Paul Stonick
The Pragmatic Punk's Guide to Leading Design
In this episode of Brave UX, Paul Stonick shares with us some of the lessons he’s learned in over 20+ years leading design teams at large companies, including the essential ingredients for enabling innovation in corporate environments.
Highlights include:
- What should new or aspiring design leaders focus on?
- How important is the language we use in enabling change?
- What are the enablers of corporate design innovation?
- What attributes and skills have made you an effective design leader?
- How did you calculate the estimated ROI of a design sprint?
Who is Paul Stonick?
Paul is a seasoned user-centred design leader and a self-described creative maverick. He is currently the Vice President of SCADpro, a collaborative design studio that connects current and future art and design professionals with business leaders to find creative and inventive solutions to real-world challenges.
Previously, Paul has held senior design leadership positions at Avon, Viacom, Dressbarn, Barclays Investment Bank and The Home Depot.
At The Home Depot, Paul and his team were responsible for the world’s fifth largest e-commerce site, as well as the digital extensions of that business, including the consumer facing mobile app, rated the #1 mobile app in retail by Forrester in 2019.
Transcript
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Hello and welcome to another episode of Brave UX. I'm Brendan Jarvis, Managing Founder of The Space InBetween, and it's my job to help you to put the pieces of the product puzzle together. I do that by unpacking the stories, learnings, and expert advice of world class UX design and product management professionals. My guest today is Paul Stonick. Paul is a seasoned user centered design leader and a self-described creative maverick. For the past 22 years, Paul has worked in visual design. 17 of those have been invested in e-commerce and 15 in leading world class creative teams, many of which have delivered highly praised award-winning work. In 2003, Paul took on a senior digital creative position at the then 142 year old luxury department store chain Bloomingdale's. There he was part of a special ops team of five who was put in charge of creating the company's first e-commerce website.
- Within five years, the team had grown to over 150 people and the website was doing over 100 million U S D and revenue per year. After Bloomingdale's, Paul went to Avon where he was creative director of the North American online division. During his time there, Paul led the team that launched the company's first mobile app, a massive change in the way that Avon representatives interacted with the company. Since leaving Avon in 2013, Paul has held a number of senior design leadership positions at well known brands, including Viacom, dress Barn, Barclay's Investment Bank, and most recently at the Home Depot, which is the world's largest home improvement retailer at the Home Depot. Paul lead the team responsible for the UX of the world's fifth largest eCommerce site, as well as the digital extensions of that business, including the consumer facing mobile app and experience that Forester Research rated as the number one mobile app in retail. In 2019, he's been described as a bought by his former colleagues as a positive role model and exemplary coach, leader and advocate and passionate about creating excellent customer experiences that serve both the customers and the business. And it's my pleasure to welcome Paul here to speak with us today. Paul, welcome to the show.
- Paul Stonick:
- Thank you so much, Brendan. That's an amazing introduction and I wanna be that guy you just described. Oh wait, that's me [laugh] so much. That was a wonderful introduction. Glad to be here.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Well, given the amazing things you've done in your career, Paul, you made that fairly easy for me. So it's great to have you here. And before we jump into some of the practice based areas that I'd love to cover with you today, I hear that you're a massive fan of Crowded House and that you actually met the lead singer Neil Finn. And for those of you that are listening that don't know who Crowded House and Neil Fal weren't born in Australia or New Zealand, it was a really popular rock band back in the 1980s and the 1990s here. So tell us, Paul, what was the story there?
- Paul Stonick:
- Yeah, now and thank you for bringing that up. And Credit House is one of my top favorite bands of all time. And I was first turned on to them in 1987 with their debut album that on popular on the radio and their big hit was over. But I had the opportunity to see them in concert at my college at Drew University in 1989. And it was very loose just in terms of how the band was setting up in our gym to play. It wasn't a very big arena, it was a college gym. Also an exciting experience. So in between classes, I wandered over to the gym and I'm just kind of milling around. There's no security or anything and these are different days. And Neil Finn just happened to be walking around and I walked up to him and I asked him for his autograph and he was very pleasant and I had it all these years that I managed to have it framed as well too.
- And it's a little bit hard to see, but I had it framed with one of their album covers and he was just genuine and kind and easy to talk to. I still have the ticket stub as well from that concert. Just an amazing experience and a funny story someone that I went to college with had this old early modeled Toyota. It was all beat up and old and painted by hand and she had all the members of Crowded House spray paint their names as autographs on the car was pretty cool. So one of my top bands of all time, they're amazing in concert and they still tour, still record not with all original members, but they're amazing.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- And that's high praise. I mean, if I remember correctly, you are from New Jersey and that's the home, Bruce Springsteen Whitney Houston, and several The Misfits. I mean there are many amazing artists that come from there. So it's great to hear that an Austral Australasian band is right up there on your hit list.
