[00:00:00.090] - Chris
In this episode of Great Practices, I'm talking with Jen Gordon, a user design and user journey expert, about how to get the necessary approvals on your projects to keep things moving forward. Find out the challenges that come with receiving approvals in highly regulated industries and how understanding people process and technology will make the experience easier for everybody. Plus, you'll find out why there's no shortcuts to building good old relationships, and why writing a ransom note every now and then may be a good thing.
[00:00:34.160] - Narrator
It's hard to say when something is a best practice, but it's much easier to know when something is a great practice. And that's what this podcast is all about. Interviews with CMO and project management leaders who through years of trial and error, have discovered their own great practices and are now sharing their insights with you. Now sit back and enjoy the conversation as Chris Hopp uncovers another great practice in this episode.
[00:01:03.090] - Chris
So, I'd like to welcome you to this episode of Great Practices. And do you need someone to tell you that you've done a good job? Are you always looking for approval? No, we're not talking about approval from your mother or your spouse or your colleagues, but rather approval on deliverables plans, change requests, budgets, anything else that needs someone to review on your projects and say yes, to move forward, or to review and say no. And this is the reason why, and this is what you need to do to continue to move things forward. Well, our guest today, Jen Gordon, has been managing projects for a long time, ranging from creative projects, process improvement, UX, and design, to projects in highly regulated industries where approval is hard to come by. She's going to share with us some of what she's learned over the years to identify the right people to help say yes and the fastest ways to get there. So, Jen. Welcome to great practices.
[00:02:01.670] - Jen
Thanks for having me, Chris.
[00:02:03.260] - Chris
So first of all, we always start with the obligatory question can you tell us a little bit about yourself and what you do?
[00:02:09.130] - Jen
Yeah, of course. Well, when we met years ago, I had started out in UIUX design and over the years started to work on a lot of marketing teams. And that's where I started to develop some interest in user journey and user experience, user research, and helping those teams achieve the overarching goals of the organization. So that's my passion is taking user experience, customer journeys, and elevating those to allow the business to achieve the goals thereafter.
[00:02:44.710] - Chris
That's been really, what, over the past how many years you've been doing that now?
[00:02:48.410] - Jen
About the past twelve years.
[00:02:50.490] - Chris
Okay, got it. So I take it that you've been enjoying that then?
[00:02:54.260] - Jen
Yeah, I really love it. And it's been a journey for myself actually, where getting on Scrum teams, agile teams, we have an initiative that trickles down from above and then how do we execute it? And then report back on our findings or the results of whatever we produced. But where we're kind of focusing today is some highly regulated industries where that flow is sometimes laborious in the timing.
[00:03:27.170] - Chris
Yeah. So what are some of those highly regulated industries that you've worked in over the years? What does that look like?
[00:03:33.180] - Jen
Well, right now I'm working full time for a global bank, so currently working there. And then I'm also with a large healthcare system. So when we're talking about creative projects and what's allowable from HIPAA compliance standpoint and that kind of thing, that's just a lot to consider and pretty much everybody has to understand that those are priorities and that it can't be skipped over.
[00:04:00.110] - Chris
And I would assume there's a lot of opinions also in that mix right. That would come to the table.
[00:04:06.130] - Jen
Well, I'll say from the banking standpoint, there's a lot of institutional knowledge around what you can and can't do already, like from a content creation standpoint. So these writers, they already know, don't mention or don't use this phrasing or don't make this claim, and the language that surrounds a certain interest rate or whatever, it needs to be worded a certain way and we're constantly learning. But I would say that's sort of the foundational level of having that institutional knowledge where the content creators are kind of learning as they go and therefore speeding up the process as they go. So we're not having to reinvent the wheel every time with the same corrections.
[00:04:55.310] - Chris
Got it. So what are some of the other challenges that are brought to the table when it comes to project approvals in these regulated industries?
[00:05:04.130] - Jen
Just things that get overlooked or things that we aren't aware of. It's like new things that are coming up in the industry or somebody being unaware of how to phrase something and it gets through and then they come back in. And some of it is you would never guess that what you're submitting would have an issue. Like whenever you read over the copy, you're thinking this seems like a valid factual message and then it comes back down with even just the slightest change of wording and it's just something you could never anticipate. Sometimes it gets to the legal department and they just have another way they want to phrase it for whatever legal reasons they have.
[00:05:50.050] - Chris
And then that adds to the foundation right. Of the way to do it going forward time and time again. Right. So it continues to build. So let's talk about some of the ways that you've overcome these challenges. It's always good to break things down into people process and technology, right? You can't go wrong if you look at things that way. So first of all, let's look at the people aspect of things. So how do you manage the people involved to keep things moving along?
