When Jared Spool first visited Product Momentum a few years ago, he talked about the struggle designers feel when they’re directed to add new features to a design without first understanding the problem to be solved. “Great designers don’t fall in love with their solutions,” he advised us. “They fall in love with their problems.”

In today’s episode, Jared chats with Paul Gebel and co-host Christina Halladay, Director of UX at ITX. With his trademark wit and wisdom, he doubles down on that advice by describing what he’s been up to since we last spoke, as a Maker of Awesomeness at Center Centre.

“I’ve been helping UX leaders function at that strategic level, bringing out the value of their contribution and helping them think about the right problems.”

Strategic UX vs. Tactical UX

“Most of the UX practiced these days is tactical UX,” Jared adds, “by the folks who have really great skills who can create designs and do usability tests and write fantastic content. But there’s a limit to how much they can contribute to the organization.”

On the other hand, he says strategic UX helps us get to the root of our users’ problems. It’s about introducing the power of UX early in the product development process and focusing on shipping the right thing. Before we can do that, though, we first need to make sure we’ve identified the right problem.

Strategic UX Drives Outcomes

Tactical UX is output-driven; strategic UX is outcome-driven.

“With strategic UX, we’re finally applying all the great things that UX people do – their skills and talents, the capabilities, the knowledge, the experience, the expertise – to make sure the organization is being competitive and that we’re actually solving big problems for their users.”

Leaders + Vision

Be sure to catch the entire episode to hear Jared Spool discuss leaders (as opposed to managers) and vision: “Leaders inspire others to rally behind a compelling Vision, which is the story that articulates a possible future (as opposed to a ‘do-nothing’ future) and inspires action from all levels of the organization.”

Product Momentum Takes the Show on the Road. Sean, Paul, and the rest of the Product Momentum team will be recording live at The New York Product Conference, powered by INDUSTRY. On April 18, at The Times Center in midtown Manhattan, attendees can watch and listen to our conversations with some of NYPC’s amazing keynote speakers.

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Paul Gebel [00:00:19] Hello and welcome to Product Momentum, where we hope to entertain, educate and celebrate the amazing product people who are helping to shape our community’s way ahead. My name is Paul Gebel and I’m the Director of Product Innovation at ITX, along with my co-host Sean Flaherty and our amazing production team and occasional guest host. We record and release a conversation with a product, thought leader, writer, speaker, or maker who has something to share with the community every two weeks.

Paul Gebel [00:00:44] Hey folks, we have a great show for you today. It’s a repeat guest, Jared Spool, back from episode seven. He’s been a great friend of ITX. He spoke at our conference, we’ve been on the road with him, and it’s been a delight to get to know him over the years. This most recent conversation is really par for the course along that that same trend. Jared really brings a lot of strategy down to practical levels. And to explore that, I brought along a really qualified co-host for today, my good friend Christina Halladay, director of UX at ITX here. She leads the design team and practice. Christina, thanks for joining us today. It’s been great to have you on the show today.

Christina Halladay [00:01:19] Hey, Paul, thanks for let me crash.

Paul Gebel [00:01:21] Absolutely. So one of the top line takeaways that I found really helpful – and Jared is a master at this is bringing abstract and strategic thinking into really practical hands-on approaches. I think the way that he detailed out the ‘do nothing future’ versus the ‘possible future’ in the way that we solve problems through outcome driven strategies, a lot of that can get very heady, but he makes it very practical. But I’m curious where were some of the top line takeaways from your perspective?

Christina Halladay [00:01:51] Yeah, I thought that was a very simple but powerful concept too. I think for me, talking about how even in 2024, we’re seeing a lot of design teams still stuck in tactical mode. And we need to really make sure that we’re picking our heads up and thinking more strategically and driving some of those conversations and how we think about the UX and and measuring the UX.

Paul Gebel [00:02:12]  Well, it was a great conversation and I’m excited to share it. So let’s get after it.

Paul Gebel [00:02:19] Hello and welcome to the show. Today we are really excited to be joined by Jared Spool. If you know Jared, you know he needs no introduction. If you don’t know Jared a short biography is not going to do his work justice. So I encourage you to go look him up. But he is a Maker of Awesomeness at Center Centre. He’s been a great friend of ours for many years now, and we’re really excited to have him back on the show. Returning from guest number seven, back in our very early days of the podcast, and looking forward to jumping back in with you today. Jared, welcome to the show.

Jared Spool [00:02:52] I’m really happy to be back. It seems like just yesterday that I was guest number seven.

