Kevin Bethune

Episode 89
Brave UX

Reimagining Design: An Incredible Journey

In this episode of Brave UX, Kevin Bethune inspires with his incredible journey across engineering, business & design, shares how to keep calm inside of a nuclear reactor, and shines a light on design’s diversity blind spot.

Highlights include:

Are designers too in love with the future state?
Who is Reimagining Design for and what will it give them?
Where did you put your fear while working inside a nuclear reactor?
How does the designer’s mindset differ to the engineer’s?
What does only 300 black ArtCenter graduates mean?

September 6, 202201:15:24

Listen on:

Who is Kevin Bethune?

Kevin is the Founder and Chief Creative Officer of dreams • design + life, a strategic design consultancy that helps companies like PepsiCo, Nike, and Berkshire Hathaway, to bring a multi-disciplinary, human-centred and innovation-focused lens to business.

Immediately before founding dreams • design + life, Kevin was a co-founder of the strategic design & innovation capabilities at TWO top tier management consulting firms - Booz & Co. and the Boston Consulting Group.

Kevin’s journey to and through design has been quite something and has included becoming closely acquainted with the ins-and-outs of nuclear reactors and making the leap from a business role at Nike to designing record-breaking Air Jordan shoes.

Kevin’s first book, "Reimagining Design: Unlocking Strategic Innovation" was published by The MIT Press in March, with the forward written by his good friend, the legendary technologist and designer, Dr. John Maeda.