- Paul Stonick:
- Crowded house and Neil Fan are very underrated. Neil fan, in my opinion, is a guard among men and super underrated just in terms of his talent and his gift. So if you do have the chance to check him out and listen to 'em, please do. And for those people that know me as well, I'm a huge fan of Nxs being from Australia as well too. So that's right up there in terms of my top bands, including Kiss and other bands, [laugh] yeah, I can talk about that and nerd out about stuff like that for hours.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- [laugh]. Well look, I'll post a link to Crowded Houses albums in the show notes for everyone who's curious to take a look. Now while we're on the topic of music, Paul, I understand that relatively early on in your career you worked at mtv. How did you end up working at mtv?
- Paul Stonick:
- Yeah, so I started my career in 1998 at mtv and prior to that I had gone back to school to study web design and web development. So similar to your story, Brendan I really got my voice and decided what I wanted to do right around the time the internet got its voice as we know it. So when Yahoo came online, I got online, it's like, how did they make these pages? This is really cool, where did this come from? And so getting under the hood and being very self-taught in the beginning I went back to school and said, I need to get trained in this. And back in the mid to late nineties, it was hard to find a program in web design and web development just didn't exist. So being able to find that was actually, I was lucky. And there was a program near my house, so I went back to school and out of that I went to MTV and I saw a role there for a production designer and I applied for it and I went in and it was really in the trenches and honing my chops and working on MTV news and mtv, movie awards and digitizing videos, html traditional web design type of work that I was doing.
- And it was always something exciting going on at mtv Back in those days, these were the days of trl, right? Total request live. If you're not familiar with it, you're talking in sync. Britney Spears, Backstreet Boys, that was the big thing at the time at mtv. So there was always something exciting going on. And then even when I came full circle and went back to Viacom in 20 13, 20 14, it was really kind of the same experience as well.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- And that was, I mean that's a really crucial period in the evolution of the internet as well cuz it was this merging of the traditional in the digital world. How did that formative experience at MTV shape the trajectory of your career?
- Paul Stonick:
- It was early days for me in my career. So there was a lot of learning. So to be transparent, I didn't really know anything about anything at that point. It was kind of my really kind of big jump into corporate world. Prior to that I had graduated college with a degree in art history and a really wicked backhand. So I was teaching tennis for a couple years until I figured out what the heck I wanted to do with my life. So getting into the corporate world was something new and out of my comfort zone. So that primed me in a lot of ways what I was in for terms of my career directory and trajectory and moving forward what leadership looked like and emotional intelligence and being able to have organizational savvy presenting to senior leadership. Those early days were started at MTV and some of my earlier gigs as well too. So that kind of laid that path as I figured out what that corporate career would look like over the next 20 years.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- And it's that I suppose that experience, that exposure to how the corporate world worked, but also being able to draw on your previous life experience that has really set you up quite well for the leadership positions that you've taken on. And I just wanted to ask you about that. Is there something that, thinking about yourself putting the mirror up, is there something about even before you started ntv, the way that you see the world or the way that you engage with other people that really has stood you in good stead for those leadership roles that you've since had?
- Paul Stonick:
- Yeah, I think it starts with being authentic and being your authentic self and being transparent. And I think for people that know me, they're gonna get the authentic me and you're not gonna get anything else above that. And I think people can trust me from early on as well too. And that's something that I tried to build on early on with my team and to quote my friend Steven Gates, I build that from a emotional side and a practical side as well too, knowing that I am going to lean in and help you out and remove the roadblocks and from a practical side, I know I'm going to also have you show up and deliver and execute and ship and I'll be there for you as well. So developing that trust, my big thing, the bigger message when I think about my leadership style is really about emotional intelligence.
- And that's something I was turned onto back in 2003 when I was working at Bloomingdale's and we were required to take a course around emotional intelligence. I had never heard of it and was turned onto it through that course and through the works of Daniel Goldman. So if you don't know who Daniel Goman is, he's really the godfather of the concept of emotional intelligence and has written a lot of great books, follow 'em on LinkedIn, absolutely amazing. And that's something that has been through my career, a narrative all the way through about being aware of your emotions and how they affect you. Then also being aware of your emotions in the room when you're in a meeting and somebody is reacting and having a moment, making sure that you don't start amping up as well too, that how you can stay calm and have a decent reaction that's gonna be more productive in terms of that conversation. So look, as a boss, nobody wants your boss to run around and be yelling and screaming and dropping FBOs and stuff like that. That's not my style, that's not how I work and nobody wants that, right? So emotional intelligence is really about how you can be aware and be in control in terms of what that looks like in a room and for yourself. I would also joke that my emotional intelligence is much better at work than it is at home. [laugh].
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Well I can tell you my emotional intelligence is much better when I've had a good night's sleep.
- Paul Stonick:
- Yeah, agreed [laugh].
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Yeah. And look, this emotional intelligence has been a bit of a theme when I was doing some research for our conversation for the people that have worked under you and obviously they have said some of those things that I mentioned in the introduction for this conversation, but real, I really get the sense that they feel like you're in their corner. And I mean leadership isn't something that people always want. Sometimes they fall into it, sometimes they seek it out for you. Did you always want to be a leader?
