Customer Proximity: The Missing Link Between Sales And Ops with Robert Gessner

Sales and sales operations want the same thing, but the way we’re set up often guarantees friction. When sales and ops functions collide it can feel like two organisations speaking different languages. We sit down with Robert Gessner, a seasoned operations and go-to-market leader with deep experience across global tech and a long spell at Citrix, to unpack what’s really going on and what actually helps. 

We dig into the practical fix that keeps coming up in high-performing teams: customer proximity. Robert explains why operations cannot live entirely in a central bubble, and how a customer-facing front end creates a clear interface between the field and HQ. We also talk about the risks of centralisation, why regions create shadow organisations when they do not get what they need, and how to simplify processes that drive everyone mad, from price exceptions to endless approval loops. 

The theme is autonomy with guardrails: push decisions closer to the customer while keeping accountability and sensible constraints. 

Then we zoom out to the bigger picture: complexity often reflects strategy. If a company tries to serve every segment, every channel, and every go-to-market model at once, operations has to build processes for all of it, and the machinery creaks. 

From there, we move into the “project economy” and the execution gap that appears when leaders design strategy but step away from delivery. Robert makes the case for building project management capability inside sales organisations and for involving frontline and middle managers early, so change does not die after a launch webinar. 

If you care about go-to-market execution, sales operations, process design, and building a customer-centric operating model in a fast-moving tech business, you’ll take away practical steps you can use straight away.

 Subscribe, share this with a colleague who lives in approvals, and leave a review with the one change you’d make to reduce friction where you work.

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Transcript

Welcome And A Summer Check-In

Sam 0:10

Welcome to get Amplified from the Amplified Group, the podcast about the people that power the tech industry. Well, it's still a nice summer's day here, Vicky, because it's only an hour and a half since we started the last one. I'm not supposed to break the fourth wall, am I, and tell people that we've done two in a day. But anyway, this is all very casual and friendly, so it's it's all good. Um still not raining up where you are? Still thinking?

Vic 0:35

I don't know if you hear the birds singing, but the birds are singing. Green Retreats um have just built me an absolutely gorgeous outside office for the entire team to come and work in.

Sam 0:48

So um uh I think you need to do um do a little video tour at some point for our listeners, maybe maybe stick it up on LinkedIn. I mean, I will do if you've had great service, it's good good good to plug them if they've done an exceptional job.

Vic 1:02

I will uh I will do that little video.

Sam 1:04

I'll look forward to the video

Why Sales And Ops Clash

Sam 1:06

tour. Um So who have we got joining us on this episode then?

Vic 1:12

Yeah, so actually on the previous episode, we talked with Helen about listening to our clients and recognizing patterns and patterns that we see, I think not only with our clients, but just generally across the industry is we see I'm gonna use the word friction, we see friction between sales and sales operations or perceived friction, certainly. And so when Lindsay and I were were talking about this, we thought who is the right person to come and talk to us about this. And we both had the absolute privilege of working with Robert Gessner when we were at Cipchric. And gosh, if anybody understands this and knows how to overcome it, it's Robert. So I we asked him if he would join us, and I'm delighted to say hello, Robert. It's great to have you here.

Sam 2:21

Hello, Vicky. Hello, Sam. Fantastic. Welcome, Robert. You're very welcome on the podcast.

Robert 2:25

We're very happy to have you here today. Thank you. I'm very honored, I'm very excited. I'm a little bit nervous, and uh because this is my first podcast, but you know, I'm sure it will be an exciting conversation. You you will be fantastic, I'm sure. Where are you? I'm based in Switzerland, and I heard you talking about the weather earlier. So I just told Vicky earlier, I'm so happy that it has cooled down from the 37 degrees, 39 degrees we had last week. And it's raining outside and it's fresh, and I love it. Wow, fat, fat.

Sam 3:01

So you've had a bit of a heat wave as well. Yes, yeah, fantastic.

Vic 3:05

But isn't that funny that Robert talks about it being 39 degrees in a heat wave, and we're talking it's 30 and we can't count.

Sam 3:12

So honestly, yeah, I guess it was 33 or so, wasn't it? Yeah, yeah. It's tough. It's tough. Um, you know, my girlfriend's in London, and it's just horrible in London. Yeah, you know, because it's all small flats crammed together, not enough breeze, not enough wind. Well,

Robert’s Career And Core Themes

Sam 3:30

anyway, that's off topic. So perhaps, Robert, you could give us a start by taking us through your quick career history today, if you don't mind.

