Design Thinking: Human-Centered Problem-Solving With Sara Musgrove PhD.

• What is Design Thinking?
• Stories of Design Thinking Outcomes
• Detailed walk-through of Design Thinking
  • Empathize
  • Define
  • Ideate
  • Prototype
  • Test

Connect With Sara Musgrove

• Connect with Sara Musgrove on social media >>> Facebook | Instagram | Linkedin
• The Riverbend Group >>> Website | Linkedin | Instagram | Facebook

Additional Resources

• Youtube Channel: Growing as Grownups
• Watch: Sara's Interview With Scott Sanchez
• Watch: Keith Eigel Interviews Robert Kegan (Father of Constructive Developmental Theory/CDT)

Additional Takeaways

• Curiosity helps set aside ego and assumptions.
• The iterative process of design thinking leads to better solutions.
• Understanding the problem is as important as finding a solution.
• Collaboration brings diverse perspectives to problem-solving.
• Testing is about learning from mistakes, not just validating ideas.
• Real-world applications of design thinking can save lives.
• Curiosity is essential for effective leadership and problem-solving. Eliciting stories helps uncover extreme emotions and values.
• User personas are essential for guiding design processes.
• Prototyping allows for creative exploration and testing ideas.
• Empathy is key to understanding user needs beyond surface-level responses.
• Self on the shelf mindset encourages focusing on users over personal expertise.
• Diverse teams enhance the design thinking process by breaking echo chambers.
• Prototyping can reveal unexpected user reactions and insights.
• Falling in love with users rather than solutions leads to better outcomes. People want to trust and have confidence in their mechanics.
• Digging deeper reveals what truly motivates employees.
• Vulnerability is essential for effective leadership.
• Empathy can help resolve conflicts and misunderstandings.
• Restraint is crucial in difficult conversations.
• Letting go of control can lead to personal growth.

Podcast Episode Unedited Transcript

Jason Scott Montoya (00:01)
Welcome to a Listen to Learn episode of the Share Life podcast. I'm Jason Scott Montoya, and today I'm speaking with Sarah Musgrove about design thinking. Sarah, say hello.

Dr. Sara Musgrove (00:11)
Hey, good morning, good afternoon. Jason, good to see you again.

Jason Scott Montoya (00:14)
It could be 2 a.m. if they're watching this in the middle of the night, wherever they are. Sarah and I met many years ago, probably 10 to 15 years ago, I don't remember the exact year, but it was through her work at the Leaders Lyceum, which helps other leaders develop, and I've gone through the program, they were also a client of mine for a while. Sarah is a specialist of design thinking, which is a human-centered way to tackle

Dr. Sara Musgrove (00:18)
That's true.

Jason Scott Montoya (00:43)
problem solving. She's now helping leaders optimize their influence and impact at the Riverbend Group. I've invited her today on the podcast to tell us what is design thinking, how does it work, and why should we be leveraging it? Design thinking is both a framework and a mindset, so we're gonna talk about both, and it helps us think differently and early so that when we're executing and building, we're effective and efficient, but also remembering the people that

helping and serving along the way. So Sarah, to get us started, tell us a little bit about who you are, where you came from in your story, and how that intersected with design thinking, and why it was so compelling to you when you landed upon it.

Dr. Sara Musgrove (01:27)
Absolutely, it's a fun story, at least for me. So I am an industrial organizational psychologist by training. Actually started in marriage and family therapy, transitioned to industrial psychology. So that was a weird pivot. And, you know, it's funny, Jason, when we met, I think I had just finished grad school. So it would have been about 12 years ago.

Jason Scott Montoya (01:30)
Heh heh.

Yeah.

Dr. Sara Musgrove (01:52)
If you would have said, am going to be on a podcast talking about innovation, I would have thought you were crazy because it was. It is not in my wheelhouse. It was not anything I had studied. If you would have asked me if I was an innovative, creative, entrepreneurial person, I would have been like, no, I like to follow the rules. I like to keep it safe. Just, just not in my personality, but.

Jason Scott Montoya (01:59)
Tell us why, tell us why that's so absurd.

Dr. Sara Musgrove (02:20)
probably just a few years into my career, one of our clients invited me to come sit in a workshop that they were doing separate from our program and said, it's on innovation, I think you'll find it interesting, there's a lot of application points to what you teach. And I always love to learn, so I went and I sat in this workshop and I did the activities and as I'm sure we'll talk about, there's pieces of it that just feel like you're playing, they're very creative, they're very messy.

And I left that workshop and I thought that was fun. That was interesting. I have no idea what that has to do with leadership or psychology. But I trusted this person's insight. And so I took my journal and my notes to a coffee shop. And I remember sitting there like, here's what I learned in this workshop. How in the world does this relate? This lady sees something. I want to see it. And I started at that point teasing apart.

kind of the basic framework of design thinking, identifying some tools that are useful in leadership, some mindsets that are relevant in personal growth, psychology, all the different things. And I thought, okay, it is not obvious, but there is something here. And just dug in, taught myself as much as I could teach myself, tracked down the guy that taught this workshop and for about a year.

I kind of joked that I stopped him saying, we need to talk, we need to work together, there's something here. And after a year, I finally wore him down. And we've been good friends for the past decade, we've worked together, we've done some really cool stuff. So it was this very unexpected thing that dropped in my life that has been really fun to explore and apply it outside of.

the innovation space. I am not an innovator. I don't work in product design. I don't start new businesses. I'm a leadership development psychologist. But yet I find the elements of design thinking so applicable beyond the traditional ways that people think about it of I am innovating a new thing that I've really just fallen in love with it.

Jason Scott Montoya (04:45)
Yeah, so I have this kind of visual metaphor about the bouncy ball and there's two types of bouncy balls. One is the bouncy ball that bounces everywhere and far reaching all over the place and is sort of out of control. And that bouncy ball person, which I would describe myself, needs structure to contain the creativity and innovation because there's too much of it.

So you put the bouncy ball in the box and then it bounces around safely in that box. And then the other type of bouncy ball is the one that doesn't move at all when there's no box. But when you put the box around, then they bounce around just like the other bouncy ball. So they both need structure, but they need it for different reasons, one to contain it and one to liberate. And so I guess, do you feel like that describes you?

Dr. Sara Musgrove (05:29)
Yeah, I love it. You give me a framework to be creative and I will have so much fun with it. You give me a blank piece of paper and I'm gonna freeze.

Jason Scott Montoya (05:35)
Yeah.

Yeah, so in that sense, you're not necessarily pioneering the structure, you're pioneering the output of the structure, but you need someone to help you give you the structure. And so that's where the design thinking comes in. Now, was design thinking, when you discovered it, was it a thing in terms of like, is part of the industry or is it like, was it like kind of like pioneering, it was new at the time and now it's been developed by a variety of people or how has that unfolded in terms of just its evolution?

Dr. Sara Musgrove (06:09)
So I don't know the full history. can tell you my impression of it is that design thinking in its essence has been around for a long time. underlying fundamentals of it are not new.

Jason Scott Montoya (06:23)
Yeah.

Dr. Sara Musgrove (06:23)
In my experience, Stanford really did a good job there. D school, Hasso Plattner School of Design, I think they call it the D school because that's a lot of words, really did a good job of putting it in a clear package that has made it accessible to a lot more people beyond people that are in that product design space. So I would say that the people who work in actual

Jason Scott Montoya (06:34)
hehe

Dr. Sara Musgrove (06:51)
design have been using human centered thoughts and methodologies for years. Design thinking, I think has gained a lot more traction in the past decade because it has been taught in a way that makes it for people like me who are not innovative by nature or working in that space made it accessible. And then now I hear it all the time. So.

I think it's definitely grown, I wouldn't say it's new. It's just more accessible.

Jason Scott Montoya (07:22)
Yeah. Now, could I, so I want to just interject a question here, an idea, a thought. When you think about, so one of the areas that you specialize in the organizational psychology is this idea of constructive developmental theory. And that talks about the adult psychology of how we make sense of and make meaning through the world, through different stages. And so for you, part of it was personality, but how much of that maybe resistance or

or dynamic of innovation and being creative is also related to just the developmental level that we're at, if that makes sense. So in other words, someone that's in a lower level might struggle more than someone in a different level because of social dynamics or ideological dynamics. Does that make sense? Not just personality.

Dr. Sara Musgrove (08:14)
So it's an interesting question and I think somebody's developmental level maybe is more of a threshold than a progressive element of the equation because design thinking, like the core of human centered design is empathy or understanding the needs and values of another person.

In somebody who is in that early level two kind of thinking, true empathy is not possible. The ability to recognize that somebody else has a different perspective than you do is not possible. So I would say.

That is a point of resistance. I would say at level three where we are really attentive to what other people think of us, it can cause challenges because part of design thinking is prototyping rough, very early solutions that you know are going to be wrong in some way. And so if you're really concerned about that external validation, that's going to be a hard piece. That being said, I have worked with elementary age kids teaching them design thinking.

Jason Scott Montoya (09:10)
Mm-hmm.

Dr. Sara Musgrove (09:28)
And at the basic level of what design thinking is, they are able to solve problems for people based on things they learn about them. They have a better time playing. So I would say that the points of resistance to this approach to solving problems is probably more about our cultural expectations of people more than

developmental level or even personality. Personality makes some parts of the process easier or harder for different people. I think the point of resistance is more tied up in...

ego, if I just am being blunt of I've been taught to be the expert, I've been taught that I'm supposed to have the solutions. It's what our academic system trains people to be is problem solvers that I have enough. I'm an expert. I know how to solve a problem. And design thinking says, set that aside and go talk to people and really understand them before you try to solve a problem. So it's a long answer to your question, but hopefully that makes sense.

Jason Scott Montoya (10:18)
Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, I guess another layer to that would be, almost seems like design thinking is also a process to integrate people at different levels of maturity. So everyone's collaborating in their strengths towards the same desired outcome. Does that make sense?

