Standing in Other People’s Shoes: What We Learned Shadowing Each Other in DXS
First, some images from our team Slack channel…
And this…
And this…
Messages like these came and came. Our team — the product development, community and content strategy specialists for The Wall Street Journal — had embarked on a somewhat crazy and totally wonderful experience of letting everyone on the team shadow somebody else in a totally different job.
Why did we do this? Let’s face it, in the remote world, connections between team members can become more difficult, especially with cousin teams that work adjacent but not regularly with each other. On top of that, some people in our unit have started since the pandemic began and never met their colleagues in person.
Our team at the Journal is one that is designed around bringing people from different disciplines together to find great audience-focused solutions and strategies. Sitting within our unit — known as Digital Experience & Strategy — are reporters, editors, engineers, designers, product managers, program managers, data scientists, distribution strategists, SEO editors, strategy editors, user researchers, innovation and R&D chiefs, audience interaction specialists, and the list goes on.
In fact …
when we set up DXS, we stated that a primary goal would be to bring all the different disciplines of a media company together at the table and to give credence to each of those ways of thinking as we find the best paths forward. Our differences in disciplines is a strength.
So in the spirit of learning from each other and fostering new connections, we ran a shadowing program across DXS over the past few months. This post is about what I and others in DXS learned along the way.
It started with just my direct reports — a dozen professionals ranging from our head of technology to our chief data scientist to our editor of programming strategy to our co-heads of design. But as our team members saw us all in each others’ (virtual) meetings, they asked to join in. The program grew and grew.
In the first round late last summer, I shadowed Lydia Serota. A 13-year-veteran of the Journal, Lydia brims with passion for the Journal and its readers. Given that more than half of the 150 people in DXS have been hired in the last couple years, Lydia’s institutional knowledge is regularly called upon. Lydia runs our Content Experiences unit, which includes our innovation, CMS, editorial tools, and storytelling teams. In the day I spent with Lydia, I got to crash her meetings with pretty much all of these teams. Content Experiences is an area I care deeply about — after all, the experiences readers have with our content is one of the most important aspects of our journalism — but it’s rare I get to spend an entire day focusing solely on that area.
When we got to the first few meetings, I had to adjust my modus operandi immediately. “This isn’t ‘my’ meeting,” I told myself. That meant I shouldn’t open the meeting or drive it. I sat back, I listened in, and I observed in a way that I almost never get to do. It was really great seeing how much I get out of meetings that other people within DXS lead. I found in my day with Lydia that I got a lot out of it just watching and listening. I wasn’t there to guide, give feedback, etc.
It can be difficult to make time for meetings where you aren’t expected to either present or react. But I found simply observing to be extremely valuable.
One other tidbit I loved in my day with Lydia: She convenes people from around our organization. Every meeting I attended with her (beyond her 1:1s) was a melting pot of people across teams, out of silos, from various departments and parts of the company. It reminded me of our important role in DXS as a convener of people within DXS and outside of it, all around common goals and interests.
The shadowing was also interesting because you end up hearing reactions to your work from the people who shadow you.
In the first round, I was shadowed by Leslie Yazel. Leslie is our editor of programming strategy, who helps us set strategy for our news stories. She worked at the Journal for years then went away to run some magazines. She rejoined the Journal last year in DXS. Shadowing, she said, was like party-crashing. (“I’m here, with a beer!” she joked.) The day, she said, showed her the difference in meeting cultures — how meetings are different with product-development teams versus how they run in news bureaus. Her day with me, she said, “pinballed from tech leadership and engineering to standards and advertising to the news hub and Noted” (our digital magazine aimed at younger audiences). It’s true — I do a lot of context shifting. I guess I’m glad my team members don’t realize how much I sometimes pivot in under 30 seconds as I join the next hangout.
But beyond my own experiences shadowing and being shadowed, it was awesome to watch the feedback among other DXS leaders. Lydia even wrote an ode to Ross Fadely, our chief data scientist, after she shadowed him. (I’m not allowed to quote it here!)
A little project that took us under two weeks to complete had created new ties and increased respect for all that we each undertake on a daily basis. And we found lots of commonalities around the organization.
Mike Finkel, one of our two VPs of engineering, said of his day shadowing Leslie, “There were many interesting parallels to the way we work. The morning news meeting felt very much like the Agile daily standup we do in our product teams. The give and take between different groups echoed our conversations between product, design and engineering. The experience reinforced for me how foundational collaboration and communication are to our shared success, regardless of our job function.”
