November 30, 2023 • 32 mins
When we think about our best work, the things that come to mind are probably about the work itself, but guest Denise Burchell poses that team member relationships are the real determiners of success. In this episode, J.B. and Molly learn how to design those relationships for maximum impact and innovation as Denise shares valuable insights garnered from years spent leading cross-disciplinary teams. They also explore shifting focus from products to people and how to plan for the relationship dynamic, remote or not.
"You can do anything with a distributed team that you can do with an in-person team... you just have to make up a lot of the serendipity with orchestration." - Denise Burchell
0:10 - Intro
1:22 - Shifting from product first to relationship first
7:30 - Aligning with executives
13:53 - Hire, Fire, Boss!
17:38 - Ways of working and macroeconomics
20:48 - Team ideation for the TED conference
26:35 - On distributed and in-person teams
30:42 - Reflections and outro
Connect with Denise on LinkedIn.
Mentioned in this podcast:
- Create Inclusive Collaboration Experiences During the Design Process training by Molly and Denise on Salesforce Trailhead
Follow Unserious in your podcast app, at unserious.com, and on Instagram and Threads at @unserious.fun.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
J.B. (00:05):
This is Unserious.
Molly (00:11):
When we think about our best work, the things that come
to mind are probably about thework itself what ideation
practices you use which create aframework, produce the best
ideas, how you organize thatwork and keep it on track.
But if you zoom out and look atthe bigger picture, the real
determiner of success is thequality of the relationships
(00:33):
between the real and imperfectpeople doing the work and how,
together, those team membersdeepen trust with their
customers.
And, like anything else, itturns out, you can design those
relationships for maximum impact.
That's the superpower of ourguest today.
Denise Birchell is atrailblazer of design strategy
(00:55):
and relationship design.
She transforms businesses byunlocking the creative potential
of high-functioning, diverseand cross-disciplinary teams.
She has collaborated withleaders at Nike, ted and
Genentech and led teams atplaces like Frog Design and
Salesforce Design, as well asIDEO, where she and I first met.
(01:15):
Denise, thank you so much fortalking to us today.
Denise (01:19):
Thank you for having me.
Molly (01:20):
I appreciate it.
One thing that you have talkedto me a lot about is about
shifting from product first torelationship first in business
today, and I'd love to hear howcome, why that focus on
relationships and work today?
Denise (01:39):
Relationships are actually the fuel of work.
They make us work better asteams.
They make us work better aspeople, when we like who we're
working with.
When we take the time to get toknow who we're working with, we
bring a level of excitement andpassion to the work that's just
not replaceable.
I react a lot to this notion ofproduct first because I think
(02:04):
product first thinking is quitenarrow actually.
It's this notion that, oh, we'regoing to do whatever is right
for the product, we're going tomake decisions on what's best
for the product and we're goingto sometimes have to say no to
whatever the users are tellingus that they want.
And fundamentally for me, Ithink if you build a product for
(02:25):
the sake of a product insteadof for the sake of its users,
your product has a very limitedshelf life and a limited market
and adoption cycle.
So I'm all about fueling thepeople to make products for the
people.
So it's relationships backwardsand forwards and front to back.
Molly (02:45):
I love that.
One of the things that I'vereally admired is that you are
developing new crafts inside ofdesign, and one of those crafts
is the craft of relationshipdesign.
I'm wondering if you coulddefine for us what relationship
design is and what might be someof the methods or ways of
working when you are arelationship designer.
Denise (03:09):
Yeah, absolutely so.
Relationship design just camefrom the basic insight that
relationships are thefundamental building blocks of
value.
Very jargony speak right there,but what it means is that
relationships are how businessis done, it's how products get
made, it's how things get sold,it's how products take off and
(03:30):
things become viral.
Without relationships, withouthumans sort of pushing these
things forward, a product isjust an idea, is just a build,
is just a small encapsulation.
Relationship design alsoacknowledges that on the user
side of the equation, things arerarely ever used in a vacuum.
(03:51):
I like to think of a cell phone.
If we think of the cell phoneas this notion of personal
technology, it's the thingthat's on our nightstand at
night.
It's intimate in bed with ussometimes.
But it's also the thing thatchanges social dynamics.
At a bus station or a trainstation, on the subway platform,
(04:12):
people no longer talk to eachother because everybody's got
their nose in a cell phone.
And so when you think about theusage of the products and
services that we build, it makessense to not just think of what
am I doing for the individualuser I have in mind.
It makes sense to think of theuser in the social context.
What's the team behind them?
(04:34):
What's the community behindthem?
Where are they when they'reinteracting with this product or
service?
And how do we, as designers,start to create a practice that
takes all those things intoconsideration, because they
really do impact the experienceof using the products and
services we build?
Molly (04:57):
One of the things that I've learned from you is that
who a team is and how they workimpacts the quality of a product
or a service or an experiencethat is designed, and I'm
wondering if you can give anexample of like maybe what good
relationship design might looklike in the world, or maybe what
(05:19):
would bad relationship designlook like in the world?
Denise (05:22):
So when I think about good relationship design, I
actually think about the waythat the Salesforce design team
itself was put together and run.
So the Salesforce design teamwas created with leaders that
represented the key silos inproduct team, in distribution,
(05:43):
in marketing and in operations.
And the reason that Teddy'sMerhal, the founder of the team,
brought these leaders togetheris because he knew that
relationships are the buildingblocks of value and he knew that
in order to do somethinghorizontal in an organization
that relies very heavily onmetrics and success milestones
(06:05):
that are vertical and siloed, heknew that it had to be a level
of trust in individuals that gotdifferent groups of people to
engage and participate andsupport our work.
So, bringing together this sortof four corners of Salesforce
into his leadership team, healready had a step in the
(06:26):
direction of getting buy-in towhat we were doing.
We also created a comms strategyfrom the start that understood
different levels of engagementwith what we were doing.
So we had a Slack channel wherewe would broadcast.
We had a quarterly meetingwhere we would tell people what
(06:47):
we were doing and what we wereabout to do.
We would talk to individualleaders in a very sort of let me
hold your hand and explain howthis might have something to do
with the goals that you have,and then, in general, we had an
open invitation for people totalk to us and bring ideas to us
(07:08):
about how we could worktogether, and so this comms plan
, at multiple levels, understoodthe matrix nature of the
organization, and it understoodthat you need top-down support.
