Welcome to Power of Ten, a show about design operating at many levels of zoom, from thoughtful detail through to transformation in organization, society, and the world. My name is Andrew Polaine. I'm a design leadership coach, educator, and writer. My guest today is Marzia Aricò an independent consultant for organizations seeking to integrate design strategically and works as a design leadership coach for individuals aiming to advance in their design careers.
Marzia has been immersed in the world of design leadership for more than 15 years. She holds a PhD on the topic from the Copenhagen Business School and has led design driven transformation programs with many major organizations. She also writes a regular newsletter called Design Mavericks and has a video series called Design Voices Elevated. Marzia, welcome to Power of 10. Thank you. It's a pleasure to be here. So, Dr. Aricò, we can, we can call each other doctor.
Tell me a little bit about your journey. Okay. Brief intro is that I started from industrial design. Actually, my father was an architect, so I was thinking to become an architect. But then I realized, I used to love going, you know, working with him as a young child. But then I realized that I was way more comfortable with a scale of design of objects. Architecture was too large of a scale for me. And then I studied industrial design and started actually designing things, real products.
And that didn't last long. You know, I found myself in, uh, one year at the Salon del Mobile in Milan, and I'm Italian. Yeah. And you know, I was surrounded by people that were, you know, conversing for hours about the perfect curve of a chair that probably a hundred people in the world would be able to afford. And I realized that that was not a good way of using my skills. So I relocated to London and I got into the world of design, uh, management, innovation management.
So I really started thinking about design as a way to Uh, support transformation really, mainly around innovation. And that brought me to my PhD in organizational studies because I very quickly realized that, you know, with a wave of design thinking and service design are really.
at one point, like a corporate entertainer, you know, you, you, you are in an organization entertaining an innovation department that has some leftover budget, you know, they love working with you because you bring some new ideas and post dates, but then there is no real impact. I mean, at least with the chat. There was the chair at the end of the project, you know, is that what it is? There was really nothing. Um, so for me, it was even worse.
So I thought, okay, I thought there must be a better way to do this. And so I decided to go to a design, to a business school to really understand the way organizations work. And now could we embed design in a way that could be a service or organizational goals and business goals. And so that was quite an enlightening, um, Yeah, experience, and I brought a lot of that knowledge into LibWork. I used to be design director at LibWork in, actually, in Bradford, and I'm in London.
And so I translated a lot of that academic thinking into practice and translated it into modules that could help organizations really apply design to their transformation efforts. So usually I used to come in. At moments where, you know, an organization was going through a digital, uh, transformation or some agile transformation, sort of consumer obsession, right? So those things, they are quite grand and big words that no one understands and they're usually tech led.
Yeah. And so I used to bring a design approach, a more realistic approach to the story. And I completely forgot about the LiveWork connection, actually, and the whole service design thing. Yeah, I've been there for 10 years. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, I haven't, I haven't actually read it yet, but your latest newsletter you talk about, you've got this competency model for service design. Just so I can kind of age you. Age me? I was going to say date you. When were you doing the PhD?
Finished in 2018. Okay. Alright. so much. So I started four years earlier. So you know, earlier than many in the whole designers need to learn about business and all of that sort of stuff. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It is as a, as a practice led PhD, like an industrial PhD. So I wasn't really in academia instead of academia doing only that, but I was working and live work at the same time.
And for me it was the best setup because it could immediately, you know, observe reality in my projects with my clients. translate that into the world of academia and vice versa. So it was a really good setup for me. Um, I was not there to, you know, resolve a gap in the literature, you know, I was there to, to, to, to find the space to really scientifically look at the issue.
Yeah. And it was about design organizations or the, the, It was about the adoption of service design in organizational context. Uh, and it took me about two years actually to find a business school that would allow me to do that. Really? Because, you know, yeah, because I have a design background.
Yeah. So every single business school I approached were like, you know, you are a designer, you should go to a design school to do a PhD. And I had plenty of design schools that wanted to do this with me, right? But I was like, you know, I understand the design part. What I don't understand is your part. Like, I need your help to understand your bit. And it just, the answer was no. I mean, usually they used to tell me, yeah, go, go do an MBA.
And then come back and I'm like, I'm going to spend like 200k to do an MBA, two years and then come back to do four years PhD, forget it. And then eventually I found this illuminated professor at Copenhagen Business School who was really believing in the power of technology. of Stefan Misk in the power of, uh, you know, bring design and business together.
