Laila Coulton

I started my career as a Management Consultant before transitioning into large corporations to focus on establishing customer centred capabilities and to drive change. I’m well suited for organisations needing clear strategies and implementation systems. With extensive experience in team management and motivation, I can bring order and direction to complex situations. Please reach out if you need a clear path forward.

Examples of my work:

Xero’s initial goal was to embed accessibility into ways of working. I created the Digital Accessibility strategy and 5 year plan within 6 weeks. Following this I delivered process and organisational change to enable accessibility to move from a 'should' to a 'must'. Our Digital Accessibility customer service practices were externally recognised.

Following a restructure, I created the 3 year and annual plans for Design and Research Operations. I built strategies which translated into annual and quarterly roadmaps with clear benefits and outcomes identified. My strategies enabled halved teams to maintain SLAs, consolidating tools and reducing annual spend by over $200k.

Coles Group wanted to build an in-house design capability to reduce agency spend and improve customer experience. I iterated and managed the operational systems and processes which enabled us to operate design in house. In addition to this, my design team built the Coles Group Design System to speed up and deliver consistency in our designs.

Across both Xero and Coles Group, I led teams in customer and employee journey mapping to enhance customer centricity and prioritise work. I'm adept at translating complex internal work and customer needs into clear, prioritized initiatives, aligning team strengths with key objectives.

My decade as a strategic management consultant, working across diverse sectors like energy, utilities, tax, and retail, honed my ability to learn quickly, be flexible, and focus on delivering valuable outcomes. My projects included, competitor analysis, category analysis, scenario planning, call centre optimisation, space and range optimisation, organisational redesign, systems integration and implementation, supply chain optimisation and strategic planning.

• Strategic Planning: Vision, Mission and purpose exploration, Impact vs Effort mapping and prioritisation to build 5 year plans, annual plans and quarterly roadmaps
• Human Centred Design: Convergent and divergent thinking to identify the key problems to be solved and the best ways to solve those problems.
• Journey Mapping: Mapping employee, technology and customer experiences to sharpen strategies and align on priorities
• Benefits realisation: Identify hero metrics and establish measurement practices. Create artefacts to share progress up, down and out of the organisation.
• Change management: Build stakeholder maps, change plans and communication plans to ensure messages cut through noise and reach intended audiences