- Paul Stonick:
- I think I was naturally a leader at that point. I was naturally comfortable being in front as well too. And if I go back to my tennis days and use tennis as an example, I was teaching 20, 30 people, adults, children, where I had to be in front and lead and lead a particular clinic or that particular lesson or that particular camp, whatever it was, I had to be in front and organize and be transparent and be authentic and make decisions or change and think on the fly as well too. So a lot of that was already established, but as I started getting into corporate career, bringing in that narrative emotional intelligence was really super critical for me to be able to deal with politics and some of the nonsense that goes on in corporate that we all deal with it every day at all different levels, no matter what it is. How can you actually deal with that? And that is so important as you try to think about leadership as well. So that was super important for me.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Yeah. I wanna come back to something that you said earlier. You mentioned Daniel Goldman's book or books and I believe emotional intelligence is the title of one of them. Have there been any other authors or thinkers in the space that have influenced your approach to leadership and developing others?
- Paul Stonick:
- There are really kind of four key books I think over the last 20 plus years that have influenced me. And I'll answer your question on the last book. The first one is Don't Make Me Think by Steve Craig, which is just 1 0 1 that you need to have on your desk if you haven't read it, it's still relevant today just in terms of basic UX principles the elements of user experience by Jesse James Garrett of course is another one that should be on your shelf. Sprint by Jake Nap of course in Google Ventures is amazing. We can talk about that a little bit as well when we think about design thinking and scaling design thinking at the Home Depot. And then finally, the last book has really influenced me the last couple years. And the reason why I'm so in tune with it and really resonate with it is that because it's very similar to the way my team was working at the Home Depot, the book is called This Might Get Me Fired, and it's by Greg Larkin.
- And it's written from a very kind of punk attitude as well, which is great. It's got a really direct, honest, authentic tone. And that's who Greg is at the end of the day. But it talks about innovation at large companies and rarely being authorized and how do you push innovation through when you're dealing with organizations or doing things the same way or politics or people or whatever it is. And a lot of things we're doing at the Home Depot were very similar to what Greg described in his book, just in terms of creating a secret society, finding like-minded people like me that were interested in scaling design thinking or talking about accessibility and bringing that forward finding that what he calls the Godfather or godmother, having that person or senior executive to help clear the roads for you to help have that road open so you can go in and make decisions and do things and get things done.
- We were doing a lot of that stuff. We were just using different language and we had that godfather in place. We had what we called a guild rather than a secret society. We were innovating, we were showing the outcomes at the end of the day. And one of my favorite lines from that book is that you present the outcome, not the idea. And that's what we're big on. It was about outcomes over output, right? Cause it's easy for somebody in an office to say, I don't like that idea. You can easily shoot it, they can easily shoot it down. But when you start presenting the outcomes and the impact and the value, then you start leaning into what they care about and it becomes a much more grounded conversation with senior leadership about what's working and what's not working.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- And that's fascinating. And I do want come to your time at Home Depot and leading the charge with design thinking and scaling that and also this notion of outcomes over outputs, which is something that I know from our conversations on LinkedIn before you're on the show that you're really passionate about that too. But ju just sitting with this leadership area just for just a little bit longer. So there, and this is a kind of similar conversation or a question that I posed to Ryan Rumsey, who I believe who was on the show last week. And that's for someone like yourself who went from being a design practitioner to a leader of other design practitioners and a design leader, what would you say to someone who's found themself in that position, maybe by chance or someone who's aspiring to occupy that position, what advice or essential ingredients or anything can you share with them?
- Paul Stonick:
- Yeah, that's great. And yeah, just to cap on a question you had asked earlier as well too, when you do enter that leadership path, and it could be either craft or people, whichever way you wanna go, those paths are terrific. But to answer your most recent question about early days of leadership, it's really for me it's about going to back to what I was saying earlier about being present, being visible and being authentic. You have to be able to learn, you have to be able to listen. And if you don't do those things early, you're not gonna build that trust. So you have to make sure that you're gonna present yourself in a way that you're accessible to your team and you have to be comfortable that you are gonna make mistakes. It's not gonna be perfect every single time. And when you are working with your teams, you have to tailor to the situation as well. It's not gonna be a one size fits all in terms of how you're managing and leading your teams. So whether you're managing up or you're managing sideways, you're managing down. You have to tailor to the situation and have that capacity to be able to run with it. So that would be early advice is say hey, be able to tailor to the situation, be visible, be present, be authentic. And that will certainly help you in your road of leadership.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Yeah, that's really great advice. So shifting gears now and talking about the time and your experience at the Home Depot, I mean you are credited largely with the scaling up of design thinking and it was through a particular method and design thinking called the Design Sprint. What was it about design sprints that really captivated you and made you wanna really get behind that as initiative and scale that up?
- Paul Stonick:
- I can't take all the credit. I have to share that with Brooke Catalin who I recommend you should have on your show as well too. She's amazing. And when I got to the Home Depot, she was already running the program of Designs Sprint, so along with Ryan Johnson as well too. And they were doing an amazing job at what we called squad level and just in terms of inline innovation. And I was already a big fan and I knew what I could do and I knew the output of it. It was absolutely fantastic. Low risk, low investment, creative problem solving for all. And you just need to take the word design out of the title of design thinking and that you, that's essentially what it is. It's creative problem solving for all. So when I got to the Home Depot in 2017 and recognized that this was already happening, said fantastic, said Brooke, this is all you're gonna do all the time you're promoted, I want you to do design expression design thinking and we're gonna take over Home Depot one design sprint at a time.