Robert 3:39

Yeah, okay. And I'll I try to be brief. So yeah, I I I spent my career, really all of my career in the technology industry. And as you can see, you know, kind of from my age, I've I think I've been in the industry long enough to remember uh when we shipped software in boxes and uh with discs and when the orders came in through the fax machines, etc. So you know what I'm talking about. So and uh yeah, I always had jobs in operations and planning, you know, kind of I had various international management roles across supply chain, business planning, customer and renewal services, sales operations, and go-to-market planning, specifically the last 10 years, more on the go-to-market side. And uh the other thing I would say in in pretty much every of my roles, project management and managing strategic initiatives was a big part of it. And actually, it has been ever increasing and becoming a more important part of my roles uh in those companies. And uh the companies I worked for that included Lotus Development, IBM, VLSI, Philip Summerconductor, SourceFire, and Cybersecurity, and then a very long spell at Citrix Systems, obviously at the end. And then about four years ago, I ended my journey in the corporate world. So I reflected a little bit about what I did and what I want to do. So today I advise and help companies managing strategic initiatives mainly around go-to-market, go-to-market planning. Uh, and I'm a partner at uh a small niche consulting company called Go Europe Consulting, where we help and support startup companies, foreign startup companies that want to expand and increase the footprint in the European market. So, kind of that's essentially the short of it. So obviously, beyond all the titles and companies, I think the common themes and the things that I felt are very relevant that already kept me very close and emotionally attached to the operations subject is I think what you talked about, wiki, and what we've just been discussing earlier, and kind of that specific inherent friction and tension between operations and sales teams or customers, you know, kind of including partners and community, et cetera. Obviously, I would extend that. And I really I've been I've been working most of my time really at that cross-section, you know, kind of between the field sales teams and extended with the partner community, the customer community, et cetera, on the one side. And then you have obviously the the operations, specifically HQ finance and operations teams, which is a completely different world. And again, how to manage, you know, kind of between those, you know, groups and make sure that something positive comes out of it at the end of the day. I think that has always been uh a common theme and challenge, you know, kind of as I was working. And the the second big theme was more about execution and how to drive change projects, you know, kind of, and also why execution feels often very hard. You know, achieving what you said you want to do in projects and initiatives, obviously, you know, kind of I think all most of the companies that I worked in and also that I'm seeing now still struggle a lot with that. And there's a lot of surveys why you know companies, six, seventy percent of strategic projects tend to fail to realize the purpose and the uh expected outcomes in the end of the day. And yeah, you have to ask why and what what I think we in operations and companies can do better, you know, kind of to to improve the execution ports. So that's that have been very two two very, very common themes that throughout your throughout your career. Absolutely. And and I think that's still something that keeps has my passion and my interest today.

Sam 7:40

Yeah. And it seems to me it's a running thing. Though, you know, in in I mean, you know, I'm lucky to really have only had one one employer. Um, you know, we had some tension between sales and ops. We were I thought we were pretty good at managing that because we all felt like we were pulling in the same direction. But you see that in every organization, different priorities. Um why why is there that

Two Languages And Two Reward Systems

Sam 8:06

tension?

Robert 8:08

Right. I I mean there's there's different perspectives and reasons why it is uh again from my own experience. There were probably two things that I felt are most relevant on, you know, kind of why we have it. I mean and I see operations and sales, they're they're nearly like two contradicting forces, and that's why it has quenches. So they they use different languages, uh, you know, kind of they they have different like ecosystems, if you like, uh different reward systems as well, you know, kind of, and that is not always fully compatible. So if I look at sales, obviously kind of they have their focus, I think, is on creating value for the customers, you know, kind of for the partners and for themselves as well, obviously, at some stage. Um, so to do that, I think they need they require flexibility, they need require speed of execution, and sometimes they want to bend the rules naturally, you know, kind of to make things happen and give the customer what they want to have, etc. And then on the operation side, you know, kind of it's it's it's sort of a different thing, you know, kind of you want to have consistency, you you know, have uh a systems and and process perspective where you have rules and regulations, and obviously you have a lot of other, you know, kind of uh limiting factors. You know, you have uh maybe you have ISO 9000 things, you have um SARB and Zoxley at some stage, you know, you have GDPR, you have a lot of these things that you need to protect, obviously, because that's part of the job and sales operations. So again, you're more rules-based, and rather than creating value for the customers, a lot of operations people think about creating value internally, reducing costs, you know, kind of efficiency. So, again, those things naturally don't work well together. That's what I've been seeing.