Paul Gebel [00:03:00] You’ve been very busy in strategic UX and research as, you have been, but a lot of your thought leadership lately has been pointing to a brighter future for strategic UX and especially sort of the role of research in that. And just to kick us off, could you elaborate on some of the key components that strategic UX is making up in the world of product and design in 2024? What do you see the lay of the land is being right now.

Jared Spool [00:03:26] Most UX and by most I mean like 99.9% like so, you know, 999 out of a thousand organizations, if they have any UX effort at all. It’s tactical UX. And by tactical UX, I mean that it’s a bunch of folks who have all sorts of really great skills that can create designs and do usability tests and write fantastic content. And they work at a very low level in the organization. They basically work on project work to make sure the screens are clear and understandable and the flows make sense, and the content that’s provided  is well represented and the things are accessible and all sorts of really important stuff.

But there’s a limit to how much that contributes. And it’s basically seen at the upper levels of the organization, if it’s seen at all. It’s seen as sort of a ‘make it pretty’ team. And their job is to just clean up the rough edges, make it all look really good. But what happens is, that they focus on the wrong part of the problem. They focus on the sort of end game where what we’re trying to do is whatever it is we’re going to ship, we’re going to make sure we ship it well, and that it’s going to be a well-built thing, but what they’re not focused on which are UX people have some really unique qualities to bring is they’re not focused on are we shipping the right thing? They’re not focused on this idea that in order to understand if we’re shipping the right thing, first, we have to make sure we have the right problem, and then we have to make sure that we have the right solution to that problem.

Because if we ship something that doesn’t match the problem, or we ship something that isn’t even addressing the problem, it doesn’t matter how nice it is, it doesn’t matter how well it’s designed, it doesn’t matter how accessible it is. None of that stuff matters. And so strategic UX is this – I don’t know what you would call it – a movement, an approach change, a transformation in organizations where what we’re doing is we’re starting to use the things that UX people do – the resources, the skills and talents, the capabilities, the knowledge, the experience, the expertise. We use those to actually make sure that the organization is being competitive, that the organization is actually solving big problems, that the organization is providing the best possible solutions, that they’re developing the right expertise.

And so that’s what strategic UX is, and at a much more senior level in the organization, it focuses on looking at whether the organization is delivering the right things to its customers the right way. There’s a couple of ways you can see it. One is I like to tell people is that, you know, there are two types of organizations in the world. There are those that are currently going through a transformation, and there are those that don’t know that they’re currently going through a transformation. And all those organizations that are going through that transformation right now, what happens is that there’s a way that the organization sort of thinks about change, right? You think about the executives, the most senior executives, CEOs or administrators or whoever runs the organization. You think about them as people who are sort of venturing into an unknown territory. They don’t really 100% know what they need to know, what they need to do.

And in most organizations, in 99.9% of organizations, they look to other executives, other people at the C-suite, at the senior levels to make sure that they are taking the right change into account. They might work with people in the sales organization to make sure that customers are going to buy whatever the new products are in the new regions that they’re transforming into, or they work with the finance team or even the HR team. And those are all sort of strategic consultations. They’re partnering with those folks, and they’re having these conversations about where the organization’s going and why it’s going there. And all of that is great. All of that is exactly what should be happening.

But there’s a team in the organization that everyone will acknowledge is essential and important. And they can’t do without, but they never consult with them on this stuff. And that’s the custodial team, right. That’s the janitors and the custodians who keep the buildings clean and make sure facilities are topnotch and work real hard to do this. But when the organization’s going through a big transformation, they don’t call up the custodians and say, hey, what do you think? Should we be going in, you know, moving into Latin America, or should we be, you know, just sticking with the regions we have. And so those folks are not consulted. And in a strategic UX organization, the UX people would be in that first group. They’d be amongst the salespeople because they have knowledge about who the users are, what the users need, what the current experiences are like, and what the future experiences could be like. But in most organizations, they’re treated more like a custodial team. They’re seen as this important function, but they just make things pretty and clean and, they’re not really essential from a strategic standpoint.

And in a world of UX, we’ve been feeling this a lot lately because those are the folks who are potentially first to be laid off when reductions need to happen. Those are the folks who are not being consulted at the right time, and everything is more tactical with, and so the work that I’ve been doing has been about helping UX leaders function at that strategic level, bringing out the value and the contribution, making sure that they have the right metrics, that they are thinking about the right problems and that they’re dealing with the right elements of the problems. And all of those things are what I do.

