Leisa Reichelt 'Scale is not the goal. Impact is.'

Gerry Scullion: [00:00:00] Hey folks, and welcome to another episode of This Is HCD. My name is Gerry Scullion, and I'm a human-centered service design practitioner based in the beautiful city of Dublin, Ireland. Today on the show, I'm delighted to welcome Lisa Reichelt, somebody I've been looking forward to speaking to on the podcast since I set up This Is HCD in 2017. Now, Lisa was one of the early research leaders at the UK's Government Digital Service, the GDS, where she built the research practice behind gov.uk. She then moved home to Australia, and that's where I connected with Lisa, um, where she was leading research at the Digital Transformation, um, Agency, and spent seven years heading up research and insights at Atlassian, the behemoth massive software company behind the likes of Jira and Confluence and many, many more. These days she's back working independently though and hosting her own podcast, The School Can't Experience. I'll throw a link to that into the show notes if you want to take a listen. It's [00:01:00] fantastic. In this conversation, we dig into what it actually means, uh, what it actually takes to scale research across three very different organizations. So it's a fantastic opportunity if you're leading conversations within organizations or actually, you know, overseeing those programs of work as well And we talk about the golden years of GDS, where, uh, there's loads of people there that we would look to in government, like Martin Jordan, uh, maybe Lou Downe, uh, Trisha Doyle, lots of people, Sarah Winter, Sarah Richards in, uh, GDS as well at the same time. So and what it's like to pull the handbrake and research, uh, in a culture inside a big tech darling like Atlassian, and even when it costs you some friendships, so we get into the ni- the nitty-gritty of that. Now, before we jump in, there's three things that I really want you to listen to- listen out for in this conversation that I heard that I think you might be interested in. And as the first, and it's a really powerful one, is don't [00:02:00] negotiate with yourself before you negotiate with them. And what that really means is Lisa was offered the leadership role at GDS, and she wrote down what she actually needed to succeed in that role: dedicated researchers per team, uh, a regular cadence of testing, all of these things, things like budgets for participants. She asked for all of it, and she knew she wasn't gonna get everything, but she got a good chunk of that, and most of us talk ourselves down before we even walk into the room, okay? That's a really, um, powerful insight from a design leader like Lisa. The second one is the politics is not a distraction from the work, it is the work. And the prelude to this conversation was I was messaging, um, Lisa back and forth saying, "Hey, listen up. I'm in the final stages of writing This is Human-Centered Design, the book," which is out next year on BIS. Fantastic publishers. Hat tip to the, the folks down in Amsterdam. And I knew Lisa had some gaps, uh, or had some information that could help me plug in those [00:03:00] gaps that I wanted to find more information out. So she was so kind with her time and gave me two hours of her time one evening, and we went through everything. But anyway, back to this. It, it... uh, politics is the work. If you want research to change an organization, you have to get into the corporate DNA, the budgets, the resourcing recipes, the program management, all of those different things, the legal conversations. So doing great research isn't enough if it never makes it out of how the organization operates. Now, the third thing is always know your top three priorities, not the top three things that you're working on, the top three things your organization should be working on. So if someone senior, myself and Lisa were talking about this, if someone senior caught you in the lift, for instance, and asked you what you were working on and like, you know, and said, "Right, you talk to your customers all the time. What are the top three things you'd be working on in this business if you were in charge?" Could you answer that question? [00:04:00] Lisa argues researchers need a strong, clear point of view on what the organization should be doing to connect it to the metrics the business cares about, and to put skin in the game, because if you've learned 70 things, you've learned nothing. Look, Lisa Reichelt to me is one of the reasons why I kind of leapt into social and government work, um, you know, 2014, whenever that was for me, and I really, really thank her for her time and her honesty in this conversation. I know if you're in that space, you are gonna absolutely love this. I'd go so far and say it's one of the most important conversations that I've had, uh, on the podcast. So I know you're gonna enjoy it. Let's jump straight in. You know, and I think I said it to you before I left Australia, uh, you're one of my design heroes. Like, you know, you really paved the way for an awful lot of stuff that, [00:05:00] you know, I, I f- I, I leaned into over the years, so I'm delighted to finally get you on the podcast. God. When we look back, when... Well, let me finish. When we look back at our LinkedIn conversation, it goes something like, "Hey, Lisa, huge fan. Uh, what's going on?" No response. And then it goes to 2017, um, "Hey Lisa, great seeing you. I'd love to have you on the podcast," and then we were like, I moved away, and now I've finally got you on the podcast, and I'm delighted to have you here. Lisa Reichelt: Uh, and for people who don't kind of realize who Lisa Reichelt is, um, I want you to tell me a little bit about yourself, where you're from, and what you do currently at the moment. Oh, God, Gerry, I feel so embarrassed after that- No ... but thank you. No, you shouldn't, 'cause like it's- Oh ... with loads of people over the years that the best conversations can take years to happen, so when I have you on, it's always a- Okay. It's, it's meant to be when it's meant to be, isn't it? [00:06:00] Absolutely. So what do you wanna know, what I'm doing now? Well, I guess what your background, um, and then also we can talk a little bit more around what you're doing now at the moment. All right. Well, my background, I have been, I'm, I've been doing this kind of human-centered work for quite a while. Gerry Scullion: Yeah. I, I, um, didn't train as a designer, and I kind of started working before the internet was really much of a thing, but when I saw that it became a thing, I'm, I was immediately attracted to it and thinking, "This is what I have to do." I wasn't sure what I wanted to do, but I knew I wanted to work in that space. Lisa Reichelt: I think it just felt very exciting and transformational, not unlike the world we're in right now, honestly. Yeah. Um, and as I got in and explored it to see what I could do, in the old day, they had these roles called producer roles, which were basically everything but the graphic design and the coding. Yeah. Um, and sometimes it [00:07:00] was some of the coding. And then, I guess, gradually over time, I kind of like pared away parts of that to get to the bits that I really, really liked, and, and, and, and I ended up with research- Yeah ... um, predominantly, and so I've been doing- Research work in, um, different countries, different- Yeah industries, different spaces for quite a number of years now, and learning a lot along the way. Yeah. You worked at the GDS, you were one of the, the early, um, people in the GDS, and then when we first met face to face, um, was, I think it was 20- we're saying 2014 or 2015, around in those years. Mm. Both of us suffer from somewhat of a, an obscured timeline 'cause we're, like, getting older, and we have to look back at LinkedIn saying, "When was that?" What year was that? DTA around that time, DTA, and then, like y- Atlassian for the last bulk of years, and [00:08:00] now y- you're on your own. You're independent- Yeah ... um, whi- which has kind of gone a full circle, which we were chatting before, like, you know, when you had your first child, your freelance and an independent-ness. So- Yeah ... can I talk- I, I, I always really kind of considered myself a craftsperson first and foremost. Yeah. I had no desire to do management at all. I just really loved doing research work, uh, and GDS was the first time that I actually took a management role. Yeah. And that was largely- Because there was such a huge opportunity there- Mm to, for research to be really impactful, but it, it needed someone to come in and say, "Here's how we're gonna do it." Yeah. Um, and you know, so s- so I thought I'm, that might as well be me. Um- Yeah, absolutely ... and that's, yeah, that's kind of turned into my thing that I- Absolutely ... do now, is to try to create these spaces to bring research in to [00:09:00] be, you know, as impactful as it can be within organizations. So th- that's exactly the foundation for this conversation, folks, Lisa's background, I'm really interested in, you know, kind of getting their perspective on what that looked like in the early days of GDS, and then DTA, and also Atlassian. And how you scale that, uh, th- that is a secret sauce. You know, you could do it once, you might get lucky. Do it twice, you know, you're, you know, starting to build out a bit more, you know, chance of being able to conduct the luck if you want. But doing it three times in very different organizations, I'm really keen to, to understand that a little bit more. C- can I take you back to, um, the, the GDS, whenever you started there? There was a precursor to the GDS, where Francis, uh, had written that letter. Mm. The surname, or their surname should I say, is, uh, it, it's- Francis... Sir Francis Maude. Yeah, Sir Francis Maude, yeah. Mm. So that had been set up. I think that, we're, we're agreeing [00:10:00] that was probably around 2013-ish, around that time. I reckon that the, the first work started like 2011, 2012. Yeah. I... When did I say that I got there? Gonna have to look, look at LinkedIn again. Around that 2012, um- Yeah, 2012. Um- What did it look like when you were there? Like, w- was there many people employed at that stage? Was research a thing? Oh, so, you know, I have a very untrustworthy memory, so I'll do my best to give you the most honest, the most- Yeah honest appraisal that I can, but if, if somebody- Okay ... comes and says that's not, that's not right, then they are probably correct. Right. Um, there are a few things that I'm sure about. Um, I, when I started there, it, they had done the GovUK Alpha Okay ... Gerry Scullion: um, which was the prototype of what would ultimately end up being GOV.UK. Lisa Reichelt: Yeah. Um, and it featured a, a big picture of the, of the London Olympics, uh- Oh, yeah, I remember seeing it ... which never, never found its way into, um, [00:11:00] into production, and was apparently never intended to. That was a bit of a crowd-pleasing graphic. Um, and they... Anyway, so I got there, they were working on, uh, the GOV.UK production model, basically what was gonna go out and be used by real people in, in a real way. Uh, and I came in actually to work originally on the identity project as, as an individual contributor, as, as a researcher on that program, and the first program in GDS that had its own researcher. Right. So there were, there were two or three other researchers on staff at that point. Yeah. And I remember going to their meetings that they'd have each week, and they had a spreadsheet with about 25, 30 projects, and they'd sit there and work out how they would spread each other out across all of these projects, and how they would outsource usability testing- Yeah to different [00:12:00] agencies. Um, and that was, that was the- their kind of big challenge was like, how, how do we make ourselves spread thinly across all of this work? Yeah. Gerry Scullion: And, um, yeah. I could- Yeah ... I could look at that and pretty quickly go, "This, this is never gonna work. This is never gonna- Yeah ... never gonna do the job." Lisa Reichelt: And so my, my real ambition there was to take that huge opportunity that I had in being the only researcher on one program, and set up a really great way of working, and show how we could make progress against a really tough problem through this way of working, in this kind of- Yeah ... iterative, very human-centered way that was very involving of the entire team. And I was so fortunate to have other people on the team there before me who were very enthusiastic for this way of working. So I didn't have to- Yeah ... force anybody to do [00:13:00] this. I, I kind of- Sort of lucky to be there ... got dropped into it. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. So my big opportunity really was... And, and the other part of the story to this is that prior to me coming into GDS, I had written a blog post, as we used to do in the day, in response to some of GDS's blog posts, talking about how user-centered they were. And saying that whilst I believed that they were definitely tr- seeking to do things in the best interest of the user, and they were using a lot of user data to guide their thinking, I wasn't sure whether they could really truly call themselves user-centered based on the activities that the teams were doing kind of week after week. Yeah. Um, and yeah, I remember Tom Loosemore at one point coming into me and basically saying, "Well, don't whinge about it, fix it." I was like, "Okay." So did Tom Loosemore hire you then, bring you in? Ugh, it's kind of... No, [00:14:00] no, n- Back then ... not, it's, it's a, it's kind of a, a, it's a little bit more complex than that. Yeah. It was a, it was, it was a desi- a designer who was working- Okay ... on the program who dobbed me in and said, "Come and, come and do this." You'd, you'd be a good, good addition to the team. So can we just talk about that piece where you said that there was gonna be p- people spread across whatever, 20, 30 projects Yeah Um, you identified that straightaway, saying that this isn't gonna scale, you mentioned it- Mm a second ago. That is a good example of a micro process within the bigger scheme of processes within processes, and you identified that. Can you recall, like, the steps that you took to kind of change that process so it became much more, uh, of an obvious choice to say we actually need more researchers in each one of these projects to increase the chances of success? I can definitely tell you what happened. I can't tell you- Yeah, I would love that ... I can't tell you- Don't have to Gerry Scullion: mention any names Lisa Reichelt: No, I can't tell you that this will work anywhere else- I know ... 'cause that is kind of, that is a, a, yeah- It's contextual to this complex system that was there at that time, um, and the listeners should know that[00:15:00] this is not a recipe for like, "Ah, Lisa said if I do this, I'm gonna get that," 'cause again, folks, you should know at this stage, complex problem, you cannot understand, you cannot- Well, and also- ... I have to say that ... if, if we do get to talk about this in the multiple different contexts- Yeah ... you'll see that ev- every time, yeah, is different and, and- Absolutely every time requires a, a different approach. In this situation, what happened is that I was asked whether or not I would be willing to step into a leadership role for research- Yeah ... in the organization. Um, and I had been freelancing for quite a while, I was pretty happy freelancing, and the idea of giving that up to become, you know, working in the public service was m- was not- Yeah high of my, on my list of things to do at the time. Um, but you know, but the team there was fantastic, like the overall team at GDS was fantastic, and so- Yeah ... the opportunity to work with [00:16:00] them on such a meaningful problem was pretty attractive. But I kind of, I set my terms really and I said, "I, I will do it, but I'm gonna wanna do things really differently, and you're gonna have to support me to do things really differently- Nice or we're not gonna do it." Yeah. I love that Um, and they, and so they were like, "Okay, well, you go away and work out what your terms are and tell me, and we'll go from there." Yeah. And then the next most important thing that I didn't do was negotiate with myself before I negotiated with them, which I think historically I had done a lot, and I think we do it a lot, where we go, "What do we need to make this work?" And we look at it and we go, "Oh, that's too much. They'll never go for that." Yeah. "I better tone it down to something that doesn't look so outrageous." And then you take that in, and then they negotiate you down even further, [00:17:00] and then you end up with not enough. Yeah. And so I, in retrospect, I realize that I, that I managed to get myself to not do that. So I wrote down what I think I needed, and I went and I asked for that. And I didn't get that, but I got- A version ... a good chunk of it. Yeah. And then we're off to go. And, and the thing specifically that I was asking for was around the, the, the resource allocation to say, "We're not gonna do this four people splitting across all of the people, all of the different projects. What we're going to do is we're going to have dedicated researchers per projects." Nice. So, you know, y- we would say, "This is, uh... We're working on, uh, you know, the performance platform," was an example. Yeah. Right? We'll have a researcher who's working on that. Um, and, and they'd have to work at least three or four days a week on that, and they would also have to be able to do a round of usability testing every [00:18:00] two weeks with about five or six people. Yeah. And so we'd have to be able to fund that, so we had to put in the budget money to... At that point, we were, we were using external usability labs. This is pre-COVID, when we still got out amongst it with real people. Um- Well pre-COVID. Gerry Scullion: Right? Um- Yeah ... and, um, and we'd have to be able to pay for, uh, incentives as well- Yeah Lisa Reichelt: which was a whole, a whole other- Which was advanced, yes ... policy thing. But w- we won't, you know- Yeah. We can get to that ... we might get to that later. We can get to that. Yeah. Yeah. But that, that became, like, a really important thing, where I could go- Yeah ... "This is the recipe for what we need. We need dedicated resources per team." Mm-hmm. "They need to be able to do this simple format of research at, at this, um, cadence." Mm-hmm. So then what that allowed was for this to easily go into a spreadsheet Because what would happen [00:19:00] prior to that is that people would say, "Oh, we've got a project coming up. Um, do we need to do any discovery work on this? What do we need?" You know, and there'd be some, "Oh, well, it depends. I need more information. Oh, oh," you know? Everything was custom quoted. Yeah. And so by the ti- like it just meant that everything then was thought out. Like do we definitely need that, or what about, you know? Yeah. And then, but then, then, you know, timelines would pass and, and it wouldn't get into the spreadsheet, and it wouldn't get funded, and then the project would start, and it was too late, and it was constantly chasing your tail all the time. Gerry Scullion: Yeah. You were seen as a bottleneck as well probably. It was j- yeah, it was just hopeless, right? Or somebody would- Yeah ... do all the budgeting, and they'd forget to talk to you, and they'd go, "Oh, this project's kicking off next week. Oh, can you help us?" Well, no. And in those scenarios where like projects were kicking off and they forgot to spoke to you, what happened in that instance? Was it a case of like, "Lisa says we can't do it 'cause we don't have the research"? How Lisa Reichelt: do you- Yeah, well- 'Cause that, that doesn't scale. [00:20:00] Like, that piece doesn't scale, Lisa. Like, you know, where Lisa's, you know, on holidays, and then you come back and there's four projects that have kind of, you know, bolted. You need to have to scale you. And there, that, that's the pieces- Well, no ... that I'm kind of keen to- No, because so, so I guess one thing is, right, the first thing that you do is you build these recipes, right? Yeah. What are the, what are these, these, like, these recipes or these kind of algorithms that people- Yeah can pick up and they can go, they go, "I'm, I'm creating a new project, and so therefore I know I'm gonna need to budget for one researcher, and I'm gonna n- need to budget to do this amount of research, you know, to this format over this period of time so I can put that money in." Yeah, yeah. Um, so, so the, to, to try to come up with these little patterns that, that don't require expertise, right? And so the reality is that- So- ... that for most people- ... those patterns, where do they live? Where do they live- Oh ... those little recipes? Like, is that something that you have to bubble up to, you know, the people who are setting the budgets to, like, a [00:21:00] framework, if you want, for how projects get stage gate funded? Or w- like, talk me through that, because the recipe might live at your team level, but does it live at an organizational level is what I'm trying to ask. Yeah, so it, so I would say that in that instance, there were two main areas where it lived. It lived with the people who were in charge of the program management- Yeah the people who, like, saw the projects coming in and had to work out how to resource for them- Mm-hmm ... how to fit them into the budget, so always having, you know, good relationships at that program management level. Yeah. And that'll be called different things in different organizations depending on where you are. Yeah. The other thing that works effectively in my experience is to say it publicly out loud a lot and say, "This is what we do." Yeah. And kind of create almost, like, a public accountability, so, you know- 100%. I love that ... Gerry Scullion: in, yeah, in, in G- GDS was a big blogging organization, right? Yeah. And [00:22:00] I very actively, uh, worked with my team to write things down and publish them and get them out there because that did two things, right? In this particular context, we had what do we, what were we trying to do within GDS, but GDS is just, like, one tiny part of the overall government. 