Secrets From The C-suite: How To Unlock Your Potential

Craig: Thank you, Sheena. And I have to say, I'm so excited to be here today. It's not every day that I get to sit there and talk to some of the best go to market operators in the world, and just have a conversation about what works and what doesn't work. Today's topic is secrets from the C- suite: how to unlock your potential. And look, there's a lot of information out there. You can get it anywhere, on how to build a world class company. But we want to know what really works, and we want to talk to people that have done it, been there, done that multiple times, and hear their stories and guidance from what they did to scale their business. We want to focus today on clarity, alignment, and data- informed decision making, but everything's on the table. So I'm very excited, I think you will be too. Let's start with actually introducing, having our guests introduce themselves. I'm going to go around the horn guys, just give us a brief introduction about who you are, and let's start with Kelly. Kelly, great to have you here.

Kelly Breslin Wright: Thank you, Craig. It is great to be here. My name is Kelly Breslin Wright, and I'm the president and chief operating officer at Gong. Prior to Gong, I was the executive vice president of sales at Tableau Software. And after that, I sat on a number of public and private technology company boards. I also teach a class called Go To Market Strategy at the University of Washington. And I'm just thrilled to be here today, thank you.

Craig: I'm pretty sure you have the background that's perfect for this panel. Dannie?

Dannie Herzberg: I'm pretty sure I agree. Thank you, Craig. Thank you, Kelly. My name is Dannie, I am partner at Sequoia Capital. And I have the privilege of partnering with companies like Notion, like Gong and many others. And prior to Sequoia, I was an operator for the last 15 years. So I spent five and a half years at HubSpot from the very early days, building the company ground up, scaling sales, and most recently as director of platform. And then over the last four years, I joined Slack, where I oversaw self- serve, SMB, mid- market and enterprise sales, and had four incredible years before becoming an investor.

Craig: Amazing, amazing. Dannie, I've seen you over the years doing your thing. It's an incredible story, I'm so glad you're here. Okay, Olivia, you're up.

Olivia Nottebohm: Well, thank you for having me. It's such a treat to be here with such an incredible other group of leader women. So just wonderful to spend the time together today. So let's see right now I'm the CRO of Notion, and responsible for the go to market functions, so sales, marketing, customer success, customer experience and operations. And before that, I was COO of Dropbox, and before that I was over at Google Cloud building out Google Cloud. So, head of the SMB business there as well as responsible for go to market strategy and operations. So, a topic that's near and dear to my heart. And before that, I spent 13 years at McKinsey, always in tech and always in go to market. So a lot of really interesting learnings there as well, and I'm excited to be here today.

Craig: I love it, guys. This is going to be amazing. I actually, Olivia, I'm actually going to start the whole process with you. Everyone can't wait to hear what you guys have to say here, so I'm going to dig into the content. So from your experience, what's top of mind when scaling a go to market organization? And so, tell us everything you know.

Olivia Nottebohm: Well, I'll keep it brief. Because as long as you keep to these principles, I think you're good to go. It's not that it's easy, but it's very focusing. The first is world class talent, it all rests on the people and who you bring on to the team, and those early hires are very defining in terms of the trajectory and the talent that you can hire and attract later on. The second is purpose and plan, so a very clear purpose, people resonate with why they're there. The why is incredibly important, and the plan equally as so, so they have to be able to follow the thing you're asking them to do in a very clear manner. And the third, and I'm not sure everyone would say this, but the third is constantly anticipating scaling blockers. So, constantly thinking one to two years out about what you're scaling limiters are going to be, as you build out that go to market function, and almost playing out that chess game in your head in advance, and then making the moves now to make sure that those scaling blockers don't actually happen to you. So a lot of first principles, problem solving, to make sure that you never have to slow down your go to market scaling.

Craig: I love that. That is excellent. Dannie, what would you add to this conversation?

