 You and I know that design can have a tremendous positive impact, but how do you demonstrate this value to an organization that doesn't have human-centered design at its core? In a way that earns respect from the business and positions design as an equal partner, rather than just being a resource. That's what we're going to find out in this episode. Here's our guest for this episode. Let the show begin. Hey everyone, this is the Service Design Show. I'm Scott Zimmer and welcome to Episode 187. Hi, my name is Marc Fontijn 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 a difference between success and failure? All to help you design great services that have a positive impact on people business and our planet. Our guest in this episode might be a name that you haven't heard all that often, but this man's track record is just mind-boggling. Scott Zimmer was the Chief Experience Officer at Verizon. He was the Chief Innovation and Design Officer at one of the top 10 commercial banks in the US and he was the Global Head of Experience Design and Innovation at Capital One, where he spearheaded the acquisition of the Legendary Design Consultancy Adaptive Pad, which in hindsight was an absolute pivotal moment in our industry. I'm in a fortunate position to be able to talk to many talented service design professionals. And amongst the many success stories that I hear, there's usually also a sentiment that the value of design isn't appreciated and respected by the business in a way that we feel it deserves. This is a major problem for many reasons. For one, it's easy to get frustrated and just leave your company. On the flip side, your company might decide that design is irrelevant and shut it down entirely. And somewhere in the middle, you might fail to get promoted into leadership positions that would give you more influence. All scenarios that we'd of course like to avoid. Now, when you look at Scott's track record, you'll see a recurring pattern. He's been able to somehow position design at a strategic level in every organization that he's worked at and therefore managed to get the proper funding to do good design at scale. Building out teams and departments most of us can only wish for, because as we know, this level of investment in design is not common. So how did he do it? That's what we're going to uncover in this episode. If you stick around to the end of the conversation with us, you'll know what it takes to shift a company's investments and get them reallocated into design. How you can grow a small team of design into a strategic company-wide capability. And when do people start knocking on your door asking for your help? I hope this got you excited for the conversation and the insights that are coming up. Because now it's time to sit back, relax and enjoy the conversation with Scott Zimmer. Welcome to the show, Scott. Hey, thanks. Great to be here. It's so interesting to have you on the show because you've worked and had a pleasure to meet with so many of the previous guests. We'll get to that in a second. So in some way, you're the man behind a lot of service design figures who have gone before you here on the show. So it's a great honor already. Scott, I didn't know your background, to be honest. I got introduced to you by a good friend of ours, Maurice Jomonias. And then I looked into your background and I was like, oh man, this guy, super interesting. For the people who haven't read your LinkedIn profile yet, could you give like a 60-second history overview of where you are coming from and what you're doing these days? Yeah, sure. I think the important points to know are as a youth, I was an artist and was inspired by entrepreneurship, so chose a business track instead of a design track. And enjoyed my business track, including an MBA, put myself in leadership positions, both at tech companies and then eventually at banks. And that brought me to raise a hand for what's possible in becoming more customer-centric and get closer and closer to what designers are capable of. And you mentioned some of the fantastic guests you've had on this show and how I came to know them. I did get to work with them. I would say they're the ones I learned from. They're the reason I know what I know and it was a true honor. So a couple of the big things that shaped my perspective. I was lucky to work for Disney early in my career and everything about that culture is user experience design and service design. They didn't call it that, but that's certainly how that culture thrives. I was also lucky to work under someone named Regis McKenna and Regis in Silicon Valley in the Bay Area. He helped shape Intel and Apple early in their years and helped Apple famously understand that they didn't need a logo. They needed a customer strategy. They needed to figure out who they were serving and what they were doing for their early customers. So I enjoy being a sponge. I've learned a tremendous amount. And at this point in my career, design is my absolute favorite job family. I've had designers I admire convince me that I need to admit that it's in my DNA as well. And I'm looking to give back in any way I can. So really happy to be here and share some of the lessons I've learned. Awesome. Scott, one of the classic questions I have on the show during the introduction is whether people know the moment that they got introduced to service design. Would you know that moment? Was there a moment? Well, I think that goes back to when I was at Disney. I was introduced to just all of the detail that goes into Disney planning and experience. And it certainly opened my eyes. And that was an internship before I finished undergrad. So that goes way back to the mid-90s, early to mid-90s. So yeah, it's been all my radar since then. And then of course later in my career, the name of it and the phrasing of it came onto my radar even after 2010. Cool. Scott, we have a lightning round to get to know you a little better as a person next to the professional. I've got five brand new questions. So I'm going to cheat and look at my notes here. Your goal is to answer them as quickly as possible. Just the first thing that comes to your mind and then we won't dive into them right now. But let's see where this takes us. Are you ready? Sure. Okay. So the goal is to finish this sentence. Something that always makes me smile. Something that always makes me smile. The emotion and personality of pets. All right. If I had unlimited resources, I would. Ensure that the world is learning from the foremost experts. All right. Question number three. Finish this sentence. The most important quality in a friend is? Authenticity. All right. The best part of