There's a Tear in My Beer

No, I promise, I’m not channeling Hank Williams, Jr.!    

It is strategic planning season and I’m reflecting on some of my favorite client memories. A few years ago, I worked with Everybody’s Brewing on some long term planning. They set a target on their milestone timeline to: “Get Everybody’s beer in a can.”  This strategy would not only allow for much greater distribution beyond their immediate community, but would help them grow and move closer to their vision of putting little old White Salmon, Washington on the world map.

Fast forward to the next year:  I was visiting another client in Portland and we went to lunch. In the fridge at the deli, right before me, I saw Everybody’s Beer in a can! My eyes immediately filled with tears. The client I was with noticed my reaction and said, “Wow, I guess you really love that beer.” Sure, I do, but my tears were tears of work-joy. I was so proud of them! They did it!   

This made me realize I’ve had a lot of tears of work-joy since starting my own business. It was wonderful confirmation that I am absolutely doing the work I was meant to do. I truly love my clients and love helping them achieve their life and business dreams.

My mission is to build capacity in leaders and teams through and for business success.  It is incredibly rewarding to watch my clients grow as people, and see their personal growth drive their business growth. It is the why behind what I do.  If you are working on your strategic plan, and specifically your mission, I encourage you to think beyond what you do (like for me it is coaching, training, facilitation) and get really clear on why you’re doing it. Once you understand and are able to easily communicate why you do what you do, decisions become clear for opportunities you are considering.  

Lower the Cake Dome

We all have ‘that person’.  You know, the one who can instantly make us anxious and wish we were anywhere else, doing anything else, but having to interact with him (or her). Interestingly, you may like or even love this person. Or, maybe not.  Regardless, he has the uncanny ability to set off an unpleasant emotional response (aka, push the hell out of your buttons).

This mere fact alone might be reason enough to distance yourself from this person at all times.  What happens though, when you can’t; when ‘that person’ is a colleague, employee, customer or God-forbid, a family member?

Who knew grandma’s heirloom, would prove so beneficial to your emotional well-being?!?

Enter the Cake Dome: a simple, rounded, clear glass force-field of sorts protecting what is inside from what is out, and what is outside from what is in.  This handy piece of visual imagery, developed by my friend and colleague, Dana Meyer, can not only help you manage your interaction with style and grace in the moment, but aid you in recognizing your hot button topics for even more preparation and grace for future interactions.

Visual imagery can be an amazingly powerful tool that can play a pivotal part in memory (Yates, 1996), motivation (McMahon, 1973) and high level creative problem solving (Arp, 2005).  As applied to our scenario, visual imagery becomes a tool that allows us the space for self-reflection and the mind-set for re-direction.   It can be a major challenge to identify what triggers us within a given scenario or interaction.  In her article “5 Steps for Managing Your Emotional Triggers,” Marcia Reynolds, Psy D, presents practical methods for uncovering how to identify your trigger points.

Once we know what pushes our buttons, we can better handle the situations, people, and issues presented to us. The Cake Dome gives us a way to protect ourselves from the emotional energy within a situation or encounter, allowing us the ability to react in a more calm and rational way.

Now you may be wondering, when and how do you “cake dome” someone? When you see this person’s name appear as an incoming caller, you see him walking towards you, or you know you’ll be seeing him, mentaly brace yourself and imagine enclosing ‘this person’ in the cake dome.

This concept allows you to see and hear what the other person is doing. However, your experience is as a social scientist or observer, rather than an active participant - getting emotionally drawn in. As comments, tone or gestures are coming from the other person towards you, imagine that they are splatting inside the walls of the cake dome and therefore not touching you on the other side of the glass. Label the splat. Look for patterns. Get curious. If a person says the sky is green, it may seem strange and wrong, but will likely not spark an emotional reaction from you. So noticing those things that do spark an emotional reaction can be instructive for our personal development, as they are likely pouring salt in the wound of an insecurity, fear or unmet need. Perhaps this irritation was intended by the other person; I have found that it was typically not. Regardless, you have the ability to manage your self-talk related to that interaction and thus, manage your reaction.

My personal experience with cake doming is that after several interactions, imagery it isn’t necessary anymore. I still notice the tone, gestures, comments and behaviors. However they have no emotional impact on me. So, next time you’re faced with ‘that person,’ protect your emotions and cake dome him!

