[00:00:00] What's an example of an online system process or tool you've used, that's caused you frustration in the past, perhaps it was a bank machine or an online purchase website or a work process with a million handoffs and approved. Chances are my guests today did not work on the user experience or UX design aspect of those projects.
[00:02:19] My guest is Paul Isen, a user experience, expert and consultant. He holds a doctorate degree in human factors and has years of broad cross industry experience. After honing his skills in various companies, including some big names, like IBM CIVC, and one of the big four consulting firms, Paul now consults with various clients to help them transform their customer and user experiences.
[00:02:43] As you'll hear it in the episode, Paul and I go way back. He is someone I count as a mentor and a friend. And I'm so grateful for this conversation. I learned so much, and I know you will too.
[00:02:55] Hello, and welcome back to talent management tricks on your host, Lisa Mitchell. And today I'm joined by an old friend and mentor of mine. Paul Isen. Welcome to the show. Thanks for inviting me. My pleasure. So I thought it would be a good place to start to, to have you explain to me and the audience a little bit about your background, what you do.
[00:03:24] So I'm considered one of those hardcore UX people that is, I have specialized in and as a practitioner in this domain for my entire career. Of user experience. Exactly. this started with a deep education and a doctorate in how humans interact with technology and systems and solutions and through a human factors background, and then immediately into a practitioner state.
[00:03:52] where we were looking at, how humans interact with technology and systems. I did stints in house with IBM and with CIVC where we're developing in house products and solutions and processes, as well as spent a lot of my time consulting in that area. And it's really. Understanding what do end users value?
[00:04:17] And we do that through a course of research and then establishing a strategy for how can a solution then deliver that value. And then finally you get into the execution, which is the conceptual design and the detailed design. And of course, all along the way, one of the core principles is engaging your end user community.
[00:04:36] And that's what we really mean by being human centered. It's the empathy that we're able to uncover in order to be solving problems that are really meaningful in a way that is valuable to users, empathy, we can uncover. Okay. Interesting. So. Could you share with us a little bit, like right now you are working, on your own, you have your own firm where you provide user experience consulting to firms.
[00:05:01] What's an example of, of a project where you've been brought in to, to bring that UX rigor. this one I'll mention this kind of interesting. And it was particularly engaging for me because it was a bit of a different space. And I was working for a while with a health insurance.
[00:05:20] In the us and, with the introduction of the affordable care act in 2012, suddenly there were about 16 million, some American citizens who had access to health insurance that prior to this, they didn't, and that actually introduced massive gap in knowledge between. The processes of products and services that are available for them and their ability to conceptualize those and actually take advantage of them.
[00:05:48] And there's this whole space. Health insurance literacy, that I was spending some time on trying to really uncover, establish an understanding between, of the gap between, the product and capabilities available and people's ability to, understand, choose insurance and use insurance, and then establish some opportunities for how do we.
[00:06:10] actually close that gap. so that's a strategy kind of engagement that I was involved in. And then out of that, we sponsored individual initiatives looking for areas to kind of educate people in sort of a, just in time fashion, so that they can understand the importance of making certain choices and then provide some guidance for how to make those choices in a way which best suits them and avoid.
[00:06:34] Classic biases that we all have that make it difficult for us to choose kind of in that, behavioral economics and behavioral science, capabilities that we have, or, those principles, at least that underlie some of our decisions. Fascinating. So did the do these other initiatives that were spawned?
[00:06:52] I love that word. It sounds like my, 15 year old is spawning things in his video games all the time. But anyways, what that, if those initiatives did that, did it extend to sort of technology solutions it did process, maybe communication. Technology the experience itself. When we talk about user experience, we're really thinking about all of the various channels and touch points, where one is interacting with an organization.
[00:07:17] so we want to be able to think broadly about. We think of often the customer experience as the full sum, total of your sense of interacting with an organization. And then the UX side is more about the technology, but really you can't separate the two when you're creating the solution. Yeah. So what it brings up for me is I'm thinking about.
