Disclaimer: This post starts in full “snark” mode. Read at your peril.
Reading my feeds this weekend, I realized how badly I have been missing things. One word, one principle recurred. The solution to everything we do. The single word that would transform organizations, enabling us to hit our numbers, perhaps even exceed them. If only we had been smart enough to recognize it years ago.
And the clues have been there. It is the top line of every income statement we read…..
The word……. Revenue!
Apparently, at least according to these guru’s and thought leaders, organizing around Revenue is the answer to all our challenges.
The secret underlying this word is the transformation of our thinking, our organizational structure, our metrics and comp plans.
We need to transform our organizations around the concept of Revenue. Moving from thinking about Sales to Revenue is the way we make money.
Apparently, the simple word change from Sales To Revenue, changes everything. Organizing around Revenue, now enables us to collaborate with each other. To emerge from our product, marketing, sales, and customer success silo’s focusing on one thing, Revenue. Our ability to collaborate is immediately realized by switching to this Revenue focus. It enables us to now start working together to achieve a common revenue goal.
We see this transformation that immediately makes all things better. Rather than marketing enablement, sales enablement, customer service enablement, we now have a singular focus around revenue enablement–and everything becomes clear! And the operations sides of our organizations are immediately aligned and focused under a single revenue ops focus.
My mind started spinning, both grasping the tremendous simplicity and focus this creates, but also imagining what could be possible.
What if we went further? What if we decided to go beyond product, marketing, sales, and customer service? What if we thought of development as part of the cohort. After all, without product development, we have nothing with which to create revenue. Or manufacturing, if we can’t build and ship the products, we could, potentially create bookings, but not revenue. Then you look at operations, finance, even HR. Each function serves a critical function in creating revenue.
I’m beginning to think, “What if we gathered them all together, in a unified mission of creating Revenue?” We can now collaborate, we can work to a common purpose and goal. We would be a well oiled machine, focused on growth and revenue.
I was sitting out on the back deck, having a beer with a neighbor, discussing this break through thinking around the secret to creating revenue—aligning every part of the organization around this single mission. All of a sudden, he interupted my reverie, he asked the question:
“Don’t we call those companies, corporations, enterprises? Isn’t their function to design, build, provide products/services that can be marketed, sold, and supported to create revenue? What am I missing?”
My bubble burst, my euphoria dashed, I realized he’s correct.
Changing a word, reorganizing the functions of the organization under that single banner doesn’t change anything!
Having separate functional organization, product, marketing, sales, customer service doesn’t prevent us from aligning around a common purpose and goals. Having a revenue focused organization doesn’t immediately cause us to collaborate and work together.
But there was this nagging thought, “Dave, why are all these guru’s and thought leaders saying it’s the secret to success, you must be missing something….”
I started thinking, the absence of this singular focus and alignment around revenue must be why businesses have failed so miserably in the past….. I started reflecting back on the modern industrial revolution and the pile up of massive failures or underperformance, globally. Thousands upon thousands of organization who have failed because they aren’t organized around a Revenue focus.
I thought, how did we achieve $105 Trillion in the global economy? I wonder what it might have been if we had a singular organizational focus/structure around revenue.
OK, you get the point.
But somehow we spend too much time thinking, “if we changed the names, if we changed the reporting structures, if we change the metrics, we solve all our problems.” But we don’t spend anytime thinking about how do we work for a common purpose and goals across organizational and functional boundaries? How can we collaborate more effectively, across departments, job roles?
We don’t fail to achieve because of our organizational structures, we fail because we let our structure become the excuse for failing to align and work together.
Then there is one further flaw to those who think we solve all our performance problems by aligning ourselves under one Revenue based organization. If we have to do this to align purpose, goals, metrics. If we have to do this to collaborate effectively, then what does this mean about our ability to work with partners, ecosystems, or our customers? They will always be organizationally separate from us. How do we make these work, because if we can’t, we do, in fact fail.
Let’s stop wasting time continuing to rearrange deck chairs. Let’s focus on how we get the work done and collaborate across disparate functions and organizations–both within our own enterprises, with our partners, and with our customers.
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