People Before Process: Building Creative Ops at DoorDash, with Shannon Duncan [Full Transcript]

This is the full transcript of episode 11 of Creative Ops Compass, “People Before Process: Building Creative Ops at DoorDash, with Shannon Duncan.” Shannon is Chief of Staff for Marketing at DoorDash, where she built the company's internal creative studio from the ground up. In this conversation, we talk about why understanding your team matters more than picking the perfect tool, how to make process change stick when stakeholders push back, and why an internal creative studio needs to stop being treated as a free resource.

You can listen to the full episode here.

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Intro

Jesse Krinsky: Welcome to Creative Ops Compass, your navigation system for turning creative chaos into strategic impact. My name is Jesse Krinsky. I'm a creative operations consultant and the founder of In Focus Consulting. I help in-house creative teams streamline workflows, improve stakeholder relations, and elevate their role as strategic partners.

Shannon Duncan: We're not widget makers, right? We're not just cranking out things in a machine. The variable you have is this human. Therefore you need to understand the particulars of that human in order for the other parts to work.

Jesse Krinsky: Today I'm talking with Shannon Duncan, Chief of Staff for Marketing at DoorDash. Shannon built DoorDash's creative operations from the ground up. She's navigated hypergrowth, taught stakeholders to respect creative capacity, and proven that the best processes are built around people, not the other way around.

Shannon and I spoke about why understanding your team matters more than implementing the perfect tool, how to make incremental changes stick when stakeholders resist, and why internal creative studios need to stop being treated as free resources.

Starting With a Clean Slate at DoorDash

Jesse Krinsky: Shannon, thanks so much for joining me. I met you briefly at a creative ops conference months ago in LA. You were on a panel there. I loved what you had to say, loved your perspective on creative ops, and I was so eager to have you on as soon as I met you. So I'm so glad to have you here today.

Shannon Duncan: Thank you for having me. This is exciting.

Jesse Krinsky: All right, let's jump right into it. So you joined DoorDash in 2021, I think, right? Walk me through what you inherited when you got there. What existed in terms of creative ops? What did you have to build from scratch?

Shannon Duncan: Yeah. Well, luckily I walked in knowing what to expect because DoorDash just started their internal creative studio late 2020. So I knew that it was on this journey of building itself.

Shannon Duncan: So what I walked into was a team that consisted of some existing creatives, just kind of like folks, odds and ends of a full kind of internal creative studio slowly but surely hiring themselves. I was hired in a year where we're also hiring other business leads, other operational people just to help build that foundation because you can't really go too far if you're just a team full of creatives and they're going great, now make a studio, right? You have to build the foundation, which I think operations is at the core of.

Shannon Duncan: So I walked in with a fairly clean slate with folks who were eager to have me there, which is always comforting. Especially when creative leaders, when you have an ops person start and they value operations, they're like, oh my God, your welcome email was always like, oh my God, finally someone has come to make sense of whatever we're doing.

Shannon Duncan: Yeah, I walked into a place that didn't have specific processes laid out. I walked into a place that was also very open to change or adapt or to mold themselves operationally and whatever needed to happen in order to make this a more efficient studio. So yeah, it was exciting in that I didn't have, I wouldn't call it free reign, but there was a lot of opportunity.

Jesse Krinsky: That's a double-edged sword though, right? Because you have a clean slate, that's great, but how did you decide where to start? Because you can't do everything at once.

Shannon Duncan: No, you certainly can't. I'm definitely a person who wanted to, I wanted to come in and be like, boopity bopity boop, I fixed everything. But the most important thing, and it was very much hammered into me in my onboarding was just like, absorb, absorb what you can. You know, you hear all the adages like you know, we're building the plane while we're flying it. It's like drinking from the fire hose. Insert whichever one may exist. That is what I was given when I started.

