Finding Mastery with Dr. Michael Gervais - How to Think, Create, and Lead in Unconventional Ways | Sarah Stein Greenberg

Episode Date: January 12, 2022

This week’s conversation is with Sarah Stein Greenberg, the Executive Director of the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford University (the “d.school”).For over a decade, she has helped lead the d.school to nurture creative thinkers and doers and help spread the methods of design.Sarah teaches at the intersection of design and social impact - she likes to tinker with old educational formats and adapt them to today’s learners.She has taught the d.school’s foundational class Design Thinking Bootcamp, an experimental course called Design Thinking for Public Policy Innovators, and the long-running, high impact Entrepreneurial Design for Extreme Affordability, whose students have gone on to design products and services that have helped over 100 million people worldwide.Sarah is also the author of Creative Acts for Curious People: How to Think, Create, and Lead in Uncoventional Ways.It’s a timely, highly visual resource for people who seek to choose curiosity in the face of uncertainty, filled with ideas and 80 innovative exercises around the art of learning and discovery.So, this is a conversation about learning how to better define the problem before you try solving it and I think you’re going to love it …_________________Subscribe to our Youtube Channel for more powerful conversations at the intersection of high performance, leadership, and meaning: https://www.youtube.com/c/FindingMasteryGet exclusive discounts and support our amazing sponsors! Go to: https://findingmastery.com/sponsors/Subscribe to the Finding Mastery newsletter for weekly high performance insights: https://www.findingmastery.com/newsletter Download Dr. Mike's Morning Mindset Routine! https://www.findingmastery.com/morningmindsetFollow us on Instagram, LinkedIn, and X.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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and not something that enough of us have been trained in. That's part of what I'm trying to do here with design is to really help people have those skills to be prepared to face those kinds of unknown challenges. Okay, welcome back, or welcome to the Finding Mastery Podcast. I'm Michael Gervais, and by trade and training, I'm a sport and performance psychologist. I am fortunate to work with some of the most extraordinary thinkers and doers across the planet. And the whole idea behind this podcast, behind these conversations is to learn from the extraordinaries, to pull back the curtain, to explore how they have committed to mastering both their craft and their minds. Now, as you recognize, our minds are our greatest asset.

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easier. So if you're trying to hit your daily protein goals with something seamless, I'd love for you to go check them out. Get a free variety pack, a $25 value and 10% off for life when you head to davidprotein.com slash finding mastery. That's David, D-A-V-I-D, protein, P-R-O-T-E-I-N.com slash finding mastery. Now, this week's conversation is with Sarah Stein Greenberg, the executive director of the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford University. It's also called d.school. For over a decade, she has helped lead the d.school to nurture creative thinkers and doers and to help spread the methods of design. So Sarah teaches at the unique intersection of design

and social impact. She also likes to tinker with old educational formats and to work to adopt them to today's learners. She's taught the d.school's foundational class, Design Thinking Bootcamp, an experimental course called Design Thinking for Public Policy Innovators, and the long-running, high-impact Entrepreneurial Design for Extreme Affordability, whose students have gone on to design products and services that have helped over 100 million people worldwide. So this is a conversation about taking a different approach to problem solving. I think you're going to love it.

With that, let's jump right into this week's conversation with Sarah Stein Greenberg. Sarah, how are you? I'm doing great, Michael. How are you doing? Yeah, today's a great day. So it actually happens to be my birthday. Really? Oh, I feel so honored to be sharing your birthday with you and anyone else who's listening. Congratulations. That's fun. I think that it feels more like it's something that I should be thanking

my parents for. Like I didn't have much to do, you know, decades ago on this day. Like I, you know, I just kind of popped out. So yeah, for sure. So it's a fun day and I'm thankful that we're able to have this conversation. Do you have a special way that you like to celebrate your birthday? And is that any different in this particular moment as we're still kind of in this transitional, you know, new world of where we are in the pandemic currently? Look at you asking questions already. I can't wait to get into how you structure questions, but I will, you know, let me honor that because the answer is yes.

And when I think about life purpose, for me, it is quite simple. It's to help people relationship with the planet, and to build a relationship with machines. I'll put an asterisk next to that. And so that's how I celebrated my day today is I took time to make sure that I was investing in myself, investing in loved ones, investing in time and the planet. And then I haven't figured out the investment in the machines for me today, but that's how I'm doing it. So yeah, thank you. That's great. I do want to asterisk that relationship with machines and go back to that at some point and hear more about what you mean by that. Well, let's just do it really quickly now before we get into your work is that

it's a simple conversation, but machines are coming. You know, in nine years, we will have a machine, best predictions at least, that will be smarter than the smartest human. And so in 15 years, we're going to have bunches of them. And they're going to work faster than us. They're going to process faster. They're going to be able to solve problems in interesting ways that we will not be able to compute and do. And so our relationship with machines is going to become extremely important from like an artificial intelligence, you know, a deep thinking standpoint. And if they're learning from us, I'm nervous because I think when they learn from us and watch us, I'm not sure if they're going to see the best

of humanity. And so if they can do what we show them better than what we can do right now, I'm nervous about that. And so those relationships that we're building with machines will be important because if we treat them like an adolescent that is edgy and doesn't know what they're talking about, and they're just stupid machines and like frustrated by it, as opposed to loving them more like a child i think that we're going to find ourselves in a divide that is going to be problematic for humanity and so there's a much longer conversation to have there but that's the beginnings of why i think our relationship with machines is so important i i think you're onto some really important

ways of thinking about it, but I would just say I think it's here in certain ways. I think just the rise of machine learning in so many different contexts that are being built into products and services today and the degree to which they are learning from us because they learn from our data sets and our data sets are riddled with bias and ways in which we are replicating kind of our current social structures and our current ways of seeing, for example, our relationship with the planet or with each other. That's already happening, I think.

