Episode 126: Navigating Change While Driving Growth - The RevOps Balancing Act

Speaker A: From AI and shifting processes to evolving customer expectations, RevOps is sitting at the center of a non stop transformation. Welcome to the RevOps show, where we cut through the noise and get real about what it takes to accelerate revenue and lead with clarity. In this episode, Doug and Jess break down how to stay focused, avoid the messy middle, and create stability without slowing progress. So with that, let's jump in. Um,

Speaker B: Jess. Doug, I'm not gonna lie.

Speaker C: Okay? You're tired.

Speaker B: I'm tired.

Speaker C: I am. I am, too. Who decided to put this on Friday afternoon?

Speaker B: Well, we were gonna do it earlier. We actually even got.

Speaker C: We actually got on. We.

Speaker B: But I had the post conference cold.

Speaker C: How was the conference, Doug?

Speaker B: What is the conference that you referred to, Jess?

Speaker C: I don't know. Um, Inbound. How is inbound?

Speaker B: Wait, you weren't there?

Speaker C: This is my first inbound in a decade that I have not attended.

Speaker B: Did you have fomo?

Speaker C: I had fomo. I did. I did. I heard from some clients about it. I heard from some of our people about it.

Speaker B: You heard from. What was the second group? You said?

Speaker C: Some of our people. Some of our team.

Speaker B: Some of our team.

Speaker C: Was there some of them, yeah, two of them.

Speaker B: Um, it was good. Um, it was strange.

Speaker C: Why was it strange?

Speaker B: So I can't remember. It was. It's either my 13th, 14th, or 15th.

Speaker C: Um, one of your teens.

Speaker B: Let's see. 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25.

Speaker C: This is just gonna be the whole show, just you counting.

Speaker B: That would be a good show.

Speaker C: Be amazing.

Speaker B: That might. That might set a record for, uh, for downloads. How many. How many licks does it take to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop?

Speaker C: Wow. The world may never know.

Speaker B: How far can Doug count in one episode of the Revop show?

Speaker C: Oh, my God.

Speaker A: Um,

Speaker B: so it was my, you know, my 13th inbound. M. Um. But so much about it. And actually, I forget who I was talking to. They. They. It was a hubspotter who said that their anxiety was. Was like they were going to a conference for the first time.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker B: Yeah. And it was like, not because they. It was in San Francisco for the first time. And, um, nothing against San Francisco. Knock on wood. The first and only. Um, so it was a good conference. It was fascinating. Um, I'm not. I don't. I don't love Moscone. I mean, I'm glad I've been there now, um, you know, bcec, imagine. Imagine, um, a place that makes BCEC feel intimate.

Speaker C: Yeah. So the big. The Largest conference center I've been to is the one in San Diego, which I'm assuming is about the size of the one in San Francisco.

Speaker B: Does it cover multiple streets?

Speaker C: Yes.

Speaker B: Like it's multiple blocks.

Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. If memory serves. Yes, it does. I mean, it's been a long time, but.

Speaker B: And from what I understand, we were only in two thirds of it.

Speaker C: It's wild, Doug. It's wild. Yeah, I heard. I heard you couldn't. Like, there wasn't much running into people. There wasn't as much running into people as there has been in Boston.

Speaker B: Although the thing that's strange is there. There wasn't. Right. Absolutely was not. Except there were a couple people that, uh, we must have run into.

Speaker C: So. So I have to ask, because it's been the running joke of the last three inbounds in Boston. Did you run into Nick Collins?

Speaker B: No.

Speaker C: No. Oh, See, that's.

Speaker B: See, the only Nick conversation I had was the scheduled Nick conversation, which was part of a, uh. Part of a group, which was actually one of the highlights. I mean, Nick always does a good job of giving you the rationale behind what he's doing, why he's doing it.

Speaker C: It's one of the reasons I love running into Nick. It's always an interesting conversation that you have with him.