You need bottom-up support inorder to actually create a
movement that really allows youto elevate design, which is
(07:29):
fundamentally what we were aboutdoing.
Molly (07:36):
How do you align executives to work in
relationship-centered ways?
Like I'm like, how did people,how did you do that?
Because it can be consideredsoft, it can be like a nice to
have, not a strategic imperative, like what are your tips or
tricks or wisdom on how youalign executives around working
(07:58):
in more relationship-centeredways?
Denise (08:02):
First of all, they already have a bias toward
relationships, because theycan't really have gotten to
where they are without havingthe relationships that got them
there, and so it's about sort ofhelping them understand how the
relationship that you'rebuilding with them is helpful to
them as well as helpful to you.
You're not constantly justtalking to them when you need a
(08:22):
favor right.
You're building a relationshipthat's a two-way street.
Sometimes it's about I canoffer you insights from an area
of the organization that youcan't see, or a level within
your organization that you can'tsee.
Sometimes it's I bring adifferent level of cooperation
from the external to theinternal of the company right,
like I have a broad networkoutside of people, experts, who
(08:45):
we can tap for whatever.
But fundamentally, executivesare also in a high pressure
situation to deliver on veryspecific business outcomes, and
so it is our job to frame ourwork in the terms of those goals
(09:05):
and that pressure right.
I have to know, I have to becurious.
First of all, what is top ofmind for this executive?
What are they accountable forthis quarter?
And then I have to squint.
When I'm just scoping some work, I have to squint and say, okay
, how can my work be additiveand help this executive achieve
(09:30):
something they are on the hookto achieve?
Because that is how you becomeimportant to that executive.
If you can slip your work intothe slipstream of their
priorities, if you can show theways in which you're a partner
to them instead of a time suck,that's golden.
That's what they want to hear.
J.B. (09:48):
So that feels like very much a big, mature company
situation.
I think when you go to startups, a lot of the executives that
you're working with you're themature one.
You're comparatively quitesenior.
You might not have the samelevel because you didn't found
the company, but you're tryingto convince these founders and
(10:09):
product leaders thatrelationships matter and really
you need to start with listening.
It's not something that comesnaturally to them.
There's no data that listeningis really important.
How do you get them there?
Denise (10:29):
So I've got two thoughts to share.
On that one, I am a formerstartup founder, so I've seen
this up close as well.
The first thing I will say isthat the VC-funded startup
system is fundamentally broken.
The incentives are scale firstand ask questions later, and
(10:50):
that is in direct tension withthat idea of build a product
that people love and then scaleit Right.
I think that if you're just asmall business out in the world
and you don't have this pressureto hockey stick your growth to
get the ROI for your investors,I think you do things very
(11:10):
differently.
You have an ear toward whatyour customers want because, at
the end of the day, you'reanswering to your customers.
In the VC-funded startup world,you're answering to your board
and, frankly, the incentivesthat they have drive a lot of
those decisions to not listen tocustomers.
So I've found that, frankly, Ijust don't work with super early
(11:31):
stage startups that areVC-funded because, you're right,
they don't have data that saysthat pleasing customers matters.
But let's use some common sensehere.
If you're playing a longer game, don't you have to please your
customers?
Isn't that kind of basic?
Yeah, data is always backwardslooking.
(11:51):
So, as someone who works ininnovation, data is a really
hard thing to rely on.
You just can't count on databacking up your story.
However, there are some thingsyou could do.
One of the things that I liketo do is to create an ecosystem
map, and my ecosystem map isabout the stakeholders as well
(12:14):
as the users.
I need to look at who are theexperts at different things in
my organization.
Those are the people whoseintuition is going to be in play
.
And those are also the peoplewho will have those fundamental
concerns about will this ideascale or is this the right idea
(12:36):
to build now, and what you haveto do is just spend a lot of
time one-on-one, listening totheir concerns and understanding
that those concerns come from aplace of valued experience.
Yeah, and if there's one personvoicing that concern in the
room, chances are a lot ofothers in the room are feeling
that same concern.
(12:56):
And so then you move to toolnumber two, which is prototyping
.
Since you don't have data tosay, this is the right thing to
do.
We know it because it's data isbackward looking.
What you have to do is figureout how do I structure
experiments that help buildconfidence in the ideas?
The way to build confidence inthe ideas is to go head on
(13:20):
addressing the objections.
I don't know if this idea willscale.
Great, how do we start toexperiment with whether or not
this idea will scale withoutbuilding the thing?
Because here's the thing isthat it's very expensive to
build a product and then learnyou're wrong, if you can come up
(13:40):
with an experiment that helpsyou understand the potential for
scalability without actuallydoing the scaling.
You can go a lot further inconvincing a leadership team to
buy into it or even a startupfounding team to buy into it.
J.B. (14:02):
When we come back.
Cross-functional teams andtransformation with Denise
Birchell.
More on Sirius in just a moment.
Molly (14:13):
Denise, welcome to Sirius .
Obviously, you can tell howserious we are.
So, instead of Mary Shaggirkill, we're going to play hire, fire
or boss.
I'm thinking about your artistbackground and your history as a
sculptor.
So would you looking at FridaKahlo, georgia O'Keeffe and Mary
(14:37):
Cassatt?
Who would you hire, who wouldyou fire and who do you want as
your boss?
Oh wow.
Denise (14:44):
Okay, all right.
So initial stab here.
Yeah, I think I might ratherplay Mary Shaggirkill.
No, I'm kidding, I got it, justkidding.
No, I think I would love towork for Frida Kahlo, just
(15:05):
because, holy crap, she's beensuch an influence.
I'm a Latina, you can't tell.
I totally look the white halfof my heritage.
But I would love to just kindof absorb the energy and the.
You know she does not takeherself seriously, and I love
that about Kahlo, you think so.
(15:26):
I mean, she takes her artseriously, but I don't think she
takes herself seriously.
Okay, like she goes in alldirections, she doesn't.
I don't feel like she was thekind of person that, like she
was my fire, she was your fire.
J.B. (15:46):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I would have fired her, that's a big
help.
Molly (15:48):
He's on it yeah.
Denise (15:50):
Tell us it's the eyebrow right.
