Darcy Marie Mayfield

Starbucks outsourced the heavy lifting of staff scheduling to an algorithm, and guess what happened? This is obviously an attempt to streamline labor costs. How could a company of this size disregard manager guidance/input for scheduling? How much more profit can they squeeze out of a cup of coffee to the detriment of the product and experience? Computers are great, folks, but you still need to use your brains, and you need to trust the people who are on the ground to make the best decisions. #customerexperience

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Being a founder with ADHD is extremely challenging... I've had to learn how to compartmentalize dozens of projects / tasks to prevent my brain from spontaneously combusting...but still, it's not enough. Text, email, Slack, Asana, meetings, phone calls...it feels like an endless stream of notifications. I literally check email without even knowing that I am doing it... 😬 We've put policies in place from day 1, like not joining client Slack channels, but it's still a lot for my brain. We're usually working on 6-8 projects at once, and some have 5+ projects within them. It's a lot for my brain to process and keep running as "background tasks" until I can give them full attention. All of the distractions take a toll when my attention is so easily broken. I go to the extreme to block distractions so I can do deep focused work, which is what my business and clients need most. I use a Brick (physical device) to block my social media apps, put my phone in a drawer, close my email, and I've designed my office environment to be like sitting in nature (still a lot to do, but super fun to work on). Another thing I've done this year is batch meetings to Tuesdays and Thursdays only, so the rest of the week is reserved for deep uninterrupted work. When it gets really busy (like now) this becomes impossible and meetings spill over into deep work days. It's so wild the lengths I have to go to do the most high-value work. It's ADHD for sure, but it's also a culture of constant connectedness. There's a notion that if you don't get back to someone within 24 hours you don't care. I mean your phone is right there, right? This isn't at all a dig on clients, I've talked to a lot of my clients about this and they struggle with the same things. This is the nature of the workforce nowadays in almost every single industry, and it stems from our personal lives which have been infiltrated by social media apps. And now the native constant connectedness those apps use to be "sticky" has spilled over into work. I've posted about the dumb phone before, but it's seeming more and more appealing everyday. Maybe there's something in-between smart and dumb? This is hands-down one of the top 3 challenges I deal with as a founder. Does anyone else struggle with this? If so, what are some things you're doing to manage it? Now that I've spent 15 minutes on LinkedIn writing this on Monday morning, I've gotta get my ass back to work! 😂 Have a great week friends. 💜

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I'm sharing this photo from the Pfizer factory in Brooklyn not to celebrate a burrito pickup location, but to celebrate the companies on the sign. Like many cities, New York has incubator spaces for small businesses, and last night I went to a FoodHack community meetup and saw what community and innovation look like in the FoodTech space. There were talks about the state of the FoodTech industry, its relationship to Climate Tech and its challenges, and a chance to not only sample some incredible foods and beverages but to meet the founders and hear their origin stories. I think how much AI is dominating our news because of its impact; I also think we're doing a disservice to some truly interesting work if we believe innovation is led by tech first rather than by people working in the space already. FoodHack is a global movement (https://lnkd.in/eFtK_45u) and the full lifecycle approach in a lot of the food companies was about taking resources created as a byproduct, and building an ecosystem to reduce food waste, (https://lnkd.in/ewNvaHGK). By making use of the byproducts we not only create tasty new food inventions and new companies, we create impact through reducing greenhouse gases. One of the speakers noted there was no real real partnership between government agencies and SMB foodtech companies, and the ecosystem of FoodTech people are supporting one another to scale things up. There are opportunities to help do this, and more public-private partnerships and increased funding would help us. Victory Gardens helped us rethink food and distribution during World War 2: we have a Climate Crisis that is an opportunity to rethink how we create and consume products and services, and FoodTech incubators are one of those Victory Gardens we need to nurture for the present and future. You can read more about the Pfizer building's food residents and incubator here: https://lnkd.in/en8yPYf7

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Is #SkillsBasedHiring assessments the best way to hire a #designer? The entire experience is an interesting #ux and somewhat laughable one. How do you quantify ambiguity in the workplace with a "true or false" response? I'm curious about how that response works well in a design critique. #hiringprocess #recruiting #uxdesign #jobseeker

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