Ask yourself a question, “Are you taking your people where they want/need to be taken?” Too often, we tend to focus on where we need to go/what we want to accomplish, but we fail in engaging our people as effectively, taking them where they need to be taken.
Recently, I’ve had a fascinating experience working with a very high potential CRO. He had never been in a leadership role, but now found himself in leading the selling team for a high growth start up.
Our initial meetings were consumed with fire fighting. He had inherited some challenges, some bad commitments, and a lot of disorder. He and his team were enmeshed in activities, crises and busyness. The team tended to get diverted by the newest shiny object, “What if we chased this deal, it’s outside our ICP, but they are talking to us? What if we did this program……?”
This leader was overwhelmed by his own busyness and leading an equally busy team.
We put a few of the fires out, we left a few smoldering, but we shifted our attention.
“Where do you need to be by year end?” I asked.
“Well we have a goal of $X. When I look at our pipelines and current activity, it will be a real struggle, but we are going to do our best, but will probably fall short….”
“Hmmm,” I responded, “I understand your point. Based on the current pipeline, there is likely to be a gap. But I see at least one path there, perhaps a couple. It won’t be easy, but I see some ways you can hit the goal, even though it’s only about 3 months away.”
“What do you mean,” he asked, “we are working our asses off, but I don’t see us making it. What can we possibly do?”
The ensuing discussion lasted a couple of hours. I started with some ideas, “If you could focus on these couple of opportunities, you might make them even bigger and close them…… And if you tweaked a few things in this area, you could find and qualify new opportunities really quickly….. And you are spending too much time on these really small deals, what if you closed or abandoned them in the next week, what time would you free up to go after these bigger opportunities…. And your founder has great relationships with execs in three companies that have a high need for your solution…..”
We shifted the conversation away from what they were currently doing and imagined a couple of path’s that could actually take them where they needed to be.
We went through the pros and cons, the risks, and what would have to happen, but there was an amazing shift in his mindset. Initially, he was focused on working hard to get what he could, now he had ideas of how he could get to where he and his team wanted to be.
The next day, he held a meeting with his team. He’s an extremely fast learner, he took them through a similar discussion. He helped them establish the vision of where they wanted to be. Then they went through a lot of brainstorming to figure out what they needed to do to get there.
They identified a very specific plan, “We need to focus on these specific prospects and prove these things….. We need to get the buyers on this deal to reframe what they are looking at…. We need to get in front of these organizations and engage them in discussions…. We can get these current customers to introduce us to these prospects….. We need to ask a board member to open the doors to these three organizations.
At the end of the meeting, a couple of things happened. They had a very specific action plan and goals for what each person would do, and how they would execute on their ideas.
But more importantly, each person on the team had discovered where they wanted to be.
In the meeting, the CRO had helped them discover where they wanted to be taken. They had a clear vision of what they could achieve and a path, though not easy, to achieve it.
Later, the CRO and I discussed what had happened. Thoughtfully, he reflected, “We know what number we wanted to hit. We were doing all the normal activities we always tend to do, and we were working hard. But what we were missing was a path to achieve our goals. It’s no easier than before, but we know exactly what we need to get done, we can see how to get it done, and we have a vision to get where we want to be.
Our people are incredibly busy with all sorts of activities. They (and we) keep them busy doing more and more. But too often we lose sight of where they need to be taken. Great leaders understand this, continually reinforcing the vision of where they want to/need to be, coaching them on how they might get there.
Now that I’ve taken you on this slightly “esoteric” journey, some of you might be scratching your heads thinking, “Well Dave, aren’t you really talking about hitting the number?” Yes, the number is part of it, but the number is just one representation of what we are trying to achieve in our organizations and teams.
Afterword: Our customers struggle with the same thing. Perhaps we can help them discover where they want to be taken.
Leave a Reply