my day is when? When I am getting energized from linking with people I care about and respect. Okay. And fifth and final question. The world needs more dot dot dot. The world needs more respect for design. And that's a great leeway into our topic for today. So, very interesting. The world needs more respect for design. I think that's the thing we want to unpack and explore today. Let's start with this question. What do you mean with more respect? And how does maybe the lack of respect currently manifest itself? Yeah, sure. It's a tricky word, too, because people who are not designers, if they were ever to hear a designer seeking respect, their first impression would be that it's about ego or it's about something that a crazy designer is seeking for their own service. What I have witnessed through my career and the reason I say that is that so many companies and businesses deeply understand job fields like finance or like marketing or like even data analysis or software engineering. And as they're building up their organization, those are easy places for them to lean. But as we've all seen, I think hopefully your listeners on this podcast, there's a really wide variety of the way companies engage with design. And there are some companies who would say we would be nothing without the insights and talents of the designers that are contributing to our success. And there are other companies who would say, oh, we've got designers, and we let them know when we've made the decisions and they make our stuff look good. So this notion of design maturity, I think it's really about design respect, and I think it's important from everything I've tried and my teams have tried, it's important to humbly earn the respect of the partners that designers engage with inside of companies, earn that respect through interactions that show the value of design and specifically the value of design, not only for creating things that customers love, but also creating meaningful business growth. Because whether we like it or not, the orientation of most companies first and foremost is can we grow the business, can we earn revenue, can we earn profit? And if we as designers can't speak that language and empathize with the weight on the shoulders of our partners, then we can't achieve the balance that's necessary where a business should actually be pursuing both customer delight and business growth at the same time. Okay. I'm going to try to help you take a stand and maybe play a bit of the devil's advocate here. One could also maybe say design doesn't need to earn the respect, like it should already have the respect. If a business doesn't understand that the only way to grow your business is to do what customers desire, then it's not up to design to explain it to them, they will go out of business someday, somewhere. So one might say, we as designers, we shouldn't really try and strive to earn that respect. It should be naturally present. What's your take on that? The simple reality is that the people that we're partnering with don't understand the design skill set very well or misunderstand it. And I think we all know that if you were to go into many companies and ask 10 people, 9 out of 10 people would still say, even though it's 2023, would still say designers make things pretty or something to that effect. And that's not true for other job families. They could easily articulate what someone in marketing or someone in finance does. I think if we believe in empathy in our field, I think it's important for us to empathize what it feels like to have someone walk up to you and say design is critically important. You should already respect it. Or service design is going to make a huge difference at this company. I hope you respect it. Here we go. And if we empathize with the fact that they've maybe never heard of it, and it might sound to them like someone walking up and saying, centrifugal engineering is critical and it's going to make a huge difference in this company. I hope you're ready to respect it. It's that, in many cases, it's that different to our partners. So I think it goes a long ways if we can help people on board to the fact that our skill set is oriented around more deeply understanding customers and also addressing the problems that they face. And usually what I've found is business people or people in the roles where they need to be customer centric, they have a lot of pressure on them to be customer centric. They use all the right language, but deep down they realize they're missing a lot of the skills. They may have never had classes in research or they may not deeply understand, you know, the way to advance ideation around what's possible in serving customers needs or coming up with better solutions. So that forces them into a position where they end up feeling like they have to front like they know it, but maybe in the background they're a little bit intimidated. And I think that causes a lot of the challenge that we have, you know, as an industry. Have you always had this feeling that design needed to slowly and humbly earn respect or was there like, I'm curious how your career has evolved that you got to the point where you are. Maybe you can take us back to the moment where you started to realize that this might be the missing piece of the puzzle that we need as a design community in order to be more impactful, because eventually I guess that's what we're striving to do here. Yeah, I think it was just a confluence of circumstances in my career that taught me that lesson firsthand. You can all imagine that Disney, it's a given that Disney, you know, designing creativity is core to the culture and it's not just respected, it's revered. And part of my time there, I was in the marketing organization and part of my time there, I had the privilege to work on the Disney imaginary team and help launch the Disney cruise lines. And as I transitioned away from that culture and into other cultures, the stark difference to me was shocking, you know, like, wait a minute, this isn't something that everyone reveres and that is core to how this company is going to succeed, obsessing over, you know, every inch of a customer experience, for example. And fast forward to my arrival at Capital One. And I know you've had a few guests from that design team, which I'm really proud to say I was the founder of. It's a culture that learns and listens. The culture is set by the CEO at Capital One, who's actually an entrepreneur, actually out of Stanford and the Bay Area. And this notion of learning and listening opened the door for us at Capital One to really understand what was possible with design and build enough respect