Influencing Organisational Culture

Kasey Canlas at UXDX EMEA. Video: https://youtu.be/CUJFhtQ2Xbs

Readable transcript: edited from the recording's captions for readability (fillers and false starts removed, punctuation and section headings added). Wording is the speaker's own. Timestamps are positions in the video. Names marked [?] could not be verified against the audio.

Who is in the room

[00:00:00] Host: Let's start with our first question. In the room, what size organizations do you work for?

[00:00:08] Kasey: This is a good question, guys. I don't know what my size is. That's a good question. I don't know, I have somebody saying a thousand, there we go. Enterprise is pretty big, I would say. I feel like it, but then I'm like, I don't know, I haven't met everyone in the company yet.

[00:00:26] Host: Are you remote, or are you in the main office?

[00:00:30] Kasey: I am remote. I can tell you right now, the number of people that work in Ohio at Genesys is, I think, two, and one of them is me. So I'm really good at knowing the number of people that are locally in my area, but not great at everything else.

[00:00:43] Host: More than half of the room is enterprise, so 1,000-plus employees, and we've got a few in small, which is nice, so you've got a nice mixture. I just went from 5,000 to 300, so I'm in that medium section. No one's less than 10. They just don't even think about solo designers. I'm assuming you're an agency of one, freelance. Who are the freelancers in the room? Nice, we've got one, and some online, I assume. Fantastic. How many are below 50? How many of you are the only designer for the company? How many of you are the only researcher for your company? There you are, you poor soul.

[00:01:24] Kasey: We chatted earlier. I was like, "God bless you, here's an article about how you need to get more in there." Researcher, research operations manager, research manager: you're everyone. If you're a researcher, you don't want to be doing ops stuff. It takes a lot of time.

Building a research operations team at Genesys

[00:01:40] Host: The good news is, it's enterprise. Do you want to chat a little bit, and then we'll talk about your organization? Yours is pretty big, right?

[00:01:47] Kasey: I have worked for two different companies that were enterprise, in UX research. I worked for McGraw Hill, and they are a publisher, and then I also worked for, great, I've forgotten the name of my company: Genesys, customer service AI. I guess I could have looked down. Yes, I could have. Anyway, when I was in UX research, we'd had a research team, but then it ended up that everybody was no longer with the company. It just went extinct.

[00:02:16] Then they started building it back up from the ground, and because it was during a restructure, they asked me. They said, "You've been doing design operations unintentionally for the past five years. Do you want to go on the design ops team, or do you want to spin up the UX research team with them?" They said, "We need a UX research ops position, but we don't know what they do." And I was like, "Cool, I'll figure it out. This is awesome, that's different." I was like, "They sleep a lot. I think they eat snacks, lots of snacks, supplies of snacks." And they agreed that that was not my job.

[00:02:52] Thankfully Kate Towsey had written an article, so I read that, and it helped direct me, and I was looking at a lot of other operational things and figuring out how to do it. We now have a research team of how many? Like 25? When did we hire people? 25 researchers? I thought we were at 19. There we go, so plus management, 25. Maybe. I was thinking 19, but there are three managers and a director, okay, and researchers. It's been really nice, because we have a lot of products and a lot of specialties, and so being able to have a bit of a mixed bag of work...

[00:03:29] Host: Tell us a little bit about what Genesys does, so we know the kind of research you're working on. What does Genesys focus on?

[00:03:34] Kasey: Genesys, Genesis. I mean, "Genesis" is like the EU version, right? And they have it in Spain, so I don't know what version I'm saying.

[00:03:43] Host: But what do they do? What do you focus on?

[00:03:45] Kasey: The researchers, or me, or the company? Oh, okay. You know when you're like, "This isn't working, I'm going to talk to a customer service place"? You can call them, or you can click that little "chat with us" if you don't ever want to talk to somebody. This is me. I love the FREE NOW app, and then I just talk to the cab driver the entire time. So basically what it is... I forgot the question. Son of a gun, hold on. What does Genesys do? There we go.

[00:04:17] When you're looking at the "chat with us," essentially that's us. When you click on that and that bot shows up, and they're like, "Hi, I'm totally a human." They don't actually say that. It's very much, "What can I help you with?" and it gives you a selection, and it does a nice job there. That's one of the things. They also help with the customer contact centers, so those different back-end areas that are actually handling all the customer service, the calls that come in, and the people that are using those systems. Anybody inside customer service is really our designated demographic.

