Episode 3: Dean Broadley on Innovation, Gardening and Growing Teams
In this episode, Andy and Lisa have a conversation with Dean Broadley. Dean is a South Africa-based design team lead.
Dean talks about how his wide ranging experience as a digital practitioner and manager and his love of gardening have given him insights on how to grow people and teams in an organization. We also get Dean’s perspective on digital innovation and new technology adoption in South Africa.
Transcript
Announcer:
Welcome to Surfacing. In this episode, hosts Lisa Welchman and Andy Vitale spoke with Dean Broadley. Dean is a South Africa based design team lead and spoke about how his wide ranging experience as a digital practitioner, manager and gardening enthusiast have given him insights on how to grow people and teams in an organization. Dean also spoke about his perspective on digital innovation and new technology adoption in South Africa.
Andy Vitale:
Dean, I know Lisa knows you, but I would love to hear more about your background and what you've got going on.
Dean Broadley:
That's the hardest question. My background is accidental is the way I would put it. I've spent probably the last 15 years in some form of design related thing. Whether that be comic book and character design, CG post-production work, et cetera. That's kind of how I got my birth into design. Then I've kind of spent the last say six, seven years primarily in the product design kind of UX space. But it's primarily also just building teams and understanding how teams work and then apply that skillset. Some of those learnings and those things have really helped me understand just people in general. I do a lot of work with communities. I help people with careers and how to think about careers in a little bit more of a less linear education factory kind of mindset. That's kind of my head space. I've worked a lot in the financial services industry, kind of small startups, those kinds of things as well.
Currently spending my daylight hours within the telco industry. Then also we're bringing kind of all my other skills to bear, which is I do a lot of things in the garden. I have a very deep understanding of plants, and that is my happy place. I actually just before this was talking to somebody on a FaceTime and taking them ... I did a tour because they saw ... I put some stuff on Instagram and they were like, "Where do you actually live? Because that doesn't seem like a house. It seems like a forest." But-
Lisa Welchman:
Wow. I didn't know that about you.
Dean Broadley:
Yeah. It's one of my most preferred activities, is doing plant related things. I crossbreed chilies
Lisa Welchman:
That's fascinating.
Dean Broadley:
... I'm growing mangoes, I'm growing all sorts of nuts and things. That is my thing. I also have a bit of a background in music. I used to play musical instruments in kind of through high school and a little bit early college. But I dropped the tuba for the pencil because the pencil was cheaper. Yeah, that's kind of my-
Lisa Welchman:
And lighter.
Dean Broadley:
Yeah, exactly. Much easier to carry around than that.
Lisa Welchman:
I always get enamored by people who play double bass tuba. I remember when I lived in New York, just seeing people haul that stuff in the subway, it was like a workout.
Dean Broadley:
Yeah. I had calluses on my hands. I don't miss them. Because they didn't design those cases, I think for ... The handles weren't really comfortable. People were wrapping things around them and stuff. I think it was an afterthought in the design process of instruments. It's actually what I did. One of my final design projects, one was redesigning the tuba case. I made one that I could carry on my back rather, and had a whole bunch of other cool stuff involved. But that was fun. Yeah, that's my background. I am a father to a corgi. I don't have human children. I just have a corgi. You may hear her at some point if she sees a bird cross the threshold where it shouldn't. I live in South Africa. Originally from Cape Town, but I'm living in Johannesburg right now. Which is more city's that kind of ... It's our economic hub, if you will. I would say Cape Town in some ways is the spiritual hub because that's where South Africa was first colonized from. So a lot of the history sets there. It's very kind of interesting city. It's beautiful. That's kind of my background at the moment.
Andy Vitale:
We've had some guests on from the United States and from Europe. I'm super curious what the design and tech community is like in South Africa.
Dean Broadley:
Yeah. It's a very interesting one. I've been asked this question a lot actually between December and January. Which is quite interesting for me that it's something that people are thinking about and asking. Which is nice because it hasn't been historically through my career something that people have asked me even in my interaction. It's a very interesting community. I think we sit in a very kind of, let's say, a sense of cognitive dissonance when it comes to technology. Because we have a lot of kind of, let's say, First World components to our infrastructure and economy. I mean, I'm sitting on a gigabit fiber line, but then they may shut my power off at any moment too. We've kind of got that very kind of very, very, either ends of the spectrum. That shows up in the way the technology community operates. Because again, if you look at Cape Town, if I use that as a geographical kind of thing, you'll see a lot more, let's say the top in kind of over the top kind of technology stuff. So more Uberized kind of thinking and attempts to apply. But those things tend not to work at scale here because it's just not the way our country is shaped. We have massive unemployment. I mean, our youth unemployment is at 40% the last time I checked, or worse. You can't really build-
Lisa Welchman:
Youth being what age?
Dean Broadley:
Youth being under the ages of 25, as far as ... Yeah. So relatively old. I think it might even go as close to 30 the last time I checked. But they change these things and it depends on what report you read actually, if I'm honest. But I mean, that kind of talks to the tech community where you've got people consuming ... We consume all our stuff from outside, let's say from the States or Europe, et cetera. We go, "Well, this is how tech is going." Then people try to build those things here, but they just don't take, because you're not going to get product market fit. It's not going to be relevant to somebody who's living hand to mouth for, if I do quick maths, like 300, $400 a month, maybe if they're lucky. That impacts the tech community. Also, what I see working a lot with the enterprises in there because kind of, because there's also that. You've got the private sector versus the enterprise sector is very different. Where again, you'll have big companies trying to do, "We should do all these things and use Salesforce and all this kind of stuff."
But they're kind of, in my mind, almost building their own portfolio rather than actually thinking about customer need. That's the kind of big dichotomy that we have in our tech and design industry. We have also a massive diversity issue. Less so in kind of, let's say software engineering, in engineering exploits. There's been a lot more investment for a little bit longer bringing people up there from a diversity point of view. But in design, as an example, we've got about 96%, or let's put it this way, we are about 4% people of color in the design industry. In a country where it's 96% people of color. We've kind of got an issue there. People always complain they can't find designers and I'm like, "Well, 100% because you're trying to pick a fruit from a tree you never planted." That's going to be hard. That's kind of the shape sort of culturally. There're some really interesting things. There's lots of good innovation. A lot in the payment space again, because we've got such an interesting economy.