Sam 9:59

So yeah, slightly different targets, slightly different priorities, maybe remunerated on slightly different things. Yeah, exactly.

Robert 10:08

How do you pull all that together then? So

Build Customer Proximity In Ops

Robert 10:11

I again my biggest approach was always because again, I think operations tends to be focused too much on the internal things and the internal audiences and not on customers. So from an operations management perspective, I always thought that you need to avoid creating like a siloed operations organization. Um, that that's and an expert organization that talks their own language, you know, kind of when people in the sales organization cannot really deal with that. So one thing that to me always was very important is creating that organizational structure that helps having a uh a customer-facing front end, if you like. So establishing customer proximity. I think that that's another way to put it. And the way, again, when when I built uh operations organizations, for example, at Citrix, I always use the approach that okay, we have one team that has like a customer front end. I mean, typically kind of sales sales being the customer, we create the front end. So kind of we have people that are acting maybe as business partners, you know, kind of so that there's a clear accountability and communication line on if I'm a vice president in northern Europe or in southern Europe, I have always somebody that I can talk to. So you need to create those interfaces. Same thing when you create customer services groups, you know, you cannot only have people that work in the back end, you know, kind of independently of what's happening at the front end and on the customer side. So that's important to create that, I think, organizational alignment, you know, kind of uh wherever that happens. Again, what I've seen, obviously, mostly we create the organizational alignment at the geographic level. So you have your uh different sales regions, and then you need to make sure that you have business partners in the operations teams aligned to those sales regions so that they have somebody that they can talk to, uh, somebody that helps them escalate, but also the role of this of the operations business partner was to naturally understand what the regions need so that they can then they can act as the interface and the intersection between the sales teams, but also the operational headquarter teams because they are even further away from us. And you need that missing leak, you need that that angle that helps to connect the two worlds.

Vic 12:41

I I can really see that, Robert. It makes so much sense to me that you have operations sitting in their own, I'm gonna say corporate bubble, and they don't understand the reality of actually what's happening in the field. Even even if it's a geo bubble, they're still not actually around the sales teams. And I remember certainly in our prep call with Lindsay on this, she was talking about, I think it was a Tracy Carroll, and how she was that interface between the sales teams at Citrix and back into the operations team, the central team, and just what an incredibly important role that is. And I think from a lot of the organizations I observe, I see that that's missing.

Robert 13:31

Yeah, yeah, it's important. And again, I I'm not saying, you know, that's uh I mean, in operations, you cannot negotiate a certain rules-based processes and systems that work. You need you need to protect that. But you have people that are in the back end. So again, going back to I think when I talked about organizations, so when you talk about operations organization, you have your frontline people that are customer-facing, that you know, kind of create customer proximity for the operations team so that they don't operate in asilo. At the same time, you have your back-end function, you know, you need to have systems where essentially kind of you run the system and you develop the system. So the whole operations system development is typically a back-end function, you know, people who need to maintain data, you know, kind of process licensing requests, et cetera, in the system. That all can be back-ended because you want to retain productivity in operations as well. That's equally important. But if you only have people in the back end, and then you know, then you cannot connect the both worlds. And then that creates a lot of issues downstream in terms of again, operations going in a way that doesn't support the the, I think, company priorities and where the company needs to move to make sure that they remain competitive, remain innovative, you know, kind of and do the things that the customer eventually needs and that make the uh company successful.

Vic 14:59

Yeah, I can see that. And and certainly the the best practices that we've seen is when geo leadership teams have operations as part of their virtual team, so that they are one team and they are talking one language.

Robert 15:15

Yeah. And I I think you know it's it's it's even more important because I mean, one other thing that I guess you you guys have seen, but but definitely have experienced that in pretty much every role I've been, I think, is um the whole centralization perspective.