And so really, really being mindful and starting to understand the role that this kind of automated decision making is playing in our lives today, as well as, you know, in the future. I think that's, yeah, it's going to be a kind of transformative topic of our times. Are you an optimist about this? Not just in general, we'll get to that in a minute. But when you start thinking about the future of machines, do you have a optimistic lens or do you have some concerns? I don't want to call it pessimistic, but do you have some fears or anxiousness or concerns about the future state of our

relationship with machines? Well, I think actually being an optimist and having fears and concerns are not mutually exclusive. That's correct. So I would really put myself in the kind of informed hope category, which is described really beautifully by a writer named Rebecca Solnit in her book, Hope in the Dark. And she writes about, you know, sort of if we just think about optimism and pessimism as our sort of only options for ways to look at the future, there's something that's a little bit passive about both of those, right? Like if you just think pessimistically, it's like, well, things are not going to go well, right? So I don't have to do

anything about it or there's nothing I can do about it. And by the same token, just thinking optimistically, you could also let yourself off the hook and say, well, things are going to go great. So what do I need to do about it? And I think there's a way to straddle that a little bit and say, I have hope for the future and I am going to show up and apply my, you know, in our case, in our, in our environment, like our creative abilities, our design abilities to, to actually trying to see a better future, but I'm not going to take it for granted. And I'm actually not going to take my own sort of role and dynamic in that for granted. And I really, I find a lot of meaning in that, in that idea of informed hope. And I think that, you know, she's really, in that case, she's writing about the very human tendency when confronted with uncertainty

to cling to anything that feels predictable. And so that optimism narrative is predictable, right? It's an attempt to try to say like, I kind of know it's going to go fine. And so is the pessimistic one. And it's kind of both disorienting and courageous to be able to say, I don't know what's going to happen, but I want to be there. I have some hope and I'm going to get in the game and try to work on these kinds of things and try to make them better. Well, okay, let's stay here. I know this isn't at the center of what I would hope we would talk about, but this is materially important because I'm going to agree and then add something to this, right? Optimism and pessimism is the lens that we see the future through. That being said, naive optimism and naive pessimism is the lens that we see the future through. That being said,

naive optimism and naive pessimism is a passive approach. And it's a very dangerous way to engage with how you think the future would unfold. And so naive pessimism would be the most egregious, would maybe, you know, would be like, hey, listen, this abusive relationship I'm in is going to work out when the other person is not doing any work. It's naive to believe anything will change. So being an active participant in co-creating your future is an important part of having, and this is a term I think you'll appreciate, agency. And so being, you know, agentic in your life with a lenses about how you believe if you can express your best abilities consistently, tandem with other people in your community and team and tribe and whatever,

that that co-creation is actually what becomes the active realistic part of how you believe the future could work out. And so I think I'm, maybe I'm just restating the same thing that you are positioning. Yeah. I mean, I think, I think you're hitting on, you know, for me, something that's quite important in creative work, which is agency, right? It's like, do you have, and part of it is like, well, you can see and notice lots of problems around you. And if you don't feel like you have any creative agency, what is it that you could possibly do? Right. And that's, that can like lead you into that more pessimistic kind of being stalled out. And so, I mean, that's a lot of the work that we do with folks who may not yet believe or understand how to use their own creative abilities to start to actually develop that kind of creative self-efficacy, that creative agency that we want everybody to have and to be able to take into the world.

Okay. So agency is, we can define it by, let me just do kind of a street version of it, which is I choose. I've got some abilities here to choose how I'm going to think and do, right? And I'll be, it's definitely a pedestrian street version of it. What does creative agency mean when you put those two together? So the way that I think about it is that it is the ability, not just to, as I said, like notice things around you that you want to change, but to try to do something about it because you have some belief that you can come up with something that's better. And that self-efficacy that gets honed over time or that gets, I guess, developed or built or

strengthened because you see some evidence that when you try using your creative abilities, you can actually make a difference. And we structure that into the very way that we teach at Stanford in that we start people out with quite small, very scaffolded, quite constrained projects to work on. There's a little bit of room to maneuver. There's a little bit of room for creativity, but we're not throwing you into the deep end. And then you try another one. You might see some success. You might learn a lot about where you need to strengthen your abilities. You try the next one. It's a little bit less scaffolded. It's a little bit more open-ended and you build up that resilience over many, many cycles to actually be able to tackle some of the most, you know,

intractable or large scale or systems level kinds of challenges. And the reason that we're doing that is twofold. One is so many people come to creative work thinking, but, or, level kinds of challenges. And the reason that we're doing that is twofold. One is so many people come to creative work thinking, but I'm kind of buying into some of the myths that we have in society about like who is and who isn't creative. I'm not creative. I can't draw. Everybody's heard that. Someone said it to me just yesterday. And that's one thing that, you know, can really hold people back, right? So you have to actually see some proof of your creative abilities in small ways. And then the other piece is that, you know, what we're really trying to do is to train people to be ready to solve and address problems that haven't even occurred yet, right? That we may not have names for yet.

Wait, wait, hold on, hold on, hold on. I hate to interrupt. It's like you dropped like 15 gems in here. Like I'm afraid I won't be able to hold them together. Like it's so good. Okay. So, okay. One, thank you for clarity and the simplicity in your thinking helps me reaffirm that you spent a lot of time here and really have gotten into some of the first principles of creativity and to be able to do it at scale. But let's go back to the scaffolding nature. So tightly scaffolded to wide open. Can you give me an example of a tightly scaffolded beginning project? Yeah. So, I mean, let's even see if we can layer this on. Maybe sort of like what is design and design thinking can become clear through this example. So there's an example that I share in the book that's called The Haircut. And The Haircut is a kind of early starter project that's great for getting some familiarity with this way of working. I'll say that one more time.

Great for getting some familiarity with this way of working. And you start by sitting with a partner and interviewing them about their haircut experiences, right? And they may also be interviewing you if they're doing the exercise at the same time. And just finding out in a very open-ended way, what works for them, what doesn't work. You maybe want to probe for some very specific stories, like best haircut experience you've ever had. And the worst one, um, you might want to find out a little bit more about like, what do they remember from when they were a kid or, you know, are, if they're a parent, what do they experience when they take their kids to get their haircut? You're trying to get a kind of a broader sense of like, is, is hair care meaningful to this person? What are some of the

experiences that they've had, positive and negative? And then you think about, okay, all the things that you've just heard, what are some of the needs that came up, right? Either a need that could be to make something better or to like keep reaching for that aspirational, wonderful experience. So for example, you might find out like for a really busy parent, they haven't had like a moment to themselves for a haircut in years. And like, that's the experience that you want to design or for somebody who, you know, has like had a, just a terrible communication problem about what it is that they want. You come up with some idea that's about, you know, like giving them inspiration as they're walking into the, into the salon to get their haircut. Lots of different

needs come out. Then you come up with a bunch of different ways that you might address those needs. That's the ideation or the brainstorming piece. Then you build a few of them into prototypes. You might sketch that out. You might, you know, build something out of Legos or cardboard very rapidly. And the reason that you do that is because you are trying to express a kind of not fully formed idea and give the person that you're designing for the opportunity to have a little experience of it and to see for themselves, like see something new in it, perhaps that you're not even yet expressing. And you get some feedback from them. And sometimes you realize like, oh, I didn't really get the need right, but they help explain kind of what they are resonating

with. Sometimes you realize like, oh, they really love this idea. I'm going to build this out further. And you might go through an iteration and then you'll have kind of a concept that you might be ready to share with others. So in the most basic terms, that is a way of arriving at a challenge and opportunity for creative work in this case, like redesigning the haircut experience and then listening and, and honing in on some real human needs, right? Not your own, not your own idea of what could be improved or what's needed, but actually someone else whose lived experience is probably different than yours. And from that, you will get some new ideas that you could not have had walking into that initial interview. And that is often what we're trying to do in design is to put

