Transcripts are edited for readability and clarity.

Nigel: Hello, my name is Nigel Prentice, and I am a Design Director at IBM. And I would like to welcome you to the It’s about time podcast. The podcast is coming from the Racial Equity in Design work at IBM.

Nigel: I love being inspired by those who are much wiser than myself, and so here we go. “Success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles, which he overcomes while trying to succeed.” That’s Booker T. Washington.

Nigel: Secondly, “Just don’t give up what you’re trying to do. Where there is love and inspiration, I don’t think you can go wrong.” That’s Ella Fitzgerald. And hopefully, you’ll see how those ideas of inspiration, love, perseverance, success, and overcoming connect to my guest today.

Nigel: Mr. Oen Hammonds, designer, mentor, Distinguished Design Executive at IBM, is a bit of a celebrity in the design world. He has completed work for several Fortune 500 companies, including IBM, BMW, Procter & Gamble.

Nigel: His professional background includes jobs with the United States Army, Northern Kentucky University, and other advertising agencies. He’s also been featured in design-focused podcasts. He’s been a speaker at several conferences and gatherings. To say he’s important to the design industry is an understatement. From teaching design to being a chair on the national board of directors at AIGA, the largest organization of design professionals, Oen enjoys helping others be the best they can be, both in their design career and in everyday life. I’d like you to welcome Oen Hammonds. Oen, thank you for being with me.

Nigel: Of course, of course. Listen, my memories of you go back to the early days in the revitalization of the design program here at IBM. I’ll never forget you were delivering what we call at the time — it’s still called playback zero. It was a playback zero of cybersecurity software, I think it was QRadar, perhaps. Do you remember some of those early days?

Oen: Yes, that was my first role at IBM was working on the IBM Security team.

Nigel: That’s right. So, tell us a little bit about what your role is today. You’ve recently received a promotion, congratulations!

Oen: Thank you. Thank you very much. As the IBM Distinguished Designer, I sit within the corporate HR team and I run a team called the IBMer Experience team, and we’ve had different flavors and variations of that since I joined HR about five years ago.

Nigel: So, HR— obviously, everyone has HR departments and HR functions and companies. What is your role specifically in that group and what does design bring to the conversation strategically for an HR corporate division?

Oen: My role is pretty unique. Like you said, a lot of companies do have HR departments, but there’s really — I haven’t found anyone like me who is a design professional working within the corporate HR sphere. And in my role, it’s to really look at HR and the offerings that we bring to our employees and the experiences, the enablement’s, and the learning at a 30,000-foot level.

Oen: It’s not just centered on systems or centered on consulting, but it’s to look at those things at a holistic level, as a technical executive, and look at are we providing the best experiences for all of our employees? Are we providing simplified, end-to-end task and products that can help our employees focus on the things that we’re hiring them for? Which is providing the best products to our clients.

Oen: And so, HR is not in the way. But when they do need to use HR, it’s simple. It’s easy. it can be completed within a timely manner. And so, they can go back to their day-to-day roles.

Nigel: I see, and for those who might not have experience with this side of the design craft, what business do designers have going in there and helping HR redefine how it delivers these services? What special perspective do designers bring to this conversation?

Oen: Well, you know, HR practitioners and professionals are amazing at what they do in evaluating the best products to help, you know, IBMers with their benefits and to help IBMers with their skills and learning. What we do as designers is make sure that we’re looking at that from a user’s perspective of not just, “oh, we we’ve provided you this tool with like 10,000 features,” but we may take a step back and look at it holistically, and say like, “that’s a lot, we need to simplify that.” Can we provide them a much more simplified experience that still completes the things that they need to do? And the company can still get the things that they need from that as well. We’re almost like the voice of the IBMers, but we would never say that. Well, I’m speaking for IBMers. It’s more of I’ve spoken to IBMers.

Oen: And this is what they are saying about using your tool, your enablement, your experience. and this is how you can improve it by simplifying it, by maybe taking out some of those bells and whistles that no one’s really using and focus in on the things that they really need to use within your tools and experiences.

Nigel: Gotcha. Got you. So, HR is concerned with things from a future employee being a candidate, and what’s their interaction in the sort of interview, discovery, application process all the way through hiring and onboarding experiences. There’s software that has to manage all that. Their user interfaces, their tools, their processes, communication channels, everything has to be managed and that’s just the upfront are we gonna hire this person? And so, there’s a ton of experiences there that a design team to get involved in. Also, while a person is employed, there’s benefits administration. There’s you know, retirement planning. I mean, the number of things HR covers is expansive.

Oen: Is very expansive, which is why HR gets blamed for a lot of things as well, too. Nigel: There you go.

Oen: We do look at what we call these very specific employee journeys that are arrive, grow, work, live and depart. And we look at every single one of those pillars, cuz every single employee at IBM has to go through them.

