Day 3–Navigating Organizational Systems: Rethinking researcher’s role in driving change

— What a great conference this has been, and I am thrilled to be with you and follow on heels of first two days

— Let’s get into it, and start rethinking our roles as researchers

— For some context, when I joined Wells Fargo, there were all kinds of research disciplines within the company

• Customer insights research meant something much broader than UXR

— Over last 25 years user research has predominantly been focused on technology and product design

• Simon Roberts CEO of Stripe Partners and president of EPIC causes this UX-ification of research

— UX-ificiation is a more transactional focus on products, and getting users to look at prototypes and getting their thoughts and reactions, and pushing the design forward

• As digital products become more embedded and practices in UXR have become more mature, but more factory like

— Last few years have been challenging, and it behooves us to think of our job of researcher

• Are we just testing prototypes or moment where someone interacts with a company’s product?

— I say no:

• UXR became dominant model, as it aligned with product cycles, and clear short-term value
• But it’s atrophied our perception of value, and our impact

— It’s not our fault but it is our responsibility

• Other functional areas don’t need to prove their value

— Our purpose is to help the organization learn

• And why is it critical?

— Our world and organizations have become more complex and are in a new era of perpetual upheaval

— I personally feeling the sense of upheaval in the world, and so what can we control in this era?

• The only thing we can control, is how well and how quickly we learn, and actions we take based on that learning

— So what do we help organizations learn about?

— I have heard about need to understand customers and business, but framing reads as threatening

• Push us past simplistic transactional understanding of value we can bring to business

— Go beyond executing on financial goals

— We can work to make customers visible in the organization and helping the org learn about itself

• We gather info out there about people and experience bring insights inside and compare it to assumptions and strategies of what is going on inside the organization
  • A feedback loop to help org ask and answer questions like what are our underlying assumptions about what we are trying to accomplish
    • Needs of customers and how they are aligned with assumptions?
    • And how can we bring back balance?
• How does viewing customers and org as system lead to better solution?
• Researchers should facilitated this systemic loop, and ton of impact with that

— Thinking about reading organizational and making sense of customer attitudes and lived experiences

• Applying sense-making skills to reading the organization and what we read and interpret

— Depends on lens we are looking through and this lens determines what can be seen and what can be known

• The lens determines reality

— Lens as metaphor that we use to make sense of our world, and in the book Images of Organization, there are collections of metaphors to decode and interpret organization

• Metaphors serve as flash lights that illuminate one thing, but keep things in the dark — as some things are not seen if the light is not shining on them
  • This is how metaphors work for orgs and how we see them

— So what is reality of org? And why does this matter?

• Against backdrop of UX-ification of research, lens used to shape world and organizations opens some possibilities and closes others
  • Prescribes actions that are valued, and decisions you can make
• Use the metaphorical as tool to make the familiar strange, and decode what is happening in the organization and its financial, business goals

— Will go through two predominant lenses of 20th century and 21st century so far, and how systems thinking lens can hep reclaim our impact, and navigate this era of upheaval

— First and primary lens, since industrialization and modern era, has been machine metaphor

• Take factory as inspiration and shaped thinking how work is structured and taking problems into smaller parts to be effectively managed

— Industrial era and machine metaphor predominate thinking about business and see this in functional area specialization and giving us things like hierarchy, org charts, and product management approaches

• Given us a lot of foundational management theory and focus on efficiency, productivity standardization, and control

— Creates coordination barriers though, and provides us with the fantasy or sense of control that doesn’t exist in complex context we live in

• People and world will never be a well-oiled machine

— Second lens to have techno optimist hackers lens and see rise of combining machine metaphor

• Way to win to be laser-focused on innovation, speed and execution, growth, and scale above all else

— Companies as seeing as engines of disruption to redefine industry and growth [growth as only metric that matters]

• Incredible innovations have been achieved, and mantras of move-fast and break things, creates blindspots and unintended consequences that harm people and societies

— Rapid scaling can outpace ethics, and erode ecological, social, health and trust

— Pivot to living systems network lens, and compelling alternative, and thinking about organizations, and one where learning and research would be embraced and thrive

• Interconnected living systems encourages us to see whole as well as parts

— In dynamic, always changing network of interdependent relationships

• Rather than machine to optimize, or markets to dominate, and how to create thriving networks of relationships

— As seeing whole systems and fractured parts, asks us to see all stakeholders and what first-second-third effects decisions may have

