Sales Teams Don’t Need Pep Talks—They Need Clarity

If your sales team is missing targets, working harder than ever, and still feeling misaligned… the problem isn’t motivation. It’s clarity.

In this episode of Elements of Culture with CRO, Bill Dwoinen, we unpack why sales performance has far less to do with hype, “rah-rah” leadership, or motivational speeches—and everything to do with direction, expectations, communication, and support.

We explore what high-performing sales cultures actually look like, the leadership habits that build (or break) trust, and why accountability only works when teams know exactly where they’re going and how success is measured.

Whether you lead a sales org, run revenue operations, or want to create a team that performs without burnout, this conversation delivers the practical insights today’s sales leaders need.

You’ll learn:

• Why pep talks don’t fix structural problems
• How clarity increases performance across remote + hybrid teams
• The 3 pillars of modern sales leadership
• Why accountability falls apart without support
• How to create a culture where expectations, communication, and results stay aligned

Join us weekly as we dig into the real stories behind work culture transformation.

Not theory. Not fluff. Just honest conversations with leaders and innovators who've been in the trenches.

Transcript

Accountability Needs Support

Speaker 2 0:00

So accountability without support is just it's it's not healthy. And that's when you start to really lose people and people operate from a place of fear. Is I do think that successful people have the right level of paranoia. I think you have to have it. Um, you know, especially in you sign up in a sales culture for just, you know, there's a scoreboard and there always has been. But I I think where leaders have gotten better or any advice to new leaders is you can't have one without the other, is that it has to be transparency, direction, accountability, and support. Otherwise, you're just a yeller.

Speaker 1 0:32

At Elements of Culture, we sit down with experts in leadership and team building to explore the DNA that drives a thriving organization. Hey everyone, and welcome back to Elements of Culture. My name is Taryn, and I'm joined with my co-host Julie. And today we are talking with Bill DeWinen. He is the Chief Revenue Officer at Neural, which is a team collaboration uh workspace that's kind of visually driven. And uh, Bill, we just want to welcome you to the show.

Speaker 2 0:59

Yeah, thank you very much for having me. I've been looking forward to this all week and uh excited for the conversation.

Career Path And Sales Philosophy

Speaker 1 1:03

Absolutely. Well, thanks for jumping on with us. I know we're gonna talk about a number of things and uh just excited about it. I know leadership and sales strategy and all those different things are uh just areas of your expertise. But before we do that, um tell us a little bit about your background personally, Bill. How what's kind of led you to uh the position you're at now with with uh Mural?

Speaker 2 1:27

Yeah, it's a it's a great opener. I always appreciate the introduction question because I do always I'm like very proud and very grateful for the blended experience of my career. And so currently, you know, chief revenue officer at Mural, I've been here for less than a year where I oversee our revenue, customer success solutions, rev ops, and enablement teams. Prior, and we were kind of talking about this on the onset, is I, you know, I grew up at one of the first kind of job boards out there, uh, careerbuilder.com, kind of funny when you think about the dot com name on it. And then um I transitioned to LinkedIn, which was such a great experience, and then um spent the last five years uh before Mural at Slack and Salesforce um leading teams and kind of a blended experience of I always felt it valuable to like at Slack. I, you know, spent some time as an IFC because I thought it was a great way to just learn how to talk about the product and learn how to talk to you know what customers care about, and then you know, went into leadership. And so, you know, always leading high performance teams and um beyond grateful for the the experiences I've gained from uh those three main companies I've worked at.

Speaker 1 2:31

That that's amazing. It sounds like you know, you've really gotten to be a part of some really kind of staple companies when we think about uh the culture, especially when it comes to like workspaces. And, you know, I think that's so cool. So you do bring some unique experience there.

Collaboration Tools And Culture Shift

Speaker 2 2:46

Yeah, it's it's it's great. And also, I mean, we we think about a lot just how things have evolved, whether it's in the, you know, I've been in the collaboration space now for almost six years, just you know, thinking back to my first cold call in 2006 that was, you know, advertise online because people see your jobs quicker and where we are today with AI infused everywhere and automation, and just um, I think we're kind of at this next chapter of settling into the way teams are working. And so it's been a really fun space to be a part of. And collaboration, the role of collaboration tools has played a significant role in the last five or six years, but specifically this evolution from being so critical when one day most people went home, especially, you know, office workers and and you know, uh, white-collar employees. And then now I think we're settling into the way we want to work going forward. And they play a key role, but maybe a little bit different, where there's almost this panic of like, oh, wait, we don't really have an effective way to work disconnected, you know, how do we do it? And so it's really been fun to see how the space has evolved, like the impact we can make on customers and obviously what it means for your leadership and you know, your leadership style and your overall sales strategy when it comes to, you know, running a business.