And he was running an experiment, bringing really students from the design school and the business school to, to really explore alternative ways of imagining really organizations and the future. Yeah. So that was the perfect place for me to do that. But it really took me a while to find that island of joy. That just goes to show you kind of the divisions there, doesn't it? The kind of siloing. that goes all the way through. I mean, I certainly found that in academia too.
I think it was Yuval Noah Harari that was talking about this, that isn't it ridiculous that the school of economics is in a different building to the school of biology or the climate change department or and humanity.
So in this, we've often talked, um, when I say we as a collective service design kind of community about really when service design is Successful in an organization has been a sort of injection of it, you know, so they might hire consultants or be building up that department in house.
The whole organization really switches to that mindset and it's, it becomes a sort of normed way of working rather than this kind of innovation jazz hands thing that, I mean, I had someone say to me, a client, uh, sometime ago, Oh yeah, we did, we, we did service design last year. It didn't work. Yeah. So we did services. So now we're, you know, whatever they were doing. The next thing. So what did you discover in your PhD around that?
And what's the secret to it getting absorbed and transforming an organization? And you know, what barriers are there? Like, I think with everything, the key is understanding the context. So when service design comes in, It usually, it rarely enters a service design. It enters a service of something. And usually that something is customer centricity or the customer voice, or, you know, very, very, very often it's customer experience.
So when that happens, you bring inside an organization a fundamentally different logic to what exists there, right? And so what I started looking at is what are the logics that operate in an organizational context that determine the way people think and behave. Right. And there are not infinite number of logics. Um, there are probably six or seven.
So I, I used, you know, an example of a telco organization and it was this market traditional telco logic dominant there, which tells you, you know, it's all about, you know, profit. It's all about technology as driver of innovation. It's all about specialism, right? And then there was a second logic that was quite, you know, uh, relevant and present, but smaller than the first one. And that was the digital one. So they went through a digital transformation years before.
So the digital logic is, is somewhat similar to the traditional one, but brings some aspects forward in terms of speed. For example, speed becomes a very big thing, right? And the approach to innovation becomes agile. Yeah. Yeah. And then, and then, And then you get customer centricity as a logic on its own. And you can actually see people carrying these different logics. Like you see which groups of people actually portraying, believing, you know, carrying those sets of values and beliefs.
And it's not that one thing is wrong and the other is not. Right. You know, like those organizations have been operating like this for centuries and very, very successfully. So, so, you know, you come in with a completely different set of, uh, of, uh, of, uh, ideas and, and you're trying to basically. Um, tell them that what you bring is better than what they have, which really works, right? So, so the idea that I try to introduce is, is combining, combining logics.
So, first of all, can you really break down the existing logic and understand what are the key elements that make that logic? What are the words that people use? What do they believe in, in terms of, you know, the very purpose of this organization and now, and now, and now that purpose comes to life, right? In terms of ways of working. And then understanding what, what are, what are areas where you can really.
collaborate where, where there is, there are somewhat similarities, there is an opening where you can actually work together. And what are areas where, where you can't, where fundamentally there is, there is such a clash that you will have to basically either push for one or the other. But, and then if that is the, the, the, the option that you go for, how are you going to do that? Right? Because you're not going to be able to tackle everything at once. So what is your best bet?
Where do you start? How strategically can you do that? And And so that was a big part of my research, defining what these logics were and the composing elements and how to recognize them and how to work with those. So this all makes a lot of sense as you're describing this and Yeah, I think there's often that thing between, I like that you called it logic, because there's this idea of a world view that makes sense to people as an internal world view of kind of how they think about things.
Often though, attention or outright kind of clash between the stated principles of the organization. And the logic of the organization and, you know, the one, the one that's top of mind for me right now is Google's emissions through their AI ambitions are now 50 percent higher than they were because of the data centers. And so, you know, there's one of those things where there's a classic, you know, here's what our mission statement, here's what our ambitions are, here's what we're saying.
And yet there's this other thing that's driving them. That's actually what the sort of actual logic on the ground or they're kind of the tacit sometimes It's not even explicit right the tacit. This is the way we do things around here. How have you sort of found the way? Or exposing it even maybe exposing it. I think it's a it's a it's a bad better question, so maybe it's a much harder answer, but, but exposing it, I think is the first, uh, step.
