Working in Marketing Ops in Europe with Global Teams with Omair Izhar

Hi, I'm Michael Hartman.

I'm Naomi Liu.

And I'm Mike Rizzo, and this is OpsCast. A podcast for marketing ops pros. And RevOps pros. Created by the MoPros, the number one community for marketing operations professionals.

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Hello everyone, welcome to another episode of OpsCast, brought to you by marketingops.com. It's powered by the MoPros. I am your solo host this episode, Michael Hartman. Mike and Naomi are unable to join today, so we're going to get going anyway. Joining me today is Omer Izhar, and we are going to talk about what it is like working in marketing operations in Europe, and specifically in his case, working with US-based company. Omer is currently the head of marketing operations and technology at Ably. Prior to that, Omer had several roles in demand gen, general marketing, and marketing ops roles. He has also worked for Oracle/Eloqua. So Omer, thank you for joining us today on— for those— for a recording, right? This is a late Friday for you, so staying late on the last day of the week.

Hi, thank you, Michael, for inviting me over. It's a pleasure joining this incredible podcast. Been listening to this for quite some time, and it's kind of amazing to be guest as well. So yeah, looking forward for it.

Uh, flattery will get you everywhere. All right, well, so it has been a bit of a custom for us, I think, for a while now to start these— some of these episodes with, you know, people sharing their career story and how they got into marketing ops. So what, like, let's continue that and have you share kind of your journey and how you ended up in marketing ops, and, and then we'll go from there.

Definitely. I think like many, marketing ops have been kind of accidental for me. I, after graduated, joined a company called BA System, which was acquired by Oracle way back. And I joined them as Eloqua administrator. So that's ideally my journey coming into OpsWorld. But yeah, it started with Eloqua, Eloqua, you know, making sure like It's been set up for success. Ideally, with the sunset of Kana, a lot of people probably might not know about it. It was sunsetting. It was coming to end of its life, and Alequa ideally was just replacing it. And yeah, that ideally just became my marketing ops journey, you know, managing marketing automation platform down to now leading a team. for Apley. So yeah, that's, that's highly what it is. And, and again, in between that, from Oracle into world of Cisco, I've been there for roughly 5 and a half years. Again, doing pretty much marketing operation related roles, right? Way from being someone who just helping them setting up their marketing and channel program as well as setting up like custom processes, Again, in-house, then switching over from there into world of fintech, a company called Bazeware. Again, 4+ years there. And again, incredible journey there. Joined them as a campaign manager and ended up like as a marketing operation lead looking after just not marketing operations, but web operations kind of come under my remit as well. And from there, you know, working for bigger corporates like SoftBank, you know, 3 years there and most recently At a startup organization called Eightly. So yeah, it's pretty much evolved around, you know, marketing automation tools, data processes, looking at the strategy as well as building teams, which is more fun part, I suppose.

Yeah. So it's, so just like every other marketing ops, your story is just like everyone else's in marketing ops, which is—

Well, it's kind of a paradox.

Right. What I mean is that there's no consistency.

whatsoever. I wish there was like a, you know, career path defined for marketing ops, but yeah, I think it's mostly accidental.

Yeah, I think, you know, that if Mike was here, he'd tell you that I think part of what his goal when he started the MoPros and now marketingops.com was, is to start to help facilitate some of that. And I see some of it happening. So I'm happy for that. So there's, I think there's lots of opportunities where there's gaps that of knowledge that go beyond just knowing a specific marketing automation platform, for example, or specific technologies. But so curious, couple quick questions. So on those companies that you have worked for, and I should know this about Ably because we've talked about it, but I didn't. I did a little bit of research, but is it a B2B or B2C? Do you have a mix of both in your background?

It's a mix of both. Again, it's a real-time infrastructure company. And yeah, I think it's pretty much focused around real-time data and it's a startup scale-up organization at the moment. We roughly have 120 folks to be more precise. By the time I joined, we were roughly, I think I was employee number 64. So yeah, it has definitely doubled up since I joined them.

That's great. That's amazing. Yeah. So it sounds like you've not only worked in B2B, B2C, you've also worked in different size and stage of companies as well throughout your career.

That is correct. Yeah, I started from a mid-sized SME to a big giant, to again mid-sized, again to a big enterprise, to now a startup. So yeah, it's a bit of experience.

Yeah, interesting. And another, I guess another thing, especially since you worked with Eloqua, worked at Eloqua, right? You were at Eloqua specifically within Oracle or?

No, it was a company called BDA Systems. This is what pretty much my very first job. And I ended up, uh, you know, working for them for roughly 6 months and that company being acquired by Oracle. So it is way before, you know, the takeover of Adecqua by Oracle. So yeah, it was a middleware company, which was ideally, you know, Oracle's bread and butter.

Yes.

So yeah, I went through an acquisition, I did the very first job and then going through that acquisition. And again, I'm talking about the time like 2008, like scary moments.

So yeah.

Yeah.

