Amidst high growth, the salespeople at a global technology company were confused about which accounts and opportunities to focus on. Mark, a rising director on the go-to-market team, was leading a project to build a propensity model to solve this problem. The model took in numerous data points across disparate systems to give salespeople directional leads. Leaders were excited about the model and the problem it would solve, but they often ended up getting stuck in the details during presentations. Mark was beginning to get frustrated. How can he get his leaders out of the weeds so he can keep advancing this important work?
Individuals at all levels in organizations will encounter situations where leaders lose the big picture. We have encountered it across our careers, from starting out when we worked with our bosses on small projects and later, when we presented to boards on transformational programs. While the particular questions in those situations were different, the underlying challenge remained the same. Based on over 30 years of influencing leadership decisions, we recommend three steps that individuals can take to reset the conversation with leaders. We’ll demonstrate these steps with a real-life example of how Mark, a rising director in a $10 billion global technology company, successfully advanced his work amidst a cascade of detailed questions.
Getting Stuck
When talking with salespeople, Mark kept hearing the same thing: “I don’t know where to focus.” Most salespeople had dozens of accounts, and the company sold a range of products with new releases coming out monthly, meaning some felt overwhelmed by what they had to sell. As a result, the company’s sales pipeline was not developing in line with expectations, and the leadership was beginning to get nervous.
Mark had been at the company for over a year and had just been promoted. He had the internal support and desire to take on a big problem, and he excitedly thought this was it. Working with a data scientist, Mark overcame significant technical challenges, quickly building a dashboard that clearly showed salespeople where the opportunities were in their territories. Salespeople were enthusiastic when the dashboard was released on a small scale, and leaders wanted to hear more. The meetings quickly became a drag though, as many leaders focused on adoption data (one of the data types used in the model) and systems issues, as the company had numerous reporting tools. Their concerns were valid, but Mark didn’t believe that necessitated stopping the work. Disappointed with how the situation was unfolding, he resolved to change tactics.
Pushing Ahead
After a wave of internal meetings with leaders, Mark adopted a three-pronged approach. We’ve found that these tactics work in many circumstances when leaders get stuck.
1. Work with your “users.”
Individuals must think of themselves as product managers, treat their work as a “product,” and move with their users. The leaders who get stuck in the details are rarely the ultimate users of the work. Individuals should continue to work with users, taking in requirements, making updates, and demonstrating value. The lack of full leadership buy-in should not be an impediment. Rather, leaders will be more supportive when there is strong enthusiasm from the actual users.
In Mark’s case, though he was presenting to leadership, the users of his work were in sales. Mark decided to keep working with salespeople to understand what they liked about the dashboard and what should be improved, just as if he was a product manager. He kept developing the tool based on their feedback. In addition, when he gave enablement trainings to sales or was in meetings with leaders, he had salespeople present with him. This positive feedback demonstrated to leaders the value of the project and led to them spending more time considering how to scale the work and less time questioning the data nuances.
2. Sell the big picture.
When presenting, project leaders sometimes resort to talking about the work in a project management context where they’ll assume buy-in to the vision and then jump into execution aspects, sharing GANNT charts and discussing roles and responsibilities. This is a mistake. Individuals should instead paint a picture of how the work will solve a pressing problem by discussing the vision and use cases, and tying the work to leadership’s priorities.
After some initial discussions with leaders, Mark created a separate presentation for them. The presentation focused on how the tool would make salespeople’s’ lives easier, which would improve pipeline, increase employee satisfaction, and reduce turnover, a priority for leadership. Mark was still prepared to talk about release schedules and workstream owners, but he never led with those points. The meetings began to go smoother, and the executives were relieved to have an initiative that could help stem the flood of employee departures.
3. Create self-service content.
Project managers should create self-service content that addresses technical questions. If two or more leaders ask the same question, it is a good indication it will come up again. Individuals should prepare simple FAQs, descriptions, or video tutorials that address these issues, and they should publish them in an accessible forum. This will reduce the time they spend responding to the same questions.
The propensity model included data on product adoption, as it was a company priority to monitor client adoption of newer products. Mark realized that leaders were getting stuck on how the adoption data was calculated. He worked with the data scientist and product team to create a page on definitions and another on commonly asked questions about the data, and then he posted them on an internal company site. For more technical audiences, he sent out the self-service content in advance of presentations. Questions from leadership about adoption slowed to a trickle, and Mark was better able to focus the meetings on key items.
Gradual Payoff
Of course, challenges will arise no matter what. Leadership will likely want to make changes to the work or they will want to tie it to other related projects that are also underway. That is just part of working on an important initiative. In Mark’s case, leaders originally wanted Mark to align with other data initiatives that were internal. These initiatives were slow-moving though, and aligning fully with them would have jeopardized his project’s ability to quickly deliver value. As Mark successfully used the three tactics, leadership got on board, and leaders began to tell other project managers to follow his work — not the other way around.
The benefits to overcoming these challenges are significant. The company is better off when this kind of work is implemented, and the team that completes the work will reap the benefits. More importantly though, the individuals on the project will have improved their skills, having overcome internal hurdles and won over leaders in the process. In this case study, change took time. But weeks after deploying these tactics, Mark realized that the tone of these leadership meetings had gradually transitioned from skepticism to excitement. His project’s potential was still not fully realized, but he knew that he had developed a new skillset and that the company’s leaders were on his side.
