Introduction  

You need to make a decision but don’t want to make a mistake. For decades, Dr. Constance Dierickx has helped leaders make wise decisions. Now, she’s sharing how to see what others don’t and make great decisions when it matters most. So come on in and have a seat. It’s time for your appointment with The Decision Doctor.

Constance Dierickx 

Hi, I’m Constance Dierickx, and I’m happy to welcome you to this episode of the Decision Doctor podcast. My guest is Ayse Birsal, an internationally known and lauded designer whose firm, which she co-founded and runs with her husband, has clients including Amazon, Herman Miller, G.E., Johnson & Johnson, and Toto. Recently, the New York Times named her and her husband in their list of designers of the 25 most defining pieces of furniture from the last 100 years. I met Ayse when we were introduced by our mutual friend Dorie Clark. Ayse joined a meeting to talk about her work and her book, Design the Life You Love, and wow, was I smitten. Ayse is a rare blend of intellect and curiosity, and talent and generosity. Her recent work includes her book Design the Long Life You Love, which speaks to the opportunity and challenges presented by the gift of a longer lifespan. I am so excited to share this episode with you because you will be smitten with Ayse too. Ayse Birsel, thank you so much for joining me on the Decision Doctor podcast. I’m so excited to see you. And just a quick tidbit for the listener, Ayse Birsel is an internationally known designer who’s won many awards, and I had the great joy of meeting a few years ago in a small group setting. So I feel like I got to know her in a way that I wouldn’t have, had I met you, Ayse, at a big meeting like Thinker50, or something like that. The work you produce and the content you produce is an ongoing source of joy for people who don’t work with you professionally, but who are absorbing your content. So thank you so much for joining me.

Ayse Birsel 

Thank you so much for inviting me. This is a dream come true. We’ve been thinking about it for a while now. So thank you.

Constance Dierickx 

That’s true. We were like ships passing in the night, sometimes. Before we dive into our conversation, would you tell our listeners, where in the world is Ayse?

Ayse Birsel

I’m in Dakar. And a lot of people hear that and think, what’s she doing in the car? I am in Dakar, Senegal, where my husband has a gallery, and he’s got to open an exhibit of his paintings. He’s my partner in life and at work. And so I came to give him a hand.

Constance Dierickx   

Wow. So, we are many time zones apart. So thank you so much for being willing to join me. You and I met several years ago because we have a mutual friend, Dorie Clark. And that meeting was unforgettable. I’m going to quote Marshall Goldsmith who says that your book, Design the Life You Love, was life changing for him. Now, Marshall is also quick to say that people like to engage in hyperbole when they’re describing things that people do that they really admire and who are friends. And he’s quick to say that it is no hyperbole. I have to echo that. That meeting was really transformational because you took design, which I always thought was this concept that was beyond my ability to understand or engage with, and you showed us, actually, how to use design thinking. I was floored, I was completely floored. And it has changed the way I work with my clients, not just the way I work. So I’m really interested in having you talk a bit about what is that design process that you’re so known for, so that the listener doesn’t feel that distance from the concept of design that I felt for all those years.

Ayse Birsel 

Absolutely. And I just want to say that you’ve become one of my greatest champions, which this conversation is another example of. So thank you so much. 

Constance Dierickx 

My pleasure. 

Ayse Birsel  

The design process that I’ve developed is called deconstruction reconstruction. And it’s about taking what we know apart so that we can see what something is made up of. Once we see these parts, we can decide what to keep, what to change, what to avoid, or delete. This helps us think about the same things differently, and then put it back together, reconstruct it in a new way, knowing we can’t have everything. And then from that, go to an expression, and the expression could be a product, it can be product strategy, and it could be our life or life strategy. So that, in a nutshell, is what deconstruction and reconstruction is. And it comes from my expertise as an industrial designer, designing everything from concept cars to office systems to kitchen gadgets and utensils to toilets. So, there. It’s the same process.