And usually the way I've started my research in every single one of the organizations I looked at, and I looked at about, uh, 10, 11 organizations, uh, is what are you here to do as an organization? Yeah. So what's your purpose, right? And in what way people answer to that. And then you will discover that there is not one logic of the organization. There is a logic of a group of people that has critical mass. Yeah. Right. And then there is.
It's another group of people who actually explains the purpose of the organization in a more widely different way. And you will find pockets, right, of people doing that. You will probably find two or three. And those really are the first representation of conflicting logics and what literature tells you, because obviously I based this on theory, institutional logic theory.
Um, what literature tells you is that if the conflict arises at the level of purpose of the organization, then it's not, it is not possible to resolve it. So one will have to prevail over the other, basically. Uh, I tend to agree with that in a sense, although my view of the world is a bit more nuanced than that. I have not seen anything else in practice happening.
And so in those situations, so in that, in that sense, there's like a dominant group and I guess it's a top down thing, it's, it's rare. I'm trying to think of an example. Well, is it rare for the critical mass to come from the bottom of the pyramid, if you like? Only from the bottom of the pyramid? I don't think so. I don't think that can happen. I think you need, you need a bit of both, right?
So critical mass exists when it, you know, it is, um, complemented by, you know, different levels of seniority and different. But to be honest, if you look at examples where organizations really manage at one point to radically pivot from one thing to another, it happened through a massive round of layoffs.
Basically, if you look at the moment in which, you know, IBM at one point decided to reintroduce design and this renaissance of design in IBM happened because there was a new leader who decided to just cut a whole, you know, layer of people, like in droves and then replace them with people with a completely different mindset, right? And you create, you artificially create a new critical mass. Yeah. Okay. It's really like, you know, amputation and kind of, uh, and then an implant, isn't it?
Yeah. I love that. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. I always come back to this over and over again. I think, I don't know if it is for you and it'd be interesting to hear your view on this that comes up in coaching all the time is the level of fear and anxiety kind of in the world of work in general. And you know, obviously there's in coaching, you hear it from coachees, but also how much is.
You know, all the way through the organization, whether you're a junior and that sort of, in some respects, more understandable because you don't have any power and you might get fired through, but right the way, all the way up to the top, there was a stat, I think, that came out the other day, which I don't know how to really kind of interpret this, that was something like 60 percent of CEOs feel they have imposter syndrome, you know, and so, you know, all the
way through, it was certainly kind of middle to senior leadership, junior, some executive leadership, There's a lot of fear and anxiety that seems to really be pervasive and shape the kind of behavior and culture of the organization. There's a lot of kind of hidden tensions and that there. Did you, did you find in your either in your PhD or in your coaching that that is Organizations run over fear, like the book, I'm going to publish a book. I'm going to publish that.
That is, that is the currency. Yeah. I'm going to publish a book in November. It was going to be called eventually Design Leadership Chronicles. But actually the original title of the book was Fear of Design. Ah. And, uh, and then I changed it. People said, Oh, it's a negative thing. But actually it's so true. Yeah. Like, you know, and. And fear is what, it's what moves things inside organizations.
And that is the reason why large, especially large organizations, and not for everyone, are for a very specific, you know, subset of individuals that can actually handle that and are okay to deal with that. Uh, so yes, it emerges very often in all sorts of different places. In my coaching, for sure, and these days, more about probably in the coaching about all the rounds of layoffs that have happened, is my job secure? But also in terms of imposter syndrome, am I good enough?
And in the book, I have, um, I'm basically portraying nine stories of design leaders from all over the world. So these are leaders that work for very large organizations in various sectors from healthcare to banking. And it's a graphic novel. So I'm, I'm telling each individual stories in, in, in a graphic novel format, right? And that, that is one of the things that I really wanted to highlight, like the human side.
The human, the toll, if you like, of covering positions of that kind for a long period of time, trying to drive that level of change in a place that really rejects you, right? Rejects you and your in your ideas and your way of seeing the world. And, and, and in many of these, I'm thinking of a specific chapter where there is this woman in a corner thinking, I'm not good enough. I'm not good enough. I'm not good enough.
And how do you get out of the mantra that you're not good enough to actually, you know, drive your team to start growing and change, right? It's a very hard thing to do. Uh, but a lot of these people have managed, managed, I think it's a very human, thing to feel, you know, I think it would be weird not to, to feel, you know, on the other side, it would be weird to feel that you've got it all, you know it all, and then, you know, you're up for the challenge.