There's a lot of good payments innovation that happens in Africa. The banking sector is pretty good. If you compare it globally from a innovation point of view, there's lots of interesting things happening there. I think that's also front of mind for a lot of people when it comes to technology in our country. But not as much as I would probably like around actual human centeredness and when it comes to that stuff, especially in the longterm.
Lisa Welchman:
I mean, do you think there are things that folks in the US, Asia, Europe, the rest of the world can learn? I mean, you talked a little bit about sort of that pay space. What are the innovative things that are coming out of all of that you just described. Which is just a different kind of dynamic or a unique kind of dynamic that you have. Are there things where you think, "Yeah, this would actually rock it out in some other places if people would adopt these practices." Because sometimes out of what others might perceive as difficult circumstances, come some really interesting things that make a lot of sense.
Dean Broadley:
Yeah. I think it's a really interesting question because I think it's probably both ways. I think our market could ... The one thing our market also struggles with is having agency over their own kind of thought. Because of our history, we've always had an external power of some kind and that's happened over generations. People tend to think that decisions get made outside of themselves. That's just one thing because it also adds color to the thinking. However, one thing that I do think is really good, the best things that have ever come at our market in my opinion, are that kind of really scrappy, doing a lot with very little, kinds of thinking. Not over-complicating sort of solutions. I think almost if you want to get to the truest version of an MVP, if you apply the mind to the people probably yeah, because they just don't have the funds, the technology, whatever, you can really look at how you could get to that at the base level. If that could be bottled and used, I think it would be really powerful. So that you can actually understand that you could ...
I mean, I give a good example of, they were trying to get internet into a lot of the townships. There was one township that figured out ... They were having issues with coverage. They had enough kind of antenna in theory, but there wasn't getting the distance. Somebody figured out if they take this really cheap coffee can and put it over the antenna, it boosts the signal directively. So you could get a lot more length of distance. They just recycle those coffee cans out, and then that worked. Rather than now going to invest and dig up roads and do all sorts of stuff, it was like, "Well, literally here's a coffee can, and it seems to focus that beam and it gets to the next antenna better." It's little things like that that I think really are interesting that they could fund here. I also wish that I wouldn't ... Again, the question was phrased around other markets. Looking at that mindset, I almost wish that we would look at that mindset a bit more.
Because we're so outward focused that we're looking for answers from the outside and we're missing the magic that actually sits here already. I think that that would be an interesting one. I also think it would be a case of ... I think what external marketers could also do is just think, especially a lot of African markets, less as around volume and revenue, but more of the kind of stuff I'm describing. Because there's, I think a lot more deep value. Then again, to my earlier comment, you're not going to get that volume. Again, it's like trying to pick a fruit from a tree you never planted. I think that kind of thing is what the tech industry could do. It's a lot of what I've kind of taken a note of when chatting to some people, especially on even people issues in the workplace. We work in a situation ... We've got 11 official languages. We've got every kind of religion you could hope for. It's just something that we do and we understand. I'm not saying we don't have our issues. I mean, we have many issues. Ours is just a bit more in your face all the time. But I do think-
Lisa Welchman:
I wish you could see them.
Dean Broadley:
Yeah, exactly. I think that that's ... A lot of South Africans that moved to Europe and the States comment on that. They kind of go, "I just wish ... I miss when I knew who my enemies were. They were trying to have a fight with me in a way." Whereas this kind of undercover stuff is the hardest to deal with maybe. But, yeah, I think-
Lisa Welchman:
Well, thanks to social media, they're coming out of the [inaudible 00:12:15].
Dean Broadley:
Exactly. Whether we want to or not. 100%.
Lisa Welchman:
So there they are.
Dean Broadley:
But, yeah, I think that's an interesting one.
Lisa Welchman:
I wanted to ask you about your Build the humans, the products will follow talk. Which I sort of peeped out and looked at a bit of online. What's your thing behind that? What is your philosophy behind that?
Dean Broadley:
Yeah. I just have a firm belief that everything is a symptom of the people that created. If you focus on the people, the symptoms get better and at its simplest point. When we're trying to build products, design solutions or build technology or whatever it may be, it's a symptom of the mindset, the grouping of people, the timing, all those kinds of things. I kind of in that talk, talk a little bit about thinking about the humans as a whole and who you work with. I talk there about, when you're hiring for somebody, not hiring for a role, but hiring for a person, you hire the whole person. Then also talk a little bit about the fact that on one hand, on the kind of business side everybody's replaceable, but I refuse to replace people if that makes sense. If Lisa was in the team and then Lisa leaves, I'm not trying to get another Lisa because I don't believe that's necessarily possible if I hired her for the right reasons. I should be looking for a different human and that different human could be Andy, and Andy brings his whole life experience.
Then falls the kind of functional parts of that role. But then we should be getting that other value and Andy should be getting value from us. I think that just build better products. I think you can spot silly mistakes that you don't necessarily have to wait for scale in production to find sometimes. I might disagree with myself there as well, but that's kind of the premise of it. I also look at things like-
Lisa Welchman:
You might be more likely to spot them-
Dean Broadley:
Yeah, exactly. The likelihood of-
Lisa Welchman:
... if you have this ... Yeah.
Dean Broadley:
Yeah, exactly. If Andy has a skill that has nothing to do with the job, that skill could be relevant to the job, but you just don't know that. It won't go on a CV. It won't happen in an interview. But when I'm interviewing people, I ask questions and people are usually a bit flustered because I'm just like, "Wait, who are you though and what do you care about? What don't you care about?" Kind of thing. I'm trying to figure out who they are as a person. Because if the value systems don't match and even when I'm under the most pressure to full, let's say headcount slots, my HR teams will get a bit annoyed with me. But I'm just kind of like, "I'd rather get the right person, whatever that may mean. Because then full a headcount slot with somebody at a drop the hat, and then figure out they've got all these other things that don't fit. They may not be a bad person, they just may not be fit for that area, culture or whatever.
