Leading Through Organizational Change: When Everything Around You Is Shifting

When the Organization Changes, So Must the Leader

Organizational change sounds good on paper. Living through it is something entirely different.

In this anonymized coaching session, Jeff works with a professional navigating a major organizational restructuring as their company transitions from traditional functional silos to cross-functional "pod" teams aligned around customer accounts.

Together, they explore the leadership challenges that emerge when roles, responsibilities, relationships, and expectations begin to shift. How do you create clarity amid uncertainty? How do you build trust across new teams? And how do leaders help people move forward when the future feels unclear?

This conversation offers a practical look inside the coaching process and provides valuable lessons for anyone leading through growth, transformation, restructuring, or organizational change.

If your company is evolving and you're trying to help your team adapt while maintaining performance, this episode is for you.

In this episode:

•  Why organizational change often creates more uncertainty than leaders expect 
•  The opportunities and challenges of cross-functional team structures 
•  How accountability changes when success becomes shared 
•  Leading people through ambiguity and transition 
•  Building alignment during periods of organizational transformation 

Because when the organization changes, leadership matters more than ever.

What got your revenue here won’t get it where it needs to go next. On the Shoulders of Giants is the podcast from High Achiever
 for founders, executives, revenue leaders, and operators responsible for accelerating growth in complex organizations.

Hosted by Jeff Wells, each episode explores the leadership principles, operating systems, and decision-making frameworks behind scalable, sustainable performance.

We go beyond tactics to help organizations align strategy, execution, and resource allocation through a Revenue Operating System designed for clarity, accountability, and measurable growth.

Subscribe for conversations on:
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• B2B Growth Strategy
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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

There might be a little dust on the bottle, but don't be fooled because what's inside is wisdom. I'm Jeff Wells, and this is on the shoulders of giants. Hey, welcome to the pod. Today we're doing something we've never done before. We got a lot of feedback that it would be cool to be a fly on the wall for a real coaching call. So that's exactly what we're sharing today. We've taken an actual call and changed the identities and any references to company names or people while keeping the integrity of the conversation fully intact. So what you're about to hear really happened. A couple of quick notes before we start. This is our first pass at anonymizing a live session, and we're using AI to do it. It's not perfect yet, but it'll get sharper as we refine the process in the episodes ahead. You'll also notice this one is audio only. We're usually a video show too, but for this first attempt, audio is where we needed to start. Let's get into it.

SPEAKER_00 1:03

Things are good, my man. Busy, busy as ever, but but good. I I had a late workout today. I was we got a quarterly business review later today. So I was working on the deck. I had to get out by you know 11 o'clock. So I I was like, I got 30 minutes to spare, had a workout. So that's why you got the fresh, newly done hair today. You look like Wall Street. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It'll puff out in about half an hour. So that's it. When it whenever you see it like this, it's not a style. It just means I've just showered. So so but yeah, all is all is good, my man. How are things with you? How's the how's the sort of business wise and everything? Good, good, busy.

SPEAKER_01 1:39

Um, yeah, lots of stuff going on.

SPEAKER_00 1:41

So yeah, because you took on a lot of new people about six months ago, right? Is that about right?

SPEAKER_01 1:46

I started to, okay, and then I kind of shifted gears. But like first of all, I think the nature of the world is changing quickly. And so I really started to rationalize that the best way to do this is probably not to scale through people. Yeah. And so I sat back and started to think differently about the business. We've doubled down on the podcast. So we just published our first eight episodes. And I'd say it's okay. Okay. You know, it's uh a work in progress, but I'm getting much clearer in terms of what I think it should look like versus what it does. Yeah. It's really an interesting thing. So you know, learning a new discipline, right? Yeah, it's just the curve is enormous, especially for somebody who's not as smart as most people.

SPEAKER_00 2:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:42

So it takes a little bit of time.

SPEAKER_00 2:44

Are you referring to me there? I feel like I say that all the time to my as we're trying to learn new things. My I'm always like, look, I I don't, I don't, that's why you guys all work for me, work for me. I don't know how to do this. This is you guys are the smart ones. Right? Come on. I know how to close a deal. I know how to close deals.