Centralisation Without Losing The Regions

Robert 15:32

So money and operations, you know, you typically tend to centralize a lot of the activities. And that includes stuff that maybe traditionally, historically part of the sales organization. I mean, you talked about Tracy and you know, kind of order and customer services. So some of these roles might have been historically been sitting in the sales regions or inside sales, you know, kind of that's another thing that in operations we tend to, you know, kind of think about creating more critical mass. And when you do that, and and you know, kind of we did it a couple of times at Citrix uh for sure as well. Obviously, from a sales perspective, it feels like you're taking something away, you know, kind of so it creates uh a certain reaction. And then if you centralize those operations functions, but you don't deliver and you don't give the regions what they need, then you know, kind of obviously they then they go and create shadow organizations, you know, kind of and make sure that they do their own thing. So again, even from that part, when you centralize, the minimum you need to do is you know, kind of retain that uh customer proximity and front end. So when you have sales operations business partners, if you have customer services business partners, you need to make sure that they stay connected, that you know, kind of you save the budget to make sure that they can travel back to the regions, you know, kind of on a regular basis, meet with the partners and the customers there. Uh because you want them to be part of the regional team at least as much as you want them to be a part of the centralized team.

Vic 17:04

Yeah, I love that you just talked about the importance of customer proximity. I think that that's a really easy thing to get your head around.

Robert 17:13

Yeah, exactly. I mean, like I I think of I thought about these people again at Sales Opson and then customer services as being like advocates for the for sales teams and for the partners, etc.

Sam 17:28

Do companies overcomplicate this stuff? You know, we talk about keeping things simple, but you know, jargon, too many meetings. Yeah. Can we can we simpli can we just simplify all this stuff? Make it easier for people to understand and all get pointing in the same direction. Yeah, I you can, I think. It's it's I hope so.

Robert 17:51

It's it's not so simple.

Sam 17:53

No, uh it's not not simple to simplify.

Robert 17:56

No, I uh so I mean probably that that would be a third thing I I could mention as one of the common themes is that uh that uh people always feel that things are much too complicated and too complex. So um that that completely resonates now. I think if if you think about the reasons why that is, you know, again, that there's many. I mean, the what what typically again have haven't been have have worked in companies that uh I think started maybe small and had some fast growth, that is a natural sometimes consequence. I think when companies grow, that the complexity naturally accumulates, I would say. Also, there's M ⁇ A activity, and then it's small and mid-sized companies who don't have a lot of experience or think about you know how to make sure that they bring all the different systems and processes together. So

Simplify Processes With Outside-In Design

Robert 18:47

I think it's a growth pain. Um, that's one thing, and obviously you need to have like a bit of a I think a routine, a discipline where you every other year, I think it's et cetera, every other year nearly, you know, kind of we did a little initiative about going through okay, are there any processes where we see that the sales teams are actually kind of complaining where the customers are struggling? Often we used or leveraged systems projects. Okay, we brought in maybe a new CRM or we changed or we moved um, we brought some a new, we brought in Salesforce, et cetera. So that's a natural compelling event when you think about processes and redoing that, I think. So that's one organic. There's not a lot in like an operations role that I had that you can do against it. You know, kind of I think it just needs some discipline.

Vic 19:35

But just before you go on to the one, um I really can see the importance of we've had these rules for the last five years, these are them, but they're just stuck in this is the way we do things. But the business has moved on, the customer demands are different, the products might even have changed. Yeah. And and yet things are still stuck in the old way. So I think I don't think we should underestimate the importance of of building in that review with the right people in the room.

