The work
From Las Vegas construction sites to Microsoft, eBay, AT&T and an AI platform on a $120 server. Nearly 100 companies, eleven industries, $1.18B in value delivered.
Every company here was changing shape faster than its operations could hold. The people inside already knew most of the answer. My work was to listen at every level, from the founder to the front line, connect them back to each other, and clear the one blockage that let everyone else move.
Some of my work is covered by confidentiality agreements, so a few rooms appear by sector.
01 · Microsoft · MSN
MSN had 35+ products and three fresh acquisitions. More than 100 teams sat across five functions, and each function ran its own agenda, its own rhythm and its own idea of who owned the product. The leaders were exhausted by the infighting, and the company needed a three-year plan.
The Book of Insights is the most thorough and solid start to the planning process for a multi-year release roadmap that we have had to date.Blake Irving · MSN / Windows Live Platform, Microsoft
Alignment arrives when every team agrees on the outcome they share. The plan follows.
02 · Microsoft · Xbox
Xbox needed a way to bring game publishers, indie producers and licensed content into one ecosystem, with certification, licensing and payments that worked for everyone. The work crossed sixteen functions every day: finance, engineering, legal, licensing, marketing, game quality, the Executive Office and more.
Speed comes from daily conversation with every function the work touches.
03 · eBay
Mobile was arriving fast, and eBay needed to be on every phone in every major market at once. Roughly 24 internal, partner and contractor teams covered design, development, QA and delivery, each with its own priorities and its own timeline.
Twenty-four teams move as one when each team hears what the others are doing, every week, in plain words.
04 · Nuance · Dictaphone merger
Nuance was absorbing Dictaphone. Mergers shake customers loose, and support volume was the place churn would show first. Nineteen teams had to agree on one product, and the product had to work in natural language, years before anyone called it conversational AI.
Automate the call your customer makes most often, in the words they already use. Then watch where the remaining 20% goes.
05 · AT&T Wireless · Customer care
AT&T needed a full care center in Sacramento, staffed, trained and equipped in six months. Every founder fears the same thing at the front line: hand people authority and they will give the money away.
She works with a high level of integrity, openly gives credit where due, and seeks practical solutions that stand the test of time.Scott Sanford · Director of Customer Care, AT&T Wireless
Give your front line a number and stand behind every decision inside it. They protect the company harder than any approval chain.
06 · AT&T Interactive
AT&T Interactive was moving its subscription products onto the web and mobile. The sales force selling them numbered 5,000 consultants across 22 major markets, and every one of them needed to understand a new product line and believe in it.
Your people inside the company already hear what customers want. Ask them first, and the sales story writes itself.
07 · Webex
Corporate accounts were waiting more than a month for support, well outside their contract terms. The highest-value customers were at risk, and six departments each saw a different piece of the problem.
Walk the customer's whole path through your company. The backlog lives in the handoffs between teams.
08 · A twelve-branch surgical group
The group ran about a 12% margin across twelve branches and was leaking everywhere. It sold eye surgery at $299, competing on price alone, for a procedure that frightens people. I came in as VP Operations and was promoted to COO, then interim CEO.
Find the fear sitting under your product and design every touch point around it. People pay for care.
09 · NomaData
In 2000, private medical, dental and chiropractic practices kept patient records locked inside each office. Data security was weak across the open-source tools of the time, and HIPAA deadlines were coming.
She is a visionary with enough savvy to figure out who the real experts are and empower them.Kenny Flegal · Technical Architect, NomaData
Design for the person whose data it is. The rules eventually catch up.
10 · Las Vegas resort development
Early in my career, the largest contractor in the Las Vegas market was pouring the structures for a generation of resorts at once. Casino boards, owners, investors, engineers and architects all had a stake in every pour, and every schedule depended on the one before it.
Every project runs on sequence. Know which pour everything else is waiting on.
11 · Investor diligence
An investor was excited about a nine-figure commitment to an Airbnb for yachts. The model looked fine on paper. Since 1998 I have written more than 20 startup pitch decks that raised over $300M in all, so I know what a pitch is built to make you feel.
She has complete understanding of big picture scenarios and the details, adapts to any business environment seamlessly, and completes high quality plans and strategic solutions quickly.Nathan Lewis · Angel Investor, London
How a founder does one thing is how they do everything. Read the small things first.
12 · Current practice · AI and automation
A growing business was paying for about ten subscription tools that barely talked to each other. Each tool added a login, a bill and another handoff.
Inside three days she automated eight team processes with our longest-serving experts. Because they drove the solutions, they were thrilled.Christian Peterson · On an operations automation initiative
Problem first, then tool. Automate a process your people already trust, with the people who run it.
Stories and lessons from nearly 100 rooms: what’s really going on underneath, and how founders and companies find their flow.
Subscribe Let’s talk