Main point:
Not only is there a HUGE base of ready, connected consumers
Those consumers have multiple connected devices, and more than just Smartphone, Tablet and PC – new connected (commerce-capable) devices appearing every day.
Main point:
Not only is there a HUGE base of ready, connected consumers
Those consumers have multiple connected devices, and more than just Smartphone, Tablet and PC – new connected (commerce-capable) devices appearing every day.
Main point:
Not only is there a HUGE base of ready, connected consumers
Those consumers have multiple connected devices, and more than just Smartphone, Tablet and PC – new connected (commerce-capable) devices appearing every day.
Main point:
Within just a few years, over a ¼ of all retail commerce will be “digital” – via contactless tap, in-app or browser.
Contactless (tap-in-pay) capability in store is projected to grow the fastest as in-store commerce becomes more digital.
In-app checkouts (in a merchant’s app) is projected to grow quickly as well – becoming equivalent to the size of web-checkout today.
Main point:
We all know the importance of smartphones – but today they are the FIRST STOP shopping channel. People start their product research ON the smartphone.
Also, consumers use the smartphone IN HOME as well as out-of-the home – it is the device viewed as most convenient and accessible and it “goes with me”.
Main point:
Not only are people connected, but they are VERY connected. They have multiple connected devices, and they move between them throughout the day – often using multiple devices to complete a single task.
Just at MasterCard, we have a huge focus on Internet of Things, on Security – which is at the core of our brand, BlockChain, DevOps…
And we’re a B2B2C company, so the rise of the platform is interesting. I no longer control the digital touchpoint -> I influence it. Our end to end experiences to consumers will flow through a few different entities: Merchants, Issuing Banks, sometimes the Silicon Valley folks.
Dynamic for sure…
And a lot of people are spending a lot of time saying how important the customer experience is.
Management is listening, intently. But Management needs to understand how to lead the company with experience which is easier said than done.
Do you prioritize how you invest by how you are continually improving the experience or are you focused on revenue?
What is really getting management attention is how experience minded companies are outperforming the folks that are lagging. By a lot.
So the data in the market and the conditions for success have never been more ripe.
And for our teams and talent, it has never been more important to have influence skills, leadership skills and storytelling.
And we need to do this for every level of the company.
Why did you join the company where you are? What are your ambitions for experience – particularly in the intermediate term, say 3-5 years?
This is the inspiration you need to serve you well as a leader, and we are just starting to have be at the levels of the company to really influence change.
So here is the challenge. It is your job to lift your organization’s conditions for success for experience to be successful.
So where you want to take your vision is your thinking on how to lead. It’s really how you lead at every level of the organization.
What we need to do to be successful isn’t well understood by our leadership & partners. (Take 3-6 months to go research with your target audience)
And, our TEAMS are learning what it takes to be successful in a large organization. Our teams typically have all the right hard skills, or you wouldn’t have hired them. We need to give our teams the soft skills to lead from their vantage point, up and around the org.
We may have a direct manager that we work for, but managers can change. And your line manager may have a limited vantage point within your organization.
I like to think that I work for our Management Committee at MasterCard, which is the collection of executives that lead the company and my direct manager – our Chief Innovation Officer sits on. That way, I think about Sales & Relationship, about Finance, about Technology, about the MasterCard Franchise in macro, then I think about Digital Payments & Labs to apply my broader business perspectives to.
Your agenda is where you want to take your company on an intermediate term.
How knowledgeable is your organization on experience?
What do your WINS look like?
What are the foundational elements you need?
REMEMBER, executives are typically averse to building big teams before they see value & they don’t know what it takes to get the outcomes they desire.
Doing great work that no one knows about isn’t all that helpful.
Communicate cross functionally, have your elevator pitch ready, host lunch & learns, get invited to leadership meetings to talk about experience. Apply what works in your organization.
Consistency is more important than grand ambitions.
Another thing that we’re looking at at MasterCard is getting actual Customer Experience metrics. We’re ramping Voice of the Customer program, and in conjunction with that we’re looking at how we will measure satisfaction to get to an executive dashboard to review on an ongoing basis. Metrics & data resonates well with our executive team, and anything to quantify experience is key.
I’m sharing this for those who haven’t read it. As leaders, many of us are new to the people stew of a large cross functional org. I’ve found this book to be invaluable to terms of defining an agenda that people can get behind and provides great context for leadership.
How many people here love their lawyers? You need to take your experience detractors and turn them into champions. The fastest way to get there is bring them into customer engagement such as research or testing.
We’re building a usability lab where I work, in our New York City Tech Hub. That will allow us to folks in our corporate headquarters, St. Louis where we have a key operations site, and let’s say London all participate in viewing usability studies that we are doing for digital.
It CHANGES the conversation.
Work with your dev team, work with product.
Know when you need to either compromise things or stage them. And know when you need to provide some vision to drive the conversation to meet user needs. Our roles are a blend of inspiring and executing. Our vision will always have more credibility when we have a solid execution track record.
