Democratizing Access to Innovation with Dr. Wanita Dixon

Dane Groeneveld: Welcome to the Future of Teamwork podcast. My name's Dane Groeneveld, CEO of HUDDL3 Group. And I'm pleased to be speaking with Dr. Wanita Dixon this morning. Dr. Wanita is an innovation consultant, an innovation doula, mechanical engineer, a business developer for artists. She's got a lot of energy, a lot of technical expertise, and it's exciting to see what her views are on the future of teamwork. So welcome to the show, Wanita.

Dr. Wanita Dixon: Hi. Thank you for having me.

Dane Groeneveld: It's going to be a blast. I really enjoyed our first conversation when we got to meet and you were telling me about your journey starting out as an engineer, working for some big companies, and being a part of so many cool teams on a global basis. Maybe you could tell our listeners a little bit of that story about how that's shaped and influenced where you are today and where you're focusing on in the future.

Dr. Wanita Dixon: Awesome. I'd love to. So I'm originally from Oxford, North Carolina, and I wanted to be an artist, a visual artist as a child. And like a lot of folks, my parents said, you won't make any money at that. But I also was so into the math and the science, and taking things apart, and figuring out how things work, that I went into mechanical engineering. So navigated my career, floating from job to job. I'd get bored and then I'd try something different, and recreating myself every two to three years. So some of the large companies that I worked with in aerospace, so Pratt& Whitney, Pratt& Whitney Rocketdyne. So I've actually designed rocket engine hardware.

Dane Groeneveld: Wow.

Dr. Wanita Dixon: Right? I mean, super cool stuff. But that artistry and that love of visual just never died. And so now, I've transitioned into being a business developer for artists. So I'm bringing my background from these large multinational corporations experience as a former executive in product innovation and development, and saying, this artist behind me is Lupe Lawrence. I told Lupe, I said, have you thought about other ways to monetize your work? And of course her response was, no, I just want to create. So let me help you, let make that bridge for you because I genuinely love beautiful, functional things.

Dane Groeneveld: That's very cool. And it's such a interesting combination, the engineering, the big corporate product development, and then this more organic artists supporting their career, the growth of their audience, the growth of their work, their body of work. It's a really unique combination. Tell me a little bit more about what you bring when you team up with these artists, what you bring from your experiences in the larger corporate world, the aerospace and defense market.

Dr. Wanita Dixon: I would say what I bring is that expertise, so the innovator's method and design thinking, and also lean startups, that's something else that I'm reading. So start at my own consultancy, Technical Creative Consulting LLC. That's the name of it because I am the technical creative. I'm the bridge between the two.

Dane Groeneveld: I love that.

Dr. Wanita Dixon: And because I understand commercialization, I understand finding a market gap and identifying customer needs for the art. Let's take an example. So Lupe's work is photo realistic. She does paintings that make you imagine that you're actually in the city or in the scene that she's in. It makes you feel something. Putting on my corporate lens, I instantly say, now where would she find people or businesses that might be interested in that work? So I told her, I said, ooh, tourism board for the different cities, places she's traveled where people know her, art galleries, travel agents, endless. And the more that I talked to her about this, the more excited she became. And she starts pointing to paintings on the wall. She's like, and where do you think this is? And I said, mm, looks like Charleston, South Carolina. And she goes, yes. It was one of the trips I took with my husband. And so it's just this whole thinking differently, thinking creatively about, in a non salesy way, but in a way that helps you connect with the person that's going to have a reaction. I bought this painting because there is a picture of a woman and she's on this winding path leading into this unknown land sort of a thing. I said, well, that's me. I just ... That's me. I have a visceral connection to it.

Dane Groeneveld: I love that. And it's interesting with where we are today as people. Some people will talk about the grim nature of climate change and geopolitics and everything else, but as people, we've got access to so many resources. We've got so much more time. There's so much more busyness, there's a lot more anxiety. And I think connecting with other people and connecting with emotions is a big theme right now in teams and individually. So it's interesting that that's been your experience with that piece of art, that that's the experience that you bring from industry as you start to think about, well, I can help artists connect with people in a way that solves a market problem. It's not just, like you say, it's not just economic. It's actually about bringing human value to the work that anyone's doing, whether an engineer, an artist, or otherwise.

