Lightning Talks

Shilpi Sinha, Ramona Ziemann, Jose Manuel Villanueva López, Daniel Heaslip, Martina Hodges-Schell at UXDX EMEA. Video: https://youtu.be/qVDVSO5VEww

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.

Jose Manuel: change is not transformation

[00:00:01] Jose Manuel: Okay, can you hear me? Yeah, okay. Hello everyone in the audience here, and hello everyone watching us online. I only have five minutes, so let's just jump right into the topic. When you are transforming an organization, there are two questions that pop up first. How can you transform a massive, complex organization like Thoughtworks, with more than 30 years in the business and with a global reach? The second question is: transforming the organization to do what, exactly?

[00:00:31] These two questions didn't matter to me at the beginning, because I was in this caterpillar state when I joined our operations department back in 2020. I was brought in to design a new tool for our consultants to plan their growth within the organization. The tool is called Pathways, and still today it is a success: 92% of our workers are planning their growth using that tool today. We then went ahead and released our own learning tool, called Campus, and then we continued and released another custom-made tool called Sumit [?], which is meant to track our performance.

[00:01:16] A question that arises here is: does releasing custom-made software mean transforming an organization? Hold on to that question. One thing that those kinds of tools show you is the culture where you need to drive that transformation. For instance, let's take Sumit [?], our performance tool. What happens when 85% of your consultants succeed in their performance cycles? What does that mean? Does it mean that we are a culture of achievers, or actually are we a culture of avoiding difficult conversations, hence I'm going to be granting my colleagues a nice rating in their performance? Food for thought.

[00:01:59] So go back to the original question: is that really transforming organizations? Well, it's definitely not. Change doesn't mean transformation. More often than not, organizations continue running change programs one after another, and they are no more than just band-aids that help organizations without really tackling the deeper issues that a transformation actually needs to tackle. Research backs that up: in 2022 the average employee experienced 10 change programs, in comparison with just two in 2016. Can you imagine the level of fatigue that we have on the employee side with so many change programs? No wonder transformations sometimes don't really get anywhere in organizations today.

[00:02:50] So if not change, what is organizational transformation? According to the academics, this is one of the definitions of organizational transformation. I would add a layer to that: where they say leaders, I would say agents of change. And when I say agents of change, what I mean is the emergence of the designer in the operations department, to help facilitate that transformation.

[00:03:17] That's what happened to us in 2022: lots of change programs, lots of custom-made tools, but we were not transforming according to where we wanted to go. We had to go back and start asking deeper questions about our organization. With 30 years in the business, deeper questions are: what is our distinctive approach still? Who are we as an organization? We then started to look at the capabilities that existed in the organization, and had to decide which ones we are going to be keeping, which ones we are going to be hiring or recruiting because we need them, these are new things to help us transform, which ones we can transform by learning, and then which ones we simply have to drop, because they don't serve us anymore in the organization.

[00:04:06] Another key question is asking yourself: what is the shape of the organization? At Thoughtworks today we are moving from a federated model to a more centralized model. You can imagine the amount of friction and change processes that this creates. But the most important question is: what counts as value when you are transforming? There are only two things that you can do when transforming from operations: either you're saving cost for the organization, or you are making money for the organization. Designers today, more than ever, have to speak the language of the business, and the language of the business is the language of return on investment. You can try to put tangible numbers to the cost of the transformation, because in essence organizational transformation is a design problem, and a design problem is a business problem.

[00:04:54] I want to finish by showing you this blueprint. This is what I started using when I entered the operations department. I knew I wasn't just designing a tool to help our workers' growth; I was trying to connect different functions. So I imagined Thoughtworks to be this big city where people had to go from A to B, just to find out that there was not even a subway line between these two points. My final remark on that is that organizational transformation is not [?] absolutely necessary in organizations. If you put a designer at the table, it could be intriguing, but it could also be a fun thing to do. Thank you very much, and I'll see you tomorrow in my workshop.

