Experience Strategy Podcast: Situational Markets and Employee Experiences with Steve Usher of The Experience Designers Podcast

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In this episode of the Experience Strategy Podcast, we are joined by special guest Steve Usher, founder and host of The Experience Designers Podcast. We go deep into the core principles that drive success in experience strategy across both customer and employee offers. We challenge the status quo, pushing beyond played-out persona-based segmentation to explore the untapped potential of situational markets and context. Tune into this episode. It’s time to zoom out, see the big picture, and take full responsibility for executing on the complete job to be done.

Voiceover: [00:00:00] Welcome to the experience strategy podcast, where we talk to customers and experts about how to create products and services that feel like time well spent. And now here are your hosts experience nerds, Dave [00:00:15] Norton and Aransas Savas.  

Aransas: Welcome to the experience strategy podcast. I'm Aransas Savas. 

Dave: And I'm Dave Norton.

Aransas: And here on our podcast, we talk about. Experience strategy. I know. Shocking. [00:00:30] Uh, we talk about it broadly through our work across a wide range of categories. But we also have friends who have shows that are in a similar vein. And today we are talking to one of them. We're talking to Steve Usher. [00:00:45] Steve is the founder and host of the Experience Designers Podcast where they talk all things experiences.

But primarily focus on employee experiences. And so today we're going to [00:01:00] collaborate and play and see what happens. Thanks for joining us, Steve. 

Steve: Hey, and look, thank you for, uh, thank you for the invite. I mean, I, um, I love podcasting. I love collaborating. I love co creating. So, um, when you both, um, [00:01:15] approached me, it's a, it was an instant yes.

And of course we, we all share this similar, slightly similar thread on this word experiences. Um, and, um, yeah, I, I'm really curious to see what we, uh, what we can stretch and where we can, where we can kind of [00:01:30] lean in on this topic today. 

Aransas: Maybe we should start by just introducing ourselves a little bit.

Can we start with you Steve? 

Steve: Sure. So, um, yeah. Hey everyone. I'm Steve Usher. I am from the UK. I live in Stockholm. A very beautiful city, particularly this time of [00:01:45] year when it's sunny. And I, um, I'm a passionate person. When I put my dedication and focus on things, I bring my all to it. And I would say that.

You know, what I do every day is really centered around human centric [00:02:00] design, bringing that mindset more first and foremost around designing with and for those in which you're creating for, designing for, and really then as a secondary is around experiences and bringing that into the context of employee experience.

And as we know, over the last, [00:02:15] particularly post COVID era, this has been a function, a discipline, a mindset that has been, or perhaps two words, employee experience, uh, as a buzzword that's grown. A lot, uh, which is an amazing movement from New Zealand to the U S and everywhere in between. [00:02:30] Uh, I've seen in the last seven, eight years, such an amazing shift in this area.

So it's a brilliant, uh, but I'm still also delving and leaning a lot into like that purist experience design. I've still got a lot of curiosity, a lot of desire to [00:02:45] continue learning them, that practice and that art of experience design in its purest form. I'd like to say it's purest form, if that makes sense, regardless of context.

So I'm really curious to see how, how you guys also, um, lean into that as well. 

Aransas: Ah, for sure. Dave, [00:03:00] for Steve's audience and maybe even for anybody who's new to the Experience Strategy Podcast, give a quick intro into who you are. 

Dave: Sure. I'm. I'm Dave Norton. I'm the founder and principal of a company called Stone Mantle, the experience strategy [00:03:15] company.

We've been around for 20 years almost, right? It's been a long time. We've done a lot of work for a lot of different companies over a long period of time. Right now, the most, the thing that I'm most [00:03:30] passionate about is a book that I'm working on, uh, On experience strategy, it's on substack and it takes a little bit of my time on a regular basis to write, to write I'm writing [00:03:45] daily around this book.

And so it's pretty exciting and, and I'm enjoying it quite a bit. 

Steve: Good discipline, Dave. Good discipline, Dave. Good. Requires discipline books. So I've learned something about you already. That's amazing. 

Aransas: And, and. [00:04:00] Telling people you're going to do it makes that a lot easier. I guess it's a good transition into my intro in that I've worked for the last 20 years and experienced OGs.

Most of my career working in behavior change, [00:04:15] specifically with Weight Watchers globally. And after that came over to work with. Closely with Dave, uh, both here on the experience strategy podcast, but also on the experience strategy collaboratives program that's so mental leads. [00:04:30] And so there I get to help companies from a wide range of categories.

learn together, grow together and have more impact together. It's really a groundbreaking and kind of extraordinary program. Real honor to get to do [00:04:45] that work. What am I most passionate about right now? Well, inexperienced strategy and really in all of mine, it's about how we can use the transformative power of coaching to create more impact.

