Innovation insights? C-suite policy makers, does your sales team feel overwhelming near-term quota pressure? The right approach to training – whatever that means in your organization – is worthless if your sales staff are unable to mentally engage due to short-term pressures. Mandatory webinar training delivers ZERO benefits if your sales staff are all checking email and following up with customers on their 2nd screen during the session. I’m a big believer in face-to-face training, (possibly even 1-on-1 uber-tailored training depending on the economics), but even those approaches can fail if their focus is so set on this month or quarter that they can’t spend mental energy envisioning a better way to operate long-term.
CEOs are in a complex quandary on information security. On the one hand this is a topic requiring deep technical expertise which is (usually) outside the wheelhouse of CEOs, unless they head up a security tech company. On the other hand, it has become abundantly clear that in the court of public perception (and for that matter, the court of law), it is considered a CEO’s personal responsibility to ensure that appropriate protections are in place to protect the information of a company’s customers – particularly consumers. No CEO wants to end up on the front page of the newspaper or sued for negligence over a breach.
This is not the main driving problem though. The top CRM systems (Salesforce, Dynamics, SAP, Oracle) have been designed with sales input, design thinking and user experience experts coming out their ears. I find several of the top systems really elegant in their combination of simplicity and power. It’s hard to imagine these systems being much simpler while still achieving their intended goal. Neither is the tech IQ of sales staff the major problem. Never before have salespeople had the level of technical skill that today’s sales professionals possess.
Every business should want to have an IT consultant! IT consulting offers multiple benefits to both small and large organizations. Businesses benefit from their wealth of expertise and experience in handling technical tasks. Unfortunately, many business owners wait until they experience a crisis to hire experts. Such an approach may lead to irreversible damage, especially in the case of a security breach. The best approach is to hire consultants regularly to ensure that a business has the best systems in place. Find a few more info on monetizing tech.
An advice any CEO should know about cybersecurity: Achieving information security compliance with one or more government regulatory standards for information security (i.e. ISO 27001, NIST 800-171, HIPAA, NYDFS, etc.) is good, but not sufficient to ensure real cybersecurity. It is vital that CEOs establish the appropriate cybersecurity “tone at the top” for their respective organization, regarding the importance of information security and how cybersecurity is everyone’s shared responsibility in a truly digital world. Establishing an organizational “culture of cybersecurity” has proven to be one of the best defenses against cyber adversaries. It is the people, not the technology, which can either be an organization’s greatest defense, or its weakest link against a cyber-attack.
Because we recruit experienced C-level IT executives as lead consultants, our team brings expertise and proven track records to these engagements. Our experts are comparable to anyone at the senior partner level at Deloitte, PwC, Accenture, E&Y, McKinsey, BCG or Bain, but we have four significant advantages these competitors cannot match: Our lead consultants remain fully engaged throughout the term of our consulting projects. When you engage one of the “Big 4” accounting firms or “Big 3” strategy firms, you may never again see the senior partner from the day the contract is signed.