252: Creative Problem Solving through Design Thinking with Edgar Papke

Pete Mockaitis
Edgar, thanks for joining us here on the How To Be Awesome At Your Job podcast.

Edgar Papke
Well, thanks. Yeah, it’s a real pleasure to spend time with you.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, boy, I think we’re going to have a lot of fun. And I was intrigued digging into your background. So you’ve got three albums of music, whether it’s a singer or a songwriter, a degree in Culinary Arts, and you do a whole lot of the speaking/consulting workshop thing. I want to get your take on, what is it that you delight in within these kind of different-seeming fields, and is there a common thread that really kind of works with you and how your brain functions?

Edgar Papke
Yeah, very much so. I think right at the core of it is a common thread that runs through just about all of my work and anything that I do, both professionally as well as pursue artistically – is art, it’s creativity, and just allowing myself to explore and discover and express creatively, is that common thread. And then around that there is this desire to learn and explore. So whether it’s learning to play a musical instrument better, learn how to sing better, or how to create a great dish in the kitchen, or writing a book – to me it’s all a creative process and a learning process. So there’s always the learning that goes with it, which just fascinates me.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that is good. And I didn’t think we’d go deep on here, but I have to touch upon it. So right now as you talk about the learning and how that’s sort of intrinsically enjoyable to you, I guess the first thing I thought about was Carol Dweck’s fixed mindset versus growth mindset, and how it seems like you are just very comfortably situated in a growth mindset. Well, you tell me – it sounds like you’re not stressing if the dish you create is terrible, or the instrument you play sounds harsh and shrill and annoying to anyone who’s within earshot. You’re just digging the growth. Any perspectives you have, in terms of how you keep that kind of alive, or does it just come totally naturally to you?

Edgar Papke
Yeah, I think there’s that aspect of it, and there’s I think an ongoing conversation about letting people fail in the business world and in organizations. And I don’t really think of a moment in time or an outcome as ever being a failure; not much anymore. I think I used to do that much more when I was younger. I’ve come around to the idea that everything that I do is a prototype of one type or another, and so it’s not so much a failure as an outcome. And the outcome is just another step along the way.

I know it may sound corny to call it all one long journey, yet it is. And so every time I endeavor into something I’m willing to do it and then let go of it into the world and just keep moving on with it. And yeah, I’ve done a lot of things that just somebody would look at and say, “That’s kind of crazy” or, “That’s not perhaps as good as it could be.” And yet for me as long as I’m trying my best and as long as I’m putting something out there that I can continuously improve from – that makes me happy, and I do think that that’s part of the human endeavor – that ability to pursue knowledge, to create, to expand our personal and social horizons. I think that’s a necessity of the quality of human nature.

Pete Mockaitis
I dig it, I dig it. The human experience – it’s starting deep. And even that turn of phrase – I think I’m going to stick with that in my own personal life and viewpoint. Everything I do is a prototype, because just the word “prototype”, at least for me… I don’t know, I have already just fantastic connotations of a prototype, is one – progress. It’s like, “Hey, I’ve got a prototype.” “Cool, let me try it out. Let me take a look.” Once you go from an idea or a rough sketch to a prototype, equals progress. And at the same time it implies unfinished-ness. So, at least for me, it’s hitting my emotional cords just right to say everything I do is a prototype, because it is simultaneously cool progress, but also unfinished, and nobody should expect it to be finished. It’s just a prototype, so chill out about it.

Edgar Papke
Yeah, and that’s what attracted me initially to the ideas around design thinking, because design is change, it’s art, it’s a creative approach to solving problems or using an idea. And I think that’s what design thinking and my work with Tom has been all about – the co-author Thomas Lockwood of the book. I know he’s extremely, extremely creative, and he’s also very logical and sequential in his thinking. I lean much more towards the creative side, the freewheeling side; yet in my personality there’s always this quest to be more competent, to try and master something and get something to a certain point, and knowing that whatever point I get to is just another stepping stone moving it forward.

That’s what design thinking is really all about in an organizational context. We don’t really get hooked or get too rigid about anything that we’re doing or an outcome that we have. Rather we keep seeking a better or a more advanced way of doing something or creating something.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And so then the design thinking – this term has come up a couple of times on the show. But I’d love to hear your crack at it. How would you sort of define this term? If someone says “design thinking”, what is that generally referred to?

