The E-commerce Leader

[00:00:00] Jason: If you can’t effectively communicate your vision to your employees and paid team members, how in the world, can you communicate it to the world?
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[00:01:11] INTRO: Hey folks. Welcome back to the e-commerce leader today. We are continuing our discussion about building team culture, how to co-create a vision with your fellow team members, so that everybody’s on board really important stuff. It sounds a bit abstract, but if you don’t get this right, it really does have a big impact on how your teams perform.
[00:01:29] So it’s really, really worth getting right. And I think it’s a bit of an under-discussed topic, so hopefully you’ll find it really, really helpful. And I hope you enjoy the show
[00:01:38] Michael: so that’s the, the downside when it doesn’t work, but how do we get to the higher level visionary part of this shared vision, then the more inspiring bit.
[00:01:46] Are you
[00:01:46] Jason: ready? I have an acronym. Yeah, I’m going to call this my Sliema model. S L I am a Slimer it’s I think that might catch on this might really be, this might really be a New York times selling, acronym that takes over over time, you know, there’s smart goals and there’s, there’s a whatever, all kinds of SWAT analysis.
[00:02:06] And now they’re going
[00:02:06] Michael: to have. Slimy. Okay. Tell me what this acronym
[00:02:11] Jason: stands for. Okay. Yeah. With that build up. I think you’ve got to have a shared vision that, you, you communicate with people that have a few attributes and so here they are. So this is a Slimer the first thing is they need to be strategic.
[00:02:25] You want to create a shared vision with people fine they see as strategic. Like, you know, if you, if you’ve got a shared vision, Then, you know, they’re going to see it and think, yes, this makes good sense. People won’t follow, you know, a crazy plan. And so you’ve gotta be strategic about what you’re sharing.
[00:02:46] The second thing is logical. It has to make logical sense to them to execute on it. The third thing is inspiring. It’s gotta be something that really motivates and that we can rally around. And the next one is it’s gotta be mutually benefit. Having the shared vision that you helped me get rich is not a good mutually beneficial, shared vision.
[00:03:08] Is it? And then the final thing is it’s gotta be achievable. It’s gotta be a shared vision that people can achieve. And the precursor to all of this is the best way to get at this. The very best kind of, approach to all of this is the best, vision is co-create. If you co-create a vision with somebody, then it’s theirs as much as it is yours.
[00:03:33] And I think it’s a really, really under considered, business objectives and planning, thought co-creating with somebody where you can both execute on something is even if it’s not your complete person. Vision that you personally had in your mind is going to be infinitely stronger. You know, whatever that metaphor is, where they have two horses where like one horse can pull, like, I don’t even know what it is like a thousand pounds or a pound, or I don’t even want it to, but then two horses put together like 64 times exponentially stronger.
[00:04:07] And so the co-created vision in my view is the gold standard to achieve and to get to, and if you can buy into it and the other person buys in. You’ve got something very, very powerful that you’ll then build together, you know? Yeah.
[00:04:23] Michael: I really like this. I mean, the first thing to say is it sounds kind of obvious.
[00:04:26] It’s almost a cliche these days. Tom Peters said in, in search of excellence, which was, I guess, Companies in the eighties, right? Also the early nineties at the latest, he said, no involvement, no commitment. I remember underlying this and asterisking it. Cause he said, underline this and asterisk it, no involvement, no commitment.
[00:04:43] So he was very serious about it. But the truth is in most of my collaborations or hirings, I’ve not really done this. Actually. One of the exceptions is, is you mentioned when we created this podcast, you and I sat down and I think probably at your invitation, but also I was very happy to go through this.
[00:04:57] We really had several discussions where we talked about. What is the sort of editorial, it wasn’t just, how do we make money out of this? So that we did think about that, but it was more about what’s the, the brand, the look and feel, what are we not going to do? How do we want our podcast to stand out amongst other things?
[00:05:11] And we made several decisions that I think have really been very clear guidelines for us for the last couple of years. So that’s an example of how it should be done on, I think. Actually quite rare. And so there’s a lot of easy wins there if you actually remember to do it. I think,
[00:05:25] Jason: and I think with a team approach, you’ve got an opportunity when new team members come in.
[00:05:30] Cause usually what we’re doing as team builders is we’re looking for someone to fill a role in an area of the business that is deficient or not being managed, or, you know, we’re doing ourselves and we know we’re doing it ineffectively, and we want somebody to come alongside that. That’s a common. You know, situation, many entrepreneurs find themselves in.
