How To Achieve Greater Business Results, Scale Your Business More Effectively, & Build An Envious Corporate Culture Along The Way

Houston Business Growth Podcast

Episode 3: How To Achieve Greater Business Results, Scale Your Business More Effectively, & Build An Envious Corporate Culture Along The Way

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Host: Brian Webb

Guest: Anthony Coppedge

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Description:

LISTEN TODAY, as the host, Brian Webb, along with our guest, Anthony Coppedge, walk you through How To Achieve Greater Business Results, Scale Your Business More Effectively,  and Build An Envious Corporate Culture Along The Way.  Anthony is based out of Fort Worth, Texas where he leads the Agile Transformation for Digital Sales at IBM. He's held leadership roles at Fortune 100 enterprises and sub-$20 million revenue software startups. He's been applying the values and principles of Agile since 2009 and is literally one of a handful of early leaders in the Agile Sales and Marketing space worldwide.

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Helpful Links:

The Age Of Agile by Stephen Denning

Mastering Marketing Agility by Andrea Fryrear

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Podcast Sponsored By: SERVPRO® Disaster Recovery Team Houston

Find and Follow our Sponsor, SERVPRO® Disaster Recovery Team Houston

Web: www.disasterrecoveryteamhouston.com

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/servpro-disaster-recovery-team-houston/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SERVPRO9734

Intro Video:  https://youtu.be/YH1GXKrRUTU 

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Connect w/ Brian Webb

Web: https://cmo.webbmarketing.solutions/

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thebrianwebb/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thebrianwebb

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/brianwebb/

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Connect w/ Anthony Coppedge

Linkedin: https://linkedin.com/in/anthonycoppedge

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Click on this link for a full transcript of the podcast.

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Like what you hear? Want to Subscribe? Connect with Houston Business Growth Podcast on Apple Podcasts - Subscribe and leave us a review. Your participation helps us grow and reach more business owners and leaders just like you.

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Transcript:

Brian Webb:

Hey there, everyone. Welcome to the Houston Business Growth podcast. I'm your host, Brian Webb. This podcast is designed for entrepreneurs just like you that want to grow your business faster and make better decisions with fewer regrets. We're here to help you grow by bringing you tools, tips, and tricks, along with success stories and industry expert interviews that will help you to grow your business and your team while helping you to avoid the pitfalls and mistakes that cost you so much money and wasted time. So with no further ado, let's jump into today's episode.

 

Brian Webb:

I am thrilled to death to have my good friend, long-time friend, Anthony Coppedge on the Houston Business Growth podcast today. I've known Anthony for about 25 plus years. And today's title is called, how to achieve greater business results, scale your business more effectively, and build an envious corporate culture along the way. Anthony, for those in our audience who don't know who you are and what you do, why don't you take a moment, introduce yourself.

 

Anthony Coppedge:

I'm just this guy, you know?

 

Brian Webb:

Yeah.

 

Anthony Coppedge:

So I've known you so long. For those who don't know me, I am an [Agile 00:01:20] transformation lead at IBM, where I drive the transformation to agility, business agility, for digital sales. And so my background is in marketing, sales, entrepreneurship, business ownership, obviously, and software as a service business, as well as mom and pop and enterprise. So I have a pretty diverse background and I try to bring it all to bear.

 

Brian Webb:

Awesome. Awesome. So I know you're going to be talking about what we've kind of named the title, how to achieve greater business results and scale, and build an amazing culture. I know that you're going to be talking to us about Agile. Why don't you tell our listeners exactly what Agile is, just to get us started today?

 

Anthony Coppedge:

Sure. Well, we all know that the adjective to describe something agile would be nimble or flexible, or to be able to iterate or change quickly. And that really is the heart of it, the lowercase A. But when people talk about upper case A Agile, what they're talking about is a movement that started in 2001 when they said, there has got to be a better way to deliver software. And so it started there, where they would look at things like ... Brian, I know we're both old enough, do you remember Windows 95?

 

Brian Webb:

I do.

 

Anthony Coppedge:

What was after Windows 95? What was the next OS they released?

 

Brian Webb:

Wasn't it 98?

 

Anthony Coppedge:

It was 98. And then after that, what was it?

 

Brian Webb:

2000?

 

Anthony Coppedge:

Yep. And then after that XP.

 

Brian Webb:

I'm being tested.

 

Anthony Coppedge:

Did you notice that it took years to roll out a new piece of software back then?

