Episode 14 of The Design Journeys Podcast hosted by Chris Whyte. New episodes every other Wednesday!

In this episode of The Design Journeys Podcast, host Chris Whyte speaks with Mark Joynson-Bickerstaffe, founder of Mark & May and former design leader at Dyson and Kohler.

The conversation explores Mark's career journey, starting from his early influences, his time at Dyson during its startup phase, and his leadership role at Kohler. Mark shares insights on the evolving role of designers, the importance of innovation culture, and his belief in creating sustainable, meaningful products. They also discuss the challenges of scaling design leadership in large organizations and the importance of intuition, financial understanding, and communication for success. Mark highlights the ethos behind Mark & May, a consultancy that focuses on conscious design, pushing clients towards more sustainable and impactful product development.

Here are some of the key takeaways from this episode:

• How to foster a culture of innovation in fast-growing businesses.
• Why intuition and financial understanding are crucial for design leaders.
• The evolving role of designers in creating sustainable and impactful products.
• Mark’s approach to leadership and scaling teams, balancing creativity with business strategy.

Connect with Mark Joynson-Bickerstaffe on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mark-joynson-bickerstaffe-a219b52/

Connect with Chris Whyte on LinkedIn: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/mrchriswhyte/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

Learn more about Kodu Recruitment: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://teamkodu.com/⁠

Hello and welcome to the Design Journeys podcast. I'm your host, Chris Whyte And in this podcast series, we explore the journeys of founders and leaders from the world of physical product design. In today's episode, I'm joined by Mark Joynson -Bickerstaffe, co -founder of Mark and May. Mark, welcome to the podcast.

Hello Chris.

Hello. Yeah, good to have you on. So I'm going to do my best to do a little intro as we discussed beforehand. But so as we discussed earlier, you described Mark and May as working on product and more an ethically astute consultancy and lifestyle product retailer founded on the need to create better products, services and experiences which address the pressing needs of the modern world, a socially, environmentally and commercially sustainable future. So thank you for.

We'll also dive into some of the things that we discussed in our prep call, such as design leadership and how the role of designers has changed, sustainability and recruitment challenges, because I know that's a part of Mark and May's offering as well. but yeah, again, welcome to the show. Thank you for joining me.

Yeah, absolute pleasure. Look forward to chewing the fat on many issues.

Let's see how much we can cram into an hour, shall we? So we'll start right at the beginning on the Design Journeys podcast. if we go back to kind of pre or teenage Mark, I suppose, what kind of what got you into design or when did you become aware of design and what led you down that path?

well, yeah, I didn't know what design was really until I, you know, it's one of those usual things. Mr. Chambers, my design technology teacher at school, gave me the recognition there was this thing called design. My dad was an engineer. I'd always taken things apart and drawn things and sketched and so on. And he was the one who said, you know, there's this thing, it's design, it's industrial design. This is what you do. And I was like, okay.

but I still didn't really know what it was. And I took a very strong lead from my dad at that point, who basically was like, you're good at science, good enough. You're good at maths, you can draw a bit. Why don't you do engineering? So I decided that after leaving school, I'd go and do engineering and absolutely hated it. It was one of those classics that, know, first sort of...

you year, found the maths really, really hard to the point that, you know, I, my dad actually, you know, gave me some really good advice and he put me in touch with an engineer at Rolls Royce. And that bit of advice was very straightforward. It was like, well, you know, if you think you can do engineering, you can just about scrape through it, carry on and do it now. Because if you do design first and try and go back and do engineering, you'll find it twice as hard. So that's what I did.

Solid advice. Yeah. Yeah.

So I like, yeah, and I never, I'd actually, know, yeah, I found it hard, the sort of the math side of it, but actually the practical grounding and everything about engineering has been a foundation of what I've done ever since. But I knew I wanted to do more after that. So, you know, I can remember walking down the corridor and seeing a poster for the RCA course in industrial design engineering as it was at that point and going, wow, mate, that's what we should do.

And as soon as I landed in the RCA and I was lucky enough to get in, wow, it was home. Absolutely home. And I wish the course had been longer, you know, because it was, you know, there's so much that I was learning day on day. But I had also had the huge benefit then that that course at that time, industrial design was a separate course, but you were in the same studio, you weren't segregated, you were mixed. So, you know, I was sitting next to

Yeah.

industrial designers doing their course. That's how I learned from them. They learned from me and you know that fuels really the foundation of what I learned as a designer. Yeah.

Brilliant. Have you got any other any kind of famous alumni that you studied with the RCA? Because see, it's quite quite a famous institution, isn't it? Quite a pedigree.

Yeah, mean, Marek Reichman. Yeah, Marek Reichman was my year. Philip Tracy, the hat designer. Yeah, and then, know, Sean, went along, he went on to lead Philips Design for a long time. was in my year. Yeah, and so generally, you know, the people that I've, a number of the people there have gone on to do pretty big things in the world of design. Bill Thompson, who I was best man for.

He was in the design course. went on and it was high up in Whirlpool. So yeah, it's great foundation and a lot of the people go on to do great things. Nevermind Dyson, okay, so lots of people went to Yeah, so.

yeah.

Well, yeah, lots of people go to Dyson regardless of the university course, they? But certainly more over recent years, as it's just become a huge, huge employer. so, that was that was your first from what I can tell it was your first kind of experience of the real world, you know, quotes kind of going into into Dyson as a graduate. So and you spent eight years there and kind of as a new product.

Yeah.

development director before you left. that must have been a really, really interesting journey. And the Dyson back then in the 90s, I imagine is it was a completely different beast to what it is now. Certainly a lot more focused in terms of the product categories, I imagine.

Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, when I started, what people don't often realize is when I started, the business was a consultancy. It was licensing technology to other companies. So we had a product in Japan called the GeForce, Johnson Wax in the US, you know, the big corporate had bought and licensed the product. And my first project was a backpack vacuum cleaner concept for that, for commercial cleaning. So

Huh?

not many people realize that's where it started. So when I started, that's what I did. And then in parallel, the DC01 was sort of in development. And then very quickly that took over and everyone, me included then, was on DC01 and bringing that through to be the first true Dyson product. looking back at it now, it's like, that's the startup, that's my startup journey. Because at that time it was...

It was, you know, a few people in a, okay, it a coach house, it wasn't a little dingy studio or anything, but it was a startup and, we did everything. You turned your hand to everything. You worked long hours. You did whatever was required. And, you know, certainly the first seven years of that journey through Dyson was very much about adaptability, flexibility, learning on the job, making a lot of mistakes.

building teams of people and being entrepreneurial, being part of an entrepreneurial growth process and really just working with passion. I think that's the key thing. We were driven. The business has started to do really well. And of course, that fed our self -confidence and our desire just to keep going and keep driving forwards.

It taught me a lot of the fundamental lessons about exploring innovation that are still just as true today. And I still, you know, would come back to when people say, well, you know, how do we do this? Design thinking is the sort of buzzword that's current for what Dyson have been doing all along, and many other businesses, they're not unique. You know, I hate to sort of get obsessed about Dyson as this amazing place. It is, it was.

but it's not the only place. It's a good.

Yeah, absolutely. I think a lot of these things were happening. It's just more recently we've got a name or a label for it now. Yeah, absolutely. didn't I never knew that about Dyson. That's really interesting. how many people were there when when you worked then and how many did it grow to by the time you left?

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, we've written enough books about it now. Yeah, so we can...

So when I started, think, you know, maybe five, six people there, three design engineers. So I was sort of in there right at beginning. Some of those were temporary. You know, I think I was one of the first employees or second employees or third employees. And then when I left, I had in my team, 250 people. And then the rest of the business was probably another thousand people at that time.

And we moved, we've gone into the custom built factory and R &D center in Malmesbury. And it was hugely expensive. But it was fascinating because the growth phases you go through as a design leader, we're all there to see, you go from that, you're small enough, five people, less than 10 people, that you all know each other, you work together. It's...

Natural leadership emerges, but generally it's relationship based. And then you get above that and you have to start introducing structure, hierarchy, you know, the ability to command and control in order to make sense of that. And then you face the challenges that you face as well. Well, you're my friend. Now I have to manage you. I have to do a performance review and that ability to then separate, you know, the personal and the professional.

Yeah.

Yeah.

learning that, which I think is essential to every leader, is understanding that you're always balancing those two things. The chummy leader, who's your mate all the time, doesn't work for very long. It's very hard to sustain that as business grows. But then doing it in a sensitive way that maintains the culture of the business you want to maintain is the art form. Because you can go full corporate, but then it's impersonal.

Absolutely, yeah.

can be effective, but it doesn't carry a lot of, know, innate culture with it that perhaps you want to maintain your business. So that's an art form to how you do that. yeah, learning's all the way through. Learning's all the way through.

massively. Yeah, especially with the business scaling so so quickly and so to such a massive degree. And then, yeah, making that step from senior or kind of team lead to kind of manager and then head of and director. mean, that's such a difficult it's such a different job as well, isn't it?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I think the thing I learned, you know, the lesson I learned from that and to get people to think about is it's easy to, you know, success drives growth and you run up that ladder. And if the business is well structured, maybe it has a development scheme that you then active in and you build skills along the way that support your growth. But quite often they're not.

But if they're not, and the reality is, you know, the business needs you in that role, but they're not giving you necessarily the tools and the capability to be secure and capable in that role. And I think the message I pass on there is the only person responsible for your development is you. You know, that there's tendencies and employee in the business to think, no, I should get that from HR or someone else should give that to me. But I'd say no matter where you are, and I've learned this later in my career as well.

No matter where you are, you've got to own that, lead that and drive that because you're the only one who controls your career path. It's up to no one else. So never lose sight of that.

Absolutely.

it's unfortunate it's a lesson that most of us don't learn until we've been through that and it's that benefit of hindsight isn't it but yeah I definitely look back on the early stage of my career where I was it was a little bit more of a why someone else is all they haven't done this or or whatever and actually on reflections like I could have pushed harder to kind of kind of set the boundaries or set the kind of you know what was required

Yeah, exactly.

Because now, obviously, the portfolio is so broad. Or was it still kind of predominantly that kind of the core business then?

Yeah

Well, yeah, I the core business, you know, I was there at a great time because, you know, we put in place the fundamental R &D for the vacuum cleaners, you know, scientific capability, you know, back to first principles, relearn that. But actually, you know, the business was always then looking for diversification of product line. So actually, I led lots of programs looking at, you know, robot vacuum cleaners, washing machines.

tumble dryers, basically all sorts of appliances that can make a difference and finding the inventive benefit that we could bring to the market in those areas. So, you know, the R &D labs were basically, you know, they were invention shops with us pursuing, you know, how can we get this to work twice as fast, be twice as good? You what fundamental technology can we drive through? You know, the electric motor, you know, that was...

Okay.

started at the time that I was there and we started pulling a lot of scientists in. It took a lot longer to get to market. I didn't know that at the time, but it took a lot longer to get to market. So yeah, it became quite diverse. So it went way beyond product design. It wasn't just about embodiments or a different form factor. It was all about fundamental principles. And I can still remember the inventive step of, for instance, the washing machine.