Dannie Herzberg: That was really well said by Olivia, I'm just going to underscore what she said with some different words. So, number one by far is the people, which means attracting, coaching, retaining A players at every single goal level of the organization. And so for anyone on here who is in a leadership position, I believe recruiting is the most important area where you can spike. And luckily it's a learnable skill, it's not like innate. So, I highly recommend that everyone invests in making this your super power in your brand. And then part two is creating a culture is intentional. And the way that I think about culture, is it's a shared set of principles that drive how people make decisions, and how to behave with one another and with customers. So, what I would suggest is putting pen to paper about the aspirational attributes, and your operating principles. And the best example to use of this would be HubSpot's culture code, so that's a document that everyone here can search. And an operating principle that you'd find in something like HubSpot's culture code would be as simple as a three word phrase," Use good judgment." So keep it really, really simple, but create some heuristics that help all of your employees as you scale, figure out how to behave, how to make decisions and how to show up.

Craig: Gosh, I love this. I love where we're headed here. Kelly, why don't you add, let's close it out with you and see what you can wrap around on all these amazing things that we just heard.

Kelly Breslin Wright: Yeah. I so agree with Olivia and Dannie, and it's really putting it all together, because it does come to the people and the culture. Where I like to think about it is all of the culture, and people being unified with a sense of purpose really comes from having a clear, cohesive vision and mission for the company. Where everyone can rally around that same purpose, know what the north star is, so everyone in the company knows what you're building, where you're headed to, what is the essence of the company and why does it matter? What is the company's why? And this is a common mistake. Oftentimes execs will ask me," Well, what should I do when my teams aren't aligned? Sales and marketing are going in different directions," or," Go to market, wants to sell this, but that's not what product wants to build." And the first question is," Well, is everyone aligned with what the mission is and where you're going?" And you can tell if you go ask everyone on the executive team, or even your individual contributors and your feet on the street," What is your mission?" And you get a whole bunch of different answers, then that's what your challenge is. And so we need to align everyone on a very clear vision and mission. And that is important not only for employees, but it's also important for your customers to know, why should they do business with you? It's important for your investors, it's important for the analysts, it's important for the communities in which you serve. And that unifying purpose helps to provide clarity and focus. But at the same time, that is the core and the essence of your company culture as well.

Craig: I am going to call the big bullet point header here, unified purpose. I love that. And I think we heard that throughout the different commentary here on this topic. So Kelly, while I'm with you, I want to ask you another question, which is as companies go out and build their sales and go to market team, and scale their team, what are some of the biggest pitfalls? I think you just named one, but what else would you add to that?

Kelly Breslin Wright: Well Craig, it does come from the mission and vision, because that helps to provide the direction. But the next layer underneath that is focus. Especially for those of us who are on the call, where you're in a hypergrowth situation, or there's a lot of complexity and there's so many different things to do, we can only do so many things at a time. So we need to have very, very clear focus, and that mission and vision will help to provide some of the high level focus. On top of the focus, there tends to be a lack of visibility. So people are operating on opinions and hunches, and not the real clarity of the data. So, what is the truth of what is happening? So that you're not chasing in the wrong direction, because you have some hunch that isn't validated. So you want to have the focus, you want to have the visibility. We already talked about clarity of the unified mission. All of those together will drive alignment. And the other challenge that companies have, is if they don't have alignment. So think, if you don't have a mission, you don't have focus, you don't have visibility with data and you don't have alignment, all of that will be very difficult. So, what you want to do is nail down on the focus, using data, make sure that you're really tight with your communication to your team so you can drive that alignment, and that makes everything much easier.

Craig: That's perfect. And it's interesting, because we'll talk about all of these themes throughout the rest of the conversation. But certainly if I had to say one thing about what you just said, is how incredible of a unifier data can be. It can also be a divider if we don't agree on it, and don't believe right what we're looking at. But when we do and it's evidence driven, it is an incredible part of the unification story, right? And brings us together.

Kelly Breslin Wright: Absolutely.

