A Call for More Conscious Products
A year ago, I was smack dab in the middle of one of the hardest periods of time in my life. I was dealing with a scary list of challenges and trying to work my way though them in the best way I could.
I’m a list person, so I had them organized into buckets — “Health”, “Personal”, “Work”, etc. Under the work bucket, at the top of my list was wanting to do something more meaningful that made people’s lives measurably better, that was more aligned with my personal values, that was in an environment where I could be authentically me and be surrounded by smart people I could learn from with similar values, have a schedule that fit the constraints I was dealing with, and with a salary that could support paying for living.
I did a deep-dive to research what kinds of existing jobs would fit the bill. I came up with a very, very, very small list of options. Each option that was on that list also had a “Ya, but…” attached to it. For example:
- Great problem to solve, but it’s a not-for-profit or early-stage startup with limited funding, limited jobs available, and lower salaries
- Great problem to solve, but the entire leadership team is a single demographic
- Great culture and diversity, great funding, great salaries, but the problem the team is solving is not clearly understood and defined
- Great problem to solve, but the implemented solution actually makes the problem worse
The frustration I felt coming out of this exercise was not only the catalyst to me starting my own company, Conscious Product Development, but also helped me to realize that this is a much bigger problem than me trying to find work for myself.
Not only are many aspects of our lives in crisis mode — if you actually want to make a difference and contribute your time and energy to making your own life and other people’s lives better, it’s often extremely challenging to figure out a) how to find good problems to solve b) what opportunities currently exist to help you solve these problems c) how to create your own opportunities.
With the brainpower I see being put to use solely to make millions and billions of dollars in revenue in specific markets, especially in the tech space, I refuse to accept that this is the best we can do.
I refuse to accept that this is the way life will be and remain.
I refuse to accept that morals and ethics and helping each other cannot be sustainable and opportunity-creating.
I refuse to accept that this is our bar.
I refuse to remain on autopilot.
This is a call to be conscious.
This is a call to make more conscious decisions about where we are putting our time and energy, and to question why we are putting our time and energy into these things.
This is a call to make more conscious products and more conscious product decisions.
It’s 2021. If you lift your head up and turn 360 degrees, you’ll see how many aspects of our lives are in crisis.
We are in a pandemic that we were not prepared for. Our climate and the state of the planet is rapidly going downhill, to the point where we don’t know what life will be like for our children and for us as we age — where we will live with parts of the Earth predicted to become inhospitable, food shortages, rising water levels, extreme weather conditions, poorer and poorer quality air to breathe, food shortages, and the list goes on. Rates of preventable chronic illness are on the rise globally, with conditions like heart disease, stroke, cancer, diabetes, chronic lung disease, and depression killing 41 million people prematurely. This represents 70% of all deaths globally. Discriminatory laws and social norms mean that we have a long way to go to achieve human equality, with limited opportunities and access to services, resources, employment opportunities and wages depending on gender, skin colour, differing physical and mental abilities, sexuality, and a plethora of other “others” that our systems and communities have not considered, have not been designed around, and that have resulted in unconscious biases that we bring with us into every situation we are in.
For the most part, most of us are aware of these stats and conditions to some extent. But most of us aren’t actively empathizing with what these things actually mean. A lot of our culture in the Western world is built on fear-based blah blah blah leadership rather than facing root causes, even if they are painful, square in the face and doing something about them that moves the needle the greatest amount with the least amount of effort and resources.
I don’t have all the answers, but I strongly believe that we can change things for the better through some of the following principles:
- Be empathetic. We need to do a better job at seeing and feeling the pain and hurt in the world so that we care enough to do something about it. Instead of protecting our tiny bubble with all our might and being like, “this is fine”, we need to make an effort to understand the things that we don’t.
- Go inward. To make outward change happen, we need to start inside, within ourselves and understanding our reason for being, our values, the things that make our souls come alive and the ways in which we are connected. We need to become more conscious. To be conscious means to be aware — aware of what our gut is telling us, aware of our unconscious biases, aware of the choices we are making, aware of what impacts we are having on others, and most of all, aware of our own “Why”.
- Accept responsibility. Even though a single one of us didn’t cause all of the problems in the world right now that we are being faced with, we need to accept responsibility for how we respond to these challenges.
- Put people first. A person’s primary task should be being human, not using a product or technology or trying to figure out a system. The Principles of Calm Technology are an excellent way to approach this when designing solutions. We live in a world that was largely designed for the mean of a specific demographic. Awareness, empathy, and gathering more data are key if we want to design more inclusive products that cater to broader user needs.
- Spend more time in the problem finding and framing space vs. the solutions space. We need to start by asking better questions. More effort needs to be put into finding and framing meaningful problems to solve rather than focusing first on creating exceptional solutions, which in turn cause more problems. We need to be able to understand problems and who they impact really, really well, and then frame those problems to the best of our ability. Albert Einstein once said, “If I were given one hour to save the planet, I would spend 59 minutes defining the problem and one minute resolving it.” There are way too many products that are created as a solution first, with the goal of making money vs. starting with deeply understanding a problem and who it impacts and why and then developing a solution that solves this problem for these specific people. Starting with a solution first wastes brainpower, resources, and time that could be spent addressing better root causes and having greater, more meaningful impacts.
- Start small. The best way to get something done is to get started. The best way to get started is to start small. Global solutions start with local solutions.
- Approach problems in a holistic, connected way. We need to approach problems holistically instead of in a fragmented, silo-ed way. Sure, we may be able to come up with solutions faster if we implant artificial swim lanes to keep things laser focused. But these silos that help make things appear to be more organized and logical, and create a sense of knowingness, confidence, safety, and “progress” can also hinder us greatly and create barriers in us being aware of potential connections that can be made to bring exceptional holistic solutions to life. We need to stop seeing the world in black and white and accept that we are every shade of the rainbow. The best solutions come from cross-functional thinking and diverse perspectives.
- Play the long game, with mini learning experiments along the way to make course adjustments. We need to be willing to give up immediate gratification so that we can make things better for ourselves in the long term (and so that we have a long-term to even look forward to.) We also need to get better at running iterative tests to validate our hypotheses and assumptions and keep making small adjustments to the course to develop products that have a measurable positive impact on our lives.
What else can we do? We can spend time figuring out what our own North Star is. We can spend more time finding meaningful problems to solve — you can use this guide I created as a start. We can find more meaningful work using tools like Topstartups.io using filters like “Sustainability”, “Health” and “Education”. We can develop our own products and companies around finding meaningful problems to solve, and implementing solutions using humane and Calm Technology (I’ve created a list of tools you can use to help you here). We can invest in companies committed to solving humanity’s greatest challenges. More than anything, we can start with caring more and asking better questions to understand.
I would love to hear your thoughts on this article and suggestions for future articles. Stay tuned for a follow-up piece on real-world examples of teams that are focusing on great problems to solve to develop products that have a measurable positive impact on our lives.
-Lisa
Follow me on Twitter: @lisazane15
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