This does not make any sense…
Those Kamikaze pilots deliberately crashed their planes directly into enemy warships, why did they bother to wear their helmets on?
The truth is, their helmets were actually a soft leather flight cap, designed for protecting their head from getting knocked by the cockpit canopy during high-speed, mid-air maneuvering when avoiding gunfire while nosediving into a target.
The pilots’ protective headgear helped them to complete their mission, not necessarily survive it.
Another reason (and a more interesting fact) was Commitment – wearing those helmets was an act of respect resembling heroic behavior, a signal of commitment similar to a Samurai wearing its full armor suit before embarking on a mission to protect their master.
Why am I sharing this?
As a Sales Enablement and Rev Ops leader, I often get asked – “How do you identify gaps and hiccups?”….
Alongside those traditional performance KPIs and reports, leaders should keep an open eye on whether their teams are accomplishing their housekeeping & administrative tasks within their sales ecosystem or, for whatever reason – they are doing the bare minimum to get by (for the sake of argument, this applies to top performers as well as low contributors).
Parking aside technical reasons, before enforcing rules and policies in an attempt to improve adoption, leaders should consider the poor level of housekeeping as the first sign of breaking trust and/or lack of Commitment. Basically, what the reps are trying to tell Leadership is – they’re cutting corners because they don’t believe in the process, the product or the culture, or whatever the reason is…
Before enforcing rules and policies to improve adoption (e.g. band-aid), we should seek to understand the reasons for which reps feel less committed to administrating a process.
We should help them to complete their mission and gain our trust.
