Today my guests are Lisa Kay Solomon and Chris Ertel, the co-authors of the powerhouse 2014 book Moments of Impact: How to Design Strategic Conversations That Accelerate Change, which celebrates its 10th anniversary this year! I devoured this book 10 years ago and I think you might enjoy it, too!

Lisa Kay Solomon is currently a Designer in Residence at the Stanford d. school, where she teaches classes such as Inventing the Future where students imagine, debate and analyze the 50-year futures of emerging tech, and works closely with the K12 community to make futures thinking a mainstay of 21c core curriculum. She has also been named to the Thinkers50 2022 Radar List and is one of ixDA’s Women of Design 2020.

Chris Ertel is a managing director of Deloitte Consulting LLP with a specialist role designing and providing high-stakes strategic conversations for clients and priority firm initiatives, in the Deloitte Greenhouse® signature environments. Chris is an innovation strategist with 18 years of experience advising leading organizations. He holds a PhD in demography from UC-Berkeley.

We talk about 

• What it really means to be a facilitative leader, and why it’s so impactful. As Lisa and Chris say in MOI:

“At these critical moments, everyone will be looking at you, not for all the answers, but to help them unearth the answers together”

• The Five Core Principles of Moments of Impact, which can form a Design Process

1. Define your purpose  (your design intent!)

2. Engage multiple perspectives (with your facilitation skills!)

3. Frame the issues

4. Set the Scene

5. Make it an experience (even an intense or challenging one!)

• How designing conversations is different from facilitating them: Lisa makes it clear that Conversation Design is about intent and purpose while Facilitation skills are the tool that helps orchestrate those Moments of Impact.

• Why Conversation Design isn’t taught to leaders but should be (Lisa also tells us why it’s so hard to teach, since it brings together strategy, psychology and emotional intelligence)

• Why Chris always coaches leaders to condense and delete content from their strategic meetings (to 10 slides!) instead of making what communications expert Nancy Duarte calls a “Procument” (something that’s neither an easy to use and digest presentation or a leave-behind document!)

• How crucial discussing decision-making rights are - as Chris suggests many leaders want to keep their options open and wind up creating an “air of democracy without the reality of it” 

• Why You should start becoming a junkie of learning theories

• The importance of balancing humor and levity with challenging-ness and sparkiness to create productive environments

• The importance of knowing that the “yeah buts” will come when we’re hosting challenging conversations as in: 

yeah, but, that won’t work here! or…

yeah, but, what will we be able to report next quarter? Or…

yeah, but who’s budget is going to cover that?

And so much more! If you have Moments of Impact that you need to shape, design, and lead and you *don’t* have Moments of Impact on your desk - get it!

Head over to theconversationfactory.com/listen for full episode transcripts, links, show notes  and more key quotes and ideas. You can also head over there and become a monthly supporter of the show for as little as $8 a month. You'll get complimentary access to exclusive workshops and resources that I only share with this circle of facilitators and leaders.

Links

Get Moments of Impact! 

https://www.lisakaysolomon.com/about

https://www2.deloitte.com/us/en/profiles/certel.html

A plan is not a strategy: The short video from Roger Martin we were talking about!

My guest today is Ashley Goodall, a leadership expert who has spent his career exploring large organizations from the inside, most recently as an executive at Cisco. He is the co-author of Nine Lies About Work, which was selected as the best management book of 2019 by Strategy + Business and as one of Amazon’s best business and leadership books of 2019. It is an awesome book - highly recommended. If, after listening to this conversation you want to hear more (and I think you will!), take a listen to him and his co-author, Marcus Buckingham, talking on the HBR Idea Cast about lie #5 - the idea that people need feedback - and how most managers think about giving feedback in an utterly wrong way - which is also an idea we dive into later in our conversation today.

Prior to Cisco, Ashley spent fourteen years at Deloitte as a consultant and as the Chief Learning Officer for Leadership and Professional development. 

His book, "The Problem with Change: and the Essential Nature of Human Performance" is about what we might call lie number 10: the idea that change is good and that leaders must lead change in order to be good leaders. Wholesale belief in this lie has created what Ashley calls  “Life in the Blender” - driven by what I’ve heard some folks refer to as “The Reorg of the Day”.

I love love love the musical analogies Ashley uses to describe leadership - not as the lead guitar or first violin, but as the Ground Bass - the principal structural element of a musical piece. The Leader can help teams navigate change by playing a backbeat of stability and consistency, supporting a range of free expression and variation. Find a link to Pachelbel's Canon here and listen to the Goldberg variations here (which he mentions in the extended version of the analogy, later on in the conversation).

What is that Ground Bass? For Ashley it’s about helping people feel seen, connected, celebrated and clear on the story of the meaning of their contributions to the work. 