Speaker 3:57

So, Bill, let's talk a little bit about collaboration because I feel like we've evolved in that area, but because of the collaboration and the way the platforms have evolved, I feel like leadership has evolved as well. Talk to me a little about what you've seen over the years of how leadership has changed and has this collaboration really helped in creating a healthier culture within teams.

Defining How Teams Communicate

Speaker 2 4:20

Yeah, so it's a it's a powerful question. And I think there's I I hate giving that there's two answers, um, but but there really is. And so I do think that collaboration as a whole has always been happening, right? But there's always been parts that have been broken. You know, I've been in sales now for almost 20 years, over 20 years. Wow, um, weird to say out loud. But uh, you know, there's always been like, oh, teams are disconnected, how do you bring them together? And so whether it was like email or in person or in the office, is there was always kind of this challenge of how do we work better together? And so the power of collaboration tools overall or just better collaboration is that I do think it can help bring organizations together is you can feel the culture of mural if you're a new employee and you see, you know, all the things we celebrate in our channels, or how transparently our leadership team communicates. And it becomes this mechanism where we are so transparent, where I'll do kind of a monthly top of mind, our CEO does a monthly top of mind, like you know, we're transparent around what's happening in the business. And so the level of transparency that it brings. Now, on the other side of that, I think where leaders have to be really careful is ensuring they define how they want to collaborate as an organization. And I'm kind of on this kick of, you know, bringing a bringing synchronous collaboration back because the challenge with all these different places you can collaborate is I'm guilty of this too, of like, hey, did you see that email? Or did you see that um, you know, maybe 40 years ago, it was like, hey, I sent you a fax, and then it was, oh, I emailed you, and now it's like 30 things. It's like, oh, I slacked you, or I emailed you, or I um texted you, or I WhatsApped you, or I, you know, teams you, or whatever it is. And so I think what we're learning is that we owe it to our teams to set clear expectations on the way in which we want to communicate, that places like Slack and Teams are great for automation, great for workflows, great for transparency, but not the place we want to start triaging things or not the place to um, you know, share things that shouldn't be shared. And so I think more clarity there. And then also the thing you have to be careful of, and not, you know, I always say I my my one of my core leadership principles is starting from a place of trust. And you want to, you know, start from a place of trust that employees are working, they're working well, you give them direction, but you almost have to be careful. I think they make like mouse pads that um automatically move every 30 minutes so you can look active on teams. And I'm like, wait, that's that's what they do. Like, I'm raising a kid in this society where they they sell things like that. And so you just have to be careful of that false positive of, like, you know, I'm I'm active in these channels and I'm being productive. And so, um, but back to kind of the more serious tone of I think you just have to give your teams clarity on the way in which you want to communicate, um, the mechanism that the tools play, but also, I mean, clarity is best. Like, I am so big on bringing back synchronous work and just going back to confirming that we're all aligned because um I know when we think about not to transition kind of far away from that, I don't I I have been blessed in my career to be surrounded by people with these like infectious work ethics that just make you want to run through a wall. Burnout, and they have this stamina that is like unbelievable. Where burnout comes in is when there's lack of alignment, lack of progress, um, not feeling supported. And that's where you have to really be careful.

Speaker 7:40

Bill, it's funny because 20 years ago, collaboration was having getting rid of the cubicles and having an integrated space. And for the introvert in me, all it created was noise. Uh and I don't know if it was the most beneficial thing. So I'm grateful for the platforms because I think um the information that needs to be shared is shared. Um I remember that uh time when all the walls came down. I was like, what's happening? Um and so I I think it's it's a testament to um better collaboration. And I think I think what you said about being aligned is so important. I think we lose people with misalignment. Um, we lose them with the vision of what we're actually trying to do. And so I think the clarity that comes with communicating that is so important.

