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Book Review: The Advantage by Patrick Lencioni

I just finished The Advantage by Patrick Lencioni on why organization health is the number one reason companies succeed. Lencioni argues it’s the true competitive advantage companies have.

I’ve read a lot of business books and have gone through an MBA program to learn about competitive advantages and the “it” factors that makes some companies better than others. Most of the readings have been about culture with a sprinkling of motivations. Culture makes the most noise for success, and it’s not a surprise. Culture is more uniquely applied for a company. How it operates with values and its mission. If values and the mission provide the map of a company, then organization health is the step-by-step directions to navigate.
The key take-aways:
  • Organizational health starts from the top. Much like culture, leaders can determine the health of company. Eliminating office politics (big points here from Lencioni) while ensuring the leaders row all in the same direction fosters strong health. Removing politics and acting in as a single cohesive executive team cultivates greater success than operating well but in silos.
  • Lencioni hits hard on trust across the executive team. This is the key to removing politics. Encouraging individual leaders to be vulnerable enables folks to work better together understanding individual purposes and reasons for actions – he encourages leaders to share vulnerable stories from early years (oftentimes, childhood). Trust enables leaders to have healthy debate, and agreement to move forward together as a team despite opposing feelings individually.
  • Healthy organizations exhibit cohesive teams where the whole is greater than the parts. Organizationally healthy companies exhibit functional groups who may operate outside their functional silos and even, at times, reducing effectiveness of a functional role to support another function as long as the greater company is positively impacted. In one case, this could mean sharing engineering resources to help on the marketing or sales side.
  • Meetings are big, big deal. Typically, meetings are also a waste today due to not only a lack of action, but poor structure and categorization. Lencioni argues for four types of meetings: the daily check-in, weekly tactical, monthly strategic, and quarterly off-site. In some ways, these meetings can actually increase the number of meetings in the short-term. However, long-term, meetings can reduce, but also be highly actionable making meetings productive. Being structured on the topics and the goals for each meeting type drive results. Lencioni argues that this is the biggest and lowest hanging fruit for companies.

This book was recommended to me by a friend who works at one of the top companies to work for in Atlanta. It’s not surprise why he recommended this as he’s seeing the book’s influence at his company. It’s clear to him how Lencioni was onto something on building organizational health.

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Coaching Themselves Out

“Coaching members out.” I heard this phrase a few months ago as a euphemism for firing or terminating. I thought it was a good way of sharing how leadership and managers ensure smooth transitions out of a company, beyond just “getting rid of an employee”.
Then, I heard a twist to the phrase – “coaching themselves out”. In this case, it’s the member of an organization who is removing him/ herself by subtle environmental/ cultural cues. This doesn’t necessarily mean a company is ostracizing a team member, or otherwise explicitly motivating a team member to leave. That’s bad.
I heard this phrase from a company who was recently voted as one of the best companies to work for. Folks here coach themselves out because they feel they are the “wrong fit”. Their values, ambitions, and the like do not align with that of the company’s.
The company is enthusiastic about living out the mission and values. Here, team members are encouraged to speak up to other team members when they are not living up to the mission and values.
Being so vocal and explicit about mission and values entrenches folks who believe and follow the prerogative. On the other hand, such explicit faith means those who do not align eventually leave on their own accord. Culture begets culture.

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Taking a Look at Bezos’ Letter to Shareholders

