Managed Chaos Podcast · 2026-08-12 · 16 min
Key moments - from our scoring
Substance score
56 / 100
Five dimensions, 20 points each
Jeanaleigh Gonzalez brings over a decade of talent strategy experience from Meta and Accenture to discuss how design thinking - a framework typically applied to product development - can transform HR processes. By reframing onboarding, hiring, and promotion processes as products and employees as users, organizations can apply the five-stage design thinking methodology: empathy, definition, ideation, prototyping, and testing. The conversation centers on how founders can measure ROI in people investments by tracking metrics like time-to-productivity and retention, rather than viewing HR as a cost center. Gonzalez introduces empathy mapping as a four-quadrant tool (what they're saying, feeling, doing, and the results) to identify friction between employee statements and actual experiences. A key theme is building psychological safety and curiosity within leadership - the willingness to ask questions and embrace different viewpoints rather than assuming leadership requires certainty. The episode addresses generational differences in the workforce, particularly Gen Z's focus on values alignment and meaningful work, and closes with practical advice on transparent AI adoption strategies that position technology as amplifying human potential rather than replacing it.
Replace the 'product' with your people systems (onboarding, hiring, performance, promotion) and your employees with 'users.' Follow the five design thinking stages: empathize by talking to recent new hires about pain points, define the real problem (e.g., 'new hires feel lost,' not just 'we need more docs'), ideate solutions, then prototype and test with actual employees before rolling out.
An empathy map is a four-quadrant tool tracking what a direct report is saying, feeling, doing, and the results. The friction point lies in the gaps between these - for example, if someone says 'all good' but shows signs of being overwhelmed, that mismatch reveals where you need to dig in and have a deeper conversation.
Track concrete metrics like the gap between planned onboarding timelines (e.g., 90 days) and when employees actually feel productive (often a year), retention rates, and the productivity cost of early turnover. Also measure whether new technology investments are actually being adopted meaningfully with proper training support.
Gen Z has deliberately chosen careers aligned with their values and impact, wanting to ensure their time is precious and well-spent. Millennials served as a bridge generation carving out this path, and both generations benefit from leaders who use curiosity and empathy to understand their motivations rather than stereotyping by age.
Be transparent about which specific tasks AI will handle so humans can focus on higher-value work, then actually provide training and support to help employees adopt the tools effectively - treating it as an enablement initiative rather than a threat.
Our reviewer’s read on each dimension, with quotes from the episode.
The episode offers solid foundational concepts - design thinking applied to HR processes, empathy mapping, measuring onboarding ROI - but lacks depth and specificity in execution. Most insights are repackaged frameworks (design thinking stages: empathize, define, ideate, test) without novel data, case studies, or counterintuitive claims that would challenge a practiced operator.
Design thinking, when you're thinking about it from the perspective of building for people, you actually need to sort of flip it around and think about your people as your users
The tech will help you identify the gaps very quickly. But it's the people who are going to help you see their zone of genius or what's really bogging them down
The core framing - treating HR processes as products and applying design thinking to people systems - is sensible but not original; this has circulated in HR/People Ops discourse for several years. The generational observations (Gen Z values alignment) and the empathy-mapping quadrant are standard frameworks without fresh counterarguments or contrarian positioning.
Design thinking, when you're thinking about it from the perspective of building for people, you actually need to sort of flip it around and think about your people as your users of, um, said product. Right. So when you're thinking about design thinking for building products, just replace that with your people systems as your products.
for Gen Z, they've done a really good job figuring out if I'm going to spend a lot of time m working. It better be something that I love and it better be aligned with my values.
Jeanaleigh Gonzalez brings relevant operational experience - decade-plus leading talent strategy at Meta and Accenture, now running an HR consulting firm. She has hands-on practitioner credibility rather than pure thought-leadership positioning, though the episode doesn't extract enough specificity about her actual scaling decisions or failures to fully leverage her seniority.
she is the founder and the CEO of Equivita, a people First HR strategy firm that helps high growth teams use technology to amplify human potential rather than replace it. Drawing on more than a decade leading talent strategy and scaling people programs at Meta and Accenture
a leader in the past that really sat with me and gave me the courage to speak up at all levels of my career from a point of curiosity is if everyone in the room is thinking in the same way only one person is thinking
The episode is almost entirely devoid of concrete data, named examples, metrics, or timelines. The only semi-specific claim is the 90-day vs. 1-year onboarding story (no company named), and vague references to technology adoption gaps. No numbers, no client wins, no revenue figures, no measurable outcomes from Equivita's own work.
taking onboarding as an example, you build an onboarding plan that hasn't considered recent new hires and it's a 90 day plan. But then you ask the new hire, when did you actually start feeling like you, you found your footing and you were ready to go. And they say it took me about a year.