internally at that culture for design that when we met Adaptive Path and Adaptive Path met us, it was a marriage that had a chance of working. So as we brought Adaptive Path into Capital One, I'm pleased to say that I was able to convince the rest of Capital One to really respect the opportunity to work with the brilliant leaders that came with that acquisition. And that runway, I think, taught me so many lessons that have stuck with me forever. I'm super proud to say some of those designers are still at Capital One, so it wasn't a total disaster getting acquired by a big bank. But I'm a little bit less excited about what's happening at other banks and at other companies, where the business leadership or the technology leadership is still offending off design or keeping design in a place where it doesn't have a voice. And those companies I forecast will not be as successful as companies who do review it. It's super interesting for me to unpack this story with you because there is always, it's good to look at ourselves and be accountable for what we can do to align with other partners within the business. But I'm also very curious to hear your opinion on, I'm sure that there are situations where just all the odds are against you and you're never going to, whatever you do, no matter how much and how hard you try to translate, to be the partner, to be humble, to earn that respect, the environment isn't going to be there. You might get into that. Maybe this is a good transition. So what have you seen? What works to earn that respect? What can we do? So if we're in a situation where we do want to be more impactful, have our voices heard and respected and have the influence on decisions, what works? How do we do that? Yeah, there's a few lessons I learned the hard way. And I think they're really important differences going right or left on some of the decisions that design teams can make within companies. The first I would say is it's critically, critically important for design teams to position themselves as partners and not as resources. Yet organizations will default to calling them resources. The resource language I think may come from the ad agency world, which of course is a fraction of all design, but that past, the ad agency creative past, I think is very poisonous to the way people in companies view working with designers. Because the pattern is set that from the days of ad agency world, that creatives will show up, they'll get a brief, they'll go off behind a magic curtain, they'll come back with some answer and hope that whoever the stakeholder is, the client will like their answer. And you didn't hear me say customer in that whole, in that whole example. If there's a culture that's trying to build on that pattern, the strongest thing a design team can do is find a way even on a relationship basis to earn the respect of the people that they're working with and emerge out of some of those, some of the language like resources, like that client orientation where there's a design team within a company considering that the rest of the company are its clients. It just goes really poorly. That doesn't happen if you're a legal team within a company. It doesn't happen if you're an engineering team within a company. Those are professions that are respected for their expertise. And design should be absolutely the same and is at any great culture that you find. So creativity might be the challenge here that businesses perceive creativity in a specific way. I can imagine that it's also something that we should embrace and celebrate as a design community. That's one of our key skills that we bring to the table. Or have you seen that this is something that we should initially try to avoid and maybe focus more on being a partner that's helping to achieve business goals and leave like the how to create creativity prototyping, all the things that make design design out of out of the equation? How do you see this? You know, one of the things I would say there is creativity as a service is also a terrible place to position design. But positioning design as Sherpas of creativity, as a career field that deeply understands how to foster creativity. And then positioning design to spread the love and empower others across the organization to bring out their creative selves. That's a great positioning for a design team. And it can easily start in accepting, you know, the chance to do workshops for other teams. But it has to be a workshop where you bring in the entire team of, you know, cross functional roles and help everyone accomplish something together, as opposed to a workshop where everyone sits in an audience and looks at, you know, the few creative people who do their best to put on a creative dog and pony show. I've seen countless examples of workshops done the right way, leading people to almost have a seed planted in their minds like, wow, I didn't realize that's what's possible. I didn't realize I had that in me. You know, I didn't realize a designer would trust, you know, my thoughts and even help me, you know, be more creative. So positioning design as a catalyst of creativity across an entire organization is something that I think is really successful when done right. And at Capital One, we had both adaptive path helping us with that. And we also had a deep relationship with the D school at Stanford. And we're lucky enough to have several members of our team, literally from the D school exec ed program in an organization that was part of my group that was teaching design thinking across the bank. And if you teach design thinking the right way, you absolutely inspire people from other disciplines to believe in respect in, you know, design method, even if they don't consider themselves designers, they, they revere the fact that they now can speak and understand the method of human centered design. We as the audience and listeners can imagine that we've had the question of if design is, for instance, like you said, the share bar of creative view or uses that one of its roles. It is challenging to attribute the impact of our work because we're facilitators and other people are doing the work. You don't get recognition for, hey, the design people actually helped us do this. Usually it's what I'm trying to get it is how do you then move away? I'm trying to find the right words here, like the facilitator often doesn't get credited for the value that they bring to the table. How do we solve that? I think it's an important thing to jump on for a moment. First off, when you mentioned facilitator, I think it's important for designers, you know, working with partners in a company to move past facilitation. That may