Nigel: Mm-hmm

Oen: Some may have some deeper things that they may have to go through, but every IBMer goes through an onboarding or hiring experience. Every IBMer has to grow. What does that growth look like for an executive versus an entry level employee? What are the lived experiences that an IBMer may go through? The benefits, the compensation, those different things. Work — everyone works here. I mean, I hope everyone works here. And so, like what’s their work life like? And then what’s their departure like? Departure’s just as important as arrival because we want anyone who’s departing IBM to be advocates for IBM. Every single one of those phases are important to look at.

Nigel: So, the early part of your career, before you were in HR, working in this way was heavy on graphic design, visual design. What were you able to bring from your training and your experience? You know, from a brand perspective, visual communications, visual design, interface design, those are sort of more tactical, tangible — you know, you could click on a thing that you designed that’s out in market, right?

Nigel: What do you bring from that more product centric design to this more service and strategic design? How did you bridge that gap?

Oen: When I think about my previous career before joining HR, I look at it as what are the things that I learned, and what are the best practices that I can bring over and help other people that are not designers learn from those experiences? Not only what are the best practices — where did I, you know, not do so well? Where did I fail? And make sure that the people that I’m working with — and the majority of the people I work with are non-designers, so they don’t have that mindset. And I can provide them that insight. Whether it’s technical insight or even just experience insight so that they can get an understanding of when we are making recommendations to them, that it’s based off of experience. It’s not just a— you know, well, I like it this way.

Oen: It’s based off best practices, principles of things that are expected in the consumer experience that we should be bringing to IBMers. And that’s one of the things that I distinctly remember Ginni Rometty talking about. You know, the best experiences is the consumer experience. And we should be doing that within our products, and within our own house as well, and the services that we provide IBMers as employees.

Nigel: Right, right. That’s powerful to think about, you know, mostly because IBM is such a business-to-business company. If you were to go out and ask 20 people, what does IBM do? How does it make most of its money? I bet most folks would not know. And so, for our CEO to say, can we make IBM as loved as a consumer product is loved? That’s an amazing thought because —I think raises the bar for us as designers. Wouldn’t you agree?

Oen: Definitely, and it really expands where design can make an impact. Me being an HR is a great example of that. How can design help improve our internal services that we provide to employees to match the experiences that they expect in their everyday life outside of work?

Nigel: Right. Right, right. As an employee, I think I’ve seen some of those experiences come to life. You know, no matter where one comes from in life, the thing that they’re doing when there in your position, in our career, meaning this many years in, usually is a pretty stark contrast to kind of where we come from. So, I wanted to rewind the clock a bit and go back to what makes Oen tick.

Nigel: So, if you could talk a little bit about where you from, where’d you grow up, and what was your upbringing like?

Oen: I’m originally from Louisville, Kentucky. And I was raised in a part of Louisville called Smoketown or the specific area is called Sheppard Square housing development. The projects.

Nigel: Mm okay. Alright. Alright.

Oen: So, I’m a product of the projects and you know, single parent. Youngest of three — three of us in the house. And most of my background was going to inner city schools and just really trying to, you know — my brother was an artist, and everyone did some type of crafts in my family. But my brother was probably the most prolific. He’s an amazing pencil drawer, and so I would sit down and mimic him and draw comic books and things like that.

Nigel: How much older is he?

Oen: There’s five years in between each one of us. So, my brother’s in the middle and my sister’s the oldest.

Nigel: Gotcha.

Oen: I would, say it’s the start of an inkling of creativity. I would say middle school is when I got the opportunity to start playing around with computers. But even before that, I was playing around with the Mac, the old school Mac classic box — Two SC, whatever that thing was. And using Mac Draw and, you know, whatever Photoshop .05 or whatever. Drawing 8-bit design and things like that on the computers. And, you know, all of a sudden, I just was getting asked these random requests from mostly faculty and teachers in elementary, middle school to like, “hey, can you draw this?” “Can you make a brochure on that?” And it’s like I’ll figure it out; I don’t know.

Nigel: So, you were asked to do graphic design gigs in elementary? Okay.

Oen: In elementary school!

Nigel: That’s gotta be a record.

Oen: Yeah, I don’t know. At that time, I had no clue what I was doing. No clue what I was doing. And, you know in high school, it became a little bit more formalized because of newsletter and like, you know, computers got better and things like that.

Oen: So, I had a better understanding of that than most people did, cuz I was just always — we never had a computer at home, so I just spent hours whenever I had free time at school playing around with the computer and using whatever drawing or illustration program on the computers to just learn how to do those things. I just had an interest and I just kept pushing it.

Nigel: At that point, elementary, middle, and even into high school, were you still mostly self-taught?