Dr. Wanita Dixon: Definitely. And you just reminded me of an exercise I did with my last team when I was at Carrier Corporation. So I did art therapy without them knowing it was art therapy.

Dane Groeneveld: Oh wow. Tell me more about that.

Dr. Wanita Dixon: And it helps that you have a team that's open to it.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah.

Dr. Wanita Dixon: Okay. So another local artist, she is what is called a fiber artist. And her name is Kianga Jinaki, and she does quilts. So she made quilt squares of different scenes, different colors, fabric and textiles. And her house here in the area is one of my happy places. So I'll go there and sit with her and see what she's working on and buy bulk fabric from her because I like to make handbags for fun. I had this idea and I told her, I said, you've been teaching these classes on how to make pillows, like lumbar pillows, right, and covering it in this African fabric. She imports fabric. So we went online and we planned out the project. So we went online and I made a box for each person on my team. And inside the box was a pillow, just a blank pillow from Amazon, pair of scissors, thread, needle, pattern for the pillow. And then a piece of African fabric that they were going to use to cover these pillows that I handpicked based on their personality. I picked the color and the structural texture that I wanted. I packaged it up and I enclosed a little note and I shipped it to each person's house because my team was virtually. Only two of them based in Florida, physically with me in the office. And then Kianga called in on the Zoom from her house and she had her kit and each person on the team had their kit. And I blocked off a Friday afternoon, and we put on some music, and our job was to sit and make these pillows. So now let me paint a picture. So I had a Dominican man on my team, an Asian man on my team, couple of white guys, right, myself. But the thing that we had in common, we were all mechanical engineers. And so it's that whole getting uncomfortable because... can you see it? Right? This engineer who's never done anything, I'm not creative, and he's sitting here and fumbling with-

Dane Groeneveld: I love it.

Dr. Wanita Dixon: Right? And he's laughing and he's like, I'm so terrible at this. And by the end of the call, just that satisfaction as they all showed off their work.

Dane Groeneveld: That's very cool.

Dr. Wanita Dixon: And contributed into a local artist.

Dane Groeneveld: That's touching so many important themes, supporting local art, vulnerability like you said, embracing discomfort, sharing something personal with team members. In work, we can all be too much about the widget that we're working on and not about who we are and our experience of things. That's such a cool exercise.

Dr. Wanita Dixon: Thank you. And she teaches those classes all the time. And so it's encouraging people in corporate to think differently. And it wasn't expensive at all. It was the cost of the materials and paying her for an hour of her time to actually do the live instruction.

Dane Groeneveld: That's really cool.

Dr. Wanita Dixon: It was.

Dane Groeneveld: We've actually, one of our teams just identified an opportunity for the holidays supporting children in foster care. So we're working with this group and I can't remember the name of it, it may come to me later, but they send us these duffle bags and these kits to decorate the duffle bags for the kids, which they'll get their Christmas gifts in. And so we're going to do the same thing to our virtual giving themed creative event in the holiday season. But I think it's really important because just doing a happy hour or a pub quiz, you're not really connecting people. And people will go and sit there and have a beer, or maybe they're not paying attention if it's virtual. But this is a way to really let it all relax and be in the moment.

Dr. Wanita Dixon: Dane, I can't possibly love this enough and I'm on record as I'm stealing that idea for the holiday.

Dane Groeneveld: I'll send you it. I'll send the link.

Dr. Wanita Dixon: Cool. Yeah, that's super cool. We could do it for any charity locally, and get the artist engaged, and maybe auction off the finished bags.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah. That would be super fun. That would be really cool.

Dr. Wanita Dixon: Hey, thank you for that. See, inspiration thing.

Dane Groeneveld: That's why I like the opportunity to just be talking to guests on this show and understanding what we're all doing. That helps drive that human connection in the future of teams, and teams not just in the work setting, in the community setting as well. Maybe we're supporting artists, maybe we're supporting a not- for- profit organization, a sports club. I think we can play roles on lots of different teams as the individuals that we are lucky to be part of businesses with experience and resources to bring to bear.

Dr. Wanita Dixon: Exactly. To make things better, more beautiful, more intentional.

