In this episode, Paul and Sean catch up with Ryan Rumsey just moments after his poignant keynote at the 2024 ITX Product + Design Conference. During his keynote and follow-up conversation, Ryan explained that the biggest challenges product builders face are people challenges, “deeply rooted in our own personal experiences and feelings.”

Ryan Rumsey is the CEO of Second Wave Dive, an on-demand strategic consultancy, and the founder of Chief Design Officer School, a learning platform for design leaders.  He is also the author of two books and – as conference attendees can attest – a captivating speaker.

Assess Workplace Power & Influence

Ryan also highlighted the significance of power and influence in the workplace, especially within the design and creative domains where his expertise lies. He pointed out that people in design roles sometimes lack influence within corporate structures, leaving them with a sense that their ability to contribute value is somehow diminished.

“We can’t really talk about any of this without talking about power. In this sense, we’re talking working inside of corporations, where power typically doesn’t reside with people who are more on the creative thinking, artistic, exploratory, empathy side of the spectrum,” Ryan says.

Reframe the Meaning of Value Metrics

Designers and creatives can escape this perception by reframing what it means to deliver value and be successful, Ryan adds. We need to shift the focus from traditional metrics like lifetime value (LTV) and return on investment (ROI) to the emotional and personal aspects of work, he explains, stressing that personal fulfillment and how we make ourselves and others feel are crucial in our professional journeys.

“For a lot of us, we don’t tend to see value through our own eyes,” Ryan comments. “Instead, we tend to see value in ourselves as others see value in us. So if the culture is of LTV and that’s not your domain, it’s really hard to feel validated in value if that’s not your love language.”

Prioritize the Human Element

When we prioritize the human element, Ryan offers, we begin to focus on the well-being, motivation, and development of individuals within the team, and we create an environment where people feel supported, trusted, and empowered to contribute their best work. But even then, individuals working alone have limits to what they can achieve.

Invite Others To Be Right with You

“That’s why I embrace the advice I received from a friend and mentor some years ago,” Ryan shares. He said, ‘Look, you know what you’re doing. You’re doing all these things that, you know, are right. But you can’t reach your potential on your own; you’ve reached the limits of your aloneness here. You need others to be right with you.’  And I absolutely felt that double entendre aspect of other people are right, too, just from different angles.”

You can also catch the episode with Ryan Rumsey in video on the Product Momentum YouTube channel!

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Paul Gebel [00:00:19] Hello and welcome to Product Momentum, where we hope to entertain, educate and celebrate the amazing product people who are helping to shape our communities way ahead. My name is Paul Gebel and I’m the Director of Product Innovation at it, along with my co-host Sean Flaherty and our amazing production team and occasional guest host. We record and release a conversation with a product, thought leader, writer, speaker, or maker who has something to share with the community every two weeks.

Sean Flaherty [00:00:43] Paul, what a great episode with Ryan Rumsey. I really enjoyed it.

Paul Gebel [00:00:46] Sean, that was one of the most human conversations I think we’ve had all day, and there have been a lot of really human conversations.

Sean Flaherty [00:00:51] There were. That’s definitely the theme of the day. Love recording these in front of a live audience.

Paul Gebel [00:00:56] So much more energy.

Sean Flaherty [00:00:57] He really engaged the audience. Yeah, I loved his style. His kind of slow and steady wins the race. Very patient.  Good delivery. Great podcast.

Paul Gebel [00:01:05] Yeah. And one of the things that didn’t come out so much in the conversation we just had, but one that was really clear on, on stage, I think is important to bring to those listening right now is there’s only two types of problems. There’s rational a relational right.

Sean Flaherty [00:01:19] And the relational ones are the hard ones.

Paul Gebel [00:01:21] You gotta do the work. Let’s get after it.

Paul Gebel [00:01:26] All right. So welcome, Ryan. We’re really excited to have you. I, really enjoy the talk that you just gave. Ryan Rumsey is an author, speaker, coach, CEO of Second Wave Dive. You’ve been sharing your journey for us the past, few minutes up on stage. And just wanted to recap for those catching up, just to some of the high points of, well, how feelings intersect with this journey we’re on as product and design professionals. In a few words, can you tell this conversation we’re about to jump into?

