Speaker 0: There we go. Let’s see if this works.

Speaker 1: Awesome. Yeah. If you could just go into presentation mode because we’re seeing your speaker notes, and we’re live in two seconds.

Speaker 0: Okay. Um, what do I

Speaker 1: Okay. Hello, everybody, and welcome to the session. We’ll just give a few, uh, a few more seconds for the rest of the people to join and to settle our screen share.

Speaker 0: Here we go. Sorry.

Speaker 2: Audience tools. Audio.

Speaker 1: Yeah. Okay. So we have, uh, quite a few people joining us. Hello, and welcome to the session going beyond SLAs. Um, how to build a stronger strategic team. Aliyah, how are we doing with the screen share? Ah, there we go. Looks looks great. Thank you. So I’m Pam Carey with Sercante, your moderator today. We have Alia and Jayak with us today to, um, to help explain them how the mixture of sales, marketing ops, rev ops, marketing team can work together effectively and maybe even become partners. So I pass it off to you guys.

Speaker 2: Hey, guys. I’m Seth. And out of the two of us, uh, I believe I’m a more direct and bland person, but I’m here because I truly believe in this, uh, topic. So let’s take it forward. Next slide. So, basically, what we’re gonna talk about is, you know, just a brief history of what these service level agreements are, how exactly they originated, and talk about how and whether they are, uh, you know, relevant in today’s world. And then, you know, we’ll open up the floor for q and a. So next slide, Oli. So if you have to basically look at how these SLAs originated, you know, it was the late nineteen eighties. And I believe, you know, it was more about delivering a particular service without any complications or without any complexities. But today, if you see, uh, you know, the marketing realm, uh, you will notice that there are three fundamental components. Next slide, Javier. So that’s three fundamental components to a marketing SLA. What you have is marketing services. You have timelines, and then you have reporting. And this should ideally translate, you know, to a clear expectation. And it’s important to note that an SLA doesn’t necessarily have to be formal. It can also be, uh, you know, in an informal manner or, you know, just a spoken manner where, you know, you have, uh, teams within an organization, marketing operations team, you know, working where there’s an unspoken SLA and understanding between your manager, uh, and, you know, the employees where, you know, the deliveries are expected. Uh, next slide. So, uh, to wrap it up, basically, if you look at the pros and cons of an SLA, it’s very good in terms of setting those clear expectations in and making sure that, you know, you identify those people who are going to be accountable, you know, towards your outcomes. And, uh, essentially, it looks at identifying those basic risks that are usually, you know, the norm within a particular But there are some glaring cons, you know, and this, uh, obviously, because of COVID, you know, it has sort of exposed, uh, these disadvantages. So one is the rigidity. It doesn’t allow you to, you know, change to the changing marketing environment. And this actually puts a burden on, you know, the client for whom this SLA is being delivered. There’s also an unrealistic expectation that sets in, especially when, you know, there’s not a lot of communication going on in the background where marketing teams are expected to sort of deliver, uh, certain asks or certain items which do not necessarily account for, you know, their complexities. For example, a nurture campaign. If the SLA talks about a nurture campaign as being, you know, x number of days, but the reality is a nurture campaign has so many other moving parts that you can’t necessarily dictate those, you know, terms or take dictate those boundaries, it actually leads to those trained relationships. And lastly and most importantly, I’ve seen a lot of these metrics, uh, you know, uh, being very superficial because you talk about metrics like the time spent on a particular project, which doesn’t necessarily translate to, you know, measuring, uh, those strategic objectives. So are SLAs still relevant? Not really, in my opinion. Because when you take a step back, you are basically producing a product or delivering a service that is supposed to result in a revenue. And if the revenue outweighs the costs, you are a profitable organization, thus creating value. But next slide, please. So, essentially, what we’re talking about here and I’m so sorry that I’m keeping it very short and blunt. Uh, but essentially, what we’re talking about is driving customer satisfaction, driving employee satisfaction, drives brand value, and drives financial performance. So that is nothing but strategy. Right? But here’s where things go wrong. When it’s not aligned, when a strategy is not aligned or when an SLA is not aligned to, you know, your organization’s goals, what you’re left with is a very shortsighted you know, operation that focuses on metrics performance metrics that don’t necessarily translate to the organization’s performance. I think the best example I can give you is a friend of mine was recently laid off even though he addressed, you know, all the KPIs, But he was told that his performance is not up to the mark because the organization was in trouble. And, again, without going into the details of it, I feel like there needs to be a more of deep dive, you know, into how these metrics necessarily translate or percolate through the organization. So, basically, what I’m trying to say is if an SLA does not align with your strategic goals and does not align with those dynamic changes in the market, there is no point to an SLA. It’s a good starting off point, but definitely not something that’s going to be your bible or your journal or your guiding light, you know, in your organization’s success. So the solution the way I see it, and this is something my colleague is gonna talk about in detail, is based on what we’ve read so far, everything has to do with the trust issue in the organization. And there are these three tenets of trust, which, again, my colleague is gonna talk more about it. But what I’m basically gonna talk about is the fact that, uh, you know, symptoms like turnover, fraud, redundancy, disengagement, quiet quitting, all of this is I think one of the main ingredients is the lack of trust, and that seems to be you know, uh, has taken control, uh, over some organizations sometimes where people end up either quitting or people end up either, you know, uh, just disconnecting from the work itself. Uh, this might be a very drastic example to give you, but all these concepts are basically imagined realities. Right? An organization, a religion, an idea, a concept. And ultimately, a strategy is also an imagined reality. And you need people to gather around that, believe in that common cause, and work towards it. And you can only foster that belief when there is trust. And when that trust sort of gets eroded, you what you’re left with is a very superficial, uh, you know, employee relationship where people do the basics, you know, just to get the work done. And that’s not necessarily how an organization can look to grow. So Alia.