Because some of the, some of the, you know, challenges that these organizations face are really complex, you know, redesigning healthcare for the entire population of Brazil. Like, there are lives at stake, there are, not just in terms of patients, but also actually the employees, you know, jobs and. And you're really rethinking the way a certain organization goes about delivering some crucial services for people.
So it would be weird to think and not necessarily right to actually go in it saying, yeah, I've got it all. I'm good. You know, I know what I'm doing. So I think there is a level of. Actually, sanity, if you like, uh, is a healthy way of questioning yourself. The problem becomes when that paralyzes you, right? Paralyzes your, your actions and your choices. And that's what I tend to explore with the people I coach. In your coaching, yeah.
Yeah. And a lot of the times then you discover that actually the source of the problem is not really their role. It's really coming from the parents, right? So I usually, I, I am at a point, no, but I'm at a point where I refuse to coach people that do not have a psychotherapist.
Like if you are doing, so if you are doing a parallel kind of experience, introspective experience about who you are, where you're coming from, what are your triggers, usually my role as a coach is way easier and I'm become way more effective. Yeah. We explore this too in my coaching. My wife's a psychotherapist, a psychoanalyst, and I sort of draw a lot from that work, and it's something I've done for a very long time too, about 25 years.
I have two opening questions in my coaching, actually, is my secrets. One is, um, you know, what did you want to be as a teenager? Because I'm always interested to know, some people are like, oh, I've known I wanted to do something creative since I was six, and other people were like, oh, I wanted to be a, you know, a teenager. a fireman or thought I was going to be a doctor, you know, and their parents wanted them to be a doctor. And then, you know, there's always this interesting moment.
When did you discover that design was a thing? And this was a thing that you could do for your case. Your father's an architect. My dad was a designer and my brother's a designer. And so that was kind of always there. Um, I actually wanted to be a filmmaker though. I wanted to be a film director. And so it's always interesting because I often think there's a, there's always that slight echo of that initial ambition. That sort of pervades people's lives, that's for me.
But there's the other bit which gives you a chance to talk about people's parents and upbringing. Because your parents, in leadership, your parents are the first people you encounter as leaders, right? They're your role models, the people who are in charge of what's going on around here.
Yeah. And, and it really is fascinating how often that comes up and, you know, when I hear that and then when I hear then people's kind of issues, particularly when they're dealing with senior stakeholders and managers. It's it's really common and it's funny because I have some coaches like well I'm thinking of doing some therapy at the same time But does it is it going to kind of clash and I'm right?
No, no, no, please do it Because I also want to have the time because I'm not I'm not a therapist although I've got a lot of kind of experience You know, but I but I also have times when I you don't want to be able to say to someone Hey, you know I think this is something that would be really useful for you to work on in therapy because there's some stuff that I can't Um, I don't feel responsible enough, yeah, to bring up in a, in a session, particularly in an online thing, you know.
But also the other way around, like the other way around, if, if they are aware of specific triggers or trauma or, you know, sources of certain, you know, behaviors, then it's way easier to recognize that and, and, and embrace it in your strategy and you're thinking about your career and choices and you become way more intentional. God, I wish so many more people did it though, as well, because it's.
You know, one of the things, there was a thing I read, uh, I don't know if you read Stowe Boyd, he does, has this work futures newsletter. There was an HBR article, I went to have a look at it just now, but I didn't want to get distracted. It was kind of, we did a study to, you know, examine whether the way managers react to employees talking about their emotions makes a difference. And we discovered that it does, and I'm like, Really? No shit.
And so much of that stuff, it's this, and we've got this data and part of me is like, great, well now you've got some data about the bleeding obvious, right? Another part of me is always astonished at how this idea of professionalism means, you know, you just suppress your emotions at work. And yet you see the toxic outcomes of doing that all the time. But that is the reason, that is the reason why I started my. Uh, video series. Yes. Designing Pointer Celebrator.
Because, you know, I've been, in my entire career, I've been working as a consultant with very large organizations, where, dominated by a very specific group of individuals, usually typically men, typically white, typically in their 50s and 50s. People who look like me. Well, I mean, a bit less creative, I'd say, so. Me in a suit. So, and also wearing a suit.
Yeah. Or not, but usually with that, um, kind of approach to leadership where, you know, your emotions and your, your vulnerability should be hidden, right? Yeah. And, and the, the, the loudest voice is the, is the most important voice, right? And so at one point, I mean, for me, I had a really a breaking point where it was like, I really don't want to, I do not want to do this anymore.