Edgar Papke
And in the book we talk about this as the collective imagination and what design thinking brings out is just who we all are as human beings, and that’s our creative capability. So design thinking in and of itself is looking at a problem or looking at a situation very contextually, and looking at it in a holistic way and starting a conversation of what’s possible. And from there it leads into more process or systemic ways of coming at that in organizations.

One of the things that we really enjoy is some predictability of how things are going to get done, and design thinking gives people permission in organizations and in teams and groups – it gives them permission to be more creative, to express themselves more freely, to pursue knowledge and ideas in different ways. That pretty much in a lot of organizations gets dampened, it gets suppressed by wanting too much process. And really in and of itself it’s kind of an interesting dynamic, because you’re applying a predictability or a process to more unpredictability, more creativity, more freewheeling thinking, an idea generation.

So design thinking in and of itself – it’s an approach, it’s a process, and it’s a mindset; it’s a way of thinking. Much like you and I have been talking about it, it leans much more into possibility-thinking than it does into restricting or being rigid about our way of thinking or seeing the world.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, thank you. And so then, your book here – Innovation by Design – you lay out some perspectives and practices that can unleash great creative and innovative things in organizations. So, I’d love to hear the sort of top level thesis, in terms of, ultimately what is the distinction or the key to go about tapping into and leveraging more great innovation?

Edgar Papke
It’s an excellent question, and what comes to mind immediately for me, and one of the things that we looked at through the lens in doing research for the book, is the connection between design thinking and creative thinking in organizations and their cultures. When we look at high-level what we do, there’s always a “What” and then there’s an emotional driver of “Why” behind it. Then we start getting into the “How” part of it.

And culture really is all about how things get done and what’s expected of people in terms of their behavior, what’s acceptable or unacceptable. And I think one of the keys here is to really be able to understand how problems get solved, how decisions get made, how conflicts get managed in an organization, and how its culture informs people about how to go do that, and then be able to understand how design thinking as an approach, as a process both fits a culture, as well as can move a culture. And what I mean by “move it” is in positive and more innovative ways.

Pete Mockaitis
Now, I love how you say it’s so important… Well, you didn’t say it, but I think you believe it, that it’s important to have some clarity associated with those areas – how decisions get made, how problems get solved. And I’m having flashbacks to consulting work at Bain & Company, in which we used a tool called the “RAPID framework” for decision-making, like who has what role for a given decision – who makes a recommendation, who approves it, who performs it, who provides input, who ultimately owns the decision. So it’s the acronym RAPID. And I found that so helpful, because in some organizations there are some decisions that are quite fuzzy – it’s wildly unclear who really has the decision. Everyone’s kind of concerned about covering their rears…

Edgar Papke
That’s the same thought I just had, was in some instances people don’t want to make the decision.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, certainly.

Edgar Papke
Because of potential consequences.

Pete Mockaitis
And so they rope more and more and more people in to provide input, such that it’s like someone can be blamed or whatever. So, I’ve seen in my own working life how bringing clarity to decision-making is fantastically helpful and useful, in terms of the, “How does this given decision get made?” Could you search with us a little bit in terms of how do problems get solved? Could you maybe lay out the menu of options associated with, “Hey, in some organizations problems get solved in this kind of way; and others in that kind of way”?

Edgar Papke
Yeah, and we break it down in my previous work through True Alignment, we break it down into three distinct types of cultures. And so, from that, you can use those as a springboard to see how decisions are made in different ways. One culture we call a “participation culture”, which is very collaborative, and so decisions are much more driven… Leaders don’t own a decision as much as a group does, and so there’s much more of a collaboration consensus-building and a quest towards agreement within the group as to what the best path is, not just to buy in; rather to gain a high level of commitment to the decision and the outcome that’s being reached.

That’s different than an “expertise culture”, where decisions are generally driven by those that either have the authority, or by way of establishing and demonstrating their competency, that they’re given the power influence to make decisions. So it’s less of a collaboration process; it’s more of, we either turn to the experts, we turn to the people with the authority, whatever it happens to be.

And then there’s also a third one, which is “authenticity cultures”. And there’s a great degree of personal empowerment that takes place, so decision-making can be driven very rapidly by individuals in whatever situation that they’re in because they feel empowered and they’re given the right or they’re expected to make the decision at a very personal level.