be the on ramp to engage, but past facilitation towards partnership and where decisions are being made about what a product or service or experience will do. Typically at an organization with a very low design maturity, those decisions will be made by the business leader or by the business leader plus the technology leader. As the maturity gains, we in our field have always talked about getting design a seat at the table. I think it's more about as that maturity advances, those two roles learn to respect the fact that having a third voice as part of those conversations can really add to the decision that ends up being made. I think it's critical to work towards equal partnership across those three types of disciplines, business slash product, engineering and design, where they all respect their backgrounds and they all welcome the contribution. Even when you get there, as maturity is growing at an organization, you still find the insecurity at the product level or the technology level where they may take credit for a designer's work. To share an example, I clearly remember an award being given for something and the product manager running up on stage and taking full credit for the whole thing and following up with the product manager later and saying, hey, was it really just you? And he said, no, of course not. My design lead and the team were amazing. My technology lead and the team were amazing. And just working with that leader behind the scenes to say, it's really important to acknowledge the full team effort that it took. Another example, moving out of the past where engineering teams would present services or experiences that they had been involved with building, they were putting themselves in the presentation mode to show off even the user experience. And they were obviously nervous because they couldn't describe the decisions that were made that led to the way a user experience came to life. And so following up as a leader, following up with that person behind the scenes and saying, hey, I know you feel the weight to describe all this, but if you are partnering with an expert on the design team that has contributed significantly, give them the chance to speak to their own design decisions, and you'll both look better. So sometimes that credit piece, it's just a matter of insecurity and tradition, and it can be broken through the right way of reminding people behind the scenes in a way that doesn't embarrass them that there's a better way to do it. And in both of the examples I just shared, that team came full circle. And there's nothing stronger than an experience or service or product going really well and having somebody get an award and having that person that gets the award say it wasn't just me, it was me and the other two functions that combined collaboratively. And I'm so proud of that. So yeah, yeah, yeah, having somebody else, that's a social prover aspect I guess for that design needs and being on stage and somebody preferably the CEO giving design some credit. I want to cycle back for a brief moment to something you mentioned about being an equal partner. The word equal can mean a lot of things. What does it mean to you? How does equality in this specific example manifest itself? Equal in what? It's actually a really, really important point. And it's something that that is out of alignment and lots of organizations just by the way design has been introduced as a job family and it's newer at so many organizations. So the product or business leader might be very senior because they're in charge of the whole product or area that they're working on. They may be partnering with a technology leader who might also be quite senior because of course in the technology field you've got a lot of headcount. So the technology leader might have 80 people working in that space and therefore they're an assistant vice president or vice president along with the VP of product. And at so many organizations as they start to welcome design into that conversation, they may be starting by welcoming a senior manager into that conversation. So you have two VPs and a senior manager saying, yeah, we're collaborating all three voices, make a difference. And the truth is human nature doesn't take us there. Human nature takes us to the place where the two VPs will often talk offline or sometimes hold meetings and say, we'll just let the senior manager know when we're done. And you'd be surprised how important it is to make progress on this. If those two VPs had a VP of design at the table, they look at and listen to that VP of design differently. If that person is actually equally deep in their career, equally credentialed in their background, equally experienced, equally wise. And it's such a deep topic because sometimes you could put someone at that table and they'd be a director and I would look at the director of design and say, well, this director of design is a PhD in human factors has been designing for 23 years. Why are they a director of design and not a VP as these other two are? And on that front, it's just the reality of business and the reality of newer job families. And so I took it upon myself and I know other leaders at other organizations who have as well to start to ask that question of equality of HR and say, hey, if we're looking at apples to apples, why would this person not have an equal title to this other person in another career field? Now, sometimes HR goes back and says, well, the technology leader is leading 80 people. But I could still overcome that by talking about the depth of experience and the depth of knowledge, especially with some of the talent that exists in our field, right? And so not only on my teams, but on other teams led by other leaders that I keep in touch with, there have been some upgrades of designers where the HR team says, you know what, it's true. Someone with this level of background and experience shouldn't be a senior manager of design where the same in technology as a senior director. So some level of equality on the title front, you would think it's petty, but it matters. It matters over time. It matters when those teams pull together and it's worth fighting for as a senior leader. What happens? What have you seen that happens when those job titles are mixed up or aren't in line with the rest of the team? You aren't equal partners, I guess, and therefore? Yeah. Well, first of all, I mean, a lot of design teams are just used to it. And I'm sure a lot of the listeners to your podcast are like, yeah, that's been that way for years. That's just part of being a designer. I'm sick of it, but it's not a fair world. But the ramifications of it are, they're