My Perspective on How to Make an Impact and Stand Out in the Market

First and foremost, if you don’t actually look beyond the numbers on your spreadsheets and data graphs to the real humans who make up your customer base, you WILL lose to those organisations that do. 

Am I biased as I have spent most of my career trying to get people’s attention through brand and advertising through to converting that interest into revenue or subscription and then maintaining that interest to create a customer lifecyle? Damn right I’m biased. And for good reason.

I’ve worked in all types of organisations, from early start ups to well-established multi-nationals and through both my own work and observation.

Here is what I know to be true:

1. 1. Brand is king. Companies that have a strong, distinctive, customer focused brands that run through all customer touch points and drive their internal cultures have better, longer customer lifecycles and brand affinity

   2. The humans matter. Customers, staff, suppliers. Investment in having good relationships with all helps produce stability, creativity and a willingness to try (or at least tolerate) something new and different. When humans become lines on a spreadsheet, numbers to optimise and exploit instead of gateways to innovation or deeper engagement, you lose the power to do much more than chase competitors.

   3. Short term thinking yields very short term results. Companies trying to hustle as much money as they can without consideration of the long term impact to their customer base will get what they pay for – perhaps a quick revenue bump for a quarter or two but also a user base that will leave them in a heartbeat when a competitor offers them something just 3% better – they’re hustling you back. Companies need to work on short term and long term solutions at the same time.

   4. If you can’t provide quality, provide awesome customer service. If you’re a volume vs quality business, most competitors or upstarts can find a way to do it cheaper / crappier than you and still find customers. You’re only hope is to go back to the human side of things and offer something they can’t – great customer support and/or retention schemes.

My Background

I’m a product leader who solves user problems holistically and optimises the positive impact within organisations. I have a proven track record of implementing and influencing fundamental change within companies to design more customer-centric digital products that increase engagement, revenue, and brand impact across multiple territories and portfolios.

I believe the best customer engagement happen when collaborating with related functions, like marketing and content, to help create more seamless, uniquely branded customer experiences across all touchpoints.

I’ve worked in nearly every type of set up and company size: from agency to in-house to solo contractor; from 2 person start-ups to enterprise level to multinationals. This also expands into working in 3 different countries (USA, UK, IRE) and across 6 major metro markets, including San Francisco bay area, New York City, London and Seattle.

Being able to identify the customer through-line for businesses comes from experience and proficiency in:

• Advertisting art direction and design
• Digital product design, UX and UI
• Brand design and development
• Service and experience design
• Evaluative research and leading UX Research strategy
• CRM and social media asset design

This gives me adaptability and vast toolbox to enter any company to solve business problems collaboratively and creatively. My background in design, content delivery and team management informs my position on improvements to creative ops and process.  

And the results speak for themselves:

• Led and managed high performing product design teams, contributing to over $5 billion of generated revenue at 2 Fortune and FTSE recognised companies
• Grown teams from 2-3 designers to 13-20+ multidisciplinary member teams at 4 companies
• Fundamentally transformed how design works and delivers at several companies through design leadership, strategy, collaboration with product & tech, evangelisation, best practice and proof of benefit
• Saved millions of $USD / £GBP for multiple companies through identifying efficiency opportunities related to design and research, including the implementation of design systems and re-evaluation of research tooling and participant sourcing.

My Approach to Leading and Getting Sh*t Done

GSD (getting sh*t done) is at the centre of how I approach work. But it’s also about getting the RIGHT sh*t done. Design needs to be pragmatic, it needs to consider the company priorities, feasibility of implementation, the ROI of effort. How you go about handling business objectives and how design and research will support them varies significantly depending on the growth stage and ownership of a company: what a start-up in stage B investment needs could be vastly different from a publicly traded company vs a company just recently bought by private equity… I have experience with all of these scenarios and have contributed as an IC and leader in all. 

Regardless, good design also needs to be seen as crucial, not a “nice to have” if you want users to stick around. And not all design decisions that enthuse your customers are purely functional.

My approach to solving problems:

I need to get into the weeds a bit at the start in regards to data, research, business goals, competitor landscape, current user complaints / needs / opportunities to understand and prioritise the problems to be solved. Once the foundations are in, I’m off the races. I make a priority to:

Build relationships with as many business stakeholders and departments representatives that have any impact on the customer journey – try to understand their pressures, their priorities, how they are being measured.

Round up insights and/or make a research plan to gather the insights needed to truly uncover the need, problem or opportunity. Whether I’m taking it on myself or working with a team to execute the research, we want to get enough insight together to start in a good direction of problem solving and add to that body of knowledge as we go through the project process.

Get inspiration, ideation and initial solutions going. Sometimes I’m the one breaking out the sketchbook or the latest design tools to comp up the solution outright. Other times I’m guiding a larger team by articulating the priorities and strategy and organising the process (e.g. design sprints, workshops, research studies) to get solutions going. The best scenarios involve developers / tech from the start, helping to inspire and sanity check the ideas we’re creating. The end goal is to create an environment where people can collaborate as needed to get a bevy of great ideas to test – lone wolfs and prima donnas need not apply!

