Month: December 2010

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Career Planning: Looking At Options

A-career-woman-raising-her-fist-as-a-sign-of-a-success.

career optionsWhat’s your best move?

Once you have completed a review of who you are, (see prior post) then focus on what’s next for you. Many people think if they’re not finding career satisfaction in their present job then their only choice is to change companies or careers. That’s not the case. Before jumping ship explore these:

Four Realistic Career Options

Enrich your current job – Grow in place
Look for ways to expand or change your responsibilities to provide you with greater challenge, visibility and skill building. Here are some options to grow in place. Be part of a task force on a pressing business problem; handle a negotiation with a customer; supervise product, program, equipment or systems purchase; do a project with another function; research and report on cost cutting measures.

Change your job – Go for a promotion
Vertical movement usually is achieved as a reward for excellence in your current position and as a result of having demonstrated performance required for a higher level position. However with today’s flattened organization structure, paths may not open up as quickly as you would like. So don’t limit yourself by thinking only about upward movement. Take a look at these other options.

Change your job – Go sideways
Explore the possibility of a lateral change in job position within or outside your functional area. I’ve seen marketing people do a stint in product development and visa versa. A lateral move can provide you with new skills, experiences and expertise which could be critical to your success later on. It can also help you test the water in a new career.

Change your job – Move down to move forward
Realignment can be an effective option if you wish to move back to a more satisfying position, alleviate current job related stress or bring balance to personal live. It can also provide the appropriate experience to test out a new career. Up is not the only way to thrive and be satisfied.

Two Other Career Options

Cutting loose– Move out
In situations where you job no longer matches your current interests or you cannot find opportunities within the organization, then look into the option to see growth or better fit opportunities elsewhere. Be careful though of not going from the frying pan into the fire. Moving out requires careful examination and planning. Check out the November 4th post on Is It Time to Stay or Leave.

Make no changes – Stay put.
Reviewing you obligations and commitments, you may decide that this is not the right time to be making changes in your life or career and the plans for the future need to be deferred for awhile. Whatever the reason for opting for no change, it should be a positive and conscious decision instead of one arrived at from feeling “but I have no choice.”

What’s Next For You?

What do you see yourself in the short, medium and long term? Remember, different career options will be best for you at different stages of your professional and personal life. Take into consideration not only where you are but where is the marketplace and how is it changing. My next post will look at how to develop a plan and take action.

Do you want to develop Career Smarts?

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Bringing Executive Coaching into Your Organization

A-group-of-executives-working-for-the-benefits-of-their-organization.

Executive Coaching is on the rise as a way to positively impact business performance. The Denisoff Consulting Group (of which I am a member: The DCG Coaching Cadre Team) recently published a complimentary white paper.

This white paper Business & Management Consulting – Denisoff Consulting Group covers important Executive Coaching topics such as: addressing the tangible benefits of utilizing executive coaches; 3 general areas where coaching is particularly effective (supporting strategic initiatives; leading deep cultural change efforts; and leadership development); as well as how to introduce coaching within your organization.

According to the authors, “When an organization decides to bring coaching to their leadership team, it is critical that they do so in a very intelligent and thoughtful way. The keys are to fully understand the impact of coaching, design a plan to implement a coaching process and connect coaching to the other business and developmental initiatives in place. By doing so, the organization will realize the payoff and many benefits that Executive Coaching can offer.”

For more resources, see the Library topic Personal and Professional Coaching.

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Pam Solberg-Tapper MHSA, PCC – I spark entrepreneurial business leaders to set strategy, take action, and get results. How can I help you? Contact me at CoachPam@cpinternet.com ~ Linkedin ~ 218-340-3330

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How Much Should the Client Be Involved in Consulting Projects?

Hand holding a consulting card

Peter Block, author of Flawless Consulting, asserts that, as a consultant, you should not be contributing more than 50% of the effort in a consulting project. Your client should work the remainder. You should never be doing what your client can do in a project.

This is especially true for external consultants. Internal consultants might do more than 50% of the work. However, they still should strive to have clients do most of the work if those clients are to learn to solve problems for themselves.

Others might believe that the amount of work each party contributes depends on the nature of services in the consulting project. For example, a technical consultant installing a computer system might do most of the work. However, even in projects where you are an expert consultant, for example, training clients how to conduct a certain procedure, your client must participate substantially in the project.

