How to Decode Conversation: A Paradigm Shift in Qualitative Insight and Human Understanding (with Indi Young)

In this episode of The Design Psychologist, we dive deep into the world of qualitative research and human-centered design with legendary UX thinker Indi Young. 

If you've ever felt like your user interviews only skim the surface—or if you've relied too heavily on personas—you might be missing the most powerful insights. Indi joins us to explore how deep, non-judgmental listening can revolutionize your understanding of users and, ultimately, your design outcomes. 

Together, we tackle questions like:

• What is deep listening, and why is it essential in design research? 
• Why do traditional interviews often fail to uncover what truly drives user behavior? 
• What are thinking styles, and how are they more effective than personas? 
• How can designers move from interpreting behavior to understanding internal reasoning? 

By the end of this episode, you’ll see user research—and your role as a designer—through a completely new lens. You'll be equipped to listen more deeply, think more critically, and create more human-centered solutions.

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Transcript

00:02:47.373 --> 00:02:52.173
Welcome to The Design Psychologist. I have a very, very special guest on the

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show today. It is Indi Young.

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She started her career as a software engineer, but quickly became a UX practitioner,

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UX consultant, product strategist.

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Over the course of her career, she's accumulated a lot of success stories.

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She was the founding partner of Adaptive Path, which got acquired by Capital

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One. She is a speaker, thought leader.

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She is the author of three books, one of which we'll be talking about today, and five courses.

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Her three books are Mental Models, Aligning Design Strategy with Human Behavior.

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Practical Empathy, The Collaboration and Creativity in Your Work,

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and Time to Listen, How Giving People Space to Speak Drives Invention and Inclusion, assumptions aside.

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So today she works independently as a problem space researcher,

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a coach, a consultant, a qualitative data scientist.

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Indie Young, thank you for being here today.

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Woohoo! Thank you. Thank you for inviting me and thank you for doing this new podcast. Very fun.

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Yes, yes, absolutely. So why don't we start off with,

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is there anything that I should also highlight about your

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career in terms of your path into research specifically and

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you know some of the things that brought you to where you are

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today uh sure i could i uh

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the i have you know sort of the the story that forged me um which was the i

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mean i had already been when i was a software engineer it was before the recent

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was even the term user experience um.

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And in the early 90s, I got hired as a contractor by Visa, the credit card company.

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And they're all like, okay, okay, we're going to go switch all these green screen

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terminals out of our call center.

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And we're going to have the reps using the, you know, the windowed system with

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a mouse and everything. Now, Visa, when I, they were just going through this

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point where they got email.

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And when I was working with this team, they still had the little room on the floor.

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There were actually two rooms on the floor of each floor of this giant building

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that was so wide that it had to have two rooms.

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And in that room was the Xerox machine and all the little cubby holes with everybody's

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name on them. And you would go in and make your memo.

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You know, you could make your memo on your computer. You'd go print it out, then Xerox it.

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Taking it back put it in all the little cubby holes yeah so

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it was this time and they were excited about

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email and the idea

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that email could save paper right so not

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only that they were excited about computers in general windowed systems and

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mouse systems and they thought oh we need to update everything in the call center

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where these reps are trying to

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help people who have lost their traveler's checks. Do you remember those?

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Or their card, their credit card.

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And they call in and they're in a panic usually. And the reps were really good

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at helping them get a replacement.

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Now, when they said, oh, we're going to switch out of the green screens,

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I, having a background in computers and understanding how these things are used,

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I'm like, oh, these reps are not going to like this.

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This is not going to be a happy change for them. It's going to make more physical

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movement of their hands, more time to get between these fields they're trying to fill in,

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and more distraction from the person on the phone that they are focused on.

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So I'm like, okay, I convinced the bank that I needed to go and talk to these

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reps and find out, you know, how they're doing things. And that was basically the beginning.

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I needed a way to, I was working on this big team where there was another part

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of it doing the architecture, the software architecture.

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There was another group who were doing the database design.

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There was another group. I was just doing the front end. There was,

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you know, a bunch of different groups who were working together.

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One was doing like sort of the business rules of it. And what I did was I,

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after doing a few days worth of, you know.

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Following these people around and, and watching them interact with each other

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so much, like, hey, Bobby, didn't you have someone in this teeny town in Italy?

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Where did you send the replacement? Oh, yeah, yeah. It was, you know, blah, blah, blah.

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And they had their atlases at the end of the aisle of cubicles.

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Okay, this is before maps.

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And so they would run down to the Atlas and try to find that thing,

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figure out the street address, blah, blah, blah.

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So there was a lot of interaction. There was a lot of knowledge sharing going

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on outside of the digital realm.

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And I'm like, okay. Yeah, go ahead. And that was well received.

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Right. So so back then, this is before, you know, for the audience that,

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you know, long before, you know, usability is like a known thing.

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It was kind of like in its early stages, nascent stages.

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And the even a big institution like Visa, were they was it a hard sell to say,

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hey, I need to do these naturalistic observations and follow people around?

00:08:21.351 --> 00:08:27.131
Um no because i couched it you will laugh i couched it as a state machine,

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okay so a state machine is supposed to represent the

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states of a computer i used it to represent the states

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of the reps i included in it the way that they're interacting with each other

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or interacting with the map atlases and all of that sort of thing um and i included

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in it kind of these little rules that they were helping themselves solve these problems with.

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So because I made it into some process, it was not a hard sell.

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And in fact, more than that, the other teams, the data design teams,

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they're like, oh my gosh, this is the database design.

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The software architects are like, okay, this makes our job a lot easier. Now I can see this.

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Everybody was like, Thank you for doing this, Indie. You just saved us like

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three months' worth of work.

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So that was my launch story. That's kind of how I got really interested in,

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Being able to represent real people and bring value to them,

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to their way of thinking.

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Now, at that point, I was still thinking of the reps as a monolithic group.

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There might have been reps in there that were doing things differently than the other reps.

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And now what I do is I pay attention to those different thinking styles.

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Because even though we are all trying to do the same thing, we may bring different

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thinking or personal rules to it.

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We still get it done in an acceptable way.

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But the thinking styles are the things that I want to try calling the org's attention to.

00:10:06.300 --> 00:10:11.040
There's so many apps out there. I was just writing to somebody today about this

00:10:11.040 --> 00:10:14.040
example where they've designed the app for themselves.

00:10:14.700 --> 00:10:18.840
They've designed the app. So let's take Google Maps.

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It is an app designed for you to get to a destination, an address hopefully,

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very specific point as fast as possible.

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There is no option for saying, hey, you know what?

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I would like to get there, but see all the scenic monument or historic monuments along the way.

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I've got a cousin who's driving from Canada to Arizona.

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There's no way, I mean, you can do that in other ways, but not on the map, right?

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There's no way to tell the map, hey, I'm walking there and I would like to take

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the shadiest route because it's awfully hot out, right?

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There's no way to say, hey, you know, I'm walking there, but it's a city I've

00:11:01.200 --> 00:11:05.940
never been in, and it would be fun to walk past a park or to walk past this,

00:11:06.100 --> 00:11:10.220
you know, thing that I would like to see on my way to my meeting.

00:11:10.960 --> 00:11:16.140
There's no way to do that. There's no way to tell it, hey, if I'm driving, I want a calm route.

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Like one that's not going to be like right downtown where people are trying to park or,

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you know something like that there's no way also to avoid

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that address to say hey i'd like to

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take 19th avenue back to the bridge route

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me that way you can't say something

00:11:35.660 --> 00:11:38.960
like that right so which

00:11:38.960 --> 00:11:43.380
goes to your what you write about with purpose and that's that's one so that

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opening story I love because it really touches on that kind of business touch

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point between what we're trying to do and what the business is capable of understanding.

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Right. And so that's not always. And so when I picked up this book,

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Indy, I was expecting it. You know, I was kind of like, well,

00:12:05.298 --> 00:12:07.898
You know, it's a research book. It's probably about, you know,

00:12:08.178 --> 00:12:09.078
conducting interviews.

00:12:09.678 --> 00:12:15.278
I'll probably gain some insights on, you know, better question asking and,

00:12:15.378 --> 00:12:16.598
you know, how to conduct it better.

00:12:16.878 --> 00:12:22.658
I was not expecting to have a whole paradigm shift in a whole minute.

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You caught me by surprise with that.

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And that's one thing I want to say. And another thing is I'm big on quotes and quotables.

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And, you know, I can't go two pages in this book without coming across a good quotable.

