Sales Insight Roundup: Sales Transformation, IT Risk & Stress
The sales insight roundup gathers news, research and provocations from thought leaders in sales and leadership. Here’s what we found interesting this week:
4 Reasons Why Executives Are Concerned About Digital Risk
From Gartner
Beyond the hype and hysteria in the press about cybersecurity threats, board members and senior executives are genuinely interested in the IT risks they currently face. This growing interest in IT risk is currently being driven by four consistent themes that we experience in our daily client interactions at Gartner.
Lack of understanding
Increasing pressure to disclose technology risks
Lack of visibility into key business relationships with third-parties
Growing interconnection between technology and business risks
We Still Don’t Know the Difference Between Change and Transformation
“Change management” means implementing finite initiatives, which may or may not cut across the organization. The focus is on executing a well-defined shift in the way things work. It’s not easy, but we do know a lot more today about what to do…
Transformation is another animal altogether. Unlike change management, it doesn’t focus on a few discrete, well-defined shifts, but rather on a portfolio of initiatives, which are interdependent or intersecting. More importantly, the overall goal of transformation is not just to execute a defined change — but to reinvent the organization and discover a new or revised business model based on a vision for the future. It’s much more unpredictable, iterative, and experimental. It entails much higher risk. And even if successful change management leads to the execution of certain initiatives within the transformation portfolio, the overall transformation
could still fail.…
It’s easy to beat ourselves up over failures in change management and the various studies that show we’re not getting better at it. But we really do know how to execute discrete changes. What we know much less about is how to engineer a transformation. And if we want to get better, let’s at least start by being more clear about which one is which.
Business Travelers, Google Translate is Now Your Best Friend
From Inc
Among the various challenges of traveling abroad for business, one of the toughest is confronting a language barrier. But Google has just gotten closer to breaking it down thanks to the latest update of its Translate app. The next time you encounter text or spoken language you can't understand, this app could be your best travel buddy…
Real-Time Voice Translation …Now the app automatically detects which language is being spoken, so you can have a fluid conversation with real-time translation. It's not far off from having a live interpreter.
Help Your Overwhelmed, Stressed-Out Team
Is your team stressed out? These days, everyone seems overwhelmed and way too busy. But even when your team members have a lot on their plates, they don’t have to sacrifice their health or happiness. What can you do to reduce your team’s stress? How can you help them focus on what really needs to get done?
Principles to Remember
Do:
Agree on what’s unique about your group’s skills and experience
Reduce or eliminate assignments that don’t align with your team’s purpose
Schedule time for high-level, strategic work
Don’t:
E-mail your employees at all hours — set limits on technology use
Call meetings without an explicit purpose — stick to an agenda Underestimate the importance of your own behavior — you set the norms on your team
Comment below with other articles you found interesting this week or comment with your opinion of the Insight Roundup articles.
