Get Amplified
Get Amplified
Leading Like a Team Coach with Harvey Smith, VP Partners
What happens when a leader embraces the role of team coach?
In this episode, we sit down with Harvey Smith, VP Partners, who shares his experience leading partner teams across EMEA through his natural team coaching approach.
Harvey opens up about the delicate balance between authority and humility that defines great team coaching leadership. Drawing on his extensive experience at DocuSign, Salesforce, Tableau, and VMware, Harvey reveals how he transformed disparate teams into cohesive units through simple but powerful approaches.
His mantra? “If you’ve got 27 priorities, you haven’t got any.” By focusing on no more than three clearly ranked objectives, Harvey empowered his team to stay aligned, and say no to distractions. The phrase “Harvey says no” became a cultural shorthand for protecting priorities and staying on mission.
We delve into how genuine trust is built within teams. Harvey shares his belief in vulnerability and accessibility, implementing skip-level meetings where team members could speak freely and career development sessions that demonstrated his commitment to their growth. This created psychological safety that allowed honest communication to flourish.
Harvey's innovative approaches to breaking down silos include his "pod model" for cross-functional collaboration and strategic use of "stretch projects" that deliberately positioned team members to connect teams.
When it comes to conflict, Harvey doesn’t shy away. His take? “Partners are like a car accident – everyone slows down to look but no one wants to get involved.” His solution? Proactive education, clear communication channels, and shared understanding of roles and responsibilities.
Book Picks
- Rebel Ideas by Matthew Syed – on the power of diverse thinking
- The Culture Map by Erin Meyer – a must-read for navigating global teams.
Whether you're managing partners, leading through change, or simply trying to create more effective teams, this episode offers practical wisdom for balancing the human element with unwavering focus on business outcomes.
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https://www.linkedin.com/company/amplified-group/
Welcome to Get Amplified the podcast about teamwork in the tech industry. Well, it's a slightly gloomy day in Buckinghamshire today, with a little bit of sunshine. First thing, Vicky. How's the weather looking over in deepest darkest Oxfordshire?
Vicky:As I live quite close to you, Sam, I would say it's very similar weather. It's not chilly is it?
Sam:it's kind of no middling. It's not coats, not coats. Maybe hoodies, yes, maybe hoodie, anyway, enough about the weather and the prevailing temperature. Who've we got on the podcast today?
Vicky:We've got a very cool guest today. So as Amplified Group, we have been looking at the importance of leading like a team coach and really what does that mean? And it's different to being a manager. And you know, Sam, we've talked previously about leading like a gardener and creating the environment for a team to flourish, and actually that's what a great leader does and we believe that's what a leader who leads as a team coach would do.
Vicky:When we were thinking about how could we really share what this really means, because actually we've been doing some research recently and people don't understand what team coaching is. And so we thought, right, we need to start talking about it in in our socials. And then we thought, actually it'd be really great to do a podcast on it. And then we thought who do we know that does a phenomenal job of this? Somebody jumped right to the top of the list and that was Harvey Smith, who we've had the pleasure of working with for a couple of years and honestly, it has been such a delight to partner with Harvey and his team and just see how the effect of his leadership, the effect of his leadership, really aligned a team, brought them together with a common goal. Everyone felt like that they were being cared for, they had their back and just everything that we would think about as great leadership. Harvey just does that, and so we thought right, I'm going to bully him into coming on the podcast because he didn't want to so he's here under duress he is there under duress
Harvey:Thank you, Vicky. I'm not sure how I can follow that. Should we just finish with that?
Sam:oh welcome. Harvey and I you know I know Harvey well from from your VMware days when I saw you regularly in your role running partners there. So nice to be back in contact and to catch up with you, which is all good. So maybe you could start, Harvey, by bringing us up to date on your career history so far, where you've been, what you've done what's your name and where'd you come from?
Harvey:Exactly. So I'll sort of perhaps, perhaps work backwards rather than forward. So most recently I was at Docusign, leading their partner organization main focus was on EMEA. I joined Docusign from a stint at Salesforce and I ended up at Salesforce through working at Tableau, the analytics software, and we were an acquisition into Salesforce. So, as you say, before that I was at VMware and prior to that I was at Hitachi Data Systems.
Harvey:I did about 11 and a half years there, which was an amazing kind of experience. I learned a lot. And prior to that I did a stint at project program management at Lucent Technologies and before that I was on the sort of other side of the fence. So I actually worked after doing my degree. I actually did a placement year and worked for a stockbrokers in London, a company called Casano, which was a unique yeah, and I did a little stint temping at Lloyd's Underwriters who were getting their first computer system, an IBM AS400. Gosh, and you were going to come and look after it. I bet they've still got it. They probably have. Those things were like you know, they were like unbeatable.
Sam:Yeah, they last for like 60 years or something, don't they? It's crazy, people can't get rid of them.