Dane Groeneveld: So let's stay with this theme of engineering and art. I know you were telling me earlier about a podcast you're planning to bring out on, the Letting off Steam. I'd love to hear a little bit more about the origins of that and how you've come to see the role of art helping other people in these engineering, mathematics, scientific roles.

Dr. Wanita Dixon: Absolutely. So the podcast is called Dr. Dubs. That's my nickname for Wanita that I picked up back at Carrier in an innovation workshop. One of the students that I was teaching, these are coworkers, not children, but he goes, what's up, Dr. Dubs? And I go, it's cute. It's got a-

Dane Groeneveld: I'll take it.

Dr. Wanita Dixon: I'll take it. So that's the Dr. Dubs part. And then the STEAM is Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Math. So the Letting Off Steam is the concept that, as I would say, professionals in the hard sciences and the hard engineering, very structured, very methodical, very processed. How do you bring innovation into that? And you bring innovation into that through creativity, and art is just simply the vehicle. So that was my theory behind that. And at the end of each podcast, I'll ask the person, so how do you let off steam? What's your creative expression? And you may say, oh, I collect sculpture, or I like to surf. Dane told me he likes to surf, right, and it's all connected. Think about how you became a good surfer, the physics of it. There's an artistry to it, but there's physics in that too.

Dane Groeneveld: Oh, absolutely.

Dr. Wanita Dixon: It's just all joined.

Dane Groeneveld: I like that lens of letting off steam, how do you have your creative expression, because that's very personal. That's very human. But I also like what you just touched on, which is we can access innovation through the creativity. So it's not just about personal expression, it's about, I guess, getting away from the structured laws and rules and measures and day- to- day problems that we're solving to think about what we could solve in a future state if something was different. So I guess that's what art unlocks in many respects.

Dr. Wanita Dixon: It definitely does. It's lighting up the other side of your brain.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah. Yeah, I like that. It's funny because you look at the world we live in. I always like to talk about The Jetsons because I watched The Jetsons growing up. And people in these floating cars and we've got these drones that are soon to be passenger- ready, which are going to look a lot like those. People talking on video phones, and we've got that on our cellphones now. Robots. I mean, when you get creative and you think about what the world could look like if you weren't bound by today's constraints, it's pretty easy to excite people towards something new that may actually be better for everyone too.

Dr. Wanita Dixon: Yeah. And that's a cool exercise that we learned in innovation. So I'm actually certified in innovation, and innovation in terms of product innovation, and have taken classes through IDEO as well. And it's also, you don't have to be trained in things that just come naturally. So here's the exercise for your listeners. It's called Remember the Future.

Dane Groeneveld: Yes.

Dr. Wanita Dixon: You're familiar with that one?

Dane Groeneveld: Not specifically Remember the Future, but so many people I talk to about futurists and innovation, and even personal wellness, they always say, you've got to set something out in the future and then reverse engineer into that. So I'd love to hear what your version of Remember the Future is.

Dr. Wanita Dixon: That's exactly what it is. So you can do this, and we did this with a couple of products at Carrier. So you start with the prompt. Remember when I had to take out my phone and pressed the button in order to, let's see, let's do refrigeration because I did a project in that.

Dane Groeneveld: Okay.

Dr. Wanita Dixon: Remember when we had to take out our credit cards to pay for food at the store?

Dane Groeneveld: Got it.

Dr. Wanita Dixon: It turned into cashless point- of- sale on the refrigerated cabinet in China because China is mostly, or Shanghai and the larger cities in China, are mostly a cashless market. So they like to use WeChat.

Dane Groeneveld: Yes.

Dr. Wanita Dixon: So getting that integration with the hardware and the software is something that is, it was really difficult for engineers that only worked on hardware. Because I'm mechanical, to really think about those integrations and think about different ways to combine their knowledge in it, it was a lot of fun.

Dane Groeneveld: Oh I bet. And you start to think heavily about user experience then when you start to bring in not only the software, but where are they going to interact with this? How frequently are they going to interact with it? There's a lot of pieces that come into play.

Dr. Wanita Dixon: Exactly. And for those that are studying what I like to call the pure sciences, adjusting your mind a little bit to learn the other language. So I used to call myself a functional polyglot.