Andy Vitale:
I'm going through that now. Actually, the same exact thing because we're trying to scale a team that's about 40 or 50. We're looking at potentially doubling that or at least doubling it, potentially tripling it. The first few hires as I'm new to the organization, are so important. It's like, "Do I want someone that's really good at doing the job? Or do I want someone that just seems they're great at something and then I could figure out where to put them once we get them on?" Because we want to build this team of great humans and point them in the right direction rather than try to fill them into a slot that we have that exists. That's open.
Dean Broadley:
Exactly. That's exactly it. Because it assumes that that slot that opens, that you could predict who the right human who is worth that slot. Most of us will know from our careers, there's a lot of, again, accidentalness that happened in terms of your discovery, your curiosity, that makes you who you are. I remember this actually, the reason I started kind of thinking about this, was actually at one of my very early jobs where I had resigned and then they did exactly this. They were like, "Well, we need to find another Dean. Can we write everything down that Dean does here into the job description?"
I said to them, "You realize that 80% of that stuff you're putting in there I learned while I was here. What you're asking for is you're asking for somebody who's been through my kind of life background, my cultural background, have my level of curiosity before they get here. I just had the opportunity to do those things here, and so I acquired those skills and got good at them here in the time that I was here. I don't necessarily think it's fair to expect that there's going to be a large conversion rate of humans that are going to have all those things checked." Yes, maybe some of them, but I just don't think it's necessarily going to be true. Because I was just like, "Well, here's this CG thing that's happening. I'll learn this." Then I kind of fiddled around, figured out some stuff. I was like, "We can use this in our campaigns or our marketing. Cool." We did. Nobody else was ... I mean, there were few people that were doing, but it wasn't at scale. Again, that's why I kind of say, you can't really look at ...
You got to get out of the replacement mindset and more of well, what new thing can be create in that space and which human could bring that? It also just means you have empathy for the whole person when you work with them. You don't treat them like a unit of skill. You don't go, there's developer one, two, three, four, five. You actually understand that those are people with hopes and dreams and frustrations and all the rest of it. That's kind of my view.
Andy Vitale:
Yeah. You mentioned that you ask some questions that really catch people off guard. I just wanted to kind of ask what some of those questions were that you ask to understand who people are as humans rather than the skill set that they have for the job.
Dean Broadley:
Yeah, sure. I mean, one of the ones that I ask is like, what is one thing that you're most proud of in your life and it doesn't necessarily have to do with work. I think one of the questions or the responses that has stuck with me was, I had a lady who said ... Well, she finally managed to keep a plant alive for longer than three weeks. I was like, "Well, that's interesting." Obviously I'm a plant person so I was like, "Well, now I'm really interested."
Lisa Welchman:
You were judging. You were like, "What wrong?"
Dean Broadley:
Well, no, I was just like ... I meet a lot of people that are like, "I can't keep a plant alive." But now that ... Then I dug into them and what I got out of that though, is that even though she had lots of failure, she was like, "I'm going to get this right." That was her-
Lisa Welchman:
Her grit.
Dean Broadley:
... personality trait that I was like, "Okay." If I'd asked her like, "Well, how can you describe a way where you have grit or whatever?" People are going to not really know how to answer that. But if you ask them something that they're proud of, people are taken aback a bit because they're like, "What am I proud of?" They maybe haven't thought about it before. But when people do eventually find that answer, you also know that it is something that is authentic. People will talk about things in their family, things that they've overcome more, a thing they've ... Like an achievement. Maybe it will be linked to work, and that's totally fine. But that's one of the things I ask because I also like to get what I refer to as, because we drive manual here, I refer to as clutching out. Clutching out of gear, interview gear, and get into just conversation. I find that question helps them kind of go, "Okay." I have had a few kind of people are very quite rigid and they're like, "You're not asking all the normal interview questions."
I was like, "100%, that is why I do it. Because you can't practice for the chaos of life. Here's your first taste of chaos, me Dean, kind of thing." That's one of the things I'll ask. I'll also ask about things that frustrate them or things they're least proud of or things that they kind of feel that is unattainable. Then I try to dig into why do they think those are unattainable. Why do they think ... Do they wish they were further in their career or in their life? Then why do they think that? Because you can also kind of give real interesting answers there in conversations. I think also my agenda or my personal kind of agenda there is, when I'm bringing people into my team, I'm very deliberate about figuring out what value I can offer them. It's really important to me because otherwise, again, it's a transactional relationship in so many ways.
Lisa Welchman:
It's an exchange. It's an exchange that you're having. I think people often forget. Or they don't forget because they complain about it. But people spend the majority of their life at work. You spend more time with your work colleagues in this environment than you often do with your family. Why I love talking to you, Dean, is, we always end up at this place of sort of compassion for the team, compassion for the worker, compassion for the person who's creating these online experiences. If that team feels good, they feel good about the work that they're doing. They feel good about being a human being. I mean, nothing's perfect. They feel well-treated at work. There's just going to be a lot more space for them to create better experiences. To be open and more compassionate to the user and to everyone in the entire system. That just can't help but make things better.
It's not going to make somebody who has some blind spots as it relates to diversity all of a sudden see the light. But will make them more able to receive information. Information that says, "Hey, maybe I kind of had this wrong." Or whatever. But when you get in these sort of hard, difficult specifically transactional, "I told you to do this X, J, that." Just a very specific milestone thing, it just doesn't feel really healthy. I guess this is just my way of maybe asking, what do you think are ... People are talking a lot about design ops. Andy knows that I'm suspicious of designers creating design op teams because ops is a thing and design is a thing. I'm not entirely sure designers know how to do ops. But we got to get it together one way or another. What would be the things that you would do or what are the hallmarks of a good design team?
Dean Broadley:
Yeah. I think it's exactly that. I think I often am a person who observes. I do stand out of a group and I spent a lot of my childhood being out of society or whatever. I-
Lisa Welchman:
You were a monk.
