Passion, People and Principles
Early on in my consulting career, I remember having a hard day with clients and coming home to my wife, saying: “Those stupid clients just didn’t get it.” My wife, very gently, said “You mean that today, just today, you weren’t able to help them understand?”
My first instinct was to throw something at her, but my second instinct was to realize she was right. The lack of understanding might not have been my fault, but it was certainly my responsibility to make sure I was being understood.
This isn’t a moral point, but one of simple survival. If clients don’t hire me because they are too ill-informed to recognize the brilliance of my insight, it’s me that loses the job. If I’m trying to advise them to do something and they just won’t take my advice, they are going to view me as less than completely helpful. It may be their fault, but it’s my problem.
I get questions about this all the time. Everyone has stories of “dumb” clients or people who just won’t listen or cooperate or let you do the job you were hired to do. And it’s so easy (since it’s so often the truth) to lay the blame on the other person and throw your hands up in despair. It’s so unfair, we think, that we have to work at being understood when it’s their fault.
The crucial first step – taking ownership and responsibility when you feel that you are not being well understood – is a huge challenge for most of us, personally and professionally. How often have you had a disagreement with a family member, only to give up in frustration when they “just won’t listen to you” or “see your point of view?”
Yet only by taking responsibility for the effectiveness of our communications can we obtain the influence or the results that we want. We have to stop attributing blame, and start viewing the situation as a problem to be solved. We have to learn to get people to engage with us, not just take opposing sides.
We have to ask questions like “Why does this person believe what they believe now?” “Why is it in their interest to defend the point of view that they are making?” As Steven Covey says, one of the keys to effectiveness is “Striving more to understand, and less to be understood.”
Note the paradox here. The better you are at understanding the other person, the clearer it will be as to how you might engage them in conversation, have a chance of being understood, and lead them to a different conclusion. Striving first to understand is not (just) a moral or social point, but good pragmatic advice.
Next, it’s necessary to make the obvious point that understanding something yourself is one level of accomplishment, but being good at helping someone untrained in your field to understand it is another. This requires a whole new set of skills.
I have a client who always says to me “Explain it to me as if I were a six-year old.” He doesn’t mean it quite that literally, but it’s a helpful reminder that what he wants from me is not just answers but understanding. The skill of helping people understand complex issues is not that common among highly trained, technically qualified people.
And as we know, a free market rewards what is scarce, not necessarily what is inherently valuable. A superior ability to help a client understand your field may be a real point of differentiation, as an individual or as a company.
Of course, this applies to all our relationships, not just those with clients. If your administrative assistant doesn’t fully understand what you want, you won’t get back what you want. If your boss doesn’t understand what you’ve done, you haven’t done it.
Learning to communicate so that people understand you better is a vastly neglected skill.
On http://www.lawmarketing.biz/ there was a request from a new marketing director of a law firm who had been asked to give a speech at a partners’ retreat about “what it is that I do, and how it equates to dollars in the door”
There’s a temptation in this situation (and every new relationship) to rush to prove yourself (or the worth of your subject area) by making claims for what you can offer. After all, that’s what you’re being asked to do.
However, the image of being thrown to the crocodiles comes to mind. You can just see the skeptical lawyer audience listening with an “Oh yeah? You’ve just been added to my overhead costs? You better be good!” mentality.
In this situation (as in a sales situation, or as in all new relationships) the best thing you can do is apply a variant of Shaula Evans’ approach and make sure that you clarify your mandate, and make sure there are no misunderstandings about where you can and cannot help. Use this opportunity to get the relationship off on the right foot and you’ll save a lot of future grief.
So, in this situation, my advice is that the new marketing director (or HR director, or IT person) should stand up, take a deep breath, and say something like the following:
“As your new marketing director, my job is to support YOUR efforts to attract, win and retain clients. I cannot do that for you; I can only help you do it better.
“If you are energized and motivated to want to get involved in developing your practice, I will be available to offer advice customized to your practice, your personal situation and your ambitions. It will not be the same advice across the board, because each of you is different, and I must learn to serve you as individuals, not as clones of each other.
“I’ll try to be a trustworthy counselor to each of you. Tell me your objectives, and I’ll try to help you accomplish them, if I can.