Oen: Yes, never had any formal training in any of my early education around how to use a computer to draw or to like make design pieces. I kinda taught myself how to do a lot of those things.

Nigel: And was it a lot of sketching? Like one does when they’re 10-years-old and 13-years-old, you’re just basically drawing what you see around you. So, it’s more art maybe at first, but then once people start giving you “commissions” now starts to blend into design, cuz you’re doing art for an outcome.

Oen: Right.

Nigel: You know, so you’re probably doing a little of both, I’m assuming. Like expression, but as well as, oh, there’s a thing someone wants me to do and I’ll do it to their specs, so to speak.

Oen: Exactly, and a lot of those things of learning was trial and error. Trial and error was big, because it wasn’t as — you know, command Z didn’t really exist back then. So, you really wanted to make sure what you were going through design and when you hit print, like actually worked. So, a lot of folding papers and doing different things to make sure that when you sent something off to the printer or whoever’s gonna output it, that it worked. Otherwise, you gotta like start essentially all over again.

Nigel: Mm-hmm, there’s something about physical design of artifacts. I remember those days, too and sometimes I wish I was back crafting, you know, the little knives and you know, scissors and paste and trying to make something useful or interesting out of whatever materials you had at hand. So, that’s really cool. So, then you went into high school, and then after high school, what’s next?

Oen: So, before the end of high school, I joined the military when I was a junior. At that time, back in the early nineties, I graduated in 92. So, like early nineties, there was a thing called the split option program that the Army was offering. And so split option meant that you can join your junior year of high school. Go to do your training. Come back, finish up your senior year of high school, and then you go active duty after you graduate your senior year. So, I did that, and it was probably one of the best decisions that I made because at that time, I had really no clue what I was gonna do.

Oen: My mom couldn’t afford me to go to school. I couldn’t you know, take out loans and go to school, what the majority of people do. I also spent the last year of high school just doubling down and getting myself together. And was really by that point — as I think about it now, I probably would’ve burnt myself out if I tried to like to go to college then. And so, going to the military was at that time, the best decision that I could make for myself. So, that I’m not floating, and that I am also given a gateway out of the projects, out of Sheppard Square.

Oen: My mom worked so hard to put me into places that were like — why are you putting me in Boy Scouts? Why are you putting me in Junior Achievement? Why are you making me be a Red Cross volunteer? As I think about it now, if I had not made that decision to go and join the Army, I probably would’ve repeated the life that she did not want me to repeat. Which was to continue living — be the next generation that lives and grows up and has a family in the projects.

Nigel: This is really fun to uncover. So, from a couple of interviews, previously, I’ve heard a couple things about your time in service. Apparently, you’ve got a nickname called “The Hammer” or simply, “Hammer.” And you designed in the military, even though it wasn’t your job. Could you speak about both of those?

Oen: Yeah, so “The Hammer” comes from — I was just a hard charger. For those who have never seen me before or met me before, I’m 5′6”, I’m a buck 30. I probably weighed a buck 40 when I was in the military, and I took no flak from anyone.

Nigel: Mm!

Oen: And I don’t know why it was that way. Well, I do know why I was that way. Growing up in the projects, you can’t back down. And so, when I joined the military, I think I made people — people stopped taking me for granted because of my size and the name “The Hammer” came from was — I just hammered down on something. If I had a goal or a, you know, like a drive to do something I went and did it.

Nigel: Gotcha.

Oen: And so that’s where “the hammer” comes from.

Nigel: That was an earned and honest nickname that described how you got down in the military. People knew when Mr. Oen comes, better watch out. Sounds like you kicked off your design career in the military a little bit. How did that happen?

Oen: Yeah, you know, I think one of the key things that I remember, one of the key moments that people started tapping me to do some design work was when — it was actually basic training. I served in chemical warfare and the unit emblem for chemical warfare is the dragon. And so, one of the first things that I did in the military was drew our mascot in our barracks. So, like a huge wall, me and another guy, Andrew, we both paired up together and drew this huge emblem on the wall. Then it just kind of like spiraled out from there. I think I made a comment and probably was an inappropriate comment — I made a comment about PowerPoint presentation that was being shown by one of the commanders that was like, “I can’t understand what you’re showing me.”

Nigel: You said this in a briefing or something?

Oen: It was after, it wasn’t during the briefing. I think I made a comment to one of the people in the room and next thing I know it’s like, “hey, can you redesign this then?” And so, I redesigned it and sent it back to them and I ended up — that turned into like spiraling to like other jobs. I ended up doing some mascots on the side of like tanks and helicopters. That’s kinda like the beginning of really formalizing, you know, what could I do with something that I was passionate about? And at that time, still wasn’t really clearly graphic design because I didn’t know. I never — at that point in time, I never really looked it up. I never really looked up what can I do with this as a career?

