Episode 252: Building a Bold Strategy with Your Team

Welcome to Skucast, the podcast for entrepreneurs in the promotional products industry. Skucast shines a light on our industry's best work, features maverick personalities, and discusses what's really involved in running a modern promotional products business. Skucast is the official podcast of Common Skew.

This year, many of us have scrambled to try new things when it comes to our team meetings, particularly our strategy meetings. Whether you are a team that is in person and at the office 100% of the time, or whether you're a hybrid team or completely virtual, we are all trying to figure it out, trying to find the best way forward to work on strategy together while maintaining a strong culture. A few weeks ago, the Commonsku team gathered together at the beautiful Evergreen Brickworks in Toronto for our year-end celebration and 2023 strategy kickoff meeting. It was 2 full days of solid planning, plus plenty of fun and laughs over dinner and drinks, and most importantly, it was a time to connect in person with our team. Since many of us are discovering new ways to think forward and strategize together, we thought we would share with you what we learned from our experience. Hi friends, I'm Bobby LeHew, Commscue's Chief Content Officer, and I'm joined today by Catherine Graham, Commscue's CEO, and Mark Graham, Commscue's President and Chief Brand Officer. But before our chat, I want to mention that if you are going to the PPAI Expo in January, we would love to see you there, and we have multiple opportunities to do so. On January 9th, we're hosting Commscue University. It's where you can learn all about the platform. It will include presentations led by myself and my CommsCue colleagues Aaron Couturier, Dave Schultz, Aaron Burley, Catherine Graham, and our entire Expo team. You can also visit us on the show floor at booth 5717 or join us for a private session in the SKU suite for a one-on-one chat with our team. But don't worry about remembering all this because we have a beautiful website that features all of this at commonscue.com/expo. That's commonscue.com/expo. And if you're not going to Expo, we hope to see you virtually on January 19th for SKUCON Virtual, the conference for innovators, explorers, and dreamers in the promotional products industry. Learn about our incredible lineup of speakers and rally your team to join us. To learn more and register, visit skucon.com/virtual. Today's episode is brought to you by CommSkew, the work-from-anywhere platform that powers your connected workflow, enabling you to process more orders in dramatically grow your sales. To learn more, visit commonskew.com. Now here's my chat with Mark and Gavin.

As I said in the intro, everyone is typically doing a year-end strategy session or planning session, and we just recently wrapped up ours. And in typical Skewcast, Common Skew fashion, we don't want to just say, hey, here's what we did, wasn't it wonderful? We want to say, hey, here's what we did and here's what we learned from it. So Mark, in your mind, as one of the leaders and principal organizers of our gatherings, what made this year's event different from previous gatherings? We changed the way we did some things, and I think we sort of unlocked a new level of productivity and strategizing with our team. So why was this important for you, the way we changed things this year?

So I think what was different about this particular event compared to what we've done in the past is that we we treated this like one of our customer events, a SKUCon, a SKU Camp specifically. And the reason we did that is because we've got a fair amount of event planning skills, but in the past when it's come to our own team, we've almost been a little bit like the cobbler's children, right? Like, oh, we're gonna roll out the red carpet for everyone else. And internally, and not to say we wouldn't roll out the red carpet internally, of course we have. I wouldn't want to give the wrong impression, but in terms of, hotels and venues and dine-arounds and all of that. We've typically not done that. It's been at our office and it's been great. But it's a little bit more DIY. And so, we made this change to say, well, why don't we think about this like a customer event? We know how special our customer events are. There's obviously a ton of work that goes into them. But there's great return that comes from it. So, we So that's what we did. And we treated this like we would have building a SKUCon or a SKU Camp. So everything to do with like internal communications and creating design and having a brand around the event, creating a website that we had that communicated all the schedule, all the FAQs, just like we would for a SKU Camp. And there were probably times where a few of us looked at around and said, oh gosh, this is so much work. But it was so special to see the impact that it had on our colleagues and how it streamlined everything and how everyone felt that they were really coming to something special. And that was the big learning, that these investments really do pay off when it comes to how it makes people feel in terms of how it drives culture, how it drives engagement, and all the collaboration that is so, so important to a company like ours. And we're certainly no different than anyone else in the promotional products industry, but I think Sometimes, the learning is don't be the cobbler's children. Offer the same experience that you would internally and it pays off handsomely.

Yeah.