Craig: Yeah, I love what you said there, I love it. Okay. So, well actually, would anybody else add to anything after we've laid all our cards out on the table? Any twists and turns you want to add here?

Dannie Herzberg: Yes. I want to build on what Kelly said, because I think that is so spot on, the mission orientation. Any candidate should be asking you what is the company mission, should be able to feel it. And I've seen customers sign up for a product because they to want to be part of what that company stands for. So, yes to that. My addition is a org within a company can have its own mission, in service of the greater one. So, let's say you are the leader of just the mid- market sales org or just the enterprise sales org. I would actually spend some time thinking about your org's why. How do you work in service of greater go to market, and in service of your customers? And put pen to paper to spell that out, so that people understand what they're joining, as kind of like a subculture of the greater organization.

Craig: Dannie, I want to jump into a meaty topic here with you. As we were prepping, I was so excited hearing you and your passion around this question. But when you think about fully unlocking potential to enable our go to market teams, when you think about leadership, what are your top leadership best practices for managers and execs now that you work with so many of them? And what can individual contributors do to drive leadership, even when not in a manager position? All right, so three questions in one, giving you a big meaty platform here to tell us more, and looking forward to hearing what you have to say.

Dannie Herzberg: Let's start on the leadership front. As leaders, I love to see when the executives of our portfolio companies create space to step out of a day to day, and zoom out. And frankly it almost feels impossible, because there's more to do than you could possibly ever do. And so it almost feels indulgent, but I guarantee to you it is not, it is very, very strategic. So I'll get a little bit tactical, but I am a big believer in off- sites. Twice a year, carve out time with your team, step back, anticipate what's around the corner. Almost goes to the blockers point that Olivia was mentioning earlier. So in a high growth company, a great framing for getting into this mindset of zooming out, is acknowledging that what got us here will not get us there. So it's, what are the next one to two years all about? And then specifically, if you're designing the space for this to make it count, I encourage a couple of things. First of all, I encourage change the scenery if you can. And it might sound silly, but there's... Okay, there's this book Moonwalking with Einstein. I don't know if anyone's ever read it, but it introduces this concept of a memory palace. And the idea is that memories and thoughts are most accessible when you can physically visualize them in a unique location. So, I'm really a proponent of actually changing your setting if you can, to be able to have big conversations about what's around the corner. And a prompt could be like a walk and talk, somewhere outdoors with a partner on the leadership team, asking yourself what's around the corner that we may not see? And then you regroup, and figure out how to anticipate that change in how the org operates. And the next, I make the zoom out moments as much about building trust as they are about talking shop. And the truth is they're totally intertwined, our personal and our professional. So, I really encourage an opportunity for people to check in with where they are in their personal lives, so that everyone else on the team has a richer context for what's happening when they show up to work every day. And they operate with a lot more empathy, and especially in a remote first environment, I think vulnerability and bonds can fuel an org for the remainder of the year. So, I would carve out meaningful time to do that. And then almost touching upon the culture code concept that I mentioned earlier, introduce a common language when you zoom out. You want a set of phrases that remind people that you're marching toward the same thing, and how you're going to show up in the journey. And I suggest you spark this by either devising your own set of values, or you can borrow from someone else. So for example at Slack, we brought in Brene Brown to speak to our executive team. And she introduced a few concepts that influenced how we communicated. The phrase that stands out is," Clear is kind," we kept saying that every time we had real talk with one another. And in the absence of budget for Brene brown to come in physically, watch a Ted talk that sparks a bigger picture conversation, and introduce that into your common vernacular. And then the last thing I would say, is set annual priorities and limit it to two, which is going to feel impossible. So, to acknowledge that impossibility of doing that, discuss what is tempting that you are going to choose not to emphasize, so that everyone in your organization can recite back what the annual priorities are, and how to make decisions there. And set your organizational rituals and celebrations around what you've decided really matters for the year. And then Craig, the last question I think was how do ICs show up as leaders, or what can they do within a scaling org? Was that right? Leadership is not limited to people managers. That feels like a really important concept to me. If each person can think of emergent leadership opportunities, it's basically figuring out what superpower reputation do I want to own and be known for, in this company that is creating fertile breeding ground for all the next companies that are going to be created? You can be that go- to. So, you could be the person who is known for being proud of giving up their Legos, and standing up a function, and then handing it off without any ego associated with that. You can be the IC who is really, really good at qualification, and you lead all of the sessions on qualification. Whatever it is, own it, and present it to management, and make it your thing.