 

Brian Webb:

Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

 

Anthony Coppedge:

So that's what these guys were up against. It took years. So they would have these beautiful Gantt charts that would describe all the dependencies and what it would take to make something. And it was always precisely wrong. I like Gantt charts for one reason only. I love the whooshing sound they make as the deadlines fly by. Because they're always precisely wrong.

 

Anthony Coppedge:

So this group of leaders met and said, there's got to be a better way. And they wrote a manifesto and said, what if we just had a way to chunk that up into small bite-size bits, and rather than figure out everything up front, we figure it out as we go. And so that's the idea behind Agile.

 

Anthony Coppedge:

It has since been applied to project management, human relations operations, to marketing, and now of course I'm leading it for sales. So Agile is a way of working, a new way of working which brings people together to where we're better together than apart. And we learn, test, and validate very, very quickly so that we deliver higher value at scale.

 

Brian Webb:

I know that transforming a culture sounds dynamic, not static. What are some ways that entrepreneurs can encourage this kind of cultural transformation?

 

Anthony Coppedge:

Well, first you have to be able to know your why. So, so many businesses think their why is profit. No, that's a by-product, right? If you deliver phenomenal value in whatever you do, you're going to make money if you there's an appetite for it, right? So if you think of the Venn diagram of, what are you great at, what does the world need, and can you get paid for it? Right in the middle of that is this ideal way of saying that's the offering you should have. Well, every business needs to be able to clearly articulate what that is. We exist for the purpose of, and we know we're successful when, and we will do these things to align our work, our efforts, our actions, and attitudes, to make sure that happens.

 

Anthony Coppedge:

So for an entrepreneur, you wear all the hats, right? Chief cook and bottle washer. But when you're thinking about growing your business you have to think about the clarity you have of where you want to go, not the outputs you want to achieve, but the outcome of being in business and make that visible, transparent, shareable, and easily transferable to everybody else in the organization.

 

Brian Webb:

That makes sense.

 

Anthony Coppedge:

And that's the key to building the culture you want. The best way to invent your future is not to look at your past. The best way to invent your future is your future.

 

Anthony Coppedge:

So we want to think of it, not like maps go, but more like GPS. Now for those over 25 in the room, you know what I'm talking about, but there was a day when I was in sales, where you would have a binder of maps. And if I wanted to follow this road in Houston, from the Northside to the Southside, I would, when I get to the edge of the map it'd say, turn to page 37, then I flipped to page 37. There's the rest of that map. And then, okay, turn to page 45. And then that's how you were able to navigate and take a portable map with you. And what I would do, Brian, like any entrepreneur, I would find the most efficient ways to get from client to client, from location, location. And I would know those. And so I'd highlight them in. So I was determining routes.

 

Anthony Coppedge:

Well with GPS, we have dynamic real-time information, mostly from other cell phones. And if it sees that on I-45, that there are no cell phones moving, that's probably a traffic jam. And so it's going to try to route you around that. So GPS is more interested in the destination than the route. And as entrepreneurs, we need to be far more interested in the destination than the route.

 

Anthony Coppedge:

We don't need to tell people how to get somewhere. We need to make sure they have the tools, the competence, and the clarity to know that we're going to support them as they discover the best ways to get there because they're closer to it than we are. And we need to trust them with the ability to take our business and add that value to clients. So we delegate not just responsibility, but we delegate authority. What we're trying to do is build out a culture that says it's built on respect, openness, courage, empathy, trust. And these are very, very difficult things for someone who's used to doing it all and controlling it all, because Agile is the antithesis of control.

 

Brian Webb:

Wow. That's a mouthful. So let me ask you this. So Peter Drucker once said, culture eats strategy for breakfast. In today's radically different world, especially during and after COVID, what's the difference between employee management today compared to even just a year ago?

 

Anthony Coppedge:

Well, it's hugely different. And I think everybody listening to this podcast would already have experienced what that feels like. But if we were trying to put some labels on it and describe it, it would be chaotic, uncertain.

 

Anthony Coppedge:

So how do you know if your people are have what they need to get the job done? How do you know, not just what are they working on, but are they getting the right results? How do you know what the process is that needed to be identified? How do we have better communication so that people don't feel like they're on an island inside their homes as they work from home?

 

Anthony Coppedge:

And we've all had to address this, IBM too. And so one of the things what's been helpful is, Agile focuses on building a communication centric organization. So we're real big on visualizing and communicating about where we are, where we're going, and what's in the way. And so, because we do that regularly, daily, it's small little increments of check-ins, not to inspect, but to understand that give us the ability to pivot, test, and move quickly, so that our reps, even though if they're working from home, still feel like they are a part of something bigger and they still have the benefit of the largess of the organization, their peers, and their management to help support them.

