Rob Hamblen
Behind the Scenes of World-Class Design Sprints
In this episode of Brave UX, Rob Hamblen shares his insights on effective sprint facilitation 🦉, why he asks clients if they’re designing for today or tomorrow 🛸, and why design sprints have a PR problem 🦄.
Highlights include:
- What do you do when senior leaders aren’t willing to be wrong?
- What types of business challenges are most suited to a design sprint?
- What have you learned from facilitating sprints with tricky team dynamics?
- Does dot voting to enable effective group decisions to be made?
- Does it matter if design sprints are performative if alignment is the result?
Who is Rob Hamblen?
Rob is the Founder of Be the Leap, a company specialising in the combination of rapid innovation frameworks ⏩, like the Design Sprint and Design Thinking, with leadership accelerators. Why? To help product teams launch more successful products!
With over three decades of experience working in and leading teams that make digital products, Rob has worked with clients like AMEX, Adidas, HSBC Bank, McKinsey and ‘that company formerly known as Twitter’ 🦤.
Before founding Be the Leap, Rob served as a Product Design Director at AJ&Smart in Berlin. In this role, he honed his facilitation expertise 🤹♂️, leading the B2B sprint team and overseeing both the client experience and the development of the product offering.
Prior to that, Rob spent some time in sunny Dubai as the Creative Director of UX for IBM iX 😎, where he helped to establish IBM Studios and managed a cross-functional team that supported clients as they sought to transform their businesses.
Transcript
- Rob Hamblen:
- We have to brace them on the onboarding of a sprint. Before they go into that workspace, we have to say to them, look, are you going to be prepared if we say do not make this product that you are going to come and take that advice on board?
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Hello and welcome to another episode of Brave UX. I'm Brendan Jarvis, managing founder of The Space InBetween, the behavior-based UX research partner for enterprise leaders who need an independent perspective to align hearts and minds and also the home of New Zealand's first and only world-class, human-centered research and innovation lab. You can find out more about what we do at thespaceinbetween.co.nz.
- Here on Brave UX though, it's my job to help you to keep on top of the latest thinking and important issues affecting the fields of UX research, product management, and design. I do that by unpacking the stories, learnings, and expert advice of a diverse range of world-class leaders in those fields.
- My guest today is Rob Hamblen. Rob is the founder of Be The Leap a company specialising in the combination of rapid innovation frameworks like the design, sprint and design thinking with leadership accelerators, why to help product teams launch more successful products.
- With over three decades of experience working in and leading teams that make digital products, Rob has worked with clients like amex, Adidas, HSBC Bank, McKinsey, and the company formerly known as Twitter.
- Before founding Be The Leap, Rob served as a product design director at AJ &SMART in Berlin. In his role, he honed his facilitation expertise leading the B2B sprint team and overseeing both the client experience and the development of the product offering.
- Prior to that, Rob spent some time in sunny Dubai as the creative director of UX for IBM iX, where he helped to establish IBM studios and managed a cross-functional team that supported clients as they sought to transform their businesses.
- Rob's been a guest on the Dallas Design Sprint podcast, the Ding-O-Meter podcast and Disrupt By Design, and I've been very much looking forward to having him on Brave UX today. Rob, hello and a very warm welcome to the show.
- Rob Hamblen:
- Hey, Brendan, thanks for having me as well. A warm welcome for you in Berlin as well.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Is it really that warm in Berlin at the moment, Rob?
- Rob Hamblen:
- Actually, do you know what? Today is very mild, so we're enjoying it.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Oh, good to hear. Good to hear. No, it's a pleasure to have you here. And as you know, I've been having a little look through and listen to previous things that you've written and that you've spoken on some podcasts, and one thing that I noticed when I was listening to a podcast you'd done recently is that you hold two world records and I kept listening to this podcast thinking at some point he's going to tell me what these are for, but it never came. So now I'm really, really dying to know what's the story. What are these two world records that you hold?
- Rob Hamblen:
- Okay, so I guess one is kind of a mediocre world. It was the second one, which was, I think it was something like I was one of, I dunno, 490 people on a hackathon like Slack channel or something. It was a world record for the most amount of people on any one time and it was kind of very underwhelming actually at the time. It was like, oh, and by the way, yeah, that's what you were a part of. So it's great for these kind of conversations, but you never go to a party, go, Hey, I'm Rob, I have two world records. But yeah, so thank you for bringing that up. And the first one actually was the coolest one, and I'm a bit of a petrolhead if anybody knows me. I love cars and I actually used to have a Lotus and I actually had to sell that car before we moved to France in thousand nine.
- It was a wonderful experience owning this car. I used to take it to varying track days and there was one particular time, it was a Lotus Day and it was a sne and again was it was part of the world record for the most privately owned Lotus on track at any one point in time. I forget the number 300, something like that. So yeah, that was really fun and we did three parade laps, not driving recklessly, but we were driving probably a little bit faster than we should as everybody was. But yeah, we got a world record out of it. So yeah, that was the first one.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- You mentioned you're a petrolhead and clearly with a world record that relates to that. How many speeding tickets have you had in your life, Rob?
- Rob Hamblen:
- Actually, do you know what? Touch wood? One one. I had it in the slowest possible car. Ironically, I was always able to evade getting a ticket when I was driving my fast cars and I think it was just a moment of madness where I was just, I think driving to work. It was in a really crappy old Citron that I used to have as a second car. I used to drive in the winter so that my racing pu at the time wouldn't get trashed and yeah, I think I got ticketed for something like 30, 34 and a 30 or something like that, so it wasn't even anything amazing, but yeah, that was the one that got me.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Tell me where did this love and appreciation for cars come from?
- Rob Hamblen:
- That's a good question actually. I think it must go back to my dad always drove really nice cars and I think the first point in my kind of early twenties when I realised that I could actually start enjoying the A to B of getting to work was when I started to look at some better cars, let's just say. So yeah, I think probably my father is probably the one that I would earliest memories and he had a 2 0 5 GTI 1.9 Pergo and it was literally like a go-cart and I remember being probably around the age of 12 or 13 when he had that car and I just remember it being the best thing in the world. He also had a and a little red mini at the same time. And actually my sister and I, we were really young when he had that dual car combination and we loved the mini more than the Porsche because it fell faster.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- There's something about being in a mini if you've been in one of the originals, right? There's so low to the ground and the acceleration just everything goes through the car and into the body
- Rob Hamblen:
- And into you literally you can live and breathe it. It was really great memories for that one as well.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Speaking about fathers, you are a father, you have four children and I understand that one of your daughters, Anna and a bit of a footballer and has recently secured a spot in a professional team. Where is she off to in December?
- Rob Hamblen:
- Well, we hope it's not been solidified yet, but she's hoping that this Mexican team will take her. So I don't want to mention the team because I think if you know when this is going to be released, so maybe it gets released before she gets there. So yeah, we're hoping that she's going to be off to Mexico quite soon, so everything is heading in the right direction for her and that happening, so we just have to wait and see. She's also looking at some potential German teams as well, so yeah, that's why we're not trying to be too permanent on anything just yet with where she's going. Do
- Brendan Jarvis:
- You have a preference as to where she would end up? Mexico is quite a long way away from Germany. Yeah.