Okay. Well, good. All right. So this is, this has been, uh, this is it really. I find it fascinating, everyone's story. Let me add one last question about that and then we can move on to the kind of main topic here. But curious, one of the things I'm always curious about are, are there, were there moments, uh, or decisions during your career or people that were part of your career that you think like, yeah, you look back and like, oh, that was really like a, uh, Like a key point or in my career where, you know, path could have been different if I had made a different choice or had a different person that I was connected with?

I think there were some definitely defining moments. I think during my journey, I would definitely start with a very fast one. And again, via system, I had an incredible manager named Paul Bouchelle. really good friends with him now, but he was pretty much the one who defined my career, right? Had been my mentor for quite some time. And to present day as well, if I give him a buzz, he will definitely, you know, reply to my calls and, you know, talk to me and then give me, you know, the honest advice people would generally would give you. So yeah, he was an incredible person anyway, like, you know, helping me, you know, again, coming straight out of uni, like no one knows what, how exactly things will shape up. But yeah. sitting me down, walking me through it with pretty much every single day-to-day stuff right away, like how I manage my time, how I can better communicate, how I speak to team, project manage and stuff like that. And again, every single thing that you have learned as a part of theory and then bring into practical world. Yeah, he's been phenomenal. While we are talking about it, the other person who's kind of incredible within my career path was Um, my boss at BA Systems, uh, sorry, at, at Bazeware, Kerry Jones. Um, you know, he's been in, in kind of a tech world for quite some time. And yeah, again, he helped me, um, again from my days from Bazeware to present day as well. Like, he's, he's incredible. Like, um, he got tons of knowledge, you know, old school marketer with a love of technology. He's, he's been phenomenal as well in terms of, you know, asking advice, helping me, guiding me, and then again, sometimes even correcting me, right? Which is an important part. So yeah, I think these were 2 defining moments. And again, these 2 folks have definitely helped me a lot in terms of where I am, what I have done in my career. And again, the other part of the question was like, if I have thought about it differently, you know, back in the days, I think I'm kind of a technical-minded person. So I would have gone a little bit different like direction as compared to where I am. No regrets. But yeah, it is one of those things, right? You need to really wake up every morning and do something which you love. And I think important for me was that, you know, technical stroke, you know, doing things differently, being strategic at the same time. And, you know, again, marketing is something which I love the most. So yeah, that's what I do. That's That's getting me excited every morning.

I, you know, I love that you've got, like, it was pretty quickly that you came up with those 2 people that were, you think of as key to your career. And, and, um, if I, if I heard you right, is that they would not only would they be there to answer your questions and give you advice, but they would also sort of hold, like, call you out a little bit, right? When you, you know, like, it's, yeah, like, look inside yourself. So I think that's a really good That's really good to have people that do that for you.

Definitely. I think it has to be, you know, just like talking to, you know, someone who is kind of real honest friend, right? Because they need to accept your goods and bads and be honest when they give you feedback. Again, you know, relationship with your managers obviously is important. Like if you from the day first becomes not only good friends with them, but been open about them and again, all the other factors that will come in like, hey, how you build bonding, empathy and then obviously like, you know, pure honest discussions around your career, I think, yeah, and then you can build a relatively very good bond. And yeah, that's, that's ideally the case with both my, you know, some of my 2 good managers.

That's awesome. All right, well, thank you for sharing that. Hopefully our listeners will learn something from that and maybe take stock of who they've got in their circle, right? So let's get into this. So one of the reasons we wanted to talk was because you work in Europe, but I think now you're working for, and maybe in the past too, I can't remember exactly, but you've worked for companies based in the US, right? So you're working in marketing ops and marketing in Europe, but with a US-based company. And you and I talked, right? I've been the opposite where I've like, I worked in the US for a Japanese-based company. I currently work for a company that's UK-based actually. Although the business unit I'm in is really mostly US. But so just, I think let's start with, you know, how would you like, what's your experience been working with, you know, in Europe with those, you know, for companies that are based in the United States or with other regions? Are you, do you notice differences about how you work with people in Europe versus the US? Let's start with that.

Well, the first and foremost thing is like you need to have a world clock handy, right? That's, that's the first thing that you need to have.

Oh my gosh. This is like we're recording, we're recording this shortly after, uh, we, we at different, in different weeks changed from daylight savings time to standard time, right? And so I totally understand that.

So that's the very first thing. And, and obviously the other piece is, um, You know, time plays an important part when we talk about like, and again, we talked about early, like the bonding piece, that's kind of important. But I think having that face time, especially if you look at past 2 and a half years and probably some of the time way back as well, like having that face time is kind of super important for us, especially in OpsWorld. So working with those corporates, again, based out of US, again, San Fran based out of UK, and then, you know, 8 hours difference, it can be very, very difficult to manage. But luckily, I've been in kind of a, you know, hybrid world for a very long time, considering, like, from my early Cisco days. And how I managed that was, you know, again, adjusting my working hours. You know, talking especially about my time at Splunk, I would have time, especially Monday and Fridays, a little bit working with the US hours and obviously accommodating like based on my personal life as well. But yeah, it, it was, it was more, more like just like making sure like I create ample time for the team there. Plus the team was kind of super adaptive for, for me as well in a way like they, they might just step in 8 o'clock their time just to have some time with me. Again, talking about those complex projects where there's going to be a cross-collaboration across the pond, right? Which is, which is super important. So yeah, it has to be like, you know, a bit of flexibility involved through it. And again, giving ample prompt time to folks as well. Otherwise, yeah, things can get like last minute rushed through, which I, I lead the recipe for disaster. So yeah, having that moment, I think, definitely helps.

