Marzia Aricò – Design Leadership Maverick

Marzia Aricò – Design Leadership Maverick

My guest in this episode is Marzia Aricò, an independent consultant for organisations seeking to integrate design strategically, and works as a design leadership coach for individuals aiming to advance in their design careers.

Marzia has been immersed in the world of design leadership for more than 15 years. She holds a PhD on the topic from the Copenhagen Business School and has led design driven transformation programs with many major organizations. She also writes a regular newsletter called Design Mavericks and has a video series called Design Voices Elevated.

You can view it below or on YouTube or subscribe to it wherever you get your podcasts or listen on the player below.



Audio


Marzia

Andy

Timestamps

00:00:00 Intro
00:00:48 Marzia’s Background
00:06:14 Service Design and Organisational Change
00:14:03 Fear Anxiety
00:15:19 Design Leadership Chronicles
00:18:22 Coaching and therapy
00:21:53 Design Voices Elevated
00:26:57 Self Love Intentionality
00:35:37 Rethinking your future
00:42:25 One Small Thing
00:45:07 Outro

Transcript

Note: This transcript is machine-generated and may contain some errors. AI is dumb, but also Marzia enthusiastically talked over each other a lot in this episode!

Intro

[00:00:00] Andy Polaine: Welcome to Power of Ten, a show about design operating at many levels of Zoom, from thoughtful detail through to transformation in organization, society, and the world. My name is Andy Polaine. I’m a design leadership coach, educator, and writer. My guest today is Marzia Arrcò, an independent consultant for organizations seeking to integrate design strategically, and works as a design leadership coach for individuals aiming to advance in their design careers.

Marzia has been immersed in the world of design leadership for more than 15 years. She holds a PhD on the topic from the Copenhagen Business School and has led design driven transformation programs with many major organizations. She also writes a regular newsletter called Design Mavericks and has a video series called Design Voices Elevated.

Marzia, welcome to Power of Ten

[00:00:46] Marzia Aricò: thank you. It’s a pleasure to be here.

Marzia’s Background

[00:00:48] Andy Polaine: So Dr. Aricò, we can, we can call each other doctor. Tell me a little bit about your journey.

[00:00:54] Marzia Aricò: Okay. Brief intro is that I started from industrial design. Actually, my father was an architect. So I was thinking to become an architect. But then I realized I used to love going, you know, working with him as a young child. But then I realized that I was way more comfortable with a scale of design of objects.

Architecture was too large of a scale for me. And then I studied industrial design and started actually designing things, real products.

[00:01:21] Andy Polaine: Hmm.

[00:01:22] Marzia Aricò: And that didn’t last long. You know, I found myself in, uh, one year at the Salon del Mobile in Milan, and I’m Italian.

[00:01:29] Andy Polaine: Yeah.

[00:01:30] Marzia Aricò: And, you know, I was surrounded by people that were, you know, conversing for hours about the perfect curve of a chair that probably a hundred people in the world would be able to afford. And I realized that that was not a good way of using my skills. So I have relocated to London, and I got into the world of design management, innovation management. So I really started thinking about design as a way to explore. Uh, support transformation really, mainly around innovation.

[00:02:00] Andy Polaine: Yeah,

[00:02:01] Marzia Aricò: And that brought me to my PhD in organizational studies because I very quickly realized that, you know, with a, with a wave of design thinking and service design, I really felt at one point like a corporate entertainer, you know,

you, you, you

are

in an organization. entertaining and innovation department that has some leftover budget, you know, they love working with you because you bring some new ideas and post its, but then there is no real impact. I mean, at least with the chair, there was the chair at the end of the project, you know, is that with this, there was really nothing. Um, so for me it was even worse. So I thought, okay, I thought there must be a better way to do this. And so I decided to go to a design, to a business school to really understand the way organizations work and how could we embed design in a way that could be a service of organizational goals and business goals. And so that was quite an enlightening, um, yeah, experience. And it brought a lot of that knowledge into LiveWork. I used to be design director of LiveWork in, actually in Brighton. I’m in London. So I translated, a lot of that academic thinking into practice and translated into models that could help organizations really apply design to their transformation efforts. So usually, I used to come in, and At moments where, you know, an organization was going through a digital, uh, transformation or some agile transformation sort of, consumer obsession, right? So those things, they are quite grand, they have big words that no one understands and they’re usually tech led.

[00:03:36] Andy Polaine: Yeah,

[00:03:37] Marzia Aricò: And so I used to bring a design approach, a more realistic approach to the

story.

[00:03:44] Andy Polaine: and I’ve

completely forgot about the live work connection actually and and the whole service

[00:03:49] Marzia Aricò: yeah I’ve been there for 10 years.

[00:03:52] Andy Polaine: I haven’t I haven’t actually read it yet, but your latest newsletter. You, you talk about, you’ve got this, uh, competency model, right, for service designers.

Just so I can kind of age you , um, when did you, when did the, I was gonna say date you, when were you doing the, the PhD?

[00:04:08] Marzia Aricò: Finished

in 2018,

[00:04:12] Andy Polaine: Okay. All right.

[00:04:13] Marzia Aricò: so I started four years earlier.

