Team is what the Leaders Are – Pshhht!

The ______ of the Leader

According to John Maxwell, “The speed of the leader is the speed of the team.” While that’s true, it is important to remember that the leader sets many agendas in addition to speed. Consider this phrase: The ______ of the leader is the ______ of the team. Now pick almost any word to fill in the blanks…

Attitude.

Enthusiasm.

Focus.

Service.

Integrity.

Passion.

Rarely will team members rise higher than the standard set by the team leader. Team members pay more attention to what the leader does than what the leader says. Ideally, there is congruence between the words and the action of the leaders. Wherever there is misalignment, followers choose to believe actions.

Are you giving team members something to live up to? Challenging them the a higher purpose? Are you a limiting factor?

That may be the way of 20th century knowledge work. To those of you reading this who are inspired by the above I feel for you. If you’re one of these leaders who believe it’s about you, look around. While you’re reading this your people…your own community is getting it done. If you’re a follower who is waiting to be inspired by your own leader you’re in for quite the uninteresting career.

So what type of leader inspires a team today? My thoughts move quickly to social networks to develop an answer to the question. The more I think about it the more I like it…

Social leadership

Imagine leadership that creates a platform for you to plant your passion and grow success through cultivating your dreams with the right relationships. A collaboration between parties that crosses well over the line of boss/employee to the muddy waters of partners on a journey of shared success.

I know, this isn’t a new idea. Or is it? Have you ever been a part of a group that posts the goal(s) on the wall and then hierarchy is literally thrown aside in favor of a social approach? Where the leader merely guides the right relationships trusting that those relationships will create the synergies necessary to exceed the stated goal?

Business guru to gurus Tom Peters talked about this type of team.

“The leaders who work most effectively, it seems to me, never say ‘I’. They don’t think ‘I’. They think ‘we’; they think ‘team’.”

I think we’ve all experienced this in some aspect of our lives. Unfortunately it’s probably very rarely at the place we hone our professional craft. Sad really.

Social leaders – state (ambiguously) our vision, our mission, suck us in whole hog. Then connect their teams to those who can, together execute against that vision. Then…they get out of the way.

Yes…they stop. They get out of the way and watch as this collaborative network far exceeds what they envisioned.

This last part is the hardest part for most middle managers especially. They want to delegate the work but many attempt to keep the glory of planting the flag at the top of the hill all to themselves. As I compare this strategy of leadership with social networking it falls apart. Imagine a social network where I post an idea, gather feedback from those around me and then take all credit.

That would be the last time I collaborate with that network and my whuffie would be forever damaged.

For teamwork to work, it must be embraced–in principle and in practice–by everyone on the team.

So those of us on teams – don’t wait for your leader to tell you how to team together. Get together with your colleagues and DIY. Collaborative teams are democratic. Talk amongst your team members and set out on a path of shared success. Announce to your leader(s) that there’s  a new social initiative on your team and you’ll like them to have a seat (not the seat) at the shared table. And, as you start on this journey remember this:

1. In successful teams, team members are interdependent. They engage others for help early and offer help always
2. Competition is healthy. There are three things you can use to create healthy competition: a competitor in the marketplace, a team goal to be achieved or a common problem to be solved.
3. Team members are self-starters. Since they understand the big picture, they don’t need to be told what to do. Set the shared goal together, hold each other equally accountable and stay out of each other’s way
4. Successful team members share both rewards and sacrifices. Don’t expect people to make sacrifices if they won’t get to share in the rewards later.
5. The best thing you can strive for is not a team with a great leader. The highest goal is a team of leaders.

Here’s to more leaders, followers and organizations that continue to learn, grow and prosper from the social networking concepts.

Social rules!

CRM and the Customer – Sharing Ideas

It’s sad to say but I think we’re already taking transparency and collaborative idea sharing for granted. We love platforms like MyStarbucksIdeas, IdeaStorm, Crocs Ideas and other collaborative corners where we can, as consumer/customer and company, share thoughts, challenge the norm and make products better for all involved. I know I’ve logged a few ideas for Starbucks and Dell as well as for Salesforce.com on their Ideas site. I also know that my ideas are actively being vetted not only by product managers, but by other community members. Together we’ll make the products and services for those companies better.

