our next speaker hails from ride sharing service Uber and he's here to incite a revolution it's his belief that the hypers specialization that we've seen in product teams of the past is just that a thing of the past and that the future belongs to the generalist so please everybody give a very warm welcome to John Garvey [Music] hello hello hello everybody so wonderful to be here let's keep the energy going how about it I'm going to talk today about how increased specialization inside a product organizations is a thing of the past and how we're shifting to a new Dynamic where resourceful generalists will Thrive and I'll be telling this story through one of the most powerful narrative structures ever created comic books but more specifically Pokemon uh based on my 10-year-old son recommendation for the theme of this talk got to catch them all right all right here we go all right I'm going to argue that there are four powerful poke forces at play inside of every product organization today human- centered cultures powerful playbooks evolving tools and merging duties and these four forces are creating a new kind of superpowered professional that I call resourceful generalists I'll also tell you about how we as insights professionals can prepare for and adjust to these forces by acknowledging resourceful generalists by rooting ourselves in hyperrealism supporting them by enabling and not blocking their access to insights which also allows us to focus on more impactful work and how we can become resourceful generalists ourselves by doing work across the product life cycle thinking outside of our traditional roles and embracing adaptability but first I'm going to tell you my story and how I learned the hard way about how these forces are driving big changes inside of organizations back in 2020 I was a research manager at Uber for about two months I come to LinkedIn or come to from LinkedIn where I was a a user experience research manager and was quickly swept up in a large uh round of covid initiated layoffs that impacted roughly 25% of the Uber uh population sadly most of my research team was let go too and I wasn't alone I was one of roughly 60,000 people just in Tech that were laid off that month and that wasn't the end of lay offs in 2020 there were around 80,000 total layoffs in Tech okay you're probably wondering why I'm talking about getting laid off at a conference um but the truth is is that this experience caught me off guard and I started asking some questions that help me better understand the forces that have impacted me as a researcher designer and manager I'm also a huge fan of oversharing in fact uh we just got back from a family vacation to the San Diego Zoo and these are my kids and they definitely think you should check out the flamingos skip the Penguins because they smell like fish farts according to my daughter but back to my story now remember it's 2020 in the middle of a global pandemic and I'm definitely not freaking out Okay I lied I totally was and I was asking myself some existential questions why was my team impacted more than others were we not adding enough value do they think they can actually work better without us and then two months after getting laid off I kid you not two months after getting L off I got a call from Uber asking me to come back and as you can imagine had a few Choice words so yeah I said yes what what what did you think I would say all right and because I got the rare experience to Boomerang back into a company where I was just laid off I got a unique look into the before and after layoffs version of uber and the Uber that I stepped back into was a completely different company but more on that in just a second what I didn't realize was that my layoff was only the first Spike of much larger layoffs to come later in 2022 and 2023 a second Spike occurred and these layoffs were much more disruptive the spike produced a ground swell of Doomsday prophecies within the insight Community like some of the questions I posed to myself the broader insights in ux research communities were asking tough questions and coming to terms with hard truths like Jud who uh spoke today on on one of our panels he wrote at you he wrote and and was asking if we are at a fundamental inflection point with how we deliver insights or others wondering if we're at the lowest point of ux and still other others were asking if we had entered into a new Dark Age of late stage ux and maybe the most fundamental question people were asking is this even a viable career path in the future and I'm here to tell you that ux research and insights professionals are still crucial we will continue to play an important role inside of tech organizations and product organizations but we have to evolve to stay relevant in this new post layoffs Paradigm this is because all product organizations and particularly those that went through layoffs have fundamentally changed or are in the midst of changing as we speak just like how the Uber I walked back into had fundamentally changed as well so there are four poke forces driving much of this change some of these forces have been happening for some time some are newer but the four forces create a completely new kind of product environment where what I call resourceful generalists Thrive and all this creates new expectations for insight professionals I'm going to walk you through these four forces and then talk about how we as insights professionals can adapt to them let's start with Force One human centered cultures driven by Design thinking human centeredness has gone mainstream now it can be argued about whether design thinking has lived up to the hype but thought leaders like Don Norman Jacob neelon Tim Brown of idio and countless other thought leaders have ingrained the idea that design thinking and human- centered approaches are valuable and are worth using in broader business contexts in fact these efforts have been so successful that every top business school now teaches