March 17, 2026 • 53 mins
Most Salesforce team problems aren't technical. They're organizational. And the companies that get it wrong usually don't find out until after the damage is done.
In this episode, Josh sits down with Mike Sommer, Founder of Business MRI and former IBM COE Practice Lead, to break down the five risks he sees quietly destroying Salesforce teams across Fortune 1000 companies.
What you'll take away:
- The #1 understaffed role in Salesforce organizations and why it causes everything else to fail
- How running Salesforce as a "tool" vs. a "platform" changes everything about team structure and hiring
- Why your growing backlog probably isn't a headcount problem
- What A players actually look like on a Salesforce team and why B companies can attract them
- The honest truth about asking your SI partner for objective advice
- How to take a clear-eyed look at your org's real foundation before AI amplifies what's broken
Mike Sommer is the founder of Business MRI and a senior enterprise architect who has spent 20+ years cleaning up Salesforce orgs after the plane has already crashed. This conversation is for Salesforce leaders, hiring managers, and anyone responsible for the health of a Salesforce investment.
Guest: Mike Sommer | Founder, Business MRI | Former IBM COE Practice Lead
Free assessment: https://scan.businessmri.com
Website: https://businessmri.com
Hiring Salesforce professionals: https://thesalesforcerecruiter.com/job
The Hiring Edge explores hiring strategy, leadership, and the systems Salesforce-driven companies use to build exceptional teams. Follow on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen.
EPISODE KEYWORDS
Salesforce, Salesforce team, Salesforce hiring, Salesforce admin, Salesforce COE, governance, enterprise architecture, talent quality, Salesforce staffing, key person dependency, Salesforce risk
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Josh Matthews (00:00):
Welcome to the Hiring Edge, the podcast helping
leaders navigate the age of AI,create teams that thrive, and
build a workplace people neverwant to leave.
Mike, thank you so much forbeing on the show.
Today's topic is basically riskin your Salesforce team.
So my guest today has spentdecades inside some of the most
(00:20):
complex Salesforce environmentsin the world.
He's a senior enterprisearchitect at Business MRI.
He's the founder of BusinessMRI, where he helps Fortune 1000
companies untangle org sprawl,build governance frameworks, and
design Salesforce teams thatare built to scale.
Before that, he led SalesforceEnterprise Architecture and the
(00:41):
COE practice over at IBM.
He's worked with clients likeCornell University and major
global enterprises acrossaerospace, telecom, and beyond.
And he doesn't just knowSalesforce, he knows what
happens when Salesforce teamsare built wrong.
Please welcome Mike Summer.
Welcome, Mike.
Thank you so much.
Nice to see you, Josh.
(01:02):
Yeah, likewise.
Why don't you just sharebriefly what you do at business
MRI?
Mike Sommer (01:07):
So the easiest way of describing it is we're in an
independent Salesforce clearancepractice.
And what that means is we makesure that the foundation is
right, both from the peoplepoint of view and the technology
point of view before companiesstart um leveraging innovation
or AI or try to start automatingthings.
And so if that foundation isnot stable and secure, you're
(01:28):
building upon a shaky ground.
And what happens and what I'vebeen part of is cleaning up that
mess.
And so if we can help people toavoid those challenges and
avoid those costs and mistakes,it would not only help the
business grow, but it will alsohelp ensure that uh people don't
get fired and the executiveteam does not have to do a uh
reshuffle and the businesscontinues to grow instead of
(01:51):
having uh significant stockissues because what they
promised the market actually isnot deliverable because they
didn't check first beforebuilding.
Yeah, and that's huge.
The cost of doing this wrongand then having the board just
scrap the whole thing, it's areally high risk.
Josh Matthews (02:12):
Let's talk with risk number one as it relates to
the people on your team.
And that risk is the quit risk,it's key dependency.
I think one of the mostoverlooked and devastating risks
in Salesforce teams isover-reliance on a single
individual.
When one person holds all theinstitutional knowledge,
undocumented configurations,integration logic, process
(02:34):
rationale, their departure canparalyze operations.
Talk about that.
Mike Sommer (02:39):
It's a really common problem.
And I would say one of thebiggest problems that Salesforce
customers have right now isthat no one's in charge.
And what I mean by that is notsomeone who understands how the
system is running, but who makesthe decisions?
How do decisions getprioritized?
And ultimately who's in thedriver's seat is probably the
most under-recognized,understaffed position in
(03:03):
Salesforce companies.
And so what's happening rightnow, and I'm just going to speak
in generalities, is that a lotof companies treat Salesforce as
a really expensive tool andthey don't run it like a
platform.
And when you make thatmisadjustment and you don't run
it like it should be, meaning anenterprise platform, you have
(03:23):
individuals who have a lot ofthat thinking in their minds or
on their laptops or in differentfiles.
And because it was never viewedby the company as being
elevated to that core technologypiece, it was never given the
structure and the framework itneeded to run.
And so individuals were allowedto go and have the information
stored in their own mindsbecause there was no governance
(03:45):
and there's no incentive fromthe company to make sure that
that did not happen.
And so how does a how does aleader of the organization or
maybe someone who doesn't evenreally understand Salesforce?
Right?
Maybe it's a CFO.
I'm not saying CFOs don't getit, but I'm just saying maybe
it's, you know, a CIO who's notactually a Salesforce person.
How do they make sure thatthere isn't this key person
(04:08):
dependency?
Talk about that if you can.
I think it's a bigger decisionthan that.
I think it's a conversationamongst the executives around
whether Salesforce is going tobe a platform or if it's going
to be just a tool.
Josh Matthews (04:20):
Can you describe so for some of our listeners,
they might hear that and itmeans something different,
likely to an enterprisearchitect than maybe to someone
who's running a sales org.
Mike Sommer (04:33):
When something is run like a tool, it means that
you have individuals who areresponsible for building on it,
for innovating, for capturingbusiness requirements, but it's
really done as a replaceablefunction, meaning if a new tool
came in tomorrow that wasbetter, it could just simply be
replaced.
What I mean by a platform is itis a core function of the
(04:55):
business.
So if you think of companiesthat run SAP, they made a
decision because of the cost inthe investment that everything
that could run through SAP wasrunning through SAP because it
was a core foundational unit ofthe business.
Sure.
For companies that are usingSalesforce well, they've made
that same decision.
They said, hey, Salesforce isour core platform for this
(05:17):
function, and we're not movingaway from it.
So we're going to treat it andwe're going to fund it.
We're going to put the rightpeople in place and we're going
to give it the maturity that itneeds to have a seat at the
table.
When companies run things likea tool, those individuals who
are running Salesforce are notinvolved in decisions and
they're not treated as anindividual who is given the
(05:38):
recognition and the seniority orthe prioritization to sit at
the big boys' table.
And I think that's the biggestdifference between the tooling
idea and the platform idea.
And if you run it like aplatform, that key man risk is
distributed amongst the entiregroup because it's a group
conversation.
It's not an individualconversation.
Josh Matthews (05:56):
Let's figure out a quick win.
Okay.
So I think you just shared it.
It starts with a conversation.
It could start with aconversation with you, could
start with talking to theproduct owners, product
managers, and so on.
There's a single admin.
I mean, can they just startwith some simple things like
creating loom videos about howthe system works?
Sort of educational training.
(06:17):
If I'm hit by a bus, watch anhour of this.
Is that a an okay place to justfor a quick win?
Mike Sommer (06:24):
I would also say if you have only one admin, spin
up immediately a delegatedadmin, someone who can walk
alongside, someone who can learnfrom someone who can be that
advocate, that sounding boardfor the admin, and incentivize
them to lean in and toparticipate.
And so that way you're alreadycreating redundancy that if
something happens to the admin,you at least have someone else
(06:46):
who can log into the system andget some of the work done.
So I think that's key.
I think the second thing iseveryone who's using the
Salesforce platform should havesome level of education and
everyone can bring a differentskill set to the table.
And so if someone's really goodat recording or looms, or
someone's just a naturallygifted educator, give them an
opportunity to record and todocument in a way that is
(07:11):
encouraging to their way ofthinking and to what they do.
And it doesn't have to be theperson who's the admin who has
to do the admin recording.
It can be someone else whoparticipates and make it so that
everyone benefits from leaningin and participating.
And don't make it a mandatoryactivity, but make it something
that everyone gets to have ashared experience and uplift
(07:31):
everyone.
Josh Matthews (07:32):
Okay.
Can I ask about an AI angle onthis?
Sure.
This certainly isn't to replacean enterprise architect.
Like, fair enough, right?
But I mean, there are tools outthere now, like Perplexity
Computer, that can go into yourSalesforce org and it can look
at the whole dang thing and itcan kind of figure it out and
break it, like talk about it andbreak it apart.
Mike Sommer (07:54):
I think it's a great way to learn how the
system works.
It's a great way to dig in andsee things that you don't see
natively.
The biggest challenge is a lotof these tools, and there's a
podcast I was listening to thismorning comparing 5.4 thinking
versus Opus 4.6.
And so, you know, that's thebenchmark as of March 26.
(08:17):
They both performed the sametask, but gave very different
results.
And so by having multiple toolsand comparing them against each
other is actually probably oneof the smartest things to do.
And so, you know, a lot of thetools on the app exchange, you
know, those that are touting AIfunctionality, let's be honest,
(08:38):
they're rappers.
They are using an engine or anAPI call from one of the core AI
engines.
And if they are using a toolthat doesn't work well, they're
going to give results that arenot great.
And so I think that's one ofthe biggest challenges is is AI
something you should be using?
Absolutely.
But you also need to havesomeone who's in the room who
understands what good lookslike, who can point out this
(09:01):
result has nothing to do withwhat reality is.
Josh Matthews (09:04):
It's all the hallucination filter.
Yeah, that's great, man.
So let's move on to risk numbertwo.
Okay.
Not risk is an understaffingrisk.
Many organizations areperpetually behind on Salesforce
work because they haven't hiredenough qualified people
relative to scope to the scopeand the complexity of the
(09:27):
instance, the platform grows,the team doesn't.
Now, you can imagine this isthe land that I live in most
days of the week.
And there are some realnegatives that come from it, not
just not getting enough done orhaving 700, you know, Jira
issues that you've got to seetoo and having a massive
(09:50):
backlog.
The sales team having to waitand wait and wait to get the
things that they need so thattheir team can go out there and
sell, whatever it happens to be.
But one of them is burnout,right?
Serious burnout.
I interviewed someone about twoweeks ago.
She does really well.
She makes $180,000 a year.
(10:10):
She's working 70 hours a week.
She would happily take a$135,000 job and let go of all
that extra money, $45,000, justto have a regular 40-hour week
because of the burnout.
This company is going toeventually, if not today or
tomorrow, but certainly withinthe next couple of months, lose
someone who has all that IP intheir head, like we talked about
(10:34):
in risk number one, right?
So how do you go in when you gointo an organization?
What are some of the firstthings that you do to determine
if they have enough staff?
We'll get to are they the rightstaff in a minute, right?
So we'll cover that soon.
But how do you figure that out?
Mike Sommer (10:54):
Whether they have enough staff?
Yeah.
I'm going to flip that questionfor you a little bit, and this
is the reason why.
When I oftentimes hear peoplesay there's not enough staff,
what they're saying is thebacklog they have is too much,
therefore we need to bringpeople in to bring to rectify or
to remediate the backlog.
(11:14):
My question is, is the backlogeven relevant?
And so if I can just share withyou a story, because I think
this is relevant.