I think the other part just to dig in a little bit on there is that previously, we've hosted all of these at our office. And this time, we didn't do that because we have outgrown our office and we all can't fit there anymore. But by moving it to a different location offsite, it created a completely different vibe. As far as removing people from the day-to-day. There wasn't that temptation to, I'll just slip off and sit down at a desk here and hammer at a bunch of emails or whatever the case may be that might cause kind of distraction during a time when we're trying to focus on working on the business and being together. So, that removing ourselves physically from our space made a big difference. And then, ultimately, we put even local people up in a hotel so that they could remove themselves from kind of the day-to-day pressures of what tends to distract in their personal lives and said, okay, this is a time just to totally separate out from, from what you typically do in a day and be able to just focus on kind of enjoying, you know, being with the team and focus on these planning sessions.

That's a really good point you brought up, Catherine, because I think it really set apart this event. It set apart our minds.

It set apart—

it said to everyone, hey, this is serious for us to carve this time and strategize. Because if anyone knows Catherine Graham, this is all about strategic priorities and making sure that what we're doing as we come apart and do this is that we are strategizing about the business moving forward and making connections with each other along the way. I want to give some mechanics behind the scenes about like what it looked like. Our meeting consisted of 2 full days and really 4 or 5 core ideas. One was something we always do, which is our VPs, they do a look back about progress in the previous quarter. And then also they close the event out with a look ahead at the next quarter. And in this case, because it was a year-end event, we were also looking at the upcoming year. We do something that everyone thinks is really special. We hear from the quiet voices on our team. In other words, we bring out folks that aren't typically not in the spotlight. And we ask them to share what it is they're working on, what they've accomplished. And it's a really fun glimpse. I'll let you comment on that in a minute. We also hear from our clients, which is probably one of the most potent moments in our gatherings now, where we have folks come in and speak for a few minutes about what the platform has meant to them and, and how it's impacted their business, but also how that we can better serve them. Then we have breakouts, which are like interdepartmental meetings, and which is an opportunity for departments to cross-collaborate, different than, say, just a breakout with your entire department. This is an intentional cross-collaboration. And then finally, dinners and our normal dinners, the chance to connect with each other. But of these 4 core ideas, our VP lookbacks and lookaheads are essential. But this part where we bring out quieter members of the team who don't normally share the spotlight, maybe even are really shy about getting up in front of each other. Catherine, why is it important for us to bring those voices out and have them speak and actually present on what they're working on? Why is this such a big hit?

It's very interesting for the team to be able to have insight into what individual people are working on. I mean, no matter how much we try to be, you know, cross-functional and collaborative and communicative about everything happening, at the end of the day, we still spend a lot of our days in our silos of what we're working on within, you know, our particular function or department. So being able to just, excuse me, surface some of what's going on within those individual people's roles is interesting.. And also because there are a lot of people that are new to the company and their functions are new to the company, that giving— being able to give the team insight into what does that job mean. You know, we had someone start in like sales operations over the past couple months, so you know, what does he do? And so Shannon gave a fantastic presentation on, you know, what it is that he's been working on and what that means in terms of how it's going to help, you know, the sales team be able to be more, you know, efficient or effective. So that those deep dives, I think, are just incredibly insightful as far as being able to give, give that perspective on what individuals individual team members are working on.

Yeah. Mark, what was the standout moment for you, or a standout of many a moment of you with these voices that we bring out this time around?

It's that people are so nervous. They're so nervous to get up and present. And I think that that nervousness translates into an exceptional performance and a performance where I think they even surprise themselves. And I think we know as managers and leaders of the business that they are eminently capable of delivering something great. But in a lot of cases, they haven't spoken before. And I think Bobby is— or sorry, haven't spoken in front of a larger group. And I think this is a bit reminiscent of the approach that we've taken to Sku Camp and SkuCon, where we've identified really exceptional voices within the industry, but they may not necessarily be professional public speakers by any stretch, but they're— and they're nervous and they're excited and they come up and, and, uh, and, and those presentations are really real and, and raw. And I think that this was our version of that internally. And to hear Shannon, one of our colleagues, talk about sales operations and to sort of demystify this job, yeah, um, or Ksenia talking about all of our content production, all the backend production work that takes place and all the statistics and everything that goes in there was so illuminating. And I know that they were nervous getting up there. And so those are the moments that as much as it's really, really exciting to hear Catherine deliver a great strategic presentation about the way forward for Commonsku, it's— I think it's equally impactful to hear from different colleagues in different corners of the business And no one is better than the other, I think. And I really love that democratizing impact because I think some of our earlier meetings that we were having, I think were very VP-oriented. And it felt like it was almost as though you have these people that were speaking from on high and I'm looking around the room going, well, like what does that new developer colleague of ours think about this? And I'm sure that they're interested in it, but at the end of the day, like why don't we get that person coming up and sharing what their world looks like.

