Sales

Bob Maller

September 27, 2021 by

Bob is the former President and Chief Culture Officer of Collaborative Solutions, and an expert at growing teams, practices and partnerships in the fast-moving cloud computing space. To call Bob an IT services veteran might be putting it mildly. He started his consulting career in the ‘90s at global consultancies Accenture and Deloitte, before going on to manage consulting teams at PeopleSoft. That experience served him well when he joined Collaborative Solutions as its second employee. Over the years he’s grown Collaborative to more than 1100 employees and Workday’s longest tenured partner. Along the way, he’s also created a firm well respected for its work, culture and dedication to diversity, winning a ridiculous number of Best Places to Work awards. Collaborative was acquired by Cognizant in 2020, and Bob continues in the same role at Collaborative as Cognizant’s standalone Workday practice.

Why are you passionate about helping people-based businesses?

When we developed our core values at Collaborative, the clear first value was People. While it can be cliche to mention People as a core value, it’s the businesses that truly nurture and develop their people who are most successful — especially in services. Real magic happens with collaboration, which is why when you’re building a firm or a practice, teamwork is such a critical trait. The “smartest” or most-skilled person may not be a fit for your organization if they don’t thrive as a member of a team.

As the second employee at Collaborative Solutions, you grew the firm from a niche PeopleSoft federal contractor to a ‘crown jewel’ of the Workday ecosystem with more than 1000 employees. What was the most challenging part of that early journey and what was it when you reached scale?

In the early days, the challenge was to differentiate ourselves. As we became a Workday partner, the fear was that we would build a practice and the large SIs would swoop in to hire them away. This is why hiring the right people and building a sustainable, employee friendly culture was, and is still, critical.

Our first acquisition (a Workday consultancy in Australia) was also an interesting milestone. Integrating them into what was then a North American-centric business and making them feel a part of the Collaborative family took real work.

At 500+ employees, I no longer knew each employee, which was a very weird feeling. We needed ways to stay in touch with each other and keep engagement high. So we launched the Collabie Convos series (intimate video calls with 15-20 employees) to discuss a variety of topics. We also put a lot more emphasis on developing the people in the firm to become leaders and great ambassadors of our culture. It cannot just be the senior leadership team who sets the tone for the culture.

You’re a huge advocate of culture and inclusivity. What is the key to scaling culture as the company grows, expands and evolves?

It starts with formalizing and promoting your core values. In the early days, it’s about defining and discovering those values as a founding team. As we got larger, it became very important that every employee around the world knew what our core values were and why we had them. We reinforced them daily and worked them into our processes. They weren’t just words or phrases on a wall in an office.

Selecting and developing the right leaders within your practices is also critical, and should constantly be reviewed. These are the leaders that new hires will look to, even more than the executive team. Do you have the right leaders? Do they exemplify our core values? Did we promote people into areas they cannot handle and would be better suited as individual contributors? We, as leaders, cannot be afraid to ask these questions and make adjustments along the way.

When it comes to inclusivity, it simply needs to be a priority – a focus from the top down. I’d also highly encourage instituting a buddy and/or mentoring program to indoctrinate people into the company and to ensure that they have someone to help navigate their careers within the company.

Keeping employees engaged is never easy, but it can be even more challenging during rapid growth and downturns. What are some things leaders can do to keep engagement high throughout a company’s lifecycle?

The first thing is to survey your employees, but just as importantly, do something with the results. Show your employees that what they told you is valued and, if it needs work, that it’s being addressed. I am a big believer that surveys are anonymous and people understand that improvement is a process. It doesn’t happen overnight. For trust to flourish, leaders need to be vulnerable and transparent. Talk to your people more often than you think, through a variety of mechanisms. Use video as much as possible when communicating important things (as opposed to a flat email that no one really reads).

Matt Henwood

August 24, 2021 by

Matt has been working with services companies for more than 20 years, starting in telecommunications and evolving into software services. Over the last 15 years he has supported three services startups at Sumtotal Systems, Appirio and 7Summits, which all led to successful acquisitions. He is familiar with high-growth environments, has successfully attracted and grown talent organizations and the people within them, and implements operational models that can scale. Today, he leads Operations and Delivery at Envoy.