SPEAKER_01 3:01

It's so true. Yeah. Anyway, I think look, I think the world is changing. You know, I've got a couple observations just about the market overall. I think it's it's a chaotic place. Yeah. But I also think that in that chaos, there's never been a better opportunity in the history of the workforce to create wealth.

SPEAKER_00 3:24

Yeah, I I I do agree with that. I don't know how long it lasts for. That's that's the thing I sort of said to my wife. I was like, you know, there was there was a moment about a year ago where I talked about at the end of this year, I might take six months off and travel before Henry gets into proper school and stuff like that. And look, yeah, could could still do that potentially, but I'm I'm looking at it from a perspective of these are some pretty good earning years. So we'll we'll do some extravagant vacations. We we we actually just I was like, we'll make memories here. We just bought a boat on on the lake that we're right buying and stuff. So I was like, I kind of shifted my kind of focus from like, all right, plow through this, get three years done, then take a break, to you know, there's there's probably a break coming my way at some point that I don't want to do, but it's but let's let's accumulate some wealth along the way.

SPEAKER_01 4:15

Yeah, but I think look, I think that's really wise, right? Because there's certain times in the market looking back where I would have said to you, take the break because it's not going to change. Like there's never a good time. But I I really do think this is a unique season, and I think your measure around that is really wise. I'd also say to a lot of people that the market is it's so chaotic. And as you and I have talked about in the past, finding good leadership in this market right now is the exception, not the rule. Yeah. And so the whole nature of you know the grass looking greener on the other side is really misleading, right? Because the probability of you getting into something quickly that is demonstrably worse than where you are, there's a high probability of that.

SPEAKER_00 5:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 5:14

Right. And so I don't think it, I don't think it's necessarily a market that says don't move, but I do think it's a market that says move with measure. Yeah. Right. Like if you were ever to do your diligence in a job search, now's the time to do more diligence than you've ever done in the past.

