In our Productivity Hero Spotlight series, we interview enterprise leaders to learn how they think about productivity and how they got to where they are in their careers. For this week’s productivity hero spotlight, we spoke to Dixie Dunn, VP of Customer Success at Docker.
About Docker: Docker helps developers bring their ideas to life by conquering the complexity of app development. Actively used by millions of developers around the world, Docker Desktop and Docker Hub provide unmatched simplicity, agility and choice.
Source: https://www.docker.com/company/.
Interviewer: How do you promote productivity and collaboration at Docker?
Dixie: I think of it as you want people to be as productive as possible, try and generate productivity hacks through tools and automation, and look for ways to have more business value generated per person.
As a result, we're one of the most efficient groups in the company when you look at generated dollars attributed to people, because we've really taken the approach of figuring out how we act on information in a more streamlined way. If you don't have a way of getting information faster and more productively, then you don't have it to act upon.
“If you don't have a way of getting information faster and more productively, then you don't have it to act upon.”
Interviewer: Can you talk more about how you automate workflows?
Dixie: If you can't automate your workflows, you can't have efficiency with people. Early on, we looked at automating workflows as much as we can. It does mean that there's an emphasis on operations people because you have to have operations people to automate workflows.
I want my people to be working on the customer problems, not worrying about how the internal machine works.
“I want my people to be working on the customer problems, not worrying about how the internal machine works.”
Interviewer: What productivity tools, habits, or apps do you find most valuable in your work?
Dixie: More data always helps us understand where to improve faster. And then the general experimentation about ways in which we can remove all of the non-value added work.
So, that's where the Xembly piece came in and removed non-value-added work.
Do I need to take notes? Do I need to take action items? What can I do to deprecate?
And so we're looking at it not just with Xembly, but with other tools that we have as well.
We look for ways to help us input data and information because we want more data to see how we're doing, but I don't wanna say, hey, everyone, you need to go manually input all that information. I'm looking for that productivity jump that helps get the information in the right places without having to push people to continually do it because that's not productive.
“that's where the Xembly piece came in and removed non-value-added work.”
Interviewer: With AI all around us, how do you see it becoming part of your workflow?
Dixie: It needs to support us without doing tons more work in order to make it work. Automated data input is a big one. Helping people schedule time and automate processes more efficiently.
When I think of the places where AI can help very quickly and actually is applicable and easily implementable, things like what Xembly is doing are definitely a category, and then probably data entry and insights in general. Those are all areas we're looking at from an AI perspective.
Interviewer: How do you use Xembly and Xena in your work?
Dixie: I use Xembly to have that additional productivity assistance. When I talk about automation of tasks, that's what I think of. How can I use the things that AI does well to automate tasks and to provide the input of data. What did I leave that meeting on the hook for? What do I have to go do and did it happen? And then fill my calendar.
I've had folks say, well, we get transcripts from, I won't name other source transcripts that you can get. And I'm like, yeah, but it's more than the transcript, right? It's the whole other productivity suite around it.
If Xembly was just the transcript itself or even the action items from the transcript, it might not be as useful as the productivity hack of making sure that those items are done and helping with the scheduling. Those are the kinds of things I think of AI enabling that were not there a number of years ago.
I would also add the integrations with Google Suite, Notion, our Customer Success and CRM tooling, make Xembly a one-stop solution.
“The integrations with Google Suite, Notion, our Customer success and CRM tooling makes Xembly a one-stop solution.”
Interviewer: Can you share any habits or practices that have contributed to your career growth?
Dixie: Being willing to embrace that there's a better way to do whatever it is you're doing. A better way to serve. A better way to connect. A better way to work. And always wanting to find out what those better ways were. And not being afraid to step into challenging environments and challenging problems. I always seem to find another bigger, more challenging, more difficult thing to accomplish.
Interviewer: What’s the best career advice you have received?
Dixie: Do hard things. That's been career advice I've always received.
Because hard things teach you things that you wouldn't otherwise know.
The other one is to be compassionate. Because you really don't know what you think you know. You really don't.
“Do hard things.”
Interviewer: What advice would you give your younger self or maybe someone starting out in their career?
Dixie: I would encourage them to explore different things. Explore different opportunities, different roles. You never know what you're going to want to do, what you're good at doing. I think having a bit of an exploration mindset is the advice I would give someone.
“Explore different opportunities, different roles. You never know what you're going to want to do, what you're good at doing.”