The thought of such collaboration intrigued me. I thought about how such a platform could be used for my business in the Tradeshow industry. Granted, the tradeshow/exhibition business is one of the last vestiges of 20th century communication (read: faxes, paper, phone, paper, maybe e-mail and of course paper), but certainly such a platform could bring together our product/service managers, salespeople, marketing teams and executives with customers.

The next few posts will outline our experience selling the idea to our leadership and lessons learned along the way.

Since all good stories (not including this post in that realm) end with a tease I’ll leave you with the most important questions to be asked when considering a roll-out of a collaborative idea sharing platform:

“Do we want to know what our customers have to say?”

While I’ve yet to run into a company/group who answered negatively to this question, many should have spent more time pondering the question before launching into a new project.

Next up: What does it mean to listen and how do we show we are listening?

Collaborating with Sales – Documenting the Saga

Welcome to the Collaborative. This blog, which has morphed over time from a place to track the happenings of high tech collaboration to musings about collaborative communities in every day life to a quiet corner of the interwebs while I spent some time thinking about voids.

There’s something missing in collaborative communities online. Something that the blogosphere has passed over (at least as far as my browser can tell). While there are many resources about how to solve specific technology problems (complete with working examples) there are few if any places where CRM related change management and change acceleration are discussed in detail.

I’ve talked to a few readers and have heard what this space should not be: a place to simply pontificate about why change is important. Of COURSE it’s important. Those companies that change well thrive. Those that don’t or can’t, well they end up on the beach just as the tsunami of change rushes over them like a brick wall of energy and they are left to ask, “how did we miss this?”

So armed with what this conversation community won’t be, I’m taking a stab at what it should be: A place to share my experiences with change and how the Technical Strategy coupled together with cultural strategy creates effectiveness every time. Real examples, WIP, successes, mistakes, customer marvels and malcontents. All cards face up on the table.

Below is an introduction to such a conversation. I invite you to soak it in and join the journey with me. I’m not sure where this will end or how we’ll get there. Along the way we’ll debate, laugh call each other names and through the process, learn.

I look forward to the journey. Both the journey of bringing more and better change management to organizations of all sizes and for the opportunity to collaborative with you to make this a place to share and to effect change in all that we do.

Change and the Organization – A Match Made in Hell 2.0
Note: names (both individuals and companies) are removed to protect all involved. What matters is not WHO specifically but who generally and why specifically.

Picture a sales organization for a multi-billion dollar company. Exceptional industry knowledge, best of breed technologies to serve the customer, brand recognition to kill for.  Picture that same sales organization having revenue, cost center and incentive figures in giant silos separated by time and space. Picture a sales organization who’s idea of new business is growing current business next year by 5 points.

Layer into that picture a culture void of goal setting for sales people. Of course there’s goal setting for the business. Budgets must be completed yearly…but nothing to track a sales person’s performance.

Meanwhile, somewhere in the middle of the ocean a major techtonic shift occurs. Questions like, “shouldn’t we incent our sales people to sell?” arise from the murky depths and catch, because of changing leadership a current. The wave slowly grows in size, speed and force. Those caught up in it as it rolls quietly and quickly along ask similar questions. Those safely on shore start to hear reports of large, fast swells and want to protect themselves. They want to move inland and surround themselves with all the reasons that they need not change.

This then is the story of a company. A real living breathing company who is right now in the middle of this coming tsunami. My job is that of surfing instructor. I won’t stop the wave (I’ll encourage it) but I’m all about getting you on a board and hanging ten together. This space will chronicle that journey, as well as, provide a place for us to collaborate on thoughts, suggestions and lessons along the way.

