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PreSales podcast hosted by Adam Freeman and Todd Janzen. We discuss the burning issues facing the PreSales world in a relaxed and conversational style.
The world can get pretty serious, so join us with for a casual chat on all things PreSales.
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Episode 84 - Stephen Morse
Adam Freeman: [00:00:00] Hello, and welcome to episode 84 of Two Presales in a Pod. Hi, Todd. So I've got Todd with me.
Todd Janzen: Hey.
Adam Freeman: You can say hello. And we've got the one and only Steven Morse. So Steven, thank you so much for joining us.
Stephen Morse: Thank you for having me.
Adam Freeman: Yeah. And Steven has joined us, 30-plus years of SE leadership, well-known on LinkedIn, if you follow him on LinkedIn, and what's great is that we're going through all of these times of change, and whether you've been a leader, and Todd and myself have been leaders, right?
But nobody wrote the rule book for leaders, and I don't want you to sit here and think we're only talking in this episode to leaders." It's not. You are l- an emerging leader. You're a leader of a team. You're at minimum leading yourself, okay? And at times like this where there's a lot of change in the profession, there's a lot of technology, there's a lot going on around us, leading yourself is actually sometimes equally as important as leading a team.
And Todd, you came up with the idea of inviting Steven on the podcast, right?
Todd Janzen: Yeah. And this is exciting because w- we couldn't be more spread out across the world right now. I'm in San Francisco. It's 11:00 PM [00:01:00] here. Adam, I believe it's 7:00 AM your time in the UK, and Steven is joining us from Japan.
So if there's some weird delays and whatnot, it's because- ... there's a lot of knowledge going across some fiber optic cables. But yeah I'm so excited to have Steven on 'cause we just go way back to the early days of Salesforce. Steven, I think I first met you, you were leading the APAC team for Salesforce.
Had just amazing interactions there, and then you came over to the US, you led the mayor team there for a long time. And man, you just did, you did so many things, and you always just had this wisdom, and I'm just I'm just so excited to unpack some of that for everyone today.
Stephen Morse: Yeah. Thanks, Todd.
Yeah, it's been an amazing 30-year journey, and I look very fondly on the Salesforce times too. About 20 years leading global teams and being able to share so many amazing times, go through so many eras, share wisdom about being a first-time manager all the way, up into global leadership and the [00:02:00] amazing people I bet met along the way.
That's really what the... Sharing that wisdom and bringing it forward is really what I'm all about right now. Awesome. Let's kick this off. When we were talking about doing this, y- you came up with something very interesting right out of the gate, and you said, "There's a mind shift, mindset shift that everyone has to make," and that caught my attention immediately, and I think especially in these times.
Todd Janzen: Talk to us about w- what that means.
Stephen Morse: Yeah. I've been, 'Cause I run a institute called the SC Leadership Institute. I've run it for about eight years now, and I've had a lot of conversations with global leaders, both in coaching them and working with them, enabling. And, I'm finding that we're in a pretty unprecedented state of the world.
And I guess my- when I talk about a mindset sh- shift I'm talking about the world has changed fundamentally, and there's this idea of this fixed or stable state manager, and we're [00:03:00] really looking at the shift from the stable state into what I call a wartime strategist role. Now, by wartime, I don't mean physical aggression.
But I do mean that we're talking about wartime in terms of being able to apply strategy under unprecedented pressure, right? We're not in a stable or forgiving environment anymore. We have the tech industry that's matured as a whole. We have buyer cycles that you guys talk about that have changed a lot.
AI is this massive force multiplier that is changing everything, and we're still in inning two of nine. So you know we're in a state where the stable, we need to shift our mindset from brute force or what's worked in the past to leveraging that into moments of urgency, clarity, judgment and using actually emotional intelligence and human connection as a way to achieve relevance in an overwhelming AI world.
I k- I kinda think about it as [00:04:00] AI is this massive force, right? And it's coming in massive and sheer volumes. But leadership, whether it's individual or at management levels, you need to decide where to apply it. And so judgment around how we use these tools it becomes key. And human connection is where it lands.
And so whether we're dealing with building internal teams or working with our prospects, it's the values of trust, it's leveraging these human skills and being emotionally intelligent to ask the deeper questions that are gonna actually differentiate you in a performance-based way in a world where AI dominates.
Todd Janzen: Yeah. I know you do a lot of mindfulness, and you d- you know you're actively fit and I'm, like, hearing some of that come out in what you're saying. So maybe we can just double-click on some of that. What you said about we're in wartime, and we're under this new stress, and, like, how do we behave?
How do we react? Maybe double-click down [00:05:00] on that for us.
Stephen Morse: Yeah. High vel- high velocity, high stress environments are the norm. We're being asked to do a lot more with less. There's more job insecurity. It's harder to create- things like confidence and trust. And so how do we start to cultivate these skills, right?