Speaker B: Yeah. I didn't. Didn't run into Nick. Didn't run into Chris. Ran into Remington. Um. Shout out Remington. Um, ran into him. Must have been ten times.

Speaker C: Okay.

Speaker B: Um. So again, it's just interesting that. That, um. But. So the conference was good. Um, the. The difficulty is, like, I wouldn't. I wouldn't go to Inbound every year if it was just what happens at the conference.

Speaker C: Right.

Speaker B: I would say 70% of the benefit that I get, um, are all the things that happen that weren't on the schedule, that weren't planned.

Speaker C: Right.

Speaker B: And I would say I got 20 to 30% of that benefit this year. Yeah, 20 to 30% of that impact. Because the other thing, too, is BCEC is kind of cordoned off in Southport. So it's kind of like a section of Boston that basically only exists to support conferences and mini conferences. Right. So there's a whole restaurant ecosystem there. There are hotels that are there. Most of the people at those hotels are probably going to whatever the conference is. There's some other things that are happening, but.

Speaker C: Right.

Speaker B: Um. So. So there's a lot. So even. Even when you're outside the conference center, there's just a lot more likelihood that you're going to run into each other.

Speaker C: Right.

Speaker B: Um, San Francisco. You're kind of like in San Francisco. You're in, you know, just off of Union Square.

Speaker C: Right.

Speaker B: Um, which is an interesting part of town. Um, and so, you know, the hotels are all spread out there. There was no Weston equivalent. Um, so I missed all the intangible parts of Inbound. But the conference itself, um, HubSpot announced their new methodology, the Loop. Not to be confused with Chicago.

Speaker C: Yep.

Speaker B: Um, still getting my arms around that. How much of that is truly a methodology? How much of that is just kind of a characterization, uh, to call it a methodology? I mean, it feels. I mean, they're trying to say it's. It's the. It's the next revolution, like Inbound. And I think that the danger there is. I think, like, you know, AI is revolutionary, but I think the methodology still is a little bit more, like, it's a little bit too much of just like it's a continuous improvement. Infinite Loop. Um, we'll come back to Infinite Loops in a minute. Um, product is on fire. Uh, no question that the product is.

Speaker C: Holy cow. The product update. I mean, I told our team this, like, it's the product updates. And maybe it's because I wasn't. I stayed more away from them this year leading into Inbound. So I wasn't as intimately familiar with some of the announcements that were going to happen as I have been in previous years. But I felt like it was a substantial amount of product, uh, like meaningful product updates that. That will really impact.

Speaker B: And when you think about the fact that what they spotlighted was probably maybe 10 to 15% of the product updates.

Speaker C: Well, so, like, that's the part that I know that I'm wholly aware of because I, Again, I've been to Inbound. I think I've been nine times. I've been eight or nine times. Yeah. So. But.

Speaker B: But eight times as an insider. One time as an outsider.

Speaker C: Correct. Correct. My first year, I came as a client of, um, what was Imagine is now Lift. So, yeah, I thought the product updates were pretty impactful.

Speaker B: Uh, I think, if anything, there's too much product update. I think that there's a lot of bragging about they had 200 plus product updates. I think that's too much of the product updating. Um, I'd like to see, you know, less volume and. And a little bit more focus to what's going on. But they're. I mean, they are, you know, they are carving off a, um, a very broad. You know, I was talking with Nick in the conversation I had with Nick, I said, you know, the truth of the matter is you can't be one partner and, and fully support HubSpot. No, you just can't do it. It's too broad.

Speaker C: Yeah. What did Nick say?

Speaker B: Nick agreed.

Speaker C: We haven't talked about this.

Speaker B: Okay, Nick agreed. He was like, yeah, that's fair. And, um, um, there needs to be more product enablement too. What I mean by that is more real deep training around it. There's a little bit too much of the, um. This is where I hope HubSpot doesn't lose its secret sauce. Because to me, a large part of its secret sauce was it was never purely a product company.

Speaker C: Right.

