021 : An Empathetic Approach to Leading Organizations with Steve Usher
As a professional recruiter, starting an interview-based podcast was a natural move for Steve Usher. In September 2018, he put together The Experience Designer, a show dedicated to the human resource, talent acquisition, and employee experience community. What began simply as an “interview craving” and a thirst for knowledge turned into a passion project to serve other creatives in the industry. It’s a motivation Steve Chaparro can wholeheartedly relate to, having started The Culture Design Show with a realization “that there is an awareness that still needs to happen” around “bringing together the principles, the methodologies, the mindsets of design thinking and how it can impact employee experience.”
Steve Usher defines design thinking as a bottom-up approach to solving problems. It’s based on empathy, which includes walking in the shoes of your employees and understanding your end-user. It’s about internalizing the needs, wants, and desires of your stakeholders and building your service and experience around these foundational factors. He laments the widespread acceptance of the top-down, systemic, hierarchical approach that many companies continue to live by. Steve Chaparro agrees, but points to the rise of “Chief People Officers”, “Chief Design Officers”, and other such titles adopted by more C-suite executives today as proof of the exciting shift towards a greater focus on employee experience.
Fellow podcasters Steve Chaparro and Steve Usher interview each other on their respective professional journeys in the world of design. They discuss the drastic changes taking place today in the HR field—to the point that the very term “HR” may soon be deemed outdated—and the new, practical methodologies being introduced in place of traditional, top-down organizational leadership. Stay tuned.
Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:
- Steve and Steve on their growing pains in the early days of their respective careers
- Steve Usher’s perspective on design thinking
- Why “HR” may soon become an outdated term
- The importance of distinguishing between HR as a function and HR as a profession
- “Employee experience”, define
- Implementing design thinking and employee experience to smaller companies with fewer resources
Resources Mentioned in this episode:
About the Guest:
Steve Usher is the co-founder of 5ive.studio, “an employee experience design agency based in the Nordics.” He is also the host of The Experience Designers podcast, which features “interviews with practitioners from a diverse range of industries” on “the future of work, crafting experiences and the role of design thinking.”
He graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Estate Management at Luton University.
Sponsor for this episode:
This episode is brought to you by the Culture Design Studio, a consulting firm that helps people and cultural leaders who feel constrained in their ability to engage their employees to become champions for their people through a series of facilitated workshops. They provide a practical and collaborative process to transform the culture within your creative organization.
Culture Design Studio has worked with organizations like Duarte Design, Design Thinkers Group, Red Bull, USAID, Bacardi, and the Office of Civic Innovation
If you’re looking for more than just a consultant and want someone who can facilitate your organization through a structured conversation to transform your culture, Culture Design Studio is the one for you.
Contact them today to learn more about what they can do for you and your company.
Full Transcript: Powered by Otter.ai
Announcer
Welcome to the Culture Design Show where we feature conversations with leaders and thinkers who are passionate about culture and design. Now, let’s get started with the show.
Steve Chaparro
Steve Chaparro here. I am the host of the culture design show a podcast where I feature leaders and thinkers at some of the top creative firms in the world, including architecture, design, technology, and marketing. What’s the one thing they all have in common? They all believe in the power of culture, and design.
This podcast is brought to you by culture design studio, we help people in culture leaders who feel constrained in their ability to engage their employees to become champions for their people. Through a series of facilitated workshops, we provide a practical and collaborative process to transform the culture within your creative organization. We’ve worked with organizations like Duarte Design, DesignThinkers Group, Red Bull, US Aid, Bacardi and the Office of Civic Innovation. So if you’re looking for more than just a consultant, but someone who can facilitate your organization through a structured conversation to transform your culture, reach out to us at culturedesignstudio.com
Hi, Steve. This is Steve Chaparro all the way from Long Beach, California. Welcome to the culture Design Show.
Steve Usher
Thank you, my friend and Steve. It’s Steve here from the Experience Designers Podcast in Stockholm in Sweden. So yeah, dude. So we’re coming together. Yeah, to have a kind of mash up between two podcasters passionate about employee experience.
Steve Chaparro
I’m very excited about this. This is something we’ve been talking about for some time. We got to meet a while back Actually, we met virtual we actually never met in person. We have a digital relationship. But since we’re both passionate about the employee experience, as well as having our respective podcasts, we thought, Hey, why don’t we actually do one Where we get together in, in a sense, interview each other for our respective podcasts and see where the conversation goes?
Steve Usher
Absolutely, absolutely. So where should we start? Where should we start?
Steve Chaparro
Well, one of the things we talked about was I love to learn about your professional journey, you have an accent that I would not have thought I would hear from a person living in Sweden. So tell me about your professional journey.
Steve Usher
Yeah, cool. Okay, so my life has taken me on a bit of a journey. So I was originally from Liverpool center of the universe in the UK, moved to London spent majority of my kind of growing up and I don’t live there. And then up until about four years ago, I decided to move to Sweden. And my professional background is really I’m kind of in a bit of a game of two halves, really. So my first half I would say, from kind of early 20s, I was super lucky, started my own recruitment agency business, and then went on a kind of Rocky rollercoaster ride of owning and running and growing a recruitment agency organization. You know, I look back with pride amount of learning the people I met, it was wild. So, but one of the things that after that kind of journey I was coming up to 40. midlife is starting to get a little bit definitely.