Robert 20:10

Yeah. Then that's the other thing. You you say having the right people in the room, and I think that's where I agree. And I probably would say even come back to what we discussed earlier about, you know, kind of having the custom in mind. Again, one of the problems that definitely, you know, kind of and mistakes we have done a lot in operations is when we design things, it's in the bubble, you know, kind of we are okay, we have a lot of people in there that know the systems inside out, uh, but they don't know the outside worlds is enough. So you need to have that uh outside in thinking, you know. I I even say, you know, process design in operations is is often flawed, um, because it's again, it's it's not designed around the people, but but more around the control aspects, about the efficiencies. Yeah. Uh and then you have all sorts of things. I mean, you you probably have seen that yourself. I mean, there's an overemphasis on the control side. I mean, sales exception requests and all of these things, and price exceptions. I mean, how approvals and sign-offs are needed, and then somebody rejects and it goes back to square one and to the first point. I mean, it that that thing drives people crazy, so you can obviously implement more autonomy in the system. And also the teams need to control themselves. Sometimes there's a tendency because you have a lot of stakeholders also in sales, everybody has their wish list. So you have the tendency that you want to account for every single scenario, you know, kind of uh uh regardless how frequent or how much business and impact it has. So sometimes operations also need to be the um the bad guys in the room and ask the hard questions. You know, how important is that really do we need to have it? But so that that's a couple of things, but but predominantly I would agree, uh, Vicky, is that. Same, you need to have the customer, you know, kind of thinking in the back of the mind when you have the process. So kind of what outcome are we trying to see, brother? Okay, how we just improve the process, etc. No, you need to have the end in mind. And that can help, I think, to address some of these uh complexity issues.

Sam 22:20

We um SoftCat, we took one of our sales managers and moved him into the sales operations director role, which I thought was quite good because he had sales interest at heart and the experience of that and being customer-facing, but he also had a you know a good ops brain on him, as it were.

Robert 22:43

Yeah. No, and exactly, and to and think to that point, and um, I think reiterating what I said earlier about this the customer-facing things, if if you have people in operations who are very close to sales and customers so that they understand not only understand, but I would even say anticipate their needs, yes, then they are the resources you need in those projects and when processes are designed because they then basically can uh be advocates and and representatives of those customer needs.

Vic 23:15

So something else that that I think about is what you were talking about with price exceptions and approvals. The time it takes to go down the organization and back up again versus if I think about the methodologies that we follow, because there isn't a tech organization out there that isn't trying to do more with left at the minute, that isn't feeling squeezed, um, that isn't feeling that pressure. Um and and yet the the the methodology that we have, the following the general standing that crystal, the team of teams, is being able to push authority and decision making down an organization so that they are able to do it closer. That's how they I mean, they got 17 times efficiency by doing that. But they did it because they had guardrails in place, and it's those guardrails and those dis so you you've got the constraints that you're working within. Does that make sense to you?

Robert 24:30

Yeah, totally, specifically when you talk about uh price exceptions. I mean, like I said, you you need to I think move from that control aspect to empowerment and autonomy and also accountability for the decisions. So you need to give the people, you know, kind of the managers, first-line managers, well not but at least middle management and and into the regions more autonomy to kind of do uh approvals. Um I think also with technology today and AI, obviously, you will have a lot of opportunity, you know, kind of to really support the decision-making process and provide data so that you can still maintain those guardrails that you were talking about. So uh, but absolutely, if if if you try to control everything and approve everything, and there's always a tendency at the top to do that, I think you need to definitely stand up against it because again, it slows down things um and and makes processes very, very complicated and customer uh unfriendly in the end.

Vic 25:35

Yeah. Yeah, Ned, brilliant. Thank you.

Robert 25:39

Yeah. I mean, but maybe to the to the initial question from from

Strategy Clarity As A Complexity Cure

Robert 25:43

you, Sam, on complexity. I mean, I always there's one thing which is not the fault, I think, of operations or anybody, but which you cannot negate also drives complexity sometimes the company strategy or lack of strategy themselves. And I think that is not always seen enough. I mean, the lease of my car is running out, so actually I'm I'm I'm looking for you know kind of a new car currently. So after two years or so, I'm now going to car configurators online, and it's very interesting. So one of my favorite pastimes in the world. Oh, really? Okay. Yeah. With the rise of the Chinese cars, I went to some and with some cars. I mean, we have two or three options, you know, kind of here, four colors, and and that's it. You know, kind of obviously in those options, there's a lot of stuff included, etc. But it's there, but then we go to uh Audi or Mercedes or something, the traditional German, it's very complicated. You use that, and then you it it doesn't work if you want some specific extra. So, and obviously you can, and there's a lot of like corporate examples as well, like you know, kind of low-cost airlines like Southwest or Easy China.

Sam 26:58

Yeah, the the car manufacturers generally have moved towards packaging options in you know, in in IT terminology, bronze, silver, gold packages or something like that. Exactly. Rather than generally rather than having an endless, endless list of options, unless you're buying at the you know, the very high end, the Porsche, the the Bentley, whatever.

unknown 27:19

Yeah.