Craig: God, that was great. That was more than we bargained for. Actually, you know what? I did have a quick thing that I'd love for you to comment on. Some people on the call might think this is crazy, but when you talk about annual priorities, are you talking about big sort of strategic initiatives they want to do? Or is there a range? As folks think about the two, do they think about it by the swing that'll have in their business, or any comments you'd have on that?

Dannie Herzberg: It must connect to the swing you have in your business. And it's almost misleading in sales, where you're like hit the number, it's pretty black and white. But I would be distinctive about what any given year is all about. So, one chunk of the sales org at Slack one year had its priorities as enterprise selling in the mid- market basically, how do we start being more strategic in the way that we approach customers? And the other priority was culture as a competitive advantage. And that was a framework for encouraging every IC to be their own recruiter of referrals, for the way that they show up, for them to be emergent leaders like we just talked about. So, I think two simple for raises that embody how you want to operate as an organization that year as individuals, and collectively as a team. And it should be strategic, but it's not quite the same as OKRs, if that makes sense.

Craig: Totally, makes total sense. All right. Well, let's take that, let's talk about growth and coaching. I actually wanted to ask Olivia this: what recommendations do you have for those who want to progress in their career and to the next level, just from a growth mindset and coaching perspective?

Olivia Nottebohm: So, I would say it's four things. And I'll list the four, and then I'll go into each of them in detail. So, the first is put in the work early. The second is find advocates, different than mentors. I'll go back to that. The third is, share what your goals are. And the fourth is, life is long and tech is small. And I'll go into each of those. So, put in the work early. There is real truth to first impressions matter and count, so those early efforts that you do as you start a job, and that first year in a job, whatever role it is and whatever number of jobs you've had before, really does matter. People notice you as a standout, people note that you're collaborative or they note that you can get things done. That first year really matters, and I firmly believe sets the trajectory for the other roles that you're offered later on, the amount of trust that people have in you, the amount to which people want to bring you in. So again, I would put the work in early, in any role that you're in. The second is finding advocates. So here, there's this delineation between finding a mentor, who is someone who gives advice, and finding an advocate, who is someone who pounds a table for you. And I would say that my journey has been very much affected by people who pounded the table for me. And I think this is a really interesting area to think deeply about, because people pound the table for you often because you've worked on their behalf, you've helped them. You've really impressed them. It's very hard to find an advocate or someone who will pound the table for you, until you've proven yourself to them. And that's straight talk, I know, but it's really important to understand that relationship, because it's rare that it's not some sort of quid pro quo where both people can benefit heavily. The third is setting your goals, and sharing them. So, often the career conversation I have with people who come to me is," Well, what is the mountain you're trying to climb?" They're asking me," Should I take this next job?" And I first have to understand,"Well, what is your greater goal? What do you want to be one day? And will this give you a new set of skills that contributes to that goal that you're aiming for?" And without knowing that answer, I could give really bad advice. So, it's always what I start with," What is the goal that you're striving for?" And I would recommend that people are very open about that. It's very admirable to be clear about your goals, and your career goals, and to share them. And then the last one is, life is long and tech is small. You keep on meeting the same people in tech over and over again, and your experiences from 20 years ago affect how you engage with them later on a board, or whether you'd even want to join a team or join a company. So, don't burn any bridges. Whatever decisions you make, you'll still be in the same flow if you decide that tech is something that you love and something you're passionate about. It ends up being a very small community who can help each other and support each other, and the same people will be around 20 years later. So, just keep that in mind.

