Communication and Collaboration for the New Rhythm of Work

0:01We are communicating more than ever and have all the tools to do that, but that doesn't mean we're necessarily aligning better.

0:09Amanda Schneider:Welcome to Design Nerds Anonymous, the podcast that sparks curiosity at the intersection of business and design. I'm your host, Amanda Schneider, founder of ThinkLab, speaker on TED.com, and author of the new book, Work for What's Next. In this episode, we're focusing on two more themes from the book, communication and collaboration. We now have three times as many meetings as we did just a few years ago. More channels, more tools, more messages. Hybrid work didn't create that pressure, but it certainly revealed it. Today, that communication either builds velocity among your team or it builds friction.

0:53Amanda Schneider:So to help me unpack these challenges today, I'll be joined by Dr. J.J. Peterson. He's the former head of StoryBrand and one of the leading voices in modern messaging, helping organizations eliminate confusion and move people to action. And Gideon Spitzer-Williams, who leads global experiential marketing for Canva's B2B organization, serving more than 200 million users worldwide, and shaping how teams communicate at global scale. Together, we'll explore how clarity accelerates teams, why AI should amplify wisdom, not replace it, and how to design communication systems that create momentum instead of noise.

1:38Here's my

1:39Amanda Schneider:conversation with Dr. JJ and Gideon. Welcome, Dr. JJ, our first repeat guest and Gideon. And I'd love to start by inviting each of you to introduce yourselves and one word to describe the future of communication and collaboration at work, kind of given the path that we're on today. So Dr. JJ, I'm going to start with you. Thank you for having me. I'm very excited to be back. I'm Dr. J.J. Peterson. I run a marketing ad agency called Conscious Brand Agency. And I was the head of StoryBrand for about 10 years with StoryBrand and Donald Miller. And what I do is I help companies communicate, tell amazing stories in their marketing using a story framework.

2:24As I have been diving in and working with a ton of different companies, the future for me of communication is the one word I would use would be exciting.

2:34Amanda Schneider:Exciting. Love that. And tell us a little bit about your podcast. Yeah, my podcast is called Badass Softie. And it's really for people who are unapologetically driven, but also want to lead with heart. So it's about leadership and communication and marketing, really trying to figure out like, how do we actually change the world, but do it in a way that we don't lose our soul. Gideon, I'd love for you to go next. Yes. Thank you for having me. I feel like I need to start a podcast myself now. Yeah, I'm Gideon. I lead global experiential marketing for Canva's B2B motion. So I've spent my career across agencies, CPG, certainly my tour to tech, largely focused on impacting Gen Z.

3:14But now my work is really focused on helping businesses understand how Canva can really help them in the modern day workplace. So this whole conversation is very relevant to my current job and formally in previous roles. The future word for me is clarity. And, you know, at Canva, we talk a lot about going from chaos to clarity and how fast you can do that. And I think as teams scale, tools multiply, AI, AI, AI, the real advantage is when we can quickly understand what matters, why it matters, and then what to do next with that.

3:50Amanda Schneider:Most people have heard of Canva, but in case some of our listeners have been living under a rock, would you give us a quick overview? What is Canva? Yes, Canva is a visual communication platform. So we have everything from presentation tools to video editors, Word documents. It's used by well over 200 million people globally, everything from K through 12 to your large, you know, Fortune 500 businesses. We're users here at ThinkLab as well. So. Love that. Appreciate that. So I love your words, exciting and clarity. And I think that that's exactly what we need. as we look at the title of this episode is Communication and Collaboration for the New Rhythm of Work.

4:30Amanda Schneider:This whole season, season 10 of Design Nerds Anonymous is part of my gift to the world, I hope, which is a new book titled Work for What's Next. So I'd love to dive into this and just ask, what is one core idea from the two chapters that I sent you that aligns well with your work and how would you build on it? Gideon, maybe I'll start with you here. Yeah, thank you so much for sharing that. I mean, so many of the core ideas. I think largely protecting time and attention. And that came through a bunch of different ways with time boxing for deep work, defining creative hours, modeling boundaries.

5:03And that's not only my time and attention, but that's my teams and the teams I work with, I think will help create that space for the deep work. At Canva, we also say a lot about doing fewer things well. So really having a lot more of that focus, I think, will help with that clarity, which kind of goes back to that future word. I mean, I love that. And especially when I think we are so distracted these days that being able to protect and create boundaries is so important. And part of it that kind of stood out for me from your chapter is the idea that we have shorter attention spans, fewer chances to be in the rooms together.