This perspective aligns very well with the message Bree Larson offered here some years back. Bree is a Partner at SYPartners and shared her framework around the challenges of designing organizational change - that most change can easily result in one or more of the Six Types of Loss she identified:

Loss of Control Loss of Pride Loss of Narrative Loss of Time Loss of Competence Loss of Familiarity 

All of which Ashley suggests leaders can deflect or reduce through 9 key leadership skills that he outlines in depth in his book:

1. Make space 

2. Forge undeniable competence 

3. Share secrets 

4. Be predictable 

5. Speak real words 

6. Honor ritual 

7. Focus most on teams

8. Radicalize HR 

9. Pave the way

Prior to releasing the book, Ashley wrote a New York Times Op-Ed piece which is a blockbuster and is an even more succinct, poignant and straight-on condemnation of modern corporate leadership - it is also highly worth reading. This book feels a bit like a Burn Book - Ashley is pointing out fundamental misconceptions at the heart of corporate life in a direct and unvarnished manner - in the hope that some leaders will listen and start doing things differently - Leading in a way that takes into account how humans really are and what we really need to thrive at work.

Ashley is very clear: companies need to look beyond wellness initiatives and corporate cheerleading and shift their focus to the fundamental environment of daily work.

The effects of a corporate life caught in constant change are more than clear to anyone who’s been through it: uncertainty, a lack of control, a sense of unbelonging and of displacement, and a loss of meaning

As Goodall says, “The ultimate job of leadership is not disruption and it is not to create change; it is to create a platform for human contribution, to create the conditions in which people can do the best work of their lives.”

Also - do listen for an extended exchange around minute 40 where we talk about the power of praise and the Paul Hollywood handshake - if you’re not a Great British Bake off fan, there’s still time to watch a few episodes to get in the mood - or at least witness the effect of the Hollywood Handshake on Friends star David Schwimmer here.

Head over to theconversationfactory.com/listen for full episode transcripts, links, show notes and more key quotes and ideas. You can also head over there and become a monthly supporter of the show for as little as $8 a month. You'll get complimentary access to exclusive workshops and resources that I only share with this circle of facilitators and leaders.

Links

Find a link to Pachelbel's Canon here and listen to the Goldberg variations here.

Ashley wrote a New York Times Op-Ed which is a blockbuster

Take a listen to Ashley and his co-author, Marcus Buckingham, talking on the HBR Idea Cast about lie #5 - the idea that people need feedback - and how most managers think about giving feedback utterly wrong.

Canon in D Major by Kevin MacLeod is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/...)

Source: http://incompetech.com/music/royalty-...

Artist: http://incompetech.com/

Witness the effect of the Hollywood Handshake on Friends star David Schwimmer here.

Rabbi Tarfon said: The day is short, and the work is plentiful…It is not your duty to finish the work, but neither are you at liberty to neglect it. (Pirkei Avot 2:15-16)

My conversation today with Jerry Colonna closes with him paraphrasing this powerful notion - and the work we are discussing is the work on yourself and the work to create a better world - one where everyone feels like they truly belong. In a world where many organizations are retreating from Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging initiatives, I’m grateful that Jerry is leaning into this conversation. I see the work of antiracism as firmly in the realm of what my peoples call Tikkun Olam, repairing the world.

It’s absolutely essential that men in positions of power and especially men who present as White, do not neglect this work. 

Jerry is a graduate of Queens College and a Brooklyn native.

Jerry helps people lead with humanity and equanimity. His unique blend of Buddhism, Jungian therapy, and entrepreneurial know-how has made him a sought-after coach and leader, working with some of the largest firms in the country.

In his work as a coach, he draws on his experience in Venture Capital as Co-founder of Flatiron Partners, one of the most successful early-stage investment programs. Later, he was a partner with J.P. Morgan Partners, the private equity arm of J.P. Morgan Chase.

As a partner with J.P. Morgan Chase, Jerry launched the Financial Recovery Fund with The Partnership for the City of New York, a $10 million-plus program aimed at creating grants for small businesses impacted by the attacks on the World Trade Center.

Along with a strong commitment to the nonprofit sector, Jerry is the author of two books: REBOOT: Leadership and the Art of Growing Up (2019) and REUNION: Leadership and the Longing to Belong. (2023)

Reboot was met with critical acclaim, stirring up a big question in the hearts and minds of people: “How have I been complicit in creating the conditions I say I don’t want?” Jerry’s second book builds on this question, asking us what benefit we get from the conditions we say we don’t want - the systems of oppression that those who have eyes to see, can see.

Reunion is a highly personal book that asks us all to examine our history of longing to belong - and the ways in which we have been excluded or excluded others.

Key Threads in the Conversation

We discuss Jerry’s Journaling practice and how it is an essential conversation he has with himself, each morning.

We explore what it means to be a “good man” - and how in his first book, REBOOT, he questioned whether he was a good man, while in REUNION, he built upon the assumption that he is a good man and explored (and expanded) what it means to be a good man in a world where there is division and polarization.

And I get Jerry to coach me on one of my favorite questions: understanding the disowned parts of ourselves, exploring the reasons behind disconnecting from them, and the importance of integrating them back without denying them - very much in line with the process of REUNION. All while working to authentically grow in ways that matter, without self-abuse or denial.

Those parts of ourselves we wrestle with wrestle back at us. Many leaders I coach want to be feel or been seen as more or less of some quality or another - they, like so many of us, feel they must be other than they are in order to belong.

