Tag Archives: Strategy

Seven Building Blocks for a High-Performance Sales Culture

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By Neil Zaman

While there are certainly many opinions on how to build successful teams, here’s one roadmap for constant improvement based on the Triangle Model. When followed, this model can lead to increased innovation, improved individual satisfaction, more effective communication, better decision making, and higher quality execution. And what sales team can’t use all those?

Below are seven key principles for building out a team – with explanations of how these principles can help an organization up the ante.

 

1. Trust
Trust is the foundation on which all successful teams are built, and that requires an unwavering belief that everyone is driving toward the same strategic goals. This is the most critical component when building a high-performing team.

When laying out that foundation, begin by ensuring everyone is in a position that matches their skillset. If people are in positions where the opposite is true, the overall team trust will be on shaky ground.

Communicate with and learn from your employees and explain why you’ve strategically placed them where you have – reinforcing that you believe they can succeed in this role. Show employees you trust them by allowing them to make decisions, and back them up if questions arise. Employees will feel the trust and empowerment when they know you have their backs.

2. Vision
Once you are on your way to building out your team of strong contributors, you’ll need to share a clear, simple vision that is aligned all the way to the top-line corporate strategy. The vision should be lofty, but the most important part is that it’s actionable for everyone.

As an example, strive to delight customers – and talk about this all day, every day. This means the actions and decisions we make must be aimed at ensuring our customers are successful. Within the overarching vision, there can be several goals to support it, such as, “Improve customer support by X%,” or, “We plan to introduce a new product this year at a specific number of customer sites.”

3. Teamwork
Be mindful that some may feel isolated at work rather than feeling like part of a cohesive team. Highly distributed teams and improper positioning can cause challenges – as can a management team that doesn’t reinforce a team-centric mentality.

Drive inclusion by encouraging each and every team member to bring creative ideas to the table to solve problems or provide input for important decisions. Everyone has individual roles and responsibilities, but there’s usually some kind of crossover with other peers and cross-functional groups within the company. Facilitating crossover leads to a “we are in this together” sentiment.

Foster a team mindset within the organization by instilling incremental checkpoints to ensure you’re on the right track.

4. Empowerment
When you’ve completed the above steps, it’s time to let the team perform. Find ways to empower them so they can earn wins that pay off for the broader organization.

Team members are often more productive and perform at their peak when you get out of their way. It’s critical that team members have opportunities to grow and execute on their own. Be ready to guide, but first set the stage, agree on the goals, and let the teams and contributors establish their own success strategies.

5. Accountability
Bringing accountability to the table helps build trust and understanding within your team. Similar to building a trust foundation, accountability helps reinforce the trust that is already present.

To build accountability, establish clear goals from the top down that can be measured with each individual – and have regular check-ins to track key milestones. By staying on top of progress, you are avoiding surprise and establishing predictability. Demonstrating accountability when it comes to objectives – and being transparent about successes and misses – elevates the organization.

6. Execution
Building a high-performing team that drives innovation and growth is incredibly challenging, and I’ve found that pushing execution and follow-through is sometimes overlooked.

Instead of being paralyzed by planning and analysis, remind the team of your shared vision and push them to execute on it. Instead of complacency, develop an agile and customer-focused approach.

7. Reward
After you’ve built your high-performing team and are in a success pattern, don’t forget to acknowledge and reward your team members.

Money isn’t always the answer. Sometimes just giving someone the credit in front of a group can go a long way. With repeat successes, you can look at opportunities to expand your team members’ responsibilities and consider promotions. The recognition can be very motivating and fuels the continued success of the individual, the team, and the broader company.

Building a team and leading it to success requires a lot of steps. If any step within this model breaks down, the entire foundation can become weak – leaving you with lost opportunities.

Using this triangle model, you too can enable your team to succeed. You may want to put your own twist on the model so it’s true to your own leadership style. But always put your customers first.

Source: Selling Power

Remote Work Is Here To Stay

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The question is, how to make it really work for you? A few secrets of success from a company that has been remote right from the start.

This has been a significant year of change across the globe, particularly in the workplace as we have all had to adapt and rethink our workforce strategies. As we look to find the answers to the right, wrong, and most effective ways to move forward in the new normal in 2021 and beyond, one thing is for certain: remote work practices are here to stay. Whether your team is fully remote or is a hybrid of remote and in-office, the workplace has forever been affected. Major companies like Facebook and Twitter have already set a precedent by allowing employees to work remotely, permanently.

