Ivy Ross, Google's Chief Design Officer on why designers are the most strategic people in the room

0:00Ivy Ross:Hi, I'm Ekaterina from Future London Academy and today we've got a special treat for you. Ivy Ross, Chief Design Officer of Consumer Devices at Google, flew all the way from Silicon Valley to London for a couple of days. And one of these days she's spending with us. We'll be exploring London, nature and diving into all sorts of philosophical conversations about design, leadership and the future. You'll definitely enjoy this conversation.

0:32Ivy.

0:33Ivy Ross:Yes. You are an incredibly fascinating person that feels like you lived a hundred lives in one. I seriously don't know how you've done it. At the age of 25 or mid-20s, your jewelry design was already exhibited in museums across the world. You then moved to work for Avon, Swatch, Disney, Mattel, and now you're Chief Design Officer at Google. For consumer devices. For consumer devices, which are incredible. So you lead teams for Nest, for Pixel, for beautiful physical objects that Google has. is how does one design a career like yours? What was the, did you have an intention to do multiple things when you were young?

1:35Ivy Ross:How can someone go through life like that? Because a lot of people peak at certain point and kind of then rest on the success of what they've done, but you just don't stop. So how did you do that? Well, first of all, when I hear it recounted back to me, I don't stop. But if I do, I'll probably get exhausted. But so I just keep going. I think because I am, as we talked about earlier, a curious person, I can't stop because I'm interested in so many different things. But essentially, once I was first a craftsman, craftswoman, and had the gift of being able to materialize, connect my mind and my hands and make things.

2:22And there was no substitute for manifesting with your own hands. I think that gave me such an advantage to then become a designer. And I had more ideas than I had fingers, which is how I then learned to put my ideas on paper and sell them. It's interesting to say, how do you design that life? I think I undesigned it. I didn't try and control it and design it. I let it unfold, but paid attention to what felt like the right next move. And when I say the right move, first of all, I realized early on, I never I wanted to apply my talent to different categories. I never wanted to repeat the same one twice because people used to say early in my career, what are you?

3:11Are you a handbag designer? are you a toy designer are you what you've done so many things and I said it's a mindset it's a way of thinking that I thinking and being that I can apply to whatever category if you give me the parameters like I think design is easier when you have the restrictions because if you don't have any restrictions it can be so many things but with restrictions you're the idea is for you to be as creative as you can within the box the different categories I've designed in either by myself or alongside my teams has always changed because I wanted the new challenge of stepping into the unknown and I realized that about myself and that I actually thrive on you know something familiar and something unfamiliar.

4:06The familiar is knowing myself and what I feel I do well and what I like to do. And the unfamiliar is, can I, it's like my life has been a master experiment. You know, can I apply that to this category that I may know nothing about, but I'm interested and curious. And then it's great because I have to deep dive and learn the customer, learn the technical boundaries and I find that an exciting it pushes me to do my best work each time in whatever category I'm in.

4:39Ivy Ross:What I really admire about you and still don't know how you've done it you didn't just change the categories but you were also very successful in each company that you joined it's one thing to say I'm curious about so many things I'll do this I'll do a bit of that but But you also were CMO, you're now Chief Design Officer. You're not just doing consumer devices at Google. You are Chief Design Officer at Google, which requires not just curiosity, it requires something else. So what do you think that was that made you not just join companies and join the industry, but also become successful at your job?

5:22Well, I have a left and right brain, both. and I actually really appreciate the way they work together. So there's a, I actually enjoy processes and I enjoy most having an idea and manifesting it with a group of people. I call myself now an orchestra conductor because I get to know my instruments really well and that's my team. And I think not enough leaders deeply listen to who they have, who their team is, but I feel like I get to know them well enough to be able to then agree with them on what symphony are we playing, and then know when to say more drums, less trombone, and really kind of shape-shift and get us to a place where we're doing our best work as a team to manifest or solve the challenges that had been set out for us.

