I joined a company about four months ago as a manager. After the basic formalities, The Boss gleefully said, “Get ready for the technical presentation with the executive staff next week.” It was, "Ready, Get-Set, Go” from day one.
Global Team.
I inherited a global team across four time zones. Challenges ranged from finding a common time for team meetings to providing support and maintenance, and managing various projects and business expectations. “May the next few months be a period of magnificent transformation.” I told myself.
We began our journey of transformation by answering the question that Simon Sinek has asked in his famous video at TED:
What is your why?
It was obvious to us that our “why” was to seek success and inspiration for others. I gradually came to realize that there was more to leadership than pursuing success or making decisions. My training on mindfulness revealed that we needed to be inspired by wisdom, gentleness and authenticity.
We needed to be vulnerable and honest.
We shared our challenges with our business leaders while seeking their guidance and partnership. We started with streamlining operations. We needed to tell the world how we are organized and communicate. We started to leverage tools and systems wisely, be it bug tracking tools, CRM systems, spreadsheets or presentations while cutting down on multiple meetings. We evaluated each team members’ strengths and assigned clear roles and responsibilities.
Debilitating Backlog
Although early, results were encouraging. Our backlog reduced to an all-time low.
We are focused on architecting wide, realistic solutions that align with business’ value and goals. We partnered with business and strategized our sales initiatives; exemplifying a true collaboration. It took extreme creativity and organization skills to streamline our support operations.
There is no looking back.
We are experimenting with new ideas- collaboration, agile, transparency, innovation, evangelism and vulnerability. We are empowering sales teams to sell to prospects with meaningful contextual data, build a self-service customer community or mastermind the suite selling. Constant feedback and input from business is helping us grow faster than I could ever imagine.
We are in this journey together.
I am glad that we took this challenge and decided to pioneer the new ways of being. We instinctively want to offer their best to others. We are beginning to recognize that each one of us is capable of leadership.
Instead of being a traditional manger and spitting out orders, we have decided to share the responsibilities. Our small team acts like a start-up with quick decision making without waiting for instructions.
Excitement is contagious and motivating.
The revolution has just started but I believe we are learning, inviting opportunities and inspiring results.
Like all startups, we will do like you do. We will start small and the best is yet to come.