Yeah.

You know, we're working on washing machines, trying to work out what to do. We built a test rig and in order to load the washing machine the way we wanted to load it, we split the drum down the center and then clamped it together and then had two motors rotating it in a single direction. And then, you know, in the lab one day with one of the guys working on it, we were like, I wonder what happens if one of them goes the other way around.

Okay.

Right.

Let's try it. So off we go, we try it and suddenly we find that we're increasing wash speed by 30, 40%. So, happy accident. But the lesson in that is you've got to try things. You've got to be in there working on it at that level, observing, trying, and happy accidents happen, occur. That's part of invention.

Alright.

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And it's always struck me as a business that's not afraid to kind of throw resources at innovation and invention. And yeah, I don't ever recall seeing a Dyson washing machine, but I know from speaking to countless Dyson engineers over the years, there's lots of things that they've worked on that will never see light of day. you know, they've gone through that process to explore it. And the ones that do tend to go on to be quite successful.

It does the product launches thing.

Yeah, yeah, the washing machine was one of the few failures. did launch. It did. Yeah. And it sold some. but it's, again, you know, it's another story that, it's worth, you know, the story there was okay. The machine, it was complex. So it was expensive, Dyson, you know, commanded a premium. People were buying the technology that they saw it as being different, better. So that was fine.

Yeah, already.

Hmm.

But one of the things that participated to it not working in the end was James insisted on it being silver, red, purple, transparent in areas. And most people don't want a spaceship in there because unlike a vacuum cleaner, a washing machine is on show. And we sort of knew that if we just did a white one, it would sell in

bucket loads, because it would just fit in and not what people want at the end of the day as a machine that works and keeps going and you know, it's part of your family life. So that you know, whether that was the it failed after I left and it's to do with me, course. But whether that was the sort of the nail in the coffin, but in the end, it just didn't translate to enough market sales to stay in the product range.

Yeah.

Yeah, but I guess now you mentioned that you look at some of their products now they're a little bit more understated. Certainly the hand dryers and things are, you know, there's a clear sense there. So maybe that maybe that was an expensive but good lesson for them. Yeah, really interesting. Yeah.

a lesson. Yeah, and the air purifiers, know, they have to fit into a domestic environment. Yes, they're somewhat progressive, but they're not so challenging that you won't live with it.

Absolutely. It's it's I've got one running under my desk now and it's yeah, just just kind of blends into the into the office. So it's yeah, they've clearly taken that on board. Really? Well, let's move move on then. Let's kind of touch on some other areas of your career. so Dyson, you then went over to Alcatel, Optronics and and Strix.

I like it.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

after that for a little bit. So stricks are interesting because my son is that's more and correct me if I'm wrong here, but they do kind of the thermostats today for for kettle switches for kettles.

Yeah, yeah. And the, the basis that allow you to disconnect to kettle without unplugging the cord. Yeah. Yeah. No, that's the bounce out of Dyson. And I call it a bounce deliberately now. You know, I left Dyson because I started to disagree with Jones. You know, I started to find myself going, hang on. That's a really good idea. There's a market for that. Why the hell aren't we doing it? So I just had enough. So a headhunter called me and I, bounced into a VC, Alcatel.

Yeah.

Yeah.

learned a bit there that actually the skills you learn as a design engineer can be applied even when the science is extreme. know, the principles remain true. I bounced out of that because that business was sold, was VC and then it was sold to Alcatel and then went to Strix. Thinking that that could be quite a good place because they were wanting to go into other, they wanted to diversify. So they were looking at innovation, wanted to diversify, landed.

with them and yeah, they are all over really high precision, low cost technology that goes into every coffee machine and kettle. They did a bit of industrial design for customers to, know, so if Bosch wanted a kettle or Moolen X or T -Fail, sometimes they're getting involved in the design of that. So that was part of it. But really they wanted to go into things like water filtration. They were looking at Brito and the market growth there and saying, we want a piece of that pine.

And my role was to try and innovate like do a Dyson with them. of course, that doing a Dyson is not just about one person landing. It's about a culture. And the culture in that business was all about command and control with an extreme focus on minute cost. And they found it very difficult to really adopt the attitude of make, try, fail, learn, move on.

And that's how you innovate and then understanding the market and understanding the consumer. So it was a couple of years with Strix, interesting, know, interesting, challenging, but I knew that it wasn't going to last. And that led me sort of, again, I actually got offered a job at a sort of FTSE 500 stationary business, you know, with a million products in stationary. And then just before

Yeah.

Yeah.

Okay, yeah.

starting store. I don't know how do that.

That's all on design pens.

Yeah, that was it. And so actually, that's the first time I started a business on my own and developed, I started in lighting products, started to get some interest going there. But then the Kohler company came knocking on the door and I thought, wow, here's a business that's...

Okay.

Yeah.

Definitely not a jump there, was it? Best part is 16 years I think you spent there. Yeah.

16 years, yeah. And I never thought I'd be there that long. I thought, partly because I thought I'd just want to go back to running my own business sooner. But it's rare that you find a business that is global, has every material set you can imagine in its portfolio, is a manufacturer, has a design. It's really marketing led, but design has a strong role to play and has bold in its brand value.

Yeah.

and had scale. So 16 years of leading design and engineering and working on every product you can imagine in bathroom space. The only downside of it is you always get, you come out of a business like that and you're always a toilet designer.

