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Our teams don’t understand each other – how do we get on the same page?
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This week’s Scale-up Confession comes from Luke, who runs a SaaS company that provides HR and payroll automation software. Responding to Luke's letter, Rob is joined by marketing expert Nicola Anderson and fractional CFO Pete Donnell to discuss possible solutions.
Thanks to our panellists:
Nicola Anderson - https://www.linkedin.com/in/andersonnicola/
Pete Donnell - https://www.linkedin.com/in/pete-donell-0508272b/
Connect with Us:
Have your own business question or leadership challenge? Please email Rob at rob@mission-group.co.uk (and let us know whether you would prefer a private answer or are happy to feature in a future episode).
You can also reach Rob on LinkedIn via https://www.linkedin.com/in/robertliddiard/ or to book some free time https://www.eosworldwide.com/rob-liddiard).
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Transcript
Introduction to Chaos in HR Tech Startup
00:00:02
Speaker
Hello, welcome to another episode of Scale Up Confessions, the show where we talk about what it really feels like to lead and manage a growing organization. I'm Rob Lyddiard. I was the founding CEO of a software business called Yapster that was acquired in 2022. And I'm now a professional implementer of the Entrepreneurial Operating System or EOS, which means I work with entrepreneurs and entrepreneurial leadership teams to help them get what they want from their businesses.
Tackling Growth-Induced Chaos
00:00:26
Speaker
Today's confession comes in from Luke, who's the founder of an HR tech platform that's grown really fast, but experiencing feelings of chaos internally, you know miscommunication between teams, drop commitments, umf confused product priorities, all the sorts of things that that most of us that have been in Luke's seat have felt in the past, particularly if business is growing quickly.
00:00:46
Speaker
So as ever, I've invited a couple of my very clever professional friends to come on and respond to the confession to give some targeted advice to Luke and to all of you listening.
Expert Advice from Nicola and Pete
00:00:55
Speaker
Nicola Anderson is one of the best regarded thought leaders, community leaders in the London revenue scene. She's got ah a deep, deep background as ah as a CMO.
00:01:06
Speaker
And she's just seen so many challenges, not just in marketing and revenue functions, but she's really big on cross-team collaboration at leadership level. So she's always a fantastic contributor to these discussions.
00:01:18
Speaker
Today, Pete Donald also joins us. Pete's a longtime finance director with Series A and B, scale-up SaaS businesses, technology businesses. He now is working on a fractional basis with fast-growth tech companies and also is founding his own saas product. So he brings an incredible experience from the finance seat, but also with a deep empathy for the entrepreneurial journey. So we know he's going to make a big contribution today also.
Unpacking Internal Miscommunication
00:01:43
Speaker
So without further ado, my conversation with Pete and Nicola responding to Luke's scale up confession.
00:01:56
Speaker
Nicola, Pete, it's another scale up confession. How are we both? Fantastic. Looking forward to this one. Yeah, very good. Thank you. Excellent. Listen, without further ado, let's dive straight in. There's a chap called Luke that I think badly needs your help. And I'll press play so that our listeners understand why it is that I'm keen for us to get going.
00:02:16
Speaker
Hi, Rob. I run a SaaS company that provides HR and payroll automation software. Our business is growing and you know sales are strong, but internally we're in a bit of chaos.
00:02:29
Speaker
There's miscommunication between departments and it's leading to mistakes, inefficiencies, and we're constantly firefighting. The sales director, well they keep promising features that yeah don't exist yet.
00:02:41
Speaker
The CTO and product development team are then blindsided when clients demand updates that they never planned for. Meanwhile, our customer success team is left dealing with frustrated users, feeling like they're the last to know about important product changes.
00:02:57
Speaker
As a leadership team, we're sort of stuck firefighting these issues rather than you know making strategic progress that we want.
Common Startup Hurdles and Solutions
00:03:04
Speaker
We've tried Slack channels, shared project management tools and weekly catch-ups, but It seems key details keep slipping through the cracks.
