Dear reader,
This 2-part series is for anyone who’s feeling uncertain, scared, fearful of the future and is looking for some useful, practical tips on how to proceed. It comes from years of working in Human-Centered Design (HCD). We borrow different theories, practices, and activities from a variety of sources like Agile, Design Thinking, and Lean Startup.
Our objective is to share key concepts and practices that can help you tackle complex problems and do your best work during these chaotic times. Not to worry if the last 3 or 4 sources we mentioned don’t mean anything to you, we’ve distilled everything on this page based on three key points for easy reference:
1. What problem does it solve?
2. What is the concept about?
3. Actionable steps
You can easily skip through by looking for a problem to solve that matches one you have. For this first article we’ve focused on ‘Mindset’ or, concepts that are more like, general principles or ways of looking at the world.
In our next article, we will dive into ‘Actions’ or, activities that can be done for problem-solving purposes in very specific situations. We will add to this as time goes on, if you feel that anything is missing, or if you found something useful, let us know in the comments. Let’s get started.
What problem does it solve?
Problem: ”I’m overwhelmed by what’s going on.”
What is it?
‘Amor Fati’ is a Latin phrase that means something like “love of fate”. It’s about not just accepting a situation but fully embracing it as the only way things could happen.
It comes from Stoic philosophy, which is
“a philosophy of life, a practical guide to applying wisdom to your daily choices, focused on living life as a thriving rational being, characterized by excellence in judgement and the fulfilled happiness that is to the mind what robust healthy fitness is to the body.” (Source)
The school of life describes it as follows: “The person of amor fati doesn’t seek to erase anything of their past, but rather accepts what has occurred, the good and the bad, the mistaken and the wise, with strength and an all-embracing gratitude that borders on a kind of enthusiastic affection.”
It’s a mindset that has helped us as a company take on the very complex problems brought by COVID-19 with stride and focus on the possibilities of this new normal.
We’re trying to move past the “denial” stage of loss (we lost our “normal”) to “acceptance”. Because that is what we are dealing with— grief. It is grief that we are collectively feeling, as best said by the Harvard Business Review.
It is through acceptance and collaboration that we will move forward. We find strength in quotes like these from Marcus Aurelius, a Stoic philosopher:
“Accept the things to which fate binds you, and love the people with whom fate brings you together, but do so with all your heart.”
A key part of it for us is withholding judgement on a situation or emotion and instead remaining curious to it: seeing it, feeling it, inspecting it from different angles.
Pro tip: Stoicism is not really a “one cool trick” type of quick fix for all situations so see it as a new philosophy to be applied to situations in your working or personal life.
Actionable Steps
What problem does it solve?
Problem: “I’m scared to take the first step into the unknown.”
What is it?
The fear of failure, of criticism, of taking a risk can hold us back from ever taking the first step on a project. By embracing uncertainty as a step in the proces, especially at the beginning, we are able to get the ball rolling. Our goal is simply to get less uncertain as time goes on.
Embracing uncertainty is a concept that underpins everything on this list. What it means to us is that we recognize that, particularly at the beginning of a project or a process or an idea, we accept that the outcome is inherently uncertain. There are a lot of unknowns.
We are humble and allow ourselves to accept that we don’t know what the final solution will be. We accept even that perhaps we don’t know what the real problem is yet, the root cause.
Is the problem as you see it now, the real problem? Or is there something behind it? And that thing behind it that appears to be the problem - is that the problem? Or is there something behind that? And so on down the line. It’s problems (challenges! opportunities!) all the way down. Stay curious.
This concept also gives us the permission to be wrong and test things out and discover the right answer through an interactive learning process, rather than try to have the right answer off the bat.
In the past, I’ve called this a “shiteration”: start off as shit and get progressively less shitty as you go along but you have to have the courage to be shit first.
Once a team I was mentoring came to me with a website they had made and said, “Phil, we don’t know where to put the Register button on this page.” I explained to them that they should put it anywhere, anywhere at all. Even somewhere where no-one could see it. Then invite 5 people over, one at a time, and ask them to use the web page to register on the site.
Note what difficulties they have, move the button to accommodate this feedback then test on another 5 people. Shiterate. If you’re creating something for other people, you have to expose it to criticism. The sooner, the better.
Pro tip: This is often uncomfortable when you start. It’s painful to show your work to someone as we fear what they might say. You have to push through that and expose your vulnerability. The more you do it, the easier it gets.
Actionable Steps:
What problem does it solve?
Problem: “I try the same old solutions on the same old problems.”
What is it?
Legendary stand-up comedian, George Carlin, explains the concept of vuja dé best:
“Vuja Dé” helps us forget what we think we know and see the world with fresh eyes.
“Déja Vu” is a term you are probably familiar with, it’s french for “already seen”. It’s the idea or feeling that we’ve been here before.
