THE INVESTIGATOR PROFILE

What challenge are you looking to solve with innovation right now?

I work on implementing global marketing programmes. This is not new to large corporates, but it is new to Facebook. The role is complex as it involves harnessing the diversity of so many different stakeholders across the world with all their different needs and requirements. Although our initial campaign ideas may be considered innovative, the execution of them is multifaceted and requires good investigate and implementation skills to make the innovation work.

Looking at your Six ‘I’s^® results, you are an investigator. How does this knowledge impact or change the way you work?

In Facebook, playing to our strengths is not new. What I liked about The Six ‘I’s^® is it is specific to innovation strengths, and about how I contribute to making new ideas work. It has given me confidence in knowing that my core skills are fundamental to making things work. Without good investigation, we can waste time or not really understand the needs that we are trying to solve or our customer requirements. There are only so many hours in the day. Focusing on what I am good at, rather than trying to be good at everything, is what I try to do. This helps me to have more impact.

How do you play to your strengths? What advice would you give other people who want to get better at investigate?

It is about building relationships, listening and taking the time to hear the needs of different people. The more you can do this, the more you learn to put aside your own assumptions so you can understand whether an idea will work. This gives you more information and better information allows you to make more quality decisions. I work with many project managers and sometimes they just want to go head first into implementation. I encourage them to listen to others and see how they can solve problems, to be more agile and create space for testing and experimentation.

What steps, if any, would you take to improve the areas where you are not so strong or that are important to you and how?

I think it is three things. First, it is great to know your strengths and where you most naturally contribute and to build a role around these strengths. This builds confidence and makes you more impactful. Second, it is good to know where you are not as confident so that you can work with others who will complement you and, third, it gives you insight into where there may be opportunities to develop new skills. For example, I am lower on invest skills and would love to be more entrepreneurial in investing.

How has The Six ‘I’s^® helped you and your teams/business? What examples, if any, can you share?

Thankfully, we have an entrepreneurial culture at Facebook. But, while we are encouraged to think differently and are working with innovative technology, we still have to build the skill to utilise and harness the diversity that we have. In rolling out global campaigns, we are using large-scale implementation processes to manage stakeholders across four regions. This is largely operational and needs excellent teamwork to deliver on the complexity. I am able to think consciously about how to put people together who have different strengths. The Six ‘I’s^® is a great Model for building project teams.

Have you produced something you would consider innovative?

We identified a new opportunity, which we have named demotainment – demonstrating our products by actively using them in Facebook business to business marketing. Using lateral thinking, we ignited ideas that showcase our advertising platform and the benefits of our products by using them the same way our clients would. We are able, in real time, to investigate how they are working, due to the technology that we use, but it is more than that. We have had to challenge our ways of thinking – the traditional ways of doing advertising – to create powerful opportunities for our customers to innovate in how they advertise their products and services.