Yeah, they're also great skill-building opportunities. So presentation skills are extremely important for anyone to have and to be able to, to present and communicate, you know, what you're working on and your ideas. So being able to have that, to give that opportunity in a safe space where, you know, the team is going to be super supportive and they're excited to hear, you know, what everyone has to say. So I think it's just a great opportunity to be able to provide.

Well, correct me if I'm wrong on the numbers, but a third of our employees, this was the first in-person gathering that a third of our team actually joined us for. And because of our fast growth, there can be a, what does this person do? Why do we have this role? And so it eliminates that negative energy around what is this other person doing? And the other thing I want to mention for those that are listening and saying, hey, this is a great idea. I think we need to do this with our team. It does take a little bit of encouragement to bring some of those quiet voices out. But also it's important for those quiet voices to know that when you're sharing what it is that you do, it really unlocks a bunch of other ideas for everybody on the team. So it really just helps me go like Vicki showed up last quarter and she's a data analyst and I had no idea what a data analyst does even for our own company. And she showed what she does and it was mind-blowing, some of the things that she does.

So it's very important. But there's one thing I'll do to add to that, that I think that something that's an interesting kind of framing for distributors listening to this is that that kind of presentation and sharing could be, you know, individual salespeople sharing really cool projects they've worked on, you know, throughout the year. So it doesn't need to be, you know, a big formal presentation with slides and things like that. It can just be, you know, how it is— how do you give some greater insight into the amazing, you know, work that your colleagues are doing so that there is that transparency and sharing that can better happen across the entire organization?

Yeah, I like that idea. If you're a creative director, maybe you're in the creative or marketing role, you can share how a campaign went or something like that, or what it is that you do on a regular basis. I think one of the, one of the interesting things is this is what do on a day-to-day basis is to me one of the most fascinating parts of the work. Let's talk a minute about— we brought in some clients. We had Tom Rector with Screen Embroidery, we had Alicia with Haymaker come in, and what a special moment for our team because we have a lot of our team that has frontline access to customers, but there's a percentage of our team that doesn't. And they came in and it was very real, it was very raw. The thing I love the most about it is they shared the stresses that are involved in running their business and what that looks like. What are your thoughts, Katherine, as we bringing in these client voices?

I think the more we can give that perspective to the whole team, I mean, ultimately this is the reason why we get up in the morning is to have an impact on our customers' businesses. And so being able to hear firsthand, you know, what that impact is and to be able to also, you know, get feedback if there are areas that we can be doing better, but ultimately to be able to listen to, you know, that more detailed, like a more intimate perspective in terms of, you know, their them personally, their businesses, you know, things that Commscue has enabled them to do that the development team, as an example, doesn't have that opportunity to hear that perspective every day. So hearing, you know, being able to have them come in, you know, via Zoom and for the whole team to be able to experience that was just incredibly impactful.

Yeah.

Mark? And I mean, I don't think Commscue is unique in that we're very customer-centric. There's obviously lots and lots of businesses that are extremely customer-centric. But I think for us, our management team, I think, sometimes takes it for granted because so many of us have come from the promotional products industry. I mean, we've been around for decades, right? Old-timers, we are. And I think we take this for granted. He just called you old, Bobby.

Yeah, speak for yourself, man.

I know. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. But I can't point it at me, Katherine. But we've all been to the ASI and the PPAI shows, and we've developed these very deep relationships. And that's very special for us. But I think to Kathryn's point, if you're on our development team, you don't have frontline access to a customer. And a typical developer in a company sometimes can struggle to see how the code they're building translates into the real world. And for us, when we're bringing people into our organization, we say what's special about Commonsku is that the business side and the customer side of Commonsku work in lockstep with the development side. So that way there's empathy for the customer, that we understand their, their joys, we understand their frustrations, we understand the things that they, they like about the product, that we understand the things that they don't like about the product. And, and I think for the folks that are on the back end of our business, I think that's really, really important, um, to, to be able to understand how something that they've built that is— that's led to maybe our portals product, how that's actually being used in the real world. And what's amazing about this sometimes is that a developer will go, I had no idea that that's how they were using the product because we designed it for this purpose, but they're using it for this purpose over here. And that's kind of blowing my mind a little bit. And, and so that was really, really special. And we were really appreciative of Tom and and Alicia for taking the time to be with us.

