Welcome to Count Me In.
I'm Neha Lagoo Ratnakar.

And today I'm speaking with Sérgio
Tavares about design thinking and why it's

crucial for leaders and management
accountants to understand the basics of

design thinking in a
digital-first business world.

Sérgio is a design leader at
Frog where he researches humans,

culture and society to create digital
solutions that better meet consumer

needs.

This is a very interesting conversation
as we discuss how management accountants

can help shape the metrics and what
data designers should be focusing on to

alleviate pressure points and
deliver better digital solutions.

So let's get started with Sérgio.

Welcome Sérgio. It's such a
pleasure to have you on the show.

Now let's start with the basics for people
who might be new to design thinking.

Can you give us a simple
definition of design thinking?

Hi, Neha. Thanks for
having me on the show.

I think design thinking is a
term that came about already in

the sixties and it talks
a lot about what is

the customer need, the end customer need?

I think we came from an era of advertising
and marketing that we're more trying

to persuade the people
to want certain things,

to consume certain products
and design thinking,

subverted that by looking
into what they really need the

things they know they need,

but also the things that they don't know
yet that they need and supplying these

needs.

Wow. Okay. I love that.

And I'm totally going to steal
that in my next conversation.

Great.

All right. So I like how design thinking
it keeps customers in the center

and what are the challenges that companies
these days are facing when it comes

to this customer centricity?

Yes, that's, that's an excellent point.

I think many companies are
finding a lot of challenge to

compete with the startup scene.

I think the startup scene is
going through a change now.

We're a little bit past
the move fast break things

time. So we are seeing the downfall
of the first unicorns we had.

We crash Zuckerberg had so many
problems with democracy and then

the whole thing with the
fake news. And there's,

there's all the ups and downs
with Elon Musk going to Twitter.

So there's a lot that is
telling us that this first wave

or this wave was over and
companies are now need to

compete in a different way with startups.

I think that

the challenge that companies are
facing is also that startups,

they have very well understood that they
need to look into the customer needs.

And it's very simple for them to do that.

They just get out of the building as
the jargon says and run interviews fast

prototypes and then create their
product or improve their product.

And then when you come to AB corporation,

this is very difficult because there's
so much procurement hierarchy and

it becomes very difficult
to just move very fast.

So when it comes to customer centricity,

I think that is where startups have
an advantage and companies have

problem because they need
to output the results.

They need to push harder, their marketing
efforts, their existing efforts,

and rethinking their
products around the customer

is something quite demanding.

Right. Wow. That, that
was very insightful.

And when you talk about
being customer centric,

how does that translate to being
customer centric within the organization?

For example,

how does your work at Frog apply
this customer centricity internally?

Yes.

I think the first thing that we come
as a Frog consultant, for example,

we come to a customer is like,
tell me where the research room is.

And that usually means
that there is no room.

And so that means that we
need to structure that.

So we need to ask first
let's run a round of

questions,

a survey out there to your
target customers or to a
specific segment you want to

work with.

And that means also that this
research that you order it'll fall

into an empty drawer. So you
need to create the drawer.

You need to create a structure that will

catalog and categorize
research and put it into

use in product development or
marketing or on the operations.

So I think that's the first thing.

So building the airplane as you fly it.

Yes, yes, exactly.

That just gives us a bit of speed
and it's easier to show that

we are getting insights
about the customers.

We're getting ideas on how to make
our product more desirable, viable,

usable for customers.

And that's usually a good way to
start because in corporations,

you need to start convincing
like the whole hierarchy.

So it starts to connect
with the KPIs and it starts

to need to connect to
the financial numbers.

Right.

So it's not very easy to sell, like, okay,

in 10 years this idea will pay
off, but you can start by saying,

let's discover what we can do
to change things right now,

and how a better experience, for example,

of a digital service
will mean less time that

people take to let's say, use our product.

And that means faster onboarding,
and that means more revenue, right?

So when you start to
create this connection,

that's when design thinking
connects with financial

departments management
consultants and so forth.

These connections are quite new designers.

They were often seen as the creative side,

and they are usually with high fly
ideas. That won't be very sustainable.

But when we start to work with business
consultants that that's started

to change.

And you're right, the perspective
on design is changing everywhere.

I've also heard people talk about
customer journey maps and our

listeners who are many of them are
from accounting and finance world,

would like to understand how that
helps clients with the accounting,

most importantly, but
also their KPIs, OKRs,

metrics and operations, the
hard facts of a business.

Yes. So the customer
journey is basically a map

of all the interactions that the
end customer goes through when

interacting with your product or service.

So that may seem very far fetched from
accountants, but I would think it's not,

for example, in a model that I have
developed with the client during this year

we have throughout the journey,

all the pain points and highlights through
the experience. So let's think of a,

let's say a bank or an
insurance company or

any service, really.

So you have a person that is first
deciding if they're going to buy it,

then they let's say in
case of an insurance,

then you have the time that a
person's gonna make a decision.

If they're gonna get a
more premium account.

And then they have another part of their
journey where they're actually making a

claim. So all these

the customer goes through all these,

what happens often is that the designers
or the people taking care of the

product are looking a lot
on the customer pains.

And they are telling
for example, the company

customers need to be able to claim very
fast for where they have some, a broken,

broken device at home. So we
need to make this very easy.

And then on the other side, you
have the accountants, for example,

that are saying, look if we
make this just immediate,

we're gonna have more fraud. So

I developed this model where
we add to the customer journey,

the pressure points that
are internal to the company,

pressuring the solution stores customers.

