In Good to Great, Jim Collins observed, “Great companies… start by getting the right people on the bus, the wrong people off the bus, and the right people in the right seats.”

When I joined The Iconic, the company had the right people in the wrong seats. The company was organised in a functional structure by business unit.

One of the company values was, “We get things done.” However, the organisational structure restricted the company’s ability to achieve that.

Collaboration was low, and speed to market was slow. Getting things done required negotiating with multiple business units’ resources and priorities.

Outcomes were weak, and accountability was unclear. Outputs were business unit-centric, not customer-centric, with a lack of direct responsibility for customer touchpoints.

Inspired by Spotify’s agile teams, the Dubberly experience cycle, and startup metrics for pirates, I sat down with The Iconic’s Managing Director, Adam Jacobs, and proposed organising the company in a matrix structure by customer experience cycle.

Roles, responsibilities, and reporting lines changed.

So did the organisational chart.

I drove organisational change from department-centric silos to customer-centric cross-functional teams with single success metrics.

“By doing that, it means they don’t depend on other parts of the business. They’re completely independent, they can experiment very quickly, they own their own roadmap and they tend to deliver higher-quality technology in a much faster period of time,” Adam Jacobs said in a Financial Review article.

I established the Experience Design team and introduced customer-centric, evidence-based research, design, and testing methods.

I combined qualitative and quantitative research, and gained a wide perspective. I observed new and existing customers across a range of scenarios and tasks in moderated and unmoderated sessions, listened to customer service enquiries, interviewed internal stakeholders, visited the warehouse, conducted surveys and poked around in Google Analytics.

I synthesised the research which revealed what worked well and what could be improved.

I grouped opportunities into themes, and prioritised by pain and frequency.

I linked the priorities to the company strategy and my team’s roadmap.

We halved the steps, eased data entry, and simplified the purchasing experience for new customers.

We simplified the experience for existing customers even further. Only 2 clicks required, yet still satisfied strict business and third-party requirements.

I increased the conversion rate by 19.3% year on year.

Continue with good purpose.