Speaker B: It was, it was, uh, of its community. So as they launch things, they also had deep support around how to apply it and how to make it work. And with so much new. And it's what I refer to as so much new new. Yeah, there's a lot of new new that's happening with the product and with the world. What does new new mean? It means new features around, new capabilities, new functional areas, new focus areas. Um, so you think about something like customer, um, agent, that's a new capability with a new feature. And I feel like there's not enough, um, you know, some of this is because that's where like, you know, for, for all of the, you know, here's our case studies, here's our proof cases, etc. You know, everyone still so much at the forefront of figuring out what do I do with this.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker B: But it definitely puts you in a place where, um, I mean, I left, I left the product update and I had to leave a little bit early because I had a, one of the, one of the few calls that I had, uh, while I was there. I left feeling exhausted.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker B: How am I going to, how am I going to keep up with everything?

Speaker C: Well, and so I've been getting an influx of questions of is there a training around this? Is there documentation around that, like already? And every request has been different, which just tells you how many product updates were announced.

Speaker B: So, yeah, yeah, it's like we're living in this infinite loop. Um, and I'm wondering, where's the rest station? Do you find yourself feeling that way?

Speaker C: Always, Always. Every day, you know,

Speaker B: I have seen more people talk about, um, with everything going on in the world, um, and, and, and the trends over, I would say the last five years. I mean, I would say, you know, post Covid. So, you know, you think about it March 14, basically 2020, just how it feels like we've Been on this never ending accelerating treadmill.

Speaker C: Yep.

Speaker B: Um, except it. Except the treadmill is. Is. I mean, you can make a treadmill steep and you can make it fast, but it's like being on a treadmill on Lombard Street. And for those of you that don't know Lombard street, that's a San Francisco reference. It's the street that basically just has these huge S curves, like probably about 5 or 6s curves.

Speaker C: Oh, is that the street that you have to drive like 10 miles an hour on? Because.

Speaker B: Yeah, it's brick laden street that winds at an angle like 70 degrees. Maybe. 70 degrees is. I'm sure I'm exaggerating. Let's see, um, what else?

Speaker C: Didn't I say this is great content.

Speaker B: What is Lombard Street? I think it's Lombard. Defining Lombard Street's essence. Most renowned for its one block section in the Russian Hill neighborhood that features eight sharp hairpin turns. Um, yeah, I was exaggerating a little bit. Uh, the street's natural 27% grade was too steep for the automobiles of the era to navigate safely. That's why they had those hair. That's why you have all those S curves. Is so that you could get up. Isn't it weird that 27 degrees feels like, like straight up and down?

Speaker C: It does. It is weird. Yeah, it is. Did you go on Lombard Street?

Speaker B: I did not. I didn't. Oh, you know what I did do that was cool?

Speaker C: What?

Speaker B: I took my first, second, and third waymo.

Speaker C: Oh, the. You let the. You let the robots take control of your life.

Speaker B: That was the one time I could just sit back, relax, and not have to think about anything.

Speaker C: Yeah, I've ridden in those in Austin. They're pretty cool.

Speaker B: They're pretty cool. Nice. Um, no. No driver to awkwardly ignore asking me strange questions. No commentary on anything. It was quite nice.

Speaker C: Yep.

Speaker B: All right, so what does Lombard street have to do with real life? Jess?

Speaker C: What does Lombard street have to do with real life? Always. Always twisting and turning, Doug,

Speaker B: at a faster and faster rate.

Speaker C: Yes. All right, so today what I want to talk about is there's so much changing right now in the world and in business. As you talked about, we're on this never ending treadmill, and Revops is really at the center of it for business. With Revops being responsible for identifying process improvements, iterating. Where do you draw the line? How do you. How do you make progress while keeping up with the ever changing environment?

Speaker B: You know, before I answer that question, I had a. I had a deja vu moment.

Speaker C: Oh, man.