ourselves in the way of inspiration and insight that's beyond our own field of vision and actually do that to be able to make something that's useful or innovative for others. What does that mean to put myself in the way of? So it's a, yeah, I guess that's a little colloquial sort of in our own terms. But what I mean by that is to create the conditions or the context in which new information is going to come to light. So if I'm in an interview with somebody who I'm designing for, instead of asking questions that are very close ended, do you like getting a haircut? Right? Like rate on a scale of one to 10, you know, what this, this experience is like, right? That's not actually going to give me new ideas or very much real insight. But if I ask you, tell me about the worst haircut experience

that you had, I'm going to hear a really interesting story. And from that story, I get not just kind of the mechanics of what you didn't like about it, but also probably a little bit about how you feel about, you know, your appearance, how you feel about relating to people in a service provider role, like, you know, lots of different stuff could come up. And my job is to actually stay with you and to, and to hear where is there an emotional relationship that you're expressing to the experience that you've had? Like, where is there actually emotion coming out? That's often where people's, like, beliefs and worldview and needs really lie.

So, you know, from a psychology perspective, this is not news to you, right? But I'm not listening from a psychology perspective. I'm really listening from a design perspective. I'm trying to understand what is important to this person that I want to design for. Finding Mastery is brought to you by Momentus. When it comes to high performance, whether you're leading a team, raising a family, pushing physical limits, or simply trying to be better today than you were yesterday, what you put in your body matters. And that's why I trust Momentous. From the moment I sat down with Jeff Byers, their co-founder and CEO, I could tell this was not your average supplement company.

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focused for longer without digital fatigue creeping in. Plus, they look great. Clean, clear, no funky color distortion. Just good design, great science. And if you're ready to feel the difference for yourself, Felix Gray is offering all Finding Mastery listeners 20% off. Just head to FelixGray.com and use the code FindingMastery20 at checkout. Again, that's Felix Gray. You spell it F-E-L-I-X-G-R-A-Y.com and use the code FindingMastery20 at FelixGray.com for 20% off. This is all gold, but what are you designing for? So in this little project, right, I am, I am practicing my skills primarily, unless I'm like a, you know, hair entrepreneur, who's about to go launch a new,

a new, you know, disruptive innovation in the, in the hair care space, which, you know, maybe I am, who knows. But the, the idea is we practice a type of design called human-centered design. So we really want to make sure that when we go to create something, we are actually doing it, you know, we are creating something that is a benefit for someone else, that has utility for someone else. And that's an important mindset shift from thinking about like, oh, well, here's this fancy new piece of technology or this new scientific advancement. Like we could make anything, here's this fancy new piece of technology or this new scientific advancement. We could make anything. Let's make something. I'm sure someone will need it. We go from the opposite perspective. We think about what do people need,

and then we figure out how to build it. Are you designing an experience for insight to get to solution, or are you designing specifically for the solution? And I know there's a step in between that part of the process is through the design process is to understand the problem. And I want to bang these kind of three pieces of it pretty hardly, actually, or pretty loudly. So what are you designing for? So when I, as an educator, am designing a piece of curriculum that I want others to use to learn how to use design, I am designing a learning experience, right? When the person who's sitting in the interview with the person talking about their hair, they are both trying to find opportunities that could result in creating

innovative solutions, but they're doing it in a way where some of that meaning is actually co-created, right? So the kind of research process is a creative research process where often the person who you are interviewing or whose needs you're trying to understand, they're reflecting on the conversation in the moment as well, and often contributing ideas about the potential solutions or the nature of the need. So it can function on a couple of different levels. I'm actually not like, does that hit at what you were asking? It does, because there's a nuance here. Like, am I designing to understand the problem? Am I designing to create a shared experience for insight? Am I designing solely for a solution? And it sounds like it probably is all three of those. basically a person-centered approach that the person holds insight, that the person holds

understandings, and that our job is to honor those insights and understandings and to understand the solutions they've applied in the past and to help bridge some of the gaps so that they can have agency over the solutions that they're trying to sort out. And so they don't need a hero to do it. That would be a mistake, right? It's to help unlock the insights and then provide a space for solutions. And I think it sounds very similar. And maybe that's why I get tripped up because it sounds so much like psychology applied to specific problems that people are trying to, not psychotherapy, but specific problems about business or at the geopolitical level or at infrastructure levels, whatever it might be, not just interpersonal. Is that a fair capture? Well, I mean, I really resonate with your,

maybe it's just so simple that that's why I've not been understanding it. And there's actually a great, I quote one of my uh, Nicole Kahn in the book talking about like, you know, design is actually really simple. It's like, we ask people about some of their needs and what's going on in their lives. We come up with some ideas that might help them. We ask them for feedback on whether that's, you know, meeting their need. And then we keep iterating and it's a, it's a cycle. And that fundamentally, that is the kind of, you know, design that we're talking about. And it does, it is common sense, right? It's actually quite straightforward. And what's very useful about it, particularly when you're tackling really complex

issues is that it allows you as the designer to not go in thinking that you're the expert, right? Thinking that you, you already are going to know the answer because right. If you already know the answer, it's quite unlikely that you're the expert, right? Thinking that you already are going to know the answer because, right, if you already know the answer, it's quite unlikely that you're going to come up with something innovative. And it's also probably unlikely that you're going to come up with something that's truly, you know, for others, right? Or could meet a need in the market. And so having an iterative process where you're listening, you're discovering in a structured and robust way, you're experimenting, you're testing your ideas, you're listening, you're discovering in a structured and robust way, you're experimenting, you're testing your ideas, you're getting feedback and improving them,

that actually frees you up to walk in with this open mind about the nature of the opportunity you're going to be designing for, as well as the nature of the solution you're going to be creating. And I will say that that is quite a hard thing to shift to for many folks who come from like a very expertise driven culture I think this is one of the harder things for companies when they start thinking about like how do we bring design into into an organization because we start with a posture of acknowledging that we don't know the answer and that's actually quite an unusual discipline and but it But it's really, really important in terms of getting to someplace that's creative and getting to someplace that's

innovative. So you can apply design thinking inside of a relationship between a quote unquote boss and direct report to help solve a problem that they're trying to sort out. Is that also a fair way to deploy design thinking? Yeah. I mean, people use design thinking in so many different ways. I mean, even in terms of like thinking about like, what am I going to make for Thanksgiving dinner, right? Like how do I actually meet the needs of all my guests? You know, people use like a really wide range of, or they apply it to a very wide range of things. There's a great practice in the book called instant replay, which actually from a sports perspective, this will sound like completely obvious, but it doesn't get used enough in terms of thinking about teams and collaboration. And it's a, just a simple practice of, you know, filming a team meeting that you're having in order to