J.B. (15:53):
No, it's not it's not the eyebrow, it's.
She's too much of a downer tobe around.
All the time I was like I don'tknow that.
I want her on my team.
Denise (16:05):
Okay.
J.B. (16:06):
She's gonna like, it's gonna be, it's gonna be, it's
like, oh God, like we've allworked around those like really
moody creatives.
Molly (16:13):
This is an HR issue because she has, like, some
physical ailments.
J.B. (16:17):
This is the biggest.
No, I know, I know, I know it'slike.
Molly (16:19):
You need the moral dilemma in the HR conversation.
Denise (16:24):
She's like how many different protected classes am I
part of?
Really, let's go for it,definitely like a leadership
conversation right now.
Molly (16:34):
I'm always reviewing Frida Kahlo in Silicon Valley.
J.B. (16:39):
Yeah.
Molly (16:41):
That's awesome.
Keep going.
Denise (16:42):
Denise.
All right, so I would fireGeorgia O'Keeffe.
I just don't think she canconduct herself professionally,
if we're honest.
J.B. (16:54):
Too much, too much hitting on the young ladies.
Denise (16:58):
Exactly.
I'm sorry.
Why does every piece of workproduct come out looking like a
mola?
Why?
Molly (17:06):
Oh man, so that means you would work for Mary Cassatt, I
suppose by default.
Denise (17:13):
I think I always do end up working for Mary Cassatt.
The more traditional, the likeyou know, maybe sort of older
school kind of people, so sureit fits.
J.B. (17:27):
I think that that's a.
I think it's a good call as aboss and not and not what you
think that you're getting into.
Denise (17:33):
That's true, so much of the time, right, yeah, not what
you think you're getting into.
J.B. (17:38):
That's right.
That's right.
It seems like right now and I'mnot sure if it's like we're
coming out of COVID we're stillworking remotely.
Why are so many companiesstruggling with transition and
change efforts right now,especially among highly
cross-functional creative teams?
Denise (18:00):
The pandemic threw a big wrench into the ways of working
.
I was recently talking withanother friend about this how
pre-pandemic.
It was very common to have anoffshore team doing some
development or running a callcenter or doing some kind of
very well-scoped work that theycould do almost separately from
(18:22):
the in-person team back atheadquarters.
The pandemic threw everybodyinto the all remote, all the
time bucket, of course, andcompanies started hiring
remotely.
Some of them had a moreregional strategy where they
were thinking about how to keeppeople in the same time zones.
Other companies were like yay,finally, we can just hire the
(18:45):
best person for the job, nomatter where they are.
So now we're in this post-phase, post pandemic, not in the
sense of COVID is done, but inthe sense of the way that it's
impacting our work.
A lot of folks are being askedto come back to the office, but
companies can really only askthat of local employees and
(19:06):
they've hired some remoteemployees for some really core
functions and core jobs.
So we're in this moment from aways of working perspective.
At the same time, we're lookingat this macroeconomic context
where companies are just reallyfocusing on optimization,
(19:29):
they're focusing on efficiency,they're focusing on quarterly
returns.
It's the year of efficiency,everywhere, that's right, and so
when you're in a moment likethat, the tendency from a
mentality perspective and amechanics perspective is to
clench, to hold things tight, tobring things in closer.
So this transition is notnecessarily going well for them,
(19:51):
because they're trying to dothings differently in more than
one way at a time, and a lot oftimes the answers that they have
looked to in the past whenthey've been trying to make a
transition say it's a digitaltransformation or something like
that they've thrown technologyat the issue.
Yeah, and in this case, youcan't just throw technology at
(20:12):
the issue.
You have to start to understandthat transitions are moments
where you need to deal withprocesses and orders of
operation.
You have to deal with humansand the messy context that they
bring, and you have to deal withtechnology and all of those
things.
In time and space can be a lotto juggle, and I don't think
(20:35):
that companies are reallyfocusing on the transition
itself.
They're so busy focusing onefficiency and focusing on their
products that they're reallynot taking the time to look at
how all of the elements of thesystem are working together and,
in many cases, working againstthem.
Molly (20:54):
You talked about transitions, and the things you
need are process that includessystems and ways of working.
You need to think about thehumans that's, both your teams
and your users, and thediversity of expertise and life
experiences within that, and youalso talked about technology as
tools, but there's something inthat around how you create
(21:17):
adaptiveness and how thatadaptiveness really leads to
groundbreaking innovations, highquality work and high
functioning teams.
Yeah, and that's something thatis your secret sauce.
Denise (21:31):
I mean, I got the rare privilege of working with
Genentech and they were sponsorsof the 2012 TED conference, and
so we had a huge space at theTED conference to do something
with.
The brief came to us veryopen-ended it was.
(21:51):
You know, you have to tackle atopic of interest to Genentech
and to TED and it's got to befucking awesome.
Can I say fucking yeah, it'sgot to be fucking awesome is
what the client said.
Molly (22:04):
Yeah, of course it does.
Of course it does, it's got tobe fucking awesome TED and
Genentech and IDEO it's got toblow some minds.
Denise (22:10):
That's right.
And at first I was assigned tothe project as an experienced
designer and we got intoresearch and started to think
about what are the differentthings that TEDsters need out of
a TED conference, what are themindsets you're in when you're
at a conference, all those kindsof designing things.
But about a month into ourproject the project leader had a
(22:38):
health emergency and had to bowout.
And at the last minute theysaid okay, denise, can you come
in and lead this team?
Wow, and it was definitely across-disciplinary team and we
didn't yet have a concept.
And there were eight weeksbetween us and the TED
conference and we were a littlebit terrified, oh yeah.
(23:00):
And so we had this brainstormone day and luckily the client
was along for this ride ofambiguity, and comfort with
ambiguity is a rare thing in ahuman being and probably more
rare in a client situation.
So we come up with thisbrainstorm and one day somebody
(23:21):
just drew it on a post-it notewhat if we turned DNA into music
?
Wow, and we all kind of laughedabout it like sure.
How would we do that?
Yeah, and then we thought aboutit Could we do that?
And we started working on allof the various details.
Well, how could we do it?
What could we do?
(23:41):
So, before long, we added amusic producer to our team,
because all of the music that weused was composed for the event
.
That's amazing.