- Rob Hamblen:
- Do you know what I mean? It is funny because she had a full scholarship in the US so we were able to watch all of her games pretty much from the comfort of our bed because they were normally at three in the morning, and if any of you are parents who go and support your children playing football and you'll know that you do this come rain or shine, and actually sometimes when it's actually sunny and warm, it'ss actually harder than when it's raining and it just whatever the weather you go and support. So we feel very lucky in the fact that she will have her matches televised if it's in Mexico. But of course as a dad, I don't want it to be that far away. I'd love her if she was playing some local German leagues so we could go and watch them. So yeah, I dunno, whatever's best for her I would say is I'll be happy wherever she ends up going.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- What has it been like from your perspective as a father watching and develop as a footballer and sort of reached the professional heights that she's reached? How has this been for you?
- Rob Hamblen:
- Do you know what it's kind of been, I don't want to sound too arrogant, but we kind of always predicted that she would get this far. I think at the age of around, well, she must've been around 13, we knew that she was exceptional and then we kind of had to start taking her a bit more seriously, I guess. And again, I'll go back to if you're a parent and you watch your kid, you of course just think your kids like the best in the world. So that's naturally how we felt for a long time. But we just knew that she had a talent, she had an acumen for reading the game and being able to place the ball rather than just responding or just kicking it reactively. So we knew that she was going to be on this journey. And actually a friend of ours, Tony Bennett, I'm going to mention him, he will laugh if he ever hears this podcast, but I think he actually put a bet on Anna becoming a pro player at some point in her career. So I mean, if that happens, I dunno what his odds were at that point, but he could be quizzing on that one. But yeah, no, we just knew, always knew, well,
- Brendan Jarvis:
- You owe him some money. I can't imagine you would be bidding against your daughter here who's actually going to have to pay out if he's proven. I
- Rob Hamblen:
- Think just the bookies, I think he genuinely, you can go and put crazy bets on for things like this. Really? Yeah. Wow. I think that was, we'll see, I don't think it was much, I think it was more a playful bet more than anything else. But yeah, of course we wanted to do well and as all of the kids, we've always, we haven't obviously just prioritised Anna doing football. All of the kids have had their own unique talents and contributions to growing up, so we're super proud of all of them.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- I'm sure. I'm sure. Following this sports or sort of fitness type thread along a little, I understand that you are or have at least in the past, been someone that's been quite into a rather intense sport, one called CrossFit. If anyone who's listening knows anything about CrossFit, it's pretty up there in terms of how intense it can get. Why would you want to subject yourself to that kind of torture? Rob,
- Rob Hamblen:
- Do you know what? That's a really good question. I guess I'm a glutton for punishment if you could say that. So this was a really interesting time. So we left Dubai, moved to Berlin, and actually for anyone who knows or has heard of AJ and smart, it was a really cool boutique agency here in Berlin and I joined them in 2017 and we worked hard and play hard. We had all of these amazing perks. The office was working from home, John and Michael very gracefully gave their staff access to either yoga or Pilates or CrossFit. I'm into neither of the first two, so for me I was like, well, CrossFit, I'm pretty fit as an individual, so let's just give it a go. I was also acutely aware that I was at least nine years older than everybody else at that office. So for me it was like once I got into it, I was thinking, well actually I'm pretty good at this.
- I mean, there was a guy called Kyle, he was also very good and we would sometimes try and battle each other with regards to who could lift the most or who could do the most endurance. But for the most part on the cardio stuff, I would whip everybody's asses. And for me it was a great to keep fit. I was cycling at least 20 KA day and doing CrossFit twice a week. So for me it was a great way to stay fit and stay healthy. And for me now I'll be 50 next year. I like to think I'm pretty fit and healthy for my age and definitely CrossFit for three or four years played its role in supporting that I think. So it can be very cliquey. I think I understand it, it's a club and people that go to this club like talking about this.
- But what I liked about it was that actually Rickard who was the owner of Escapist CrossFit in Berlin, he became as much the personality about why we would go actually going through the exercises themselves. And it's so hard, Brendan, you need almost like a personal trainer level person to crack the whip and push you because there's just no way I would've just done it off my own back. And actually in the mornings in the winter and the Berlin winters when you're trying to get up at quarter to seven or whatever time it was, that was also really, really hard. I'm not a morning person, but knowing that you're going to let someone like Ricard down if you, no one turns up because it's cold and wet, he would never forgive you. So he was the driving force for a lot of the time in actually getting me out of bed and actually pushing me during those sessions. So yeah, kind of grateful for that in those days it was very good.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- I find that with, I do boxing and I find that with my trainer, Dylan, it's such a good pre-commitment device that every Tuesday and Thursday or whatever the days are, I think it's actually Monday and Wednesday that I train without fail, let him down. And I suppose there's also a financial price to be paid if I don't turn up, but he's definitely the person that pushes me past the physical limit that I would probably not push myself past if I was left to my own devices. Yeah,
- Rob Hamblen:
- It's weird, isn't it, how you've got this, you have this kind of relationship where we were often one of four or maybe sometimes one of six, so you still knew that there were going to be at least four or five other people there. But there were occasions where only two people would turn up and there were even rare occasions where only one person would turn up, but it definitely needed to be a club that you pushed each other to commit to. I mean, don't get me wrong, there were occasions where people were ill or whatever and you couldn't make it, but for the most part, everybody tried to commit and not let everybody else down. So it was as much as part of it as the actual exercises themselves, which were gruelling most of the time. So yeah, it was good, but kind of sadistically fond memories.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- You know what, I actually had that word sadistic in my mind when I was asking that question when referencing CrossFit, and I thought, I won't go that far. I won't go that far. No, it
- Rob Hamblen:
- Is. It's brilliant.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Let's wind the clock back a little and talk about roughly around about when you got started in the broader field of UX. And this is sort of in the early to mid two thousands and you worked as a senior designer for quite an interesting little company, I believe called Genics, and that company focused on designing for mobile and particular, it was Nokia's series 60 os that was rolled out probably across most of the world's telcos at the time in terms of the devices. What was it like working on design for that os, for those devices at that time that had such global reach? Is this something that you consciously thought about at the time, just how far and wide your designs were going?
- Rob Hamblen:
- Yeah, do you know what? I'm glad you brought this question up because I was just literally holding the camera. It is such poignant time of my career that this phone represents that on my shelf behind. So for me it was, I just transitioned out of being a traditional designer design for multimedia and you were approaching the.com boom era as well, and I'd got headhunted to join this very small team that actually before it was Trix, but yeah, it had its kind of name change and then we got bought out by Qualcomm. But in the early days when we were Trix, we were actually customising these kind of series 60 phones. I remember as I was leaving the agency and I'd got this job as a designer for small screen and mobile devices, I was thinking, well, I've been designing these brochures for eurofighter, I've been designing windows for Nationwide Building Society.
