Monal Chokshi
Growing Impactful UX Research Organisations
In this episode of Brave UX, Monal Chokshi shares the lessons learned from growing three UX research orgs 🦉, what makes research impact a reality 🚀, and reflects on the next step in her career 🔀.
Highlights include:
- What do you wish you knew about management before becoming a manager?
- What do researchers leaders need to do to increase their impact and influence?
- Did you become a manager to have more influence on product decisions?
- What do you look for in a company when deciding whether to apply for a job?
- What is the right way to socialise and influence partners with insights?
Who is Monal Chokshi?
Until recently, Monal was a Senior Director and Head of Research & Insights at Dropbox, the company behind the cloud-based file storage and synchronisation service 🔄 that helps over 700 million people, in over 180 countries, keep life organised.
At Dropbox, Monal led an organisation with researchers embedded in teams working across the company’s diverse range of products. As well as a centralised research team that contributed to Dropbox’s strategic direction through foundational research 💡.
Before joining Dropbox, Monal was the Head of UX Research at Lyft. It was here that her visionary leadership enabled the discipline to grow from just her, to over 30 researchers, design strategists, and research operations specialists 📈, working across all of the company’s products and services.
A generous contributor to the community, Monal has shared her insights at popular events, such as at UX Live’s UXR Conference, and on podcasts like the UX STRAT Podcast, Noam Segal’s UXR Conversations, and UserZoom’s UX Peditious 🎙️.
Transcript
- Monal Chokshi:
- You want to provide people with what they say they need, but then if you want to show additional value, you have to give them some of what they didn't know that they needed as well.
- 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 Monal Chokshi. Until recently, Monal was a senior director and head of research and insights at Dropbox, the company behind the cloud-based file storage and synchronisation service that helps over 700 million people in over 180 countries keep life organised at Dropbox.
- Monal led an organisation with researchers embedded in teams working across the company's diverse range of products, as well as a centralised research function that contributed to Dropbox's strategic direction through foundational research.
- Before joining Dropbox, Monal was the head of UX research at Lyft. It was here that her visionary leadership enabled the discipline to grow from just her to over 30 researchers, design strategists and research operations specialists working across all of the company's products and services.
- But Lyft wasn't the first time that Monal had taken on and achieved something so ambitious between 2013 and 2015, as a senior manager and head of design research at SoundCloud, Monal again built the discipline of research from scratch.
- A generous contributor to the community, Monal has shared her insights at popular events such as UX Live's UXR Conference, and on podcasts like the UXSTRAT podcast, Noam Segal's, UXR Conversations, and UserZoom's UXpeditious.
- And now she's here with me gracing this virtual stage for a conversation on Brave UX. Monal, hello and a very warm welcome to the show.
- Monal Chokshi:
- Thank you, Brendan. Thanks for the very nice intro and also now I'm saving the best podcast for now. So thank you for having me on the show.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- It's more than welcome to have you here. I've really enjoyed preparing for today and learning a bit more about all the wonderful things that I sort of touched on there in your introduction. But one of the things that I didn't mention in that introduction was that you used to be quite the runner, so good in, I believe that you are the first Indian American to be inducted into Stanford University's athletics Hall of Fame. And I just want to give people some context here, because you were inducted alongside a few other famous people, including Tiger Woods and Mike Messina, and you even qualified during your running career for the 2008 Olympic trials in the United States. When did you first realise that you had the potential to be a great runner?
- Monal Chokshi:
- Maybe I realised it in about sixth grade. I was always fast. I started playing soccer when I was about six years old, and I was the smallest first on the team, even though everyone was tiny when you're six years old. But everyone else got bigger and I stayed kind of tiny, but I could run up and down the field without having to be taken out and being subbed out. And when I was in sixth grade, I tried track and field for the first time. We had it as an afterschool sport and I broke six minutes in the mile, which as a sixth grader, like an 11 years old girl is a really amazing thing. And I didn't realise how fast that was, but when I started to learn more about it, I was just like, oh, wow, this is pretty cool. And then when I was in eighth grade, I started taking, running a little bit more seriously. I played soccer. Soccer was my first love soccer and ran cross country and track. And then when I went to high school, soccer and cross country were at the same time, so I had to decide which one to do. And then I knew I was getting serious when I decided to give up soccer in order to run cross country. And so I ran cross country in the fall, indoor track in the winter and outdoor track in the spring.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Just quickly on soccer, were you at all tempted to fly down to Australia and New Zealand for the World Cup? That was just on,
- Monal Chokshi:
- I mean, I am still a football fan. I call it football now after having lived in Berlin also for two years and learning that nobody calls it soccer out there or anywhere in the rest of the world, but I would love to go to the World Cup and I've seen a couple of soccer or football matches in Berlin, but there's so many places to go see football. And I mean, it is definitely an experience that I want to be check it out.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Definitely. Just coming back to running and the speed at which you were running, you've previously said that winning the 3000 metre title at the 1998 National Collegiate Athletic Association Championships, well, that was a bit of a mouthful, but we got, there was the highlight of your running career. I just want to give some context again here to people. So you ran in the heat nine minutes, 30 and 77 split seconds in the final that you won. You shaved off over 10 seconds to run, nine minutes, 20 and 18 split seconds, and of course you won that race. Do you remember during that race just how it felt while you were running?