Speaker 1: Alright. Thanks, Jayat.

Speaker 0: So just to kind of build off of what my colleague has spoken about, um, relationship building is such an important part of being able to work more cohesively in those strategic teams. I think it’s such a basic understanding of life that oftentimes we mitigate it or minimize its importance. Um, and just when we talk about relationship building, it can be boiled down really to three simple components, transparency, accountability, and trust. Transparency. I’m being open and honest about my motives and my reasoning. Accountability. If I make a mistake, I’m going to own that mistake and be very transparent about that mistake and also be willing to fix the mistakes that I make. Trust. Can I count on you to make the best decisions for the company, for the greater good of the company or of the team as a whole? And when all of these three tenets are aligned, you do have the pieces the necessary pieces to build lasting relationships, which is a key function of being able to work better in a team setting. I think we too often discount this just because it’s so pervasive in our day to day life that we kind of, you know, we we kind of take the view as I I know what it is to build relationships. I know how important relationship building without actually taking intentional steps to ensure that we are doing it. So to expound on those three points a little bit better, transparency really can take many different forms. I know it’s one of those hot one of those common words that seem to get thrown around a lot, may whether we’re talking about pay transparency, leadership being transparent, net zero transparency. It takes a lot of different forms, but when you take a microscope and look at it, really, it’s just about being explicit about your motives and being willing to put them not having any fears about putting a microscope on them. Um, and what that can really look like in a team setting is just being willing and open to share with other teams throughout your organization your the wins and losses of your teams, the pride the priorities of your teams, just to kind of keep people more updated on what’s going on. That way, if you are working in a team setting and you are supposed to be delivering something and see on upon the chance that you aren’t able to meet a specific deadline or something happens, you have that relationship with an with other team members, um, with cross functional team members that they’ll be more understanding. And I think really I think really great ways of being able to foster that transparency. I think team newsletters are really awesome where you’re sending them out to internal stakeholders, just letting them know about some of the priorities that your specific team might be working on, some of your successes, some of your losses, and what’s coming up in the future. That can also take the the form of maybe team updates where quarterly, you have a thirty minute town hall where you’re sharing, um, the same the same functions of your team. Accountability. Um, that’s another big one. When we think about accountability, I think oftentimes we know what accountability is, but not necessarily who should hold us accountable. Um, accountability really can have it has two sources that is external and internal. And when we think about external accountability, it’s being accountable to someone else, being accountable to your supervisor, being accountable to yours to your spouse, your children, or your parents. So relying on other people to ensure that you’re doing what you said what you say you’re going to do, and that’s great. But when we think about working in teams and team dynamics, I really think internal accountability really should take precedence, and that is relying on yourself to keep yourself accountable. Um, I’m I am the type of person that does what I’m going to say that does what I say I’m going to do, and this is how I’m going to ensure that I am hitting those milestones. And, really, when you have that internal source of accountability in place, makes it a lot easier to to meet a lot of the demands of those external accountability sources. Trust. That is definitely a big one. Um, trust, we think oftentimes, we hear about the circle of trust, but when we think about trust, especially in a professional setting, it’s really a triangle that relies on three facets. Empathy, meaning I care about you, I care about your feelings, logic, I trust your reasoning, I know that you are the type of person that makes sound decisions, and then authenticity. Are you going to be real or are you going to be fake? When we think about organizations, so often when the trust has been broken between an organization and its employees, these are 10 of the most common pitfalls that we see that organizations tend to fall under. Um, I know that when Jayath and I were working on getting this presentation ready, so many of these, we definitely were able to you know, we we’ve experienced them. Um, I’m really curious, though, like, everybody that’s here in attendance, which of these 10 pitfalls resonate with you the most? Um, if you wouldn’t mind just dropping them in the chat, I’d be really, really interested in just seeing getting y’all’s feedback. So now that we’ve kind of spoken more, um, just about relationship building, I wanna move on to aligning goals and understanding roles. Um, organizational organizational and departmental goals. If your company’s goals aren’t aligned with your department’s