A Shared North Star Turns Silos Into One Leadership Team with Troy Stoll

We’re celebrating our 100th episode of Get Amplified by bringing in Troy Stoll from Dynatrace (APAC), an energising leader who’s lived what it really takes to make alignment stick. 

If you’ve seen strong teams slowed by silos, mixed metrics, or underlying friction, this is a clearer way forward. By aligning on a shared North Star and working back to remove friction between marketing, sales, services, and customer success, the APAC team is now executing with real pace and consistency. 

We get into why over-communication is a leadership responsibility, especially as teams evolve, new leaders join, and priorities shift. It’s less about telling people what to do, and more about helping them understand why it matters and where they fit into the bigger picture.

A big part of the story is the Switch change framework and why shared language matters more than most leaders realise. We break down its three core ideas: finding the bright spots (what’s already working), shaping the path (making the right behaviours easier to follow), and motivating the elephant (tapping into what actually drives people to act). 

The shift here is simple but powerful: stop trying to fix everything, and start amplifying what already works. That’s what shrinks change and helps it land faster across teams, cultures, and geographies.

Troy also connects this to the Team Speed Check as a practical way to surface purpose, trust, clarity, and simplicity, so leaders aren’t guessing what’s going on, they’re responding to reality.

If you’re looking for actionable ideas on cross-functional leadership, communication, and building trust that shows up in pipeline, renewals, and better customer outcomes, this one’s worth your time.

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Transcript

A 100th Episode Celebration

Sam 0:10

Welcome to Get Amplified, the podcast about the people that power the tech industry. Oh, Vicki, how are you? How's the weather?

Vic 0:17

The weather is glorious, Sam. I think spring has finally arrived.

Sam 0:22

About blooming time. About blooming time. Hey, how many of these have we done?

Vic 0:28

I think that's a bit of the loaded question, isn't it?

Sam 0:30

It might be.

Vic 0:33

So, gosh, I feel like I should have a party hat on because this is our hundredth episode, Sam. So I mean. Thank you very, very much for putting up with me. And I have to say, I think it's helped me immensely with my clients because I don't talk at all and I I don't know if you've noticed, but I don't talk as much as I used to.

Sam 0:53

Maybe not. Maybe not. Maybe not. Well, we just let our guests talk. They're, you know, they're the they're the main event, aren't they? Exactly. Yeah, wow. A century of episodes. Yeah. Fabulous stuff. So we must have a really special guest on today, then.

Vic 1:08

Oh, we do. We absolutely do. So we have with us Troy Stoll from Dynatrace. And over the last few years, it has just been an absolute privilege to work with Troy. And so to have him on for our 100th podcast, we had a brainstorm internally of who's the right person to have on. And it was just unanimous. We have to have Troy. So Troy, I'm so thrilled you're here for this.

Troy 1:34

Thanks Vicky. I'm so privileged. It's the 100th podcast. I feel like I should have brought a party hat. That would have been amazing.

Sam 1:41

Brilliant. Brilliant. How's the weather where you are, Troy? Because you're not quite in the UK, are you?

Speaker 1 1:46

Correct. I'm a little way away. And if you haven't picked up from the funny accent, I am based in Australia. So I'm based in Australia. I'm based in Melbourne. But I work in Dynatrace and I cover a quite a big area. So I cover Asia Pacific from New Zealand to India. So yes, lots of, you know, I'm always in one half of the world somewhere. So it's always good.

Meet Troy From Dynatrace APAC

Sam 2:04

Makes sense. Makes sense. Well, well, you're very welcome on the podcast and congratulations. And also thank you for being our hundredth guest. We really appreciate it.

Troy 2:13

No problem. No problem. And you know, I always love listening to Vicky's and your podcasts. They're always great and always get lots of key points and key key messages and understand and learn a lot as well, which is great.

Sam 2:24

Fabulous. Really appreciate it. So maybe you could start, as we always ask our guests, as you will know as a listener, by giving us a sort of a career history today, a potted career history, if you will.

Troy 2:35

Well, career, yeah, potted career history. I'll try and keep it brief because I have been in the industry over 25 years, which you know, someone asked me last week what moisturizer do I use because I look young, but trust me, I haven't got much hair left. This is always a problem. I don't know if we're gonna have video on the in the podcast, but it's a bit of a struggle. So I've been afforded a pretty interesting career, actually. So, you know, I started off originally from a technical perspective in IT some 25 years ago, um, and then became an architect and moved from kind of post-sales into sales, into account management, even running customer success. So I ran customer success, I've run basically lots of different parts of an organization. And as a career, I've worked at Dynatrace for quite a while, I think in into my 18th year. So that's that's quite a while. But um for those of you that know on the podcast any of the history about Dynatrace, for me it's been like working for five or six different companies.