As a remote-centric company with 750+ employees spanning 35 countries, remote work has been ingrained in our DNA since Auth0 was founded in 2013. Over the past seven years, we have found success in giving our team the freedom to do their best work on their own terms, regardless of location. Here are a few key lessons we learned on how to make remote work successful.

1. Learn to love remote work

It is important to first recognize that we are in a very unique time and the past several months have not been ‘normal’ remote work settings. People are not only adjusting to new work practices such as working remotely, but there are many other factors to consider right now—in a normal remote setting your kids are at school, your partner is at work, you are not cooking all day, among other things.

For companies forced to work remotely during the pandemic, there is great risk in rushing to  “see this doesn’t work” judgment, not giving it the time it needs, or just thinking remote work is just a thing for tech startups. Be slow to make decisions and have the flexibility to adapt and make changes where needed. There is an adjustment time required if you have not previously been predominantly remote.

2. Hiring for talent unleashes a greater talent pool

The constraints of hiring for one location puts you at a disadvantage. Being open to the idea of a global and remote workforce naturally unleashes a pool of talent that otherwise would not be available. By enabling your team members to do their best work regardless of location, you will be able to hire a diverse mix of people from different backgrounds and skill sets without having to compete with other companies within a certain region; a team that is also naturally closer to your customers across the globe.

3. Remote work is not a cost-cutting measure

At the end of the day, remote work should not be looked at as a cost-cutting measure—a program centered on this thinking is doomed to fail. Remote work requires more work, not less. You can’t just hand out laptops, send employees on their way and join sessions on Zoom. Or randomly except your team to ”collaborate” by chat on Slack. \You have to be deliberate about how you communicate, and how you align teams behind common goals. And you must support the well being of employees from a personal, professional, and regulatory perspective.

4. Communication is your most effective tool; use it

With the obvious lack of face-to-face communication, trust and a philosophy of work based on results and not on chair time are at the heart of a successful remote culture. Multi-directional communication is critical as trust is built from the bottom up and from the top down. And especially during times like right now where human communication is missing and feelings of isolation are high, be aware of different video and communication tools like Zoom and Slack and create virtual spaces that facilitate idea exchanges, bonding, and socialization to keep your team engaged and connected to each other.

5. Create a routine, set boundaries

With remote work, there are many things to take into account and the lines between personal and professional life are blurred. Working remotely requires discipline, structure, and boundaries—you could very easily burn out if you’re not setting good practices in place and creating a routine for yourself. When you work remotely it is important to complement the ‘start/stop’ ceremonies like commuting and leaving the office. It takes effort, but if you do not have discipline, your life is all work, which is not good for anyone. Encourage your team to devise their own schedules, so they can complete their work when feeling most productive and collaborative.

While the benefits of remote work and flexible work options are endless, it is important to recognize that everyone operates differently and you have to figure out what works best for you and your team. As the benefits of remote work continue to be seen, you will realize how a remote workforce can be an integral part to your success within the increasingly competitive industries you play in. Looking forward to 2021 and beyond, remote work will likely be a large part of the future of business—and for good reason. It works if you are willing to put the work in.

Source: Chief Executive

‘Be Human’: Marshall Goldsmith’s Best Leadership Advice Right Now

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In any time but the current one, this is the last place Marshall Goldsmith, one of the most in-demand CEO coaches in the world and bestselling author of leadership classics like What Got You Here Won’t Get You There and Triggers, would be. Back in B.C.—Before Covid—Goldsmith was a legendary road warrior with 11 million frequent flier miles, tracking how many nights a year he was at home with his family, rather than vice versa, in the hopes of improving that KPI.

Yet, here he is, with a green screen behind him, chunky Sony earphones locked on snuggly, ready to talk from his home in Covid-subdued La Jolla, California. And, as you’d expect from someone who is obsessed with prepping leaders for change, he’s okay with it. “I’m a Buddhist,” he shrugs. “What is is, so you just make peace with what is and do the best you can and move on.”

This kind of equanimity takes work, of course. Lots of it. In the midst of crisis, Goldsmith is practicing what he preaches, meeting with a group of 50 or so high-performing people each weekend (virtually, of course), talking about issues, feelings—and fears. He’s working with his own coach, trying to improve his behaviors, checking in nightly on how he’s doing relative to expectations. And, more than anything else, he’s listening and trying to help his clients—many of whom are household names in global business—tackle a very, very tough time.

