Awaiting Approval

Tamora Petitt - Clarity

Tamora Petitt has spent 25 years helping people find their way through complex experiences, from redesigning one of the internet’s most visited health tools to building UX teams from scratch, teaching over 200 career changers the craft, and quietly applying design thinking to everything around her, not just the screen in front of her. She started out as a dancer. That turns out to explain a lot. What comes through most in this conversation is how much clarity Tamora has about what the work is actually for. We talk about why the people commissioning the work need to be in the room long before the final presentation, about the difference between asking for approval and asking for alignment, and about what happens when you start treating the relationships around your work with the same care you bring to your users. There is also a redesigned symptom checker that is still live today, a six-year-old vocabulary change that reframes every stakeholder meeting it touches, and a lesson learned on the floor of a Target store that has never left her. If you’re feeling stuck, or just want to think out loud about where you’re headed, you don’t have to figure it out on your own. I offer free 15-minute conversations for anyone who wants to talk through what’s in front of them. Whether that leads to working together or not doesn’t matter. What matters is that you’ve got someone in your corner, even for 15 minutes. Head to http://www.growwithadamjennings.com [http://www.growwithadamjennings.com] and book a call. I’d genuinely love to hear from you. Want to support Awaiting Approval? Remember to rate this episode, and subscribe to the show. And you can get your hands on amazing Awaiting Approval caps, mugs and more, here: https://adam-jennings-shop.fourthwall.com/en-gbp [https://adam-jennings-shop.fourthwall.com/en-gbp] This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit growwithadamjennings.substack.com/subscribe [https://growwithadamjennings.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2]

Charles Cadbury - Conviction

Charles Cadbury has spent 25 years building things at the edge of what’s possible. He created one of the first voice-enabled hotel concierge systems, invented voice-activated audio advertising, won the global Alexa Cup, and has spent the last decade quietly convinced that the way we talk to technology is about to change everything. He also watches the sunset every Thursday, without fail, with someone worth talking to. That alone tells you so much about him. This is a conversation about conviction, the kind that keeps you building in a direction long before the world catches up. We talk about what it actually takes to bet a business on a technology that isn’t ready yet, about the difference between brands that will own the voice era and those that will be left scrambling, and about why the most important thing you can do, in work and in life, is stay genuinely curious about the person in front of you. Charles has a way of making the future feel less frightening and more like something worth leaning into. Don’t be scared, he says near the end. Be excited. If you’re feeling stuck, or just want to think out loud about where you’re headed, you don’t have to figure it out on your own. I offer free 15-minute conversations for anyone who wants to talk through what’s in front of them. Whether that leads to working together or not doesn’t matter. What matters is that you’ve got someone in your corner, even for 15 minutes. Head to http://www.growwithadamjennings.com [http://www.growwithadamjennings.com] and book a call. I’d genuinely love to hear from you. Want to support Awaiting Approval? Remember to rate this episode, and subscribe to the show. And you can get your hands on amazing Awaiting Approval caps, mugs and more, here: https://adam-jennings-shop.fourthwall.com/en-gbp [https://adam-jennings-shop.fourthwall.com/en-gbp] This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit growwithadamjennings.substack.com/subscribe [https://growwithadamjennings.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2]

Odeya Noble-Bougay - Continuity

Odeya Noble-Bougay returns. If you heard her in Season 2, you already know why. If you didn’t, go back and find it, then come here. Odeya thinks in ranges rather than binaries, leads with a generosity that feels entirely natural rather than performed, and has a way of reframing a question that makes you wonder why you were asking it the other way round in the first place. She was the obvious choice to bridge Season 2 into Season 3. Continuity, in every sense. This conversation picks up where the last one left off, which is to say it goes somewhere new entirely. We talk about kindness as an act of noticing, about what it means to hold space for the people around you without losing the thread of what you’re trying to build. We talk about why things are never as clean as the framework suggests, and why that is not a failure of process but simply the nature of real work. And we talk about the moment a CEO said something to Odeya so simple it has stayed with her ever since. If there is doubt, there is no doubt. If you’re feeling stuck, or just want to think out loud about where you’re headed, you don’t have to figure it out on your own. I offer free 15-minute conversations for anyone who wants to talk through what’s in front of them. Whether that leads to working together or not doesn’t matter. What matters is that you’ve got someone in your corner, even for 15 minutes. Head to http://www.growwithadamjennings.com [http://www.growwithadamjennings.com] and book a call. I’d genuinely love to hear from you. Want to support the Awaiting Approval? Remember to rate this episode, and subscribe to the show. And you can get your hands on amazing Awaiting Approval caps, mugs and more, here: https://adam-jennings-shop.fourthwall.com/en-gbp [https://adam-jennings-shop.fourthwall.com/en-gbp] This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit growwithadamjennings.substack.com/subscribe [https://growwithadamjennings.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2]

