Business Resource Center › Todd's Results 2010

Ah-Ha! Moment — In December, I was wrapping up the year by recognizing various people who have added value to the firm this year:

• For our clients and referral sources, my staff and I took several opportunities to say "thank you" to the folks who pay our bills, help us connect with those who might need our help, and generally make our work possible.
• For my staff, I made sure each one personally knew how much I value him or her, and how much I appreciated everyone's individual and collective contributions to the business in 2010. I did this in several ways and on several occasions throughout the month. Without the firm members, there would be no firm — and I'd be doing something much less enjoyable than what I am doing!

So a year of "Adding Value to the People" culminated with heartfelt appreciation and thanks, further adding value to the people!

Ah-Ha! Moment — Every November, we have a Firm Meeting the Tuesday before Thanksgiving. The format of this meeting is always the same — we have a brief business discussion, followed by one or more continuing professional education (CPE) sessions, and ending with the Firm's oldest tradition, our Thanksgiving luncheon.

One of our CPE sessions this year was "Recognizing and Appreciating Strengths." The content drew from several sources, including John Maxwell's June 2010 Maximum Impact monthly teaching lesson, "Developing Yourself and Others Through Strengths." I was especially struck by how our greatest strengths can become an incredible liability, if we are not aware of our limitations. Dr. Maxwell calls this a "blind spot" and describes it as:

"An area in the lives of people in which they continually do not see themselves or their situation realistically. This unawareness often causes great damage to the people and those around them."

StrengthsFinder assessed my top strength as "Achiever" and explained this as: "People strong in the Achiever theme have a great deal of stamina and work hard. They take great satisfaction from being busy and productive."

My blind spot? As an Achiever, I can't fathom why everyone doesn't want to be as busy and productive as possible.

Mirror positions and locations of other cars cause a blind spot when driving. Most of the time, we are aware of these blind spots when, say, making a lane change and adjust accordingly. Sometimes, however, we need a passenger or other driver to alert us to our blind spot.

Similarly, I am generally aware of my strengths-based blind spots and adapt to the situation — but, sometimes I need one of my associates to alert me to my blind spot. Fortunately, this CPE session educated firm members on both my strengths and theirs, and we can all now better recognize and communicate each others' impending blind spots.

Ah-Ha! Moment — In late September, one of my colleagues told me she anticipated needing two more people working 20-25 hours a week the entire month of October to meet a project's deadline — and she needed these two persons starting no later than October 2! Wow — talk about a tall order! How could I get two people identified, screened, interviewed, reference checked, hired, and oriented in 6 business days? I'm glad I talked with my Office Assistant, a senior at UNC-Greensboro, who told me about SpartanCareers, a web site linking employers interested in hiring UNC-G students. I reviewed the site, registered, and quickly constructed a job description for the positions.

Imagine my amazement when I started receiving resumes within a few hours of the job being posted! I obtained resumes from ten good quality candidates within a few days, allowing me to winnow out the ones with insufficient available hours and little relevant experience, bringing in four for interviews, and finding two top-quality people who could start just in time for the project!

Even after the two folks began work, I kept the job posted on SpartanCareers — and I'm really glad I did! In mid October, my Office Assistant, who was working an unpaid internship, had the sudden opportunity to convert this into a paid position — thus requiring her to give notice to me. I checked the resume inbox — and found nine more students to consider! From these, three were interviewed, and we found a great new Office Assistant — who started work three business days after we interviewed her.

The lesson? Sometimes you have to "Add Value to the People" — and other times you have to "Add Valuable People." This month, I learned about SpartanCareers and found a great new way to identify some really talented students.

PS — It is a little tricky to find the employer (versus the student) side of SpartanCareers on the UNC-G web site, so here are two helpful links:

• To learn more about the overall process as an employer, you can refer to: http://csc.dept.uncg.edu/employers/postjobreferral/EmployerGuide.pdf
• To register or login as an employer, just visit: https://www.myinterfase.com/uncg/employer/

Ah-Ha! Moment — As I shared in early 2010, my focus for this year is "Adding Value to the People" — and I always enjoy adding value to the folks in my firm. As is typical, we have a firm meeting every September or October. In planning this year's September firm meeting, I had noticed how engaged my staff were at our April 2010 firm meeting, when we focused on "soft skills" — in particular, skills such as "Active Listening" critical to our overall firmwide goal of doing a better job expanding our relationships within our clients.

