PRODUCT BREAKFAST CLUB PODCAST #4: HOW TO STRUCTURE YOUR CREATIVE PROCESS TO MAXIMISE OUTPUT

Key Takeaways

[Music] hello and welcome to the product Breakfast Club podcast by AGM smart where each episode will bring you a fresh and insightful chat between designer and co-founder of AG and smart join us and Kourtney and chick Knapp the New York Times bestselling author of design process books print remember to subscribe to our podcast on itunes or wherever you listen to your podcasts if you're watching on youtube don't forget to hit the subscribe button Jake is said it to the John gets a little electric shock each time you do if you're enjoying the podcast please take a moment to like share or comment we love hearing your feedback [Music] hey everybody hey ooh hey everyone everybody up there F episode 4 already I mean you know it's it's actually crazy how do we get to Episode four already thought we were gonna just bring one just episode three hey now it's four this is we're back to a normal the normal product Breakfast Club consistency or maybe constellation is the best thing to say where it's nighttime here in Berlin and it's morn in time with Jake it's morning I had to have to block out the blinds behind me cuz it's just it's so sunny here in California how is it in Berlin is it is it pretty pretty nicer you see I mean if you're on YouTube you can see behind me here this the blackness it's been like this since about 2:00 p.m. so it's not really I can't really talk about the way the weather here it's it's it's you don't even know it's just no it's just bike it could be really sunny it may be it's like really I don't know it's an I think I actually like it I have no problem with this like some people get really worked up about the weather being bad they're like Oh or need to get out of here in the winter or I start feeling sad but I find it cozy but I'm also from Ireland so I spent 20 years in the darkness so I don't even further north if my geography serves that right I don't know no it's very similar it's very similar it's on a very similar latitude is latitude the right word maybe no Louis yeah talk about it anymore platitude it's a it's not the same who's that the same vertical on the no same horizontal on the globe when you have a globe turn it around same horizontal welcome to the product Breakfast Club podcast the podcast about product process and globes so I mean it was actually a crazy last two weeks right yeah we were in the same place doing a workshop here in San Francisco doing product Breakfast Club podcasts and and then I've done another workshop in Austin and now now back home for Thanksgiving which would sound really old to the people who are listening to this yeah I mean if and what is Thanksgiving for all the European listeners I didn't know was Thanksgiving which is why I apologized when we started something about turkeys yeah it's the one day of the year when those Americans were we're grateful for what we have and then the rest of the year we just sort of take things from other people ah okay that's fair enough that's right no I can understand that that's fair it's balanced it's all about balance here it's just Thursday that's what we call it here in Berlin Thursday just hanging out hanging out that was really cool last two weeks actually I mean we there was a lot of things happen I don't really even know how much we can talk about it because of NDA stuff but the workshop was really great I mean it was like two-day design spring boot camp we had some really really cool companies there it was definitely like a career highlight for me definite for you is probably just like whatever yeah this is just an off day for was amazing we had super we had super cool companies there we had we have like slack and medium and Airbnb and Netflix any blinds a cool companies can have to bleep all that out I don't know if we're allowed to say their names well I think that but I think we are I think it's fine yeah it was pretty cool and and so it's fun to see that people are doing design sprints and they wanted they want to know more about it so so it was it was cool and we had we had really good food and coffee was a fun time I didn't like it no it's really really great it was such a read it was a really great week are we allowed to mention where we were on Wednesday who we met on Wednesday maybe not maybe if I who did you meet on Wednesday we went to a particularly we went to a particular well-known design agency and oh yeah well of course we can see yeah we were at IDEO hanging out and Tim Brown came by Timmy Brown I was actually almost Tim Cook came by I was really I was super he looks really different in person this Tim Cook guy I got a new sign on my phone confuse make sense I'll do it no yeah no but we got we got to go that we went by I do and we talked about running a design agency which I don't know anything about but you do and of course Kylie does cuz he's run I do and for a long time and really built it up built up the the brain and over the over the years so pretty that was pretty cool yeah Kevin Rose I don't know if you say that either but I mean he's just got nothing to do you know he's just relaxing you know I don't know what he actually does just the since the podcast just listen to our podcast I mean everybody everybody we meet listens to this right I think so yeah I mean I have to assume everyone be listening to it 100% I mean it's great that people would probably haven't even obviously like released it because we're just doing the first episodes yeah people are probably hacking in yeah to your service because you have servers right there hacking right a hundred percent yeah taking the rod files editing them themselves so they can get really access yeah it's all over the globe this podcast is gone it has gone viral actually still I mean it's still I mean if you're listening to this episode episode four we still haven't released the podcast but it has gone viral so I mean I don't know how that even happened people are making the artwork for it they're they're putting it on however you put it on the item we don't even know how to do that yet but even though they see it out for us it's amazing it's so yeah really cool yeah and also