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You know, like, is this one of I think this is one of them.

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When an organization puts resources toward user research, usability and big

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data, they are only covering their own perspective.

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They are looking at people through the lens of their products and services and

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distorting reality to suit the organization's perspective, communicating and

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listening deeply with actual people in listening sessions.

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By contrast, focuses on the person's purpose. And that introduces a bunch of ideas.

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So I just am just really blown away by this.

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I think it should be definitely required for researchers, especially qualitative researchers. Yeah.

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Yeah, I mean, it does have a whole chapter in there about how to ask better questions,

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but everything is sort of focused around reframing from the solution,

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from the org to the person, what they're trying to address,

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and understanding that more deeply.

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I kind of sometimes think about it like that's the stake that I hammer through

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all this sort of scenario, context, person,

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approach, thinking style, all of this.

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I put this stake through it, and that's the thing I hold constant.

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So I'm going to hold constant, what is it the person's trying to get done?

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And then I can change all the types of people, the thinking styles of people,

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the speed at which they're doing it.

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I can change the demographics around it.

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I can change all of that so that I can let the org see that the true patterns

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are not necessarily based on demographics frequently. They're based on thinking style.

00:14:33.351 --> 00:14:38.971
Right. Right. And so getting into this, you know, one more comment I want to

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make about this is that it's a book that achieves this rare balance of high theoretical value.

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Value that's the the mind shift stuff and getting

00:14:48.811 --> 00:14:51.711
you to think about this just very differently and high practical

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value so like you mentioned you have whole chapters talking about

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the nitty gritty this is what you do and this

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is kind of how you do it so it's like like i would say like i don't

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know it's kind of like the second half of the book or the last third

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of the book is very much can be used as a reference guide

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so you read it and then you're about to do your research and

00:15:09.271 --> 00:15:12.971
you can like check back with it um yeah yeah

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i'm kind of a uh you know uh a trees

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for the forest kind of person or rather a twigs for

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the forest type of person so it's it's with

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great joy that i hear you say that it has the theory

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to it um as well because i end up

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i'm more uh apt to talk about

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the details of how to do it um and

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that i think is what i'm focused

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on right now is helping lots of people around the globe understand those details

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of how to pull it off in a way that is like creates this super valuable knowledge

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that then an org can use for the mindset shift.

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Yeah, exactly. And so one of the big pieces of that mindset shift is average

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and the concept of average people.

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Now, I've read some stuff in the past, you know, The End of Average, right?

00:16:06.834 --> 00:16:10.974
The book about that. And it talks about, but, you know, you talk about the early

00:16:10.974 --> 00:16:14.154
human factors and some of that stuff.

00:16:14.374 --> 00:16:18.194
So what, you know, should listeners know about just the concept of,

00:16:18.294 --> 00:16:22.494
oh, we need to understand the average user and build this for the typical user?

00:16:23.834 --> 00:16:28.814
Well, the average user is a myth. No one is average, right?

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Everybody's sort of like some distance from average.

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And there's a great percentage of your market or a great percentage of the employees

00:16:40.754 --> 00:16:44.614
that you're trying to support or a great percentage of the citizens that you're

00:16:44.614 --> 00:16:48.434
working to support that are a great distance from average.

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Um and those people get ignored um so

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like you know the the person who wants to take the calm route through the city

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um and not get scared by people like backing out into the lane of traffic or

00:17:04.434 --> 00:17:09.434
something um they are completely ignored they are unsupported they will never

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be supported unless someone speaks up for them.

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Because the people who are driving

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the product tend to think in this thing called cognitive bias, right?

00:17:23.694 --> 00:17:29.034
They tend to think in terms of their own experiences or the experiences that

00:17:29.034 --> 00:17:32.454
they've heard from their brother or their mother or something like,

00:17:32.554 --> 00:17:35.034
okay, I can stretch my mind to understand that.

00:17:35.354 --> 00:17:40.914
But to be able to stretch your mind to understand And a very different approach,

00:17:41.174 --> 00:17:48.514
one that's much farther away from average, but is just as valid as those that are close to average.

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That takes, it almost takes regulation, right?

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That's how we've done it with respect to accessibility and curb cuts and things like that.

00:18:01.806 --> 00:18:06.686
It took regulation to get there because the people who are doing the design

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can't stretch their mind that far.

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Now, we're also talking a lot about cognitive bias.

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Lately, we've talked about equity and things like that.

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And people are like, okay, I know that equity is good and I need to be aware

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of it. But kind of like that elastic is almost snapping back in a lot of places.

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So we almost need regulation so that we can get people to really take the time and pay attention to it.

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The way that I look at it, like that book, the way of looking at it,

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the method of looking at it is really doable.

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It doesn't take a lot to convince your org or your team to see where the value is there.

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To see, all it takes is a couple of examples where you can say,

00:18:53.586 --> 00:18:56.066
oh, my gosh, this company over here.

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Their app worked great for this particular group of people, this particular

00:19:02.006 --> 00:19:06.826
approach, but not for the other one at all.

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And in fact, they were maybe harming that other one or causing the other one

00:19:10.746 --> 00:19:16.286
to feel shame or to feel emotionally triggered or something like that.

00:19:16.406 --> 00:19:19.106
And that harm costs the org.

00:19:19.706 --> 00:19:22.806
It costs the org yeah because we're like there's

00:19:22.806 --> 00:19:25.586
churn there's attrition there's the

00:19:25.586 --> 00:19:28.946
amount of effort that you took to get that person to come

00:19:28.946 --> 00:19:32.066
to your solution and have that

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damage done to them or that harm done to them and then

00:19:35.166 --> 00:19:37.906
they leave right right and then

00:19:37.906 --> 00:19:41.226
in that early part of the book you ground the user

00:19:41.226 --> 00:19:44.506
the reader in this problem in helping

00:19:44.506 --> 00:19:47.586
folks understand it and it's that you're leaving people out

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and you're supposedly creating this solution

00:19:50.946 --> 00:19:54.666
and then we get the problem versus solution um uh

00:19:54.666 --> 00:19:57.726
for people but people are just wildly left

00:19:57.726 --> 00:20:01.466
out because you're thinking too much about your solution and i

00:20:01.466 --> 00:20:04.346
love how you recontextualize the concept of

00:20:04.346 --> 00:20:07.166
harm and there's a range of

00:20:07.166 --> 00:20:10.506
harms of different types and different intensities

00:20:10.506 --> 00:20:13.906
and it's not evenly distributed um it

00:20:13.906 --> 00:20:17.286
can be kind of like systematically distributed so um

00:20:17.286 --> 00:20:20.946
you know i think that's sort of a powerful way to communicate why

00:20:20.946 --> 00:20:26.846
we're caring about this it's so so important to care about it especially now

00:20:26.846 --> 00:20:30.906
when we've got everybody pounding down the door to try to get like quote-unquote

00:20:30.906 --> 00:20:38.206
ai trained ai is being trained on data that has cognitive bias in it we train

00:20:38.206 --> 00:20:40.826
it That way it becomes part of the system.

00:20:41.749 --> 00:20:46.849
Our system then is in equal, right? It does not have equity.

00:20:47.429 --> 00:20:49.069
In equity, is there a word for that?

00:20:50.189 --> 00:20:52.129
I think that's the word. Yes.

00:20:54.049 --> 00:20:58.269
Anyway, so the idea though, is that it gets baked in and we don't want it to get baked in.

00:20:58.949 --> 00:21:02.389
I think AI even, it kind of makes this topic more timely.

00:21:02.749 --> 00:21:06.009
You know, one of the things I think about India is like, okay,

00:21:06.229 --> 00:21:12.449
as AI is kind of replacing a lot of the work that we do, it might not replace

00:21:12.449 --> 00:21:15.529
whole job roles yet, but it replaces a lot of the work.

00:21:15.889 --> 00:21:20.169
And it's being kind of celebrated by, you know, executives as an opportunity

00:21:20.169 --> 00:21:22.589
to get more work done with robots.

00:21:22.749 --> 00:21:26.869
Then it makes me think, well, how do we market ourselves as humans?

00:21:27.289 --> 00:21:30.309
It's going to be stuff that humans are good at if you want to

00:21:30.309 --> 00:21:33.909
be able to get paid for your labor and and

00:21:33.909 --> 00:21:37.089
i feel like with this book it kind of leans very

00:21:37.089 --> 00:21:41.449
much into being human into communicating uh

00:21:41.449 --> 00:21:45.189
with humans and extracting value

00:21:45.189 --> 00:21:54.769
out of those human interactions i think that that's so i've had conversations

00:21:54.769 --> 00:22:04.209
with people lately about what's the future for us in design or product strategy or even research.