Action Over Meetings And Burnout

Speaker 2 8:31

Yeah, it's I while I'm laughing about the whole more um moving away from the office space, like the movie office space, like the cubes, to the more collaborative spaces. And yeah, you know, I do think that there's a role. Like I almost look at some of the tools that are out there as kind of this like system of information, right? Where I can take more, you know, I can update stuff in Salesforce, or I can put more kind of live information in a Slack channel or Teams channel, whatever that may be. I also think like what we're trying to do is, you know, what's the saying, like eat your own dogs, whatever it is. Like we're we're using mural to really bring a more collaborative approach to our sales cycles, right? Even with our teams being sales CS solutions, maybe five or six different teams working with customers, is we see there's an opportunity to create a more collaborative experience there. So action is surface better, so that you know everyone kind of can work in the same place. And I always laugh about um, you know, my time at Slack and Salesforce was so special. I always say I got my you know PhD in sales there, and I would not be in this role if it wasn't for my time there. But I would laugh, I could be on these big deal motions and there'd be information living in 15 different places. It was like Quip, Canvas, Google Doc, text messages, Slack channels, team channels. Like, where do I go? Like I'm so confused. And also teams would would um, I I'm kind of I say it a lot, but like collaboration is not the problem. I think we meet a lot, like we have a lot of great meetings, and I think what happens is let's say you have a meeting about account X, and there's a big meeting in 30 days or 90 days, whatever it is, and everyone's like, okay, we want to, we have a this deal, we're working on it. So I'm so okay, great, all sounds good. And then everyone goes like that, and they're working individually versus this more collaborative approach of kind of we want to create, like what we're trying to do is just remove these moments in time of the sales process and just creating a more streamlined approach throughout. And what does that do? It's way more pleasant for the customers. Like, customers don't get like it's a very natural thing if sales teams turn over, people get promoted, where customers get annoyed is it always starts over. Like, I'm your new rep, tell me everything because they can't find anything anywhere. And so um, kind of like looking at our teams at hey, how do we bring this more collaborative selling approach? How do we surface action? And how do we make it clear that if a team jumps in halfway through a deal, they're up to speed, or if an account changes hands, how do we make it seamless for the customer or make it without less meetings? And so we if you look at collaborating in a way, it has to be in a way that still calls out action versus like, I mean, I'm sure you've all been on calls before. When you're like, okay, we talked for 45 minutes, but who's doing what next and where is it going to be and by when? Like that's when burnout happens, is when that is the norm.

Leading Remote Teams Inclusively

Speaker 1 11:16

Yeah, that's so good. I love that we're talking about collaboration because I think some of the pain points that we see with teams is where there's lack of collaboration, there's lack of clarity. And I think, like you said, it does lead to burnout. I think also it creates instability for the for the team for the employees, and you have them questioning, you know, like whether or not they're really making an impact in their role, whether or not their leaders actually believe that there's they're capable in their role. And so all these questions start coming up when there's lack of clarity. I want to switch gears just a little bit, but along the same vein too, Bill, like when you're talking about collaboration, obviously remote teams, remote work, things look so drastically different than the cubicle days that Julie was referring to. And, you know, what we used to, when we come together and collaborate, now it looks different. And with technology, with AI, it brings teams closer together where you're interacting oftentimes with folks that are in a completely different time zone, another country, another continent. Speaking from your experience, whether it's at your current role or just what you're seeing in the industry, Bill, like how how can teams collaborate more effectively when it's with remote teams? And then the second part of that would be how do leaders effectively lead well in the collaboration space with remote teams?

