CLIENTS AND INDUSTRIES

SEARS HOLDINGS CORPORATION

Tracy Hayes, Director of User Experience at Sears Holdings Corporation

Early in the development of the User Experience team, the group responsible for all the websites of Sears.com and Kmart.com, Sears was scaling the team quickly. New managers in the organization were figuring out the product, vetting priorities and dealing with the organizational challenges that came with growing a team. Christa was hired by Tracy Hayes, an Experience Design Practice lead to design and facilitate 3-4 sessions over the course of a year for her and her teams. 

One challenge that was posed to the group was to deliver an ecommerce solution that had the right mix of Content, Community and Commerce. Christa designed an innovative and dynamic session that incorporated team building so the group would gain their colleagues’ trust to support the group dynamics of a new team. In combination, Christa structured focused idea-generating session so the team could think in new ways about the design challenges and come up with exiting new possibilities. This session spring-boarded the group into developing the page layouts for the site. 

Another session that Christa designed and facilitated for the team was a RACI (Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, Informed) session. In a short amount of time there were new employees and new teams that had not worked together before. There was no roadmap for how they should interact or who should deliver on new projects. As can assume, there was quite a bit of overlapping and overstepping that lead to confusion at best and loss of morale at worst. Christa worked to first understand the team challenges, the tasks that lacked clear ownership and the teams involved. She then designed a focused and inclusive session to ensure that all team members were heard, and their feedback was shared in an open and honest manner. Finally, she gained consensus of the group and clearly documented the decisions made so the team had a charter in which to be used to move forward.  

In both situations, the goals of the session were met, and each member of the team was able to contribute via innovative and very organized facilitated sessions. The conversations were dynamic, fun and collaborative and the group was able to be led through activities that were open, honest, safe which lead to new ideas that may not have been developed otherwise. 

WHIRLPOOL CORPORATION

Themi Psarras, Associate Director of Project Management at DigitasLBi

While at DigitasLBi, a digital marketing agency in Chicago, Christa was asked to facilitate a post-mortem session at the conclusion of a 3-month, multi-team project. The team consisted of many stakeholders representing DigitasLBi, a PR agency and as well as the main client, which was Whirlpool Corporation. The project itself was very successful yet chaotic and needed to be repeated yearly in preparation for the team’s involvement at the January Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, Nevada. The goal of the session was to understand what worked well, what should be repeated and what should be done differently when the same project was kicked off again in a few months. Christa facilitated a very dynamic conversation employing various techniques to gather all ideas and then prioritize which themes the group thought were most impactful and useful to move forward. From there, Christa organized the large group into small, individual groups to work through action-oriented plans that could immediately be put into practice. Christa was able to lead and guide the conversation of thirty attendees, ensuring that each felt included and had a voice in gathering all of the ideas, prioritizing the themes, and ultimately felt ownership against the action-plan that was delivered and used in the coming weeks. Christa also received positive praise from the session attendees and sponsor.

WHY NOT GIRL!

Lauren Herpich, CEO and Founder of Why Not Girl!