SPEAKER_00 5:33

Yeah, no, and uh agreed. I'd had a couple of folks, which and I, you know, wasn't it's not unless something crazy came up where it's like, hey, this is just too good, right? It's running something that's that's moving so fast, it's not something I'm I'm overly looking at. I I actually had a great call with my COO just last night, actually, just good kind of good timing on this. We are we're changing the structure of of the company uh a little, not a little bit, a lot. And they've they've they want me to lead a set division. I'll explain what they're what they're looking for, and I'd love kind of some advice on what what the pitfalls might look like. It's very timely conversation based on actually me just not being able to make last week's has made this a very timely conversation because I knew none of this last Wednesday. Uh I got a little wind of it on Friday, and then a quick call with my CEO on Monday morning, and then followed by COO kind of going, hey, we haven't flushed this out yet, but this is the plan, and we're gonna try and move quick. So, what they want to do, they're trying to decide it's the whole business or it's just the vertical side of the business. They they think it's all, but they know they want to do it with financial service and healthcare because they believe they have the right leaders and me and one other guy to do this, but they want to set it up like a pod. So think of like how like anthropic and others are doing it, where basically there's uh because we do a lot of our business is service business. We have obviously CSMs that are very heavily in the accounts, and then we pretty much don't do a lot of I'd call like new business, like in the enterprise. Like we have most of the logos, our new business deals are like actually other lines of business, and then the big we have a lot of products we can sell, and we have obviously two platforms here saying, yeah, so the the idea is to create these pods. They're talking about, you know, it could be five or seven people in a pod. There'll be a leader, will likely be a salesperson, like a Jason or a Samantha on my team would likely lead it. There is some like higher level CS people that could, and then there's SEs that are like managers right now that could move into that role to lead it. But effectively what they want to do is you've got a book of like each pod's got a book of like 30 million, maybe like 15, 20 accounts, one or two AEs on it, two service level people, a BDR, and a solutions engineer. So you've got people who can be in the account technically. And then instead of having like, hey, this is your designated CSM, like this is your designated account team. And it's like, so if someone moves, there's still the tribal knowledge of the other five people effectively. So that's kind of what they're doing. It should be three or four pods under me, because I'm about 120 million of revenue. So that'd be three or four team leads, and then me being like the the principal, they call it, yeah, VP of like overseeing the financial services, and then they're going to add the global side to me at the end of the year. So I'll take over the financial services in EMEA as well. So that goes me from complete frontline managing, which is five people and an awful lot of revenue, to 24, 30 people under me with probably four or five direct reports, and then you know, another sort of 15, 20 people below that, depending. Well, probably 20 to 25 people, sorry, below that. So depending. So that was a lot to take in on a at 5 p.m. on a on a Monday. And it it, you know, there is, I did a lot of research, like Anthropic does that with like forward-deployed engineers, salespeople, CSMs, they work in pods. We're not anthropic, but that's neither here nor there. But that's kind of the way we want to do it because we we feel with our agentic AI solutions, our our Scout, which basically is a, I call it a competitive intelligence solution that about AI, that if you think of the, I forgot the name of the company now, but you had scrunch, this was acquired. All of those companies that do it like at the brand level and location level, we feel we've got a pretty good tool where when we're talking, so I was having a conversation with Edward Jones, one of their principals. We were talking about ad spend. They spend, you know, hundreds of millions of dollars on targeted Google, Facebook ads. And we basically showed them using our data, we can show you where you should be spending the money and where you shouldn't. And they don't have a tool that does that. So out of nowhere, and not even our like call it use case, we we have about a two or three million dollar opportunity to sell them data so they can make better informed decisions on where they should be targeting ad spend. So, so we see ourselves not as kind of that listings company anymore, but more of a, hey, we can we can solve your AI digital footprint. And I think we the way I look at it is the next 18 months, we'll see if that works or it doesn't, or if we're back to being a listings company that's a commodity. Yeah. So that's that's that's where we're at. So sorry, I just talked a lot there, but I want to give you kind of how how it's perfect.

SPEAKER_01 10:42

I mean, the context is great, right? And I and I think there's really uh two primary things in the narrative. One is obviously the evolution of the product, yeah, but organizationally aligning around what we believe the evolution of the product might be. And I think, you know, ironically, I think that makes sense. I also think that if indeed the product doesn't shift in the way you foresee it shifting, I don't necessarily believe that the model, I don't think that the model itself is so dependent on the evolution of the product that if you if the product doesn't do what you think it will do, that the model disrupts things in any way, shape, or form. So let me ask you this before I tell you, you know, share some perspective on this, because I've actually got some pretty good perspective on it. What is your like what's your initial inclination towards it? Like as you kind of think about it and how do you feel about it?