5:42So there's the necessity to be more and more clear, which is kind of what Gideon's word was, this idea of having to be more clear in your communication. And I think that especially like when we can't see each other face to face and on Zoom, the clarity around communication is so key. And one of the things that I do when I'm working with companies and leaders is really help them understand that whenever you're communicating clearly and you're working with somebody else, you have to realize that they are living a story and they are the hero of the story. When we're in this gray space together, Amanda's the hero of her story.

6:22Gideon's the hero of his story. I'm the hero of my story. And a lot of times we can't see each other and there's more opportunity to be unclear. We have to get people's attention quickly. And the way we have to do that is understand, like even in this space, why is Amanda here? What does she want? How do I help her achieve what she's going to get? When I start with those principles of understanding that the people I'm communicating with are the heroes of the story, then we actually can communicate more quickly, more clearly, and actually get people on board and help them achieve their goals and the company goals even faster.

6:56A mentor of mine once said to me that everyone is working on the most important thing at the company. And I think that really resonated because I believe one of the other notes was formatting for the audience. You know, while we also have our own perspectives, a CMO cares about very different things than a CFO or a Gen Z starting out in their career, right? So you have to be able to format it and show them different things that they may want to see or, you know, take out things that they don't need to see. I love in your chapter where you talk about how really having to start with the hook whenever you're communicating with anybody of what does it matter to the people you're talking to.

7:35So when you were just saying, Gideon, about a CMO or a CFO, I talk to companies all the time where they go, they're trying to send out an email that says, hey, everybody, I need you to sign up for this and do this by this date. Okay, well, if you start with that, like here's what I need you to do or the company needs you to do, and there's no hook to why it matters to the person, it's already unclear the urgency around it, why I need to be involved, and the clarity for them about why it matters is lost. And so if you don't start with understanding why does it matter to them, what is their story they're trying to live, and how do I hook them in the beginning, it's all lost to begin with.

8:15Amanda Schneider:And less likely to be acted on. What's interesting to me about all this is really trying to push that action. And if it feels painful or add stress, it's gonna be something I wanna avoid doing rather than do. You know, as I'm listening to you guys talk and it was interesting editing your own work, I realized how much I reuse words. Clarity was one that I was like, I gotta work some of these out of there, that's too much. But another one was intentionality. And this feels like a real paradox on this communication collaboration because Dr. JJ, as you were talking, like reframing all of this takes time.

8:46Amanda Schneider:But the time is the one thing that we feel like we don't have as AI and some of these technologies come in. It's going to create more noise, not less. So I feel like we are just hitting the accelerator button and going faster and faster and faster. So I'd love for either of you to build on this. How do we create time for more intentionality? For me, it's even less about the how and about just understanding that there is a need, right? That it actually, the intentionality and the connection has to be there. And I think we actually say, well, we don't have time. Things are moving too quickly. And because of that, we lose a lot of the intentionality, a lot of the connection.

9:25We sacrifice connection and intentionality for efficiency. And I think we can have both. I mean, I'm not saying one is worse than the other. But in this new age of things moving so quickly, I think we've sacrificed some of that connection and intentionality for efficiency. And you can be that way, but the reality is the research shows that connection, joy, whimsy actually improves quality of performance and creativity and also allows us to recover from hard things. So if we're not taking the time to actually create some intentionality, build relationship, connect with people on a human level, even though we're trying to be efficient, we lose the advantage of efficiency because people can no longer be creative, connected, joyful, recover from stress.

10:21I work with some incredibly ambitious people and all of us on this call are as well. And I think one thing that AI does is it creates a lot of space for work, but that work should be meaningful, not just more work. So and I think that's something that I try and work with my team and any team at Canva of like making sure, you know, we don't have these tools so we can necessarily do a lot more of the busy stuff. it's so that we can have that more meaningful work and be more intentional. And I think that's where you get the time and space to say, okay, I need to craft this message this way for one person, different way for another person.

10:59And I think that is the most important unlock for me because at first what happened for me personally was, oh, yes, this can analyze a spreadsheet. AI can analyze a spreadsheet or help me craft these emails or Slack messages or whatever. So I'm just going to send out a lot more of them and work faster. But then I actually was overwhelmed by it because I was just doing too much beyond my capacity and I wasn't really like thinking thoughtfully about things.

