Communication Resources Northwest

Project Managers and Powerful Presentations: The "Secret Ingredient" in Presentation Success

2012-01-30T10:18:00.000-08:00

Great project managers define issues, remove barriers to performance, resolve resource issues, and empower team members to do their best work. Not coincidentally, these very skills that make some project managers exceptional at managing projects, clients, and teams can be brought to bear in the development and implementation of winning short-list interviews.

I recently coached a presentation team with 12 presenters in a 25 minute presentation. While certainly larger than an ideal number of presenters, this presentation was flawless, with detailed and compelling technical content, carefully choreographed primary speakers, lean-ins, and transitions. No ego took over the preparation and team members worked together seamlessly to achieve an incredibly interesting, technically rich, and well-coordinated performance. What was particularly remarkable about this team is that the entire presentation was conceived and implemented within a 48-hour period after the notice from the client about interview specifications.

While I’d like to say this presentation came together because of strong coaching, I’m humble enough to recognize the value of incredible leadership from the senior project manager as a catalyst for team excellence. As a coach, being able to partner with the project manager enabled more creativity, the ability to help individual team members, and a singular focus on crafting the right message for this client and this project.

This project manager held himself to the highest standard of performance. While he was certainly stressed by the demands of the situation, he put the needs of the team first, while making sure his parts of the presentation were well executed in a timely fashion. This enabled both of us to manage the presentation preparation like a project, moving quickly through initiating and planning activities to executing the interview, monitoring team performance, and closing out our “project” with an exceptional interview. Treating the presentation like a project enabled the team to work through a large volume of tasks in a very short period of time. Not only did they develop and rehearse a solid prepared interview, but they also responded to some questions in written form, developed and rehearsed oral answers to other questions, and prepared for impromptu questions from the owner. I am confident that without a streamlined approach to the process and the leadership of our project manager, the team would not have been able to perform so brilliantly in such a short period of time.

There are two important takeaways from this experience: First, complex presentations can and should be managed like projects, and second, complex presentations require a strong partnership between project manager and presentation coach.

From a project management perspective, our project manager brought his team together before the short-list, anticipating an interview and getting the team ready for future success. By initiating the process early and being able to start presentation planning, he reduced future stress on the team and enabled a focus on the complexity of client requests once the short-list was announced and the specifications articulated. Project execution was divided into phases. As a coach, because the team was so well managed, I was able to move the team quickly through the phases of presentation development: alignment, strategy, choreography, and rehearsal. We were able to significantly reduce the amount of time required in each phase, essentially fast-tracking the project in order to deliver the highest quality presentation in a very short overall project duration. In fact, we were able to collapse strategy, choreography, and rehearsal, enabling the team to practice movement and flow in the presentation as they continued to develop content. And, even the normal VE of the interview content (cutting good material to get the presentation completed on time) wasn’t as painful as it usually is; team members gave up things they wanted to say for the greater good of the presentation with no complaints and no late team member drama.

The lesson learned for me as a coach is to lean on strong project managers to lead their teams. This enables me as the coach to develop and lead a strong presentation. When the project manager leads his team in the presentation preparation, I can focus on the message and the choreography. For this team, our senior project manager was the glue that held the large team together, enabling highly technical professionals to deliver their best performances. Agreeing with him on the structure of the coaching and the clear milestones of the presentation preparation process freed me to help individual speakers, monitor messaging from a mock-client perspective, and ensure all of the details were handled before the team left for the interview. In fact, the team was so well managed that we finished rehearsing early, enabling team members to relax for an hour before they left for the actual interview. In 25 years, this has unfortunately been a rare occurrence and reminds me how valuable managing “float” in my coaching schedule can be.

Working with a strong project manager took some getting used to. The combination of two strong personalities can be challenging in the best of times and even more so under an almost impossible schedule. But, it worked – and I’ve come away from this experience humbled and grateful, reminding myself of the value of listening to and collaborating with other smart professionals and grateful for the opportunity to learn from such an exceptional manager in a truly impressive interview performance.

In the future, I’m looking to work with project managers as partners in the presentation process and I’m committed to partnering with them as we lead teams to successful interviews. Unfortunately, however, this experience is not the norm. Too often, project managers are working on multiple responsibilities and are only too happy to delegate the presentation to a marketing or coaching resource. While happy to step in, I’m reminded of the value of partnership: this particular project manager believed so strongly in his team and in the importance of this pursuit that nothing else he was doing took precedence over his team’s success. And, the team felt it and delivered to his highest expectations. I suspect each of his teams give him this level of performance because, quite simply, he expects it of himself and inspires it in others. In the future, I’m going to ask for this level of dedication of all project managers with whom I work.

This experience has given me a renewed interest in using my own knowledge as a project manager to continue to streamline the coaching process so we can deliver better interviews – faster. That’s been the crux of my coaching efforts at Communication Resources and it’s always nice to see that it works – with the help of strong project managers and dedicated teams.

Short-list interviews are themselves projects that require strong project plans, milestone schedules, change management, focus on stakeholder needs and interests, and most of all, strong leadership. We won’t hear for a bit if this particular team won or lost in the final interview. But, even without the verdict, to my project manager on this pursuit, thank you for partnering with me and reminding me of the power of focused leadership and unwavering commitment to the success of your team.

Three Resolutions Your Organization Can't Afford to Miss

2012-01-19T13:49:00.000-08:00

I’ve taken a break from writing over the holidays to catch up on projects (and bake lots of pies) – and it’s been restful. The down time has enabled me to start the New Year with fresh ideas and energy. This naturally makes me think of how we manage our time and energy in business development and marketing with the thought that perhaps sometimes taking a break to review, reassess, and re-energize might be a wise investment for many firms.

The tendency for many of us in the New Year is to frantically try to catch up from the past year and start the New Year with a frenzy of activity. While sometimes project commitments make this a necessity, spending time in January to determine direction for the coming year would be a wise investment for all of us. And, instead of broad resolutions, we should consider each of the core areas of our business and determine both reasonable and stretch goals for the coming year.

I’d like to propose three specific resolutions to guide our first quarter planning – ones that I’m implementing in-house and recommending to my clients.

Make Better Go/No Go Decisions. As I’ve found in the past couple of months, sometimes not writing is the best choice. This is not only because I’ve enjoyed the self-imposed break from the blog, but also because of three recent projects on which we’ve been asked to consult in which teams worked hard to win projects they probably shouldn’t have pursued in the first place. These firms spent thousands on beautiful proposals that had little impact on the final selection because the firms in question weren’t positioned to either make the short-list or achieve the win.

We’ve all been “sucked in” to the RFP response for projects that sound great on paper and for which we know our firms/teams could succeed. Even though most of us know that the likelihood of selection without relationship and reputation is extremely low, we spend thousands of dollars chasing seductive projects. Quite simply, in this market, firms can’t afford the luxury of expensive proposals – no matter how well written or designed – for projects we have little chance of winning.

Making the No Go decision is extremely difficult in the moment. As a result, now is the time, before the next sexy RFP, to develop a clear, quantifiable Go/No Go metric that requires rigor in the analysis and accountability for the decision. Numerous samples exist in the industry – start with a standard template and adapt/tailor it to your business and client type.

One good question I ask my clients is “If it were your checkbook from which we had to write the check to pay for this pursuit, would you still pursue this project?” In this way, making the Go decision becomes personal – and people start thinking about accountability for their decisions. This doesn’t mean our firms should be scared to make Go decisions, but that we should be more thoughtful in the process, making sure we have done the pre-sell work necessary to increase the likelihood of a win.

Develop a robust QA/QC program. In most of the RFPs I’ve reviewed in the past six months, clients are asking for proof of a QA/QC program. As a result, the leadership of forward-thinking firms will spend some time this quarter developing and documenting a robust program, then implementing it in their organizations. And, the Marketing/BD staffs of these leading firms will spend time developing the collateral materials we’ll need for RFP responses and short-list interviews.

Most firms have a QA/QC program, but I’ve found that few of my clients have well-documented programs that can be shown to a client. While documented programs were once only required of larger firms, even moderate-sized and small firms are now being asked to produce QA/QC plans for client review. Not only is having such a program good business, but our clients are now demanding that we do so and that we be able to talk about these plans in the marketing process.

Over the years, I’ve read a lot of proposal sections and heard numerous presentations on quality. In each, I typically hear about three step programs, usually involving some level of peer review, a dedicated quality committee (usually labeled with a creative acronym), and checkpoints throughout a proposed project schedule. In each, I’ve found little competitive value – and, in fact – I’ve found little evidence that the firms in question have really addressed quality in the way our clients need us to.

It’s time for a different dialog about QA/QC, and it’s time to rethink how we present and train these programs. In the 2012 version of a company’s QA/QC program, I’d like to see clear flow diagrams that illustrate how QA staff are integrated into the design and/or preconstruction process, tasked not with checking work, but with resolving issues before they become problems. For dedicated quality committees made up of experienced principles, we need clarity on what these professionals do and how they are integrated into the team beyond occupying a northern space on the organization chart.

And, because of their clear link to final product quality, there needs to be sections in quality plans devoted to relationship/ communication management in addition to the sections on review process. Project debriefs clearly show that the nature and frequency of team/client communication prevents quality problems, results in increased clarity of expectations, and helps resolve issues. As a result, our quality plans need to address communication in very specific, planned, and measurable ways – including timelines, checklists, agendas, and metrics.

Invest in Strategic Training and Development. In the past several years, the budget item that’s taken the most significant hit for both the public and the private sector is Training. While eliminating waste and cutting non-essential programs are certainly a good idea, cutting all training for staff is fundamentally a bad one. Training is essential not only for staff growth, but essential to staff retention. Well-trained staff members respond to challenges with greater success and feel less work-related stress as they know their company is willing to invest in their future.

Three essential programs that should be brought back across the industry include performance management, customer service, and the suite of communication skills essential to business success (interpersonal communication, writing, presentations).

A firm’s employees are its most important, and most expensive, asset. Having supervisors who understand both their responsibilities and opportunities for effective performance management is essential to any organization. Effective performance management training covers the full gamut of supervisory responsibilities, beyond performance appraisal, to include performance planning, resolving problems, feedback, coaching and mentoring, and the requisite legal issues.

Without customers, firms cease to exist. Unfortunately and paradoxically in this economy, the leadership of many firms forgot the link between employees and customers. Customer service is not just important to firm leadership; rank and file employees have far more day-to-day contact with customers and as a result, need training in how to anticipate, resolve, and manage customer issues across a range of situations.

Finally, across our businesses, we live or die by communication. Effective interpersonal skills drive quality, project management, and client relationships. Having staff with strong writing skills not only improves our firms’ documents, but makes the whole production process much easier, enabling us to spend more time in creative pursuits vs. rewriting and editing. And, I’ll say it again, “Losing in the presentation is the most expensive place to lose.” Training staff in communication skills pays off across the marketing and the management lifecycle and is a wise investment overall.

So, those are my three resolutions – proposed to all of us for 2012. For my own firm, I’m not only making resolutions, but I’m scheduling time to talk about them, creating work breakdowns to implement them, and creating metrics to evaluate our performance on

Election Day Thoughts on Communicative Branding

2011-11-09T11:06:00.000-08:00

Political discourse has a level of intensity and immediacy that’s compelling on multiple levels. As a communication consultant, I tune in to all the debates – regardless of political affiliation. I listen to political ads until I can’t stand another. And, I really do read most of what candidates and special interests send to me. Some I find informative, others strike me as alternately amusing and disturbing.

I tend to get philosophical on Election Day as I mail my ballot. This year, I’m thinking about leadership and the far-reaching implications of the actions of leaders and how, through their words and actions, they communicatively “brand” their candidacy and/or organization. For example, many of us are watching one potential candidate to see whether his response to allegations of past impropriety satisfies potential voters or ends his political aspirations. And, from an organizational standpoint, we are seeing a cross-generational explosion of anger at organizational leaders who don’t stand for the stated values of their organizations.

So, does a politician or an organizational leader have a responsibility to act consistently to the highest values of his/her organization at all times? In my view, yes. The leader is the manifestation of the organization itself. S/he is the physical representation of the values, vision, and mission of the organization. That’s why the law recognizes that leaders (to borrow from one of my favorite attorneys) are held to a “higher standard of care” with regards to their communication and their actions. By their actions, they “bind the organization.” This means that employees, clients, vendors, and suppliers should have a reasonable expectation that the leader speaks for and acts on behalf of the organization. Thus, when a leader behaves poorly, the ramifications for the organization and the leader are, and should be, more severe.

I’ve been teaching courses in anti-harassment and non-discrimination for much of the last six months to meet a core training objective of one of my public clients. So, I’ve been steeped in the stories and experiences people share about their organizational experiences relative to “safe” working environments. Unfortunately, bad behavior exists at all levels of organizations. Sometimes leaders are those behaving poorly and sometimes they unconsciously “endorse” bad behavior by not acting definitively or proactively against it.

As a result, I’m increasingly convinced that we need to strongly remind leaders of their responsibility to embrace their obligation to be better representatives of their organizations’ values – behaviorally, structurally, and communicatively. Leaders need to behave in a way that eliminates even the impression of impropriety – not only because of the legal ramifications, but because others are watching all the time to learn what is – and what is not – appropriate within the organization. A leader who tolerates discrimination, harassment, or unethical business practices negatively brands his organization, regardless of the official written values, vision, or mission of that organization. Thus, leaders not only need to be accountable to the highest standards of behavior, but they need to have a zero tolerance attitude toward inappropriate or unethical behavior by their employees, vendors, and suppliers.

While some might argue that leaders are human, I’d respond that while true, employees and clients have the right to expect more from them. In accepting the mantle of leadership, the individual agrees to be held to the higher standard and should understand that in employees’ eyes – and in the marketplace – s/he “becomes” the organization.

Leaders should actively consider the communicative brand they want for their organizations and then consistently behave in a manner that models the brand and “shouts” to the community and marketplace that “This is what we, as an organization, stand for!” Instead of making the communicative brand happen by chance, organizational leaders should be intentional in its creation: How do we want to be perceived in the marketplace? What actions or behaviors would communicate this? What policies or procedures do we need in place to support the brand?

Politicians and scions of business remind us all too often with their behavior and their words that they are indeed all too human. For me, as a voter and as a citizen, I expect more. With my vote, I have the right to expect leaders who perform with the highest levels of transparency and ethics – all the time, regardless of their party affiliation. And, leaders of organizations large and small, pay attention: any one of us who leads others should hold ourselves to this same high standard. Don’t just write the communicative brand for your organization: teach it, live it, be it.

SMPS Twin Cities, November 16th

2011-11-03T11:35:00.000-07:00

On Wednesday, November 16th, Communication Resources President Meg Winch will be speaking from 9am-12pm for the Society for Marketing Professional Services Twin Cities on "Critical Communication for Project Managers: How to Sell and Win Projects through Project Management."
You can register for the event here.

Workshop description:

In today's challenging economy, A/E/C firms frequently search for ways to differentiate themselves from their competition. The most powerful differentiator within these firms, the project manager, relies on the power of their communication skills to delight clients, cultivate relationships, fill new business pipelines, and develop and reinforce the success of their companies. Without strong communication skills, however,project managers become less effective at selling themselvbes on the jon and can weaken their firm's reputation and client base.

This communications workshop focuses on the important art of selling projects on the job, from the pre-sell and marketing processes, through project kick-off, implementation and close-out phases. We'll emphasize how firms can differentiate themselves by improving the communciaiton skills of their most critical resource, the project manager, and how firm management can develop successful, communicative project managers within their company. This seminar is appropriate for project managers, firm principals, and marketing/business development professionals.

Join us!