Dean Broadley:
I was very much like-
Lisa Welchman:
You were a tuba monk.
Dean Broadley:
... "I don't fit anywhere, so I'll watch how this thing works and see how group dynamic works and all the rest." But then ... So I kind of look at it very empathetically because I can generally find myself on either side of the conversation. There's never just two sides, obviously. I think the things that are the hallmark of good team are shared understanding and trust. Shared kind of empathy and trust are hard earned as well. It's not just, we're holding hands running through flowers kind of situation. But it's a, "I know in this situation, Dean gets frustrated because of X, Y, and Z." Then I know also internally with myself. I think the other big hallmark is individual and then team self-awareness. That's, again, a thing that is incredibly hard earned. That I know when I'm irritable or whatever, my team knows me. I refer to that as showing your working, especially as a leader. Not just getting to asking and giving answers, but really showing your working of, "I need us to get here. This is why I think we need to get here and this is how I arrived at that."
So that your team goes, "Okay, we can see where he's coming from." Teams that have those kinds of conversations navigate much harder problems better because things are fine. Again, real teams are the ones that survive strife. Not the ones that make loads of money when things are easy. Because that's just all dopamine. Again, holding hands, running through flowers, that's easy. But it's when the field of flowers is on fire and you've got to figure out how to kind of survive that, that's different. I think that that's definitely a thing. That when teams figure that out, it's really, really good. I mean, my team ... I'm thinking of a particular team now, but they also ... Once we figured out that I actually had ADHD and it was pretty extreme, my team also would initially get quite frustrated with me in reviews because I would literally see a squirrel or a bird ... Because we're living in Cape Town, there's lots of things going on. I'd be like, "There's a thing."
Then I'll think about some other stuff and I'm going down that path. They just eventually perverted their behavior and they would just go and stop and pause. Because it wouldn't be for very long. But then once I come back in the room and they would just go on again. Or if it was really urgent, then they had good communication methods of going, "Okay. Hey man, how's it going?" Then I'd be like, "Oh." Because they also know I'm also somebody who likes to say the truth and just. I think that's also something that's a hallmark of a really good team. That doesn't take themselves too seriously is a really, really important one because things go bad. People who take themselves too seriously, the brain kind of has few options. That it either has to find something outside of itself that's to blame or inside, which is a little bit more harder. Then you kind of collapse. So it either turns into fight or collapse. Whereas if you don't take it too seriously, you kind of look at it more objectively and say, "How did we get here? Okay. We did a thing here."
Or, "I did a thing here. A complete stuff up on my part. Let's figure it out." We figure it and then kind of get it. Then again, another thing I always say is like, "A team who can figure out how to figure it out." That's the skill on the skill level that I think is really important. Because, yeah, it's not all in books unfortunately. Even if it is, you still have to run the works to know what it feels like. There goes my dog.
Andy Vitale:
As a leader, how do you create the space for the team to achieve that dynamic?
Dean Broadley:
Demonstrate it yourself first, is one of the things, depending on where the team's at. If you're arriving in a team that's preexisting and you're a new leader, it's very different to having the opportunity to build from scratch, having done it both times or both ways rather. It's very, very different because obviously you can craft some things, you can set some cultural guidelines from the start when you're building a team from scratch. I think one of my most successful teams was done that way. I was like, "The only thing we were kind of dictators on is culture in a way so that we don't let in ..." As far as it makes logical sense or fair sense certain cultural non-negotiables, let's say. One of the things I'll do is, see where and assess what's happening with the team. Then by demonstrating, let's say, making a mistake publicly or in a forum or in a review, it's always amazed me how much people will go, "Okay. But then if he can do it, then it's okay for me to do it." Without you having to say it.
Because words are fine and they work with some people, but mostly not, in my experience with most people because they can't feel that yet. They have to be in the situation. I'm also one that never punishes productivity attempts, curiosity, any of that kind of stuff, because I just think it's silly to have that kind of mindset. If somebody produces something that let's say and is not fit for purpose for what we're aiming for, I kind of ... When I was learning design at a high school, I had an amazing design teacher. He had this thing of, when you're coming up with ideas and stuff, anything you don't want, you crumple up, but you don't throw it in the bin, you throw it on the floor. We had all the different years in the same design class and you're eventually walking through kind of a [inaudible 00:27:51] height thing of paper.
Lisa Welchman:
That's great.
Dean Broadley:
The thing being that if you were ever working on a project that you were struggling with, you could reach down and pick up somebody else's mistake and crumple it and it could inform what you were thinking about. The amount of times I did that and it really did help was awesome because it's a completely objective piece of information. But it came out of somebody else's brain and they were trying to go somewhere, and that stuff still lives in that artifact. What I'm always doing with teams is going, "Okay, nothing's wrong, but nothing should be thrown away as far as possible." I find a lot of teams do that. They'll throw things away. Even if you're in finance or ops, whatever, you'll go through documents and versions and operating models or design versions. Then you get feedback and then you change the thing you're working on, but versioning gets lost a bit. What I'm trying to get teams to do is like, "Okay, but keep it because you never know when you tried something out that may be fit for purpose later."
That's why I kind of used the phrase fit for purpose. I think that's also a great way to create the space for people to then do that with others. When leads are doing it with their team or peers are reviewing with one another, they kind of have that understanding. Then we write it down as well so that people who are then subsequently joining kind of have this charter around how we operate. I think it's also just, consistency is also important in behavior because we're pattern creatures. If people can't kind of figure out what your pattern is to a certain degree, that also kind of means that they ... I always say, in the absence of clarity, because patterns can create clarity, is people fill in the apocalypse in that gap and nothing in between. There's just like, "And need of world." If you can kind of create that clarity, I think that also creates a good space for people to then kind of go, "Okay, this is cool. This is okay." Then just constantly asking for feedback, I think is another thing too that creates a space.
So I will ask my team constantly, are they getting value? Am I providing value? Where are they feeling pain or frustration from me? Then I will tell them whether or not some of that's intentional as well. I'll be like, "This is why." Again, showing the working. That's kind of how I try to do it.
