Hey there. Welcome back to the hustle podcast Today I'm joined by Dina Williams is Prock, designer of fun size. And today our guest is Brian Peterson, former design director at Fun Size. And he just recently left fun size. He's about to move to Chicago to explore some new adventures. And today he stopping by fun size for one last time before he moves. Before he was about to do a Web flow presentation. So thank you so much for stopping by right before you're about to give a presentation

right before talking of stamina. This is a test.

How you guys doing

today? Good. Yeah, I'm doing really

good. So actually think both you guys, Deena's actually planning the web flow meaning in Brian's presenting. So they're doing this, like, right before they have to do that. So that's super cool, you guys. Thanks for doing

it. We're just crushing some dry ice outside for some for some flow from far.

Yeah. Ask Brian to tell you the story about the time he got a part of his body stuck on dry ice, maybe e connect with him on Twitter and asking questions. So today we're actually gonna be talking about designing, intent and gold setting, which is something that Brian is very passionate about if you're talking about this a little bit last night. So before we get into the topic, why don't you take a moment to disinter? Introduce yourself?

Yeah, so, like you'd mention I've had the pleasure of working a fun size for about two and 1/2 years. It's been a wild ride, and that's been going from Oregon Startups. Enterprise do a little bit of strategy work, doing some workshops and design sprints, but ultimately kind of focusing on just like how do we make like better products? So that kind of journey started at a start up for about three years before fun size. And before that, I concentrated may be on more like animation illustration work and kind of found that that type of work was a little bit shallow for me, where it's like, you know, I like doing the process of it, but once it was Donna's down, an idea product is kind of exciting, but that kind of movie into tech and now I've kind of worked in the front tires have been great cause I followed the hustle podcast treats me,

and I've actually had the pleasure to work with Dina Williams on projects when I first started, which is amazing, and now it's it's kind of fun to be full circle. So first time caller, long time listener.

Yeah, it's in history. That's how we that's how we got toe know each other. That's gonna Well, it's also kind of wild, you know? You know, if you were working with Dina a lot when you first joined now you know you're leaving. Oh, it's sad. Let's not talk about it. All right? So let's go. Let's get into the exciting stuff here. Let's get it. What is it about this topic that motivates you? Like what? What what are you interested in designing with intent and the idea of, like goals?

I think the big thing is face value had probably seem like from people from fun size of Jack O'Brien's always talking about goals, how to do projects. How weak, unlike kind of learn from these frameworks. But auto that came from experimentation of of me, starting out like not having like a formalized kind of design department and trying to think like how do you work with other people in the start up when no one is a design background? So how do you make your own goals? How do you make sure that you're working towards something? How do you make sure that you're achieving things and staying interested in curious? So I think for me I struggled with that a lot because I was a little bit more high level, just always jumping at the next shiny car. So the idea of theirs sometimes that you back up and you feel a little lost in the middle of that, and it's because of usually, even if you don't have a high level goal or something you're directing towards. You're like, What am I actually doing right? Kind of gives you a little panic,

and I think that's maybe the first case and goes through trial. And error is a lot of reps that I've got in, like messing things up and doing it terribly. And then also their time is like, Wow, that helped me more than I thought so, being able to share that with people and I think that it's the same way people talk about communication, they caught like a soft skill, and I think gold setting kind of takes the the bench on a lot of stuff. But in reality that impacts like the quality of work, that you make the quality of the time that you spend around with people. And I think that's with projects and with your internal stuff keeps people like, jazzed up and, like, you know, pumps the life and the things.

And without the blood, it kind of dries out right. So I think that's what it started personally. And then now I started realizing the best impact on people is not sitting behind somebody shoulder and saying like Move this to there to there but also being like, Hey, how could we like, How could you level up in like, the week in two weeks in a month and 1/4 in a project, and the work that comes out when someone feels like they're doing that like, is a win win for everybody?

There's there's so much here You said something in a second ago that I'd even even think of, and then what you just said I thought was interesting because Brian and I were having a conversation the other day and he was saying, like, You know, it's usually not, You know, someone's not We gonna leave the company based on their super that What was it like?

Oh, people usually leave because of their direct supervisor, not the leadership,

right? The person that's direct, they're working with directly, right? So, like planning goals and showing someone that they're achieving those goals, it creates inspiration and motivation. And, you know, I think that's that's

awesome. I don't know which I'm not. I'm not leaving fun size because of that. But no, I had to say, for the concept of that is regardless you feel like you're a manager or not. I know there's like a a key word, but my first move into doing more like design lead items, you realize that you're impacting a lot of people's work and I've been like Deena like you're you're focusing on your craft. You're excited to, like, learn and do those things. But if, like, you could do a project in like something like flats, right? And you're like,

