Art Harding, People.ai COO on Operating Leadership

Michael Koenig: Hello and welcome to between two cos we're phenomenal chief operating officers come to share their knowledge advice. And at the very end, a crazy story. I'm your host, Michael Kane. I'm a. Excited to welcome our guest art Harding, COO of people, AI people. AI is an AI powered revenue intelligence platform. That's crossed the billion dollar valuation mark with 200 million in venture capital funding from the likes of Andresen Horowitz. Light speed, iconic. And Acadian ventures. Art has an incredible track record of taking companies from 50 million to 1 billion in annual revenue in part through his leadership and global sales services and operations teams at companies like Symantec, VMware, Riverbed technologies, new Relic, and now at people. AI welcome art. Thanks for being here. I'm excited to have you on. Thanks, Michael. Well, art, normally I'd start off [00:01:00] by asking about a guest's path to the COO role work. Going to get there, but before we do, we have to talk about something that's on top of mind for all of us. And that's, Russia's horrific war against Ukraine. Many of us have family, friends and colleagues in Ukraine, and we're worried for their safety and the safety of their loved ones. And I know that this has been true for your team at people, AI, which has founded and led by a Ukrainian alleg Rodinsky. OAG mentioned in a LinkedIn post that starting back in November, people AI have taken actions to prepare for this eventuality to protect your team members and their families. Can you take us behind closed doors and tell us a little bit about those operations?

Art Harding: Sure. Um, and, uh, thanks for asking Michael, you know, it's, um, never pleasant and I think I've fortunately, um, we've all been developing more. Coping mechanisms and readiness skills over the last few years, as it, as it feels like we've had one macro event after another. Um, this one is a, a very different one. Um, [00:02:00] obviously I would first start off by condemning any act of, of war, um, on any party's part. Um, in particular, when it hits close to home for companies like people, AI where our founder is, we also all have. Um, team members, um, and obviously those team members have family members and over the years, we've, we've built a relationship with the people of Ukraine at people, AI. Um, yeah, I think about people that had come to, uh, meetings or revenue kickoffs walking around San Francisco with them hearing about their lives in Ukraine and then watching how quickly that can all be upended is, is a tough to deal. um, you know, as we were getting ready to, to chat this morning, um, we talked about, Hey, it sounds like you all were on top of this very early. Um, and you know, I think one of the things I would wanna make sure that I do is speak about the whole subject with the appropriate amount of humility. Um, as I mentioned, the leadership team, I'm a part of right now for better or for worse, um, went through the pandemic and the events of the last few years together and a set of skills.[00:03:00] That I didn't read in the fine print of the, of the leadership description was, um, coping with situations or macro events that you might not have anticipated. Um, maybe you've read about before you've talked about, as you went through your business continuity Dr. Plans, but suddenly it becomes real, um, So I think one of the things is, um, we are, uh, just culturally as a company, we're, we're a bias for action company. We like to plan for multiple scenarios. We know we like to evaluate what would be the worst case situation, a midpoint and an ideal scenario when we make large decisions. And this, this situation was no differently. Ironically enough, just as we were coming out of the pandemic, just as we were starting to get the first signal of things becoming normal here, we were getting some early warning signals. Um, from the types of people that are, are tracking these things, we started hearing the gurgling on the news. And so, you know, for us, it, it really always starts first and foremost. No, no pun intended. It does start with the people. Um, and so there's a lot [00:04:00] of distractions, a lot of things you could choose to focus on. Um, but we thought the most important thing would, is to. Sit down with our employees, both those, the ones in Ukraine, as well as the ones not directly, um, potentially in, in the impact zone and explain what was possible. Um, that based on the information that we had that could happen, um, our readiness for it. As we were, any business has business continuity and Dr. Plans, et cetera, you have to be very aware of, you know, obviously where your technology runs, how it secured, et cetera. Um, so after, you know, some of those fundamentals, which, which thankfully were already in place, it allowed us to move to our employees and really communicate to them early. Um, give them a clear set of options. And really encourage them to have as much information as they could as possible and give them a set of options. For instance, relocating out of the country. This was months before the conflict kicked off. Um, and, and of course, you know, you never want to not want to, you can't force people, um, to make decisions about their personal lives. But what we [00:05:00] can do, um, is support them with a set of conditions that allow to make different choices. So, um, we were very clear and upfront about what those choices and options were. Um, a number of. People took us up on those options. Some others decided that they wanted to evaluate and watch the condition unfold more over time. Um, as conditions deteriorated, some people changed some of the decisions that they made and wanted to invoke different options later on in the process. And yet others, um, have heroically as we've seen in public media channels, but also some of us have gotten new experience privately really been amazing. Um, in terms of, you know, we have, uh, GNA resources and, and people working on functions that are still, you know, driving the business, um, and, and doing, um, out of their choice, um, something that they want to do, um, as both a source of pride and, and potentially maybe in some instances, distraction. Um, and then we have others that have decided they wanted more be more directly involved, um, and fighting for their country or helping with relief efforts or other things. And of course, um, they've got our support as well. So you start [00:06:00] with the people. Um, then making sure that, um, you've got clear roles and responsibilities across the leadership team. Um, so that not everyone is focused on the same thing. So, um, my CEO and I, um, which I'm sure we'll talk about today is critical that the CEO and CEO have complimentary skills shared views of, of how to tackle problems. Um, and he, and I agreed that obviously he, with his background, he'd be able to add a ton of value. Um, with regard to what's going on in Ukraine, and that could add a lot of value in focusing on our employees and customers. And we've repeated the mantra for a lot of our employees that the best thing we can do is to ensure that our teammates have a company and jobs and customers and prospects to come back to, um, that we cover while they're out, but that we stay focused at the job at hand. Um, you know, nine to five or nine to nine , whatever your Workday is, and that we keep pursuing prospects and trying to grow the business while doing the right thing by the people. So it's really starting with the people, um, then ensuring that you've got clear rules and responsibilities for who's on point for your customers, keep your [00:07:00] investors, um, informed and then obviously continuing to prospects. And then we also made a point to encourage our employees and give them clear, vetted. Broader communities where if they wanted to participate more than maybe their day job was allowing them to. And they had energy, they wanted to pour into this to encourage them to do so, but after, um, they got their work done and the job done, um, we had people focused on the humanitarian side of it for the company and we needed just as many people, um, driving the business and covering any of those holes and thus far. It's really been amazing to watch our people org, um, which is people, AIS, HR department, um, plus, um, step up the partnership that they got in their leadership with our leadership team, with our operations team, um, everything from how to pay people, um, where they are keeping track of them and their families has been, been quite enough right on everyone's part. Well, it sounds like