Transcript

Brendan Jarvis:
Hello, and welcome to another episode of Brave UX. I'm Brendan Jarvis, Managing Founder of The Space InBetween, the home of New Zealand's only specialist evaluative UX research practice and world-class UX lab, enabling brave teams across the globe to de-risk product design and equally brave leaders to shape and scale design culture. You can find out a little bit more about that at thespaceinbetween.co.nz. Here on Brave UX though, it's my job to help you to put the pieces of the product puzzle together. I do that by unpacking the learnings, stories and expert advice of world-class UX, design and product management professionals. My guest today is Kevin Bethune. Kevin is the founder and chief creative officer of Dreams Design and Life, a strategic design consultancy that helps companies like PepsiCo, Nike, and Berkshire Hathaway to bring a multidisciplinary human-centered and innovation focused lens to business.
If you're thinking that sounds pretty fancy, you'd be right, and Kevin has certainly earned every bit of that fanciness. Graduating from Notre Dame with a Bachelor of Science and Mechanical Engineering. Kevin started his career in the nuclear energy industry at Westinghouse Electric where he became closely acquainted with the ins and outs of nuclear reactors. I kid you not hazmat suits and everything! We're certainly going to spend some time talking about that. Seeking to develop his understanding of business, Kevin left Westinghouse and went to Carnegie Mellon University where he was awarded an MBA along with the Manufacturing Entrepreneur of the Year award and Enterprise Award with special distinction. Kevin then joined Nike, the iconic global sportswear brand in a business capacity. However, his curiosity soon led him to footwear design, where thanks to the mentorship of Dwayne Edwards, then Nike's head footwear designer, he would design the record breaking Air Jordan Fusion Eight shoe. Again, seeking new horizons
and to solidify his creative foundation, Kevin left Nike for a Master of Science and Industrial Design at the prestigious Art Center College of Design, where he now serves on the board of trustees. Kevin is also the Board Chair for the Design Management Institute. In his most recent chapters, Kevin was a Co-Founder of the strategic design and innovation capabilities at two, not just one two top tier management consulting firms, Booze & Co, and the Boston Consulting Group, also known as BCG. As Vice President of Strategic Design at BCG Digital Ventures, he led a large team of designers who influenced and shaped every corporate venture that emerged from the incubator in 2018. Kevin left BCG to carve his own path under the banner Dreams Design and Life. His first book, Re-Imagining Design: Unlocking Strategic Innovation, was published by the MIT press in March with the forward written by his good friend, the legendary technologist and designer, Dr. John Maeda. And now he's here with me today for this conversation on Brave UX. Kevin, welcome to the show.
Kevin Bethune:
Oh, thank you Brendan. Really appreciate you having me.
Brendan Jarvis:
Oh, it's such a pleasure to have you here, Kevin. And as we were talking about off Air, we had recently spoken together at Design at Scale put on by Rosenfeld Media, and we didn't actually get a chance to connect in person like we are doing now. So it is really great to have you here, and I have some serious doubts that we're actually going to be able to get through all of the amazing things that you've done and that you are still doing, but we'll see how we go.
Kevin Bethune:
[laugh], appreciate your kindness. Thank you.
Brendan Jarvis:
Kevin, one of the things that I discovered about you when I was preparing was that you, at least in the past have been a big fan of endurance running, and that used to be a passion of mine as well. Not so much now since I've become a father, but I was curious, how many miles have you clocked in your shoes this week?
Kevin Bethune:
On average, every week, I, I'm doing about 20 to 25 miles, so not as much as I used to in my youth, but I needed every morning to relieve stress and just sort of burn off the anticipation for the day.
Brendan Jarvis:
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense now because Kevin, you are one of the most calm people that I think I've come across. You just have this presence that everything is at ease. So to know that part of that can be attributed to your running is it's a little light bulb that's gone off for me. So Kevin, I know that running is clearly, it's been a passion of yours. You're still doing farm, farm anymore miles than I am, actually, I feel quite embarrassed. I don't think I'm at the right table here. And I know at Art Center you, part of your final project or what you were working on there with your masters was a device that was a wearable that was for runners and that it was to do with helping runners stay in tune with flow. What was that, a self-motivated project? How did that come to be? Yeah,
Kevin Bethune:
I think so when I came to Art Center College of Design, after my time at Nike, I sort of told myself, you know what, I'm not going to just go back to athletic topics. I'm going to try to keep my options open and keep my horizons expanded. And by the time though, you are who you are. And by the time the thesis rolled around, I just knew that my passions were sort of in the space of serving human potential, unlocking human capability. And for my time in Nike, just fully appreciating that sport is definitely one of those expressions of the purest form of human potential. And because I loved running so much, it's always been my outlet for relieving stress, feeling the endorphins. I told myself, how could I help running communities in general? And this is around the time where wearables were starting to come on the scene and I, I'd observed sort of Nike in the field band with that exercise or the rise of Fitbit and these kind of things. And this notion of quantified self sort of was part of the zeitgeist for all things wearables. But again, I found myself still running and wearing in watches or carrying my phone, and it wasn't necessarily the most intuitive digital experience. It actually interrupted my flow of the run versus helping me actually stay inflow.
Brendan Jarvis:
I totally know what you mean. Having used to run with an armband with my big phone on there, and you'd sort of be running along and you'd had to twist your shoulder to try and see what was going on. And then you gait all that's right, goes terrible.
Kevin Bethune:
Yeah, that's right. Exactly right. Or crossing traffic in the danger of that. So I said, what could be a more intuitive set of affordances, which led it to the device and the way to really streamline that experience
Brendan Jarvis:
And being centered around flowing. How often in a regular week do you reckon you'd actually hit that flow state in your run?
Kevin Bethune:
If I'm lucky, probably one or two days out of the week where I feel, wow, that was a good run
Brendan Jarvis:
For people that aren't long distance runners and haven't experienced that high. It is for me anyway, it's like running on clouds. Everything aligns in your body. You can dial up and down your pace at will. You actually, you feel as close to a God as I can possibly imagine. You would feel when you hit that sort of spot as that, what that's been like for you two?
Kevin Bethune:
Totally. Totally. There was a Runner's World article several years ago, the talk about a runner seeing the seven golden cheetahs on the horizon, [laugh] sort of like this heavenly moment where you're just one with the cheetahs running on the clouds. So that vision comes to mind anytime I hit flow in my run. Yeah,
Brendan Jarvis:
Yeah. Brilliant, brilliant. Just before, we'll come back to your time at art center, but before we do that, I really wanted to touch on a number of things, but one of them, which is your journey to design and InDesign, which is truly really, it's one of a kind. I know you could say that about many people, but your journey is particularly special, as I've mentioned in your introduction, you've just written a book called Reimagining Design, unlocking Strategic Innovation, published by m I t press. This book touches on that journey, and it's not quite what you expected as far as I understand when you first started, who is this book for and what is it that it will give them?
Kevin Bethune:
No, it's a really good question. And honestly when the idea of writing a book came to fruition, it had come from those recent career chapters of standing up design and innovation capabilities, especially in spaces that hadn't understood the power of creative problem solving. So it could have easily been another book on design business integration or another book that adds to the canon of design thinking all worthwhile pursuits. There's still plenty of books to write in those two areas, but I think when I started writing, we were wrestling with all things pandemic and the compounding pandemics of social justice sort of awareness and climate change and all these compounding things were happening at the same time where I couldn't help connect the overt stuff we were seeing in the media every day to a lot of the covert realities that we were experiencing every day in our personal and professional lives. And I found myself sort of going there. I couldn't help but go there to that personal lived experience, whether it's in the workplace or navigating my community and unpacking that. I found myself the writing process was a cathartic act of unpacking a lot of that stuff that had built up over time,
Brendan Jarvis:
That stuff that had built up over time and being in that space of the pandemic and with the unrest that was occurring, particularly in America, hopefully I'm not using the wrong term here, but the systemic oppression and racism that has been directed towards the black population for as long as the black population has been in America. How far to go with that? It sounds like you were riding a bit of a wave of your own lift experience, a bit of emotion. What sort of checks and balances did you have in place? Did you work with someone like John Maeda on that sort of role of just checking in and helping you to refine the message and how you were telling that story?
Kevin Bethune:
It's an interesting question. Upon reflection, there were definitely a few author confidants that I felt like I could go to. They created safe spaces for me. I was so honored that John, my mentor, my friend, allowed me to come into his simplicity series and write the 10th book in the series. And so my wherewithal to not want to bug John was sort of top of mind. So I didn't go to him for a consistent checks and balances. I wanted him to the final work and feel comfortable writing the forward, and I'm grateful that he did that. But actually, Kat Holmes, who wrote the previous book in the series Mismatch, she volunteered to be my author, confidant, someone I could go to and just share rough balls of clay, get impressions, and she was actually the first voice of encouragement to say, you know what? You're presenting a perspective here that is rich with practitioner frameworks and information to help people, help designers, but you are writing in a way that can shine a new light on design for all types of people. And ultimately, what I saw, how the book was making traction in the market and watching people post excerpts, I realized that the book is actually functioning like a mirror for anyone that's creatively curious, regardless of background. You don't have to be a designer to benefit from the book. It's for students, it's for business folks, technologists. If you're creatively curious and are wrestling with those curiosities, my hope is that my book can be that mirror to help you inform your individual trajectory as well as how you might influence your organization as well.
Brendan Jarvis:
You mentioned safe spaces and how, you know, have that author confident that provides that role to you. And you also mentioned that you could have easily have written a book about frameworks and applying design in a practical sense. And there are many books that have done that in the past, and like you said, there's still room for more of them, but you took a bit of a risk here. How close is the final product to the work that you envisioned that you wanted to bring to reality? How close to your expectation has been people's response to this book and the impact that it's had on their lives and how they're thinking about design, but also thinking about some of the quite salient social and other racial implications that have been brought to bear in this piece of work?
Kevin Bethune:
There's definitely always a tension in my mind of wanting to have the book enjoy it as by as many people as possible. And then on the other extreme, I feel like my job is done if one person, if just one person says, this book impacted me, it changed me, and I've had more courage, creative confidence, curiosity to move forward in my journey. If someone, and I've gotten messages like that, I am so grateful. And just getting those messages on a daily basis or weekly basis, the impact that the book is having because it pivoted to this very personal place I I'm over the moon in terms of the resonance and the impact that has on people. So to answer your question, it's far exceeded my expectations from what I thought would've been a project from the outset.
Brendan Jarvis:
People, if you're listening and you wanna get just a sense of what the book is, I believe you can go to the m i t press website, and there you can read an excerpt. I also know that on Amazon, the book is available and there is an excerpt available there as well. I definitely highly recommend that you check it out, and we'll be coming back to the book at some point in the rest of this conversation as well. Kevin, you've worked on nuclear reactors, you've designed Nike shoes, you've been a co-founder of a global design ventures business for a renowned management consultancy to actually two of them. How do you think about this journey? Are you a polymath or are you a hard worker, or are you someone who just knows, knows how to make the most out of an opportunity, or is it simply just good fortune? How do you post rationalize what this journey has been for you and where it's still going?
Kevin Bethune:
I think the best answer I can give is that I'm a very curious polymath. What's the say in good fortune favors the brave or whatever. I mean, I'm definitely imperfect human being, don't always feel brave at times. But at the same time, I can say I've been in situations where I've wanted to connect the dots in terms of the understanding, the bigger picture and my specific role in that puzzle piece. But many times feeling the resistance of, well, well that's fine, you have those curiosities, but know your place, play your role. And in a way, indirectly saying, play small play in terms of how we see you. But again, my curiosity is firing and wanting to connect dots and wanting to go explore and figure out how to investigate larger narratives, larger stories to unearth human possibility and opportunity and all these things. And so that actually leads me to certain convictions that I believe are important, that I'm willing to follow my sword for the sake of wanting to make the right impact on the human condition, on the world, et cetera, et cetera. And I want to keep going with that. So curious, polymath, the curiosity will beget definitely the hard work to wanna lean into the fringes. I'd be afraid to experiment. I'd be afraid to lean into the wind of resistance when people are uncomfortable with me doing that, and I'm never going to stop.
Brendan Jarvis:
So great to hear you say that. And I think I probably didn't do Kevin Justice when I did Kevin's introduction, you know, kind of give people a sense of who's coming on, but didn't really dwell on just how much intensity you must have had to bring to bear to do and achieve all of the things that you've achieved. And I want to come back to where people begin and where you began, Kevin, because I always like to give people a bit of a sense of just what that origin of that journey has been like. You know, grew up in downriver Detroit, and I haven't been to Detroit, I have been to the States, but not to Detroit. And I've heard you describe your upbringing as middle class now. I could make some assumptions about what that means and we could go from there, but I don't actually want to ask you about that instead. So when you think about Detroit Downriver Detroit growing up, what memory stands out for you that captures what that time was like?
Kevin Bethune:
I think down river Detroit, for those that don't know, it's definitely the southeastern metropolitan sort of region below downtown Detroit. And that was definitely, that area was home to many folks that work in the American automotive industry. So most of the neighbors were factory workers, business folks, engineers supporting these brands. And even within the city that I lived in, you definitely saw the extremes of perhaps the more affluent to the really perhaps destitute, you know, had a wide range for blue collar to white collar. And we were definitely in a middle class home. Both parents worked very hard to support us, three kids, and we definitely had our fair share of resistance where we were reminded quite repeatedly that we were not part of the normal culture of that environment. So these were predominantly white middle class neighborhoods. And so we definitely had a lot of friendships, a lot of good experiences in the school systems and such. My parents had a lot of friends from all backgrounds and graces, but every so often you get reminded you, you're the black family in the neighborhood and some may not feel like they wanna welcome us and they want to make that known. And so the innuendos or even the overt slurs in school, the epithets that you would find in workplaces and institutions like that, you would see that stuff, the graffiti, you would see that stuff. Our home was even vandalized a few times in the different parts of Michigan where we
Brendan Jarvis:
Lived. I understand that at one point you were the only black family living on the street and you recounted, I believe this was in your design at scale talk as well. You recounted being a small child and you've been very kind in how you've described this, but a brick coming through the window of your family home. And I just don't think that many people who of color have any idea what you've called it, resistance. That's a very polite term for it. I don't think we have really any sense of what that weight is like to live with and walk around with and go to school with and go to the workplace with. These were your neighbors, these were people in your community.
Kevin Bethune:
I mean, the brick was one episode, another was the N word being spray painted on the garage door, and my father purposely left it up so the neighborhood could see what was capable from their neighborhood, from their own neighborhood.
Brendan Jarvis:
Yeah, I'm speaking broadly here about the west, but we are very good and quick to criticize. And so we should as well uphold human rights globally. But we are very quick to forget just what a poor job we have done at home. This wasn't 1930s Germany. This was 1970s, eighties downtown Detroit. I wanna come back to your father. Yeah, I understand. He spent his whole career in merchandising and retail, and he is someone, at least from the very few things that I've heard you say about him, that you have taken some strength from. These are my words, not yours. And you have said about him that he embodied the spirit of the servant leader. How did he do that and what impact has he had on the man that you now are?
Kevin Bethune:
Well, there was memories of sort of take your kid to work day or you get to shadow your parents and see who their friends are in the workplace and on a few of those visits to his environment. And this was us navigating very large retail department stores and to see how people responded to my father as he's walking, of course, he's my number one hero, my first hero, my first example of what a man should be, that I was so proud to have that exposure growing up someone like him. But to see how people responded to him. There wasn't a situation where he was walking and they were fearing him because of his authority. This was actually the look on their faces, the body language, how they responded to him. They were definitely happy to engage with whatever he was asking them to do, but you could tell that they trusted him, that they were happy to serve him and not him.
It was more or less believing in the larger purpose of what he was trying to create as a runway for them to learn and develop and to be a part of something, part of the success of the store or whatever merchandising opportunity they were about it. They believed in the work, you could feel it. And they revered him, they trusted him, they adored him. And I remember as I got a little older going into my first jobs, he would often say, you can't lead anyone unless there's trust first. And you can only build trust by serving and supporting your teammate to the left and right of you, regardless of what their title is, whether they have a white collar, blue collar, doesn't matter. You serve your fellow human being in those moments and you build trust that way. And at some point you'll have opportunities to lead from there.
Brendan Jarvis:
Was your dad someone who also embodies the sense of control and calm that you do?
Kevin Bethune:
He has more of a humorous, funny personality than maybe I would ever have [laugh]. So I think humor is his calming sort of calibrator. Yeah.
Brendan Jarvis:
Yeah. He sounds like a really, really special guy. He's obviously had a huge impact on you. I want to come to center briefly again now watched your center alum profile video, and in that you spoke about having studied mechanical engineering at Notre Dame. Now that's a serious college for people outside of the US that don't know, I believe it's Ivy League or very close to, it's certainly up in the stratosphere as far as places you can go. But wasn't the choice to mechanical engineering wasn't the choice that you would've made under different circumstances? Was it?
Kevin Bethune:
I had creative affinities early on. I drew for hobby, but the idea of becoming a professional artist or professional designer that was just thousands of miles away from my worldview, especially in the heart of automotive country there. And so even though I had creative affinity, I didn't know that I could do that pragmatically. And so the next best choice was, well, I think mechanical engineering has some visualization faculty, some drafting aspects to it. I know I could draw a little bit there and maybe that's a first point to really dive deep.
Brendan Jarvis:
It was a pragmatic choice though, right? As well from what I gather. Yeah,
Kevin Bethune:
That's right. Right. Less of a risky choice.
Brendan Jarvis:
Yeah. Were you the first, if not close to the first in your family to go to college?
Kevin Bethune:
No. My older brother, three years older, he was the first in our core nuclear family to go.
Brendan Jarvis:
Right. Did he carry the weight of expectation then and you were able to to get away without that?
Kevin Bethune:
Yeah, a little bit. He definitely provided Sam merit cover and [laugh]. Yeah, [laugh].
Brendan Jarvis:
Now, when you were a freshman, so you get to this fantastic college, obviously got the chops to be there and you're doing your engineering. And I understand that you had some difficulty with math and that you spoke with a university advisor about this. What did they tell you to do?
Kevin Bethune:
And honestly, it's probably was more than just math. It was just whether it was math, chemistry, physics, those early foundational experiences, the learning didn't come as easy as it did in high school or years before. I honestly remember. It was so easy just to get the a's whether it was memorizing or it just came too easy for me leading up. But when I got to Notre Dame, it was a whole different ballgame and I realized there was deficiencies in how I was truly learning. And when it came time to visit the freshman advisor with your first round of midterm grades and some of those challenges in hand, not feeling like I was meeting the mark, the first position was, well, I'm not sure for you, maybe you should go do something else, like study business or liberal arts. And at the first sign of challenge that was the council. So
Brendan Jarvis:
You didn't hate that advice though, you
Kevin Bethune:
No, I think it ties back to the upbringing my parents believing in us, inspiring us to really go for our curiosities. And I knew I liked the intersections of math and science and visualization, whether it's drawing or drafting or 3D work. I knew engineering was speaking to me with relevance. I just needed to figure out how to learn in that world, learn better. And I ultimately decided in knowing that my parents, my family would whisper in my sort of the back of my head, you gotta do what it takes to figure this out because you are meant to pursue this meant for you deeply in your core. You just gotta figure out how to master the work that's necessary to get on the playing field.
Brendan Jarvis:
What'd you change?
Kevin Bethune:
Yeah, I think it was doubling down on ensuring that I didn't just memorize terms or I didn't just methodically plow through problem sets that I pushed myself to really understand the material did not just memorize, but to really learn and master and understand at a deep level how these paradigms were working so that no matter what question it was posed on an exam, I could figure out how to navigate because I knew it that well. I think it was just more of a double or tripling down of mastering the subject matter.
Brendan Jarvis:
So telling though, isn't it, it's often something that's lacking for us in our high school educations is that discipline around how to actually think about what it is that we are consuming as learners.
Kevin Bethune:
Totally,
Brendan Jarvis:
Yeah. That's such a key skill. And I wonder actually, just, I'm kind of going, not off topic here, but sort of occurred to me, I wonder what you're a father as far as I understand. Yes.
Kevin Bethune:
My son is 12 years old,
Brendan Jarvis:
Right? So he, he's at a very important, I mean every age is important, but he's at a critical age where he's about to head off to high school. How do you talk to him about his learning? What sort of things are you encouraging him to consider and to think about and stance to adopt to his education? How active are you in playing that guide beacon for him? For what learning can be?
Kevin Bethune:
Yeah. I think both my wife and I really try to encourage him to plan his day so that he's making most of the time that he has to learn or dive into his assignments to not be sort of reckless with how he spends that time, because the details matter. And then when it comes to learning, I want him to definitely not go through the same mistakes that I went through. So I'm always saying it's that enough to just quickly memorize. Cause he, he's fast scanner and he can totally memorize easily a number of terms or a number of ways to calculate a problem, but do you really know it, understand it? So just sitting with him, coaching him to actually read the full context, really appreciate, really digest it, articulate back before he starts a problem. What do you understand about this? How would you organize the problem before you start just calculating or attacking it? How would you think about arranging and planning your essay before you actually start writing? So when he does that, he finds that he's actually a lot more efficient and he has more time for fun things because he's been a lot more effective in the homework. Time
Brendan Jarvis:
And retention probably goes up as a result. That role of conversation and question that you're playing, it's such a key one, such a key one. So you obviously made it through mechanical engineering. You graduated from Notre Dame. I understand you weren't that thrilled with the opportunities that mechanical engineering was presenting you with, at least in from most companies and in most industries. And then you discovered nuclear energy. What was it about nuclear energy and specifically Westinghouse Electric that made it more attractive than some of the other things that were coming your way?
Kevin Bethune:
Weirdly enough, in my freshman year I think it was physics class, there was an excerpt around nuclear power in the physics book and it talked about longhand tooling and robotics and working with reactors. It was a short expert, but that stuck with me. And then when it came time for senior year and all these industries are coming to campus the typical pitch was, well, to do engineering, you're going to have to first learn our business. You're going to have to work on a factory floor under some foreman, shuffle inventory or move carts around, organize things, clean the floor, these kind of things. And maybe after eight years of doing that, we'll start to let you have some real engineering opportunities.
Brendan Jarvis:
It's unbelievable. Now you've just come
Kevin Bethune:
Eight years,
Brendan Jarvis:
Just come out of this wonderful college and this is what they're, they're saying is your potential for the next eight years. I can't believe it.
Kevin Bethune:
A lot of industries have this trajectory sort of mapped out of what you're supposed to do. And meanwhile the nuclear industry, who I hadn't even thought of since that first sort of moment in freshman year, but I got an email out of the blue Westinghouse was really bullish around new talent. The industry was actually bullish because they hadn't hired young people coming out of school for 10 to 15 years prior. So they were facing a knowledge crisis. They were fearing the brain drain of all these engineers retiring. So the door was wide open, come on in, learn from the best and really get a lot of credible experience early and often.
Brendan Jarvis:
Yeah, I don't know how, just thinking about that, I don't know how comfortable most people would be knowing that someone in their early twenties has so much responsibility for something that could go so terribly wrong. But clearly you were very capable and people around you and in that same position did a good job and definitely benefits in helping young people come through at the time into an industry that hadn't done its job in terms of recruiting new talent being inside a reactor is not a place that many people would voluntarily choose to be. It's probably the last place that most people would want to be. Where did you put your fear?
Kevin Bethune:
I think definitely from the education there was a respect for the science. And as long as I understood what was happening, and again, the expertise was there to really help me understand, aside from the media rhetoric around nuclear, this is actually how things work. Here's where you need to really protect yourself from harmful exposures. And as long as you do those things, you can actually have a safe fulfilling career and have no health risk associated with your time in the industry. So a ski day at the top of a mountain might expose you to more radiation from the sun than all of my nuclear career combined. So understanding the science and understanding the facts, I got more comfortable with the idea of working in that field.
Brendan Jarvis:
I think I saw a photo of you when you were giving a talk where you are in the reactor, and I'm probably not using the right words here, but you are standing there on the framing with some colleagues that's looking down into a reactor and
Kevin Bethune:
We were over the water surface. You literally, the rector is sitting at the bottom of this giant swimming pool basically, and the water is the shielding agent protecting us from the harmful radiation below.
Brendan Jarvis:
That blew my mind, just water in between you and this thing that could cause so much destruction to the cells in your body. I don't think many people realized just how finely tuned the sciences. But also you realized when you got in there and started being an engineer in this context that what they'd planned to build and what had actually been built, that wasn't a hundred percent aligned necessarily, was
