Have you Experienced the Headquarter Syndrome? In the ever-changing landscape of business, miscommunication often arises as companies strive to grow, expand, and adapt. If you find that your field sales teams are not embracing new product or service offerings with the desired enthusiasm, you may be experiencing the Headquarter Syndrome. This phenomenon occurs when decisions are made in isolation at the headquarters, without involving and engaging the teams responsible for executing in the field. The resulting miscommunication from HQ can lead to a range of negative effects. Drawing from my own experiences working closely with clients who have successfully tackled this issue, this article aims to provide insights and strategies for overcoming the Headquarter Syndrome. Understanding the Headquarter Syndrome The Headquarter Syndrome arises when a corporate HQ team develops a new product or service and expects the sales team to comprehend and advocate for it with their teams and clients. Often, the response from the field is tepid and cautious. While waiting for demand is commonly cited as a reason, the underlying issue is that the passionate and win-win rationale behind creating a new offering is often invisible to the field. The lack of clarity about these products or services hinders effective communication and message relay. The Telephone Game Analogy A familiar childhood game called the telephone game vividly illustrates the challenges of communication. In this game, players sit in a circle and whisper a message from one person to another, resulting in distortion as the message travels around the circle. Similar distortions occur daily in the business world. The gaps in communication that lead to the Headquarter Syndrome can have detrimental effects. Harnessing the Power of Storytelling to Counter the Headquarter Syndrome To ensure that your information resonates and sticks with your audience, leveraging the power of storytelling is crucial. Stories are inherently memorable and impactful, making them ideal containers for your data and messages. A well-crafted story can be effectively retold by your audience, allowing them to convey the information accurately to others and create a lasting impression.

• The Essence of a Good Story: Authenticity and Client Centricity In sales, stories should position the buyer and end users as the heroes. The impact of success should highlight the client as the true hero of the story. If you are part of the product or pre-sales team, your internal sales team becomes your client, and the stories may differ accordingly. A compelling success story revolves around a hero, a challenge, a solution, and a final impact or decision that constitutes a satisfying ending. The beginning of the story should engage and captivate your audience, while the end should leave them feeling hopeful and successful.
• The Importance of Authenticity Authenticity is crucial in sales and marketing. Your stories should be relatable and genuine, as credibility plays a significant role in how your message is perceived. The authenticity of your storytelling influences how listeners perceive you, so be genuine and helpful. While the use of hyperbole can be effective, it is essential to strike a balance and keep the storytelling grounded.
• Building a Network of Influencers When you share your company’s strategy story or a client success story in a way that enables receivers to retain and retell the information to key decision-makers, you effectively create a network of influencers who will promote your offerings. This network becomes instrumental in overcoming the Headquarter Syndrome and spreading your message throughout the organization.

Conclusion To counter the Headquarter Syndrome, one of the most effective approaches is to employ storytelling. The power of business storytelling has proven to be invaluable in enhancing engagement, influence, inspiration, and overall impact. By incorporating storytelling techniques into your communication strategies, you can bridge the gap between headquarters and the field, ensuring that your message resonates and creates the desired outcomes. Embrace storytelling to communicate with impact and overcome the challenges posed by the Headquarter Syndrome in your business units.

How to counter the Head Quarter syndrome

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A few of my coaching clients who are entrepreneurs across industries have been reaching out to me as they continue to feel insecure and uncertain about the looming recession in 2023. They continue to deliberate if they should quit or continue to reinvent and rebuild. I guess there are many of you going through the same emotional rollercoaster of what's next and how to come back. My advice has been: "reinvent, rebuild, and make a comeback," as that's precisely what I am doing in my own business. It's never too late.

 

Legendary tennis player, Andre Agassi, went from being #1 in the world in 1995 to #141 in rankings by the beginning of 1998. When he hit bottom, he also got into drugs, fell into a depressive state, and faced personal relationship challenges. That's when his coach asked him this question: do you want to quit or rebuild? He chose to reinvent, rebuild, and make a comeback. The journey was slow, painful, and full of challenges.  He went back to basics and started playing with local and low-ranking players to win again, as every win made him feel accomplished and encouraged him to play more and more tournaments. By the fall of 1999, he was back as #1

I have paraphrased some of his key messages from interviews, adding from my own experiences as an entrepreneur, that I believe are very pertinent for everyone as we swim against many tides that seem to continue to challenge us.

 

Go back to the Basics:  When you are in crisis, step back to the basics and think of all the highs and successes you had before the crisis. That will encourage you to move forward. Research shows that positive thoughts have a massive impact on future outcomes.

 

Plan and Goal Setting: Plan your work and work your plan every day. Set tangible daily goals and make sure you accomplish them--take it one day at a time. Please reach out to me if you need help here with goal setting

 

You are the Barometer: Compare yourself from the past and the present and focus on the future. Don't get distracted by what you see around you, as that can slow you down. If you play #golf, you know what this means.

 

#Resilience: Yes, every day brings new struggles that are not in our control but what's in our possession is how we choose to engage with them. So, have a positive mindset and engage with courage and clarity.

