Ep 70: Empowering Careers and Agile Methodologies with Kristen Juve
Watch the YouTube video version above or listen to the podcast below!
Episode Summary
This episode dives deep into the professional journey and insights of Kristen Juve, Senior Agile Coach at General Mills. Kristen and Dave Dougherty reflect on their shared experience of graduating into a recession with arts degrees and how that shaped their career resilience and adaptability.
Kristen discusses her diverse background—from nonprofit work and social media to product and program management—and how Agile methodology became a core tool in her professional toolkit. She unpacks what Agile truly means, its misinterpretations in corporate settings, and why real success with Agile requires leadership buy-in and empowered teams.
The conversation also touches on Kristen’s work in university recruiting, emphasizing how today's graduates are far more prepared and socially adept than public perception suggests. She encourages early-career professionals to network boldly, reach out for coffee chats, and embrace volunteer work to build experience and confidence.
Both Kristen and Dave share personal stories about mentoring, building professional relationships, and navigating career pivots. Kristen offers a behind-the-scenes look at how she explored new career options during a potential layoff and the value of informational interviews. Together, they highlight how layered skillsets—like combining creative writing with tech—can open unexpected doors.
The episode ends with an honest conversation about personal growth, learning from missteps, and using every experience—even the small ones—to prepare for larger opportunities ahead.
Ep 70: Empowering Careers and Agile Methodologies with Kristen Juve Podcast and Video Transcript
[Disclaimer: This transcription was written by AI using a tool called Descript, and has not been edited for content.]
Dave Dougherty: Hello and welcome everybody to Enterprising Minds, the latest episode. We have a brand new format for you, something new, something fun. Alex and Ruthie are not with us today, but we do have the wonderful. Kristen Juve with us, and she's gonna be the first guest. If you're unfamiliar with Kristen, she is a Senior Agile coach over at General Mills currently previously a technology product marketer, which you could expand on later.
But she's one of my favorite people. Formerly a board. Member of social media.org, is that right? I'm going off your LinkedIn thing.
Kristen Juve: A.
Dave Dougherty: Perfect. Okay. But has an interesting background, like me, did not anticipate corporate world, which I think is gonna be an interesting conversation for, the job market currently as well as some of the new grads coming into the world.
Kristen's Career Journey
Dave Dougherty: I know Kristen, you and I both graduated into the recession with arts degrees we have a lot of experience what the current batch of grads have, but yeah, why don't you, I did the high level generic stuff.
Why don't you introduce yourself to everybody? What would you add? What would you not.
Kristen Juve: Oh gosh. Yeah, you definitely hit the right high levels. graduating at the height of the recession. I definitely have a very diverse background in doing the grunt work and just being able to pay my bills and.
The character development that came with that that is very applicable in literally any other job too.
Yeah, I've worked in social media organic paid social media. I've worked in SEO I've worked for nonprofits. I've worked for startup tech companies. And I am currently at General Mills and I've been there for about six years. And I've been fortunate enough to get to explore and play between agile methodology, project management and product management and program management.
Yeah, it's been a really good learning experience too.
Dave Dougherty: Yeah. Now I know you and I we met at 3M. We also had a podcast with each other during the pandemic. So this is a blast from the past. And we usually would talk over a lot of project management stuff
Diving into Agile Methodology
Dave Dougherty: Being a Senior Agile coach. I was gonna say, how do you feel about Agile? But you have to feel good about it, but how are you feeling about it?
I Agile methodologies now that it's 10 years old or so in a big corporation.
Kristen Juve: Is a really loaded question, unfortunately.
I, okay, so I truly believe that agile methodology. Is one of the best ways to work. It is not always going to work in every environment. Obviously Lean or Six Sigma, things can work better in plants or in other type things. But when it comes to like marketing, I've seen it work really well.
We were a part of that at 3M. There was boy, they called Dojos and had these pods and really focused highly scoped teams even though they were really large. That it worked. Like they took the strongest elements that were a problem in corporate and they took those outta the equation and it made it work.
Dave Dougherty: right. And just quick before we get too far into the weeds.
Kristen Juve: Yeah.
