My Work Philosophy

What makes a really strong team? 

Is it the skills they bring? Is it the experience they have? 

I believe that great teamwork doesn't start with strong skills or high experience. It starts with human-centered connection and trust. It starts with shared values, shared mindsets, and shared behaviors as a team.

Teams should foster a sense of belonging and ability to fail without shame. People should be encouraged to challenge status quo and experiment with new ways of working. Leaders should transfer the power to the team to own their process and decisions alongside stakeholders. When teams do this together, they empower each other to solve the biggest problems. 

This is why every team in the world has a different setup and outcome. Each one has unique people, unique backgrounds, unique constraints, and unique challenges to face together. They must find a way collectively. What works for one team may not work for any other team, and it's not a dictation but a collective voice. Each collective voice is unique. 

My work philosophy revolves around bringing the best out of teams by distributing the ownership and decision-making to a collective. Through this, the interns become leaders. The seniors work in cohesion, not in competition. The team innovates on the problems with their users and customers. I practice service leadership and prioritize the growth of others while also working on my own growth. It's important not to be the sole person who's responsible for success, but to spread the ownership and responsibility to all peers. After all, they have valuable opinions and ideas too. They can lead too. They can solve any problem they put their energy into, no matter what level of experience they bring to the table. The world needs the kinds of leaders who hand teams the keys to their own future. 

I've led many teams through incremental value delivery. With an empowered team who's ready to drive their own way forward, companies can remove the biggest risks and explore the biggest opportunities. 

I emphasize the philosophies of agility in my work:

1. Interacting with my team to define the ways we work together
2. Building working results early and often
3. Collaborating with users and customers to decide
4. Responding to change when change needs to happen

I learned early in my career that these mindsets don't just cover development work. They span across any kind of teamwork. I have learned how to build Agile UX processes and Agile Development processes alike. 

Over the years, I've learned how to practice these mindsets and build teams that practice these mindsets. It takes a lot of energy for a team to build shared values, shared beliefs, and shared behaviors in such a way that they deliver iteratively. They face many challenges in their own team and outside the team. They must learn how to serve each others' growth. They must provide room to belong, learn, fail, contribute, and challenge decisions. 

Over time, teams learn about themselves, the business, and the audiences they serve. When they deliver early and often they learn what works and what doesn't work early and often. They change direction early and often. 

All great teams can't start by defining "how" they will work together. They must start with "why" they are here together. They all need to align on the things they care about and then define how they approach iterative work. They can choose an agile method that suits their needs once they align on why they are doing this work and why they are taking the approach of agile.