Human-centered [BLANK].
Seeing human-centered design everywhere: software, coaching & philanthropy.
Human-centered design.
I first learned about human-centered design in the field of product management & software design. It blew my mind that there are researchers who study HOW people use technology. I was lucky to take classes on human-centered design at Stanford’s D.school and the GSB.
What is it? Or what is the approach?
Very simply - you start with the pain point/question you’re trying to answer, you sit with people who experience the pain point, you quickly prototype a potential solution and then ask them open-ended questions about what works, doesn’t work and what they’d want to be different - and then repeat!
For someone who grew up with the mindset, “I have to have all the answers - and they need to be right!” and “I need to be right to have <influence/authority/power>”, I had to wrap my mind around the concept that SOMEONE ELSE had the right answers - and it might not be me!
The person closest to the problem has insights and wisdom I don’t have.
Instead of “I need to be right”, my role and responsibility was to get close to the end-user, ask the “right” question and listen.
This approach to product stands in sharp contrast to the mythos of product leaders like Steve Jobs, who seemed to have a vision of what consumers want before even consumers understood, or were able to “see where the puck was headed.” Proponents of this mindset often quote the adage attributed to Henry Ford, where he purportedly said, “if I’d asked people what they wanted, they’d say “A faster horse”. (Fun fact: According to this HBR article, the provenance of this attribution is very suspect: https://hbr.org/2011/08/henry-ford-never-said-the-fast)
My personal takeaway is that it doesn’t have to be binary - it’s a “yes, and”. Yes, it’s simultaneously true that some users don’t know what they want AND to quote that same article, “An innovator should have understanding of one’s customers and their problems via empirical, observational, anecdotal methods or even intuition.” [emphasis added]
The point is to deeply know the problem - and keep an eye on what users ask for AND your own intuition. Ultimately, you can still decide to throw away the customer feedback - at your own risk!
Side note: The hard part about working in a heavily regulated space is that you can't just pay attention to your end user. You also have a stakeholder, lthe government or regulators that you have to satisfy, and sometimes, in meeting a regulatory requirement, it translates to a less good user experience BECAUSE you’re compromising between what the user would prefer and what the regulations require for the protection of all users.
Human-centered management
Many first time managers struggle to make the leap from IC (Individual Contributor) to manager because of this exact dichotomy: trying to be the expert vs becoming expert at asking the right questions.
For the first part of their career, they’ve received promotions, praise and advancement from having the “right” answers or being the subject matter expert in a very narrow field of responsibility. “How’s your project going? Great! Here’s my detailed breakdown…”
As a manager, you’re suddenly responsible and accountable for the output of ALL your direct reports, which is hard to see at the same level of granularity when it was your own work.
Some managers cope by micromanaging the hell out of their teams.
Others focus exclusively on their own scope and ignore their direct report’s responsibilities, until they’re asked by someone else to account for a project not under their direct remit, and then they try to furiously catch up on weeks or months of work in a 30 min 1:1 with their direct report.
Most managers are just trying to stay above water; what their directs do is an afterthought.
In my first experience of management, I went from being an IC in January to managing 10 people in June to managing 45+ people a year later.
At first, I tried to stay on top of everyone’s work (aka spending evenings and weekends reviewing work & spot-checking), still in the mindset of “I need to know everything going on in my team” but by year 1.5, I faced the impossibility of that task.
I remember there being a distinct internal shift from “I’m the expert” to “Oh, the person working on this is the expert and my role is to support them (and provide cover/guidance/context where my wisdom/experience/perspective is helpful).”
My approach for 1:1s switched from tactical, project-based “interrogations” to asking a set of open-ended questions to the expert in front of me:
Where are you blocked?
What do you need me to do so that you can do your job well?
Where can I provide more clarity or greater context for your work?
Even CEOs struggle with this, on a different level. It’s a mindset shift to go from “I hold the vision so involve me in every decision” to “Everyone on my management team needs to hold a shared vision that I’ve communicated. My job is clarify, communicate and bring the vision to life through clear goals and metrics”
Ultimately, I put in another leadership layer and set up reporting so that we could systematically track progress. Now, whenever I start managing a new team, I ask them to send a weekly update that focuses on 1) what they’ve accomplished this week, 2) where they’re blocked and need my help and 3) what they’re working on next week (which gives me information on where I might provide best practice or point them to additional resources), so that our 1:1 time is focused on the questions above (vs them simply updating me on what they’re doing).