review that tape later as a group and see how you're doing as a team. And some of the things that often will come up is like, oh, the boss thinks that they're really, you know, open-minded and they sit and listen, but actually they're talking, you know, 75% of the time. Or folks who are, you know, really on the quieter side will actually see themselves hold back and realize like, oh, that's maybe something I want to start working on. Or you'll and amplify that voice. But having that kind of practice can help you become aware of those dynamics in your collaboration. And it's the same thing that we might do if we're trying to learn about and observe a situation for a design purpose. It's about an intentional period of observation and then reflection and seeing what you can learn from that and then improving over time. So will you take, just as a matter of

process, you'll film it. Everyone knows that it's being filmed probably. And I would imagine everyone knows. And then you would watch it back individually with each person in the meeting, or would you watch it back with a team? How would you do that? Yeah. So the person who designed this practice, Eugene Korsansky, you could do it a number of different ways. But the way that he designed it, one, absolutely everybody knows that you're doing this recording.

It is not a secret taping. The other thing that he thinks is really, really important is that you really make sure everybody knows it's not being used for an evaluation purpose. And it's really being used as a way to tune up the collaborative abilities of the team. And so there's a caution, which is like, if you're a team in crisis, this is actually probably not like you need to actually address that crisis. This is, this is really about an opportunity for improvement. So the conditions need to be, you know, you need to be thinking about that, but then after you do that, um, the recording, you should all watch it together silently or, you know, without a lot of talking in between, and you should really be taking notes about what you observed and then

what you interpret from that. And then you have to make sure that everybody gets an opportunity to share. And then Eugene has designed the most beautiful ritual at the end, which is you delete the tape, right? It's really meant to be, this is a moment in time.

This is not a persistent artifact that we're going to keep with us. It's just a way for us to have a really robust conversation where we get to see ourselves a little bit more objectively because we're viewing ourselves interacting without being inside that experience at the same time. Does this process hold up or this very easily do with video conferencing. In fact, in a way that may feel even less intrusive than if you're like putting a video camera in a physical conference room. So frankly, the environment that we're in now, these days, I think really lends itself to this kind of practice. Last bit, and I'll ladder it to sport in a minute on feedback loops is, would you play the tape back within an hour, within 10 minutes, within 24 hours? Like what is the amount of time before you provide the feedback session? I might give it at least an hour, but I wouldn't give it more than, you know, a day or two. I think it's, it's meant to, cause it's not meant to be like a retrospective tool. It's really meant to be a little bit more

of a, um, an analysis of kind of the, in the moment. Um, and, and there are many reflection tools actually that we use in design and also just in terms of how we teach and how we think about learning at the D school,school, where you want to actually get better at reflecting in the moment so that you can guide your, you can make really mindful choices about how you're showing up in a collaborative environment or in a creative process. But to get good at that, you need the retrospective reflection, right? You actually have to hone that ability to notice, you know, sort of almost in a detached way what's going on. And that just takes some practice. So I would say maybe 10 minutes isn't quite enough

to get out of your head, but like more than a day or two, and it's going to feel a little bit old and stale. So somewhere in that, in that zone. Yeah. From sport, there's some well-understood timeframes for feedback loops and there's a gold standard. So this is more for coaching, if you will, but immediacy tends to be better than time over time. And so, but sometimes there's a cost to immediacy because you're breaking a flow, you're disrupting a rhythm, you know, and so you have to know the art of how to interrupt properly. And then, then if we're using film, then as soon as you possibly can, and there's actually from a physiological standpoint, there's some data that would suggest within a couple seconds. And then if not best practice would be to have it as soon as you possibly can from the time that the practice ends. So their physiology is still up, but they've got some time to kind of quiet particular parts of

the brain down so they can be in a more advanced learning mode as well. But 24 hours is like a maximum. You do not want to go longer than 24 hours before reviewing film and tape or whatever. So there's some windows of time that are actually quite interesting. I love that. That's fascinating. Yeah. Cool. All that being said is maybe now's a nice time to talk about the five phases to design thinking, because I think that those five phases probably show up as a thin slice in the exercise you just shared, but also there's a macro arc to these five phases. Yeah. So let me first preface this by saying that there are many different ways to describe design and design thinking. And actually, what I think of as design thinking is those attempts

to create a mental model for folks who may not intuitively work this way as designers have always worked. But there's really no one right way to describe a creative process. So I'll say, you know, there's a model that uses five phases. There's models that use seven phases or 10 phases. There are models that are really meant to emphasize that it's an iterative process. And you'll see those kind of arranged in a circle. There are the model that has really taken off in the UK is the double diamond model, which really emphasizes that in certain phases of the work, you're diverging, right? You're coming with lots of different ideas or you're having lots of different observations. And then in other phases, you're converging. And that is when you're making decisions, you're narrowing, you're synthesizing and distilling kind of the main ideas and that,

that you go through that multiple times, hence the double diamond. And what I, what I, the reason that I say that is because I think that as design has increased in popularity, people have kind of, it's gotten simplified in a way that is really useful for new learners to start to pick up these practices, but also can become a little bit too rigid. And so I'll talk about like the way the sort of main phases, but I just want to offer that caveat, which is, these are all great ways to learn and to have a mental model and to have kind of an orienting mechanism in your, in your mind when you're going through a foggy kind of messy iterative process. But there is no one, you know, right one, but often the way that I think about it for myself is that there is a really important phase where you are really

trying to find and uncover and refine your understanding of the problem that you're trying to address and phases where you are working on the solution. So kind of almost like problem finding and problem solving, and you're moving back and forth. And a lot of the skills that you're using when you're within a problem finding mode is, as we've talked about, you're moving back and forth. And a lot of the skills that you're using when you're within a problem finding mode is, as we've talked about, you're interviewing and listening to people and understanding stories. You're observing, you are doing secondary research. You're trying to understand more about the context. And then you're stepping back and you're saying like, how do I connect the dots? Like what's really important here? That's a phase that we call

synthesis. And that's where we often then will define, here's the problem that I really want to work on, or here's the unnoticed need and the unmet need that I think is really worth surfacing here. Then you might move into more of the deliberate phase of trying to come up with some ideas to address those problems. Moving forward, you then are going to build, you're going to figure out, okay, here's a few of the ideas that I think are the most promising. I'm going to build them as if I was going to advance them so that I can get actual feedback about them. We talk about that as prototyping. And then in an ongoing way, you are testing those prototypes and you're getting real feedback. But the way that I just described it is a more

linear version than how it often operates. And I think that's one of the things that I'm hoping for in this book is that there are lots of ways into all of these different skills, but I have somewhat deliberately not organized it according to one of those existing mental models, because I don't want to get people too stuck in a rigid way of thinking about how to use their design abilities. Really cool. And there was a moment in time where I was presenting and I had done a, this company had asked me to present this content that I'm thinking about in my mind. It's not relevant for the conversation here, multiple times across the corporation and a leader that had been in it multiple times.