subtle. But like I said, you know, there'll be leadership team meetings where only VP's and above are going. And therefore, the director of design isn't involved. Or let's change it from VP. There'll be leadership meetings where only directors and above are going and a senior manager is not invited. People accidentally use it as a marker and accidentally make decisions, you know, partnering with someone that's at their peer level and feeling like they can inform somebody who is not at the same level once the decision's done. And of course, that's something that design deals with. Everywhere is, you know, hearing directives on what will be designed and having all the decisions already made versus being involved to positively influence and bring forward the design talent to the discussion. I'm sure that this not only demoralizes design practice within an organization, but it also, well, in that case, it also limits its impact when you have demoralized staff. Yeah. And as a senior design leader, obviously, the rationale that's most important to business leaders is you're missing out on opportunity as a business by not having design have a larger role in decisions that are even strategic decisions that are steering where the business will go. And certainly in the space of service design, that's couldn't be more true, right? Because service design done well is helping a company identify the moments that should be invested in across a customer experience or across a system. And that's classically been viewed by business people as a strategy only decision with the design word coming nowhere near it, right? But at organizations that are truly mature, yeah, you have a strategist, a business strategist working with a design strategist saying, it's never been better. I can lean on this person for talent that I don't have and decisions we make together are like one plus one equals three. Okay. So we've got becoming a partner rather than a resource and working your way towards that, making sure that job titles are aligned. What else can we do to earn respect? You know, another thing that I see pretty often, and maybe it's because companies aren't good at hiring design talent, if they're low on the design maturity curve, maybe it's because design is a newer job family and great design talent isn't out there as common. There aren't as many great design schools as there are great engineering schools or marketing schools. But a challenge that I see that hurts us is when designers step into roles that they may not be fully qualified for and aren't genuinely brilliant at their craft and then get invited to that table that I was describing before or get invited to that discussion that I was describing before and don't make a difference. So for service design to make an example and maybe again, maybe some listeners are in this position and I think it's an important one to handle well. If you were an architect or a UX designer or an industrial designer and you've transitioned into service design and you show up to a partnership opportunity as a service designer, but you've been enrolled for six months, you should deeply understand what service design method and opportunity and perspective can bring to that conversation. And if you don't, you're doing a disservice to the role and the reputation of service design and also how you'd show up. So I bring this up because it does happen a lot where designers do get into the right conversations but don't contribute in a meaningful way and that adds up to something else on the respect frontier. That adds up to the group saying, yep, I met a service designer, didn't really add much to the conversation. So next time we'll make the decision ourselves. So I say all that to say it is really important to be genuinely an expert at your craft and to genuinely obsess on, even if you're making a career transition, genuinely obsess on what you can do to bring value to the conversation. Even introverts can do this very, very well and because you're making a huge impression either way. And so if we're going to make progress, you've got to make a positive impression. All right. So we are listening very closely to the words that you are using to describe the situation and one of the things you mentioned here was making a meaningful contribution. Now again, something that I feel we need to unpack because how do you, what is meaningful in this case? And what's the opposite of being meaningful? So what is maybe the current status quo? How are we showing up to those conversations? Yeah. It's a great question. Well, first I would say a pair of partners that a designer is showing up to collaborate with might expect that meaningful means the designer brought a beautiful graphic or something shallow like that, right? Now sometimes design is bringing forth something that helps with visual articulation can go a long ways, but meaningful contribution I think from the design perspective typically means bringing forth a really deep customer perspective and asking challenging questions at the right moments. And if there's no easy answers to those challenging questions offering the means or the method by which we may be able to uncover those answers. So representing great ways to do research, asking, do we really know that, asking why, you know, why would we suggest that being brave enough to go an opposite direction, you know, when a conversation is headed towards something where they're mostly leaning on that profit motive that we described earlier. I know a lot of us have been in a situation where we do see the bigger picture. We do see the strategic importance of our work and we do see the value. And then we get into these conversations and we address these things. And then people like Matt, just stay in your own lane. Like your goal is to, I don't know, create a blueprint or like put it in a box. And the fact that we are contributing on a strategic level is actually playing against us. Have you seen similar things? Well, when you, when you end up in a position where the partners are saying stay in your own lane, honestly, it goes back to the things we already talked about. I've often seen that's when the partners are more senior and the designer is speaking up saying, I've got an idea to offer. And they're like, you know what, senior manager, we'll let you know when we're ready for your novice perspective. So I think that's one of the issues. And the other issue, maybe that person is not a true expert at their craft. If we talk about expertise for a second, first of all, I'd love to just point out some of the strongest designers I've ever worked with have been self-taught, have been so strong