[00:04:14] Andy Polaine: Yeah. So, you know, earlier than many in the whole designers need to learn about business and all that sort of stuff.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:04:24] Marzia Aricò: I did this as a, as a

practice led PhD, like an industrial PhD, so I wasn’t really a PhD. in academia instead of academia doing only that but I was working and live work at the same time and for me it was the best setup because I could immediately, you know, observe reality in my projects with my clients, translate that into the world of academia and vice versa, so it was a really good setup for me. I was not there to, you know, resolve a gap in the literature, you

know, I was

there to, to, to, to find the space to really scientifically look at the issue.

[00:04:57] Andy Polaine: And it was about design. Organizations or the, the,

[00:05:01] Marzia Aricò: about the adoption of service design in

organizational context.

Uh, and it took me about two years actually to find a business school that would Allow me to do

that because

you know, yeah, because I have a design

background.

So every single business school I approach were like, you know, you are a designer.

You should go to a design school to do a PhD and I had plenty of design

schools that wanted to do this with me. Right. But I was like, you know, I understand the design part. What I don’t understand is your part. Like I need your help to understand your bit. And it just, the answer was no. I mean, usually they used to tell me, yeah, go, go do an MBA. And then come back and I’m like, I’m not going to spend like a 200k to do an MBA, two years and then come back to do four years PhD, forget it. And then eventually I found this illuminated professor at Copenhagen Business School who was really believing in the power of Stephan Misk, in the power of, you know, bringing

design and business

together.

And he was running an experiment, bringing really students from the design school and the business school, to, to really explore alternative ways of imagining really organizations and the future.

So

that was the perfect place for me to do that. But it really took me a while to find that

island

of joy.

Service Design and Organisational Change

[00:06:14] Andy Polaine: That just goes to show you kind of the divisions there, doesn’t it? The kind of siloing that goes all the way through. I mean, I certainly found that in academia too, I think it was Yuval Noah Harari that was talking this. said isn’t it ridiculous that the school of economics is in a different building to the school of biology or the climate change department or any of these things, you know, and humanities.

So, in this, we’ve often talked, um, by I say, we, as a collective service design kind of community about really when service design is successful in an organization , there’s been a sort of injection of it, you know, so they might hire consultants or be building up that department in house.

The whole organization really switches to that mindset and it’s, it becomes a sort of normed way of working rather than this kind of innovation jazz hands thing that I mean, I had someone say to me, a client, uh, sometime ago, Oh yeah, we did, we did service design last year

[00:07:08] Marzia Aricò: It didn’t work. It didn’t work.

[00:07:10] Andy Polaine: design last year, didn’t we?

So now we’re, you know, whatever they were doing, the next thing. So what did you discover in your PhD around that? And what’s the secret to it getting absorbed and transforming an organization? And, you know, what barriers are there?

[00:07:25] Marzia Aricò: Look, I think with everything, the key is understanding the context.

So when service design comes in, it usually, it rarely enters as service design. It enters as service of something. And usually that something is customer centricity, or the customer voice, or, you know, very, very, very often it’s customer experience. So when that happens You bring inside an organization a fundamentally different logic to what exists there, right? And so what I started looking at is what are the logics that operate in an organizational context that determine the way people think and behave, right? And there are not infinite number of logics. Um, there are probably six or seven. So I, I used, you know, an example of a telco organization and there was this market. traditional technical logic dominant there, which tells you, you know, it’s all about, you know, profit. It’s all about technology as driver of innovation. It’s all about specialism, right?

And then there was a second logic that was quite, you know, relevant and present, but smaller than the first one. And there was a digital one. So they went through a digital transformation years before. So the digital logic is somewhat similar to the traditional one, but brings some aspects forward in terms of speed.

For example, speed becomes a very big thing, right? And the approach to innovation becomes agile and

[00:08:49] Andy Polaine: Yeah. Yeah.

[00:08:50] Marzia Aricò: And then, and then, and then you get customer centricity is a logic on his own. And you can actually see people carrying these different logics. Like you see which groups of people actually portraying, believing, you know, carrying

those sets of values and beliefs.

And it’s not that one thing is wrong and the other is right. You know, like those organizations have been operating like this for centuries and very, very successfully. So, you know, you come in with a completely different set of, uh, of, uh, of, uh, ideas and, and you’re trying to basically, um, tell them that what you bring is better than what they have, which rarely works, right?

So, so the idea that I try to introduce is, is combining, combining logic. So, so first of all, can you really break down the existing logic and understand what are the key elements that make the logic? What are the words that people use? What, what do they believe in, in terms of, you know, the very purpose of this organization and now, and now, and now that purpose comes to life, right? In terms of ways of working. And then understanding what, what, what are areas where you can really collaborate, where, where there is somewhat similarities, there is an opening where you can actually work together. And what are areas where, where you count, where fundamentally there is, there is such a clash that you will have to basically either push for one or the other.

But, and then if that is the, the, the, the option that you go for, how are you going to do that? Right? Because you’re not going to be able to tackle everything at once. So what is your best bet? Where do you start? How strategically can you do that? And, and so that was a big part of my research. Defining what these logics were and the composing elements and how to recognize them and how to work with those.