and if you're listening to this and you're still like hey you promised me an episode one that the audio quality was going to get better we get better yeah I mean I'm gonna get takes gonna get a new mic I'm gonna get a like a spit guard here because I keep spitting on everything and we're gonna get different software who knows what we're gonna do but first of all the most important thing is that we're getting started and that's kind of like the you know right exactly you know that's the way that's the thing that's the thing we're getting started and we're you know it's 90% of the way to a real podcast so it's people like a go yeah just right now keep your talking people talking and I have topics topics to talk about today that's good besides the name dropping we did so far no dropping Brown I have one more name dropped I have one more name drop I didn't even think about it if we're doing a name dropping round yeah also next week you're gonna be speaking at Google's first design spring conference and some Jain Smarties are gonna be there too yeah yeah that's right you're gonna have to folks from AJ and smart they're speaking kind of like taking over every panel I think I feel that they get the conference but yeah it's pretty cool it's good there's gonna be there they're having a design sprint conference which is which is exciting I think you think no people talked about it yeah think so interesting we're telling you I'm excited I'm so excited all the time but I just have to imagine what it would be like for someone who who wasn't if they would be excited now I can teach you as you can tell why aren't you eating breakfast by the way that's the kind of premise of the podcast right it took us so long to figure out what height the microphone yeah no I it's almost lunchtime now I think she actually needs to lower it one more by the way I would I would recommend one more lowering so while you're lowering your microphone I'm gonna I'm gonna kick right into the first and maybe only topic because I know how long we tend to ramble and this is a topic that we have both discussed a lot of times but I don't think we've ever kind of oh by the way I have to say no and and this is why these topics go on for so long because now I'm on another tangent I had to listen back to the first three episodes to check out if they were actually worth publishing and I assumed they actually wouldn't be but they were and one thing I realized is all the different little annoying speech things that I do and that's the worst thing about listening the worst and best thing about doing a podcast I think is that you're like oh my god why do I keep saying that and I'll tell you I keep saying kind of and now I notice when I say it and even though I do these YouTube videos all the time I guess our edit my editor is actually take that out and so I'm yeah really a really eloquent and then I hear the podcast unedited and it's like kind of kind of kind of kind of on YouTube you're just like Max Headroom you're just like yeah but I exactly 1994 and it's just it's all scam smoothed out with all the kind of is removed its jerky it sounds so good it sounds so good on YouTube I just didn't realize that I was such a bad public spear myself at these conferences and things and it's just yeah I don't know but at the common notice I haven't noticed but now that you mentioned time to start keeping a log of all the annoying things I do I kind of noticed actually I one thing I want to say just relating to the Google conference next week there's a huge difference between speaking in the US and speaking in Europe by the way like and I think we say more about that it's it's just all to do with the swearing in the year in Europe because I think there's just so many different languages and because I'm Irish and because you know D is Australian and like there's so many people from different countries in at AJ and smart and a lot of countries are very sweary especially Ireland Ireland and England and Australia there we use words that you guys consider to be like insanely bad like there's a word with the letter C that we use all the time like as a almost like hey you're such a that word exactly barely and we we use it as a term of endearment and like I would call my co-founder ah you're such a crisps and you know I would call like I keep my wife I would say yeah you're such a crisps she would say it back to me Chris yes but in the u.s. it's like you have to be a little bit careful about what you say because people are very they're sensitive to that sort of thing you know it's like we're gentle we're just you know you come over here with your crisps and you're you your shoots in your darns and we're just like ah ya know if this is a safe place trick its guys love the safety it's very it's very different over here in Europe I told you a little bit of a bird kind I'm not going to go into it anyone listening who knows what furnace knows what I'm talking about but this would never happen in the US it's just what never happened this is what would get everyone would get arrested and it would be like front page of whatever newspaper you have the day opens like it's just yeah a lot of Germany's weird I mean in a good way but I'm getting I think I'm getting better but I have a feeling there's gonna be some swearing happening on stage at the google event coming from AJ and smart members which you know I'm actually gonna warn them because I've had to I've had to tell me down like I've really toned it down also for the podcast because I know a lot of people from us the US will listen a lot of one person okay now I'm not gonna go into the topic I think you know actually you did a really good job at the workshop though there's two days and I thought you dropped like maybe one one swear F by the whole time to the bomb that was pretty good I don't even I can't remember what it was but yes it was low it was it was a low figure of those that was that's impressive I mean really it's it I think it's okay I think people are okay with it you know yeah but they but there is a there is there's a the line is definitely different the line is not in the same place you know what I think it is and I think maybe correct me if I'm wrong but