Steve Chaparro
Yes, I understand that very well.
Steve Usher
Yeah, it happens for sure. I wasn’t expecting it. But you know, life just throws you some curveballs every now and again. And I decided, you know what, I think it was time for something new. And so took the opportunity to exit the business. And you know, I had a beautiful time, about almost a year of not working, just took some time out. And I really reflected on what is the I’m passionate about. And one of those things, the word that just kept coming back to me was experience. And so that’s just taken me the last four, four and a half years on just the most incredible growth journey, both personally professionally, and has also brought me to Sweden as well, which is just amazing.
Steve Chaparro
So tell me about that growth. I mean, you know, when I compare, I’ll share a little bit about my own journey. But yeah, I’m always intrigued about when people say this Journey of growth, because growth has its growing pains. What were some of those growing pains for you?
Steve Usher
Yeah, I mean, look, I’ll be completely open and vulnerable and all that stuff here. So I mean, I think for me moving out of an industry, which I knew so well, it was like, it was mainly in the kind of customer experience Customer Contact industry. It’s a great industry. And, you know, I kind of left this industry after it was kind of my identity, actually, for so many years, the company was my identity. So when that kind of was, you know, when I change that, and then I kind of had that kind of time, and then also don’t forget them moved to Stockholm as well from London. So my whole world changed, actually.
So yeah, I went through some really interesting phases, just personally in terms of like, you know, started doing things like meditating mindfulness. I got a couple of coaches just to help me really identify, you know, where do I want to go? Where’s my strengths? where are some of those emotional changes that I’ve been going through at the time and work through it I mean, you know, coaching is really important. Definitely. And, you know, without that I wouldn’t have really then kind of then progressed on to more than kind of refining myself and finding that next passion really, which I came to with design thinking. And as soon as I left that office in Amsterdam at the design thinkers Academy, I knew in that moment as I, I know my purpose now I’ve got my new purpose, I got a new passion. I know what I want to do.
And since then, it’s just been experiment, experiment, out of comfort zone, learn, iterate, fail, you name it, it’s great. It’s great. So that’s been my, you know, and that’s the great thing now that I’m on this continuous learning now. I mean, I haven’t stopped learning. I’m always reading always curious if I’ve really transformed myself. In that respect. I think I got quite comfortable, probably in my mid 30s and decided to make a change. So yeah, yeah.
Steve Chaparro
Some good stuff.
Steve Usher
How about you, Steve? So I know you know, you were in one industry, I believe for some time and then you’ve transitioned as well.
Steve Chaparro
Yeah, I would think, you know, my journey could also be described as The Great Experiment, because there’s been a big series of decisions, transitions, learning experiences, and even wondering if any of the moves that I’ve made, if any of them were mistakes, but in hindsight, I see them as part of this great experiment, this great journey. And so I mean, I chose the profession of architecture at an early age while I was in high school, I did a paper in response to an assignment that we had in ninth grade. And I chose an architect and I actually was very intrigued by the profession and pretty much decided by my sophomore year 10th grade that I was going to pursue that as, as a profession.
So I went to architecture school in Los Angeles and completed that five year program and went into the field into the profession for the next five and a half years, I found a really great firm, where I was afforded a great opportunity to learn and gain take responsibility of projects in ways that I think were unheard of in the industry. And it wasn’t anything to do with me it was everything to do with the firm itself and just the culture of really, you know, in a sense, throwing people out into the water and it was a sink or swim. And that had obviously, it’s bad aspects of it, but some very powerfully good things as well. After about five and a half years though, I grew restless, I actually chose not to embark on the path to licensure in architecture, because I felt that if I did, I would basically choose a single profession for my life. Because after 20-30 years, I would not be able to explore other things. So I say that I was restless within the four walls of architecture. And so I needed to learn how to apply those principles that I learned in architecture and design and apply them to other arenas.
And so I actually went out and joined another firm real estate development for me we actually was a national home building firm in here in the United States. and learned how to do land planning and then moved into a profit and loss role, where I learned about business and it was a really hard time to learn about business because that was during the housing crisis of 2005 to 2010. I learned a lot though we weren’t managing profits, we were more mitigating losses. But I actually learned more in a down period about business than I would have in an up period. And so that was a really transformative period for me. 2010 I got laid off from that job. And that was one of the first major transformative periods for me because I had seen a lot of success up to that point. But having gotten laid off, I thought, I’ve got a lot of transferable skills. I have a prop any problem finding a job? Well, I did. I took me a year and a half to find a full time job at half the pay that I was making before.
So there was a lot of learning a lot of inner in self reflection, I actually went into financial services. I had to reinvent myself because there was no work in architecture or Real estate development during that time period. And so I became a licensed financial advisor for about three years. And I learned a ton there about what it means to be an advisor, what it means to be a trusted advisor and to do what is best for your client, as opposed to what is best for you. But also, I grew restless with that because of the compliance nature of that industry. I felt like I was handcuffed and to creativity…
Steve Usher
As a designer in there.