because they were all in learning every night or involved in many aspects of our community, et cetera. But if you're a partner, if you're a product leader, or if you're a technology executive, it's difficult to build on those markers. And sometimes brand and background and logos and things like that can change the narrative a little bit. So as tricky as it is to say, designers who have worked in a certain environment that others respect, as soon as they start speaking up, everyone else is going to listen. Designers who come from a certain school that others respect, as soon as they start speaking up, everyone's going to listen. And what I found is the best recipe for success in design teams is to have some of those designers sprinkled in. So some of those branded, logo-attached, amazing background designers within the design team can really change the way partners show up and treat the design team. And it opens the door for the self-taught, the designers who maybe even are stronger to contribute in a meaningful way. So having a mix to be able to say, she's from Apple nine years and is contributing to this. And he's from nowhere, but we think he's one of the strongest designers on our team. We're both going to contribute to this discussion. All it takes is a little bit of practice of that, where the partners are open to our perspectives and then learn that anyone on our team has tremendous talent and the equation shifts dramatically. And you don't get any more of the stand your lane type of behavior. Yeah, it's, I don't know how to label this. You could label it as manipulation or it's strategic. But having somebody who has bragging routes, bragging, arise or social proof, extensional, external credibility, who doesn't per se needs to be the best expert. But like you said, opens doors. Well, it's, yeah, it's, it's the way it works. And it helps if it helps. And it's probably something we should look into. If it's easy for us to want to resist that. That's so shallow. That's crap. But if we cut, if we fall back on what we're supposed to be good at, which is empathy, and my, my cheesy example of, you know, somebody shows up and says, they're a centrifugal engineer, you should believe them. If they say they're a centrifugal engineer, and they're from MIT, and they'd love to add value to your project, you might actually listen. It's human nature that we can acknowledge and use in our favor. And as we listen to that person and understand that person has a lot of value to add, then they can introduce, you know, their peers who maybe don't have that same brand to fall back on and we start to just respect the job family in general, the way it should be respected. Maybe we should take a lesson or two from our friends at the marketing department, how to, how to position a strong message and what works around that, right? Yeah, I think so. Well, and that may be a topic for, you know, another podcast, but there's probably lots of ways to, to lead with a little bit of that. For someone who doesn't know and understand and respect design yet, it doesn't just have to be your school or where you worked. It could be, it could be who you learned and studied under, you know, like I learned from Jesse James Garrett, or it could be workshops that you plugged into that are, that are renowned, like I've taken every, you know, certification course, you know, that you know, XYZ has offered, RISD has offered. So there's, there's a lot of ways we can do it as a community if, if we're facing that pill battle. And all we have to do is get through that open door and then we can move on to more important stuff. Yeah. So in that sense, we sometimes need to get over ourselves and forget, well, forget that, you know, it might be shallow, but it's also a very, just a strategic tool to, we're doing it for the greater good. Yeah. That's, that's maybe the message. That's the important part. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So when you look back on your journey so far, what would you consider to be some of the biggest lessons that you learned? Yeah. I, I definitely think there's an element of good fortune that I've happened upon that, that is the result of bravery. So I think one of the, the biggest lessons is the braver you are and the more you're facing, the larger the opportunity can be on the other side of it. If you stick with it and if you're willing to fail on the way. So multiple different points in my career as I stepped into areas where I knew that they were important. I needed to, I needed to I needed to not listen to, you know, people in my ecosystem who told me that that was, you know, career suicide or not going to play out well. And I needed to engage and really learn from and listen to people that I admired. And so I would say that's had a huge influence on my career. I would say there's also moments in a career that you have to stick up for your values. And so there's moments to make a decision that might take you in a new direction because the direction that you're on and what you would find yourself forced to do on that direction just doesn't add up to who you want to be. And so I've had a couple of those moments as well that felt really difficult in the moment and turned into the best, you know, left turn or right turn I could have ever asked for. So I would encourage anyone out there facing a similar situation to go for it and make it through the trough, if you will, and find, you know, find the sunshine on the other side of it because it's worth it. When you talk about bravery, were there moments, maybe you can give us an example of a moment where you were almost ready to quit and then sort of still pushed through? I mean, we can go back to Capital One as an example. I joined Capital One to lead their direct bank. So I joined them to be a business executive who revered the future of banking based on my background. And we acquired ING Direct in the U.S., which was the strongest direct bank in the U.S., and I quickly became one of many leaders of Capital One's direct bank, and I shifted towards customer experience and new features and innovation. That ended up getting me a role to be Chief Digital Officer effectively at Capital One. And in that role, I needed to advocate for technology, product, and design. And I really focused on product first off so much so that I ended up at odds with a lot of the organization who was formerly steering decisions on how things would evolve before product management was a job function. So as we introduced the product management job function, I had business leaders saying, I don't like this. This needs to stop. This job function shouldn't exist. And I pushed until