[CTQ Smartcast] Using Design Thinking To Shape The Organisation Culture, With Alisha Raghavan
Alisha Raghavan is the Chief Design Officer at Pensaar Design and has experience across various design functions.
In this Smartcast, hosted by CTQ co-founder BV Harish Kumar, we spoke about how design thinking has evolved in the past decade in India. We also had a detailed discussion on Pensaar’s transformation programs, the role of empathy and teaching in an organisation and how design thinking can be applied in various aspects of running a company.
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(Read the shownotes below or skip to the transcript)
SOME OF THE THINGS WE SPOKE ABOUT
The journey of design thinking in India
People’s response to design thinking as a concept
Design thinking v/s a big bang solution
The principles of design thinking
Applications of design thinking across functions
The role of empathy and how can leaders build it?
The six-step culture journey at Pensaar
How do the elements of design thinking impact a company's culture?
The role of teaching
Future relevance of non-fiction books, NFTs and sarees
LINKS TO BOOKS, PEOPLE, PODCASTS AND WEBSITES MENTIONED IN THE SMARTCAST
BOOKS
Creative Confidence by Tom & David Kelley
Sprint by Jake Knapp
PEOPLE
PODCASTS
WEBSITES
OTHERS
Ted Lasso - TV Series
If you enjoyed this Smartcast, you will also like Designing A Culture For Tomorrow, With Smriti Handa
TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE
00:00:00
Harish: Alisha Raghavan is Chief Design Officer at Pensaar Design. I spoke to her about how people's expectations and perceptions of design thinking in India have changed over the last 10-15 years. We spoke about how Pensaar Design applied design thinking to their own approach to transformation programs. It's interesting how important education and alignment of stakeholders are. Realizing its importance is probably the right of passage for consulting companies. We also spoke about the role of empathy and teaching in an organization. If you're curious about design thinking and how you can adapt its principles to thinking about different aspects of running a company, you will find this chat quite interesting.
00:01:00
Harish: Hi Alisha. Welcome to the CTQ Smartcast.
00:01:04
Alisha: Thanks Harish. It's a pleasure to be here.
00:01:06
Harish: Yeah. So we're going to start with a slightly tricky one. Probably it's going to show that you've been through this for a long time, but we're going to talk about the whole journey of design thinking as a practice/space domain, whatever you want to call it in India and also juxtapose it with how Pensaar design has been working over the last few years. So if you can talk us through that journey that will be great.
00:01:32
Alisha: Yeah, absolutely. I mean when I started my career, more than a decade back, I'd heard the word design thinking, but even when I was working with design agencies, nobody was really familiar with design thinking at that point in time. It was a buzzword in the design industry in India at that point in time, but definitely not outside the design industry. Moving from there, maybe a decade later is really when I have seen it pick up when it's not just designed companies, but companies across different industries, tech firms, manufacturing companies, all of them that have heard about it, but also heard about the value of it. And it's been quite wonderful to see that change and put that into practice as well over the last decade and more of design thinking. Really being in the industry and being practising in the industry. Saying that if I go back six to seven years, when Pensaar started, in the tech industry and like I mentioned, some of the other industries that our clients, it was still a buzzword. So, it was something that you checked the box and said, I'm going to do design thinking for my organization. So we would get a lot of requests to do design thinking in a two-day session, or three-day session, and get people familiar with design thinking, and have them become design thinkers in two to three days. And they felt that their teams would be ready to solve problems, just being exposed to design thinking. From there, we began seeing change, when people realised that it's a transformation journey that the organization has to work through and it isn't just about being exposed to that concept, but really practising it, trying it on and then also making it a little bit of their own, because it's not something that you can just start to adopt within an organization from day one.
00:03:49
Harish: Yeah. So, like I always keep saying, “The future is already here, it's just unevenly distributed”. Right. So I'm sure you still get some companies who will come and ask you to do a two-day workshop on design thinking, just get us started. And from there, we'll be able to do it. What is your response to companies like these, when somebody comes and says, can you just get us started on design thinking?
00:04:13
Alisha: So I think over time Harish, what we have been able to build is help them understand that there's a journey and a continuum, where you start with awareness but understand what the goal is. Are you looking for them to be practitioners? Are you looking for them to be catchy? And depending on what your goal is, then we can then advise them and say that maybe you want to start with awareness, but definitely have a roadmap of how you want to get to be a catalyst, to being active practitioners within the organization. Most people do have an appetite for it and they do realise that they need to come back, it can't just be a two-day session done once in a month and once you leave, you've forgotten.