Steve Chaparro
Yeah, yeah, again, I think that’s part of the journey for me is this experiencing this restlessness and wanting to explore how to apply new ideas in your existing arena, or try to explore applying existing ideas to new arenas, and that’s always been part of my journey. So I went back into real estate development for a moment. And then I went full circle back into architecture, where I was a VP of strategic design and in that period, what we did there is we tried to apply for our client Companies, what is their company story? What is the story of their culture, their story of their people? And what can we do to shape their physical environment to either one embody those values or to actually act as a mechanism to reshape those values. And what I learned in that period there was that many of the organizations that we were working with, actually did not have a true sense of who they were. It was a culture by default, as opposed to by intention or by design. And so I sought to embark on this new chapter for me, and that is to how can I apply those design principles? Those collaborative, those empathetic those emergent processes and methodologies, to the design of culture and that’s when I started the culture design studio, and that’s what brings me here today.
Steve Usher
Amazing, amazing. And we also have mutual friends and with the DesignThinkers Academy, you know. Who have you know, been, I know for me certainly shaped my thinking and set me on a path which I, I never thought even existed to me.
Steve Chaparro
Yeah, and that’s been as part of my current story culture design studio is not the only thing that I’m doing right now I have the wonderful opportunity to partner with other organizations in different ways. One of those is with Duarte, and they are worldwide known communication design firm. So I do workshops for them around presentation delivery, content development, and even content design as well.
The other part, as you said, is DesignThinkers Group and I was able to meet Marc Bolick, who is head of the US business here and got to meet him and we just had a chat and I loved what they were doing, and had the opportunity to attend some of the workshops to them, become certified through them and realize that there was this global network that they were a part of, and you actually had, as you mentioned, the opportunity to go out to the mothership out in Amsterdam, and with Arne and the folks over there. And I think that’s one of the ways that we were able to meet each other. I think it was, I don’t remember if it was in. Do you remember exactly where it was that we connected? Was it on LinkedIn? Was it?
Steve Usher
Yeah, it was it was LinkedIn because Marc, I think Marc met I actually bumped into Marc at the end of the design thinking conference in October last year and realized I was like, Oh, your Marc. Right. Okay. And so we just connected out and had a great conversation, and he certainly recommended that we connect. So just curious, Steve, how’s the podcasting journey been for you?
Steve Chaparro
Yeah, so it’s been great. So I attempted and I’ll say attempted to do a podcast about two and a half years ago was called Reshaped, and I got to that magic number of 10 episodes, but then I stopped. You know, they say that so many podcasts don’t reach 10 episodes, they just peter out and die off. Well, I had gone to attend a graduate program. So I actually stopped but then we’re about 11 episodes in right now on this new podcast called the Culture Design Show. I just love having conversations with people. I’m just so curious. And I love asking questions of people and learning, you know, from folks like you of your journey. And to find out new ways of looking at things.
I think initially, I had thought to try to have a video first approach, and that is that we would always meet in person, we would have some nice slick video production. And that I started to see at the beginning of March that that wasn’t going to work well, and it wasn’t even COVID related yet. But then when COVID-19 hit, okay, obviously, that’s not going to happen. So what we’re doing today on zoom has been the way we’ve been doing it and it’s been working great. I’ve been getting some really good feedback, but I’m all about trying to learn how to do this better and, and I’d love to hear from you like what are some lessons that you learned and what compelled you to start the podcast as well?
Steve Usher
Yeah, so I mean, it’s all Arne’s fault, DesignThinkers Group. Now it’s not really it’s not. So often my kind of epiphany with the DeisgnThinkers guys, I came back to Sweden. And in my mind, I was just kind of at that point at that junction, I was just like, you know what, I have to take this to HR, I have to take this to acquisition. This is, this is one of the greatest things that HR can embrace and understand and learn. I mean, this is I and I’m really passionate about this. And I see that a really exciting future for HR if an organization’s Of course, on a broader scale on the benefits of applying design thinking mindset. Sure, we’re going to get to that.
So for me, that was my drive, and I was I need to say it now. And I think it applies beautifully to experience design. And so I literally I think I was actually used a friend’s birthday and I was going back to Amsterdam for a weekend. And I find Arne. I said, Hey, it’s Steve, I’m going to start a podcast I think it’s only fitting if I come back and up my first guest. And so yeah, when over recorded the first one. And my mindset with it has always been, like global view, because I think EX is a global movement. It’s happening right now. It’s growing, evolving. I think 2020 even in these current circumstances, EX has been stress tested to the limits right now. So I think it’s a good thing and a wake up call for a lot of companies right now. And so I wanted to maybe be part of, you know, provide a little part of that movement.
And so, I’ve got, I mean, I’ve been just tying in meetings and other kind of, you know, client work I’ve been to like Germany in Berlin, you know, it’s the land those offices and the brilliant Chris roar, and we talked about candidate experience. He had the amazing title of candidate experience innovation manager. So his job was to basically innovate innovate the candidate experience, which not many organizations invest a headcount on that specifically, you know, I’ve spoken to, you know, people in South Africa, us all over for where else have I been? I’ve been to, obviously the UK been to Lego offices. This year, which was amazing.