This was more of a kind of the innovation slash refinement phase. Like we had innovated something. We're trying to refine the messages and the practices and, you know, the general framework of what we're trying to deliver to this corporation was a pilot phase. And the leader comes up to me afterwards and goes, Mike, this is, it's so good. I love the storytelling. I love the science.

I love how practical this is, but it doesn't hang together well for me. It feels like these amazing snowflakes. Like, can you just share a snowman? I was like, oh yeah. So you want a model and, and you, are you saying that you went kind of orthogonally away from a model and have provided and have seen value in brilliant snowflakes? And that is inviting people to be in wonderment of a particular snowflake as opposed to seeing the whole structure in its form. I think that the snowman and the snowflakes are both useful. But I guess I would just say like there are many different snowmen or snow people. And I think where I where I hope that the field goes is to be able to to offer those different models without people overly identifying with one as the recipe, like the thing that they can just do every single time in a rote way. When we have a longer period of time to work with students or adult learners,

you know, the goal is actually to develop fluency and understand like, well, what am I actually gaining when I sit and interview somebody in an open-ended way? And that leads to this rich understanding of the needs and the opportunities, right? And if you really understand that, then you don't have to put it first or second or third. You actually know, when do I need to fill up that bucket, right? When am I low on insight and I really need to get out of my own head and behind, you know, out from behind the desk and actually go and interact with people who are having this need, right? When you've gained fluency around, why am I building these rough models and then going and testing them and getting feedback then like you don't need the sort of like linear

orientation because you will intuitively recognize like oh i i haven't actually tested any of these ideas i better go actually get some real data and some some feedback to move forward and so what i'm really trying to do is to i I mean, there are lots of wonderful mental models out there. I don't think, I don't know that we need another one. There is no one perfect one. What I want to do with this book in particular is help people get to some of that fluency in the different skills that are operating when you are in a kind of, in a creative process. Finding Mastery is brought to you by Cozy Earth. Over the years, I've learned that recovery doesn't just happen when we sleep.

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slash finding mastery and use the code finding mastery at checkout for 20% off your first order. That's calderalab, C-A-L-D-E-R-L-A-B.com slash finding mastery. So you are helping people become and to use tactics to be better learners. You're helping them embrace the not knowing, the anxiety of ambiguity, helping them kind of relish in it because that's where the good stuff will be explored. And you are a learner. So I would love to understand, like, where did that come from for you? And maybe you can, you know, use some of your storytelling chops to walk us through. Like, when I look back, it is now clear to me that I fell in love with learning? And how do you finish that? As a young kid, I think is the real answer. I think of learning as manifesting in so many

different parts of my life. I mean, it's learning to read a book. It's learning to build something. It's learning to be in a relationship with someone where you can be surprised by them and, you know, develop a real connection. It's learning to, I mean, literally like learn how to get better at a game or a sport that you're, that you're playing. And of course it's also learning when you're in a classroom and you're, you're taking in new skills and new information. But I guess I really think about learning as being like a thing that happens every day, if you're lucky, like a thing that happens every day as you are exposed to new information and new environments. And I get really bored with routine. I like need a lot of variety. I get really excited to be in new and different environments.

And I get really, I feel like my brain just fires in a different way when I'm at kind of intersections and overlaps. So that might be like the intersection of two cultures or the intersection of, you know, a partnership between two organizations that's starting to form. Or in my current life at Stanford, like we, the d.school really, we attract students from all over campus. So I've got students in the med school and students in public policy and students who are MBAs and students who are studying engineering. And that has some interesting effects, but one of them is there is no one expert, right? Like no one person has the secret to how, you know, what the thing is that you're going to build or which disciplinary perspectives is going to dominate, right? It's actually a really interesting meld and opportunity to borrow from different, different fields and backgrounds. And then it just provides

this opportunity for constant learning because you're like, as an engineer, you think about it that way? That's so interesting. So for me, there's just something always that has been true in my life about liking those intersections because I see them as such learning opportunities and learning kind of every day in every way that I can. I believe that about you. Some people say it because it sounds woke. I believe that's about you, uh, full heartedly. I want to understand the dinner table or the breakfast table when you were younger. And can you bring me into what it was like at your dinner table? Yeah, I'm going to tell a really embarrassing story, actually, which is my parents have told me this.

I don't have a memory of it because I was too young. I must have been in kindergarten and we read whatever kind of was like the age appropriate, you know, how how babies are made kind of story. And apparently my parents had a dinner guest that night at the end, which is kind of unusual in our house. But in the middle of dinner, I apparently just said, I just need to check and see if I got this right. And I like proceeded to recite, you know, with some, some detail, you know, the sort of like medic age appropriate, but medically accurate information that I had, I had learned

that day about, you know, human reproductive reproduction. My parents were like a little embarrassed. They were like, okay, this is, you know, we don't know this dinner guest super well, but they just kind of looked at each other and then looked at me and said, yep, that's right. And then like, we moved on. And I think that that, that story comes to mind immediately because I think that is like a great example of my parents just normalizing that taking in new information, even if my timing wasn't phenomenal in terms of how I was then sharing that information as a five-year-old, but that that learning process was really valuable,

was really validated, and that like sharing what you learned was a normal thing to do at the dinner table. And I have to say like that really continued throughout my childhood and adolescence. Like I clearly remember my parents, you know, to kind of sharing like what had happened at work that day. And I could hear them working out challenges and supporting each other and kind of talking through the projects and the problems that they were facing at work. And I think that was also a really useful context to see the thought process and to see the almost just like the long-term nature of like, how do you, how do you solve problems over time? How do you actually, um, like get good at and, and continue to improve how you're doing your work? I mean, you know, in my case, my dad worked in healthcare, my mom was in education. So like just, you know,

sort of long-term commitment to working in spaces where there sometimes aren't easy answers and you really have to show up for people. I was going to say, like, I don't, I kind of bristle at the question and tell me what your parents did. Like, cause it's, it's missing the point, but the fact that they sound educated and had done some sort of internal work that it sounds like you're, there was some stability financially, but I'm making that up. And there was some stability emotionally, and I'm making that up too. Would you check both of those boxes? Yeah. I mean, I was very, you know, fortunate that I grew up in a family that was, was pretty stable. It was really quite stable. In fact, we, you know, we kind of lived in one house

until I was, I don't know, in sixth or seventh grade and then in, you know, we kind of lived in one house until I was, um, uh, I don't know, in, in sixth or seventh grade and then in, you know, second house. And that was really like the whole, the whole context. I, we, we didn't move around a lot. I grew up in Philadelphia. We were there the whole time and basically in the same neighborhood the whole time. Um, and, and I went to one, one school actually for that, for that entire period. And I, I will just say, you know, definitely in my family, like learning was valued, reading was valued. We were a very restricted TV family. So, you know, like just did a lot of, you know, sort of active activities like reading and playing outside and, you know, pretty, pretty awesome.