Harvey:Yeah so it's crazy, people can't, people can't get rid of them, yeah so. So it's sort of been a bit of a varied career and I I think there was a couple of points during that journey, where it sort of brought me to where I am. So one of the things was when I worked at casanova, we had a lot of suppliers. We worked with people like bsg back in the day and they would, they would have these people kind of coming in and selling us kind of projects, and I think when we were part of the IT department we never had enough budget. We were always sort of under pressure to deliver and generally when something went wrong it was our fault. So I kind of like the idea of being on the other side of the fence as well.
Harvey:So so I took a year out traveling, which, was interesting. I actually came back with more money than I went with and I had a proper job when I was out there working, working for a retailer called Colesmire in Australia for about four or five months, and but I came back and I decided I really wanted to work on the other side of the fence and that's when I ended up at Lucent, um yeah, doing project program management, and the first day they said, uh, you, um, you were going to go to Hong Kong and I was like wow, and then they said no, no, actually it's gonna be Hammersmith. So so I was expecting to be flown halfway across the world, except I didn't. I got the bus from Chiswick, where I lived at the time, down to uh, probably took.
Sam:Probably took longer using British public transport to get you from Chiswick to Hammersmith than it would to get you to Hong Kong.
Harvey:I think you're right. But it was a really interesting experience and I course and this was around 2000, when the doc, you know it was a telco organization the dot-com model was bursting and so so you know it wasn't necessarily the best time to have jumped to the other side of the fence. But that brought me to Hitachi and Hitachi. I'd ended up selling into Hitachi and EMC at the time and Hitachi it was all falling apart at loose and Hitachi said come and join us. So I joined them and I was looking after the third party technology that they resold. But I stuck my hand up and went oh, can I have a go at the channels please? And the rest is kind of history. So that's how I I ended up doing that, um, and I think there's a thread that sort of been across all the jobs I've done.
Harvey:You know I I'm one that really likes building and developing and changing. So every company going through some sort of change, like Vicky VMware, you know we were top of the tree with server virtualization coming under pressure because of the competition. So we were launching network virtualization and the end user compute of course. So it was all around. How do you take a channel and develop a channel or build a channel or change a channel.
Harvey:And I think that the other point where, you know, I realized after I left VMware that that was the thing I really loved doing, and I think the other point that really gave me a lot of energy was when I joined Tableau. One of the most amazing things was actually I'd been mainly UK and I focused, I moved on, uh, amir, and so for me, the energy and the excitement I got from working in different cultures and understanding how to develop channels in different cultures and the way you know different cultures work and how to approach it, I think it was a. You know, that's something I get a lot of passion from the whole diversity and the different sorts of people as well. So, yeah, and I, for my sins, as I said, I always seem to be drawn to companies that were going through some sort of change process.
Sam:So anything else is boring, right? Yeah, exactly, yeah. No, that makes sense. I wonder if are you one of these guys that you get to the point where you've affected a program of change and then it's business as usual and it's time for the next challenge yeah, I think so and I you know, to a degree I feel much more comfortable going through that kind of period of change.
Harvey:You know I had a fantastic time at salesforce. I was amazingly well looked after, particularly during the pandemic. But but you know they have a particular way of of of doing things yeah well, yeah. So you know it was great and it's a fantastic company and you know I I would always look back fondly on my time. I've got great friends and colleagues from there. But for me the time was right to kind of try my hand at something else and use a lot of the skills I'd developed.
Vicky:Can I just say, having seen you in action, the way I know we're jumping the gun a bit here and the way I know we're jumping the gun a bit here, but the way that you can cut through things to get stuff done is quite extraordinary, so I can see you've got a real talent for it.
Harvey:Thank you.
Vicky:I'm going to stop paying you compliments.
Harvey:I can see you're wriggling in the chair, massively uncomfortable, but there you go. That's the British.
Sam:That's the British. Yeah, the british, british deference.
Vicky:It's hard to cope I'm putting a zip on it now thank you, vicky, appreciate that, otherwise I'll mute you.
Sam:So I mean, Harvey, you've been a died in the world kind of channel guy, I suppose, since you, since you got into the industry and you know I I sort of feel like once people get into the channel thing, once they get the power of it, they're stuck with it. It's in their psyche. Um, you know, you've in the past strongly felt the partners of the engine for growth. Tell us about that and why you think partners are critical for growth today.
Harvey:Yeah, and I think it's a really good point. I do think they're critical for growth, but it has to be done. It has to be done right. You know often, as I say these companies, you know there's some sort of change that makes these companies want to do more with the channel or change the way they do the channel. It's like either moving to the cloud or building an enterprise motion or having a platform play, and we know that.
Harvey:You know organizations don't just wake up wanting to buy a piece of software. You know they have a business problem to solve that they need to solve and more often than not what you provide is part of a wider solution. So you know you need partners that can articulate that to the customer and show them how they're going to get that value. So partners are kind of critical for that wider solution play. But also as a business, you know it's that relevance you know getting higher and wider within organisations. So being able to talk to people you're not talking to, talking to more senior people, having more strategic conversation partners are key for that. Also, partners should help you go faster as well.