100%. So if we could, if we could publish this and say, "This is how we're doing it," then other people- Yeah ... in other departments can look at that and go, "Right, well, that's what they're doing." Yeah. That gives us the license then to go, "We should be doing that, too. We, you know, that's- Absolutely ... that's, that's what we're gonna do." Lisa Reichelt: Before we move on in this conversation, I wanna go back to that piece, and I'm sure some communications and PR people were probably freaking out when GDS had the power to be able to blog. Mm. And was there a piece around that where suddenly Lisa's like, "Screw it, we're gonna blog about this stuff. We're gonna say these things"? Was there a, uh, like an approval process before you posted these things out? Because that- You know, [00:23:00] from a, when you look at it from a risk perspective, you, you could be putting somebody on the hook for some of these things. H- how did that work? So again, GDS was a bit of a special beast. Yeah. Um, and that culture was very much there before I was there, and so- Mm-hmm ... I, I just kind of hooked into that. Yeah. Um, there was a, there, there was a amazing communications team at GDS at the time who were fantastic at helping publish great blogs out- Yeah you know, that, that shared what we were doing precisely for the same purpose. Like, it wasn't just research that was doing this. It was all parts of the organization- Yeah ... who were trying to share out what their process was and how they were working so that that could be picked up and, and, you know, be used as a model. Um, but, you know, in, in practice the way that it worked was that there was a central GDS blog, but then different projects and different capabilities would also have their own blog as [00:24:00] well. So occasionally we would- Okay ... blog on the big GDS blog, but we also- Yeah ... had, like, a research.gds.gov.uk- That's right blog as well, right? And we could blog pretty much whatever we wanted there. Yeah. But I'm, I ... You know, there were certainly lines that you could clo- cross and get in trouble for, but- Yeah ... there wasn't really any great incentive to do that. Absolutely. But- This was the day of the Twitter as well, though. Remember, like, where it was, content was flying out into Twitter and it was being retweeted. Indeed. It w- it would get out very, very quickly. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Which is fantastic. The golden years. Call- Yeah. Yeah, we call it the golden years when we look back on it. Like, basically, um, w- there's a few things that I'm really interested in, and w- as I'm writing the book at the moment, so, like, I, I'm, I'm writing it pretty much, uh, out loud if you want, um, I argue in the book that, uh, the politics you meet in organizations is not a distraction from the work. It is actually the work. And what you were talking about there about that, that process you [00:25:00] identified, and being able to navigate that, I'm sure from listening to you now that Monday to Friday you weren't on the tools as much as you were before when you were working independent. You were now navigating a whole other kind of ecosystem and a new skill that had to be cultivated. How does that, um, statement make you feel about it being not a distraction from the work, it is the work? Is that something that you feel is, you know, you, you could see yourself, or maybe it's s- it could be improved? I, well, I don't know if I can improve it, but I think that you're definitely correct. I think that, um, you need to Part of the reason that I moved into doing management w- work rather- Yeah ... than being on the tools all the time was precisely because I had done so much research work- And like I, I, when I [00:26:00] was living and working in London, I kind of stayed there long enough to get briefed by the same organization with the same research brief. Okay. Right? And you realize that whilst it was a fun project and I'd be happy to do it twice, I was kind of getting to that stage of my life where I'm like, "You know what? This is not actually making any difference in the world at all." Okay. And in order to really make that difference, you have to get into the corporate DNA. You know? You have to change the way that the organization thinks about who it is and what it does. Yeah And, and a certain part of that is done by doing the work, and doing it really well, and doing it very collaboratively, and doing it very openly. But a lot more, well, the, at least an equal amount I think is about really understanding how that business operates, and trying to get into the operational [00:27:00] structures so that, you know, things like budgeting become easy for resource allocation, things like incentivizing participants, like going through that whole, you know, legal policy- Yeah uh, p- p- issue, you know, was like for a long time was just be like, "Uh, the, the..." you know, "the rules say you can't do it." And it's like, "Okay, well, show me the rules where it says that." Yeah You know? And then, like, really digging into, into just really mundane operational things. Lots, and lots, and lots of conversations with lawyers- Yeah about, you know- When you were there at GDS was- ... what's risk and what's not risk ... but but when you were there at GDS was almost seen as a standalone thing. Well, it was kind of if you want, like, a shared service, wasn't it? It was like people were bringing problems in from respective parts of the government, whereas now it's much more absorbed into, uh, the government structure and the fabric itself. Gerry Scullion: That was always the goal, right? Yeah So [00:28:00] GDS had what they called transformation projects where- Correct ... each department would have one or two transactional projects- Mm-hmm ... that it would bring in, and that department and GDS would work together on that Mm-hmm And that was, like, kind of like a little bit of sort of a hothouse situation where those practices and, and ways of working, and all capabilities would start to, to, you know, go by osmosis from GDS kind of out into the organization Yeah But still within the organizations, I worked with a, a lot of folk who were working very hard to, to build this up within their own organizations as well. Lisa Reichelt: So, like, folks- Yeah ... at the Ministry of Justice, uh, the Home Office, and HMRC, lots of, lots of places where I was working closely with, uh, folk who were really trying to get this up and running in their- Yeah ... organizations as well, I, I would say in much, often much more difficult political terrains. 100%. What did it look like in [00:29:00] terms of the- the conditions for GDS accepting those projects. W- was it a condition of, like, you need to be at a certain level, if you want, in the design maturity in order for us to be in- able to be effectively engaged, or it was a case of, like, basket case A has arrived on the doorstep- ... we need to try and figure this one out? All of this actually happened before my time, Gerry. Gerry Scullion: So there were- Yeah ... 25, they agreed to do 25 transformation- Sure ... projects. Yeah. I'm pretty sure what happened was it got divided up across a range of different departments, and those departments were able to nominate, um, transactions that they wanted to do- Oh, okay ... as transformation projects, and then c- probably between GDS and the department they decided whether or not it was a good case- Yeah or, or not a good case. But that was, that was kind of part of that sort of big program of work. So it wasn't, like, an ongoing thing, it was like there's 25- Yeah ... we're gonna execute 25. And then, you know, like, ultimately, like, the fourth part of the remit was always go wholesale, right? Which is that- Yeah acknowledgement that it was never all gonna happen out of [00:30:00] GDS, that it had to happen, uh, you know, across all of the organization, and also more widely out into the ecosystem of suppliers and partners as well. Lisa Reichelt: Yeah, 100%. If you imagine- The other thing... Sorry, can I just- Go on ... say one, one other thing, which I think is very unique to, um, to GDS and to the London context specifically- Mm-hmm is that there are few places on earth where you will have access to such a rich talent pool- Oh ... than, than, than London. There are a few places in the US, but there are- Yeah ... very other pla- very other few places in the world. And so part of my strategy there very much was, like, hiring in some of the best talent that I could find Because then, you know, the goal was lots of public servants, or what do they call them, civil servants in the UK- Oh, civil servants uh, wanted to, wanted to get on board and start to learn how to do this research work, right? So we could bring in from the [00:31:00] outside very experienced and talented people who could then- Yeah ... start to, you know, train up and, and mentor and support a, a, a big group of people who were very keen, obviously often had a lot of good public sector background, but not necessarily human-centered design background. And so that was- Okay ... a strategy that played very well in that context. Didn't play so well in Sydney. Yeah, it was harder in Sydney, um- Yeah ... which we're gonna come to now in a second. But just going back to- But Gerry Scullion: also, but also, sorry, e- even in the UK, where, you know, when we had to go up north and, like, build teams in Newcastle- Yeah you know, the, again, like- Very different ... very, like, yeah, so, so the same playbook, as you were saying, is not gonna work the same everywhere. It's not gonna work, no. You're gonna come up with challenges, and you're always gonna have to come up with new ways to try to work out how, how do we do this? Yeah. Yeah. Can I just ask you on that piece, you said, like, going out and looking for the best talent, there's a common thread between all of the [00:32:00] people I know ex-GDS is in that they're all absolutely cool, cool people to hang out with, okay? Like, they, there seems to be a very similar- ethos that's deep within the person, okay? Lisa Reichelt: And I can't say ev- absolutely everybody, but, you know, generally speaking, the people who I do know, um, there was a really good casting agent to the movie, if you want. Mm-hmm. What was that like? How did you do it? That's the secret sauce for me, is building the team that can actually live and breathe any of these little processes that we're talking about here, these rituals. So, and that's what we're gonna come onto next, about how this scales. Can you just talk to me about h- how you ensured that that was actually followed through at a research level or a recruitment level? Yeah. Well, I guess f- the, two things, right? Again, there were a lot- Mm ... there was a lot of culture and values in place already- Mm-hmm before I got there. Yeah. [00:33:00] Um, which was part of the reason why I was attracted to be going there, right? Mm. And so you had very meaningful work. You had very talented people to work with. Um, but there was that, that commitment to serving, you know, the user- Yeah ... Gerry Scullion: as, as we called them at the time, like that really truly putting user needs first, and that was, like, the number one item on everyone's agenda. Lisa Reichelt: Yeah. Uh, that's, you know, that, that's gonna attract- Mm ... a certain type of person. Um, but then the other thing, I think, is the way of working was always very, very cross-functional, very collaborative, very transparent. Yeah. And so I think when you are working that way, it's, uh, there's, you kind of have to leave your ego at the door a fair bit- Yeah right? You, because, yeah, um, and you're working on really hard problems, and you're, and, [00:34:00] and, and