00:05:01
Harish: Yeah. And I think, the other value that an external agency like yours brings to the table is the very fact that you would have an interdisciplinary team, which most companies may not have, right? So, when you actually go in and talk about these things, what makes it easier for somebody like you to do it, how do they respond? I'm just trying to get a sense of the whole level of awareness and response to design thinking as a concept first before we go deeper into what you are doing.
00:05:40
Alisha: Yeah. So I think there are pros and cons. When we go as an external interdisciplinary team into an organization, we bring a fresher perspective. That's not biased by the existing understanding or customer experience. And while that is true but also the con, because it's like, I think we get it so often the most asked question is, can you show me a case study that applies to my industry? And there's never going to be a case that's going to match that exact company, that exact industry in the way that they're looking for. And people ask, can you give us a presentation after that two-day event, but it's not a formula. People are used to it being a structured formula. You just give it to me, this is what I'm supposed to do and magic is going to happen. So we have to set it up, guide them through that, understanding that you're not going to get it on the first try, but certain smaller practices that you can start to incorporate from the get-go. But it's a process, it's a journey where you solely expand your ability to think that way, to approach problems that way, to work with your teams that way.
00:06:57
Harish: Yeah. I remember when I was first exposed to design thinking, I think back in 2007-08, the biggest sort of ‘aha moment' for me was the fact that design thinking put a lot of importance on prototyping, something which is concrete and then making incremental changes. And that was like the biggest thing for me that I can actually see. It's not some vague idea in my mind, or in someone else's mind. Having said that I've also seen this same thing work differently for some people who are this big bang solution. They're not big fans of this incremental change, but we know that prototyping and making these small experiments and actually getting feedback is what makes these solutions robust. So, how do you respond to things like these, where people want these big bang magic pills, to start with?
00:07:59
Alisha: Yeah. Fortunately, I think, what's happened, Harish, concepts like MVP have worked in the industry. People understand it. There have been talks that design thinking only helps with incremental innovations versus those big bang innovations that you're talking about. But actually how we talk about it is that it's about that whole concept of failing fast. If you're able to figure out what could go wrong right away, so there's prototyping, but there's also testing for customer behaviour, the whole experimentation, and the Linux that we engage in the process. If you're able to understand all of that and if you need to pivot right away, you can still get to your big bang, but at least you will get to your big bang knowing, and being more sure of what you've built versus being completely surprised that you thought it worked and it was going to be this big bang innovation, but people didn't warm up to it or adopted the way you thought. So it's actually not coming in the way. It's actually helping that big bang process. And putting multiple things together in a short period of time, to get to your big bang faster than waiting years to build it out and create this marvellous thing that nobody's adopting.
00:09:21
Harish: Right. Yeah. So, like something that you mentioned some time ago about these principles of design thinking. So if you were to talk about what are these principles, the way you change your thinking in general, what would you recommend as the elements of design thinking that everyone, probably CXOs in companies should adopt, generally the way they operate in the company and the way they lead, not necessarily as a problem to be fixed using design thinking, but what are these principles or elements that they can adopt?
00:09:58
Alisha: Yeah, I think, honestly, it goes on to the root of the culture of how you work together. Often what we've seen in nodular stations is eventually because when you scale, the focus becomes more operational. You feel like you've got enough customer data, so you don't feel like you need to go back to understand the customer, but as your company is evolving, the customers are also changing and evolving over time. So in terms of the principles, if I have to think about it, the one which is so stupidly simple, but it's so amazing. When you're collaborating with, even now with teams or as a leader, with the rest of your team or discussing something, there is this concept of thinking independently together. We talk about it when you are in a group and there is a leader in that room, there is this whole concept of decisions being made. The highest-paid person in the office, whatever they say, everybody's going to be more agreeable to that. That's the concept and design thinking that great ideas can come from anywhere. And so when you think independently together when you take the time where each individual is able to think on their own and have the ability to present what they thought without, of course, dissent and with whole acceptance, you don't know what will come out of it. But if you're just going to have everybody talk to each other, that's not really a collaboration, it's actually more long-winded because you'll never get anything. Or you're just going to go with the first idea that the boss says.
00:11:40
Harish: Yeah. And people often tend to call these discussions brainstorming and we have to generally go and correct them that this is what brainstorming really means and we get them to go back and write down their individual ideas and then come back. We end up doing some improv exercises to get them to figure out that “yes” and then work together. So yeah, I can fully understand what you're talking about. Wanted to ask about specific, safe laws in companies. Because we work a lot with companies where we are trying to help them build and scale their culture. So, how should somebody working in HR or people function think about using design thinking in, say improving the experience for a candidate or onboarding experience of an employee who's just joined? How can they use concepts like design thinking in improving the experience?