So was that what you working on? Because my experience was I worked with the Chatham studio and it was Showers. So we were recruiting for the Showers team. Yeah.

because to it

yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it started with showers because it was Kohler Myra. But then really, the if you look at the business, a business like Kohler, and actually most of these big businesses, their core profit comes from toilets, toilets, everyone needs one, you know, every home has one that's got a sewage sanitation system. And they're expensive to make unless you make them locally, they're complex to make huge investment. And you know,

Really? Yeah.

your toilet range, your keys. So work on a lot of toilets. I worked on a lot of taps, a lot of showers, a lot of baths, a lot of surfaces, a lot of kitchens. Yes, cabinetry, yes. But you always will have that toilet design moniker in your portfolio.

Yeah, it's an interesting one though, isn't it? How do you innovate on a toilet where the design, but certainly from the industrial design side of things, again, correct me if I'm wrong here, but it hasn't fundamentally changed for like a hundred or so years. yeah, there's efficiency to be made, if you're making something out of clay or pottery, you're fairly limited there, aren't you?

Yeah, and there's an analogy here as well, which is it's a bit, you know, let me stick with me. It's a bit like a, it's a bit like a mushroom, a fungi, in the sense that a mushroom actually is just the flower. The bit you see is just the flower. The actual organism is under the ground is the, you know, the mycelium under the ground. Well, that's what a sewage infrastructure is, and a toilet is the bit at the end. So

Yeah.

One of the limits on innovation is literally that, that, you know, the bit that's in the ground and in your house is pretty fixed. And the bit above that is limited in what you can play with as a result. However, that said, I think, you know, cultural innovation is driving change, know, bidet toilets coming in from Japan and China where cleanliness and hygiene has been a much stronger driver. That technology is coming in.

the overall experience on the toilet. You know, it sounds weird to talk about it that way, but it is a very important one for health. And then inclusivity, know, toilets for a long time have been very poorly designed as you age and for people with who are less able. So there's a huge amount of work actually going on in that area as well. So behind the scenes and actually coming into the market, gradually it's changing, it's evolving. And especially with the aging population, there's a

Yeah.

there's a huge opportunity still there for toilets that are better suited to us as we age or as we go through our life stages when serving those needs.

It's really interesting as well from a product point of view in terms of the, well, I find it interesting that kind of difference from fast moving consumer goods or kind of technology that might be replaced every couple of years, maybe when you look at vacuum cleaners to something that people very rarely change unless because it's expensive to refit your bathroom, how often do you change your toilet maybe?

Yeah. Yeah. I want to, one of the huge, yeah, exactly. But one of the huge things I learned, you know, the contrast between Dyson and Kohler, you know, Kohler is a effectively, it's an interior design company. So they're designing products that you live with. They're part of your home. And as a result, you know, design in that context is about aesthetics. You know, that sort of old fashioned thing of, well, aesthetics is.

Maybe never, you know.

Yeah.

it's almost a dirty word in some respects, what it looks like being important and being really critical and having style. But actually that's because a product that allows you to have your own style, express your own style in your home whilst meeting the cost target or leads that and shows you a new way of expressing individuality in your home.

is a good design challenge because it's functionality, it's experience, it's aesthetics, it's feel, you you're dealing with water or heat or detergent product, washing products. There's a wealth of stuff around that. So it really truly is user experience design where the balance of it is different to FMCG, a lot of FMCG products.

Yeah.

massively,

I guess a lot of it you were probably selling into contractors and kind of home builders or house builders as well because I guess it's where a lot of the new kind of sanctuary where it goes in, isn't it? But yeah, really interesting.

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, there are a lot of things, a lot goes through retail as well in the US and China and so on. So yeah, but increasingly a consumer market as well. The online office of multi -channel sales now, so that transition means that pretty much you can get it on any channel.

Yeah.

Yeah, brilliant. So there's been a few points there. I've seen Dyson, you got to a point where you were were frustrated. It sounds like you had reached a tolerance of how much change you were prepared to not influence him. That sounded weird to turn it out loud, but you you were frustrated because you couldn't influence the change that you wanted. And then I guess with Strix,

you hit a roadblock in terms of the lack of or the saying that they wanted to invest in innovation, then they're not. was it kind of the key lessons from from those experiences? And I guess what kind of kept you at Kohler for so long?

I think that.

The key lessons from those are innovation is a culture. And it's not just about having a way of doing things, a personal way of doing things or a proven way of doing things from somewhere else and transplanting it. You have to start with the people, how they think, their ability to act in certain ways.

And that comes down to often is organization and leadership. So start a culture. If you want to be change your business's innovation, because you can try it, you know, you can implant and do a project. You can pilot something and drive it, but you won't sustain it unless you change the culture. And that starts at the top. So what I learned there was the thing you have to probe most deeply into is what is the leadership attitude to it?

And that comes down to that commercial sort of maturity of, you know, what gives freedom in a company. And it's, it's about the leadership. It's about finance. So you have to understand finance and you have to understand how financial mechanisms and people work and think in organizations to, to talk in their language when it comes to what innovation can deliver us value. and

I guess that's what I learned. So when I went to Kohler, you know, what I saw at the top was creative leadership. You know, yes. You know, I can remember going into meetings and literally you have to walk into a meeting with a pile of books, sort of this high. And they were stacked full of financial and product analysis because the business was about control, but actually they had the layer on top of the leadership.

it was a family, still is a family -run business. They wanted to lead and they wanted to lead through design and marketing. And they, the rest of it was a way to deliver that. It's not without its issues because that brought in other issues of personality. So the culture there was more aligned. And so trying to make that more innovative was less of a step. The challenge was the scale of the organization.

huge 35 ,000 people worldwide. How do you influence that culture? It takes time and it takes a body of people. it's then about, it's a different process. why was it like 16 years? Realistically, because it took probably three years to work out what the hell was going on. It took five years to really start to make a difference that started to stick. And then,

Hehehehe

some more years for that product line to start coming through to market, to see the change, see the value. And then sort of be able to look back and go, right, what next? Not to say it was completely done. You know, it wasn't and it never is, but at least we've moved forward, you know, and we'd got over the hurdle which you had at the beginning, which was the only good design really could be done in the U .S. And the design was exported to the rest of the world.