Kevin Bethune:
It? Yeah. I mean, every plant that you enter to perform maintenance upgrades, whatever, these are architected multi-billion dollar structures, and the drawing sometimes doesn't match exactly what was actually fabricated in reality. So when you come in with a new set of tools looking to engage componentry that had been there operating 20, 30 years, sometimes things don't fit up exactly as you expect and you have to anticipate the contingency. So all that just gave me an appreciation of what it takes to deliver on the product promise under mission critical guidelines and really carrying forward the tenants from my mentorship, from my father around building trust and working with high performing teams that was on steroids in that
Brendan Jarvis:
Environment. I don't imagine there's many situations in the boardroom that phase you much, Kevin.
Kevin Bethune:
Yeah. The practice with stress is there for sure. [laugh]
Brendan Jarvis:
Getting a real sense now of where you get your calmness from having just recounted that story. Thinking about your experience as your polymath, as we were talking about, you've obviously developed your foundation and design and built on that in more recent years in your career, but how do you think the mindset of an engineer, the sort of typical engineer, if we can stereotype compared with, say, your typical designer or people that haven't had training across disciplines in those two things, how do you think that they differ?
Kevin Bethune:
Whether you believe a designer has a hand in articulating, communicating, visualizing a future state experience that we're creating? We're essentially creating the future. The engineer, I think brings a healthier respect for what is actually feasible. There's an appreciation for how the physical world actually works. Arguably the same as true on the digital side of things too, if you're a digital engineer of some sort. But that appreciation of how the world works and being able to unpack existing systems and then connecting that to how we can reconfigure, reimagine, or translate a different future state, I think that combination is incredibly powerful for my experience.
Brendan Jarvis:
Do you suspect that designers love for the future state and engineers appreciation for, sounded like you said, you sounded like you were saying the had a healthy appreciation for reality and what's possible within the current context. Do you suspect why engineering in say digital product-based businesses or services tend to do better with the business than designers do in terms of their ability to connect the value that they provide back with value that the business is trying to drive through the products and services that it's putting out there in the world?
Kevin Bethune:
Yeah, I think perhaps there's less of a, I hate to say the word, but naivete and communicating the hard knocks to the business world. I think engineers have a probably easier time of that. And not being afraid also to speak up to the challenges. We have a clear obstacle here. This technology will not work unless we do X, Y, z. I think the business world will appreciate that sort of answer and work with it versus, oh, there's a dream future state that I've envisioned. Believe me, this is more attractive than what you're doing right now. And that's a harder mental jump, I think for present day stakeholders that are immersed in a short-term reality to deal with.
Brendan Jarvis:
So not necessarily that designers need to completely become boring or completely less weird than they currently are and all their, and I am one. So all of our wonderful traits that we have, but that we need to develop a bit more appreciation for reality in order to have more influence.
Kevin Bethune:
I almost see it as a bifurcation in our brains. Yes, we have to build up our short term empathy, our pragmatic empathy for what the business needs to do and how are we actually being subversive with good intent to help the business be more successful? But I think that connects to the other side of our brain to say, we need to dream and come up with compelling visions that pull the business to a better place. And you gotta have a strong north star that can pull on the business and really challenge it to do better. And I think that imaginative spirit definitely designed as probably one of the most important advocates to really craft that story.
Brendan Jarvis:
You built your business foundation after engineering, you left Westinghouse and went to pursue an b A at Carnegie Mellon. I got the sense that you got a little bit bored of engineering.
Kevin Bethune:
I actually loved the product volition those cycles, and then looking at the cascade of work and saying, wow, that in five years time in nuclear, I felt like I got 10 years of credible experiences. So there were aspects about it that I really loved. I love working with high performing teams as well to get stuff done, but I just felt that engineering trajectories typically plateau. If you're a great engineer on a given subject matter expertise, the company is going to want you to do that over and over and over again. And many of my mentors, some of them, they were not rising in the executive ranks. They were doing the same things for the last decade or two in some cases, and they were the trusted go-to. But was that enough for me? And meanwhile, my curiosity is wanted to connect the dots to entertain how as an engineer could I participate in strategic conversations. And of course, I lack the business acumen to have those conversations, but again, curiosities we're pulling in that direction.
Brendan Jarvis:
Yeah. Yeah. So you did this mba, and I'm just going to quote you now cuz you said something really interesting about your experience there. So here's the quote. You said, I'll be honest, the business school environment, while it was rewarding to step into a two year career refresh, there were a lot of voices and you went on to suggest that you felt like your inner voice was dying or at least being drowned out a little, and that there was a lot of career pressure that came on for smart people like you to go into banking and finance. How did you know that trajectory wasn't the trajectory for you?
Kevin Bethune:
I think while I respected the subject matter of learning the business acumen from finance, accounting, all these different lenses that I was experiencing for the first time, I found value in that. But when I started talking with companies in recruiting conversations, I could tell maybe that trajectory that they were envisioning, the career pathing that they foresaw for candidates like me, it just wasn't resonating. It wasn't pulling my heartstrings. And honestly, some of those interviews, I could tell that the person across the table probably sensed that I wasn't completely convinced that that was right for me either. In those conversations that kind of came out, the truth would come out. So I think thankfully it might have taken a year and a half into the two years, but I started to listen to my gut a little bit more and say, what kind of companies have environments that blur the boundaries a bit more entrepreneurial thinking, allow me to leverage who I was before the MBA and what I might wanna learn moving forward that's beyond the mba. And it was companies like Nike and Apple and those kind of companies came into the mix. Yeah,
Brendan Jarvis:
I understand you had a very pivotal moment at a career fair. Yes. Where Nike was kind of hiding out on the back corner and you came across them and you walked up to the guy and how did that conversation go?
Kevin Bethune:
Yeah, it was one of those it was a national black NBA conference. You can imagine hundreds of booths, thousands of would-be candidates hoping to get conversations with companies. And hilariously, the Nike booth was one of the smallest booths there. And the swoosh was probably no larger than my smartphone. It was so tiny, but it was like Nike's here. And I just went off into a corner and just got myself together before I approached that booth and said, I know that they're tired of hearing from all these thousands of candidates. Oh, my favorite athlete is X, Y, Z person and I wanna work for your brand so badly. That's not going to sell the person that there's any resonance. But I thought about my story, Hey, I came from a product univers engineering. I want to add this business layer, but I also want to go in an environment where there's this creative sort of collision happening as well. And maybe there's a mutual of mutual learning that could be had. So let me articulate that storyline to the person. And when I did, and he was like, when I first walked up, he was not saying, hello, nice to meet you. Not extending his hand. The first thing he said was, why Nike? Very gruff. Very to the point. Hey, cuz you could tell he was tired of the same.
Brendan Jarvis:
Yeah, having the same conversation 400 times.
Kevin Bethune:
Yeah, just right on his whole person. He was tired of it. And after I made my sort of two minute pitch, he handed me his business card and let's just keep in touch. And I was so grateful for that moment. And sure enough, I touched base with him every quarter, let him know what I was working on, asking him about his realities as well. And he eventually offered me an opportunity to interview with them.
Brendan Jarvis:
It went pretty well, didn't it? Yeah.
Kevin Bethune:
Yeah. Can't complain. I'm very thankful that he gave me that opportunity.
Brendan Jarvis:
You started in a business capacity, but that didn't last very long.
Kevin Bethune:
Yeah, I started as a business planner, typical MBA job, [laugh], supporting investor relations, wrestling with the financial and operational realities of different business segments. By meanwhile, I was networking, Nike being the collegial culture, that it was common to have coffee chats. One person would kick you to two more people to have coffee with. And that led me to meeting a lot more product folks over time and eventually turned those coffee chats and the stretch assignments to show people what I was made of.
Brendan Jarvis:
What if I don't ask you this? People aren't going to get a true sense of what a stretch this assignment was for you to go from being an MBA business role into, as I mentioned in your intro, designing award-winning or record breaking SA sales level shoes. This is, again, it's easy to gloss over this stuff, but just what kind of extra effort on top of your regular day job were you putting in to secure this opportunity?
Kevin Bethune:
And I think that's the first big meaty stretch assignment was with the Jordan brand. I met Joanne Edwards, it was one of those, he gave me half hour of his time and he saw that I was hungry, I was curious. He saw the rough drawings I would do for hobby. I was still drawing for hobby for my whole life. And he saw some of that stuff and he said, Hey, you actually have some raw creative skill. He's like, if you want, I'll give you a chance. I have too many briefs, not enough designers if you meet me in the mornings. So he was one of the hardest working people I remember in the Nike environment. We would meet together at six in the morning in his office, commiserate. We would go do our day jobs and then I would work on his stuff to the wee hours at night and two or three in the morning and then six in the morning the next day, rolling, show him what I had achieved.
And he was giving me hard feedback, what worked, what didn't work, what I needed to go redo. And then he started inviting me into the product reviews, the design reviews with the Jordan team, which was very intimidating when they were looking to review my shoot, my design proposals, Mika sliding my sketches across the table for this room full of people to lean over and see was extremely intimidating. But I had his support, I got the right feedback. I would come in consistently with new rounds of iteration and all of a sudden my shoes are part of the line plan. And eventually my shoes did really well when they launched in those seasons. So I'm grateful that he gave me that opportunity.
Brendan Jarvis:
Do you still speak with him?
Kevin Bethune:
Yeah, we're friends to this day consider us still. I consider him still to be a mentor. We're always supporting each other's ambitions. Now that he's beyond Nike, he's now doing great things with pencil, now, pencil, Lewis College. But we're big supporters of each other for sure.
Brendan Jarvis:
Does he still give you hard feedback?
Kevin Bethune:
[laugh] a very honest friend and mentor for sure.
Brendan Jarvis:
Yeah the best kind, the best. You made this leap, right? But it wasn't smooth sailing. And I've heard you say something else and I'll quote you again. Now, you said, for every one person that gave me the time of day, I had 99 people saying, you're a numbers guy, we just don't see you playing over here. What are you doing? Why did you refuse to accept the limitations that other people were placing on you and your potential?
Kevin Bethune:
If I'm honest, I probably did listen to some of them in the early outset. When you first hear that feedback, it's difficult to swallow. Maybe this, maybe they're right, this isn't for me. But then it's like Duane has me coming back to his office the next morning. I still need to show up and satisfy Duane's requests. And then the Jordan work opened up other doors where I were, was able to help other Nike categories. And that work wasn't supposed to, that work still needed to be done. And I was able to produce the evidence that satisfied the stakeholders requests and people were happy with my work. So all of a sudden I'm feeling that I could create the evidence necessary to convince myself that I can do this. Ultimately. And I think also as we mentioned earlier, the convictions, when you see evidence like that, the convictions get stronger. And then also outside of Nike, I'm seeing the world change to really embrace the intersections between design business and technology. Apple's coming on the scene hot and heavy with its ecosystem, physical iPod software, iTunes universe, and I saw a little bit of myself in this growing convergence and the convictions just kept getting stronger and stronger. Whereas what I know I'm supposed to do this,
Brendan Jarvis:
I just can't help but think back to that same conversa or the similar conversation you were having with your advisor at Notre Dame, right? There's a bit of a theme building here. People, if you're paying attention, you might have picked up on this. So you know left a wonderful job at Nike again, like you've got this history of almost being restless with your own curiosity and wanting to take things to that next level. And you went to Art, went to Art Center where you did your masters and it was an industrial design, masters of science as far as I can tell. And you are now on the Art Center board. This is a top tier prestigious design school in the world, but definitely in America and in its 90 year history, there have only been 300 black alumni. And that puts you in rarefied company considering that Art Center graduates or at least appears to graduate 300 students or so a year. What does that mean?
Kevin Bethune:
It definitely is sobering when you realize it's that little traction when it comes to diverse candidates coming through the pipeline. It says that there's a problem for diverse folks to see Art Center as a viable avenue for them. Again, it could be sort of deemed as very exclusive and almost like a conservatory on top of the hill that's unreachable, it's unattainable. So there says there's a lack of messaging to young kids in school systems that design could be for them. And yes, you could actually make it if you work hard, you could make it at a place like Art Center. But unfortunately those narratives aren't cascading down to everyday folks, especially marginalized folks in those neighborhoods. Also, unfortunately, there's still just a dismally low representative population of practicing designers out there too. So those young people are not seeing examples of themselves mirrored in the marketplace either, which is also very sobering and disappointing as
Brendan Jarvis:
Well. You have previously criticized the field of design, and I'll quote you again now, saying design has an ivory tower problem. The existing and most celebrated pedagogies have been articulated and codified by a very privileged few. It's not a reflection of that beautiful tapestry that is the world and its full diversity. Now, as designers, we like to think of ourselves as being inclusive. This is perhaps a blind spot for us, like a big blind spot. And I touched on the, and I think you have in the past as well, I think you were probably even involved in it, that A I G A census, the last design census that came out. Now, the figure that stuck with me and that I mentioned in my talk at design at scale is that only 3% of the designers, the nine and a half thousand designers that responded to that identified as black. And I then looked at the US census, the general census and the black population in the States is roughly 12 and a half percent.
Kevin Bethune:
That's
Brendan Jarvis:
Right. That's a magnitude. That's a magnitude of difference away from just having representation at the level of the general population. Have we got a problem here in design? Do we have a massive blind spot that no matter what our rhetoric is that we are just failing to address? How can we reconcile such a massive gap?
Kevin Bethune:
It is an appalling blind spot, and unfortunately it is taken events like the summer of George Floyd and all the jarring, overt stuff that colored our last couple years, even though the black community has been saying these things for centuries. So again, we're in a wave of awareness right now, arguably last couple years. But I think it was fine for the design industry to say, oh, it's fine. I'm inclusive because I'm designing for these people whether I'm designing shoes or blenders or microwave ovens for these people, I'm designing for them. And there's a myopic attitude there, a lack of humility to say, do you really know what those folks need? Or are you just shoving products for them to consume? You only care about them as consumers, which essentially makes you sort of a scientist with a clipboard studying people like lab rats. You're not really empathizing.
You have the compassion, you're not meeting them at their level, you're not inviting them into the party to cook. And even designing with isn't enough because still I can claim to co-create and immerse with you, but then I'm going to go right back into my, I'm, I'm being facetious when I say this, I can hop into my Porsche and go back to the office into my bubble again and make decisions without those people. So why can't our future state teams actually mirror the world in terms of representation so that we actually have authentic people that are representative of those communities, speaking for those communities or bringing the team back into those communities where they came from to really engage in an authentic way versus a lot of the resistance that I felt where the prestigious design firms might look at me as a candidate, I'm not sure this is for you, or you don't look like my design studio. You're not wearing the black turtleneck the way that we wear it, or you're not listening to the music that we listen to and who we'd like to go have beers with after work. You're kind of different. We're not sure.
Brendan Jarvis:
Are these inferred or are these explicit explicitly said to you?
Kevin Bethune:
Combination of both. And then it's not just me, it's also my black peers in the industry, or we've found design through weird atypical paths and we share notes with each other.
Brendan Jarvis:
I hesitate to say this, but you are now part of the ivory tower. What are you doing from within its walls at art center and more broadly through the influence that you have in the field? You're on a number of other boards and initiatives here. What mountains are you trying to move here and how are you doing that?
Kevin Bethune:
It's funny my friend Dr. John Maeda [laugh] sort of tapped me one day and said, have to remember like Muhammad Ali didn't just tear down the world of boxing to make a name for himself and then ultimately to become a beacon for all things social injustice, the activism that his platform represented in a corrupt world of boxing. He was able to navigate to the very top of that and then use his influence in a major powerful way. So part of me believes in there's a lot of things that need to be torn down and built back up again. Reimagined completely erratically in some cases. But at the same time, I also know pragmatically that there's certain platforms, infrastructure precedents, that are going to take a long time to unwire. And so while those platforms are actually so intertwined in our everyday makeup, learning how to navigate them to create space, to advocate for those hidden voices, to create opportunities, I'm a big believer that I can't just do my job and if I'm the only one in the room, that means I failed.
But I need to be conscious of who can I bring along with me, what communities can I be a part of to show them the work that I'm a part of or shine a light on other people doing great work so that they can see that and let's share with each other. Let's actually practice some eminence so that we can learn from each other and realize that we're not alone in this journey. And then let's go shine a light and provide mentorship and exposure to the next generation That's coming up watching all of us as examples.