Dane Groeneveld: Whoa, tell me more about that.

Dr. Wanita Dixon: Well, because polyglot speak different languages. And as polyglot speak different languages, a functional polyglot is a fancy way of saying, I can present to you this morning, and well it's morning here now. I can present to you this morning as a mechanical engineer, and we can talk about structural integrity and material science and things like that. Then I can come back and change what I'm wearing and go into an art gallery, and speak to the curator and say, I understand you have a show coming up and I've been studying your career as a curator and you seem to like still life, still life paintings, and you also like these colors and things from this period. Here's a portfolio of the different artists that I'm representing. Which of them do you think would be best suited for that exhibition? And I'll be in touch to make sure that they're prepared to present a body of work.

Dane Groeneveld: That's cool.

Dr. Wanita Dixon: Right? And then I can flip and go out into the community, into the nonprofit space, and that's the business development, and say, I understand there's a couple of grants and requests for proposals with the city in the following areas. Here's my presentation on how we would address that. And here's the feature artists that I will be collaborating with to deliver it. So it's being able to walk in each of those spaces comfortably.

Dane Groeneveld: That's neat.

Dr. Wanita Dixon: Comes from being a black female from the south. First generation college graduate, used to being an outsider, so I understand that. And I've worked all over the world in languages I don't speak.

Dane Groeneveld: Which is-

Dr. Wanita Dixon: ...

Dane Groeneveld: Which is interesting when it comes to connecting. Because when the language barrier presents itself, you need to connect around more physical manifestations, emotion, the look and feel of something, the structural specifications of something.

Dr. Wanita Dixon: Engineering, science, math. No color, no boundary.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah.

Dr. Wanita Dixon: That's the connection.

Dane Groeneveld: That's cool. And I know that's one of the really, not necessarily unique to you, but unique to what you're bringing to some of your newer customers, partners, communities that you're participating in, is that global technical network and product experience that you have. And I know when we were talking, you were telling me a little bit more about the, I'm going to get this, I think I'm going to get it right, the League of Virtual Engineers, the way that you were working with other engineers around the world and driving connection there with these people. So I'd love to hear you share a little bit about that with me and with the listeners too.

Dr. Wanita Dixon: Absolutely. So I'm a member of the Society of Women Engineers, and they do a conference every year. And so I got to present a couple of years back. And the topic of my presentation was Leading with Love, and it was the topic of the presentation that Love stood for League of Virtual Engineers. So I walked everyone in that presentation through a refresh of my doctoral dissertation work. So my doctoral dissertation work was virtual project team management of engineering teams. It was published in 2012, 10 years before.

Dane Groeneveld: ...

Dr. Wanita Dixon: So I guess I should call myself a futurist student.

Dane Groeneveld: That's right? You were there.

Dr. Wanita Dixon: It's crazy. But it was, it's really around the thought process. And when I worked at Carrier, those engineers were all over the world, and it's how do you motivate, how do you keep people engaged in that common purpose? And I would argue you do it by loving them. You do it by making a real connection. Once I would travel to these sites, and then I was in a lot of Carrier's marketing pieces so people could see me on film, they could read stories about me, not in a hey, look at me show off- y way, but more of I'm being authentic, I'm being vulnerable. I'm just like you. I just happen to look a little different. But I'm a mechanical engineer, right? What can we make together? How can we align and use our skill set in that, I would say, that common purpose? What's the thing we're focusing on? Okay, we want to build this. Okay, great. So Dane, what do you know how to do? And Dane says, well, I'm not super creative, but I'm really good at doing the business plan to determine how many of these things we can sell with the market sizes. And one says, oh yeah, that's incredible. And I can talk about the texture and the design. And then Jim comes in and Jim says, well what about the patterns? And another person comes in and talks about the materials and the manufacturing on and on and on. And pretty soon, we've got this incredible thing that we know it's going to sell because we talked to the customers first and we did iterations and we changed this because they didn't like it, or we investigated the price point. That's the innovator's method is bringing it all together.

Dane Groeneveld: I love that. And it ties in a lot with some of the other guests we've had on the show about when you find something, you can't just innovate in a vacuum. You need to make sure that you've got the best of the best team members, whether it's finance, whether it's marketing, whether it's materials, and that you're really listening to the customer because you guys could design the most beautiful thing, but if the customer doesn't need it, what purpose does it serve?