Yeah.

because that was the way the brand was defined, changing that fundamental understanding of, the brand is this. It's about how you design into that brand. And that has a local cultural filter on it. What's right for India in the Kola brand is similar but different to what's right for in the U S and the same in China and the same Europe. So once we got our started to get over that, we were able to build studios locally in those environments.

they were able to tap into the real understanding of the user need, the market need, etc. and start to deliver the right product for the market under the Kohler brand. So that's, that's yeah, so there's enough there. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Yeah. So there was enough for the change as you went along. Yeah. Lots to get, your teeth stuck into. Brilliant. So I've got a question for you then that might be helpful for some listeners going through. they're looking at like senior leadership role and looking to maybe interview a few companies. there any kind of key questions or

things they should be asking or could be exploring. They're going to help tease out whether there's a culture alignment there for some of us, because there's nothing worse than joining the business and finding out that actually there is a mismatch there and it's not going to work out because it's a waste of time and money for everyone involved. So what would be advice there?

I've touched on a little bit, which is, you know, don't just probe into, you know, product and engineering and probe into financial, probe into strategic planning, probe into vision, mission, purpose. And, you know, this is one of the other themes that I will, know, one the things I've learned through my career is, you know, invest in your intuition. Do self -examine yourself and say,

Yeah.

Did I feel that that was right? And then did it result in what I expected? Because having powerful intuition and trusting your intuition is, I think, is really important as a design, as a creator. Because so much of what we do is truly synthetic. It's not sort of apply this process and you will get a result. It is a very complicated interaction between things that you have to navigate. And often it's so much.

So your intuition is truly powerful. So when people then talk to you about, you know, why they want to change the business or what they're trying to achieve or the culture of the business or the financial structure and the freedoms you'll have to operate, does it ring true? Does it feel right? And keep probing on that because a good leader, a good, you know, a good business would welcome that questioning and not, you know, not.

become comfortable with you probing into areas that are way outside what you might say is the normal parameters for the job description.

Yeah, absolutely. If they're if they're not comfortable or if they're not prepared to answer those questions, then that tells you quite a lot about the culture and the people there. So brilliant. Thank you for sharing that. So let's let's talk about Mark and May then. So I see you're at CODA for kind of 16 years and then it looks like you launched Mark and May fairly soon after that. what what kind of prompted that and maybe tell us kind of

Just give us kind of a bit of a potty history about kind of the business and what you're up to.

Yeah, Mark, I mean, I got to the point at Kohler where I was starting to think, what's next? You know, I was doing global design work, working with great people, enjoying it, but he was like, well, what's my next contribution here? And I've always, you know, as I said earlier, I've always felt inside me that I wanted to try having my own business, working in a small business.

And so it got to a point where I thought, okay, if you don't do it now, you know, it just gets harder. And that's another piece of advice to anybody who's thinking about it is don't think about it. Just do it. Yeah, it'll be hard. It'll be hard, but just do it because you'll learn from it. And any employer, if you then choose to go back to employment, we'll look at it and go, okay, what did you learn? As long you know what you learn, it's fine. It's good. So yeah, so

massively.

I had a reasonable network of people that I could talk to and contacts to go out and try and find work and so on. So I thought, all right, okay, yeah, why not? Let's have a go. And then of course I launched the business and then COVID, 2020, COVID bang. I'm my God, is this gonna be a bad timing? Now I've got none of the support mechanisms I might have if I was employed. But luckily I picked up a couple of clients.

Yeah.

Yeah.

in those early days and actually Dyson and Kohler served me well because I got very used to working remotely, you know, working in large organizations, global organizations, working like this, you know, like I've been on a podcast, it was completely comfortable to me. I've done it all the time across cultures, different languages. So that felt okay. So actually I could operate well. And I think clients found that quite appealing because I could sort of settle them down. It's like, don't panic, don't panic.

Yeah.

This is okay. So I picked up a couple of clients and actually, you know, what we set out to do with Mark and May was, you know, we talk about ethically astute, know, conscious, I'd say is the primary word I'd use. We're a conscious consultancy. We're not saying that the only work we do is world changing, you know, environmentally sustainable, socially and ethically, you know, transformational work.

We believe that you have to achieve that goal by taking one step every time you do work. Sometimes that step can be bigger. Sometimes it's very small. There has to be a step forwards and our clients have to be willing to accept the challenge that we are going to push you forwards because that is how change happens. Sometimes it's fast, sometimes it's slow, but it has to happen. So we set up on those.

brands. And then we the first projects we did one was, you know, you get the weird stuff. So I became a CTO for Lewatt, who Lewatt are a sustainable sanitation business helping solve sanitation problems for extended urban communities. So, know, where you get the slums on the outside of cities and developing countries, no sanitation, pit the trees, horror stories about health, know, privacy, dignity, security.

So really trying to make a difference there. So I helped steer them through getting a product to market that was reliable, that was well -engineered, dealing with cost issues and then working on the next generation product. So that was a great partnership. We're just continuing to this day and obviously, know, really trying to make a difference to millions of people worldwide. We then did a project with a potato company, sounds weird, but...