- And that was our mantra. How do we actually get it out of inline innovation, map it to the way we were working of this new kind of squad and community format where we had adopted the Spotify model of working, empowering others and creating the center of excellence around what that could be for design thinking and then scaling across the organization. So not only did we start within IX or interconnected experience, but we wanted to go to HR and finance and supply chain and all these other teams across Home Depot teams that we never even heard of or knew what they did. And it's like we need to work with these teams to help solve problems. Cause it's not only about a digital prototype, we were using it as a way to come up with strategy or process or organization, other things that weren't necessarily tangible.
- It's like we can actually have this type of outcome. So we were successful that way. And then also working with our Home Depot University, creating a custom course where people could come in and take a design thinking one class and I credit Brooke Catalytic and a couple other people from the team putting that together and working with Home Depot University to get people to come in and take the class. And when I first looked at the roster, I'm like, who are these people and where do they come from and what group is that? I don't even know what that is. So the word on the street was starting to spread that we were onto something and I was super excited about that. And not only was it within Home Depot but within the industry we started getting recognition as well too. So we got invited to UX Strat and Google Design Sprint conference, how design, we started getting invited to these big conferences to speak about the success we were seeing in terms of scaling across the organization.
- We also had created inline training as well too facilitator training for people that wanted to expand their tool set and wanted to learn something new that makes them more marketable or allows them to grow in their careers at the Home Depot. That was a new facet that we had added as well. And I think our vision had really culminated in early 2020 when we were tapped along with our enterprise partners to do a facilitation session session with our executive leaders. So elts in your room and corporate officers cut across different rooms. So no pressure. You've got your ceo, your coo, your cfo, SVPs in the room and you're talking about design thinking and pushing past the obvious. So if you just sit back and think about that for a second, this is where the secret sauce came in about changing mindsets, changing behaviors, how we can solve problems, a completely different mindset.
- So talking to my COO and telling him to pass past the obvious in terms of what we're trying to do here, that's a kind of difficult conversation to have. But you can see during that session the eyes light up, the magic moment hit, people were thinking in a different way and it was this hugely successful. So to have that type of success, to get all the way up to your ELT and facilitate sessions across big problems that were facing the Home Depot, I am super proud of that. And just one of the most amazing experiences when I think about my journey and my career.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- I mean that's really an example of what brave being brave and UX is all about is getting in the room with the C-suite and showing them the value that they can get from a methodology like that. And I think for people that are listening, Paul I mentioned an introduction that the Home Depot is the largest home improvement retailer on the planet, but just to put that into perspective for people, can you just give us some quick little facts about how large that actually is?
- Paul Stonick:
- So at the time it's about 450,000 associates. So that's not only corporate but also in store store and 2100 stores approximately across the US in Canada and Mexico. And it's 120 billion company that's with a B billion and the fifth largest eCommerce site. At the time that it was, there was about a 10 billion site. We had grown the business from 7 billion to 10 billion over three years. The mobile app at this point, just amazing size, scope and impact that we had at the Home Depot. And it's a company that's values driven as well too. And you hear about values and you see them on the wall of different organizations as well. But we had something at Home Depot calling Bleeding Orange. And that was really leading in terms of who we were as an organization leading into those val values. Whether it's taking care of our people or respect for others or giving back, those are things that were important to the organization.
- And then, which also aligns with what UX is about, you also have the inverted pyramid and at the top of the pyramid it says customers first and all about the customers. And when you think about what user experience is about, that's what we need to do. We have to think about our customers and create that empathy and understand those wants, needs and frustrations and behaviors. So the founders those were the best gifts that they gave us where just in terms of the values and that inverted pyramid, because the mantra was you take care of our customers, you take care of associates and everything else takes care of itself. And that's the beauty of the Home Depot. So amazing organization, amazing company. I'm proud of my time that I was there.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Yeah, no, it sounds really, really amazing. I wanna just come back to the effort to scale this within the organization now that people have a sense for just how large it was. You know, talked about being in the room with the C-suite as kind of the killer outcome that sort of culminated this whole effort that you'd been on to get it to that stage where you had that buy-in. But for people listening to this, they are also gonna be interested in the journey. Now I know when you are selling this, you mentioned to people across the organization, we talk about outcomes, less about process, but can you share with us reflections back on some of the highlights or the challenges that you experienced in the road up to that C-suite meeting?
- Paul Stonick:
- I have to say it's a rare experience because our road path was pretty clear to get there. So going back to what I was saying earlier, I was very, very fortunate to have a Boston place at the time, his name's Prat and he had cleared the way just in terms of what UX meant, the importance of product and socializing that all the way up to the top, creating this road for us to really drive a Mac truck through and say we can bring this forward in terms of how we're working. So like I said, when I got to Home Depot, the process was already in place. I just helped bring it forward and scale it across the organization. And there's a key story that I, I'll always remember, and this happened before I got there, but Brooke loves to tell this story as well too, is that there was a design sprint that was done around paint and the vision of paint and the future of paint and what that could look like.