Dr. Sara Musgrove (10:48)
Yeah, yeah, I think, I mean, that's one of the core pillars of design thinking is that it's, it's meant to be done together. It's meant to be done. I always say it's a team sport. Like I am tempted to want to do, do it by myself because it's faster and then it gets done the way that I want it to get done. But really bringing together diverse perspectives, diverse personalities, diverse areas of expertise.

Jason Scott Montoya (10:57)
Yeah.

Dr. Sara Musgrove (11:14)
diverse styles, all of that really helps get to the right solution more than I'm just trying to do about myself.

Jason Scott Montoya (11:19)
Yeah.

Yeah, and I think, I guess one other layer I'd add to that before we dive into what it is more so, is this sort of sense that I'm missing something that I need from somebody else to help solve this problem, right? So tell us about that.

Dr. Sara Musgrove (11:40)
Yeah, this aspect of openness, of curiosity in the design thinking space, a lot of times we use the phrase of beginner's mindset. The recognition that my understanding alone is inadequate to truly understand the problem.

that I'm trying to solve and come up with the right solution. I may have a great solution. I may have thought of this brilliant idea that I think would make a great product or make a great process or whatever it is you're thinking about. But it only works if it is solving the need of somebody in the market, whether that is a customer or in my case of leadership.

the person that I'm leading, I need to make sure that what I'm doing matches that person. And so I have to have that awareness of I only have a piece of the picture. And to go back to constructive developmental theory, it's kind of a level four awareness, like at its core of I have even like level four plus, like I have my way of understanding things, but I know it's just one way. But it really is just recognizing

I'm not solving the problem for me, I'm solving the problem for someone else and I need to understand them in order to understand the problem in order to then come up with a solution.

Jason Scott Montoya (13:04)
Yeah, yeah, that's good. So kind of, I guess, transition us into, help us understand what, so what is design thinking as a framework, the method, you talk about the method, the mindset, we kind of tease a little bit of the mindset, we'll dive more into that. But what is this method? Kind of walk us through that at the high level and then we can share some stories of that in action, so.

Dr. Sara Musgrove (13:24)
Yeah.

Yeah, so I think about it kind of as a hierarchy. So overall, we are talking about the innovation space. Within innovation approaches, there is human-centered design, which is solving for your end user in mind, right? The person that you are benefiting by the work that you've done. Design thinking, then, is the most common.

methodology of human centered design and the way I teach it, the way I understand it comes out of that Stanford framework. There's different variations of the steps, but it has the same core fundamental steps. Starting with empathy, starting to come to understand who it is that you're trying to help. Then we go to define, define the problem.

And these two steps are where I think human centered design and design thinking put a stake in the ground as different than how we think of kind of the more traditional problem solving approaches. Really taking as much time to understand the problem as we do coming up with solutions.

So empathy and define are the first two stages. Then we do move into those solution oriented steps, which is ideation, bringing together a group of people to come up with as many different ways that we could solve the problem, recognizing that our first idea is usually not the right idea. And so the best way to get to a great solution is to have a lot of ideas. Then we prototype. We build something early, quickly, rough.

We get those ideas out of the theoretical space into reality in some sort of interactive form. And then we test it with our users. We take it and actually put it back in front of people, either the actual people we're trying to solve for, people who know them well, people who represent them, to get feedback. And that feedback then loops us back into the empathy phase because we are not testing to see if we are right. Our first idea...

Jason Scott Montoya (15:30)
Yeah.

Dr. Sara Musgrove (15:39)
is almost never right. We are testing to learn more about the person and their need. And so it's this iterative process that loops back from prototype testing. There's this unofficial step that's like iterate, but basically it's saying we're connecting back into empathy. We go through it again. And each time we go through this cycle, we're getting a little bit closer to understanding the true problem.

Jason Scott Montoya (15:45)
that we're trying to help with the solution, right? Yeah.

Dr. Sara Musgrove (16:08)
and a little bit closer to finding the right solution.

Jason Scott Montoya (16:11)
Yeah, so I kind of think of it like you're spiraling upward. So could it be like just a conversation between you and me or is it like something that takes months or years? what's the time span of this type of thing?

Dr. Sara Musgrove (16:17)
Yeah.

I mean, that all depends on the scope of the problem you're trying to solve, right? So if we are trying to start a new business, create a brand new product, that's gonna take months. It may take a dozen times through the cycle to get to the right answer. If we are trying to solve how we're gonna design a podcast episode that might be useful to your listeners,

Jason Scott Montoya (16:36)
Yeah.

Dr. Sara Musgrove (16:58)
you and I could do that in a matter of an hour, you know? But I think one of the things that drew me to design thinking is there is this five-step framework that you go through over a period of time doing multiple laps. As somebody who doesn't work in the innovation space, rarely do I use that whole process, right? More often, I pull out tools from it.

to apply in other areas. so pulling out this tool of empathy and define to say, I'm gonna sit and talk to Jason. I'm gonna really understand what matters to him to see what it is. What are his pain points? What are the things that bring him life? What are the things?

that might make his life better and I'm gonna understand you as a person and define a need that you have and then think, okay, great, how might I be able to solve it? And I may not have to go through the whole brainstorming prototyping phase. So different elements of it could be used in any given moment. The full process can take anywhere from a couple days to a couple years probably.

Jason Scott Montoya (18:00)
Yeah.

Hmm. Yeah.

Yeah. So give us some stories so people have an understanding of like, wow, like this was used for this and this was the outcome. us some examples, some inspiration.

Dr. Sara Musgrove (18:23)
Yeah, so I have two stories that I tend to tell when I'm introducing design thinking. My favorite one works best when I have visuals to share with it. So I'm not gonna tell the full story, but it's for how the GE Adventure Series MRI machines were created.

The short version of that is this man named Doug Dietz went through design thinking and figured out how do we make the MRI process more kid friendly so that fewer kids have to be sedated. And you just need to see the pictures to understand how cool this is. But another really powerful story that's very classic in the design thinking space comes out of a class from Stanford University called Designing for Extreme Affordability, I believe.

And this group of students was tasked with an issue of infant mortality over in third world countries that upwards of four million babies were dying each year within the first weeks or months of their birth. And the issue is incubators, which are really essential for the care of a newborn who was born prematurely to keep them warm to help regulate their body temperature.

really expensive, really hard to maintain. so countries like Nepal weren't able to have that equipment. So what do we do? How do we create a low-cost incubator? So the team came up with all these prototypes, figured out how we can use water, how we can use other things to regulate temperature, went over to Nepal to do their design work, their discovery work.

started noticing that there are incubators in the hospitals. And so they were asking the team, okay, so I see that you have them, what's not working, come to discover the incubators were there and they actually were working. The problem is by the time the babies were getting to the hospital, they were too sick that the incubators weren't helping because in these third world countries, babies were being born out in the villages that were.

Jason Scott Montoya (20:11)
Ha

Dr. Sara Musgrove (20:34)
four to eight hours away from the nearest hospital. So these mothers are giving birth in their villages and it would take days sometimes to get the baby to a hospital. So that team then realized the user that we're solving for is not the hospital that needs cheaper incubators. The user that we're solving for is the mother in these remote villages that are having the premature babies that can't keep their baby.

warm enough to survive in the early hours of their life. So rather than building these cheaper incubators, what they went to was a, it's called the Embrace infant warmer and it looks like this little teeny tiny baby sleeping bag that you can heat up a pack of paraffin wax. You can use it with, heat it up with fire. You can heat it up with boiling water. You can use electricity, whatever they have.

It keeps a steady temperature for eight hours. And so the mothers then were able to give birth, bundle up their baby, transport it to the hospital. And then the baby had a chance of survival because it was in better shape when it got to the hospital. So I love that story because of the pivot of we thought we were designing an incubator for the hospitals. The real user.

is the mother and the baby, and they have a totally different problem. And if we really want to make a difference in infant mortality, that's what we need to solve. And there's fun features about how that evolved, but that pivot in who am I really solving for and what do they really need, I think is a really great example of design thinking in action.

Jason Scott Montoya (22:02)
Yeah, that's... Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, I think that's such a great, inspiring example and it's so insightful because I just think about all of these issues that our society is facing and I think a lot of people tend to have this sense of like, well, we'll just pass a law that makes this legal or illegal and then the thing is fixed. And they fail to realize that the problem, like you could give this hospital all these incubators, it ain't gonna fix the problem. And so if you actually care about the infants that are dying,

then you'll solve, you'll actually wanna solve the problem, not just pass a law that makes you feel better about yourself, right?

Dr. Sara Musgrove (22:52)
If I have time, I have another story. It's much quicker, but to just show the vast applications of this. So a number of years ago, I had the opportunity to do a program that fully integrated design thinking and leadership, which was really cool. And one of the assignments I gave to the participants in this class was to go have an empathy conversation with somebody that you were trying to have influence with. And the idea was how do I

Jason Scott Montoya (22:55)
Yeah, go ahead.

Yeah.

Dr. Sara Musgrove (23:19)
How do I redesign myself to be a better leader for this person? And so in my head, they were all gonna go talk to their direct reports or somebody that, a colleague that they were working with. Well, this one lady took the assignment back home and she had a kid that was really struggling in school, not doing his homework, trying to, you not wanting to go to school every day when she was getting so frustrated. Why is this kid not wanting to do his homework? She had tried all sorts of consequences and rules and ways to make him.

Jason Scott Montoya (23:21)
Yeah, I like that.

Dr. Sara Musgrove (23:50)
You you can't turn on the TV until you do your homework. So she said, I'm gonna go and say, what's going on? Like, what's hardest for you about school these days? you know, what is really troubling you, making this hard for you? And what she found out in that conversation with her son was that he was being bullied at school. He was having conflict with his teachers.

Jason Scott Montoya (24:14)
you

Dr. Sara Musgrove (24:19)
So it had nothing to do with him being a kid who didn't want to do his homework. There was deeper emotional issues going on that she never would have known. Kids don't volunteer that information a lot of times. If she hadn't taken the time to ask and say, like, what's, what's hardest for you at school these days? And she had been trying to solve the problem of how do I make my kid do his homework? And that wasn't the problem. It was my kid needed to feel safe emotionally at school.

