Ep. 051 - Laura Whitwham & Sam Ewell. Lighting an EX fire in The British Red Cross

Written By Steve Usher
 

What does a humanitarian business such as the British Red Cross do to ensure they’re also human-centric on the inside when creating an experience for their people?

Well, they commit to a dedicated people experience team and start their journey of introducing a way of working that puts the employee at the heart of everything. Applying a human-centric approach, whilst delivering benefit for the people involved and showcasing the methods and mindset along the way, all the whilst using the process to change hearts and minds. 

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EP. 051 Transcription

[00:00:00] Steve: Sam, Laura, welcome to the experience designers.

[00:00:05] Sam: Thanks, Steve.

[00:00:07] Laura: Thank you

[00:00:07] Steve: Hey, so grateful for joining me on the pod. Obviously our time is our most valuable resource. So I always say that. And I think it's a, yeah, absolute pleasure to have you here. I'm super excited. And yeah let's just dive in.

Let's tell the audience who you are, where you work, and then we can share out some of the journey that you've been on in your context. So perhaps Sam, would you like to kick off?

[00:00:32] Sam: I'm excited to be here. Thanks, Steve. So Sam Whitwham, I'm People Experience Manager at the British Red Cross. So yeah, I've been excited to be here and talk to you about particularly about a project that we're working on called Employee Experience Design Project. And I'll hand over to my colleague, Laura, who can tell us who she is.

[00:00:51] Laura: Thanks Sam. So yeah, I'm Laura Yule and I'm a senior service designer with the Red Cross.

[00:00:58] Steve: Amazing. Amazing. Okay. So just for the audience, some context. What does the British Red Cross world look like both in terms of the organization, the scale, some of the complexity, just to give us that kind of landscape feel of your world every day inside the organization.

[00:01:18] Sam: The Red Cross so charitable organisations been around for over 150 years. We're part of the wider kind of international network of our movement of Red Cross, Red Crescent organisations right around the world. We've really established our three kind of main causes or three areas that we work in.

So first of all, you probably know us for disasters and emergencies. We, we have a, we have conflict or of natural disasters like earthquakes or floods. Generally you'll hear mention of the Red Cross being there to support people in crisis. And that's, that happens overseas, but it the UK as well.

We've right at this moment, we, Parts of Scotland in the UK and the north of England and Wales, all impacted by flooding. So our volunteers will be out on the front lines supporting people in time of crisis, essentially helping them to cope in the immediate crisis, but also recovery and getting them back up on their feet after the, initial crisis has happened.

There's two other areas that we work in health inequalities. So in the British Red Cross, we are focusing on people who may be falling through some of those kind of cracks in service provision within the National Health Service. So making sure that we're supporting people in their homes. Maybe preventing them going into hospital in the first place by giving them extra support or helping people get out of hospital and back into their homes and in the communities by volunteers going to their homes and helping with that sort of support.

And then our third area of our third cause is displacement and migration. So we work really closely with refugees, with asylum seekers right across the migration trail, but as they come into the UK, people are facing very difficult circumstances. So how do we support people who may be facing destitution, maybe have been separated from their families?

How can we, find, help trace missing family members, things like that. So some really important causes diverse causes, but we've got some amazing people, both employees and volunteers. on the front line helping doing this stuff every day in day out. So that's the three front line.

That's what we're known for. That's what the British Red Cross are known for.

[00:03:40] Steve: Amazing, amazing. What's the scale of the business just in terms of like employees and then from a volunteer point of view, what's just to give us a sense of the scale?

[00:03:49] Sam: So we've got I think the last count was around 13, 000 volunteers in the British Red Cross. And we've got about 4, 000 staff members. So literally

[00:04:00] Steve: And are they just, and where are you located in, is it? Just in terms of multi site, what's something, yeah, just

[00:04:06] Sam: everywhere. So we've got our head office which is in London. But actually, most people now we've got spread right across the UK from, the Channel Islands Sicilia is right up to. up to the, yeah, out of Hebrides. So we are we're right across the UK. And, obviously in the communities where we're most needed.

Yeah it's vast. It's a vast network of people, vast network. But also we've got got a retail chain. We've got so we've got kind of people in the shops. We've got people delivering wheelchairs, so they might be out on the road in there. in their vans and we've got people in the warehouses or, so there's a, there's lots of different kind of ways of working at the British Red Cross as well as the location and the yeah where we're placed right across the right across the UK.

