by Nortal cloud team, August 17, 2021
Next up for our employee spotlight is Jason Doll, a Delivery Director at Nortal US! We interviewed him about his experience in leadership, and why he joined the Nortal team. Find out what he has to say in the interview below.
“I’ve been working in technology leadership for the last 25 years in both the software and hardware industries. At the beginning of my career I was in retail technology, where I worked with customers to bring technology based solutions to multiple retailers. The middle third of my career shifted to digital commerce, where I first worked at Amazon running white-label ecommerce programs for other third-party retailers. It was a unique program that Amazon provided to retailers, which included website, operations, fulfillment and customer support. Then I went to Liberty Mutual Surety to work on digital commerce in the form of Surety bonding platforms, which took the concept of ecommerce to areas of banking in the US and other countries. It was also interesting learning and thinking about the regulations and user focused aspects of digital commerce within the cultural practices of each country. For the past several years I have been working in consulting with both local and international, large-scale customers.”
“Throughout my career I’ve worked in global delivery, which I’ve always enjoyed, so there was a natural appeal to join the team here at Nortal. I like that there is a vast customer portfolio and priority placed on individual projects. I own a myriad of diverse projects, which allows our developers to stretch into different areas of customers’ business because it can help us tie insights with work that is being done somewhere else. Nortal has a reputation for hiring seasoned technologists, which is something I’ve really enjoyed because we can instantly create that credibility with clients and demonstrate our value even in the initial conversations. Ultimately, I have seen this level of consultants quickly transform from service providers to trusted advisors.”
“I have worked in global consulting before but I have not worked with northern and eastern European counterparts before. Even though working with international teams has its similarities, there are always regional and cultural differences to pick up on and be cognisant of as you communicate, set expectations and deliver results. Americans can sometimes come across too forward or in a seemingly insensitive way, so I try to learn about the cultural norms of the teams I work with to ensure we are all playing on a level playing field.”
“One of the key differences between individual contributors and leaders can be the “blips on the radar” or the number of things that they are tracking against. An individual contributor is usually focused on delivering on their commitments and what they can specifically contribute to the growth of the company. As a leader, there are many more things that you are directly affecting, managing, guiding and having to be aware of…not to mention tie many of these things together within and across accounts. I think that the saying “see the forest from the tree’s” really sums up one of those first steps to leadership. If you are too focused on the little elements, you are micromanaging, if you are only concerned with the top line performance you are missing out on opportunities to optimize. It is a balancing act, a good leader needs to know how to balance the big and the small, and how to develop their teams to give them the ability to see what is going well and what needs attention.”
“Nortal has always done distributed delivery, and while that’s something that hasn’t been a foreign concept in the US, it’s something that we are really making an effort to take advantage of considering Nortal’s global capacity, to benefit our American clients. Seattle has a very vibrant and competitive technical footprint. The fact that we have five or six other countries we can hire from, allows us to hire top tier technologists to work on our projects remotely. It expands our staff pool from the I-5 and I-405 corridor to across the Atlantic. For our customers it provides them world class, economical solutions with a consulting workforce that is producing up to 20 hours a day.”
“I have to say that all of the projects across all of our customer portfolios are interesting and bring different problems to solve using a myriad of technologies. That said, I have always had a deep affinity for First Responders, and I have the privilege of working with a client who builds technical solutions specifically to benefit them. Platforms that manage dispatch, body cam video, evidence handling etc. and their solutions are deployed globally. For another client, we are working on a series of projects that are providing physical, site and network security to their campuses and facilities around the world. Over the course of the past 18 months much of our work has been in support of COVID-19 related return to office initiatives, ensuring that employees can come back to work, safely and at scale.”
“I joined Nortal in the middle of the pandemic, so the vast majority of my interactions with my coworkers has been over video conferencing. Our offices have partially opened over the past couple of months so I have physically met some of my colleagues but only a few. I am really looking forward to when the whole office can come together. We can all physically meet up. The same can be said for my clients as well. I think I have forged good relationships with my customers, but nothing beats shaking hands and greeting each other when working together to tackle business challenges.”
If you’re interested in working at Nortal, visit our careers page. To learn more about Jason and his background, visit his LinkedIn profile.