Daniel Stillman on Design Thinking

Daniel joins us on this week’s episode of the podcast. Daniel does some really interesting work on design thinking and designing conversation for companies and individuals. Daniel does a lot of different things, but at his core, he will talk about being a designer. He’s a design thinker and helps others design their companies, and themselves, to help them unpack what they have envisioned for themselves and where they want to go. Daniel founded and exited start-ups and now travels the world teaching design thinking to teams and organizations to help them be more intentional at work. At his core, Daniel believes design means making things better tomorrow than they are today.

In this episode they discuss when and how he got interested in facilitation (6:50), why he was different than others in his family with regard to challenges (11:40), how he thinks about confrontation (13:10), how he practices active listening in tough moments (17:50), life as an infinite game (22:30), how he went from focusing on science to facilitation (26:30), the consequences of looking at human focused design vs. non-human focused design (29:30), how he thinks about vision (34:00), how he thinks about values (37:20), the conversation operating system model (41:20), what is so powerful about sticky notes for him (47:50), what he does to make sure he’s showing up at his best (51:00), what he does on stage to make sure he’s good to go (52:20), how he thinks about all the different hats that he wears (55:10), and how he facilitates with people who just want to have a monologue (57:30)

Thank you to Daniel for coming on the podcast. We encourage you to check out his podcast and sign up for his emails on his website at http://theconversationfactory.com/. Daniel just finished a book on design thinking called “The 30 Second Elephant and Paper Airplane Experiment,” and he’s working on another book about how conversations work which should be coming out in the next year. You can also find Daniel on twitter @dastillman.

Lastly, if you liked this episode and/or any others, please support us at Patreon or follow me on Twitter: @brianlevenson or Instagram: @Intentional_Performers.

Thanks for listening.

-Brian