Produced by Dave Huber
Global innovation competitions
My Role - Global Design Program Manager
Alignment with executives
Training 150+ Designers
Directing a multi-week global event
Director of 8 Jams over 4 years:
Tech for Social Good (2019)
Blockchain (2020)
Watson Moments (2020)
The Future of Cloud (2020)
Competitive Intelligence (2021)
Elevated Moments (2021)
Designing for Sustainability (2022)
Product-led Growth (2023)
Product-led Growth 2023
Global Design Jam Director
Employee Outcomes, 160 participants
94% reported becoming more skilled
83% reported being more engaged at work
81% reported an increased ability to innovate at work
Innovation Outcomes
7 concepts were adopted by product teams
5 concepts were integrated into our design library
Background:
Product-led growth was identified as a critical missing strategy in IBM’s software portfolio. As team’s looked for ways to act on it, I took initiative and coordinated a global design jam to train and inject PLG strategies into our most strategic software products.
“I must commend Dave for his multi-faceted, hands-on efforts and his leadership. When the need for PLG enablement emerged, he took it in his own hands to organize a global event for IBM. Fantastic work.”
“Dave has a penchant for recognizing the right problem that we need to solve, and
prioritizing his effort toward that problem.
Specifically, his focus on accelerating
product-led growth for new customer acquisition enabled him to zero in on a specific set of tactics and skills that designers were lacking.
Dave is able to take an approach to work that is both strategic and tactical. As a result, he acts as the connective tissue between initiatives that have been prioritized by our leaders (i.e. PLG for acquisition) and creating a learning experience that is meaningful and effective for our team members.”
Produced by Dave Huber
Kickoff and Finals
Orchestrating
Designers need to play;
org’s need innovation.
Healthy groups of people are a thriving ecosystem. Finding ways to connect different needs and desires throughout an organization creates synergy. 2+2=5.
Measuring outcomes
After each design jam I send out a survey to our designers and managers to better understand what’s working and what’s not. I work with our user research team to make sure the surveys are fair and honest.
I led a team of 3 to put on a global event
Working with the Director of AI Apps and the Director of Design for Blockchain Technologies, I was responsible for making sure the event went off smoothly and delivered on our objective.
What I learned
Global events can take up a lot of time. People are busy and great employee engagement requires knowing why we’re doing it and directing events to go smoothly.
Start with why
We often inherit traditions that don’t serve our current needs. As I listened to our executives explain why we had done design jams in the past, they all gave different answers. If we don’t know why we’re doing something, it’s hard to do it well.
Over communicate
To put on a global event requires a tremendous amount of communication and scheduling. For this, I leveraged a comms plan and weekly checkins.