Creating Electrifying Culture & Moon Shots – Google’s Anna Baird Inspiring leadership interview with Jonathan Bowman-Perks

Anna Baird, Director of Cocoon Advisory, Google, LinkedIn, CEB, Macquarie and PwC

Never have people said ‘that leader is too human for my liking’ or ‘that business was too helpful to me’ Anna has always been rooted in customer experience work, whether it be the burgeoning era of CRM technology systems or true-data-driven-future product development…every part of her career has included three key elements:
1) aspiring to elevate a customer’s journey,
2) leading with compassion (even when it really is hard to dig deep for that patience), and
3) trying to innovate at scale.
If you are a manager or leader in the customer success (or now redefined as customer obsessed) space, empathy is at the core of every decision you take. Whether it be empathy for your team members as they launch, learn and iterate of the processes and approaches they use to solution big problems or whether it simply is just checking in and sending someone a message of support in a time like a global pandemic.

Small efforts matter a lot, small acts of kindness in the community help fuel our economy. So think about the last great customer service experience you had or the last time someone really helped you in your everyday life. As leaders, let’s find more ways to support our teams and our customers starting with championing openness. Open meetings with the roundtables of what’s working and what’s hard. Strive for open, honest and constructive customer satisfaction discussions. Use data to see the opportunities and qualify the sentiment with VOC. Use the most difficult words shared as your ground floor to improve from.

Anna said:

Leading customer experience and relationship management consulting teams, my skills are best utilised when I am involved in reframing challenges and bringing thoughtful solutions to an industry like Professional Services. Working on sell-to, sell-through and sell-with programs, my global client portfolio has always been intricate, challenging, and reinvented through innovation. Leading a world-class team and creating the blueprints for the business have been experiences that have stretched my organisational abilities and my people skills.

Blessed with opportunities to keynote a number of conferences, facilitate workshops and advise a portfolio of startups, I have continued to sharpen my ability to work on developing and nimble businesses that move fast, change often and grow rapidly.

Enjoying life outside of work, I volunteer for special projects and ongoing education for the female talent pipeline also known as ‘Women on The Rise’. Trying to maintain a holistic health, finding the right application of time and investment is something I refocus myself around daily.

Anna’s strategic advisory knowledge extends across topic centers like: CRM, Cloud, digital brand, marketing analytics, organisational behaviour methodologies, social selling, attracting top talent, brand impact and ROI, customer spend profiles, demographic perspectives, customer acquisition, customer experience, employee advocacy and digital disruption.