In my experience, fighting against our parts without understanding and loving them is a losing battle. Jerry asks us to understand the stories behind our self doubt, and to honor the ways that part of us has sought to care for and protect us in the past.

I find great empathy and lovingkindness in spending time nurturing my denied parts and my clients do, too. I’m so grateful to absorb Jerry’s approach to self-integration, and to expand our inner work towards creating not just a life we love, but a world we want to live in.

Head over to theconversationfactory.com/listen for full episode transcripts, links, show notes  and more key quotes and ideas. You can also head over there and become a monthly supporter of the show for as little as $8 a month. You'll get complimentary access to exclusive workshops and resources that I only share with this circle of facilitators and leaders.

Links

Reboot

Jerry’s profile at Reboot

Some other solid interviews with Jerry:

On Being with Kista Tippett: Can you really bring your whole self to work?

Noah Kagan, from AppSumo, interviewing Jerry on being a better human and a better leader

My guests today are Rei Wang and Anita Hossain, Co-founders of coaching platform The Grand, which was seed funded by Alexis Ohanian’s firm Seven Seven Six in 2023. Rei is the Chief Product Officer and Anita is the CEO.

I met Rei ages ago, in her early days in NYC at General Assembly, where she worked as a Product Manager and Global Community Lead, developing educational opportunities for students.

And I was excited to interview her about her work as the CEO of the Dorm Room fund at First Round Capital a few years back to get her perspectives around the intersection of community and product design…especially when the community IS the product. Check out that conversation here. Rei cultivated a vibrant startup ecosystem, mentoring over 250 entrepreneurs on various aspects of business management and fundraising. Their leadership garnered recognition, including the Forbes 30 under 30 award.

Rei and Anita met during their time at First Round Capital, where Anita was the Head of Knowledge. While there, she helped hundreds of entrepreneurs connect deeply and vulnerably, to share their concerns and to learn from each other. Anita was also an executive coach with the renowned coaching firm, Reboot, and is a certified Neuro-Linguistic Programming Practitioner.

Key Advice for Working Through Challenges

• Prevention is first and foremost! Speak early and often to reduce buildup, bottling up and boiling over of tensions

• Make feedback about actions and behaviors, not about the person or their personality

• Rei suggests that using a simple framework like SBIO is a great way to frame feedback. (Situation or data, the Behavior you see, the Impact it has on you, and the Opportunity for improvement or transformation)

• Make sure feedback conversations are two-sided, with both partners regularly asking for and offering feedback

• Anita underscores the importance of Co-Creation of resolutions to challenges instead of telling someone to be different. Working on these tensions with a sense of collaboration can lead to reduced defensiveness.

Head over to theconversationfactory.com/listen for full episode transcripts, links, show notes  and more key quotes and ideas. You can also head over there and become a monthly supporter of the show for as little as $8 a month. You'll get complimentary access to exclusive workshops and resources that I only share with this circle of facilitators and leaders.

Links

The Grand

My previous conversation with Rei Wang

My guest today is James Rutter, Chief Creative Officer at COOK, the pioneering frozen food company, where he oversees internal and external branding and communications. COOK is a founding UK B Corp, committed to using its business as a force for good in society, and has been ranked in the top 100 Best Companies To Work For every year since 2013. COOK’s award-winning frozen meals and puddings (which are desserts, btw) are made by hand in Kent and Somerset, and sold from 98 of its own shops nationwide, in 950 concessions and through its own home delivery service.

James joined COOK in 2010 after 15 years as a financial journalist and editor, and he speaks and writes regularly about purpose-driven business and brands. You should really follow him on LinkedIn!

James and I talk about the glory that is a proper Fish Pie, and about citizenship and participation. James’ leadership philosophy for his internal team is grounded in a sense of play and a recognition of community.

He shares some of his favorite insights from Peter Block’s book, "Community: The Structure of Belonging" and the deep value he’s found in working with Jon Alexander on Citizenship and Participation. Jon Alexander is the author of the bestselling book, "Citizens." James references Jon Alexander’s Participation Premium Equation in the opening quote.

There is so much goodness in this episode!

At Minute 27 James shares his community and transformation insights from Peter Block, including the essential idea that a small group, a community, is the fundamental unit of change, especially when that group is grounded in possibility. He also goes to share the impact that Block’s ideas of Inversion have had on him:

As James says, summarizing Block:

“It's not the performer who creates the performance, but the audience… And again, in a conversation sense… it's the listener who creates the conversation whereas we often think it's the speaker who creates the conversation… it's the child who creates the parent, not the parent who creates… this is (not) some kind of answer, but… a thought to play with. What if that's the way it works? How would you approach it differently? If the audience creates the performance, then how are you seeking to bring the audience into it? How are you giving them the power?”

At Minute 42 we discuss the importance of Connection over content: 

“...you've got to seek to build the human bonds first before you seek to do whatever the worky thing is you want to do.”

