The alarm goes off. I hit the snooze button… one more time. I don’t want to face the world today… I can get 9 more minutes of sleep.
Soon enough, I’m picking up an outfit to wear for my barrage of calls, I take a shower, and motivate myself for a new day of challenges, pressures, and hassles.
I had to work late last night too. I’m running on fumes and plenty of caffeine. Deadlines are deadlines, and there was no pushing this one. 
It’s almost Friday, but I can’t think about that. I’m not feeling it today, but that doesn’t matter. I have to put up a good front, wear a smile, be congenial, and present my best self to my peers and colleagues.
Because, I am…
The leader.
I’ll bet you didn’t see that coming. Do you realize that the person who occupies the corner office, who looks larger in life on your company town halls and promo video…
Is a human too?
They want to be noticed.
They have a tough job to do that is critical to the success of the company
They want to advance in their career.
They want to keep their job if and when the RIF (Reduction In Force) decision is made.
This empathy is a topic we covered in the Session 4 of MOPs Unplugged... because it is critical to shifting this mindset.
Yes, and this very ambitious (like you), very overworked (like you), very optics-driven (like you), and “has to do a job today” (like you) human, has the same goals as you do… just with a lot more pressure because of the responsibility of the role, and a lot more to lose if he/she fails. Job security isn’t great for the CMO role especially, so the pressure to perform at a high level is always there.
We who work in Marketing, Sales, and other Revenue Operations functions can relate, can’t we? We have limited time and budget. We feel that we have the weight of the world on our shoulders due to the fact that the systems, data, and processes we manage are connected to revenue. We worry in tough economic times, especially these times.
In addition to these basic needs on Maslow's hierarchy of career needs (okay, I just made that up), we have this additional thing in common.
We have to leverage the work and input of others to do our jobs effectively. This is where we ourselves engage, and need to bring this empathy into our working relationships with the leader.
Let me bring up an example that I have experienced often, and if you’ve spent more than a hot second in any Revenue Operations role, have experienced.
You just rolled out changes to your lifecycle process and trained your Sales team on processes to update the CRM. Two weeks after the training, upon rollout, one of your sellers sends you a message because there are issues with dispositioning the lead, and you see the Slack notification. You set up a screenshare with this rep to troubleshoot the issue. However, when you get into the conversation, the rep starts pontificating about why this “lead” is invalid, and perhaps the lead is a long-time customer that they have known for 20 years, and the rep starts telling you all about the prospect’s family, the happy hours they attended together, and how many widgets they ordered 6 months ago.
And… you are very tempted to tune this rep out. All you really want is for them to share with you a link to a record in Salesforce, or perhaps screen share to reproduce an error. Your inner monologue (please!) is saying “Get to the point! I don’t care about what brand of tequila you like in your margarita!! Don’t you know I’m busy?”
You feel as if you just wasted your time…
This is how the leader feels when you get “too technical” and “in the weeds” with them.
They don’t care about the 12 step process that caused you to arrive at your decision, they want “the punchline” and “what do you need from me?”
The leader, like you, has a high-stress job to do too, and they not only don’t want their staff wasting their time…
They literally can’t afford the time waste. They have too many things up in the air.
Now, I can hear you asking me… “So, how do I make sure that I am communicating to my leader in a way that they will listen and receive the message? I don’t want to be “that person.”
Here's the straightforward answer: You have to succinctly tie your message to the leader’s objectives.
In many organizations, leadership team members leverage a system known as “OKRs” to determine what they are measured on. Like every TLA (Three-Letter Acronym), let’s break down what this means.
OKR stands for “Objectives and Key Results.” This is an organization model to combine long-term planning and short-term (quarterly/yearly) execution into a single framework.
An “Objective” is an aspirational long-term goal that the leader is committed to reaching in the next 3 to 5 years, and generally has a Red/Yellow/Green indicator to determine how close they are to achieving it. Most leaders will be assigned 3 objectives that are strategically important.
The Objectives (O) are the “What”
For marketing leaders, these objectives generally fall into three categories (you can use these as a cheat sheet if your company doesn’t use this framework).
- Grow revenue (either in total or in a specific area)
- Increase efficiency (Leverage resources more effectively)
- Build culture (Align teams, Create a preferred place to work)
Most of what we do in Marketing and Revenue Operations ties to one of these three objectives.
The Key Results (KR) are the “How.”
Each objective generally has 3 to 5 key results listed as bullet points under them. These key results define projects and priorities that they are committed to delivering on in the current year (typically with dates) that will drive the company forward towards achieving the objectives.
For example, in alignment with marketing operations.
- A Key Result under “Grow Revenue” may be to drive attendance of key decision makers to the company’s big user group meeting, where strategic product reveals will be introduced.
- A Key Result under “Increase efficiency” may be to drive adoption of marketing technology that streamline approval processes and enable marketers to conduct more high-value campaigns.
- A Key Result under “Culture” may be to improve sales and marketing alignment and collaboration to gain better insights on customers and the effectiveness of marketing lead generation.
Most leaders are not keeping these objectives and key results a secret. In fact, they understand that their job as the leader is to ensure that their teams understand them and align all of their activities to them.
Because if something is not aligned with an OKR, it should be deprioritized. A good leader does not want their team working on low or no value work.
Therefore, listen carefully, and then develop your communication to quickly and succinctly communicate your asks and your wins in terms of their goals. Give them the punchline, and see where the conversation takes you.
If they want to go into detail, let them. However, most good leaders trust their team and want to help, especially if the activities you are engaged in are helping them achieve their objectives.
It’s that simple. It’s not easy, and it takes practice, but it boils down to effective communication.
We got this. Let’s build this communication muscle and develop ourselves into trusted advisors to our leaders, because that is what as GTM Operations professionals we need to be for our leaders.
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