- Monal Chokshi:
- Yeah, so it was my senior year and I honestly hadn't had the best season. I was injured at the beginning of the season, and so this was my last hurrah. I'd had a really good race leading up to that national championship. I won at the time called Pac 10 Conference Championship in the 3000. And so I felt like I was okay starting to get back into it in terms of getting in much better shape and overcoming that injury. And so what happens is that there's a trial and then there's a final. So in the trials, you really don't want to run all out because two days later you have to then really compete. So the trials race is really a way for you just to run just fast enough so you can get to the final, and there's some psychological stuff going on there in terms of how you want to run the race strategically and what you want to show your competitors or not and all this stuff.
- So I had been to the national championship, fortunately every year I was in college, so even from my freshman year. So I'd had a lot of experience with that. I felt like, okay, even though I haven't had the best season, I have a shot at this. And one of my goals was to win the national championship while I was in college. When I went into the final, it was actually these distance races can be very tactical, meaning strategic in how they're run. So when you're a sprinter, you just go all out, sprint as quickly as you can, and it's the fastest person wins these distance races. A lot of times if you ever watch the Olympics or something, you'll see people kind of jocking for position because you all have to share the same lanes. There's pushing, there's shoving, there's elbowing. It gets really messy, and there's a lot of strategy that goes on just in terms of getting boxed out, leading the wind for people, drafting off others, things like that.
- So there's a lot going on in these races that observers or people who don't know the sport would probably never even realise. So this race actually played to my strengths because I was somebody who always ran. The style is called sit and kick. So you kind of sit behind the leaders and in the last lap or last 100 metres or something like this, you just sprint. And I had a really fast sprint at the end of races, and so we actually started out really slow and where people were just kind of tripping over each other and the pace would go faster and slower. And then with the lap to go, I just stormed from the back and took the lead and then just ran crazy to last lap so that I was able to hold onto that lead and win. But I came from, I think I was in last place for at least half of the race.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Listening to you talk about this in the, I suppose the strategy and on the field tactics that go into running a race like this, I couldn't help but wonder, and maybe I'm being a bit cute here, but are there any parallels that you can see in the way in which your sit and kick approach, for example, that you've approached the development of your career? Are there things that you've borrowed from your time in running that you've been able to apply into the realm of research in the realm of what it's like to operate in big tech essentially?
- Monal Chokshi:
- Yeah. Well, one thing on a more macro level is I've always liked the underdogs. So I was kind of an underdog through college, my college career, and I didn't win a national championship, a solo national championship until my last race, but I was an underdog going into the race. My cross country team at Stanford, we won the national championships in 1996, and when I first started at Stanford, we weren't even ranked nationally. So it was very much a, we were underdogs. And when we won the national championships like three years later, it was a very much a surprise. So I really like that. And you can probably see, I think Lyft was the seventh startup that I worked at. So finally a very successful exit for Lyft back in 2019 when we went public. But it took a while before I got to work at a company where that underdog status actually came through and we redeemed ourselves in a sense. So on the macro level, I'm very much about getting scrappy. You would probably call my running and my training a bit scrappy in that way, and then taking on big challenges and proving to others that, you know what, we can do something that we're not favoured to do.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- And we're definitely going to talk about some of the big challenges that you've taken on. But before we do that, I was curious, is running still a thing for you?
- Monal Chokshi:
- So I mean, I think running will always be a thing for me, not competitively. And I think I've had a couple of injuries over as you get older. But yeah, I'm eager to kind of continue running through the rest of my life. I don't think it'll ever be something that I stop doing and unless something is preventing me from doing it,
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Yeah, I'm not nearly as good a runner as you, but I'm a runner and there's just something about it. I don't run competitively, but there's something that just has kept me running for at least the last 15 years, and I can't see myself giving it up unless I have an injury that prevents it. It's a special pursuit and you get a certain feeling from it when you find your gear, your sixth gear or something when that kicks in.
- Monal Chokshi:
- Yes. And that sixth gear is the one that, it's like the hidden one, the one that I've been known to turn on in a sense when I've been racing. But the competitive side of me I think is always in there.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- I believe you're speaking to me from your father's house, and why I'm mentioning that is that I was looking back at your reflections on this in particular, this final race that you won at Stanford, your last race, right? The one that you essentially came from behind and blew everyone away. And I understand it was your parents who instilled your interest, interests and your love of sports, and your dad was a cricketer and your mom enjoyed sports like tennis and something that I hadn't heard of before, actually racket ball. And about this particular, in particular, your athletic success. You've said before, and I'll quote you now, I believe my success in athletics was rooted in my support. What else do you attribute to your family's support?
- Monal Chokshi:
- So my parents were born and raised in India. They came over here with nothing and lived the American dream. So I actually wrote papers in high school and college about my dad because we are learning about the American dream, and he lived it. And I think the thing that I appreciate most about my parents was the fact that they really supported me to make my own decisions through life. And I know that it was rooted in, it's always been rooted in love and support for we want you to do what's going to make you happiest. So even though they had their biases about what they thought that was, whenever I made a decision, they were behind me a hundred percent.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Well, let's talk about one of those decisions, and that was your decision to study the somewhat infamous and tech circles, bachelor of Science and Symbolic Systems at Stanford. You did that with a concentration in human computer interaction. I believe your parents weren't that keen initially on you pursuing that, were they?
- Monal Chokshi:
- No, I mean everyone else at that time, because the major was only a few years old when I started at Stanford in the early to mid nineties, dating myself, I think they had just had their first graduating class. And so no one ever heard of Symbolic Systems, and I couldn't have dreamt that people actually would know about what that was now. But my parents were just like, yeah, cool story, but no one's going to ever hire you because no one knows what that is and what that means. And it was just what I felt was I'm like, this is it. This has everything that I'm excited about to learn. I didn't have any of philosophy, psychology, computer science, I didn't have any of that stuff in high school, and it was all the stuff I was interested in, and it was in one major, which I was excited about because I couldn't decide on a single thing.
