Author Archives: Larry Janis

Sales Director

 

Sales Director will be responsible for our clients  BPO’s North American opportunities – driving sales strategy, supporting execution and building your own book of business.

The ideal sales leader will have substantial BPO experience, technology experience, with a proven track record of partnering with leading technology enterprise companies, understanding their needs, and selling solutions. The candidate must have BPO, consulting and technology sales expertise, and be comfortable selling to and partnering with both Fortune 500 companies as well as promising technology startups. Management consulting experience is a plus.

This leader must maintain an attitude of customer service, focused on maintaining our goals of effective delivery and forging long term relationships with the accounts created, as well as the internal functions responsible for delivering on projects. This leader should be able to convince customers to embrace their project delivery to be done from World class delivery centers mostly based in African continent. Ideal candidate should have abilities to talk about Impact Sourcing in an authoritative manner and advocating the same while pitching with clients.

This role will be based in Seattle/Bay area.

 

Responsibilities:

  • Develop and execute new account plans, deliver presentations to new clients, and close business with a consultative solution-selling process
  • Successfully partner and manage the strategic growth relationship with top technology clients for their product development and management outsourcing needs, serving as a key business consultant, designing work processes and tasks that add value to their supply chain
  • Act as a  brand champion, communicating effectively the differentiated value of impact sourcing services
  • Partner with the professional services group in producing high quality work for clients, especially in new client trials and insights into improving processes
  • Bring competitive market intelligence and customer requirements back to product, engineering, and marketing teams
  • Drive the capture and monitoring of critical sales data, ensuring sales forecasting data is both accurate and complete and customer/market insights are consistently communicated to the m-team

 

Requirements:

  • BA/BS with a solid record of academic achievement; preference given to candidates with a strong technology or engineering background
  • 5+ years of overall sales experience, with at least 2 years consulting or technology services sales experience to F500
  • Outstanding executive presence and written and verbal communication skills
  • Experience owning an annual quota of $2-5M in direct sales
  • Experience with channel sales or alliances
  • Experience with leading development and management of a sales pipeline and key sales metrics

Attributes:

  • Aggressive growth orientation and comfort with an org-wide transparent objectives and key results process
  • Strong bias toward finding and implementing solutions
  • Passion for machine learning and AI, and using technology to deliver value to clients
  • Deep commitment to building an ethical, world-class company with technology and social impact at its core
  • At home in a very fast-paced environment with a high level of ambiguity

If this could be a fit for you or perhaps someone you might know, please let me know!

Sincerely,

Larry Janis I Managing Partner I Integrated Search Solutions Group

P-516-767-3030 I C-516-445-2377

ISSG I Twitter I LinkedIn

How to Turn Stress Into Success Once You Reach the Top

  by Roger E Jones

What dozens of experienced CEOs wish someone had told them before they assumed the hot seat.

“Aspiring CEOs need to be careful what they wish for; the job has its downsides too.” – A seasoned CEO

Many business school graduates see the CEO job as the pinnacle of one’s career. As a result, they work hard to get there or, if they feel their path is blocked, leave the big company to become CEO of their own start-up, sometimes with huge success. Yet those who achieve that hallowed CEO status often face enormous unforeseen challenges that make them wonder whether it was all worth it. And with good reason, because these challenges tend to lead to increased stress. This, in turn, has a detrimental impact on their career and home life.

However, companies can be coy about their senior executives’ health. When a CEO needs to take a leave of absence it is normally put down to “exhaustion” or “overload”. It is almost unheard-of for companies to admit this fatigue is due to stress. Elon Musk himself admitted to the New York Times in 2018 that stress is taking a heavy toll on his life. And in 2015, then-newly-appointed United Airlines CEO Oscar Munoz reportedly suffered a heart attack soon after starting his role (a number of studies link stress to heart disease).

As an executive coach working with new CEOs, I am familiar with the rollercoaster ride that some experience. I thought it would be of value to those wanting the top job (or are new to the CEO role) if they knew in advance what to expect and how to transition from job stress to job success.