In essence, we are marinating in Danny Meyer’s ideas of an Employee-First workplace, which is why we talk, at the end of the episode, about how Happy Cooks make Happy Food, referencing an earlier conversation we had. 

And James insisted on talking about my Mom being on the Mike Douglas show with John Lennon, Yoko Ono and Chuck Berry in 1972, hosting a historical cooking segment -  this episode is famous because it’s the first time John and Chuck met and Played together. You can see A Tiny Video Clip of my mom on TV here (most of them seem to get pulled down). At a crucial moment in the cooking segment, my mother, just 22 and not actually my mother yet (or anyone’s!) realized that the studio band was playing chaotic music, and that everyone was in a chaotic space, and she announced that unless we had a calm, peaceful environment, the food would taste chaotic - our intention and our energy would flow into the food. The Host, Mike Douglas, asked the band to play something quieter and more mellow, and John Lennon, assigned to cut cabbage, began reciting the mantra he wanted to suffuse the food:

“Rock n Roll…Rock n Roll…Rock n Roll”

What do YOU want to suffuse your work with?

Head over to theconversationfactory.com/listen for full episode transcripts, links, show notes  and more key quotes and ideas. You can also head over there and become a monthly supporter of the show for as little as $8 a month. You'll get complimentary access to exclusive workshops and resources that I only share with this circle of facilitators and leaders.

Links

James Rutter on LinkedIn

Fish Pie Recipes!

Peter Block on Community: The Structure of Belonging

Jon Alexander’s book Citizens

Jon’s Agency Equation: A Proposal

Agency = Purpose + Belonging + Power

Agency: the ability to shape the context of one’s life

Purpose: the belief that there is something beyond your immediate self that matters

Belonging: the belief that there is a context to which you matter in turn

Power: practical access to genuine opportunities to shape that context

Exit, Voice, Loyalty: An essential book on people and organizations

Finding flourishing and play at work - inspiration in https://www.punchdrunk.com/work/

Quotes no one said: “Teach Them to Yearn for the Vast and Endless Sea”

Via quote investigator: https://quoteinvestigator.com/2015/08/25/sea/

Minimum Viable Transformation

Matt LeMay on Agile Conversations

Happy Cooks make happy food: On Daniel’s Mom being on the Mike Douglas show with John Lennon, Yoko Ono and Chuck Berry Hosting a cooking segment: Context and History!

Why this episode is famous - it’s the first time John and Chuck met and Played together.

A Tiny Video Clip of my mom on TV! (most of them seem to get pulled down)

Today I share my conversation with Suzanne Vickberg, aka Dr. Suz. She is a social-personality psychologist and a Research Lead at Deloitte Greenhouse. Along with her Deloitte Greenhouse colleague Kim Christfort, Suzanne co-authored the best-selling book Business Chemistry.

But there’s another type of Chemistry - or Alchemistry - that I sat down to talk to Dr. Suz about - shifting the default track of a conversation from protection and opposition to collaboration,

Some years ago I interviewed Dr. Elizabeth Stokoe, a Professor of Social Interaction at Loughborough University, who speaks in her book Talk about conversations as having a landscape or a “track” that participants asses and orient to rather quickly…and that we glide down that track, while we monitor the texture of that landscape, and navigate the bumps in the road…so that we can keep things on safely on track. Check out our podcast conversation here and her TEDx talk here. In the opening quote to this podcast, you can hear Dr. Suz describing this process of “landscape orienting” happening very rapidly in a divorce context.

Knowing the default path is very helpful when navigating a “hello, how are you?” kind of “small talk” conversation in a non-wierdo-way. Knowing the default track can help make things smooth and easy…when you’re visiting the store, or a bowling alley. And when you don’t know the basics of the track, things can be hard - Doing simple things in a different culture can be surprisingly slippery to navigate when you don’t know the basics of the track. 

But sometimes the default path can be extremely detrimental - especially when the default is ineffectual or becomes unconscious and habitual - we keep doing things out of rote, not intent.

In business, a common default/habitual conversational path is looking at an underperformer and putting them on a Performance Improvement Plan in order to be able to fire them more easily,

A non-default, more conscious conversation is taking the time to learn *why* they are underperforming and helping them actually transform themselves, their work performance and their lives….and in the process deeply benefiting the company and even the community.

Seems impossible, right? Or grandiose? Carol Sandford, in her book about Regenerative Business talks about an organization that did just this… a manager discovered that a chronically underperforming and late employee was just functionally illiterate. That employee, once they felt safe to share more, helped that manager learn that many of their employees were facing similar issues. Instead of a PIP, this employee got literacy training, and became an advisor to a new literacy program developed inside the organization, which spread out to the larger community, in ripples of growth and transformation.

That is a *non* default conversation - turning a PIP conversation into a community-transformation conversation.

On a micro-scale, Dr. Suz’s book tells the story of rethinking or re-designing the “default track” for a very, very common conversation - Divorce. When that word gets said out loud, people find lawyers, put up a shield, and start digging trenches. 

There is a better way! It takes effort to deeply empathize with your “opponent” in a difficult conversation. It takes patience and imagination to collaborate with your “opponent” to design a win-win scenario. 

