Damian: Hi, Uliana. Thanks so much for joining me in this podcast where we just talked to the speakers that are going to be present at Hatch. How are you doing?

Uliana: Yeah, I'm great. Thanks. I'm glad to be here.

Damian: Cool. So why don't you tell me a little bit about yourself and about what eleks does the company where you work in.

Uliana: Okay. I'll start with eleks. eleks is enterprise software development company with customers all around the world in different domains, such as logistics, retail, FinTech, healthcare, etc. A part of our service portfolio is also like digitalization consulting, technology consulting. Product and service design, ideas, validations, proof of concepts, etc.

Basically, when a new customer approaches eleks with a request, we try to figure out what is the problem they are solving. If additional research is needed, we go through round of collaboration activities, such a workshop. To better frame the problem to come up with the plan, how to tackle it.

Currently I'm responsible for all the design activities within Dach and Nordic region. I work as external consultant with some clients of us. I often take part in presale activities in portfolio definition and development in strategical planning, et cetera. That's in a nutshell.

Damian: Great. I think it's really interesting because you're exactly a little bit the target , of the conference, you know, all these people who have started as Senior Designers and have transitioned a little bit into more leadership positions. And I think that then you have a lot to relate with the people actually listening on the other side. And your talk is about a topic that we always seem to come back to, which is collaboration, right? Tell me more, what is for you good collaboration with, within your team or within teams in general?

Uliana: Okay. I believe that the key to good collaboration is opinions exchange. And on the one hand, it's the freedom to express the ideas and concerns, like this insurance of being heard, especially on a junior level, when you have lack of experience and you have no courage to talk. And this culture within the company and the safety zone to talk, but on the other hand is also the openness of leaders and managers, or just the team to hear these new opinions, to hear these concerns, this ability to listen, because leaders as the leaders, we sometimes feel this responsibility of the overall success, we tend to rely on our own experience in decision making, and sometimes we forget that the team might be a great source of influence of new ideas. 

So basically the good collaboration for me is this honest communication, and yeah, that depends on the setting and the situation.

Damian: All right. You mentioned about this transition that you've had in the last four years and obviously you probably talk about this enabling something that you've also had to experience in the last 10 years we moved away from individual designing and just one person taking over uh, and everyone reporting to it. to working more colaboratively both in our software, and about the way we work right? But still there aren't really any rules on how we should do it. How did you figure out yourself, how you wanted to collaborate with your team?

Uliana: Okay. First of all in our team, we understand that decision making we need to distinguish in two situations. Sometimes there are decisions we need to make on our own as a manager and just inform others in a meeting or so. Maybe get some feedback, some concerns, but decision is already made.

Versus those situations. Mostly strategical decisions where we try to involve more opinions and to involve more people. And when we need this involvement, we often use workshopping as a tool.

. In consulting, it's also really important Because our customers, they have much deeper knowledge in their domains than we do. And we, it might be that we have had similar projects or some understanding of the domain, but still we come there with our methodologies, with our abilities to help them. To do what they are capable of doing and basically guide them into right direction.

And yeah, within the design team when we decided with the customer like on what we are building and if it's just like software, and then we have the whole design team involved and development team like a nice tool is design critique. It's like the place for everyone to share, to talk, to work on different versions, to present it, to hear what might some concerns, what might work better or worse.

So basically to sum up in my teams, we still have defined roles and responsibilities but cultivate that idea that it's okay to ask for opinions. It's okay to not. No. And it's not dependent on your seniority level. Manager might ask as well. And I have the feeling that I hear a lot about the encouragement of a junior specialist to ask for advice, to express their thoughts, etc.

But as the managers or leaders, we often assume that our title means that we need to know everything. And I saw that Mindset failing, and that is what has brought me to the topic of my speech , where I want to address this issue and illustrate how we can all benefit and the companies and products, how can we benefit from it?

