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I've fallen out of love with OKRs
I've fallen out of love with OKRs
I have a confession to make, one that's especially hard to say during this season of goal setting: I've fallen out of…
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Rob Forman posted thisIf someone gave you advice.. and you acted on it.. and it went well.. go back and tell them! This is a powerful feedback loop that is largely under-utilized. The giver feels good because they paid it forward and positively impacted another person. And you, the recipient, are likely to get more of their time/ideas/investment in the future because you've proven you are the type of person who runs with it. Crazy simple but effective life hack.
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Rob Forman posted thisA handful of the best people I’ve ever hired received a yellow flag on reference checks. For two of them, I even heard “I wouldn’t hire them.” I dug further and decided to roll the dice. They were amazing. Moved the needle on the business. What gives? Does it mean throw out or ignore the reference checks? Far from it. These are the exception that proves the rule. My theory: I wonder if, on occassion, great people, who inevitably push hard, sometimes push too hard. They ruffle feathers or make mistakes, esp when things aren’t working. This counter-thesis makes me work harder at interviewing so I can get a more complete picture and separate the signal from the noise. That being said, I’ll take pushes-too-hard over not-hard-enough any day.
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Rob Forman posted thisA CRO I coach has one of the best sales instincts I've ever seen. But he kept making one mistake with his CEO. When his CEO brought him a concern, he'd do one of two things: agree or disagree. Both are wrong. Disagreeing (more common) creates a situation where your boss now has to convince you there's a problem. Do that enough times, and they stop trying to convince you. They want someone who scans for problems on the horizon and addresses them proactively. But agreeing too fast means you capitulate without understanding what they actually want. The right move? Drop into discovery mode. Defenses down, curiosity up. "Interesting.. tell me more about what you're seeing." And then listen and mirror. You don't agree. You don't disagree. You signal intent: "If there's a problem, I want to be on top of it." After that, you gather information, decide what to do with it, and come back with a plan. This closes the loop and builds trust and alignment. Funny thing is, this leader does exactly this with prospects every day. He just forgot to do it with his boss. This small tweak can yield large benefits.
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Rob Forman posted thisLarry Wall (creator of Perl) famously identified the three virtues of a great programmer: 1) laziness, 2) impatience, and 3) hubris. Funny enough, they are the exact same traits for agentic engineers. Lazy -> automate all the things; impatient -> make it fast; hubris -> build a clean system I can brag about. Not sure how to interview for these but made me chuckle when I thought of the parallels this morning. 😂
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Rob Forman posted thisThis morning Paylocity announced the acquisition of Grayscale. Congratulations to the entire team! Ty Abernethy, Hubert Liu and co spent years focused on solving a real problem: the pains around high-volume hiring. Now the AI-powered recruiting platform they built will fit perfectly into Paylocity's mission of taking this amazing candidate experience - engaging faster and earlier - to their 40k+ customers. This was a fun one for me personally. Knowing Ty and Hubert from past adventures, I came in as a seed investor in mid 2021, and joined the board in early 2022. This gave me a front row seat to the journey. The management team was driven, coachable, and transparent. They navigated the fall-out of covid, made hard calls, reinvented themselves with AI, and never lost sight of the customer. To the entire Grayscale team - Joe Yeager, Kaylee Daniel, and many others - congratulations! Thank you to fellow board members Jon Birdsong and Sean O'Brien.. I learned something every time we were together. Special thanks to Sean for stewarding the transaction. And finally to David Cummings and Atlanta Ventures.. your foundational investments which made all of this possible. It was a privilege to work alongside you all. Atlanta keeps producing. Excited to see what Paylocity does with what you've built. Onward!
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Rob Forman posted thisI just taught my AI agent intent-based leadership skill to elevate its communication with me. There are surreal times we’re living in.
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Rob Forman posted thisAI adoption has entered phase 2. I'm seeing the same pattern across every company I talk to: Phase 1 (Summer/Fall 2025): "How do we get people excited and using AI?" - Hackathons - Sign up for any tool you want - Show-and-tell sessions - Celebrate early wins Phase 2 (Now): "We are doing this. What is holding us back?" - I won't let us get left behind. This isn't optional any more. - How do we implement and standardize tooling and workflows? - I don't have all the answers, but we are going to figure this out. The tone has shifted. There is less patience for late adopters or laggards. Pro tip: don't be one.
