Hello and welcome to the You Know How To Live Show my name is Kate Hammer and in just a moment we will have Sarah Stein Greenberg with us Sarah is the executive director of the Stanford d.school and author of the recently released book Creative Acts For Curious People Sarah leads a community of designers faculty and other innovative thinkers who help people unlock their creative abilities and apply them to the world she also speaks regularly at universities and global conferences on design business and education now wherever you are listening or watching from I am so glad you are tuned in and hanging out I hope you are ready for my favorite combination of things hopefully a bit of entertainment and of course some takeaways to improve how you work and play and do all the things you do in between please take a moment right now to subscribe follow leave a comment or give a five-star review so that we can stay connected and with that let's bring in Sarah Stein Greenberg Sarah thank you so much for making time to be here and talk a little bit about your new book creative acts for curious people that just came out this fall my pleasure I'm really excited for our conversation today yes I am too especially after reading it and going through the exercises um I'll talk more about it later but the book or well we'll talk more about it later but the book is comprised of over 80 different exercises and we will explain the purpose of what they can do and in what context you can use them soon but I'll tell you what it is a lot of fun so uh first question for you Sarah right now you serve as executive director of the Stanford d.school where students of all disciplines attend classes workshops and programs to learn how to use design theory and skills to develop their creative potential for someone unfamiliar could you describe how a person who is not pursuing professional design work can benefit from design education absolutely that is a great place to start um so we really think about design as this incredibly flexible set of problem-solving approaches and actually it's not even just about solving problems in an elegant or um useful way it's actually about kind of questioning the way that a problem has even been framed and thinking about what is the real opportunity here so we think about design first as this relationship between problem solving and problem finding or opportunity finding and you know designers have been uh kind of able to notice things in really interesting ways designers are able to express their ideas in a tangible form that lets you interact with them and then and then give feedback and a lot of what we do at the d.school is really about taking some of those principles and practices that can be applied to so many different fields and in so many different ways and and then teaching people who don't necessarily come from a design background so for example um one of the stories that's in the book is about a group of four of our students um a civil engineer and a public policy student and actually two medical students and they work together on a really interesting kind of open-ended design challenge around helping a cardiac care hospital do something better something more uh user friendly something more efficient something lower cost and the students really came up with this incredibly inventive way to incorporate the family members of patients into the heart of the care process and I think they were able to design that solution in part because we didn't constrain where they might go right we really allowed them not just to solve a tightly constrained problem but actually to back up and say hey what are the opportunities here they really spotted this unique opportunity to incorporate the role of family members in a in a unique way um and that led to this really amazing organization so that's the kind of design that we're talking about it's this really widely applicable set of practices that you can use to then think about how do I improve anything in my in my life in my community at work yeah you see throughout the book as you're reading it this recurring suggestion that maybe your first idea about how something will result is not what it will end up being so instead of saying okay this is where we want to end up we're being more exploratory in the very beginning of you know let's let's hold off for a second let's not decide where we want to end up let's explore the problem itself and you give lots of really interesting ways to do that uh that is a very sharp observation and I think you know all of us you know human beings are wired to be problem solvers right so if like if you see if you see a problem often you immediately think about an idea about how to fix it um and what what happens normally is that your first idea is what we call a point solution it's like you just connected you know sort of one dot from the problem into the into the solution the way to fix it and if you spend time to back up and to explore well what are the root causes of how this problem came to be and who are all the stakeholders involved and what are some ways that this problem has been solved in other parts of the world you actually are going to really enrich the the not just the solution space but the chance that you're solving a problem that that actually is meaningful and that is uh more systemic than just sort of like that one little manifestation that you might have first spotted so that practice of actually slowing down making sure that you're doing uh those those observations those interviews trying to understand more of the context before you jump into solution mode that's a big part of what we practice at the d.school yeah you know I love that expression solution space to me that sounds like an indication that there can be more than one right answer um and taking the time to kind of sort through what you're able to come up with and you know what are the pros and cons what are the benefits and what are the challenges you're going to see with each of those um