Mentoring and Melon Balls

2011-10-24T08:23:00.000-07:00

My mother made me lunch today; what a treat! There’s nothing like lunch made by Mom – no matter how old I get. She served melon balls for dessert, and I learned something interesting– if you have melon that’s not quite as sweet or fresh as you’d like, soak it for a few minutes in ginger ale before serving. That’s a trick that I’d never heard before – apparently, my grandmother passed this trick along to my mother who by happenstance passed it on to me. Makes me wonder what other interesting and useful, though nonessential tricks I might be missing because I never asked or they just never came up.

While those of you not versed in old kitchen lore may not find this as fascinating as I did, this example should remind us of the knowledge that leaves organizations when we do.

There are countless skills and work processes that less experienced employees would find both interesting and time saving. As we embrace technology and new ways of doing old work, it’s still important to learn from seasoned leaders what means, tactics and methods made them successful at what they do. Think about all the things senior professionals know that remain locked in their heads until they’re asked why or how they do what they do. While it’s certainly important for old dogs to learn new tricks, it doesn’t mean the old tricks might not have some value in the organization. Technology isn’t always the solution to every challenge, nor does it always make our work better, faster, or more efficient. And, sometimes, we need to remember the old ways to make the new ways work better.

This is the primary reason why I recommend in-house training programs that are conceived and implemented by senior leaders of an organization. While learning new things is always important, learning old things in new ways may be more important. For example, while we teach young project managers how to use the latest scheduling software, let’s not forget the art of using logic to set up a schedule using sticky notes on the wall. Or, how about learning customer service from someone who’s done it for 25 years instead of from a highly paid consultant who can teach theory, but not real practice?

While there’s certainly room for skilled, industry-knowledgeable consultants, firms get better value for their training dollar by considering how they use consultants. Hiring consultant trainers for specific programs makes a lot of sense, particularly if those consultants bring industry expertise or innovation to the organization. But, for standard programming or firm-specific knowledge growth, a better use of consultants is to guide the development of in-house programs vs. providing those programs as trainers. In this way, the organization retains the ownership of the curricula while gaining the value of outside expertise. And, the firm’s own leadership can and should then tailor the material, add real-life examples, and perform the actual training.

Long-term leaders are a firm’s most valuable asset; the firm can maximize the value of that asset by transitioning leaders from the boardroom to the classroom. Those responsible for training and development of employees should actively tap into the deep knowledge base of long-term leaders. Interview them to find out what they know and why they do what they do. Take a new look at standard curricula and think about ways to integrate leaders in a more meaningful way into the programs beyond the standard introduction and conclusion. Welcome firm leadership into the classroom with open arms and make it easier for them to participate in both program development and training implementation.

Sometimes, an organization uses outside trainers because leaders feel they are too busy to be actively involved in training. I’d argue that far from these leaders being too busy to spend time in the classroom, there’s nothing more important for them to be doing in the later years of their careers. Candidly, if leaders take what they know with them when they leave, they diminish the long-term sustainability of their organization and lose an opportunity to mentor and grow employees.

Actively integrating leadership into in-house training programs provides the highest value in training design and long-term program consistency. More importantly, it gives senior leaders the opportunity to interact with employees and pass on their knowledge and experience through examples and illustrations. By using outside resources to help guide curriculum development, the firm gains the value of the outside perspective and design based on effective training principles. However, by having internal leadership do the actual training, the firm gains the value of these leaders’ real world experience and the invaluable connection they will build with the next generation of employees.

Presentation Leadership

2011-10-11T07:53:00.000-07:00

It’s the busy season for presentation coaching at CRNW, and I’ve been fortunate to work with teams across the industry on mostly winning presentations (the win record is back up there!). While working with these teams, I’ve been exposed to a broad range of leaders and leadership styles, some dramatically more effective than others. As a result, I’d like to propose some guidelines for organizational leaders in helping teams get ready for major presentations.

Ownership. I believe that the Principal in Charge (PIC) for the job should be the principal in charge of the presentation. This means making sure the team starts preparation early – even before the short-list is announced (yes, if you think highly enough of your qualifications to submit, you should think positively enough to start earlier on the presentation). Savvy leaders don’t transfer the ownership of the pursuit to the Marketing Department, nor conversely, do they micro-manage busy coordinators. The best leaders stay actively involved, partnering with Marketing in the development of key messages and in motivating/scheduling team members.

Too often I work with principals who are too busy to work with their teams throughout the pursuit process, providing a “vanilla” introduction and/or conclusion to the presentation, losing the opportunity to really connect with the team and add the value of their experience and knowledge. Conversely, on the most memorable and successful pursuits in which I’ve been involved, the principals were integrally involved with every decision, not taking control, but really co-coaching by helping refine messaging and motivating team members with their passion for excellent communication with the client.

Practice. Firm principals need to be at every practice, communicating the importance of rehearsal and their commitment to the presentation. This does mean that those of us who coach need to be sensitive to schedules and minimize the time it takes to get ready for a presentation. But, having the PIC actively engaged in even the more mundane periods of rehearsal can be extremely motivating to the rest of the team – and results in a more coordinated, cohesive presentation before the selection committee.

I’ve been fortunate to work with engaged principals who support their teams in presentations with the knowledge and comfort that comes from rehearsal. And, I’ve also seen the reverse - principals who take over the presentation because they didn’t know the outline or the logic and didn’t trust their team members to perform.

Because of the criticality of their role to the final success of an interview, I expect the leadership of the team to be ready to present well at rehearsals. If as a coach I have to spend the majority of my time working with the principal and not the technical members of the team, we lose time and focus. Principals need to have done their homework, practiced off-line, and come to the rehearsal ready with their material so they have the time and the focus to help the rest of the team.

Grace. Effective leaders bring a sense of “grace” to interview preparation. In other words, they help even the worst speaker look good by helping with both coaching and the final delivery. They know that the success of the presentation is dependent upon the skills of the entire team, not just themselves. As a result, they know each team member’s strengths and weaknesses and they work to help build comfort, not criticize.

Principals who are actively engaged early with presentation strategy tend to avoid last-minute changes and destructive criticism. Those who come in at the last minute harm their teams by providing late feedback and attempts to rewrite others’ content. As teams get closer to the actual interview, they need the full support of their leaders. And, technical professionals in particular don’t do well with late changes or global criticism.

Courage. Finally, effective leaders have courage to try new things in an interview to differentiate their firms and their teams. They listen well and they engage both coaching resources and their own Marketing professionals to find ways to present differently. And, they are willing to do whatever it takes to help their teams win, even if it puts their comfort in the process at risk. For example, I recently got to work with a firm principal who was a very poor speaker himself. He was willing to make an example of himself, trying new ways to rehearse and present that he’d never used before. Ultimately, he gave the best presentation of his career, winning a strategic project for his firm. Had this leader not had the courage to risk embarrassment in front of his colleagues or had been too afraid to ask for help, that presentation could have turned out much less positively.

Unfortunately, no one has found the exact formula for a winning interview, but, there are some commonalities to winning interviews. One such commonality is that in my experience, without exception, winning teams have a leader who believes in the project, the team, and the interview preparation process. And, s/he is committed to making the effort it takes and exhibiting the leadership the team needs to win.

Maintaining the Value of Teamwork through Effective Partnering

2011-10-03T08:54:00.000-07:00

Across the country, team members spend countless hours in mandated and voluntary early-project partnering efforts. As a facilitator for the past 25 years, I have to report honestly that the results of these efforts have been decidedly mixed: some teams reap the benefits of stronger team relationships and the ability to work through inevitable conflict, while others perpetuate negative zero-sum behavior that benefits no one, least of which the project. While certainly the quality of partnering efforts can explain some of the difference in post-partnering behavior and more can be explained by the values/vision of the team members themselves, I believe that the long-term benefits of partnering can be strengthened by teams who take initiative to manage partnering as a core project activity throughout the project’s duration.

Maintaining partnering should be part of the project management plan for any project, with the project manager taking ownership for ongoing team relationship maintenance and facilitation. While larger or more complex projects may require the talents of an outside facilitator to maintain objectivity and focus, most project managers can use their strong talents in communication and leadership to maintain the focus on partnership and teamwork. I recommend two key strategies to maximize the value of partnering: establishing partnering metrics during the partnering session and making partnering a regular agenda item for every OAC (Owner, Architect, Contractor) meeting.

I’ve written about team metrics before, so let me extend that “conversation”. We know from performance management literature that accountability is easier when we set measurable targets; this works for both individual employees and teams. The challenge comes in creating measurable targets in an inherently subjective area such as teamwork. However, when I ask team members to help develop partnership metrics during partnering meetings, I’m seeing remarkable similarities, indicating that team members do indeed know what teamwork looks like and how it influences project outcomes.

At the start of a project partnering session, I ask team members, “As the project progresses, how will we know partnering is working?” As a result of the ensuing discussion, common partnering metrics include the following:

• Speed of decision-making

• Speed of dispute resolution

• Number of disputes requiring escalation

• Perceived effectiveness of communication across team members

• Number of unanticipated changes

• Perception of value of project changes

• Maintenance of user experience/expectations

These are just a few of the items team members have developed across partnering sessions; many more relate specifically to the characteristics of the particular projects. Importantly, for teams that use metrics as part of their overall project management process, these items are measured at regular intervals with data collected from all team members, making them true measures of team performance, not any particular entity. For teams using a longer set of project partnering metrics, I recommend bundling the measures into clearly defined categories such as Communication, Decision-Making, Project Management, Technology, and User Experience to facilitate clearer, more streamlined conversation about performance.

Project managers (or any person in a leadership role) can use the partnering measures to drive conversation about partnering at monthly OAC and regular team meetings. However, to be effective, ground rules for this discussion need to be carefully articulated and enforced by the team. The conversation is about team vs. individual performance, and solutions need to be team-based vs. focused on any individual or entity. If partnering is on the agenda for every meeting, with a standard amount of time allotted to discussion, team members build comfort discussing teamwork and recommendations for improving it throughout the duration of the project. Further, by having a regular conversation about partnering and partnership, team members are more likely to remain vigilant about keeping the partnering agreements they made at the beginning of the project.

At key points in the project’s schedule, the entire team can reconvene to reinvigorate partnership, using the established measures to objectively reassess and then discuss how the team is doing relative to maintaining teamwork. For identified challenge areas, the team can discuss possible changes or interventions. This mid-project focus on partnering has three distinct benefits: it communicates that the leadership team values teamwork; it involves the entire team in the maintenance of teamwork and the use of teaming to resolve issues; and it socializes new team members to the team’s values relative to partnering and teamwork.

Ultimately, while my industry colleagues and I do a good job helping teams start projects off strongly with well-planned and facilitated partnering sessions, this is not enough to help a team maintain partnering behaviors throughout the project’s duration. Project teams – and project managers – who believe in the value of partnering, take ownership for the process, use measurement to drive accountability, and continue the partnering efforts all the way to successful project completion. Project managers who take ownership for partnering communicate to their teams that partnership has value and that the team can – and will – use partnering values to resolve issues and add value to the entire team.

Managing Stage Fright through Effective Presentation Design

2011-09-27T10:35:00.000-07:00

In this economy when firms must count on higher performance from speakers in short-list interviews, technical professionals are finding it increasingly difficult to manage the stage fright that comes with this industry-required ritual. Unfortunately, stage fright in a short-list presentation, or any high-stakes presentation for that matter, is normal and expected, even for those of us who present regularly. Due to the importance of the outcome and the challenge of the assignment, it’s perfectly logical to experience some level of fear. And for some, this fear can become debilitating.

Early in my career, I ascribed to the common misconception that stage fright is “stage energy” and can make a speaker livelier and more engaging. As I get older, more experienced, and perhaps more jaded, I think stage fright, no matter how we package it, is never a good thing. Stage fright results in a full compliment of really nasty psychological and physiological outcomes, none of which do great things for a speaker’s content or delivery. Particularly among technical professionals, managing stage fright is unfortunately not as simple as deep breathing (though that helps), positive self talk, or using planned movement. Managing stage fright starts with how technical professionals prepare for presentations, not in terms of the time they devote to the process, but more broadly in the entire methodology many use to get ready. From a content standpoint, many speakers develop content by starting at the introduction and writing until they reach the conclusion. I’ve described this to many as the “Snoopy Effect.” As Peanuts’ fans will attest, Snoopy has been writing a novel for the past 70 years. Despite having conquered the typing challenge (on a manual typewriter no less!), Snoopy still can’t get past the introduction, “It was a dark and stormy night...” Despite the compelling nature of the introduction, that dog can’t write beyond his first three lines because simply, he doesn’t know what happens next. Unlike Snoopy, presenters need to work from the inside of their presentation out vs. starting at the beginning and working to the end. In other words, if I have purpose for speaking (and every good speaker has one), what are the key content blocks that will support the purpose? By developing content blocks of information, and then organizing them in a logical manner, a speaker can create a roadmap for the presentation. In addition to the benefits of clearer organization, speakers can learn the stopping points along the “road” from introduction to conclusion. For many professionals, stage fright means fear of “forgetting what I’m going to say next.” As a result, having a clear roadmap can be priceless. For example: If my purpose is to clarify my team’s unique process for public involvement, I might employ a simple topical outline with three topics in chronological order.

We engage our entire team in the identification of stakeholders.
We will use social media to engage difficult to reach stakeholders and bring them in to the project "conversation."
We will document all stakeholder processes to provide a clear record of decisions to guide the project.

Note that this outline focuses on three critical areas of public involvement (bolded text) in a three-part outline that a speaker can further develop. More importantly from a stage fright management standpoint, the speaker knows s/he has three main points or stopping points in the presentation and is able to “chunk” the presentation into three smaller units, making each easier to remember and easier to present.

What if I now took this outline and created an organized “content matrix”? This might enable a nervous speaker to have an even clearer roadmap for moving through the content of the presentation.

For example, “unpacking” just the first of the three points from my outline:

WHAT we are going to do:	WHY it’s important	HOW we are going to do it	PROOF that we can do it
Stakeholder identification	• Multiple and diverse stakeholder groups • Risk from missing one key stakeholder group (Use City of XX example)	1. Engage our entire team – lots of community relationships 2. Work with client organization to find common groups 3. Use existing groups to identify others 4. Reach out using a variety of venues	City of XX Master Planning Process • Same project type with similar schedule • Same project team • XX Public meeting story

Now the presentation gets much easier to develop – and much easier to present. Using both the Y axis of the matrix (flow of the presentation from beginning to end) and the X axis (the flow of each sub point in the presentation), speakers can learn the pattern of the presentation and can be more comfortable as they move through the content. Plus, they can speak more conversationally because they aren’t learning lines; they are learning logically sequenced blocks of content that can be delivered more extemporaneously.

Content design alone can’t eliminate stage fright, but it’s an important first step for most technically oriented speakers. By effectively mapping content, speakers gain control of their presentations and reduce the risk of forgetting important points or going off-track. By taking the fear of forgetting off the table, these speakers are better able to focus on a more engaging delivery during the actual presentation. Next week I’ll write about managing stage fright through more effective rehearsal and delivery. However, for me and my teams, managing stage fright starts well before the first rehearsal with content that makes logical sense and is easy to follow.

Assumptions and Questions

2011-09-19T14:56:00.000-07:00

Every time I gratefully receive a vegetarian meal, I’m also amazed at the assumptions people make about us non-meat eaters. Vegetarian meals are generally full of healthy foods, which are nice, but they generally don’t include great desserts. I’m currently sitting on an airplane, watching my fellow passengers enjoy chocolate cake, while I snack on healthy fruit. Folks, just because I don’t eat meat, doesn’t mean I’m not a committed fan of chocolate cake – or chocolate in any form for that matter. To keep me from falling in a sugar-seeking frenzy on the cake of my seatmate, let me instead write about the topic of assumptions.

