Curated work
Overview
As an executive design leader, I drive design through the teams I lead. My functional leadership spans CX design, product, brand, and business leadership. I also work 1:1 with multidisciplinary designers to create compelling experiences that add real value to people.
As requested, here are some further materials about CX Design Principles that led at NM, building Experience Metrics, and as well as the tangible outcomes.
Capabilities
1. Master facilitator & collaborator able to lead people w/ different priorities & personalities.
A career working in complex, highly-matrixed enterprises driving large global CX design projects.
Accomplished enterprise facilitator working in-house and regular industry workshop leader.
2. Extensive CX experience with service & design in both digital and physical environments.
Led the development and prioritization of a multi-year CX roadmap (157 products & services) at Northwestern Mutual in alignment with c-suite, business leaders, and 11 design functions.
3. Codified thought process that gets through tough problems to good solutions.
I have an extensive toolbox of consulting methodologies, industry best practices, and behaviorally-backed frameworks. The toolbox is helpful to get groups of people to focus more on outcomes, not output.
Some tools I reach for often are; Cynefin, AP’s experience mapping, system thinking frameworks, Zeratsky’s design sprints, Ideo’s human-centered design toolkit, Luma’s innovating for people, lean canvas, cognitive-behavioral techniques, high-performing team models, DISC, and behavioral economics frameworks.
Notes
CXO Enabler
Accustom to working w/ the C-suite, delivering on their expected altitude, and at scale. CMO (Linda Boff, GE. GE’s rebrand, Design Council, Physical Environments), CCO (Becky Edwards, Olympics. Design & experience transformation strategy), and CXO (all of my work was under the CXO’s function)
Pragmatism
I have a deep understanding of the business reasons and practical constraints that experiences need to exist within. I pay close attention to aligning Design with the business strategy to increase market share. This keeps Design from existing in a vacuum. (GE was big on this and all work was viewed through this lens.)
Customer-focused
Focusing on the user, not just in the discovery phase, but at all points on the journey. The goal is to serve them uniquely and engage them more deeply. (All of the foundational customer-centricity tooling into NM’s digital products)
Autonomous
There has been a lot of job crafting in my career from being an entrepreneur, to running my studio, and to working on an executive level for iconic brands. I’m well versed in making the role my own, keeping my MGR engaged, and working collaboratively cross-functionally to deliver on both the big picture and the single service.
Northwestern Mutual
Multi-Year Roadmap Case Study
Approach
Challenge
There wasn’t a clear CX vision, there were 9 different roadmaps, and no one was owning the end-to-end service experience. (The organization was very siloed and politically entrenched.) Also, it wasn’t transparent how the journeys tied together, nor what outcomes they were striving towards. The team originally tasked had a rough start. I was asked by leadership to take over this workflow and deliver it.
Action
This was net-new work for the CX function. I used a Cynefin framework to find the right way to approach this complex problem that showed: a holistic view of the end-to-end experience, how it ladders into the overall strategy, addresses targeted customer pain points. Once the scaffolding was in place, I pulled in the team to co-develop… adding portfolio, epics, features, interdependencies, and success metrics. I then facilitated the stakeholder and cross-functional interviews for alignment and prioritization.
Some immediate needs came out of this workflow. This included: a way to force the experiences to be customer-centric, a way to have consistent experiences on all the platforms, And we needed metrics tooled into the digital experiences (to highlight “what are we trying to improve for the customer “, “how are we improving it?”, and “how will we/they know that we succeeded?”).
Result
Built a multi-year product roadmap (157 products, services & solutions) aligned with top-level business strategy, C-Suite leaders, and 11 practice functions. The big outcomes included communicating goals and priorities to the rest of the organization, building support, and adding transparency.
We also established human-centered product design principles with heuristics to unify experiences across the enterprise. As well, we developed design metrics, a data-driven, behavioral fact-base to enable practical and concrete action towards customer experiences. Together, they created a more comprehensive foundation for service and experiences at Northwestern Mutual.
Deliverables include; stakeholder interviews, cross-functional interviews, personas, competitive benchmarking, design maturity audit, service blueprints, experience diagramming, buy-a-feature, journey mapping, important/urgent index, I like/I wish, stop/start/continue, clustering, validation tests, visioning, desired outcomes, human success criteria, defining the “why”, bright spots/blind spots, and retros.
(There was a whole culture component, behavioral norms, rituals, and a high-performing team model that overlayed this workflow. I can talk about if you are interested.)
CX Design Principles
Establishing CX Metrics, Library, and Dashboard
CX Vision Anthem
Impact
Built foundational tools in order to design services & experiences that are strategic, focused, and solve a unique set of customer needs. Established clear dependencies and cross-functional collaboration to deliver against a complex service journey.
Reduced churn in development, material lift in operational efficiencies, and a blueprint of data collection to enable sustainable products.
Changes the cognitive model for critiques, making them inclusive and democratic, so they are about the work and not the loudest voice in the room. Assured consistency in the experiences across the enterprise, bringing a shared feeling and common understanding to the customer.
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