Rikke Hovgaard is the Director of Analytics at #Salesforce, and in this edition of my #podcast#OnThePeiroll, we have a blast talking about data.
You know when you’re going on a hike that’s a bit scary but then you bought a pair of great hiking boots that you can’t wait to try?
And then you step into them, and phwoar they’re even better than you thought.
Not only that, but then you find a 🦄 along the way, and she’s into World of Warcraft and you jabber on about quests and guilds and stuff. 🧙🏻♂️
The podcast conversation was EVEN better than that!
I thoroughly loved it! ❤
Have a listen – I especially enjoyed her anecdote about how she collects boxing data so she can be more lethal!
Transcript
Pei Mun Lim
Hello, Rikke, welcome to my podcast, it’s called OnThePeiroll, where we look at software project delivery, and how we can help make things better in a roll up of Salesforce or Marketo, things like this. How are you today?
Rikke
I’m doing I’m doing great. Thanks for having me. It’s, it’s really interesting subject, I think it’s been covered a whole lot in the community. So it’s really interesting to see what everybody has been saying, once you go live with this podcast.
Pei Mun Lim
Thank you. I know you are a quite a well known name in the Salesforce ecosystem. With your data tribe, I’d like you to tell us a little bit about your journey, how you started to where you’ve got to today?
Rikke
Yeah, of course. Um, so I started right after university and ended up randomly in consulting, I kind of was appealed by trying to get my hands dirty. And so a lot of different industries, a lot of different projects. And so that’s why I thought it like, consultancy would be interesting. But I have to be honest, I didn’t know a single thing about Salesforce back then. And I remember ending up in an interview when he started talking about Salesforce. And I kind of panicked in my head, because not once in the job that had said something about Salesforce. Long story short, you know, I kind of made it anyway. And I got the job. And so I just kind of taking it from there. But I think in every single project I’ve had, it’s been key for me to keep learning and trying something new. So I’ve had conversations with my managers about how can I develop my skills and, and learn new projects. And my my manager at one point, realized that I was good with reports, and I answered quite a lot of that those questions. And so she sent me on to training for, and it was way back then. And so that’s kind of how I ended up in into working with wave Einstein analytics, and now Tableau CRM. And that’s also how I work with marketing. It was just kind of like, I wanted to learn something new. And I just dipped into it and started learning. And then I got the projects. And yeah, the ball got rolling.
Pei Mun Lim
What are the kinds of things that you like about consulting, and specifically around the reports, and insight and analytics.
Rikke
So I think, honestly, data is just the heart of everything. So whenever you are having just a core implementation of Salesforce, you focus on business processes. But if at the end of the day, what you’re ended up getting is just a lot of data, and how do you make sense of this data? How do you actually take all this information you’re generating and convey it into something that makes sense and that you can enhance your decisions or enhance your business with them get more insight. And I think really, that’s what I really like about data analytics. And what I’ve done, come to learn later, because in the beginning, of course, I was just working a lot with the standard operational reports we have been in core Salesforce. And what I came to learn later, when I started working with wave, Einstein analytics, Tableau CRM, let’s just call it except last year, I’m going forward. But when I started working with that, what I thought was really interesting was the whole data modeling side. And that you can’t just take data as it is you have to think about how do you structure this data, so you can actually get an output that is relevant for you. And lately, one of the things that I’ve been looking into is AI and machine learning. And what I find interesting is the data structure that you have for that and the way that you’re it’s just modeling and filtering your data is completely different from when you’re trying to get dashboards and reports. And so that whole mindset just fascinates me that it’s more than just pretty graphs. It’s actually understanding the business. It is understanding the data, it is being creative as well. So it kind of have everything for me.
Pei Mun Lim
Okay, so I’m, I used to be a DBA with Microsoft in sequel, and I find myself so like you, I love data. I love The relationships between data. And I find myself walking around, and I just have yardies in my head, like, how am I related to you? How’s that business related to this other business? And how is it providing services to me? Do you find yourself thinking that way?