 

Look Ahead:  Focus on what is ahead of you rather than what's behind you. "Rear View" is essential to analyze but looking forward is the need of the hour in the current environment.

 

One of my favorite phrases is, "Action brings Clarity," so keep moving ahead, and things will fall in place. In his book, "Think and Grow Rich", Napoleon Hill says, "Have a DEFINITE-NESS OF PURPOSE which is the knowledge of what one wants and a burning DESIRE to possess it. 

The quality of sales talent has been identified as a key indicator of the Organization or the department’s revenue growth and performance. The war of Talent (Mckinsey 2000 and 2015) clearly articulates that 20% of the sales team delivers more than 67% of the revenues which means that there is a huge gap in assessing and hiring the right talent.

 

Hiring managers seem to not have the necessary competency or tools to assess the incoming talent and make informed decisions based on scientific data that are usually difficult to interpret during a normal interview process. This is not a generic statement but seems to be the case based on my experience of observing several such managers, especially while trying to hire knowledge workers. It has also been observed that hiring managers tend to interview sales talent for the job based on the job description and not for long-term futuristic employment hence limiting the discussions to transactional questions.

It was concluded by Tepper, Bakosh, and Hagberg (2009) that talent assessment data and benchmarking with high performers by leveraging the right assessment tools can benefit the sales hiring managers in assessing the stage of the Sales Talent Lifecycle. We @ Spiria conduct niche assessments that are specialized for sales leaders that clearly leverage deep data and analytics to help hiring managers to support their experience and intuitions or for talent development on a long-term basis

Who is an Executive Coach?
Executive Coach is not a consultant, counselor, therapist or even a mentor. Clients usually bring on a " Consultant" and not a Coach when they need to solve a burning issue and needs solutions, advice or suggestions and is often a reactive engagement after the fact. In the contrary, an Executive Coach is engaged by a client proactively and more often in an ongoing basis for professional development with a focus on both short and long-term goals.

 

An Executive Coach need not be an expert in a specific subject, industry or business problem of a client as the role is to help them step back and think differently and enable them to walk a path with clarity towards their goals.

 

What does an Executive Coach do?
An Executive Coach works with his or her clients to unearth their full potential and supports them with tools and resources that will enable them to take actions that can potentially lead to the set goals. This also applies to an internal coach. If you are an internal coach for someone in your Organization, take off the consulting hat and don’t rush to offer solutions. Good coach is like a GPS that gives the direction but the coachee needs to drive or run on their own towards their destination. As Galileo said: “you cannot teach humans anything…you can only help them discover it within themselves “

 

Executive Coach gets paid for enabling their clients to solve their own problems. This would be called " Coaching good” vs " Coaching poorly" wherein a coach offers advice and solutions to the client's issues and spends more time talking than listening. The ability to ask powerful questions that can help the clients find their own paths is what differentiates an executive coach from others.

 

Focus on Client’s agenda
In Executive Coaching, it's always about client's agenda and mostly involves listening and the only talking is to ask the right open questions that will help clients to keep clearing their own path. A good analogy would be using a shovel to remove the snow and as you go thru the process, the path keeps opening. The ability to ask powerful questions that can help the clients find their own paths is what differentiates an executive coach from others.

 

Myth and Blind spots
There is a myth that if a coach has been recommended or assigned to someone by their company, it means that they have some serious derailing behaviors needing a fix. While that is a possibility, more often that’s not the real reason. From my own experience and talking to others in my network, the top reason for hiring a coach seems to be to further develop the high potential managers and enable them to get ready for their next role.

 

Also, in sports, there is a concept of reflective coaching wherein a coach and the player are able to sit together and watch the replay of a game to find the gaps and work on improving before the next game. In the corporate world, one does not get that opportunity and the managers that are supposed to offer feedback and coaching are not necessarily trained to do that effectively hence cannot help finding the blind spots or don’t have the time to spend on coaching their teams. In these situations, having an executive coach at all times helps to find and remove those blind spots and work towards achieving the long-term goals.

 

My Take
Now, my personal take on Executive Coaching is that it’s a marathon and not a sprint. It starts with a process of getting to know the client, earn the right to advance, help the clients find their path and continue to work towards becoming a Trusted Partner for a long and continuous engagement. So, if you are considering engaging an executive coach, plan to engage for long term to see a measurable impact.

It has been observed that half of the hiring decision end up in Mis-hires (Top grading by Bradford D Smart). This is further supported by the survey results and research done by Aberdeen Group (2013) stating that having the right people in the right roles is critical for the success of the Organizations performance.

 

Sales hiring managers seems to not have the right competencies to make those decisions and a clear need for coaching them to hire right talent is one of the major finding of my research. Infact, it has been found that many a times the talent assessment to hire an “A” player seems to be done by a “B” level Sales hiring manager that often ends up in “A” player not wanting to join the Organization. This is further supported by the research done by, Ed Michaels, Helen Handfield Jones and Beth Axelrod.

 

In summary, in today’s fast moving digital world, hiring managers need to leverage the time with the candidates to see if there is an opportunity for mutual learning and skills and competencies that can add value to the entire eco system if their company.