Today we talk with Voltage Control president Douglas Ferguson and we're taking you beyond the prototype. If you ever run a design sprint, or even if you simply sat down at your desk to think through a really cool idea for a product or a new podcast or how do we improve something in your neighborhood. You started the design process. The question is, how do you go from a good idea to putting something out into the world? Douglas helps us find out.
"You gotta slow down to go fast" - Douglas Ferguson
Voltage Control president, design thinking facilitator and innovation coach Douglas Ferguson recently published a book called Beyond the Prototype that aims to help teams and organizations (and individuals!) go from generating awesome ideas to implementing them. Over the course of our conversation we cover:
Links and Resources mentioned in today's episode
Jake Knapp - Sprint: How to Solve Big Problems and Test New Ideas in Just Five Days
Greg Satell - Cascades: How to Create a Movement that Drives Transformational Change
David Epstein - Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World
ExD Douglas Ferguson
Adam Gamwell: [00:00:00] Welcome to experience by design the podcast where we explore the human side of people products and the services that shape our everyday lives from airlines to atomic habits, design, thinking to digital psychiatry, we have to cover it all. So if you do your listeners have any suggestions for guests topics or experiences that you think need to be explored, let us know.
[00:00:21] You can message us experiencexdesign@gmail.com. Today we're taking you beyond the prototype. If you ever run a design sprint, or even if you simply sat down at your desk to think through a really cool idea for a product or a new podcast or how do we improve something in your neighborhood. You started the design process.
[00:00:41] Now what's cool here is there is a whole varied set of practices centered around design thinking or a structured way to approach and understand problems that a group of people face and then work to come up with in test solutions. Now this method has been modified countless times over the past 20 years, and one of the most popular versions is called the design sprint, which compresses the design thinking process into a five day marathon. Now, the idea behind at the sprint is rapid definition coming up with many solutions, many possible solutions selecting the best one and then testing it with.
[00:01:14] Real people. It's quick and dirty and designed to help teams or individuals find momentum, So today we're talking with Douglas Ferguson. He's the president of voltage control, a design sprint and innovation firm. Now, Douglas is a workshop facilitator and a coach and one of the major questions our guest helps us think about today is what do you do after you finish your design sprint? In other words, how do you strategically move beyond the prototype so it just so happens to Douglas.
[00:01:41] Put together a ton of wisdom over his storied career and wrote a book about it. This book is called beyond the prototype and it's designed to help companies and teams get from the discovery phase of their sprint into launching something that because this is experienced by design and both your host or ethnographers, we, of course want to get to know the stories of the people who helped shape our world. That's the magic of experiences we set about to design them, but there's always a.
[00:02:06] Good mix of serendipity that comes out of just being there and building on the experiences of others around you, so let's taking the time to get to know the stories of the makers and designers of our favorite products and services and tools is kind of like watching the behind the scenes of your favorite movie.
[00:02:21] So we're super excited to see that Douglas is also a music producer and a musician himself, which actually ended up inspiring the name of his current company.
[00:02:29] Douglas Ferguson: [00:02:29] And the name of that company was, it was based off of, I have a pretty large modular synthesizer in my studio. And, and whenever I patched the synthesizer up, I was going to get lost, you know, an hours of exploration. And. Really curious about the kind of, the ripple effects of, you know, you make one little change here and then the model's all connected and, and it resembles in a lot of ways, you know, how teams work, you know, just systems theory kind of stuff.
[00:02:58] And, you know, it was really interesting to find out that Brian Eno had discovered cybernetics. Before he really got into, and to music and his, his theories around music were developed completely around, his work in his readings around cybernetics. He is like, how can I apply this to music? And, whereas I came out about it the other direction, you know, I've started realizing these patterns when I was working with teams and complexity, kind of informed things, and then drew the connection back.
[00:03:28] And then I was watching a documentary about brightening. They're on there talking about him. Going the opposite direction, which I was, man, that's pretty profound. I don't know if I would've made that leap just reading it and going, Oh, of course.
[00:03:41] It's
[00:03:41] Gary David: [00:03:41] nice when you find out you're liking company with Brian Eno.
[00:03:44] Well,
[00:03:45] Douglas Ferguson: [00:03:45] yeah, except he was much more genius about how he got
[00:03:48] Gary David: [00:03:48] there. Well, I mean, you know, there's always someone much more genius. Right. But I think we got to take what we can get. Absolutely. You know, it's like, well, you know, so-and-so is much more genius than I am, so I'm not worth anything I therapist tells me I should.
[00:04:02] I should reframe that. I should tell a different story in my head. I actually just started playing guitar recently because, you know, middle age and I, when I'm like listening to records or whatever and trying to play along, I'm like, why don't I sound as good as they do? Then I'm like, Oh, that's right.
[00:04:16] Because you're not, and you just started and some maybe you should give yourself a little bit of credit.
[00:04:22] Douglas Ferguson: [00:04:22] Well, he's telling me his thing is like, I wa, you know, in the recordings too, I would always have musicians, drummers especially come in, you know, in place of led Zepplin and say, I want to sound like that.
[00:04:33] It's like. Okay, well that's a, you got a, it's going to take, some from time machine action, you know?
[00:04:44] Gary David: [00:04:44] Right. I know. It's like I want to dunk a basketball. Well, that's nice, but this is this, this is a hand you've been dealt and this is what you have to do and this is what you got. Shoot, shoot. Three pointers.
[00:04:55] Don't dunk. But I think, I think, you know, your point about systems thinking and symptoms, you know, integration. Yeah. And I don't, I don't, I've been teaching usability classes for a while now there, even though I'm not a usability expert, or trained in usability, it's just how I ended up there because I do ethnography.
[00:05:12] But it seems that this idea of moving from the individual to the system, I won't say it's brand new in design, but it seems to be picking up speed where people are kind of going less from a individual orientation or, you know, we really need to talk to five people. And into, Oh my God, we got to tie all this stuff together.
[00:05:30] I mean, has this been your experience in the work that you've been doing, that there's been more people asking for this integrative approach to design?
[00:05:39] Douglas Ferguson: [00:05:39] You know, I, I personally haven't run into that as much because the, the work we do, the kind of the systems work we do, if you will, is more related to the humans and how they interact and how they make decisions.
[00:05:53] Right. And then hopefully my, my mission is to go get the organizational health. Kind of, aligned and humming. And then, then ideally they, they are a good functioning system. It's sort of like, leaning on Conway's law. You know, th the organizational, any software, any system you build is destined to be a mirror image of the organizational structure.
[00:06:18]so if we, if we attack the, the way the communication structure as a decision making practices and how they communicate and how they will, hello, how they generally work together, then everything else will be an emergent quality. And because I don't like. I don't refer to myself as a consultant because I don't want to come in and tell them how to build their software or how to, how to design their things.
[00:06:40] I just want to equip them to be better teammates and to make better decisions. And we do that through through workshops and meaning, culture exploration.
[00:06:49]Adam Gamwell: [00:06:49] That's interesting. So I mean, even this idea then, yeah, I'd love to kind of get a bit about , your history and your story of how you got into this, right.
[00:06:56] Cause then like working as a, as, you know, CTO space and then working with voltage control and I'm thinking across, you know, design sprints with Jake Knapp and stuff. And so walk us a bit through that, that kind of journey. cause I think this is a really, really great place to, to think about. I love this idea of Conway's law. We should, I think we should return to this later too, of like, how does we think about this for organizational structure and has a software mirror that, but how, how'd you get there?
[00:07:16] Douglas Ferguson: [00:07:16] Yeah. So it's a, it's been a fun, fun journey. I started off in, writing software and, I was working for a company called a core metrics and we were, Building analytics. So if you know, if you're familiar with Google analytics, we were essentially one of the first to do that one by one pixel kind of data collection. prior to that, it was all ser server file analysis, which was. fraught for many reasons. And, so this is the first way to, you know, accurately measure and, and try and track user behavior.
