Breaking Silos with Journeys: How to Align Teams Around What Really Matters

Shreya Dhawan, Mariah Mills at UXDX Community: The Experience Advantage: From Journey Health to Revenue. Video: https://youtu.be/rI61h1JYFBQ

Readable transcript: edited from the recording's captions for readability (fillers and false starts removed, punctuation and section headings added). Wording is the speaker's own. Timestamps are positions in the video. Names marked [?] could not be verified against the audio.

Introductions and Harmonic Design

[00:00:08] Shreya: Today Mariah and I are going to be talking about journeys. Specifically, we will be covering how we have used journeys in our work at Harmonic in aligning teams and really breaking silos across teams, to be able to build something impactful and create value from the work that our clients have been wanting.

[00:00:31] Without getting into it further, I'm going to jump in real quick. My name is Shreya Thakrar [?], as Rory mentioned. I am a lead service designer with Harmonic Design. I'm also joined by Mariah, who is my partner in crime at Harmonic, also a lead service designer. A fun fact here: we just discovered, and actually remembered, that Mariah and I joined Harmonic on the same day 8 years ago. So it's a pretty fun thing to be able to do this with her, and to get both of our brains together to really share some juicy stories with you today.

[00:01:08] All right, before we begin, I wanted to quickly give you all an introduction to Harmonic. We are a US-based firm. We are a service design agency, and a lot of the work that we do is around inspiring services, making them more human, inclusive and sustainable. We have worked with clients across different industries and sectors, and of different scales and sizes, and our working model is essentially working side by side with our clients to be able to really make the change that they desire.

[00:01:44] The next slide is just talking about our capabilities. I won't get into too many details here about our capabilities, but we do all sorts of work, front and back, end to end, top down, as you can think about it. We are service designers, so a lot of our expertise and methods are in the realm of service design, and we are very big on understanding the people and the environment that we're engaged in with our clients. All right, over to you, Mariah.

Journey maps and becoming journey-led

[00:02:19] Mariah: Thanks, Shreya. To jump into our topic today, a couple of prompts for you to think about as we get started. I imagine many of you may have been part of building a journey map in the past. Some of the images in the background here might look familiar to you. But our question to you is: how many of those maps have led to lasting changes? That's just an intro to our topic today.

[00:02:53] I wanted to start off with the acknowledgement that these days the answer was probably yes for many of you, because journeys are becoming quite ubiquitous. Whether they're used by user experience teams, in research readouts, whether they're part of a design workshop or a deliverable, or just part of a process like building a user flow. And I know there's one thing that I track and smirk at a little bit. There's a lot of discourse sometimes around what is the right way to build a journey map, or whether they're becoming too much of these static artifacts versus something that's more interactive. The conclusion I've come to, at least, is that there's not really a right way. What matters is the choices you make in your setup, layout and design of the map itself, and that will make it an effective tool for what you're trying to get done.

[00:03:57] Through this talk we're going to cover some ways that we've used journeys with our clients to unlock unprecedented alignment and really bring people together around a shared perspective through storytelling, and also to unlock these management superpowers too: making them an interactive tool, something that they can easily pick up and work with and use as a living tool going forward.

[00:04:27] As I mentioned, we don't have a perspective that there's one right way to do a journey map, but this is just an example of some components that might be part of a journey map. Generally, these are things that we see in most of our journey maps as we strive to build alignment with our clients. The story of the customer interactions and experiences over time, through journey stages and moments. And then tracking that to things like outcomes and KPIs, as well as where the work of the organization fits into that: teams, roadmaps, capabilities, things of that nature.

[00:05:10] I want to take a little bit more time, as we get into this, on what it means to become journey-led. As Shreya mentioned, we are service designers, and we're often entering organizations that are product focused, or working with the product operating model, or have alignment in that kind of orientation. A lot of times what we see is something we could describe as being a little more feature-led. Teams are really focused on what it is that they're putting out into the world. What is the timeline it's on? When are the releases coming out? We're resolving specific pain points.