How do we understand what's being said or not being said in a room with a prospect? Or when and where not to go in a proof point or a demonstration. And to guide our team members or ourselves through moments of stress, right? And what really boils down to that are the fundamental demands of emotional intelligence, being aware of what's going on, being able to manage your own reactions to things, being able to listen on multiple levels.
We're incredibly empathic creatures, so I can look across and I can see, Todd's grinning, he's smirking a little bit, and Adam's nodding. These are actually empathic signals that indicate various emotions, [00:06:00] and I can regulate and use that to be more resourced in the answers that I ask for. We all know in a, an opportunity cycle, a lot of times what's said, people don't even really want the answer to that question.
We need to dig deeper. We need to be able to ask better questions about what's really happening and leverage the emotional connection that we have and the management of our own internal landscape to show up in a stronger way and a more measured way that allows us to act, in more effective ways.
Yeah. It gets amplified at a leadership level because oftentimes what you do is mirrored. What... and you can create general- greater generalized anxiety as a whole or you can also start to shift that, to apply AI forces appropriately, but use emotional intelligence, right? To help manage yourself under pressure to establish trust with cr- prospects, to build trust with your team so you're getting great performance internally and great results externally.
Todd Janzen: Yeah. I hear a ton of [00:07:00] optimist- optimism in your voice when you're talking about that. And something that really resonates with me that you just said is I think at the end of the day, pre-sales, we are in the business of trust, full stop.
Adam Freeman: Yep.
Todd Janzen: And that gives me a lot of optimism and hope for the future with all this threat of AI taking jobs.
And at the end of the day, y- you said this right before you hit record, at the end of the day, someone wants to look you in the eye when they buy something for you and say, "This is gonna work, right?" That's right. They want belief. They want confidence. And AI is great at delivering tools as a massive force to deliver the math, to deliver the result, but at the end of the day the per- the trust and the confidence that's built are human qualities.
Stephen Morse: Those performance... I call human qualities as performance qualities now because they're more valuable. Where do we place that? How do we use that to create- The types of teams that we [00:08:00] want the stress levels that are manageable, and the outcomes that we as buyers and sellers, have.
Adam Freeman: Yeah.
Todd Janzen: If I'm reading between the lines- Some of this isn't new. Oh, sorry, go ahead, Adam.
Adam Freeman: So some of this isn't new. If you look back even eight, nine years ago, you could go to Tesla, and you could buy online a car, right? Something that had pre- previously been in person, a very much in person experience, right?
Done it. You could go, and you could put your credit card in and have a car delivered to your driveway without speaking to a single human, right? And that, at that time, that was almost unthinkable. It was a revolutionary car, but it was a revolutionary way of selling. I remember watching that thinking, "There's no reason someone wouldn't want to buy software that way."
But it was the want part that was important, right? It was that we needed to create these digital off-ramps. And you talk about that stress and that needing to talk to a human at the right time. There are people that will happily go very far down the buying cycle, don't wanna talk to a human, right?
Yes. You have other people that are like, "Okay, I'm a little bit scared now. It's going quite fast. It's not that I don't wanna buy, but I just wanna look [00:09:00] someone in the eye," as you say, "or talk to a human that's gonna give me that trust and that belief to allow me to go." And I used to call, when I was running pre-sales, a digital off-ramp.
At what point do you allow someone to exit this pathway and rejoin if they want to, but where are your off-ramps? And I think SE have a huge role to play in that. I was thinking about that as you were talking. It, it really resonated then.
Stephen Morse: Yeah. Yeah, it's such a huge... There's so much going on.
You'll ultimately have AI buyers, and you'll have, proof justification through forward deployed engineering where they're, it's not just a demo, and you have to show it working with their data, and it's actually working. So there are many different elements that create different pressures around around the cycle.
But at the end of the day, it's a monetized event where you're enlisting another vendor, and you're, you... There are, there's technology, and there, there are humans and outcomes that you as a human at a company want. There are human outcomes that, that your vendors that you work with have. And so there is a level of decision-making and balancing of these [00:10:00] decisions that happen when you can talk to somebody who you actually trust or work with the technology and the organization that that you really trust.
In fact, I was, we were joking a little bit just before this. I've been online trying to find a... We're launching a few websites with some of the announcements coming out. And I I was frustrated because I was trying to get my... I'd been on a couple of other AI platforms, and the bot was getting nowhere.
I was like- ... "I just need you to tell me this. I've got my checkbook ready. Please tell me," all the signals of "Please just help me solve this problem," right? And three out of the four- day upon day, start the trial now. One of them, finally a human just popped on, probably got a signal from an AI saying, "Oh, there's a monetization signal here.