Rikke
All the time. And it’s not even just in workwise, I think a lot of people just consider me a little bit of a data nerd because so I actually I go boxing every week, twice a week. And I’ve even gone so far that I’ve now gotten these trackers on my wrist. So I can, I can actually measure my speed and my, the power of my punches and the type of punches that I’m doing. And so of course, the data nerd that I am. God, this was before I bought it, by the way, I needed to make my investigation clear, can I get access to this data? Meaning Can I get it out in a CSV format? So I can actually put it into Tableau CRM and start like, looking at my data? How can I kind of do that with everything? I’m with my. Yeah, everything that I tried to work with, I see a way of Can I measure this in some way? And I can I start tracking it. And I guess I’ve just always been that way. I find it fascinating to see result over time and also see how can you improve both on a professional matter and a personal but yeah, definitely seek data opportunities everywhere, and try and answer questions everywhere in terms of data.
Pei Mun Lim
So here is a cheeky question based on what you just said. So what’s the pattern Have you found with regards to boxing in your performance, what you found with the data that you’ve seen,
Rikke
so actually, I found that it’s pretty consistent, but what I’m also realizing is, Mondays tend to be so bucks Monday and Thursday, and Monday tend to be slower than when I am boxing on Thursdays. And so I had a discussion with my trainer recently, where it’s like, I think it’s because I haven’t had anything activating me during the week. So I keep I need to have that aggression, to really push, push forward and you know, make faster and more powerful punches. And so, um, yeah, I think just after the weekend, she’s just completely relaxed, and you haven’t really dealt with anything yet. So I don’t know.
Pei Mun Lim
That is such a super fun fact. Okay, I could take this conversation right down to analytics, and how well these like with the Internet of Things, and so on, so forth, but maybe for another session. For today’s session, I’d like to focus a little bit more on Salesforce projects in general. And I, I did have some questions, but I like how this is flowing. So let me ask you, with regards to Salesforce projects, which are very heavily focused on analytics, what are the key things that organizations should think about, let’s say if they come to a point in their business where they think I have so much information? Sorry, I have so much data. Right now, in various systems, I would really like to get very key insight into my customers into the ways of how we work and how we can improve. What are some of the things that they need to think about at that point before even embarking on a big, analytic type project?
Rikke
Yeah, so it’s a it’s a really interesting question. And I think a lot of people ask themselves that too late. I think analytics is not something all, at least not all the projects that I’ve been involved in, or customers I’ve seen in my consulting career, it’s not something that they consider upfront, how do we want to use this data? A lot of the times they’re just replicating the process that they already have, and assuming it’s still going to work. And sometimes that’s fine. But I think you really need to start thinking about a data strategy and ask yourself, why am I actually in need of these, this piece of information? So in the beginning, you might not collect any kind of information about your customers in terms of what describes these customers. And so you want it to start doing some trending analytics down the line and you don’t have this information about, you know, What country are they in basic example right? And you would then have to on the backend, start figuring out and filling out this all this data with can become quite time consuming, and then you start having patchy and not really good quality of data, which then comes to another issue around when you start reporting how to sexually dis data look. And then also, if you start doing machine learning, it’s going to become even more difficult. So I think one of the things I always suggested in the implementations I did was, think about the data strategy. What kind of things do you want to report on? What is it that is relevant for you to know, and make sure that you capture this data, but also, it shouldn’t really be a hindrance, either you shouldn’t put in too many fields, because we all know that, you know, if, if everything is mandatory, you just don’t fill out anything. But at the same time, if you don’t make anything mandatory, it’s you know, you’re going to get a bad quality of data. So I think it’s about also thinking, well, when you first creating an account, for instance, there’s certain things of information you will have. But when you’re getting to, to the stage of creating a opportunity or an order, or however you