Yeah, you mentioned something early in that when you were answering the question about FaceTime. And I know, so go back to the time when I worked for a company who was based in Japan. We had, generally speaking, right, everything was, this was really pre-Zoom even, was a big thing. It was conference calls. And it was so hard to really work effectively with those folks over there. And not like no one's fault, right? It's just like the communication was a challenge. By the way, their English was far better than my Japanese, like the one word I know. But so there's that plus the time difference plus like the major cultural differences. And it was, it was a, it made a huge difference going over to Japan and meeting and socializing and working with them. in person, it really, really changed how that relationship worked. I think even though we were doing remotely after that, we, you know, only got to do that once every year or two. So do you find the same thing with, like, do you find it that the case regardless of country that you're working with, or do you find it with certain countries or certain regions that it makes more of a difference?

Well, talking about, you know, UK, US, I think No problem. We speak the same lingo, definitely. But I think it worked quite well, especially like when I joined as an MEL person. You have to understand like the cultural aspect. I think this is a really good point that you highlighted, the cultural differences between actually within Europe as well, you know, outside of Europe, you talk about Middle East, for example, and, you know, accommodating to that, I think. Yeah, it definitely makes a— it's a massive difference, you know, understanding that cultural aspect is super important. Like, and again, I'm talking about, as you mentioned, your example around Japan. So I ended up like working quite closely with folks in, you know, Middle East and Southeast Asia. It was like total different way of working as compared to now, just like more focused around Europe, how you, you know, work with, for example, my best friend in that region versus, you know, my best friends in Northern Europe. So definitely you have to do quite a lot of tailoring around how you work with them, how you communicate with them. But yeah, you know, talking about US, I think it's perfectly fine. I think that they are very much understandable in terms of like the culture. But yeah, again, one of the key topics that we previously have discussed was, you know, how us as Europe kind of work with the US. And I think there is going to be a continuous Conversation around like how we need to tailor those aspects for Europe. One fit all doesn't work sometimes. But yeah, having that, I'll call it the— what's the word I'm looking for? Like, it has to be like super tailored around like what we do, for example, region by region. And if you don't understand certain things by talking to them, then yeah, you won't be able to build the right processes, build the right way of communication with them. So just visiting those regions would not help. But yeah, obviously learning, I think it's a 2-way traffic. You have to continuously learn. One key thing I think is super important, which I find it very, very helpful within my career as well. One of my key managers used to say that to me, like every time when you speak to a different person and to a different region, be a Mickey Mouse. It's like big ears, small mouth. So get to listen more, understand more, and talk less. And I think it can really, really help you, um, which I find fascinating still to present day.

Yeah, no, I, I think it reminds me of like the short period of my career when I was in, in a sales role. In one of the, the training that went through training, I wasn't ready to be in sales at that point in my career. I really wasn't. All that great at it. But one of the things I remember, the biggest thing I remember from the training— well, there's a couple things, but the one that really always remember, and I think it applies across, is that, uh, there was like this research, like the best salespeople were not the ones that we all assume just talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, right? They actually ask really good questions and they listen actively, and, and then they think of the next question. They're not the ones who are talking, asking a question, wait, and already like planning on what the next thing they're going to say is. I think Like, I like the Mickey Mouse thing, like big ears, small mouth, right? I've heard variations of that. I think that is such an insightful thing. So for people, even regardless of whether you're working with people across, you know, in a certain region or country, but also, you know, across the globe, that is, I love that. I'm gonna steal that Mickey Mouse analogy. So thank you.

Not a problem. Yeah, I think it works. Definitely works. And I think as you rightly said, like, you know, your gig in sales, you know, one of the key, I should say, like learning from my career, I think it was early days when I was leaving Oracle as a part of the acquisition, they actually offered me to work in sales and I said like, you know what, I'm a marketer, let's give it a go. And I ended up like sitting in the sales academy for like probably 2 weeks. And at the end of 2 weeks, I decided that that's not going to be my cup of tea.

But— Oracle was and probably still is a sales machine. Right.

So, oh my God, it was nice to be in that phase. I think you get to learn quite a lot in such a quick amount of time. But I think I decided at the end of 2 weeks, that's where I'm not gonna survive. And I think we all know the reasons behind it. I'm not gonna go into those details.

Well, so this is a little bit of an aside. What I will tell you, my experience also was like, I wasn't really— that wasn't what I was ready to do or made to do. Particularly at that point in my life and career, but I will I will say it gave me a very good perspective about how really hard it is to sell and do it well. And so I as especially when you get into marketing or marketing operations, it's really easy to discount other well it's easy to do that in just about any function, but I think between marketing and sales, right? We like to discount each other's you know the amount we add to an organization, and I. As much as I am a big fan of marketing and operations, I think I also understand like picking up a phone and calling a prospect and getting hung up on, asking for the contract, right? All those things are— they seem easy, but they're not. It is a huge ego smack when they say you get nos and you get nos more than you get yeses. Even the best salespeople will tell you that.