Craig: Yeah, that was a webinar in and of itself. That was an amazing answer. I keep getting more than I bargain for, and I'm pretty sure I will get more than I bargained for on this one. We got to talk about data- informed decision making, and I'd love to start with you, Kelly., why should companies be data driven? And then what are the challenges when companies are not data driven?

Kelly Breslin Wright: Yeah. Well Craig, I think I'm just so passionate about data. I've built my career on tapping into data, whether it was when I was a consultant, or then at Tableau and now at Gong. And there's an interesting thing, because right now there's kind of a perception that everyone thinks that they're data driven. And here's the difference: just because you go collect and store a whole bunch of data, doesn't mean that your company is data driven. And so, I think the main important part is, how can you build a company where it's not just data driven of collecting data, but you actually are really permeating a data driven culture? And here's what happens, and this is a challenge when companies aren't data driven. So many companies collect so much data, they collect it, they store it, but they don't even know what to do with it. And if you roll the clock back a couple decades, 20 years ago or so people didn't even really care about data. Then you have people collecting data. And then it was well, empower people to be able to have some self sufficiency, to tap in and access that data and ask their own questions. This is one of the things we focus on at Tableau. But now the problem is there's just so much data, that people don't even know what to do with it. So there's a risk that companies have, of they're collecting the data and not really tapping into this as a data asset. And data should be used to inform your decisions. They can help you to understand what's truly happening, and they can actually be used to make people and your team so much better. How you interact with your customers, how you're developing your product, how customers are using your products and services. So, what ends up happening is because companies collect that data and they don't tap into it, they end up relying on hunches and opinions. And hunches are great, you want to be able to have that hunch, but then it's important to go validate it by data, not just make decisions based on your opinions alone. You want to be able to base your decisions on facts. And if you think about how companies are doing that, you should be asking yourself, what are you doing to tap into your own goldmine of data? Now at Tableau, we talked about," Eat your own dog food." At Gong, we talk about," Gong on Gong," of leveraging your own data. So to make this really tangible, for companies and individuals to say," Well, how can I be able to have more of a data driven culture?" First, ask yourself have you built a culture of data? And are you tapping into your data, in a way where you can democratize the data, and empower people to have access to information that helps them do their jobs better? And then lastly, are you maximizing the potential of the goldmine of data that you're sitting on to be able to understand what is happening, to understand the interactions with your customers, the interactions with your team, and to help everyone on your team get better? And that's really what we're all trying to do, is to build a better data driven culture, that taps into reality to make better decisions.

Craig: Olivia, you've worked at three different companies. If you were going to add best practices to what Kelly just said on driving data driven decision making, would you add anything there?

Olivia Nottebohm: Well, a hundred percent, everything that Kelly said resonates so deeply with me. Not surprisingly, we all as leaders make a lot of decisions. And Kelly's elements about making data part of the culture is so, so important. I would say that the reason I love data is that enables unemotional decisions. And we are making decisions constantly, as are managers, as are individual contributors. And it's a really good practice to anchor in data. And why do I say that? The beauty about data is that it has no emotion. So as you go to make a decision, if you really get yourself to outline the options, for each option include the pros and the cons, and then include data and anchor those pros and cons and data, you'll find you'll get out of some of these more emotional groupthink decisions, and really open up the aperture about different paths you can take, different timeframes you can consider, and frankly, really make sure that you're making it on something solid versus hunches, as Kelly said. I would say the second piece is a counter tension to that. So, this is preventing analysis paralysis. I don't know how many of you have heard that word. But data is very special, it's very important. However, if teams spin because they're constantly searching for all the data, you do potentially fall into letting perfection be the enemy of good. So, you also need to apply this judgment of, what is the amount of data you need to make a decision? And once you have that data, and outlining it in advance, like," This is the data that I would need to see, to be able to make a trade off between these two options," making that decision. So, really making sure you have a time window during which analysis occurs, and then making a decision and going. And that was something that I found really important when I was at Google Cloud, when we were in hyper scale, and now at Notion also when you're trying to pace over a hundred percent. There is as much damage done when a decision doesn't get made or prolonged, as a decision that's maybe 80 right, but you're executing strongly against it. So, it's this beautiful balance for which you hold data. You need it to make decisions, it's incredibly important, and then you have to make sure to cut yourself off and just make the decision and run.