Harvey:And also one of the things I've seen a lot in the more recent roles I've done is access to markets that are not necessarily your core markets. A lot of them are obviously set up in the UK or France or set up in Ireland, but they want to reach the whole of EMEA. How are you going to do that? It's very expensive and difficult to get the right people put the right people in regions. So you really want to be.
Harvey:You know you need people, but you obviously want to be thinking about how you do that through kind of channel partners and so being able to build that kind of ecosystem as well, and you want different partners to play a different role. You know from kind of ecosystem as well and you want different partners to play a different role. You know from from. You know service providers to resellers, to distributors, to the big hyperscalers as well you might work with as well so your marketplaces to just kind of systems integrators, whether that be regional, who may be building solutions around your technology, or all those globals that are driving those kind of transformations you really need. You know when you're building an ecosystem you really need to. You know, think about what your business needs and factor in all those different kind of partner types as well.
Sam:Yeah, I guess you know, fundamentally, it gives you scale, but you can't get without employing a load of effectively salespeople and probably technical people as well. Yes, yeah, yeah, effectively sales people and probably technical people as well. Yes, yeah, yeah, okay. So tell us a little more about that cross-fertilization of ideas, that sort of working together sort of solve problems and keeping everybody on the same page. That's your jam, isn't it? That's your secret source I hope that's.
Harvey:I hope that's the case, but no, I do believe that generally never is a case that one person has all the answers and you know, if you've got a diverse kind of team who have wide skills, you're going to find people within that team have seen some of these problems before and no ways to kind of deal with it. So I think the important thing and and this is where the Amplify group really really helped was getting that shared goal. So if everyone has that shared goal and they're working towards that shared goal, everyone can start thinking about how they play a part in that shared goal and what they bring to that. But also, if everyone has the same shared goal, everyone's working towards the goal. So people are more likely to share that information across team, across the teams and and you know, understand that they're all pulling in the same direction. So therefore they're more likely to help the other people they work with as well.
Vicky:So, Harvey, you know what you've just described there sounds. You know what you've just described there sounds it's good theory, but actually, if I think about the work that we did with you in Ireland, um, when I first met with you to prep for it, you basically said I'm leading the partner organization and these are disparate teams that have never been together and never worked together, and so I mean we're talking about the SI team, the reseller team, the SE. There was a whole spectrum of different teams that didn't feel like one team, and you had a really clear vision of I want this a whole organisation to feel like one team and come together under one goal, and that's what you asked us to help you with.
Harvey:Yes, it's completely to your point when you have those silos. You've got to break down those silos. So you have to have people working on on the same page and get that shared goal. So you can't just tell people that this is going to be the goal. You have to bring them on that journey as well and get them to you know, understand and and believe what goal that you are. You are their joint mission correct. You have to. You have to have that joint mission.
Harvey:So, um and I don't think there's any easy way to do it it's hard, you know it's hard. You have to. You have to talk to the people individually. You know you have to build trust with them. You can't just come in and say this is the mission. You have to build that trust as well. So there's a lot of things that you need to do as a leader to to get to the point where people are going to start giving you the time and start believing in that kind of shared goal and then then all be pulling in the same, in the same direction.
Sam:Interesting stuff have you got a you know a magic wand for breaking down silos and getting people collaborating across functions?
Harvey:I don't think I necessarily have a magic wand. I think there's a lot. Well, that's disappointing, I know I wish I did you know I I think the magic wand is a lot of hard work and listening to people and talking to people. You know I always use the analogy. You know some partner teams. It's a bit like a car accident Everyone slows down and has a look, but no one wants to get involved.
Sam:That's great I love that.
Harvey:I don't know if you've ever heard that before. I haven't, I mean.
Sam:I totally get the analogy, but wow.
Harvey:You know you really need you need to talk to everyone and you need to have shared goals. So you know, on a wider thing, if you're working cross-functionally, you know great example is you can't go to the customer success team and say I need you to give me a load of resource because I need to do this. You know you need to say why. You know you need to be clear on understand what their goals are. Understand, you know, share your goals and see where the overlap is and see how you can kind of best work together.
Harvey:So you know, I think the silver bullet or the magic, you know the magic wand, is that kind of hard work. And and also listening to the team, hearing where they've got the challenges, hearing where the collaboration isn't quite as good as well, and start to sort of break down some of those as well. And there there will be areas where naturally it's kind of more more of a challenge because they might have done business in a particular way or they have a particular way of doing business. So then you need to find those points of kind of collaboration and build the plan around those as well. Um, you know, and I think for the partner organization, one of the, the partner organization most of the time isn't there just to just for the sake of the partner organisation being there. You know it's there to support the aims of the business as well. So you have to be totally aligned to the sales organisation and that's not just one plan at the top.
Vicky:That's a really really good point.
Harvey:Massively important. And if you think you might might say I've got a regional plan for the uk and ireland. Well, well, actually, quite often businesses will have a smb, they'll have maybe a commercial mid-market enterprise, you might have a uk and I plan.