it's, like, proper universal design, which is super hard. Um, and so I, I think, I think there is something about that sort of, that, that kind of egoless way of working- Yeah ... Gerry Scullion: and that willingness to be wrong and to learn, and, you know, that that is the, uh, you know, it's very attractive to a certain kind of person. I think those, that's the sort of person- It's the key ... that you would get there, right? And if, yeah, if you weren't happy- ... to work that way, then you wouldn't, you wouldn't c- you know, you wouldn't be- You wouldn't cut it. No. Well, you wouldn't, uh, you wouldn't want to come and do it, right? There's, there- Yeah Lisa Reichelt: there are some people for whom that would be a complete nightmare. Um, but I think we really sort of wore our heart on our sleeves in respect to, like, what the values were and what the ways of working were. So if you saw that and you thought, "That sounds delicious, I really want some of that," you would run for it, right? Whereas I think other people would, like, quietly go, "Couldn't think- Right ... of anything worse," and they kept to themselves. Absolutely. Now, if you imagine that I was [00:35:00] in Sydney and we were sitting down in, in a pub and, you know, we were probably a little bit older than we are now, well, a good bit older 'cause this is kind of a retrospective question, um, but if we're looking at the fact that GDS has now outlasted several changes and several kinda leadership changes, lots of prime minister changes in the UK over the last decade, um, not just you, but generally speaking, um, that, that sort of early version of the GDS has managed to successfully outlast a lot of those different pieces. Um, what, what do you think were the key ingredients other than the people, um, that sit around that? Like, the people's a huge part of it, which we've just covered. But can you think of other aspects, um, that really led to its success? Because it has been a, a, an in- incredibly successful kind of initiative for the UK Gerry Scullion: government. I think, again, this is, we've covered a [00:36:00] little bit of this already, what- Mm-hmm ... you know, the fact that, the fact that a, a lot of it was distilled down to clear beliefs, right? Lisa Reichelt: Yeah. So you had, like, the design principles, um, you had the, the, um, the service manual, you know, that was all, you know, here is how we do things. It was written down. Uh, there was no, there was no secret sauce, right? It was all- Yeah ... there and, and distilled down and readable by anybody who wanted to read it, very accessible. Um, it wasn't overly complex. Like, things- Yeah ... were kept as simple as they could be, you know, in terms of the user interface, but also in terms of the ways of working, right? Gerry Scullion: We didn't- Yeah ... overcomplicate things. We kept it as simple and repeatable as possible. And then there's things like the infrastructure, so things like the design system were massive in terms of being able to help, um- scale [00:37:00] Lisa Reichelt: Yeah, make it easy for teams who hadn't done this stuff before to, like, s- get to a good place quickly. And- Yeah ... there was a nice partnership, I think, as well, that the design system created between developers, designers, researchers, um, probably others as well, right? I, I, this was a place to kinda coalesce on, here's how we're gonna do things, here's why we're gonna do it, here's what we've learnt. Um- Mm ... and, you know, and, and again, for that to be very kinda accessible and readable and understandable to anybody who, who wanted it as well. Yeah. So I think, you know, taking that time to think about, well, what do we believe, how do we work, uh, and to, and to make it as clear and as simple as possible and communicable as possible. Yeah. Um- It's a huge thing. So the communications team and the content design team, you know, Sarah Richards/Winters- Yeah ... you know, Henrik, all of those people that were there in, uh, at those [00:38:00] stages, setting the foundations up is kind of one of the r- key reasons I can see for its success. Definitely. Did you live- And I, I think there were, there were also pe- people like Ben Terra and Russell Davies- Ben, mm-hmm who were kinda at that senior leadership role, right? And just, like, putting stuff on posters. Yeah. You know? Just, like, posters that in a half dozen words set out a, a clear belief and were just, like, pinned up in places, you know? Like, we would have, we had our research is a team sport poster, and any time I went out to a department, I would just, like, bring the poster with me and go, "Where can we hang this up?" You know? I mean, just as you're saying that, some of the phrases I have nicked are from you. 'Cause you're saying, "Show the thing." Like- That was Russell, that wasn't me. That was Russell. Oh, okay. Well- But yeah. But, but they're all- I think I've heard it from you ... but, but they're, but they're designed to be nicked. That's exactly the thing, right? That's exactly right. They're designed to be nicked and, and, and success was when you saw somebody else saying it. Yeah. It wasn't [00:39:00] like, "Oh, they're saying my thing without saying it's my thing," right? Yeah. It's like every time- Mm. Like- ... I hear somebody say research is a team sport, I'm just like, "Yeah." You know? And I bet Russell, every time Russell hears somebody say, "Show the thing," you know, he has a- Yeah ... quiet little chuckle and does a little... You know? Like it's, it's, it's great. That's exactly the point. Gerry Scullion: So one of the things that, uh, I'm keen to get your perspective on is GDS was set up, okay? And Francis, or Sir Francis Maude created, he wrote that letter, and it got executive buy-in, but then prime ministers changed and executive sponsors moved on. Lisa Reichelt: What did that look like? Because in private sectors, whenever the sponsor sets something like this up and then they move on, it creates an unwavering within those teams and those, that kind of function, and then people are second-guessing it, and it kind of takes it a couple of steps back. And then if it happens again in quick succession where there might be a bounce of a leadership, then it's a case of like, "Okay, now we're a threat, and then we're gonna be killed." So can you remember [00:40:00] what that was like and maybe give some thought and, um, perspective on how that managed to succeed? Because I don't know if you read the news, but, you know, the UK government go through a fair amount of PMs at the moment. Yeah. Well, I wasn't really there- Of course ... for that much time that I- Yeah that I could tell you. I think- But, but Lisa, you were there in Sydney, um- I was ... whenever the DTA was shifting, wasn't it? There was a, there was a couple of PMs. Uh, yeah, I mean, I've, I've- Julia Gillard and- Gerry Scullion: I've certainly seen changes, right? I think, I think, you know, you could say one of the reasons that I think GDS was so successful was because of Sir Francis Maude and because of where he was- Mm in his career, right? He was a very- Yeah ... senior politician who was late in his career and had no desire to be the PM. Yeah. And so he just did the [00:41:00] right thing. Yeah. And, and, and he w- he was like the guardian angel, like, but with a big sword, not, like a metaphorical sword, not a real one. All right? Like really defending, defending GDS- Often, right? Lisa Reichelt: Absolutely. And then GDS also had, uh, a layer of leadership, um, who were very bold in the way that they set out as well, right? And so- Yeah ... what, what happens then is that that layer of leadership moves on, and Francis Maude moves on, and, and new people come in, and it all comes down to whether or not the people who come in, um Really understand- Yeah why, why we're doing it the way that we're doing it, which is often a very different way to what they have experienced before. Um, and whether or not they're w- and, and then kind of two things can [00:42:00] happen off the back of that, right? Yeah. They can either go, "I just completely reject this premise," and go in a completely different direction- Gerry Scullion: Sure Leisa Reichelt: which, you know, is, is painful. But then the other thing that kind of feels less painful at first, but maybe, maybe might not, might still be awful, right, is when they keep doing the motions but don't really get the why. Yeah. And I think that's, that's when you get this sort of drift from purpose- I've heard, I've heard this from which is probably the thing that I, like if I, if I talk, when I talk to folk who are working in government space in the UK now- Yeah ... I think that's what I sense is this drift where- Yeah ... a lot of the same motions are there, but a, but sometimes don't feel entirely confident that people are aligned to the why- Yeah as to why we're doing it. Gerry Scullion: So was that a case of like at every opportunity, you mentioned hanging posters and really hammering that home, that [00:43:00] why piece, this is why we're doing it, and maybe surfacing anecdotal evidence of the impact of the work? Is that, is it that kind of flavor of Leisa Reichelt: work that got done? I think so. Yeah. Yeah. And I, and, and I, and I think, I think that's, that's kind- I would like to think that's been a hallmark of how I always work- That makes sense ... right? Which is like I, what I, if, if, if folks are gonna challenge me on what we're doing- Yeah ... I want you to challenge me at the principle basis. Yeah. This is, this is, this is what I'm trying to achieve. This is why I'm doing this. So if there's a ... Yeah, so either you, you go, "Well, I fundamentally don't agree with what you're trying to achieve," or- Yeah ... "I think there's a better way that you can achieve what you're trying to achieve." They're like kind of two different questions. Yeah. And I think it's super important to make sure you know which one you're talking about. Gerry Scullion: Yeah. Leisa Reichelt: And for me it's like if you've got ... Like, let's assume that most of the people that we work with are pretty smart. Gerry Scullion: Yeah. Leisa Reichelt: If they, if they understand the why, if you get the principles, then you can give people a lot of [00:44:00] flexibility to achieve that however they want to. Yeah. But if they're just following the pattern without understanding the why, then, then I think And, and this is where like there's a little bit of a conflict between what I said at the beginning and what I'm saying now, right? Yeah. And one, one of the other things that, that, you know, the whole premise of this at the beginning, Gerry, for you, was you said, "Well, how do you scale this?" Gerry Scullion: How do you scale it? Yeah. Leisa Reichelt: And, and actually like I, I, I made a little note at the time just like is, is the goal scale? Mm-hmm. I actually think sometimes we, we go, "How do I scale this?" And scale particularly now, right, in this whole AI blah, blah, you know, world- I think it's really maybe we need to talk more about impact. Like, how do we get the impact? Gerry Scullion: Yeah. And I mean, scale is Leisa Reichelt: a- Because we can get scale, and then you have all of these people doing all of this stuff and still- Absolutely ... not achieving anything. Yeah. Gerry Scullion: Yeah, absolutely. And sometimes, you know, s- scale