Dave Dougherty: High level for anybody who's unfamiliar with agile, you largely, this is really broad brush. So you know, you chunk the workout, basically you set the high level goals, you chunk the workout, you mark what's a dependency, what's water blockers. And it, you go in these sprints one week, two week.
I've seen some people do month long,
Kristen Juve: Three.
Dave Dougherty: to me feels a little long. But yeah, that's the high level. Go look it up if you want any more information, but otherwise, let's nerd out.
Kristen Juve: I would highly recommend looking at it too. And I think the biggest thing for me that I think a lot of leaders focus on about ad methodology is doing things simultaneously. So it's not
I do one thing, then hand it off to you, which is. Waterfall.
Challenges and Misconceptions of Agile
Kristen Juve: gonna soap box for a second, and if you do end up getting your csm you'll probably learn that waterfall actually comes from a paper, a research paper that a gentleman wrote, and the entire paper, the thesis is on how Waterfall doesn't work, and yet he included an image
Dave Dougherty: right.
Kristen Juve: the front of the paper of Waterfall. that is what so many leaders took and we're like, this is what this is about. So if you wanna know the power of visualization, that right there sums it up.
Dave Dougherty: Is fascinating.
Kristen Juve: doesn't work, but there are definitely there's problems with everything. It's trade offs. It just depends on what you're looking to accomplish.
Dave Dougherty: For me, waterfall is way too optimistic. Like I know so many people just bake in oh, this is the best case scenario we're gonna launch on this date three months from now. And you're like, Uhhuh,
Kristen Juve: It is not rooted in any sort of gut checks, realities, estimations. It's my,
Dave Dougherty: right?
Kristen Juve: Focuses and leverages the hierarchy. So if your boss says It's done by this day, you get it done, which means you as a worker, matter if you have a life. Potentially, which in
Dave Dougherty: Yeah.
Kristen Juve: if you're doing it correctly, you end up with really empowered teams who are accountable to themselves, who are clear in their communication.
Dave Dougherty: Right.
Kristen Juve: it's meant to do is to show you where you have problems. 'cause we always have people problems, right?
and sometimes process problems, but sometimes it's people and process. Like it's never just one thing. And so having a process in Agile methodology that you can point to and go, okay, why didn't this happen?
We agreed on this thing beforehand.
Going on here? Your people can say, oh, I didn't know that was the expectation. Okay, cool. Now, let's try it out. Okay, next
Dave Dougherty: right.
Kristen Juve: in. Now we've got accountability built into place too. So I'm going all over the place with this. But true agile methodology I think is. Not found in any single corporation, fortune 500 companies. I don't think there might be one or two teams in one of those large companies that's doing it really well.
But in general, that's not happening. Because leaders like to get involved and they are not necessarily trained on Agile. It's much like when Dave and I, we started in the digital marketing world.
Our leaders didn't know what digital marketing was. They didn't know what a. Click was like what that actually meant, like where the click
The CTRs, like they didn't know what any of that was. We had to educate
Dave Dougherty: yeah. take this paper brochure that we're printing and make the website look like that.
Kristen Juve: exactly. then we wanna see how many people come to it and it's do you want them to do when they come to it anyways?
Dave Dougherty: You're also assuming people care about what you have to say.
Kristen Juve: Yeah.
Dave Dougherty: Yeah.
Kristen Juve: I feel like there's this whole, even though Agile is probably, so it was created in like what, 1998 I think, and that was mainly only used for software development at the time and is now permeated into every other area. I think because there's been so much miseducation about it and people being too flexible with certain parts of the framework that we now have this perpetuated culture where like. We were just like, why isn't this working? And then we're like, oh, Agile's stupid. We don't, it's not working. It's not good.
Agile's not the way to do it. It's no,
Dave Dougherty: there's also, there's there's also this sort of, they took a word and started using it. Differently. So there's
Kristen Juve: That
Dave Dougherty: dictionary Agile, then there's the Agile methodology. Agile
Kristen Juve: Capital A and lowercase a.
Dave Dougherty: yep. And the, oh, we're moving with, agility.
Kristen Juve: Yep.
Dave Dougherty: we're not, we're a Fortune 100 company. Could you get anything done by the end of the week?
