​One of the questions I have been asked recently was how someone could adjust from an external customer facing sales manager role to becoming a more internally staff-focused team leader – in other words isn’t it a completely different skill set?    My response is that in most ways it is the same – and I draw on Agile here to support my explanation – because with an external customer facing role you are acting as both a servant and a leader just as you are as an internal team leader.  
 
Providing support to the customer, whether it be completing agreed tasks or delivering set outcomes, can be described as the ‘servant’ component of the role, while guiding and informing the customer of new opportunities or solutions available is the ‘leader’ component.  The role of the team leader also has internal customers (think direct or in-direct reports) who are looking both for leadership as well as the servant component where both the individuals and team interest is at the forefront of the managers mind.
 
Every external customer is a unique personality just as is every team member.  Every team is also unique just as every customer organization is with different cultural components, ethics, and work practices.  A successful sales manager will adapt their relationship approach to the individuals within each organization that they engage with, just as they will ensure they understand and meet the needs of the organization those individuals are a part of.  Similarly, a good team leader will consider the needs of the wider team, their engagement, their success criteria, just as much as they will be aware of the individual needs of everyone who makes up that team through one-on-ones, coaching, and the like.
 
Relationships like this can be considered as a balance between the individual, the team, and the external stakeholders – again very similar in both of these internal and external scenarios.  Think of a balanced triangle where two-way connections exist between each point.  Does the team like the individual, and does the individual feel support from the team, does the team feel acknowledged by stakeholders or does the individual feel they have recognition for their special efforts? All of these typical internal team questions are being mirrored externally with customers as individuals, team participants, and their wider customer organizations and affiliated groups, are dynamics that the successful sales manager lives and breathes every day. 
 
So yes, the position of the external customer manager and the internal team manager share a common dynamic focused on people - their needs, wants, likes and dislikes – so in many ways the fundamentals are exactly the same.
 
By Tim Pegler
Tanjent Partnerships Ltd

​With so much awareness now of the impacts of climate change the argument of the root cause becomes less relevant – it is happening and we need to plan to support our people when they are impacted.   Storms, erosion, flooding are key risks that spring to mind but there are less newsworthy  trends such as increasing sickness attributed to higher or lower temperature extremes, increased traffic congestion due to pressures on older infrastructure, and rising housing costs due to increases in maintenance and insurance. What can we as employers do to ensure we have plans in place to support those employees affected?  

Wellness is a good place to start. Increased summer humidity and heat along with winter storms are likely to cause an increase in health issues – how convenient is it to work from home in your organization and how effectively is this communicated to staff?  Even heavy rain causes significant traffic disruption and let’s face it, it’s not the most pleasant or safe start to anyone’s day to battle through stormy cold conditions to reach the promised warmth of the office coffee machine.  Do you have a clear policy that covers difficult weather events?  Is it safe for everyone to travel on those days?
 
It is also worth considering how staff will engage with the company when offsite in such instances – do they have robust internet connections (fibre to the home or at least wireless rather than copper) and is your organization set up to operate as normal if many staff work remotely at any one time (think Skype for Business scaled support or similar)?  Preparing for such times will also help avoid the loss of productivity that will occur if this is left unaddressed.
 
Travel in some form is a significant factor affecting most staff – traffic congestion is common even under normal conditions let alone during times of flooding, slips, or storms.  Flying is also likely to become more disrupted with warming oceans and increasing turbulence so business trips between main cities or countries during some months may become impractical due to the likely delay at either end of the flight - not to mention the emotional impact on the individuals themselves.  Are you making good use of video communication to reduce the need for travel (think positive business case opportunity) as well as to act as a robust contingency if planned travel is no longer practical?  Having a clear process in place to support travel postponement is also great practice so staff know who to contact and what to do in such cases.
 
Lastly and most importantly you can be conscious that each and every one of your people, and that includes all of the management through to the grads, will have their own personal challenges to contend with – be it sick kids, property erosion, flooding, repair costs, or related anxieties - and in many cases may not want to share this with you directly.  This is where just generically acknowledging that these personal issues will occur to everyone from time to time (and impact individual engagement and performance on any given day) will take some pressure off those affected.  Make it clear who they can flag such issues too and reassure them that allowances will be made wherever possible.  This way they know they have the collective understanding and support of the company while they get things back on track.

​Tim Pegler for Tanjent Partnerships

McDonald’s recently announced that it would be using AI technology across its US drive-through windows to tailor customer offerings to reflect the weather (think ice-cream on hot days) and the sharing of what cars before you have been ordering.  This move toward an AI-based service experience will inevitably raise fresh concerns about the risk to job security, particularly in the service and manufacturing fields, with millions of roles potentially threatened globally as technology continues to rapidly improve.
 
Should we be concerned about or embracing AI?  Eon Musk has certainly been one to raise the warning flag – at the recent World AI Conference he repeated his view that mass unemployment is a real concern, as “AI will make jobs kind of pointless”.  The counter view to this was given by AI-defender and Alibaba co-founder Jack Ma. Ma’s view was that newly created roles such as data scientists and robotic or software engineers will compensate for many of the roles being lost to technology.  Musk countered this with “probably the last job that will remain will be writing AI.”
 
Certainly efficiencies abound using AI – the Amazon Go supermarket implementations in the US and UK incorporate a mixture of AI and computer vision to track everything a shopper puts into their basket and deducts the total cost from their online account once the store is exited – a good example of time saved on routine tasks while still retaining the personal experience of physically shopping.  The consequence of course is front of house check out staff are no longer required (this is currently a trend we can see in NZ through self-scanning without AI being a factor yet) although there will still be the need for shelf stackers, online order packers and other related roles – the key difference is just that the tasks of the roles have changed and are often created through technology changes themselves.
 
NZ’s population growth is projected to decline over the coming decades as the average age rises and the gap between births and deaths narrows.  Could AI be the savior here as many of the ‘simple’ jobs that are often hard to fill may be able to be automated and care of the elderly assisted by AI and robotics when there are not enough younger generation volunteers to fill the required positions?
 
So AI should be embraced quickly for the customer experience benefits it can offer but it also offers many staff engagement benefits by relieving the need to complete unsatisfying tasks.  Product and property management have great examples of this – price adjustments, CPI changes, locating documentation, data collation – they all take up valuable time that could be better spent planning strategy or more effective propositions if these tasks were automated.  AI in fields such as this will not lead to fewer jobs in these industries but will free up existing staff to focus on customer experience and growth. 
 
Every business needs an AI strategy – how to begin learning and planning for deployment, or how to remain competitive when your competitors have an AI driven edge.   
​Tim Pegler for Tanjent Partnerships