How CHG Healthcare builds a journey-led organization

Dan Sullivan, Director of Journey Management at CHG Healthcare, joins Jochem van der Veer to share how he's building a company-wide journey management practice that goes far beyond mapping exercises. With experience leading customer success at TheyDo and strategic roles across startups and enterprises, Dan reveals the tactics, creative approaches, and organizational shifts required to make journey management a true decision-making engine rather than just another artifact.

Here’s why you don’t want to miss this episode

It's not about the journey—it's about the decisions

Dan emphasizes that journey management only creates value when it drives actual business decisions. Rather than focusing solely on building perfect journey maps, his approach centers on understanding stakeholders' needs and translating customer insights into a language that executives and product teams can act on immediately.

Go wide, then deep, then wide again

Contrary to typical advice to start small, Dan describes how CHG went wide first with a museum-style immersive experience that exposed 500+ employees to the journey framework. This created organizational awareness and buy-in before going deep with specific product teams to prove impact—a flexible approach that adapts to organizational momentum.

The immersive journey museum that changed everything

Dan's team transformed a company event by creating a physical, walk-through experience of their provider journey. Complete with video ads, interactive exhibits, Lego sets, and live demonstrations, this creative activation helped product managers discover they were solving the same problems independently—sparking immediate collaboration.

Journey management as organizational design system

Rather than democratizing journey ownership broadly, Dan treats journey management like a product design system—maintaining tight control over the core framework while making insights accessible across teams. This ensures quality and consistency while enabling teams to extract what they need for decision-making.

Balance customer obsession with business reality

CHG's foundation of customer centricity combined with transparent business metrics created fertile ground for journey management. Dan highlights how organizations can fall into the trap of being "all about the customer" while forgetting they're also running a business—and why that balance is critical for sustainable impact.

From Artifacts to Action

This episode offers a masterclass in organizational change management disguised as a journey management conversation. Dan's emphasis on storytelling, adaptability, and meeting stakeholders where they are provides a practical blueprint for CX and product leaders looking to move beyond static artifacts toward dynamic decision-making tools. His honest reflections on what's working, what's still evolving, and the mistakes he's learned from make this essential listening for anyone building customer-centric practices in complex organizations.

For teams struggling to get executive buy-in or wondering how to scale journey thinking beyond a single product team, Dan's creative approaches—from transit map metaphors to physical museum exhibits—demonstrate that breaking through sometimes requires thinking like a filmmaker, not just an analyst.

Want to hear the entire conversation? Watch or listen to the podcast with Dan and Jochem on The Experience Edge:

Spotify | YouTube | Apple Podcasts