What am I doing? This is just like going towards what I want like that that you start Thio. I thought it was a big responsibility that, like you're driving, what task people are working on, right. And if I don't know what you wanna do, why am I can't guess right and reviews on mine. How do you feel about what? Well, setting. Well, yeah, I guess I'm just trying to think like I know someone like I definitely like a huge checklist person like, So I like, I was,

like, really minute goals valiantly cross off with. And sometimes I catch myself also setting goals that are, like, way to general and way too vague. But there's no practical steps that you can take to get there like, Oh, I just wantto get better at design like something that's just so like so that you have to find, like, a balance of, like, finding steps along the way, but not getting two minute, but also getting two generals like How do you kind of help people figured that out, like without being either either spectrum. I think that works to a lot of the questions,

like what? What makes a great goal in a lot of stuff and on my wife, like she does smart goals, and that's a pretty like stuck thing. And when someone starts in for third grade, like they say, like, Okay, we're going to make a certain amount of smart girls and smart sensor s a specific M iss measurable. A is achievable. Can you actually do it? R is relevant. Why is this a goal that I want to do? And what's the time bucket that I want to do? And like, we experimented with this idea that,

like setting a goal that means that this goal is that attached to a larger goal. It's not just like, hey, this week, I want to do this, But like, what is that actually leading to you for your like to equal right and like and breaking those things down? That goals can also be different because you can you can flex with him, cause goals should be our obedient and serving you not the other way around. Right. So if you want to change, you change it. But I'd be curious of like would have been your biggest challenges for, like, a minute and the large Do you think it's just kind of focused on something? Yeah.

I mean, let me all use an example that's not actually design really be like when I, like, try to learn like languages like French. It'll be like, Well, obviously the big goal is be fluent in French. But like I always forget to set the small goals of, like how that actually happens then, like so that if I do work like a new designated, just random like stuff like, I study for a little bit here in there and I don't see like progress because the goal is so big, like you can't possibly. But if I said like smaller things like Let me finish these lessons that I found online that I can see progress because like, oh, I finished it Or like,

let me learn how to use one thing. Oh, I finished. That's like I think that's kind of where the minute ones like I get more sucked into doing those cause. And I can feel that progress more like first List says, Make a list and go awesome. That's amazing.

Especially for someone like you. I mean, you're always working on something like you're you're you're learning French and you're all the same time you're learning Korean and then you're you know, you're learning about design systems, and you're like learning how to plan a Web flow meet ups and you're learning out of, like, even do things like this. Like it probably does seem crazy when because a lot of those goals probably take a very long time for

documents you don't check away. You're doing document. You use any tools for this? Like I've been using this thing called, like plan. That kind of like it'll show like a progress bar. And I love progress. Yeah, I think those things are important, but most of it's just saying, Like what? Like standard mechanisms that you just write down, Like like like checking on, like every week, just taking I mean what it takes, like a couple of minutes to say. Like,

today Did I do something that I wanted to dio to re gold to a week and at the end of the week? Or to spend, like five minutes on like a Friday? Like I said, reminders just on Syria to be like daily. Do your 31 talk about three things. You improved on two things. You're happy with, one that you won't improve and then on end of the week and end of month. Say, like, are you still on track and like that helps me decide, Like if I'm still on track, keep on going. But if I'm not going towards that, maybe I should change my higher level goals and really doesn't take a lot of time.

It's just those mechanisms that I think are hard, like, it's easy for us to get stuck in routine and like I'm gonna gonna do, do, do do. But like, it's easy to be like when you get those paralyzing moments right. He's got all the time, like, really big goals and also no, do something and be like, Oh, man, I'm nothing. And then you come like freak out all the time. Yeah,

I like I like like you said that doing like basically, like many Retros because I'll do that were like at first I'm like, Okay, so my goal is to fluent Korean by August so I could talk to Jimmy's parents and, like, when that is that realistic, that's would be well, that too. But you have, like, I'll set the goal, but then, like if I don't, I'm like, Okay, well,

let me do, like, all set, all set the list of things like let me do, like, three lessons every day And then, like not realizing that's not even practical or realistic. And then when I don't do that, I'm like, I don't think like, Oh, the routine isn't working for me. I'm like, Oh, I'm not working for me You know, like when it's like,

Oh, we maybe you should re evaluate and think of like You can always change thes Maybe that one specific thing isn't working for you. Like someone told me That device recently is like If you set the goals and you said the thing and it's not like working for you, just change it to something that doesn't work. You don't have to, like, just cause you said it first. You also like, agile lt's type stuff. It's like the only value of a plan is planning, not the actual plan. So the idea of a routine is like I've seen like, really strict frameworks. I've seen really loose framework sightseeing in like different people do different things. Someone's like auditing and making graph. Somebody's don't doing that and ideas like it's pretty much more about just what works and an idea of just making a plan gives you more intent.

Just making sure that whatever you're doing is doing something right. And a lot of people, I think when you're not, you get to a point where all of a sudden you do do a retro like once every three months to yourself and you like I'm I'm stuck right and it's like That's not, You know, you could break those things down slower and slower, but feeling like what works, and it's just like the learning growth, right? But I feel like that what you mentioned for, ah, those retro XYZ like theirs. It's not a coincidence that, like also on projects and what I'm like really hard core about goals when we talk about things. But also it's like we do retro sze. We don't do wretches than directories like every two weeks,

even if it's like something like 30 minutes and we're done in five minutes. Now you do retros because think about what's happening and thinking about how you're working. It kind of works on both, and it's like it's like a two for one deal, right?

