Customer Success Has a Leadership Problem | TDSU Ep. 8

00:46   welcome lifers to the Daily standup a brand new project from lifetime value where we're giving you Ideas Daily that relate to customer success I'm your host and I'm thinking of making a company like WTH pal goop and I want to know what do you guys think the first candle should be what's the scent that should come from that company beeswax what's got to be weirder than that Brad and um we haven't introduced you yet so you're screwing this up no I'm kidding I'm your host Dylan young JP

01:23    do you want to say hi uh yes hi I have no candles I have no candles stunned stunned Rob can you say hi please hey Brad nice to finally formally meet you and Again Brad has not been introduced yet Brad can you please introduce yourself hey everybody Brad Davis founder of success Panda happy to be here thanks so much for being here Brad Brad you know the uh you know the story we want to know what is on your mind in customer success today yeah so really what's on my mind is I've been since starting success Panda uh which is aim

02:00    to be a Marketplace for the entire CS uh space I've spoken to mentored or coached or mock interviewed hundreds of people in the past three months and uh I want to talk about leadership and customer success it's it needs to be talked about a little bit so it's not there's there's some things that we got to we got to cover do you guys remember when you were kids and your parent would sit you down on your bed and they'd say we've got to talk that's the vibe I'm getting from

02:30    from Brad right now yeah so expound a little bit tell us what uh what exactly it is you want to talk about you sound so disappointed no I mean I I I am but I'm not because here here's the thing is when you when you when you talk to hundreds of people you hear lots and lots of stories about people who are Frontline people working for leaders and the biggest deficit I think we have in the space is leadership and the challenge is we have to Define our word leadership for me simply means the ability to get results through other

03:04    people and so right now there are a myriad of different challenges but fundamentally we have people that are in leadership positions who are bosses and not leaders so we don't need to like you know we don't need to dog on them we need to help the leaders become better leaders and then we need to help just organizations um increase their knowledge base and increase their understanding what it takes to be um in a leadership role cu the difference between a boss and a leader is a boss says this is what you should do because

03:37    I told you you should do it right and a leader is someone who says let me come down to your level help you and show you how to get the result right so that's kind of that servant based leadership style that's so popular but at the same time um if you're just a boss works yeah it's going to be a challenge so you said you didn't want to dog on anybody but can you just give us some examples maybe they're name their title their LinkedIn URL just so we have example no I'm kidding I'm kidding yeah I'll BL that

04:05    out right now JP I'd like to get your take on this as um you just recently made a transition and you're working with a new group I want to know kind of like what's been your experience how did you as you were going through the process of of finding a new role one that fit you how did you assess this exact thing that that Brad's talking about yeah I think that I've learned over the years that you know leadership is is everything having the people in place that you feel like genuinely care

04:37    about um your development who care about your ideas I think that sometimes it can be very easy for um people in more senior positions to be dismissive of ideas I think what was cool about U my company is that there was definitely a culture of um you know being a learning organization and I could tell in my two interviews my two uh final interviews with both um you know managers including the VP um that the VP is actually very much into mentorship mentors people in the other space and I really saw that this was a place where I could go and

05:14    really learn and and be mentored and I think that just even giving off that Vibe right is palpable as opposed to what Brad was referring to as a boss you can almost feel that difference you know so yeah that's sort of the first thing that came to mind why I thought you know this job was so good for me and Brad helped me Brad helped me so I remember after JP talked to you Brad he was he was pumped about that conversation and the energy and the tips you brought uh yeah definitely big shout out to that Rob I want to I want to ask

05:54    from the perspective of somebody who has led before but how does this resonate with you or are you like this is all  no no it it resonates with me in a particular way starting with the fact that uh I've been a very bad manager at times and I've been a better manager at times right so I can honestly look back and say you know now I just manage a team of one and it's kind of a relief now um and I think you don't even have plants I've heard don't even don't even manage those no no no no employees

06:24    no pets no plants whatever um one of the realizations that I had aligns really well with what you're saying Brad which is that I if I thought of my role as a manager as being a CSM to my csms well what does that look like that means that I'm responsible for their success I'm responsible for measuring their engagement measuring their satisfaction and frankly making sure that they renew every day they come to work right and that they expand right so that Paradigm really helped me and I I I changed my mindset of like running

06:59    the team to one of serving the team that's just from my personal experience it helped me to scale up a I think the biggest team that I was on was like 82 people by the time I left and um really wouldn't have been possible if I didn't have that little uh know moment of reconciliation with my own ego no that's so that's so key because the number one trait that I look for in leaders is actually humility um so you just had right there Rob you're like yeah I recognize that uh I wasn't great

07:29    and then I decided I was going to get better and humility is a is a hard thing to learn and I think that from my conversations and all my history I think it's challenging when you get to a certain level within an organization directors or VPS and people um aren't used to feeling safe even at a leadership level to to say these magic words I was wrong right because it's like we all have this magic wand we wave and we want our leaders to have every decision be the 100 correct per correct decision every time and no

08:05    one has that has that uh that level that batting average but yet we still kind of all kind of play along and like oh this is probably going to be the right thing that we're going to choose to do as an organization and then it turns out that it's not as optimal as we thought but it's okay because as long as you're you have a level of humility you're like hey it didn't work but it's not the end of the world we're we're going to Pivot and try something new but that gets to the

08:30    the point of being agile as a leader most leaders what I find is people fundamentally are afraid to make mistakes right they're like okay fear is my base emotion I don't want to make mistakes I need the playbooks I need the assets I need the processes I need the policies I need my app framework and then and only then will I go out and maybe dip my toe into the I'm going to try to lead um the team and but leadership is not like you you're called into a leadership or you're put place in leadership position because there's not

09:02    answers to questions there these are problems that haven't been decided or need additional Clarity and so the number one thing that leaders can do is provide Clarity provide Clarity because if you have Clarity of what your team should be doing and you're very clear about their kpis then it will be it'll be like a dream come true when you start seeing the execution of all your people because everyone's rowing in the same direction so I'm really big unclarity uh for managers and it's and leaders and

09:29    it's honestly it's their job it's your leadership's job to provide you Clarity and provide you Direction I like what you said about leaders admitting they're wrong my early lesson in this my dad is the most humble person I know one of the most humble people I know but he would always make this stupid dad joke which is like there was only one time I was wrong and that was when I thought I was wrong but I was actually right it's really dumb wow it's a bit of a mind Bender yeah we should exchange

09:58    dad jokes sometimes cuz I got one that is always a laugher but that's about it go ahead we got hey we got a little bit of time here Brad let's go take us out on a high note yeah so how many legs does a Cow Milking stool have oh my goodness uh I have not had enough caffeine JP you got it what is it all right let me ask you okay hold on I messed up the joke why it's been the messed it up I messed up the joke here's the delivery hold on hold on okay here JP I knew you were You're In the Zone on this so why why does a

10:34    Cow Milking stool only have three legs because the cows got the utter oh I like it I like it okay quality yeah hear that joke and it's okay yeah that's our time Brad I thank you so much for bringing a topic and a great a dad joke thank you so much Brad we'll see you around see you guys