So true. Yeah, definitely.

All right. Well, so you mentioned something in there. I think if I got it right, you know, we were talking about like regional differences. And this is— I'll give you a for instance that I think about when I talk to people, when we have worked at companies that want to go from, you know, doing a lot of stuff in the US or the Americas, like US, Canada, and some in Europe, and then when they want to move to other areas. So Do you do you find? Because I think I think of like, I think a lot of marketers and companies think of like well we there's a lot of them think about these major like you got the Americas or maybe you have North America South America you've got Europe Middle East Africa is all kind of grouped as one right and then Asia Pac and then some people especially technology companies separate Japan out from the rest of Asia Pac but what I've what I've found or the way I've seen it done is that like. The Americas is generally done in the same way regardless of state or country. I think a lot of American companies when they go to Europe think of it as a homogenous kind of place as well, right? Unless they're, at least from a marketing standpoint, I don't think they do if they have feet on the ground for selling because clearly that matters. And then I always think of, I've always thought of Asia like it's like a dozen different places because there's actually a lot of differences in how business is done in Japan versus China versus Australia versus Singapore or whatever. I mean, is this your observation? How are you, I guess, especially when you're marketing and doing stuff in Europe for a company that's based in the US who probably has people who think of Europe as this one big place, how are you managing that?

Okay, good question. So first and foremost, I think there are instances where, as you pointed out, there are folks on the ground, you know, and obviously they can be your eyes and ears, and obviously they are the first person who's gonna give you the feedback if this is going to be the right thing to do for that particular region or not. In case we are not, and I think a lot of test and trial tend to happen, right? But And again, you know, considering like certain norms in Europe, like France, if you send them English email, they probably will just ignore it. And same can be said for Dutch region, apart from like Swiss, where they probably would have a bit of, you know, click open and, you know, read, you know, stuff like that. But in terms of adding that regional taste to it, I think looking at just Europe on its own, there are massive differences. You know, there's a lot of respect factor, the, the language, how certain things have been kind of put together. The sense of respect comes, comes into play. Now, privacy is another big thing, especially in Europe, which has to be like the top priority, you know. And again, working in ops, It really, you know, you have to like stay on top of so many different things. Yes, GDPR is just one blanket, but at the same time now, for example, since Brexit, like you have its own privacy rules. So you have to keep on like reading those and staying on top of that. And when we talk about like, hey, now working for US, you have those what we call as the global comms coming in. And you are the person on the ground have to really work and coordinate and triage quite a lot of things with your field marketing teams on the ground, you have to talk about all these things with them. Hey, here you go. This is going to be the language, is going to be the messages. Who are you going to target? How are we going to target? How often are you going to target? What kind of channels are we going to use? And the other aspect that comes into play, and again, this is sometimes like where ops can become super helpful, is like our territory slightly now into the world of sales as well, considering now previously that floats into, for example, if people are using Outreach or Salesloft for their sequences, like We definitely become the voice there, helping the team define like, hey, this has to be toned down, has to be slightly, you know, changed based on the region or the number of touches you're gonna have. Because marketing in, in the past, right, have tons of data around like how people respond to messages, type of messages, types of emails that we send. So again, yes, sales still want to send emails, but we really are the right people on the ground to work with. to actually build the better sequences that actually help the team to do conversions, get better acceptance of those messages. So yeah, I think it's a massive shift since the GDPR comes into play, since now we are working quite closely with, you know, teams outside of our team, like we call it your marketing operation team. So yeah, that's definitely You know, regional factor. There's a lot of other factors, as I said, like privacy and obviously understanding. Sometimes, you know, especially like my time at Splunk when we were talking about, you know, really complex technical words. So you have to really work with the folks on the ground just to, you know, I would call it not the dumb it down way, but actually make it like simplified so people can understand that on regional level. Some of those words don't even exist in certain dictionaries, for example, but yeah, this is kind of super important.

So are you— here's what's really interesting to me, and then I've got a follow-up. Maybe I'll do the follow-up first, but it's interesting you talk about the technical terms because I worked at Texas Instruments for a number of years and we were working on localizing content, and the research team that did the research in— and this was particular to Asia— I can't remember if it was China or Japan, may have been both, but when they went over there to see technical documentation like data sheets on products, do we need to translate those? What was really interesting is what they found going into people's offices, there was usually an engineer who would be in their office that would literally print out the English document and then in the margins have the translations, and they actually didn't want the translated content Because I think a lot of us just assume, oh, they were going to want it translated to Chinese, you know, one of the Chinese languages or kanji or whatever. But in fact, they didn't trust the translation on technical information. It was really fascinating, right? So—

Precisely. You rightly pointed out, like, we decided, like, have all this Chinese or Japanese text, all of it, and technical terms, they remain in English, right? So Yeah, man. Again, not to forget, like a lot of times the browser especially, like they were just using the machine translations.

Oh my God, like terrible.

It can be, it can be, can be a disaster.

