Ep. 022 – Positive psychology & design thinking

In this episode, you’ll meet Belinda and Emma from the United Kingdom. We explore the evolution of employee experience and why it’s more than just a fancy new title in the industry. They share interesting insights from their research and applying positive psychology to design thinking methodologies and their work.

Listen to full episode :

Want to connect with Belinda & Emma

https://www.linkedin.com/in/belindagannaway/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/emmabridger/

Websites

www.peoplelab.co.uk

Book

Employee Experience by Design
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Employee-Experience-Design-Effective-Competitive/dp/1789667712/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=emma+bridger&qid=1618229796&sr=8-1

Experience Designers Ep 22

(A.I.’s not perfect and nor is our automated transcript. Approx 90% right)

Steve: [00:00:00] Belinda, Emma, welcome to the experience designers.

Emma: [00:00:04] Thank you very much.

Steve: [00:00:06] Oh, it's perfect. Almost perfect unison. That was very good. Well synced. So if I, if I may, Belinda just a quick introduction into yourself and yeah. Your background and yeah. Share it. Share a big passion of yours as well. That'd be great too.

Belinda: [00:00:22] Great question. Can I go with the passion first? So that's I forget that that's a really,

Steve: [00:00:27] let's just start with that one.

Belinda: [00:00:28] We've just been talking about Emma knows where I'm going with it. She's going to, yawn want to go, Oh, not the sea swimming, but this is a lockdown revelation. The sea swimming. I, I live in a home and the sea is absolutely full of of a group of women and a certain age with their dry robe.

So sea swimming and anything to do with sea, very much a passion of mine. The more boring bit My background, I started as a journalist and I've been through sort of comms and marketing digital transformation and have ended up in this whole world of people and experience. So now I describe myself as a facilitator team and systems coach, and I guess also a star student of design thinking as well.

I guess what the common thread to all of that is. I like to ask an awful lot of questions. It's nice to be on the receiving end.

Steve: [00:01:11] Yeah, I think we're all students. So design thinking for a long time. It's not just a, Oh, I've learned it. Got the certificate. Thank you very much. Constant learning for sure. So Emma, how about yourself?

Emma: [00:01:22] Nice to be here. Thanks for inviting us to join the podcast. So my background is someone described me recently as a recovering academic, which I think is a really good description. So I thought it started life as a, as an academic in the field of psychology, positive psychology. I didn't know that.

That's what it was called, but then fell into corporate world 10 years in house in big corporates. Really passionate about helping people to thrive at work really, which we'll get into today and then set up my company. People are 10, 11 years ago to help companies. Do you know, help people thrive at work essentially.

My passion is music, so I I used to play in bands back in the day. I grew up playing corn in the brass band, local breast bonded in rural shop share because there's nothing else to do. And that was a bit of a social life for me and my sister at the time. And then I joined a much cooler band when I was a student and I played bass guitar.

And so, yeah. I love playing music. I love watching music. I love, you know, going to gigs, go into clubs, listen to music. So that's my, that's my real passion.

Steve: [00:02:21] Amazing. Amazing. And I don't know, I I'm absolutely certain, we would have heard that on the recording, but we also got authentic seagulls in the background, in the home area, which is really great.

So look with today, just out of interest, how did your, how did your paths cross? How did you, you both come together?

Belinda: [00:02:37] I look at it. It's like a dating questions. I have, we got the same one. So introduced.

Steve: [00:02:45] I actually am a quickly writes. It, writes it down on a, put on a postcard and hold

Belinda: [00:02:48] . I was introduced to Emma many years ago when I was working at what was deemed to be the UK first new media agency at the time.

That's how long ago it was social media agency and agency called next McInnes. And we were introduced by a mutual friend friend called Jenny who? I think there's a music connection. There is that right, Emma.

Emma: [00:03:08] Yeah. So, so Jenny, I Jenny's husband Ian really well because his little brother, Dave and I were, we went out for years and we were in the band skirt.

It's all very amicable. It's all fine. My husband and David Good friends. So, yeah, so I went out there, the rest of my twenties. He's brilliant drummer. He played in corner shop actually, but I've plugged there and he was an app and as well. And that's how I knew Ian and Jenny small world. So a deputy and we, we met through Jenny, I think didn't way

Steve: [00:03:33] amazing, amazing.

And now, you know, you're on this kind of EX journey as well together, which is, which is awesome . So look, can I just let's just talk about EX or employee experience for a moment. So I just wanted to ask you, like what you see in the movement right now? What are you hearing?

What are you thinking? Like what's the junction we're in right now?

Belinda: [00:03:51] So I'll take this one and I think there's, there's two things. Well, there's lots of things going on. I think on the, I'll take the, sort of the downside first, I think there is a potentially a risk of a bit of edX washing. So we have seen in recent months and years, People sort of changing job titles or changing agency descriptions or whole function names, and just simply inserting edX where it used to be internal comms or HR or engagement or whatever.

And I think there's a risk with that, which is it might be doing this whole world of experience and deeply thinking about experience and the components of. Experience and design and better experiences. I think there's a risk that they might be doing a disservice to that world and undermining the value potentially of that.

I think this is more risk, but I think it's that on, on the upside, definitely that's coincided with a pandemic. This focus on, on the human experience. Of work and of the human experience of connectedness within organizations and the empathy that's needed to understand and work with that with people. And all of that guys is all parts of their lives, I think is absolutely on the agenda across the board from leaders to HR teams to IC to everybody.