00:22:04.709 --> 00:22:09.369
And the future, I think, is richer and deeper.

00:22:09.669 --> 00:22:16.509
For us, the labor that we can provide that the executives can concede that,

00:22:16.649 --> 00:22:20.549
hopefully, the AI can't do, is to listen deeply.

00:22:20.769 --> 00:22:23.649
It is to recruit better.

00:22:23.929 --> 00:22:29.509
We are letting people recruit using database tags.

00:22:29.889 --> 00:22:31.769
That's not how to recruit.

00:22:32.789 --> 00:22:40.389
We can be the people who look at the resulting patterns and compare them with

00:22:40.389 --> 00:22:46.109
the existing solutions and say, let's measure the harms, Let's measure the health.

00:22:46.309 --> 00:22:49.209
Let's just measure it. Let's measure in a different way.

00:22:49.429 --> 00:22:54.549
So let's do our evaluative studies by thinking style, by a certain subset of

00:22:54.549 --> 00:22:58.969
things that people are thinking about as they're trying to dress something.

00:22:59.771 --> 00:23:06.631
And then let's put, you know, one of those, I've got the sort of rainbow of

00:23:06.631 --> 00:23:08.211
harms. We've got mild harm.

00:23:08.351 --> 00:23:10.871
We've got serious harm.

00:23:11.111 --> 00:23:14.651
We've got lasting harm. And then we've got systemic harm.

00:23:15.051 --> 00:23:21.431
And under there are each one of those four are like ideas. And I made that up. We can change that.

00:23:21.831 --> 00:23:29.111
I'm inviting people to change it and help increase the resolution.

00:23:29.771 --> 00:23:35.151
I guess, of it. But we had nothing. The only kind of harm we talked about before

00:23:35.151 --> 00:23:40.331
is like, oh, the user's frustrated or the user's not delighted or they're confused,

00:23:40.551 --> 00:23:42.191
right? And that's all mild harm.

00:23:42.691 --> 00:23:46.271
Most of it you can recover from being confused about.

00:23:46.931 --> 00:23:53.631
But the lasting harm is that you lost for hours trying to solve something that

00:23:53.631 --> 00:23:55.651
was a bug that shouldn't have been there.

00:23:55.651 --> 00:24:01.331
It wasn't designed right or something right that's you'll never get those four hours back.

00:24:02.111 --> 00:24:06.071
Now you have to like work on the weekend to

00:24:06.071 --> 00:24:09.011
make up those four hours and you don't get the time

00:24:09.011 --> 00:24:12.071
to spend with your um you know your elderly

00:24:12.071 --> 00:24:14.731
father or something you're never going

00:24:14.731 --> 00:24:20.211
to get that time back so that's lasting harm and so if we're able to look at

00:24:20.211 --> 00:24:28.931
the the effects of our ignoring people or our lack of support for certain thinking

00:24:28.931 --> 00:24:33.271
styles in a different way and label it differently,

00:24:33.271 --> 00:24:35.911
I think our executives can pay better attention.

00:24:36.798 --> 00:24:40.158
Now, what does this all have to do with purpose? Yeah.

00:24:41.358 --> 00:24:44.598
So purpose is that thing that I hold constant.

00:24:45.658 --> 00:24:52.198
And if you're an org like a bank, you're going to be serving lots of purposes

00:24:52.198 --> 00:24:54.178
that people have, right?

00:24:54.438 --> 00:24:59.998
You might say, you know, so a purpose can be any level.

00:25:00.178 --> 00:25:06.278
It's like a Goldilocks thing. It can be the mama bear or the baby bear or anything in between, right?

00:25:06.798 --> 00:25:13.938
And the thing is, is that that is where if we frame by purpose,

00:25:13.938 --> 00:25:18.358
we're going to get data that we can use,

00:25:18.538 --> 00:25:22.758
patterns that we can actually use in our decisions.

00:25:23.358 --> 00:25:32.158
So let's do an example to sort of help get this theory down into reality.

00:25:32.158 --> 00:25:37.978
And that is, let's say that we wanted to do a super broad purpose for a bank,

00:25:38.198 --> 00:25:45.478
which might be for, let's just say, commercial real estate, right?

00:25:45.638 --> 00:25:49.878
That might be the division in a bank, commercial real estate. That's very broad.

00:25:50.698 --> 00:25:55.078
Maybe you don't quite know what purposes people have within that area.

00:25:55.318 --> 00:26:02.398
So you do like a scenario setting or landscape setting kind of study to understand

00:26:02.398 --> 00:26:06.558
a little bit more about all the variety of things that people who are doing

00:26:06.558 --> 00:26:12.038
commercial real estate and needing financial support for it have in mind.

00:26:12.038 --> 00:26:13.078
What are they trying to get done?

00:26:13.198 --> 00:26:16.478
Well, obviously, like loans are probably going to be one of those things.

00:26:17.598 --> 00:26:24.278
But there might be something like loan, like games you play with loans where

00:26:24.278 --> 00:26:25.818
you're mashing loans together.

00:26:26.798 --> 00:26:31.278
I'm sure there are a lot of very wealthy developers who know a lot of games

00:26:31.278 --> 00:26:35.658
to play with their money sources.

00:26:36.138 --> 00:26:39.878
Loans might not be the only place where they get money.

00:26:39.898 --> 00:26:43.718
Maybe it's not always a bank that's offering it.

00:26:43.718 --> 00:26:49.338
Well, as a bank, I would want to know where the other places are that this commercial

00:26:49.338 --> 00:26:54.318
developer, real estate developer is getting their funding so that I can understand

00:26:54.318 --> 00:26:55.478
their thinking around it.

00:26:55.478 --> 00:27:03.478
So maybe we narrow that purpose down to just getting funding and maybe we narrow

00:27:03.478 --> 00:27:09.738
it more so we can get somebody's thinking into what went through your mind as

00:27:09.738 --> 00:27:15.018
you were setting up funding for the last few projects that you did this year.

00:27:15.760 --> 00:27:20.160
There might be two or three. There might be just one. But everything that went

00:27:20.160 --> 00:27:21.920
through your mind as you did it,

00:27:22.420 --> 00:27:28.140
what you're going to hear is little personal rules that people set up for themselves

00:27:28.140 --> 00:27:33.240
based on some other thing that they were involved in that maybe didn't go so well.

00:27:33.240 --> 00:27:37.460
And so they don't do, you know, a certain thing anymore, or they avoid a certain

00:27:37.460 --> 00:27:43.360
person or a certain, you know, bank or a certain style of loan or money source.

00:27:44.300 --> 00:27:48.100
You're going to hear about how they can network with people.

00:27:48.520 --> 00:27:53.160
You're going to hear about how, I don't know, they make deals with people.

00:27:53.740 --> 00:27:58.740
I have no idea, over lunch or on the golf course or, you know,

00:27:58.840 --> 00:28:04.120
whatever other cognitive bias kind of idea we have about how these people behave.

00:28:04.700 --> 00:28:10.520
But instead of just having our cognitive bias idea, we're doing listening sessions with people.

00:28:10.760 --> 00:28:14.360
We're trying to understand what went through your mind as you were doing this

00:28:14.360 --> 00:28:15.420
the last couple of times.

00:28:15.720 --> 00:28:19.320
Now, we could narrow it down even further.

00:28:19.960 --> 00:28:23.440
We could expand it out. We could jump to a different realm.

00:28:23.600 --> 00:28:27.040
It could be still within commercial real estate, but it has more to do with

00:28:27.040 --> 00:28:29.280
construction, sourcing.

00:28:29.560 --> 00:28:33.400
Maybe it has more to do with building green, right?

00:28:33.520 --> 00:28:37.540
That might be a thing that we would be interested in trying to get our heads

00:28:37.540 --> 00:28:40.820
around as a bank in terms of funding, right?

00:28:41.080 --> 00:28:45.440
Green building or whatever. What are the rules around it? What are people considering?

00:28:45.760 --> 00:28:49.180
How do they make deals there? Because I'm sure they're making deals there.

00:28:49.360 --> 00:28:54.360
They don't want to just, you know, put extra money into it because it makes them feel good.

00:28:55.440 --> 00:28:58.780
So there's an example.