Harvey:But that plan needs to be broken down into the various areas yeah, you know, properly aligned as well, and, and you know that is the job, I think that is the job obviously of the team, but the aligned as well, and that is the job. I think that is the job obviously of the team, but the leader as well, the leader of the partner organisation has to put that framework in place. So we did a lot where in the last role, we were sort of systems integrators, ISVs and resale, but we created like a pod model where we had those individuals were aligned to a sales leader and we had someone on point to be the person that was sort of interface, regional. So that gave you know, that gave a stretch project to one of the team because they were sort of stepping up into that. But also it meant that you could come with one clear.
Vicky:But also it meant that you could come with one clear sort of one clear aligned story and kind of mission, working with your opposite number. Before we get into the business side of things more, I would like to to kind of shine a little bit of a light on the human side of leadership. And you know we're talking about team coaching and leading as a team coach, and it can't be underestimated the importance of building respect and trust within your team and trust within your team. Harvey, you have a really I wouldn't say it's unique, but there are few people that have the ability to have authority and humility at the same time. It's a really, really hard balance to strike. One of the people that really stood out for me with that was a guy called Mark Stradling. I don't know if either of you came across him, but Mark ran Northern Europe for Citrix and then he was the first person on the ground in EMEA for VMware.
Sam:I don't think I've ever met him, but I know him by reputation. You and many others have talked about him.
Vicky:Yeah. So Mark had this absolute ability to have authority, that be really approachable and to have that trust. And I think you have that, harvey, and there, as not many people I can say that to, because seeing the difference in the team that you work with and because we we did it with 12 months apart and I know we did a few small interventions with the leadership team but with the entire team, seeing the difference in the room of how people responded to you the first time we worked with you when you hadn't been there very long, to the second time, where you got that trust across the team. And we saw this in your speed check with the, the change in the in the results. So it was measured. We could see the trust there. But getting that trust and having the humility because you would say I don't have all the answers Is it something that you do subconsciously or consciously, or can you tap into that bit? Give us a bit of a. I know this wasn't in the outline, but I think it's really important.
Harvey:It's really interesting because I do remember that first session and there were people who've been there 10 years and they'd seen a lot of change and there was yeah skepticism and I think you have to kind of vulnerability is an overused word, but you know I am, I am I probably overshare sometimes but you're very yourself, aren't you?
Harvey:I you, I think only. I think, probably when I was younger and my wife would tell you this, I was probably not myself and I think as you get older, you understand your skills and you understand your weaknesses more. And I don't have all the answers and they're things that make me uncomfortable, you know, like doing podcasts and the sort of vulnerabilities, but I think you have to treat people as much as you can with respect and you have to be open with people as well.
Harvey:So, you know there were things that I did when I went in. You know there were people who had a healthy level of skepticism, so I devoted time to them. You know they were asking me why is it going to be different this time? And I would say, well, because of this, this is, this is what we're going to do, you know, and I would do skip level meetings. I I kind of listen to them.
Vicky:That's really important. You can't underestimate that, because you've said it a few times Listening to people have to listen, people need to feel heard.
Harvey:So you know, when you do internal surveys, you know you look at the results of the surveys but you take action on those results. So you know, one of them was about career development. We set up like a career development morning where the leadership team allowed people to just book time in the calendar. We cleared our diaries and and, and you know, I said to everyone you should have a personal development plan, and I got involved in working with people on certain personal development plans as well.
Harvey:You have to be accessible as a leader as well, I believe, because definitely agree with that, and also one of the things as well if you're asking someone to do something, you have to be prepared to do it yourself. And, and that is so many leaders tell people to do things. And then you know I I'm always, if I'm prepared to ask someone to do something, I've got to be prepared to do it myself. So where they need help, you jump on calls, you get involved and you're kind of showing people the expected behaviors as well. Um, and and I I'm very much a believer in carrot rather than stick as well I don't yeah, yeah definitely.
Harvey:I've had people in the past who you know been on other companies, you know a while ago, being on personal development plan or, you know, performance improvement plan yeah very honest by the reasons and one of the guys you know.
Harvey:Actually, you know we sat down, we explained the challenge, we were very honest, very open, and he came out the other side of it and sort of understood it and doubled down. So I think being as open and honest as possible being excessive. Yeah, you know that that level of vulnerability, when you don't know, you might say I don't know, you know, I can't give you the, the guarantee, I think all of those kind of lend themselves and I don't I'm not sure that there is anything I specifically do. Perhaps it's just the way I am as a person, you know.
Vicky:Yeah, I think I do think it comes quite naturally to you, but you also do what you say you're going to do and the whole Harvey says no, I really want to talk about this because this was so empowering for the team, so I'll shut up, Sam, dig into well, no, no carry on, you know.
