Head of CX Insight and Innovation Brian Hodgdon shares his tips on how to lead a global team — and give back to the world outside of tech
At Dropbox, we’re privileged to have some of the most well-rounded, diverse, hardworking people in the tech industry on our teams. Working together to build products and experiences that work for customers from all corners of the globe has never been easy, but leaders like our Head of CX (Customer Experience) Insight and Innovation Brian Hodgdon have made it their mission to inspire their teams to achieve the goals they never thought possible.
Brian has a background in CIO-type roles at massive global tech corporations, but has always been drawn to the nuances of using innovations in technology to solve big business problems. He was attracted to Dropbox by the opportunity to help a team, ripe to substantially benefit from an infusion of technology, develop solutions that could work for a base of over 650 million customers, and was excited to get started when he joined us about a year and a half ago.
“The thing that initially came to mind was, ‘how do we marry all of this customer data with everything we know about what’s going on in the support environment and make the experience better for our customers? When we can’t prevent customers from needing support, can we anticipate their needs and get them answers more quickly?’”
Brian’s team employed machine learning algorithms to solve some of the complex problems they encountered, but building these solutions wasn’t exactly simple. Brian’s team, which is about 30 people strong and made up of data scientists, software engineers, program managers, and more, is spread out across the globe. This is a massive shift from Brian’s previous roles, in which he’d sometimes manage projects with thousands of people working on them and zero opportunity for personal connection.
“Now that I’m at Dropbox, the ability to get to know each individual on the team is really important to me. We only had a few people on this team when I joined, so since then, we’ve built it out in a way that’s diverse in a number of factors, including backgrounds, skills, and aptitudes. That is the power of this team — it’s not just an engineering team or a tech team. It’s the combination of tech and business aptitude that makes us powerful.
Managing a team of this smaller size has allowed me to build a relationship with each individual on the team and know what uniquely motivates them and what specific thing they bring to the table that we can capitalize on. To be a high-functioning, high-performing team is an opportunity that’s often missed — we can tend to think that all team members of a single discipline need to have the same skills and look and act the same. But when we identify how each person is energized and brings something unique to the table, we can use this to bring something special to the project as well, and make something amazing that’s bigger than all the individual parts.
Then, the more you get to know someone and find out what they can uniquely contribute, you start to overlay it on what you’re trying to achieve and find the gaps. Too many times managers draw lines with ‘this role should end here,’ but I like to look at people irrespective of their title. For instance, if I have a software engineer who’s interested in data science, and a data scientist who’s interested in software engineering, I can find projects that need both skills and allow them to blur the lines between their roles and work together. This way, they’re both a lot more fulfilled in terms of what they’re delivering. Often this means loosening the formal structure of the project, but it can can also mean that this project performs better than any other.”
As some of the most motivated, ambitious workers in the tech industry, many Dropboxers have told us they operate best when they have goals to work against. Part of Brian’s focus includes establishing bold, aspirational goals for his team, while making sure they still have the autonomy they need to reach these goals in the way that works best for them.
“It’s important for me as a leader to refine and define the boundaries of what my team can do — otherwise there are too many options. If I can say, ‘this is the focus area, and here are the guard rails, but you can do anything within that,’ it brings focus while giving autonomy as well.
When I started, I took a good amount of time to just talk to everyone I could talk to and find out what they need and what their pain points are. From there, out of the thousands of things that we could be doing, I built a vision toward three things that needed to be our specific focus: personalization, enabling customers to be more self-sufficient, and building more compelling experiences. This set the focus and the guard rails for my team; if it’s not about one of these things, we’re gonna do it another time.”
And outside of Dropbox, Brian is just as focused on helping others to have an equal chance at achieving their goals. He, and his wife Selena, are particularly passionate about giving back to children from disadvantaged backgrounds, both locally and abroad. For about 8 years, he and his family have been involved with a small children’s village in a remote area of Haiti.
“When someone I knew asked me to go to this village with him, I started thinking about my own background. I grew up largely overseas and moved around a lot, and had a lot of exposure to poverty and hardship in different communities and cultures. I recognized that my own children were not getting that same exposure, and thought it would be a good opportunity to help them realize their privilege and learn to give back. We fell in love with the village and have been involved with it ever since; all three of my daughters go back with me on a regular basis.
I was there when the first children were brought into the village, and now we’re at capacity with almost 80 children. A school we built there has enrolled almost 330 students from our village and the surrounding community who otherwise would have zero access to education. Last year, we hosted a soccer camp that had about 200 kids in it; these are kids who normally play soccer barefoot on the dirt, and we were able to take cleats and soccer balls over for all of these kids. Additionally, there’s a stadium in close proximity to the village that the national team of Haiti plays in, and we were able to arrange to have full use of that facility for our kids for a day. It was amazing to see the faces of these kids who have next to nothing playing on the same field that their national team plays on.
Dropbox’s policies not only help me give financially to the village, but they also help me to take time off to participate fully. Prior to Dropbox, I would have to fight for time off, and would feel bad about the time I was there. But here, I get support to go do it, and I’m encouraged to be fully offline while I’m there too.”
We’re proud to have managers like Brian leading our teams at Dropbox by showing they care about not only their teammates, but their communities and customers on a global scale. Follow us on Instagram for more stories like this or check out #LifeInsideDropbox.