Speaker B: I Got on the flight, I was looking at. Looking out the window, and I saw, um, the tarmac crew. I forget what they're called. Um, loading the plane with, uh. With. With its baggage.

Speaker C: Yep.

Speaker B: And I thought for a moment, that's the job.

Speaker C: That's the job.

Speaker B: That's the job.

Speaker C: Loading bags onto an airplane.

Speaker B: Yeah. You think about it. Think about it, Jess. You get a.

Speaker C: Okay. Um.

Speaker B: AI is not going to replace you.

Speaker C: Fair. Yeah.

Speaker B: Do you think they have cases, um, of the Mondays? Do you think they're at. They're at a neighborhood, uh, picnic on. On a beautiful Saturday afternoon, and they're thinking about, okay, well, what. What meetings do I have on Monday? What do I have to do?

Speaker C: Are you asking if they have an office space moment? Is that what you're asking me right now?

Speaker B: Right. And it's like, you know, their. Their day starts when they show up to work. Their workday starts when they show up

Speaker C: to work and ends when they leave.

Speaker B: And when it's over. You're not carrying anything over, et cetera.

Speaker C: Clear. Check in and check out. Because you. You go through tsa, you leave through tsa.

Speaker B: Um, I did a. I pulled a rookie. Rookie. Rookie mistake.

Speaker C: What'd you do? What'd you bring on the plane? What'd you try to bring on the plane that you shouldn't bring on, Doug?

Speaker B: No, it's what I forgot to take off the plane.

Speaker C: Did you leave your phone on the plane?

Speaker B: No, leaving my phone on the plane would have been preferable.

Speaker C: What'd you leave on the plane?

Speaker B: I left my laptop on the plane.

Speaker C: Douglas, you okay? I got given a hard time about this years ago when I left my laptop on a plane.

Speaker B: I got up. Um, I. I had taken it out of my.

Speaker C: You, uh, left it in the pocket. Left it in the pocket.

Speaker B: Everything was crazy. Um, I was able to get it pretty easily.

Speaker C: You know what I now have is a sticker on the bottom of my laptop with my contact information on it. That's what Delta told me to do.

Speaker B: Yeah. I realized it as I threw my stuff in the car, and I'm like, oh, no, that. That pocket looks flat.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker B: And then I was like, oh. Anyways, um, I thought about that because they got, um. They got it to me pretty quickly. And I was like, how they, uh. You know, how they do that without having to go through tsa.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker B: Anyhow, we were talking about, how do you keep up? How do you keep up?

Speaker C: How do I keep up? I feel like I'm George Judson most times.

Speaker B: Um, did you know what treadmills were invented for?

Speaker C: No,

Speaker B: treadmills, um, were invented as a form of torture.

Speaker C: Did not know that. That tracks though. That tracks. I mean, so if we're talking about ever changing though, and how do I, uh, so we've talked about this in the past. I think the place where I always start is what are the outcomes that we're trying to achieve right now and what does the end look like and then what is complete for that end? So I'm trying to find a foothold, an anchor, a waypoint, if you will. Doug. Uh, that, that we can be striving towards. That's, that's the first piece for me.

Speaker B: Yeah. I was asked this question on a podcast that I was on recently, uh, partner podcast, just sharing my experiences in there. And they asked me, how do I keep up with everything going on with the product, etc. And my response was, if I try to keep up with everything going on with the product, I, I, I'd have no time to do anything else and I still wouldn't be keeping up with the product.

Speaker C: Um, yeah,

Speaker B: now, I mean, I'm looking at, you know, I, I, I find it, you know, this is hard. Everywhere you look, someone's talking about what they're doing and it looks like, oh my gosh, that's what's working perfectly. Or that's what's working perfectly. There's, you know when, when you're in the middle of something, you are deeply familiar with every challenge that you have. You, you're feeling every bump. And so it's, um, I was explaining to somebody else, um, a meeting I had at Inbound, and I was like, you know, one of the challenges that you have whenever you're implementing complex processes is there's always 10 to 50 things that could cause the thing to go, that could cause whatever you're working on to fail. Yeah, every one or maybe two things that are like, oh yeah, this is what's, um, this is what's going great. So you really have to, um, you have to step outside of yourself. And I agree with what you said. You have to focus on what are the outcomes that you're shooting for. Um, what is success?