Investing in technology that's meant to support your people but not providing them any training to be able to use it to its utmost potential. And so then you run a report that says well, our people are using it, but it's still not driving the right outcomes.
The host (Katrina Purcell) asks reasonable setup questions and ties concepts back to founder problems, but rarely pushes back, challenges claims, or digs into contradictions. Questions tend to be invitations for the guest to elaborate on safe territory rather than probing for evidence, failures, or boundary cases. The conversation is friendly but lacks intellectual tension.
So let's walk through design thinking session. What would that actually look like? Let's say our onboarding process is a disaster, right?
How can founders use empathy mapping right now, this week while they're listening to better understand day to day friction that their employees might be feeling?
Computed from the transcript - who did the talking, and the words that came up most.
What if you treated your onboarding process like a product and your new hires like the users? In episode two of this four-part series, Katrina Purcell sits down again with Ginaly Gonzalez, founder and CEO of Equivida, to unpack how Design Thinking - usually reserved for engineering and product teams - can fix the messiest parts of running a company. They walk through what a real design thinking session looks like when your onboarding process is falling apart, why the uncomfortable conversation with your newest hire is the fastest path to a better process, and how a simple four-point empathy map can help any manager spot the gap between what their team says and what's actually happening. Ginaly also digs into how empathy and curiosity (not more tools) are what actually bridge the gap between generations at work. Follow and subscribe so you don't miss the rest of the series. ️ ABOUT THE GUEST Ginaly Gonzalez is the Founder and CEO of Equivida, a people-first HR strategy firm that helps high-growth teams use technology to amplify human potential rather than replace it.
Transcribed and scored by The B2B Podcast Index.
Speaker A: If everyone in the room is thinking in the same way, only one person is thinking.
Speaker B: Welcome to Manage Chaos podcast where we give you the startup business rundown in less time than it takes for you to get to work. I'm Katrina Purcell and I am joined here in the studio by Jeanaleigh Gonzalez. Thank you so much for joining us. She is the founder and the CEO of Equivita, a people First HR strategy firm that helps high growth teams use technology to amplify human potential rather than replace it. Drawing on more than a decade leading talent strategy and scaling people programs at Meta and Accenture, she designs workplaces where empathy and technology work hand in hand. Thank you so much for being here, Jeanna Lee. We're so excited.
Speaker A: Thank you for having me. Happy to be here.
Speaker B: All right, so one of the most important things that you have in your startup is your people. I know that we don't always think about it that way.
Speaker A: Right.
Speaker B: We think it's the technology or the idea, but really it's the people who are helping you execute it. Whether that's just you and a co founder, you know, you and a small team m you and a bunch of contractors because you can't afford to hire anybody full time. Right. So whatever that team looks like, those people are the most important piece you have to actually executing on your vision. We're going to talk a little bit about design thinking today. What I love about this is that most of our startup listeners are probably saying to themselves, well, of course I use design thinking in my engineering process. Of course my product team uses design thinking. How in the world does that apply to people? So let's start there. How does it apply to people?
Speaker A: It's such a great question and such a great process, really. Design thinking, when you're thinking about it from the perspective of building for people, you actually need to sort of flip it around and think about your people as your users of, um, said product. Right. So when you're thinking about design thinking for building products, just replace that with your people systems as your products. So, so onboarding is your product, hiring is your product, the performance process is your product, and your people are your user group.
Speaker B: Ooh, okay. I love that your promotion process is your product. Right. I mean, I think that's something that we don't. We don't always talk about either. Right. While you're thinking about revolutionizing workplace dynamics, to be honest.
Speaker A: Right.
Speaker B: Because I think a lot of people never consider putting people first in a lot of these situations. How does this start to shift? Even how every Decision in the company gets made by putting the people at the center of everything.
Speaker A: It starts to shift the conversation towards the outcomes that you're really looking to see come to life in your people processes and the care in which you're developing them. And what I mean by that is if you are putting your people first, you need to understand where they're at, where they're coming from and what they need out of you as an employer. Once you have a clear understanding of that, you build processes on top of that level of understanding that they're going to see themselves in. And so driving adoption is going to feel very organic at that point and they'll be willing participants.
Speaker B: So let's walk through design thinking session. What would that actually look like? Let's say our onboarding process is a disaster, right?
Speaker A: Let's.
Speaker B: For instance, I'm sure this applies to none of our listeners, but let's say our onboarding process is a mess, right? There's a lot of chaos. We need to figure out how we're gonna manage that chaos. How would we apply design thinking to that process?
