Josephine Wong
Making Meaningful Work
In this brand new episode of Brave UX, Josephine Wong challenges us to design with intention 🌏, build cultures that care 🤝, and recognise the quiet power of everyday interactions to create truly meaningful work ✨.
Highlights include:
- From Melbourne to Apogee: Founding a UX Consultancy
- Understanding Systems: Politics, Economics, and Research
- The Problem with Feature-Centric Thinking
- Make Meaningful Work and the Power of Micro-Interactions
- Bringing Human Skills to Kids Through Sparkle Studio
Who is Josephine Wong?
Josephine Wong is a co-founder and principal at Apogee, a pioneering user experience consultancy founded in 1998 with a vision to bring human-centred design to Hong Kong and the wider region 🌏. Over the past 25 years, Apogee has played a significant role in advancing UX across Asia.
She’s also the co-founder of Make Meaningful Work, a studio and learning platform helping people unlock their potential by focusing on meaningful work in environments where they can learn, improve, and thrive together 🌱.
If that wasn’t enough, Jo is also the co-founder of UX Hong Kong, an annual learning event that brings together passionate practitioners from across product and service design to explore and celebrate exceptional experience creation 🎉.
A committed and influential contributor to our field, Jo has shared her expertise on global platforms including Beat Camp, We Can Do Better, the Reorient podcast, and UXpod 💬.
Her work is deeply informed by her multicultural upbringing and global perspective, allowing her to bridge cultural nuance and inspire designers and researchers around the world 🌍.
Transcript
- Josephine Wong:
- I'm interested in quite a lot of different things, just how things pieces together. That helps me when I do research, not just understanding the customer's point of view. I'm also interested in why the business want to provide this type of products or services to the customers and how that fits them. Because I think if your products and services don't add value to your customers, it won't last or it won't sustain.
- 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 want an independent perspective to align hearts and minds. You can find out more about me and 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 our field of design. I do that by unpacking the stories, learnings, and expert advice of a diverse range of world-class leaders.
- My guest today is Jo Wong. Jo is a co-founder and principal at Apogee, a pioneering user experience consultancy founded in 1998 with the vision of bringing human-centered design to Hong Kong and the wider region. Over the past 25 years, Apogee has played a significant role in advancing UX across Asia.
- She's also the co-founder of Make Meaningful Work, a studio and learning platform dedicated to helping people unlock their potential by focusing on meaningful work in environments where they can learn, improve, and thrive alongside their colleagues.
- If that wasn't enough, Jo is also the co-founder of UX Hong Kong, an annual learning event established in 2011 that brings together passionate practitioners from all areas of product and service design to explore and celebrate the creation of exceptional experiences, a committed and influential contributor to our field.
- Jo has shared her expertise on global stages and platforms including Beat Camp. We can do better. The Reorient podcast and the UX Pod podcast. Her work is deeply informed by her multicultural upbringing and global perspective enabling her to bridge cultural nuances and inspire designers and researchers worldwide. And now she's here with me for this conversation on Brave UX. Jo, a very warm welcome to the show.
- Josephine Wong:
- Hi Brendan. Thank you for having me. Hi Jo.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Oh, you're most welcome and it's been something that's been on our calendar for a while now and it's the very last recording of an episode of Brave UX in December of 2024. So it's great to have you here and I certainly enjoyed learning all about you and the work that you've been doing over the past quarter century and one of those things that I noticed was that, and this is going back to your LinkedIn profile, is that it seems like you started your career in account service for an advertising agency. What was it that initially attracted you to advertising?
- Josephine Wong:
- I didn't look for that opportunity. It was someone from the agency see, look me up. I was working somewhere else and a creative director saw me doing some proposal writing with my big, I think it was information architecture or some kind of information book that I was referring to and they were looking for someone that understand computer and tech to talk to the clients and so he started to talk to me and asked if I'm interested to help them. That's how I started.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- And what do you recall from those early experiences working in advertising?
- Josephine Wong:
- I need to pick up a lot of new knowledge about print, tv, radio, all these different ways of production. It was really fun when you were young, you excited to learn all these new things and it was very much kind of the start of everyone was very excited about these new technology, mobile phones, computers and all these things.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Yeah, I noticed it wasn't long after you joined the agency that you actually started Apogee, so obviously you saw an opportunity or there was something there that happened and I want to come to that at some point soon. But before we do that, I just want to go back a little further and explore your family history a little. Because I understand that you grew up in Hong Kong and I think I mentioned this in your introduction and what was a rather multicultural home, your dad is Chinese Burmese and your mom is Chinese Indonesian, and both of them can trace their roots back to different provinces in China. How has this diverse family background informed your research practise?