Hey, how can I help you? What's going on?" And I'm like, "Listen, I just need to know this so that I can go ahead. I'm trying to buy from Japan, and I can't get through the screen 'cause you think I'm in Japan, but it's from the US." "Oh, I get that. That's what ha- Let me just send you the URL. You should probably try this [00:11:00] other thing, too.
It's great." And I'm like, "Wow, you just solved it in, two minutes," what had taken me days before. And I don't think I'm alone in that regard. That's where you're throwing AI at something that, that you just need a human touch for. And I was really happy with that, I got my answer solved very quickly.
They still had all the automation that they needed to run what they do. But it's, again, it's the human touch. That's... The human touch won that deal for this vendor. And so knowing where to take aim with all this AI and where to use the right human capabilities is gonna be the differentiator, particularly when you're leading people, particularly when you really are driving, in this new era growth, scale, success.
Todd Janzen: Yeah. We had John Brunswick on the last episode. He closed us out at Demo Fest in San Francisco two weeks ago. And he talks a lot about kind of what you were just explaining of even a couple years ago the buyer would show up, and it's let's take a warmup lap together, right?
Like- [00:12:00] Yeah ... you're starting the race cold, they're starting the race cold. And he's today they show up ready to s- run a race, and you, the SE, now have to show up in the same mindset, in the same shape. And I think that's kinda what you're talking about as well, right? Is with this kind of wartime posture.
Stephen Morse: Yep.
Todd Janzen: Yeah. And maybe give us some examples of h- how you see the profession changing or, like, how do SEs have to show up differently now?
Stephen Morse: Yeah, I think that and this echoes a lot of things that have, many people have spoken about before. But, knowledge and product knowledge is massively being centered with AI, right?
We have this ability to do so many of these things, and buyers are coming with a lot more knowledge. Th- the ability to run AI to increase the productivity and preparation and demonstrations and even strategies is unprecedented. W- we need to show up, and we need to be able to translate technical expertise and [00:13:00] confidence, right?
Or technical expertise into confidence. And part of that means teasing out all buyers, all people who are evaluating. They have their technical requirements, but there are also important var- variables about their personal needs, the needs of the organization, the quantified value and impact that is not obviously...
It's not just an ROI calculation that comes out of a, of a a calculator. And there's some interesting, there's some great stats around that. But it's about creating that value and confidence through taking all these product capabilities and becoming a more p- becoming a partner to the individuals with whom you're working.
Now, the engineers need to know, "Hey, this needs to work. I need to see these results." All of those things are absolutely critical, and you need to make sure you're aligned with what their objectives are, their goals are. But there's the project manager, there's the VP of the department, there's other stakeholders where [00:14:00] you, what is on the surface may not always be what they're really looking for, right?
There are political motivations, there are personal motivations. There are all sorts of intertwined impacts that it's very important as an SE who has trust who has trust as a default and builds, and has to build that, right? The rep's going after the dough. And frequently there's that relationship where it's more difficult.
The SE is coming in from a desire and a curiosity to truly understand, drive the solution value, but quantify it and really build confidence. So I would say that it's about decision-making confidence from all the technical capabilities. You need to come with a full metal jacket, but you need to know how to convert that, to use that wartime analogy again.
The analogy that I have been using, and I'm about ready to drop a LinkedIn post on this, is I think Sun Tzu's Art of War has never been more relevant now.
Adam Freeman: Yeah. [00:15:00]
Stephen Morse: Yeah. And the- ... because we're in a place where we've got drone warfare and bombs going off everywhere, literally and figuratively- right? It's not about brute force. It's about understanding where the high ground is. It's about knowing your enemies and knowing where we're going to be placing these, when to wait, when to form alliances, when to move for- when to to take various steps. And so really, this is it's a lot about the art of it, too as much as it is, all these great tools that we have.
And so I'd say that's really, to me, one of the biggest domain changes that has occurred.
Todd Janzen: Wow. That, so what you just said has my head spinning right now. Yeah. And we could probably do a whole episode on it, but I'm... where it took me is- things are moving so fast, but where do you need to slow down and be super deliberate?
And maybe I'll use an example. So with your competition, right? [00:16:00] Historically, I think the way that we approach our competition in a deal is maybe like trench warfare or like tanks, right? And big armor. And, now it's like carefully crafting that article that the LLMs pick up that- ... gives you more credibility or trust.
I'm probably over my skis at this point, but there, there is a subtle art to probably winning right now that many are not playing.
Stephen Morse: I would totally double 1,000% on that, and I would also say that we're missing human moments that matter, and we're t- automating our way around them. And part of achieving clarity is understanding where the human moments matter.