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Rob Forman posted thisIt’s a Tuesday, June 2018. I feel terrible. My head is throbbing and I am achy. I wonder if I’m getting sick. But I wasn’t getting sick. I knew exactly what it was. I was in the 4th week of a series of “experiments” I was doing on myself for better sleep. Backstory: I’ve always slept well. Planes, camping, noisy cities. Didn’t matter. Sleep was never a problem. Then 5 or 6 years into the Salesloft journey, it suddenly was. There was the stress. Hypergrowth. I was pushing hard to continue to learn and grow faster than the rate of my experience. I got a coach, added some structure. But none of it fully explained why my sleep had fallen apart. So I set out to get better at sleeping and decided to run experiments. Week 1: Fixed bed time (10:30p instead of variable). Week 2: Reduce blue light (new computer settings and reduce usage past 9p). Week 3: Lower room temperature (64 degrees instead of 69). All of them had interesting and positive effects (perhaps a post for another day if there is interest). Week 4: Caffeine. I didn’t think I drank that much coffee. But I also didn’t track it that closely. A cup first thing. Another at the office. Definitely one before my cut-off at 2p. Maybe more. The positive and negative effects of removing it shocked me. For some, feeling terrible would’ve pushed them back towards it. I felt the opposite for some reason. It made me mad. I felt embarrassed for thinking it affected me so little. I felt foolish for mistaking addiction for habit. So I quit. After a few more days I felt clear. Really clear. And I slept better than I had in months. That was almost 8 years ago. I haven’t looked back. Sure I had to replace the morning ritual (now mint herbal tea). And I’m not rigid about it. I had half a cup of black coffee on a quail hunt last month because that’s what you do. The surprising part wasn’t how much coffee affected me. It was realizing how long I’d gone without questioning something that had quietly become normal. Sometimes the biggest gains don’t come from adding more. They come from removing something I've stopped noticing.
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Rob Forman posted thisStop saying "my team". Small language change; big perception shift. I stopped saying "my team" and started saying "the team" or "the sales team." Why? "My team" signals ownership (not the good kind). Territory. Protection. None of the things I want to signal, even accidentally. I'm an executive. I could be plugged in anywhere. Give me a mission and I'll get this team to take the hill. Not my team. This team. Extra credit: I should be doing succession planning so someone else can take over the team at any point. Harder to do when I'm viewing it like it's mine.
Rob Forman replied to a comment
5d
ha meta indeed, but so good! thanks for sharing ❤️
Rob Forman replied to a comment
1w
Agree its subjective, but so is the whole interview process. Good point that many managers might be Bs/Cs.. that should be factored in. And, the high performer I'm interviewing usually got to choose their past-boss so I still factor it into the whole picture.
Rob Forman replied to a comment
1w
Love that. Those are fun to send and receive.
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Rob Forman liked thisRob Forman liked thisToday marks the single greatest moment in Demo Automation history; I’m ecstatic, thrilled, and humbled to share that Consensus has officially acquired Saleo 🎉🎉! So what just happened? Consensus, the largest, most respected name in the demo automation space, is acquiring the most revered and innovative AI native demo platform to create the single most powerful and complete product experience platform in the world. We are bringing the very best of video and top-of-the-funnel demo automation with the very best in “Live” agentic demo capabilities into a cohesive experience. Discovery insights, buyer intent signals, and behavioral data can now be integrated directly into the live demo experience - creating a more personalized, relevant, and impactful journey for every buyer. For sellers, this means a connected path from first engagement to closed deal. By eliminating manual demo preparation and disconnected workflows, teams can focus more on selling and less on the operational work that has traditionally slowed them down. When I first met Doug Johnson, Rex Galbraith and Adam Freeman in 2024, we birthed the idea of “what could be”. I built a deep connection with their team and grew to understand their culture and how similar we operate. We have many shared customers with many signaling that a partnership between the two companies would be “game-changing”. Fast forward 18 months later and here we are; vision realized and two incredible companies coming together to create a 1+1 = 4 scenario. This is just the beginning for Saleo; chapter 1 was a massive success and chapter 2 will be even bigger! So what does the future look like? I will be moving into the role of President, working alongside Doug Johnson; I’m pleased to call him a friend and now colleague. In addition, I have the privilege to serve on the Consensus Board of Directors to help shape our incredible future for years to come. I have so many people to thank and so many milestones to celebrate, but that will come in due time with a follow-up LinkedIn post on Friday. Until then: To Daniel Hellerman: my brother, my friend, my co-founder, and the ying to my yang. Thank you for trusting me. Thank you for the incredible journey and for showing up every day in the trenches. Thank you for going to battle with me, by my side, in conference rooms, board rooms, courtrooms, and Zoom rooms. To Alexey Svetliakov: the wizard extraordinaire and the best damn engineer I’ve ever met. You are a wizard, my friend. To Emergence Capital, Tech Square Ventures Joseph Floyd Blake Patton Scott Lopano, Kyle Porter Rob Forman Jon Hallett and all others - thank you for trusting us with your capital. To all Saleo Employees - thank you for creating such a special company. Thank you for the late nights, the sacrifices, the high expectations, and for caring so well for our customers. To my wife, Lauren. Thank you for loving me so well, standing by my side, and trusting me with our future.
Experience & Education
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Financial Cents
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Volunteer Experience
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Board Member, Board of Directors
The Anvil Academy
- 3 years 8 months
Education
Challenging, equipping and discipling middle-school boys into strong young men.
Patents
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Methods and Systems for Determining Cadences
Issued 11605100
See patentMethod for analyzing behavior data to determine an engagement score, representing time effort from potential customers, to derive the most effective cadence structures. Utilizes model-free reinforcement learning in a generalized Markovian process.
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System and Method of Scoring Candidate Audio Responses for a Hiring Decision
Issued US20140095402A1
See patentA system and method for extracting a large amount of raw emotional features from candidate audio responses and automatically isolating the relevant features. Relative rankings for each pool of candidates applying for a given position are calculated and candidates are grouped by predictive scores into broad categories.
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