 You really can deliver a good service when your employees aren't happy. That's why in this episode we're going to explore how to design for humanity at work. Here's the guest for this episode, let the show begin! Hi, I'm Marine, this is the Service Design Show and we're on Episode 159. Hi, my name is Marc Fontaine and welcome back to the Service Design Show. On this show we explore what's beneath the surface of service design, what are those hidden and invisible things that make all the difference between success and failure to help you design great services that have a positive impact on people, business and our planet. Our guest in this episode is Marine Boucher. Marine is a service designer at Humankind where she helps forward thinking organizations establish workplace cultures that the employees and bottom line laugh. I'm sure that you'll agree that taking good care of your employees isn't a nice to have if you want to thrive as a service-oriented business, it's a must. This means that the employee experience should be designed with as much care and attention as the experience for our customers and maybe even more. But sometimes it's not easy to convince stakeholders to invest in this and get them to care as much as you do. Well, luckily Marine has been part of many conversations with clients who want to bring humanity back to work and she's going to share her learnings with you today. So if you stick around till the end of this episode, you'll know how you can get started designing a better employee experience even if that's not part of your current job description and also how you can build momentum within the organization making sure it's a sustainable thing rather than a one-off initiative. The goal of these conversations is to help you grow and mature as a service design professional. If you're enjoying this, make sure you click that subscribe button and that bell icon because we bring a new video like this every week or so. That about wraps it up for the introduction. Now it's time to sit back, relax and enjoy the conversation with Marine Bouchard. Welcome to the show, Marine. Hi, Mike. How are you? I'm doing really well. The moment we're recording this, it's still full on summer in the Netherlands. We're breaking record, high temperatures. So yeah, I'm doing well. How about you? We're kind of finishing winter in New Zealand, so we're not on the same temperature. But looking forward to spring for sure and some warmer temperatures. Yeah, so we'll switch places in a few weeks or months. Marine, nice to have you on the show. I always like to have people from New Zealand. I have been a few on the service design show so far, which is absolutely great. We're going to talk about a topic that I find really interesting. But before we get into that, could you give a brief introduction of who you are, what you do these days? Yeah, of course. So you might have heard it. I'm actually not from New Zealand originally, I'm French. So I come from Paris originally and I live there for a while. I have moved to New Zealand about 10 years ago, which I now call my home. And a bit about me. So I've kind of have a range of experience in design. So it goes from I started in visual design, then moved to product. I also played a bit of a role in design ops. And now I'm actually doing some service design. I worked across a range of industries, which is always very interesting to understand different dynamics and ways that people approach things. And outside of work, I am obsessed with pottery, which I feel like this is definitely a wave across the world. And I do love going for walks and being close to nature. I didn't know that pottery was a wave across the world. I need to get outside of my bubble. Definitely try it. I think initially for me, it was definitely like a meditative hobby. So just kind of, you know, taking the time to touch the clay and disconnecting. But I became a bit obsessed, I have to say. I bet you that there are YouTube channels out there with millions of subscribers and views on pottery alone. Like it's one of those niche things where the niche is that big enough that you can attract millions of people. Interesting. I'll definitely look it up later. Rene, this is already a very nice introduction, but to continue on this, we also have a lightning question round in the service design show. I've got five questions for you. And your goal is to answer them as quickly as possible. Just the first thing that comes to your mind in that way will get to know you even better. Hopefully. Are you ready? Yeah, I'm ready. All right. What's always in your fridge? Champagne. I love having a bottle just in case you need to celebrate something. I think that can be a t-shirt. I love that. What was your first job? Actually, my first job was a fashion journalist for a magazine in Paris. Really? Yeah, completely different. OK. Which books or book are you reading at this moment, if any? At this moment, what am I reading? I'm reading Setting Boundaries by Dr. Rebecca Ray. So it's kind of like understanding boundaries of like for yourself and people around you. It's pretty interesting. Well, I'll add a link in the show notes for sure. This is also an interesting question. If you could work from anywhere in the world, which place would you pick? I'm going to say Mallorca, because I was there visiting my sister and I absolutely loved it. OK, close to me. Close, well, close. Relatively close. For sure, the New Zealand. Let's keep it at that. And the final question is, do you recall the moment that you sort of heard about service design? Yeah, so that was my previous job. I was working for the biggest bank in New Zealand. And I remember like someone introducing themselves and being like, oh, I'm a service designer. I was like, oh, what is this? I want to learn more about this. So definitely kind of talk to that person, dive in a little bit more and try to implement some of the tools and methodology in my role, which kind of led me to then