Why I Have Double Vision and Think Your Business Should Too

In my strategic planning work, I’ve found that a grand long-term vision like: ‘putting your tiny town on the world map’ is wonderful for inspiring your team to persevere through challenging times. I like to think of this long-term vision as your “When It’s All Said and Done” (WIASD). However, though inspiring, your WIASD may lack the specificity to guide your team members’ immediate efforts. It may also fail to provide a much needed near-term fix to fuel everyone’s momentum. This is where a near-term vision or an “Amazing Not Too Distant Future” (ANTDF) can help.

At any point in time, every business has a certain amount of calm or chaos going on with respect to it’s people, profits, and products or services.  The “Amazing Not Too Distant Future” is the next level of better for this combination of things. The ANTDF is not a final destination, nor is it an achievement in a single point in time. It is a new norm that remains constant over a given period of time, perhaps months, quarters or even a few years. When it is achieved, a new ANTDF is needed.

For example:

Let’s say that your business is booming. While that’s great, you didn’t anticipate sales going so well and as a result your staffing levels aren’t adequate to get the work done. This leads to lots of folks working lots overtime to get the promised work out the door and to the customer. This overtime is negatively impacting employee morale and eating into your profits. On top of that, Quality Control is catching a higher rate of product defects, which requires rework to fix the issues!

In this situation, your ANTDF might be to: ‘Maintain average monthly revenue while increasing profitability by 2%, improve employee morale by two points and return to prior quality levels.’  We aren’t working on strategy for getting there yet, just setting an aspiration for an “Amazing Not Too Distant Future” - a next level of better for your people, profits and products/services.

On the other hand, if your business vision statement is only about the achievement of a new steadier business state, you may miss the early steps necessary to make the grand, legacy-leaving impact that you know your business is meant to make.  You don’t have to know the strategy yet for how you are going to get there. When you simply have a compelling, far-reaching legacy you’d love to leave through your business, you begin noticing opportunities that would have otherwise been invisible to you.

As if that’s not reason enough, a double vision is helpful for your staff. You likely have some employees who are predominantly interested in understanding near-term targets and others who are at their best when they understand and are in tune with the organization’s long-term vision.

When you hold a double vision, you get the focus and momentum of a near-term vision as well as the opportunity-leveraging and deep inspiration of a long-term vision.  This promotes a more fluid and energetic environment for you, your employees and your organization.

How the Bomb Factory Prepared Me to Run a Successful Coaching and Consulting Business

A significant part of my Organizational Development (OD) tenure was spent at a company in the Aerospace and Defense industry and specifically in a Missiles division. So many of my co-workers lovingly, and jokingly referred to our workplace as the Bomb Factory! 

Obviously bomb-making was not my charge. I did play a critical role though in helping leaders and teams perform well together to reach company and customer objectives. My work was unlike that of most OD consultants, which now, as a business owner, gives me a competitive advantage over other executive coaches and strategic planning facilitators. I truly enjoyed my work and the people there and can look back fondly at the profound ways the Bomb Factory prepared me to run a successful consultancy. Here are the top three.

1) I Had to Sell it

In many companies, Organization Development is an overhead function. So most internal OD Consultants are tasked by their company’s senior managers to develop and implement programs such as improving the new employee on-boarding process or increasing employee engagement. Those programs are applied company-wide.

However, at the Bomb Factory, I was responsible for identifying, generating and justifying the programs my team members delivered to our internal customers at various levels in the organization and in various functions and product lines. So that meant my approach had to be focused and customized. Instead of an overhead expense, the money the leaders spent on my programs came out of their operating budget. So I had to give them some pretty compelling reasons to hire me.  This gave me lots of good practice at selling “people stuff” to Program and Engineering Leaders. This required me to identify how the money spent on me and my team would help them reach their business goals. It turns out this is a pretty critical skill to have.

2)  I Got to See if the Darn Thing Actually Worked (and fix it if it didn’t)

Frequently, an external consultant or even an internal OD consultant will conduct an assessment, make some recommendations and then leave the customer to implement the recommendations. Or, he or she may deliver a program (hold a series of training sessions, facilitate some problem solving or goal setting workshop) and then move on. In my experience at the Bomb Factory, I was there to help implement the recommendations, see what worked and didn’t, and make adjustments as needed.  This gave me a unique perspective most OD professionals don’t get. The proven success with one customer made the offer more compelling to the next internal client.

As a bonus, in the course of the implementation, the next problem was uncovered which led me to the next piece of work with that group. The ongoing relationships allowed a deeper level of trust to build which allowed for greater willingness of those internal customers to try the next proposed intervention.  