[00:07:36] You know, in my experience many times it's been about how do we bring in systems thinking? Right? So if we're trying to create transformation within an organization, how do we embed and thread, the language, the purpose, the principles, so that, everybody over time is on the same page and is able to, to buy in.
[00:07:56] And execute on whatever the desire transformation is, make it happen together. so I know it's not exactly the same, but I sort of see a little bit of a connection there. Right? The systems thinking. Cause you said, you know, you're trying to look at any process technology, communication, where are users interacting with something like your, concern.
[00:08:12] You're trying to anticipate, how are they going to Intuit their next step for instance, is that right? It's directly. Absolutely. It's directly connected. And you think of. an area that we talk about called service design, and really, it's not only creating that experience on the front end, but it's looking at all the layers of the system that are servicing and establishing, rendering that experience so that it's effective.
[00:08:37] And you've got your front stage and your backstage and the sort of components both. Human and machine that are contributing to the experience. And so there's a blueprint that one will often create to just try and understand. It might start with, we think of customer journey and laying out the components of the customer journey and then layer on top of that, those elements of the system that service that journey.
[00:09:00] And you really have kind of a systems view. Yes, it's so interesting. So, and I should share with the audience, like how you and I know each other. So we work together. and, and this is where we're going to date ourselves late nineties. And I was a one woman training machine, in my organization and a subsidiary of, one of the big banks and, was succonded to a special project where we were trying to do.
[00:09:23] it was a large call center and back office operations, and they were all on green screen using Kix space technology, really outdated even then. And, and it was about, it was called the workstation capability project. And I don't know who came up with that, but we were laughing earlier in the green room.
[00:09:38] It eventually got renamed Odyssey project, but we were trying to re design. the experience, first of the CSRs, the customer service reps, we wanted to make it easier for them to flow through the many screens. Originally, it was going to have a gooey interface somewhere of a web based type of interface.
[00:09:57] But this was the nineties that, that eventually got kibosh due to budgeting and saw, but it was. Th th the screens were so confusing, it was like, you just knew you had to press F four and then look for some fields that had nothing to do with what you thought you were looking for. You had to learn these strange field labels that didn't match the information you were searching for.
[00:10:16] So it was renaming field labels. It was setting them up in a different flow across the screen. So that, typical calls and inquiries that would come in would actually map more intuitively to what the customer service rep was seeing online to get that information more quickly, more efficiently, less frustration, and also less training.
[00:10:35] So I was brought in as the learning project lead to represent learning and. because I was going to be responsible for rolling this. I would eventually write for training people on it. So it was sort of representing the needs of, of the learners and so forth. So Paul, you had come in as part of almost a SWAT team that the bank had at the time to help us.
[00:10:55] This overall design. And when I think about that, like you, you know, use the term when we were speaking earlier, it was pioneering days, right? When all this kind of thing was, it was a bit new. Can you elaborate on what you mean by pioneering days and how our experience back then? It's what does it look like now in the landscape of user experience?
[00:11:15] Sure. It's interesting. When you think about the user experience, Often you're thinking about that point of connection with the screen. And so we think about the design of the screen and the user interface and the widgets and the communication there. And that's the course of the component. And then importantly component, IBM created this model.
[00:11:33] They call the iceberg model and their analogy was that that screen is really just the tip of the iceberg. But the elements that actually influenced the user experience go much deeper and broader. And they're sitting on. The surface, you need to think a little more deeply about that. And so, as you recalled earlier on when we were discussing this Lisa, the processes themselves, the structures and the objects of the concepts, the way people think of their work and of the systems that they're interacting with.
[00:12:03] We need to be able to sit design those, to match that mental model and that underlies then what gets rendered on the screen itself. And so, that was playing, hearing, thinking that, these decisions that establish what are the objects that we're creating, what are the functions and the processes, and how does that work typically?
[00:12:23] executed by process designers and developers, prior to any engagement with someone who would think about the front end screen at all. Oh God, that hence those weird labels, like it was like, it would say bar and he'd be like what's far, but somebody was saying to you, oh, The, variable interest rates, you know, but, but like there was a lot of training that had to be associated with it.