[00:05:51] And I think it’s in that situation, you have a perfect setup to say to the new person, if you’ve hired them. Hey, you’re the expert in this space. We’re not doing it well right now, let’s, co-create this idea of how this should be done. Give us your best learnings and lessons from your prior work experience and your ideas.
[00:06:11] Let us explain from our side how things work in our business right now. And let’s, co-create a plan that goes forward that you can execute on. It’s really a per. Set up for that idea of having them be highly invested in the vision because they’ve helped create it. And as entrepreneurs, we can do that over and over and over as we scale up our, our business.
[00:06:32] And I, I think it’s a, there’s a lot of just very simple, you know, logic that you can apply there as opposed to saying to someone. Something along the lines of, I’m no expert and we’re managing this horribly right now. Nonetheless, let me tell you exactly what you’re supposed to do.
[00:06:53] Michael: I think this is, this is a very good point and this, I just want to put another nuance into this point because I think it depends who you’re hiring. If you’re hiring, for example, I’ve got a graphic designer that works very, very part-time with me, but she knows me in the brand by now. And. She’s an expert in graphic design.
[00:07:06] So if I bring her in, I expect her to be much better at graphic design than me, whereas I’ve just hired somebody to be a virtual assistant and sort of blended role of different things. One of which. There’s another point here. It sort of grew up his resume. Cause I’ve been wanting to develop some outbound marketing efforts for about a year and a half and just thought I’ve never got round to it.
[00:07:25] He has some outbound marketing experience, but he did make the point, which is entirely valid that he said, well, look, I will need a structure or he’d put it more or less this way, which was good managing up. Even in the hiring interview, which is one reason I hired him. You know, so in other words, he was making the point gently and diplomatically, but firmly that it’s up to me as the manager to manage it because I’m not hiring him with a pre-existing skillset as somebody who’s got loads of expertise, I’m hiring somebody who has a certain amount of experience in that area, but was not in a managerial role.
[00:07:54] If you see what I mean. So I think there are different levels of appropriateness of how much leadership from you people expect versus how much is a co-creation in the purest sense of.
[00:08:03] Jason: Yeah, totally, totally agree. Sure. Yep.
[00:08:07] Michael: So then the other question, I guess, less extreme than, than the, when people are behaving badly or in competently, when it’s going okay.
[00:08:15] But people aren’t really buying into your shared vision. How do you address that more subtle situation?
[00:08:19] Jason: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I, that’s a hard, that’s a hard question to answer. I would say there’s three situations or three, three paths that you have to explore when it’s just not working. And people aren’t executing, you know, clearly in the way you had envisioned and you feel like there’s a real miss misalignment or, or even worse when they’re clearly executing with their own intention and their own vision.
[00:08:46] That’s contrary to what you wanted to see happen. There’s three things that are happening there. One is you badly explained the. Or it hasn’t been co-created in such a way that, you know, they they’ve clearly not understood it and it may be the fault is with you as we’ve talked about second. So that’s one thing, second thing could be that they just aren’t the right people.
[00:09:09] And, they’re, they’re clearly not going to work with you in a way that’s co-creative and, and executing against the same plan or vision. So that’s the reality. They might just be a bad. And, but the third thing is the harder one. And that’s that you might just be going through the, the, kind of the, what people call the forming storming and norming kind of team building process where they’re new, you’re new to working with them.
[00:09:39] They’re not quite dialed in yet. And you have to go through this Rocky path. Where first you form as a group and then you storm, you know, kind of chaos or whatever, and then you get into the normal routine and you, you have to evaluate whether that’s what’s happening or not. And if it is where you’re at in that cycle, and how do you get through that patch where you, find your sea legs, I guess if you’re on a boat together and you can really start to work effectively together, that’s a really, really common scenario.
[00:10:10] And. And so I think that’s, it’s a hard thing for us to know as, as one of the leaders is, are, am I in that period with someone? And can we make this. Or is this the sign that they’re just not the right person or again, the sign that maybe I haven’t communicated effectively?
[00:10:24] Michael: Yeah, these are very, very thoughtful responses.
[00:10:26] The situation that I think often the default response is I’ve hired an idiot. How could he possibly not get it? And then to just fire that, there’s a phrase, which I think in America is very popular, which is hire slowly fire quickly. And I’m not really convinced. That’s always the case. I mean, I don’t think you should let somebody hang on longer than.
[00:10:41] Intuitively, no genuinely this ain’t working, but I think you’re right. That there is a, a period there’s a little bit of a honeymoon period. And then there’s the reality of, of the difficulties. And you need to, you know, I guess your judgment probably just gets better over time with, with telling the difference between this is just teething problems and versus this ain’t going to work, is it?