I couldn't push anymore. And I ended up stepping away from that push and advocating instead for Capital One's first design team. So we centralized design at Capital One. I advocated that this was the next most important thing in the future of Capital One. And so many people said, good luck with that. We're an analytics company, and I don't know where that's going to go. So that was one of those moments of adversity that we just had to push through and try to do it the right way based on lessons learned already. And of course, I couldn't be more proud of the folks that are still there, Jayman and others that are still at Capital One, the size of that team, the way that team now influences the culture of the entire company. And even when you look at Capital One's stock price from the 2013 era till now, you see a hockey stick. And I think we've got an amazing story. So who knows what might have happened had that not been the circumstances. Was there, and we don't have to talk too much in detail about Capital One, but I'm curious, was there like a tipping point? Because I can imagine a lot of organizations are building design capabilities, they're acquiring great talent, and still they don't manage to sort of make it over the hump. Was there a hump in the story of Capital One? Well, the adaptive path acquisition, I would say is easily a tipping point, but it was, we were already working with the Stanford D School. We already had built the design team up to about 100 people. And the reason I think adaptive path was such a tipping point was because all across the organization, as people were starting to say, what is this thing? Is it really interesting? Is it really important? And mind you, because the culture of Capital One is curious, is intellectually curious, which the cultures of all companies I wish could be like that. But if you're going to say what is this, I'm curious, you need to be able to introduce those people at all the different parts of the company to designers and design leaders that they'll revere. And if you only have, and this is one of the problems with the growth trajectory of most design teams at large companies that are trying to welcome design to make a larger impact on their culture, if you only have one or two or three or four senior level design leaders who can meet with business leaders, analytics leaders, technology leaders, and really impress them, and really authentically show what design is capable of. If you only have a couple of those, it really limits your chance of growth. And so an adaptive path acquisition where you bring in, at that time, adaptive path was probably 45, 50 people in total, but of that 45, 50, half were revered in the design community already. So the first thing we did was allow all of the Capital One businesses to start to interact with the brilliance, not only the brilliance of the leaders we already had, but the brilliance of the adaptive path leaders that we brought in. And immediately it changed the tone and the narrative like, wow, if there's more people in the design organization like Patrick Quaddlebaum, then I'm in. And that was the reaction we were getting from really smart, you know, business leaders in other parts of the company. So I stepped away from Capital One in 2017 and accepted a job as Chief Experience Officer at Verizon and took that playbook to Verizon. And in New York City, met an amazing team at Moment Design, also design leaders, also service design and UX design. And we positioned our design team to acquire Moment at Verizon and repeated that same play. For the same reasons, we already had a few renowned and respected design leaders, but at a moment who was already based in New York City, adding those to the amazing people to the design staff at Verizon catalyzed the growth. And that culture is now very strong today, I'm proud to say as well. Interesting. We have to sort of wrap up, but the message I'm getting here is, and this is going to sound obvious, maybe sometimes hard to translate or put into practice, but the quality of the message matters a lot. And you need people who know how to share that message, who know what the message is, and it works in both ways. It works in attracting other stakeholders who don't have a design background and getting them interested in getting them to see the value. But I'm also hearing you say like, when you have a team like AdaptiveBet on your staff, it also attracts design to them. So, yeah, having people who can It's a flywheel. It's a flywheel. And we have to credit somebody at Capital One for this. It's a bet. It's an investment. And you have to stick your neck out. We credit my boss, Frank, who reported to the CEO and Frank, he saw it and believed in it and backed it, backed me in doing it. So, it was, you're right. It's a bet. It is a bet. I also want to make the point that it's a bet when you're only acquiring talent. And most companies will look at it and they'll have finance teams that will say, well, what's their intellectual property? What are their assets? What are their other things? And how can you value that? And if you only acquire talent, what if all that talent leaves? So, that makes it a risky bet at that. But there are definitely levers and ways to address that risk if you really lean into it. Interesting. And making it, yeah, well, it's an investment. It's a bet. And especially in these times, maybe in all times, like convincing people without the design background to take this on. The best example, the best case study we have is the stock price of companies like Capital One who have done this and who have shown that it pays off. It can pay off at least. It's no guarantee. And there's definitely an upside. Yeah. You know, one of the things I love to point out about that culture, I think Jayman and his podcast mentioned that the design team is over 700 now. It doesn't grow to that size unless the rest of the organization is begging for it to grow to that size. So, the funding ends up, and this is the lesson, I was there and grew it to 450. The funding comes when people who control the P&Ls say, wow, when I'm partnering with with the design team and I'm seeing the value they're adding to my business and to my customers, I'm wishing I could do more of it. And so they come knocking and say, can you build me another team that does this or another team that does that? And they fund it by shutting down other parts of their funding. So, they fund it by pulling back on things that they feel are less valuable. So, you know, when we look at design teams anywhere across the world that have gotten to be large, we can't look at them as, wow, someone was a good empire