Harvey:So this is this is really interesting. And and, sam, you, you know, and vicky all working tech companies what happens when something comes under pressure, like you know you need to chase the number, or you know you're behind, whatever it is people start looking for other things to do and it means that you know the team are all. You know a team will generally always be overloaded, you know, and then suddenly you pile two or three more things on and I always remember I read this article when I was at Salesforce it was just a LinkedIn article and it absolutely resonated with me, called the Power of Subtraction, and it was a very short article but effectively saying when this happens, people just want to put more in. That's wrong. You want to understand what has made you successful and you stop doing the things that are periphery to that or are taken away. Now, when things aren't going so well, there's always an added level of inspection, ok, but you want to kind of protect the sellers or whoever you've got below that from that. So you might take that on, but actually what you want them to do is focus the time You've got to focus the time on the things that kind of make you successful. So when, when you're building a plan and back to that point, aligning with kind of sales leadership, all the time, someone will have a pet partner or a pet area they want to focus on.
Harvey:And if you have that agreed plan, that gives the team the power to say no for now. You know, I understand it. Or if you want to do that, then we need to remove something because we are not in the position to do this, this many things. And I'm I'm absolutely one for simplicity. I think if you, you know I I see these business plans like 20 pages long. It just for me it doesn't work. You know you want one page with all the key information on get the kpis agreed. You know, get those agreed. Get page with all the key information on get the KPIs agreed. You know, get those agreed, get what you're going to do.
Harvey:And one of the other things I love to do as well is say to the team in a year's time, if you look back on what this partnership looks like, what do you want it to look like, and then work backwards, what do you need to do to get to that point as well. So these are, these are the the um, these are kind of some of the things. And if, if then someone wants them to do something or there's something on the list, is that going to help you get to that goal? If it doesn't help you get to that goal, why are you doing it? And so it's very empowering, I think, for a team to be able to say, great, we'll park that one for now, or do you want to take something off the list, to put this one on as well? And that's what strong leaders could do. You've got to provide the air cover to the team, so that, yeah, and I suppose by giving them the Harvey says no phrase.
Sam:You know you're almost making yourself the scapegoat, as it were. You know the excuse, the reason to say no to something that is busy but not good busy.
Harvey:Yeah, 100%, then they can come, and then they can. You know, whoever's asking them to do it comes to me and we kind of have a conversation about it. Yeah, not then that saying no, if you know what I mean. So yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly, I've got there I know it's hard.
Harvey:It's very hard to say no, it is, and we are naturally we will naturally always want to support people and but you know I'm not met partner managers, that you know. Certainly the ones that work for me, I, you know, are always, you know, really hard working, really doing things and and you just don't want the people to get overloaded and get distracted if you haven't got those metrics agreed. You're always saying you know what are the partners kind of contributing? So one of the things I think I've learned this is is having operational support is really important as well to be able to, you know, get those metrics agreed.
Harvey:How are you measuring the business? You know, agreeing that with the sales leaders. What does good look like for them? What do they want to see? You know, what do they want to see from source revenue, from partners or co-sell or whatever it might be. Getting that agreed up front and then measuring yourself against it. Because if it's not working, you do not want to be in a position where the the sales leader, you're turning around going. Look at my business, it's fantastic and the sales leader's going well. I'm not seeing the impact, you know. That's why you have to have these joint joint plans are absolutely crucial to the whole thing yeah, yeah, I yeah, I said earlier, agree, busy versus good busy, I think that's a really important distinction.
Harvey:You've both been in leadership positions, so you can say that as well.
Sam:Well, you know, it's not just, it's also managing yourself. Yes, you know I like to do stuff. I like to keep things moving. Like you, I think I'm a bit of what our ops director used to describe as a change activist, which which are quite like. So you know, I I'm not going to sit on my backside and just let stuff happen. I want to be doing, but I am aware that I need to be disciplined enough to make sure that I personally do things that are. You know, the phrase always used to be that make the boat go faster.
Vicky:Same concept, isn't it?
Sam:And by doing that you know you are a good example to your team as well. You know, go see that customer but maybe spend less time with the vendor, that sort of thing.
Harvey:One of the other things as well is when people come to me with a problem, my natural reaction is to try and fix it and I beat it out of myself to say, no, tell me how you think you're going to solve it. Or and I had a manager, uh, hitachi neil evans, and he was absolutely fantastic. He, he used to say I'd come in with a problem. He said have you come for a solution or have you come for affirmation? If you come for affirmation on your approach, go away, come back and tell me how, uh, how, it worked for me. That was that's great. So many times people say, oh, we've got there, and then I have to say, no, how do you think?
Vicky:Hold yourself back. But that's. That's a really, really good example of team coaching. I just want to come back to the 'Harvey says no' from, because you said it as a bit of a blasé statement in the workshop that we were doing and then we picked up on it and there was almost like a cheer around the team of that because it is so empowering. But it only works if you're following a plan to start with, so you can can't just say, oh no, Harvey says no. It has to be because we have got this joint plan. This is where we're going and this is how we're breaking this plan down to be actionable. And if this isn't on my to-do list, then that's how the empowerment works.