00:03:13
Speaker
Feels like every team is operating its own bubble. So we're growing fast, and I'm worried that if we don't you know fix this now, the cracks will only get bigger. How do we get everyone aligned and stop these costly miscommunications before you know they derail us?
00:03:31
Speaker
Thank you for any advice, Luke. All right, both. um As I always say, I'm sure you've never heard any of these situations before across your various client portfolios. ah Pete, I know this is your first scale up confession, so hopefully you'll be willing to skip to share some scar tissue. We always look to Nicola to jump on the grenade first and explain where she's going.
00:03:52
Speaker
I have so many. So why don't we why don't we start start with that theme Nicola, I mean before we dive into solving Luke's issues, i mean what are some of the things that that spoke to you in in in his confession that you recognise as common issues?
00:04:07
Speaker
Just this classic silo piece. I mean, coming from a marketing background, I hear this so often, especially in in some recent fractional roles where either marketing just does exactly what it's told and just gets pulled in all sorts of directions and has no kind of clear vision of where it's going.
00:04:24
Speaker
um Not really communicating with any teams, just doing what they're told. um or that everyone's kind of following their own agenda and often forgetting about the customer.
00:04:38
Speaker
So what's happening is product are building what they think they should be building. Sales are selling what they think should be selling. Marketing are doing the marketing stuff that they think they should be doing. And no one's actually going back to the basics and saying, right, who is our actual customer?
00:04:55
Speaker
And what is it that we need to be doing to make sure that we're giving them the best possible experience and growing the business? um And I find it amazing how you see how frequently this occurs in businesses that are doing really well.
00:05:08
Speaker
And this is what Luke says, you know, the business is growing despite all of this, but it is obviously limiting it now and it's going to continue to limit it. um But it's definitely not a ah unique situation. And I think what made me smile is that the immediate thing is let's add some tools in.
00:05:23
Speaker
Let's do an Asana. Let's have some slack and we'll chuck in loads more meetings and everything's going to be fine without really actually getting to the crux of the problem. Unfortunately, this is something that having a nice project management tool is not going to fix.
00:05:37
Speaker
Amazing. All right.
Strategic Planning and Incentives
00:05:38
Speaker
We've got a few good issues there. Pete, anything in Luke's confession speak to you and your experience? Yeah, for sure. I think um very, very similar to to as Nicola was saying, I think it's really common problem.
00:05:49
Speaker
um And I think that when I, from a CFO perspective, when I think of alignment, often it's kind of boils down to what are people's incentives and ah measures? And I think exactly as Nicola alluded to, if people aren't clear on that, if it's not connected to, you know, the business plan and the and the financial plan, people tend to just replace that vacuum with either what they know and are good at or what they,
00:06:13
Speaker
or what they like doing often those two things are the same things and people don't tend to act in bad faith but when they haven't got that direction they you know they might be doing something that's not connected to to really what you need and that tends to happen as you you know move beyond certain numbers of people and geographical proximity and different teams and add structure is that can that what's happened naturally in the past you know i can become more detached and Fascinating. I wasn't expecting you to go to incentives. i mean, it makes sense. Like, I mean, it's why we love having CFO in the seat, because I'll think about vision, but actually boiling it down to expressing that vision and incentives. Maybe not somewhere we've started. I mean, what do you think, Nicholas? We start there and it feels like an interesting place to so kick us off. I mean,
00:06:58
Speaker
Pete, you obviously have got some deep thoughts there. Nicola, you've made a point in in a previous confession, I think, about misaligned incentives between a couple of teams. Like, anything to kick us off there around the incentives point before we hand over to Pete?
00:07:12
Speaker
I think it's, It's how you think about incentives. I mean, I immediately think money, but it's also just about achieving your team's objectives. um And if they're not aligned, then you're going to have a huge problem. I think I was referring to to a time at GoCardless when I first joined and mine was all about self-serve small businesses and the sales team was all about mid-market.