Constance Dierickx 

Yes, and it is so portable. You can apply it to your life, you can apply it to a bidet. I believe that you were instrumental in the Toto company coming up with the now famous washlet, which is being adopted by more and more people in the US who weren’t as familiar with that sort of piece of equipment. And I read somewhere that you reconceptualized the bathroom as a, what did you call it? You change the name at one point, like a water room? 

Ayse Birsel   

Oh, yes. A water room. Oh, yes, that’s one of my favorite projects.

Constance Dierickx  

Yeah. And that’s just a small example of how your process can change your thinking. So you came to the United States on a Fulbright to go to the Pratt Institute, and I actually grew up with a woman who left high school and went to Pratt. I grew up in a small town in Florida near where the space program grew up, and none of us knew what Pratt Institute was. So that was my first introduction. I wonder if, when you were a student, did you have any inklings about what you’d be doing now?

Ayse Birsel 

No, I didn’t. I had no idea. And that’s the beauty of it. I grew up in Turkey, in a family of lawyers, and it was kind of expected that I’d become a lawyer. But I love to draw so much that I thought, okay, I should do something creative. So I took a different path and wanted to become an architect. I love the idea of this intersection of buildings and humans. But then a family friend came to tea and talked to me about industrial design, which I had never heard those words, two words together before. He said, “Look at this teacup and how somebody designed it, and the edges curve so that it can fit our lips better. It has a handle so that we can hold hot liquid in our hands without burning ourselves. And it has a saucer so that if you spill your tea, you won’t ruin your mother’s beautiful tablecloth.” It was at that moment that I fell in love with the human scale of industrial design. I thought, that’s what I want to do. I’ve designed hundreds of products since then, thanks to, first, my undergraduate in Turkey at the Middle East Technical University. And then I came, like you said, I did my master’s at Pratt in New York, Pratt Institute, where I’ve taught as well. And then the connection, I’m sure we’ll talk more about this idea of applying that same process that I use for designing products to our life started as an experiment. So I didn’t know that I would get here.

Constance Dierickx 

It sounds like a very common story. People who are bright and creative often have kind of crooked paths that, when they’re starting out, they might wonder what am I going to do? Then, they take a turn, and maybe it’s a little scary even. But in your case, I’m so thrilled with the work you’ve done that you found your way into this designing your life because I’ve been able to learn that from you and share it with friends and share it with clients. But also, I’ve been able to turn it the other way, and look at the space that I occupy and say, “Did I design the space I occupy, let’s say my office, as carefully as I’m trying to design my life and my work?” And the answer was a very loud no. So I made some changes. And it’s been very fun. I actually had my office that I’m in, which you could see on the screen a few minutes ago, it was an unfinished space, and I had it finished, and it became my office. And the architect came in to help me think about it. He started asking me all these technical questions. I got very annoyed. I wasn’t sure why I was so annoyed. And I said, “Wait a minute, stop, stop, stop.” I said, “I need to tell you what I want the space to feel like. I need to tell you what I want to be doing in the space.” And he was dumbfounded. And he said, “That’s the best question to start with.” So, we started there. Now, I have an office that I love. So, you influenced me quite a bit in that regard.

Ayse Birsel 

Oh, thank you. I’m delighted to hear that and that is the best question.

Constance Dierickx 

Oh, is it? Oh, good, good. Well, I knew I wanted it to feel open and airy, so that I could think big, have big thoughts, not be confined. I didn’t want it to feel like a cubicle. And it doesn’t. It’s actually really lovely.

Ayse Birsel

So you’re making me think that, often, one very simple deconstruction, and your question is part of tha,  is to think about, for example, in the case of your office, what is the emotion of it, but then continue and think, what’s the intellect of it, what’s the physical event, and then what’s the spirit of it? So if you think of emotion, intellect, physical, and spirit, you’re deconstructing. This could be your office, it could be a project, it could even be your family vacation. It’s easy to do, you know, it’s really four things. It gets you to think holistically about something. Once you understand these things, you can then translate that into, well, what are my actions based on this, the emotion I want to create, the intellectual feeling or content I want to have, the physical qualities and the spirit of a space. Then, you can become intentional. So that’s why I love deconstruction. These four steps, for example, are very simple, but immediately give you a holistic idea of anything that you’re thinking about. And it’s a simple but profound exercise.