- And then the focus on human computer interaction was what really drew me to it, because at that time, the first email account I ever had was when I started at Stanford, and it wasn't just because I, everyone else had an email in the high school, no one had it back then. So all this stuff was brand new and very exciting to me. But yeah, they were kind of like, why don't you just major in computer science? Why do you have to pick some major no one's ever heard of? You're never going to get a job.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- How long did it take them to come around?
- Monal Chokshi:
- I think after I started getting jobs.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- The proof?
- Monal Chokshi:
- Yeah, yeah, exactly. Then they're like, okay, I guess it was okay.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- This is possibly an unfair question, but do you recall at the time having a clear picture while you were studying symbolic systems of where it would take you
- Monal Chokshi:
- In the long run? No, I was just kind of following where my passion was, and I didn't think years and years out at that point. I think I was just like, this is fun, this is cool. This combines all my interests my whole life. And through high school as well, I really loved art. My two favourite subjects in school in high school were math and art. So those were the things that I was really excited by. And my mom was an artist. My dad was well in India, he was a math professor, so I feel like I got those both from them. So I didn't know what would become of what is now the internet and everything that we basically live and die by today.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- You graduated with symbolic systems and then you went on to work for a number of tech startups, I believe, in the sort of valley area, but then you decided to go back to school at some point in, I think it was around the mid two thousands. And this time you went to uc, San Diego to study a master of science and cognitive science with a focus in HCI. Why go back to school? What motivated you to return to the classroom?
- Monal Chokshi:
- Yeah, a couple of things. I think when I graduated from Stanford, I knew I'd always want to go back to school at some point to get another degree. And I think it was the perfect timing for me to go back because, well, first of all, there was the whole.com crash thing, so it made employment a little more challenging, but I did have a job, but during that job I was just like, you know what? I don't think this is what I want to do in terms of just sort of the day-to-day, I was working as a designer. I wasn't getting to do research just because budgets were cut and things like this, but I'm like, I think I want to do something that's a little more, I want to see what else there is. And so I was deciding should I go back to school for design or for research or both, or how does this work? And back then they were really limited in terms of the programmes. So what I decided was I would go back to school and focus on research, and I went to UCSD because, not because of the cognitive science aspect of it, but there were two research labs at that time there that were focused on understanding how to design technology through using ethnography. So to me, that was exactly what I was excited about.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- That decision seems to have been a fairly good one. If you look back at the things that you've done since you graduated that programme, I've heard you talk about your career progression before, and I'm going to quote you again now, you've said I'm sort of a free spirit. Whatever seems good for whatever reason is how I land. I don't really have a grand plan. So that sounds very whimsical, just go with the flow. However, if I look at the companies that you've worked for and the things that you've done in those companies along the way, it all looks very intentional, very purposeful to me. Has there really been no grand plan?
- Monal Chokshi:
- I'm glad you think it looks very intentional. I mean, that means it's working. I mean, honestly, I'm trying to think if there really was a grand plan, and I think that no, I have goals and there are things I want to do, but it's not necessary. I don't think I've taken the time in the past to say, 20 years from now I want to be doing this. I think the only thing to me that's most important is 20 years from now, I want to be doing something that I want to be doing at that time. So yeah, it's not to say that I don't have any long-term goals, but I'd say that your tastes, your desires and everything can change as life goes on and the environment changes and everything else. So I don't committing myself to anything in terms of goal because it take hold very seriously that I'm not sure that I really want to commit myself to.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- You shared with me offline that you are currently in, it seems like in this in-between place, I can't remember exactly the word that you used to describe it, but as per your intro, it's no secret that you finished up at Dropbox earlier in the year. Where exactly are you at in yourself with regards to what comes next for you?
- Monal Chokshi:
- Yeah, it's a good question. And I think now that I've already dated myself, I'm in that middle age period, which I think a lot of us who have been in the industry for a while are, and what I'm noticing when I speak with friends or colleagues who are also in this stage, I mean, the pandemic obviously was a huge point in our lives that for everyone that made a step back and think about, gain more perspective about wow shit can happen, and what does it mean to us? What are we doing with our lives and what do we really want to do moving forward? So I've taken this time to really step back and think about that quite a bit. I've also had some pretty big life events happen over the last year and a half, including my mom passing. So it's really given me this time off has really helped me stop and consider this trajectory I've been on, I feel like is a very normal sort of what you're supposed to do in your life kind of trajectory.
- But is that really what we want for ourselves? I think in the second phase of our lives, I feel like I'm not just entering a new chapter, I'm kind of entering a new part of the book of life, and right now I'm taking an intermission. So yeah, so it's been really fun to just first take some time to spend time with friends, family, build those relationships that I feel like we didn't have a chance to as much over the pandemic time, but also so many of us work so hard and dedicate so much of our lives to our jobs and our career that we don't always have a chance to think about spending that time with the people that we love as much and getting quality time in. So you start thinking about when you're on your deathbed, what do you want to look back and remember and be happy that you did and spent time doing? So that's kind of where I'm at. So what I like to think about this time as is it's really been sort of doing UX research on myself. So if I'm the user and the experience is my life, then I'm doing research right now on understanding what do I want that user experience to look like and feel like and be for myself, and then becomes the design of the product. But first I'm just doing the research.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Well, seeing as you're in the research phase, I can't help but ask what insights have you uncovered? Is there anything that you've decided not to do in this next chapter?