Speaker A: So it starts with empathizing, right? And really the first step of design thinking is building that empathy muscle. And it starts with being curious. So talking about what people want, what are their pain points, what's important to them, and what does their day to day look like. And then getting that level of understanding moves you into defining what the process really needs to look like to solve for not only what outcomes you're looking to drive, but also the people within the system that are going to drive those outcomes on top of that process or even within, sometimes even from the back way alley, right? And so you want to make sure you're bringing those people in to the process and driving the right outcomes. And it starts with that empathy piece, the definition piece. Then you move into ideation. We understand the problem, the pain points of the priorities. We've defined what the process should look like. We're getting to building and ideating around that and then going into testing and prototyping. So when we're thinking about it from an onboarding standpoint, I would probably start with the most recent new hire. Let's really bring them in. Let's talk to them. Let's have the conversation, the uncomfortable one, right? So what worked? We'll start there. A little softball question. But what really sucks and what are we building to solve for? Having the guts, really as a team, to have that very uncomfortable conversation and creating a safe space around that builds the best processes within the Design thinking process.
Speaker B: It comes back to something that we've talked about on, um, the last episode, but also that we've talked about on other episodes of the podcast around having a team that is willing, able and understands that it's a safe space to provide feedback, to be able to say, you know, my onboarding process, sure, this part was great, but it would have been really nice if some of this was documented or if I understood what the values were and I could read them and that they're willing to provide that feedback. They're not just saying everything was great.
Speaker A: Right. Creating that safe space allows you to get to the nitty gritty. And it's the difference between coming out of a session going, we need more docs versus our new hires feel lost because. And this is what we need to do to solve it.
Speaker B: Right? And that outcome piece, we talk a lot about outcomes when it comes to financial outcomes or outcomes from our products. But applying that outcome framework to people, let's dig a little bit deeper into that because I think it's so important in reframing the conversation of people just being a liability or just being a cost center to actually being, uh, something that's productive that you can move within your organization.
Speaker A: It's an interesting one because a lot of people processes are the most difficult to measure in terms of roi. But the leaders who are considering people processes as ROI are ah, the ones who are driving better outcomes in the investments that they're making for their people. Before you build the process and want people to adopt it, if you consider the people first, then build the process, your output and is so much greater and much faster. Taking onboarding as an example, you build an onboarding plan that hasn't considered recent new hires and it's a 90 day plan. But then you ask the new hire, when did you actually start feeling like you, you found your footing and you were ready to go. And they say it took me about a year. You really want to bridge that gap. And doing that really is considering the people first and building processes that are improving some of those gaps.
Speaker B: The onboarding process in particular is where you actually can define roi. Because if someone is taking a year to really get into the groove versus 90 days or 60 days, that's a big difference in productivity.
Speaker A: Oh, huge, huge. That's one way to measure it pretty clearly. The other way is investing in technology that's meant to support your people but not providing them any training to be able to use it to its utmost potential. And so then you run a report that says well, our people are using it, but it's still not driving the right outcomes. And the gap really is not the willingness in using the technology, but the support in adopting it in meaningful ways.
Speaker B: And I think from uh, a hiring, even from a hiring process standpoint. Right. The ROI there is how long does it take me to get someone in seat and then how long do they actually stay once they've been hired? Because that shows the work you've done to match the role to the reality of your situation.
Speaker A: M. Yeah. And to make it even more layered, it's how much did my existing team invest in their ramp up to then yield in just a quick turnover.
Speaker B: Oh, okay. Let's talk and dive a little bit more into empathy because I think I've been hearing a lot and there's a lot of sort of divisiveness about different generations and how they approach work and what's important to them. We are both millennials. We've obviously borne the brunt of people saying millennials are lazy, millennials are this, millennials are that. But now we have Gen Z and I think a lot of folks feel like Gen Z requires a lot more effort in the workplace. So let's dive into a little bit about empathy, about how different generations are vibing in startup world.
Speaker A: I really love that question. This topic in general. I don't tend to talk about empathy without talking about curiosity.
Speaker C: Mhm.
Speaker A: It requires curiosity to be able to be interested enough in the differences and want to solve them in meaningful ways, seeing where that common ground is. And how do we celebrate differences amongst generations and then continue to evolve our people processes to support the workforce that's coming in and wanting to grow. I think for Gen Z, they've done a really good job figuring out if I'm going to spend a lot of time m working. It better be something that I love and it better be aligned with my values. And I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing.
Speaker B: I think it's great.