work, then I’m sure that you know the customer a lot better. And then you might need to fill in more information at that point in time. So think about just a data strategy of how are you what are you going to use this data for, but also how are you going to collect it becomes really important. And then I think, another thing is, not every piece of information has to be in Salesforce, I mean, typically, a lot of consultants will start saying, oh, but we could put this in into Salesforce. And you know, while we can, it may not always be the best way to do it. Sometimes you already have a well established process or your dependency integrations that legal legislations, that basically means that you can’t put it into the same system. And you have to be aware of that. But that doesn’t mean you can’t get access to this data. For instance, with Tableau CRM, what we can do is we can have these different connectors, so you can push the data sets in directly. And you can create your dashboard, and we can embed them directly into an account page. So when you’re looking at your account, you don’t necessarily just have to have the Salesforce data, you can enrich it with any data, but make it relevant for that account, and then embed it directly in
Pei Mun Lim
just a very quick question on that you can embed that but you wouldn’t be able to search on it because it’s not within Salesforce, or can you still do it? Well,
Rikke
I mean, what we’re doing is in Tableau CRM, we have our own data store, we just don’t follow the the regular Salesforce relational database with different objects, we just have a different data source. So you’re pushing the data in, but we’re going against against different limits. So typically, in Salesforce core objects, you’re looking at how in how much data source you can use there. And if you’re not having a lot of users, you might hit quickly hit those limits, especially when you talk about transactional data. But in Tableau CRM, we can actually do is we have data sets where you can have up to 10 billion rows of data, and you can also purchase more. So it’s a different kind of data landscape that we’re looking at. As soon as the data is there, you can filter it as much as you want. If you’ve ever interacted with the tableau, CRM, dashboards, you click on something and everything reacts to that selection that you’ve done. And we call that fascinating. And that’s really the power that you can start drilling down into your data. And not just look at static graphs that we typically have with operational dashboards,
Pei Mun Lim
I can see that you’re so passionate about data, I’m kind of getting the vibe as well. Let’s take the conversation a little bit wider. And talk about projects in general and in your career kind of projects that you’ve been on. Feel free to you know, narrow down to data and analytics if you like, because that is my jam as well. But tell me about the kinds of projects that you have found really enjoyable. Now go to the other side one then later but the projects that really enjoyable to you what are the themes that you can grow from that what what made them great to work on? Yeah, like to fire.
Rikke
So I don’t think we necessarily have to talk about data here To be honest, I think so said earlier, anything that is driving me is where I get the ability to learn. So I don’t want to get completely out of my comfort zone where you just on deep water and don’t know how to So reach land, but where you’re pushing your own boundaries of your knowledge and your skills, and it can be in terms of products. So you know, working with Peridot, wave back in the day, working on a Marketing Cloud or even things in Salesforce that I haven’t done community. So something like that. I think that’s where I’m, I’m really interested because I’m gaining new skills, I’m trying something out that I haven’t done before. And the other thing that I really appreciate with a project and make it even more enjoyable, actually comes down to the collaboration you’ll have with the client. And because I find a lot of the times as a partner, what you ended up being is that sole responsibility of delivering a project. But when it comes down to it, a partner is only delivering the project. But who is who is taking this and taking it further. Because when you’re looking at data, when you’re looking at even just to the maintainence of your Salesforce org, the job is not done when the partner leaves, somebody has to take this over, somebody has to keep developing it. And I think the best project and most enjoyable project is that combination of me learning something new, like, like, adding to my skill set, but it’s also having a great partnership with the customer where you don’t actually see Oh, this is the customer and we’re depart a partner. But it’s that collaboration between the two, when you take joint ownership of the project. That’s really where I find the most, or the best project that I’ve worked on. Six.
