My name is Peter Thomas and I'm director of FORWARD, the RMIT University Centre for Future Skills and Workforce Transformation.. I'd like to welcome to skills cast, our podcast featuring an eclectic set of topics that we're interested in. And hopefully you will be too. So join our forward development partners, fellows and guests as we look at all things skills related by that skills gaps and how to address them. I'll be with emerging skills that you find the future of work, or some of the technologies that may change the way we think about skills in the future.
Welcome to skills cast, I'm Daniel Bluzer-Fry development partner at FORWARD, the Centre for Future Skills and Workforce Transformation at RMIT. Today, I'll be in discussion with Tracy Brown. Tracy started a digital design career in the late 90s, and has since worked as a UI designer. FTD UX designer, service designer, CX strategist, Creative Director, strategy director at both executive and non executive level, and course creator, Tracy founded the Future of Doing in 2021 to teach leaders how to design better workplace experiences for creative makers, the highly skilled designers, engineers, developers, strategies, and concepting teams that work together to both generate and build ideas into differentiated and tangible solutions.
One of the key reasons for our discussion today is the recent launch of How We Talk About Work, a book published in mid 2022, that Tracy has authored that is a product of three years of research with 85 participants across six continents, and has over 200 illustrations to bring their words to life. It's an easy and engaging way for employers to get up close to real opinions. Hopefully, you're inspiring them to think of their talent as much more than simply Resources. Today, Tracy also consults on three key areas. The x's, as we like to say, have interconnected experience strategy in CX customer experience, CX employee experience, and LX, which is learning experience.
So, Tracy, I mean, it struck me when I, I think this year was quite random. But it popped up in my LinkedIn feed shortly after I'd begun at FORWARD. And immediately I tapped one of my fellow development partners on the shoulder who's focusing her entire work stream on creativity, and ultimately, kind of creative skills for the future. But you've published this wonderful book. A lot of work has gone into it. So I thought maybe I just start off by passing over to you to provide a bit of context around the book, and what inspired you ultimately to start doing research into effects in the creative industries?
Sure, so I think it probably started like all things way before you actually have the idea to do something, you have all sorts of things that happen in your life, and they're all sort of joined together in one momentous event. So for very many years, I've been managing a combination of designers, currently, sorry, sometimes developers, strategists, creative concepters is and I constantly came up against having to explain why they were getting so frustrated with the way that they worked. And it was very difficult for me to explain, for example, how creative cognition works to people who don't tend to do that kind of work and why things had to be a very specific way. And if they weren't very specific way people got super frustrated. So as a manager, that had been something that had really weighed on me for a long time, and it had just been bothering me how I was struggling to explain the voices of these, what I call creative makers, people whose main job is to come up with ideas to very difficult problems, and then actually solve them. And so I decided to leave executive leadership.
And I started getting into looking at the concept of merit and realize there was a lot more to discover there. I was lucky enough to be invited by a university or a college in based in Berlin to talk to their executive MBA team about what I discovered. And through that process, I realized that there just really wasn't a lot of research specific to what, you know, this creative making cohort, there's a lot of employee experience information, but it tends to be quite generic and it doesn't take into consideration creative processes and creative problem solving, and how there are certain things that are quite specific to that group. So I thought I would just start the research myself, because that's what I do is part of my job is to do research. So I fortuitously started the study in 2019. Obviously not knowing what was going to happen to the world. And it just so happened that I started the study in late 2019. I compiled those into a podcast and I shared them with with the partners at the Berlin based College, and then everything kicked off. And I just carried on researching with people, because I realized that this was going to change everything. And so I carried on interviewing people, one on one all over the world, people in, you know, Germany, the United States, Brazil, Nigeria, China, you know, over over six continents, just, you know, so many people. And as a consequence of that, I ended up with this great information and started to be able to figure out the pillars of what people need in order to be happy, while being also a creative maker at the same time.