SPEAKER_00 11:46

Yeah, so I think there's some, I'll start with what I think is some of the the positives. So, well, you know, first and foremost, it it puts, you know, in fact, selfishly, it puts me in a position that I can tell a really an even better story than than before of of what I'm running and what I oversee. So from a completely selfish perspective, like that's even if I feel it's like gonna be terrible and doesn't work, I I'd probably be like inclined to to go that way to a certain extent, right? Like, not if it's gonna be completely detrimental to to things. I think that we often, I think when you look at it like, and maybe I'm the way I think about it, like when you think about like a pod structure, and if everyone's now gonna be paid a little bit more on like a smaller portion of like deals, you can't really hide a average or below average SC, CSM, or AE in a smaller pod structure. I feel when I look at like my I've just got six reps, if four of them are crushing it, I probably hit my quota, right? Like I don't really, it doesn't matter if the other two don't, as long as they're not causing me any like harm. Whereas I feel in this structure, you've the whole team has to be a bit more effective. And I feel there'll be more accountability because when I look at we've got to get rid of a couple of really poor performing CSMs that nobody really complained a ton about because the CSM had one account with each rep. So like the rep was like not, eh, whatever, it's one of my accounts, but they add up, right? All of a sudden we had 18, 20 accounts that were being underserved, and the AEs weren't really calling out because it was only one portion of the business. Whereas if a CSM is really poor and that's your main CSM, you're either up leveling that CSM or they're moving out. So I think there's almost a little bit of that policing aspect that I think, yeah, comes into play of a team. Again, because there's less sellers on it. Like you can't, you you really need both. You need you need them all to be performing. So that's kind of my my initial thoughts on the positive side. Maybe there's a few other things. Negative is ripping the band-aid off and making this change mid-year, trying to figure out like comp structures, whether everyone will be happy with where they're placed. You know, like on my team, you know, I think can be a team leader if if for whatever reason, like he doesn't shake into the mix of becoming a team lead on on one of these, like is he happy being the number two seller in a pod, you know, or be, you know, being run by a solutions engineer or a CSM lead, you know, those are the type of thing, and vice versa. You know, if Kev moves in, you know, there's literally CSM leaders who are gonna move into these pods that, you know, that they're gonna suddenly be run by a salesperson or something. Like there's there's those aspects that make me think that if everyone isn't fully bought into the vision that I'm gonna try to lead with of where we can make a lot of money, there's gonna be people that are gonna be looking elsewhere because they don't, they're not used to this kind of like way of setting up a system. And then we obviously have the accounts you work with. There's gonna have to be shuffles there. So we have to really tell a great story to the market of why we're doing this. There's gonna be upset people, but I I that's that's something that I have to figure out how we're gonna navigate once they they tell me what the plan is to execute on. That's my my thoughts, both good and bad, in the in in kind of a quick form form. Quick for me, not that quick, right, Jeff.

SPEAKER_01 15:13

But nothing it's good. Like it's I mean, it's good because all of those comments and the narrative actually shows that you're thinking about it, right? Pretty pretty in depth. So I've got I've got a number of comments that hopefully will be helpful. First of all, the structure is by far my favorite structure. Okay. It's my absolute favorite go-to-market. Oh wow. Okay. We ran it the first time back at Reactionable Software, like I mean, 25 years ago. Yep. And we we built pods. CSM, SE, Net News Seller. Net News Seller was typically on point, right? Even though um the CSM and the SE reported to a CSM and a sales leader or a CSM, an overall leader, right? And then they deployed those. So you had a net new sales leader, you still had a CSM leader, and you still had an SE leader, but each of those were in teams, and in essence, those teams were led by the seller.

SPEAKER_00 16:25

Okay. Quick question for you then, just because I'm I'm I want to do you think this, I don't know if because I asked that question, like, so would it be me overseeing like the pods and like CSM and SE leaders as well? And they said the way we see it is there's not that layer of like a an SE or a CSM leader outside of like the SVP, like very high up, like their their thing in a structure 100%. So so that's so that's so there's so the like the the the the only high up SE and CSM leader will be like the highest level, right? The one that reports, yeah. So typically, like I like that. I don't like the like the fragmented frontline leadership, okay? I like the individual pod being led by the leader, and then what you have in terms of the strategic and the support functions are more operationally centric, right?