But the default design for divorce doesn’t usually create ideal outcomes…just conventional ones. It’s possible to create something better than you can imagine if you create the space for a transformational conversation.

Dr. Suz helps break down how “design” in these situations just means really understanding the REAL problem we’re solving and what our IDEAL outcome really could look like… BEFORE we jump to solutions.

Also check out my podcast conversation with Adam Kahane, author of, among many other amazing books, the book Collaborating with the Enemy - which is what I know a divorce can feel like. Some of his perspectives take this “divorce by design” mindset into the broader business and strategy arena.

Enjoy this conversation as much as I did…and think about how you might transform the most challenging conversations in your life and work. With more conscious creativity and intention, with empathy and collaboration…with more design you can create more of what you really want, just like Dr. Suz did for her own divorce and for her own life.

Head over to theconversationfactory.com/listen for full episode transcripts, links, show notes  and more key quotes and ideas. You can also head over there and become a monthly supporter of the show for as little as $8 a month. You'll get complimentary access to exclusive workshops and resources that I only share with this circle of facilitators and leaders.

Links

https://www.divorcexdesign.com/

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

https://www2.deloitte.com/us/en/profiles/svickberg.html

https://theconversationfactory.com/podcast/facilitating-breakthrough-with-adam-kahane

My guest today is Jay Ruparel, co-founder and CEO of VOICEplug AI, a Voice-AI company empowering restaurants to leverage AI and automate food ordering using natural language voice ordering at drive-thrus, over the phone, websites, and mobile apps. VOICEplug's technology integrates with existing systems and apps, allowing customers to interact with the restaurant using natural voice commands, in multiple languages and be serviced seamlessly.

I wanted to sit down with Jay to unpack what he has learned about how conversations are structured (for computer-to-human interaction) that he brings into his CEO (human-to-human) conversations - crucial conversations, with his senior leadership team and his broader organization - does an AI-savvy conversation-aware CEO approach conversations and interactions with a different eye?

We also focused on a few questions of deep concern for our culture today: the responsible and ethical use of AI and how it might impact the future of work.

Through our conversation, it became clear that:

AI is great for:

Repetitive or highly similar and constrained tasks. Ordering fast food at a drive-in, VOICEplug’s use case, is a perfect context for AI. In these kinds of conversations, there are boundaries on the scope of the interaction and a clear set of intents and possible goals.

Jay also points out that his AI is trained on many, many different instances of people ordering food from other people. So,the voice-driven bot can get better and better at these kinds of conversations, all the time.

Humans are best for:

High-risk and high-complexity conversations with no clear comparables or no clear scope. For Jay’s conversations with key industry stakeholders, at company-all-hands, and with his leadership team, AI can give him ideas or first drafts, but ultimately, he needs to navigate nuance with his human conversational intelligence

++++++++++++

AI is great for: 

Crunching lots of data (which is always from the past) and summarizing it. 

Humans are best for:

Deciding what kind of future they want to create.

Jay points out in the opening quote that the Human mind can think, reflect, envision and CHOOSE an ideal future, creatively. AI can do a lot of that…but it can’t choose the future it wants. That is still a uniquely human strength - to dream and to choose to create that dream.

Jay dreams of a future where work is a deeper and deeper collaboration between humans and AI, where humans focus on higher-value activities while AI takes over repetitive tasks.

Jay goes on to suggest that curiosity and powerful questions are THE most critical of human skills.

When I asked Jay to share his favorite ways of designing conversations, he shared three tips:

1. Take just a few minutes before a meeting to be very clear about your key one or two objectives for the conversation. In other words, start the end in mind. Another way of putting it is to take time to set an intention. You might enjoy my conversation with Leah Smart, the host of one of LinkedIn’s top podcasts, on just this idea.

2. If Jay is meeting with folks he doesn’t know as well, from outside the company, like new clients or stakeholders, he’ll deliberately slow down the conversation and delay getting to the core objective. Instead, he’ll spend 20-30% of the meeting time getting to know them, talking about other things, all in service of trying to understand them as people, and their conversational style

3. Jay consciously chooses some conversational areas to NOT be highly scalable or automated - he shares a story about being offered an AI tool that would send automated and personalized birthday emails to his employees. As he says “What is the point of me having to use that as the CEO (when)…that relationship, that wishing someone on their birthday as a personalized conversation means so much to me. That's the last thing I would want to ever automate.” Not all conversations, even ones that can seem small and inconsequential SHOULD be automated. It is possible that a real, human touch will be the ultimate in luxury in the future.

Head over to theconversationfactory.com/listen for full episode transcripts, links, show notes  and more key quotes and ideas. You can also head over there and become a monthly supporter of the show for as little as $8 a month. You'll get complimentary access to exclusive workshops and resources that I only share with this circle of facilitators and leaders.