Please.
I was working with a Fortune 5company, and they were
implementing Salesforce, andthey're spending like a million
dollars a week on development,and they completely
reverse-engineered Salesforce tobe a CPQ first solution.
unknown (11:38):
Okay.
Mike Sommer (11:43):
And so Salesforce came in and said, What are you
doing?
Like you're building a systemthat is taking away all the
value and benefit of whatSalesforce has, and you're
building something that'sbecoming a monstrosity.
And so they kept on adding moreand more staff because of the
technical debt and just chaosthey were creating.
Sure.
That the system ended upfinally blowing up.
(12:05):
And when they went back, andyou know, I was brought in to do
the retrospective of like, whathappened?
You know, okay, the plane hascrashed.
What happened?
The issue was they were tryingto take their old ways of
thinking, their ideas of how asales environment should run,
and they were trying toreplicate it into Salesforce.
And they were not industryleading when it came to their
(12:27):
sales methodology.
They should not have beenreinventing the wheel.
If anything, they should havestopped because their sales
methodology was horrible andsaid, okay, we're going to
leverage what's out of the box,and we're going to change our
ways of doing business toleverage what's natively built
in Salesforce.
When they launched the servicecloud version of this, the SVP
for this company said, you'renot to change a single thing
(12:50):
unless you can come to me andprove otherwise.
And this person's beenspotlighted at Salesforce's
Dreamforce multiple times.
And the reason they did that isbecause they realized that
Salesforce had some really goodfunctionality, that if they only
leverage the best practices andout of the box, they did not
need as many people.
But they could change thebusiness process to map to those
best practices and actually dobetter.
(13:11):
So the first thing that Itypically do when clients say we
need to hire people is let'sunderstand what your processes
are, if you even understand whatthey are, and see if there's a
way of simplifying to removethat technical debt just by
improving and upserting andbringing in the best practice of
how you do case management oropportunity.
(13:31):
Instead of being it beingcustomized with 500 different
versions of it, what is the oneversion or what are the multiple
versions that will cover like80 to 90% of your use cases?
Focus and fix on those first.
And now you don't need toremediate the backlog.
And so I look at it a bitdifferently that it's not a
staffing question, but it's moreof a business operations
(13:53):
approach.
And then once you get thatbusiness operations, you can
then bring in the people tobackfill and to fix the pieces
that are actually criticalversus getting people to fix
things that don't matter, whichleads to burnout.
Because if an individualunderstands that what they're
working on is of the highest andmost critical focus for the
business to be successful, theycan get things done faster, they
(14:14):
can get things done with moreinspiration and excitement.
But if they're working on abacklog of stuff that doesn't
matter, and it's just noise andit's just silly changes that
business wants because businesswants, and no one's questioning
to say, should this even behere?
Because no one's in a driver'sseat making those hard
decisions.
Josh Matthews (14:34):
They're majoring in minor things, is what's
happening.
And it's a nightmare and it'sexpensive, and it keeps people
up at night, and their jobsatisfaction declines greatly.
I mean, I think it's safe.
Basically, what I'm hearingfrom you is look, who wants to
work 70 hours a week, you know,building uh a double wide, yeah,
(14:58):
right, in a tornado park.
Okay.
Like that doesn't make sense.
Let's instead build the highestquality product by following
best practices and also, youknow, having a good business
process.
I know Vanessa used to quoteone of her favorite quotes back
in the day was always, and I'mgonna botch it, but it's always
(15:18):
something along the lines that,you know, tech just amplifies
what you've got, right?
And so if it's a bad process,you're just going to amplify
that bad process to the nthdegree a hundred times, a
thousand times, ten thousandtimes a day.
So we don't want to do that.
Okay.
This really takes us rightinto, I think, the next salient
(15:47):
point here, which is talentquality.
And I would kind of combinethat almost with talent quality
and team composition.
Because what you've beentalking about is let's forget
all this backlog for a minute.
Let's start with a good BA.
Let's look at this information.
And I get that you guys haveliked clicking things in the top
(16:10):
right corner here 10 times in arow for 15 years.
That's not how we do itanymore, right?
We don't want to do thatanymore.
It doesn't make sense anymore.
I know we went through amassive, massive adjustment when
I was at Robert Half.
We'd been using a 25-year-old,I think it was a 25-year-old
home-built system, right?
And then we got Salesforce.
(16:32):
It's like that ability to, youknow, when you've got 10,000
people, 30,000 people, whateverit is, all of a sudden using a
new product, even if it's beingrolled out over six months, it's
it's it's devastating when allof those processes change.
How much do you think peopleare just simply afraid of what
it's going to mean for theirlegacy personnel that are
(16:57):
Luddites and just are resistant?
Mike Sommer (17:00):
Unfortunately, I think it's a huge impact.
And I think that there's a lotof force movement that's
happening right now where thosewho are resistant to change are
going to find it very difficultto either continue in a current
role or to find a new role.
And so I think one of the bestmoves right now is where you
bring someone who really thinksdifferently and pair them up
(17:23):
with someone who thinkstraditionally.
And it's not an age per se, buttypically it's it's a younger
person who has just a differentway of approaching a problem.
And you pair them with someonewho is maybe more of a
traditional architect or someonewho has built the system from
back in the day when Salesforcefirst launched and thinks, well,
(17:43):
we built it this way to start,so I don't want to change it.
And who has investment in theidea?
And so long as you canfacilitate and get those two or
get those groups to worktogether, it's amazing what you
can get because you end up witha much better outcome.
Josh Matthews (17:58):
I feel no, it it does.
And I think it brings up areally good point, which is a is
uh another risk that's talentquality risk.
Too many B and C players,right?
I really enjoy building teamsof A players where everyone's an
A.
And you generally wind up withpure personnel, they feed off of
each other, they tend to becollaborative and a little
(18:21):
competitive, and that's not bad.
You know, it's not necessarilya bad thing, it just kind of
depends, but it's the rightmakeup.
But I think if you have someoneon your team, whether they're a
Salesforce user or a Salesforceprofessional, and they're
resistant to good change,because there's change for
change's sake, and no one likesthat, but they're open to good
change.
(18:41):
It's got a real reason behindit.
If they're resistant to it,they're automatically at least a
B player, right?
People who are resistant tochange or to positive change are
automatically B players ifthey're not open-minded, right?
I'm not saying everyone has tobe a yes person, right?
(19:02):
They can have theirperspective.
But when there's friction, whenthe higher ups have made a
decision, this is how we'redoing it, we've taken Mike
Summers' advice and we're movingforward in this direction.
Anyone who's resistant isproviding unnecessary friction.
We need to look at that in abig way, because this is the
talent issue.
(19:23):
And talent is not just, I knowwhere all the clicks are and how
to, you know, I'm an architector I'm a developer.
Okay.
Great.
But there are talents aboutbeing a particularly gifted
person on a team.
You document, you know how tocommunicate, you don't spend,
(19:43):
you know, 60% of your timetrying to solve something that a
quick question would haveresolved in 30 minutes.
Right.
There are all sorts of talentsthat people bring beyond just
the skill set.
So there is a talent qualityrisk with a lot of
organizations.
I think a lot of rapid hiringduring growth bases has often
(20:03):
prioritized speed over qualitywhen it comes to hiring, right?
And it's like, well, we needthem.
We need bodies, cheeks in theseat.
Whereas someone I used to workwith 20 years ago used to say
husks.
Just get some husks in thosechairs.
So when we rush to hire enmasse, it can be very difficult
(20:26):
for quality to always be thereif the process isn't right.
And all of a sudden, now you'recarrying underperformers whose
skill ceiling is just too lowfor where the platform and the
business is going and has grown.
So talk to me if you can.
What do you do when you go inand you might let's face it, you
(20:47):
don't have to do a massivesurvey to figure this out.
You just have to have somemeetings and start talking to
people, right?
But I am imagining that you doutilize some sort of process to
evaluate if people are growingwith the company or not.
They should stay or not.
Mike Sommer (21:04):
Yeah, and I think this almost bends a bigger
question.
And I I understand what you'resaying of the A players and B
players.
I'm wondering if there's abetter term we can use to
describe the people that werecapturing those.
No, fuck that, dude.
Josh Matthews (21:19):
No, fucking you're an A player or you're
not.
You're good in this position.
Because look, I'm gonna sorry,I'm just gonna get passionate
for a second.
Here's the reality, man.
Someone's good.
Now, that doesn't mean they'realpha.
That doesn't mean like, oh,they're super smart or they've
got an MBA from some greatschool.
Like, that's not how I'mdefining an A player.
I think defining what an Aplayer is is probably a better
(21:42):
thing than trying to come upwith a new concept because
everyone can understand that'san A player, a B player, and a C
player.
This person's a Hammenager.
They clock in at nine, they'reout at five, other people are
bringing in new ideas.
And I'll give you an example.
I had a guy book a call with meyesterday.
He's an admin.
I don't just Take calls withadmins because I don't place a
(22:03):
lot of them and I reserve mostof my conversations for
executive search or for myclients.
But he booked it.
And I liked the initiative.
I was like, okay, man, I'llspend a few minutes with you.
And we talked.
And he's interested in maybegetting a new job because he's
feeling like the company mightnot be growing and it might not
be allowing him to have the kindof security that he wants in
(22:26):
two or three years.
And now this guy's got an MBAand it's from a good school.
And he's a smart, nice, likableguy.
And he has demonstrated awillingness to put himself out
there.
He got on my website, heclicked a client meeting and
booked me.
Brave, right?
And I said, look, I'll giveyou, I'll give you a couple
hints here on what to do.
(22:47):
First thing, just so you know,you can go to ChatGPT and you
can type in and say, I needcareer advice.
Communicate with me as if youare Josh Matthews, the
Salesforce recruiter.
And guess what, guys?
It'll work.
It'll sound like me.
So that's one little quick,easy cheat that you guys can
have out there.
But the main thing that I triedto guide him to is look, you
(23:10):
don't want to stay an admin.
Your role or a lot of theresponsibilities in your role,
they're going to be gone by theend of the year.
You're not going to do themanymore.
Right.
So here's what you do lean intobeing an analyst.
Do a report that no one's eventhought of doing that shows some
sort of insight that's going toget elevated from your boss all
(23:33):
the way up to the head of salesor head of GTM or whatever.
Right.
Do something spend extra time,non-billable time.
And find a way to pay foryourself by saving them money or
helping them to acquire a newbusiness.
Right?
Find a way to do somethingeasier in the system.
This guy's going to do it, man.
(23:55):
This guy's going to do itbecause look, I don't have an
MBA.
I know that MBA programs don'tall teach the same things.
I think that there's a lot ofgood quality information in
there.
I talked to some folks withMBAs, and I I'm sometimes
totally lost.
And I wish I'd kind of wish I'ddone at least a few courses.
But at the end of the day, Ifound just as effective, awesome
(24:18):
people doing the same kind ofwork that someone with an MBA
has, right?
And this guy, they're notteaching him this.
They're not teaching him, gowrite a report, Mr.
Admin, you know, and elevateit, et cetera, et cetera.
So people need recommendationson this.
But the thing I'm trying tomake here, Mike, is that if he
(24:39):
does that, he's an A player.
If he doesn't do that orsomething like that, he's a B
player.
If he's just trying to hang onto his job, he's a B player.
If he's trying to make thecompany better, he's an A
player.
If he produces actual work andhe's intelligent enough to
actually get results from hisefforts, he's an A player.