Pei Mun Lim
Absolutely, I totally agree. Okay, so on the other side, does character building projects, you’ve already pulled up one item, which is, if you get dropped in the deep end, with no support, and out of your comfort zone, maybe be asked to do something that you’ve never been done, or you don’t have the capability of doing so that doesn’t make it enjoyable for anyone. It’s a sink or swim situation, you might swim. But that could leave scars and pain that kind of comes up later on and manifests in different way, like anxiety, for example. And so that’s one, what other kind of character building projects you’ve been on? And why have they been tough for you?
Rikke
I think you know, you’re spot on saying when you’re put into the deep water, and you have absolutely no idea how to to solve it. That’s been, I’ve been on a few of those. And that’s really not comfortable. And I think everybody can agree on that. I think the other one is also looking at when you just don’t have a good collaboration with project managers with the customer. There’s that blame going on, oh, we wanted this. We didn’t get this. You’re you’re at fault, where in reality, maybe you’re to blame for some of it. But it may also be because you have dependency with the client. And now everybody’s just pointing fingers. And I think that whole scenario just demands some really difficult conversations. Sometimes you have it with your project, project manager, sometimes I’ve had to happen myself directly with the customer. And it’s never fun having those kind of conversations, because it’s an art of not being defensive and understanding where people are coming from. What at the same time, you don’t want to take the whole blame because again, it is a team effort. Right. And sometimes I also just find it really annoying if I’m honest, that I have to focus on what went wrong. Why not just look at what is the issue now and how can we move forward? I really often I don’t see a whole point in dwelling in what happened. It happened. Let’s not blame anybody because it doesn’t matter. Now. We just have a situation we have to deal with. And yeah, those conversations can be quite difficult to have, I think.
Pei Mun Lim
Yeah. So you’re talking about the project itself that may not have been handled properly, potentially from the start. So if you say there’s a blame game issued, and there might be a situation where expectations are not aligned properly, customers think they’re getting something and we thinking we’re building something else. Yeah. Does that sound about right?
Rikke
Yeah, yeah, I mean, it’s it’s the Sometimes it comes down to, you know, it’s being sold, and you come in after it’s been sold. And then you listen to the requirement and you’re like, Well, that doesn’t really match up. How am I going to work with those hours to make that happen? Or maybe even there’s constraints, I had a situation where it basically boiled down to them wanting two way integration. But the system integrator that we had to work with, or like the other system we had to work with, was only allowing us to do one way integration. So I’m like, then they’re saying, Well, what do you want me to do? Because if I can’t do a two way integration, and that’s what, that’s what you want, I really can’t do my job. And so those are really difficult conversations to have. But it can also be further down the line, something unexpected happens, and you just have to deal with it, maybe, you know, you’re losing a team member, that it’s being allocated to a different project, maybe you don’t have the right resource at the right time. There are so many different scenarios that can happen in a project I know, you know, you must have experienced it as well. The pain and the joy of it. And yeah,
Pei Mun Lim
so from from my point of view, as a project manager, this all falls on my shoulders, when things go wrong, it’s up to me to fix it. Because the team members should really focus on what you get at the data side or the marketing side, whatever that might be. And all those. It’s for me to deal with. In your in your career, have you What have you had good project? Well, sorry, I can answer that you’ve had both good and bad project managers. Right, in your projects course, Draw, me some bullet points of what makes a good project manager that you would work with, again, and obviously contrasted with somebody who may have left you to pick up the blame and to deal with dealing with issues when it should have been there?