Well, it sounds like it. So what caused anxiety? I mean, as a kid, I was really shy, actually, which is somewhat interesting to me now that I work in a role where I'm constantly surrounded by people. And I don't know why that is, why I was so shy as a kid, but I was definitely really reserved. And even things like the idea of, you know, going to, you know, if we were in the grocery store, like I didn't, you know, I wouldn't want to be talking to the cashier because, you know, she or he was a stranger. Like I definitely had a little bit of social anxiety as a kid and, you know, that can still manifest actually. But I have a lot of, as an adult, I have a lot of coping mechanisms to deal with that. Yeah. And you, it's interesting because you under,

you inherently will understand what it feels like to be unsettled because you had some lived experiences there. And then it's not lost on me that your position in the design thinking creative process, you're actually in control, but you do it benevolently by giving the keys to the person you're trying to help as a co-creator in the experience. But it's a safe place. And I say that as a psychologist. I understand that I'm not escaping from that. And I think it's actually one of the deep challenges, unsolved challenges at scale for

the discipline of psychology is that, you know, we want our people to be brave, but we're actually quite scared. And we've taken the position of having a, you know, in any form and it's safe. And so I think there's some benevolence in creating that space, but there's also some hiding that takes place. And I'm wondering if you recognize yourself in any of that, you know, the hiding in the job that you or the profession that you have so passionately moved forward. Well, I think the job that you or the profession that you have so passionately moved forward? Well, I think the place that you can't hide if you're in any kind of field where you're producing work and you're sharing it is, you know, that is a vulnerable act, right? So when I, and actually that's exactly why we have a lot of practices that are about

how do you share unfinished work in order to get good feedback on it? Because if you don't, and you only share that perfectly finished thing that you've spent, you know, the last two years creating that no one's ever seen, you are so invested that you are quite fragile if that does not succeed. But if you actually can develop a practice where you routinely share, and it's not, it doesn't make, it still hurts if somebody is like, oh, I really don't resonate with that thing that you made or like, I don't know, this isn't landing for me, or I would never use that. But, but doing that very early in your creative process, that is a way to, to recognize that

actually like, it's quite hard to put your, put yourself out there and put your work out there. And the earlier in your process that you do it, the more likely you are to be able to refine that thing into something that actually is going to be useful or that you could, you could put into the world, you could implement. So, so I will say that I think, you know, just as a human, I really love the design research process. And that is partly from some of the reasons that you described. It's partly because like, I've been in a lot of contexts where people are, people really need to be heard and listened to. And there's a part of, there's some real value that's exchanged just even in that act. And the place where I often then seek a really strong creative partnership is in the,

in the prototyping and the making and the sharing of that work. I have some of those skills, but for me, that's always the harder part is actually, you know, in those stages of design work. So I, you know, I think everybody has some kind of natural gifts and then some areas where we're all stretching. For me, that's definitely the part where I always stretch, but I have found it so valuable to, um, have ways to recognize that that is the harder part of, of design work for me to seek partnership around it. And then also to, to use some of these same tactics and skills, um, that, that I write about because they're so, they're so helpful in, in helping people actually get over some of those

fears. Okay. And you have an interesting part of the process, if I understand it, is that you do not start with the end in mind. You actually start with trying to understand the problem, but not the solution, which is a really interesting part of the process because oftentimes I find my incredible value in saying, okay, what would three years from now look like if it were amazing? Or let's just kind of take the lid off this thing and talk about an amazing three to five years, your personal life, your professional life, and try to create some expansion in that, and then try to crystallize that a bit more so that I can understand the texture of it, and then work backwards on creating some very practical steps and solutions or experiences that might get us closer to that lived experience. So

can you, can you like talk about waving off that strategy or would you double down and say, no, there's value in that. And we just do it a little differently though. Yeah. I, I, I just read some really interesting research that Jennifer Ocker did about the value of imagining the end state versus the goal you're trying to achieve versus the value of imagining what that would do for you. And actually that vision of what it would do for you if you successfully ran that marathon or you got that promotion, it that it's, it's actually the thing that comes next that helps you stick with those behaviors over the longterm. I found that very, very interesting because I think one thing I, I, that comes up for me a lot is wrestling with being

fixed on an end state, which is, I think can really constrain your creative ability versus being excited to, to live in the world after you solve that problem or after you've launched that new product or service that's beneficial. So I guess I don't know if that makes sense. Well, it does. If I just add that that first bit that you're talking about is actually helping ladder to purpose. And when we know

what matters to us most, we'll do whatever it takes. And so crystallizing that will help us stay in the hard parts of whatever it is that we're trying to sort out. So I like that. And then I can see and feel that clearly is a better way of saying it. And then the other part is like, I think that many of us are overwhelmed by taking the lid off or creating space to explore what could be. And it feels overwhelming. And when I've asked plenty of people in the business world about to walk through that exercise three years from now, you see their eyes kind of glaze like, oh shit, I got to be an adult. I don't know what to do here, but like, I'm just grinding. And like, there's this overwhelmment that takes place. Like, what do I, what would I say? What am I

supposed to write? And so I find that to be telling in many respects. And so it's almost too big. Yeah. We, I, we had a similar practice a few years ago where we were asking students to think about not what their major was, but what their mission was. And students got very tripped up if we talked about a single mission. But if you think about, hey, over your lifetime, you might have a number of different missions. Let's talk about the one that you're going to tackle next. That actually can, I think, reduce some of that which that may be related to what you're describing. But I have to say the feeling of being either overwhelmed or disoriented when you consider starting a process where you where you're acknowledging we don't know exactly where we're going to end up. That is one of those things that I think is critically important for all of us to be developing skills around at the moment in time, you know, in history that we're living through. We need ways to be able to say, I don't know what

the answer is. I don't know what's going to be happening six months from now. We don't know when the supply chain, you know, problem is going to be solved, but we can't remain, you know, we can't just get stuck. Right. So how do we actually start to learn about the new context that we're in, about the ways in which the world is changing around us? And I fundamentally think about design as a process of learning, right? It is a process that you can use when context has shifted around you or when you are trying to solve a problem that you haven't seen before, or a need that hasn't been met before. And having those skills and those practices to be able