Like, I do not want to enable any more of these people to make more money or, you know, expand their markets or, you know, whatever the thing is that we're doing. But also I felt the need to hear other narratives, you know, other narratives of people that are leading in organizations that are making change happen, but they're doing it in just different ways. And so that's why I started looking at women, people of color, non binary, like people that might have just a different way of.
looking at what success looks like, what leadership looks like, what management looks like. It's a great series. You've got all of these, you've got all of these people. I'm really interested to know whether there is, there's a couple of things actually, as you say, the dominant culture is like, is that people look like me, cis white middle aged men who maybe don't even think about the fact that there's a whole structural bias in that direction, right? In the worst case.
So it's not always easy for those people that you're interviewing in Design Voices Elevator to even get into leadership positions in the first place. No, not at all. And it's also not easy, as you talked about, you know, in an organization, you might have a different set of logics to operate, to bring a new one in, right? And to operate in a different one.
So are there any clear sort of themes and topics that you've learned through those, or common themes and topics that you've learned through those videos? Yes, I think so. Actually, it's the first time that I'm reflecting. On it like that because i've been running it. Yeah. Yeah, and then stopping it to actually reflect. Okay, let's take about what, what has happened in this first 10 episodes. It's a very good question.
Um, you know, in the first season, I've interviewed people where diversity in lots of different ways, like, uh, diversity in terms of social economic background. For example, I interviewed, uh, Bethany Jarroussié, who comes from a very large family, 10 kids. None of them went to school. She, she, she did not go to school. She did not graduate. She was homeschooled and she did not go to university.
And so for her, that, uh, was a big stigma, you know, like it was really difficult to get into a corporation and just say, yeah, I don't have a degree. And I've been homeschooled for my entire life. And I was actually a part of a family that was moving every year, you know, and there were others that were just rationally different, like black women or, uh, I just actually interviewed for season two, the first black man.
And, um, in terms of also kind of ethnicity, all sorts, gender, but also sexual orientation. And for all of them, it's been very difficult to find their space in an environment, in a system that was just simply not designed for them. Where they were the exception and themselves being themselves. Because when you tell people, you know, you should show up as your Yeah. Your authentic self.
Yeah. Yeah. It's very easy if you fit the parameters of what people like or, or, or consider acceptable or consider, you know, legitimate. But if you don't, it's really hard to just show up as yourself and then people go like, wait a minute. Well, it's dangerous. I mean, it's really. It's dangerous. Yeah. And so I think there are a couple of things. The first one is like an incredible self love. Like these people are, are self aware.
They love themselves as individuals, and not in a way that they think that they're better than others, but they just like who they are. Yeah. And so, and so, in a sense, they're confident enough to actually bring out that piece of themselves in an environment that might not necessarily like it, because they're not going to change their idea about themselves because they do things differently.
And And these are people that have been also very reflective because they're not privileged in the sense that options are given to them, but they are people that have to scrap every single next opportunity, right? And they're just, you know, digging for the next thing, uh, and really working hard to make it happen. They've been incredibly intentional in that. progression in their career and in the choices that they made. Uh, way more than a lot of other people that I spoke with.
They, you know, went in very fancy universities and, and their father, you know, called their mates and found a job for them. Um, so that's the second thing. So the first is, um, yeah, self love and the second is intentionality. Um, let me think if there is anything else. Oh, yeah. The third is probably an incredible amount of passion. Like these are all people that are really passionate about the subject matter that they are in, but also like the people they do it with, right?
They're all people, people, you know, there are people that really care about the people and, and whatever they do, they try to do it with a team of, uh, individuals that. share a sense of, uh, the same beliefs and values, if you like, in a lot of these conversations, they always refer to the team or the group that they were, they did the thing with.
Yeah. And is that sort of intentional also in terms of they've built their tribe around them, really, they've deliberately found those people and if they're in leadership roles and hire those people? Or has it just been a sort of gravitational pull to the people who have fallen? No, I think it's a gravitational pull.
I think it's a gravitational pull and, and these are generally people that can find the best in others, you know, so they don't necessarily need to build their own team of like minded people. They're actually able to jump into a situation where a team is broken and people treat each other with no respect or, you know, and then work with that material of design, if you like. Yeah. to make something wonderful out of it, right?
Because these are people that profoundly believe in, in, uh, that there is good in everyone, you know? And so I can certainly work with you, even if other people think that you are not good enough, or if you are Yeah.
