About the guest Barry Klein is Vice President of Success and Enablement at Austin-based Talroo. Barry provides leadership to Talroo’s Customer Success Analysts team who have revenue and customer service responsibilities for multiple verticals. Passionate about establishing “customers” as “partners”, he focuses on long-term relationships, lifetime value, and establishing raving fans. With more than 30 years of experience in customer-facing and executive roles, including Vice President of Sales Engineering for Vignette Corp, Barry also spent several years running his own small business and consultancy. As a result, he is equally comfortable with enterprise-class relationships as he is with start-ups and small businesses. Connect with Barry Klein Key takeaways Balance trust and accountability for remote teams through clear communication and addressing performance issues supportively Maintain cultural alignment for companies adjusting to remote work by periodically bringing teams together in person Treat people with empathy, dignity, and brevity when delivering difficult news like layoffs Foster shared success across departments by prioritizing lifetime customer value over short-term gains Lead through change by building alignment in hybrid work environments through open communication and supportive leadership Quotes “I don’t want to lose the best of what we have, which is we do get along and we do like each other. And we do learn from each other.” This quote highlights Klein’s focus on maintaining the positive aspects of company culture even in remote work. Highlights from this episode How do you balance accountability for remote teams with trust in employees? Barry emphasizes the importance of communication patterns in balancing trust and accountability for remote teams. He discusses monitoring response rates on communication tools and following up if a usually responsive employee becomes less so. He also mentions verifying that work is being properly documented and best practices are being followed. However, he stresses addressing any issues supportively rather than punitively through frank yet caring conversations to understand what may be hindering performance from maintaining trust while ensuring accountability. How do companies maintain cultural alignment in a hybrid/remote work environment if they’re not experts in it yet? Barry suggests bringing remote teams together periodically for in-person meetings to prevent losing the best parts of company culture, like employees liking and learning from each other. For example, having team meetings over lunch to facilitate collaboration while respecting employees’ commutes. He emphasizes occasional in-person interactions are important while still allowing flexibility, and that clear expectations help alignment when not all can come into the office regularly. How do you make sure to maintain empathy and dignity when having difficult conversations like performance issues or layoffs? Barry emphasizes maintaining empathy and treating people with dignity for difficult conversations like addressing performance issues or layoffs. He advises documenting performance concerns addressed and putting underperformers on clear improvement plans before termination. When layoffs are necessary, Barry recommends personally communicating with impacted employees beforehand and controlling internal messaging to honor their privacy. For both issues, brevity is advised to avoid prolonged difficult discussions while still acknowledging the other person’s feelings. The goal is to have difficult conversations respectfully without causing further stress or embarrassment. How do you start fostering shared success and alignment across multiple departments in a company? Barry suggests starting to foster shared success and alignment across departments by prioritizing clear cultural alignment from senior leadership on what is most important to the company. In their case, the focus is on lifetime customer value over short-term gains. Regular communication is also important to ensure all departments, from sales to customer success, understand and are working towards this shared goal. He emphasizes making decisions that are in the customer’s best interest to achieve long-term success rather than allowing individual departments to focus only on their own metrics. Fostering open discussion on challenges and opportunities can also help identify misalignments early and keep teams progressing together. Resource recommendations Books: – The Infinite Game – Books by Jon Meacham Shout-outs –Emilia D’Anzica, Growth Molecules