I mean, fantastic context. And I love how almost the baseline and the read began pre pandemic, because I feel like we're constantly reading about how, you know, this earth shaking, generational inventors are unprecedented is the, the operative term I think most of us are chuckling about by now, but how it has fundamentally shifted the way people are relating to their work relating to things like skills and their future, not just in the domain of, I guess, the labor force. But more broadly, you mentioned these pillars, they're obviously key in your book, and you provide some some great kind of directional insight in the back of the book, in terms of what I guess, yeah, executives should be taking away when they think about, you know, what they're ultimately providing environmentally and contextually, to these creative makers that you've interviewed. Did you want to talk a bit about I guess what I think for you, through the process of writing the book, what were the most startling or interesting takeouts that you got in this particular journey?
So I think, First up was I've over the last few years started becoming more and more familiar with neuro divergence. And so neuro divergence to be clear is a number of different ways in which people's brains are wired, cognitively, typically autism and ADHD, which comes up a lot in our industry, but also dyslexia dyspraxia, a number of different cognitive differences, if you will. So all of those people are just put into a category of neuro divergence. And what I found interesting is, in particular, talking to people in the UK is that there is such a growing awareness of how prevalent it is within creative industries in particular. And it just so happens that people who've got advanced mathematical, linguistic and creative skills very often what it is for this way, neurodivergent people very often have advanced mathematical, linguistic and creative skills. And that just so happens to be what we do, you know, whether you're a developer or a designer or a concept or strategist, that's essentially what makes us good at what we do.
And so, neuro divergence is super interesting, because I know that I've, I've managed so many people who I thought were completely brilliant. And I would always get some escalation or people saying they're very difficult. That's a term that people love to use when describing, designers, developers, credits are very difficult. And I would look at what they were asking for. And I didn't really understand why there was such an issue. But I started to realize that a lot of the people who had been kind of always disregarded in the past, because they were communicating in a way that wasn't typical, or they weren't forming, forming relationships with people in a way that neurotypical people like them to. In essence, they don't know how to play the game, and they don't like to play the game that ended up really penalizing them. And yet they were exceptional at their jobs. But the more you learn about neuro divergence, and the more you realize that it is, is so prevalent in our industry, you kind of changed the way that you manage people, and you start to realize that the things they're asking for are not unnecessary or problematic or high maintenance, they're just absolutely necessary to their cognitive process, like for example, you know, natural light, or where people sit or the noises that surround them, or forcing people to be in long meetings when they've got ADHD or understanding how people process information.
Once employees just accept that there are a lot of neuro neurodivergent people in their environment and they start to design for they'll start to intimately ease a lot of not just creative anxiety, but mental anxiety as well, which, you know, in many cases has been alleviated through through the pandemic. So people who really stressed out about working in open plan offices are absolutely in, you know, in their element, because they don't have to deal with all this sort of sensory stressors that they had to deal with previously. So, yeah, I think more learning more about neuro divergence and having that penny drop and realize that if I'd known about that before, I would have been a better manager, and then passing on that information to other people who don't know about neuro divergence. So that's probably one of the biggest insights
I mean, yeah, to jump in. I think this is fascinating because the other thing I recall us by briefly discussing prior to our conversation today, or now, I should say is, you're talking almost about learning as well. And I think you're reflecting on, you know how in relation to neuro divergence and diversity, there's different layers almost that people need to almost best prepare themselves to execute their role in their jobs. So the big picture orientation is that more macro frame of thinking versus focusing in and understanding the minutiae of detail, in some cases, for instance, can you talk about that a bit more? Because I think that's also something that's fascinating when we think about skills acquisition and in learning in workplace contexts.