Yeah, I want to say one thing, last thing on this, and that is that, you know, as somebody who's like a professional communicator, it's always important for us to remember that 80% of our communication or more is nonverbal. So we can read things that the client wants. We can hear about things that the client wants. But to actually hear from Alicia, like, what is your day like today?

What did you do today?

What are you doing this afternoon? Or to hear from Tom, like, what is it you look at first day when you walk in the business so that you can get a handle on what you're doing and to hear the tone in their voice, whether it's stress, or joy or happiness was really, really important. So it's something I honestly never did as a distributor or never thought about bringing in client voices to our annual strategy meeting and talking with them about the business because that had such a potent moment. Speaking of another potent moment, and we'll talk about multiple things here, but we did some, some little touches throughout the event. Merch, of course, we practice what we preach. So everybody showed up with some to a table full of merch with assigned seating so that nobody sat in their departmental pods. And we had people sitting. We did that throughout the whole event. That was actually a lot of fun where you ended up sitting by a developer or someone else because we just tend to gather in our groups, right? We did shoulder days. So, we have 2 full days of our meeting and then departments can decide that on the day before or the day after on a shoulder day, you can get together with your department, which is a great way for new people to sort of come in and meet folks. Any thoughts on these, Kathryn? Thoughts on any of these other things that were miscellaneous in our gathering?

Yeah, certainly the mixing it up was really critical, especially for new folks that hadn't met anyone before of being able to, you know, feel as if they had that opportunity to integrate. And so, it was not just, you know, within the meetings itself in terms of having, you know, that assigned seating to be able to shake things up. It was also at, you know, the holiday party, kind of when at the sit-down dinner that we kind of mix things up as well. So, that made it super important in terms of being able to create those connections kind of, you know, beyond your people that you work with, you know, every day so that, you know, it's not just a name on Slack or, you know, a little square on, you know, the Zoom meetings. As a company as a whole, that you've actually had a chance to get to know that person and to chat with them and hopefully create some kind of shared experiences.

Yeah. Last question as we wrap up. Lessons learned for you as leaders. Mark, you're notorious for obsessing over the details. Some might say it borders on neurosis, but that's for, you know, you and your therapist to work out if there's such a thing.

Bobby, you're my therapist. You're talking about, right?

Right, right. We have folks that are gathering together as teams all the time, like they're in person, they're back in the office. We have folks that are hybrid and working virtual. We have different— there are different audience needs as we speak on this podcast. But it seems like our gatherings require a little more intention than in years past. Why, Mark, and what advice would you have for leaders as they're organizing these kinds of— especially these either quarterly or annual events that are really important for strategy strategy moving forward?

I think in the past, we took a lot of this for granted. And I think to some extent, that was because we had an environment where everyone was within— came into work every day in our Toronto office. And that's where culture was built. That's where consensus was built. That's where all the collaboration took place. So, culture was built over lunch or it was over poker games at night or some of the fun things that we would do. And that world has shifted. I mean, obviously lots of people have returned to in-person, and that's phenomenal. And we're trying to decide whether that's going to work for us. But during COVID um, we, we expanded quite a bit from a, from a headcount perspective, but we expanded all across the, the two countries. And so we've— approximately half of our team is now outside of Toronto. So the This is a very post-COVID sort of unique thing to us. And I'm sure might be familiar to people who are listening to this. So, what's happened is that we no longer have those ad hoc poker games and the ad hoc lunches on a daily basis. And so, we have to be a lot more intentional and in bringing people together. And then, I think when you bring people together, you can't take it for granted. So, you have to treat your colleague just like you would treat a customer. And as I say that, it sounds so obvious, but I think there— I think that sometimes you can take shortcuts and go like, okay, well, it's just a company meeting, no big deal. And I think we were guilty of that in the past where we were, and I think our events were still fine, but that's where these additional details became that much more important. And believe me, I think there's tons of things that we can improve upon. I think this is by no means a podcast to say like, hey, look, we figured it out. I think So this is really step one of a very exciting journey that we're on. And to be clear, I think we'll learn from a ton of other people as well. But I think the details are important. I think culture is exceptionally important. I think we're in a very weird and strange labor market. And I think the companies that win— clearly, I'm not the first person to observe this— the companies that win are the companies with the very best people and the ones that stick around. And the ones that feel valued. And I think that we're excited to be on that journey, still have lots to learn, but that's why the details are exceptionally important.

