Women are making their marks in every business sector. Their commitment and dedication have helped them to overcome great odds and make beacon for all those to follow. Their success stories are exemplifying varying degrees of hardship and success. One such example of leadership is presented by Rose Bentley, Chief of Staff at Teradata Corporation. Rose leverages her field and cross functional experience to help drive strategic planning, superior customer experience, organizational growth, and sales optimization. In an interview with Insights Success, Rose unveils the keys insights of her inspiring entrepreneurial journey.
Below are the highlights of the interview:
Give a brief overview of your background and your role in Teradata.
Throughout my career, I have been turned to by companies and non-profits to initiate best practices and processes that strengthen operational performance, solve complex organizational challenges, catapult sales growth, and improve customer success.
Currently within Teradata, as America’s Chief of Staff I get to Ieverage my field and cross functional experience during a fun and challenging time for Teradata. As a Cloud First company, we are looking at how we do business differently, and how we become more customer obessed.
Prior to Teradata, I provided strategic leadership for CloudCherry, a global SaaS company’s, North America brand where I spearheaded operations, sales and go-to-market strategy, driving 3X company growth within 18 months positioning CloudCherry to be acquired by Cisco.
Before that, I led the direct global sales team and created a customer success organization at Satmetrix, increasing revenue growth and customer commitment for a successful exit with NICE.
Describe Teradata’s cutting-edge services which address all the needs of its customers.
With all the investments made in analytics today, we feel it is time to stop buying into partial solutions that over promise and under deliver. It’s time to invest in answers that drive business outcomes. Only Teradata leverages all of the data, all of the time, so companies can analyze anything, deploy anywhere, and deliver analytics that matter most to their business. The cool thing about Teradata is we are on-premises, in the cloud, or anywhere in between. We call this pervasive data intelligence. It’s the answer to the complexity, cost and inadequacy of today’s analytics.
What was your life changing event/ incident that changed your life?
Moving to Silicon Valley put me on a new and rewarding course. Not only did I get to work with and meet the man of my dreams, I suddenly found myself in a place that took no prisoners.
Growing up in Montana and through school in Utah I was always seeking the best and brightest minds to learn from and when I landed in San Francisco I realized I was a small fish in a big pond – and it thrilled me!
Never did I think my childhood of playing in creeks, floating rivers, watching breakfast club over and over on snow days and arguing with my adoring brother regarding what camping games we were going to play over the Summer– would ever leave me with the desire to live in a big city and swing for the fences but it did and I am a better person because of it.
How necessary is it to align business with technology and what are its outcomes?
Business and technology alignment are vital for market impact and growth. Aligning the two means as business goals pivot, technology can more readily respond with necessary solutions to support and maintain enterprise momentum. In turn, technological advances and improvements are hardwired into existing and future strategies and initiatives.
I will say though “Technology is designed to accelerate a business outcome. Don’t expect technology to fix a business problem – expect technology to help you drive the process forward and enable best practices you need within your business to be successful.”
What strategies do you undertake to make your employees resourceful?
They say everything you need to know about life you learn by age 5 – well, with a mother as bold and beautiful as mine she instilled in me the curiosity, I needed to always find a way forward, she use to say “where there is a will there is a way.”
When I recently ran into an issue of how to help an employee become resourceful I leaned on a few of the truths I was taught – First, if you want someone to believe they can do it you have to give them the tools to be successful, whether that is structure to work within, a playbook, or even basic training. From there you need to empower the person to be resourceful. Let them know it is ok to fail, and that you expect it and can’t wait to hear about it!
And last you need to create the environment for them to be resourceful – guide them to the questions that help them solve the problem without you. When someone presents you with a problem ask them “what have you done so far to solve for this?” “Or what would you recommend we do?” Then give them the space to bounce ideas off you but help them realize they are on the hook for finding a solution.
What are some of the vital attributes, in your opinion, that every leader should possess?
Everybody defines leadership differently, but I really like the way John C Maxwell defines leadership, “A leader is one who knows the way, goes the way, and shows the way.” Regardless of how you define a leader, he or she can prove to be a difference maker between success and failure. A good leader has a futuristic vision and knows how to turn her ideas into real-world success stories.
To become a good leader, you will have to set a good example for others to follow. That is where your commitment to the business, passion for learning, and empathy come into play. I also believe good communication skills and decision-making capabilities play a vital role in the success and failure of a leader. You need to be able to communicate effectively and call the jump balls. If you don’t like carrying the weight of the hard decisions it can be very hard to lead. Every leader needs to feel comfortable making decisions with what data they have in front of them, because you don’t always have the complete picture.
Lastly, leaders need to be able to know when to set aside time for innovation and creative thinking, as well as the futuristic vision – having a North Star gives you the ability to set the right roadmap for success and then support your teams to get there.
URL: www.teradata.co.uk
Rose Bentley | Chief of Staff | Teradata Corporation