Jeff Bezos, CEO Amazon, recently published his letter to Amazon shareholders. It’s a good, inspiring read into Bezos’ vision for Amazon, and how he pushes the company to constantly stay ahead of its competitors. Here are a few key tenets:
  • “Day 1”. Bezos opens the letter describing why he constantly focuses on Day 1 – customer obsession, eager adoption of external trends, etc. Beyond Day 1 is Day 2, “stasis” which leads to irrelevance and then decline and death. He focuses every day on Day 1.
  • “True Customer Obsession” is at the heart of Day 1. Bezos claims every customer, no matter how much s/he says is happy, is dissatisfied. Customers always want more, better – even if s/he doesn’t know it. For Bezos, he pushes Amazon to always innovate on behalf of the customer.
  • As part of true customer obsession is the notion of getting to the true crux of how customers feel about a product or service – “resist ‘proxies’” like surveys.
  • “Embrace External Trends”. In this case, Bezos is referring to realizing and capitalizing on macro trends. Fighting a big trend is like “fighting the future”. Instead, embrace the trend (i.e. artificial intelligence), and you can ride it like a tailwind.
  • “Disagree and commit”. To make decisions expeditiously, Bezos will openly voice his disagreement (usually a genuine disagreement of opinion), but commit to supporting an opposing idea. The idea here is that being wrong may be less costly than being slow – which is “going to be expensive for sure”.
  • Quickly escalate points of disagreement/ misalignment. Making a decision based on “wearing one down” is slow and “de-energizing”.

Give the letter a look-over.

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Book Review: Primed to Perform

In late October at the Sales Force Productivity Conference, I kept hearing whispers about a great speaker that I didn’t get a chance to hear – Lindsay McGregor. She talked about culture and what motivated employees. She also co-authored a book about high performing teams. This has always been interesting to me, so I sought out Lindsay to talk to her about her talk. I ended up running into her several times. When I told her all her books at the conference were sold out, she happily told me to send her an email, and she’d send a signed copy.
Well, I got the book in November – Primed to Perform – that she cowrote with Neel Doshi. After reading the book, it’s one of my favorites! I finished it a while ago, but I wanted the material to sit a little while longer before writing a review of it. Yes, it was that good.
McGregor and Doshi studied hundreds of companies and other studies about high-performing companies to find the key factors of what drove their successes – developing the Total Motivation Factor (“TOMO”).
Here are my major take-aways:
  • TOMO is made up for 3 direct motivators and 3 indirect. They range from the most powerful motivator to the least influential, and then least influential to the most powerful “de-motivator” – Play, Purpose, Potential, Emotional, Economic, and Inertia.
  • Direct motives – “Play” is the game and the enjoyment attained by the role/ job. “Purpose” relates to the outcome of the activity – the impact. “Potential” is how the activity enables some downstream effect aligning with some personal goals.
  • Indirect motives – “Emotional” pressure occurs through disappointments, guilts, and shame. “Economic” pressure comes from solely having some reward or even avoiding some punishment. “Inertia”, then, is the most powerful indirect motivator. Inertia is the motive where they do what they do simply because they it’s the norm – “It’s a job”.
  • TOMO can be calculated for teams by assessing scores in each of the motives – sample assessments can be found at www.primedtoperform.com. The highest performing companies tend to have TOMO scores at least 15 points higher than their industry peers.
  • Tactical and adaptive performance are critical strategies for every company. Tactical refers to the structure and processes of how a business operates. In sales, this may include following sales cadences for outreach. For marketing, this may include the editorial calendar for social media postings. It’s the plan. Adaptive performance refers to the ability to adjust to changes quickly, and perform at a high level. The military refers to adaptive capabilities as VUCA – variability, uncertainty, complexity, ambiguity. VUCA enables military personnel to adapt to fast-changing scenarios where plans go awry.
  • Beware of cobra farms. When India was a British colony, there was a bounty placed on dead cobras. At the time, cobras were plentiful and roaming wild. With compensation for dead cobras, suddenly, cobra farms started manifesting. This created the wrong solution as there were many times more live cobras being bred. Beware of the incentives and rewards put in place, and how success is measured.

There are many more take-aways from the book. In fact, this is one book I will read at least a few times a year to continually remind myself as my company grows and I build my teams. The company will continue to evolve, and enabling a culture that is agile and adaptive will be key to growth and having a sustainable competitive advantage.

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TAG Sales Leadership Panel Take-Aways: High Velocity Sales Organizations

I attended a Technology Association of Georgia (TAG) Sales Leadership event a couple weeks ago on High Velocity Sales Organizations.

(I’m a little late to posting this. Having scaled down to one post a week as I round up 100 Strangers, 100 Days (today’s day 89!), my posts are being stretched out.)