And so I do that with a wide range of companies for [00:05:00] their experiences, both employee and customer experiences with Stone Mantle. Uh, and, and then I do it personally in my coaching practice. It all fuels each other. And I think of things It's kind of to Tape's point a moment ago [00:05:15] as either being energy depletors or energy multipliers.

And when we're doing these things that we're really passionate about, I feel like it's an energy multiplier and it is a renewable resource for us. So, um, I think it's really cool we're all sharing what we're [00:05:30] passionate and excited about because it's probably something that is creating more energy for us.

So, Dave, speaking of things you're passionate about, I know you've been writing this book on experience strategy and one of the things, [00:05:45] uh, that I get really excited about in there is the clear and specific principles of experience strategy that you've identified and certainly that you teach in the collaboratives.

And I thought it might be kind of fun to share those, those principles [00:06:00] and then with Steve explore what they mean for employee experience strategy. Specifically. 

Dave: Sounds perfect. Let's try. So in the book, I'm covering four principles. First one is that [00:06:15] growth comes through situational markets. And what I mean by a situational market is that people have situations that come up on a regular basis and it's the situation that drives the need that [00:06:30] drives the opportunity.

And if companies were to focus more on The situations that people find themselves in and focus a little bit or actually a lot less on who the people are, but more on what the people are. [00:06:45] people are doing in those situations that could really grow. So that's principle number one. Number two is that you compel people to want to engage with your business by having a point of view.[00:07:00] 

And by a point of view, I mean that there needs to be some kind of near future need, near future requirement. That you have a point of view about that kind of filters [00:07:15] throughout the entire, uh, experience. The third principle is that experienced strategists, unlike innovators, are responsible for getting the whole job done for the customer.

So in [00:07:30] innovation, we tend to think about these sprints that we do and ideating and coming up with new ideas. But when it comes to experience strategy, we need to think holistically about the entire thing that the customer is trying to do, [00:07:45] how it relates to our entire business model and so forth. And then the last principle is that value.

Comes through the value of the time that you spend with the [00:08:00] customer. So value is not, doesn't really come through necessarily through loyalty. It comes through whether or not the customer is willing to actually spend time with you. So those are the four principles. And I know they [00:08:15] probably all need a little bit more explanation, but.

Yeah. I love that. Throw that out there. Wow. 

Steve: Ooh. Let's start from the top. Yeah. Okay. Okay. 

Aransas: Situational markets. 

Steve: Situational markets. That comes up. That drives the need. That [00:08:30] drives the opportunity. Is that right? Just playing that back. Sure. Hmm. 

Aransas: Poor Steve, we're like, here, we're going to give you 20 years worth of thinking, just fill it in to five sentences and go.

Steve: Hey, you know what? We're [00:08:45] really lucky. You know, today I was facilitating an ideation workshop as part of a design project I'm doing on employee onboarding. So I'm kind of fresh in this, like. Uh, moments of really thinking about a [00:09:00] particular journey in particular, but this is interesting around situations that come up that drives the need.

Can I just ask to clarify in terms of situations? Is that something that's kind of about moments? Could [00:09:15] that be a word that's around like repetitive moments or is the situation just to define that word a little bit?

Dave: So in fact, it's interesting you bring up moments because I'm going to, that's what my next little [00:09:30] section that I'm writing is on why the word situation versus the word moments, and historically we've done a lot of work around moments.

Right. Yes. But for a lot of companies. What they see when they hear the word [00:09:45] moment is their own process. So you're going to go through these moments, awareness, desire, liking, you know, then you're going to go into usage, right? They have a tendency to see it through [00:10:00] the journey lens that is their own process.

Yeah. But what the consumer sees is, Hey, I'm sitting here right now and I'm hungry. And I need something to eat. Now, [00:10:15] what am I hungry for? So, that's the situation that the consumer is in, the person is in, and when we have a tendency to say, you remember all the work, Steve, that used to be done around first moment of [00:10:30] truth, second moment of truth, Zero moment of truth, right?

Remember when they were like, Oh, there's something before first moment. The Z mot, the Z mot, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, right. And that's [00:10:45] in companies have that mindset, but that, but that's not what, what the consumer has is a whole bunch of digital tools that allow them to, Hey, I'm hungry. I'm going to grab something.

And if they want it delivered, they can have [00:11:00] it delivered. They can go get it. They can do whatever. That's a very different type of thing. 

Dave: The other reason why I like the term is because it forces you to think about the context. [00:11:15] In which they're making the decision. And sometimes we have a tendency with moments to not think about context, to think mostly about that it's happening in their head and we're trying to understand mindset.