So I think empathy really is the word of the year. And I think that has got to be a good thing from employee experience.

Steve: [00:05:12] Yeah, I agree. Yeah. I think I've also, I, so I would definitely support that. I think if I've been kind of doing a quick kind of Boolean search on LinkedIn over the last couple of years, just by employee experience in titles, for an example, and there's been a huge uplift of people and kind of inserting those two words into their job titles, but I think you're right.

And I, I would say. I probably made me maybe turn that dial up slightly Belinda in terms of, I thought that you'd been polite. So I really, I think we need to call that out and I think, I think there's probably a research piece there to, to be undertaken, to really understand, like, what are those roles?

What sits underneath them? How are organizations. Really constructing that kind of IEX whether it's as a function or whether it's as a mindset or both and how they're evolving those. So I think that's a really it's a really valid point to raise there for sure. What do you see? Like if you kind of thought about, think about it as a journey and as a movement.

I'm how would you describe like the evolution? Like where are we in this kind of evolution on it? You know, you've done some research over the last kind of 10 years and you've been in, you know, you'd be very much intrinsically involved in from a research point of view. What have you seen and learned from that work that you've been doing and how that evolution is unfolding?

Emma: [00:06:28] Yeah, so the, the research that we've done has very specifically looked into What a great experience looks like for people. Which sounds like a really simple question, but there's very little that exists that explores that. So, you know, making the link to positive psychology, which I think is really interesting, kind of you know, merging of positive psychology and design thinking using, you know, the best bits of both really you know, we've spent sort of 10 years asking.

You know, people in an organization when you're having a great experience at work, what's it look like? What's it feel like what's going on for you? Tell us a story about it. So collected qualitative data from probably thousands of people from all over the world. And for years, I've kind of wanted to interrogate that.

So normally we kind of, you know, we would use that kind of conversation with an organization we're working with. To understand what good looks like. And I say, okay, so really simply this is what's happening when your people are at their best, how many great experience, how near, or far away from that water, we need to do pretty simple stuff.

But I've never really looked at the whole data sets. So. Great opportunity last year lockdown happened. And so we thought, actually, we've got some time, let's have a look at this, you know, this amazing kind of dataset we've got and went through it. There's a lot to go through and kind of pulled out some universal themes of, you know, engagement experience.

If you like, whatever you choose, whatever you choose to give it. Basically, there are some universal themes that are present, where people are having a positive experience at work. Are they linked to You know, to, to a lot of the psychology that's out there. So for example, meaning features, you know, we've, we've talked about meaning Victor Frankel talks about man's search for meaning, meaning speeches for many years purposes, big business at the moment.

So it's no surprise that, you know, people talk about meaning present, but I think it was really interesting as differentiating to that purpose of the big paper as a small piece. So people finding meaning. In their own way. So whatever is, is useful and relevant for them. So it came out with the research with the kind of a number of universal themes.

So we looked at meaning appreciation was in there. See if I can remember the more now growth, the ability to have personal kind of personal growth ability to have some kind of impact autonomy featured a challenge featured thing that was all of them. Connection, connection. Yeah. Human connection, of course.

But I think that the, the real sort of the real takeaway is that that's only ever half of the story, that there are universal themes that feature. You know, whether you're talking to people in China or Oman or the U S wherever you're talking to people, but equally there are individual differences. So you cannot make assumptions about what a great experience looks like for people.

You have to ally them. To share their views and their stories with you because it really, you know, there's a real difference between both from organization to organization and then from teams team then from individual to individual. So some people for example, will talk about, you know, it was a great experience because it was fun.

And I love the people I worked with and it was work hard, play hard. There's a really big social aspect of, you know, never knew what's going to, what's going to happen the next week. A sense of adventure. Whereas other people might say, I knew exactly what was expected of me. There was a really clear, brief, they were mentioned the social aspect, the fun aspects that you can not make assumptions about what good looks like for people.

Yeah. Well that shows the research.

Steve: [00:09:38] Well, I think also just commenting on that. I think. You know, experiences are inherently personal, you know, you and I can go to a same coffee shop with the same coffee or latte, but we will have two very different experiences. And obviously they're very personal and I think there's a kind of a, you can argue to say, well, can you design an experience?

And of course you can, but it don't think you can cover it. Everyone, but you can certainly design it to maximize as many as you possibly can and to deliver an experience for as many people as you possibly can, or certainly have the ingredients to allow an experience to foster, however that's going to then be perceived.

Is that something, is that something you've kind of, you've also shared. Yeah.

Emma: [00:10:22] Yeah. I think this is why the psychology, you know, It's great to kind of, you know, as I said, merge the best bits of psychology, positive psychology, and design thinking, because you know, we talk about you know, experiences, most basic level.

It's something that happens. It makes you feel something, you know, good, bad or ugly, therefore, you know, Thinking about that from a kind of individual perspective has to, has to feature because, and then this is where it kind of marries really well with this. I'm thinking because it's heart, because I'm thinking, as we know is, you know, a need to be empathic and to really understand that the person we're designing for.

And I think this is where the sort of marriage of positive psychology design thinking really comes into its own. But so thinking in our world, We're looking at employee experiences and how to help people thrive at work, therefore designing, you know, using positive psychology to help you genuinely empathize and understand the people you're designing for, with the kind of, I guess, the, the you know, the objective of helping them to thrive.

So it's about helping them to experience a better level of wellbeing, which fits with employee experience, I think is a great. You know, great sort of marriage with those different ideas and disciplines. I know there's some debate about, you know, whether that would work. If you're designing from a customer experience, we would obviously argue would, but there are examples where you might be designing a customer experience, which doesn't result in increased levels of thriving wellbeing.

