Tell me about a time you led a group to a result that mattered.

In my junior year I ran the student tax clinic, which files free returns for low-income families near campus. The year before, the clinic had filed 140 returns and turned away about 60 families because we ran out of appointment slots. I had 22 volunteers and the same eight Saturdays, so the only way to serve more people was to get more out of each one. I sat in on the first Saturday and timed where the hours went. So I split the work in two. Newer volunteers ran intake, and experienced ones only prepared returns. I also recruited four volunteers to call every family two days ahead with a checklist of documents. Not everyone liked the change at first. I listened to their concerns and they came around. We filed 212 returns that season, up from 140, and turned nobody away. It taught me a lot about leading people through change.

In my junior year I ran the student tax clinic, which files free returns for low-income families near campus. The year before, the clinic had filed 140 returns and turned away about 60 families because we ran out of appointment slots. I had 22 volunteers and the same eight Saturdays, so the only way to serve more people was to get more out of each one. I sat in on the first Saturday and timed where the hours went. Almost half of each appointment was the volunteer collecting documents, and a third of families had to come back because something was missing. So I split the work in two. Newer volunteers ran intake, and experienced ones only prepared returns. I also recruited four volunteers to call every family two days ahead with a checklist of documents. Not everyone liked the change at first. My three most senior volunteers liked doing a return start to finish and told me the new setup felt like an assembly line. I asked them to try it for two Saturdays and tell me what broke. One of them, Marcus, pointed out that details were getting lost in the handoff, so I asked him to design the handoff sheet. We filed 212 returns that season, up from 140, and turned nobody away. Families got back about $310,000 in refunds. What I took from it is that the senior people came around once the problem was theirs to fix. Now when I change how a team works, I give the skeptics a piece of the design early.