[00:10:39] Andy Polaine: So this all makes a lot of sense as you’re describing this. And yeah, I think there’s often that thing between, I like that you called it logics there’s because there’s this idea of a worldview that makes sense to people as an internal worldview of kind of how they think about things.

Often though a tension or, uh, outright kind of clash between the stated principles of the organization and the logic of the organization. And, you know, the one, the one that’s top of mind for me right now is Google’s emissions through their AI ambitions are now 50 percent higher than they were because of the data centers. And so, you know, there’s one of those things where there’s a classic, you know, here’s what our mission statement, here’s what our ambitions are, here’s what we’re saying. And yet, there’s this other thing that’s driving them that’s actually with the sort of actual logic on the ground or the kind of the tacit, sometimes it’s not even explicit, right?

The tacit, this is the way we do things around here. How have you sort of found the

[00:11:37] Marzia Aricò: first thing I

[00:11:38] Andy Polaine: that or exposing it even maybe? Yeah.

[00:11:40] Marzia Aricò: exposing it, I think, is that it’s a better question solving it is a much harder answer, but exposing it, I think, is the first step. And usually the way I’ve started my research in every single one of the organizations I looked at, and I looked at about 10, 11 organizations, is what are you here to do as an organization? So what’s your purpose, right? And in what way people answer to that? And then you will discover that there is not one logic of the organization. There is a logic of a group of people that has critical mass. And then there is another group of people who actually explains the purpose of the organization in a wildly different way. And you will find pockets, right, of people doing that. You will probably find two or three. And those really are the first representation of conflicting logics. And what literature tells you, because obviously I base this on theory,

institutional logics theory, um, What literature tells you is that if the conflict arises at the level of purpose of the organization, that is not, it is not possible to resolve it.

So one will have to prevail over the other, basically. Uh, I tend to agree with that in a sense although my view of the world is a bit more nuanced than that, I have not seen anything else in practice happening.

[00:13:02] Andy Polaine: And so in those situations, so in that, in that sense, there’s like a dominant group and I guess it’s a top down thing. It’s, it’s rare. I tried to think of an example, well, is it rare for the critical mass to come from the bottom of the pyramid, if you like?

[00:13:19] Marzia Aricò: Only from the bottom of the pyramid? I don’t think so.

I don’t think

that can

happen.

I think you need, you need a bit of

both, right?

So critical mass exists when it, it, you know, it, it is, um, complemented by, you know, different levels of seniority

and different,

But to be honest, if you look at examples where organizations really managed at one point to radically pivot from one thing to another.

It happened through a massive round of layoffs, basically. If you look at the moment in which, you know, IBM at one point decided to reintroduce design and this renaissance of design in IBM happened because there was a new leader who decided to just cut a whole, you know, layer of people like in droves and then replace them with people with a completely different mindset, right?

And you create, you artificially create a new critical mass.

Fear & Anxiety

[00:14:03] Andy Polaine: Yeah. I guess really like, you know, amputation and kind of, amputation and an implant isn’t it? Yeah. Yeah. I always come back to this over and over again. I think, I don’t know if it is for you and it’d be interesting to hear your view on this that comes up in coaching all the time is the level of fear and anxiety kind of in the world of work in general.

And, you know, obviously there’s in coaching, you hear it from coachees, but also how much is, you know, all the way through the organization, whether you’re a junior and that sort of in some respects more understandable cause you don’t have any power and you might get fired through, but right the way, all the way up to the top.

There was a stat I think that came out the other day, which I don’t know how to really kind of interpret this stat, but something like 60 percent of CEOs feel they have imposter syndrome, you know and so, you know, all the way through it was certainly kind of middle to senior leadership, junior, executive leadership.

There’s a lot of fear and anxiety that seems to really be pervasive and shape the kind of behavior and culture of the organization. There’s a lot of kind of hidden tensions and that there. Did you, did you find in your, either in your PhD or in your coaching that that is the case? Yeah.

[00:15:16] Marzia Aricò: fear. Like the book, I’m going to publish a book.

Design Leadership Chronicles

[00:15:19] Marzia Aricò: I’m going to publish that. That is, that is the currency. I’m going to publish a book in November. It was going to be called eventually Design Leadership Chronicles. But actually the original title of the book was Fear of Design. And, uh, and then I change it because people said it’s a negative thing, but actually so true, like, you know, and and fear is what is what moves things inside organizations.

And that is the reason why large, especially large organizations are not for everyone for a very specific, you know, subset of individuals that can actually handle that and are okay to deal with that. So yes, it emerges very often in all sorts of different places. Um, In my coaching for sure, and these days more about probably in the coaching about all the rounds of

layoffs that

have happened, is my job secure? But also in terms of imposter syndrome, am I good

enough?

And in the book, I have, um, basically portraying nine stories of design leaders from all over the world. So these are leaders that work for very large organizations in various sectors, from healthcare to banking, and it’s a graphic novel.

So I’m, I’m telling

each

individual

stories in, in, in, in a graphic novel format, right? And that, that is one of the things that I really wanted to highlight, like the human side of it. The human, the toll, if you like, of covering positions of that kind for, for a long period of time, trying to drive that level of change

in a place that really rejects you, right?

