AMA: LinkedIn Vice President of Global Sales Operations, SaaS, Akira Mamizuka on Stakeholder Management

Rev Ops org design needs to consider multiple variables, such as the Sales Org structure and the remit of the Rev Ops team (for example, in some firms, quota setting is owned by Finance). Regardless of these variables, one aspect that is often a hot discussion topic is "span of control" for Rev Ops teams. In general, Rev Ops teams in companies that are past $100M in ARR should aim for a span of control of 1 Manager to 3 Individual Contributors. Higher spans of control hurt the ability for the Manager to coach their team members given the complexity and nuances of the job. Lower spans of control require the Manager to "double hat" as individual contributor, as well as create business risk when attrition happens as it is harder for the work to be re-distributed. Additional considerations when building a Rev Ops team: 1. Separate work between "horizontal" (i.e.; it common work across all segments and regions of the business such as quota modeling) and "vertical" (i.e.; work that is focused on a specific segment or sub-region such as Sales territory design and bottom-up forecasting). "Horizontal" work is better done centrally by a single sub-team, which creates leverage and maximum efficiency. "Vertical" work benefits from dedicated focus and deep expertise from a mapped sub-team in a given area of the business. 2. Assign a disproportionately higher number of Rev Ops resources to growth segments. This is a common mistake in the function; i.e.; to solve for equity by assigning similar resourcing levels across all parts of the business and managing for the loudest voice in the room. 3. Aim for scale. One of the roles of Rev Ops is to increase the productivity of the Go-to-Market resources over time, and this should include Rev Ops resources. A good rule of thumb is that Rev Ops headcount should always grow slower than sales HC.

The RAPID framework is extremely valuable to drive timely and high-quality decisions. It is used to clarify the role that each function plays in a given decision. It eliminates confusion, unnecessary cycles, and set clear expectations about the role played by each function. The RAPID framework outlines which functions Recommend, Agree, Perform, Input and Decide a certain decision: * Recommend: Develops recommendation for a decision. 80% of the work happens here * Agree: Ensures the recommendation meets certain requirements. Their input must be factored in by the "R" * Perform: Executes the decision once made * Input: Provides critical expertise. Their input is taken at the discretion of the "R" * Decide: Makes the decision and commits the organization to action

This is a common scenario especially when you are talking about global teams, with members from multiple countries and cultures. I will share one example that hopefully brings to life my approach to this type of situation, when there is a gap in communication styles. When I worked in Europe, I realized I often had difficult e-mail exchanges with one of the regional sales leaders. As much as I tried to be clear and precise with my words, they were always met with misunderstanding and resistance. To the point that friction became the norm, and the relationship was fractured. During one of those heated e-mail exchanges, I decided to stop the e-mail back and forth, and call the person directly. Although I was nervous about how the conversation would unfold, it ended up being surprisingly positive and constructive. We were able to listen to each other points of view and come to an agreement. More importantly, we realized that when talking over the phone, a lot of the tension that took place in our e-mail communications did not exist. We agreed that, when discussing controversial topics, we'd always favor a phone call over e-mail. That simple step was essential for me to build a trust-based relationship with this stakeholder. Having an open and deliberate conversation with a stakeholder about communication style, channels and ways of working in general, is a helpful instrument to build trust-based relationships and effective collaboration.

First of all, I don't believe that tension between functions is a bad thing. Although too much tension is toxic, too little tension leads to complacency. The key is to strike a balance, operating in a state of "healthy tension". In my experience, the most important factor to achieve a state of healthy tension is effective communications. Often, excessive tension emerges as a result of unmet expectations or wrong assumptions. Both can be mitigated through open and honest communication. If expectations are set and agreed upfront, it becomes a matter of accountability. If someone is curious about why a stakeholder took a certain action, instead of making an assumption they can simply ask the person an open-ended question. Here are a few tools that I find helpful to improve communications between functions: * Regular 1:1s: allow stakeholders to see eye-to-eye, realign expectations on an ongoing basis, and avoid small issues to snowball * Ways of working discovery: an intentional conversation solely aimed at understanding each other's preferred communication styles and ways of working * Clean escalation: at times, teams spend endless cycles trying to reach alignment at their level, without success, which can lead to frustration, tension and slow decisions. In those situations, the best path is to escalate the decision up the management chain

In the post-pandemic world, hybrid work and hybrid teams became the norm and not the exception. In multinational corporations, often a portion of a working team will be based in a different office, country, or remote. Tactics that I find helpful to cross-functional alignment with hybrid and remote teams include: * Be mindful about time zones: when possible, schedule meetings in times that work for all, and rotate times to make it equitable * Leverage technology: working in the cloud makes collaboration a lot easier and transparent * Foster participation: during meetings, when the majority of participants are in the same room, it can be difficult for the minority that is virtual to engage. Be intentional about making it easier for virtual folks to participate * OKRs: helps set expectations about roles and responsibilities and deliverables * In person moments: nothing replaces the depth of in person connections. Whenever possible, bring teams together for offsites and team building