Become a Design Thinker

Our identity in our career life may have been once destroyed. It can be due to external forces - your role was being rejected as what we discussed in the last episode. Or you are being fired from current position. Maybe your new supervision changed all your job duties overnight and get rid of all you have done for years.  When your old identity have been destroyed, you have to rebuild it. Rebuildi...

At some point in your life, you may be rejected. We are not talking about your proposal being rejected by your boss or your pitch is rejected by your client. We are talking about your role being rejected. Being rejected means you are being ignored or put aside. No one cares what you are doing. Today, we will discuss how to rebuild your identity, and your work when opportunity comes, when you have...

 You think you are building something solid.  But somewhere along the way, something else has quietly crumbled.  So, what have been broken down and left behind?  Your passion - which you have traded for security when you were young.  Your identity – which is shaped more by people’s expectations rather than yourself.  Your vision - which is nearly forgotten in the rush to climb.  We have a general...

Our success is often built on what we’ve done in the past. The things we repeat—our habits, strategies, and ways of thinking. These will help us succeed by offering us proven formulas. They create a sense of certainty in an uncertain world.  But here's the hard truth: What brought you here may not get you there.  It means that your previous successful formula, thinking, and methods may not be...

In a rapidly changing world shaped by longer lifespans and the rise of AI, defining your future solely by connecting the dots of your past limits your potential. True adaptability and innovation come from embracing the "white space" — the unmarked areas of your experience that hold unrealized possibilities.  In this episode, we will get inspiration from Chinese Calligrapher in handling t...

How rocket scientists faced failure?  While every small failure may cause fatal consequences. Rocket scientists living in a world of uncertainty, using the limited knowledge about the universe, keep testing the limits to send humans to space. We love certainty. But our world has become more uncertain than before. We have to find a way to live with uncertainty, even dance with it.  What inspiration...

Join us in this special bonus episode of "Become a Design Thinker" podcast as we dive into the world of community engagement with Jake McKee.  Learn how Jake has helped globally renowned brands like Lego and Southwest Airlines integrate customer voices into their product development. Discover the principles of community-driven product development, the importance of storytelling, and how...

 When we are breaking our comfort zone - our career reinvention, identity shifts, and burnout, the loneliness of solo work, loss of focus, disorientation, and fast-changing work contexts require others’ support.  We need communities that embrace risk-taking—especially in learning something new or exploring new terrain — because our growth, transformation, and creativity all begin at the edge of un...

Many people may struggle with how to start solving a problem. It may be a problem at work, a tension in your family or a self-doubt in personal growth. You may feel overwhelmed. There are so many pathways in front of you. But you simply don’t know how to start. The overwhelming nature of the situation makes it feel gigantic—too big to tackle. We are overwhelmed by the problems ahead. It is not jus...

We are working in a very fluid global business environment. Many of us may have the self-awareness that the knowledge we have learnt in school and the experience we have earned in the first half of our career life may not be sufficient to carry on in the remaining part of our career. We may struggle that we don’t have enough time to learn something new. Or we may struggle that the learning journey...

We are all granted for a fixed amount of time. Time does not belong to us. We don’t own our time. If we don’t use our time wisely, it will pass away .  Everyone has only 24 hours a day. Creating extra time is impossible. But if you can apply the four principles discussed in the last episode, you can create extra moments that can be allocated for your lifelong learning.  In today's episode, we...

 Learning Nomad is an idea to empower us to survive and thrive in the ever-changing workplace impacted by AI. It is a commitment to lifelong learning to build our self-awareness of the knowledge gap, self-orientation of growth direction and self-pacing learning habits in a fast-changing context.  To embrace lifelong learning, we have to bust the following misbelief. We are too old. Why do we have...

In this episode, we’ll explore the concept of the Learning Nomad as a powerful metaphor for navigating today’s ever-changing working landscape. Just as nomads adapt to shifting environments by remaining flexible, resourceful, and open to new opportunities, adopting a similar mindset toward lifelong learning can empower us to thrive in uncertainty. We’ll dive into the mindset shift required to embr...