[00:06:18.170] - Jen
Yeah, well, I think part of it is, especially in a larger organization, making sure that you loop the proper people in in the proper order. That's a challenge we've been faced with, is being over scheduled with meetings. And so people are like less meetings, less meetings. And you want to honor that and be respectful. But then at the same time, sometimes if you don't loop people in early, you regret it later because they wind up getting looped in and it would have saved several iterations if they had their feedback earlier. So from a people standpoint, I'm not saying that's wrong, but it is a little extra thinking about, okay, here's the project, here's what the purpose of the meeting is and why you are invited. That's probably the number one thing. I'm sure that's not unusual for people in larger organizations where you have to be sensitive about people's time.
[00:07:14.170] - Chris
But is there a trick to identifying who the right people are to get in those meetings right there that are going to be the approvers? I mean there's always like a reviewers and there's always approvers.
[00:07:25.790] - Jen
Yeah, I think for the organization I'm in, there's product owners, there's marketing leads and over time you start to identify who's in charge of which groups. It's hard though in the beginning because you don't know anybody and a lot of times the teams are very remote. It's not like you're running into them. The water cooler, it took me a little time to get to know those players and also a little time to make those mistakes of shoot, I really wish that person had been here like two weeks ago.
[00:08:03.290] - Chris
Yeah, so maybe that is the answer. Maybe it is just going to take some time to figure out who the right people are.
[00:08:09.870] - Jen
Yeah, people told me, hey, or you ask around, you're Teamsing people saying, hey, who owns this project? But then over time I just am doing that less. Oh, one other little thing that helps with that, depending on what system people are using. But one thing that does help with that because some structures have changed at the bank and so different people are in charge. And in Jira you can see who the leads are now or who's looped in on a ticket or a project. And so usually I'll just ask our Scrum master, hey, so and so is on this ticket, are they leading it? And then they confirm it. And sometimes our Scrum leader can also give us a sense of all the players that are going to be involved. And if they're not on our team, then we have to arrange other meetings because sometimes we can touch on a few things during our calls that resolve questions and problems that pop up.
[00:09:08.060] - Chris
Which brings us really to our next question. Like you mentioned, Jira, that's really kind of know planning tool and how you're able to move these projects forwards through that. What does the workflow or the process look like to get these approvals quickly?
[00:09:21.890] - Jen
Best case or best practice is you start with messaging in a marketing environment and that can sometimes get lost in the shuffle where stakeholders want to see something. And so you're lorem Ipsuming things that's not ideal, obviously, and depending on who the lead is for that particular department, they may let it slide, they may not. But ideally you want to start with the messaging, get that copy to compliance, have it reviewed, rewritten reviewed again because it's such a mess to have it going back and forth and that hasn't gone through final approval. Yeah, I mean, I'll say getting up to V 17 v 17. We kind of were joking about it, but I was also with my team members, but I was like, guys, this is not cool. Actually, this is the way we want to do it.
[00:10:27.550] - Chris
Yeah, it's not like you're bowling. It's not a high bowling score or anything.
[00:10:32.620] - Jen
No, you want that number like way lower.
[00:10:36.490] - Chris
That's right. What are some of the tools then that you use when it comes to version control or being able to manage all that? How do you manage all that side of things?
[00:10:48.510] - Jen
I actually would love to hear how other people if you ever have another podcast that talks about how copywriters iterate copy and then hand it off to design without it looking like a ransom note, you know what I'm saying? Right. The comments, the strike through the red, the yellow, the blue. I mean, I'd seen some that literally it was like I mean, I thought I could make wallpaper out of this or something. It was just so colorful.
[00:11:14.320] - Chris
Yeah, it's like they're cut out of magazines and all that kind of stuff. Like that kind of ransom note, right?
[00:11:18.440] - Jen
Yeah, that kind I mean, hot mess design. We're just trying to decipher this. So that's one of the struggles that I've seen at the bank where they're just the back and forth and then some people will download the Word Doc rather than working off the cloud and so they've got a different version. And I'm not answering your question. I'm telling you more of the problems. I'm just know outside of Google Docs, I haven't seen how people do it really effectively in Word. Especially when you've got contractors jumping in and they're doing some copy stuff and they've been working on it in their laptop and local machine and then they upload it and they don't use any kind of version notation in the file name. And I think it just takes somebody being like a total, this is the way it's got to be.