[00:07:54] And the thing that I realized was, well. It wasn't just me, the realizing it, but we basically had a competitor come in and kind of join us for lunch and steal our customers away because we were so infatuated with the technology and these, these brilliant things that we had created. And these are advanced, tools for understanding shopping cart behavior.
[00:08:18] And, you know, when you, when you list it out, the functionality and the capabilities hands down, anyone in the industry would say Coremetrics was the best. But, but along came Omniture and created a user experience. We didn't even call it user experience back then, but deliver a better UI and, essentially, you know, in some regards it was just prettier and made more sense.
[00:08:43] It was easier to, to understand that the first time user experience was, was much more pleasant. And, And also they were undercutting us because, you know, they were, you know, a lot of times people talk about the first mover advantage, but man, it can be helpful if someone files away for you if you come in without all the debt.
[00:09:01] And without all the, the, just the extra mass. And especially back in those days because, you know, we had servers. And the and the back room that we had a special AC piped into. And you know. The storage devices were very intelligent and had their own operating systems. nowadays, you know, with, with, with clustering of hardware and using Google's, blaze, the pathway for using commodity storage versus, you know, this programmable stuff and, you know, the ability to slice up servers and things really drove down costs.
[00:09:38] So you got the confluence of like, of those things. And. And, anyway, I'm getting off track. But the point is, early on, I, I was, I got taught that lesson that the technology for technology's sake is going to take us no good for anyone. And it started to develop this understanding that there's this three legged stool of, you know, technology market and, and design.
[00:10:04] And so if you, if you look at it like generally when you're hiring, hiring product managers, there's, there's, the, an imbalance on the team. And, and that's because nobody is equally excellent at all three. You generally someone, each person's going to have one in a sweet spot. And so when you're balancing the team's good to, to balance across all three, and.
[00:10:26] And the, the, the examples are, you know, Google, Apple, maybe, P and G, right? Whereas like, you know, P and G and these kind of consumer package, good companies are really market focused. They're really just kind of getting into these deep needs and trends. And, you know, who, who knew we needed a, a razor or a shave shaving razor with like 10 leads in it or whatever.
[00:10:53]And so, you know, as a sort to formulate some of these ideas. I was also really fascinated with process and how we bring teams together to function more efficiently. whether that be extreme programming, agile, lean, you know, and there's always a new flavor and new ideas of developing every five or so years and tracking those things and experimenting the time.
[00:11:15]I was, you know, moving from individual contributor on the software development side to act two, to leader within, within the company. And typically all the title of CTO where I was, managing, engineers, QA, product, et cetera. So that, so the entire product organization, and, through that work, Found the design sprint and had my team running them. I was corresponding with Jake, you know, over the internet, just kind of pen pal style. And. He, one, once Google ventures invested, he actually came and ran one with us. So I think it was something like sprint number eight for us or something, depending on how you count them.
[00:11:56] Cause we had experimented with a lot of tiny versions, full versions, et cetera. And it was really fascinating to me watching some of the things he did the way he worked with the room. and I just kind of clicked for me that, there, there was maybe more to this facilitation stuff that I want to realize.
[00:12:14] And that led me on a journey to start looking at all these other different, modalities. Especially once I started to. I go out on my own as our quote unquote fractional CTO. And, you've got a lot of requests for the design sprint stuff because a people now in their heads knew I was available cause I was now, you know, a free agent.
[00:12:34] And, just based on the popularity of those requests and people being curious about my experiences with Jake, started doing a few of them. And then that led to, you know, other facilitators saying, well, that's interesting stuff. This is what I do. And I'm right, I realize that there are all these silos.
[00:12:52] Right. And they started throwing assists, stitched them together, cause the architecture people weren't talking to the design thinking people, and then the design spread community's almost like a separate pocket from the design thinking people. Then there's a little bit more cross-pollination there, and then you've got the liberating structures people and thinking wrong people.
[00:13:10] Right? And I realized that it's really crazy because like a lot of these concepts are, either they're informed by some of some earlier groundbreaking work, or are they, they're just smart practitioners that arrived at the same conclusions. And that's really fascinating to me because if you start to stitch together this community and allow them to talk about what works and what doesn't work, and some of the nuances, then we can all level up together.
[00:13:34] And so that's, that's kinda. That's kind of the whole arc of the journey. I know it's a long winded story, but,
[00:13:41] Gary David: [00:13:41] nah, I mean I think that there needs to be the detail because people often wonder, like, you know, we're here without necessarily knowing how we got here. One of the, one of the things I always enjoyed was reading information systems journals, and they'll reference a concept like culture and then provide a citation from like 1998 like, well, you know, the concept of actually goes back further than that, and maybe we should know about what happened back then than how we got here. Because I think often that that gap of knowledge makes people feel like they're reinventing something that actually has a lineage that needs to be understood.
[00:14:13] Because there's a richness in that movement to where we are. Because like you said, smart people figured out that where we were before wasn't complete in terms of its approach and we needed something else to more fully inform what we were trying to do. So I think we need that kind of, that background to really understand design, you know, design as a movement, not as a moment, if you will.
[00:14:37] Absolutely. And it's talking about a moment. I was just speaking with someone the other day and really fascinated by the situation we're in right now and how it might oppose, Unique opportunity for researchers. And so I haven't specifically spoken with the anthropologists on this, and now I'm curious.
[00:14:58] I was just told that, well, and it makes total sense, but I'm, I'm thinking about completely different things at this point. And they were, they, they told me that, school shootings or, or there had been no school shootings and, and the, It was the first month of no school shootings for like, I don't know, it was something staggering like over 10 years.
[00:15:19] And they got me to thinking, wow, does this, this, this, this pose an opportunity for researchers to look at like, has the violence stopped or has it morphed? Is it happening in different places now? And how are those places similar to the places where, We're w, you know, to schools and does it give us a glimpse into new understanding that we can, maybe adapt further studies?
[00:15:43]Actually just recorded a video on this cause I'm teaching a class in criminology, so I know you asked for anthropologists opinion about, I'll jump Adam here for a second. I think part of it is, as I said, is a simple, a simple explanation that schools aren't in session. Sure,
[00:15:59] Douglas Ferguson: [00:15:59] yes.
[00:16:00] Gary David: [00:16:00] And you know, while I think I, that's both.
[00:16:03] You know, simple and depressing at the same time. Cause then I ask the next question, well one school is get back in session. Does that mean there'll be school shootings again and you know, are, to what extent are we really fundamentally changing the culture already? Just pausing it because the structural conditions are such that it inhibits us from doing what we normally would do anyway.
[00:16:24] Douglas Ferguson: [00:16:24] Sure. That part, that part makes sense to me. The point I'm curious about is like, so in this kind of forced reduction. Or this artificial reduction. Does that give us an ability to, to understand why it happens. Because we can look at how, where the behavior moved to or, or when it, when, when it resumed, does it change?
[00:16:45] Are there more of them because like that I think pent up I don't, or is there, is there less because they had a break from it and then something that, I dunno, it's like, it'd be interesting to see if, cause there was no way that, I guess my point is there's no way a researcher could have said, okay everyone, you're going to have to stop what you're doing.
[00:17:02] And hit the pause button for a while cause I needed to like have a reset for my study. I mean, could they, could researchers use this to their advantage to somehow understand, look at, look at how the behavior shifting? I don't know. I'm fascinated by that.
[00:17:16] Adam Gamwell: [00:17:16] I mean certainly looking at behavior change over time, we can certainly do that.
[00:17:20] But I think it's interesting too, cause like to to your question. You know, can we predict those schools? Shooting is kind of the question though too, right? And like, does, does any research indicate towards that? And like, you know, a lot of times also sciences, sociology and anthropology, you know, we, we don't tend to predict the future as it were, but we can like, identify trajectories, right?