Okay, now we can solve that problem. And so as a psychologist and as a former marriage and family therapist, right, like designing infant warmers to save premature babies in Nepal is amazing. And being a better mother to a kid who's struggling in school is equally amazing. And that's where this design thinking approach is relevant. I can't think of any areas in life that have a complex problem where it's not relevant, right?

Jason Scott Montoya (25:04)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Dr. Sara Musgrove (25:15)
So I just wanted to give those two extreme examples.

Jason Scott Montoya (25:19)
Yeah, yeah, that's great. I'm just thinking like, why are we failing at this so badly? You know, what's missing? What are we missing, Sarah? Help us. Okay.

Dr. Sara Musgrove (25:29)
Curiosity. I mean that's after years of studying this the thing that I

Like if I had a magic wand to make the world a better place, curiosity would be it because it sets aside the ego and says, I just want to understand. I want to understand people. I want to understand the situation. If I have an idea, I want to be curious if it's a good idea, right? So rather than trying to come up with a solution.

rather than trying to know everything, if we could learn to embrace curiosity, we get a lot further, but it requires a vulnerability that I think is uncomfortable for a lot of people.

Jason Scott Montoya (26:15)
So we'll talk about that a little bit.

Dr. Sara Musgrove (26:17)
Curiosity implies that I don't know. And there's a skill to it, right? Like it is one of my favorite classes to teach is, or sections of a class to teach is this idea of asking really good questions. How do I listen in a way to be curious rather than listening to understand? So there's a skill to curiosity, but more than that is the ability to say, I may think I know.

But let me just ask a question to see what I might be missing and be willing to learn. It's like a growth mindset on steroids almost of there's always something I can learn. You know, one of my favorite examples is like when I'm working with leaders and they say something to me that sounds great and leadershipy, like I really value teamwork. Teamwork is really important to me.

I, as a psychologist who studies leadership, have my own idea of what teamwork means. And most naturally, and probably more of the time than not, I proceed and go, okay, teamwork means everybody working together to achieve a common goal. But when I'm being intentional about curiosity, I say, what does teamwork mean to you? And I'm glad I asked because to this person, teamwork was about having everybody

do things that make me look good.

Okay, so you can see there's a leader level issue going on in here. His idea of teamwork was very different than my idea of teamwork, but if I wouldn't have paused and slowed down and said, what does that mean to you? Tell me more about that. I would have missed something really important. And so that ability to slow down, ask questions, set aside my assumptions.

Jason Scott Montoya (27:44)
Yeah.

Dr. Sara Musgrove (28:07)
And the hard thing about assumptions is most of the time we don't even know what we're assuming. It's just...

Jason Scott Montoya (28:12)
Yeah, it's fundamental axiom of which we are unaware.

Dr. Sara Musgrove (28:16)
Yeah, and so you have to be intentional to say, what am I assuming to be true here? And how could I ask to see if I'm right? Or I want to know how I'm wrong. Like the assumption of I know that I'm wrong in some way helped me get it right. And that's, you know, to go back to the framework of design thinking, the method, that testing phase, what I see so often, and I struggle with it myself.

Jason Scott Montoya (28:33)
Yeah.

Dr. Sara Musgrove (28:44)
I grew up, I like to joke that I'm over-educated. I've spent too many years learning to be a perfectionist, right?

Jason Scott Montoya (28:52)
Yeah.

Dr. Sara Musgrove (28:52)
Testing to me is did I get it right? In design thinking, testing is how did I get it wrong? Show me where I'm wrong so that I can get it right. And that fundamental shift of thinking of instead of going here's this thing I built for you, do you love it? To go listen, I know this isn't the right thing, help me figure out where I missed the mark, let's get this better together.

Jason Scott Montoya (28:55)
Okay.

Yeah.

Dr. Sara Musgrove (29:21)
requires that vulnerability and more attachment to the end result than my own success.

Jason Scott Montoya (29:31)
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, there's a lot of things you said there. I love the idea of like redesigning ourself, like letting the situation be an opportunity for us to redesign ourselves. I can relate to that in a lot of ways. I think one of the things in terms of curiosity, think there's another layer I wanna add to that to get your thoughts because when you, like I might be curious with you or with someone or even in a part of my life or with.

or even in most of my life or all of my life, but then I enter into a context that is maybe hostile or very difficult or controversial. And it's almost like that desire for that curiosity of which helped me in these other areas or would help me, all of a sudden.

my inclination is to not be curious or it's to go a different road or it's using the curiosity and not having any effect. talk to me about that idea of maintaining that curiosity even in hostile circumstances. It could be as simple as having a fight with your spouse or something more large too.

Dr. Sara Musgrove (30:35)
Yeah, I mean, yeah, that's exactly what mean.

That's exactly where my mind was going. Not that it's hopefully hostile, but those are the times that it's hardest because in those moments, our protective reflexes have kicked in, right? I don't want to get hurt. Curiosity is, as I said, a vulnerable attitude. So it does require you to kind of set aside your own agenda for a minute.

Jason Scott Montoya (30:44)
haha

Dr. Sara Musgrove (31:08)
I'll tell you when I'm at my best, I am able to be curious in those moments, but often it requires me to like, I need a time out. need to get myself in a place that I can do that. And then I can come back into the conversation and ask the questions.

Jason Scott Montoya (31:11)
Yeah

Okay

Dr. Sara Musgrove (31:24)
Tell me what's important to you about this or tell me how you're feeling in this moment and why, whatever the questions are relevant to the thing. But asking questions to understand where that other person is.

Jason Scott Montoya (31:32)
you

Dr. Sara Musgrove (31:39)
rather than I'm putting my stake in the ground, you're putting their stake in the ground, who's gonna hold out the longest, who's gonna overpower the other person, right? There might be times in life where that is the right approach. I would like for those to be fewer than I think we think they are. Right, so as a simple example that I can share, so I'm a stepmom when I got,

Jason Scott Montoya (31:56)
When it's only absolutely necessary, huh?

Dr. Sara Musgrove (32:04)
married my kids were 9 and 11. The 11 year old had some emotional reactivity challenges, would get very worked up and I started to notice when he was getting worked up, he would just keep saying the same things over again, making the same arguments or the same defenses over and over again. And so eventually, you know, my psychologist alarm went off that like he's not feeling heard in this moment.

We are not making any progress by continuing to counter his argument. So I said to my husband, was like, I need a timeout. I'm going to go get Dr. Musgrove and I'm going to come back. Right. Like still mom Sarah could not handle it. I have to, have to like tell myself Dr. Musgrove is going to show up. And I went in and I would say, all right, buddy, tell me why you're so upset. Well, my sister blah, blah, blah. And I would use the framework that

Jason Scott Montoya (32:52)
What?

Dr. Sara Musgrove (33:02)
that you're, I think, aware of this self on the shelf listening. I think we introduced that in the program. So what I hear you saying is you're upset that your sister, whatever, is that right? Yeah, tell me more. And once he knew I was listening to him, once he knew that his perspective was being heard, one, I could understand what the real problem was, that it was not

Jason Scott Montoya (33:06)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Dr. Sara Musgrove (33:30)
you know, she got a cookie and I didn't get a cookie or whatever it was. It was like, he really feels like he is being overlooked in a number of situations. I could address that. And I was like, you're still in trouble. Like, I need you to understand from our perspective, this behavior is still not acceptable in this house. But let's talk about the thing that really matters to you. And so in those moments, like we were able to calm, there was like an emotional intelligence.

emotional contagion thing happening where like if I was able to stay calm and curious it brought his emotions down. And the same strategy can work if my husband and I are in a disagreement. Typically what you find is you're arguing about a method, a strategy, how we're gonna do something, but if you can be curious and get to those deeper level values, we want the same thing. And when we can recognize we're on the same team, we both want the same thing.

Jason Scott Montoya (34:00)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Dr. Sara Musgrove (34:28)
Now we just have to figure out which of these different strategies to get there is the right fit for us. And so it calms things down. It finds, helps you find commonality. It helps you find the thing that really is triggering the response that's causing the hostility. So when people are, when you're able to engage in those conversations, that empathy work of like, I want to understand why this is so important to you. It can make a difference now.

Jason Scott Montoya (34:52)
Yeah.

Dr. Sara Musgrove (34:55)
you're not always able to sit down and have those conversations with people. But even if you can't, you can probably infer a lot of things, take some educated guesses of what is important based on the way they're behaving.

Jason Scott Montoya (35:07)
Yeah, yeah. So yeah, that's a lot of interesting. Are there any other stories you wanna share or do you wanna dive into maybe a little bit more detail into the design thinking itself?

Dr. Sara Musgrove (35:20)
I mean, I have a thousand stories I could tell, so I'll hold off on them and maybe some of them will come out as we talk about some of the other elements of it.

Jason Scott Montoya (35:25)
Okay. So I guess, kind of walk us through the steps of design thinking and we can start with empathy. Like what does that mean to you or what does it mean to the design thinking process? And I think it's interesting that you bring up assumptions in that relationship and just definitions. What's the definition of things? Because when you intersect with another person of which comes from a different place,

Dr. Sara Musgrove (35:33)
Mm-hmm.

.

Jason Scott Montoya (35:50)
A lot of our words have different definitions. We use them differently. And I think that's actually a really milestone moment in a relationship when you kind of work out those definitions. It's very frustrating to go through that, like that fire, but it's the fruit on the other side of it is absolutely incredible. So anyway, let's dive in there.

Dr. Sara Musgrove (35:54)
you

Yeah.

Yeah, so empathy, of like the step, the process of it is getting out, I say getting out of your office, but whatever your home base is, getting out of my own world, getting into the space of the people that I am trying to help. Watching them.

noticing what they do, noticing how they do work, and then having questions, having a conversation with them where I'm asking open-ended questions that are getting past, what do you need? What do you want? What do you want me to design for you? Getting to like, what are, I think about it in terms of eliciting stories that capture extreme emotions. So what is the best? What is the worst?