Lisa Welchman:
All of this sounds like cultivating things. Tell us about your garden. That there's a ... Well, it sounds like the skills that it takes ... I've never had a large garden. My mother was quite a gardener and sort of grew up in a farming environment. I know about plants and growing them and things, but mostly for food, not for the classical garden with different types of flowers and things like that. But there's a patience that's required and an acceptance of things that you can't control. I'm seeing that reflected a little bit in your philosophy about how you work with people, which is great. Because usually when people talk about teams, they even sometimes use this language of machine. Like, "We're a machine. Our team is a machine."
Dean Broadley:
The engine.
Lisa Welchman:
Right, yeah, engine.
Dean Broadley:
The engine is used often. Yeah.
Lisa Welchman:
All of this other kind of stuff. Which are these things that we've architected, technology that we've made that haven't sort of spawned naturally out of nature. The language that you use reminds me more of this sort of garden side. Of like, look there's stuff coming out of the ground, and yes, you can plant things. You can pull weeds, you can be intentional. But you also just sort of have to accept the weather and you have to accept different aspects.
Dean Broadley:
100%.
Lisa Welchman:
Yeah. In that context, one, I'd love to hear about your garden. Two, am I crazy making that analogy?
Dean Broadley:
No, not at all. I mean, I think probably only in the last kind of couple of years of my life have I really realized how much of that part of my life has actually informed how I look at people. I've been able to verbalize it probably better than before. I mean, one of the talks I even talk about is, don't be a pot plant, be of crab. Which we can get into a bit later. It's very logical. Don't worry. It makes total sense.
Lisa Welchman:
I was about to say [inaudible 00:31:42].
Dean Broadley:
But yeah, I think it's interesting. There's a lot of things that I pull from different disciplines, whether it be the gardening or even woodwork. Which is something that I do too around. I think that's more on the patience side. I don't see ... The thing with gardening is it's less about patience actually for me and it's more about the weather point you made. It's actually something I say to a lot of people is, to learn what to treat in your life as weather. Sometimes the people are weather. You don't get upset with necessarily or aggrieved when it rains. You might be like, "We were going somewhere. Now it's rained, but cool." You move on because you understand you have no influence there. I do think that that is true of much of our life, but because people are involved, we want to influence it. Traffic is a great example. I remember when I moved here to Johannesburg, because it's a bigger city, et cetera. I would sit and was I getting a lift at that time because I hadn't kind of got myself set up properly.
I remember seeing similar people or the same people in traffic every day, and every day they were frustrated. It's kind of like, frustration for me is almost you're surprised. I'm like, "But it happened yesterday." What I choose to do then is go, "Well, this is weather. It's part of the environment that I'm in, rather than something I need to control." Then you can kind of accept that, "Okay, well now how can I reframe this time psychologically or cognitively?" That's one of the things. Weather is a big one. It doesn't mean that there are no impacts of weather. If it rains a lot ... We just had a massive storm on Friday, there's a lot of flooding. My wife had to drive back from where she's staying at the moment of the week and drive through very deep water in a very small car. There's still that reality to it, but you also don't carry that with you, if that makes sense.
Then from my actual kind of literal garden point of view, I also didn't have much ... Or in Cape Town, it's very common to have very poor soil where you live because it's by the ocean, it's quite sandy. Water will literally just sit on top of the soil and not go in. It's hard to grow things there. I also had to learn that type of stuff. But right now I'm like ... I don't know. Literally, seeds fall on the ground and they just grow. I mean, I've got gooseberries growing out of the pavement basically in my driveway, which I've never seen before. It's great here. I grow all sorts of things here. I have ... One of the reasons we bought this house was because I have macadamia nut trees, pecan nut trees, peach, apricot, almond, plums-
Lisa Welchman:
Oh my goodness.
Dean Broadley:
... mulberries, pomegranate, some baby avo trees, fig trees, pear. Then underneath those trees, I've grown a bunch of ginger. That's something I've done. Then I crossbreed chilies. That's a lot of fun. I've got everything from a basic jalapeno to Carolina Reapers, habaneros, cayenne peppers, Scorpions, all sorts of chilies that I just kind of crossbreed. That's also a really interesting thing about ... Again, a great analogy that's probably cooking up in my head is that when you crossbreed a chili, you take the pollen from one plant, put it on the flower of another plant with a Q-tip or whatever. but the fruit it'll make will be true to the plant still. But the seeds in that plant then grow the new breed. Which is really interesting.
Lisa Welchman:
So it takes a while?
Dean Broadley:
Yeah.
Lisa Welchman:
It takes a generation.
Dean Broadley:
Exactly. You've got to be willing to work with that season in a way. That's something that a lot of people don't get. That's actually why if you go buy these kinds of plants from a nursery often there'll be labeled one plant, but then when the fruit comes out and it looks weird. Because the nursery can't know and also chili plants are and especially with bees, they just get cross-pollinated all the time. So it's likely to happen. Then loads of the normal kind of herbs. I grow fennel, citrus or lime, lemon. What else is here behind me? Mint, oregano and all the other kind of herbie type things. I also grow citronella because mosquitoes love me the most of all humans.
Lisa Welchman:
Yeah. I'm in that club too. Yeah. I don't know what that is. I've read many different theories around mosquito attractiveness, but it's just insane.
Dean Broadley:
They just dig me. I stayed in Brazil for a short time, for three months, I did an exchange there.
Lisa Welchman:
Oh mu God, what a nightmare.
Dean Broadley:
I'd be in a room of 30 people and I would be annihilated and everybody would be fine.
Lisa Welchman:
Yeah, the one mosquito will come in and chew you up repeatedly. Yeah.
Dean Broadley:
Yeah. I mean, that's kind of the shape of the garden I have at the moment. There's much in the woodworks. I'm experimenting with mushrooms, to try and grow different kinds of mushrooms in my greenhouse. Because here we have a very kind of wet, humid, hot summer, big thunderstorms, that kind of thing. But then no rain in winter, incredibly dry, the air gets really dry and cold. Not super cold. In the evenings it can get in the minuses, but very ... There'll be one or two days in the season, but it's more of the dryness. That's also something that I've had to kind of figure out with plants because some plants don't like that dry. That's why I've got the greenhouse trying to help manage the humidity. But there's definitely a big parallel between the stuff I've learned through gardening that I see in people. I mean, one of the things that I've also figured out is that my greenhouse, the panels are kind of UV protected so that the plants don't ... It gives them their best chance of sprouting, et cetera. You can grow really beautiful plants in the greenhouse and ideal conditions.