Expectations, Measurement, And Belonging

Speaker 2 12:37

Yeah. So it's um, you know, leading with remote teams was a new thing for me at LinkedIn, you know, before the pandemic, I had a team of 12 people spread out across NYC, San Francisco, and then Chicago, where I was kind of going bouncing around every week. I was like home for a week, then SF for a week, NYC for a week, and kind of just making my rounds. And so it was it was the first experience with like, okay, how do I create this productive environment where it's not um, you know, we're all here or we have our team meeting, but then also for me, I'm a big culture person. And I do think that there's like a few aspects of culture. You know, my dad coached college baseball forever, and he always said, like, there's never a losing team with a great culture. And so I think that culture starts with like the right people, setting a you know, a culture of you know, great expectations and a winning attitude, but then also having some fun along the way. And so you also think about it from a cultural component that I can't take people to lunch once a week, or how do the teams meet? And so when you think about just leading, you know, I would say kind of um disconnected teams in a way of like not in the same place, you really have to double down on things like being completely transparent. And the second thing is being inclusive. And it's hard sometimes. Like I have leaders in Ireland, I have leaders in San Francisco, and you try to do off-sites when you're like, oh, I don't feel right doing this because half the team's here, half's not here. It's 5 a.m. in SF, it's like, you know, 10 p.m. in Sydney, whatever that may be. And so you want to start from a place of making sure that it's a very inclusive culture, whether it's how you schedule meetings, how you formulate opinions, because you can't you can't host a call where you're making decisions and half the team is there, right? And so you have to think about those sorts of things. And then how do you make it in a way where you can still create this collaborative environment? I mean, I would like to think that half of my team calls are the team talking. And, you know, so how do you create these environments where they have space to share learning, share what's top of mind, um, share what they're doing? And then even clearer is going to be, and this is like the the part that people like to avoid sometimes about leadership is just clear expectations and accountability. And going back to what I said earlier is like, you know, I've had the privilege of working with such great people and hiring great people. We have great teams here, and so you never have to worry about like, are they working? But you really have to make sure that you're like giving clear direction on roles and responsibilities and expectations, and you're measuring them and you're talking about them all the time. And so, um, and a lot of times if people aren't thinking that it's because they feel disconnected. You know, they feel just they don't feel like they're a part of something. And sometimes you have people leave. Um, our culture may have been a bit too remote. And we made some tweaks to that, where we actually hired a few more folks in the APAC region to make a kind of a pod where they can all work together, where versus someone kind of being like, hey, I'm working everyone else's hours, I'm not feeling this way. Like we're not a 40,000-person company where we have offices in every single, you know, hot spot for you know different countries, where we have to get creative with headcount while making sure people feel connected. And so a lot of it is making sure you give clarity around expectations and measurement, making sure you really create an inclusive culture where everyone feels like they have a voice and they play a role. And you have to try to balance, right? Like what I try to do is balance, like with my leadership, my direct team meeting uh every week, it almost like take turns where like maybe one month or every two weeks, it's might be a little bit later for the AMIA folks, where you know it might be a little bit earlier, a few weeks later for the SF folks. And so you just really try to balance it out, but you want to pull people in. And so that's I think what you have to think about in this space. I I and maybe it's maybe it's overemphasized because I came from the collaboration space. There's the danger of async work, and I'm guilty of this. Like the folks, my West Coast team, they probably wake up with like nine things from me, like updates, or because I wake up at like four in the morning, right? I'm doing I'm doing work from like four to seven a.m. before um we get our little guy going. And so you, you know, you appreciate things like scheduling messages, or you know, try to do kind of mindful of things like that and and not doing that. And so even for me, I I feel like it's challenging because you almost have to default to asynchronous updates, which is overwhelming because it's, you know, there's great features to summarize things and you know, AI everywhere, but it gets really hard with flow of information, then you find yourself starting sentences with, well, I sent you an email or I sent you the Teams. And I'm I'm really trying to catch myself to not do that as much in really starting to do more kind of like I had this leader at Career Builder that was amazing. And one of the things I learned is like the best sales leaders are almost annoying, which is funny to say, but even just like calls all the time, like, how's it going? What can I help with? Like, I'm trying to bring more of that back, where in the morning maybe it's like a daily stand-up versus here are 10, you know, emails or end of the day stand-ups. And so, how do you think about meeting people kind of where they are versus just doing a dump of information because I wake up earlier, so on and so forth. And so being mindful of that is also super critical.

Accountability With Compassion

Speaker 17:48

So, Bill, you talked about accountability and expectation and communicating that clearly. And so um, for people who've been in this that space for a long period of time, um, those used to be words for getting chewed out back in the day in the sales on the sales teeth. Somebody says this isn't, you know, this is expectations and accountability. I was expecting to get chewed out by something. Talk to me how we've changed that because we're I see there's such an intentionality by leaders right now to build such healthy, transparent, authentic workspaces. What are you doing practically on a day-to-day to set clear expectations? You said you're talking about the numbers, you're talking about the expectations of accountability. Talk to me about what that looks like and what you how your team is receiving that.