And I've considered, you know, you don't have good relationships with others or, so in a lot of the cases that I heard, it's not necessarily, I mean, some cases they build their own teams, but in a lot of others, they just go in and just work with the people that they had in a way that was unprecedented because, you know, when, when you are used to, like a lot of the people have probably, you have the same, like a lot of the people that I coach have no one example of a
good leader or manager in their career. Yeah. They've always been wisely treated. really badly, you know, they're just very bad examples of people that massive egos, uh, you know, and so when that's the only example you have, then it's the only thing you think to do.
Yeah. But when something new happens to you, when someone comes with a completely new perspective on what leadership is that someone that gives you agency, That, you know, empowers you if you like, although it's a word that I really don't like, because when you talk about empowerment, it means like, you know, the power is somewhere in there. Yeah, it's a little bit colonial, isn't it? In itself. Yeah, it's, yes. But okay, it's a word that, you know, people understand.
So then, you know, things People change, people start seeing their environment and their relationship with others in a slightly different way. And it takes time, but it is possible. So a lot of these stories are stories of that kind. So to pull those threads together, and you were talking, we were talking about that thing of people feeling like they're not good enough and, and all of that sort of feeling, because that's, you know, messaging you get a lot as well.
I mean, that's what a, a management structure and all those bloody performance reviews and all that kind of stuff, the incorporation. A really set up to constantly remind you that you could be doing more, you know, or you should be doing more. You know, even if you're burning out, so it's not, it's never enough, right? Even if you hit, even if you're a manager, you're someone in sales and you're, you know, you're hitting all your targets. Well done. Here's your new target.
You know, and you don't get to just sit back and relax. And so there's this constant undermining of yourself. I want to come back to the question about this, but if you're saying, you know, these people that you have been interviewing in the Elevated series, that they are, have got this kind of amount of self love and it's contagious, right?
So then when they have that, then other people get permission to have that and it will shift them out of a operating out of a kind of position of fear, which is usually pretty toxic for everyone to a different one of confidence and that idea of. There's good in people.
My question for you though there is, what's really a question for them as well, which is, you know, a lot of those people who are, um, in some kind of minority, you said it's difficult for them to kind of rise up in a structure that doesn't really encourage it. It's not just doesn't encourage it, often actively suppresses it, right? So if you're a woman of color. or a non binary person.
You're constantly getting the messaging that you're, you're different, you're not right, you're not one of us, all of that sort of stuff. How have those people found their kind of self love and confidence in the, in the face of that? That's a very good question, I'm not sure. This is something that I should ask. You know, because, because it, because there's that sort of classic, the way I'm sort of getting to with that is I guess there's a, there's that classic.
False DEI thing where, where kind of people will say, well, they should speak up and it's like, no, but you don't understand the power differential there. But these are people who have spoken up, have stepped forward in the face of often, you know, the possibility of losing their job and, and all of these things. Um, yeah. I don't know. I can guess, I guess.
Um, yeah, one thing that I find is, uh, In common to all of them is they're incredibly reflective people like they're really cruelly not themselves, you know in the good and bad ways Their experience is also varied, like these are rarely people that 20 years. These are people that have seen multiple realities of different sizes, shapes, right? Small businesses, they were founders, they were then, you know, in a large corporate and then moved to another one.
So there are people that are exposed to a variety of humanity, and I'm hoping and guessing that in that, you know, in changing movement. Yes, you find people that consider you wrong and will not miss any opportunity to make the clear, but you will also find people that don't and that encourage you. And, uh, one of the questions that I usually ask is, um, like something in your career, they change everything for you. And usually what their reference is.
a person that opened up something for them in terms of self realization, in terms of change of perspective, in terms of, you know, very often it's about, you know, how someone that helped them realize how to operate from a position of strength rather than one of weakness, right?
That's what we usually do is, you know, we think about in all of the different ways in which we are weak in a certain position and use that as a starting point while flipping the perspective on what are actually my strengths within this environment and how can I leverage that. That's a very different starting point in your connection with others even. I think it's the first time sometimes people have been seen, you know, properly seen as a, as the person they really are by someone.
It's incredibly valuable that I think, you know, It's really powerful and it's rarely a manager or leader or sort. It's just another, it could be a peer. It could be anyone. Yeah. I mean, I definitely heard some time, you know, when we were talking about some people's stories of childhood, some of the stuff I've heard is a teacher, you know, teachers that I've had a moment, but sometimes it's that sometimes it's a relative. Sometimes it is a manager.
