Designing the Organizational Conversation with Jason Cyr

Today we are talking to my friend and client Jason Cyr, Director of Design Transformation at Cisco. We have a wild and rambling conversation about designing conversations on at least three scales: as a facilitator of workshop experiences, a designer of design processes and as a leader of a transformation effort in a larger organization.

Like anything else, conversations can be designed with a goal in mind: speed, effectiveness, clarity, joy. How do you intend to proceed towards your goal?

The very first story that Jason tells us shows how knowing your conversational goal is key: Jason tells us about his Uncle Rowley and how Jason's mother pointed out the ways in which Uncle Rowley was as talented conversation designer. It seemed like he designed his conversations with an overarching purpose, regardless of the objective of any individual conversation. His purpose, his higher goal was to make people feel good. Did he do it in order to be successful, or was that an outcome of his purpose? Sadly, we can't ask him...but there was clearly an aspect of his way of being that enraptured Jason as a boy - he wanted to be like him.

As an aside: One of my favorite topics in conversation dynamics is about how power shows up...the type of power Uncle Rowley exerted over young Jason is called Referent Power - the power of charisma.

Jason is now responsible for designing a much bigger conversation at Cisco - how teams work together and how teams of teams communicate and collaborate. One key way he's doing that is through enabling his organization to apply the tools of Design Thinking to their internal and external challenges.

What my conversation with Jason highlights, is that this conversation takes a long time....the cadence of transformation is not the quick rat-a-tat-tat of a stand-up meeting. It's a steady drumbeat of regular workshops and consistent follow-through. It's a healthy reminder that change takes consistency, clarity...and time.

Jason has a simple three step transformation process that he shares:

Start with the Coalition of the Willing
Make more evangelists
Craft stories that share themselves

How does Jason pull people into that conversation? It seems like he uses the same skills he learned from his Uncle - making them feel good, like they are part of a bigger narrative arc - a growing capability and practice inside the organization, one that can and does deliver value to the organization...even if it takes 6-9 months into the effort. This is charismatic power on an organizational scale. People want to be part of a positive story.

How does Cisco design the design thinking conversation? Jason shares four principles of Design Thinking at Cisco and they are so delightfully on point that I wanted to repeat them here:

Empathy. We are always designing for someone else's benefit. Somebody else is going to consume the thing or the thinking or the product that you're making. Do your best to understand that person so that you can build something desirable for them.
Go wide before going narrow, whether you're trying to choose a problem to solve or whether you're trying to find a solution to that problem, explore a little bit before making a decision. Try and reframe that problem and dig into that problem before tackling it. Try to generate multiple solutions before picking one. And it doesn't have to be a lot of work.
Experimentation. As soon as you think you have a good idea, how quickly can you figure out what's wrong with that idea? We do that by experimenting, putting it in front of people, having them react to it.
Diversity. Be thoughtful about who you bring into the conversation around the problems that you're solving. Make sure you have the appropriate definition of diversity and make people of all genders and colors feel welcome. Jason also asks: are we including the right people from across the organization, ie, engineering and product or design? Maybe we should be including sales. Maybe we should be including other parts of the business.

I'm so grateful Jason took some time to sit down with me and share some insights on how to lead a design transformation in an organization and keep the conversation on track, moving towards it's ongoing goal...I hope you enjoy the conversation as much as I did! Also, be sure to check out the episode Jason referenced, where I interviewed Jocelyn Ling from UNICEF's Innovation team on Disciplined Imagination.

Referent Power: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Referent_power

(one of my favorite types of power!)

The six types of power

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/six-types-power-leaders-john-prescott/

Jocelyn Ling's episode on Disciplined Imagination https://theconversationfactory.com/podcast/2019/8/27/disciplined-imagination-with-jocelyn-ling

10 types of innovation: https://doblin.com/ten-types

The book: https://www.amazon.com/Ten-Types-Innovation-Discipline-Breakthroughs/dp/1118504240

All process is the same

https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/article/5-stages-in-the-design-thinking-process

https://www.ibm.com/design/thinking/page/framework/loop

POST method: Purpose, Objective, Structure, Timing. Adjust your ST based on your evolving understanding of PO.

Facilitation Means design experiences and conversations: https://medium.com/@dastillman/facilitation-means-designing-conversations-24bac966076e