Transparency In Practice

Speaker 2 18:32

Yeah, so it's um, it's a it's a powerful question. And it's this kind of I hate using the phrase inflection point, but it it really is. And and so I I think first what you have to do is take a step back. And when I when I think about my transformation as a person, as a leader, um, as a seller, like throughout my career, I look at my time at Career Builder and what that taught you was like grit, hustle, you know, 150% year to date's not enough, right? Like it was this, and you I needed that for that phase in my career and just the pace. And it was like uh we used to always joke we're a bunch of like hardworking C students, right? Like people just had this like crazy grip. What was missing is what I got at LinkedIn was this super thoughtful, strategic approach to everything. And that you can be both, like you can be compassionate and hold people accountable. It doesn't have to be one or the other. And so that is a big part of it. Then I got to Salesforce, and Salesforce was like next level execution and accountability, but people wanted it. People in that culture expected nothing less than to be held accountable. And I think what is exciting about where we are today is I would like to hope and think that most leaders are going to find this middle of the amazing compassion we showed during the pandemic when people were, you know, dealing with so much, right? They it was it was so much beyond work and how companies cared for their employees was next level. And now we're back to this like, hey, we now all have numbers to hit, and you can do both. Like you can still remote culture. Like, I don't need people to tell me they need an hour during the day to go, you know, to their child's play or to go for a run. I don't need to be told that because I trust my employees or my, you know, my my coworkers. But I think it's more of this whole point of like, it's we shouldn't be afraid to say performance-based culture. We shouldn't be afraid to say we're gonna hold people accountable. It's the way in which you do it. And so that anecdotal story leads me to what I think is most important is the first thing I do each year, the first thing I did here was walk the teams through like my leadership principles, which were communication, trust and transparency, collective responsibility, and executing on the controllables. And so that kind of sets this tone of how we're gonna operate. And, you know, there's a lesson I learned from my father, who was this amazing coach and leader. He was a um, he worked at a park district, so he didn't have like a leadership background, but people operated so well when they played for him because they always had direction, they always knew where they stood, and they felt supported. And so I think what we've gotten away from is that people need that. Like I'm on this kick of just, I'm still on this learning journey at mural. And if there's one clear thing that I've realized, it's just we owe people more. We owe them more transparency, we owe them more direction, we owe them more clarity on how many meetings should they be running the month, or how many, you know, how much pipeline should they be generating, or how much should they be traveling. And so I am a firm believer that people operate better with that level of transparency. But Julie, people forget the second part. And that's what separates leaders is accountability and support. I'm gonna hold you accountable and I'm gonna help you. When it feels like I'm just getting in trouble all the time, it's like, okay, like sales, you know, sales reps are not like they're they're very um prideful people. They're not gonna come to you and say, Julie, I'm having a hard time. I need help getting meetings, right? I'm just, I'm not like I'm on my toes a bit. Help me. And so if you don't do both, that is not great for culture. But if you do both, I think people respond differently where they know what's expected of them, but you're gonna help them. And so I'll give you an example of like, okay, hey, we lost this deal or you missed your number. Let's like get on a call. Let's go through your accounts, let's go through your deals. You know, who could I reach out to? Like, how can I help you? So accountability without support is just it's it's not healthy. And that's when you start to really lose people and people operate from a place of fear. Is I do think that successful people have the right level of paranoia. I think you have to have it. Um, you know, especially in you sign up in a sales culture for just, you know, there's a scoreboard and there always has been. But I think where leaders have gotten better or any advice to new leaders is you can't have one without the other, is that it has to be transparency, direction, accountability, and support. Otherwise, you're just a yeller. You're just that parent that yells all the time.

Living Your Leadership Principles

Speaker 1 23:10

That's so good, Bill. And I think what that does, you you're you kind of touched on being a parent. I think what that does is it creates the sense of safety, right, for the employee, um, a space where they can grow, where they can thrive, where they can be accepted if they're struggling and be supported through the process. And I think that it does create a sense of safety for the employee and as a team. Um, talking about culture and creating that uh type of culture, I feel like, you know, with corporate culture, we're kind of shifting away from this, like, you know, apparent yelling, so to speak, or like Julie said, getting chewed out. I feel like the culture and the way that we communicate is shifting. Um, and you're seeing more leaders, we're talking to many more leaders that have this um desire to have more of a transparent, focused type of leadership and leading with compassion and leading and seeing the individual through their struggles, through their successes, and really supporting them along the way. What would you say in your experience, Bill, like through the different places that you've been, you know, kind of exposed to where you've earned your PhD? What are some key ways that, you know, if if there's a leader out there who's listening, is like, I really want to see some of these shifts in my own culture, in my own workplace. What are some like tangible ways that they can, you know, really try to make some of that impact happen?