Vicky:But something else that was and this is unique to our work with you, that we haven't had with any other team that we've worked with is when we came in with with you, we did, we did that plan on a page which was super simple, which was right. This is our north star, these are the top three priorities, and the other thing you did was you stack, ranked those priorities, which is a really difficult thing to do for leaders, but you did that with the team. When we came back the following year and we reviewed it as a team. You didn't feel the urge to change it. You were like, no, we're still on this mission. Do we need to tweak it a little bit or fine tune it? Yes, but actually having the courage to go right. We're on track here. We can see the progress we're making. Let's keep going doing this. Are we all clear on that? The simplicity that you brought to that is rare.
Harvey:Really.
Vicky:Yeah.
Harvey:For me.
Vicky:It really is and I really don't think you should underestimate it.
Harvey:For me. I think it's fairly intuitive. It has to be a simple plan, yeah.
Vicky:It is because it was a big team you were leading as well. So if you've got a big team and, as Mark Templeton says, the simpler you keep things, the faster you go If you need to bring an entire organization with you.
Vicky:You keep it super simple. I remember and you're talking about Lucent earlier I don't know if you ever worked with John Burris. John Burris was a massive hero of mine. He was the sales VP at Citrix when Citrix went through the billion dollar growth. Um, he sadly passed away a few years ago, but in sales kick-offs he'd have no more than three words on the slide and I used to think in fact I gave him stick because I'd go is there no substance to what you've got? And he's going no, Vicky, these are people that we're working with. They've got such a busy life. I need them to remember these three words. And it was absolutely the power of simplicity.
Harvey:I think it's so powerful. You know there will be complexity and you know you're in technology, so we love we always love acronyms, we love complexity, but having it having a very simple plan that everyone can kind of understand and get behind, and then it spins off.
Vicky:How do they contribute to it?
Harvey:How do they contribute, and then they can think about how they kind of contribute. And then they are. You can ask them and then you set your KPIs or goals or whatever methodology you use or whatever methodology you use and then the leaders can review with those individuals what are you doing against these or what are your goals against these? And it just makes it very, very simple. And if you do that review process regularly, people are checking in and it actually serves as a reminder because it's very easy to drift Something shiny and new over there and you're off on it. But having that, having a very kind of simple and agreed plan with the measurement, so you know you could put some amazing goal up. If you can't measure it, probably not worth putting on there as well. Yeah, I'm a firm believer in that. You know you have to have that. You know time-bound kind of measurable goal there as well.
Vicky:Yeah, you know you have to have that. You know, time-bound kind of measurable goal there as well. Yeah, Sam, do you remember us doing the podcast with Geoffrey Moore? A chicken can only lay one egg at a time? and that that was about prioritizing and stack ranking them it's so important.
Sam:Yeah, we've said a million times if you've got 27 priorities, you haven't got any priorities.
Vicky:Even if you've got five priorities, you haven't got a priority.
Sam:Yeah, it's probably three or fewer.
Vicky:Yeah, and stack, rank them Honestly, I think, as Pit was looking at this.
Harvey:It was a real masterclass, almost the workshop that we did with you but it really, it really helped and the the learnings that you brought to it as well. Look for the bright spots as well, and and how we applied switch and I think it's interesting.
Harvey:The first time, obviously, as we said, people were a bit nervous, didn't know what was going on. By the second time, the people who had been there before were running into the room, and I know that a lot of them spoke to you subsequently as well. And so, for me, that whole exercise of bringing the people together, trying to get some face-to-face time where possible, try and get them to work as as a team, I think that's. I, yeah, it's great you can do it over Zoom, but you still can't build it. I think, as a leader, you want to get the people in the room, or as many of them, yeah, possible I agree and I also think um one one of the other things.
Harvey:That, I think was important. I was privileged to have a great leadership team in my last role, but I actually brought people like the HR leaders into what I was doing as well. I brought the supporting functions as well, who were important to me, had the dotted line as well, so they were part of the whole planning process and felt that they had ownership in it as well, which is awesome.
Sam:I think that makes sense. Can we talk about safe spaces as part of your team coaching, something that's important to you?
Harvey:Yes, yeah, I touched on it earlier. I think you owe it to people to be as honest as possible. There are always things that you can't share in any organisation, and you'll have privileged information as well, but where possible, you need to be as honest as possible about you know. If a sales leader is saying he's not happy with this, you work on it and you avoid blame. You look at how you work on it and and you avoid blame, you look at how you can address it as well. I I also tried to to the point I would have skip level meetings and I would. I would say to people you've got to be as honest as possible. Talk to me, you know, talk, talk to me as well, talk about your kind of you know what you want from the organization. And and I think I don't again, I don't think there's any secret sauce to this, it's just being yourself and being as honest and open, accessible as possible.
Harvey:I always remember I had, someone who worked for me, and she had worked for me for a couple of years and she was looking for that next role, and so she said, look, you know, I'm looking for that next role. So, rather than go, oh, you know, I helped her and she was looking for more of a global role and we mapped out who she would have to influence to get that role and the timeframe and it turned out that someone else moved out the role and it came much quicker. But she got round to all the right people and she sort of walked through the interview process and got that. And I think you have to if people equally, if people are have, you know, had time with you, but want to progress as well.