Crafting beautiful, effective design solutions. With a degree in design and illustration and lots of experience in art direction and brand, I know how important it is to create delightful, engaging designs and user interfaces to keep audiences engaged.

Take stakeholders on the journey through the project as we go. I don’t believe in “design by committee” – designers and researchers need to be trusted and have enough autonomy and ownership to do what they do best. And stakeholders need to be assured their concerns and priorities are being addressed by the solutions – communication and transparency are key.

Test, test learn – rinse and repeat. Not every project needs to go through a full discovery cycle – some projects are no brainers and are safe bets. And even safe bets need to have their success tracked. I try to work with the data science teams and product management to track success of feature launches and follow up on their revenue or engagement impact. Small changes can make a big difference – either way!

My approach to team management and creative leadership:

Get the lay of the land

Evaluate the skills and enthusiasm that already exists in the team, if a team already exists. I need to get to know each of them – what are their skill proficiencies? What are their career goals (inside or outside of it)? What’s getting in the way of them doing good work? What things do I need to leave alone to help high performers do what they do best? What skills are missing in the team either for the present or for where the company is headed in its ambitions?

I’ve had some great success in coaching and mentoring inherited talent and position them for successful promotions at Hotels.com, Just Eat and The Racing Post in particular.

Hire in, restructure out

I prefer to find a way to coach someone up who wants to stay but is not meeting the grade of what’s needed for their position / team / company. It’s their decision to muck in or not. And sometimes they’ll not get there, so I need to consider how the team needs to be structured or restructured to meet both the company objectives and best serve the dynamics of the team. Sometimes, there is no place going forward for someone whose skillset or approach no longer works.

One way to shift a team that has been dragging or demotivated is to bring in fresh people, even if it’s just a contractor for a few months, to showcase the level of craft and professionalism we want everyone to rise to. This approach was very effective at Racing Post and Gumtree. 

The top things I look for in candidates (that are not specific to the role itself):

• Curiosity – are they looking beyond Google and AI for their inspiration? Do they ask good questions that go beyond their discipline?
• Proactiveness – do they go hunt out answers for themselves, build relationships in the business without prompt?
• Professionalism – do they know how to present well? Do they know how to solicit actionable feedback? Do they handle difficult feedback or meetings with grace?
• Team camaraderie – do they accept that everyone is on the same team? Do they add to the culture not just the craft?

It’s with these approaches that I’ve taken teams from 2-3 designers, with inconsistent rigour applied to their output, and built them into teams of 15-20 high performers of multiple disciplines (including UX/UI/Product design, research and content writing), along with management layers, to great effectiveness and impact within multiple organisations of varying sizes.

Create opportunities for the team to step up

I can’t do it all. And there is always at least one person on the team that wants to advance. I try to provide opportunities for “hungry” team members to stretch themselves, with adequate support and coaching.

I measure success by how many people have I helped get to the next level, not just how much positive financial impact I’ve created.

Supportive, accountable, humane team cultures

I despise referring to team members as “resources” – they are problem solvers that also have their own goals and needs. I actively try to create a culture within the team that encourages collaboration, skill sharing, empathy and accountability. Great team dynamics and collaboration lead to more interesting and innovative output. Encouraging accountability amongst the team can also help keep teammates on track and delivering. 

People also need to feel they can trust their teammates because sooner or later someone will mess up. Sh*t happens. As long as people take accountability and learn from it, do what they can to remedy it, failure should not be career ending. I try to create teams where successes are celebrated and failure is seen as a great learning opportunity. If we can all manage to have some fun while working with each other, all the better!

Getting into Brass Tacks – What I’m Good At

• Analysing complex product, business and user needs, and working with my team and stakeholders to develop design and research-based solutions that are effective, feasible, and profitable for B2C, B2B, and media based products and SAAS.
• Providing creative vision for my team and beyond – focusing on opportunities to innovate and up skill / cross skill with other design departments to ensure we stay engaged and competitive as a design organisation.
• Partnering and collaborating with business owners, subject matter experts, product management and tech to develop a user centred product strategy that informs product roadmaps and identifies areas for discovery and innovation.
• Leading, developing and managing for high performance, specialising in product management and multidisciplinary design, content, and research teams.
• Coordinating and managing fast paced, multi-iteration and new product projects, as well as deep discovery, user research driven projects for website, apps, display and video products.
• Educating and managing stakeholders about the importance of good design and research and how it can positively affect their bottom line.
• Mentoring future leaders, coaching them to be people-focused in their approach to driving business value.

What I’m Skilled In

• Providing creative vision and north star design and strategic direction
• Strategising with stakeholders, product management and development on processes and categorisation of product deliverables to ensure the best customer value efficiently and within budget.
• Coordinating creative / UX department scale-ups and restructures as businesses grow organically or through M&A.
• Developing user research strategy from large discovery to quick-fire validation.
• Developing product design strategy and briefs.
• Evolving DesignOps – Discovery processes, best practice implementation and documentation.
• Directing multi-platform product design (UX/UI) and cross-channel service design strategy.
• Working with remote teams across market and timezones within hybrid Agile and Kanban processes.
• Designing for accessibility and localisation.