WORK WITH FRIENDS

My mentor, industrial designer extraordinaire Bruce Hannah, often writes design poems. One of his sayings reads like a funny haiku.

Mock It Up

Before

You Fock It Up

I always remembered that. It has become one of our tried and true design practices.

We love coming up with new ideas at the studio, and we always mock them up and try them out with our friends.

The idea of a mock-up is that you want to try, fail, and learn fast at a low cost and in the safety of people who want you to succeed.?

We have been doing this as we prepare for our Design Connections? project with the Mat-Su Health Foundation in Alaska.?

There is something poetic about working on Design Connections? with our Connections. Connections can happen in all kinds of ways. This wonderful group—participants in our earlier research with The SCAN Foundation—became our friends and champions of our work over many Virtual Teas during the pandemic.? They reminded me of an article I wrote for?INC.com?about friendships at work.

In it, I make five points that are still all true:

1. Tap into your friends for talent: Most of our friends have different expertise than us. Who better to partner with when we need new capabilities???
2. Fail in the safety of your friends: It is better to fail in the safety of friends first to succeed in the presence of strangers. After all, they are our biggest champions and supporters.
3. Go to the office to be with friends: This idea is even more essential today when many of us work remotely. Go to the office explicitly to make social connections and deepen trust with your colleagues.
4. Promote your friends: We can all do better at talking positively about how talented, hard-working, generous, and kind our friends are. This is part of Preemptive Help, which I wrote about last week.
5. Be yourself, even at the office: We talk about bringing our authentic selves to work, and this is much easier to do among friends.

My motto?

Work with friends, and become friends with people you work with.

Thank you,

Ayse

PS. Send us a note if you want us to invite you to our mock-up sessions.

Here is the?INC.com article if you’d like to re-read it: How to Work With Your Friends, and Become Friends With The People You Work With

Molly Klimas interviewed me for officeinsight and I wanted to share it with you here, Where are all the Women Designers.

Speaking of friends, my friend Beth Polish’s new TEDx talk is a gem and is up to 30K viewers. Let’s watch it together: “How to Build the Reputation You Want.”

For our design programs, please email Leah Caplan, VP, Design and Project Planning, Birsel + Seck, [email protected].

For coaching engagements, please email Jacquelyn Lane, President, 100 Coaches, [email protected].

For speaking engagements, please email Nancy Aaronson [email protected].