 Yes. Hello. It's really been, you know, you asked if we had a good time. I'm actually grateful. A sense of gratitude for being here. To the people I've met, there's, I was just telling someone, thank you, about the great enthusiasm for learning and for doing good work. So I've been most most impressed and really pleased to meet everyone. So I want to speak with you as leaders because that's how I see you. You're here at this conference. You're working in design and user experience in a country and a world that needs that so much. You're eager to improve your ability to create things that matter to India and to the world. And so, and I think even just being here at the conference is kind of an active leadership on your part. So that's the view from which I prepared my thoughts. And I'll say that, you know, for most of my career, I think I'm getting close to 35 years of industry, which is why I have hardly any hair left. And, you know, for a good part of that career, I worked on products. I worked on processes, services, interfaces, interactions, all kinds of things. Mostly the focus was on the things that you can see on the on the visible outcomes of the work. Even if it's an interaction, it's still kind of visible, yes? And so all of these kinds of things were what I was hired and paid to work on, the kinds of things that I've been teaching people to work on. But I had a sense, a growing sense. It took me actually a long time to recognize that my sense of discomfort with some of my work, that this is what it was about. I couldn't find the words. That there was something, so we'd be hired to go find an unmet need or some actionable insight. And then they would make a product to try to fix it. But that need came from somewhere. There was a kind of roots in soil of what was going on in people's lives. And it has to do with their relationships with one another and the way they communicate, the way that they go about their day, the systems that they participate in, what they really care about, their values, good or bad boundaries, all these kinds of things are the roots in soil of life, of the things that we can see. And I was not, only was I not being asked to work on those things, I didn't feel equipped to work on those things. So my question is, how can we advance the practice of work that really, truly, no joking improves life. And that has led me, like business and the things that we're teaching now have been trying to work in social complexity, where the starting question is a social question rather than a business or technology question. But it turns out that this is a mythic question for, I don't know, 10,000 years, thousands of years, people have been creating together, trying to, sometimes succeeding. Some of those people were poets, some of those people were able to talk to us about what it was like to be someone who was, who was trying to do such work. And there's some common themes. One of the common themes is that the person on this journey of creation in the world, their identity, you know, the question is not who are you, the questions who are you becoming? Not the kind of the poetic imagination, people are not defined by their history, their biography, by what they've done, but their identity is tied with the questions that they're engaged with, kind of the questions, especially the scary questions, the frightening questions that they're stepping into and trying to work on. And also by the possibilities that they bring into the room when they arrive, by the possibilities and questions. And another common theme is this, the metaphor of a journey shows up over and over again, all over the world as a metaphor for going through life. And for sort of along the way, we encounter some of the great aspects of life, like marriage or partnership, like work, expressing ourselves through our work, like our relationship, like our inner life. So I wanted to have kind of two chapters to this talk this morning, which, given what we've just seen, you know, I'll tell you, this is not directly about user experience. I'm not going to talk about methods or approaches or tell you about project stories. I'm, as I say, I kind of want to speak with you as leaders about what it's like to do work that's deeply creative and what it's like to become someone who does that kind of work or be becoming. So the journey of deep creativity, the journey of becoming, taking your creative place in life. So let's start with the first journey. This is an old idea. It's often talked of, not often talked about in professional life. The way we pay attention to the world shapes what we create. So let's explore that a little bit. It is a key to this journey of deep creativity. Here's a, here's a work challenge, a design challenge. We have the current situation. And we have a desire to better situation. We like to get across the gap. How do we get across there? How do we get from the way things are now to a better way things could be? Well, one method, a shallow method is to just do something. So people say, I know what to do. Maybe we're concerned about traffic in Bangalore. So someone is a traffic engineer and says, I'm an expert. I know what to do. And I don't know what the answer would be. Maybe it's more roads or maybe it's more taxes or something. The point is that shallow attention and shallow attention gets you shallow results. It's easiest to be the expert. To see and do what you already know or to think you know. It's easiest to project your vision onto the situation. And then try to persuade the situation to conform or comply with your vision. And maybe if you're working for one of those people it's easiest to just go along. To kind of be polite or sort of go along because you think that's what they want. Yes, so that is a has a terrible track record as a as a source of good good answers in the world. Well, here's a little bit deeper, a little bit deeper creative journey. You go out and look at the situation before you decide what to do. You allow for the possibility that you don't already know. Or that what you did last time is going to work this time in this new situation. And then you prototype the thing and you iterate it until you allow for the possibility that your first try may not be the best thing. So this is very common in industry. Many of us receive these requests to go look for, you know, observe and look for an opportunity and produce a thing. There is, though, as you have probably found yourself or people you work with, there is an enemy of observation. If you're going