Why are you so passionate about helping people-based businesses?

I gain the most satisfaction helping people to succeed, whether it’s career growth, customer success, or on a personal level. I believe that it starts with attracting and sourcing the right talent, and from there, focusing on how to remove blockers and motivate them. I love helping people succeed in their careers and I’ve found that I have been able to make the biggest impact with services companies.

Your focus on ‘people first’ has led to highly engaged teams with strong business results at 7Summits, Appirio and Sumtotal. What advice would you give to leaders looking to bring this concept into their organization?

Having a people-first philosophy means keeping the “team” front and center when making decisions and creating processes. It starts with bringing the right talent in, fostering their growth once they arrive, and supporting them throughout their journey. I believe that if you take care of the team, all of the other performance metrics will follow.

Here are a few concrete tips: When it comes to making smart, impactful hires, make sure you create recruiting models that allow for multiple data points. Hire for aptitude and culture fit over other attributes. Next, make sure there’s a high level of engagement with multiple points of interaction. It’s easy for consultants to get lost in their project world, especially when working remotely. Tools can help. Lastly, foster growth and performance through mentoring and training. Ensure there are resources in place that allow people to grow and perform in their specific roles. Centers of Excellence are one way to accomplish this, in lieu of functional organizational models.

What is one tip that you have for building a truly global delivery team and culture?

One of the activities I’ve found can positively impact a global buildout is to align respective teams and leaders with their counterparts in different regions. At Appirio I was able to spend a lot of time in Europe and India as we built out our customer base. Getting alignment and routinely engaging with my counterparts in those geographies helped us grow and scale the services and teams respectively. These relationships led to stronger communications, ultimately leading to achievement of our shared goals.

What advice would you give leaders seeking to transition a delivery team’s focus from being project based to truly sustaining ongoing customer relationships?

I believe there are two core ingredients that feed into strong customer relationships: understanding their business and understanding the outcomes they are looking to achieve. Customers have a lot of choices when it comes to who they want to partner with for technology services. The organizations that come in, learn and demonstrate a strong understanding of their customers’ business, and then shape solutions that lead to tangible business outcomes are the ones that will win. That, and having the right people.

Heidi Spirgi

January 29, 2021 by

Heidi has spent her career helping organizations tap into the power of their workforce. She is the former Chief Strategy and Marketing Officer at Cornerstone, a talent management technology company whose solutions are used by 75 million people around the world, and has held leadership roles at The Marcus Buckingham Company, ADP and PeopleSoft. In 2004 she co-founded Knowledge Infusion, a strategic HR consulting firm that was acquired by Appirio and eventually became the foundation for Appirio’s Workday cloud services practice. She has been recognized as a Top 100 HR Tech Influencer by HR Executive Magazine, and is a sought after expert on how leaders can promote gender equality.

Why are you so passionate about helping people-based businesses?

People are the heart and soul of any business, but no more so than in services. Tools and technology lack value on their own, it’s the people behind them that really make the difference. People-first businesses, whether products or services companies, are also just a lot more fun to be a part of and lead. When you look at employees as humans first, workers second, teams are a lot more trusting, collaborative, engaged and motivated. That’s when innovation flows!

You have a track record of creating strong, high-performing team cultures. What factors are important when it comes to creating a strong culture?

The first thing is to ensure people, leaders included, have a beginner’s mindset. If you approach everything as a student, rather than believing you know everything at the outset, you don’t close your mind off to new ideas. This was one of the reasons why Knowledge Infusion was so successful. We had industry expertise and a passion for our work, but we didn’t necessarily have a playbook for the kind of consulting we wanted to do. And that’s not a bad thing. The second thing is to create an environment where it’s safe to take risks. I tell my teams to actively seek those OSMs (oh shit moments) where you try things you haven’t done before and have no idea how it’s going to end. It’s in those moments that you grow and create breakthroughs for the business.

What advice would you give founders who are just getting started in a highly competitive ecosystem?