And a development team, and wethought, okay, how are people
going to interact with this?
The end of the day, theexperience was that people would
(24:02):
come to our stations and theywould pick a swab packet out and
it had a pin on it.
We had these 2,500 trait pinsand they all had traits on them
that you could relate to.
Some of the traits were like Ihave vampire fangs or I have
curly hair or I've got, you know, scraggly toes.
(24:26):
That may not have been the mostflattering of them.
The idea was to show off thepotential for Genentech to
develop these swabs in 24 hours,which was a piece of
technological innovation thatthey had only recently developed
.
We ran into so many differenthurdles.
The lawyers came in at the lastminute.
You can't give people geneticresults without having them sign
(24:49):
legal forms and is insurancecovering this?
Is this medical Lawyers?
And innovation.
Molly (24:55):
A match made in heaven.
A match made in heaven or not?
Denise (25:01):
But at the end of the day, this was one of the best
examples I have ever seen of aproject that resembled the team
that created it, and one of thebiggest insights for me was
about cross-disciplinary teamsand how bringing together people
with incredibly differentbackgrounds cultural backgrounds
(25:22):
.
You know their practices andspecializations from a design
perspective and creativeperspective.
You know even, to some degree,socioeconomic backgrounds.
All the people were in the roomtogether and it was an
incredible sort of example ofhow the team comes together and
(25:42):
puts their hearts into theirwork and develops something that
the world has never seen before, and it came off without a
hitch at TED.
You know, six weeks later and Ihave to tell you, during one of
the early prototyping sessions,we brought in all of the big
wigs at IDEO who have been toTED and were going to TED,
(26:04):
brought them through a prototypeand it was, by all accounts,
the biggest prototype failure Ihave ever had.
We all had those we all hadthose.
And a certain leader at IDEOwas like six weeks until TED and
(26:27):
this is where you are, and hisgreat advice to us was don't
fuck it up.
J.B. (26:40):
So do you think you could do that again today with a
distributed team?
Denise (26:46):
Oh, that's a really good question.
I honestly believe you can doanything with a distributed team
that you can do with anin-person team.
I think it would have gonedifferently, it would have
unfolded differently and therelationships would have been
built differently.
But at the end of the day, I dothink you could do something
like that with a distributedteam.
J.B. (27:08):
Do you need more of runway or do you need more time?
Do you need more resource?
Molly (27:13):
Do you need more belonging time helping people
feel part of the team.
Denise (27:19):
I think you need two different things.
I think you need to set it up.
When a team is first comingtogether, you have to take very
explicit action to address thehuman side of being on a team
making people feel belonging,making people feel like you
understand who they are andwhere they're coming from and
(27:40):
you value the work that they'regiving, and then setting the
table for them to create thosekinds of relationships with each
other.
So it's not just everyone withthe leader, it's creating the
space for each person to build atrust with other people, and
that, frankly, moves at thespeed of trust.
So you may need a little bitmore time for a team like that
(28:02):
to gel.
But the other thing that youneed is careful orchestration
and reflection along the way.
We take a lot of things forgranted that happen when we're
in physical space together.
There are just a lot of cornersthat we can cut, and when
you're not all in the sameproject space physically
(28:23):
together, you aren't overhearingthings.
So you have to start to thinkabout what are the opportunities
that I can create for the teamto share their ideas and,
similarly, what are theopportunities that I can create
for people to kind of go headsdown and be producing in a
(28:43):
specific direction.
You have to make up a lot ofthe serendipity with
orchestration.
Molly (28:51):
Yeah.
J.B. (28:51):
Yeah.
Molly (28:53):
Denise, that is one of the things that you are a real
wizard at.
When I look at the amount ofcomplexity, diversity,
disruption that is happening inour personal lives and our
professional lives today.
It is around setting the tableand orchestrating, and right now
we're always going to be partof a team.
(29:14):
Where somebody has a differentlife experience, speaks a
different language, hasdifferent expertise, is a
different age definitely doesnot look like me, and that art
of inclusion and acceleratingtrust seems like a starting
point for how you driveinnovation and well-being for
(29:36):
teams today, and that, to me, islike a big part of relationship
design and what you areactually pioneering in the
design space today, and that'sone of the reasons why I love
working for you, with you andlearning from you, and so we're
just thrilled that you were ableto join us today on Unserious
and share your wisdom and yourstories and giggle with us about
(30:01):
who we would hire, fire andwork for.
You're just pure magic, and Ican't tell you what a joy it is
to have had this time with allmy favorite people, to have the
chance to learn from you today,so thank you.
Denise (30:16):
Aw, thank you so much, Molly.
I appreciate your kind words.
J.B. (30:19):
It's been incredible learning from you over the last
hour.
Denise, where can people findyou?
Denise (30:24):
We are in this really weird space where Twitter is no
longer a valid platform as faras I'm concerned, and so I guess
you can find me on LinkedIn.
I am Denise Burchell.
That's where I'm at.
J.B. (30:39):
Fantastic.
Thank you so much yeah.
Denise (30:41):
Thank you, Denise.
Thank you so much for having meon the podcast.
It's been so much fun talkingwith y'all.
Molly (30:51):
Man.
Denise is dazzling, Gosh.
I love how she talked aboutdesign today and how it's so
much more than pixel pushing andcreating products.
I love thinking about it as anart, that art of relationships
with customers, across teams,even with leaders, and how you
influence them, you know.
I also love that she talkedabout how she designed that
(31:12):
relationship work at Salesforceand while I was at Salesforce
with Denise, we actually wrote acourse and we just finished it
and I'm pretty proud of it andI'm honored that I had the
chance to work on it with Denise.
It's a 201 leadership coursefor free on Trailhead for how
managers can build inclusive,cross-functional teams, and it's
(31:35):
just like Denise.
It's a mix of Brené Brown andAdam Grant, like mindsets with
people first, practices andtools that equip diverse teams
to build trust, purpose,predictability and make better
decisions together.
We'll link it in the show notes, but it's, it's great and it's
another way to get to know theamazingness of Denise.
J.B. (31:54):
Molly, I took that course this morning and it's great.
How good you and I has been oneof the real through lines and
themes of Unserious this seasonand its relationships with teams
, relationships with keyaudiences, with clients, with
the leaders we work with, and Ijust loved the structure and
rigor and design thinking sheput around complex relationships
(32:17):
to yield maximum impact.