Rejects you and, and your, and your ideas and your way of seeing the world. And, and, and in many of these, I, I’m thinking of a specific chapter where there is this woman in a corner thinking, I’m not good enough, I’m not good enough, I’m not good enough. And how do you get out of the mantra that you’re not good enough to actually, you know, drive your team to start

growing change,

right?

It’s a very hard thing to do. But a lot of these people have managed, managed. I think it’s a very human thing. To feel, you know, I think it would be weird not to feel, you know, on the other side, it would be weird to feel that you’ve got it all, you know, it all, and then, you know, you’re, you’re up for the challenge because some of the, some of the, you know, challenges that these organizations face are really complex, you know, redesigning healthcare for the entire population of Brazil,

like there are lives at stake.

There are not just in terms of patients, but also actually the employees, uh, you know, jobs and. And you’re really rethinking the way a certain organization goes about delivering some crucial services for people. So it would be weird I think and not necessarily right to actually go in it saying yeah, I’ve got it all.

I’m good You know, I know what i’m doing. So I think there is a level of actually, sanity for like, uh, it’s a healthy way of questioning yourself. The problem becomes when that paralyzes you,

right?

Paralyzes your, your actions and your choices. And that’s what I tend to explore with the people

[00:18:20] Andy Polaine: In your, in your coaching. Yeah.

Coaching and therapy

[00:18:22] Marzia Aricò: Yeah. And a lot of the times then you discover that actually the source of the problem is not really their role. It’s really coming from the parents, right?

[00:18:29] Andy Polaine: yeah, So I usually,

[00:18:31] Marzia Aricò: I,

I am at a point, no,

but I’m at a point where I refuse to coach people that do not have a psychotherapist.

Like if you are doing, so if you are doing a parallel kind of experience, introspective experience about who you are, where you’re coming from, what are your triggers, usually my role as a coach is way easier and become way more effective.

[00:18:52] Andy Polaine: I do explore this too in my coaching. My wife’s a psychotherapist, psychoanalyst, and I sort of draw a lot from that work, and it’s something I’ve done for a very long time too, about 25 years. I have two opening questions in my coaching actually, is my secrets.

One is, you know, what did you want to be as a teenager? Because I’m always interested to know, some people are like, Oh, I’ve known I wanted to do something creative since I was six. And other people were like, Oh, I wanted to be a, you know, a fireman or thought I was going to be a doctor, you know, and their parents wanted them to be a doctor.

And then, you know, there’s always this interesting moment of when did you discover that design was a thing? And this was a thing that you could do. For your case, your father’s an architect. My dad was a designer, my brother’s a designer. And so that was kind of always there. Um, I actually wanted to be a filmmaker though.

I wanted to be a film director.

[00:19:38] Marzia Aricò: Oh,

[00:19:39] Andy Polaine: Um, and so it’s always interesting because I often think there’s a, there’s always that slight echo of that initial ambition that sort of pervades people’s lives, it does for me. But there’s the other bit which gives you a chance to talk about people’s parents and upbringing, because your parents, in, in leadership, your parents are the first people you encounter as leaders, right?

They’re your role, role models, the people who are in charge of what’s going on around here. Right? And, and it really is fascinating how often that comes up and, you know, when I hear that and then when I hear then people’s kind of issues, particularly when they’re dealing with senior stakeholders and managers, it’s, it’s really common.

And it’s funny cause I have some coaches like, well, I’ve, I’m thinking of doing some therapy at the same time, but does it, is it going to kind of clash? And I’m like, no, no, no, no, please do it. You know, please do, both. Yeah. Because I also want to have the time, cause I’m not, I’m not a therapist, although I’ve got a lot of kind of experience in it, but I, but I also have times when I, you know, want to say to someone, Hey, you know, I think this is something that would be really useful for you to work on in therapy because there’s some stuff that I can’t, um,

I

don’t feel responsible enough yet to bring up in a, in a session, particularly in an online thing, you know.

[00:20:48] Marzia Aricò: But also on the other way around, like the other way around, if they are aware of specific triggers or trauma or, you know, sources of certain, you know, behaviors, then it’s way easier to recognize

that and,

and, and, and embrace it in

your strategy

and you’re thinking about your career and choices and you become way more

intentional if you God, I wish so many more people did it though, as well, because it’s,

[00:21:10] Andy Polaine: you know, one of the things there was a thing I read, uh, then if you read Stowe Boyd, he does has this work futures newsletter there was an HBR article. I went to have a look for it just now, but I didn’t want to get distracted.

It was kind of, we did a study to, you know, examine whether the way managers react to employees talking about their emotions makes a difference. And we discovered that it does. And I’m like, really, no shit, and so much of that stuff, it’s this, we’ve got this data and part of me is like, great, well now you’ve got some data about the bleeding obvious, right? But another part of me is always astonished at how this idea of professionalism means you, you know, you just suppress your emotions at work and yet you see the toxic outcomes of doing that, right? All the

[00:21:53] Marzia Aricò: time

Design Voices Elevated

[00:21:53] Marzia Aricò: But that is

the reason, that is the reason why I started my, uh, video

series, Design

Voices Elevated, because, you know, I’ve been in my entire career, I’ve been working as a consultant with very large organizations were dominated by a very specific group of individuals, usually typically men, typically white, typically in

[00:22:15] Andy Polaine: People look like me. It’s, it’s

[00:22:17] Marzia Aricò: Well, I mean, a bit less creative, I’d say, so.