[00:04:47] Host: Does it include the knowledge base and FAQs, or is it mostly the contact?

[00:04:54] Kasey: Yes, thank you. I'm so glad I have a coworker here, because it turns out when you have bright lights in your face, you forget a lot of stuff. I should have brought sunglasses. It would have been really cool.

[00:05:05] Host: We were talking about doing this, but I kind of like the sun.

[00:05:09] Kasey: I know, it makes the shoes shine better. I wish I were getting a tan right now.

Researching people who are always on a queue

[00:05:14] Host: What is it like doing research on a product that is already a contact point? Do you interrupt them in the middle of it to try to get feedback? How do you actually conduct your research?

[00:05:24] Kasey: How much do you want to die? Because you should never interrupt somebody while they're doing a customer service thing. That was one of the most difficult things when I joined Genesys. Before, when I was at McGraw Hill, it was often teachers or students. Students are a little harder to get. Teachers, you can pretty much find a teacher. You could go outside and be like, "Is anybody a teacher?" and they'll tell you they're a teacher, and then they'll tell you their other friends are teachers, and it was very easy to get people.

[00:05:48] But customer service agents were one of our big groups, because they're the ones using a lot of it. There were always deciders that wanted to talk to you, the people that say, "Yes, I can make a decision on whether we should take this or not." But to get the actual people who are logging in every day and dealing with so much stuff, with outside noise, pressure, stress: you want to talk to them, but you can't talk to them. So you have to talk to their managers, and you have to talk to the CSMs who have an in with their managers, and then you have to say, "Can we talk to your people?" And they're like, "For how long? Are you going to want to talk to them again? How much time do you need? What's going to happen? Because we have them on a queue, and their time is measured, and there are metrics." It's not as easy as you would think.

[00:06:30] So it's really about providing that value, telling the CSMs, "Hey, yes, you'll let us talk to your customers, your precious customers that you have raised up from a baby, and now they're a full-grown adult and you're very proud. I will not scare them off. Here is the value I'm going to provide to you: I can give you back what I've learned about your customer." And then they're like, "Okay." And it goes well with one person, because the other CSMs have said, "No chance, you're not using them as a guinea pig." Then you get one good person, one good use case, and you're like, "All right, this worked out well, let's talk to the other ones," and they can vouch for you. So it's about getting an inside man to start the whole thing.

[00:07:05] Host: Okay, so given that was the environment, what was it like to get the research operations team built up and get more people, when people were so hesitant to do research to begin with?

[00:07:18] Kasey: It is very difficult, and it's never going to be something that you have 100% of people on board with. It's a great idea, it works in theory, but when you actually try to do it, you're just going to have that 1% that's like, "I was going to, and then I didn't." Then you're going to have another 25% that are like, "Yes, let's do this, I'm here for it." And I don't know the rest of the percent, because I'm terrible at math, but whatever that percent is, it's like, "We'll see how this goes, and then I'll tell you what I'm not doing and what I don't like." Those people are cool too, because then you know what you need to fix.

[00:07:51] So it does take a while to get that adoption going. It takes a while to get something new out there, to even see if it works, to get people to even do it, so they can tell you what's wrong with it. They might tell you what's right with it too, but there aren't as many of those. They really love to tell you what's wrong, and that's good. You need that.

Company culture: pathological, bureaucratic or generative

[00:08:08] Host: Certainly. For those of you here who are working in research, I'm assuming you also have to do your own operations, since you don't have a dedicated research operations team. How many of you feel like you spend more than half of your time doing operations and not actual research? Five, six, a lot of hands going up.

[00:08:28] Kasey: You should talk to them, Kevin. Why are you just sitting there? You want to go talk to some people? Talk to people after this.

[00:08:33] Host: Next question. I want to know how you would classify your company's culture. Is it pathological and power oriented? Is it bureaucratic and rule oriented? Or is it generative and performance oriented?

[00:08:45] Kasey: Can you say these in real words? Wait, people understand you. Never mind, we have parentheses. People like to have a lot of power: do they love having power and not giving it away? Do they like rules: do this, not that? All right. Performance: oh wait, here we go, you want results. We've got a heart. Oh, we've got a sad face. I'm hoping that's empathy and not that you're sad you're here. I really hope so.