[00:12:44] So part of this project too, was, developing EPSS, which for some listeners you remember as electronic performance support or, you know, some of you wouldn't know. RoboHelp you know, which eventually came along and was sort of like an overlay you could buy to put on top of your system. Or, we actually ended up developing knowledge base in Lotus notes.
[00:13:03] It was accustom, Lotus notes kind of build. So it wasn't completely contextual asserts. Somebody could click on. question mark on screen, like you see a lot in web interfaces now, but it was like a separate database you would pull up, where, service wrecks or, or back office processors could go.
[00:13:18] But anyways, it was kind of the concept though, was to make it just in time. Right. And to anticipate the questions, to have actually done research, to find out what those will be so that you can. Mitigate, like be ready for those that's right. What are the things that we've learned over the years is that, when we're trying to support people's performance, we have to be thoughtful about what we train on.
[00:13:43] So for example, rather than providing acronyms codes and things that might suit a highly proficient, very experienced user. Recognizing that we have generally high turnover in call centers and other types of work environments. We want to be able to kind of balance the understandability of our user interface directly versus the kind of support and tips that we provide.
[00:14:07] In order to help their performance there. And I think the rule of thumb that we can think of as educators and trainers, of workplace employees is, that we need to help employees appreciate the types of things that they can do with the system and the value of that. In other words, to motivate them to want to engage.
[00:14:27] And then once they engage, we should have. Good design speak for itself and enable the mechanics of interaction to flow naturally, rather than feel that we have to train the mechanics of interaction. And there are great design patterns and libraries and conventions. we've developed and fine tuned over the past three decades to make that much more available.
[00:14:50] The whole thing is so, so fascinating to me. So something that you, you were mentioning to me, earlier was this about the concept of, of literacy and how it's a strong predictor of, of one's ability to succeed? I'm hoping you can elaborate a little bit on what, what that means. yeah. Interesting. So in this example that we were just talking about in the health insurance space, there's been research to uncover some of the sources of these performance gaps, and one of the greatest, indicators of success is actually, what's referred to as self-efficacy one's confidence in one's ability to succeed that alone.
[00:15:31] Will spur internal motivation and effort. and that is a strong predictor of success. and so that's an area that we want to really touch upon and focus on. And so how does that render in design it's by reinforcing, one's effective decisions by providing. Feedback on decisions and, identifying areas that were successful in areas where there's opportunities to, to behave in a different way.
[00:16:00] In a positive kind of constructive reinforcement. So let's, let's really take that down into the weeds. Then when we look at the whole health insurance case study, so to speak, right? So you've got all of these Americans who now all of a sudden can access to healthcare and, and they have, they don't know what they don't know.
[00:16:16] Right. And so there's all these new products available. You you're helping. the, I don't know if it was the industry of the company. Look how, or what's the gap between what we're going to be offering or have here. To support and what people know or need to learn and how they might use it. So what's the practical kind of, boots on the ground example of how your work in this space would have facilitated somebody new, you know, making that purchase for the very first time.
[00:16:45] Well, let's start with. prior research and observation, we see that a lot of people. Simply we'll make some optimal choices. They won't take the time to think through it. People will spend, forget the number exactly 14, 15 hours researching an automobile. before they purchase it, usually three to five hours researching a mobile phone, which costs a fraction of what health insurance costs.
[00:17:15] Often people will have an expectation that when they're selecting. Uh, health insurance plan and making the choices within that 20 minutes or half an hour should be good enough. And there's a ton of evidence that people are making suboptimal choices. One. So what's the impact of that? Well, there's research that also identifies that health outcomes are worse, that your actual life expectancy can be lower because people that are avoiding.
[00:17:42] They choosing a plan which ends up having them pay a lot of pocket and they're avoiding the kind of, preventive health care that's required in order to maintain longevity. And for that privilege, they ended up paying more than they would otherwise have. Well, how, so, how do you, how do you protect them from themselves from making these sub optimal choices?