What is your favorite? What's the most stressful? What brings you life? Because if you're asking like, what is a typical day like for you, you're gonna get very generic information that's not gonna help you. But if I were to say, tell me about the best day you have at work. Tell me about the most stressful thing you have to do at work. I'm gonna know what are the things that tap into your strength that you feel like you're good at, where you're contributing, that you wanna do more of. And I'm gonna find the things

Jason Scott Montoya (37:02)
Yeah.

Dr. Sara Musgrove (37:29)
that you don't want to do that are stressful, that are hard, maybe you don't have the resources, I would unpack why those things are stressful for you. So getting those extreme emotions help you understand what really matters to the person, what they love, what they hate, what their values are.

Jason Scott Montoya (37:43)
Yes.

And I would also add like it gives you something lot stronger to stand on. Yeah.

Dr. Sara Musgrove (37:50)
Mm-hmm. Yeah. So those stories, whether it's a story from one person or you do empathy work with, you know, eight people, it depends on the scope of the project, right? Usually one person is not enough in doing empathy work. You want to talk to a handful of people who have some sort of commonality.

and then creating a user persona. So it could be one user that really encapsulates what you find from all of them, or it could be key elements that you found across them that you create this new persona. That story that's attached to a human, you carry out through the rest of the project because that is inspiring. Wanting to help a desperate mother in a remote village of Nepal.

Jason Scott Montoya (38:33)
you

Dr. Sara Musgrove (38:36)
inspires you to come up with really creative solutions and be willing to fail because you're committed to get it right, rather than I want to design an inexpensive incubator, right? I design my incubator and then we're done. So you want to have those user stories. It's that foundation that you have to inspire you when things get hard to make sure you're solving the right problem.

Jason Scott Montoya (38:48)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Dr. Sara Musgrove (39:00)
So a lot of times people will come back and say, well, we have survey data that says this is what matters to people. I'm like, survey data is maybe a good place to start, but you want those stories? Because you want empathy is about understanding people better than they understand themselves. Reading between the lines, digging deeper. And what you find is when you ask people these questions, oftentimes they start telling you things that they didn't even know were inside of them.

Jason Scott Montoya (39:12)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Dr. Sara Musgrove (39:29)
So helping people bring that out, know the this the quote that I use all the time in explaining This is the Henry Ford quote about if I would have asked people what they wanted. They would have said a faster horse Right people could not have said I need a car Nobody knew what that was Right, but by watching people and observing that they need to get from point a to point B faster and a horse was

Jason Scott Montoya (39:43)
Yeah

Yeah.

Dr. Sara Musgrove (39:57)
have these limitations. What if there's a way I could automate a horse? What if, well, that turns into a car. So it's gotta be more than what's your problem. What do want me to

Jason Scott Montoya (40:01)
Yes.

Yeah, yeah, in my world, it's like I need a website, I need Facebook, and it's like, well, what are you trying to accomplish? And is that the vehicle, the best vehicle to do that? And maybe there's a better vehicle, or maybe that's it, but let's at least test it, you know?

Dr. Sara Musgrove (40:18)
Yes.

Yeah, so Jason, in that example, like if a client comes to you and says, I need you to build me a website, spending time with that person to figure out what is the important thing that they want to communicate and make accessible, but a step further of who are their potential...

Clients who are the people there want the website is not for them. It's for somebody else, right? So finding some of those people and say what do you like watching them? Search a website watching them. What do you click on? What do you want to know? Where do you click first?

Jason Scott Montoya (40:38)
Mm-hmm. Yeah. okay. Yeah. Yeah

Yeah.

Yeah, no that's a good point, because a lot of times, I've built a lot of websites for business owners and realizing, this is for you, it's not for your customer. Yeah.

Dr. Sara Musgrove (41:04)
Right. I mean, one of my stories is a client that came to a design thinking program I was leading saying, my boss has told us we need to build a website to house this information. And I won't go into the details of what it was, but through the empathy prototyping process, the whole thing.

At the end of the day, what they found out from their users was, sure, you can build us a website, but what we need in the moments that you're trying to solve for is not a website. I'm not gonna sit down at my computer. I need somebody to call that can help me in this moment. I don't need a website. And so...

before building out the website and being like, here's this website we built for you, don't you like it? They took a drawing of a website to a conference to show to these potential users and they're like, I mean, yeah, add this feature, add this feature, but really, I wanna call you. Like, can we figure out a way for us to build a relationship? And so the boss was like, no, you still have to build the website. Okay, we'll still build the website. And we need to create a way to build connections outside of a website.

Jason Scott Montoya (42:10)
Yeah.

Dr. Sara Musgrove (42:16)
That's just one example of thinking about who the real end user is, right? It's not your customer who wants the website. It's their customer or their potential customers that they're wanting to reach them through the website. And what do those people need?

Jason Scott Montoya (42:19)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, I guess I think of a specific type of scenario, kind of pulling in the constructive developmental theory, level three, the socialized mind. If someone is working on a website and they're more worried about their boss's perception of their work on that website versus the end user, how does design thinking help enable that person?

Dr. Sara Musgrove (42:52)
storytelling. So like I said, this client, the group that I was working with had to still make their boss happy. They still had to do it. But they were able to bring their empathy insights, these compelling stories. So there's like this extra step to design thinking that storytelling, how do we take these user insights and put them in an inspirational and compelling story? They brought the stories of

Jason Scott Montoya (42:53)
Yeah

Yeah.

Dr. Sara Musgrove (43:21)
the yes, a website and a relationship to their boss and said, here's what we heard. Here's what Joseph out in the field was telling us. Here's what it's like in that moment. Here's their challenges that they're facing. What really would help him is this. that.

user grounded story is how you can pitch it back to your boss and say, it's going to be, you know, and if it's truly like a egotistical boss and somebody that's trying to make them happy, you you package it and like, here's what's really going to make us successful. Here's what's really going to make people grateful for you or, know, whatever there's now I'm getting into like manipulation strategies.

You can frame it in a way, like what does that boss need, right? They need validation.

okay, so how do I pitch this to them in a way that they feel validated, like here's this work that I did that's gonna make you look good, or if it's like I need to look good in front of this boss, what they wanna hear is that I have a solution, here's an alternative solution that I package, you know, whatever it is. But those stories grounded in real user insights, not just something that I'm thinking about alone in my office, is how you...

get people to pivot in what they think the solution is.

Jason Scott Montoya (44:43)
Okay. Yeah, yeah, that's interesting. what, what, walk us through, what are all the steps of the design thinking process?

Dr. Sara Musgrove (44:53)
Yeah, so that was all empathy. Define is taking the problem that you've uncovered in your empathy insights and focusing in on one challenge that's worth solving. It's like, we can't do everything. What I like to say is if you're trying to do everything for everyone, you're doing nothing for no one. You need to really...

Jason Scott Montoya (44:56)
empathy.

Dr. Sara Musgrove (45:17)
really identify what is the problem we are trying to solve and who is it going to help. And so there's in the way I teach it, get, we kind of fill in this fill in the blank framework of I've got this user, they have this need. Here's what would be game changing for them. So once you've really solidified a user centered problem, the next step is ideation. So that is bringing together

Hopefully you have a team with you the whole way through, but ideation really relies on diversity of perspective. It's a time-bound brainstorming session where you are purely focused on generating as many ideas as you can. So there's some different strategies you can use. It is all about generating. It is not about evaluating. It is how many ideas can we get on the table? Once you have come up with

as many ideas as you can within a limited amount of time, right? Like you got to put some time bounds on that for people who are naturally like, that's not going to work and that's not going to work. Like you will have your time to evaluate, but right now we're just generating. We then kind of the second part of ideation is narrowing those ideas down to the ones that you think have the most potential. And rather than saying like, what's the best idea?

The way that I do it is I have people think about it through three different criteria and we pick ideas from different categories. So one of them is like the long shot idea. What is the most out of the box, innovative, crazy? I don't know if it would ever even be possible, but man, it's awesome to think about doing that. Like let's not leave the long shots behind because we think they're too hard. The second one is most likely to succeed.

Jason Scott Montoya (46:46)
Okay.

Dr. Sara Musgrove (47:07)
Like what's an easy win? What is something we know we could do? It's gonna make a difference. We could knock it out pretty easily. Like let's consider those ideas. But my favorite one, of course, is the most meaningful or the most likely to delight the user. So going back to our empathy research and what really matters to these people, which of these ideas would our user love? So when we have those different ideas, we pick maybe one, two, or three of them.

Jason Scott Montoya (47:18)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Dr. Sara Musgrove (47:36)
We then carry those on into prototyping. So this is where the play begins, where we create very low resolution, rough and dirty models or representations of our idea. Like I literally have a box, I guess it's down in my basement, of dollar store craft supplies, Post-it notes, tin foil, pipe cleaners, balloons, very purposely.

Jason Scott Montoya (47:42)
Yeah.

hehe

Dr. Sara Musgrove (48:04)
cheap and disposable items. And I say, build some representation of your idea. the phrase that picture's worth a thousand words, a prototype is worth a thousand pictures. It is helping me because again, if you and I are on a team designing something, we may have this idea that on paper we've agreed to, but my picture of it is very different than your picture of it. And it's not until we start

Jason Scott Montoya (48:07)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Dr. Sara Musgrove (48:32)
building it and putting it in a context of how a user would interact with it that we start recognizing, we're kind of thinking about this differently, or we haven't thought about how the user is gonna get introduced to it, or where they're gonna be when they are able to use it, or what's going on around them in this moment. So we build out a physical representation. It can be an actual product that you're building with

Jason Scott Montoya (48:50)
Yeah.