00:12:47
Alisha: So, I mean, in the last seven years of Pensaar, we have seen design thinking being used across a variety of problems. And, I think looking at it internally is not different. What we call customers in design thinking, it's basically the customers, the problem and so in the case, for HR, that customer is your internal employees, your new joinees and the first place to get started is to really understand the customer, to be able to empathize with the customer. So really talking to some of the employees who have been there for a while, some employees who joined recently or potentially people who are going to join, to really understand their experiences, to understand what their challenges or pain points were, what really made them happy, and even possibly right after they joined, what did they struggle with? Because only when you understand all of that and you bring all of that together, look at all of them, not just one person's information, but you've spoken to a variety of people and bring that together to try and make sense of it, connecting the dots and looking at what are some of those unmet needs, what are some of those actionable insights, then you can come up with solutions that will truly benefit them. So, I think when you understand that employee experience, you'll also understand what matters to them, what we call customer benefits, and how they measure success. So, even when you do come up with a solution, it's not just looking at your business or KPI metrics, internal metrics for the HR to look at, okay, this is going well, but you can also look at how the employees measure success with that experience and are able to evaluate the solution that you've created and keep iterating on that as well, especially given the pandemic, even employee expectations and experiences of change, how new joinees look at their employee experience is very different from pre-pandemic. So even in the last two years, it's changed so much that it's important for anybody to keep going back to the customer and really understanding what matters to them, what are some of their challenges and iterate on that experience and the solution, that they are trying to design
00:15:15
Harish: In fact extending this to these larger companies over the last three, four months, we've heard from and worked with companies which have been trying to debate this return to the official decision, should they make it hybrid, should they make it one week in the month or one day in the week and how do they do this, it's been a major conundrum for a lot of these larger companies. The smaller companies have been nimble enough to go ahead and say that, yeah, we will let people decide. It's also probably the demographics of the decision-makers, whereas in the larger companies, what has happened is that the decision-makers or the slightly senior folks have probably always been used to working in the office. So, they're not really in tune with working from home or remote working and all that. And it's been a big challenge. Two layers that I see there are even people who have sort of tried to get input from employees, some people have seen it as doing lip service, or they will ask us about all these things, but they're anyways going to do whatever they want to do, has been an underlying belief that people have expressed in larger companies. And in some cases, though, decision-makers wanted to actually factor in everything. They just lack that empathy for different personnel, like say, how would a 23-year-old engineering pass out from some remote part of the country, what would she be thinking about if I'm going to force her to come to Bangalore and join work because they have never sort of lived that experience. So there are two things. One is there's this lack of trust that, yes, they will ask me all these things, but they're going to do whatever they want to do anyway. The second part is this genuine lack of empathy. So, what's your response to this and especially for the second one, for leaders who want to build that empathy, what is the way that they can actually do this? Because it's an unknown-unknown, they don't even know this. So how do you actually work towards it?
00:17:40
Alisha: Yeah, I mean, going back to the first one, the lip service, it's also about how genuine you are in terms of having those conversations and collecting that information. It's just like a quick survey that you're doing. Of course, that's not going to really get to the root of understanding them. And of course, it's going to seem a little bit not authentic or genuine and just something that they do. And from a perspective of building empathy, I think, it's important for leaders to make time, to have some of those conversations, understandably so they can have all of those conversations and there can be a team, but at least to be part of some of those to see it for themselves and to be able to hear it from the customer directly and whenever I refer to a customer I can go and tell a leader that this is what your employees are saying, but when they listen to it themselves, and when they are part of that conversation themselves, it's different because you can’t but help entity, of course, you have to come even your biases aside, but it's also that your customer sitting in front of you saying something and you have to keep your mind open and you can’t help but listen to it.
00:19:07
Harish: Yeah. I think these are actionable tips for some of our listeners and viewers about how to develop this empathy. They have to take time. I think I read this as the recipe for some French cooking. So, they gave all the ingredients and this is the most important ingredient this time. You have to give it time. Without time nothing could happen.
00:19:34
Alisha: Absolutely, it could be one conversation or two conversations. I completely understand leaders are pressed for time, but even if they're able to spare an hour or two to have those one or two pharmacies and truly make the time to understand that individual, that's more than enough to help them and build that empathy.
00:19:59
Harish: Yeah. So let's move tracks, right. Let's talk about some of the projects that you have done and I know you have this six-step culture journey that Pensaar has come up with for culture transformation. Can you talk us through that and give us some concrete examples of how you have helped companies using design thinking?
