As you grow inside an organization, you need to shift your approach to be less tactical and more strategic in order to be able to think long term and project what success will look like in the future.
Throughout the past years I have been focusing on developing this mindset to be more aligned with the company strategy and I put together what I consider should be your next steps if you are focusing on the same:
- Develop your direct reports and delegate
When you are focusing on the tactical side of your role, it means you are looking at the day-to-day operation and trying to solve immediate problems. You are paying attention to details and trying to have quick wins that will impact your results short-term. In order for you to have the time to focus on the strategy, you will need to delegate some of these tactical tasks to your team. This will not only free up your time, but also give your reports the opportunity to develop and grow in their positions. In Customer Support, these tasks tend to be tasks such as: analyzing staffing needs and plan day-to-day coverage, understanding CSAT trends and identifying training needs, implementing small changes to processes and ways of working.
- Look at the big picture
Book some time for you to start understanding how your function is tied to other departments inside the company. Make sure you talk to other stakeholders who focus on the strategy and start analyzing the data. Once you start having a helicopter view over the different departments, you will get a lot of insights of how your role aligns with everyone else’s and how you can cross-collaborate to achieve meaningful change. This for Customer Support is crucial. The customer experience represents everything that customers go through during their journey using the product. If I just focus on how I answer them when they reach out to support, I am losing sight of how well the company is serving them. That is why it is so important for you to understand what their experience is like when they get in touch with Sales, how their digital onboarding works, what messages they see, what campaigns they receive, how they use your online materials and how Success teams follow up with their requests for optimization. Once you start getting to know other team’s processes and results, you will start having a lot of ideas of how these different departments can collaborate to simultaneously influence their results in a positive way and thrive for a better and consistent customer experience.
- Focus on the vision first
When we are in tactical roles, we tend to be very detail-oriented and we may be killing some good ideas, just because we didn’t immediately see how they could be implemented short-term. However, as you transition into a strategic role, make sure you educate yourself not to do that. Focus on what the vision is for the future and how you want the customer experience to be. If you are really solid on the “what” and the “why”, the “how” can be dealt with later. It doesn’t mean that it will not be taken care of, but when we’re sure it is the right strategic move, we’ll find a way.
- Resources allocation
If we are in tactical roles, resources are not something which is always on our mind when we think about what we need to do. If we are working on something we will look at the resources we have to implement it and adjust the plan according to them. When we transition into a strategic role, we need to think ahead and understand how we will allocate existing results to implement the changes long-term and if we need additional resources. This, sometimes, can involve changes in the structure of the team, or changes in some of the specific roles. We shouldn’t be afraid of these changes. We may not be able to achieve our vision with how the resources are currently allocated, but if we change them, it can all be possible.
- Return of Investment
Finally, when you start looking at the bigger picture, working on the strategy and long term plans, you will feel the need to look at different hypotheses and plan some impactful changes. With this level of responsibility, you can’t just trust your gut feeling to sustain your ideas. The higher level of effort to put things in motion will require a much higher investment, and this investment needs to create enough value in return. This requires a change in the mindset, as you will have to always consider what is the impact for the business.
Strategic leadership is challenging. You may feel that, sometimes, it is hard to get all the data you would need to feel absolutely confident of what should be your next step. However, surround yourself with other leaders, keep track of the market trends, prioritize planning over immediate action and always involve your team. This should help keep you on the right path.
André Vidal 