“I can offer advice and execution assistance on a wide variety of marketing activities, including seminars, articles, speeches and so on. I can help you make each of these more effective. However, I will not give blanket recommendations about which of these tactics to use, nor how each of them can best be used. In all cases, the best technique will be one that both fits you and will appeal to your clients. We will discover what these specifics are through personal discussions, or not at all.
“Part of my job will be to help you understand what it will take to accomplish the goals you say you want to achieve.
“Occasionally, this will mean that me pointing out that you are aiming for unreachable goals, or that the amount of effort and resources you are willing to dedicate will not get you where you say you want to go. While I will do my best to help you achieve your goals, I will not encourage you to launch half-measures if I don’t think they will work.
“In order to serve you well, I will need the privilege of giving my opinion and sharing my knowledge about what works. I will be your advisor, dedicated to your success. I will not just do what you tell me to do if I think you will be wasting your time.
“It’s not my job to tell you to get involved in business development. If you do want to get involved, then I am here to help. If you don’t then, as your employee, I cannot and will not try to force anything upon you. I will only give my opinion and advice when it is asked for.
“So, please give me a call so that we can meet one-on-one, and I can truly understand what you want to accomplish with your career and your business. I promise you that, if you do, I will do everything in power to assist you in accomplishing your goals. Thank you very much.”
post # 67 — May 3, 2006 — a Strategy post
When doing strategy work with professional businesses, I sometimes ask the people in the firm (senior and junior) to choose the four or five key things they would work on changing if they became their firm’s czar or czarina. Among the possibilities:
- The range of services (more or fewer)
- How we compensate people
- Which clients / market segments we serve
- Ownership structures (Equity v. Partnership, etc.)
- What we train people in
- How we are organized
- Financial controls/measures
- Performance appraisal criteria
- Degree of specialization of people
- How we decide investments
- Use of technology
- Degree of worldwide integration
- Change way we staff projects
- Disseminate knowledge and skills around the practice
- Use of paraprofessionals
- Approach to dealing with underperformers
- Who we hire
- Number/location of offices
- Approaches to R&D
- How we market ourselves
- How we train and coach
- How we choose managers and other practice leaders
- How we gather market intelligence about what clients want
- How we price services
- What we invest in
- Use of Methodologies ratherthan treating each assignment as unique
- Retirement policies
- How we do quality assurance
- How we use support staff
- Management of overheads
- How we hire
This is obviously not a complete list.
But if you were concerned about strategic strength (and not just short-term profit gains) which 5 would you pick to focus on?
post # 66 — May 2, 2006 — a Careers, Managing post
Bill Peper wrote in to ask:
I wonder what you think of the underlying premise of Positive Organizational Scholarship, a hot topic at the University of Michigan Business School these days. In particular, I am curious of your opinion of the Reflected Best Self exercise.
Thanks for drawing this to my attention, Bill. By way of background, the Reflected Best Self exercise is a way of getting feedback from those you have worked with (or family or friends) asking them to relate stories about you when you were at your best and made your largest contribution. It’s worth checking out. The underlying idea of the approach is that, as Marcus Buckingham pointed out in a series of books (starting with First Break All the Rules) a person’s success is usually obtained not by working at correcting weaknesses, but by finding out their core strengths and building upon them. (This is the source of the word “Positive” in the name of the area of research.)
It’s too soon to know whether this particular method of self-discovery is the best approach, but I am very sympathetic to the insight that most of us, for better or for worse, have a package of strengths and weaknesses, probably very hard to alter.
Two very important conclusions flow from this. First, know thyself. And second, find a way to play a role that fits who you are, not some organization’s generalized statement about what we all need to be good at.
(The conclusions are critical insights in managing someone, too. To help someone succeed, you must help them find a role where they can flourish, not fit everyone into a cookie-cutter set of standards)
True Professionalism (1997), I wrote about it this way:
Don’t worry about what you’re good at. If something turns you on, you’ll be good enough. If it doesn’t, you won’t. Your “strengths” are irrelevant: What you like is critical.