Sam:You know you, you need to be open to oh yeah, great, but a great believer in not holding people back from your own team just because you you know they do a good job for you. You know if they're right to move sideways upwards whatever within the organisation and I think that you know that reflects incredibly well upon you as a leader to enable that sort of transition. I think that stuff is really important, that sort of transition.
Harvey:I think that stuff is really important totally, and I think things like the, the personal development, um, work really well because people came this is my ambition and I was like, okay, well, how do you think you want to get there, what you want to do and and being able to be just be as open as as possible you can and treat people with respect. You know the way you want to be treated. I think it's a common thing people say that treat people the way you want to be treated, but you know, I'm not sure that every leader necessarily does yeah, that makes sense.
Sam:And how do you go about building these incredibly powerful bonds across big teams?
Harvey:It has to be that I think the shared goal is the most important. Yeah, um, I, I think I think getting that cross collaboration you know I talked about that, that idea of the pod model, so, so people will work um, work together with one of the sales leaders, perhaps, or customer success, or whatever it might be, um, I also. I also love the idea of stretch projects as well. So if there's a stretch project that takes the person somewhere slightly different, that that gets them exposed, we had a guy, uh, we were, you know, launching a new sort of platform solution in the last role and and I got this guy to be the person that kind of coordinated and helped track all the, all the training we did as well. So he was sharing that with the us and and and talking to kind of different people as well. So I think getting people to work across as much of the team as possible outside their silos is important as well giving.
Vicky:That's actually textbook, you know. So, team of teams, general stanley mccrystal, that we we follow his methodology. Yes, doing what you've just described is the way that he did that. Yeah.
Sam:It is that maybe.
Vicky:Maybe he learned it from harvey I think we can all learn from Harvey.
Harvey:Oh, please, please. But yeah, the stretch projects, trying to get that cross-collaboration as kind of much as possible. You have to be very deliberate about it as well. You have to be very deliberate. We had situations where we got customer success. We wanted to work closely, closely, so you kind of appoint someone to lead a project there, but they feed back to the whole team as well. You know all of those sort of things.
Sam:Things, you, you, uh, you can do makes sense makes sense, and how do you influence people kind of outside of your direct line of command? You know, within your organization and clearly within a partner role, in channel partners.
Harvey:I kind of mentioned it earlier. You have to go and you have to be present, you have to listen to it. Back to that point on listening again, you have to understand what their goals are, where they overlap with, um, your goals, yeah, how what you want them to do will benefit them as well as as well as you. You know, often you can't just turn up say I need, you know, I need eight hours of your time. You know how is it gonna, how is it gonna benefit? How can we best work to work together? A great example um, you know, one of the first people I spent some time with in my last role was the head of professional services.
Harvey:Partners and professional services aren't always oh, yeah that's always a fun one, and guess what I built? She was fantastic individual and and yeah, we had some tough conversations, but but it built on trust to start with, so you could built on trust and I yeah there's no and and that that's.
Harvey:That's a work. You know my diary would be full of meetings with marketing. It would be for the customer success. It would have been, you know, services you have to, as a leader, get around to those, those individuals as well, and, and, and there, get your, your team, involved where possible as well. And um, you know all of all of those, all those points yeah, makes sense.
Sam:What about handling conflict between direct and channel? You must have.
Harvey:I'm going off piste here sorry you are, but you know you know, know you are such a channel advocate, I know you.
Sam:You know you supported us in the time when, you know, when you were at vmware and I was at softcat, we were working quite closely together. But it's not always an easy thing to manage, is it?
Harvey:you know, I, I remember when I was a softcat, we, uh, when you were a soft cat, I had a call from your, your then md colin brown. Uh, yeah, there was difficulty with a difficulty with a deal, and again there, yeah, you, you just gotta take it. If there's a complaint, you take it, you don't ignore it, you get back to people, you own it.
Harvey:Communication isn't it you, you, you communicate, um, I, I also think it, it, it, and this is a learning. You know you have to have that plan with the sales leadership because you have that plan and then the sales leadership aren't keeping their side of the bargain or you're hold them accountable can't you?
Vicky:yeah, hold them accountable, can't you?
Harvey:Yeah, you can hold them accountable, but also don't try and force things. If there's a commercial team and they work in a certain way and it's working very, very well, you're probably not going to get much truck if you go and suddenly start trying to change it for them. What you want to do is you want to look for ways you can help. So if they're focused on core markets, you might focus on the emerging markets. Or if you think that you have a partner that could produce some kind of solution bundle that you can't do yourself, that gives a differentiation rate. So so, like anything, the, the, there is always going to be contention.
Harvey:I think if you have an organization that has a commercial team, there'll always be a turnover of AEs. So guess what? Why don't you get involved? Why don't you get some of your team to do a stretch project around the onboarding? Why don't you do education sessions for that team on a regular basis? Why don't you have someone appointed to as a go-to person that they can ask questions? Why don't you set up a Slack channel or Teams channel where people could kind of ask those questions as well? So, so if people do things wrong and you haven't told them the way to do it right then then, yeah, the challenge, I think, comes where people are. Are perhaps doing it because it's for their good not necessarily the good of the organization as well and that's what. That's where you go to the manager yeah, yeah, makes sense, not easy no, and it's it's.