Michael Koenig: there's. A great complimentary relationship between OAG and yourself. You spoke [00:08:00] a little bit about how that has played out during this conflict. What about in other areas of the business and perhaps during peaceful times?

Art Harding: Yeah. Um, it's interesting. Um, you know, I met OIG as a customer, um, a few years ago when I ran strategy and operations go to market strategy and operations for new Relic, um, which was an integrated rev like, um, go to market strategy and operations org. People that was a very early stage company. I think probably series B at the time, if I recall correctly, um, just getting their initial set of large customers. Um, and it was during the sales process. When I, when the sales rep first was articulating what people I could do. And I started asking questions about why we weren't doing more big or faster, which quickly got me an appointment with our CEO. Um, and I had always been. Accused of being a high energy person over the years, which I wore very proudly until I met OIG and realized that I had nearly scratched the surface. [00:09:00] Um, and that what I thought was energetic was, was OIGs, you know, middle gear, um, which was fascinating as someone who'd been in the industry for 20 plus years, largely at. Large enterprise customers, um, that I participated in their growth. Whenever I hear an intro that says art led to, you know, I definitely was a leader in some regards, but I definitely can't take credit for a lot of those companies. I was just, uh, along for the ride with a lot of other amazing people. It was the first time I had seen a company at that size, um, and seen someone so committed to you. Something that I also believed in. I thought sales and marketing was changing. New Relic was on the front edge of agile software development. And I couldn't help, but draw these parallels between what new Relic was doing for the software world, AppDynamics and Datadog, all the folks that have changed the way we build software over the last decade or so, and asking why we weren't applying similar principles to go to market. We had poor instrumentation, we were building annual plans, like a waterfall method, and I thought GE isn't the go to market [00:10:00] organization of the future. More agile. Um, better instrumented. And as long as we're, depending upon this, um, you know, human manual effort is gonna hold us back. And, um, that's really where I started was not that we had certain behavioral characteristics that we saw were very different people. Um, we're very different ages. We have very different backgrounds. He grew up in Ukraine. I grew up in new England, um, but we had a shared vision of what we thought the solution. To some of the current state problems looked like. And I think that's, you know, I'm certainly not here to prescribe, um, what people will develop as common ground with others. But I found one of the strongest common ground is passion for solving a shared problem with each other. You can really maybe find ways to experience different personalities and different ways of doing things. If you're north star are, is the same. Right. And I think that's really where O and my relationship began was we saw the world very similarly. We saw the problems very similarly. We were excited about solving them.

Michael Koenig: So how does [00:11:00] that manifest itself within the rest of the organization?