I've heard, you know, my coaching occasionally, um, and that, that person's then followed that manager to different companies, right? They're, they're loyal to that person. Um, and then they get to a point where they realize that they also then want to sort of move, move away from that because they start to feel a bit dependent.
But I think sometimes it really is just a person said, Oh, you, you know, you're really good at this or you should try this or, you know, and they, they're seen and they have that moment of being seen as the person they are and it gives them such confidence. In the face of, I guess, the organizational structure that's very common to, to suppress all of that, whether it's the sort of feelings and emotions, or whether it's, this is your role, stay in your box, and all of that.
Or even not having that kind of conversation, right? Not even having a culture where, you know, like that HBR article, where talking to people about how they feel, um, and surprise, surprise, they're human beings. I felt like that whole article could have been, We did a bunch of studies to find out that humans aren't robots, you know. You know, it really makes a difference in opening that space. There's so much we could talk about. We're coming pretty close to time.
You've talked about the side of alternative futures and using design to sort of reinvent the future of the organization. Tell me a little bit about that before we wrap up. Yeah, I think it's one of the best things that design can bring in an organizational context. Um, visibility of really everything, what your future could look like. And it's so So, relevant right now, all sorts of different changes the organizations have to deal with, right? And usually the response is very reactive.
The structure is rarely set up to be able to see the change coming and ride the wave rather than succumb under it, you know? And so a lot of the kind of work that I've been doing, but also the research that I've led is really to try and understand in what way, um, designers and design can do that. And in the book specifically, I have a whole section around it with three stories. And one of these stories is, um, uh, the story of a woman that I absolutely love and respect, Harriet Beckham.
She's, uh, actually British, but she used to live in the, in Australia. Now she's in Singapore. She's, um, director of design at DBS, the bank now. Uh, but before that, she was working for an insurance. And a lot of the work that she has done is to really think about, you know, in a world that eventually is an uninsurable world, right?
Where, you know, heat waves are hitting on a weekly basis and, you know, you have hailstorms and all of that and, you know, insuring your houses, it's just not as simple as it was, you know. a couple of decades ago. What is your role as an insurer? You know, what is that? Are you going to insure? Like, what is your business model even, you know? And I love the ability of designers to actually ask these dumb questions. The people go like, Oh, yeah. Like, who are you even?
Like, you know, like, you know, it's like almost just stopping the wheel. Like people understand their vision, deliver, deliver, deliver, deliver, deliver. And then she just, she put a piece of wood in the wheel, stop the wheel and go like, hold on a minute. Like. And I find that incredibly powerful, just the ability to actually ask the question.
But then what she did was to really work with scenario planning and she did a course at Oxford site business school with some professors that really helped her think how scenario planning could really work in a context. And she basically materialized, you know, she told me one thing that really stick with me. She said, strategies tell to make, while designers make to tell, right? And so what she did, she really. crafted this poem. plausible futures in a way that people could interact with.
And she had four plausible alternative futures that could actually become reality. And she made all of the artifacts, and she had actors, you know, acting, the role is so small. And she had the kind of food that people would eat, and the kind of smells that people would have. Right. And she allowed stakeholders to really immerse themselves into the world and the problems related to the world and the opportunities related to the world.
To then engage them into conversation, uh, Okay, in a world of this kind, what is the our role as an organization. And then you start really, because you bring people outside of the daily, but you project them in something that is so, you know, they feel so far away. Then they, you start unlocking the creative powers that individuals didn't even know to have and, and start connecting dots in ways that are just unprecedented.
And so from that piece of work, a completely new strategy for an organization emerged and I find that incredibly powerful, this ability of allowing people to imagine, but also, and more importantly, to connect that to what does that mean for our today, right? So what does it mean for what am I going to do tomorrow morning?
Because, you know, it's all very beautiful to just, you know, as an artist, bring people out there and experience something new, but then the connecting the dots into your role tomorrow morning. That's as important as the other bit. And I think designers more and more, the role of designers, strategic designers should actually be that, you know, should really help organizations and people in organizations ambition, the future that I want to.
I say to designers all the time, and my coach is, you know, you forget that you're Because you take it for granted, I think, that you can do things like draw, right? Or, or, or kind of manifest things that you're The superpower is that you can make an abstract idea tangible in some way.