[00:09:18] Host: Calling it: it's 47%.

[00:09:21] Kasey: Yes, we're almost there. Oh, you've got the stats. A lot of you are judged heavily on what you get done. They don't care how you get it done. They want a thousand tests done this week. They don't care if it takes nine hours to get one person to schedule.

[00:09:36] Host: Okay, so what is the research operations team like for you? What is the process you follow to make sure that they are both performing but have a bit of flexibility, a less bureaucratic environment?

[00:09:49] Kasey: That's a good question. We have somebody here on my team, Lely [?], and she just took a bite. I'm terrible, I am so rude. I was going to see if you could actually talk to somebody, because I can tell you I'm amazing at what I do and how I work with the team, but I would love for you to tell them, once you're done chewing, and I don't call you out on stage like a rude person. Lely is great, by the way. Lely works with me at Genesys; she's a researcher. Kevin could even go to her, so she doesn't have to come up here.

[00:10:18] Host: I'm going to get a mic just for that purpose.

[00:10:21] Kasey: You're going to get a magic mic. I was going to say, you don't want to come up here, do you? The lights are shining in your eyes. It's terrible for remembering stuff.

What research operations changes for a researcher

[00:10:29] Lely: Can you hear me? A little louder for us. So you want me to describe Kasey's process? It should be fun.

[00:10:36] Kasey: Oh, that's a first one that we can get in there.

[00:10:38] Host: What is it like working with Kasey?

[00:10:39] Lely: I was going to say, I used to work in a company where I did all my own research ops. I was the only researcher. I had to recruit everyone, I had to manage budgets and track down cost centers, and it would delay research by weeks. And of course some manager on the other side doesn't really understand that: "Just because I didn't email you that, why is everything not done?" And I'm like, "Well, because I've got to pay someone to come talk to me, so you've got to speed that stuff up." And then that causes crazy knock-on delays that no one really anticipated.

[00:11:12] Moving to Genesys, I moved to a big research team for the first time, and we had research ops, and it's crazy how much it speeds stuff up. There are always things that are going to introduce delays that you can't account for, but it's nice to have someone who can manage data privacy, and I don't have to feel that weight so much. If I do what Kasey says, I know I'm compliant and it's fine, and I don't have to worry. 80%, that's still a good, solid win.

[00:11:42] Or recently, for example, we needed new tools, and we just put out an ask, and we had an operations team to say, "Okay, well, I think we could probably push this tool, like Dovetail, through procurement." They tracked it down, they dealt with legal, and then suddenly I just log in one day and I have this tool that has sped my work up tenfold overnight. So it's great. Kasey describes her job as, "What's the problem? Tell me and I'll fix it," and that's pretty much how it works. So it's pretty good.

[00:12:15] Kasey: And it's great to get the feedback from the team too, because you can't just say, "Here you go, here's the process, do it now." You have to say, "Hey, what do you think about this process?" And they're awesome, especially Lely. There are others on my team too who have all these different perspectives, and they know what's going on. As researchers, they know how much pressure there is, so they can tell you, "Oh, that's never going to happen. I know that you'd love for us to do that; that's not going to work." And so it's like, "All right, what's the bare minimum you'll do, and what's the bare minimum I need you to do? Let's find the middle ground." Because you can't create things in a silo either, and that's something you'll find out as well.

Democratization and getting headcount approved

[00:12:55] Host: There's been a lot of talk about democratization and getting research out. I think there was even a debate.

[00:13:00] Kasey: Yes, there was. I think I had my own debate too. It was really fun.

[00:13:05] Host: How many of you have had reductions to your research team in the last year? None? Oh, very happy to see that. We've seen in the last layoffs, in February, that there was a bigger focus on research teams than on the design teams, but product design in general was cut when they did these big tech-wave layoffs. So democratizing research has become a super big theme, because they want PMs to do research, they sometimes want tech leads to do research, they want research to get the same amount done, if not more, than last year, with sometimes fewer people or smaller budgets, and especially a lot less time. And so one of the big challenges when you're trying to get a research operations team off the ground is: do we hire a researcher, or do we hire a research ops person?