00:20:22
Alisha: Sure. How we reached that six-step cultural transformation journey, was through some of the things that I was telling you, that when we first started people were talking to us for about two days and introducing people to design thinking or making them design thinkers. And over time as we made some of those mistakes, or tried to do things a particular way, there was a lot of learning from some of those failures as well. So, how the six-step journey then evolved is to start with building a case for that transformation, for customer-centricity and innovation, but we've also used it for safety and other such culture transformation. In the past, for example, we've looked at this really large global consulting firm and they were looking to get their high performers to be introduced to design thinking and really be able to be more innovative. So the innovation head had reached out to us saying, this is what I am looking to do and this is my objective and goal. And we went ahead and started working with the high performers. Halfway through, what we realized is that's not necessarily the goal that the rest of the leaders had. So we were trying to create a safe space to say that you fail fast and learn from it and incorporate these processes and it's not going the right way. You will start to see small wins and early successes, but it takes time. Nobody's putting the pressure on you to start delivering right away. We had other leaders come in and say, the reason you're doing this is that now you're going to have to show us an X percentage of improvement. So our first step is not to just have a spot in our sponsor, being in alignment with them. But we really need to make sure that, we're working with all of the leaders and all of the leaders that aligned with that vision because at the end of the day, the team that you're working with, they're going to have to hear from different leaders and if they are hearing opposing thoughts, it's really going to confuse them and it is really not going to help in that transformation within the organization and it's not going to be very successful. So even though we tried a few cycles of trying to work with them, that leadership alignment was something that was very important for us. So our first goal is about building a case with the leadership, showing them external successes of applying this transformation and also working with, hearing from their customers about the perspective of the organization and hearing from internally what their perspective is. So getting an outside-in perspective and an inside-out perspective of the organization. So using that to build that case. So we're using design thinking even there to help build that case for them to hear about what their customers are saying, for them to hear what their employees think of their customers, bringing that up to them and really making them see that the case for transformation is real and it's needed. The second step is building internal success stories because we brought external success stories to this, but we've not really built that confidence. So to do that, we need to influence their mindsets and so what we do is we take on a few projects where there is a select team that's able to apply this new way of thinking and learning to those projects in a given period of time. So we work with them to do that and we influence the leadership mindsets by seeing those early successes. Then we work with the leadership in what we call leadership alignment to build their version of that framework of what that transformation is for their organization. So aligning all the leaders to get that working across different leadership so that everybody is singing out of the same hymnbook. And again, this goes through multiple cycles because you are trying to create a shared vision for the organization during this leadership alignment phase. Once the leadership is at a place where they're all singing from the same book, there are certain internal successes and examples of this change being applied and having results. All of this happens fairly. I would say in two to three months, it's not a really long period, even though I am seeing it like that. Once that has happened is when you start to align the rest of the organization to it. So, it’s the whole organizational alignment, you look at how you can communicate the shared vision, and how can you create excitement for the shared vision, while building these catalysts of change because the leaders alone can’t let that change, so we need to have a few catalysts who tried this on, first time, had early successes. And once that starts to happen you reach a place where you need to now design the organization to be able to carry this forward and to be able to scale it across the organization. And that in itself is a process. And the last is to sustain that momentum because there's all of that excitement and attention when the leaders are focused on it, but for it to become a daily practice, but also for it to stay the way that people work, you need to be able to sustain that momentum and also keep evolving that, increasing the number of catalysts, training to all of that. So, if I have to just quickly sum that up, it starts with building a case, and then it's about influencing the leadership mindset. Then it's about leadership alignment, then organizational alignment, then organizational design, and then sustaining the momentum. So it starts small then grows bigger and then really becomes a way of life within that organization.
00:27:22
Harish: Right. Yeah, I think it's very interesting that you stumbled upon the importance of the leadership alignment and the organizational alignment as being critical for the success of what you will do in steps five and six. Right. I think that's a result of you applying design thinking to your own problems statement, I guess
00:27:49
Alisha: Absolutely. We call it eating our own dog constantly because there are so many times, okay, you hear a leader and then they say everybody's behind it. So one of the things that we make sure to do is do all of those stakeholder interviews, and really understand everyone's perspective because it all seems like they're behind it, but thoughts and perspectives about it may vary. So making sure that everyone's on the same page or all of their concerns are being addressed and together they've come up with something that accounts for everyone's way of thinking is really, really important.
