💃 Salesforce Professionals - Be Exceptional; Own Your Time 🕺

Good morning, Salesforce Nerds! You know this song, right?

Well, today, you’re gonna sing a little song called 40hrs to Freedom 🎤 🎶.

And it goes like this ⬇️

Agenda for today includes

• Be Exceptional; Own Your Time

• Daily Principle

• All the Memes

Be Exceptional; Own Your Time

Today we will discuss-

💃 Connie Makes Moves 🕺

💃 Connie is Exceptional 🕺

💃 Being Exceptional is Required? 🕺

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SCENARIO

It’s Thursday afternoon and Connie the consultant looks at her utilization for the week 👀.

34hrs.

👍

It’s only 3pm Thursday, and she is looking at a full day for Friday.

So, that would get her around 44hrs 👎.

But she’s getting paid for 40hrs? Well, that doesn’t seem fair 😠.

Here’s the thing - Connie cares about her clients and her team. She’s not gonna leave her tasks hanging. She’s gonna work extra hours to get the job completed 🙌.

But she also ain’t no chump 😤.

She’s not going to work excessively, burn herself out, and become a liability to her company and clients because she can’t summon the will to get out of bed 😩.

She’s exceptional because she maintains an excellent WLB. She sets expectations with her company and her clients. She makes her clients feel warm and fuzzy in every interaction 😊.

So what does she do 🤔?

She does what any exceptional consultant would do - she scopes out her next few weeks 🔭..

⚡️ Current state of her projects. Desired state, and by when. All clearly communicated to her clients.

⚡️ Epics, Stories, and Tasks remaining, including level of effort and who is responsible.

⚡️ Bake in a buffer for uncontrollables, exceptions, and changes.

She sees that she can spread out her tasks across the weeks, hit her project milestones, hit her utilization rate, AND have a 40hr work week 🎉!

SCENARIO CONT’D

As she expected 🔮, her plan is tested the very next week, but she’s prepared 🙌.

Marge, Connie’s manager, asks Connie to present to the team next month in their weekly team meeting.

Connie has done this before, and it took about 3hrs of prep to present something she was proud of and that added value to the team.

Connie told Marge, “I have a full plate for the next few weeks. I have a few major milestones coming up, and some important tasks to complete for those milestones. Some of them are major development items that our offshore team is working through, so I need to monitor that progress closely.”

Connie continued, “I’d be happy to present, but I would need to work with you to understand which project tasks I could push back without risking our client’s success.”

🙂 

CONTEXT, NEEDED

Connie really laid it down there 💯. But some further context is needed 👀.

Connie is an excellent consultant-

✅ Her CSAT scores are among the highest in the company.

✅ She exceeds her utilization rate.

✅ Her client retention rate is 100% 😳.

In summary, Connie is exceptional 💪. Just look at it from her manager, Marge’s perspective-

✅ Connie brings Marge’s KPI’s up, making Marge look good to her manager.

✅ Marge doesn’t have to manage Connie. Connie takes care of her business. This saves Marge a ton of manager overhead time.

✅ The inverse of the previous point - Marge has 4 other direct reports to manage. 1 of them is on a PIP and the 3 others are fine but need her regular support.

Connie makes Marge’s life easier, and Marge has very, very few easy buttons, especially as a manager 🫠.

IS EXCEPTIONAL REQUIRED?

So, to lock-in that 40hr work week, is being exceptional required?

Could an average performer execute the same planning and scheduling process that Connie did, and make their manager rollover?

It depends…

Here are a few variables to consider-

👉 Your Company

How is the financial health of your company? How is your revenue YoY? And profit margins?

What is the culture at your company? What is your manager’s management style? What is your manager’s manager’s management style?

What does the rest of your company look like? Maybe you’re not exceptional, but everyone eIse is super incompetent 🤷 😂.

👉 Your Clients

How satisfied are your clients with you? How satisfied are they with the solution you are building them?

👉 You

Are you able to model out the work and effort required to make your client’s successful, in the timelines that you all have agreed upon?

Then, you’re able to execute that plan?

And manage uncontrollables, exceptions, and changes that are guaranteed to disrupt your plan?!

If locking in a 40(ish) hour work week sounds hard, that’s because it is 💯. It requires a ton of knowledge, experience and skills 🧠.

Where to get all those 😉?

Daily Principle

and now....Your Daily Memes