Cisco Digital Summit - Collaborate to Accelerate

Thomas Winter, Senior DirectorDigital Experience Innovation14 May 2015

How We Eliminated 95% of Intra-Team Email and Improved Speed, Agility, and Impact with Digital Technology

Collaborate to Accelerate

Thomas Winter, Senior DirectorDigital Experience Innovation14 May 2015





A story about Innovation, technology and leadership

Me: Electrical Engineering Degree & MBA / 15y with Cisco in Sales, Marketing, Ops, ChangeMgt / Adoption, Sales Strategy Family, Tech, Learning, MountainsLive in a small village in Switzerland, lead virtual teams for 10 yGenX Digital Native

Notes to previous slide

3© 2014 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidential


Shape the Digital Strategy for Sales – You Have 90 Days

• 5 months ago I took the job to drive digital experience innovation for ww sales

• Need to digitize sales – best informed customer ever – 70% through buying cycle before talking to vendor sales to be more relevant or dramatically cheaper

• Sales digitization was focused on data quality and foundational capability• Opportunity to complement with digital innovation for sales by sales with near term impact.• Decision to extract 18 people from existing organization to drive digital innovation team within sales• Pressure to deliver fast, given pain inflicted on peers with resource extraction• Need to able to differentiate (Blue Ocean) in a perceived crowded space (Red Ocean)

• Digital selling strategy Fuse business strategy, user experience & design and technology for sales by sales

• Today’s presentation is about how came together as a team.

• Suggested reading Blue Ocean Strategy - W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne




Vision, Leadership and Change

• Assembled a diverse team - 5 countries - 9 time zones - 11 sites - 67% female - 7 with small children or dogs

• Most with a new job scope (from executing projects to innovate and strategize)• Day 0 - Had a month pre-notice to create a vision for the team and a plan to bring

everyone along Syllabus on Jive• Day 30 – excited / day 75 – what am I doing here? / day 90 - head above the water /

day 120 – innovating and accelerating

• Stayed focused on the strategy! • Innovation - “How is this better?”• Outside In - “How does this help the sellers to sell more and sell faster?”• Execution – “Who does what, by when?”• Impact – “What have we delivered?”

• Suggested Reading Rookie Smarts – Liz Wiseman / Scrum - Jeff Sutherland




Digital technology to collaborate and accelerate the team

• Timing was right … new team, new tools

• Business problems to be addressed• Share knowledge > Jive• Build relationship > TP / DX80 • Communicate/Collaborate > Business Messaging / Cisco Spark• Execution > Virtual Kanban

• Foundation Box / Smartsheet / Jabber IM / Webex

• Social media Interaction (in and outside the team) / Thought leadership (grow / position)

• I encourage you to experiment!




Results so far

• We are firing on all cylinders. • Hyper-connected and still have a life. Sustainable operating model.

• Recognized by our stakeholders to drive results• Lined up several innovations for sales• Socializing digital selling strategy

• 4 business workshops this month:• Sales Collaboration• Analytics• Social selling• Connecting Marketing – Sales – GCS – TS

• Leadership and new collaboration technology made the biggest difference

• Suggested Reading Multipliers – Liz Wiseman / The NEW one minute manager - Ken Blanchard



I didn’t have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead.

- Mark Twain


One Last Thing

• Ain’t nobody got time for this!

• Your long email won’t get read• Your CC won’t get read• Make peace with it and learn to be clear and concise in 140 characters.

• Be better, be brief.• It’s YOUR responsibility.• It’s an imperative for business messaging! (Cisco Spark)

• Suggested reading Brief – Joe McCormack


Let’s stay in touch!www.thomaswinter.me