3) I Got a Big Picture View

This is a big one.  My experiences with internal customers at various levels in the organization and in various functions and product lines enabled me to see the business from a more comprehensive view.  Because of this unique experience, as an external consultant today I am aware that the “people” issue I may be trying to solve is potentially a small slice of a much bigger problem that may be related to other departments or inter-department issues.  I understand that my solution may be ineffective or less effective until other issues are resolved.  Because of this I ask questions that revolve around the business as a wholenot just a small piece of the business I have been asked to “fix”.  My awareness and understanding of this brings more value to my customers.  They know I am able to understand how issues relate to business objectives.

Now It’s Your Turn!

I’m interested to hear from you. What experiences uniquely qualify you to do your work so well?

3 Things I Learned From Getting Fired on Valentine’s Day

I had gone from making six figures working in a large corporate environment as an Organizational Development professional to living in a small town where I was told I could never make the same salary.  I had always wanted to have my own consulting practice but wouldn’t have launched it by design in a town with few big businesses and little to no network. Due to my husband’s insane travel schedule, having a child with special needs and no family in the area, I had to make it work, serving small businesses in my community.

I was off to a decent start but it didn’t last.  While the initial highs were exhilarating, the lows were downright excruciating. I’ll share the story of a particular low and three valuable lessons in hopes to spare you some of the pain.

The Feast

Diving in feet first, I got a contract for a big project with Client A. I arrogantly thought that projects like that for customers like that would continue one after the other. In parallel, I had a smaller but still sizeable engagement with Client B plus a few small projects here and there. Life was good.  I was living in a gorgeous place and meeting lots of wonderful people. I had a relatively easy schedule, doing interesting work and making (and spending) pretty good money.

The Famine

You see this coming, don’t you? The work with Client A was completed with no specific next projects lined up. The project for Client B had turned to ongoing support (a retainer) but after the initial challenges were addressed, the ROI for my monthly fee was diminishing. I dropped the ball in client communication (more accurately, my son dropped my phone in my coffee) and Client B fired me…..on Valentine’s Day!

The Lessons

Financial strain set in, but the emotional hit was worse. Not only was I feeling unloved after being fired on Valentine’s Day,  I felt like a stupid business owner for not being prepared for this possibility. The frustration and self-doubt made me needy and difficult.  It put a strain on my marriage and made me an impatient mother.  Something needed to change!

This painful experience turned out to be a gift.  It forced me to focus more intently on how I ran my business, not just how I supported clients with theirs.

Here are 3 valuable lessons that have transformed my workload and income.

1: STAY IN YOUR SWEET SPOT

After the primary challenges were handled in Client B’s organization,  in order to keep the contract, I was filling my time doing work that needed to be done but was not in my wheelhouse.  This is led to a lack of focus and an ultimate breakdown in communications.  In hindsight, I can see that I should have completed  the work that I know how to do well for that client, ended the engagement, and moved on to the next client.

2: DON’T PUT ALL YOUR EGGS IN ONE BASKET

Anytime a significant percentage of your income is coming from a single customer, you are at risk of your business tanking. Even if your performance is perfect, your contract could be reduced or eliminated due to their budgetary constraints or your primary point of contact leaving the company. I currently have a few large contracts. However, now, if I lost any one customer, the revenue from my remaining customers would cover the minimum amount I need to keep afloat.

3: KEEP IN TOUCH WITH INTERESTED PROSPECTS

Though I had a list of contacts with notes, I had been following up with leads in a pretty haphazard way. I had not cultivated any serious prospects. The lesson here is the importance of staying in touch periodically to maintain a relationship with leads and referral partners, with even greater touch and frequency for the prospects closer to a possible yes for a specific offer. I now track this in a table I call Prospect Purgatory.

The Big Takeaway

After my Valentine’s Day wake-up call, I studied and applied lessons and tools from gurus like Michael Port, Lisa Sasevich, Callan Rush and Justin Livingston.  I began developing a model and a system that was going to work for my lifestyle and in my community. By reframing my services into categories and improving my structure for keeping up with prospects, I was able to better focus my marketing energy to secure new clients.  I call this my No More Feast or Famine process.

Structure and systems are the answer.  If you are a creative thinker, like me, the thought of a structure or formula might seem constraining.  I have found just the opposite. It actually allows for greater freedom. I have continued to refine my No More Feast or Famine process and supporting tools for myself and have shared with my clients who also struggled with reaching a sustainable workload and income.  Creativity can now be spent more enjoyably in other areas, rather than wondering about where to find my next client.