The event headlined:
My take-aways from the event:
  • It’s hard to get the attention in sales, right? Every second counts – literally. The first 10 seconds are to earn a minute. Prospects are looking to be interrupted – pattern interrupt. Kyle mentioned how he was interrupted by a great cold call. Kyle told the caller to “email him later” because he was busy. The sales rep responded with, “are you sure you want to do that?” Kyle was taken back. “What did you say?” The sales rep responded slowly this time, “Are you… sure… you want… to do that?” At that point, Kyle was unsure. Kyle gave him the time. Or another cold call, “Hi, this is SO-SO. How do you handle cold calls?” It broke the ice.
  • Modern sales orgs are challenged to find the balance between “analytical scalable, measure” and “human, empathetic, customer-centric”.
  • Brian has a great track record of growing sales teams from the ground up. At Rubicon, Brian has grown from 1 to 85 sales reps in 10 months. Brian shares the keys to growth are: evangelizing the company message and vision; enable sales professionals to be pioneers; and separating the volatility of sales processes to an innovation team. What works then, gets implemented with the sales team.
  • Wanda shared how she grew from old-school orgs to very dynamic sales organizations. She recognizes the aspects of sales she can affect and what she cannot. She cites the importance of dumping baggage (possibly rigid sales professionals who do not align to the culture). Look for people who are agile, and enable them with the right tools – right tools in the right hands of the right people.
  • Brian also highlighted how the culture of sales people have a consistent theme from previous lives (applicable beyond sales, too). He looks for hustle. Can this person hustle? Is this person intrinsically self-motivated? Can candidate be beat down over and over again, and keep going? He looks for resiliency. To assess this, he tries to get the other person to open up about vulnerable moments.
  • Wanda stresses the importance for excellent communicators. If the email is trash, it says a lot. She’s looking for someone who is aggressive for the job in email. Customers will see the same type of emails. She wants her team to have lots of empathy. Be researchers and technologists – seamlessly pivoting between sales and marketing.
  • Tyce describes three types of people – 1. Person you can tell what to do, and it’ll happen. 2. Just won’t get done. 3. With no instructions, it’ll get done no matter what. Understand the different types and how the generations of people may affect them.
  • Two suggested sales books – 1. Message to Garcia by Elbert Hubbard. 2. How to Win Friends & Influence People by Dale Carnegie.
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Trouble Brewing with Friends Who Are Partners/ Colleagues

Sat down with a young film Director and Producer recently who is having trouble with his team. He’s produced several independent pieces and is about to work with a massive brand and big time director. He’s real excited about the opportunities coming up, but more recently, he’s frustrated with his colleagues who also happen to be good friends.
There have been pains and frustrations with key individuals which have threatened production; meanwhile, relationships between his brand and his clients have been strained due to the same colleagues. The crux of the problem is working with friends who are amateurs and are not as determined as he is.
While this Director is working hard and building a name in the industry, his colleagues are neither at his level, nor are they working as hard to be better. The production is HISbrand, and he is realizing it is his brand that is being harshly affected. His visions are being muddied by those representing him. In an industry based on brand and can be fickle, every negative relationship can tarnish opportunities for years.
Thoughts here:
  • It’s real, so treat it as such. One of my lessons from Body Boss is that you have to treat your startup as a true company (or Production Company in this case). It’s not a hobby if you want it to truly turn into something special. You can start from a hobby, but eventually, you must treat it as a company. Everything counts. Everything matters.
  • Your team is an extension of you. For entrepreneurs, it’s the co-founding team, the leadership, the employees. Top-to-bottom, everyone represents your brand. Hire slow. Fire fast.
  • It’s not about friends, it’s about quality… about passion… about vision. Some say working with friends is bad, but that’s not the real problem. The problem arises when you can’t work professionally together, and how working relationships can impact personal ones. Sometimes, friends should just stay friends.
  • Re-frame the hard talks. The Director is worried about impacting personal relationships when considering how to approach his colleagues about moving in different professional paths. However, the longer he procrastinates, the more mistakes occur. It’s important to realize that hard talks will occur as the company grows, as more customers onboard, etc. Re-frame the difficult talks into interests (rather than positions). Each talk needs to happen for a reason, so re-frame to the positive outcome of this.