Art Harding: I think about how we communicate to the employees, how we communicate to each other, how we communicate to our investors, customers, and prospects, like just kind of how we articulate what it is we're doing. Um, I think there's a couple things. One, if you're gonna partner with people in this instance, co O CEO, maybe it's a head of sales and head of marketing, maybe it's R and D partnering with go to market. I've always found one of the bigger challenges in, in. Kind of low hanging fruit in terms of source of disagreement are the TA are, people's what I call default timeframes. Everyone has a default timeframe that they're most comfortable, existing or operating in. And the first wave of, of. Lack of alignment or people being disconnected. I usually will pick at, Hey Michael, what timeframe are you talking about when you say in the short term, the most important thing we need to do your short term, if you're an R and D could be a [00:12:00] year, if you're a serial entrepreneur, short term could be this weekend. Right? And, and so in terms of, I think one of the biggest things that, that OIG and the rest of the leadership team and I had to iron out when we first got together was who communicates what. When and at what altitude, um, and we started to think of the leadership team as more of a symphony versus some hierarchical, you know, the, the king speaks and then the prince speak and the queen speaks and all the different Royal subjects from around the land. Um, it's not that that communication was isolated to specific role. It was. What is the conversation? Are we talking to an analyst? Are we talking to the company? Are we talking about less last quarter or are we talking about the strategy? And I, I think we've done a great job of figuring out which of our executives most naturally communicate in that timeframe. Um, and we try to eliminate those pronouns during our leadership meetings about short term. Mid long term, et cetera, and get specific, right. And break these, these pronouns and editorials down into specifics that we can [00:13:00] action. Um, so I think that would be the first one is clear rules or responsibilities. When I speak on an all hands, I think people are starting to expect business performance last quarter and X quarter when oligos opens up they're they're listening for solar powered fly, autonomous vehicles know the future.

Michael Koenig: That's the perfect divide between the visionary CEO and the day to day nitty gritty, uh, operational aspect, the operational leader there, and the COO, um, you just described this as a symphony, right? Who, who communicates what, when and. For symphony, it's all about alignment being aligned, knowing which instruments play and, and what piece of music everyone is playing now in terms of alignment in a previous conversation that we had. And I'm paraphrasing here, you mentioned that it's really time to move on from focusing on sales and marketing alignment, and that it's all about integration. Now, can you tell us

Art Harding: about that? Yeah. You know, I think. As we think about [00:14:00] the symphony analogy. You talk about how does this, um, manifest itself. And I went right to communications there there's one other area this manifests itself, which I think is applicable. To the relationship between sales and marketing, which is, I think, as a senior leader, particularly for a CEO and O's done a great job of this. And as someone who's a cross-functional leader, I feel this is important for me, for myself. It starts with respect and understanding. So when you talk about, you know, how do these different per perspectives, timeframes, horizons, or natural operating. Rhythms manifest themselves. When I think about the calories that the industry or we as professionals spend on trying to align friction across different departments. When department a has not even taken the time to really understand what it's like to walk a mile in department B's shoes and how quickly we are to point out what we want out of this partnership. Before we set out to understand what's actually going on what trade offs that [00:15:00] department needs to make. Um, so when you talk about how do two very different people come together and how does that play? It actually first and foremost starts with respect. And I think one of the biggest things I've learned, um, in working with my leadership team and with the li is how to be just curious enough about the types of trade offs that an RTT team needs to make, um, or the implications to a post sales group. When you, you know, rush the market with a product and are successful selling it, that it's very, to difficult to do anything in these highly integrated enterprises alone. Um, and it's amazing how, um, You know, success has many friends, but failures, an orphan, you know, how, how quickly we, uh, um, are. You know, uh, to point out what other people could have or should have done to us, which brings us to, to marketing and sales alignment. Um, it came out of one of our AEs. He was doing a disco discovery call with one of our prospects, um, with RCM, I, and talking to them. And he literally just said off the cuff, when I hear [00:16:00] marketing and sales alignment, it makes me cringe. And, um, especially if it's alignment for the purposes of. I, I know you don't want credit, but you know, simply the performance of our investments. If you're still trying to align marketing in sales at this point, you're actually starting to fall behind the organizations that have already aligned. Or have alignment, um, and are they're moving on to sales and marketing integration. Um, and I think it goes beyond sales and marketing. I think we can also talk about sales and post-sale, but if you have functional groups that are still trying to align, that means they're probably still debating things like shared goals, shared vocabulary. Um, business process integration, and these are the fundamentals, um, required. If you wanna unlock any of the leverage that we see, great companies unlock with software automation, data, the software automation and data are not what deliver the value. It's the application of these things. To [00:17:00] a new way of thinking, um, to new partnerships that that may not have existed in the past. So I, I really think if you find yourself managing and mitigating a lot of alignment, collaboration, um, conflict, friction, um, at the C level or SVP level between departments, um, the, I think you're starting to lose more and more ground, um, between these organizations that are working on tighter integration of these functions.

