Things have been so busy at Certus I simply haven’t had time to
finish and post Part II. Wow – where has the time gone this year? So
before reading this you might want a quick refresh and read Part I - https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/positive-disruption-want-really-successful-oracle-cloud-mark-sweeny?trk=mp-reader-card
So continuing the second part of the two part special (from April 2016!) and the underlying theme of having “the ability to Execute and Deliver is Absolutely Everything”, here are the last 4 points!
7.
Build a Great Team Around You – Involve your people, its everyone’s
company not just yours - Be selective in recruitment and as you grow
become even more selective!
Returning to my original
point from Part I. Surround yourself with people that not only have
different skills to you but are or have the potential to be even better
than you! Be selective! I have posted previously that one of the best
comments I ever received about Certus was from a partner of a tier 1
management consultancy who said “The nicest thing about Certus is
that it works like an exclusive members club, to work there you have to
be invited to join. Many want to join but very few are accepted”.
For
every new hire focus on the 2+2 = 7 scenario, aim to double the value
of your delivery capability through finding the right hires and
integrating them into your existing lineup. (Going to try and find the
time to explore and share this in more detail as to how we achieve this
in a future blog). For Cloud the emphasis is on business knowledge, you
need people that can have quality conversations on the underlying
subject matter.
In this day and age, finding the right talent is
extremely difficult, but if you have a great company and happy people
then it helps. The way to maintain the culture as you grow is to get
your people involved in the recruitment process; after all who better to
judge an individual if they are going to “fit” than those already on
the front line
8. Develop a go-to-market strategy that
involves doing everything completely opposite to everyone else –
leverage social media, create positive noise and build your company
profile and brand
From day one we wanted to build a
“brand” as we could see the Oracle Cloud was going to be the next thing
and from our experience saw that the traditional players (“our future
competitors”) wouldn’t move fast enough or invest early enough in the
product set. But there are a number of factors that make a brand, and we
wanted to focus on putting our employees at the centre of it, as we
knew if we could achieve high levels of employee engagement and
satisfaction we would achieve similar levels of customer satisfaction,
as our employees would look after our customers. We felt in doing so we
would create the space as a small nimble start-up could easily fill, and
by establishing a brand prospects, our customers and the industry
itself would remember us and people would want to come and work for us.
9.
Execute and remember that your only good as your last project, and that
you need to constantly achieve high levels of customer satisfaction
The
larger operations can afford to have projects fail and there are
numerous case studies out there relating to this. However when your
operating on a smaller scale you cannot afford to have any project go
wrong - ever! No matter what you have achieved previously this is the
only thing everyone is going to remember– in-fact with the larger
organisations it is almost expected that they will have a high fail
rate, and you will constantly ask why? that despite this they always
seem to pick up the next large contract. All I can say is “That’s Life”.
So knowing the odds are stacked against you and you can’t necessarily
always load the deck in your favour – the one variable you can control
is your delivery. So make sure you not just deliver but deliver in the
right way and achieve high customer satisfaction. This is critical with
Cloud as you are looking at a long term relationship.
10. Finally, but really most importantly - focus on Customer Success and have happy Customers
I
have personally become absolutely besotted by customer satisfaction,
and every Friday I go through all of our customer engagements with my
Exec team and ask not just that our engagements are on track but are our
customers happy with our service delivery. If not, why not? and what
are we doing about correcting this the following week. Without Customers
you don't have a business period. Customers will do a more for you and from
my experience help you grow, but only if they are happy!
So It's Simple?
Ok
to be honest it’s really not so simple as maybe I might make out to be.
You need a high appetite for taking calculated risk; a lot of passion; a
“can do” attitude matched with a determination that you can achieve
absolutely anything; an expert delivery team that will literally follow
you over a cliff at times, plus keeping one eye constantly on the Cash - “Cash is always King”
You
also need however to be highly critical of your performance, and when
you don’t deliver be forensic in your examination. So be prepared to
admit you screw up, learn from it and move on quickly and naturally
don’t do it again. If you can’t do this, you will fail.
No one
owes you or gives you anything, you fight and take every inch of ground
you can when building a business, and sometimes it really is a case of "last man standing" – just make sure your that man! Finally life is short
so enjoy the experience and the ride, and remember it is supposed to be
fun.
Oracle Cloud brings innovation, that used correctly can
really transform businesses - I have seen this happen, and the endless
possibilities is what makes it really exciting for your customers and
your company. So go innovate and enjoy!
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