move into a more service design role. Yeah, so I'm fairly new to the practice, actually. It's a fairly new practice for everybody. Nice. Thank you for sharing this. This sets a bit of context for the conversation we're going to have from now on. When we did our prep call, we explored some interesting topics. And the topics that we landed upon was the way you described it was designing humanity at work. Correct. Yes, that's the one. OK. Designing humanity at work. Sounds like a big, ambitious goal. Let's start with the question, what does this mean for you? Like designing humanity? What what do you see? What do you think about when you hit up? Yeah, of course. So this is kind of linked to my company's purpose, which is leading humanity at work and my role being a designer within that company encompasses that kind of designing humanity at work, where we really look at people experience, how do they feel at work, how do leaders feel at work, how does the business feel with their people and then look, you know, like kind of approaching as a curious mind and trying to understand everything that goes around to then determine specific challenges that we can take forward and design for solutions for and then tests with people. So everything that we do at humankind and in my role, I think for a world that I've done as well, is definitely looking at how to design with people and being as inclusive as possible, but also finding that kind of common value between what the business needs and what the people need for sure. And you mentioned humankind when that's the company you're currently working at. If people want to learn more, go to humankind.nz. I was it's if you Google humankind, you'll get a lot of results. So that's that's challenging. But humankind.nz there, you can find more. It's super interesting. So when you describe this, one of the terms that comes to my mind is employee experience. Like is that is that the same? Is that different? How do these things relate to each other? Yeah, definitely. So that encompasses employee experience. I think what we're trying to do humankind is really have this innovative approach and we're using something called ECD, which sounds familiar because it's very close to HCD. So employee centered design. And in the market in New Zealand, for now, we are the only one. And I think across the world, there's not a lot of people that do that. That kind of role yet, which is super interesting and also kind of also bring some challenges across. So we're definitely still on that kind of learning journey and understanding, you know, like dynamics at work. What are some of the common themes we see across clients? All those kind of good stuff. So. I'm trying to sort of wrap my head around how I can imagine employee experience. What does success look like for you? So when you're doing a great job, when everything is working out as planned, what kind of change do you see within organizations? Yeah, so that can be very different. I think one of the things I most appreciate in my job is the definitely diversity of challenges that people have at work. So that can be, you know, something to you know, an employer that never really speaks to their employee and kind of goes directly into the legal side of things to then changing the attitude, being way more empathetic, talking to their people and really developing that good relationship with their employees. So that could be one, but it could also be, you know, senior leadership really emphasizing and investing into their people experience that's successful. Even, you know, like I think whenever we have clients coming to us to to solve a challenge, like that's already a success because that means that they care and that they want to make things better. So, yeah, that's that's definitely that kind of small step. And then we see the ripple effect of some of the work that we do with them and collaboration and how successful it can be. We'll get into that a bit more later in the conversation. I want to cycle back a little bit in your history. How do you get involved with designing humanity at work with employee experience, especially when you mentioned that this is like the first company in New Zealand that's doing this? So could you describe your journey of it? Yes, of course. So, as I said, I heard about service design in my previous role quite earlier on. And I was kind of looking into tools and methodologies of service design. And one of the things that I was really passionate about, so my role was being in design ops. And one of the things I was very passionate about was, you know, like the well-being and the thriving of our designers at the bank. And, you know, I like my goal was to be the best experience. So every designer in New Zealand wanted to work there, which is a very amazing goal to have, not always achievable, but definitely something to kind of work towards. And so I started just, we started looking at some of our growths. We were growing the team very quickly. So one of our strategies was to make sure that the onboarding experience was a very qualitative one. And to be able to do that, you know, like just went back to basics, talked to existing employees, talked to new hires. What were the common issues that they were having? What could we do better? And then kind of have the experiment, experimental approach and just trying things out every time we had people new. And just like co-designing with people when they were, after they were onboarded for like a month of what it could look like. And then we really, really changed that experience for people. And that definitely was the reward that it came for me was so incredible that I was like, this is what I want to do. I definitely want to make sure that people have this incredible experience at work that, you know, they want to stay here. And then you moved away from the bank. Did you right away move to humankind? Not at all. So I think one of the things that I can call myself is the recovered