Martina: learning leadership from horses

[00:05:37] Martina: I get to continue Anderson's amazing topic around how we become better leaders to support autonomous, happy, cross-functional teams. Which way do I click? Here we go. And here's a spoiler alert: a really interesting angle on how to help learn and embody better leadership skills. I've been working at the intersection of human-centered innovation, tech and cross-functional collaboration for near enough 30 years now. I've been really curious to help, on the one hand, organizations transform into modern product organizations, and with that help the leaders shift how they lead those teams. Again, not everyone on that journey is actually happy to change how they lead, how they've been successful. On the other hand, as Anderson was mentioning, it's also helping people step up into leadership for the first time, learning leadership skills from scratch.

[00:06:44] I've been really curious about how we can help people learn those modern leadership tenets more easily, and what might make it interesting to help them embody that learning that we've just talked about. I found that working with horses may be a surprising answer, but also really helpful with embodied learning. Even I, who's been a horse person, I've been that kind of girl that has been asking her parents for a pony for Christmas all her life, never thought I would be buying my first horse to help people become better leaders. But let me share with you how this works.

[00:07:29] Horses are brilliant at mirroring back to you how you show up, what kind of energy you project. They're able to give you immediate, unbiased feedback on how you show up as a leader. It's really interesting for you to become more self-aware of how you communicate, how you can be more confident in your leadership, or how you can adapt your leadership style to help support your team better.

[00:07:56] Very quickly, since I also don't have much time, I want to share five lessons learned. The first one is: be humble. It's actually a really humbling experience to work with horses, animals of that scale. We talk a lot about humble leadership, servant leadership, but I don't see so much of it in action. I think it's really important to start with building deep empathy, deep understanding, deep connection with each individual in your team. Build that trust. We talked earlier also about motivations for becoming a leader. It's absolutely fine to want to step up into leadership as your next step in your career, but you also need to consider that your main purpose is to actually support other people in their success.

[00:08:39] Secondly, we talked about how you embody your vision, your mission, your purpose, to actually inspire people to want to rally around your mission and want to collaborate with you on that. Also, what energy do you project? How do you embody your passion to align people around wanting to follow you, and actually wanting to follow through and collaborate on that? We had a really lovely session here last week with a client. The horses were minding their own business at the far end of the field. When she started talking about what her goals were and what she wanted to do, they all of a sudden really perked up. I just took a photo, and they came marching over to check out what she was actually doing. This was really interesting to them. So figure out how you embody that sort of exciting energy that people are drawn to and want to participate in.

[00:09:28] Thirdly, check on your organizational boundaries. There are so many layers to boundaries, but organizationally, is your team set up for success? Are they able to come together to work on outcomes together? Equally, do they have enough guardrails to be able to make good decisions, and to know what good looks like, what success looks like? And on a personal level, again, to understand yourself a little bit better, your own leadership a little bit better, one question might be: what does it feel like going from solving the problems yourself to asking your team to solve the problems instead, and making space for them to be able to do that?

[00:10:11] This might be a little bit counterintuitive: how do you communicate more clearly when you're actually removing words from the conversation? But working with horses in a coaching session is really interesting to learn, or explore, that elusive concept of how to be a leader, rather than what to do and what the tools are. How do you actually embody that? How do you communicate with your body and with your energy? What's too much, what's too little, what's grounded, centered, and actually gets you to the right aligned understanding and outcome? And it's obviously a continual conversation, a continual feedback loop, so you continue to have a shared understanding with your team, to set you up for success.

[00:10:56] And I just realized one more thing. Horses are brilliant at taking care of themselves and living in the moment. Leadership is demanding, often exhausting; a lot of leaders burn out. I would invite you to figure out, and it's not frivolous to take the time, how to take care of yourself, and equally also to look at how to support your team to create a sustainable pace. Thank you so much.

Dan: building design maturity at Three Ireland

[00:11:20] Dan: Hello everyone, my name is Dan Heaslip, and I currently lead the human-centered design team in Three Ireland. Today, in just five minutes, I'm going to bring you through a journey of where we've come from and how we've improved design maturity in the organization. This is our team of 12, who sit within our digital team within commercial in Three Ireland, formed in 2022. They work across multiple disciplines within UX/UI. We have SEO specialists, UX/UI, a UX researcher, copy, and of course a journey design team as well.

[00:11:56] But 12 months ago things looked very, very different. We had no copywriter in the organization, and we did not have the ability to carry out any customer testing. We did not have the ability to carry out any research from a UX perspective, and essentially we were an order-taking team that worked in an IT waterfall-like methodology.