For example, they must actively participate in your training methods, be actively listening to you, thinking about what you are saying to them, and engaging in small group exercises.

Prominent psychologist, Carl Rogers, asserted that you cannot teach anyone anything. People can only learn when they are ready to learn. That is why Block’s assumptions about consulting are so valid, particularly that effective decision-making requires free and open choice among participants and that effective implementation requires the internal commitment of your clients.

A challenge, particularly for new organizational consultants, is to cultivate a collaborative relationship with clients so clients are highly involved in all phases of the consulting project. New organizational consultants might fall victim to the myths that they can somehow descend into an organization and “fix” it without the client having to participate.

The irony of this situation is that when the organizational consultant follows that approach, the client often reacts positively. However, soon after the consultant leaves the project, both the consultant and client realize that the intended changes to the organization never really occurred. Instead, the client is now in a situation worse than before. Reports from the consultant sit unread on the client’s shelves. People are confused about what to do because little or no learning occurred from the project. Perhaps worst of all, members of the organization lose faith in the value of bringing in outside help again in the future.

Organizational change efforts often fail. That is why organizational consultants have to move away from the traditional “outside expert” approach and toward collaborative organizational consulting.

What do you think?

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For more resources, see the Library topics Consulting and Organizational Development.

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Carter McNamara, MBA, PhD – Authenticity Consulting, LLC – 800-971-2250
Read my weekly blogs: Boards, Consulting and OD, Nonprofits and Strategic Planning.

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Some Criteria For a Mission Statement to Meet

Mission statement of a business

There are few topics in strategic planning that generate such diverse and strong opinions as what should be in a mission statement. The statements vary from one-line slogans to multi-page documents.

There are few activities that can become such as waste of time as extensive discussions about what words should be in a mission statement — perhaps planners should spend more time identifying external and internal trends and then what to do about them, than discussing at length what words should be in their mission statements.

One o the best ways to efficiently write a mission statement, and yet leave time and energy for the rest of the important planning process, is to establish certain criteria that the mission statement should meet. Then, after an hour or two of discussing the mission, a subgroup could draft a mission statement that meets the criteria.

Some Proposed Criteria for a Mission Statement

  1. Is clearly understandable by people internal and external to the organization (strong requirement)
  2. Succinctly describes the purpose of the organization (strong requirement)
  3. Succinctly describes the overall type(s) of customers/client served by the organization (strong requirement)
  4. Provides sufficient focus and direction that Board members and employees can reference the mission when making major decisions (strong requirement)
  5. Succinctly describes the particular customer/client needs and wants to be met the organization (recommended)
  6. Mentions the particular results (new knowledge, skills and/or conditions) that the organization tries to help its customers/clients to achieve (recommended)
  7. Differentiates the organization from other organizations in the area (recommended)
  8. Conveys strong public image (recommended)
  9. Mentions the locale in which the organization operates (optional)
  10. Mentions any particular strengths and opportunities identified during the strategic planning’s external and internal analysis (optional)

What do you think?

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Carter McNamara, MBA, PhD – Authenticity Consulting, LLC – 763-971-8890
Read my weekly blogs: Boards, Consulting and OD, Nonprofits and Strategic Planning.

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Some New Nonprofit Board Models

Two male volunteers

As demands for Board effectiveness and accountability continue to grow, research and discussions about how Boards might operate differently, continue to grow, as well. There are a variety of new ideas for Board models.

Networked Governance

David Renz suggests that the effectiveness of governance could be enhanced when we realize that governance can include organizations and activities that go beyond the role of the Board in an organization. Nowadays, many nonprofit services to a community are often delivered across a network of organizations and, thus, the distributed governance of that network is a key point in the effectiveness of those services. Renz mentions the advantages of the perspective on networked governance and also mentions the difficult challenges inherent in that perspective, for example, how can individual nonprofits and Boards influence the overall network and how can we ensure that individual Boards are doing their fiduciary responsibilities.

System-Wide Governance

Judy Freiwirth asserts that the traditional “top down,” “command and control” paradigm of Boards actually gets in the way of the nonprofit’s successfully working toward its mission. She suggests that the governance responsibility to be shared among constituents, including members, staff and Board. In System-Wide Governance, Board members are from the community and constituency. Although, governance is very democratic in nature, Board members do perform some legal and fiduciary responsibilities. She mentions the Whole Scale Change methodology as an example of how constituency-based planning and operations can be successful.