One of the greatest challenges of any business is maintaining a positive culture rooted in its founding mission and values. The candidates and partners businesses bring on board has a tremendous say in how companies can be successful.

For the Director, it’s important to realize that not everyone will fit the culture and passion of the company, and he needs to take action sooner rather than later. The Director is the leader, and must lead by example.

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Sales Culture Development: Take-Aways from TAG Panel

I attended another TAG Sales Leadership event last week — “Sales Culture Development”. I’m appreciating all these events as I continue to develop as a sales professional (should never really stop learning) and as we, at SalesWise, develop our own sales team. 
Given the panel discussion was about sales culture, there was heavy emphasis on how to engage sales professionals as well as reviewing the metrics that sales professionals are evaluated on. 
The panel included: 
Here were the main topics I took away:
  • Technology presents great opportunities and challenges. It’s important to recognize the dependency we become on technology and how personal effort and attention “disrupts” mass sales efforts. However, in a day of technology bombardment, personalization can be the key to sales.
  • 50-50 training on soft and hard skills. Much of sales comes down to effort, and yet, there are far more resources on teaching sales pros the hard skills to sell, rather than how to address the person and relationship. “Listen through the solution”, don’t “sell through the solution”.
  • Measure with balance. Tom Snyder, Founder of Vorsight BP and accomplished speaker, shared the importance of task clarity. It’s curious how much of sales metrics are based on outcomes (close X-many deals by the end of the quarter) which is akin to a football coach who tells his players to “score!” That’s obvious. What coaches really do is speak with players on the HOW and WHY. 
  • Focus on the funnel. Especially focus on, yes, the bottom of the funnel to ensure deals close, but then, focus on the top of the funnel. Everything in the middle tends to sort itself through effort.
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Sales Team and Sales Reps Engagement to Drive Results: Take-Aways from TAG Panel

TAG Panel on “How Dynamic Sales Orgs Drive Results”. Pictured from left to right: Jon Birdsong, Mary Ford, Ryan Radding, Eric Mercado, and Kyle Tothill
I attended a Technology Association of Georgia (TAG) event for sales leadership a couple weeks ago about “How Dynamic Sales Orgs. Drive Results”. The panel included:

The majority of the discussion revolved around engaging sales teams either in mentoring and coaching or via direct incentives. Here are a few take-aways:

  • There’s a spectrum of engagement and performance that ranges from (low to high): Resistant, Reluctant, Existent, Compliant, Committed, and Compelled. Mitigate (or remove) reps in the first three groups while promoting and sharing practices of the high performance reps who exhibit innovation and leadership.
  • Drive engagement in these areas: Connection (connect individuals together to form the team), Support (mentoring and coaching), Reward (incentives), Progress (clear career progression model), and Structure (ensure alignment and understanding of roles and responsibilities).
  • Measuring success and engagement should go beyond metrics and activities. Include personal goals – set, met, exceeded? Understand that the “outside” lives of reps has a very real impact on work performance.
  • Beyond retention and promotion stats, evaluate the effectiveness and engagement of the team with referrals by reps and how quickly reps ramp up.
  • Gamification plays to the competitive nature of sales reps with a layer of transparency and accountability.
  • Pull ideas from reps on selling, don’t just push “best practices”. Sales reps can be innovative in how they sell and pushing “best practices” may not be conducive to the reps’ individual styles.
  • Coaching tends to have a “master-subordinate” structure set with boundaries while mentoring allows freer structure and less formality. Mentors tend to go beyond sales topics or even at the current job. Have/ establish both.

Good points raised by the team, and continues to illustrate that to drive sales, it’s all about driving engagement from the team. Companies are organizations of people. Engaging the people within, at the group and individual level, can produce a culture that drives sustainable practices for business growth and team motivation.