Vic 3:30

Yeah.

Troy 3:31

So between you know being part of a massive conglomerate to pre-IPO, IPO, post-IPO, um, it's been a pretty wild ride. So yeah, very interesting, which means there's there's lots of good stories um that we've had from a Dynatrace perspective as well.

Sam 3:49

Great stuff. Sounds sounds like a fascinating journey, and I'm sure we'll dig into it a bit more. And you've had some engagement with with Vicky and the team, I believe.

Speaker 1 4:01

Yeah, absolutely. So we started probably an engagement with Amplified about two years ago, Vicky, I'll probably probably say.

Vic 4:08

In Asia Pacific, yeah. So we've been working with Dynatrace for three, four years before that, but we first started working together a couple of years ago. No, three years ago. Three years ago. Yeah.

Troy 4:17

Three years ago. Time twice, time twice. But yes, it's uh it is one of those things that I look back and I kind of wonder about where we were before that. So we can we can talk about that. But yeah, obviously, um in my last kind of couple of roles, I'm now I now run the value practice for Asia Pacific uh as a strategic um as a strategic director. But before that, I also ran enablement. So I've always been part of kind of the go-to-market leadership team within the APAC group. And for me, I'm super excited to talk about some of the things that we've gone through working with Amplified over the last kind of two to three years. It's been quite a journey. Brilliant.

Sam 4:51

So give us a bit of context. What was the starting point? What was the goal of the program that you worked on?

A 25-Year Career Across Roles

Troy 4:57

Ah, great question. So if I take all the way back some three years ago when I think Vicky was first engaged with the team, it was really about how do we up-level our leadership team? How do we drive more consistency, better communication, really start to uplevel their skills as leaders and help drive more change throughout the business? And when I think about that time, it was really we focused a lot on sellers, we focused a lot on individual training from an enablement perspective, but there was a bit of a gap around leadership. So we weren't putting sales leaders and leaders in general across a kind of a core training. So one of the things that we focused at from an enablement perspective and working with leadership was really what kind of programs can we run to help up level our leaders? And whether it's around communication, change management, uh how they communicated and coached their teams, that was a real focus for us from an outside in perspective, especially looking at what we had.

Vic 6:00

So just before we go any further, uh for me, one of the and and I know we're going to get into this, Troy, but one of the things that has been so wonderful working with the Asia Pacific team is when you talk about leaders, you just take for granted it's across every function in the Asia Pacific business. I think uh many of the organizations that we work with, when we talk about leaders, they just think purely of the sales functional leaders versus legal deal desk five.

Troy 6:40

Everyone, marketing, post-sale. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Vic 6:44

Yeah. So when you're talking about leaders, you are talking about the breadth of every single function needed in APAC, aren't you?

Troy 6:52

Absolutely. So I think, you know, and I've seen this as I've worked a lot with very large organizations as customers when I talk to customers and leaders and other customers, as well as, you know, other peers that I work with. Generally, when when companies get to a certain size, it becomes very hard. There's there's obviously a lot of silo, a lot of friction between different groups. And uh luckily the leadership group in in Asia Pacific is is probably, I think when we started, Vicky, it was probably the core leaders and one level down was about 35. Yeah. Maybe it was around 35 to 40.

Vic 7:23

Yeah.

Troy 7:24

Um, and at the core leadership group, I think there was 12 to 14, maybe roughly. Yes. Uh and then some extended functions as well. And that really, you know, when we looked at that, the core leadership, when I say the core leadership, was that 12 to 14? And to your point, Vicky, absolutely, we take our cross-functional hats off. Um, and that was really driven by by leadership within the sales organization and post-sales organizations to have a lot of trust. I know we'll talk more about trust, um, but really we looked at problems at an organizational level, not just at a functional level.

Vic 7:58

Yeah. And I think for me, that has been just a joy to witness the approach there. Because I have to say, many of the organizations we work with don't start there.

Sam 8:11

It sounds sounds logical, but it's almost sort of revolutionary, isn't it? Because everybody's got their own individual goals.

Troy 8:20

Yeah.

Sam 8:21

Targets to hit or you know, metrics to improve or whatever. Then you don't end up seeing the wood for the trees, do you?

Troy 8:30

And Sam you know, I think one of the key aspects that we think of, especially in our own roles, is you know, what do our peers, what are they in control of and what are they trying to drive? And so a lot of the time it's how do we find a North Star as a group where we can all rally behind and understand how that benefits everybody.