Now, they are gonna mat- they're not gonna matter in a lot of the ways that we used to think they mattered but they're gonna be so super important in the ones that really do. It's gonna be the differentiation one of the key differentiators that once we have, of course, all the capabilities met and we're on parity, and we have [00:17:00] all those, all the capabilities and outcomes that we wanna drive, it's the human points that are gonna matter.
Adam Freeman: And this is really ironic, right? I know, 'cause I know Todd and I are both on the same page. We've known each other many years and have many conversations before we worked together, right? And it sounds ironic that when we work for a demo automation company, I'm gonna say that, okay? But I've always believed that automation and the level of automation we can get at scale now with all the AI tools and all the tech in our profession, we've never had more.
The moments of intentional intervention matter more than they ever have, and all of the automation and AI gives us an ability to be more intentional than ever. And I think the leaders and the ICs and everyone that thrive today, particularly in sales and customer facing moments, are gonna be the ones that understand where those moments are, where they matter, where they move the needle.
Because there's so many people that are trying to figure out, how do I live with AI? How do I fight AI? To your analogy, how do I almost create friction, take the friction away? What's the [00:18:00] gift that this gives you in terms of time? And I'm gonna use that word again, being intentional with your actions, with your purpose, with your why am I here on this deal, to be human, to be likable.
Going back to some of those skills, you've got this one side that's very FDE, technical, I've gotta bring up. That's called some products need that. Some products- Yeah ... just need, I just need you to know my industry, believe in me, and almost say what the AI's saying, but really make it human, and that's where this moment of intentional intervention, I believe, comes in.
And I s- is that resonating right with what you're saying?
Stephen Morse: Totally resonates with me. I love to hear the conviction in your voice. And y- that's belief, yeah. We're talking about belief at the end of the day. Confidence, belief, trust, and those come from the intentionality of humans working with humans, we oftentimes get wrapped up around fast growth SaaS, and I love- Yeah ... that's where I've spent most of my time over the last eight years at the ESE Leadership Institute, working with fast growth companies that are, Twilio is tripling in [00:19:00] size, and, other companies that are, like, doing these crazy things.
It's awesome. I love it. But the complex enterprise sale the technology, vibe coding something for the enterprise, it's n- it's a really nice play thing, yeah, and maybe someday Claude will write everything for everybody. However, these are human beings with careers trying to design the future.
And so when we add the complexity of large scale or large ticket items, yes, AI has to deliver above and beyond with that force multiplier, but the human factor is gonna decide whether this lands, whether we take it down or not.
Todd Janzen: Yeah. I think your simple example of how you bought this week- ... applies to every sales cycle going forward.
And you recognize that it's gonna be different for every individual, but what you described was you did your own research 80-plus percent of the way, and then the human came in to look you in the eye, and you're like, "Okay, I feel comfortable making this purchase." The data shows [00:20:00] that. The Gartner data shows that, right?
Yeah. It totally backs up what you just said, and I think people really need to architect their sales processes to do exactly what you did.
Stephen Morse: Yep. There's
Todd Janzen: a question- Or whatever that company did ...
Stephen Morse: that AI will not answer or ever ask.
Todd Janzen: Yeah. Yeah.
Stephen Morse: There's some ti- or emotions that need to be addressed.
This is interesting. It's coming really into this AI and emotional landscape. The focus of the last year and a half has been canonizing all of this work of the last 30 years and the last 20 years of leadership into a balanced scorecard, if you will, a set of wisdom and playbooks, programs, but also mindsets and ways of being.
All of those are domains that the ESE Leadership in building the workshops and working with tons of people in my own career have culminated in. And the personal domain is something that we are talking about a lot today the types of resilience, emotional intelligence, awareness as [00:21:00] a skill, as a high pressure, weapon, if you will ways to build performance and lower your stress levels and build great teams and get excited again on what it is to be human in an AI-driven world.
To your point, Adam, it's motivating, it's exciting. It's these states- ... that, that allow us to do our best work. And so- Yeah. I've put a lot of that, a lot of thought into that. And it's been quite some time in the making. But I don't know if this is the right time to, to talk about it, but-
Todd Janzen: Well-
Stephen Morse: I'm that per-
Yeah. I'm sorry. Go ahead.
Todd Janzen: Yeah. So I guess it was m- it was in the fall or the winter- ... you sent over a PDF and you're like, "Hey, give this a read." And I'm like, okay, like I think Steven's making a book. Is this thing ... Is that what maybe you're talking about?
Stephen Morse: Yes, sir.
Todd Janzen: We getting
Stephen Morse: close?
I, ... I'm getting really close. I am so close that I am holding a proof. This is ... It's done. It's just-
Adam Freeman: Is this a world exclusive? Is this a world exclusive
Stephen Morse: premiere? It ... Yes. [00:22:00] I, I've, I've-
Adam Freeman: Whoa ...