can be, you know, not the right kind of metric because, [00:45:00] as you said, people can be doing the thing and not delivering the impact. So that is a really good point. Um, I just wanna pick up on something that you said there a second ago around, you know, Sir Francis Maude, you know, they champion things, and that was one of the, the key kind of pieces that set it in motion. Um, Malcolm Turnbull did something similar in Australia where he stood and he presented, um, the DTA, or w- it wasn't called the DTA, it was called something- It was the DTO orig- Leisa Reichelt: originally Gerry Scullion: DTO originally, I remember, yeah. Yeah. The DTO was created, the Digital Transformation Office. Mm. And I remember at that time I was sitting in the Downing Centre. I remember hearing, I was like, "Oh, they've, you know, Turnbull's after a talk with this." And I was like, "Oh, fantastic." Leisa Reichelt: Mm. I Gerry Scullion: mean, on paper you look at it, Malcolm Turnbull, impressive businessperson, you know, he was a pretty, uh, shrewd person to try and get behind the DTO at the time. But yet, if we're to be totally brutally honest, I mean, 10, 12 years later, it [00:46:00] probably hasn't seen the same level of impact as the GDS, uh, had. Listen, don't laugh. Leisa Reichelt: That's understating things somewhat, I think, Gerry. Gerry Scullion: I know, well, you know, I think I've got a future on TV. I wanna try and be political here a little bit. That's a joke, but I've definitely no ambitions to be on TV. But, um, what, what was the difference there? Like, you know, like, so when Malcolm Turnbull left, there was more re- repercussions at the DTO to the DTA. Can you, can you comment on that? Leisa Reichelt: What can I say? I can... So I left GDS to- Gerry Scullion: Mm ... Leisa Reichelt: come back to Australia to work at the DTO. Uh, and part of the reason that I was optimistic about it was because Turnbull was the Minister for Communications- Yeah ... and, and he was the guy who was leading the charge on this. He'd had a lot of conversations with folks in the UK. Um, and I was [00:47:00] reasonably confident that, that- It was gonna be good ... that they knew what they were gonna do. Um, I was, like, literally getting on the plane to move my family back from London to Sydney when- Yeah ... the s- the, um, Tony Abbott-Turnbull spill was occurring. Okay, really? Um, yeah, I got off the plane. I got on the plane to Tony Abbott PM, and off the plane to- Oh, okay ... Turnbull being the PM. Yeah. Um, and you can't, you can't do- That was a surreal ride, wasn't it? something like this as a prime minister. Gerry Scullion: Yeah, I do remember- Sorry ... this. So I'm looking back at, you know- Leisa Reichelt: Yeah, Gerry Scullion: right ... Tony Abbott as Leisa Reichelt: the minister. Yeah, so, you know, w- weirdly, if Tony Abbott had stayed as the prime minister, and Turnbull had stayed as the dep- as the Minister for Communications, maybe we would've been more successful. Um- Yeah ... and, you know, and, and I know he did... He continued to care [00:48:00] about it a, a lot, and was as involved as he could be. Yeah. But he, he had a lot of stuff going on, um- Gerry Scullion: Who, Tony Abbott or Malcolm Turnbull? Leisa Reichelt: Turnbull. Gerry Scullion: Yeah, 100%. Leisa Reichelt: Right? There was a lot going on, and, uh, and there was no way that he was able to give this the, the time and attention that it needed- That was going on in amongst all the other stuff that was going on. And so I think, yeah, we, we, we lost our Frances Maude- kind of before- Gerry Scullion: Before you Leisa Reichelt: even had the plan ... not, not before we got started, because like the DTO existed- I do remember the D- ... you know, before, before I got there ... and Gerry Scullion: I remember meeting you in the DTO at that point, and there was a bit of a flap because, not with you, but just with generally with the government at that stage- Mm-hmm because Tony Abbott, it's probably safe to assume, like, and I don't, wouldn't like to speak on behalf of somebody else, but he may not think the same as Malcolm Turnbull when it comes to that kind of stuff. So- Yeah ... um, he, he's, he's very [00:49:00] much on the right, like, you know, Tony Abbott. And I, I tell you a funny story about Tony Abbott. We lived in a, in his constituency in Sydney, and we had our first child, and he'd gone through all of the stuff that he'd, he'd done. And he came out and he saw a photo opportunity with myself, my wife, and my newborn baby, and I was very proud to tell him to GTF away. So, um, he w- he's just not somebody I would ever want to align, and unfortunately, uh, you know, he ha- he hung around for a while. Like, yeah, I was looking, he was nearly two years sitting around at, at that role at that stage. So you were in this- Well, Leisa Reichelt: yeah, he plays... No, he's back being the president of the Li- um, Liberal Party again now, so. Gerry Scullion: Is he? Yeah, Leisa Reichelt: he's Gerry Scullion: back in. I'm just looking to see if... I'm a l- bit disconnected a little bit. I, I don't look at that side of politics in, in, in Australia. Wow. I should do. Stunned. See Leisa Reichelt: if he's- Stunned to hear that, Gerry. Um, yeah. Anyway- And- ... enough of that ... what, what does Gerry Scullion: that mean, though? Like, when, when, when he [00:50:00] came in, like Tony Abbott came in, like, was the DTO in the- No, no, Abbott Leisa Reichelt: was, Abbott was in already, right? So the- Yeah ... the, the, the point here is that when I, when I came to do this job- Gerry Scullion: You had Abbott Leisa Reichelt: when I agreed to do it, Abbott was the PM, but, but Turnbull was Minister for Communications- Communications ... and this was his baby, right? Gerry Scullion: Yeah, that's right. Leisa Reichelt: So this was, this was like a big fish in his pond. Yeah. But then he became the prime minister- That's it ... and all of a sudden we were like a fingerling, like we were nothing in the scheme of things for him. And so we then got a new, uh, minister to look after us, and then another- Yeah ... minister and another minister, so we ended up with all of these junior ministers coming in and, and being responsible, none of whom really got it or cared about it in the same way- Yeah ... that Turnbull, who had sort of initiated- Yeah this whole piece did, right? So Gerry Scullion: what was it taking Leisa Reichelt: for- So we didn't have that very senior leadership, we didn't have that sort of government- Yeah ... representative who like really [00:51:00] got the principles of what we were trying to do. Gerry Scullion: So that why was missing, if you go back to the, the GDS, like the, the why we're doing this. Uh, I, I- Or was it a case of you were poorly featured from Leisa Reichelt: the outset? I th- I ... My belief is, and other people will probably say different things potentially, my belief is that at that political level, that political leadership level- Gerry Scullion: Yeah ... Leisa Reichelt: the, the why graduated with, um, Turnbull and was never really brought back in. We didn't really ever have political leadership that got the why ever again- Yeah ... I don't think. Gerry Scullion: But when you look at it on paper, like, you know, Turnbull moving from communications minister to PM, you'd imagine that's, it's gonna get greater clout. You- You know, on paper, like you'd imagine that that was the case, but unfortunately- Leisa Reichelt: You might think that- Or- but no, it's not, because he then becomes occupied with so- Everything ... s- so many things. He has no ... He has all the best will in the world, but- Yeah ... no time and [00:52:00] attention, and he, he then can't spend his political capital on- Yeah ... something, you know, as, as, I'm gonna say, relatively inconsequential compared to some of the other- Yeah big-ticket things that he was dealing with. Gerry Scullion: Absolutely, terrorism and every- it was a hu- it was a, it was a pretty- Leisa Reichelt: It was, there was a lot going Gerry Scullion: on ... difficult time. Leisa Reichelt: Yeah. Gerry Scullion: It was a difficult time. So again, if we were to compare, and again, we're not doing like for like, but if you look at the GDS and you look at the, um, the DTO/GTA, is it a case of it was just the wrong time in Australia? What am I hearing there? How, how, how do you- Leisa Reichelt: There's lots of- Or- There's lots, there's lots of things. Lots of things, right? Yeah. So I think, y- yes, we didn't have that political leader, um- Mm-hmm ... in the same way that we had in the UK. Yeah. Um, I think also, uh- Being, being n- not the first iteration is, is a very different- Yeah ... kind of [00:53:00] situation as well, right? Yeah. So you remember when Spotify did their whole, like, "Here's how we work, here's our way of working," and suddenly everyone was like, "Oh, we're gonna do the Spotify model. We're gonna do the Spotify model"? Yeah. And then some people were like- Mm ... "Oh, bloody Spotify model. Ugh, don't, like- ... don't even talk to me about the Spotify model." Gerry Scullion: Yeah. Leisa Reichelt: So it was a little bit l- like that when, you know, all... a bunch of us came in, you know, I, I, I am Australian. I was born here. You were born here. Um, but, you know, I got off the plane with my accent that I developed from living in London for a long time, um- Yeah with, with a bunch of other people who, who were British, and a lot of the public sector- Yeah ... who were involved in this were just like, "Can you just get on your plane and fuck off?" Am I Gerry Scullion: allowed to swear? Sorry. There was a really young person... Absolutely. There was a young person who was, like, a technical whiz. Yeah, Jordan. Leisa Reichelt: Jordan Hatch. Gerry Scullion: I remember... Oh, uh, Jordan Hatch. I remember that name being... I was like, "Oh my God, they've brought the best of the best over from- Leisa Reichelt: Yeah ... Gerry Scullion: but there was also a sub conversation, a sub narrative that was going through, 'cause I was at the local [00:54:00] level, if you want, like the Na- Mm ... like, yeah, New South Wales, and they were saying, "Oh, they're just gonna do a lift and shift." Leisa Reichelt: Mm. Gerry Scullion: And it was this whole piece. They're, like, it's not contextual. It's not understanding the, the differences and the nuances, 'cause there's a lot more, uh, um, and I say that with conviction, like, you know, nuances in Australia around, you know, identity and our colonial past and how we actually, you know, deliver our services, you know, so it's contextual to, you know, the indigenous peoples of Australia, like, all of those different pieces, and it wasn't... I, I remember at the time, it wasn't communicated particularly well- Mm ... um, on how that was gonna be approached. I remember speaking to the New Sou- or the, the New Zealand equivalent, and they just seemed to be much more ethically grounded. I hope they... oh, that's not being offensive. They just seemed to be more conditioned to thinking about the other. Is that, uh, something that I maybe have tainted a little bit in my, in my [00:55:00] memory, or is that something you can comment on? Leisa Reichelt: I can only tell you my experience- Gerry Scullion: Yeah ... Leisa Reichelt: really, Gerry, which is that I feel as though, um- I feel as though