Now it’s time for your feedback. Please find the poll below and let me know what you think. Hate it? Cool…we’ll scrap it and move on. Love it, we’ll find ways to get you and your change management successes and nightmares chronicled. Not convinced…tell me what we’re missing. My goal is simple: to share an experience that we can all study, learn from and add value to the collective pool of knowledge.

I look forward to the journey.

The Anatomy of Collaboration

Right people, right culture, right customer experience

My entire career has been leading and participating in teams. In fact, I think it’s fair to say that most of our lives are teams.

• Families
• Friends
• Sports/Activities
• Work
• Religious/volunteer endeavors

. . . we live (and die) by teams.

So why do so many organizations/departments collaborate so poorly? If so much of life is team oriented why do we let politics, personal achievement, insecurities take priority over team?

Our world continues to change and evolve. Since the 1800s we’ve moved from fields to factories and from those factories to corporate towers. A study of each of those evolutions reveals that while team was important, it wasn’t incubated.

• “Do your work, do it well and go home.”
• “Do your work well and you get a prize, do it poorly and you get fired.”
• “Keep your head down. We’ll do the thinking for you.”

Each of the above come from management playbooks from the past. Trust for the individual was sapped from the workforce and collaboration was abhorred. And, even though ignored, collaboration bled through every process within every organization. (Think Model T assembly line, think the invention of the silicon chip and computers, think about the internet). Teams will find a way, even amidst leadership against their creation.

So if management of years gone by was command and control, carrot and stick, success despite fear, what is the new model? What is working today? Jeff Jarvis discusses what’s working today in his book “What Would Google Do”. Today’s companies treat employees and customers much in the same way: as contributors to their vision. A 3 legged stool (business, customer, employee) that is constantly changing and growing based on mutual feedback and a passion for the vision. No where in there did I mention respect (I abhor that word only slightly less than “empowerment”). I did mention vision, contributors, equality between company, customer and employee. These are the keys to building platforms (another Jarvis obvervation about the new economy companies).

Maybe the most telling quote from the book is what Jarvis referrs to as “Jarvis’ First Law“. It goes:

“Give the people control and we will use it; don’t and you will lose us.”

I think this applies as much to the employee/employer relationship as it does to customer/company. Trust us and give us a vision and get the hell out of our way. Give us access to the customer. Give the customer access to us. TOGETHER we’ll do amazing things.

One plus one has never equaled more.

Collaborative CRM – We ALL Owe it to the Customer

“It’s MY customer. It’s MY call.”

That was uttered recently in a meeting. The meeting was to discuss business process (a subject near and dear to my heart) and more specifically to view our sales business process through the eyes of the customer. I’ve led many such meetings in my career and was pleased that my current employer was ready to embark on this cause. Little did I know how deeply engrained our silos…our fiefdoms were.

The issue arose from a seemingly insignificant exercise. Each team (representatives from each division) was to answer the following questions:

• What are the critical things you need to know about your customer to make decisions on next steps?
• Why are these pieces of information critical?
• How do these critial items enable you to best care for the customer

The idea was to then list these critical components to show how similar our needs were across all divisions. Like any sales organization, this one things that it (each division) is completely different than the others. And, after performing this exercise they found that, like any sales organization, they’re more alike than they are different. That realization created tension. For years (75+) this company treated it’s division as businesses built on the idea of how different, how unique they were. Now they were realizing how intertwined their services were.

We left that meeting with quality work completed (my vantage point) and a lot of uneasy feelings among team leaders. I felt like there’d been chinks strategically placed in the armour of space and time…that we were evolving. Time would be the next ingredient needed to continue this process.

The next thing that occurred was a customer meeting. One of our division sales people met with a customer and discovered in that meeting that another division had been talking to the customer. How dare they! It’s MY customer. I was in the meeting with the customer and a couple of things happened that disturbed me:

• The salesperson immediately stopped listening
• The customer found himself apologizing for contacting the other division

This customer needed the services provided by our other division. It was an upsell that the first division would get credit for yet all this guy could think about was how his colleague dare talk to HIS customer. In the car after the meeting we debriefed. When my sales colleage mentioned how angry he was about his cross division colleague talking to his customer I reminded him “it’s not YOUR customer. It’s OUR customer.”