instead of just assuming that there's one that we're getting to the one so I love that solution space very cool yeah that's right and I think particularly in a moment like you know the times that we're all living through right now there is no one right answer right we're all yes but like how do we solve some challenges that are being you know kind of thrown at us whether it's like how do I how do I work from home how do I deal with you know having kids at home or how do I deal with transitioning back into a world that might be starting to open up a little bit more um you know these are these are the kinds of challenges that don't have one right answer and and you get to make some creative choices right as you're navigating um these kinds of these kinds of very open-ended problems but I do think that a lot of us um were sort of trained to try to solve problems as quickly as possible and somehow like the speed to which you get to an answer is is almost like more value than getting to than opening up that solution space and when you open it up and you consider diverging directions you actually I think are more likely to come up with something that's that's more powerful or more long-term or more useful in the long run yeah there are always going to be times where we have you know less time than we would like to come up with a solution but I love how the d.school is providing this space for people to spend more time in that in that area and think through with people from all sorts of backgrounds how they might tackle any given dilemma okay so I want to hear a little bit about what your experience is like leading this school so you serve as a leader of a community of designers faculty and other innovative thinkers who help the students unlock their creative abilities and apply them out in the world help us imagine what that looks like how does a typical day play out for you well I think one thing that I love best about my job is that there is no typical day um I'm one of those people who like doesn't really like to fall into a kind of fixed routine and so having a lot of variety is very fulfilling for me it piques my curiosity it keeps me sharp and keeps me learning and you know there's just such a wide range of things that are happening you know in any given day at the d.school so you know we might have a class going on that's about um you know pediatric feeding challenges and and the students are collaborating with clinicians and doctors or we might have a class going on that's about designing financial resources for people who have experienced a natural disaster and there's a whole you know group of people from the banking industry and from you know communities that have been affected by wildfires for example um working together in another space and so you kind of have this feeling of like I kind of never know what I'm gonna run into when I walk through our space and so for me it might be you know part of my day might be engaging directly with students it might be about um you know working on things like strategy and finance it might be about like oh we gotta problem solve how are we gonna hold this big event in this space and you know there are um just a million interesting uh problems to be solved on a daily basis and I love that kind of variety yeah absolutely okay so there's definitely a broad amount of things that you are considering from one day to the next a lot of mystery and intrigue there but I imagine that dozens of people are looking to you to make decisions and gives instructions throughout the day do you have strategies or tools that you use to ensure that your most important work gets accomplished yeah you know that that saying about um you know the urgent drives out the important is so true and I think about that yeah I think about that statement all the time right it's like the thing that is on the top of my inbox is often the thing that gets my attention first whereas you know the thing that's 10 emails down might actually be most important so one thing that I have found um to be really helpful is um I when I need to do well I'll say two things one is I don't look at my email on my phone and for me that was a really important shift because it means that like I only can access those important emails when I'm sitting down at my computer and I've sort of said okay now I'm in a work I'm in a work zone right and that's because I do get so many requests and um I've heard that we're like described as you know somebody else is creating your to-do list absolutely virtual of all the emails that you get right so but I want to control my my to-do list so one of the ways that I do that is I don't look at email unless I'm kind of sitting down and I'm prepared to be in that mode another thing that I've developed is when I need to do any kind of writing or thinking about some kind of big picture issues I try to do that um first thing in the morning and I have to do that in a way where it's like if I just look at one more operationally focused email or I have one phone call that's about something that's more of the day-to-day I have a hard time getting back into that creative space so for me it's become really really necessary to to make sure that I I carve out time that is dedicated time um you know and then I have all kinds of coping strategies for trying to like get focused and be present in those in those moments as well yeah so you have identified specifically when you function best to handle certain types of tasks and ventures and then you're planning your day accordingly I love that you are choosing specific times to check your email oh man I think you're exactly right it's so easy to get distracted by what other people need right now so obviously I can't imagine that the sheer quantity um considering your role of how many requests or diversions you might receive so sounds like an awesome strategy to have in place and you know each and every request you get is important to the person who made it and so it's a struggle to feel like well I don't