Stephen Morse: I had a voting on how this book was gonna go down and what was gonna happen. And so I got lots of great votes on how to do it, but this is just too large and massive, and we're getting a different format going.
So it is done. It is ready. We were talking about this earlier, like I'm so excited to share this with the world. It represents the wisdom of my 30 years, along with the thousands of years. Todd, you and I, our years at Salesforce, all the programs we built, all the thousands of person years of engagements that I've had in the industry and at the ESE Leadership Institute, packed with stories, of real world stories, real world situations on everything related to cultivating your own personal brand, building and designing organizations that are enduring in high performance, your operating model, your commercial model, and it's meant to share the wisdom of what's worked to inform where you're going, right?
We ... There's always lots new to invent and do and evolve into. But this was the book [00:23:00] that I wrote after 30 years because I ... It was the book that I wish I always had as a person contemplating leadership, a team leader, a manager, a director, all the way up to, a global VP and who got thrown into it, or is it a different industry.
I wrote all that for you, for the craft itself in a way that, hey, if I had this, I'd have this field manual, this guide to help me accelerate my practice and hopefully create great performance and better wellbeing at the same time.
Todd Janzen: Yeah. I think I- And
Adam Freeman: just speaking from what-
Todd Janzen: Yeah, go ahead, Adam.
Adam Freeman: I was gonna say, from what I know when you were talking before, it's not just covering
A, a lot of books that have been published have covered very theoretical areas. Yes. And you cover some very practical playbooks as well. I just wanna reinforce that because I think that's actually slightly different from what we've had before.
Stephen Morse: You're spot on. Todd read a couple of chapters too, where it's like- I think you looked at some of the compensation methodologies- Yeah
and like all the different [00:24:00] things that work at scale and what to include, when to have, all the, everything from analyzing what President's Club is to knowing what variable comp is. And y- and I, and what I love is all the case studies. So we have dozens- Yeah ... of guest speakers who are like, "Here's where I really screwed up on, this problem- Yeah
and we lost key people, but then we recovered," right? So in a way it's knowing where not to make mistakes by, by learning from those that have had, that have come before you.
Todd Janzen: Yeah. Yeah. I think I- You're- I think I wrote this back to you after reading it. You basically wrote a field guide for leadership.
And whether you're in leadership or in management or aspiring to be I was, to your point, like I wish I had this. And it is a how-to manual as well. And I think as an SE leader, like your first oh shiz moment is when you have enough people going, "I don't like the comp plan," and you have to redo the comp plan.
That is your first moment of, "Oh, wow, I could really screw this up." Oh, yeah. And like after reading [00:25:00] that chapter, I was just like, "Oh, man," "This could've saved me so many nights." The other thing that crossed my mind though, Steven, was like how good of a memory you had. 'Cause I was reading it and I was like, "Oh yeah, okay.
That's what was happening." I didn't really realize it at the time, but like you've just, like you're still trapped. You remembered like-
Stephen Morse: Yeah ...
Todd Janzen: things that happened back in 2004 at Salesforce. I was like, "Wow, how'd you do that?"
Stephen Morse: I the best part was that I created the Leadership Institute. I about eight years ago, Matt Cameron, who ran ANZ at Salesforce, along with Ben Smith.
And and he was like he started a management, a sales management company before and he's "Dude, I need a deck on sales engineering. Like, all these startups have no idea what's really going on. Founders are giving demos, they don't really know what's going on. What is this SE thing?" And so I built a deck and I'm like, "Okay, here are just the things you need to think about.
Here's how we're funded, this is how we comp, da." And he's "Dude, this isn't enough." You need to sit down and write a two-day, full-day everything you know about [00:26:00] an S- being an SE leader. And that was, God, all eight, eight, nine years ago. So the reason why I remember it all is that I locked myself in a room over many months, many nights and weekends and I wrote this out.
And then it was just a joy to launch some of the, our first black belt workshops with, some of the leaders of Google and Twilio and, OpenAI now. All tho- these great companies that are, like, came in and they shared what was going on. And then the course got better and, and so I w- I've been privileged to have been in the seat of being able to document all of it.
And then this book writing process was amazing 'cause I was like, "Oh my God," I'm going through the Rolodex, qbranch, demo automation all of these other pieces, tools, and leadership. I'm a certified coach as well. I just got that. What does coaching mean to... What does coaching really mean?
Not just telling people what to do. All these variables. It's just been a labor of love, really. Yeah. And I, this craft so much. I think that there's nothing but the upside for the expansion of this role, [00:27:00] the right mindset, tool set, skill set of this group. It's what we make of it. And we should enjoy the journey as we grow through it.