Sam 8:48

Yeah.

Troy 8:48

And so, you know, Vicky kind of touched on it before. We ran a number of workshops to understand what that North goal or that North Star should be as a goal and what that should look like in 12 to 80 months' time. And then how do we work backwards from that? Yeah. And, you know, before we got there, we obviously had to understand and identify what those friction points and problems were, like any organization. And I think you know, that was the point of a lot of discussion and communication, which was great.

Sam 9:19

And how do you get all those different functions to buy in when I'm not going to say that potentially the you know the cohesive whole is entirely contrary to what they're trying to achieve, but it you know, it can it can misalign from what their individual goals, targets, metrics, expectations are.

Why Leadership Needed Uplifting

Troy 9:38

Well, and I think that's true in any organization. I look at our organization two to three years ago. We were all measured on very different things. Yeah. Some people were measured on growth, some people were measured on revenues, some people were measured on campaigns. Um, you know, from a metric perspective, we had wildly different metrics and KPIs that were measured on. Um, so Sam, to your point, absolutely, how do we get there? It was very much a, and this is more culturally within Dynatrace, I think, in where we were, we've had a very collaborative, open door kind of view of the world. So it wasn't this is my KPI and this is yours. It's like, well, let me understand what that is, and ultimately how does that fit into the larger goal? And so for many of us, it was understanding the peers around us and how they were measured, but also understanding if we targeted two or three key things, we kind of we look after all of it.

Vic 10:32

Yeah, because it's it's fair to say, isn't it, that the metrics and KPIs for the different functions are still rolling up into corporate, they hadn't gone away. And I think that's a really important thing to call out. It was how you aligned the ones that they had to to work in harmony.

Troy 10:52

Yeah, harmony is an interesting point, Vicky. You talk about harmony. Uh, I think most organizations would say harmony is not necessarily everywhere. So there's always friction points. And the question is, you know, understanding that friction, and then the best thing is actually just communication. And I think we talk about it a lot, but you have to over-communicate to understand where people are and and how to really start to identify what change you need to make as an organization.

Vic 11:20

Yeah. And I know we're gonna we'll get to it, but of course, that basis starts with trust.

Troy 11:29

Absolutely. Yeah, no, trust absolutely. And if you think about, we had some people that were when we started this journey three years ago or two and a half years ago, that were brand new. Actually, probably I would say a third of the leaders were brand new, and a third of us were probably had been there a long time, and another third had been there maybe for you know one or two years. So we were going through a big amount of change as an organization, too. So very quickly, we had to try and learn as much about each other as possible. And what I would say is luckily in our part of the organization at APAC, we have vastly different cultures and communication styles and different countries. Yeah. In some in some respects, you have to realize how similar you are, but at the same time quite different.

Vic 12:21

Yeah.

Troy 12:21

And I think that that means you're more tolerant to others in general, probably.

Vic 12:26

Yeah, maybe. I'm not even sure.

Sam 12:27

You'd hope so. You'd hope so.

Vic 12:29

Yeah. Because there's certainly some magic in that team.

Troy 12:33

Absolutely, absolutely. I think it's, you know, I can I can pick up a Zoom call or a Slack channel and and talk to anyone from across the whole region. And, you know, we have a very open door policy. So I think that's something as a leadership team, we're just constantly trying to solve problems.

Sam 12:49

Yeah. Probably virtual open doors these days.

Vic 12:52

You know, it's it's interesting. So obviously we did work a couple of years ago, and then I was I was back again earlier this year. And the the big challenge that that Jim set us was I want this team to come together to solve problems together even more efficiently than we are at the moment.

Troy 13:14

Yeah, and I think that touches on the journey is continuous, right? So even though we come, we constantly come a very long way as an organization, and I think you know, we've we've done some amazing things as a leadership group, and we've talked about that a little bit later, but it's it's very much people still come and go within the leadership group, within others. We have to constantly reinforce, you know, over-communicate what we're trying to do so everyone understands still what are we trying to get to. And I think that's that that communication is key. And you know, as you mentioned, Jim, who's our sales leader for APAC, he constantly reminds all of us that we have to still solve the key points to the business.

Vic 13:53

Yes. Yeah. Well, I mean, Jim for me is the absolute example of so we call best practice uh leadership leading like a gardener, which is creating the environment for everyone else to grow. Yeah. And he he absolutely does that, the best of any leader I've seen. So it's it's been amazing. It's been really, really wonderful to see that.