to navigate an ambiguous context, but not rush to closure, right? Not rush to try to find that perfect end state, but actually stay in the problem space long enough to find those truly unique opportunities, that is both very difficult, but I think very, very necessary in terms of what we as, whether educators or problem solvers or leaders, actually need to become better at right now. It's really the ability to navigate ambiguity, the ability to hold space for others to do that, and the ability to embark on a learning process rather than a, like, I'm going to nail it today process, I think is

quite important and not something that enough of us have been trained in. That's part of what I'm trying to do here with design is to really help people have those skills to be prepared to face those kinds of unknown challenges. Great. You're taking me exactly where I wanted to go. So let's just take those three. Hold ambiguity for self and others. That's one and two. And then, geez, the third one just escaped me. Learning journey. Yeah. Not to kind of run to a solution, right? And so what would be the skills that sit underneath of that? So in terms of ambiguity, I think that one, there's some

recognition and some understanding of how you currently relate to ambiguity. So actually, if you don't mind, I can just ask you to do something we often ask our students to do, right? So if you think about like, if one end of the spectrum is, you know, ambiguity is something like I have to endure, I can't wait until it's done. It's like being in a dark forest and I just can't wait to get through to the light on the other side. At the other end of the spectrum is like, bring it on ambiguity all the time. I love to kind of like be in the problem and, you know, sort of explore and explore. And where do you fall on that spectrum? You know exactly where I sit and, and my team will drive. It probably drives people nuts that I'm so extreme on the other side. Like it feels like I am so in the process that sometimes I don't know

if I pull out properly to be able to say, wait, hold on. We actually need to kind of put a stake in the ground here. So I'm pretty extreme on, on the loving of not knowing and the loving of ambiguity. There's a cost to that. And I think a little bit. Well, yeah, I mean, I'm glad. So I'm glad you say that. I think there's, I think in really healthy functional teams, you have a mix of dispositions, right? And having that vocabulary across the team is actually very, very important because there are moments when the folks who are like, get me out of this ambiguity really need to sit with the problem and take the time to explore and to consider multiple directions. And there are times when the people who are like embracing

ambiguity, perhaps to a fault need to actually, as you just said, put a stake in the ground. So I think that having a balance can be really useful, but one of those skills that you need is just understanding, like, what is your relationship to ambiguity? For many people who have a hard time tolerating ambiguity, it is quite an emotional relationship. And that can manifest in teams in ways that create a lot of tension, particularly if there's like unexplored differences in how people relate to ambiguity. So that's one of those skills is like naming and acknowledging and keeping that alive. Another one of those skills is like a very fundamental and concrete one is you can preserve

ambiguity in a structured way by choosing not just one idea to move forward in your creative process, but multiple ones. So you might choose to prototype, do what we call parallel prototyping, right? I've got this one idea over here that's kind of the wild, ambitious idea. I've got one that sort of seems like it might be most financially rewarding. And I've got this one over here that seems like it might be most delightful for the person I'm designing for. If you keep those three prototypes alive and you test all of them, you are in effect preserving ambiguity, but you're not doing it in like a completely willy nilly,

you know, way where you don't ever know what's gonna actually help you then move forward. You're doing that deliberately to keep the solution space a little bit broader. And then based on the feedback that you're gonna get, maybe you'll merge those prototypes, maybe you'll narrow and realize like one actually is meeting the need better than another. So those are the kinds of practical skills that you can develop that help you also reframe your relationship with ambiguity, right?

It's not actually something that's out of your control. It's something you can invite into your process when you want to be able to explore. And then it's something that you can start to constrain when you are working towards a particular decision point or moving forward. It's a cool answer because that's not how I would have gone to it. I would have said, or I would maybe just add to what you said in the way that the skills that I'm interested in is when people are in a space that creates an emotional response, let's call it ambiguity. Some people, it kicks up frustration. For some people, it kicks up anxiety. For some people, it kicks up excitement.

And then so wherever the emotional response is, one, we need awareness. So awareness of that emotional response, awareness of the thoughts that are related to the emotional response, like how they're able to experience that. So that's where I go. And so that's where I think we can actually have real training. You know, it's like, that's where mindfulness would sit in it. That's where breathing protocols, that's where reframing to your earlier point would sit in.

And it feels like much of your work is actually helping people become more mindful. Yeah. There's a component, I think, of becoming more fluent in your own creative abilities and your own design abilities that is very much about awareness and getting there requires mindfulness and attention and reflection. So there's a great practice that my colleague, Leticia Britos-Caballero created, which is just called what, so what, now what? And it's a protocol that she uses with her students all the time, because actually like being good at reflecting on what you've just experienced or what's happened is not necessarily something that everybody is

just, you know, naturally skilled at. So having some prompts to structure the way that you're really breaking down and understanding, you know, what was happening in that learning experience or what was happening in that moment of tension with my team. And, you know, what does that mean, right? Like, what do I actually think about that? And then what do I want to do about that? What, you know, do I want to get better? Do I want to change how I'm showing up? And that kind of reflection, I think, can then create more of that mindfulness in the moment. We often talk about, you know, mindfulness of process as one of those underlying skills that we want to see our students acquire.

Because, you know, if you are in that sort of disorienting creative work and you're, regardless of what mental model you're using, there are going to be moments where you're like, wait, are we headed in the right direction? Like, is this meeting a need? Are we going to finish on time? All those kinds of questions come up. Being able to understand where you are is, is a really, really important skill, but you have to develop that for yourself. That's not, you know, especially like in the, in the real world, like there's no, you know, you're, you're charting the course, right? You are actually figuring out like, where are we in the process? And we want our students to learn that skill as early as possible. to an area that I'm really fascinated by, which is our obsessive concern with the opinions of other people. You know, what would be, I don't know, maybe an example of a design mission or approach to breaking down that fear and to helping people, individuals, but to do it at scale,

to be better at this obsessive fear that we have. Can you say more about, I heard two different things. I heard fear, what's the fear, but then I, and I heard concern and I initially interpreted that as like, you know, sort of like getting likes on, you know, social media or something. So like, which, which part of that are you thinking about? It's cool. The question is I'm taking note of how you did the question. So to answer the question is it is a pervasive, quiet, insidious fear that constricts people's freedom to express themselves. And the fear is what will they think of me? Yeah. I mean, so I literally just had the moment where I'm like, okay, Sarah, stop rushing to a solution. Like the first solution that I had, like the first thought that came to mind is like, I just want to get kids offline and give them an opportunity to like, all go to summer camp and not have to deal with, you know, living in an online world and develop real relationships. Okay. So that's a great example of where like immediately, frankly,

based on my own life experience, I just like defaulted to a solution. Even the great Sarah wants to run to a solution. Well, look, I mean, these practices exist because they are needed, right? So, so let me back up from that. I'm just, I'm just honestly sharing my, my interior monologue. You know, where I would really start is, is first of all, trying to figure out who are we talking about? So I think I would agree this is a pervasive problem. Let's go adults. Let's go adults. Let's go adults. Okay. So tell me more about these adults. Who are you thinking about? Let's