Okay.

why they wanted to persuade more of us to buy loose potatoes in supermarkets versus bagged, because obviously the bag is packaging, literally just goes straight in the bin. And we worked with them on several projects, which were all about moving the retailers, Tesco, Wacos, Sainsbury's, etc. Moving their thinking on in how they could retail and sell more loose.

Yeah.

And that was a fun project, know, quite challenging, quite, you know, shocker behavior, you know, a lot about operational efficiency, which is a real challenge, you know, it got wastage. So it's a really interesting project. So that was, that was great. And then we picked up various, you know, different clients. We worked for a client called QuickScreen and they are in the healthcare space trying to transform infection control in the healthcare built environment.

Yeah.

And we've worked with them on several projects. They're really challenging about how you get rid of materials that are either single use like hospital curtains, or infection traps like hospital curtains and all sorts of terribly designed furniture. And continue to work with them in terms of innovating. But also, and this is the sort of product and morbid of Mark and May, when we engage with clients, you know, it's the classic of often they come to us with a brief and say, this is the problem.

Please can you quote, us a proposal to work with us to help solve this problem. The way we behave as a business is then to immerse ourselves in that client's business and operations. And we always then come back to them 99 % of the time and say, yes, that is a problem, but this is the real problem. This is the real problem to be thinking about if you want to really address that issue identified.

Quite often that leads to us working on the project and also helping them with organizational development, executive level and the team level, nurturing creativity in business and helping them really implant improved capability in their own businesses to do better work and drive better results for the company long -term. And that's really what we see.

Yeah, that's really interesting. So it's so easy to get kind of fixated on one one element of the of the problem or the issue. And actually, it's a lot more complex than that. And they're kind of very interchangeable. will kind of symbiotic if you like, you know, there's no good just creating a great product if there's no marketing or, you know, because no one will hear about it. And it's no good kind of

Yeah. Yeah.

Yep. Yep. Yep.

design a great product if there's not the technical team behind it. So I know you get involved in, certainly with companies like Quickscreen, you help or you go above and beyond really helping companies resource as well, which for a lot of design consultancies, that might seem a little bit alien because if you're helping a business build their design team out, surely that means less work for you in the future potentially.

that's quite a, it's one of those sort of contradictions in a way, but actually, you know, because of what we stand for, you know, we see that as part of our job, you know, and in a way we say, we know when we've done a good job because the client doesn't need that part of our services anymore. And the trust part of it is actually it'll lead to something else. It'll lead to something else because even when

It did, just minute.

Yeah, absolutely.

They talk to another business and say, yeah, you you should think about, or they just ask us to do something else. You know, what about this part of our business, you know, and another business that we work for, a great startup called Meadow who are innovating, yeah, sustainable packaging, you know, and, you know, I hope they're really successful. But, you know, we went in there and we did a combination of work both on the marketing side, but also on the supply chain side.

Yeah, I know them very well. Yeah.

And that's because going into that business, we saw that actually one of their biggest challenges was understanding their supply chain and mapping out their supply chain as their route to market and success criteria. And actually, you know, given a diverse background and with a design brain, you know, design thinking brain, you can really go in and address and see the problems that are there and start to strategize about how to address them and then bring in specialists, you know, we're

We never pretend that we're experts in every field. You know, it's the classic consultancy T shapes. You have the breadth, but you have expertise. But also we know how to bring in expertise to then form a truly expert team for a client. And I think a lot of clients struggle with this, is, know, recruitments, you know, you know, there's more than anyone, Chris, but your recruitment is tricky because, know, you're

If you're committing to someone's life and supporting them, not just an overhead, you know, it's a horrible way to say it, but you want to support them, but you also want them to do a lot of things. So their expertise sometimes can be very specialist, but often needs to be a bit generalist. Now on some projects, you need external help because you want true expertise, but you don't need it long -term. You need it for that project. And you know, that's the other side of what we do is bring in

a truly expert team to do a specific thing, whether that's in supply chain, whether that's in electronics and software development, whether that's in nanotechnology. You shape that by building the right team. And then that comes down to, again, it comes back to intuition, experience, and the ability to build the right culture. It's unique with the right attitude fundamentally. Attitude, you

Absolutely.

Now, attitude beats strategy every time. And that's something that everyone should carry with them is, you know, the right attitude will bring you a lot of success. You shouldn't have to work too hard at motivating people. And when you do, you know, there's something that you need to think about.

Yeah, massively and on the more side of things, the value is certainly something I've kind of worked on throughout my career is trying to add as much value as possible. But it's something that's that's been reinforced more and more kind of as a launch coder as well is that I listen to a lot of what Alex Homozi kind of puts out in his podcast and in his books. And he's very big on kind of give, give, give, give and then kind of

good things will happen. You know, you don't have to ask all the time. But then from a consultancy point of view, he's got a really interesting tape, which I think marries up with with kind of how you've run Mark and May is that you use consultancies or agencies, whether they be advertising, recruitment, business, design, or whatever show from you buy that expertise in that you don't have and you have a short sharp hit. It's expensive, but it's extremely value packed. And the way that he uses them is to have an agreement with them that

He'll he'll use them on projects. But every time that he works with a consultant or an agency, he wants to upskill his current team. So they should be leaving the business in a better, better shape as well. So over time, you end up becoming less reliant on the agency. But the agency wins as well, because they're building up good rapport, great testimonials, great kind of social credit, if you like. And that's that's the lifeblood of any kind of value pack businesses, those recommendations, because you're going to do

much more with that than any kind of generic marketing campaign. so, yeah, it's.