00:28:24
Harish: Yeah. You have to bridge that thing say-do gap. So, if you can give me some concrete examples of where this has worked and any place that you can talk about where in spite of all these efforts, things did not work because of something else that was out of your control or whatever. Can you give us some concrete examples?
00:28:54
Alisha: Yeah. So prior to creating the six-step process is where things have been both. It's either been in terms of leadership alignment or very quickly just not expecting results. So that's one of the reasons why when we are influencing leadership mindsets, we are also building those internal successes and getting people to try it on to size. And before it becomes a way of life, we feel like even the catalysts need to try it out at least three times before they can truly be comfortable. You're not going to learn the entire process of design thinking, applying it to one project. After which, when we've used, we've used it for a large global security firm where they were looking to; they were very successful, but there was foresight from the leadership that you want to make sure that while everything is going well, we're thinking of the future and we certainly need to be more customer-centric. And so they brought us in to help the organization be more customer-centric. And we worked across. When we went into building the case we spoke with teams across the globe, trying to understand their perspectives and understand how they pursue the customer. And we also had the whole understanding of the customer across the globe in terms of what they have seen in the product and how they perceive safety and security as well? And then we worked with the catalyst and when people hadn’t just done a boot camp, start everyone design thinking gone away, everyone would have believed that they learned it and they could apply it, but when they had to start applying it on key projects that mattered to the organization, and we have to coach them on certain challenges that came up because these are years and years of thinking in a particular way. That's when they started to see that change. We've had wonderful stories of the engineer going out and speaking to the customers and he built some product and then when you went back to the customer and saw the pain that the customer was having with a product that he had built, he said, I can never go back to the way I work, because now I have really seen. I thought this was a product that was working efficiently, but when I see the customer pain and challenge, there is no way that I can go back to just sitting in my office and working on something. The other aspect was in the way that the leader is also coached and speaks to their teams. So it was a matter of also having leaders that worked with them being coached in the kind of questions they asked. If a lot of focus is always given to what is your final idea, you're always going to come up with the first idea and make sure that you try to make that succeed. So with simple things like coaching the leaders do ask them how many different things did you try before they came up with this solution and that sets the expectation that there is no one idea, there are multiple ideas that you're going to have to try. You want to look at multiple things before you narrow it down to the one that works for the customer the best. So there were small things that the leader had to do in the way that he or she engaged with their teams, to get them to think differently, or to get them to try different things before finalizing and helping the team see their biases. So when we worked with this global security firm, we worked across, coaching the leadership as well as these catalyst teams working on the projects. And over that period of time, it became so evident for all of them that the way that they were looking at their products, while it worked well today, it was important for them to change the way that they were working to truly create that benefit for the customer and yeah then it scaled from there to look at other teams as well.
00:33:05
Harish: Yeah. So like you were mentioning about this engineer who said that I'm not going to go back to that way of working ever again, what kind of mindset changes have you seen among people which they applied in other areas of life or work, professionally the way they think, how has that changed? What have you seen?
00:33:35
Alisha: Yeah. Something as simple as research and the power of asking open-ended questions and just being open to listening has been pretty big for a lot of people. So we have heard people talk about how they have not just applied it to work, but they've also applied it to their personal lives. At the end of the day, when they go back home and they're chatting with their family, they're asking questions and being genuinely interested in understanding them. Just something as simple as all of us going back home and speaking to somebody in the family and being like how was your day? But most often than not, most of us have been very inauthentic because it's something you ask. So whether it was in terms of connecting with the customer, or asking those open-ended questions, that was something that people really took to and had that change in mindset. The other one, as I mentioned, was thinking independently together. Right from school, everyone's used to, like you said, brainstorming, being a particular way, everybody checkboxes that and says, of course, we brainstormed for this project at school or this project at work. But trying this new approach of giving everyone some time to think about it independently and then collaborating, has been very impactful for them. And it's actually one of the things that we say that you start with small things. If you're trying to bring design thinking into your team or in your organisation, unless you're truly transforming the organization ground up, you start by introducing small things, even if you don't have everybody else in your corner, trying to be part of that transformation. You can showcase value. So you will go out and have a customer conversation and bring that customer conversation into a conversation, see the impact of it. The next time you are sitting with a bunch of colleagues, think about something, try thinking independently together. Once people see small evidence of change, you see the benefit of doing something, then you can bring something else in, but everybody else who's not exposed to that way of thinking will not right away to that way of thinking as well.
00:35:54
Harish: Yeah. I think sometimes even just having that shared knowledge and terminology, language itself makes such a big difference in the way you think, because now you know that when I say immersion, what does that really mean or when I say brainstorming what does that really mean?
