Inflection Point Advisors

Some of my best interactions with customers have been when we screwed something up or when they thought we screwed something up. No matter what business you’re in, it’s hard to get customers to respond to calls or emails. It turns out, when everything is going fine, most customers don’t want to talk to you. I know the whole “we’re not a vendor we’re a partner” pitch, but trust me, you’re a vendor and they’re a customer. When something goes wrong, then you hear from them. Never fear these phone calls. You get to talk to a live person who is using your product or service and hear their experience first-hand. You learn a lot about your offering and your team. These conversations are gold and you should welcome them. If you sell a product and it doesn’t work like it is supposed to, admit it, fix it and offer some kind of financial make-good. If you offer a service, it can be a bit trickier. Customers tend to be outcome oriented and couldn’t care less about how much effort the team has put in. If it’s clear you screwed up, see above. If it’s clear it’s your client’s fault, point that out to them but offer to help them resolve whatever issue they are having. In a tie, meaning you both screwed up, see above. Fix it and move on. These moments give you an opportunity to delight your customers or clients. Embrace them.

Pick up the F’n phone It might be a generational thing, but I’ve never been a big texter at work and a lot of my texts say “give me a call.” I can’t stand the back and forth that often takes place via text or email or Slack or whatever the latest messaging capability is that’s embedded in a SaaS tool.? Through my advisory work, I often hear from CEOs about employees and partners who are slow to respond or whose responses seem to miss the mark. Sometimes it’s little annoying things, but often it's big rock items that need to move forward. When I hear this, I’ll ask: “what did he say when you talked to him?” and predictably, I’ll get the answer “I haven’t spoken to him. We’ve been texting [Slacking, emailing, etc.].” My advice now is always the same: pick up the phone and talk things out. Without exception whatever the issue is gets resolved almost immediately. It’s really that simple. Our communication channels are not interchangeable. Different tasks require different ways to communicate. Here are my guidelines: Email - Great for broadcast communications, moving documents around and for archival purposes. Don’t expect an immediate response from email unless you don’t have Slack/Teams or another internal chat tool. Slack/Teams - Good for quick updates and responses, for soliciting comments and the typical work chit chat that takes place in an office. It’s good and bad for remote teams.? The good is that it’s more akin to talking than email.? The bad is that these tools are overused and lead to endless back and forths (see above re picking up the phone). Oh, and good luck finding that document you received a few months ago. Text - I don’t get how people text for work. I understand “I’m running late, I’ll meet you at the client dinner” or “great work today!” I don’t understand “here are my thoughts on the acquisition proposal.”? Texts seem to go unseen quite a bit (“sorry, I didn’t see your text”) they’re hard to search and they are a security and confidentiality nightmare. The biggest challenge with all of these channels is that they are mostly asynchronous.? Regardless of medium, messages often go into the unanswered message black hole. If you’re not getting a response or you're not getting the right response, pick up the f’n phone.?

“I’m not interested in making money, it’s just with my talent, I’m cursed with it.” -Noel Gallagher Last week, I wrote a post about how people should think about compensation early in their careers. Now, here are some thoughts on mid-career comp. Early in your career you are paid for your potential. For example, when you join a company that makes phone cases with little to no experience, the company is worse off after you join. Think about that. The day you hit the payroll of the phone case company, you are a net negative. The company has a bunch of people who know how to do their jobs and…you. As you get experience, you become a net positive and if you leave, the company is worse off. It now has one less person who is really good at making or selling phone cases. You, however, should now get paid for your experience plus more potential. Mid-career comp is not straightforward. There are lots of variables. Industry, company size, function, incentive pay and your life goals all impact potential comp. That said, there are some broad guidelines that I would try to follow. First, let’s make an assumption. This is about working a full-time job at a company that you don’t own or run. If you are taking a lateral role, expect lateral pay. If you happen to get more, great, but don’t expect more pay for the same job just because you crossed the street. If you are going to a much bigger company to do the job you are currently doing, you may or may not get offered more money, but your benefits are likely to be significantly better.? Do not undervalue this. This is real money and can improve your life. Don’t focus on the W-2, focus on the whole package. There will even be situations where a pay cut is a pay raise if you add up all of the goodies you’ll get when you join the new company. If you are taking a significant step up in job responsibilities expect to be paid at the low end of the range. You haven’t done that job yet. Don’t expect to be paid as if you have. The wild card comes when you switch industries or switch functions. Switching industries is the easier scenario. Unless the new industry requires specialized training, some type of certification or other factors that make it truly unique, it doesn’t matter. Your skills are clearly transferable or you wouldn’t have applied for the job and you wouldn’t have gotten an offer -- you shouldn’t be paid less because you're moving to a new industry. Switching functions is a bit different. If you are taking on a new role in a new function, don’t expect to be paid at the high end of the range. Ditto if you’ve been out of the workforce for a while. At that point, your goal is to get back in the game and re-earn the ability to command a premium. A final thought. It’s a myth that companies try to pay their employees as little as possible. You aren’t the only line item on the budget. If you get an offer that you feel is low, but you love the company and you can live comfortably, take the gig.