00:07:33
Speaker
And so I had no incentive to achieve my objectives and prove I was doing a great job to actually support the sales team. And obviously their comp was all based on mid-market. So there was major issues, huge, as I think I shared before, someone pointed out, like having divorced parents, sales and marketing issues.
00:07:51
Speaker
Time to fix that one. But there's also the comp one. and And I think another piece is how are you compensating the sales team? What does a good deal look like? And without getting really into the detail, it sounds like selling all sorts of things that aren't actually built yet and creating chaos with product. If they're still getting their incentives by getting a deal closed, even if it's not the right fit, that's a very dangerous place to be.
00:08:15
Speaker
Love that. So, Pete, like when you go into a new entrepreneurial client, let's say it's a, I don't know if Luke's a newbie CEO or not. Let's say that he is, he might not have any clarity around the customer, therefore is bit flaky on the vision other than having good looking pitch deck that unlocked investor wallets, presumably.
00:08:35
Speaker
Why don't we assume that actually the vision's fairly clear, maybe we can get into some customer stuff, but let's say isn and he's not got no idea of who his customer is. How do you approach something like, how do you approach a situation like that then in terms of helping a founder start to see to see the levers that they can pull from like through the lens of incentives?
00:08:57
Speaker
so i think So I think firstly, as your conversation just alluded to, and incentives, there's a huge spectrum of incentives. Incentives is anything from really hard incentives like your commission structures all the way through to what do you just talk about day to day? And particularly as founders or CEOs, what what do your behaviors tell people you care about?
00:09:18
Speaker
through to you know how does your performance ah management process work and who tends to get promoted or who gets recognised. So there's this huge, when I say incentives, I mean in a very broad sense and then particularly um to the to to to the question you just asked in the sense of what are you measuring and what are you talking about and what do individuals feel responsible for, whether they're financially incentivised or not. or not Do they have clarity about what they're delivering?
00:09:44
Speaker
My preferred method for this in in almost every business that I have either worked in full time or that I now support has been try and establish some methodology of what I would call strategic planning, where you work back from your vision and from what the customers need, particularly based on your growth objectives. Because if you have growth objectives to grow 3, 4x in a short space of time, you might be dealing with very different customers that you have now.
00:10:12
Speaker
And then try and connect that deeply to a some form of financial plan. There's a risk in overengineering it, but you want your financial model and some of the KPIs and measures that you talk about day to day to be able to work back to you know tangible bits of effort. Quarterly for me has always worked quite well, but i and and often in in in fast growth um environments, a sort of OKR style process already exists like that.
00:10:36
Speaker
But I think that trying to tie that vision piece all the way through ah will also should or should ideally allow you to to identify what you need from different departments if it's marketing, sales, but you know particularly in this context, also tech. and So, yeah, my my starting point would probably be a strategic planning process to to to the question that you asked.
00:10:58
Speaker
Yeah, 100% agree. I think it's really important to work out what are we trying to achieve? Like what are our core company goals? And then how does that cascade down to each of the teams?
00:11:09
Speaker
How are we actually determining how we measure that as well? I think a common complaint from sales and marketing is, oh, we have all these targets and product and engineering don't, but it's absolutely possible to have um kind of core goals for them as well.
00:11:24
Speaker
And then seeing how they all tie up and then when you're reviewing company being on a, you know, a weekly all hands or whatever it looks like, it's always coming back to their core goals. And I also, um Pete, like to put in what we're not doing, because I find so often it's easy to go, oh, and we'll just fit this in as well.
00:11:41
Speaker
And so being really clear, like we are not doing international expansion, we are not going after this specific ICP until we've achieved these things. That's heavy. Okay, Luke. So just playing that back, Pete, Nicola, correct me if if I've picked this up wrong. So um we're going, the first thing we really want to know from Luke is like are we are we clear on on the vision? So what is the vision? So um from there, we're thinking about what's the customer profile? What's our growth aspirations? Is that going to change the the customer profile? if we're not clear on that, we've got an issue there.