[00:12:19] To get to where we are today, we had to get an understanding of where we were. So we used this UX maturity guide from Nielsen Norman, which I'm sure some of you are familiar with, to get an understanding and give ourselves a gauge of where we were. Essentially we were probably coming in somewhere around level two out of six. So we had some work to do, but we certainly had some foundations already in place. Today, after spending a little bit of time building the team, getting an understanding of the requirements and working with the organization, we've probably brought that up to around 3.5, and are certainly heading in the direction of around four out of six from a maturity perspective as well.

[00:12:59] So what does that look like? Where are we now? Over the last 12 months we've built a really strong process. The team itself works within agile squads. They're all product focused: we have responsibility for My3, three.ie, 48 and Three+. So the team are really clear in terms of what their expectations are across those products. We've built a really strong culture, and we've invested heavily in further education. The team have gone on to do further courses in UI, UX research and consumer psychology as well. And for our outcomes, when we go into any project now, we're really clear in terms of our metrics and our defined outcomes, and the expectations of those stakeholders in terms of what they're looking for from a design perspective.

[00:13:45] Just to give an example in terms of research itself. Last year, when we were forming the team, to where it is today, we really wanted to get a sense of what the organization was looking for and how we as a team could give that to them. As I said at the start, we were unable to run any usability tests or any UX research in 2022, because we lacked that core skill within the team, but also from a capacity perspective it just wasn't there. Today we've run over 30 tests, probably a little bit more as we speak, in 2023, and we've reached over 500 potential customers or users. That's just one UX researcher, and next year we've got big plans in terms of evolving that even further. But that just shows the power of being able to build a team, even a small team, and the value that we can bring to an organization.

[00:14:36] From a methodology perspective, we work across the Double Diamond; many of you here will know that. What it's done for the team is give them a standard process to work through, but from an organization perspective we're able to show where our value sits, from discovery right through delivery, and being able to test and iterate and bring back the valuable insights that help us test and learn and make improvements.

[00:15:00] Our design principles are our guiding compass, and these really help the team ensure that we're consistent with what we design and what we deliver for our customers. We want to make sure we walk in our customers' shoes. Over 70% of our customers are on mobile, so mobile first is really important to us. And of course we want to make sure we're user driven as well.

[00:15:22] Just in relation to a case study, to show you how we delivered some value to the organization and show the importance of our team. Earlier this year, internal research and our data showed us that our global navigation was trending downwards and our customers were falling out of our funnel. So we got our heads together, we got a really good understanding of what our data was showing us and telling us, and we were then able to show that value from a research perspective to stakeholders. That gave us real buy-in and acceptance, in terms of showing value to the organization.

[00:15:54] From a strategy perspective, our UX strategy plays a pivotal role in the overall business strategy, in terms of showing where we should put our design efforts, and it helps us meet the needs of the organization and make sure we're measurable with our outcomes. And finally, 10 seconds left, in terms of where we're going next from a team perspective. We want to move forward. As I said, we're sitting somewhere around 3.5 out of six, and we want to move that forward. So: have a data repository accessible to all, with that data sitting there. We're moving more and more of our product and our teams towards agile. We're going to implement accessibility standards over the next 12 to 24 months, and make those design system improvements. We want to continue to grow and nurture our team and make sure that they have the right skills for the future, and we want to build that design maturity within the organization. Thank you very much for your time, and I hope you've taken something away. Thank you.

Ramona: getting design a seat at the table

[00:16:45] Ramona: Good afternoon everyone, and nice to meet you. Let me tell you a story. Imagine you are entering your workplace, where design is like background music: it's there, but it doesn't get the attention that it deserves. On the one hand there is UX as a powerful tool, and on the other hand its power is mainly untapped, waiting for its chance to be used. Imagine walking to your office every day, your supposed UX-driven heaven, but things are a bit different. Every time you offer a design strategy, the mood shifts. Not because your ideas aren't great; it's because the audience, your organization, your supposed UX-oriented heaven, doesn't recognize the business value of design.

[00:17:36] My name is Ramona Ziemann. I'm head of design at Endava. Endava is a global technology company that provides mostly software development and consulting services in over 60 locations worldwide. I joined the company with a mission to bring more UX awareness and try to establish a UX culture inside the organization. And now I'm getting into trouble. In German you say [German phrase not captured], which means getting into trouble if you speak badly about your employer.

