Welcome to ChannelWaves, the podcast where channel
leaders share success strategies, best practices and emerging
trends, brought to you by StructuredWeb.
Here's your host, Steven Kellam.
Welcome, everyone, to ChannelWaves.
StructuredWeb's view into everything channel.
I'm your host, Steven Kellam and very excited
to have Meaghan Sullivan-Moore, Head of Ecosystems
and Mid Market at SAP joining us today. Welcome, Meaghan.
Thank you so much, Steven.
Such a pleasure to be here with you.
Yeah, look, we started this out.
I'm going to take everyone back a little bit.
We started out, Meaghan did the first
podcast for me at StructuredWeb.
And we had also done several podcasts other places.
And we had been talking about how do
partners need to change, what do they need
to do to not do the status quo?
I got a great quote from you that I've used on
several webinars, by the way, about partners need to change the
status quo and figure out how to drive revenue.
And listeners, we've had lots of great endeavors,
we've had lots of great conversations about that.
But the reason I reached out to Meaghan to
have this one, this podcast in particular, from my
perspective, the grounds has shifted so much, not just
over the past three years with pandemic, supply chains,
everything that's happened to stress out the world.
Now you throw what's happened from a human
resources perspective with this economic downturn and I
don't know anybody who doesn't know someone who
has not been affected by this. Right?
So we're having these conversations about driving revenue,
automating everything, simplifying, all these great suggestions or
great ways to make marketing work.
But how do you do that when you
have less resources without your head exploding?
So, I guess what we want to talk
about today is really the channel psyche.
And I wanted to tap into Meaghan's knowledge
as really, I would say as a manager.
And that when you have to do more with less.
How do you do that?
How do you deal with people?
How do you motivate them?
I think the title of this, just to tell everybody
is going to be: How do you get your head,
and I think and heart, into the marketing game today.
So sorry, that was a long dive into that,
but obviously there's been a lot going on.
I think it's an amazing topic. Yes.
COVID stressed out the world, for sure.
And just when we thought that was
over, the hits just keep on coming.
Now we've got the recession, we've got things
around the world happening that are terrible.
The bank failure going on, multiple layoffs
at companies impacting the entire tech industry.
It's a very stressful world out there.
And so I think it's more important than ever for
leaders to be paying attention to that and to keep
a pulse on what's happening with their employees.
I mean, in simplest terms, where do you start?
Are there three mantras to this in Meaghan's world,
if I'm trying to make all this happen, what
are the three things that you have to deal
with that would help you make your team successful?
I guess that's really where I'm driving.
Well, I think, number one, first and foremost, I always
like to start at 50,000 foot level, at a strategic
level, and we set the tone as leaders.
Our organization, very similar to our CEO, set
the tone as an example for our company.
So it's super important that the mood and the
temperament is going to start with us, right?
So really taking care of ourselves, or myself as
an example, making sure I'm healthy, making sure I'm
taking care of myself, making sure I'm being vulnerable
and being honest about where I am in my
life, I think is very important.
Because if the team sees there's a bit of vulnerability
and nothing's perfect and we're all in this together as
an example, I think that makes people feel better.
And it's okay to not be okay kind of scenario.
So I think it starts at the top and
what kind of tone we want to set.
So I always like to say we can wake up
with a headache every day, or we can wake up
feeling great and that we're going to have a great
day and push through it and make it great.
And I really do think it's all in your head.
I can't believe I'm going to actually quote
Buddha on this, but I think Buddha said,
"pain is inevitable, suffering is optional".
But I actually saw that the other
day, because what you're talking about, and
I think that cuts across every leader.
Actually, it's not even just if you're leader a team.
If you're in a team and you're dealing with other
people, what choices do you make on what that day
is like, then that sounds so much easier than it
is to do, because we all wake up today with
lots of things on our minds.
I don't know if it's that hard, though.
Of course, I live in a glass half full world.
I can find the silver lining in anything.
It's just kind of how I roll.