[00:04:50] Steve: amazing, amazing. So just in terms of your functional area, where you, yeah, where you work and obviously you've mentioned people experience project, what's the journey that kind of the people function, has been on within the business. How has this come to be where you are today, where you are actually doing people experience work, which is amazing.

What's, yeah, what's been the journey.

[00:05:13] Sam: If I explain the journey then Laura's kind of can give us her expertise on how we're doing it

[00:05:18] Steve: Perfect.

[00:05:20] Sam: Yeah, so essentially this kind of stems Let's go back to 2019. So this is pre pandemic, right? The Red Cross, we in, in, in 2019, we were developing a 10 year strategy for the organization.

So we We actually launched our strategy 20, strategy 2030. We launched it in February 2020. That was really outlining our three causes I've just talked through, but also there's three pillars of support to that. And one of those pillars is people, the people pillar.

The people that were supporting, but also our people, our volunteers and our employees. Which is really great. And there was a real kind of shift and focus on talking about making the employee experience better. Four weeks later after the launch, we had our first COVID lockdown. Immediately the shift, it shifted, everything shifted.

We had to then think about Changing the way we're working as everyone knows that whole kind of process of that complete shift of that pivot and Really focusing that through that first 12 months, especially on well being of our people. How are you coping with this shift? How are you?

Managing working from home. How are you managing juggling like these work and life issues that we're all facing so that was this big shift towards people experience And it was actually, it wasn't actually until early April 2022, I think that we've eventually set up a dedicated people experience team, which is what I'm part of.

And that initially was to really part by just giving a quick overview of what that people experience team looks like. We've got equity, diversity and inclusion team within that. We've got a a group of people that look after our HR systems and people data. And then there's a team of us that look after, a small team that look at thinking about people's voice and improvements, how can we make improvements based on what people are telling us.

So part of what we wanted to do and our ambition. When we first set up was to understand what the employee journey looked like, how can we understand where those pain points are, how can we make things better for the experience of our people? So that was an ambition. How we done that was a bit of a mystery to me, I'll be honest,

[00:07:37] Steve: Laura. I have more questions. I definitely and we'll come back to some more questions on that for sure because I think there's also this thing around that decision strategically to actually have a focus on the people experience because ultimately that requires a shift in thinking and that doesn't come easy for lots of organizations to be brave enough to actually.

Let's start doing something. Just that first hurdle. So I'm really curious. But we're definitely we back on that one for sure. So Laura let's bring you into this conversation for sure around your role and just out of interest. Let's start with what was sold to you when you went for those interviews?

What was the brief? What was yeah, showcased to you? What was it about it that enticed you and got you hooked and committed to coming in and doing this work? 

[00:08:22] Laura: Yeah, thanks. So I'm, I get very excited by sticky, complex problems and the role that design thinking can play in unpacking some of that. And when I joined the brief was to try to understand the experiences of. The 4, 000 employees that work at the British Red Cross and Sam's obviously unpacked some of the wide variety of different roles that exist.

And because there's, a huge variety of roles, there's also a huge variety of different cultures and norms and practices and even technologies that are used across the organization. So trying to understand and unpack the experiences for all of those people. Also on a one year fixed time contract felt like a unrealistic brief.

It was the system was too large and too complex to really dig beneath the surface and meaningfully understand those employee experiences within just one year. And then also improve those experiences, which was also part of the original brief. For the kind of end to end employee journey as well.

It wasn't there wasn't a focus area as well when I started. Yeah, it was really that was what drew me to it. It's that that was the original brief and that kind of hinted to me as well that I was potentially going to be going into a context where the... The kind of language around like maturity in, in design thinking capability was fairly low within people services at least.

So my first kind of job was to help the team to understand really where design thinking can add the most value. I spent the first three months, and we were really lucky to be supported by this, the people experience design team, but also senior stakeholders gave us the space to just take a breather when I first joined and say, okay, let's get a lay of the land in terms of.

What do we already know about our employees and what are we already doing to improve their experiences? Because Sam spoke about the central people people services. Directorate, but also across the whole of the British Red Cross, there are local directorates and that have their local kind of people services teams.

So again, adding to that complexity in terms of who's responsible as well for making those improvements to employee experiences. So yeah, we had, like I say, about three months to really do some desk based research and also interviews we spoke with over 30. different members of staff within the people services function, and also within the local people services teams as well.

And we, we had people experience surveys that had already gone out. And I also found out that within people services in July of 2023. There were 60 projects that were already underway, aiming to improve different parts of the employee journey. So there's a huge amount going on and also a huge amount that we knew.

