CAT LEAD Flashcards
“1. Describe a time when you had to synthesize complex information to make a difficult decision.
· What was the situation?
· How did this decision impact others?
· What information did you consider?
· How did you synthesize the information to determine the best course of action?
· What tradeoffs did you consider when making your decision?
· What was the outcome?”
“When we first started the MAP project and took over the architecture, we had to come up with the proposed architecture. It was a big challenge, as there is nothing on the market place that would meet our flexiblity requirements. We also wanted to use AWS as much as possible to add another layer of flexiblity.
The reason this was such a challenge was that there were so many integrations and problems to solve for, just to get the inital version out of the door. When i look at the system and where we are today, it all makes sense but getting to this point and even the inital agreed architecture was difficult
We had to take into account, data flows from multiple disparate systems, how integrity of data will be maintained across them, how to standardise the data.
We broke the problem down in to the major components and flows, we would go over the whole system mapping how data would move around it, once we completed a pass, we would start again and jump down a level of detail.
I took this approach rather than drilling down into minute detail on a component and moving on, to ensure that the big picture is always kept in mind.
There were a lot of decisions and tradeoffs that had to be made along the way, as an example it would have been easier to rebuild certain components to make the architecture work, but from a practical standpoint that wouldnt happen.
Ultimatly the platform is really flexible and does a good job as it was intended, componentry that we built like the DEH, event hub etc can be used in other places and applications as we tried to design for the unknown as much as possible”
“2. Please describe a time when you held your team or other colleagues accountable for making a sound and timely decision.
· What was the situation?
· What steps did you take to support and guide your team or colleagues?
· What information, data, and/or resources did they use to make the decision?
· What was the outcome?”
“For the past few years i have had a resource assigned to lead our MDM integrations, he is highly capable and inteligent. MDM has been a particularly difficult project and is easily a full time project to lead. In some circumstances I would want to vet most major decisions on a platforms integration or direction.
However, with this project I gave him autonomy to make all technical decisions required and ultimatley accountable for their success and delivery.
The main framework of support and operation that i provided to him was to esclate soft issues to me, e.g. problems with personality types, politics etc.
Regular catch ups with him to keep abreast of the development and progress. I also tried to instill that we need to focus on the bigger Pfizer picture and make the right decisions for Pfizer.
He had a good development team to support him in implementation and access to the data and tools needed to complete his work.
Ultimatley the project was delivered, it was a long and complicated affair, but he made the right decisions to get the best out of a bad situation and progress our capibilities whilst minimise impact from external failures. “
“3. Please tell me about a time when you had to make a decision quickly even though you did not have all of the information you would have liked.
· What was the situation?
· How did you evaluate the benefits and risks of waiting to gather the information you needed versus taking action?
· What information, data, and/or resources did you consider to make your decision?
· What was the result?”
“I was working on an innovative project in the netherlands where we were launching a fully fledged online pharmacy. When i joined the project the vision and vendor selection had already taken place using IBM websphere.
It quickly became apparent that the technology was overkill for the needs, costing a large amount of money & also the implementation partner was out of their depth.
We were partnering with a local online pharmacy to be our fulfillment partner who obviously already had an online presence. Whilst working with them on the integration, I realised that we could switch the deployment to utilise their existing platform and re-theming it, as all functionality was built in already. There were pros and cons to this and we had a number of sunk costs and time schedules we had to adhere to, but overall as this was a pilot the risk of the change was less important that the projected over runs and expense of staying the course.
I worked with my partner in market to cost, plan and seek feedback on the transition to the new vendor from the business stakeholders. This had to be done over a short period of time as the ROI for a switch was being eroded the longer we stayed with the current partner. We did not sever the relationship completely with the other vendor and ensured that all code and latest documentation was up to date, to ensure a reversal was possible if needed.
It was a large additional effort on the pfizer project side to get this off the ground, ultimately the project was approved and we delivered within the new timeframe a successful product.
“
“4. Describe a time when you had to identify and implement a solution to a problem that affected multiple stakeholders.
· What was the situation?
· How did you identify and incorporate feedback from the various stakeholders?
· What information, resources, and/or perspectives did you consider to help you identify potential solutions?
· What was the outcome? How did you determine the effectiveness of the solution?”
Cookie tool with global privacy office
“When i worked in Digital Services we had a site outage on Pfizer.no. At this time the site was hosted on internal pfizer servers.
Outages were not uncommon, but this one was a big problem as it was the corporate site for pfizer.no. The resoloution was not straight forward, working with the global teams we attempted multiple restores from Back up, which all failed and took a long time.