What we really want to [00:11:30] understand is what's going on around them that's causing them to have that situation. 

Steve: Yeah. And you know, I, you know, what just came to mind there as well as like you have fleeting moments, so they come and go, they feel, they feel a little bit more moment terror [00:11:45] moment. Momentary rather than a, a situation, uh, what I'm hearing and what I'm, how I'm now perceiving it is like, it feels like a little bit more richer.

It feels a bit more depth to it rather than just a feeling of a linear come and go if start [00:12:00] finish. So it feels like there's more depth. 

Dave: I don't know. I like your, you know, building on that idea of fleeting moments. You've also got, You know, the Google world of micro moments, right? We're trying to slice up the interactions that [00:12:15] the customer has into these teeny tiny little interactions that we can capitalize on.

Again, that's not from the consumer's perspective. That's Google trying to sell ads at a very micro level. [00:12:30] 

Steve: So, so, so, okay, let's contextualize this. Um, and I love that you also anchored into the immediacy around that we can anchor into a process. And as soon as you [00:12:45] said that a little, a little red thing was bubbling here for me, um, going off.

Um, because this is, I would say in the context of my work and from the pure employee experience perspective, my biggest challenge is [00:13:00] exactly that. So the audiences, uh, on which I talk to, or the stakeholders in which I engage, one of my first, I guess, tests or understanding and clarifying is how they're thinking about their [00:13:15] world right now.

And it, and in the HR and the people environment, a lot of it historically and still is a lot of it today is focused on process efficiency, cost saving, and doesn't bring very much the employee into that voice, into that conversation. So I think The [00:13:30] situations is interesting because I'm already thinking, let's just think about different situations an employee could go through.

And I always, when onboarding, for example, I always think about, yes, we think about immediately the [00:13:45] situation of a new hire joining and their needs. I also extend onboarding to situations like coming back from paternity leave, which in Sweden, it could be easily a year before you come back to [00:14:00] a business because of the very generous maternity policies we have in this country.

And I also have a question in there around, well, what if it's their first child versus their second child versus say a third child, [00:14:15] what's the situation in that from their perspective? A first child would be, super anxious to leave their child for the first time. The second one, yeah, not so much. Um, but also like the demands are very different.

You have two children [00:14:30] to care for and pick up. And so, you know, that's where my brain's going now, just thinking about situations and that gives a little different kind of a richer thought around that. That, well, that is exactly 

Dave: what we're talking about there. Right. Um, [00:14:45] and. The interesting thing about it is you could design an experience that's really compelling and put all of these moments into it and never take into consideration that they have three children.[00:15:00] 

And, uh, and maybe you can't, there's only so much that you can do to support the three children part, but the fact that you're actually trying to reach out and understand their situation. And honestly, I think [00:15:15] that. Remote work, even though it was kind of forced on companies, you know, the main reason why people like remote work is because it addresses situational needs that they have.

Steve: Yes,  it [00:15:30] does. I agree. I agree.

Aransas: And creates new ones.

Steve: And create lots of new ones. Uh, I agree. And actually those situations, a lot of them are very personal driven. It's circumstantial driven. It's family driven. It's environmentally driven. There's, there's lots of dynamics to that. [00:15:45] And I, I still think we're.

Uh, I do get a little bit of, uh, of energy and resistance to this. Is that, you know, we're, we're asking the wrong questions here. How do we get people back to the office? Well, the fact we're using the word back is completely, you read the wrong, [00:16:00] the wrong words to be using. It's like, how do we enable people to thrive and be productive or to whatever?

That challenge might be in their situation or context. Um, that brings value to both parties, not just exclusively the [00:16:15] business. Um, so, um, that is something else which, um, yeah, I can definitely relate to. I love the situations. Here's a question, Dave. So how would you as a, as a business and how you guys work, how would you bring a situation to [00:16:30] life?

So that actually, because it's about storytelling, this is about capturing what is that situation? How do we articulate that in a meaningful way? How would you do that? Cause that's where we need the convincing, the influencing of those in which particularly in [00:16:45] organizations, stakeholders that we want to influence.

Um, Yeah. Just curious. How would you bring it to life? 

Dave: Well, I'm sure Aransas will want to build on some of the things that I'm, I'm suggesting here, but, you know, historically the way that companies have thought [00:17:00] about markets, let's use, let's look at that word for a second, is based on. Persona segmentation.

So that's my way of describing that. Um, we do segmentation, we identify who the [00:17:15] target audience is, and we really focus on that, who, who she is. And then we describe her in all of her glory, you know, like, what is it that she's all about? And we develop this persona that humanizes her, [00:17:30] maybe describes her needs a little bit.