But I think from an internal point of view, from an employee experience, point of view, absolutely. That is your starting point. So it kind of makes complete sense to us to, to, to kind of, you know, merge those different ideas and

Steve: [00:11:53] disciplines. Yeah, that's brilliant. So I just want to just touch on it. So just tell us a little, a little bit like a grounding or a an introduction to positive psychology.

Let's let's break, let's break it out from the PP to the, to the design thinking. So tell us a little bit about positive psychology. What is it? How does it work? What's the structure. It's

Emma: [00:12:15] it's, it's really simple. So positive psychology for me is an umbrella term. It's not actually anything new. We've been, you know, using positive psychology psychologists for years.

Go back to work with Viktor Frankl. Man's search for meaning. Yeah. Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Look at the work of Carl Rogers. These are all people who have looked at how do we enable humans to thrive and live their best lives, but it was coined by Martin segment in 1998. He's kind of the grandfather of positive psychology.

If he likes is coined by him as a, as a term. For a conference, he was kind of curating. And that was, you know, that was kind of the kickstart of the whole positive psychology movements. And in a nutshell, it's, it's about taking a strength-based approach. So psychologists very often look at, you know, what's wrong and how can we fix it?

So, you know, someone has got a problem. They need help that's and that's all completely valid, nothing wrong with that. It's only ever half the story. And positive psychology for me is really about sort of saying, well, you know what, what's, what's good look like, and how can we get more of it? So there's a backside of your strength based approach at its most simple level.

There's obviously a lot of nuances in there, but that for me is kind of a succinct way of explaining how I be positive.

Steve: [00:13:29] Yeah. Positive psychology though. Belinda, I'll ask you this one. So right now, I mean, it's quite tough for people to be positive, quite frankly, right now we're in this real midst of, in the workplace, you know, this shift to homeworking all of these.

You know, school obviously is homeschooling all of these really big challenges. How, how do you, how do you see this kind of impacting the workplace right now? Or people generally from a psychology point of view or positive psychology point of view? Yeah.

Belinda: [00:13:59] Yeah. I suppose the way that we use it in our work is by.

Combining it as a, as a philosophy, if you like as a methodology and borrowing some of the tools from positive psychology and into weaving them with some of the tools, some design thinking in order to create better experiences. So we're not sort of setting out to say, right, everybody needs to be positive and, and, and, and, and all of that stuff, it's all about understanding what constitutes a great experience for people.

And how can we enable more of that? To happen. I think there are some really strong, common threads ads between positive psychology and design thinking. I mean, design thinking is obviously inherited Huntly rooted. And optimism that it's possible to find out what is going on for people, and then to realize opportunities to make some, make that stuff better.

Obviously now, while we're focusing on people's experience at work. So I think, you know, those common threads is a really, really strong, I think also what positive psychology. Offers this approach to employee experience is also, Emma said, it's a strength based approach. It's not a deficit deficit based approach.

So we, we're not, we're starting the point that everything isn't broken, you know, there is stuff that is working. So actually, how do we take more of that and apply the lessons from that to create more of those great experiences. So if you take the pandemic experience, it'd be really. Easy to, to assume that it's, it's universally dreadful for people.

You know, but actually for a lot of people, I mean, it is obviously for a lot of people that has been absolutely catastrophic on many, many levels, but actually for, for those of us, who've been privileged enough to shift from an office space to a home space who are not commuting and spending more time with our kids.

It's actually been really, really positive. So I think as I say, what. Positive psychology offices is just this ability to look for what is working and then ask the question, how can we create more of that on a really, really practical level? We we've taken some of these themes and learnings from positive psychology to slightly adjust or adapt if you like some of the design thinking principles.

And I guess the most evident one is it would two, probably two things that we do. And we talk about this a lot, this UX design framework and a new book that we've just. Got out. But we did two specific things in there, I think, which really sort of weave these two things together. So one which has we changed, it's sort about language, right?

We change the problem space, the opportunity space. So that diamond, where we seek to understand more about the human need and, and what, what is needed. We simply reframe the language to ask, you know, what could we achieve here? What's the opportunity to improve the. So that's a really simple mindset shift and a language shift.

And the other thing we do is we actually add a third diamond upfront into the, into what most people would recognize this, the design thinking framework. And this is where we're much more explicit about what we're doing in that first instance. It's where we actually asked the question. It's almost like the, sort of the scoping bit that people or the exploration of the constraints, but that people would.

Understand from design thing. Can we make that really explicit and as well as asking what the constraints are. So, you know, what does the work need? What does the organization need and what people need? We actually then asked the question, what does good look like here? What's the big picture here? What are we trying to achieve?

And what does a great employee experience look like in this organization? So we've added in that third diamond right up front to acknowledge that for a lot of organizations, that's a really useful place to start. It's not the place that every organization or every team was started. But I think my idea in that third time, and we're taking a really positive strategic lens to the big picture issues before we dive

Steve: [00:17:40] in.

Yeah. Yeah. And w where do you see where do you see some of the challenges where, so if we talk about, you know, applying you know, some of these frameworks and these mindsets, so let's, we'll talk about both because it kind of. Very much linked. So the mindset and, and, and the, and the framework, how well, some of the challenges, what are you seeing in terms of applying this into the organizational context?

What some of the key, key challenges that you see in, in applying this stuff and getting it more, getting it, you know, starting and creating the movement internally.