Side note: Similar to the regulator stakeholder challenge, my hardest challenges as a manager are when my direct manager or the CEO or macro-environment challenges interfere with my ability to attend to what my direct reports want/need.
Human-centered approaches in other fields
I’ve been privileged to dabble & spend time in other fields beyond software, and I’ve been struck by the universality of this human-centered approach, paired with this corresponding concept that the person in front of you has the solutions, not you.
Coaching & Therapy
I still remember my first Masters-level counseling class where I realized that my role was not to solve or tell someone how to fix their problems but to empathically listen and hold space. (This is why I’m not a therapist - my 31 year old self did not have the patience or maturity to sit with someone’s problems repeatedly, week after week!)
Not all coaches are trained this way, but in my opinion, the most effective coaches are trained to “hold up a mirror” (ie: reflect back) and ask open-ended questions, trusting that the person in front of them actually has answers/solutions within them.
Some people question the motives of therapists/coaches, “Aren’t their incentives aligned to keep you in therapy/coaching forever?” and my response is, “You can always choose to stop therapy. And, the whole point is that they don’t have answers, you’re the one who holds your agency.”
Nonprofit/Philanthropy
The whole field is about helping people. And, the greatest damage is often done when outsiders come in with solutions that don’t make sense for the local community, or undermine the agency & dignity of those they intend to serve by assuming their incapability.
I still remember attending the 2018 Skoll World Forum, where the theme was “The Power of Proximity”, that we cannot solve problems from a distance. And that the key to empathy and effective collaboration is proximity.
It’s SO much easier to sit at home, in the safety of our own thoughts/beliefs (aka “ivory tower”) than to spend time with others, to enter in the discomfort of being learner and listener.
Writing & Public Speaking
I spoke with a wise author recently (who has published several successful books) and their feedback was spot on: Instead of talking ABOUT your experience teaching in the classroom (which is ultimately about YOU), how can you bring those same experiences to life for the reader? In short, they were saying, “Center your book on the reader’s experience; not you.”
In speaking at other companies, the most valuable part of prep leading up to the talk isn’t my rehearsal time (which is important) but speaking with people who represent the audience or know the audience better than I do. It allows me to speak with greater empathy & clarity.
Side note: Like the regulators or your manager, your own ego can interfere with your ability to listen closely to the human in front of you. “I know best” or “I need to be right” are ego drives that most therapists & coaches learn to manage as part of their training, so that they can hold space for the other person’s experience. As I’ve become a better writer, speaker and manager, I’ve learned to put aside my own nerves, irrational fears and ego that can get in the way of me showing up.
Human-centered is countercultural.
This is so countercultural to how we're trained. We're trained to have a “right” answer and that our value is having the answer versus our value is being able to ask good questions, to empower others and to value the perspectives of others who are closest to the issue.
The deep irony as you progress in your career is that the person who knows the problem best is rarely you, but you are responsible or accountable for solving that problem.
While you may be able to offer helpful perspective or past data from your own experience, both may be irrelevant because of situational/contextual pieces that make this problem different from whatever you’ve encountered before.
The role of manager is to elicit the information from your team, assemble the pieces AND the best possible solutions and then, make a decision with the best information you have.
If you’re a coach, therapist or philanthropist, your role isn’t to make the decision but to empower & support the individual in front of you to take agency in making a decision - no matter if it is the “right” or “best” one.
There’s only the best decision you made with the information you had at that specific point in time.
Ultimately it's about laying aside your ego, your own idea of being right and prioritizing what is best for the human in front of you - and starting with asking them first what they want or need.
So what to do?
Get better as asking open-ended questions (vs closed questions with in-built assumptions)
If you’re a manager, how much of your management approach is human-centered vs you-centered?
If you’re trying to help someone or fix a problem, how can you get physically (and emotionally) proximate to the people experiencing the problem?