After three years at JPMorgan (!!!), I have built a lot of things, worked with a lot of people, and I am still having a blast.
For me, it is a mix of good fortune and approach. I spend my days juggling competing priorities, shifting deadlines, multiple requests, and four developers with different personalities, often across regions and timelines. What has made this sustainable is being intentional about how I show up.
Here are a few things that have helped me — and might help you if you are navigating complex, matrixed environments too.
1. I always enter a project trying to help. I know the roles, the SLAs, and the process. That is my job. It is not everyone else's. So instead of leading with constraints, I start with a question: How can I help? Once I understand, I can usually surface multiple paths forward and then we decide what is realistic.
2. I show people things. This is not always efficient, but it is effective. I will pull examples of what we have built, how we built it, and the tradeoffs we made. Many people need something to react to. Spending an extra thirty or sixty minutes here often turns someone into an informed partner, which saves far more time later.
3. I connect people early and I do not gatekeep. If I hear that a team has not spoken to another stakeholder, I say something. Sometimes I recommend a conversation. Sometimes I put everyone on the same call. Most friction I see is not tech related. It is informational, and it compounds when no one intervenes.
4. I care about being right, but I do not need to win. If something is wrong, I say it and explain why. I will push when it matters, especially when a decision creates risk, rework, or downstream pain for teams not in the room. I focus on being useful, even when that means doing work that technically is not mine.
If you have ever heard me speak, you know what comes next. If something is broken and I see it, it is now my responsibility. That usually requires creativity. It means finding a solution that works for the business, respects the technical reality, and does not punish the people who have to live with the outcome.
5. I am unromantic about the work. I make recommendations and stand by them. If someone disagrees or hires an agency, I do not take it personally. My subject matter expertise is not fragile. I have built a career I am proud of across hundreds of millions of dollars in award winning campaigns, new brands built from nothing, billions of organic impressions, and digital experiences that became standard.
The work is not about avoiding friction. It is about using judgment, clarity, and creativity to move things forward without burning people out or breaking trust.
If you are leading work where influence matters more than authority — being helpful does not mean being quiet. It means being precise, principled, and willing to do the thinking when others cannot or will not.