Ryan Rumsey [00:02:00] Yeah. I think for me, you know, the biggest challenges we all face are people, challenges. And, we tend to all come from different families of origin and have different backgrounds. And so, oddly enough, like our own ability to tell somebody no, in our regular life shows up in our professional life, too. And so, I think a lot of, what isn’t acknowledged, around work is how much of our self, our feelings are wrapped up around all those things.  So, yeah.

Sean Flaherty [00:02:40] Do you think that’s more, prominent in the design community?

Ryan Rumsey [00:02:44] I think we can’t talk about any of this without talking about power. And so, if we talk about power and influence, you know, if we’re talking working inside of corporations, power typically doesn’t reside with people who are more on the creative thinking, artistic, exploratory empathy side of the spectrum.

There was a wonderful podcast a few years ago called The Hilarious World of Depression, and it was a host who would interview comedians, comedians who are known to be humorous and joyful and whatnot, and how much they struggled with, their own self thought and whatnot. And I think there are similar themes that happen within the design community. Most people I know who are really, passionate about bringing value to customers, or working with people or interested in research, didn’t get into the work to think about OKRs and revenue and P&Ls.

And so, I think there’s a lot of feelings that come up when that starts to enter the fray. But I, I see it in product managers, too. I wouldn’t give it a label to a category or a title, really. Salespeople are certainly under a lot of pressure. So, I think it goes I don’t think it just belongs to one group.

Paul Gebel [00:04:19] Yeah. Well, you had a lot of great points that you shared. And, you know, being so personal, applying it as a reflection on your own journey. There’s so many points that I want to jump in on, from your walk with Jeff and just having a moment of self-discovery to the, the three kind of points of remixing and leading yourself and going down that path of finding that that unlocking yourself in that journey of discomfort, like the goal of a product isn’t necessarily to be the most beautiful or efficient or scope schedule, budget. It’s to kind of find yourself in the work. And we’ve talked about that a lot throughout the day today.

But it seemed to come home, most powerfully for, for me, when you’re talking about remixing your skills. We have this toolkit of product people and designers that are optimized for metrics. And the way that we value ourselves is based on whether those metrics go up and to the right. And the way that you kind of flip that on its head is it’s not about, LTV or ROI. It’s about how we make ourselves feel as part of the journey, how we make others on our team and, the end users feel.

So, I’m wondering if you can unpack that a bit more for us. It’s hard work if our job’s success depends on numbers to turn that into a feeling. And I’m wondering if you can help us reframe the reframing into a thought process to get us there.

Ryan Rumsey [00:05:50] I should first be very clear that this wasn’t like a conscious or even thing that I wanted to do. I had sort of reached my own capacity of whatever mechanisms that worked for me up into that point of being an adult, that we’re no longer working. And so, I just personally had no other choice but to sort of acknowledge that the way I was working, the way I felt about work was not working. So, I had to try something new. So, I just want to say that this is more out of like, grief and rage and, these types of things that, I would not have ever wanted to do these types of things. And I think when we talk about the importance of LTV or those types of things, these are all signals that are really indicative of a company being able to continue to be a company and make money to continue to do good things and pay for salaries and those types of things. But I think for many of us or me, I don’t want to speak for anybody else.

But in many of the conversations I’ve had, I think for a lot of us, we don’t tend to see value through our own eyes. We tend to see value in ourselves as others see value in us. And so if the culture is of LTV and that’s not your domain, it’s really hard to feel validated in value if that’s not your love language, you know, and so, you know, when you kind of become a people manager, there’s this topic that doesn’t come up a lot, which is suddenly the sense of responsibility that you have for other humans. In addition to this dual sense of responsibility for business and customers, that we don’t often talk about. Suddenly you’re, you know, you’ve been a parent. There’s this thing that isn’t written in the books of just this sense of responsibility that’s there. And, and you end up having lots of conversations like this that you didn’t know you were going to have, of people not feeling value in the way that they expected. And I think that’s more the case than not that, we expect something to be that, especially maybe with a promotion, every time we get a promotion, we expect it will feel a certain way. And then you get to the thing and you’re like, this is not what I thought it would feel like at all, that that becomes more of the priority, or more, in your face.