- How hard can it be? The screen size is tiny and the pixel density was ridiculously crude as well back in those days. And it was like, how hard can it be? And so I remember really early on thinking that actually it's really challenging for those of you that can remember those small screen sizes, it was not easy. There was also making something look really pretty and then getting it optimised so that it would actually fit on the actual footprint of the phone itself as well was also really challenging. So I loved it actually for me, it was the first time I really started to enjoy the morphing of technology and design and yeah, I remember there was a project that we worked on for Nokia and we custom themed, I think it was something like 330 screens of a Nokia device. And I was part of a team that kind of designed all these.
- There were like I think five of us back then and it was just when Phantom Menace had just been launched and we did crazy wacky things because we were trying to draw attention to how the phone or how the engine of tris on these phones would enable more customizations. So we had the signal strength with the lightsaber that would go up and down and we had all these amazingly rich graphics, and for those of you that do remember Nokia, they were very actually very good phones, but they became very boring very quickly and they didn't really move with the times, which is kind of why they died to death all of a sudden, obviously with the iPhone being launched as well. But before that, you could literally navigate your way through tasks on a phone so intuitively you didn't have to read a manual. And that was where the first time I really understood that UX was something, I don't even think it was UX back in the early two thousands.
- I think we ended up presenting that demo to Nokia and it was actually through a friend of a friend a couple of years later that I actually got the conclusion of that meeting because we didn't rehear anything from Nokia back in those days after it had been presented. And we found out that it had ruffled a few feathers back at Nokia. I think some people, even senior people maybe got made redundant off the back of it by not anticipating these, it definitely ruffled a few feathers and we were showing them what was possible with relative ease and they didn't really kind of react to it. So I think the quote was something along the lines of what we did with a team of 25. It would've taken Nokia 2000 employees and probably two years to have done so. We were very ahead of our time back in those days and we kind of knew it. So yeah, very fond memories. We were definitely disruptive and we were, I think back in those days, not many of us were doing UX back then, so it was and a very elite kind of team of people that had migrated from design to do a design for these mobile devices. So yeah, it was good fun,
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Interesting to hear that you kind of shot yourself in the foot potentially not understanding the loss of face that the people at corporate and Nokia would've encountered as a result of how much you've managed to do. That's a really interesting observation, I suppose, of how sometimes the dynamics between a smaller, more innovative organisation and a larger, more corporate organisation can be at odds with each other. This is a bit of a random aside, but I was watching series three, I think of the Walking Dead with my wife recently, and this is actually on DVD and what you were describing about the menus, sorry, the screens on phones at the time is making me remember just yesterday how difficult it was navigating a DVD menu thinking, gosh, this technology, I remember now I remember the effort that went into designing these and the loops of the footage that go around in the background and the way in which you had to navigate it with the remote. It's just phenomenal how fast the design of UI and UX, it moves on, it moves on really quickly. Speaking of moving on, when you were at Trix and you mentioned Qualcomm acquired the company, this was a bit of a change in your career as well, wasn't it? You moved from being someone who was on the tools to someone who was managing a team spread across the UK and also the US Cast your mind back to that time, how ready for that challenge did you feel when this opportunity arrived?
- Rob Hamblen:
- Yeah, I felt ready. And I think there's a saying, isn't there, and I dunno whether it's a cliche or not, but whenever you are at work and especially for corporations, you are always working for the job as in you're always working at that level, the job before you get recognised for it. So I think it's a really good kind of way to keep your mindset because I think if you were to suddenly get promoted into these things, then you would necessarily, you're going to be very reactive, you're not going to ease into it. Whereas I think if you actually do the job without the pressure of you actually having to do it, but you are working towards that, I think it makes that transition much easier and it takes some of the pressure off it's did for me as well. But I dunno, I think I'm a people person, I've been told I have a lot of empathy for people.
- And actually it was one of the things that Jake Kn said when I asked him about my facilitation skills and I guess he kind of drew the attention to me that I was a very empathetic person and I think when you manage people, I've really taken a lot of pride in actually working with those people and getting the best out of them and not they work for me. It's like I want to get the best out of them. So I just have a set of managerial tactics I guess, that are quite natural to me. And I think actually it was my boss at the time, we were good friends. He was the one that actually asked me to join him through Glab and he actually was like, well, I was also discussing the immigration with my wife and kids. We were going to move to south of France.
- We ended up moving in 2009 and I think I preempted this from as early as maybe 2005. This is something that we were going to do for a long time. And then when my boss at the time I was just saying to him was like, yeah, well at some point we're going to be moving. He was like, well, it's not going to be much fun here without you. So he started looking for another job and he ended up leaving much sooner because I said to him, it's like, well, I'm not going to be moving for at least a year or a couple of years, but he got this amazing job opportunity and he took it so I naturally filled his slot. And what I will say is that it is hard because when you go from being a team member into being a person that manages that team, there's a saying, isn't it?
- It's like you can't be friends with the people that you manage because there's a different dynamic in that relationship. So I had to migrate myself out of being mates with this wonderful team. I still hold them with the highest regard into this more managerial position. But let's not be deluded back in those days when you're a manager or a team, you are just middle management. So actually what I found was that I ended up having some autonomy and what I could do for them, but equally I was the person where the upper management would communicate things that would need to happen and then I would be that person to do that. And that was the toughest part. I think when you first step into management, it's not as all empowering as people think because there obviously are politics and dynamics that you have to manage, the relationships that you have to manage upwards as well.
- And I think it only comes with experience that you learn how to manage upwards. I think managing down is easy, managing upwards is a much harder task to learn, but it was something that I really enjoyed and I got on with people. So for me, I guess I accelerated through that quite quickly. And there was one thing that really mattered to me, and I think it was when iPhone was launched because we were working for Qualcomm, an American company, we had predicted our team, we had predicted that obviously of course iPhone's going to be something completely different. We had to deconstruct or reverse designed old like Sony P eight hundreds that were stylists operated, like touch interface phones, but they would only be the surface layer and then everything else would be hard key navigation, things like that. So we were already predicting that this iPhone would be fully touch screen.
- And we'd also gone into these crazy exercises where we were working out the touch input size on buttons with regards to fingerprint sizes and things like that and the placement where buttons were and things like that. So when iPhone got launched, I was like, well, let's have a couple to review and to reverse design. And I remember going through this very long process, very long corporate process to have these two phones signed off that were competitor technology. And for a long part of that process I just got red tape, brick walls, it's never going to happen, competitor phones, all this kind of stuff, and you want them shipped to the uk, right? That's going to happen. And in the end, I eventually got sign off from the CFO of Qualcomm in San Diego, so the highest of the highest, I had to put a case forward, but we ended up getting two phones shipped to the UK and we shared them between the whole team.