*The name and some content of this episode are inspired by the book The Art and Business of Ghost-writing , written by Nicolas Cole. Our daily work and life. We may have occasions when we have to deliver a message that does not come from you and is uncomfortable to someone else. But we have the responsibility to tell the brutal facts or give a wake-up call. If you are a manager, you may need to fl...

Design thinkers are quiet to observe, patient to prepare, calm to speak and prompt to act behind the scenes to serve people you care about. In this episode, we will discuss how design thinkers serve people.  We will talk more about the YOU mindset of design thinkers. Design thinkers deeply think and promptly act for people. We pursue to create a positive impact through our creativity, actions and...

You may have fragmented stories when you look back on your past. These stories provide clues that may help you to reinvent your journey and suggest the next step forward. Like a Quilter, you can sew fragmented ideas into meaningful patterns. The pattern tells the stories of the quilter, about the self-discovery journey, about freedom, and about the community they serve. If you start to look into y...

In this episode, we will explore how to reframe what had happened to us and turn it into a meaningful story. This story is not a nostalgic reminiscent. A meaningful story can connect our past and make sense of what we doing now. Most importantly, the story should open a path for us to take more steps toward a desirable future that we are pursuing.  Like a curator, we can manage the meaningful coll...

We have different people relationships to manage. These relationships are like concentric rings, like the target of an archer.  Archers cannot choose the battlefield. Archers stand with their legs firmly planted on the ground to have a solid base for shooting. But the master of archery tells us that a great archer cannot always choose the battlefield.  Inspired by the book The Archer, written by B...

Deciding to make a change in midlife is stressful. You want to talk to a lot of people to find the answer. You want a mentor to tell you what to do next. But it never happens. When deciding to change, you are alone. You have to make your decision alone. In this episode, we will use the metaphor of a tightrope walker to see how we should make our go-or-not-go decision alone. Each step of a tightrop...

You’re never too old or too late to seize an opportunity in a new arena. The key is maintaining the momentum to swing from where you are to where you aspire to be. In midlife, it’s easy to fear that we’re too old or too late to make a significant change. We may think our best opportunities have already passed. However, the trapeze artist teaches us that it’s never too late. You may have missed som...

" But why does this happen to me? This is not my plan. I am not going in this direction." We all have a goal. At least, in the past, I believe. Sometimes, we may have tried something. But the outcome is not something that we anticipate, we desire, and we expect. We may quit. We may sit still. We run away, or, we go back to our comfort zone.  What’s the problem behind it?   In this episod...

Your success is shown under the spotlight. Many of us enjoy the moment receiving applause and cheers from the audience. But these applauses and cheers do not mean we are getting better and guaranteeing the next success. This is because you may not aware that something is appearing under the spotlight simultaneously. It is your shadow, which will shape your mind and influence your next success.  In...

*The name of this episode is inspired by the movie “The King of Masks” (1995) directed by Tian-Ming Wu.  We build our skills through our past knowledge and experience. Our current skills may make us feel good, right now. We may think that we are good at something right now, in our workplace, in our daily life. But the world is changing. What is our ability to adapt to the change? It is our skills,...

In this episode, we will gain insight from high-altitude mountaineers when they are pursuing the summit under ever-changing conditions in the mountain. We have our goals. We want to use what we have learned and what we have earned in the first part of our life journey to do something impactful to the world and meaningful to ourselves.  We have a plan. We spend lots of our time and resources on ach...

Design Thinkers bear the doer mindset. Design thinkers drive a change by action rather than dreaming or talking about it. However, excessive or premature action may result in undesirable situations, cause confusion, or hurt the people that you care about. Firefighters perform their duties in life-and-death situations. If we examine carefully, we may find some similarities between the situation fir...