Robert 27:20

But uh if again, I'm and I was translating, for example, it in some of the companies I worked for, the the complexity also comes often because strategically there's no clarity about where you want to operate and where you want to excel, you know, from from a segment.

Vic 27:37

Yeah, I mean we're trying to do SMB and we're trying to do enterprise.

Robert 27:41

Exactly. And you want to be in mid-market and an SMB, you want to be uh addressing every single partner channel that exists in the world, and you you don't focus on okay, where do you and that means you need to create operations processes for all of these segments, for all of these go-to-market structures. And for smaller companies specifically, that that brings operations to you know kind of the the limits, I think, of what they can manage and yeah, permit sense. I I think that's something that is also important to consider. Is is the strategy clear enough so that it gives operations an opportunity to really drive operational um excellence uh business.

Vic 28:22

Yeah, because you because they know where to focus to really refine those pieces to get that bit, to be literally to go back to the car analogy of the well-oiled engine piece of it. Yeah, makes loads of sense.

Sam 28:39

Okay. Really interesting. So there's something in that I've heard reference the the project economy.

The Rise Of The Project Economy

Sam 28:49

What do we mean by that? That's come up in uh in some of your stuff, Robert.

Robert 28:53

No, yeah, it's so that that's not uh something uh I invented. Oh, okay. I thought I thought you were the no the the progenitor of no, I I I I steal a lot from other uh people who are smarter than me, but no, it it's uh I think it initially came from there's there's like Project Management Institute is probably one of the uh most renowned um institutes there, and there's there's a guy uh who's that that I I I work with. Uh he has coined that I think in the end. But essentially what it means is, and again, that that's what my own experience is from from my career, is that um obviously we live in markets that uh are more and more dynamic, you know, kind of where the the speed of change uh is increasing uh ever more. So for companies it means that you need to be able to drive change, you know, kind of remain agile, etc. And uh I think the project economy term just means, okay, there's a shift from, you know, kind of uh 10, 20 years ago when strategies were designed to last for five to seven years, that's where you need to review strategy every other year or every year, uh, and where a lot of the value creation that you have is actually moving from the operational work from like the business as usual to driving value and innovation through change. And change is mainly achieved through projects and initiatives, essentially. So again, and again, that's my own experience. I mean, uh in my last time at Citrix when when I was uh doing the go-to-market um planning and uh orchestration, um, every year, you know, kind of we we agreed on four to five key initiatives, sometimes very strategic transformation projects that we did uh from a geo perspective. And then on top of that, obviously corporate had their own projects that they want to extend it, where you need to participate and so on and so forth. So kind of easily ended up with something like 10, you know, kind of large initiatives that you needed to chuckle over time. But the crux is, you know, and and again, you need to be successful doing that because otherwise you cannot execute on the strategies and the things that that the company wants you to do to you know remain competitive uh win the market share, etc. Uh, and that's the thing. So kind of that that's what project economy essentially kind of deploys. That there's a move from just running your regular operations to creating more capacity and competence on really driving change through projects. Make sense? I I don't know, but you know, kind of let me know if um Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Sam 31:34

I think that I think that makes sense. Um I guess there's also a lot of nice talk in this arena. Um do people maybe struggle to execute though, follow through on what they come up with? Yeah, you know, you've you've present you you've clearly managed to execute in this space, but that's hard, right?

Robert 31:58

It's it's hard. I mean, not even for I mean like we we have not that that silver bullet. Uh I I haven't I don't have a silver bullet that that makes sure how you do it. I think uh I'm not sure anybody has, but

The Execution Gap After Strategy

Robert 32:11

uh surely uh again, I think that specifically in sales organization, I would say that there's like an execution gap. Uh again, we know that strategic initiatives often fail to achieve what they need to do. And I I I think because again, in in the in the past, I think strategy, you know, kind of it's it's um leadership wants to be responsible for strategy. They think that's the core competence. And I think what often happens is you know, kind of uh leadership gets involved in strategy design, uh in strategy formulation. But when that is done, there's maybe a tendency to throw it over the fence and say, okay, now the execution of it is a more profane task. Uh it's something that we then give to the operations people or kind of to the ranks lower. And I think that's where then there's the risk that stuff gets derailed, obviously, because um that there's this uh some somebody said, you know, kind of when when strategy leadership or the leaders design the strategy, they formulate the strategy, then you have middle management when they redesign it a little bit, then tweak it, and then you have first line of management, and they have to execute it and they do something different. It's a little bit like the Chinese whispers thing sometimes. So I think the the point is um uh a lot of things can get derailed. Uh, and I think often the reason, um one of the key reasons is that leadership, you know, kind of doesn't stay close enough to the execution part because it's just not, I don't know, sexy enough, you know, kind of not as appealing, as interesting as strategy formulation.