6:24You know, in school, I was an art major and a psychology minor, and I really was fascinated with humans, what makes us work, what makes us doesn't work. So I think my fascination with people beyond just being a builder of products, teams, companies, or even houses, has worked for me because friends of mine say, how can you deal with the politics? You know, there's always politics in every company. And I thought about it. And, you know, being in a company is like a petri dish of humanity. It's just very concentrated. And so you see the function, dysfunction of humans. And I've been fascinated with how people work together.

7:19You know, what makes this team work and that team not work? Or what, what's, so I think it's kept me, I can deal with the politics because I'm learning. It's a, I see it as a big laboratory. And I understand, and the joy of having been in these different companies is you learn so much about the different flavors of humans and the different way they operate. But I'll give you an example how I brought the two sides because we talked earlier about how I've always alongside my career explored what interests me and one of the things that has interested me is not only how you know when I was making the pieces that got into museums and winning design awards by myself I thought how can I give the gift of this to others as I became a design leader and because I know how I felt when and I was in the zone making these breakthroughs.

8:17And when I first got into companies, you know, a CEO or my boss would go, you, you, and you, you're a team. And I'm like, no, we're not. We don't even know each other. And so I was so naive about the corporate world because it was never necessarily an aspiration of mine. It almost happened by accident, but you realize there are no accidents. The universe had it planned for me. I just thought, huh, I'll observe. like, you know, how does this work that we're supposed to be a team? And I started observing these three people could brainstorm and spiral to new places within an hour, coming up with great ideas.

8:56These four people, three hours, nothing, no good ideas. So I called up one of my sound teachers and I would say, you know, I feel like some people are on the same wavelength, no judgment, just different wavelengths. Some people are on different ones. Can I force, you know, this was the beauty of my naivete. Can I force people to be on the same wavelength? Because we'd be so much more productive if I can get people on the same wavelength, because I felt what it feels like to be in the groove or in that flow state together. And you're just, the ideas are coming. And so he said, I don't know, let's try.

9:32And he came in to the company at the time with a a machine that I had to find 12 employees that would, and this was 25 years ago, would open their mouth and say, ah, and he recorded these 12 different people's tones. And we looked for the place where they overlapped because everyone has a range. But where was it that these 12 individuals had a frequency that was the same. And then he took that frequency and he did it in octaves up and octaves down and embedded it in a piece of music. And he and I said, you know, the concept of entrainment where cuckoo clocks eventually start swinging the same way because they've gotten entrained with each other.

10:21The master experiment was, could we get these 12 people's brains to entrain together and be on the same wavelength which would therefore get us great ideas. And so I thought, wow, I'm in this place where I'm getting to produce great work and play with some of my theories and ideas. And I'm very grateful. I remember when I, I think, turned 40, and I was a senior VP somewhere, I said, how did I end up at this high level, you know, basically doing what I love to do? And a little voice in my head said, to get the credibility to do the real work. And I thought, okay, now I get it. And the real work was creating environments and holding space for a variety of folks.

11:20because now as my role grew, it's mostly creatives, but also there's some engineers, program managers, it's quite a range. But the real work was finding the way to create the best conditions under which people would not just produce great work, but be happy producing great work.

11:40Ivy Ross:I love these stories and I feel like that's probably, right now the most undervalued and the most important ingredient in any company to create that culture, to create that atmosphere or whatever we want to call it, conditions for creativity. Because I think right now we're swimming in a sea of sameness where every company is producing slightly better version of something else. And especially with technology being commoditized, that creativity and imagination is something we'll make or break companies and differentiate them. How, what are the things that, apart from, I don't know, sound and like, what are the things you've seen working in different environments that you've been in to create that special culture where people can thrive?

12:37Well, you know, giving people the time to be inspired, because it's like even a computer, we don't ask for output before we give it input. And yet we often ask our people next more. It's like this constant drive for productivity without an understanding of you need to refuel, you need to put something in before you ask, you know, creativity is making new connections. But if your people aren't don't have the time to take in new things how can they come up with new things so uh I've done things and do things uh like everyone you know takes one inspiration trip a year or we go into a city different cities and we experience have experiences together and do things to and I remember when I started doing this early early on And my bosses would go, what do you mean you're going to take your people out of their work for two days to have this experience?