[00:17:39] And see if there's like certain conditions that are settings. That's why this the systems perspective is so interesting, you know, because it's like we might see structural inequalities and social inequality and access to guns, access to schools, you know, movements of people and stuff. And so, right when we restrict one of those variables, in this case, going to school, do we see like the violence move elsewhere?
[00:18:00] Do we see it go away? Right. And it is a really interesting set of questions of like what trajectories are changing because school. It's outright now, you know?
[00:18:08] Gary David: [00:18:08] And I would add to that point where I think that schools should do more teaching of causal modeling, quite frankly. Because if you think about all the variables, and it goes back to the systems thinking in organizations and implementation and how to get things going, and what factors inhibit that.
[00:18:24] You know, right now there's been a huge surge in gun purchases. Right? I mean, so that's not good. We're just going to be a huge surge as a huge surge in unemployment and probably an economic crash. Well that definitely isn't good for, for crime. people are not in school. Well that's both good for school shootings cause you're on school to shoot.
[00:18:40] But also kids aren't in school with regulated time, but they do have access possibly the guns at home. Okay, well that's a problem. And so then thinking about how all these things linked together. Right? And what are the strongest relationships in the weakest relationships? really does become like this larger, you know, question of how do we, what are the variables in this design ecosystem?
[00:19:02] How do we then interrupt those, those pathways that lead to school shootings or any kind of shootings so that they don't happen.
[00:19:10]I'm just like, you know, I'm not optimistic by nature, which is redundant because I'm a sociologist. and it kind of comes with the territory. But I do think that, you know, we, as we're seeing right now with this larger pendulum swing, with these AstroTurf protests where people are protesting, you know, being in quarantine.
[00:19:28] Well that was, you know, in hindsight, that's pretty predictable. Cause that's what, that's what. So it's been happening. Right? But I think that's also part of this, like the zeitgeists where people feel like expertise is no longer relevant in their lives, that anybody, anybody's opinion as equals anybody else.
[00:19:44] Oh, by the way, there's a deep state conspiracy that's actually operating underneath was, is making all of this, you know, an illusion. You know, any way perception is stronger than reality. So therefore. Unfortunately, you're going to have these outbreaks of, of nonsense because humans are predictably unpredictable
[00:20:04] Adam Gamwell: [00:20:04] and are predictably irrational,
[00:20:05] Douglas Ferguson: [00:20:05] right?
[00:20:07] Adam Gamwell: [00:20:07] So I think Douglas, it'd be one question I had for you this is actually a really, really fascinating line of questioning. And so, in, tacking on to Gary said too, this idea that there is kind of this, you know. Sort of pushing down of expertise, of, of certain kinds of expertise in terms of, of people leading the charges that were in like helping share public information or best practices that we might say of maybe even being human.
[00:20:28] But you know, a lot of the, in the, in the design world where we're obviously working mostly with an organization, so there's is a different you know hierarchy and governance structure, obviously. And in a smaller, it's like not as big as quote society. However, the idea of like, the facilitator has really kind of come out as one of these, you know, models of thinkers and, and a form of expertise in itself, right?
[00:20:49] Of how do we help organizations align their thinking and how do we get teams to work together? And I, so I'm just kind of wondering, is there some weird mix of, of bringing facilitation out into wider societal thinking? You know, in like what, what is it about the facilitator that you've found that like works so well that, cause as you said, this kind of a model that you found your way into through systems thinking and through the design lens realizing, Oh, actually, like this is a skill that's super important to help people guide their thinking.
[00:21:14] Right? And that's even what beyond the prototype your, your book is kind of framing all about, it's like, how do we keep that going, right? How do we facilitate forward as it were beyond the sprint itself? And so, I don't know. I'm thinking of two parallel questions here. One of how, how does the idea of facilitator resonate with you in this bigger conversation , about society we're talking about. But then also , we can, we can dig into like organizational levels too. are organization's just microcosms of society, or are they have much more specific, much more regimented and facilitator wouldn't work the same way out in the, in the, in the wider world.
[00:21:42] Douglas Ferguson: [00:21:42] You know, I, I think that, there's, there's a lot to unpack there. this notion of facilitators in broader society absolutely resonates with me. And there's a, when you look at the, the framework for. well, there are some frameworks that fit and those domains. maybe more so because that's where they evolved.
[00:22:01]you don't see design thinking applied so much and outside of the world, although there are, there are buckets of 'em or I would say there are, there are examples out there. for instance, I'm seeing lots of HR professionals starting to, to attend design thinking conferences, which means that, and so the lens being pointed outward.
[00:22:18] To customers. It's being pointed inward, which I think is really fantastic. And I've been retro referring to it as employee experience. And, and then you've got, Then you've got stuff like liberating structures, which is, typically found in health care and, and social justice type of work. So this is going to societal change.
[00:22:38]work is definitely, done with inside of . we will in those frameworks in that world, you find it on the art of gathering, those communities. un-conference dot net. So an example of a more kind of open and a free exploration of ideas. You typically find that people that are in that work are typically using tools that are, more loose, and they're control structures.
[00:23:04] And, you know, I titled my conference control of the room. And I've gotten a little bit of backlash from some of those more loose folks because they hear it and they're like, well, it's not about control. And my point is like if you're showing up. You're exhibiting some form of control right now, whether it's, whether it now, if you hear the word control and immediately think take control, then that's just a semantic conversation, right?
[00:23:28]but I think there's a difference between loose and tight and, and, and that, that the marks a difference between the, these, these frameworks that are used. And, And so when I look at or think about the broader societal stuff, it's, it's very fascinating. I think that the one challenges for a facilitator to be the powerful or be effective, I'd say that there has to be this notion of relinquishing, of, of control for the facilitator.
[00:23:56] So the facilitator has to be. considered, there has to be some order, right? Where we're the group at large that has this shared goal, the shared, the shared value. This, this outcome they're seeking has said that I believe this facilitator can help us. and if that condition, you know, it's just like, you think about co emergent or a complex adaptive systems and, and, and how reactions happen, you have the initial conditions have to be set.
[00:24:25] Yeah. And so the, I believe that's one of the initial conditions. And if that, that is true, if they have faith that they have belief that this person can bring them together and get them where they need to go. And maybe this group, maybe it's not as one person, maybe it's a constellation of facilitators and that we're going to be, we're going to be here as your guides and there has to be a lot of trust there.
[00:24:45] And that's there. Then magical things can happen with really large groups, but you have to use the right tools and you have to come with the right intent. And the shared the shared values have to be there. a good friend of mine, Greg Sitell, just released a new book, within the last year called, cascades. And, this is his first book with mapping innovation. If you've ever seen that one.
[00:25:08] Gary David: [00:25:08] I have that book, actually. I read it.
[00:25:09] Douglas Ferguson: [00:25:09] So cascades is really cool because basically saying that, you know, social movements, sorry, have you read cascades or mapping innovation.
[00:25:17] Gary David: [00:25:17] Mapping innovations.
[00:25:18] Douglas Ferguson: [00:25:18] Cool. Yeah. So cascades is the book you really wanted to write.
[00:25:21] And the publisher was like, well, that are novel, never sell. So he convinced. So then they're like, well, this innovation one will, will sell. And so once he became a published author and then it will do the book he really wanted to do. He was, he was in the Ukraine during the, the orange revolution, and he watched that just go watch his wife, I think is his girlfriend at the time.
[00:25:43] Go from, you know, just being an as his, his like girlfriend too. Being an activist and it was almost like a switch flipped. Like he, he didn't hear her complaining or like saying, I'm thinking about doing this. It was just like, I'm going, as she was walking out of the door, the handkerchief, and he was like, what?