- Monal Chokshi:
- I think one of the things that I've learned, well, there's a few things, and I haven't quite figured out all the insights yet. I'm still collecting data. I'll tell you that, Brendan. But for one thing that I've always known and that is just kind of coming up more and more is that people are such a big part of my happiness and what is meaningful to me in this world and during my time here. So that is definitely going to continue to be a priority for me, and hopefully I'll find a way to combine that even more so with my career and where I spend my time moving forward. I mean, every job that I've taken up until this point has always had a huge component of the people. And I feel so lucky that I chose a profession where the people are just so awesome, quite honestly, because I've made so many friends and had the pleasure of working with so many smart, thoughtful, empathetic, beautiful human beings that I just feel really lucky to be part of that. So that is a huge part of what makes me tick, what makes me happy, and what gives me joy in this world.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Well, speaking about the people and bringing this back down to your career now, you once made the leap from being an IC to a manager, and I believe it was a design product design director at Intuit who you'd worked with at Yahoo that gave you that first management opportunity. What do you wish that you had known about making that leap before you made it?
- Monal Chokshi:
- Do I wish I knew? I think what I wish I knew was that it's okay not to know exactly how to do it and that it is a process. It's not like one day you wake up and you have to know everything because you learn and you gain that experience over time. So I've been fortunate enough to have an older sibling, my sister who she is one of these people who is just a born leader and they're rare in the sense that we're like, she walks into a room and then everyone's just like, okay, we're all going to listen to you. I dunno how she does it. I'm still observing to try and figure it out, but she just has this presence. And so growing up, I always thought that in order to truly be a leader, that's what you had to be like. So I really felt like that was an imposter because I wanted to try, but I didn't think that that was my personality.
- And so it was difficult for me to have the same kind of confidence moving into that role. But what I've learned over the years is that first of all, there's so many different kinds of leadership styles, and second of all, a lot of them are just skills that you learn over time. And so through experience, through training, through mentorship. So I was going into this sort of blind and all right, I have this opportunity, but I don't know what I'm doing. And then after a certain amount of time I learned that no, that's completely normal. So anyone else who's out there listening to this, please know you're not alone and feeling that way.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- I was going to ask who was it? Maybe there wasn't someone, maybe it was an experience that you had, like a baptism by fire, but who was it that showed you what truly great management looked like?
- Monal Chokshi:
- I think it was just really starting to observe and learn through various people working with coaches and mentors and just as a researcher at heart, seeing and observing like, well, what does this manager do? What does that manager do? What's working well for them? What's not? And keeping mental notes about, oh, this I thought was a really great style, or I really liked how I was treated in this situation. I want to do that for my direct reports, so on and so forth. So I wouldn't say there was one person or manager that I was like, oh, everything this person has is something I want to emulate. I think everyone has their own style and hopefully you can create your style by emulating parts of everyone else that you've respect and what's worked well for you that you've seen.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Yeah, definitely. Definitely. You've spoken before about the misconception that exists that only managers are leaders. And I want to quote you again now about what you've said here. You've said you don't have to be a people manager to be a leader. Being a leader means coming up with ideas, speaking out about them, having a perspective and really being able to influence. The bottom line is that we can be leaders without managing people, but the best managers are also strong leaders. Should it be a bottom line that someone should have to demonstrate that they're a good leader before they're given the responsibility of being a manager?
- Monal Chokshi:
- I mean, ideally, right. I think that would really help set them up for success. I think management is also more than just the leadership part of it. So there are some people who are amazing leaders but maybe are really bad at managing people in some way or shape or form. Management does require a lot of logistics and things like that too. Spreadsheets, you could be great with people, you could be great with ideas, you could be a great leader, but you might be really bad at being on time and time management in some ways. And so I think a good manager is also then need that part of it because you're riddled with meetings, you have lots of things, performance reviews, like other things that are just very time management oriented. So in some ways it is a good thing to be a strong leader to become a manager, but that's not the only thing. That's my point.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- There are a lot of things that managers have to contend with that ICS don't. It has different demands. It places different demands on the person that's performing that role. And this transition generally seems to me fairly senior ICS into managers at some point in their career seems to be a fairly common one, right? Few people, in my observation at least start out as managers and end their careers as managers. And you've previously said about this, and I'll quote you again, A lot of folks as they progress in their career for whatever reason, lean more towards the managerial side. And perhaps it's because they feel like that's where they'll have more of a seat at the table, or they'll have more authority, they'll have more influence or impact on decision-making cast your mind back to when you made that leap from IC to management, is that how you felt at the time? Did you feel that you needed to do this in order to have more influence and more impact on decision making? I
- Monal Chokshi:
- Do remember wanting that when I was at Yahoo, and that was when I was last in ic, wanting to be able to influence more and not feeling like I would be able to as an ic, I felt like in some ways I could influence the product and product decisions, but I didn't feel like I had enough influence for greater processes and getting to more foundational or fundamental root problems and wanting to attack those. So when I became a manager, I mean as we already talked about, I was just like, all right, I'm here. But it's not like the authorities just given to you either in a sense. And I took my responsibilities as a manager very seriously, especially I felt responsible then like, oh, there's this part. I have this team. I want to make sure I'm showing up for them first. So developing those skills and such.
- But after Intuit, I went to SoundCloud where I started the design research team there, and it was just the whole discipline, but that's where the company was small enough where I really felt like, okay, I have a little more of a platform to be able to try and influence. And really there was also a lot of work on my hands in terms of building something from scratch. And I think it was really when I got to lift where I saw a way to build something so foundational in terms of the research team. I was the first researcher at the company across all of the disciplines and the first research leader. And in building that team, I think there were a lot of decisions to be made. And one of the things that I did was as different organisations hired their insights leader, because often this happens in silos, I just went and befriended that person.
