Yes, yes. I know the quote mis-attributed to Drucker1 reads “strategy”, and not “process”. In my experiences across three (four?) industries, so many organizations talk (and certainly write on their websites) about culture, but default to enabling, measuring, and rewarding process. Look, as an Army brat who was also trained by the Jesuits, I LOVE me some process (and organizational hierarchies, but that’s another discussion!). But process alone never yields the potential an organization contains. Don’t believe me? Read on (also, please feel free to read on even if you do agree with me)!
2001 certainly did not wind up the way any of us thought. But it was the first time I was part a corporate culture that had something other than a negative effect on the individuals within it. And, because I am slow on the uptake, I wasn’t really aware that this was why the team I was on was as successful as it was until much, much later. Having recently left my first career in college admissions, I had no exposure to corporate life (if you’ve not spent any time in a collegiate organization as an employee, you’ll just have to take my word for it: despite the recent shifts at this level of academia, it is in no way, shape or form related to the real world). What I found in my first foray into the wild world of software sales was a team of “telesales” reps (we’d call it biz dev today) lead by a gentleman who was also relatively new to the industry (I would find out later). His team, supporting the regional sales teams out in the field, played an essential and challenging role in the sales cycle. Our job was to vet out prospects and their organizations to see if there was a potential fit for our mainframe performance and monitoring software. To put it another way: we hammered the phones all day long.
There is no glamour in this role. You are measured in dials per hour, real conversations per day, and verified lead counts. It is a role that easily slips into management by metrics, and far too often does. Not this team. We’d all go out to grab lunch, and we’d all bring it back to eat in our break area together. Every. Day. And if we didn’t bring lunch back, it was because we all went out together. We’d share stories of comic conversations and devastating rejections. We’d compare tallies and chide one another for gaffs. And we never missed a commission check. Never. Not once. We all made a boatload of money2.
Why were we successful? It’s easy to point to the culture, dismissively. “Oh, we had a great team, the culture was the best…” is easy to say and then move on to the next topic of conversation when discussing past career highlights with friends; however, when positive culture is present, great things occur3. How was our team able to succeed, despite being as wildly different as possible (we were black, white, female, male, deeply religious, adamantly agnostic, college grads, first career, third career, retired Army Ranger, Southern, New Englander, and on and on)?
We were well trained and encouraged to expand our knowledge regularly
Performance standards were well documented and communicated
Successes were public, failures and misses were private
Questions were expected, assumptions not tolerated
Collaboration was not seen as conflicting with competition
We agreed tacitly that this was The Way4. But why? Because our leader was just that: our Leader. His title was Director (I think? Memory is fuzzy, but I’m playing golf with him this week, so I might add a clarifying addendum), reporting into the VP of Sales. His function was that of a manager, designed by origination chart to focus on metrics and outputs – the dials, the lead gen, the conversions. He instead, through intuition and introspection (and being the most wicked smart person I know), LED the team. His approach combined continuous education, observation, encouragement, and cross-team collaboration. This last is one of the most overused phrases in resumes, more often than not indicating that the user once had a passing conversation with someone form the other side of the hall while waiting for the coffee to finish brewing. When I use it here, I mean our leader worked actively with and created meaningful partnerships with his leadership team, the marketing and product management teams, the lead product developed, the sales engineers, and the support teams. By engaging with them, and offering to lend his knowledge, skills and expertise (and even his voice – he was The Voice of our company when it came to any voice-overs), he showed us what it meant to be fully engaged, and how to do so.
By focusing on the “what” (highest performance possible) and not the “how” (the measures, the metrics, the PROCESS), our leader created the culture of success and growth. Process and procedures were in place, don’t get me wrong. And they were communicated and coached consistently. But they were not the means, nor the ends. They were the necessary backstops, the basline, and not the sole focus to the exclusion of all else. And those who myopically focus on process miss the great opportunity, and kill viable, successful organizations. And that’s another story, too.
More posts like this, please.