[00:05:51] But a lot of times the teams developing those features are either isolated by function, or they're cross-functional, perhaps like the model that Rory was showing, but isolated by product or by feature, and not really seeing a full picture of how all of that fits together. We found that transitioning some of that thinking into being more journey-led can really help with not only becoming more cross-functional, but more cross-product, cross-feature, more holistic in the way that our clients are able to align around what the customer experience is, and what outcomes are resulting from the projects and the work that gets done. It's also a little bit of a shift of the metric, of what we're looking at.

Case study: a transportation operations team

[00:06:42] I'm just framing this up to jump into a couple of examples that Shreya and I have that hopefully can help inspire you to see how you can use some of this in your work. As we mentioned, we really believe the way to be effective is to tailor your journeys and your journey activities to the challenge at hand. So I'm going to talk a little bit about a project that I worked on recently with a client in the transportation industry.

[00:07:12] Our client was situated in the operations part of that company, trying to figure out how all the frontline employees who move people around get from one place to another and get everything done that they need to get done. Specifically, we were working with a technology group within that space. The project itself was internal product innovation. They had some goals on reducing costs, enabling automation, and improving employee experiences along the way as well.

[00:07:46] But they had some challenges. They were working with a lot of disjointed tools and operations that had evolved in silos over time, and it was a massive problem space as well. It was a very large operational group, or conglomeration of groups. Our stakeholders were also struggling with that breadth of complexity, to really scope and prioritize the key challenges to address within that, and just get their heads around what would make the biggest impact. And with this, they had challenges around making the case for change, getting the funding to do all of the work that they felt needed to be done. These are pretty common challenges that we'll run into as we jump into our work with organizations. It definitely was not unique to this team.

[00:08:47] This team was in the middle of a big transformation initiative. They had some ideas about how to go forward, and it was a very product-centric approach. They had these four product areas to get things done operationally. The questions they were bringing to us were things like: how are these products structured to work together? How do they enable employees to execute the tasks that they need to do operationally? Which employees need access to which of these products, or parts of these products, at what times?

[00:09:28] What we did is we started to help them reframe this and say, "All right. Well, let's not start from the product and ask how that can help the employees. Let's start from the employees and the roles and the things they were doing to enable the operations, and see what the needs were there and what we can align." With our reframe, we made the choice to use a journey approach and framework here. For me, telling this story in a different visual way unlocked a completely new way of conceptualizing and thinking through the challenges at hand.

[00:10:13] We did a lot of research with many employees and stakeholders and mapped the frontline employee journey; the backstage operational journey, so how all the operations teams support that frontline employee; and then, role by role within that journey, how they work together and what they need to get done moment by moment in order to support that frontline journey. So we broke it down in a way that was a hybrid of using a Jobs to be Done-like approach and aligning that to the journey framework.

[00:10:55] What we did on top of that was align the product areas they had been conceptualizing to that. This gave them a new view of not only where their product areas were used by certain employees, but how they operated together. We weren't just looking at four isolated products that could be actualized by four isolated teams; we were looking at something very cross-functional that needed to enable specific roles and tasks along the way.

[00:11:28] They were able to use this map to quickly identify opportunities, both for quick wins and long-term transformation work. This facilitated discussions on what to prioritize and why. It also initiated, like I mentioned, more of a systemic approach to product design and management. So we saw a lot of collaboration start to emerge that wasn't there before. I'm going to hand it to Shreya for our second case study.

Case study: journey ownership and moments that matter

[00:11:57] Shreya: All right, thanks, Mariah. That was definitely an interesting project, and I learned a lot from listening to you speak about it. The second case study we're bringing is again using journeys as a framework, for a slightly different challenge. This one was a project where I was working with a continuous improvement and experience team in a Fortune 500 company. This company is known for providing really exceptional customer service to all of its customers, and of the suite of services that they offer, one of them is the ability for customers to rent a car.

[00:12:46] This company was also going through a big strategy and outcome refresh, and because of that refresh, two of the things that they were trying to do were a big agile transformation and a focus on reducing expenses. So really focusing on the big financial impact of being able to control their costs and really reduce the cost of the way they serve their customers.

