Episode 12 of The Informed Life podcast features an interview with design executive Kim Lenox. For the past twenty years, Kim has served in leadership positions in top global organizations like LinkedIn and HP. Now she’s leading product design at Zendesk where she manages and interacts with teams dispersed throughout the world. In our conversation we get into the keys to making this work:
I think really critical is just finding alignment, making sure that we are all in alignment. The company Zendesk was founded by three Danish founders, and the Danish culture is very consensus-driven, and so we spent a lot of time in building relationships and having conversations around our shared vision, so it’s not a top-down mandate. It’s really about it coming from all directions and great ideas. It comes from every direction, it’s really about us making sure that we’re aligned, and that comes through conversation.
Kim also shared her latest tool to help her keep track of conversations:
I have a lot of memory recall when I am writing conversations down, and it’s really a visceral, very important part of my work style, and what I was finding was on paper, I wasn’t… every three months I would change notebooks, and so I would walk around with two notebooks because most of the things that I’m doing don’t get done in three months, and even if it’s the end of the month and you start a new month you still have to reference back, so I got this iPad to be able to help my work style, and so that’s my latest tool.
As a fellow iPad note-taker, I was keen to hear about how she’s doing this. I hope you enjoy this conversation. (By the way, if you’re enjoying the show in general, please review it in Apple’s podcast directory; this helps other folks find it.)