design thinking and I just pulled bunch of the ads for uh for those business schools here the result a new generation of business Executives product managers and entrepreneurs who know about human centered approaches this means that human centered culture is no longer owned just by ux it's now owned by the entire product organization next up is force two powerful playbooks hard one Insight methodologies developed over a decade have now been packaged into powerful playbooks excellent books like continuous Discovery habits from experts like Teresa Torres have reached a mainstream audience of product leaders and practitioners in fact these playbooks have been so successful that some insights professionals have blamed the authors for research layoffs I know Teresa and she's one of the most talented product insights professionals I've ever worked with I stand firmly in the camp that is poor form to blame a book for losing your job but it is a clear signal of the power of these playbooks and how widespread the powerful playbooks Force has become the main takeaway here is that the playbooks will only get better and more widely available roles outside of insights will continue to pick up these playbooks to their own benefit Force three evolving tools the pace at which new research and insights tools are coming to the market has significantly increased these tools are getting more powerful and easier to use allowing any user to self-service more easily and get even quicker and deeper levels of analysis and synthesis without experts I think the announcements this morning was an indication of that as well plus now ai supercharging these tools in addition to off-the-shelf ones we're familiar with companies are building their own AI powered insights tools which can provide even more capability to any role this means that a subset of questions that would have previously required an insights professional to answer can now be answered by anyone inside of the product organization radically empowering novices Force four merging duties as organizations have gotten leaner employees have absorbed some of the duties of lost roles until 2022 maturing organizations that wanted to grow quickly had easy access to quick loans and investment opportunities were plentiful in this new environment that is no longer the case as interest rates have gone up and VCS have become more disciplined about their investment portfolios additionally as organizations have reached maturity and streamlined their business models they've cut employees as we know since 2022 there have been around a half million layoffs just in Tech rather than these duties of these employees going away entirely they have been absorbed by others in the organization through heightened productivity as I see it market conditions will drive further consolidation and backed by the other three forces we will increasingly see smaller organizations achieving incredible outcomes with only a handful of employees for example mid journey is said to have reached hundreds of millions of dollars in Revenue with just a team of 11 in this environment a new kind of super professional is evolving who I call resourceful generalists resourceful generalists are adaptable and smart professionals who are laser focused on increased productivity are inspired to solve challenges by any means necessary and are often undeterred to do work across roles and responsibilities and fueled by the four forces resourceful generalists will Thrive inside of the product organizations of today and tomorrow so I imagine that many of you will have critiques of this analysis you might say these four forces are nothing new to some extent I agree with you there have always been new tools evolving organizations and transfers of knowledge what's different today is the rate and speed at which this is happening and now the tech industry similar to the evolution of other mature Industries like the automotive industry is going through an intense period of change and evolution so here's what I'd like you to consider in the course of creating this deck I've used five new AI tools I use mid Journey for the comic expired images and for those eagle-eyed folks out there you may have seen the prompts throughout this deck I use Gemini chat GPT and co-pilot for help with research and Analysis and I use toome a new AI based deck creation tool which gave me some inspiration for deck layout and overall narrative structure prior to these tools I would have needed double the editing time and help from an illustrator and more now these tools have cousins in the Insight domain and resourceful generalists are already using them so you may be wondering what we can do about it what how we can adapt to this new reality and that comes down to three actions we can take acknowledging resourceful generalists by rooting ourselves in hyperrealism supporting them by enabling and not blocking their access to insights which also allows us to focus on more impactful work and becoming resourceful generalists ourselves by doing work across the product life cycle and thinking outside of our traditional roles let's start with acknowledge Ray Doo the founder of Bridgewater Associates and asset management firm says be a hyper realist truth or more precisely an accurate understanding of reality is the essential foundation for any good outcome the good news is that being a hyperrealist is an Insight professionals purpose and superpower we're committed to telling hard truths rooted in data these truths are sometimes difficult to hear but we hold ourselves and our organizations accountable to these truths because it's the right thing to do for our teams and businesses and this is the moment that calls us to lean into this capacity within our own Community looking boldly at the future of our profession and work even when it's uncomfortable let's move on to our next action support supporting resourceful generalists thoughtfully has been one of the keys to my team's success