If they try really hard andthey don't get results, it's a B
(25:01):
player.
So it's a really simple, simplething.
And I'm you I apologize goingoff like this on you.
There's nothing wrong withthat.
But you know, I warned you.
Mike Sommer (25:12):
Well, the reason I bring that up, Josh, is A
players want to work for Acompanies.
And the reality is not allcompanies are A companies.
I think A players like to workfor B companies and turn them
into A companies.
Yes.
I mean I found that over andover again.
I I completely agree, butthere's also a lot of C
companies.
And a company that's trying tohire an A company or an A player
(25:33):
needs to be realistic of whatkind of environment they're
inviting that person into.
And so that's crossing the gapof that calling it A, B, and C
is because everyone likes tothink of themselves as the best.
But benchmarking can getagainst what?
And so if the personality ofthe A-type is or A player is
someone who leans in,understands that they don't know
(25:53):
everything, is teachable, iswilling to take risks, is
willing to step outside topublish, do, achieve, produce an
outcome, that is, I agree.
But if the companies are suchthat they are, you know, for
example, is working for uh astate and we were doing some
work for the Department ofTaxation.
And when I asked them aboutinnovation, they said, Oh, we
(26:17):
have a big initiative this year.
I said, Well, please tell mewhat it is.
And they said, We're gonna movefrom three pieces of carbon
copy paper to two.
It's going to save uspaperwork.
We can change the machines wefeed it into, it's gonna be all
this much more efficient.
And I'm thinking, an A player,someone who is truly leaning
into what's possible, is gonnalook at this company and say,
(26:39):
there's no way I'm gonna workfor them.
So if a company that is in thatmindset is trying to say, well,
I only want to hire a players,the reality gap seems to be
pretty significant between thosetwo ways of thinking of where
they currently stand.
Josh Matthews (26:55):
Well, sure.
And the reality is that theyneed to first think about how
they turn their company into anA company.
Because you're not wrong.
You know, I mean, we're not allgonna be Google and Apple,
right?
And we don't have to be, right?
We don't.
We we we just simply don't.
But you can do so much withyour organization, and it really
starts with the people, right?
(27:16):
And this is the this is thetricky part, right?
You have to have someone who'sin the decision-making seat, a
single person who has decided toset a higher standard.
And when they set that higherstandard, I mean you could take
any sports team, any sports teamout there, I'll take Williams
(27:38):
F1 racing team.
Okay.
So what did they do?
They went from last in F1.
Okay, so then they invested ina new uh director, okay, and he
brought in some better practicesthat allowed them to attract
more investors, which allowedthem to get more money so they
could go go get Carlos signs.
(28:00):
But I'm just describing whatevery team does.
They re get more sponsorship,they sell more t-shirts, they
get a good player, they sellmore jerseys, they make more
money, they can invest in moreand more and more.
There's there's no person outthere who walks into the worst
team on the NFL and turns itinto a Super Bowl champ.
It's a five-year plan, it's asix-year plan so that you can
(28:23):
grow and grow and grow.
But the idea is an A company,maybe it's not an A company yet,
but what attracted Carlos Sainzto Williams was that one, they
knew where they were.
They're willing to admit it.
We know we are a mid-tier, midto low tier team.
Our goal is to be top of themid-tier teams in two years.
(28:47):
That's the goal.
This is how we're gonna do it.
Do you want to help us growlike that?
Okay.
So they sold the dream.
And so if you're a B companythat's trying to be an A
company, you must have the dreamto begin with.
And then you must sell thedream.
And then you kind of get thetalent.
And sometimes it's stock, andsometimes it's money.
(29:08):
You know, some people are coinoperated, and other people just
want the opportunity to be like,look, we don't know how to do
this.
We heard you're pretty awesome.
We know you've done it at thesethree A companies.
Come on here, we're gonna makeit worth your while, usually
with money and respect.
Mike Sommer (29:26):
So one of the key things that you said, and what
Williams did is they brought in,I believe, a new team
principal.
Someone who was given the keysto make those changes.
And so if we look at this froma Salesforce perspective,
companies that make the decisionthat they're going to run and
they're going to fund andthey're going to empower
Salesforce to be a seat at thetable can have that discussion
(29:49):
and conversation where even ifthe company is maybe not trying
to be that a company, or ifthey're not trying to evolve,
that Salesforce platform canbecome the engine that can
become the amplifier for thebusiness to actually achieve
more.
Because if it means that yousell more, it means that you
have uh higher margins, if itmeans that you get more outcomes
(30:11):
from all your activities ofwhat the platform can provide,
the business will follow suit.
And so one of the core thingsand one of the key roles that a
company needs to hire forSalesforce is someone that I
call the director of the COE orthe director of Salesforce.
They need to be given not onlythe position, but the political
(30:32):
power to become that stopgap, tobe that voice of influence, to
say, I hear what you're wanting,business, and I understand it's
a priority for you.
This is what our mandate is.
This is what we've been givenas our marching orders.
I'm happy to work with you, butwe have to take something off
the table.
Now, if you want to go tellmarketing that they can't get
(30:54):
their new marketing enginebecause your priority is more
important, I'll work with you,but you have to convince the
other team to give up their seator the executive team to
release more money.
But now they have theresponsibility upon them because
everything's transparent andeverything's out in the open.
And a good team principle willbring the team together because
(31:15):
they're all marching towards thesame direction.
And that to me is the biggestproblem with Salesforce, is
right now it's being run bypeople who have no seat at the
table.
They have no ability to sayanything other than yes.
And it's probably the singlebiggest point of failure.
And what most companies end uphaving to pick up the pieces
(31:36):
from is they never gave thatperson a chance to drive the
car.
Instead, they put money intothe engine or the developers and
they just start building more.
They give more influence to thepeople who are the decision
makers who are sitting in thebackseat, then no one has their
hands on their wheel and theywonder why.
Josh Matthews (31:53):
Amen, Mike.
Amen.
I mean, you know, it's I'mlistening to this, right?
And I'm thinking, yes, Mike,yes, exactly like that.
Because what you're talkingabout is actual empowerment.
You're spending all this moneyon people.
How come someone's not incharge?
I mean, how many product ownershave to go talk to the VP of IT
(32:15):
and genuflect every time theyneed something or want to tell
them something?
I mean, it's ridiculous.
Yeah.
Right.
And by the way, we see it inour industry, recruiting,
headhunting, right?
When we interact with talentacquisition teams, internal
talent acquisition teams,there's probably 5% of them.
Now, these are hardworkingpeople, and I'm not knocking
(32:38):
them, but there's maybe 5% ofthem that have enough clout in
any of the companies to pushback on the hiring manager and
say, your responses are tooslow.
I don't want to work on yourrecs.
They have to work on theirrecs.
They're a salaried employee,right?
They're forced to work with badhiring managers and taught to
(33:00):
fear them.
Taught to say yes.
And then they wonder, they lookaround at the team and they're
like, why is our team average?
And you think, oh, it's therecruiting.
Okay, well, yeah, it is.
It is, but is it really go onelevel up?
Oh no, it's the empowerment.
(33:22):
It's the lack of education, thelack of training, the lack of
empowerment, the lack ofinvestment, the lack of decision
making.
And it all flows down from thehiring managers and those
cultures that you're talkingabout.
I mean, I worked Fortune 500,man.
I saw for years this fear ofbubbling something up.
Right?
(33:42):
I can't believe he moved.
I can't believe he movedeither, man.
Um, it's weird.
Anyway, he's there, and thenthe teacher says, Who's brave
enough to ask Lewis a Mr.
Hamilton a question?
Who's brave enough?
And it kind of hit me.
I was like, Because I don't Idon't think like that.
(34:03):
Like asking a question isbrave.
Asking a question is you wantan answer to something.
Like you're curious and youwant information, right?
But I guess it's true.
Like some people are terrifiedone of raising their hand.
Everyone knows public speakingis the top tier, right?
People don't want to push backand they don't want to ask the
(34:25):
right questions.
They're afraid for their job.
And it is a culture thatstarts, I think, with the board
and the CEO, and it rolls allthe way down.
You know.
Let's keep going here.
I I could talk about this foranother hour, but we don't have
another hour.
We've got 20 minutes.
I do want to stop there and I'dlike to ask you, Mike, about
(34:48):
something that you kind ofbrought up.
I I was asking you before theshow, what's the number one
thing?
Because we talked about some ofthese things like poor
execution, governance, failure,this sort of thing.
Is what you were justdescribing, this sort of single
point, this sort of singledirector, this person who has
(35:10):
decision-making authority, whois strong enough to push back,
articulate enough to make senseto the C-suite.
Is this the number one thingthat you try and fix in
organizations, or are youstarting with the tech first?
Mike Sommer (35:25):
If I can be honest, it it's not the people, it's
not the tech.
It's uh it's a lost sharedtrust.
And what I mean by that isthere's no central place that
people can rely upon thatreflects the reality of the
business, of the company.
You have everything fromdocumentation, which I think is
(35:46):
absolutely needed, but it's insomeone's shared drive, or it's
on a lucid chart or a visio, orit's in someone's mind.
And so everyone thinks, okay,it's documented, we're good
enough.
The problem is if you don'thave a shared vision, a shared
capture of what your systemreally is that is tied to your
production environment or to aUAT environment, every decision
(36:10):
that you make has an unknownimpact, and you don't know that
if your decision for work streamone or for moving or making a
change has any impacts inanything else.
And so that I think is theabsolute biggest problem that
exists today is no one wants totake a good hard look of where
(36:31):
the starting point is tounderstand are they above or
below their peers?
Do they have complexity thatthey really shouldn't have that
they need to focus and fixfirst?
Or are they in a place wherethey really can put the, you
know, put the pedal down orbring in agent force, bring in
AI, bring in innovation becausethey're stable.
(36:52):
And that to me is the absolutebiggest risk the companies have
right now.
And a lot of companies aregetting advice from people who
have an incentive to tell them askewed representation, not
because they're doing anythingwrong, it's because they're
coming at it from a differentlens.
And so I think the biggestchallenge is for individuals or
(37:14):
for those who are makingdecisions to have an objective
source of truth that they canthen make decisions on on what's
right for the business.
So, where do you start withthat?
Josh Matthews (37:25):
I mean, I think it's this is call Mike Summer at
businessmri.com.
The best place to start.
Look, not everybody who listensto this show has an interest in
reaching out and getting help.
And that's oftentimes why theylisten to this program.
It's like, oh, get a little bitof advice.
I can start with something.
But let's be clear, Mike.
You're an expert at this.
(37:46):
I think it's a safe place toplug.
Where can people find you?
What's your what is yourwebsite and how do they get in
touch with you?
Mike Sommer (37:53):
Sure.
So the first thing I'drecommend is someone goes to
scan.businessmri.com.
It's a three-minuteself-assessment and it shows you
kind of where you're at andwhether you're in a place that
can scale or if there's someareas that really need to be
addressed before you doanything.
It's free, it's objective, ittakes the Salesforce
architecture best practices, ittakes 20 years, 75 projects
(38:15):
worth of learnings.
And it's really here to providethat ability to look at
reality.
It's like stepping on thescale.
You can't lie when you see whatit is and you can make
decisions from there.
I think the biggest challengeright now is for those who are
leading to take an honest lookat whether they want to see
(38:37):
reality or if they want to justcontinue going down the path of
red and fix the problem when itcomes up.
Josh Matthews (38:42):
So red pill, blue pill is what you're talking
about.