Community-Driven Governance: Governing for What Matters

Community-Driven Governance is a framework that defines a Board’s primary purpose as leadership towards making a significant, visionary difference in the community the organization serves. The Board’s work centers around an annual plan that aims first and foremost at the difference the organization will make in the community. The plan then addresses the organizational infrastructure needed to implement that plans. The approach is intended to be simple enough for any Board to put into practice, while comprehensively addressing first the ends, and then the means for which a Board will hold itself accountable. The approach also aims to avoid a typical problem in Boards when they attend primarily to internal operations, rather than truly representing the needs of stakeholders.

See Governing for What Matters by Hildy Gottlieb

Relationship Model

Steven Block proposes a model that, instead of having a rigid, top-down structure of roles and hierarchy of the traditional policy model, provides for Board and staff members to work together with great priority on generating relationships and value from those relationships. The Executive Director and staff play an important role in bringing matters to the group (a group of Board members and staff) and their opinions are greatly valued. Board and staff share experiences together, for example, rituals and meals, to develop relationships. Board members are not expected to take part in activities outside Board meetings. They can be there to assist staff. Committees are not used.

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Carter McNamara, MBA, PhD – Authenticity Consulting, LLC – 800-971-2250
Read my weekly blogs: Boards, Consulting and OD, Nonprofits and Strategic Planning.

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Close More New Business

Businessmen in suit shaking hands to close a contract

Offer an Iron-Clad Guarantee

In the last post, I introduced Lance Latham’s extraordinary strategy for building his LinkedIn network from zero to over 23,000 direct connects in 18 months. While interviewing him for the post, and reviewing his company’s website Metrilogics.com, I was enormously impressed with another business-building strategy he and his team have successfully employed.

Metrilogics offers a rock-solid guarantee that sets them apart from other consulting firms – giving them an important competitive advantage, and an edge that helps them close more new business.

The Metrilogics Savings Guarantee

According to their website, here’s their powerful guarantee – verbatim:

“Following the Opportunity Assessment, we will present our summary findings to the client’s senior management team, including the identified annualized savings opportunity, and recommendations to achieve those savings.

If the client’s management team makes the commitment to achieving these savings by following Metrilogics’ recommendations, then Metrilogics will embark on a Savings Project with the client organization for a defined time period to make the annualized savings a reality. Metrilogics will always guarantee client annualized savings of at least 3x the client’s project investment (= a guaranteed client ROI of at least 200%).

If – by the end of the project – client annualized savings exceed the original guaranteed dollar amount, Metrilogics won’t bill extra for the additional savings achieved.

In the unlikely event that the guaranteed annualized savings have not been achieved by the agreed-upon project end date, Metrilogics will either:

  1. Continue working without additional compensation until the annualized savings target is reached, OR
  2. Refund a portion of our compensation, proportionate to the guaranteed annualized savings shortfall.”

Management’s Insights about This Guarantee

Lance reports that their significant expertise (25+ years) and keen ability to identify savings within their clients’ operations gives them piece of mind about the potential risk they take on this guarantee. In fact, Metrilogics usually finds a greater percentage of savings than they project – the perfect example of another outstanding business fundamental; “Always Under-Promise and Over-Deliver”.

Metrilogics’ sweet spot is a mid-size company with 20-25 employees, conducting an 8 week engagement, finding $100,000 in bottom-line savings (though they regularly work with multi-billion dollar organizations). In a recent project, Lance is deservedly proud to report that in a 9 week engagement, they projected (and GURANTEED) $125,000 in savings. The result? $168,000 in savings – $43,000 and 34% higher than projected!

Lance and his team has never had to pay out on a guarantee. Rather, they have ALWAYS over-delivered. Bravo!

About Metrilogics

According to Metrilogics’ website and LinkedIn profile; “Metrilogics helps management teams achieve dramatic operational savings quickly. Through the Metrilogics process improvement approach, companies have achieved significant bottom-line cost savings, ranging from hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars per year — the larger the organization, the greater the savings!” You may contact Lance by phone: 317-441-6844 or email: Lance @ Metrilogics.com (no spaces).

What guarantee can your company offer? Tell us about it or offer a link.