Constance Dierickx 

It is. The way that you did that exercise with a group I was in, it had a feeling of inviting people in, not telling us that this is the right way to do it. I think that that works so well with many people who feel like they already know so much. You deal with really smart, successful people and so do I, and that group of people doesn’t want to be told, well, now we’re going to be creative, because that just feels like a bridge too far. So your process is very much inviting us to take the steps. One of the beginning parts that I recall so vividly that really became emotional for me was you asked us to write down who our heroes are. I wrote down Madeleine Albright, Richard Feynman, Walter Isaacson, I wrote down these people that seem miles from me, miles from where I am. Then, the next thing you asked us to do floored me. Will you talk about what that next step is?

Ayse Birsel  

I would, but first of all, I love your heroes. And I want you to tell us why they’re your heroes. What are things you see in them? 

Constance Dierickx 

Oh, you’re gonna turn the tables? Yeah, I thought you might. I think that every one of those people is intellectual, and so much more than intellectual. They embody curiosity, a sense of fun, expansive knowledge, and also a lot of depth in certain areas. So Feynman was a Nobel Prize winning physicist known for Feynman drawings. And he was quite a character. He played bongos and was a world traveler, both literally and in his mind. Walter Isaacson, of course, is a historian and a writer of many wonderful books. My favorite of his is the book on DaVinci. And DaVinci is an example of what I’m talking about as well. So now that I’m wound up, I can keep talking, but I wanted to ask you who your heroes are and why.

Ayse Birsel 

I will tell you my heroes, but I will turn your values or your heroes and what you see in them back to you and say, yes, you are like your heroes, Madeleine Albright, Richard Feynman, and Isaac Walterson, right? You’re intellectual and so much more. You embody curiosity and the sense of fun and expansive knowledge and depth, and you are polymath, like these people. The reason that I can say that is because what we see in our heroes are actually our own values. And this was my way of asking you in that session, what are your values? But that question is loaded, right? It’s really hard to answer. So instead, I asked people who are your heroes, and then, just like we did now, remind them that the reason that we see certain qualities in them is because these are the qualities that we have, or we strive to have. Those values are at the foundation of anything we design, and it’s really an important step in the design process because when you know your values, they become the foundation of your thinking. What I mean by that is you can still throw ideas through them and say, this fits, this doesn’t fit. And this is true when you’re designing something for a client. So for example, we design products and systems for companies like Herman Miller or Toyota or Target or CVS, and the values of the brand come through a filter through which we see the ideas. And same thing when it comes to our life. Your values are how you see the world. What I love about the heroes exercise is then the follow-up question, which is, well, what would you do to be more like your heroes? Because your heroes are demonstrating how you can bring those values to life, and you can get incredibly specific and say, oh, I see how they do that, and I can try to do the same thing. So now, I’m going to come back to your question to me, who are your heroes? But I have many heroes, but one of them is our mutual friend Marshall Goldsmith. Marshall came to one of my sessions, in fact, when my first book, Design the Life You Love, was coming out. He said, let me help you promote your book, which is an incredibly generous offer. And he said, why don’t you do a workshop and I’ll invite my friends. And my workshops were usually like 15 people, 20 people, but when Marshall showed up with his friends, he showed up with 70 of his friends. I asked him and everyone in the room the same question, who are your heroes? And Marshall said, his heroes were his teachers, people like Frances Hesselbein, who is the CEO of Girl Scouts, Buddha, Alan Mulally, who is the CEO of both Boeing and the Ford Motor Company, and the list goes on and on. And he said, what he noticed about them is that they taught them everything he knows, without asking for anything in return. And then when I asked them the follow-up question, so what would you do to be more like your heroes, he said, hold on one second. I can teach everything I know to others without asking anything in return. That was the beginning of his knowledge philanthropy project, which is an amazing project where he actually is giving out everything he knows to others, myself included. They generously, without asking for anything in return, the only condition is when we’re Marshall’s age, that we do the same, that we share our knowledge with others. So, long answer, forgive me. But I agree with you. I love the heroes exercise.