So you can hear there are some distinct differences. And it’s interesting to note that those elements become very important in terms of how problems get solved as well. Do we collectively come together, do we turn to experts or have one or two people solve a problem for us because we deem them to be the most competent, or is it a matter that everyone gets to explore and learn and everybody gets to take risks? So even risk-taking takes on different definitions.

What is interesting about that is that very often leaders don’t pay enough attention to that in organizations, and so there’s a degree of disconnect. In other words, in an expertise culture sometimes a leader will say, “Well, I want people to feel empowered, I want them to make decisions”, etcetera. Yet the reality is that people are constantly seeking permission or going to one or two people in the organization to solve most of their problems and make decisions for them. So it’s very interesting how often leaders and mangers don’t really know how to interpret their culture, and don’t really have a map for it.

Pete Mockaitis
Right. Well, that’s very thought-provoking, and I could chew on that for a while. But I’d instead maybe like to zoom in on… In your book you lay out 10 attributes that sort of facilitate great innovation. And as I peruse them, it seems like a number of them are maybe helpful at sort of the more senior leadership level – and correct me if I’m mischaracterizing anything – and others seem like that’s something absolutely any professional can do, no matter their stature or authority or absence or presence of direct reports. So, could you share maybe a couple of the practices that are amongst the most actionable and universal for all professionals?

Edgar Papke
Yeah, I think all 10 of them are accessible to anybody in any part of the organization or at any level of an organization, at least from an understanding perspective. The first one that we talk about in the book – “design thinking at scale” – has a tendency… We probably look at it from atop of the organization, say, “Well, how do we train and how do we move design thinking or the process of design thinking through an organization?”

And yet we find that the organizations, and those in our study group in the book, that do it exceptionally well, are the ones that engage everyone in the organization in learning the process of design thinking – how to look at a situation with empathy through say a customer’s eyes or another person in the organization, their eyes, and what the context that they’re in, and be able to solve problems well at that level. So I think that they’re all accessible and it really has a great degree to do with how leadership approaches it and how it moves through an organization.

That being said, I think the ones that really step out most often for anyone to be able to use are, one is the attribute of curious confrontation, because as we well know from our experiences, just about everybody struggles with how to manage conflict effectively, especially in the workplace. Conflict is an ongoing challenge that we all have as human beings. And curious confrontation is really taking a look at the term itself “confrontation”, meaning to face the truth.

I don’t have to have a solution to a problem or have a solution to a conflict that I’m in with someone or within a group. What I do need to be able to do is to step into it and to be able to say, “There is something we need to talk about here. There is a conflict, there’s a disparity in the way that we see or think about things, and let’s have a conversation.”

And the curiosity element is the one that says that there’s a desire to explore, a desire to investigate, a desire to peel away the layers in the conflict and see what’s really at the core and what the core problems are. So, anyone in an organization can actually learn to confront through inquiry and to ask questions, as opposed to always just stepping into everything with an answer. And that in and of itself is very, very powerful for any of us to engage in, whether it’s in the workplace or in our personal lives.

And also the aspect of co-creation – just a simple idea that we rely on one another in our creative process. In other words, great innovation and creativity is the building of one idea upon another. And it goes back to earlier in our conversation about prototype – “Here’s one idea; let’s build on the idea.” And so this idea of co-creation is really leaning into including people around us in ways that we probably haven’t done before, and asking them to help us to be creative in solving problems or finding new paths to innovating at higher levels.

And so much of what we do, we have a tendency to just look at our own world or live in our own world, whether it’s at work or in other parts of our lives, without really reaching out or opening up to engaging others in creating and finding solutions to the problems that we have. So the idea of co-creation and opening up to that, I think is a wonderful attribute for anyone to have as an individual and to be able to use.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, I’d like to hear a couple of things here. When it comes to curious confrontation, I guess a couple of things are coming to mind. And one – a friend of a friend mentioned that he or she had a coworker who would often just shoot out an email note like, “Several of my comments have not been integrated into the document.” So, this person did not have a solution, which is I guess pros and cons. Some folks will say, “Don’t bring me a problem without a solution”, and you’re saying it can be totally cool to say, “No, I don’t know the answer yet, but we’re going to engage in a curious confrontation, and that’s cool.”