in the u.s. when I'm one-on-one with somebody and talking to somebody and I'm swearing they'll they'll get sweary right they'll kind of they'll just let it rip but I think everyone's concerned about the group everyone's concerned about like looking at in the group or seeming like you okay with swearing so when I speak at companies in the US you know I'm at the very start of my US career people would come up to me at the end and say hey that was really great and yeah and yeah but maybe next time you could tone down the swearing and I'm like I didn't even swear I've been what are you talking about that word is a swear word for you okay fair enough so yeah and it's funny because I every so often in our workshop last week I did I would stop mid-sentence really aggressively and changed the word I'm gonna say because I was just about to say you know well on the podcast I could say [ __ ] but immediately I every see you I could you know you would be like yeah so up next when you get the heard you just try to hold it back and then my kind of recoil yeah and then you would you would say the the prototype and it was exactly sort of weird but for the pain event I held it back for the free I did a free workshop on Wednesday night at we work and Soho I was just like spitting out all the backed up [ __ ] that I was holding back to was like people are just walking it now they were and I think they don't care if it's free all right so let's just actually jump into a topic that I think that people I don't know if they're listening to this podcast for product kind of talk or if it's just like random ramblings yeah let's maybe do some product so I had a I have a little I have a little subject to kick us off a little topic to kick us off and when you see me looking over here unfortunately that's the bad thing about it being a YouTube ready podcast is that you can see me doing stuff I've got like so much material around me right now it's just ridiculous but when I'm looking over here it's because I'm looking at my notes and the topic or at least the the thing I want to talk about is this tension between creativity in a design process or in a design team or in a company or whatever just the topic of creativity and how that differs from structure and routine and how this this there is this like tension and maybe I can kind of let's say kick it off with a little anecdote which you like you like characters don't you idea exactly so I mean for me at least now like when I started AJ and smart or when I started in the design world nine years ago when I was a little boy and I was really all for you know this like open creativity and I didn't want anything to block me and I didn't I really did not enjoy companies imposing processes on me at all because I was kind of a bit rebellious but as I started to grow the company as I started to grow these teams and started to figure out how teams worked I realized that you do need some structure right I think that you do need some basic processes to hold things together and one really great story or one really great example I was chatting to one of the guys from GE who was at the workshop last week named Roth negra David O'Malley actually he's a great guy but he was I was chatting to him about this and he was like there's a great experiment you go into a big field of course he's Irish as well so it's always related to fields you go into a big field you put some kids there I don't know I have the kids in the first place by the way let's just ignore that you put some kids in the middle of the field wide open field and you watch what they're doing right and basically this wouldn't work in America everyone would just arrest you immediately so you watch what they're doing and they just kind of walk around but they don't go very far from the center point you literally do this no you don't have to you literally get a feel that you just you get kids and put them in there I think that this is not something you should do but it's an experiment that happened it's an experiment that's an experiment ahead it's an experiment in Ireland where they don't have laws okay or not I don't really know how what happened date I don't know what this David Costa no but it's a really great example so you put the I think there were kids anywhere you put them in the field and you just let them roam free right and what happens is they tend to not really go very far they tend to kind of stick with in the middle it like in the middle of the in the middle of the field essentially and they don't go very far from the center point now you put a fence different kids we get let's get some different kids get rid of these ones now let's put some different kids in the field but we put a really wide fence around them this was way less creepy what he explained it to me though now you put a fence around these kids and they actually walk to the edges of their boundary that has been created they use a lot more of the space and they play in a lot more of the space and the point is that having some sort of structure and having some sort of limitations allows you some sometimes more freedom than you would give yourself if it was completely open get it I get it right perfect yeah okay so in this way and then another book I was reading at the moment is this discipline equals freedom handbook which I was showing you this big scary black book here and I think that I really do believe personally that having some form of discipline some form of routine within product teams and are within creative processes it doesn't have to be product teams it could be graphic design or brand or whatever just writing a book I really do think that it gives you the freedom to focus on what the challenges are what the problems are and you're not thinking the whole time about where the boundaries are and where what the process is right so that I all I agree with I'm 100% on board with that and that's the baseline however now this is where the tension comes in last week when I got back from San Francisco or this week when I got back from San Francisco I it was the first sprint that I'd done that I'd taken part of in a long time where I felt like I had kind of maybe depleted my creativity or somehow I just felt