Michael Koenig: That makes sense. If you're just working on the table stakes aspects to what a team looks like, what a cohesive company looks like, you're gonna be falling behind. Now you mentioned the word friction. Oftentimes, I hear the relationship between sales and marketing is having a healthy friction between the two to be Frank. I've never understood it. Why does there need to be friction at all? Can you give me a concept of like where your mind's at? How, how have you thought about that? I'm assuming you've heard it and, uh, I'd just love to hear your thoughts there.

Art Harding: Yeah. Um, you know, [00:18:00] when I think about sales and marketing, um, and the boundaries, there's, there's that they've been managing historically, you know, you've got the cliches where sales wants to know what marketing is doing for them. And marketing would like to know what sales is doing with what they've provided. And I do believe, I think sometimes. My, um, altitude on this topic can make people think, I don't wanna measure all of the inputs about the handoff. So we absolutely want the measurements. The question is what do you do with that measurement? Um, and what is that measurement in service to. Uh, you know, I've, I've always found that some of the best problems to challenges start with customers and prospects. And I think that the buyer and customer journey from the moment someone takes interest in our product and service to when they start to do some discovery, maybe self-served to, when they enter into some sort of a nurturing and sales cycle process. It's a very precious time for the customer. [00:19:00] And I think the north star for your sales and marketing teams should be that buyer and customer experience that may be the first time or maybe a signal that you've served them well in the past. And it's a re repeat by. And if you elevate the prospect and customer and their journey and, and how they interact with your, with your company as the north star versus the performance of your demand gen engine or the. Close rate of stage two opportunities. Those metrics are meant to feed something. And when we, as leaders fail to articulate that the star of the show is the buyer and the customer. That's when the departments start to fall into, well, I don't know what Michael's doing over there in sales. I gave him X number of leads and he hasn't done Y and Z with them or sales. I can't remember the last time I got. What I wanted for marketing. Um, I think if you can quickly break that conversation down and say, Hey, how is this confusion impacting the buyer and customer? And how would we know if we were doing better and [00:20:00] just really bringing people's attention back to the, to the customer? Um, and your prospect, I, I think is one of the, the first things. Um, I dunno if you're looking for more specifics on it, but

Michael Koenig: no, absolutely. That makes a lot of sense. It's almost as if. There is no healthy friction, right? If there is that friction, then we're not focused on what we're actually trying to do here. We're just kind of looking out for our own sort of micro KPIs versus the actual buyer experience and customer

Art Harding: happiness of it. Well, so I do think there's some healthy friction, but I I'll give you a very, I have a very clear definition of this, and I apologize to NASCAR fans everywhere because I have not earned the right to make a, a joke about their sport, but I, I'm not a NASCAR fan. And then I tell people it's probably because I, I think I, I either don't understand the sport or I might get bored. And when I think about friction, um, I, a little bit like a race the first time around the track. Oh, well, that was interesting. Second time around the track. I think I've seen this before. [00:21:00] By the third time I'm experiencing the same type of friction. My patience goes out the window and I would try and turn the NASCAR in the other direction just to see what might be going on in, in another loop. Um, and so, you know, we're going to encounter friction. We're gonna encounter friction that was brought in from competitors. We're gonna brought in frictions from the market. We're gonna have friction from new hire. If you're scaling a business, the friction's gonna be. Constant the question is, can you evolve beyond it? And can you earn the right to solve new problems? If, if any of your listeners have been in a high growth environment before. they can all relate to the fact that actually it may not be just restricted to high growth. Rarely do you come to work and all the lights are green. The knobs are on go. The switches are on. Yes. You come in and you sit in your coffee. You're like, whoa. Okay. Everything is in, in is in perfect condition. So when we come to work in the morning, we know that we're gonna have opportunities to solve problems and challenges. The only question is which ones. I prefer ones. I prefer new ones that are a signal of progress when the friction [00:22:00] becomes repetitive and you just keep solving on the same challenges, it becomes a grind, right. And that's where we need to evolve beyond that. But it's not. So we can fix all the problems it's that we can earn the right to solve the next set of them.