Oen: By that point in time, I served eight years in the military. And my second — I did two tours. The two, four-year tours, the second tour was reservist. So, I was back home, spent doing reserve duty, but then also going to community college. And at that time, I was taking just the basic classes until I figured out like what degree I’m going to do.

Oen: And I just started going to the library and it’s like, what can I do with art? I mean, that’s the starting point because that’s what I framed everything that I was doing around was art. And going and looking it up, somehow, some way, two topics came up, commercial art and graphic design.

Oen: And commercial art made sense at the beginning, because at the community college, I was going to Jefferson Community College, they had commercial art classes. So, it’s like, “oh, I’ll take those classes. “And then, I had some really, really good teachers that let me know if like, “hey, you’re really good at this.” I don’t know. To me, I’m just making my way through the class. It’s like, “you should go to a four-year university.” And it’s like, alright, what are the options there then? And further library reading and things like that, that’s when I discovered graphic design. And once I started reading about what graphic design is and started looking at books of graphic design, the annuals and things like that, it’s like, “oh, I get it now!” Like I can see why he’s telling me what he’s telling me, because I can see poster design. I can see logo design. It’s not just about the illustrations I’m making. It’s about the context that those things live in as well.

Nigel: Mm-hmm.

Oen: And so that’s when I, you know, decided to transfer from community college and go to my alma mater, Northern Kentucky University, and graduate with BFA in graphic design.

Nigel: Okay. One of the things I want our listeners to know about you is that I’ve had the pleasure of watching you and working with you here at IBM since I started in 2014. And so, as of this recording, that’s eight years ago. That’s eight years of us, eight years — you know, walking these halls together and seeing each other develop. You know, we talked about doing playbacks around software and your designs are on screen and you’re walking folks through it.

Nigel: And then you turned right around and did some — I think like line art posters, or some sort of posters for one of the world tours that you were— it’s really interesting that you have had the opportunity to travel the world training folks in design activation or delivering activation around design and design thinking. And so, what were some of those countries you visited? And can you talk a little bit about the poster series you did for those cities that people love so much?

Oen: Yeah, the program that you’re actually referring to was a global design week program. we traveled to Shanghai, Bangalore India, Stuttgart, Böblingen, Germany, Singapore, Tokyo, so a lot of places. The core of the program was about how do we — at that point in time, we were actually — if you remember, we were doing a lot of flying people into Austin. 30 or 40 people come here, we’ll teach your team how to use design thinking and have a design mindset, as you are developing your product experiences. And what Phil Gilbert charge us with — who was the leader of design at that time was we need to scale it.

Oen: How can we scale this in larger way to hit more people? One of the things that we thought about was instead of flying everyone here, why don’t we just fly a smaller team to those sites where those teams are sitting? And also activate those people, who are what we call “magic people” — the people who are like I really love design thinking. I want to coach, I wanna do this. How can we further empower them to be us without them coming to Austin all the time?

Oen: And so, that was the core of that program was teaching — going out to teach design thinking to all the key sites where IBM sits, and all the key products, and hallmark products. As a part of that program, you know, I always have to scratch my design itch. Like my traditional graphic design. But I also wanted to thank these people. I’ve seen people come here and they sit in a room on day one of product design camp, and their arms are crossed, and they’re leaning back in their chair, and they’re mad.

Nigel: For no reason!

Oen: For no reason. Someone told me to be here.

Nigel: Right? I’m not a designer. What is this? What does this soft squishy stuff mean, anyway? I’ve gotta ship a product.

Oen: Exactly, I didn’t just want to deliver that experience. I also wanted to leave them with something memorable, something that we — and I, particularly, appreciate them spending a week with us and hopefully learning something new that they can take back to their teams on Monday. I could do some easy digital artifacts to give to them, but I’m a prolific and lover of screen printing and illustrating. And so, something to help them realize that we’re thinking of you when we come here, we’re not just going to place to place and landing, was let me do some actual screen-printed posters of the city that we’re visiting, that is only unique to them.

Oen: And so, the city line posters, which is what I call them, are that. They are signature marks of those cities that we visit that only the people there would recognize. And we only did a limited series. So, once we did those posters and we gave them out to the teams, that was it. That poster was destroyed and no longer reprinted anymore. It was only the people who were in the workshops, and that city got those posters.

Nigel: That is such an insightful touch that you’ve added to the program. If you are listening to this, you’ve got one of the unique posters specific for that time, and that’s it. And Oen, that points to a bigger theme I’ve noticed seeing your work over the years is that you always do exactly that. You always find a way — I’ve noticed to insert — well first, discover what the deeper meaning is. It’s not enough to just design something to some specification.