[00:13:49] Kasey: Hold on, we're changing sides. I just realized my earring's in the other ear. We're missing out; you guys are just seeing a random piece. I want you to see the earring. All right, thank you. Sorry. Whatever you were going to say, continue on. We just made a mistake here. I need somebody to do staging next year. No, I'm kidding. All right, what was the question? I feel better. Earrings looking good. I love forums, they're so casual. We've got to do some nods or thumbs up, or I guess I could look there and you guys could just give me a sad face, and I'd be like, "Oh no."

[00:14:25] Host: One of the things that we're seeing is that democratizing research is becoming a big theme, sometimes driven by the need to get more done with the same team, or more done with a smaller team or fewer resources. So how do you hire? How do you get headcount approved to grow your research operations team?

[00:14:39] Kasey: That's a great question. I'm going to tell you, I wrote an article, and this is not a plug, by the way. I wrote an article with two other people, and the whole reason I wrote it was because at my old job there was one of me, when there had been 1.75 of me, and it was awesome. I loved having somebody who could work 30 hours a week in research operations and take some of that burden off. We'd alternate active recruitment, we'd alternate processes. And then when that person left, they were like, "Oh yes, we'll replace them sometime, eventually." Then I would ask again after a couple of months, and they'd be like, "Sure, we're looking into it." And I was like, "This is not sounding so promising."

[00:15:20] So I looked at how much I was doing, I looked at how much they wanted me to do, and I said, "Here's where I'm at right now, here's where you want me to be, here's what I can handle." And that's not handling it well. That is running around like, which I know you've seen me run around like an insane person, but at work, running around like an insane person is chaos. It's terrible. So I waited and waited, and I didn't get another hire. Unfortunately, though I loved the team and they were awesome, I had to say no, this isn't good for my health.

[00:16:01] Then I went to Genesys, and in my first interview I was like, "If you hire me, I'm going to ask for a headcount in a year. I'm just giving you a heads up. I'm going to expect a headcount in year two. Just throwing it out there." And I explained why. I said, "Here's the logic behind it." That's really the key point. You don't just go and say, "Give me this." Because if you have a kid, or a spouse or a partner or whoever, that says, "Give me this," you're like, "No chance. Nice, I love that you asked, but no."

[00:16:33] It's about saying, "Here's what's in it for you, and here's what you'll be able to do if you give me one more person. Sure, it costs this amount, but guess how much effort you'll save. Guess how much happier people will be." You heard Lely is a lot happier: she doesn't have to deal with tool procurement. I'd be a lot happier if I didn't have to deal with tool procurement, but sometimes that's part of the job, sometimes that's what we have to do. So figure out how you can say what you can do with that extra headcount. What are you going to do with them once you get it? How is that going to save you time? How is that going to put your valuable skills as a researcher or as a designer towards the thing that matters? Because that's where the key element is.

[00:17:15] "It takes me two hours to do this screener, and then to talk to people, and then to schedule them, and XYZ. It takes this amount of time. If you had one research ops person, or one extra researcher, they could do this and this and this." And they'll be like, "Okay, I'll take that back." Because they're going to go to their boss, who doesn't even realize that's a thing, and the boss is going to say, "Well, why do I want to do this?" And you've already given them the whole thing. They can just hand it to them in a nice bow and go, "Here's why I want this headcount." That doesn't always happen. You have to do some of the work in order to get that, totally.

Q&A: standing your ground when too much is asked

[00:17:54] Host: Does anybody have any questions for Kasey? Does anybody want to say anything?

[00:18:05] Audience: Hey Kasey, quick one. In a situation like that, where people are asking so much of you and you just can't do it, it's always hard to stand your ground versus people who often either don't understand what you're doing or don't care to understand. The only resolution I've found in my career is just moving company when it gets bad. You just leave and go.

[00:18:34] Kasey: When you don't want a lot of packing, yes.

[00:18:36] Audience: Sorry. Have you found success in standing your ground, or does it always eventually end up with leaving?

[00:18:43] Kasey: That's a great question. I've done it once before, and then I've actually stayed at the company that I'm at now. I have a boss that's pretty empathetic. Actually, very recently, I had made a roadmap, and I was like, "This is my roadmap. It's going to go great, it's going to go just as planned." And then we had a tool that wasn't working, and they were like, "This is not going great." The tool was getting higher priced and higher priced, and they were like, "Guess what, we need you to procure two more tools to replace this. It'll be a better process overall, but just take the next three months and throw yourself in there. Oh, and don't let anything else slip." And I was like, "That's cool."