- I said, Hey, look, here's going on. We're the first research leaders here. Let's work together. Let's try and eliminate the silos. Let's bring our teams as we hire them into a community just so that we would have that sense of community, but also not be duplicating work. I'd seen that way too often in the past, not even being aware of what others are working on and making sure that we are collaborating as much as possible while we were setting up, for example, survey processes and operations. Basically, it's so important that there's somebody who is, or all these leaders are coming together to say, Hey, let's not reinvent the wheel, and we're not all going to separately work with legal or whatever. Let's do this all together. Let's share the budget for our survey tools and things like that. So it was really nice to build that infrastructure and influence in that way and make sure that we were doing things in a very efficient manner, and then hopefully having the chance to influence as a larger collective.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- I want to come back to Lyft, so many good things in there to talk about. But before we do that, I want to continue on where we're going here with this building influence across different research leaders and how you can use that to influence the direction of a company at Dropbox. You formed a group called the Insights Council, and I understand that was similar to what you were talking about there at Lyft where you literally got together this group of leaders and research across the business and collaborated. You actually tried to align everyone and get something going where you could create greater value than you could in your silos other than maybe your experience at Lyft. But what was it that inspired you to take this action?
- Monal Chokshi:
- Yeah, I mean, I just saw the potential for coming together. It's sort of like theoretically it should work, but in practise, because it's like, okay, if you think about it, we all have a separate piece of the puzzle. It's like let's each take our pieces. Each piece maybe has a little picture on it, but when you put all the pieces together, you're like, oh, I could see the full picture. And so it's just like, all right, data science, voice, the customer, all these different types of research. At Dropbox, I had both the design research team and the market research team. We combined a few months after I got there. So that was nice because those are such complimentary sets of data and researchers that have so many similar skills. But then we still had lots of other teams throughout the company, and it's just like we're all trying to answer very similar questions.
- We all have different types of data and we should be working together to triangulate the data to come up with the most robust insights for the company. But it's working across those organisational lines and trying to create roadmaps that are shared. It's so difficult given the roadmaps that each organisation has and that those insights leaders have to report up through and report back on. So it was really about trying to get leverage at the next level up at our executive team level basically to say, Hey, we want to work together more and it's going to benefit you, but unfortunately that's a very difficult thing to do. So what I ended up doing is proactively starting seeing that there's this issue that where we don't have this holistic single voice of truth, which is what I like to call it. And every August our C-suite presents to our board the new fiscal year plans or company strategy, whatever it's going to be.
- And I noticed in my first full year at Dropbox that right before the board meeting, the executives would come to our teams, come to the insights leaders and be asking for data or quotes or examples to support what their ideation was for whatever the strategy was. And it's a scramble. It's sometimes fire drills. It's very much like, oh wait, we need this kind of data. We need that kind of data and things like that. And after that experience, I'm just like, this seems kind of backwards. We be giving them insights upfront so that they can base their strategy off of that. And then hopefully we would have enough time, they would have enough time to then say, oh, actually we need more information on this thing. We really like this thing and we can go back and do that. So I got buy-in from my manager who is awesome, Alistair Simpson, who is also on your show, and a lot of the other insights leaders because we formed this Insights Council to bring everyone together, like people, representatives from our team.
- And we did something called an Insights Summit. So I said, okay, pick the three to five biggest insights from the last year and let's all get together and discuss them and come up with the main themes and then present them back to the company and let's do this well before they're going to start their planning process for their kickoff, for the strategy planning and the board presentation. And it was a big hit. So we were able to do that. It was perfect timing because I knew at the beginning of Q3 was when they were going to kick off that work. And so they were looking for data and we just gave it to them all packaged up nicely, and it ended up driving a lot of the company strategy for the following year, which was awesome. So I think this is an example that while it's very difficult to coordinate and you need buy-in and collaboration from and cooperation from the various teams, it can show what we're able to do for the company at that holistic executive level and the value that insights teams can have. And so that is sort of my, what I keep working closer and closer towards. I want to lead teams to show this as an example for what we can do and what we can be, because I think we're all of the insights teams, including UX research, are so underutilised in terms of the value that we can provide for the company.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- It sounds like you really were able to flip the reactive nature of how the seeking of insights went from the executive on its head, and it became very proactive and very formative helped 'em to form what they were actually planning for in terms of the company's strategy. I had the pleasure and the privilege of reading Steve Portugal's second edition of interviewing users before it was published. And there's an essay that you wrote in there, which I believe you're talking about what you achieved here at Dropbox. And there was something, there were many things actually in the essay, but there was something in particular that caught my attention that I wanted to ask you about. It was something you said actually, and I'll quote you again now. You said this was a risky initiative as it was not asked for, required the participation of folks from several teams and would be seen as a waste of precious time and resources if not successful. Now it's easy I suppose to look back at this and post rationalise what made it successful. But at the time that you took the risk, what made you feel that it was a risk worth taking?
- Monal Chokshi:
- I mean, first of all, it was something a company needed in my opinion, and I felt like this was a risk worth taking because it could have huge impact in a positive way. And so the thing that I really loved about working with Alistair was that I felt I had the psychological safety of taking risks. And I spoke with him saying, Hey, look, I know that this is a risk, and so I want to make sure that you're okay with it. And he was. So I said, all right. And what I tried to do was make sure that everyone else who was involved, the other teams and so on and so forth, that we were really trying to minimise how much investment or time and resources that they needed to put into it. So we used research that already existing and just had some workshops and really tried to make it efficient. It worked out as good as I could have hoped for. I feel very lucky that this was one of the bigger risks that we took and it was successful.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Can it be understated just how important the influence of an exec, someone like say Alistair, is on enabling research to be a strategic contributor to a company?