want to you know I don't want to ignore people I don't want to let people down but at the same time you know I can't be at my best for the things that I have committed to if I'm not creative if I'm not setting some boundaries and so about you know about my my thinking time my writing time so I struggle with that as I think I'm sure many many people do um but it's become increasingly clear to me that like the as an individual I have to sort of set those conditions to allow me to do my best work and that the way in which my inbox functions is not necessarily going to contribute to that so I have to take a firm I have to take a firm stand on on how and when I um uh work on things that I'm prioritizing versus um you know whatever might be the top of the heap today yeah do you feel like that sets a tone throughout your department for people to be confident in the boundaries that they have and to have clarity around that and to speak transparently with others in the department about that I hope so I think that um you know that is that is a type of leadership that I try to model um I very very rarely email people on the weekends or the evenings um even if I'm working I might be working on my own stuff rather than um kind of filling up other people's inbox I'm sure I don't I know for you know certain I'm not a hundred percent um uh good about that but I think that sets an important tone and yeah I also um you know just try to be very transparent about like this doesn't need an answer right away or this is quite time sensitive and and just really take that extra step to communicate um what the needs are and we also really actively experiment at the d.school with things like let's see what happens if we try not to book any meetings during lunch time right and then you know that'll work for a while and then maybe it'll creep back or often we'll have each individual team design the strategies that are about kind of protecting that kind of tea group time individual work time and then time when they're available for for lots of folks um and I think having that as just like it's an active part of our organizational culture to keep designing and redesigning those sorts of rhythms yes I love that a lot of prototypers in one space just constantly animation help ourselves yeah that's right we you can stop us if we tried yes I love that um okay take us time or take us back with you to a time before you found yourself in your current role could you tell us your story of how you got here and at what point in that story did you adopt the attitude of a designer yeah you know it's a really interesting question because I think for me part of what was so exciting when I found design um as kind of an explicit language as an explicit set of practices um I had already been uh sort of intuitively doing some of the things but I didn't realize that it was like a whole legitimate way to work so after college I um I worked in the nonprofit healthcare space and I found myself really interested in understanding more about like how does the private sector deal with innovation um how do companies um that that have a you know that they're in the private sector actually like respond to new market demands and and innovate in some ways a lot more quickly than some of the kind of big non-profit organizations that I was a part of and um I got very interested in that and so I wound up um going to business school at Stanford and at that exact same time the d.school was just getting started so I took some of these very very early classes and I learned about things like prototyping and I learned about design research and what I realized is you know there were ways in which my instincts in my previous work for example were were leading me to do things like gather a bunch of feedback and input before I would start designing a set of communications materials right and really thinking about who is going to be the user of this tool while I'm in the while I'm in the process of creating it but again I didn't have that as like oh this is a legitimate practice there are all these different ways to do it I can practice this skill and get better at it and get better feedback and better data so for me finding design was this just incredibly um practical and useful and also somewhat like validating and liberating way to start thinking about my work and so I would say I don't know I started thinking about myself as somebody practicing design you know around around that time as I was taking some of those classes that the d.school was offering in the very early days and that really set me on this you know trajectory that I've continued um after school I uh left and I went and worked as a design and strategy consultant and I got to work on some incredible projects um around Asia around Africa in a number of different countries as well as the U.S. um and then I came back to the d.school and Stanford in 2010 and I haven't I haven't left yeah so you've been there for a minute yeah it has been a while I know I really um it's it's just such an interesting place and I feel like we just keep growing and changing and for me as a human and as a leader and as an educator that's the kind of environment that feels enriching um and part of how we do that is we're always thinking about like what do the students need now right like we try to be as you know student-centered as as we can because we are teaching human-centered design after all so like really prioritizing sort of you know who are we teaching what are their needs and you know no no time in my experience has that been more important than you know the moment that we're in right now where everybody has this completely set of you know really challenging set of both personal and also you know sort of communal needs um at the moment yeah oh absolutely right thank you for helping us seriously well you know I really um I really think that the kinds of things that we do um with our students are going to be valuable to people in many different contexts and so um you know