workaholic. So I have definitely put a lot of my time and energy into work. I am still very passionate about what I do, but I kind of got a bit disconnected with who I was as a person and what I needed in my life. So I actually took a six month break, which was incredible for me for my mental well-being as well as physical. I was able to move my body, all of those things that you don't always do when you're stuck in your problem solving at work. So yeah, that's been super rewarding. And also gave me the space of choosing carefully what I was going to do next. So yeah, I'm really grateful for that time. I think not everyone has the chance to have that time, but I would definitely encourage everyone to take some of that time in their lives. Thanks for sharing that, that's super useful, I think, for a lot of people listening to take care of yourself mentally, physically. That's I think a message that we can repeat in every episode. So when you had the time to sort of think about your next move and decide upon your next career step, you eventually ended up here. What makes this the place for you that feels, I'm making an assumption, but that feels like this is the place you need and want to be? I think, I mean, definitely loving that place for sure. I think I'm a bit of a person who like to experiment. So not to say that I'm getting married with humankind for sure, but I am engaged with them for sure. I really love them. And I think what really drove me there and makes me show up and really passionate about what I do is that purpose that the company has. And I really connect to leading humanity at work. I see that in the work that I do every day. So it's not something that is just words, it's really an attitude and it's really cultivated within the company as well. So we often have conversation about how we actually show up, how we lead humanity at work. And that's hearing all my coworkers and how they do that. That's very inspiring. And also, I can imagine that not to disregard employee experience, I think it's a great avenue and path to explore, but designing and leading humanity at work. That feels more mission driven, purpose driven. I can imagine that that sort of helps you to get up in the morning and go to work. One thing I'm also curious about is your perspective on why is this work so important? Not just for you, but also for the organizations, maybe the employees within these organizations. What's at stake? Yeah, so there's so many things that you see nowadays in just the working space. So I can think even about some of these things that I've seen recently in the keywords that pop out which is like TikToks with people in HR giving advice to employees. Also some of the trends that you can see around the great resignation or the silent quitting, which is a very new one. And also just looking back a little bit, two years ago, I mean three years now, with the pandemic organization really had to think really quickly on how to adapt with employees and move workforces like at home or fully remote or kind of have those hybrid models to be able to function. And that definitely changed cultures and ways of working even around technology, having the right tech at work to be able to do your job. All of those problems that didn't really happen a few years ago and not investing in your people or your culture or anything like that would definitely have a huge impact on your organization or your people. Do you want me to dive in into one specific point? Yeah, I'm curious, what do you see with the organizations that sort of are where this is maybe still a blind spot or are willfully ignoring this or like what challenges do they face? I think for organizations, definitely like retention. So, you know, like people kind of looking elsewhere. The market is not as easy as it used to be. People have way more opportunities nowadays. So it's really, you know, like thinking about what can you offer as a company? So your people are, you know, like wanting to stay working for you but also feel inspired and connected to working with you. And yeah, some of the impact of not really having, you know, a strong employee experience is definitely like, I mean, especially nowadays with social media and everything you would have like reputational risk, which could kind of influence on financial risk as well. And you could have, you know, lower productivity, having to catch up because people are such torn over and you can't catch up with the lack of resources. So all of those kind of problematics that have that kind of ripple effect and could definitely influence your company. Yeah. Yeah, I can see that there's a lot at stake and it's almost, when you think about it for five minutes, it's so obvious why you should care about your employees. But yeah, somehow it's not that widespread yet. What I'd love to do now is maybe dive into some of the examples of how do you do this? Can you share some stories? And maybe I think that will make it a lot more tangible and sort of inspiring for somebody who's listening right now and thinks about, yeah, I want to do this as well. So could you share some stories? Yes, of course. I'll also share just for that kind of comment saying, I want to do this as well. I'm happy to share as well some things that you can start. So even if you don't have that capacity at work or anything like that, there's a few things that you can definitely get started on. But just going back to the examples. So as I shared earlier, that bank was the one that got me into that passion for sure. And then as I said a little bit before, depending on our client, we'll get definitely different projects and different purposes of the work that we do. So I can talk to you about one where we were working for a government entity and they wanted to uplift their people experience team. So that would incorporate employee experience and HR to uplift them into employee-centered design methodologies and tools. And so that was an incredible project because