13:41And I would say, it's not taking them out of their work. It's putting them in a different phase of their work to get the good work. And, you know, I have since learned you need to there's the rigor that you do. And then there's what the wonder and the time to take information in. and your default mode network needs to put together the things that you've experienced. So we don't seem to appreciate, you know, we measure work by the productivity. I also did an experiment in a company where it was a 12-week product development cycle. And I said, I'm going to take the first two weeks and not produce anything, but spend those two weeks having everyone get to know each other really well so there won't be competition so we're all starting we know the gifts and talents each of us bring and we're not going to be competitive with each other instead we're going to honor and really work with what each nuance of the talent is and um and have shared experiences together because i think when you have shared experiences together, you develop a new language and then start the process.

15:00And it was this master experiment. If you didn't do this for two weeks and you just had 12 weeks of the time clock starts and you are going through the phases of creating a product idea and manifesting the prototypes versus taking the time to spend the two weeks connecting, learning about each other and having new experiences together. And then the 10 weeks, at the end of that 12 weeks, people, the products, the results were better and people were happier in their jobs. In fact, in one case, I remember people, the rumors were, what are you doing over there, Ivy? Because people were getting pregnant.

15:46And it turned out that these were people that were getting pregnant by their spouses, obviously at home, but they were feeling so unstressed that their hormones were flowing differently with these women. And so it was like one of those fringe benefits of working this way. But the most important thing is that the work was better and people were happier. So, you know, I've had the, I'm very grateful to have had the gift of, you know, within a creative framework, a lot of people don't understand how creativity really happens and they they want it it's be more creative more innovative and I know that that it comes from a trust and a little bit of freedom is part of the ingredients and being creative and so I'm grateful that um sometimes people don't get involved with how you do something they want the results and so I've played with those experiments I just mentioned to it's like designing a new way to work and so wherever I see the opportunity to do that like if I have an idea of wow this we might be produce better work or be more creative if we could only do this or that and I'll try it.

17:07And so I think that's why I've enjoyed my role as a because people say, you know, you yourself don't make things anymore. And I said, no, but the joy of being the orchestra conductor and watching people and make great work and be proud of it and discover new things and discover new things about themselves is brings me great joy.

17:33Ivy Ross:How do you convince senior leadership that that is needed? Even to do an experiment for whatever, 12 weeks, you still need to, as you said, like take them out of their work time. And I have a feeling you have some sort of superpower throughout your career to talk to business people, senior leadership, whoever that is, in some sort of magical way. I don't know what it is, so I would love to know. That convinces them that all these things that you bring from this different interest that you have outside of work are needed, which is not easy, and other people struggle to even convince people that creativity is needed in the company.

18:15So how do you convince big businesses like Google, who are very tech-driven,

18:21Ivy Ross:very, I can imagine, data-driven, metrics-driven, that you need to slow down, that you need to do things that may be a non-linear and haven't been proven yet? Well, you just prove that it works. I mean, I think there's nothing... Well, first of all, my dad had his own business after working for Raymond Lowy, and he used to bring me down as a little girl and I would sit in the office and just he'd give me crayons but I was I distinctly remember listening and watching the way he worked with his team and the way he treated them and I when you I look back now I learned a lot from unconsciously absorbing some of that but it's one of those things where you once a while have to do it and ask forgiveness later because you You have faith that you'll show the proof.

19:15And so, first of all, some of the things that I'm interested in personally, I do on my own time or take vacation time to study the things that I do. But in terms of with the team, you know, there are times I've been challenged. Like I remember first at Google when my team and I said, this phone needs to be in this color. They said, where's the data that shows that? And I said, it's in our subconscious. And I said, do you know that 95 % of what we take in goes into our subconscious and only 5 % stays in our conscious mind? So when we collectively as designers get an intuitive hit that blue is the right color, it's actually based on more data than you might have in your cognitive mind.