Vic 33:53

So, Robert, you talked about I think the three layers, the leaders, the middle managers, and then the frontline leaders. How important is it to have those frontline leaders and those middle managers involved in the plan in the first place?

Robert 34:11

I think it's very important. I mean, you need to balance it. I I you cannot have like the other thing on the project side is you you cannot uh have 200 people.

Vic 34:20

No, no, no, the the smaller the more agile.

Robert 34:23

Yeah, so I I told you, so I again having the design thinking head on and making sure that you reflect all. So typically, I think what what goes wrong with with projects in sales organizations often that it's it there's a strong leadership bias at the beginning. So kind of I think leaders try to jump to conclusions because they talk in in their bubble, they understand and they think they know the solution and they want to go straight to okay, implementing the solution to fix the problem that they perceived. And I always advocated against it, said, okay, every initiative you start, you should start with a real discovery. And in the discovery, you need to bring in the frontline people. Yes, I I I always wanted good frontline management in when we had the discovery sessions. I mean, typically what what I did is I I started out with typically a retrospective. Okay, we looked at what's working, what's not working, what is it we need to change? We you can use Miro or you know, kind of some other collaboration tool to do that. And then you you try to really, and you bring it everybody, all the roles that really uh, you know, kind of can contribute not only the leadership, you know, kind of you need to have that bottom-up approach as well as top-down, I think. So that that's important to sort of project. That's in the like when you formalize the solution. You want to make sure that you have reflective. When it comes to the like the execution part of it, so kind of okay, you think you have they become important as well because again, normally you go through your normal planning cycles, and then let's say you're ready to launch, and then you need to implement it. And that's another big risk that I'm seeing often that managers think or leaders think, okay, if the project, if you close it down, if all the checkboxes are turned off, if you've built your go-to-market um model, etc., you can launch it and you do one training, you know, kind of or you do a couple of webinars and then off you go. And it doesn't work like that. Because to, let's say, to implement that, you need first line management and middle management to be absolutely on board. So, yeah, you should definitely involve middle management in the execution planning as well. And you need to make sure that the first line managers are able to coach their teams through the change, because the first line managers are, you know, kind of, I think they are the absolute um key here to make sure that change is executed because frontline sellers, etc., they will talk to their first line managers. So if they are not able to coach the teams to understand what the change is about, you know, kind of to communicate uh properly, then the risks are big. So yeah, the the answer is yes. I mean, I think both layers are uh absolutely critical for successful change process management.

Sam 37:14

Good. Well, Robert, we've covered some serious ground there. I suspect there'll be a uh minimal amount of editing on this one as we try and squeeze all that all that stuff in. Yeah, as we sort of bring this toward a conclusion, have you got three takeaways for our listeners, maybe?

Robert 37:34

So we talked about simplicity, so I I think I have two. Uh wait. Um perfect.

Frontline Leaders Make Change Stick

Robert 37:41

I like that. I'm happy with that. Uh yeah, but again, they play into a lot of arenas anyway. So I think the one thing is that you talked about is that uh how important it is um when you design and build the customer operation structure that it needs to be customer-centric. Um again, it helps to address so many different things, it helps address the friction, it helps to make sure that the processes you build, you know, kind of are designed for with the customer in mind. So that's I think my first takeaway. And the second one obviously is what we talked, just talked about is the whole execution piece, and that I think that sales organizations must absolutely deliver strong and build strong management, project management capability, because with the project economy and you know, kind of the the need to drive change, if you don't have that, I think it can become a competitive disadvantage over time.