00:36:12
Alisha: Yeah, absolutely. And I think that's why one of our steps in the six-step process, is leadership alignment, where you create a shared vision, get in a shared language that you can then translate down to the rest because it's very important, otherwise much like you and I discussed somebody else's idea of brainstorming versus our idea of brainstorming is so different. That's why one of the things we do is that people get really shocked, we don't actually encourage brainstorming and people isn't that what design thinking is about and talking about the traditional way of brainstorming, but there's a different way of doing it, which is a lot more in impactful.
00:36:49
Harish: Yeah. So what's the sweet spot for companies to come and start working with you? What do you look for in a company or a problem context when somebody comes to you?
00:37:04
Alisha: Oh, I actually don't have a very concrete answer for that because it varies so much for us. We love clients that are ready to roll up their sleeves, get their hands dirty and work with us on a problem. Because we encourage co-creation. They bring to the table, their deep expertise in the industry that no matter how much we do research and secondary research, we're never going to account for their level of expertise. But given that we also understand that there are organizations that are hard-pressed for time and have so much else that's going on. We worked with clients where a few of them can work with us, but we do most of the heavy lifting in terms of customer interactions. So there we encourage co-creation, we bring the research and understanding to work with them to co-create. So that's why there's no real sweet spot in that sense, I think the sweet spot or the mindset would be being open to not knowing what you're going to hear from the customer or to whatever you hear from the customer and being open to doing those experiments and learning from the customer. I think as long as they are open to trying something out and willing to listen to what the customer says everything else will go around. And just to give you an example, there's a project where we worked with a large e-commerce firm and we were trying to understand some problems in terms of seller platforms because it's a marketplace, there are sellers who put the products up and the sellers were not understanding the payments section of the product. When we did that research, a section of the stream had this one mindset: we know our customer, we've been doing this for a really long time. What can you tell us about our customers that we don’t really know? And when we encouraged them to be part of the conversation, we got a few customers to their office, so we've done some of the research on our own. But when we were doing deep co-creation with them, we actually got some of the customers to the office and when they heard it from the customer's mouth, how they perceive the organization or some of the challenges that they were having, there's nothing that can wake you up like that. So even if they're not open to finding a way, being open to a process is definitely important. Even if they're not open to thinking that there's possibly a different way that the customer thinks.
00:40:12
Harish: Yeah. And just extending this to organizational culture, say for a fast-growing company, CEOs, founders have this vision that, yeah, I want to have a company which practices these values, they have the end state in mind. So how do you use elements of design thinking to shape the culture to conform to the kind of values that these people start with because that's the vision that they want to take the company towards, from an organisation culture standpoint?
00:40:50
Alisha: Yeah. I think it's a combination of some of the things I've mentioned earlier as well. It’s the kind of question the leaders ask. It's encouraging, it's things where you encourage a multi-disciplinary team to work together. So other product managers or other designers work in silos when they're discussing or ideating on something. The engineer, the product manager, the data person, the marketing member, the member, and the designer are all working together, thinking quickly, ideating on things together. What are some of the metrics that you're using? Is it just business focus metrics that you're looking at? Are you looking at what customer success metrics are? What are some of the things that you've heard from customers having a sense of it? There are organizations where I've seen where they put up huge quotes from customers and their walls have like these real customers and what they said. So you're constantly around; you can't possibly step out of the office every day, but at least you're around that customer conversation. And things like not doing traditional brainstorming, but encouraging everybody to work together, not being judgmental about ideas but looking at how you build an idea, encouraging other people's ideas, and looking at multiple different ways to do that. Finding prototypes, getting customer feedback at every stage of when you're building the product or even scaling that product. So multiple little things that organizations can do. I understand the pace at which they want to move, the more they apply some of these little things, as much as it may seem like it's going to lengthen the process, it's when you're going to actually hasten the process.
00:42:54
Harish: So we read your medium post about the role of empathy and teaching. So we wanted to ask, what would you recommend to founders in terms of the role of empathy and teaching in an organization for them to better deal with their customers, as well as their employees. What is the role of empathy? We've spoken a bit about empathy, but what is the role of teaching?