Dr. Sara Musgrove (49:02)
resources. It can also be, if you're feeling really brave, a skit. This is what I make people do in the workshops because it's the most unusual, but it's the most powerful. And that is we literally act out the scenario, but we bring in somebody from the outside to be the user and have them, we would say like, okay, so pretend, an example I use in my trainings is you're going to get your car serviced, right? Everybody has...

experience and feelings about having to go to the mechanic. Very few of us have great experiences with that. So we say, all right, you have brought your car in for an oil change and you're walking into the waiting room. Begin, right? And so then there's somebody who's serving as the receptionist. There's somebody who's serving as the mechanic. We have these interactions in that way. So we've now transitioned from the prototype to the testing, right? They go hand in hand. You are eliciting

Jason Scott Montoya (49:45)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Dr. Sara Musgrove (50:02)
real reactions from people, right? Like there was one, we did it for the first time, me and my teaching partner, he surprised me with a new prototype in a workshop and it involved getting a shot, like a blood bank experience. And I had a very visceral reaction to his prototype. He was standing there with tin foil on his head with a big sign on him that was like Mr. Needle or something. And I was like, no, no, no, no.

Jason Scott Montoya (50:05)
Yeah.

So you must love getting shots.

And the needle was like this long, this thick.

Dr. Sara Musgrove (50:32)
Right? It was like, in any given situation, it would have been so ridiculous to be like, this man is walking up to me with tin foil on his head. But when I am invited to put myself in a playful creative space, I can then fill in the blanks and imagine this being a real scenario. And so,

Jason Scott Montoya (50:46)
that yeah you can be crazy yeah

Dr. Sara Musgrove (50:54)
Prototyping is great and sometimes you prototype just for the sake of learning and communicating amongst a team like we're not on the same page We need to prototype this But really prototype then is used in testing which is getting that idea in front of a user and Saying here's what I was thinking about. I'm sure it's not right What do you like about it? What do you wish was different? What would be helpful about this?

What do you, you know, like, what do you, it's hard to say what do you not like? Cause people are really kind and they're not gonna tell you a lot of times what they don't like. But you can watch their nonverbal reactions using the framework of I like, I wish, I wonder is a really powerful one. Cause it's getting feedback without saying, what do you not like? What do you wish was different? Right? And.

Jason Scott Montoya (51:48)
Yeah.

Dr. Sara Musgrove (51:50)
What you have done now is started a new round of empathy using your prototype as a conversation starter So a lot of times you can get more empathy work out of testing a prototype than you can just straight cold empathy work

Jason Scott Montoya (51:57)
Yeah.

Yeah, so I have a weird parlay here because of your tinfoil hat. I wonder, when you describe this prototyping context, and there's one, a level of vulnerability, like, you're saying this guy's got a tinfoil hat and you're kind of putting yourself out there, but it's creating an environment where you don't feel condemned for doing that.

Dr. Sara Musgrove (52:34)
Mm-hmm.

Jason Scott Montoya (52:34)
Right? So when I think about just in our society and a lot of people that are getting attached to a lot of these wild conspiracy theories, and that's what they're doing. They're doing what you're describing. They're kind of doing it, I think the challenge seems like they're doing it in a real way, but when I think about a lot of the people I talk about, it's usually in a private conversation. They're not like usually broadcasting it. But I wonder if in a way they're trying to prototype something

Maybe the outlet is problematic in a way, but I wonder if that's a way we could approach that type of situation is to see it as a form of design thinking that's maybe we could help sort of work out and redirect. I don't know, what are your thoughts on that?

Dr. Sara Musgrove (53:22)
Well, that this is a new a new application of design thinking. So I've not given a lot of thought, but it is. It is fascinating. I think. You know, to me. Yeah.

Jason Scott Montoya (53:33)
I mean, if they wanna be heard and they don't wanna be condemned, I mean, it seems like that at least would be an interesting.

Dr. Sara Musgrove (53:38)
Yeah. So this would be to your earlier question, this would be an example where my response would be curiosity. I think, right, the people that I know that buy into some some crazy conspiracy theories, they are they are convinced, right? Whatever whatever information they've been fed. And if I try to argue them out of it, it's not going to work. But if I go, you know, what's interesting to that to

Jason Scott Montoya (53:47)
huh.

Dr. Sara Musgrove (54:04)
what's interesting about that to you and how does that change how you approach things and if I can be curious with them.

One, it's a little more interesting for me. But it helps them maybe think more critically.

Jason Scott Montoya (54:13)
Yeah.

Mmm, that's a go into more of that. Yeah, that's interesting

Dr. Sara Musgrove (54:21)
Because when you ask people questions and they're having to think about it at a level beyond, heard this, I saw this on Instagram and it makes sense. When you ask questions, they have to pause and reflect. Does that really make sense? Or do I really think that's true? Or what am I gonna do with that?

They are now, rather than just defending and kind of saying the same sound bites over and over again by digging deeper, you help them realize that at some point there's not much deeper to dig.

Jason Scott Montoya (54:51)
Yeah, yeah. I think though as someone on the other side of that, like sometimes you get to some shocking places and we want to react. But I think that framing that you're describing maybe helps us not have that reaction.

Dr. Sara Musgrove (55:06)
Yeah, because then if you're coming at it as a design thinking perspective, which may be a stretch for design thinking, but in the sense of how do I help solve a problem for people? This person is coming to me with some thoughts, with some feelings. How do I help them? I wanna listen to them. I wanna figure out what really matters to them.

And maybe it's they just need an outlet to listen and I don't have to try to change their mind. Maybe they need validation and I could say, I don't agree with you, but I hear what you're saying. What is it that they're coming to you for and sharing these stories?

Jason Scott Montoya (55:36)
you

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, what's the reading between the lines? think that's always, I think that's a hard thing for me to figure out is what is it they want? And sometimes you can ask, but sometimes they don't even really know how to say what they want.

Dr. Sara Musgrove (55:59)
And sometimes they just want shock value, right? They're wanting you to react.

Jason Scott Montoya (56:02)
Yeah, that could be part of it too, yeah. Yeah, that's a good point, yeah. And then if you react, you're giving them what they want. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. So for them, either doing something like that or ignoring it is probably a healthier thing, but if someone is feeling insecure or wanting just to be heard, that might be another, curiosity might be a way.

Dr. Sara Musgrove (56:09)
Yeah. that's interesting. That's kind of my, that's my go-to response. That's interesting.

Jason Scott Montoya (56:28)
So that's the prototyping. So what follows prototyping then?

Dr. Sara Musgrove (56:32)
So prototyping and testing really go hand to hand. So at the end of testing, there's this inner, as I said, testing kind of naturally flows back into empathy. But in that process, you want to be asking yourself, what am I learning new about the person, the users? What am I learning new about their need? And what am I learning new about the solution? And so that's where when you,

Jason Scott Montoya (56:34)
Okay.

Mm-hmm.

Dr. Sara Musgrove (56:59)
finish the testing phase, you've gathered more of this empathy work. You say, did I learn something new about my user? Did it open up some other doors that I want to go explore? Like, huh. They had a response in this testing that I didn't anticipate or didn't experience when we were just talking before. Let me go explore. Let me go ask some more questions about that. You may then realize you've defined the wrong problem. You thought the problem was

quick automotive service. What you find is that they really want to be able to

And so if trust is this new issue, if you've redefined, you've like the problem I was aiming for in my first round wasn't quite right, we need to redefine the problem. So then we're back in that define phase. And now that we've got a refined problem, we need to brainstorm again. We need to ideate again around the new problem, build a new prototype, test it again. What am I learning new about the user, their need and the solution?

back through it again. And that's where each time in theory you're getting closer and closer. Yep. Yep. And that's, there's like this iteration kind of pause button in the middle that is what have we learned, right? And so to go back to constructive developmental theory in the process that we teach in our leadership programs, this idea of taking a step, right? I'm trying something new in my leadership and how I show up for people.

Jason Scott Montoya (58:05)
So the testing would then recycle back into empathy. that what you mean? Okay. Yeah.

Dr. Sara Musgrove (58:33)
That's my prototype. I've taken a small step, I've prototyped it. I need to pause and reflect, what am I learning new about myself? What am I learning new about the people that I'm trying to have influence with? Okay, so how can I do something different this time? And so anytime you are introducing this reflection point, there's development, there's growth, there's learning. And so it's really important that we don't skip that.

And what I find a lot of times when I work with teams who are actually going through a design thinking challenge is they go through this process. I can sell them on going through the five steps of design thinking, empathy to testing. They get feedback from testing. And then they're like, cool, all right, all we need to do is make those changes to our solution and then we're done. And they say, no, no, like we really need to think about.

what did you learn new in all of these areas, is that solution still the right solution? Because once you get to testing, if you're not intentional about it, you can fall in love with your idea.

Jason Scott Montoya (59:39)
Heh.

Dr. Sara Musgrove (59:40)
And even if it's made out of pipe cleaners and tin foil, you fall in love with it. Which is why we need to have the stories, the inspirational empathy stories to come back to ground ourselves in because we need to fall in love with our users, not our solutions. And so if I come through that testing phase and I go, my user just didn't love it. It didn't solve their deeper need.

Jason Scott Montoya (59:57)
Yeah.

Dr. Sara Musgrove (1:00:06)
I need to throw away my tin foil and start over and recognize I solved the wrong problem. And so, you made the comment earlier and we've chatted about this that as a whole, design thinking can help you move, it can help you get to the end faster, right? Because we are making sure we're solving the right problem in a way that is desirable to our users.

However, in these early phases, it can feel really slow because you've taken five steps forward and you may have to take six steps backwards and realize you were solving the wrong problem. Like the Embrace Infant Warmer, right? They had their, they'd gone through this whole cycle. They built their cheap incubators. They realized we don't even have the right user. We got to scrap all of that and start over. And so it can...

Jason Scott Montoya (1:00:52)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, it's like going to Disney World and then you end up in Ohio, you know?

Dr. Sara Musgrove (1:00:57)
Right. It can feel like you are.

slowing down, but you're slowing down to make sure you have the right problem so that when you go to launch your solution, your chances of success are way higher. You're going to get to that endpoint faster and you're not going to have to do as many kind of redos on the back end if your product isn't successful right off the bat. And so that process feels messy.

Jason Scott Montoya (1:01:02)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Dr. Sara Musgrove (1:01:29)
it's because I've got to be able to say, I got it wrong. But when you're committed to solving the need for your user and not committed to your idea.

it's really powerful. And I think that's one of the...

