I am an independent design leadership coach, consultant, educator, trainer and writer who helps clients build and grow their own design and innovation capability to transform their organisations and themselves.
I find it interesting that people are influenced by servant leadership but view it as them "shielding" their employees. Part of service is in building their capacity, helping them with boundaries, etc. It isn't by doubling down on the hierarchy under the notion of being someone's protector. For me, focusing on what's needed by people closest to the client/product/service/whatever is a way to attune to our capacity, needs, and well-being as a system - and this should absolutely include leaders. In service we should join with those we serve. "Pour their cup" first ... and then just go and fill your own. Otherwise it's just more jingoistic, toxic management speak in the context of ever-more-productive systems. You can't apply transformative concepts to what is fundamentally the same vehicle and system without making compromises. At that point, it just becomes yet another thing to struggle through trying to implement.
While I agree to an extent, especially on the first part of what you said, it’s extremely difficult to be of service in any kind of way if you’re totally depleted. I know my coaching sample is biased, of course, because I’m generally working with people struggling and looking for support, but I also hear a lot of reports from others that they’re barely hanging on. The really do need to self nourish before they do anything else.
@@apolaine I think both perspectives are compatible. I agree that we need to care for and sustain ourselves, and if push comes to shove - that's the priority. I work in the mental health field alongside frontline clinicians, and a phrase I use is "there are two people in the room" to counter-act the discourse of "client-centered" meaning the erasure of the clinician, employee, and human who serves their clients. I see service to others as something that occurs in parallel to sustaining ourselves; I think there's merit to working towards alignment of those interests. At some point, I guess you'd need to choose, but that gets to the reality that there are dynamics that risk making the choice irrelevant - who gets chewed up and spit out in a meat grinder of an organizational structure can become moot. For me the important aspect is having humility and, where possible within a structure, reframing the relationships/power dynamics involved; that's why I responded to the language of shielding/saving/protecting/etc. Thanks for the conversation and insights from your work!
@@michaelbird9148 That's a good phrase. Thanks for sharing it. I do think medical training seems to lead to clinicians suppressing that side. At least that has been my experience as a patient or parent.
Haha. It always depends when it comes to design. I do think, though, that it depends on your own power and agency in the organisation. The more senior you are and power you have, that more you can “afford” to and should aim for servant leadership. It sounds selfish, because what I’m saying is that the less it costs you the more you can afford to do it. But this is also the same with allyship. It costs me very little as a cis white male to challenge others who look like me who might be mansplaining, being racist or sexist. So I should. I think Sinek’s really took a lot from the military, which has a very clear hierarchy that is not usually challenged and is also highly structured. It’s a different space to most workplaces.
@@apolaine Oh, I hadn't thought about it that way-'the less it costs you, the more you can afford to do it.' That's totally realistic. Thank you for the clarification; it really helped me understand it better. I hope to see you at Design Leaders in London! :D
Thank you Andy, my first time here: amazing new approach to understand Climate Change 😊 To be prepared?! I believe it is above us: look how many missiles are exploding today 😢
The take away from this video is that scientists really don't yet know what they are talking about and cannot yet speak authoritatively on the subject of climate change. Worse yet, the glibness of scientists as they hurtle one wrong idea after another with an air of being above it all, does not make it any easier to make political and economic decisions of governments, or industry. the political pushback on climate change also makes it imperative that science communicators get their act together to eliminate all the confusion and controversy rather than promoting more confusion and controversy. I am at the point where I don't want to get fooled into making a stand on the subject of climate change on any public forum because the science is not settled as I have believed it was for such a long time. As a person who feels that the planet is warming and we need to cut fossil fuel emissions, now we have scientists telling us maybe it isn't the carbon after all. enough ! I am sick of it !
@@apolaine I have heard from various science presenters that the climate model is broken. Hansi Singh is saying the climate models are broken and that science now has to rely on A.I. We don't even know how A.I. does what it does other than it can digest large amounts of data. What she is saying is that the science is beyond the human capabilities and we need A.I. to figure out the climate puzzle. If this is true, then there will be no way to convince the public that the answers of A.I. are accurate or even plausible. The junk produced by A.I. on social media is terrifying, manipulative, and utterly fake. It didn't help that she went on about knitting and crochet which (while perhaps of interest to some) has nothing to do with why I came to watch this video.