Yeah, absolutely. You know, think all too often these days, people sort of think that the app or the system can replace relationship and actually relationship, you know, with the human, with people. yeah, just, you know, and we talk about soft power, you know, the reality is truly effective teams, truly effective businesses have a lot of soft power.

necessarily the ones are out there shouting in your face the whole time, but the ones are getting on doing it and doing it well and you know being self -critical and you know being motivated to do better and that soft influence, soft power way of doing it often is more effective. You've got to know where the limits are you know because there has to be a discipline underneath it but really you know that's what

And people want to work in places like that. They want to work in places that they can be themselves, be their best selves, and deliver great work. But understand this is not a creche. It's not a place you go and kick back and do nothing. You're there to do a job of work, and you should expect to work hard.

Absolutely, absolutely. So a lot of the work that you've been doing with Mark and me, obviously working with with startups, but there's a there's a big emphasis on kind of meaningful and impactful products and the sustainability angles. So was that a was that a purposeful kind of was that by intention or is that just kind of like a happy accident?

No, I mean, I came out with Kohler. has an innovation for good, which goes beyond corporate CSR tick box. that sort of, I did some work in that area when I was at Kohler. It's funny because it goes right back to roots. I did my engineering degree, was engineering design for appropriate technology and appropriate technology being appropriate to the environment you put it in.

It's no point putting a complex machine in Africa that when it breaks, can't get a spare part and no one can fix it. So actually it's always sort of been there as a, an underpinning to what I do, but I just felt that, you know, these days, people who create products have a responsibility that goes beyond, you know, their job. you know, we are in the first

our first acts of creating concepts and sketches and whatever, we are laying down a foundation of impact. And we need to be cognizant of that and we need to own that. Otherwise, nothing will change. Work just for consumption and profit is, of course, we all need to earn money. Businesses need to earn money. But we equally have to become better and better at that. And the imperative needs to be being more efficient.

being better and as I said earlier, know, step by step. So we did set out and say, we want to do projects that move the needle forwards. I'd love it to be in big strides, but I'd accept it being in small strides based on how far we can push an individual client, how far we can work with them, what that change can bring. But we'll be working defense. So, you know, some simple boundaries. And I think all of us do have to have

our moral boundaries that we stand by. So we did set out with that stall and some businesses come to us and it's not on their agenda at all. You it's not, you you say, does this fit into? It's not on their agenda. We then open them up with questioning to say, but do you want to be better? Are you willing to be open to be better? Because that's the creator's job is then to show them how being better doesn't necessarily have to cost them lots more.

or make a risk in the marketplace of consumer. That's about design. That's design. And that's the constraint that we love is, yeah, make it really hard, but add the skills to then, you know, attack the problem and try and solve the problem in better ways. I'm a true believer, you know, we're in a phase now where we've just, we've got to experiment and you know, yes, there's things that appear to be green or better and don't actually result in it being.

see that later and go, okay, well, we learned that, we're gonna do that again. But we have to try. The imperative is to to sit on your hands and say, no, it's too expensive, it's too difficult, I think is no longer acceptable. And designers, I think, should stand for that. I recognize hugely that being a designer, say, you know, you're a start of your career or you're in your career ladder and you're,

Absolutely,

you may be slightly worried about championing that in a business that doesn't seem to want to do it. And that it seems to sort of too big a mountain to climb. I just say in that respect, either change jobs or understand it from a value perspective in that business and start to understand the why behind it. Why is there resistance? And they all always come down to money.

some sort of me related issue and then attack that. And you might have to do that on your own for a bit to build up your understanding of fine, that will add to your credibility in the business because you're truly understanding. And then think about small changes that start to a difference. So that's our attitude with businesses is, you we don't go in there expecting huge transitions and transformations. We go in there hoping for that and accepting a small change.

Well, yeah, if you can, if you can provoke a thought or just putting it on someone's radar, like when it wasn't before that, that's a win, you know, if you keep doing that and keep kind of speak to people about it, then it's going to build some traction. think it's definitely that. So, yeah, just those little things are cumulatively going to add up. unconsciously we're

running out of time, but we've kind of covered a lot of the topics, think, through kind of throughout the kind of the journey, but we were talking about kind of design leadership. And I think you've kind of just touched on there as well in terms of how it's changed and the responsibility that designers have. But yeah, perhaps if you've got any more insights or thoughts on on that and how the role of designers has changed over the years, we could touch on that briefly for a few minutes.

Yeah, I I think one of the things I learned was, you know, obviously, you know, typically as a designer, you'll be very hands on all the sort of foundational tools that you need to use as your in your early stages of your career. And quite often you'll then, you know, if you've got the desire or the ability to progress to leadership and management, having that foundation is really critical to credibility and trust.

as you then step into leadership, you know, know what it takes to do the job. But then as you progress and you get, as you continue to progress in leadership, the time between when you were last on those fundamental tools and the state of those tools changes, you know, and you won't be able to operate the CAD system that the team are using, or you won't be able to use the analysis tools because simply you haven't got the opportunity to do so.

I'd say that your job is to really understand the fundamentals that dictate the way that that job is done, but not have to do it. Your job is to translate that into leadership understanding, the ability to tell other people about it, to make it simple for other people to understand. Because the challenge that most leaders face in organizations is, know, why does it cost so much? Why does it take so long? Can't we do it in another way?

And you have to find the language in yourself to communicate and understand, give understanding to others in simple ways about what certain things require and why. that, so this skill of communication and making the complex simple, making design speak, non -design speak is critical for a leader. And I think you have to work at that.

It's not acceptable to bombard people with jargon and hope they just get bored and say, can't be bothered. Yes, that's not the answer. And that is a skill. I'd say, think about that. It's something you have to work at. When you catch yourself going into it, have to say, hang on a second. They're glazing over. I need to take this to a different level. And I think that intellectual challenge is a good one. think that's where...

