What I've Learned in TCU

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This month we're bringing you guest blog posts from people on our team who are enrolled in TCU classes. They'll be sharing their experiences and things they've learned. Today we're hearing from Mo Elmeligy.

I’ve always asked myself what it would be like to work with a team where everyone is rowing in the same direction.

How would it feel to work with people who put the team before themselves? How would it feel to work in a company that has core values? How productive could we be if we learned how to manage our priorities and not waste our team’s or our own time?

I asked myself questions like these for years. Until Telcion.

I’m lucky to be at a place now where everything makes sense.

I know where the company is going and what my role is, and I have a great team. While there’s a stellar work environment, what really makes me excited about working here is that you really feel that the company cares about you as an individual.

Telcion offers Telcion Communications University (TCU) classes that had the answers to all my questions. I feel that I am growing, learning new skills, and thinking differently. TCU also allows me to really connect with and get to know others outside of my immediate team. Now that is remarkable for any job, but especially remarkable for a company where most employees work remotely.

I joined Telcion 6 months ago, and recently attended a few TCU classes that I’m excited to share about.

What the Heck is EOS?

What makes a company successful?Is it the people? The issues? The vision? The processes? The traction?

According to EOS, or Entrepreneurial Operating System (the heart and soul of Telcion), it’s all of the above. Each of these components were central to our reading and discussions as a class.

In this class, I learned about rocks… yes, rocks. Rocks are 90-day project priorities that everyone sets.

Why are they called rocks? Well, it comes from a great example of how if you are given a pile of rocks, ranging in size from grains of sand to large pieces, and try to fit them in a jar from smallest to largest, you can’t. But if you take the time to organize the rocks in varying priorities, and make the sand fill in the cracks, success!

This translates directly into our workday and efficiency in that sometimes working in order of size is not the best strategy. Rather, it is better to organize work by priority.

Core Values

I was also happy to learn the core values of the company from our CEO, Lance Reid. Lance spent two hours of his time with our class, telling us all about Telcion and how it started, and how our core values keep us successful and on track.

Our core values are: Curiosity, Transparency, Work Ethic, and Selflessness. I remember during my interview process as I had different levels of interviews with the leadership team, the one thing they all had in common was the reiteration of the company’s core values and how important they are. This made me wonder how great the team would be if these are the values the company was born with.

I would love to share with you my favorite highlight for each core value.

Curiosity

To ask the right questions, a healthy dose of curiosity is needed. We can be curious about the technology that we are selling, or in understanding more about our clients to better help them with their complex business problems.

Transparency

For me, transparency and honest feedback is the fuel to my energy. At Telcion, the leadership team makes sure that we always know where the company stands in terms of performance, results, and goals. We set our rocks together and we row together to beat those goals. No one will ever look down on you here for making a mistake as long as you’re being transparent and learning from those mistakes.

Work Ethic

Work ethic involves understanding and implementing what is needed to help the company achieve its goals, and helping our clients solve problems while creating a raving fan experience for them. And the best part is, Telcion always encourages us to maintain work life balance.

Selflessness

Simply, team before self.

Raving Fans

Being in sales, and especially as a managed service provider, it is all about creating a “Raving Fans” experience for our clients.

In the Raving Fans class, I learned how to always “deliver plus one.” This is all about being consistent in delivering what our clients expect from us, and then adding one percent to it. This can be done by understanding our client's vision, and then focusing on one or two things to fill in the gaps.

I also learned to “meet first and exceed second,” which means to always start with the limit and don't offer too many services that you cannot deliver, because one negative experience can affect your entire future relationship with a client. After meeting expectations, we should exceed after and be consistent. This “creates a vision of perfection centered on the customer.”

Final Words

Not only is the content in TCU engaging, but it has been so refreshing to get to know people outside of my immediate team and be given the opportunity to grow together. And guess what? It is on company time too, so it is a couple of hours of catching up even in the middle of the workday to invest in and learn from each other.

I feel like these classes have helped me to set my goals straight and always to motivated to deliver more, knowing that there’s always room to learn new things.

This article was contributed by Mo Elmeligy, Business Technology Consultant at Telcion.