Steve Chaparro
That’s a dream venture right there.
Steve Usher
It was brilliant. And and Eunice was just just such an amazing person. And I think the big thing for me is I kind of on that reflection point for me about what is it I want to do is I realized really quickly that oh my god, 20 years of my life, I was in recruitment. And of course, interviewing is a big part of that job. And I hadn’t done it for so many years. So I kind of missed it. So I’m kind of getting my interview craving, it’s satisfying my thirst for this constant learning that I have, because I love new stuff. One of my coaches nicknamed me, magpie, because I love new shiny things. So that’s, that’s my thing. So it satisfies that. And then from an outward point of view, it means that I’m serving people externally in the sense that I’m then sharing out great content that people can learn from and share from so that’s my principles. I don’t do it to make money or to do advertising or any of that. Maybe later. I don’t know. I think you have to earn the right to do that in my mind. So yeah, hard work.
Steve Chaparro
Yeah. I love that. You say that because I think sharing this message is definitely a big part of of my motivation as well, especially with the topic that we are centered in, in our work in terms of this idea of bringing together the principles, the methodologies, the mindsets of, of design thinking and how it can impact the employee experience. And I think part of it is for me, I do see that there is an awareness that still needs to happen about this way of thinking, I think of, you know, the adoption, I kind of call it three stages of adoption.
One is, you need to bring about awareness about a new way, then you can apply it in some small, maybe controlled problem that you’re going to try to address by applying it and then that’ll bring an opportunity to bring about more adoption. And so I think for me, it’s been about what can I do to have more conversations about this and to get other people’s perspectives and even in some cases, learn the language that they’re using because sometimes it’s a matter of language in terms of what can we do to adopt other domain language To then apply some of these principles, because I think sometimes as we’re going to get into talking about design thinking in a moment, I think too many times when we’re practitioners in any respective discipline, we tend to espouse that language or that lexicon. And sometimes you see people’s eyes rolling back, because they’re like, you know, this guy’s a nerd, you know, I just let him talk about his thing, my eyes are gonna glaze over, and I’m done. So I think that has also been a new way of either one, learning about language or even, in some cases, learning about the pushback. I think sometimes the pushback is just merely an attempt to understand it’s not a rejection necessarily. And so learning about some of those things has been a really exciting thing.
Steve Usher
I second that. Communication is really key. And I’ve certainly I’ve experimented quite a bit with this. And so I’ve kind of gone in, you know, really enthusiastic a couple of years ago, like, you know, design thinking, blah, blah, blah, and everyone’s like, I’ve got no idea what you’re talking about, and just doesn’t connect And I think what I learned to do was to, as you say, I think of it from a crafting point of view. So when I, when I look at an organization or start working with an organization, I look at it as a canvas. And each Canvas is different. It has different characters painted on it, it has, you know, different tools that are used, there’s different types of pain, there’s a different feeling to it.
And so I always kind of, and there’s a different language, of course, so I always try and work and understand, okay, what’s some of the language it’s going to work in this and I’ve got a really good example to share this with mechanic experience point of view that I did a couple of years ago. And it just, you know, getting that narrative, right because when you talk about like the use those two words are the all these words out there on our agile HR, design sprints that’s coming really strong right now has been for a while, particularly more so than bleeding into HR. And then design thinking it kind of just strikes this, I don’t know. Some people just switch off to it. And so you’ve got to kind of, you know, adapt it and be flexible and understand their language and then just kind of meld it around that just to get, because what the thing about this is just getting started. And once you kind of get started, and certainly through the research phase, once you’re in there, all sorts can open up. I mean, that’s the beauty of it, really. So that’s what I found.
Steve Chaparro
So at least from my podcast, the audience are really people and culture and design leaders at creative firms. And so for those that aren’t necessarily as knowledgeable about design thinking, if you can share your understanding of what design thinking is, and what were some of the things about it, that really resonated with you and your work?
Steve Usher
Yeah. So I was excited being a leader of a business or I was within my recruitment company. And I think my biggest kind of learning with this is called I wish I knew this what I when I was in my 20s for sure, was, it’s bottom up. It’s all about empathy. It’s all about walking in the shoes of your employees. It’s really understanding your end user and I think organizations spend a tremendous amount of money researching and listening to customers. And they went through kind of cx went through quite a big transition like 20 years ago, where they went from kind of pushing products out to then transforming that by understanding, okay, we need to adapt to our customers and start to listen more understanding intrinsically more about our customers behaviors, what’s their needs, their wants, their desires, where they like to engage with us what channels and then build the service and experience around that.
And so, it’s crazy to think that in 2020, we’re only starting to really understand that actually, a captive audience is our employees, and they’re the most, you know, they’re the closest kind of human beings your organization, yet we continue to focus on top down solutions do as what we say rather than really, you know, if you had 1000 people in your organization, that’s a really captive group of people. So why not actually take the time to really understand them intrinsically understand their journeys through your business as an employee? How do they engage with you? How did they touch you? How did they connect with you? How do they you know, all of these kind of moments that happened along the kind of employee journey? And then why don’t you then with purpose shape your business to your staff as well and your employees? And only now, I mean, we’ve had this constant thing around engagement for like decades, which is still drives me mad because it’s we haven’t, we haven’t solved it. If you look at the Gallup scores, hasn’t changed. They haven’t changed. Organizations have been long for far too long, throwing things at the problem and downward downward, this systemic hierarchy or downward command and control. And so now, you know, organizations that are recognizing that hey, this stuff doesn’t work anymore. People aren’t engaged by the anymore.