[00:26:00] How did that just happen? That's how I got really fascinated by this. And as a journalist, you know, he was equipped to do the research. I mean, he looked into it and he said, wow, there's, there's, there's a, there's some defining differences between social movements that work and ones that don't. And. and you can apply these concepts to change with inside companies.
[00:26:19] And, that, that really deeply resonates with me. And as a practitioner, I know I, everything he said I knew to be true. And it was, you know, when you read these things and give you language and stories for stuff that you've noticed, that's, that's pretty amazing, you know? and so I, so it echoes some of the.
[00:26:38] Stuff I was trying to say around these shared values, because if we're gonna, we're gonna make some change. We are, we have to all be aligned on, you know, trying to achieve the same outcome or else, you know, there's, There's little little odds that we're going to, we're going to get to where we need to go.
[00:26:55] And in a way, you know, you can also look at my negotiation science because you know, you know, whether it's Chris Voss or whatever camp, you believe in the, you know, you have to think about, these two parties may. Have different, views on the subject. But ultimately, if we're gonna, if we're going to make a road forward, we had to understand where we are, where we align and where we agree.
[00:27:21] And to me, that's really the job of a great facilitator asked really, really great questions. They keep their own opinions at Bay, they stayed neutral and they help us get to the desired outcome.
[00:27:39] Gary David: [00:27:39] Hmm. I really do appreciate the, I teach a course on employee experience actually, and this element of social movements create a social movement and organization.
[00:27:49] I think, you know, what separates, and we talked about this in the past, I'm passionate as a separates. You know, user experience per se, from customer experience, employee experience, patient experience. I teach it. I work in a university. Student experience is this cultural change, right? It's not just about improving functionality and usability.
[00:28:06] It's we need to change your organization, have a different purpose, a different outlook, a different mission. And that's, and that's the trick, right? I mean, that's. Easier said than done, especially when you're waiting into, as an outsider, all of the politics, all of the history, you might be the third person they've brought in to try to do a thing, and everyone's burned out of coming to these sessions with post it notes and we're busy anyway, and who is this guy?
[00:28:29] And now we got to sit here and do these, you know, play these games and whatever. And I, I'm, maybe I'm talking about this too much cause I'm speaking from personal experience now of being in those rooms, sitting there, you know, how do you then as a facilitator, get those people on, on board with this kind of level setting of why are we all here?
[00:28:49] And. By the way, is it from a community organizing perspective? You might not be here for the same exact reasons, but at a certain level we can align the reasons you are here and what you do want in finding that point of connection where we can all agree. We might disagree on some, some specifics, but the larger point is something we can all agree on.
[00:29:10] Douglas Ferguson: [00:29:10] Yeah. I think there's, there's, there's a couple of things there. One is you have to ask and you have to reserve time. And space for that conversation to happen. And so when we, when we look at, we look at this kind of work, generally, I like to start there. That's a great way to open. to get deeply into purpose, there's, there's an amazing liberating structure called, nine wise, I'm not to be confused with Firewise.
[00:29:41]but you can, I mean, it's for more of these things, you know, you're drilling deeper and deeper into what really drives you. and Trinzic Lee. And, w and if we started there and we give everyone a voice and we listened and we provide mechanisms to, for, for that voice to percolate up to the top and the find, do some sifting and sorting in ways that are efficient and we can, we can manage across large groups.
[00:30:04] In fact, I'm Daniel Stillman and I did a workshop last week on large virtual meetings. And, we've, we've been developing this concept, we call it information trees. And when you're dealing with really large groups, you have to think about how you traverse the tree much like you would. And, from a computer science standpoint, so do we, do we randomly test leaf nodes.
[00:30:25] Did we do an exhaustive, search through the tree? there there's any interesting ways to, to kind of, manage the group in a way that everyone's still feels heard. And, the, the ideas of all kind of bubbled up and, and moved around. And so I think one mistake a lot of folks make, so I can give you the counter example that people make the mistake of just assuming that we're all aligned.
[00:30:48] Of course, of course we want to adopt agile. So then we come in with this big presentation about like, the agile manifesto is dah, dah, dah, dah, dah. It's so awesome and blah, blah, blah. But we never gave anyone an opportunity to talk about their hopes and their fears and why they think this thing won't work.
[00:31:05] Like you need to understand your opposition just as well as you understand your, The, you know, your advocates and the people that are already on board with you. And the thing is, is not to get drunk on your, your own excitement and your own desires and, and just kind of bulldoze the stuff through.
[00:31:23]we have to make sure that we understand what. Every, what's in it for everyone. And if we can, if we can understand all those things and support everybody, then, then we're going to have a much more resilient program, another mistake. People, so, you know, don't make that assumption and intentionally program in time to explore that as, and it's a great way to open because then if we really understand our goal and our share vision, I mean, you know, you're looking at the design sprint, it starts off with the goal.
[00:31:53] And I think that, That's an area as a facilitator that I've, I've tweaked to, to the point where, you know, it's interesting, a lot of people will, have, have published variations and wrestle in the design sprint. It's like, Oh, here's this four day version. Here's the three day version, or I don't do this, or I do that.
[00:32:11] And I, what I really focused on is the nuance of each component. Because I feel like that the cadence and the arc is really well designed. And, but within the, within the HR activity, I think there's opportunities to optimize and specifically tailor for different industries and different, different, different types of groups.
[00:32:32] And the goal specifically is one that I think, you know, and, and the book, it's like, have this discussion about the goal. And I've found that, you know, playing with some different techniques to really unlock. Those shared values can really set the stage for how the team works together for the rest of the week, and that applies to any kind of gathering.
[00:32:51]
[00:32:51] Adam Gamwell: [00:32:51] do you find that, in terms of setting up the idea of goals and visions, that is kind of an initial step. now you're thinking about this, this, this can happen in both. The initial phrase of the design sprint itself, but then also it seems like this is, this is a great thing to kind of revisit it, right? Right. After you finish the sprint, as you're kind of going into the, beyond the prototype phase, if we can call it that, I guess.
[00:33:12] Douglas Ferguson: [00:33:12] I think it's constantly double stitch on, because the thing is, is we, so, I mean, it's, think about acronyms right. Or any, any words are, or anytime we shortened some, some concept down.
[00:33:29]we do it for efficiency so that we can quickly communicate, bigger concepts. But, but whenever we compress our meaning, we, there's opportunity for nuance to be lost. And when that, and when there's two things that happen with that, right? we can be using the same word, but meaning different, like two different things.
[00:33:48] Or would we be using two different words to mean the same thing? And, and when that happens, you know, that's when teams are getting malaligned and they don't realize it because they're not having open arguments. But there is this like underbelly or fabric of, of, disorder and that can be very, very dangerous because you don't even realize it's happening.
[00:34:12] I worked with a team back in November and they were on the surface like performing well or hyper aligned. When we got in there, there, they were basically were repeating the project brief. And, the thing I noticed is they were using, there was a word and this word, is a very cornerstone of the brand.
[00:34:35] And it became clear to me what I, what I was able to, to extract was that they did not understand. They had different thoughts around what that word meant for this project. And so, like for instance, it wasn't G, but let's say that their, their slogan is we bring good things to life, right? Well, what if, what if they all disagreed on what life meant? Right? That's problematic
[00:34:58] Gary David: [00:34:58] or good things
[00:34:59] Douglas Ferguson: [00:34:59] yet. Exactly. Exactly. And so, so that's the kind of stuff that if you are a facilitator comes in. Starts to the cease of these things without telling them what life or good things mean, just slows things down and gives everyone permission to have that conversation.
[00:35:15] That's where the real magic can happen.
[00:35:19] Adam Gamwell: [00:35:19] So
[00:35:19] Gary David: [00:35:19] I guess it's like really no different than your production work. Right? I mean, cause you, you, you worked as a, looking at your LinkedIn bio, you worked as a producer. It didn't meet, you know, music production work. And is it that different of hearing that nuance, seeing like what little changes might happen, bringing everyone together to orchestrate and then, you know, all the different tracks you have to meld them together to create a final thing that blends as, I mean, as are the skills that distinct music production versus design sprint?