[00:19:20] In research operations, there is so much stuff you do in the background that people don't even notice, because it's going swimmingly. They notice everything that's going wrong. And I said, "You know that if I do this, I'll be able to keep up this, this and this, but all of this that I put on the roadmap is going to another quarter, because guess what, I'm not going to be available to take that headspace and do all of this extra stuff for three months." Once you say that, and once you give that context, then they're going to say yes or no.

[00:19:53] Then when they come back to you and they're like, "Hey, remember this was on the roadmap and it didn't get done. What's going on with that? Why aren't you going to do that?" I'm like, "Hey, let me just look in my OneNote. Oh yes, we had a conversation about this in the quarterly discussion, and I said, 'Ah, you want me to procure two tools that weren't on my roadmap, I'm going to push these to there.'" And then they go, "Oh yes, I did say that." And you say, "So what's the priority now? You want me to just drop this procurement right in the middle?" And they realize that you're a bit of a pain, but you're also right. So then they say, "I do remember that," and then they decide what they want you to do.

[00:20:29] Because often, once you're in the middle of something, it's not as easy to drop it. You've already got the contacts, you've already got people replying to you, which is sometimes the hardest thing in the world. If you've ever tried to work with legal or data privacy: sometimes they're awesome and they get right back to you, and sometimes they've got 50 fires going on, and you're just like, "Hey, over here. I don't have a fire, I have a candle, but I'd love to talk to you." And they're just like, "Not a time for candles at dinner, we've got to go."

[00:20:55] So it's really about making sure that you are clear at the beginning: "Okay, this is starting to look like too much for me. I can only handle this much," and explaining to them why you can't handle more. If that's not okay with them, I don't think they are looking realistically at your job. You also have to explain everything you're doing, because there's a lot of stuff that I run in the background and I don't log. I don't want to log every time that I do a report, or every time somebody messages me and says, "Hey, I've got this problem, can you solve it real quick?" Because that takes time. That takes looking up the answer, and then trying that answer, and then going, "That didn't work," and looking up another answer, and then maybe two more.

[00:21:32] I've got three other colleagues sitting here, and they can say, "I've messaged her a couple of times, and she never responded until three or four days later, and she's like, 'Sorry I'm so late.'" It's because of all these tiny little things that no one sees. So it's budgeting in that too, and saying, "I've got 20% of my time to solve random things that will pop up." And just being clear with your boss when you can't do something. I've done the whole taking on more than you can handle, working late into the night, and stressing myself out, and it creeps into everything else in your life. It's not healthy for you, and you're going to do less of a good job because you're constantly stressed.

[00:22:10] Host: Agreed. You have to do some expectations management.

[00:22:14] Kasey: Yes. Reel me in, man. Let's go to something else, if you want.

Pros and cons of a power-oriented culture

[00:22:17] Host: I have one more question for the group. What are the pros and cons of a pathological culture? Just as a reminder, pathological is power oriented. There are differences you have to apply when trying to get things done, based on the company culture. So what are some things that you consider positive or negative if it's power oriented, where there's a person who decides everything and you have to go to them for approvals? It could be quick decision-making, it could be having a singular vision, it could be strong short-term gain. They might be a bottleneck for decisions, there might be a lack of innovation, or there might be low team morale. We're going to see if there are more pros or cons, but I'm assuming here, given the crowd, there are probably a lot more cons.

[00:23:04] Kasey: While you vote, I'm going to grab the mic. I love that low team morale is in there, because that is a whole ROI in itself.

[00:23:12] Host: Yes. Maybe you can't quantify it, but...

[00:23:15] Kasey: Well, once people leave.

[00:23:18] Host: I like quantifying some of these negatives, though. When you're in a performance-based culture, you can always talk about what you can and can't get done, but they're not aware of what they're missing out on. If you're not achieving what you agreed to, they can see you miss one or two projects, but if you could be getting twice as many projects done, they don't know that. At a power-based company, when you have a person who is dictating everything, I feel like you have to translate everything you want to do into their language, so either an OKR or some goal that they have. Essentially you're doing persona development on your stakeholder, and then speaking their language whenever you're making a request or an ask of them.

[00:23:54] Kasey: Also, PMs already have OKRs, or ROIs that they're trying to achieve with their projects. What are they? It'd be cool if you knew too, so that in the future, once you've done your design, once you've done your project, your research, you can say, "Oh hey, guess what, that impacted this," because now you're speaking to it. That'd be really cool.