Catherine, how would you encourage other leaders as they look at building a different kind of strategy experience for their team based on the lessons you learned?

Two things I would say. This has been a wild past couple of years. And so being able to take the opportunity opportunity at year-end to be reflective and to be celebratory of, you know, what the company has accomplished during the year. Sometimes you just get so— you're on the hamster wheel as far as, you know, what's the next thing, next thing, next thing, and you're just getting stuff done and you're shipping again, moving on to the next. And so, taking that opportunity to be able to reflect and to celebrate the phenomenal achievements of the team throughout the year, I think, is incredibly important. I always, you know, Michael, our CTO, puts together presentation every year that summarizes all of the work the development team has done throughout the year, new features and little things. And just look at this. It is shocking. You realize how much has been done throughout the years. Like, really, that was this year that that feature shipped? You kind of have these weird stretches of time that it's hard to believe the number of things that have happened within one calendar year. So, that's super important to be able to pause and have that moment of celebration. And then equally as important is having that moment of pause to say, okay, you know, what comes next in terms of next year? And be able to really articulate that as far as what it is that you want to achieve as a company. And not just a top-line sales number, but more broadly around who, when you're hitting that year-end phase at the end of 2023, what do you want that reflection and celebration to be at that point? So, that's one aspect. The other thing I would say is that cannot overemphasize enough kind of the power of being in person and being removed from the day-to-day, of having that time to work on the business. And it may seem, especially, you know, now as our team, you know, grows in terms of geography, that, you know, those looking at the possibility of bringing in kind of remote team members, you might say, wow, that seems expensive, either in terms of travel costs or time out of the office or any of the other elements that go into that decision-making. But that time is absolutely priceless as far as what it does to create kind of that cohesion and culture and that shared experience that ultimately kind of enables the team to be able to work together effectively in all the times that we're apart. So, the cost is nothing when you contrast it to ultimately what the benefit is of being able to have that structured time together.

Yeah. I want to add to this, that at the— we have a lot of folks that are 5 to 10, maybe 15 team members, right? And they might say, we talk all the time, like we're now going to have this special, create this special experience. I think it was worth it. Our VPs, we spent time almost in every meeting for a couple of months, like 5 or 10 minutes to talk about the upcoming strategy meeting. But then we had one meeting where we dedicated ourselves to pre-planning this event. And I think that's the difference. I think it was a big difference maker is that we all got together and said, how do we create this special experience outside of our normal collaboration collaboration that we do. And I think that was a big part of it moving forward, that there were voices from every department that were brought in to help make it special and to make it important and potent.

So, um, yeah, and as the team grows, that becomes, you know, all that much more important. I mean, we're just shy of 40 people right now at this stage, and, and so having that, uh, having things be a little bit more structured in terms of how it is that we're thinking about that time together and ensuring that there is value out of it, that having, you know, more forethought. And I give Mark huge credit to driving kind of the detail, you know, on this, that it is— it should be a great experience and it should be a very useful time for everyone to step out and work, have that new 2 days to work on the business.

As we wrap, I just want to say thank you both. That was such a special experience. And I also want to say a special shout out to our community. We've mentioned this in the past few episodes, but we've had over 50,000 listens. We have a 65% increase in the in the SKUcast audience, and we are so thankful to be serving this amazing community. We're really looking forward to SKUCon and Expo, and we just want to say we wish you all the best for 2023.

Kathryn, we're just so excited for the upcoming year. I think that was the overall sentiment that came out of our gathering, is people are just ready to go and have so many fantastic ideas and plans, and we just can't wait to get rolling.

Mark, final word.

I'm really excited that 2023 represents the turning of a page, and we have so many different types of working styles that are happening. We still have people that are working virtually and remote. We have people that are doing both and it's hybrid. And then we've got other folks that are back full-time in person at the office. And I think all three of those models are really exciting. But there's new models that are out there and the ability to get together and to collaborate in a creative space Um, was really special for us. We're really excited to share our learnings, and we're also excited to learn from you too. Um, so thank you so much for listening. Have a wonderful 2023 and a very happy and safe holiday season. Thanks so much tuning in to this episode of SKU Cast. Be sure to keep up with our latest content by subscribing to SKU Cast on iTunes or to our blog at community.commsku.com. Until next time, friends, thanks so much for listening.