Mike Sommer (38:45):
Exactly.
I mean, there are some peoplewho just unfortunately have the
mindset of, I'll fix it when itbreaks.
And others, you have themindset of, you know, something
doesn't feel right, somethingfeels off.
The team's in a place that if Idon't put them in the right
position, we could have somesignificant layoffs in the near
future because our cash flowposition is not looking good.
And if we don't fix thefundamentals, if we don't
(39:07):
improve our way of doingbusiness, our efficiencies, if
we don't bring in AI or tooling,whatever that thing is, they
can see far enough down the roadbecause maybe they've
experienced it to know it'scoming.
And so I think that's reallythe red pill.
Blue pill, is you would say, isthis is coming.
This is going to happen.
And companies that don't thinkit's going to affect or impact
(39:28):
them or their people are goingto be rudely awakened.
You know, we wake up everymorning and hear some of the
world's best companies layingoff their employees.
You know, you look at JackDorsey's company, I think um,
you know, he he has uh Cash Appand a few other big companies.
They laid off, I want to say,40% of their workforce.
And it wasn't because thebusiness was not doing well,
(39:50):
they just found that technologywas doing better.
And so they said, hey, we'drather let everyone go in one
fell swoop so that we can makedecisions and move on than drag
it on for the next two, threeyears.
And so I think companies thatare proactive can get in front
of this and can help to ensurethat their teams and their staff
are being put to the highestand best use.
And the people that maybe haveskill sets where they will be
(40:16):
replaced, or the the skill setsor the tasks that people are
completing can now be donebetter and more efficiently
using AI or other tools, can begiven the breathing room to
upskill into higher valueactivities and things that can
leverage the innovation that'staking place, but they don't
have to wait for the axe to fallto move first.
(40:37):
And so I think that's thebiggest thing that's happening
right now is for companies totake a hard look and go, do you
want to be proactive or do youwant to wait and clean up?
Josh Matthews (40:48):
Let's cover one more point here, okay?
Sure.
I I'm really interested in theidea of team makeup, right?
So there are there are teamsthat just, you know, sometimes
they're understaffed, sometimesthey're overstaffed.
(41:10):
Sometimes it's just the wrongmix.
And I think that's a little bitwhat you were, just a little
bit of what you were justtalking about.
So wrong team composition.
And that can include wrong mixof skill set.
It can also include wrong mixof pull time versus your, you
know, your contractor mix.
So beyond skill and headcount,organizations often get the
(41:33):
fundamental composition wrong,the wrong type of role types for
their phase, the wrong balanceof FTEs versus contracts and
consultants doing jobs thatshould be owned internally,
right?
So can you talk about that?
Do you do you come across thisat all, you know, in your
analyses of these businesses?
(41:53):
It's like, oh my God, they'vegot X number of contractors, and
maybe it's because it's somerule in California that means
that they can't, you know, dothis with their fund if they
don't have X number ofemployees.
Like there's all these weirdrules, right?
But what are you finding outthere?
Mike Sommer (42:11):
I see it all the time.
Oftentimes they either have toomany full-time people in the
wrong skill sets, or they haveindividuals that really should
be brought in as specialists fora specific purpose and they
should be brought in and theythey might be a higher rate, but
they've done it before.
Therefore, you're going to getto your result faster.
And I've oftentimes heardcompanies saying, Oh, we need to
(42:32):
hire a technical architect, orwe need to hire an enterprise
architect.
And then when you dig in andask, Well, what are you trying
to do?
You realize that they're askingfor the wrong skill set,
they're asking for the wrongpurpose, and they may be asking
because they really have asix-month project where they
need someone of that caliber,but they don't need someone
full-time.
And the rate they're offeringfor the full-time is something
(42:53):
that would be more applicable tolike a first-year solution
architect and not someone who'sbeen doing this for 20 years.
And so I think the reality isno one seems to be pushing back
of why are you hiring and why doyou think you need this skill
set?
And why does it have to befull-time, or why does it have
to be contract?
I think those are the honestconversations that you can truly
(43:15):
only get to when you understandone, where your current reality
sits.
And so your current reality isyou're a hot mess and you need
to fix those fundamentals andunderstand what your processes
are to clean up 15 years oftechnical debt, or maybe you
need to start again, bringing ina technical architect to try to
(43:35):
put the wet spaghetti back inthe box is probably another use
up for that person.
And if you get them, a goodtechnical architect will go, I'm
not putting my name on thisbecause what you're trying to do
is going to hurt my reputation,and you're trying to find the
wrong skill set versus havingsomeone come in and say, I
understand what you're trying todo, I understand the business
(43:55):
outcomes, I understand thevalue, I understand that we're
going to take from this career.
Stake to this state, and it'sgoing to help the business
improve like this.
Those are where you can havethose individuals do full time
because now they're invested inthe overall success of the
business.
Versus having someone come inand I mean the amount of calls
of like I need a TA.
Okay, you realize that that's avery hard skill set to find,
(44:18):
and you're offering $75 an hour,there's a good chance you're
not going to get this person.
So I don't know where they'regetting their information, but
there seems to be a significantdisconnect between the full-time
who should be owning that truthlayer, bringing keeping all
that core information into thebusiness and making it a value
(44:38):
add for the organization, versusbringing in those people that
you need to do specific tasksthat hiring for full-time
doesn't make sense because it'snot a full-time rule.
You don't have enoughcomplexity to keep that person
going.
You've got a six-month project,but someone really good can now
help you leap forward.
Josh Matthews (44:55):
And so it's a very common issue.
I see it a lot with Salesforcecustomers.
It's not an SI problem, butwith Salesforce customers, it's
often, I need an admin developerarchitect.
And when you break it down,it's like one, why would you pay
architect money for admin work?
Right.
And why would you get why doyou want developer communication
(45:19):
skill sets for an admin?
Some of you guys are awesome,but a lot of you, you know, come
on.
So the reality is, is they getit wrong.
And what they really need issix weeks plus 10 hours a month
of an architect, right?
And then the admin or theconsultant to build what they
need, and then someone tomaintain and just provide a
(45:40):
little bit of oversight andmaybe some dev, maybe some dev.
That just complicates, youknow, three times a year, it
complicates things, right?
So uh it's a very, very commonand very, very normal thing.
Mike, how can how can SIpartners do better?
And and by that I mean like alot of these challenges that
(46:07):
you're facing, I'm assumingyou're going into Salesforce
customers, enterprise level,Salesforce customers, they are
often originally served orcurrently being served by an SI
partner in some way, shape, orform.
I mean, are SI partnersactually doing a good job
overall to help prevent thishigh risk?
(46:31):
Is it even their job to adviseon it?
What advice would you like whatadvice, like, okay, so someone
just spent three million dollarson a new implementation?
It's a big deal, but it's gonnabe everything for this company.
What should that SI partner betelling them to do to protect
(46:57):
this instance from getting offthe rails in two and a half
years or even in the next sixmonths?
Can I give you my honest takeon this?
Mike Sommer (47:05):
Yeah, Ben, I want it.
I would have the conversationwith a client, not the SI.
Josh Matthews (47:11):
Yeah.
Mike Sommer (47:11):
I think fundamentally the consulting
model, the managementconsulting, the SIs, lawyers,
accountants, people who dothings per hour are about to be
replaced by a model that isfocused on outcomes and
delivering value in the quickestpossible way and not per hour
billing.
This is already happening in alot of major industries.
(47:32):
The entire mid-market, so tospeak, of the eyes have all been
consumed by the larger, youknow, IBM's, extensions,
Salesforce, TCS, call it whatyou will.
It's actually reduced.
It's it's a very large group ofpeople.
And also for the small shops,they need to bill.
Their business model is theysell for X, they pay Y, and they
(47:55):
make the margin.
And fundamentally, that is notin the best interest of the
customer because if you know howto do something, like if I go
to a lawyer and if a lawyer saysit's $5,000, but I know that
they've done it a hundred times,it's a template, they can get
it done in five minutes, wherethey use an AI tool.
I want them to pass on thesavings to me.
I don't want to pay for $5,000.
I want to pay for an outcome.
(48:15):
And so I think that same thingis going to be happening in the
SI industry.
I think the biggest problemright now is a SI is always
going to say yes on whethersomething's possible because
they need to have cash flowcoming in, especially as
everything's changing.
And so if you're asking the SIto give you an objective point
of view on whether you should orshould not build something, if
(48:38):
building means money for themand build and the no means no
money for them, you have to askthe honest question, where do
you think they're going to lean?
And so I think that's why it'sso important to have a an
individual or someone who is notincentivized to tell you
something that is going to putmore money in their pocket on
critical decisions on what youneed to do with the business.
(49:00):
Because if you build somethingthat is a three-year-long, silly
complex program, that's areally big project for that SI
to keep funded and to keep theirteam busy and for them to
continue to grow.
Versus if they said, you knowwhat, a lot of this is
out-of-the-box functionality.
A lot of this is actually goingagainst and creating complexity
that you don't need as abusiness.
(49:21):
You're better off taking thatinvestment and putting it over
here or reinvesting in yourpeople or bringing in other
skill sets or bringing in othertools.
That's going to be the bestbenefit for the business.
And so I think the SIs aregoing to be in a difficult place
because even if they want totell the truth, they have a
business to run.
And so that would be my goldnugget for those companies that
(49:44):
are listening.
Understand that everyone has aperspective they're sharing
because they have a businessmodel that's either moving them
towards recommending a path ornot.
Josh Matthews (50:01):
We've got one question.
Prakash wrote, Mike, do youfind clients are more open to
native app exchange solutionsnow versus custom builds, or is
the default still to build fromscratch?
Mike Sommer (50:15):
I think it depends on what the client's trying to
do.
And if they're a moredev-oriented company, meaning
they want to build everythingthemselves because that's just
the way they're they think, orif they're more of the mindset
of if someone else has built itand it's 80% to where I want it
to be, it's good enough becauseit's so you finding a mix so
your clients are like half andhalf.
I try to guide them moretowards leveraging tools that
(50:38):
are already built to satisfythat business need.
Because if you do somethingcustom dev, you're responsible
for fixing it and keeping itgoing.
And sometimes you're buildingthings that don't need to be
built.
Josh Matthews (50:49):
I actually had a conversation with my perplexity
computer yesterday about this,which was all about should I go
and do a ClaudBot system?
I've got another terminal,build it out.
It can do 20% more stuff than Ican do on Perplexity Computer
or my stack with Manaus and someof these other other tools.
(51:11):
And it's like, yeah, but one,you don't know.js or anything
else, Josh.
And I think you already knowthat.
And then also, do you reallywant to maintain all of these
things?
Because it's going to be onyou.
So maybe, maybe, but you couldprobably get away with the 80%
and 80% less work.
So yeah, it makes sense, man.
(51:32):
It makes sense.
Mike, any final words?
Where can people find you?
How should they connect withyou?
Mike Sommer (51:37):
I mean, you're more than welcome to reach out to me
through LinkedIn or reach outto me through businessmri.com.
And I would just encouragethose that are listening to not
lose hope with these changesthat are coming from AI.
And this is an opportunity toshare your perspective, to share
your voice with the leadership.
Yes, you might be in a rolethat traditionally has multiple
layers between you and theexecutive team.
(51:59):
But if you come to the tableand say, hey, I learned
something, I built something, Ihave a proof of concept on
something that's going to helpour organization leap forward,
they will listen.