Yes, so I guess it's quite a big topic learning. So I think I was telling you about the fact that I'm so I believe that creating learning models or creating business models orientated around learning will be the salvation for almost every organization. But when it comes to the way that people process information, I feel like a lot of the stuff that we feed people is so vague. And you know, we'll talk about things like, you know, in order to be a leader, you need to show initiative, and I think I used that example, the other day, you know, that means different things to different people. So you get some people who are trying to step into a leadership role, and they're told that they need to take initiative. And so they'll just do something without asking anyone else, because that's what they think initiative means. Right?
And then they get penalized for that. So with learning experience, I think I like to think I like to assume that my audience could potentially be people of hugely different cognitive variances. And I like to be very, very clear and transparent and specific about what I mean by things.I don't think that you should ever, you know, expect someone to adopt a skill unless you can explain exactly what it's for exactly what elements go into it exactly how its measured. I think that so many organizations are quite loose around what they want people to know. And they're not super specific. So I believe that most organizations should be creating a list of all the activities and tasks that they perform, breaking them down into learning modules and treating their projects like a syllabus. Yeah. And when you do that, yeah. So when you do that, when you start to think, okay, every project or activity we do is a syllabus, and then you actually take all the fundamentals of instructional design into consideration, you always have to explain, you know, what it's for, you know, then you have to break it down into units that are measurable in terms of learning. So I personally think that that's the way forward for organizations be super clear.
Yeah, this is really interesting. And I think we also touched on the idea of almost then linking that to skills, matrixes, and really clear definitions. And I think that was something else that you've been observing. And there's so much going to say go into, I guess, some of your experiences in that as space. But I thought that was a really valuable kind of insight and provocation, do want to talk about that a bit more. And also reflect on what I guess, you feel are some of the barriers to more organizations adopting I guess that, yeah, that more kind of, yeah, it's I'm not gonna use the word simple, because I don't think it is simple. But I guess that that clearer, less absolute, there's less abstract kind of descriptions around, you know, roles that people or more or the skill sets that they require.
So I think there's there's three, probably three or four reasons why organizations find it so difficult. So I should say that a number of years ago, I tried an experiment, I had to merge two parts to design teams into one. And I found that there was a lot of mythology around what UX was and what UI was and all these like tribal differences. When people had issues with one another that went back, I don't know how long. And so what I did through that process is just go okay, I'm just going to be really honest about what design is and what it isn't. And I listed out every single possible design activity, everything from every single type of research technique all the way down to what a style towel versus a style guide versus, you know, a mood board everything in the whole palette. And I put it into that structure. And I realized that what it did is it completely liberated the team because they didn't feel a sense of anxiety, or they didn't feel like they couldn't learn something because it was tangible. And they could go oh, that's what it is. I thought it was something else.
So I created a handbook. And then I created a list of activities. And then I asked everyone to rate themselves on how proficient they felt they were at each of these things, and whether they wanted to learn it, and whether they didn't want to learn it. And then we created this great skills matrix. And then what we did is have a lunch and learn every single Tuesday to teach whatever they wanted to learn. So all of those different tasks were put into a survey they voted on them. And then throughout a year we had every single Tuesday without fail. We train people up and then they also had additional resources they could go to they wanted to learn more All right, that was super successful, we ended up creating a learning culture because people came it became almost addicted to just wakening their brains up and realizing what they could actually do.So when I tried to roll it out, whenever all that out in other situations, there have been a whole number of barriers. So number one, I think that there's so much pressure on heads of departments to do way more than they should be doing. So first of all, they have to consult with clients, then they have to manage teams, but do administrative things like signing off leave, and you know, dealing with, like personal issues without having any behavioral psychology background at all. Then they also, you know, are expected to be thought leaders in the industry. And then on top of that, when you say to them, can you train your team, it's like, it's the straw that breaks the camel's back, right. So some people are naturally good at it. A lot of people are just not trained to train. That's not how their brain works.
