How do you communicate with company leaders?

[mbarba]

Many executives under-appreciate the work operations leaders perform.

How do you communicate the value of your work and get buy-in from company leaders on your proposals?

Share a story or technique in the comments below!

[Doug6]

I am a Senior Executive that as discussed in these lessons speaks the language of business (accounting, finance, kpi's, strategic planning, etc.).  I am finding these lessons and topics to be very informative and encouraging.  There is nothing like cotinuing education.  My approach to fostering a harmonious and low friction organization has always involved making sure we all understand the various languages spoken throughout.  It is imperative to me that all team members understand profit and loss, cash flow and balance sheet statements.  Additionally, the goal is to make sure each employee understands the role they do and can play in moving levers in the business to impact the results measured and tracked on these statements.  At the same time I want to make sure all managers understand the language spoken in all the functional disciplines such as Sales, Marketing, Customer Service, production (in manufacturing environments), HR, outside services (legal, accounting, etc.).  Good planning, communication, clearly defined roles and responsbilities, career path development, etc. supported by trustworthy and actionable data can be powerful.

I have yet to achieve or experience perfection but the tools you are sharing are great.  I am especially enjoying the Revenue Ops section.

Thank you.

Doug H

[KClancy9]

My current techniques is a bit elementary. I normally send a slack or email after preparing a slide show or data charts. 

[CEOKevinK]

Prepare beforehand an effective attention statement that catches their attention based on their previous experiences that also relates to the ask.

[Alysha_TW]

I've found that creating a shared language for what matters most and what that effort looks like is key to creating alignment on goals and measuring success. Too often [insert marketing terms] get   bundled together as if all those words and efforts are the same thing, but actually you do them for different reasons and you don't need to do them all at once. For example, people will spew words like "social media" and "branding" but not really know how those things are connected. If they have visuals to separate the problems, they can more easily pinpoint those problems, then you can work better together to solve those problems in chunks.

[HDoherty]

Love the focus on shared language, often in sales and marketing, we can get caught up in our own lingo which excludes others and senior leaders from fully understanding what we have to say.

[ECarbajal]

As explained in this lesson, visual communication is key. I have found that my most effective communication with leadeship is mostly with visual aids and summarized bullet points of an already summarized idea or plan. If you are able to articulate the topic / problem / solutiuon with a few words then you are already on your way to solving the issue at hand. 

[Natalie_Furness]

We have found that bringing together key stakeholders is key to implementing change. So often marketing, sales, and customer success are overburdened with administrative tasks. More often than not you will be able to find someone in the department who would happily have ops help. By involving stakeholders across a plethora of departments in the process of developing an operations solution, we have seen a significant increae in board approvals.