• by Barbie Romero , February 18, 2025

Kohl’s Senior Manager, Marketing Technology & Process Transformation also let us know her favorite clothing item from the brand as well as favorite efficiency tool.  

1. How does your team work better with other teams in your organization and break down silos?

 Bridging silos is a long game, and we’ve bought into that mindset.  

My team works across most marketing and many IT teams, which gives us a phenomenal vantage point to bridge silos. We’re a truly horizontal team. Given our position, we try to prioritize gaining trust. We do that by letting the initiatives “come to us” as much as possible, rather than insisting upon our involvement. 

Secondly, we try to ensure that any problem statements we identify are framed as neutrally and agreeably as possible. As a general guide, if we can identify a stakeholder who would disagree with the problem statement, it probably still isn’t framed correctly (there are rare exceptions to this). 

Let's work with an example: process. It's tempting to evaluate through discovery and then the recommendations say that a team's process is inefficient. However, that can make people feel defensive and disengage early, further perpetuating silos.

Instead, an open-ended framing might be to zoom out and frame it as “processes are inconsistent,” which is true and certainly more neutral; however, it can still put teams on defense. It also exposes a bias towards consistency and suggests that consistency is right. But the reality is, intentional, purposeful inconsistency can be effective.

Taking it a step further might be “processes are flexible, accommodating differences for how each person prefers to work.” We then follow it up with an impact that directly hits on outcome– “the inconsistency affects our ability to report on progress across teams and expose bottlenecks.” Now we’re not focused on what's “wrong,” we’re focused on where everyone needs to go. It also isn't a refutable statement.

It isn’t all rainbows– there are days when teams are frustrated with our approach. However, so long as we work hard to remain neutral and follow up with partners, that frustration tends to be fleeting for a point in time vs actually being ingrained in our partnership approach.

2. What is your favorite item from Kohl’s to wear?

 I bought these ridiculous(ly amazing) Lauren Conrad fur boot slippers last year. They’re particularly awesome for cold weather late night dog-walking. 

3. Do you have any advice on how to convince senior leadership to adopt new technologies?

Maybe the unpopular opinion, but I believe that getting people to care is an emotional venture first, even when a business prioritizes work based on value and impact. Numbers can’t stand alone if they aren’t even given an opportunity to be discussed. Therefore, what problem statements are top of mind for the leader? Probably the problem statements of their team. Go understand that and articulate it back to the team and the leader. It isn’t a specific enough problem statement if it’s largely disagreeable. Then, how does the tech support that problem statement and, how can I quantify the value of it? If the answers to the first or second questions aren’t clear, abandon ship. Tech should only ever be adopted to solve problems. 

4. Any favorite past Kohl’s collaborations?

Pretty sure the Sephora partnership takes the cake for me, but Kohl’s has so many great partnerships and collaborations to choose from. I love the nostalgic lines that came out recently even though they are juniors’ products– Aeropostale & Limited Too. 

5. Favorite tool for efficiency like Slack etc.?

Slack for sure– getting info from people is the fastest way to keep moving forward.

If you’re interested in submitting content for future editions, please reach out to our Managing Editor, Barbie Romero at Barbie@MediaPost.com.