So now it’s about how can we then shape it from the bottom up. And this for me, where as design thinking comes in because it’s human centered, it’s centered on the end user, the human, and how we can then design it upwards from there. So, you know, that’s my view. That’s my kind of how I see this whole engagement is a top down. It’s an outcome. It’s kind of a, it’s a byproduct of good management or good leadership. It’s a reactionary thing. Whereas experienced design, Human Centered Design is much more proactive, and actually focusing and targeting on the areas that you you need to improve on from the bottom up building it from the bottom up. Very important.
Steve Chaparro
Yeah, I agree with all of that. I think many times. I mean, there’s so many things that you said that I, I’d love to…
Steve Usher
Go for it
Steve Chaparro
..to follow up on because I mean, so much of what I’m seeing as well in terms of, you know, it’s interesting to see, you like what you were saying about the customer experience and how that has evolved and how that has in A sense has allowed the CMO to have a seat on the C suite table. And how that has also translated to now you have ch rows, or Chief Human Resources officers or chief people officers are now rising to the C suite because that employee experience is now a strategic advantage for the company. Or even the idea of having a chief design officer as well being part of that C suite.
It’s very interesting to me how the importance of these particular experience related conversations, customer, employee, and just experience in general, have elevated these roles in the company and they’ve been so much more important. I completely agree that many times I think the the best practices that we’ve had even HR using that word HR is somewhat possibly going to be an outdated term. And that’s the reason why I’ve seen so many leaders transition from being called car rose to cpos because it’s really about people and in some cases, that CPO is actually overseeing both the customer experience and the employee experience because it’s very much about the people experience. I think sometimes when we talk about HR and even one the function, and then to the organizational design in terms of how decisions are made that top down command and control, I think that worked really well. When the environments were predictable. We understood maybe our customers, we understood the economic landscape, we understood how people bought we understood how people, you know, came to work at companies, but as you said, maybe it wasn’t working because the employee engagement numbers have been consistently low the way they have been.
But I also think that now we’re living in a time that is not predictable. That is not simple. That is not the way it used to be, you know, we talked about the whole time term vuca, right? You know, things are volatile these days, things are ambiguous. They’re complex, they’re just uncertain. And so we need a new methodology to solve these complex problems that we’ve never faced before, or that these expectations on behalf of customers or employees have never voiced before. Because now they’re saying, hey, that experience that I had, you know, with x company, I want that to be part of my shopping experience with you, Mister company, or even Mr. Company, as an employee, I demand that same type of experience. If I don’t get it here, I’m going to walk there’s so many things that we need to think about.
So I think design thinking as a way of systematic approach to solving complex problems, is definitely the way to think about it. And I think, you know, there are, you know, the stages, you know, right, we talked about the stages to design thinking whether, you know, people use different terms, but I think at the end of the day, we as practitioners should not fix that. on sort of the strict methodology and even terminology of design thinking, but really focus on the desired outcomes. And I think that makes it much more palatable to human resource leaders or even CEOs to understand the value of this, because I think that’s the biggest challenge, right is how does design thinking, impact what we’re trying to do in HR? What are your thoughts about that?
Steve Usher
Yeah, so Yeah, good question. So I mean, for anybody who hasn’t come across it there is the McKinsey report on the impact of design like it from a return on investment and some of the some of the outcomes and that are really compelling. I think we’re in early stages on this. Personally, I don’t think we can derive any you know, there are some good examples out there. Don’t get me wrong, but I don’t think it’s at a level yet where we can say yeah, it’s this exact return on investment on x, y investment on this kind of level of design gives you this outcome.
I think for me right now, I mean, you touched on it there around HR itself. I think it’s There’s an interesting kind of thing happening I’ve seen is that you’ve got HR as a function, and then you’ve got the HR profession. And some of the things that I’m really passionate about is all of the legions of like HR practitioners, whether it’s HR assistant HR manager, head of HR, regardless, is the toolkits and the skills and the mindset they have right now, by right now, a traditional HR function. Internal perception of HR is also a big challenge in lots of organizations, that has to change that has to change. So the narrative for HR is against them, so that their behavior needs to change how they engage the company needs to gauge how they engage cross silo needs to change.
And so that’s again, coming back to designing is an amazing tool and mindset to be able to then to start with confidence. And this is one of the big things that I’ve seen with HR is confidence, and just that ability to kind of take that step forward with these new sets of tools because again, like we’ve talked about earlier with our careers changing? Well, that’s a big also a big change for somebody who’s been doing quite, you know, reactionary hr 20 years.
Steve Chaparro
Talk about identity.
Steve Usher
Yeah.