No. The yeah, that, I think that led to a number of problems, but then also to your point earlier. The way that I've always experienced it, like we, we implemented it at the agency that I worked at previously. I use it for home projects. I use it for my personal projects, but I also use it the way that makes sense for my brain,
Kristen Juve: Yes,
Dave Dougherty: may or may not be the rest of my team,
Kristen Juve: but that's why you have two conversations.
Dave Dougherty: But that, yeah, you need to have the whole team on board. And I have only had one or two teams in my entire career who were like, yep, we're all doing this.
Kristen Juve: That's somewhat on leadership to also help reinforce though
Dave Dougherty: Yeah.
Kristen Juve: there's so
Dave Dougherty: Yeah.
Kristen Juve: to it and it like anybody who's working in a larger company, even smaller companies, the politics of it, the people's opinions of things, the biases that they hold, all of those play a part to all of it.
Leadership and Agile Implementation
Dave Dougherty: do you find agile makes it easier to talk like up the corporate ladder or is it harder to to report out? Because I know I've always had the report outs with whatever agile scrum thing that we're doing, but whether or not they listen is another issue. We won't get into that.
Kristen Juve: I'll say in general, yes. Also highly dependent on who your leader is. If they don't truly believe in Agile or they just think it's a way to prioritize things.
Dave Dougherty: Right.
Kristen Juve: necessarily it, it really does depend. However, if you are in a leadership type role within those pods, whether it's like a scrum master or a senior agile coach, or the product owner or product manager,
my world, we have all of those pretty much. In some worlds, you will not have all of those roles. If you take it upon yourself to build your rapport with your team and and you can advocate for them, you can also build your rapport with your leader. And it doesn't necessarily have to be wrapped up in an agile bow. It can be taken from the agile world that you guys are running and then to them the way that they're asking for it too.
It's easier, obviously, if a leader has buy-in into all of Agile methodology, but
Dave Dougherty: Yeah. That's a recurring theme on the podcast for sure is leadership buy-in and
Kristen Juve: Oh yeah,
Dave Dougherty: It seems like this white whale this sort of mythical thing, but it does happen. It,
Kristen Juve: does. I've experienced it and it's, I didn't realize what I had when I had it.
Dave Dougherty: exactly. Yeah. Yeah, that's funny.
Mentoring and University Recruiting
Dave Dougherty: Now one of the big things that we've talked about, and one of the reasons I wanted to talk to you outside of, the Agile piece is a lot of topics that you and I are passionate about, which is, getting the like mentoring other kids and doing sort of informational interviews with other people.
You are working with university recruiting, right?
Kristen Juve: Yeah.
Dave Dougherty: That correct.
Kristen Juve: general Mills has, we have HR obviously, but then we have a volunteer group. And we have certain schools that we target. So uc, Madison is one that we target. I'm obviously an alumni back when I started at General Mills, the person who was the lead team lead was leaving and they just reached out to every single person they could find.
That was. UW grad.
Dave Dougherty: Ing.
Kristen Juve: this sounds really interesting. And so not knowing what I was getting myself into, I signed up for it. I now have a co-lead and we've got a really awesome team. So we get the opportunity to go to career fairs at uw do talks with various groups there,
and get to meet like almost be soon to be grads and help hire them into our program.
Dave Dougherty: So what how's that experience been? What kind of con conversations are.
Kristen Juve: It's really awesome actually. It's, I've met some of the coolest people and it is really fun to hang out with someone who's younger, who still hasn't fully gotten in the corporate world. And they're like, how hard is it to get in? And what is it like? And have that very fresh take on everything and they're like
Crescent and you have, like CIN Toast
Dave Dougherty: My mom knows about that product. That would be cool to work on.
Kristen Juve: So it's very tangible. Our products are very tangible. So that's a very cool aspect where they get to get to see everything. it is, I've, I worries
the next generation. The kids who are graduating college right now, I'm not worried about them a bit. I have had lots of conversations with 'em, and I'm not worried. It's funny because I I was doing pony lessons for my daughter I was sitting next to this older woman who was a grandma of one of the kids that was in the class. And somehow we got to talking and I was like, oh, yeah, I'm a, I am, I help with recruiting.