Jason Scott Montoya (1:01:41)
So that's why it's so important to start with empathy, because you want the commitment there so that you have something to make it easier to let go of your attachment to the solution,

Dr. Sara Musgrove (1:01:51)
Yeah, that is definitely the preferred way to do it. I have worked with people who have started with, they've already gone a few steps down the path where they have an initial product in mind. A website that somebody says, want you to build.

Jason Scott Montoya (1:02:05)
Yeah.

Dr. Sara Musgrove (1:02:08)
You can start there for sure as long as you think of it as a tool for empathy. So if I take that website and go sit down with the end users and watch them play with it and ask them questions and maybe give them some choices of different things, do you like this or this better, why? Watching not to see if I got it right, but to see what am I learning about the person.

You can start with prototyping to launch yourself back into empathy as long as you know the human is the center, not the solution.

Jason Scott Montoya (1:02:43)
Yeah, yeah, I like that. And I think that's something I always have to figure out how to remind my clients, like, this is who we're trying to communicate. you know, as a business owner, particularly, they're thinking, well, you know, I'm trying to my business and make more sales and make more things. But you have to do what you're describing if you want to do that. Like, so it's, you can't just focus on that or you actually lose both. I think the other thing that kind of comes to mind is,

contrast what you're describing with the idea of echo chambers.

Dr. Sara Musgrove (1:03:15)
Tell me more about what you're referring to with that.

Jason Scott Montoya (1:03:17)
Like I think in a lot of ways you're breaking down people's echo chambers through the process itself. In other words, I kind of imagine like you're on this journey, everyone's on this journey and there are like these distractions along the side of the road and people are getting sucked into them. But design thinking kind of keeps, everyone to stay on the road and get back on the road. And one of those distractions I think would be an echo chamber.

Dr. Sara Musgrove (1:03:43)
Yeah, so I'm back to thinking about the bouncy balls that are out of control who need the structure, right? The Jason bouncy balls. Having that define statement from step two is one of those parameters that we're like, okay, there are a lot of directions we could go. Which of these is in line with our problem statement?

Jason Scott Montoya (1:03:47)
Yeah. Yeah.

Dr. Sara Musgrove (1:04:06)
The other version of that would be I see teams get so caught up in their own thinking they come they come away from Their user insights and like what do we love? What do we want? What do we think would be cool? And there's like a group think energy that develops that I have to pull back. Here's your user. Here's what you heard from them Does this does this resonate with that?

Jason Scott Montoya (1:04:29)
Yeah.

Dr. Sara Musgrove (1:04:34)
Or have you learned more that our problem is now wrong and we need to redefine the problem, but making sure that we stay aligned with that. I think into the idea of the echo chamber is also the power of having a diverse team around you as you do this. You're purposefully inviting different perspectives to speak in and challenge and kind of break you out of status quo thinking.

So don't know if that answers your question, but.

Jason Scott Montoya (1:05:04)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, that makes sense. I think that would be a good place to transition more directly into design thinking mindsets. So talk, so the mindset, we've kind of teased it in and out as we've been talking, but I wanna dive in a little bit more specifically because without the mindset,

at least at the leadership level of driving the design thinking process, there is no design thinking because the mindset would not allow it if we did not have it. So tell us, how do you think about the mindset? You mentioned the empathy and the diversity, but there's an underlying assumption being made in those agreements. You mentioned the beginner's mindset. Talk to us about that.

Dr. Sara Musgrove (1:05:51)
Yeah, there's a whole bunch of different mindsets that I pull in based on the context in which I'm talking about design thinking. The beginner's mindset and curiosity, fundamental, right? The willingness to say, am not the center of this. What can I learn about the people that are trying to help?

So with that, there's a couple specific phrases that I use that help reinforce those mindsets. So self on the shelf. We use that when we are teaching active listening in various contexts. But this idea of I have a lot of expertise, experience, perspectives, insights.

They're still good, they're still valuable, but in the early stages of design thinking, in those initial empathy and define stages, I need to put myself on a shelf and be all about my user for the time being. How much can I learn assuming I don't know anything? Bring that back and then integrate it with what I already know and figure out what do we do with it. So self on the shelf is one. Dig deeper is another one.

A lot of times we operate on the surface level, right? You think about, you run into an old friend and you say, hey, how's it going? Great. How are you? Fine. What did you learn? Nothing. Right. You ask somebody, you know, I've come back to this example just because everyone can relate of car maintenance. What do you wish, if I were to say, Jason, what do you wish was different about the car maintenance experience? What might be your first answer?

Jason Scott Montoya (1:07:13)
Yeah.

Well, I guess one of the things that come to mind is I actually, you know, I've had so many experiences, I have some positive ones. And I had one guy that used to do art when we lived in Lawrenceville that he was the owner of it and he also did the work. It was just a small shop. And it just, felt, I guess to answer your question, it felt like the trust was there and the personal care.

And ultimately it was like, I can have confidence that this guy's gonna take care of my car and it's gonna be affordable and I'm gonna look forward to those experiences whenever I have them. Even though I might have to pay, but that would be, know, that's what it turned into. That's what it ended up being. So yeah, yeah.

Dr. Sara Musgrove (1:08:10)
Okay.

Yeah. Okay. So, so that would be a great, if I was trying to redesign car maintenance experience, thankfully you fed me a lot in that answer, that trust and confidence and personal care and feeling assured that like, even if I have to pay for it, I know that I'm getting a good thing. Like that would be a thing I would want to integrate. But a lot of times people are like, it costs too much. I don't know if I need what I actually need. It takes too long. Right.

And so it's like, need to redesign the waiting room so that it's more entertaining while you wait, right? But what it boils down to is people want to be able to trust and have confidence in their mechanic. so digging deeper beyond initial, here's the problem I have. I need a website. I need an app that will do this for me. Well, tell me more about that. And why is that? And what's important about that?

Jason Scott Montoya (1:09:03)
Yeah.

Dr. Sara Musgrove (1:09:07)
the principle of the five whys, right? So if you can, instead of taking people's first answer at things, but say why or what's important about that five times and dig deeper, that's a really big mindset. And that's one of those mindsets that go so far beyond design thinking in any aspect of life that I think are really powerful.

Jason Scott Montoya (1:09:09)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, that dig deeper thing I think is really powerful because I heard this idea that kind of our beliefs, sort of takes a sedimentary approach, like kind of think of like sandstone, this layer after layer after layer. And so we kind of accumulate these beliefs over time. But we haven't intentionally developed them, it just happened. But if we can dig deeper,

and understand that, we can turn it into something that one, we have clarity on, and then I think is even stronger than what, more of a systematic understanding versus just an organic one. And I think that so many people don't necessarily have that. And I think when they enter into situations, they use sort of their previous beliefs, or just from my own experience, I've used my previous beliefs.

In a situation that actually makes the situation worse than it helps it if that does that make sense? Yeah

Dr. Sara Musgrove (1:10:36)
And I think that like an easy example of that, again, out of the innovation space and back into the leadership space or the business space is the low hanging fruit of what people say they want at work is more money, right? My husband leads a team and he's got, as all leaders do, some people that are just not, they're not super engaged. so,

Jason Scott Montoya (1:10:52)
Mm-hmm.

Dr. Sara Musgrove (1:11:01)
He's like, well, they just want a promotion and they want to raise, right? That's the low hanging fruit. When people ask you what you want, you want more money. But I challenge him like dig deeper with them to figure out what really makes them feel good about work, right? And the deeper things that people need at work is significant in affirmation and validation.

Jason Scott Montoya (1:11:04)
Yeah.

Dr. Sara Musgrove (1:11:26)
And I like, there are ways to solve those needs that don't require you having to give them a raise, which is not possible right now. So he started sending thank you notes and he started doing different ways to give people a sense of significance at work. so low hanging fruit is they want a raise. Let's give them a bonus. Great. Everybody will take the money.

Jason Scott Montoya (1:11:38)
Yeah.

Dr. Sara Musgrove (1:11:47)
but six months later you've forgotten about the money and you're still dissatisfied. What's that deeper longing that you have? So I think that's really, people can't name that most of the time. Like you said, it just kind of develops over time and it's not something we are intentionally thinking about. So you have to watch and observe and ask questions to get down to that layer.

Jason Scott Montoya (1:11:58)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, and I think what happens is they get to the edge. So they make the money that motivates them and then they maybe pass it a little bit and then it stops motivating them. And then they face that dilemma. okay, I guess there was a cap to that desire. I mean, maybe it was practical, I don't know. But now there's something else.

And so, you know, a famous example would be, I think it was Deion Sanders, he won the Super Bowl and then he felt like completely empty and discontent, you know? Like, so now I had to deal with it, right? That edge.

Dr. Sara Musgrove (1:12:41)
Yeah. Yeah. The ring was not really what he, the solution to life that he thought it was going to be.

Jason Scott Montoya (1:12:49)
Yeah, so I wanna kind of dive into a little bit of vulnerability and risk taking and restraint. So I wanna read this quote because I love how design thinking, like how it integrates the extremes. Because that's kind of how I like to think. Because I think by going to the extreme situations, helps me think better. And so, when Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022 with its full army,

I was trying to make sense of this situation that was kind of a unique one in our situation. so looking back to history is one of the ways to do that. And I ended up some William Hound this Colombian professor, Richard Betts, and there's a particular, a lot of things in this article that he wrote, but there was one passage that I think just encapsulates a lot of what you're describing. And it had to do with the lessons we learned from World War I, although we didn't know them otherwise. If we had, we might have been able to slow down or prevent it.

But this is what he says, he says, in a nation buffeted by memories of a great war, so he's referring to World War I, hindsight at the time suggested that the catastrophe of World War I might've been avoided if statesmen had shown more empathy for their adversaries, more willingness to take risks for peace, and above all, more military restraint as the summer crisis of 1914 worsened. So we have empathy, risks for peace, and restraint.