Links

https://voiceplug.ai/

Jay on LinkedIn

I’m excited to share my conversation with Kevin Bethune, a multidisciplinary design executive, entrepreneur, best-selling author and keynote speaker based in Redondo Beach, California. He’s been a VP of Strategic design at BCG Digital, A global process product manager at Nike and a Nuclear Engineer at Westinghouse. He currently leads his own firm, https://dreamsdesignandlife.com/

One of his key ideas is “Open your aperture.” -ie, shifting the lens that you are looking at a problem from or through. Design and Design Thinking has so many tools to help us do just that, and find creative approaches to our biggest challenges.

In our conversation, we discussed the importance of embracing creative approaches (since our habitual approaches most likely can’t solve them!) and the need for bold leadership to optimize for curiosity and creativity - because going with business as usual is usually a lot easier than spending time on curiosity.

It takes a willingness to slow down to optimize for curiosity in a business environment that is often so focused on quarterly capitalism.

We also highlight the lack of diversity in design and innovation, particularly in black representation, and the cognitive dissonance of claiming to serve certain communities without actually representing them - an unresolved critique of many innovation firms.

The S-Curve and the Cone of Possibility

Kevin’s book, Reimagining Design: Unlocking Strategic Innovation, is CHOCK A BLOCK with diagrams (and I love diagrams!) that will stretch your thinking, but we spent some time on one diagram in particular that combines two classic models of thinking: The cone of possibility and the s-curve.

The Cone of possibility is a cone on its side, with the tip at the present, and the sides of the cone stretching out like rays of sunshine to the right. The rays represent possible futures along the timeline. There are many versions of this diagram online. Kevin’s version calls the center of the cone the “most likely” or projected future. The cone of possibility invites us to consider widening edges - future scenarios that are plausible and even impossible or preposterous futures, not just the projected or ideal future.

Opening our aperture to consider multiple possible futures means that our plans can be more resilient, adaptable and even antifragile.

The S-curve is a visual representation of one of my favorite Shakespeare Sonnets. #15: 

When I consider everything that grows Holds in perfection but a little moment, That this huge stage presenteth nought but shows Whereon the stars in secret influence comment; When I perceive that men as plants increase, Cheered and check'd even by the selfsame sky, Vaunt in their youthful sap, at height decrease, And wear their brave state out of memory;

Things are born (or emerge), they grow, mature and then fade away. Kevin’s version of the S-curve includes more detail:

1. Emergence

2. A dip - the trough of disillusionment

3. A hyper-growth phase that slows into..

4. Maturity and then…

5. Decline, or retirement. 

Kevin overlays the cone of possibility with a set of cascading s-curves, representing a host of possible trends rising and cresting as we look out into the possible futures.

As Kevin describes this diagram in our conversation, his hands are making waves of opening and closing, diverging and converging. That's what he’s seeing when he looks along the cone of possibility: all of these different trends, multiple pathways. It’s this complex, undulating space that he tries to illustrate for the teams that he works with to help them see a bigger aperture to think inside of.

These diagrams, these mental models, help redesign the conversation about strategy and innovation. We’re not designing for a single, simple, ideal future. We’re looking out at a complex landscape with multiple possible twists and turns. That is how you unlock strategic innovation - step back, widen the aperture and change the conversation.

In short - creative visualization facilitates dialogue and widens perspectives.

Head over to theconversationfactory.com/listen for full episode transcripts, links, show notes  and more key quotes and ideas. You can also head over there and become a monthly supporter of the show for as little as $8 a month. You'll get complimentary access to exclusive workshops and resources that I only share with this circle of facilitators and leaders.

Links

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

https://dreamsdesignandlife.com/

My guest today, Emily Levada, is a seasoned Chief Product & Technology Officer. Currently, she is the Chief Product Officer and Interim co-CEO at Embark Veterinary, a company dedicated to leveraging genetics to enhance the health and longevity of dogs. During her tenure, the company has achieved notable recognition, ranking as the #3 fastest-growing private company in Massachusetts and earning a spot on Forbes' list of promising venture-backed startups.

She also serves as a Board Member at JCC Greater Boston, bringing her expertise to contribute to the organization's growth and development and holds a significant role as a Member of the Customer Advisory Board at UserTesting, where she actively engages in guiding and advising the company.

Emily is also a two-time podcast guest, my first ever!  We did an episode a few years back where she shared some wonderful insights and frameworks about Trust, Communication and Psychological Safety in teams.

Emily was also gracious enough to be a guest mentor for the Innovation Leadership Accelerator cohort I co-ran with my friend Jay Melone from the product innovation consultancy New Haircut some years back. 

In this conversation, we sat down to talk about managing organizational emotions, especially negative emotions, and especially during critical junctures, like layoffs - something that many folks have been through, and many folks in the past year. I knew that Emily had some experience with this in the past and had some great thinking to share around this crucial leadership topic. 

There’s no *good* side to be on in a downsizing event - the people who are losing their jobs and income are also losing a sense of identity and need to navigate an uncertain future. But the loss of identity and the need to face an uncertain future is also true for the folks who are still with the company - both the “rank and file” and the leadership. 

Layoffs done poorly can dent a company culture.

Emily emphasized the importance of transparency in the period leading up to a layoff, as it builds trust and can mitigate negative emotions. 