Aligning Functions Around A North Star

Troy 14:16

So what impact is that? So Vicky, you've been part of the. Oh, sorry, Sam. No, no, no, carry on, carry on. I was gonna say Vicky's been part of the journey, so she's seen that. And I think you know, one of the key things that you know working with Vicky and the team closely has meant that, you know, uh Jim is an amazing leader, and then obviously everyone supporting him, but he's you know, he's part of the team as far as he he is part of the team, and and you mentioned you know, you you're basically setting the garden to sow the right seeds in a way, but as an analogy, um everyone's table, but also he's supporting everybody else. Yes, absolutely. So yeah, the the cool thing is, you know, you think about an inverted pyramid, the the the leaders are holding everyone else up and make sure that they're communicated with and they understand where they're at. And I think you know that's something that we try and do every day in our team, and and Jim obviously is is great as a leader to drive that.

Vic 15:12

Yeah, and again, just to reiterate, whether I'm talking to customer success or services, they still are very much aligned as part of Jim's team, even though they're reporting into corporate and to to see that the the cohesion that there is across the team. And it's so consistent.

Troy 15:39

Absolutely. And I think that consistency builds more trust. I mean, it's the consistency of different leaders to say, well, why isn't that person in this call? Or, you know, we there's always thinking about how do we make sure that everyone is aligned and understands, you know, and can and has the commitment to move forward. Um and that really starts with you know cross-communication and making sure everyone's so many analogies on the boat, on the bus.

Vic 16:03

Yeah.

Troy 16:03

Um not left at the bus stop, probably is a better analogy, right? Yeah, do you know what they don't want to be?

Vic 16:08

Right. Because God, so many people feel left out. Yeah. Yeah, don't get left at the bus stop like that one.

Troy 16:16

Yeah, totally. Totally. But yes, it's um it's something that especially you see this, and I say this a lot when I talk to customers, functionally, they have very different larger silos. Yeah, ultimately, it's only when they get to much higher in the organization where they see kind of the view. And I guess that's something that we try and give our teams is visibility to what we're trying to achieve.

Vic 16:37

Yeah. Yeah. So so when we were together the first time, because uh identifying actually what the priorities were for the business in Asia Pacific and all the functional leaders, understanding what those priorities were and how they could either support them or not slow them down has has had a huge impact, hasn't it?

Troy 17:03

Absolutely. And I think you know, you talk about slowing not slowing them down, that comes back to it from a change perspective, how do we manage change? Yeah. And really it's about removing those barriers or shaping the path, depending on how you want to mention it, but removing those barriers so people can just get on with improving outcomes for everybody.

Vic 17:22

Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, you're alluding to that. So let's just call it out. Um that switch was has been a big part of the methodology used.

Troy 17:32

Absolutely. I mean, it's become ubiquitous through our organization as a as a language. And you know, switch as a as a framework can sometimes seem a little bit cumbersome, like it's there's a lot of parts to it.

Vic 17:43

Yeah.

Troy 17:43

And I think, you know, one of the key things that we've and we use switch quite a lot. I was in a call last week where the services leader was talking about there's bright spots over here as an example. Yeah. So, you know, we're talking about different teams, and this scene has some amazing bright spots. We need to make sure that we focus on that.

Vic 17:58

Yeah.

Trust, Inclusion And Over-Communication

Troy 17:59

Um and so as I'm talking through different parts of the business, it's just the language is there. So, you know, focusing on the bright spots as part of the switch framework, yeah. Um, obviously removing barriers and shaping the path. How do you incentivize or or or help point to the destination where we're trying to get to? Um, these are all things that people have just brought in and think about that almost in in their daily in their daily job.

Vic 18:27

Yeah, if you think we've just taken a switch to the sales team, the services team or the marketing team, they wouldn't understand what the sales team was talking about. So because we've got this shared language across the entire organization, the power of that I haven't seen the impact of that anywhere else because we've not had that cross-functional support in any other organization that we've worked with at the scale that we've worked with in Dynatrize APAC. So that that I just have to call it out.

Troy 19:06

Yeah, no, brilliant. It's had a massive, massive impact on us, I think. And one of the one of the key challenges at the start was to your point, Vicky, trying to and maybe Sam, trying to align with how do we get everyone there. So when we first brought it out, you know, me and me and Jim talked a lot about how do we make this effective across our region. And one of the key key points was to Vicky's point, trying not to let anyone left behind. So we focused on all people leaders that had more than five direct reports as almost a gating, let's try and make sure we include everyone that has at least five direct reports. And we got 98% of them than the rest of them we picked up on the next kind of intake of that same that same space.

Vic 19:45

Yeah.