Don’t try to be all things to all people. When you expand your offerings too fast, suddenly it becomes more difficult to differentiate. The market doesn’t understand who you are or your unique value proposition. You still need to be opportunistic, but in a thoughtful way that allows you to identify the downstream trade offs. It helps to establish a set of guiding principles, a set of beliefs that act like guardrails to keep you on track when those shiny objects and short cuts seem tempting. And try to act bigger than you are — invest in marketing to establish your brand and build credibility early on. If you’re competing against the big guys, you have to look and act the part and B-level marketing will sink you.

Toni Pavlovich

January 28, 2021 by

Toni is a results-oriented, culture-first kind of leader who started her career as an F117A Stealth Fighter avionics engineer but now spends her days navigating the world of enterprise software. She currently leads Splunk’s Professional Services and Sales organization, a $200+ million P&L with more than 850 sales, services and partner delivery professionals in more than 20 countries. Toni has experience across nearly every aspect of a business and the customer journey, whether that’s technical pre-sales, sales, professional services, global support, mission critical services or customer success management. When she’s not busy building, mentoring and managing her teams, Toni can usually be found competing at any number of sports or volunteering at the Longboat Key Turtle Watch.

Why are you so passionate about helping people-based businesses?

I started my career in engineering and product sales, but spent the majority of my time as a leader in people-based businesses. People are the heart and soul of any company, and there is nothing more amazing than creating a culture and environment where high performing teams are learning and growing, providing huge value to customers, and feeling accomplished but challenged. That’s a sweet spot for me, and results in great talent and a thriving business.

You manage teams on five continents. What advice would you give to founders looking to expand internationally on managing a truly global team culture?

This is too hard to summarize in a few sentences but I’ll start with a big one: think and act globally, but with a local lens. By that I mean leaders have to be clear on overall objectives and direction, while being thoughtful and respectful of the culture, language and diverse needs of local employees and customers. Too many U.S.-based leaders come at it with a U.S.centric mindset. Be conscious of what you say, what policies you put in place and what actions you take. Even small things like creating flex meeting times that respect time zone differences can make a big impact.

How has the cloud changed things when it comes to meeting the needs and demands of enterprise customers?

As customers move from perpetual or on-premise to cloud technologies, their expectations of vendors have shifted alongside. They now expect a regular cadence of new features, seamless updates, instant fixes, proactive pushes, even telemetry. If expectations aren’t met, they feel much more empowered to leave and find a new vendor. This means companies have to get the right services to customers, at the right time, with the right resources to speed customer adoption; it’s imperative that they’re getting value every step of the way so they renew and expand. However, that takes sales, services, support and product teams working together, which means everyone now owns customer success. Not one particular group.

As a vocal advocate for women in Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM), what do you think companies can do differently to help women excel in technology organizations?

Making progress in this area takes real work, not just talk, and it can’t just be owned by HR. It needs to be infused throughout the company as a business imperative and treated as importantly as other drivers for success. It requires leadership and holding everyone accountable. A good place to start is to benchmark where you are currently and be realistic but set aggressive goals. Collect the data, use it as a foundation, measure your progress and communicate how you’re doing. Be purposeful in creating a diverse pipeline of candidates and ensure you are creating a culture that is inclusive.

Emma Sprague

January 25, 2021 by

Emma Sprague is a partner at KNP Communcations, a private firm that helps its clients become great communicators by providing in-person and virtual training and coaching for organizations and individuals globally. Before KNP, she founded Upswing Strategies, a media and communications firm.

Why are you passionate about helping entrepreneurs?

It takes guts (and time, and heart, and so much resilience) to launch an idea out into the world and fight for it to thrive. A lot of that has to come from the entrepreneur, but there are places where guidance and investment from others are essential. I’m grateful to be in a position to help entrepreneurs, both with my first-hand experience launching a business and because that business is focused on helping good people with good ideas deliver their message, tell their story, and make their pitch with the impact they desire. I am animated by the process of helping people shape their most authentic and compelling way to communicate and to lead, and to feel confident in both.

You’ve done a lot of social science research into why people listen to and follow some leaders more than others. How can founders hone their speaking and presentation skills to be a more inspirational leader?