that is a big part of why I you know took the time to sit down and write this book is because I want more people to have access to those same kinds of tools and and practices yeah okay so that is a great lead to the next question with the release of this book creative acts for curious people for the first time ever someone without a tie to Stanford is able to get that front row classroom experience why did the d.school decide to make this move and make your teaching more accessible well we have always been um trying things like you know putting short format courses like digital learning experiences online um we we you know share those for free and we've had you know people take uh you know download and go through those experiences I know hundreds of thousands millions of times yeah but we have I think not um fully captured the breadth of what we teach at the d.school and so that was really my goal in this book was that I we started by interviewing over 100 faculty and instructors they offered some of their favorite experiences like learning experiences that they had designed the ones that they had seen people react to as being like the most transformational or the most useful in propelling their design projects forward and um that just exposed this incredibly wide range of techniques and tools and I think that to me is what's super exciting about this book is that it's not it I mean my perspective is woven all the way through it but there are perspectives from so many different incredible teachers at the d.school and my hope is that each different assignment feels a little bit like oh I'm in Leticia's classroom right now or or I'm in you know I'm in Perry Claibon's uh classroom right now or I'm in Eugene Korsunskiy's classroom right now and these are all different you know people who have just like these incredibly um specific and intentional and beautiful ways of teaching and leading a group through through these processes and so I tried to get that essence into each one of these different assignments yeah absolutely I will say as I was reading through you can see all of these names on each page with each of the exercises and it does give you that feeling of really being part of the d.school and you know some of the names are repeated you really get a sense of what it might feel like to be moving from classroom to classroom and the vibe that you might catch in each of those spaces and with those people so in the book you offer over 80 different exercises that facilitate the growth of creative abilities can you share an example of one of the exercises that a reader could try right away sure um so one that I just think is so useful um comes from Eugene Korsunskiy who I just mentioned and he designed this assignment that he calls Instant Replay and Instant Replay is a great thing you can do with a team or if you're working with one other collaborator um to kind of check in and see like how are we functioning as a team and the way you do it it's actually very easy to do if you're collaborating remotely you just record you know 20 25 minutes of a team meeting that you're having and then you both watch it back together now people don't like to see themselves on video often but it's okay you're in it together and you're not gonna use this um piece of footage for anything evaluative but you're just gonna see what do you notice who talks more who talks less do you have um a set of behaviors that really like help the other person express their half-baked ideas and encourage or do you have maybe a set of behaviors that kind of unintentionally their people are putting up some blocks does a team you know struggle with making a decision or have a lot of great practices around that and so it's just an opportunity to actually you know all of us have the the experience of being on a team but until you kind of take it outside of yourself and watch the video play back it's kind of hard to see that objectively and having that shared artifact allows your whole team to then see what's going on and to make some suggestions uh for how you might tune up your collaboration um so that's one that I that I absolutely love yes so you talked about the element of discomfort and what I noticed as I was reading through the exercises is that that reoccurs this is a common part of what you will experience if you actually play them through so whether or not it's talking to strangers or making up a special handshake with someone you may not know very well there are a lot of requirements for you to get out of your comfort zone and to not take the path of least resistance but would you argue that that is protect potentially the exact thing that helps you to develop your creative ability to get uncomfortable yeah I mean I'll respond to that in two different ways because I think it's such a useful thing to talk about so one is like your brain is going to be stimulated by things that aren't familiar to you so inviting that little bit of strangeness into your life whether that's talking to a stranger whether that's going to you know an exhibit of some kind of art that you've never heard of before um ways to actually like learn something new and be surprised those are incredibly stimulating for your own you know sort of creative ability and then you know the bigger theme around discomfort um has to do with the fact that if you're working on something creative you by its very nature you don't know exactly where you're going to end up and that is quite um disorienting and uncomfortable for many of us because you're going to be asking yourself questions of like am I going to finish this on time is it going to be good enough is anyone going to like it what is you know what is the way in which I'm expressing myself say to other people what is it saying to other people about me and all of those questions can make you very uncomfortable but the reality is if you're not having those moments of discomfort then you're probably working on something quite conventional quite predictable and um that is