Business Resource Center › Todd's Results 2010

Ah-Ha! Moment — June already had a rough start and I knew I would be out of town the last week of the month. Anxiety gripped me, killing my productivity. Finally, I faced down my panic by taking an action I had never done before — I listed all my tasks for the month, estimated their time requirements, determined which I could delegate or defer, and figured out prerequisites and dependencies. When I was done nearly 4 hours later, I stared at 53 tasks totaling 154.5 hours needing my attention. "Great," I groused to myself, "I've got 14 days in the office, translating into 11 hours per day — on top of things already on my calendar." Nonetheless, I took the final step and placed these 53 tasks on my calendar.

In thinking about this now, I realize my early June experience was a "trapeze moment" — the term Susan Battley gives to that scary act of letting go of old, unproductive behaviors and working to develop new, improved behaviors. In her book Coached to Lead: How To Achieve Extraordinary Results with an Executive Coach (see: In Praise of Unlearning! — THA e-Update April 2010 ), Susan lists this final tip to deal with trapeze moments - "Tell your coach if you're feeling seriously deskilled or are worried about a transient performance dip." Well, my coach is the one who assigned this exercise, so I submitted my calendar to her by the agreed-upon date and time, with these comments —"I feel better about getting things done in June. There is, however, very little wiggle room in all this." She was glad to hear I had done my assignment, asked only a few clarifying questions, and complimented me on developing a new behavior!

Throughout the rest of the month, tasks shifted to and fro as conditions changed. Some tasks I had planned were no longer needed, some new tasks were required, and I juggled things to respond appropriately.

The end result? Everything got done by the time I left to chaperone a high school youth mission trip. The payoff? I was able to feel good about being out of the office for a week. I also learned the value of planning my entire month at one time — and my coach has now made this an ongoing assignment for me. And the "Working On The People" lesson this month? Sometimes, I am the "people" needing the work — and usually, the work is uncomfortable at first.

Ah-Ha! Moment — Much of our time in May was spent gearing up for a large client project, involving many esoteric concepts and requiring some complex application development. Several of our consultants were engaged in what I call "geek wars" — healthy, yet vigorous, intellectual debates on how to tame this real tiger of a project. When these debates occur, both "head" and "heart" are involved, because my folks passionately present their ideas.

Sometimes, however, pride gets the better of folks, and then it's up to me to re-center everyone's efforts. Because I was not involved in these debates, I brought a dispassionate point of view to the "head" ideas, and a passionate "heart" aspect to the big picture goal of "let's serve this client well." After hearing the various viewpoints, I was able to suggest an idea no one had previously considered, getting everyone to re-think their approach to the problem. The outcome? A new approach, which everyone agreed would work much better, and could be built into the required application. After the direction was set, ideas and tasks quickly fell into place, and everyone once again functioned as a well-aligned team of high-performing professionals.

This month's "Working On The People" challenge? Helping my team re-center their "hearts" and "heads" on what was truly important — devising technology and processes to help our client get better business results.

Ah-Ha! Moment — The April "Working On The People" item centers on several disruptions — which I permitted to happen — to our normal weekly and monthly routines. And while the events were all important, I learned an important lesson about how many disruptions my firm could successfully absorb without driving people crazy.

Each March, I hold a firm meeting to cover prior year results and outline key goals and challenges for the upcoming year. Earlier this year, primarily because of hiring a new Manager of Business Development, I decided to push the meeting from March to April. Also, as part of the firm's Twentieth Anniversary celebration, I had committed at least 100 hours of our time to help with a Habitat project, requiring two workdays from the firm members. The project was scheduled to start in late March, with weekday work dates in April and May. "Perfect!" I thought. "We can do the first Habitat workday in the beginning of April, the firm meeting later in April, and the second Habitat workday sometime in May. This will be, at most, two special events per month, and my folks should be able to plan around this."

Well, reality has a way of turning well-laid plans upside down. An unexpected situation occurred with a client's major customer, which in turn required several of my staff to alter their plans to pitch in and spend many unanticipated hours servicing our client's changed needs. I also learned the new online signup process for our two Habitat workdays did not match the actual work schedule, and the real day they needed us was the last Thursday in April.