00:28:58.980 --> 00:29:03.120
We're like, we're changing and shifting. And that one bank is going,

00:29:03.760 --> 00:29:05.120
you know, they could throw up their hands.

00:29:05.220 --> 00:29:08.640
I don't know how there are too many purposes that we could serve because we

00:29:08.640 --> 00:29:11.720
could do all of this for business loans and business, you know, whatever.

00:29:11.940 --> 00:29:15.440
And all of this, again, for home loans for a person, et cetera.

00:29:15.720 --> 00:29:17.020
And I'm like, yeah, that's fine.

00:29:17.320 --> 00:29:21.480
You will do it once. You're not going be doing this kind of research all the

00:29:21.480 --> 00:29:24.640
time. You will do it once. It's going to last for a couple of decades.

00:29:24.880 --> 00:29:29.320
You will add to it as you need more information in certain areas.

00:29:30.500 --> 00:29:35.340
But you're probably going to have, I don't know, maybe as a bank being very

00:29:35.340 --> 00:29:39.700
large in terms of serving purposes, you might have 10 of them, right?

00:29:40.880 --> 00:29:45.460
Right. Right. Yeah. I mean, this quote from your book on this,

00:29:45.460 --> 00:29:48.160
people exist in their own context.

00:29:48.240 --> 00:29:50.620
They are centered in their own worlds.

00:29:50.800 --> 00:29:55.480
Your product, if it appears in their world at all, is one of the tools they

00:29:55.480 --> 00:29:59.120
are using to make progress on their own purpose.

00:29:59.320 --> 00:30:03.180
And it just nails it so much because we're research the task,

00:30:03.360 --> 00:30:05.860
research the goal, research the jobs to be done.

00:30:06.060 --> 00:30:09.200
And they're all segmented. That's not what they're trying to do.

00:30:09.400 --> 00:30:13.700
I think it nails it in a number of ways because from this sort of,

00:30:14.320 --> 00:30:17.680
From kind of like a holistic humanistic side, it kind of nails it.

00:30:18.260 --> 00:30:24.220
Then there's when you look at business theories like Blue Ocean that try to

00:30:24.220 --> 00:30:31.080
say, okay, here's how you can systematically get to the next big innovative idea.

00:30:31.340 --> 00:30:37.100
You've got to do a Blue Ocean and here's the Red Ocean with all the competition and blood in the water.

00:30:37.300 --> 00:30:39.640
And then here's the Blue Ocean you want to navigate there.

00:30:39.920 --> 00:30:43.060
But then, you know, that's all about navigating to the purpose.

00:30:43.240 --> 00:30:47.600
Let's say, you know, they give you examples like Cirque du Soleil works because

00:30:47.600 --> 00:30:51.620
it's satisfying the purpose of, I just want to be entertained tonight.

00:30:51.900 --> 00:30:55.140
Not, I want to go to a circus or I want to go to a movie.

00:30:55.560 --> 00:30:57.960
It kind of gets in between right to the point.

00:30:58.420 --> 00:31:01.880
And I think that this is, it just, uh,

00:31:02.060 --> 00:31:06.660
I think this really um empowers user

00:31:06.660 --> 00:31:10.360
researchers user usability practitioners to

00:31:10.360 --> 00:31:14.020
better communicate how doing

00:31:14.020 --> 00:31:19.980
research in a better more thoughtful manner truly maps on to greater business

00:31:19.980 --> 00:31:29.420
opportunities yes absolutely the um so i i tend to look at the business opportunities

00:31:29.420 --> 00:31:30.680
in three different ways.

00:31:31.060 --> 00:31:37.580
One is measuring how well we're helping someone accomplish their goal.

00:31:37.880 --> 00:31:42.620
And when you said humanistic there, a lot of the time when I talk about a person's

00:31:42.620 --> 00:31:49.180
purpose, I talk about it in terms of them using a lot of different tools, such as memory.

00:31:49.420 --> 00:31:53.580
Memory is a tool. Such as running next door and talking to somebody about it.

00:31:53.780 --> 00:31:56.780
Talking to somebody about it is a tool. such as

00:31:56.780 --> 00:32:00.060
looking it up in a book that's a tool such as

00:32:00.060 --> 00:32:03.020
or online right or remembering some course

00:32:03.020 --> 00:32:06.100
you took about it and it's there are so

00:32:06.100 --> 00:32:09.160
many different tools there are mechanical tools there are manual

00:32:09.160 --> 00:32:14.460
tools and there's digital tools certainly but it's not the only thing we're

00:32:14.460 --> 00:32:20.600
using all all our tools not just the digital tool and i think we lose sight

00:32:20.600 --> 00:32:28.320
of that fact when we are so focused on the solution that we're trying to make as an organization.

00:32:28.660 --> 00:32:35.740
And by being so myopically focused, we lose the idea that,

00:32:35.980 --> 00:32:40.580
here's the analogy that I like to use, we're sort of focused on a fire road

00:32:40.580 --> 00:32:44.060
that we're hiking down, right, through this landscape.

00:32:45.018 --> 00:32:48.758
And all our competition is either behind us or in front of us, right?

00:32:50.118 --> 00:32:54.938
And we lose track of the fact that there's all this landscape around us that we can walk through.

00:32:55.478 --> 00:32:59.658
We can make our own trail. That's innovation. So that's the second way,

00:32:59.838 --> 00:33:06.778
is that they're not only measuring value and seeing what those gaps are and

00:33:06.778 --> 00:33:11.678
what those harms are, but just purely using this knowledge to like,

00:33:11.778 --> 00:33:13.798
okay, I'm leaving the fire road.

00:33:13.798 --> 00:33:16.658
There's another thing I could be doing here and I

00:33:16.658 --> 00:33:19.558
see it there was a company Qualcomm that

00:33:19.558 --> 00:33:22.438
um that saw it so clearly when we

00:33:22.438 --> 00:33:25.138
were doing some work and they're like we're going

00:33:25.138 --> 00:33:28.678
to start this whole new division because this thing

00:33:28.678 --> 00:33:34.378
could you know this thing could be our next big uh I don't know money maker

00:33:34.378 --> 00:33:39.738
um because it's just not being dealt with and everybody talked about it and

00:33:39.738 --> 00:33:45.778
then And the third way is what we sort of started talking about is like,

00:33:45.958 --> 00:33:49.438
yeah, you've created a solution. That's this fire road.

00:33:50.218 --> 00:33:55.818
But there are other approaches. And so like the person who wants to walk to

00:33:55.818 --> 00:34:01.458
their meeting through the city via a shady path because it's hot out,

00:34:01.738 --> 00:34:03.978
that's like a little parallel trail.

00:34:04.458 --> 00:34:08.198
It's not going to go shooting off into like some innovative different hill.

00:34:08.198 --> 00:34:13.318
Is a little parallel trail that we're ignoring that even though it's following

00:34:13.318 --> 00:34:17.058
the same thing, it's not being trod upon by our competition.

00:34:18.110 --> 00:34:21.470
Mm hmm. Right. And it could become its own fire road. Right.

00:34:21.970 --> 00:34:27.250
No, when you're doing. Yeah, exactly. And so when you're doing listening sessions,

00:34:27.590 --> 00:34:35.290
you know, one part you talk about how the lack of embarrassment when you're asking questions.

00:34:36.250 --> 00:34:40.270
And a lot of times in business meetings, especially we want to not seem ignorant.

00:34:41.730 --> 00:34:46.650
And you say, we keep quiet or at least come up with some guesses.

00:34:46.850 --> 00:34:52.030
So you say, a deep listener must get past this habit and ask the participant

00:34:52.030 --> 00:34:54.350
about things that seem obvious.

00:34:54.610 --> 00:35:00.850
Remind yourself that there is no way to understand someone's mind in advance.