being able to be there with them every day, we took them through sprint methodologies, we ran a few sprints with them. And just being able to see how enthusiast they were was so gold. And it was also really interesting and beautiful to kind of see people part of the sprint, you know, like interviewing people, hearing it from their people. What were the things that people found challenging and really have this kind of accountability after discovery to be like, we need to do something. And that was like kind of, you know, tearing my eye, I was like, yes. So, yeah, just that kind of really learning enthusiasm and that kind of like empathy that develops through that process was incredible. A few questions about this. So if we look at the start of a project like this, Uplifting People Experience, I'm really curious, like, do you know how it started in the organization? Like who gave the brief and what was the incentive to put out a brief like this? So we definitely like keep good relationships like with some of the work that we've done before, with some of our clients. And we definitely have a good reputation across New Zealand. So that always helps. People definitely trust us to do good work. But I can't really tell you specifically for that one. But I think, I mean, the aim of this project was just to be able to offer the skills that people needed in the People Experience team so that they could uplift the overall leaders workforce and that government entity. So, yeah, that was really their aim initially is really like, you know, they can always hire consultants like us, but being able to do it themselves and us coaching them through it is definitely more of a kind of skill uplift. But also they know their people. They know their challenges. We'll always know them better than we do. So that's for sure such a powerful project to be part of. And sort of where is this project now? Like what happened after you left? Do you know? Yeah. So we do have to run a few more sprints with them to just because we wanted to make sure that they really understand that there are different types of sprints. It's not just the discovery. There's also the design and delivery. And we're also putting a playbook together to be for them to be able to take that forward. You know, like someone's getting on boarded. This is how we do things here. This is part of a culture. This is how we want to grow our mindsets. So yeah, it's really about embedding that into culture. And this sounds, I think, very similar to what people might already be familiar with, like sharing and training people on service design, methodology, service design approach. I feel that the sort of difference is that maybe the group of people who you're training is different. Like who is part of this project group from the client side? Yeah. So that one was a selection of the people experienced team. So they are people that would potentially have some knowledge with human-centered design. But the majority would probably have HR background or have a little bit of knowledge of EX. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I can imagine that this sits more or leans more towards the HR aspect or capability building or stuff like that. Cool. Any other examples that you think might be helpful to illustrate this kind of work? Yeah. So another example is a project that I had with a smaller client. But that is growing very quickly. And so part of their growth, they really want to make sure that their people understand how they connected to their story, how they're contributing to that story ongoing. And one thing that I really admire with that company is that no matter the growth, the challenges, whatever comes through them, their people and culture is something that they really put really high. And so that's very important to them and you can see that. And so that project was co-designing like the experience that would bring people together to tell that specific company story and then test it out with some of the employees to make sure that we didn't invent something completely crazy. And after that, we basically created this kind of one-off event and ongoing experience that is to continue. But it was really incredible just being able to see how everyone really was able to share what they contributed to the story of the company, what were some of the challenges they faced and how they overcome them, as well as the things that they wanted to celebrate. If you look back on a project like this, it already shows on your face in the video version of this interview that this is something that you are proud of, that you enjoy doing, what is the thing that you're most proud of if you look back on a project like this? I was doing that in partnership with someone in my company and we left the place and very kind of touched. Because of the stories we heard, but also one of the person said, at the time when you see a challenge, it seems huge and we'll never overcome it. But now being able to reflect on it and see how much we celebrate and have fun in the way that we do things, that challenge seems very small now. And we were like, wow, this is incredible. Being able to offer that to people and for them to kind of reflect on those kind of things. I think I was really proud of just us trying something different with that client and it was received quite well. So that was really good. Now, I'm curious if you how often you encounter conversations where you sort of have to justify the value of your work. Like it seems like these clients are already bought in. They have this mindset. They sort of somehow intrinsically appreciate and see the value of investing in their people. But I can imagine you also meet other types of stakeholders who are more skeptical or critical or curious. Maybe that's just better work. Do you have those? What are those conversations? Yeah, so we definitely don't do those methodologies yet with all of our clients. So we offer a range of services and employee-centered