I love money. I love everything about it. I bought some pretty good stuff. Got me a $300 pair of socks. Got a fur sink. An electric dog polisher. A gasoline powered turtleneck sweater. And, of course, I bought some dumb stuff, too. --Steve Martin If you’re looking for a job and are lucky enough to have multiple options, one of the hardest things to do is to not take the job that pays the most because it pays the most. I have had two people reach out to me in the last week looking for advice about a potential new job. The first person is right out of college looking for his first job and the second is somebody who I have worked with in the past looking at a new role. Even though these two are at very different stages of their career, the conversations were virtually identical: I have two job offers. I love the first company. I love the people, the role and the industry and it will give me great experience, but the offer is a lot lower than the offer from the second company.? The job at the second company will be fine, but I’m not that excited about it. If the first offer paid a little bit more, I would take it today.? Over the years, I have heard from enough people on this topic that I have a pretty standard script which, as you've already guessed, includes the advice to ignore the money and take the job you want. This advice is almost always rejected. I’m never offended. There are bills to pay. It would be maladaptive to not take the money, but I’m sticking with my advice. Let’s start with the new graduate. We tend to gravitate to the highest offer because, well, it’s higher. But, here is something to think about. Our pay (forget bonuses, commissions and other incentive pay for a second) is static. We get a fixed amount of money for a fixed amount of time (typically a year but it can vary wildly). Our work and our skills development, however, are dynamic. In the first couple of years of most careers, we are drastically overpaid. On a relative basis, we know nothing and we contribute little. We also tend to be judged as part of a pack of people who also know nothing and contribute very little. As we get experience, for better or for worse, we separate from the pack. If it’s for the better and we’re doing great, we may be underpaid which makes perfect sense. Because compensation is not adjusted in real time, at any given point in our career, we are likely underpaid or overpaid. The key is to think about compensation (like we think about our careers) over the long-term which means optimizing for experience. The type of experience that you will get that will lead you to the next role, the next company or the next industry and that you will enjoy along the way. I have more thoughts in the comments and will do a part two of this post for people later in their career.

The Myth of a Company in Chaos All companies kind of suck, particularly high growth companies. If you could somehow transport into any company and spend time observing all aspects of its operations, you will be mystified at how the company remains in business. Don’t believe me? Ask any CEO you know if in the last couple of months they didn’t say to themselves one of the following: I’m surprised our customers don’t fire us, we look like idiots, or it’s a miracle we’re still in business. I was speaking with the daughter of a good friend of mine over the weekend and I asked her how work was going (she works for a mid-market company). She’s always very positive, so I was surprised when she answered “not great.” As I dug deeper, I noticed that there wasn’t anything earth-shattering about her complaints. They were mostly along the lines of the place is poorly run. Nobody takes responsibility. Customers aren’t happy. People are leaving. Leadership plays favorites. HR doesn’t care. In other words, she described things that every company on earth experiences at one time or another. Companies, even small ones, are complicated organisms. They require groups of people bound by some ideas and a list of job responsibilities to work in unison to get a product or service out the door, have somebody buy and use that product or service, have them feel good about it, and then come back to buy more. And, by the way, this is not a fixed process run in a controlled environment. Employees come and go, new products are developed, old products are retired. Competition, the economy and changing customer behavior all wreak havoc. The best companies, the companies that appear on all of the lists (best places to work, most admired companies, most pet friendly), are internally in chaos. This is ok. Chaos is the natural result of all of the people, processes and unexpected events that continuously conspire to make operating a business incredibly difficult. Chaos isn’t usually the result of ill will or incompetence, it is simply the normal operating state of most businesses. It’s not a bug. It’s a feature. How companies navigate through chaos is what differentiates the great company from the not so great.? Avoiding the chaos is a fool's errand. Mastering the chaos is where magic happens. There are certainly companies that are terribly run, so much so that they will go out of business. But, if you work for a company that is just experiencing the day-to-day chaos that I just described, my advice is to step up.? If people are leaving, think hard about staying. Careers are often made in these moments.