not where innovation lives right that's not where you're going to stumble across those opportunities like our students did who were working with that hospital to really uncover a completely different way to look at a system or a situation and come up with a completely brand new solution and so learning that those moments of discomfort actually mean that you're stretching that you're struggling in a very productive way um that is a powerful learning to have about what creative work feels like and doing that in a in a safe environment where you've tuned up your team collaboration where you know you're with people who you can trust um even through those ups and downs that discomfort is really quite useful to you in in your creative work yes I love that struggling in a productive way you know we're so tuned into efficiency so if we can at least tell ourselves throughout these exercises this is productive this is not just you know gonna feel weird and then that's it like we're gonna get somewhere well and there there is an assignment in the book called Learning Journey Maps in which you can actually decide is this true for you so in a Learning Journey Map you basically use you know you you use a you make a graph of a learning experience that you've had recently or a creative project that you worked on or any kind of project you've worked on yeah and you think about when were the highs and lows of what you were how much you were learning along the way and then when were the highs and lows of your kind of emotional state and often you'll see that people have a moment where they were learning a lot but they felt really nervous or stressed or anxious and that gap between the sort of like learning a lot but doesn't feel very good that is I think those moments of productive struggle so if you can begin to understand and even see that part of your journey for yourself in your own experiences I think it's easier to shift that mindset from oh I want to get out of this discomfort as quickly as possible to oh I'm going to let it unfold a little bit I'm going to know that I have the skills to actually navigate this kind of messiness and this kind of moment of struggle in a in an effective way yes I like that so this is a question that I feel many people are very intrigued by um and want to know especially for someone who has seen a lot of success uh what does your morning routine look like well I am um I am not a morning person but I am jealous of all people who are morning people there is just something about like rising with the sun or really getting going in the morning that just has always seemed so so compelling to me so I will I will just say I think I have some sort of like you know um you know embarrassment that I'm not more of a functional person in the morning but I just gotta own it I'm really not so my ideal morning is you know it's slow it's not about you know trying to like jump out of bed um I love when this you know during the times of the year when I can rise after the sun has risen or as the sun is rising and you get that beautiful light that helps me kind of enter the day in a really collected um and natural way then you know the morning routine always involves a little coffee and a shower and kind of you know sort of a little bit of time maybe sitting and you know reading the news or just kind of like entering the day slowly and then as I said if I if I have some kind of big creative project that I'm working on I'll take the first couple of hours to try to dive into that as much as possible um and then I'll shift into more of the kind of operational um you know kinds of uh interactions yes maybe check that email inbox that's exactly right after after the creative you know I've reached some kind of you know I've written whatever page count I need to get to that day yes well that morning definitely sounds delightful um okay so if someone who's been watching or listening would like to get connected with you where can they find you should they bug you on Instagram Twitter where's the best way to find Sarah um you can find me on LinkedIn and you can also find me on Instagram at @steingreenberg and I love to have people come visit me there just because I that's where I share my kind of personal creative hobby which is around photography and um the d.school um as you mentioned is actually publishing a whole series of books so these are gonna start coming out in the Spring and you can find out all about those at dschoolbooks.com we have a whole bunch that I think are going to be really useful to folks if there's one around designing for belonging there's one around designing with data and telling stories through maps there's one around courage and learning how to express your ideas and make a stand so so much so much useful content that we've just been so excited to put into a format that is going to be more accessible for folks wonderful I can't wait to get my hands on these books that will be coming out in the near future in the meantime if you still need to pick up your copy of creative acts for curious people you can find it in lots of places it's on Amazon where else anywhere else people should buy the book um it's in Barnes and Noble if you go to indie bound you can get it at your local bookstore so lots of different places to buy awesome well thank you so much for your time today Sarah have a great week just wonderful to talk to you yay you can find links in the show notes to learn more about Sarah's book creative acts for curious people and to connect with Sarah on LinkedIn and Instagram thank you for tuning in if you enjoyed your time with us today please share this episode with a friend then subscribe follow leave a comment or give a five star review season one of the show will include more chats top authors experts and influential personalities we will be serving up simplified applied psychology habit theory and quality of life tips and tricks that you can put into action right away until next week I'm Kate Hammer and You Know How To Live
