During the past seven seasons of the Design Better Podcast, Aarron Walter and I —along with the rest of the world—have witnessed global crises ranging from a pandemic to war in eastern Europe. We’ve worked through our own challenges during this period, and have helped friends and family in times of need. Aarron took direct action to help out globally, leaving his full-time role at InVision toward the end of 2020 to work at Resolve to Save Lives.  

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These are difficult times. It’s a tragedy, worldwide, unevenly distributed.

Seth Godin

Author, entrepreneur, and teacher

These are difficult times. It’s a tragedy, worldwide, unevenly distributed.

We’ve also seen the way people work evolve quickly over the past few years, most obviously in the shift for many to remote or hybrid work. During this period, Aarron and I have had the good fortune to speak to some of the brightest creative minds to help us and our audience understand how to navigate these challenging times. 

As work shifts from in-person interaction to more distributed and hybrid collaboration, it becomes increasingly important to understand how to collaborate effectively. This book will help you raise the collaborative intelligence of your teams, drawing from interviews with some of the most creative, prolific, and multidisciplinary leaders, authors, and makers in the world.

Aarron and I started this podcast to educate and inspire people in the world of product design, but over the years, as we’ve interviewed leaders and pioneers in disciplines ranging from astrophysics to comedy to fashion, we’ve realized that the collaborative toolkit that designers use can help every team. Correspondingly, we’ve discovered that design and product teams can learn from all kinds of disciplines.

In each chapter of this book, we’ll share relevant excerpts from our interviews as we explore the foundations we believe are critical to making your team—and you— more collaborative.

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Management is a job…whereas leadership is a quality that you have to earn.

Julie Zhuo

Author, Making of a Manager

Management is a job…whereas leadership is a quality that you have to earn.

We’ll begin with collaborative leadership in Chapter 2, where Aarron discusses how effective leaders bring teams together to establish shared values and vision that help people take their own path toward success. He shares lessons learned from leaders like Julie Zhuo and Jason Mayden.

In Chapter 3, Aarron investigates what it takes to understand your colleagues. He looks at how Design Better Podcast guests like Benjamin Earl Evans, Jehad Affoneh, and Sara Seager have honed their skills at reading people, and the specific techniques they’ve developed that unlocked their collaborative potential.

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Observation is a form of humility and humbleness, because for me to understand you, I have to first admit that I don’t understand you. And that admission allows me to have permission to get to know you, to learn about you, to serve you.

Jason Mayden

Trillicon Valley

Observation is a form of humility and humbleness, because for me to understand you, I have to first admit that I don’t understand you. And that admission allows me to have permission to get to know you, to learn about you, to serve you.

Next, in Chapter 4, guests like Christian Madsbjerg, Brian Chesky, and Laura Martini help Aarron build a case for why understanding your customers will help assure that you’re running the race to success in the right direction.

In Chapter 5, I dive deeper into how mission, vision, and purpose can each be used as levers to raise your collaborative intelligence. Guests like Eileen Fisher and Chris Kemp offer examples of their own mission and vision, and Dan Pink speaks about the importance of purpose in work.

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You have a voice in your head saying, You’re not good enough. You can’t do this. You don’t have any ability. Everybody gets that. And the thing is, you can’t control your thoughts, but you can control the amount of energy you give them.

John Cleese

Actor and comedian

You have a voice in your head saying, You’re not good enough. You can’t do this. You don’t have any ability. Everybody gets that. And the thing is, you can’t control your thoughts, but you can control the amount of energy you give them.

John Cleese, Irene Au, and David Kelley teach us about creativity, innovation, and divergent thinking in Chapter 6. They help us understand why creativity isn’t a solo act, and how to get in the proper mindset to access the right tools for creative collaboration. 

Finally, in Chapter 7, I share insights from Seth Godin, Katrina Alcorn, Sandy Fershee, and Marty Cagan about why building together—from low-fidelity prototypes to high-fidelity user tests—helps the whole team learn what matters most to users and customers, and ship the right experience to them with less wasted effort, in less time.

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There’s a certain sense of willingness to take a risk and to fail. Let’s say it’s in chemistry and the other people know I’m not a chemist, but you might ask a question or say something that just seems really dumb … you have to be willing to put yourself out there in order to make the idea happen. Permission to try something new and to fail and to do better.

Sara Seager

Astrophysicist and author

There’s a certain sense of willingness to take a risk and to fail. Let’s say it’s in chemistry and the other people know I’m not a chemist, but you might ask a question or say something that just seems really dumb … you have to be willing to put yourself out there in order to make the idea happen. Permission to try something new and to fail and to do better.

If you’re new to the Design Better Podcast, we hope this book will encourage you to listen to some of our favorite episodes. And if you’re a longtime fan, we hope that you’ll share this book with your colleagues to get them excited about the opportunity to learn from some of the brightest creative minds out there. 

Of course, this book wouldn’t be possible without the generosity of the people who have shared their stories with us and with you. We have enormous gratitude for each of our guests, and we hope that by sharing their wisdom, we can inspire you to build great things together with your team.