And so my hope with this is to be for all the practitioners everywhere, that they can accelerate and get where they need to if it's more fulfilling for them. And it also just raises our craft.
Todd Janzen: Yeah. Yeah. Adam, to your question, I was really blown away at the level of detail in the book.
At least- ... what you sent me to, to pre-read. And that's why I came up with this term of it's like a field guide. Like-
Stephen Morse: Yeah ...
Todd Janzen: y- you should have it on your desk, and when you're like, "I wonder how to..." "Oh, yeah," and go to chapter and just what's Stephen Morse do?" Boom.
Stephen Morse: Yeah. Or what does this have to say?"
'Cause it's not just me. Yeah ... it's it's the product of my career, but with the contributions of so many great people. And that's exactly what it was designed for. We almost named it a field manual. But my- ... my marketing team's "No." And, Mark Rennie is a big sponsor of it, too, and he, I've worked with him twice now.
And, it's it's, [00:28:00] it is leadership. It is about SE leadership. And Adam, to your point, it's for most senior leaders, it's for aspiring leaders, and there's something in it for everybody.
Adam Freeman: I think it's fair to say, I, somet- there's a lot of times I miss being an SE leader, right?
Now, you two guys will probably get that, right? When you've led a team and you've built a team, specifically when you've built a team, do you miss it, right? And if you're lucky enough to be listening to this and you're in that role, enjoy it, right? Because there's wonderful things in other careers that you'll find, but when you're in that moment, sometimes- It, it can be a lonely place being an SE leader as well because the book stops with you, whether you're aspiring or whether you're there.
And some of the biggest SE leaders I know at some of the biggest organizations right now when I talk to them, they're asking the same questions as an IC. Like, where do I fit? That vulnerability. I'm gonna ask you about this word, Steven. The vulnerability that a lot of leaders and people are feeling right now, and it's because I believe the human side of it is amplified right now.
It's almost [00:29:00] like it's exposing you because you can't just hide behind data anymore. It's like everything's changed so fast. What's our transformation plan? Everyone's been asked monthly for a transformation plan. What's next? How fast? And the pace of adaption and change has never been higher because the accessibility's never been higher.
And I just wanted to ask you a little bit right now about if you were going into SE again and you were looking at leadership, what are the core attributes you would look for in somebody right now in the modern world? With these playbooks you've written and everything you know what would you look for in a human right now?
What would you amplify if you were in that position again?
Stephen Morse: Yeah. It would depend on what domain you wanted to talk about. As Laura said, are working with sales or your operating mode. I could say that some domains are heavily influenced by AI, and others are things that need to be separate.
I think what I'm hearing a lot and to your point, is a lot's being asked of SE leaders, to be more strategic. Yeah. To be more accountable. To drive harder to [00:30:00] outcomes. And call it, more ruthless. And that's... I would say that's a little bit unlike a lot of SE leaders that I work with.
We don't like to be ruthless. Yeah. But we're being asked to be that way. And and it's an uncomfortable zone for many SE leaders to step into after a long time of working on some of these other operating precepts. And you add the fact that AI, they want you to replace it, and you've got productivity drivers too, and it creates an anxious state where people feel insecure, they're feeling anxious.
And there's a couple of strategies that I would attributes that I would look at in terms of how do I reignite my partnership with sales, my partnership with my role, right? And in this unprecedented world. And the other... and the reality is, kinda get back to the first thing that we talked about.
This is really a fundamental shift- in the way that the SE role is evolving as a wartime strategist. But we don't have to lose our soul [00:31:00] as, benevolent people wanting the best and to be of service to the values and the outcomes that we're supporting. We may have to make tough decisions.
So here's what I'd leave you with, Adam, and this comes a little bit from, again, my mindfulness and my practices, is compassion is the ability to understand the suffering of where you are and where other people are, and to make decisions about what needs to happen, even if it's letting go of half your team, even if it's bowing to a sales leader who's lo- who's on their last throes and who's trying to throw you under the bus and wants you to do something, right?
It is being able to approach these situations with a level of wanting to be of service to the people and the company and the higher cause and being able to make tough decisions in the middle of that. We can move into a distressed state "Oh, [00:32:00] my God. I hate this. I don't want this. There's problems with that," and we're all in that.
We all face that. Those are narratives that come up a lot, right? But taking this idea of being of service to the SE function, your vision of it- ... being of service to the company that you're working with, the sales leaders that you're with and using that to balance the decisions that you need to make.
What that results in is a level-headed view of what needs to be done coming from a place of wanting to do the best that you can do. I would... so by cultivating that decisive yet empathetic approach is going to make your job a lot easier. Again, everything from reorg-ing to realigning to deciding when it's time for you to seek other pastures or you to align to a different, reality or make decisions with more [00:33:00] clarity.