[00:10:58] I think that’s yeah. Yeah.
[00:10:59] Jason: Keep teething problems, I guess is a good way to phrase it. Yeah. It is hard to know. And I think over time you just get better at realizing you give it your best. You figure out, over time with experience, how best to approach people. And then, but sometimes you still get surprised and sometimes you get surprised by your own behavior and your own insecurity or, or limitations.
[00:11:22] And sometimes you get surprised by other people’s. And so the dose of humility, I think, is important there, but, but those are the crossroads that you’re at, you know, is it. Is it you, or is it just normal annual work? Just
[00:11:35] Michael: a couple of responses to your other points as well. The visions battle badly explained.
[00:11:40] I mean, I think it’s extremely common to have not switched a bad vision is to have earlier absence of one. You think you’ve got a vision, but it’s very unfocused and vague. And by the way, I interview, you know, obviously tons and tons of e-commerce entrepreneurs and, and SAS and agency owners. And most of them, I simply say, I’m not trying to test them, but I it’s a real asset test over time.
[00:11:58] I’ve noticed, I say so in one sentence, so I can introduce a clean leaf, the podcast. What is your business do. And then they come up with corporate stuff or they come up with something that’s way too long and vague. And that’s a real test. If you can’t explain what your business does in a sentence to a stranger, then you may have an issue.
[00:12:12] And that that’s okay to go through those phases. Sometimes the coach can really help with that or a branding expert if you really want to get deep diving. But I think having gone through a process like that before you talk to a team, or if it’s not looking clear to, to reiterate. And maybe privately sort with a coach or a fellow entrepreneur who’s not involved in your business and then go back and try and we articulate that can help, I think.
[00:12:33] And then at that point you may need to give the employee, as you said earlier, more or less implied the option that this is not what you thought it was, and you may need to give them the option to say this. This is not what I thought it was. It’s not what I want to stick around for.
[00:12:46] Jason: Yeah. Yeah. I think that happens as I’ve worked with people now for what, three and a half, four years one-on-one coaching.
[00:12:54] I think that happens what you just described because people see trainings about business model. And then they say to themselves, that’s a business model. I could take off the shelf from this guru or expert, and I could stall install into my life, my situation, my circumstance, and therefore I’m now operating a business model that got told to me, or explained to me, or taught to me.
[00:13:20] And, but usually they’ve tacked that on to other things and, and slices of other ideas and maybe, Frank and business. Has been created. And sometimes you see that in here that in people, when you ask them those kinds of details and you realize they haven’t really spent enough time with their baby to really realize how do I talk about this?
[00:13:49] Explain it, grow it, and, and manage it. And sometimes they’re big, you know, sometimes they’ve had seven figure successes that are. You know, and, and, and so it’s not as if they haven’t been successful, but they’ve still maybe not really fully stewed on their business model. And some of that’s just a function of time after running the same business model for over a decade, I can tell you we’ve thought a lot about it, but when you’re only, you know, 12 months into it, or, you know, 18 months into it, you still have fuzzy.
[00:14:20] Yeah. And what you’re doing and, and that’s par for the course, you know?
[00:14:23] Michael: Yeah. It is. I, I think it is par for the course, but I think also when you get to certain inflection points, if you hire a coach for the first time, if you hire a person you’re paying for the first time, what it does is force you to articulate things.
[00:14:34] And when you try and articulate things, sometimes. You realize you have no flipping idea. Like I had to add in terms of horror stories. I had a really, I thought I was quite proud of myself. I started to four in the morning. One day, I’m just working on, that’s not what I’m proud of myself, but I was working on really structured interview questions.
[00:14:49] I had my, outgoing, assistant who’s fantastic. Part of the interview process. And we had a chat debrief afterwards, I thought, oh, wow. That was so much better than two years ago. But then I was trying to explain some of the sort of outbound sales, ideas to this guy in a second interview where I was going to discuss fees and stuff.
[00:15:07] And, and it was all over the map. And I think. That was part of a rather painful and rather embarrassing way of me realizing that I have not formed my fault at all around the sales thing. And that’s okay. But it showed me where I’m at. I thought I was kind of mentally clocking myself as I’m sort of four out of 10 for clarity, but I was about one and a half out of 10 and that’s okay because now I need to go away and really train myself, take trainings, listen to.