Leading is a lot easier and more effective when people want to follow, when they are inspired, when they admire you and feel you’re headed somewhere together. That feeling is informed by the emotional character judgements we innately make about one another. Is she my kind of person? Does she have the ability to influence my world? One of the best ways to inform that judgement and inspire is by communicating your vision, your values and your story well and authentically. Becoming a magnetic speaker demands deliberate attention to how you prepare, how you show up, and how you deliver. That approach requires harnessing your individual strengths and personality, honing strategies that align your words, body language and voice with your message, and building a routine that ensures you approach each engagement with energy and poise.

During the pandemic companies had to shift quickly from in-person to virtual events. What can we learn from the companies who’ve been successful in this new format? How do they keep engagement high?

The first thing to do is acknowledge that virtual engagements – while powerful in a lot of important ways – are a really difficult mechanism for holding people’s attention and making true connections. That means the bar is much higher and you have to be all the more intentional in building a plan that meets your goals and captivates your participants. And that’s exactly where you start – what is your team hoping to get out of this and what do you want others to get out of this? If those answers aren’t crystal clear, you will flop and be lost in the sea of virtual panels rattling on behind someone’s email screen. Once your goals are set, some good things to consider: shorter presentations and shorter events; super engaging speakers only; incorporate multiple formats; get people on their feet; find ways to break through the screen; and build individual follow up into the plan.

You are a mentor and coach for Bates’ Bobcat Ventures entrepreneurship competition, and are deliberate about reaching leaders early in their careers. What advice would you give to founders on how to help and source future leaders?

I love working with students and young people. Confidence in public speaking, and so many other skills that make better leaders, better entrepreneurs, are ultimately a matter of routine and practice. The sooner you introduce and build those habits, the more they become second nature, muscle memory and mindset. I like to introduce students to a more holistic way of communicating – not just the words, but your energy, your movement, how you feel about what you’re saying – tactics for welcoming and handling nerves, and telling stories as a tool for persuasion. My advice to founders: think about what skill you wish you’d mastered earlier in your career and pass it on. Where to start: connect with schools you attended, incubators in your region, and by word of mouth. Coach one person and more will come. The long view goal is to create better prepared leaders for our teams and our world.

Ryan Denehy

January 25, 2021 by

Ryan is a serial entrepreneur, investor and hands-on advisor who has started three companies, and is now the founder and CEO of Electric, a IT solutions company with more than 20,000 end users and 400 customers. He started his first venture-backed company, a digital ad network called Banquet and his second company, Swarm, a retail analytics company for SMBs, a few years later. Both began with a services-based model but over time transitioned to managed services and eventually pure software, and both had successful exits to publicly traded companies (USA TODAY/Gannett and Groupon). That journey has given Ryan broad experience in all aspects of revenue strategy and proven his ability to craft a vision, build the team, and get the job done.

What do you love about leading and growing people-based businesses?

People-centric approaches (versus software) give founders an edge when it comes to speed. A smart services team can form a hypothesis, create a solution, bring it to market, and iterate and improve it, and within weeks have a seven-figure commercial business unit up and running. That is significantly different than what happens with software-driven companies, and is a unique competitive advantage if managed correctly.

You founded and successfully grew businesses focused on managed services, including Electric AI and SWARM Mobile. What is the biggest mistake companies make when expanding into managed services?

The hardest thing about expanding into productized services is figuring out the division of labor in the value chain. It’s easy to chase big dollars and do it all, but sometimes (well, often) less is more. At SWARM, we ultimately decided to focus our efforts on integration and software and pushed a lot of the commodity field work to channel partners. At Electric, we’ve been really clear about what our humans should do versus someone else’s. This focus has been key to scaling.

What advice would you give founders as they move from the initial start up phase into scale mode?

The best advice I can give is to look at your business objectives 12-18 months from now, and then look at the team that you have today. How confident are you that each leader can own their part of that new number and get the job done in 12 months (not today)? The biggest danger with a scaling business is hitting a wall and it’s entirely avoidable if you look far enough into the future and assess your team on tomorrow rather than today.