My video about presenting yourself and your portfolio is a good accompaniment to this one: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-XoWPpub846M.html
On the politeness challenge, I remember Mark Boulton and I giving a rule in a critique, that no one is allowed to say "awesome / great work", because it's all about the pursuit of improvement - so often folks preface critical feedback with this, and in a multi-cultural and diverse team, this "awesome/great work" statement before the actual feedback, got misinterpreted countless times - either, "ok, so i'm nearly there then, only a couple of tweaks" or "oh hear comes the bad bit and they're trying to make me like them, now i'm not listening because i'm thinking about their motive, not the actual feedback". Actually what folks wanted to say was, "thanks for the hard work so far... but"... ah the delicate and ever evolving crit sessions, and politeness tension!
Good point Buzz. The language and cultural difference is often really tricky. I noticed in Australia when teaching that it was much American in that way of “it’s great/awesome”. My response was always to ask “Yes, but why is it great?” I really should get around to reading The Culture Map.
I think you could do a whole video just on avoiding meetings-- why you should do it but also how: no meeting days, having an agenda, what type of things are best for sync or async communication, having a central repository of information/documentation to avoid endless updates...
Great video. I especially love the "meta communication tip" - I have a similar observation. It does help to talk about "how did we do this and why did we pick that method/framework" briefly when talking to execs.
Thanks Petra. Yes, good tip, though I know design folks can often get into a "look at all the work we did!" process rabbit hole if they're not careful.
Ideation is crucial though I've found many organisations don't really know how to do it, especially those that have underinvested or disempowered design teams.
I know this video is old at this point but I just found it and it has been super useful. Creating a whole thing from scratch is harder than it looks I've found out when trying to do this lmao with your whole explanation I can start small and build to what you have. The template thing especially will be very helpful. Thanks!
Thanks Bruno! Yes, I might do a re-make of this. I think a very lightweight start is useful. You can go super deep in Obsidian straight away, but it's a bit like world building an entire world from the start rather than gradually letting it unfold.
14:10 I don't know very well the US scenario of that time, because I live in Europe but i think that the reference to "enterprises" hiring for UI Designers ignoring so the first diamond, it's certainly a driven power that influenced other busineses and people, but I think it's just a fraction. I do not think that UX Design has never took off as job profession, the concept of user experience perhaps did, this because: - Only few actually understood it was a profession that required a certain knowledge either formal or acquired, in sciences and D. Norman remarked this several times already in 2008, in 2010 and 2014 as well, even remarking how design was became just crafting and designers lacking of knowledge. - When NNGroup actively started to spread UX through the world with their usabiliy week and user experience week, it never passed the message it was a job and for a matter of biases, those attending the seminaries where probably preferring to believe it's just an upskill and Norman and Nielsen do no really have 15+ of experience, otherwise it's not cool because it means it's not so easy and a UX will not magically bring me extra money in a snap of fingers, and UX will be something i have to study. - When UX was brought from the physical word and the HCI area on internet, the digital market was already rule, not just in US but also here in Europe, by job titles like Web Designer, UI Designer, Visual Designer and Graphic Designer (typically people transitioning to internet become web designers). I was doing UI for browser games in 97 and in 2000 I had finished a 1 year school in web design in Italy and I think that in US the first web design course was kinda launched 4 years before NNGroup. Understanding user experience as a field is easier than understanding behavioral sciences, so well, company are looking for UX Designers for their UI, cool, I place the tag UX on my job title and probably nobody remember, but even in US you had job titles like UX Web Designer and in 2006 you could read UI/UX Designer which was a UI Designer adding the UX tag and both, UI Designer and Product Designers at that time were mainly web designer changing the title and adapting to new "product mindset" that was taking the place of the "project mindset" and replacing "i'm working on a website" with "I'm working with a product". - Things does not evolve in the same way everywhere. Recently Nielsen has published a post on linkedin showing the previous names of the job title UX Designer, among them there was the Usability Engineer. In 2010 or 2011 a prominent website about usability, in Italy, already active I think since 10 years was writing that people thought UX Design was just a fancy name, because didn't have the scientific bases of Usability Engineer, obviously not true, as at that time Norman had already remarked the scientific basis in his essays, books and because by reading back through history you see how things unfolded. - In 2013 one of the four major bootcamps we have online today, launched the first course in UX Design, they didn't documented themselves, they simply picked up what the market was already back then, a focus on UI and this converted on their content and the teacher which was not a usability analyst, a psychologist or similar, but someone coming from the art and graphics. The rest of the bootcamps followed the stream. hence, for all these reasons you have the first diamond ignored. UX Design was engulfed by UI and you see this in all job advertise I see between Germany, Spain, Italy and Greece. All the requirements are crafting oriented, research is sloppy or made a the beginning of a project because is there they they indent it to be, behavioral sciences are missing and common sense is often the way.