They will pick up the phone,they will sit in a room, they
will have a coffee, and that'sprobably one of your best career
moves of going above and beyondand bring a different
(52:19):
perspective than maybe theycurrently have.
And to go outside of your jobdescription and to be aware that
there are politics, butpolitics get trumped when you
bring something that truly movesthe business forward.
And so I would say don't beafraid of AI, embrace it, use it
every day, seek mentors fromthose that you can walk
alongside with, where you canactually help them see things
(52:42):
they don't see in their owncareers.
I think this community isreally one where everyone has an
incentive to do the best andlean into helping others because
we've all been helped.
And so reach out, connect, andif someone doesn't respond,
don't take that as a no.
There's a lot of noise, justkeep going and it will connect.
Josh Matthews (53:03):
Wonderful.
Thank you, Mike.
You're welcome.
Thanks, LinkedIn people.
Thanks, viewers, thanks,listeners.
Welcome to the Hiring Edge, the podcast helping
leaders navigate the age of AI,create teams that thrive, and
build a workplace people neverwant to leave.
Mike, thank you so much forbeing on the show.
Today's topic is basically riskin your Salesforce team.
So my guest today has spentdecades inside some of the most
(00:20):
complex Salesforce environmentsin the world.
He's a senior enterprisearchitect at Business MRI.
He's the founder of BusinessMRI, where he helps Fortune 1000
companies untangle org sprawl,build governance frameworks, and
design Salesforce teams thatare built to scale.
Before that, he led SalesforceEnterprise Architecture and the
(00:41):
COE practice over at IBM.
He's worked with clients likeCornell University and major
global enterprises acrossaerospace, telecom, and beyond.
And he doesn't just knowSalesforce, he knows what
happens when Salesforce teamsare built wrong.
Please welcome Mike Summer.
Welcome, Mike.
Thank you so much.
Nice to see you, Josh.
(01:02):
Yeah, likewise.
Why don't you just sharebriefly what you do at business
MRI?
Mike Sommer (01:07):
So the easiest way of describing it is we're in an
independent Salesforce clearancepractice.
And what that means is we makesure that the foundation is
right, both from the peoplepoint of view and the technology
point of view before companiesstart um leveraging innovation
or AI or try to start automatingthings.
And so if that foundation isnot stable and secure, you're
(01:28):
building upon a shaky ground.
And what happens and what I'vebeen part of is cleaning up that
mess.
And so if we can help people toavoid those challenges and
avoid those costs and mistakes,it would not only help the
business grow, but it will alsohelp ensure that uh people don't
get fired and the executiveteam does not have to do a uh
reshuffle and the businesscontinues to grow instead of
(01:51):
having uh significant stockissues because what they
promised the market actually isnot deliverable because they
didn't check first beforebuilding.
Yeah, and that's huge.
The cost of doing this wrongand then having the board just
scrap the whole thing, it's areally high risk.
Josh Matthews (02:12):
Let's talk with risk number one as it relates to
the people on your team.
And that risk is the quit risk,it's key dependency.
I think one of the mostoverlooked and devastating risks
in Salesforce teams isover-reliance on a single
individual.
When one person holds all theinstitutional knowledge,
undocumented configurations,integration logic, process
(02:34):
rationale, their departure canparalyze operations.
Talk about that.
Mike Sommer (02:39):
It's a really common problem.
And I would say one of thebiggest problems that Salesforce
customers have right now isthat no one's in charge.
And what I mean by that is notsomeone who understands how the
system is running, but who makesthe decisions?
How do decisions getprioritized?
And ultimately who's in thedriver's seat is probably the
most under-recognized,understaffed position in
(03:03):
Salesforce companies.
And so what's happening rightnow, and I'm just going to speak
in generalities, is that a lotof companies treat Salesforce as
a really expensive tool andthey don't run it like a
platform.
And when you make thatmisadjustment and you don't run
it like it should be, meaning anenterprise platform, you have
(03:23):
individuals who have a lot ofthat thinking in their minds or
on their laptops or in differentfiles.
And because it was never viewedby the company as being
elevated to that core technologypiece, it was never given the
structure and the framework itneeded to run.
And so individuals were allowedto go and have the information
stored in their own mindsbecause there was no governance
(03:45):
and there's no incentive fromthe company to make sure that
that did not happen.
And so how does a how does aleader of the organization or
maybe someone who doesn't evenreally understand Salesforce?
Right?
Maybe it's a CFO.
I'm not saying CFOs don't getit, but I'm just saying maybe
it's, you know, a CIO who's notactually a Salesforce person.
How do they make sure thatthere isn't this key person
(04:08):
dependency?
Talk about that if you can.
I think it's a bigger decisionthan that.
I think it's a conversationamongst the executives around
whether Salesforce is going tobe a platform or if it's going
to be just a tool.
Josh Matthews (04:20):
Can you describe so for some of our listeners,
they might hear that and itmeans something different,
likely to an enterprisearchitect than maybe to someone
who's running a sales org.
Mike Sommer (04:33):
When something is run like a tool, it means that
you have individuals who areresponsible for building on it,
for innovating, for capturingbusiness requirements, but it's
really done as a replaceablefunction, meaning if a new tool
came in tomorrow that wasbetter, it could just simply be
replaced.
What I mean by a platform is itis a core function of the
(04:55):
business.
So if you think of companiesthat run SAP, they made a
decision because of the cost inthe investment that everything
that could run through SAP wasrunning through SAP because it
was a core foundational unit ofthe business.
Sure.
For companies that are usingSalesforce well, they've made
that same decision.
They said, hey, Salesforce isour core platform for this
(05:17):
function, and we're not movingaway from it.
So we're going to treat it andwe're going to fund it.
We're going to put the rightpeople in place and we're going
to give it the maturity that itneeds to have a seat at the
table.
When companies run things likea tool, those individuals who
are running Salesforce are notinvolved in decisions and
they're not treated as anindividual who is given the
(05:38):
recognition and the seniority orthe prioritization to sit at
the big boys' table.
And I think that's the biggestdifference between the tooling
idea and the platform idea.
And if you run it like aplatform, that key man risk is
distributed amongst the entiregroup because it's a group
conversation.
It's not an individualconversation.
Josh Matthews (05:56):
Let's figure out a quick win.
Okay.
So I think you just shared it.
It starts with a conversation.
It could start with aconversation with you, could
start with talking to theproduct owners, product
managers, and so on.
There's a single admin.
I mean, can they just startwith some simple things like
creating loom videos about howthe system works?
Sort of educational training.
(06:17):
If I'm hit by a bus, watch anhour of this.
Is that a an okay place to justfor a quick win?
Mike Sommer (06:24):
I would also say if you have only one admin, spin
up immediately a delegatedadmin, someone who can walk
alongside, someone who can learnfrom someone who can be that
advocate, that sounding boardfor the admin, and incentivize
them to lean in and toparticipate.
And so that way you're alreadycreating redundancy that if
something happens to the admin,you at least have someone else
(06:46):
who can log into the system andget some of the work done.
So I think that's key.
I think the second thing iseveryone who's using the
Salesforce platform should havesome level of education and
everyone can bring a differentskill set to the table.
And so if someone's really goodat recording or looms, or
someone's just a naturallygifted educator, give them an
opportunity to record and todocument in a way that is
(07:11):
encouraging to their way ofthinking and to what they do.
And it doesn't have to be theperson who's the admin who has
to do the admin recording.
It can be someone else whoparticipates and make it so that
everyone benefits from leaningin and participating.
And don't make it a mandatoryactivity, but make it something
that everyone gets to have ashared experience and uplift
(07:31):
everyone.
Josh Matthews (07:32):
Okay.
Can I ask about an AI angle onthis?
Sure.
This certainly isn't to replacean enterprise architect.
Like, fair enough, right?
But I mean, there are tools outthere now, like Perplexity
Computer, that can go into yourSalesforce org and it can look
at the whole dang thing and itcan kind of figure it out and
break it, like talk about it andbreak it apart.
Mike Sommer (07:54):
I think it's a great way to learn how the
system works.
It's a great way to dig in andsee things that you don't see
natively.
The biggest challenge is a lotof these tools, and there's a
podcast I was listening to thismorning comparing 5.4 thinking
versus Opus 4.6.
And so, you know, that's thebenchmark as of March 26.
(08:17):
They both performed the sametask, but gave very different
results.
And so by having multiple toolsand comparing them against each
other is actually probably oneof the smartest things to do.
And so, you know, a lot of thetools on the app exchange, you
know, those that are touting AIfunctionality, let's be honest,
(08:38):
they're rappers.
They are using an engine or anAPI call from one of the core AI
engines.
And if they are using a toolthat doesn't work well, they're
going to give results that arenot great.
And so I think that's one ofthe biggest challenges is is AI
something you should be using?
Absolutely.
But you also need to havesomeone who's in the room who
understands what good lookslike, who can point out this
(09:01):
result has nothing to do withwhat reality is.
Josh Matthews (09:04):
It's all the hallucination filter.
Yeah, that's great, man.
So let's move on to risk numbertwo.
Okay.
Not risk is an understaffingrisk.
Many organizations areperpetually behind on Salesforce
work because they haven't hiredenough qualified people
relative to scope to the scopeand the complexity of the
(09:27):
instance, the platform grows,the team doesn't.
Now, you can imagine this isthe land that I live in most
days of the week.
And there are some realnegatives that come from it, not
just not getting enough done orhaving 700, you know, Jira
issues that you've got to seetoo and having a massive
(09:50):
backlog.
The sales team having to waitand wait and wait to get the
things that they need so thattheir team can go out there and
sell, whatever it happens to be.
But one of them is burnout,right?
Serious burnout.
I interviewed someone about twoweeks ago.
She does really well.
She makes $180,000 a year.
(10:10):
She's working 70 hours a week.
She would happily take a$135,000 job and let go of all
that extra money, $45,000, justto have a regular 40-hour week
because of the burnout.
This company is going toeventually, if not today or
tomorrow, but certainly withinthe next couple of months, lose
someone who has all that IP intheir head, like we talked about
(10:34):
in risk number one, right?
So how do you go in when you gointo an organization?
What are some of the firstthings that you do to determine
if they have enough staff?
We'll get to are they the rightstaff in a minute, right?
So we'll cover that soon.
But how do you figure that out?
Mike Sommer (10:54):
Whether they have enough staff?
Yeah.
I'm going to flip that questionfor you a little bit, and this
is the reason why.
When I oftentimes hear peoplesay there's not enough staff,
what they're saying is thebacklog they have is too much,
therefore we need to bringpeople in to bring to rectify or
to remediate the backlog.
(11:14):
My question is, is the backlogeven relevant?
And so if I can just share withyou a story, because I think
this is relevant.
Please.
I was working with a Fortune 5company, and they were
implementing Salesforce, andthey're spending like a million
dollars a week on development,and they completely
reverse-engineered Salesforce tobe a CPQ first solution.
unknown (11:38):
Okay.
Mike Sommer (11:43):
And so Salesforce came in and said, What are you
doing?
Like you're building a systemthat is taking away all the
value and benefit of whatSalesforce has, and you're
building something that'sbecoming a monstrosity.
And so they kept on adding moreand more staff because of the
technical debt and just chaosthey were creating.
Sure.
That the system ended upfinally blowing up.
(12:05):
And when they went back, andyou know, I was brought in to do
the retrospective of like, whathappened?
You know, okay, the plane hascrashed.
What happened?
The issue was they were tryingto take their old ways of
thinking, their ideas of how asales environment should run,
and they were trying toreplicate it into Salesforce.