I mean, I could get the gist of some stuff by doing those translates. Like I remember getting, yeah, replies from people from marketing emails in other regions and it would be in whatever their local language was, and I'd be like, I don't know what this says, and I'd throw it into a translate tool, and, um, it never was— never felt like it was quite right. So, but okay, so I'm curious. So you— I brought up translation, but I didn't hear you talking about translated content, which was interesting to me. Maybe you were implying it there for regional differences within the, the continent and all that, but are— I mean, are you— because I think a lot of us in the US would think, oh, You know, they don't really need it translated, or we need to translate it into, you know, say 3 major Spanish, French, German, right? Cover it. That'll cover everybody. Like, I don't know, like, is it— is translation an important piece for you there on when you're getting stuff, or is it more about, uh, you mentioned simplify, simplifying the English content so that it will work across multiple countries?

I think it's, it's a, it's a combination of both. And I think you rightly pointed out, I was, you know, in talking about regionalization, I think I was meant to include that translation component as well. It can be one of our, you know, biggest successes as well as it can become the bottleneck as well. And I think most of the failures are kind of related to localization and translation. So, um, yeah, I think there's a combination of 2 things, right? There's a simplified English that has been kind of you know, kind of tailored to use ideally outside of the, you know, the Americas as such. A lot of time, you know, this can be the right route. And again, it can be instances like that where, you know, and again, certain countries, especially in mainland Europe, they would not open up emails based on their subject lines. But overall, we have seen like if it's been like really nicely written and tailored according to mainland Europe, They have a really good success rate. Yes, of course, localization will come into play because there is going to be a massive ask, especially around dark region, because, you know, the sense of respect and localization, I think, is kind of very, you know, go hand in hand. It's very important for them. There had been instances in my short career as well where I've seen like, hey, localization becomes like a big roadblock pinning everyone's backside in a way like by the time localization comes in, I think the ship has sailed and the campaign won't even go live.

Right.

And again, it totally depended on the complexity as well. So, and again, combination of simplicity and making sure like, you know, when we are going for localization and, you know, speed to execute is super important for that. So yeah, and again, instances like the companies I work with, they kind of, you know, split Europe into tier 1 and tier 2 countries considering like everyone, like where their most bucks are coming from. So prioritizing is super important and making sure, like, I think us as marketing ops, and I think we play multiple roles, especially in Europe, you know, again, working for US companies, we become like project managers as well in many instances. I've done this thing, you know, role multiple times where I am the one who's coordinating the efforts in terms of making sure like we, we create those formats which are quick to localize and quick to convert back into the original formats. So, you know, back in the day, we tend to have those Excel files to a point like now we are coming to a point we have sophisticated DAMs. Ideally, they are doing the same functions.

Yeah.

And now the connectivity makes things super easy for us to push and publish stuff directly into our marketing automation and CMSs and and stuff like that, which obviously helps us a lot as an ops person because speed is every single thing that helps us to execute. And we have to work across region. And again, America being one, like, but here we have, again, different time zones as well, just like US, right? But we have to give time separately to just give an example, that region, not Northern Europe. And then we have Southern Europe. And then if we extend down to South, you know, again, Eastern Europe as well. things are done slightly differently. So yeah, these are all the factors which come in regardless of whether you just wanted to, you know, take them as priority 1 countries, priority 2 countries, or, you know, rest of Europe as we call it. So it is important. But yeah, it is vital that as a part of the process, as you becoming the PM, you coordinate all those efforts together. Sometimes you actually drive the whole team forward as well, considering like if it's a, it's a key thing to deliver on, you make sure like everyone who's responsible for doing certain jobs in order to, you know, make the whole program successful, they do things rightly in a timely manner.

Yeah. So I think what I took away from that is if you are, you're in a position where you or your team is thinking about doing localized content, whether it's emails or landing pages or web content, whatever it is, that you need to allow ample time for the translation and review and QA of it. Because if you don't, right, then you're putting yourself at risk. Or you need to then decide, you know, if that's not enough, if you don't have enough time for that, do you still go to market with something that you have that is in English, right? Or whatever language you start with, which makes sense. I mean, I'd like you— I mean, every place I've seen translation, even if there is one of these translation engines that gets smarter as you feed back the corrections, I have never found— I've not found a place that is comfortable with just trusting that without having somebody within the company review, right? Or somebody that knows that space. So you might hire an individual contractor or something, but— Which, right, it slows it down, particularly if it's detailed content.