[00:18:05] Which sounds really dystopian. Yeah. It's, uh, it's about finding those right moments, and right. Mechanisms to educate, just as an example, social proofing, which is an effective technique to, Illustrate what people who are peers of theirs peers by location, by education status, by health status, or by age, just as examples, what kinds of choices they're making and how those outcomes are happening.
[00:18:33] And so little vignettes of stories, just brief paragraphs even, or just kind of sometimes bite-size. Soundbites can be effective and motivating somebody to say, Hey, this might make sense for me too. So do you mean, so I'm going to marketing, like in terms of getting the message out, is that marketing specifically, or even in the enrollment process when somebody is applying for insurance?
[00:18:55] Yes. Yes. And yes. Okay. If you've can take it down to them, the individual choices, there's kind of, why should you even pay attention? And then now that you're paying attention, why should you spend time thinking about. Question or set of options that we're presenting in front of you right now. another technique is just really kind of reflecting on how you're protecting yourself and your family.
[00:19:20] So, when you kind of have people take a moment to think about. Who they're covering and what their current situation is. That's a way of going of emotionally, reinforcing the important, the empathy piece. Right. But the human centered. Okay. Okay. So, and, and all of this really, you know, Thai. So much to this concept of, well needs assessment.
[00:19:43] First of all, you know, which is for anybody who's, who's leading talent, right? Whether you're in HR or ODI or learning and so on, you know, you're thinking about, well, what's the need, there's the prescribed need. And then there's, what's actually going on. And, and, and how do we, how do we affect change? It's change management.
[00:19:58] There's a whole bunch of that here. and good design. There's, you know, when you, somebody comes into a learning event, Whether that'd be a 15 minute piece or a week long, you know, how do you hook them? How do you create the, the width them what's in it for me and why should they care as you put it? So, so that's sort of my read on how these two domains or disciplines can, can intersect a little bit.
[00:20:22] How would you extrapolate. To the training world, to the learning, the growth and development world, the, the, you know, user experience principles, and then that's a big topic, but just kind of, yeah. Can we cover it in 10 minutes? No, I'm kidding. No, just, just, just give us tip of the iceberg. It's okay.
[00:20:39] Absolutely. At the surface, there's kind of, first of all, that component about really providing guidance around what is appropriate to provide as context and background in order to understand. I would value interacting with a tool, for example, and then there's the design mechanics to try and really eliminate, any kind of education about how to use the interface and really the better the design is the fewer band-aids that you were required in order to help people understand.
[00:21:11] don't forget to submit this after you filled it out, you see that kind of thing as an example where, that shouldn't be something you need to instruct me to do. I should, it should be a clear status in front of me. and. said that too. I just ran. Is that reasonably okay? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we can endlessly talk about those opportunities and then there's learning management systems itself.
[00:21:35] And as you're aware, there's kind of all. set of design principles around that and supporting people's learning capability and reinforcing providing kind of an upfront, expectations. So the learning principles that get embedded and you want to then render those learning principles effectively in your, in your interactions as well.
[00:21:53] And there's kind of an underlying principle, which is always leave the end user in control. And so, although you have And agenda in order to provide a curriculum with expected learning outcomes, you want to be able to have your learners experience that in a way which suits their learning style and their learning interests and their desire for repetition and review, et cetera.
[00:22:16] Yeah, I, I like that phrase always leave the end user in control. You know, that, I think that, it makes me think of, you know, an adult education doing my diploma all these years ago. And, and, and it was this whole concept of, these are adults, right? So they need to feel in control and treated as equals, you know, so it's, that's the difference between pedagogy and andragogy, right?
[00:22:38] So how do you, how do you respect, demonstrate that respect of what they already bring to the table? Right. And allow them to feel a sense of agency and control. so that's coming into play here. so I, I, I want to actually talk about some other funny example. Actually, do you have any others of where you've seen something you're like, oh my God, like that should be more obvious or intuitive.