- So we would do turnabout for a week and swap them around. So everybody had one. And I remember for me that was the first time I really felt like as a manager, I had done something for my team as something that was going to enrich their day to day and just, it was a lot of work. It also elevated me as someone that could get things done and actually put my money where my mouth is with regards to doing something for my team as well. So that was a really good thing to do and I think it was as a manager kind of status, I felt like I'd swung my weight around a little bit to get that and make that happen. So they were good days. But yeah, I think managing the team and stepping in someone else's shoes initially was pretty hard and there were some challenges that we had to get through, but we got through it, it was fine.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- There's a lot in there. And I want to pick up on what you were talking there about with regards to the red tape that you encountered in Qualcomm in order to get these two iPhones, this is in retrospect probably a really sensible and savvy move to get these as soon as they possibly could right into the hands of the teams responsible for, I suppose effectively competing in some way against Apple. Yet there was an absolute reluctance you had to go all the way to the CFO to do that. And I want to pick up with you on something that you've said previously around, in fact, it's around user testing, but I feel like there's a parallel here. So just go with me and take it where you, like you've previously said, and I'll quote you now, companies don't want to do user testing because they feel like it's a lot of effort to go to find users and then they have to capture all the data and by this time development cycles are already in place and they feel like, oh, if it's already being made, how can we change things? It's just going to cost us too much time. Now, to me, when I heard that and then hearing you tell this sort of story of Qualcomm and the reluctance to actually get something tangible into your team's hands, it sounds to me that some companies are actively preferring ignorance and a willingly increasing sunk cost rather than investing early and at a lower risk to find out whether or not they might be wrong about something.
- Rob Hamblen:
- It's sad, isn't it? But yes, that's the truth. I've been blessed to work with a lot of forward thinking companies that also have also acknowledged that they do that or I'm trying to be kind of tactful here for all the clients that we've worked with because for the most part, the clients that we have worked with have been very doing this, or if they haven't done it, they kind of see the benefit in doing it. But throughout my whole career, we'd set up a usability lab back in 2003 at Qualcomm and to get people in and have an actual custom made apparatus for the phone to be held with cameras looking over the top and stuff, that was a big deal back then. That was something that people just didn't do. So then when that lab was set up and we could start showing the data to make more informed decisions about what users' expectations were, this was kind of like the DNA that formed very strongly within me.
- So today, so when we're doing product audits, for example with our customers, we've seen so many of these happen this year. It's unreal because actually this year feels like a year of not innovating but rectifying, but when companies can actually understand how easy it is when we enable them to be able to do that, it's like a no-brainer. Like, okay, well then why did we not do this before? And I guess my team is very capable of collecting data, and we do this very quickly obviously as well. And I want to be really explicitly clear, there are many different forms of research and there are many different forms of user testing and usability testing. And as you and I both know companies, we work with restricted budgets, so the fact that we're doing any user testing with these restrictive budgets is actually a big achievement in itself.
- We would love to run three month research cycles where we test 150 people, but the reality is that we only get to test with 50 or 20 people on these product audits. And especially when you're talking about B2B clients, what we've actually also understood is that our customers have been using this as a way of engaging with new customers as well. So it can be very powerful and it can be when utilised and concisely and proficiently, it can be very, very powerful in the hands of those customers. And my theory is why would you want a sleepless night when you're about to press the button to launch an app? And if you haven't used tested it, I know for a fact if we had any questions from any c-suite coming our way with regards to why something was performing, I know for a fact when we have data to prove that everything that within that customer experience has been tested, and if it's still not performing, then you start to have holes in, for example, how it's been marketed or how it's been implemented, for example, through code and things like that.
- Normally that's not the case because we've worked very closely with the dev teams as well, but you could have the most perfect app that people love, but if it hasn't been marketed correctly, then that's the side that's going to fall down. And that's how we kind of move forward because we want to be able to make sure that we can sleep the night before a button a project is about to get launched. So yeah, it's the data that does the talking, so it gives us that confidence to be able to say that, and that's also very powerful as well.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- It's just reminded me of something else that you've spoken about previously, and this is around the D-Day I suppose, that arrives when it's time to test the prototype in a sprint. And this is probably the most uncomfortable day for many people in the room because this is when titanic assumptions come to face to face with icebergs or potentially do. You've previously said about this, and I'll quote you again when you want to put that in front of those five interviewees, that being the prototype, that's where the data is. It's what validates your assumptions and hearing the voice of that customer as to whether this feature worked to the CEO of a company. They can't argue with that. Now I thought about this and I thought about my own experiences in similar situations, and they can argue with it, can't they? And they do argue with it and they do say things like, oh, but that was only one person's perspective or five people for example, whatever it may be. Even 20 people sometimes isn't enough to get people past their assumptions that they're holding onto. So when you encounter or if you've encountered something similar, this kind of deep ingrained resistance in our culture towards being wrong or at least the risk that they perceive as associated with being wrong about something, what do you do in those situations?
- Rob Hamblen:
- I think I'm in a very biassed corner here because, or very, I should say very privileged corner because actually when you mentioned that my 30 years or three decades of experience, what I've noticed is that especially since I found it Be The Leap, when companies do pull us, I'll pull my team in, we do have those gritty conversations and luckily and when I was at aj, we ran hundreds of sprints. I mean we haven't run as many sprints would Be The Leap, but we've still run a lot. So when you add up those, if I guess for the last six nearly seven years, we've seen pretty much everything happen in a sprint that should or couldn't or we didn't think would happen. And we basically, I guess you could say I'm one of the smug guys that has an answer for everything. But I do it in a way that is without ego, but with true empathy for the people that are making the products and the customers that we collect the data from that are using them.
- So we had a project actually just recently where it was a product audit and we had gone through the sequence of changes and it's such a lovely company, actually I wish I could mention names, but I'm not going to mention names, but the creative director, they had had a pretty, not heated but pretty serious conversation around whether a feature should be saved manually or auto saved. And they were like, Rob, can we bring you into this conversation because we feel that you would lend some weight into how we can put everything on the table and just deal with the facts rather than an opinion on how it should be solved. So obviously I brought Hannah in as well. Hannah was working very closely on the UX side of that project as well. And we had this meeting and the PO was there as well. And what I did immediately was I just said, look, I want to hear everyone's perspective on this.
- So the creative director, ed, again, this is a call that we all record as well, so that we always record all of our remote calls and the PO put his case forward and then it's like, okay, Rob, what should it be? And I just said to them, I am not your customer, so I'm not going to tell you. I said, I've got a good idea of what I think it should be, but it's just my opinion and I know that with all of our year's experience, my opinion is likely to be correct, but I don't want you to just take my word for it. I want you to hear it from your customers as well. So we immediately went into a user testing cycle with actual customers that they were selling that product to, and we preloaded these screens, we added the features, and we almost tested it with them as well.
- And it was a unanimous decision that it should be auto save only because everything else was auto safe before that. Yeah, and the golden rule, if UX right, you're not pulling the floor out from someone's feet, you are kind of keeping it consistent and kind of keeping it in a fashion that they're going to be more comfortable with, but it wasn't the solution of the problem, it was how we went about solving it for them. And yes, of course they brought me in, but we did it in a way that no one felt like their ego got trampled on. There was no one that was like, I told you so I did this. It's like, okay, yeah, we agree. Actually it makes sense. When we found the rationale for why this person wanted it to just be a manual save in the end it was like, oh yeah, it just would've been 10 times easier for us to implement that on that summary part of that document.