Michael Koenig: That makes a lot of sense. And I think we'll have to introduce perhaps an alternative to NASCAR where we do one lap forwards, then everyone does 180, does the next lap backwards. And then we just switch back and forth. That could be quite interesting. Although maybe the 10th time around, we would still lose your interest. So let's take a step back and let's talk about the first question I normally ask, which is look are what. What's your story. How'd you end up as COO. If you look at the experience that you have, it, it almost seems like a CRO role would be more fitting given all of the commercial and, and go to market experience. How'd you end up in the COO position, especially at, at people? [00:23:00]

Art Harding: Um, well, I think it's, it's interesting, Michael, cause I think I came across your podcast, probably very similar to many other cos where the. You know, you start asking, what is the job? What is the job description? What's the most common manifestation of it. And at some point you get comfortable with the discomfort. That. Um, and I recently shared with my wife of 25 plus years, I said, I've decided to view my job as the most interesting job in the world versus the most undoable job in the world or the surface area. Because if I viewed it that way, that would be a very closed, you know, contracted mindset. So I, I have decided that the COO job is the most interesting job that any person could have out there. Right. Um, a good place to start the conversation. I think the second point is I never set out. To be COO. We never had it. I'm actually shocked when I have people come to me say, Hey, will you be my mentor? I want to be a COO. I'm like, really? I'm like, I didn't know people wanted to be COOs. I, it was never in my career path where I came out of university or college and said, okay, I'm gonna be a [00:24:00] COO someday. Yeah. And how I, how I arrived at, uh, in the COO role, Michael is, um, Starting in a services background, billable consulting, project management, practice development. I think post sales gives people really good operational rigor. It's hard to run a services business sloppy. The margins are thin. It requires it. but, you know, PRI you know, for that reason, the low margins and the hard work, I started getting curious about higher margin businesses. There's no better one than software. Um, and, you know, made my way into that through the services arms, um, and then into overlay positions, writing statements of work, supporting sales teams. And after doing that long enough, ended up carrying a bag for semantic and VMware, um, with the direct quota of caring responsibility, supporting the overlay teams, et cetera. Um, after doing that for years, I did miss leadership. And I did miss having teams in particular. I missed doing business internationally, and I had an opportunity to join Riverbed, um, with their professional services team and Riverbed really, um, blossomed during [00:25:00] my time there. And, and I went from a north and south America services leader into a global services leader. Um, and the crescendo of how I ended up operations was we were required by a PE firm, um, who as part of that transition asked me to take over sales operations. Um, and I've been in operations. Ever since that was about five to eight years ago. Um, and my most recent pivot into customer facing role was where we started the conversation as a customer of people, eyes. I had such a passion for the problem that they were solving that, um, this role that I've, I've sorted out with O and the rest of the e-staff, um, um, here at people, AI, um, has me running to America and teams. Um, and it's been a lot of fun.

Michael Koenig: So that makes a lot of sense. And one of the things that you had mentioned previously was around self-serve right. Nurturing the, the self-serve, and then getting them into more of this sales process, the sales cycle there, we've heard a lot about the term. Product led [00:26:00] growth versus sales led growth. And, and perhaps I'm, I'm over simplifying here, but product led growth is basically just the latest way to refer to that self-service experience with digital products that it's tied together to some sort of viral loop that's designed to get more customers in the door. Whereas sales led is just that growth led by sales teams, pounding the pavement. How do you think about these in terms of enterprise sales? You talked about this, not necessarily being mutually exclusive, having that self-serve aspect, is there ever a point at which it could all be product led for enterprise organizations?

Art Harding: No, I, you know, I, the short answer is no. Um, I, I think the minute I hear universal, all, everything never forever. You know, I hear those types of words. Um, my initial response is unlikely, but usually these trends that we get really excited about in the technology industry, I, I think of them as like glaciers that [00:27:00] move through our industry and they, they, they move through and they make a big impact. But then they eventually melt away and they leave these boulders behind, um, of artifacts that are around for some time. And I think one of the most common things having been acquired, acquired companies, fast growth companies, and you're hiring people from lots of different backgrounds. We all have this temptation to refer to emotion. Um, or a company I worked at Salesforce from this year to that work. I worked at new Relic from this time to that time, I worked at data doc and we, we take that experience, which might have been a phenomenal experience and a great opportunity for you professionally. And then we want to universally port that recipe for success to every company that, that we go to. So I would, before, you know, I start digging into as an operator or as a leader. What the digital experience for my prospects or customers might be versus where humans are gonna be interacting or, or our, our teams are gonna be interacting with them. [00:28:00] You really have to understand what product you're selling. You have to understand what product you're selling, who the persona is. That's gonna make that investment and who the persona is. That's going to use the technology. They're not always the same person. What's interesting about PL is initially. Um, as you're driving into a company, the user is voting with their clicks, um, or maybe a small transaction dollar. And at some point you're going to have to, uh, penetrate an enterprise economic buyer or somebody looking to make a purchase for enterprise reasons, the priorities of the individual user and the priorities of the business may be very different. And the economic value of what you're doing may ver be very different. And it is a, it is a pivot. Um, just as you know, companies that do a sales led top down motion need to worry about and drive user adoption and consumption of technology. People who land with PLG easy come easy, go. People who sign up for trials and onboard very quickly, also churn very quickly and collecting them as a cohort in positioning that to an enterprise company with enterprise.[00:29:00] Features and benefits by default is probably out of the wheelhouse of what the in original inception or premise of the company was. So you're going to be introducing a new product. You're gonna be introducing a new set of features or maybe a new value proposition, regardless of which way you pivot or not even pivot build upon or expand your business. Um, you're gonna have to answer those questions.

