I’ve been thinking about my early days as a musician before I switched gears and built my career around technology, design, and product management. Sometimes folks ask me if I still play my saxophone, and I say no. I never quite found my voice as I did working in technology. One thing I did take with me though was being proficient at the art and craft of improvisation. Being good at improvisation means bringing creative thinking and innovation to the table.

A lot of the work I’ve done fits within the realm of what is known as Digital Transformation. But as my practice continues to evolve, I’ve become less comfortable using such a tech-specific lens to every challenge organizations face. I decided I needed to think more broadly at techniques used for Business Transformation to see if this is a better fit. But what does all this transformation really mean?

Teams who collaborate at a high level do so because they know and trust each other. Not just on a personal level, which is great, but how they do and talk about their craft. This includes the steps it takes to accomplish activities like design sprints, and also when to do them, who to do them with, and how activities relate to each other.

Last July, I left my role at Exygy as Director of the Product Management team after 7 amazing years. Having some time to reflex on those amazing years, I have a sense of pride for the work we did together and a respect for the learnings along the way.

I hate to say it, but the answer isn’t always yes. For many years, I’ve worked in and around design systems for organizations that design, build, and maintain digital products. In many cases, they are just not ready for a design system because they haven’t yet become an outcomes-oriented organization that uses agile and human-centered design practices.