00:12:12
Speaker
Then we're going into thinking about of making sure we've got the right setup to build a financial plan and then understand whether we're staying on track or not for financial plan.
CEO's Role in Vision and Alignment
00:12:22
Speaker
Link that down into our kind of operating plans, effectively, the operating machinery, how we make sure that teams are delivering effective, collaborating, delivering their own plans and delivering kind of cross team initiatives, which also then means Nicola, the point you made there, making sure that teams are really clear on what they're not doing. So driving ruthless prioritization.
00:12:44
Speaker
It's funny because it sounds so easy to say it like that, doesn't it? Luke's probably listening to this and thinking, fucking hell guys. so yeah so so um I think also as part of that is being really clear on who's your addressable market, um who's the buying group within that, what is your what are you actually offering them? like What is this amazing problem that you're solving and the product that you're actually delivering against that? So you can be really clear and have those have that ring fence like this is what we are this is what we're not I mean i'll just use an example I remember our sales team saying ah go cardless we can't just sell when it's only direct debit we need to have a credit card solution as well otherwise this is impossible it's like this is not what we are we are not about to branch out into every single payment solution we're laser focused on this and that's why we're focused on this audience and if a business wants that as well they're not the right fit for us and that's often the hardest thing particularly at an early stage is to say no to potential customers and
00:13:41
Speaker
and not start building for individuals um just to hit targets in the short term, because it feels like an easy win, because it's hugely disruptive when it's not. Pete, you sound that you had a thought as well. It makes sense to Claire.
00:13:53
Speaker
No, I think a very sort of strong agreement with that, really. And I think that there's, whether it's kind of an incoming CEO or a historic founder, I think that that point around what is your addressable market, basically continuing to find product market fit, even if you're going into a new market, you need to be able to do that. And you need, particularly in the example of you know of having a tech team, if your tech team doesn't have sufficient time to actually spend on research and development or iterating in a new market,
00:14:23
Speaker
you're to make it really hard for yourself to, let's say, double or triple in size. So if they are consumed by technical debt, consumed by being a feature factory for a very noisy sales team, your long-term growth aspirations are going to be really negatively affected.
00:14:37
Speaker
So you've got to start trying to connect your roadmap as part of your operating planning co process, not to be reactive to the latest pipeline, but be deeply connected to your your vision and your yeah and your operating plan and so on. And that that is hard to do. And as you say, we it's easy to say you know ah verbally over ah ah over a podcast.
00:14:58
Speaker
But in reality, at this stage of business, this is the the job of the CEO, the founder. This is the day-to-day rhythm you have to start getting yourself into to continue the upwards trajectory.
00:15:10
Speaker
I love that. Sorry, on, Nicola. I was going to love that expression. Feature factory. I'm keeping that one. Thank you, Pete. It's not mine. I absolutely can't complain. I've spoken to lot of CTOs over the last few months.
00:15:22
Speaker
yeah What I was going to say is... um There's a lot of kind of, you you read a lot, this sort of celebritization of scale up CEOs, lots of people wanna be a CEO. I don't think there's a tremendous depth of understanding of what it means to be the CEO for a lot of the folks that go out and get this job title and raise the money and get going and even enjoy quite a lot of initial success. i mean, I wouldn't say I enjoyed like breakout success, but I definitely got further than you might expect one to with an incredibly limited understanding of what my job actually was as the founder.
00:15:53
Speaker
um I try not to talk up the entrepreneurial operating system EOS in these podcasts. Nicola, you've done a few with me. Hopefully you'll agree. I don't talk talk up that book. I think they would get boring and people would tune out. I think in this case, it would be really worth Luke looking into like a third party operating system, like some sort of management leadership framework if he's never done that job before. I'd never been a CEO before and I didn't really know what the job entailed, even at...