And so that gathering all of that data and insight, which, hadn't also really been surfaced and bringing that to our people as well, in people services, as well as again, senior stakeholders really helped to bring to light and surface. That complexity and surface that the fact that, coming into the organization and maybe creating personas and journey maps for the end to end employee journey, in a year's time, what really are you going to do with those personas?

What. There's every chance they could go into a cupboard and never be seen again and be out of date almost immediately as well, because of the constant change that's happening to their experience. Yeah, that was

[00:12:09] Steve: I love that. Lots of, okay. Lots to unpack here. This is cool. Cause, cause I think this is. Some learning in here, I think, for people as well, is that this isn't about a shiny new thing. It's actually about also weaving it into already what's going on in the context of the organization, because there's, there is good stuff that's already happening.

It's how then, how do you then bring it together? And then also, how do you lift that up in, from a data perspective and make those kind of that red thread connections? Just out of interest, what I've also heard is, from both of you in different ways, is that you had tremendous support from the business with this.

And I think, you mentioned there, Laura, to give, some of the senior leaders were giving you the space. That's just, when you said that, I was like, cool, because there's some leaders out there listening to this that you should absolutely be giving some space to this. What did that enable you to do and how did it feel to know that senior leaders had your back with this and were giving you that opportunity to do this work?

How, just love to hear your experience of that.

[00:13:13] Laura: Yeah, it was obviously hugely reassuring because it enabled us to really make the impact that we were able to make through design thinking. Sam's written an amazing blog using this analogy of kind of wallpapering over the cracks of problems. And the, I really liked that analogy because, if I had decided to just meet the original brief.

Again, like I said, we could have, created personas and done some journey maps, but they would have been so high level they wouldn't have been helpful. And this way we get to really go into the cracks and do all the plastering that's needed to genuinely solve the problem in the long term.

So that's the way in which it was enabling. It was really thanks to the foundational work that was done before I arrived. As the kind of service designer where our project team had set up a kind of an oversight group with senior stakeholders from across the business who were brought into the idea of working in this way.

And so they were able to be our kind of champions and our sponsors, which, yeah, like I say, was

[00:14:21] Steve: Amazing. 

[00:14:22] Laura: Helpful.

[00:14:24] Steve: Sam, just from your perspective what was, what's the journey to that, to, to weave these, to get them to this point of saying, okay, great, let's go, because this is, I think, one of the, This is getting into the cracks that you mentioned, particularly from a leadership perspective and convincing the business.

This is the way to go. This is an opportunity for us to work in a different way. And of course, that sometimes requires change in people, which is sometimes difficult or more often than not. What did you find? How did you get it to that point? Or how did the team get to that point where it's like, yep, that decision signed off just and what were there any challenges to get to that as well that you had to hope that you had to overcome?

[00:15:04] Sam: yeah certainly challenges. I think let's get back, to the start. So yeah, the

[00:15:08] Steve: Yeah, do it. Let's do it. Yeah.

[00:15:10] Sam: Essentially, we've got within the British Red Cross, and actually Laura and I sits within this team, is the service transformation team. And they sit within our design, our DDAT, so that's our IT, our digital and tech team.

But, so there's pockets of excellent service design approaches or service delivery. But they're usually focused on our frontline services. So for example Laura's team has recent or helped, we've got a mobility aid service. So hiring out wheelchairs and other mobility aids to people who might need them because it's difficult to get them on the NHS in the UK.

So it's, how can we make that really efficient for our people? What do people need? What do the end users actually want? And so they went through this process and completely redesigned the service and it's, that was a really good example of them using great service design. We also used it in pockets in our fundraising fundraising team had come up with really innovative fundraising products and services to generate more funds for the organisation.

What we hadn't done, even though we had that expertise in those pockets of excellence, was use kind of user design or user centered thinking or to deliver or shape our products and services for our own people. We've never really done that. I think it was a case that, I reached out where we worked really closely with the service transformation team to help develop the brief, help develop a bit of a business case.

To pitch to our people services teams. The challenges are one of, we're a charitable organization. We've got this is quite an innovative, quite a new way of thinking really, so it was having to bring them on a journey without really any evidence of we've never done this before within the people space.

I think that was one of the biggest challenges. And, making sure that how can we prove something where we don't have any evidence for it. So

[00:17:03] Steve: Amazing. Yeah.

[00:17:05] Sam: That's a big challenge but yeah, that's what we were able to

With those experts, those champions that Laura's spoken about, we've got a couple of our Head of Employee Experience, Adil Khan was one and we've there's a couple of people across the organization, Adam Rowland's gonna give him a name drop as well, because he's great and really helping us understand how to position it, how to, how we can the real benefits of this way of working.