Bureaucratic culture: a bank in Ireland, and a university in Galway

[00:24:16] Host: Okay, now let's talk about a bureaucratic culture, where there's tons and tons of process, lots of admin, maybe more than just one person having power; there are tons of people who have to be involved in the process. What are the pros and cons? We have clear roles, consistent ways of working, clear accountability with hierarchy. There's also possibly a resistance to change, possibly a lack of innovation, and possibly slower decision-making.

[00:24:40] This one's a bit more neutral. The resistance to change is obviously, I think, directly part of what makes something bureaucratic: "It's always been this way, why not keep it that way?"

[00:24:51] Kasey: I love and hate that comment. I do. "We've always done it this way." If I'd always stayed the same way, I would be a baby. Sorry, clearly that doesn't work out, guys. You would not want a baby up here. Also, companies have to grow, so why would the processes never change? Our competitors are changing. Why would we not change? Why is it so hard to agree to make a change? How do you change that? Has anybody dealt with this? Has anybody dealt with a bureaucratic culture and run up against stuff? Everybody's terrified to raise their hand because I might come to you. Yes? No? Now you're terrified. Or you will answer.

[00:25:30] Lely: I can always give an example of this.

[00:25:32] Kasey: You will still answer for me, Lely. Dude, I feel like I have to encourage more people to speak. Who wants to go next? You guys, it's not scary, I swear. You can stay down there. We won't even make you come up here.

[00:25:43] Lely: And stay in the dark. Kasey, you can be less afraid. I'm going to talk about my previous job.

[00:25:47] Kasey: Perfect. Which company?

[00:25:49] Lely: A bank in Ireland. I think a lot of people find that financial organizations are bureaucratic, to a flaw. Part of it is important, of course. You don't want to crash a financial system, or you don't want to break a financial rule; there are crazy consequences to stuff like that. But it really slows things down. As a researcher, I find it affects the quality of your research, because you're going out to test something, and I know it's probably not going to reach a customer for a few months, even if they've been asking for it for a year, or a year and a half.

[00:26:31] The customer almost can't see past that barrier of what they want to change now, and you end up with quite negative or skewed research feedback, when you're like, "Oh, I totally get it, but please can we talk about something else? Please can we move slightly left field?" Because you don't know that your problem is going to be fixed in three months, and I moved past that two years ago and have to move on to something else, or else you might never see this thing in the future. That resistance to change changes the perception that your customer base, and then your interview base, has of what you're doing, I find. You have to sift through it.

[00:27:05] Kasey: That was an excellent answer. Thank you for taking me out of the spotlight for a second, I appreciate it. Anybody else want to be a kind soul? Yes, sir, in the red shirt. You're one of my new favorite people.

[00:27:15] Audience: That's great, because Genesys are one of my favorite companies. They have a big presence in Galway now, because they have a shiny new research building. I feel like they brought a lot to the tech scene in Galway, because I didn't hear anyone talking about UX research in Galway before Genesys came along. We have a lot of big tech companies in Galway. We have the Boston Scientifics and the Medtronics, and we used to do some work for them, and they didn't know what UX was. So I think Genesys have set a good trend in Galway, certainly in terms of UX design and UX research.

[00:27:58] Maybe like the banks: we work for a university, so we have a bureaucratic culture, which shouldn't really be the case, because universities are supposed to be free and open-thinking societies. But we learned a lot from working with the likes of Boston Scientific and Genesys in terms of having a more flexible approach to UX research. I think there's a place for bureaucratic culture in certain industries, but when it comes to UX research there should be no such thing as bureaucracy, because you just won't find out the things you need to find out if you have to conform yourself to that kind of culture.

Tools the team can't live without

[00:28:39] Audience: But I just had a question, maybe it's something you can answer later, about your successful UX work at Genesys. What are the tools that you can't live without as a team? Are there any tools that you could recommend, especially since we have a small UX research team in our company?

[00:28:59] Kasey: I have a couple. Either of you?

[00:29:02] Host: I just don't want to, if it's not the sponsors... Oh sorry, guys. Which tools do you use?