Sean Flaherty [00:08:45] Yeah. You mentioned most problems or people problems. I think this is particularly acute in the product space. Right. Because we got a bunch of people with bags of money giving it to us to build a thing. We hire a bunch of smart people that architect and build and design and product manage products, and they’re smart. And then we try to tell them exactly what to do.

Ryan Rumsey [00:09:10] Yeah.

Sean Flaherty [00:09:11] And when you try to tell smart people what to do, what do you think happens that doesn’t go well. And then and then we deliver these things, these products out into the world. What we’re really judged is the success of the product. The craft that we build, isn’t the people providing them money. It’s the users, right? Most of whom will never meet.

Ryan Rumsey [00:09:32] Right.

Sean Flaherty [00:09:33] So there’s a lot of people, there’s a lot of like intersections with people and all of that.

Ryan Rumsey [00:09:37] Yeah. There was you know; people talk about Apple a lot. What they don’t typically talk about is something that I experienced is Apple is one P&L. There’s no iPhone team. There’s no Mac team. It’s one P&L. And every capital investment that is made goes all the way up to the C-suite, which means as an employee, I was essentially paid, as like my salary to kind of be an incubator. And they were essentially treating my salary as the venture capital. And what we were then required to do was to partner with people from other functions to create business cases. And they would provide the investment in scaling of product and business and design that had already kind of been vetted and proven out.

Compare that to most companies where you have seven different business units, all with a GM, no shared OKR. And it’s you could say it’s product management all you want. But if the way the accounting works is that you have an annual funding cycle and you decide here’s your budget for the year, here’s $50 million. And then after the budget is approved you then do discovery. I’m sorry, it’s project management work. Because as soon as money is allocated, as soon as a budget is given, what does every executive want to do? They want to kill it. They want it to end. When you have a project, everything is now about the deadline. We want to make sure that it never goes beyond. And financially, it makes sense if you think about a P&L. And you have a top line of revenue and everything else is a cost. Well, a cost is fixed. They say that’s all we’re going to spend this year. And so, it makes a lot of sense. And it’s just one of these things that I got exposed to at Apple that I didn’t understand until five years later.  Well, no wonder the things that worked at Apple weren’t working here. And it has nothing to do with design or product management. It has everything to do with how the organizational model, how the financial strategy is set up. And I can’t move that as a director in a 33,000-person company. That’s not my role.

And so, in realizing that is where that’s where the remixing came as well. Okay. So now there’s these other sets of circumstances. How am I going to win anyway. And, you know, that’s where you end up going off script. That’s where your best practice doesn’t account for such things. But suddenly those formative skills that you have to understand people, understand needs, understand a market. I think one of the, for the product people. I’m sorry, but I think one of the more challenging phrases out there is product market fit just in the way that we say it. It insinuates that you make a product, and you get a market to fit it. Untrue. You analyze a market, and you make products and services to fit the needs of the market.

Paul Gebel [00:13:14] Yeah.

Ryan Rumsey [00:13:15] And it’s the same for working in-house. You understand the market of what’s happening around you, how the business is done, how is it structured, how decisions are made. And you tailor your services, your product of your running into house to fit the market need? Nobody’s going to know that it’s a best practice or not. They’re not going to know. Nobody’s going to know.

Paul Gebel [00:13:42] I want to jump over to, a couple of questions from the audience. We’ve got some good ones coming in and, a 1 or 2, that are circling around this idea. It’s probably going to take a little bit of setup for those who weren’t in the room during your talk, but you mentioned a concept. I don’t know if you meant it to be a tactic or stra-tactical. The idea was the rule of three and giving someone sort of three ideas. Two-part question –can you just kind of re set up what that meant in context. And how successful have you found that to actually be in practice?

Ryan Rumsey [00:14:15] So the rule of three is based on the idea that the smallest number to form a pattern is three. It’s really a communication tactic. So, what tends to happen with designers or product managers or researchers? We tend to talk a lot when we’re nervous. When we’re anxious, we tend to talk a lot. And if you’ve ever been in any conversation and you are giving a review and it’s an hour review and you are 45 minutes in and people still don’t understand what you’re talking about, the rule of three is a way to see if you can become clear and concise, using a pattern in a way to see if somebody gets the idea. I was using the rule of three when it comes to who I give my emotional energy to, because if I invite somebody to be curious with me, if I validate them and speak plainly, and I give them three shots to “adult” with me, and if they aren’t able, I’ve done my “adulting,” I’m not responsible for their “adulting.”

