The Company Road Podcast E53 Samantha McCallum - Facilitating Alignment, Strategy Skeptics whilst Protecting your Energy
“When you were doing the intro, you know, you can just hear how diverse and broad the different types of roles or experiences and industries I've had were. I think you know some parts have been serendipitous right. Where you're just kind of following your instinct around what you enjoy like this constant search in your work for things where you feel good you know you're getting joy out of it you're learning you're collaborating with really clever people. That's like everything to me.” - Sam McCallum
This month’s theme
Sam McCallum shares insights from her extensive industry experience and strategic design background. Key topics include the importance of team alignment, the application of hypothesis-led experiments to address strategic scepticism, and maintaining work-life balance. Sam also emphasises the value of diversity, iterative feedback, and practical strategies for preventing burnout and ensuring effective project delivery.
Gain valuable insights from industry expert Sam McCallum on strategic design, team alignment, and maintaining work-life balance. Listen now to elevate your business strategies and achieve successful project outcomes.
In this episode you’ll hear about
- Sam's background in strategic design and diverse industry experience
- The differences between consultancy and in-house roles
- The importance of strategic design in aligning with market trends and customer needs
- The role of strategic designers in enabling executives and product teams
- Why it's important to bring people together for key project moments
- How hypothesis-led experiments can be used to address strategy skeptics
- The benefits of diversity and inclusion in teams
- The value of iterative feedback in strategy development and the practical steps for implementing iterative processes
- The importance of self-care and work-life balance
- Ways to avoid burnout and maintain energy
Key links
About our guest host
Sam brings 19 years of diverse experience from consultancies, digital agencies and client-side leadership roles. Known for CX, strategic design, business design and innovation, Sam has a track record of successfully delivering new products and business models to market.
Sam's industry experience includes Finance, Media, Telco, FMCG, Grocery, QSR, Retail, and Government, with roles including; Head of Experience Design at Latitude Financial, Head of Marketing at Fairfax Media, and Strategy Director at R/GA.
About our host
Our host, Chris Hudson, is a Teacher, Experience Designer and Founder of business transformation coaching and consultancy Company Road.
Company Road was founded by Chris Hudson, who saw over-niching and specialisation within corporates as a significant barrier to change.
Chris considers himself incredibly fortunate to have worked with some of the world’s most ambitious and successful companies, including Google, Mercedes-Benz, Accenture (Fjord) and Dulux, to name a small few. He continues to teach with University of Melbourne in Innovation, and Academy Xi in CX, Product Management, Design Thinking and Service Design and mentors many business leaders internationally
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