And that's our market. Okay, with situational markets, we're not focused so much on the who, we're focused on the what. Think, think for a [00:17:45] second, the company that is most known for doing persona segmentation is Procter Gamble. They really invented it. They made it what it is today. Back in 2002, they had a [00:18:00] breakout product.

It was the Swiffer. I know, you know, we don't even think about this anymore, but like nobody had thought about creating like the Swiffer. It was the first time that they had ever [00:18:15] designed a product where they didn't start with who is the target audience, but instead started with what is the need. Hmm. And it doesn't really matter if it's male or female who's using the Swiffer.

It doesn't really matter [00:18:30] what their income level is. We're going to focus on the Swiffer. And it was so wildly successful for them. They haven't had anything quite so successful since.

Aransas: So the question It's still crazy successful. Yeah. And I think that I, I ordered [00:18:45] one a couple of weeks ago and I was like, how are these reviews?

It's still so insane. I mean, hundreds and hundreds of thousands of five star reviews. And I think it is exactly what Dave is saying. It is [00:19:00] that we set ourselves up to fail when we try to identify a, a theme amongst the uniqueness of humans. Right. So every human is different. They have different life experiences, different [00:19:15] desires, different preferences.

And yet we set ourselves up to succeed when we focus on the job to get done. 

Dave: Yeah. 

Aransas: And, and because that can be timeless. It can be, while deeply specific, also powerfully [00:19:30] universal. 

Dave: Yeah. Not surprisingly, it was Clayton Christensen's group that Helped to innovate the, um, Swiffer and, you know, the Clayton Christensen was all about the job to be done.

Right. So how do [00:19:45] you tell the story? That's what you asked, Steve. And the way that you tell the story is you focus on the what, and then when it comes to the, who you tell very specific stories about individuals that [00:20:00] you've met along the way. Who will use the what? I think we rely way too heavily on this idealized overthought personification of an individual [00:20:15] to create kind of the, the emotion to help the organization get what it is that we're talking about, who it is that we're talking about.

I think instead we need to tell real stories. About real individuals [00:20:30] across the spectrum who will benefit from the Swiffer, whatever that, whatever that is that you're, you're going to be creating. 

Aransas: And I guess to the power of, of storytelling in general, I think modes based [00:20:45] storytelling is especially effective here.

So you'll hear us, Steve, talk a lot about the idea of modes. And when we talk about modes is a mindset. That people get into to get a job done and then it's the behaviors that they do to get that job done. And so when you think about [00:21:00] modes and the modes people are getting into, and certainly you can see great examples across all of the highest performing companies from Amazon to Apple.

Man, they're supposed to start with A, so I'm not sure it's a good progression. But [00:21:15] you can see, um, how they are using modes based thinking, but this is something that's available for every size company. And you know, we've had the joy of working with some of the top companies in the world, but we've also supported through our [00:21:30] certification program on other ways, some of the smallest companies, mom and pops, and they are able to do this because it's really just about understanding what is your, what need are you meeting?

What problem are you solving? And then what is the mode your customers getting [00:21:45] into to get that job done? So instead of trying to archetype them. Get to know what they want. 

Steve: Yeah. Yeah. Why are they trying to get done? I was interesting because I was actually just writing situational storytelling. Um, and I, I, yeah, [00:22:00] I think that's a, that's a really interesting.

Well, what did you mean by that? That sounds really interesting. Yeah. I, I, I just wrote it down because I was, I was thinking about, you know, we have this kind of, To our point, we have a hero in our story. So we normally write about the hero's story. We [00:22:15] have a, an archetype. We have an individual that we, that we bring to life and their journey.

I, I'm more, my brain just suddenly went to like, yeah, cool. So how do we create a situational storytelling, um, approach? And to your point, the mode, the [00:22:30] modality, the mode element could be something in there to, to, to. To learn from and to leverage, but yeah, I think it's a different, it's definitely from what I've been practicing from on the EX side.

I think there's definitely something which is, um, could bring a lot of value for sure. [00:22:45] That's very cool. 

Aransas: Should we talk about POV next? 

Steve: P O V. I feel like singing for that one, but anyway, go. 

Aransas: Please do. Gotta 

Steve: get a POV. Anyway, let's go. All 

Dave: right, so. 

Aransas: Steve [00:23:00] Usher, . 

Dave: So one of the things that intrigues me, you can say whatever you want about Elon Musk.

