Solution Lead (Washington D.C.)

Washington, DC
United States

GoKart Labs

51 to 200 employees

We invent businesses. We make products. We market experiences. We transform companies.

We’re GoKart Labs—a digital innovation company that uses collaboration and human-centered design to help companies of all sizes invent, make, market, and transform. We’re also an active incubator, applying our methods, process, and team to launch our own businesses. Overall, we’re a bunch of curious, entrepreneurial makers. A motley crew of strategists, marketers, creatives, and fearless explorers using design and technology to make experiences that people love.

Company Info

Job description

Why This Job Is Important

Business models are being challenged, some are disintegrating, and new ones are being invented every day.  At the center of nearly every transformation we’re witness to (with our clients and internally), digital products, experiences and the way they’re grown in-market are increasingly more vital to the success of business (digital or not). Further, people who can lead the invention, creation, and marketing of successful digital things are core to the lifeblood of a successful modern organization. We’re actively looking for solution leaders to help us lead through this change.

As a Solution Lead working on strategic projects at GoKart Labs, you’ll play a central role in solving some of the biggest challenges we’re asked to take on.

What You Will Be Doing

  • Lead client projects and teams.
  • Facilitate diverse groups of people toward clarity and alignment around new solutions
  • Bring together desirability (what people want), feasibility (what the organization can do) and viability (what the market will support as a business).
  • Work with GoKart Labs teams to prioritize, validate and build solutions that solve the organizational and propositional challenges of our clients. Whether that solution is simply a validated prototype or a concept that goes to market.
  • Support our clients in the design and validation of solutions that meet their goals for new and existing products/services
  • Use a flexible methodology to get the job done, and you’ll challenge us to build upon and improve our methods/tools too.
  • Help our clients develop and refine their go-to-market strategies for new products and services.
  • Help us to seek out and win exciting new projects where digital products sit at the heart of the solution.
  • Sometimes you’ll be 100% focused on a single project for several months and at other times you’ll be supporting multiple product teams at once.

What You Are Good At: 

  • You're a Leader
    • You’ve been a natural leader your whole life
    • People don’t follow you because they have to, they follow because they want to
    • Nobody has to ask you to do something (certainly not twice)
    • In every situation, you help others see what (and how) they can help - and - you give them the confidence and tools to drive it forward
  • You're Creative
    • You’ve got raw intuition and can invent/create something brand new
    • "How might we" is a natural part of your language
  • You're Strategic
    • You know how to prioritize what should be done, and why you need to do it
    • You have a not-to-do list
  • You're Technical  
    • You know enough to be dangerous (in a good way).
    • You’re self-aware enough to know when you’re dangerous (in a bad way).  
  • You're Insightful
    • You know that some of the best ideas are inspired by data.
    • You also know when to ignore it.
  • You're a Simplifier
    • You make the complex simple, cut through the clutter, get unstuck.
    • You’re quick to see A - Z, but you’re empathetic (and can lead a team) through B-Y.

What You Have Done: 

  • You’ve built products that have proven value in-market
  • You have experience applying strategic frameworks to organizational challenges (Lean Canvas, Strategy Canvas, Lean Startup, Value Chain etc.). You understand the advantages and disadvantages of key tools.
  • You have experience applying an experimental, hypotheses-led approach to business challenges.
  • It would be a plus if you had: 
    • Experience with product/service design and development in a service model context (resourcing, working models etc.).
    • Practical experience leading the invention - creation - marketing of digital products/services from end-to-end.

A Little More About You: 

  • You’re curious - never satisfied until you know why, what, how, who, when, and why -- again.
  • You’re confident, yet humble.  You’re as comfortable inspiring and leading an internal team as you are presenting in the boardroom.
  • You communicate visually -- your hands are constantly stained with sharpie or whiteboard markers.
  • You define strategies, but you also love executing/iterating the plan.
  • You have an original point-of-view, but are obsessed with analogues.
  • You care about the end user above anything.
  • You trust data as much as your gut -- both help you make decisions.
  • You care about what happens after launch as much as you do about defining what should launch.
  • You prototype, and achieve success through deliberate trial and error.
  • You have deep knowledge of cultural & digital trends.
  • You love to get your hands dirty.

Work location: Washington, DC

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