One key to discovering what you really like and love is to ask yourself what are the things you don’t like to admit. “I don’t like to admit it, but I need to be the center of attention.” O.K., find a career path that will let you show off. “I don’t like to admit it, but I don’t like dealing with other people.” OK, then devise a role that will let you make your contribution through things done at the office, such as intellectual creativity and true technical superiority. “I don’t like to admit it, but I really want to be rich.” Fine, go out and build a business. “I don’t like to admit it, but I’m an intellectual snob.” That’s all right, so find a career path that will allow you to work only with smart people. Play to your “evil secrets.” Don’t suppress them. You are a lot less flexible than you think.
post # 65 — May 1, 2006 — a Managing, Strategy post
There is a special report in this week’s Economist magazine (issue dated April 29-May 5th 2006) on Goldman Sachs. It is essential reading for anyone who is interested in professional businesses.
The summary quote from Goldman’s CEO, Hank Paulson, is a brilliant insight. “Goldman”, he says, “is a hard place to be hired, a hard place to be promoted and a hard place to stay.” As the Economist’s writer observes – “And if you want an explanation of how Goldman endures, that, perhaps, is the best explanation of all.”
The article is rich with details of the intensive hiring process (a vice-chairman had to endure 150 interviews before being hired), the tough promotion process and, the enforcement of high standards even among the firm’s most senior people. The article says “Often enough, someone important is asked to leave. This is one of Mr. Paulson’s most critical roles.”
What all of this proves is that, in professional businesses the essence of strategy, the keys to ongoing success, are not primarily the choices of which markets to compete in and which services to offer. Such decisions, important as they are, are secondary to having processes in place which force the firm, and the people within it, to live at (and to) higher standards than the competition.
Goldman does not preach different philosophies than most other businesss would preach – commitments to client servoice, teamwork, being a place for the best and the brightest -it just has THE DISCIPLINE and the COURAGE to achieve consistently higher standards on those principles, with fewer compromises.
Strategy and the Fat Smoker and the chapter The Value of Intolerance in my book True Professionalism)
post # 64 — April 30, 2006 — a Careers post
One of the most common types of questions I receive is how one can change one’s boss. The following is a typical example, received recently by email:
I have been at my consulting firm for approximately six years now, but we seem unable to grow as a practice and I am also concerned that I will not be able to grow personally as a trusted advisor. A large part of the explanation is that our firm has a single, traditional authority figure in which all deliverables, on-goings, and business development must pass through. Many of us are ready to begin trying our hand at business development and having our own clients that buy us and our ideas instead of the authority figure. The authority figure may say that he supports this but does not change actions or behaviors when pushed back on to relinquish control. It is frustrating for me as someone who wants to grow, learn, and make my own mistakes, and also see the practice grow. What can I do to help institute change? Could I successfully broach the subject without getting myself into hot water?
Here are some quick and simple rules to apply in situations like these:
a) People help those who are trying to help them. You must earn the trust and confidence that you want other people to place in you. Give to get. What have you done that would make the other person want to give you a chance?
b) People do things to benefit themselves, not to benefit you. You must make the case why the other person would want to give you what you want. Why is it in his / her interest to do so?
c) Present your change idea not as “Here’s what I want” but as “Here’s how I can help you.”
c) You need to understand what the other person’s wants really are. Don’t make lazy, short-hand assumptions, such as economic maximization. You need to find out what their real psychological drivers are (need for glory, need for control, insecurity, vanity) and find a way to give them what they don’t yet have enough of. Don’t be unethical or exploitative, but recognize that you’re dealing with the psychological complexities of a person here, not just a “rational, logical” situation.
d) Try and make it their idea, or at least their refinement of your idea . “Boss, I’ve been thinking about a way for us to get better at certain things. I’ve thought of a few options. What do you think of them? Can you think of ways to make them better?”
e) If you want someone else to give you what you want, ask initially for only a little. Ask for a chance, an experiment. Don’t rush, don’t get impatient -seduce, don’t assault.
f) Use the model described in my coauthored book Trusted Advisor, Engage (make sure the other person is willing to explore the topic); Listen (Explore their true desires and wants); Frame (help them view the issue from a reviswed perspective); Envision (Hep them see what’s attractive about a better future situation) and Commit (explore the actions necessary to get to the goal.) As the book advises, don’t rush to the next stage until you’re sure you’ve completed the prior one.