really it was it was for a really cool and brand that I really was exciting working with and I was just assuming like every other sprint that I would just jump into it and the structure of the sprint process would help me to you know pop out ideas like it always does now the end of the story is that it actually all worked out because we had so many people in the room and we were able to bring these ideas together and it worked great but I felt sure I do but my idea sucked really I really think that this week of especially of all the weeks I really felt like this this is this was a bad week this happens sometimes but I also feel like what it made me think and what it made me think about for the company of a Jane Smart when we're doing these Sprint's all the time is maybe we do need to introduce now that we've gotten so cold and so logical about building products maybe we do need to introduce some form of open creativity or well some way to let's say and here's another book I've been reading which has been the artists way by Julia Cameron and she talks about this idea for vibe but a much different way less dark but what I really like she talks about this filling the well like this filling the creativity well you know having like this well of things to pull from of inspiration to pull from and it's like a process you go through every week yeah and it just got me thinking like there is this definitely a tension between creativity and structure I often think that structure is the best way to go and it kind of produces creativity but yeah I don't know man I felt it last week I was like what have I done here and why isn't this a good idea because I wasn't happy about it what came out was great but it definitely wasn't because of me ya know there's a there's a limit to what you can in my opinion to what you can accomplish with with pure structure and that seems it's it's it feels funny for me to say that because so much of my time over the last few years has been trying to insist on people that structure would would set them free because it does structure does help you in most cases that's what people need they need the fence around the field so that they can get started and start playing and not huddle in the middle thinking like when is the dimi Gorgon gonna come out of the woods classic sense is gonna keep you safe but I just started watching stranger things that's why the reference now into this yeah you're very far behind everybody wife said well yeah but I think that the the thing that like one thing that struck me recently is well you know you mentioned we visited I do and I think that's a that's a group of folks who have really been you know intentionally thinking a lot about creativity over a long period of time and have developed a sort of culture of creativity and I don't know if you felt it but I feel it like when I go in the building there yeah sounded to me honest like from the outside I wondered with I do like how much of that was sort of this brand or this story that they had crafted versus like was it reality and I really actually think it is reality of having been exposed to it a bit more you go in there and you're like wow like they they have some kind of some kind of special thing and they and they I know are thinking a lot about the processes that you do to to refill the bucket and to draw inspiration I think what's challenging for somebody starting out in design is that you are starting off building products are starting off writing being artist whatever is that you you want to know what the right way to do it is and I think that we often like over optimize on creativity over optimize on like let's make sure we evaluate everything and let's make sure we don't constrain this process and this idea that we're not going to constrain it so that we can do the perfect artistic thing I actually think that's much more common and that's why yeah you and I like we did this idea of doing design sprints putting structure around it this is really helpful and liberating in most cases but if you go too far in the direction of structure then at a certain point you do need you do need just some like some inspiration which is I mean actually that's why I'm watching stranger things I'm after I finished this book I'm working on right now I have this idea for a science fiction book and I need some like I need some inspiration I need to fill up that well and so I'm you know trying to take more time where I do nothing and take time where I where I watch TV shows which normally like I intentionally think like watching TV is not a good use of time that's its it just like sucks your your free time away from doing other things but I'm trying to like carefully make room for the kinds of things I wouldn't normally do to to try to spark some of that stuff and try to make room for my mind to wander and it is important but I think that people shouldn't start by optimizing their because that's I think that's a way of where a lot of people lean but yeah be you know maybe some people are more like you know more rigid been processed from the start I don't like I had to work to get there I don't know any company that is very rigid and process you from the start I think that it's very it definitely leans towards the creativity side and and most companies that I help out their problem is that they have so much inspiration that they have no idea how to start something or where to how to translate that inspiration into a product and I think that I lean very very heavy and on the cold logical side of building products but I also do 100 percent yeah III I had the same feeling when I walked into I do by the way I had really secretly wanted to hate it I wanted [ __ ] because of course I do or you know another design agency that you could that's like that's like a thing I've because I felt like I'm trying to establish myself my own identity as a designer and I kind of wanted to say go to idea I would be like oh good I'm actually better than ever so like that's exactly that's like I think this is this feeling that you have inside and then you go and you're like oh no they're really cool yeah smart and I need to create work and look how fun it is here and look how much like they're