As business development professionals, it’s important to carefully avoid assumptions and ask good questions from our clients about their projects and about their needs and expectations for design/construction professionals. For example, is it true that budget conscious clients want cheap solutions or that they don’t want to spend money? No; they just need clear justification for expenditures and may, in fact, prefer a more expensive alternative. Do bureaucratic clients always take more time to make decisions? No; they just need to have timeframes and the cost of late decision-making explained to them. Do all clients hate change orders? No; most clients just hate to be surprised with change orders.

Before meeting with any client, I recommend to my own clients that they create interview guides to direct questioning and make sure they’re really probing for important information. An interview guide is not a formula for a conversation. Rather, a guide is just what it sounds like – a “map” that helps conversation flow in a productive direction.

An effective conversation guide starts with project-related topics of interest such as budget, schedule, or project history. It should also include process-related topics such as working relationships with consultants or communication preferences. And, it should include personal-related topics such as role on the project or personal interests as they relate to project performance. By including a full compliment of topics, the BD professional can learn extensive amounts of information in a shorter amount of time. I recommend conversation guides be pre-written, first by topic and then by question. More experienced business developers can prompt themselves with topic areas; less experienced professionals may find that writing questions out helps them keep questions open-ended and information generating.

A good business development interviewer doesn’t make assumptions about what s/he hears; rather, s/he starts with open-ended questions to get the client talking and then hones in on areas of interest through increasingly specific probing questions. And, good probing questions require active listening skills, not simply moving on to the next question on the list.

For example:

· Business Developer: “Ms. Jones, what has led your organization to the point of needing new space?"

· Client: “We’ve experience tremendous growth as a result of our new product line, which is something we really didn’t expect and it’s created some significant space challenges.”

· Business Developer: “Can you tell me about those space challenges?”

· Client: “Our new space requirements are really specific; we just can’t seem to do what we need to in the existing space. As a result, we think it’s a good time to be thinking about a new building.”

· Business Developer: “What is specific about your space requirements?”

· Client: “We need large, open laboratory spaces that accommodate teams of researchers working collaboratively in a well-ventilated environment.”

· Business Developer: “Why a new building vs. other options for this type of space?”

· Client: ”We’ve always wanted our own building to make a real statement for our company in the downtown core. This seems to be a catalyst for making that happen; our management has reached that ‘tipping’ point that they’re ready to act.”

Interesting conversation, one that could still lead in many different directions; I’d love to see this one evolve. Instead of spending time talking about his/her firm, this hypothetical business developer comes to the conversation with a genuine interest in the client and the project. S/he asks a first open-ended question about the client’s needs (product needs). S/he listens carefully to the answer and follows up with increasingly specific questions designed to clarify the client’s real project needs. In four questions, s/he’s found out that the client wants a specific type of space, that the organization wants a statement building in downtown, and that they need space quickly to accommodate unexpected growth. Were I the principal of the design or construction firm pursuing this client, this would indeed be valuable information.

The takeaway (and they did take away the remains of the chocolate cake) from this is that business developers need to think carefully about what they need or desire to know about projects and clients. And, they need to plan conversations to cover a broad range of topics – product, process, and personally related – quickly. Finally, they need to really listen and use probing questions to clarify what the client is saying to get at the information that helps us win projects by being able to address the client’s real needs, expectations, and aspirations.

So, on behalf of my seatmate, thanks for keeping my mind occupied while she finished her cake. And, good luck to all the dedicated business developers who take the initiative to learn the depth of information it takes to win in our increasingly competitive design/construction environment.

“Selling” the Joint Venture

2011-09-12T09:10:00.000-07:00

Joint venturing on projects is common practice in the A/E/C industry to add capacity, strength, or portfolio to a project pursuit. In some cases, firms joint venture at the suggestion of the potential client, but most of the time, they do so to increase their competitive advantage. Having been a party to creating presentations for multiple JV teams, let me add my voice to the discussion of how to successfully joint venture on a project. Regardless of financial arrangements between firms, real management structure, communication flow, and all the other things firm leadership must consider in a joint venture, I’m primarily concerned with how we sell the JV to the potential client to give the team the maximum chance of winning the pursuit.

In my experience, most JVs aren’t successful in the pursuit – not because the JV wasn’t a good idea, but because in the push to meet all parties’ needs in the venture, the needs of the potential client and the project were forgotten. If the firm leadership hasn’t carefully considered how the JV is going to work for the client and project, I find it’s almost impossible to win with the JV team. In many cases, firms push for a “balanced” JV relationship, making sure no one firm is slighted in the arrangement. Too often, this results in double staffing: two project executives, two project managers, two technical leads or split design responsibilities, etc. Looking at this from a client perspective, not only is it difficult to identify a single point of contact, the client sees a team that’s overstaffed and appears very expensive.

On one hugely successful pursuit, I had the honor of working with a JV team that got it right. This team’s leadership put their collective egos aside and thought about what it would take to win the project and create comfort for the owner in the organization of the team. The client was presented with one project executive, one senior project manager, one project architect, one design lead, and a clearly defined set of technical experts. Roles and responsibilities were clearly presented in the proposal and the team did not waffle on roles and responsibilities in the interview. Interview time was used to explain how the team would approach the client’s work, not on explaining the organization or giving talk time to multiple project managers or designers.

Conversely, on a recent JV design/build pursuit, we had to bring almost 20 people to the interview: two designers, two project managers, project executives from each firm, etc. The firms’ leadership was so busy worrying about not offending each other, making sure each firm had equal talk time that they forgot that they had to win the job first. As a coach, I found it difficult to focus the team on relevant differentiating content because team members weren’t coordinated in their approach or their relationships.

If a team can’t put corporate politics aside and come together in a united proposal and presentation, it’s pretty clear the client is going to have problems with this team as they deliver the project. Surprisingly, I’ve found that most potential clients don’t actually mind a JV – in fact, they can see that partnering on projects can bring the best expertise to technical and community challenges. But, these clients need to see a real partnership and teaming arrangement from the beginning in order for them to have comfort in the team organization.

The most important discussion the leadership of a potential JV should have – once they’ve figured out they want to pursue a project together – is what the organization chart should look like. Independent of percentages and final division of the work, what does the potential client need to see relative to leadership and organization? How can the team look streamlined and well organized? The “math” is pretty simple: If the combined firms don’t figure this out and communicate it clearly in the proposal, they lose.

Joint venture partners need to consider the logic of the project, not the logic of how they will divide up the work. Organization charts need to make sense – to the team and most importantly, to the client. We should never have two project managers. We might see deputy project managers responsible for specific scopes of work, but there should be a single point of contact for the client. Similarly, we should never see two lead designers. There should be one unifying design vision for the project even if specialty designers will handle specific portions of the project. And, there’s no reason for two project executives. Owners can still get the combined resources of both firms with one executive speaking on behalf of the joint venture. From my perspective, if firm leadership doesn’t trust their partner to speak on their behalf, there’s a bigger problem at play than who has what title on the organization chart.

At the end of the day, from a marketing perspective, the best joint venture relationships are seamless: The client doesn’t see different firms. The client sees the best technical and management experience brought to bear to resolve project challenges and create project excellence.

Delivery Matters

2011-08-29T11:15:00.000-07:00

I’ve been flying far too frequently these days. On the up side, it means reconnecting with family, friends, and clients from around the country. On the down side, it means listening to the airline safety announcement over and over – to the point where I can recite it verbatim. Nonetheless, as a presentation coach, I find myself really listening to the safety instructions, wanting to give the flight attendant an audience to which s/he can deliver this most important presentation.

This morning, I observed a delivery style that occurs far too frequently on airplanes and in many other types of critical presentations. The flight attendant rattled through her information so quickly, I doubt anyone really heard her, to the point of slurring and missing words. She used no inflection, delivering her monologue in a monotone, devoid of emotion or interest. Her demonstration of the safety equipment was lackluster at best, disconnected from the speed-speak flow of the words. I found myself thinking from the perspective of a first time flyer who really needed to know this information. “Should I put my oxygen mask on first, or should I help the person next to me? Where are those exits again? What if the exit door is behind me? Will anything direct me to the nearest exit? What about the unlikely event of a water landing?” Though I’ve heard the instructions hundreds of times, I know that in the event of an airline incident in which I were called upon to act on those instructions, only the ceaseless repetition of the instructions would enable me to act. I fly ten or more times each month; I’m betting most of my fellow passengers don’t have the benefit of hearing the message that frequently and may have to rely on the instructions they heard this morning.

How many presentations in our industry do we deliver like this flight attendant? I believe that in many cases, the most boring content in presentations is often the most important, despite the fact that many audience members have heard it before. For example, in short-list interviews, I’ve seen project management presentations that had selectors on the edge of their chairs, and I’ve seen similar presentations that put audience members to sleep. I’ve witnessed safety meetings where team members were engaged and asking questions; I’ve also seen the same content delivered to an audience whose sole interest was getting out on the jobsite vs. hearing the information. What’s the difference?

The major difference between a great presentation of common content and a bad presentation of the same content lies in delivery. A great speaker takes the content and personalizes it: There’s nothing more important than delivering this particular message to this audience. Great speakers know that even the best content is not enough to make a great presentation; great presentations take passionate, appropriate delivery combined with a genuine interest in the audience and audience members’ understanding.

The elements of great delivery are fairly simple; it involves intentionally focusing on how you move, how you look, and how you sound. How you move has to do with appropriate gestures, eye contact, and body movement. How you look has to do with relaxed posture, comfortable and appropriate dress, and orientation to other team members. How you sound has to do with the pace, pitch, volume, and tone of your words. While we could write a book about each of these elements, the bottom line is that great delivery involves intentionality – making a choice to adjust any one of these elements to fit the needs of the content, the situation, and the audience.

Most importantly, great delivery involves a genuine interest in the audience and audience members’ comprehension of the material. This interest changes everything. Being interested in audience member comprehension forces speakers to really look at audience members. Being interested makes speakers change their voice to communicate interest, concern, or excitement. And, being interested engages team members, audience members, and the speaker in the importance of the content – collectively and individually.

What if this one presentation of the airplane safety information was the time it really mattered? Would that knowledge change the delivery of the information? I’d like to think so. The takeaway for me is this: Each time we have the opportunity to speak to an audience, we need to deliver the information as if this time it matters. While many of our presentations don’t have potential life or death implications, they are important. At all times, in all situations, to all audience members, make a choice to speak like what you are saying makes a difference.

Measuring Partnership

2011-08-22T10:14:00.000-07:00

Project partnering has been around for a long time, and candidly, the jury is still out as to whether or not it creates lasting value for projects and teams. In some cases, I’ve seen partnering deliverables guide team members to more positive, team-based behaviors that have had profound impact on project success. In other cases, I’ve seen team members revert to pre-partnering norms more protective of their own interests vs. common team needs at times when the project really needed stronger teamwork. In recent partnering processes both in the public sector with the USACE and in the private sector on some large, high-impact projects, I have been working with teams interested in finding a methodology for improving the “stickiness” of the partnering mindset throughout the duration of the project.

One method we’re using with great success is to create partnering metrics that can be used throughout the project duration to measure team performance against partnering objectives. While useful to assess team member perceptions, the usefulness of the partnering measurement tool is more in how it drives a conversation about teaming and partnership throughout the project schedule.

This is not a new concept. Early partnering facilitators recommended establishing and documenting what they called “partnership expectations” for the team. However, as partnering has evolved, few teams actually went so far as to create a real measurement tool. With the costs and benefits of team performance so high, it’s time to “add some teeth” to how we use partnering. Clearly established partnering metrics are one way to accomplish this.

Establishing the measurement tool requires two things: a useful and recognized scale and meaningful, discrete “variables” that indicate team performance. The quantitative scale makes the measurement and subsequent interpretation of the results more objective, resulting in higher quality discourse about team behavior. The variables enable conversation about core team elements in a way that enables behavior change on a more micro level that is more achievable and lasting.

When establishing a scale, I typically prefer a seven-point Likert-type scale that is evenly balanced at the poles. The scale is broad enough to enable one to see variance across the response population, but doesn’t mimic a ten-point grading scale. Plus, though others in the industry might disagree, I like having a midpoint between positive and negative ratings since in many cases, “I neither agree nor disagree” is the real answer vs. “N/A – not applicable”.

While there are certainly some common variables teams might use in the creation of a partnering measurement tool, the most valuable metrics are specific to the team and the project, with variables that are meaningful and communicative to team members. And, these metrics are best created with the team itself.

As one of the early partnering activities for any project, I divide the team into two groups. For the first group, after explaining the concept of a metric, I ask them to create a draft measurement tool of discrete items that once measured would give the team an indication of how successful they are relative to partnering. I ask team members, “How would you know partnering has been successful at key stages of the project?” An example variable might be “Communication of issues at the appropriate level” or “Decisions made in a timely manner.” Both of these could be measured on a scale through gathering perceptions from all team members. And, the results would give the team an understanding of how the entire team feels it is doing in each area, and more importantly, would foster a discussion on how to improve.

The second group works on listing, based on past experience and their concerns for this project, risks or roadblocks to success. This list is used as a test of the measurement tool and the individual metrics: Given what we know about this project and the real challenges we have ahead, do the items we’ve listed get at the real issues our team is going to face? For example, if the team is aware that a significant challenge on the current project is going to be the transition of team members from one phase to the next, we might create a metric in our measurement tool, “Orientation of new team members to partnering goals and objectives.”

Partnering takes considerable time and investment at the beginning of a project, and for larger projects, throughout its duration. Teams that find ways to continue the partnering conversation in productive ways without multiple formal sessions make a wise investment in their future success. Establishing and using a tailored partnering measurement tool is one way to continue the conversation and target real improvements in teamwork to achieve project goals.

An Approach to the Approach: Writing a Winning Approach Section

2011-08-11T11:29:00.000-07:00

In my experience, clients carefully read four parts of most proposals: the cover letter (“the invitation”), the approach section (“How can you help me?”), the resumes (“Who are you?”), and the cost or budget section (“And, just how much will this cost me?”). While the pretty pictures of your projects and descriptions of your work are certainly interesting to most clients, nothing is more interesting to a client reader than the client’s own project or problem. As a result, one of the most important sections of any proposal that we write is the Approach Section.

The Approach Section, in fact, distinguishes a proposal from a statement of qualifications (SOQ). An SOQ asks for information about your firm and your experience. A proposal asks for an approach to doing the work requested and/or solving the problem described. Experience in a proposal, while important, has a different purpose than qualifying your firm. In a proposal, experience proves that you can do what you said you could in the approach.

The first step in writing any good approach section is to carefully read the RFP. Most RFPs are written with clear instructions regarding the information for which the client is looking; sometimes, there are even clear instructions on how the client wants you to organize that information. Read it, clarify it, underline it, and follow it. While writers need to bring their creative writing skills to the cover letter, writers need different skills for the approach section. Approach sections require the very best expository or descriptive writing.

If the RFP asks “how” your team will resolve a problem or accomplish a key scope of work, it’s important to really write about what your team plans to do and how this approach will resolve the problem or accomplish the work. Anytime you read the word “how”, this should be a clue that the reader expects to know what you are going to do and how it will meet his need. Too often, when I read an approach section, the section starts with statements of experience or skill: “XYZ has extensive experience in this type of work, and we are excited to bring this experience to your project.” The writer then spends considerable proposal “real estate” describing this experience, even though it’s usually also described elsewhere in the proposal.

Approach sections generally should not include details of your experience, your awards, or even client testimonials. Rather, the approach section should detail how you are going to do the work. The key evaluation criterion for any approach section is “responsiveness.” Does your approach to the work respond to the client’s stated problem, need, or request?

