Alexander Loth - Decisively Digital

Elissa:I'm glad you brought up courage. It's such an important part of everything we've been talking about. Because if you don't have the courage to be yourself, if you don't have the courage to change, if you don't have the courage to try again after failure, if you don't have the courage to make the first move, well, a whole lot of stuff is just never going to happen. You need leadership with courage.

Alexander: Besides Tableau, what are your favorite apps, tools, or software you can't live without?

Elissa:I use this app called Done. It's a to-do app where you can set goals in order to get in the habit of doing certain things. I love it because it just kind of keeps me focused on the five or six things I want to do regularly to make sure that I'm building the habit.

I love reading so I'm a huge Kindle fan, but I also love the New York Times and the Washington Post . I am a big Evernote user. Actually, I love Flipboard, because it gives me a perspective of lots of different media sources. I also love Spotify, Slack, Waze, Dropbox, and all kinds of word games.

And I still of course love Tableau. I love using it in my class to teach it to show my students that you need to be analytical. But I also use it to analyze the data coming out of my class: Who's paying attention? Who is participating?

Alexander: What is your smartest productivity hack or work-related shortcut?

Elissa:Whatever problem you have, somebody else has had it, so don't think “I'm in this on my own.” Anytime there's a problem, I always think I'm sure that I can't be the first person who has had this problem. Someone else solved it. They got out of it. They survived. You can too. And maybe you can even solve it better.

Alexander: What is the best advice you have ever received?

Elissa:One of my brothers and Christian Chabot gave me great advice. Let's start with my brother. When I was getting out of college, I told him I thought I wanted to do a certain job, but it's too competitive. He replied: “Elissa, there's always room for the best. Don't give up on your dreams because you think you can't compete. If you're the best, there's always room for you.”

Related to that, he said in the same conversation: “You can become the best if you're willing to work hard and you're willing to learn and work smart.”

The third one is from Christian. He said when you're hiring, hire people who have their best years ahead of them. In other words, hire people who are excited about the future and want to change and learn and make the most of today and their future opportunities.

Alexander: How should a business evolve to survive and thrive in an increasingly digital world?

Elissa:As you know, the COVID-19 pandemic forced us all to be increasingly digital at an accelerated pace. Businesses needed to evolve in several ways.

First is about hiring your people. Being more digital and more remote has meant that the talent pool for every position has greatly expanded — you know now that you don't have to have every employee in the office every day, that we can work remotely at scale. So take advantage of the expanded talent pool and hire the best people you can find, wherever they are (within reason).

That being said, we're all going to have to get much better at establishing deep and trusting relationships without necessarily experiencing in-person touchpoints. That's hard to do, from the interview or first meeting to the daily working relationship. That means reading people well, sending clear signals, and delivering on the things we say we're going to do.

We're also going to have to find ways to make teams work efficiently together at scale in digital environments. I've noticed in my teaching that I can't cover as much material in a virtual class as I did in an in-person class. But there are practices and techniques that can shorten the time to efficiency.

And finally, when it comes to sellers and buyers, I'll make a pitch for my discipline. In an increasingly digital world, marketing is going to own more and more of the customer journey because marketing teams can generally execute digital experiences well. So seeing sales, customer success, and marketing come into greater alignment and integrate better is going to result in more customers acquired, happier customers, and more turnover.

Social media is a great way to carry your brand and your voice, because it's casual and temporal. You could have a little more fun with it, which can be a huge part of your brand.

Culture comes from the personalities of the employees. You need to be surrounded by people you want to build this culture with.

Refreshing culture is not done in a one-day workshop. It's going to take deliberate evolution over a long period that starts with the truth about who you are.

1 1Tableau is a product-driven software company focusing on data visualization. The company was founded in 2003 and is headquartered in Seattle, Washington. On August 1, 2019, Salesforce acquired Tableau.

2 2Christian Chabot is a cofounder and the former CEO of Tableau Software.

3 3Chris Stolte is a cofounder and the former chief development officer of Tableau Software.

4 4Pat Hanrahan is a cofounder and the former chief scientist of Tableau Software.

5 5Tableau Public is a free online service where everyone can share their visualizations.

6 6Tableau Conference is an annual conference for Tableau users.

7 7Nate Vogel is the VP of worldwide sales and partner readiness at Tableau Software.

Patrick Kirchgäßner, senior product manager, Highspot

Source: Patrick Kirchgäßner

In his current role, Patrick is building an analytics platform that includes self-serve reports, powerful data visualizations, and raw data exports for the business customers of Highspot's sales enablement solution. He has led ecommerce businesses and is developing a real estate lead acquisition platform leveraging chatbots and social ads. In prior roles, Patrick has built consumer apps in the multimedia and entertainment space, where he had to rely on data to drive product improvements.

Alexander: You are senior product manager at Highspot. What is your mission?

Patrick:Highspot is an enablement solution focused on improving the performance of customer-facing teams. I'm spending my time building the analytics engine that gives our customers the data to create better content and improve rep behavior.

Alexander: How should business models evolve to survive and thrive in an increasingly digital world?

Patrick:More so than ever, 2020 has shown us that businesses that can adapt and evolve quickly are resilient to unforeseen or sooner-than-expected change in the environments that surround them. To be successful in the digital world, businesses need to understand the metrics that make them tick, leverage data to understand changes in their environment early, and be ready to course-correct quickly.

Alexander: How can technology shift the roles and responsibilities of the workforce?

Patrick:Technology in many ways makes much of our work more measurable and thereby more predictable. While it helps businesses to be more efficient, it can make individuals feel uncomfortable or left behind. To successfully adopt technology, it is important to bring the workforce along as the technology gets introduced — so they can use it to their advantage rather than being afraid of it. With information having become a ubiquitous commodity, the ability to leverage it with technology has become an invaluable skill.