And the more you are a partner that is part of the solution, the more you will be involved in prioritization & strategy setting.
We can’t ask for a seat at the table, we have to earn it.
Who here finds hiring easy?
We have a good geographic diversity in attendees here, east coast, west coast and important points in between. You know your community best, but I’ll share a few things that work for me.
We are in New York City, right by Union Square. We’re house proud, so I like hosting community events. In New York City, UXPA and IXDA have strong chapters & leadership. So I work with both of them to be able to host programming out to the community. I have a personal interest in developing the next generation of UX leaders, so that’s the subject matter I tend to like to host. There’s also Meetups, and I’ve spoken at a few. We’ve hosted hackathons, including our fashion hack with Parsons so that’s another good way to engage. There’s World Usability Day, which is a great community event in NYC.
We also sponsor a graduate student project with Carnegie Mellon.
So these are some example. If there isn’t a lot in your area, it’s a great opportunity for you to be a leader and spin something up.
The burden is on you to be an employer of choice.
Along with authenticity, you need the right skills.
Beyond that, you want alignment in values. If I come across a talented designer with an extreme startup mentality, they may not be a right fit for our product design team but they may be great in our innovation lab.
I like builders. We do some interesting work around Financial Inclusion, which is a clear social benefit that also is appealing. I like collaborators vs. cowboys.
A role on your team, for that individual, needs to make sense.
If you think about how long it takes to hire, typically 90 days at a minimum, and you think about the amount of intellectual property it really takes for a UX person to hit their stride – this can be 6 months or more from hire to productivity. So if you are turning over 20% your team annually, for example, you are doing that at huge cost. If your role on your team is a good fit, you are more likely to keep someone on a 3-5 year clip.
Enterprise leadership is typically allergic to building big teams until they have seen big business value. You need to think about the waves of value that you will deliver and aligning your growth to that.
If you are building from scratch, I’d insist that you bring in research from the start. The enterprise has a hard time understanding how UX people are more T-shaped than generalists, so it will take some education to HR and business partners why you need a “visual designer” vs. a “UX designer” or a “content strategist”.
I think everyone here should think about Performance Management as a key component of the EMPLOYEE EXPERIENCE.
People that used to work for me usually reach out for help for 2 things: they are looking for a new role or they have a problem with their current manager.
The challenge with UX is that many managers are rock star individual contributors, but not everyone has had a lot of people management experience.
We need to think about this part of the employee experience as thoughtfully as we design our products & services.
Here we have the annual calendar that many enterprise companies follow.
Objectives are the foundation. You are responsible for getting these out at the START of the review period. I tend to socialize my objectives with key partners to make sure we are aligned in what we are delivering for the business. I tend to think that a few objectives on the “what” and one or two on the “how” is the right mix. “What” objectives can speak to how design will add business value. “How” objectives are more about how effectively your team is getting the cross functional team behind them.
Be sure you directly tie compensation to outcomes, to performance. Send a message with compensation.
We do a Talent Review on an annual basis, where we talk about the talent we have, how to develop it, flagging people for additional responsibilities.
Reviews are a time to formally provide feedback to your teams. Hopefully that message is “you really crushed this, fantastic job”, but sometimes it’s “you did a great job concepting the design, but I’m concerned that you are struggling getting your project partners behind your ideas. I know we’ve spoken about this a bit, but I think we need to put some focus on that and here are some ideas that may help you”.
Which leads me into coaching.
I want to share with you one of the best career learnings I got from the WORST boss I’ve ever had. I learned something invaluable from her: provide feedback often in a clear, direct and supportive manner.
As much as we should define objective on the “what” and the “how”, we need to coach there too.
Have 1:1s with your directs at a frequency that is appropriate to their level: more junior more regularly – weekly. More senior, less regularly with coaching conversations that are more directional and more problem solving oriented.
You NEVER want anyone blind-sided at performance review time with negative feedback. Your teams deserve a better employee experience than that.
Development is as important.
Do this person need a “Career Board of Directors”, are they at an inflection point, are their hard skills getting stale. It’s good to initiate these conversations with your teams to define areas where you need to invest in them or they need to invest in themselves.
Who here loves fielding a performance problem?
Hopefully if you hire well, set clear objectives, coach and develop your teams you will not have much of these.
But, if you do here are some guidelines:
Always be respectful
Always be clear & direct
Follow your companies HR processes
Your intention should always strive first to manage up or realign responsibilities
If you aren’t able to manage performance up, follow your HR processes to manage out
A performance problem never ever ages well, so don’t daudle. The impact on team morale, on productivity on delivering business value
Keep your team execution focused and in the know.
Your teams on the ground have narrower perspectives than you do.
We’re 2 years in at MasterCard on our big digital push. My teams on the ground can at times be knee deep in sausage making kinds of issues.
I’ve found that from time to time I need to reinvigorate them on our transformational agenda.
So in order to have high performing teams & talent, you need to manage at all levels of the organization.