LEAD AT THE SPEED OF TRUST

MAKE BETTER DECISIONS FASTER

OPERATIONALIZE + SCALE

I spent my first 100 days doing just one thing:

listening

I didn't come in with a grand master plan. I sat with the staff and unpacked the issues burning a hole in their morale. I discovered a team that felt physically scattered, hopelessly siloed, and entirely disconnected from the organization's decision-making processes.

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But before we could fix our external services, we had to fix our internal environment.

Beyond just "bringing the tribe together", we completely reconfigured our physical and psychological workspace. We created dedicated quiet zones for focused "deep work," and inclusive, open spaces for collaboration and problem-solving.

I introduced my work philosophy, Work Out Loud, making our processes entirely transparent to the rest of the organization.

A funny thing happens when you address the fundamental human needs of your staff and build a psychologically safe space... they feel empowered to unapologetically do their absolute best work.

Let’s be honest:  as an organization, we were relying way too much on assumptions. We were guessing what our customers and community needed instead of actually asking them.

My guiding philosophy has always been building without learning is just guessing.

In order to fulfill our mission, I needed to equip my team with the proficiency and operational tools to gather real evidence.

You think boiling the ocean is hard? Try raising the temperature of the universe by two degrees.

Me

Simplified before:after view of UX team shift in will-n-skill

I met with everyone on my team and evaluated their passion for and proficiency with various UX research methods.

That gave me a baseline for the team to take action in the form of:

Training resources to build proficiency

See one, do one, teach one to build confidence

Buy-in and tie-in to build advocacy

Score some quick wins to build credibility

Over the course of 6 months, I was able to fill proficiency gaps, and identify those on my team that had the potential  and the desire to eventually become Zonar's first official UX researchers.

In tandem with this effort, I knew that I needed to build unwavering support from other departments.  So I went on a "book tour" of sorts...

Partnering with my fellow department heads, I introduced a series of resources that would create a shared "value language" between UX, Product Management, and Engineering — helping everyone understand each other's decisions better.

Conduct discovery research with both current & prospective customers on a regular basis — ideally weekly

Identify unmet customer needs & market opportunities  to make products people truly want

Focus on enabling the customers’ most important desired outcomes to maximize business impact

Understand the steps toward a desired outcome to make products that help customers reach it

Conduct low-fidelity, low-cost, iterative experiments to solve customer problems together, faster

Align organizational efforts around the most valuable work to keep teams focused & engaged long-term

Through this collective effort across three key departments, I established a set of "litmus test" value questions that every deliberation or decision would roll up to:

How well do we really know our current and future customers?

NEEDS, PAINS, GOALS, OUTCOMES

How can we substantively improve our customers' daily lives?

USEFULNESS, VALUE, DELIGHT

Can our customers use our services successfully?

COMPREHENSION, USABILITY

What business value do we expect these services to generate?

GROWTH, REVENUE, LOYALTY

How quickly can we build and deliver these services?

FEASIBILITY, ABILITY, VELOCITY

Once we had trust and evidence, we needed something more than free coffee, sheer willpower, and staff burnout — we needed sustainable architecture.

To keep the team focused and engaged long-term, we had to fundamentally change how we worked together. I partnered with fellow leaders across different departments to dismantle operational silos and establish a collaborative, shared governance model.

We standardized our internal workflows so our staff could spend less time dealing with frustrating administrative bottlenecks and more time doing the meaningful work they actually loved. Finally, we defined a clear career progression framework, providing absolute clarity on what professional excellence looked like and ensuring equitable compensation for everyone.

Elevated the grass-roots initiative known as DSPLY (Design System, Pattern Library & You) to an organization-wide commitment that fundamentally changed how the UX and Engineering teams work together.

Worked with fellow leaders in Product Management, Engineering, and Technical Program Managemnent to forge a more integrated way of working that integrated continuous learning into the rhythm of the business.

Established and rolled out the first formal set of behavioral & performance metrics for accurately & consistently measuring the efficacy and quality of Zonar products and services.

Defined a career progression framework for the department that was both comprehensive and easy to understand, helping provide clarity on what excellence looks like for each role.

Hired 5 additional employees in 2022, including 2 UX Managers (and an internal promotion made it 3), another dedicated researcher, and Zonar's first Design Technologist.  Re-org'd the team around areas-of-focus.  Also hired, trained, and lead two new UX Designers for Continental EU's Fleet Management Systems team.

Began reporting directly to the CPO, and working more closely with the VP of PM to double-down on the strategic partnership between PM and UX.

Partnered with the Director of TPM, VP of Product, VP of Engineering, and over a dozen other leaders and stakeholders within the Zonar Product Delivery organization to define, evangelize, refine, and get buy-in on adopting Dual-Track Agile as our default methodology in 2024, making how Zonar gets products to market more collaborative, transparent, accountable, and efficient.

By actively listening to our community and aligning those insights with the organization's strategic goals, we stopped just "launching products" and started delivering evidence-based solutions that we knew would make a tangible impact to both our customer community and our bottom-line.

The culmination of this multi-year journey can be seen here:

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Whew.  That was a lot, to be sure. Summarizing nearly 6 years of organizational leadership is no small feat, so thanks for making it all the way down here. 

If you're interested in hearing more about anything above, feel free to grab some time on my calendar.