So we talked about. You know what makes a good goal? We talked about it a little bit like, you know, personal, go creating. But what has been your experience in gold planning in a professional contacts like, Why make goals for projects? Why make goals for individuals that you're working within the professional context? Like Why? Why is that important?

It's a great question, and I'm probably gonna use an example of Doctor. It's the startup that we worked at with Chanel, which is, was an amazing owner of that business, and and luckily he had done something before, and he was very conscious of how destructive things and as a lawyer is very diligent. And I think the biggest thing that we took away from that project, which is valuable, is saying like, What do you want? How do we help you turn these into achievable goals? How do we make sure that we mitigate and go away from his much risk is possible. So it's like a like What do you want to get done at the end of this engagement? And then the first question is, is that feasible or not? And if so,

then it breaks down So for us to meet that, like, how do we break those down into sub goals? And then within those sub goals, how do we do even more? And that helps you. Just in two weeks, everybody gets like, pigeonholed and gets really excited about something. Then you realize instead of using hoping that pivotal or or gear are some sort of swim lane board shows you that you're behind, like it has to be a mechanism from the team and people communicating because tools not gonna fix that. So it's like, Hey, while we're doing this and we're missing our goal and like, those retro mechanisms help you where it's like OK, well,

were further. And if you want to change this, we can change this. But I just want to make sure that you're happy at the end of this right or we're doing goals that are important to you and like help creating those goals because the output is just it's a product of that, right? It's not that that comes from good goal setting and making sure we understand it

properly, right? Yeah. I mean, if if you're gonna try to do a good job for someone the least you could do is have a conversation, which a lot of this isn't and document and write like a lot of this is just like documenting things said that, you know, like you have context of what you're doing in. It's also very common for goals to change very often, right? We're talking about this again last night. It's like usually when things go off the rails for when they're successful, it's probably because individual teammates between themselves and maybe with our clients or other stakeholders are constantly talking about that. What are these goals are a baseline? Are the are these thing? Are these things change right and constantly setting that and like that, you know,

But I don't I don't know, like it seems obvious, but I think that's a big That's a big difference in like a like a a junior senior person in mind. Like the cottage here. People don't aren't wired to think that I don't know. Maybe that's not a right way to talk about it, like it's obvious that you should just be taught reevaluating

goals constantly. Yeah, I think it's just what's the intent of asking like That's especially different when you have someone that's more interesting, like an icy track to versus, like a ah, management and leadership, Try or not, leadership management track is setting the context of that. It's like, should they actually be doing that every meeting, if that's not a long term goal for them? Like, ideally, I I'm biased, but I think everybody having some sort intently bring more value, and it's very low bandwidth to do that. It's just hard work to keep on doing it frequently.

But I think the idea that the difference between you know, starting out and more experience it's more of just realizing, man. I could have spent a fraction of the time that saved me so much heartache. So I'm gonna try to do this as early as possible, less of like someone's wired or not. It could just be very. Luckily, in a lot of cases, things just haven't blown up right, and you're like, Oh, well, I don't need to do that And things worked out and that could be from a lot of good natural, like obviously everyone here infront size like pretty cool to talk with, and we have like great clients we have great projects like that is both a blessing.

But also, you know, that's that's tough for someone to be. Okay, we want to be a little bit more intense and about how we document. But really, like, everything's going really, really well, because we have a good sauce is right. But, like, just small little tidbits, and I think documenting. I know I've sent you and other people like pages and pages of documentation. No one actually reads that again.

But the act of documenting that was the intent of thinking. Are we still on the right course? Right. You could You could write that and then instantly throw it away. And that was valuable for the project was gonna read that, right. But

people have to be willing to, you know, surface that like that. Like, are there these gold still accurate or, you know, Yeah, you're totally right. Like someone that's it's on the icy track often relies on their leader manager to tell them when the goals of because their value

is like, Hey, like, I'm a heads down and craft, right? Because everybody, I think Ethan had this great sign director here. I mean, the way he breaks down these problems is so logical, and we're talking about something with like, peoples of time. It's like everybody is the same amount of time, right? Like everybody has the same on ours. Everybody has the stuff and the only difference between someone that maybe is starting out or the somebody that's like maybe a bit more like air quoting like experience is just realizing. Like, what?

What? How much time am I doing on something that has impact and how much time I do it and something that doesn't? And there's sometimes that, like I could do five or six different prototypes that, like forget 60% of other stuff that move forward the meeting by, like, you know the goals by a week, Or I can make one and then focus on something a little bit more craft oriented when it doesn't need to be. And I just spent two hours on that right? But like when you present no one, no one looks at that and you need to think about who you're talking to. What are the goals of the time period? Because they're also another side words. Hey, we don't want versions We just want, like we want someone to do craft stuff like I'd assume for the design system stuff from you.

Dina is like Now we need we need to think about like how these things look from a style standpoint and like that needs that fine craft, right? And there's just knowing what recipe like If someone wants pizza, you're not gonna come in and cook like bratwurst, you know, and you have to think about like, who's eating at your restaurant? And I think that's intent. That kind of goes under the umbrella

of intent. So what? What is what does it mean to you to work with intent?