[00:23:00] because I think it could be illustrated for people listening about, oh, do we have processes or, or, or something embedded in our systems that, that, that might be something similar to that, reminders that could be, you know, removed, like, don't forget to submit this. experienced implications that I've talked about can be pretty profound.
[00:23:20] but when you ask this question, what comes to mind is it's kind of a little bit of a nitpicky thing. But I've mentioned it because it's so pervasive. And it's just one of those things that we don't realize always makes us stop and think for a second. And then when you add up all of the nitpicky things that we went across in this world, we spend a lot of.
[00:23:40] Second stopping and thinking about what do I do here? And the example that I'm thinking of here is just a consumer example. When you say log on to an online banking experience or any kind of other travel site or something where there's an account and you need to authenticate, and there's that check box that says, remember me and.
[00:24:03] You checked it the first time, because you see your name already prefilled there, or your ID pre-filled but the check box is sitting there and it's not checked well, what do you do? What does that mean? Do I have to check it every time I log in? I have to say, remember me again? Well, no, you've done well then what if I decide, I don't want you to remember me anymore.
[00:24:22] What do I do? I've got an unchecked checkbox here. There's no way to do that. And this is something which is. Bizarrely almost convention now that I think others sites look at what are the big banks doing? And we better say, remember me. Well, cause I've actually, that's so interesting. Cause I'm thinking, have I thought about that?
[00:24:40] I actually have, because I'm like, is it cookie thing that it's no longer checked or like, like, cause I cleared my cache or I'd like, And I'm wasting brain cells on this. Right. And you're there to try and transact. You're not there to understand the design, nobody it's there because somebody decided that the default should be unchecked as opposed to check the correct solution is you check it by default.
[00:25:03] Cause that's what I said last time. And if I decide, I don't want you to remember me, anyone else, if we don't check it again, it feels very trivial. It's just a second. But it's multiply that. And then of course that's just one microcosm of, of the other opportunities that exist. So interesting. So it makes me think about, in, meeting design or program design about, you know, looking at, well, it's almost like this idea of.
[00:25:28] Deliberate removal. Like, is there something here that really, you know, we think makes sense because it's sort of the default of how we've always done it, but maybe it doesn't make sense really. And is it slowing us down? What needs to come out here? Yes. And you know, what's something that I would be remiss not to emphasize is that we have all of these design patterns and conventions and underlying.
[00:25:50] Principles of cognitive psychology and interaction design that we can apply to make design decisions, but nothing beats the user feedback that, and the, the insights that we gathered through that. and so a keen, researcher will be able to observe the hesitation. And probe on it because it's something that's very settling and you wouldn't necessarily have somebody self-report oh, gee, I had to stop and think for a second about this checkbox.
[00:26:19] so that's, you know, there's different techniques for gathering feedback and some are unmoderated and some are moderated, but, this is, something that we have to keep in mind that. We are going through the process of identifying what's important, creating a concept for a solution, and then refining that concept that we need to be cross checking this with the end user community, and course correcting our set of assumptions for that's really iterative.
[00:26:45] Right. You know, working with the users, it's that, you know, I had a flashback when you were speaking, I thought, oh my God. And going all, all those years back to sitting beside a CSR and watching that. Attempt to use our knowledge base and our new screen flow in beta or whatever it was called. Right. So, and user acceptance testing and making notes and watching like where they were getting stuck and everything.
[00:27:09] I forgotten all about that. But I remember doing that. Interesting. You probably taught me how so the, the other thing that, you know, I was, I was sort of smiling about earlier when you were talking is, this idea of. talent management learning. If we're speaking about learning organizational design, organizational effectiveness, it's, it's way more than just the learning process, right?
[00:27:30] How someone's learns, it's how they get feedback on the job, how they interact with processes, how processes are designed for them to make it easy. Right. And, and to make them more efficient and so on. so there's, there's a whole lot of intersection here. I was thinking about apple. So. Real apple fan.
[00:27:48] And you may not be some people hate them because they think they're too expensive, everything. But what I love about them and my family does is their, so their products are so intuitive and they're so, connected. So for me, I don't want to have to remember to back up. I take a lot of photographs like.