Rikke
Well, I think you’re spot on, because you’re saying it, you know, as a project manager, that is your responsibility. I think the problem is, sometimes the reality is a project manager doesn’t necessarily is not necessarily allocated full time to one project. Right. So especially when you’re dealing with small, a lot of smaller projects, so you might have one project manager that has, I don’t know, let’s just make it crazy and say, to have five, six projects at the same time. And so there is going to be times where they’re not going to be able to be hands on. So I think those situations are I don’t know, if you can actually do anything about it, it just happens. And I think that’s what you need to have strong consultants that are able to pick up the slack. And that doesn’t mean they have to do everything. But having those difficult conversations is definitely something where you can you can add into it. But what it just don’t see your question around. So what makes a good project manager, I think what I really enjoy is where I sit back, and I don’t have to focus about the planning. So the project manager for me is really one that sets up the whole framework. And I can focus on what I’m good at, which is technical side. And then I let you know, whenever I have any issues, I can escalate, I have, you know, that framework to work within. But I also appreciate when a project manager can go in and push back on the client. I appreciate a project manager that can go in and have technical conversations with the client. I’m not expecting them to be, you know, as technical as me, that’s not the point. But if you are coming to me and say hey, what’s the status on this requirement? And I give you an update, that’s going to have some technical elements to it. And it’s always helpful for me, if you understand, you know, what is a Salesforce object? What is, you know, process builder, or was it what is, you know, apex, not that you have to be able to create it and deliver it, but understand the concepts because that’s going to make my communication with you a lot easier. And you can take the communication with the client. Of course, if there’s a deep dive, you know, you can always bring in the right people. And, but I think that for me is really something that is helpful.
Pei Mun Lim
So what you’re saying is You appreciate a project manager who actually manages the project? Yeah.
Rikke
And you’re so silly. But yeah,
Pei Mun Lim
Absolutely, I can see where we’re coming from. And also, you’re touching on a point where a project manager is a lot more effective when they have some domain knowledge.
Rikke
Yeah. Yeah, because I’ve had situations where we had brand new project managers and, and they’ve dealt with it projects before. So it’s not that they’re not skilled, but having to educate them on Salesforce. And just the fact that you may have, you know, three releases every year means that there are certain ways that you want to address things you don’t want to over customize things that are standard in within the project. And just having those kind of discussions is just a lot easier when people have that domain knowledge.
Pei Mun Lim
Fantastic. Thank you. So just going back to your career history, mostly in consulting with consulting partners, and now you work for Salesforce, you’re with the SAS provider? How are they different in the way that working in a way that you interface with customers? How’s it different and just paint a picture?
Rikke
Yeah, well, first of all, I don’t really do any kind of hands on building anymore. So that’s the major, I guess, the major thing. So just to paint it a little bit more clear, I actually work on the product product side, and not on the sales side. So I don’t do any demo building, mostly what I do is advisement on how to utilize your Tableau CRM, the best way, you know help out if you have any performance issues, or whatever it may be so so that’s more what I do now.
Rikke
Now, I think, the major difference that I found beside the fact that my job is really not the same anymore. In terms of building, I think that the major thing that I find different is, as I said before, I’ve always tried in my project to keep learning and keep doing something new. So I remember being a first mover on par dot, I remember being a first mover on Marketing Cloud, I remember being a first mover on wave. And just within my company, of course, there’s a lot of people that have moved into these products. But I was one of the first people in my company to actually work with these things. And what that also meant was I was the expert, right? So whenever there were any kind of issues, I was the person that people went to, but I was also the person that was sitting with my own difficult issues or challenges and had to figure out a way. And if we look at when wave came about back then there was absolutely no documentation. Well, there were but there wasn’t the fact that when you’re googling, you find a lot of different things. And on I don’t know, workflows or whatever formula fields or whatever you would do in, in core, Salesforce. But when I did it for wave, I just came up with very limited results, if any. So I have nobody to discuss anything with. And that’s actually why I started my blog as well. It’s because I was like, Okay, I need to document my knowledge, if I have the issue I’m sure other people have as well. And but yeah, so I think the major differences now being part of the product team at Tableau CRM, there is always somebody to ask and the team that I’m part of, we are all focused on Tableau CRM, all focused on Tableau CRM implementations performance. And so there’s all but always somebody to ask. And I really love that, that I’m not the, the the single expert in the team. I don’t have to know everything. I don’t have to figure out by much myself trial and error. I can ask people and that’s that’s really the major difference, I think.