design and our methodology is something that is definitely outside of your comfort zone. If you've never worked in that space before or are not familiar with this methodology, it can be quite nerve wracking. So there's definitely a lot of reassurance going on, especially with people who do it for the first time with us. And then I think we don't really force it. So we propose things that we think could work and we make sure that we take them along the journey. But yeah, if they don't feel comfortable just yet, that's completely fine too. We want to make sure that people do what feels right to them. But I think they also have this trust in us that if we do put something forward, they're like, okay, let's try it out and see if that works for us. So what are some of the things that you see that clients tend to get? How did you say that? Nervous, stressed out? The things that make them uncomfortable in the beginning? Is there a common pattern? Yeah, I think there's different things. And that's very common to human-centered design that I've seen before. So the uncertainty, so when people are like, oh, what are we going to deliver? And we're like, well, we don't know because we haven't talked to anyone yet. So that's definitely one of the questions where people are like, but what if we don't deliver anything? And we're like, well, we would have learned on the way. And that's probably better to learn across a few weeks than a few years. So it's kind of like changing those mindsets for sure. Some of those things are quite challenging. There's also, I think the time-boxing, that's something that we've realized this can be a little bit nerve-wracking for people that haven't done any of those methodologies. Because I think people are used to have that kind of time of reflection and being able to like, oh, I'm not sure about this. Let's kind of dig a bit deeper and deeper when we're like, no, actually, we've done enough digging. We need to move forward. And that's something that, yeah, I can see we definitely need more reassurance in those aspects. Related to this, is there a specific type of organization that is more open to this? Like, do you see that your clients are coming from the public sector or commercial sector? Like, again, is there a pattern there? I don't think I can tell you yet. But because, I mean, I feel like I've seen very big organizations that are like very, you know, like, kind of historic, almost like, you know, like do things that are quite not necessarily modern or anything. And then they kind of like really embrace the process. And then I've seen smaller companies that are very innovative and then are like, oh, we don't know. You know, so I feel like it's more like a people's mindset rather than like the type of organizations or things like that. Yeah. Yeah. And again, I feel that there are there are so many similarities with service design. I think it's just that you're designing an internal service. Like if to make it simple, which is super important, by the way. Now, at the start, you said like that there are many reasons why it is important to do this, why it pays off, like what is at stake if you don't do this. All these things make sense to me. And I hope also make business sense to clients. But still, it doesn't feel like this is already super wide spread. What do you feel are still the roadblocks or the barriers to sort of a broader adoption? I think, I mean, you know, like if I look back a few years, like even 10 years ago, and where design was, you know, like the role of designer was like to prove its value, like constantly. This is beneficial. This could help you in your business, you know, like this discussion was that kind of never ending discussion. And I remember being like, will we get there? Will we get to a point where people understand what we do and see the value? And we did, you know, like we did get there. And you kind of see that huge wave of like designers and also all of those disciplines that kind of take care of different things across the design spectrum. And so I feel like it's maybe something quite similar in the people space. Because when I think about design and how it kind of grew, now it's very focused on services and products for customers. So that's something we definitely, I mean, I say we as a society as much as companies and clients understood the value of. I think there is still that kind of education and growth to be in the understanding of the value of people in your organization and how it's vital without your people, you can't do anything. So it's really kind of focusing on that next, I think. And I mean, on that next, I think about like the design evolution, but I definitely think about it shouldn't really be next, it should be alongside. So as much as you focus on your products and your customer experience and services, it should be as important to focus on your people and their products and their services. Is it just a lack of awareness that takes time and some good examples to inspire organizations and to show them, hey, this is possible. There is an entire toolkit for you to explore. I think we can definitely see really good examples with some companies. I have in mind Spotify and the remote working and how flexible they got with their people for being able to work around the world and how they want to. So, you know, like, and they're not the only ones, like lots of companies are definitely, you know, investing in their people and it's not just their people, it's also how their people live and feel. I'm thinking as well, like recently with America and how all of those stories around abortion and how a lot of companies came out and said, you know, we'll cover that for people, we'll make sure that, you know, people that do need the care will be there for them. And so it's even going, you know, like, it's not about like, like, what's your experience at work? It's what's your experience as a human and how you work, you know, it's kind of changing towards