Cultivated a Culture of Research and Data-Driven Strategy
Role
Product Designer, Lead Researcher
Key Initiatives
Weekly Book Club, Monthly Metrics Meeting,
Timeline
August, 2022 - Present
Overview
When I joined Workforce.com, a workforce management software provider, I was faced with designing for a product whose strategy operated on unvalidated assumptions with no unified process for leveraging customer insights and data. This became a major issue, especially as we transitioned to a new product focus. Without clear customer understanding, decisions stalled, priorities shifted, and the strategy lacked alignment with business goals. It was clear we needed to shift towards a more customer- and data-driven approach.
Goals
Cultivate a data-driven strategy informed by customer insights and market research to establish an iterative, research-based product strategy.
Outcomes
A culture shift from assumption-based strategy to a data-driven one, grounded in customer and market insights.
Approach
Weekly Book Club
Six months into my role, I recognized that our assumptions-based strategy stemmed from an ingrained company culture that believed past successes would continue to work without iteration or validating. This created a disconnect between what we thought we knew about our market and customers versus the reality.
To address this, I launched a weekly book club with the goal of highlighting the importance of learning about our clients through research and data analytics. The books we chose organically morphed from learning more about product design (Hooked) to exploring product strategy and finding product-market fit (The Lean Product Playbook, Solving Product). Through discussions of these books, we began to challenge assumptions around our current business model by applying concepts and frameworks offered in the books we read, encouraging curiosity and strategic thinking.
Celebrating our 1 year anniversary of book club, we'd covered quite a few books which enriched our understanding of our market, product, and topics like product strategy and data analytics.
Monthly Metrics Meetings
About eight months after launching the book club, our third book introduced the pirate metrics framework. Building on our group’s enthusiasm to explore this framework, I launched a separate monthly metrics meeting and invited leadership to join, allowing us to apply the framework directly to our business model. This initiative pushed our teams to rethink how customers fit into the business model. Key topics, like customer acquisition and retention, became focal points. Leadership now had a structured framework to analyze data and validate assumptions, resulting in more informed decisions about product-market fit and business success.
Beginning with a basic Google Sheet, our metrics meetings were about tracking trends per month based on "Key Metrics" per the Pirate Metrics framework. Each month we'd review the data trend and discuss the implications of these trends for the business and our teams.
User and Market Research
As we progressed, the book club and metrics discussions highlighted critical questions about our market and customers. Key questions, like what differentiates our product, why do customers buy our product, and who best fits our value proposition, pointed to a need for discovering the motivations and values of our own market and clients. To begin answering these questions, I spearheaded user and market research initiatives, gathering insights from our clients and market. Book club and the metrics meetings enabled other team members to begin contributing their own insights, creating a rich knowledge base. This collective effort helped inform product decisions and align teams on customer needs.
Colleague Commendations
What colleagues valued from my work changed from simply visual value to analytical and user-centered value.
"Emma makes decisions based on research and data."
"She carries out the company value of talking to customers and helping others on the team get involved."
“She really demonstrated her research-guided approach to design.”
Supporting a Shift in Company Direction
One of the most challenging aspects in maintaining these initiatives was when the company direction moved from servicing a singular product to offering a whole new product area, changing which clients we prioritized. However, by integrating book club learnings, metrics data, and research insights into strategy meetings and sharing them with leadership, our strategy stayed grounded as teams continued to make decisions based on data rather than assumptions.
Impact
The book club initiated a company-wide shift toward curiosity and data-driven decision-making, leading to metrics meetings which tied product decisions to business performance, ultimately increasing our research initiatives which grounded our strategy through a transition period. After two years, the product team is now more informed, product cycles prioritize client expectations, and customer feedback is regularly shared through all-hands meetings.
Optimizing for the Future
The book club and subsequent initiatives grew organically through collaboration and improved communication across teams. In the future, action items could be developed from each book’s insights, with book selections aligned to specific business goals. Establishing the metrics table from the start, with leadership involvement and cross-team collaboration to gather data, would further streamline this process.