[00:29:09] Kasey: This is a great question. We use DocuSign, but there are also a lot of other tools that have DocuSign-type stuff built in now. We also use Acuity Scheduling, but that's because I forced it on the team. I was like, "This is very robust, and I don't want to do this all manually, so I'm going to teach you how to do it, and then you just put your times in there, and we'll do it that way." They've learned, and it's been smashing. But there's also other scheduling that is easier to do. And we just started Dovetail. We're checking that out; it's in a pilot right now.

[00:29:41] Audience: Which part of Dovetail are you using? The library part, the transcriptions?

[00:29:48] Kasey: I was going to say everything. The main reason we got it is because initially, when I started, there wasn't really a knowledge base, so I tried to spin up something in Confluence, and it turns out VPNs make people very angry when they have to sign into them, and if they get kicked off and then they have to sign in again, they're like, "How dare you." They'll do it for the PMs, but when an ops person asks, nah. So now we've got something.

[00:30:15] Audience: Sorry if I derailed the topic of bureaucracy, but I just wanted to ask. Thanks.

[00:30:20] Host: Not at all. I feel like with bureaucracy come lots of tools.

[00:30:23] Kasey: And that's true too, because even when you're doing tool procurement, there's bureaucracy. There are a lot of teams, and there might not be as much visibility into what's going on. You might have something where you're like, "I love this tool, this tool is amazing, we're going with this tool," and then they say, "Oh wait, our compliance..." "Yes, we can totally give you those documents too." "Is it in the budget? Maybe in January. We can plan it for next year." And the prices: they give you one price that you think you're going with, and then you get to the actual contract, and you're like, "Hold up, there are all these little extra fees. We didn't talk about that. We talked about this and that." So there are those things too that you don't always know, and they can change what's the best tool. Maybe it wasn't the best tool, because of price, because of some little details that were missed.

Generative culture: judged on the value you bring

[00:31:09] Host: Now let's talk about what we really care about, which is what we're here to do: perform. We're generating value. So what is it like when everything is judged by the value you bring? Sometimes there's high innovation, there's high employee engagement, it's a lot more adaptable. But there might be so many choices to make that you have decision paralysis, there might be stress from a lack of clarity, or high change, or a lack of a clear, consistent vision.

[00:31:33] Kasey: Our little adaptability is just sitting there. It's "everyone can do anything as long as it gets the job done, as long as we hit our goals," but maybe that isn't a very unified effort. Maybe it's a little clumsy. I am so glad I'm not on the stage; that would have been a cool nosedive.

[00:31:47] Host: Caught you, don't worry.

[00:31:49] Kasey: But my shoes would have been on stage for a second. You would have seen them in the air, and they would have looked beautiful. Just letting you know.

[00:31:56] Host: All right, based on the votes, it seems like we're pretty split here, but mostly cons, actually. So we're not liking any of these types of companies a lot, but there is a bit of a split between generative and the last one, bureaucratic. A lack of clear vision, and stress from a lack of clarity. You have lots of options, so maybe you're not being told exactly what to do, but they still want you to get the job done. And you need to involve them, because they are your stakeholders. They're the ones who are assessing you, but they're giving you a blank slate. Does anybody have any questions about how to work in this environment?

[00:32:33] Audience: Thank you. It's something you said a second ago that's been on my mind a lot recently. I think you phrased it as how you are measured on the value that you bring. But as a designer, value is a trigger term, because our value often isn't clearly set out. Are you talking about the company bottom line, or are we talking about a UX metric that the company is looking at? I'm just interested if you have any thoughts on what is the value that we're measured on in a culture such as the generative culture.

[00:33:06] Kasey: We can both answer this. I was going to say, has anybody ever dealt with this in design, where you've solved it, or you've had the same problem? No hands. No one's ever dealt with that. No one wants to give examples about this.

[00:33:23] Host: Go, Kevin, if you want to. The lack of clear vision, especially when it comes to lack of clarity: sometimes the company will set very clear goals, and then set them again, and then again, and then again. Or you have something that's a big project, and you deliver V1, and before V1 even gets shipped there are three or four or five changes to it. Or now there's a new company North Star metric, or the OKR for this quarter has changed, but the projects from last quarter are not done yet.

[00:33:47] I feel like the best model to solve this kind of problem is a working-backwards model. If you are working towards an open goal, which is what generally happens in these kinds of environments, but the goal is short term and everyone isn't aligned on the steps you need to take to get that goal done in the short term, that short-term goal becomes a long-term goal. But if we set a long-term goal to begin with, then every single thing we do this week, next week, this quarter, this year, goes towards that three-year vision.