On the other hand, leaders often have a desire to protect people from such difficult conversations until the last possible moment, so the whole team can focus on their day-to-day jobs.

I explored this polar tension between these two fundamental values, transparency and protection, with Emily using a tool called Polarity Mapping, developed by Barry Johnson Ph.D., the creator (and registered trademark holder!) of The Polarity Map®! You can read more about polarity mapping in my friend Stephen Andserson’s short blog post here and check out Dr. Johnson’s company, Polarity Partnerships here. IMHO, Stephen’s version of Barry’s diagram (below) is a bit clearer!

The basic idea of Polarity mapping is that often we feel pulled by two values, like:

Should we focus on Innovation or Efficiency? 

Should we prioritize Deadlines or Quality?

Growth vs. Consolidation?

Short-term Gains vs. Long-term Organic Growth?

Centralization vs. Decentralization?

(thanks for these examples, Stephen!)

In my own coaching work, I’ve found leaders can struggle to navigate conflicting parts of themselves, forming inner polar tensions that leave them feeling stuck, like: 

“I need to be flexible vs I need to be firm”

“I need to lead the conversation vs I need to let the conversation flow”

“I need to be aggressive or I have to be more passive”

“I need to listen more vs I feel the need to fix challenges”

“I want to be authentically myself vs I need to be a chameleon to get by”

And because we get pulled between them, and feel the polarity to be an unwinnable double bind of “damned if I do,” we kind of flub the balancing act. Polarity mapping asks us to be ultra-specific about the positives of both values AND to be very clear on the downsides of over-indexing on one value to the detriment of the other.

Doing a mapping like this can help us thread the needle of polarity, and look out for the early warning signs of over-indexing in one direction or another.

Below is a version of a polarity map for the tension Emily describes in our conversation, between Transparency and Protection.

Emily points out that these polarities pop up, not just at crucial moments in a business like layoffs, but in day-to-day operations, too.

Leaders can feel that Emotions are Inconvenient, but Team Emotions have real impact

Emily shares the top three negative organizational emotions she finds can deeply impact a team’s ability to learn (ie, be willing to experiment), be creative (ie, being able to innovate) and be fundamentally effective:

Anxiety (Fear)BoredomApathy

Fear, anxiety, and boredom are detrimental to creativity and productivity in knowledge work. Leaders need to address these emotions and create an environment that fosters engagement and challenge - and ultimately, create a learning organization.

“People cannot do creative knowledge work when they feel fear and anxiety and boredom. Those things are just incompatible.”

Emily suggests that well-run one-on-one meetings are crucial for understanding how team members are feeling and detecting signs of overwhelm, underwhelm, or “whelm” in their job. One-on-ones can help build a foundation of trust and safety, on which we can build honest and productive conversations.

Emily also shares some straightforward approaches for shifting these key negative emotions:

Anxiety: focus on building psychological safety for teams experiencing anxiety, and provide more transparency and context. Boredom: create relevant challenges Apathy: create accountability and challenge for teams experiencing apathy

Head over to theconversationfactory.com/listen for full episode transcripts, links, show notes  and more key quotes and ideas. You can also head over there and become a monthly supporter of the show for as little as $8 a month. You'll get complimentary access to exclusive workshops and resources that I only share with this circle of facilitators and leaders.

Links

Trust, Communication, and Psychological Safety with Emily Levada

The Joys of Polarity Mapping, by Stephen Anderson

Polarity Partnerships

 

My guest today is Jason Knight, the creator, host, producer, editor and promoter of the One Knight in Product podcast, a B2B SaaS product consultant, and fractional Chief Product Officer for companies that have gotten to product market fit and need help scaling their product team. Jason is also the founder of My Mentor Path, an inclusive, accessible and cloud-based mentorship service. 

Sandra Monteiro, a Product Manager at SAGE Publishing and a mentee of Jason’s, joined us halfway through to share her own experiences with mentoring, how she found her way to working with Jason as a mentor and what some of her learnings and insights from working with Jason as a mentor have been. She also shares her thoughts on what mentees should be thinking about as they search for and work with mentors.

We explored Jason’s mentorship journey and why mentorship matters to him, the challenges of Industrializing mentorship pairing and productizing the matching of the lopsided mentorship marketplace.

We also touch on how to measure the impact of the work and the subtle and important difference between Mentoring and Coaching. Jason suggests that many people who say they want coaching really want mentoring from someone who has “been there and done that”…and that great mentoring leverages coaching mindsets and skills in a practice he affectionately calls “centering”.

Some fundamental questions we explored were the differences and relative merits of FORMAL vs INFORMAL mentorship as well as working with someone INTERNAL vs EXTERNAL to your Organization

One of the big insights Sandra shared was shifting her expectations on the nature of the mentoring relationship from one centered around SOLVING vs conversations centered around TOOLS (ie, being offered relevant examples, learning materials and frameworks, holding space for emotional distance, and being offered broader context for challenges).