Pei Mun Lim
In the when you’re working with consulting partner, and we were talking about what makes a great project and you’re talking about the buzz between learning, something brand new, and the collaboration with the client to address a certain business problem to complete the project. Are you finding the same bugs in your current role, so you are still learning so that gets a tick box, but it’s a different way of working now. So you’re not interfacing directly with clients. Apart from being the advisory Are you still getting the other side of…
Rikke
Yeah, I think so because I might not be doing the hands on building anymore. And that’s not true. Because sometimes I have to test things out by myself. So I’ll do it in my little demo. org and try something out. But I think it’s kind of like it’s the same thing. When I started out with with core Salesforce in the beginning, I was doing so many different fields and building I was like, Oh, that was actually fun, just creating fields. And then you kind of built, I don’t know, hundreds of fields, and you get to a point of like, okay, I’ve done this, I know how to create a field, formula, B lookup, it doesn’t matter, I’ve got it. And, and so you kind of just find new things, and new difficult issues to deal with. And I think it’s the same thing in my job now that I might not do the hands on building. But I still deal with customers. And we’re still looking at how, for instance, to optimize data flows. And so I still have to look at data flows and and figure out how have they done it? And what can we actually do to improve it to improve it. So there’s still that problem solving. And I’m still being challenged because not every single customer’s data is the same. Where business processes, I’m sorry to say a lot of time, they are quite similar. But data and the way that you are using data, this data can be quite different. Of course, there are things, which is also why we have templated dashboards that are the same for every business. But when you then start looking at external data that you’re pulling in, and you can’t just look at it the same way all every time. So I still get that, you know, challenge.
Pei Mun Lim
Do you have a team that you work with now? At the moment?
Rikke
Yeah, so we are a Well, I mean, if you look at the closer team, and we in the analytics Center of Excellence, I think we’re maybe 16 people. But we’re all global. I think I’m the I am the only one in the UK. So we have one other person in Europe, then we have some people in India, and we have some people in America.
Pei Mun Lim
There’s a couple of ways I can take that question. Let me take the first one. And in your experience, what do you think are the things that make a great team to work with?
Rikke
I think it’s more, you know, having respect for one another and your similarities, but also your differences. And letting those differences be the strength. So I think, yeah, just making sure that understanding that just one way is not necessarily the right way, there are so many different ways that you can, you can come to a solution. And I think we all bring each our own flavor. And I actually think that brainstorming is getting the best, best solutions.
Pei Mun Lim
Is there any way you can provide a small anecdote to just illustrate this, when you say, letting our differences be our strength. Just do you have an example that might come to mind? how someone else’s difference with you has brought out a richer and better outcome? Do you have any come to mind, man, I don’t think I have anything. Okay. All right. Let’s let’s talk up now, that comes to mind, let me know. You know, talk also about a global team. Whereas I think in the past, when you and I worked together, make positive we had teams when we went in we interface in that I think plays a quite a big part in creating team cohesion. Now, it’s global. And if you’re the only one that UK, you may or may not have met the rest of the 16 members of your team, how do you what are the strategies that you have used to or that worked for you in terms of trying to get to know everyone a little bit better, and to create the kind of bond that makes working so much more fun.