Troy 19:45

But it meant that customer success leaders were talking with STR leaders, which were talking to sales leaders and pre-sales leaders. And so what you see now is people who maybe not work next to each other on a day-to-day basis would join a Zoom call and say, Hey, I understand you've got this problem. Here's how we fixed it in a different region. Or here's what we're doing as a team. You should try and replicate this in a completely different geography. Because especially in APAC, everyone or Asia Pacific, everyone thinks they have a different culture. But ultimately, we're all doing the same job.

Vic 20:21

Yeah.

Troy 20:21

Cultural differences aside, everyone's got the same challenges, the same barriers. Maybe slightly nuanced, but it means they can learn from each other massively.

Sam 20:30

Yeah. We're all people at the end of the day, depending, you know, whatever region we're operating in.

Vic 20:35

Yeah. And um what one of the things that I think I learned from Darren there, who introduced us to Switch in the first place, was when he was talking about shrinking the change. So this is under motivate the elephant. He said don't look so when you're trying to drive a change, don't look for the big differences, look for the things that are the same. And that is it's just a reframing of things. And I've used that with a leadership team last week. They were going, This is just too different. It's like, let's look for the things that are the same. And actually, there was a lot. And it just changed their perspective on it.

Switch Framework And Shared Language

Speaker 1 21:17

It just makes everything smoother. And yeah, if you think about that from a change perspective, the best changes are the ones you don't actually recognize as an individual. You only look back six months' time to say, can you believe where we were six months ago and where we are now? Just by a little bit of focus, a little bit better communication and communication across across the whole business. So everyone understood what we're trying to achieve. Yeah. Vicky, you talk a lot about the number seven. And yes. So when I was in sales enablement, I used to talk about the sales teams the number 15, because you know, you have to get seven, double it, and add a little bit extra with sales teams to make sure that it's constantly reinforced. Um, so that was, you know, when I was talking to leaders, I said by the time you get Sick of talking about it. Yeah. It will start, it has only started to sink into to the others around you.

Vic 22:05

That are listening. Yeah, no, absolutely. Yeah. So Sam, just to give you some context there, I start every workshop with a slide with a number seven on it, and I ask everyone what that is representing. And they come up with lots of things that are right, but it's not the answer I'm looking for. And the point I'm trying to make is you have to hear things seven times for you to remember them. But as as Troy's just said, if you're a salesperson, maybe it's more like a good thing. But once they've said it once or twice, everybody's got it. And they haven't, because they're so busy in their own world.

Sam 22:38

Yeah. Yeah.

Troy 22:39

There is so much going on. And then you think about a frontline sales manager who has so many things, so many things on a daily basis, hitting them from every direction. It's probably the hardest low in any organization.

Vic 22:50

Yeah.

Troy 22:51

And there's so much change and activity and things happening and priority, prioritization constantly. Yeah. It just has to be consistent and reinforced for them and for their teams.

Vic 23:02

Yeah. One of my favorite stories about this is, you know, I'm a huge fan of Alan Maleley, who was the CEO of Ford. He had an interview and he just started leading Ford at the Wall Street Journal. And they said, What are your priorities then? And he got this business card out, just a little one, and said, This is this is what we're working on. And then after he'd turned Ford round and they'd been hugely successful, two years later, he went and had an interview with them again. And they said, Right, what are your priorities now? And he brought out the same doggy business card and went, they haven't changed. We're still doing this.

Sam 23:41

Yeah.

Vic 23:41

And it he and he really talked about how much you needed to repeat the message. So oh, it's it's just a joy to talk to you, Troy.

Troy 23:50

Oh, thanks, Vicky. But yeah, the the communication, the reinforcement, it, you know, and even now we've we've got new leaders in in our organization, in some parts of the organization as we grow, we've we've obviously added new leaders as well. Um, it's that constant reinforcement of we we didn't just start here, we we've been on a journey. And this is why we've been on a journey, and here's why it exists.

Vic 24:11

Yeah.

Troy 24:12

And, you know, ultimately, as I mentioned before, reinforcement with everybody constantly. And you talked about Jim, Jim bringing it up on the last workshop.

Vic 24:20

Yeah.

Troy 24:21

I think is we all have to take a step back every now and again and make sure are we still going where we need to? How do we reduce the friction? How do we improve the communication? And how do we just continue to move forward? And I think a lot of that is being curious about you know other functions, your other peers, how they're doing, and really helping them drive forward helps everybody.

Vic 24:45

Yeah.

Sam 24:45

Yeah, makes sense. Vicky, maybe it's worth us sticking something in the show notes about the switch methodology, just for those of our listeners who are not intimately familiar with it as you and Troy are.