And then I guess there are other times when someone just makes an observation like that – it’s like, “I don’t know what you want me to say or do, or this doesn’t really warrant any conversation time right here or now.” It’s sort of like, “Should I drop everything and say ‘Yes, you’re right. I looked at your comments and I determined that they did not in fact strengthen the document, given these rationales.’”

And so I guess at times I’m thinking that could be very helpful for folks to learn and grow and develop and get more tuned into the brain and the goal of the leadership, and getting sharpened and strengthened and challenged. And the flipside – that could just take a whole lot of time for that. Is that really a smart use of resources? So, how’s that for a curious confrontation? I’m just going to drop that in your lap, Edgar. What do you think of that?

Edgar Papke
Well, several thoughts crossed my mind as I’m listening to you, so let me go back to the beginning and then work my way through it. The first one is, a lot of times people use this statement: “Don’t just bring me a problem; bring me a solution.” Unfortunately, if I don’t have a solution, and that’s the price of admission for us to have a conversation, we’re going to have a hard time talking about things. My preference is always to – and I coach leaders to do this directly – is, stay away from that part of, “If there’s a problem and you want to talk to me about it, bring me a solution”, is probably better delivered by just changing it slightly to, “If you identify a problem and you want to talk about it, let’s talk about it. I’d like you to find a solution or think about possible solutions. If you can’t come up with anything, let’s talk anyway.”

I think we’ve got to always have the door wide open as leaders to engage in coaching and learning with the people around us. And so, “Bring me a solution” – I like the idea of, “Try and bring me a solution. If you can’t, let’s talk anyway.” Because a lot of times problems don’t get surfaced because people are afraid to talk about them, because they’re going to be seen in a light as not smart enough or not competent enough or not doing enough about it. So that in and of itself I think can be problematic.

Going back to your example – your example is a really good one. So somebody shoots off some emails and they’re not responded to. There’s three things that everybody always wants – it’s human nature. And this is also what wraps around the idea of the collective imagination and who we are as human beings and how we innovate. And one of them is that we all want to be heard, we all want to feel a part of it, be acknowledged. And when we’re not acknowledged, we feel ignored, and that’s very problematic.

So I think if somebody’s sending emails and they’re not responded to, and they raise the issue, rather than have a quick come-back for it or have an answer, sometimes it’s just simply to ask somebody and open up to the idea of what’s important to them – to say, “Okay, yes, I didn’t respond – let’s speak truthfully here – I didn’t respond. And let’s talk about what’s important to you – about this issue or about your ideas.”

And if I did, by the way – like in your scenario – if I did take a look at the emails and I didn’t think they were good ideas, then it’s probably a little bit of a problem why I didn’t communicate back with you. So a lot of times I think it’s also a matter of being responsible to our relationships and to be able to do what we need to, to respond in a human way, to not ignore, to pay attention. And very often rather than if somebody does confront us with an issue or we have to talk to somebody about something, I think inquiries about being able to open up the conversation to, “Help me to understand what’s important to you about this, and what your ideas are and what might work and what might not.”

I think there’s not just only a coaching opportunity for leaders in these kinds of conversations. I think just with coworkers, I think it’s important to recognize that if we take the time to build relationships at the level that we need to, then a lot of the time that we spend in dysfunctional conflict and not being able to talk about things or having to go back and fix things – I think we can avoid those. We can move past those much more quickly if we have a good ongoing relationship. And that does take time; it’s like any other great relationship – take the time upfront and you’ll save a lot of time down the road.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, Edgar, I appreciate that and I think you have a kindness and generosity about you in that response. And I guess my knee-jerk reaction in hearing this story relayed, I was thinking, “Who expects to have 100% of their comments integrated into any document ever?” It’s kind of like the nature of the beast, is that when you have a lot of cooks in the kitchen, some of your ideas will stick and some of them won’t, and it might be a little unrealistic for a person to just sort of say, “Not all of my comments made it into the document”, as an expectation.

But you’re saying, to paraphrase, it sounds like maybe that relationship isn’t at the strongest – that they feel ignored, hurt, unseen, and thus, this is sort of like a request to address that matter. And so there could very well be some “valid, deep-seeded” things, in terms of their beliefs and values and input that are not getting acknowledged, as opposed to, this is just an annoying coworker who has unrealistic expectations who needs to get over it.

