Case Study 03 · Strategic Facilitation & Organizational Decision-Making
The hardest room to lead isn't the one where you have the most authority — it's the one where you have the least.
Overview — For Skimmers
Fannie Mae's public-facing website had accumulated over 2,000 pieces of content that needed to be evaluated, rationalized, and largely cut. The team I was leading through that process included directors and senior advisors two levels above me in the org chart, plus peers with deeper domain expertise than I had in parts of the content. I didn't pretend otherwise. I designed the process around their expertise, synthesized what came back, built alignment on a recommendation to sunset more than half the content immediately, and owned the outcome. The website isn't the story. How we got there is.
The Situation
Fannie Mae's public-facing website had accumulated over 2,000 pieces of content across years of organic growth. Some of it was excellent. Much of it was outdated, redundant, or built for a version of the business that no longer existed. The website needed to become a strategic digital asset oriented around today's audiences and tomorrow's priorities — not yesterday's internal stakeholders.
Someone needed to lead the organization through the hard work of deciding what stayed, what went, and what needed to be fundamentally rethought. That someone turned out to be me.
The Approach
I designed the process before I ran it. The team I was working with included directors and senior advisors — people two levels above me in the org chart — and three peers with deep subject matter expertise in parts of the content I simply didn't know as well as they did. Pretending otherwise would have been both dishonest and ineffective.
So I didn't. I deliberately structured the review to route each section of content to the person best positioned to evaluate it — matching assignments to expertise and organizational seat rather than centralizing the analysis in my own hands. My job was to design the process, hold the standard, and synthesize what came back into something the whole team could stand behind.
We reviewed more than 2,000 assets. I led the team through the analysis, managed the disagreements, and built alignment on a unified recommendation: sunset more than half the content immediately, with additional sections flagged for redesign or complete rework. Then I owned that recommendation with the web and design teams and drove implementation.
The Outcome
The content reduction measurably improved site navigation, search performance, and content relevance for key audiences. But the outcome I'm most proud of isn't the number — it's that a group of people with more organizational authority than me left the process feeling like co-owners of the decision rather than passengers in it.
That's the work. The website is just the deliverable.
Influence without authority isn't a workaround. For the right person, it's the whole job.