You join on those champions, join on those experts to to create a bit of a briefing and help bring some of those senior leaders who maybe are new to this way of thinking along that journey with us. To, yeah, I got to a stage where we were able to say a 12 month contract, short amount of time to do this work, but and a short amount of time to, to, Because this is, we're talking about culture change really, aren't we?

This is a new ways of working for people. Move into that much more user centered thinking rather than I think what we're probably guilty of we are guilty of it at the Red Cross, is that organization, designing things for the organization, not for the end user. So it's trying to shift that, shift the balance a little bit towards being, really working on this is a return on the investment that we're gonna make.

This is what we can do if we can do it properly. So yeah, it was certainly challenging, but yeah those champions really helped us.

[00:18:29] Laura: And I think.

[00:18:31] Steve: Yeah.

[00:18:31] Laura: think one of the other kind of challenges with the original brief is this idea of being able to deliver quick wins and again coming back to this analogy of wallpapering over the cracks some of those Quick wins might be the sort of fixes that aren't addressing the root cause of the issue.

And really yeah solutions to deal with an immediate problem. But I think that challenge was actually an opportunity for us to build trust with the people who needed a little bit more persuading or also were persuaded in theory, but didn't really know what design thinking looked like in practice.

By what we've decided to do is have almost like three strands to our work. One is about really trying to look into the root cause of problems using systems thinking approaches. And then another is to actually start to deliver some tangible impacts and some tangible changes within one sort of pocket of the employee experience and one sort of pocket of the organization.

And in that sense, build the trust and buy in from our leaders and also in that work, start building more evidence. That can feed into systems thinking and then a third strand, which was around building the design thinking capability within the organization. So doing like touch mentoring and coaching for projects that also happening inside people's services so that people can learn by doing and start to adopt some of that design thinking themselves.

So that, like I say, that, that constraint around managing expectations about what service design really looks like. Actually. Like I say, it was a chance for us to think about ways that we can yeah, make some tangible changes in, a short amount of time.

[00:20:27] Steve: Yeah. And I think that's so crucial. I think what, just playing this back for a second. Cause I think staying in that problem space, getting into the data and the insights and, finding those opportunities, because if you move too quick into solution, as you say, you just will, you just paper over the crack.

So actually. spending that little bit more time and holding that space does bring tremendous value, particularly in the context of the British Red Cross, where there is some complexity and there is some elements of whether you were bringing lots of different points together to identify those things, but also as well, that helps identify.

down into those kind of KPIs or performance metrics to identify those areas where you can weave this work into directly impacting that piece while solving the causal impact at the same time. That's the ideal state, isn't it, to be able to bring those two things together. Just out of interest, Laura I know in our Kind of intro call.

We you touched on this cause you talked about the complexity and you love this kind of red thread, like bringing this kind of data together. It's one of the things that you enjoy just to give a sense of what kind of dots were you connecting? What are some of the kind of areas that you.

Touched on and landed in as part of that first three months.

[00:21:43] Laura: Yeah. So one of the things that we noticed quite quickly that there was a bit of duplication happening in terms of the teams across the organization attempting to solve the same problems without drawing on. Research that might have already existed or sharing insights and collaborating so that obviously different solutions work for different people.

So it's absolutely natural and normal and fine for there to be different solutions and

different teams delivering what they know is best for their people. But that kind of siloed working where lessons learned weren't being shared or research wasn't being shared I think was one of the challenges. So connecting the dots in that way. And so building relationships with people across the organization so that I can almost play that role as a as a bit of a bridge between people was a really big sort of the most important thing to me actually when I started was about building relationships with people across the organization to help with that work. So yeah, the connection dots between projects and and. And then as well, I think connecting the dots with existing research. So I started to build up a bit of a systems map. So thinking about, for different parts of the employee journey, starting to understand, okay, what different solutions exist?

Who are the different people that are working on them? Who are they? Who is that solution supposed to be for? And how are they experiencing it? And what are the sort of back end? It's a technology and policies and processes that kind of make that solution happen. And then when you start to build that up, and like I say, at the start, we realized 60 projects happening in people's services.

When you think about how they connect in terms of teams or user, who the user is, all those sorts of things, you start to notice that actually there may be, yeah, a two or three core issues. Rather than what might seem like 60 issues and literally, on a map, getting a little some dots, dotted lines and connecting those dots and starting to see that some of these issues is just two or three things.