- Josephine Wong:
- I think quite a lot looking back, growing up that you get in touch with all these different people, different language. Although I don't speak Vietnamese or Indonesian, I don't really speak the dialect of the different province they come from, but you get to see and get to exposed to all these different perspectives. I think that's very, very helpful for me. I think I also nurture my curiosity. I guess I'm just curious about how come these different things have different people and different dialect, all these different food. Even the food was really interesting because growing up in Hong Kong is mainly Cantonese food, but you also exposed to all these different provinces or Hong Kong is quite an international place. You get to expose to all these different Western Asian food. Just talking about food is amazing. So the diversity of all these different cultures and language and everything I think gives me a much more open-mindedness when I talk to different participants what we call when I do user research.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- I wondered from those experiences growing up in Hong Kong with parents from different backgrounds, Burmese and Indonesian, whether that curiosity that you spoke of is something that naturally unfolded from your upbringing or is it something that your parents really encouraged you to embrace and adopt?
- Josephine Wong:
- They didn't really explicitly like, oh, you go and explore things or that type of ways. But I think the critical thing is I think my parents are not typical parents that, I wouldn't say limit, but they almost box kids like you are a girl, you shouldn't do this, you are a Chinese girl, just study finance. They didn't really put boundaries on what I should do or should not do. I think that's a very critical elements that I can just, I always feel I can just do whatever I want.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Well that feeling of freedom without having those boundaries placed upon you that you mentioned that took you at some point to study at the University of Melbourne in Australia,
- Josephine Wong:
- Which
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Must have been quite the cultural shift going from Hong Kong to Melbourne.
- Josephine Wong:
- Yes.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- What were your first impressions of Australia?
- Josephine Wong:
- Quiet. It's a very interesting experience because growing up in Hong Kong weekends is like going out shops, everything is there, it's the business opportunity, right? All the shops will be open and all these things happening and also shops close really late because people might need something after work so they cater for the customers. But when I went to Australia, it's almost the opposite. Sundays it's so quiet, shops open, I dunno open similar time but close really late six o'clock or the shops would be closed and that was the biggest difference that I saw.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- And I understand that when you were there it was quite an important time in your life because you met Daniel Sukuk, who's your co-author and business partner in Apogee for over 25 years. What inspired the two of you to set up a business back in Hong Kong?
- Josephine Wong:
- So we met at university, I came back after graduate, so we weren't a couple at university. I don't know, I think it's part of my growing up as well, my personality that I always keep in touch with my school friends. So Dan was one of them and so he come visit Hong Kong because his brother moved to Hong Kong earlier than him, so he would come and visit and just keep in touch like you mentioned I said on my own small advertising agency in the nineties and he came to Hong Kong and I think his brother always asked him to come here and just explore opportunities because it's quite a happening place and so I think he decided to move here. Why we decided to set up a business because at that time it was the.com, everything is about tech and com and everything and what he was doing Australia, that service wasn't available here. So we saw an opportunity to offer these specialised servers to all these mainly corporations. But yeah, people just don't really know but they are venturing to all these new ways of doing things, doing online things, websites.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Do you think that Dan enjoyed the late night Sunday shopping when he got to Hong Kong? Of
- Josephine Wong:
- Course
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Jo, you mentioned there that you weren't partners when you were met at university. Forgive me if I've misinterpreted that, but did you mean in the professional sense or also in the personal sense?
- Josephine Wong:
- Personal sense and professionals. We were close friends at uni.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- That's interesting. I did wonder if you were an item as well. A couple as well as business partners, but now that's all making a lot of sense
- Josephine Wong:
- Now we are life partners and business partners.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- You must have some very interesting conversations about how to make those two things work and well done for making it work for so long. What do you think the secret has been if there is a secret to having both a great professional and a great personal partnership?
- Josephine Wong:
- I think our personalities are different and our strength is also different, so we compliment very well. You need to talk about things that you just need to communicate. Yeah, we talk a lot.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- I wanted to ask you about something a little different now and that's, I know that you are passionate about political and economic systems and you mentioned Hong Kong is quite a happening place and you mentioned even the fusion there of east and west as far as the food scene is concerned, but it's also a place where different political and economic systems have converged. What initially sparked your interest in exploring these systems?