builder, you know, or that organization really had a lot of money. We have to look at it as the core of that team was really successful in earning the respect of this field from the rest of the company, and therefore they attracted investment and grew it in a way that made a major influence on the culture. There's always money. It's just a matter where are people investing it. And if you, like you said, if you are able to make sure that they invested in you and not somebody else or a different discipline, then you're doing something right. And usually when you're in a business that means that you're helping to drive certain results for people who are, like you said, controlling the piano. Yeah, exactly. What's next, Scott? What are you up to? Because what are you up to? That's the question. Yeah, so I've always been an aspiring entrepreneur. And the way I've handled it throughout my whole career is I've been building and growing, you know, teams and functions within giant companies accidentally. And I finally stepped away from my leadership roles and in building a startup that actually directly relates to our world, which I'm very excited about. As I was thinking about how I might introduce it to you, Mark, I also thought of the fact that it'd be great to just give a shout out even more specifically to some of the design leaders that I mentioned earlier from a couple of the different areas. So I would love to just note that the reason I feel I know what I know about the design space is because I learned from brilliant experts. And from AP, Adopted Path, I'd love to give a shout out to Brandon, Jesse, Jaiman, Patrick, Laura, Maria, Iran, Chris, and of course, Peter Mehrholz, who never was part of my team, but I had contracted with him to advise my team. And actually, that's when he was writing the book that I think you should all check out design orgs or design for design orgs, which is amazing. And then from moment a shout out to Brendan, their CEO, John and John, Alexa, Shannon and Philip. And from my last role at Truist, Jess Mauricio, who you mentioned is our mutual friend, Shannon, Natalie, some of the folks at SCAD. And then at the D school, Jeremy Perry and Catherine are all people I revere. So I mentioned that to say I wish everyone could learn from people that they look up to who know way more than they do. And as I stepped away from my executive roles and was starting to help and advise and understand what problems existed out there, the problem that we gravitated towards in founding a technology platform that we founded is the reality that there are experts like the people I just mentioned who have a lot to offer to people that are trying to transition into their field. But there's a scale problem. Any expert can only help a few people at a time. And so we're addressing that scale problem and we're building the world's first talent extension platform. And in the coming months, we'll release it. Right now we're prelaunch and building our waitlist. But effectively, we're leveraging AI to scale mentorship or the mentorship learning model that's existed across so many job fields. But in services, I know this is a great example. And we want to scale it and give everyone access to an expert that they look up to. If you've ever had someone ask you, what course should I take to learn more about how to be good at this field? Or if you've ever had someone preparing for a big moment in their career and try to ask you for advice on how to do it, that person probably wishes that they could call up Jesse James Garrett, or call up you, Mark, or call up somebody who's revered in our field. And the simple truth is they can't today. That's what we're going to solve. And it's a very inspiring mission. It's also very exciting to be in the middle of the AI revolution that we're all a part of. So the last thing I'll say is on that frontier, we don't believe it's about mentorship per se, like we've all seen that. We believe it's more about sponsorship and that sponsors, when engaging with people that they're helping, there can be a revenue model there or something that can turn into compensation. Certainly, we've looked at organizations that have countless dollars, training dollars, that are going unspent. And those dollars, maybe those dollars should be spent on bending the ear of someone who can really help. So I'll leave it at that. I'll formally announce Service Design is one of our first verticals. And if you're interested, you can check out our prelaunch website at temp.me, tmpt.me, and join our read list. And we look forward to showing you what we're capable of. I'm really curious where that will take us. And I totally see where the potential of this. So really curious how this will look in, I don't know, half a year. See, that's 12 months, 12 months. So I'll make sure to add all the links in the show notes. And you've also given me at least a dozen new names of people who I want to invite on the show. The other dozen has already been. That's great. So that's great. Scott, to wrap things up, is there anything you'd like to revisit from the things we've discussed so far? No, I think we're good. I think we're in a good position. Yeah. And if there's just one thing you wish people would take away from our chat, what's the one thing you hope they'll remember? I think every designer deserves the respect of the people they work with. And I think there is a recipe. And I think it can be earned. And if you find that you're in a position where it's not going anywhere, having the bravery to make a change is also a good move. And on that note, I would say thank you. Thank you for sharing your wisdom. I'm looking forward to seeing you inside the tent as a mentor, sponsor, guide, apprentice. Thanks so much for coming on, Scott, and sharing your learnings and lessons with us. Yeah, awesome. My pleasure. I'm absolutely thrilled that Scott joined us on the show and shared some of his learnings. I'm really curious. What's the one question that you'd like to ask Scott after hearing his story? Leave a comment down below and we'll try to answer each and every one of them. If you've made it all the way to the end of the conversation, you're still with us. Please do me one favor. If you enjoyed the conversation, click that like button. Not to feed the YouTube algorithm. I really don't care about that. But rather to let me know whether or not we're on the right track by addressing topics like this. My name is Marc von Thijn and I want to thank you for spending a small part of your day with me and tuning in to the service design show again. Please keep making a positive impact and I look forward to seeing you in the next video.