And so why I say the rule of three is just to say I’m going to give it a legit shot. Three is a pattern enough that I need to do, and I don’t have to adult for everybody in the room. And, I can say this now. I’m independent now, but there are lots of people, no matter their titles, no matter how much power or responsibility they have, who will show up like their 13-year-old self, who will stomp on the ground and be upset because something isn’t happening. And if you give a good shot and you invite them to be curious and they aren’t able to – I typically refer to them as like late majority adopter. They’re somebody who held on to their BlackBerry until 2017. They’re not an early adopter of the change that you’re trying to initiate, and that’s okay. But what it also means is they’re not ready for your level five, you know, craft. They’re not there yet, but a two is still going to help them.

Paul Gebel [00:16:45] Sure. Quick follow up that that’s also included in it in a question or two here is do you tell people when they’re on that third opportunity, do you tell them what year is that a part of the conversation? Or is that all internal part of your mental checklist?

Ryan Rumsey [00:17:05] This is me personally. This is my perspective. I first and foremost have to make sure that I do no harm. And there’s great power in words and telling somebody that they’re not adulting. I don’t care who you are. It’s super powerful and it creates harm. I have to also understand that I am still committed to the relationship. One of the major differences that we you know, we get lots of these frameworks that come from consulting and academia and venture capital very different than the in-house relationship because in-house somebody is not paying you a seven-figure check to give an answer that even if you have a difficult moment, you still have to be in relation with them. You still have to make sure that there is trust. And so, it’s mostly for me because I also have worth. I have to ensure that I’m upholding myself and my own values as well. And so, the rule of three is more so that I can go home and look in the mirror and say, I’ve done a good job. You know.

Paul Gebel [00:18:12] It’s empowering.

Ryan Rumsey [00:18:14] Who believes in the basic rights of humans, human intrinsic rights? Hopefully everybody. Everybody has the right to say no. And I have to respect that. Just like I will say no. But I also have to ensure that my emotional energy is spent where I need it to be. Because we mentioned in the talk the eight C’s, if I am not feeling calm or connected with somebody, I am not in a place to learn and to grow or to facilitate somebody else’s growth. If I am timid, if I’m tense, if I’m touchy, I have the eight Cs of self-sabotage. I’ve just made those up for myself. If I have any of those, I know that I’m not valuing myself in the way that I need to. Again, I’m 50 – this is not how I operated for a long time. This is like me going through lots of stuff.

Sean Flaherty [00:19:18] Building.

Ryan Rumsey [00:19:20] I’m pretty chill now, but this is not how it was working for a long time. And so, I just want to mention that, you know, if you don’t have to show up on Monday, like, there’s no pressure to do this.

Sean Flaherty [00:19:36] Yeah. Kind of reminds me of, James Carse. A lot of what we’re talking about. You know, when you think of product, products exist to solve a problem, and those problems are out in the market. In theory, they’re always there, but they can always be solved in a different, better way, like there’s always some other, better way to solve it. And James Carse talks about infinite games versus finite games and the game of product, so to speak, is should be more of an infinite game.

Ryan Rumsey [00:20:09] Absolutely. We mentioned before, projects are meant to die, right? Those are meant to live. Products are meant to be cared for. I think that’s a major component that a lot of industries just aren’t there yet. Like, if you talk about early-stage startups, they kind of get it.

Sean Flaherty [00:20:30] Yeah.

Ryan Rumsey [00:20:32] But if we’re talking about transforming a 150-year-old industry that is still relatively new, we’re still very new in this game. You know, you also mentioned, the idea of product and meeting a need. And we all have our own biases on what quality is. But if we take two companies, again, like Apple and Dell, how many in the room think Apple is superior quality and all the stories? I’m sure people would raise their hands, but we have to remember that Apple made the intentional decision to win in the market, to choose to win through superior product, through high quality, high-cost products with beveled aluminum and closed systems. And Dell chose to win through price and supply chain. And yet both have very satisfied, happy customers and both have employees that enjoy working there. And both are billions of dollars of company. Right. And so, there’s I think this notion of product too, that they’re, you know, product or design that there’s kind of this, you know, sexiness to it that is only relevant to one type. Everybody tends to gravitate towards, like high-quality and whatnot.