Edgar Papke
You’ve just really touched on something really powerful, and that’s the idea of expectations. One of the things that we generally don’t do well enough in any relationship, especially within a group context in the workplace, is talk about the expectations we have for one another, how information might be used, how well we’re going to be heard by one another, how we expect responses from one another. Unspoken expectations wind up getting us into resentment and into conflict that’s often unnecessary. It’s a slippery slope. So bringing expectations into the spoken realm becomes key.

And I’m going to tie that back, if I may, back to design thinking, because if you have a process through which people are heard, how they can engage, that they can predictably be open and willing to express themselves freely around their ideas, around concerns or whatever it happens to be, in and of itself you’re creating an environment of some predictability of expectation of how things are going to happen. So, the idea of design thinking of itself is to have inclusion, it’s to have involvement, it’s about sharing information and it’s a different way of working together. And it does in fact satisfy a level of expectation need that we all have. Yeah, go ahead, please.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, I like that. So absolutely, you’ve zeroed in on that. It’s like, it seems as though we have a mismatch of expectations. I’m sort of imagining lots of inputs coming in and we’re just going to quickly triage them and going to get the document out the door quickly, given the timeline. And it sounds like you may have the expectation that each of your comments will be absolutely integrated. Is that fair? And then you can have that conversation, dialogue, and then it seems like everybody wins. So, I like that notion of, there are unspoken, mismatched expectations at work in that example and it’s great to get after them.

And there might be an epiphany moment, like, “Oh, okay, so nobody gets all of their comments integrated into the document? Oh, that’s totally cool. Okay, well sure, I didn’t know that’s the game we were playing here.” And then we’re all aligned there; that’s awesome.

So, I also want to follow up on co-creation. Could you maybe just give us an example or two, in terms of, you talk about we’re often in our own worlds, doing our own thing and missing out on the opportunities to really co-create something cool by reaching out in different places. So, could you maybe bring that to life with an example or a case study?

Edgar Papke
Yeah, sure. One of my favorites is actually what Visa does in their innovation centers. So Visa is one of the companies we talk about in the book, and they have a design function within the organization that specifically is geared towards bringing design thinking throughout the organization as a whole and involving everyone.

And what they’ve done in the co-creation space is they’ve opened innovation centers. They have several – one out in the Bay Area, in San Francisco, one in London. And what they are doing is inviting the actual customer in. So they’re doing business-to-business and of course there’s the business-to-consumer of their customer experience that’s taking place. And so what they do is they invite the customer into the innovation center, and they actually recreate or create a retail experience of some kind for a customer, for a consumer, and will get inputs from different people as part of that process, all the way down to the consumer.

So you have Visa, then you have the business itself, say whether it’s a Costco or a Neiman Marcus, whoever it is that they are working with, and then they also include their consumer, and they co-create and look at what the actual experience is of the shopper in a retail space. So you actually create the environment and the co-creation process is everyone begins to get involved in a particular innovation, whether it’s an information component, whether it’s an actual experiential moment that a consumer has, whether it’s online or in a retail environment. And so this co-creation is really about a broader involvement, different parties getting involved and bringing their ideas and bringing their thoughts into the process.

Pete Mockaitis
So, as we say the “retail environment” – so we’re actually inside a Costco with a customer, and just sort of maybe talk it out loud, like, “Hey, what are you thinking about this credit card swiper right now?” And see what happens?

Edgar Papke
Yeah, pretty much you’re taking it down to that level and see what exactly does the experience look like and how do we get input into that, so that we contextually can better understand and better create solutions to problems and create new ideas and new ways to do things.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, that’s good. And so then that can really surface some of the nitty-gritty, in terms of, “Do I have to push English or Spanish first before I can swipe it, or can I go ahead and swipe it?” or, “Is it a chip, is it a tap, is it a swipe? How do I know when it’s ready for my swipe?” So you could really probably zero in on some of those things that might be sort of not in the immediate consciousness of a Visa executive.

Edgar Papke
Yeah, very much so. Also in the book we write about New Zealand Trade and Enterprise, and their co-creation process is broader. So New Zealand’s Trade and Enterprise group – what they’re responsible for is for expanding New Zealand’s economy on a global basis. So they also invite entrepreneurs and business owners and executives from different companies in New Zealand into the process, and they take that all the way out and do co-creation and training around design thinking that then can be used worldwide in different markets in different ways with different customers and consumers, as well as different companies.