And then we can have a real timeline
of everything we provide to the end

customer and all the pressure
that the company goes through

in a map. So everybody can see the problem

on a bird eye view and
have a clear understanding

of everything that is going on and how
we can solve the problems together in

alignment.

I love the idea of pressure points.
I'd never heard that one before.

Thank you. Yes. I think this
comes from, from really,

and I think that's when we start
to be customer centric in our day

to day, that we started
to listen to our customer,

like the companies are saying,
yeah, the design team is very happy,

but they're not getting their
ideas through. When they,

even if they pointed out in
the customer journey and,

and then we came up with this concept
that let's use the pressure points,

because that's when we
have our limitations, like,

we simply cannot give
this solution for free.

Let's say there's a
financial pressure here.

And also one thing that might
be, it'll be very important.

The collaboration between
accountants, for example

and consultants on the business
side to tell designers and

decision makers, innovators,

what are the differences
in different OKRs KPIs,

and even what is the difference between
a lagging indicator or a leading

indicator? Because designers, for example,
when they're improving the product,

they just hear the, the simplest
ones, like we need higher revenue.

But they can help to discover
the root cause of a problem.

Right.

And the business consultant for the
accountant can help them to convert that

problem into a metric.

And that will be their root
metric or their leading indicator.

This work is very nascent.

I don't see many companies and I've been
working in this model with our Milan

studio in Italy and exchanging a lot of
information with our American studio in

San Francisco,

it's rare to have the interaction
between people that work only with

numbers and then people that work
only with product development.

And thank you for being that
bridge between these two parties.

That communication is super important.

Yes. I'm trying, I'm trying.

All right.

So let me pivot from that to some
other things that I've heard in the

field of design thinking like
prototypes or minimum viable products.

And I'm trying to connect that
with accounting, for example,

which is a very rules-based field. Now,

how can what can accounting and finance
people learn from the field of design

thinking if they had to
take some practical tips and
start implementing tomorrow

to become more design
oriented, or more innovative,

what is it that they can start doing?

Yes. Neha, this is an excellent question.

And I think I could say also things
that the accounting teams can teach

or coach the design teams with.

But first I think accountants
may benefit from thinking

a little bit less on the big scale of what

projects can become. So they start to do
the number crunching. And if we invest,

let's say in this new product,

we're gonna be able to see figures
break even in five years and so forth.

This business case of
five years is going really

out of style because it's based
on a lot of fictions, right?

You have very good estimations and such,

but the minimum viable product school
of thinking and the design school of

thinking, say, let's
create just a trailer,

just the first thing that we can get a
signal from the market and see if people

respond. If they respond,

we can finance the idea
for more six months.

And and this can go

it can save a lot of these
initial investments and the
CapEx of the whole thing.

You don't need to put all the coins in
the same basket all the eggs in basket,

you can just work with the first
signals and, and confirmations.

But now we come to the idea, if this,

if a company does this once
and then twice, and then five,

10 times, they need a
system to govern innovation.

And that's where accountants
would be really valuable. Okay.

Because they can create a system,
like you said, thinking in systems,

like how can we know that
an idea is gonna pay off,

they need to hit a certain
target in certain amount of time.

And it's not really a given
to understand that people

that have sometimes great product ideas,
even when they are inside companies,

they are not sometimes very good in
governing this idea and keeping the tab on

KPIs. And I think the accountants
may take a role of not being the,

the checking department or kind of the

red stamp department, but more
like the coaches that say, Hey,

this is something that
you may be able to do,

or this is where you need to
invest so that you hit your KPI.

So you become a mindset of
nurturing when you start to really

help them to do the accounting,
which is what you are best at.

So one last question is is with
the companies going remote first,

these days, what is,

how do you think has design
thinking changed the way we think,

or has design thinking changed as a
result of how companies are changing?

Yeah. Well, there's a lot going
on in this cultural shift.

And what we are seeing now is
the rise of a truly hybrid mode

of working. And by hybrid,
it means, well, let's say

our playing field is the workshop.

So it's where we take all the very strong

knowledge that every
stakeholder has in their minds,

and try to put together in a board
with sticky notes and that kind of

stuff.

So it's more about organizing the
ideas so that we come up with something

new. And with remote work,

there was like concerns that
this process can happen,

but they started to happen in
online boards like Myro or Neuro.

Actually,

they start to open new possibilities that
people can concentrate a little better

in their own individual work, that they
can contribute to that along the day.

And only later join the workshop.

And there is even a mode where we are
experimenting now to use the digital

board,

even if we are in a room because it's
just so easy to output more ideas,

or then to erase and move.

And also to read
sometimes. So it's legible.

Exactly, exactly.

And there's not that person that will
need to take care of all the post-it's

right.

Or all that kind of operations
that the team needs to take upon.

Also, it's common that in offices,

you need to clear the room after you
leave there's confidential information.

So all these starts to be solved,

and it doesn't mean that sometimes
you shouldn't be all together without

devices, because there's, there's
an added value that to that too,

you're able to maybe
focus or pay attention to

listening to more to each
team of the, of the project.

So I think there's a
hybrid model going on.

We are still discovering what it
can do for these creative processes.

And I think we should try to listen to
what the teams are bringing and how they

are most productive when working.

This has been Count Me In,

IMA's podcast providing you
with the latest perspectives
of thought leaders from

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