[00:35:48] Douglas Ferguson: [00:35:48] You know, I think that, you know, a lot of the lessons I learned there are definitely applied. You know, it's just like any experiences you have, you, you bring things to bear. and I, I do think that there's, there's a bit of a symphony that you're, you're conducting.
[00:36:04] In fact, we. We, we wrote an article not that long ago, drawing parallels between our conductor and the facilitator. and. You know, I, I, I personally love the electrical metaphor. You know, it's like, whether you're a conductor that's like, driving a, a steam engine or in front of the orchestra or, or the actual component within an electrical device that's conducting the electricity.
[00:36:32] You know, it's the same core definition. They're the same roots of, of the word, if you will, that we are an enabling. And we're extracting the essence of, of what's happening. And then, and I think that a, a good music producer, you know, and I learned this, this from Steve Albini, this notion that you should be documenting and, and not influencing what's happening, but taking a, an accurate portrait.
[00:37:00] Now, if you. If, if there are things that you might do to embellish and make it sound slightly different from, from what's live, but I tried to be clear and transparent with 'em. With my work. So that, that I was there extracting what, what that band was, was intending to do and, and the sounds they wanted to create.
[00:37:26] And so, I think it is very similar to going into teams. They, you know, they have a goal. They have an objective. I'm not there to tell them what they should do, or why they need to do it. I'm there to help them achieve those things that they, they, they so deeply want.
[00:37:40] Gary David: [00:37:40] So no more cow bell. Right? But you guys always need more cowbell. And so I got some, some bands, some artists are temperamental and, and some are going to be easy to work with, like organizations. I was listening to another podcast this weekend with Al Austin native, Kathy Valentine from the Go-Go's, and. She was talking about this element of it, like being in the studio, trying to arrive at a sound, working together, bringing the parts, and sometimes it's just magical.
[00:38:11]and sometimes, you know, the org, what worked in the past is out of step with the present. And you need to either move and change with that moment in music or else you're going to be, you know, left behind. and also. You know what, if you're playing stuff that matters to you, it may not be about how many records are selling or how many tour dates you have, but are you finding meaning in the work?
[00:38:30] And I guess again, the, the connection would be the same. That if all you're doing is being driven by profit and growth, well, is that really the purpose of what you're trying to do as an organization or is it you, can you be a smaller organization and accomplish meaningful things without worrying about getting bigger for bigger sake?
[00:38:49] Douglas Ferguson: [00:38:49] Yup. That's amazing. You know, I've, as a startup advisor and mentor, I run into that often, you know, a founder has an amazing idea, but they're not pursuing the amazing idea because quote, it doesn't scale and I don't, I don't know what really is the, I mean, I would assume it's ego, but it just surprises me that someone has stumbled upon.
[00:39:19] That they could, you know, potentially with a small team, you know, pocket a couple million or maybe a million a year or something. And, and that's not good enough. You know, if I don't, if I don't make the, you know, if I'm not, if I can't ring the bell at the stock exchange, then, then this is not worth, worth any of it, man.
[00:39:40] It's like, wow, you really, and then the fascinating thing is if you do the, if you do the passion project, you do the lifestyle business, which is like nothing to shake a stick at. I mean, gosh, like, you know, so many people would be so, so grateful to be in that situation. Right. And, if you did that. And really pursued that.
[00:40:00] What, what surfaces that you're not even considering right now because in that work you expose some new novel thing. And, so I, I'm just, I'm a firm believer and, and following your passion and, and doubling down on what works rather than trying to like have some, some notion of what the future should be and trying to force that to happen.
[00:40:22] Adam Gamwell: [00:40:23] how might we then think about the notion of control in this case, to come back to your conference title, control of the room here. cause I thought it was interesting how you said that certain people read that differently, right? Like what, what does it mean by controls? So I love this idea too, of, of, especially in the startup space, right?
[00:40:36] You know, most startups fail. But again, what does failure mean in this case? and then also what does it mean to have a sense of like you're trying to control the future, but also just come up with a passion project, you know, that. May not scale. I don't know. So I'm, I'm really, I, I think it's a super compelling too, cause then you can talking to a bunch of founders and folks with ideas, right? you know, you do hear this notion of that you want to have some sense of like becoming the next you know, Google or, and that may be a little too big, but, you know, but it's the idea of like, wanting to be able to scale is one of the key metrics of having a kind of success. And so , it does change the way of what does it mean that the notion of control, I think in this space too, of what a, what a founder's trying to control, know. so I'm just in between the idea of like both control and scale. Also, just like, what are people trying to get at by scaling versus just following their passions. And this is one way to think about that with control to help us, you know?
[00:41:26]Douglas Ferguson: [00:41:26] Yeah. I mean, self-control comes to mind. The, but I dunno, I'd have to probably had to sit down and interview some folks around that intent.
[00:41:36] Cause usually when I'm in that conversation, I'm, I'm really focused on. Not necessarily what drove them to that conclusion, but helping, unpack it a bit for them to make sure that they're thinking about alternatives and that is that the right path forward. so I can't really say with 'em. With confidence, exactly what, what the drivers are.
[00:41:58] But just thinking about the patterns, I would hazard to guess that, it's really about ego and about, you know, notoriety. You know, like, Oh, I want to be famous or I want to be known for this. Or, you know, there are some people that are driven by this notion of having something bigger and more complex.
[00:42:17] Cause it's a challenge. Like, can I, can I, can I overcome that? And, and also I think that some disregard the lifestyle business because they think it's like, like less, less important work or, you know, they've achieved the less or whatnot. And, I. For whatever reason, they've set the goal and they're very, they tend to be very fixed on it, you know?
[00:42:41] And, and I think that's a lot of times that tenacity, that grit, that, that laser focus is what, it's what's served them well. And allowed them to succeed. But the thing is, is like, and that does not, that can work in a simple domain and a complicated domain, but in a complex domain, you have to be darn lucky to like have set those sites exactly right. And so being able to twist and turn and adapt is really what it's about. And this, in this kind of VUCA world that we live in now.
[00:43:12] Gary David: [00:43:12] Hmm. There was a really nice book by David Epstein called range. I don't know if you've seen it and it kind of speaks to this, right? It's like this 10,000 hours model of practice, you know, was really nice if all you're going to do is like play Tchaikovsky within a very controlled environment.
[00:43:28] But if you want to sit down with a bunch of people playing jazz, it's not going to help very much. And you have to kind of draw on an extensive range of experiences and knowledge sets in order to, You know, adapt to, how things are changing and it's, you know, on a, on a different than kind of like side note.
[00:43:46] I mean, me venting and Adam and I had conversation. One of the major drawbacks of academics is that we're taught to hyper focus in a very narrow range of work. Which then really hurts in terms of taking foundational work and then applying it more broadly. And so, I guess one of the things I wonder about with your work is, and in your role of social broker, of connecting pieces, of getting people in silos and organizations in very narrow ranges to connect and see how all those dots can be integrated in unique, an unthought of ways.
[00:44:21] Douglas Ferguson: [00:44:21] So have you ever seen this? the listeners can't see this, but there's a really incredible blog post out there that, talks about, has these concentric circles and there's a little.in the center and says, this is what you learned in kindergarten.
[00:44:35] And this is how much you, and then the next ring is, well, this is what, you know, coming out of high school and then college, and then a master's degree. You kind of fill shades in the part of the next layer, but you don't get all of that. And then the final thing is a little dent on the, on the outer ring.
[00:44:50] And it says, once you get your PhD, you've made a dent. And, and the available. Noble knowledge in the world. You've added a little bit to it. And then the next screen is a zoom in of that deck, and it says, now this is your first step. This is your perception of the world.