But I really do think that if we can look up
to our leaders and say, you know what, to your point,
they have a lot of pain in their life, but they
have chosen to keep the glass half full.
They've chosen to see the silver lining.
I think that kind of bleeds into everyone.
That kind of incents them to look
the same way in some cases.
Not everyone can do it.
But I do think that we have to stay positive and
motivate and yet at the same time be vulnerable about, yeah,
I'm having a bad day, things kind of suck.
But having said that, I'm going to choose to wake
up on the right side of the bed and choose
to look at the light rather than the dark. Okay.
I think that goes back to
some basic principles of life, right?
For instance, how much do you listen
versus how much do you talk?
And are you truly listening?
Do you choose to, as you say, be positive?
I mean, there's so many things out there.
No one wants to listen to someone complain.
I think that's just like the
simplest things in life, right?
Whether you have with your friendships or with
your spouse or with your partner or whoever,
I think those life lessons can be really
drawn on from the business lessons.
And sometimes, I don't know.
You think it's easy?
Look, I'm an optimist too, but I don't know,
I don't think it's that easy for some people.
I think one easy thing to do that I
do since January 1, I've done this every single
day, is just find one thing to say.
Today I'm grateful for X and my 23 year old
daughter and I exchange a text message every day.
She's now just graduated from college. Every single day.
We have not missed yet of I'm grateful for and
name it, whatever it is, it could be the sunshine.
Today she said, I'm grateful for Zoom calls,
which was great because she didn't have,
her dressy pants on that day. Okay.
I was going to wonder where that was going to go. Sure.
Okay, look, we'll call those optimism hackers.
Optimism hackers. Good. Yeah.
Just be optimistic.
My second thing is how to lead in times of great
turmoil, I believe, is really sharing context of kind of why
you're asking your team to do something for them.
So, for example, I think so often we'll get a
fire drill or something from our manager saying, I need
this, or fill out this template, we got X amount
of time, or do this or whatever.
I think it's really important to share the context
of the strategy coming down from above on why
you're asking people to do things rather than just
kind of ask for a point in time project.
Because if they understand the context behind
what's going on and why the ask
is covering, we hire very intelligent people.
They're going to have some great innovative and creative ideas
that have come out that we didn't think about.
That's why we pilot these people is
because they're experts in their field.
And so the more context we can give them, I
think the greater productivity and innovation will come out.
Once again, I completely agree with you, but
I think that that's good at any time.
But I also think that gets harder when you
have less resources, when you're working on a smaller
team and your work is more and now on
your smaller team, you got more deliverables.
I think it's almost human nature. It is
for me, to go, I just need to get this done.
And I don't think that's right.
I think you're absolutely right.
But I think people have to take that first
thing that you said about taking care of themselves
and kind of get centered on that so they
can remember to be patient and to ask questions
and to realize that others have great ideas.
But I have to force myself look, I have to wrote
down you can't see it up there is to be patient.
I understand my strength and my weaknesses and I literally
every day have to have this up there to remember.
I've got same thing super intelligent people.
And I think today I'm agreeing with you even more that people
want to be a part of that big picture the solutions and
you got to listen and you got to be patient.
I have a note behind me this is slow down.
So in order to know okay, patient, slow down.
About the same thing, I'm sure everyone has that.
But I think it's really critical because I know some
people who are looking at in this time and there's
optimism, but also there's people, I believe that see us
as an opportunity to shine and to do well and
to get their ideas and to be successful.
So I think there's also a lot of that
but as a leader or a coworker, it doesn't
really matter whether it's sideways or up or down.
I do think we have to slow down a little bit.
I'm not so sure the world
is sending that message right now.
No, it's go faster, faster, faster, immediate, I
want instantaneous results, all that kind of stuff.
But I do think no matter what level
you're at, if you're asking somebody to do
something for you, you can slow down.
I need to slow down, right.
Give them the context of why you're asking for it
and why you need it done and what needs to
be done, and brainstorm a little bit on kind of
here's my challenge, what I'm trying to figure out.