So this co-creation can be very expansive, and it allows us to be able to integrate different ways of thinking and different ideas much more readily and quickly, as well as the creative process is more expansive, so it’s more open. And as a result of that, your ability to identify and to solve problems or identify and create opportunities is much faster, it’s much more fluid. There’s also this aspect of free expression that we all enjoy as human beings naturally, which is just to throw ideas out and see what happens. And a lot of the co-creation process and great ideas actually get generated that way.

Pete Mockaitis
Cool. So now you also have an attribute that you mention called “going after the right problems”. And so, what do you mean by that, and is it common to slip into addressing the wrong problems, and how do we keep our mental acuity to stay focused appropriately?

Edgar Papke
Yeah. I think what happens a lot and we all, I believe, have this experience, is that very often we look for the shortcut or look for the easiest problems to solve. Sometimes we’re not going to take the time to collect all the information that we need to identify what a real problem can be. This attribute is coming at it through the lens of identifying what the right problem is; it becomes key to success in innovation and business.

It really does mean paying much more attention to the consumer and to the customer, and ideally involving them in identifying what is it that they’re really seeking and wanting. I’m going to go back to something that you mentioned before that I think is powerful, is that, “Do I have to go through a sequence for you as a provider of a product or service to understand who I am?” So, whether it’s in Spanish or English or whatever language it happens to be, how quickly can you communicate with me in a way that I feel both appreciated, that you’re paying attention to my way of communicating, as well as how easily you can communicate with me.

So I think when you start peeling that one away, you might say, “Well, the problem isn’t how do we guide someone into our way of doing a transaction. Perhaps what we do is we understand who the customer is and we create a technology that allows us to respond to that particular customer in a way that makes them comfortable.” In other words, if I’m Spanish-speaking and you understand that as a provider of a product or service, the right problem may not be that you put me through a process that you want me to go through; rather you design a way of interacting with me, whether it’s artificial intelligence or using whatever technology that you have, so that my comfort in communicating is much more immediate and allows me to actually be able to communicate in the way to get what I want.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, cool, thank you. And so, Edgar, tell me – anything else you really want to make sure to mention before we shift gears and talk about some of your favorite things?

Edgar Papke
I think there’s one other aspect of this that I think is important, and that’s another one of the attributes, and that’s this idea of “open spaces”. What we find more and more are these community-like spaces at organizations and that we’re creating in the workplace. And so when you start thinking about open spaces and whole communication… And whole communication is taking on different forms – different forms of art, different forms of expression that you see people using, and co-creation in and of itself – you see how these then come together, you see co-creation in open spaces, community spaces, where people can interact much more easily with one another and things are much more fluid.

That seems to be one thing that any organization can undertake to help them to be more successful, especially when it comes to design thinking. So, walking into a conference room or a boardroom and rather than having paintings on the wall, having white space on the wall for people to build ideas and to draw and to capture different ideas and build on them as they move forward over a period of time. So you see all of these attributes coming together in such wonderful ways. And one of the keys is to create the spaces for people to be able to engage one another and have that sense of both community, as well as a sense of a shared purpose. 

Pete Mockaitis
Cool, thank you. Well, now could you share with us a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Edgar Papke
The first thing that comes to mind is actually something that comes from one of my heroes, one of who is Bob Dylan. And some time ago, in an interview somewhere I came across his thoughts that everything comes in threes. His way of describing it was that the blues in music is that you’ll have a 12-bar blues and it’s only wrapped around three chords. And what happens is that two cords create a tension and then the third one comes along and breaks that tension, or it takes the listener in the direction. And it builds suspense, it also delivers a resolution.

So, when I think about that and I think about how innovation occurs, there’s always these three key elements that we’re engaging in. One is that element of what it is that we’re wanting to do, and then the emotional element of “Why”. And what design thinking does in relationship to that idea, that somewhat of a quote from Dylan, is that this third piece – that creates a resolution to the tension. And if you look at “What”, “Why” and “How”, we can’t really have two successfully without having the third.