SPEAKER_01 17:16

Yeah, so typically like I like that. I don't like the like the fragmented frontline leadership of the individual pod being led by the leader, and then what you have in terms of the strategic and the support functions are more operationally centric, right? So, like if CSMs need infrastructure tools, either you've got somebody in RevOps that's focused on the CSM infrastructure, sort of the motions and the cadences and those things, but like a single point of leadership over the individual pods. Yeah. Okay. Right. And then you've got these cross-functional, whatever the teams are that help with strategy and operational stuff, just like in your sales teams. Right. RevOps floats across the business. Right. Okay. So yeah, I like it that way the best. It's it just makes it a lot easier to lead to all the functions. Here's the second thing I really like about the model. If you were to sit, you know, if we go back to the primary role of the leader, right? And we think about the first principle of the primary role of the leader to make great decisions and teach other people how to make great decisions. If you're to sit back in the face of this and ask, well, how are you making that decision? Yeah, a really good answer would be that we started thinking about the business outside in versus inside out. Yeah. And outside in means what's best for the customer. Right. And by any stretch of the imagination, all of your resources organized in a single pod focused on a finite group of business with consistency, right? Builds continuity into the engagement model, it builds alignment into the engagement model. And done right provides a much better customer experience, a more holistic customer experience. Because of a lot of the things that you just said, all of those people have a shared objective. And you tapped on what I think one of the most beneficial elements of the pod structure is, is that they will self-regulate. Yeah. Right. When we share the goal and the objective, and our compensation is tied to a shared goal and objective, we're only as strong as the weakest link in the pod. And therefore, in a fractionalized organization where we have disparate goals and we're less aligned around a single leader, right? Multiple leaders versus a single leader. So we get fractionalized guidance. It's really easy for call it a salesperson on the team to have a CSM that isn't performing, and vice versa, and for neither to say anything about the other.

SPEAKER_00 20:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 20:09

In a pod structure, you can't do that.

SPEAKER_00 20:13

Yeah, right. That's kind of that that was that's the one I think is the most beneficial because I hear about CSM issues and I hear about my AE issues. I have two AEs that you know probably aren't going to make the grade. But again, nobody brought it forward until it became an actual issue. Because when you look at it, there was literally seven times that somebody could have brought this forward, but because they only had one account with them, it's like it's it's it's it's you know, if they have 20 accounts, it's like, eh, it's less than 5% of my book. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 20:41

And you as a leader have to then to get the context, you have to run unnecessary motions to go down to the business to figure out why one AE or one CSM may not be pulling their weight within the construct of the whole. Also, this whole the ratios that you see across the business. I don't know how yours are, but when you see like an AE who's got four CSMs spread across their book of business, you can't build any continuity into what you're delivering on behalf of the customer. So what you'll get is you'll start to get individual pods who will define what good looks like in terms of their collective delivery to the customer. You as a leader, because they will self-regulate and the good pods will start bubbling to the top, is you'll start to see trends in terms of the collective motion that those pods are delivering to the customer, which then will inform the other pods. You and I have talked about it a lot. One of your primary roles in terms of making really good decisions is your ability to capture context at scale. And the problem with capturing context at scale is that so much of the context is fragmented across a number Of different people. And the game of telephone is alive and well in the building, right? So what starts out here from one person as good information, by the time it gets to you, it's so convoluted it doesn't even look like it originally looked, which is closest to the customer.

SPEAKER_00 22:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 22:17

Now if you fragment that horizontally across multiple resources that aren't aligned, your ability to capture really good context is fragmented further. Which once, again, as a leader, means that in your operating system, you've got to get so far down in the weeds and figure out what truth is, right? That it just adds a layer of work that's very, very challenging to scale. So in the pod structure, don't take this the wrong way. But here's the best thing about one of the best things about the pod structure is you've got all the liars in the same room.

SPEAKER_00 22:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 22:53

Yeah. Right. And I say that with, you know, as much empathy as I can. But the reality is that there's no malice in terms of the communication. It's just that by the time that collective communication gets to you, it's not the communication that's truly informing. Right. Because it's it's changed so much. This allows you literally to manage the pod and to sort through the nature of the context as a unified pod. Yeah. There are economy is scale, economies of scale related to this that are tremendous.

unknown 23:27

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 23:28

Not the least of which is what we talked about in terms of they well self-regulate. Yeah. Right.

SPEAKER_00 23:34

Yeah. But the thing I think that is is really good.

SPEAKER_01 23:37

Yeah. Here's the other thing. The beauty of their self-regulation, if you teach them, the first stop of self-regulation is to deal with it as the team. Yeah. Right. So initially you've got to train them to, you know, if the AE is coming to you and saying, hey, I got a bad CSM, then the first stop in that journey is to point the AE as a leader back to the pod, and y'all work out how you're going to solve the problem.