It doesn't take very long to do that.
And I'm telling you, the results you'll get from the other side
and them lending their ideas and some context that they have, it's
going to be better if you take a little bit of time
or prep just to kind of set the tone.
I think it makes a huge difference.
One thing I've done, we're talking about hacks, right,
is I've had meetings where I've had them very
free flow in the past right here's, an hour
meeting there's four of us together.
I've actually worked and created more context
or broken out in those meetings.
I've done more of an agenda setting not
to tap it down but to make sure
that everyone has their chance to do this.
I should get more organized right next to be patient
and slow down because we can't waste our time as
much but we still want to give as much input.
So I'm trying to figure out maybe this help.
I'm trying to figure out how I
talk less and I listen more.
And the way for me to do it was to
put more structure into my meetings, but not to tap
things down, but so I could get be more prepared.
I'm preparing more for meetings now than I ever
had before so that I don't have to do
some of those things and let other people shine.
Yeah, I love that.
I think, too, there's a beauty
to simplification and stop doing things.
I think especially in bigger companies.
In smaller companies, not so much, but in bigger companies,
we tend to have things that we've done for years,
and they're just kind of innate, and we do them.
When we do that, we do them.
But so much of it is necessary. Right.
So really taking the time to your point of
kind of set the agenda, get ready for the
meeting, what are we really working on?
Like, do we really need to run this report anymore?
We've been running it for six years.
Is anybody even looking at it?
I've had so many instances where we kind
of do this with the team and we
really scrub down and we stop doing something.
Nobody says anything about it.
It's like, okay, well, that was great.
I mean, sometimes one person might care, but I think we
really need to simplify in this day and age as well.
There's too much noise.
There's too much going on. Right.
And I think that all goes back
to your point of letting people know
the context, why you're doing those things.
I had a meeting the other day, and I've
got in the habit of sending the agenda and
writing some of the pieces around it.
It's so funny.
One of the persons sent me back and said, well,
I guess we don't need to have the meeting.
We had an hour, and we
actually handled it all through email.
And it's not that we don't want to be
together or spend time, but we just basically growth
hacked that thing out of there, right?
And I'm like, okay, that's a pretty cool way to look that
I mean, I have an employee that before every one on one,
she will send me her kind of bi weekly one on one.
She'll send me her list of,
here's everything I want to cover.
And it's literally like bullet
points, sub sub bullet points.
And it's so thorough that by the time I get
on the call, we're super efficient because I can say,
okay, we don't need to cover one, three, and seven.
I just want to hit two and five right now.
And it's fantastic.
I think we both feel more efficient for it, and
I think that's a great way to empower people, too.
I'm not telling we don't need to have this meeting.
They're telling me that they can do this and we don't
need, which I think we're all like, that's great.
We'll do it every other week.
And I think in context and going back to it,
that's a great way to ask it in this times. Right?
Okay, we need to do this.
How can we be more efficient? What works for you?
And you find people that are talented like, that can make
things work offline just as they can do it online.
And then for number three.
Are we ready for three?
Well, I think number three plays
very well into all that.
We're ready for number three. Yeah.
So I think there's nothing more
important than empathy right now.
And let's go back to you. Listen.
That listen, that's the second
thing I have written down.
I had to slow down and listen.
Second, they're interrelated, but our employees are
going through so much externally in their
personal lives that we don't understand.
And because we are at work so many hours
of the day, unfortunately they bring that to work
because our lives are so intertwined right now between
personal, so really taking the time to understand where
people are, what challenges are they facing, and how
can we help them through those difficult times, be
empathetic towards their situation?
Because I think when you do
that again, it's that vulnerability thing.
When you open up a little bit, when you
get empathetic, our employees are going to be way
more productive, which is amazing, but they're also going
to feel like they're respected and they're included and
that they have a seat at the table with
you, which I think is super important.
So what do you think about
the difference between sympathetic and empathetic?
It's the classic term, right?
Sympathetic would just be like, oh, I'm
so sorry you're going through that.
