‘The Guy Who Does Crazy Stuff’
Logan Groover leverages the lessons learned from the MMM program to play the role of impressionist at e-commerce giant Wayfair.
Officially, Logan Groover (MMM ‘19) is the guy at e-commerce giant Wayfair tasked with solving complex challenges when there are critical go-to-market needs and capability gaps.
Less officially and perhaps more precisely? Groover calls himself an impressionist, a tinkerer, and a storyteller.
“I like to introduce myself as the guy who does the crazy stuff,” said Groover, whose title is chief innovator for strategic platform innovations. “I’m basically an impressionist who takes on any function that a project requires to get it over the line.”
That means some days he’s acting as a product manager and others he’s pretending to be an engineer. To be that versatile playmaker, Groover relies on the lessons he learned as a student in Northwestern's MMM program, a dual-degree program between Northwestern Engineering and the Kellogg School of Management.
Groover said he has always been an outside-the-box thinker who never quite fit into any one professional definition. Along with his more business-oriented MMM degree, he has a master’s degree in producing film and spent time working in the motion picture industry.
“I’ve always been too business-focused for Hollywood creatives and too creative-oriented in business settings,” he said. “MMM’s focus on the whole brain, leaning in to leverage different parts of the brain and translating for others to navigate the intersection of innovation and business, really spoke to me. It brought balance.”
That balance has been enormously beneficial for Groover at Wayfair. He joined the company soon after graduating from MMM and quickly realized how necessary his education would be to succeed with the online retailer of furniture and home goods.
The program’s focus on becoming comfortable with discomfort has been vital, he said.
“I’ve been fortunate that I get to work on some of Wayfair’s most complex challenges,” he said. “The ability to embrace the ambiguity of the problem statement and rallying teams together to find solutions with humility has been invaluable.”
Groover currently leads a four-person team. Yet on any given day, he can find himself playing a variety of roles while influencing and rallying more than 150 internal stakeholders across more than 15 different teams.
Groover credits the MMM program with helping him master the ability to wade into potential cross-functional minefields with a solid understanding of different business needs.
“Software engineers, marketers, or any other function all speak different languages,” he said. “The better you are at learning cross-functional languages, the easier it is to bring collaboration on large cross-functional projects by translating and bridging the gaps between teams to drive outcomes.”
Groover has been a key player in exactly those kinds of projects for Wayfair. For example, he helped the company expand the availability of installation services in its appliances category.
He credits another MMM lesson with helping him figure out how to solve any potential business problem. The key point to remember?
“No one really knows everything,” he said. “The focus on avoiding bias and preconceived notions or assumptions really leads you to find the best solution for your customers, not what you think is the best solution for your customers.”
Groover encouraged current and future MMM students to not be afraid to lead from any level as they move through their careers.
And, he said, don’t be constrained by job descriptions.
“Don’t be afraid to define your own roles," he said. "My role at Wayfair didn’t exist and was a natural evolution of some of my side projects. You don’t have to be a product manager or work for a design studio to innovate.”