00:16:19
Speaker
a hundred thousand B2B users. um In the entrepreneurial operating system, you basically are in, you read the book Traction and then you're encouraged to take your leadership team through um ah set of like three foundation days over 60 days where you design the right structure for the organization, get used to executing with discipline and accountability as a leadership team, and then define your vision on a long-term basis and your values, and then take that all the way through kind of operating plan. We talk about a one-year plan, 90-day rocks.
00:16:50
Speaker
And then Nicola, we even talk about an issues list, i.e. the things that we're not going to do right now. They're fires that we're going to choose to let burn. And then you agree to meet every quarter to sort of realign around those tools. You do a prescribed weekly meeting to stay on track or say when you're off track and then issues solve for things that are threatening that plan. And it just brings a level of rhythm and rigor into the business and So that then as you start to surround yourself with really good executive colleagues and then eventually good colleagues lower down the organization, those people can actually do great work. Like, cause kind of the point you've each made, I think so far is,
00:17:26
Speaker
while we could definitely help
Building a Trustworthy Leadership Team
00:17:27
Speaker
Luke, but Luke also needs to take responsibility for this and as CEO for figuring out where this business is going, how it's going to get there, what matters and what doesn't. doesn't so So this doesn't just turn into an advertorial for EOS.
00:17:39
Speaker
Love, any thoughts for each of you on operating rhythms, any other processes or approaches that you've seen done well, or if you as fractionals will typically grab newbie CEO by the scruff of the neck and and help them bring that clarity and sort of comprehensive rigor to bear on on on the situation. um You know, yeah I think one thing that was interesting is that um he mentions that in the leadership team meetings, they're just firefighting. And it sounds like there's maybe some more support that that Luke needs from that leadership team as well.
00:18:11
Speaker
And I would also question how much trust there is across each department. And that's so critical for this for the stage of business. i mean it's critical at any stage.
00:18:22
Speaker
But once there's trust, then people believe that you're doing this for the best interest of the company and the accountability as well. So, you know, my favorite is always five dysfunctions of a team.
00:18:32
Speaker
But I think it sounds like there's a lot of work that needs to be done in the leadership team to bring them all together because it has to start from the top. And if they're not aligned in the leadership team meeting, it's going to struggle to bring it through the teams as well.
00:18:46
Speaker
Nicola, can you just, just in case Luke isn't yet persuaded to read that book, and I agree that he should, you want to just very briefly talk through why you love five dysfunctions of a team and what that would lead to Luke actually doing as a result of listening to this advice?
00:19:00
Speaker
Yeah, it's all about how how to create effective leadership teams and and what's important for that. And it talks a lot about trust, accountability, ownership, and also not being afraid to say when something isn't working and asking for support. But most importantly, it talks about the leadership team is your number one team.
00:19:21
Speaker
It's not your engineering team or your marketing team or your sales team. think this is what people find the hardest to manage. It's like you are not just responsible for the marketing team. It's all about that. Ultimately, you may need to make decisions that could be relatively negative for your team, but are the right thing to do for the business.
00:19:38
Speaker
And I think it's a really good foundation for all leadership teams to read that book, understand, see where some of the gaps are. There's a great quiz at the back um to see how you're all doing.
00:19:49
Speaker
and But to really see um where some of the the challenges could be and where you need to work on. Another one is conflict. You know, one of the businesses that I joined, and they were all just so nice.
00:20:00
Speaker
everyone Everyone just wanted to agree and support each other. And there was a real fear of saying, actually, Pete, I'm not sure that this is the right direction for us to be going in.
00:20:10
Speaker
um Perhaps we need to rethink some of the ways we're looking at them the planning and the financial budget. and And Pete says he knows I'm doing it with best intent. So he's open to hearing my feedback and approaching it with curiosity versus going, how dare you critique this? You have no idea about finance.
00:20:27
Speaker
So it's all about creating that very healthy debate, which I think so often, particularly in young teams, people are very, very nervous of.
Aligning Product Roadmap with Goals
00:20:34
Speaker
my God, that's such good advice. um Pete, anything to add? one like What do you typically recommend? what have you seen? Well, any books, any approaches?