Vic 24:57

Yeah, certainly. We've we've got lots of assets on my group that we can do that point into. Yeah.

Sam 25:02

That makes sense. Well, Troy, this all sounds lovely and cuddly and fluffy and friendly. Um but let's get that down to brass tact to some extent. But have you seen any impact on the business from taking this cross-functional approach? Because, you know, yeah, I mean clearly it sounds like a lovely thing to do, but we need we need to see some results, don't we?

Troy 25:28

Absolutely. I think you know, it comes back to I talked to him before about the openness and the culture that we have, at least in Asia Pacific, and you know, that's the that's the culture I work in every day. Was there friction initially? Absolutely. I mean, you you don't get you don't get somewhere without at least a little bit of friction and conflict. But a lot of the time that comes back to good communication and listening and understanding where those people are coming from. And Vicky touched on it before, you have to build trust. You have to build trust. You have to understand where they're coming from. You know, it's not all about you and what you're trying to achieve. You have to understand what they're trying to do as well. So uh absolutely at the start, there was there were challenges, there was lots of conversations, but ultimately as a group, we came together and understood what those were. So I won't talk too much about the detail. But then on the on the other side, so once we got past that point and we started working on things that would that would basically benefit everybody and aligning to what those goals were, we've had some massive success. And um we're a public company, so I can't talk too much about that. But you know, we've seen it in the results from the sales teams, we've seen it in the results from the the post-sales teams, really driving managing accounts and outcomes for our customers has been one of the things that has really started to drive us forward as an organization. Much more cohesive, much more aligned than we saw before.

Vic 26:53

So I know we can't talk about the numbers, but you've seen results from pipeline generation significantly increasing, haven't you? Uh massively significantly increasing.

Business Results Without The Numbers

Troy 27:04

Yeah, yeah. So I think there's there's a couple of different segments in our business that were kind of struggling a little bit. So again, we put focus around some of those big bets early about what we needed to put in place. And it wasn't just what we needed to change, it was also about how do we put a framework and a process around that to help everybody. So absolutely, we've seen that massively grow, that part of the business. Um, we've seen it be wildly successful and hopefully continues to be that way. At least the forward indicators look like that. But a lot of the times when you're in that change, it's hard to understand whether you're actually making progress or not. So leading and lagging indicators all all start to look good. And it's how do you keep everyone on the same path and reinforcing that? Because I think that's uh it can be a very fragile thing. So the moment you lose trust anywhere, you know, parts of the business can drop off.

Vic 27:58

Yeah.

Troy 27:59

And so it constant reinforcement, constant communication, um, and really trying to continue, I think is the key.

Vic 28:08

Yeah. And just to get back to, so you've seen success from pipeline generation through to renewals. So the entire sales cycle and the deal size, and it's just it's been transformational for you, hasn't it?

Troy 28:25

Yeah, I mean, I can't talk too much about the details, but yeah, looking at the entire customer journey has been has been amazing. And thinking about that as a customer journey, not just as a sales journey or as a post-sales journey. Yeah. Um, in Dynatrace, we we call about uh integrated account teams. So the IAT, someone everyone works on the account. And really the whole preface of that is how do we help customers get better outcomes? And so when you start to look at that and and people start to even in the IAT, cross-functional hats taking their hats off a little bit to help solve problems and help, we don't have big teams in some countries. So everyone kind of jumps in to help as an account team to help get customers' outcomes. And that drives opportunity to build more pipeline, obviously, on the on that back end from a renewal perspective. Um, and really, you know, that's that's helped us massively as a business.

Sam 29:20

Yeah. So that's the that's the quantitative. How about the qualitative? Qualitative. I always struggle to say that word.

Troy 29:28

Um I'm always going to be biased on that, Sam. So when you when you asked me about qualitative, you know, it's it's something that I've seen great change and it's been amazing for me personally. Um, from other people, people in the team. Well, this is where I probably asked Vicky, because Vicky probably talks to other people, but feedback in the team, you know, being successful means that it opens up more opportunities for everybody. And um ultimately that's where everyone wants to work in an organization like that. So yeah, ultimately, you know, how do we how do we help drive drive the way forward? How do we help improve the business? That's ultimately what we're trying to do. So uh yeah, if I talk to you know, everyone from first line managers to RBPs, uh to probably what I would say the cross-functional teams that have been the ones that have been most impacted from a positive perspective, they're the ones that have seen much better collaboration and communication um across.

Vic 30:27

I've got a quote, and I'm sure he won't mind me quoting it. I'm just trying to find it from Tom Nagel, who's the SDR leader in Australia. Um I'm just trying to find it because he sent me an email on it last week just saying just what a significant impact going through this approach has had on him and how he thought about things. So let me just see if I can find it. Carry on.