I was coordinating the multiple teams to work on the resolution, I had to pull people from multiple teams during the red team call, appropiratly escalting and bringing new resource in where possible. We ended up having to get a server administrator to go to the hosting location and physically replace parts on the server to complete the restore.
In the end the process took a number of days and many teams to work in cahoots to get this resolved. All whilst keeping the business updated. The end result was the restoration of the website & led to migrations and changes in how backups and restores functioned”
“1. Please tell me about an initiative you developed and implemented that addressed the needs of customers, colleagues, and/or stakeholders.
· What was the initiative?
· What steps did you take to develop the initiative?
· How did you work with others to implement the initiative?
· What were some of the results of the initiative? Is the initiative still in place?”
”"”When I worked in digital services, shortly after the drupal platform & drupal gardens was introduced to Pfizer, we were requested to rebuild the pfizer.co.uk website based on the new US design.
There were a number of ways of going about this, 1 would be to simply build the website with a matching style to the specifications of the UK business.
The second was to use this as an opportunity to replace the existing sharepoint template that was end of life. Which had 2 sub choices as well. Build a flexible drupal custom solution
or
A build in Drupal Gardens where a templated site would be created with CSS, JS and assets centrally hosted to make visual changes and updates from a single location.
To make the decision, I first investigated each options pros and cons,
as an example building the co.uk site out would probably have been the cheapest option, the least risky, easiest and most likely to 100% satisfy the customer, but it would have no benefit to the rest of pfizer.
The custom solution would probably be more flexible if needed, but would cost more
The drupal gardens solution would be the cheapest to roll out to new markets but would offer less flexiblity.
I also needed to quickly perform a feasibility analysis & cost for all the options. Once i had all of this, i took it to the global corporate team to see if they would help fund and endorse a centralised solution. If so this would make either drupal custom or Drupal gardens the preferable choice.
With their endorsement i canvassed a number of other markets that would be looking to upgrade in the next 12 months. The theme was the other markets were willing to invest in the new branding, but only at a lower cost.
Once discussed with the UK lead, they said as there was some central funding they would be willing to work as a pilot.
Ultimately drupal gardens was chosen for the potential to be rolled out to many different markets at a lower price point, self service content and abiding by global design. It was a success whilst i was in the team and we launched to many new markets and made use of the centralised CSS for updates.
The template is used in multiple markets and is still being rolled out. “
“2. Please tell me about a time when you helped align your team or department’s short-term goals with your company’s or division’s vision or long-term strategy.
· What was the situation?
· What steps did you take to understand the vision or long-term strategy?
· How did you translate that vision or long-term strategy into team goals?
· What was one of the outcomes?”
“Within engineering we always try to focus on doing the right thing for Pfizer, even if the shorter path is easier and cheaper. Pfizer has a strategy to push more of its interactions online, a big drive for digital marketing and personalised digital content.
When building out the map platform we had some very specific requirements for the EU and the US which revolved around relativly basic personalised marketing. We used this opportunity to establish what we hoped would be a marketing platform that is flexible enough to be able to be used anywhere in Pfizer. Rather than tighly integrating against the specific requirements we build flexible frameworks that allow for best of breed tools to be pluged in and swapped out. Examples like the DEH, Data Exchange Gateway, Event Hub etc.
This strategy has paid dividens as we are able to adapt to different markets needs and have a solid frame work that will cover most use cases.
One specific outcome was that we were able to adapt the MAP platform and bring australia on who was determined to do their own thing. This is a great win for Pfizer as a whoile “
“3. Describe a time when you decided to forego a quick win in favor of a longer-term strategy that had the potential for enduring success.
· What was the situation?
· How did you balance the pros and cons of pursuing the short versus longer term strategy?
· What information or resources did you use to help make your decision?
· What was the outcome?”
“This year we had the MDM replatforming project, as the new reltio product is using a much more modern technology stack, we wanted to shift the responsiblity for mapping data to the MDM team and decouple of environments further.
The most straightforward way to do this would be providing direct access to GRV and GCP, or providing export files. However, we pushed for the implementation of a proxy layer between GRV and GCP, this was more expensive and had a longer lead time, but provided a lot of protection and potential for reuse down the line.
Having the proxy inplace means that we can control authentication on a user/service by service basis, it can be reused for any system that needs real time data & we can rate limit or block abusive services
We had multiple design reviews and completed full costed proposals for all options, these were circulated with senior management and multiple stakeholders consulted on the proposal and the options. For the reasons above we pushed the proxy option
The proxy is now in production and functioning well, it has abstrated my team from a lot of back and forth and given the MDM team freedom to map data as they see fit”
“4. Describe a time when you challenged yourself and others to create an alternative solution to a recurring problem.