[00:22:20] Andy Polaine: Me in a suit,

[00:22:21] Marzia Aricò: and also whearing a suit or not. But usually with that, um, kind of approach to leadership where, you know, your, your emotions and your, your vulnerability should be hidden.

Right.

And, and the, the loudest voice is the most important voice. Right. And so at one point, I mean, for me, I had a really a breaking point where it was like, I really don’t want to, I do not want to do this anymore.

Like I do not want to enable any more of these people to make more money or expand their markets or, you know, whatever the thing is that we’re doing. But I also, I felt the need to hear other narratives, you know, other narratives of people that are leading in organizations, they are making change happen, but they’re doing it in just different

[00:23:04] Andy Polaine: Yeah.

[00:23:05] Marzia Aricò: And so that’s why I started looking at women, people of color, non binary, like people that might have just a different way of looking at what success looks like, what leadership

looks like,

what management looks like,

[00:23:20] Andy Polaine: It’s a great series. So you’ve got all of these, you’ve got all of these people I’m really interested to know whether there is … there’s a couple of things actually. As you say, the dominant culture is, like I said, people look like me, cis, white, middle aged men, who maybe don’t even think about the fact that there’s a whole structural bias in that direction, right, in the worst case.

So it’s not always easy for those people that you’re interviewing in Design Voices Elevated to even get into leadership positions in the first place.

and it’s also not easy, as you talked about, you know, in an organization that might have a different set of logics to operate, to bring a new one in, right.

And to operate in a different one. So are there any clear sort of themes and topics that you’ve learned through those or common themes and topics that you’ve learned through those videos.

[00:24:04] Marzia Aricò: Yes,

I think so. Actually, it’s the first time that I’m reflecting. On it like that, because I’ve been running

you know, and then stopping it to actually reflect the holistic. about what, what is happening this first 10 episodes? It’s a very good question. Um, you know, in the first season, I’ve interviewed people who were diverse in lots of different ways, like, uh, diverse in terms of social economic background.

For example, I interviewed, uh, Bethany Jarroussié, who comes from a very large family, 10 kids. None of them went to school. She, she, she did not go to school. She did not graduate. She was homeschooled and she did not go to university. And so for her, that, uh, was a big stigma, you know, like it was really difficult to get into a corporation and just say yeah, I don’t have a degree and I’ve been homeschooled for my entire life and I was actually a part of a family that was moving every year, you know, and there were others that were just racially different, like black women. I just actually interviewed for season two, the first black man. And, um, or, uh, you know, in terms of also kind of ethnicity, all sorts, gender, but also sexual orientation. And, and for all of them, it’s, it’s been very difficult to find their space in a, in an environment, in a system that was just simply not designed for them. Where they were the exception, and themselves being themselves because when you tell people you know you should show up as your

[00:25:29] Andy Polaine: Yeah. Your authentic self. Yeah.

[00:25:31] Marzia Aricò: yeah it’s very easy if you fit the parameters of what people like or or consider acceptable or consider you know legitimate but if you don’t it’s really hard to just show up as yourself and then people go like wait a

[00:25:44] Andy Polaine: Well, it’s dangerous. I mean, it’s no good it’s

[00:25:46] Marzia Aricò: dangerous you

[00:25:47] Andy Polaine: Yeah.

[00:25:48] Marzia Aricò: And so I think there are a couple of things.

What, what the first one is like an incredible self love, like these people are, are self aware, they love themselves as

individuals and not in a way that they think that they’re better than others, but they just like who they are. And so, and so in a sense, they are confident enough to actually bring out that. piece of themselves in an environment that might not necessarily like it because they’re not going to change their idea about themselves because that dude thinks differently. And And these are people that have been also very reflected because they are not privileged in the sense that options are given to them.

But there are people that have to scrap every single next opportunity, right? They’re just, you know, digging for the next thing, uh, and really working hard to make it happen. They’ve been incredibly intentional in their progression in their, uh, career in the, in the choices that are

[00:26:45] Andy Polaine: Yeah.

[00:26:45] Marzia Aricò: uh, way more than a lot of other people that I spoke with, you know, when in very fancy universities and, and their father, you know, called

[00:26:55] Marzia Aricò: their mates and

[00:26:56] Andy Polaine: It was all easy. for them, you know?

Self Love & Intentionality

[00:26:57] Marzia Aricò: Um, so that’s the second thing. So the first is, um, yeah, self love and the second is intentionality. And let me think if there is anything else. Oh yeah, the third is probably an incredible amount of passion. Like, these are all people that are really passionate about the subject matter that they are in, but also like the people they do it with, right?

They’re all people,

people, you know, there are people that really care about the people and, and whatever they do, they try to do it with a team of, uh, individuals that, share a sense of, uh, the same beliefs and values, if you like.

In a lot of these conversations, they always refer to their team or the group that they were, they did the thing with

[00:27:44] Andy Polaine: yeah. And is that sort of intentional also in terms of they’ve built their tribe around them really, they’ve deliberately found those people and, if they’re in leadership roles and hired those people or has it just been a sort of gravitational pull to the people who have followed them?