Denise is just incredible.
Yeah, and that's the show.
Unserious is in its firstseason.
Thanks to all of you who havesubscribed, rated us and shared
the podcast with your friends.
We are so excited to see theUnserious community grow.
Join us on Instagram atUnseriousfun and check us out at
(32:40):
Unseriouscom to learn about theteam here.
Thanks so much for tuning in.
Denise (32:52):
I'm sorry.
Why does every piece of workproduct come out looking like a
vulva?
Why?
This is Unserious.
Molly (00:11):
When we think about our best work, the things that come
to mind are probably about thework itself what ideation
practices you use which create aframework, produce the best
ideas, how you organize thatwork and keep it on track.
But if you zoom out and look atthe bigger picture, the real
determiner of success is thequality of the relationships
(00:33):
between the real and imperfectpeople doing the work and how,
together, those team membersdeepen trust with their
customers.
And, like anything else, itturns out, you can design those
relationships for maximum impact.
That's the superpower of ourguest today.
Denise Birchell is atrailblazer of design strategy
(00:55):
and relationship design.
She transforms businesses byunlocking the creative potential
of high-functioning, diverseand cross-disciplinary teams.
She has collaborated withleaders at Nike, ted and
Genentech and led teams atplaces like Frog Design and
Salesforce Design, as well asIDEO, where she and I first met.
(01:15):
Denise, thank you so much fortalking to us today.
Denise (01:19):
Thank you for having me.
Molly (01:20):
I appreciate it.
One thing that you have talkedto me a lot about is about
shifting from product first torelationship first in business
today, and I'd love to hear howcome, why that focus on
relationships and work today?
Denise (01:39):
Relationships are actually the fuel of work.
They make us work better asteams.
They make us work better aspeople, when we like who we're
working with.
When we take the time to get toknow who we're working with, we
bring a level of excitement andpassion to the work that's just
not replaceable.
I react a lot to this notion ofproduct first because I think
(02:04):
product first thinking is quitenarrow actually.
It's this notion that, oh, we'regoing to do whatever is right
for the product, we're going tomake decisions on what's best
for the product and we're goingto sometimes have to say no to
whatever the users are tellingus that they want.
And fundamentally for me, Ithink if you build a product for
(02:25):
the sake of a product insteadof for the sake of its users,
your product has a very limitedshelf life and a limited market
and adoption cycle.
So I'm all about fueling thepeople to make products for the
people.
So it's relationships backwardsand forwards and front to back.
Molly (02:45):
I love that.
One of the things that I'vereally admired is that you are
developing new crafts inside ofdesign, and one of those crafts
is the craft of relationshipdesign.
I'm wondering if you coulddefine for us what relationship
design is and what might be someof the methods or ways of
working when you are arelationship designer.
Denise (03:09):
Yeah, absolutely so.
Relationship design just camefrom the basic insight that
relationships are thefundamental building blocks of
value.
Very jargony speak right there,but what it means is that
relationships are how businessis done, it's how products get
made, it's how things get sold,it's how products take off and
(03:30):
things become viral.
Without relationships, withouthumans sort of pushing these
things forward, a product isjust an idea, is just a build,
is just a small encapsulation.
Relationship design alsoacknowledges that on the user
side of the equation, things arerarely ever used in a vacuum.
(03:51):
I like to think of a cell phone.
If we think of the cell phoneas this notion of personal
technology, it's the thingthat's on our nightstand at
night.
It's intimate in bed with ussometimes.
But it's also the thing thatchanges social dynamics.
At a bus station or a trainstation, on the subway platform,
(04:12):
people no longer talk to eachother because everybody's got
their nose in a cell phone.
And so when you think about theusage of the products and
services that we build, it makessense to not just think of what
am I doing for the individualuser I have in mind.
It makes sense to think of theuser in the social context.
What's the team behind them?
(04:34):
What's the community behindthem?
Where are they when they'reinteracting with this product or
service?
And how do we, as designers,start to create a practice that
takes all those things intoconsideration, because they
really do impact the experienceof using the products and
services we build?
Molly (04:57):
One of the things that I've learned from you is that
who a team is and how they workimpacts the quality of a product
or a service or an experiencethat is designed, and I'm
wondering if you can give anexample of like maybe what good
relationship design might looklike in the world, or maybe what
(05:19):
would bad relationship designlook like in the world?
Denise (05:22):
So when I think about good relationship design, I
actually think about the waythat the Salesforce design team
itself was put together and run.
So the Salesforce design teamwas created with leaders that
represented the key silos inproduct team, in distribution,
(05:43):
in marketing and in operations.
And the reason that Teddy'sMerhal, the founder of the team,
brought these leaders togetheris because he knew that
relationships are the buildingblocks of value and he knew that
in order to do somethinghorizontal in an organization
that relies very heavily onmetrics and success milestones
(06:05):
that are vertical and siloed, heknew that it had to be a level
of trust in individuals that gotdifferent groups of people to
engage and participate andsupport our work.
So, bringing together this sortof four corners of Salesforce
into his leadership team, healready had a step in the
(06:26):
direction of getting buy-in towhat we were doing.
We also created a comms strategyfrom the start that understood
different levels of engagementwith what we were doing.
So we had a Slack channel wherewe would broadcast.
We had a quarterly meetingwhere we would tell people what
(06:47):
we were doing and what we wereabout to do.
We would talk to individualleaders in a very sort of let me
hold your hand and explain howthis might have something to do
with the goals that you have,and then, in general, we had an
open invitation for people totalk to us and bring ideas to us
(07:08):
about how we could worktogether, and so this comms plan
, at multiple levels, understoodthe matrix nature of the
organization, and it understoodthat you need top-down support.
You need bottom-up support inorder to actually create a
movement that really allows youto elevate design, which is
(07:29):
fundamentally what we were aboutdoing.
Molly (07:36):
How do you align executives to work in
relationship-centered ways?
Like I'm like, how did people,how did you do that?
Because it can be consideredsoft, it can be like a nice to
have, not a strategic imperative, like what are your tips or
tricks or wisdom on how youalign executives around working
(07:58):
in more relationship-centeredways?