Rikke
It’s actually funny you’re you’re saying that because I’ve recently been reading about culture, and how different cultures interact and different classifications of cultures. And one thing that I’ve come to realize this we actually have every month we have a social hour. And I feel a little bit saying it, but it’s not something that is really You know, something that is doing it for me, like I feel very hard time engaging. So I was reading this book, and there’s just something that clicks. And I think it comes down to the fact that the way that I I work is I’m very linear. I rely on data. And I don’t really rely so much in relationship in terms of generating trust. And I just by default habit in a way if, if that makes sense. So, why I’m saying all of this is I find it extremely difficult to small talk. And when you’re not small at, like, when you can’t really engage with the small talk, it’s, it’s getting harder to actually get to know people. But thinking about it in a work context, that doesn’t necessarily have a great value. For me, that doesn’t mean that I’m not valuing it at all. But it’s not necessary for me to carry out my work, if that makes sense. So I think, how do I, how do I get to know people? I think it’s just come slowly over time. It’s not that forced small talk, but it’s like, you know, oh, what were you up to this weekend? Or? You’re going on PTO? Do you have any plans? And, you know, or, for instance, I was talking with a colleague, and she has some, like, she’s in India, and, you know, she has this amazing background, I was like, Oh, where are you? And she’s like, Oh, I’m actually Caroline is like, Oh, my God, I’ve been to Kerala. And we started talking about that sort of stuff. So I think that’s how I get to know people. From a virtual side. Of course, some people I have met in person as well, but purely virtual. I think that’s slowly but surely, that’s how I get to know them.
Pei Mun Lim
It sounds like it’s usually a little bit more as well, because it kind of cuts out a little bit on the chit chat, the hobby, what have you done over the weekend, etc. And it suits the way that you work better?
Rikke
Yeah, but I actually have to remind myself to engage with small talk. And, and there’s just certain things that are easier to engage with. And but but yeah, I do have to remind myself, and I know it’s a cultural thing, that I just tend to go straight to the point. So even when I write emails, I have to go back and just soften it up and say, Oh, how are you doing? So yeah, but that’s just how my brain works. And I just laugh at it now. But I’m extremely aware of it. I’m extremely aware of how it comes across.
Pei Mun Lim
So it is something that I tried to address for sure. But yeah. Okay, that brings us kind of nicely to a part of the podcast that I’d like to learn a little bit more about you. And this is called the you user manual. And it’s something that I’ve read, and where It’d be great if everyone came with manuals, and this is how you work with me. I work very well, without the chitchat, or if my kids come through, Mom, this is how I want you to work with me. More gametime, less nagging, that sort of thing. I think that would be perfect. So I’m trying to learn a little bit more about my guests, just with the last few questions in the podcast. You’ve already I think, shared quite a lot about how you think about how you approach and how straight you are. Are there any other roll type of unfiltered truth about yourself that you can share?
Rikke
Well, I think, in preparation for this podcast, of course, she said some of the questions as I was talking to you, one of my friends yesterday, and she was like, that I’m extremely hard to read. And I think it’s because of my directness is I? It just comes natural. I just go straight to the point. And I think I shared it before. I just go in and say, Okay, what is the issue? Let’s fix it. No blame there is, you know, it’s not your fault. It’s not my fault. Let’s fix it. And that’s kind of my attitude. And I think if I do that straight, straight up, especially if I haven’t met people before, they can get intimidated or scared off or they you know, hard to read. But once you know me, and you know how I work. I guess the point is that she was also making us like she always know where we’re where I am at like, she has no issues in kind of reading me once you know who I am and like how I work. But that first impression can sometimes be difficult, and actually a manager once told me about as well and that’s when I became really aware of it, and I’ve tried to adapt it, which is why I always try and go in and soft, my reply.
Pei Mun Lim
So I’m guessing that’s quite different in the UK and we’re fine does not necessarily mean fine. And I’ve also had to learn the secret coded language. Oh, yes. So you come from Denmark? Can you share some of the differences you found in terms of how communications like or any culture shock? coming over to England?