[00:28:04] Okay. And I don't want to have to remember to back those things up and so on. I like that, you know, if I take a picture on my phone that it shows up on my Mac book, that I have it right. And, and I can look at them and organize them and so on. And that there's the little click I can get information. No the other day there, they, they gave me a new update and it was telling me, I looked at a picture of my dog and it said, oh, there's info.
[00:28:26] And this little funny button and I with a little star and I clicked it. I hadn't noticed it before. It's new told me she was likely a border Collie, which she is. So it was just, I just find it so interesting. Right. Cause nobody trained me or told me what this update was going to involve. And here I'm already experiencing it and, and, and, and appreciate it.
[00:28:45] Th there is though that concept that you understand of this synchronization among all your devices. Yes, that's right. That's some people have trouble wrapping their head around that. And what do you mean. Same with an email, for example, how it's all really just living in one place. And these devices are windows to see your email.
[00:29:07] That's conversation that I have regularly with my mother and my mother-in-law.
[00:29:14] could not teach my dad the concept of email folders to save my life. He was just like, what are you talking about? I'm like, it's like, Like you have a physical folder, but it's on your computer and you're putting the email they're engaged needed again. Huh? He just, it just did not, translate.
[00:29:30] So what do you do in that case where you've got users and, and, you know, on that literacy front, some people are further along in their understanding and their, in their, previous experience, right? or ability to adapt. W how do you design for that? Well, this is where I turned to the education community and the training community and say, you know, th this is where w where we need to provide that exceptional understanding, because you can't rely on a user interface to be able to fill in the blanks.
[00:30:01] There that's really. So, so what are you, so from a design perspective, or you're not, it doesn't sound like you're designing, unless I'm misinterpreting your answer to the lowest common denominator, so to speak, right? You're you're like if you're saying, okay, here's sort of our average user, here's our super user and here's somebody like our parents, you know, who's struggling with X.
[00:30:22] Who are you designing? That's right. So an ideal design is going to cross the chasm and, and really, service, a variety of, I would say proficiency levels, but you have to be careful with the end points, right? Because you don't it too much information that's provided, as long if it's provided in a way that.
[00:30:45] So it gets out of the way of the proficient user. That's fine. But then it makes it harder for the neophyte to be able to potentially even access or engage with it. So there are some boundaries that you need to put around realistically, this isn't a consumer population you really have it's, it's such a breadth.
[00:31:02] And so think about a banking machine or a kiosk for if you're showing up at a. Well, while you're traveling at some tourist attraction, those are typically designed to the lowest common denominator they're designed as a walk up and use experience. Anything that you're talking about in the workplace.
[00:31:19] You're going to be expecting a level of proficiency. You're going to want to support more efficient and productive use of the tool. And so you don't want to sacrifice that, for those, who really are having conceptual trouble understanding the nature of the solution that they're interacting with.
[00:31:34] so some of what you were just discussing makes me think of what I've called elastic design. So it's, it's something that, I, you know, I'm a former school teacher going to really going back a very, very long time ago before I even first met you. And you know, it was this idea that you you've got a range of kids.
[00:31:52] I remember when I taught for a whole two years and it was great eight, I had gifted kids in my French immersion class, and then I would do core French. And I had some kids that had, behavioral and learning. Identifications. And, and so it was really around how do I develop lesson plans to, to meet the general needs of, of most, and then have, Created opportunities and ways like stretch opportunities for the kids that needed more, that, that finished earlier wanted to, to be challenged in a different way and ways to help meet the needs of, of the, the kids that were struggling a bit that, that needed more time or needed it broken down more carefully.
[00:32:30] and so when you bring that into the workplace, I think the same thing is just as important right. As is how. Do you create learning experiences on the job experiences that are elastic and, and consider that there's a wide range of needs? Yeah. That makes a ton of sense to me, absolutely. This such as supplementary modules or components and the, and this is where.