Shannon Duncan: Because DoorDash is a place that moves quickly and creates quickly, right? So I will use onboarding in air quotes in the sense that I started, had a couple of days of like, hey, here's how you log in. And then you're just jumping in and starting to figure things out. But for me, though, where I started was just observing.

Shannon Duncan: I'm the kind of person who's like, I don't care what kind of meeting this is, you're working on some banners, I'm just gonna sit behind the scenes and shadow every single meeting that's happening. I want to understand how you guys are currently creating right now. I am doing one-on-ones with everyone and their mom, just meeting people, asking what it's like working there and just absorbing as much as I can. And then just sneaking my way or forcing my way into meetings or spaces or Slack channels just to get details, right? So that was where I first started.

Jesse Krinsky: And were you focused mostly on those meetings with the creatives? Or did you also start trying to make the connections between them and the stakeholders? Because obviously the creatives don't exist in a vacuum. You're responding to requests and briefs.

Shannon Duncan: Yeah. Well, originally I was more focused on who are the players? Who are the people who are in this studio, on this team who I need to understand? So my focus was more so learning the people and how they ticked. Because then I could better understand how they will eventually work. Because jumping forward to understanding like, hey, how are you designer interacting with this marketing manager here? That's no good to me yet if I don't understand how this designer ticks, right? So my main focus in having those one-on-one meetings and just observing how people work is to understand them in context.

Why a People-First Approach Beats Tools-First Creative Ops

Jesse Krinsky: I'm glad you brought that up because a lot of creative ops leaders, they tend to lead first with tools, processes, structures, systems. And that's all very important. There's no question about that. I know that you lean more towards what I'd call a people-centric approach, right? What does it actually mean in practice for you? How does that impact how you work and how do you connect the soft skill side of that to the structure that is essential in creative operations?

Shannon Duncan: Yeah, well, when I think about kind of where I came from, I started in project management and I also started at either small or independent agencies, right? So what's good about that is that there are no network-wide systems that you have to work with or establish processes therein. You really are figuring out how to work best on the team you're a part of because also there was such a variety of clients.

Shannon Duncan: So if I was working on Intel or Google or Reebok or whatever we had at the time, I had to shift the way I was working even as a project manager, which kind of then led itself to creative resourcing a little bit and other processy things. I had to shift based on the team I was on because the clients were so different. So I was already kind of like the only thing that is constant in that is that I'm dealing with a group of people who work here, right? So the variable that I had to play with was humans.

Shannon Duncan: I was lucky to have an experience at places where that was just natural and that was the variable I had to work with. So when you then jump to something like DoorDash, especially in a time where it's growing and we're trying to establish this studio, I was kind of like, great, I'm working with a variable that I know, people.

Shannon Duncan: And at the end of the day, and I say this to creative leads who are in managerial positions as well, you can wanna make the best work that you wanna make, account people wanna do things on the fastest time they wanna do, but if you want to make the best work, you have to think about the people who are making it. We're not widget makers, right? We're not just cranking out things in a machine. The variable you have is this human. And so therefore you need to understand the particulars of that human in order for the other parts of the pieces to work.

Shannon Duncan: So if I have a ton of creatives who, for instance, I'll just use a simple example, but if I have a ton of creatives who for the life of them will never check email, then why on earth are we sending things in email versus utilizing Slack as the tool that works for us? You know what I mean? Or if I'm having people who have such problems with these Slack channels and how they're managed, why would I use that process in the same way because it's a process established? I need to understand who I'm working with in order to start to build. If that makes sense.

Building Trust Before Rolling Out Process Change

Jesse Krinsky: It does. So, along those lines, very frequently I've seen when a creative ops leader is building a foundational system from nothing, the technical side, the tools, the process, the systems, that tends to be, I would say, the relatively easier part. And the harder part for a lot of these leaders is getting people to change how they work, have them buy into these changes and embrace them, right? What's been your experience with that on the change management side of creative ops?