So, I asked 84 CEOs from around the world, whose firms range from SMEs to global multinationals, about their biggest challenges in their first months as a CEO. I also queried them on the impact of these challenges and how they addressed them (or wish they had addressed them).

The biggest challenges

Seven problems were most frequently mentioned:

  1. Feeling trapped and viewing themselves as slaves to the business: Their huge sense of obligation meant that most were unable to ‘switch off’ even at weekends.
  2. Feeling dazed and confused, even skeptical, and not knowing whom to believe: A consistent theme of “Who tells me the truth?” came through. My earlier research and my piece for Harvard Business Review also highlighted this struggle to find the truth.
  3. Lacking credibility and wondering how to earn the respect of their team: If they have come up through the ranks, they face the delicate and daunting task of leading their former peers. If new to the business, they must prove themselves with no internal track record to rely on.
  4. Dealing with huge self-doubt: Some new CEOs fear they are not up to the job and lack the skills and mindset needed to be successful.
  5. Feeling lonely: It may seem hackneyed, but it really is lonely at the top. When new in their role, CEOs yearn for a knowledgeable confidant and independent sounding board.
  6. Getting addicted to the job: “You become king of the castle, the ruler of the land,” jokingly remarked one CEO. But for many, the sense of power and control becomes addictive.
  7. Sacrificing home life: The job addiction can mean a complete lack of work-life balance. New CEOs can become so immersed in the business that they lose sight of their life outside work. Many remarked that they didn’t see their kids as much as they wanted to.

Strategies to transition from job stress to job success

The chief consequence of these challenges is stress. The 84 CEOs I consulted, and those CEOs I’ve coached over the past 17 years, used a portfolio of coping strategies to help neutralize the stress and ensure their success. These include:

  • Scheduling time to think: The CEO role can be all-consuming as everyone wants to have your ear. However, consciously carving out free time, even if it’s just two 30-minute slots a week, will allow you to reflect on your thoughts and feelings, and take a more objective view.
  • Upgrading your leadership: Your leadership and communication style may need to be refreshed. One new CEO requested to go on a senior leadership course as a condition for taking the job. This was brave, as it could have been interpreted as a sign of weakness.
  • Making your top team ‘click’: New CEOs ensure they have the right team in place. They ask themselves fundamental questions about the quality of their direct reports: Could I work with this person? What could I learn from them? Do they focus on getting the job done rather than politicking? They then replace those that don’t make the grade. External specialist coaches are often called in to work with the team, so honest, open and direct conversations become the norm.
  • Checking the organisational reality: CEOs find it key to decode what people are telling them. As one CEO remarked, they make efforts to ‘unpick the stories they hear’ and another aims to ‘find routes to the truth’ by testing the assumptions made by others.
  • Building inner confidence: As a new CEO, you will do things you haven’t done before and you will face high expectations. At times, your inner confidence may waver. In such case, remind yourself of your accomplishments. Seasoned CEOs believe you should ‘trust yourself and call the tough decisions’ and you will ‘become content with the discomfort’.
  • Hiring an external coach: Many CEOs had the support of an external coach when starting in their role. A good coach will not only act as a sounding board but also won’t be afraid to tell you the uncomfortable truth, keep you from lying to yourself and hold you accountable.
  • Staying balanced: To prevent their CEO role from taking over their life, my clients find it helpful to imagine they are 100 years old and looking back on their proudest moments. Time spent with family features prominently, far ahead of any CEO accomplishments.

So, if you are aiming for the top or have just taken on the CEO role for the first time, be cognisant of the challenges you will face and heed the advice of experienced CEOs. Their coping strategies will help you have a more balanced, productive and stress-free life.

Source: INSEAD

WHAT IS TOP TALENT AND HOW IS THAT IDENTIFIED?

As a part of our talent acquisition engagements, we ask our clients how they define “top talent” and how they would assess those traits in the interview process. Reflecting on the insightful comments we hear every day, we thought there would be great value in a new blog in which senior executives/thought leaders share their “Take on Talent.”

This is the twentieth in a series of blogs/interviews with senior executives who are thought leaders in the areas of Talent Acquisition, Career Development and Leadership who will  share their perspectives on this ever present question.