But that, at that stage was, a hypothesis and being a design thinker, it's quite like a. Scientific practice in a way, and so that's where our kind of more direct delivery work within one aspect, one area of the employee journey is going to help us to start to test some of our hypotheses about what those core issues are.

[00:24:22] Steve: And how was that received? I'm just, I'm so curious because you come into an organization where there's 60 different projects and then you can start to identify, Oh, okay. So these are holistically the similar project, problems areas, but then also maybe centered around a similar user as well, but coming at it from different perspectives or different angles.

What was, how was it received inside that group? People running different kind of project streams. Was there a bit of an aha moment? Was there a bit of oh, okay That's interesting

[00:24:53] Laura: the only reason, I really came to terms and fully understood that was the case, that there was that duplication or that business need was being prioritized over user need and actually projects weren't delivering the changes that they needed to deliver and they were having to be redesigned again and again.

I learned all of that because people within people's services were telling me they were being really honest and open and really aware that was happening, it didn't actually come as a surprise to anybody. I think they just needed somebody to collect the evidence about it and be the storyteller for them about that. And yeah.

[00:25:32] Steve: That's very

[00:25:32] Sam: That storytelling aspect is just massively is, has been really important part of what the work that we're doing actually. And and I think it does bring. It does paint the picture. Laura literally produced, an eco map of looking at career progression within the Red Cross, which we know is a problem area.

It always falls really low on our people. Surveys, it's like, why? Laura produced this ecosystem or this map showing all of these different solutions that we've got to help and prove the career progression for our people. There's so much out there. We literally, showed people this during showing tales and blogs in different ways of storytelling and people were like, Oh my gosh, no wonder it's really complex.

Isn't it? No wonder people are struggling to navigate all this stuff, so it's it really just painted that picture. But actually, what another bit of feedback that we've got within the career progression is that the people, the team that we were working with, they literally said we get this information back to say that actually we're not finding it easy to see service sorry, career progression.

So their immediate thought was what other thing can we produce that will make it easier? And push that out into the, into add to this already really complex system. Just another thing that people have then got to try and figure out and navigate without, I think what we're really poor at doing is embedding the things that we've got and making sure that we're making it easy for people to access it.

We're making sure we're producing the right things that they need and then make it, how can we just, remove all the barriers to them then using those systems, read all those products really well rather than having. Loads and loads of different things. Let's have a few things that are really simple and really easy that actually our users or people want.

[00:27:13] Steve: Yes. And that's such a, an amazing point Sam, because this is such a symptomatic thing in so many organizations. We, we're moving, it's this kind of old paradigm that we're shifting, it's happening, but it's this thing of this top down or, Just somebody overlaying a solution on top because they think it's the right thing.

That's right from their lens and their perspective inside the organization. And of course, the adoption then is much lower and then you get more complexity and a layer cake of all sorts of solutions, which then creates more complexity for the user. So it's yeah, so to flip that cake and just start with the user and as you say.

From the work that you did, Laura, as well, that I'm just bringing together some of those data points and put them at the heart of it, I think is yeah it's the starting point and the effect. I just think for me, all that screens in my mind right now is like efficiency time and opportunity to get even more agile time and opportunity to actually create solutions that are adopted by your employees because they're part of that process.

There's nothing but goodness in it. Thank you. Laura.

[00:28:17] Laura: Yeah. And I think that's when you ask that question about how did people, respond, when we presented that initial research in the first few months that there was actually, it felt really important as well to celebrate what had happened, what's been happening. And as Sam said, like of these.

Solutions that already exist. A lot of these solutions, have been based on research and insight that they've got about their employee experiences. And I think the missing piece has just been thinking about the end to end journey of the service. People are often focusing more just on the product itself and not thinking about, okay, but how does our employee find out about this?

And how does the employee easily navigate this? And how does the employee, once they've finished, for example, a leadership program, What does that connect to in terms of maybe job opportunities? And it's, again, that's the kind of connecting the dots. If it's, if you've got two different teams, one dealing with job opportunities and the other with leadership programs, and they're working completely separately, they don't even know about the work sometimes that's happening in, in other parts of the organization, then, of course, from an employee perspective you're not going to have an easy transition or smooth journey from one place to another. So like I said, I think a big part of our focus, one of the other kind of challenges and constraints we're working in is financial at the moment. And so again, that presents that opportunity actually to think rather than creating more new things, because there are many new things that keep being created.

Let's look at what we already have. Let's think about what we know about our employees and prioritize from those things that exist, the things that we can focus in on and improve and start to look from a service perspective rather than just a product perspective. So yeah, think about access and adoptability and that kind of thing.