And she's like, how are they? And I was like, I'm sorry. She's like, how are the kids? Are they okay? Do, can they talk to you? Can they talk to each other? And I was like. They're fantastic. They have
Dave Dougherty: Yeah.
Kristen Juve: the social skills, like it is, they're human beings.
Dave Dougherty: That's hilarious.
Kristen Juve: on the internet of oh, we should be scared of this generation and they don't know how to use a computer. Have I had to teach my early career people how to use teams? Yes. Is that weird? No, because
They have had to know that piece of technology
Dave Dougherty: right.
Kristen Juve: to our company? It's always funny to me what people think of the next generation, but I have met some amazing young people who I am following along on their career path now.
And it's really not just at General Mills outside General Mills as well, and it's really fun to watch.
Dave Dougherty: Yeah, it's been interesting to see some of the conversations I've had with some students. Like I, done some guest lecturing here and there and I will put a challenge out to people when I'm doing that and I'm like, on this slide is my exact contact info,
Kristen Juve: Yes.
Dave Dougherty: call me. Ha ask me for a lunch or something.
And nobody does it
right. Except the last class that I was in, and maybe it was because they were entrepreneurship students but I had four different kids. Call me up. And that was great because they were asking awesome questions. And then there was, the backgrounds were like all over the place.
Feeling Intimidated by Networking
Dave Dougherty: And there were some of 'em, there were a couple where they're like, oh yeah, I'm a entrepreneurship and a bio-engineering model, or something where I'm just like, I can't talk to you.
Kristen Juve: You're way more C
And I'm 38. Like what?
Dave Dougherty: I'm not smart enough to talk to you.
Kristen Juve: Same. Same. I've had those similar situations. It's
Dave Dougherty: Yeah.
Kristen Juve: fascinating. And they're like, I'm so nervous. You're so like you work at it. And I'm like, I'm a human being.
Networking.
Dave Dougherty: Right.
Kristen Juve: Like the word networking is like the scariest word to every single human being. And I find it so funny in every single mentoring situation I've ever been in, I'm like, have the audacity to throw time on someone's calendar to ask them for some time.
So obviously, like it makes it way easier. You're already working at a company and if it's a really big company, fortune 500 company and you're
About a different space, you figure out who a person is, even if they're two levels above you
Dave Dougherty: right.
Kristen Juve: minutes. Worst
Dave Dougherty: Yeah.
Kristen Juve: is no. And now you know, they're
Dave Dougherty: Then you might be surprised too, like I remember, yeah, there are those people too, unfortunately. I know when I first joined 3M there, I took a swing and there was a guy who was a senior vice president and I emailed him and just said, Hey. It helped. I knew his daughter, so that helped.
Kristen Juve: It doesn't
Dave Dougherty: But he didn't know me at all. But I said, Hey, I just joined 3M wondering if I can ask you about the experience and like totally taking advantage of the new kid card,
Kristen Juve: Oh.
Dave Dougherty: And I fully expected him to say no to me, 'cause he is 14 levels above me. Why would he even waste the time?
And I just got. An email. You can tell he tapped it out on his iPhone just 15 minutes, seven 30 in the morning on this day. And he was driving to the airport while we talked and, That's what I got. I got 15 minutes with him and it was great, and pretty much everything he said is exactly what came true.
So don't even, yeah, I would say even to, to anybody. Just don't even be afraid of how big you think they are. Just still do it.
Kristen Juve: There's
Dave Dougherty: totally.
Maintaining Professional Relationships
Kristen Juve: element to this that I never considered. I shouldn't say that. Back in 2020,
I was on maternity leave. I vividly remember this. I had my baby strapped to me. And I had a former colleague message me and it, long story of how that happened, but he was like, do you mind chatting for a little bit?
I like, need to figure out like what my next steps are. And he had his, like where he was going was nowhere where I had been, but he just wanted to understand a little bit more about like networking.
Dave Dougherty: Right.