Vic 38:35

Yeah, Joe, um I was doing some prep for a workshop that we're doing with a leader next week, and he summed this up so beautifully. He said, So in the last workshop, we looked at what the North Star is. What we very often focus on is the what. He said, I don't want us to use our time to focus on the what. What I want to use our time on is the how as a team we come together because the what is always changing, there's always a new project. So what I want to do is build our competency, to your point, Robert, about how we adapt to these changes.

Robert 39:11

Yeah.

Vic 39:12

Because it's constant.

Robert 39:14

Yes, yeah, yeah. Yeah, and I know, and and I know we haven't talked a lot about you know, kind of how how you do that, I think, but it but it's equally one. Obviously, my recommendation was always on the how that sales organizations. I mean, there's different things. You can obviously hire project management from outside, which I normally would not uh recommend as a author, but I think it's better to have these capabilities to build it internally. Yeah. Also have a project management approach that is compatible with with the sales, you know, kind of view. You cannot do the you know, you know, you cannot replicate what what other larger project management uh organizations do. Obviously, it needs to be something that fits for sales. And I think there's ways to do that, and and yeah, and sales organizations should start doing that if they haven't done it yet.

Vic 40:02

Yeah, and in fact, I don't know if I mentioned it to you in the prep call, but DynaCrace, which is one of our um larger clients, and we've worked with them across the globe, we've actually done something a bit different with them. But we've so we've delivered some courses for their first line sales leaders, and one of them is leading through change, so giving them those competences to be able to do that. And we've done that for every sales director within their organization globally.

Robert 40:30

Okay, yeah, no, it's good. And and again, you know on another call, or if you know what they mean, I could definitely can show a lot about my experiences on how you can make that happen and how you can Yeah, no, I'd love to explore that more with you.

Vic 40:43

Thank you.

Sam 40:44

Maybe, maybe we'll have to do a sequel.

unknown 40:46

Yeah.

Sam 40:49

Brilliant. And are you a reader? Have you got any books that our listeners might find useful?

Robert 40:54

Um, so I'm I'm I'm a reader, but I'm not a strong book reader, I have to confess. But I do read books and uh I do have, yeah, I have one recommendation because I mean I heard that that might be interesting. I uh and again, I don't know if you can see it, but you know, kind of that that book is called um

Takeaways, Book Pick, And Closing

Robert 41:14

How Big Things Get Done, and it's from Ben Flieberg and Dan Dan Gardner. So I I I came across it because it was uh economist recommendation, I think, two or three years ago. And obviously it's about project management, so which which is something that that interests me, but that's that that book is not only for project management geeks like me. Well, it is too, but I think this one is really, really entertaining. So it it basically kind of builds on studies and research from uh, I think more than 16,000 uh different projects. Uh, and it looks at very different things. It looks at you know, kind of uh enterprise building and why that was built on time and on budget, and why the Sydney Opera House got completely derailed, and it looks at uh things like nuclear power plants and how Pixar movies used like an agile um MVP approach to produce the uh you know kind of the animated movies always in in record time, uh etc. And again on budget. So this is a lot about success or failure of projects and what is important. And I think the the the the consensus is I think they call it think um uh think slow and act fast. So if you don't put a lot of a lot not enough time into the preparation and the planning of your projects, um that's where it gets the raise. It's not rocket science, but you know, kind of if you not do that, if you rely too much on your like human factors and too much optimism, etc., then things you know kind of typically don't stay on track. So but but again, it's very, very entertaining. I learned a lot about different things and uh I can highly recommend it.

Vic 42:49

I love I love an entertaining book that you can learn from, but being entertained through your reading is is is a is a real priority for me. I love the think slow, act fast, because we use go slow to go fast. Um it's the same concept, but it's within a team. If you go slow and you get your planning right, then you can execute at speed.

Sam 43:12

Yeah. But it's uh you don't make any you make fewer mistakes, you go off on fewer side quests.

Vic 43:19

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Super. That's been wonderful, Robert. Thank you.

Robert 43:24

Good. I I hope it's been valuable. I mean, it was it was really fun for me. Good comment.

Sam 43:29

Glad you enjoyed it. You were an absolute pleasure to have on the podcast, so we really appreciate it. Good. Okay. So thanks very much, Robert. And it just remains for me to say thanks as always for listening. Um, your comments and your subscriptions are always gratefully received, and we'll see you on the next one.