- So we were just trying to aggressively cut some corners, some costs or whatever, but we understand now that wasn't the case, but it was just a great way of just putting everything on the table and going, okay, what is the right thing to do here? And that's why companies come to us because we help 'em do that. And it's done in a way where even in a sprint, I do not have a problem telling a founder or a CEO if this idea is just going to be shit. That's why they come to us and we have to brace them on the onboarding of a sprint before they go into that workspace. We have to say to them, look, are you going to be prepared if we say do not make this product that you are going to take that advice on board and it's as much about the old gladiator staff, thumbs up, thumbs down. It's like, of course we will make that product work within the parameters as much as we can. Even if we have to pivot for the iteration sprint, that's also fine. But there have been only a few handful of occasions where we've gone, we really wouldn't invest in this. We think you should really pivot on this business model to have a more successful variation of that product. But yeah, we have to have these hard conversations, but we do it with diplomacy and respect always.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Speaking of hard conversations and more particular hard or potentially hard questions, I believe that you often ask new clients whether they're aiming to design for today or for tomorrow, what are you really getting at when you're asking them those questions and what are you hoping that they will realise or achieve as a result of answering that question?
- Rob Hamblen:
- Yeah, it is kind of been a saying of mine actually. It's like we design for tomorrow. If you want to design for today, it just means that you are literally just ripping off all the USPS from your benchmark and putting it into one app. You're not really innovating for something new. So when you design for tomorrow, you are kind of scrapping that you are going from a complete customer centric perspective and understanding what their requirements are and then you are making a product based on what their needs and wishes are, where they've identified pain points. There's an opportunity that you can quash that with something that's going to be good for them. And I see this so many times, it's like people do benchmarking and then they're like, yeah, we'll take this from that one this from that one. And don't get me wrong, actually in a sprint that's actually okay to do that because all you're doing is you're creating a smoke and mirrors illusion of something.
- All you are trying to do is get the customers to go and not really like that, but if it was like a, B, C, then it's giving you a platform for them to be more vocal and more at ease with that. But when it comes to the actual design and execution of that product, this is where our team are constantly reexamining what the benchmarks are and making sure that we steer away from that for just copying it for the sake of it. So that's really what I mean by design, design for tomorrow, don't design for today.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- I understand that you've talked about a couple of things that you do at LEAP here, right? You've talked about the product audit and we've also been talking about sprints and I understand that when it comes to sprints, particularly at leap, you've said before that, and this is a quote here, elite will only do a sprint if it's not just UX or a design shoe. We see a design sprint only being used if the challenge is significantly juicy. So what kind of challeng or challenges are significantly juicy?
- Rob Hamblen:
- So it kind in the most basic sense, and this is great if it comes back to a simple, I say a simple, there's a lot of complex UX things that would potentially need to be changed in product experiences to make them form better. But actually that's why I created the product audit to fix those. When it's a design sprint, we also charge a lot of money for a design sprint. So it's just not really fair to do UX fixes when a company is shedding a significant amount of cash to do that. You are also pulling in the whole of a C-suite team and that is an expense within itself and you are getting to commit to two days. So they should only be really thinking about challenges that are the future facing digital experience of their future, their tomorrow, or something that's going to completely pivot on business model that maybe contradicts what they do now or something like that.
- So I mean that's being very general, but it's that kind of business orientated challenge that's going to be potentially disruptive, really new, something that doesn't exist already or something that is likely to be, for example, we've done a lot of work with fintechs or banks actually, and they might be moving into a FinTech space, so that could be deemed aggressively new for what they would be traditionally known for. So things like that would be a design sprint because they would need to know whether it's worth investing all that money into something in a much shorter space in time rather than actually going all in and making it and designing it and then nine or 12 months later realising that they'd missed the mark because they hadn't done the research properly or whatever. So the sprint is great. I think when it's used properly, it can be really advantageous for companies and teams to run them.
- We've even run sprints with big financial institutions to test whether their research team had done the right research on their potential users that were going to be using it. And actually the sprint outlined a potential flaw that the research team had identified also they said, I trust them, but yeah, we identified that actually they were choosing a set of customers that married up to a persona that wasn't quite right and then we were able to rectify that for the week two and obviously that will improve their data. So it can be very powerful and I think especially when you have a really capable team, especially when you have researchers or psychotherapists on your team, that brings another dimension to how you can really extract data in a way that's going to be critical for that company to move forward.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- You mentioned involving the C-suite and the types of sprints that you're doing, those juicy problems, the forward looking, I dunno if the right framing here is the second and third horizon. You're looking further out than just the here and now. And I've seen in the past designers struggle with getting the buy-in from stakeholders to commit to the sprint, possibly less to do with the amount of money, even though that may be significant. It almost seems like when it comes to the c-suite, it's more about how protective and precious their time is and really the perception of the sprint when it comes to the c-suite, it needs to be really carefully managed, or at least that's my observation. Now you've said something about this and it actually ties back to your time at AJ and smart. You said, when I was at aj, I would meet with Jake, so Jake Knapp and we would talk about why it was called the design sprint. And he said to me he wouldn't call it a design sprint now because design is misunderstood by the c-suite. They think they're there to be sitting down drawing you've hundreds of these. And in your experience, do design sprints and perhaps design more broadly, do they have a PR problem when it comes to executives?
- Rob Hamblen:
- Exactly, a hundred percent. I remember running a sprint with a very large Spanish bank and this was actually was a sprint that we did with be Thele and a partnering agency. We encountered exactly this problem. We also had this at AJ Smart, no end of times, but actually for me when it's a Be The Leap sprint we call it, we actually called it a product sprint as a way of slightly migrating away from these awkward kind designer conversations. And if you don't want to devalue the power that a sprint has, so if you can mitigate anything that clarifies how people walk into that room and what their expectations are, then as far as I'm concerned, if we can call it a product sprint, then that's fine and it's got us actually, I think we've made quite a lot of traction with that. Of course, we were actually talking with a client this year as well because they want to do a sprint that is a design sprint because it's not necessarily a digital experience that's going to be the result of it.
- So that's where you would then claw it back and it wouldn't be a product sprint, it would be a design sprint because we dunno what the outcome is. So when we know and when we're taking a briefing from a client and it's a digital experience or customer experience, then a product sprint is rather perfect for marrying up with their expectations. So again, it comes down to conversations and just facilitation skills, right as well. So when you've got these very senior people in that think drawing with a sharpie is utterly ridiculous, there's a better way to communicate why they're participating and that is that they're leading by example. We're doing a top down experiment. If they want their company to change and to be disruptive, then it starts at the top. We also say things like, you are a very senior member of this bank, for example.
