Improving Organization
When I encounter problems, I like to zoom out and think about the big picture and ask myself how I can be a part of the solution. Below you can see an example of a time when I noticed an organizational problem and how I went about finding, proposing, and implementing a solution.
The Problem
Our file management system wasn’t efficient.
The root folders were the names of individual contributors
Inside each one, the work was organized by personal preference, without any unified naming conventions
Cross-team collaboration and access was difficult due to the lack of standardization across individual contributors
There was no good way to know what existed where and so duplicates were being created across folders, creating additional confusion
When someone left the company, their work had to be moved into a new folder and adopted by someone else
My Approach
This existing system had been in place for a long time. So when I presented the issues to my manager and suggested we consider a change, she was understandably overwhelmed and hesitant to change. However, I was confident that we could improve the system.
In my free time I worked towards a solution by:
Researching storage organization methodologies to understand how others had gone about resolving similar issues
Established the organizational priorities by Interviewing other creative teams at the company to understand their needs
Identifying the source of truth we would reference to ensure consistency in our naming conventions across platforms
After considering my plan, my manager agreed that this was a significant improvement to the current system.
The Solution
A new organizational system.
First-level
Company name because this was the first-order of access shared by all teams. The naming convention was written to mirror the organizational source of truth for records at the company, the CRM.Second-level
Individual teams which serviced different product types.Additional Considerations
Shared notes, brand assets, individual deliverables and campaigns all received additional granular folder structures
I created the standards and lead the implementation of this new organizational system with all of the creative teams at the company.