00:20:42
Speaker
Do you just grab the CEO by the scruff of the neck and drag them up the experience curve? ah I think a couple of CEOs I've worked with might feel like I've tried to. um But no, I mean, look, I think that ah all of those things are absolutely right. I guess for this specific example that Luke shared, I think that probably the key process, if you like, that feels like it's not perhaps working in the way that Luke would like is is really around product roadmapping, ah product prioritization and and reporting and so on. And that is, ah think in B2B SaaS companies,
00:21:18
Speaker
It's almost always one of the things that people find hardest. I think it's there's actually not that very many really good proven methodologies out there to make it work. and I think product people in particular find it really hard sometimes to operate in that environment. So I definitely think getting some alignment with his leadership team around what the product process looks like, what how how you prioritize different products, connecting that to your plan.
00:21:40
Speaker
I think Nicola raised such good point earlier. Make sure that also includes what you say no to because it's easy to say yes to a bunch of things, but it's when you know when
Influence of CEO on Culture and Behavior
00:21:48
Speaker
later done down the line a customer asks you for this and the sales director still wanting to hit their target and so on.
00:21:54
Speaker
So all of that stuff. I also think there's always this element, whether it's founders, CEOs, or yeah or the leadership team in general, and I think this kind of ties in with that one team mentality and how you also go out and behave as a team, of never underestimating the impact that your behavior will have on all of those people around you that are involved in this. So for this specific example,
00:22:16
Speaker
if you get really excited by cha talking to customers and exploring different feature ideas and are visibly in the office or wherever, whiteboarding stuff and talking that up, or even just, you know, you shout about the latest big sales deal that's been closed. Even if we know that our salesperson has made up a load of functionality that still doesn't exist, you are just encouraging and exacerbating this behavior. And that is going to be so much more influential than you would.
00:22:43
Speaker
I think a lot of founders realised. I think that's something ah that that's um underestimated. So, yeah, im those those two things probably the things that stick out as well to me. That's such a good point. And it's funny, actually, because, so Nicola, as my team at Yapster, as we went through the process of building enough trust as a leadership team to then engage in healthy conflicts, where that political sort of social capital often ended up being spent,
00:23:09
Speaker
was on bringing me back down to earth, like not in a destructive way, but just I just wasn't, I hadn't appreciated how many of my quirks that were woven quite deeply into the DNA of the company, including the things that many of the early customers really liked.
00:23:24
Speaker
were actually the root of some dysfunctions. You know, I'm quite a process averse person. So i'm not i'm not a product visionary that's whiteboarding Pete, but like, I guess my equivalent is I'm, you know, I was a corporate lawyer, I'm a service professional. They groom us to stay up all night jumping has ah however high the client demands.
00:23:41
Speaker
You bring that mindset into a product business that can be extraordinarily disruptive. And of course you've got the biggest job title, you're responding to the most important quote client.
00:23:54
Speaker
incredibly difficult difficult for an organization to shake itself out of that bad behavior. um so Luke, I hope you've picked up on those pieces of
Leadership and Tool Utilization
00:24:02
Speaker
advice there. In addition to what we said earlier in thinking about that sequence of of um vision to to operational deliverables, you've got to build team health. Nicola's recommended book, ah Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni is a great shout.
00:24:16
Speaker
Pete's recommended you also try and find some sort of proven process, but perhaps by a trusted CTO. for your product methodology and then again spend that that willingness to engage in conflict that Nicola's recommendation will build for you to then make sure that your product decisions are right. Sorry Nicola, looks like you've thought. There's two other things as well. I think often we can get very internal and we build out our product roadmap based on what we think customers want.
00:24:41
Speaker
um i I did some advisory work for a company where Product had this whole set roadmap and and sales were shouting, saying this isn't what the customers want. And they were just at loggerheads and they weren't going anywhere. So I just ran some customer interviews. And actually, on this occasion, sales were right.