Christina Halladay [00:10:08] Jared, do you attribute the being stuck in this tactical mode to leadership? Is that a leadership problem? Is that lack of buy-in at the highest level of UX still? Is it the UX leadership? What do you see out there as the problem, the root cause?

Jared Spool [00:10:27] I mean, ‘problem’ is probably it’s too strict a word. It’s only a problem because we’ve sort of noticed suddenly that we have this thing that we don’t know much about, that we need to know a lot about.

I think it’s just that the field grew up being very tactical and has fallen into, I think it’s just an evolutionary thing. I think what happened was, in the, in like 2000s and in the 2010s, we got this shift about being part of product. There was this notion that, the experience that people had was just part of the product in some organizations it’s so tactical that UX is all we thought it was as a digital experience.  You know, it starts when you fire up the app, it and when you shut it down. And, organizations that treat UX strategically don’t put those boundaries on it. But I think because the majority of organizations are tactical, I think it’s more – it’s water to fish, right? They don’t know that they’re swimming in this tactical ocean, that there’s a whole other world outside of that ocean, because that from their perspective, it ends at the surface.

Christina Halladay [00:11:48] So it’s waiting to be unlocked. And maybe we need to show them the way is maybe something – a call to action for design teams. And how can they start to to show that value.  I was immediately thinking of service design.  As you’re talking about limiting impact to digital experiences, the media thing that comes to mind is how can we get teams to look bigger at the actual end to end experience? And I know that’s a lot of what you talk about too, right? Like connecting with the customer support teams and seeing things at a bigger level.

Jared Spool [00:12:21] Yeah, I think in steps; first you have to switch from product to experience. And so service design I see is sort of an early attempt to think about things that way. I think there is no real difference between service design and UX design in the bigger picture, I think. Yeah, there are lots of little skills.

You know, when I’m designing a, a pull down, I’ve got all sorts of skills that I’m working on at a very small tactical level. But nobody says, “Oh my gosh, that product changed my life. They switched to pull downs!”.

Christina Halladay [00:12:58] Wish it was that easy.

Jared Spool [00:12:59] Yeah. It’s focusing on the wrong thing.  That we start teams down this this direction as we focus on outcomes. Tactical folks all focus on outputs. They focus on what they deliver. Everything’s about delivering something. Where they’re delivering wireframes or we’re delivering usability results or we’re delivering a service blueprint. We’re delivering something. And so everybody focuses on delivery.

Whereas in the world of strategic work, you don’t focus on delivery, you focus on outcomes. And outcome is the change in the world that happens because you’ve delivered something and or happens when you don’t deliver something. I mean, it’s a change in the world. So what we do with teams is we start them when we say, okay, whatever you’re working on right now, let’s take whatever you’re working on, this new feature that someone told you had to build and you’re building it. If you do a fantastic job on this feature, how will it change someone’s life? And more importantly, how will it improve someone’s life? Who’s life is going to improve and how?

And the thing is, is that most people can’t answer that question. In fact, most UX people can’t answer that question. I was talking with a team that was so proud of what they knew about their customers and everything they knew. They run an e-commerce site that sells, IT equipment. And I said, okay, if you do a great job, in this new way of selling your IT equipment –  basically they were working on this feature where you basically just an IT manager, you described what you were trying to do, and then it would recommend the hardware that you needed and the software you needed to have to do that thing. And I said, okay, so if you do a great job on this thing, how will it improve someone’s life? And they had no answer. They said, well, users might, you know, save time or they might where I am I don’t know. Tell me specifically give me the name of someone whose life you’re going to affect. And they’re like, well, we don’t know. I’m like, you are one of the leading retailers of this stuff. How is it you don’t know the names of anybody whose life you’re improving? And that’s sort of the moment when people realize that they have been working a little too tactically. Because when you’re tactical, you pay any attention to what’s going on around you, and you don’t pay any attention to things like who your users are or what they need.

Christina Halladay [00:16:05] Keeping your head down, you’re stuck in the sprints or whatever it is to try to try to deliver. And these seem like pretty obvious questions that we should be able to answer, right? It’s just fascinating that we’re not we’re not getting there, you know, especially as designers who are supposed to be the representing the voice of the user and thinking about these things. And somewhere along the way, we get lost.

Jared Spool [00:16:29] Well, I think part of the problem is we have these mantras like we’re supposed to be representing the voice of the user, which I think is wrong. I think the whole organization should be the world’s foremost experts in the user. If someone in the organization has to represent the voice of the user, that implies that everybody else doesn’t have to represent the voice of the user. I think we’ve lost a game going in under those contexts.