Brendan Jarvis:
Do you think that most companies see diversity as a social problem that needs to be solved or as a risk to their profit and loss that needs to be managed?
Kevin Bethune:
I sort of see it maybe along the tier of number one. I honestly, I hope to believe that the large part of our humanity, our human collective cares about doing the right thing and they want to feel like they're invested in that pursuit. But to our earlier arguments the business world has a huge appalling blind spot in this regard. And you're already late. I would say that to most industries, you're already late and that blind spot that you have is now actually eroding and risking your business because people's value criteria is constantly changing. And especially over the last couple years, it's changed overnight in some cases and you're already late to be able to respond to the demographics that are going to be very important to your bottom line moving forward. And they don't wanna just be a lab rat or a consumption engine for your business.
They wanna know that you're in it for their benefit, for their wellbeing. And if you're not able to prove that, I think people are waking up to these realities and sharing receipts with each other. I can get on Twitter and see what your employees are saying about the insides of your company quicker than you think. I can see what your customers are saying about your brand faster than you think to get an assessment of how truly committed you are or if you're just doing lip service and being very performative. And unfortunately, most companies fall into the performative category, if we're honest.
Brendan Jarvis:
Companies are often held up as our beacons of innovation and contrasted against government as I suppose the laggards when it comes to change. Yet listening to you describe the current state, it very much sounds like the corporate world is being responsive and has been caught with its pants down with regard to such an important social change that is undergoing and that we are, we're currently living through. It almost to me. I mean, I don't know how you think about this, which is Well, I'm going to get to a question in a second, but just how alarming is it that unless we see the events that we saw in 2020 and had been happening for, let's be honest, had been happening for forever? Since that as well. Yeah. That were just being will willfully ignored. Yes. What does it say about our institutions, corporate or otherwise, that it takes something so graphic and so unignorable and so wrong for us to respond? Why does it take that which we all saw and still is burnt into our brains before people start to really take action?
Kevin Bethune:
Unfortunately, the precedent is about that desire to win at all costs, win in terms of, call it greed, call it the supremacist notion of wanting to win at all costs at the expense of human beings. And I say that not from the overt stuff. I say that more from the covert stuff of you're fine not listening to large swaths of people that represent our makeup of society. You're fine driving into a path of privilege and while realizing that several miles away there might be someone experiencing a case of police brutality cuz it doesn't affect your world. You're fine being a part of an engine that's going to satiate your desire for wealth and dominance and supremacy. So unfortunately, I think even since 2020 there's been a boomerang back where this is 2022. You don't see as much corporate energy around these issues, even though it was so graphically depicted in 2020 where a lot of companies were saying things and you hardly see any of that.
So we're almost in this booming cycle of a reversion, of a hesitancy to talk about that stuff anymore. And in some cases, some companies have doubled down on the opposite position that that's political talk. We don't discuss political stuff at work. Don't bring your full self to work. We only want your work self. And it's like, no, this is not politics. 2020 was about right or wrong, human condition, violation of someone's humanity several times over and you don't wanna talk about that stuff. You don't want to have an open conversation with the people that are clearly being affected by these continuing acts of tragedy and how they have to swallow that and come into work every day. You're telling people to stop talking about those things. So all that to say is that I think we have the cycle of performative behavior followed by resistance to dealing with some of these issues and over and over again we go,
Brendan Jarvis:
There's a word for that behavior of avoiding engaging in this topic that comes to mind for me. And that's cowardice.
Kevin Bethune:
I think you're right.
Brendan Jarvis:
Are the hierarchies that we create in our endeavors, whether they be in government or through business, are they effectively creating a zero sum game here? Do people, and I mean particularly white people in the west, do we have to start acting against our own self-interest and proactively give up our seats? Is that the solution? Is it that drastic? Or is there something that I'm not seeing and that people aren't seeing as a way of actually addressing this fundamental social problem that we have created and continue to perpetuate?
Kevin Bethune:
Yeah, I think as you characterize that question, I definitely see in my mind too, ends of the spectrum, zero sum game clearly, or a flourishing of opportunity for everyone. And I'm definitely of the camp that leans to, there's a latent opportunity to really flourish where we can all benefit if we open our eyes and say like how do we mirror the marketplace, mirror the mosaic of humanity, ensure that our teams are a representative, that we allow people to bring their whole selves to their organizations that they're a part of. And that will be less biased, we'll have less blind spots. We'll create enormous business opportunity if we do that. Hopefully a responsible, respectful opportunity at that. In the short term though, as part of a strategy to eventually get there, if I'm a corporation, my whole C level is, and the couple layers below that C level are all white males, for example. You might have to make some concessions to say this is just a mismatch or mismatched and we need to fix it. And there might need to be some short term interventions that are perhaps painful to navigate and for the need of inspiring bold change that might be uncomfortable for some people. So I think we have to reckon with that as well.
Brendan Jarvis:
That was Kevin, that was a very diplomatic answer suggesting that it's both, both of these things need to happen. I think so. And much more towards the compelling vision of the future that you painted with greater opportunity for everyone. But I suppose my concern if that is the only not criticism of your vision, I think it's a wonderful vision and definitely where we should be heading. But I can certainly see people becoming complacent with that if that is the only thing. Yeah. That is in their mind. That's right. Wouldn't it be nice one day if, mm-hmm. It'd be very easy to ignore the reality on the ground currently, the work that has been done in some corporates. You were talking about how there was more leaning into this issue around 2020 and perhaps we are boomeranging a little bit away from it currently, as the lens has gone on, what's going on in Ukraine and the media sort of shifts where it puts its attention. But the work that has been going on at the big end of town, so our big multinationals, our corporate end in business, do you see this as work that has been striking at the branches or at the root of the issue?
Kevin Bethune:
Unfortunately, I think the majority of observation skews toward the branches. Who's going to be bold enough to say, as a corporation, how are they feeding into some of the systemic paradigms, the systemic threads of inequities? What political movements are they actually endorsing with their deep pockets?
Brendan Jarvis:
Fine, don't bring your whole self to work. That's politics. Let's not go there. But completely ignoring the millions if not billions of dollars that get poured into lobbying Washington
Kevin Bethune:
And
Brendan Jarvis:
Every year by
Kevin Bethune:
Corporates. And what fueled some of the balance sheets of somebody's companies and from their very start, the very origin story of a lot of these multinational corporations, did it have ties to slavery?
Brendan Jarvis:
Yeah, you're going to make a lot of people very uncomfortably and rightfully so. Mm-hmm. Easy for us to look at corporates and we should look at them very closely and we should scrutinize their behavior and their origins and what they're doing and what they're not doing. And again, I talked to you about this fair. So I come from New Zealand, I live in New Zealand, I'm a white guy that lives in New Zealand. I'm not on the ground in America. I don't have a front row seat in the American play that's being played at the moment on stage. I'm not there. But what I do wonder is we have our own issues in New Zealand, which I won't go into cuz it's not the focus of today, but how much of this is, is actually way more fundamental than our expressions is as humans in the corporates and the organizations that we create and more about the way in which we govern ourselves and that we have chosen to legislate and live in community or not with one another. How much of this is actually the root of this problem that we have? How much of this is actually a result of our failure
To govern ourselves in a way that works for all people?
Kevin Bethune:
I think whether it's the corporate arena or how governments have been wired to ideally serve their people, the wiring is so incestuous with each other, with either side now and even through history. But we're a country, if I speak for the United States, we are a country that has never really dealt with the nation's original sin and how the institution of slavery has affected nearly every single institution policy mandate law. Now granted certain rights have been bestowed over time, but there hasn't been a full appreciation of the original sin nor respect for how deeply the threads go down to the root system of what has informed many of the spaces being the way they are by their design, by their initial design. We talk about founding fathers, we hold them up all the time for the initial genius that was deemed to be the American promise, but it wasn't for everyone. And many of those same authors were participating in the institution of slavery. So until we're honest about those things, I think unfortunately these paradigms will continue and corporations will have free license to continue to participate in these engines and act in their own best or self-interest without, again, to your earlier point, addressing the root. It's just performative stuff on the branches.