I've got automated watering and misting stuff in there. But what is interesting is, you can grow a really big plant in there. If you take it out and put it in the full sun, it hasn't hardened. It doesn't have the UV protection it would go if that thing had grown out in the soil. People are kind of symbol in a way for me as well. Is, and I've seen this with lots of juniors, that if they don't have some strife in that early part of their career, they don't know what real strife is. Then when anything hits them later, they kind of fall over. That talks to a bit of resilience and perspective. I mean, some of the best product designers I've worked with spent the early part of their career working in more often than not in really difficult, terrible, mostly advertising agency situations. When they come into a place where they're doing product design and UX, they're like, "Well, I have time to think. The thing I launch, I can go in improve."
Whereas I find with more often than not, the juniors coming into that space from the start, they've got great salaries, firstly. So they're not having to be a waiter on the side as well while doing the 18 hours a day advertising job. They're got loads of budget, all the tools they could hope for and the time. When you kind of go, "Okay. Well, we need to do this quicker." They're like, "No, but you can't." They don't believe that. I always say people know things more often than they believe them. It's just, whether or not what they know is true is the difference. They know that they don't have time because that's their entire experience. My job there again is either through demonstration rather than having some form of verbal tennis match. I've done this several times with some of my designers where I'll just sit down and I was like, "Cool. I was saying you could do it by Wednesday and then I did it in three hours." They were like, "How did you do that though?" I'm like, "Well, I'll help you show you."
Now think about all the time you'd have to think about the problem or whatever. That's also that ... In kind of growing things in greenhouses, there is that concept of plant hardening. Where you put in a specific spot that gets morning sun rather than afternoon sun, because often sun is the worst. Then you slowly harden the plant to the point where it can weather much more. That's true of people too and that's also the way the pot plant thing comes in. Where if you treat yourself as a pot plant, you kind of rely on everything outside of yourself to give you the right place, the right nutrients, the right water, the window sill, whatever it is for your growth. It came about when I had some ... I was doing some mentoring and quite a few juniors in the session had said to me ... Well, they said they'd left companies because they didn't like it. I asked them, "Well, what's the main reason you left?" What they say to me is, "Well, they didn't grow me."
My response to them was, "Well, you're not a pot plant. So you need to figure out how you grow yourself to a certain degree." Learning that is the fundamental difference around, especially when people think about their careers or their teams. Again, it's like, what do you think is external and is out of your control? So knowing the difference again between the weather components and the stuff you can actually influence. Then the other way to look at pot plants is, who are pot plants in your life? We do this a lot with our managers and our leaders that we don't necessarily work well with sometimes we have a difficult person. Where I've had once where somebody who was really struggling, was really not dealing well, and I just asked her, "Well, how long has this been going on? Or how long has it?" Well, she said, "For three or four years." I said to her, "But then it's kind of your fault now." It's what I said. I say, "Why I'm saying that is, no human outside of you is there to change for you."
Whether that's your manager, your friends or whatever. They're living their story. At some point, if you've tried many things, you've got to kind of ... One of the strategies you can employ is go well, that person is just the pot plant. What do you do with pot plants? You give them water, you make sure they've got sun and then you move on with your day. You figure out what are those things. You've got to almost get a little bit more transactional because humans are, as we understand, diverse. Which includes their level of sanity. So sometimes these things are going to be difficult. A lot of the time, those people are just not going to change for you. That's okay. It's not their job to. But you've got to figure out how you can live your best version of your story in that scenario. That pot plant analogy really helps people, I think. Because we all have seen a pot plant or either have some form of plant in a pot.
So we can understand, "Okay, well, yeah, I'm not thinking about that basil plant right now. But it's still alive and I give it what it needs and I'm happy and it's happy." It's kind of like that in a way.
Andy Vitale:
I love that analogy. We invest so much time and resources into training and developing humans, and which we should, but they also have to take the initiative and take that training and be able to apply it and be able to look for different training and let us know. And help us understand and see how we can continue to tailor that training to better suit their development. I do want to take it back to plants for two reasons. One, I live in The Carolinas and you mentioned Carolina Reapers and you mentioned just that cross-pollinization of developing new variants of peppers. Smokin' Ed Currie, who's the godfather of doing that is close by. I haven't had a chance to visit him yet. The Reapers, I don't do well with, but everything else I can kind of tolerate spice. My brain went there, but my actual question is, I just got a veggie pot. I don't live in a ... I live in The Carolinas, like I said. It's not super fertile soil. It's a lot of clay. We're going to try to grow vegetables in an elevated pot so the chipmunks and the rabbits and everything else don't eat it. I'm just looking for some advice. What can I expect?
Dean Broadley:
It depends on the plants that you're trying to grow. What's the annual rainfall like there?
Andy Vitale:
Yeah. We've got rainy seasons in the summer. It's relatively wet. I don't know for sure the annual rainfall. I guess that's the research I have to do already. But it's a lot of vegetables that we can eat. Small [crosstalk 00:43:48]-
Dean Broadley:
But it's primarily summer rainfall, right? Is that what you're saying? Or is it-
Andy Vitale:
Yeah.
Dean Broadley:
... [crosstalk 00:43:52]-
Andy Vitale:
Spring through summer.
Dean Broadley:
Any snow?
Andy Vitale:
Very little.
Dean Broadley:
Okay. Awesome.
Andy Vitale:
Usually nothing measurable.
