Ride Out

Big companies tend to breed fear into others. If they are large and are perceived to have big market presence, its easy to feel intimidated by their sheer size. You'll hear this from folks in the boardroom all the time: "well, it is Hugo Co. - we better not step on their toes" | "guess who we just did a big project for".

Managers of big corporations tend to act like they have these enormous armies behind them giving them power, dominion, and demanding respect. You'll often see folks in this position of power talk down to other companies. Or, on the flip side, you'll see managers afraid of being talked-down to hold their tongues when they would normally speak up. Scope is ignored, people jump at the slightest wimper from the big time co., and I would argue the results are many times thwarted and watered-down because of this tension between the shark and the minnow.

It reminds me of a scene from Braveheart when the English and Scottish are first facing each other for battle. The Scottish nobles see the large, so-called invincible British army, and considering their own small unrefined troupe, are ready to call a truce. Then Wallace rides in and changes the equation. He picks a fight. And the Scottish win.

When you put everything else aside, any project or business relationship really just boils down to two people working together. We need to forget about the size of the army behind. Stop being afraid to ride out. Don't kiss ass, don't shrink back, and if you're on the other side, don't come in with an inflated view of yourself. Relate, be yourself, and let your personality show.

Bottom line - stop worrying about the army and focus on the individual.

For related entries, check out previous blogs: Let Your Personality Show & Personality Matters.

Direct is Key

We've all had someone try and tell us something funny they saw on the Office or 30 Rock. Its almost never that funny in the retelling. Somethings you just have to hear and see yourself.

Business communication is not too dissimilar. Just like in-person communication is preferred to phone, and phone communication is preferred to email, communicating directly with a client is to be preferred over communicating via a third party.

It doesn't matter how good of notes someone takes, hearing it directly from the speaker can never be replaced by someone trying to re-communicate the facts. Nuance, tone, style, relationship - there is depth to communication that is only understood by hearing it directly from the source. Good listeners ask questions, and good questions can elicit right responses that provide the right solutions. If someone is merely acting as a 3rd party and just an intermediary of information, they are less likely to even ask questions, let alone get the right info.

People hate this mentality. The Business model of the 20th century said, "Be big, be an expert at a lot of things, and tell everyone you can do it all. Then, at the end of the day, the client will say - look who did it ALL!". Problem is, no one believes this anymore.

Be real, be honest, and if someone else is doing the work as a sub, let that fact be known. Even better, let the sub be a part of communication with the end-client so that they can get the real nitty-gritty details - the kind of details that take a project from acceptable to unbelievably good.

And while you're at it, enforce this with the 3rd parties that may be acting as your own intermediaries.

Prioritizing...really

Everyone says prioritize..."We've got to keep our priorities straight.", "What's our number one objective as a company?", "You're not juggling your responsibilities effectively.". What specifically do they mean?

I find that managers, including myself, struggle to define what we mean by what is really a pretty cliche biz term. We may have an innate ability to part through a sea of responsibilities to determine what is most important, and even more likely, we may find it easy to define priorities because we determine what's a priority for those around us. But how do we actually train someone else to prioritize competing responsibilities?

I want to communicate this effectively to someone else in a better manner than just - that's not a priority, but this is. Studying this further, I came up with a few questions that helped me put structure around the prioritizing cloud:

1. What has an actual delegated deadline?
   Meaning, did someone else determine a task had a specific deadline (date/time) vs did I just tell myself a task had to be done by a specific date or time? The actual deadline should always trump the internal deadline.
   
   
2. What is the most essential for our company?
   Meaning, what is actually turning good profits? Whatever project or task is producing revenue or has the potential to produce revenue for our company should be the next highest priority.
   
   
3. What is Relationship-building?
   Meaning, what is providing a service to our clients that is building our good name in their eyes vs completing internal projects or work?
   

This is less than an exact science, so these do have to be re-shuffled. You obviously don't want to only put deadline projects and profit-generators in the front seat every time, or you'll become a selfish, hard-edged company no one wants to work with (nor should they). But in an effort to begin the conversation of what is meant by prioritizing, I found this a helpful matrix.

Use this as a beginning point as you're working with those around you to determine how to prioritize your own work internally. This is definitely an evolving art - so realize that these are questions you'll have to tackle every day and probably redefine multiple times.

If you're not having these conversations, you're probably not prioritizing as a team. So take a stab at it and see what happens...