Shannon Duncan: Yeah, well, kind of going back to the people first essence of that, inside of being a people first ops leader, I am building trust. Many of us creative ops folks end up being mama or papa bears to creatives. We end up being the person that they vent to, et cetera. So you're naturally building up that this is someone I can trust to have my interests at heart because they understand the things that are important to me.

Shannon Duncan: So in that regard with creatives, I think the important part with change management, and this also applies to the PMs that I work with and mentor, this applies to the producers and also the business leads I'm partnering with. If I've worked to establish that trust, then when I offer up a change, then it's kind of like, well, this is coming from Shannon, someone who understands me, someone who understands the work I'm doing, someone who has acknowledged and validated the things that are tricky or need to be fixed. So if she's saying that this could be a good recommendation as far as a process change, let me listen. So that's one part of it.

Shannon Duncan: And the second most important part is like, I have never seen it be successful where people are like, hi, we're just gonna dump a huge, massive systems change, but then like figure it out and do it. No, it has to be slow and incremental. One of the one thing that we live by at DoorDash, which I love, is one of our values is 1% better every day, which is in its essence, it's about not being perfect. It's like, hey, we don't have to wait to make a change till we know it's 100% accurate or absolutely will work. These small incremental shifts or changes move us in the right direction, right?

Shannon Duncan: So for me, it's like, hey, if I need folks to start using the Slack channel analogy, start paying attention to Slack channel, let me change one thing that we do about this. Let's change it so that we give updates every day on a Monday. Let's do that every week and see if people start to pick up on the rhythm. Great. Now let's do the next thing. And it's like a slow incremental change, which is definitely the path we took in developing the studio over a few years where it's like, we were also responding to changes in business so that was inevitable, allowing certain processes to change bit by bit. This is now how we're running kickoffs. This is now how we're running internal reviews. This is now how we're managing timelines. It's allowing that slow adoption so that people get used to it and then can go on to the next change.

Jesse Krinsky: That also can set up another challenge where the people who are outside your team, the stakeholders for instance, if they're not entirely clear on how to work with you, the processes, right? If you're iterating, which is always important, absolutely, it can be challenging sometimes for people who are outside the team to understand, wait, what's the process now? Because a month ago, this wasn't this. And getting them on board with those changes, especially when they're incremental like that, that can be very challenging. How have you dealt with that?

Shannon Duncan: Yeah, well, I think there are two sides of this and that there's a creative process, right? In which, let's say 40% of that process is visible to a partner and 60% is not, right? So when I'm thinking of incremental small changes on a creative process, I'm thinking about the ones that are more inwards towards the creative studio, right? That's where I find the ones where sometimes it takes creatives a little more to make a change where that's where I think those incremental 1% changes are helpful. Now when we are talking about bigger changes that affect the entire workflow such that folks like a marketing partner might be visible to it, those are definitely more tricky.

Shannon Duncan: There are definitely issues in which it's like, I would say issues that have come up that I'm sure come up with whenever you have big changes have to do with control. Like, wait, so where am I now tapping in? Where am I now providing input? You've changed process A to B, but I need to still make sure this is on brief for our business. So how do I fit into that?

Shannon Duncan: To where that is, I mean, the biggest thing in that is collaboration and communication. It is one, making sure that any changes we want to implement to a process, we are socializing first with either maybe a test group or a core group or leadership or a combination thereof before then publishing live and talking through live. Here we have multiple different kind of all hands, either with our marketing or with individual audiences or teams, which are good forums for that.

Shannon Duncan: But I found actually workshopping those changes with small test groups has actually been really helpful over time. We've done that before where it's like, hey, we want to do a big tier one, priority zero kind of project differently. We're doing one for winter holiday coming up. Let's actually on this one, treat it a little bit different and let's get alignment for everyone on board like, hey guys, here's our new RACI. Here's our new order of operations for presentations. Here's how we want to treat this project, but we're all shaking hands that we are going to try this out, see how it goes.