I think the number one thing that a strategic UX team needs to do is make sure that the organization is the world’s foremost experts on who the users are and what the users need, what their current experience is like, and what their future experience could be like. Why are you allowing anybody else in the world to have more expertise on this than you?

Paul Gebel [00:17:17] I want to dig into one thing that you’ve been really helpful and broad and kind of describing this sort of sea change that’s going on right now and try to make it a little bit practical for folks who are – they’re in a delivery team. They’re in sprint land, they’re on an agile, a unit of some sort or another, and they’re just, you know, grinding through user stories and making mockups and wireframes and just kind of shipping and in this rut, and I see so many people in this mode of just constant delivery. How can an early or mid-level career designer who is maybe not in a position to make decisions, still have a voice of influence, to bring this idea to bear on an organization that might just be stuck in this agile rut? What are some practical ways that people maybe not in that leadership role can still nudge the needle towards this sort of holistic service design and strategic UX mindset. Is there a way that we can shape this from the individual up, or does it necessarily need to be top down?

Jared Spool [00:18:21] No. Leadership comes bottom up. So, the first thing you need is, the way this works is managers and leaders are not the same. The manager is appointed by the organization. They have direct reports. Their job is to make the organization and particularly their directs more effective. And by that, I mean their directs need to understand what’s expected of them. They need to have all the materials and resources to do their best work every day. They need to have an understanding of how what they do relates to the mission of the organization. They have to understand how their opinions count. They need to understand how all of this maps into their career. That’s what good managers do, is they make sure all those things happen.

Leaders are not about making the team effective. Leaders are about pushing a vision forward. You become a leader not when the organization appoints you as a leader. You become a leader the moment you have a follower. And when you have a follower, that person wants to take your vision and move it forward. So, you need to have a compelling vision that get people excited.  And people get wigged out about vision. They think it’s this big thing, but you can think of a vision as basically, a timeline. And the timeline starts with a point on it, which is today, and then it goes forward into the future, because that’s sort of how timelines work. The thing about timelines is that there can be multiples of them. And there’s one sort of default timeline, which is a timeline where today, if we just look around, we see that we have all these problems that we can easily identify, that people can see. And all these problems are here because of everything we’ve done up to this moment. And if we follow this timeline, on one path I call the path ‘do nothing different’. We’re going to end up with a future where nothing is different. So, all those problems that exist today are still going to be here. Plus, there’s probably going to be a couple more because that’s how entropy works.

But there’s an alternative to this. And the alternative is a different future. We can just put a point on the timeline and say, this is a different future. We’ll call it the better future. And what makes it a better future is that all the problems that exist today – well, they’ve been solved. That’s what makes it a better future. We can imagine this future where all these problems have been solved. We don’t know exactly how we’ve solved them. That’s not worth getting into quite yet. Because if we if we don’t get agreement that this better future is the future we want. It doesn’t matter how we think we would solve it. So, we just have to know that we want this better future.

And when we talk about a vision –  vision is a story that tells the difference between that better future, the future that we’re going to get to if we do something different, and, the future that we get to if we do nothing different. So that vision is, it’s just a story that tells us what the difference is between those things. And if we have a great story that tells us the difference between the future we’re going to get if we do nothing different and the future that we’re going to get if we can do something different. People get excited about that story, and that’s when you get a follower, right? You see this these days, often in things like people coming up with, “Hey, we should do a design system”. And it’s like, this is the future we’re going to get when we don’t have a design system, but we could have this better future when we do. And that better future will take all these problems because we don’t have a design system today, and it’s going to solve them in all these different ways. We won’t have seven versions of the same component. We’ll be able to develop faster.

Developers can do their own first cut designs without the help of the very limited design team. There’s all sorts of things that happen here, and then we can talk about what the difference, how we’re going to get there. If people are like, “No, we don’t need a design system. It doesn’t matter what our plans for how we’re going to build it are.” So, we focus here on this better future. And that’s the place you start with. And this is an outcome-driven approach. Because we’re starting with, well, what’s the change in the world or the change in the world as these problems are going to go away. And when those problems go away, it’s going to be a different world than the one we’re going to end up with if we just keep doing what we’ve always done.

Christina Halladay [00:23:52]  And a key piece is obviously enrolling the entire team in this vision. Bringing others into the process. Do you have any specific recommendations for how to create the vision and bring everyone along for the ride? Like have you seen pitfalls and then areas where it worked really well in trying to get to this place?