goals or even your individual goals, you have misalignment, and that’s going to create a problem, which will create friction. Um, how many of us that are in attendance today can say with no doubt that they are aware of what their company’s goals and that their department and individual goals are aligned to that. I know that, you know, I face ambiguity in my own professional life, and I’m sure many of us have as well. Um, so I think it’s very important that when we are thinking about setting goals for the current and upcoming year, that we keep a lot of that in mind. Um, the way that Jayath and I kind of, um, discuss goals and creating that alignment is like a a Moustroshka doll where the goals are nested within each other. You have your company’s goals as the big old, the the big nesting doll, and then your departmental goals as the smaller nesting doll, and then your individual goals nest it somewhere within those. And when they aren’t lined up perfectly, things aren’t gonna fit together. Roles is another big one. Um, here I have a Belbin team role description. Belbin, the way that she kind of described, um, team roles and how they function into the bigger picture as their action oriented goals. There are cerebral oriented goals, um, and there are people oriented goal or oriented roles. And all of those roles work together for the greater good of the team as a whole. Um, no two roles are the same. So everybody the roles play to the strengths and the weaknesses of individuals, and those strengths and weaknesses Those individualized strengths and weaknesses come together and build a dynamic team. I think the best way for me to kind of, though, to visualize it is just thinking about the Apollo eleven. Did y’all know that there were more than 300,000 people that were involved on the Apollo eleven strategic and execution team? And what that all culminated in in was something beautiful. We put people, you know, we put people in space. We put people on the moon, but it didn’t just take three astronauts to get us there. It was an entire team of people all playing to their individual roles to ensure that they were able to meet their final their final goal. Another thing that is often kind of overlooked is improving training and documentation. Um, out of everyone in our audience, who can say with definitive confidence that the training and documentation at their organization is at a great level to where if a new person were to join, they’d know exactly what to do. Or if somebody were to leave, if a subject matter expert was to leave, that continuity would be able to be ensured. Because I know that a lot of organizations, including mine, struggle with that. Um, too often, documentation is kind of one of those it’s everyone’s responsibility, it’s everyone’s role. It’s everyone’s job to to ensure that there is proper training and documentation. But there’s a saying that if it’s everyone’s job, then it’s no one’s job. So just kind of taking it from that perspective, I think improving training and documentation is key just to ensuring that strategic teams are able to collaborate a lot better. Um, this right here in the, um, in the slot in the presentation, it’s just a simple Lucidchart. There are tons of tools that you can use to kind of get your training and documentation stack where you’d like it, whether it be, like, Microsoft Office or even Excel spreadsheets, LucidCharts, whatever the case might be. Just start out simple and just build from there. But I definitely think that can really help to remove a lot of the ambiguity that tends to plague teams and then impact their overall collaboration efforts. Siloed decision making. This is a big one. We’re in MOP, so we’re no stranger to having to pick up the pieces of silent decision making. But one thing, um, that really stood out to me just kind of when putting this all together, I don’t know if any of y’all have read James Clear, um, his book Atomic Habits, then you’ll be, um, pretty familiar with this chart that I’m showing here. Um, two pilots start off in in LAX, um, headed to in y to New York City. But then a slight deviation along that way of three and a half degrees, it drastically ends up changing the destination where the second pilot that was that started out at LAX at the same time is now in Washington, DC instead of its original destination of NYC. So small changes, even changes that seem small in the beginning, they really can have large impacts at the end. So I set all of that to say, when you’re in a team and you’re making decisions with only your team in mind, you have no idea how it’s going to impact the next team. So one small change one small one change that you think is small and has little to no impact on the greater good might cause another team to have to work sixty hours a week just to fix the the fallout from that small from that change that you perceive as small. Um, so I think one key thing to remember is when you are making decisions, bringing other teams ensuring that other teams are a part of the decision making process just to have a better view of how any potentially small changes can impact the greater good. Alright. Um, we wanna take this time now to kind of open it up to any q and a.

Speaker 1: Hi, Ariel. We have a very quiet audience today. We don’t have any, uh, uh, questions in the q and a or the chat. I think this was a great, um, great presentation outlining all of the all of the missing effect how how your teams have impact on everyone else.

