Leading from any seat | Arit Nsemo | Ep. 90

[Rob] (0:00 - 0:16)

You want to be tier three toilet paper, right? You want to be the type of person- Right. And then- and definitely not tier one where you're just like very much not a pleasure to work with because you're just over here complaining that no one's getting toilet paper.

It's my first time saying this out loud, so work with me here.

[Dillon] (0:16 - 0:48)

I was- I thought- I thought so. That was my question. Is whether you had rehearsed this.

JP, there it is. There's that smile. That's what I wanted.

Just a little smile from JP. All right. What's up, lifers?

And welcome to The Daily Standup with Lifetime Value, where we're giving you fresh new customer success ideas every single day. I got my man JP nodding slowly. JP, do you want to say hi?

[JP] (0:48 - 0:49)

What's going on, people?

[Dillon] (0:50 - 0:53)

And I got my man Rob here. Rob, do you want to say hi?

[Rob] (0:54 - 0:55)

What's up, lifers?

[Dillon] (0:56 - 1:04)

Sun-kissed. Sun-kissed Rob. It's beautiful.

It looks professional.

[JP] (1:05 - 1:08)

You look like an orange soda.

[Dillon] (1:08 - 1:12)

We have Arit with us. Arit, can you please say hi?

[Arit] (1:13 - 1:13)

Hello, everyone.

[Dillon] (1:15 - 1:22)

Hello, hello. And I am your host. My name is Dillon Young.

Arit, thank you so much for being here. Can you please introduce yourself?

[Arit] (1:23 - 1:45)

Yeah, my name is Arit Nsemo. I currently am leading customer success at a e-commerce search and merchandising company called SearchBrain. Been in customer success for almost 15 years now, which feels like a really long time to be in customer success.

But here we are, just bopping around tech companies, helping them fix their processes in CS. That's kind of my vibe.

[Dillon] (1:47 - 1:57)

Right on. I like that vibe. Arit, thank you so much for being here.

You know what we're doing here. We ask one simple question, which is, what is on your mind when it comes to customer success? Why don't you tell us what that is?

[Arit] (1:58 - 2:07)

What's on my mind is how CSMs can lead from any seat in the business, whether they're an IC or a manager or whatever their role is, they can lead from any seat.

[Dillon] (2:08 - 2:19)

I love it. So that's a declarative statement. And I don't know that it really needs a ton more, but why is that your topic?

What's happening today that has you feeling that way?

[Arit] (2:20 - 3:55)

Yeah, so customer success is super interesting, right? It's been around for, let's call it 20 years-ish in its current form. I'm using air quotes because everyone defines it differently, it seems.

But what's happening more recently is, obviously, there's been crazy upheavals in tech companies, and there's been layoffs, and there's been team restructurings, and CSMs suddenly have to do a lot of stuff they weren't doing before. And I think it's led to a lot of disempowerment in the CS community, specifically for the individual contributing CSMs. They feel like they're getting told what to do. They feel like they're owning things they may not necessarily be enabled for.

And I think it requires a huge mindset shift for CSMs to go from, hey, I'm going to be the best friend with the customer. We're going to make sure that everything is good, to leading from any seat, which is, I own this relationship. I own this business.

It's in my book. I own the relationship that I personally have with our internal product team. I'm responsible for making sure that certain things get communicated.

And so it shifts the mindset from one of like, oh, my gosh, overwhelm, I can't get through my day, which is totally understandable, given if you look at the average CSMs calendar now, I mean, how many customer calls do they have just back to back? They're getting asked to provide customers for all kinds of different things. They're the touch point for the customers.

So they're constantly going to the CS team for things. And it leads to them being like, okay, I'm not in the driver's seat anymore versus leading from any seat, which is like, hey, I own this. This is what I need to do.

How do I talk about it with my customer? How do I actually drive change from what I can personally control?

[Dillon] (4:01 - 4:05)

I love that after you said all that, you're like, yeah, that's some heavy shit.

[JP] (4:05 - 4:07)

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Dillon] (4:07 - 4:26)

So I have like, maybe it's like an unattainable question or unanswerable, but what would be your number one tip? Is it just like, hey, think like that. Think like you're the CSO.

Think like you're the owner. What is the number one tip you're giving to your folks in this new reality?

[Arit] (4:26 - 5:32)

The first thing is to start with it in a tactical perspective. It's really hard to change mindset. I'm one of those people that thinks that action is the number one way to do anything, to get any change to move forward, to do mindset shifts.

It is a mindset shift, but it requires action to do it. So the number one thing I say is pick something small that you feel like you've lost control of the narrative on and regain control. That might be your calendar.

Maybe your calendar has gone off the rails because you've allowed it to get booked up with customer meetings and you're pulled in left and right and you're answering Slack messages. First thing first, take control of your time. Take ownership of your time.

That could be a small thing to do. Lead from NEC. A next thing might be, hey, this process is super broken.

There is no resource to fix it. I'm going to start doing this thing differently to make my life easier, prove the value of it, and then bring it to the rest of the team. That's leading from NEC.

Those are things that feel really empowering, because CSMs are actually really good at that stuff. They're just not given the opportunity to do it. And I think they have to stop waiting to be told that it's okay to do that kind of stuff and just do it and watch it pay dividends.

[Dillon] (5:35 - 5:54)

HOFFMAN JP, I want to come to you first, given that you're more likely to be experiencing this, not because of your personality or anything, but because you're sitting in SEED as an individual contributor. How is your organization empowering you? Or maybe talk about a previous experience, about how you've experienced this.

[JP] (5:54 - 8:11)

Yeah, great stuff, Eric. That was really great. And I think that the part that you hit that was really great was picking something, right?