AI At Work: Intentional Adoption

Speaker 2 24:38

Yeah, it's uh the shift in culture. I I think your point is spot on. I also think there's been a move away from the like we are family culture thing of like, okay, we can all get along and care for each other, but like it's a career, right? Like we're not, I mean, I think you saw that a lot during the tech layoffs, is I think the companies that were like, well, we're a family, but it's like, well, we're really not, because it's like we're business and that's okay, right? It's okay to say that, right? So I think people have gotten away from this blend of like, of course we care for our employees, but you know, this is this is work. We want this to be a pleasant uh a pleasant place. And so the transparency part is critical. And so whether you're a frontline leader, whether you're CRO, whether you're an SVP, no matter what org you're in, like I do a first day of the month, October, top of mind. And usually it doesn't change. It doesn't change month over month. Um, or even communicating out, you know, we get into a cadence where it's like last month of the quarter. So the first week, here's how many deals we have. Second week, it's twice a week. Third week, it's four times a week. End of the week, it's like every hour how many deals we have. And so this concept of transparency, whether it's around what you're focused on, what the KPIs are, or even what's going on in the business, like you couldn't get over the impact of that level of transparency around just the number of deals and the excitement. Like we did it for the first time a few months ago when we closed Q2. It was amazing. It was like getting thank you notes from legal, of like we had no idea, getting thank you notes from deal desk, getting notes from people being like, I don't even have a deal and this is amazing, and I feel like I'm connected, right? Like these really minimal things. And it goes back to this power of collaboration tools and transparency. And so it could be strategic things, it could be top of mind things, it could be um, you know, things like what's happening in the business. And so the transparency part is super critical. And I can't, again, going back to like IC or CRO, like there's some, if I'm leading ICs or CRO, there's fundamental concepts I'm doing that are the same. And so for me, there's not many things I don't pull my leaders into. And so that they're not involved in. And so if we're planning for next year, yeah, they should be a part of that. Or if we're thinking about org structure, they should be a part of that. Or if we're trying to figure out how to define roles and responsibilities or how we want to forecast, they should be a part of that. There's also a danger of like, you do have to be clear on sometimes things are going to be a certain way and that's it. You know, sometimes it's like, this is what it is, like these are our forecasting notes, these are our expectations. It's really not up for conversation. But then there's things where like, hey, let's all figure this out together. And it it is, it is not only made them feel more connected to the business. It's been super helpful to me because I am a very passionate Gemini and I get my mind made up sometimes. And it's good to have people that are very comfortable. I hate saying challenging me, because it's not it. It's like they're bringing a different point of view. And so, like, how do you pull people in? And then, you know, I would urge any leader out there or anyone that is thinking about being a leader is take a step back and just think about what are your leadership principles? You know, have you ever thought about that? I never did. It was until someone pointed out to me four or five years ago that I started to think about that. And then that should be what sets you free to then do the thing. So I want to build a culture of trust where um my my mentor, old boss from Salesforce, said this, and I'll I'll always repeat it. It was um good news flies fast, bad news flies faster. And so you want to create a culture that, like, hey, you can call me and tell me something went wrong, that's okay, but you have to like build this trust where people feel like they can do that, or they feel like they can make a mistake and you'll have their back, or they can go create friction with a customer negotiating and you have their back. And that takes time. That's not like one single post. That's not, it's it's it's leading from the front and displaying that every day. It's not saying it, it's not putting in the presentation, it's not throwing it in a LinkedIn post. It is, I'm going to live this every day. And so when you call me with bad news, I'm gonna turn it into a coachable moment. I'm gonna thank you. I'm going to do these things. If you, you know, frustrate someone doing, you know, frustrate a customer, which we never want to do, but you have to balance, you know, parts of your job, like reaching out to users or reaching out to CIOs, whatever that is. Like you have their back and say, good job, you went for it, and that's okay. And so those are things that, you know, the whole like trust is consistency over time. You can't just throw it in the deck, you have to live it. And so I I think for me, it's just transparency to kind of net it out of like transparency, pulling your team in, figuring out what your core values are and leading from the front and just showing it because it's a shift. It is not, you're not gonna see it in a day, but in a week, in two weeks, in three weeks, and not that let me be clear. I don't want calls just on bad news, but I don't want people to stare at their phone and be like, I don't want to make this phone call. Because I've been there and that's awful. It's hard enough to like lose a deal or do X, Y, and Z, and then that pressure. Or I don't want it to be like a midnight Slack post or you know, email that something happened. And so it's just how you live it and how you talk about it. And just it goes back to that funny saying of the best sales leaders are annoying. It's like you really talk about the same stuff every day, so it becomes confusing. Just in.