Nigel: Listen, we’re at IBM; 300,000 employees here, right? Every country in the world, there’s only 3000 designers. That means there’s a ton of people who are not designers here who talk in terms of features, specifications, requirements, etc. Standard sort of technical, professional jargon, if you will. So how do you do that? How do you go beyond the specification? Go beyond the requirement and dig out that deeper meaning that everybody loves it when they see it. But to the lay person, they don’t know that they’re missing it until you show it to them.

Oen: That’s a really great question, mainly because I’ve never really intentionally think about it. It’s almost like a feeling. It’s the part of design that you can’t teach. I mean, if you do enough sketches, if you ideate on it, if you brainstorm about it, if you bounce it off a wall or bounce it off of someone else. And you start to kind of hear pattern or you feel that pattern. Is there something there? if I don’t do this, I may be missing something. If I do it, and I hit the mark, then it’s great.

Oen: But if I do it and it doesn’t hit the mark, at least I know. So, it’s about tapping that inner feeling, tapping that inner voice in your head and really trying to see what would happen when I do it. Not what will happen if I do it, but what will happen when I do it?

Nigel: Interesting, are there times when you feel more connected to that inner voice, and you find it easier to get to that creative inspiration?

Oen: When it’s not something personal to me. You know, designing for yourself is hard. But when it’s not about me or I don’t see myself in the thing that I’m designing for, but I need to get to understand who I’m designing for, the picture just seems much more, broader and much more clearer to me than when I’m trying to design something for myself.

Nigel: I see what you mean. Listen, that almost sounds like a textbook definition of empathy, right? Different than sympathy. We’re not trying to recreate someone else’s emotion within our emotional self. We’re trying to — to the best of our ability, understand the life, the experience, or the moment that someone else is having, usually when interacting with some of our software or our consulting services, or some other sort of offering or interaction with IBM. But, by and large, like you said, that’s essentially what a lot of designers tried to do is try to have the deepest empathy possible so that the designs end up being about the person whom you’re serving.

Nigel: So, talking about having passion for something that’s not even yourself is easier. That leads me to some work you did around leadership. But I think before you went into HR, we needed and continued to need — but at the time, we especially needed some enablement for our design leaders and managers.

Nigel: And in the early part of the program, I had a little bit of programmatic approaches for that and got together all the new hire leads and managers — sort of people in the mid-career and above. This is how we’re talking about career management, and this is how we’re investing in, hiring and expansion and physical space and studios. And then you came in with something better. It was called Lead & Hustle. Can you talk about that a little bit?

Oen: Yeah, that was one of the last programs that I did before going into HR, and it was one of my favorites. The program was centered around how do we make sure that our mid-tier — people who have been here for about five years or more are understanding and figuring out what is the right leadership role for them. Because if we look at what typically happens is that, oh, you’ve been on the team the longest, you’re a manager or —

Nigel: Right, right, right. Qualified or not, right.

Oen: You’re qualified or not. You’re a manager! You’re a manager! Hey, guess what? Happy birthday! You’re a manager. But we’re not giving people space to explore that or to really understand what are my leadership, strengths, and weaknesses and you know, where should I find people to help me? Or where should I go in and learn more? And so, the Lead & Hustle program was about helping people who were right at that point they’re almost going into like a more “formalized” leadership role, whether it was being a design lead for their team, or it was being a people manager on their team and helping them understand their strengths in their weaknesses and have a safe space to practice and learn about that as well, too.

Oen: The Lead & Hustle program was nomination only. So, you had to be nominated by your manager. You had to like put in an application as well too. We held it in our space here in Austin, but also it was a safe space. We had a social contract at the beginning of the week-long workshop where everyone had to agree that like, no names. Like no names of people that, you know, we may need to talk about how you interact with them and how it may have not been a negative experience or things like that. But we wanna learn from those experiences as well, too. Not just from myself, but from two key areas.

Oen: One from other leaders within Austin and beyond to come in and talk about their personal experiences, and how they have accomplished them. Then second from each other. Creating a space where they can actually start to create a community amongst each other, and really share stories and talk about how they have gotten through those experiences. At the end of it, the hope is that they get a better understanding of what to do next.

Oen: So, what do I need to continue to do to build my leadership skills? And also, a better understanding of where they can go as leaders within IBM because it’s a much bigger and broader leadership paths than most people think that there are. Which is one of the great things at IBM is that we have multiple ways of being a leader even without having a title. And for them to be able to hear that and understand you can be a leader and not have two letters in front of your name. You don’t have to be the DP [Design Principal]. You don’t have to be a DD [Distinguished Designer]. You can be a leader before you even get to those more formalized paths.

Nigel: Right. Right, right. it was a safe place — a lot of people to explore their ability to be leaders, sort of maybe uncover the art of the possible with regards to leadership. And then what are some of the design toolkit items that a leader can pull out or a manager can pull out and use when they’re back with their teams?

Oen: Exactly.

Nigel: Is that about, right?