Personal Growth And Team Behaviour Shifts

Troy 31:00

And his team I actually talked about last week, but yes, it was um, you know, as an example, uh STR sometimes, again, one of the hardest jobs, trying to in-rate up our leads, trying to create pipeline. You have to work well as a cohesive team with your sales team, with marketing, with the account teams in general if you're doing ABM account-based marketing. So that's one of the things that, you know, again, the communication within the teams has been super important, especially at a cross-functional leader perspective, to make sure that everyone's aligned and trying to get the right outcomes. And that means that Tom's been able to pick up things and probably do things differently than he would have done.

Vic 31:40

Yeah. Well, the quote from him, I've just found it, was I just wanted to say I've probably had more growth in the past year than at any other point in my career.

Troy 31:50

Which is awesome. Yeah. Which is awesome.

Vic 31:52

Yeah.

Troy 31:52

So I've had other feedback from you know, pre-sales leaders, from other people who probably don't necessarily get invited to sometimes some of these leadership courses or leadership trainings.

Vic 32:04

Yeah.

Troy 32:04

And so again, the first, the first level managers, or maybe one above, they're the ones, especially from a technical perspective, who maybe don't think about the business all the time and how they could really impact that.

Vic 32:16

I've got another story as well, actually. And this comes from some pre-work we did for the last the last workshop when we were together, and it was highlighting an issue. And I won't go into what the challenge was, but the challenge that was raised was not by the person where the challenge was. They were speaking on that person's behalf. And they were speaking on that person's behalf to support them. It wasn't to call them out, it was to support them. It was done really positively. It was this person's got a problem here. I want you to know about it because we need to help them fix it. So that was a real example of cross-functional hat being taken off because it was in an entirely bit of the different bit of the business.

Troy 33:01

And that comes back to trust. I mean, you can't do that in an environment with a with a lack of trust. So the ability to identify someone who's maybe struggling and say, and maybe not everyone knows about it. So many people were on remote and and they don't see everything day to day, to say, hey, this person's got a problem or this function's got a problem, how do we fix that? That's yeah, that's where leadership comes from.

Vic 33:21

Yeah. So it was an absolute joy to witness. Yeah.

Troy 33:26

And I think when you you think about that from a communication perspective, you know, Vicky talked about five behaviors a lot, and you know, amazing book for those that haven't read it from Patrick Lincioni, but it's it's something where everyone who reads that book identifies it. It has has in some time in your career, or maybe even currently, you can identify with those kinds of roles and what they're doing. And I think there's some amazing takeaways at the end of that on on how to how to drive the challenges of those organizations and and obviously how they manage that, which is also very cool. So I think that's something I typically read once every six months, Vicky. Yes, typically. Yeah.

Sam 34:04

Yeah, I do. Damn it. I was going to ask you if you had a book to recommend and you've just done it already.

Speed Check As A Change Diagnostic

Troy 34:09

That's okay. That's okay. Um, yeah, actually, another one that I'm reading at the moment, which is kind of very different path, but is also quite interesting, is Emperor Up by Frank Slootman. So I've been reading that recently. Yeah. And that's that's all about having having the courage to change. Very different books. But um, you know, how how do you how do you think about an organization and where you need to get to? And I think a lot of the times if you get the moment you get comfortable, it's hard to make change. Yes. And so sometimes that level of not conflict, but just taking a step back and saying, you know, what can we change to make things better? Um, and trying to identify with that makes a makes a massive difference.

Vic 34:50

Yeah.

Sam 34:50

Makes sense.

Vic 34:51

Um, something that I realized, Troy, that we haven't touched on that, and we haven't prepped on either. So this is going to be completely off the top of your head. But um, to start the program and to continue and to give us the insights that we need. And actually, I had calls with three of the RVPs last week was the speed check. Can you just talk about the speed check and how you've used it?

Troy 35:17

Yeah, so I think one of the amazing things that happens when we obviously engage Amplified as you know, as someone to come in and help us look at the existing business is Vicky and the team run a speed check. Now, what is a speed check? It looks at measuring and obviously interviewing the direct manager and their team about you know where they think they fit from a clarity, from a simplicity, kind of how they understand the business and how it's communicated with them. And so for me, the speed check has been massively beneficial around understanding some of those key challenges that people are having. Um, so one of the things that speed check does is you get a report, and the report is for a leader of a particular function or area. And towards the end, it'll it'll basically identify which areas everyone agrees with or which areas are people massively struggling with. And Vicky can probably jump in. But for me, it's the individual words that people put in to say what they're struggling with. Really starts to highlight some of the key, you know, process issues is a good one, always comes up in most organizations. Yeah. Um, whether it's process, whether it's things you might not even think about. That as a leader you might not be aware. And me as a cross-functional leader, sitting down with a sales leader or a functional leader with a speed check is a is a great time to look at that and say, let's review what it says. Take all emotion out and just let's let's look at what it says and understand this is this is this is the feedback we have. How do we then build a better way forward?