throwing their heart into what they're doing and it's it's it's pretty cool it's also impressive because they've been they've maintained that culture for a really long time which I don't think is easy did you know I really hate that I learned from them I really I really disliked I dislike that it was such a nice meeting something Tim Brown would just come in and punch me and and I would be like knew I do sucked I knew it no it was really really cool and I definitely got I I've been to ideal workshops a long time ago but of course obviously this was them kind of doing workshops off-site or at conferences and I always really liked them and I always got a lot of inspiration from them but of course that's the surface level things right you're just seeing the here's what design thinking is and and here's again why Design Thinking is I'm like okay I get it but then I went into the their office and I was like [ __ ] okay these guys really know what they're doing and they really this is a this is a company that it has like harnessed creativity and turned it into a business it's very impressive one thing that I think is interesting about them is how good they are telling their story and talking about what they do and you know that they they're well known because of that and sometimes I think it's easy to become skeptical as people who are really good at telling their story you know is the story the same on the inside of this on earth and I think for I do you know it is and we go and you see like oh this is the same this is the same thing it's not an act yes is actually honesty this is what comes through is this honest and and they're also good at crafting it and making it clear yeah and that's kind of an interesting thing because I think there you know a lot of there they're probably a lot of companies that we we wonder like how how real how honest are they being in the way they talk about what they're doing and what they're up to we're sort of trained to be skeptical of of the intent of companies and and it's cancer these guys are cool I'm still skeptical because I don't want to like them no it's really great maybe we can get the Tim Cook on the show at some point I just cook so Mr Cook not even Tim just mr. cook like 100 percent wrong I actually found the idea that you're watching stranger things as a way to fill up the well it's obviously I could I could mock you about the fact that you're just making some [ __ ] excuse for watching Netflix like every so everyone else when they're binging on Netflix you know there that's clearly that's clearly what it is I mean it is it is definitely an excuse to do it all right but I also can feel that like it does yeah you know I think that watching so I'm writing I'm writing a book about with my with my my friend about my real friends not even afraid about about making time for things that are important to you right and it's one of the things that I was as I was working on the book I was researching how much time people spend watching TV per day around the world and it's crazy it's like four and a half hours a day in the United States on average but it's not that much less in Europe you know other countries are I think the UK is three and a half or more it's it's hard to find maybe like Sweden was in the like two and a half to like most countries are over three hours per day three hours per day it's it's so much time there's so much I could do with even part of that time so I'm always really really really like have gotten careful of of watching TV because I found that when I stopped watching TV regularly in the evenings I had time to write instead and so if I've written anything it's because I stopped doing that and that started to clear up some some time and and mental energy because if you're always absorbing other people's ideas you there's no room for your own ideas you can't do that all the time there has to be room for you to just be quiet be bored and create things but below a certain threshold I think he's you you stop gaining benefits from the quiet and from from being in your own head yeah and and it started to be it started to be really useful to actually see what you know other people are doing again and and and be up to date on it and yeah and it's and it is a great excuse to to watch it no but honestly one of my fate is like the products that I worked on this year that I'm most happy with a large part of the concept came from playing a game called titanfall you obviously don't know what titanfall is because you don't know like popular culture but it's a very cool it was a very cool and you've heard about half-life right I have okay yeah so it it was very famous for kind of changing the rules of how games work narratively and this game titanfall 2 came out and it was very focal essentially you are it's a first-person shooter where you have a giant robot that you can get inside of and a lot of how it worked in terms of the the story the kind of mixture of platforming and shooting and how it all worked with the achievements that you could unlock within that game it was just floating around in my head once I started working on this new product and it suddenly came back to me during one of the exercise in and I was just like oh my god that's like a perfect match for what we're trying to solve here they already solved it in this video game and I think that's a for me I I actually have to force myself to play video games which is a weird thing to say i procrastinate on playing video games I prefer to it's easier for me to just watch crap on YouTube then load up my playstation or Nintendo but I I'm forcing myself to do it now I actually forced myself this sounds so weird and sad I forced myself to finish the new Mario game I loved it I really really loved it but it takes me so long to get up the courage and to get rid of the procrastination to just turn it on and actually start playing but once I do I really end up taking a lot of the mechanics and the inspiration back into the product work and I think probably one of the reasons I was so drained for this sprint this week is that rather than taking in a lot of new information because we were giving so much we were doing so many workshops it was just like we