We've talked a lot about empathy and we've talked about even risk a little bit in terms of vulnerability, but I wanna just kinda lean into that a little bit more as we talk about this mindset, and this might seem like an extreme example, but I think it can play out in maybe our small group or maybe our church or maybe our business, where things do kind of escalate and there are divorces and there are breakups and there are church splits and there are friends that part ways. So I think some of this can be relevant, but anyway, let's talk about that. What are your thoughts?

Dr. Sara Musgrove (1:14:44)
Yeah, I mean, I love the way that you think about this stuff that you're like, let's find even more non-traditional applications for design thinking than what I've done. And so I love it. World peace, that's a new one. We talk about how design thinking solves wicked problems, the things that other traditional methods can't solve. And I was like, world peace, that is a non-traditional wicked problem. I mean, yeah, I mean.

Jason Scott Montoya (1:14:54)
Yeah.

Hehehehe

Hehehehe

Dr. Sara Musgrove (1:15:09)
Empathy for our adversaries. Like what is the conflict really about? What is this other person, we have our sound bites that make them sound bad and us sound good. What is it that they really are caring about, right? Understanding what their true goals are, that digging deeper empathy piece, super powerful. Now, can you always sit down with the world leader that is threatening war and understand that?

Maybe, right? At the highest level of diplomacy. Maybe. Can I? No. But we can do some discovery work in other ways and figure out what they really care about. Like I would love right now with what's going on with Israel and Gaza and like what are we really fighting about here, right? There's this deeply rooted historical value that's being threatened on all sides over there.

Risks for peace. That was the second one, right? one of, this is one of the things about design thinking and innovation that is hardest for me is the risk taking piece, right? This perfectionist, I want to have the right answer. I don't love risk. But smart risks, small, safe, smart risks.

Jason Scott Montoya (1:16:09)
Yeah.

Dr. Sara Musgrove (1:16:29)
Right, so that's this idea in design thinking about kind of fail forward quickly, fail forward fast. How can I try something without waiting to have the full thing baked and ready to go? How can I learn something quickly? So finding little ways to experiment to say, does it help if we do this? Can we try this? Right? That don't have world shattering.

Jason Scott Montoya (1:16:35)
Yeah.

Yeah

Dr. Sara Musgrove (1:16:58)
consequences if they don't work. I don't know what those are. I'm not into policy and military strategy, but thinking about a marriage conflict, can I try, can I take a risk and say, would it be different if I tried? Because the only thing I can control is myself, right? This is true in...

Jason Scott Montoya (1:17:03)
haha

Dr. Sara Musgrove (1:17:24)
government, is true in marriage, I can only control myself. So am I willing to take a risk to try something different to see if that would make things better in my marriage? It would make things better with my boss. It would make things better with my customers. Am I willing to try something? If I'm not willing to try something, not, can't expect somebody else to be willing to try something to get to peace. So for sure, again, small,

Jason Scott Montoya (1:17:28)
Yeah.

Yeah.

And what's holding us, what are we missing if we're not willing to take that risk? And what do we have when we do take it?

Dr. Sara Musgrove (1:17:57)
We're missing the opportunity for growth and change and.

We're stuck in our pride. We're stuck. Like I have one of my, I love a good like graphic t-shirt and one of the ones I wear, around controversial moments is nothing changes if nothing changes. Right? Like this isn't gonna change unless this situation isn't gonna change unless something else changes and I'm the only thing I can make change. And so.

Jason Scott Montoya (1:18:04)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Dr. Sara Musgrove (1:18:29)
what can I do differently to change the situation?

Jason Scott Montoya (1:18:31)
Yeah, I think it's really powerful.

Dr. Sara Musgrove (1:18:32)
we're missing the opportunity to grow and change and evolve and we are putting our stake in the ground and we're saying I'm going to stay right here and I'm not willing to budge. But that that means you may not be pushed backwards but you're not moving forwards. So it it the way that I say it again it's a little bit of a like psychology

Jason Scott Montoya (1:18:44)
Yeah.

Dr. Sara Musgrove (1:18:57)
manipulation trick, but when I'm, you especially with kids is if you're expecting the other person, if you're putting all the power in terms of changing things in the hands of the other person, you've surrendered all of your power and you've given them all of the power.

Is that what you want? No, I've got the power. Okay, then you use your power to change. Right, but if I say I'm not moving, you need to move. You have now put yourself at the mercy of somebody else who is not likely to be moving in a direction that you would choose. So.

Jason Scott Montoya (1:19:28)
Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah, that's really good. So where does vulnerability play a part in all that? Or a willingness to be vulnerable?

Dr. Sara Musgrove (1:19:42)
I mean, it's the willingness to... If I am convinced that I am right...

Why would I change? Because change then would imply that I was wrong. And so vulnerability comes in to say, I'm willing to acknowledge that I have a part in this system. I will do something different. I will I will surrender a little bit of my desire or my power in hopes that in the end the result will be better. So that vulnerability to say I have to let go of my way.

Jason Scott Montoya (1:20:12)
Yeah.

Dr. Sara Musgrove (1:20:18)
meet you some degree closer to where you are in hopes that that we'll get to a solution. The risk is once you move, you've now kind of become vulnerable because you're no longer staking the ground position and you could get totally trampled over.

Jason Scott Montoya (1:20:38)
Yeah, yeah, I guess a scenario that comes to my mind is what do you think about if you're interacting with someone and their solution, their way is working for them now, they're on a road and their car is driving and it's working, but you see a little bit further down the road that there's a cliff and that road just drives off a cliff. And so you may not want them to drive off that cliff, right?

And so you see something that they don't, guess, essentially. So what are your thoughts about how blind spots kind of play a role in this and the connection between blind spots and the collaboration piece of design thinking itself?

Dr. Sara Musgrove (1:21:22)
Yeah, mean, immediately in the sense of collaboration and design thinking is we all have blind spots, right? Like we have, we can only see the world through our perspective, which means I'm missing some things. So if I, know, Jason, you're the creative entrepreneur type, I'm a follow the rules kind of type.

If we're working together, you're going to see things in my blind spot pretty quickly because they are not your blind spots. And vice versa, I'll see things in your blind spots. And so by working together, I may be looking at the road right in front of me. You're able to say, Sarah, I've been down this road before. Here's what I think is going to happen. Let's talk about what we're going to do. And you'd find a way to help me come up with a new path forward. I think.

and all of it beyond innovation is this like you don't want to go through life alone, right? You want to have people that you can, know, it's why companies have board of directors, it's why people have mentors, it's why we encourage everybody to be in developmental relationships. Somebody who can speak into your blind spots, challenge you, support you, hold you accountable.

Jason Scott Montoya (1:22:20)
Mm-hmm.

Dr. Sara Musgrove (1:22:39)
to help you be willing to say there is another way, let me try it. Right, my way is different than Jason's way. My husband's new favorite phrase, I forget what TV show or movie he got it from, but it was, you don't have to do things my way, just don't do it the wrong way. And so, this idea of learning to let go of doesn't have to be my way.

Jason Scott Montoya (1:22:49)
hehe

Dr. Sara Musgrove (1:23:06)
It could be a different way. Let's just be safe to make sure it's not the wrong way. How you define what the wrong way is is a whole other thing I can't answer,

Jason Scott Montoya (1:23:11)
Yeah.

Yeah. Well, what would be your short answer to what is the helpful way to help people? If someone's like, I'm holding onto this thing that I want to let go, but my hands are not opening, what do you tell them?

Dr. Sara Musgrove (1:23:32)
Yes.

Okay, now we're getting into like psychology coaching work. My first question is, how's that working for you? And people usually can admit, I see that maybe it has some benefits, but in some ways it's not working. I'll say if you hold onto this for the next five years.

where do you see this going? How could it help you? How could it hurt you? What's the cost of hanging on to this in terms of your relationship, your business, your mental health, whatever it is? So it's kind of some strategic curiosity, right? Coming at it and saying let go of it is not gonna get you anywhere. But to help them.

Jason Scott Montoya (1:24:00)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Dr. Sara Musgrove (1:24:16)
help them identify like I'm holding onto it because it's serving me in some way right now? Name those things, acknowledge that it is serving you in some way and then name the ways that you recognize it's not serving you and make the costs outweigh the benefits in some way.

Jason Scott Montoya (1:24:22)
Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, it's hard. There's a, on your guys, on your former podcast, The Growing is Grown Ups, I was rewatching the interview with Robert Kiggin, and he talks about the bridge, like crossing the bridge and like being on one side of the bridge and wanting others to cross the bridge, and just how.

Dr. Sara Musgrove (1:24:41)
Yeah.

Mm.

Jason Scott Montoya (1:25:02)
One, you want that so badly for them, but at the same time, they also have to do it for themselves and it's this weird paradox dynamic.

Dr. Sara Musgrove (1:25:10)
Yeah, that's a great, that's a great conversation. I love him. Yeah, it goes back to that empathy of rather than standing on on the more solid side of the bridge and saying, come over here, it's better. Really understanding what it looks like from that perspective. And when he was telling, telling us that story, I was thinking of the Indiana Jones.

movie and you may I don't remember I want to say late Raiders of the Lost Ark but that's the only one I really can think of where they have to literally step out onto like an invisible bridge and it's not until you ask for it okay like that's the picture that came to my mind and when he was saying that is like you from your perspective see that there is a solid bridge in life is better on your side they are looking at what feels like death and very scary that you're asking me to step away from what I know

Jason Scott Montoya (1:25:37)
Yeah.

Yeah, the Last Crusade, that was the third one,

Yes.

Dr. Sara Musgrove (1:26:05)
and I don't even know that there's something on the other side. And the way that we define leadership is meeting somebody where they are in order to lead them where they need to go, which means you have to get back to the scary side of the bridge and walk with them rather than standing in your safe place and saying, come on over, it's fine.

Jason Scott Montoya (1:26:09)
Yes.

Yeah, well, and it's so interesting. That movie is one of the perfect movies, obviously. But the tests, after the bridge, then there's a situation where the chasm opens up and Elsa falls down and Andy's there and the cup's on the ledge and Elsa's trying to grab it. He's like, let it go. She falls into the abyss and then he slides down and he's right where she was and his father's holding his hand saying, let go, let go.