When we approach a problem with “Déja vu” thinking, we bring assumptions (often unspoken) about why the problem exists, and about what the solutions are, we say: “I’ve seen this before! I know what this is! and I know what the solution is...next!”. And we’ve missed a learning opportunity.
“Vuja Dé”, on the other hand, is what we get when we flip “Déja Vu” on its head. It’s the exact opposite. It allows us to push our assumptions aside and see things for the first time. It’s about seeing the world with a child’s eyes where everything is new: we’re constantly questioning everything, picking things up and inspecting the world around us with curiosity. We look at the problem with wonder.
Pro tip: Remind people to stay on track with “Don’t forget that we’re vuja de’ing it!”.
Actionable Steps
What problem does it solve?
Problem: I have trouble working collaboratively with people.
What is it?
Ever been in a meeting with a HIPPO before? No, not the animal, it’s an acronym that stands for Highest Paid Person’s Opinion. You may have experienced (or you may be) the one high up in the organizational hierarchy shouting down any idea that comes up, “that’ll never work!”.
Divergent and Convergent thinking are two different modes of mental work. We need both of them for solving problems, or any kind of creative process actually. Divergent thinking is about being creative and open-minded, it lets us open our minds to explore possibilities and ask what could be, what might be, what if… even crazy ideas are welcome at this point.
Convergent thinking lets us use our analytical and logical part of the brain to process, judge, choose, analyze ideas. It’s important to have a time where all of us together (yes, including the HIPPO) are divergent and then a time when all of us together are convergent.
This helps create a space where everyone feels comfortable sharing their ideas because we’ve agreed in advance whether or not we’re going to be divergent or convergent.
Pro tip: It’s really important to make sure that there is no overlap between these two modes of thinking. If you have one person being convergent when everyone is being divergent it doesn’t work.
Actionable Steps
What problem does it solve?
Problem: I find it hard to get clarity when discussing ideas with others— especially in video calls.
What is it?
It can be frustrating when people come away from a meeting with different interpretations of what happened, what’s next, and who is assigned to do tasks. This is bad enough face to face but when doing meetings online, it can be so easy to fall into the trap of thinking that we’ve agreed when in fact we haven’t.
When we run a face to face workshop, we go through stack after stack of post-it notes (which is why we started donating to the Haribon Foundation to offset our carbon footprint). We use them for myriad activities but at the core they’re there to make the conversation tangible as we’re discussing something.
We often begin an activity with writing notes down individually and then sharing them back to the room person by person. Setting a timer for 5 minutes for each individual to think about the issue and write down their thoughts is a great way to prevent the loudest voice in the room from dominating the conversation and helps ensure that everyone contributes to the conversation and has an equal voice.
How many times have you asked a group of people, “Does anyone have any thoughts?” and got nothing but blank faces? When you ask people to write down their thoughts then share back, suddenly everyone contributes and you get a much deeper conversation from several different angles.
With the world being virtually 100% online there are several digital tools (Google Sheets, Office 365, Mural, Miro, FunRetro) at our disposal for tracking the conversation and the great thing is you don’t need to worry about reading anyone’s handwriting.
Pro tip: Be aware of your company’s firewall restrictions (some companies don’t allow anything from Google) and plan in advance.
Actionable Steps
What problem does it solve?
Problem: I need to connect more with the people I work with and/or the people I create solutions for.
What is it?
Empathy is about putting yourself in the shoes of others. We’re all guilty of not doing this often enough, whether it’s with our family or friends, our co-workers, or our customers, or whomever it is we serve.
Now more than ever, it’s important to empathize with everyone around us. How are our co-workers doing? How are our customers doing? Do they need any help? It’s a challenge, of course, as it means taking a break from our own lives and using the “Vuja Dé” mindset to focus on someone else’s for a change. It’s not something we can do all day every day and we may have to be intentional about it.
It can mean more listening than talking - we usually tell people doing research to focus on 80% listening, 20% talking time - but it can take many forms. Face to face conversations are one way to get an insight into another person’s life but there are other ways such as diary studies.
A diary study is where you provide a diary template for people to fill in day by day for a certain period of time e.g. a week and then you collect them in at the end and review. Here’s a simple one we did last year for a remote working study we ran at our company where everyone had the option to work remotely for a week.
The great thing about diary studies is that they “scale” quite well. For a small amount of your time creating the templates, you get to distribute them to a lot of people and collect a lot of data at the end of the work for relatively little time and effort.
If, on the other hand, you do have the time available to you to do face to face interviews, we’d recommend the following:
Pro tip: Track your team’s “exposure hours” - this is the number of hours each team member, manager, leader, is exposed directly to real customers interacting with your company’s or your competitor’s products.
Actionable Steps