Speaker C: Mhm.

Speaker B: Um, I think this is where the gap comes in. You look, you're about to say something.

Speaker C: Yeah. And I actually had a thought as you were talking because I just talked to a client about this today. So like, everything, the other thing to keep in mind is like, this is where what does the end look like? And completes are so important. Everything in the middle Feels like failure. And we all forget that when we're in the middle. And so you're in the middle and everything's wrong and this is going wrong. And the instinct is we need to either stop, which is bad, because then you lose your velocity, or adjust, and that's where you have to go back to what is complete, what is end, to see if you are on track. Do we actually need to make an adjustment? So the conversation I had today, we're doing a pretty significant data transformation with a customer of ours. Lot of changes, lot of cleanup, and we're getting a lot of feedback from users about issues. And like, the comment that was made is there's frequently this read that data is disappearing. It was there yesterday, it's not there today. And I, uh, reminded them, I'm like, guys, remember, we've changed, and we're almost across the finish line to complete. We can't change course now. We got a very clear path and plan, and if we follow that, we'll be where we need to be at the end of the journey. But we can't allow this perception of everything's a mess right now because we're in the middle. We're in the middle of it. And I think that that happens so frequently for RevOps, like 10 times a day, every day. I feel like, yeah,

Speaker B: I've always been a fan of the quote, that everything, you know, in the middle, everything feels like failure. Well, maybe fan is the wrong term, but you get what I'm saying. Yeah, um, the. The, um. All of a sudden, my brain's not working. I must be in the middle. You know, we talked about revops being at the forefront of this, um, Within good process. Good process creates focus, and RevOps is responsible for reviewing new technologies, for staying aware of what's there, for looking at process improvement. Um, RevOps is working on the next thing, while the previous thing is getting standardized and operationalized and institutionalized, et cetera. So it's really easy. I mean, a good Rev Ops person, their heads on a swivel, right? They're paying attention to a lot of things. So it is super easy to feel overwhelmed. Um, and I think one of the things. I hadn't thought about it until you brought up that quote. One of the challenges when you feel that that overwhelm is check to make sure that you're not in the middle of too many things.

Speaker C: Oh, yeah.

Speaker B: Um, I think one of the. Like that, like, one of the other hard things about it is there's never a shortage of things to be working on. Um, and the better your processes are, the more likely you are to become aware of where there are gaps in your processes. It's the Dunning Kruger effect. The better you are, the more aware you are of what's not working. Um, which of course just becoming more aware feels like you've regressed even though you've actually progressed. So I think one of the things that's really important for RevOps is to make sure, you know, is, is to be the governor of how many things are we in the middle of?

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker B: Um, and one of the things, you know, maybe we do an episode on this. What are, what are ways, ideas and strategies to, to shorten your middle gaps? How do you take one large effort and project and, and make it multiple projects so, so that again, you're getting to those completes.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker B: Um, and you're not feeling like failure that that's so much of what Agile is about. Um, but, but, but I think you've got to be focused on, you know, when, when you know the underlying hypothesis of what you're doing and why you're doing it. You know, what does success look like when we're at, at this next point. We did, uh, a previous episode on acceleration cycles. Right. If you start looking past 90 days, you're looking at things that are so far out of your, you know, so far increasingly out of your control that you fall into the gap. Um, and you don't measure yourself by progress. I think one of the places when you find yourself feeling overwhelmed, um, frustrated and confused, you're comparing yourself to the ideal, you're not comparing yourself to the progress that you've made.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker B: Um, but I think one of the things that I try to do is to be really focused on what are the problems and what are the real restraints impacting my customer. Right. I could get lost in the AI conversation and be digging deeply into that and taking courses about mcps. And um. But the fact of the matter is there's things before that's an issue that are restraining our customers and the people who rely on us to move forward. So really one of the reasons that I think having your ideal client profile so clear is so important is so that you can have that focus on what is it that really matters and what I don't want to say doesn't matter, but what's the need to have versus the nice to have? I think more than ever that, that um, that understanding is critically important.