SPEAKER_00 24:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 24:06

Right. That's the first pass is go deal with the team, work it out as a team. Now, granted, if you can't work it out with the team, that's what I'm here for. Yeah. Right. But now I can facilitate a really transparent conversation with those three people. And I have the quote unquote position to do that without having to worry about, oh, I'm going to piss off a cross-functional leader. Right. Because they all roll up to me. Yeah. And in essence, what they're doing now is you're delegating people to run their business. And they want to run their pod. You want to teach them to run their pod almost as if they're running a PL. Their own PL. Right. Here's the other thing that's beautiful. You're going to start to very quickly see who on the teams can lead and who can't. Yeah. Which is the perfect succession plan. Yeah. Right. So now you're building redundancy from a leadership perspective, promotion paths, because the nature of actually leading those teams and working together as a team is beginning to show you who's the next step of leaders. You're starting to see patterns from the core teams that are doing really, really well that you can then repeat across the other pods. You get the benefit of self-regulation, right? And then ultimately, you know, the beauty of this is you've got to tight everybody to a compensation structure that is rooted in those shared objectives.

SPEAKER_00 25:46

Yeah. And I don't know what that looks like. So I'm actually going to be in Chicago tomorrow for a meeting on Thursday. And my COO happens to be in. She said, Hey, you fly in early, we'll grab dinner. We'll just talk a little bit more. She wants me to bring me in under the hood a little bit. I I won't have a ton of say in it, but she'd like to like bounce ideas off me, she kind of said. She said she didn't want to bring in other guys like that, but she kind of said, I've kind of earned the right to be in that room to help a little bit, and she'll trust my judgment. So that's the one thing that she said to me. They haven't figured it out. They're running through some compensation models. But the idea is they're going to be, as a company, we have a lot of redundancies when you think about like just CSMs with one or two accounts and not, you know, but they have to because it's just the way we've done it. And now adding this pod together, you don't have to do it. With that, the idea was not to save money. The idea is to push that into the pod structure that they can compensate people better. And, you know, an SE shouldn't be just making, you know, $10,000 off a five million dollar deal type thing, right? You know, or whatever the I don't, that's probably very exaggerated, but you get the point. Yeah. It's like like they want they want like a CSM or an SE to be paid more for the big deals, and then an AU who's running a pod to make even more based on the success and retention and and that. So it sounds like what they're trying to do is is work through that right now, that like basically everyone will succeed. Because right now, like a platform consultant that does a great job, that ends we end up selling more to them because they built this great interface in the background. They just make their wage. So they're not that like when more when more stuff comes in for them to build for the clients that expands the account. Yeah, they're more, they're more, they're more grumpy than anything else about it.

SPEAKER_01 27:49

So that's kind of that's the absolute beauty of it, is that in the shared objectives, everybody wins. Now you win at varying degrees based on you know OT structures and those types of things, but you're tied to the very measured outcomes. And so what you want to think about as you begin to build out the plan is not just quantitatively, what does good look like? Right. So quantitatively, or the quantitative metric is the easy metric to drive. And it basically says, you know, if I've got a $30 million book of business, net growth against that $30 million needs to be X. The return on our collective investment for the resources is Y against that quantitative outcome. Right.

unknown 28:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 28:33

And the reality is that what you want to make sure is what you're trying to do is begin with the end in mind relative to what good looks like. Because as an example, just because you have 10% growth against a $30 million business doesn't necessarily mean that the book is good. Yeah. Right. So you need to quantify what are the right KPIs. So in essence, you get the breadth of coverage against the base, and you've got the quantitative KPIs, right? So what is the revenue attainment? But you've also got the qualitative KPIs, things like you know, however you measure qualitative. Now promoter score, customer sat, whatever, you know, your retention metrics are quantitative, right? So you just you want to balance, begin with the end of mind, define what good looks like against quantitative and qualitative inputs, and then tie your comp metrics to those quantitative and qualitative metrics. So you get the balance against the portfolio. Yeah. Right. I absolutely love the model.

