Organizing Chaos
Organizing Chaos
The Foundation for AI-Driven Innovation
The Foundation for AI-Driven Innovation
A new company tool for teams to track goals, originally born out of a hackathon, was never grounded in foundational research. It existed as a formality, disconnected from how people actually thought about, set, or tracked goals.
Teams, individuals, and executives alike struggled with the same systemic problem:
“I don’t know what goal I should set to help the company, how this goal relates to me, or how I’ll be evaluated on it.”
Despite the platform’s intentions to support performance and growth, the architecture couldn’t keep up with the reality:
Information lived in scattered systems: Excel, Word, other portals, memory.
Employees forgot their goals shortly after setting them.
Managers had no unified way to support progress, tailor guidance, or connect work to outcomes.
Executives couldn’t see alignment, gaps, or risks across functions.
This wasn’t just a product problem. It was an experience architecture crisis, and a massive missed opportunity for AI and automation to enhance goal clarity at scale.
Without a cohesive system, teams were overwhelmed and misaligned. The goals process varied wildly across nine functions, spanning Sales, Strategy, People, Legal, and Product orgs.
Key breakdowns:
No standard way to translate org goals to teams to individuals.
Broken in-system support for iterating or refining goals over time.
No visibility into how goals connected across the org or laddered up.
No nudges, timelines forgotten, no structured guidance.
The result? People couldn’t see their own value. Managers felt stressed. Executives had no confidence in the data. And a tool designed to inspire alignment and growth became a checkbox task people forgot by Q2.
I led a multi-phase experience mapping study to resolve ambiguity, surface truth, and architect a smarter future.
But it is important to note, this success wasn’t mine alone.
It was only possible because leaders across the organization prioritized the path. They opened doors to the right people, made time for thoughtful conversations, and shared candid insights that revealed the root causes beneath the surface.
When leadership chooses to empower leadership in others, transformation becomes a shared mission. Our collaboration turned ambiguity into alignment, and that’s what made all the difference.
1. Uncovered the “invisible system” across 9 business functions
This time, we didn’t start with the tool, we started with people. Through experience mapping, I captured:
How employees set, track, and forget goals.
What tools they rely on (or don't) and why.
What feedback loops (don’t) exist.
What leaders, teams, and ICs wish they had.
This gave us a bird’s eye view and ground-up empathy for what was missing in the current architecture.
2. Designed a foundational experience architecture
Using this map, I:
Modeled a lifecycle from org → team → individual.
Identified 5 systemic failure points and dozens of friction patterns.
Mapped emotional and workflow pain points that future systems must solve.
This architecture became the blueprint for reimagining the platform as an intelligent, guided experience.
3. Set a strategic roadmap infused with AI & automation
I delivered maps with:
Prioritized critical experience gaps.
Identified use cases where AI could reduce cognitive load, personalize nudges, and enhance visibility.
Align orgs on a birds-eye view for 1–3 year product, design, and research focus to build toward a smart, adaptive, human-centered goal ecosystem.
Key AI opportunities included:
Predictive surfacing of relevant goals during creation based on skills, experience, interests, and level.
Contextual feedback guidance for managers.
Smart reminders & milestone timelines tailored by role.
Confidence signals for readiness in performance reviews.
This work transformed chaos into clarity. It made future planning easier, and allowed for adaptability when new research drives deeper insight.
Outcomes included:
A unified system model across 9 functions.
Executive buy-in for long-term innovation investment.
A prioritized roadmap grounded in human reality and infused with AI opportunities.
New strategic confidence that the goals platform can actually empower people to grow, not just check a box.
Great platforms don’t just capture performance. They unintrusively orchestrate it. They guide us with clarity, nudge when we drift, and free us to focus on what truly matters.
Through deep research, leadership partnerships, and mapping the experience architecture, we illuminated a smarter, more human-centered path. One where intelligent systems meet people where they are, and help them grow with clarity, not confusion.