- Josephine Wong:
- I'm always interested in how things work because growing up in Hong Kong you hear a lot about finance stuff in the news people around you. So it's the environment. So I'm always a curious person and I want to know how things work, not just economics. I'm interested in quite a lot of the different things, just how things pieces together. That helps me when I do research.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Tell me about that. How does understanding how these broader and quite integral systems to our lives, how has that helped you in your work as a UX researcher? I'll
- Josephine Wong:
- Give you an example. Say I work with a lot of banks, so if you work with banking projects, not just understanding the customer's point of view. I'm also interested in why the business wants to provide this type of products or services to the customers and how that fits 'em. Because I think if your products and services don't add value to your customers, it won't last or it won't sustain. So I think that helps me to ask questions not just from the end user or end customer point of view. Also I can see from the customer's point of view why they need to know certain things. Sometimes I would suggest things that they might not see because they're in it. So I think that helps me quite a lot. I dunno, 25 years experience that I've worked with different product teams and different researchers, different designers, different engineers, not many people are willing to do that. A lot of them only want to see their own task and not willing to connect their tasks with what's around them. Basically your task is this, you need to zoom out and connect them together to basically do a much better job.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Those are the people that you spoke of there that do not see things or act in the way that you've just described. Is your sense, and I know we're generalising here, but is your sense that it's something that people are consciously are willing to do or unconsciously unwilling to do?
- Josephine Wong:
- I think it's a bit of both. Consciously they see what's their KPI, right? If I create an app, I need to hit certain adoption rate and even the research question would focus on that, right? Oh, if I add these features, would you be willing to use it? It's not occur to them If they ask both that as well as how does that connected to that person's life or business? If it's a business product and services, how does that add value to them? How does that fit into that life? Because the person, it's your job, it's natural, right? You only see your tasks but if you don't see from their tasks their point of view or their world is totally different from yours, why should they use your products and services? How does that fit into their lives and other things that they're using. If you're not willing to zoom out and see that for all the experiences that I have, adding features is not going to cut it.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- You've been doing this a wee while now and thinking about that particular situation and tell me if I'm wrong here, but I suspect that sometimes taking the broader perspective is not the thing that clients or stakeholders or perhaps it's people that you're working with in a project team, it's not the thing that they want to hear. What ways, if you do agree and if you disagree, let me know if you do agree. What ways have you found more helpful in opening those people's minds to taking a broader perspective in the context of research on a product that has features that need to get built and OKRs that need to get met?
- Josephine Wong:
- It's a very broad and as well as deep question because it's very contextual and it very depends on the people that you work with. So there are different ways to do it as well. You can ask questions that is related. You can ask questions to the clients that's related that they might not explore before. I think a lot of the times it's the intention that you're bringing in that can come through the conversations that you have, whether it's with the participant or with the client or the team. Your intention is to show that they are wrong. Sometimes that happens is your intention is to open people's perspectives, but how are you going to do that? There are different ways of doing it and depends on the personalities of different people, the personality of you and how you can feed into that bigger soup. You need to think about that as well. So the intention that you bring in is very important because I think our industry, a lot of the times we tend to bring this criticised way of mindset, I can find a better word or the judge of this thing, which I think that type of intention is not helping the teamwork and you spend the time where they come from, why they think that way. What other perspectives can we see to make this better? I think that type of intention, people can feel it and people are more willing to talk to. You
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Generally found that when people attempt to prove that other people are wrong, things don't go particularly well for them.
- Josephine Wong:
- Exactly,
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Yeah. There's something in that and I hear what you're saying there around the judgemental aspect of how we can sometimes be in danger of framing our role in helping to evolve products and services and that's a good reminder particularly as we're, well this will be released in the new year, but particularly as we are beginning a new year. Just before we move on to make meaningful work, which I'd love to talk to you about someone who I believe has made a difference in your life and that is a gentleman by the name of De Xing and he's been a bit of an inspiration. I understand for you and some people might not be familiar with who ing is, who is he and what is it about his life that has resonated with you?