Rikke
You know, what I actually when I came here five years ago, I had the wrong assumption that, you know, I’ve always heard that the British and the Danish tumor is similar. So I just kind of assume we’re kind of similar. Right. And so I came over, and I didn’t really feel to my directness at all, not at least compared to how it would have been in Denmark. Right. So how I would engage there was was exactly the same approach that I came to England with. And I will say, I got into some, some difficult discussions. And, and, you know, I, you know, I’m probably to blame. But I think it’s, it’s, it really comes down to me looking at the room and saying, there’s an elephant in the room. let’s address it, how do we get this elephant out? I don’t care who brought it in. But let’s figure out how to get it out. And what I realized was, everybody thought I was saying, oh, you’re telling me that it’s my fault that the elephant is here? And I was like, No, not at all. But I didn’t realize until it really escalated. And so I think that’s really my my, been my most difficult problem or challenge hearing in the UK. And I’m not even sure I can tell you I found a way around it. I do try to be more sensitive. But and I also tried to explain to people how I works to say, Sorry, I’m saying this in a direct way. I’m not meaning anything by it, or anything personal about it. But there is an elephant in the room? How can we get it out? Right? And so that’s been my approach, but have I mastered the English way of talking? And No, I haven’t.
Pei Mun Lim
But have you found that particular approach to be more impactful or more effective? By just seeing up saying it upfront? Say I’m not? This is not what I mean, this is what I mean.
Rikke
Yeah, I think it has. But then there is the other aspect where people get sometimes confused that I say that, because when they listen to me, and this is the feedback, I’ve got some feedback I’ve actually gotten, when they listen to me, they actually, because the way I speak is not very Danish sounding. They don’t, they don’t think that I’m a foreigner. Or at least not native in in English. So English is definitely not my native language. And sometimes people make assumptions of that, and don’t understand why I’m then addressing the fact that I’m actually not English, or I’m not American, or I’m not Canadian. And, and they get confused. And they’re like, you don’t need to do that. But at the same time, I felt what it did when I didn’t address it. And so, I guess you can’t really win. But for me, yeah, it has, as has, it has helped or think it has, again, going back to that book, I actually read about culture. Um, it was saying that some cultures do prefer not to be very specific. So you have to denote meaning from the words and from like, read between the lines. And that’s how they work best, where other, especially Western cultures tend to prefer the very specific, explicit way of saying what you’re feeling what you think. And so I don’t think you can ever really win. But I think if you’re just being aware of how you’re being perceived, or at least try to observe it. I think that’s going to help you quite a lot. It has, for me, at least, interacting with cultures.
Pei Mun Lim
I think that alone could be just another podcast by itself just dealing with so many questions, more around working offshore teams, for example. And how how You’d approach working with different people in your global team. But I’ll save it for another topic. And delicate too. Indeed,
Pei Mun Lim
indeed, like I said, you know, there’s so many ways I could take this, but we kind of have to wrap up. But before we go, I’m just going to ask you one final question. And what I like to find out for me, is one of the kinds of things that you value, what are your values that is important to you?
Rikke
I think fairness and respect, is really what it boils down to. And, of course, it’s difficult to explain what this actually fair and respect mean, because you and I can have different perceptions of that. But I think a good way of of starting out is just treating people how you want to be treated yourself. And I think, if at all, for me, that really what it boils down to if you’re not being fair, if you’re not being respectful. I just I have a really hard time working with people that that don’t do that. And yeah, I just think that it causes a lot of conflicts for me. Okay.
Pei Mun Lim
Thank you so much, Ricky, this has been such an amazingly fun podcast, I could just talk to you for ages. And I will. I like I like the fact that your journey has incorporated a lot of things that I like to run data around projects. And I think that especially, I think the question around what should a company do or think about with regards to the data management strategy? And at what point, and I think your answer to that was as early as possible? Yeah. Right. Don’t get out.
Pei Mun Lim
I like that, because I think it will give listeners a really good insight as to how they should approach this and how they should think about data and why it’s important to them. I also like the fact that you’ve provided so much insight around working with a consulting partner and with Salesforce in how you approach the cultural divide, in terms of weight working and also from the country that we can come from. So thank you very, very much for spending the time with me today.
Rikke
Oh, no worries. My pleasure. And thanks for having me.
Pei Mun Lim
We will have a part two at some point. Thanks so much, Rikke. Take care of yourself. Cheers. Bye bye.