Shannon Duncan: Because at its core, the DoorDash values we have just don't apply to our creative studio, they apply to the entire organization, right? So our partners understand, if we're like, hey, we're trying to be 1% better every day. People who work here inherently are buying into those values. So while sometimes it's kind of like, ah, it's a little scary, they understand because we've communicated it what we're trying to ladder back to, you know?

Jesse Krinsky: I imagine your team has a lot of stakeholders that you have to work with, right? And I love what you said about how you socialize the changes before they're happening, get feedback. But it's got to be the case where eventually a decision needs to be made about a process change. And inevitably, I'm sure not everybody is going to love that, right? I'm especially curious about with stakeholders who are not on board, right? How have you navigated that?

Shannon Duncan: This is where I think project management as a core function is like a linchpin of successful creative ops. And that when we come into a new process change, they are the people who, no matter if you're still getting that feedback in email versus tagging it on the Figma, they're gonna be the ones who like as painful as it might be every time, tag it in the Figma guys. Thank you so much for this, put it in there. Thank you so much for this, direct it to the thing we discussed. And they are just continuously reminding people of the process, of the process, of the process.

Shannon Duncan: So have we introduced new things where it's like, hey, this isn't sticking? Yep. But then we investigate why isn't it sticking? And maybe it's like, actually we realized we thought of something that was theoretically sound, but then when you put it in practice, it ain't it. It doesn't work. And so that's where we also have to be open to understand like the thing we proposed actually isn't working. And the perfectionist in me hates that when it happens, but listen, that's growth. That's on being 1% better yourself. But that's also an acknowledgement. You can enforce something. You can try it out. And hey, everyone can do it, but you can still acknowledge it actually wasn't great and pivot. And I think the biggest thing we do is pivot quickly when it's not working. And we have to.

Staying Flexible Through Hypergrowth

Shannon Duncan: But it's interesting. I'm reflecting, there are so many things if I'm reflecting on my time here, because now I've been at DoorDash for four and a half years. And if I'm reflecting on where we are now with tooling or process or whatnot, I kind of go like, man, there's no way this would have ever existed in 2022. It was just not a world in which it can, right? So it's like everyone is growing and progressing at the same time, right?

Shannon Duncan: And I think it makes me think of when we, one thing we tried to do was very clearly articulate the creative process down to detail and owners. Cause we were having a moment with partners where it was like, hey, folks are kind of like, who owns this piece of the puzzle? And it really was for really big campaigns. And there was a little bit of an ownership pool and like, who's the directly responsible individual on certain things?

Shannon Duncan: And I remember we kept going through this process of writing this and then sharing it with a smart core team of leadership and a couple of stakeholders, but there's still being an issue, still being an issue and still being an issue at some points of it with top leadership, right?

Shannon Duncan: And at one point I was kind of like, hey, actually let's cut it. Let's cut this process doc. Cause one, the creative process doesn't really change that much. Spoiler alert.

Shannon Duncan: But with the one I'm speaking about at DoorDash specifically, I was kind of like, hey, actually, let's not touch this anymore. Because what I'm understanding right now, even though there was a desire from the internal studio leadership, we need to publish this process, publish it. I'm like, actually, do we? Because all I'm getting is resistance. Work keeps going. And right now, I don't feel like people are, there's a bigger thing here that needs to be solved that's beyond this document, that's clearly at a leadership level and disagreement about a couple of steps in here, that pushing to publish some detailed doc on process is not the time. There's something else afoot, right?

Shannon Duncan: And so it was also being able to acknowledge and to have those moments of, actually, there's a thing I want to implement, but now's not the time, so I'm just going to park it, was in that moment the right thing to do? So there's much to be said for something almost like we were diagnosing the wrong thing, you know what I mean? We had to actually stop, park that and let it ride for a minute to understand what the real issue was.