Michael Koenig: That makes a lot of sense in terms of, I can also imagine those multimillion dollar multi-year contracts, not necessarily getting signed with a click, but rather well, maybe through an e-sign software, but rather you definitely want to talk to someone there. You mentioned new products. I know you have a lot of experience with launching new products, preparing the go to market function for this and. It's something that tends to get overlooked in terms of just the preparation. Can you tell us a little bit about your experience with that and how you approach it?

Art Harding: Well, I think your prior question is a [00:30:00] good lead into this, which is, you know, your question was how, how much is technology impacting? The buyer and customer journey. And how does that manifest itself? And I said, first and foremost, we have to start with what we sell and who we sell it to. Um, that simple question. Um, what is it that you're making? What problem are you solving? Who does it solve it for and who, you know, what pain are you solving for and who is actually purchasing? It can really get lost in the noise of a large scale opening. As you're hiring people, watching lots of products and in a phenomenon that I've experienced firsthand. And I've seen time and time again is when you get. Product market fit. That puts a real wind in the sales of a company where it's just growing really quickly. On one thing, it could be databases, it could be cloud CRM, it could be, you know, storage. It could be backup. Think of any company out there that started with one, one product and took off quickly. The question is whether they acquire technology, whether they build it organically or [00:31:00] they introduce something new, um, or even a new capability, can they do it together? And what I mean by together is do your R and D teams and your go to market teams, have they moved beyond alignment into integration? So we talked about marketing and sales, right? You know, where, Hey, look at the end of the day, it's to drive pipeline and convert that pipeline into customers. That is a shared responsibility. The, the obsession with. Attribution great signals for driving investment, very bad for driving teamwork. Right? And so getting sales and marketing to understand that their shared responsibility is the convert ever expanding pipeline into ever expanding revenue. Um, is job one, um, at a, as a go-to market leader, whether it's CRO COO COO president, when you're the CEO and your sitting across R and D and go to market functions. I think this same level of integration, like what is a GNA product? When is it complete? When does go to market start getting ready? One of my early mentors said, treat content like a product, meaning you gotta get your messaging [00:32:00] iterating while the engineers are iterating on some of the earliest versions of what it is they're building off of their PRDs and products are not. Released into the market until you have your first set of customers. You know, I always, I'm always curious why we celebrate the release of software. I, I would think we would wanna celebrate the first three customer references in case studies. That's when a product's actually released when people are actually using it. I'm okay with celebrations along the way. We celebrate building pipeline and go to market. And I would love for years to celebrate the accomplishment of having completed code, but the mission isn't there until R and D and go to market. Are successful in working together and building that pipeline and landing those first customers. So if marketing enablement are working on the messages for their campaigns, for the enablement programs, pricing is getting ready for packaging. Customer success is getting ready for have the impact to renewal contracts. If you start all this after you launch your product by Def. You've delayed your growth. If you can work on these in [00:33:00] parallel, then as the engineers celebrate, dropping the software, go to market is celebrating, releasing all of the machinery required that we know results in this success from a go to market perspective. What

Michael Koenig: do operations look like at people? AI, and how would you characterize them?