[00:13:17] Similar to what Mariah was sharing, the challenge here was a little bit similar, but this team was specifically struggling to understand what to focus on and which efforts were going to really help them reduce those costs. They were struggling to prioritize and sequence the journey backlog. They had a big backlog of tasks and items and features that they needed to build, but they didn't know where to start, which ones to prioritize first, and which ones to put off for later. One of the things they were lacking was the ability to have a view of the current state journey, what it is and what it looks like, because it was not mapped. It was not something that anybody had even thought about.

[00:14:12] The other thing they were having trouble with was the problem of prioritization. Since the backlogs were flooded, there was no view into how they should be sequencing that, what efforts were going on, how they should place bets on what is a quick win versus a long-term improvement to work on in the future. And lastly, they also wanted to experiment with this whole idea of journey ownership, and really figure out what it truly means to own a specific journey. What does it mean to take accountability for that journey and to continuously improve it, so that we're able to make changes and prioritize work keeping journeys in mind, as a new way of working?

[00:15:01] The approach that we took was slightly different from the previous case study that Mariah shared. In this specific case, and we have abstracted the framework here so that you're able to use it in your own context, we started off by talking to a lot of internal stakeholders and really understanding their strategy, what mattered most to them, what it means for their functional area to reduce expenses and reduce cost, and what data they had. We wanted to understand the journey from their perspective, because we didn't want to start from scratch. We wanted to come in with an idea of what that journey is, and really leverage the minds of the internal stakeholders to create one view of the journey that could then be tested externally with real customers to fill in the gaps.

[00:15:59] Meanwhile, as we were starting to create this framework by capturing the info that we were getting from these stakeholders, we started looking at journey moments, and specifically the moments that matter. As we were looking at that, we were pulling in specific data. We were defining metrics and data that needed to be pulled at specific moments, to understand where more intervention was needed, where we needed to focus our research, and where the gaps were that we needed to fill.

[00:16:34] We very quickly realized that there was very limited visibility across different teams. We did not have the ability to capture data across the journey to determine whether the journey was performing well, which we would use as a way to prioritize efforts against. So we used moments that matter as a proxy for the journey performance and the journey health. Because there was a lack of that data, we thought the best way to determine how the journey was performing was going to be looking at the moments that matter.

[00:17:15] The way we did that, if we go to the next one, yes. We created this journey framework where we were really able to map these journeys to the bigger business outcome of reducing expenses or reducing cost. We were able to identify some metrics that were going to be applicable across the entire journey, that would tell us how the journey is going to perform end to end. But specifically, by identifying those moments that matter, we were able to pull specific data, whatever was available, along those moments. What this offered us is an easy yet comprehensive way to look at the journey performance and really identify, if there is a lack of data along the journey, where the data gaps are. If there is data fragmentation, if there are specific moments where more data needs to be pulled, how do we create a new data strategy, so that we're able to really use data to tell us where continuous improvement needs to be made along the journey?

[00:18:28] By mapping it this way, we were able to identify a very high-impact, low-cost or low-effort change that, if we made it, would save a very substantial amount, millions of dollars. We were able to do that only because we were able to really get down to the level of identifying those moments and capturing data at those specific moments. What it also exposed is the gaps I was telling you about before: that there was very limited visibility into the overall journey health. We were able to educate them on which data is good, where the data needs to come from, and really the importance of data in effective decision-making.

[00:19:19] The last thing that we did on that was look at the work streams of the projects that the different teams were working on and map them along the journey, much like what Mariah and her team did, to really see the better opportunity to sequence this and prioritize work.

[00:19:39] Next, we did two things. We were looking at the near-term improvements as well as the long-term improvements. Because we had signals of how the journey was performing and what those moments that matter were, we were able to connect all of the backlog decisions to those moments that matter, and really use that as a framework to say what should happen first versus what should happen next. We used a very simple matrix, as you can see here, a two by two that goes from strategic to tactical and now to later, to really sequence what should be done as a quick win near-term versus enabling a broader strategic transformation in the future.

[00:20:27] And lastly, for the long-term improvements, we wanted to really look at how we get there using the journey. When we went out to do research earlier, when we were filling in data gaps and journey gaps, we were also pressure testing some really early concepts that would help us define what the North Star was going to look like. That way we were able to build a phased approach, something that we call an evolution plan or evolution mapping at Harmonic. It helps us translate the long-term North Star strategy into actionable, bite-size steps in a phased rollout, so that we're able to identify the most critical and important capabilities that we are required to build towards the North Star, and have a plan to build them in a phased rollout.