[00:12:12.970] - Chris
I would concur because I think you're right. It's like I've seen it in many different forms and fashions and it is it's essential repository it's SharePoint it's, teams it's, whatever. But regardless, people have a tendency of just pulling it down, downloading it, working it offline, it's just like you cannot keep up with that, but you just have to mandate that this is the way it's going to be. And if it's not in that and you're not editing in there, it's not going to make the final cut, is it?
[00:12:42.070] - Jen
Yeah, like some consequence, like time out, your phone gets taken away, something I don't know.
[00:12:47.980] - Chris
Yeah, some consequence. And make it look like a ransom note also. Like, whatever that consequence is going to be.
[00:12:53.110] - Jen
Right.
[00:12:55.030] - Chris
I think that's the way that should be handled there. All right, well, I think we've so we figured out basically version control is via ransom note.
[00:13:04.330] - Jen
That's how you approach it. Just kind of go all in on that thing and then just watch your designers slowly die inside. Who cares about them anyway?
[00:13:18.030] - Chris
I'll paraphrase it, but it's like, basically it is going to take just a lot of regulation and governance on whomever the project manager is going to be.
[00:13:29.320] - Jen
Yeah.
[00:13:30.020] - Chris
Well, thank you.
[00:13:31.080] - Jen
That was the word I was trying to come up with. It just wasn't coming out. Governance.
[00:13:35.290] - Chris
Yes, I've got dozens of them. So are there any other principles that our listeners can apply to make their project approvals go smoother and faster that you may have seen work or not work over the years?
[00:13:50.090] - Jen
This is kind of relational. It's not necessarily like step by step, process driven. What I've seen work, or work better over time, is when you have a consistent team that is producing work over and over and over again and those relationships start to gel and you understand how the others communicate and you've made some of your needs known. Like, hey, I'd really love it if all the comments are resolved on this word. Doc. That to me, is when things start to kind of smooth out. And also another aspect of that, I think to build those relationships and to be really intentional about it, if possible, to have some kind of happy hours or whatever, like something that's social every once in a while, especially if it's a remote team, to try to help support those relationships that you're building every day. Because really, for me, in terms of getting stuff done, I care about my teammates and making their work go more smoothly. It builds more empathy for each other in our roles. And so to me, that's what starts to smooth things out. Even if we were transitioning to Monday from Jira and it was bumpy, like, from a process standpoint, we were like, oh my God, I mean, how are we going to do this?
[00:15:21.220] - Jen
It wasn't working, but we were hashing it out and we knew each other and we liked each other and we had respect for each other. And that, I think, was kind of the foundation that made all the chaos. Okay.
[00:15:33.070] - Chris
Very profound. So, you know what? Maybe this is the reality of what this is all about. Maybe there is no shortcut to just getting approvals and that kind of stuff. Maybe it just takes time. You got to know the right people. You got to build those relationships, you got to put those things in place, have those systems in place, and those are the principles that you would apply that over time, it's just going to just make it really go on autopilot.
[00:15:57.160] - Jen
Yeah, right. Yeah. I wish I had that formula. If I'm being totally thoughtful about it, it was really about because we did wind up getting it ironed out, we did wind up implementing Monday. It started to flow, we started to work out the kinks and it was okay. But really, after all that's done, then what's greasing the wheels? It's the relationships and the caring about what you hand off to people.
[00:16:23.930] - Chris
Yeah, perfect. All right, excellent. Well, we appreciate your insight today, Jen. And what is the best way if someone wants to contact you, if they want to discuss ransom notes further or any of these things further, what would be the best way for somebody to contact?
[00:16:41.150] - Jen
I love, I love talking about customer journey stuff. So if you have a customer journey that's broken or needs optimization or if you have OKRs that are completely not getting hit, I love helping with that. So yeah, just email me [email protected], that's where you can reach me.
[00:16:57.640] - Chris
Okay, sounds good. Well, thanks again for being on today, Jen, and sharing some of these great practices with us and we will talk to you soon.
[00:17:05.270] - Jen
Okay, sounds great.
[00:17:09.690] - Chris
Well, we'd like to thank Jen again for being on today and joining us on Great Practices. And do you have a great practice you'd like to share? Go to thepmoleader.com click on Explore Great Practices podcast and fill out the form at the bottom of the screen. Someone will get in touch with you shortly. Also, be sure not to miss an episode by subscribing to Great Practices on your favorite podcast platform. And if you like what you hear, be sure to share this with your manager, colleagues, and anyone else you think would benefit. Thanks again for listening to this episode and keep putting Great Practices into practice.