Belinda: [00:18:11] Yeah. So I'll start and then I'll let him pick up. And interestingly, as part of the research process we've been going through, we've been phenomenally lucky to speak to some amazing heads of VX around the world.

And we've actually managed to put together this little sort of like. Yeah, X design club, where we were checking in with real practitioners on a daily basis, not taking a basis on a really regular basis to see actually what's happening for them. It's an amazing site

to sign up. Now we're thinking about them on a daily basis.

So that's been a really great, so it was inspiration. Some of the things that I see. Yeah, well, it's all context specific, right? Different organizations start in different teams, different individuals even start in different places. And sometimes this is a side of desk project for one individual working in a more traditional HR team, other places as a wholly X team, but where this stuff gets stuck, I think is the theater and the language of design thinking can be really, I going to say nausea, that's probably a little bit strong.

It can be really off-putting for a lot of people. So just being really, really aware

Steve: [00:19:18] that. So say how it is Belinda say how it is, come on, let's call it out, come on. You're being polite again.

Belinda: [00:19:24] Not that we've gone native, but you know and it can really potential collaborators. So, you know, language is really, really important to speak in the language of the business base in terms of, you know, what you're trying to achieve, but also how you're going to get there as well. So, you know, if you don't need to talk in terms of brainstorms and ideations and Lots of facts.

None of that don't use that language. Just, I can't remember who it was I was talking to, but they said they just talk in the language of prop. I know that is a as a us tech company. So they're actually really familiar with this, with these constructs anyway, but I'm the head of VIX there. He was saying that actually he talks about being in the problem-solving business.

So he goes on from find what needs fixing, and then he's got a series of, you know approach that allows him to, to collaborate, to solve those problems.

Hmm, that would be my starting point. I've got lots more in terms of where this stuff gets stuck, but I think that for me would be the starting point.

Hmm.

Steve: [00:20:17] It's interesting. Because design thinking is a problem solving. It's problem solving, which in its own terms suggest it's negative. There's a problem. Correct. Is my initial thought, you know, so I think bringing the positive psychology break better, but looping this back in, I think is a, is a really good, it's a good angle.

And I think it's a really, it's a really credible way to approach it because also if you do things like let's just take. Let's just take a normal kind of journey mapping process, and you kind of, you know, you've created a journey map and you see the various touch points. There's there's always that natural tendency to look at.

Oh, look at the, where, where the negatives are, look at where the, the negative emotions or whatever. But I also say like, where's the peak moments and then how can you pull that peak moment out? And how can we make that even better? Like how can we really like, really develop that as a really. Like really shifting kind of experience that, that might then become your future marketing.

And then that might be the moment that people share a lot more externally if you're looking to attract more talent as an example. So I think I totally see where, where you've, where you're bringing this together. Can I just let's let's I just want to kind of recoil slightly on the, on the, on the, on the piece, around from an organization.

Cause I think if I just give you some context, so I think we're still kind of in many organizations, particularly like large scale enterprise level, there's a very small number of organizations who are, I guess kind of, you know, aligning the edX into the, into the HR operating model or people operating model.

So, where do you see some of the, well, how do we get past some of these kind of hierarchial siloed? Oh, industrial type era that was still lots of organizations are steeped in and, you know, still very much kind of struggling. How do you kind of, how'd you, where's the start point for these types of organizations, just to kind of give us a sense of starting this movement and getting, moving them into this journey and really shifting ultimately this kind of, you know, the internal workings of the organization into a much more human centric approach.

Belinda: [00:22:18] Yeah. I'll flip to Emma to, to, to answer this one, I think

Emma: [00:22:22] yeah. Yeah, sorry to go back to the book, but when we ask it to the book,

Belinda: [00:22:30] I'm not ready to plug it all. Starting point was democratizing EX, but we still are in. The literature and the, you know, the conferences and as I won the IEX is very much spoken about in the context of very specific types of organizations. So typically, you know, knowledge base workers at the time, working in lovely offices or now working, you know, with the privilege of having a home office to work in and the flexibility to do that.

Yeah. But we wanted to democratize this and, and, and I won't steal Emma's thunder, but you know, we talk about people working on oil rigs and then Porter cabins in car parks. Actually, why shouldn't they have a great employee experience too, but the idea of democratizing it, it's sort of moving beyond the industrialized kind of view of people do what they've told, and there'll be happy to have a job to actually.

What does it look like to create a great experience and why? I think there's a lot that the psychology really stacks up with the, you know, the impact of creating a great experience, absolutely stacks up to make the business case. Emma, do you want to expand on that? I've got done a really bad job

Emma: [00:23:29] of injecting used to not as like, I mean, there's, there's, there's, there's not a straight forward answer as you'd expect.

I think I speak speaking the language of the business and find Find the way, the way in the routine. And there's lots of different ways to find a routine, but I've got a great piece in the first chapter of book from a company called Astor who are in the social housing sector. So not a company traditionally associate with, with the ex really like FISA this very often the kind of the, the tech companies, they're the shiny brands that, that kind of go there first.

And, and I think, you know, Sometimes we go back to the language piece. You know, we are about democratizing the X and we are about making it accessible for people because this is the right thing to do. We need to do that in a way that's going to work for them. And, and, and, you know, the design thinking language does put people off and I put my hands up every time, you know, we talk about artifacts.