[00:30:12] Steve: And I think we mentioned this as well. It's the charity sector is it's, there's so much, there's so much more, but there's a focus around doing more with what you have and to how to get. And I think that I'm a massive advocate of that. And I think it requires a different.

Different level, maybe a different type or at least an application of creativity on applying that in a way that you know, in some organizations where they might have bigger budgets or opportunity at the shiny new things or whatever it might be, actually, yeah, I still think there's so much opportunity and goodness in what's already around and weave it into that.

Totally great. So just in terms of there's some landing points because I'm really curious to see you about some of the wins and some of the Yeah. Some of the stuff, the tangible stuff that you've created as part of this, you mentioned, obviously the the development from a personal development point of view, any, do you want to maybe expand on that area or where did you land up actually is probably more the question where did you lean in as part of the creating some tangible changes as part of one of your three, three areas

[00:31:18] Sam: We've, we're focusing in on the career progression within a pocket that we wanted to really sat to, we've done this big bit of research and then narrowing down to a particular point on the on the employee journey. We are looking at career progression, particularly within within one of our our cause areas health and local crisis response.

Because what we wanted to do, we're recognising that, I'd say that big eco map that Laura's produced, loads and loads of stuff on there, but a lot of it probably designed for people that are Sat seven hours a day at their computer. They can easily access the internal comms that comes out.

They can easily access The intranet and you know that information or the you know learning platform that we've got, all of those things That is easy for desk based people How does it work? How do access to some of these solutions work for people who are based in hospitals or visiting?

People that were supporting in their homes or out in the community. So how, so we wanted to really work With people that aren't desk based essentially. So what we're doing at the minute. We're still in that kind of user Understanding that that process.

So lots of we're in the process of just going out, talking to people, shadowing and I'll talk through some of the techniques that we're using, but so at the minute that's our focus area. So we're doing a bit of a deep dive into that. And we're hoping to get some kind of solution or some results by the end of the year, really to understand what yeah, what, how that work is really coming together, but some of the quick wind stuff that Laura does is actually, trying to embed this way of working across different projects.

There's this, I say, Laura's mentioned it all alluded to it is what we're calling lighting small fires. We want people to just start to start to think in the projects that they're working on that they're designing or how can we be really. Focus on our people here. How can we really make sure that we're considering their needs from the start of the project design.

So Laura's been doing a load of different mentoring that coaching for different projects. So I think we're up to about eight, eight online projects now where Laura's really supporting light touch coaching, but actually shifting the kind of the focus a little bit from that. Organization, what do we need from an organization perspective?

Is it cost efficiency? Is it making it really easy for the people delivering the thing to actually what do our people need? What do they need to make sure that this really easy to access and all of the good stuff that we've already spoken about. So those, that's something that we're doing on as well as this deep dive and yeah, beginning to really embed that thinking so that this isn't a.

This isn't a 12 month thing,

[00:33:59] Steve: thing.

[00:34:01] Sam: building that building the momentum and that we see this shift in ways of working for the longer term. So we've become a really truly people centred organisation in practice as well as right now on paper.

[00:34:14] Laura: And I can already see that people are just starting to ask the right questions to the right people. I think one of the things I really noticed when I joined was that people didn't recognize the value of, having feedback and collaborating in terms of, consulting on their ideas and those sorts of things.

But they weren't asking the people who the product or service was for. I thought this is, really lovely in theory that you're testing your idea, but it's you're not testing it with the user. And people are obviously different and you have to recognize that user needs might be different from the needs of employees who work in your team.

And so I think that's, I think one of my, the shifts that I'm celebrating the most actually is that people are starting to go to their users to ask for feedback which is obviously changes the outcome in

[00:35:08] Steve: Can I just, what's, this is such a, yeah. consistent challenge that we see. What's that journey? You've done some of the coaching and the nudging. How can people just anyone listening who might be in a similar situation to you or is a leader or a manager or, doing work inside their organization and maybe creating solutions for people what can they do to shift that mindset?

Cause we're talking about mindset shift here. Fundamentally, what some of those things that you would share just to help people just to start nudging people and supporting and I don't know what tactics would you and I know it's very contextual, but if anything that you've done that's been really successful for you, that would be really valuable.

[00:35:51] Laura: terms of what you've done. I think one of the things that makes people feel really uncomfortable, even if they are brought into design thinking and practice, is that it involves quite a lot of uncertainty, because if you're Putting the ball in the user's court in terms of the user's kind of deciding what product or service really is best for them.