Denise (08:02):
First of all, they already have a bias toward
relationships, because theycan't really have gotten to
where they are without havingthe relationships that got them
there, and so it's about sort ofhelping them understand how the
relationship that you'rebuilding with them is helpful to
them as well as helpful to you.
You're not constantly justtalking to them when you need a
(08:22):
favor right.
You're building a relationshipthat's a two-way street.
Sometimes it's about I canoffer you insights from an area
of the organization that youcan't see, or a level within
your organization that you can'tsee.
Sometimes it's I bring adifferent level of cooperation
from the external to theinternal of the company right,
like I have a broad networkoutside of people, experts, who
(08:45):
we can tap for whatever.
But fundamentally, executivesare also in a high pressure
situation to deliver on veryspecific business outcomes, and
so it is our job to frame ourwork in the terms of those goals
(09:05):
and that pressure right.
I have to know, I have to becurious.
First of all, what is top ofmind for this executive?
What are they accountable forthis quarter?
And then I have to squint.
When I'm just scoping some work, I have to squint and say, okay
, how can my work be additiveand help this executive achieve
(09:30):
something they are on the hookto achieve?
Because that is how you becomeimportant to that executive.
If you can slip your work intothe slipstream of their
priorities, if you can show theways in which you're a partner
to them instead of a time suck,that's golden.
That's what they want to hear.
J.B. (09:48):
So that feels like very much a big, mature company
situation.
I think when you go to startups, a lot of the executives that
you're working with you're themature one.
You're comparatively quitesenior.
You might not have the samelevel because you didn't found
the company, but you're tryingto convince these founders and
(10:09):
product leaders thatrelationships matter and really
you need to start with listening.
It's not something that comesnaturally to them.
There's no data that listeningis really important.
How do you get them there?
Denise (10:29):
So I've got two thoughts to share.
On that one, I am a formerstartup founder, so I've seen
this up close as well.
The first thing I will say isthat the VC-funded startup
system is fundamentally broken.
The incentives are scale firstand ask questions later, and
(10:50):
that is in direct tension withthat idea of build a product
that people love and then scaleit Right.
I think that if you're just asmall business out in the world
and you don't have this pressureto hockey stick your growth to
get the ROI for your investors,I think you do things very
(11:10):
differently.
You have an ear toward whatyour customers want because, at
the end of the day, you'reanswering to your customers.
In the VC-funded startup world,you're answering to your board
and, frankly, the incentivesthat they have drive a lot of
those decisions to not listen tocustomers.
So I've found that, frankly, Ijust don't work with super early
(11:31):
stage startups that areVC-funded because, you're right,
they don't have data that saysthat pleasing customers matters.
But let's use some common sensehere.
If you're playing a longer game, don't you have to please your
customers?
Isn't that kind of basic?
Yeah, data is always backwardslooking.
(11:51):
So, as someone who works ininnovation, data is a really
hard thing to rely on.
You just can't count on databacking up your story.
However, there are some thingsyou could do.
One of the things that I liketo do is to create an ecosystem
map, and my ecosystem map isabout the stakeholders as well
(12:14):
as the users.
I need to look at who are theexperts at different things in
my organization.
Those are the people whoseintuition is going to be in play
.
And those are also the peoplewho will have those fundamental
concerns about will this ideascale or is this the right idea
(12:36):
to build now, and what you haveto do is just spend a lot of
time one-on-one, listening totheir concerns and understanding
that those concerns come from aplace of valued experience.
Yeah, and if there's one personvoicing that concern in the
room, chances are a lot ofothers in the room are feeling
that same concern.
(12:56):
And so then you move to toolnumber two, which is prototyping
.
Since you don't have data tosay, this is the right thing to
do.
We know it because it's data isbackward looking.
What you have to do is figureout how do I structure
experiments that help buildconfidence in the ideas?
The way to build confidence inthe ideas is to go head on
(13:20):
addressing the objections.
I don't know if this idea willscale.
Great, how do we start toexperiment with whether or not
this idea will scale withoutbuilding the thing?
Because here's the thing isthat it's very expensive to
build a product and then learnyou're wrong, if you can come up
(13:40):
with an experiment that helpsyou understand the potential for
scalability without actuallydoing the scaling.
You can go a lot further inconvincing a leadership team to
buy into it or even a startupfounding team to buy into it.
J.B. (14:02):
When we come back.
Cross-functional teams andtransformation with Denise
Birchell.
More on Sirius in just a moment.
Molly (14:13):
Denise, welcome to Sirius .
Obviously, you can tell howserious we are.
So, instead of Mary Shaggirkill, we're going to play hire, fire
or boss.
I'm thinking about your artistbackground and your history as a
sculptor.
So would you looking at FridaKahlo, georgia O'Keeffe and Mary
(14:37):
Cassatt?
Who would you hire, who wouldyou fire and who do you want as
your boss?
Oh wow.
Denise (14:44):
Okay, all right.
So initial stab here.
Yeah, I think I might ratherplay Mary Shaggirkill.
No, I'm kidding, I got it, justkidding.
No, I think I would love towork for Frida Kahlo, just
(15:05):
because, holy crap, she's beensuch an influence.
I'm a Latina, you can't tell.
I totally look the white halfof my heritage.
But I would love to just kindof absorb the energy and the.
You know she does not takeherself seriously, and I love
that about Kahlo, you think so.
(15:26):
I mean, she takes her artseriously, but I don't think she
takes herself seriously.
Okay, like she goes in alldirections, she doesn't.
I don't feel like she was thekind of person that, like she
was my fire, she was your fire.
J.B. (15:46):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I would have fired her, that's a big
help.
Molly (15:48):
He's on it yeah.
Denise (15:50):
Tell us it's the eyebrow right.
J.B. (15:53):
No, it's not it's not the eyebrow, it's.
She's too much of a downer tobe around.
All the time I was like I don'tknow that.
I want her on my team.
Denise (16:05):
Okay.
J.B. (16:06):
She's gonna like, it's gonna be, it's gonna be, it's
like, oh God, like we've allworked around those like really
moody creatives.
Molly (16:13):
This is an HR issue because she has, like, some
physical ailments.
J.B. (16:17):
This is the biggest.
No, I know, I know, I know it'slike.
Molly (16:19):
You need the moral dilemma in the HR conversation.