Jesse Krinsky: That can be very hard for a lot of leaders of any kind, particularly creative ops leaders. I find because often they want to show that they're doing something. They want to prove their work. That's really remarkable that you had something that leadership was saying, yes, get this out there and you held it back. I think that takes a lot of willpower to be able to say, even if there's value in here, it's not quite ready for prime time. Let's hold it back. So not a question there. I just think that's remarkable that you have the fortitude to do that. So good on you.

Shannon Duncan: I caveat, I also can do that with the luxury of that time being here for four years, establishing that trust, building with some people. I'm just going to sit on it. I'm just, we're going to sit on this. It's fine to sit on it. It's okay. And it's, it will, it's also, I mean, we talk about showing your value. I think it is very hard. And I say this, especially now as someone who's in the chief of staff role, where a good chunk of my job is soft influence. It is very hard for ops people to show the soft influence value sometimes. And so what we then end up doing is potentially compensating in process or things where it's like, actually, the value I'm bringing is all of the in between that you don't see that is leading to these decisions being made. But, I think you got to rely on the sum of all parts in that one. And just over time, your influence is seen and felt and recognized.

Shannon Duncan: Because suddenly people, and it goes with project management too in that sense of when things are working well, people sometimes go, well, do we need project management? You're like, it's working well because they exist. It's invisible. Yeah.

Turning Creative Work From a Free Resource Into a Real Currency

Jesse Krinsky: Changing the subject a little bit. So DoorDash has gone through massive and very fast growth over the past few years. How have you been working to balance that need for the consistency of systems and processes with the fact that the company keeps changing? I imagine it also means the priorities are changing and the KPIs are changing. Stability versus the flexibility side. How do you manage that?

Shannon Duncan: Yeah. Well, I think luckily from an ops perspective, the changes that are happening in an org don't really affect the foundations that are built, but maybe how we use them.

Shannon Duncan: So for DoorDash in my time here, really the thing that's been growing or is most obvious to me from an ops perspective is just the categories we operate in. People know DoorDash for restaurants, right? But now it's beyond that. We are in retail, grocery. We are now in the restaurant reservation business. The types of work that can come into the system is increasing. So how do we adapt to a resource issue? How do we adapt to, more like pressured timelines because now we do ads marketing. Now there's just more work to be done that all can't then just be solved by hiring people because that's not always the way to go, right?

Shannon Duncan: So it's then like, how do we apply systems of priority? And something that's been on our mind that we're working through right now is just how do we actually kind of create a currency for our studio? Because we've reached the point where now that's something because internal studios can come up as, hey, that's a free resource. And now that we have so many things, we're actually, no, we need to internally figure out how to acknowledge that that's not a free resource. We don't charge ourselves internally, but we have to put some guardrails up there in order to protect time. So these are the things we're exploring now from an ops perspective. AI is also one of them, right?

Jesse Krinsky: So along the lines of protecting the team, because if you don't work on a chargeback model, then the team can kind of be abused. Well, there's two sides to it. One is that for some stakeholders, if there is not a charge for something, then the value of it seems lower. It's like wine bottles. If a more expensive wine bottle, we just believe that it's a better bottle of wine when that's not necessarily the case, right?

Jesse Krinsky: So that's one area there that a lot of creative teams have to struggle with is if we don't charge that we look like we're not as valuable. But the other side is that if you don't charge for the work, then there aren't necessarily repercussions for endless rounds of reviews, right? How have you set up those guardrails so that the team doesn't kind of get abused in that way?

Shannon Duncan: Well, it's interesting because we're now at the place where the handling of that is now being managed by our new creative ops lead and business folks, but I'm still advising. But I think it's funny to think about it because I would say there's a period of time where, go back a couple of years, even if a currency model is necessary now, I can see it absolutely not working then because our focus was we are starting a new studio. We need to show that we're a resource. We need to influence the brand at all possible places and spaces and what we need to do. So we're just going to hunker down and we're going to do as many projects as humanly possible.