Dean Broadley:
Okay. Yeah, no, I just asked because the big thing with plants is the microbiology in the soil. One thing that a lot of people don't necessarily realize with plants is, plants don't ... I might be misquoting. But they don't technically take the nutrients from the soil. They get the nutrients from the fungus that's in the soil that's breaking the stuff down. When you have very high extremes and clay and the extreme sense, well struggles with that. For that fungus, that mycelial network to actually start producing. If you could ... Depending on the vegetables, what you got to look at is, if they've got very fine roots, they'll struggle with the clay. Amending it with lots of plant material, compost, et cetera, will help a boatload. This is also something I've learned through watching my plants die when I moved to Johannesburg. Because there's also more clay here than wherever. I would usually mix some of the local soil with some of the stuff I've bought or some compost I've made.
Then all that it would happen, is the clay would go all the way over time to the bottom of the pot and then harden. Which meant that when I was watering these plants in the winter, the plants would then hit that thing and then actually get root rot. Especially with peppers, they suffer from that a lot. They need a lot of drainage, and they would just die. That's something to probably watch out depending on the vegetable or whatever you're trying to grow. But things like carrots, et cetera, I mean, they're pretty hardy. They like firmer soil than people anticipate as well. There's a whole thing about no dig gardening. I don't know if you've come across it yet, but basically people have the ... There's generations of farmers who will disagree with what I'm about to say. But the concept of tilling soil. The counter argument is that you mess up that mycelial network I was just talking about, like the fungus and all the rest of it, which actually creates the nutrients.
That's why you got to add all this fertilizer and all these things afterwards, because you've now messed up that natural process. Carrots are a great example where there's a guy ... I can send you a link afterwards. I can't remember his full name, but it'll be in my YouTube history. But the way he's done two kind of beds over a long period of time, one where he's done tilling and one where he's done no dig. He shows the difference with carrots as example. Where the carrots that are in the tilled soil come out all weird and old and weird shapes because they can go anywhere. The soil is soft. Where the soils that's not dug, they're straight and they're bigger and they're stronger and that kind of thing. I think that's a thing. You could expect things to die. That's a big thing I always say to people. People will go, "My plants are dying." I'm like, "Yeah, that's the thing that happens with things that are living. They die, because something happens." The important part is to just then deconstruct the why-
Lisa Welchman:
Learn from it. Yeah.
Dean Broadley:
... and maybe it was sun. Yeah. Some things like full sun, some things like morning to lunchtime, somethings like a bit more afternoon sun. Sun is a big one. If you're growing ... I don't know what the pest situation is where you live, but things like cauliflower, broccoli, those kinds of things, there's a moths that makes caterpillars that just decimate them very quickly. There're loads of really good organic things you can put on them to help with that. If your area has rodents of any kind, they will go for your vegetables. Something I've been dealing with in Johannesburg as well. But they seem to be chewing my hosepipes and things as well, which is annoying. More than my actual produce in a way. But I think that would be really interesting. I mean, yeah Smokin' Ed is growing all the chilies there. He's obviously figured out some stuff there. Especially if he's got a clay soil, he's definitely had to figure out how he's getting good drainage there. Maybe it's not as bad clay as what I'm thinking about is here as an example.
Lisa Welchman:
The soil was very, very red there. I remember when I visited being just really taken. But also I went to college in North Carolina and it's here ... It's the brick Capitol. Everything's made out of brick because you can just make brick very easily out of the soil. You were definitely clayer than that in Johannesburg, at least by sight. I'm not a gardener.
Dean Broadley:
Yeah. It's more brown clay as well. It's river clay. It's more-
Lisa Welchman:
It's serious.
Dean Broadley:
... a form of-
Lisa Welchman:
It's serious stuff. Yeah. That's good.
Dean Broadley:
Yeah.
Lisa Welchman:
But I get [crosstalk 00:48:19]-
Dean Broadley:
If it breaks apart-
Andy Vitale:
It sounds-
Dean Broadley:
... when it's dry, then you're probably a little bit more lucky because here it'll just turn into almost brick [crosstalk 00:48:26]-
Lisa Welchman:
To rock. Yeah. It looks like. Which makes for great roads if you don't want to do any paving.
Dean Broadley:
Exactly.
Andy Vitale:
It really sounds like anything else that we do, and a lot of what you talked about aside from gardening, it's learning from mistakes and doing your research. We can apply that to anything. We can apply that to design, to humans, to what we do to technology. I think it comes full circle and I love that.
Dean Broadley:
Yeah. 100%. It's exactly what I said too. I mean, I went to a talk or in a workshop for a large financial institution and it was kind of like they were all kind of risk people. I'm like their anti, whatever. The anti spirit animal thing is ... But I'm kind of that anti spirit animal for risk people. But I was talking about mistakes as an example. One of the questions I got there, which has stuck with me to this day, because I'm really trying to ... I to reverse engineer people's mindset so I can try and better myself sometimes. He asked me, he was like, "Okay, I get it. Mistakes are good. When you make them, you learn things. But how do you know which mistakes to make?" I was like, "Okay, hold on. Okay. This is really interesting. You're missing kind of the point."
Andy Vitale:
The point. Yeah.
Dean Broadley:
"Kind of the point." Yeah, exactly. But he's like, he wants to do this, but he still has this thing where ... It's probably again, education, organization, lifestyle, whatever has kind of put him in this box of, things have to be the first time. What I said to him is, "Well, the way I look at it is, I assume the mistake is going to happen. I don't know what it is. I don't know how bad it is, but it's going to happen. But what that lets me do is start. Once I can start, then I can kind of be more sensitive to how is this going. Then not necessarily attribute the whole mistake to me, but more about, you can only make decisions with what you know now, your past experience, et cetera. Then this becomes a new experience, which then helps you make better decisions in the future." It's also one of the things that I've always said to people and something that's interesting is that, one of our greatest strengths as human beings is that we learn through experience.
We make mistakes, we learn. One of the greatest weaknesses of human beings is that we learn through experience only. Sometimes we have to feel ... It's like, we see this with kids. We're like, "Don't run there." Until they fall, until they knock their head, graze their knee or whatever it is, then they understand. The same is ... That doesn't leave you, I believe, no matter how old you are. Because you have to feel the problem. We've seen this with COVID. I think if the virus lit you on fire, we would have solved it a lot quicker because we're good with fires. We're not so good with invisible threats or slow release, like climate change, et cetera. Until people started feeling this thing close enough to them, their families or whatever, then you kind of get this thing of, "Okay, if this thing is real." Which is kind of a pity and that kind of talks to how we have dialogue in our society and who we trust and why we do or don't trust those entities or people. But that's a whole nother can of worms.