In a conversation with Chief Executive, Goldsmith, who will be the keynote speaker at our upcoming annual CEO Leadership Conference on November 5, talked about how Covid is disrupting his clients, what he’s counseling them and why this period of unparalleled change and challenge is an essential time to work on your own behavior and improve your emotional intelligence. The conversation was edited for length and clarity. Continue reading →

The Digitization Imperative

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  By Ram Charan

The Covid-19 crisis isn’t behind us yet, but companies have to start putting the economic pieces together for their business to not just survive but also build a new future. At this point, there are three priorities most companies should act on with great haste: employee safety, cash management week by week and a digital connection with customers, suppliers and ecosystem partners. Missing any of the three could seriously jeopardize the continuity of the business.

Companies that are not already on their way to being digital have to realize the urgency. It’s not just digital giants like Amazon that threaten their future. It’s also legacy companies that are becoming digital. In the pandemic, they’ve been able to adapt more quickly. And, under normal circumstances, they can gain share very fast.

Maybe you’ve come to terms with the fact that you must become a digital company. But you’re convinced that this is not the time to act. You have to realize that waiting for stability is a luxury you can’t afford. Really, there is no need to wait.

Talking to a number of CEOs, I have learned that there are myths about what digitization costs, how much cash it will use, and how long it will take. Business leaders don’t think they can show a clear return on their investment. Besides, they’re convinced that people in the organization will resist it.

Well, that’s no longer the case. You can now pick the most urgent, most critical tasks—the ones that will help you get cash, increase revenues or connect with customers, suppliers and ecosystem partners—and achieve them in bite-size portions. You can see benefits in weeks or months, not years.

 

Here are some examples:

• Dynamic pricing. It is a necessity when uncertainty is here to stay.

• Collection of receivables. The collections process is critical to liquidity.

• A continuous connection with customers. You will need this to help you pick up how their behavior is changing, how demand is shifting and what the voice of the customer is. It will help with forecasting, with impacts on inventory and cash flow.

• A single source of data. Data-based decision-making, whether or not it’s automated, is now an imperative. But it is difficult to use data for decision-making if it is spread across many silos; it is highly inconsistent, and managers don’t trust it.

A number of small vendors now exist that can do projects like these for you in less than 90 days for less than $400,000.

Make your own list and take one or two tasks at a time. Then, reach out to small vendors (UST Global and Altimetrik are two I’m familiar with). Define your tasks clearly and precisely, just as you’ve done with outsourcing, facilities construction or other turnkey projects.

You might not realize that digital giants like Amazon all began using digital technology for one task at a time. They used small vendors—and still do—because they are fast, they cost less, and they take the project to completion. They become partners in operationalizing it. You focus on what needs to be digitized and why, and how it will create revenues, cash, margins, customer satisfaction or speed. The vendors focus on giving you the relevant digital platform or digital apps.

When it comes to organizational resistance, that is unlikely to exist anymore. If someone does resist, you have to deal with it right away.

One more thing: don’t be put off by terminology and tools with which you’re not familiar, like algorithms and big data. Algorithms—the mathematical rules by which data is processed—have been around for hundreds of years. Roughly two dozen of them are used for common tasks and are readily available.

So, take the mystery out and take on small turnkey tasks that can build your business and ensure its continuity.

Source: Chief Executive

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8 tips for driving digital strategy during COVID-19

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By Clint Boulton

From deliverable schedules to procurement windows, virtually every IT timeline has been compressed by the coronavirus crisis. Those three- to five-year horizons for digital transformations? They’ve shrunk to months thanks to the pandemic, say some CIOs and consultants.

As is often the case, the truth is more nuanced. Big Bang transformations have been streamlined — not sidelined — in favor of short-term priorities. Having stabilized email, boosted bandwidth and battle-tested VPNs to fulfill mandatory work-from-home policies, CIOs have set their sights on innovation. Companies such as Nationwide have digitized software development to accommodate employees working remotely and to serve customers without a hitch.

The new normal

Such is the new normal for most large companies, and IT “will be in the middle of that,” according to Rick Pastore, senior research director of The Hackett Group. Mobile devices and software, cloud and other digital tools grant CIOs greater flexibility than they’ve had previously in supporting how and where employees work, Pastore says.

Moreover, objections to smart automation, machine learning, advanced analytics and other emerging technologies that require robust investments will “melt away” — if they haven’t already, Pastore predicts. Many CIOs have created new analytics dashboards to chart productivity and have built bots to digitize manual tasks. Others have changed the way they meet with business peers during the pandemic, with a mind toward preserving that method in the future. Continue reading →