Trust & Collaboration
A more personal take on work and transformation.
If you want a more personal bio… here it is.
I have worked in grocery stores, waterfronts, rivers, coffee shops, funded startups, bootstrapped startups, interactive agencies, and publicly traded companies with sales of $4B, and I’ve worked in the government sector on citizen experience and digital transformation for the State of Oklahoma.
I have worked with amazing people dedicated to their particular craft throughout my career journey. The jobs that were the most fulfilling were ones in which trust and collaboration were staples of the day-to-day business of doing business.
As stockboys in the grocery store, we worked with our teammates to ensure every piece of inventory that could fit was out on the floor so our customers could purchase what they needed and our managers could track inventory for re-order.
As a waterfront coordinator at an outdoor camp, we trained our river rafting guides and our lifeguards to watch over the customers like they were family, then had to trust they would do so every moment on the water.
As a small startup team member, trust and collaboration kept us afloat and drove us to every milestone on our roadmap. There was more work than we could do in a day, and we had to collaborate through tough decisions that could kill the business or launch it into the stratosphere.
As a leader in digital innovation at Sonic Drive-In, a $4B publicly traded company in the Quick Service Restaurant industry — building bridges across departments while knocking down knowledge silos was only accomplished with the voice and talents of others working beside me.
In serving the citizens of Oklahoma through the digital transformation of the citizens' experience, it was only through collaboration across the political aisle that we could reform and pass the Central Purchasing Act of 2020 into a signed bill.
You get the picture.
Pro tip: To be successful in digital, everyone must leave their ego at the door. Digital is an excellent exposer; it forces collaboration and creates an environment where trust can take hold. The work of digital transformation is the work exposing inefficiency, creating productive workspaces, and optimizing workflows. Digital transformation outs hierarchical command and control as an outdated and ineffective management style. Ushering in a “Master’s of None” philosophy where you hire people more innovative than you and let them build.