You know, he's, some days he's crazy, some days he's brilliant, who knows? Like he's all over the board, [00:23:15] right? But Elon Musk, whatever company he's working with, he always has a point of view. That to me is fascinating and it a point of view goes way. [00:23:30] Beyond, you know, like a story that you tell to differentiate your product from somebody else's.

Like he wants to take people to the, to Mars and I kind of believe that he believes that that's going to happen. Did you watch 

Aransas: the movie? 

Dave: Yeah. Which one? It 

Aransas: was [00:23:45] the Mars movie. This Elon, it was the weirdest. Oh, 

Steve: have fun. No, I haven't seen it yet. Thing I've ever 

Aransas: seen. I mean, it was mesmerizing and the conventions were all over the map, but it was really something.

I think you're right, Dave. He believes. But 

Dave: you think about what. I [00:24:00] mean, he has radically changed the car industry and that's only one industry that he's radically changed. Yes. And the way that he was successful in doing it is he got everyone, including [00:24:15] all of the investors to agree with his point of view.

Now we as experienced strategists, we need to learn from that idea. I think. That experienced strategists [00:24:30] spend way too much time thinking about consistency and the ideal. So we'll say, here's the perfect shopping cart to create, okay. Going way, way back to stuff that IDEO used to do to get. [00:24:45] Design thinking going, what we need to be thinking instead is what are the near future needs that people will have and, and how can we help our companies to understand those near future needs?[00:25:00] 

So people in rural parts of the world can't get access to the internet. Elon Musk creates Starlink, right? And it takes a tremendous amount of foresight [00:25:15] to do something like Starlink and I'm not up to that level, but I do think that most companies need to have a point of view about the future. And if they have that, then they will be able to, to create better [00:25:30] experiences.

Steve: Okay. My mind goes, okay. So if I go straight, straight to like employee experience and we think about talent market, this might be a different skew, but I think there's something there. I'm not big into the generational stuff, but [00:25:45] actually Gen Zed deserve our attention just because of the sheer size of this talent group.

Um, and if my statistical brain is right, is it 50 percent of the workforce would be Gen [00:26:00] Zed by 2025 or something. It's like, it's, it's insane. And interestingly, the demands and the needs in this group require this connection to a little bit more around purpose. And I [00:26:15] think it's not exclusively to this, but I think for an organization to have a clarity around a point of view that it has that perhaps not in all cases, but has a point of view that is very strongly in the connection to [00:26:30] the planet or purpose or, Whatever it might be, even with Musk, he has that point of view.

It still connects into expanding humanity, protecting the future of humanity. Um, we talk about obviously with, with, uh, Tesla. Um, [00:26:45] so I still think there's a, there's an element of the green element connected to that, that point of view and having a very clear point of view around that is very important, I think, for future current and future talent groups more so than I think we've ever seen before.

I think the old. [00:27:00] Mission statements and those things, just, they're not cutting it, particularly if they're, you know, shareholder led, which we still see in some of these statements or points of view or focus areas. I don't know. How's that sounding for you, Dave? No, 

Dave: I think it works. And I think, uh, you just [00:27:15] look at Apple.

They have a point of view on privacy. Even just that, I mean, that's not saving the world, but it's, but it is something that's really important. And I think it does a better job of [00:27:30] differentiating them. You come out with a statement like, you know, privacy is very, very important to us that then filters through the entire organization, the way that they innovate, the types of solutions that they create.[00:27:45] 

And. People have a load start to kind of look at and say, you know, Tim Cook is right. We need to be focused on privacy and we're, that makes us the opposite of Facebook and we want to be [00:28:00] the opposite of Facebook and people and employees can buy into that and I think Generation Z will do exactly that, right?

Steve: And I think points of views have a potential to. disrupt, to be contentious, [00:28:15] to not greenwash, to, uh, and that takes sometimes bravery and perhaps to your point with Elon is a good example where he is in that middle zone at times. And that's not necessarily a bad thing, even though there might be judgments to that and there are [00:28:30] moments, don't get me wrong.

Um, but there is, you know, for me, it has to be like authentic. It's got a similar feel to it for me for like missions and purpose to a certain degree. But if you're going to articulate a point of view on a topic, That you're going to connect your business to, then it's the [00:28:45] same in my mind around how you filter that down into the day to day organization.

It's how it lives and breathes that point of view. It's how it's supported, how it's, even how it evolves. It doesn't necessarily always have to be the same. It maybe has to also be just, yeah, a little bit more flexible and fluid because [00:29:00] missions tend to be quite fixed to a certain degree for a long period of time.

I think maybe points of view can also be a little bit more fluid and adaptable. 

Aransas: I think a really good example of this right now is the four year study Google just completed into high performing [00:29:15] teams. And surprising, maybe not to us, but to many was that it wasn't about having the smartest people. It wasn't having the most ambitious people.