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For more resources, see our Library topics Marketing and Social Networking.

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ABOUT Lisa M. Chapman:

Ms. Chapman’s new book, How to Make Money Online With Social Media: A Step-by-Step Guide for Entrepreneurs will be available very soon. With offices in Nashville Tennessee, but working virtually with international clients, Lisa M. Chapman serves her clients as a business and marketing coach, business planning consultant and social media consultant. As a Founder of iBrand Masters, a social media consulting firm, Lisa Chapman helps clients to establish and enhance their online brand, attract their target market, engage them in meaningful social media conversations, and convert online traffic into revenues. Email: Lisa @ LisaChapman.com

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Capital Campaigns #12: Soliciting the Lowest-Rated Prospects

a-businesswoman-on-call-with-a-potential-prospect

The “Lowest-Rated” prospects are those who are left after the (“higher-rated”) prospects from all the other Divisions have been assigned; and, considering that condition, this segment of your constituency should not be solicited until all of the “higher-rated” prospects have been solicited. As noted, these are the prospects for whom you have no idea of the likely amount of their commitments.

In one small community, all of the newspapers serving that area carried stories about the need for the Campaign. Each story included a pledge form the reader could cut out, fill out and send to a specific Community Gifts Campaign address.

This is a don’t-hold-your-breath-waiting-for-the-commitments-to-roll-in situation, but it is good public relations, good marketing and it does give “everyone” a chance to be part of helping their community.

In another small community, the Chair of the Community Gifts Division, with others helping, recruited 50-60 volunteers (who first made their own gifts/pledges) to go door-to-door in their neighborhoods. We used the local high school auditorium and conducted a training session to educate them about all aspects of the Project the Campaign will fund. We suggested wording they might use to “Ask” for the gift, provided blank pledge cards for their use, described how the pledge cards should be filled out, and answered everybody’s questions.

The Division Chair worked with a large number of Co-Chairs and Captains to make sure that there was someone to knock on every door, and to be sure that there’d be no duplication of effort.

In one community, the banks comprised a separate Division that was solicited by a Chair and members of a committee representing each of the banks. When it was time to take the Campaign to the Community, all of the banks included a small Campaign brochure and a pledge card in the mailings of their monthly statements to their customers.

For a national/statewide organization, face-to-face solicitation is impractical/unlikely, and the constituents of this Membership Gifts Division can be solicited by mail and/or telephone – a combination of both would be best. (Watch for my posting on Mass-Solicitation.)

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Have a comment or a question about starting or expanding your basic fundraising program, your major gifts fundraising program or a capital campaign? Email me at AskHank@Major-Capital-Giving.com. With over 30 years of counseling in major gifts, capital campaigns, bequest programs and the planning studies to precede these three, we’ll likely be able to answer your questions.

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Q is for Quiet

Blond woman making a shhh gesture with her hand on her lips

I remember being in college with the assignment to be alone and quiet for 25 minutes. We were to do this and report back our experience. One of my friends, a major extrovert, could not do it. She said after 5 minutes, she was done! I remember completing the project, but wondered about its value and purpose. Little did I know that in order to tap into our spirit, the heart of who we are, we need to be quiet to listen within.

The Wisdom

Stephen Covey, best-selling author of The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, once said that we live three lives – our public life, our private life and our deep inner life. Our public life is the life everyone sees and knows on the outside. This is what most of us would describe as our work – engineers, teachers or community activists, etc… Then the second life we live is our private lives, the life we have at home. This is what our family or close friends experience who we are at home. We might be pursuing a hobby or acting another way that the majority of people don’t see from an outside perspective. Then the third life we live is our deep, inner lives. It’s our spirit, who we are from the inside. This place holds our greatest desires and wishes for our lives. It is a secret place that very few of us share with others. And the way to access and nurture this deep inner life is by being quiet.