I would I would just say, thinking like, What am I doing? What is what is the definition of value in the thing that I'm doing? And it's a little bit Sometimes I think the great thing about working in like a client service is is that the the presence of it being part of the team, but still being someone from like a very high specialization coming in, you have to validate that you have to be able to articulate that to someone that might not fully understand or be exposed to that. So it's a lot of times where you have to tell intent on a weekly basis of being like this is what value we're bringing. And I think that is a good muscle. The train. I think I want to be consciously broad with same way we do Kickoffs and someone's like Brian, what do you want to do for what's your goal for the projects, like I want to bring value like I'm not going to say, like, I want to do good research, rowing to do good strategy on it. I don't know if the project needs that,

but you kind of go inflexible and you keep again something Ethan said. Really well, in one of those French like Keep the Funnel is broad is possible when you start, so it allows us to like not like shut doors. So I think intent is just being conscious, maybe intended just being conscious of what you're doing and like, that's the first case because it's it's never the same. Doesn't make sense. Yeah, absolutely makes sense. So then what does it look like if something like you're on a team that doesn't have intent. I think what happens is the dangerous thing is like things don't break right away, right? Like that's That's the hard part is that if you had decent communication and and maybe without intent, you don't see the damage until I don't want to damage. You don't see things the the product of that until,

like, weeks later. But like when it's weeks later, you like, burned three weeks, right? And that that's why it turns like, really, really bad. So I feel like intent is the hard part. Two is being diligent on intent. You don't see the direct. I don't go into a meeting and, like, type a bunch of stuff and ask about priorities every time, most of time.

Probably people are like, man. Okay, a little bit rigid on some stuff, but you don't see the wind right away. So the opposite is like if you don't a team without intent could look the same, but I think it's it's it's thinking about the overall. If you think of a project and engagement really stretched out, that's where you start seeing it and you really have to expands into question. Yeah, it has to be probably like broader. Been like Oh, I just need a prototype. It's like the more the big thing is, I think is like putting accountability on people that are making the decisions is probably like a more tactical thing of without intent. If you're leaving a meeting and not saying like so it sounds like you're saying this this and this That's still what we talked about for the goal for this week and next week.

So we're good. But can you confirm that? Or if something changes Well, hey, you said that the goal was like next week or this quarter to do this, This seems changing. Are you giving me approval to do that and then having some sort of documentation? So at least one that happens down the road and someone's like, which luckily we've never had cause I think things worked really well cause we got a good sauce here, and I think we're diligent about a lot of like structures and in different ways. But it kind of goes the point where if something does change like man, we're a little behind schedule or I kind of wish you has done this after meeting or something that they leave. It's you can say like, Well, three weeks ago or two weeks ago, we talked about this and you gave us.

That proves you're right. Okay, cool. And that's kind of like the equal shared responsibility of a relationship, right? And that's like a trust building, regardless of its good or bad. It's like a trust building, because then it's just you just recalibrate said It's your question. Yeah, yeah, so that can you tell me a little bit about like the project charter that you were reading? I really like that idea. Like I've just like getting up beginning and then always changing it and making sure, like, ever on the design team knows,

like, not just like what The goal is for the product that we're working with, but also like what our goal is to help that team and then what? The goal is to help our design team. And like I mean, I think again the act of just having the charter is probably the most valuable just for the kick off. I'm back and forth, and it pains me to say this that, like sometimes you don't need to like be super diligent on a charter or not, but the value of a charter is toe have something in the beginning of the project. And maybe every time you switch to say, What are your rolls or Who do you talk to? Our what? Our goals, what? Our measure of success.

So at least it's something to do because I've done both side of the coin where some people require you re check that every like, a month or two or even closer vacations like two weeks and other times, you know, a year and 1/2 charters gonna fall off. But that thing was instrumental toe be a temporary bridge for the just

journey. Yeah, I think What? The reason why we started questioning doing charters at fun size was when we hit that point in time where our design team doubled in size and our client that our clients got astronomically bigger and the problems that bigger and we realized okay, we have way more people collaborating on projects. We want to make sure that everyone understands like the basic thing, so they know how to add value. The client is hiring us for this reason. This is why they're thing matters. This is how we're going to approach it. This is our assumptions thes air the risks. These are the people and you know it from the director level. Could say, Well, this is how I'm gonna use the people that we people could understand what's expected them. Are they expected to go deep and explore? Are they expected to move fast?

Are they expected to create a process or follow a process? How old success be measured, right. If you don't do those basic things, you could end up with a bunch of people with a different definition of all these things. It's it's basic alignment creation. I think I agree with you after after that point. It's almost like a mission briefing from, like, military. Right is the mission brief. We're gonna go invade. Here's how we're gonna do that. But then, once it's in action, once the mission's in action,

that feedback should be delivered real time. Hey, it's a different. Yeah, you know, like we're changing course for a change, of course, but you know what's also really interesting related to things like this? I was on a that that Facebook panel that was you were there, right? Do you remember that guy from IBM? His name. But he was talking about social contracts. That's it's not necessarily like goals, but its moral eight inch. Have you heard of this?