Constance Dierickx 

What really captured me when I first did it was when you asked the follow-up question. And I want to say, too, I’m sure you noticed, I noticed, that when you were turning that question to me, I got so squirmy. I got very squirmy and uncomfortable. This is a very natural reaction that people have to say, well, wait a minute, I mean, I’m not Richard Feynman, I’m not. But the way you guide people through that, then, is to be very specific. It ends up taking what’s a big idea, and bringing it into something that’s more concrete, perhaps more pragmatic, and more personal. And that’s what enabled me to really be able to say publicly, those are my heroes, because I was really squirmy at first. So it is a wonderful process. Thank you for sharing the story about Marshall. That was the impetus for him starting MG100, which is Marshall Goldsmith’s 100 Coaches, which I was invited to join in, I think, the second round, and I believe you’ve been there since the beginning. And it’s a wonderful group of people that come together to learn. That’s the purpose. We learn and we get to know each other. It’s fantastic. 

Ayse Birsel 

Absolutely. If I may add, this is what I love about teaching people how to design their life or a subset of their life, which could be work, leadership, it can start a ripple effect that your design for your life or your work could then passively impact other people. That’s the transformational quality of design. So, Marshall says that I changed his life. I can confidently say he has changed my life because he started, like you said Marshall Goldsmith 100 Coaches, and through that, he has taught so many people and he has brought us together. He has brought, you mentioned Dorie Clark, our amazing mutual friends. I met Dorie and so many amazing people through Marshall’s 100 Coaches. And that’s the beauty of it. In design, in your life, you might help improve somebody else’s life too.

Constance Dierickx

Yes, yes. The way you have organized your process, it’s easy to remember, highly portable, as you say. I love processes that are simple and portable and powerful. That’s my method. Like, how do I do that? I wanted to share a story with you about one of my clients –was he the CFO? He wasn’t the CFO, but he had a finance job. He was very close to the top of his organization. And he was a crusty, ill-tempered expert known for his financial creativity. I got a call one day from his boss, the CFO, who I knew quite well, and who later became the CEO. He’s one of my favorite leaders, but I’m not permitted to name him, sadly. He said, “Look, I’ve got this guy that works for me, and he’s great, technically, but he’s a grouch,” and blah, blah, blah. I said, “Well, what is he doing? Tell me, what’s the behavior?” He said, “He’s very inaccessible.” Now, he doesn’t answer questions, he doesn’t like people to meet in his office. He said, “Can you help him?” I said, “Well, I don’t know. I need to meet him.” So we scheduled a meeting and I walked into his office. His name is Richard. I walked into Richard’s office and, immediately, I saw the manifestation, the artifact of him being inaccessible. He had a desk that was about eight feet long, and on the edge of it, the far edge of it, were piles of paper about three feet high, all the way across. So he literally he had developed a barricade. Now, this was before you and I met, Ayse. So I settled for intervening in the most basic way. I asked him what message he was sending. And he said that I’m busy. Well, of course, the ego need, there it was, I’m important, as well, which is okay. People need to feel important. But we remedied that over time. And he made some small improvements. But had I met you before I met him, I could have done a lot more. He ended up retiring about three years later. But it was, maybe, one of the first times where I quite intuitively incorporated what I knew about him from the way he had decided to organize the space into how was that affecting his reputation? So that was really gratifying to help him improve it, even though there was no magic wand moment, let me assure you. But do you find that people often have some natural inclination toward these things, but we have trouble putting words on it?