00:24:57
Speaker
And product were building stuff that they just weren't interested in. And it was only when I played them back the recordings that they went, oh, OK. And they just didn't have the information they needed. It was more just like, this isn't the right thing to do, but there was no evidence behind it.
00:25:10
Speaker
um So that's one. And then on the other side, often sales think, oh, the customers asked for this, we must build it. But if you say, I'm afraid this isn't something that we're going to have in the next 12 months, often it's just like a nice to have. I know on so many situations where I've been in negotiation, im like, I'll definitely sign if you can add this feature and they'll just go, no. And I'm like, well, I'm going to sign it anyway. I just thought I'd ask. um So actually, sometimes you don't need to to build in these extra features. They're very much nice to have. so The other thing that I thought was interesting was the bit about customer success. And it seems like there is a major breakdown there.
00:25:46
Speaker
And that making sure that often ah making sure that customer success is as much a part of the understanding of of the product roadmap, but also feeding into it because they're speaking to the customers every day and so often they're forgotten about.
00:25:59
Speaker
Yeah, it's it's it's so true. um Nicola, ah you referenced it earlier. I would love if you're willing to spend a few of the the minutes that we've got remaining talking about why tools are not a panacea.
00:26:11
Speaker
Because it hasn't come up on prior confession. Oh my goodness. There are so many scenarios where we've had like different departments using different tools. So someone's in Google Docs, someone else is using Asana, someone else is using, you know, Monday.com.
00:26:27
Speaker
How does this work? We're using different ones. Then there's the second one where people love setting it up. They add all the projects, never gets used again. um So and or they revert back to a Google spreadsheet. um And I think you can spend a lot of time getting it ready, which could be invested in in way more productive areas.
00:26:50
Speaker
um So i think the first thing is make sure that everyone in the business is using the same tools. um The second one is work out who's owning it. and making sure that it's kept up to date.
00:27:00
Speaker
Because if no one owns it and has overall responsibility, it will just end up being that sort of thing. Oh, we've got a meeting quick five minutes before everyone update ah And then no one looks at it. um So you've got to really make sure that it's going to add some value.
00:27:14
Speaker
And if they doesn't, I mean, Pete, you must have ripped out some tools in your time. Yes, I certainly have ah gone in and removed remove bits and pieces. um Look, i ah i this is my lens on it, but I can't help coming back to incentives and measures um because, yeah, implementing a new tool can feel like work and progress, but what dial is it changing?
00:27:38
Speaker
And to to this point around CS, I think it's good thing. um Even at the beginning, I think Luke mentioned, you know, business is going well. we've We've won lots of new business. Are we talking about and NRR as much as we should do? Are we measuring NRR? Are we measuring other success metrics for CS?
00:27:53
Speaker
And in each of our teams, if we don't have clear measures, they're always at risk of filling that vacuum that we talked about earlier by, oh, we use this tool in my mark last place, that's going to solve the problem. But is it?
00:28:06
Speaker
We don't, you know, can you prove it? Is it where the constraint lies? um If you like your manufacturing and your theory of constraints, one of my favourite and you know ways of of thinking about this so yeah it's very much measures for me I have to say i personally have tried lots of different project management tools and exactly what we described and I've never cracked it I'd say anybody who's worked in my finance teams has definitely experienced what Nicola just described of oh five minutes before so I've never figured that out but I do believe if you measure people and hold them accountable to the right things they often figure it out for you
00:28:39
Speaker
I think often they get used for outputs versus outcomes. So, oh, look how busy I've been. I've done these 25 things, but are they actually relevant? And that's why what I love is just having that very clear dashboard, which I think is you know very much an EOS piece, which is something the whole company is looking at.
00:28:56
Speaker
These are the 510 core metrics or progress on the product roadmap that we're going to perhaps just very simply traffic light and just see how we're progressing against them. And that's something that is shared and viewed and there are actions taken off the back of it.
