Engineering Leadership for Scale, Agility, and Momentum with Jason LaFollette of Yext

CIO Classified

Jason LaFollette, CTO at Yext, shares his product-driven approach to leading agile teams, maintaining tech debt, and using a “top-down, bottom-up” style to keep productivity and momentum high.
About the Guest:

Jason LaFollette is Yext's Chief of Technology. Jason joined the company in 2014 and built out the enterprise consulting side of the business before moving over to product engineering and technology. Prior to joining Yext, Jason was CEO and co-founder of Citrrus, a professional services company specializing in mobile app development and wearable devices, which Yext acquired as the company's first acquisition.

Timestamps:

*(02:30) - Understanding Yext's Business Model

*(04:55) - Leadership and Team Management Strategies

*(14:20) - Scaling and Technical Debt Management

*(24:00) - Adopting New Technologies and AI

Guest Highlights:

“What I'm looking for is momentum with the teams, momentum with the people, momentum with the systems. If you get fixated on the tactical parts... It's a false sense that you're doing something great, but you’ll hit a ceiling quickly in terms of productivity.”

“We only want process when it accelerates us… Once we've proven that we know how to do it manually by keeping smart and talented people in the loop and making good situational decisions is our secret sauce to scale with a lot less pain.”

“If something is important to us, the company, or the management team and we aren't measuring and watching it, other people aren't going to value it either. I've come to adopt a mix of top-down and bottom-up leadership where we can't have all-of-one or all-of-the-other, or everything falls apart.”

Get Connected:

• Jason LaFollette on LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/jasonlafollette
• Ian Faison on LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/ianfaison

Resources:

• Learn more about Yext: www.yext.com
• Hungry for more tech talk? Check out these past episodes:
  • Ep 54 - AI Business Strategy for CIOs
  • Ep 53 - Business-First IT in the AI Era
  • Ep 52 - Empowering Citizen Developers and Reshaping Business with AI
• Learn more about Caspian Studios: www.caspianstudios.com

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