Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast we’re back with LeeAnne Rimel, Principal Admin Evangelist at Salesforce, to talk about her Snowforce keynote and how Admins can position themselves to the lead the way in the future.
More about this Insights session: how Admins can lead the “Fourth Industrial Revolution” with constant learning, developing techniques, and thinking ahead.
You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with LeeAnne Rimel and Gillian Bruce.
LeeAnne’s Snowforce adventure.
LeeAnne is back from giving a keynote at Snowforce, in Salt Lake City, Utah, one of several community-driven Dreamin’ events. Her talk was focused on how Admins can lead the way to the Fourth Industrial Revolution. “Anytime there’s change in an economic ecosystem it can make all of us wonder, ‘What does that mean for me?’”
If you look at demand for Salesforce Admins today and going forward, it’s easy to feel confident about their role in the future economy. However, “I also think that we all together talk about what behaviors and habits, beyond being a product expert, that you should hone as an Admin to ensure that you continue to be well-positioned as the jobs ecosystem is growing.”
In prepping for this talk, Mike Gerholdt gave LeeAnne a challenge: “I see how you think about building apps and thinking ahead about what the business needs, but I want you to figure out how to teach others to do that.”
Why Salesforce Admins can lead the Fourth Industrial Revolution.
Just in case you’ve missed every Salesforce event keynote ever, we’re at the precipice of the “Fourth Industrial Revolution.” That means that everything is connected— customers are connected and expect way more from companies than ever before. Salesforce is positioned to help companies help make that customer connection and meet those expectations, and at the heart of that are Salesforce Admins, who are figuring out how to make that work with the technology that we have.
“The Salesforce Admin is uniquely positioned to be both the product and subject-matter expert,” LeeAnne says, “and then one thing we’ve seen continue as a trend is the democratization of our platform, that you can do more and more with declarative. Every release, we see more and more things that, once upon a time, required code.” Admins are able to do more, and so you really need to hone the tools that make you successful.
The three habits all Admins need to develop.
There are three core practices that you can focus to make sure that you’re ready for whatever comes your way: constant learning, developing your techniques, and thinking ahead. Developing an attitude of constant learning means making it part of your daily routine. “I’ve always been interested in the five-hour rule,” LeeAnne says, and one of her favorite examples is Barack Obama, who read for an hour a day even when he was in office. “Now, I’m pretty dang busy,” LeeAnne says, “but I don’t think I’m ever as busy as President Obama was.”
To develop techniques, you focus on learning new skills, maybe through copy and paste, and work up and build the muscles to be able to do it on your own. “If you’ve never made a lasagna before you probably start with a recipe,” LeeAnne says, “but then you start making changes to that copy-and-paste code and then eventually you know how to do it.” And just like a new lasagna recipe, you’ll get the best feedback when you share your efforts with others and listen to what they have to say.
Finally, in terms of working on thinking ahead, we’ve all been in that situation where someone comes up to you and asks for a checkbox on the lead object that says that they’ve received the mailer, or really any granular, particular request. A reactive response is to say, “Okay, I’ll add that checkbox.” However, LeeAnne suggests you should develop the habit of taking a step back and asking, “What do they really need?” You want to always be in a constant state of active discovery because you want to understand the needs that are driving these requests so you can think a level above the requests and answer the business need.
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