a lot of people have made a lot of decisions before anything got started. Gerry Scullion: Yeah. Leisa Reichelt: Yeah? Uh, m- perhaps on both sides, right? Yeah. Certainly when, when I was there, it was like a lot of folk just going, "You don't know what you're talking about. This is fundamentally different. What worked there will not work here." Yeah. "We're fine as we are." Believe us, right? And, and I mean, I hear what you're saying, but at the same time- Mm-hmm and, and, you know, maybe I haven't learned my lesson, right? At the same time I go, "Well, it is simple," right? Because it, b- no matter where we are, whether it's UK, Australia, US, New Zealand, right, what do we do? We start with user needs. Gerry Scullion: Yep. Leisa Reichelt: All right, and we go and we find out [00:56:00] who are the users, what do they need to do- Mm what do we need to do to make that a good experience? Gerry Scullion: Yeah. Leisa Reichelt: I do believe that is the same everywhere. Gerry Scullion: Yeah. Leisa Reichelt: But I also believe that the, that what those needs will be and how we design to meet those needs will be different everywhere. Gerry Scullion: Absolutely. Leisa Reichelt: And I think that was, that just got, like- Gerry Scullion: Lost ... Leisa Reichelt: we were never able really to- I think that- communicate because I, I don't really feel like folk were listening, and maybe, maybe m- m- more should have, could have been done in terms of communicating- Yeah ... almost certainly. But- It Gerry Scullion: was communication outwards. It was more, like, about, not about the ways of working, but I think in the local scene it seemed to be like, well, you know, w- they didn't even ask at that point. Like, there were some really solid, amazing people in Sydney, and they still are, like, you know, that would've been an amazing internal hire to come in through that. And it was seen as [00:57:00] a, like, okay, well, w- maybe we're not good enough, they've gone over and they've taken the GDS across. And again, I'm not, not having a... Y- you were Australian, as you said, you were born Australia, um, but there was also, you know, a, a leadership from another country at that stage- Mm ... the US, and it was a case of, like, well, w- we haven't... didn't feel like it was connected to the system in that s- in, in that sense. It was kind of like a UFOs just landed in amongst a lot of the work that had been tried before. So yeah, again, hopefully I, I wasn't setting out to, um, to offend, but it was just remember it being how it was perceived at the time, and I think it was more of a communications thing as opposed to actually- Mm ... how the actual work was happening. 'Cause when I was over at the GTO, GTA, whatever, whatever it was called- um, it was, it was, you know, the work was, was great. It was, at that time it was, it was very positive, and I know everyone, myself included, wanted to work there. Leisa Reichelt: Mm. Gerry Scullion: It was a case of, like, "Oh man, if [00:58:00] the job comes up and I'm working alongside Lisa and everyone else, I am gone from here." I remember saying Leisa Reichelt: that to everyone in the department just- Yeah, but Gerry, like, l- we don't... Like, that's not what we want, right? We want- Yeah ... amazing people to stay out in the departments because that's where the bulk of the work has to happen, right? Exactly. And so, like, the whole, you know, the goal is to, to get that great, you know, unified framework and work, like... Yeah, anyway What could have been, what could have been Gerry Scullion: But go r- all the way back to that piece of the politics is the work Leisa Reichelt: Mm. Gerry Scullion: Um, uh, is that still holding true if we're looking at that statement into the time where you're in the DTA and the DTO? The politics, it sounds like at that stage you got off the plane and you're like, "Hey, there's Bondi. Oh my God, what's that in the distance? This is gonna be- ... I'm gonna be working night and day." Leisa Reichelt: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, definitely. A lot of, you're dealing Gerry Scullion: with a lot of politics at that point, yeah? Leisa Reichelt: Definitely. Definitely. And yeah, I don't know. I don't wanna- [00:59:00] I wanna be, I want, you know, I kinda wanna be ... I think- Yeah ... the reality in a lot of the context that many of us will be working in is that- Mm ... you will come into situations where there are entrenched power systems- Yeah that people are very happy with. Gerry Scullion: Mm-hmm. Leisa Reichelt: And some of the things that you are gonna maybe suggest should happen are going to, like, mess with that. Gerry Scullion: Yeah. So- Leisa Reichelt: Um, and people will do whatever they need to do to shut that down, to- Gerry Scullion: Yeah ... Leisa Reichelt: maintain their own power systems, and it's kinda naive, I guess, to think that that's not the case. Mm. I was, I was a lot more naive back then than I am now, let's say. But, um, yeah, I think, I think there was a lot of that going on as well. Gerry Scullion: So Leisa Reichelt: if you look at the- That was back at the same time as Robodebt was going on, too, right? So there was, you know, it was a pretty interesting time . Gerry Scullion: I, I [01:00:00] remember, um, GDS, the DTA, DTO, and then, uh, well, I, I, I'd came home to Ireland, um, and then you were at Atlassian, okay? So what were the two pieces ... Atlassian, for anyone who doesn't know, by the way, is an absolute powerhouse of an Australian success story. It started out as a startup, went on to become a massive enterprise. Don't know what its current valuation is in the ASX, but it's definitely still in the billions, I presume. Leisa Reichelt: It's on the NASDAQ, actually, but yeah, it's, it's- Gerry Scullion: On the NASDAQ, okay, right ... mm-hmm. So, um, thanks for qualifying. I'm, uh- ... picking you up on that . But, like, a re- huge success story. So you joined there 2018, was it 2017 or something around that era? Leisa Reichelt: Something, Gerry Scullion: something like Leisa Reichelt: that. Something like that. Something like that, yeah. Yeah. Gerry Scullion: Last, you were there for seven years. Leisa Reichelt: Mm-hmm. Gerry Scullion: Um, walk me through what are the, the pieces that, um, you know, when you started that role, what did you draw upon from your experience in the DTA? Um, and what, how did that differ, the two different worlds? You were coming from a [01:01:00] public organization, and you're dealing with, you know, trying to improve public services into a absolutely huge organization in Atlassian. What was that like, that tran- transition? Well, I actually don't think that, um, Atlassian was bigger than- Really? ... the public service at Leisa Reichelt: that point. Gerry Scullion: Of course. Yeah. You went ... Well, I suppose- It was- ... if you look at the, the scale of the, um, the employees in Atlassian- Leisa Reichelt: It's grown a lot. It's, it's grown- Yeah ... a lot over, over the years. Um, There, uh, it was funny. When I first started at Atlassian, everyone was just like, "Oh, it must be such a relief to be working in a tech company. It must be so much easier than it is- Why did you say that? ... working in government." I think they just... I don't know why they... But I guess it was just the impression that things are harder to do in government than they are in- Yeah in, in tech companies. [01:02:00] Um, but that was not necessarily my experience, and I think that there were a couple of things that stand out to me particularly around that. One was that in, you know, in big corporates and in government, there is a lot of bureaucracy, but the bureaucracy's very legible Again, like going back to like someone's written it down, and you can find it, and you can follow it, and you know what needs to get done in order You know? Yeah If you wanna do a procurement, there's, there are rules, they're written down, you follow the rules. Um, in, in more of a sort of a tech startup world, a lot of the time, certainly my experience was that, um, they, the bureaucracy still existed, but it was a lot less legible. It was hard- Okay ... you had to like find the person who knew the thing- Right who could unlock the door to get the thing done. [01:03:00] Um, and, and so that, just like navigating your way around the system was a lot more- Isn't that- ... difficult Gerry Scullion: It, isn't that a kind of like it's kinda meta in a sense because Jira and Confluence are the two places and the two softwares that Atlassian create- Leisa Reichelt: I think it's more cultural for getting- Yeah, I think it's more- ... the Gerry Scullion: cultural Leisa Reichelt: piece ... I think, I, I think, I think it was, it's, it was because the mindsta- the mindset of the place was still very much startup mindset. Gerry Scullion: Yeah. Leisa Reichelt: You know? We don't, we don't mess around with things like procurement, we just like get stuff done. Um- Yeah ... but like actually that wasn't the reality. Actually, there was a procurement process, you know, and somebody- Yeah ... knew what it was, but most people were just like, "We just get... I just put it on my credit card." Gerry Scullion: Is it, is it a case that in government there was like a, a knowing culture and then trying to move them into a learning culture? That, that shift is a big thing for me when you're trying to... You know, we actually don't know, 'cause we need to go and ask, and we have to do the research in trying to find out the answers to some of these questions. [01:04:00] Presumably, and again, assumption flag being waved here, at Atlassian they already had design, they already had design research. They all... I know Ben Crothers was there for a long time. There's a lot of great people that I have known over the years being in Australia. Um, Atlassian is synonymous with the design community. A lot of the meetups are met there. So design was presumed would be more mature at that point when you arrived in, 'cause it had been around for coming up to 10 years, I'd say. What were the challenges that you were faced, that you were facing when you went into Atlassian, and w- what was your, kind of your task? What was y- you, you, you set out your agenda way back in the GDS about these are my, my negotiables and my non-negotiables, this is what I wanna be able to do. Can you talk about what that was like from your perspective of going into Atlassian? Leisa Reichelt: I think that one really significant difference, and I, you kind of touched on this, I think, in your- Mm ... what was it? The, um, [01:05:00] your knowing culture to your- Knowing Gerry Scullion: culture to learning culture. Leisa Reichelt: Yeah. So what I, my experience in government, and in, and in some of the different organizations that I've worked in as well, was that they were Like, I'd come in, "Hi, I'm Lisa. I do UX research." And they're like, "You do what now?" Yeah. I'm like, "I do UX research." "Oh, what's, what's that?" when it's at home, and you explain it, and then, and they ... So your job becomes to help them understand what you do and why it might be a valuable thing for you to do with them. And then they go, "All right. Okay. You've convinced me. Off you go now. Do the thing." Right? Right. Okay. And then you have the, the space to go do the thing. Gerry Scullion: Yeah. Leisa Reichelt: Going into Atlassian was very different, because as you say, there was quite a mature culture there. Mm-hmm. A mature design culture. I'm gonna say not a mature research culture.