Kristen Juve: but we were chatting and he's but then don't I have to maintain that relationship? And I was like, no. No, they know what you're doing. They know it's just it's a coffee chat to say hi and if you guys happen to hit it off and cool, but don't feel like you owe them. I have to check in every holiday and wish them a Merry Christmas and a happy Easter, and all the that is not, no one who in the professional world expects that.
So different than a friendship in that way. And I think if I would've known that earlier and having that conversation with him really opened my eyes of oh. Other people felt this way too, where it's I can't maintain a hundred thousand relationships, even if it's
In on people.
No one's expecting that. Everyone, people who have been in a company for a few years understand that. This is just how it works too. You just, you chat
Dave Dougherty: right.
Kristen Juve: and if great, if you hit it off, you wanna be friends, awesome. If not, also that's okay too.
Dave Dougherty: And then with that too is the I mean there's this sort of natural ebbs and flows of,
Kristen Juve: Yes.
Dave Dougherty: You're working together in that company. They leave, you, leave, whatever. It happens. And then,
The Power of Networking
Dave Dougherty: Yeah, I will say that all of the op, like all the cool opportunities that I've had, have been based on the networking piece.
At least for anybody who is looking for a job or is graduating into the current thing. Network, to go on LinkedIn and don't like digital, troll them. But if they're doing something cool, you can you can say something, I saw that face, but ultimately
Kristen Juve: I agree. I agree. I agree. do wanna offer one example that recently.
Dave Dougherty: perfect. Okay.
Kristen Juve: To me. So for whatever circumstances I was potentially okay. General Mills had some layoffs.
that we got warning that was gonna happen. So I started questioning like, Hey, what would I do
Dave Dougherty: Right.
Kristen Juve: got laid off right? So like you start to just examine your world. You gotta do what's best for you guys, survive. It
Dave Dougherty: A natural human response,
Kristen Juve: Exactly. I ended up thinking about potentially changing my career completely and in doing so, totally freaked out. My husband, understandably. And so we had, a lot of conversations and it was more like, Hey, you completely stopped working and going back to school, could you look at other roles that are at other companies? If you were to be laid off that. Fit your skillset, but also are more aligned to this, closer to this other like total career pivot.
Dave Dougherty: Right.
Kristen Juve: that's a really good idea. So I, in all the research that I was doing in this one total different career, I figured out that everything else in the world, there was a software, a SaaS for it. I've worked with SaaS and I have done agile methodology and I've done product management. So I was like, oh, cool, I'm gonna look at this company. And I started being like, I think I wanna work for this company. really like them. And it took on of as a life of its own. And I was like, huh, there's no way I'm getting hired because like we know everyone's getting laid off right now. can't just submit a resume and hope that they'll call me 'cause that probably will not happen. They probably have a
Of resumes. I did a little looking around on LinkedIn and I found out that there was someone who worked there who knew someone that I knew really well.
So I reached out to that person.
I said, Hey, can you introduce me? And they were like, oh
Dave Dougherty: Right.
Kristen Juve: Yeah. Within a few days I had a meeting with him. He was fantastic. He was so kind and so willing to just chat with me. He knew exactly what I was talking, like why I was calling him. I was like, Hey,
role, blah, blah, blah. He's send me your resume. I didn't get the job. But it was really cool to get to learn more about the company. I was like, I'm really interested in this company. I think that you guys might be a good fit for me. I'm wondering what your pain points are. I'm wondering what the good things are. I'm wondering like how the culture is. And I got a lot of those questions answered in that meeting to even figure out if I'd want to continue. If I were to get like an interview, I'd wanna continue on that path. So like when you're doing networking and you have an informational. You have these set of questions, it gets you information that allows you to move forward and if you want to or not to. So it's not just simply
Dave Dougherty: Right.
Kristen Juve: yourself bare at someone's feet and being like, hire me.
But
Dave Dougherty: There's nothing more repulsive than feeling like someone's desperate.
Kristen Juve: unfortunately, that is the truth.
Dave Dougherty: Yeah. Yeah.
Kristen Juve: sucks because that lover of vulnerability like should be seen as a huge advantage.
but it's not because. This world we
Dave Dougherty: It's just not, yep.
Kristen Juve: people to be able to hire you at a lesser rate.