Nacho Zuccarino - Vulnerability

Nacho Zuccarino - Vulnerability Nacho Zuccarino has lived several careers in one lifetime. He started out teaching metaphysics in Buenos Aires, moved into advertising, spent a decade in Silicon Valley working at orgs like Google and Netflix, helped launch Starlink with SpaceX, and has spent the last two years building at the intersection of creativity and AI. He is restless, warm, and deeply, disarmingly honest. And he will tell you, without hesitation, that he is still a broken kid. This conversation goes to places neither of us expected. We talk about what it means to drag yourself into rooms full of people who know things you don't, and why that discomfort is the fastest way to learn anything. We talk about therapy, about fathers and mothers, about the generation of men who were taught to take the hits and say nothing. We talk about what happens to your identity when the two things you built it around, being a parent and being a professional, are suddenly out of reach at the same time. And somewhere in the middle of all of that, Nacho says something that has stayed with me: becoming an adult is mostly killing your creativity. That is what this conversation is really about. If you’re feeling stuck, or just want to think out loud about where you’re headed, you don’t have to figure it out on your own. I offer free 15-minute conversations for anyone who wants to talk through what’s in front of them. Whether that leads to working together or not doesn’t matter. What matters is that you’ve got someone in your corner, even for 15 minutes. Head to http://www.growwithadamjennings.com [http://www.growwithadamjennings.com] and book a call. I’d genuinely love to hear from you. Want to support the Awaiting Approval? Remember to rate this episode, and subscribe to the show. And you can get your hands on amazing Awaiting Approval caps, mugs and more, here: https://adam-jennings-shop.fourthwall.com/en-gbp [https://adam-jennings-shop.fourthwall.com/en-gbp] This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit growwithadamjennings.substack.com/subscribe [https://growwithadamjennings.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2]

Debbie Millman - Becoming

Debbie Millman has spent over 20 years interviewing the world’s most creative people, built one of the most celebrated design podcasts in existence, written a number of highly acclaimed books, co-founded the Masters Program in Branding at the SVA, and helped shape how an entire industry thinks about craft, identity, and what it means to do meaningful work. She is warm, considered, and disarmingly honest. And she is, by her own admission, still very much in the process of becoming. What struck me most in our conversation is how someone who has achieved so much remains so genuinely curious about the gap between where she is and where she wants to be. We talk about the strange emptiness that tends to follow creative achievement (as covered in her latest TED talk), about the mechanisms we build in childhood to protect ourselves and then spend decades trying to dismantle, and about what it really means to show up for your work and the people around it with honesty and without pretence. It is a conversation about courage, mostly the kind that arrives late and the kind that is still on its way. If you’re feeling stuck, or just want to think out loud about where you’re headed, you don’t have to figure it out on your own. I offer free 15-minute conversations for anyone who wants to talk through what’s in front of them. Whether that leads to working together or not doesn’t matter. What matters is that you’ve got someone in your corner, even for 15 minutes. Head to http://www.growwithadamjennings.com [http://www.growwithadamjennings.com] and book a call. I’d genuinely love to hear from you. Want to support the Awaiting Approval? Remember to rate this episode, and subscribe to the show. And you can get your hands on amazing Awaiting Approval caps, mugs and more, here: https://adam-jennings-shop.fourthwall.com/en-gbp [https://adam-jennings-shop.fourthwall.com/en-gbp] This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit growwithadamjennings.substack.com/subscribe [https://growwithadamjennings.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2]