[00:45:06] Gary David: [00:45:06] And that wasn't so true. It would hurt less.
[00:45:08] Adam Gamwell: [00:45:08] All right,
[00:45:12] well that's,
[00:45:14] Douglas Ferguson: [00:45:14] you know, there's this beautiful flip side of that called only Enos and only miss is the study of the, this notion that. Only you, David. I'm sorry. Only you, Gary, have, had the experiences you've had and only you, Adam have either had the experiences you've had and that's created a unique person with a set of a unique experiences and you're going to bring a totally different lens to a situation.
[00:45:41] And that's exactly why diversity matters. Because when I bring together lots of perceptive perspectives, then we can, we can Excel beyond, you know, what we had otherwise, receipt get, or the, the, you know, the, the outputs we've get a generate. we just ourselves. So I think it was really beautiful.
[00:46:00] And, it led me to, to further think about this notion of observational diversity. And often we'll redo an ethnography or user research. We'll send one researcher and to do the research. And I've really been fascinated by this, this phenomenon out of the design sprint where you've got a cross functional team listening to the interviews, not just reading a report that someone else put together.
[00:46:22] And so, and a lot of the retrospectives and debriefs that the things that different people pick up on. That then trigger other stuff for other people in the room so that that conversation is powerful and I think we should see, I would love to see more of that even just outside of the design sprint. And that's the, that's the concept that I was putting forth in the kind of cultivating the culture chapter, which is like, can we do these things outside of the confines of the design sprint.
[00:46:48]Adam Gamwell: [00:46:48] Yeah you actually, , that was the chapter that jumped out to me as a cultural anthropologist, the most, was this idea of, of not just cause that was the word culture, but it was, it was the idea of how do you cultivate something beyond the, the, you know, the place where it is born, as it were.
[00:47:01]and I think that that is a really fascinating question too, because, in this case, like the design sprint and then even like the, beyond the prototype, you know, journey as it were, you know, work best. At the end of the day, if they can be then adopted and brought into the, bring the mindset out further, you know, beyond just the actual practice through the week itself or whatever the timeframe is for kind of charting the course afterwards.
[00:47:23] And I guess, have you found that, I mean, I'm guessing one of the answers is like when cross functional teams, you know, pick up on this night in different kinds of people are, are helping promote, in this case the design sprint. But have you found there's certain instances or scenarios in which that culture gets adopted more, more readily.
[00:47:40] Douglas Ferguson: [00:47:40] Hmm. Yeah, there, there's one, there's one kind of situation where it's just, it takes off like wildfire and that, that's the situation where the team's been reading all the blogs. They, they know all the things. They just haven't started a practice. And, or maybe they've tried to and they've just, you know, for whatever reason it hasn't taken hold and along.
[00:48:07] Comes a design sprint and now they've kinda gotten the training wheels. It's sort of like having that bicycle and like trying to get on it and just kind of fallen off of it and getting a little discouraged and going, well I don't, I'm not sure. And then, you know, and then you get the training wheels and you get, you get to experience the benefits.
[00:48:23] And how much fun it is to have the wind hitting your face. And you're like, ah, I'm gonna stick to this and like, figure this out. Right. And, and also there's this interesting element where the phenomenon around once leadership. Like says, devotes and, you know, attention and resources to this cause, you know, they might be hiring an outside agency, like, like voltage control to come in and facilitate.
[00:48:46] They might be, they might be just reserving internal resources to fizzle, facilitate, but they're certainly devoting five days and the entire team, that's five days to seven people. That is a commitment, right? And that that's a signal to the team that we care about this stuff and we want to do it. And so.
[00:49:03]then also when you, when you come out with a prototype and the story around, around what happened. And that's why I believe the, the retrospective, the recap of the photo album that tells that narrative around what happened is so critical. Because then that starts to spread this meshes message throughout the organization.
[00:49:22] And so basically it starts this little, this flywheel that begins to kind of spin up and there's momentum around that. And, and so you can really can see the, the culture, kind of shift within a company. And it really, really helps if they're already kind of on that, on that edge of that knowing, doing gap.
[00:49:42] Or they're like, no, all the things, but they're not quite doing it. And once they experience it and then once they've got some stories to tell, cause having that internal case study super, super powerful because it's one thing to say, Oh yeah, blue bottle coffee did this and that and there's this awesome like thing that Slack did and it's in the book and blah, blah, blah.
[00:50:01] Well, once you tell them that. You know, our HR PR department, like reduce the cost of, of application in our review process by 50%, and we're like 10 X faster, or whatever it is. Once you can talk about those internal wins, you can, you can, it can kind of own it and, and you can replicate it a lot more easily.
[00:50:25] And so. Those are the ones I see that are the easiest to adopt, just not immediately go back to, to, to business as usual. And then I'll say, even if they conditions aren't perfect, I think the, the next best thing is to follow the steps and beyond the prototype. Hmm. Yeah. That, that's,
[00:50:43] Adam Gamwell: [00:50:43] that's a fair point.
[00:50:43] Right. So, I mean, actually it's a jump at that to the other, another chapter that I think resonates really well with that the idea is of sharing your story. Right. And what does it mean to tell the story of, of the sprint you did. And so for me, I think like the idea of stories and culture goes so well together.
[00:50:56] And as an anthropologist who has the wonderful name of Michael Jackson, who's, who's older than the other, Michael Jackson, and so anthropologist Michael Jackson, has this wonderful idea that stories are the blood vessels of culture, right? And it's what makes the, makes the cells move through. and it's what makes you live, right?
[00:51:13] And so I think having those stories and, and like, so the idea of the internal case studies, one of the is, is a great. Great example. I know this for me personally too, once I was able to begin doing case study work in design, then I suddenly was like, Oh, I get now a little bit more how to talk about this.
[00:51:26] And I now I further further can then think about anthropology and how do I plug this into design and put these pieces together? And it's, it's through doing, right? And so it's like you get these pieces and then like you get some knowledge and then you start doing them. You get those stories and then suddenly there is, there's what we might call a culture who starts to emerge where there's a certain way the blood flows is a certain way that we tell the stories.
[00:51:45] Right. And that gives shape,
[00:51:47] Douglas Ferguson: [00:51:47] right,
[00:51:48] Adam Gamwell: [00:51:48] as it were, to, to the body,
[00:51:50] Douglas Ferguson: [00:51:50] you know,
[00:51:50] Adam Gamwell: [00:51:50] the organizational body, I guess, that becomes the culture, you know? So I think it's really interesting to think about that too, and like, again, so, so I, I'm just double points for yes. Beyond the prototype in terms of linking together these ideas of stories and culture.
[00:52:02]I, you know, they reinforce each other.
[00:52:03] Douglas Ferguson: [00:52:03] I think. Absolutely. I was just recently, just speaking with a,
[00:52:09] Adam Gamwell: [00:52:09] a podcast,
[00:52:10] Douglas Ferguson: [00:52:10] host, who has, a new podcast called untold stories of innovation. And, We were, we were having fun unpacking the story arc of the design sprint itself. So, so then, so much so that we, it was, it was really a beautiful moment.
[00:52:26] It has, we, we, we kind of verged into a very collaborative. Exchange during the recording of the podcast. And so we're now, we're working together to see, see what that might turn into as far as like maybe a, a workshop on, on how narrative impacts your facilitation and how you can use the power of narrative to think about, how you might design your, your workshop.
[00:52:48] And we are, we already, we taught a module and our advanced facilitation workshop around. You know, using different merit, narrative structures, to, to map out your, your agenda. And so, and that was, that was in collaboration with a, a partner of ours, Daniel Stillman, who was really fantastic. And, so the power of narrative is, is pretty phenomenal and, and shouldn't be understated.
