Business X factors

Building a business is a path fraught with difficult decisions. For every hard-won success, there are equally hard-learned lessons. Fred Smith gambled FedEx’s last $5,000 to save the business, Henry Ford went through two bankruptcies before founding Ford Motor Company and for Rob LoCascio, the CEO of LivePerson, survival meant he had to do the unthinkable and cut two-thirds of his workforce just one year after taking the company public. He is the original bounce-back guy, having survived three major world disruptions: the dot-com bubble, the credit crunch and now, the pandemic. 

On this episode on Business X factors, LoCascio lets us ride shotgun on his journey, and he explains how LivePerson has been able to not only bounce back and become a massively profitable business, but how they have been able to revolutionize consumer communication with brands. He reveals his and his company’s  X factor and he looks toward the future of business and technology.

Main Takeaways:  

• Hit the Brakes and Make a Turn: There are many entrepreneurs who hang on to their original idea long past its expiration date. It takes foresight and a good reading of the market to abandon an idea. But this tough step is necessary in order to move onto the next thing. Have a short memory and your eyes pointed ever forward, and don’t be afraid to make the hard decisions.
• Get it Out: Whether you’re ready or not, sometimes you just have to get a product out to the market and iron out the kins later. In fact, by getting the product into the hands of the user, you are better able to understand exactly where improvements are needed and can then make adjustments with velocity. 
• A Different Point of View: Leadership is always one of the most important elements in the success of a company. As such, it’s easy to play it safe when hiring for key roles. But sometimes it’s useful to bring in a new perspective or a different kind of person for a role like CFO. When someone with a background counter to what is traditional is put into a role, that person can ignite a new spirit of innovation and bring new ways of looking at things that can spark growth in a company.

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Business X factors is produced by Mission.org and brought to you by Hyland. 

For over a decade, Hyland has been named a Leader in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Content Services Platforms, leading the way to help people get the information they need when and where they need it. More than half of 2019 Fortune 100 companies rely on Hyland to help them create more meaningful connections with the people they serve. When your focus is on the people you serve, Hyland stands behind you. Hyland is your X factor for better performance. Go to Hyland.com/insights to learn more.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Studies show that 80% of CEOs have indicated they are worried about the key digital skills of their workforce _ yet few have done anything about it. In an era when sweeping digital transformation is being embraced by every company regardless of industry, why has improving the digital acumen of the workforce been a project left untouched? Suneet Dua, the Chief Product Officer at PricewaterhouseCoopers, says the problem is CEOs don’t know how to go about giving their people the right digital training and skills. 

At PwC, a 170-year-old company, digital tools have been used for years to grow the company exponentially, but Suneet discovered that its workforce did not have the digital mastery or resources to leverage technologies for the business. It was a fatal flaw in an otherwise efficient system and was slowing everything down. Armed with a passion to solve this problem, Suneet set out to start what he called a citizen-led skills journey for PwC’s workforce of 280 000 employees. Along the way, he and his team not only developed a digital skills app — which has been made available for free to every citizen in the world — they created digital accelerator jobs and a digital laboratory with more than 750 automations for PwC. 

In this episode of Business X factors, Suneet takes us on the journey that led him to this upskilling quest and why its success has been the X factor that has helped power PwC to the heights it’s reached today. 

• Filling the Potholes: Most CEOs know that their workforces should be digitally upskilled, but many don’t know how to do it. At PwC, the company has long offered tech solutions to its clients and has transformed its own business with digital tools, but it found that many of the employees could not leverage technology for the business. To fix this blindspot, a massive upskilling undertaking was necessary to keep PwC in a leadership position in the digital world. 
• Getting Buy-In On A $3 billion Revolution: In order to bring the ‘citizens’ at PwC up to date in digital skills, the company invested $3 billion. The first task was to establish a digital baseline to determine where things stood at the company and to determine where the biggest digital gaps existed. With the baseline established, the team proceeded to build a learning platform that could fill knowledge gaps but the trick was making employees want to take part. That’s where gamification and incentives were put in place. 
• Spread The Knowledge: The success of the upskilling process has led to the creation of bots that would never have existed otherwise in the PwC world, and employees are happier and more fulfilled because of their ability to grow within the company. PwC saw this success as an opportunity to help other organizations do the same thing, and it decided to share its X factor on a much wider scale. 

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Business X factors is produced by Mission.org and brought to you by Hyland. 

For over a decade, Hyland has been named a Leader in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Content Services Platforms, leading the way to help people get the information they need when and where they need it. More than half of 2019 Fortune 100 companies rely on Hyland to help them create more meaningful connections with the people they serve. When your focus is on the people you serve, Hyland stands behind you. Hyland is your X factor for better performance. Go to Hyland.com/insights to learn more.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

In this new podcast, we pull back the curtain on some of the biggest and most successful companies in the world to show you how they work, and what their best-kept secrets are that keep the wheels turning. A new podcast by Mission.org. Brought to you by Hyland.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.