But, you know, if I were to ask everybody in the room, have you ever bought something because it fit your budget? Every one of you have said yes. Is that not human-centered? Is that not high-quality? Is that not good product? Absolutely is. And that’s, I think, a conversation that we need to have more of that there are infinite ways or six ways to Sunday to deliver, build, have meaning and ensure that the customer has that meaning too. And we just don’t tend to talk about it, especially in tech. We just don’t tend to talk about that.

Paul Gebel [00:22:37] Yeah, I think we just have time for 1 or 2 more questions and one more of this popping up aligns with one that I wanted to jump on to. I believe this question is related to the conversation you have with Jeff. And the quote that you gave was, to learn how to invite others to be right with you.  I’ll go back to John’s talk at the beginning of the day about double entendres. And when you first read it, I heard it as learn how to let others be right with you, like, be there. But I think you meant it as learn how to let others be right with you. Yeah. So, I, I think both work, but both work. How did you mean that and how did Jeff intend it? What was that moment about?

Ryan Rumsey [00:23:20] Jeff really meant it in both ways. Okay. First, he filled up my ego quite a bit, and he said, like, you know, look, you know what you’re doing. You are capable of things that, you know, you are right.  And then I think when he was saying that quote, he was saying the other part of that, which is you can’t be alone, you’ve reached the limits of your aloneness here. And so it absolutely felt that double entendre aspect of other people are right, too, just from different angles. My boss, who was buying a refrigerator on Amazon, was right from a certain perspective. And so, but I think it’s more so the relationship side.  Which is, you don’t build great products, you don’t build great anything. You tend not to have meaning in life by yourself. Biologically. We were not sort of evolved to do that. And so, I think the second one is the more relevant one which or maybe the first one to be right. They’re both good to walk alongside.

Paul Gebel [00:24:36] Yeah.

Sean Flaherty [00:24:37] Reminds me of the first rule of improv.  ‘Yes, and’. Fastest way to kill comedy is with a no, right?

Ryan Rumsey [00:24:45] That’s right.

Sean Flaherty [00:24:46] It’s humanity. Yeah. Well. Thank you. This has been a great conversation. Do you have any books or anything that you’re reading today that you would recommend to the audience?

Ryan Rumsey [00:24:55] I’m rereading The Fault in Our Stars. I have, a 15-year-old and a 12 year-old, and it came back up again. I’m on vacation right after this, and so I hope there’s a lot of reading next week that has nothing to do with work, at all. I don’t want to read another process.

Sean Flaherty [00:25:21] The real meaning of life.

Ryan Rumsey [00:25:23] So that’s what I’m reading right now.

Sean Flaherty [00:25:25] All right.

Ryan Rumsey [00:25:26] Yeah.

Paul Gebel [00:25:26] Ryan, I want to take a minute to thank you. Thank you to the audience for submitting these great questions. It’s been a really powerful conversation. I know you’ve unlocked some things. Just seeing some of the eyes light up around the room. Some light bulbs came on. So I really appreciate the time you took to chat and unpack this a bit more with us today.

Ryan Rumsey [00:25:40] I really appreciate it. Thank you all for being here and being attentive like it makes a difference.

Sean Flaherty [00:25:48] Does right.

Ryan Rumsey [00:25:49] People give you energy back. Zoom does not do that. And so, very, very appreciative of you, for being here and making me feel comfortable. And welcome.  Thank you.

Paul Gebel [00:26:03] Cheers, Ryan.

Paul Gebel [00:26:13] Well, that’s it for today. In line with our goals of transparency and listening. We really want to hear from you. Sean and I are committed to reading every piece of feedback that we get. So please leave a comment or a rating wherever you’re listening to this podcast. Not only does it help us continue to improve, but it also helps the show climb up the rankings so that we can help other listeners move, touch, and inspire the world just like you’re doing. Thanks, everyone. We’ll see you next episode.