00:43:21
Alisha: Yeah, I think for any organization that's growing is constantly learning, you're learning from your customers, you're learning about new technologies and new competitors. You're constantly learning. And I mean, I'm not going to generalise it, but a lot of the founders I know individually had that learning mindset of constantly reading all of these different books, speaking with mentors, trying to adopt these new ways. And it's important that the organization also had that culture and I think we all learn from each other. Each person brings different kinds of experiences and just to give you an example of how we do it at Pensaar is we create a day when we learn from each other, they're each somebody or the other comes from a slightly different background where they're able to bring that experience. In a larger organisation, there are people coming from different functions and it's important to learn how something works. I don't have to become a data analyst. If I know how that works, I can possibly do my work better as a product manager or as a designer. So learning is possibly the only constant in any organization and to be able to teach, you need to build empathy, who the learner is and what the learner is. I can’t expect to go and teach, I'm using a really bad example of data analysis for designers, but I can expect to teach data analysis to designers expecting them to all come with an engineering background. So I really need to understand how they think in the way that they consume information. If they are more visual, I can’t just speak to them. I may need to possibly create the little models and help them understand something. So being empathetic is really important. It's not important upfront when you're trying to prepare for how you're going to beat someone, but it's also important when you're teaching them and we are constantly put in a situation, especially at Pensaar because when we're teaching design thinking to people, we know it back of our hand that we live and breathe, design thinking. We constantly face this where you have to build empathy. It may seem like a simple concept, but somebody else's not understanding it and you have to understand their perspective, why are they possibly not seeing it that way? Can I give them an example that will illustrate it better, which is closer to what they need? So going back to how a lot of people say, can you give me an example of my industry, my function? Maybe we can’t give them an exact example of that but if we are able to understand where they have a challenge, with the kind of case study that we're showing them, why they're not able to connect it, it could be that, for example, I'm showing them a marketing case study or an example of how design thinking is used, but they see what happened if it's a B2B company, how would that be? So it's about building a little bit of that empathy to understand what is becoming a hindrance and a barrier for them, and trying to find ways that we can teach them that. So for a leader who's learning so much and wants to be able to change his or her own organisation to bring new ways of thinking, you are constantly in a sense teaching, when you're mentoring your teams, you're teaching, when you are coaching your team, you are teaching. So building that empathy for that other person, bringing some of your experiences for the learner is also going to definitely help them. And also understanding their perspective because the way I learned it would be different because my life experiences allowed me to see it differently than somebody else.
00:47:40
Harish: Right. Yeah. The curse of knowledge is what we all want to avoid. Yeah. So any rituals that you've seen working well in your company or elsewhere, which helped in building a learning culture, like these learning sessions that we talked about. Anything else that you've seen working well?
00:48:04
Alisha: So, one is of course and these learning sessions don’t have to be just internal. Getting external points of view and perspectives is really important as well. I've also seen people are trying something on, with that safe space to fail, where teams have been allowed to bring in some new process of methodology, try that on for size and of course have the ability to reach out to experts, but let’s face safe space to try it and learn; there have been book exchanges, but then that's very like individual and I think what's wonderful is I have also seen in some organizations do the whole learn by doing. I guess there's nothing like learning by doing, working together, learning something together, it could be even yoga in an organization, but everybody's trying to do something together and learning together and learning a different way of thinking and building their knowledge.
00:49:14
Harish: Yeah. So we have come to almost the end of the conversation. So, Alisha, one question that I wanted to pose to you is what are the books, podcasts, courses, and people that you follow, and who have shaped and influenced your thinking? Things that you would recommend to our listeners as well.
00:49:42
Alisha: I think for me, Creative Confidence and it's quite wonderful because it opens that way of thinking to not just designers. For the longest time, people have understood design as being aesthetic. The good thing about design thinking is that it allows people to see that it's not about aesthetics. It's about how you address a problem, and how you try and understand it from the customer's point of view. So Creative Confidence was really wonderful in that way. There is also Infinite Games by Simon Sinek, which again changes that perspective of how you look at success and how you measure success as an organization that you are here for the long game. It's not about this competitor versus us. I listened to a lot of different Ted Talks. So there's a talk which is very interesting because it goes back to the work that I do. You have to be vulnerable to be empathetic as well. I am a true-crime podcaster, but that has no relevance to this. One of my favourite podcasts is Invisibilia because it looks at the change in the human mindset and digs really deep into certain ways of thinking, and certain ways in how people behave. And it really opens my brain every time I listen to it. Each time they take a different topic. As a person. I'm constantly looking at getting exposed to really different things. I'm not somebody who only reads these non-fiction business books, but I'm always looking at different kinds of articles, videos or podcasts that really expand my way of thinking and looking at different kinds of connections. So Invisibilia definitely does that. That's one of the reasons I also like Simon Sinek in the way that he constantly changes the way that one thinks and looks at different problems, the golden circle is such an interesting concept. So yeah, then for me HBR, Forbes, and Fast Company are the places I go to check any other interesting articles.