Th- that is the modern SE leader where I would say when we take ourselves out of our reactive mode and we look at clear, clearly at where we are at our organizations and where we are at our companies, recognize the stresses, and make those decisions based on what's of highest value and service to the situation.
Todd Janzen: Is some of that in the book, Steven, what you just talked about? Yeah. Oh.
Stephen Morse: Yeah.
Todd Janzen: I-
Adam Freeman: Yeah.
Todd Janzen: I was hoping the answer is yes because- ... funny, not funny, the examples just, you just gave in the last three minutes is basically a summary- of the range of what I hear every single week from SE leaders.
Adam Freeman: Yeah. For sure.
Todd Janzen: Yeah. It is consistent. It i- yeah, and it is a very different world right now. And you ... It was just so funny how you just so casually rattled those off, and I just h- they're the things I hear every week.
Stephen Morse: I hear 'em too. Yeah. And it's not easy. These are tough times. These are, times where, again, we wanna lean into those leadership [00:34:00] competencies.
I just got my co-ac- I spent a year getting a coach credential, and I just passed my oral exam last week. And I did a investment, not only for my own transformation, but a lot of I, we offer coaching services with we're o- we're gonna be offering it now that I have my certificate. And that's working at an individual level with leaders where, there's probably not enough time to talk on this podcast, but there's just a lot
There's situational leadership in everything that we've talked about, and learning how to be, to lead with clarity and be that, steadiness and shifting ground and handling this to the best of your ability, and being of service to yourself as well as the organization. But there's just the broader picture of technology shifts, and we are in a human, we're in a human industry as leaders, as individuals.
And we owe it to ourselves to be able to live our lives in alignment with our values in a balanced perspective and show up. And that's, I work individually with a f- handful of leaders at a [00:35:00] time and one that I derive a lot of personal value from.
Todd Janzen: Yeah. I think you're gonna be super successful there.
With ... there was a fair amount of job stability, over the last decade, and that has come to an end, and there are so many people changing jobs. And with that, there's an SE leader that gets a new sales leader, and then they bring a bunch of people in. And there are different opinions on how to do things, and there's just- A lot's been happening
yeah a lot of people in the profession need, need some advice and help right now.
Stephen Morse: Yeah. Yeah, that's part of my offer. I I wrote the book so that a lot of the workshops that we did of these black belt workshops it's all in here. And there's gonna be boot camps that, for new leaders who are like, "Give me two weeks.
I want it all," right? We're gonna still do those, where they're gonna come out of there with their minds blown on, like, how this, how you could be a world-class SE leader. Buy the book. You've got... You'll have the book. But there's also, we wanna do more with leaders who have been in industry for a while but are feeling some unprecedented changes, whether in their own lives or in [00:36:00] these, AI-driven change or industry change, and want to just really focus on some of the aspects of it.
We plan to offer I'm excited, more of a quasi-implementation workshop where they read the book ahead of time, and they come so we can have discussion, active discussion about the problems, the challenges, the realities. And people walk away from those workshops with the beginnings of a game plan and a methodology for them to think through it.
And I think that's unique to... I'm excited about that 'cause that helps me to create even more forward motion, not just an enabling program that's "Hey, here's some stuff."
Todd Janzen: Yeah.
Stephen Morse: Use your workshops that are gonna... Yeah. It's
Todd Janzen: it's an exciting time to be in pre-sales. Exciting and scary at the same time.
But look, we have podcasts for our professions. We have p- conferences for our profession. We have- ... software now for our profession. We're now in this era where there's a bunch of folks like yourself giving back and sharing their wisdom. There are recruiting and staffing firms just focused on the pre-sales profession, right?
There's there's a lot of [00:37:00] focus on this- Yeah ... craft, which is really awesome.
Stephen Morse: It is awesome. It is awesome. I love what SEs have done. I'm so glad... I was in sales a couple times and and I came back. I made my numbers, but it just wasn't for me. There's a soul of the SE that I love. And above all, it comes down to the great people.
Todd Janzen: Yeah. Hear that. Do not disagree.
Adam Freeman: Do not disagree. So we'll probably come to the end, unfortunately. I think we could chat for about a week- Yes ... on various aspects of this. Yes. There's so much stuff you're saying that I'd love to pile on and thing, but you'd end up, talking for a week over the same subjects.
But Steven, thank you so much for coming on- Yes ... and sharing your gift. But Todd, I know you've got some questions you love to ask and interrogate people on before they leave. Okay.
Todd Janzen: Oh.
Adam Freeman: I'm gonna ask the first one. Steven, we love to ask people, what's your favorite bit of tech in your kit bag right now?
What can you not live without?
Stephen Morse: Oh. Tech I cannot live without.