to go look at the situation. And that is judgment. We so here's your point of view in the middle of the circle. And the circle is your beliefs, your presuppositions, what you think is true, what you think you know about the world. So whatever's coming in that you're observing or perceiving gets changed, gets filtered by these beliefs. Or another way to look at it is to say we're always kind of projecting onto this screen, this bubble, our view of the world. So when we look at the world, we're actually seeing our own projection overlaid onto the world. It's an enemy of seeing clearly, of clear observation. So each move into deeper creativity requires a kind of courageous inner step. And in this case, that step is to open your mind, open your mind to see what's really there, to just pay attention to your senses, not your own interpretation of what you're seeing, including the things that don't align with your expectations, that don't agree with you. So we can learn to move our center of attention. And that is part of a deeper creative journey. There's yet a deeper way. Having observed the situation and seeing what's going on, you could ask the things that I see, what's under that? Where does that coming from? So you can immerse in the situation and see the traffic from the point of view of the drivers and the city planners and the pedestrians. You can look at the situation from many different points of view. Maybe in our little story, we explore the idea that some of this traffic is coming just from goods, getting the stores getting their supplies, food getting to the food vendors, for example, shoes getting to the shoe vendors. So there's these trucks. So you go to the stores and you see through their eyes and you ride with the delivery drivers and you spend time in the warehouse in the shipping facility. And what you're seeing is the organizational processes and structures and the city's processes and structures that are underneath the things. That's where the things come from. Why did we ever think it was good to have cars in the first place? There was a reason for that, yeah? Well, this thing of immersion also has an enemy and that's cynicism. So when we see the world through other people's eyes, we've moved our center of attention to the edge of our beliefs and understanding. We'll start to see complexity that we didn't see before and we're going to see people that don't really do things the way we think we ought to do them, you know? So our creative work can be blocked by cynicism. We can say these people will never learn. We can say we've tried that before and it didn't work. It'll be too expensive. It's way too complicated. We get cynical based on our past disappointments. So the antidote to cynicism is to move your attention outside yourself. So you're no longer the only person or team or company involved. You're part of something bigger. You see yourself as part of the whole system, shoulder to shoulder with the other people that are living that situation. When you realize that you're just one part of this much bigger set of possibilities and you open your heart to working with everyone who is part of what's going on, much more becomes possible. There is one more yet deeper step that this can go. Observe the situation, immerse in it, see from many points of view. And if you've opened to truly see and let go of your presuppositions, you let go of the idea that you're the one that's supposed to fix it, supposed to make it better. You make room for something new to be born. Because those processes and structures aren't the root of the situation after all. There's an existing system in its full of people who also have their beliefs and their ways of seeing the world and their stories about what's good. So you can't get those new processes to come to life until you work with their root source, their roots, the priorities and possibilities of the people who are living out that situation. So and I tried to think of an example in our story. And I don't know. I mean, maybe you've discovered that that some things don't have to go to the store, they can go directly to from the warehouse to people's workplace and they pick it up and it's by scooter and there's fewer trucks and so I don't know. I'm not I'm not trying to think of solutions, but I'm trying to give you examples of how the people together who open in this way who let go of the old of the way things are to make room for the way things could be something really surprising now can arise that you wouldn't have conceived of before. So this is the place where something profound can happen because you're working at a profound level. And you reframe the purpose, reframe the principles. So now when you work with the with the new processes and structures, your prototyping those, they're trying to bring to life a completely new way of seeing the situation. But of course, letting go of the way things are the way things we do the way we do things around here also has an enemy. And that is fear. It is, it is scary to change. It's, you can you can feel inadequate. You can feel like we're going to fail. You can feel like this is too big for me. It's scary to collaborate with people. Do you trust them? They're unlike yourself. And you're actually kind of letting go of what you know, you're letting go of a piece of your identity, your your your professionalism is associated with the way we've been doing things and being the expert, letting go of that is scary. So the step that the the courageous step in this journey, this this creative journey is to open yourself in such a way that you see yourself as part of the larger thing that's happening, your your beliefs and presuppositions kind of dissolve. And and there's a bunch of you together having this happen. And what you're working with is the sense of possibility that there's a kind of a future that wants to be born now that everybody is just kind of seeing this as a part of a whole is kind of new. And and you're you're working from raw possibility of this of this group of people together. So that that future, it becomes your customer. Now, I'm not saying that this is like the process to follow. I'm not prescribing a process. I'm saying this I'm saying that work that that touches the roots and soil of a situation work that has a chance of bringing something better. Meaning full something meaningful for people and something that really lasting it requires deep creativity. And deeply creative work means connecting your insides, your sense of care, your sense of connection, your