Any large document, like an approach section of a major proposal, can seem daunting when one considers writing it all at once. Fortunately, for most proposals, an Approach section can be logically segmented into prompts to make it easier to write, and coincidentally, easier to read. Generally, the section should be organized chronologically in clear subsections, or should follow the structure dictated by the “prompts” in the RFP. The first step in writing the approach section is to find the logical structure and define the “bundles” of information. These bundles – or subsections – can reflect the logical stages of the work (such as Schematic Design Activities, Design Development Activities, etc. ), or they might reflect logical topics that need to be discussed (such as Quality Management, Safety, Communication, etc.). A writer might even organize the section spatially, bundling content around sections of the site, floors of the building, or areas of the facility.

The writer can then add opening and closing sections to the beginning and end of the approach section. These might be “Approach Philosophy” in the beginning and “Concluding Thoughts” at the end.

Like the entire document, each subsection should have its own logical organization. In fact, a savvy writer creates a common organizational template for each subsection of the overall approach. This establishes a rhythm and flow to the reader, and it makes the writing much faster and easier. There are several common organizational structures a writer might use for a subsection, including:

Problem, Cause, Criteria, Solution: What’s the problem? What caused the problem? What are the solution criteria? What is your solution?

Vision, Process, Result: What’s the aspiration or vision for the work? How are we going to get there? When we do this, what’s the positive result?

Knowledge, Resources, Solution: What do we have to know in order to deal with the challenge? What help or resources do we need to be successful? What’s the solution we need to bring to the challenge that will meet the client’s goals and objectives?

One other way I make these sections easier to write is to borrow from my work as a presentation coach (writing and presenting are, after all, both communication skills). When speakers are having difficulty outlining parts of a presentation, I direct them to always use a four part outline: What are you going to do for the client to solve the problem? Why is it important to do that? How are you going to get it done? Can you prove that this approach will work?

The “What” becomes the topic paragraph for the subsection. If the subsection were about an early project process such as Partnering, I might start with the following:

“The most important first step in any project is the Initial Partnering Session. Our team will hold a partnering session during the first week after Notice to Proceed that will set the stage for project success.”

The “Why” provides the value proposition for the “What.”

For example, I might write, “A well executed partnering session can save a project like yours millions of dollars by avoiding changes and claims while dramatically increasing end user satisfaction. In partnering, we establish the rules of engagement for all team members, integrating team goals so we are all working cohesively toward the same delivery goals.”

The “How” refers to the “guts” of the subsection. Fortunately, since the writer wishes to describe the approach to a scope of work, the logic of the work dictates the logic of the subsection. Each subsection might be organized around the sequential steps it takes to resolve the problem or complete the scope of work. The easiest way to determine this organization is to refer back to “Project Management 101” – the good, old Work Breakdown Structure or WBS. A WBS details discrete tasks that in order lead to scope completion, a step-by-step XX to accomplish the work. The writer can use a WBS to organize each subsection of the Approach.

For example, continuing my partnering subsection, I’d organize this subsection chronologically by the logical, sequential tasks needed to accomplish a successful partnering: identify participants, plan agenda, provide facilitation, and document results.

The “Proof” can be examples from projects where the “How” worked. Remember, these should not be detailed project descriptions, but rather, short statements illustrating success.

For example, “Leaders at Fort XX have found this approach so valuable, they work with us to use it on all projects kicked off at this very busy military training installation.”

Each subsection should stick to its topic and its outline. This keeps writers from including too much in the subsection and keeps readers “on point.” Far from being constraining, using a logical, predictable outline helps the writer be more creative and helps the reader understand the finer points of the narrative.

There are certainly many more ways to write an approach section, and I’m sure many of my readers have extensive experience to share as well. My goal with this short blog is to propose ideas to make the whole writing process easier so readers can clearly understand the value your team brings to the project.

When writing the approach, writers need to think like readers. In today’s economy, clients receive numerous proposals – 20, 30, 40 for a single project. As a result, readers need to review multiple proposals very quickly. Yours needs to stand out by being easy to read and telling a clear, cohesive story. Far from making your proposal more mechanized or simplistic, these logical organizational techniques will make your Approach Section easier to absorb and eminently more memorable.

The Art of the Cover Letter

2011-07-27T11:24:00.000-07:00

The cover letter is the first part of any proposal that any potential client will read. As such, the cover letter should be the most engaging, interesting part of your proposal. Too often, the cover letter is nothing more than a glorified transmittal memo. In its worst form, a cover letter contains legalese language that creates a negative impression for the reader. What a wasted opportunity! Sometimes, it’s the only thing a potential client has time to read and will read in any detail. Make it count.

There are three elements of any good letter: the content, the writing style and structure, and the formatting. While content is certainly the most important, all three elements combine to create a letter that gets read and leaves a positive impression.In its best form, the cover letter creates an image of your team and firm in the mind of the reader and encourages him/her to continue to read to learn more about your approach to the project.

The content of the letter needs to communicate a strong set of value propositions: what the client “gets” as a result of hiring your team. The value propositions need to differentiate your firm and they need to be what the client wants or needs from his/her project. I believe that a strong letter should lead with the strongest argument for hiring your team. Consider the following two examples:

Pursuant to the Port’s Request for Proposals, RFP #12345, Communication Resources is pleased to submit the following proposal for consulting services. Herewith this letter, our firm commits the necessary resources to perform the work for the Port on this project in a superior manner. [Note: Unfortunately, I don’t have to make this stuff up; I really read this in a client’s proposal and changed the name to protect the truly guilty.]

The Port has an incredible ability to garner public support and engagement for a vibrant redevelopment of the Portland waterfront. As a regional leader in public outreach and engagement, Communication Resources is ready to be the Port’s partner in creating enthusiastic support for this project.

Which introduction would encourage you to keep reading? If you said the first one, stop here. I can’t help you. In the second example, the topic sentence transforms what our research tells us the Port wishes to achieve with the current project into a strong claim (a “value proposition”). The second sentence establishes us as a regional leader and a potential partner in getting the Port staff what they want (e.g., the message is, “You want the value from the first sentence, hire us as your partner.”).

The content of the cover letter should preview the major “Win Points” in the proposal. The content should set the expectation for what is to come in the pages beyond the cover letter. As a result, the main points of the letter should be clearly articulated in the body of the proposal as proof of the claims that were made in the letter.

While from a style standpoint, I could write volumes, let me instead suggest three key writing skills. First, the cover letter should include strong topic sentences. The topic sentence represents the “announcement” of the topic of a paragraph and makes a strong claim that will then be supported in the body of the paragraph. [Note: For much more detail on this subject, any writer should reference the writing “Bible” – Strunk and White’s Elements of Style – really, read it; you’ll be amazed at how your writing improves!]

Second, the cover letter should use grammar and punctuation consistently. When you don’t know how to use a particular convention – such as the comma after the “and” in a list – either look it up or use/misuse it consistently. Nothing is more frustrating to me as a reader (and to other readers, I’m sure), than the inconsistent use of a grammar or punctuation convention.

Third (and there are so many more from which to choose), the cover letter should be checked for common mistakes such as “their” vs. “there” or that each pronoun has a referent (i.e., who is “they” or “he” or “it”?).

Finally, the third element of an effective letter is its formatting. An effective cover letter draws the reader in through a perception of clarity and ease of reading. The writer uses bullets and bold type to draw attention and highlight key claims. No formatting technique is over-used, inconsistent, or confusing. I recommend the “rule of three” – choose three formatting techniques for your cover letter, use them consistently, and use them throughout the entire proposal. This encourages the eye to land on content for which you want additional attention.

Some writers leave the cover letter to the very end of the proposal writing process, thinking that they’ll write a great cover letter when they know all of the elements of the proposal. Big mistake! The cover letter should be written first as it sets the most important claims for the proposal. The proposal should support the letter, not the other way around.

Finally, the tone of the cover letter should be neither too formal, nor too casual. All communication is intentional; this includes your writing. Determine the tone you wish to convey, and then write intentionally to convey that tone. Choose words carefully and make your writing a reflection of who you are and the firm you represent.

A cover letter is like the first chapter of a novel; it either draws you in or makes you put it down. Write a cover letter as if it were an invitation. It’s an invitation to read more, to learn about your team, and to discover the opportunities your team brings to the client’s incredible project.

Another Call for Civility in Customer Service – and at Airports

2011-06-27T10:56:00.000-07:00

I’d like to add my voice to the ranks of businesspeople calling for a renewed focus on civility in the workplace. Work should be a place where people are able to do their best work to the best of their talents and capabilities, not a place where they feel harassed, put down, or treated poorly. This topic comes to the top of my mind – and my blog – because I’m writing this entry while I fly back from O’Hare after a very negative encounter with TSA.

Let’s address the TSA issue first and why it made me think about customer service and civility. I travel a lot through most of the major airports in the country, so I have become very familiar with the challenges of traveling. Most TSA agents are quite nice; in fact, I’ve been amazed at the courteous and professional behavior at a couple of airports like Minneapolis and my hometown, Seattle. Both of these are very busy cities and hubs for a major air carrier. With few exceptions, I’ve found these agents to be comprehensive, courteous, and kind, despite the inherent challenges of doing a job most members of the travelling public don’t understand and don’t appreciate. These agents understand how to do their difficult job with grace and professionalism. They remind me that we should all work this way, regardless of the task or the audience.

Today at O’Hare, however, I encountered something totally different from what I hope is the norm: an entire security checkpoint of what appeared to be unhappy agents, none of whom smiled at passengers and many of whom barked orders to get passengers to do what they were supposed to do. In the urgency to get to my flight, I forgot to remove my phone “ear-bud” from my ear, but no sirens went off and I proceeded through the checkpoint to gather my belongings. Moments later, from across the checkpoint, I hear a very loud and adamant, “You! Madam! Take that out! Now!” I’m not sure O’Hare has had terrible problems with tall blond terrorists (madams?) of Scandinavian descent sneaking explosives into airports through ear-buds, but I was nonetheless subjected to a lecture on how I’d held up the line and how my ear-bud would now have to be rescanned through the belt – this was accomplished with much rolling of eyes by the agent for my apparent stupidity. Risking being subjected to a full body cavity search for making a suggestion, I took the chance as an educator to calmly let the supervisor know that he might consider some training for his staff in basic customer service, starting with “Please”, “Thank-you”, and “I’m sorry." And, I’m using this rather unpleasant experience to think about how these basic customer service skills might apply to my work.

In most of our firms, we often must ask busy professionals to do things they’d rather not do – like write a section of a proposal, attend a strategy meeting, or “perform” in a presentation. And, we often have to ask for these things in chaotic and challenging circumstances. In public agencies as well, also a large percentage of my clients, city and county professionals often deal with members of the public who are not at their best. And, they, too, must work under very challenging and chaotic circumstances while serving the public. It’s hard to be civil all the time, it’s hard to be nice, and it’s hard to be kind when we don’t get what we want or need. Despite this, most of the time, most of us do very well by way of civility, regardless of circumstance, but for those situations when it’s harder than others, I’d like to propose some basic guidelines that I hope you all will join me in adopting for our various organizations:
·       We don’t have to be like our customers all the time, but we do have to be polite and professional. This is particularly challenging when our customers – internal and external to our organizations – are not at their best.

·       Basic courtesies of “Please”, “Thank you”, and “I’m sorry” will go a long way toward diffusing difficult situations. Because human beings are natural mimics (we tend to unconsciously adapt our behavior to the environment), being courteous generally elicits more courteous behavior in response. If you don’t believe me, find the sourest looking person at an airport and smile. Chances are, you’ll get a smile back – most people can’t help it. Similarly, if you model courteous behavior, even in a challenging situation, most people will respond in kind.

·       Remember, someone else’s bad behavior isn’t about you, and you don’t have to respond accordingly. I’m convinced some people were raised by wild animals because that’s the only way I can explain their behavior. Despite this, I’m challenging myself and others to be consistently courteous – and even nice – even in the face of really bad behavior.

Sometimes our customers are not from the outside; they are from our own firms and organizations. Just because these customers are “family” doesn’t give us a ‘bye’ on behavior. Courteous, civil behavior is the cornerstone of any successful business. Organizations that support rudeness, harassing, or discriminatory behavior are bad places to work – and I suspect there are many other problems in those organizations that will eventually come to the surface. Great organizations support courteous and professional behavior, within their organizations and to their customers – all the time.

So, I have a proposal – one that I’ve made to my clients over the years. I think all of us should take initiative to drive civility and professionalism back into the workplace in places where it’s absent. In other words, I don’t believe we will create more courteous workplaces simply through policies or training. I think all of us – at all levels of our organizations – need to model civil/courteous behavior to each other, demonstrate consistently what we want from others.

I think we should no longer tolerate bad behavior. This doesn’t mean responding in kind. But, it does mean making professional behavior part of our promotion and teaming decisions. It means requesting the behavior we want when we don’t get it – in a calm, professional manner. And, it means taking a deep breath in chaotic or challenging situations and responding to others in ways that are calm, professional, and reinforcing of a positive image for our organizations.

And, I think we should practice thanking people for the difficult jobs that we need to do ours. While it might not make people nicer, more courteous, or even more professional, we’ll feel better about our work and how we interact with others. So, to my TSA agent from ORD: Thank you for your service to keep the flying public safe. I know you have a hard job and I appreciate what you do, even when I have to take off my shoes, coat, watch, hair clip…..and ear-bud.

Father’s Day: Relationship Rules from Meg’s Dad

2011-06-20T10:28:00.000-07:00

In honor of Father’s Day, I’d like to share some insights about relationships, writing, and communication from my mentor and father, Robert S. Gruhn. Dad was an attorney practicing labor law for more than 50 years in addition to volunteering legal advice and services to a variety of public agencies and museums around the Puget Sound. He was an old-school attorney, focused on helping his clients preserve relationships and reputation.

Dad had three rules he lived by and that he taught his children and clients:

1) Never write anything you wouldn’t want read back to you in court. This is sound advice in any context, particularly in this age of rapid email and social media that gives little time for contemplation and the development of a cogent, well-thought-out line of reasoning. We should all think before we hit send, avoid use of the “reply all” button, and write each email or post as if our words could come back to us in some form, some day.

In fact, my Dad took this “rule” a bit further in reminding us that there was one reader worse than any court of law, and that was my mother. He reminded me never to write anything I wouldn’t want my mother to read. Oddly, this was not because of the obvious maternal consternation over content, but because my mother is a linguist. As a result, I am more careful than most to proofread carefully, and to avoid mistakes in grammar and punctuation.

2) Never do or say anything that might welcome the unwanted attention of the Coroner. This piece of advice caused me no small amount of confusion when younger, but as I age, it makes perfect sense. Dad was trying to tell me to be aware of the repercussions of my behavior, even behavior that didn’t seem all that dangerous at the time. He wanted me to think before I act, not to make me afraid of risk, but rather to consider the consequences and make sure I was willing to pay the price for my actions. Again, sound advice. What if in business, leaders considered both the short and long-term consequences, for their organizations and employees, of the actions they take or recommend?

We should all take the long view, understanding how our corporate actions impact the world around us, including employees, clients, and stakeholders. We should consider the risks, weigh them carefully, and then act with clear knowledge of risks, costs, and benefits. In other words, we should “own” our decisions and be responsible for our actions.

3) Always preserve the relationship because in the end, that’s all that matters. Dad was known as a “gentleman lawyer”, one who wisely advocated communication over litigation. And, because he chose his battles wisely, when he did have to go to court, he rarely lost. Over the years, I’ve learned that my Dad was right; relationships matter and we can win more in business through talking and negotiating than we can through steadfastly arguing for our own point of view.