Lisa Welchman:
I think with COVID and with your gardening analogy, just briefly, it is, I'm reminded of that hot house potted plant. I think there are people who have the ... Their experience of living is in a hot house environment and they didn't realize that.
Dean Broadley:
100%.
Lisa Welchman:
So all of a sudden that's gone. I think some people just aren't tooled to understand that they're not in control. I think not understanding that that environment was constructed in order for them to have their absolute best life all the time. People who are used to that ... I'm saying this very broadly. I mean, you can sort of poke holes in this, and as a generality. But I think a lot of people have had a little bit of an experience in understanding that, wow, life can really go sideways. For some people who are adults and long adults, this has been ... They've never had someone in their family die of cancer or lost a child or any other really tragic thing. For a lot of people, this is their first sort of wake up call of like, "Oh my goodness, this isn't really necessarily going to be engineered for me to be able to do everything that I want all of the time. That's been really fascinating from a people perspective, just watching everyone's varied reactions to this.
Even if you just push away the politics of it, particularly in the US and in other countries as well, and just look at people and their various reactions, it's very telling. But anyhow, one last question, which is the big, broad question for you is, what's next? We've talked about so many different things. We didn't touch on music, so maybe we'll do that some other time. What are you up to next? What's kind of your ... You do a lot of community work and organizing of folks in the digital community and the design community. What are you going to be up to for the next few years?
Dean Broadley:
That's something I'm currently figuring out, to be honest with you. I definitely am trying to figure out ... I'm always trying to ... One of the things I believe is, and it's probably a dangerous belief, is that if I'm not having an existential crisis every two to three years, I'm not trying hard enough. Meaning I haven't pushed myself to my limits enough, whether it be psychologically or skills wise, et cetera. I'm always trying to ask myself, what's that next version of myself? Because you only live one life so I'd like to do as much of it as possible. That's currently where I'm at from that point of view. I've been doing a whole bunch of new things. I mean, something I did all through my childhood and all through varsity, is I played a lot of games. I'm now doing some streaming game streaming because I'm just like, "Well, there's a thing here and there's a community happening. I understand some of it, but not all of it, so I might as well try it." I've been doing that for the last couple months, and I'm having a lot of fun.
People are enjoying it and I'm incorporating my dog into it because she's better looking than I am. So people will join and they can redeem points for an appearance from her. It's working great so far. That's just kind of one of the things I'm doing there. From a career point of view, I'm really trying to see ... What is always also really important to me and what I'm exploring right now is, I try to move forward more than I move up if that makes sense. I'm trying to look at what is the next most forward step I can take rather than an upward step. That may be, I don't know, different industry, maybe different market in terms of country or whatever it may be. I don't think necessarily a fundamentally different job because I have a firm view on where I get energy from now. As long as I can do those things at my core. So it's trying to figure that out. I'm looking at, where does that pitch up.
I mean, if I could do this all day and get paid, I would probably be the happiest because then I can really talk forever and not lose any energy. I'd probably faint before I realized I was dehydrated from talking too much. But it's kind of like, how do I leverage that? What I've been doing lately and this is in terms of the next steps, is looking at, okay, well, what are the things that have given me lots of energy, what have I provided the most value to the world around me in relation to those things? How do I package that into the next version of Dean, and who's employing that? If they're not employing that, how do I convince them that they should, kind of thing? That's kind of my next steps. It's I'm trying to think quite broad. My wife is a clinical psychologist and she's busy doing her community service here. She has to wrap that up. We're also thinking from a family point of view, what's next there when she's done. She's in a different city, so we'll be navigating that.
She's back home this weekend and then next weekend I should be going there. But she said, if the sun is shining she's coming home so she can have a pool day. Which I will not argue with.
Lisa Welchman:
Priorities.
Dean Broadley:
Yeah. That's kind of the kind of rough view. I am enjoying some of the content creation stuff I'm doing with the streaming. It was something I did in the early part of my career, so that's also something I'm looking at. Is, what was I good in then? Then again, I followed the universal flow to where I am now and now I'm trying to look at those coach marks of my life and kind of go, okay, well, how do I package that and become the next version?
Andy Vitale:
Dean, how can people find out what is next for you? How can they keep track of what you've got going on? Maybe see some of your games streaming. What's the best way for people to just see what you've got?
Dean Broadley:
That is a fantastic question. It's something that I ... It's one of my New Year's resolutions, is to get better at ... I've actually quite deliberately hid from social media from before and various platforms. I only really put my face up on the internet last year for the first time as an example. I was quite tentative around that. That's a whole another story. But LinkedIn is a good place to find me. You can go to my website, it's just my full name, deanbroadley.com. Twitch is, twitch.tv/abcdean. Yeah, those are kind of my primary channels where you can find me. Most of the stuff links off of Twitter, it's BroadleySpoken. I've also started sharing some of my gardening things there lately, which people also didn't realize I do because you can see I'm not great at sharing. But those are the things, BroadleySpoken on Twitter, for probably most of those things as well. I'm trying to leverage that a bit more in this year, the 2020 with the new logo.
Lisa Welchman:
It's 2021.
Dean Broadley:
Yeah. Well, I call it 2020 with the new logo because-
Lisa Welchman:
2021 with a new logo. Okay.
Dean Broadley:
... it's the same thing.
Lisa Welchman:
There you go. Well, since we all lost last year, maybe yeah.
Dean Broadley:
Exactly.
Lisa Welchman:
Maybe you don't even need the new logo. Well, thank you so much for your time. It was really great to talk to you about all the things.
Andy Vitale:
Definitely.
Dean Broadley:
I appreciate you having me on. I would love to come back anytime you want me. I can talk about all the things.
Lisa Welchman:
Fantastic.
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