- Monal Chokshi:
- It's huge. It's so huge. I mean, I think this is a struggle that a lot of folks in research have faced because research doesn't report up directly to the C-level most times. And so you don't always have a leader that research reports up through who really understands the insights or research side of it and what's possible. And so I feel like that gives us a lot of potential to grow our disciplines. But at the same time, there needs to be a path that is the support there to kind of take those risks or to try things and a belief that insights can help shape. Things like that are this important.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- You've got a track record of working in organisations where you've established a practise or in the case of Dropbox, where you've transformed a practise of research into something different, something more effective, something better. When you are considering, because you've done this a number of times, this doesn't appear to be random luck when you are considering companies to work for, what are the signs or signals that you're looking for that you think, oh, okay, this is a place that is receptive or is going to give me an opportunity to create something special when it comes to research?
- Monal Chokshi:
- So I did this talk at the learners conference a couple of years ago, maybe it was 2020, and it was about structuring UXR teams. But really I talked about how I facing my journey at Lyft, the seven stages of growth that we went through. But I also talk about these five key factors that I look at when I assess companies and really trying to understand how well set up for success. Might you be as a UX researcher or a leader, basically, what is it going to be like? Are you going to spend your time sort of having to fight the good fight or are you going to be given resources and then really focus on just doing good work mean? So an assessment tool per se, but some of that is just like where does research sit in the organisation? Obviously the relationship with your manager and so on and so forth.
- So when I interviewed at Dropbox and I spoke with Alistair, I was just so energised by the alignment that he and I had in terms of how we thought about insights right away. And then I spoke with his boss before I signed my letter. He also was of similar mindset. I'm like, this is great because if what I ultimately want to do, I mean Dropbox already had an amazing research team, so I'm like, what I really want to do, what I did at Lyft was zero to one. This is more like a one to two. Let's really try to level up the team and see what we can do as an organisation within the company to influence at the highest level, at the executive level, you need to have that support. It's so much harder and more challenging to do that when you don't have the ability to be brought in or if you have naysayers. So I think having that support and those folks who believe in the kind of work you do and understand what's possible makes it so much better. So there's still a lot of education needed at Dropbox across the company, and I think every company has that. It's not like everyone knows what UX research is or what even market research is, or the difference or the difference between all the different teams like data science. So we faced a lot of that I have at every company, but I think we're slowly but surely getting closer. And
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Every company is different, right? Lyft was a different company to Dropbox, and I noticed that when you went to Dropbox, you did things differently to what you did at Lyft, which is probably not unsurprising, right? It's a different company. But when you started at Dropbox, the research teams were fully embedded, or at least I believe they were. And you decided to change that. You formed a centralised team as well as kept some of the research team embedded. What was your thinking behind that? Why do things differently at Dropbox than you'd done at Lyft?
- Monal Chokshi:
- Yeah, so I mean, this is something that I would've loved to have done at Lyft had I had the resources, and I think it was probably the next step. But what I noticed, I mean, every company is different and every situation is different. What I noticed when I went to Dropbox, they hadn't had a permanent leader for about a year and a half when I joined. And so there was a lot of reshaping to do and a new vision was needed and so on and so forth. But just in sort of assessing, doing the initial assessment, I saw that everyone was embedded, but we weren't necessarily seeing the forest from the trees, and there were a lot of foundational elements I felt were missing. So really understanding. So backing up really quickly, Dropbox is sort of figuring out its act two. So cloud storage obviously was the bread and butter a long time, and it's somewhat of a commodity now.
- It's about figuring out what is the next thing. And so we knew in a lot of ways who our customer was for the cloud storage, but then what does that transition look like to the next ideation of the next big thing for Dropbox? And who should we be targeting and so on and so forth. So there were a lot of unanswered questions, foundationally, and we didn't have a dedicated team trying to figure that out, that we also, even though Dropbox was very customer centric or cared a lot about its users, there was no kind of level metric that was focused on customer satisfaction or happiness. So if we're going to make this part of our company's DNA in terms of how we're assessing ourselves, the experience of our users and our customers and things like that, and if that is supposedly important to the company, then why aren't we measuring it? Why aren't these metrics going to the board, so on and so forth. What was the
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Answer? Why weren't they measuring it?
- Monal Chokshi:
- Well, it's a long story, but I think part of it was just that infrastructure really wasn't in place. Our CX team was measuring NPS, but many companies, NPS was just a number, and nobody understood why it moved when it moved, if it moved, and then it just started getting ignored. And so most people weren't even aware there was an NPS score that was being collected. So part of what we did was started a CSAP programme that really focused not just on the high level brand satisfaction of the product overall, but also started looking at various experiences with the product to really understand what composes that high level number, where are the areas in which we can really focus to increase satisfaction overall as well. So things like that, I think they need to be somewhat actionable or understood. I think the reason why the NPS number was started to be irrelevant was because nobody really quite understood like, well, how do we move it? And what does this really even mean for us?
- Brendan Jarvis:
- There's research and then there's effective research. And in your mind, what are the things or the thing that separates the two?
- Monal Chokshi:
- I think it's actionability. You probably have this as a quote too for me. You've done so much research. I'm very almost eerily impressed.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Hopefully it's not bordering too far into the airly, but we'll see.