00:52:32
Harish: And any people to follow on social media, on LinkedIn or Twitter?
00:52:36
Alisha: That would be the same people that are behind all of this content that’s created. Simon Sinek for example. If I can think of a few I will share them with you. But these are some that came to mind.
00:52:49
Harish: Sure, in fact, an interesting thing was I actually found out about the show Ted Lasso on Brene Brown’s podcast. She's a big fan of Ted Lasso and that's how I started watching that show on Apple TV and I became a big fan of it because like this American who goes to England to coach a football team and he is only used to the American football. So it’s a nice and interesting one which I credit Brene Brown for introducing to me.
00:53:20
Alisha: And sometimes it's the simplest thing that people tell you. And I think for me, those are the biggest eye-openers, right, things that are right in front of you, that seems so obvious for when somebody breaks that down and tells you, it’s like, oh gosh, that is so insightful. But you do feel like you should have already known. That's just how it is, because even in terms of culture transformation, like when you look at a good culture, it's about not working in silos, sort of collaborating, it's about not looking for perfection but constantly iterating and working fast towards what you need. It's letting failure not be a barrier, but being open to failure. When you look at all of that from a cultural perspective, it sounds so obvious and so normal. But because we all get stuck in it or we are focused, it becomes something operational or a deadline. We tend to forget these tenets of the culture, which if not worked on or if not transformed then can become a hindrance to the success or progress of an organisation. And that's why some of these authors and speakers just blow my mind because Brene Brown just spoke about vulnerability, which again is a very basic concept. But when she broke that down for most people, it was I think very insightful to a lot of people. The reason why she even became famous.
00:54:59
Harish: Right. Yeah. So, we've come to the end of this conversation, but we won't let you go without asking for your hot takes on certain terms, topics, and things. Basically, we will be asking you about what you think is the future relevance of whatever I'm going to tell you. So what do you think is the future relevance of non-fiction books?
00:55:27
Alisha: I think people are constantly going to need new ways of thinking and I actually see the whole section of non-fiction books really growing and it's moving out to the earlier concept of seeing them as self-help books, but just different ways of thinking different philosophies or different steelworks to look at something. When Sprint came out, even though as design thinkers we are very familiar with it, but it blew people's minds because like oh we can get things done in five days, we can follow that entire process. So I think it just allows people to think about things differently and it's only going to grow. I don't think it's going to go anywhere.
00:56:12
Harish: Okay. What do you think is the future relevance of NFTs?
00:56:18
Alisha: To be honest, I still have to wrap my head around it. I can't fathom why a random little cartoon gets billion and billions of dollars, but I guess it's here to stay, in a way we are allowing not just a few to have that ability to create art or control art or anything like art, because NFT started with a little bit of art as well. But it sort of allows it, I don't know if you democratize it. But I still have to understand it. It's beyond me, but I guess it's here to stay.
00:57:01
Harish: Okay. And the final one, what do you think is the future relevance of sarees?
00:57:12
Alisha: I really it stands the test of time because I have a soft corner for sarees and my mom and I tried to revive the whole Kerela saree, look at it differently. It’s a beautiful garment. I mean it is something that I think as Indians, not just patriotic, but the fact that it is just a piece of cloth and an amazing garment. It allows us to celebrate the rich craft and culture that we have, and the craft history that we have in the country. And I don't think we should loose that. There are so many different kinds of sarees. So I hope it's here to stay. Even I wear it but not as frequently as I'd like to. But I hope it stays.
00:58:05
Harish: Yeah. So I think there's more wishful thinking as well as what you think is really going to happen. So on that note, I think we covered a whole range of topics today from how design thinking has evolved over the years in India as a practice, as a function, how can companies use design thinking, what are principles of design thinking that individuals can implement and practice in their names, changes in mindset? So I think we have covered a whole range of topics and this is a great conversation. I'm sure our listeners will really enjoy this.
00:58:48
Alisha: I really hope so. There is so much that can be spoken about design thinking and, I'm sure that I didn't do it enough justice. But it goes beyond that term. Sometimes that term itself is counterintuitive because people think, it's got design upfront, so it must be only something that designers can do but there's a lot of value in that.
00:59:13
Harish: And, and we've got your dog's voice on this podcast. So it finally stole your thunder.
00:59:27
Alisha: Yes, he definitely wants to be heard and be part of it.
00:59:32
Harish: On that note. Thanks a lot, Alisha.
00:59:35
Alisha: Thank you so much Harish.
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