sense of who you are to the situation you're working with and the people that live it. artists do this, you know, writers do this, engineers do this, positions do this, teachers and mothers and religious leaders, lots of people do this kind of deep creative work. And yes, designers do it too. However, it has certainly gone out of fashion in industry. It's something that it's almost lost. Although it's very thriving and other other parts of life. So whatever your personal story or whatever the story of your team or organization, we're all invited to participate in work that's bigger than ourselves. And the truth is that our work is already bigger than ourselves. We are already having impact in the world, we can't help it, our decisions affect the world all the time. So when we embark on it, and trying to do this, this kind of more deeply creative work, the heart of the work and the quality of the work is not related to the intelligence of the team, or the your ability, your, your, your skill, your craft. Those are useful, we all have gifts to give, but the heart of the work is our openness to the world, and responsibilities are openness to taking our place in the creation, taking place in the in part of something that's growing, that even sometimes even despite ourselves. So that turns out is has been a challenge for people throughout throughout the centuries. This thing of moving from I to we creatively has been a challenge for people. Maybe I don't know since the Stone Age, for all I know. So that leads to the second, the second journey. The reason that great poetry and literature is popular is because it reports on the experiences that all humans share. And I've, I've made a shift and been in the process of making a shift to work that starts with social questions, as I said. And as I've been doing that, I've been been learning from people who have studied that kind of the more soulful or or mythical stories about this kind of work. And I thought I would kind of synthesize and and pass some of that on to you. So this isn't this is a synthesis, not a particular myth or a particular story. It's kind of a combination of things I've pulled together. sources I'm using, by the way, I should say that some of what I just showed comes from a fellow at MIT named Otto Sharmer. And David White, a poet and Joseph Campbell scholar of mythology or some other sources I'm drawing from. So this story begins with being asleep, a kind of creative snoozing, a state of kind of comfort with the way things are, it may be working to please others following the script that was handed to you by your by your culture. So I don't know about you. But for me, that's meant things like living up to please others, others expectations, or choosing mostly by criteria I was given by my upbringing, feeding as often like I was, you know, kind of numb, my intellectual passions were growing, but my emotions are not connected to my work. And kind of living on the contingency plan, living until waiting for the right job, the right money, the right invitation, the right request. So that, you know, there there comes a point, I mean, a lot of people live a fair amount of their lives in this state. Yes, we all do sometimes. There comes a point, though, when you've had enough, David White says, you know, with all of our goals, mission statements, positive thinking, bonus mileage plans and future career moves safely to the rear, we can look around and find ourselves slightly chilled in a small unfamiliar clearing and a dark wood facing that stubborn not to be accepted life we've made and must call our own. One day we wake and see our life as we've made it. And that leads to this kind of the next chapter waking up Dante, in his inferno, was he 16th century? Think this is the opening lines of the inferno, in the middle of the road of my life, I awoke in a dark wood where the true way was wholly lost. And in the middle of the road of my life, I woke in a dark wood where the true way was wholly lost. White says in three lines, Dante says that the journey begins right here, in the middle of the road, right beneath your feet. This is the place is no other place and no other time. When you do wake, you are rousing a different part of you, a barely experienced life that lies at your core. Having forgotten this central soul experience, you do not recognize where you are. The part of you that loved your sleep feels as though you are lost. So the poetic tradition is that this is a scary place, but it's the necessary place of beginning. So if you feel like, I can't see, and I don't know where to go, then you've begun. So this sense of inadequacy, and a kind of setting out from home, setting out from your comfortable place. So now you're going to pay attention to the world in a little bit different way. Now, after Dante woke in the woods, he walked not too far, he got to the edge, and he could see the sun shining off the mountain peaks in paradise. And that's exciting. So he's walking along, and it wasn't very far before he encountered three monsters, a leopard, a wolf and a lion that represented some of his flaws and temptations. And that's just a repeating theme, starting out on the journey meeting a monster. In Beowulf, Epic, it's a different monster. It's a monster named Grendel. And so I use this story and the interpretation of this story meant a lot to me at a certain time. So I put Beowulf Lake in here. If you don't know the story, a king, Rothgar, had this great hall in the north, and he had a problem with a monster named Grendel, who kept coming in and killing his warriors and dragging them off into the into the night. And so he hired Beowulf to kill Grendel and promised half his kingdom as the reward. So Beowulf and his men wait, Grendel comes in, tremendous fight. He manages to tear off Grendel's arm, Grendel goes off and dies. So big celebration, drinking and jewels and rewards. And something else comes into the hall and drags warriors off into the night. It's Grendel's mother. And when when David White tells this story, he says, it's not the thing you fear, it's the mother of the thing you fear. So Grendel's mother lived at the bottom of a of a black cold lake. It says that a stag, you know, a male deer, this symbol of courage, if is pursued by wolves, chased by wolves, would rather die on the shores of the lake than go in. But grant Beowulf has to go into that lake and go down to the bottom, he gets to the bottom, he finds there a weapon that will kill Grendel's mother and he and he succeeds. The point