Ahem ahem…It was 2014 when yours truly was designing a whole new flat UI for the Viber iOS app.
It was a vast overhaul of the entire experience with a small number of 200 million active users waiting for us to launch.
After the product delivered, I was given the biggest reward I could have asked for- I was asked to lead the team.
My role was evolving as we went, but one thing was consistent- focusing on people and driving them to be at their best.
I knew little but felt a lot. This feeling has kept me going till this day.
Check out the examples below that highlight my experience in leading people
People Leadership
Career Development
People Leadership
All recent roles- SEEK, ACG, Seer Medical
Development is integral to personal job satisfaction, productivity and recognition. Stating the obvious but investing in career development can lead to higher levels of employee retention, as individuals are more likely to stay with an organisation that supports their professional growth.
I conduct these chats and I conduct them frequently (once a month), they involve three major components in the following order:
1. Discussing their individual Clifton Strengths (by Gallup) as a way to address soft skills.
If this is first that you have heard of clifton strengths; it’s a is a self-assessment tool that generates a report of 34 strengths, ranked from top to bottom. The report sheds light on individual strengths and gives pragmatic tools to achieve high performance.
2. Discussing their individual hard skills and levels (e.g- I rate myself 3 out 5 on Interaction design). We also created a skills guide to assist with those conversations
3. Setting some short and long term goals that help them progress their soft and/or hard skills.
Designers and researchers have been extremely happy with this session, often expressing their appreciation for a leader who is so deeply invested in their professional development. This sentiment is also mirrored in the results of engagement surveys.
Competency Framework
People Leadership
A Cloud Guru
The COVID-19 pandemic has prompted a shift towards remote work, resulting in rapid growth for A Cloud Guru - a SaaS product that supports cloud migration. To support this growth, I took on the task of establishing new roles that required change management activities. One such activity was the establishment of clear career paths and skills required for different levels within ACG's Product Design team. Working closely with senior leaders and the People and Culture team, I created a skills framework that reset expectations and improved performance and development conversations. As we iterated on the framework, we also handled change management tasks such as promotions and redeployments.
The most significant benefit we noticed was the immediate accountability it created for the ACG design system and the company and product strategy.
Forming a Healthy Unit
People Leadership
I’ve been part of a team since the beginning of my professional career.
I have seen disjointed teams and unified ones. Those who practiced a culture of competition, pride and siloes and those who practiced safety, vulnerability & unity.
I work hard to create the latter.
At Seer, it meant some of the following activities:
1. I facilitated the co-creation of the Design Team Values. They set the bar for expected behaviours and held outliers accountable.
2. I created a Notion Design Space to promote better transparency and help break siloes.
3. We completed User Manuals to promote better collaboration
4. I used the Clifton Strengths framework to promote vulnerability
5. We socialised! Organising off-sites, virtual team bonding activities (e.g End-of-year Reflection session)
Seer Medical
Talent Acquisition
People Leadership
Seer Medical
With great talent, comes great responsibility!
For that reason, I have made it a priority to invest my time in insuring we match our hiring and onboarding practices to the level of talent we wished to attract.
Let me tell you what we did-
1. We created an inclusive hiring process with flexibility
2. We created a guide for managers with steps to follow as they hire and onboard
3. We set up a Notion Talent Pool
4. We created a pre-onboarding deck with an intro to the team
5. We gave them a Clifton Strengths code to complete before joining!
6. We customised an onboarding notion board to help them orientate themselves on their first day/week/month. Check out the board we created for our researcher!
p.s: you know you did well when employees still point out their hiring and onboarding experience, a year into the job!