- And it was so well done, the outcome was brought to CMO at the time and he looked at it and was walked through all the information. He's like, why don't we work like this all the time? Knowing that when you get to that eyes light up moment of saying this is amazing work and you did it in this time and low risk, low investment, it's a great story to tell cuz then you're showing the outcome, here's how it actually maps back to the bigger strategy. So I think one of the challenges we did run into though with design sprints, it wasn't all rainbows and unicorns of course as well too, and there's a lot of things to be proud of. But as we started doing more design sprints, questions start to rise as why are we doing a design sprint? Does this need a design sprint?
- What qualifies a design sprint? Why are so many people locked into a room for three to four days and so often, why aren't they working on these other things? So those are things we had to start addressing in terms of the day to day to make sure that we could actually defend why we're locking people into a room for three to four days. And so people aren't surprised by it at the end say, hey, here's what we've delivered, I didn't know about it, why are we building this? So those are the things we had to start addressing as well too. And then thinking about what's the return on investment when it came to a design sprint. So we were very fortunate to have two gentlemen that I work with that were in the strategy team within interconnected experience. These are former McKenzie guys and they brought a different way of thinking to the table that allowed us to start crunching down exactly what we need to do, figuring out opportunity cost and the overall investment in a design sprint.
- When you think about time and effort and logistics and things like that, we're able to really come back with a calculation and say here's what this design sprint value is at the end of the day working with our product partners to figure out the value of that particular feature or experience. Then also measure how much is actually going to launch, here's the digital prototype, but is that actually going live into production? So measuring that metric and we had an 82% metric of going live into production, we had a speed to market benefit as well too, where we were getting things out into the market 10 to 20 days faster. So once you start measuring those to actual numbers and outcomes and detail, that goes back to what I was saying earlier about the impact. Then you start talking about things that leaders care about. And I could start having conversations with my business leaders about, well here's the impact that's driving and here's the value of the KPIs or whatever that measurement is. Here it is and this is why we should be doing it.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- So it's almost like you were able to wrap an outcome calculation that spoke their language, the language of the business to justify the investment in doing the sprints, but also from what you were saying there, Paul, to determine what to run sprints for and what not to. So when you were speaking previously about scaling up design sprints at the Home Depot, I heard you describe a realization that you needed to change the language that organization, the organization was using to talk about what was going on. And in particular that was about failures being renamed to learnings. Now that to some people listening could seem to be a trivial change, but how important in your experience as a leader in design is language in either enabling or disabling positive cultural change?
- Paul Stonick:
- You know, hear the term fail fast all the time and that's pretty common through the industry, larger organizations, small organizations, but the way we positioned it at the Home Depot was more of a learn fast culture and it's just a quick switch in words. It has a much more positive outcome as well too. And just a positive frame of mind. So that allows you to move forward and say, okay, we learn from this, how do we iterate? It's not that we're gonna stop learn means I can actually take something away and improve on it. Fail fast almost sounds like it's a dead end even though you can't iterate and get better at it, learn fast just feels like it's more positive and I can take something away and put that back into the next loop and move that forward. So when you think about innovation within large organizations and what that looks like, you can actually start bringing that to senior leadership, right?
- Here are the outcomes and here's how we can innovate. And like I said earlier to Greg Larkin, innovation in a large organization is rarely authorized and sometimes you just have to take a risk, sometimes you just have to go and do it right? And there was an acronym I used to use all the time in different organizations where it's J F D I, just having to do it right because if you wait for approval or if you wait for this, it's gonna be 18 months, it's gonna be outdated and you'll be behind anyway. So sometimes you just have to take a risk and do it and ask for forgiveness later. But if you can present the outcome, then you're having a much more grounded conversation. Or if you can show the math at the end of the day, whether it's implicit ROI or relative roi, once you start having those conversations, then the innovation really happens, right? Because now everything opens up and you're able to move through and do something that's really different. And when I talk about innovation, I talk about innovation not just like a little bit beyond bau, right? If you're just doing something a little bit beyond bau, what are you really doing? It really has to be this eyes light, upper magic moment that creates a difference for the user. At the end of the day, that's who we need to be serving.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- And it's such a important point to make, isn't it? It's this alignment of people's understanding behind the words that you are using, whether they are the words that business is used to using or the words that designers used to using. But you have to find that common ground. And this is something that I explored with Ryan Rumsey as well and he, he's in completely in alignment with yourself about just how critical that is. And I just wanna come back to this notion of innovation is really approved within large companies and sometimes you just have to get on and do it. And one of the conversations I've had locally here was with a large supermarket chain and it was shared within a forum, so I'm not gonna name any names, but the frustration with that person was within that position of leadership was that covid. When that happened, it was almost like innovation was happening in rapid, at a rapid pace.
- Like people were reimagining supply chains, they were rethinking the customer experience, they were pushing out massive improvements to their apps and to their online experience within two, three weeks. Things that just the regular pace of business would never happen. And that's obviously a rare forced condition that has been placed upon all of us possibly not sustainable, but if we think about language and we think about other conditions that might be useful to enable this innovation to happen at the corporate or the really large business end of town, what else have you observed as being really critical to getting those gears going and getting people in that mindset of not just incremental but in those larger big step changes of innovation?
