'Core sampling' - A management philosophy that gets to the heart of the matter

I have had the good fortune to spend some time with leadership at Samsara, a company that has been an unmitigated success in the transformation of 'connected operations'. Recently I listened to Logan Bartlett 's interview with Samsara CEO, Sanjit Biswas, which was a mini-masterclass in choosing a market and building to solve for universal problems. One of many things I took away from this discussion was an elegant way of determining the capability of a manager or leader to help their people succeed in whatever discipline they are engaged in (product, sales, marketing etc).

Sanjit explained that within Samsara, they refer to 'Core sampling,' which he explains as the ability to not only understand the big picture but also be able to understand the details to ensure people are doing the right things. This sounds simple, but in my experience, our brain's ability to fill in the blanks and jump to conclusions thwarts a clear-eyed vision of reality. Looking at it through the sales lens, a good example is the leader who says:

"Yes, in my last role, we had a 13-week, structured operating rhythm that involved activity and outcomes inspection in support of a predictable forecast."

That does sound good, doesn't it? The 'core sampling' Sanjit refers to is to get beyond this surface-level response and dig into the details to see whether someone knows more than the glossary of terms. My follow-ups might be:

• "That sounds great - Can you explain to me the specific inspection meetings that were critical in ensuring predictability?"
• "I see, and in the pipeline discussions, what specifically were you looking to confirm/uncover (and how did you do that)?
• Can you share a specific example of when you had a team or someone that was out of spec and how you got them back on track?"

As a leader I was known as someone who never left any unknowns unknown. As a consultant, I found an incredible amount of upside to be unlocked by supporting leaders in 'double-clicking' on what managers and individual contributors are doing in their critical moments. So, following Sanjit's lead I highly recommend the concept of 'core sampling' not only in the hiring process, but as a health check on your organization. For sales leadership, some specific tactical inspection activities are:

• Listen to a recorded 1:1 between your frontline managers and their ICs (If you do nothing else, do this next week)
• Attend a weekly team meeting
• Listen to some recorded discovery calls
• Jump into the CRM and do a 'view all' activity and scroll through the email correspondence between your AEs/CSMs in your top deals/accounts