The Big Picture and Maggie Vercoe
The Big Picture and Maggie Vercoe
A 32-year parking veteran, Maggie Vercoe has served as COO of TEZ Technology since 2025, overseeing professional services, support, account management, and marketing. Before TEZ, she spent over 25 years at T2 Systems, helping shape customer experience, SaaS adoption, and organizational growth during a dynamic period in technology. Known for her collaborative leadership style, calm presence, and love for complex implementations, Maggie is a trusted parking industry expert. She is an active contributor to IPMI, Women in Parking, Women in Technology, and the NPA Board. She holds a BS from the University of Wisconsin in Milwaukee.
Her experience has certainly given her “The Big Picture” of her industry as she has worked with many people in many ways. When Maggie talks about it, her eyes light up: “I love the big picture. I love the big ideas… I like to put things into play and then have really smart people, who are much better at the ‘getting-it-done stuff’, get it done.”
What makes Maggie so effective at managing the big picture becomes clear in the way she describes her leadership approach.
Self-Awareness: Know Your Strengths and Growth Areas
Maggie says big-picture understanding begins with an honest assessment of what you contribute. She identifies her natural abilities clearly: “I have very good communication, collaboration… customer service, all of that,” and “I am very good in that sort of outgoing area.”
She is equally candid about the skills she has had to develop: “I really needed to learn more about the… data-driven side of things,” and “Being a little bit more analytical… is not my comfort zone.”
Her big-picture perspective is rooted in this honesty: knowing where she excels and where she must grow.
People Awareness: Understand Others’ Strengths and Perspectives
Maggie believes you cannot see the full picture without understanding the people around you. She says that over time “you learn their personalities, their skill sets,” and that leaders must “lean into the strengths of theirs and lean into the strengths of yours.”
She also recognizes that others may be better equipped to execute parts of her vision. She describes “really smart people that are much better at the getting-it-done stuff,” and sees her role as hiring the right people so she can “set the vision and then they get it done.”
Listening is part of this awareness. She reminds herself, “Even if I have this in mind, I need to listen because I could be missing something.” Taking “a beat… and listening a little longer” often reveals ideas she wouldn’t have thought of herself. In one major process change, stakeholder input “really helped us shape it into a much better process and layout than it had been.”
Problem Awareness: Identify the Real Need and Its Pain Points.
Big-picture thinking starts with the problem, not the preferred solution. Maggie insists, “You can’t just innovate to innovate. It has to solve a problem. It has to help something.”
She warns that if leaders aren’t listening closely, “you’re not going to do it right.” Collaboration requires “really paying attention to what the need is,” and understanding “what the other side is asking of you or needing you to participate in.”
Maggie also believes leaders must see the entire experience from the customer’s point of view. That means tracing every interaction a parker has with the system: “You have to go be the person that’s parking… to really understand all the different touch points.” And because “we’re all parkers, ” our own experiences should inform how we design solutions that impact others.
System Awareness: Use data, Culture, Operations, and Efficiency Together
Maggie’s big-picture leadership matured when she learned to combine her people strengths with analytical discipline. She emphasizes “understanding the data” and “analyzing the information that we have,” using “data points to become more efficient without losing the spirit of who I am and what we’re trying to do.”
This systems-level thinking helps her connect culture, communication, customer experience, and business performance. She asks, “How can we be better from a company financial standpoint?” and “How can we do better by using the tools that we have to guide us into being more efficient?”
For her, efficiency is not abstract — it directly affects service: “Our customers are getting faster help.” And trust is part of the system too: “If you back up what you say you’re going to do, then people want to stay working with you.”
Vision: Set Direction, Trust the Team, Adjust as Needed.
Maggie summarizes her leadership orientation simply, “I’m very much big picture. I love the big picture. I love the big ideas.” She enjoys strategies “to a point” and likes “to put things into play.”
Her growth came from learning not to control every detail: “There are some things that I used to have to have my fingers in all the time because I just wanted it to be done right.” Over time, she became comfortable letting capable people execute the vision in their own areas of strength.
In short, Maggie’s “big picture” is a combination of self-awareness, people awareness, problem awareness, and systems awareness – all held together by trust.
Was Maggie a Valet?
Maggie’s first job in parking was NOT valeting, but in a parking garage ticket booth. She learned an important lesson there. “When I first … I had somebody try to kick in the door because they were so mad that they got a parking ticket. And I was pretty scared. I was young.”
Her boss stepped in with calm words: “Tell me what you’re bothered by, tell me what you think we did wrong.’ The approach de-escalated the situation: “It did calm the person… they stopped kicking.”
Her takeaway: “To this day, this is probably the most valuable lesson that I have learned… even if it’s wrong what the person is doing, how can you create some sort of safety to make the conversation a little bit more calm?”
She has carried that lesson throughout her career.
Family – Whatever It Takes
Maggie is candid about the tension between leadership and family life. “I'm both very proud of myself and also it has been difficult…I have missed things in my family because of my career… first steps….dances - that has been very tough.” Yet she’s proud of modeling ambition for her adult children.
Her husband’s decision to stay home during her career growth created a strong bond between him and the kids. “As my career grew and my responsibilities got more, we agreed that he was going to stay home.” That’s collaboration at its best. Maggie believes that “whatever it takes for your family is what you should do.”
Last Advice
Maggie encourages parking professionals to be okay with failure and learn from it. She also urges people to get involved with professional organizations and volunteer – “you will learn so much.”
Maggie knows herself – a “strengths” test she took revealed that she’s both an includer and a classic WOO - Winning Others Over – a CliftonStrengths theme describing people who energize relationships and draw others in. Her strengths match her role beautifully.
What are your strengths? If you haven’t already, take a personality test and evaluate yourself and your roles. How will you find your niche – how will your strengths complement those around you? (What is CliftonStrengths? The Ultimate Guide to the 34 Themes)
I send a huge thank you to Maggie Vercoe and hope you enjoyed learning more about her as much as I did. She is quite a parking professional.
Maggie’s leadership example checks off most of my Leadership 101 qualities and added two more:
Be curious and invite feedback.
Lead with a clear sense of purpose for yourself and for your customer.
Work hard, work hard, never give up, work hard, work hard.
Lead with respect and tailor motivation to the individual.
Invest in your network and industry involvement.
Be proactive in client relationships for long-term success.
Pay attention to the details as they drive cost and performance.
Being a valet is a legitimate pipeline to success.
Take on roles that stretch you.
Build a strong support network.
Trust your gut and find your voice.
Understand the real need before deciding on a solution
Use data to adjust plan along the way.
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