- Josephine Wong:
- Oping is the president of China that open up China and reform the old communist system. That's why we see the China now. He's the architect for this modern China that we see for the past 40 or so years. He's the top top leader I think in our time, not just setting the vision. He was able to carry it out for a lot of us growing up in Hong Kong, such a small place. You can't imagine how big mainland China is now. Hong Kong's back to part of China. We are little dot China is like the whole Europe and people don't understand how diverse the population is. Chinese is not just one type of person that there are so many, you can tell my parents are both Chinese, they come from different provinces, they speak different dialect and they eat different food. So the diversity and he was able to unite the whole country saying that this is the new direction that we are going, let's give it a try.
- I don't know how he did it. Convincing power, because you can't just be a dictator. People don't understand how many convincing that you need to do to get everyone's support to go to that direction as a leader and the way he's executing that plan is also amazing. How, I'm not sure if you know there's, it's not a province, it's a small area next to Hong Kong. That's where it all started. The experiment, why I find him so amazing is he's doing this whole startup way of doing things but in a huge country in such a scale. That's amazing because I can see that. So we run a small company that's hard already. How can you expand that to over a billion people? That's just unthinkable. So that's why I think he's so amazing and though the persistence of trying to get the country back on their feet again, that determination, it took him his whole lifetime. He got beaten down a few times and I think that type of values in him, the belief, so persistence, I just can't imagine his life. I can talk about him for a long time. You can see,
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Well he is obviously someone who's had a great impact on you and he's someone that's achieved some fairly monumental things in his life. You mentioned a number of things in there and one of them coming from a western New Zealand perspective thinking about how you described it, is the diversity that exists within China. And for me I was like, that's probably something I should have thought about earlier, but it's something that yes, we are somewhat conditioned to look at a country like China for example. You might at France or wherever else you might look and just make some generalised assumptions about what the people are like living there and what the culture is like. But the way that you painted it in terms of geographic terms, being as broad as Europe and possibly as diverse as Europe in terms of some of the regional differences and cultures that exist hadn't occurred to me previously. And Hong Kong is a place that a very rich history and it's a very important city and state. Is it a state? I'm not sure. Tell me Jo. Is it a state?
- Josephine Wong:
- It's a special administration region. It's called SAR.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Yes. And most people will be familiar that there was at one point British colonial rule and influence there and that recently, I think it was in the nineties, that the process of rejoining China officially took place. So that puts it in a very interesting economic and political environment. And I was curious, there's been a lot of tension building around the world recently between the two spheres of east and west and you are right on where those two worlds have met. What areas of commonality or common understanding, common grounds, common humanity have you observed in your time in Hong Kong between those two? Sometimes purposefully polarised perspectives and views and philosophies in the world.
- Josephine Wong:
- So growing up in Hong Kong, the education system is very similar to a lot of the commonwealth faces around we listen, we compete with each other in exams to go to. So at my time it was still using A levels and then you compete with all same level people and five for less spots in university and then you compete again in the work places to get ahead whatever. I think that mindset and attitude is very much in a lot of the people's mind. That's how things work. But I think in terms of the Chinese philosophy and it's built in our language, that's still deep in inside a lot of people. I encourage people, if you have a chance, come and visit China and see how things going right now. Because I think the fact that when oping open up the country and reform the system, if it's not a Chinese community, I think the speed won't be as fast the progress.
- What I mean is, so that goes back to the philosophy and the culture that we have is we always have, it's called, it's what it means is you always go and find a common ground to do things. So what is the common ground for if it's two parties or three parties, we knew everyone lost. So that's something quite ingrained. But at the same time, it's very interesting, a lot of the times we are in the system and we have to compete in school and workplaces. There are quite a complex things going on. How things work in China is you have a direction from the top that, oh, we should go this way. Do you agree? Yes, if you agree, you implement in your context how that works for you. So I think that type of, maybe you can call it freedom or maybe you can call it something else, whatever label that's put on that is a very different ways of thinking from mainly the western Anglo side of the world because what happened for the past maybe 200 years when the countries or the power have the power and the capability, they will conquer others.
- And so I think the conflict comes in when they think if China becomes strong, they'll choose the same. I think that's where the clash is. But I think most Chinese people history and DNA in us are not like that. That's why if you have friends in New Zealand or Australia or other countries that are Chinese community, they usually focus on their own stuff instead of go and I don't know, expanding.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- It sounds like you feel that may be a misconception that people from the western world hold about this dramatic rise of China that we've witnessed in the past 40 years.