Head over to theconversationfactory.com/listen for full episode transcripts, links, show notes  and more key quotes and ideas. You can also head over there and become a monthly supporter of the show for as little as $8 a month. You'll get complimentary access to exclusive workshops and resources that I only share with this circle of facilitators and leaders.

Links

Sandra Monteiro

Jason Knight

https://www.oneknightinproduct.com/bio/

https://www.oneknightconsulting.com/

My conversation on Unapologetic Eating and Living with Alissa Rumsey is here

It’s not every day that a patient-doctor relationship turns into a Techstars-Funded medical innovation startup. In this episode I sit down with Dr. Onyinye Balogun and Eve McDavid, the co-founders of Mission-Driven Tech, a women's health venture in collaboration with Weill Cornell Medicine dedicated to the transformation of cervical cancer care with modern technology.

Onyi, as her friends call her, is the CMO of Mission Driven Tech and also an Assistant Professor of Radiation Oncology at Weill Cornell Medicine specializing in the treatment of breast and gynecologic malignancies and does research into improving cancer care in low and middle income countries.

Eve, the CEO, is a former Google executive who is also a Stage IIB Cervical Cancer survivor. Eve and Onyi met during the pandemic, when Eve was undergoing cancer treatment under Onyi’s care.

I heard Eve and Onyi’s presentation at the 2023 Techstars Demo day in New York and was stunned by the fundamental disparities in historical improvement in gynecological cancer outcomes - as they point out in this conversation, in recent years, Prostate cancer treatment has achieved a nearly 100% five year survival rate. In the same period, cervical and uterine cancer mortality has gotten worse, while cancer treatment for all other cancers has improved exponentially. Their company exists to change that story.

Co-Founder Communication Insights

This conversation is one of a series on co-founder communication. Check out my interviews with the co-founders of online gaming start-up Artie on Pivoting while staying sane (the secret - have a coach and a therapist!), a conversation with Carolyn Gregoire and Scott Barry Kaufman, the co-authors of the 2015 bestseller, Wired to Create, on navigating Paired Creativity, and this interview with the co-founders of collaboration tool Range, Jennifer Dennard and Dan Pupius, on the keys to healthy conflict. One key that Beth Bayouth and Mario Fedelin, the COO and CEO (respectively) of Changeist, a non-profit organization dedicated to youth empowerment, discussed was the importance of co-founders sharing how they are really doing so that they can be sure to not fall apart at the same time, a sentiment that Eve and Onyi echoed.

I also discussed the idea of “prototyping partnerships” with Jane Portman and Benedikt Deicke, co-founders of Userlist - and they helped me see that the healthiest companies have partners that have worked together in some capacity - and indeed, in this interview, Onyi and Eve called Eve’s cancer treatment their “first collaboration”.

Know yourself and each other

The start of a startup journey can be optimistic, so we explore what they have learned about each other that has helped them to better communicate and collaborate together since they started the project.

Accelerators can’t do it all for you

Eve and Onyi share how the accelerators can help with structure, mentorship, capital and community, but that ultimately you need to have something worth accelerating - a key customer insight or a core technology - both of which Mission-Driven Tech has!

Have multiple modes and frequencies of communication

Eve and Onyi have a weekly meeting just focused on their flagship product, the Blossom device, and another meeting weekly for other issues, and to simply connect. Meanwhile, they have a Whatsapp thread that enables them to constantly stay connected and in touch with each other. Balancing always-on connectivity and scheduled connectivity is key.

A partnership is a marriage and reflective listening is key!

Onyi shared their perspective that being in a co-founder relationship is like marriage, and that communication is key for any marriage to work. As she says, “The future of this company rests partly in how well we're able to communicate. So we tell each other the good, the bad and the ugly.” She shared their simple and effective approach to communication - making specific time for it, and using active listening intentionally:

“I hear what you're saying, I reflect it back to you. You hear what I'm saying and you reflect it back to me.”

Know who your real audience is

We discuss user-driven product development, which Eve and Onyi, as a former patient and doctor, are a unique example of…but we also discuss how in their current stage, investors are their actual “buyers”. Onyi discussed how she’s developed a keen sense of “push vs pull” when they are making their investment pitch - some investors just get the commitment required to make a startup like this successful, and those people are their real audience. It’s not about convincing the wrong people, it’s about finding the right people.

Balance Now and Next

Every startup needs to balance managing their current challenges and opportunities with putting energy into strategic vision and planning. Eve points out that this is a particular challenge for medical and device companies - the rate of change can be slow, due to fundamentals of the problem space. So, there needs to be more patience and intention put into planning and hypothesis testing. As Eve pointed out, There is immense pressure to achieve immediate results, but real impact takes time.

Head over to theconversationfactory.com/listen for full episode transcripts, links, show notes and more key quotes and ideas. You can also head over there and become a monthly supporter of the show for as little as $8 a month. You'll get complimentary access to exclusive workshops and resources that I only share with this circle of facilitators and leaders.

Links

https://missiondriventech.com/

LinkedIn:

Onyi: https://www.linkedin.com/in/onyinye-balogun-md-ms-22b57283/

Eve: https://www.linkedin.com/in/evemcdavid/