Ayse Birsel 

Oh, I think we have a lot of unconscious things that we all do, that we don’t notice, but that other people see or send a message. And part of the reason that I really enjoy helping people deconstruct, again, something that’s important to them is to help them break their preconceptions about these things. So we put things together, intellectually or physically, just like your clients, or emotionally. When we try to understand, well, what are these things made up of? We’re taking it apart, and it’s kind of like taking apart a camera, an old, imagine like Canon or Nikon black camera. When you take it apart, it has hundreds of pieces in it, right? But once you take it apart, you can’t quite put it back the way it was before, which is the beauty of deconstruction. Once you take something apart, which is what you did with Richard, in the gentlest way with a lot of empathy, you took him apart and made him realize that those reams of paper basically were creating a barrier between him and everybody else. That might not have been his intention. So, deconstruction is very much about that. It’s understanding what something is made up of and realizing that we have the power to decide which ingredients we want to have going forward and which ones we want to get rid of. So that’s exactly what you did, even though you and I hadn’t met then. That was the idea.

Constance Dierickx

I’ve had experience with interior designers who’ve come to my house and done something quite different. They walk in and they start commenting instantly, well, that looks great, that looks great, oh, you’re good with textiles, but you don’t know anything about scale. And so right off the bat, you feel like, okay, I’m an idiot, I don’t know how to. I learned over the years, eight years of grad school in clinical psych, and then as a consultant, that when you assault people’s decisions, even though they were an unconscious decision, you can expect nothing but defensiveness and distance. You’ve now distanced yourself. So my more gentle way of dealing with Richard was definitely learned. And then, when I met you, my intentions around this, it was like rocket fuel. It’s like, okay, now I have some more language about that because we do. We make decisions about what to wear, what to eat, what to hang on the wall, quite unconsciously, and having a process that makes it conscious, but also isn’t judgmental – the person judging it is the person, not you or not me. So I’m really grateful that you brought that to the world. The people at Target and Herman Miller and Toto benefit a lot. But now we can all benefit from learning this. So, actually, the listener can’t see, but I have your first book, Design the Life You Love. Is that your first book?

Ayse Birsel

That is the first book, yes.

Constance Dierickx

I thought it was and then I thought, oh gosh, I hope I’m not insulting her. And you signed it for me. What I noticed was that just signing the book, there was a very artistic intent. There was a design intent. So I’ve tried to adopt that when I sign my books. I have to say, it’s mildly hilarious.

Ayse Birsel

Oh, that’s so sweet. Thank you. I’m very flattered. And in that book, actually, there’s a page, I don’t have the book on my desk here in Dakar, but where I do show the camera deconstructed and where you can see the whole page is covered with little springs and pieces and all these things that you don’t know when you look at the outside. Often, I tell people it’s kind of like in Hollywood films. I’ve seen this only in films, where somebody’s gonna get married, and you tell all the guests and family, if anybody is opposed to this union, speak now or hold your breath or something like that. I say the same thing about deconstruction, like, if you’re happy with your life or you have the perfect life, don’t deconstruct it because once you do, it’s not going to go back the way it was before because you start seeing things differently. That’s the idea is, I think that our life is our biggest project, and that’s why I wanted to see if I could apply my design process to our life, and thought, one, if this process works, it should work on our life. Two, if our life is a design project, this is the perfect proof point to see that you can design and redesign your life using a design process. And both things have worked. So the first book was sharing that with everyone step by step, how you can design the life you love. Then, the second book is Design the Long Life You Love, because in 2019 we had the opportunity to work with the SCAN Foundation, which is a nonprofit that is specifically around creating new policies for older people. We traveled the states from east to the west, down to Mississippi to the south. In light of people who were 60 and older to come design their life with us, it was so mind-blowingly beautiful and we learned so much from them, these wise people who have crystallized intelligence. So I felt compelled to write a second book to say, “And look! Here are some lessons from older people. These are lessons that we can all use without waiting.” So it’s for people who are younger, in their midlife, as well as in their 60s, 70s and 80s. That book is about love, purpose, well-being, and friendship, the four pillars of a life well-designed.