As everyone will have seen, most of these rules are identical to those you would apply in trying to get a client or a parent to give you what you want. They are all closely related, if not identical.
Is anyone else willing to share their “rules of thumb” for managing the boss?
post # 63 — April 28, 2006 — a Client Relations post
Shaula Evans is one of my tech team. The remarks that follow were posted yesterday as a comment to an earlier blogpost about how to buy professional services, but I thought they deserved more prominence, so I have repeated them here.
As you read her remarks, think of marketing and selling your services, inside and outside your organization. Shaula says:
“I know that you and I agree that many people approach business relationships like a romantic courtship: they put their best face forward, make outlandish claims and set incredibly high expectations, and then, over time, they fail absymally at the impossible standards they’ve set and great frustration (and often high drama) ensues for everyone.
“My approach (when I’m on my game) has been the dead opposite: I tell the other person all the very worst things about me, all the things that make me hard to work with or that might make him or her choose a different partner. In business situations over the past several years, this has meant making business partners and clients aware that I am dealing with chronic health problems that currently include insomnia (which can make scheduling calls and meetings a little extra challenging). If partners want to proceed in full knowledge that my health requires certain accommodations, great! And if not…it is not like I would be able to hide the truth for long.
“When I’m off my game, by the way, which is usually if I am feeling under pressure or insecure, I will start to want to “puff myself up” and pretend to be things I’m not. And typically, I fight down the urge to present a facade, and the relationship goes well, but when I succumb to the fear-driven need to be something I’m not (which happens less frequently, fortuneately, as I get a little older and a little wiser), the story usually ends in disaster.
“My most successful use of this technique wound up getting me married. My husband and I met online (through an email discussion list for professional actors and directors), and fell madly in love before we even realized it. Unfortunately, he was in Charleston, South Carolina, and I was in Vancouver, BC, Canada, and we had no prospects of meeting in person until a convention for actors came up in Las Vegas (roughly half way between us!) that we were both planning on attending. We proceeded to chat on the phone, and did everything in our powers to each drive the other one away-exposing all of our worst flaws and telling all our worst secrets.
“Our reverse psychology trick worked: I proposed an hour after we met in person for the first time, he eventually said yes (after he got over his initial tongue-tied shock; I really threw him for a loop since he had been planning to propose to me and he didn’t see my proposal coming), and we have now been blissfully married for over 5 years.
“Back to the mundane world of business. When I have been sharp enough to try to “scare the other guy away,” my results always been (almost) as good. Being brutally honest about my own flaws and weaknesses and particular needs seems to have encouraged the person or people on the other side of the table to respond in a direct, honest way (instead of an over-inflated, artificial way), so we could have a real conversation about whether we met each others’ needs.
“When I worked as a technical and executive search recruiter, I used this technique, too: telling a candidate all of the worst parts about a job or employer, to find out if they were really interested; and presenting a very balanced and honest picture of the strengths and weaknesses of my candidates to my clients, so they could fairly judge if the candidate was a good match for the opportunity at their organization. In this way, I built up great, trust-based relationships with both my candidates and clients-and it was much easier to take care of everyone’s needs.
“Of course, not everyone responds well to this approach. Some people are really baffled when you break away from the received conventions of social ritual, and their reactions can range from offended to upset to extremely hostile. Fortunately, such a response is usually a pretty good indicator that our communication styles won’t mesh and I’m better off not starting a relationship with that person. (“A bullet dodged,” as my husband would put it.)
“You can call this “reverse psychology,” or “demonstrating trust in other folks to elicit their trust in you,” or “telling the (ugly) truth”-it all boils down to tell the other people in the conversation what they really need to know, to figure out if they want this relationship, and to have the information they need to move forward on a secure footing. In a way, it’s an anti-game approach. And the great thing is, you can initiate this strategy from either side of the table.
“If you ever try to start a new business conversation by outlining all the reasons the other person shouldn’t take your business…I would be very interested to hear the results.”
***
I endorse Shaula’s insights. Her approach won’t always get you the most business, but pursuing that is not the key to ether profits or a happy life. The key insight is that in trying to form relationships, business or personal, you’ll profit most by having an approach that screens people out quickly who aren’t going to like what you do, and brings in people who do. That way, you get a high percentage of profitable, repeat engagements and fabulous word of mouth with a minimum of effort.
