Free Advice - IMPACT Consulting

How social technologies are extending the organization

2012-05-10T18:50:13+00:00

One of the hot topics of conversation in business these days is how to effectively use social media for connecting with prospects and referral sources, and for promoting our work. We have all heard about companies leveraging social media as a tool to extend their networks, but how?

This article in McKinsey Quarterly, written by Jacques Bughin, Angela Hung Byers, and Michael Chui, deals with the benefits of planned and targeted enterprise-wide use of social media, we at IMPACT think it is extremely useful to start thinking about getting strategic about the social media game!

Three tips to improve your listening skills

2012-05-09T14:47:00+00:00

Harvey Schachter's articl e in the Globe and Mail gives three great tips to improve your listening skills.

As coaches, we cannot emphasize enough how important it is to listen, at different levels, to what is said and what is not said. This listening is the key to asking powerful questions- which is the best way to develop people, and to develop business.

Take a minute to give this a read, and think about how you can show others you're listening.

Five Simple Things

2012-05-08T13:12:42+00:00

From profitguide.com, Greig Clark shares his discovery: there are five fundamentals of running a successful business, and they live where the rubber meets the road. None of them are earth-shattering, but they can be tricky to apply.

What do you get when you spend 40 years in and around entrepreneurship? In my case, 10 black, three-ring binders are an important part of the answer.

Let me explain. I lived my first 20 years of self-employment as an entrepreneur, building College Pro Painters. I spent the next 15 as a venture capitalist, with a few of those years at the helm of Arxx Building Products, one of the investments in our VC fund. Since stepping down as CEO of Arxx five years ago, I’ve worked as (or, at least, evolved into) a “trusted advisor” to entrepreneurial businesses. And for each of the companies I’ve worked with, I’ve compiled a synopsis of each business in a black, three-ring binder.

I recently leafed through those binders in search of the best business lessons of my past 40 years. My discovery: there are five fundamentals of running a successful business, and they live where the rubber meets the road. None of them are earth-shattering, but they can be tricky to apply.

1. Focus, focus, focus

It’s easy to say, yet so hard to do. I recently read a book on the Facebook story, and this principle leaps out above all else. Facebook placed relentless focus on building a user base, campus by campus, and continually making the program friendlier. As wild as I feel for saying this, Mark Zuckerberg was right not to put short-term focus on raising revenue.

To put the importance of focus into greater relief, consider Paul Martin: a superb finance minister but a weak prime minister. In the former role, Martin focused like a laser beam on reducing the deficit and building surpluses. As prime minister, he dared not disappoint any people, so he ended up disappointing most people.

A CEO I’ve known for a long time told me that his biggest job is to be Dr. No. Only by turning things down does he let people know what really is important.

My brother Paul, a longtime entrepreneur who is now a consultant in Vancouver, tells me that the biggest problem he sees in business is that people start many things but finish few. “I’ll get to that next week,” they say. Next week never comes. His advice? “Complete something.”

2. Time management

It’s the kissing cousin of #1. We have two finite resources in any business: time and money. We budget the heck out of money. Time is even scarcer, but we treat it more shabbily.

How a CEO spends his or her time is the biggest signal to staff of what is really important to the company. A good technique for aligning your actions with your priorities is colour-coding your time planner with those priorities in mind. One of the CEOs I work with, Jeremy Behar of Cirrus Consulting Group in Toronto, knows good people are the key to the growth of his business. So, he shades hours in his day planner green to denote the time he will spend recruiting people or developing his existing employees. That way the task stands out visually to him.

Another trick is to be proactive, applying Steven Covey’s “put the big rocks in first” principle. Go through your calendar months ahead and mark some “green space” in every week to block off time to tackle your most important priority.

3. Horses for courses

Or, as Jim Collins wrote in Good to Great: “Get the right people in the right seats on the bus.” But how can you tell when you have the “right people?” It’s never easy. My first boss, Scott MacDiarmid at General Foods, used to tell me the thing he liked about me was that when he asked me for “A,” he got A or A-plus, and on time; he never got a B or C with an explanation. In business, table stakes is understanding what is asked for and delivering it. Greatness is taking it one step beyond that, being proactive and what I call a “life force” in the business. Someone who is an “energy multiplier,” not a drain. It is so great for entrepreneurs when they feel that they are “not alone” in trying to grow the business or push the envelope.

On the other hand, when the person is not right, you will know. But, like most entrepreneurs, you might be “slow to fire.” Don’t be.

4. Clarify roles

This is all about getting the right seats on the bus. Everyone needs to know what they, and they alone, are responsible for. The “one throat to choke” philosophy is still a good one, although perhaps a bit graphic. At Cirrus, a little box appears under each person’s name on the org chart, containing that person’s top three deliverables and metrics. This allows strategies and plans to be quickly checked against principles #1 and #2: do the tasks reflect the focus of the business, who will perform those tasks and how will anyone know those tasks are being performed?