Harvey:You know, when you try to retrofit a channel to an existing organization, it's difficult, but even in places like vmware, you know we hit.
Sam:We hit this challenge on occasion, as well, yeah, I mean it's gonna happen, isn't it where you know people have have targets to hit? They'll do what they need to do to some extent the thing is having a shared plan at the leadership level and actually I would say that we lacked that at vmware.
Vicky:We didn't have clarity until quite late on about the role of partner, until we we did the gb split the general business piece. If it's grey, it's then literally hand-to-hand combat down in the field and that that's yep that's not how organized it, it's down to the leadership team and having that alignment right at the EMEA level.
Harvey:I think privileged to work for edoma twice. So working, working for, ed. You know, one of the things is getting that sales alignment and you know we spent a lot of time doing that at tableau, so we had that. We, we, we were very clear on. You know, this is the area that the partners will focus and the channel will focus and this is a. You know, this is where we don't necessarily see that and I think, I think I've I've learned that over time that that's kind of critically important you have to have clarity yeah, but it's not just for your team, it's for the sales people yeah, everybody needs to have that clarity.
Harvey:They need to know where their line is yeah, but but equally that the, the part, the team you know, have to educate the, the sellers. If the sellers aren't used to it or not experienced, you need to. You know, no one else is going to own that for you?
Vicky:you had that as a big objective, didn't you?
Harvey:100. We took that on and you know and that's not just you know multiple companies. We've done that. You know educate the value, agree which are the partners you're going to work with in a particular region. So you're you're not trying to go off and work with lots and lots of different partners. You know, if you're a, if you're working in a in a tier two market, the business might not be that big. So what you want to do is you want to concentrate it. But equally, it's the responsibility of the partner manager to be working with those partners, to start asking for stuff back from them as well, rather than it's all one way as well.
Vicky:Yeah, yeah.
Sam:So, Harvey, I'm going to have to put you on the spot with one last question to give us a book recommendation, if you don't mind.
Harvey:Yeah, so I would like to recommend two books. Ooh, controversial. So there are a few things that are sort in important to me and and this idea of diversity as well. You know, a diversity of thought, diversity of approach as well.
Harvey:And there's a really good book by Matthew Syed, Rebel Ideas as well, which you might have come across, and he talks about the kind of power of diversity, and there's a lot of podcasts sideways as well, and the first couple of series are much more about diversity as well, so that that's really interesting. And the other one, is kind of linked as well.
Harvey:Uh is erin maya ulture Map and again, that's about how different cultures around the world operate and how they agree. And uh, and luckily enough, actually the lady who I was lying to in south tabloid sales with anna alonso, she actually had erin meyer on a call and she ran a with her leadership team. So she ran this thing and it was. I was in the kind of unique position of being the only Brit, you know English person on the. You know there were Italian, Spanish, you know French, everyone there. So it's just really interesting.
Harvey:I find that book absolutely fascinating looking at how different cultures work, how you get to agreement in different cultures as well. You know, I had a great first time. I went to the Middle East. I came out the meeting and I turned around to my partner, account manager Cream, and said that went really, really well and he said they're not going to do anything. You said it's amazing, they were not harsh. No, they didn't. You know you didn't get and I went whoa, it's like you know you start. It's brilliant. You have to go back and learn and understand and things like that.
Vicky:How you've just shared. That is really refreshing, yeah, very good.
Harvey:Yeah, good couple of books there.
Sam:Thank you Interesting, oh, cool. Thank you for that Vicky. Anything to add before we wrap it up? I have.
Vicky:I've got an observation from being part of this great conversation and, Harvey, thank you so for for making the time to do this with us. What I am concluding, so, our formula that we use for our Speed Check is, as you know, Harvey, purpose, trust, clarity and simplicity, and and the way that we take that to our clients is we say there's two pieces to it. There's the human element of it and there's the business element of it, and if you can get those two pieces right, that's how you're able to execute at speed. That's effective teamwork, and we we started this by saying we wanted to talk about team coaching.
Vicky:I think the trick to success is getting the balance right between the people bit, the empathetic bit that you clearly do so well harvey, but always being focused on what the goal is and what the business outcome is. And if you can marry those two together, I think that's where the magic happens and what has become really clear for me today, because I started this podcast with how brilliant it has been working with you and it's just come to me about why. It's because you have the ability to balance both of those so well and so, um. I just want to say thank you for sharing uh that today it's been. It's been a real pleasure to talk to you thank you, vicky thank you well.
Sam:Thanks, Harvey. That was magnificent and really nice to see you again. It's been a little. It just remains for me to say thanks for listening to Get Amplified from the Amplified Group, as always. Your comments and your subscriptions are gratefully received.