00:35:01.230 --> 00:35:05.790
And this is a really important lesson for us all. And here's something that

00:35:05.790 --> 00:35:08.690
I'm trying to figure out on these lines is,

00:35:08.690 --> 00:35:11.670
you know if you're in a

00:35:11.670 --> 00:35:15.070
situation where you're representing the business and you're representing

00:35:15.070 --> 00:35:18.030
the research there's this pressure if you're

00:35:18.030 --> 00:35:20.890
representing things on the business side to not seem like you

00:35:20.890 --> 00:35:24.150
don't know about things and you when you're

00:35:24.150 --> 00:35:26.810
talking you have to like as a consultant you have to make it

00:35:26.810 --> 00:35:29.890
obvious that yes i understand this and you

00:35:29.890 --> 00:35:32.810
know you kind of get in this habit maybe of like completing the sentences

00:35:32.810 --> 00:35:36.070
and you're showing that you know your stuff but

00:35:36.070 --> 00:35:39.350
when you're wearing a it's a different hat from the researcher yeah

00:35:39.350 --> 00:35:42.470
right and and so what do you think what is

00:35:42.470 --> 00:35:45.670
the balance there is it to make sure that you're separating the

00:35:45.670 --> 00:35:51.490
business representative and research roles is there are there other things what

00:35:51.490 --> 00:35:54.790
should we be thinking about there i think what we should be thinking about there

00:35:54.790 --> 00:36:02.850
is building trust with the person so we want to go away from this idea that

00:36:02.850 --> 00:36:05.530
we are the researcher and they are the subject.

00:36:06.230 --> 00:36:12.070
We want to leave the idea entirely that we're an explorer and we're going into

00:36:12.070 --> 00:36:15.790
their mind and we're finding the little gold bits and we're bringing them back to the team, right?

00:36:16.010 --> 00:36:24.230
This is very much based on sort of this empire building kind of a mindset, right?

00:36:24.570 --> 00:36:27.790
Colonial mindset. We're going to go, we're going to grab what we want,

00:36:27.790 --> 00:36:30.090
And we're going to go away with it. No.

00:36:30.690 --> 00:36:34.830
What we really want to be doing is supporting that person, giving them better

00:36:34.830 --> 00:36:43.230
value, something that they will find of value, right, in the thing that they're trying to get done.

00:36:43.370 --> 00:36:46.810
In order to do that, we have to understand them. In order to understand them, we have to build trust.

00:36:47.692 --> 00:36:52.672
Which means we need to show them that we are not there to bring things back

00:36:52.672 --> 00:36:59.612
to our team and take them away and sort of, like, use the ideas that that person gives us, right?

00:37:00.172 --> 00:37:05.892
If this person is going to give us an idea, we're going to, like, pay them for it.

00:37:05.972 --> 00:37:10.652
We're going to give them royalties for it or, you know, that kind of a mindset. it.

00:37:11.132 --> 00:37:18.272
So the idea is that when we're building trust with someone, it's not something

00:37:18.272 --> 00:37:23.112
that like you can click it and it's on and then it'll turn off when you're done

00:37:23.112 --> 00:37:24.172
with a listening session.

00:37:24.352 --> 00:37:29.192
It's something that is like a needle and it moves back and forth all the time

00:37:29.192 --> 00:37:31.952
throughout the session based on what you're saying to the person.

00:37:32.192 --> 00:37:39.972
So one of the chapters in here is about safety and trust and how a person feels

00:37:39.972 --> 00:37:43.472
and how they think about what they want to say to you,

00:37:43.652 --> 00:37:47.892
how much they want to tell you about their inner thoughts. Inner thoughts are personal.

00:37:48.272 --> 00:37:50.732
We don't talk to people about them very much.

00:37:51.572 --> 00:37:55.212
That in of itself is a reason why these things work really well,

00:37:55.232 --> 00:37:57.652
because it feels so good to be heard at that level.

00:37:57.652 --> 00:38:01.872
Um but when so

00:38:01.872 --> 00:38:06.772
so that idea of building trust is that

00:38:06.772 --> 00:38:10.292
it is built on that idea of being a person

00:38:10.292 --> 00:38:14.732
only coming there to understand someone's interior

00:38:14.732 --> 00:38:17.612
world i know i'm not taking

00:38:17.612 --> 00:38:20.972
any insights back to my team there will be no report after

00:38:20.972 --> 00:38:27.292
this listening session the insights come a few weeks later after we build patterns

00:38:27.292 --> 00:38:32.392
across the listening sessions based on the inner thinking emotional reactions

00:38:32.392 --> 00:38:37.052
and personal rules that people are telling us and how those play together in

00:38:37.052 --> 00:38:39.312
terms of their focus of mental attention.

00:38:40.172 --> 00:38:43.672
Yeah. Yeah. No, I'm sorry. Go ahead. I was just going to say,

00:38:43.772 --> 00:38:46.972
one of the things we're doing is when we're doing the data synthesis,

00:38:47.192 --> 00:38:49.072
we're doing it in an emergent way.

00:38:49.292 --> 00:38:51.872
So we're trying to avoid, we're trying to resist.

00:38:52.432 --> 00:38:56.352
We won't ever be able to do away with our cognitive bias.

00:38:56.492 --> 00:39:02.092
Our cognitive bias is always present because we're human, but we want to resist it as much as possible.

00:39:02.252 --> 00:39:06.412
So our data synthesis has to be emergent. It can't be top-down.

00:39:06.932 --> 00:39:11.672
And to be emergent, we need to pay attention to where was this person mentally?

00:39:11.932 --> 00:39:20.332
What were they focused on? What are they trying to decide or move in their mind

00:39:20.332 --> 00:39:25.332
or move forward on what they're trying to address with their purpose?

00:39:26.357 --> 00:39:32.697
So to pick that apart, so I, as the listener in a research session,

00:39:33.377 --> 00:39:37.137
am letting the person lead the conversation.

00:39:37.997 --> 00:39:45.677
And being aware of my own biases, that's important because it helps me guide

00:39:45.677 --> 00:39:47.757
things correctly and capture things correctly.

00:39:47.977 --> 00:39:51.877
It helps you not try to show the other person that you understand.

00:39:52.497 --> 00:39:57.797
So I do a lot of listening sessions, like say with a chemist, right?

00:39:58.517 --> 00:40:02.897
And all my other research peers would say, oh, I have to go and understand the

00:40:02.897 --> 00:40:04.357
chemistry that they're using.

00:40:04.657 --> 00:40:07.717
I have to understand the industry that they're working in.

00:40:08.237 --> 00:40:13.237
I'm like, no, because we're going to be speaking to them at a human level.

00:40:13.437 --> 00:40:15.917
We're going to be speaking to them about their inner thoughts.

00:40:16.137 --> 00:40:19.937
We don't need to know the chemistry. The chemistry is unimportant.

00:40:20.297 --> 00:40:23.497
The thoughts are important. the emotional reactions are important.

00:40:23.977 --> 00:40:27.977
The personal rules are important. And being able to pick those out and make

00:40:27.977 --> 00:40:31.497
sure that we're getting to that level, as opposed to staying sort of at the

00:40:31.497 --> 00:40:35.797
surface explanation level or the surface,

00:40:36.057 --> 00:40:39.717
just below the surface, we get at opinions and preferences.

00:40:41.017 --> 00:40:47.797
We want to get past those because that's where our usual listening set or interviews stop.

00:40:48.097 --> 00:40:51.777
It's like, oh, you can explain to me how you do it. Well, I don't need someone

00:40:51.777 --> 00:40:53.737
to explain to me the process necessarily.

00:40:54.277 --> 00:40:59.977
I need someone to explain to me their thinking as they execute this approach

00:40:59.977 --> 00:41:05.237
that they're using and what are their personal rules and what are their emotional

00:41:05.237 --> 00:41:10.757
reactions and how am I going to find differences of thinking style?

00:41:11.597 --> 00:41:14.397
Okay, so let me try to throw an example out there.

00:41:14.577 --> 00:41:17.937
And if this example doesn't work, then you could use the chemistry so let's

00:41:17.937 --> 00:41:20.937
say the primary user is going to be a chemistry,

00:41:21.677 --> 00:41:27.777
chemical engineer and they're using a software to maybe guide the balance and

00:41:27.777 --> 00:41:32.437
the mixing of chemicals and but they're also using all those other tools to

00:41:32.437 --> 00:41:36.577
guide the mixing and balancing of chemicals that's true yeah well then i would

00:41:36.577 --> 00:41:40.477
say that um by default as a researcher would say okay,

00:41:40.617 --> 00:41:45.417
well, I want to understand chemistry because then I can ask better questions.

00:41:45.537 --> 00:41:47.317
You're not going to ask about chemistry.

00:41:48.476 --> 00:41:55.956
Yeah. So let's say, so the example is, it was a bunch of people who were using

00:41:55.956 --> 00:42:00.276
a particular chemical to build other things.

00:42:00.276 --> 00:42:03.716
This particular chemical was silicone.

00:42:03.756 --> 00:42:07.516
It apparently makes things sticky or slippery.

00:42:07.756 --> 00:42:10.636
And so they're building things that are either sticky or slippery.