- You've got ideas, we want to hear what your ideas are. And the sprint is a very equalitarian process that enables everybody to contribute without knowing who contributed to it. So it's a very safe way for people to put their ideas on the table as well without being either thinking that they're too silly or only choosing it because you know what the CEO's handwriting is. So once you've had these conversations that everybody then relax and goes, okay, well I'm not on the spot. I'm here to contribute and no idea is really too silly, then normally the floor is ours. And I think again, I'm privileged because of the years and the effort that we put in an AJ and smart and perfecting how we onboarded these sprints. There's a lot of learnings from that. And actually I have to have a big kudos and thank you to AJ as well because any of my team before they start here at Be The Leap, they run the AJ Smart Masterclass. It's the foundational kind of product minimum expectation that we would always give our staff before they actually go and run sprints as well. So yeah, there's a lot of learnings and I'm very proud of those learnings and to be a part of it as well.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Rob, I've heard you just in that previous answer, you mentioned that sprints are a very egalitarian process and this is something that you've talked about before and it made me wonder why is it that sprints often call for someone to play the role of the decider then is this recognition that perhaps the collective wisdom in the room is not appropriate when it comes to making decisions of the magnitude as to which solution to turn into a prototype?
- Rob Hamblen:
- So it is simple. The sprint can only move fast if you have a decider, that person's role is to just call something. If you feel like you're going down a rabbit hole with something, it's the job of the facilitator to call it very quickly and to say, is this relevant to us solving this challenge right now? And then if it is, you can give them two minutes to explain where they're going with it. And if not, then you can just say, look, it's not right for right now, let's shell this. If you feel it's really important, put it on a parking lot. We'll discuss it later, but we just need a decision to move forward. And if you didn't have that person doing that, then you may as well just go back to the old meeting style where you leave the meeting room with not really any clear direction of what's just happened other than the fact maybe you might have booked another couple more meetings to try and solve this problem.
- That's why it's a disruptive and cold process because that's why people don't like it because they're like, I've been in sprints before with two co-founders and we've had to say, okay, one of you has to be the decider and then you have this kind of like, well, we're both so it's both of us. And it's like literally we just need one of you to go for today for this decision right now. We're going to go this route just so that we can move forward with it. We're not saying that that's the strategy that's going to get set in stone, it's just so that you can move forward and move forward quickly.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- It's interesting you mentioned that co-founder situation, when you put people in a position like this where it really calls upon people's somewhat attempt to be impartial when making a judgement on a decision, it also calls on the person who's not playing that role to have some form of trust displayed in that other person's ability to decide. And it's interesting, you kind of start to, sounds like you're starting to scratch at some of the chinks in the armour when it comes to founders or potentially executive teams or any team when someone has put in that role as a decider.
- Rob Hamblen:
- Yeah, we've had sprints where two co-founders have nearly closed the business mid-morning on a Monday morning because they realised they both wanted to go in different directions. And this happened more than once, especially when you have small co-founding teams like with startups. And actually what we ended up finding was that, I mean not only does this give you incredible learnings as a facilitator, but you end up also being almost like a product counsellor as well, or like a team or person counsellor as well. And this has often happened with many of the sprints we've run Be The Leap. We've often had the CEO or CPO phone up about three or four weeks later and go, yeah, can we just have a chat about some of the dynamics of the team? We want to make some changes. And because all of the personalities around the table, we just want to sound some stuff out with you, is that okay? So we end up becoming counsellors for their strategy, for their business and for their roadmap. And I love that this is the job I love to be called in externally and be completely impartial. And like I said, as long as you are respectful and diplomatic, you can have any conversation. And that's I think also why teams pull us in to do that as well.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- I've heard you reflect on your role as a facilitator before and about this, and I'll quote you again, I feel it's super relevant to what you were just touching on. You've said for me it's a regular day being a facilitator and being a product designer all in the same workshop. And it's where I get my jollies as well. I love that saying, but it's just listening. The biggest part is actually just listening to the client. It's the biggest thing you can do. And there are obviously a lot of things you do in a sprint, there's a lot going on, a lot of moving parts. What makes listening the biggest,
- Rob Hamblen:
- Because I think a lot of people don't do it. And I think even when you have sprints, you have these leadership teams, you are providing a safe, open space where everybody can be listened to and it's this together alone. So no one supposedly when you've done a concept sketch, no one knows who's done that, but when you are having time box discussions as a team, you have to listen. And I think what I also love is that when you have the whole of a C-suite team around a table, the amount of decisions that get made really quickly within a short space of time is phenomenal. And I think the Sprint also heightens that decision making process as well. So I learn a lot from c-suite. I bring a lot of those learnings from working in California to working in Europe. And I think people that hire us to go and run sprints, they also tap into our exposure to these Silicon Valley teams as well.
- And that's something that I really, really love and there's something quite special about just being there and just being able to observe the team listening with each other, having also some healthy debate I think is really good as well. And it's just a way for people to, let's take a scenario. So say there's one person who's new to the team or they've been there for a long time and they're just not quite skewed in the direction that the rest of the team want to go, the sprint is a great way for them to go, okay, now I get it from a dev perspective, why it has to be this way, why there's a marketing person involved in it. They have to understand the decisions made that, for example, maybe it's not as simple as just re-skinning a white label product that you've actually got to start creating something for yourself. So it's the exposure to all of these really intricate but very complex moving parts to making a product successful. Having that team there right at the beginning is the only way that product's going to get made with some surety and some precision that everybody is agreeing with.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- I want to zero in on now and one of the methods in which decisions get made in a sprint. You mentioned debate and discussion, and I'm sure that people's opinions are influenced by that free flowing conversation, albeit time box. There's a method that at least it's the part of the GV design sprint, which is.voting. Is that something that you use in your sprints?
- Rob Hamblen:
- Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- I want to ask you about this, and I'm sure you're aware of the criticisms of.voting. I wanted to get your take on it, right? So it's clearly, it's something that's prone to bias from how the ideas are written to the aesthetic appeal of people's handwriting. You mentioned earlier on, can you spot the CEO's handwriting? And then there's also it's very public nature. So someone in the ones that I've been in the room and someone leads, and then you almost observe the sheep mentality of some people following. What, if anything, have you done or do you do differently to address these kind of core criticisms of do voting as a method?
- Rob Hamblen:
- Yeah, so one of the things I also trust Jake implicitly with regards to why he wanted everything in the sprint the way that it was. And I've been a part of a team that's been able to enhance that original process with the endorsement of Jake as well. So that's super, super cool and kudos to the AJ guys as well for doing that. But to go back to the herding or the do voting, there are some very specific things that should happen in order for that voting to be done correctly. So for example, the decider or the most senior members of the sprint, you would not have them do the.voting first simple. So when you have a expansive product team, like you might have marketing, you might have some designers, you might even someone from Lauren there. If you're running McKinsey Sprint like we did, you'll get the broader sense of that room voting first.
- And actually what that does enables the decider to observe where the room is going to go. So he gets to understand who's alive. He already knows where his votes are going to go, right? Or sorry, I should say, they might already know where they're going to go. So it gives him or them a chance to understand where the sway is. And then normally we give them a couple of minutes and then they can get involved. And then what happens is that if you have two or three votes, you'll get a couple of people putting couple of dots down first, but they'll normally keep one just because they want to understand where it's going. And then you'll get the more senior votes coming in. And of course, yeah, that's when people start to pay attention because they want to see how the CEO is understanding this perspective from a bird's eye perspective, if you are a UX designer, you are only focused on the product.