- Paul Stonick:
- I think empowerment and trust. At the end of the day at the Home Depot we were faced with a similar situation as well too. When Covid hit, everybody's gone remote and we were called flat footed a little bit just in terms of curbside pickup. This is a large endeavor to launch and while we had talked about curbside pickup for some time, we needed to get it out there because this was a human behavior now that we had to address. There was a change in customer behavior, it was expected competitors were get already had it in place, so how do we get there? And an amazing cross-functional team, it had to be 50 or more people involved in curbside pickup. It's not just about curbside pickup in the app, but you're thinking about logistics and supply chain and workforce and everything else. There's so many things to consider when you're dealing with curbside pickup up.
- It was really about getting out of the way and trusting your teams and letting the teams go. And we launched curbside pickup in seven days. Seven days. That's unheard of to what you were saying earlier. Things are happening at light lightning pace. I think if we didn't have covid that probably would've taken us 18 months to get out the tour, but to do it at that speed and we started small and that would be my advice to companies as well, that doesn't have that road where you can drive a Mac truck down. It's like you gotta take small steps to get there and start small and show those wins, those outcomes, the changes that you're making not only for the user but also to the mindset and behaviors of the organization and started to get that traction and tell that story. So starting curbside small with I think it was five stores and then we scaled to 10 stores and then we scaled out to a thousand then to 2100.
- I mean it just went on and on because we learned from what we were doing. Plus we were eating our own dog food and going to the local Home Depot and doing curbside pickup and what was working and wasn't working and it was actually a beautiful thing to see too because the empowerment was there. Even store managers setting up curbside pickup because all the marketing and the signs and everything out wasn't out there yet. Taking a homer bucket, putting a stick in it, handwritten sign, curbside pickup this way that is just great in terms of everybody rallying around the mission and the message that we are trying to do and take care of our customers. Going back to the inverted pyramid, which I was talking about before, we had to address this new human behavior and that's really the definition of an outcome at the end of the day. What human behavior are we affecting or driving that provides business value, so how can we actually prove that? And we were able to by providing this wonderful service and letting the team go and leadership getting outta the way, politics and all of the other stuff, just letting team go and decide and get it done. That was a huge difference.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Yeah, I mean isn't it amazing that the sort of unifying force that Covid had in these large organizations and their ability to get things done and I sense particularly in New Zealand cuz we've escaped the worst of the pandemic, there's a return to that normal mode and a bit of frustration from those leaders and those businesses that have perhaps more like a creative maverick like yourself that 18 months to get something done is just almost pulling the hair out, just wanting to get, wanting to get progress made. I wonder if there are any ways that you can accelerate and create that alignment and that urgency more quickly. But I haven't really come to any great answers there.
- Paul Stonick:
- I think it goes back to what we were saying earlier. I think if you can use either low risk, low investment methodologies to help you get there that can show the wind, that can show the value at the end of the day and take that small risk or small chance and do it in incremental ways to start getting traction and building that confidence like Lego blocks in a way as well too. That's stuff you have to start telling and telling that story up and telling it frequently as well too. So putting those slides together, telling the story, here's the actual outcome and then get into that frame of mind of translating that impact into what leaders care about. And I think that will help you get traction. You just have to build it incrementally. So starting slow, building on getting that confidence and then help that will hopefully get you more traction as you go along and more let's say empowerment or trust to do these things on a larger scale.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- It really sounds to me like you're describing the process that UXs use to understand users and have empathy for their needs and reflect back to them things that are gonna solve their problems back on the business and really using those skills to speak that language.
- Paul Stonick:
- It's the way I like to define user experience is not only about the satisfaction between a product and a user, but it's also about creating emotional connections. And that's so important when you think about how a person shops or interacts with a brand. When you think about loyalty and trust and connection or likely to use again or CSAT or whatever your measurements are, it's about creating these deep emotional connections with the customer. And I think one of the most interesting projects that I worked on where I really started to understand what empathy looked like and what's frustrations, needs and behaviors had to be garnered to pull together something useful for our representatives when I was working at Avon. And so at the top you had mentioned about your Avon mobile app which we launched and we actually launched that in eight weeks. So that was a pretty high bar to get something out the door in eight weeks.
- And it's funny, in Greg Larkin's book, he basically says if you can't ship in eight weeks, don't bother. So basically get it out the door. But it was at that point where we started doing research with our representatives and talking to representatives and listening to them and this is the way they were putting food on the table. This was their livelihood. And at that time Avon was a very archaic organization in terms of representatives using paper and catalogs and faxes and stuff like that. We were getting our butts kicked by Mary Kay and Orban and Sephora was innovating in the space even though it wasn't direct to consumer, they were doing a lot of innovative things in the digital space. So again, that very kind of maverick idea working with the boss who was the president of online, we need to get a app out the door quickly.