Speaker C: Yeah. So in that same vein of kind of really identifying like what, what's going to Impact the customer. So how do you, how do you get everybody aligned on that? And how do you manage if you get competing priorities or competing requests between different departments? Because like what sales perceives as the customer need might be different than what marketing perceives as the customer need might be different than what success. I'm kind of boiling it into those, putting in those three different buckets. But the business isn't always going to agree. So how do you get that alignment on?

Speaker B: Well, I think that's what strategy is.

Speaker C: Huh.

Speaker B: That's why having a clear strategy is important. I think transparency is important. So you know, too often the ideal client profile exercise is left to marketing. Yeah, um, I think that the ideal client profile exercise needs to involve marketing and sales and customer success and finance and operations and human resources. Um, everybody needs to understand who the customer is. Everybody needs to understand what are the primary problems that you exist to solve for. And like you might solve hundreds of problems, but there's uh, there's never more than three to five problems that are the reason that people buy from you, the reason that people work with you. Understanding what that is, um, is super important. Uh, um, communicating that is important to RevOps. I think, I think there's an element of um, you know, this, this is where silos get in the way. I think silos build efficiency, but there need to be cross collaboration teams so that we understand what is the objective. I think that's why OKRs are so crucially important. And OKRs need to waterfall down the organization. Not to be confused with waterfall planning, but they need a waterfall down. It's like what are the key corporate objectives? What are the objectives and how do your objectives play to the larger objective? I think those are all things and I think that's why strategy and internal communication is so important.

Speaker C: Where do you see that breakdown though? Like uh, what are the places that make what you just talked about a challenge? Other? I mean we set silos obviously, but like how do you, how do you ensure you get that trickle down? How do you ensure that you've got the right people involved?

Speaker B: Well, I mean, I don't know that you're going to like the answer. I think the place where I see it break down is at the beginning is the failure to make the decision. Um, that's another place where like I know part of what's driving my feeling of feeling overwhelmed right now is I have too many options.

Speaker C: Yeah, right.

Speaker B: Um, and every option is filled with opportunity and danger. Yeah, right, right. And so it becomes very easy not to make the decision let, let the next crises, you know, like that, let the next acute issue pick itself up or let the, uh, squeaky wheel or whatever the case may be, I think having a clear objective of what are you trying to achieve? Again, understanding and defining what is success? Um, what is the gap that needs to be addressed for success? Can someone take notes on this episode so that I can implement what I'm talking about? Um, I think that's where it has to begin. Um, I think that the decision needs to be made above the level of revops. I think, again, I think strategy is an organizational effort. Strategy is owned by the executive team.

Speaker C: Yeah,

Speaker B: I think that. So I think where the breakdown occurs is when those decisions, when those choices haven't been made.

Speaker C: I want to get your take on, um, change management a little bit because I think that that's an aspect of this as well. And what I want to get your opinion on is there's change management. When we talk about, frequently it's the users and like the change management for the users in a system, CRM or otherwise. But, uh, one thing, as I was kind of thinking through this in preparation for the episode, is there is a change management aspect overall for the business of what you're talking about and the change management of the approach we're going to take. So, you know, having that clear ICP and that becoming the focus. How do you, how would you kind of orchestrate that change management across the business versus just, you know, again, when we talk about change management, it's usually related to a system. Um, do you agree that change management needs to happen within the org and how do you orchestrate that?