Dr. Wanita Dixon: Exactly.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah.

Dr. Wanita Dixon: Exactly.

Dane Groeneveld: So with this League of Virtual Engineers, often you are not one of them, but often you run into engineers and they're very conscientiously attached to details and processes, and they don't love to be out talking to customers and exploring. They don't like to take criticism about their work. How did you, with the League of Virtual Engineers, bridge that, finding the people who are best at talking to the customer and really, really truly listening?

Dr. Wanita Dixon: That's the functional polyglot again.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah.

Dr. Wanita Dixon: And this is the value of large corporations. In startups, an engineer would have to talk to the customer or someone on the team would have to. If it's corporations, there's just so many of us. That's a bit too esoteric, right, but you can talk about the universal laws and the law of attraction. People who get me, get me. And so my energy would pull the type of engineers that could be, I don't want to say trained, I want to say could be practiced or rehearsed to talk to customers. They simply thrive on, oh well, I saw Wanita do that and I could do that too. Well, yes, Dane, absolutely you could do this too. That's another term I guess I had thought about recently. Democratizing access to innovation.

Dane Groeneveld: Interesting. Tell me more about that.

Dr. Wanita Dixon: Well, just like art collecting, it should not be the sole domain of the elite or the wealthy because look at how much you're excluding by doing that. Some of the best ideas come from that introverted engineer in the corner. Like you said, he's, he or she, doesn't want to be criticized about their work, just like an artist, wants to focus on the detail and create their little thing. And I'm not really thinking about the customer. I'm thinking about what I want to give birth to, me, me, me. And it's like, well that's fine because then maybe your role is to produce the thing. And it's our job to figure out where it's useful. So it's holding the hammer, right? Making the hammer instead of looking at a problem and saying, what's the best tool to solve it? It's just a little more of a shift. There's no right or wrong, really.

Dane Groeneveld: And I like the way you explained democratizing access to innovation because you look at where some of the best innovations come from, and they don't come from the center, they come from the boundaries, they come from the fringes, from people that are seeing something that the big corporation or the team with the best product in their hand isn't seeing. Because you can get that path dependence, right? If I've got the best widget and I'm like, why would anyone ever use a widget different to this? Let's call it the vinyl record. No one's ever going to do music that sounds better than this. And all of a sudden it goes digital, Netflix, and Blockbuster. There's all of these stories through history.

Dr. Wanita Dixon: Exactly.

Dane Groeneveld: You're not looking to innovate and evolve. You're just looking to keep doing what you do well and you get stuck. So there's that element and it brings more innovation for people. And then there's the other element, which is if the innovation's truly coming from the ecosystem, maybe they're going to bring products forward that may not be technically the best, but their products that other people associate with, they value, they care for. And technical specifications don't always win. Sometimes it's what easiest to use, what do customers fall in love with. So it's another reason we've got to be looking at the boundaries.

Dr. Wanita Dixon: Well iPhone cameras versus Android cameras, but iPhones and Apple, right? It's like people ask me, what are my favorite brands and experiences? And yeah, I mean, it's the switching costs associated with leaving the Apple ecosystem. One is maybe technically better, but the experience is not better. And the ease of use and yeah, you're right. It's the whole thing. I would say though, there's a place for everyone in this world. And even in those large corporations, I would call myself an intrapreneur versus, now, I'm an entrepreneur because I'm on my own. But it's out of those companies figuring out how to navigate that. The thing about a large corporation, you have enough in your product portfolio that is" stable". How did he even do it any other way? And the answer is because you have to have someone making the money and the stability in order to have the safety, have the credibility, the market positioning, the freedom to innovate.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah. No, I agree. It's that I know Harvard did that box one, box two, box three article years ago. So that stability of box one, box two, you're looking for extensions of what your core is. And box three is what's way out there, what's the zero to one innovation?

Dr. Wanita Dixon: Exactly.