I have to kind of go what what's that again? And I think I'm hugely passionate about plain English. And I think that. You know, as a recovering academic, you know, what am I big areas of, of, of kind of frustration is the gap between the world of academia and an organizational, you know, real life. And the fact that what we know to be true from all the research doesn't seem to find its way into.

Into the real world. So for example, it's still the, a billion dollar industry that focuses on giving employees perks and things like how you give them a great experience. We know that doesn't work, right. And yet this might go into that. So I think it's like speaking a language of the organization, find the, as our.

Our friend, Sarah from this OPD was so the Trojan mice there find the little ways you can make a difference. Some companies love the language. I loved that part of this kind of tribe in their lap it up, or the companies you've stolen even mentioned positive psychology or design thinking, you know, you just say, okay, we think we've got a great way forward for, for helping you achieve this.

And here's one thing we can do. I tend to find that you guys I'm sure will agree once you, once you're able to allow people to go through the process, using the tools that we use from design, the positive psychology people have such a great experience in itself. It's a very kind of a positive spirits and, and people really come alive.

Is there one that was really pretty really enjoyed that. I get it now we kind of have to walk them through it for them to. That walking by doing isn't it, you know, you have to let them experience it for themselves. So, sorry. Slightly rambling answer there. But yeah, the, the final point is the you know, I was talking about the company that we work with.

So sharp mentioned the brand. They're a huge company, but the fit it's very working with. They, they make cast iron pipes in the Foundry, in the Midlands and. You know, they're not traditionally a company you think of really focusing on the X and you know, everyone, because technology is very important. I had to speak to someone recently, you know, technology has to fit you.

And I'm like for that company, technology is not the moment. I probably never will be even on the radar for their employees, they come to work, they go to the Foundry, they don't have company mobiles. They don't have company laptops. They, they use posters and they get together in the restroom to have updates and that's not going to change anytime soon.

Now what's that's right or wrong, you know, but it's just overemphasis on the kind of the knowledge workers, the shiny offices, the journey, the involves the great tech, but there's so many businesses that are micro businesses. You know, people trimming messes in bombs for, you know, agriculture, you know people making cast iron pipes.

They also deserve a great experience. I think that's. Part of what you wanted to achieve with the book as a site, it doesn't have to be just in the realms of the knowledge workers that it should be accessible to all.

Steve: [00:26:52] Yeah. Did you have you come across David McCloud? The work that David did with the engagement stuff engage for success and I don't know.

Cause he, he, he did two pieces of research that for both governments and And I remember he was saying from an engagement point of view, remember his research showed, I think his post, the financial crisis 2009. And he was saying like, all we needed was like a 3% uplift on engagement scores and we would, we wouldn't be in recession or so it was something, yeah.

And it was an, and he mentioned panel beaters as, as, as an HSBC in the same arena and said, actually these panel beaters where from an engagement point of view work, highly engaged group of people. Yeah, so it's, it's you know, it it's, it transcends all of this or, you know, any organization. And so, yeah, so no very cool stuff.

And I think it's I think we're running at eight now from less of an engagement, but more round kind of experience for sure. Can I just ask, just from the companies that you've worked with, how are you seeing companies set up X from a resource point of view? Where are you seeing the budgets kind of going, you know, we talked about maybe these role changes or title changes, but fundamentally the companies that perhaps are investing in the X, how are they, how are they setting up?

How are they, how are they aligning their resource to this movement?

Belinda: [00:28:14] Yeah. It's so context specific.

Emma: [00:28:17] So, so you've got

Belinda: [00:28:22] organize interesting organizations with a sort of a strong design orientation already kind of get it. And they are much more likely to be creating actually a standalone IEX design team.

And I've seen those teams shift from being, you know, within HR to actually stand alone. And one global bank we were talking to, as you said, Do you know, that shift out of HR into more of a standard lane, almost like a, an innovation lab type of thing has worked really, really well for them because, you know, it's allowed them to work in that really agile way with bringing multiple skills into the team so they can actually crack through new innovations really, really quickly.

So that is happening, but I would say, okay, that's very much at the leading edge of organizations doing this. I'd say on the whole, in the sort of the middle maturity bit, if you like, what we're seeing is sort of more traditional. HR teams drive in collaboration across well, I did teams, HR and IC coming together.

For instance, coming together with it coming together with that's either sort of empowerment. If you like, I'm thinking of one company as just speaking to where they brought. I see in design and, and, and HR together in that way or on a sort of project by project. Basis, so that's happening. And so that's sort of focusing on specific programs and outcomes, and that's where the funding is coming from from that.

And that so often starts with onboarding. And again, I think it probably would have done anyway. Because, you know, the cost of having people that don't hit the ground running is really high or the cost of having people that leave you within the first six months, having to spend all that money to recruit them is really high.

So often organizations start there. It's also a great place to start because it. It next, because it's not necessarily owned by anyone team. It necessarily requires people to collaborate across functions. So it creates a lot of learning in the process of, of focusing that as well. And then, you know, in other instances, it's okay.

I said, it's sometimes just a side project side of desk project that individuals, or, you know, a couple of people within a certain bit of an organization are taking on and then managed to find some money down the back of the Cyprus. So for, to, to support. Focusing on a small Trojan mice type of project.

So in lots of different ways, but I think the most advanced tend to have the X teams that are either slightly separate to sort of the traditional HR team, or they've genuinely made that sort of HR transformation. So it's more of an edX focus working in really agile way.

Steve: [00:30:56] Yeah, there's a interestingly this year.