[00:27:58] Marzia Aricò: pull. I think it’s a gravitational pull and, and, and these are generally people that can find the best in

others, you know,

so they don’t necessarily need to build their own team of like minded

people.

They’re actually able to jump into a situation where a team is broken and people treat each other with no respect or, you know, and then work with that material of design, if you like. to make something wonderful out of it, right? Because these are people that profoundly believe in, in, uh, that there is good in everyone, you know? And so I can certainly work with you, even if other people think that you are not good enough, or if you are, uh, Yeah, not considered, you know, you don’t have good relationships with others or So in a lot of the cases that I heard, it’s not necessarily I mean, in some cases they build their

own teams, but in a lot of others they just go in and just work with the people that they had in a way that was unprecedented. Because, you know, when When you are used to, like a lot of the people, probably you have the same, like a lot of the people that I coach have no one example of a good leader or manager in their

career.

They’ve always been widely, you know, treated really badly, you know, they’re just very bad examples of people that are massive egos, uh, you know. And so when that’s the only example you have, then it’s the only thing you think to do,

you know, but

when something new happens to you, when someone comes with a completely new perspective on what leadership is, that someone that gives you agency, that, you know, empowers you, if you like, although it’s a word that I really don’t like, because when you talk about empowerment means like, you know, the power is somewhere and then you

[00:29:36] Andy Polaine: Yeah. It’s, it’s a little bit colonial, in itself, Yeah.

[00:29:39] Marzia Aricò: it’s, yes, but okay, it’s a word that, you know, people understand.

So, then, you know, things change. People change. People start seeing their environment and their relationship with others in a slightly different way. And it takes time, but it is possible. So a lot of these stories are stories of that

[00:29:55] Andy Polaine: Yeah. Pull those threads together, you were talking, we were talking about that thing of people feeling like they’re not good enough and, and all of that sort of feeling, because that’s, you know, messaging you get a lot as well. I mean, that’s what a, a management structure and all those bloody performance reviews and all that kind of stuff that in corporations are really set up to constantly remind you that you could be doing more, you know,

or

you

should

be doing more, you know, even if you’re burning out.

So it’s not, it’s never enough, right? Even if you hit.

Even

if you’re a manager, you’re someone in sales and you’re, you know, you’re hitting all your targets,

[00:30:27] Marzia Aricò: your

target. it’s like, well, that’s well done, here’s your new target, you know, and you don’t get to just sit back and relax. And so there’s this constant undermining of yourself. I want to come back to a question about this, but if you’re saying that, you know, these people that you have been interviewing in the elevated series, that they are, have got this kind of amount of self love. And it’s contagious, right? So then when they have that, then other people get permission to have that and it will shift them out of a operating out of a kind of position of fear, which is usually pretty toxic for everyone to, to a different one of, of confidence and that idea of there’s good in people.

[00:31:03] Andy Polaine: My question for you though, there is what’s really a question for them as well, which is. You know, a lot of those people who are, um, in some kind of minority, you said it’s difficult for them to kind of rise up in a structure that doesn’t really encourage it. It’s not just doesn’t encourage it, often actively suppresses it, right?

So, if you’re a woman of color or a non binary person you’re constantly getting the messaging that you’re, you’re different. You’re not right. You’re not one of us, all of that sort of stuff. How have those people found their kind of self love and confidence in the, in the face of that,

[00:31:40] Marzia Aricò: That’s a very good question. I’m not sure. This is something that I should ask. Actually. Yeah.

[00:31:46] Andy Polaine: cause, cause it, because there’s that sort of classic,

the way I’m sort of getting

to with that as I guess there’s a, there’s that classic.

[00:31:52] Marzia Aricò: Yeah.

[00:31:54] Andy Polaine: False DEI thing where, where kind of people will say, well they should speak up and it’s like, no, but you don’t understand the power differential there.

But these are people who have spoken up, have stepped forward in the face of often, you know, the possibility of losing their job and, and all of these things. Um,

[00:32:11] Marzia Aricò: and I’m

I don’t know. I can guess. I guess, um, you know, one thing that I find that’s, uh, in common to all of them is they’re incredibly reflective people. Like, they really cruelly know themselves, you

know, in the good and bad ways. Their experience is also varied. Like these are rarely people that have stayed in one place for like 10, 15 or 20

years. These are people that have seen multiple realities of different sizes, shapes, right? Small businesses, they were founders, they were then, you know, in a large corporate and moved to another one. So there are people that are exposed to a variety of humanity. And I’m hoping and guessing that in that, you know, changing movement, um, Yes, you will find people that consider you wrong and will not miss any opportunity to make the clear but you will also find people that don’t and that encourage you and One of the questions that I usually ask is Like something in your career that changed everything for

you

and usually it’s what their reference is, a

[00:33:14] Andy Polaine: Yeah.

[00:33:15] Marzia Aricò: that opened up something for them in terms of self realization, in terms of change of perspective, in terms of, you know, very often it’s about, you know, how Someone that helped them realize how to, uh, operate from a position of strength rather than one of

weakness, right?