were dumping information the the entire two weeks and obviously loads of traveling and obviously jet lag and everything still no excuse but I'm wondering I'm just like thinking I'm wondering now and what I've been thinking about today is how to within the structure of a Jane smart how to yeah somehow build in this inspiration sharing which is not just on the level of obviously whichever come every company does which is like the okay we post stuff on slack and everyone can look at it or we have like a once a month town hall where we tell you cool stuff I'm wondering if there's like a way that we can build it into the culture of a Jane smart that somehow you discover cool [ __ ] and you kind of are you know inspired by it I have helped you know one thing I mean I don't I don't have the answer to that although I can certainly I can certainly riff real time which is the intense race of Sprint processors brain strongly but what I what I do think actually is it and this is this is kind of ears off of like podcast territory and into like being just giving you like a candid feedback that's why my company you guys run too many Sprint's yeah you run too many you know and and they're actually you can't run a sprint every week or almost every week and not wear down that that creative part oh and here comes I think Flynn is coming in that's see that is lovely how it has brought me a coffee nothing but shame no it's great sorry go on you were insulting my running and posts yeah yeah yeah you can't I mean yeah so I know for I would you know I was talking to some of your colleagues about your sprint schedule because we were at the workshop and and they were talking about how I mean how many how many Sprint's have you all done and since you started doing sprints or in the last six months last year one thing you have to consider is that so not considering it I don't want to hear any runs two sprints per week in parallel every week and and yeah there are two product teams as well so we do try to give I mean the woods the way we're trying to solve that now is that we have a rotation system where people are rotated off the product team every three weeks and they have like one week to themselves but yeah it's still the week itself we're not sure exactly how that week is working and as you know with someone like Dee we rotate or off a sprint and then send her to San Francisco to run a big workshop so it's not really where we know that everybody is in quite a reactive state right now at AJ and smart and well I mean you guys are in you're in start-up mode you know you're you are startup yeah growing super fast and trying to get a handle on it and in my experience and it's not like I'm like a have like you know bazillion years of doing the same thing but when just because the designs for is pretty new yeah when I started doing it at Google and it didn't have like it hadn't quite caught on and I was really still trying to like convince people hey give this thing a shot I was probably doing it maybe once a month and then twice a month and so over the course of maybe a year and a half I did like 25 of them and then when I went to Google Ventures and we've really started to find out okay now I know how to explain it it's companies get it we were doing collectively like 35 40 a year for like two or three years they hit definitely hit this point where we I just had to dial back because it's so hard to get into a new problem every you know every week or two week so if you do three a month I think it's too much to be sustainable it's okay for like a couple years maybe but but it's really it's hard so I think the first way to get more to get more out of your team's created site to create more creativity is to just if you can like put few even put fewer people on Sprint's or do something so it just bounce back a little bit to give people a little more time to do other stuff and to have what we always tried to do at Google Ventures was to have these these like make time sort of weeks like a week where you're just you have time to create something and it doesn't mean you don't have like a day or two of meetings but but that week is it's a sprint or you know it's effectively there's a big block of time available to to me to dive into a writing project or for us to dive into working on the website or whatever it might be and that was that allowed us to feel like a different mode so part of what happens is just within the same mode all the time no matter what that mode is then you you're gonna get okay you're gonna get run dry on the great inspiration yeah I agree actually so at Google Ventures how did that work like was their roster you know like Jake is on week week off week on week on week off week and was there like was it explicit or was it rather oh I don't want to do a sprint this week it was just I don't want to do sprint this week I just said that every week yeah I was like you guys do it I'm just gonna sit back here and take well we had practically how we did it actually and I don't think this is really make sense for many teams necessarily but John and I were really into John's raske we're like we were in the same office we're really in Sprint's and we were just most often the two of us would would do sprint together and then whenever we could we would we would bring in we work with Braden we would work with Daniel we would work with Michael Kristen the other folks on our team but it was it was largely like we would sort of we wanted to do Sprint's as much as we could and again like kind of starting to become aware of there's a certain point where it's like diminishing returns and and then those other folks were also doing other things they were doing spreads but they were also like you know Daniel was also advising a bunch of companies on on their brand and their product and and like coaching founders and the same was Braden and he was you know helping teams with like some deeper projects as well so I don't know how that I don't know how to translate that to an agency accepted some people are more into sprints than other people and have more of like a you know an interest in just kind of doing it over and over again and that that does help I think that it brings up an