Speaker 0: Awesome. Well, we also do want to leave everyone just in the spirit of collaboration and being able to work more better cohesively. We did create a curated playlist, which was really fun just to give you a little bit of inspiration. We are all doing very hard jobs, and it’s not always easy to, like, work with other people. Um, or it you know, we might have off days, and so we did create this playlist. If you guys just needed a little bit of collaboration inspiration, I hope you guys will enjoy it as much as we enjoy putting it together.

Speaker 1: Great. Thank you. And we do have one question that was posted. Um, do you have examples of small changes that can have a big impact on the team as a whole?

Speaker 2: Yeah. I can take yeah. I mean, I could take that. So we are talking about trust. Right? And maybe I can preface this with an example. In the seventeen hundreds, France was basically had a king and a queen, and people sort of trusted and believed in that idea. And then there was this revolution that took place where, you know, people wanted, uh, to believe in, you know, the, uh, value of human rights or democracy in general. So what I’m trying to, uh, say is that you have to start small and you can’t expect something drastic as a revolution to take place in your organization. So maybe basics like, you know, having discussions, uh, or just making sure that people are heard. Because 90% of the time, there are people in your organization who don’t get heard. You know, their ideas are just not accounted for because, you know, they’re never involved in any of these discussions. I think Avalia also mentioned town halls. Right? Like, I don’t think it takes that much of an effort, you know, to organize a town hall where people just have a chance to speak, people who never get the chance to speak. I think maybe you could start off with something like that. But all in all, it requires a deep dive into, you know, every single organization because I’m sure most organizations have, you know, their own unique way of functioning. So it’s all about introspecting first and then taking those baby steps. So to start off with, just make sure people are heard.

Speaker 0: Yeah. Yeah. And I think just to kind of piggyback off of that and just ensure that people are heard, um, and also, um, you know, examples of small changes that can impact the organization as a whole. Um, one example, if you have one team that decides they want to, um, make a small what they perceive as a small change to forms and the way that they are processed, but they’re not actually the execution team. So now you have another team, and they want these these particular changes maybe, um, enact it retroactively in addition to new forms. Well, how many forms do you have? How many forms need to now have this additional field added? How many how many existing records are you going to have to go back and and fix just to ensure that they have the value to ensure that they have the the newly added field value? So small changes like that, what one team might might kind of perceive as, oh, this is small. This this won’t impact anybody else, really can impact the bottom line. It’s not you’re having to allocate more resources to get this to to get this new field value added, and that’s taking away from priorities and projects that they might already have, um, in the pipeline.

Speaker 1: And sometimes you’ve just thrown that rock into the pond. Right? And there’s all these ripples that that come out and if you don’t play that what if game.

Speaker 2: Exactly.

Speaker 1: Yeah. So we officially have five minutes left in this session. Oh, Oh, we have another question here. Um, how do you get clients to tell all of your secrets or explain important details that could have a direct impact on recruitment if it’s withheld?

Speaker 2: Oh, I mean, that’s again, translates translates to, you know, what we were talking about earlier. I mean, you can only get to that stage when a client trusts you. Right? So an SLA is a good way to start because, obviously, you know, you’re just building out that relationship. And then you start feeling each other out in terms of, you know, how you deliver and how you work together. And that’s where, you know, those three tenets come into the picture. And, again, it doesn’t necessarily have to be even that framework we’re talking about. It all boils down to, you know, how the client views you. You know, today start, you know, obviously, they start trusting you based on the work that you deliver, then they start opening up. And that’s when, you know, you start maybe deep diving into some of those strategic issues. Because most of the time, what I’ve noticed is these SLAs don’t necessarily give you insight into, you know, any of these strategic challenges that organizations face. So, yeah, I mean, uh, I’m I’m glad that question was asked, but there is no simple answer to that because it’s all about building that trust. It’s only 10, you know, that a client would disclose their secrets to you. I mean, apply that to your personal life. Would you disclose, you know, your secrets to a complete stranger? No. You wouldn’t. You would basically share it with someone that you trust. So yeah.

Speaker 1: Great. Thank you, Jayas. Okay. Any final questions? We still have a few minutes left. Nothing new. Okay. Uh, thank you so much for joining us, and, uh, we wanna give a huge shout out to the sponsors of MarDreamin that help us be able to put together this fabulous event and the wide range of topics. Uh, thank you, Jayas and Aliyah. Um, it was a great session. Have a great rest of your day, everyone. Enjoy the rest of the event.

Speaker 2: Thanks, guys. Have a good one.

Speaker 0: Thanks, y’all.

Speaker 1: Bye.

Speaker 0: Bye.