Then you start, a far usual way of working is to create a business case at the start of a project. And within the business case, it already says what the product or service is going to be and the impact it's going to have. Then of course writing your business case and saying.

We don't know actually yet that's, it can feel quite scary so I think one of the sort of ways to nudge people into feeling more comfortable in that space is is to make people but or reinforce the message that people remember more about what you how you made them feel than what you did and so in that sense trusting the process that if you are just continuously being User centered that immediate impact that you will have is to make people feel valued So in terms of you know making improvements to our employee experience, for example even if you don't know what the end product to service exactly is going to look like from the beginning going through a design thinking process will immediately deliver benefits and impacts because you're listening to your employees, you're meaningfully engaging with your employees.

And I think the second thing that people end up feeling a little bit uneasy about is thinking that you have to sacrifice business or organizational need. In order to meet user needs thinking, for example, that maybe employees might come back from our research about career progression saying that they want maybe an unrealistic pay rise that the organization can't, for example and actually, again to ease that concern just showing people by doing it with them in that kind of mentoring context that good service design involves balancing user needs and organizational needs. And that, the start of a project involves understanding the constraints that you're working within from a technical and organizational etc.

perspective. And. To see how, and that's where the innovation and design thinking comes in. It's right here are all of our constraints and here are all of our user needs and how can we come up with a solution that meets it's both.

[00:38:17] Steve: Yeah, and

[00:38:19] Sam: I think there's also an element of the challenge of this is going to take a long time though, isn't it? This is that, having that having to talk to people that takes time. We could just get on and crack on and find, we think, I think we know what we need to do. So let's just do it and get it out there.

So I think that it's challenging that actually it might take a little bit more time upfront. You're right. But actually the, that investment of time is gonna, pay dividends down the line. Once you, we know that we've got a solution that works. Rather than producing something that, that often it doesn't work and then people aren't accessing it.

So I think there's that element as well of, yeah, it takes a bit more time up front, but actually it's worth it. And just really at the start of the project, really setting out your, setting out that as a, as one of the key you will see a return on your investment of this, of that time.

[00:39:10] Steve: also let's just talk practical for a minute. Laura, you mentioned earlier in the session here that you spoke to 30 people. And of course, that was probably more from a wider perspective of bringing in different elements. But what if we were just talking about, personal development exclusively, you actually don't need to speak to 30 people, it would be that people, I think sometimes there's a perception that you have to, particularly when we think of it from a Traditional way, which is send surveys out and we get as many responses as we can possibly get, and those types of things, which are valuable and valid, but also actually just sitting with maybe eight to 10 users is enough actually to get started and how little you actually need.

I can't reinforce that enough. And I think that's the thing about lighting the fire is getting, just getting started rather than trying to get the silver bullet from the start. What do you, what's your thoughts, 

[00:40:02] Laura: yeah, totally. A hundred percent. And like I say the volume of people that we spoke to was more the had the added benefit of kind of relationship building and building trust in our team. And and Yeah, I 100 percent think that it's not a, doing design thinking isn't rocket science.

Really, and I'd say if you can even just even five users is often enough to really get

[00:40:34] Steve: of their reality? Yeah,

[00:40:37] Laura: And yeah, hopefully helping and yeah, getting feedback from people that were helping them to feel more confident that it is something that they can do, even if it's something they've not done before, or it's not their job description, it's often just a shift in mindset and starting to become a little bit more scientific about thinking.

Okay, who is this for? How is it for them? And why is it for them? And that's a nice mantra to just go into your work with.

[00:41:04] Steve: It's it seems so simple. And actually it is, but of course, putting that into a work environment and humans, it becomes very complex very quickly. As we know, we're not the, we're not the simplest of beings on this planet, are we? Definitely not. Okay. So let's let's just some, I have one more area I just want to delve into if that's okay.

Is around the development piece because I'm a huge, also, I'm loving some of the stuff that you're sharing today because I'm a massive advocate of also showcasing, but also teaching along the way and showcasing that as an opportunity for people to, to learn by doing. And to apply some of this kind of mindset methodology just a bit of an insight into the, yeah, the work that you've done on that side, because it seems like you've lent a lot into that in order to start changing hearts and minds and to this new way of working.

And you've lit, definitely lit the fire. I'd love just to get a sense of what you've done on that side to just give, empower people, in a bit more. This work and how it's been received.