And they were not industryleading when it came to their
(12:27):
sales methodology.
They should not have beenreinventing the wheel.
If anything, they should havestopped because their sales
methodology was horrible andsaid, okay, we're going to
leverage what's out of the box,and we're going to change our
ways of doing business toleverage what's natively built
in Salesforce.
When they launched the servicecloud version of this, the SVP
for this company said, you'renot to change a single thing
(12:50):
unless you can come to me andprove otherwise.
And this person's beenspotlighted at Salesforce's
Dreamforce multiple times.
And the reason they did that isbecause they realized that
Salesforce had some really goodfunctionality, that if they only
leverage the best practices andout of the box, they did not
need as many people.
But they could change thebusiness process to map to those
best practices and actually dobetter.
(13:11):
So the first thing that Itypically do when clients say we
need to hire people is let'sunderstand what your processes
are, if you even understand whatthey are, and see if there's a
way of simplifying to removethat technical debt just by
improving and upserting andbringing in the best practice of
how you do case management oropportunity.
(13:31):
Instead of being it beingcustomized with 500 different
versions of it, what is the oneversion or what are the multiple
versions that will cover like80 to 90% of your use cases?
Focus and fix on those first.
And now you don't need toremediate the backlog.
And so I look at it a bitdifferently that it's not a
staffing question, but it's moreof a business operations
(13:53):
approach.
And then once you get thatbusiness operations, you can
then bring in the people tobackfill and to fix the pieces
that are actually criticalversus getting people to fix
things that don't matter, whichleads to burnout.
Because if an individualunderstands that what they're
working on is of the highest andmost critical focus for the
business to be successful, theycan get things done faster, they
(14:14):
can get things done with moreinspiration and excitement.
But if they're working on abacklog of stuff that doesn't
matter, and it's just noise andit's just silly changes that
business wants because businesswants, and no one's questioning
to say, should this even behere?
Because no one's in a driver'sseat making those hard
decisions.
Josh Matthews (14:34):
They're majoring in minor things, is what's
happening.
And it's a nightmare and it'sexpensive, and it keeps people
up at night, and their jobsatisfaction declines greatly.
I mean, I think it's safe.
Basically, what I'm hearingfrom you is look, who wants to
work 70 hours a week, you know,building uh a double wide, yeah,
(14:58):
right, in a tornado park.
Okay.
Like that doesn't make sense.
Let's instead build the highestquality product by following
best practices and also, youknow, having a good business
process.
I know Vanessa used to quoteone of her favorite quotes back
in the day was always, and I'mgonna botch it, but it's always
(15:18):
something along the lines that,you know, tech just amplifies
what you've got, right?
And so if it's a bad process,you're just going to amplify
that bad process to the nthdegree a hundred times, a
thousand times, ten thousandtimes a day.
So we don't want to do that.
Okay.
This really takes us rightinto, I think, the next salient
(15:47):
point here, which is talentquality.
And I would kind of combinethat almost with talent quality
and team composition.
Because what you've beentalking about is let's forget
all this backlog for a minute.
Let's start with a good BA.
Let's look at this information.
And I get that you guys haveliked clicking things in the top
(16:10):
right corner here 10 times in arow for 15 years.
That's not how we do itanymore, right?
We don't want to do thatanymore.
It doesn't make sense anymore.
I know we went through amassive, massive adjustment when
I was at Robert Half.
We'd been using a 25-year-old,I think it was a 25-year-old
home-built system, right?
And then we got Salesforce.
(16:32):
It's like that ability to, youknow, when you've got 10,000
people, 30,000 people, whateverit is, all of a sudden using a
new product, even if it's beingrolled out over six months, it's
it's it's devastating when allof those processes change.
How much do you think peopleare just simply afraid of what
it's going to mean for theirlegacy personnel that are
(16:57):
Luddites and just are resistant?
Mike Sommer (17:00):
Unfortunately, I think it's a huge impact.
And I think that there's a lotof force movement that's
happening right now where thosewho are resistant to change are
going to find it very difficultto either continue in a current
role or to find a new role.
And so I think one of the bestmoves right now is where you
bring someone who really thinksdifferently and pair them up
(17:23):
with someone who thinkstraditionally.
And it's not an age per se, buttypically it's it's a younger
person who has just a differentway of approaching a problem.
And you pair them with someonewho is maybe more of a
traditional architect or someonewho has built the system from
back in the day when Salesforcefirst launched and thinks, well,
(17:43):
we built it this way to start,so I don't want to change it.
And who has investment in theidea?
And so long as you canfacilitate and get those two or
get those groups to worktogether, it's amazing what you
can get because you end up witha much better outcome.
Josh Matthews (17:58):
I feel no, it it does.
And I think it brings up areally good point, which is a is
uh another risk that's talentquality risk.
Too many B and C players,right?
I really enjoy building teamsof A players where everyone's an
A.
And you generally wind up withpure personnel, they feed off of
each other, they tend to becollaborative and a little
(18:21):
competitive, and that's not bad.
You know, it's not necessarilya bad thing, it just kind of
depends, but it's the rightmakeup.
But I think if you have someoneon your team, whether they're a
Salesforce user or a Salesforceprofessional, and they're
resistant to good change,because there's change for
change's sake, and no one likesthat, but they're open to good
change.
(18:41):
It's got a real reason behindit.
If they're resistant to it,they're automatically at least a
B player, right?
People who are resistant tochange or to positive change are
automatically B players ifthey're not open-minded, right?
I'm not saying everyone has tobe a yes person, right?
(19:02):
They can have theirperspective.
But when there's friction, whenthe higher ups have made a
decision, this is how we'redoing it, we've taken Mike
Summers' advice and we're movingforward in this direction.
Anyone who's resistant isproviding unnecessary friction.
We need to look at that in abig way, because this is the
talent issue.
(19:23):
And talent is not just, I knowwhere all the clicks are and how
to, you know, I'm an architector I'm a developer.
Okay.
Great.
But there are talents aboutbeing a particularly gifted
person on a team.
You document, you know how tocommunicate, you don't spend,
(19:43):
you know, 60% of your timetrying to solve something that a
quick question would haveresolved in 30 minutes.
Right.
There are all sorts of talentsthat people bring beyond just
the skill set.
So there is a talent qualityrisk with a lot of
organizations.
I think a lot of rapid hiringduring growth bases has often
(20:03):
prioritized speed over qualitywhen it comes to hiring, right?
And it's like, well, we needthem.
We need bodies, cheeks in theseat.
Whereas someone I used to workwith 20 years ago used to say
husks.
Just get some husks in thosechairs.
So when we rush to hire enmasse, it can be very difficult
(20:26):
for quality to always be thereif the process isn't right.
And all of a sudden, now you'recarrying underperformers whose
skill ceiling is just too lowfor where the platform and the
business is going and has grown.
So talk to me if you can.
What do you do when you go inand you might let's face it, you
(20:47):
don't have to do a massivesurvey to figure this out.
You just have to have somemeetings and start talking to
people, right?
But I am imagining that you doutilize some sort of process to
evaluate if people are growingwith the company or not.
They should stay or not.
Mike Sommer (21:04):
Yeah, and I think this almost bends a bigger
question.
And I I understand what you'resaying of the A players and B
players.
I'm wondering if there's abetter term we can use to
describe the people that werecapturing those.
No, fuck that, dude.
Josh Matthews (21:19):
No, fucking you're an A player or you're
not.
You're good in this position.
Because look, I'm gonna sorry,I'm just gonna get passionate
for a second.
Here's the reality, man.
Someone's good.
Now, that doesn't mean they'realpha.
That doesn't mean like, oh,they're super smart or they've
got an MBA from some greatschool.
Like, that's not how I'mdefining an A player.
I think defining what an Aplayer is is probably a better
(21:42):
thing than trying to come upwith a new concept because
everyone can understand that'san A player, a B player, and a C
player.
This person's a Hammenager.
They clock in at nine, they'reout at five, other people are
bringing in new ideas.
And I'll give you an example.
I had a guy book a call with meyesterday.
He's an admin.
I don't just Take calls withadmins because I don't place a
(22:03):
lot of them and I reserve mostof my conversations for
executive search or for myclients.
But he booked it.
And I liked the initiative.
I was like, okay, man, I'llspend a few minutes with you.
And we talked.
And he's interested in maybegetting a new job because he's
feeling like the company mightnot be growing and it might not
be allowing him to have the kindof security that he wants in
(22:26):
two or three years.
And now this guy's got an MBAand it's from a good school.
And he's a smart, nice, likableguy.
And he has demonstrated awillingness to put himself out
there.
He got on my website, heclicked a client meeting and
booked me.
Brave, right?
And I said, look, I'll giveyou, I'll give you a couple
hints here on what to do.
(22:47):
First thing, just so you know,you can go to ChatGPT and you
can type in and say, I needcareer advice.
Communicate with me as if youare Josh Matthews, the
Salesforce recruiter.
And guess what, guys?
It'll work.
It'll sound like me.
So that's one little quick,easy cheat that you guys can
have out there.
But the main thing that I triedto guide him to is look, you
(23:10):
don't want to stay an admin.
Your role or a lot of theresponsibilities in your role,
they're going to be gone by theend of the year.
You're not going to do themanymore.
Right.
So here's what you do lean intobeing an analyst.
Do a report that no one's eventhought of doing that shows some
sort of insight that's going toget elevated from your boss all
(23:33):
the way up to the head of salesor head of GTM or whatever.
Right.
Do something spend extra time,non-billable time.
And find a way to pay foryourself by saving them money or
helping them to acquire a newbusiness.
Right?
Find a way to do somethingeasier in the system.
This guy's going to do it, man.
(23:55):
This guy's going to do itbecause look, I don't have an
MBA.
I know that MBA programs don'tall teach the same things.
I think that there's a lot ofgood quality information in
there.
I talked to some folks withMBAs, and I I'm sometimes
totally lost.
And I wish I'd kind of wish I'ddone at least a few courses.
But at the end of the day, Ifound just as effective, awesome
(24:18):
people doing the same kind ofwork that someone with an MBA
has, right?
And this guy, they're notteaching him this.
They're not teaching him, gowrite a report, Mr.
Admin, you know, and elevateit, et cetera, et cetera.
So people need recommendationson this.
But the thing I'm trying tomake here, Mike, is that if he
(24:39):
does that, he's an A player.
If he doesn't do that orsomething like that, he's a B
player.
If he's just trying to hang onto his job, he's a B player.
If he's trying to make thecompany better, he's an A
player.
If he produces actual work andhe's intelligent enough to
actually get results from hisefforts, he's an A player.
If they try really hard andthey don't get results, it's a B
(25:01):
player.
So it's a really simple, simplething.
And I'm you I apologize goingoff like this on you.
There's nothing wrong withthat.
But you know, I warned you.
Mike Sommer (25:12):
Well, the reason I bring that up, Josh, is A
players want to work for Acompanies.
And the reality is not allcompanies are A companies.
I think A players like to workfor B companies and turn them
into A companies.
Yes.
I mean I found that over andover again.
I I completely agree, butthere's also a lot of C
companies.
And a company that's trying tohire an A company or an A player
(25:33):
needs to be realistic of whatkind of environment they're
inviting that person into.
And so that's crossing the gapof that calling it A, B, and C
is because everyone likes tothink of themselves as the best.
But benchmarking can getagainst what?