Jared Spool [00:24:12] Sure. There are some common traps that people fall into. One trap is they start selling the ‘do something different’ before they sell the future. “We have to do agile”. Why are we doing agile? “We just have to do it.” What problems are we solving? “Don’t know. Agile is the way to go. This is what we do.” And the problem is, is that one of the things when you become a leader, you begin to realize is that when anybody resists an idea that you have, it’s because they are perceiving some sort of risk. There’s some sort of risk between what you’re proposing and what they’ve always done. And the ‘do nothing different’ path becomes the less risky of the paths.

Christina Halladay [00:25:08] It’s safe.

Jared Spool [00:25:09] It’s safe. We always know what it is. We know how it works. We know what we’re going to end up with when we’re done. So at least we think we did. So this is the problem of selling the method or the technique or the process. And this is the problem that a lot of UX people have is they’re all process-focused because tactics is all about process. So being 100% process focused means that they focus on, “Oh, we’re going to do this thing and then that thing and we’ll experiment and it’ll be this messy thing”. And and everybody’s like, “Why would we do that? Because we haven’t sold the vision yet.

So that’s one trap. Another trap is that all the things I see as problems here? Aren’t the problems you’re dealing with. So, when I paint my better future, you’re like, okay, but that doesn’t solve any of my problems. Why do I care? And so you have to do research. You have to figure out who the stakeholders are that you need to influence. And you have to make sure that those stakeholders have their problems solved, too. They have to also have things in this list that belong to them. So that they are so excited they’re willing to take the risk.  When we get people so inspired, so excited, they’re willing to do all sorts of incredible risky things. It’s usually a factor that we haven’t done a good job of explaining this.

Jared Spool [00:26:46] And again this is outcome based. We’re talking about the change in the world before we’re talking about the work that we do to get the change in the world. And so it’s driven by the outcome. If we want it to succeed, we have to have a clear definition of what the outcome looks like of how it really does make things better in people’s lives. Otherwise, it’s not inspirational, and it’s not something anybody’s going to jump on. Life is hard enough. Why just why make things harder if there’s no reward?

Paul Gebel [00:27:24] So at the risk of being pedantic, I want to tie in the idea of outcomes and vision and problems because I think in my mind, it can be easy to blur those ideas together. The problems that you’re solving for do nothing versus do something. And the vision being the delta between the two possible futures, and then the outcomes being how it’s felt in the world. Are they three different ideas that need to be described as different components of that overall story, or are the problems, the outcomes in the vision all really the same thing? Is that too reductive? Is that getting too particular about the words that you’re using, or is it important to keep those things distinct in this conversation?

Jared Spool [00:28:12] I think they’re different lenses into the same thing, right? We’re looking at it from different angles. So, let’s talk about something specific. I’ve got a client that I was talking to last week. They make the next generation of accounting software, whatever that might mean to you. Their clients are going to be medium and small businesses, and they think they have a real offering here. The CEO has put an objective on the table, which is by the end of 2024, they need 900 new subscribing clients for their software as a service accounting system package. And so the UX people are like, well, you know, I don’t what do I have to do with getting 900 – that’s a sales problem. That’s not my problem.

But I immediately started talking about, okay, so tell me where these 900 new clients are coming from. This is a this is an industry that is fairly saturated, right? Businesses today use some sort of accounting software or they are still on paper.  That’s one or the other. And if you’re going to get 900 new clients, what percentage you’re using somebody else’s accounting package and what value do you bring in your capabilities that make this worth switching from somebody else’s accounting package you use? One of the things about accounting systems is that they lock you in with the data, right. When you have years of data with an existing accounting system, and you have to have seven years of data at your fingertips in case you get an audit coming down, or you have to go back and, take a credit based on past losses or some other things. You’ve got all of these reasons to need to get historical data.  Are you going to run two systems simultaneously? Is that what you’re asking your customers to do? Or are you somehow going to import all their existing data from their existing system into your system? And then how do they run these historical reports? Have you thought anything about that process of onboarding into this new product and getting all that historical data there, or maybe you’re not going after those people. Maybe your 900 new clients are the last 900 people on the planet who are running their business without an accounting system. What have you thought about? Why haven’t they adopted an accounting system? What is it that you’re doing that nobody else has ever done that has has gotten there? And what is the experience of learning an accounting system when you’ve never used one before? Because if they don’t have an accounting system, they don’t have much of a bookkeeping system. How are you going to make this valuable to them and allow them to run their small business without interruption, because chances are they’re trying to do other things other than accounting all day long? And so what do you know about your users and your customers? And how can you guide the CEO to say 900 is an unrealistic expectation? Or are we could do much better than 900, or we need to focus our marketing at this audience. We need to make sure that our Customer Success team has these tools.

