Jude Robinson, Product Lead, DWP Digital
Strategic, creative, and get 'stuff' done. Passionate about customer-centric products and excellent service. Proud wife and mum. Work to live, love to explore, and travel, but nothing beats walking my dog and riding my horse in the Durham - Northumberland countryside.
What is your favourite social media platform, and why?
LinkedIn is my office, that professional networking environment. Facebook and Instagram are my living room for keeping in touch with friends. Twitter, my 'local', for engaging with friends and strangers alike in really interesting short, sharp conversations that can reveal so much! Great for throwing a hook out there and seeing the response!
Tell us about you and your current role or area of interest.
Who am I - a lover of big thinking and creativity, creating visions and strategies. I relish a challenge, facilitating, networking and collaborating to understand the problem and solution using to resolve complexity! Give me structure, and order any day, but if there's ambiguity, I'll pull a plan together. But most of all, I'm for the customer, giving them the best experiences and colleagues, listening and helping them grow as individuals. Right now, I wear two hats.
1 - Leading the service design thinking in our digital strategic development collaborating with service, digital and strategic colleagues in identifying and using common design standards and patterns to be more joined up in support of customers when they need it most.
2 - Through a learning culture, facilitating experimentation in new ways of agile working and capturing that learning in a 'How To Guide' in support of colleagues to digitise our services more quickly.
Our service transformation vision has never been more relevant. The pandemic has illustrated just how essential joined-up, responsive, scalable digital services that customers can access on their own terms are to millions of people across the UK.
What do you like about your career or area of focus?
I've moved around over the last three decades, mainly big corporates, lucky enough to have experienced globally with a small business mindset, the heady days of Orange startup, and breaking into the UK market with Intuit QuickBooks. Meeting some amazing people along the way has been inspiring, both customers, suppliers and colleagues alike! I've experienced the very heart of customer service, leading contact centres.
Launched multiple consumer marketing campaigns, the first-ever Dual Fuel offer back in the day of the energy market deregulating, global accountancy software B2B customer loyalty programmes, and delivered significant big bang network infrastructure changes and iterative value customer journey improvements. It's cliched, but it's the people who make or break a role for me, being part of a proactive, pre-emptive team, focused on user needs and adding real value, always keeping the customer at the centre.
Latterly, identifying agile ways of working for organisations to deliver 'value' through products and services sooner has had a profound impact and led me to a conscious decision to use my experience as a public servant, not motivated by profit but rewarding and meaningful, motivated by providing better quality, digital services to improve people's livelihoods.
What is the best advice you have ever received?
If it doesn't feel right, it's wrong. 'Trusting your gut' is a figure of speech for what is really subconscious mind and instincts. Since childhood, our minds have absorbed and stored massive amounts of information for a reason! Our first reaction to a situation or problem is the conscious mind reaching back to the subconscious and pulling forward stored information!
Stay true to your values and beliefs; trust what your instinct is telling. After nine months in one role, I was wrestling with what I was doing; I was unhappy and starting to become a person that wasn't me. If it doesn't feel right, it probably isn't was the advice I was given, so I left and moved on. I wouldn't be doing what I am now and be the person I am if I hadn't experienced and learnt. The last bit is key, learn and move on, don't look back; you can't change the past.
What inspires you, motivates you, or helps you to move forward?
Leaders who empower and trust others. Open, honest, and transparent engagement and communication upwards and outwards. Talent that innovates and creates new ideas. Gratitude, just a simple thank you.
What are you proud of in your life so far?
Many things, my family, my friends, a job that I love, letting go and forgiving a past that defined me for a while, my personal and professional achievements, but the three things I am really proud of are.
1 - Becoming the person I am, that I know if my mum was still here today, would have been hugely proud of - a precious, loyal wife, a loving mum (daughter and fur babies!) and a genuine, trusted friend to many.
2 - My daughter! Her smile makes me smile, and I've brought her up to be brave, capable, be herself and that anything is possible. And she's doing great!
3 - Realising my lifelong love of horses and buying a youngster aged three whilst growing my riding confidence to now twelve years on be competing, even at a local level, in show jumping and generally out there riding around the countryside, giving back to other nervous horse riders by coaching them.
What is your preferred way to meet new people/network?
Meeting people through people, starting a conversation, more latterly on social media platforms but ordinarily local, small meetups of like-minded people. Volunteering for things, such as recently co-hosting a Hackathon or helping with charitable events. Connecting people in my network, as you don't know where it could lead!
What skills or qualities do you feel have helped you?
Simply put, tenacity has and continues to give me the confidence and is, for me, a blend of determination, persistence and grit, inherited from my mum! I've hung on through challenges, bumps in the road, never given up to eventually achieve who I am today and my goals. It's been a journey of pushing through barriers of doubt and self-limiting beliefs (I did to Go Ape with my fear of heights!), and being willing to persist despite all the odds, always find a way through no matter what.
I guess I'm realistic too, but I've always loved a challenge, push myself to go beyond what's comfortable, and learnt that I am capable of so much more than I give myself credit for (just thinking about horse riding and going from jumping a small pole to much larger fences! Not even close to what they jump at the Olympic's, but in my head I do!).