SPEAKER_00 29:39

That's great. I'm again, I I'd actually not obviously I've not worked at too many companies like this. You know, I've kind of just been only been at three really in the tech space. Obviously, I have a lot of partner companies that, you know, that's how we met with through like spread fast back in the day and obviously Hootsuite. And I'd just not seen this model necessarily. So I was like, you know, I was doing a lot of research last night and found a bunch of companies that seem to do it now, and obviously could only find the big ones because that's the ones that you can find easily. So it's good to hear that this is a model that makes a ton of sense to someone like you.

SPEAKER_01 30:11

But look, the reality is this is you see it in bigger companies because oftentimes it's perceived as an expensive model. But the reality is that if you look at the fractionalized nature of those resources that exist in the business anyway, right? They're this they're a higher cost structure when they're not aligned.

SPEAKER_00 30:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 30:31

And so there's this false perception that you know aligning those to a pod structure is cost more money. And I just think that's a false narrative.

unknown 30:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 30:43

I don't think it costs more money. I think the the productivity increases that you potentially get from the alignment offset any incremental cost. And then your ability to aggregate more business to an individual pod and get leverage, ultimately, funds from a compensation perspective, the escalators that you can put in place for the pod, right? Because that's where it technically gets expensive, is on the accelerator side. Yeah. But who who cares?

SPEAKER_00 31:12

Who's not willing to pay accelerators for good business? Yeah, that's that's where I will say, you know, you know, funnily enough, I I think back to my first year at Bandcamp where I, you know, hit like 300% my number and yeah, you know, did not cross a particularly big number, you know, payment-wise. In actual fact, you know, I got hit with cogs, I got hit with all these things. Once you hit a certain thing, you know, it was capped. And here it's like funny, like we have a couple of good months, and I look at my pay and I was like, holy smokes, it's like, why are you paying me? So it's like, that's you we we pay well on accelerators. We do pay the sales team well. Like, I I had I had two people make a million dollars plus last year as sellers, which is which is great that none of our competitors are paying that. As it should be. Should be, right? But it but it's not.

SPEAKER_01 32:03

I know, but think about this. Think about just the mindsets. And you and I talk about these things because they're more career oriented. And what you learn from this is that every dollar over plan technically is a dollar that you could dilute and the company still exceeds its objectives. Correct. So if indeed in diluting that dollar, and you don't have to radically dilute it, that's the false perception. But in diluting that dollar, every, you know, the dollar over plan, what you build back into the system is continuity. Yeah. Right. And you and I have talked about this a million times. The first principle of revenue growth is continuity. Yeah, right. So build your structures, build your go-to-market, rip the band-aid off once, do it quickly, and then iterate from the model.

unknown 32:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 32:52

So the only thing I'd say to you is that in this model, what as much as it depends on you, you want to commit to the model and iterate against the model. Give it 24 months to play out. Yeah. Right. Because you will start to see the synergies and alignment that might be slightly chaotic at first, will begin to stabilize. The teams will come together with their own subculture within the broader culture. The top teams will begin to hit. You pull the patterns out of the top teams, share it with the other teams. Now you're going to start to see seven out of 10 teams who are hitting their numbers. Yeah. Right? Of those seven, probably two or three of those are getting into mad accelerators and setting the pace for everybody else. That is the snowball effect. Right?

SPEAKER_00 33:41

Yeah, no, I I I like it. I think it makes a ton of sense. And I think that's where it is. It's exciting, right? I think there's a lot of I'm more excited now. I chatted to you about it. So that's that's that's good. I I never felt yesterday, like I said when I heard it, I was like, it's really interesting. The the the things that sprung to mind were like the self-regulation, the you you're only as strong as your weakest person. So like everyone levels it up or you you level up or you level out, right? Like pretty simple. But what's but but again, what was exciting to me was like, again, even if it wasn't like the great, the great model, it was like it's career development for me. I'm I'm gonna improve what I can do. But the fact that it is actually something that makes a ton of sense is even better, right? Because there are definitely times where I've, you know, you you you talk about that career leaps and stuff. This feels to me like in company, 100%, it's a big leap for me. So 100%.