Like IBM, they called social contract and essentially, what it is is a team sits down in a room and they say, Here's how we're gonna work together, right? We're gonna be We're gonna start work at this time. And at this time, we're gonna We're gonna use these tools. This is how we're gonna conduct critiques. This is how we're gonna handle disagreements and they sign it and then, like, they will hold each other accountable for it. Yeah, and then I

think it's kind of interesting. I think the act of just looking at these things is there not the value is not the artifact, right? It's a product of a good cadence, right? It's probably good kings howto work together and because when you're seeing a social contract, I'm going right away toe like a project that I got to work like Lindsay and Paige. And the first kick off that we did was internal Be like, hey, what goals do you wanna work? I shared the Katie Dill levels of recognition. Like read this and then let me know. How do you want to be recognized? And then also driving from a leading standpoint is saying, like, these are the things that I want to work on and like weekly being, like,

What? What can I be doing? More of what company? Unless of I think that's a social you could you could drive a social contract anyway. But it's also like saying, Hey, here are like, How you how you push code? But if that's not enforced and that's not like driven by action of the team and by whoever is leading, I think goes back what you said for like the or we talked about for, like the you lied because if your direct supervisor is like, that stuff comes from action and the artifacts are great.

But some pixie active sitting down and having the conversation.

Yeah, and that's the value. The artifact I would out almost imagine that those artifacts, like lose value like a car Susan drives on the parking lot is gone. But like the fact of you sitting there and having that Gideon is great. Well, yeah. Okay. At least I have an idea of, like, how this critique should worker. Yeah, that's great, man. That's a

a different area goals. And this is this is something that I've always really found inspiring. And you because I'm I'm wired this way. Like I like to work on goals for people, right? I mean, it's part of my job to do that and used in you and you and you've been do it. You've been doing this for a while. It fun size even before, even before you. Even before you got a promotion, we knew you were doing it. And I think it also seems rather obvious that a design leader should be doing that. But I talked to a lot of designers that other companies whose leaders do not do that for them, you know, like, how should a design manager work with a designer to create goals for individuals? Then how do you negotiate an individual's goals with the with the project goals and make him and an insurer success across business and personal perspectives with often are in conflict?

I would say first I'm packing like a lot of times I don't think I've seen ever a time that it has been in conflict, and I think that's the design management or a lead toa describe to someone. If they feel like it's in conflict, why it's actually relevant and how could help their career. I think a lot of that's just framing the larger meteor of that question would be setting goals. It's it's you have to establish in the beginning that it's like you have to Hey, the reason you are here and we're doing this stuff is because we are a business and the value of goals and the value of goals of the client and the value of what we're working on, whether your in House attorney client service is that we're doing things that like has, ah, measurement of value right, that allows you to keep on doing what you're doing. And you have to describe that to someone mean like, I know your gold might be toe You know, I don't know if there's a good metaphor like Climb Swiss Alps or something, but I think the idea of saying like what's going on and how how you need to do it. But I also understand that it's like, Hey,

there's there's a There's a relationship between the person's goals in the project goals because they are all intertwined. I think the first thing is not setting that I've made mistakes of thinking too firm on a framework to go in and be like Everyone's gonna have the same structure of a goal And I would like, impose a little bit more of like how I structure goals. I think the difference is sitting in and realizing that about this document one time just for my own personal, be like if I said this from like a height wise, like a 10,000 foot or 100,000 foot goal is that like I care about this person and like, letting them know that I care about this person and it's like, as that breaks down and different layers is saying, like as that goes down Maur those are all attached because it context was set and being like okay, well, if your goal of this project is to do this, that's because you want to get to this promotion and you want to get this promotion because I think that you fit really well for that and you talk about the framework. But then when I actually get to the tactical of what your goals are, I almost feel like I never write those goals. I'm like a translator based on the experience of getting reps in, but like,

it's not my place to do goals. My places to say like, Well, what do you want improve on? What have you felt stuck? What do you want to dio? And then when they write that down, it's usually never the right thing or not the right thing. It's usually never the actual thing that they're talking about, but they're like, Oh, well, I want to be better at communicating. It's like OK, well, in relation to what you've talked about for wanting to be more I see like Well,

is that actually autonomy was like, Oh, yeah, kind of like Okay, well, I'm gonna help And let's say what about autonomy is hard for you and then giving them the tools cause self advocacy can't be given. It's learned right in, and I think it goes this point that I always tell them a little bit rough, which I learned was you either lied or you're gonna be lead. And I think that goes to your own journey. So, like, never leave it up for someone else that isn't in your shoe every single day to set what you should be doing what you're accomplishing because, like, you know your goals and you need to like self

advocate. Yeah, like like we were talking about last night. Like, people aren't mind readers, right?

You can tell us will help, because I mean I mean, you like we're talking. You've, like, 2030 people, right? Like you're not You're not in every single meeting like it's impossible. But you're also you care so much about People want to dio some thinking like my goal when I'm talking to people on the team. Is this like I wanna equipped you with his much information as possible Is that when you talk to Anthony and you talk to design director, you talk to someone you know exactly like this woman doing. I've been thinking about this and they can use the max of your time, right, because it's also not. It would be hard for me too, if I were in that situation coming back. Well,

what do you want me to dio? Right? And you'd be like, Well, I think you should do that. Like if I disagree. Whose fault is that? And in reality, it's the fact that I'm not thinking about what I should be doing. Um, I don't know that interesting question, but that's a meaty one, I would say like letting people do it. And that's that's training, that self advocacy muscle understood in context of the frame, and then be like when we actually talk goals.