 

Rob Vatter, is an accomplished Technology Services Executive, excelling in turning strategic vision into tactical execution to achieve aggressive business agendas.  He has lead diverse teams to significant accomplishments in the IT Outsourcing and Engineering and R&D Services industries for over 25+ years.  Currently he is the Chief Revenue Officer at ClickFox, the industry leading SASS platform for journey analytics. (more…)

Two leadership practices for tapping the best of your multi-generational team

By Nicole Bendaly

Diversity, when capitalized on, gives teams a big leg up. It provides a mix of perspectives and experience that generates energy and better ways of doing things—most simply put, a higher level of performance.

Fortunately, it is not uncommon to find diversity within teams these days, as more and more people are working alongside team members who represent two, if not three, generations different from their own. But this enriching ingredient can also present challenges. Differences in values and points of view can make for a challenging work environment, certainly toughening a team’s ability to reach a consensus but also potentially creating tension between team members over expectations of behavior and work practices.

The trick to thriving as a leader of a multi-generational team is to know where to focus your energy so your team is energized by their differences and members can work in sync. The following two leadership practices will launch the habits a multi-generational team needs to be at their best. (more…)

Manager Global Business Services Outsourcing & Shared Service

  Manager: Global Business Services Outsourcing & Shared Services (Consulting)

Leading businesses are now using Global Business Services (GBS) to create alignment among their business units. Instead of operating numerous shared service centers and managing outsourcing vendors separately, organizations can integrate governance, locations, and business practices across the enterprise to achieve transformative performance improvements. In this way, GBS serves as a single enterprise organization or network that can drive collaboration and sharing to improve delivery efficiency, effectiveness, and business outcomes.

You along with dynamic colleagues will work closely with executives to consider how an outsourcing or shared services operating model aligns with their business strategy. As a Manager, you will lead and deliver large, complex client engagements that identify, design, and implement creative business and technology solutions for large companies.

Manager level responsibilities include: providing service excellence by identifying key client business issues, determining client needs by supplementing the standard assessment techniques and tools with innovative approaches, evaluating and validating analysis and developing recommendations for the client in the context of the overall engagement.  You will be expected to implement and oversee the quality of deliverables and effectively manage the team and day-to-day relationships to ensure exceptional performance.  Managers participate in the development and presentation of proposals for business development activities. You will have the opportunity to lead small engagements or components of large, complex engagements.

Manager Qualifications- GBS

Required:

  • A minimum of 6-8 years consulting and/or industry experience is required
  • Must have subject matter expertise in Shared Services, Outsourcing and/or Offshoring industry or multiple back office functional optimization
  • Shared Services Feasibility Assessments, Implementations, and Optimization
  • Ability to analyze and apply outsourcing trends
  • Practical experience with the full lifecycle of functional optimization, BPO and/or shared services programs
  • Core vs. Non-Core Assessments
  • Understanding of vendor landscape
  • Financial analysis and business case development experience
  • Ability to interact at all levels of the client organization
  • Bachelor’s Degree
  • Ability to travel 80-100%

Preferred:

  • RPA experience
  • Ability to work independently, manage small engagements or parts of large engagements
  • Strong oral and written communication skills, including presentation skills (MS Visio, MS PowerPoint)
  • Strong problem solving and troubleshooting skills with the ability to exercise mature judgment
  • Willingness to mentor junior staff
  • An advanced degree is preferred

The team:

Finance & Enterprise Performance Consulting:

The Finance & Enterprise Performance Offering (where Global Business Services resides) works as a trusted advisor to CFOs, COOs, CIOs, and key executives. We advise, implement and deliver as-a-service solutions, helping our clients develop strategies and capabilities to support enterprise-wide decision-making, improve finance operations, and create impact within their organization. F&EP brings together four different, but highly complementary legacy practices, allowing us to go to market more effectively and bring unparalleled breadth and depth of expertise to our clients which is unmatched by our competitors today.

If you think this could be a fit, please let me know

Larry Janis, Managing Partner, E: janis@issg.net

Phone 516- 767-3030 ext 301