Native AI And Customer Expectations

Speaker 1 30:00

Yeah, that's so good. I think, you know, the you really have to live it out, right? It's not just like you you said something that kind of caught my attention specifically. Don't just put it in the presentation. Yeah. I think sometimes with like company culture, company meetings and updates, they'll put all the language in a presentation, but they're not actually living that out. And so, which creates this, you know, sense of, I don't know, that there's a lack of trust, right? From the team. And so you really, I think you really hit that um head on is you have to live it out, I think, as leaders. Um, I want to shift gears just a little bit, Bill. And because you're in this collaboration space, you're in this tech space with teams, um, your team, but also with clients as well. How do you let's talk about AI a little bit? I know you mentioned you brought it up earlier, just briefly, but we're seeing, you know, AI is shifting things so quickly. So we're talking about culture shifts, but let's talk about the tech shift as well, because AI is certainly impacting our our day-to-day lives as individuals. You know, we were just talking with someone recently. You can just throw a prompt real quick in Chat GPT and have a whole plan for anything or a plan for a client, but specifically on the way that we support customers. How do you see, you know, AI changing the culture, our work culture, but as well as solutions for clients? What's that going to look like in the next two or three years?

Culture Of Learning: Mistake Vs Error

Speaker 2 31:24

Yeah. So I'll actually break it down into two buckets. And I, you, you have no idea how many times I've said, how did people raise kids without Chat GPT? Because my my prompts used to be like best places to travel, you know, in September. And now it's like, could you take a baby outside when it's 102 degrees outside? And so it's it's been amazing, right? Um, but when you when you look at AI in the workplace in for customers, we'll break it down into two buckets. So the first bucket goes into the themes that we talked about today, is uh internally. I think what you're seeing now was the lack of transparency and lack of direction. Have companies at this impasse of like, well, we bought all this stuff and we're not using it, or our employees are afraid of it because we didn't give them direction. But like we there's there's been in my lifetime, there's been a few moments in time that it forced you to just move fast. And that's okay, right? Like when people realized mobile wasn't going away, there was like, oh my gosh, we have to build out a mobile career site, we have to revamp the way we advertise. But that took like 20 years. I need to learn the exact stats. That it took the internet like 30 years to get as many users as Chat CPT had in one day. And so with the internet and mobile, it was like this slow, there wasn't this like super bowl for those that don't know what it is. It's like the big game where you can win the ring, right? It's like this moment in time, it's like a big celebration. I tried to bring sports analogies in, so I want to always clarify them. And so that was like this slow, steady fight of like, okay, we don't believe in mobile yet, but we're gonna try. Then it was like, oh no, we have to go. With AI, it was like, okay, yeah, we really have to go. But what was missing was what to use, how to use it, when to use it, how to use it, responsibility, clarity on the vision for AI, the amount of fear people have. You know, there's like two schools of thought, and I get it. There's like the CEO of Anthropic that comes out and says, Well, there's gonna be 50% unemployment in three years. Well, that's that's that's scary for all of us, right? Uh, there'll be an usher at Wrigley Field if that happens. My my dream once I'm done working. But then there's the the whole thought of this augmentation of work. And that's where we're really focused on is how do we actually complement the works our team or the work our team is doing, especially around repetitive tasks. And we did something really cool, mural. We did this AI talent show, which instead of an all hands, we had employees come present ideas to incorporate AI into our workflows. The feedback was amazing. It was like best all hands ever. Thank you. Like, what a great example. And so, my advice and what we're doing is be super intentional about what you're doing and why you're doing it. Pull people along and don't have AI for the sake of AI. And what I love about it is someone that is like a nerd about like watching financial news and reading 10Ks and being on earnings calls. Um, we just did this activation or like sales enablement around like breaking into the sales ICP. And instead of this like month-long training and three-month-long training, it was like, here are the five GPT prompts to sound like a pro. And you put them in, you're like, wow. So it was like, what does Julie Incorporated, you know, what does what does Julie Incorporated revenue leaders care about? And how would a collaboration tool help? So you can form this point of view in like seconds, right? Then you can go make the cold call, you can go write the email versus being like, I need to sit on earnings calls for 12 hours. And so I see it bringing such great efficiencies to our account teams and also our customer experience on the website, where now we have a conversational interface where you can actually book a meeting now and like just incorporating it there. And so that's like the internal answer at a high level. Just be thoughtful, be specific, be clear, bring your employees along and think about what are the repetitive tasks we can automate. And then how does it augment the work people are doing? Then let's go to the bigger conversation, which is like customer expectations for AI, is the belief is it should be native, it should be included, it should be normal. I think where some kind of tools uh have, I don't want to say tools in general, I don't want to generalize the statement, but I do think a lot of when AI first came out, um, tools in the collaboration space or any type of a solution out there was like, we're gonna monetize this and charge for it within our core product. And CIOs were like, no, you're not. Um, you know, they got together and they're like, hey, this should be native. Like you should be building, like, we would rather see a 5% uplift in what you charge us and innovation in the product than you charging us a separate SKU for things that should be native. And so um, there's there's a really strong push of just building AI everywhere, but it being native in tools and making sure your customers are along with the journey. We have seen amazing results uh from AI within Mural, right? If you're not too familiar with the tool, is like Mural, you can get into some really like journey maps and you know, customer experience maps or even just a lot of legacy information, but AI summaries or even a chat bot will help you figure out what to do is that you know, people are saving hundreds of hours across teams a month to go do high payoff activities. It could be you leave work early, it could be you actually take a lunch, it could be you take a walk, it could be you just do more. And so continuing it to build it in your product where it almost follows you everywhere. And what I'm most excited about is that you know, every software platform has its like core obsessed user base, and then that user base they're trying to get to. And I think what AI is going to do is remove some of the guesswork of how to work. And so if I want to spin up a mural for a big deal strategy and I've never used it, I can do that with AI. And now I am a pro at it. And so that's what I'm most excited about in the product. The innovation, like the how much we're shipping, how fast we're shipping, how we're evolving, is at a pace that Muriel's never seen before, which is great. And then internally, we're just learning from some of the early lessons of be thoughtful, be intentional, pull your employees along and you know, use it because it's it's it's great.

