design thinking story
Nicole Dessain
Why Talent Tales?
Why Talent Tales?

Sharing Stories – A Conversation with University of Salford’s Robert Ritchie

Sharing Stories – A Conversation with University of Salford’s Robert Ritchie

In this Talent Tales episode I had the honor to interview Robert Ritchie, Head of Organizational Development at the University of Salford. Robert’s creative superpower is being a “shape shifter” – he can adapt to different situations in order to get things done. Sounds like a regular superhero to me!

The University of Salford has an entrepreneurial culture which lends itself to experiments in innovation and design thinking. The team recently defined ten core behaviors (incl. to be “daring”). This gave employees permission to be creative about the things that they can accomplish and enabled managers to lead towards creating an innovative, modern university.

When it comes to design thinking, Robert and his team have especially embraced empathy to connect with employees as “real humans” and to find out what is important to them. The university also embraces a “prototyping” mindset in that it’s ok to try something and to learn from mistakes, to be curious.

Cultivating Customer Obsession – A Conversation with Soumee De

Cultivating Customer Obsession – A Conversation with Soumee De

In this Talent Tales episode I had the honor to interview Soumee De, Head of HR for Consumer Banking Technology (EMEA/APAC) at Citi. Soumee is a self-described creative “artiste”, human professional, and technophile. Her creative superpower is bridging gaps - between technologists and those who are not that inclined, between business and HR, between the world of art and science.

In our conversation, Soumee describes how she discovered design thinking a few years ago through a workshop her company offered. To her surprise, she experienced herself struggling with applying the concept of empathy to our work. As HR professionals we get paid to pass judgement on people – when we interview them for a role, evaluate their performance, or assess their potential. Her personal takeaway was to unlearn some of the behaviors she’s honed in HR and apply more of an ethnographic research lens when trying to solve a people-related challenge.

Embracing a Growth Mindset – A Conversation with Christina Chateauvert

Embracing a Growth Mindset – A Conversation with Christina Chateauvert

In this Talent Tales episode I had the honor to interview Christina Chateauvert, Design Thinking Learning Lead at Ford Motor Company. In her role, Christina focuses on building design thinking capability inside the organization.

Christina’s passion is to educate others on how to use human-centered design in their business and personal lives through her work at Ford, her teaching in the “Learning Design and Technology” graduate program at Wayne State University, by providing professional development workshops for women at SheHive, and by hosting the Detroit hr.hackathon.

Christina’s creative superpower is “From Abstract to Action”. She thrives in the creative problem solving space and loves to translate insights from user research into tangible solutions.

If you are new to the design thinking method, Christina has a great definition of “human-centered design” for you: The way we introduce the people we are designing for into our design problem, so we make sure they are always the focus when we are trying to solve that very problem.

Yes, Professor Chateauvert!

Creating a Culture of Empathy – A Conversation with Arity’s Steph Ryter

Creating a Culture of Empathy – A Conversation with Arity’s Steph Ryter

In this Talent Tales episode I had the honor to interview Steph Ryter, Creative Culture Leader at Arity.

Not only did Steph get to create her own job title (who doesn’t want to be a “Creative Culture Leader”?!), she also has a superpower: “Reading the Room”. Yes, that’s right, Steph is able to sense the energy in the room. BAM!

Steph started her career in Broadcast News after having studied Communications but soon was looking for other ways she might help people. Hello, Human Resources!

In her current role at Arity, she is tasked with making the company the Best Place to Work in Chicago.

And she is applying design thinking to make it happen…

Why Talent Tales?

Over the last three years I've discussed with hundreds of HR professionals how we might make our work places more human-centered by leveraging the power of design thinking.

From those conversations there was a theme emerging: Those who hadn’t used design thinking yet wanted to learn from those who'd already done it. And those who are steeped in the method wanted to share their experience to help advance our profession.

What if we could bring these groups together through storytelling?

A quote from Brené Brown popped into my head:

Maybe stories are just data with a soul.

Et voilà - Talent Tales was born!

My vision is to bring each story to life in a multi-media experience: live webinar, blog, video, and podcast.

I hope you will find this experiment valuable and will join us for the ride. As with everything in design thinking I am very open to iterating on the concept and content so please share your experience along the way.