Oen: Mm-hmm

Nigel: Sounds good. I’m sure there was some empathy mapping going on. I’m sure there was a lot of self-discovery, which I’ve noticed, you’re really good at that idea of self-discovery. You’re not afraid to ask yourself the tough question. If you’re known as “The Hammer” for your teammates in the military, you’re not afraid to point that same criticality at yourself. In our conversations, you you’ve shared with me, some of those ideas actually started when you were much younger. I want to kind of touch on those cause I think it’s important for us to internalize this concept that hopefully we get into.

Nigel: And I’m gonna introduce and move into this topic by laying out a few facts for folks. So, we’re at IBM, we’re in an organization that is the home for the design ethos at the company. At first, it was called IBM Design, this sort of internal unit that Phil Gilbert stood up and led. And now Katrina Alcorn leads the group and it’s called the Design Program Office. Inside the Design Program Office, we have things like the design career framework and playbook, the job codes, the promotional band levels, the whole rubric, and what it takes to be designers defined by this construct called the Design Program Office.

Nigel: You and I got our start working for this unit internal to the company and because all that exists, one of the things that program set up was — and is the Design Principal program and the Distinguished Designer program. So those are two very lofty achievements in one’s career. It recognizes and rewards somebody’s craft leadership. Their ability to deliver design in their business unit, and it does it with a focus on mission. The mission of a DP and really of a DD, Design Principal, Distinguished Designer is to deliver some domain within design that is unique to that person that the company does not get from anyone else. And moves either the practice forward or the company forward in its achievement of business outcomes, as well as human centric outcomes. And that’s how we kind of think about those two.

Nigel: You are someone who started as a product designer. You moved into education and activation type work, became a Design Principal. Now you’re a Distinguished Designer. Now you’re an executive, and now you’re at this point of your career where you’re looking at the next frontier.

Nigel: And I want to talk about that story arc for you and how amazing it’s been from honestly, those projects you talked about early on. There’s this underlying theme that you’ve talked about called “the onlys” in the past. What, what does that mean to you being an “only”?

Oen: Yeah, you know, it’s actually a very recent concept that Fortune magazine writer, Ellen McGirt introduced to me. She runs an article called Race Ahead, but we also both spoke at The Design of Business | The Business of Design conference, and that’s where I first met her at. That’s where she talked about being one of the only, and as I think about the beginning of my career, I never thought about being one of the onlys.

Oen: I always really thought about, you know, what do I need to do to be successful and who can help me? When I heard about this concept and got a better understanding of this concept after hearing Ellen McGirt talk about it, I reflect on that time, and I was one of the onlys in the room. A lot of the times. From Boy Scouts to Junior Achievement to Red Cross volunteer, to middle and high school, and it was because my mom put me in these places because she did not want me to repeat her life.

Nigel: And just to be clear, one of the only Black, young people in the setting around majority non-Black folks?

Oen: Exactly, exactly. My mom did what she needed to do to make sure I was successful. Yes, I probably at that time hated her for it mainly because — it wasn’t because I was reflecting, “oh, I’m the only Black in the room here; I’m uncomfortable.” It was a version of imposter syndrome.

Oen: Like, why am I here? What am I trying to achieve in this space? And you know, over time, I got use to being one of the onlys in the room, because my focus was about what do I need to do to be successful? Who can help me to be successful in this space? And with the focus on that, as I reflect on my career now, I won’t say it’s easy — being one of the only in the room. Being one of the only Black Distinguished Design Executives at IBM. But I would say, it’s not something that I’ve taken into consideration when — my role at IBM is to help IBM be successful. I don’t let that factor become a roadblock.

Nigel: Wow, that is so critical. I can’t really underscore how impactful that idea is. Here we are in 2022, two-ish plus a few months, years after George Floyd, where the world had to realize that we’re not done with race relations. We’re not in a post-race relations world. We still have —especially in the U.S. issues to resolve at a societal level.

Nigel: Right here in Austin, Texas, you can go on the east side of the freeway and see that it’s a different world than the west side where the lake and the hills and everything are. My son happens to go to school on the west side — because I’ve got this role at this company, I’m gonna be able to do some things for my family. I’m trying to underscore this concept of the only. I’m the only one in the room, too, most of the time, just like you are. And because of that, I do acknowledge I get to receive some privilege. However, I was also the only one in the room at the same time when you were at those young ages because of my mother as well.

Nigel: When did you come to that realization? Was it because you were a prodigy as we talked about earlier and even in elementary and middle school, you were able to turn that idea on its ear and say, I might be the only Black kid here. I might be the only one from Smoketown. I might be the only one riding the bus for this long, but I’m gonna turn this into a success moment.

Nigel: Did that happen or organically or did that evolve over time, maybe through additional influences — people, military college, your first, your career stops?