Because what we usually do is, you know, we think about in all of the different ways in which we are weak in a certain position and use that as a starting point while flipping the perspective on what are actually my strengths within this environment and how can I leverage that. That’s a very different starting point in your connection with others even.

[00:33:51] Andy Polaine: Yeah.

I think it’s the first time sometimes people have been seen, you know, properly seen as a, as the person they really are by someone. It’s incredibly valuable that I think, you know,

[00:34:00] Marzia Aricò: Yeah,

it’s really

powerful.

And it’s rarely a manager, or a leader, or a sort. It’s just another It could be a peer, it could be anyone.

[00:34:07] Andy Polaine: yeah, I mean, I definitely heard some, you know, when we were talking about some people’s stories of childhood some of the stuff I’ve heard is a teacher, you know, teachers who had a moment, but sometimes it’s that sometimes it’s a relative, you know, Sometimes it is a manager.

I’ve heard, you know, my coaching occasionally, um, and that, that person’s then followed that manager to different companies, right? They’re, they’re loyal to that person. Um, and then they get to a point where they realize that they also then want to sort of move, move away from that because they start to feel a bit dependent.

But I think sometimes it really is just a person said, Oh, you know, You’re really good at this, or you should try this, or, you know, and they, they’re seen, and they have that moment of being seen as the person they are, and it gives them such confidence. In the face of, I guess, the organizational structure that’s very common to, to suppress all of that, whether it’s the sort of feelings and emotions, or whether it’s this is your role, stay in your box and all of that, or even not having that kind of conversation, right?

Not even, you know,

Having a culture where, you know, like that HBR article where talking to people about how they feel, um, and surprise, surprise, the human beings. I felt like that whole article could have been, we did a bunch of studies to find out that humans aren’t robots, you know, um, you know it really makes a difference in opening that space.

There’s so much we could talk about we’re coming pretty close to time. You’ve talked about this idea of alternative futures and using design to sort of reinvent the future of the organization. Um, tell me a little bit about that before we to wrap up.

Yeah.

Rethinking your future

[00:35:37] Marzia Aricò: Yeah. I think it’s one of the best things that design can bring in an organizational context. Um, this ability to really rethink what your future could look like. And it’s so so relevant right now. All sorts of different changes the organizations have to deal with, right? And, and usually the response is very reactive.

The structure is rarely set up to be able to see the change coming and ride the wave rather than succumb under it, you know? And so a lot of the kind of work that I’ve been doing, but also the research that I’ve led, is really to try and understand in what way, uh, designers and design can do that. And in the book specifically, I have a whole section around it with three stories. And one of these stories is, um, uh, the story of a woman that I absolutely love and respect, Harriet Buckleham. She’s, uh, actually British, but, uh, She used to live in Australia and now she’s in Singapore. She’s um, director of design at DBS, the bank now. Uh, but before that she was working for an insurance and a lot of the work that she has done is to really think about, you know, in a world where, that eventually is an uninsurable world, right? Where, you know, heat waves are hitting on a weekly basis and, you know, you have hailstorms and all of that and, you know, insuring your houses is just not as simple as it was, you know, a couple of decades ago. What is your role as an insurance? You know, what is that? Are you going to insure? Like, what is your business model even, you know? And I love the ability of designers to actually ask these dumb questions. The people go like, oh. Like who are you even? Like why are you, you know? Like, uh, you know, it’s like almost just stopping the wheel.

Like people are in this tunnel vision. Deliver, deliver, deliver, deliver, deliver. And then she just, she put a, you know, piece of wood in the wheel, stop the wheel and go like, hold on a minute. Like, and, and I find that incredibly powerful, just the ability to actually ask the question. But then what she did was to really work with she, um, scenario planning, and she did a course at Oxford. Say business school with some professors that really help her think how scenario planning could really, uh, work in a context. And she basically materialized. You know, she told me one thing that really stick with me. She said strategists tell to make, while designers make to tell, right?

And so what she did, she really crafted this plausible futures in a way that people could interact with it. And she had four plausible alternative futures that could actually become reality. And she made all of the artifacts and she had actors, you know, acting, the, the role is a small business owner. She had the kind of food the people eat and the kinda smells the people would have, right? And she allowed stakeholders to really immerse themselves into the world and the problems related to the world and the opportunities related to the world to then engage them into conversation. Okay. In a world of this kind, what is our role as an organization. And then you start really, because you bring people outside of the daily, but you project them in something that is so, you know, they feel so further away, then they, you start unlocking the creative powers that individuals didn’t even know to have and, and start connecting dots in ways that are just unprecedented. And so from that piece of work, a completely a new strategy for an organization emerged. I find that incredibly

powerful, this ability of allowing people to imagine, but also, and more importantly, to connect that to what does that mean for our today, right? So what does it mean for what am I going to do tomorrow morning? Because, you know, it’s all very beautiful to just, you know, as an artist, bring people out there and experience something new, but then the connecting the dots into your role tomorrow morning, um, That’s as important as the other bit. And I think designers more and more, the role of designers, strategic designers should actually be that,

you know,

should really help organizations and people in organizations ambition, the future that they want to be in.