- And so listening to our customers and what they needed, that was that kind of turning point for me going back almost 10 years at the point at this point and in the early days of mobile, that was the big difference to say hey, this is really gonna make a difference in somebody's life and that is a human behavior that we can affect that is an emotional connection that we can speak to and create for these Avon representatives. So I'm super proud of that one too because it wasn't about the return and the speed we got it to market was about how we changed human behaviors. It was a changed how Yvonne representatives work, we modernized the workforce. That's a big cultural transformation within an organization.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- And it's interesting listening to that story as well cuz you've spoken again about a sense of urgency that you were able to tap into alongside the empathy that you were painting for the user, but you were putting it in context for the business about getting killed by your competition and that's also something that executives really understand and really wanna address. So there might be something in there for people listening as well. If you can associate your endeavor if it fits with something that's serving, solving an urgent problem for the business, that is also maybe a way of getting change to happen in that corporate environment at a faster pace.
- Paul Stonick:
- You bring up a good point because the work has to map back to the mission, it has to map back to the bigger strategy of the organization. So going back to what we were saying earlier regarding impact and having that grounded conversation with leaders, the work still has to map back to something tangible. So whether it's OKRs, o GSMs or whatever the measurement is, right? The work that you're doing within that strategy has to map back to the bigger strategy so that you can map it to real time numbers and impact. So if you can tell that story and show where that is driving, that's gonna make a big difference in terms of that story as well too. Getting buy in, getting trust, and then you can start telling that story at the end. This is how we drove the strategy through this particular experience. This has changed how we work. These are great things to talk about in terms of how you're changing the business, but how is it map back to the bigger picture and some sort of investment.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Now let's shift our focus into a particular area of innovation that I believe you were quite closely involved with at Home Depot, which was the consumer facing app and it was one of the first apps I believe to use voice search and augmented reality in the way that consumers were able to experience the product range and solve some of the problems that they had with identifying certain parts that they had to replace in their homes on the ground. What were the conversations going on about the adoption of this quite new technology in the industry in which you were working?
- Paul Stonick:
- The app team, first of all, I'm super proud of the app team, world class, product engineering, design, data science. Everybody that was involved in the app for the Home Depot super talented and did an amazing job and that's why it is one or I should say was the number one mobile app and retails rated by Forrester in 2019. It's amazing. But the thing about the app team in general is that they're very empowered. There was a lot of trust there and a lot of buyin in terms of what we were doing. So new features, for example, augmented reality, that was a new feature that was built as a exploration by one of my talented designers. It was something that he was kicking around and doing and presented that and say this is something that we can actually build into our app with AR kit. And he just did a couple quick prototypes and ideation using just different types of imagery and said here's what it could be.
- So taking that type of thinking, right, empowering and trusting the team to try new things and do different things, I would say certainly helped in the growth of it and adding new features. When you think about voice and image search way, findings amazing within it as well too. And that's primarily what's happening when you're in store as well too, is I can take you to the bay could take you to the aisle. That's the beauty of the app as well too. But even if you see any of the national spots running on TV within the US it basically starts here. I see somebody using their phone and they're figuring out they're using augmented reality or they're gonna change paint in their room or they're figuring out what part they need and they don't know what it is. Then that's driving the whole interconnected experience. So whether they're buying online or they have to go in store and pick up that thing, that was the beauty of the app because it was so embedded in terms of what interconnected retail meant and the bigger strategy which I was talking about earlier. That was the beauty of it and is just one of the most amazing things. And people that I talk to all the time say, oh I love the Home Depot app. That thing is amazing and it really is because it really solves a lot of problems for the user at the end of the day.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Paul, you mention you have a bit of philosophy, J F D I just fing do it and that really resonates with me, although I've always considered myself a bit of a maverick as well and that's why, and I'm an entrepreneur, but I can appreciate that when you're operating within a larger organization that maybe that carries a greater risk to your own career with it. When you do that, when you run with things and you sort of ask for forgiveness later, it seems like it's worked.
- Paul Stonick:
- Go ahead.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- I was just gonna say it seems like it's worked fairly well for you, that attitude, but have there been situations where you wished that you hadn't just fing done it?
- Paul Stonick:
- Yeah, [laugh]. So when I think about J F D I, it's about cutting through bureaucracy and when you get into large organizations it's everywhere and sometimes you can't escape it and it comes from all angles, but I use it as a way to cut through bureaucracy to get shit done. And it's usually low hanging fruit as well. It be like, hey, we need to know the license of this particular tool, J F D I go and do it. We need more freelance dollars to do this particular project J F D, just go do it. I will go too bad for you. That goes back to that emotional trust I was talking about earlier, that I'll remove the roadblocks, I'll take care of that and figure it out and if I get a slap on the wrist, I'll get a slap on the wrist. But we don't wanna slow down progress in getting things done when it's really just comes down to common sense.
- This is just common sense we're trying to cut through when we think about J F D I. Now there have been instances, for example, when I worked at Avon and we were building a site around baby clothes and baby items and things like that too. And I did a J F D I moment where I needed more people to help build this thing and I went way over budget just in terms of what we needed for design, but it was worth it at the end of the day. It was a fun site, it was cool, it was different and innovative. But that was one moment I looked back like, ooh, I may have gone a little bit too far cuz now we're tens of thousands of dollars over budget [laugh], right? But we figure out and I didn't lose my job over it and as the book says, this might get me fired, but sometimes if you're gonna fire me for that then we should have a conversation [laugh].