- Monal Chokshi:
- But I've been known for saying, doing research is only half of the researcher's job. The other half is influencing. And so if your insights are not driving decisions, you're not doing a good job because at the end of the day, you could do the best ever research, but if nothing happens from it, then it's kind of like, oh, well, that's a waste. That was a bummer.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Is that influence part though? That's the more tricky part for many researchers, right? It's not the part that is patently obvious from the outset, just how it should be done. And picking up on this, you've said previously, and I'll quote you again now tactically, we need to plan time in our roadmaps to ensure that we are socialising and influencing partners in the right way in order to ensure that they're aware of how these insights can and will benefit the business. Now, I want to pick up on the right way here. What does the right way to socialise and influence partners? And I'm assuming you're talking about product and engineering here, but feel free to correct me. What does that look like?
- Monal Chokshi:
- It's not necessarily limited to just product and engineering and say, well, for my team at Dropbox, it was also marketing, but also more collectively. Holistically. It was the csuite, which we call the S team, senior leadership team. And I think it looks different at different companies, and it's really a matter of, again, doing research to understand what is going to be the best way to influence. So are people actually going to read your report if it's a report, or do you need to do something that is more immersive, interactive, have a presentation, things like this. I think a lot of researchers are used to just saying, okay, here's the report I delivered for you, and now moving on to the next thing. Well, that's okay in some regards. It's also like, well, if we're trying to fight for a seat at the table and show up as leaders, that's not us helping ourselves. That is actually playing more and more into being order takers. So I hear a lot of people complain, a lot of researchers complain about, I don't want to be an order taker. I want a seat at the table. Well act like you have a seat at the table. Don't act like you are an order taker, but if you do, then you're just perpetuating that. Does that make sense?
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Yes, it does. And I think you are someone who is qualified to say that and have weight, and that's based on the things that you've managed to achieve so far, the risks that you've taken, the Insights Council, I believe at Lyft, it took you a month before you felt you'd figured out what the strategic direction of the company should be. And you certainly strike me as someone who's not afraid to take a well-considered stand and operate at that level without requiring the permission to do so. I think that's a really refreshing thing for people to hear, and your story is clearly a key part of that, man. I wanted to ask you about another tension or part of an experience that most researchers have encountered in their careers, which is particularly in tech, this need to move at speed often. Maybe this is tied into what you were talking there about don't be an order taker.
- I'm not sure, but see where this goes. This is to do with the pace of the companies we work in. You've said in a very fast moving company, people just want to run as quickly as possible, but I think sometimes it takes a little bit more effort and energy to ensure that the work is high quality and that's reality, right? We're not operating in a slow paced environment and people want things yesterday. It often forces researchers or it feels like sometimes it can force researchers into a reactive mode. And we were just talking about that it actually being proactive to get that seat at the table. How do you navigate that or do that dance with stakeholders that have these expectations on your team or the organisation you are leading around speed and quality. How do you approach that with them just as to what they can expect from you?
- Monal Chokshi:
- I mean, this is definitely, I think a huge challenge for research teams because you are doing a dance where if you are still trying to, which I mean I say still, but it's kind of always trying to gain that credibility. You want to provide people with what they say they need, but then if you want to show additional value, you have to give them some of what they didn't know that they needed as well. And then it's just like, oh wait, you can do more and wait, actually you kind of read my mind. Great, maybe we should include you in more conversations and things like that. So there is a little bit of a dance that I think needs to be done, and this is where researchers who a lot of UX researchers have a background or some background in psychology, you really have to think and strategize in addition to your regular job about how to influence best and where to sort of appease, do take the order in a sense, build that relationship, but then also kind of find a way to then influence by doing some things more proactively.
- So it's a mix of this reactive, proactive. Eventually. For example, at Lyft, we had that at the very, very start, I was just like, alright, I was hired to basically do start this UX research team, but hired by the head of design. And what they really wanted was a usability testing programme. Like, great, we'll give that to you and get you involved. And then started getting to talk to the PMs, realising hearing what the PMs wanted as well, but didn't know that we could answer. Started giving them some stuff and then them getting excited and eventually just gaining momentum and being able to gain more resources and headcount and there was more demand and we didn't have enough people on our team. We had at that point too. So then the VP of product had to get involved and give us some headcount. And then when teams were kind of new teams in the hypergrowth stage were coming on board like, oh, we're going to start this new lift bikes and scooters team or whatever it was.
- They were just like, oh wait, we need a researcher. We know what great work they do and what they're going to help us set our whole roadmap. Amazing. That just happened organically. So that was such a huge moment for me to know that we made it. That was a huge milestone and things like this. So I think it's a game at this point in our trajectory of where we are, the industry itself, like our field and what we're trying to build. Because for me, it's like I mentioned before, there's so much that we can do and that we're capable of. And I think once you have those tools in your toolkit of methodology, I started my career being like, I need to learn how to do this kind of method and that kind of method and that kind of method. That's not, I mean, yeah, it's important, but getting to be experts on all these methods isn't as important as it is to be able to influence.