Speaker A: I think it's a great thing. And I think yes, we did bear the brunt of carving out that path as millennials. And we're like that bridge generation between the senior folks and the junior workforce coming in and helping to sort of shape the experience of culture. So bringing it from the slide to the meeting. Real life.
Speaker C: Yeah.
Speaker A: For our younger generations coming in, they've got a lot on their minds. Everything from am I focusing my time in the right place? My time is precious and I want to make sure that I'm having an impact. But I Also want to make sure that the experience I'm having is serving me and serving me well. And then there's driving towards business outcomes. It's having empathy for the differences and the curiosity to ask the right questions to then build the right processes that are going to engage our younger generation in meaningful ways and keep them happy.
Speaker B: I love the way you keep talking about curiosity because I think that there's this perception that asking questions and being curious is something that people do early in their careers and then at some point you have it figured out. Which you know the spoiler is, that's not true. It's never figured out. But I think leaders tend to be nervous about asking questions and nervous about expressing that level of curiosity because it might show a crack in their sort of armor, the crack in their ability to say that they know what the right thing to do is. So how do you help people reengage that level of curiosity within themselves?
Speaker A: It's really simple, right? For leaders who are building a team so that they can drive their outcomes and if they're building a team that looks different from them, then they should almost expect different viewpoints and welcome them and embrace them. The quotes that I usually anchor to I heard from a leader in the past that really sat with me and gave me the courage to speak up at all levels of my career from a point of curiosity is if everyone in the room is thinking in the same way only one person is thinking and we know that that does not drive the best outcomes.
Speaker B: I mean, there's evidence to show that even when you're designing products, right? Having multiple voices in the room, multiple viewpoints of how they might use it builds better products. It builds better products. I love that. So how can founders use empathy mapping right now, this week while they're listening to better understand day to day friction that their employees might be feeling?
Speaker A: I hope that all the founders take this with them to all of their one on ones this week. And it's really just like a four point quadrant. It's what is my direct report saying? What are they feeling, what are they doing and what's the result? The friction point lies within those four. So what are they saying versus how is it showing up? And that gap is where your friction exists. If they're saying all good, but I feel overwhelmed, that's a mismatch, right? That needs to be solved for and you know sort of where to dig in.
Speaker B: Solving for that is not just telling them that what they're experiencing is invalid or that it's not happening. Right that doesn't remove the friction, that actually creates more friction.
Speaker A: Correct.
Speaker B: So how do they go about removing friction?
Speaker A: It's having the conversation, that tough conversations, having the tough conversations, having the human to human connection point that helps solve in meaningful ways for individuals who are complex. We're all very complex. Right. So when we think about it from a driving engagement in the workforce of people using tech, the tech will help you identify the gaps very quickly. But it's the people who are going to help you see their zone of genius or what's really bogging them down and how they need to be re engaged in meaningful ways to drive their best outcomes.
Speaker B: And that's where listening more than you talk becomes very important for leaders.
Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. It's a very useful tool. I think listening to your workforce in a. Creating that psychological safety to help them feel comfortable opening up creates more productive conversations, builds trust in meaningful ways in a genuine way and then helps to drive better productivity and better outcomes.
Speaker B: Exactly.
Speaker A: Mhm.
Speaker B: The people are really at the center of everything and I think that's what our four part series is really trying to dive into. Today's episode really focused on how we're applying concepts like design thinking that can be applied also to people processes. Right. So we're not just designing people processes in a vacuum, we're designing them with the people that are affected by them.
Speaker A: Correct.
Speaker B: Your company really focuses on people driving people, helping them adopt technology, helping them to understand it. If I'm a founder and I'm trying to get people to understand and adopt AI, what is something that I can do today that will help my team understand that AI is not replacing them? It's, it's supposed to be enriching.
Speaker A: I think being transparent about that very plainly. If you're looking to make investments in tools that are going to help optimize your human workforce, leading with that messaging and being very clear about what tasks you expect AI to adopt so that humans can focus on the human things and really helps to dismantle that fear and create a transparent, very clear path forward for your workforce to adopt in the right ways. The second piece of it is building training around that so that it's enabling them to do so. Yeah. So they feel supported. Actually train them.
Speaker B: Yeah.
Speaker A: Actually teach them a thing or two.
Speaker B: I think that's the perfect place to end this episode. Actually teach your team a thing or two. Right.
Speaker A: Like don't be open transparent and teach them.
Speaker B: And there you have it. Thank you for joining us on this episode of Managed Chaos podcast. We will be back with Jeana Lee for two more episodes, which we're very excited about. Please like, follow or subscribe anywhere that you get your podcast.
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