we realize that we are in control of how we Empower generalists and this has allowed us to evolve with these broader forces while maintaining the quality that drive optimal outcomes for our teams and business instead of blocking their access we built Frameworks guard rails and programs for them when we did this at Uber we developed a model based on uncertainty and business risk uncertainty is based on how much we already know whether we have answered any related question before business risk is based on how much risk we take by not answering the question at hand as you can see this Matrix allows uxr to own high risk and high uncertainty projects which which is where we can deliver the most value the other quadrants include Outsourcing enabling self-service and dropping in inquiry entirely to support this model we developed a range of different tools and templates for our resourceful generalists and this model extends Beyond research the ux design team that I managed follows a similar approach the design team's decision Matrix is based on okr impact and ux complexity and just like our teammates on uxr this approach allows our fairly designed team who are here in the audience to deliver impact at scale through partnership and prioritization in summary supporting resourceful generalists involves proactively designing how your team wants to support them not the other way around become the Last Action for us to consider becoming a resourceful generalist Don Norman is the co-founder of the neelen Norman group he challenges each of us to start thinking more broadly about our roles and impact and to become generalists to drive impact and influence he says that increased respect comes when you able to think and do work outside of specialized departments as Insight professionals if we wish to increase our impact and influence we too have to become resourceful generalists and there are two ways that we must become generalists the first is to think and work more broadly across all stages of the product life cycle it's no longer an option to narrowly focus on one part or another we must be able to accurately move across the life cycle adjusting our focus nimbly on where gaps in business risk and uncertainty exist we must also think and do work more fluidly across roles and functions we can't be constrained by our traditional areas of specialization and we must start working across domains together as a quick anecdote a year ago I decided to change my role at Uber from ux research management to ux design management I made this change because I believe that designers are researchers and vice versa and I wanted to lean into my potential as a generalist but even if we don't jump roles we must focus on adaptability not surprisingly according to LinkedIn learning the most in demand skill of 2024 is adaptability as Insight professionals we must learn how to write a PRD and translate our findings into concrete design Rec recommendations we must also frame our insights around business value we must ask other roles for self-service tips and tools when we get blocked it's also helpful that AI now writes SQL for you and finally we must always be one step ahead in our thinking about what other resourceful generalists might need or want from our roles so as we wrap up there are two things I want to leave you with one the four forces powerful playbooks human- centered cultures evolving tools and merging Duties are already at play inside of your organization if you don't see them yet you might just find one around the corner the next time you look these forces combined create resourceful generalists and they are inside of every organization they will become increasing powerful two to adapt to these four forces and evolve alongside resourceful generalist we have to acknowledge support and become acknowledge what is by rooting ourselves in hyper realism support resourceful generalists by enabling and not blocking access to to insights and finally become resourceful generalists ourselves by working across across the product life cycle not being constrained by traditional zones of specialization and embracing adaptability when you do this you will become part of the generalist Revolution that will shape the future of insights thank you so much we do have a few questions from our chats from the live stream from Matts da his question is uh how do you see the resourceful generalist different from a t-shaped individual who knows a lot about a lot but does have deep focus in certain specific areas I love that question uh because I think in many ways a resourceful generalist is a t-shaped person um but what I argue is that that B that bottom part of the tea going down the root that grounds you right your area of specialization is still an area that's really important to you as a professional and you don't want to lose that but the four forces I argue are creating the broader top part of the tea right so as you think about continuing I think to evolve and change root yourself in that specialization but grow your limbs awesome I also have a question here from Ashley trobridge so she's curious to know what roles and job postings are out there that indicate this um as they found that many are still specialist roles are they really resourceful generous roles in Disguise I like this question that's a really good question I have am not an expert on all of the roles that are available or sort of like evolving or changing but I have seen more roles that kind of match the resourceful generalist uh I guess way of of being and acting I read an article recently uh that indicated that uh particularly AI companies are looking for these kinds of folks to come into their organization because they know they're Scrappy they can solve problems and they can actually leverage the tools that they're building amazing well that's all we have time for today with John can we give John one big round of applause please thank you so much amazing work thank you so much [Music]