I wonder what kind of service this customer would have received had we all put him at the center of our world. How much money was left on the table because we couldn’t get our collective act together. Does the customer feel like he’s working with a team focused on providing him an experience? (I asked and the answer is no…no doubt he’s now shopping us).

Are we focused on what belongs to us or on stewardship of our customer’s success.

Here’s to the latter. We aren’t given customer relationships for life. They are earned daily and we must be good stewards of that relationship with each interaction.

Here’s to becoming what our customer values.

CRM Rethought (Art 2.0)

The other day I experienced what CRM is all about. An extrodinary exchange with someone who gets what customer relationship management is all about. It was the kind of exchange that changed my afternoon. The experience was “Art 2.0″.

I had overshot the lunch hour and needed to get something quick before an afternoon meeting. I wandered down the street to a local burger joint (we’ll call it Whataburger). My expectations were low.

• I  need food
• I need food quickly
• I need food that resembles a burger

The last part about needing a burger is debatable but it was a part of my expectation so go with it.

After walking in the door I was greeting by an older gentlemen behind the counter. It wasn’t a grumble but an emphatic “Good afternoon sir! Welcome to Whataburger.” After nearly snapping to attention (this is not the norm at a Whataburger for those of you outside the south/southwest) I stumbled to get out, “good afternoon”.

Art continued, “Tell me about the best burger you’ve ever had.” I must say I was a bit puzzled. Remember I’m looking for a burger…quick. That’s all I need. Yet I found myself answering Art’s question and together we concocked what I consider to be the best burger ever. As I spoke he did a few things. He listened, he wrote and he contributed. I knew he was listening because he responded. He asked questions and offered his own suggestions. He scribbled intently on his notepad and asked my name. By this point I’d lost all track of time (my meeting was starting in mere minutes) but Art and I were engaged in a collaborative moment. How can you leave your partner when you’re dreaming up THE BEST BURGER EVER!

After completing this exercise I remember saying to Art, “OK now I’m going to have to go home and make this burger Art.” (I failed to mention that early on in the conversation Art introduced himself and we shook hands). Art responded, “well I can’t promise the best burger ever but I can promise a fresh one. Now, the next time you come in, I’ll have everything on your list too.” I smiled. How could I not believe him?

My order was cooked and delivered to my table (by Art). He sat down briefly and explained that he’d taken the liberty of changing out the standard Whataburger bun with a better bun. As Art said, “our buns aren’t any good and a bad bun ruins a good burger.” Wow. I happen to agree with Art. My friends and I have often commented that in the world of fast food burgers Whataburger’s tagline should be, “best burgers, crappy buns.” Now Art had taken that off the table.

I was so taken back by this I asked Art if I could ask him a few questions. Of course he offered the time. Seems as if Art spent a career in sales. When he retired he wanted to stay busy in the community so he came to work at the Whataburger where he stopped every morning for coffee. He said he couldn’t bring customers like me back to the days of the Texaco station where car hops came running when the airhose dinged but he could bring that level of service to us as an example. When I asked about the notepad he showed me. Pages of customers names and descriptions, notes on ANYTHING they’d said. And, their description of a perfect hamburger.

“What do you do with the notes Art?” (I had to know). “I head to the local market and pick up the ingredients. Next time you’re here we’ll make it for you.” I shook Art’s hand and headed to my car with countless questions in my head. Walking out I heard Art say, “Hey there Brad? Are we gonna do another blue cheese special?”

All of this at a burger chain? Talk about breaking the rules. No doubt Art’s odd approach cuts into bottom line sales per customer. But, I’d be willing to bet that it’s brining more customers back more often. Why?

Simple. Art 2.0

Thanks for reinventing yourself Art and for showing us what building customer relationships is about.