Because I think sometimes people come, and there's a great idea, and it's like, oh, of course. And then it's like, well, where do you start? How do you do it?

You're going to take ownership of 100-something customers? What does that look like? So I think that what you hit upon was really important, which was picking a place to start.

And I wholeheartedly agree that if we don't have control of our time, if we don't get a hold of that, then yes, we do start to get caught in the vicissitudes of emails and what different people are telling us about things. And you're right. Even if I am, let's say, doing things, like I'm reaching out, I'd have that mindset.

If I'm just constantly sort of feel like I'm going in between, I can see what you mean in terms of feeling disempowered. So I think that that is really important. I think that the way that my company in particular, I'm a little bit like, oh, oh, we're going to talk about my job right now?

But I do feel supported by my manager. I feel as if I can have one of those with my manager where I can share my honest feeling. I give credit to my manager and she's like, hey, I know you love the company.

It's clear. Like no one questions you, but do you like your, how are you liking this role right now? And I was like, whoa, you know what I mean?

So like, but of course, first of all, I'm like, am I giving off something that seems like I'm not liking it? But I was able to just be like, hey, no, I'm just like, you know, now that I'm sort of out of that early three month honeymoon period, you know, and I'm starting to get into owning my book, like again, having more literal ownership that, you know, now it's a little bit more heads down. Whereas before I was spending a lot more time like, oh, hey, you talk about a broken process.

I had time to be like, yeah, it was this broken process, right? But now I have less time, but I know, I feel like Rob, you were nodding your head like a bobblehead earlier. What were you going to say?

I felt like you were nodding, you was ready.

[Rob] (8:12 - 8:22)

Well, see, here's the thing. I've been looking for an opportunity to say this out loud, but there's been something on my mind lately. I've been calling it the toilet paper problem.

Oh my God.

[JP] (8:23 - 8:24)

I'm going to hit you with this.

[Rob] (8:24 - 9:15)

So I'll try to keep it quick. So, so I was thinking, you can imagine where and when I was thinking this, but there's types of people in the world, right? There's people who they realize there's no toilet paper left.

You're running out of toilet paper. And there's three tiers that I think people can react to this with. There's one tier it's like, oh, we're running out of toilet paper.

Like this sucks, man. Life is hard. Okay.

Tier two, we're running out of toilet paper. Oh, well, that's okay. Someone will probably do something about that, but I'll at least be cool about it.

Like I'm not going to be angry and curmudgeony about, about this. Tier three is I'm going to CVS. I'm going to buy some toilet paper right after this.

I'm going to be the toilet paper savior of this whole household, this whole organization. And it's my first time saying this out loud. So work with me here.

I thought, I thought so.

[Dillon] (9:15 - 9:19)

That was my question is whether you had rehearsed this.

[Rob] (9:19 - 9:36)

So you want to, you want to be, you want to be tier three toilet paper, right? You want to be the type of person who's not going to sit back waiting for permission. Like, oh, and then, and definitely not tier one, where you're just like, not very much, not a pleasure to work with because you're just over here complaining that no one's getting toilet paper.

[JP] (9:36 - 9:37)

It was one ply.

[Rob] (9:37 - 10:19)

So we've been talking so much about CS being the junk drawer of the organization. And one of the things that's been on my mind is there's sometimes something really, there's gold in that junk drawer every once in a while. Right.

And so I do believe that we should define our charters very specifically. But when we find that gold in the junk drawer, it might be a hidden leadership opportunity, like what you're saying, Eric. And we have that more than a lot of other organizations do because of the novelty and the changing identity of the profession that we're in.

So I'm guilty of recommending too much that CS folks ask forgiveness, not permission. It's backfired for me every once in a while. But most of the time, people have really exceeded my expectations when I give them that prompt.

And, you know, we're all better off because we're tier three toilet paper.

[Arit] (10:19 - 10:28)

Yeah, that's right. Toilet paper. I think encouraging CSM to go a little bit rogue.

Go a little rogue. Just rogue enough to feel fun.

[Rob] (10:28 - 10:29)

Just a little rogue.

[Arit] (10:29 - 10:30)

Yeah, I think that's always good.

[Dillon] (10:32 - 10:34)

If you can make the argument that you know what's best.

[Rob] (10:34 - 11:00)

Yeah. I did this actually just recently. It was a really great quick example.

He had a customer churn. Big bummer. You know what he did?

He said, for the first time in company history, I'm going to organize a churn post-mortem. No one had done this at the company before. So he's going to get everybody at the table together and show leadership around an area that would otherwise feel like a big blemish on his resume at the company.

And it worked out really well. Everyone respected him as being a leader of his book of business as a result.

[Arit] (11:00 - 11:16)

That's a perfect example. I had a CSM on my team take initiative and build out their own workflow and play in churn zero. Test it out with their book of business.

Realize it worked really well. And then scheduled time to share it with the rest of the company. And it was beautiful because now everyone can take advantage of it.

[Dillon] (11:16 - 11:31)

Love it. Well, I'm glad we recovered and we didn't end on a mention of toilet paper. That's our time, Eric.

Thank you so much for bringing this to our attention and for keeping a straight face for most of this. We'd love to have you back in the future. But for now, we've got to say goodbye.

[Arit] (11:32 - 11:34)

Bye. It was lovely.

[Voiceover] (11:38 - 12:09)

You've been listening to The Daily Standup by Lifetime Value. Please note that the views expressed in these conversations are attributed only to those individuals on this recording and do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of their respective employers. For all inquiries, please reach out via email to Dillon at LifetimeValueMedia.com.

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