20:01And so that bought me a few months. And then I'll never forget when that question was asked. and about six months later, the head of marketing calls me up and said, oh my God, I just finished watching the Academy Awards and every woman's gown was in that color blue. How did you know? And so, you know, you have to pick your shots and be brave every so often, but there's no better way than to just do it and prove it.

20:31Ivy Ross:What if it does improve? Have you done something that actually fails? Because that's part of the experimentation. Oh, for sure. Experiments fail. Oh, for sure. Yeah. And how do you come back from that? like I believe in it how do you make your senior leadership trust you again when you had a failed experiment you know it's like track record in that um it's like even in fashion which is what I started in you take chances sometimes and it balances out because when you really get it right the win is so big that it makes up for the small two or three times where it didn't work exactly the way you want.

21:06So I think, you know, it can be like this, but overall there clearly has to be enough wins that you have the credibility. And so sometimes what we'll do is even do, take two or three different approaches to cover ourselves, because when we, you know, we're experimenting and don't know, and then we'll put it in front of consumers and see what they think. And so that's a good way to validate. When you're placing big bets, one should put it in front of the consumer as well, which we do. But we will always have some long shots that we're taking. And we learn a lot from that. But we'll sanity check ourselves before we make any place huge bets.

22:00Ivy Ross:Let's go back to your incredible career and history of everything you've done. Not just career-wise, but also I felt like you lived such an incredible life and keep living every day. I mean, today we were doing things that I would never imagine doing in my life. So that was fascinating. But you've parted at Studio 54. Now you're dating me, but yes. But, okay, let's start there. How was it? I haven't been. Tell me. How was it there? I am very grateful to have grown up in New York and I started in fashion and I worked for people like Calvin Klein, Swatch Watch in the 70s. Yeah, late 70s. And it was an incredible time in New York.

22:49It was, you know, the days of Andy Warhol and Bianca Jagger. And with each of the jobs I took, I was very, even when I was young, I kind of said, I want to understand or learn. Like with Calvin Klein, it was like he had an innate ability to tap into the zeitgeist. I'm like, how does he do that? And then I work with him and it ends up, part of his secret was taking us out dancing on a Friday night and teaching us how to observe and look at everyone in that room and feel the energy and what feels like it's becoming. And I learned grassroots marketing from Swatch because they would give all of us in the office, you know, four watches and$50 and tell us to go, here we go.

23:43There's a theme here, obviously dancing, but go dancing in clubs, wearing the watches up and down our wrist and so I'm like wow so you could start your own trend that way and so it was you know I say I did pick my jobs from my heart and my head but now I realize how intuitively strategic they were because I knew I was a designer or an artist or a creator but I also knew to succeed I need to understand these different components and so I was subconsciously very strategic in what I knew I had to learn to be the best I could be and to make sure you know you could have all the great ideas in the world but if you don't know how to bring them into the world successfully and market them it doesn't matter so I was very grateful to be there then as I am grateful to be in technology the last 11 years because it's so important that and you know I was always a bit of a futurist and even at Mattel Toys I did the first baby doll that had 110 sensors in it because it was it was on the cover of Wired magazine.

25:04So I remember when I interviewed for Google, they said, well, have you ever done a piece of technology? And I said, yeah, I did a baby doll with 110 sensors on it and was on the cover of Wired. And I'm also a humanist. So I think technology is a tool for us. And I think it's a tool that should amplify our humanity. So for me being in technology as the world progresses here, it's been, at this time, a great gift also because I feel like we need to ask questions of what problem is this solving for humanity. Technology can be such an amazing tool.

25:43Ivy Ross:I'm glad you mentioned that you were intuitively strategic because when you look at your CV or whatever, biography, it does feel like you were at the right company, at the best time of that company. Like, Swatch was iconic. Calvin Klein, again, at that time was the place to be, as you said, like really sensing the trends and what's coming next. So it's interesting how you describe that you were kind of observing always, like, what's happening. So therefore, it might have been intuitive decision, but it came from all this data that you were sensing that there is something interesting going on in this company.

