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Use Case:

Team Building: Attract, Hire, & Retain Talent

My strategy, at a high level, for leading high-performing, diverse, inclusive global product, design, and research teams.

Team in Serbian countryside

Background

Team Boston Dinner After a Leading Agile Sessions

I have always been a natural leader, in part because I am an empathetic partner and articulate communicator, who excels at generating enthusiasm for ideas among others. I have consistently improved my management skills over the last 15 years to attract diverse top talent, retain and develop high-performers, and drive my teams towards delivery of a collective goal. With the recent transition to remote work, I have consciously adapted and grown to effectively navigate the complexities of leading teams that are hybrid, distributed, and global and who possess varying degrees of experience and multidisciplinary skill sets.

Team Leadership Values

  • Promote psychological safety by being clear about the conditions for team members' individual success.
  • Celebrate day-to-day wins, work ethic, and behavior during weekly team syncs.
  • Pair team members to expand domain expertise, soft, and/or technical skills.
  • Listen, evaluate, and understand what each person needs and nurture their growth.
  • Set clear departmental OKR’s and align with individual performance goals. Discuss on a regular weekly cadence.
  • Socialize the career path ladder and skills assessment.
Celebrate day-to-day wins

Notable Accomplishments

  • Attract, build, grow, & lead global product, design & research teams from 11 to 31 people in under 1 year with 0% attrition to effectively support a complex portfolio of data analytics, healthcare products.
  • Received executive buy-in (at a Fortune 4 Healthcare company) to establish a pioneering senior level team of Product, UX Strategists and Enterprise Information Architects to amplify the reach and impact of innovative work I had spearheaded as an individual contributor.
  • Mentor 5 computer science students over a summer internship and deliver a comprehensive Menu application that significantly improved the dining option selection experience for over 2200 daily campus users.

Teams and How We Work

How I Attract, Hire, and Retain talent

Attracting, hiring, onboarding, and developing tremendous, high-performing talent requires a clear strategy. Below I've outlined my high level approach.

LinkedIn Groups

Attract

  • Active participation and influence in product, design, and technology leadership communities.
  • Develop and maintain healthy relationships with faculty and deans at leading educational institutions.
  • Support and mentor designers via LinkedIn groups, conferences, and by maintaining an open line of communication with individuals I’ve worked with over time.

Onboarding

Hire

  • Hiring tremendous talent requires a clear strategy that encourages diverse applicants, clearly identifies the team & business need(s), defines a consistent scoring practice, and provides comprehensive onboarding for each new team member. I am very thoughtful in this process and partner closely with human resources / people to ensure I provide a memorable and considerate candidate process. This includes:
    • Identify the need for a new team member and articulate the business value proposition.
    • Write a high-quality job description that becomes the basis of the new team member's performance profile.
    • Partner with human resources / people to evaluate the salary band.
    • Post the position across diverse job boards, social media sites, and my network.
    • Setup candidates for success by clearly defining the process and time commitment upfront.
    • Establish evaluation criteria for the interviews to remove bias amongst the hiring committee

Scorecard

Retain

People are at the heart of retention and creating conditions for people to thrive is the key to success. A team, by definition, is a group of people working together to achieve a collective goal. They embrace the daily challenge because they have the support, tools, processes, conditions and culture to lean into so they can become the best versions of themselves. Over my career, I’ve found the art of retaining and developing high-performers and an effective product, design, & research team is heavily reliant on the following building blocks:

Building blocks of an effective team

  • Purpose: Team Charter, Vision and Strategy, Roadmap, Leadership

  • Principles: Customer-driven and innovative

  • Partnerships: Communication and how we work

  • Performance: Accountability, Learning & Development programs

  • Productivity: Tooling and Meetings that Matter

  • Predictable Quality: Workflow & Metrics

  • Product-Market Fit: Revenue Generating and Sustaining