Constance Dierickx

Yes, and I would love to hear you talk about a concept that you introduced in the first book with the rabbit. The cute little playfulness, and how that translates into designing the long life you love, because I observe, in some older people, and when I say older, some of them are my age, but they seem to have lost a sense of adventure, curiosity. So what can you tell us about how to carry that playful attitude? What did you learn from older people about that?

Ayse Birsel

I love that you’re asking me this now because I just came back from Alaska where we had this amazing collaboration with the Mat-Su Health Foundation and Council on Aging where we invited older people for one month to come and design social connections together. You’re reminding me that one person afterwards told me the sentiment that you just shared with me. She said, “Ayse, before I came to your design connections sessions, I thought that I’m getting older and I’m sadder. I have lost some of my friends and getting older seems to be a process of losing things. I was kind of resigning myself to, in this stage of my life, I’m going to be sad.” And then, she said, “I came to your session and now I’m happy.” And she said that she realized that she can, at any age, redesign her social connections. It made her realize that she can have new friends and that she should have a new friend, and that gave her a new sense of everything you just mentioned, curiosity, optimism, and energy. So that really has become our call to action really around helping older people in their late 50s and 60s, all the way to 90+ make social connections. When you are younger, there are a lot of social constructs, whether it’s the playground, the school, our families, and then as we get older, our new families, our work, our hobbies, sports, all these things help us make social connections. So some of those social connections, we transform into friendships. But as we grow older, those social constructs tend to fall away. And the new social constructs haven’t been designed because we now live longer than our grandparents. So we have 20 to 30 longer years. and society hasn’t really caught up with those things. So we’ve started this new social construct as a remedy for loneliness and isolation to help people who are older make social connections, but also using the same process that we’re talking about. Basically, deconstruction, reconstruction applied to social connections to help them see that they can be incredibly optimistic, full of empathy for themselves and for each other, and open-minded and collaborate with each other to create new solutions for themselves. So again, long answer but it’s just something you said about how we feel, which seems to be the preconception around getting older. Things will go downhill from now on. I’m of the belief that, in fact, it’s quite the opposite. We have incredible wisdom that comes from our years of living long. And with a couple of tools, one of which is deconstruction/reconstruction, we can take back our optimism and our lives.

Constance Dierickx

That is beautiful. It is one of the ways we can begin to address this massive problem that the Surgeon General has talked about, Vivek. 

Ayse Birsel

Murthy. Dr. Vivek Murthy. He’s amazing.

Constance Dierickx

He is. I sent him an email. I tried to interview him for one of my books. So, maybe he’ll hear this and talk to me now. But we know that the physical correlates of loneliness are devastating. When I hear people that I’m around talk about – especially people that have had a really great career, a professional life, but they don’t have much else – when you listen to them talk, they’ll say things like, “When I was in the Navy,” or, “When I was at IBM,” or whatever. To use your analogy, their camera is turned to the past. Your process invites people to look to the future and to say, I can choose, at any age, to remove some things from my life that aren’t serving me and add things that take me where I want. But I also want to congratulate you for saying to people, “If your life is great, if you’re very happy, don’t deconstruct it because you can’t put it back together.” I don’t know if you’re aware of a psychotherapist named Irving Yollum. I’m not sure he’s living any longer, but he was someone we studied in school. He wrote a book called Love’s Executioner. And he said, I don’t like doing marriage work because you have to take apart the relationship to do that. If the couple is basically happy, but they’ve got a few kinks in the road, sometimes you actually kill what they had. So he called that book, Love’s Executioner. It’s a beautiful analogy to what you’re saying. If something’s working, if people are satisfied and happy and healthy, you might be able to come in, and on the margins, make some improvements, but who are you to do that?