[00:53:11]you know, the, the, the one thing I will say is, we. See a massive difference and the resilience of this work. When teams think about the message that they're going to send to the broader organization, and if we. if we don't do that, there's a few risks. One is if we, if we run into someone who wasn't in the design sprint, so the, at first discovered this when I was talking about the CEO who had hired me but was a part of the design sprint, he had delegated the designer role and you know, he had an add a team that he was really interested in working on this work.
[00:53:53] And, And about a, I dunno, a couple of weeks, after the design sprint, I was having a, a followup call and coaching session, and I asked him how things went. And, I think had he heard anything from the team and he was like telling me the story about how he ran into the decider and she, she said, yeah, it was a ton of fun. And, and I thought, wow, that was. That's what, that's what he got when he inquired a water cooler. And it's, and it's not surprising because you know, this work where we've D w w we're relying on the power of the child's mind. We really want to tap into some of that kind of fearless curiosity and this playful energy that can be so productive.
[00:54:40] And, And so if you haven't prepared, that's, you're going to go to an emotional spot. And so what we're really saying is just reserve some time to have that conversation. So we know that the outcomes are codified and we're, we're kind of somewhat rehearsed, not to the point that we're trying to be deceitful, but we just want to make sure you, you wouldn't get up in front of a, of a group of 200 500 people without being a little bit rehearsed and what they're going to say.
[00:55:06] Right. And I think if we, if we treat this work the same, it can, it can be very powerful. The other reason is. just, when you're stopped in your tracks and don't quite know what to say. they're the other, the other, kind of fatal issue here as if we all leave the meeting and we all take slightly different, observations with us when we discuss with other people in the organization, they'll hear different things.
[00:55:32]and if you can imagine like, if you hear different things from our group, it probably doesn't make you very confident in their ability to execute. and so it really, will undermine the resilience of your efforts. And so just having some alignment around the, the content and the, the conclusions and the next steps, super critical.
[00:55:53]And you know, I also, if the bonus credit, if you can not only think about the, the, the topics that are important to discuss and share out and talk about post workshop or post-meeting, but also think about the audiences cause your, your, your message might differ slightly based on what they're, what they're concerned about.
[00:56:11]Gary David: [00:56:11] That last piece actually, something I wanted to ask you about because. You know, you have the, you have the wonder of the child's mind with the responsibility of an adult's life kind of in these, these projects because it does come down to, as your book talks about implementation and what that looks like might be different for different groups.
[00:56:29] And so this starts again for the messaging and the branding and the marketing of the change. Because. You know, different groups might look at this idea or this shift or this new thing differently, but at the end of the day, however they get there, as long as they're arriving to the same spot, you know, does, it doesn't really matter.
[00:56:49] I was working on a project, with you know, trying to get doctors to, to code their documentation in ways that would increase the hospital's reimbursement. I wasn't fraud, but the doctors just didn't have time. Didn't think it was important to put down all the details of the procedure and the way that really good, professionals would get them to do that.
[00:57:09] They would say something like, you know, administration really doesn't appreciate how good of a doctor you are. And they really don't understand the complexity of cases that you manage and handle. And the way we can get them to really understand the value you bring is to make sure your documentation has everything in it as PO as much as possible.
[00:57:28] And the doctors would be like, yeah, that's right. It wasn't, you know, we need to increase the, the reimbursement for the hospital. That wasn't going to get them there. What was going to get them there was what mattered to them. So it was the same program, documentation, improvement program, but a different message that a lot of people to converge to the same space.
[00:57:46] Douglas Ferguson: [00:57:46] I love a, and you know, I think that that story, it's pretty incredible because that to me is true design. You know, we, we, we created, conditions and we, put in place, criteria so that we got the desired outcome. Right. And, and, and, you know, you talked about what matters to them. That, that's what I was talking about earlier when I mentioned the shared values.
[00:58:14] You know, you had to understand. Where, what we have in common. or what about this, this thing that we're trying to do, is really pulling the strings for you. and how, how you can come in. You know, Greg in this cascades book talks about, you know, for the movements to work, you have to have, a loosely coupled, disparate nodes, United by a shared purpose.
[00:58:36] And, and sometimes that shared purpose is not always clear. And so that requires some hard work. And this is what I was talking about at the beginning of, meetings and workshops to really spend some time getting to that, that doing that purpose work and, and finding out what motivates people. and so if you're doing that work, and you know, you realize that.
[00:58:59] Wow, that they don't really care about this piece, but they really, really care about this. Then you can design that, that interaction or that exchange with, with that kind of core principle in mind. and, you know, the, there's this, this is really interesting, tool that we used at the beginning when the coronavirus stuff started to first become a real concern in the U S and.
[00:59:21] It was right before South by Southwest got canceled and South by and Capitol factory, a local accelerator. how does come in and run a, a workshop to explore, how we might change our behaviors to make South by more safe. oddly enough, or, I guess not that surprising at this point. the mayor's announcement that South I would to be canceled happened right in the middle of the workshop.
[00:59:45] So you can imagine we've got a room full of people that are kind of exploring this, like really important conversation. And the, you know, the oxygen's gets sucked out of the room. It's like the most, like, is this the strangest. Phenomenon. For me as a facilitator, it was like I had a highly energized room just there to figure it out and then just totally inflate it and like, like a switch just got flipped.
[01:00:09] Right. And, but the thing we were doing was something called improv prototyping. This is where we present a challenge. And, and we, in, in groups of three kind of act out the how we might behave based on that challenge. And so, like. one of the prompts was, someone's going to act out, a unsafe sneeze, and then someone else is going to react to that unsafe sneeze.
[01:00:35] So they're going to be improv. It's both their improv and really just one person's improv and the bad behavior and someone else's improving the good behavior. And then the third person is an observer. And so after, after the session, after the short session, it's only like maybe five minutes, then, then, then we do a debrief.
[01:00:53] And, and I would say, you know, we were talking about critical components of facilitation and I was talking about starting with the purpose and, you know, making sure that, that we understand where those shared values might exist and, and that we get really resilient on the goals and objectives.
[01:01:09] Well, the debriefs are equally important. Cause if we had the worst is improv or icebreakers and and warm ups. If you do those things and you can't answer the question, why don't we just do that. Yes. And you need to ask yourself, in fact, I usually will say, if you can't ask that question to the room and have a really pithy conversation, then you need to ask yourself, why don't we just do that?
[01:01:35] So that the debrief is kind of baked into a lot of these liberating structures. Cause that's like one of their core principles. But the, then part prototyping is really cool because you get to, practice. You're basically designing on the fly. You're reacting to this thing and, and you know, watching your behavior and then end the debrief.
[01:01:53] We can talk about what behavior is we want to emulate and which ones we want to like avoid in the future. And then we can, then we can try it again. So not only are we designing on the fly, but we're also rehearsing and giving people that motor memory of what it's like to feel like telling someone you should really cover that cough.
[01:02:13] Cause it's not socially acceptable to like admonish people in public. But it's like if, if they were out there doing those things, it's not great for society. And how can we, how can we shift those behaviors so that, so that we can stand up and, and help and help shape things for the better.
[01:02:31] Gary David: [01:02:31] Maybe you can do that next with a regional emphasis.
[01:02:33] Okay, now you're a new Yorker observing this unsafe cities. Now you are from Boston, now you're from the South.
[01:02:39] Douglas Ferguson: [01:02:39] We did. We talked about that. You know, this notion of like, cause especially with South, by being such an international conference and say, you know, what are, what are some of these social norms that people bringing in that we need to think about and account for?
[01:02:53]it was that lens that was a very fascinating conversation. And you know, honestly, people ask me what I liked the most about the work that I do. It's, it's when, when the, when the conversation goes there, when someone brings up something that's like, wow, that is a bit of a wicked question and there's no right or wrong answer.