Leveraging Multiple Skills
Dave Dougherty: Yeah, I remember along those lines about, doing what you want to do. I think there, there have been major steps in my career where like in college I happened to meet this woman who. Was going back to school after being a TV producer out in Hollywood. And she had worked on a number of things that, if you're of a certain age, you would've seen it on cable.
And so I told her, I was like, Hey, I'm, I'm going to school, creative writing, music composition. These are the things I want to try to do what do you recommend? She's lemme put you in touch with, these people. So then I started calling them and talking to 'em and
finding out what they thought what's it actually like in the industry and whatever.
One guy got his start, like his big break, was to play bass guitar for Ray Charles
Kristen Juve: That's really
Dave Dougherty: and he was from Canada. He did one of the Call of Duty soundtracks. He did a number of film scores that you would've recognized, like very cool individual in terms of, what he did. And it was, to your point, the what's it really like in this industry,
Kristen Juve: Yes.
Dave Dougherty: Because I had already released a couple of records, but I hadn't done the film Hollywood thing yet, or like even independent films or anything like that. So it was like, what's this film scoring world like? And it was fascinating to say what he said. I go back to that conversation a lot because sometimes he'll, the thing that he said is don't be the kids that come off of the bus every day thinking that once you move here, you'll make it Like if you have some other skill, like for example, my creative writing background, like leverage that to be able to do the film scoring if you want to do that.
Kristen Juve: That's a good
Dave Dougherty: because that's a, that's your way in because now all of a sudden you have two skills instead of one, which make you, you could write your own film and then you also score it because you do both. And then you get jobs for both. And I've seen this in the marketing side too. I don't know, maybe it resonates with you,
Oh, I do communications, but I can also build websites.
All that kind of stuff, all of that leverages into things.
Gaining Experience Through Volunteering
Dave Dougherty: And it was, some of the mentorship stuff that I've been doing, I've been telling them like, go, like you have the current skill sets that you do, but if you want something in a different field or you wanna weigh in, but nobody's hiring, find some non-profits or volunteer for somebody that,
Kristen Juve: Yep.
Dave Dougherty: Or a cause that you like so that you can at least say that you're doing the thing
Kristen Juve: yes. And you
Things
Even if it's on a smaller scale. You still will learn things that are that. I graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts and Photography.
photography. I did awesome internships for Readers Digest and Freedom Madison,
nothing. And like I was like, okay, how do I through this?
Had
Dave Dougherty: Right.
Kristen Juve: what my life could look like. But helping my sister set up her website help, like doing my own website for my photography stuff like that was the little piece of things. And it started to like, and you're fresh outta school too you're like, it's, I explain this? You know that you don't know things, but you don't know what it feels like to know things. When you finally hit I don't know, 28, 30, whatever, how many, it depends on how many years you've been in whatever area you've been in. You're like, this is all the
Dave Dougherty: Right.
Kristen Juve: different day, slightly different flavor. I've done this before. It's
and it's starts to all make sense.
And like you could start to piece it and. It's something you can use for interview questions, and it's things you can do to set your up yourself differently. You encounter the same situation and you're like, I didn't like how I handled it last time. I'm gonna do something different this time in a
Dave Dougherty: And at that point you need to start worrying about your own biases and knee jerk reactions instead of
Kristen Juve: fun too. Yeah. It's
Dave Dougherty: that is a different podcast.
Kristen Juve: that is a different podcast. Many hours could be. It
be recorded on that topic.
Dave Dougherty: Perfect. Thank you for your time. Where can people find you online? If they wanna learn more, maybe reach out for a coffee.
Kristen Juve: I'm on LinkedIn. Kristen, Juve I don't think I have it fully updated at this
So if you were to be just really. top of it, you would notice my, it hasn't really been touched in a while.
Dave Dougherty: I'm sure no one will notice.
Kristen Juve: What's that?
Dave Dougherty: I'm sure no one noticed. No one will notice.
Kristen Juve: no, at all.
Dave Dougherty: Perfect. Alright, thank you and everybody like, and subscribe, share with your friends. Hopefully this has been helpful. We'll have New Pathways newsletters out each week of the year. Happy 2026 and,