Steve Chaparro
I mean identity if you’re if you’re disrupting the function of HR, if you’re just if you’re asking us to do different things, am I equipped to make that shift? And if not, if I’m not what does that mean, for my longevity? I think in some cases, it is a threat to someone’s professional identity.
Steve Usher
Yeah. And the thing is, if you’re in a in an environment and a culture that doesn’t like failure, as an example, well, as we know, this thing is all about failing, fast moving forward. iterating. So if you’re in an environment, you’re bringing this mindset mythology into an environment actually doesn’t actually stand for failure, then you know, you’re in you’re going to be in really big trouble. So I think there’s this kind of stuff going on. I think HR as a function is really interesting right now. Where does it go? Like, you know, from an ex perspective, is HR going to be the kind of architects or orchestrators or organization is going to build out like laterally and build out x that way? Or is it going to be housed under HR within HR?
So I think there’s some interesting kind of things around the function itself. And I also think within organizations right now, you know, there’s this consumerization of technology, particularly in HR. So last year, $4.7 billion invested in HR tech. So in 2017, it was 1.1. So there’s been an absolutely monumental shift HR tech, which is going to drive HR crazy because it could have loaded suppliers, asking to buy their stuff to add to their tech stack. But I also think, for me, that means that the consumerization, this intersection between the organization and their employees is going to get more and more consumer eyes, it’s going to get more automated, we’re going to do better data, better insights, which is really exciting. But then also it’s going to reduce, I don’t know 20 50% of activity in HR functions right now. They’ll probably reduce probably more tools 50 in terms of those interactions, because it could just be automated.
So I think, HR, it’s an interesting, like, what do you do with that? Like, what do you do with that bandwidth? So if you asked any HR professional, I will give you 50% of your time back, what would you want you want to do with it? That’s quite interesting. If I was in a job, it is quite interesting question, what can I do with it? How can I serve the people in the organization in a much better way through experience design in my mind?
Steve Chaparro
So let’s talk about the employee experience. So you 5ive.studio is your agency and you’re an employee experience agency. And so describe for us your definition of what the employee experience is even independent of design thinking.
Steve Usher
Yeah. So I think for me employee experience in its simple format is it’s the coming together of culture, it’s environment leadership. It’s having your voice heard. And it’s basically a it’s basically having this kind of complete kind of cycle in environment. But is in a way kind of personalized to a certain degree. And I think that’s some of the kind of this kind of mass customization is going to be quite interesting is how we deliver that personal experience to each and every employee. So for me, like employee experiences, and design is very much about solving problems with them for your people, rather than kind of doing it kind of content at them. So that’s kind of one of the things that I whenever I’m talking to customers at the moment, it’s still really big on education, Steve, it’s not like this big thing right now. It’s really massively pigeon steps. It’s kind of education.
And I was with a client, give me an example. So I was with a client earlier this year. And, you know, they’ve thrown so much money at their employees that they weren’t getting the results that desired outcomes in terms of upward upward engagement. And so, you know, we just talked about that for a minute around. It really, you know, working it from the bottom upwards, like designing from the bottom upwards. We weren’t here to sell ours, you know, what we’re here is to create and facilitate a safe environment with a group of their users, ie their employee groups to facilitate and extract an understanding around what that experience is, what does it mean to them within the context of that organization. And actually 80% of the problems I predicted, and actually was a bit more of the problems that they were expressing, I predicted was already in the team already, because and you don’t need an external consultancy McKinsey to come in and tell you something, charge you a fortune in the answers it in the team. And all we did was bring along some really, you know, cute little design tools, and just extracted some of that just in a really informal way. We built trust with them really quickly. And we just got them to just experiment around we just started to pull out those themes and identify right there some of the some of the challenges that we can start to identify and then start to kind of then start to validate those with Much conduct greater research and much more detailed insight work.
So for me, it’s like I call it pigeon steps, it’s just start small start with something, it doesn’t have to be this, you know, grand life experience, you know, employee experience come and work here. You know, it’s not that hard doesn’t have to be that grand. I just try to at the moment, bring it down to just very, very small, actionable chunk herbal work that people can kind of resonate with. And in fact, what was it what was really interesting is we recommended to this client that actually within their leadership group, they create a community of practice within their within their team leading population within their management population. And we encourage them to actually to create this community, digitalize it, and then step back, just step back, like let them be like let them let them express and the leadership fan of challenging, they found it challenging to that they felt we have to step back. And so that’s not a criticism, that’s fine, but actually what transpired with COVID They ended up having to step back. And performance went up. I mean.
Steve Chaparro
Yeah, it’s very interesting. There’s that even that term we that we sometimes use in workshop facilitation is as a facilitator, you need to step back so people can step up, and actually do the work on their own, you’ve guided them. But now it’s time to step back so people can step up. And, you know, who knew this would actually be a far greater experience?
Steve Usher
I’m curious to see what’s the movement like in the US around those two words employee experience.