Art Harding: Well, you know, as I, I often hear people struggle to describe encourage, and also maybe frame what operations is at any company, not just people, AI, and it's a little bit of a passion for me. Haven't been thrown into it, um, later on in my career. And really having to depend upon some really amazing leaders in my first year who put me through operations school 1 0 1. And there's a couple of things that I learned, um, that I feel have been very important around operations. Um, we're not connective tissue, we're not a deli counter, uh, that you just rock up in order whatever sandwich you want. Hold the cheese. We're a business partner, um, that requires first and foremost [00:34:00] leadership. So if you're out there and you're responsible for sales ops or rev op, or you're a COO, your first job is leadership of people. And if I look at a lot of the different cross-functional teams, the leadership element of leading a team of operators, Um, it doesn't seem to bubble up to the top priority as, as I might expect it to, or see it in other departments. And that pains me to say to someone that's been in operations teams, but one of the places I start is with the team. Um, and, and the quality of the team, the clarity of the team. The second thing is. So, first of all, first and foremost, if you're running a leadership, if you're in a leadership position in operations, your job is not to be the smartest person in the room. Your job is not to find every mistake in every report. Your job is not to make some C level executive happy. Your job is to first and foremost, lead a function and lead a team that function I use this acronym E squared T has three very specific word responsibilities. Drive efficiency, make things faster, cheaper, improve effectiveness, help us achieve or exceed [00:35:00] a goal or third transform us for the future. So when we're asked to invest our time as an operations team in projects, or in keeping the lights on. I, I want the team to think about those three elements. Of course, projects can hit on more than one of those elements, but we're not here doing what I call the, you know, title executive ranking prioritization scheme, which is the loudest most important executive gets their projects done. And, and the, the, the business is basically triaged and the operational capacities deployed based on who asks for it versus. Do we have the composure to understand that we're not just here taking orders, that we actually have a charter, which is driving efficiency, effectiveness, and transformation. And then the third element is with the right leadership, with the right shared mindset in terms of what we do. Do we have the courage and integrity to actually manage the boundaries of the capacity? We have priorit that capacity appropriately. and I don't know if we're the connective tissue [00:36:00] in operations, but I would like us. I, I, I always strive for a brand of being the department of clarity, which is, do we know where we actually are? Do we know what is before we try to start solving problems? Do we have clear definitions of what success would look like? And then what are the risks that we're willing to expose ourselves to whether it's timeline, risk, budget, risk, or execution risk between where we are today and where we need to go. Um, and so I, I cringe of things like connective tissues, supporting cast back office because it really encourages operators to be on their heels, not on their toes. And I think great leaders think more like product managers and they own the product of. GNA or go to market capabilities and it's our job to bring those capabilities to market effectively and efficiently, as well as transform them for the future. So you've

Michael Koenig: talked a bit about leadership here and you've described coaching as inspiring for the right to inspect performance and provide timely [00:37:00] and meaningful feedback. What do you mean by that? Can you expand please?

Art Harding: Sure. Um, I was at a prior company doing a sales, um, methodology launch with some external consultants. Um, and it was interesting how much energy, the external consultants in the enablement team put into first communicating the why we were doing this training for. People that technically we would all think in their job description. Coaching is in their job description, the frontline managers of any sales organization. What's interesting. If you go out and you interview frontline sales managers, and you look at the quantity of formalized training program out there today for frontline managers, it's pretty sparse and your, their description of their ops will be pretty varied. And so the, uh, the group we were working with felt very passionate that we needed to really get everyone inspired about coaching [00:38:00] first that yes, we had telemetry, we had metrics, we had measurement, but if they didn't know how to actually use those as a coach, that we weren't gonna be successful. Um, and on this tour, I actually ended up blurting out on stage once like inspection, without coaching as micromanagement. Right. And, and the pencil's like, can I, can I quote that, let's write that down. It became became a one liner. We used as a, as a collective team for a while, but where I got there was I just thought about any coaching experience we've had, whether it's a, a tutor or a fitness instructor or a music coach. I don't hire a guitar coach to tell me I'm bad at the guitar or my financial planner to tell me I'm broke or a fitness trainer to tell me I'm, I'm unhealthy. Um, and when I look at outcome based coaching, like you either make it kid, or you don't, you know, in this sales world out there, here's your quote on a bag. And a list of accounts will see a 90 days and, you know, know every 90 days that's. In the old uninstrumented world where you talk to people periodically, that made a lot of sense. It was a FEAS fam [00:39:00] and doer die, you know, make it or make it or don't culture. But now we have a lot more telemetry. We know exactly what's going on. We know exactly who people are meeting with. We know exactly what the formula for success looks like. We know exactly what someone who's ramping and onboarding looks good. Um, what good looks like therefore. Our job as, as leaders have changed, it's no longer just about sourcing talent, holding it accountable, and then swapping it out for talent that can get it done. Especially if you think about the talent wars that are going on in, in some of the industries today, how well can you coach to leading indicators to a sincere party that actually wants to improve their performance and. Um, on this area of having so much telemetry of leading indicators, right? So can you see my spending habits? Can you see my income? Can you start coaching me while there's still time for me to change the outcome? Um, if you show up and it's already too late, or I'm already being held accountable for some outcome, that can be very demoralizing. And then it's like what here for just to, just to read [00:40:00] the scoreboard. Thanks. Um, and I think this is particularly challenging for those of us. Who might not be from the generation where we were getting constant feedback and instrumentation on everything we were doing. I, I went to college before cell phones , you know, and I think we can look at the younger generation and accuse them of being needy for feedback. That's something I'll hear a lot, you know, as, ah, millennials, Hey, they always wanna pat in the head participation trophy. Another way to look at it is they've grown up in a world where, where they being a generation younger than me. They've grown up in a world where they're getting telemetry and feedback and information about what's going on and what they want is they're really eager for coaching and feedback. To impact the outcome because they've experienced applying, leading indicators. They've a, they've applied, um, getting great coaching at just the right moment, which helped them change their trajectory. Um, and so if, if you find yourself being frustrated with the hunger. That people have for feedback, um, view it as a hunger for coaching, right? And challenge. [00:41:00] We need to challenge ourselves to step up and become better coaches and maybe coaching ways that are new to us, because we may have suspected or known things, activity drives better sales meeting with the right people can help you expand an account or grow ASP. It's another thing to actually have the telemetry and be able to offer someone coaching that it seems like Michael, you are struggling to move from. Any follow up meetings with people titled VP or above, let's unpack that specific skill and go from there. And how do we get you better at that? That's a much more actionable set of coaching for you. Um, as a leader than me just telling you missed your number at the end of the quarter,