And so organizations focus very heavily on training people be managers, even though I would argue that management is a talent. But you know, that's my personal belief that it's hard to be really good manager for a long time. But they don't train them how to be coaches. And ultimately, the weird thing is that we're lacking skills. It's perfectly within the capabilities of every organization to upskill their, this their stuff. But the question is, who's going to do it? And what I found is that people just don't have time. And not everyone thinks in that way, like I thought it was just pretty straightforward. You just say what the task is what it's used for, you know, roughly how long it takes, you know, for me, that seems like a pretty straightforward thing. But for a lot of people, it's incredibly challenging to think that way. And then there's also this kind of sometimes this is a kind of political issue that sometimes when you ask people to say what their team does, they get really fearful that they're going to be held accountable.
And very occasionally, you get people who actually do are out of their depth, and they're not, they don't really know what they're doing. And it's very confronting for them to have to, you know, explain that because a lot of the time they've just sort of faked it until they've made it and so they don't want people to know that, but that's rarer. Right. So that's the rarer situation.
I mean, I think that's really interesting. And it's almost kind of that demystification of what a department does, yeah, that final barrier that can can, I guess you're saying breaks the camel's back in terms of the extra workload, but then in terms of potential power, remade how people kind of interrelate to different structures within an org if they have to kind of almost shine that cold light of day on what they're doing. And they don't feel adept at kind of relaying that or just feel comfortable demystifying it, I guess, because they feel as though it's something they're insecure about almost, because it may, you know, change the way that they feel they're perceived within an organizational context. I think that's a really fascinating challenge. And I mean, just just to build on that, I guess. I mean, and I think in in the book that you recently published, there's definitely some guidelines on this. But in terms of overcoming some of these barriers, are there any strategies or any ideas, I think that you can shine a lot on that you think can help organizations break those barriers down to move towards learning cultures, and, I guess, organizations that really promote skill development. The other thing being I think you've said, I guess, educational teaching. I mean, we're of the persuasion here at forward that everyone's got a teacher inside them. And I mean, be that at a very basic level, I mean, not specifically even related to work, we should all have certain domains that even at the most basic level, we can share some literacy or understanding with others weird. So yeah. Any reflections, I guess, on on how to help shift those barriers and open up that kind of learning and orientation with organizations based on the work you've done?
Oh, absolutely. So look, I think I agree with you, I think it's actually easier to teach someone to be a coach or teacher than it is to teach someone to be a manager. And I feel like, you know, because most people really love feeling like they are. People are benefiting from the knowledge, right? That's an inherent desire that everyone actually has, even when I speak to people about the best work that they've done in their career that it always somehow comes back to the people that they work with, and the fact that they felt useful. And so it really does invigorate leaders when you give them the chance to be good teachers, but they still need training like not everyone's a natural at it. Some people need to understand how to accommodate different audiences, etc. But I mean, I think that one of the the underlying issue that prevents organizations from divert from delivering great employee experience or learning experiences, the fact that they've got business models that don't support it. So the reality is that it takes time to document Information, it takes time to even write a case study on something you've just done, right? So documenting learning information takes time, and you have to have the technology, the templates, everything set up. So it's super easy for people to do it.
But most organizations do not have that even when they have Confluence spaces, for example, it's unstructured. And they don't necessarily have an individual that sort of helps to just make sure everything is well documented. What I found when speaking to people at the kind of big tech giants that I won't mention in in Silicon Valley is that they hired people whose sole responsibility it was to maintain a learning kind of intranet, if you will, yep. And so people could contribute information about the tasks and skills that they were performing. But there was someone who was making sure that the content was user friendly, and making sure that people could access it correctly. And so it comes down to investment organizations need to invest in a couple of things.