You should be breaking these down and it's painful. Sometimes It's like, sits there and someone's like Well, I don't know and they have to sit, sit, sit. It's uncomfortable, But man, that's golden after because now they're like, Wait, it's actually not communication its autonomy. I start learning that and you talk to someone else. It's like, Oh, I actually want to do this And that was just threw them exploring their own mind. And I just helped with,

like, a a tool for extraction, right? So how do you extract it from clients to that, you might not have as much like sit down time with like, face to face. Let's do over this kind of thing. I would say sometimes it's the harder conversations and retro those saintly. At some point, you can't be like we're gonna do a project. You're rarely going to talk to us. We're gonna come into your business, understand it in like, a week, and then give you gold. That's just like,

not possible. Like, how would you handle if you hired somebody like people don't get people get hired and they're usually within those just job descriptions for in house or wherever. Companies like you won't be operating at full speed into like, three months and, like we're in a case for Can Client was like OK, well, we're like a special force is gonna come in in like, two weeks. You're going to start seeing some value, whether it's like political, whether it's process, whether its output and for conversations. And I think that has to be driven and talking like this is a two way street in a relationship. If you don't have time, this is going to be harder,

and this is how it's gonna be harder and we need to talk about it and bring it up when it's a problem and I think sometimes other agencies and other type of client service is when you hear people talk about it, they're very risk averse. But like in house and a start up like that's what actually causes like great work. Great. That's the byproduct of it. So extracting is being like, Hey, do you have time for us? And if not, well, we're not gonna be able to do this because we're on Lee were attached to you, I think. Anthony, I talked about this interesting thing yesterday was we're like an extension of the body, right? So by ourselves,

like, let's say the relationship is we are some like robo mechanic like cool arm that could do like 30 different things, right? Samurai swords, machine guns, grappling hooks, whatever. But that hand does nothing if it's not attached to the organism and like the client and whoever you're PM, you're stakeholder is the organism. That arm can't drive and make sure that we're walking in the right direction. But that arm could ask every single 10 steps like, Hey, you said you wanted to go east. Are you sure you want to go that way? But the high level of that metaphor is that like we're attached to the main, so making that conversation really clear and I'm still trying to work on it.

It's always, you know, the communications, pretty tough art of communication. That stuff is being like, Hey, if you're not available, we're not gonna be able to do as good of work. If that's your question is like extracting that is like maybe not saying like you might not I might be able like we can't extract that right if you're if you're available, like once a month, like this is the expectation or were saying we do not work with you unless you have and and you can't have to be a little annoying. But then it's like everyone is happy when the work gets great, right? When when things work out, when it's actually kind of like. And during that Facebook talk that you gave Anthony,

it's kind of like what, like sometimes you have to realize also that, like sometimes your client school might actually not be to be in the meetings. That might be that they have more time to work on other things, and that agency takes care

of everything that's so true and that it again it comes down to communication, right? Like the case they were talking about was, Well, I guess I probably can't talk about it, but it was a client of ours that told us pretty clearly in the beginning. Hey, look, my goal is to do just good enough work so that things aren't stuck. Second carrier across, you know, like we can keep moving traction on on our core products and new stuff. And you're here to help me, but find time so that I could hire the best designers that I can hire. Internally, I won't be in a lot of meetings, and I won't be able to give you a lot of attention,

but that's okay. I just expect just good enough work so I could do that right? Like that was extremely powerful, right? Because without that clear communication as a designer myself, you could imagine how stressed out that'd be like, Why is the clan not here? Do they like our work? Is it good enough for me? I don't like, you know, like, what's the thing? But like, you know, in.

And so as soon as I knew that Of course, the instinct is you go tell the team that, right? Like, you know, like your That's the value, right? Like yeah, and so I don't know, like, and when she wants, you know, some of these things, you can figure it out, but yeah, the other point.

Like I've also been in situations where my boss, or maybe, you know, in business context and agency contacts, a client isn't available, and it's gonna take a lot longer to build. Trust is gonna take a lot longer to get things done. And and maybe you can't even get clear goals. Yes, but it's possible, Right? Okay. I'm gonna ask you this question. Just because I I've started to talk to a few people who work at smaller companies that where they may be are maybe that one of their either the only designer or other one of two designers, they don't have a design manager design leader. They're working directly with,

like, a CEO or engineering. So they don't. They're kind of alone, right? Like, and there I know that you've been in that scenario your past job. What kind of advice would you give them for creating Project work goals and individual goals that will help them succeed. And what kind of goals should they expect from their leadership? Like what would be the mutual expectation there?