of the lake is that there is something for each of us that holds us back, that kills our courage and kind of drags it off into the night. Something that keeps us from living out our true desire. There are things about yourself that you're not proud of are things that you've come to feel are inadequate or ugly. But they're still part of you. And so White says, you know, ironically, our place of refuge is the lake, where the greater devouring animal of our of our disowned desire lies in the shape of Beowulf's mother. The refusal to go down into the lake is the refusal to be eaten by life. The delusion is that there might be a possibility of immunity from the failures that accompany our exploration in the world. But the story says you're going to be swallowed by something greater one way or another. So the real question is not one of winning or losing, but of experiencing life with an ever increasing depth. The storyteller says, why not go down at home or at work into the lake consciously, like Beowulf? Don't die on the shore. The stakes are high. Well, having gone into the lake, thought the monster dove into life. The next step in this mythical story, recurring theme in the story is coming home and taking your place in story after story over centuries, the hero leaves home on a quest. And after a long journey, he eventually comes to a place that he recognizes as the very home that he left. And he finds that he's now ready to take his place in the world. He's able to integrate all the parts of himself. And and and along the way, kind of the in the act of returning a spark was lit, that his his creative fire. Yes, coming home and taking your place means this, it means accepting yourself just as you are as enough. Those things that made you afraid to go on the lake, you've accepted them as part of you. It's not that you banish them or conquered them. It's not that you became perfect, you just came home to yourself, you understand that that's part of you. So I'm going to read a couple of poems. I have two minutes. I'm probably going to use four. This is an example of a poet working with with these themes, Derek Walcott, Love After Love, the time will come when with isolation, you will greet yourself arriving at your own door in your own mirror. And each will smile at the other's welcome. And say, sit here, eat. You will love again the stranger who was yourself. Give wine, give bread, give back your heart to itself to the stranger who has loved you all your life, who you ignored for another who knows you by heart. Take down the love letters in the bookshelf, the photographs, the desperate notes, peel your own image on the mirror, sit, feast on your life. This is a poem about coming home to yourself. Yeah, welcoming your whole self. The last chapter in this story, you know, for a long time, I thought, oh, I took my place. I'm feeling some creative fire. I'm more okay with my flaws. I'm just going to bring them along to work with me. That's it. Now I will do my work. But it turns out that life is full of crossings, full of frontiers. The lake was the first and maybe kind of one of the scariest. But I now I kind of see maybe that's how life is going to be. I see life as involving a series of frontiers I experience new beginnings all the time, in my family and I work personal life in cooking. And I come to see them as like coming to a river, or coming to the top of a ridge and seeing new territory on the other side. And then I'm faced with the choice. Do I go there? Do I make that crossing? It's not comfortable. And often, I've realized that I've been at the edge of something for quite a while, and not even recognized it. Oh, that's why I've not liked the last four projects. Because I've already moved on. I've already I've already wanting something else. Yeah. So here's David White. We can experience a kind of frontier identity. No matter what threshold we find ourselves in, in each stage of life, there's a way of understanding the particular threshold you're on. And living a life that's up to the conversation you're asked to join, continually invited into new and bigger conversations. I will skip a little bit in the interest of time. And say that, say this, this story of our lives with all of these possibilities, this this continuing growth, this journey is held together through a kind of a of central imagination. In in poetic tradition, imagination is not just the ability to think up new things. Some of the European boats would call that secondary imagination. Primary imagination is your ability to form a central image inside yourself, or to discover that image inside yourself, an image that makes sense of all the thousands of images you're involved with in your life. There's a faculty of imagination and human beings is able to make sense of any level of complexity, and to give you a place to stand at the center of it and a ground from which to step into your new life. So I'm just going to close with a poem. Another one. This is David White, Santiago, and I've kind of extracted parts of it. It's kind of dense. So I encourage you to ask Google about it and read it line by line, but we'll just read it. I think it's a nice another nice journey story. The road scene than not seen. The hillside hiding then revealing the way you should take the road dropping away from you as if to leave you walking on thin air, then catching you holding you up when you thought you would fall. And the way forward always in the end, the way that you followed the way that carried you into your future that brought you to this place. So that one day you realize that what you wanted had already happened long ago, and in the dwelling place you had lived in before you began and that every step along the way you carried the heart and the mind and the promise that first set you off and drew you on. And that you were, I love this line, you were more marvelous in your simple wish to find a way than the gilded roofs of any destination you could reach. As if all along you thought the endpoint might be a city with golden towers and cheering crowds and turning the corner what you thought was the end of the road. You found just a simple reflection. A clear revelation beneath the face looking back and beneath it another invitation all in one glimpse, like a person and a place you had sought forever, like a broad field of freedom that beckoned you beyond, like another life, and the road still stretching on. So welcome to the frontier and thank you for very kind. Thank you. Yes, thank you so much. Yeah, I will.