 

Anthony Coppedge:

So you don't have to see somebody working. You're looking for the fruit of that work. And anything that's not showing up, you're asking why, not what. There's the heart of really being a great manager inside an Agile organization. And in fact, Brian, I would say that traditional management looks at task management, activity metrics, quota attainment, as the way they understand quote unquote success. But what I would say, with Agile, we would look at it and say, how can I help you get what you need and what's in your way?

 

Anthony Coppedge:

And so in Agile management, I don't want to inspect, I want to understand. In Agile management, I don't want to have activity metrics, I want to have outcome results. And I want to understand, are we delivering value, not, are we delivering stuff?

 

Anthony Coppedge:

One of the easiest ways to see this is, look at the activities that someone says, yeah, I did all of these things and yet the business isn't moving forward. Pick an area in your business where you see that. And there likely is one. There's usually at least one person, larger companies are going to see it more common, where they're doing all the things, but the results aren't happening. Well, we shouldn't say, shame on you for not working hard enough. We should look at ourselves and say, shame on us for not trying to understand why that is. Because if I can understand that in COVID, people aren't answering the phones like they used to. They're literally not at the office. But they are responding to email. They're on LinkedIn. They are responding, but they're just doing it in a different channel. So having an activity quote of, did you make 50 calls a day? Well, that might be the wrong thing. But because we want to have busy-ness as an activity metric for success, we're having them actually be incredibly efficient at doing all the wrong things. That's not success. So we want to find new ways of doing that. And management in Agile is more about helping you with your career advancement and getting stuff out of your way. And that's it.

 

Brian Webb:

So let me ask you this, when you're talking about metrics, what's important for Agile to measure? Or what kind of key performance indicators are focused on in an Agile organization?

 

Anthony Coppedge:

Yeah. So you want to, first of all, visualize your mission, your vision, and your objectives. So I'm a big fan of OKRs or, objectives and key results. And the idea is to say, if we're supposed to be about this, then what are the things that we're going to focus on to get there? And let's go validate and see how that works.

 

Anthony Coppedge:

So what you do is you empower people to be self-directed. And the measurements you look at are less about activity and more about outcomes. So there is both a sense of lagging indicators that you could check into to look for things based on the kind of business you have, that would be helpful to understand. But the more important question is to ask, why is that?

 

Anthony Coppedge:

For example, it's not uncommon in the world of sales and marketing for people to be very busy looking at the click throughs and the open rates of things. But that's like true, but irrelevant, right? Because if they don't actually do something, I don't care how many people open my email. I don't care how many people click on my Facebook bot if it doesn't lead to something, right? I can have a false positive that shows, sure, I get lots of activity, but does it ever go anywhere? Well, then it's not success.

 

Anthony Coppedge:

I once had a sales rep, a young sales rep say to me, "Hey, check it out, man. I got my stuff moved over this week and I'm visualizing my work and I made 400 calls this week and I made 400 calls the week before." And I said, "Great, how many leads did you get?" And he's like, "Well, none, but I made 400 calls." I'm like, that's not success, right? We actually are not paying you to make phone calls. What we're paying you to do is get results. That'll usually include phone calls, but I'm less interested in measuring the activity and more interested in understanding what's working, what's not, and where are you in that understanding continuum, so that I can train you if you need more training or I can demonstrate to you how to do something more efficiently, or you can show me our process is messed up, we're out of alignment, but this is where we are.

 

Brian Webb:

We'll get back to today's episode in just a moment, but first, a quick word from our sponsor. Today's episode is brought to you by Team Meacham at SERVPRO's Disaster Recovery Team Houston.

 

Brian Webb:

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Brian Webb:

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Brian Webb:

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Brian Webb:

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Brian Webb:

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Brian Webb:

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Brian Webb:

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Brian Webb:

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Brian Webb:

So I have a question. I was once taught the principle of the BAT. And BAT is an acrostic. B stands for behavior, A stands for attitude, and T stands for technique. Behavior, in this particular scenario that we're talking about would be making calls, right? Attitude is, if you don't have the right attitude about three things, one, yourself, two, your organization, and three, the products or services that you sell, you're probably going to suffer. And then technique is obviously just getting better and better.

 

Brian Webb:

So I would imagine the entrepreneurs and business leaders listening to this episode will agree that at the end of the day, especially the business owners, one thing that they care the most about is, how many leads did you close? How did you drive revenue? At the same time, I know that doing the right behaviors is usually the best way to predict the outcomes you want to achieve. How do you weigh those two important variables in Agile?