I don't know if you've noticed it. There's been a real push on narrative around the future of HR and it's kind of been coming isn't it. Or you got a, I mean, my, my next guest is lost in from the U S he's got literally launched a book called redefining HR. You've got Damien Dina, of course. Who's the head of the exits.

IBM. I mean, they shared a great piece around HR. 1.0 2.0 3.0. Well, how do you, if you were to, yeah. What, what, I mean, I'm just thinking about your book and the construct of your book. I think applying that into like enabling a proportion of sort of a HR large HR function and given them these skills in these mindset and this knowledge, I think could be incredibly powerful for any organization.

And my only thoughts on that.

Emma: [00:31:43] Yeah. I, yeah, I think we've where do we stop? We've got some work to do haven't we, because I, I, like I said, I think going back to the bee's original comments at the start, I think you're quite kind, that'd be about the, the size of the, of the, of the task here. What we've seen is that a lot of organizations that we work with are just relabeling.

You know, we're not people experience, we've got a people experienced team. They're still just doing what they did before. And we're actually looking at this kind of maturity model. And we kind of have this idea of going from kind of transactional transformational, if you like. And, and what does that look like?

And, and the journey that you know, that, that. The HR is going on. And actually Jacob Morgan has got some great stuff in his book about the kind of the, you know, the, the journey that HR has been on. But I think the next step is going to be a, you know, a paradigm shift for HR because it's genuinely going to be about, you know, collaborative working, you know, the kind, I mean, Mark, maybe we, you know, he contributes the book and actually studied Damon and great conversations with them.

They were able to do some really exciting, you know Things in their organizations because they had the permission to do that. I think a lot of organizations. You know, still see HR is there to just kind of fix the people, stuff that goes wrong. Despite, despite where we've come from and what, you know, what you read.

I think the reality of having worked in house for many years is that we've got a long way to go. I think it really starts with, as we, as we said, you guys it's the small steps, isn't it? It's, it's the starting to experiment, like taking a design thinking approach to this. It's the Trojan horse, Trojan mice.

So not the horses, the mice and trying, I think the easy place to start is trying out arms specific. Projects discreet projects rather than looking at the end to end experience. Cause that's so huge. And I think we tend to find the people we work with. Get very overwhelmed quite quickly by that terms of, wow, it's everything.

I need everybody in the room to help me solve this. So I think starting small and getting those wins in really helps to kind of move that forward. But I think. I think we can't underestimate the size of the shift here is a big shift. And I think Josh has said as well as talking a lot about commentating a lot on this and some really great stuff coming out from him as well.

But I think it's really exciting as well, putting my positive psychology mindset on it's a really exciting time. I think as, as you know, we're seeing, you know, the people coming through who are much more open to these new ways of working. Yeah,

Steve: [00:34:10] I think I totally agree. I think the fact that we are even talking about employee experience design and how we purposefully designed that, I think just that narrative on its own, you know, we're in a place now where we are actually having these conversations.

I know there's a lot of. I guess going back to your earlier point, I think, yeah, there's, there's a lot of lacking a bit of substance in some of this, but I think it will. It's part of, I think it's just part of the evolution. I think we'll see more and more value. It just just one thing I wanted to ask you, because this is also, again, I know it's super contextual.

I mean, I, I, I love the fact. You said it several times. Cause I always, I always look at any organization. I'd think of them as a canvas and then each canvas, you. You've got different, huge amounts of kind of cultural context. You've gotten processing all of these things. But I think one of the things that I find and I've seen is when, particularly when this adopting kind of the Mo you know, the various modes of, of a design process is, you know, the upfront work around the research, the empathy, moving into insights, et cetera.

And, and those, those bits I found always tend to be a little bit easier. I think, where, where the, where it gets a little bit tougher, particularly when you're doing it first time. Is where you get into kind of ideation, prototyping and testing. And that can be a little bit, that can be a bit tricky because in some organizations or in some cultures, the failure, the failure part, isn't really a it's it's seen as a failure.

So again, going back to this kind of negative using the positive psychology that actually. No, the failure and it not working is a positive thing, not a negative. What, what, what do you see? Have you come across that at all? What thoughts? Emma, thoughts sort of you or so?

Emma: [00:35:51] Well, what I would say is that'd be give her a sec.

It goes back to psychological safety, you know, again, it's lip service. It's okay to innovate and fail. Is it really though? Is it really? We've all been in organizations where, you know, they say the right things, but there's a lack of integrity go after from a cloud stuff's enabler of engagement, the lack of integrity.

So you're telling me that I can, you know, try things out and test things and get it wrong. But the reality is if that happens, then I've got a black Mark against my name. So I think it goes back to how do you create a culture? Genuinely create culture of psychological safety would be my take on that. And I think that going back to the point about the, the process, I must admit in my experience, I've found the, the, the innovation prototype testing makes a lot more sense that people that we work with because they get that bit.

It's the beginning, but the scoping piece is always, and the empathy piece, it's always the bit that is far more challenging because nine times out of 10, you know, we work with people who think that they got a problem they want to solve. And once you start to interrogate the brief a bit, you realize they don't really know why they're doing it or what they're doing or what it is they want to do though, you know?

And it takes quite a lot of work to really unpick that and help them to understand. What it is they're going after and why, and then the empathy piece as well. I think, you know, companies don't think twice about spending, you know, hundreds of thousands of pounds on customer research, but the minute you suggest spending a bit of time talking to their people, it's like, if we've already got that data, we don't need any more.

