The Art of the Pivot

“What was the mindset of leadership? Were they ready to trust their employees working remotely? Or was it a brand new thing, where they had to overcome the myths that existed around remote work for many years?”

As CEO of LogMeIn, one of the world leaders in remote work solutions, Bill Wagner has a front row seat to the monumental changes brought on by COVID-19. What lessons did he learn while steering an organization experiencing a 400% surge in its software’s usage? What factors made some organizations so successful while others floundered? And what does the future of work look like in a post-pandemic world? Hear Bill’s unique perspective on this week’s episode of the Art of the Pivot.

“We spend an insane amount of time on developing an exceptional culture… People over profit. Impact over EBITDA… We talk about that in the boardroom much before the dollars and cents.”

Dana Berg is the Chief Operating Officer at SADA, a cloud services provider with an outstanding track record of 25+ million migrated users. But Dana doesn’t just oversee the business transformations of SADA’s customer base. SADA made a “bold existential flex” of its own in 2019, shifting gears to focus purely on its Google Cloud business. The risk paid off, resulting in SADA being named Google Cloud’s Global Reseller of the Year. Hear from Dana how keeping the customer at the center of the business enables SADA to deliver top-notch results for all stakeholders, inside and out.

“Across your corporate existence, you will always face either externally introduced or internally necessary pivotal moments in which you need to decide, ‘Am I playing defense or am I playing offense?’ I think history has proven, in our industry at least, if you go into the offense you can actually translate a crisis into an opportunity.”

The small town of Walldorf in Germany isn’t just known for some of the world’s best white asparagus — it’s also home to SAP, the 30-billion dollar business process management behemoth. Luka Mucic is a member of SAP’s Executive Board, and the company’s Chief Financial Officer. Join Luka for an in-depth discussion of what separates an intelligent enterprise from one which just has lots of data, exactly why SAP was willing to take a short-term profitability hit in order to focus on cloud infrastructure, and what we can expect from the next generation of business process intelligence tools. Plus, you’ll get a sneak peek at what’s coming up at SAP’s global virtual user and customer conference, SAPPHIRE NOW.

“I think there's a different kind of relationship potential that a lot of people are longing for, that is quite frankly being neglected in a world where digital's become everything.”

Wellington Holbrook is the Chief Operating Officer for Canada’s Connect First Credit Union — and he wants you to know he’s not like other bankers. Formed by a merger of four large credit unions in Alberta, Connect First is working hard to answer the question, “What does a credit union look like for the 2020s?” Join Wellington to discover what this transformation looks like from the inside, including how empathy and community have to match with scalability and technology, building a culture that gives workers “permission to try,” and why Wellington has given his direct email address to every single Connect First customer.

“Storytelling is maybe one of the most critical things you can do both in a business and outside of a business … I think civilization is probably built off the back of storytelling so it's no different from a business to the earliest cave drawings.”

Kiran Akkineni is the Chief Marketing Officer at Zulily, one of the most successful of the ‘flash sales’ businesses founded in the early 2010s, with a mandate to provide a customer experience that is entertaining as well as convenient. Join Kiran to hear how the pendulum is swinging from performance marketing to brand building, the crucial role of customer analytics, and why it’s vital to demonstrate value very quickly — though not always in a financial sense. Plus, you’ll discover the one thing about shopping that won’t change, no matter what’s going on in the world. 

“A lot of companies say, ‘Hey, one of the core initiatives for this year is being customer focused.’ Then what happens next year? What happens the year after that?”

Yamini Rangan is HubSpot’s Chief Customer Officer, bringing together marketing, sales, customer success and the operations behind them to deliver delightful experiences for customers.  Join Yamini to discover how values can be a competitive differentiator, why seeking to understand is better than seeking to be understood, the benefits of a “customer-in” vs. a “function-out” approach to strategy, and why she is a fan of roundtables.

“Think about social media relative to where e-commerce was 20 years ago ... My best advice is if you're not thinking about this, think about it more.”

Social media management platform Hootsuite has over 18 million customers, but that’s not enough for Chief Technology Officer Ryan Donovan. He’s looking to help businesses scale up their social media, to help hundreds if not thousands (or tens of thousands) of employees keep collaborating on social selling and brand advocacy without tripping over themselves. Join Ryan to discover how the philosophy of “waking up smarter” applies to business transformation, his take on the recent degeneration of social media, and why social media content marketing is a huge missed opportunity for many businesses. 

“Anyone building a building now has to be thinking ahead on how that building can respond to a variety of situations instantaneously so they don't get caught flat-footed.”

We’re all familiar with smartphones — but what about smart buildings? Think of a dynamic space that reacts to what its occupants need, from air filtration to automatic elevators to recognizing people when they walk through the front door. Phil Clement, Global Chief Marketing Officer for Johnson Controls International (JCI), explains how JCI uses ‘digital Lego blocks’ and digital twinning to create sustainable buildings that help enhance health and wellbeing, why a digital-first mindset is especially important to companies with long histories, and how repetition can help organizations scale up their offerings to customers. 

“The impact that leaders can have in this period of time is extraordinarily important [to] building that positive energy with the employee, so that he or she builds energy from their employment.”

CEO is a tough job as it is. But try stepping up right in the middle of a global pandemic. That’s the challenge that confronted Aaron Cooper, who’s still serving as interim CEO of Groupon. Discover Aaron’s single priority when he took over, as well as how organizations can prioritize future development even in difficult circumstances, how to create and balance value propositions for customer groups with very different needs, and why constant modernization should be your mantra. Plus, you’ll discover the beauty treatment US Groupon customers spent over 15 million dollars on in just one quarter of 2020. 

“If you know that your customers have the power of choice every year, that drives change in how you sell to your customer. The most important part of SaaS is service.” 

Over the last year, Stephanie Nashawaty, Chief Customer Innovation Officer, North America at SAP,  has seen dozens of businesses accelerate innovation, to the point where business model changes that used to take years, now take weeks (and in one case, literally overnight). Now, a lot of these changes are here to stay, and the next step is to build on the lessons learned to create truly intelligent enterprises. Join Stephanie to examine why data is vital to transformation, how to unlock the three phases of value creation (discovery, realization and optimization) for any business, and why ‘customer-centric’ is a synonym for ‘trusted’. 

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