Dr. Sara Musgrove (1:26:30)
Hehehe.

Jason Scott Montoya (1:26:54)
You don't need it. And so it's just such a powerful, these powerful memories, know, that's a movie I grew up with, that were so timeless that they're still relevant today, you know? So I wanna talk about the last piece here is Restraint.

Dr. Sara Musgrove (1:27:03)
Mm.

Jason Scott Montoya (1:27:14)
So he says, more military restraint as the crisis escalate. And this kind of goes back to earlier what I said, like, even when you're having a conversation and it gets heated and emotional and you want to react and react, and, you know, it might turn into a sort of a conversational fight versus a literal fight, although literal fight can be the case for many. Tell us about that restraint layer and does design thinking give us any resources to deal with that?

Dr. Sara Musgrove (1:27:39)
I mean, from a design thinking standpoint, I would, I would say the anchoring point would be to go back to what the problem is you're trying to solve.

that definition statement. My first thought when I heard you say this again today was more from some of my work in like difficult conversations in those conflictual situations, which is in order to help you restrain reminding yourself what is my goal? What am I really trying to accomplish? And how would I act if that was true? So if what I really want is peace,

how I'm gonna act if that's true is with restraint and with a peaceful orientation no matter what is coming at me. so I think coming at it from a design thinking lens might be a stretch. But again, some of those mindsets are fundamentally true. We're solving problems for people.

Jason Scott Montoya (1:28:39)
Yeah.

Dr. Sara Musgrove (1:28:42)
We're focused on what is the real problem. What do we want? What do they want? And then what is it gonna take to solve that? Not getting stuck with my initial solutions or approaches or strategies. And so if what I really want is peace, I need to stay as peaceful as I can so that if they amplify,

Jason Scott Montoya (1:28:48)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Dr. Sara Musgrove (1:29:08)
If I respond, they can amplify more and I respond, they can amplify more and I respond. And now we're at war versus if they amplify and I can stay calm, it's harder for them to keep going if I stay calm. It can calm down. using that restraint, emotional contagion is the fancy psychology phrase for it, modeling and living into the solution that you want.

Jason Scott Montoya (1:29:20)
Yes.

Yeah.

Dr. Sara Musgrove (1:29:33)
My goal is peace. need to act with peace. My goal is mutual respect. I need to treat you with respect. So.

Jason Scott Montoya (1:29:39)
Yeah, yeah. Well, I think of a couple things. One, unmasking of what we want, right? So what is it we really want? when the tension is high, do we go towards that or away from it? And I think the other thing kind of as a layer of that is that digging deeper, what is actually, is it that I want? And I think, I want peace based on the reality of what it takes to create?

which means restraint in this case. So if I want peace, I must be restraint, which means I must practice and move towards restraint. But there's a reality that requires that restraint that I may not be committed to. Does that make sense?

Dr. Sara Musgrove (1:30:22)
Right, because if you're being honest with yourself, you may say you want peace, but really what you want is to be right or to be the winner. And you've got to wrestle through what is it that I actually want? And am I willing to submit? This is the tension of the growth gap tool. If we were to do a growth gap tool on a context like this.

Jason Scott Montoya (1:30:32)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Yes.

Dr. Sara Musgrove (1:30:47)
I say I want peace, but what I really want is to be the winner, right? I'm gonna have to say I'm willing to sacrifice being the winner. I'm willing to sacrifice the other person acknowledging you were right, if what I truly want is peace. Because if I'm still kind of subconsciously being driven by, I want the other person to acknowledge that I was right, I wanna be the winner.

Jason Scott Montoya (1:30:50)
haha

Dr. Sara Musgrove (1:31:12)
What you're saying is I may not be willing to actually do what it takes to get to peace because this other driving force is stronger than peace. doing that empathy work on yourself, what do I really want?

Jason Scott Montoya (1:31:21)
Yeah.

Dr. Sara Musgrove (1:31:26)
would be powerful.

Jason Scott Montoya (1:31:26)
Yeah, and I think what, an opportunity, the opportunity for us is if we lean into that tension in those situations and we do have these values we care about, they will help us see where we have the lesser values. So I'm having a conversation with someone on a controversial topic and I'm realizing I wanna be right, I want to win, I want to whatever it might be that's a lesser value, but I wouldn't be able to see that and work it out of me.

if I didn't lean into the tension, right? So it's an opportunity for us to grow, but it's like who wants to jump into the fire, you know?

Dr. Sara Musgrove (1:31:58)
Yeah.

I mean, now we're back to vertical development again, which is all these things somewhere in the universe are connected. yeah, you've got to be willing to lean into that uncomfortable space to learn new things about yourself and define who do you want to be and what really is going to drive who you are, what values are at the core.

Jason Scott Montoya (1:32:06)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah. So we've talked a lot about design thinking. Is there anything we missed? Do feel like we've covered it? And do people have a good idea of what it is and its benefits?

Dr. Sara Musgrove (1:32:44)
Yeah, I mean, I there's so much to it, right? We have covered a lot. think what it boils down to for me and what I say, like, I can teach you the method and lead you through the process. If you go out and use design thinking, the methodology to solve problems, that's awesome. What I would say is most important for me that people latch onto are this idea of

curiosity and empathy and being willing to test and experiment for the sake of learning. Right, this idea of seeking feedback with the mindset of how do I get better? How do I grow and learn through this? So, so.

Jason Scott Montoya (1:33:28)
Yeah.

Dr. Sara Musgrove (1:33:33)
Those two pieces, right, if nobody remembers the five steps of design thinking, if they can remember, let me be curious and ask people questions to get to know them better, and then let me try some things to see if I can meet them in a new and different way and learn more about myself and what works and doesn't work in the process. I think those two shifts are the power of design thinking that will unlock

Jason Scott Montoya (1:33:44)
Yeah.

Dr. Sara Musgrove (1:34:00)
success at work, in business, in marriage, in leadership, in world peace, whatever it is, empathetic, need finding, and kind of being willing to take risks early and often.

Jason Scott Montoya (1:34:06)
Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, that's awesome. That's a good recap. So if someone's listening to this and they're like, wow, Sarah, this is awesome, I want you to come into my company and teach us this or facilitate a design thinking process or develop this in our culture. What would you say to them? What are the next steps?

Dr. Sara Musgrove (1:34:37)
I'd be happy to. I love this so much. It's so fun to teach. It's such a safe thing to teach. When we talked the other day, Jason, you described it as a Trojan horse and I love it because to come in and do an innovation workshop, easy for people to buy in and understand that it's important. Through the playing and the prototyping and the storytelling, you can teach these lessons that are so powerful.

I love it. It's one of my favorite things to do. So people can reach out to me. I work for the Riverbend group right now. You can contact us and I'd be happy to talk about.

Jason Scott Montoya (1:35:14)
Tell us what is the River Bend Group, what do you all do and what's your role there?

Dr. Sara Musgrove (1:35:18)
Yeah, so the Riverbend Group is a professional development and training company. our mission is to inspire and equip leaders and organizations who want to become better. We have a full spread of different things that we can do from webinars to workshops to big experiential transformational epic learning experiences. Covering any range of leadership skills and.

development areas. we have a lot we can do, right? I've referenced some of our, you know, like emotional intelligence is a relevant skill. Difficult conversations is a relevant skill. Creative thinking is a relevant skill, right? All of those skills help build this, but then design thinking itself is a workshop that we do that can be anything from a half-day introduction to a six-month project facilitation experience. So.

Jason Scott Montoya (1:36:11)
Yeah, yeah, that's cool. And then what's your, are you like the teacher of these sessions or what's your role there?

Dr. Sara Musgrove (1:36:14)
I love it.

Yeah, so my official title is Senior Client Advisor. So my job is to work with clients to do design thinking work essentially with them to discover what it is that they need that would help them, right? Just like you, I have clients that call me and say, I need a workshop on communication skills. And I go, okay, tell me why, tell me more about that, tell me what problems you're really seeing.

Okay, I think not, you don't really need a communication workshop, you need a change management workshop. So I get to do a little bit of that on the front end in the discovery piece and then me for design thinking, I am the facilitator of those workshops since it is my area of expertise. But on any other topic, one of our team that is the right fit comes in and leads a workshop on the topic, so.

Jason Scott Montoya (1:37:10)
Well, tell us how people can, like, what's the website for them, for you?

Dr. Sara Musgrove (1:37:15)
Yeah, so theriverbendgroup.com is our website. We go by Riverbend, but theriverbendgroup.com. Kind of overview of our company there. They can reach out to me directly and be happy to talk to people. Sarah with no H, sarahm at theriverbendgroup.com. But you can also just come contact me through our website. It goes to like the general email box and they'll funnel it to me. So.

Jason Scott Montoya (1:37:18)
Okay.

Yeah.

Okay. Okay. Cool.

Dr. Sara Musgrove (1:37:44)
And I'm on LinkedIn and the usual places.

Jason Scott Montoya (1:37:49)
Yeah. And she's got a ton of episodes of her own podcast with Keith Igel at the Leaders Lyceum called Growing as Grown Ups. A lot of great episodes there. If you want to go back, definitely start with Robert Keegan's interview, but there's a lot of other good ones as well.

Dr. Sara Musgrove (1:38:03)
Yeah, I think it was episode 20. I went back and looked at it the other day. I interviewed Scott Sanchez, who is my design thinking mentor. And so for people who are interested in design thinking episode 20, I interviewed Scott and then 21, Keith interviewed me. we feel that they just can't get enough. There's there's those.

Jason Scott Montoya (1:38:10)
Okay. Okay, cool. Okay, that would be a good one. I'll put the link in that.

Yeah, that's probably the one I heard when you talked about design thinking. was like, I need to talk to Sarah about design thinking on the podcast. Cool. Awesome. Well, thank you so much for sharing your expertise about design thinking and your stories and your life. And yeah.

Dr. Sara Musgrove (1:38:30)
Yeah, yeah, so those live out there still. well thank you for having me. It's a pleasure.

---