Interview Prep - PMO Flashcards
What steps do you take to ensure your continuous development as a leader? How do you model and encourage this behavior for your team members?
Constantly seeking new, diverse insights and perspectives (Allies with the black community). Seeking new experiences and working to understand different facets of the biz since we are all interconnected (stretch assignments) - then building the connections between the learnings I have sought out and my day to day role to showcase continuous learning and how it helps us as individuals be better at our jobs and lead successful teams.
Provide a specific example of when you successfully coached a team member to raise their level of performance.
While I don’t currently have direct reports, I have a lot of individual contributors that participate in getting a display program from concept to executed and out the door. One of the key people being our suppliers. We had an instance shortly after launching Wrike. And for background wrike is our project mgmt system that we implemented this year to help streamline workflows, keep centralized documentation of all projects, and manage timelines. This system helps us better collaborate with jnj colleagues as well as with our suppliers. When we launched this system, like many new system or process launches - we had a few hiccups and speedbumps along the way that we needed to account for as people got up and running in the system and learned how to navigate the different workflows. When we finally announced our cut off date of moving everything off of email and into the wrike system, we had a supplier that just kinda completely disregarded it and went about doing their workstream thru email. So I reached out and worked to understand what was holding them back from utilizing the new system.
How do you identify and provide feedback on employee strengths and areas of improvement? How do you use this to develop others?
Again, I like to come back to the Credo. Is an employee taking actions that align with the credo and are putting the needs of the customer and consumer first? Are they going above and beyond to support those thing or finding innovative ways to streamline a process and add value? Then I like to ensure I take a moment to send an email and congratulate them in a group setting to recognize the work they are doing. And conversely if an employee isn’t meeting those standards - I always make sure to check in 1:1. we’re human sometimes work or personal lives or both become overwhelming or stressful. And I think recognizing that and offering support and being empathetic towards whatever the circumstances are - help build trust in that relationship and hopefully can help find ways to help that employee improve upon their performance.
Tell me about a decision that you made that did not turn out as you had planned. What lessons did you learn? How have you applied this learning elsewhere?
Launching the first ecom MPs for better profitability and to avoid chargeback prep fees. While launching our first MPs did help us achieve these goals it wasnt without a few hiccups. First and foremost we had a really difficult time getting amazon to order the packs, and get the flywheel spinning. In addition to that we didnt have a human contact or resource as amazon to help provide guidance on how to successfully launch a new item given there are ways to get a fly wheel up and running from the get go.
lessons learned: seek more expert advise or help from those that have had similar experiences or projects in the past to see if there are any no brainer mistakes that can be avoided.
Please provide an example of how you inspired others to implement a new or innovative idea. What happened? How did this impact the members of your team?
wrike
Please provide an example of a time when you created a new way to solve an existing problem. What was the outcome?
Wrike!
- System was being utilized by creative to manage projects and maximize designer bandwidth.
- I was utilizing from a collaborator standpoint, only submitting my art requests through the portal
- Upon utilizing it though, recognized its benefits and capabilities.
- Rolled it out as a TC PM system to help streamline, simplify and increase transparency in our TC workload
- Larger JNJ org now interested in our gained efficiencies and streamlined project process that they’re looking to roll out something similar more broadly across the TC org in JNJ
How have you embraced diversity and inclusion? What steps have you taken to encourage and leverage multiple viewpoints that drive business growth or create new opportunities? Provide a specific example.
In my mind – it first and foremost starts with the individual. So I try to ensure that I am constantly seeking diverse perspectives, educating myself and growing in that space to be more consciously aware of D&I in my day to day life. One way I do this is by attending the monthly allies with the black community sessions.
From there, I try to take my learnings and action them in my day to day role in projects that I lead and work on. An example is our Pride 2021 program we launched this year. I co-lead this program – driving the project scope and timelines, and managing communications across all key stakeholders – which there are many given it spanned across 5 brands and ~15 codes, with a special Pride icon wrap. This program was aimed at spreading awareness and celebrating those of the LGBTQIA community.– and we partnered with retailers and our JNJ Care with Pride initiative to have part of the proceeds go back to LGBTQ advocacy organizations. This year, on OGX alone we were able to drive an incremental $1MM in GTS by expanding stores and distribution.
Provide an example of when you worked on a multi-faceted project that required your team to develop external stakeholder relationships to achieve success. How did you and your team select who to partner with? What was the outcome?
MTS national menu
Started the TPM role we were $300K overspent and one of my main priorities stepping into this role was getting us back on track to be in line with our budget bc we couldnt afford to continue spending at the rate we had been historically.
Dug into the data of what had shipped / found it difficult to find all the detailed financials across programs but had a general understanding that the most expensive programs were the small volume programs/high expense - largely skewed towards our food customers doing small unique programs.