[00:39:45] Andy Polaine: you know, you forget that you’re, cause you take it for granted. I think that you can do things like draw or, or, or, or kind of manifest things that your superpower is you can make an abstract idea tangible in some way. And I’ve just, I teach on a Master’s, I co lead a Master’s of Service Design in Switzerland and we’re talking about sort of prototyping stuff and this idea, you know, that there’s obviously down one end there’s all the stuff you might do and you do your research and you do your kind of concepts and all that stuff, but it stays very where we are now, but obviously prototyping the future and things like design fictions and critical design are really powerful because of that thing that you do. You take people off the treadmill really. Uh, and then just kind of looking down at the ground and running and running and running and, uh, and you have to, you ask the question of not just why is it like that, you know, and what might that be?

But the ability to make that tangible the way you just described it is incredibly powerful because as you say, you know, once people then Once people see it, they can go, Oh, right. Now I see that, that changes the

[00:40:43] Marzia Aricò: you cannot unsee

[00:40:45] Andy Polaine: you can’t unsee it. Yeah, it’s Yeah. Yeah. That’s very true. How powerful is that indeed?

[00:40:49] Marzia Aricò: Yeah. You know, within that, I’m, I’m really a big fan of, for designers to understand business, to

understand organizations. A lot of the stuff that I have been writing the last year is all about that, like explaining to a design audience how organizations work, how are policies set, how are people measure stuff, what is a business model?

You know, all the basics, but that is not true. then comply and become part of the machine. That is knowledge to use to do stuff like this, you know, to allow imagining alternative futures with a language and a connection to the reality of today, uh, that is relevant, right? So it’s a way to be relevant rather than a way to become like them, you

know, and I don’t want to do it.

I don’t want to do

an

[00:41:37] Andy Polaine: Us and them. Yeah.

[00:41:38] Marzia Aricò: but you know.

[00:41:39] Andy Polaine: But I think, I noticed that people talk about engineering, but we talk about design and somehow designs become this kind of noun. And, and we don’t talk about designing.

And I think there is that part where I just need a bit more research and research can be a fantastic procrastination tool as well. Right. I just, I just need a bit more. Um, because it’s almost so that they can then color by numbers.

And I think, you know, there’s that leap. The designing bit is imagining what a future, whether it’s sort of an object or a website or whatever, uh, or a whole, you know, social scenario, imagining what that might be like. And our job is to make stuff up. Our job is to imagine something new and then make it tangible. And that’s the designing bit that I feel has got somehow lost in, uh, in the last few years.

[00:42:25] Marzia Aricò: I agree.

One Small Thing

[00:42:25] Andy Polaine: So we’re coming to the end. As you know, the show is named after the Powers of 10 film by Ray and Charles Eames about the relative size of things in the universe. What one small thing is either overlooked or could be redesigned that would have an outsized effect on the world?

[00:42:41] Marzia Aricò: Okay, I have something in mind, which is not really small,

but I’m going to use

that one anyway. Which is education of small children.

Um,

I’m thinking like zero three even. You know, that is like the period of our lives where. Our infrastructure is set, you know. And kids are usually treated as, um, almost like an empty box to fill

in with things, while by themselves they have so much creative power to unleash, if you would just let them do that. So, I think, you know, I’ve been thinking about it a lot because I have a six year old and I’m now pregnant with my second child and, and I really, I’m really struggling with, to deal with the

educational system as

we know it. And I’m in a, you know, country like the Netherlands that is very progressive in the sense, but, but, but still like I find like gender definition or, or what plays or, you know, uh, constructs that are just not empowering or providing agency to kids to really express their full potential. And so I think that is something to really think about. And I think it would really benefit our society at large. I think we would really benefit from a bit more of nurturing creativity since very early stage and trying to maintain that

throughout

our

lives. As the father of a daughter is in a Steiner school, I can only agree that’s a very good answer. Thank you so much. So where can people find you online? You’ve got all of the stuff going on. I’ll put some Oh yeah, so

my blog, my blog designmavericks. substack. com and there I write every week, but I also publish my video series and there, there will be info about my book as well. So I guess that’s the best place

[00:44:35] Andy Polaine: All right. I shall put all the links in the show notes. You are at marzia. studio is your, is your sort of personal marzia.studio is

[00:44:41] Marzia Aricò: my

website. Yes.

I’m also on LinkedIn most of the time,

More than happy to have conversations there with

[00:44:47] Andy Polaine: Great. All right. I’ll put the words there and people can find you there. I really appreciate all the work you’re doing, your writing and the videos, you know, the, the elevated series is, is really excellent. I think it’s really important too.

Thank you so much for being my guest on Power of 10.

[00:45:02] Marzia Aricò: Thank you for inviting me. I had a great time.

[00:45:05] Andy Polaine: you. Bye.

Outro

[00:45:07] Andy Polaine: You’ve been watching and listening to Power of 10. You can find more about the show on polaine.Com, where you can check out my leadership coaching practice, online courses, as well as sign up for my very irregular, more irregular than Marzia’s newsletter, Doctor’s Note. If you have any thoughts, please put them in the comments or get in touch.

You’ll find me as apolaine on PKM. social on Mastodon. You’ll also find me on LinkedIn on my website, all the links are also in the show notes. Thanks for listening and watching, and I’ll see you next time.

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