[01:06:00] Gerry Scullion: Okay. Leisa Reichelt: Yeah, Gerry Scullion: yeah. Yeah. I do ... I, I would see that. Leisa Reichelt: We were, we were talking about, um, consent earlier, I think, before we started recording, right? Informed consent. Mm. Gerry Scullion: Yeah. Leisa Reichelt: There was ... When I got started out at Atlassian, there were no consent forms for research Yeah. There were non-disclosure forms Gerry Scullion: Yeah, okay Leisa Reichelt: But there were no consent forms. That whole- Interesting ... conversation around consent being something that was there to, like, look after our research participants was not a conversation that was happening. It was like, we have to protect ourselves from our research participants- Yeah ... who might see our amazing designs and go and tell the world about them before we launch it. Uh, and so- The onus was there Yeah. So there was a lot of stuff happening, and- Mm-hmm a lot of people who... Hmm. There was a lot of stuff happening, and a general sense that we're, we're pretty happy with what we're doing. Gerry Scullion: Yeah. I mean, they were growing- We're pretty proud of this ... like, they were growing like bananas. Like, there was- Leisa Reichelt: Yeah. Gerry Scullion: And- How do you, how do you work within that, like, [01:07:00] delivering value whenever everything is going great and maybe- But it- you're not doing research very well? Leisa Reichelt: Gerry. Gerry Scullion: I'm asking the questions. Leisa Reichelt: I, I know- I don't agree with them ... I know, but I've, you know, I've been, I've made a New Year's resolution to try not to lose more friends, and you're about to make me lose more friends probably. Gerry Scullion: Sorry. Leisa Reichelt: What's going on? It wasn't going, it wasn't going great. Gerry Scullion: Yeah. Leisa Reichelt: It wasn't going great, right? The research work that was being done there, I think, was done with great intention- Gerry Scullion: Yeah ... Leisa Reichelt: but was providing a lot of false positives, where they'd done a lot of work and they had a lot of data, and they were like, "This demonstrates that we should do this." And, you know, I remember having a, a chat to a, a, a really good researcher who had been hired there not long before me, and she's like, "Please, can you have a look at this project? I don't know if I've just missed something really important in my research career, [01:08:00] or if this is just, like, a completely bonkers way to solve this problem." And I just looked at her, I said, "I've never seen anything like this in my life." Um, but, you know, and, and this is, this is kind of the thing, like, you go into these organizations that have a very specific way of doing things and a- Yeah ... and a level of confidence and pride in themselves for doing it that way, and you come in, and the first thing that you're doing is, like, did, did I, like, did I miss a really important part in my career that, like- question yourself, right? You're like- Yeah ... you know, is it me? Um, and so- Yeah, yeah ... you know, that, that, and then, and then, like, being able to reset that without completely pissing everybody off- Absolutely ... who has invested a lot in that. Like, I will be completely frank with you and say I did piss off a lot of people who had invested- Mm-hmm a lot in that, and, you know, to this day, like, say, they would cross the street not to come talk to me, I think, um, because I probably could have handled [01:09:00] that situation a lot better than I did. Yeah. Um, uh, and I, you know, I, I don't know. I still, honestly, I still don't know how I would have handled that differently- Yeah because it kind of, it sort of did need a handbrake turn. But that is you- And I don't know how you can do a handbrake turn without- Gerry Scullion: Yeah ... Leisa Reichelt: without the people who have set it up in the direction- Yeah ... not feeling as though you're kind of shitting all over them. Um- Gerry Scullion: But I think i- i- aren't these the moments, though, in your career, Lisa, where you have to have an internal compass of yourself of what's the right thing to do? And that's what I've heard, you know, from you speak, from you write. It, this is, this is Lisa. This is who, who they are. Like, you know, if there's, this is the, I'm working towards these principles here. You know what I mean? I will do and say what I have to say to try and reset that course. Yeah. And, you know, you can say, "I probably could have handled it better." Yeah, who couldn't have done something better? Like, you know, there's, it's easier to say in retrospect. But at that moment in time, I, [01:10:00] I'm sure it was difficult personally, professionally, and going into work and you're saying, "Well, look, I think we've, we've been doing not, not exactly a great job in certain parts. Here we can improve these things." You might've lost people on the way, but I'm sure over time it might have got a little bit easier, did it? Leisa Reichelt: Eventually. Gerry Scullion: When you talked about it, yeah? Leisa Reichelt: Yeah, eventually. But, you know, but you're right, you know? It is y- I think you do need, you need to make a decision as to what your priorities are. Um, my priorities s- were to do the job the right way, to do the best, what I believed was the best thing for the company- Yeah ... and the best thing for our, which I believe is doing the best thing for- Absolutely ... you know, our customers and our users. Um- That's the hard work ... right? Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And so it was, yeah, like I did not approach this like a popularity contest. Um- Yeah ... and yeah, it was, it was, it was really, really [01:11:00] hard- Mm-hmm ... and, you know, for, for, for a long time. Um, and you know, I, I, I think that actually this is kind of in a lot of cases it is what you choose when you choose to be a researcher. Gerry Scullion: Yeah. Leisa Reichelt: Because you're constantly telling people stuff that they don't wanna hear- Gerry Scullion: Um Leisa Reichelt: um, and trying to find ways to get them to em- Come on ... embrace that, right? And- Mm ... and change directions off the back of that. And so, yeah, you know, I don't, I don't think you become a, a researcher and be a good researcher if you wanna be the most popular person in the organization. Gerry Scullion: I love that. I love that 'cause that's the stuff you gotta talk about. I don't, I Leisa Reichelt: think I, you Gerry Scullion: know, I- Leisa Reichelt: I know. Gerry Scullion: No, but it's so, it's so important to say it out loud, and I, I can even feel you saying to yourself, "Oh, my God, should I say that?" But like at, at the same point, that is so true. Leisa Reichelt: Mm. Gerry Scullion: And in my cases, I, I hear a lot of that coming through from lots of people I coach. It, it's not a popularity contest. We're, we're here to bring the [01:12:00] hard truth back, and hopefully they accept it. And you know, going to bed each night, you can put your head on your pillow and say, "Well, hmm, I'm, I'm walking the walk and I'm talking the talk." Um, how Leisa Reichelt: you- It's really interesting though because like I, I reflect, you know, there are certain people who I've come across in my career- Mm who have not chosen that path, right? Gerry Scullion: Yeah. Leisa Reichelt: Who have been extremely popular with their stakeholders, with, you know, with people that they do- Yeah ... the work for, um, and who get fabulous feedback, "Oh, you're so great. You're doing wonderful work," you know? But f- I, I'm aware that they're- And Gerry Scullion: the stuff is probably in the toilet Leisa Reichelt: they're not doing, they're not doing, they're not doing the- what they should, they're not having the hard conversations, right? They're, they're sugarcoating everything. Um- Absolutely ... but, God, do they have a great time getting invited to all the parties. It's, you Gerry Scullion: know- I, I, I'll [01:13:00] just, on that point, I do remember being in a, a government department in Australia and starting out like, "Hey, Gerry, what's going on?" To then being found out that they just refer to me, "Where is Scullion today?" It, it was a case of like it had shifted so dramatically when I started bringing back the real research and, you know, writing these things down so it was clearly understood, and I speak about that in the book. I speak about this, like, this is not gonna mean that you're gonna have, uh, the happiest of Monday mornings, uh, when you're working in organizations. But I mean, the bulk of your work, if you look at it now, you know, how would you... Is it something you're proud of, or how, how do you see it, uh, from your own perspective? Um, you said that there was things that you probably could have done better removing out of that, but would you, would you be generally positive about your, your, uh, career that you've achieved so far? Leisa Reichelt: I'm not the person to [01:14:00] say that- Gerry Scullion: Come on ... Leisa Reichelt: Gerry. I- No, you Gerry Scullion: know ... I'm a, I'm a, I'm a fan, so. Leisa Reichelt: Yeah, I know. Do you know what? Before we, before we get to that though, I do wanna say one thing, right? Because I don't- Yeah ... I don't think that it's okay that we go, "Oh, it's hard being a researcher. You always say sad things. People don't like you," blah, blah, blah. I think, you know, to go back to, like, how, how... If you wanna be impactful, if you wanna create change- Mm-hmm ... then the worst thing that can happen is that you don't get invited to the meetings. Gerry Scullion: Yeah. Leisa Reichelt: Right? Yeah. And so it's not, it's not acceptable, it's not okay to go, "Well, nobody likes me 'cause I say mean things, 'cause the research says mean things, and therefore..." Yeah Right? And like, what can I do? You know, uh, that's w- that can't be the end of the story. Like we- Yeah ... have to ... But I think part of the, of the big challenge is how do we turn it around? How do we get into the mindset of the [01:15:00] folks who we're trying to share this with and, and- Yeah ... be a, be, be really a part of that. And this is why, you know, I think, you know, going back to GDS, something that worked very well there, right, is that y- you weren't the outsider, right? Yeah. It was the team working together, right? The, the unit of delivery was the team, to go back to another thing that was on a poster, right? Mm-hmm. And so the team would come up with the, with the prototype and how they thought the solutions would work, and the team would go and watch the research, and the team would work out what they'd learned, and then, you know, round and round we'd go. And, you know, I think that was what I was always trying to push more and more towards, was like, how can we get our, our research folk in as a genuine part of that cross-disciplinary team where we all have skin in the game? Gerry Scullion: Yeah. Leisa Reichelt: Where I'm not having to wag my finger at anybody. Um, but when you're at that strategic level, and you're going, "There's this whole bit of work over here that needs to happen that you've got no one on," and it's not- Yeah [01:16:00] the sexy, glamorous work. Gerry Scullion: Yeah. Leisa Reichelt: Right? It's the hard work. It's the making Jira easier to use work, right? Uh, that's, I think that's where it's super hard- It's a challenge ... is to try to, try to get the resourcing into areas where no one really particularly wants to do it 'cause it's not super fun. Gerry Scullion: Um- So is it a case of being an agitator while still maintaining the status quo, and you're Leisa Reichelt: going I- don't even wanna, I don't, I don't think I wanna go with the agitator thing, right? I think it's- Yeah ... for me it's really about, like, how do you connect it to the business? Gerry Scullion: Yeah. Leisa Reichelt: How do you, how do you try to talk about this in terms that the business cares about to say- Gerry Scullion: Yeah ... Leisa Reichelt: um, you know, it's, it's al- you almost take a lot of the user talk out of it. Gerry Scullion: Yeah. Leisa Reichelt: And, and you're like, "Well, we," do like, "We need to go and fix this up over here because this is having a real impact on the onboarding effectiveness-" Absolutely "... which is impacting this metric, and this metric, and this metric, which are the metrics that, you know, y- I, I am willing to make a [01:17:00] bet that if we do these things here, it's gonna have this influence on those metrics," right? Yeah. And then I have my skin in the game- Gerry Scullion: Yeah Leisa Reichelt: So I can be right or wrong. I can be provably right or wrong against business metrics that the organization actually cares about. I, I think, I think that there's a lot of that, right? It's like how do you make sure that you have skin in the game so that you can be held accountable, and you're not just someone who's over in the corner having a moan? Gerry Scullion: Yeah Yeah. There's, there's so much to distill in that, like, you know, like I'm, I still feel like the agitation piece is if you're not agitating, you have to question are you being complicit in actually how you're doing things. Like, and agitation doesn't have to be a negative thing, it can be, you know, you're reverberating a little bit more at a higher frequency to try and allow people to, you know, kind of rethink and reflect on actually how they're doing these things. Leisa Reichelt: Can I reframe that? Gerry Scullion: Yeah, please do, this is a [01:18:00] collaboration. Leisa Reichelt: So one of... I was talking to someone about this the other day, right? They have this- Yeah ... huge big amount of, of data, it's all wonderful data and like they've got- Yeah ... they've learnt about 70 different things, and I'm like, "You know, if you've learnt 70 things, you've learnt nothing," because no business can absorb 70 things at once. That's true. I'm like, "If you got caught in the lift with the CEO tomorrow, and they said, 'Right, mate, what are the, what are, what should I be working on?'" Like, do you have your top three things? Gerry Scullion: Yeah. Leisa Reichelt: And I think that's why, that's where I got to, was I wanna have an opinion on what are the top three things that I would do if I was the boss. Yeah. So if I get in the lift with the CEO and they're like, "Oh, hey, how's it going?" You know, "Oh, we're just gonna do some planning," or, "I'm thinking about this," like, "What do you think are the important things?" Like, I know my top three things immediately off the top of my head. Yeah. And that they, they've come from the body of work that the research team have done, um, and that they maybe [01:19:00] are aligned to things that the business is interested in doing, or maybe they're gonna go off in a completely different direction- Yeah but I have those prepared and ready to go, right? And I would, you know, I would have my Confluence pages all there and ready, so, you know, if I got the chance and they were like, "Oh, can you send me some stuff on that?" Boom- Gerry Scullion: Done ... Leisa Reichelt: you got it, right? It's all I've got, I've basically got the proposal for the idea there already with all of my kind of sources and recommendations. Yeah. So I have something that's very legible that's- Actionable ... and, and is, and is opinionable, in, sorry, is, is, like, opinionated. Yeah. I think it's really important that we are specifically opinionated and we can talk about why from a business point of view- Yeah ... why does this matter, you know? Because my top three things should be what are the top three things that I wanna recommend that we do that's gonna have, like, an impact on the bottom line- Yeah on the metrics that the business cares about. And Gerry Scullion: in fact- Leisa Reichelt: And so that, that's kinda agitating, but I think it's very, it's like productive agitating. Yeah, Gerry Scullion: positive agitation. Leisa Reichelt: [01:20:00] Yeah. Gerry Scullion: Yeah. Is, is probably a, a way of kind of... But I love the, the anecdote of what you're talking about. It's not agitating if we're just sitting there being kind of like, "This is all, we can do better than this," it's, you know, you actually put action around it. And I think that's a really nice way of framing it. Lisa- And Leisa Reichelt: you make it concrete, right? You make it concrete and you make it debatable. Gerry Scullion: 100%. 100%. Um, I am conscious I've taken so much of your time, um, in your ni- It's been Leisa Reichelt: so fun though, Gerry ... Gerry Scullion: in your nighttime. I mean, this, this is, this is why I, I podcast. I know you are now a podcaster, and I want you to give a shout-out- to your podcast. W- w- we've been connecting folks last week about just how amazing it is to podcast, 'cause, you know, this is how I speak to my friends. This is how I speak to everyone else. What you hear is what you get. Um, but y- what's your experience? And tell us about your own podcast that you're, you're working on at the moment Leisa Reichelt: Well, I, when I left Atlassian, I left for a very specific reason, which is that- Mm-hmm [01:21:00] uh, in my family, one of my children was having a lot of problems with, um- Yeah ... with school, and that was leading to some sort of s- pretty significant mental health impacts. And so- Mm ... I needed to take some time out to, to help him out. Yeah. Um, and there is an amazing charity that is a peer support organization for folks who have got kids who are struggling with school, 'cause that, it's a pretty traumatic experience for, for the kids- Sure and, and the parents alike. I know it's a big issue over in the UK and, and other places- Mm-hmm ... as well. Um, and they, connecting with that organization was so transformative for me in terms of the support and the insight that it provided. I thought, I have a little bit of time on my hands now. Yeah. I wanna, I wanna be doing something, you know, productive with my time as well. Not that looking after my son isn't productive. No. Uh, and I'm like ... Actually, a, a, a friend of mine from Atlassian said, "You know, you should make [01:22:00] a podcast about your experiences." I was like, "Ugh." But then at one point I'm just like, you know what? I should make a podcast for this organization because they, you know, they- They need it helping them connect with more people is such a powerful thing to do. Yeah. And so that's what I did. I, like, I hit them up and said, "Let's make a podcast." And they're like, "Who will we get to do that?" And I'm like, "I think I can do it." Yeah. Amazing. Frantically googling to try and work out how on earth you do it. So yeah, so I have a podcast that I've been doing for about a year and a half now called The School Can't Experience. Gerry Scullion: School Can't Experience. Leisa Reichelt: Yeah. And it's just, it's a mixture of lived experience interviews with families who have been- Beautiful ... through it and come to the other side, and then also interviews with experts, education experts, psychologists, or all kinds of folk- Yeah who, uh, support families through this experience, and who understand that it is a nervous system issue and not a behavioral issue, which is, like, the real- Wow ... turning point of, of insight that changes everything. Gerry Scullion: Wow, okay. Yeah. Leisa Reichelt: Mm-hmm. Gerry Scullion: I'm gonna put a link to the [01:23:00] website 'cause I've been on it, and also a link to it in, on Apple for people who are listening, like, want, want to see and listen to Lisa interview these people. Like, you know, we did have a big conversation on Arc, which we could probably plan for another conversation if you're interested, on how research and podcasting- I, I, I, you know, we both agree on this, that it's an incredible, uh, cross- Mm ... functioning discipline if you want. Like, that you can actually use podcasting as a really nice way of designing in the open and, you know, being very transparent. And a lot of the skills that I learned through doing design research transfer into doing podcasting, and I think y- you're feeling the same thing as well. You see, see the parallels. Leisa Reichelt: 100%. The other thing, like I used to always love the way that you would learn so much about the world through research- Yeah and learn so much about other people and other people's lives through research. And through podcasting, I now have, like, a good excuse to [01:24:00] message all these people who I just wanna, like, h- talk to- Mm ... and learn from- Gerry Scullion: Yeah ... Leisa Reichelt: and go, 'Hey, will you come and talk to me?' And let you know, and I'd like, you know, otherwise they would just say no, but, like, 'cause you've got a microphone- Yeah and a podcast, amazing people say yes to come have a conversation with you. Yeah. So that's, uh, such a treat. Gerry Scullion: It is amazing, like, a- a- as a thing, I remember, like, way, way back in Australia, someone saying to me, like, "Oh, you'll open the, the doors," and again, I don't, we're not a big fan of Tim Ferriss, but he says that in one of his books, like the ability to be able to speak to CEOs in his life, he said, feels like he's had about 10 MBAs. Mm-hmm. And I was like, 'Wow, that could be kinda cool from a design perspective- Right ... if I could get inside the heads of a lot of people and understand how they work and think.' Leisa Reichelt: Mm. Gerry Scullion: Um, so yeah, it's, it's a huge privilege to be able to interview people like yourself and understand their own perspectives and how they reflect on they, how they worked and operated and scaled things. So I wrap every episode on This Is HCD [01:25:00] up with Lisa by, by saying thank you for, for coming on today, talking to me, r- allowing me to go left and right and, and have these conversations 'cause we don't run on a script. I've got a, a Mac here in front of me where I'm looking at some ideas for conversations, and you've helped me fill in those gaps 100 times- better than I could have ever done in a script. So again, that takes a certain level of vulnerability and trust, and, and I appreciate you giving me that time and giving me this, this opportunity to speak to you, so thank you so much. No, Leisa Reichelt: thank you, and sorry to everyone else who I've accidentally pissed off when I've talked about these things along the way. My apologies. Gerry Scullion: No, we're, we're all big, big boys and big girls, and everyone else in between, so, um, thank you so much, and I'll chat to you. Leisa Reichelt: Thank you, Gerry. I appreciate it. Great to talk.