Adam Freeman: Can be software, can be hardware. Could even be... I had one person ask, "Can [00:38:00] it be my travel suit?" 'Cause I'm like come up with something more interesting for the podcast. But if it really is your suitcase that you love to travel with, then that's okay, too.
But yeah, what's your favorite thing that you're, is in your world right now tech-wise?
Stephen Morse: I think probably the... There's one that I use the most, and that is OpenAI. Oh ... but I also I love I love reading transcripts of stuff that I've talked about. I love extracting pearls of wisdom through stuff and creating and running it through my own voice as an, as a GP2, GPT.
I've, I I went through an exercise here's who I am and here's what I produce, and it's provided a little level of me. So I'll just feed it in there and say "Hey, I wanna, what do you think? Here's what's top of mind for me." And, it's the digital twin idea that I find it to be the most relief driven s- technology that I have because it gets a lot of that rote grinding away.
It still is annoying. You still have to go back and forth and grind, and it's not right. You still spend a reasonable amount of time at it, but it just [00:39:00] takes a lot of that low level stuff away.
Todd Janzen: Yeah.
Stephen Morse: Probably that's a common answer, I would assume, but, you know-
Todd Janzen: Yeah ... it's
Stephen Morse: pretty awesome.
Todd Janzen: Yeah. I know the feeling.
All right. Second question. This one's super serious, so be ready for this. And we ask this of all the guests, by the way. What is your favorite pizza topping?
Stephen Morse: Oh, great question.
Adam Freeman: This is the hardest question you've had today. I know. I love the reaction here. I know. Nothing else has phased you until now.
Stephen Morse: No.
Todd Janzen: And you're probably not eating a ton of pizza lately- ... 'cause, you're in Japan now.
Stephen Morse: Yeah. We went to, we ac- we actually went to a pizza joint when I got my certification. I forced my family out to- ... to
Todd Janzen: pizza
Stephen Morse: and I got one of those Capricciosa pizzas, which is like meat with- ... but it had olives on it, and I hadn't had olives, like a really savory sliced olive on there.
A lot of its consistency is very meaty, but the olive that made it for me. With all things being equal, olive, it bats over its weight in terms of adding a [00:40:00] savory, piece to the pie.
Todd Janzen: Keep going. Tell me more. No the reason why we're laughing so hard is Adam calls olives Satan grapes.
Adam Freeman: Hate them.
Stephen Morse: Oh, really?
Todd Janzen: The
Adam Freeman: only food I hate.
Stephen Morse: Satan grapes.
Todd Janzen: Yeah. And I love them and now whenever we're together, I order them all the time. Ooh, I didn't know
Adam Freeman: that. So if I've learned to love them. You- Todd's introduced me to some olives that I can get on board with, right? I'm not gonna exclude all olives like I used to.
Not all olives are created equal, but it is absolutely my lowest option. Is that a
Stephen Morse: texture thing, or is it just the flavor that
Adam Freeman: particularly- I don't know. I just hate them. I think I had bad- ... really bad jarred olives at some point, right? It put me off. So as you were saying then, I'm watching Todd's face, 'cause like I say, people don't realize that we actually, yeah, we work together, but we actually do stuff outside of work, and he's watching going, "Yeah.
Keep talking about olives. Keep talking about olives." Yeah.
Todd Janzen: Yeah.
Stephen Morse: Go olives. I'm sorry, Adam. I love a lot of other pizza toppings, but that's one stood out for me.
Adam Freeman: I... Listen, I think it's great. Everyone's entitled to their own pizza. The more olives you eat, the less there is for me to have to eat.
So I'm cool with that.
Stephen Morse: Pass 'em over.
Adam Freeman: Yeah.
Todd Janzen: Great answer,
Adam Freeman: Steven. Oh. That
Todd Janzen: was the best answer of the day.
Adam Freeman: It's wonderful. Let's close this out. Steven- Thank you so much for sharing some of your mindset. I think we definitely need to dig in on the idea of wellness and being present, and I think- Yeah
I think that's a super important topic that we should cover at some point. But thank you so much for coming on, sharing your wisdom. Hope the book is such a huge success. We'll share something about it when it's out. I don't think it's ready yet, right? It's
Stephen Morse: soon. You can you can join the wait list if you want.
It's imminent. But you can go to- Yeah ... scleadership.com, and then there's a book link if you wanted to. But we'll... That way we'll make sure that you will get a when it comes out. There's a couple of other little bonus items too. If you were in there. El- otherwise you'll know hopefully when it's imminently out in the short term.
Adam Freeman: Brilliant. But thank you so much for coming on and sharing this with us. And that's it for another episode of Two Prils and a Pod. See you later, guys. Bye.
Todd Janzen: Take care.
Stephen Morse: Bye. Thanks, gents. Thank you. Bye.