And she's doing an amazing job over there and they have an amazing mission and I'm really excited for you to meet her and I'm excited to ask some questions to Anna about what they're doing over there. So, Anna, all that aside, I want you to tell us a little bit about your mission around humanizing work
We are a human centered design firm that partners with organizations, really in any industry, to help them solve complex problems where there's a human at the center. So those problems tend to fall in either the innovation category or the culture category. Innovation would be partnering with a company to help them develop a new product or service or solve a problem. And then culture is helping them identify the gap between their current culture and their intended culture and designing interventions to bridge that gap
Parker Gates
@parkergates · 2:06
And so if I think I'm hearing you correctly, what you're saying is that when we allow people to work in their most human ways, they do better work for themselves, for the client, they're happier. Satisfaction all the way around is greater than it would be before. And so it leads me to be curious about, like, how did we get to this place of dehumanized work?
Swell Team
@Swell · 0:15
OOH. Parker I like that question when I say humanize work so that people can do the best work, hopefully, of their lives, I think it's important to ask the question why. It's not just because that feels good, which it does. It feels good to feel inspired at work, but I think it's because it is our best chance at progress
Parker Gates
@parkergates · 1:44
If I'm in a less intuitively human spot, then I am in a more, I don't know, efficient or more of a space of executing on an idea that's already been planned. And I love your analogy of you want your surgeon to be efficient and not creative. This is not the time to be redesigning the wheel in the operating room. I guess in the business world, we tend to use such kind of ambiguous, nonspecific language
Yes. Okay. I like the idea of giving specific examples. All of this can feel a little bit like nailing jello to a wall. So first of all, I think that creativity and efficiency both exist in a humanized work experience. It's how we choose to navigate each of them and bounce back and forth between the two that either humanizes or dehumanizes how we feel about work
Parker Gates
@parkergates · 2:07
What are some of the things that they can do to create a more humanized work culture? Really simple, like basic well, maybe not easy, but like simple and basic stuff that they can do to get started. What are some examples of something like that?
And knowing what the company's ambitions are and knowing what is expected of each person to help achieve those ambitions are two things to start with. So the first one being write down your clear, concise mission. Like, write it down and then have job descriptions and make sure that each person knows what their specific contribution is to help tackle that mission. Then the next thing I would say is, be clear on your specific ways of being and ways of doing
Parker Gates
@parkergates · 1:25
I feel like I was in a different state every time I recorded my questions for you. And so that was interesting and neat. And for anybody that wants to know more about Stoked or get in touch with Anna, you can go to Stokedproject.com and contact information can be had there. You can look her up on LinkedIn. Anna. Love, Annalove