It's like, well, yeah, there's, there's a bit of data, but we don't really, you know, we need to kind of go and some stuff we don't know, we need to know here. And there's a real reluctance to do that piece. And I've actually got Great guest on my research show today, talking about what we can use from, from user experience or customer experience.

And she wrote a piece for the book and she's, she's a customer experience professional. She's talking about, you know, in her world, it's quite hard to speak to the end user. You have to put a lot of effort in and in our world. We work with them. So it should be really easy and yet we're still really bad at it.

And it's another, it was a brilliant challenge for immersion Carrie Hughes. And she went so coz SoulCycle spark that you might've heard of, but it's a great challenge because I think we're really bad at it. We don't invest in it and yet we've got, we work with all these people. We've got ready access to the moon.

We still don't really take time to do that. So I think that would be my again, but a rumble that my reflection on what, what, you know, your, your thoughts there. I'm sure you've got some thoughts on that. Yeah. I

Belinda: [00:38:20] mean yeah. I guess. In brief, interesting that you say that you find that people are happier in the kind of exploratory finding things out, empathy, you know, the opportunity space.

Actually. I think what we find is that people tend to want to, as soon forward into the, I've got an idea, let's do this. That could be the next teams that we work with, you know, the, you know, the IC or HR and they used to solving problems and solving them really quickly. I think, I mean, you've just said this, so actually getting them to slow down.

And stay in that solution space, as it say in the, in the opportunity space is sometimes where we have to put a lot of effort. So that's an interesting one. So getting people to be really cognizant and comfortable about wandering around there and stepping into people's shoes and all the stuff that we know that we need to do.

And there's also, I think I might oversimplify this.

Emma: [00:39:06] Greatly, but I struggled a little bit

Belinda: [00:39:09] with the question that you asked about, Oh, the fear of failure and you know, the idea that's okay. Should be okay to fail. And that language kind of takes me back. I don't know, is it 10 years? And everybody used to fetishize Facebook and the move fast and break things, posters, you know, that everybody used to have on their conference talks and years ago.

Emma: [00:39:28] But for me,

Belinda: [00:39:31] I think I have simplified, but for me, it's not about, it's not about prototyping. Oh, it worked out. It didn't work. Prototyping only doesn't work if you don't learn something. So the whole point of prototyping is simply to communicate an idea. Well, enough is to learn something about, you know, either your end-user or the, the opportunity or trying to resolve.

So the only real failure is if you don't learn something. So this idea that prototyping is binary. Yes. It worked. No it didn't. I find a bit. Problematic feels like a much bigger conversation and I probably over simplified, but for me, prototyping is about learning.

Steve: [00:40:04] Yeah. Well, I think also I think this is some of the dangers with design thinking is that people are seeing it as this kind of step-by-step linear, isolated.

It's not, you know, you know, less, less kind of iterative. So it's yeah, it's interesting. It's interesting. Okay, so let's, let's jump into the book cause we're, we're definitely yeah, I'd love to just learn it a little bit. Yeah. A couple of times. Can I just, so just out of interest cause I'm hugely respectful of people who you know, cause it's a lot of energy and I've got a friend Katrina Kalia who wrote a book.

Called the robot proof pro brought proof recruiter and she still hates her keyboard to this day. So I I just wanted to ask yeah. What, what kind of prompted the, the book? What made you kind of you know, delve into the yeah, UX design and to share this out and put it together.

Emma: [00:40:52] Okay. So I, I took my Dave McCloud actually.

So I he's, he's a good friend of mine. So I wrote a book previously to this one on employee engagements. And I was actually involved in the gateway success movement from the beginning. And I wrote the engagement book like five years ago and did a second edition and said, I'll never up gangster, hate you.

That same thing. And I'm not a natural writer. And I found it really hard work. But then when BIA and I started working together a few years ago and developing our ideas and testing things out and, you know, you know, thinking this through and running public courses, I sort of said to, to me, I think, I think there's a book in this.

And it really, you know, it came from that passion to. You know what she said, it looks democratize us to get this out there so people can do this for themselves. And yes, of course, it's nice that people bring us into, to work with them. We love that, but you know, we really wants it to genuinely make the world of work, a better place for people.

And again, it goes back to that passion of mine about taking that, the research that we know works, like you talked about peak experiences before peak had brought a classic example, you know, some great research, great neuroscience, some, some great evidence-based practice from design thinking that we know works.

People aren't really using it. People are still kind of sticking to these models that come from off the shelf and say, if you do these three things, you'll have a great experience, which is actually not how it works. It has to be bespoke to your organization. So it's a real passion and energy from my point of view, to say, you know, we've got some stuff that we know that works really well, and we've got some expertise and Andrea and I, I wanted to share that and I sort of approach B and said, I've spoken to my publisher and kind of tends to be, share this idea with them.

And they just grabbed hold of it straight away and said, yeah, we'd love. Would love to do that. So I've approached base, you know, would you co-author with me because a, I can't write a command again. And B I think, you know, our skill sets are really complimentary and be as far more skills and expertise in design thinking than I am.

So it just made sense to, to, to co-author it. So that's kinda how it came about.

Steve: [00:42:48] Belinda. What's your, what was your experience? Is this that's your, this is your first book.

Belinda: [00:42:52] It is my first book. Well, it's my first business book. I've written a couple of really dreadful novels that are sitting on hard drives somewhere.

So my background, I started my working life as a journalist. So I suppose that kind of the writing bit was easier with that, but without blowing smoke up, anybody's. Backside. It was delight working with Emma. You never cause she's got just this wealth of experience and, and, and, and insight. And the other thing that was just tremendous is that I decided to take a really journalistic approach to my bit of the writing and that meant.