Ayse Birsel

It’s funny that you should say that. A lot of people when I started talking about deconstructing and reconstructing your life told me, “Oh, Ayse, you’re going to have so many divorces on your hands.” Actually, it’s been quite the opposite. So many couples have written to me afterwards saying, your sessions are worth 10 couples therapy sessions. I think the reason is because we approach things from the perspective of thinking like a designer, which is optimism, empathy, holistic thinking, the open mind, and collaboration, and getting people to connect with their values like we just talked about, and then, from that, redesign their individual lives. But then, as a couple, use that communication methodology. My experience has been that it takes courage to design. But once you give yourself permission, it really bears fruit in the most wonderful ways.

Constance Dierickx

Yes. I think one of the issues with the comparison of couples therapy to what you’re doing is that it’s a different group of people. So people that come to you, I suspect, I don’t have any research to demonstrate this, but let me just talk about who comes to couples therapy: couples that are in distress and in pain and they want to talk about their problems. Oftentimes, they’re led to talk about their problems. So they’re focused on what’s different, what’s the rub here, why is he wrong, why is she/they wrong. Oftentimes, marriages and relationships are pretty far down the road before people come. I suspect, I hope, that people that come to you have that mindset of deepening a relationship, and maybe they’ve got a little problem that gets surfaced in your sessions, which would be great. I would love to, I don’t know how to study that, but it’s an interesting idea.

Ayse Birsel

It’s an interesting thing. In a way, whether it’s two people who are in a relationship or friends who are together or new friendships, it’s all about designing connections. So I just wanted to circle back, and I was thinking, oh, I’d love to leave your listeners with a couple of tricks for when they design connections. May I do that?

Constance Dierickx

Yes, please. I think that’d be great. And I have a final question for you before we wrap up.

Ayse Birsel

Great. So there’s a whole section on this in my book Design the Long Life You Love about friendships, that there is this idea of a friendship factory. What we’ve learned from older people is that your tendency to become friends, or at least make social connections, increases if you can have a shared interest, a shared place, and a shared time. So, if you think of the simplest places, like a dog park, for example, or a dog run, or a book club, or even a conference, can be a friendship factory because people who share similar interests are coming together for a limited amount of time to the same place. So, just a reminder, again, this simple formula, keep in your mind that a friendship factory is a shared place, interest, and time, and this could be any place. And if you go in there thinking – now this is how I go into places where I don’t know anyone – I just think to myself, what if I meet my new best friend here? So I go to conferences or meetings or unfamiliar situations with this positive mindset that friendships start someplace, right? I might have the opportunity to meet just like you and I did at Dorie’s session. I mean, that is a perfect example of a friendship factory. Really, I’m an introvert at heart, so I would much rather stay home and read my book than go to a meeting. But this perspective of, but hold on, what if I meet my next best friend has really changed my approach to things. I often tell people, when I’m at the conference or a meeting, if I have the opportunity, I’m here to meet my next friends, my next group of friends. It really captures people’s attention and, suddenly, you’re putting a plan out there that I am here to do. That’s kind of a big part of designing your life, becoming familiar, articulating something that you want to do and thinking of ways of doing it, and then create a set of to do’s that will help you get closer to that idea. So just a tip. Remember friendship factories and you’ll be surprised. I want to hear from your listeners how many social connections they make once they put this into action.

Constance Dierickx

I love that because I think, oftentimes, when we’re going to some event where we don’t know anyone, and I’m also introverted. Although, sometimes people argue with me and tell me I’m really not. I say no, my parents trained me to have social skills from a very young age and it sort of hides the fact that I too would rather be on the couch with a blanket and a cup of tea and a book. But I love it because sometimes when we go to these things our anxieties rear their heads, consciously or not, and we approach it as if I have to prove myself or I have to show that I belong here. Not that we march in thinking that, but your mindset removes that pressure of I have to demonstrate something. So I love it. I’m going to be sharing that with – actually, after this, in about half an hour, I’m meeting some friends who my husband and I became close to because one of our friends needed to exercise more for his health. I said, I’ll make you a deal. If you’ll commit to it and meet me, I’ll meet you twice a week and we’ll walk for an hour. Then, his wife joined and then my husband joined. And we’ve been doing this now for a year and a half and my friend has improved his health dramatically, and I know him much better.