What do you wish you had known when you started out?
It's OK to make mistakes. Learning is a continuous process in life and making mistakes is an important part of that learning process. I'd want everything to be perfect, just right. I'm my own biggest critic and would beat myself up. But over the years, I've learnt the hard way (I remember not fully proofreading a press ad as it was short on time and the call to action telephone number was wrong! Big mistake!).
Things would take too long, albeit delivering high-quality results. I've relaxed a little and realised if I just go for 80%, I not only get things done faster but get to see the benefits sooner and learn from feedback to continuously drive iterative value beyond!
Who do you most admire in business, academic or creative circles and why?
Scott Cook, the co-founder of Intuit from an idea, and built it into a multi-million dollar company, currently employing over 8,500 people and serves 60 million + customers every year globally. In building Intuit, Cook was very specific about the common attributes he looked for in people; intelligence, learning ability, cares about quality work, and satisfying customers and gets things done.
As an individual, I've admired these traits and valued them in my career. You want people who get things done, that others will agree with and naturally follow them, that care deeply about the customer and how they do things and that continuously absorb learning about themselves and others. Cook is fully transparent and honest, a real inspiration to listen to. He lives and breathes the values he looks for in others. His strategy for Intuit was genius - real counter-culture - others would rush to serve big players, Intuit would serve small businesses.
Cook advocated not to shy away from but encouraged that disruptive advantage, going after problems that aren't solved or nobody has figured out. The real game-changer for me was running Intuit as a network of startups, encouraging inexpensive experiments with real customers that gave more useful information about how customers actually behave. The outcome of the experiment makes the decision, not the manager. Cook created a culture of innovation and got me hooked on the innovation cataclysm.
Outside of your professional/work area, what hobbies or interests do you have or what other areas of your life are of real importance to you?
As a family, we love the outdoors. We sadly lost our twelve-year-old boxer dog at the beginning of the year, and like many, have got a new puppy in lockdown. As he's grown, it's been great going for long walks, and we've had a couple of excellent dog-friendly staycations! We just love his company and huge character, his antics reducing us to tears of laughter at times!
As a golf widow, I get lots of time to spend with my horse and his welfare during the lockdown; visiting him every day has helped my welfare and through some hard days. I'll often ride out before work which sets me up for the day ahead, getting some headspace to think of, or after work as a de-stressor! Nothing beats cantering up the hills with the wind in your face.
Has the pandemic had a positive or a negative effect on you and/or your business, and how have you managed it?
Our response to the unprecedented surge in demand COVID-19 placed on DWP's services has dominated the last sixteen months. We made rapid changes to numerous systems to expand capacity, enable new ways of accessing our services, and facilitate the processing and payment of larger volumes of benefit claims. And all that with most of us working from home!
Do you have a mentor, or have you ever mentored anyone?
On and off over the years, I have had a mentor, valuing the torch they have shone on me and been very honest in their assessment. It's made me the person I am today, and I will be forever grateful. Knowing how it has helped me, I am only too happy to mentor those that approach me and currently mentor two individuals. Mentoring gives me great satisfaction in just simply giving back and being able to help. I love seeing people grow, and it also gives me new perspectives and fresh ideas.
What advice would you have for someone looking to get into the same area of work or interests?
Meet other product managers who can give you advice, support. Consider networking at meetups and events in your local area. Attend Hackathons and become a product manager in the team. Put your hand up to get involved in product initiatives. Be persistent, and it will come.
What do you feel is the most common reason for people failing or giving up?
Failure caused by not listening. Great leaders are great listeners. I recently heard someone say; listen to genuinely understand, not to react or respond. When you learn to listen well, you will make better decisions and get stronger commitment from the team around you.
Is there a phrase, quote or a saying that you really like?
"If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough" - Albert Einstein.
As a Product Lead, I always try to convey a clear story that positions a vision and values, keeping it simple, so people understand the what, why and how and understand what it means to them. To do this, I need to understand to connect with others.
What companies, brands, or institutions do you like or do you think are getting it right?
I'm going to be slightly disruptive here. Throughout COVID-19, I've shifted to supporting small, local businesses. Right now, there is no one company or brand that stand out as my heroes are those small business owners who've held onto their dream, found a way through the pandemic, whether re-inventing themselves, gone online. By supporting local businesses, I'm also supporting the community I live in, helping stimulate the economy, and keeping businesses alive within my local region.
How do you define success, and what lessons have you learned so far that you could share with our audience/readership?
It's the ability to reach your goals, whatever those goals may be. And those goals will change - right now, for me, it's being fulfilled at work, adding value for customers, colleagues, and being happy, safe, healthy, and loved. What life lessons have I learned;
Be true to yourself, stick to your values. You can't please everyone, don't waste time being a people pleaser. You can't possibly know everything; it's OK not to know. Honesty is best, be open and transparent. Be a critical thinker, not a critical person. Be present to what's really going on, empathetic. No such thing as failure; if you don't try, you won't know. Put your hands up, ask for help; there's no shame in it. Have a voice, don't be afraid to use it.