Steve Chaparro
So I know that for me, my understanding about employee experience really kind of started. Again, I don’t know if this is the absolute origin story for employee experience in the US but I recently interviewed Mark Levy, who was the CHRO at Airbnb. And he shared with me that as Airbnb was really fixated and obsessive about delivering a powerful customer experience and that was one for their hosts. But also for the guests and really being like, what is a 10 star experience look like? And you think of the customer experience as literally from the moment that they get the idea that they want to go, and you know, rent a house or a room at a house. They think of the idea. They remember the Airbnb brand. They engage with a brand on social media or they go to the website, they go to the app, they search around and all these different things in terms of what they’re looking to do. And so all the different stages of that experience, literally from the time they get the idea to the moment that they actually leave the house, what are all the different stages.
And so as they were building that out, Mark was part of that leadership team overseeing HR, and they said, you know, what, we need to apply these very same principles and obsessiveness that we give to the customers, to our employees. What can we do to create this powerful experience for the employees? That is just Just as important. And so I think he really began this conversation around employee experience, not just in the US, but around the world as well. And I think that’s where people who are more in tune with that he even talks about the shift from HR to employee experience. So it’s not about HR, it’s really about the employee experience, because it’s, it’s much more holistic. I think HR, in many respects, was more about compliance was about benefits was about onboarding and hiring, learning and development. All those are absolutely components of the employee experience, but they aren’t as holistic as the employee experience is.
And so I think the employee experience is definitely on the rise in terms of conversation here in the US. And I think there’s a lot of conversation around it. You look at a lot of these virtual summits that are popping up or articles that are coming up. I think the topic of employee experience is a really hot topic, but when I actually talked To some ch rose, they are probably more fixated on one, two, maybe three of those stages, but not the end to end experience. Yeah. So they’re not necessarily looking at the holistic. They’re saying, Okay, I get that we are really good with employer brand. We’re really good with onboarding, but we’re not good with engagement. We’re not good with our workplace, you know, these other components, that they’re not addressing us. But to your point, I think they need to understand what that whole experience looks like conceptually. And maybe they’re gonna, you know, be strong in certain areas, but also with the idea of, Okay, what can we do to strengthen those ideas, but I also think that there is this understanding that needs to be had with HR leaders and even though the C suite leaders is that they are not meant to be the experts in the employee experience. As you mentioned, the employees really are those experts and they are the ones that need to be included. And invited into this process to give their opinions so that they can help shape what that looks like.
Steve Usher
Yeah, totally agree. Totally agree, I think. And I think actually Mark Mark was my assumption is Mark, you know, certainly walked into an organization that understood from the top and I think this is probably one of the most important things around the CEO level C suite level is that, you know, I interviewed a head of people for a car finance company in the UK called Oodle car finance recently, it’s coming to my next podcast. And you know, you kind of go you know, car finance, like what, you know, it’s not very sexy, but these guys they get it, I mean, the owners, they get it, they get experiences, they started their business with a clean sheet, no legacy systems, no, you know, no hierarchy, anything you need to change the culture they could define. And they started out I mean, the guy, the one of the CEO or the CEO buys a book the power of moments for people that come in and interview.
So you know, when you’ve got a you’ve got an individual who’s in that mindset already, imagine starting a business now with the accent. mindset, you’re always going to be onto a winner to really compete in the market. And so I think that’s one of the key things for me is that that’s kind of top level is like making sure that each strategy is in the target operating model. And at the heart of HR. I think there’s a great case study with ABN AMRO in the Netherlands. And they were very fortunate that while they were defining their cx strategy, it just happened. They did the strategy as well. And so they went on this amazing transformation program. And they got it right. I mean, they got the kind of think it was a three year transformation 6000 employees think is 7000 ish. And, you know, again, this is something because I’m, you know, very much kind of focusing on the starting point, a cornerstone of how this whole thing, just going back to your point of, you know, extracting and understanding more about employees is listening strategy is absolutely crucial.
And I think you’re right there is a challenge right now and even like the big kind of x management companies out there who are doing a lot of the kind of the listening in the x space, and cx You know, when you’re talking to HR right now, if you’re pitching an E x tool, or an experienced tool to the CX profession, they get it. I mean, they’re like 20 years old. If you take that same listening product and apply it to employee experience and talk to HR, they’re still not there yet. Right. So I still think there’s this whole education, and I do, but I’ve salutely I totally support what you say around that siloed piece around. It’s a challenge. I mean, I think stakeholders, particularly large organizations, you know, the various stakeholders across the entire employee lifecycle, getting that aligned, and then I think in the future, I do predict, you’ve already mentioned that I do think more and more organizations will have like a centralized experience management hub, that will be listening to employees and customers and deriving that insight, and then taking that insight, identifying shining the light on where the challenges are, and then equipping HR with the necessary skills with its sprint knowledge whether it’s design thinking Working in agile way, taking those problem statements, validating them and following it through. So I think that’s kind of how I see. But there’s a lot to happen in order for that to be to be realized. But yeah.