- You don't really care what marketing you're doing at this point in time if law, you're only responsible for the copy, not how it's going to look or all these kind of things. So the lower members of the team will have a very siloed approach, whereas the CEO has this kind broader perspective of where the whole product strategy is going. So it enables everybody to go, right, that's how he's thinking. That's actually a really good idea. And then they put their votes on it. So there are some behaviours that we've spotted during this that enable people to get on board, and this is actually part of the alignment exercising of the sprint, is that you are bringing everybody up to the same speed with moving forward. So for example, the three can we questions? This is where it really starts to make sense. These are the sprint questions, these are the hypotheses that you want to prove.
- This is normally a really good place where people are starting to, okay, I see where we're going with this now, and I see that this is the hypotheses and we need to get the answers for this. So this is a great way for them to start really understanding why they're dot voting and why they're able to see where everybody else is doing their dot votes. Back in the early days, we were running remote sprints back in early 2017 at aj and we weren't lucky enough to have a realtime board at that point. That's Miro, for those of you that are old school, I think we were using some Google type kind of presentation or something to do remote sprints and you couldn't actually have the visible voting and it was all done anonymously. And actually, I mean it still works, but it just was a bit of a mess with regards to the alignment. It's really important for people to see which people have voted where because that helps them understand their perspective with way more clarity. So yes, you can do it without, I would never do it out of choice blind. I would just always do it so that you get to see it. So yeah, that's a great social and behavioural experiment in itself. Just watching the dynamics of the understand where their fellow colleagues are placing their decision-making power.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- It's fascinating really. Yeah, it really is getting your insight into the dynamics that are at play, particularly between the senior members of a team or an organisation and the less senior now. It almost sounds to me as if the design sprint is less of a design tool and more of a management tool.
- Rob Hamblen:
- I would say definitely. I mean, often we hear by lunchtime on a Monday, so this is the end of q1. Out of four quarters, we normally have lunch and everybody is relaxing for the first time, a very intense morning. And someone at the table will say, this would've taken us months. How have you done this in less than three hours? And we obviously feel quite smug because obviously we know this is something that bubbles up a lot
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Justify now,
- Rob Hamblen:
- But it's just like we do an extensive onboarding. We know who everybody is before they even walk into the room. And that was my choice to do that because actually even when was an agent, I felt really vulnerable just bringing in eight or 10 people into a room and I had to get to know them whilst doing these very extensive exercises. So for me, actually onboarding the team members individually was something that actually for me made me just a better facilitator. And part of that onboarding and that first three hours together and being together is how they get this alignment and how they're able to move forward. So I kind of take that for granted now that should just happen and it always does, but the day it doesn't. I obviously will be very wide, but I've never had a sprint not work. And that's why I just trust them implicitly.
- And they've nearly broken a couple of times, but that was in the early days when for example, you might have three senior developers in there and they might be like, oh, what are we doing? And should we be doing this? And as a facilitator without that much experience, you might be like, oh, should we do it or do this? And you have to stick to the process, trust the process as Jake says, you have to stick to the process to make sure that you don't break it. And I think that's what's happened in the past. And I think sometimes sprints had a bad little bit of a bad stigma to it because it's like, oh, it hasn't worked or it's not done this or that didn't work, or We spent loads of money on this but we never user tested or we never made a prototype, but we did this.
- And suddenly you realise that people have started bastardising it in a way that it's like, well of course if you don't use test it, how can you do just the two quarters and then just make prototype and then just go into making, that's senseless. It makes no sense. So yeah, of course you get to hear how people have maybe tweaked it and then that's why it hasn't worked. I will have and have had very firm conversations around people why they think it doesn't work and when it should and shouldn't be used, but equally it's not a silver bullet for everything as well. That's also why we made the product audit to compliment that so that it wouldn't be used as silver bullet for everything. And actually sometimes what we found was that the more we would say to a company that it wasn't worthy of a sprint, they would just come back to us with another challenge. So it'd be like, great. Okay, this is cool.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- It's funny thinking about design sprints because some of the harshest criticism of design sprints comes from designers, and this is something that you've run into, I'm assuming more than once in the time that you've been facilitating them. And you've said about this, and I'll quote you again, you've said, I know a lot of designers feel like sprints compromise their creativity because Jake Knapp is big on saying that you don't have to be a creative person to contribute to them. And I think the minute designers hear that they feel like they're being made obsolete. Do design sprints compromise designer's creativity in some way?
- Rob Hamblen:
- Actually, I think it's a really great way to enhance a designer. And I think actually I'm of the generation where if you went straight to the Mac without sketching something first, you'd literally have a ruler off the back of your hands from the art director. And it's true, your creativity is in here. It's not going to the noun project and looking at icons, it's like, okay, what is the metaphor that you want to use first? And then you would go to maybe something like a noun project to find out what you could then bastardise as a quick mockup. Then you would go into a design phase, especially if you were like Deutsche Telecom or Vodafone, they would spend two weeks designing an icon. So what I find with the sprint is that you've got this listening part, you get a briefing from the most important people in the company, the C-suite team.
- If you are a designer and you get invited into a sprint that is a privileged spot that you are entitled to because you are having a business conversation around design and why it's relevant, you are then going into a very quick mapping exercise, which gives you a very bird's eye view of a customer journey for this particular product instance. At least then you are theorising your writing some how might Wes like this is designed thinking and it's like crude this possible sense as well. Then you go into a sketching round, which is what any designer should be doing. And honestly, if my designers don't sketch before they go to the Mac, I also will get a ruler to them as well. Even in a remote setting.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- A figurative right, figurative ruler. Exactly.
- Rob Hamblen:
- Yeah, a virtual, but I'm joking. But yeah, you've got the sketching and then you've got the reviewing, so that's your voting as well. You're getting exposure. And then I don't care how good a designer, if you're the one prototyping, that is a tonne of pressure that you would never imagined if you've never done a sprint before. And I think if Hannah's listening to this, she'll be laughing because she's normally the prototyper on the sprint, but she makes very light work of these very complex prototypes, so compliments to her. But it's like I've seen very senior designers crumble under the day of a prototyping, and I've even been there myself. When I was first at aj, I was prototyping and it was like, you have to change the way you design. And it's like, it's just amazingly intense. And then, yeah, your job is not done as a designer.
- It's like, well then you want to find out how it's being perceived by the people that are going to be using it. So you then are either a note taker or you are actually running interviews and finding out where this design or product idea, I should say, not a design has hit the mark or hasn't hit the mark. And actually Tim and I, when we were at aj, we used to actually love all the negative stuff and Tim would be like, oh yeah, I knew that we'd rush that. Or we just used to love hearing where it failed because we knew that that was an opportunity to go, right. Well then it needs to be better than that. But we had this underlying conversation that was a prototype should never trip up because someone can't read the font or it was never about design. The design was a wrapper that we put around it that was designed to not fail.