Speaker B: So the thing that I would say is, I think the mistake when you talk about change management is when you look at the tool as the system. So in your example, you said they're changing a system, the CRM or whatever system they're in. The CRM is not the system. The CRM is a tool. Which again goes back to the prime directive. Why is the business process so important? And by the way, it's okay if the business process isn't clear, so long as you acknowledge that it's not clear. And you understand that the hypothesis is about the business process, right? People don't adopt CRM, they adopt business process. Um, the challenge with CRM, especially with modern CRM, is you can change and configure and do so much that there is no limitation. So you're never finished. Uh, this is where never define your database by how dirty it is. Only define it by how clean it is.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker B: Right. Don't define your utilization of a tool by what you're not using. Define it by what you are using.

Speaker C: Yep. Right.

Speaker B: Um, so, you know, one of the things that I think is important, um, and I think it's an important element about change management is it was Jeff, ah Bezos who said this in some fashion that, you know, a lot of people pride themselves on being able to predict what's going to change over a period of time. He prides himself on being able to predict what isn't going to change. That it's far more powerful to stay focused on the things that aren't changing rather than being ahead of the things that are changing. I think one of the things that is important when you're in disruptive times, I think one of the things that's important with change management is being clear on what's not changing. Um, which again gets back to why are we doing this?

Speaker C: Right.

Speaker B: We're not doing this to improve process, we're improving process to achieve something. What is it that we're trying to achieve? What is the problem that's preventing us from achieving it? The statement, I don't have access to the information I need, what would you do? What is it that you're not able to do with that information?

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker B: That's what you needed to define your change management initiatives on.

Speaker C: Yep. So how do you, how do you structure your team and how do you build, how do you build your system for iteration and allow that flexibility to make sure you can have process improvement but still maintain steady state, not have too much stuff happening at one time, not be in the messy middle all the time. How do you kind of balance those two things?

Speaker B: So I think that there's the meta strategy and the microstrategy. I think the meta strategy is more directional, um, and is less precise. I think, you know, who, who do you exist to serve? I still say that the most powerful, uh, question that a business can answer on an everyday basis is who do we want to be a hero to? I think that doesn't change that frequently. Um, I think understanding what's the problem set that they have, what's their world and of the problems that they have, what are the problems that you exist to solve? I think those things don't change that much. Um, and then I think the way you build for iteration is you build for iteration and building for iteration. That goes into why, um, acceleration cycles are so important, why three zones of execution is so important. Again, what's the company that we're striving to be. That's the aspirational, that's the magnet, that's the, the 18 month to 36 months out. What's the company that we are, what are the things that we need to do to get closer to becoming the company that we need to be with greater detail to, to the time allotment to the, you know, like the next 90 days we should have a pretty clear plan. The 90 days after that we should have an idea. The 90 days after that we should have a concept. Did I answer your question?

Speaker C: You did answer my question. So is there anything else that, that you wanted to cover around kind of ever changing environment and what rev ops should do to let's say to ride the tornado?

Speaker B: Yeah, I think it's back to very much of riding that tornado. I think that's the right mentality to have. This is a place where, you know the old phrase misery loves company. Um, if you're feeling overwhelmed, you're not alone. Um, there's a lot of that going around. Um, I think, you know, go back to first principles. What are you doing? Why are you doing it? What, what, what's the prioritization? Um, how many things are you in the middle of? What can you do to clean that up? Um, how do you stage things? I think, I think those are some of the key elements that, that um, navigate. You, you, you can't. The problem when you feel like everything's changing is you can't operate from a stable place and it has a tremendous impact of eroding your confidence.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker B: And you can't make hard decisions with low confidence.

Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. How many things are you in the middle of? The really resonates with me. It's probably because I, I mean I live in that world with clients. I live in that world here. I wear a lot of hats. So first of all, we've talked about the spinning plates theory. I don't know if we've talked about it on the, on the pod. We've talked about it a lot outside of the pod, which is if you try to keep all those plates spinning, they're all going to drop. So you might as well let, you know, purposefully let one drop. The other thing I think that folks will be surprised by because I've been taking this approach actually more with our clients as of late of, hey, we can't do seven things, uh, once. Well, so we gotta winnow the seven down to three and do the three things like super great and then we can tackle the other four. Most People get that. And if you're feeling like you're in the middle of too many things, you got to start looking at that and say, okay, what is not going to cause an issue if we don't do now? And what needs to happen first, second, and third. So triaging those things, I think super important.

Speaker B: I think the hardest thing in the Rev Ops world and why defining completes are so important is the ability to say, let's finish this before we start that. Because when you get to about 80% complete, a lot of the, especially to your stakeholders, feels like you're done.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker B: Right. But you never.

Speaker C: And then three months later, like, wait a second, I thought we had this. What happened to the thing?

Speaker B: Correct.

Speaker C: And you forgot about the thing because you started something else. Yep. All right, I got a couple of takeaways. Um, the. The better you are, the more you. You're aware of what's not working. Don't let that.

Speaker B: This is what I say to myself so I can sleep in on so damn good. Doug.

Speaker C: Um, I really liked what, like everything you talked about around icp. But really identify what are the problems that are the real restraints that are impacting your customer like that. And then making sure that all the departments are involved in developing your icp. Don't just let marketing or marketing and sales do it. Get a stakeholder from all different aspects. Uh, I, um, mean, we talk about all the time, but remember the prime directive, don't let the technology guide you. That actually is where I see us. Who? Not us necessarily, but customers go off the rails is when they get blinders on around the tech.

Speaker B: So I think one of the things I want to add to the ideal client profile.

Speaker C: Mhm. Is

Speaker B: if you're in RevOps or whatever team you're on, you need to have two IC.

Speaker C: Okay.

Speaker B: There's the market. ICP. That's who your company serves. And you need to be clear on that.

Speaker C: Yep.

Speaker B: But. But as a Rev Ops team, you have internal customers.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker B: Who are they? What are their problems? What are the problems? That. Right. A lot of people, like someone said to me, well, Doug, it's not the same thing because I'm Rev Ops. You know, they're. They're not my customer. You know, they're your customer. They're not. And I'm like, no, they are your customer. You've got to look at that through that same lens and think about that. You need to understand their world. Um, when you can demonstrate that you understand what their world is and what they're dealing with, I mean, Think about the conversation we had this morning. Because we understood that element, even though we're not directly impacting that.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker B: But because we demonstrated the understanding of that, what our approach was heard so much better.

Speaker C: Right? Yeah, absolutely. I'm. I'm laughing a little bit because I'm working on our team. I'm working with our team on this. Like, you guys have the customer, and then you have your internal customer. Like, it is. It is very hard.

Speaker B: That's the other thing that I think we've got to keep in mind is, you know, where does this break down? This is hard. This stuff is hard.

Speaker C: I will add to the internal customer part, too. You said the question that resonates most is who do you want to be a hero to? It is actually how I've gotten really good at my job. Who do I want to be a hero to for the customer, but also, who do I want to be a hero to internally? Think about that. As in your Revops role, you will excel.

Speaker B: Focus on who you want to be a hero to. You'll be saying no to shitty Revops until next time.

Speaker A: And that's a wrap on this episode of the Revop show. If there's one takeaway from today's conversation, it's this. Change itself isn't the problem. The real challenge is losing clarity while navigating it. The teams that succeed aren't chasing every new tool or reacting to every shift. They stay grounded in outcomes, aligned around customer constraints, and focused on the principles that actually drive progress. Thank you so much for tuning in. Make sure you go follow the show so you never miss an episode. We drop practical, no fluff conversations designed to help you build more predictable, more aligned revenue engines. And don't forget to subscribe to your favorite listening platform and our YouTube channel so you never miss an episode. Feel free to reach out to hannahiftenablement.com for any questions, thoughts, or inquiries about the show. Thanks again for listening, and we'll see you next time.