Dad taught me how to look at conflict from different perspectives; he believed that everyone has a point of view and everyone deserves to be heard, no matter how strange or unconventional their perspectives seem at the time. As a partnering and facilitation consultant, I’ve found this to be particularly true: team members come to projects with a broad range of perspectives and needs. If we take the time to listen and seek to build understanding of real needs and expectations, we can avoid conflicts and build stronger, more positive relationships across the duration of any project.

I’m a lucky daughter. Though Dad passed away three years ago, I get to remember him through his wise words every day (and through the 22 boxes of law books in my garage). By passing his advice on to teams around the Country, I’m helping him continue his goals of preserving relationships, building stronger teams, and keeping people out of the courtroom by negotiating in the board room.

Find the Pain; Make the Sale

2011-06-14T08:56:00.000-07:00

The title of this blog, “Find the Pain; Make the Sale,” is an old marketing axiom – and it’s one of the most important things we learn in AEC business development and marketing. It’s also the super secret of developing client relationships and designing winning proposals and presentations. This seems so basic, yet time and again we hear of firms taking valuable face time with clients to talk about themselves and their history. Firms frequently write proposals that are generic and unfocused and deliver interviews that lack substance. If more business development and marketing professionals took the time and interest to “find the pain”, they would more often “make the sale”.

Finding the pain means that we have to start with a genuine interest in our client’s business, instead of simply trying to sell them services or respond to an RFP. It means knowing what problems a client is trying to solve with a project and what “pain” that client will experience in getting the work done. Teams can differentiate themselves with how well they understand the client’s pain and in how well they target their responses to resolve it. Successful AEC marketing professionals should be more like surgeons; they don’t deal with surface symptoms. Rather, surgeons ask questions, they listen, and they devise effective strategies to resolve the patient’s real issue.

Clients have three types of pain: product, process, and personal. Product pain deals with the tangible process needs of a project: technical quality lapses, regulatory issues, schedule and budget challenges, and operational requirements. Process pain refers to the pain experienced by clients in getting work accomplished: lack of teamwork, coordination with other departments/stakeholders, a need for responsiveness, team changes, and challenging procedures. Personal pain is the pain a client experiences on a project that hurts him/her personally by way of reputation, image, or engagement.

In the earliest stages of business development, BD professionals need to be asking good questions, and probing for detailed information from their clients. Then, marketing professionals need to translate that information into focused proposals that offer a clear value proposition – in other words, that articulate how their team will “resolve the pain.”

To get at product issues, I always ask my teams to “unpack” the selection committee, to understand the project technically at a much deeper level, going well beyond the obvious. I ask them, “Why would the client want to go through the effort it will take to make this project happen?” In other words, why is this project being done and why is it being done now? I probe further to ask my teams to think about what the client hopes to be able to accomplish with this new project that can’t be done now. We talk about funding streams, stakeholder requirements, and regulatory processes – three common areas of pain.

To get at process issues, I ask my teams to think about how we can work with the client to make his/her life easier. What tools, techniques, processes, procedures, etc. can we provide that would differentiate us from the competition? Sometimes the most painful part of any project has nothing to do with the technical, measureable aspects of the project; it has to do with the team and the team leadership hired to perform the work. I want my teams to demonstrate a different way of doing business that makes work easier and processes more enjoyable for clients.

Many of our clients are personally invested in their projects either through excitement for new changes, new processes, or new facilities. Others are invested by way of fear – fear of a loss of reputation or image in the organization or the industry. Savvy teams understand that for many of our clients, the Godfather was wrong – it isn’t just business; it is indeed personal. We need to understand that the potential for personal pain for many clients is very real and that these clients will hire AEC teams that understand how to make the client look good through their work.

While projects are exciting and fun to consider, in business development and marketing, we also need to focus on what’s painful about our business. Projects can be amazing and they can bring much excitement and joy to clients, but they can also be stressful, difficult and painful. We need to take a deep dive into our projects to understand what is and what could be painful to our clients. By finding our clients’ pain – or potential pain, clients will see us as their preferred solution to avoid or resolve the pain so they can become excited about their projects.

Take Time to Win by Being Smarter

2011-06-06T13:05:00.000-07:00

Even though the economy is slow, most of my clients are quite busy and are finding it harder to spend the time they need to prepare for winning proposals and/or short-list interviews. As a result, while marketing departments are churning out more proposals, many firms are not seeing their hit rates go up with the number of proposals submitted. I’d like to change that in three ways: working earlier, working smarter, and working faster.

After some stunningly depressing second place finishes this year (as well as some happy first place wins), I’m more and more convinced that firms have to spend the majority of their marketing time before the RFP is released instead of expending intense effort to develop the best proposal and presentation. This doesn’t mean the proposal and presentation aren’t important; rather, it means that we have to be a strong contender before we get invited to the dance or we won’t have a reasonable chance of winning. Firms need to take time and effort to establish relationships, gain name and reputation recognition, and communicate specialized talent and resource expertise. Teams need to get in front of potential selectors through meetings, conferences, and other industry events. Great teams will take the time to publish, speak, and facilitate at the events that clients attend for their own professional development. The days of being able to wow a new client with a great proposal and take away the job are over; clients choose teams they know and trust. That knowledge and trust takes time to develop and grow. While a great proposal may get you to the shortlist, it won’t win the job.

Teams can work smarter, not harder in the proposal and presentation development process. As I’ve written and said before, the most important first step in any selection process is to actually read the RFP – make sure we have a plan to be compliant with all aspects of the request. Treat the proposal response like a project.Teams that create a work breakdown structure (WBS) for the proposal with task leaders and clear milestone deliverables tend to be able to finish the documents with higher quality in the least amount of time. Teams that determine their core messaging strategy upfront – before they put pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard) are dramatically more successful than even the most artistic proposal designer.

Presentations are won in strategy, not in delivery. Teams that work diligently through the four stages of presentation development (alignment, strategy, choreography, rehearsal) are able to develop higher quality presentations in less time than teams whose leadership or marketing department creates a fabulous PPT presentation and gives team members the core messages. The best presentations of the last year have been created by teams that started thinking about the project and the client, then translated the results of their thinking into compelling content documented in a clear team outline. These teams were able to very quickly choreograph and rehearse very complicated and impressive presentations in a short amount of time right before the interview – even the day or night before. In this economy, I’m not just advocating for substantially better presentations – I want us to be able to develop them faster and better.

So, how do we work smarter, faster, and better? First, smarter teams think before they act – strategic thinkers gather the right information, develop the right plans for moving forward, and act strategically. They manage the business development and marketing process just like a project - maintaining scope, schedule, budget, and quality along the way. Second, faster teams work their plan, sticking to schedules and milestone deliverables throughout the phases of the marketing process. They don’t jump ahead to visuals or content before they have a strong strategic framework for the proposal or the presentation. Finally, better teams craft proposals and presentations that are aligned with the goals and aspirations of our owners. Smarter, faster, better proposals and presentations stem directly from the information we gather and relationships we build before the proposal/presentation development process ever starts.

Develop Your Team Strategy to WIN - Join us at SMPS Chicago!

2011-06-01T10:11:00.000-07:00

Meg Winch, the principal of Communication Resources Northwest will be speaking at SMPS Chicago this month. If you are in the Chicago area on June 14^th, join us! Read below for details from the SMPS Chicago web site. You can register for the seminar here.

Please join nationally recognized strategy speaker and coach, Meg Winch, for a 3-hour workshop where she will share her approach for propelling your firm across the finish line.

Emphasizing that “Content is King,” Meg will present an integrated model for presentation preparation and delivery that results in consistently winning short-list presentations. Most importantly, her approach to presentation development and delivery helps teams improve their performance in a significantly faster and more cost-effective manner. Don’t miss this opportunity to learn how to better develop a message and differentiators that give the client something to vote for.

To more fully imcorporate the methods outlined, organizations are highly encouraged to send more than one person. To register, please visit:

Where: Tuesday, June 14, 1011

8:30am - Networking Breakfast

9:00am - Start

12:00pm - Finish

Location: Pepper Construction, 643 North Orleans Street

Chicago, Illinois 60654

Member Price: $195 (2 or more at $175)

Non-Member Price: $225 (2 or more at $205)

*Workshop will be limited to first 40 people to register

Short List Interview Coaching: Why I don’t focus on individual speaker delivery

2011-05-31T07:29:00.000-07:00

I’m a bit different than the standard presentation coach in that I don’t focus a great deal on how speakers hold their hands, articulate words, or stand in the room. Not only are these elements of presentations not particularly interesting to me, I don’t really think they matter all that much to selectors. I believe that most selectors are more interested in the speaker’s approach to the project and how his/her experience indicates future performance. So, unless someone’s delivery is seriously getting in the way of the message, I tend to leave delivery issues alone. In my world as a coach, content rules the day; delivery is just the vehicle to get the content communicated.

This does not mean that I don’t care about delivery. I do. I just care more about team delivery than I do about individual performance. Teams that come across as collaborative and supportive, and that work together well, will always win over teams with excellent, polished speakers who aren’t well connected. And, the coach can’t create a connected team by picking on individual speakers.

Everything I know about presentation skills in particular and communication in general, is that they are learned behaviors. This is good news for all of us who make our living coaching presentations – and it should be good news for presenters: it means that anyone can learn effective presentation skills, no matter the skill level at which they start. However, the bad news is that speakers come to us with 20-30-40 years of learned behavior, which needs to be unlearned in order to make some delivery skills more effective. To think we can “fix” a speaker in a short period of time just doesn’t make sense.

The worst time to try and correct someone’s deep-seeded delivery issues is when the team is days or hours away from an interview. As a result, I’ve decided that delivery coaching right before an interview requires the coach to carefully choose her battles, and not mix training and coaching. In training, we try to help a speaker slowly improve his/her skills through repeated practice and trying new techniques. In coaching, we try to help a presenter give his/her best performance in a very short period of time. This means carefully selecting the minor corrections we can make in delivery and “ignoring” behaviors that we might otherwise comment on in a training context. For example, I coached a recent winning team where one of the key team members has a habit of loudly clearing his throat before beginning to speak. He does this repeatedly at the start of the presentation and at key pause points in his delivery. But, otherwise, his delivery is friendly, his content is well-organized, and his message is solid. I decided to let it go. The quality of the presentation was otherwise strong and I believed that trying to change this habit would have made him much more nervous, perhaps resulting in negative outcomes for his presentation overall. In other words, I chose my battles and decided to focus on the overall goal, which was a confident speaker with strong content.

I also believe in coaching with kindness, using humor when appropriate to get the best speaking behavior possible from each presenter. When a speaker feels picked on or ridiculed, it doesn’t help his/her ability to present with confidence. I try to tell speakers what I like about their delivery, helping them build upon those strengths versus continually pointing out and correcting deficiencies. I’ll adjust the presentation parameters to help a weak speaker be successful. For example, if a speaker is more comfortable speaking from his chair, I’ll try to accommodate that to make him more comfortable. And, if another speaker wants or feels she needs to use notes, I’ll find a way to help her use notes most effectively.

When I’ve got a delivery “train wreck,” and there have been a few, I always take the person aside and provide some one-on-one coaching, again choosing my battles to help the speaker be as confident as possible. There are always options for speakers with a great attitude, even when they have limited skills. These options include limiting time, having the team present in a conversational back-and-forth manner, using visuals as notes, and even creating directed response with a team leader. In only the rarest of occasions have I recommended someone be removed from a presentation team; in those cases, the problem was less about the speaker’s delivery and more about his/her negative attitude combined with extremely poor delivery. And, if that person is the project manager, project executive/principal, or lead designer, your options are much more limited.

As I get older, I’m more comfortable with the “quirks” speakers bring to teams –and I think that makes presentations more interesting. I’ve been professionally speaking for more than 25 years. I’m pretty good at it, but I know that I’m not ever going to make speakers deliver just like me, nor would I want to. Speaker differences make for more engaging and interesting presentations. My goal as a coach is to help each speaker give his/her best performance in the limited time we have to get a team ready. Ultimately, in short-list interviews, we want to be compelling, interesting, and memorable. But content still trumps delivery and real people speaking with passion about the details of the project always trumps scripted or overly polished presenters speaking in generalities.

Creating Memorable Short-List Presentations

2011-05-24T14:13:00.000-07:00

As I coach more presentations, I’m convinced that it takes more to win in the interview beyond the requisite experience, team members, and technical competence. Winning a presentation in this competitive environment requires that teams be memorable. In fact, in most short-list situations, all of the teams can usually be considered qualified and able to succeed on the project. As a result, being memorable in the presentation makes a real difference in close competitions. Teams can be memorable through compelling content, eye-catching visuals, and well-choreographed delivery.

Being memorable by itself isn’t the goal – particularly if the memory isn’t a good one. Pulling my skirt off in an interview was certainly memorable, but not in a good way (no, I did not do this on purpose, and no, we did not win the job). Teams want to be positively memorable for the right reasons – reasons that drive the client to select them for the work. Fortunately, there are numerous opportunities to be memorable in the three main elements of a presentation: content, visuals, and delivery.

Content that is focused on the client and organized into clear “packages” is more memorable. Speakers who package their content and emphasize the differentiator in each of the packages tend to be more memorable. And, if the content packages are organized into a logical structure, selectors can more easily recall both the differentiators and the sequence of arguments. There are a variety of reasons why this strategy results in more memorable content: Organizing content into a logical sequence fits the way the human brain selects, organizes, and interprets data. When listeners can understand the logic of an argument, they listen better and may be able to better internalize key messages (like differentiators). And, using a logical structure of content “packages” lends itself to creative repetition of content throughout the presentation. Finally, if speakers “signpost” content as it flows through a logical structure as in “First, I’m going to cover X, then Y, then Z”, listeners are able to “relax” into the content and really absorb the main messages.

From a visuals standpoint, teams should move beyond PowerPoint to truly be memorable. Sometimes this means low tech solutions; sometimes it means raising the bar on presentation technology. In the past month, I’ve seen both utilized to create very effective team presentations. One team used presentation banners and sat on stools to create a more conversational environment with their audience. Another used a writeable site plan to interact with selectors. One more team used the largest touch screen I’ve ever seen to interact with their system during the presentation. In none of these interviews did speakers rely on flashy photography with superimposed bullets on PowerPoint. In all of these interviews, speakers used visuals as “frosting” to their presentations vs. letting the visuals take over the presentation. These days, creative teams are pulling out the crayons and white board markers. They’re making models out of non-traditional materials. And, they’re using technology in innovative ways – pushing the limits of what we thought we could do within limited time and space parameters. From my perspective, this has been fun and engaging; it seems visuals are finally working for my teams in ways I always hoped they could.

Team delivery can also be memorable in how individual speakers speak, how transitions are made between speakers, and how groups of team members move around the space. Memorable presentations are well choreographed without being overly staged. In the most recent presentations, I’ve had a large number of speakers cycle through eight chairs, individual speakers speaking from stools, and project managers acting as emcees for their teams. All of these teams understood the value of rehearsal and took the time to get each other comfortable with movement and sound before the interview. Each team was able to anticipate visuals, handle the unexpected, and assist struggling team members because they’d worked through choreography and rehearsal together. Crafting memorable delivery is actually quite simple – come up with a good idea and then rehearse it until it becomes second nature.

Finally, I think the most memorable interviews have been the most fun. Team members were so comfortable with each other that they supported one another throughout all stages of the presentation and they laughed together when things didn’t work out as expected. At the end of memorable interviews, team members come away knowing they gave their absolutely best performance, leaving nothing back.

The Benefits of In-House Training on Tight Budgets

2011-05-04T09:51:00.000-07:00

(Re-post from June 2010)

With ever shrinking budgets, how do we continue to do training in our organizations? And, how do firms even find the time to train the professionals who so desperately need training? These are questions those of us in the training profession must address if we hope to stay relevant in this chaotic marketplace. While some firms are still purchasing aggressive programs designed to develop their next generation of leaders, most firms have minimized training budgets and/or cut their commitment to staff development.

