Lisa Devieux, Strategy & Analytics (S&A) Associate Director, sits down with former Senior Team Lead, Kim Jones, to discuss her career journey throughout 5 ½ years at Seer and the advice she has for future Seer team leaders coming into the role:
Key Takeaways & Quotes:
What's the most important thing that being in this role has taught you?
Always do right by people, and that will allow you to do right by your clients.
Maybe that means really hustling to get something out the door to your client point-of-contact because you know how important it is for their success. Or if someone can’t make a meeting because they've got something else going on like unexpectedly being out sick or dealing with a personal situation -- it means jumping in to support them.
At the end of the day, something our team has leaned into consistently is doing what’s best for the person in question, and what's best for the business will follow.
What traits does someone need to have in order to be successful in this role?
First and foremost, you absolutely must love data (#datageek!) and have a passion for strategic consulting. You have to be able to work fast, grow quickly, and push limits to make the most impact.
Also you have to be empathetic. Understanding that your priorities & your team's priorities won't always be in perfect alignment, but being able to support each other toward a common goal is important.
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What challenges have you faced in this role?
Being responsible for three buckets (i.e. your team, your clients, and your divisional work) -- it can be easy to feel like you’re giving everything to just one of those buckets at a given time. For example, if I’m giving everything to my team right now, does that mean I'm not giving my clients enough or I'm not giving 100% to the division?
Learning to be okay with that feeling is key to pushing through it. You can’t be everywhere all the time -- you just can’t. That’s why prioritization is so important and why you shouldn’t fret about things out of your control.
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What are some of your proudest moments throughout your time at Seer?
Taking a team of former SEO practitioners and being able to leverage my prior experience with paid, affiliate and offline marketing to help level up their cross-channel strategy expertise. Teaching them how to connect the dots for clients and create holistic roadmaps.
Now seeing them in action, consulting and coming up with strategies for their clients using multiple types of data sources -- I'm really proud of the part that I played in leveling up an entire department and helping to evolve the way that Seer approaches digital strategy for our clients holistically.
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What advice do you have for your successor?
There is so much that you could do in this role, but something I encourage doing is figuring out what gives you the most energy and channeling all of your initiatives and priorities into impacting those things.
Finding what fuels you and figuring out how to bring that into what you do day-to-day in this role is my biggest advice.
Join the S&A Team
If you’re a natural-born consultant who loves solving problems at scale using data -- view open positions (our Strategy & Analytics team is hiring!)