- Josephine Wong:
- Yes, I think it's very, I dunno, natural is the word to use because we see that in our research as well. A lot of the times the teams have assumptions about the customers and we have to tell them, no, no, no, this is how they do things and this is their life. They have all these assumption about them. Sometimes they, oh, let's not talk to them, let's not talk to them. So I think it's very natural as long as we open this dialogue and say it's okay. And I feel like researchers are almost that facilitator of it so we can do better things together. And I have a thing about waste because I think if we produce non useful things for customers, it's a waste of time, waste of resources, and why? Because our society have limited resources. We should allocate our resources in a better way
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Aversion to waste. And you just clarified for me there what some of those forms of waste are. So whether it's a product that just adds no value to customers, it is a form of wasted effort and money that has gone into creating that. This seems to me to tie back into why you and Dan created make meaningful work and I know I've only very briefly referred to that in your introduction and perhaps once since. So just for the people that aren't a hundred percent familiar with what the make meaningful work book and studio is about, how would you describe what it is?
- Josephine Wong:
- I'll describe it using our definition of culture. So everyone is in a culture, whether it's a small team culture or organisational culture or family culture. So our definition of culture is, I'll give you the simple version of it, otherwise it's too long. So it's the interactions, relationships, and conduct between people in moments that matter in a conduct chain. Because for meaningful work, when you mention about, oh meaningful, maybe we should search for meaning I might need to quit my job and work for NGO. It's not that. That's not what we mean. So that's why we said make meaningful work means we can all insert meaning into moments that matter because you can do all these small things to make things meaningful for you and for the people around you. So it's the interactions, so the interactions and the conduct, how you conduct yourselves when the interaction happen and does that build relationship or destroy relationships because that the lowest denominator type of things that we can do because most people will think, oh, it's too hard. That's not my job.
- I can't do anything about it. It's just I'm in a lot of people in the pathetic state, which is not true. We are trying to tell people that the interactions that you have with people, before we get into that interaction, do you have an intention? Are you prepared your mind, how you conduct yourself in that interaction? After that interaction, do you reflect on it? Do you want to do better next time or do you want to adjust it and achieve a different outcome next time? Do you do these type of small adjustments? It doesn't have to be big. It's not that we want you to change the world, we can't change the world. It's too big. But you can do small interactions with people that can give you a different outcome, build relationship with these people and then you have a healthier environment to work with so you can talk and collaborate better. And a big part of this for me is health mentally and physically, because if we're in a stressed state all the time, it's not going to do well with your physical health and it's going to affect your thinking, affect your decision making, it's all interrelated.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- You've spoken about health and work and the relationship between the two before and how you and Dan had noticed that many of the people you were working with and project teams throughout the years were really stressed like you just mentioned and weren't particularly enjoying the work side of life. You've also said previously, and I'll quote you now, I find that many of the people around me know what kind of issues they have, but it's almost like they're not willing to dig deeper and find the cause and are also very reluctant to take action on it. Over the past 10 years that we've been working on make meaningful work, our observations about the organisation have shown the pattern is very similar. What do you suspect that the root cause of that reluctance to take action is,
- Josephine Wong:
- This might sound cliched, I guess the safe environment that you are in encourage you to be more action oriented. Say things, do things, try things. But if you are in a fearful and competitive non-collaborative environment, you'll be reluctant to take any action because you don't want to make mistakes. But that's why I keep saying everything is connected. We also do work with kids. We call it Sparkle Studio and because we think that, so I myself didn't learn about all these, well you can call it, some people call soft skills, some people call human skills, all these implicit skills that we never learn explicitly throughout our lives. I want people to have more awareness of that and pick it up if you pick it up as young as possible. That's very good. So I'm not sure if this is the case in New Zealand, I don't think it's in Australia. When we have our report cards at school, you have a session that is on your conduct. Do you have that in your school report card?
- Brendan Jarvis:
- I'm about to find out because my 6-year-old is going to be bringing home as a report card any day now. So I'll get back to you on that one.
- Josephine Wong:
- But do you remember you have it, did you have that in your report card?
- Brendan Jarvis:
- It does feel familiar that you would not just get an academic report, you would also get commentary about your overall behaviour within the class and your attitude towards
- Josephine Wong:
- Learning. Yeah, the problem with that is we are not taught explicitly why we are greater that how we should behave, what are some of the soft skills that we need to carry out these conducts and we were expected that we have this skill of serving the good ones and we copy those behaviours, but that's not the case. If we observe the bad ones, we copy the bad ones too. I think we need a more structured and explicit way of teaching kids and be more aware of how they conduct themselves and why is the case. So that's the reason I think our observation in the workplaces,
- Brendan Jarvis:
- I hadn't intended to go here, but let's go here, let zero in on what you are doing with Sparkle Studio with children. How are you trying to engender them to make the most of those interactions between them and other people to create greater meaning?