And so if the personality ofthe A-type is or A player is
someone who leans in,understands that they don't know
(25:53):
everything, is teachable, iswilling to take risks, is
willing to step outside topublish, do, achieve, produce an
outcome, that is, I agree.
But if the companies are suchthat they are, you know, for
example, is working for uh astate and we were doing some
work for the Department ofTaxation.
And when I asked them aboutinnovation, they said, Oh, we
(26:17):
have a big initiative this year.
I said, Well, please tell mewhat it is.
And they said, We're gonna movefrom three pieces of carbon
copy paper to two.
It's going to save uspaperwork.
We can change the machines wefeed it into, it's gonna be all
this much more efficient.
And I'm thinking, an A player,someone who is truly leaning
into what's possible, is gonnalook at this company and say,
(26:39):
there's no way I'm gonna workfor them.
So if a company that is in thatmindset is trying to say, well,
I only want to hire a players,the reality gap seems to be
pretty significant between thosetwo ways of thinking of where
they currently stand.
Josh Matthews (26:55):
Well, sure.
And the reality is that theyneed to first think about how
they turn their company into anA company.
Because you're not wrong.
You know, I mean, we're not allgonna be Google and Apple,
right?
And we don't have to be, right?
We don't.
We we we just simply don't.
But you can do so much withyour organization, and it really
starts with the people, right?
(27:16):
And this is the this is thetricky part, right?
You have to have someone who'sin the decision-making seat, a
single person who has decided toset a higher standard.
And when they set that higherstandard, I mean you could take
any sports team, any sports teamout there, I'll take Williams
(27:38):
F1 racing team.
Okay.
So what did they do?
They went from last in F1.
Okay, so then they invested ina new uh director, okay, and he
brought in some better practicesthat allowed them to attract
more investors, which allowedthem to get more money so they
could go go get Carlos signs.
(28:00):
But I'm just describing whatevery team does.
They re get more sponsorship,they sell more t-shirts, they
get a good player, they sellmore jerseys, they make more
money, they can invest in moreand more and more.
There's there's no person outthere who walks into the worst
team on the NFL and turns itinto a Super Bowl champ.
It's a five-year plan, it's asix-year plan so that you can
(28:23):
grow and grow and grow.
But the idea is an A company,maybe it's not an A company yet,
but what attracted Carlos Sainzto Williams was that one, they
knew where they were.
They're willing to admit it.
We know we are a mid-tier, midto low tier team.
Our goal is to be top of themid-tier teams in two years.
(28:47):
That's the goal.
This is how we're gonna do it.
Do you want to help us growlike that?
Okay.
So they sold the dream.
And so if you're a B companythat's trying to be an A
company, you must have the dreamto begin with.
And then you must sell thedream.
And then you kind of get thetalent.
And sometimes it's stock, andsometimes it's money.
(29:08):
You know, some people are coinoperated, and other people just
want the opportunity to be like,look, we don't know how to do
this.
We heard you're pretty awesome.
We know you've done it at thesethree A companies.
Come on here, we're gonna makeit worth your while, usually
with money and respect.
Mike Sommer (29:26):
So one of the key things that you said, and what
Williams did is they brought in,I believe, a new team
principal.
Someone who was given the keysto make those changes.
And so if we look at this froma Salesforce perspective,
companies that make the decisionthat they're going to run and
they're going to fund andthey're going to empower
Salesforce to be a seat at thetable can have that discussion
(29:49):
and conversation where even ifthe company is maybe not trying
to be that a company, or ifthey're not trying to evolve,
that Salesforce platform canbecome the engine that can
become the amplifier for thebusiness to actually achieve
more.
Because if it means that yousell more, it means that you
have uh higher margins, if itmeans that you get more outcomes
(30:11):
from all your activities ofwhat the platform can provide,
the business will follow suit.
And so one of the core thingsand one of the key roles that a
company needs to hire forSalesforce is someone that I
call the director of the COE orthe director of Salesforce.
They need to be given not onlythe position, but the political
(30:32):
power to become that stopgap, tobe that voice of influence, to
say, I hear what you're wanting,business, and I understand it's
a priority for you.
This is what our mandate is.
This is what we've been givenas our marching orders.
I'm happy to work with you, butwe have to take something off
the table.
Now, if you want to go tellmarketing that they can't get
(30:54):
their new marketing enginebecause your priority is more
important, I'll work with you,but you have to convince the
other team to give up their seator the executive team to
release more money.
But now they have theresponsibility upon them because
everything's transparent andeverything's out in the open.
And a good team principle willbring the team together because
(31:15):
they're all marching towards thesame direction.
And that to me is the biggestproblem with Salesforce, is
right now it's being run bypeople who have no seat at the
table.
They have no ability to sayanything other than yes.
And it's probably the singlebiggest point of failure.
And what most companies end uphaving to pick up the pieces
(31:36):
from is they never gave thatperson a chance to drive the
car.
Instead, they put money intothe engine or the developers and
they just start building more.
They give more influence to thepeople who are the decision
makers who are sitting in thebackseat, then no one has their
hands on their wheel and theywonder why.
Josh Matthews (31:53):
Amen, Mike.
Amen.
I mean, you know, it's I'mlistening to this, right?
And I'm thinking, yes, Mike,yes, exactly like that.
Because what you're talkingabout is actual empowerment.
You're spending all this moneyon people.
How come someone's not incharge?
I mean, how many product ownershave to go talk to the VP of IT
(32:15):
and genuflect every time theyneed something or want to tell
them something?
I mean, it's ridiculous.
Yeah.
Right.
And by the way, we see it inour industry, recruiting,
headhunting, right?
When we interact with talentacquisition teams, internal
talent acquisition teams,there's probably 5% of them.
Now, these are hardworkingpeople, and I'm not knocking
(32:38):
them, but there's maybe 5% ofthem that have enough clout in
any of the companies to pushback on the hiring manager and
say, your responses are tooslow.
I don't want to work on yourrecs.
They have to work on theirrecs.
They're a salaried employee,right?
They're forced to work with badhiring managers and taught to
(33:00):
fear them.
Taught to say yes.
And then they wonder, they lookaround at the team and they're
like, why is our team average?
And you think, oh, it's therecruiting.
Okay, well, yeah, it is.
It is, but is it really go onelevel up?
Oh no, it's the empowerment.
(33:22):
It's the lack of education, thelack of training, the lack of
empowerment, the lack ofinvestment, the lack of decision
making.
And it all flows down from thehiring managers and those
cultures that you're talkingabout.
I mean, I worked Fortune 500,man.
I saw for years this fear ofbubbling something up.
Right?
(33:42):
I can't believe he moved.
I can't believe he movedeither, man.
Um, it's weird.
Anyway, he's there, and thenthe teacher says, Who's brave
enough to ask Lewis a Mr.
Hamilton a question?
Who's brave enough?
And it kind of hit me.
I was like, Because I don't Idon't think like that.
(34:03):
Like asking a question isbrave.
Asking a question is you wantan answer to something.
Like you're curious and youwant information, right?
But I guess it's true.
Like some people are terrifiedone of raising their hand.
Everyone knows public speakingis the top tier, right?
People don't want to push backand they don't want to ask the
(34:25):
right questions.
They're afraid for their job.
And it is a culture thatstarts, I think, with the board
and the CEO, and it rolls allthe way down.
You know.
Let's keep going here.
I I could talk about this foranother hour, but we don't have
another hour.
We've got 20 minutes.
I do want to stop there and I'dlike to ask you, Mike, about
(34:48):
something that you kind ofbrought up.
I I was asking you before theshow, what's the number one
thing?
Because we talked about some ofthese things like poor
execution, governance, failure,this sort of thing.
Is what you were justdescribing, this sort of single
point, this sort of singledirector, this person who has
(35:10):
decision-making authority, whois strong enough to push back,
articulate enough to make senseto the C-suite.
Is this the number one thingthat you try and fix in
organizations, or are youstarting with the tech first?
Mike Sommer (35:25):
If I can be honest, it it's not the people, it's
not the tech.
It's uh it's a lost sharedtrust.
And what I mean by that isthere's no central place that
people can rely upon thatreflects the reality of the
business, of the company.
You have everything fromdocumentation, which I think is
(35:46):
absolutely needed, but it's insomeone's shared drive, or it's
on a lucid chart or a visio, orit's in someone's mind.
And so everyone thinks, okay,it's documented, we're good
enough.
The problem is if you don'thave a shared vision, a shared
capture of what your systemreally is that is tied to your
production environment or to aUAT environment, every decision
(36:10):
that you make has an unknownimpact, and you don't know that
if your decision for work streamone or for moving or making a
change has any impacts inanything else.
And so that I think is theabsolute biggest problem that
exists today is no one wants totake a good hard look of where
(36:31):
the starting point is tounderstand are they above or
below their peers?
Do they have complexity thatthey really shouldn't have that
they need to focus and fixfirst?
Or are they in a place wherethey really can put the, you
know, put the pedal down orbring in agent force, bring in
AI, bring in innovation becausethey're stable.
(36:52):
And that to me is the absolutebiggest risk the companies have
right now.
And a lot of companies aregetting advice from people who
have an incentive to tell them askewed representation, not
because they're doing anythingwrong, it's because they're
coming at it from a differentlens.
And so I think the biggestchallenge is for individuals or
(37:14):
for those who are makingdecisions to have an objective
source of truth that they canthen make decisions on on what's
right for the business.
So, where do you start withthat?
Josh Matthews (37:25):
I mean, I think it's this is call Mike Summer at
businessmri.com.
The best place to start.
Look, not everybody who listensto this show has an interest in
reaching out and getting help.
And that's oftentimes why theylisten to this program.
It's like, oh, get a little bitof advice.
I can start with something.
But let's be clear, Mike.
You're an expert at this.
(37:46):
I think it's a safe place toplug.
Where can people find you?
What's your what is yourwebsite and how do they get in
touch with you?
Mike Sommer (37:53):
Sure.
So the first thing I'drecommend is someone goes to
scan.businessmri.com.
It's a three-minuteself-assessment and it shows you
kind of where you're at andwhether you're in a place that
can scale or if there's someareas that really need to be
addressed before you doanything.
It's free, it's objective, ittakes the Salesforce
architecture best practices, ittakes 20 years, 75 projects
(38:15):
worth of learnings.
And it's really here to providethat ability to look at
reality.
It's like stepping on thescale.
You can't lie when you see whatit is and you can make
decisions from there.
I think the biggest challengeright now is for those who are
leading to take an honest lookat whether they want to see
(38:37):
reality or if they want to justcontinue going down the path of
red and fix the problem when itcomes up.
Josh Matthews (38:42):
So red pill, blue pill is what you're talking
about.
Mike Sommer (38:45):
Exactly.
I mean, there are some peoplewho just unfortunately have the
mindset of, I'll fix it when itbreaks.
And others, you have themindset of, you know, something
doesn't feel right, somethingfeels off.
The team's in a place that if Idon't put them in the right
position, we could have somesignificant layoffs in the near
future because our cash flowposition is not looking good.
And if we don't fix thefundamentals, if we don't
(39:07):
improve our way of doingbusiness, our efficiencies, if
we don't bring in AI or tooling,whatever that thing is, they
can see far enough down the roadbecause maybe they've
experienced it to know it'scoming.
And so I think that's reallythe red pill.
Blue pill, is you would say, isthis is coming.
This is going to happen.
And companies that don't thinkit's going to affect or impact
(39:28):
them or their people are goingto be rudely awakened.