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Build Startups With Influential Values

One of the most fun parts of a startup is building the vision and culture.
I remember one of my business school professors preaching companies with purposes addressing the needs of the world. He had a successful company built on the company’s ethos within organizations as a rallying cry for employees. 
Purpose give us the WHY of the company, while values give us the WHO of the company and its people. These influential values, as BrightHouse calls them, aren’t the simplistic, broad words like “teamwork” and “community”. These words are generic — loosely applicable to any company or group. Thus, they drive little loyalty amongst an organization’s people.
Instead, my former professor demonstrated the importance of influential values that an organization’s people would live by. BrightHouse cites influential values drive 65% more employee loyalty and greater returns to the company — 1,681% returns vs. 118% of the S&P over a 15-year span.
I’m a firm believer in my former professor’s message, and I was excited to develop Body Boss’s mission and values. I included these elements in Postmortem of a Failed Startup: Lessons for Success, too, to share our greater vision. 
So recently, I was pleased to hear a friend share with me how the values in the book resonated with her, and helped her form the values of her company.

Here were Body Boss’s values:
  • Set the benchmark. Be the leader in the work we do and the lives we live. Never settle – always strive for greatness. 
  • Work smarter, not just harder. Couple intelligent decisions with smarter actions to produce the best outcomes we can all be proud of.
  • Spot others. Motivate and support the community around us and be ready even when never asked.
  • Hold ourselves accountable. Play a fair game and live with the utmost integrity to ourselves and our team.
  • Have fun even with hard work. Every set, every rep is a challenge that consistently pushes us. Enjoy the challenges and reap the benefits of hard work.
  • Admire the mirror. Have confidence in yourself and your abilities, and know you can improve as much as you push yourself.
I admit the values can read a bit cheesy, but that’s the fun of it! We were excited and happy about the values. They were specific to our company and our company’s ethos. They were values we rallied around.
What are the values of your company? How do you and your colleagues align with those values? Do they give you greater meaning and engagement?
Side note: so far, the book has had great feedback amongst people all over — from consulting to startups from wantrepreneurs to corporate employees, and from early entrepreneurs to more seasoned. It’s been great to hear how different chapters of the book have resonated on so many different levels.
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Joining A Startup Has Been A Massive Culture Shift

It’s been a little over a month since I signed on full-time with a startup (two including my month of contracting), and it’s been a big culture shift for me. Jumping straight in…
  • I go to the same office everyday. I don’t actually have to go into the office everyday, but at our stage, it’s important to be amongst the team to iterate our sales and marketing strategies. However, I still switch my afternoon environment to find new energy and meet new people.
  • I’m reluctant to use outside resources. Having bootstrapped startups in the past and working with other startups with little funding, I can appreciate not only wearing multiple hats, but also using every resource I do have to accomplish a need. However, now, I have resources (in the team or externally) to help produce what I need.
  • Food! Now working at ATV, I essentially have free breakfast and snacks. Additionally, my company does team lunches on Tuesdays and Thursdays + Startup Chowdown on Fridays. This means that I can conserve a lot of cash by forgoing some grocery shopping.
  • My time has been incredibly focused and in overdrive on SalesWise. I used to do a lot more high-level strategy in consulting. Now part of an early-stage startup, I’m back to an early morning, late night, and much-of-the-weekend grind… fully dedicated to a single company’s cause. Time management has become even more important.
  • I’m pushed farther and faster by everyone around me. The team is made up of highly successful, bright team members. They push me to think bigger, faster, more creatively, and they’ll provide support, too. I’ve learned a lot so far from everyone on the team, and it’s been overwhelmingly good.
  • I have benefits and consistent flow of money! It’s strange to know money is coming in after years of… “instability”. I can save even more now as the company pays the majority of health insurance. It’s interesting how having this job has been saving me more money than when my income was far less steady.
  • I’m working so deep in the tactical that I’ve been lacking at more strategic thinking. We’re iterating so fast that I’ve been managing website builds and changes, performing sales, building marketing campaigns, assessing marketing content, etc. I have not stepped back enough to assess the grander picture. This worries me as this created many blindspots while building Body Boss – so deep in the weeds I failed to realize the greater picture to optimize direction and tasks. 
It’s been a great change for me so far, and I have to really earn my keep with this talented team. Looking forward to the next month and hopefully many more more to follow.
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