00:42:10.916 --> 00:42:15.256
I spoke to people who formulate shampoo, who formulate paint,

00:42:15.456 --> 00:42:19.856
who formulate rubber, all sorts of different things that they're building.

00:42:20.276 --> 00:42:26.536
They're trying to come up with a new thing in their process or a tweak to their thing.

00:42:27.496 --> 00:42:30.596
As they're describing things to me, I'm like, oh, this is, you know,

00:42:30.656 --> 00:42:34.096
in my own mind, cognitive bias is like, oh, they're kind of like chefs.

00:42:34.596 --> 00:42:37.956
You know, they're trying new things, different ingredients, a little bit more

00:42:37.956 --> 00:42:42.756
of that or hotter, you know, whatever reagent or time or I don't know, right?

00:42:42.976 --> 00:42:49.716
I don't need to know these actual, I don't need to be a chemist to understand

00:42:49.716 --> 00:42:50.776
where they're like, oh, yeah.

00:42:50.936 --> 00:42:53.676
And then I realized that it was coming out too soft.

00:42:54.076 --> 00:43:01.056
And so I decided that I need to put it through the process longer because that'll

00:43:01.056 --> 00:43:02.216
make it a little bit more rigid.

00:43:02.936 --> 00:43:06.676
Okay. So it's a little bit of explanation. That'll make it a little bit more rigid.

00:43:06.836 --> 00:43:09.656
But the I decided to put it through the process a little bit longer.

00:43:09.656 --> 00:43:14.216
Well, how, you know, how long did you decide and how did you make that decision? How long?

00:43:15.556 --> 00:43:16.916
That's interesting to me.

00:43:17.769 --> 00:43:22.149
But that's entirely human. I can understand a decision to make something go

00:43:22.149 --> 00:43:23.409
through a process longer.

00:43:23.989 --> 00:43:29.809
Right? Now, so do you separate the business discovery stuff from the kind of

00:43:29.809 --> 00:43:35.049
the deep listening stuff when you're telling the business what you've learned?

00:43:35.509 --> 00:43:39.189
I'm thinking about scenarios where like you have some big company that's like,

00:43:39.329 --> 00:43:40.569
we do things a certain way.

00:43:40.689 --> 00:43:44.669
We've done it this way since the beginning of time. And the only people like

00:43:44.669 --> 00:43:49.049
who are respected in that organization just know tons of stuff about process.

00:43:49.229 --> 00:43:51.529
They know all the acronyms and all this stuff.

00:43:51.729 --> 00:43:54.789
And then like, then there can be pressure if you're coming from the outside

00:43:54.789 --> 00:44:01.249
to say like, yes, we, we know what the, you know, the JBL and the PP7 and this, the, right.

00:44:01.469 --> 00:44:05.289
But then you also want them to respect your research findings. um

00:44:05.289 --> 00:44:08.249
and you know you you kind of already partly addressed

00:44:08.249 --> 00:44:10.949
it but is do you do you

00:44:10.949 --> 00:44:14.349
separate the two or do you have maybe a point person who's

00:44:14.349 --> 00:44:17.409
this is the person who's representing our relationship

00:44:17.409 --> 00:44:20.229
between our consultancy and our business and they know how

00:44:20.229 --> 00:44:23.129
to talk about all of the jargon and and the

00:44:23.129 --> 00:44:26.329
use cases but here's the so that

00:44:26.329 --> 00:44:29.269
the researchers don't have to be burdened right

00:44:29.269 --> 00:44:31.909
with knowing all the acronyms and knowing all the

00:44:31.909 --> 00:44:35.349
processes generally in my experience that point

00:44:35.349 --> 00:44:39.089
person has been internal to the company there's always

00:44:39.089 --> 00:44:42.389
someone whose voice is

00:44:42.389 --> 00:44:45.269
strong enough and interest in humans is strong

00:44:45.269 --> 00:44:49.089
enough that they get the i

00:44:49.089 --> 00:44:52.269
don't know funding permission whatever to do some research

00:44:52.269 --> 00:44:55.169
like this it's often someone in

00:44:55.169 --> 00:44:58.909
research and development not always it's

00:44:58.909 --> 00:45:01.789
often because of like an alignment of stars oh we got this

00:45:01.789 --> 00:45:07.049
new ceo and they're interested in such and such and this just happened and our

00:45:07.049 --> 00:45:12.149
i don't know our our stock rating went down or you know something like that

00:45:12.149 --> 00:45:19.709
so like oh something has to happen that's new um that person is always internal for me uh oftentimes.

00:45:20.609 --> 00:45:25.429
The company will want to show me i'll do this with startups a lot they'll want

00:45:25.429 --> 00:45:26.369
to show me their product?

00:45:26.429 --> 00:45:30.189
And I'm like, I don't want to see your product. I don't care about your product.

00:45:32.129 --> 00:45:36.489
I really don't want to think about your product. You can show me your product after this.

00:45:36.869 --> 00:45:40.149
But I don't want to think about your product. I want to think about what people

00:45:40.149 --> 00:45:42.869
are trying to get done because I'm not here to solve your product.

00:45:43.269 --> 00:45:48.069
I'm here to solve an understanding of people and their approach.

00:45:48.509 --> 00:45:53.369
And once we understand the patterns there, we can align your product with it

00:45:53.369 --> 00:45:55.049
and see where the gaps are.

00:45:55.948 --> 00:46:01.828
A quote from page 100, chapter 4 of the book, a person's purpose plays a large

00:46:01.828 --> 00:46:09.508
role in problem space research because a person's purpose is what they are already addressing.

00:46:09.648 --> 00:46:16.208
When and if they reach for any tools or solutions, a purpose can be anything

00:46:16.208 --> 00:46:23.108
a person is addressing, doing, pursuing, making progress on, deciding,

00:46:23.748 --> 00:46:25.768
planning, or even putting off.

00:46:25.948 --> 00:46:30.688
It's their aim, intent, objective, what they want to accomplish and achieve.

00:46:31.168 --> 00:46:35.348
Yeah. Yeah. That putting off thing, I think, is really important,

00:46:35.568 --> 00:46:36.988
worth maybe a sentence or two.

00:46:38.628 --> 00:46:44.608
I've worked with people in healthcare, understanding people with chronic conditions.

00:46:45.568 --> 00:46:49.348
And a lot of the time, and I also worked in an airline.

00:46:49.628 --> 00:46:55.968
Same thing happened. And a lot of the time, there is a point or a mindset that

00:46:55.968 --> 00:46:59.748
people fall into and thinking styles like, oh, this can't be happening.

00:47:00.088 --> 00:47:02.888
Undo. I don't want this to happen. Right?

00:47:03.648 --> 00:47:08.208
And with respect to chronic conditions, the whole medical community wants them

00:47:08.208 --> 00:47:10.508
to just get on with the treatment.

00:47:10.928 --> 00:47:14.908
Right? Change your lifestyle. Stop smoking. You know, whatever it is.

00:47:14.968 --> 00:47:17.468
Just, you know, you're bad. I'm judging you.

00:47:18.068 --> 00:47:23.148
I'm not supporting you. And I'm not here for you in that totally valid mindset

00:47:23.148 --> 00:47:26.948
of undo, right? No, no, this can't be happening to me.

00:47:27.753 --> 00:47:33.133
But if you support them, if you had done listening sessions through that,

00:47:33.373 --> 00:47:37.453
you will hear people telling you they're thinking. Like one,

00:47:37.673 --> 00:47:38.713
I will never forget this.

00:47:39.213 --> 00:47:43.613
The thing that got this person over that hump was, and I shouldn't even call

00:47:43.613 --> 00:47:46.033
it a hump because it was a totally valid mindset to be in.

00:47:46.133 --> 00:47:51.893
It's like, well, I want to be here for my grandkids in 10 years because that's

00:47:51.893 --> 00:47:53.993
when they're going to be graduating high school or whatever.

00:47:53.993 --> 00:47:58.273
And I want to be there. I want to take them on this trip that,

00:47:58.413 --> 00:48:02.033
you know, I could take them to that city that they always wanted to visit or

00:48:02.033 --> 00:48:04.573
that, you know, climb that mountain that they wanted to climb.

00:48:05.973 --> 00:48:09.653
There's always something. And it's different for everybody.

00:48:10.153 --> 00:48:15.373
But there are patterns of thinking around it that we can support.

00:48:15.893 --> 00:48:18.753
Right? Wow. I think a lot of psychologists know about that.