- It was the actual business model or idea that we were testing. That's where we needed the validation. It was never about, oh, that font's too big, or I don't like the colour of that button. Or when you run sprints a little bit with a bit more exposure to how they can go, you can bring in some elements like illustration starts for example, and test to see which one resonates the most. So you can do things like that, but it's never really about the design of the product. It's just about, okay, is this product going to make sense to you? So I think I went off a bit of a tangent on that question, but yeah, to be a designer, I think it actually compliments you. And I think for me as a designer, if you can understand process, it will help you become a more proficient designer and help you understand the business with way more clarity.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- If we bring this back to our earlier conversation around the way in which decisions get made, in particular what we were talking about earlier with.voting, how the decider is reading the room, how you let the more senior members of the team vote last so people can kind of see where they feel things are. One of the other criticisms that's been levelled against design sprints has been this feeling, feeling or unfairly that they can be somewhat performative and they converge on potentially theatre when decisions have already been made, or at least there's a space open there for people to contribute to. But really the executives already decided what they want to do. Is that fair? And if it is fair criticism, does it matter if the outcome is still being achieved in terms of alignment and forward progress?
- Rob Hamblen:
- Yeah, that's a really good question. So I can answer that with two experiences. The first one being is that, yeah, a hundred percent, if there is a strategy to change how a product is moving forward, then you can use a design sprint to do that. We had at least two sprints recently that were evidence of that. It was a shift in, I dunno if I should say it, because there were too many parallels with completely different products from the recent sprints, but it was more of a customer-centric kind of experience. Okay, that's all our phrase as whereas before, it was very, very kind of niche and very personalised to these B2B relationships. So they wanted something a bit more mainstream. So the sprint was designed to make a product that would be more self-serving to these customers. And there were some people that didn't think that that was the right strategy to move forward.
- There were others that obviously felt that that was the future of that additional product stream and that's what they wanted to test. So yeah, of course. And then there've been complete opposites to that where people just want to go into a room knowing that it's a complete blank canvas. And we've labelled these as vision sprints before with regards to, it could be any form of product strategy that comes out of it. Any experience, it could be a video, it could be a promotional video, it could be a sales deck, it could be like Jake says, it could be redesigning a waiting area for a doctor's area to make it more kid friendly, whatever. It could be a chocolate bar. These are things that you have a hunch that you want to go in this direction, but you're just trying to bring everybody on board to whatever that direction is.
- And that's the alignment thing as well. So I think it comes down to two things. It comes down to whoever is leading the project and what their objective is and what it needs to achieve and how well they align their team and moving forward with that. Remember also as well that they want to use the design sprint to prove it. So if it doesn't work, you've only lost a week or a couple of weeks if you do an iteration sprint, but look at the money it saves you if you find that out in a couple of weeks and it comes down to the facilitator to be a damn good facilitator, and you've got to manage c-suite people. These are people that don't take shit on a day-to-day, right? So you've got to be able to manage them, and this is the thing I love the most.
- I think that's also where I love now having my 30 years experience. I never feel, I feel super proud about it now, but at one point I was like, I don't want to have 22 years experience. I feel older than all of my other colleagues that are 10 years younger than me. But it's like with that comes experience and conversations and so many conversations that have formed patterns that we already know what the outcome is going to be when you're facilitating. So it's those two things that will help steer what's best for the product and what's best for the company, and the two should hopefully marry up afterwards.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- That's been very illuminating. Thank you Rob. And Rob, as we bring the show down to a close now, we've spoken so far a bit about your career and mainly about all things design sprints. But for my final question, I wanted to ask you something that's much closer to home, something personal, and you shared with me before we hit record that your youngest daughter, Alice, who's 19, was recently diagnosed with cancer. How has Alice's diagnosis changed the way that you've been thinking about your life and in particular the working part of it?
- Rob Hamblen:
- Yeah, it was really when we first found out, and we're still, this is only in very beginning of September that we found this out. And of course our world as parents, our world stopped and we immediately just flew. She was in Australia backpacking. We immediately just jumped on planes to go and be with her. And it was very strange because obviously of course there's nothing else that's as important as your kids and your family. So work just for me had to just take a backseat. And I am really fortunate that the team that I've got Be The Leap. Were able to just step up and still run it without me being here. And it was weird. It is just so many parallels. Obviously Lisa and my wife, we've had conversations, a lot of conversations recently about how we can support Alice and how we're going to be positive and with utterly devastating news that we still don't really have answers for, and we dunno what the outcomes are.
- I've drawn a lot of strength in me being able to deal with stuff because there are a lot of, and it sounds actually crude to draw parallels to your kid being sick with business, but when you think of coping mechanisms as being a human, it's just about, yeah, you have to be able to deal with it, and we have to deal with it because we have to make sure that we're our best for every day that she has. But it doesn't make it easier. Behind the scenes, there are parallels. I had to step back from the business. I had to also come back to the business as well because I felt like I was saying to you earlier, this feels like it's my bubble and the thing that I can control. And obviously there are many things with Al that we can't at the moment.
- We're just passengers and as parents to watch your kid go through that, we just feel utterly helpless. So yeah, we just draw strength in supporting each other and talking and just playing out as many different scenarios as possible so that we can try and be what we think will be prepared for them. And I know as a founder of a business, that's what I do on my week by week. You're always playing scenarios out because you have to have had thought of everything. So yeah, I mean, it's not quite the same, but there are similarities for sure, and definitely about. I think the biggest takeaway for me is that when Owl has a good day, we have to just try and make sure that we have a good day as well, because you have to keep recharging the batteries to what will never be a hundred percent. But yeah, just do the best you can.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Rob, that's a really meaningful place to finish our conversation. Clearly. I wish you and Alice and the rest of your family much strength and courage during this time. Thank you for so generously sharing your stories and insights with me today.
- Rob Hamblen:
- Thank you for being an amazing podcast host. It hasn't really felt like a podcast. It's just felt like a really, really great conversation.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Well, that's wonderful to hear. And it's the outcome that I had hoped for. I'm glad it felt that way. Rob, if people want to keep up with you and your wonderful contributions to the design world, what's the best way for them to do that?
- Rob Hamblen:
- So we are on Instagram occasionally. We've been pretty busy, so we haven't really been on there much, but if you can reach out to me on Instagram as @robhamblen, you can also go to @betheleap. You can also reach me on LinkedIn as well. That's probably my best port of call at the moment. So yeah, I'm always on LinkedIn. Yeah, or just, yeah, I guess that's probably the easiest way. Right.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Perfect. Thanks Rob. And to everyone who's tuned in, it's been great having you here as well. Everything that we've covered will be in the show notes, including where you can find Rob and Be The Leap and all of the things that we've spoken about. They'll be in detailed chapters so you can skip around to the parts that you want to hear.
- Again, if you've enjoyed the show and you want to hear more great conversations like this with world-class leaders in UX research, product management and design, don't forget to leave a review on the podcast, also subscribe. So it turns up every two weeks. And don't forget to let someone else know about the show, perhaps just one other person who you feel would get value from these conversations at depth.
- If you want to reach out to me, you can find me on LinkedIn, just search for Brendan Jarvis, or you can find my profile link to LinkedIn at the bottom of the show notes as well. And until next time, keep being brave.