Behind the Scenes at Global-Roam

This may be the first time you have read an article posted on our “Behind the Scenes” blog – or you might be a regular reader.

Whatever is the case for you, you will have formed some kind of impression about our company, and the type of B2B software services we provide.

As such, we’d like you to tell us what you think of us, as this will help us to continue to develop and enhance the services we provide – now into our 2nd decade of service.

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When you see a job advertised with a title like

General Manager for Discerning, Developing and Delivering
What the Customer Wants

it is hard not to be curious.  In particular, I’d never had a job title that needed an acronym before - “GM 3D WCW” has a sort of geeky attractiveness about it, so I had to come and have a look.

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Frequent readers to this blog will have noted an organogram included in a post made back in January that identified the organisation structure and responsibilities that existed at the start of the year.

Since that time, our business has been evolving fairly rapidly – with a fair number of changes already completed (and a number still to go) in order to ensure that we really can deliver on our primary core value of “Customers First!”.

When I have a bit more time, I will post in more detail about some of the other developments that have been completed, or are still in progress – in this post I just wanted to ensure you were aware that last Monday (22nd March) we were delighted to have someone start with us as our new General Manager for Discerning, Developing and Delivering the Software our Customers Want.

The title is a bit of a mouthful, so he will shorten it in most cases – but he will certainly be specifically focused on delighting our growing customer base with the software we develop.

I will let him introduce himself in his own time, so stay tuned for more …

Food for thought, this morning, when I trundled along to a breakfast event hosted by the AMI, featuring Dr Don E Schultz of Agora fame, and author of a number of books (none of which, it would seem, we have previously added to our shopping cart).

Don’s main thesis is that:

1)  The “modern” approach to marketing emerged in parallel with the industrial age of society, and hence is based on similar principles (e.g. a Taylorist view of the world – which leads into a “command and control” focus internally, and a top-down mentality in terms of push-based marketing to “consumers” (how I hate that term).

2)  Given that we’re progressing from this Industrial Age into what’s been termed by a number of people as a “Customer Age”, Don’s view is that marketing also needs a transformation.

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As you may be aware, we’re in the process of recruiting a General Manager for Discerning, Developing and Delivering the Software our Customers Want (Need).

Up until this weekend, we have been receiving proposals from a small number of candidates shortlisted from the large number of applications we received in the first 2 weeks after the position was opened on 24th January.

Given the importance of this position (for us, and for the candidates) this has entailed investing many hours of time in getting to know each other, and to ensure the candidates could gain a clear view of our company (where it is now, and where it is headed).  We want them to come in with their eyes fully opened – both to the opportunities and the challenges!

This week I will be reviewing these proposals to determine which one is the best fit for where our bus is headed.

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Some time ago, Paul Klaptocz wrote this (restricted) review of a book “Four Steps to Epiphany”, written by Steve Blank.

Out of interest, I watched through this hour-long lecture by the author, given at Stanford - in which he summarises a range of guest lectures over the year.

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On January 24th 2010, we commenced (in earnest) the recruitment of our new General Manager for Discerning, Developing and Delivering What the Customer Wants (Needs) – more traditionally known as our GM Products.  We posted this advert on our blog then.

This led to Derrick Hill starting with us in this role on Monday 22nd March 2010.

The process was was intensive (lasting 8 weeks, not including considerable preparation time) but has resulted in a good fit to our needs.

As part of this process, we shortlisted a number of candidates, and provided them with a detailed briefing note to explain more about our starting point, and where we wanted them to help take the business.  As part of this briefing note, we also included the following core areas of responsibility. read more »

In long-hand, you will be known as our:

General Manager for Discerning, Developing and Delivering what the Customer Wants

That’s a bit of a mouthful, so we have shortened it to a variety of titles used on this blog and elsewhere:
1)  GM Software
2)  Chief Software Engineer
3)  Director of the Product Development “Factory”

I would stress that all three aspects of the role are important.

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I posted, early in January, about where our bus is headed (you might refer to this as our Vision).  I have progressively refined this, since then, to improve the clarity of this core message.

For those who are interested, I have also started posting more details about some aspects of this Vision – as falling under any of these core headings.  Posts that have preceded this one are:
1)  I posted about my vision for growing clients (and revenues) 20x.

A key prerequisite for this to happen is that our team of employees also grows (in numbers – but more importantly in competency).

Based on the experience we have gained in the past 10 years, we think that our growth in client numbers can be achieved with an increase in staff numbers of only about 3-4x our current levels.

In “Good to Great”, Jim Collins calls this “getting the right people on the bus” … and then “into the right seats”.

We have some work to do in the next couple of years in this respect, as follows:

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Post updated on 1st February 2010 to clarify the primary KPI.

This post is designed to provide an overview of what is required.  Note that (if you are successful in your application) I would expect that you would be proactive in working with me to flesh out the details of this position, in terms of specific deliverables and dates!

I have spoken with a number of people (online and offline) over the course of the past few months, since I determined that we needed to hire you.

It seems that no job title that could encapsulate this role is universally understood.  For this reason, you will be known as our:

General Manager for Discerning, Developing and Delivering what the Customer Wants

Bit of a mouthful, I know, but all three aspects of the role are important.

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