Dane Groeneveld: And that is a benefit. I actually like connecting both of those themes that we just touched on, democratizing innovation and the importance of large corporations because it shouldn't be one or the other. In my vision for the future of teamwork, big companies bring to bear their balance sheet, their best people, some of their technologies. And they say to the people in the fringes, whether they're vendors, employees, just community members, how could you use what we've got differently? How could you take us into box three? Because then they're not spending all of the money having to do all of the thinking. They're democratizing, they're decentralizing this kind of search for what might be next, what might be valued in the community.

Dr. Wanita Dixon: Do you know what I would love? And I don't know if it's being done or not, but what's coming up for me? Universities have, in my alma mater, so I graduated from North Carolina, Agricultural and Technical State University. I like to support my school when I can. And what they have established, and it just opened this year, it is an innovation center. It's an Engineering Research and Innovation Center, the ERIC. And it's named after the current chancellor. He was the dean of the College of Engineering when I was there. His name is Harold Martin Sr. And why I'm bringing this up is inside of that building, and it's this amazing complex. There was a sign on the door on one of the offices, and it says Entrepreneur in Residence. So what the university is doing is bringing someone who has been successful in industry, an industry executive, and that person will have an office and be on site for a year assignment. So here's my crazy thought process. Artists and residents for corporations, and I'd like to volunteer for that rotation.

Dane Groeneveld: That's a cool idea. That's a really cool idea. So how does that play out in your mind? So the Artist in Residence, so they're sitting there and people are coming up with all sorts of problems. HR, engineering, marketing, communications, finance, and coming in and saying, hey Dr. Dubs, how can I be looking at this differently? Is that how it plays out?

Dr. Wanita Dixon: How can you look at this differently? What type of exercises can I take you through to help you become unstuck? So we could play at that. So I'm Dr. Dubs. I'm here in the office. I'm your artist in residence. And I have technique, and this is true. I have technique. I like to create 2D images in pencil, in ink, and also, well, colored pencils, ink. I like charcoal, pastel, but I also create handbags. So I like to construct things that are structured. Different layers, different textures. Your name is Dane. You are the chief financial officer. And you've hired some new people on your team. And they're Z- nials

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah.

Dr. Wanita Dixon: They're not relating to you, Dave.

Dane Groeneveld: Yes.

Dr. Wanita Dixon: You just came to me with a problem. They're not getting it. Okay, great. So I'm going to start asking you a couple of questions. I'm going to put on my PhD hat. I'm a qualitative researcher too. Put on my hat. So Dane, what's the biggest problem that you're facing with your new employees? You told me they're not gelling well with the team. Why do you think that is?

Dane Groeneveld: They don't feel like they have enough experience to have a voice and talk about problems they're seeing in the day- to- day task flow.

Dr. Wanita Dixon: So how do you currently get those ideas from them? What have you tried?

Dane Groeneveld: I go into meetings and I say, what are we not seeing? What can we do differently?

Dr. Wanita Dixon: Oh, so you're asking them outright?

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah.

Dr. Wanita Dixon: And you're putting them on the spot a little bit.

Dane Groeneveld: A lot.

Dr. Wanita Dixon: A lot.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah.

Dr. Wanita Dixon: Okay. So here's Dr. Dubs' prescription.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah, I love it.

Dr. Wanita Dixon: So my prescription is, have me come to your next meeting. The first five minutes we're going to do something that I call doodle aerobics.

Dane Groeneveld: Okay?

Dr. Wanita Dixon: It's an exercise that I learned in innovation. It's going to open up their creativity, and again, start to help build that psychological safety and connecting with you. So doodle aerobics, you take three pieces of paper, you put on some music. You spend one minute taking that first piece of paper, you make as many circles as you can. Any size, shape doesn't matter. Just draw it. Right? They're going to have colors, markers, whatever. Then you set the clock for another minute, as many squares as possible.

Dane Groeneveld: Got it.

Dr. Wanita Dixon: Then another minute. As many rectangles as possible.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah.

Dr. Wanita Dixon: Here's the culminating event. Now you're going to all go to the whiteboard at the same time. This is for a small team, by the way. Each pick a spot on the whiteboard, look at someone in the room. Could be anyone. And draw them as a robot using only circles, triangles, and squares, right? So you're going to see some laughter, you're going to get some engagement. You're going to get a little bit of funniness, right? At the end of those five minutes, you tell them, well, now that we've created this together and had a little bit of fun, I'd like for you to share your ideas with the team in the same way.