Craig: I love it, guys. And leave it to me, because I was enjoying the content so much that I just kept taking it in, didn't look at the clock. So here's what I'd love to do, let's go around the horn quickly, it's time to close this out. And if you don't mind, why don't you drop a go to market best practice or tip, as we say goodbye? Quickly, maybe a 25 seconds. We definitely covered a lot here today, and it was deep, and let's end with something really quick. So we'll go down the line, why don't we start with you, Dannie? And then we'll go to Olivia, and then Kelly will hit the grand slam for us, and we'll be done with today's great panel.

Dannie Herzberg: My parting tip to anyone, a leader and an IC see alike, who is listening today, is that go to market is well beyond go to market. Which means to be really, really good at it, make a friend, build a deep relationship with someone, and multiple people in another function. Finance impacts sales, product impacts sales, operations impacts sales. Your careers are long, and tech is small, just like Olivia had said earlier. So, take the time to ask someone from the product team to dinner. Learn about who they are as a person, learn about their professional priorities, swap notes about what you're both working on and thinking about, make that a regular occurrence. And I promise you, for the sake of your role as it stands today, and your future career beyond, that will be a really, really worthwhile investment of your time, for your sake and for the sake of your customers.

Craig: Love it, Olivia?

Olivia Nottebohm: Well, first of all, it's been a delight to be here with Kelly and Dannie, so thank you to you both. I can't wait to go out to dinner, grab a drink, what Dannie was just describing, soon. First and foremost, I would say building trust. And it's a very much a thread that I've heard from Kelly and Dannie throughout this. So working with your teammates and your peers, is not just about work, but it's about personal relationships and building trust. And the same is true for your customers and your users. So, as you engage with your peers or the outside world, always be thinking about how you can build trust.

Craig: Perfect end. Kelly?

Kelly Breslin Wright: Well Craig, I feel so inspired hearing Dannie and Olivia. They have so many great tidbits, and it's so motivational and inspiring. And actually as we wrap this, I'd like to circle back to some of the focus areas that Olivia and Dannie talked about at the beginning. Because I think many leaders focus so much on operational improvements, and we've talked about things you can do to go build your company, scale go to market. There's so many things that we can do operationally, that sometimes companies and people don't focus enough on the best, most important asset in your company, which is our people. And people ask me all the time," What are your top three priorities?" Thinking it changes when you're trying to scale to a hundred million, or you're already public, or you're going global, or you're trying to drive more operational efficiencies. But for me, my top three priorities regardless of company, regardless of stage, they're literally always the same. Number one priority, people. Number two priority, is people. And my top three priority, is people. Because people are our top asset. People are the ones that build the company, people engage with our customers, people are selling, people are the ones who are making decisions, people hire your other people, people manage those people. And if we get everything else right, and we don't have the wrong people, then that can be a challenge. But if you have the right people, they're going to be the ones that are going to solve all the problems, be able to help drive growth, be able to foster the best culture. And so, number one takeaway for me is just always, always remember to focus on your people.

Craig: What a perfect way to end, everyone. I too thought this was amazing, and you could take every segment here and turn it into its own piece of content, and it was incredible. So, thank you everyone. We took what started as secrets from the C- suite to unlocking go to market potential, to no longer secrets. These are tried and true best practices from the C- suite, on how to unlock your potential. Thank you everyone, and this was an amazing session, and I hope everyone enjoyed it.