When Divergence Collides

Megan and I have widely divergent backgrounds. Megan spent most of her career inside complex corporations; I’ve spent all of my career as an outsider. She is an expert in the financial and operational aspects of business; my expertise is in the “soft stuff”: brands, customers and creative. 

With the first three months of Loom in the rearview mirror, we’ve come to understand these divergent backgrounds are our greatest asset. You see, Megan and I first met as client and strategist when she was at General Mills and I at Zeus Jones. The project was ambitious (it was literally titled “The Future of Food”). My role was to understand the problem and create a vision for what could be. Megan’s role was to work across the organization to bring the vision to life. It was messy, hard work. But it sparked something we came to revisit years later: What is possible when you deliberately weave together the skills of a strategist and an operator. 

We decided to dig further into what this looks like through a little self-administered Q&A. We hope you enjoy!

What attracted you to working alongside your business partner?

Sarah: I knew I would learn things from Megan I could not learn in an agency or creative consulting capacity. When Megan and I reconnected, I was working on projects where the company vision was at odds with the economic engine (how the company made money). I realized there was a huge component of how companies operate that I didn’t fully understand, and it was holding me back from creative problem solving. When Megan and I’s skills are combined, I think we have the potential to really help clients reimagine their business. 

Megan: I am a believer that a successful business finds that balance between art and science. It weaves together the magic and the math to build a sustainable business. A lot of my training and experience had been tilted towards the science part and I felt like I was missing the power of creativity in my work. I read a saying recently: When the student is ready, the teacher will appear. When I reconnected with Sarah, I realized she could teach me a lot about what innovation looks like in practice. I also realized that a lot of clients needed this too: not just the strategy, but learning how to solve problems creatively and how to unlock new ways of thinking. 

How are your skill sets similar? Where do they diverge?

Sarah: While our hard skills and careers are incredibly different, the lessons we’ve taken from those experiences are quite similar: We’ve both come to understand that so much of work is about helping and supporting people. That presentations do not transform companies; people transform companies. As a result, we’ve both cultivated our ability to help people through change, be it in different ways. I think this is our collective superpower: We are masters in how the engine of businesses and brands work. But we see the need to build a new engine - and collectively, we have the skills to do it. 

What is gained when we weave together our collective skill sets and experiences?

Megan: Together we are finding new ways to use the tools we have learned throughout our careers.  We both know how to create a great brand, but now we are thinking about how we use the tools of brand strategy and marketing and turn them inward on companies.  How do we put employees at the center of the work? How do we create new ways of working that are inspired by a brand’s purpose and values?  We are using our skills sets and experience to bring a fresh perspective to org design and change management.   

Was there a moment where you saw her value in full effect?

Sarah: I remember feeling pride the first time I witnessed Megan guide a team of executives through a challenging conversation. The team was managing an incredibly complex business and had brought us in to help them navigate decision making. Megan was able to understand their business quickly, and then create the mental space to really understand each leader’s personal needs and situation. She held all that complexity in her head and in a high pressure environment in order to ask the right questions, in the right moments, to get these leaders talking about the problems seething beneath the surface in a constructive manner. It was incredibly impactful for that team and was a really cool opportunity to see Megan’s unique superpowers in action.

Megan: Recently, I personally felt the full power of Sarah’s value. We were working through some content and I was struggling to articulate my ideas. I could feel myself swirling. In that moment, Sarah saw my struggle and offered me two things. First, she shifted my focus from trying to perfect to trying to get it 80% there. She also offered me a different framework for solving my communication challenge. Later in the day as I reflected on our interaction I realized that she made it okay for me to not know the answer while simultaneously giving me a different way to solve the problem. It was a powerful, yet subtle coaching technique that allowed me the space to find my own answer. I had seen her do this with clients many times, but experiencing it myself helped me understand the tangible value of her superpower. 

What is lost when these skills and experiences are not brought together? 

Sarah: Ideas stay in decks and file folders, collecting dust. Organizations shift their structure and systems, but not with a clear direction guiding them. It’s really easy (and tempting) to keep shuffling papers around (or setting up meetings) without really making progress. I think our skills combined enable progress. 

Megan: I always think about how frustrating it was as an employee to go to inspiring presentations or see words written on the wall and then sit down in meetings where the behaviors were in direct contrast to what was being espoused. I don’t think it was because of bad intent, it's really hard to make change real. We tend to lean into the things that feel really tangible and concrete and avoid the messy parts of change. Our way of working ensures that we prioritize the messy, human part of change. 

What are you excited to tackle next using your combined skill sets? 

Sarah: Change is difficult. We cannot remove that mess. But I believe we can - and should move from asking employees to just grind it out to authentically supporting people through change. I am so excited to help more people get the support they deserve while enabling their workplaces to progress.

Megan: We have some really exciting ideas around how we can use brand strategy to inspire and guide how organizations make decisions, leaders show up, teams collaborate and customer relationships are cultivated and how we can bring together a cross-section of change agents in a company to solve real problems and craft solutions that can have an impact today.   Beyond combining our skill sets, we are excited to weave together what we bring with the genius our clients bring.  We learn so much by working with amazing humans. 

If this resonates with you and you are feeling stuck, we’d love to help. We say it all the time: The Loom ladies love a messy problem.