Steve Chaparro
yeah, I think one of the things that I’m seeing is that those companies that are really implementing the employee experience as a core strategy for them, I think many times they are enterprises, large companies. And I remember having a conversation with someone who was she was in the people analytics department or function at Cisco. And she talked about, you know, she has a doctorate and she’s worked at other places. She’s done research, she’s passionate about research, but when she’s been with smaller companies, she hasn’t been able to focus on this passion of really the listening that you’re talking about, whether you call it people analytics or just research. But when she came to Cisco, she was able to, like literally her job was to just to listen to the employees at the company and Like, it’s at her absolute dream job, as she said, these other companies that I’ve been I’ve worked that they didn’t have the resources to have this role or they just listened to the employee. So I wonder if that’s part of this whole challenge is that companies do not feel or in fact, do not have the resources, the resources of time, the resources of money, the resources of people to focus on listening at this capacity, because I know one of the other folks that I interviewed for the podcast is Oen Michael Hammonds. He is a design principal at IBM specifically with respect to the employee experience. So he leads the design function for employee experiences like oh my gosh, like that’s just a dream job. But I think IBM is a huge company. They’ve been invested into these things for decades.
Steve Usher
Well. I mean, I’m following IBM closely. And if anybody’s interested, there is a free design thinking training that they offer, which is pretty high level. But it’s definitely if you’re complete novice and never seen it, then it’s definitely worth it. But the IBM actually remind me of GE from the 90s, because GE, back then they went all in on six sigma, black belts, and they produced some amazing talent. And they put a lot of a lot of that into lean and methodology in six sigma. And so IBM kind of remind me of them in that way that they’ve kind of gone all in with design thinking, and they’re producing some remarkable kind of outcomes, both from a business product point of view, but then also an employee point of view, as well as some great case studies out there to showcasing that right now.
Steve Chaparro
Yeah, and I think that’s where some of my passion lies, and I think maybe yours as well is, what can we do to learn from these enterprise journeys of implementing both design thinking and the employee experience? What can we do to offer these learnings to smaller, maybe smaller companies that may not have the internal resources to bring in those learnings but to, you know, have someone not do the work for them, but actually guide them through the process of learning these methodologies by actually applying them to real problems, real challenges within organizations, and then be able to apply those with a small group of people to a pretty narrow and specific challenge. And as they gain those learnings and build that muscle, they can invite other people to that growing group of people. And it just grows organically. But it’s I think having sponsorship from leadership is so important because one of the things that is most frustrating is when people build a new capability within their team, but then it’s not embraced by leadership above them. And actually, I think that unrequited capability is it just breeds more frustration? So I think I’ve been able to even get leadership to sponsor these things and have people know, hey, this is sponsored by this VP, or if not the CEO, that they’re on board with some of these things.
Steve Usher
My crude advice on this would be Go big or go home. Because, I mean, I’ve experienced this myself. So and actually, you know, some of the designers that I met at the design thinkers conference, it was quite, it’s quite common, it’s very common, and that’s not even in the employee experience space. But is, you know, the you do the first two phases, right? So you do the research and insights and you you know, you do all the kind of quote unquote, research you do, you know, somebody’s ethnographic, you kind of pull all that together, you create your insights, your journey maps, your personas, stakeholders, all that kind of stuff. And then you kind of stop and then you don’t move on to next phase, which is then the kind of the fun bit in my mind, which is the prototyping ideation piece. And then into implementation. I think lots of organizations again, kind of stop or I’ve seen it certainly stops in the middle, because it feels like there’s an output Have a journey map or this kind of, you’ve got a list of kind of very clear areas of where you need to improve. And I think that’s the bit for me around, where HR really has a potential because I think they can get the first half over the line with budget reasonably well.
The second phase for me is it’s, yeah, requires a really very specific set of skills and tools and understanding and learning for them to engage the business and yeah, and to find those solutions with with people. So, um, build those Listen, sorry. So yeah, that’s something I’ve seen, you know, if anybody’s really genuinely thinking about design thinking, or any of these kind of methods, it’s gotta be all in on it, you got to be prepared to see all the way through and, and at times, it’s going to get sticky, and it’s going to feel like it’s not working. But that’s okay. That’s part of the process. So that’s Yeah, part of the process and their culture. So yeah,
Steve Chaparro
Well, I’m hoping for audiences that this was, in some cases, a high enough level conversation about design thinking and employee experience, but even media enough for some of those folks that are somewhere more familiar with these topics? If people want to learn more about design thinking and employee experience and reach out to you, Steve, where can they find you?
Steve Usher
As the easiest place? LinkedIn. LinkedIn. Yeah, no, absolutely. Steve Usher, I’m the only Usher in Stockholm, I think even Sweden, so you won’t be hard to call me. How about you, Steve? Where would you hang out?
Steve Chaparro
I think LinkedIn is the absolute best place for me as well. So Steve Chaparro, Chaparro is one P two Rs. And for those of you that want to know a fun fact, my last name Chaparro in Spanish is Chaparro, which means in English, the short one, and it applies. I’m five foot six, so it applies to me so well.
Steve Usher
Oh, you look like six foot.
Steve Chaparro
Oh, it’s great that the cameras do wonders. Yeah.
Steve Usher
Well, let’s see. Thanks so much. And I’ve really enjoyed the conversation and bringing these two podcasts together and curious minds in the field of employee experience. It’s very cool.
Steve Chaparro
Thank you so much. This has been a blast.
Steve Usher
Yeah, I’m glad we got it. Cool, man. Take care. thank you.
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