[00:42:07] Laura: So it started off the language around lighting small fires actually started off from a conversation I had with somebody in our technology team who uses that method for their work when they want to, they know that there's a And an employee need that needs to be met, but they think from a senior stakeholder perspective, it might be hard to get the buy in.

So what they would do is they would just do it, do what they knew needed to be done, but somewhere small. And then the, and maybe if it, the problem came up again, they would do it for that one employee. Just that, that small solution. And then the idea of Lighting Small Fires was that it would just grow and then, oh, in the end, everybody's we've got this new solution. So I really like that analogy. And because I'd had, yeah, these really broad conversations at the beginning, building relationships with people, There were people who, it just seemed very clear that they were interested in working in a different way.

And just set up regular check ins after those initial kind of calls that were more kind of research focused and ended up just every sort of two weeks checking in every half an hour or something. And naturally people bringing their the challenges that they're facing in their work and talking through together.

different methods that they could try so that was one approach. The other approach was helping to facilitate workshops, and so where people were, so as we've mentioned before storytelling has been a huge part of our work as well show and tells, and blogs, and community of practice, etc.

And people who come on into those, saying, Oh wow really interested to hear about X, Y, or Z. We'd like to do something similar. Could you facilitate a workshop? With, who are, the people who are users will be. And... So just getting involved in that way, and then planning those workshops and co facilitating with those other members of staff so that they can start to feel a little bit more confident in, again, some of the methods and processes that might be used. And, yeah, and team meetings, I did a lovely session on empathy mapping and just did a little temperature check as well at the beginning and the end in terms of how people, how confident people felt in in using that tool and just seeing like a sort of 60 percent increase from the beginning to the end of the workshop and just people even being able to explain what service design even was. They're just, yeah, quite just taking any opportunity that seems to come my way. So yeah not hugely strategic to be honest. 

[00:44:39] Steve: No, sometimes you still go with your intuition and the flow of the context. And just, yeah, that's the beauty of design, right? You don't come in with a, with just a simple framework and apply it. We have to understand what's the context and the flow and the characters and the people and those types of things and apply, imply the tools that are relevant.

[00:44:59] Sam: I think just building on that as well from a kind of organization perspective is part of this work is this is new. This is a new kind of way of working. So it's just beginning to build that first of all, that understanding awareness, but then that capability as well. And like I said, not trying to tackle everything all at once, but like Laura says, pushing on those.

Half open doors that people are interested in then you go. Oh, yeah. Okay coming no more And so the community of practice is growing. We've got almost a hundred people. I think now with join They're getting regular updates from us and just beginning to bring people on that journey again, and you know making sure that it's with slowly and building that capability.

But I think for anyone who's starting out on this journey, who's thinking about how to do this, I think, just start small, just find something and begin to build that. I think that's don't try to tackle everything.

[00:45:50] Steve: agree. Yeah. Laura, any tips for you just as we, yeah, as we head to, very sad to the end of this episode. I could go on for I'm gonna come and see you in London the next time I'm in London. I think we should do a live session. But yeah, sorry, Laura go, sorry.

[00:46:05] Laura: I think, feeding into what we've already been saying, but just working in the open, where, again, where there's that kind of nervousness or low design maturity in terms of people understanding really what it looks like. It's just, don't be afraid to really just keep banging the drum and, constantly just share where you're at, what you've learned, mistakes you've made.

And again, that sort of helps to break down those silos build a bit of faith when there's some uncertainty in terms of what the end product might be. So yeah, just constantly share your work and don't be afraid.

[00:46:43] Steve: Sam, Laura, thank you so much for just sharing a glimpse into the journey that you're on. I am after I, it was that very LinkedIn post actually Sam, that you shared that absolutely the paper crack post that you did. And I thought I have to reach out. So I did. I'm glad I did. And it's been an absolute pleasure to have met you both.

And I think you shared some super interesting insights there. I think for any organization who is, and there's a lot of them out there looking to figure out where do we get started with the X. I think you've been a really lovely, amazing showcase for that work. So keep going. I would love to invite you back on.

In the future. Let's see where, like what the future holds for the British Red Cross people experience team. And perhaps we can do that in a live session in London one day. I'd love to do that maybe next year, if you're around and interested and let's explore that as follow your journey.

[00:47:34] Sam: As I said, telling people about what we're doing and, it's not that difficult. Just start somewhere, start small.

[00:47:41] Steve: Yeah. Great. Just keep going. I love it. Thank you again and yeah, enjoy the rest of your day. And thank you again. Thanks for your contribution to the podcast. Amazing.

[00:47:49] Laura: Thanks.

Steve Usher
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