Some organizations are finding that though they value training, their limited staff don’t have time to take two days away to attend a training program. So, what do we do? One thing is clear: Firms should never walk away from a commitment to training. I say this not as someone who sells training but, as a leader of a staff who believes the more time I spend educating my team, the more productive and stable they’ll be, and the more relevant my company will remain.

I believe there are some tangible solutions to correct the current training vacuum. Training can take a variety of forms. Rather than investing in the two-day offsite training that costs thousands of dollars, firms should consider shorter, more targeted programs to address specific needs. They should consider using in-house training resources particularly for repeated courses. Nothing hones a professional’s skills better than having to teach a class.

We’re finding that as demand for packaged training programs has waned, design services that enable clients to bring in-house training to employees have increased. We have also found, with our own training video, that the best value we can deliver to customers is to provide an accompanying training guide so firms can use the video as part of an in-house training program. In fact, we think this model of training is so effective that technical firms ought to consider designing their own in-house training programs with linked instructor and participant guides.

Designing specific in-house training can be both extremely cost-effective and can maintain consistency across learners. The cost of creating a credible in-house training video has gone way down in the last several years. Creating a training video is now more accessible even to moderately sized firms in our industry. Once created, the training program can be used again and again within the company. We just completed a video for one of our clients at a 5^thof the cost that a similar video would have cost several years ago.

Quite simply, making employee training a priority makes companies better. With effective training and information, employees perform better and customers ultimately receive better products and better service. Firms across the nation need to evaluate how training is currently being done and take steps to streamline and prioritize their in-house programs.

The Often Misused and Maligned Semicolon

2011-02-24T20:10:00.000-08:00

I’ve spent the last week helping write and edit a missive about wastewater treatment – otherwise known as “The Greatest Proposal EVER Written” in the wastewater treatment category. I’m going to wake up screaming about various “terms of art” such as anaerobic digestion. Stay tuned.

While I love being a part of high-profile design pursuits, working in wastewater puts everything in perspective. And, despite words to the contrary, working with engineers is often a real treat. I really do mean that.

BUT, given the piles of editing I’ve done, and have yet to do, I thought I’d write a short educational piece for my dedicated readers about the often misused and maligned semicolon. Plus, if this blog post can effectively educate the public about proper grammar and can keep me from having to change one more semicolon into a comma or vice-versa, I’ll be a happy editor.

Semicolons have three uses. You can check this out on the web if you need more clarification – Wikipedia is a good source. Even though information on Wikipedia can be altered by anyone on a daily basis (this is more relevant for celebrity biographies), the grammar gurus of the world make sure the punctuation articles on the site are up to date and correct. And, for the truly cultured among you, The Elements of Style by Strunk and White is still the definitive source for all things written. I stand with my mother on this one.

Semicolons are used to separate independent clauses (e.g., clauses that could stand alone, but prefer being together as in “Writing wastewater proposals is fun; I’d like to do it more often”).
Semicolons are used to separate independent clauses containing transitional phrases (e.g., logical movement from one clause to another) as in “This proposal will change the way our clients think about wastewater treatment; clearly, this will result in our being selected for this project!”
Here’s the hard one, the ‘Triple Sow Cow’ of punctuation: Semicolons can be used to separate items in a list that includes items that require internal punctuation as in “We must complete every section of the qualifications section chronologically: the executive summary, which summarizes our overall qualifications; the team overview, which includes short descriptions of each member firm; and the resumes, which are only one page each.

Note, unless the list contains internal punctuation, you don’t need the semicolon as in “We must complete every section of the qualifications section chronologically: the executive summary, the team overview, and the resumes. Just because a sentence contains a colon before the list does not mean you need semicolons between items.

So, there you have it; semicolons are easy and so fun to use! Semicolons separate linked sentences; they communicate a strong link between thoughts. Semicolons communicate transition from one thought to another; as a result, you can use them to make a point stronger. And, semicolons can be used to separate punctuated items in a list after a colon: a, b, c; 1, 2, 3; and x, y, z.

In all seriousness, let’s make a commitment to stop playing “fast and loose” with punctuation. It behooves all of us who write for a living, and that means most of us, to learn how to use punctuation appropriately. We should also use punctuation consistently. Punctuation conventions, like language, change over time, but the need for consistent use is constant. Know the rules, follow the rules, and be creative in your content, not in your use of punctuation.

As for me, I’m back to writing about wastewater; thank you for the break. If appropriately inspired, we can tackle the appropriate use of a comma next time. :)

Send a "Valentine" to your Clients

2011-02-16T09:38:00.000-08:00

As we collectively lick our fingers from the Valentine's Day chocolates we received on the 14th (or bought for ourselves for half price on the 15th), I’d like to send out my own little message of “love” to clients and colleagues. Because this is a blog about relationships and communication in the A/E/C industry, I’ll stick to writing about love from a purely professional perspective. In this season of love, I’m drawn to think about what makes some clients love us and some think of consultants instead as commodities – interchangeable and eminently replaceable.

As many of you know, my team and I spend a lot of time calling our clients’ clients. We ask about the quality of relationships and the perceptions these individuals have of our clients, their work, and their firms. After more than 3000 interviews in the A/E/C industry – and through my own experience working as part of project teams – I’m pleased to report that while being on schedule, below budget, and meeting scope are essential elements of client satisfaction, they are actually far less predictive of long-term client relationship health than we might assume. Schedule, budget, scope, and quality performance are expected parts of project delivery and don’t seem to differentiate firms or teams across the industry.

In fact, one of the more surprising things we’ve found in our research is that sometimes clients can love us even when our projects aren’t going as well as we – or they – would have hoped. And, sometimes clients can feel ambivalent or worse about us when projects are actually quite successful. This doesn’t seem to make sense. Or does it?

In love relationships, there’s a lot to be said for shared values and world view. After the initial chemistry has sparked interest, most couples find they have to have something in common to forge a lasting relationship. The same goes for client relationships: the best predictor of a long term, positive client relationship is choosing the right client – people and organizations who share your view of the world, the market, and the services you provide. If you want clients who treat you as trusted partners, choose clients who tend to have these types of relationships with other consultants and contractors. If a potential client treats your peers as commodities, chances are you’ll be the “flavor of the month” once selected. If a potential client consistently engages in litigation to get what they want, think carefully about why your firm will be different before diving in to a working relationship.

That said, it’s not enough to choose the right client – you also have to treat the client right. Just like in long-term romantic relationships, it’s not about the grand gestures (though those are nice). It is instead about the daily commitment. What nice things can we do for our clients, balancing giving services away with staying profitable? We can help a client get ready for an important meeting. We can come in after hours without complaint to fix a problem. We can prepare a draft agenda for a meeting to get the discussion rolling. Think of small gestures that communicate “affection” vs. grand gestures that embarrass and overwhelm.

Good relationships start with good communication. Firms interested in long-term client relationships start those relationships by asking the client, “How can I make you successful on this project?” They ask what the client’s fears for the work are, and take the time to understand the client’s aspirations and hopes for the work. They focus outward on the client instead of inward on their own firm’s success. Firms who can master this will reap the benefits in long-term profitable work.

Successful firms only surprise clients with good news (or birthday cake); they don’t ever surprise the client with bad news. They especially don’t ever surprise the client publicly in a meeting with bad news. And, they never surprise the client with bad news, in a meeting, with a bill for services. Clients want information, options, solutions, and assistance. Just as romantic relationships can weather almost any storm together with the right balance of communication and care, client relationships are capable of the same thing. Our clients want and need trusted partners who are with them through thick and thin. They want partners who will be their advocates in good times and bad. And, they want friends who share their desire to make projects and communities successful.

When things go badly on a project, successful consultants and contractors will throw their metaphorical coats over the puddle – they pitch in to solve problems, they share the sacrifice of issues, and they stay late to get the job done. This may sound “Pollyannaish”, but this is what proven experience with clients has taught us. It’s not about the cost – that’s a symptom of a much more important problem. The real issue is how the client feels they are being treated in both the good times and the bad.

When the project is over, firms who are successful in building and keeping long-term client relationships don’t go away. They don’t ignore the client until the next budget cycle or the next project pursuit. Their principals check in on a regular basis, sharing information and advice, asking how the past project is performing, and occasionally providing some free advice. They think like and act like their clients matter as more than a project. These firms know that the secret to not being treated like a commodity is to not treat our clients as commodities.

So, in this season of love, that’s my message – care for your clients and prize your relationships with them. I do believe that if more of us actively sought to “share the love” with our clients on a more regular basis – within the bounds of the appropriateness and professionalism – we, and our clients, would be happier and more successful with our work relationships. Happy Valentines!

The Case for Clarity in Short-List Interviews

2011-01-23T22:15:00.000-08:00

My daughter recently attended a play at the University of Washington, which she reported was one of the most confusing theatrical performances she’d ever seen. The play was performed completely in Polish with English subtitles streamed across the top of the theater. She said it was extremely confusing, not just because of the content matter, but because she had to constantly take her attention away from what was happening on stage to understand what the actors were saying. I wonder if selection committees for A/E/C short-list interviews often feel the same way. I suspect they might.

After 25 years in the industry, I’m convinced we speak a different language, one for which we rarely provide helpful subtitles. And, when we do, they are often presented in such a way that disconnects our audience from the action happening on the project or in the interview. Even when clients know the multitude of acronyms we use (I challenge each of you to go an entire day without using one!), most don’t understand what they really mean, though few would ask for clarification. Even the team requirements of the procurement methods clients use are fraught with confusion for us and them. For example, I suspect that the vast majority of clients who are currently experimenting with IPD (Integrated Project Delivery) don’t really understand the ramifications of either the contract or the working relationship – as evidenced by the many who like the concept but balk at negotiating an actual IPD contract.

Do we think clients really understand how the entire realm of relationships changes when they move from DBB (Design Bid Build) to CMAR (Construction Manager at Risk)? Clearly, some do and some don’t. But, I think our industry needs to do a much better job explaining how teams work together differently under each procurement method beyond the contractual obligations and transference of risk. This is essential because within these relationships we see the real benefits of CMAR, CM/GC, IPD, Design Build, etc.

In two weeks, I’m working on one of the more refreshing interviews of my career. The client, understanding that his organization does not understand the costs and benefits of different procurement methods, has requested a very non-traditional short-list interview. In the interview for a $300+ million project, the team must first educate and convince the owner as to the benefits of the Construction Manager at Risk procurement method and then convince him that the team is the best choice for the project. I’m looking forward to this interview because we will really get to explore the core benefits of the procurement method and how by working together, the entire team – owner, designer, and construction manager – can reap the benefits in cost, schedule, quality, profitability, and relationship.

So, what do we take away for short-list interviews? Beyond the obvious goal to explain our acronyms (if you didn’t get that, “Return to Go; do not collect $200”), I think we need to do a better job explaining the benefits and the requirements of the procurement methodologies used for projects. This affords us the chance to position our teams as meeting not only the needs of the project, but being able to work with the owner to achieve the benefits of the procurement method. For example, how can the owner and the design team get real benefit from the CM’s early engagement of subs? Beyond just saying that we will engage subs early, teams should explain how this process works and the real benefit to the project and the team. In shorter interviews in particular, I’d love to see teams spend more time explaining the details of what they can do for the project via the procurement method than trying to cover the entire breadth of typical topics (our history, our experience, our staffing, our management plan….).

The partnership required to make any of the delivery methods work can start in the interview – with clarity of expectations and a conversation about how to achieve the benefits of team members working together. Savvy teams take the time to explain how they are going to achieve the promise of the procurement method vs. delivering a typical quals-based interview. Clients are yearning for teamwork, partnership, protection from growth in their budgets and schedules – and they are turning to procurement methods many of them don’t fully understand to get there. It behooves teams to not only deliver on the promises these procurement methods may offer, but to fully explain to owners how they will get there. A winning interview presents not only the benefits, but the unique methodology to achieve them in a way that is clear, compelling, and game changing.

A Tale of Two Leaders

2011-01-19T11:36:00.000-08:00

I’ve been coaching a lot in the past several months – both incredible wins and hard losses, but all hard fought. My teams are working harder and the quality of interviews keeps rising. I’m impressed with their energy and commitment to excellence. One of the things I’m noticing as I spend more time around presentation teams is the way in which company leaders interact with their presentation teams during the interview preparation and right before the team leaves for the interview. I’m seeing some profound and, quite frankly, shocking differences.

Let me illustrate by way of two cases from two different teams. Each team was working diligently to prepare for a very important, potentially game changing interview. Each team also struggled to get through their content at some point in the preparation process, as is normal for most large, complex interviews. As most of us in marketing and business development know, interviews seldom come together seamlessly. They generally go through a creative process that sometimes resembles the making of sausage (tastes great at the end, but really messy and difficult to create, even though it follows a logical production process). Teams struggle as part of the creative process because they challenge ideas and they try new strategies to develop and deliver interviews that are different than the status quo.

In the first case, one of the owners of a large construction company walked into the room during one of the early creative meetings. He went around the room to each team member, expressing gratitude for the team member’s contribution and offering the full support of the organization to the effort. He introduced himself to me and thanked me – the hired coach – for agreeing to be a part of the pursuit. He introduced himself to the outside team members and expressed his excitement for the firms to be able to collaborate. After sitting through the meeting for a short time, he gracefully exited. When the team was ready for a run-through – not the final one – he came back, and while sitting through through the rehearsal, provided some very insightful, but very supportive feedback. He clearly moderated his comments to the skill level of each speaker and was very careful to support the work the team had done in the hours he was not in the room.

In the second case, one of the owners of a design firm sat through a very short period of the first team meeting and spend much of that time expressing his perspective on the project. He provided some very insightful comments, but left before team members could engage with him or ask questions. He reminded the team how important the interview was and how he needed the team to bring home the project. At one of the later rehearsals – again, not the final one – he sat through a portion of the presentation and proceeded to lambast the team for not performing to his standard. He expressed disdain for the design of the presentation and told the team he thought it would not work well. He picked apart the delivery skills of one of the younger team members. Then, he left the room for another appointment.

Quite a difference. In the first case, the team was treated respectfully and with gratitude for their efforts. Team members were trusted with the presentation and the content. As a result, each team member worked his or her hardest to excel and had an easy time integrating the relevant feedback into the presentation, making it better. Team members left for the interview relaxed, confident, and knowing they had the full support of their leadership.

In the second case, the team was treated disrespectfully and with disdain. Team members felt belittled and at a very late hour, began questioning their plan and content, even though the time for wholesale changes had clearly passed. Team members spent the next hours fretting over the overall approach to the interview vs. coming together and feeling confident. It was truly a disappointment that the leader of the firm did not ever see the overall approach to the interview before offering criticism. In one short interaction with the team, this individual created uncertainty and unease with a strategy that could have been fun and innovative.

So, what’s the take away? The role of the company leader in the performance of a short-list team cannot be underestimated. Leaders need to either engage in the entire process or trust their teams, entering the process strategically to support their teams and provide meaningful assistance. In the first case, the company leader was not simply a figurehead. He provided insightful and relevant comments that were easily integrated into the team’s performance, making it better. In the second case, the leader provided global comments based on limited information that tore down the confidence of both individuals and the team as a whole.

That one team won and the other team lost is probably not due to the leaders and their engagement with the team. But, the behavior of each, both separately and in juxtaposition to each other revealed volumes about the respective companies and how they will ultimately work together on real projects. Leaders need to think about the power of their words as amplified by their role and their experience and tailor their content and their tone to the situation, the audience, and the timing. Leaders can inspire confidence and incredible performance or they can tear down confidence and create fear and increased stage fright. As with all things – leaders need to behave intentionally to drive the outcomes they want for their employees and their firms.