- Josephine Wong:
- So we use a very fun means. So we get them to create a TV talk show. So during that process we will point it out to them. So if you want to be a professional, what does it mean? So we'll break down for them. These are the professionalism in a studio setting that we're focused, we respect each other, we do this. What does it mean when we respect each other? So say for example, someone is doing their lines, you don't talk when the person is talking because the group that we are having now is eight to 10 years old. I think that's around that age. And at that age they didn't know. They only copy the things they see, but in our studio setting that they interact with each other and you point it out to them, this is what it mean to be respectful. This is what it means to being a professional. What's another example? When you play your character, you need different ways of delivering what you say. What are the different ways of delivering, right? So that means when you talk to your friends or to the teacher or parents, there are different ways of saying the same thing. Think about it. A character has character traits. What does that mean? What's your character traits? Right? The character that you play has different ones, so that means your friends have different character traits as well. Be aware of it.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- That awareness is a huge advantage if you can give that to people earlier in their lives, and
- Josephine Wong:
- It's
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Certainly resonating with me, although you would argue or you could argue that it's the role of parents to provide that type of guidance to children to help them become sociable in the world. It also that relies on the parents having had that experience and that knowledge when they were being raised as well. And it's obviously often not a universal situation that that's the case.
- Josephine Wong:
- You just touched another interest area that I am passionate about parenting. We don't have kids, but I think parenting is the most important job or role in a person's whole life. Why we are not educated and taught. That's my question around that people don't ask.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Yeah, it's a good question and it's not one that I've got an answer to. There's a lot of things that are assumed, I suppose in the role of the individual in society and the responsibilities that differently assigned perhaps in different systems as to who should be responsible for what and to what degree. I was curious to zero in on this idea that you spoke of earlier where the typical thinking around I need to make my work meaningful can take people to quite grand design spaces like let's solve climate change or things that require you to upend your career and take a completely different direction, perhaps as one example or one end of the spectrum. You are zooming in on something on the other end of the spectrum here, which is the micro behaviours or interactions that we have between ourselves and our colleagues at work. And I wanted to understand how focusing on those things and improving those things, how does that result in greater meaning at work? I'll
- Josephine Wong:
- Give you an example. So if we are a team and when we talk to each other without respect, when you are talking about, oh, this is what my idea is, this is what I've been thinking about. If I keep interrupting you with no respect, right? Or if I'm the boss and I just dismiss you, what do you think that the outcome would be? Not
- Brendan Jarvis:
- A whole lot of positive feeling, that's for sure. That's
- Josephine Wong:
- Just as simple as that, just one interaction. But if this interaction continues throughout years, what does that do to the relationship between you and your boss or your teammates? You have trust, you don't feel safe to say anything. You won't take any action. You won't take any ownership on anything. That's why people keep saying about people, why people don't take responsibility, take ownership, why people suggest things. When people see something's wrong, they don't say anything. So that's just one interaction that you dismiss people or you just not respecting the other ones. That's just one example. You can accumulate so many and you can see the impact and you can also imagine the positive impact interact nicely with each other. I can give you another very real, real example that this nursing home that I work with, the frontline staff, so it's a nursing home that the elderlys are not really, the mobility is very limited, so they need people to feed them, to clean them, to do all these things. But if the frontline staff, say for example, one small interaction, mealtime your dinner's ready, would you like to have some dinner? This is one way of interact dinner, just feed them. That's another way of doing it, right? There are many different ways of doing this one interaction, but because my contact is the head of that nursing home, she gets complaints from all these families and one complaint can spend her hundreds of hours in her team just to deal with that one interaction.
- So that mindset and attitude brings to other interactions like, okay, bath time and the way they're doing it, that interaction. So it can cause a lot of damage by just one interaction.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Is it accurate to summarise, make meaningful work as an effort, a concerted effort to attempt to design the social relationships between people at work?