Shannon Duncan: But I would say now in the way that we're thinking about it, because there were moments where it was like, man, we are in that abuse state, if you will, of, well, we don't have money for an agency or we don't have money to do this, so the studio will do it. And you're like, no, that's not what we can do. That's not how it should work. We should be doing it because it's our expertise to do it.

Shannon Duncan: And so, it's funny, the growth of the business and therefore the need to prioritize is actually a great thing in that it then kind of goes like, well, now you have to think of us from a what is the expertise that we bring that you need on a campaign thing because now the currency that you have or the amount that you can work with us is now limited because there's so much to do. And we all recognize there's a lot of work to do and it needs to be prioritized.

Shannon Duncan: So as far as the thing that I know the team is working on right now in order to protect against that was when we kind of spoke earlier about how do you process change with this? What was very smart in the sharing of this was like, hey, we're gonna introduce this new model where you guys all have a max capacity per team, right? And a max number of projects you do based on XYZ variables. This kind of creative currency that they're creating. And it was like, but guess what? This is the first time we're instituting it guys, right?

Shannon Duncan: It was a vulnerable moment. It's like, it's the first time we're instituting it. Acknowledge that we're trying this in Q4 and we're going to try it again in Q1 and we're going to keep iterating it onward, right? So it's been, and with that, we might use different forms, right? Or we're going to continue to noodle this based on your feedback, based on what we see going. And this is in general how much allocation you will have, but know that it might tweak because the business keeps tweaking. So we need to respond to it.

Shannon Duncan: And I think the critical change management in that is just being very honest and very vocal about, let me warn you now that here are the things that can happen. And also reminding them like, you know what, this is better than before when we said we just couldn't do your project. You were like, why? And I was like, other things just came up, right? You now have, we are giving you information that's helpful to you so you can plan, just know it's going to have a little kink.

Shannon Duncan: So it's a combination of reminding you what was and how that didn't work and how we came to be in this new world of creating some guardrails and currency, but also being very, very clear, consistently clear that this is a new process. You guys know this, we know this, we are ironing out the kinks, come along with this journey with us. And I see them and I am in some Slack channels where I see the new creative ops team working through it. And hey, it's a little bumpy and that's fine, but it was over communication, I think was the solve there and just being very clear that it's a new process that we're trying something.

Shannon Duncan: And then I think also we had a population of people who were also kind of fed up with the, how is work being prioritized here and what are we determining can go through the studio and can't. And usually those determinations were eventually just based on like, hey leadership, tell us you wanna do it, what are your trade-offs? And even trading off projects was difficult because there wasn't something to work with, right? There was like, we don't know how to trade off because you're just asking us to connect with another person who may be on a tangential team to see if they can switch projects.

Shannon Duncan: So now we're giving people, we're giving or trying to create a process for people so that planning, trade-offs, prioritization is also much more clear to them because before it was a little murky.

Jesse Krinsky: I love that. That is very uncommon. Among other things what's great about that is that it also helps break down silos among your stakeholders because if they don't necessarily care what other stakeholders are, they just have their thing that's important. If you are facilitating those connections and conversations among your stakeholders, that's fantastic. It's an unusual setup, but I think it's something that more teams should absolutely consider.

Shannon Duncan: So one thing we also started to do, we used to back in the day, depending on the audience you're working on and scoping for a quarter, hey, this is your Google Sheet to tell us what you need. Hey, this is your other Google Sheet. I was like, nope, we're gonna have them all in one. Because if you're someone who's like me, and if I get a document, I'm clicking through all those tabs. I want you to see, so when you know that I'm saying we can only accept like five of your 15 projects, I want you to click across all these tabs and see that in a quarter, we were asked to do 120, which is like impossible for the size team we have.

Shannon Duncan: Like people appropriately are focusing on their own lines of business, right? And so in so many ways I can democratize this information so that everybody is aware of all the things that are happening at once. They are kind of like, okay. And granted, did that light bulb moment happen for a lot of people? Not necessarily. But when it happens for a few, I feel vindicated. I feel seen.