11:22Amanda Schneider:What really prompted this in the original research that we did was with architecture and design firms. And we had a lot of leaders saying, you know, we're really struggling with creativity. And you hear in the chapters, there's a lot around creativity in there. And it was one of these mind shift moments because one of the Gen Zers said, you know what, like, we used to be able to travel to get inspiration and go to Florence and Rome and see all the beautiful architecture. And all of these leaders are saying digital is the problem. Well, Pinterest is not the problem. The problem is a time drought.

11:51Amanda Schneider:You know, the amount of meetings has tripled since the onset of the pandemic in 2020. And as we go back to the office and get more time in person, I think that we are seeing people try to force more of this togetherness time. But I'm curious from you guys, was there anything that challenged you to think differently or one kind of new idea that this prompted that you'll carry forward in your work? I mean, being really intentional about what needs to be in person and what needs to be async. Of course, there's value to us all getting on a call and brainstorming something. It's not something I can necessarily do myself all of the time.

12:27But I think not just defaulting to, yeah, this should be a meeting or yes, this project should have a weekly call. That simple unlock, I hope will give me hours back a week. I will say one thing in that from the communication side when it comes to meeting is one of the things that you talk about in there is that you have to start, kind of already mentioned it, start with the hook of why this matters to people and then bring your credibility to the meeting. Why should you listen to me? I think a lot of times when we hop into meetings, because we're trying to be so fast, you almost have to puff up yourself and get right to the point instead of pausing at the beginning and going like, why does this matter to the people in the room?

13:10And that was just something, a really good reminder that it's not just for like when you're communicating to customers or outside, but with your team. Like pause and go, why does this matter before I actually prove that I'm the boss? That's really key for me. And then the other piece when it just kind of, when you're talking about meetings and creativity in general, I've been doing a lot of research around joy. and how joy actually impacts our creativity and alignment and ability to overcome hard things as a team. And when we create back-to-back meetings where we've got to get a bunch of stuff done and everybody's so concerned about getting people off of Zoom because it's like, all right, we're just going to take 15 minutes because the deep work is so important and all that other stuff.

13:58I understand that. But what the studies show is that when you make space in meetings in particular and connection with people for surprise, whimsy, connection of relationship, redemptive perspective on suffering, all of those things, when you actually make space for that in meetings, even if it's just a couple minutes, what you do is you actually allow people to work faster, better and more creative. You know, when you do have that meeting, how can you prepare for it and be as visual as possible within that meeting? One of my least favorite things to do is go over a Word doc brief to an agency over a meeting that they could have read beforehand.

14:41And, you know, no surprise here at Canva, we really focus a lot on visual communication. So a lot of our ideas are structured in the format of decks or some sort of visual that can communicate it, an idea or a path or whatever a bit clearer. And when you do that and you have visuals on a page, I think often I find that that helps the conversation go a little smoother, get the point across. It sort of gets people, their creative minds thinking a bit more.

15:17Hello, this is Cindy Kaufman. I am the Vice President of Marketing and Design Solutions for Mannington Commercial. Mannington Commercial is a proud sponsor of this season of Design Nerds Anonymous. And as someone who's had the privilege of reading work for what's next early on and even being quoted in it, I can tell you the shifts Amanda writes about are real. B2B selling has changed. Our clients are more informed, but decision making is more complex. Timelines are tighter and loyalty is earned. At Mannington Commercial, we take that seriously. We've invested in equipping our teams differently, not just with product knowledge, but with context, with better digital tools, with a deeper understanding of the pressures our design partners are navigating every single day.

16:04Because beautiful flooring isn't enough. How we show up matters just as much. We believe the future of our industry belongs to brands that listen harder, prepare better, and make our partners' jobs easier. If you haven't connected with a Mannington rep recently, I'd like to invite you to not just to see what's new, but to experience how we're thinking about what's next.

16:35Amanda Schneider:Do we have to be in person to spark joy? And I'll caveat this with, you know, I built a company that is virtual first. We do meet up in person, but more retreat style. I am closer to these women that I built this company with than any group that I have worked with in a physical location. You know, we've been able to get close. So I'd love to like really tackle this idea of the balance of synchronous and asynchronous, because I think that's at the core of, again, this paradox and some of the challenge we're facing right now is it feels unnatural to some of us that don't naturally think digital first.

17:09I think it's more of a mindset shift of saying, how do I dance with this? How do I dance when to lean into the relationship and lean into the joy and see that as part of sparking the creativity and the work, the ambition that the company has? Those are not separate things. They work together. And then also in those moments where it's like, let's be okay also putting our heads down and getting crap done together or individually. And there's a little bit of a dance that happens with those things. So balance is less a priority for me these days and more how to figure out how to artfully connect them together to accomplish, to be incredibly ambitious.