- Josephine Wong:
- Yeah, that's part of it. And also I would like to see us bring us back to be more human, especially to each other because I think with all these technologies around us, we forget, we interact less with our friends and families. We interact in a very different intention and mindset and attitude. We forget to align with our values because sometimes how we conduct ourselves is not our value. It doesn't align. We just forgot and we are not aware of it. So just bring people back to that I think can make a huge difference for all these different relationships between people. Even with parents, I see parents have such tense relationship with the kids because how they interact with each other and the intention that brings in. So yeah,
- Brendan Jarvis:
- I was just smiling there because I was thinking about the interactions that I had with my 6-year-old this morning who definitely was not listening to anything that my wife or I were saying to him this morning. And perhaps I'll have to think about my intention when he walks in the door in about 10 minutes time as to how I want to pursue that conversation. I was also wondering there, you talked about Jo, the being more human and perhaps we should define that, but if I take that thread and I pull on that a little, how important if at all, is it for people to their colleagues at work to achieve meaningful work?
- Josephine Wong:
- I don't know how you define, but I would say just be respectful, respect yourself and respect others. If you define like, oh, we have to be best friends or that type, it doesn't have to be but respectful as a person, that person has all sorts of different dimensions to them get to know. Yeah, you understand more where they're coming from and it's much easier to communicate and collaborate.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Jo, it seems like companies that don't have a humanist orientation may struggle to wrap their minds and perhaps hearts around something such as make meaningful work. Have you seen the framework succeed in environments that you wouldn't from the outside looking and identify as being overly humanist in orientation?
- Josephine Wong:
- That's why we're working on our second book. It's almost finished. So we expand the framework and methodology in a much more detailed way so you can use it easily that apply it to your interactions. That's the problem with all these existing ways that we are using. We know it's something's not right, but we don't know what to do. There's no structure to it, there's no easy tools to use. Yeah, we are working on this second book that will expand from the first book on all these framework and tools.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- When is the second book coming out? Jo?
- Josephine Wong:
- It's in the review sessions now. I think Dan is talking to one of our reviewers literally now. We hope to get something done this month. I'm not sure now. Maybe next month, either December or January.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- So definitely early 2025.
- Josephine Wong:
- Yes.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Got it. And just for people who are listening that may be interested in picking that up and having something that they can run with, who is it really written for? That second book
- Josephine Wong:
- For anyone who cares about doing something about the culture they're in, you can pick up the small tools that you can use it for yourself. You can pick up the tool and get the team to use it or you can do a bigger programme for the organisation.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Sounds really good. And I'm conscious of time and I know that you have a hard stop, so we'll bring the show down to a close now. And for my final question, I wanted to ask you about a question that you have previously challenged people to answer. And that question was what kind of contribution do you want to make to this? And my question for you is, what is it about that question in particular that you feel is important for people to consider?
- Josephine Wong:
- I try not to sound too green or something. I think when we are living on this planet that we take a lot of the resources from this planet, we use quite a lot of things. I think it would be nice to contribute back. That's just as simple as that and not destroying too much.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Yes. Yeah, yeah. Certainly don't have to look too far through your own bank statement to realise just how much stuff you're buying that you probably don't need to. And yeah, there's probably a role there for ad blockers as well, on internet browsers to stop you being bombarded by things that you don't need. That's for sure. Jo, this has been a philosophical and a practical conversation, which I've very much enjoyed. Thank you for taking the time to so generously share your stories and insights with me today.
- Josephine Wong:
- Thank you Brendan. Nice talking to you.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- You're most welcome, Jo. It was definitely my pleasure. And if people want to connect with you and keep up to date with all the things you're doing, keep up to date with Make meaningful Work and the release of the new book, what's the best way for them to do that?
- Josephine Wong:
- So we have a website called MakeMeaningfulWork.com, and you can also find us at ApogeeHK.com. We have a LinkedIn Make Meaningful Work group.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Great. Thanks Jo. And to everyone who's tuned in, it's been great having you here as well. Everything that we have covered will be in the show notes, including where you can find Jo and make meaningful work and also all the other things that we've discussed.
- 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, subscribe, so it turns up every two weeks in your podcast application and tell just one other person who you feel might get value out of these conversations at depth.
- If you want to reach out to me, you can find me on LinkedIn, there's a link to my profile at the bottom of the show notes, or you can head on over to my website, which is thespaceinbetween.co.nz. That's thespaceinbetween.co.nz. And I dunno why I said that like a robot, but I did. Anyway. Until next time, keep being brave.