26:25Ivy Ross:I want to be part of it. Yeah, well, I think you're right. I mean, now I can look back and say it was strategic. Then I didn't realize it. But then I was CMO at the Gap when the whole digital social craze started. And so I learned there. It was a great company to learn that skill set. So, well, I think I, you know, as I said earlier, pay attention to what gets my attention. And so I was always felt, and maybe it came from even early on with the time with Calvin about how you stay plugged in to the zeitgeist. So I could sense this company is right for now. And I think I was telling you earlier, it was uncanny just when I would get bored because I do best when I'm either starting something new, have a new challenge in front of me.

27:14But if it's just staying in still water, I get bored and so you know some companies I would only last three or four years because there wasn't enough next challenge to keep me to keep me there but whenever I would feel it was very it was a deep feeling of wow I've done everything I could do here and I've learned everything I could learn here because I always took my jobs not based on actually not based on money or title because in fact you look at my biography as you call it and you know I was a president that I went to be a VP and then I was an art director like it doesn't matter what you called me it was what am I going to learn from this company that I feel I need to learn and are they going to use me for what I do best and if that wasn't that reciprocal relationship wasn't going to be there I wouldn't take it and so that was my unconscious radar and you know now I look back and I can see how all these experiences made me good at what I'm doing today or made me right for what I was doing at that time but it was I never had a five-year plan you know some people I know have a really and they hold on to it and they get very freaked out or impatient if they have not advanced to that next you know they feel they should be a certain place already I never looked at it that way and I never I always did the next level job before I got the title I don't think I ever had to walk in and ask for promotion i think i naturally um would just push the boundaries and do next level work and then get rewarded for it because yeah i didn't want to i didn't want to be obsessed with that i i knew i knew i just should head down do the great work and the rewards will come

29:28Ivy Ross:did it mean working long hours and weekends and yeah there were definitely times and there still are times when you know especially as you become you're accountable and responsible and you take what you do very seriously which i do uh you know a fashion show that the last minute the person is like oh my god you know decided it was wrong color and you stay up all night and you re-dye the sweaters, you know, and don't go to sleep. Or, yeah, there were times, but, you know, I've been good. I understand how important it is to keep a balanced life. And, like, you can't be good for you or your people if you're incredibly burnt out or drained.

30:18So I think my studies in the mysteries of life on the side I've always been interested in alternative ways of health and well-being even before it became popular I used sound and music if I ever would feel like I was getting overwhelmed or imbalanced and so all these things that I was curious about in my life running side by side because people would say in these various jobs, you have so much responsibility and you seem so zen or so even keeled. And you don't realize some things about yourself till people point out the differences. And I'm like, yeah, I work. I understand that that's important.

31:05I can't be good for anyone or any one of my team if I'm not feeling good. And so that's been a natural inclination. But sure, with it have come, or, you know, the other day I went to Tokyo for a day and people said, you're crazy. You flew all the way to Tokyo. I said I had to check out something in Tokyo that needed my attention. And so, yeah, I flew one day, arrived the next day, did what I had to do and got back on the plane. But knew how, when I got home, how to get back in balance.

31:43Ivy Ross:So how do you make sure you don't swing one way to another? Because, and again, I'm a very structured person. It does feel like you're a very intuitive person. So I might be asking a question in the wrong way because I want a recipe. I want a structure to how to be like you. And like, for example, I have a rule that I don't work late on Fridays. I work late any other day, but I wouldn't work late on Fridays. but I love working late on Mondays because that's an easy way to get a lot of stuff done before the week kind of starts. Well I would say first of all you don't want to be like me you want to be like you so you just answered your own question because it's not like my formula would work for you so yeah I have a similar thing don't be fooled I get like I said I have my right and left brain I couldn't do what I do if I didn't have a lot of structure and I think if actually you're structured it's like what I said designing within constraints you can become more creative and I believe that also in some way that by having some structure you can be more creative so like I'll do things where you know it's choices like I have to put in some time over the weekend and I would rather do it on Sunday mornings because I feel like I need the break come Friday I feel like I need to go into a different mode and that that will make me be able to approach the hard problems I'm trying to solve with a fresh mind.