Remembering the Importance of Connections

2011-01-02T23:18:00.000-08:00

As many of us leave our holiday family reunions for another season (I’m flying home from ours as I write), it’s a good time to reflect on the importance of our "work family." While sites liked LinkedIn do a great job of getting many of us back in touch with colleagues from around the Country and help us see the wide range of our work/social networks, they really aren’t a substitute for the real, interpersonal connections that build and nurture us in our working lives.

Researchers have long known the importance of social networks in professional and personal development. Social networking websites, though a wonderful source of contact information, can’t provide the interaction, mentoring, problem solving, and perspective taking that are so necessary for growth and intellectual development. Particularly in this economy, where companies can offer fewer training and development opportunities, interaction with and mentorship from other professionals are paramount.

I’m concerned that the moments many of us spend on social networking sites (I’ll admit to too much time on Facebook largely due to my Scramble addiction), may take away from the real interaction with others that is so necessary to develop worthwhile social networks that go beyond linked nodes on a network diagram. In fact, even email, while a time saving (or some might argue a time sucking) advance, can take away from meaningful social interaction. Online connection can never effectively replace real life, face-to-face conversation.

Many years ago, my mentor, an incredible marketing professional named Dale McMichael, told me, “One must look after one’s friends.” And, Dale did. Most times, when he flew through Seattle, he intentionally carved out time with me to find out how my business was doing and to teach me something new. He once spent two days working with my team and me to figure out a plan for growing our business – I can say without a doubt, I’m doing what I do today because Dale believed in me and took the time to make our interaction meaningful. He was a real mentor and a real friend. And, I know our relationship would not have been so valuable over email or social networking sites. Dale gave me the gift of time – sharing his knowledge and his network, and being a ready ear for new ideas and difficult questions. While Dale has been gone for many years, there isn’t a month that goes by that I don’t think of him in gratitude for what he taught me and the time he gave me in the busiest time of his own career.

So, in this New Year, I advocate for all of us to make a resolution to use our newly found linked networks to interact on a more meaningful, personal level. Pick up the phone to connect with a colleague, help a younger employee build their skills by sharing your knowledge, and in the Northwest tradition, sit down for coffee to talk about work issues, needs, and concerns. And, let’s share our networks with each other to find projects, learn more about the work we do, and help those who are not working find work. The renewed connections we have as a result of social networking sites can be powerful and valuable, but only if we use them to really foster authentic connection and interaction.

For those of us lucky enough to be in supervisory positions, let’s share our networks with our protégé’s – take them along on client calls, talk about what we’re doing and why we’re doing it, ask their advice and counsel on important issues and project requirements, and introduce them to a broader network of professionals who can provide different perspectives and opportunities. I know that this kind of mentoring isn’t something we can do online. It takes time to have the intellectual and social discourse necessary for growth and development. We all need to take the time to encourage questions, provide information, and be actively engaged in communicating with our teams.

This year, I’m making some resolutions: I’ll be writing more, talking more, interacting more, and spending more time communicating meaningfully. This doesn’t mean that my colleagues and friends won’t get the occasional 3am email, but it does mean that I hope to spend more time over coffee talking and less time holding conversations by email, LinkedIn, or Facebook. I know this is going to be hard, particularly for those of us who spend more time sitting on an airplane than we do sitting at our desks. But, I have to believe that the payoff will be worthwhile by way of stronger networks, better relationships, and more connected team members.

I’m not advocating unplugging; I’m simply advocating a new kind of being plugged in. We can use social networking to get back in touch AND simultaneously focus on bringing back old-fashioned conversation to make those connections mean something.

Thanksgiving Reflections

2010-11-24T08:03:00.000-08:00

I always love Thanksgiving week; not only is the week short, but since so many of our colleagues and clients are on vacation, it’s a great time to catch up and take stock of things at work. As a result, the first two days of the week are quite busy here at CRNW. In honor of this season of thanks, I’d like to publicly give thanks for the amazing team that works here to serve our clients. And, I encourage each of you to do the same for your own incredible staffs who work alongside you to serve clients, both internal and external.

This economy has been stressful for everyone, for firms that have lots of work and firms that are searching for more. And, given shrinking staffs, our remaining teams are stretched thin, working longer hours to accomplish more work. In fact, given the procurement “season”, I know many marketing and technical staffs will be spending time over the Thanksgiving holiday writing/editing proposals for late November due dates (and that will be a subject for a later blog – but in the interim, WHAT were those selectors thinking setting proposals due on the 29^th/30^th of November!!!??!!).

A lifetime ago in graduate school, my area of focus was on organizational stress and strain –and I’ve continued to be interested in this area of research. Stress is a normal part of organizational life that varies with workload, team dynamics, market conditions, and any kind of change – good or bad. And, most employees cope with stress quite well, with many performing their best work in stressful or chaotic situations. However, when employees stop being able to cope with and adapt to organizational stress, it becomes strain, which is always a bad thing for the employees and the organization.

Symptoms of strain include a litany of somatic complaints – when physical meets psychological – such as sleeplessness, stomachaches, headaches, etc. Organizations may see an increase in absenteeism and a decrease in productivity. Previously high functioning employees become unfocused or even incredibly dissatisfied. Some leave; others simply implode.

The most important thing our own research has revealed is the importance of the relationship the employee has with his/her first-line supervisor relative to the employee’s ability to cope with or adapt to higher levels of stress. In fact, key to avoiding strain or moving an employee from strain to coping, depends on the strength of the supervisor/subordinate relationship.

In this economy, the relationships we have with our staffs are increasingly important. Supervisors need to remember the centrality of their role in the organization – not just to manage work, but to be a social support for employees. This means stepping outside our own stressful work lives to actively engage with employees, learning what they need and how you can help. It does not mean being sucked into the personal drama of a challenged employee, but it does mean developing a relationship with the employee in which s/he can ask for and find critical assistance. And, it means obviously, regularly, repetitively thanking employees for their hard work.

Employees who feel their work matters do better work because they feel more connected to and more engaged in a relationship with the organization. Most supervisors are very good at corrective action, finding problems and resolving them. But, most employees respond much more readily to recognition as a method for improvement. So, in this week of thanks, set aside some time to not only give thanks for your team members’ work, but to tell them specifically what you appreciate.

As we leave our offices on Wednesday for some much needed time with family, friends, and the turkey, make sure you leave your organizational family feeling good about their jobs, their organization, and their worth to you and your projects. Then, all of us can come back rejuvenated and ready to buckle down in the hectic weeks before the New Year. Happy Thanksgiving.

2010-11-16T08:04:00.000-08:00

Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society.

Mark Twain

When coaching presentations, I’m often asked about what team members should wear to the interview. It sounds like a minor decision compared to the numerous other decisions we make in our professional lives. But, it is a critical one and we do need to spend time thinking about and strategizing our presentation wardrobe.

First impressions make a real difference. If we make a bad first impression, we can spend the next 20-30 minutes of the interview working hard to change a negative impression of our intelligence, our professionalism, or our diligence. And, like it or not, much of that first impression is made based on what we look like – our dress, our overall presentation of self, and how we carry ourselves.

As many of you know, I come from the Pacific Northwest – the place that brought us grunge. My husband has only worn a tie twice in the past ten years, both times under duress. And, I’ll confess to wearing sandals with socks – to work. But, even for us devoted Northwesterners, our militantly casual style needs to stop at the interview. At any interview, in fact, any professional presentation – we need to take care with our appearance and overall self presentation.

I work with a woman who is a contractor for one of our clients. She’s very intelligent and has years of experience. But, she comes to work wearing incredibly inappropriate clothing – lingerie type tops and garage cleaning jeans. And, I believe this hurts her when she makes a presentation about her work. It took me over a week of working with her to believe she was indeed the professional I’d been assured she was. The way she presents herself contrasts sharply with the talent she brings to the work. Unfortunately, I know I’m not the only one who thinks this. What we wear and how we present ourselves do make a profound and immediate impact on how others perceive us, and, in fact, how able others are to hear our message.

The Three ‘C’s of Dress will serve you well for the interview and at work in general: conservative, clean, and comfortable. Presenting yourself at work is not the time to assert your outrageous sense of style. In my humble opinion, others should notice our work, not our dress. In dressing for presentations, we should take active steps to avoid calling attention to what we wear so listeners can focus on what we say and mean.

Conservative dress means muted colors, classic lines, and quality fabrics. Conservative need not mean staid or old-fashioned. Think classic, not dowdy. Men and women should own one pair of well-fitted, tailored black pants (or for women, a skirt if they so desire) and a jacket. Find a good tailor – or personal shopper – and get one outfit that fits well. Choose good fabrics that last, natural fibers that breathe, and colors and fabrics that cross seasons.

Clothing should always be clean, well-pressed, and in good shape. While grunge works in some circles, it doesn’t work in an interview. At the risk of sounding like Emily Post, a clothing brush is an essential tool for any professional. If you have a hairy pet (I do – thanks, Rosie!), use it right before you leave the house. Or, choose clothing the same color as the dog.

Finally, in any interview, comfort is critical. Natural fibers breath and minimize the tell tale signs of stress. An undershirt can be essential to comfort and appearance. And, make sure the clothing fits in a non-constraining way. I need to be able to move in my clothing; when I’m presenting, I don’t want to think about what I’m wearing and whether what I’m wearing will continue to be decent in spite of how I might move around the space.

A good rule of thumb for any speaking team is to dress one step above how you think the selection committee will be dressed. This communicates professionalism and that you’ve taken the event seriously. I also believe – though I don’t have any hard proof – that when we dress the part, we have an easier time speaking and projecting an image.

I’m not sure I’d go so far as Twain in saying that clothing makes the person, but I do know that it makes a very real difference in how audiences feel about us. I’m also not sure that naked people don’t make an impact on society; but, in the context of a short-list interview, our choice of clothing is important and can make a significant difference to our success. It’s one more way in which we communicate the type of people we are and how committed we are to the client relationship.

An Extra Hour

2010-11-08T09:12:00.000-08:00

With the exception of my friends in Arizona and Hawaii, most of us in the US received the annual fall gift of an extra hour today. While this hour was given while we were sleeping, it always feels to me as if the day is longer, affording me endless possibilities of things to do. I feel energized by the opportunity to finish long-avoided tasks, catch up on work projects, or spend time with family and dog. This hour – 60 minutes – seems so much longer than what it is in actuality. As I get older, I look forward to “falling” back more than almost any other day on the calendar. And, to be fair, I resent giving that hour back in the spring.

As with many things, this makes me think of the difference an hour can make to my teams and to my clients. What if we had an extra hour to get ready for a critical short-list presentation? What would we do with it? As you might imagine, I have several suggestions of both what to do, and what not to do with your extra hour.

First, though, in the absence of any cosmic gift of fabricated time, how do we gain an extra hour of preparation and/or rehearsal time? By planning the presentation development like we would a project, we can capture time by minimizing waste. In other words, by developing clear milestones for preparation and by holding team members accountable to preparation deliverables, any team can significantly decrease the amount of time it takes to create a good presentation. And, by establishing realistic milestones right up to the time the team leaves for the interview, we can capture that extra hour between the final rehearsal and the time we leave.

Before writing about what we can do with that time – there are so many possibilities – I should establish what teams and individual speakers should not do. Teams that practice right up to the time they leave for the interview create nervous speakers and risk being “flat” in the actual performance. Team members who fiddle with their visuals and PPT slides up until “go live,” create anxiety for themselves and others and buy themselves enormous risk of failure of both content and technology in the actual interview. And, please, don’t spend your hour rewriting your notes. Not only will you waste time, but you’ll actually decrease the value of any notes because your eye will no longer recognize the shapes and patterns of words on the page. Finally, don’t go to your office and return emails or solve problems of your day. The hour before the team leaves for the interview is a time to prepare, to relax, and to get ready.

The hour before the team leaves for the interview can be a gift and can be the most important period of time of all. Successful teams finish their team rehearsal at least an hour before the team leaves. These teams keep speakers together to have a snack, rehearse Q and A, and work logistics. This enables each team member to leave for the interview rested, relaxed, and confident.

In some cases, I put teams through a “blocking” rehearsal. Blocking, a term borrowed from the theater, means to put speakers through the movement of the interview without practicing the actual content. This helps speakers know who is on their left and who is on their right, where they move in the space, and where to find visuals. Blocking creates confidence in movement and interaction. And, most importantly, it reduces uncertainty and burns off energy to help team members relax into the process of speaking.

In the final hour before departure, I sometimes recommend to particularly nervous speakers that they take a walk around the building, speaking their content out loud to themselves or another team member. In this way, the speaker reinforces the “body memory” necessary to link content to delivery and s/he continues to manage nervous energy. Some of my most memorable presentations involved long walks with principal speakers who went on to give the best presentation in the interview room before the real selection committee.

For particularly nervous speakers, helping them breathe can be a huge help. It sounds strange –and sometimes it is – but reminding a speaker to take deep breaths can be enormously helpful. Getting away from the bustle of energy to sit in a quiet room and calmly breathe in and out can be the best strategy for managing frayed nerves. Let the marketing professionals pack the team up for the interview.

On this day of extra time, I wish each team an extra hour to get ready for each interview. While the rest of the year only affords us 24 hours in each day, by proper planning and time management, teams can capture an hour to get speakers really ready to present their best and most relaxed selves before selectors.

Election Day Thoughts on Social Media/Marketing

2010-11-02T16:45:00.000-07:00

It’s been a long and particularly difficult election season; I’m so tired of negative ads about candidates, issues, and propositions. Despite my election exhaustion, however, I am hopeful that the majority of my clients, friends, and family have stood up for democracy and voted today. It really doesn’t matter to me how you vote – just that you do so in a timely and thoughtful manner.

This election day, I’m amazed at how many politically insensitive statements I’m reading from friends and colleagues about the issues in today’s election on both Facebook and Linked In. This makes me think about how professionals should use social media as compared with our high school and college aged counterparts.

I’m a fan of Facebook (I love reading what many of you are up to – and it’s nice to know my children are alive and well when I’m not in daily contact). I have a Linked In account, which I use sporadically. As you can read, I maintain a regular blog. And, at Communication Resources, we send out tweets about articles and events – though I have to admit someone does this for me as I’m not as technically savvy as you might think.

As technical professionals, we should be different kinds of Facebook users. We need to hold ourselves to a different standard of care relative to what and how we write. Most of us in marketing and business development use a variety of social media modalities to report on issues and ideas (as in a blog), highlight events or accomplishments (as in Twitter), and connect with colleagues and clients (as in Linked In, etc.). However, I’m finding less and less care is being taken in what and how we communicate in these venues.

I’d like to propose a new standard of communication be adopted by all of us who make use of a range of social media/marketing venues.

My father, a long-time attorney and my business mentor, taught me three things about writing:

1) Never write anything you wouldn’t want read back to you in court. This sounds strange for social media, which was intended to be more immediate and “edgy.” But remember, the way we use social media is to create an image of our businesses and ourselves. Posting political statements undermines relationships and exhibits a lack of sensitivity to others’ viewpoints. All of us need to remember that what we write exists forever as a statement of who we are, what we believe in, and the professionalism of ourselves and our businesses. So, be thoughtful and careful about what you write and to whom you write it. If you have a business Facebook (or other venue) account, keep it professional and leave the chatter to the kids.