that. And I definitely see this moving really quickly. Yeah. Yeah. And it's interesting that sometimes you need like some of these big crises to sort of give a very strong wake up call. And when you see some companies take the lead and sort of be very outspoken, they set the example on the tone for the rest of the industry. And then you can't stay behind as an employer, you sort of have to take a stand as well. So it's good that people out there are leaders out there are publicly sort of supporting this specific cause and putting it out there. Yes, for sure. And also, I mean, I do want to share like maybe a few resources or things that you can kind of get started if you are in your organization and that's something that either interests you or you want to kind of take higher up or work in collaboration with your people's team. And it's, you know, like the first steps that you can do is just kind of looking at potential like assumptions personas of who is in your organization. What do they need? What is lacking for them? What are their delighters? What do they love? But also kind of thinking about that journey. So similarly to me and that bank kind of like gathering feedback, understanding where people struggle and kind of like starting there. And I think another thing as well, like so a humankind or co-founder created a community and education platform for people to be able to take that additional step to be able to have the tools and the methodology and the accreditation to actually be able to do what we do. So it's called excellent, but I will definitely share all of those resources with you so people can kind of have a bit of a play. I think it's always good to just experiment and get it going. Yeah, definitely if you have some resources, we'll add them again to the show notes and it helps to get started and open your thinking and super interesting. One of the things that sort of popped into my mind along our conversation here is one of the struggles with maybe human-centered design in general is some people in the organization get excited about it, they adopt it, but often it's really challenging to embed it, to make it a sustainable thing and make sure that it goes beyond a single initiative or a single project. What are you seeing when you join up with a client? What do you do to at least increase the chance that this will go beyond this initial interaction? Yes, I think one thing that I definitely learned and that's also across human-centered design like on products and services, it's stakeholder management. Stakeholder management is definitely your best friend because you can create as many things as you want. If you don't have the buy-in from your leaders or your key stakeholders, like you said, it can become something that just doesn't go anywhere and that's just not what you want. So yeah, you definitely want to invest in a strategy around that. I've seen some clients do this incredibly well and I'm very impressed by how they put their strategy together and how in the loop and how much at the end of their project they get the outcome, at least some part of the outcome that they want. I think this is definitely vital for a project to be successful. And when you mentioned stakeholder management, so how do you do that? How do you approach that nowadays? Yeah, so there's a few strategies that you can have. I definitely encourage the stakeholder matrix. So it's kind of looking at who do you need to keep informed, who do you need to kind of like have involved, who needs to be, I can't remember exactly the words, I remember the quadrant, have to look it up again. But yeah, it's kind of giving you an indication of who are your key stakeholders as much as your influencers. So you definitely want the people that can influence your work to be part of your stakeholder team. And when it comes to strategy, like just having regular meetings with them, keeping them in the loop, getting them involved in some of the activities, really tell that incredible story that they are connecting with it. And they've gone from the start where you gauge their interest to they participated, they understood. And then you told them that story that loops all of it together. And they're like, of course, that's the ideal. But that's kind of how you can potentially approach it. Yeah, that's, I would almost say just healthy project management for any service design professional to adopt. And these are some of the things that you maybe take for granted at the start of your career, where you focus on the tools, the methods, but these are the things that in the long run make probably the biggest difference. The question related to this is maybe, maybe some people have ideas around employee experience design, employee centered design. I'm curious, what are some of the biggest misconceptions you've heard, some of the assumptions that people make around this that you think are good to sort of set straight? Yeah, I think, I think one of the things that people think it is going to be easy and comfortable and speedy. This is not. It's uncomfortable. It's, it's lengthy. And, and it's, you know, like putting you in those places where you don't know you would be. And so I think, yeah, being kind of comfortable within comfortable is definitely something. But yeah, just kind of like, yeah, having those, like avoiding all the preconceived ideas, the biases and, and all of that. And I know that's very difficult for everyone. But it's really about kind of opening your arms to some things are unknown and being able to kind of ride the wave, I guess. Going back to the point where you mentioned about getting started. So if somebody is excited and has read the resources, but they still feel like I need to get permission or at least get somebody in the organization to support this cause. Any tips on what are some good angles or strong stories that you've seen that help other people in the organization to get by it, to at least have your back with this. Like what