Oen: It’s really in the back of my mind, organically. It was never something that I walk into the room and the first thing I’m doing is like looking left and right. Am I the only one? Am I only Black person in the room? I’ve never done that. I don’t do that. Is it something that I happen to see when I’m walking in? Sure. But usually when I’m walking into a room for a reason, I got something to do.

Oen: I need to complete a task. I need to get something done. I need to get questions answered. And that’s why I’m in the room. I don’t wanna put myself in front of the work. The work is not about me. The work is about what do I need to do to accomplish? Who do I need to be working with to accomplish this? And making sure — particularly as a manager, making sure that my team has everything that they need to accomplish that work. We either all fail, or we all succeed.

Nigel: And so, in other words, the outcome, the idea of success, the idea of achievement, is the leading thought in your mind, right. And I think that’s important, right? I mean, we can’t hide behind the fact that Black folks in America have had hundreds of years of discrimination that’s not quite done yet. We can acknowledge it, but we must achieve regardless. I mean, I think that’s one of the things I’m hearing you say. And I think, you know, it doesn’t matter if one is Black or a minority, or even in the majority, achievement matters, right? That’s something that rings true in my ears when I hear you talk today, and also every other time. Whether it was Lead & Hustle, or the poster work, the artistry you’ve done, and other leadership venues I’ve seen you in. Achievement matters first.

Nigel: Now, was that always easy for you? Cause it seems so easy. you’re such a — day to day quiet person. I wouldn’t say you’re boisterous. You don’t have a bunch of braggadocio about you. You’re not bragging. Your presence is mild, yet strong and confident. Has that always been your ethos about you? You know, as a designer walking in, we all have to choose how we’re gonna represent ourselves. Has that quiet confidence always been your hallmark?

Oen: Not really, it’s something that has evolved over time. It’s the things that, you know, my mentors, my coaches, have helped me hone. My wife is a great example of it. You know, explaining some of the situations and things that I’m working through, and she’ll coach me. And it’s like, you can’t say that. Here’s a better way of saying that or you sound negative when you say that. And so, she’s helped me over time, rephrase things of like — I’m still being to the point. You know, when I communicate, I don’t like the fluff. I wanna get to what do we need to do? What are we trying to accomplish? And these are some ways of doing it.

Oen: That takes out all of the dancing around the situation. Let’s cut through it and get through some of the underlying things and understand why they are that way.

Oen: I get this sometimes with people dm’ing on the Slack, it’s like thank you for asking that question because sometimes, some people are like, “oh, you know, like can be this way, it can be that way.” I just kind of like —well, this is what I know. I call it judicial transparency. it’s, letting people know this is why it is the way it is without, hanging someone out to dry or revealing so much people may just start throwing their hands up and walking out. But giving them enough so that they understand a bit more about the situation than sometimes other leaders are willing to reveal.

Nigel: This is awesome, cuz you don’t get this in design school.

Oen: No. Oh no!

Nigel: How to be a leader with Oen Hammonds, here. This is awesome. Judicial transparency. I love that concept.

Nigel: And I think which is a great bridge into what you’re doing now. So, you are a Distinguished Designer in HR. You’re the highest-ranking design leader in our HR organization. How do we bring these themes together?

Nigel: We’ve talked about the onlys, and that was a little bit about our ethnic background and fitting into this great American experiment. We talked about being a graphic designer and how those skills apply to connecting with humans. And now you’re in the human resource group and you’re driving all of these experiences. You’ve only been in this role couple months now, right? Let’s fast forward 12 months. What does success look like as you define it? New executive, what does success mean?

Oen: I’m still trying to get to 12 minutes from now. Nigel: Well said! Listen, I’m right there with you, man. Right there with you.

Oen: You know, I think 12 months from now, there are some really great decisions being made, at the top. Obed Louissaint is my boss — boss of bosses within transformation and culture. He’s on this amazing mission to transform HR, which I think has been one of his passions for a while before he became an SVP. So now he’s empowered to really make that change. The change that I see is how do we help employees be enthusiastic about the work that they’re doing? To bring their full selves to work; to understand how to grow in their career at IBM.

Oen: And what are the — what we call growth behaviors that I need to exemplify to be successful at IBM? Transparency, resourcefulness, outcome-focus, those behaviors, plus — there’s six all together that he has as like his, you know, principles or like manifesto, even that all IBMers should be exhibiting.

Oen: And when we say all IBMers, it is from the band A’s all the way at the top, to the band six, that’s brand-new hire to the company.

Nigel: Do you see your role now as a lot of service design? This understanding of journeys, understanding who you’re serving, how those roles work together, and then maybe even adding in sort of some service blueprinting of how do we build, if you will. How do we evolve the existing infrastructure, whether it’s technology or business processes or other things to serve that experience that then serves that employee?

