Ravi joins Blee-blee as VP, Products. Blee-blee is a publicly-traded company and a market leader in one of the SaaS spaces. Ravi was hired to drive a product-driven culture in a traditionally sales-driven company. On the day of joining, the CEO recommended to Ravi – “Spend time understanding the journey the company made and then make changes slowly, one at a time”.Â
But Ravi was a fast mover and doesn’t like to waste his time doing things slowly. In the next few days, he quickly learned the current product org structure, the processes, and the issues. He noted down the flaws in the current setup, drafted a new structure and processes that would solve the problems and make the product org agile. As per the new structure, some of the relationships between the product team and other teams would change. This also means role changes to a few senior folks in the company.Â
Ravi created a beautiful proposal in the form of a deck which according to him is going to be the panacea to all product-related problems of blee-blee. He called for a meeting with all the stakeholders (around 10 of them including the CEO) to run them through the proposal.
The meeting…
In the meeting, he illustrated the problems of the org and proudly presented the solutions. He was expecting everyone to be wowed by his proposal and accept them right away. But then the opposite happened. The stakeholders started raising potential issues that this proposal could create and asked for solutions to them. Ravi tried to answer them with the best of his understanding but also acknowledged that there would be some sacrifices that the individual teams have to make for the greater good of the company. But then the forum was not convinced. They politely told Ravi that he needs to rework on the assumptions and come back. One SVP commented – “We don’t want to take hasty decisions especially ones that could impact our people”.
Ravi was disappointed. He even doubted the intent of some of the stakeholders and saw this as a symbol of resistance to change and holding on to territorial control.
But then what should have Ravi done differently to have gotten yes to his proposal?
Let’s replay the scenario from the day he joined Blee-blee.
Replay…
After understanding the org problems and having a draft solution, Ravi went to each of the important stakeholders and showed them his draft proposal. He did this in a 1-1 setting for each stakeholder. He listened to their feedback/objections, dug deeper into the objections. He modified his proposal to accommodate the concerns but not compromising the spirit of the proposal. With few stakeholders, where the proposal meant reducing their teams’ responsibilities, he didn’t hurry to close the discussions but gave it enough time for them to digest and get convinced. For example, his proposal had the product team owning market/consumer research which was earlier owned by business teams. He was able to understand the context of why research was owned by business earlier and why that doesn’t make sense anymore. In the course of multiple 1:1s, he was able to gather support for his proposal.
The meeting (replayed)…
Once he felt confident that his proposal is complete and addresses all the concerns, he called for the big meeting. Since everyone knew all the details of the proposal, their voices were heard through the 1:1s, the meeting was merely a formality to rubber-stamp the proposal. The whole discussion finished in less than 20 minutes.
Ravi is elated as he just tasted his first success joining the new company.
Takeaways
1. While joining a new company, it’s important to understand the context of why the company is in a state where it is and propose changes rather than attempting to showcase all your talents first.
2. Convincing stakeholders one at a time is much easier than putting everyone in a room and getting them to agree. The latter could be a recipe for disaster when a) the change is big b) You don’t have all the context
