only identified aproblem, you've destroyed a
communication barrier, which Ithink is you know.
That's really part of where thereal value comes in.
So what's, what's fascinatingabout the way that you guys, you
know this double diamondapproach is in the left part of
(23:16):
our brain.
We really anchor things downright, like a good example is
like for most people they'reright-handed, so the left part
of your brain guides the righthand and that's like you're
grasping right, so you'repicking things up.
That's a tangible idea.
That's something that you havea hold of, whereas the right
brain kind of has this.
Its job is to perceiveeverything else, like I'm
(23:38):
talking to you guys right now,so I'm very focused on this
conversation.
That's my left brain kind ofguiding my perception here.
But my right brain is tellingme that I know that there's
other things going on in myapartment.
If I heard a door click, Iwould turn right, but that's not
the immediate part of myperception.
But the way that the diamondforces you to go is that it
forces people into that rightbrain thought where it's like
(24:00):
okay, what are all of the otherpossibilities of things that
could potentially be causingthis to be disrupted.
And let's take it and thennarrow it down into something
where we can actually graspsomething and then, like you
said, that light bulb momenthappens.
But it only happens when you getinto a right brain space, where
the right brain is really goodat pattern recognition, and
(24:21):
it'll recognize a pattern andthen, as the conversation
continues, that pattern willstart to get more refined,
things will start to happen andthen, somewhere along that
continuum, there's a thing rightand then it transitions over
into this left brain thoughtprocess that now fills in all
the details and understands theprocess and can actually
tangibly grasp something likethat problem Right.
(24:41):
But that wouldn't happen if youdidn't get those two people
into the room at the same timeand create that conversation or
that space.
You know I always talk aboutcreating creative space to allow
people to have thoseconversations.
So, like doing that, I'm justlike fascinated with all of the
actual biological triggers thatyou guys are hitting throughout
this process.
(25:01):
That's what I've been reallyfocused on learning a lot about
recently, so I just had to throwthat in there for all of my RNs
and science people that.
John Kundtz (25:07):
Listen to the APEX that's the ICU nurse coming out
of you.
So, nicholas, give us yourperspective on sort of that next
phase.
Right Once we've worked and wesort of lived the world, we
start to now try to from a salesperspective.
I'm now trying to identifythings that the unmet needs of
(25:29):
the client or the prospect withmy product or service.
Nicholas Jayanty (25:33):
It's always good to design with the end in
mind and I think in the contextof some of the work that John
and I were doing is like we knewwe needed a phased approach.
We knew we needed to be able todeliver value within 90 days,
like that was what we werelooking for.
It's like where do we start?
We've got all theseopportunities now We've bubbled
these all up, we have somehypotheses on where to start
based on what we're working inthis context many times.
(25:55):
But now we're seeing if thecustomer's gonna arrive at some
of the same conclusions thatwe've kind of already
hypothesizing about.
So if the goal is to kind ofget to this 90 day proof of
value or minimum viable productand you've gone through the
activity of understanding theempathy map and where those pain
points are, now you need to getsome prioritization right.
(26:18):
So once you kind of havearticulated some of the pain
points, we'd work with ourcustomers to kind of articulate
value propositions or usercentered statements of intent
with a measurable outcome that'scompelling and differentiating.
We call them hills in enterprisedesign thinking and we have
(26:39):
those participants of theseworkshops actually articulate
what value and success lookslike to them in their own words.
So we'll go through thisactivity where they'll craft as
many kind of value statements tothis particular user as
possible, and then we prioritizeit right.
And we prioritize it by impactto that end user and feasibility
(27:01):
of the solution.
Meaning is, what do we have onthe truck aligned with what the
customer's seeking in thatpriority, and so the feasibility
of us being able to deliver itand the prioritization of that
value by the customer helps findkind of where that then diagram
of success looks like and givesus that kind of starting point.
So you know, from three to fourto five, right Five is the kind
(27:23):
of the output of kind of seeingthat then diagram and then you
figure out what you're going todo for a second third.
But that prioritization happensin step three and then that
mapping happens in step four.
John Kundtz (27:33):
If you plot those two.
What's important to the clientand what's available to us is
our product and service.
You will again create a magicgardener's perspective.
Nicholas Jayanty (27:47):
Which helps you prioritize.
You know it's like, okay,everything in the top right
corner, let's do that first.
John Kundtz (27:52):
Right, high priority, high value or high
capability, high value to theclient.
Nicholas Jayanty (27:57):
And what's cool about this is that it's
emergent right.
It's not like a group of peopleleaving the room and coming
back and telling you everybodythat's participating can now see
it happen in front of them.
So they know that like the onlybias that's being filtered into
this process is the bias of thepeople in the room.
So that emergent kind of momentis very much an aha for
(28:18):
everybody involved becausethey're like cool, it gets real
clear, real fast.
Jan Almasy (28:22):
One thing I want to add before we move into the next
you know section here is I wantto anchor that down and like
how powerful that moment ofrealization is for the group for
the future, of the way theyapproach problem solving Like
the human brain.