• Not just how-might-we, but at what cost

— Invites relational approach rather than transactional approach to business, and key characteristic of living systems is feedback loops and organizational interpretation for continuation of system exists through learning and adapting

— No going back, and we need to ride wave of uncertainty

• The term “VUCA environment” didn’t describe signals being picked up and BANI captured accelerated changes and inter-connected crises along with anxiety and grief holding

— No going back, and need to ride wave of uncertainty

• The term “VUCA environment” didn’t describe signals being picked up and BANI captured accelerated changes and inter-connected crises along with anxiety and grief holding

— Orgs need leaders who can see whole system and recognize patterns and see feedback loops rather than short-term fixes, and need leaders for multiple, conflicting truths at once

• Adapting and learning as opposed to controlling and predicting

— And I’ll proclaim something bold, that future belongs to those who can see systems and parts and wholes and relationships between them. That means you, dear researchers

• We don’t need more innovation or efficiency only

— We need ability to learn faster, experiment wisely, and think beyond immediate interests of business

• We need better sense-making, and sense-making is your superpower

— There is real value in this work and where our impact lies, and being catalyst for that learning and make customers in business and business visible to itself and explicitly how lens shapes behavior and outcomes is activity we should engage in

— Have had centuries of practice breaking things to smaller parts, and putting pieces back together again, and researchers can do this work

— Hope this provocation inspires you and gives a sense of determination and many asking how to do this

— Starts with shifting your own thinking and allowing self to think better

• Start by practicing and seeing wholes and systems, as that’s strategic
• Connecting dots between wholes and lens org is looking through requires superpowers of synthesis and sense-making
• Name organization and lens it is using, by paying attention to org values and what they do
  • Often slippages between the ‘say’ and ‘do’ of organization behavior and take that on and make it explicit

— Train partners and inform them that part of job is to help team you are working on navigate complexity and future proof the business

• Here is script “Part of value to make system we operate in, visible to all of us, and encourage us to open up inquiry and study to be more wide and aperture beyond moment where products and customers lives intersect, as it will give us a greater understanding of what our work adds up to, and insights to get to a successful solution

— Don’t make every single project you work on a big system thinking effort

• Can be tactical, but start nudging org to think in different time horizons simultaneously

— Finally, be honest with your self about priorities and values and life stage you are in right now, whether learning craft and organizational politics, and need to remain in belly of beast in less challenging confronting way to meet commitments**— but push culture to learning wherever you can**

• And if you have point where values and work don’t align and causing pain, and you need to exit the system. It’s scary, but remember more value and impact that you offer beyond mechanics of UX, design, and research
• We are here to help orgs that want to learn their way into a better future

— Thank you and I encourage you to follow me on LinkedIn and review substack

Q&A

1. How can we look at organizations, when we are members of the same system?
   1. All of us are part of multiple systems, families, organization, communities, friend groups
   2. Know we’ve all been trained and skills to think cooperatively and critically about those systems and where they can change or improve
      1. Don’t need to do this in aggressive way, but can ask questions and we can do it well
   3. Not confronting, but recognize the feeling of something not adding up, as an important clue that something happening in system that you want to investigate and ask questions about — conversations with people about and helping understand
   4. Easier to do this, when changing org when part of it, as we have skin in the game
      1. Mismatch for customer expectations and organizational behavior and pointing out Wells Fargo scandal that observation pointed to, felt vindicated and implicated in it a well
2. Beyond fear or denial, what do you recommend for socializing system thinking at all levels of organizations?
   1. Start with level you are at, and mapping
   2. Mapping as concrete visual way to bring systems and bringing systems understanding in the organization
      1. Project on digitizing a product application and research with customers and employees fulfilling application
      2. Overlaying two maps and clunky painful back-office process was causing customer-experience pain points
         1. Not digitizing current process, but redesigning back-office and customer facing portion
3. What is advantage of acting as learning agent, when org doesn’t recognize me as one?
   1. Won’t see this in job description and need to take that mantel and shifting identity to that degree
      1. How are consulting and facilitation skills, and partnering skills
      2. Skills to cultivate as researcher and agent of learning
   2. Watch people around you who do this well, read books like the Skilled Facilitator, or Flawless Consulting, and practice
4. For going down this pattern, what must they do?
   1. Grasp water you are swimming, through interpreting org actions, with same skills to understand what customer and people in world are up to, and start introducing conversations for feedback loop and noticing what is in alignment with company strategy and approach, and what customers say want, need and expect
      1. Facilitate this feedback loop between two actors
      2. Elicit this feedback and curiosity with othes
      3. Learning is the new knowing