I mean, what are you doing to deliver a great experience to the customer such that they are going to be excited to be your customers, that they feel like you exceed their expectations and you’ve anticipated their needs, instead of missing their expectations and not understanding what their needs are such that you miss them. And these are the things that the UX team needs to do right now before it does anything else. And that’s how we think of it strategically. Now, what’s the outcome? The outcome is each of those 900 new businesses, the people who do the accounting, think that this was the best change they’ve ever made in their business. And the problem is, is that you’ve got this overly saturated market where you’re trying to be something different than household brand name services. And so, how are you going to be better than the Xero’s and my MYOB and Intuit’s and Oracle Finance and SAPs is of the world.

Paul Gebel [00:32:53] That is such a masterclass in bringing theory into practice that there is making sense in the abstract, in the way that you diagramed out the possible futures. But as soon as you brought it into a practical example with that case study, that little mini case study that you just walked us through, was a really great application of how we can, I think, bring this into our organizations and try to find some followers at whatever level we’re at.

I want to continue this conversation for another hour, but I’m afraid we’re coming up on time. And to close this out, I just have a couple quick questions.

Jared Spool [00:33:28] I didn’t set the time, you set the time.

Paul Gebel [00:33:32] Well, we are trying to be sensitive to our users. And part of that is having a finite amount of time to share conversations with us. The first wrap up question is where can people go to find more information about this, either through work of yours or are there people who you’ve found inspiring? What’s a good place you’d point product and design professionals looking for ways to make a difference in their organizations for.

Jared Spool [00:33:56] So we started a community called Leaders of Awesomeness, which we started when the pandemic hit, just because we didn’t know what else to do. And since then, we’ve gotten 48,423, as of this morning, UX leaders into this community. Who knew there were so many UX leaders? That’s the place that I would start because we put all sorts of resources and we run programs out there. Every week we have free sessions, live sessions that you can attend. But we recorded them too, in case you missed them, that talk about strategic UX, that dive into all of the aspects of it. We’ve put 150 of those into the archives that are available. All that’s available for free. You can join Leaders of Awesomeness. And then we have training programs that we do, on strategic UX research, on making UX and agile work together coherently, on creating metrics that really raise the value of UX throughout the organization. Strategically make UX visible at the senior strategic levels. We have programs on that, on creating what we call an experience vision, which is a story of what the future could be for your users and your customers. Say three years from now, five years from now.  If this this little Financial startup wants to really succeed, they should paint a picture of how the world will be different when they’re successful five years from now, and then what they’re doing now are just baby steps to that. So we focus on the vision part, and then I coach and mentor senior leaders on a regular basis. That’s mostly what my day is when I’m not talking on podcast to influential people.

Paul Gebel [00:36:11] As an attendee of the Leaders of Awesomeness webinar, I can name firsthand it. It’s been really helpful having you there. And you actually answered my second question already, unless there’s anywhere else. I was going to ask, is there any place that people can go to find out more? And it sounds like that would be a great place to start. Is there anywhere else that people might be pointed to to find more of your work or sites, or connect with you on?

Jared Spool [00:36:38] I post a lot on LinkedIn and Medium, and we have our own website CenterCentre.com, but I think Leaders of Awesomeness is sort of the hub of all of that activity. Everything starts and ends there.

Paul Gebel [00:36:51] Well, and speaking for, Christina myself, it’s been a pleasure having you back on the show, Jared. It’s always just an enlightening and a fresh perspective whenever I get a chance to hear you think I appreciate it so much. Thanks for taking the time.

Jared Spool [00:37:04] What episode?

Paul Gebel [00:37:06] 130 something or so…

Jared Spool [00:37:10] Oh, and in another 137 episodes, I can give you an update on where and how we are doing.

Paul Gebel [00:37:18] Can’t wait. All right, Jared, take care.

Jared Spool [00:37:22] Bye bye.

Christina Halladay [00:37:23] Bye bye.

Paul Gebel [00:37:26] Well, that’s it for today. In line with our goals of transparency and listening, we really want to hear from you. Sean and I are committed to reading every piece of feedback that we get. So please leave a comment or rating wherever you’re listening to this podcast. Not only does it help us continue to improve, but it also helps the show climb up the rankings so that we can help other listeners move, touch, and inspire the world just like you’re doing. Thanks, everyone. We’ll see you next episode.