You know, we wake up everymorning and hear some of the
world's best companies layingoff their employees.
You know, you look at JackDorsey's company, I think um,
you know, he he has uh Cash Appand a few other big companies.
They laid off, I want to say,40% of their workforce.
And it wasn't because thebusiness was not doing well,
(39:50):
they just found that technologywas doing better.
And so they said, hey, we'drather let everyone go in one
fell swoop so that we can makedecisions and move on than drag
it on for the next two, threeyears.
And so I think companies thatare proactive can get in front
of this and can help to ensurethat their teams and their staff
are being put to the highestand best use.
And the people that maybe haveskill sets where they will be
(40:16):
replaced, or the the skill setsor the tasks that people are
completing can now be donebetter and more efficiently
using AI or other tools, can begiven the breathing room to
upskill into higher valueactivities and things that can
leverage the innovation that'staking place, but they don't
have to wait for the axe to fallto move first.
(40:37):
And so I think that's thebiggest thing that's happening
right now is for companies totake a hard look and go, do you
want to be proactive or do youwant to wait and clean up?
Josh Matthews (40:48):
Let's cover one more point here, okay?
Sure.
I I'm really interested in theidea of team makeup, right?
So there are there are teamsthat just, you know, sometimes
they're understaffed, sometimesthey're overstaffed.
(41:10):
Sometimes it's just the wrongmix.
And I think that's a little bitwhat you were, just a little
bit of what you were justtalking about.
So wrong team composition.
And that can include wrong mixof skill set.
It can also include wrong mixof pull time versus your, you
know, your contractor mix.
So beyond skill and headcount,organizations often get the
(41:33):
fundamental composition wrong,the wrong type of role types for
their phase, the wrong balanceof FTEs versus contracts and
consultants doing jobs thatshould be owned internally,
right?
So can you talk about that?
Do you do you come across thisat all, you know, in your
analyses of these businesses?
(41:53):
It's like, oh my God, they'vegot X number of contractors, and
maybe it's because it's somerule in California that means
that they can't, you know, dothis with their fund if they
don't have X number ofemployees.
Like there's all these weirdrules, right?
But what are you finding outthere?
Mike Sommer (42:11):
I see it all the time.
Oftentimes they either have toomany full-time people in the
wrong skill sets, or they haveindividuals that really should
be brought in as specialists fora specific purpose and they
should be brought in and theythey might be a higher rate, but
they've done it before.
Therefore, you're going to getto your result faster.
And I've oftentimes heardcompanies saying, Oh, we need to
(42:32):
hire a technical architect, orwe need to hire an enterprise
architect.
And then when you dig in andask, Well, what are you trying
to do?
You realize that they're askingfor the wrong skill set,
they're asking for the wrongpurpose, and they may be asking
because they really have asix-month project where they
need someone of that caliber,but they don't need someone
full-time.
And the rate they're offeringfor the full-time is something
(42:53):
that would be more applicable tolike a first-year solution
architect and not someone who'sbeen doing this for 20 years.
And so I think the reality isno one seems to be pushing back
of why are you hiring and why doyou think you need this skill
set?
And why does it have to befull-time, or why does it have
to be contract?
I think those are the honestconversations that you can truly
(43:15):
only get to when you understandone, where your current reality
sits.
And so your current reality isyou're a hot mess and you need
to fix those fundamentals andunderstand what your processes
are to clean up 15 years oftechnical debt, or maybe you
need to start again, bringing ina technical architect to try to
(43:35):
put the wet spaghetti back inthe box is probably another use
up for that person.
And if you get them, a goodtechnical architect will go, I'm
not putting my name on thisbecause what you're trying to do
is going to hurt my reputation,and you're trying to find the
wrong skill set versus havingsomeone come in and say, I
understand what you're trying todo, I understand the business
(43:55):
outcomes, I understand thevalue, I understand that we're
going to take from this career.
Stake to this state, and it'sgoing to help the business
improve like this.
Those are where you can havethose individuals do full time
because now they're invested inthe overall success of the
business.
Versus having someone come inand I mean the amount of calls
of like I need a TA.
Okay, you realize that that's avery hard skill set to find,
(44:18):
and you're offering $75 an hour,there's a good chance you're
not going to get this person.
So I don't know where they'regetting their information, but
there seems to be a significantdisconnect between the full-time
who should be owning that truthlayer, bringing keeping all
that core information into thebusiness and making it a value
(44:38):
add for the organization, versusbringing in those people that
you need to do specific tasksthat hiring for full-time
doesn't make sense because it'snot a full-time rule.
You don't have enoughcomplexity to keep that person
going.
You've got a six-month project,but someone really good can now
help you leap forward.
Josh Matthews (44:55):
And so it's a very common issue.
I see it a lot with Salesforcecustomers.
It's not an SI problem, butwith Salesforce customers, it's
often, I need an admin developerarchitect.
And when you break it down,it's like one, why would you pay
architect money for admin work?
Right.
And why would you get why doyou want developer communication
(45:19):
skill sets for an admin?
Some of you guys are awesome,but a lot of you, you know, come
on.
So the reality is, is they getit wrong.
And what they really need issix weeks plus 10 hours a month
of an architect, right?
And then the admin or theconsultant to build what they
need, and then someone tomaintain and just provide a
(45:40):
little bit of oversight andmaybe some dev, maybe some dev.
That just complicates, youknow, three times a year, it
complicates things, right?
So uh it's a very, very commonand very, very normal thing.
Mike, how can how can SIpartners do better?
And and by that I mean like alot of these challenges that
(46:07):
you're facing, I'm assumingyou're going into Salesforce
customers, enterprise level,Salesforce customers, they are
often originally served orcurrently being served by an SI
partner in some way, shape, orform.
I mean, are SI partnersactually doing a good job
overall to help prevent thishigh risk?
(46:31):
Is it even their job to adviseon it?
What advice would you like whatadvice, like, okay, so someone
just spent three million dollarson a new implementation?
It's a big deal, but it's gonnabe everything for this company.
What should that SI partner betelling them to do to protect
(46:57):
this instance from getting offthe rails in two and a half
years or even in the next sixmonths?
Can I give you my honest takeon this?
Mike Sommer (47:05):
Yeah, Ben, I want it.
I would have the conversationwith a client, not the SI.
Josh Matthews (47:11):
Yeah.
Mike Sommer (47:11):
I think fundamentally the consulting
model, the managementconsulting, the SIs, lawyers,
accountants, people who dothings per hour are about to be
replaced by a model that isfocused on outcomes and
delivering value in the quickestpossible way and not per hour
billing.
This is already happening in alot of major industries.
(47:32):
The entire mid-market, so tospeak, of the eyes have all been
consumed by the larger, youknow, IBM's, extensions,
Salesforce, TCS, call it whatyou will.
It's actually reduced.
It's it's a very large group ofpeople.
And also for the small shops,they need to bill.
Their business model is theysell for X, they pay Y, and they
(47:55):
make the margin.
And fundamentally, that is notin the best interest of the
customer because if you know howto do something, like if I go
to a lawyer and if a lawyer saysit's $5,000, but I know that
they've done it a hundred times,it's a template, they can get
it done in five minutes, wherethey use an AI tool.
I want them to pass on thesavings to me.
I don't want to pay for $5,000.
I want to pay for an outcome.
(48:15):
And so I think that same thingis going to be happening in the
SI industry.
I think the biggest problemright now is a SI is always
going to say yes on whethersomething's possible because
they need to have cash flowcoming in, especially as
everything's changing.
And so if you're asking the SIto give you an objective point
of view on whether you should orshould not build something, if
(48:38):
building means money for themand build and the no means no
money for them, you have to askthe honest question, where do
you think they're going to lean?
And so I think that's why it'sso important to have a an
individual or someone who is notincentivized to tell you
something that is going to putmore money in their pocket on
critical decisions on what youneed to do with the business.
(49:00):
Because if you build somethingthat is a three-year-long, silly
complex program, that's areally big project for that SI
to keep funded and to keep theirteam busy and for them to
continue to grow.
Versus if they said, you knowwhat, a lot of this is
out-of-the-box functionality.
A lot of this is actually goingagainst and creating complexity
that you don't need as abusiness.
(49:21):
You're better off taking thatinvestment and putting it over
here or reinvesting in yourpeople or bringing in other
skill sets or bringing in othertools.
That's going to be the bestbenefit for the business.
And so I think the SIs aregoing to be in a difficult place
because even if they want totell the truth, they have a
business to run.
And so that would be my goldnugget for those companies that
(49:44):
are listening.
Understand that everyone has aperspective they're sharing
because they have a businessmodel that's either moving them
towards recommending a path ornot.
Josh Matthews (50:01):
We've got one question.
Prakash wrote, Mike, do youfind clients are more open to
native app exchange solutionsnow versus custom builds, or is
the default still to build fromscratch?
Mike Sommer (50:15):
I think it depends on what the client's trying to
do.
And if they're a moredev-oriented company, meaning
they want to build everythingthemselves because that's just
the way they're they think, orif they're more of the mindset
of if someone else has built itand it's 80% to where I want it
to be, it's good enough becauseit's so you finding a mix so
your clients are like half andhalf.
I try to guide them moretowards leveraging tools that
(50:38):
are already built to satisfythat business need.
Because if you do somethingcustom dev, you're responsible
for fixing it and keeping itgoing.
And sometimes you're buildingthings that don't need to be
built.
Josh Matthews (50:49):
I actually had a conversation with my perplexity
computer yesterday about this,which was all about should I go
and do a ClaudBot system?
I've got another terminal,build it out.
It can do 20% more stuff than Ican do on Perplexity Computer
or my stack with Manaus and someof these other other tools.
(51:11):
And it's like, yeah, but one,you don't know.js or anything
else, Josh.
And I think you already knowthat.
And then also, do you reallywant to maintain all of these
things?
Because it's going to be onyou.
So maybe, maybe, but you couldprobably get away with the 80%
and 80% less work.
So yeah, it makes sense, man.
(51:32):
It makes sense.
Mike, any final words?
Where can people find you?
How should they connect withyou?
Mike Sommer (51:37):
I mean, you're more than welcome to reach out to me
through LinkedIn or reach outto me through businessmri.com.
And I would just encouragethose that are listening to not
lose hope with these changesthat are coming from AI.
And this is an opportunity toshare your perspective, to share
your voice with the leadership.
Yes, you might be in a rolethat traditionally has multiple
layers between you and theexecutive team.
(51:59):
But if you come to the tableand say, hey, I learned
something, I built something, Ihave a proof of concept on
something that's going to helpour organization leap forward,
they will listen.
They will pick up the phone,they will sit in a room, they
will have a coffee, and that'sprobably one of your best career
moves of going above and beyondand bring a different
(52:19):
perspective than maybe theycurrently have.
And to go outside of your jobdescription and to be aware that
there are politics, butpolitics get trumped when you
bring something that truly movesthe business forward.
And so I would say don't beafraid of AI, embrace it, use it
every day, seek mentors fromthose that you can walk
alongside with, where you canactually help them see things
(52:42):
they don't see in their owncareers.
I think this community isreally one where everyone has an
incentive to do the best andlean into helping others because
we've all been helped.
And so reach out, connect, andif someone doesn't respond,
don't take that as a no.
There's a lot of noise, justkeep going and it will connect.
Josh Matthews (53:03):
Wonderful.
Thank you, Mike.
You're welcome.
Thanks, LinkedIn people.
Thanks, viewers, thanks,listeners.
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