Of course. And I think it is right to call out, right, when we talk about marketing operation roles and how they kind of transform into roles in Europe, as I mentioned earlier, like you becoming the PM role. But another thing that I think like we wear multiple hats is like I consider our roles become like, you know, PM on different levels. Like we become marketing managers at certain instances as well, right? As we always have those new product launches or new program launches. Now we have a seat on those calls. And the important factor there is like the, you know, creating the preparedness level further down. So for example, it's a big program being launched. And obviously the aspect is always about, hey, let's just discuss our reach, like where are we gonna target them? Obviously outside of mainland America, it's just Europe. Okay. For us, it's like we are the one raising hand, hey, if we need to look at these, we have to really factor in the localization aspects. And what that meant is like if we are meant to launch on, just give an example, 1st of March, we need to give at least, you know, 3 to 4 weeks Prepare time of localization. And again, as you rightly said, human factor will come into play because someone has to eyeball it, like making sure like the sentences are ended correctly. The prefixes are kind of localized in the right way. You know, last name was kind of used in every way, whereas Germany, we need to make sure like it's been, you know, set up correctly. So yeah, it has to be like you know, that particular role where we actually become key individuals who actually work with those corporate teams, product teams, or whatever it is to make sure like we build those project management, the whole program. Otherwise, yeah, as you rightly said, hey, if you're launching it like we are launching in piecemeal, right? The English goes first and then the rest of the languages come in second. So this is kind of very important. And again, Especially for product launches, is super critical. And again, our marketing program manager hat will come into play massively every day in sort of making sure like we have active conversation with pretty much everyone within the organization and outside of the organization where we are working with localization agencies.

Yeah, that's so true. So for our listeners who haven't gone through dealing with that, Someone comes to you and says, you want to do localized content? Can't you just throw it into Google Translate? No, you can't. Like, you can, you can, but you're probably not— you're gonna end up regretting it. Of course.

And back in the days, right, we tend to have those Excel files. And again, considering like, uh, if you need to convert those things back into landing pages or emails or now sequences in your outreach platforms, You don't speak that language, so I have to really coordinate that, like what needs to replace what. It's just, it's incredible. And, and back in the days, if you talk about like how those, how things, you know, make your life difficult, consider like someone from Spain or Italy or any other country will come, hey, this, there's an error in this line. And for you, every single thing is gibberish anyway, right? So, right, I'm gonna change what? So, you know, having those things and again, you have to, you know, not be a rocket scientist to understand how to actually manage that. But I think, as I said, you become that PM who actually handled those expectations in the right way. You need to come up with those creative ways to make sure like what were you trying to achieve actually resonate with everyone within those projects. Otherwise, you're building a recipe for disaster.

Yeah. Well, and then there's also just nuances of local I don't even know what the right word is, but like phrases that you— we just use and just assume, say, the US people know. Like there was one, I want to say it was some variant of like 24/7, that if we used it in Japan, apparently it was actually like a really negative thing. I'm probably getting it completely wrong, like what it was, but there was something very much like that, something that we would normally use in the US to represent like how available we are, or it would have been generally interpreted as a good thing. And it was like the opposite in this other region. And it was thankfully we had somebody there who told us, right, you can't use that. But those are like, no translation engine is going to really pick that up.

No, I think that's so true. And again, that's why a lot of now new company that's like, you know, back in the days used to be only SDL. And again, I don't get no favors from them by saying that, but, you know, um, as you rightly called out, like, it used to be like very much a human-based, like, localization at that time, to a point. Like, now we have a few new, um, players in, in the game, um, which, which talk about like those AI-based, um, localization. And, and actually they get you know, all these things like easily picked up. They flag, you know, information like that over to you. And obviously you can decide like what actions you're gonna take. So I think the technology is definitely helping us a lot in terms of moving in the right direction, simplify things for us. And again, it has good and bad to it. But I see definitely, you know, technology is definitely helping us massively where we have to deal with so many different use cases along the same time within Europe and outside of Europe, especially where languages are concerned.

All right. Well, so let's, let's switch gears a little bit. So if I remember right, in our earlier conversation, you have a team that is actually distributed not just in Europe, but I think in other regions around the world, right? Is that correct?

That's correct. As Splunk, we had team pretty much dotted all around global, especially focused on US, actually like follow the sun movement. And obviously we have folks in, in APAC as well. Um, my role at Ably, obviously, you know, we are a remote-first company, so we have teams pretty much dotted all around. Um, my team is pretty much like everywhere, like sometimes they are in Spain, sometimes they are sitting in, in sunny Dubai. So yeah, it, it is the case.

So what, so what are some, you know, some of your lessons learned over the years that you could share with our listeners about you know, particularly those who are either working with or managing teams that are distributed across, you know, pretty wide swaths of the world? Good question.

I think one of the key things which I, in my view, can be the biggest success when you're building team, I think, is that the openness within your team. I think I like to be managed, you know, like the way I manage my team is the same way I like to be managed. So I think that's something which I have applied massively within my teams as well. Obviously, people talk about, you know, accountability, like, you know, having so many different project management tools and stuff like that. I think they are good for us in terms of helping us, but I think the success lies when we're managing those remote teams. And then again, teams sitting in different time zones is continuous communication and collaboration. What I found really helpful is some sort of visual platform which really helps the team. One of the key ones, obviously, I use Asana massively in, you know, from my early days to now. I switched over to use of Miro. That has been a life changer in terms of how we put our efforts together, collaborate together, how we actually get our work done together. Again, this is super important. Now, again, managing those teams, I think you have to build quite a lot of personal bonds with the team. I think one of the key things, I think my team would laugh at it if they get to listen to this podcast. They used to call me a motherly figure within the team considering like I care and I super care my team because, Yeah. Especially well-being of your team members is super important. Like if they are And again, I'm not gonna use the word like properly looked after, but it, it is kind of very real. Like if they are being listened all the time, they've been like actively, you know, asked about like, you know, what they think about our team, our management style, you know, other teams which kind of work with us. They will become like, you know, real core members of your team. They will actually go out of the way and actually do things like we have all these instances, we have, you know, last minute changes, we have those fire drills, we have those things just going pear-shaped, like they will actually, you know, step in and actually do things which I call it miracles, right? Yeah. If you don't look after them, if you don't speak to them, if you don't have that factor built into it. And again, it is important that you have that one-to-one and actually one-to-many kind of a bond in between the teams. Yeah. Otherwise the, there is, there's never going to be a success. One thing which I always talk to my team is like, there's no I, there's always a we, you know, we as a team complement each other, right? I obviously, like, I've been in, in this role for quite some time, but I see my younger team members who actually bring in talent of skill set, which I don't have it. And, and we all complement each other. But yeah, again, we, we listen to each other a lot. We learn from each other a lot. Other successes which I found, like managing teams like that, is, is I call it downloading information, right? As in, in simple way, like document every single thing, like tips and tricks as we might have learned throughout your career. Luckily, like I tend to store quite a lot of things on my Google Drive. So what I do is like if when I move roles, I bring those tons of knowledge.