5. Measure, measure, measure

Make those top three deliverables the key performance indicators for each manager. Put them on a one-page “dashboard” and review it regularly and relentlessly. An example is the weekly RAG (results at a glance) at College Pro, which remains that company’s most read report. When my stepson Jon was a star manager there, he used to check the RAG every day to compare his performance to his targets and that of his peers. When you get the numbers right, the numbers don’t lie—and everyone knows it. Good people will self-manage to make their numbers.

Are these principles simple? Yes. Easy to stick to? Maybe not. Tack this page on your wall, and consult it frequently. If you can’t follow this diet, find a coach or advisor who can help you. It works.

About PROFIT

In nearly 30 years of serving Canada's entrepreneurial business community, PROFIT has earned a position of prominence with growth companies, the entrepreneurs who run them and the businesses eager to serve them. Through its range of products and services, PROFIT delivers practical growth strategies, case studies and access to peer groups that help entrepreneurial companies get bigger and better… fast.

PROFIT magazine: Published six times per year and boasting circulation of 101,000 and readership of 373,000, PROFIT delivers the highest composition of business decision-makers and managers / owner / professionals amongst all PMB measured English-language magazines in Canada

PROFITguide.com: PROFIT powers the Entrepreneur channel of Canadian Business Online

PROFIT e-Newsletters: Delivering a targeted audience of growth-focused entrepreneurs: PROFIT-Xtra: 18,000 Canadians who want to grow their businesses

PROFIT Events: Exclusive CEO-only events for PROFIT communities, which include members of the PROFIT 100: Canada's Fastest-Growing Companies, PROFIT HOT 50: Canada's Emerging Growth Companies and PROFIT W100: Canada's Top Women Entrepreneurs

PROFIT Custom Publishing: Customized content targeting entrepreneurs with distribution opportunities through PROFIT or related Rogers Publishing vehicles

Growing Your Book Of Business- Multiplying Scales

2012-05-07T11:59:36+00:00

Accounting partners know how to multiply and divide. Unfortunately, they don’t always know what choice to make when it comes to growing their book of business. Seth Godin’s simple example shows the clear choice. I will borrow his language and his logic and tailor my example to the professional services firm.

Let’s say you have a list of 30 prospects (made up of current clients and other potentials with whom you haven’t worked yet but would like to). You have a choice to make.

1) You can create stories and options and benefits that naturally spread from this group to people they know, and your core group can multiply with 30 growing to 60 and then 600 (Some partners succeed in building a name for themselves by becoming a subject matter expert and becoming known through speaking engagements, writing etc. It takes some great stories, options and benefits to make this work).

2) You can put the original group through a sales funnel, weed out the ones that don’t fit your “ideal client” type and monetize the rest. A 30% conversion rate means you just turned 30 prospects into 9 new engagements.

Multiplying scales. Dividing helps you make this quarter’s numbers (and keep your equity partner status!). We know you are great at math but let us know if you need some coaching help on this equation.

What’s Your Business Development Dent?

2012-05-01T13:10:39+00:00

What’s Your Business Development Dent?

Seth Godin (known for his knack at getting to the heart of the matter) just sent out a two line post called Your Dent. He asks “Are you making a dent in the universe?” and then hints: “lots of random pokes in many different spots are unlikely to leave much of an impact”. And for a final kick, he adds “hiding out is surely not going to work at all”.

In business development coaching, a few of the partners I coach initially prefer to hide out and magically think enough business will keep coming. It might. Or it might not. A few fall into the random poking category. They can at least say they have activity. They will likely generate some modest results. Finally there are a few partners who strategize, focus and approach business development with discipline and an attitude of generosity and authenticity. They are the ones that make the dent. And because they approach their entire life this way, you can bet their dent is much bigger than the business bottom-line.

Selling to people who haven’t bought yet

2012-04-20T15:28:55+00:00

This is a great little post from Guru Marketer Seth Godin on how you can avoid the “better-than-them pitch” and make it easy for prospects to make a new decision (to retain you!).

Selling to people who haven't bought yet

The portion of the population that haven't bought from you or your competition yet is not waiting for a better mousetrap.

They're not busy considering a, b and c and then waiting for d.

No, they're not in the market. They don't believe that they have a problem that's worth the time and money they think it's going to take to solve it.

As a result, smart marketers don't market to this audience by saying, "hey, ours is better than theirs!"

If this group thought that they had a solvable problem, the would have solved it already.

No, they won't respond to a better-than-them pitch. Instead, they're much more likely to respond to a new statement of their problem and a new statement of the solution. Don't ask them to announce that they were wrong when they decided that they didn't need a tablet, a survival kit or an anti-impotence drug. Instead, make it easy for them to make a new decision based on new information.

How to Keep Your Cool During a Performance Review

2012-04-18T13:41:06+00:00

For the feedback providers among us, there is ample available advice on how best to proffer messages and to ensure their effective delivery. However, there's far less guidance to help us when we are on the receiving end of these "gifts" (after all, aren't we always hearing how feedback is a gift?).