 

Anthony Coppedge:

That's a tension to manage, that's not a problem to solve.

 

Brian Webb:

That make sense.

 

Anthony Coppedge:

Right? So COVID, right? We're all still in this right now. And so one of the things I've heard from salespeople is people aren't picking up the phone, and/or when they do get ahold of them, there are companies not sure how this thing's shaking out or when it's shaking out. The whole world's in flux. We want what you have. We just might not want to buy it right now. We need to see how things work, right? So what we would do is, we would take that feedback and go, so our Q4 might not be as great as we would normally have it be, but welcome to COVID.

 

Anthony Coppedge:

What we are more interested in then is, what kind of Q1 pipe are we building? What kind of Q2 pipe are we building? We're deferring some things, but what we're doing is adding value and we're showing we care and we're responsive and listen. We understand their pain. We want to solve that for them. So when we do that, we're okay with deferring the sale. Not because we don't care about hitting numbers. We're more interested in saying, how do we know if we're adding good value? And do they trust us as a trusted source to come back to us when they are ready to buy? That's more valuable. Because what you want to look at is not the short term closes, right, Brian? You want to look at the lifetime value.

 

Brian Webb:

Absolutely.

 

Anthony Coppedge:

So, in many businesses, once you get them to buy more than once, their lifetime value goes up by an exponential amount. So if you can get them to be a repeat customer or to expand from one offering or services into two or more, their LTV can go up five, six hundred percent, right? So what you want to do is have that long-term view and that client centric view, which is at the heart of Agile. I want to deliver value to my client.

 

Anthony Coppedge:

So let me make this real simple. When I ask my sellers to make calls or to generate leads, what I'm not asking them to do is hit a number. Instead, what I'm saying is, how can you separate the wheat from the chaff so that those people most closely aligned to what we do and the way we do it, to really exponentially help their business be better. How could you get excited about identifying, ding, ding, ding, this person's going to be blown away by what we can do for them. And you are not disinterested in the rest, but you focus disproportionately on those who are a good alignment. And now you're not worried about getting leads, you're not worried at all. What you're now excited about, and that's that B thing, behavior, attitude, right? Now you're looking at, I can't wait for when this is going to make a huge impact on your business. I'm so excited. That is a client centric sales viewpoint, not a, I need to hit my quota because I want to get paid viewpoint.

 

Brian Webb:

Right, right. Yep. Absolutely. Let me ask you this, what are some of the key benefits of having teams and departments working in Agile together?

 

Anthony Coppedge:

So that's one of the fundamental things, is that we are better together than apart. And we all know this to be true. But think about your compensation model for your different people, including sales. A lot of it is focused on individual contributors. And there's absolutely nothing wrong with that. But what would happen if you also said that in addition to your individual compensation, we want to think about how we incentivize the team getting better. How do we build a culture where a rising tide floats all the boats and everybody wins? And I'm not talking about taking the work that I do and carrying the load of five other people who are slacking. That's not what I'm talking about. I am saying when everybody contributes, we should all benefit together. And so what motivates then is the sharing of learnings, the sharing of insights, so that people are motivated and want to. Not just for the paycheck, but because they see the value of learning and benefiting from others as well.

 

Brian Webb:

I would imagine this last question that we have for today, or that I have for today rather, I know the answer to it, but I want to hear what you have to say specifically for our audience, but what kind of company or companies would benefit from an Agile transformation of their culture, their systems, their processes?

 

Anthony Coppedge:

If you want to be focused on delivering exceptional value and you can't wait to delight and surprise your clients, you probably ought to take a look at Agile. And even in spaces where it might not be as intuitive. People are like, Agile doesn't work everywhere. No, you're right. It doesn't. But it could probably work around the areas where it doesn't work.

 

Anthony Coppedge:

I had someone said, a surgeon, if I'm doing the surgery, there's no way that can be Agile. You're correct. As an individual contributor during the surgery, you are the expert. But I bet it took a lot of people to coordinate getting everything ready for that surgery to even happen. And I bet the post-op's going to require a bunch of people. And I bet the insurance follow-up is going to require a bunch people. There's probably plenty of room for Agile there, even though you're the expert in your domain, right?

 

Anthony Coppedge:

So the idea of anywhere where we can say, we're better together, and we can scale up narrowly what works and scale down broadly what doesn't, there's the real value of having your business become far more effective over time by making those small iterative improvements to make big impacts.