Vic 36:47

Yeah, absolutely. The one element that you didn't talk about there, I think, because you've just taken we just take it for granted and we've talked about it so much on this podcast already, is trust. So it also measures the trust piece. And actually, one of the big pieces for me within the speech is if we see high clarity and low trust, that's a real red flag for me that people are being dictated to. And and you know, coming back to that amazing analogy that you had earlier about people being left at the bus stop, a lot of cross-functional people, they're just getting thrown things to do because they weren't included in the plan to start with. Then it's you need to go and do this, but they don't understand the why, they don't understand the purpose, they're not part of the project to start with, but they're just being asked to do stuff. And that really causes challenges. And in the speed check, one of the things that we're measuring in trust is inclusion. But I'm not talking about inclusion in terms of DEI, I'm talking about inclusion of are they part of the plan to start with? And they know why this is important and what their role is into it. And then you get the accountability to work because um, and actually, this was one of the coaching calls that I had with one of the R VPs last week. It's it's how do you get that peer-to-peer accountability that puts the pressure on people that they're going to do even more rather than just being answerable to you? And that really comes out when I'm coaching people following a speed check. I'm really looking for those pieces in it too, if that makes sense.

Troy 38:22

Yeah, absolutely. I think you touched on something that's really important, and that's the why. So so many times as leaders, we talked about the what, we talked about what we need to change, what we need to do. We don't actually explain the why. Yeah. And that's probably the most critical point to bring people along the journey. And so if you know, I was talking to another leader from a different organization maybe two or three weeks ago, and it's like, this is all the change we're we're we're thinking about driving. And I'm like, but if you explain why, like it makes sense as a business. We're we're doing this, we're doing all of this change. You need to explain why. Yeah. Because why is the most important thing. Like it's it's they need to understand not only why the business, but why for them. Yeah. So why would they do this? Yeah. And how does it help them? And how does it help them in in reference to the goals we're trying to run as an organization? Because at the end of the day, an organization is made up of people. So if people aren't there and and those people aren't mentally there and aren't checked in to help make that change, yeah, it's gonna be a fatal change or it's gonna be extremely difficult and a lot of friction in general.

Why, Bright Spots And Closing Thanks

Vic 39:30

Yeah, yeah. Well, it comes back to switch again, doesn't it? The motivate the elephant bit. If you're not bought in emotionally, the elephant is always gonna win over the rider. Always.

Troy 39:41

Yeah, and you have to be heard, right? So again, yeah, back to the trust, being heard, understanding not only the what but the why.

Sam 39:47

Yeah.

Troy 39:47

Um, yeah, super important.

Sam 39:49

Yeah. Brilliant, brilliant. Well, that's the book recommendation.

Vic 39:53

I don't think I've smiled so much. My cheeks are hurting.

Speaker 1 39:56

You're enjoying this one, Vic. You didn't need me on this one. I I still feel like I needed my party hat to be, you know, on the 100th podcast.

Sam 40:08

Oh, anything else to cover or should we bring this to a glorious conclusion?

Vic 40:13

Not for my side. All right, great.

Troy 40:16

Yeah, the only thing I would say is, you know, for everyone who's thinking about making a large change in an organization, other than get amplified the help, which is always good. But the second thing is really just thinking about, you know, making sure that people understand the why and pointing to the destination. So, you know, what are you trying to change? Why are you trying to change? And we talked about switch, but really focus on the bright spots, focus on the people that are doing the right thing. As Vicky said, it's much easier to focus on things that are working and build on them than worry about everything else that's not. Yeah.

Sam 40:47

That's probably my key takeaway. That's a good that's a great summary. Yeah, I like that. Appreciate that. Thank you. So it just remains for me to say Troy, thank you very much for being our hundredth guest, or at least our guest on our hundredth episode, because a few people have been on more than once. Yeah, we really appreciate it. And thanks to our listeners for sticking with us. And I hope you'll stick with us for another another hundred and on onwards from there. So thanks very much for listening to Get Amplified from the Amplified Group. Your comments and your subscriptions are always gratefully appreciated.