Speaker 1 37:23

Yeah, I love that. I love the the intentionality behind it when you brought up the fact that you did like an AI um talent show for the employees to kind of bring their ideas to the table. I love that because you're making it fun, you're making the innovation fun. Um, and it's an environment where they can also teach. Um, they can teach on the things that, you know, is something that they've discovered or their own personal skill set, but they're at the same time, they're also contributing to the overall goal of the company. And so they're they're able to take that level of like ownership along with the transformation um, with the innovation and the tech tools that are available. So I love that. Well, Bill, thank you so much for joining us on Elements of Culture and talking to us just about, you know, what it really means to be a compassionate leader and making space for us to yes be professional, but also understanding that it's it's okay to make mistakes. And it's a, you know, we need as leaders to be able to coach around that because I do think that there's been a gap specifically in that area and and coaching teams to be able to um, it's okay to be themselves while also still developing as an individual along the journey.

Speaker 2 38:34

Yeah, and I I'll I'll leave you with this. And I I always think about like I was more of like a learn by osmosis kind of person of just like surround yourself with really smart people. Uh, I love to read, I love podcasts, don't get me wrong, but I've always kind of followed that rule of like you are who you surround yourself with. And um, a boss, a friend, a mentor, my first job out of college at the stock exchange, which was a very high pressure, fast-paced environment. A lesson he taught me that I that I stick with that sticks with me to this day is that there's a big difference between a mistake and an error. Like a mistake happens just from trying, right? Like I'm I'm gonna put myself out there, I'm gonna try things, I'm gonna make mistakes, I'm gonna learn from it. That's where you can insert fail forward, fail fast. Like that's what you want. And you have to create a culture that celebrates that. On the flip side, then there's an error. And an error happens out of laziness, lack of preparation. Those are the things there's zero tolerance for. And so being aware of this like mistake versus error mindset really altered the trajectory of my career. Is someone who was also an introvert, afraid to speak, afraid to make mistakes. And it really said, okay, I'm I'm gonna go make mistakes and get things wrong, whether it's trying to move to a new city, trying to do something different, trying, I am like the furthest thing from perfect, but what I will never do is make an error out of carelessness. And so when you think about that whole like leadership idea, yeah, go out there, make mistakes, try things, calculated risks, but also there's like no tolerance for the rest, right? For like no preparation and things like that. So the difference between mistake and error is so powerful, and that helps leaders set the expectations of the kind of environment you want to operate in. So I'm really grateful for the time and love the conversation. So yeah, thank you very much for having me.