Going asking lots of questions of, of, of lots and lots of practitioners. So we had that really broad pool of, of insight to John and people were just so unbelievably, welcoming and helpful and collaborative. So she was just, yeah. It and I, you know, and writing half a book has proper meaning, just think of Katrina's experience writing half of cause probably a lot easier than writing a whole one.

But yeah, it was great really lucky for, with my co author and all of our contributors. Who've just been incredible.

Yeah. So what would you say what would you say would you want people to take the most from the book for those that, that that buy and and read through. What was it, if you had to encapsulate it, what would you, what are you, what are you trying to impart the biggest like lesson or, or words you're trying to impart on people, but it's, there's

Emma: [00:44:08] two things.

One, which is just because

Belinda: [00:44:10] you're not doing employee experience design doesn't mean that your people aren't having an experience of being employed by you. So You know, don't think that by not engaging with this stuff, that it's okay, because they will be having an experience. It just may well not be the experience that is right for them, and it's right for you, right.

Organization and the work. So that was my first sort of like big pitch, but I suppose my key takeout, or would you just have a go, you know, this is, there are some big picture stuff and there's some. Some tools to support you, but this, we try not to be prescriptive and you can't break this stuff, you know, find some allies find some collaborators, get deep into it into actually what people you need to work with your people and just try some of this stuff out.

That would be hopefully if people took anything from the book, that's what they would take. That's what I would want anyway.

Steve: [00:44:55] Yeah. Emma, how about yourself?

Emma: [00:44:57] I think for me, Comes back to, if you get it right with your people, it benefits everybody. So why wouldn't you do this? It's just so obvious, but the research backs up as well, get it right with your people.

And I think, you know, it disappoints me when I hear people that have, you know, rubbish experiences at work and we've all had them. We've all been there. It doesn't have to be that way. It shouldn't be everybody benefits. You know, th th the individual, the customer, the business impacts positively on everything.

So why wouldn't you do that? It's my first piece of supposing. Secondly, I think it doesn't have to be really difficult. You know, I've got some really great tools in there. Like something as simple as the best experience activity we have used for years, which is techie for appreciative inquiry, which is a horrible name for something using positive psychology.

But it's basically sort of says, just ask you people. Tell me about a time when you loved. Being at work today or whenever, and just learn, listen from that story, it's the most simple activity. And every time you run it, people just, the energy in the room goes up and people love doing it. And there's this light bulb moment where people reflect on what they've come out with and guess what it isn't pay.

Isn't great coffee. Isn't a Gleb bar. It's the intrinsic stuff, which is, I felt valued. You know, I have some meaning basic stuff. And I think that people, I genuinely believe people have a right to that work and, and. Why wouldn't you do it and it doesn't have to be difficult. So that's, those are my kind of key takeaways.

And the last one would be it isn't. A one size fits all. There's not an off the shelf model in any consultant that tells you they have a model for this. And I don't know, I've shared a magical model. It winds me up because it has to be bespoke to your organization, your people, and that's this. So that, that the model that by chef and the research has 50% of it is some things, but the other 50% is it go and find out from your people.

So that'd be like my key takeaway,

Steve: [00:46:39] Emma. I love, I love that. I absolutely love it because I think there's this. I've seen it in the market. I've seen it happen with suppliers and I think. You know, for me, it's please stop finding benchmarks, stop being obsessed with external benchmarks and then saying, Oh, that makes me feel really comfortable that I'm measuring a seven and they're a 10.

Yeah. You know what, and this is around the core thing of human centricity is just, just, just focus your energy on the most captive audience you probably have from a relationship level. And probably in a building point of view, everybody's in the same building. If that's how it, how it's set up that, you know, they're your most captive audience that you've got the perfect user group to just start listening and start really getting into understanding the more and more so I totally agree.

Why, why just. Just not just, just do it, just start there. Yeah, totally agree. Love that. So where can that, where can the audience find you? What's the best way for people to connect with you and and, and chat, I think, do you have, you have your input cost as well? You have another podcast as well. We just share it all out.

What are you guys? How can we engage with you?

Emma: [00:47:48] So we, we run a fortnightly. Podcast. So live show as well called the reset show. That happens 70 day actually. But yeah, I think the best place to find that it's probably people have website, which is www dot people, lab.co.uk, and contact me. I'm on Twitter, Emma people lab I'm on Instagram.

As people up. And my email is Emma at people at Dakota in case that makes it very simple for you. Love it,

Belinda: [00:48:17] love it. I think I am the only Belinda Gannaway on the internet. So if you search me, you should probably find me. I'm definitely on LinkedIn, so I can't, I can always got two ends for nuts. I'm on Twitter.

Steve: [00:48:28] Twitter. Amazing. And the book is available on Amazon or any

Emma: [00:48:33] other, yeah. All good booksellers,

Steve: [00:48:38] good book. I'll put some links. I will put some links in the show notes as well, so people can obviously access that and we'll share out so. Awesome. So am Belinda, thank you so much for joining me has been a real pleasure and thank you for sharing.

Yeah, your, your perspectives on the X and a really. Yeah, I think the positive psychology element angle and that kind of that lens from it. And then applying that into DTS is a really interesting one. So I wish you all the best of luck with the book and and making a difference in the world of work going forward.

Belinda: [00:49:07] Hi, it's great to talk to you. Thank you for having us.

Steve: [00:49:11] You're welcome. Take care.