Built a High-Performing Team at Local Matters
Background
When I joined Local Matters, I inherited a team of six and grew the group to sixteen. Despite the team's talent and motivation, we faced significant challenges around deliverables, resourcing, and collaboration. The existing expectations for extensive documentation were proving to be counterproductive.
Key Strategies
The two keys to building a high-performing team are communication and clear goals. Through these elements, I've cultivated a culture where team members feel valued and accomplish great things.
Building, managing, and developing high-performing teams has been a central aspect of my career. Over the past 20+ years, I've honed a creative process that emphasizes collaboration, innovation, and continuous improvement. This process starts with clear goal-setting and alignment, ensuring that every team member understands our objectives and their role in achieving them. Simultaneously, I strive to foster an environment of open communication to ensure transparency, trust, and a shared understanding, which I have found are essential for any team to be successful.
Communication
Establishing open and transparent communication channels was vital. It was essential to stay in sync with other Directors, executive leadership, and my team. Early on, I spent most of my time collaborating with my team, discussing their projects and personal well-being, and communicating my expectations, providing regular feedback.
Building strong relationships within the team was crucial for fostering a positive and productive work environment. Trust was built through honesty, respect for differences, openness, and purposeful conversations. Regular meetings, structured feedback cycles, internal critique reviews, maintaining backlogs, and providing regular email updates helped keep everyone aligned.
We implemented weekly Monday morning meetings for quick status updates and weekly walks for in-depth discussions. I also spent an hour with every new hire at the organization to learn about them and share our team's goals. Informal gatherings like Beer Friday facilitated healthy discussions in a relaxed setting while impromptu coffee meetups, supported by gift cards, encouraged cross-departmental collaboration.
Even our processes evolved as we embraced better communication. We transitioned from a traditional Waterfall process to Agile. Fully embracing transparent communication led to a cohesive team environment where regular check-ins, clear expectation setting, and strong relationships fostered trust and productivity.
Goal Setting
Setting clear, achievable goals and aligning them with the organization's objectives was essential for keeping everyone focused and motivated. At Local Matters, every team member, every manager, and every department had defined KPIs supporting the organization’s north star.
For better or worse, there was a strong emphasis on volume and project workload. While creativity and innovation were encouraged, the goals primarily focused on throughput.
As part of the Agile methodology, we were heavily invested on tracking user stories and points.
Since then, I’ve been a part of more UX-centric organizations that aim to create intuitive, accessible, and satisfying user experiences as their North Star.
Today, we see even more success when our goals and metrics are related to software adoption, engagement, and retention, in addition to the broader organizational mission. In many mature UX organizations, you’ll also find tools such as UX/UI Audits and System Usability Scale (SUS) surveys that provide comprehensive evaluations.
My Role
In the past, I have built and led teams for Motive, Local Matters, Merkle, Hatch, and ThriveHive.
At Local Matters, I mentored the Creative & UX teams and cultivated active client partnerships, while orchestrating UX/UI deliverables for international clients including European Directories, REA Group, and Truvo.
Recruited talent and catalyzed a team of six into sixteen within a short ramp-up period
Managed Creative and UX teams based in two continents
Organized and led multi-disciplinary team collaboration
Encouraged open dialogue and fostered an environment where team members openly shared their ideas, feedback, and concerns
Successfully set clear, measurable goals for the team, increasing the team’s performance and satisfaction
Outcomes
Open and transparent communication, combined with clear goal setting, led to a cohesive and high-performing team environment at Local Matters. Regular check-ins, structured feedback cycles, and informal gatherings enhanced collaboration and maintained a positive work atmosphere. Aligning the UX group with broader metrics supported creating intuitive and satisfying user experiences, ultimately contributing to the organization's success with 250+ software releases annually.