pick a subset of adults who you think are really strongly experiencing this problem? People who know they have more to give, they have more to share. They are talented. They have a skill, a set of skills that are not being properly expressed. These are the ones that don't raise their hand in a board meeting or a general meeting because like, what if I, what happens if, and they overthink because they don't want to get kicked out of the tribe. They're afraid that if they say something stupid or look stupid, that people's opinion of them will be detrimental to their future. These are folks who are asked to say something on a public stage and they're an absolute mess for 48 hours prior to that speech. These are folks who do not use their talents and cannot access their talents in business or otherwise to creatively solve problems because they're holding back. So these are the adults

who have so much to give, but are over indexed and over rotated on, I better not because those are the folks that I, it's the middle. It's the crisis of the middle. Like the leaders that are up there banging their chest and saying, follow me as nauseatingly as that sounds, they don't have the problem. And matter of fact, I'll just be kind of pedantic here is that you can't help a narcissist through like psychological skills training very well, because really what you need to do is help them just turn on the lights, right? So I'm not talking to the narcissist. I am talking to the gifted, skilled, reserved. So, I mean, from a design, so I'm going to really like not offer any kind of solutions because we

are at the stage where we just, we don't know what they are. I would say, I'd want to go talk to eight or 10 of these exact types of people that you're talking about. People who are, who are experiencing or identify with this challenge. I want to hear a bunch of stories, very specific stories about when this happened and what that looked like, where they actively held themselves back. Then I want to actually see like, what are some of the patterns, right? Like, are there interesting patterns just among the women in the group? Are there interesting patterns amongst people who are like really close to a promotion, right? Like what are there some situational characteristics, right? I might actually further refine who is it that I'm designing for, even though we've already narrowed.

And then, and the reason that you do that is because you want the strong signal, right? When you are trying to create something, you want to make sure it's going to really sing for at least some portion of the population. And often that means that you have to like, like dampen down a bunch of the noise that comes from the averages and hone in on a particular group that's truly experiencing this challenge in a unique way. Often what you wind up designing for that group then is useful for others, but having that discipline to focus, focus, focus on who and get some rigor around the patterns and the stories that you're hearing from that particular type of group is super, super useful. But once I really

had a sense of those patterns, I might reframe the problem. So we framed it here as being around like that fear of being judged or that fear of what might happen. That's still pretty fuzzy. I'd really want to understand it's like directly related to a certain type of consequence, or it's directly related to something else that we just, we just don't know, right? Because we haven't actually done that listening and that research, at least in this conversation, you may know much more than you're sharing right now. And that would help us frame how we then think about what is the experience that we're redesigning or what is the need that we're really designing for?

And that framing will have an enormous implication for what is the solution space that we're looking at. So it might be framed around, you know, I'm designing for women who are approaching a promotion moment who, you know, need ways to like express themselves authentically, or I'm designing for people who are, you know, in like stuck in a kind of middle management level for blah, blah, blah reasons. And, you know, like it's And from there, you come up with ideas, you test those out, and then you get some feedback and that helps you iterate and refine what you're offering.

Okay, brilliant. And then this was you. This was you when you were a child. I know we're solving for adults, right? But this is you when you're a child asking, not wanting to talk to the clerk or whatever, like there's some part of you in here too. But I say that because I would love to know three, four, five questions that you would start that first phase with by asking questions of folks

that have insights. Yeah. I mean, I, I think I typically, you know, in any, like, we really want to talk about how these interviews are structured. And I will say, actually, there's a wonderful assignment in the book that is about the arc of an interview, but you spend time building rapport, right? That's essential, because I'm actually going to try to ask for some like pretty personal, you know, information that could, you know, maybe top of mind, or it may be kind of difficult for people to get into. So the rapport is essential. Then I would ask for some specific experiences, right? And I would say like, tell me about a time when you had trouble getting an idea out at work, or tell me about a time when you feel like you didn't quite reach your full potential. And I would hear, and I would listen to those stories and we would stay with them and where there was kind of like an emotional response. I might ask, you know, deeper often, you don't have to ask a lot of questions to get going, but you have to stick with something and you have to keep asking why, right? Why, why, why did that happen? Or like, what do you mean by that? And you just allow for more and more to,

to come out. And then I might later on say, you know, like, I don't know if this is right, but I think I see a connection between that story you told and that other story you told, like, is that, you know, are those right? And, and ask the person to actually start reflecting back on the conversation that we've just had. And that's often where a lot of the meaning, the sense-making is happening. So those kind of three phases of an interview, literally like the building the rapport, then advancing through a set of stories and getting more and more texture around those. And then a reflection section where we're asking people to look back and help us understand the deeper meaning behind some of those. That then a reflection section where we're asking people to look back and help us understand the deeper meaning behind some of those. That's the basic arc of these kinds of conversations.

Brilliant. That's so good. And thank you for the clarity, the depth of knowledge, the transparency, and the kindness that you've bestowed in this conversation is an elegance to the way that your thoughts work. And so I just want to say thank you for that. And the book is loaded with exercises, you know, loaded with them. I wanted to get to a bunch of them shadowing and there's just a bunch of them I wanted to get to. So we'll just kind of pause and say, go get the book. How about that? That sounds great.

Yeah. I really hope people love it. And the other thing I do want to say is, you know, I, you know, we talked a little bit about sort of that co-creative process, like when you're, when you're in a design project, right. But I also, I, you know, the, the organization that I lead, the D school is like full, chock full of brilliant educators and designers. And really the, the, the ideas in this book come from this very broad community of, of expert practitioners. And I have just curated and distilled some of those ideas. And so I, that, and that is very much, you know, sort of like

part of my leadership style. Like I really, I love being in community and in sort of the, as I said, at those intersections, right? So I just want folks to know like the work that's in this book actually represents many, many years, many collaborators. And I hope that there's something in there for everyone, kind of no matter where you are on your creative journey. Brilliant. Just like you in this conversation. So thank you. It's a great resource. I'm stoked to introduce it to the community and everything will be available in the show notes and we're going to promote the book in all of our right channels. So I just want to graciously say thank you. And then here's a reductionist thought. Let's end from in a really

reductionist way is that if you only had one question, what would it be? Why? Yeah. That's your question, huh? Yeah. That's my question. It has been since I was a little kid. Why? Why? Why is that? Why does that work?

So clear. Again, Sarah, thank you. And I'm looking forward to, I'm looking forward to amplifying your work. D school stands on its own, you know, merit and to, but the book is special. So I just want to say thank you. Thank you. Thanks so much for this great conversation. All right. Thank you so much for diving into another episode of Finding Mastery with us.

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