Number one, they need to make sure that they've got that repository set up. So it's super easy. Number two, ideally, there would be someone who is responsible a learning designer, or an information designer, or even a great BA, who knows how to or content strategists, someone who knows how to do that. And that's part of their role. And I think, thirdly, they really do need to give their their leaders time and also credit for teaching. In my view, I would love to I mean, there's so many experiments, I would love to run, that's kind of like, just talk about least five experiments that I would love to run. Yeah, but I think a learning model for me is that you only really reward you know, learning, teaching and doing. And so ultimately, you are paying people to teach in some way shape or form, whether it's some form of credit, or whether it's actual money. So if you've got experts, you should be giving them some sort of reward for imparting their knowledge in a way that's really useful. You should also be rewarding people for learning. So people can prove that they're taking an interest in improving their skill set. And also, if you're very transparent around what those skills are, you can measure it, you don't have to, it doesn't have to be vague, it can be very specific. And then actually doing the tasks that they've learned well, to a high degree of craft, those are the three things that I think make an organization produce exceptional work, and also make people feel valued.
So yeah, yeah, no, I mean, it's massive, I think in terms of, to your earlier point, you know, the fulfillment that we get through participating in learning environments, I think, you know, that we're big on building, which is a, you know, it's got its roots in kind of German philosophy, almost, it was adopted by a lot of the different Nordic countries, in terms of, you know, models around I guess, you know, human development really, that's ultimately what it was kind of anchored and focused on adult maturation and growth. And I think in organizations and workplaces, you know, it's it's a fascinating challenge and something that we're exploring more and more here, you know, at what points do organizations almost kind of, you know, expand their webs to create these these wildly fluid and open and exciting I guess, I think, use the term knowledge repositories, but also like learning infrastructure, I kind of like as the language there a lot Tracy.
And then, you know, what kind of costs not just financial and resource wise, but ideologically then as well? How does that change their business, depending on what category or sector they potentially operate in? When people start to openly share different ideas or perspectives? Or those lenses? What kinds ofchallenges could can exist? And that's something that we're slowly exploring and unpacking more and more too?
Yeah, sure. Yeah, I mean, like, I think that's really what we need to get to is, as a culture, we need to shift to a place where not knowing stuff is okay. And we get into a learning mindset where we're not scared of learning, I think a lot of people feel learning tremendously. I do sometimes. Because when you're leading something, and you're supposed to know everything, when you show any level of vulnerability, it can sometimes undermine people's confidence in you. And so you worry about the fact that, you know, it's essentially going to take away from your authority, but we have to find a way to get over that. I think, also, I don't know how we're going to do it. But we're going to have to get to a point where people can speak authentically.
And I mean, I think at the moment, especially in my generation, I'm getting into a generation now where we're learning new ways of speaking, and learning new words, which is a wonderful thing, because words should always evolve and the way we talk to each other should always evolve and the way we are should always evolve. But I have found that a lot of people don't want to discuss difficult topics anymore, in case there's some sort of repercussion for them. Which is a problem because we have to learn how to be you know, so I mean, I'm sort of dancing around a bit like we just have to learn how to be more tolerant and inclusive of one another. And even when you're trying to learn those kinds of things. People feel like they can't vocalize the what their fears are openly because they're worried it's gonna come back. So totally, there's lots of that going on, I think we have to find a way to get past that. I don't know what the solution is other than to just give each other a break.
Totally. And I mean, I think and again, this is, this is where one of I guess my interest is, especially with kind of the Civic stream I'm looking at, but kind of what points do the really open and honest conversations, potentially really start to jar and undermine? I guess the foundations that certain types of businesses have been built on or the assumptions or the modus operandi is that they've inhabited and forced that change? And, I mean, you're saying that learning is terrifying. I know that Sally who did a wonderful podcast prior to this in and around looking at kind of resilience, change durable skills? That's that's her content area? Yeah, that's a real challenge as well, for people. And I think that those kinds of conversations in that environment, there's a lot of, I guess, there's kind of almost rules within a lot of organizations. But then there's the unwritten rules, you know, and I think I was talking to about this. And there's a great example that is Žižek it kind of uses when he talks about sociality. And he uses the example. And some very, I mean, make make what you will have if someone like Slavoj Žižek is I think he's totally mad, but also totally brilliant. In some stretches, he talks about almost that kind of ritual that rule on, you know, like a first date between a man and a woman typically, or historically has been, you know, the man will pay this kind of thing. But it's expected, it's an unwritten rule that, you know, the the female should gesture to pay almost for that. And I feel like in workplaces, there's a lot of almost unwritten rules or unwritten gestures in terms of how we interact.
