Stephanie Davis Neill: How I use an “operator mindset” in leadership

International Women's Day is a fitting time to reflect on the different professional backgrounds of women in technology who shape leadership using their lived skills and experience. My own path to becoming a Chief Operating Officer at Click Boarding wasn't through a traditional HR or technology route, but through the lens of industrial engineering. As an industrial engineer and a Six Sigma Black Belt, I see the world in terms of systems. While I live in the world of HR technology today, at my core, I am always an operator.

Throughout my career, I have worked across a wide array of industries and in many varied sized organizations. While there are differences, the fundamentals of managing transformation remain remarkably consistent from startups to the Fortune 100s. It is always about the intersection of people and processes, and for someone with an engineering background, a well-designed system just makes sense. It's similar to imagining the finished version of a jigsaw puzzle from all the individual pieces. 

The skills I have brought to my current leadership position within HR technology stem from this background. In my tenure, I have worked mostly in retail, supply chain and store operations, and even industries like manufacturing, logistics and transportation. In these types of businesses, you are often hiring a large volume of people and my experience helps me understand the priorities and end goal of the HR teams we are working with.

For example, we work with multiple staffing firms – I used to hire staffing firms to fill warehouses with people, meaning I know the urgency and the need felt by those hiring. When you know the operational challenge, it is a lot easier to say to a client, "Let's figure out how we can solve the problem together"

I can also relate the benefits of our technology to the needs of our clients. A $2B+ retail company I worked at had a very high turnover of entry-level staff. If you lose an employee in a small location, the manager is basically "down for the count" and working all hours which is incredibly stressful and you need to get that role filled ASAP. That experience shaped how I think about operational strain and why solving staffing gaps quickly is so important for the people we work with.

I have also implemented many types of software from the client side which helps me understand how our clients want software implementation to be managed. I find it to be most successful when the team can hear what you are trying to do from a process standpoint. For instance, our team make it clear they understand, have done it before, and will help the client think about the things that they might not have otherwise considered. For our software, this includes even small things like the specific order an employer wants to introduce information about the team to a new hire. I've definitely seen how outsourced teams can go through the steps professionally but perhaps lack the intimate knowledge of the product or the business. 

Finally, a systems-minded leader really understands that transformation is a constant. Businesses undergo reorganizations, the world changes and technology must be able to adapt. International Women's Day serves as a reminder that every woman's lived experience shapes the leader she becomes and strengthens her ability to navigate an ever-changing environment. Applying an 'operator mindset' alongside my background in engineering to see the full jigsaw puzzle of people and processes has been central to my success in a senior leadership role.