I liked the idea of the odd increments in meetings I.e. 25 minute meeting instead of thirty or 40 min instead of 60; I think if you provide too much time for a meeting it will be used unproductively; like the principle that whatever time you allocate for a task will be used. Also the buffer times between meetings; although I have been scheduling in buffer times using Calendly for a while now, it is a good practice. The other thing I implement is sticking to meeting topics. When we have covered the meeting topics the meeting is over and I leave as soon as I am able to avoid the time waste of off topic talking. I have lost so much time to other people who weren’t looking to be productive and wanted to waste time talking about unimportant things. I am always on the look out for good tips to be more efficient and protect my time, so I’ll be watching out for your next video on this topic. Thanks
@@freddygoulet6101 Thanks for following up. Yes, I hate the think of just filling the allotted time of a meeting for the sake of it, too. It's usually a sign that the meeting hasn't been planned well. There's an opposite to that, though, too, which is to try and crash through 20 agenda items and only ever get through three. I never understand why people do this over and over again.
Busywork is the junk food of work is so true and yes you know in your gut when you’ve been pottering micro tasking instead of doing real work. How there’s more of this content coming!
I find it particularly interesting that John Zeratsky (1) helped develop Slack, (2) wrote Make Time, and nowadays (3) puts considerable effort into eliminating, or at least adding significant friction to use, anything that can be refreshed in his phone. Never too late to see the light, I guess.
This didn’t call me out nearly as hard as I thought it would! I block out Mondays and Thursdays as No Meetings Days and it really makes a difference. I get two full days to do real work. I find it way easier to say no to work than I do to myself, though. There are things I’ll do for myself, for my passion project, that I’d never do for a manager.
So much gold here. I love what she said about helping people imagine. I think that and transparency are the best ways to combat ignorance- I believe most people don’t WANT to be exclusionary; they just can’t conceive of a life that’s different from theirs. Unfortunately, that can put pressure on minority groups to do the public imagining and sharing, which gets exhausting. Great talk! More guests like Aparna, please!
Designs tough. Its a hard job made harder by the need to orientate around business objectives, politics, personal objectives and all the online media and scholars that influence what design should be. This is compounded by the natural need for designers to understand "the why" in everything they do. I have survived 20+ years by trying to be agile, adaptable and focusing on solving problems in a more general sense. This adaptability seems to drive my usefulness and relevance but has rarely driven my happiness. I agree with the points on design needing to put some boundaries around what it is.... but would suggest that in reflection, perhaps the boundaries that have been put in place (over the last 10 years) have been too big and ambitious for businesses to tangibly adopt. Thanks for the podcast. :)
I hear you. I think one of the things I hear very often is that the work to actually get to do design properly is a greater proportion of effort and more difficult than actually designing. Obviously everything collaborative has a degree of stakeholder wrangling, but much like, say actual work versus the admin of work, the 80:20 ratio is frequently back to front.
@@apolaine Thanks for the message back... Yes, thats a great point and it feels very relevant also. The term "design is never finished" feels more appropriate to the processes that surround it in a world thats speeding up.
@@adamcoppock5018 Well that's one of the beefs I have with product language, which focuses so much on the industrial idea of making a thing that is "shipped". My favourite analogy for the work we do these days (particularly with services) is landscape gardening. Nobody ever says "we shipped the garden" or that it's finished.