And I think your point on moving towards those really transparent open spaces. It's an incredibly imaginative point. Yeah. And I wonder if you know, how, again, what the adaptability of different organizations, organizations that I guess from ground zero are built with this kind of an ethos, and how they kind of perform and thrive compared to those that are almost, you know, struggling to adapt in terms of the way they've been built hierarchically, or from a power structure point of view? How they operate in this space to
what they see. Yeah, absolutely.
I think there's such a difference between organizations that have been built on a lot of organizations that have been built on people who know people who know people, right. So I bring in my friend, and then you bring in your friend, a lot of the issues that we have around bias, and bigotry and exclusion and non diversity is very often because there's just been a habit of people only ever surrounding themselves with people who are like them. And when you surround yourself with people who are like you, you don't really have to spell things out, because everyone understands the same language, right? Yeah. But to have a diverse workplace, you've got to assume a number of things. First of all, you've got to assume that they're going to be a number of people who don't speak the same language as you. And so the way that they interpret certain words is going to be different. And that there are going to be different cultural interpretations of things, you've also got to assume that there are going to be hopefully more and more people with neurodiversity be neurodiversity being included, and people who are high on the spectrum as well, right? Not just people who sort of have a manageable who find it easy to manage, there are people who very high on the spectrum, and they find it very difficult to manage day to day. And so in all instances of diversity, you've just got to assume that there's like this kind of tribe of people who are just almost don't understand one another in terms of language. And the only way that you can get around that is to be very transparent. There is no other way. Yep. And I think that's why, you know, that obviously, that's why a lot of organizations who can't be transparent don't tend to attract diverse people.
But yeah, I also just think that we, I don't know, I just think that it's the only it's the only actual answer is to be super specific about what we expect from people, what we mean by things, and also not to be as offended when someone doesn't understand. So I think I was telling you the other day, you know, I've I've had situations where I've had, you know, someone on my team, and someone's complained about the fact that they've said something that they thought was very rude. And then I'll say, what did they say? And they'll say, well, they said that this person hadn't done their job. So they couldn't do their job. But they're just being honest. Exactly what happened. Right? Yeah. Do you disagree? That that's what happened? No, that is what happened. But you know, it hurts so and so is feeling and so but, you know,it's just what happened. So, I mean, it's an ongoing, we're changing the way we talk to talk to each other as humans, and I think that's wonderful. I think there's just an ongoing experiment. You know, how do we how can we be direct without being offensive? How can we, you know, not take offense while also telling people about our boundaries. I mean, these are things that are difficult to resolve. But I do think we're getting there. I think that as a society where we're figuring it out, that's why it's feels so difficult right now, because we're kind of dealing with all the kind of really knotty bits of that problem right now and we are going to figure it out eventually. Totally. That's my feeling.
pricey.
It's been awesome to chat. Thank you so much for your time today. For those listening, you can find Tracy's book how we talk about work for sale on Amazon and please look under Tracy L. Brown look that one up great raid, beautifully illustrated some some wonderful quotes from you know, the various people you've interviewed around the world, I found myself, you know, really nodding my head in terms of the depth of insight in some instances, but also just chuckling in other instances through my own kind of lived experience and relationships with some of the points listed. Further to that you can also learn more about the future of doing by going to futureofdoing.work. And to learn more about Tracy you can visit tracylouisebrown.com. So thank you so much for your time today, Tracy.
I hope you enjoyed this episode of RMIT forward skills cast. Join us again next time and come and find us on medium our home for stories about future skills and workforce transformation. Search RMIT forward to find us.