The outcome? While everyone appreciated the firm meeting and enjoyed the two Habitat workdays, three special events three weeks in a row proved to be hard for us to digest. Everyone (myself included) seemed a little out of sync for most of April, and will likely need the first half of May for things to settle down.

The positives? These three special events are now behind us! The firm meeting was a success, and the Habitat Town Home looks great!.

The lesson learned? I need to listen to my inner voice, respect the firm's capacity to absorb special events, and look for alternative ways to honor commitments — whether internal or external — so as to not burden my people with excessive disruptions to their schedules and plans.

Ah-Ha! Moment — The glaringly obvious "Working On The People" item this month was the "official" start of my new Manager of Business Development! March 10 was Anna Santos' first full day with the firm, even though she had already spent 6 half-days and several early mornings understudying with our departing firm member, and getting "up to speed" with me. Turnover is rare in my firm, so I experienced a jarring reminder just how much time a new employee needs at first — especially the Business Development position, which reports directly to, and works very closely with, me.

Throughout March, I was frequently reminded of the effort expended in an intense one-week period in late January to advertise the position, screen over 40 resumes, select the 4 top candidates, meet with these 4 individuals twice — first an initial "meet and greet," and then a formal interview — and then make the final decision on our top candidate, Anna.

Fortunately, all this hard work paid off, as Anna quickly learned the position and immediately fit into the culture of the firm. When you "pay the price" upfront and do the hard work to find the RIGHT person — one whose natural strengths mesh perfectly with the requirements of the job — things seem to take care of themselves.

Oh, and there's another nice twist to this story. After I had set my slate of 4 finalists, I received an incredibly strong resume from a job seeker answering our ad. I decided to have coffee with this person, who was indeed as strong in person as on paper. Impressed, I shared this person's resume and work samples with Anna, who passed them along to her former manager — and who eventually hired this person to fill Anna's position!

So not only did I "Work On The People" for my firm, I also did a huge favor for another organization in Greensboro — twice as nice!

Ah-Ha! Moment — This month showed the truth of the quote (attributed to film producer and movie studio executive Samuel Goldwyn), "The harder I work, the luckier I get." In December 2009, my Director of Business Development and I identified a few clients which had large projects several years ago, but nothing major since then. We decided to offer a free "Lunch 'n Learn" session to their staff at their offices — something which could definitely add value to both clients and their personnel. As things turned out, the client who took us up on our offer was well into a strategic planning project — and thus was very interested in my discussion of linking strategy to implementation and measurement for business results in our "Implementing the Big Picture" seminar.

We heard nothing for 6 weeks following the seminar...until late January 2010 when I received a call from the Controller, requesting a meeting to discuss ways we could help implement a key portion of the strategic plan — a data warehouse and dashboard, to help executives and managers better analyze and assess a variety of measurements tracking both operational and strategic objectives. We met with our client, understood what they wanted to achieve, ensured we could meet their objectives (we could), and proposed a project — which was quickly accepted and begun in early March!

While some may say I got lucky on this project, I attribute my "luck" to both analysis and intuition to identify clients who might have current unmet needs.

Ah-Ha! Moment — Sometimes, the "Achiever" in me gets the better of my common sense. In January, I had an important meeting with a major client — and I was not feeling well. Rather than do the smart thing and listen to my "heart" telling me "you really need to go home and take care of yourself," I listened to my "head" shouting, "No — you can get through this one hour meeting — cowboy up!"

My head won out, and I did a less than stellar job with my client — which, in a firm like mine where high expectations are the norm, means I flunked. In that meeting, I wasn't any good to my client, myself, my firm, or my staff. Fortunately, this client understood my situation and we met again in early February, where I got a do-over — and aced things in this meeting.

The lesson? By letting my head-based ego have its way, I forgot to ask "How can I add value to this relationship, in this meeting?" A heart-felt honest answer would have been "I can't really add value because I'm under the weather — so it's best for everyone to postpone this meeting until I'm feeling better."