Ebony Reed, our new audiences chief, complimented Fernando Turch, one of our co-heads of design, about how he encouraged his team to bring professional and personal projects to meetings: “Fernando has adjusted the meeting structure to encourage colleagues to show their personal and professional design projects. I thought that was a good way to team build while also keeping focus on the team’s skills for growth development.”
And Thomas Williams, our other head of design, even got to work designing something to demonstrate how he felt after shadowing Dion Bailey, VP and head of technology and architecture.
“Incredibly interesting to see the work we do, from an entirely different perspective,” Thomas said. “Many of the projects we are actively working on in design came up in discussion, but the challenges and insights were completely different. Inspired by this, I created a simple diagram as a reminder to constantly seek a broader perspective.”
It wasn’t long before Round Two became a Must Do. Our team members saw us visiting other people’s meetings and asked to join in. So next, we invited all managers and leads within DXS to shadow one of us, or each other. Like the first time, I assigned us all roughly alphabetically (with some adjustment to avoid repeating pairings from Round One).
This time around, I shadowed Krista Schmidt, and I was shadowed by Kevin Dubouis. Both Krista and Kevin are strategy editors at the Journal, helping us connect our audience insights, product development and community teams with reporters and editors throughout the newsroom. Krista works with our Markets team; Kevin works with our World team. One of the things you see when you shadow people is how different people prepare for meetings. Krista is fastidious in her preparation and organization. Watching her talk with a partner on the Markets team about a forthcoming project about guides, I knew it would be a success. (Four months later, it is! Here’s one of them.)
As the shadowing continued, a new very candid type of conversation was developing among our managers about management style. Jason Jedlinski, our head of audience touchpoints, for instance, praised John Lynch, one of our engineering leaders, for letting his teams solve their own problems, saying “I admired the way the teams would be talking about a challenge, and I could see he had the answer — but instead, he let the team learn.”
And our Slack channel was lighting up again with messages like this (spotting “scope creep” is high praise!) …
And so, Round Three became the Finale…
At the end of the year, all of DXS was invited to participate in shadowing. It played out over a few weeks and was so common that nearly every meeting I attended during that time would include some surprise visitor — a person who was shadowing someone in the meeting.
The serendipity of unexpected faces in routine meetings was delightful. But it was also productive.
Bringing in someone from one part of DXS into another team’s meeting helped change the conversations. People stepped back and explained things a little more — which led to some fresh thinking and questioning of assumptions.
Team members kept the praise and appreciation for each other rolling and even started making some fun jokes about shadowing, like this post from Annemarie Dooling, a veteran product manager and strategy editor.
Even people who have worked at the Journal for a long time in similar roles found it great to spend time together. As Hani Lim, a longtime engineer on our editorial tools team, wrote that Hrusikesh Panda is “seemingly involved in every major tech initiative on WSJ” — from our changes in web rendering, to our work on deep links and log-in, to our architecture behind our new analytics pipelines. “I’ve known Hrusi as a champion for adopting industry standards and best practices, and was glad for the opportunity to catch up and learn about his (busy) day-to-day,” Hani wrote.
I enjoyed participating again. I shadowed Mike Finkel, VP of engineering, who has taught me so much about helping engineers thrive and leading in a way that empowers people. It was great to see him in action.
Watching your team members lead helps you think about if you are supporting them in the best ways possible to help them lead.
Perhaps my favorite part of the entire exercise came in my final day of it all. McKellen Rattray, one of our user researchers, joined me in something like 10 meetings. McKellen has completed work in recent months about the tags and titles we use around our product and which of those titles make sense to people who are new to the Journal. Her work, involving data analysis, card sorting and user interviews, brought us fresh perspectives that have infused many new projects.
At the end of the day, she and I regrouped in a 1:1. I wanted to know what she thought of all those meetings. She came into our hangout beaming. I was a little startled — it had been a long day, without any particular good news.
Here’s what she said: “I see my work! You are using my research! That is so gratifying.”
It is so great to be able to stand in other people’s shoes, and to let others stand in yours.
Louise Story is the Chief Product and Technology Officer of The Wall Street Journal and its Chief News Strategist. She leads DXS, the Journal’s product development and content strategy unit.