- It's funny because after I'd been at Dropbox for a little while and I started realising that there were all these just fundamental questions that as a company we didn't have good answers to and why are people churning? That kind of thing. And I was just like, this is not a hard research question to answer, but this would be so impactful. So this is those kinds of things, whether it's about conversion or picking that business metric that is important to the company and then going after it, even though that's not what's being asked of you. Those are the things that don't require rocket science or crazy expert UX research. But then they go So far,
- Brendan Jarvis:
- I feel like what you're talking about here is something else you've said, and you said that building these functions, and I'll quote you now, it's not for the faint of heart. I'll start with saying that I think it definitely takes somebody who is willing to roll up their sleeves and take on everything from the start. Is this what you're trying to tell me? I
- Monal Chokshi:
- Believe I saw that in relation to starting a research team. So yeah, there's so much going on because it's more than just doing the job that they think you're trying to do of, oh, all the logistical, sort of set up a research programme and whatever, hire some people. It's like, no, you are, well, I am trying to, I see this as a revolution. We're going to come in and be something completely super impactful and help transform the company and the way they think about research and the direction they're going.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- I just keep thinking of your race, you running this race and your sit and kick strategy. It's like, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm not trying to win. I'm not trying to win. And then blasting past people when they least expect it. It seems to me like a similar kind of thing, at least thinking about this a little bit more, you talked about the struggle of being maybe one or two researchers at the beginning, and you're trying to keep all the plates spinning. You're trying keep the business as usual people happy with what it is that they're asking for in the here and now. While secretly almost sounds like sort of secret agent style, you are behind the scenes trying to build or scaffold, I suppose, a research organisation that can have the impact or the kind of impact that you believed that it could. At what point or what action did you take that enabled you to move from being just so involved in the trenches that you were then able to stick your head out above and look around and start to get a bit more strategic with the way in which you were building these teams, this organisation?
- Monal Chokshi:
- Yeah, I'd say there's sort of also a dance that I think research leaders need to do, especially ones who are kind of building teams. One is staying on the ground, putting everything together, managing your team, managing the work, all that. For me, there was always a view to the strategy because I personally am someone who needs to always be connecting what I'm doing on the ground to the bigger picture and having that vision and that strategy. So otherwise it just feels like, what am I doing here? I'm just kind of going through the motions. So I'd say, yeah, maybe there's a certain point where then you start to focus on the strategy part a little bit more once things are kind of in place for plan, like the first part of the plan or whatnot. But yeah, I would say that I've always had sort of that eye on things from that level as well.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Maybe if we take that level and we zoom out even further and we think about the level of why we are doing what we're doing. And you mentioned earlier on your talk that you gave at UX Live, and just if people want to find this, and I'll link to it in the show notes too, it's called How to Succeed as a UX Arm Manager. And that talk, you started the talk with a bit of interaction, right? A bit of audience interaction. You asked the people in the audience how many of them knew what their company's vision and mission statement was, and about half of the audience put their hand up. Then you asked them another question, which was, how many of the people with their hands up also had a mission or vision statement for their research org? And not many hands were left up. So from that experience, you were there on stage. I could only see it for the recorded view, right? But from that experience, is it fair to say, or is it a sense that you get that many of us, other than to pay the bills, don't have a clear idea why we are showing up to work every day?
- Monal Chokshi:
- That's a good question. I feel like unless there is that vision or mission from leadership, when you're working within an organisation that can get very easily lost. And unless hopefully people are thinking about and defining it for themselves. But I think when you do, there's going to be a lot more meaning that you attach to your work and hopefully more motivation as well.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Man, I have one final question for you today, and it's to do with an interview that you did on Uxr Conversations, a podcast from also another previous brave UX guest, fellow researcher, and all round great human Noam Segal. And in that conversation you said you felt UX research was in its adolescence, and I'm paraphrasing you there. So on that topic, and we've talked a lot today about increasing influence, about what it takes to actually make things happen between different research disciplines at large companies. What is it that you feel that the, I suppose more specifically research managers, people that are in charge of these organisations and these teams need to do that would help to increase the impact and influence that they have at their organisations?
- Monal Chokshi:
- A couple of things. First and foremost is, and I mentioned this in the talk, also put on their researcher hat and do some research internally with the organisations to understand what their needs are. And a lot of times it kind of sucks to say it, but businesses, they're about making money. And so what are the ways, if we want to be influential within a business, we care about our users. That's a big part of, I'd say the vision, the mission that a lot of people in our types of roles have. We want to build products and that enhance and enrich people's lives, let's say. But in order to do that, and in order to fulfil our maybe personal mission, we need the business to see our work as being useful to the business whose goal is to make money. So he got to bridge those two. And so what are the metrics of the business cares about? How does your work show that it's going to help move those business metrics and be useful to the business?
- Brendan Jarvis:
- That's a good point to finish on. Monal. Thank you. This has been such a delightful and impactful conversation. Thank you for so generously sharing your stories and insights with me today.
- Monal Chokshi:
- No, thank you. Thank you for asking the questions and doing such great research on me. Oh,
- Brendan Jarvis:
- You're most welcome.
- Monal Chokshi:
- It's been a pleasure and I hope that some of the things I had to say are useful to people who are listening.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- I have no doubt. I have no doubt. Mona, if people want to find out more about you want to connect with you and follow all the things that you've been contributing to the field, what's the best way for them to do that?
- Monal Chokshi:
- I'd say LinkedIn. That's the one social media platform that I am active on. Really.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Great. Thanks, Monal, and to everyone that'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 mine and all the great things that we've spoken about. They'll be fully chaptered. So please check out the YouTube video so you can hop around to the parts of the conversation you most want to hear.
- Again, if you 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, subscribe so it turns up every two weeks, and tell someone else about the show as well.
- If you want to reach out to me, you can find me on LinkedIn, just search for Brendan Jarvis, or you can find a link to my profile at the bottom of the show notes or head on over to thespaceinbetween.co.nz. That's thespaceinbetween.co.nz. And until next time, keep being brave.