Oen: Yes, service design is a huge part of our work. We’re not just looking at the front-end and we’re not only looking at the back end. We’re looking at front, middle, and back. How do these things connect? How does the back end affect the front-end and prevent IBMers from being successful?

Oen: How is the middle maybe a roadblock or not really passing the right information to the front-end and again, not allowing IBMers to be successful? To get to that, we have to evaluate every single swim lane in that service design to make sure that there is a clear connection and a frictionless connection between that backend to the middle, to the front. Nigel: Mm-hmm amazing. Good stuff. So, let’s move into bringing this together. You’ve been in product design, you’ve been in education design, and education activation delivery. Now you’re in corporate HR design. What does your magic wand look like? If you had a magic wand and we could all wake up tomorrow and IBM would be a better place for design to flourish and maybe other companies could follow our magical path at that moment. What would your magic wand do? What would you do if you had that magic wand?

Oen: I would say my main first wish would be to have us all aligned on the same goals as a company. Like all major corporations, we have our own internal silos, and those silos get in the way of progress. And if we were all aligned and really worked together as a company — I wouldn’t just make the silos disappear, but have the silos actively work and listen to each other.

Nigel: And would design play an active role in facilitating those conversations? What is special about the design approach in that reality?

Oen: For me, design plays a role in helping bring people together.

Nigel: Got it.

Oen: And like construct the story of how we can do it together. Design, you know, in its true and purest definition is about problem solving. A lot of other professions are not about problem solving, particularly at IBM. We’re a technology organization, so a lot of the things that we do are very technical. Design is that one that can rise above what I call the “technical black hole” that we all tend to get into, and just be able to look left, look right. Listen to everyone, pull a summary, story together of — these are the common things that I’m hearing from every single leader, every single business unit.

Oen: These are the things that we would recommend focusing in on. And this is the end result that you will get by working together on these common issues.

Nigel: I love that. Same question, but different angle on it. Let’s say you’ve got the ear of every designer here at the company and they’re asking you for career advice. If you could prescribe a bit of advice that is potentially uniform across everybody working hard to push their career forward, what would be the number one most prioritized thing that you think they need to hear?

Oen: Find five people that are not like you.

Nigel: Wow! You gotta say more about that one.

Oen: I think we have a tendency, not just at IBM, but I think as a society in general to always want to be around people that are like ourselves. Whether it’s all the visual designers hanging together, all the developers hanging together, all the Black designers hanging together — I mean, name a group. You see in our Slack, it’s lots of same’s. Lots of similar Slack channels of the same people.

Oen: I reflect on the mentors and the coaches that I’ve had, many of them are not designers in practice. Many of ’em are technical leaders. I’m a huge fan of history, so I have one mentor as a history fan. He’s not even mentor really anymore. He’s someone that I bounce ideas off of, and we kind of like shoot the jive all the time. We talk about history and things like that, and I get a lot from our conversations. But having those different perspectives can just really open your eyes to how big the world is.

Oen: I feel that when we insulate ourselves with similar people, we’re missing out on so many things. We’re missing out on networking. We’re missing out on job opportunities. We’re missing out on seeing things from a different perspective.

Oen: That’s one of the biggest things that I would recommend to our design population. Find five people — you can start within IBM — that are different job professions, or in a different business unit or somewhere else beyond where you probably would never go.

Nigel: That’s fantastic. Listen, I think you said it best right there. I think these ideas of not getting stuck being in only, but rather see those contexts as opportunities to look for success and let success be your measure. I think this idea about rising above silos with authentic listening, and everybody else get outta the way and let design help drive those conversations that get to authenticity at work with these very interesting and important business conversations.

Nigel: Design is already imbued with the tools to drive meaningful connections across silos, and then individually, be open and invite others to help you in your growth. It’s interesting that as someone who is well known for your craft and expression of artistry and design that your singular most important answer is not the craft of design or the output of the work, but the connection with people. And that to me is powerful.

Nigel: So, with the dedication you’ve brought to your career, with the self-directed aspects that you shared with us, and the self-taught approach that then drove the introspection and the success. Again, I go back to that meaning that you always infuse into all of your work.

Nigel: it’s been an honor and a pleasure not only to be your coworker these last several years, but to sit down with you here today. Thank you, Oen this was amazing.

Oen: Thank you, Nigel. It’s been a pleasure to be on the show and you’ve been amazing to work with as well too. So, thank you for your mentorship, your advocacy, and I look forward to continuing working.

Nigel: Well said, well said! Thanks brother.

Nigel: Thank you for listening to It’s about time. I’d like to thank Alisha Moore [Padolsky], our producer, and David Avila, our audio engineer. And thanks to the entire Racial Equity in Design workstream here at IBM for making this possible. Everyone, be safe and be well.