We determined that we could create a National Menu. Standard list of 8-10 displays that could be utilized across multiple small food customer retailers to participate in their programs.
Partnered with sales for BOMs, Finance to understand what level of spend could we use and still meet our metrics, and material supplier to reconfigure design.
How do you promote and encourage your team/business to develop cross-functional and external collaboration? Provide a specific example.
1) from the beginning of every project outlining clear scope, identify stakeholders and timeline, alignment on the larger project goal across stakeholders and stakeholder role commitments.
2) In providing the clear, transparent plan - it empowers the team to be clear on their role and how their role plays into the larger project and what dependencies are tied to their tasks so that if they do run into challenges or issues - they already have some semblance of which stakeholders they will need to loop into the conversations to ensure continuity of project flow and impact if they drop the ball implications of the project further down the line.
3) An example of this would be how I launch every new project in wrike. It outlines the entire project workflow/tasks - and each stakeholder tied to what task and their due dates. It provides a holistic overview of the schedule and the dependencies between tasks. We then review the new projects live in our weekly connect, utilizing wrike as our guideline and address and potential challenges or questions that the team has.
How do you determine when a rule or guideline is critical and when you have room to be more flexible? What steps do you take to weigh the benefits and consequences of your decision?
How does the rule weigh against the credo? what is the impact to the customers, consumers, employees, stakeholders? If flexibility to the guidelines is required in order to help us better live into our commitments, than we should move forward.
How do you model integrity in your work? How do you ensure integrity and quality in the work of your business or team? Provide a specific example.
Always putting the credo first and using the credo as a guide when needing to make tough decisions. An example of this would be this year when our UFR was dropping below 50%, the team decided we needed drastic changes and a plan to get us back on track. that plan entailed cancelling all bonus production so that we could focus our time, energy and resources on building back the core base business. Bonus however, is largely used in displays. So I had to partner with our internal teams to identify a best cut off date of shipping bonus from a display perspective, ensuring they understood what firm commitments we had and timing, and where we still had room to make changes and shift priorities around.
How do you see the Johnson & Johnson Credo and Purpose affecting short-term business needs? How do you see the Credo and Purpose affecting long-term business needs?
The credo should be at the forefront of everything that we do, and is especially important for brands. Our brands must represent our JNJ values, the consumers they serve, and the planet. So in short term situations when we face tough situations, for example our supply constraints, and how we react to that to best service our customers despite the challenges - this year we cancelled bonus, our more promotional items because we knew if we couldnt service the base items and the core POGs, we shouldnt be producing promotional items that were further exacerbating our challenges. Or in the long term as we identify not only what customers are looking for now, but what needs still arent being met or what might they not know that they want now but will be searching for in the future as we develop innovation, think about displays, etc… we use the credo as a guiding compass to keep the customer at the heart of everything we do.
Tell me about a time you researched a topic and developed insights to drive results
As the TPM I’m not only responsible for carrying out individual program requests, I’m also responsible for overseeing the total NA budget and facilitating plans that not only meet our financial budget, but underlying commercial plans and goals. So an instance in which I’m developing insights and to drive results now is business planning for 2022. The sales team comes to me with their entire wishlist for 2022. From there I input those program details into a tentative calendar and plan and layer in approx cost details, incrementality, and spend efficiencies. From a first go around, the team’s plans showcased that we would double TC activity vs 2021. However, knowing internal constraints such as budget and supply and having commercial strategies that we’re trying to meet - such as not further diluting GP by limiting the amount of bonus activations, I help hone and shape the requested plans into outlining trade offs, or providing recommendations on how to improve a requested activation to meet internal goals and hurdles.
what’s your leadership style
my strengths are organization and communication, which translate into my leadership style. I would say that my style is clear, direct communication - I facilitate teams by honest and transparent dialogue, and then also trusting my team members around me. There are only so many hours in a day, I have to build that report and trust with my colleauges to know that I can trust them to carry out a task if I delegate it to them. As well as have them know that I will be there to support them if they hit a speedbump or set back.
tell me about a time you made a mistake and had to fix it
club UPC printed incorrectly. luckily we caught it before it shipped out to the customer, but it required quick turn around of rework and identifying what caused the oversight to happen in the first place.
Ultimately we determined that the print error had passed over 3 different approvers, all of which didn’t catch the mistake - but all the approvals were done thru different work streams/email. At the time we didn’t really have a formal process or chain of approvals that were required before we sent items to print. This obviously helped push us to get to a set process in place and implemented so that this type of error could be avoided in the future. In the short term we fixed it by having all approvers on one email and in the long term we implemented wrike which ultimately helped streamline and simplify communications and provide access and transparency for all users to the workflow. We were able to put set check points/stage gates that needed to be reviewed before a final approval could be issued, a solution that was not viable via an email chain.