So if we have a clarity of what we want to accomplish and we have an emotional driver of “Why”, then we need to be able to understand how to get there, and what’s the process or what’s an approach to doing that. Much like if we had a “How” and we had a “What”, if we don’t have an emotional driver of “Why”, then nobody really emotionally gets engaged in pursuing the outcomes that we’re trying to create and how we do it. So there’s this element of always looking at it through that lens.

And we also do that in the book around the ideas around the collective imagination, where we talk about our human capacity and desire to participate, our desire to pursue knowledge, and our desire to express ourselves freely, that those are the aspects of human nature that drive our innovative thinking. And it’s important to always recognize the importance of having all three. You can’t really do it on two; you have to have that third.

And that simple idea that Dylan puts forward to say you’re always going to have a tension between two things in life, there’s always going to be two things that we want. It’s the third one that we need to create a resolution to move it forward. And I think design thinking does that a lot – it gives people a “How”, in terms of how to approach and be more innovative and creative and get the things out of life that they want.

Pete Mockaitis
Thank you. And how about a favorite study or experiment or a bit of research?

Edgar Papke
I think some of the wonderful things that Peter Drucker… And I’m going to say that there is more of a body of research in particular that Peter Drucker, one of the great management minds I think of just human history – he had a wonderful way of coming at things. And one of the things that I grab hold of is this simple idea… He wrote a book at one point about questions, and a great set of questions to ask in an organizational context.

And they do wrap right back around to things that matter most to us: What it is that we’re trying to achieve and why, and what is the true benefit we’re trying to create? And in an organizational and management context, how can we best make that happen? And I find that over time I keep going back to Peter Drucker’s work, because he was on the forefront of inquiry and asking wonderful questions as to how organizations and leaders, how they can perform at their best.

And then the way Thomas Lockwood and I in writing the book – we came at it, we started with that simple idea in mind: Let’s pose a question and let’s research, and let’s find out what great innovative organizations do and how their ability to use design thinking to be more creative and more innovative – what does that look like and is there something that’s of value in that? And I think Peter Drucker provides a wonderful model for that.

Pete Mockaitis
Cool, thank you. And how about a favorite book?

Edgar Papke
Catcher in the Rye, and Leonard Cohen’s Book of Longing, are the top two that come to my mind.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, thank you. And how about a favorite tool, something that helps you be awesome at your job?

Edgar Papke
A guitar.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay.

Edgar Papke
Yeah. When I need some creative space, I stop what I’m doing and I pick up the guitar and play music. That very often just opens my mind up.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, cool. And how about a favorite habit?

Edgar Papke
Eating well. Sometimes it’s a bad habit. Being a former chef and having gone to culinary school, I love to eat good food, and I think it’s habitual. It’s a part of our family life as well.

Pete Mockaitis
Awesome. And is there a particular nugget that you share with your audiences or your consulting clients or in the book that really seems to resonate and gets folks kind of quoting yourself back to you?

Edgar Papke
I think the one thought that comes back the most often is that the most powerful thing we have in life is choice. Just the simple idea that if we’re open to ourselves and the world around us, we’ll always find that we always have a choice in what we do and say.

Pete Mockaitis
Cool. And is there a particular place that you would point folks if they want to learn more or get in touch?

Edgar Papke
Yeah. One of course is the book, and you can get that anywhere – on Amazon and book sellers everywhere. So, just the book Innovation by Design. And we’re launching a website InnoAlignment.com, and that’s where Thomas and I are sharing our collaboration and the work that we’ll be doing together going forward.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, thank you. And do you have a final challenge or call to action that you’d issue to folks seeking to be awesome at their jobs?

Edgar Papke
Yeah – to listen more. To just inquire and listen. Lead with asking good questions, sometimes the simplest question of all, which is, “Tell me more. What’s important to you? What are you thinking? Help me understand.” I think if we all just were more inquisitive with one another and listened better to one another, I think all of us would have better lives and I think progressively the world is going to keep getting better as long as we do that.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, yes. Well, Edgar, thank you for these sort of inspiring and uplifting perspectives. I agree, the world would be a better place if we did some of these things. And so, it’s been a helpful reminder for me and hopefully for everyone listening. And I just wish you tons of luck with the book and all the people that you’re impacting here.

Edgar Papke

Yeah. And thank you very much. This has been a real pleasure. Thank you for the conversation, thanks for your great questions, and again, the opportunity to spend this time with you. Thank you!