In this episode, Heather Younger speaks with Giridhar Akkineni, CEO of AkkenCloud, about his leadership style, his anything-but-smooth journey to leadership, his hyper-focus on all things customers, and how he helps his people find meaning in their work.
Key takeaways:
- Make it your focus to give your people something to be excited about every Monday morning.
- Be open and personally connected to your people.
- Customer success can be a driver for a bonded culture.
- Set clear goals so that everyone can know how what they do connects to the bigger picture.
- Never assume anything; ask the right questions.
- Rely on your team at work and at home.
- Connect at a personal level with your team.
- Always be a learner.
- Focus on time management.
Giridhar provides a very transparent path from which we can all learn! Listen in!
In an attempt to control the losses of his staffing company in 2002, Giridhar Akkineni started looking for a platform to centralize information, enhance efficiency and boost profitability by automating the “fill-to-bill-to-pay” process.
Surprised and disappointed, in 2005, he set off to build AkkenCloud, an infinitely flexible, remarkably intuitive, and astonishingly powerful platform for the Staffing & Recruiting Industry.
Hundreds of Staffing and Recruitment companies, with thousands of temporary employees, successfully run their businesses on AkkenCloud’s SaaS Platform. On average, Staffing and Recruitment companies that use AkkenCloud’s SaaS Platform grew by 220% within the first nine months.
Openness and Having a Personal Connection
For me, it’s an obligation that I keep learning every day –to find something new, bring it down to the people that are looking up on to me and make sure they’re excited and enjoying what they’re doing.
I am open and straightforward. I work very closely and I don’t have barriers for anything. We laugh and joke together. That openness, personal connection and having fun in everything we do is what people like about me.
Time defines everybody looking up on you because their lives depend on it. – @GiridharAkken #leadershipwithheart Click To Tweet
On a Timely Basis
Continue to focus on your customers. Invest on what they would need and support them for life. – @GiridharAkken #leadershipwithheart Click To Tweet
There is one thing that no person was able to get back no matter how much money they have, and that’s time.Trying to be able to achieve success in a defined time frame is very critical.
Just because I am an entrepreneur or I don’t give up doesn’t mean that I can take forever doing what I need to do, or keep on failing and failing. Of course, there will be success for sure, but how soon is that?
Do everything but it has to have a time limit. You need to plan accordingly to achieve your goals in that time frame.
At the end of the day it all comes to, “What is the ultimate goal for all of us to achieve and how can we achieve that on a timely basis?” For me, there is no other option than being successful. But, what’s the time frame to achieve that?
Customer Success
We focus on our customers and what they need. We talk to them and we put things in place through technology to make them feel, “Oh, this is so easy.” That gives great satisfaction to us.
Once we take a customer, we ask: “How can we help them? What is it that we can do for them?”
If our customers follow the best practices, that’s when they’re successful, so we need to be able to support their best practices. We need to be able to share the best practices from successful customers that we had to struggling ones.
I need to learn every day. I don’t have superpowers and answers to everything. – @GiridharAkken #leadershipwithheart Click To Tweet
You need to plan accordingly to achieve your goals in the timeframe. – @GiridharAkken #leadershipwithheart Click To Tweet
If our customers follow the best practices, that’s when they’re successful. – @GiridharAkken #leadershipwithheart Click To Tweet
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