interesting topic that came up a lot at the bootcamp so at the after party I talked I spoke to a lot of people who were really interested in learning more about what we're doing and they really wanted to tell us also what the problems in their companies were and what the like the product team level problems they had and a very very very common problem they had now that I think about it is similar to what you just said is that these people these designers and these product people are stuck in a perpetual not design sprint but they're perpetually stuck in these you know two-week a gel sprints producing assets and solving reactive problems that are coming from who they don't even know where these tasks are coming from but they're just constantly in reactionary mode and they have a very difficult very difficult time making any time to create something new for their products and this is not just some small companies this is also the larger ones who we all know they're having trouble with this too and they were excited about the idea that Sprint's could be a way to break this monotony and move them from a reactionary state to a state of taking action which is ironically the opposite problem that we have in a Jane smart but I think that that's a I guess that's a common it seems to be a huge issue in almost every company I've worked with over the last five years six years where they're saying you know what this is all great all these processes are great all these workshops are great but I have to fix this thing that's after being sent or I need to make this random button that now I need to make because new and new device came out and how do you think that I mean have you seen any great examples of comp balancing this reactive state which of course you have to be in right you have to make stuff yeah with this nonreactive state that I mean just just from my perspective the best example our companies who have adopted at least what we kind of recommend them to do is doing two week back-to-back sprint once every quarter just booking it in advance so that they're automatically out of this reactive state and doing that with different teams it tends to make the teams feel like they're a little bit more control but it of course that's something that a lot of companies are not going to do there's like a crazy engine set I'm sorry I just looked I was wondering if there was like a helicopter landing on the buildings here to you could you could you just start over with Wow something about companies I don't know no no but yeah I think well first of all I think there's kind of a funny thing because we we were talking in one of the previous episodes about how some people haters I call them just haters but they hate on the Sprint process because they say oh you're just just speeding you can't just you can't speed up design you can't speed it up and I think that it's it's funny because in in many many companies and companies are building great products even but in many companies that that like idealistic design process that those folks who want to dis about is not happening know you know it's it's just it is just constant reaction mode yeah and so there's you know there's kind of this like idealize thing of like oh well don't do that because what you should be doing is this sprawling like quest for creativity and design and and perfection and like that's I'm sorry that's not happening yeah or if you know and when it does it has its own problems but I think that what yeah what you're describing about like this the sort of routine I think we've seen a lot of where a company starts off a quarter say with a sprint or two Sprint's ideally and they've reserved two weeks at the start of every quarter to sprint do that first print find out where all of the polls are find out where the gap is between what they have in mind and what non-understanding in which they they won't in the first the first test usually and then they fix it in the second week and usually you see a dramatic improvement yeah kind of product market fit for the for the feature whatever as people learn like okay that's where customers heads are at that's where you know we'd sort of put our start to put our prototype together we're gonna make it better and usually the second week they they mail it and then teams who have a really good execution mode for the rest of let's save the quarter that's like a really good cycle because then it also it gives you I just touched the microphone that's okay but that's a really good that's a really good cycle because then the team is gonna if they can execute well they're gonna have confidence in a big thing and having confidence in a big thing and having enough of a head of steam to go do that big thing and take a while executing it is healthy I think actually we are so people say like waterfall process and everybody's like oh god that sucks what a what an old-fashioned terrible way to build things but it's not yeah it's not bad actually what's bad about it is if you do a waterfall process and you don't have a good idea you you know you're operating on a hunch that's not good or your plan that's not good because it takes a long time and once you're in that tunnel right but because people are like oh well we can't have a we can't have a spec we can't have you know we can't we just have to go fast we had a roof after break things and the trouble with that is you do get in this reactionary mode when there's always a sense that things can change things can trigger at any time it's hard to get to a high quality product so I think you're best off if you start off with it sprints you get some validation of your hunch or you find out your hunch was wrong you change directions but once you have confidence then you go into a longer process and then hopefully you have time during that longer process because you you know what shaped the product needs to have you have the time to dig in deep and do that more thorough just you know thinking get the get the quality there hopefully get inspired by things and do your best craftsmanship you know do great work and you know that's the products that most of us love they're the products that people spend time with each cycle of work that they do they