Taking a little risk, I decided to expand this focus on communication and interpersonal skills. I brought together two key persons to brainstorm ways we could not only tie together many of the group and self-study courses designed for the firm members over the past two years — but illustrate how applying their concepts, both inside and outside the firm, was already benefitting the firm members, the firm, and our clients.

It took the three of us two meetings lasting nearly four hours to initially chart our course, and then to adjust our final approach. Between and following our meetings, work continued individually, with emails and phone calls and impromptu working sessions used to fine tune our individual presentations.

The result? Three hours of content which engaged all members of the firm — because we reinforced and expanded specific, easy-to-apply techniques showing how to:

• Understand others better by actively listening,
  
• Sense a person's communication style and tailor messages accordingly,
  
• Provide effective performance feedback,
  
• Assess and deliver the leadership style appropriate to a person's development level, and
  
• Apply techniques to allow you to honor all your promises and thus live in full integrity.

Achieving all this with a diverse group of talented people is "Adding Value" in my book!

Ah-Ha! Moment — In August and early September, I experienced first-hand the difference "active listening" and "good feedback" can make.

In August, I learned — almost two weeks after the fact — I had made a poor decision in giving a particular assignment to a staff person. This person was uncomfortable sharing feedback with me, and apparently I had not been actively listening to this person — partly because the assignment was communicated by e-mail, and partly because I was rushing around trying to get things wrapped up before leaving for a 10-day family vacation. Had I been actively listening — which includes being sensitive to the other person's perspective, and looking for non-verbal clues after sending the e-mail — I might have been able to pick up on the issue, which did not surface until after I returned from vacation.

• Lesson 1 — "Active listening" can compensate when "good feedback" is not provided. (For more on "good feedback," see my comments in "Todd's Results" for 2009 on my experiences applying concepts from the book Formula 2+2: The Simple Solution for Successful Coaching, by Douglas B. Allen and Dwight W. Allen.)

Later that month, I felt one of my back teeth suddenly develop a sharp edge. I thought, "Oh, boy — I don't know exactly what happened, but I'm pretty sure how this is going to end." Sure enough, I had broken off part of a molar, and the necessary dental procedure was scheduled for early September. This "grind, drill, and mold" procedure is pretty routine, unless you have an extreme gag reflex like me. Fortunately, I have an amazing dentist, Laura Steinberg, DDS! Laura is very down-to-earth and is incredibly concerned about her patients' experience. So, at least two times during the 2+ hour "procedure," I could not tolerate what Laura was doing, and had to tell her, "This isn't working — what's your Plan B?" The great thing? She listened to me, and came up with a Plan B each time! Had I not been giving her "good feedback" and had she not been practicing "active listening," I would have had a poor experience. As it was, the whole procedure was a non-event, for which I am extremely thankful!

• Lesson 2 — "Active listening" coupled with "good feedback" yields "amazing results"!

Both were very valuable lessons, which once again proves experience is indeed the best teacher!

Ah-Ha! Moment — In July, I decided to complete a lingering "To Do" — to meet the new executives at one of my clients. The challenge? My staff seemed to have a less visible role than we had enjoyed prior to a change in ownership, executives, and top managers.  Normally, my staff help "open doors" by introducing themselves and exchanging business cards. Not so this time.

So, I worked with several staff members to determine what "message" would speak to each of several new executives and senior managers, and then crafted emails to introduce myself "electronically" and to open the door for a brief in-person introduction later in the week.

The outcome? I eventually heard from everyone to whom I sent an email. In fact, several of these persons also took the opportunity to graciously say how much my firm has helped them personally improve their areas of responsibility! The most gratifying outcome was from the CFO, who invited me to drop in a few days later. A staff member and I did just that, and our 5 minute "meet and greet" turned into a 30 minute discussion of the top issue facing the CFO. Needless to say, this was a hugely beneficial meeting for all of us.

The lesson this month? Actually, there are two:

• Sometimes, when things have gotten stuck, I have to work harder to figure out ways to "make something happen" and get things unstuck. By working both smart and hard in targeting the persons and crafting an authentic message, I was able to share something worthwhile with my client and reinforce my firm's value to them.
• Leaving this on my "To Do" list for yet another month would have only let things get further stuck. And choosing to put this on the "Todd's Results" list for July forced me to become creative, which got me unstuck myself. After all, I will do almost anything to ensure there are only green checkmarks in the "Goals Met?" column.

Lessons learned!

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 "Adding Value To 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 "Adding Value To 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 "Adding Value To 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 "Adding Value To 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 "Add Value To 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."