Ayse Birsel

That’s great. So that walk is a great example of a friendship factory. You’re demonstrating it.

Constance Dierickx

It is. I’m going to have to write about this, Ayse. I am now full of ideas. Before we go, I wonder if you’ll share with the listener what is the best business decision you’ve ever made.

Ayse Birsel

That’s a great, great question. All right, there are many different answers to that. But that is probably the first important decision I made. My father had his law office, and so I already had this role model who loved work and who was, in a way, a freelancer in law, right? So he had his own small office in Izmir, Turkey. My dad became my role model for how to be happy at work. So, probably my best decision was to mimic and to think I want to start my design studio. And I did that from the get go, and I was very lucky because when I graduated from Pratt Institute, the Chair at the time, Bruce Hannah asked me to work, sorry about that. Bruce Hannah asked me to work on a project for Knol, K-N-O-L. And when the project came out, it was a set of office accessories, when the project came out, both Bruce and the CEO of Knol wanted to give me design credit on it. And so it came out as the Orchestra Collection Design by Bruce Hannah and Ayse Birsel, which is a very rare and incredibly generous thing for them to do and, for me, a stroke of luck. But I thought, there – that’s the beginning of my design studio and I set up shop. And of course, I was very young and inexperienced and didn’t realize how hard it is to do that. But, it, in the long run, allowed me to be my own boss and to do the things that I love doing. So that is the best decision. I’m so grateful to you for asking questions. Nobody has asked me that before and I love it.

Constance Dierickx

Oh, good. Well, my career began because I was haunted by how smart people made terrible decisions with their money because I was a stockbroker. I saw very smart, educated, successful people make very ill-advised decisions. That started my journey to quit my job and go back to school. I’m so fascinated with how people make decisions. It really is the central part of my work now. I’m really happy to hear that story. I can’t thank you enough for dialing into this conversation all the way from Senegal. In the show notes, I’ll put a link to a recent New York Times article where you and Bibi were named as top influential designers, and there’s a picture of a sofa you created called the Madame Dakar sofa. Is that right? 

Ayse Birsel

Yes. So funny, thank you. 

Constance Dierickx

It’s beautiful.

Ayse (Eye-shay) Birsel

Thank you. It’s among the 25 designs of the last 100 years.

Constance Dierickx

Influential. I was reading the New York Times one day and I went, “Oh my gosh, there’s Ayse and her design with her spouse and business partner!”

Ayse Birsel

Thank you.

Constance Dierickx

Thank you for dialing in and taking time out of your day, your evening.

Ayse Birsel

I just wanted to add, your listeners again, sorry, I didn’t mean to cut you off, but if they’d like to receive our newsletter and kind of be up to speed on any sessions that we do or exciting things that we’re up to, they can go to aysebirsel.com, and there’ll be a link for the newsletter. I’d love to welcome them.

Constance Dierickx

That would be great, and thank you for mentioning that. We will put that link in the show notes as well to make it an easy short hop from listening to the podcast to finding you online. You produce so much wonderful content that’s very accessible. So thank you for that, and I look forward to seeing you in person sometime. I don’t know when that will be, but maybe when I’m in New York. There’s a new fashion designer that I want to check out her stuff. I can do a design-centered trip. I can design a design trip. Thank you so much, Ayse.

Ayse Birsel

There you go. Thank you so much.

Outro 

The Decision Doctor will be back with more advice soon. Hit the follow button on your favorite podcast app and check out TheDecisionDoctor.com to receive the Meta-Leadership self-assessment and other no-cost resources. We’ll see you next time.