Yeah.

Customize it based on my role and make sure I communicate with the team as well. You know, if they don't understand certain things, I'll make sure I, you know, spend time with them talking with those changes. And likewise, if I get to, you know, see something like incredibly happen by, like, done by certain team members, I make sure like they've been recorded, like, and, and it's been shared all across the team as well.

Yep.

One thing Which I find, I think the success of teams lies in that, like not tying your hand around things, but actually opening it up so people can learn from you.

Yeah.

And again, it's, it's, you know, you don't see that, you know, effect straight away, but you will see that, you know, compounding massively, like the way you start sharing things, what you know with others, they will get to pick that up and share furthermore. I think that is what I found in ops world, especially like what you guys have been doing is the same thing. The knowledge that you guys have, you've been sharing it all across. So it's valid within the team as well.

Yeah.

Whatever you have learned, you just continuously share. And this is where I see people, people will start building those, you know, motion continuously. You will see that impact where when they, you know, your team member will go in and work for another team, they will start doing the same thing, like all the good habits that they have learned in your team. So yeah, openness is super important, not keeping your hands tied around things is super important. And one thing which I always highlighted with my team, like back in the days, people tend to have this thing like around, you know, the stuff, the processes. I kind of simply highlighted them, hey, I create my replicates, I create my, um, replaceables because, you know, this is where I think this, you know, the learning will come in. This is where the successes will come in. So yeah, let's just not restrict yourself into just one thing. Open up, share, and you'll see, um, you know, really, really awesome stuff happening.

Uh, it's, um, I feel like I could have just been saying a lot of the same things because I, I think I, because I've had distributed teams, not as widely distributed as yours, I think, for a while. And I've found that, I'll paraphrase a little bit, right? That, that, um, you manage the whole person, right? So not just their work, you know, it's like, because I think it's just unrealistic that people can separate work and private life, right? You know, that doesn't mean you pry or, or do, but if, if, if someone's struggling and you recognize it, right, being aware of that and being there to support however they want. Um, but also, um, to me it's a lot about building trust, right? So sharing information. I think if you share as much as you can, uh, uh, that when the time comes where they may ask you something, you say, I just don't know, or I'm not able to share because of whatever reason. You built the trust that like you would share if you could. And so I think that's a really important one. I think your point about complementing each other and working together as a team to be successful, totally agree with that. I think there's a lot of value of understanding your blind spots along with like what are the things that your other, the rest of your team brings to the table. And then being humble enough to ask for help when you have to work with that area of your responsibility that doesn't really take advantage of your strengths, right? So I like all this stuff that you just talked about, like every one of those. Not only do I think that works, I think it's super, it's almost absolutely required when you've got a distributed remote team. I think it works Just as well with people in person, but you could probably get away with a little bit less of that because that, you know, that direct human connection in face-to-face time does, you know, you get the advantage of body language, all body language, not just, you know, you know, neck up, right? So, um, yeah, so it's funny because we actually just recently made a— within our leadership team at the company I'm at, we was like, we're gonna Commit to, because we were getting out of the habit of not being on camera. We have a widely distributed team, like not being on camera. And we're like, let's all agree that we're going to try to do our best. We're going to be on camera. And we're going to be on camera with as much of our body as we can, right? Because so much of it is, well, our listeners can't see, like I'm using my hands right now, right? So like hands, mood, you know, facial All that stuff is so huge in building the connections. Anyway, we could probably go on a whole long about that, but that's like, I'm really glad to hear that. Like, actually what's comforting to me is that your take on that with a completely probably different set of people in different regions of the world, like, I think that translates because it's a human nature thing.