it's convincing. Yeah. So actually a human can, we do have one of our mindsets, which is as part of the ECD methodology that is get started. So I mean, it is just start. So you just want to start and get started. I think, yeah, encouraging people to, you know, like, you want to solve something, go and talk to people, like, try like, take a piece of paper, try something on paper, test it out with people around you, you know, it actually doesn't take that long to kind of get something just across the line being like, Hey, would that work? And yeah, I think this I definitely learned like from my past, actually, which I didn't mention, but I created, I co-founded sustainable takeaway service in the past. And that's kind of how it came through. So I was at a climate change accelerator. And, you know, and two days we created the service, which is now a successful company in New Zealand. And like, we didn't really think too much. We were just like, Okay, would that work? And you just kind of get there. And then, of course, so much work to get the funding and everything that comes with it. But just getting that first step, and just getting things, you know, talking to people, trying things out, and having that data, because to be able to convince people, you definitely need that proof that it could work. Yeah. Yeah. So this is the classic catch 22 we experience in the design process where it's really hard to verbally communicate the benefits and the value of our work up front. Upfront, it's much better to sort of have some data, like you said, some results, some tangible things that you can show, and have a conversation around that. But that means that in that initial stage, you sort of have to go under the radar to over hours or like be kind of a rebel to get it started, just do it. And then that gives you something to have a conversation about. And maybe you can then say, look at this. I've discovered that if we talk to our team, they all struggle with this point. What if we would be able to solve this? Like that gives you a completely different conversation than just hypothesis based. Yes. I'm definitely an advocate of ask for forgiveness rather than permission. And you know, you think about like, I was just thinking about this and maybe because I want ice cream right now, but I was like, if you Mark, tell me like, this is the best ice cream shop. And I'm like, I'm going to ask you, did you go there? Did you try the flavors? You know, like, I'm not going to believe you if you just tell me it's the best ice cream shop. I feel like it's the same with like an idea or something where you want to convince people like you need some data and you tried the flavors. So that's why you can say this is actually the best ice cream place I've been to. And so yeah, for me, it's kind of a similar approach where you definitely kind of have to go there and be a bit of a pirate and then come out and have that data that can convince people. I have pretty good recommendations for ice cream shops. So whenever you're near Allah, I'll help you out. Now you've been doing this for a few years. You've been able to sort of reflect on this and develop your your thoughts and maybe some some perspectives. What is the thing you wish somebody had told you five years ago? I think, I mean, related to design, I think definitely like trust your instincts. But even in my life, actually, like just like trust your instincts, because, you know, like, you know the process, you know what you're doing, just kind of show up, you know, like, and you'll see what comes up. And yeah, I think also just kind of looking back and that break that I had and all of that, I'm really grateful to got to have gotten to a stage where I was like, actually, I need that time off or, you know, like, I need a work that is very connected to my purpose as a person. And so yeah, really kind of taking that time and and that focus to really like, choose what I want, which is not always what you have when you're a bit younger and have some doubts, not that I don't have doubts. I did get older though. So yeah, I think if I would give myself advice, it would just be like, trust yourself and everything will be fine. I feel that we've sort of covered two topics in this conversation. Designing humanity at work and some very good life advice that helps a lot. If somebody made it all the way to this point in the conversation, what is the one thing you hope they will walk away with? I think being curious, you know, maybe some of the stories that I shared inspired them to try a few things at work. And you definitely don't need to be an expert to get things started. There is plenty of resources out there. And there's also a few that we put together at humankind that I'll share with you. And yeah, just kind of get curious, experiment and involve people in the process. Like you definitely want people there with you because you're designing with them and for them. So. Cool. Thanks so much for sharing your story. Super inspiring. I think it's a very interesting area of the design space that is hopefully going to explode in the coming years because it's so important. There's so much work to do. It's not just employee experience, but also the entire design ops movement. I think sort of worlds are colliding. Things are converging. We're having momentum. We're having some good crises that are helping our cause. So again, hope that this will inspire many people to start working on this area. And thanks for bringing this up. Yeah, thank you so much for inviting me. That was a pleasure to talk about this. Awesome that you made it all the way here. Now please leave a comment down below and let us know is your organization already investing in employee experience? If so, what are they doing? If not, what is holding them back? My name is Mark Fontaine, and I want to thank you for being part of this community. Thanks a lot for watching to the service design show, and I'll catch you very soon in the next video.