Damian: And what you're saying is that you don't always have to have all the answers, right?

Uliana: Yes, that's true.

Damian: All right. Collaboration and especially everything that you talked about and, the possibility to voice what you need and to understand, other people in the team comes with some people skills, right? Sometimes there are people who are like really good at the craft, but they have a little more trouble with the bigger picture. Do you have a way to have the process work with their personality of where people who specifically are not the ones who will be first to just voice whatever they want?

Uliana: Yeah I don't have a quick fix for that. It will be a long process. And basically it depends on the culture. I think that if you have the right setting within a team and the right culture is promoted. People tend to adjust, even this design critique at first, the way we have it, it's on a voluntarily basis.

If someone has topics to discuss or need some opinions, they can highlight a topic on the agenda and then we will talk about it. It's it's, no one has to do it, but if we. Show like lead by example that yeah here. Okay. I'm struggling with it can you help me and they see with the time that it's normal to talk and to ask for it and Yeah, I think with the time It will become more normal and people will adjust.

Damian: Yeah. I feel sometimes designers are not the best at taking feedback and you talked about this design critique. I guess it's like a safe space where people are allowed to, say and ask whatever they want. But, I feel this reluctancy to get feedback from their manager, from their PM.

Sometimes it's a little stronger than when we can manage. Has this happened to you? And how does One go deal with that?

Uliana: Yeah. Okay. It's really important to normalize feedback culture to show how valuable it might be. I personally was really reluctant to the feedback basically just bounced back. Okay. Thank you. I thought, okay, here is my design. I had two months of experience and some design courses behind me, but I was 100% sure that the best design that can be.

And then I was lucky to have a mentor back then and he all the time told me, can you think a little bit more about it? Is it the best you can do? And then I noticed that every next time I came up with the better solution and I step by step, I learned to be open to the fact that I might be wrong and that the feedback might be valuable.

Damian: Absolutely.

Uliana: I think as a recipient of the feedback, the key is to try to understand it. Even if it's the feedback like, I don't like the color, why don't you like the color? Is it just your taste or like you, it triggers the wrong emotions or the contrast is too low or et cetera.

It's sometimes like we interpret the feedback in our own way and the key is to try trying to understand it. And yeah, as I mentioned, in general, it's really important to learn to become open to own mistakes because the fear of feedback is, to my opinion, the fear of mistakes, of being wrong, that other will notice it and will question our competence, especially as a manager or a leader.

And this normalization of this feedback culture means to bring the people this feeling that they are already part of the team, that we value them for the skills they have. We trust them, but all of us are not perfect. And sometimes we fail, and sometimes we struggle with the ideas, or we oversee really obvious things.

And this means to learn to live with the idea that even if now I'm a hundred percent sure it might be wrong and if someone comes and tells me about that, I will revisit it again and come up with even better solution.

Damian: Let's talk about your talk at Hatch specifically you mentioned a little bit about why you had chosen the topic and more or less what the grounds were for it. But what can people expect? Is it more on the practical side? Does it come, from your own experience or what can people expect from it?

Uliana: In my talk, I wanted to highlight the word courage because of we discussed recently I really, it really takes some courage to admit and accept that. And I want to showcase the benefits of this work and leadership style, which I believe can help teams and organizations become more efficient and healthy from within, so to say.

A great tool is workshopping. I will talk a little bit about the workshopping. And yeah, I really believe that if we adjust a little bit, is this mindset and have the right tools for that, we can become better managers and leaders.

Damian: Great. Lastly what are you most excited about Hatch besides giving a talk there?

Uliana: Yeah, I'm excited about giving a talk, but also I'm eager to meet other people, especially of that seniority level and exchange on the challenges they have. Maybe we find some similarities or maybe the solutions they have found or practices that we can inherit. So yeah, basically the exchange.

Damian: right. Sounds great. Thank you so much for joining today and see you in October.

Uliana: Okay. Thanks. See you.