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Well it sounds like you've always developed fairly good relationships with your more senior managers, so that obviously helps if you do end up in a bit of a situation like that. Paul, if there was one thing that you could tell creative people that are working inside large organizations that would make them more successful, what would it be?
- Paul Stonick:
- I think that's a great question. I think you always have to be willing to learn and take feedback and it's always good to get feedback from other people as well. You need to look up every now and then kind of Ferris Bueller. If you don't look up you might just miss it. So you have to look up and take a moment and say, okay, if I take the blinders off and I think about things I need to get better at, what are those things? And being able to identify that you have that kind of reflective moment about what are my strengths, what are my weaknesses what do I stand for, where can I get, where can I get better? That comes back to personal brand and creating a personal brand for yourself as well. And that's something you wanna do early on in your career.
- Now your personal brand might be different five years from now as it is today and that's totally fine. It should evolve as you grow. Your brand should grow as well too, but it's what you want to become known for. And so if you can lean into that and create that kind of story or elevator pitch or knock out those four or five bullets, that's terrific because that will help keep you grounded. And then that will also help resonate to tell your story whether it's up or this way or wherever it is that you become known at a talent review. So if I go to talent review and I'm reviewing associate xyz, people should already know who that person is cuz they have this brand and they have this awareness and they've told that story over and over, they've been visible, they've been out in front.
- I've been able to help provide that as well. That will tell a much different story. So I should be able to go to talent review cuz you have this personal brand, you have this awareness. I shouldn't have to be able to, I shouldn't have to show one design slide, I should just show the outcomes and here's what XYZ delivered in terms of their value at the end of the day. So think about personal brand crafting that, what you wanna be known for, what you don't want to be known for as well too. That's going back and being reflective and thinking about your strengths, your weaknesses, and what you can bring to the table.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Yeah, I really love that focus. Again, you've brought on leading with the outcome over the process or the design itself. I think that's really key and that's definitely been a main takeaway for me from this conversation. Paul, are you up for playing a quick game?
- Paul Stonick:
- What kind of game is it? Brendan [laugh],
- Brendan Jarvis:
- You are the first person to ask me a question. I love it. I love it. So the game's really simple. It's called what's the first word that comes to mind? So I'm gonna say a word and then you're just gonna tell me whatever pops into your head.
- Paul Stonick:
- Okay.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Alrighty, you ready?
- Paul Stonick:
- Love it.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- The first word is design thinking,
- Paul Stonick:
- Problem solving.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Next up we have outputs
- Paul Stonick:
- Files,
- Brendan Jarvis:
- [laugh] and finally crowded house.
- Paul Stonick:
- I don't wanna use, Don't Dream It's Over cuz that's too obvious. So I'm gonna use a deep cut. It's called She, She Goes On Google it.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- All right, we'll put that in the show notes. [laugh]. Hey Paul, thinking about the immediate future of experience design, what are you most excited about?
- Paul Stonick:
- When I think about experience design in the future, certainly excited about 5G and the [inaudible], 5G and what that means for experiences on mobile phones and how we're gonna harness that technology and create these amazing things through our devices, right? Knowing that this is basically where people are gonna be living and some research that we were doing when I was at Home Depot in Asia, it's really mobile only at this point. We're not there yet. US is following behind, but eventually what will mobile only look like and how does 5G support that computer vision and what does that look like in terms of computers that can see? I think that's super exciting in the work that Amazon's doing. When you think about taking something off the shelf and putting in your card and calculating, I think that's exciting. I think voice interfaces as well too.
- It's becoming more commonplace where we're talking to machines and they're talking back to us and sometimes they're not always correct, right? But there is traction, there is research showing, right, that we're gonna be talking to machines more regularly. So how sophisticated will that be down the road beyond just turning on your lights and locking the door? So voice user interfaces and people that are involved with that. I think there's huge traction and opportunity there when you think about career or different way of using your design skills or thinking about content strategy as well. So those are three areas I'm particularly excited about.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- A lot of amazing non-screen based opportunities that are coming up for people in our practice area to get excited about. Paul, look, thank you. It's been such a great conversation today. I really appreciate you being so generous and sharing your knowledge and your experience with us, with our product and our UX community, and I really can't wait to find out what you're up to next.
- Paul Stonick:
- Thank you so much, Brendan, for the time. It was a lot of fun, pleasure being on the show. I thank you again for your time,
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Paul, for people that enjoyed our conversation today, what's the best way if they wanted to contact you to get in touch or connect with you?
- Paul Stonick:
- Yeah, feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn. That's where I live most of the time. You can follow me on Twitter as well but LinkedIn is the primary space, so feel free to reach out.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Wonderful. We'll post your LinkedIn and the show notes as well. Paul, thank you once again. And to everyone that's tuned in, thank you as well. It's been great having you listen to our conversation. Everything that I've covered with Paul today will be in the show notes, including where to find Paul, any of the books or other resources that we've mentioned and links to Paul's website. If you enjoy the show and you want to hear more conversations like this with world class leaders and practitioners and UX design and products, comment leaves a comment like the video, subscribe to the channel and we'll keep them coming. And until next time, everybody keep being brave.