SPEAKER_01 34:33

That's a step function towards the leap moment. Yeah, yeah, right. Yeah, and and so that's beautiful. And you know, the self-awareness of that relative to your own career is a really good deposit. And the beauty of the way you're thinking about it, because at times as you think about that, it feels selfish, right? Yeah, but it's not selfish, it's wise. Because here's the reality if indeed there is a high potential downside in the model, yeah, and it would break that selfish motivation, right? Then you're gonna speak into it and say, no, no, no, don't do this, because you recognize that the downside is the actual opposite of what you're trying to do from a momentum perspective.

SPEAKER_00 35:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 35:18

So just thinking about it critically and expressing it that way, I don't think that's a selfish pursuit. I think it's self-awareness. And I think the value, like seeing the value of it and how it relates to the career side is really important. Yeah, right. It's intentional, right? But you're not gonna say you're not gonna say yes to a bad model just because you get span and control.

SPEAKER_00 35:43

Yeah, no, and and that's what I said, like, you know, it's like part of me is like selfishly, like I said, and you said why why is it it's like that? But it didn't, it doesn't feel like it's a bad idea. Like it felt like I'm like I'm you know, looking at it and then doing the research last night, I was like, you know, this does feel like you know, what what the big boys try to do, probably what like the Adobe's and and IBMs have gone to market with their strategic teams, right? They have a team coming in to do that, right? You know, things of that nature. And I think we just have a lot, especially in my book of business, we have an awful lot of service hours that like it makes a ton of sense to get them under the hood and actually like because that's that's been one of my biggest problems is like honestly, like I have some great service people, but they I've ended up bringing two over to be SCs on my team because they like we end up doing a lot of the work and we don't get really paid. We want to be on we want to be on that side of the the thing. Well, this is almost now bringing people who you know, SEs who wanted to be salespeople, they don't have to be now. PCs who want to be SCs, they don't have to be now. They're gonna be compensated in the way that their work is is credited the right way.

SPEAKER_01 36:58

So yeah, I love it. Love it. And I love I love the way you're thinking about it personally. I would end with this. I'd say, you know, the thing to remember in this journey is that at times it's been crazy chaotic, yeah, right, since you've been there. But I always say that, you know, the management or the intentional management of a career is your ability to navigate the concept of difficulty and opportunity living living in harmony.

SPEAKER_00 37:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 37:35

Because I'm just telling you, outside of a unicorn where you don't actually have to perform really, really well to win because you're getting pulled through the market, outside of catching a unicorn, right, most businesses are a combination of opportunity and difficulty. Yeah. Right. And if you solve for most businesses and you catch the unicorn, you're likely going to execute better in that unicorn than somebody who hasn't navigated this whole complexity of opportunity mixed with difficulty. Yeah. Right. And what that means to the unicorn is you probably bring disciplined best practices into the unicorn that even though they're not necessary to grow, when that growth plateaus, your teams are in a position to navigate through the plateau. Yeah. Which is different than most unicorn leaders who just catch the way. Who caught it on the way up, yeah. Right? And you get to the top and it peaks, and then you peel back the layers of the onion, and you're like, this organization is not only not close to good, it's really bad. And therefore, you go from a plateau to a dip and you're trying to get the unicorn back up. So recognize that this experience and the way you've navigated it of staying in the seam will ultimately pay mad dividends moving forward and already has. Yeah. Right? Because there are many times that in the midst of difficulty you could have opted out, but you stayed. And in staying, you've taken multiple step functions towards the leapfrog. Yeah. That's wisdom. That's measure.

SPEAKER_00 39:14

Yeah, no, man, right? It's it's no, I appreciate it. Love to love to chat again soon, man. This was this is a ton of this is always great. You're you're you're awesome, dude. I I appreciate it. All right, brother.

SPEAKER_01 39:26

Thanks.