So for the advice to ID would be, it's painful. It's gonna be painful, but you are in a better place than people that do have that and that air have people doing it for you. You're gonna learn faster if you're conscious because you're feeling the pain. When there are no goals and you're the only one responsible, it's gonna be tough. But I think in that situation you are more lucky than others. You might have different growth points, but you're gonna learn self advocacy differently and way more independently and way more accountable, right, because you know what happens from my side is like you feel the pain of being growth and what am I doing and question your confidence and stuff, and because of that, that creates like a conscious effort of being like, Well, I have to do this myself and like, you know,

picking up just doing the hard work with the rusty stuff, like gets you a little bit better than some of the people that have a little bit more tools and equipment from a team size, I would say from the goals that you're probably gonna get from other people's. You have to understand that in realistic, whether you have ah, design manager or a design leadership were any leadership, I'm bias to think that like no one, will ever be able to give you the best goals. That's why I kind of harp on self advocacy is like because people don't know what you're doing every day and people don't know every moment of your experience. I would say you should expect if you're not coming to the table thinking up those goals and you're on informing them and having them help, you shouldn't expect any goals or goals that are relevant to you. And I think good leaders. When you when you hear good leaders, they don't come to the table saying this is my goal for you. They come to table being like What do you want? And I'm gonna use my experiences to help you to maybe drive what you want or if I think you want this one thing and from my experiences I thought that and I want this will help you extract that question.

Right? But you're not driving it like we don't start a project with somebody and say first kick off, not knowing their product. Like, listen, this is what you need to d'oh like you don't know anything about it. So, like you, you expect that someone's gonna come in to a meeting that is new and trying to also concentrate on the technical skills and understand that stuff like and you're able to give them that like you could be putting them down the wrong way because you just don't know, regardless of how much you care, you just don't know. So you should expect How did it go in expecting no goals? So then when at least someone's there and helping you for framework like you need to be always equipped, as if there would be no goals set for you, and I don't get a little bit intense. But I think goes back to like the aspect that it's you lead your own journey or your lead on your own journey, and that changes your journey. It's a little bit more more of it when I

well, it's like the old saying lead, follow or get out

the way. Yeah, and and that attached to your own goals or your own career. Like when you frame it that way, That should be intense. Like, am I following someone else on my own career? Growth like my following someone else on my own path that I want to do stuff. And I think that that's the intent thing. I was thinking like, If I am like, should I be thinking about if this is the right goal or should be thinking about that? So that interview you did with your questions,

let's move him more like product centric couple product centric questions. What does it mean to understand all the people involved

in making a product? Have either one of you seen the end of navel gazing by Paul Adams, the VP of product for inner calm? You should check it out. Someone should. People should check this out. This and Ryan Ramsey's financial experience design talking about business. But that Paul Adams one it's so great because all he starts in the conversation is showing all those ben diagrams of like business design, engineering and then, like there's the center where everything over leaves like this is where designs at it's like No, but that's not the case. That's usually maybe where, like leadership Rpm's are at right. But, like design were like, You think about it like the brain naming itself. It's like design,

saying we're making always when diagrams and were the most important part in the center when in reality it's more like a wheel and we're only about five or six schools and and thinking about it, understanding that like the senator's leadership, regardless of where leadership's from but thinking that like understanding that he does this great thing in this in the talk where he asked, Everybody is like 300 people or I don't know whatever amount of people in this massive conferences like who talks to users like every single day and like only about like 1/3 raise their hand. And this is that maybe something really lowered 10% and like, what do you d'oh? And he asked, What do these people d'oh! And it's like, Oh, well, you know, 10% do it and this is like a a design conference. He's like if you talk to any sales customer support team and any company. They talked to multiple users every single day. So we're making stuff and we think that we're like the voice of the user when in reality,

like we don't talk to them every day. Like best processes of maturity of a design department means talking to customers, customers more. When you go in first day, you are only talking to customers sales, your direct payment and bonus and commission structure and all things air based on talking to customers. But like what metrics do we have in that allow for designed to do, to speak to users right and like we for some reason have said that like, we're the center where the epitome we're like we're here. So I think understanding that other people engaging other people will make you better at it and like you're just really good at, like recipes and combining stuff and understanding that other people might actually know Maura about the current state it or have better ideas on stuff. And I think for us for projects that we've had with large enterprise to small startups have been using those frontline staff is like man, it's crazy. It's It's insane, like one workshop with a couple of different people from another department. You're like,

Wow, I would have never thought of that idea. And you realize that it's like these air actually, people because they're talking to the people were making stuff for in reality. When we're doing design stuff, we like, get to a table and people ask for higher, Why did you do that? And it's like my own opinion. I'm not even the user, right? So, like people say, like, Oh, be empathetic,

human first. But it's like when we talked to like customers where we don't engage customer sport reps or when sales come in. We don't understand what sales does, and all of a sudden it's just like what? We don't need sales. They think too much about like Celso Cell. It's like, No, they know what people want, But I think not understanding those different departments kind of eliminates our ability to be as as useful as possible. Is a translator, right? Like we have to understand that we don't have to be really good at speaking our language. We have to be able to good at understanding different languages in translating understanding like sales. German customs, sports,

French. You know, business is Spanish. Your value is understanding and talking to each one of those three people, right? Not learning English, but I don't know that's weird enough for you. Yeah. I said answer your question. Yeah, you're always answering the question. I know, but it goes long enough. Michael Tangent. I have something on the Web for thing that says serial tangent enthusiasts, your new cosmic space explorer and cereal.