Dane Groeneveld: Nice.

Dr. Wanita Dixon: No bad ideas. No laughing at anybody's picture or anybody's thought. Have them write it on a piece of paper and just put it in a box and you read it out.

Dane Groeneveld: That's cool. So they don't have to say it. It's a box. Is it anonymous or do they say it was Dane did this?

Dr. Wanita Dixon: It's on the relationship with your team.

Dane Groeneveld: Got it. Okay. That's cool.

Dr. Wanita Dixon: Because if you've got an extrovert like me, I don't care if you don't like my ideas-

Dane Groeneveld: You're hammering.

Dr. Wanita Dixon: Yeah, I'm hammering because I'll just come up with another one. You didn't like that? Okay. That's not an indictment on me. That's just an idea that didn't work. But for the introvert, for the person that I would argue probably has the most brilliant, clear view is sitting back observing everything, or has been around for a while. He or she has not made their career by flying close to the sun.

Dane Groeneveld: Correct.

Dr. Wanita Dixon: It's a different level of fearlessness. I'm pretty fearless.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah. I like that. And actually, fear and psychological safety are two very different things. They have some relationships, but they are very different. And one of my friends, Shaun McCambridge, had a guy called Mark Matthews on his podcast the other day, big wave surfer. And he was talking about how you overcome fear to surf these 60 and 80 foot waves, which pretty real, right? You're going to drown, going to break your arm, break your leg.

Dr. Wanita Dixon: Exactly.

Dane Groeneveld: But he talks about taking small leaps on getting comfortable with fear. And this doodle aerobics sounds like it's a really good way to break down the muscle memory. Let these perhaps introverted, or perhaps more reserved, more analytical team members get out of their day- to- day pattern and start embracing that little bit of fear in a safe way. And in time, that leads to the psychological safety. It's not an inverse relationship, but there's something there. It's really interesting.

Dr. Wanita Dixon: Go back to your childhood. What did you want to be when you grew up? What would you do if you had no fear of anything? Maslow's hierarchy of needs. What would you do if you weren't afraid of losing your house? What would you do if you weren't afraid of being fired? What would you do if you weren't afraid of being laughed at or told that you were crazy or different? And then how do we, as leaders, pull that out in a safe way?

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah. It's a burden.

Dr. Wanita Dixon: ...

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah. You got to remove those burdens from people to be truly operating at their highest value and passion point. Because even someone's salary, someone gets to a senior role managing people and spreadsheets, but they're actually a creative and they're like, hey, I could only earn. Yeah, there you go. I could only earn half what I earn if I really embrace my creative side. I'm stuck here and I'm doing this job because that keeps the boss happy. That keeps the customer happy. And that feeling of being stuck, that's not good for a company's culture. It's not good for company's innovation. It's not good for the individual.

Dr. Wanita Dixon: That's a mental health thing.

Dane Groeneveld: It is. Yeah. It's wellness. Wellness 101.

Dr. Wanita Dixon: It's Wellness 101. That takes us back to the letting off steam thing. So many artists that I'm meeting and I'm interacting with have full day jobs. Disclaimer. I'm not telling anyone to quit their job, but what I'm saying is look for opportunities in that day- to- day job to do it in an innovative or creative way that feeds your spirit. And I'm also big on the 15- minute vacation.

Dane Groeneveld: Okay. I don't know that one.

Dr. Wanita Dixon: Okay. So you're working your job, again, Dane the persona. Dane, the CFO of large corporation X, right? Based, it doesn't really matter. Based anywhere in the world. He is stressed out and he's constantly go, go, go. Your assistant is calling car service, your assistant is your handler. He or she is scheduling every second. But when you're transitioning to your next meeting, car service, or you're on the way to the airport, what that 15- minute vacation is, okay. Headphones on. Music of your choice. Close your eyes. If you're listening to the music, where do you imagine it was recorded? What city? What was your favorite vacation? What were you doing on vacation? And you're just, breathe. Think of it as a guided meditation.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah. That is, yeah.

Dr. Wanita Dixon: Just focus on an object, or a thing, or an experience.