And I've just, I teach on a master's, I co lead a master's of service design in Switzerland, and we're talking about sort of prototyping stuff, and this idea, you know, that there's obviously down one, and there's all the stuff you might do, and you do your research, and you do your kind of concepts, and all that stuff.
But it stays very where we are now, but obviously prototyping the future and things like design fictions and critical design are really powerful because of that thing that you do. You take people off the treadmill, really, uh, and them just kind of looking down at the ground and running and running and running. And, uh, and you have that, you ask the question of not just why is it like that, you know, and what might that be?
But the ability to make that tangible the way you just described it is incredibly powerful. Because as you say, you know, once people then once people see it. They can go, oh, right, now I see that. That changes the way I think about it. But you cannot unsee it. Yeah, you can't unsee it. You cannot unsee it. That's it. Yeah, that's very true. How powerful is that indeed. Yeah. You know, within that, I'm, I'm really a big fan of, for designers to understand business, to understand organizations.
A lot of the stuff that I've been writing the last year is all about that. Yeah. Like explaining to a design audience how organizations work, how are policies set? How are people measure stuff? Yeah. What is the business model? You know, all the basics, but that is not too. then comply and become part of the machine. That is knowledge to use to do stuff like this, you know, to allow imagining alternative futures with a language and a connection to the reality of today that is relevant, right?
So it's a way to be relevant rather than a way to become like them, you know, and I don't want to do it. I don't want to do an us and them thing. But I think I noticed that people talk about. engineering, but we talk about design and somehow designs become this kind of noun. Um, and, and we don't talk about designing. And I think there is that part where I just need a bit more research and research can be a fantastic procrastination tool as well, right?
I just, I just need a bit more, um, because it's almost so that they can then color by numbers. And I think, you know, there's that leap, the designing bit is imagining what a future, whether it's sort of an object or a website or whatever. Yeah. Uh, or a whole, you know, social scenario, imagining what that might be like. And our job is to make stuff up. Our job is to imagine something new and then make it tangible.
And that's the designing bit that I feel has got somehow lost in, uh, in the last few years. So, we're coming to the end. As you know, the show is named after the Powers of Ten film by Arianne Charles Ease. themes about the relative size of things in the universe. What one small thing is either overlooked or could be redesigned that would have an outsized effect on the world? Okay, I have something in mind, which is not really small, which is education of small children.
Um, and think like zero three, even, you know, that is like the period of our lives Our infrastructure is set, you know, and kids are usually treated as, um, almost like an empty box to fill in with things, while by themselves they have so much creative power to unleash. if you would just let them do that.
So I think, you know, I've been thinking about it a lot because I have a six year old and I'm now pregnant with my second child and, and, and I really, I'm really struggling with, to deal with the educational system as we know it. And I'm in a, you know, country like the Netherlands that is very progressive in the sense, but, but, but still, like I find like gender definition or, or what plays or.
you know, constructs that are just not empowering or providing agency to kids to really express their full potential. And so I think that is something to really think about and I think it would really help. benefit our society at large. I think we would really benefit from a bit more of nurturing creativity since very early stage and trying to maintain that. Yes. Throughout our lives. As the father of a daughter is in a Steiner school, I can only agree. That's a very good answer.
Thank you so much. So where can people find you online? You've got all of the stuff going on. I'll put some links in the show notes. So my blog, my blog designmavericks. substack. com and there I write every week, but I also publish my video series and there, there will be info about my book as well. So I guess that's the best place. Okay. All right. I shall put all the links in the show notes. You are at marzia. studio is your, is your sort of personal site. Marzia. studio is my website.
Yes. I'm also on LinkedIn. Most of the time, I'm more than happy to have conversations directly. Great. All right. I'll put the words there and people can find you there. I really appreciate all the work you're doing, your writing and the videos, the elevated series is really excellent. I think it's really important to thank you so much for being my guest on Power of 10. Thank you for inviting me. I had a great time. Thank you. Bye. Bye. You've been watching and listening to Power of 10.
You can find more about the show on polaine. com where you can check out my leadership coaching practice, online courses, as well as sign up for my very irregular, more irregular than Marzia's newsletter, Doctor's Note. If you have any thoughts, please put them in the comments or get in touch. You'll find me as apolaine on PKM. social on Mastodon. You'll also find me on LinkedIn on my website. All the links are also in the show notes. Thanks for listening and watching and I'll see you next time.