The purpose of this post is to start a conversation among us, to consider how best to take in the feedback messages we receive — not just at this time of year, but all the time.

http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2012/01/how_to_receive_feedback.html?cm_mmc=email-_-newsletter-_-management_tip-_-tip041812&referral=00203&utm_source=newsletter_management_tip&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=tip041812Written by: ROBERT M. GALFORD

Written by: Robert Galford

Managing Partner of the Center for Leading Organizations, is a Leadership Fellow in Executive Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Design

Flip Manifesto

2012-04-13T15:53:06+00:00

Get rid of your vacation policy. Stop tying compensation to performance. Pay more to your people than the market demands. Drop the self affirmations and doubt yourself instead. Forget about annual performance reviews. And for goodness sake, pay more attention to your “To Don’t” list than your “To Do” list. Daniel Pink’s recently released Flip Manifesto (available gratis here) offers 16 pieces of advice that run counter to what you might have heard elsewhere and will certainly contradict how your own firm/ company is set up. This is precisely why it is worth the 30-45 minutes it will take you to read it. I liked it so much I have printed it out and highlighted it for a VP (R&D) I am coaching right now. I have chosen to use the paper and ink (85 whole pages worth) because I know he will never get to it if I send him the electronic version and I believe it is something he needs to read right now.

How about you? Is it time to flip some of your long held beliefs?

For more Daniel Pink, read his Pink Blog.

Introverts Run the World—- Quietly

2012-04-10T18:56:38+00:00

http://www.cnn.com/2012/03/18/opinion/cain-introverts-power/index.html?hpt=hp_t2

Susan Cain is the author of "Quiet: The power of introverts in a world that can't stop talking." A writer who formerly practiced corporate law and worked as a negotiations consultant, Cain spoke at the TED2012 conference in Long Beach, California. TED is a nonprofit organization dedicated to "Ideas worth spreading," which it makes available through talks posted on its website. Follow @susancain on Twitter.

Impact Coach Wendi Campbell Writes for CICA: Get the Most Out of Your Day

2012-04-03T12:57:48+00:00

http://www.casource.com/memberGlobal/initViewArticleAction.do?id=107244

Wendi Campbell's fantastic advice was featured in this month's CA Source Newsletter. See the link above or read her article below!

Get the Most Out of Your Day

It’s easy to say there isn’t enough time in the day to get everything done, but the truth is that most of us just aren’t using our time efficiently. The first secret to time management is to take a look at the big picture and consider what will matter most to you five years from now. By focusing on what really matters, you take control of the clock and begin to manage your time for better results.

One of my clients is a senior manager who wants to make partner at his firm. When he got to the office each morning, he looked at his calendar and saw a sea of meetings — some of them double-booked. Then he spent his few open hours answering questions and coaching members of his team. Since he focused most of his time on internal tasks he did not have enough time to reach out to his clients and network with contacts.

Schedule your objectives first

With e-calendars and workflow tools, it’s easy to let others muddle with your daily agenda. My client realized he needed to take control of his time— decide what he wanted to excel at and allocate his time accordingly. Just as financial planners say that the way to save money is to “pay yourself first,” the way to manage time is to “schedule your objectives first.”

Frame your to-do’s as specific goals

When blocking time in your calendar, be sure to schedule specific objectives and connect the dots with your to-do list. Written to-do lists are an easy way to track and prioritize work.

Written to-do’s should have specific goals. For example, instead of, “Call Marlene at Crystametrics”, write “Call Marlene to set up a meeting about that new project.” Using this strategy, many of my clients find they have more focus, decreased stress, and—as they cross things off their lists—more satisfaction.

Know your priorities

In Stephen Covey’s book First Things First, he offers a number of time management strategies, including how to prioritize your work by grouping it into four categories:

- Urgent and important items like client phone calls and staff retention emergencies. Deal with these things as soon as they crop up.

- Not urgent but important things like planning, business development, and technical reading. These items impact your achievement most, so spend the bulk of your time here.

- Urgent but not important items like internal meetings and staff distractions. Try to spend as little time here as possible.

- Not urgent and not important items like email shuffling and trivial work. Don’t waste any time with them.

Defend your schedule

Once my client had prioritized and scheduled his objectives, he needed to defend the time, so he told his team about his focus on building new business; explained his time strategy and asked them to help him stick to it; limited his open-door policy by setting specific times so his team would know when his door was actually open; and started checking his email and voice messages only once an hour. Sometimes he’d eliminate distractions by working in an empty boardroom instead of his usual workspace.

With these strategies, my client was able to take full control over his time and get the most out of his day.

How organized are you? Take this test at mindtools.com and find out:

http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newHTE_88.htm

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Wendi Campbell is a Chartered Accountant and an executive coach with Impact Consulting Inc. Her coaching specializations are personal effectiveness, execution and implementation and engagement practice management skills. Impact Consulting Inc. provides customized hands-on coaching and assessment services and has coaches located across Canada. www.impactconsultinginc.com