Yeah.

reading into the subjects, reading with diversity is important because if you just read in the design channel or listen to podcasts in the design channel, you will just reinforce your own sort of language. Go outside that, you know, and listen to people from different perspectives. And that will help form your ability to communicate what, because at the end of the day, leadership is about most things. It's just about people.

Yeah, massively.

understanding them, understanding how they work, triggers they've how to motivate, know, compassion, empathy, know, work at those things. know, arrogance doesn't get you so far, but it is important to have that energy and passion and drive and to be able to share that, but not to overstep the mark into arrogance and the perspective that you don't care.

Absolutely. I think there's a book I've been recommending to a lot of people recently, whether they're kind of looking for a new job with a middle senior designer or whether they're offered this to a lot of design consultancy owners as well in terms of just to help them negotiate and kind of pull out opportunities, but never split the difference by Chris Voss. I don't know if you've read that, but

I absolutely swear by that book. I have it on my desk. Yeah, I've got the there we go. I forget the commission for that. But I get the I read it. So reading it and then I started doing this actually, I'll listen to an audible and I'll buy the book as like as a reference. Because it's it for anyone that doesn't hasn't come across it. Chris Voss was a was a

Yeah.

I hope so.

former FBI hostage negotiator and he's taken these lessons that he's learned and put them into this book. And it's a really solid toolkit for kind of, he says, talking anyone into or out of just about anything. whether it be negotiating bedtime with a child, negotiating a pay rise or a discount off a car, you know, it is basically for coming up to a win win resolution for both parties and.

And I could see this book really well in that scenario where you've got kind of stubborn leadership that are maybe not in tune with design thinking or design leadership and a frustrated kind of manager or leader wanting to get to get their views across the tools and techniques in this book in terms of active listening and labeling and mirroring and serve us so well as human beings, let alone kind of people who want to make a difference.

That'd be my recommendation. Are there any any that you can recommend or sources?

Well, mean, final tip on leadership, I'd say, is the combination of speaking truth to power and action. It's a killer combination. know, leadership doesn't like hearing hard truths and they would find it uncomfortable. You may find it uncomfortable in the way they respond, but they can't criticize action. You know, if you're then bringing to them good results, good things, exciting and interesting things.

That combination is really good at getting people to see things differently. You have to take a bit of, you know, there is a little bit of confrontation in it. It's hard to, how to manage sometimes, but actually that's part of your job. Part of your job as a leader is, is, know, you've to, you've got to run cover sometimes, and, know, deal with it, communicate around it. But then in terms of what reading, you know, and certainly let's talk about reading around things, you know, I'm reading this at the moment.

Homo Deus by... Okay, so it's a great read for, it's got a brief history of tomorrow. So, as a designer thinking about futures and so on, but it's fascinating because it gives you that perspective of, you we tend to think about consumers today and our understanding of it. And it's really coming at it from a psychological and philosophical point of view about where are we going?

I've not read that one,

and why are we behaving some of the ways that we're behaving now, because we're coming so distant from the need to survive. Most of us are so remote from that, but that's not part of our makeup anymore. So it's fascinating in terms of giving you different perspectives on thinking about why people behave in certain ways, what is it that we're doing, why we should be thinking differently. And then the only other thing I'd say that I'd recommend is,

Yeah.

Go back and listen to IDO Futures, number 44. Steve Basel, he wrote a book called The Way to Design. The reason that's interesting is he's working in a capital investment company at the moment. So he's coming at it with a different perspective, but it's full of really thought provoking ways to think about design in

OK.

Okay.

business environments. I'd really recommend listening to the podcast or buy the book. Really interesting.

I'll definitely check that out. I love things like that where it's kind of, yeah, taking kind of someone's experience from a different industry and applying it successfully to something completely different. And like I yeah, I never split the difference. You think it's more of a sales book, but it's useful in so many ways. massively, yeah, massively. So I'll check that out. What was the other one that you mentioned? Because I couldn't quite see it on the screen.

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

It's a life skills book.

What, Homo Deus, is that one? Homo Deus, by Yuval Noah Harari.

Homo Deus, yeah.

Brilliant. I'll do is I'll link those in the in the show notes, but and obviously the split the difference as well. But that kind of brings us really nicely because I usually make point of asking about book references, but it kind of it flowed quite nicely into the point you were making there. And we are coming to the end of the of the podcast. So if people want to find out more about Mark and May, is there is there a better way to reach out to you just linked in or email?

Yeah, LinkedIn, fine. My emails on LinkedIn as contact as well. The website, markandmay .com is, you know, it's a good starting point. You know, feel free to email me, get in contact. Very, you know, one of the things, you know, as we talked earlier about give, give, give, you know, I'm very happy to talk to anybody and, you know, no obligations, just, you you want to have a chat for an hour. That's fine.

Yeah. Yeah.

think you learn a lot, you all gain a lot. I learn as much as anybody out there in that conversation. So, you know, it's a great way of building a community that tries to make a difference.

Absolutely. I definitely buy into that. And I think we've known each other for a year now, haven't we, since the design huddle that I ran with LV last year. But it's, I've always enjoyed our conversations. I always come out and feeling like I've gained something from it. And hopefully you felt the same way, but I certainly kind of come over some value. so yeah, I can attest to that anyone reaching out to Mark, you're gonna have a...

a very interesting conversation at the very least. yeah, Mark, thank you so much for joining me. It's been an absolute pleasure having you on the show and yeah, thanks again.

Likewise, thank you very much Chris for organizing this and hosting the podcasts. They're always fascinating. So thanks very much.

You're welcome.