Something I struggle with is that at least half of my work is about being connected, building a community, answering messages, and going to meetings. For me, that part is not busywork. That’s work… sometimes. What I find difficult is knowing when to switch from that to focus work or back, and how to deal with the inertia of going in either direction.
I think this is difficult, but I also think we all have a sense of this internally, too. It's that de-focussed, scattered feeling and, above all, the feeling that at the end of the day we haven't achieved much of purpose. That might be a meeting or an email, for sure, but e-mail begets e-mail (and Slack is even worse), so sometimes it can just become digital paper pushing.
A great discussion. As a software engineer I can say that while the problems aren't exactly the same for engineers, the lack of value placed on design is also a problem for engineers if they want to build things that actually last and work for users. The most wasteful thing an org can do is hire a load of engineers for a new project without design backing and it's a repetitive cycle which goes back to your discussions on late stage capitalism, shareholders, speed and scale. To me any org hiring a ton of engineers and not investing in design is doomed to failure (in terms of sustainable success). They might cobble together a 'product' and in the case of some startups that might even lead to a big payday for the founders by selling the company, but the product will rarely last longer than a couple of years and it will leave customers, users and employees in the wilderness. This kind of thing is exactly why I've chosen not to work for a software company that aims to scale up fast any more because I see very little value being created by them. In fact after about 15 years as an engineer I'm convinced that design is so important it is essential for me to learn and understand more about it so I'm now studying a UX design course. It's early days in this journey for me and I don't know where it ends up but my starting point is recognising the importance of design and advocating for investment in it.
Thanks for sharing this - such a helpful video. I hadn't realised how powerful Obsidian is but I'm now thinking of using it for my current group where we're playing Ghosts of Saltmarsh. Odd question, does your Numbers tracker auto-populate?
@@elliscoopey1520 Ah, no I have to update it when characters level up or take damage (if I want to track that). Some folks do it all in Obsidian now using the Data Folder plug-in. But it doesn't scrape from DnD Beyond.
Hi! Great video, It seems I can't find the 5e Statblocks plugin from the app, is there another way to install it? Obsidian just shows me TTRPG statblocks by the same creator. Thanks!
This video was helpful! Thank you. An issue I have with Obsidian - possibly a big one - is that it isn't **just** markdown and your files aren't truly portable. Take the internal links for example - the information about the linked file location is stored somewhere within the Obsidian vault, but not in the markdown file itself. If you open one of your files in plain text, you'll see that the file location isn't in there. Which means either those things break when you use some other markdown editor, or you're dependent on a conversion program that somebody wrote. Curious if you have thoughts on that!
@@apolaine Well, the fact that wikilinks are common in other apps doesn't matter if the file locations aren't stored in the link (which they aren't). If you take one of your MD files that has a link to [[interesting_note]] and open it in another wikilinks-style editor, that editor won't know what subdirectory interesting_note.md is in. Obsidian stores that stuff on the backend. So you definitely need an exporter. And has Obsidian provided an exporter? Nope. You're dependent on third parties. Which all goes to say, defaulting to relative markdown links is probably the way to go unless one finds them too verbose/ugly to deal with. I think that's the most portable, future-proof option, for people who care about that.
@@apolaine Not super relevant, but as far as I can tell, the vault file index is stored in the Obsidian system files, not .obsidian (which is in the vault directory and seems to only contain config information). Anyway, I appreciate your thoughts on the links!
From what I've seen, the styling for pf2e is not that challenging, you could probably give it a try and end up with something sufficiently recognizable over a small period of time. By the end of the day, it's not so much the styling that matters, but rather the content (after all, OSR content is so fun to play regardless how polished it looks on paper, amirite?)
Is there a way to open an image to another window? Usage: DM runs the game from his screen but wants to show the players a picture. Is there an addon that can open the image to a separate window so it can be shown on another screen?
Thanks for sharing! I just found Obsidian and I am porting in Notes and Google Drive notes into it. I really like the way you do this and hope you have more videos like this planned for using Obsidian in your campaign.
First, this was really helpful for showing me what I want the final product to look like. Do you have any videos planned to show how you actually went about building this setup? Second, your voice is perfect for ASMR, just saying.