It wasn't having the [00:29:30] highest amount of flexibility for the teams. But, Over this four year extensive study into a massive organization by some of the best researchers alive, they found [00:29:45] that the most important factor was psychological safety within the team. 

Steve: Yeah. Yeah. I remember seeing that. 

Aransas: What a, what a lodestar.

What a POV. Right? So, what do we have to do? Well, we have to [00:30:00] cultivate psychological safety. Luckily, there's some great research on how to do that. And so what they have done is they have done the research that they need to understand who their customer, in this case, their [00:30:15] employee, is, what they need. And then how to serve them.

And now that, because they have the right research, they've asked the right questions, they now have something that the entire organization can get behind. And so, like, I think we can look to that [00:30:30] experience, employee experience team as a great model. for how we all get to POV. 

Steve: Yes. Very good point. Is it the fearless organization is a great resource.

I think the book, [00:30:45] um, great resource to share out for those that perhaps haven't, um, come across that yet. Very good resource on psychological safety. Highly recommend. Dave number three, sir, hit me with it. 

Dave: So number three is that the experienced strategist. Is [00:31:00] responsible for getting the whole job done. Um, we, you know, we still deeply believe in this idea of jobs to be done.

Of course. So do innovators. So do there, there's so many [00:31:15] different roles within an organization where that's like, Hey, we've got to get the job done. How do we think about that? But, uh, as more and more roles within an organization. Focus on the [00:31:30] experience. There's a tendency, uh, for people to bump up against each other and say, no, I know what the job is.

To get done, or I know, uh, you know, or you're not seeing, seeing the [00:31:45] job the way that I'm seeing the job that the customer is trying to get done. For the experienced strategist, there's a need, I think, to step back and look at the forest and try to [00:32:00] understand as much as possible. is possible about the customer, the way the customer lives their life.

And even if the company cannot support the customer all the [00:32:15] way through every aspect of their lives, right? I mean, who, who could, who could possibly do that to really understand what is going on and then be able to help the organization to do a better job [00:32:30] of supporting multiple jobs. To be done of thinking through the entire sequence of what's going on.

And some of this is actually growing out of, um, some thinking we've been doing at stone mantle around [00:32:45] what is the next generation journey map look like? Because journey maps have a tendency to be very, again, process oriented moment focused. What we see Um, happening in [00:33:00] consumer behavior is that, um, people set up these systems for their life.

So they have a way of managing their family dynamics, they have a way of managing their work, they have a way of managing how they consume things. They set up these [00:33:15] systems, they have technology that support them. Maybe one of the ways in which we support the whole job to be done is by understanding their life systems.

And somehow being able to [00:33:30] represent those systems for them. So that's an, that's an example of what I'm talking about. Wow. Okay. 

Steve: I was very busy scribbling on lots of post its as you were talking there. Um, I think this is super interesting. And I think this [00:33:45] is also, let me just, I'll jump straight in. So with, with employee experience.

I still think there's so many questions for organizations about what is it? Where does it sit? Who owns it? Uh, where do I even get started? Um, [00:34:00] are very common. And as part of that, because the, the EX Evolution is about starting lighting fires, and I've had previous guests in organizations sharing that, of how they, how they [00:34:15] create influence in this work.

And I, I actually really liked. Your challenge of go into the trees because we tend to go, well, you can't see the woods without, you know, for the trees to step away from the trees and simplify and give it a focus. And [00:34:30] there's valid, of course, that's valid to do that, to start something. I also just, my mind also went to when designing an employee onboarding journey or experience is also [00:34:45] reminding and ensuring that people are also elevating.

That this is not a siloed journey. This is part of the whole employee experience end to end and talent acquisition has a very big impact on the onboarding [00:35:00] just in terms of narrative or storytelling or getting people through a hiring process and then moving into a three month notice period. Well, at that point that's onboard, that's pre boarding.

of where you have to really step up as an organization, think about the [00:35:15] experience that you want to create in those, those journeys as an example. So I, I, I think for me, I think there's a little bit of an interesting discussion around EX in our, in the industry of how we're, you know, we're still trying to convince people that this is the way forward, this is the way of working experiences [00:35:30] can bring value.

And that forces us in a way to go quite granular and focused, but I do love the whole, what if we were to follow. A graduate journey from the second they applied all the way through to [00:35:45] when they perhaps got their first manager job. That would be quite interesting to map, to look at that journey. That's cool.

Yeah. 

Aransas: That's interesting. We're working with a team right now in education who are mapping the student [00:36:00] experience from start to finish, both at boarding schools, but also, uh, large private international schools. And it's been so interesting to see some of the patterns that [00:36:15] emerge in their work. You can listen to the episode with Yellow Car to hear more about it specifically.

