Show notes
Kate Arrow  0:02  
Welcome to episode eight of Leading Insights.  Today we're joined by Melis Senova. I'll let her introduce herself.

MS  0:15  
Hi, thanks for having me. So my current, I don't know if it's a job, my current, let's call it a portfolio of projects. So things that I'm all across, really involves working with people in all sectors, trying to help them think about how they can improve the systems that they're working within from a human-centred perspective and bringing, kind of bringing the heart back to business and to government at all levels. That's kind of what I'm doing and I'm doing that through my firm Huddle which is a human centred design agency, which we started in 2009 and also through my coaching and This Human site, which is the platform that surrounds my book.

Kate Arrow  1:16  
And tell us a little bit about the journey you've been on to get that kind of portfolio.

MS  1:22  
So I started as a Biomedical Engineer.  I studied biomedical engineering and I was really interested in neuroscience and the brain and how the brain works.  I majored in neurosciences, and then I had an opportunity to go away and work in a Research Hospital in Japan for a year in between my undergrad and my PhD and that was a Research Hospital for brain and blood vessels. They basically specialised in stroke and they were also an experimental hospital, where they got all of the latest technology so I got to play with some pretty amazing equipment for that time. So this was mid 90s and I was doing functional MRI testing and PET imaging and all of this stuff, just literally looking at the brain.  Then I had this weird dream that was an eyeball trying to see itself in space, like blackness, and then kept thinking "We're using the thing in our heads to try and work out how the thing in our heads works" and I just felt this was like a big, futilely, like we're never ever going to get out of this loop of doing brain research, and that whole thing and set me on a bit of a different discovery....What I was actually interested in was, how do I improve the conditions for people? Like how do I design better services and design better policy to be able to just improve the conditions within which people exist. And that's when I decided to do my PhD in human centred design. So that's how that happened. It was that weird dream that set me off on this other trajectory around design and designing with them for people. And I've basically been doing that ever since I did my PhD in the Defence Department.  There I was working with military aircraft pilots around workload and situational awareness and designing for improved performance. And then I did very similar work in the automotive industry at Ford and Sumitomo, and then I spent some time At Telstra, in the emerging technology space and always working from the persepctive of 'How do we design for the human experience?'.  Then I set up Huddle as an agency to be able to help other organisations do that for themselves, essentially. So that looked like service design and strategic design and we've sort of moved on from there. We started a school called Huddle Academy, we started teaching it, I wrote a book, so it's just kind of it's sort of evolved.

Kate Arrow  4:36  
How did it feel at that point, when you had that dream for changing, changing your direction?

MS  4:45  
Well, there's a whole bunch of funny stories actually that led to me, finding myself at the Defence Department doing a PhD in human centred design.  I'm not afraid to explore new pathways. So no matter how quirky and weird they are, in terms of their source, you know, whether it's a dream or odd conversation or...but one of the reasons why I ended up in the Defence Department was that one of the Professors of the University that I was at, was talking to me about doing a PhD. I wasn't actually on board with the idea, I had this sort of, 'I need to get out there and start doing stuff' feeling and 'I don't want to spend more time at university knowing this much about something that's going to be that, you know, a tiny bit relevant'. He asked me; "If you could be anyone who do you want to be?" and I said that I wanted to be Charlie out of Top Gun. I wanted to be in that scene where she was walking down the tarmac, and they introduce her and they say, you know, she has a PhD in AstroPhysics. She works in the Pentagon, you know, the Pentagon, trust her. So usually when I was young, I was probably still in primary school and I just remember going, I want to be her, I want to be her, I want to be that woman. So I shared with him that story. He picked up the phone and called The head of the Air Operations Division, this defence science and technology organisation at the time, and just started a conversation around a potential PhD candidate with a scholarship, would they take her on? Then that's what I did for the next four years. I was a civilian contractor in the defence department working with F18 & F11 pilots, looking at situational awareness. So  I was just kind of, you know, following my nose in a way and it felt, gosh, sounds really exciting.

Kate Arrow  6:56  
It just shows you that it's worth being honest about  your childhood dreams and  being really transparent about what you think no matter if it's not what you think somebody wants to hear.

MS  7:19  
Yeah, yeah, for sure. And also, I think that I was in a pretty unique situation in that I, you know the Ph.D wasn't something that I was attached to so it could have happened or it couldn't have happened.  There was nothing at risk for me in that conversation. I think often people resist having those really honest and open conversations because they feel like something is at risk for them. And, and that's one of the lessons that I've actually learned throughout my career, which is to say that I have learned that you never really lose out When you show up 100% authentically and say the thing that everyone perhaps wants to say, but isn't saying,  In the short term, it might feel like you take the heat, but  in the long term, always, always, always, it's the best policy. That's what I have personally learned. So I was acting that way, you know, when I was younger, without that much to lose, really.  I'm grateful that that has kind of carried on in my career.

Kate Arrow  8:34  
And and was it like Top Gun? Was it as male dominant as Top Gun when you were there?

MS  8:41  
Yeah. In fact, I haven't reflected on this. I've always worked in male dominated industries. Until I started Huddle, and when I started Huddle  it was mostly women all the time, and we had like the whole reverse scenario which I loved. But it was also quite confusing for me because I had learnt how to work in groups of men. And I hadn't worked in groups of women before in my professional career. So that was actually quite an adjustment in terms of how, you know, work gets organised and problems get solved. And yeah, that was a really massive part of my transition into leadership.

Kate Arrow  9:32  
You've got a fascinating combination of experience, how did that all come together for you & influence the kind of leader that you are?

MS  9:42  
You know, in my book, I talk about one of my beliefs, which is that I believe that everything that you're doing is an apprenticeship for the next thing. I think that's true. I think that a caveat to that is that you should approach your life like it's a masterclass.  I think Oprah actually has a podcast something like that Life as a Masterclass. What I mean by that is that  you look at all of the things that happened to you as an opportunity for learn...