Denise (16:24):
She's like how many different protected classes am I
part of?
Really, let's go for it,definitely like a leadership
conversation right now.
Molly (16:34):
I'm always reviewing Frida Kahlo in Silicon Valley.
J.B. (16:39):
Yeah.
Molly (16:41):
That's awesome.
Keep going.
Denise (16:42):
Denise.
All right, so I would fireGeorgia O'Keeffe.
I just don't think she canconduct herself professionally,
if we're honest.
J.B. (16:54):
Too much, too much hitting on the young ladies.
Denise (16:58):
Exactly.
I'm sorry.
Why does every piece of workproduct come out looking like a
mola?
Why?
Molly (17:06):
Oh man, so that means you would work for Mary Cassatt, I
suppose by default.
Denise (17:13):
I think I always do end up working for Mary Cassatt.
The more traditional, the likeyou know, maybe sort of older
school kind of people, so sureit fits.
J.B. (17:27):
I think that that's a.
I think it's a good call as aboss and not and not what you
think that you're getting into.
Denise (17:33):
That's true, so much of the time, right, yeah, not what
you think you're getting into.
J.B. (17:38):
That's right.
That's right.
It seems like right now and I'mnot sure if it's like we're
coming out of COVID we're stillworking remotely.
Why are so many companiesstruggling with transition and
change efforts right now,especially among highly
cross-functional creative teams?
Denise (18:00):
The pandemic threw a big wrench into the ways of working
.
I was recently talking withanother friend about this how
pre-pandemic.
It was very common to have anoffshore team doing some
development or running a callcenter or doing some kind of
very well-scoped work that theycould do almost separately from
(18:22):
the in-person team back atheadquarters.
The pandemic threw everybodyinto the all remote, all the
time bucket, of course, andcompanies started hiring
remotely.
Some of them had a moreregional strategy where they
were thinking about how to keeppeople in the same time zones.
Other companies were like yay,finally, we can just hire the
(18:45):
best person for the job, nomatter where they are.
So now we're in this post-phase, post pandemic, not in the
sense of COVID is done, but inthe sense of the way that it's
impacting our work.
A lot of folks are being askedto come back to the office, but
companies can really only askthat of local employees and
(19:06):
they've hired some remoteemployees for some really core
functions and core jobs.
So we're in this moment from aways of working perspective.
At the same time, we're lookingat this macroeconomic context
where companies are just reallyfocusing on optimization,
(19:29):
they're focusing on efficiency,they're focusing on quarterly
returns.
It's the year of efficiency,everywhere, that's right, and so
when you're in a moment likethat, the tendency from a
mentality perspective and amechanics perspective is to
clench, to hold things tight, tobring things in closer.
So this transition is notnecessarily going well for them,
(19:51):
because they're trying to dothings differently in more than
one way at a time, and a lot oftimes the answers that they have
looked to in the past whenthey've been trying to make a
transition say it's a digitaltransformation or something like
that they've thrown technologyat the issue.
Yeah, and in this case, youcan't just throw technology at
(20:12):
the issue.
You have to start to understandthat transitions are moments
where you need to deal withprocesses and orders of
operation.
You have to deal with humansand the messy context that they
bring, and you have to deal withtechnology and all of those
things.
In time and space can be a lotto juggle, and I don't think
(20:35):
that companies are reallyfocusing on the transition
itself.
They're so busy focusing onefficiency and focusing on their
products that they're reallynot taking the time to look at
how all of the elements of thesystem are working together and,
in many cases, working againstthem.
Molly (20:54):
You talked about transitions, and the things you
need are process that includessystems and ways of working.
You need to think about thehumans that's, both your teams
and your users, and thediversity of expertise and life
experiences within that, and youalso talked about technology as
tools, but there's something inthat around how you create
(21:17):
adaptiveness and how thatadaptiveness really leads to
groundbreaking innovations, highquality work and high
functioning teams.
Yeah, and that's something thatis your secret sauce.
Denise (21:31):
I mean, I got the rare privilege of working with
Genentech and they were sponsorsof the 2012 TED conference, and
so we had a huge space at theTED conference to do something
with.
The brief came to us veryopen-ended it was.
(21:51):
You know, you have to tackle atopic of interest to Genentech
and to TED and it's got to befucking awesome.
Can I say fucking yeah, it'sgot to be fucking awesome is
what the client said.
Molly (22:04):
Yeah, of course it does.
Of course it does, it's got tobe fucking awesome TED and
Genentech and IDEO it's got toblow some minds.
Denise (22:10):
That's right.
And at first I was assigned tothe project as an experienced
designer and we got intoresearch and started to think
about what are the differentthings that TEDsters need out of
a TED conference, what are themindsets you're in when you're
at a conference, all those kindsof designing things.
But about a month into ourproject the project leader had a
(22:38):
health emergency and had to bowout.
And at the last minute theysaid okay, denise, can you come
in and lead this team?
Wow, and it was definitely across-disciplinary team and we
didn't yet have a concept.
And there were eight weeksbetween us and the TED
conference and we were a littlebit terrified, oh yeah.
(23:00):
And so we had this brainstormone day and luckily the client
was along for this ride ofambiguity, and comfort with
ambiguity is a rare thing in ahuman being and probably more
rare in a client situation.
So we come up with thisbrainstorm and one day somebody
(23:21):
just drew it on a post-it notewhat if we turned DNA into music
?
Wow, and we all kind of laughedabout it like sure.
How would we do that?
Yeah, and then we thought aboutit Could we do that?
And we started working on allof the various details.
Well, how could we do it?
What could we do?
(23:41):
So, before long, we added amusic producer to our team,
because all of the music that weused was composed for the event
.
That's amazing.
And a development team, and wethought, okay, how are people
going to interact with this?
The end of the day, theexperience was that people would
(24:02):
come to our stations and theywould pick a swab packet out and
it had a pin on it.
We had these 2,500 trait pinsand they all had traits on them
that you could relate to.
Some of the traits were like Ihave vampire fangs or I have
curly hair or I've got, you know, scraggly toes.
(24:26):
That may not have been the mostflattering of them.
The idea was to show off thepotential for Genentech to
develop these swabs in 24 hours,which was a piece of
technological innovation thatthey had only recently developed
.
We ran into so many differenthurdles.