Of course. It is just not that human nature. I think, as you rightly said, the body, your hand gestures, your oral expressions, I think it plays a massive role. One thing right now, I'm sitting on my chair, but I generally stand up most of the time. So people will see me like walking back and having this gesture. I think it's important. One thing which I think is important, as you talked about trust, I made sure we just have those, you know, Zoom meetings. But at the same time, we'd have no, you know, Zoom meeting with no cameras on, like where I asked my team to be, hey, let's just have a voice call only. And for that particular call, you need to get out of your office as well. Like if you're especially working remotely to ensure that, you know, we have the time to look at what's happening all around us. Like, you know, if the weather is good, just make sure you get a little bit of sun. And obviously, for all our pretty much team discussions like that, you know, it's been allocated like every month we do minimum one call like that where we spend a good 30 to 40 minutes just like that, like no camera, but we've been out and about and do things. And again, as I said, like when you've been out and about, ideas flow in and it actually helped us massively in terms of doing the things people not thought about it.

Yeah, I've worked at a place where we, this was pre-COVID where we did walking meetings.

It helped.

Yeah, right. Definitely ideas flowing. Well, um, wow, there's so much more I want to ask you, but like, let's, let's— we're gonna have to wrap it up. Why don't we just do— I'll leave it open to you a little bit, and that— is there anything that we haven't covered that you would want to share with our listeners about working with remote teams, working as a— especially for our listeners who are maybe in the US and working with colleagues who are in other parts of the world, right? What are the things you'd want them to remember when they're working with those folks that they may not be thinking about or understand about what it's like to be on that other side of that sort of receiving end of here's a new marketing communications plan?

Yeah, I think the way I would like to highlight it, I think as a part of learning is Talk. That's, that's the important factor. The other piece is celebrate together, right? It's just not your successes, but considering working with a diverse team, as we all talk about it, I think celebrate their local celebrations. Like, you know, they have Eid, we have Diwali, we have so many local festivals, you know, have that thing factored in because you will learn a lot from it. Right? So yeah, it just opens up so many different things. Like we, you know, I introduced Wear Your Local Dress Day, you know, something which I find like funny at the same time is like interesting as well. But yeah, I think this, this really helps. It, it, what do you call it? Like in a way, like it's breaking the ice. It, it let people open up and obviously build bonds. You know, we all are like a family. This is where we spend most of our time outside of our, you know, close family. So make more bonds, you know, have more conversations because ideally, you, you know, this will actually get you where you want it to be, you know, network, you know, and as you rightly said earlier, raise hand where you don't know something, you know, ask for help if you need help.

Yeah.

But yeah, enjoy. I think celebrate and have more fun at work and, and just be ready to, you know, continuously help others because this is where you will see Um, you know, literally out of the blue, people will step in and help you out of trouble, you know. Now considering like we are going through a very tough time, people will step in and, you know, amazing things. Like, you know, I know for sure recently with all the layoffs and stuff happening, people aren't coming out of their way and then helping people out, like especially ops and outside of ops, um, to get into new roles.

Yeah.

Um, you know, some of the folks which I have previously worked with, like, they are mentoring, right? So it is, it is important, like, open up, just, you know, just not someone who just like, you know, be living in their silo, open up and let people come into that circle. That's going to be super important for your success. Yeah.

So remember the Mickey Mouse analogy, right? Big ears, of course, mouth. And I think Maybe this is what you were getting at with celebrating together. All this is like, I think it's really easy for us to focus on efficiency of, say, meetings and not leave space for building those connections. And I do think it's really valuable to have some time built in for a lot of those, which I think a lot of people who look at ops people or think we're looking at optimization and efficiency and Why would we want to do that? Or we— but I am like, like, to your point, right? I mean, when you can build that trust with people, they will, they will then pay it back when it— when the time comes. Of course.

Yeah. And human factor, you know, always think about others as human first and then your employee or your team member secondly. And I think we have learned that in like past 2 and a half years when we went into lockdown and, you know, stuff like that. People have issues and, you know, how people have dealt with it. So yeah, and again, I always think like human first helps. And again, it fits in quite nicely with the marketing as well, right? Because, yeah, you know how it works.

Yeah, absolutely. All right. Well, Amer, this has been a fun conversation. I could get— we could go on for hours, I think, because there's a lot I think where we overlap on our Philosophies. But if folks do want to keep up with you or connect with you or learn from you more, what's the best way that they can do that?

Um, I am on LinkedIn and Twitter. So my LinkedIn is omer.izar, and, um, at Twitter you can find me at Omer Tweets. Um, I think these are the 2 key ones which I generally use, but obviously, you know, you guys can definitely help me connect with further folks as well if someone is looking to have a conversation with me, you know, if they are looking at some of the things like how to build teams and, you know, build empathy factor. So yeah, I love to connect. But yeah, I think it's a great platform that you guys have provided to, I don't know, hundreds and thousands of ops professionals. So yeah, stay connected, keep on listening to Michael and rest of the team. I think you will get to learn quite a lot. from it. So yeah, to share to you guys, and I wish you many, many successes.

Well, you're too kind, but thank you. So thank you for joining us. Thanks for sharing that. Thanks for the kind words. But, and then thanks to our listeners for continuing to support us. So yeah, again, we're always looking for ideas for topics or guests, including if that's something that you want to do. So definitely get ahold of me or Mike Rizzo or Naomi Liu. We're on LinkedIn. We're on the marketingops.com platform. So thank you for everyone. Until next time, we'll talk to you later. Bye.

Thank you.