Define the Mission for the Team

As a new leader of a new Solutions organization joining a company experiencing rapid growth, I prioritized getting oriented with the people I’d be working with and the culture in which we would work together. It was time for a listening tour to explore three main questions:

1. What’s the view from up top?

2. What are the needs and expectations of our clients? 

3. What are the concerns of the team and their colleagues?

What’s the view from up top?

When coming out of the gate, it’s essential to ensure that you have a mutual understanding with senior leadership about what they expect from the Solutions organization. Notes from my interview cycle provided the background necessary to complete this process promptly. 

• What are the OKRs for the current FY? - First and foremost, these need to be In the background when defining the team’s mission. While it’s not necessary to address OKRs head-on with the mission statement, you certainly don’t want there to be a conflict. 

• What are their aspirations for the company in the marketplace? - Exploring this question with leaders may uncover new observations that had not been previously brought to the forefront. 

• Where are the pains or concerns internally?  - Whether or not they see a direct correlation between Solutions and those aspirations, such concerns are essential to know about. Solutions is such a critical function with amazing relevance throughout a technology organization that I consider anything fair game when considering Solutions as having a meaningful impact anywhere along the customer value chain. For example, are there operational headaches associated with onboarding new clients that Solutions can flag early in Discovery? 

What are the needs and expectations of our clients?

When exploring this question, I feel it’s crucial for a Solutions Leader to get a 360-degree view AND to apply the unique “Solutions Lens” to that view. In one case, I learned that a premium client had been expending significant resources transforming data we were delivering to them that we considered “complete.”  The additional work was quite a burden on our client, and exposed us to an unnecessary churn risk had we not revisited the acceptance criteria with them.

Get a complete view of the client experience by interviewing:

• Sales

• Customer Success

• Operations

• Support

• Clients (either directly or by reviewing call recordings.) 

What are the concerns of the team and their colleagues?

Here, you are looking to establish mutual conditions of satisfaction between the Solutions Team and their various partners in the organizations. 

• For Pre-Sales - 

• What do sellers feel they need to succeed in closing deals? - Are Pre-sales team members working with common goals in mind?

• Are they familiar with the Pre-Sales function? - Take nothing for granted. Inexperienced salespeople can perceive Solutions partners as threats that are reluctant to engage. 

• Are Pre-sales pros being misused? - Competent Solutions Consultants are amazingly talented, which can sometimes lead to others tasking them with responsibilities extending into Post-sales Sales or even Product Development or Support. 

• For Post-Sales

• Are they set up for success? - Have Statements of Work, handover documents, and client assets been prepared with Post-sales success in mind? 

• Are they appropriately positioned in the customer journey? - Insulating Post-sales engineers from Pre-sales conversations can lead to sluggish delivery and delayed revenue realization. 

• Is there sufficient coordination in Post-Sales? Project Management neglect lurks in the background for organizations experiencing rapid growth. 

Putting it All Together

With the listening tour complete, I had a good sense of the misalignments that existed between the team’s self-perceived responsibilities and where our organization and clients needed us to be, which gave me the guidance I needed to establish our mission; CTS is the owner of the technical relationships with CloudFactory clients. 

I shared the team’s mission widely in formal and informal settings and referred to it often in meetings as a touchstone to validate questions and requests. Within a quarter, the confusion around the teams’ place within the company had vanished, and we were ready to begin building our Solutions Practice for future success.