I'd love 

Steve: to. 

Aransas: It's, it's terrific. And, and they're, they're brilliant. Approaching the research in a really exciting way that integrates all of the key [00:36:30] users in this journey. So you have the education system itself, you also are hearing from the families, the parents specifically and from the students. And then through that holistic understanding, seeing what's working and what's [00:36:45] broken in an end to end journey.

Dave: Yes. I love that. There's another, um, as you were talking, Steve, it prompted another, uh, episode that we did a while back where a [00:37:00] guy built his entire, his software development company, the built the entire model for employee engagement around the fact that there are always two programmers paired together that [00:37:15] are programming together.

At all times. And so once you become kind of like the senior person, then you're given a new junior person and you, and so your onboarding [00:37:30] process is the senior person is bringing you up to speed. And you're building, you're building software together. You get to see what's going on. You get to fix each other's mistakes.

You're always connected to each other, at least on that [00:37:45] project. 

Steve: And 

Dave: you might switch off as somebody else for another project, but then what, but then your communication, your focus and everything. You, you, you always have a partner and that might not work for everyone, but [00:38:00] talk about thinking about the whole job that you're trying to get done for the employee.

And also for 

Aransas: the customer, 

Dave: for the customer, everybody wins 

Aransas: and his company has been wildly successful. [00:38:15] Yeah. 

Dave: It's can be a little bit more expensive, but in the long run, you know, for the clients, it's a little bit. more expensive, but in the long run, they have better results. [00:38:30] So, um, just a really powerful example of thinking holistically about what it is that you're trying to do.

Steve: Love that. And don't, I mean, we can get stuck in the weeds and it happens, but, but, uh, but I think [00:38:45] also like always anchoring and honoring that, that more holistic. Thank you. It's all mindset. Go. Right. Number four. Final four. Let's go. All right. Let's go. Number 

Dave: four. Time value. Time is the most [00:39:00] precious resource that people have.

Yes. Especially workers. Right. And we already brought up Generation Z. They don't want to waste time. They don't, they're used to having all of their time occupied in different ways. [00:39:15] And we as experienced. Strategists have had a tendency to think that the way that we create value for our companies is by creating loyalty to our companies.

And we don't have time to talk about some of the [00:39:30] bad assumptions that are associated with that, but companies tend to focus very heavily on loyalty metrics. We think that they should be focused on time metrics. Am I getting, is this time well spent? [00:39:45] And what I'm doing right now, is it time well invested?

Is it time well saved? Or is it time wasted? We just published a study on vacations and we didn't include in the [00:40:00] published version the percentages for time wasted versus time well invested. We only showed the time well invested, but some of the most prominent brands in the country got high scores on both.

[00:40:15] Time well invested as well as time wasted and you need and that's where the real value is going to be going forward is being able to help a company to think about measurement in a different way and and to [00:40:30] measure, you know, Try to understand where are we wasting people's time and where are we actually creating time well spent.

Steve: I love it. So I'm a huge advocate of spent and, um, saved and invested. I think it's in a very powerful [00:40:45] mindset, actually, that people should. really understand, I think to my point earlier, a lot of the audiences, particularly in the more HR audiences, uh, that I spoke at last year, if I left everybody at least with an understanding of the difference between saved and spent and [00:41:00] to pull those two things apart and understand intrinsically what these two things, I've done, I've done a good job and I always felt that like I have to, you know, What's really interesting in this is from an EX perspective, we can, there's so many [00:41:15] aspects to this.

It's different to customer because employee is such, I think is in intrinsically different relationship. It's much more, it's closer. It's a much more captive audience. They really see you for who you are as a business, [00:41:30] typically. Uh, they see you for your, your goods, your bads, some of the challenges, of course, and it's, it's a much, it's a different depth of relationship that you have.

So I think like the time spent that you have together is, it's gotta be, it's gotta [00:41:45] be a two way win, right? So I think the emphasis is definitely on the spent. However, the. Imperative in the organization tends to be in the saved, uh, more so than actually the human experience or [00:42:00] the time spent on or invested.

So I think for me, that's, there's definitely lots of correlation, um, particularly when we're getting stuck into the weeds of work day, which is like. The hell of where to be in most HR people functions. [00:42:15] Um, and also in like workplace experience teams, which we're seeing I'm working with more and more of late.

That's really interesting. Cause now we're moving into a physical space. Of how does the office experience [00:42:30] fit into the, fit into the broader employee experience. So when they are on site, the minute they walk into that physical environment, how is it time well saved, spent, even invested and looking at some of those [00:42:45] different needs as they walk through the building and some of those key moments in time that how to enable those.