Okay, so we've talked about all different kinds of gold things, you know, we talked about creating individual goal. We will. We talked about what makes a good goal. We talked about making individual goals. We talked about how individuals need to be vocal about what their goals are. We talked about some best practices on creating project goals in general. So just this last bit like knowing, like understanding who you're working with, whether it's a a manager or or a subordinate Maura client or another business stakeholder like, how do you do you have any advice on you? Share about how you like how people can create goals and get by on winter across department, you know, there their their situations

are different. I mean nothing, nothing better than just like having a conversation with somebody in and knowing that, like they they're doing their job the same way you are right, like and no one's not. No one's gonna be against help were engaging. Is many people as possible in reality, some of those people that are even more closed off at first or are people that have been burned because they wanted that and then someone didn't do it appropriately, your or did it with, you know, a little bit more of manipulation and that sort of stuff. So it's not even that some people want to, and some people don't like everybody wants to write, And I would think that it goes down new communication. Like if you zoom out enough, every house is built on, you know,

certain building blocks, like different building blocks. And if you concert too much of like the output, you can do it. But I think communication just idea of talking like if I was talking with you were working with you would be that it should be the same as if you're working with somebody just because you should care about other people.

Yeah, I think to that point, like you should ask your constituents of your clients. Like what they personally want out of this. You know, like we're all human beings. We all want something that we all have hopes and dreams. And we have goals superiors air asking us to do. That's important to understand that.

Well, any alert, you learn more right, like it's more exciting like, Hey, like, you know something I don't And like, don't you want to collect as much of that data as possible? Right? So that's exciting and just thinking about, like how, like we have our own personal goals of designers, auras, like just our team is like they exact same thing. You know, it's all people working in the company of your move. It's like the goal is not which spokes doing better.

It's the goal that does the wheel move. But ultimately, is this person getting to go down to the pool right? Like so that if you zoom out like that's both from a product gold from a user, but also our people enjoying the work they're doing, people have any good life you can like kinda zoom out as much. I mean, I know he's a mountain of stuff. That's because next slide would flow. Everything's connected,

sliding through. So you know, you you worked as the only product designer in a start up. You joined fun size as a product designer became a design lead, ultimately really becoming a design director because you were managing projects and people. And it was really amazing to see that tradition happened. Now you're leaving like So what? What's next for Brian

Peterson? I think it's interesting to think about the conversation we had yesterday to was I think, if I would if I were to look back and think about like working on a Kraft side and being a start up like your impact on products like huge and you identify as like your impact on the product like I wanna I wanna be a craft. Wanna make something right? But there is a lack of a less of like I want to work with other people when I want to see other people like build and grow and then going to fun size, get to work with so many different clients, get to work with something different awesome people. You, at this point, we're like, Hey, like I'm I'm going to work with so many people and I can. The growth is what creates this large impact right of the work. But there is something different when you're attached these projects, even if it's like two years long, there's sometimes you like, you know,

how much different could this be if I if I was in house right and think about those things and thinking like, Could you marry those two at the state? And for my questions like, How can I have those at equal points? Is that even possible? And I think the next step is whether that's like a product you know, practice and management or design management, or even looking like product management. The idea of working with people towards impact of a product is when I'm really excited about an idea of just ultimately I still put my My goal is providing people as much value as possible and getting to meet a lot of people along the way, and I feel like that's abroad. But it's it's consciously broad to allow for me to kind of keep different doors open but I don't know what's next is a little bit of time thinking about it, thinking about craft, thinking about how I work now there's other aspects of, you know, making making work and talking. A.

I've been getting involved in a bit more, talking with a accelerators and staff and helping new people grow and get an idea of helping people with goals but also describing how fun this is but also realistic. Like setting a good gross stand for the next next generation. Right, because also makes me better. But yeah, I don't know. I just I just wantto want to see what the marriage could be between the leadership aspect and product. Because the byproduct the product is a some of the people you're working with and that marriage between the two and and the sweet spot feels like something that I'm always kind of going to search for. So excited to try to see which possible on DDE where that comes from.

That's awesome. Brian, I can't wait to see what you do next. I'm also looking forward to your presentation. A few minutes. Good luck, both of you on that? Yes. Why don't you guys tell everyone how they can connect

with you. You know you go first because case more rub you can reach me at on Twitter at Dina Soar with three eyes D n a sore, um, or just find me on the one. That's what site You had to see. The fun size website. So not on there anymore. All right, you can reach me. There would be really tough. It's not Brian Pearson, but it's iron cobra dot TV. You can see a lot of little moving baby's going on from animations, but you could also reach me at at Iron Cobra TV at Twitter and at Iron Cobra TV on Instagram. You will be somewhat enthuse sometimes and other times less enthused. Very, very well.

Very well. We're no either overwhelmed or underwhelmed. There is no center. That's the goal. But that's not gonna happen.

Thanks for tuning in that house podcast. We'll see you next time. Hustle is brought to

you by Fun Size, a digital service and product design agency that works with inspiring teams to uncover opportunities about popular products, bring new businesses to market and prepare for the future. Learn more fun sized dot CEO Tom Edgar be Zegna design. Lead it fun size. Thanks for listening the hustle and be on the lookout for our next episode.