· What was the situation?
· What steps did you take to challenge others to develop alternative solutions?
· What information, data, and/or resources did they use?
· What was the result?”
“During the MAP deployments for the first two years, we suffered a lot with an external testing team, the team was not providing value, only testing using scripts we have run, so the number of defects found were close to 0 and when defects were found it was normally a false positive due to a lack of understanding of the system.
I advocated for the testing to be brought into the same vendor as the development to harmonise the operations and retain the knowledge and talent.
A business case was put together and presented which was generally well received, it was agreed that we would move forwards with the integrated team for all new enhancements. Ultimately we ended up moving all testing to the new team. It has greatly simplified our workflow but not impacted on standards. It was a long process and took persistence to get it across the line.
“
“1. Please tell me about a time when you encouraged collaboration among team members with diverse perspectives and/or backgrounds.
· What was the situation?
· How did you help team members seek out, learn from, and leverage their different perspectives and/or backgrounds?
· Was there ever a time when the collaboration was not working well? What did you do to improve the situation?
· What was the outcome?”
“Map in china has been an interesting example of this, we had a project kick off in Beijing which was primarily being run by DCE, unfortunately the structured approach and the cultural differences made for an extremely hard session. I realised that this one way dialogue was not going to get us very far. I spoke to my global team and suggested a change in direction, rather than us presenting, try to split people into smaller groups and focus on real use cases, which might help us get our head around the problems. This did work much better, but also highlighted a need for a smaller session to be completed with the team.
We went back to China and had a engineering lead sessions across the business partners, engineering, BAI & GBI. The week was a great success, I managed share in detail what the platform did, extract the needs from the market. This different approach really brought everyone together and aided a commitment to the long term plan and goals.
We have had a number of setbacks in china, but this base agreement and vision still stands and makes working as a part of the team a lot easier.
“
“2. Describe a time when you had a major role in developing a team that overcame obstacles to achieve success.
· What was your role?
· How did you communicate and align others with the team’s shared goals and common purpose?
· What obstacles did your team face and how did you overcome them?
· What results were achieved?”
“The team i have working for me in MAP is a pretty diverse team from many different cultures, countries and experience levels. The team is highly performant and i really do not get any conflict or in fighting within the team. As the team has grown from a few people to over 15 at this point, they have been split into sub teams based on skills and interests, I have the Maps apps team, platform team and MDM/other projects. Whilst the team has been split up we try to keep a matrixed environment where possible. Ultimately the overall MAP team is there to work on the MAP product, even if they have their direct silos of focus. I believe MAP is a highly performant team and i put this down to how the team works together and learns from one another, i try to place junior contractors with experienced to help them grow.
The team is quick to praise each other and has no culture of blame.
The team ranges from highly independent resources that need a light touch management to junior guys who need a bit of extra support.
“
“3. Describe a time when you worked with a cross-functional partner to accomplish a shared goal.
· What was the situation? How did you identify this cross-functional partner?
· How did you work together to accomplish the goal?
· Did you encounter any challenges while working with this person? If so, how did you overcome them?
· What was the outcome?
· Did you work with this person again?”
“In the DMA program i formed a close working relationship with the self detailing lead. Our objective was to create a repeatable, standardised way of promoting content across europe.
I was brought into the program near the start, so the eMCM lead had already been identified.
My role was as the implementation lead, however, we did foster a partnership, where the designs, functionality and implementation was created together. Generally the partnership worked well
I did encounter some challenges working with her, as when times were uncertain, she got very stressed and often looked at ways to protect herself, rather than focusing on the delivery. I mainly worked around this by mapping the path out, discussing the worries and showing the path forwards with timelines etc. She generally needed addtional information and levels of detail to focus.
The project was successfully delivered and rolled out to a number of brands and countries. I am not sure if any of them are still online today, but i wouldnt be surprised if there are a few.
I would work with her again, once you understand how someone works, what they need and their strengths/weaknesses, it is a lot easier to get on and focus on the job in hand, being cognazant of their needs. “
“4. Describe a time when you developed and maintained a relationship with an important stakeholder or decision maker.
· How did you identify the stakeholder or decision maker?
· What steps did you take to build the relationship?
· How did this relationship impact your performance?
· Were you able to build a long-term relationship with the stakeholder or decision maker? If so, how?”