Dane Groeneveld: That gives you-

Dr. Wanita Dixon: ... surfing.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah, go back to a wave. I like that. That's really powerful. That's really powerful. And it's interesting-

Dr. Wanita Dixon: ... there.

Dane Groeneveld: And it's interesting about meditation, about flow, about getting in the zone, about variety. There was a great book that I read called Ikigai that was talking about how people get in the flow with their health and with their activities. It was looking at people of Okinawa and other people in blue zones. But also Adam Grant came out the other day on LinkedIn with a poster, which I love, which basically said, we should embrace the side hustle and the gig economy because if Wanita or Dane do a project on a Tuesday night, and let's say it's for not- for- profit, or maybe it's a for- profit job on Fiverr or Upwork or whatever that is, and they're able to have some creative expression, they're able to innovate, do something that's not the burden of their daily job, daily life. The data shows that on Wednesday morning, when they turn up to their paid day job, their energy, their productivity, their communications, everything's improved. So maybe there is a theme, they're artists in residence. Yes. That's one way for the company to structure it. But how can we structure it in the individuals and what they do outside of the company to lift their energy, their wellness, their positivity.

Dr. Wanita Dixon: Like you said, it's the side hustle and it's volunteering. Now, the simplest one, or I should say the one that I'm most familiar with would be Habitat for Humanity. They're always looking for volunteers. And again, how do you find those volunteer opportunities based upon things that you're passionate about would be the answer. I have a dog. I love dogs. And so you could find a nonprofit in your area and they're raising money, again, the holidays are coming, they're raising money. You and your day job are... ah, you're a clinical researcher for perfumes. That's what you do. It's tedious. You used to love it, but now you're a bit bored. But you have a cat and you love your cat and you want to do something a little bit creative and you're like well experience. How could I combine those things? I know. I'm going to volunteer at the animal shelter because I'm on social media all the time. I'm going to go down there and tell them I don't want any money. I just want to raise awareness for the shelter around the holidays. So then maybe you're down there and you're" interviewing the animals", different animal each day. And then you like to paint. So you're drawing pictures of the, you take pictures of the cat or the dog, and you're doing art with the animals, right? And you start this buzz, and you're like, ooh, I could sell postcards around the holidays with these paintings and all of the money goes to the animal shelter. And this is just-

Dane Groeneveld: That's fun. But that riffing is what's important, is that you don't have to start with a plan. You go out there and you riff and you just see what emerges. And how does that bring energy? How does that inform your insights and your approach and everything else you're doing? It's pretty, it's exciting.

Dr. Wanita Dixon: Exactly.

Dane Groeneveld: It's exciting.

Dr. Wanita Dixon: You just enjoy, so when you go back to work, you're like, yep, I'm doing the work, but it's giving me the money to pay for those art supplies. Oh, it's giving me money to be able to-

Dane Groeneveld: There's a big gratitude piece.

Dr. Wanita Dixon: Yeah, exactly. ... business hours and talk to the people at the place. I'm having a pretty good fun time if you hadn't already guessed.

Dane Groeneveld: Oh, this is fun. I can't believe we've almost knocked through an hour. We'll have to do another show. I'm going to have to come on your podcast and talk about Dr. Dubs and Letting off Steam. To summarize some of the things we've talked about, I love that we've covered everything from engineering and innovation, to art, to art therapy and doodle aerobics, to artist in residence, and all around helping people and wellness there too. So it's products, it's people, it's processes. There's so much cool stuff that you bring out. If anyone wants to reach out to you, Wanita, and learn more about how they can engage with you, maybe bring you on as an artist in residence or have something to do with the technical creative, what's the best way for them to find you?

Dr. Wanita Dixon: Well, I'm on Instagram, @thetechnicalcreative. And I'm on LinkedIn. W- A-N-I-T-A D- I- X- O- N.

Dane Groeneveld: Excellent. Excellent. Well, I'm sure you'll get a few people reach out to you. Off all of these activities you're out there doing the community, it's exciting to see you reaching out and broadening out your touchpoints. And I look forward to reconnecting again soon. But thanks for coming on today.

Dr. Wanita Dixon: Thank you for having me on the Future of Teamwork. This was a lot of fun.

Dane Groeneveld: It was a buzz. Thank you.