What journeys give you

[00:21:22] As we go through these two case studies, what do we learn about journeys from here? Why do we think journeys are important? One of the things that we really wanted to bring in front of you is: what are the outcomes of being journey-led? What does it provide to you? In both of the case studies we shared, you will see that we anchored on the concept of a journey, but both of us did that in our own unique ways.

[00:21:53] Journeys are highly customizable. They offer that flexibility, and they can be tailored to fit the specific needs of your organization. As Mariah was saying earlier, you just have to figure out the right way for you to use them for decision making, by making them fit your own context. I would say never once in my career have I used the same framework for journeys for two different companies, but I have used pieces of it throughout, so there are pieces or learnings that I carry on from one project to another.

[00:22:27] What do journeys help you do? They help you with storytelling and really aligning everyone to a common current and future state. They really help you tell the story of your customers, whether it's your end customer or employees or any other type of customer. Because you can work at different scales with journeys, you're also able to really connect the business to experience to technology. And journeys are a great alignment tool to track metrics and your ongoing work, just like we did in the case studies that we shared, so that you're able to make prioritization decisions in a better way.

[00:23:12] But make sure that you're not slapping journeys everywhere. There is a time and place for using journeys, and for understanding the best way to get the most from them. We have used journeys in different shapes and forms, so it's really important that you understand their use. What's important is to understand the level of zoom or scale, how deep or how high level you need to go, based on who your audience is, what you're trying to solve for and what kind of information you're trying to use. Then you can zoom in or zoom back out from there.

[00:23:54] You also need to determine the use of a journey. Are you going to be using it as a single artifact, like a journey map on the wall that people can point to, that gives you a snapshot in time of what the journey is? Or are you going to be using it as a living tool that gets built on and is used for continuous improvement and decision-making? Or something in between? And then think about how it relates to other tools in your toolkit, how you could seamlessly combine it with other tools and artifacts that exist in your system.

Journeys as the translation layer in product organizations

[00:24:31] I know we're coming up on time. We just had two more slides to cover. We brought in this slide, which we thought would be relatable to you all. It's taken from Product School's outcome-based roadmap, and we've made a slight addition or tweak here to show where journeys might fit in product organizations. They often act as a translation layer between the strategy that lives up at the top and delivery teams at the bottom.

[00:25:05] If you're joining from a product team, you might have seen this roadmap. If you're in product leadership, you might be operating somewhere at the top, making the product vision, or really looking at the business impact and values, how your goals and outcomes are coming together and layering down. If you are, let's say, a product owner or developer or engineer, you might be working in the bottom half of this map, where there is delivery, really working on those features and stories. And if you're a product manager, you might be somewhere in the middle, where you're trying to connect the strategy and delivery together.

[00:25:44] So journeys are that connective tissue that product managers can really find useful, even product leadership, and everybody working towards their goals to create something valuable and meaningful. Journeys give that end-to-end view for every team, every functional area, to come together and really see what we are working towards, instead of working in their own silos.

[00:26:12] Lastly, I just wanted to quickly touch on this, and let Mariah jump in here as well. There are a couple of ways you could take some of this forward. Like we discussed before, journeys are a great alignment tool. You can use them across different teams, including product teams and other functional areas, to focus on the layer of experience that you need to bring to your work. You can connect them to your existing roadmaps, or to outcome-based roadmaps like I showed before if you're coming from product. And you can use them to connect your strategic goals to your own product roadmaps while keeping in mind the experience that you want to offer.

[00:27:00] And of course, journeys are a multi-purpose tool. They are best leveraged when they are actively used. So don't let those journey maps sit around. Really make a change, really bring them center stage, and really use them to capture that end-to-end experience, so that you're able to bring more and more people on board and see where change needs to be made, where decisions need to be made, and how we all need to come together.

[00:27:32] All right. Well, that's about it. Mariah, do you have anything to add? I think we're out of time, but thank you, everybody. We really enjoyed presenting today and appreciate the opportunity.