Step one: how many humans?

When asked what the optimal number of people at a meeting is, Danielle cites the work of Nobel Peace Prize recipient Elinor Ostrom. Her work explores the idea that we are a cooperative species, not a competitive one. Her view was that eight is ideal the number for fostering energy and ideas. It allows people to ride the tide of the discussion – to rise forward when contributing to the conversation, and then fall back to reflect while others are talking. If however, you want the conversation to go deep, to enable vulnerability and intimacy, then Danielle recommends halving that number to four people or less.

Step two: which humans?

At Google Empathy Lab, Danielle deliberately set out to bring a creatively diverse range of people into the room when new projects were being discussed. Scientists, ecologists, activists, poets, artists all gathered, the idea being, the more diverse the participants, the richer the results. While you may not be creating products for masses of people like Google, (it has 15 products with more than 500 million users, and six products with more than two billion users) Danielle says you “add jet fuel to the rockets” by bringing in people from multiple perspectives, life experiences and skill depths when working on big strategic problems.

Step three: the right questions for this human moment?

The right question is a blank expanse of virtual paper. According to Danielle, it’s helpful to take questions like ‘what does the product needs to look like?’ or ‘what should the outcome of the project be’ or ‘how will we measure success?’ off the whiteboard, at first. “Just intuitively and deeply trust that if you get the right people into the conversation, and you invite them to be the fullness and more expansive versions of themselves…by starting from an open, curious place that allows mystery, not knowing, and the weirdness to be welcome…then magic stuff happens,” she says.