[00:32:55] leaving people in control allows them to engage in the level of interest. Yeah. And it sounds like a lot of work. And yet I think if you're intentional about it up front and you know, when you're creating that strategy that I think you can, you can figure out ways to, to decomplexify right. To, to make, to make it simple enough that you are, getting at those, those, different needs overall, when you take the train up.
[00:33:20] Invest the time to gather feedback early, very early, just at the concept stage. This is where you'll learn that you don't want to overinvest, obviously. So this is where you kind of look. Where the material gaps are in each kind of phase of learning and understanding and what, yeah. So fascinating. I've really enjoyed this conversation.
[00:33:41] I have to tell you, because I, I knew when I asked you on the, you're not, you know, the typical guest profile and, but I hope listeners that you really enjoyed hearing from Paul, because this is a, you know, a very, Interesting important domain. And I think there's a lot of principles that we can kind of, you know, bring over to our world as, as reminders, as refreshers on what's important to do and how to create the best possible design.
[00:34:04] So, Paul, before we wrap up, I have one more question for you and, I would say, you know, what would you. Attribute to your fascination, with the human experience with, with this idea of empathy and human centered design It's an interesting question. And I, and I wouldn't want to reflect too deeply, but I've, I've always been.
[00:34:26] questioner of the value. I think I was quoted in, high school by my peers as, as the guy who always asked. What's the point. So before you just stepped forward, it's about. Really understanding what you're trying to achieve and still being goal-oriented. And then as well with the training that I got through with the human factor side, which is an industrial engineering, again, a very systems oriented.
[00:34:55] Uh, approach it's appreciating the human is an extremely material component of the overall system, but let's not just focus on all of this mechanical and electronic kind of system that we're when solution that we're putting together, but really appreciating the human as part of that loop. And so it just, it seemed like a no brainer.
[00:35:17] Thank you for sharing that. And I think I just, I just found the quote for our interview today, which is what's the point by polarizing because you know it, I think that right there, if, if, if listeners get one thing only it's, it's consider when you're, when you're doing strategy, designing things, putting them out in the world, it's like considered every point.
[00:35:39] What's the point. Remember, you know, Refining my instructional design skills, when I was doing that training and really, tomorrow I'm, I'm working with, people in my program, the talent trust, and there's at least three people that need to roll out monthly leadership trainings. And they're struggling with, you know, how long it takes to create the content.
[00:35:58] And, you know, how do we kind of speed this up and still make it really meaningful? So we're going to be, I'm going to be sharing some ways to do that, but I, but I remember in that instructional design, Program in my practice after it was for every sort of objective learning objective that you have, you're creating an experience around it.
[00:36:14] you then step back and say, okay, what's the point here? Does this actually get them to that objective? Is it actually serving a purpose or is it just kind of fluffy? We're just sharing our thoughts or, you know what I mean, spending half an hour on introductions? Like why? Like, what is the point?
[00:36:29] And if you're not really sure, then that's probably a clue to, to switch things up, to remove something and you're nodding like crazy. So. Or something that I'm responding to. Cause my boss suggested I should do this or because my client is asking for it managed to have some hard conversations with clients over the years to say, you hired me to do this, then I tell you you're not going to get the outcome that you were hoping.
[00:36:52] So let's think about the outcome that you want and try and find a better way to better. Well, and it's the same thing with meetings, you know, when you have this meeting heavy culture with every single client I work with, and I know you're laughing, right? It's the same, like, and yet, so many meetings are unnecessary.
[00:37:07] I think we need to, to step back often to say, what, what is the point? Like, we need to get very clear on what everybody's there for, what the role is and what we want to have walking out of it. And, and then. push ourselves to do it in a shorter timeframe, than what we, we might've otherwise just booked because the default is one hour.
[00:37:25] Right? Well, you were right. As you advise me, the Taryn really has. I know, I know. Well, maybe you'll have to come back and we can continue a conversation because there's so much goodness here. Thank you so much. What a pleasure I am any time and thank you for, for having me and taking the time to do this.
[00:37:42] It's been a lot of.