 

Anthony Coppedge:

Brian, when I lead my kickoff training, when I first talk to sellers, I say, so I want to introduce you to Agile. Let me ask you a question, how many of you will be thrilled if I increase your quota today by 50%? And of course nobody's hands goes up, right? Like, what?

 

Brian Webb:

Of course.

 

Anthony Coppedge:

But then I talk for a couple of minutes and I say, so let me ask another question, how many of you think it's reasonable that if we work together, we could all get 1% better a week? And of course the vast majority or almost all the hands go up and I say, great.

 

Brian Webb:

Sure, everyone that's reasonable, anyway.

 

Anthony Coppedge:

If you took two week vacation in a standard tier, in 50 weeks you'd be 50% better.

 

Anthony Coppedge:

Now you ask any CFO, any CMO, any COO, any CEO, hey, what would 50% better do to your bottom line, to your customers, into your ability to scale your business? And they would be going nuts for that. Well, there's the idea, right? It's not that we're suddenly so much better, it's that we're continuously improving to get exponentially better over time. And what it requires is that commitment to clarity, the ability to have a shared set of values and a set of principles that align us so that the work we do is not just the work we could do, but the work we should do.

 

Anthony Coppedge:

And I'll leave you with this. I remember talking to a senior executive once when I was talking about the idea of breaking it up into small bite sized chunks of one week at a time to improve, right? And this person looked at me and he says, Anthony, are you telling me we get to tell them what to do every week? And I looked at him and I said, no, they get to tell us what to do every week. There's the difference.

 

Brian Webb:

It's a complete pivot. Yeah. It's a complete pivot altogether. Let me ask you this, and this is my last question, but for those in the audience who are just now even hearing about Agile with a capital A, what would be a first or a next step? Meaning, perhaps 30 minutes ago, that word was not even necessarily as an Agile with a capital A in their vocabulary, or certainly in their sense of what they need to be doing with their business. It wasn't a priority. And imagine the listeners that are hearing this, they're understanding something, they're seeing fire for the first time, what would be a first step for them to take to start moving in that direction for implementation?

 

Anthony Coppedge:

I think we do best when we talk to our peers first. So I would ask my peers, my friends, hey, does anybody know somebody doing anything Agile with their business? Because what's going to help is for you to see a contextually relevant example. So if you are aware of that, that would be the first place to start because people talk to people and that's probably easiest way to learn.

 

Anthony Coppedge:

For the podcast listeners who I'm pretty confident are going to be avid readers as well, I would throw out the book, The Age of Agile by Steve Denning. Remember I told you about that group that got together and wrote the Agile manifesto? Well, Steve has since gone on to talk about business agility, not just software agility. And The Age of Agile is a very practical read that helps kind of explain the thinking behind it. I would point to that as a next step resource. And then if you have specialty, like Agile marketing, that would be Mastering Marketing Agility by Andrea Fryrear. And there's lots of different domains where you can see this. Do a search for it on Amazon and you're going to find a ton of books. There's no lack of content. It's a multi-billion dollar industry.

 

Brian Webb:

Okay. Well, Anthony, I know that we're all better off for having had this conversation with you here today. For those that might want to connect with you online, where's the best place for them to either connect or follow or reach out to you?

 

Anthony Coppedge:

Well, I would point most people to my website, but the truth is, I've really enjoyed connecting with people on LinkedIn. And if you want to follow and see what I say before you connect with me, that's a total viable option. It's very easy to do. You just go to linkedin.com/AnthonyCoppage. And I'm sure you'll have a link somewhere, Brian. But I love connecting with people on LinkedIn. It's my favorite social platform. So that's where I would point people to.

 

Brian Webb:

And again, someone who's known you, Anthony, for two and a half decades, I would be one to urge our audience to do that. Anthony is always a source of encouragement. He's always a source of insight. And I just want to say thank you for being on our show today, Anthony.

 

Anthony Coppedge:

Thank you, my friend.

 

Brian Webb:

Thank you for listening to today's episode of the Houston Business Growth podcast. As always, we're here to help you grow your leadership and your business by making better decisions with fewer regrets. If you've enjoyed the show, please let us know by subscribing to the show and leaving us a review. You can subscribe to this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Spotify, or anywhere else you listen to your favorite podcasts. Again, thank you for listening. We'll see you on the next episode.

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Tags:

Houston Business, Houston Business Growth, Houston Business Growth Podcast, Brian Webb, entrepreneurs, Houston, sales, marketing, leadership, Servpro, Randy Meacham, Susan Meacham, Disaster Recovery Team Houston, Extreme Team Meacham, Anthony Coppedge, Agile, IBM