[00:18:14] So if your company undervalues design and struggles to integrate it, don't worry, you are not alone. What happens to me daily at work is the reality for many designers working in companies where UX maturity is still in its early stages. Usually in such companies, everything else is more important than designers and having their voice at the table. So here's the million-euro question: what can we do to change things? How do we elevate the role of a designer from being overlooked to being overbooked?

[00:18:53] Here are four points on how to get started, and what was working for me. Educate and advocate: run workshops and demonstrate how improved user experience can lead to customer satisfaction, loyalty and profitability. Build relationships and network with decision makers. Broaden your skill sets: learn something about finance, learn something about marketing or product management. The more you can talk in these areas, the more valuable you will be in cross-functional discussions. Showcase design's return on investment: use data to highlight how design has led to increased user engagement, retention or even sales. Speak in business terms as well: understand key metrics, KPIs and company objectives, and demonstrate how design solves business challenges.

[00:19:51] The challenge you get with that, of course, is resistance, because not everyone understands the business value of design immediately. So let's sum up. The magic seat isn't just handed to designers; it's earned. It requires constantly demonstrating value, building relationships, and expanding your knowledge as well. Think about what your strategy is. Ask yourself: how do you get the visibility in your company? How do you get that seat at the table? Thank you very much.

Shilpi: building stairs down from the peak of ignorance

[00:20:29] Shilpi: Hi everyone, my name is Shilpi, and I am from the LEGO Group, where I work as head of UX research for our business partner products. I'm going to give you a little glimpse into what our journey is looking like, trying to mature into being product-led and user-centric as an organization, and how we are trying to manage unknowns and knowledge gaps.

[00:20:56] When talking about knowledge gaps and maturity, I think this quote sums it up pretty well: "A fool thinks himself to be wise." I would say that this quote also sums up pretty well something called the Dunning-Kruger effect, which is basically that when we have a very low level of knowledge in something, we tend to overestimate our competency in that area. So we start at the peak of ignorance, and as we learn more we go through the valley of despair, and then finally we start making our way up the slope of enlightenment.

[00:21:34] At this peak of ignorance I usually meet people who are very smart, competent, often very senior, and it's that seniority that can get in the way of learning and unlearning. I have experienced quite a lot of being in meetings and working with product teams who are super senior, who know their products in and out; they are experts. I'm coming in from the outside and I'm trying to help or give them advice, and this can come off as them being challenged, their competence being challenged.

[00:22:15] So I had to change my tactic a little bit in the way I do user research: putting the product teams in the limelight, just as we do with participants, and setting my opinions aside, letting their opinions and experience take the stage. What I do, very simply, is almost every week I take a problem statement from one team, or a research objective, and then I invite all the other product teams to come, and I ask them: what do you think? How should we address this problem? And I always stress that there is no right or wrong answer.

[00:22:52] It might sound like a small thing, but it makes such a big difference in the dynamics of the group. It creates a psychological safety that allows people not only to express what they know, if they're insecure, but also to express what they might not know. What I see happening here is people discussing, sharing experiences. We have this wealth of experience and knowledge from all these different product teams. I'm just facilitating in the background, asking probing questions and sometimes answering questions, and gently nudging the team to do what I want them to do without interfering myself. This has been extremely effective in getting teams to come to conclusions on their own.

[00:23:44] Another exercise that I really like is assumption mapping, and here too I let the teams be the driver in the seat. I let them write down the assumptions they have of their product, and then they get to assess for themselves the data they have backing those assumptions up. So what's the evidence? I give them some criteria, for instance, is the sample size big enough? Then they get to assess whether or not they have high, medium or low confidence in that data. Then they map them out based on importance and how much evidence they have, and finally they get to prioritize what the most critical unknowns are that they need to address through further research or any other methods.

[00:24:43] So, coming back to the curve here. There are a lot of ways of going about organizational transformation. I would say there's no right or wrong answer, or right way of doing it. There's one way, where you can push people off the cliff, off the peak of ignorance. Or, what I've found to work a lot better is building them stairs, so they can help themselves down. Thank you.