[00:34:15] So if I design, let's say, a roadmap that is three or four years long, and I give you a full prototype of that roadmap four years in advance, then engineering knows, "We need to rip apart this," design knows, "We need to redesign these things," and everyone starts doing their parts. We know it's not going to get done this year, but at least we're all working towards it: not half measures, not band-aids, not temporary things, but long-term solutions that will hopefully add up eventually to that long-term goal. That's my idea.

[00:34:43] Kasey: And having that umbrella then gives you a good chance, even if you don't know what you should be measuring. I bet you could search for your long-term goal and measurement and find some suggestions there, and then go, "Oh wait, we can measure XYZ. We're only a year into it, but we've made it a ways. We're 20% in, or 10% in," or something. There's a lot of stuff online that has just been fantastic, written by so many people, that helps. Is that up here? Yes, okay.

Can a company change its culture?

[00:35:12] Host: So what does everyone think: can a company change its culture? Do we believe this is true? Yes, but I haven't seen it. Yes, I have seen it and it was great. No, I have seen it and it was terrible. Or no, I have not seen it.

[00:35:31] Kasey: This is fun. I like having all of this live-action change. I love the movement.

[00:35:36] Host: Yes, it's way better than hands occasionally raising, and then you think you're going to get called on, and you slowly just curl into a ball.

[00:35:43] Kasey: Also, it's color, because we're in the UX world and we like to wear black, so lots of cool, beautiful colors.

[00:35:49] Host: I'm going to wait a couple more seconds and see what we've got. Most people say they believe it's possible but they haven't seen it, and then we actually have more people saying now that they have seen it and it was great. I only have one example of this, and it wasn't great, so I'm that little green sliver. There's 43%, 40% of you.

[00:36:09] Kasey: I like how 3% were just like, "No, she's going to talk about it. It doesn't happen."

[00:36:14] Host: Right. Has anybody in the crowd seen it, and it was awesome? And why was it awesome? What happened to make it that way? Anyone? Anybody else that we haven't talked to? Not that you're not lovely. I swear there are other people that could raise their hand. Nothing?

[00:36:34] Kasey: Nothing? What if I offered some dark chocolate Reese's for anyone who would do it? I can't virtually send it, but I can lovingly hand it. I can mail it.

[00:36:44] Audience: It was really good. It was a games company. It was a pretty low-maturity company with some good games, and they started making some better games, had success and got acquired. Basically, it was all about bringing in really top-tier specialists in really key roles, and changing from "Oh, we're just making fun games" to "No, we're really focusing on players here, and making the absolute best games we can make." A lot of people had to move on. They just weren't suited to that kind of thing, and we had to bring in the right people. That was hard, but the success of the games and the future games the studio has made have been, I would say, worth that cost, even as hard as it was.

[00:37:24] Host: That's good. And you said that it was specialists, so it was having a clear direction and being informed by their specialty?

[00:37:36] Audience: Yes. They had succeeded before, so you knew that this was a good way to go, and there was not as much argument. Pretty much bringing in monsters with 30 years of top-level experience.

[00:37:45] Kasey: You just have to get monsters. That's very easy, they're everywhere.

[00:37:49] Audience: Yes, just bringing in people, getting the right people, and it worked.

[00:37:54] Kasey: I'll also say leadership changes, even not at the highest levels, but even over your teams, over XYZ, whoever you are and however you lead things, change the culture, even at a small angle. I can tell you from different managers you've had, you know who's been like, "This is my kind of management style," and it's not working at all. When I became a manager, there was a lot of stuff where I had said, "I never want to be this type of manager," or, "I don't want to take this with me." And then there were other things from managers where I was like, "I love this, I want to be that type." So having the right leader and the right manager, even at that smaller level, can really help change the entire vibe. Maybe it's not working at a smaller level, maybe it's not working at a higher level, but there are different levels of change too.

[00:38:42] Host: Great. It could be just on your team, or it could be from your boss or the department leader, or maybe the entire company. On that note, that concludes our talk.

[00:38:52] Kasey: He was worried about time. I was like, "You're going to have to struggle to get me off here."

[00:38:56] Host: Can everyone give a big round of applause to Kasey? And can we also applaud Kevin, who's just been working tirelessly?