Operational
Efficiency and Excellence
Streamlining a team’s experience so they can complete their work more efficiently. It’s about identifying those pain points that come up as repeated concerns and are equally labeled as a poor use of time. I enjoy focusing on the optimization of an experience so the user can focus on their core objective: Building in the room for joy. At least that’s what I call it.
Did you do this? Overheard at work.
Have you had this conversation? I definitely have and if it happens too often, there is an error in communication about job responsibilities. My team at Adobe was noticing this conversation popping up as we were starting to expand our team.
In addition, we didn't have a single source of truth for all the responsibilities, tasks, and little details that need to be cross checked. It was all in our head, which unfortunately is not an accessible resource for new team members.
I drafted up a RACI chart to help the team work all the elements of our roles, both during the live shows and in the creation process. Once refined and approved, the information moved into Airtable as a living document and guide for all team members. It has eliminated the question “Whose job was this?”
This process was expanded to build our workflows for each event. Airtable allowed us to quickly and accurately create an event schedule that includes deadlines, status updates, defined participants, and more. The addition of Airtable to our team’s workflow has reduced status meetings from an hour to 30 minutes, increasing the efficiency of proofing rounds by half, and giving each team member at least one hour per week just by gathering this type of information in a single location.
Finally, our team has a bird's eyes view of the projected workload and we can now run reports on the effectiveness of our programs.
Wow. What magic.
A labor of love. AIGA Colorado Presidency
Being a Chapter President is a volunteer position that is not for the faint of heart. It is an honor and a growing experience. I had the opportunity to lead a team of 23 volunteers to provide programming, build community, and invoke inspiration for the membership of the Colorado chapter of AIGA. We maintained a 40+ event schedule for over 2 years, increased membership by 34% (from 352 in 2011 to 530 in 2013), increased our volunteer network from 10 to 75 and added over $13,000 to our available funds.
How it all came together
UPDATED BOARD STRUCTURE
Created programmatic teams with outlined goals and objectives for each position to improve decision-making, engagement, sharing of knowledge, as well as improving retention.
SIMPLIFIED RECRUITMENT
Implemented a digital database to allow targeted volunteer recruitment efforts. We worked to reduce excess noise in inboxes so only relevant events were sent.
KNOWLEDGE RETENTION
Developed a Wiki to stop the leak of institutional knowledge. We hosted event playbooks to help each volunteer leader organize, promote, get support and budget their events with ease.
ADVISORY BOARD Consisting of past presidents and local design leaders, we created a funnel of ideas, wisdom, and connections for each board member to improve their experience and expand available support.