“When i worked in digital services I was given the EMEA PCH portfolio to manage, which was a difficult assignment as at that time the business was not engaged with BT at all for digital work. Previously colleagues had really let it run its course, just ensuring that guidelines are followed where possible.
When i took responsibility i really wanted to bring them into the fold of digital BT, i worked closely with francesco Milani and his leadership team. I had regular catch ups with each of them, spending time on education of what we can deliver, what we have done in the past and how I can help them.
This helped me to get the business partners on side and become champions for the service, as they had faith in my team to deliver.
Ultimately a larger proportion of digital initiatives were delivered through our team, i was invited to present at the EMEA PCH BT leads meeting which had business marketing leads attend.
“
“1. Please tell me about a time when you inspired your team to achieve results that they did not think were possible.
· What was the situation?
· Why did your team think they could not achieve the results?
· How did you inspire your team and ensure they remained engaged?
· What steps did you take to reward your team?
· What results were achieved?”
“When integrating MDM and MAP for the first time, it was a very difficult project. The difficulties were from a range of different issues. Personality types, software issues, integration issues, lack of understanding etc.
I think at one point during the development we were tracking 34+ different issues with an average 18 day resoloution time for each. This was massivly delaying the project, there was also a lot of politics going on, making it an unpleasent working environment for the team.
There were issues like finding the API for the service had no authentication to access all customer data, but needing multiple meetings and heated discussions as to why that is required.
The team felt like for every issue that was resolved, either gaining understanding or resolving a technical issue, 3 more popped up. It was particularly disheartening, as best efforts were made and then the source of issues were often misconscrewed during PMO/LT calls.
I attempted to inspire the team in a few ways
Providing support where needed in difficult discussions or calls with other departments
Explaining the big picture, that this is a component of the delivery and we just need to be doing the best we can for Pfizer.
Ensuring that alternate work was avaliable so their day to day was not 100% focused on this
The team was rewarded in a few tangible and intangible ways
For those that were in the UK, we had a night off and a meal near completion of the work
Those outside of the UK, got a case of beer to have a night together
I also focused direct praise related to how issues are dealt with ensuring that it is releveant to the actions they have done.
The contract staff have all been retained at Pfizer since then and rotated positions, so they have been able to take a break from this type of project.
”
“2. Please provide a specific example that illustrates how you have recognized and rewarded high performers on your team.
· What was the situation?
· What steps did you take to recognize and reward high performers?
· How did you keep team members motivated and engaged?
· How did these actions help drive development and performance on your team?”
“I split my teams into 2 major sub teams, the Map Apps team which deal with TLT, metadata Tool, Survey Tool, Vendor hub. In the past we have had trouble getting the right lead for the team, it is a difficult role as we operate in an agile manner within a very waterfall framework. Earlier in the year the latest lead did not work out as he wanted to be able to fully influence the product direction and run true agile projects, which sometimes is just not a reality at Pfizer.
I made the decision to not replace the lead and instead ask Lakshmi to take over the leadership role, I explained to him why i felt he could take this on based on how i have seen him perform previously. In the start of this assignment i stayed close to the team and helped guide, but slowly pulled away as he became more confident with the this delegation.
I have regular catch ups with lakshmi but have empowered him to make most decisions for the team and know when he can come to me with issues or problems where he needs my help.
It has been a great success and a big step for lakshmi as well.
“
“3. Describe your greatest success in coaching a colleague or direct report. What was your coaching process?
· What was your coaching process?
· How did you assess their strengths and developmental areas?
· What approach did you take for coaching this person?
· What was the end result?”
“I had responsibility for an intern a few years ago, I was not the hiring manager, but i was his line manager. It was an interesting challenge as he was extremely shy and had not worked in a professional context before.
In the first few weeks i focused on what he wanted to get out of the year and voiced what i think would be good development for him.
I considered having an intern like a hypercare project, they need additional guidance, support and feedback as they go. We have regular 1-2-1’s and monitored goals month’s, areas he struggled with etc.
His biggest concern was speaking by himself with the business and having responsibility for deliveries. Over the months we worked up to his first sole project, which was deploying a corporate template across a number of markets. The way i approached this was to set some clear guidelines of when to escalate something to me and when to try and deal with it himself.
As an example i asked him to try and solve all problems by himself first, if there was a risk to the project or he cannot solve it in 24 hours to bring it to my attention etc.
Ultimately he delivered on all his commitments with great feedback, i believe he delivered the corporate template upgrade in 4-5 markets, managing the business and vendors.
“
