trust and collaboration

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, publicly traded companies with sales of $4B, in the government sector working on citizen experience for the State of Oklahoma, and leading digital at one of the largest privately held banks in the nation.

All along my career journey I have had the privilege of working with amazing people dedicated to their particular craft. 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 as stockboy in the grocery store, we worked in tandem with our teammates to ensure every piece of inventory that could fit was out on the floor, so our customer could purchase what they needed and our managers could track inventory for next 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 each and every moment on the water.

As a member of a small startup team, trust and collaboration kept us afloat and drove us to each and every milestone on our roadmap. There was more work than we all could do in a day and we had to collaborate through many tough decisions that could very well 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 Restaraunt 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 digital transformation of the citizens experience — it was only through collaboration across the political aisle were we able to 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 the great 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 Digital transformation outs hierarchical command and control as an outdated and ineffective style of management. Ushering in a “Master’s of None” philosophy where you hire people smarter then you and let them build.

Digital transformation requires adaptation and those that cannot adapt, will not survive. The pandemic has shown what’s behind the curtain, and many companies were unprepared for the exposure.

All this to say, to be successful and trustworthy teammates and leaders — we must “make better” all around us and the way towards better is through the trust we instill in others.

In trust and collaboration our work is multiplied and our days are fulfilled.