00:29:13
Speaker
That's an amazing point. It's interesting, actually. I... um Two of the points you've just made there really spoke to my prior experience. So the first one is I've just realized, I've just read my notes, and Luke talks about poor customer comms. It's obviously driving him crazy.
00:29:29
Speaker
ah don't think he talks about there being significant churn. And it's obviously growing. I mean, but maybe they're growing and just outgrowing churn, so they do have a leaky bucket problem. But they might not even have a leaky bucket problem. So piece of advice to Luke, and it depends on your situation, is If you're like me, and I hope to God you're not, you might be really fired up or really heartbroken based on the last conversation you had with the customer. And it might have no be you might have it might not bear very much reference to how the business is actually performing.
00:29:58
Speaker
So um Pete's advice there about being anchored to the metrics and Nicola's advice about really understanding who the target customer is and what they care about and whether you are or are not delivering against that.
00:30:08
Speaker
um Please at the scale you're at now, don't just do it by gut. I did it by gut much longer than I should have. And then the data revealed that my gut was actually really off. And I considered myself to being quite an instinctive person. That was really humbling.
00:30:22
Speaker
And then the second point that was just made about tools, um My business, Yapster, was a mobile communication business that was a product that was delivered top down at scale to really big employers. So I think Next PLC, the retailer, we rolled our frontline mobile communication software out to 30,000 of their employees.
00:30:40
Speaker
We got to like 98% sign up adoption and then weekly active usage. like It was a roaring success in that business. And um I saw like behavioral change done amazingly well on Next. They didn't do it because I was so amazing. The product was OK, but like it was also because Next has been one of the leading operators on the high street because they're actually pretty good at operations.
00:31:02
Speaker
ah Yeah. And um their managers were so effective about making sure that once they picked a tool, anybody that tried to communicate up or down or across the chain kind of outside of the the um accepted, the endorsed tool, just got redirected back to it. So I'm afraid, Luke, it comes back to your role as CEO and built that strong leadership team that once you have decided on a process and then enabling tools,
00:31:29
Speaker
If you're not walking the walk, then it's in in no small part that that's on you. So I know Pete's already made that point, but i just wanted to reinforce it from a place of experience. If if you're not if you're not determining process and making sure people follow it, um it's only going to get worse, worse from there. So, wow, I think I've been my soapbox three times in this episode. I feel like Luke needs it.
Prioritizing Impactful Tasks
00:31:50
Speaker
um there's There's one thing to add on that as well, which is like a ah simple hack that we found in marketing where you know everyone has lots of marketing ideas and um from sales, like we need this, we need this, and and from other departments as well.
00:32:01
Speaker
And so we used to say, just fill in fill in this form. It was a type form. And it filtered out, I would say, 80% of requests because people never actually got around to filter to actually filling it in. And it had maybe very simple questions, maybe five.
00:32:13
Speaker
But this also works really well for products. So when are like, we've got to have this, right? Just fill this in, like... What's the additional revenue it's going to bring? um What's the benefit is? How many clients will it impact all of this? Oh, suddenly it's not quite so important anymore.
00:32:27
Speaker
So tools can play a really, really big part in that. um And you can just have something very simple. Love that. And again, you then just need to enforce it and keep referring people back. if you want this on the roadmap, fill it in.
00:32:41
Speaker
Love that. um Pete, Nicola, I know we're coming up on the time that you've got allocated to
Conclusion and Further Advice
00:32:45
Speaker
this. There's so much in there. I'm always fascinated to know like how much of this advice these excitable CEOs actually take, because if Luke was to go and and explore and implement everything that's been recommended to him from here,
00:32:58
Speaker
and given that they're growing fast already, I'm sure that he'll keep the train on the tracks and and remove a lot of his frustration. So thank you so much. I'm assuming as ever, you're happy for me to put your your your details in in LinkedIn and anybody listening needs a ah further conversation, you're happy just for them to DM you on LinkedIn?
00:33:15
Speaker
Of course, 100%. Absolutely. Fantastic. Well, thank you so much both. Thanks, Rob. Cheers.