The Whitespaces

Now, almost 20 years after my first encounter with silence, I love the quiet. In fact it is so quiet right now as I write this, all I hear is the tapping of the keyboard. The silence allows me to channel the wisdom from within to the wisdom I want to share without. So many times this channel is blocked or clogged with the noise of life. Great musicians say that their music is created between the notes, in the white spaces. It is these white spaces, the silent notes of their music, that bring life to the notes. Great inventors share a similar thought through the importance of incubating ideas. To incubate an idea is to detach from our previous conscious thinking, allowing our subconscious mind to come alive. When we are able to tap into our inner wisdom, our spirit soars. It is known that Albert Einstein, considered one of the most knowledgeable and greatest thinkers, spent endless hours in quiet – just thinking and imagining. These quiet moments of his life are when he was known to have manifested the greatest potential within him. It is also said that Einstein wanted to know how to think like God. So in order to do that, he needed to be quiet to hear God sharing His wisdom.

The Whisper

One of my favorite phrases is by Oprah who said that we need to catch God on the whisper. Hearing the whisper is about being quiet to hear the wisdom that our greater self and the higher power has for us. Many times I have used this philosophy and catch these messages when they come as a whisper. It was a whisper encouraging me to write my first book. Other times I have not listened and I’ve missed out on some good opportunities or learned some hard lessons. Yet when we don’t have those white spaces in our lives, we won’t have the space or capacity to find out what these silent messages are that come to us in the form of a whisper.

Martin Luther King would usually spend an hour each morning in prayer and meditation to get his day centered and on track. When the day would be extremely busy, while most of us would then skip this time to get a jump start on our busy day, he would spend not just one hour but two hours in quiet!!! Can you believe that? I’m always reminded of his approach when I try to fit as much in as possible. When I go without the quiet time, I don’t hear the whispers for my life. Also the music notes of my deep, inner life then don’t have the white spaces it needs to make the music I want to sing in my heart. How about you?

p.s. Because I’ve been quiet, this is probably one of the fastest and easiest blog entries that I’ve written so far. I didn’t really have to think and make it happen, it just came pouring out of me and my deep, inner life.

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For more resources, see our Library topic Spirituality in the Workplace.

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Janae Bower is an inspirational speaker, award-winning author and training consultant. She founded Finding IT, a company that specializes in personal and professional development getting to the heart of what matters most. She started Project GratOtude, a movement to increase gratitude in people’s lives.
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Leadership Competencies and Change, Part 2

The word "Leadership" written on a blackboard

As mentioned in my last blog entry, there is a growing need – and interest — for leaders to know how to lead change in their respective organizations. There is significant outcome data that demonstrates a strong correlation between the skills and knowledge of the individuals responsible for leading change and the actual success of organizational change initiatives. This again begs the question: What leadership behaviors or competencies are most strongly associated with effectively leading or overseeing change initiatives?

I stated in my last entry that there are six leadership competency areas that, in my opinion, distinctly enhance the ability of a leader to successfully coordinate and drive organizational change. Refer to my blog entry from November 24th for descriptions of the first three: Systems Thinking, Strategic Savvy, and Organizational Agility. In this entry I will introduce the second three: Capacity Building, Creative Communication, and Grit. Please know that the names for these competencies are ones that were arbitrarily assigned by me. They are definitely in use elsewhere to explain qualities quite different than those found here.

And again, as stated in my last blog, it is important to know that these competencies are intended to correspond most directly with mid-level leaders operating in medium to large organizations. This is based on the assumption that these leaders are the ones most often assigned direct responsibility for overseeing or leading change initiatives in organizations of this size.

Capacity Building

This is essentially the wherewithal to develop the overall capacity of change team members, key sponsors, and other relevant stakeholders, to effectively embrace and drive organizational change processes. In addition, this competency area is directly associated with a leader’s effectiveness at securing the resources and support that is necessary for a specific change initiative to succeed. Thus, the leader is both equipping and providing the requisite “equipment”.

Creative Communication

This competency area is marked by the skilled use of communication strategies and interpersonal exchanges to facilitate change initiatives. The leader has an understanding of the types of communication to use at different junctures in the change process. He or she also demonstrates a variety of advanced and well honed communication skills of his or her own, including verbal, face-to-face, group presentation, non-verbal, written, electronic, and symbolic.

Grit

This competency area is evidence by a willingness to personally commit to the big picture of an organizational initiative, even at the risk of sacrificing success on short-term goals. This is a common dilemma for leaders responsible for change in an organization – and this competency speaks both to the willingness to make tough decisions and the ability to recognize which decisions are going to have the greatest impact on the success and sustainability of a change initiative.

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Steve Wolinski provides leadership development, organizational change and talent management services to numerous public, private and non-profit organizations. Website, Email.