spend some time doing it and it's not all a mad dash and it's not also all like a hunch and then just like marching on a hunch for years but it's combination of the two great I think that was a stunning answer and I think we can close the topic there and maybe I mean we're already after reaching a forty six minutes so I think we can actually end the podcast maybe with a recommendation from both of us of something interesting and I'm just gonna go for it at once you'll see what I'm talking about once I do it so two episode no three episodes ago in Episode one we spoke about a book called the power of moments and we can we mentioned that it was a great secret weapon for designers because it's not a book necessarily the designers are gonna be reading but the principles in it are amazing principles to use for building products these this getting in the habit of engineering moments for customers now this week I have another book I have another secret weapon and it came out of nowhere it just popped out of nowhere and I had it on my shelf honestly I had on my shelf for about eight months and I never even thought to read it I don't even know where I got it from I don't know who recommended it to me so sorry whoever recommended this to me but it's it's College say it was me it was me Jake so it's called radical candor I don't know how this is gonna be placed well anyway whether you're on YouTube or not it's called radical candor by Kim Scott and Kim Scott was a she was a manager at Google she thought management at Apple and she thought at Twitter and basically she's written the best book I've ever read on I know this doesn't sound interesting but its management it's about managing teams and giving good feedback the big the core of it is about being able to give good candid straight feedback without necessarily insulting people but also without cherry coding everything in a way that people won't understand what you're right what you actually want and I think as someone who manages and runs design teams all the time something that can be pretty difficult especially when you're dealing with design which can be seen as subjective I think it's been pretty difficult for me to be able to give design advice even after nine years of being a designer I tend to either lean a little bit too much on the nice side especially if I find the person scary who I'm talking to or I maybe go overboard and get a little bit insulting which obviously doesn't work either right it's it's the neither of these approaches work and this book even I'm only now where I'm always recommending books after reading the first 30 pages but this book I'm I'm around halfway through it and it's it's going into everything from just how does how to give great feedback meetings how to help people within companies grow and get better at what they're doing or people maybe who don't want to grow and want to just get better at exactly what they're doing right now and just how to identify different types of people on teams it's just really really really amazing and I think that if I had read this ten years ago before I was managing product teams I would have been able to receive and receive feedback better than I did back then and use that feedback in a way that actually was more constructive so I think that this book radical candor if you are in any way involved in products where you have to speak to people and take or give feedback even just reading the first like seriously the first 50 pages of this book it's just it's gold it's unbelievably good I also think the writing style is amazing it's it's one of the nicest written books I've I've read in a long time it's like cutting with a hot knife through butter I read like the first I read the first half of it in the first sitting and I was completely blown about what blown away by it so radical candor by kim scott huge recommendation and i went been talking about this all the time to make god you were texting me about it emailing me about it i don't know obviously probably instagraming about it smoke signal everything every means of communication and so I downloaded this sample on the Kindle and I started reading it in the same compression I don't even manage people and in fact how my career I've actively tried to avoid I've every time I got into a management situation I try to quit as quickly as possible because it's horrible to manage people but but I think there's actually good lessons in there for anyone yeah based on based on I should say reading the first ten pages so far since he told me about it but it is really good in the writing is is really really clear clean nice keeps you keeps you going at least in the beginning and you really sprung this on me this idea of having a product a secret weapon to share with people I was frantically looking around my desk yeah you think I but but then you gave me you gave me an idea while you were talking which was a secret weapon for everybody what I did not know when I set out to write a nonfiction book so sprint it's a nonfiction book oh it's a business book I haven't heard of that one oh you're selling yeah oh you know what I just I just so happen to have one right here yeah what a coincidence I heard it's a really bad book though like badly written but it's a piece it is a piece but I'll tell you something what I did not know that many people may know but I didn't know when I set out so we start writing sprint start talking to our agent about it if you're writing a fiction book a novel then you you got to write the whole thing and then you try to sell the whole thing to to a publisher based on if the whole thing is good or not but that's not the way it works with nonfiction if you pick up a business book like like this we didn't write the whole thing before the publisher agreed to publish it we wrote a proposal for the book and what the proposal usually is is the roughly the introduction to the book and then kind of a business plan for who the target audience is how we might market the book and also an outline of the book in detail you know like like in the first chapter this will happen and it talks a little bit about it now if you pick up almost any business book you will find that people have done what we