00:48:18.873 --> 00:48:23.713
The same thing happened with the airline. There is a state of mind that you

00:48:23.713 --> 00:48:26.853
get in when, some people,

00:48:27.073 --> 00:48:32.073
when something has happened and your plans aren't going according to the timing

00:48:32.073 --> 00:48:34.233
that you had lined up, right?

00:48:34.433 --> 00:48:38.093
Or according even to the meal that you had lined up.

00:48:38.833 --> 00:48:46.693
Something went awry. Something isn't going how you hoped. And you've got an emotional reaction.

00:48:47.733 --> 00:48:54.713
And oftentimes, you will want to try to correct it and insist that it can be corrected.

00:48:55.173 --> 00:48:58.193
And, you know, the gate attendants are all like, oh, my God,

00:48:58.333 --> 00:49:01.373
lady, there's a snowstorm. Right?

00:49:02.813 --> 00:49:07.713
Get out of my face. And the whole airline thought of these people as grumblers.

00:49:08.373 --> 00:49:13.533
And moreover, they thought that these people would also yell at other cars in

00:49:13.533 --> 00:49:17.013
traffic and yell at their kids when the kids weren't doing things wrong.

00:49:17.153 --> 00:49:24.813
And I'm like, no, it is very contextual to this experience having to do with

00:49:24.813 --> 00:49:28.833
an air flight, right? A trip, even just one leg on a trip.

00:49:29.626 --> 00:49:34.826
It is perfectly valid, and it deserves support.

00:49:35.766 --> 00:49:40.026
Right? Yeah, so I get attribution by it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.

00:49:43.766 --> 00:49:47.846
They just thought they were grumbling. That's such a demeaning way to,

00:49:48.006 --> 00:49:53.086
oh, they're just people who, they are the kind of person who would grumble at everything.

00:49:53.446 --> 00:49:58.466
Yeah, yeah. So this is the point at which I want anybody who is listening this far,

00:49:58.466 --> 00:50:01.486
thank you but if you ever encountered

00:50:01.486 --> 00:50:04.746
any personas any set of personas in an

00:50:04.746 --> 00:50:07.826
org and one of those personas everybody loved

00:50:07.826 --> 00:50:13.506
to hate this is this is what's happening right now while we're crushing ideas

00:50:13.506 --> 00:50:23.746
how about the five whys why is that so so i i want us to be able to ask the

00:50:23.746 --> 00:50:26.886
obvious question just like a toddler does, right?

00:50:27.366 --> 00:50:32.486
A toddler's going to ask you why until you say, because I said so, right?

00:50:33.066 --> 00:50:38.286
So that is admirable, but it's not because a toddler knows how to ask why.

00:50:38.426 --> 00:50:41.526
It gets really annoying to be asked why all the time.

00:50:42.166 --> 00:50:48.766
It's admirable because the toddler doesn't know that they're supposed to know.

00:50:48.966 --> 00:50:51.466
They don't care that they don't know it.

00:50:51.866 --> 00:50:57.306
They have this idea that I'm just absorbing information, and it's okay for me

00:50:57.306 --> 00:51:01.386
in this time in my life to ask a bunch of questions so that I can learn.

00:51:02.426 --> 00:51:05.586
That's what's admirable. So I would never say ask five whys.

00:51:05.706 --> 00:51:07.066
People are going to punch you in the face.

00:51:08.746 --> 00:51:13.626
And for the younger audience members who might not know, five whys is this idea

00:51:13.626 --> 00:51:19.086
that if you're in a kind of a business discovery context, if someone says something, you say, why?

00:51:19.346 --> 00:51:22.786
And there's an answer to that, and you say, why again? And you do it five times.

00:51:22.786 --> 00:51:26.006
It's supposed to be this way that you get to the truth.

00:51:26.226 --> 00:51:31.086
It kind of appeals to lots of business thinking that wants to boil everything

00:51:31.086 --> 00:51:35.306
down to extremely simple heuristics where all you have to do is this,

00:51:35.386 --> 00:51:39.546
you know, just open this box and unzip the bag and you have this magical thing.

00:51:39.746 --> 00:51:45.166
Like, no, there's a kind of a skill that has to be built in a mindset and a framework.

00:51:45.606 --> 00:51:48.506
There's another human involved. involved and you're

00:51:48.506 --> 00:51:51.786
gonna you know that little that little um needle

00:51:51.786 --> 00:51:54.966
about trust oh man it's gonna flat line right

00:51:54.966 --> 00:51:58.026
yes like prompt engineering for

00:51:58.026 --> 00:52:00.986
humans like like s why five times then

00:52:00.986 --> 00:52:03.966
it's this hack and you'll get and you'll get to that and so

00:52:03.966 --> 00:52:06.886
you know getting toward the end here and one of the things i want to highlight here

00:52:06.886 --> 00:52:09.586
about this book and you know you could comment on any

00:52:09.586 --> 00:52:16.486
one of these but you build this really clear organized architecture of concepts

00:52:16.486 --> 00:52:21.546
and i'll just just running through them uh some of the things i jotted down

00:52:21.546 --> 00:52:28.966
knowledge making and knowledge providers deep listening which is a subset of active listening.

00:52:29.815 --> 00:52:35.835
Germinal questions, germinal as in germinate, concept, and you treat the concept

00:52:35.835 --> 00:52:40.075
as something that you find in these conversations, and it has a certain,

00:52:40.175 --> 00:52:41.995
it's a unit of information.

00:52:43.955 --> 00:52:47.895
Information session versus a listening session, right?

00:52:49.175 --> 00:52:53.515
Permeable perimeter, that took me back to the fifth grade bio class,

00:52:53.575 --> 00:52:58.155
but it's, oh, you veer in and out of the topic, but then that's okay because you're, right?

00:52:58.155 --> 00:53:06.715
Pull tabs, micro-reflections, and I think really the core one is interior cognition.

00:53:07.735 --> 00:53:12.675
Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. All of these things. There's so many different

00:53:12.675 --> 00:53:20.375
ways or ways in which this is different than you might have learned how to do research.

00:53:20.855 --> 00:53:24.755
Mainly because the way you learned how to do research was through the lens of

00:53:24.755 --> 00:53:30.615
the solution. And you need to come out of each interview with insights.

00:53:30.875 --> 00:53:32.695
We're not doing that.

00:53:33.495 --> 00:53:37.195
We're doing something different. Our insights are going to come when we compare

00:53:37.195 --> 00:53:43.355
what our solution can do to the way that people approach things mentally.

00:53:43.355 --> 00:53:46.955
Um so this idea of

00:53:46.955 --> 00:53:50.155
concepts when we're doing

00:53:50.155 --> 00:53:53.375
a listening session with somebody we're

00:53:53.375 --> 00:53:57.555
tracking whether someone is just explaining things to us or telling us their

00:53:57.555 --> 00:54:03.655
opinions or whether they're getting to the interior the inner thinking their

00:54:03.655 --> 00:54:07.755
emotional reactions about things it's like oh i'm going to make this decision

00:54:07.755 --> 00:54:13.135
to make that that process go a little bit longer so that it isn't quite so soft at the end, right?

00:54:13.375 --> 00:54:18.415
That's some inner thinking, okay? It comes from a memory.

00:54:18.975 --> 00:54:26.315
So I try to get people to speak about specific memories. I try to pin them to a place in time.

00:54:27.160 --> 00:54:31.920
So that it's easier for them to talk about what went through their mind.

00:54:32.200 --> 00:54:36.000
The other thing is that intro session is part of recruiting.

00:54:36.580 --> 00:54:39.980
With every candidate that you have, you do an intro session,

00:54:40.120 --> 00:54:45.720
which is where you talk about, like, have you done a lot of thinking about this particular topic?

00:54:45.980 --> 00:54:49.100
Let's sort of make sure. And let me explain to you that this is going to be

00:54:49.100 --> 00:54:51.640
more of a conversation. I don't have a list of questions for you.

00:54:52.040 --> 00:54:55.840
And you're going to sort of lead me through what went through your mind as you

00:54:55.840 --> 00:54:58.520
did that thing. Is that, you know, going to be okay?

00:54:58.860 --> 00:55:01.640
And here's who we're doing it for. And here's how we're going to use it.

00:55:01.680 --> 00:55:03.920
And here's what you're going to get out of it in the end.

00:55:04.680 --> 00:55:06.560
Here's how we're going to provide value.

00:55:07.920 --> 00:55:10.580
And here's how we're going to stay in contact. You know, is this all?