Michael Koenig: because the next question is, well, what do I have to do in order to hit my number, this coming quarter, hopefully it's being asked. So that makes a lot of sense in terms of, of. How coaching applies to, uh, just the process improvement and, and improvement in general. So for, uh, those folks heading into their first COO role, or perhaps a new COO [00:42:00] role, what, uh, what advice would you have for them as someone who recently walked into that COO.

Art Harding: So the first thing is curiosity is your friend, um, let go of any concept of command and control, um, the scope of your, the scope of your role. The surface area of your role is a living organism like a garden. You're not gonna come to work any morning and all the plants will be the perfect height and the sunshine will be universally. This your. You're gonna be doing something you're gonna be weeding something you're gonna be fertilizing something. So I think first is just have the right mindset that it is not a structured job. It's an unstructured job. Your job is to take chaos and ambiguity and translate that chaos and ambiguity into structure so that others can actually. Go and deliver, um, their talents and skills against that. So you're not just taking ambiguity and chaos and tossing it into a, to an organization that needs to execute. So that'd be the first one is get curious and get comfortable with the chaos and ambiguity. Um, [00:43:00] the second one is the role of people, leadership. Um, just making sure that you're providing your team, um, that you are consistent. Because you're gonna be living in an inconsistent world and it would be very easy for people to maybe view you as an inconsistent character. And I think predictability, um, regardless of whether people like it, your version of predictability is a very important component for teams. They want to know that their, their leader has some element of consistency in terms of how you see things, how you make decisions and how you fall through on those. Um, and then the last one is. I just believe, especially if you're in a scaling organization to pay attention to trust. I think trust has economic value. Low trust environments are more expensive and move slower, high trust environments move faster, cheaper. Um, so I would say, be curious, get good at translating chaos into ambiguity, um, protect and lead your teams, um, and, uh, really focusing on of trust because you're gonna be working across so many different departments. Your say due ratio has to be. I [00:44:00] balance, um, and your vocabulary needs to be very versatile so that you can connect with understand and empathize with lots of different characters.

Michael Koenig: So it's time for my last and favorite question. We've all had those moments where new problems come across your desk. And you've thought I've never seen that before. And I never thought I would. Do you have one that you can share with us?

Art Harding: Yeah, probably the, the shortest one or the, the, the one that jumps to mind outside of the most recent events. Um, obviously with the, the conflict where we started the conversation was, uh, I joined people, AI, the quarter that COVID started. And my first week of the job was looking at the new signage for the new offices. We were planning and to move into, um, just as I was starting to practice the word shelter in place and trying to understand what that meant. And I remember thinking. Is now the time to move into a new office is now the time to move into a new office and having this whole conversation. And I remember our graphic artist holding the brand new side for the new door, and I'm [00:45:00] like, I don't think we're gonna be using that, that sign. Um, and just having the courage with the rest of the leadership team to be a, a fast mover on the decision to go virtual early. Um, but just the, the, the community, a humor of, you know, obviously the pandemic was not funny, but just walking around. Um, new office spaces in my first couple weeks on the job. And then the first thing we had to do was figure out how to go remote, um, was a little bit of 180 that, um, that, that I'll always remember

Michael Koenig: maybe more so than others, especially because you're evaluating signage. exactly. Well, that's fantastic. Thank you for, uh, thank you for sharing. And thank you for joining us art. Really appreciate it. Where can people go to keep up with you?

Art Harding: Uh, the people website, uh, people I LinkedIn page, um, and you can also always find me at art at people AI.

Michael Koenig: Well, there you go. I. Thanks for listening to between two cos I'm your host, Michael kig and a very special thank you to art Harding for joining us tune in next time for our next COO chat on between two cos and be sure to subscribe on apple podcast, [00:46:00] Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. So you never miss an episode just visit between two cos.com for more. And if you have a minute, please leave us a review on apple podcast and tell all others about the show so they can get great advice from phenomenal COOs. Thanks for listening to this week's episode tune in next time and until then so long.