[00:15:32] Podcasts, write things out, run it past clever friends, maybe including yourself, and then, then write it down. And, you know, there’s various processes that need to happen. And sometimes you don’t know, you’re not there until you try and explain it. So, you know, it’s part of their, the humidity piece again, isn’t it really?
[00:15:47] Well,
[00:15:48] Jason: the scarier point is. If you can’t effectively communicate your vision to your employees and paid team members, how in the world, can you communicate it to the world? A hundred
[00:15:59] Michael: percent? You’re absolutely right. Yeah. So I guess embarrassment in the hiring interviews is, is it can be quite embarrassing because it’s a one-to-one and they’re kind of looking you for leadership because that’s your job literally.
[00:16:12] And you’re not able to ride at that point, but as you say, the people out there. Don’t ever talk to you, don’t send you emails and don’t give you rude reviews on Amazon or anything else are just simply not buying your product or service because they’re confused and you’ll write it. It’s a really great reality check that could actually help you make a lot more money once you’ve got it nailed down.
[00:16:30] I think
[00:16:31] Jason: I’m not saying I’m good at this, but I’ll just tell you one example for, because of a deficit I saw in our own business, Kyle and I’s business, and that’s that, you know, we’re. The three or four or five things that we do, and we can communicate about any one of them at any given time. And I realized that it could be very disorienting to our, you know, email list subscribers or whatever.
[00:16:57] So I just wrote something probably nine months ago or so that I have at the bottom of our email that goes out every week. And it’s just called the company we’re building to serve you. And it has the four.
[00:17:13] To be that we are building a run and every newsletter. And I just keep it in there because as people join our list, maybe they’ve joined because we’ve done a special event. They get on our list and they’re like, I didn’t know, you had a SAS software set of tools. Maybe they joined because they had the SAS software set of tools.
[00:17:30] And they said, I didn’t know, you had group coaching or a group thing. And so my thinking was, I’ll just say exactly the company we’re building to serve. In every newsletter. So there’s no ambiguity and hopefully that helps people be oriented to what we call our SAS plus model, which is software plus education consulting and done for you services, which is a mouthful.
[00:17:55] I mean, just even saying it right there is that.
[00:18:01] Michael: I think you’re right. And the more complex your offering, I mean, what you’re offering as a sort of package totally makes sense. That is sort of progression possibilities, there, expansion possibilities for your clients. So it really served them better as well as giving you a chance to monetize relationships better and all the rest of it.
[00:18:16] But it is quite a strategic way of thinking, therefore it’s not quick and easy to communicate. So I think you’re absolutely right. The more complicated your offering is, the more clarity you have to have with everyone, and that includes marketing, but it very much another way of putting it. And I thought this as well, but is recruitment is a marketing function.
[00:18:32] In other words, you, you need to attract, sell into a vision and then keep sold into. Deepen that connection with the vision of your employees or contractors or team members, whatever we’re calling them. And yeah, that, that’s sometimes something, sometimes people do nail the marketing messaging externally, but they don’t really communicate that internally.
[00:18:52] And I think that that’s another disconnect that you can see right. Less common, but it’s still there, I think.
[00:18:56] Jason: Yeah. And obviously we’re applying all of these concepts. Components to the e-commerce business, kitchen table, entrepreneur and people who are scaling up companies and teams in e-commerce space.
[00:19:05] But this is all true. And I, in my other with my other hats on, I think about how this applies to our charity, where we have volunteers all around the world and we have a team in Zambia of 63 people. We wrote a book, again, 2016 initially, and then we re released it in 2000. 19 to early 2020, and it’s called, we are so powerful and it’s our story, but it’s also the whole middle of the book is about 50 stories of our volunteers and their expression of collaboration and partnership with, with our charity and, where we’re reworking that book right now for the third edition.
[00:19:43] And that to me is the center. Content of that book is, is their stories. And, and when you hear them explain their vision and their story, Related to what, you know, the organization that you’re running and working on. It’s very, very fascinating. Cause you hear people articulate things back to you that, you know, sometimes it’s what you had said.
[00:20:05] Sometimes it’s what they heard. Sometimes. It’s what you emphasize. Sometimes it’s something you casually mentioned, but it’s a way in which you hear them, re articulate a shared vision and it’s just fascinating. And it makes you realize that communication is incredibly challenging. But when done well, or when worked on it can be incredibly powerful.
[00:20:26] Yeah,
[00:20:27] Michael: I think you’re right. And what you said, a couple of fascinating things, and by the way, all these things, you get to communicate internally. But I think our prospects and clients or customers also thinking similar things, but we often never hear from them. And that is the thing. The feature you thought was just a little extra for somebody can be the single most important thing for them.