Empathetic is really digging into
it and feeling their feelings.
Or like, if I had an experience in my
life that were similar to that, I'm going to
feel that empathy of what they're going through.
There are many times where I can't be empathetic. Right.
What they're going through, some of it
is unimaginable because we've been together for
a long team, large team.
We've been through a lot of life together.
And some of it, it just breaks my heart.
But I can't be empathetic.
But I can sympathize with them and
understand they need space or time or
more support or whatever that could be. Yeah.
Look, I think it all goes back
to everything you've tied in the context,
the asking the questions and listening.
I think the only way to be empathetic
is to listen and to figure out, especially
when we're in this world where people are
in different areas, they're doing Zoom meetings.
You don't have as much of the personal side for us.
We're still remote, right.
Most of us are still working remotely.
And I think you have to listen
and you have to ask those questions.
And I think the biggest thing is
when you ask those questions, actually listen.
Yes, I think so.
And I think by giving them that empathy or sympathy
or whatever, whichever side of it, I'm down with empathy.
I think empathy is way better.
I think people both in sympathy all the
time, and I think they should be empathetic.
I completely but again, I think by doing that, though,
your employees will be more productive and more loyal, and
they'll be able to be better employees because of it
if you just give them a little bit of love. Right.
I just think in today's day and age, there are a
lot of stresses going on for everyone at every level.
Yeah.
So why don't we wrap it up with this, right?
So what do you think about genuine and not genuine?
Because everything we talked about,
people are very perceptive.
I think people have gotten
well, curious what you think.
I think people have learned to even figure out
and are perceptive about genuineness, even on remote.
I think it's almost impossible to hide that these days.
And I'm not so sure everyone's I'm not
sure everyone's great at being genuine yet.
Well, you got people people and
you got non people people. Right.
Not everyone is going to be
skilled in leading with the heart. Right.
There's a lot of people that will lead with
data or lead with mind, and that's awesome too. Right.
They're completely two different skill sets.
But I think if you can be authentic
to who you are, that's going to show
whether you're genuine or not genuine.
I mean, I lead with my heart, right?
What I aspire to be is very authentic.
I am who I am at work as I am who I am personally.
I'm not two different people.
If you're someone who leads with your mind
and leads with data and not so much
in touch with the heart, that's okay, too.
If you listen to your point, listen
to your employees, try and understand.
Let them know that I really would like to understand
what's going on so that I can help you.
You don't have to kind of lean in and cry
and have a hug out, but I think as long
as you're really listening and really trying to hear them,
that helps a lot in the genuine side.
Okay, so any last thoughts? Here,
I'll ask you this.
What do you think it looks like for
the next we'll just wrap it up.
What do you think it looks like
for the rest of the year?
What does 2023 look like
from Meaghan Sullivan's perspective?
Well, the optimistic side in me now, the realist in
me, says it's going to be a tough year.
Even the collapse of some of the banks last week.
I think that we're at the tip of the iceberg.
I think there's a lot more coming on that
that's going to have ramifications on businesses throughout.
I think the recession is going to continue to get
deeper with so many layoffs and people looking for jobs.
I think we've got that stressor in the market.
I think 2023 is going to be a very stressful
year and is exactly why I am expressing gratitude every
day to find the positive and to remember to keep
myself kind of in that stay positive.
Because I do believe in you, and
I have talked about this before.
I believe what you put out in
the universe will come back to you.
So if I personally can be positive and grateful and
know that there's goodness out there, I think the universe
will serve up what I need this year.
Well, Megan, thanks for joining us.
I greatly appreciate listeners.
Thank you for joining us.
And we do hope that the rest of the year
is good for everyone, as good as it could be.
And I do agree with if you're genuine about it
and you're positive about it, it's amazing the impact and
the change that you can make with people every day.
But for me, I got to do it every day.
I have to remind myself every
day because I know my weaknesses.
And, Steven, today, I'm grateful for you. Thank you.
Okay. I'm grateful.
All right.
Every and have a great day.