[01:03:13] And we're gonna, we're gonna all have a, have a real meaty conversation. And. Well, I don't just in that moment it's like, I feel like the room lights up and it's a, it's a, it's an amazing place to be.
[01:03:29] Adam Gamwell: [01:03:29] That sounds, that sounds super fun. Actually. I don't want, I want to go try this improv prototyping thing now too. and I think that's great too. I mean that, that really does a great job of illustrating why debriefing is such an important piece that you don't often see enough, I think, you know, in, in certainly in like organizational meetings in general or like I think facilitation sessions like lend themselves better to, to debrief.
[01:03:48] And I think that that's really powerful and great to hear. Like that's such an important piece of your own practice and that you advocate for others. You know, Gary and I would certainly agree with that too. But it's so interesting too, how oftentimes, you know, you talk to a colleague or a friend that they're just in some, you know, random meeting, at work or even if they get together, like to brainstorm an idea that there's like not a huge amount of emphasis on the debrief side.
[01:04:09] I think that's such an important, piece that's like on one level, kind of simple. And part of it is, as you just said, they can you answer the question of why did we do this? Right? And then if you can't answer that in a. You know, in, in two sentences and it is an important piece to then make your, you know, kind of pause and say, okay, well what, you know, why can't we answer that question you know?
[01:04:28] and so much of this too, it seems like a lot of it in a broad sense is about providing the space for these extra pieces of reflection, right? And like being in setting kind of intention, right? for the practice, both in terms of like, why are we here together and, and what do you bring in, what do I bring? And then at the end of the, at the end of it, kind of like, what did we do this for? You know, what would have come out of this with, and so. to me too, it's, it's almost like we're, we're kind of melding a bit of mindfulness throughout this process too, right? Instead of just having the idea of like, it's, it's almost funny it's kind of like, you know, the idea of a sprint feels like, you know, quick, fast, and quite actions, but then it's like, you don't often think about then mindfulness around and through that. but that's kind of what I'm hearing, that this process is, it's a mix of like, you know, Zen meditation and running really fast.
[01:05:11] Douglas Ferguson: [01:05:11] Yeah. Yeah. I always talk about how this front, requires you to slow down so you can move fast and, the results are really fast. But man, when you're in, when you're in the moment, it's like, a lot of times we're. We're going to have a, a long conversation about something we usually don't, we don't reserve time for.
[01:05:30] But getting those things out of the way sets of the dominoes where everything can kind of can move a bit faster. And it's funny. So it's like, I would say some of the things that people gloss over and never do or spend very little time. While we're going to, we're going to spend a lot of time on and there's some of the things that people would belabor.
[01:05:49] And, I'm just like drag out and stall out. Those are the things we're going to move really fast on. You know, we're going to do a prototype in one day. We're not going to him and haul around what it could be, what it should be. We're just going to put it together, make it believable, and then go learn some stuff.
[01:06:04] And, you know, to Gary's comment earlier, it's like, you know, this, looking at the broader implications, I've seen people do kind of this, kind of almost like a wagon wheel type of approach where it's like, let's do slices or spokes and, And, and kind of then zoom out and look at the findings and how they all stitch together.
[01:06:23] So because it's not about like doing this one tiny test is not going to give you the whole picture, but if you do enough core samples, you can get an understanding of what's going on without cutting the whole tree down,
[01:06:40] Adam Gamwell: [01:06:40] more sustainable that way too, I hope. Right.
[01:06:42] Douglas Ferguson: [01:06:42] That's part of the analogy works as well. But
[01:06:44] Adam Gamwell: [01:06:44] let's just.
[01:06:47]Douglas Ferguson: [01:06:47] Why not, you know,
[01:06:48] Adam Gamwell: [01:06:48] we're an information tree. I hopefully it can survive a little longer for you to cut a piece of it.
[01:06:52] Douglas Ferguson: [01:06:52] That's true.
[01:06:54] Adam Gamwell: [01:06:54] cool. Yeah, I think that, this has been an awesome conversation. you know, it's, it's been such a, it's been a, it's been a journey, right? This is our, our podcast user journey right across
[01:07:02] Douglas Ferguson: [01:07:02] the, that's amazing. Yeah. You know, it's like, I think we started off and you're like, well, we're not recording. And then at some point I'm just like, I'm pretty sure we must be recording cause we were just like,
[01:07:10] Gary David: [01:07:10] Oh, we haven't started yet.
[01:07:15] Recording.
[01:07:16] Douglas Ferguson: [01:07:16] Yeah, that sounds good. Let's go
[01:07:19] Gary David: [01:07:19] Douglas Ferguson. Hi, welcome to I actually actually had started recording. I think that, like with most of what we do right there is the idea of the . The effort behind the effortless, effortless ness of the, of the work. Right. And facilitation should look easy because people who are trained professionals at it make it look easy. And that the hard work actually is when you realize that I'm now, we got to do something with what we facilitated and actually bring it, bring it forward. But you know, hopefully the fraud, the foundation and the groundwork laid in that. Spring session is the, are the, are the building blocks for the sustainable movement? Like our, like our core tree.
[01:08:03] Douglas Ferguson: [01:08:03] Yes. I couldn't have said it better.
[01:08:08]Adam Gamwell: [01:08:08] Yeah. Well, Douglas
[01:08:08] thanks so much for joining us on the podcast today. This has been super exciting. and, and so, just as a final wrap up, you know, we want to say like, yeah, your book is great beyond the prototype is an amazing book and it's, it's a great chock full of like awesome ideas of facilitation, and techniques. I like the, you know, I'm now inspired to go try out the RACI chart to like, kind of understand people's, you know, who's responsible and accountable and, and you know, who's can get deliverables and who is, who needs to be informed and such like that, for project work.
[01:08:36] But then, so working, where can the good people find you? if they want to want to check out your work, Twitter, LinkedIn, whatever, whatever, whatever you prefer to get, get found by.
[01:08:43] Douglas Ferguson: [01:08:43] Yeah. well all the social handles are linked from voltage control.com. So that's, that's a great place to go and start.
[01:08:51]I'm very active on LinkedIn, if you, earnest and connecting there. I love to connect to new people. and of course beyond the prototype can be found beyondtheprototype.com. And, so many URLs, but I got one more start within my new book, just came out, start within.com. Yeah. Really, really excited about, about that that's at start with n.com and it was such a pleasure chatting with you all today. Both of you are really fun to talk to and, man, I had a blast.
[01:09:19] Adam Gamwell: [01:09:19] Thanks so much. Thanks. Yeah.
[01:09:22]Alright, once again, many thanks to Douglas Ferguson and for joining us on the podcast today. His new book is called beyond the prototype and his newer book is called star within we'll have links to those in the show notes as well as all the other resources that we talked about in today's episode. so it's been super fun to learn about the ideas of getting beyond the prototype itself and the power of facilitation and systems thinking.
[01:09:42] As well as bringing in that, you know, that mix of the childlike wonder , and playful energy to just sort of rethinking and approaching problems in new ways. So again, many thanks to Douglas once more. If you want to support this show, you can check us out at glow.fm/experiencebydesign where you can give one, two, three, $5 a month. Whatever might be within your wheelhouse and it really goes a long way to helping us defray web cost as well as working on production.
[01:10:08]Experience by Design is brought to you by Missing Link Studios, a participatory research and design collaborative and media house that uses design thinking and the social sciences to help change makers and social impact organizations define and tell their stories better.
[01:10:22]So whether you're an individual or an organization mastering your own story style and the messaging is essential for everything from aligning business goals to understanding your customers sharing needed information or just making people feel something. So Missing Link would love to partner with you. We offer design thinking facilitation, market research, media production and concept thing, strategy and more. Shoot me a message at Adam at missing ink.Studio.
[01:10:46] And of course continue to listen to experience by design and this anthro life it's been a pleasure as always this is your host Adam Gamwell and we will see you next time.