The lawyers came in at the lastminute.
You can't give people geneticresults without having them sign
(24:49):
legal forms and is insurancecovering this?
Is this medical Lawyers?
And innovation.
Molly (24:55):
A match made in heaven.
A match made in heaven or not?
Denise (25:01):
But at the end of the day, this was one of the best
examples I have ever seen of aproject that resembled the team
that created it, and one of thebiggest insights for me was
about cross-disciplinary teamsand how bringing together people
with incredibly differentbackgrounds cultural backgrounds
(25:22):
.
You know their practices andspecializations from a design
perspective and creativeperspective.
You know even, to some degree,socioeconomic backgrounds.
All the people were in the roomtogether and it was an
incredible sort of example ofhow the team comes together and
(25:42):
puts their hearts into theirwork and develops something that
the world has never seen before, and it came off without a
hitch at TED.
You know, six weeks later and Ihave to tell you, during one of
the early prototyping sessions,we brought in all of the big
wigs at IDEO who have been toTED and were going to TED,
(26:04):
brought them through a prototypeand it was, by all accounts,
the biggest prototype failure Ihave ever had.
We all had those we all hadthose.
And a certain leader at IDEOwas like six weeks until TED and
(26:27):
this is where you are, and hisgreat advice to us was don't
fuck it up.
J.B. (26:40):
So do you think you could do that again today with a
distributed team?
Denise (26:46):
Oh, that's a really good question.
I honestly believe you can doanything with a distributed team
that you can do with anin-person team.
I think it would have gonedifferently, it would have
unfolded differently and therelationships would have been
built differently.
But at the end of the day, I dothink you could do something
like that with a distributedteam.
J.B. (27:08):
Do you need more of runway or do you need more time?
Do you need more resource?
Molly (27:13):
Do you need more belonging time helping people
feel part of the team.
Denise (27:19):
I think you need two different things.
I think you need to set it up.
When a team is first comingtogether, you have to take very
explicit action to address thehuman side of being on a team
making people feel belonging,making people feel like you
understand who they are andwhere they're coming from and
(27:40):
you value the work that they'regiving, and then setting the
table for them to create thosekinds of relationships with each
other.
So it's not just everyone withthe leader, it's creating the
space for each person to build atrust with other people, and
that, frankly, moves at thespeed of trust.
So you may need a little bitmore time for a team like that
(28:02):
to gel.
But the other thing that youneed is careful orchestration
and reflection along the way.
We take a lot of things forgranted that happen when we're
in physical space together.
There are just a lot of cornersthat we can cut, and when
you're not all in the sameproject space physically
(28:23):
together, you aren't overhearingthings.
So you have to start to thinkabout what are the opportunities
that I can create for the teamto share their ideas and,
similarly, what are theopportunities that I can create
for people to kind of go headsdown and be producing in a
(28:43):
specific direction.
You have to make up a lot ofthe serendipity with
orchestration.
Molly (28:51):
Yeah.
J.B. (28:51):
Yeah.
Molly (28:53):
Denise, that is one of the things that you are a real
wizard at.
When I look at the amount ofcomplexity, diversity,
disruption that is happening inour personal lives and our
professional lives today.
It is around setting the tableand orchestrating, and right now
we're always going to be partof a team.
(29:14):
Where somebody has a differentlife experience, speaks a
different language, hasdifferent expertise, is a
different age definitely doesnot look like me, and that art
of inclusion and acceleratingtrust seems like a starting
point for how you driveinnovation and well-being for
(29:36):
teams today, and that, to me, islike a big part of relationship
design and what you areactually pioneering in the
design space today, and that'sone of the reasons why I love
working for you, with you andlearning from you, and so we're
just thrilled that you were ableto join us today on Unserious
and share your wisdom and yourstories and giggle with us about
(30:01):
who we would hire, fire andwork for.
You're just pure magic, and Ican't tell you what a joy it is
to have had this time with allmy favorite people, to have the
chance to learn from you today,so thank you.
Denise (30:16):
Aw, thank you so much, Molly.
I appreciate your kind words.
J.B. (30:19):
It's been incredible learning from you over the last
hour.
Denise, where can people findyou?
Denise (30:24):
We are in this really weird space where Twitter is no
longer a valid platform as faras I'm concerned, and so I guess
you can find me on LinkedIn.
I am Denise Burchell.
That's where I'm at.
J.B. (30:39):
Fantastic.
Thank you so much yeah.
Denise (30:41):
Thank you, Denise.
Thank you so much for having meon the podcast.
It's been so much fun talkingwith y'all.
Molly (30:51):
Man.
Denise is dazzling, Gosh.
I love how she talked aboutdesign today and how it's so
much more than pixel pushing andcreating products.
I love thinking about it as anart, that art of relationships
with customers, across teams,even with leaders, and how you
influence them, you know.
I also love that she talkedabout how she designed that
(31:12):
relationship work at Salesforceand while I was at Salesforce
with Denise, we actually wrote acourse and we just finished it
and I'm pretty proud of it andI'm honored that I had the
chance to work on it with Denise.
It's a 201 leadership coursefor free on Trailhead for how
managers can build inclusive,cross-functional teams, and it's
(31:35):
just like Denise.
It's a mix of Brené Brown andAdam Grant, like mindsets with
people first, practices andtools that equip diverse teams
to build trust, purpose,predictability and make better
decisions together.
We'll link it in the show notes, but it's, it's great and it's
another way to get to know theamazingness of Denise.
J.B. (31:54):
Molly, I took that course this morning and it's great.
How good you and I has been oneof the real through lines and
themes of Unserious this seasonand its relationships with teams
, relationships with keyaudiences, with clients, with
the leaders we work with, and Ijust loved the structure and
rigor and design thinking sheput around complex relationships
(32:17):
to yield maximum impact.
Denise is just incredible.
Yeah, and that's the show.
Unserious is in its firstseason.
Thanks to all of you who havesubscribed, rated us and shared
the podcast with your friends.
We are so excited to see theUnserious community grow.
Join us on Instagram atUnseriousfun and check us out at
(32:40):
Unseriouscom to learn about theteam here.
Thanks so much for tuning in.
Denise (32:52):
I'm sorry.
Why does every piece of workproduct come out looking like a
vulva?
Why?
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