Brendan Jarvis:
I want to bring this back down to you and your experience now, cuz I know that this informed a lot of what re-imagining design was about. You've spoke a number of times in the past about not seeing very many people that look like you in the lanes in which you've been swimming. Even at Nike, this is a thing now, this has actually really got to me because you said even at Nike, when you think of Nike, it's sponsorship of black athletes and how active it has been in getting its voice out there on this issue. Even at Nike, you were one of a few and you've said, and I'll quote you again now you've said, it just frustrates me that I don't see more of me of people of color in design and innovation has been surrounded by people by and large aren't black. So probably people that look quite like me, to be honest, forced you to make unfair compromises. Have you had to hide part of yourself in order to fit in with the other people that you've predominantly been working with?
Kevin Bethune:
No, absolutely. As I remember those experiences, there was an emotional text and emotional labor on top of the work itself where I was always conscious of I'm clearly different in this room, what do I have to do to make this room feel comfortable with me? And then when we're all trying to contribute equally around the table, I just noticed that whether subconsciously or consciously, most of the reaction I would get to any contribution was very like, oh, I didn't understand what he said, but someone would say the exact same thing five seconds later and they would latch onto that as if it was a great contribution. And it was just like, there were so many episodes like that every single meeting, there was always that psychological warfare of just being heard, just being seen, just feeling like I was an equal contributor and feeling welcome to do so.
And I remember many personalities that were just like, they had their mind made up before I could say anything, but they were going to be my my detractor. They were going to be my protagonist just because of who I was in the room. And that was the experience for many of my black peers where we just found it difficult to where we were being tolerated, we weren't being included, not just Nike, but if we use them as an example, I mean their success is orbiting around black culture as the engine and to not see it represented up high is still disappointing. I of course have fondness for the brand. I've still mentors and advocates that I keep in touch with there, but I'm still just emotionally disappointed because there hasn't been a level of traction that I would like to see in that organization.
Brendan Jarvis:
This awareness that you've had that you've just talked about of being the only, of being not seen, of having your great ideas stolen and then five seconds later put forward by someone else as if they were their own, have you always been conscious of this or is this something that you've become more aware of in recent years?
Kevin Bethune:
I think it's funny. In my first chapter in engineering, I think maybe it was harder to gamify and provide a layer of BS on top of such critical work that was very black and white, either works or doesn't work. And you were allotted as an engineer your ability to make things work safely and respectfully. If you did those things, the organization rewarded us. That's what I felt in my first career chapter when I got into the Nike arena, it was remarkably different. It was sort of black court basketball, it was elbowing, you're showing up to a meeting. It was almost like, who's your gang of advocates and who are the bullies and how do you gamify and navigate versus just speaking to the work itself. That extra energy that was required just got so taxing after a while. And I think a lot of it, even though I'm all about competitive organizations trying to do the best work that they can possibly, but sometimes some of that stuff, it provides an excuse for the bias that sits underneath or the ignorance or the prejudice or the racism. And some of that is just noise. That's from people being selfish about their own self-interest and not really helping the company move forward. So again, this behavior feeds into the myopic tendencies and the blind spots that are ever so beleaguering possible for these companies.
Brendan Jarvis:
You're a parent, how do you talk about these issues with your son? How do you explain to him what your experience has been like or what, what's going on for him that he may be experiencing, why it's happening and what it all means? What are you saying to him about this world in which he is just about to become a young man? And
Kevin Bethune:
When he was maybe nine or 10, I was anticipating having a long sit down conversation about a lot of these issues. But honestly it's been a series of micro conversations to warm up his senses to the fact that you're navigating a society that is designed in a certain way that isn't always in your best interest, that's not always going to be supportive of you, but you need to understand where you are, who your family is, what our values are, and what we believe. We believe in your infinite potential. You can do anything as long as you apply your mind and hard work to it. But having to have micro conversations around when you walk the dog with me and if a policeman rolls up, here's how we behave. Having to have those difficult conversations or when the class that might be predominantly white, when they gang up on you because of your appearance, there was an episode where they made fun of his hair cuz it's curly.
That was his first moment of feeling the pick pile of all these kids ganging up on him because of his appearance and him having to work through his tears to deal with that. And then reminding him that, you know, can have big dreams, but to make those dreams a reality. The conduct that we have to have versus what he sees out of his peers and how they talk to their parents, how they deal with authority figures. You can't behave like that because you're going to invite a whole host of this other stuff that you don't know exists, but it truly does exist and you gotta be prepared to know that that's there. And so the conduct that we have has to be different, has to be of a higher standard. So these are the micro conversations that we're always having in the house.
Brendan Jarvis:
I'm just going to leave that there. I think that's something that everyone listening to should have a think about and reflect on. Now, Kevin, I know that we spoke before, we jumped on today about concluding our conversation with a passage that you feel from your book is important for our audience to hear and that time has arrived. So when you're ready, take us
Kevin Bethune:
Away. Okay. I'm going to read the first paragraph from chapter eight, which I call mirroring our diversity reflections for our future. Re-imagining design speaks to how design transformed my life and how lessons I've learned can provide useful perspectives for individuals and organizations. Individuals will hopefully get a sense that it's fine to mull over that career change or follow through on where that burning curiosity might lead them. In a converging world where business, creativity, technology, broader ecologies and social justice intersect, everyone will undoubtedly touch design in some way. Whether you're a designer, product manager or engineer, we should all have an appetite to break down the silos that prevent us from communicating, collaborating and garnering strategic alignment together, organizations will imagine how to leverage design more strategically than before. This will take investment in design while carving out bandwidth for teams to collaborate in multidisciplinary ways. This is true whether we are carving out a part-time capacity to explore new growth or ring fencing a dedicated innovation group. I offer these perspectives merely as starting points for every reader to customize and make real in their own complex environments. I have full confidence you'll make the necessary connections between these perspectives and the realities within your organizations. Let's be honest, breaking existing paradigms is challenging, but totally worth it when you make the commitments for yourself, your teams, and your broader organization.
Brendan Jarvis:
Thank you, Kevin. Thank you for sharing that and thank you for such a wonderful wide ranging and truly meaningful and deep conversation today. I really appreciate your contribution to the field and continue contributions, no doubt and everything that you've done and brought to this conversation with me today.
Kevin Bethune:
Oh, thank you for this wonderful conversation. I really appreciate where you took things and that requires boldness encouraging your part. So thank you for being a new friend and an ally in the cause.
Brendan Jarvis:
You're most welcome, Kevin. My pleasure. And Kevin, if people want to get in touch with you, learn more about what you are doing with Dreams Design and Life, find out about re-Imagining Design, what are the best ways or way for them to do that?
Kevin Bethune:
So for Dreams, design and Life, it's just DreamsDesignAndLife.com. Or for the book, I have an author website that points to all things that I'm working on around the book. But KevinBethune-ReimaginingDesign.com.
Brendan Jarvis:
I heard that there might be another book in the works.
Kevin Bethune:
So I'm in the final places of getting the draft manuscript for book two done. It's due by the end of this month. So that is the new goal.
Brendan Jarvis:
Well, we better hop off this call then and you better get back to writing [laugh]. Hey, thanks Kevin, and to everyone that's tuned in, it's been great having you here as well. Everything we've covered will be in the show notes, including where you can find Kevin and all of the great things we've spoken about. If you enjoyed the show and you want to hear more great conversations like this with world-class leaders in UX, design and product management, don't forget to leave a review. They're really helpful. Subscribe to the podcast and also share it with someone who you feel would get value from these conversations. If you wanna reach out to me, you can find me on LinkedIn, just search for Brendan Jarvis and I'll come up or there's a link to my profile at the bottom of the show notes, or you can head on over to thespaceinbetween.co nz. That's thespaceinbetween.co nz. And until next time, keep being brave.

Kevin Bethune

Reimagining Design: An Incredible Journey

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