I mean, they talk about all thetime training military units
(28:43):
before they go overseas right,and there's a reason why they
put them in high stressfulsituations and put them into,
you know, kill houses, as theycall them, to learn how to clear
houses and get timing and allthis other stuff and put
pressure so that when they goout into the field and they
actually encounter pressure, thebrain has already encountered
pressure similar to it and isable to cope with it easier,
(29:07):
right?
So when you get that person,even if it's just one time, they
experience that light bulb,they're forever going to
understand that the only biasesthat are present are the ones
that are in the room.
And to get out of that thinkingand escape kind of the box, go
out into the unknown and thechaos, you can grab the
(29:28):
different things that are outthere and bring it back down
into order.
But until they go through thatexperience at least one time,
you know they may not ever havethat realization, but once that
happens it is valuable all theway across the span of the
organization for the existenceof that employee who experienced
that workshop.
Nicholas Jayanty (29:46):
It's really interesting, you know, because a
lot of people don't work thisway.
You know, we're conditioned inlike a capitalist kind of
society that there's one personwho does everything and the team
is often obfuscated.
You know, like it's called thegreat man theory of history,
right, where there's one founderor one visionary, and in all of
these contexts that John and Ihave worked in, it's very much a
(30:08):
team collaboration.
There's no ownership assignedto the ideas that come out of
this workshop.
It's owned by the group, whichis very collective.
One of the things that weinvite people to do in order to
keep the space collaborative andinclusive is we invite people
to ideate silently first, whichkind of neutralizes the loudest
voice in the room, because we'rebringing in people that are
(30:28):
kind of the intern as well asthe executive and we need them
all to work together.
So what are different thingsfrom a facilitation standpoint?
Can we inject into this room tocreate a safe space, to allow
people the safety to fail tocome up with that wild idea?
We borrow some practice fromimprov, like yes, and is
something that we'll do a lotwhere we don't discourage ideas
(30:52):
that perhaps are unfeasible.
We're like, yeah, let's playthat out, let's play that story.
So that space, this space thatyou're socializing in, is very
much a possibility space.
It's a yes space, and so ourrole as facilitators is to
create that level of comfortamongst the participants and
facilitators to help them getthere right, that ideation phase
(31:18):
.
If you're not feelingcomfortable and confident, the
ideas that people are going toput out are not going to be as
creative as if they're in agreat headspace.
There's a study that HarvardUniversity did on happiness and
there happens laboratory and itwas with physicians and what
they did was they had theircontrol group and it was a group
(31:38):
of doctors, and then the testgroup was a group of doctors
that got a piece of chocolatebefore they went and saw their
patient.
And so they baseline thedoctors that didn't get the
piece of chocolate in terms oftheir accuracy of diagnosis.
Then they looked at the groupthat was given a piece of
chocolate and looked at theaccuracy of their diagnosis and
they saw an exponentially betteraccuracy in the diagnoses that
(32:01):
the doctors that were given apiece of chocolate before they
saw the patient were than thecontrol group.
And what they realized is thatwhen people are in a good place
and feeling safe and confidentand happy, their creativity
increases exponentially.
You're going to get a betteroutcome and a better output from
them if that space ismaintained and curated the right
dynamics.
(32:21):
So the psychosocial piece ofthis, jan, is very relevant and
it's not something that John andI really index on very much
when we're talking about abusiness standpoint, but on a
human-centered standpoint.
And how do you get people toengage in this new way of
working and not detract andparticipate?
Very much happens in how youset these introductions up, how
you set these activities up andthe space that you curate to
(32:46):
invite people into thiscollaborative environment.
Jan Almasy (32:48):
Oh yeah, and that's the spot that I'm most
fascinated with right now is OK,what types of activities bring
people in?
I was in an improv group incollege and it's super
interesting the way that youkind of gamified that ideation
process using improv.
Because games we understand howto play games if we're properly
(33:12):
socialized children at a veryyoung age.
You're a three, four orfive-year-old and you start the
process off and you're justmimicking.
And then there's thistransition period and it might
be a little bit earlier thanthat.
I'm sure somebody will commenton the stages but you start out
(33:34):
with mimicking what the rulesare and you don't even really
understand the rules.
But as long as everybody agreesthat the rules are the rules,
you can run around in circlesand have a great time.
But then you get to this pointwhere it's like why are the
rules the rules?
But then when you gamifysomething, it takes people back
to that childhood mentalitywhere it's hey, as long as we
(33:56):
all agree that this is what itis and we respect that, it
automatically becomes a safespace because it's so deeply
ingrained in how we operate aspeople.
That's how we learn to navigatethe world at a really early age
.
It's basically like OK, I haveempathy for this person because
they're playing tag.
If I break the rules, thatmeans that I'm disrespecting
them and all of this other kindof stuff.
(34:17):
But it kind of gives thisparameter set within which to
operate, which makes peoplecomfortable.
And then you just allow them tokind of continue a story and
improv stuff and holy.
I can't even imagine the typesof beautiful answers that come
out of a structure like that.
That's super, super interesting.
Nicholas Jayanty (34:33):
Well, even play has rules.
That's one of the reasons thatplay works is because everyone
follows this set of rules andyou've created these constraints
.
And those constraints aren'tlimiting.
They're freeing in a lot ofways, because there's certain
things you can't do.
But working within thoseconstraints often leads to stuff
that you never expected.
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