Portland, Oregon
Hi, I'm Craig.
Most business problems are structure problems wearing a costume. I find them and fix them, in a way that improves life for the people who use a thing and the people who make it. I solve what is in front of a company without breaking where it is trying to go.
How I think
Five habits I bring to any problem, before I bring an opinion.
01Structure determines what is possible.
Most problems that look like effort problems are structure problems. Look at the workflow, the org chart, and the incentives before you ask people to try harder. You can tell how a company will move by watching its footwork.
02Validate with real people first.
Talk to ten or fifteen of them with open questions before you build anything. A hunch is not a shared problem until someone other than you actually has it.
03Ship the smallest real version.
Not the smallest impressive version. Make the scope as small as possible, but no smaller, and get a working prototype in front of a real person this week instead of a finished plan next quarter.
04The engagement is the product.
Clients do not buy deliverables. They buy a relationship that moves them toward a goal. Organize the work around the goal, and the artifacts take care of themselves.
05Strip the hype, keep the evidence.
New is not the same as true. I like new technology, and I am writing seriously about how to manage what AI recommends. But I want the claim grounded in research before it drives a decision.
The arc
A long walk from storytelling to strategy. The path is the point.
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01
2000 – 2010 · Media & broadcast
Storytelling
TechTV, CBS News, and eBay buying guides. Up to seven feature stories a week, written for an audience that could leave at any time.
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02
2011 – 2015 · Digital agencies
Running the work
Project management at Saturno and Vortx. Cut average project overages by 50% by removing workflow bottlenecks, and doubled site traffic by launching a corporate blog.
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03
2015 – 2019 · Citizen, later EY
Winning the work
Business development and account leadership. Multi-year, multi-million-dollar engagements with Disney, Kaiser Permanente, and Cigna, mostly in regulated healthcare and financial services.
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04
2018 – 2024 · EY Design Studio, Point B
Designing the work
Built $10M+ in new revenue leading cross-disciplinary teams of strategists, researchers, designers, and developers through research, prototyping, and go-to-market.
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05
2024 – present · Creature
Leading the work
Head of Client Services. Lower acquisition costs, cut churn, invent new products, build go-to-market strategy, and help clients grow.
Selected writing
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The Engagement Focused Firm
Why firms should organize around client goals instead of around producing a specific deliverable. The framework the Creature mandate borrows eleven years later.
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So, You Want to Build a Digital Something
A numbered method for going from a hunch to a validated, scoped solution without building the wrong thing first.
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Organization is Everything
A curated set of examples, opinions, theory, and practice on why structure beats effort. Also, at the end, some crows.
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When it's Smart to Play Dumb: Managing AI Recommendations
On treating intellectual humility as a working tool, not a virtue, and on not deferring to a model just because it is confident.
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Three Benefits of Being Wrong
What admitting uncertainty actually does for you, in strategic terms.
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Your Agency's Dark Horse
How project managers sit on account-level insight that nobody else in the building can see.
Contact
The best way to start is a real conversation. Tell me the problem you are actually stuck on.
Email hello@chigdon.com, or find me on LinkedIn.