Does anyone else have a business perspective on or experience with this approach?
post # 62 — April 27, 2006 — a General post
Warning: this blogpost has nothing to do with business and is purely personal!
I got a note from Bill Peper, who has been an active participant in the discussions on this blog (Thanks, Bill!) He wrote:
I appreciate the great information on your site and the insights from your blog. Your writing has influenced my career more than any other author. I have a passion for the issues you discuss. I am an attorney serving as a full-time independent contractor for Standards for Excellence, a voluntary continuous improvement process for GM dealerships. I carry a few of your handout in my brief case, as they have proven handy. I also “assigned” lecture 3 of your new podcast series to all of my managers.
I also suffered from severe sleep apnea for 30 years before a friend diagnosed it last year.And I am a vocal music junkie — but my tastes tend toward jazz and the Great American Song Book. I would love to see you identify some obscure singers whose music you enjoy.
Well, Bill, let’s restrict ourselves to the Great American Songbook. (if anyone wants to encourage me, we can discuss jazz and pop some other time.) I actually do not seek out obscure singers. My philosophy has always been that as long as there’s an Ella Fitzgerald recording that I don’t have on CD, why would I want to hunt for anything else? And when the time comes to play a CD, if it’s a choice between Ella and somebody new – well, quality beats variety any day. (I have over 200 distinct Ella CDs.)
The same is close to true, for me, with Peggy Lee. If it’s not Ella playing, it’s likely to be Peggy. And (and this one may surprise you) I’d put Doris Day a close third. She developed an unhip persona, but the lady can sing. I have over 100 of her CDs. Not an unlistenable recording in the bunch. I first fell in love with her on a recording of the soundtrack she did of the ANNIE GET YOUR GUN, with Robert Goulet singing all the male parts. (It’s on one of the Doris Day Bear Family boxes – absolutely essential!)
Finally, you want obscure? That’s tough, because different people ‘know’ different artists, but are you familiar with the Boswell Sisters (from the 1930s)? Backed by the Dorsey brothers, they recorded the swingy-est, close-harmony, swooping, stop-start vocals you’ll ever hear.
OK, everybody. Let me know. Do you want me to stick to business? Or would you like to have (VERY occasionally) some music conversations here? Let the people speak!
My wife, Kathy, has always wanted us to go together to a spa. The thought has never been appealing; I’ve always thought of them as sybaritic luxuries. (They are!)
Still, I owed her — big time — for all her support, and I eventually agreed. We went to The Golden Door in southern California. (Yes, I always do things to extremes.)
For me, the highlight was not the spa experience itself, but the opportunity to listen to Deborah Szekely, the 80-something founder of the Golden Door, who gave a really fascinating talk one evening.
Among her pearls of wisdom was the advice that, every week, we should take an hour or two to examine what we have done with our time in the previous week, marking everything in one of five colors.
- Green would be used for anything that was a challenging growth experience
- Black would be used for things that were a waste of time
- Blue should be used for things that could have been delegated (even if the other person could only do it 85% as well as you could.)
- Red would represent something you did that was a deposit for your health
- and your own favorite color would be used for time spent on family, friends and fun
This is more than just “cute.” It truly is wise.
In a previous post we have discussed the issues of measuring and judging in running a business. The key insight that ties these topics together is that, as individuals and as organizations, we can only improve if we use our direct experince, taking the time to reflect on what has happened to us, and making small mid-course corrections.
There’s no point having experinces, if you don’t have a process for learning from them and building on them.
I’m not sure I want to go back to spas for the massages. But if there are people like Deborah Szekely there to listen to, sign me up again!
post # 60 — April 26, 2006 — a Managing post
Today I have posted on my website my new article A Natural Manager , a description of Jerry Labbate, a young man who, without formal training, understands and applies the core principles of managing professionals.
Jerry’s story is also the lead episode in my new free (audio) podcast series, which is made up 15 episodes (roughly 20-minutes each) entitled MANAGING PROFESSIONALS: ATTITUDES, SKILLS & BEHAVIORS .
The first 4 episodes are now available on my website, and a new episode will be added each week.
The previous series of 14 podcasts on MARKETING PROFESSIONAL SERVICES is still available on the website