Jesse Krinsky: Another thing that's great about that is that it is, in addition to helping your stakeholders understand the limits of what your team is able to do and to respect that, you're helping connect dots outside your team, which frankly helps the business more because it helps break down those silos. But also in order to do that, and this is something that I'm not sure enough creative ops leaders are sort of adept at or are comfortable with is being willing to step outside of their own sphere of creative and understanding outside of your team what real priorities are, not just what stakeholders say. Because everyone thinks that their thing is number one. But in order to actually create and implement prioritization you as a creative leader, as creative ops leader, need to have a really clear understanding of what actually matters to the business.

Shannon Duncan: 100%. And it's honestly, it was the eye opening thing for me leaving agencies and moving brand side is I was like, my God, the client is so much bigger than my brain even imagined. You know what I mean? Like you're usually interacting with a couple of people and then you go on the brand side, you're like, my God, I feel like I want to retroactively apologize to like 15 people I've worked with over the years because I didn't realize how the big machine that is happening behind the interactions that we're having.

Shannon Duncan: The great thing that we do, and I encourage anyone if you're not getting this from your brand to go find it is our CMO shares the priorities of the business with the entire marketing team annually. We do at the beginning of the year, our first marketing all hands of the year, we talk about what are the priorities for each line of business, but also we'll just kind of share like what is the TLDR main priorities of the business.

Shannon Duncan: And DoorDash does this at an all hands level as well where they're like, what's important things for us this year? Boom. And there's a lot of important things, but if you ever have that moment where you're kind of like, I am choosing between these following things. I'm like, boop, last time I checked, I'm going back to the biz priorities and this is not one of them. So guys, sorry.

Jesse Krinsky: CMOs out there listen to that point because that is not common. Disseminating that information is so important and it is sometimes it's guarded and sometimes it's just not shared for whatever reason and it is so important for people who are doing the actual work to understand why it matters and what issue we're focusing on.

Jesse Krinsky: Shannon, I could talk with you and listen to you talk about all this stuff for hours. I've kept you long enough. Thank you so much for sharing all this. It's great to hear.

Shannon Duncan: Listen, absolute joy. If you need a part two, you just holler. I can yammer about this all day. I love operations.

Jesse Krinsky: I have 20 more questions that occurred to me as we were talking, but I would love to have you on again. Thanks so much.

Shannon Duncan: Thank you! This was fun! I appreciate it!

Key Takeaways

Let's recap the key insights from today's conversation.

First, people come before process. Shannon's approach starts with building trust. And if you've established that trust, then when you offer up a change, people are more likely to listen. They think, “this is coming from someone who understands me.” That's why her first priority when joining DoorDash wasn't implementing tools or documenting workflows. It was getting to know the creatives, the stakeholders, and leaders. Build trust first. Then you can build systems that people will actually use.

Second, small change beats big reveals. Shannon lives by DoorDash's value of being 1% better every day. That means not waiting until a process is perfect to roll it out. Make one small change, see if it sticks, then build on that. And when something doesn't work, acknowledge it, figure out why it didn't work, and pivot. Building trust with your team and your stakeholders means they'll follow you through those iterations, because they know you're solving real problems, not imposing systems for the sake of systems.

And third, protect your team's capacity. Shannon's team hit a breaking point because they were treated as a free resource. That's the abuse state she talked about, and it undermines everyone and everything. In the creative currency model, each stakeholder group gets a capacity allocation per quarter. If they want more, they can trade off against their own priorities or negotiate with another team. It might not be easy, but it will help stakeholders prioritize. Leadership will need to support it, but if you make the case clearly, it's not a hard sell.

If you found value in today's episode, please subscribe and leave a review. Let me know what creative ops challenges you're facing. What topics would help your team work better? And if you've successfully tackled a creative ops challenge that other teams struggle with, I'd love to hear about that too. Reach out through the contact info in the show notes.

Thanks for listening.