[00:20:45] And yeah. Way of putting things that you hadn’t thought that much about, but you had to put a little bit of thought was really emotionally important to them. So those are two sort of responses that I think are quite cyclical. And it’s a reminder that communication there’s all sorts of academic theories, right?
[00:20:58] But it’s not just what you say. The broadcast bit is what’s received is often violently there for like completely different. And we’re talking with native language speakers, you know, it can really be there for, and our husbands and wives are for. Plays where that can happen, but also within a team. And it’s good against the humility point.
[00:21:15] If you’ve got the patience to explore, when I said X, what did you understand by that? And listen to the answer. And instead of telling them off, because that will not induce future content communication, and I have to restrain myself there and I’d think, oh, okay. So what I meant was Zed. And then. You know, you can correct course to the point of, is this just forming storming norming?
[00:21:36] I think you can’t really tell if you haven’t put, put proper communications in and at least check things you can’t really tell yet whether they’re the right fit or whether it’s just terrible management. And I would say that having a frequent meeting rhythms is really something I’ve been naturally weak on.
[00:21:49] And I’m really trying to get myself back on track with that, because I think without that, I don’t have, I have the right to expect to, and I’m not talking about so, so much, you know, a small collaboration, like of a highest similar five or a one-off project for a little bit of a graphic design work. But if I’ve got a regular employee or it’s a big project, like a website redesign, if I don’t make time for regular meetings, even if theoretically that you’ve communicated the facts, I, that contact, isn’t there, the top of mindness of you and your project, isn’t there, the connection isn’t there.
[00:22:18] And my experience is particularly with remote working that. I think I need to default to more meetings is better than too few. If am I going to err, on the side these days?
[00:22:29] Jason: Yeah, totally agree. I mean, I think the frequency of communication is a key part of getting the vision clear in both, both parties, minds, all parties, minds.
[00:22:38] Yeah, absolutely. All right, man, we better wrap up the show. My internet is decided to kit quit on me here. So. You, you want to wrap it up here? You want me to, what do you want to do?
[00:22:47] Michael: Yeah. Why don’t you just summarize your thoughts? So it’s mostly been your, your sort of stuff on the shared vision. Why don’t we, summarize what we’ve got today?
[00:22:54] Jason: Yep. Happy to do it. So bottom line creating a shared vision looks like casting, whether it’s co-created with the person you’re working with as a team or group together, casting something effective that strategic logical inspiring. Mutually beneficial and achievable the acronym Sliema, which I know is going to be super popular.
[00:23:16] It’s going to trend on Twitter. So just remember to tag me when that happens. And, we really, really encourage you to think about whether your, vision is being COVID. And effectively communicated and hopefully this conversation has helped, make that a reality for you. So there you have it, a little bit of a best practice and tips for how to create.
[00:23:38] A shared vision.
[00:23:40] Michael: We like this stuff, man. This is great topic. Under-discussed I think compared to how impactful it is. So hopefully those who are listening will find the same. Thanks so much. If you’ve joined us live today and don’t forget to put your comments and questions, we’ll look at them after the show as well.
[00:23:52] I promise. And the other thing of course is that all of this is, has been put through all the podcast channels. Usual places. Don’t forget to subscribe if you’re enjoying this so that you get regular content. If you can give us a. A rating out of five stars on apple podcasts. That’s always really, really helpful.
[00:24:09] And also in the calling app these days, very cutting edge, bit of technology that we are on every Tuesday. I’m just trying to get the times incubation says 8:00 AM Pacific, 11:00 AM Eastern and 4:00 PM. UK time or 5:00 PM central European time. So come and join us there for a hot takes with Chris green and Kyle Haimer as well.
[00:24:26] So lots of places you can reach us. It’s all exciting stuff. W we’re spreading the word, the best presence practice. And, Jason has always just want to finish by saying it’s, it’s just such a privilege to talk to somebody who thinks things through at this level. And I think that’s going to help everybody’s run their businesses that much more effectively as well.
[00:24:44] Jason: Thank you, man. Great conversation. Really enjoyed it.
[00:24:46] That was the e-commerce leader podcast with Michael VZ in London, England, and Jason Miles in Seattle, Washington. If you liked this content, don’t forget to subscribe to the show on your podcast. App. Feel free resources, including PDFs, videos on topics like traffic products and sales channel. Just go to www dot the e-commerce leader.com.
[00:25:11] No hyphens, just as it sound Thanks so much for listening.