17:53It's not just about let's hug and connect. It's about how do we move together as a team in a way that actually changes the world. Let's give more gifts to more people, serve them better, and do it at a speed and quality that is going to actually make a difference. The thing I'd build onto that perhaps is that everyone dances a little bit differently. And I think that certainly it's something I appreciate at Canva is you're free to work however you please. We have a policy called, it's not even really a policy, but it's called remote flexible. So like LA, I work, we don't have an office here, but in Sydney or Austin, where you do have an office, you don't have to go in.

18:33You can, if you want, you can stay at home, whatever works best for you. And I think as our lives, certainly with Gen Z are continuing to blend, you know, work and personal, it's really like, however you can get the job done, do it in the most efficient and impactful way. And I think that is where when you don't feel, my personal case, when you don't feel that sort of restriction or a company trying to put me into a box of you have to go into work or whatever, I think that's when I feel the freedom to do what works best for me. And that's different for every single person.

19:08Amanda Schneider:We look to Gen Z for a lot of the inspiration because they're naturally digital first, but it doesn't mean this is a book for Gen Z and we're trying to make Gen Z happy at the expense that all the other generations have to give something up. We're really trying to help integrate those. You know, I think we do have a lot to learn from Gen Z. I'm learning it every day. But I think they also have a lot to learn from us. And I say us meaning anyone, not them, right? Like, work hasn't been that bad. We've been figuring it out for many years and we can be better and they're pushing us in that direction.

19:38But I think it is like a kind of symbiosis, a mutual relationship, which is important to note. Gen Z, I think we have so much to learn from as far as where things are going and how to communicate differently and the tools that we can use. And there is a lot of fear, you know, you mentioned in the book around AI, like, and as we look towards the future of 2050 of what the future could be for communication, those tools are going to be used more and more and more, more effectively. They're going to be, they're going to help us create communication faster, quicker, all those things. One of the things that I think for those of us who are a little bit older, I'm 50, I use those tools.

20:16But what I've come to realize in all of this is that like specifically for me, when it comes to creating things with AI or using AI, AI is great at giving me information, but I have to bring the wisdom. My job in that communication is bring that humanity, my perspective, the subtlety. I have to curate the information that goes in and comes out. My job is to bring wisdom to that. And I think when we're talking about intergenerational communication, recognizing the wisdom that does come from Generation Z when it comes to the tools and the trends and the way things are moving is so important to recognize there's a level of wisdom in the younger generation that we want to pay attention to.

21:01But also not shrinking in our own wisdom and experience that we bring to the table to bring that humanity to the tools. Because if you just use the tools and don't use the wisdom, you sound like everybody else, and then it turns into white noise, whether that's an email, whether that's a PDF that you're putting out, whether that's a PowerPoint presentation or a video. You start sounding like everybody else if you're just using the tools that everybody else is using. But when you bring your own humanity and wisdom to the table in that communication and own that, those of us who are in the older generation, without being afraid of the tools.

21:44Then I actually think the two work together to actually, again, be creative and move things forward at a pace that we've never seen before in history as far as what we're capable of creating and doing in these moments. But Gen Z has a wisdom in this space, and those of us who are a little bit older have wisdom over here and allowing both of those to come together to be used to move things forward, I think is that when I say like, the reason I use the word excited about the future is because of that, you know, a lot of people, I feel like with AI, I get to be more human. And in my meetings and my presentations, I don't get to be less human.

22:25And in fact, the value of my humanity goes up. So I get to lean into my humanity and not worry about the crap that I used to have to worry about that now AI and other tools can take care of for me. I get to be human and I get to bring my wisdom. And that's the part that excites me about the moving forward of the future. And when we can help the next generation understand that as well, that even they have a point of view, they have wisdom, they have personal connection, bring that to the table in the communication and the future. Then you just don't have to worry about the details of creating. You get to use AI for that.

23:03But that's what gets me excited about the future. I think it's more human, not less.

23:08Amanda Schneider:Boomers are the largest generation. They are retiring at an unprecedented rate. and my generation, Gen X, I am 46, is not gonna fill their shoes because we're just a small generation. So we can't possibly fill that gap, which means millennials and Gen Z are gonna have to step up sooner. And what I hear from a lot of leaders is they're not necessarily ready. So if you notice every chart in the book shows perceptions across all generations because I want to use this to drive those conversations with Gen Z as the spark, but the filter of the wisdom of some of our more seasoned generations and give them a platform to really compare and contrast and host some of these dialogues so that we can all get to a better place.