Joan Tafoya, Former Director at Meta, Intel & Sandia: Why Swarming Every Problem Slows Teams
Joan Tafoya joins Jamie Flinchbaugh on People Solve Problems for a conversation built around one deceptively simple question: how do you coach problem solving when the person in front of you is difficult to coach?
Joan, a former director at Meta, Intel, and Sandia National Laboratories with nearly 38 years of experience, brings a perspective shaped by leading large, globally dispersed teams and by watching problem-solving succeed and fail at scale.
Joan opens by describing her own growth as a leader. In her early years as an engineer and manager, she was focused on results and often grew frustrated when people did not solve problems the way she would have. Over time, she recognized that she could not advance until she taught others to think differently, not to think like her, but to think more deliberately about problem-solving itself. She points to a turning point while running a manufacturing line at Intel, where a constant stream of people asking for the next step left her burning out. The shift she made was to narrate her own thinking out loud so others could follow it, and to ask people what they were thinking rather than supplying every answer.
That experience leads to one of the central themes of the episode. Joan is honest that her move toward coaching began partly as self-preservation, but she came to see it as something larger. She realized her team did not always share the same picture of success, and that alignment on both the problem and the desired outcome mattered as much as effort. Coaching, in her telling, became the way to build a group of trusted people who could carry the work forward and free her to take on new challenges.
Joan also reflects on the challenge of coaching highly credentialed experts. At Sandia National Laboratories, she built a department focused on lean and problem-solving practices in an environment where nearly everyone held a PhD. Rather than pretending to match their technical depth, she earned credibility by listening carefully, reflecting what she heard, and asking sharper questions, especially about the knowledge gaps standing between the team and its next breakthrough.
Prioritization is another area Joan explores in depth. Drawing on her time at Meta, she describes a culture that was learning to balance speed with reliability. Her first prioritization question is not whether a problem is important but whether her team is the one best suited to solve it. She warns against the instinct to swarm every visible problem, comparing it to a kindergarten soccer team chasing the ball. She also looks for quick wins that build momentum and morale without draining resources from larger work.
On ideation, Joan emphasizes starting with clarity. She often opens sessions with a silent exercise in which everyone writes down the problem statement and what success would look like, which surfaces a wider range of views and avoids groupthink. She values bringing contrarians into the room, while noting that a contrarian works best when given clear expectations about how to contribute rather than simply being allowed to push back.
Joan closes with advice for young engineers hoping to lead in fast-paced, demanding environments. She believes people grow most while they are struggling and pushing past what feels comfortable, and she encourages giving yourself grace during those stretches while still choosing to step into the discomfort. It is a fitting end to a conversation that treats problem-solving as something every person can learn and every leader can nurture.
You can connect with Joan Tafoya on LinkedIn at linkedin.com/in/joantafoya.