00:55:10.740 --> 00:55:14.420
And then if it's something that they want to participate in,

00:55:14.660 --> 00:55:17.320
you also ask them a question, well, what's the best way to do this?

00:55:17.380 --> 00:55:21.360
Because speaking out loud sometimes isn't the best way to do it for someone.

00:55:22.040 --> 00:55:26.680
So maybe let's do it by text messages over the course of a week or whatever, right?

00:55:26.860 --> 00:55:29.620
Um maybe it's better for someone to do

00:55:29.620 --> 00:55:32.720
a video um it depends on that

00:55:32.720 --> 00:55:36.480
person and what works for them you

00:55:36.480 --> 00:55:39.680
just need a way to interact with it to recognize

00:55:39.680 --> 00:55:44.340
when you're at the start the exterior layers of explanation and opinions of

00:55:44.340 --> 00:55:49.060
preferences and be able to ask questions use those as pull tabs to sort of open

00:55:49.060 --> 00:55:54.160
up that richer interior i love it and one of the questions i don't want to forget

00:55:54.160 --> 00:55:58.480
to ask you before we close out is you talk about,

00:55:58.720 --> 00:56:01.800
you know, there's the observational stuff.

00:56:02.140 --> 00:56:05.680
And by the way, I love the topic on the inductive versus the deductive.

00:56:05.840 --> 00:56:10.880
I just recorded a month ago, a podcast episode for this, talking about the difference

00:56:10.880 --> 00:56:13.260
because a lot of executives, okay, we have to test the idea.

00:56:13.460 --> 00:56:16.920
It's the deductive method. Well, no, there's the inductive, which is like you're

00:56:16.920 --> 00:56:19.740
building up your knowledge on that stuff.

00:56:20.180 --> 00:56:25.800
One of the things I wanted to ask you about is a lot of the methods have people

00:56:25.800 --> 00:56:28.000
referring back to their previous memory.

00:56:28.400 --> 00:56:35.060
How do you reconcile that with the observation that sometimes methods that rely

00:56:35.060 --> 00:56:43.800
on self-reporting or imperfect memories is still a strong method to use in this case?

00:56:43.920 --> 00:56:47.680
How do we talk about that stuff? It's much easier to remember what you were

00:56:47.680 --> 00:56:51.800
thinking or the gist of what you were thinking than to remember what you were

00:56:51.800 --> 00:56:53.740
doing and what buttons you were pressing.

00:56:54.000 --> 00:56:57.200
So we're not interested in how they're using these solutions.

00:56:57.200 --> 00:57:00.460
We're interested in what went through their mind, right?

00:57:00.720 --> 00:57:04.740
So I don't know what buttons they were pressing to extend the length of the

00:57:04.740 --> 00:57:09.340
process so that it would come out less soft, right?

00:57:09.460 --> 00:57:12.780
I don't care about that. I just care about the decision that was made.

00:57:13.459 --> 00:57:14.739
Got you. Okay. So that clears that

00:57:14.739 --> 00:57:17.839
up a lot. Cause yeah, the research is talking about how we don't know.

00:57:18.279 --> 00:57:22.279
We're not mapping our behaviors very well in our memory of that, but the other stuff,

00:57:22.739 --> 00:57:27.079
you come away with feelings and you have, you have a mental model based upon

00:57:27.079 --> 00:57:32.019
the path, the dragon, uh, with the, uh, everyone has their own personal dragon,

00:57:32.039 --> 00:57:33.839
which is their whole, um, history.

00:57:34.459 --> 00:57:37.399
Really love this stuff. Um, so we've got the three books.

00:57:37.519 --> 00:57:40.779
We've got the book we talked about today, time to listen, um,

00:57:41.039 --> 00:57:44.119
into young, and then your courses. Do you want to shout out the courses and

00:57:44.119 --> 00:57:46.139
how businesses can get in touch with you?

00:57:47.699 --> 00:57:52.259
Because I like to give people a lot of different ways to engage with ideas.

00:57:52.479 --> 00:57:55.559
There's the book, but there's also a course on time to listen.

00:57:55.819 --> 00:57:59.899
There's also a practice group on time to listen that I offer occasionally.

00:58:00.339 --> 00:58:03.959
Then there's another course on qualitative data synthesis.

00:58:04.259 --> 00:58:07.079
Now, this is a course that took me a year and a half to build.

00:58:07.099 --> 00:58:11.899
It's a two-part course. It's actually two courses with its own two practice sessions.

00:58:13.199 --> 00:58:19.599
And um that is a course that doesn't exist anywhere outside of university right now,

00:58:20.259 --> 00:58:23.779
it's seriously yeah it's pretty in-depth

00:58:23.779 --> 00:58:26.799
people love it and um

00:58:26.799 --> 00:58:30.699
i'm super pleased because i have been teaching that method

00:58:30.699 --> 00:58:33.319
i don't know for 25 years and it was

00:58:33.319 --> 00:58:36.599
really hard to teach and i finally figured out how to teach it now people when

00:58:36.599 --> 00:58:41.359
i do the practice sessions with them they get it the the ideas are there i'm

00:58:41.359 --> 00:58:45.899
like okay we're working it's working so there's two other classes one is thinking

00:58:45.899 --> 00:58:50.739
styles which is how do you derive thinking styles out of that same data.

00:58:51.819 --> 00:58:55.539
Aside from doing the qualitative data synthesis this is a different kind of

00:58:55.539 --> 00:58:59.879
synthesis we're coming up with thinking styles and then there's a course on

00:58:59.879 --> 00:59:04.699
framing your study which is like how do we choose what purpose how do we even

00:59:04.699 --> 00:59:08.119
understand what purpose you know to

00:59:08.479 --> 00:59:12.219
start gathering knowledge about so wow

00:59:12.219 --> 00:59:15.499
those are the courses and i offer

00:59:15.499 --> 00:59:18.659
four different price levels on those

00:59:18.659 --> 00:59:21.439
courses because i do work with

00:59:21.439 --> 00:59:24.379
a lot of people globally there are countries

00:59:24.379 --> 00:59:30.619
that do not have very much buying power in the u.s dollar and they get 90 off

00:59:30.619 --> 00:59:35.779
the regular price there are people in the world who do not have an organization

00:59:35.779 --> 00:59:41.499
um they're just working for themselves or they're a student or maybe they are

00:59:41.499 --> 00:59:42.699
working for an organization,

00:59:42.699 --> 00:59:45.499
but it refuses to give them budget for anything.

00:59:46.019 --> 00:59:49.179
You are paying out of pocket. You get 50% off.

00:59:49.900 --> 00:59:53.800
Nice. So inclusive pricing structure. Yeah, exactly.

00:59:54.540 --> 00:59:59.540
For everyone. Okay. And then they can find all of that on your website and all

00:59:59.540 --> 01:00:02.920
of the breakdowns of all the stuff you offer, the books, the courses,

01:00:02.920 --> 01:00:06.220
and all of that. And then people get in touch with you personally, LinkedIn?

01:00:07.140 --> 01:00:13.740
LinkedIn or newsletter. Newsletter is a great way to sort of like a first step

01:00:13.740 --> 01:00:16.000
to kind of get aware of some of these things.

01:00:16.820 --> 01:00:20.400
LinkedIn, I do a lot of, I do three posts a week and they're beautiful posts.

01:00:20.640 --> 01:00:22.880
They hardly get any impressions because of LinkedIn.

01:00:25.720 --> 01:00:28.820
But, you know, just get your tongue wet. Look at some of those.

01:00:29.940 --> 01:00:32.440
See what other people are saying. I get a lot of comments.

01:00:34.180 --> 01:00:38.880
And being able to sign up to the newsletter, I really should be sending out more newsletters.

01:00:39.000 --> 01:00:42.980
I've just been so busy this year because I rolled out a new website,

01:00:42.980 --> 01:00:45.920
which is meant to be sort of a community website.

01:00:47.020 --> 01:00:51.740
I haven't quite perfected it, but it's got a lot of wording on here and a lot

01:00:51.740 --> 01:00:57.460
of examples that you can use with your own manager and your own team to kind

01:00:57.460 --> 01:01:01.980
of explore these ideas and talk about how they might fit for your org.

01:01:02.740 --> 01:01:06.760
Nice. So a place to actually get involved and engage in the practice.

01:01:07.280 --> 01:01:13.160
Thank you so much, Indy, for being on the show today. Thank you so much for inviting me.