So there's a, there's a really interesting bit for me where it's like, yes, there's employee experience, but then there's also this kind of dimension around the [00:43:00] structural environmental experience and how that becomes the enabler for some of this as well. The workplace experience one is really interesting.

I've discovered a blade yet. 

Aransas: Agree. Agree. And, um, I think it all comes together to [00:43:15] create that experience of time value. And one of the things we've been pioneering is a new way of measuring for time value. Uh, we think it's long overdue as a metric. Massively. I want to learn more 

Steve: on that one. Yes, 

Aransas: we will tell you all about [00:43:30] it.

It is meant in many cases to effectively replace NPS as a value of success for your experience strategy. And so what you're talking about here is a, is a perfect example of [00:43:45] where and how it can be of greater value to teams to understand impact. 

Steve: Yeah. Can I just ask as well with the work that you're doing in the spent, in the spent side.

Is that more human [00:44:00] interaction tends to be leaned towards that side or are there other elements of spent? Yeah, so, 

Dave: yeah, I see where you're going with that because, you know, you think about digital as time well saved, you know, you're able to do multiple [00:44:15] things at the same time, and then you think about, you know, You know, sitting down with someone and having a great conversation or being with a group or going to a show or a play or [00:44:30] something along that line feels like time well spent.

So in some ways, the human. Is there for sure. I mean, some of the research that we're doing around artificial intelligence and human [00:44:45] interaction shows that the consumer wants both. They want to interact with people who have superhuman capabilities because they have AI to support them, but they still want to interact with the people.

Yes. So there's, there's something to [00:45:00] be said for that, I guess on the, on the Other side of it, video games, for a lot of people, are time well spent. They, they love video games. I'm not a big video game kind of guy myself, but I love [00:45:15] television shows. That just shows my age, right? You know, right? So there are digital experiences that would be considered time well spent.

as 

Steve: well. 

Dave: Maybe not time well invested, where you [00:45:30] really sit down and you focus on something and you prep yourself. 

Steve: Yes. Yes. I think there's still a lot of education needed in, uh, in the EX side on the, on the time equation. But it's super powerful and it's very compelling. And [00:45:45] of course it enables us to perhaps just give.

Boxes for people to think it gives a structure and everyone loves a box or a two by two. Um, so it's good to give them something to kind of go, Oh, I'm in that. That's great. Yeah, that's good. So it's a, um, [00:46:00] it's a good, I think anything like that is always valuable. 

Dave: We should give a shout out to Joe Pine who really developed that framework.

Uh, so 

Steve: thanks. Yeah. Thank you, Joe. Well, I mean, what's been spawned from the experience economy, it's [00:46:15] insane. Um, and you know, it's one of those books that, um, 1999, I mean, my God, it's. Stood the test of time and still people are catching up. Still people are catching up. Uh, I love it. What, what a book to create.

[00:46:30] What a book to co create. Amazing. 

Aransas: Indeed, indeed. So as we start to round down this incredible conversation, tell me, um, how should fans of the experience [00:46:45] strategy podcast follow you and learn more about your work, Steve? 

Steve: Oh, okay. So just, you know, the easiest way is LinkedIn. It's Steve Usher. There's not many ushers in Sweden, so it should be pretty easy to find me.

Um, that is definitely the best [00:47:00] place, uh, to get in contact, see my work and what I'm doing, lots of regular updates that I, that I ping out. So yeah, that's, that's definitely it. 

Aransas: Awesome. Yeah. And for us, you can find all of our episodes and all of our work, including the collaboratives and the certification [00:47:15] and links to Dave Substack, the experience strategist, all over at our home stone mantle.

co. 

Steve: Absolutely. I'm going to get on that. Definitely. Um, and actually, I'm actually, you just reminded me. And if you [00:47:30] want to listen to any of my podcast episodes, the experience designers. co. As easy as that. 

Aransas: Cool. Yeah. Check it out. 

Steve: Good. 

Aransas: Great conversation. So glad to be connected with you, Steve, and really excited to continue this [00:47:45] conversation.

Steve: So amazing. Grateful. Lots of gratitude. Thank you for your time. And, um, yeah, let's keep going with, um, experience, creating experiences. 

Voiceover: Yes. 

Steve: What a great job to wake up to every day. So thank you so much. Thank you. Thank [00:48:00] you. 

Voiceover: Thank you for listening to the Experience Strategy Podcast. If you're having fun nerding out with us, please follow and share wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts. Find more episodes and continue the conversation with us at experiencestrategypodcast.com.