2) If you are going to write it down, make it complete, objective, and verifiable. Blogs were never meant to be conversational. In my opinion, it’s a mistake to write opinions as facts or to post thoughts that haven’t been vetted. Blogs written for business purposes shouldn’t be merely stream of consciousness – they are another important vehicle for readers to understand you and your business perspectives. Assume your words may be printed, copied, and distributed. Take the same care with this writing as you would a letter, a report, or an article. Don’t write negative things that may hurt you (or others) later. Check your facts. Reread before you hit “post”.

3)Whatever you write should pass the Mom-Test by being exceptionally well-written. My mother is a linguist, champion Scrabble player, and the best editor in the business. Passing the Mom-Test meant that any document had to be well-written. I still hold myself to the standard that anything I write should be well punctuated, grammatically correct, and spellchecked. Fortunately, my mother (at 83 years of age) is still ever-vigilant, watching my writing and others’ for hanging prepositions, verb-tense agreement, or the lack of a referent.

For those of you not acquainted with my mother, The Elements of Style is still a great resource and I encourage regular bloggers (and in fact, anyone who writes regularly) to make active use of it. Read it – it’s quite good and still – for me – the definitive work on what good writing looks like. In addition, find and use a good editor. Read through and check the quality of what you write. Remember, what you write is a reflection of you and your firm.

Social Media venues like Blogger, Facebook, and Linked In provide excellent vehicles for our firms to get the word out about products, services, areas of expertise, and new ideas. But, as with any written form of communication, these venues come with the responsibility to take great care with what we write and to uphold traditional conventions of good writing. Communicating through a social media venue doesn’t absolve us from the responsibility to adhere to the standards of good writing. If we want to reverse the downward trajectory of quality writing in this country, it starts with us.

Winning the Q and A Interview

2010-10-26T14:31:00.000-07:00

Tired of hearing the same interview over and over by different teams, many owners are turning to interviews comprised of targeted questions and answers (Q and A) in the hopes of really getting to know team members’ thoughts about the project and whether a team is a good fit for the client organization. These interviews can be extremely effective vehicles for teams to showcase their expertise and personality. But they require specific planning and rehearsal, the same as for a traditional interview. Teams who come unprepared and unrehearsed do so at their peril and will not give their best possible performance.

Teams should prepare for Q and A interviews by getting immersed in the project, learning as much as they can about the client, the site, the project, and the stakeholders. As with all interviews, we win projects in the details. It is paramount that team members be able to tie rich details into their discussion of approach and philosophy as it relates to the project under consideration. This first stage of interview development is the same for a traditional interview as it is for a Q and A interview; aligning team members to the project and the client is the most important first step in any effective interview planning process.

In addition, I also recommend to teams that they develop a “What we need to prove in order to win this job” list. Commit this list to memory. Use it in your Q and A rehearsal. Keep it with you at the interview if needed; it is the DNA of your pitch. This becomes a check-list to make sure you communicate the information needed in order to win the job.

To increase your chances of success in the Q and A interview, the best strategy is to design a set of mini-presentations that respond to the key messages list above – each with a strong claim, detailed content, and examples to back up your points. These mini-presentations need not be over-rehearsed, but they should be planned and structured around strong, clear claim statements. By creating a set of mini-presentations, teams can make sure they cover the points they need to in a clear and organized manner.

Team choreography sets the mood for the interaction between client and team. In a Q and A interview, move in closer to the selection committee, even sit around a table, interspersed with the selectors if possible. Otherwise, move the team close in to facilitate eye contact and true engagement. Team members should sit up straight (not rigid) and focus their attention on the selection committee, making strong, real eye contact with the person asking the question and smiling in order to come across as engaging and collaborative.

Rehearsal for a Q and A interview is incredibly important – probably even more so than for a traditional interview. Because of the inherent “impromptu” nature of the context, Q and A interviews can encourage poor presentation behavior by some speakers. Speakers who are more confident and comfortable can inadvertently take over the interview by talking too much - overshadowing the less verbal experts on the team and wasting precious minutes. Rehearsing appropriate presentation behaviors can dramatically increase a team’s chance of success.

Teams should brainstorm a list of possible questions (and their follow-on questions) and should practice answering both the easy ones and the hard ones. If possible, convene a group of informed professionals within your own firm to practice Q and A with the team in a more realistic rehearsal. Determine who “owns” what content. Make sure no answer is more than about two minutes in duration. And, never, ever have more than three speakers speaking on the same question (e.g., the “endless hitchhike”). Finally, nominate one person in the room to make sure the team has covered everything on your key messages list.

In sum, a Q and A interview does not mean your team cannot plan, strategize, or rehearse. In fact, you probably need even more time together to align team members to the project and get them comfortable with the content and the “rules” governing your team’s approach to Q and A. Only by planning and rehearsing can we have absolute confidence that the team will perform well in the actual interview. Because so few teams are good at this type of interviewing, there’s ample room for savvy teams to shine in this venue – coming across as prepared, relaxed, conversational, and ready to get to work.

Partnering with Housing Hope: Your Purchase can Make a Difference!

2010-10-11T11:46:00.000-07:00

As we move closer to winter and our northwest winds start to blow, we at Communication Resources are very sensitive to those among us who are without shelter this season. As a result, we are donating $100 for each of our training DVDs purchased in the month of October to Housing Hope of Snohomish County.

The DVD training, entitled "Winning the Short List," provides a quality training experience to A/E/C professionals on short-list interviewing. The training is accompanied by a detailed participant’s handbook and a trainer’s guide. In this training, you can learn Meg’s tested techniques for developing, presenting, and winning short-list interview presentations. The complete system, including both DVD and Guides, is $395. With purchase, you may also call Meg and her team directly with any of your training and/or coaching questions.

You can read more about the DVD, preview a segment, and see the guides at www.communication-resources.com.

We’re happy to partner with Housing Hope to help provide shelter and valuable resources for our community’s most vulnerable families. If you would like to contribute to them directly, please do so at www.housinghope.org.

Walking, Talking, Smiling, and Pointing: Delivery Skills for Technical Professionals

2010-10-04T07:47:00.000-07:00

Technically trained professionals – primarily engineers, contractors, and architectural project managers – have typically been perceived as poor speakers. Companies spend thousands of dollars on standardized delivery coaching in an attempt to make these professionals more compelling and dynamic. After more than 20 years of coaching such technical professionals, I have found, however, that this standardized coaching method is ineffective. In order to improve the delivery skills of any technical professional, coaches like me need to adapt our approach to coaching to the unique ways in which our technical clients think and communicate.

Training an engineer in theatric “tricks” like common gestures, movement in the room, and the ubiquitous smile, typically makes said engineer look over-coached and wooden (think Al Gore in the 2000 presidential elections). Rather, we should be coaching technical professionals in ways that connect compelling content to their own natural delivery. I’ve seen literally hundreds of technical presenters in a range of important presentations and frankly, I’ve only met a handful of them who were truly horrible in their delivery. Most speakers are actually quite competent – if we work with them in a way that is supportive vs. prescriptive.

I tell speakers that there isn’t any right way to present and there’s no simple list of delivery improvements that will work for every speaker. Most speakers, in fact, are quite competent in the four elements of delivery that really count: walking, talking, smiling, and pointing. We just need to help speakers take their natural competence in these four elements and translate them into the context of a compelling presentation.

Technical professionals need to have a strong working outline that they have written, that has strong logic, and that they’ve both had vetted by colleagues and had an opportunity to practice. In my experience, most technical professionals can’t begin to focus on delivery until they have connected with content. Coaching delivery before the speaker has a firm grasp of the content results in frustration and stress for both speaker and coach.

Once content is ready, however, we need to coach technical speakers carefully – choosing our “battles” and making minor improvements that are consistent with a speaker’s natural style. If a speaker naturally uses small gestures and speaks softly, asking him to adopt broad gestures and an effervescent vocal style simply won’t work. Technical speakers are generally not trained actors and we need to support them in minor changes that will appear natural in a presentation instead of asking them to make major changes that are more consistent with the coach’s prescriptive vision of a good speaker.

Minor changes might include adding a smile, moving closer to the selection panel, slightly increasing volume, or interacting with a visual to show a process or example. Technical speakers respond well to minor changes that have a major impact. Any delivery “tweaks” that we recommend as coaches need to be closely tied to the content. In this way, the technical speaker can “see” the logic of the recommendation. For example, “Suzi, when you identify the major technical challenge, pause beforehand, then speak louder and look the selectors in the eye. This will give that statement much more impact.” This is more effective than saying, “Suzi, you need to speak louder and integrate more pauses into your delivery. This will make you a more persuasive and dynamic speaker.”

New Math: Marketing and Business Development Realities for this Economy

2010-09-27T13:25:00.000-07:00

For those of us in the trenches of short-list interviewing, we are aware of the current challenges of wnning work in a very different economy than we’ve ever seen. Right now, firms are proposing on more and more projects, being short-listed more frequently, and preparing and presenting more interviews. Unfortunately, this is not resulting in proportionately more work. And, the truly negative outcomes can be seen in less return on investment for marketing dollars and demoralized team members. What’s needed is an entirely new approach to the entire business development and marketing lifecycle that culminates in the short-list interview.

What’s required to win work in this economy is “New Math”. In the lifecycle of business development and marketing, there are four core elements: Relationship/Reputation, Proposal, Cost or Fee, and Presentation. Depending on the characteristics of the pursuit, each accounts for approximately 25% of the chance of being selected. In the past, we might have been able to “wow” a selection committee with an exceptional interview and walk away with the job. That same interview today will bring us only to a close second. Thus, we need firms to align business development and marketing efforts – looking at the short-list as the end of a long, intentional process instead of being an event in and of itself.

Relationship/Reputation has four levels of effective client “engagement”, the highest being having a strong relationship with an existing client with whom you have completed similar, successful work. This requires not only superior performance and project management, but also maintaining the solid relationship with the client after the project has been completed.

The next level is having a relationship with a potential client based on your having provided advice and/or assistance. While never having performed a project for the client, the client is aware of the firm’s capabilities and trusts that your firm can do work of a certain type and complexity.

The third level is when the potential client knows of the firm’s and individual team members’ capabilities through conference presentations, journal and trade publications, or even industry-specific blogs. In this case, the client knows of the firm’s past projects and can link his/her project to similar projects in the firm’s portfolio.

The lowest level of effective engagement is when the firm or individual has “borrowed credibility.” Borrowed credibility comes from an outside reference – usually another credible client who strongly recommends the firm and specific team members for the current work.

In the absence of any of the four levels of Relationship/Reputation, I recommend firms and teams take a hard look at their Go/No Go decision. If any of these levels are missing, the firm should likely not be going after the work at all. The best decision would be to invest scarce marketing dollars in building client engagement vs. participating in a no-win proposal and presentation cycle. Firm leadership should be actively publishing in trade journals, and they should be out in the field meeting with potential clients. At a minimum, each client manager should be regularly meeting with the clients from their current and recently completed projects to maintain the strong relationship and the reference.

Understanding your Clients: The Value of Ongoing, Internal Research

2010-09-20T07:40:00.000-07:00

I’m a nerd – I freely admit it. I love numbers, complex measurement tools, running statistics, and making graphs. There’s something seductive about taking a dataset and working with it to reveal the “story” it’s trying to tell me. Over the past 20+ years, I’ve designed and implemented dozens of surveys for public and private organizations, and every time I get a clean, fresh data file, I love to stay up late playing in the data, mining its secrets and learning what it is telling me about my clients and their needs.

The economy is tough right now and looks questionable for the foreseeable future. As a result, many firms are cutting back on any kind of organizational research. This is a bad idea on so many levels. Client, employee, and project research keeps us in touch with what our clients need and expect and most importantly, provides us a mechanism to take lessons learned from one project to the next, constantly improving along the way.

So, how do we conduct meaningful client research without huge monetary outlay? Answer: Bring it in-house and be more strategic about the process. Many of our clients are asking us to assist in the development of internal research programs in which they can gather regular data from clients – or employees – to drive internal understanding and process improvement. They are spending their outside consultant dollars on the analysis of the data or on gathering only the most sensitive or confidential data. From a consultant perspective, I don’t view this as threatening; rather, I see this as a way to provide my clients the highest value, while enabling them to continue critical research programs when budgets are tight. And, the bright side to all of it is that my clients are becoming more connected to the data, understanding how to gather, interpret, and respond to client and employee feedback in a deeper way.

Savvy firms are continuing programs of both client and employee research – using data to drive decision-making and process improvement. The big change is that they are the data gatherers and the data managers. This requires a commitment to standards of good research and research protocols and a forced objectivity about the results. This is hard, but absolutely necessary. We are helping our clients develop programs of research – setting up surveys, on-line systems, and data gathering protocols. And, most of our clients are taking on their own research programs very successfully, using us to troubleshoot and provide data analysis on confidential files.

In this economy, information is power. Firms need good information to fuel growth, improve processes, and drive training. They should never sacrifice reconnaissance, as a continued investment in data yields value far beyond its cost. But, firms can be more strategic in the research they do and their principals can get involved – doing the legwork to continue strong client and employee research even when times are tough.

The Value and Disadvantage of Familiarity

2010-09-13T08:59:00.000-07:00

My colleagues and I were down in Los Angeles this morning talking with our friends at SMPS about how A/E/C teams can develop winning presentations in this very challenging economy. One of the participants asked me a very significant question that really made me think: “How do we design a winning presentation when we are not the incumbent and the client really likes the firm with which they’ve been working?” Good question. My answer was fairly simple: You have to work harder than the incumbent.

Some of my most memorable wins in short-list interviews in the A/E/C industry have been on projects where my team was not the incumbent. We won because we did more homework and developed a presentation that clearly addressed the real needs, interests, fears, and expectations of selectors and their organizations. In those presentations, we spent a lot of time on the “alignment” phase of presentation development - getting each team member’s head in the project so that they were fully engaged in understanding the owner’s needs. This resulted in presentations that were focused on the unique aspects of the project, targeted on solving the owner’s project “pain”, and centered on the advantages they could bring the owner relative to higher value, better quality, and faster delivery.

I’ve found that it’s actually easier to beat an incumbent firm than one thinks because many incumbents get lazy, assuming that the strength of the relationship will carry them to a win. While in many cases this is indeed true, when my non-incumbent teams compete, they always compete “hungry”, offering the client a value proposition that is so compelling, so interesting, and so seductive that we can easily win against a lazy incumbent. Remember incumbents, “familiarity breeds contempt” – this means that in most relationships, partners can get complacent, leaving the door wide open to the new, shiny, and interesting. Lazy incumbents create an easy space for coaches like me to help teams “steal” the project through hard work, innovation, and creativity.

For my teams that are incumbents – watch out! Always compete as if you didn’t have the relationship. Never take the owner and his/her project for granted, especially in this challenging economy. Do more research, make more effort, prepare more for these interviews than for any other because, frankly, these are the ones that hurt the most to lose. You’ve invested time and resources in the relationship; make the concerted effort to maintain the value of that investment by giving interviews with your regular clients everything you’ve got. These truly are the “can’t afford to lose” interviews.

Partnering Leadership from the Public Sector

2010-09-08T07:50:00.000-07:00

I have the honor of being on the communications team for the Asset Management group for a leading power provider in the Pacific Northwest. This group is rolling out a very innovative program designed to increase productivity, reduce risk, and provide safe, reliable power at a reasonable cost to customers across their service area. And, they have partnered with national and local specialists to help them achieve success.

Midway through the project, this Utility asked us to provide partnering services to the team to help members remain aligned to project goals and expectations as they ramped up towards the implementation phase of their very aggressive project. In a one day session, Utility leadership, project team members and their consultants worked together to document overall goals, design teamwork improvements, and plan the course for the challenging months ahead. It was, to say the least, an exhausting day. At the end, everyone, the facilitators included, felt they had achieved real understanding across the team and had developed the start of a workable “way forward.”

Currently, the team is working through a very challenging aspect of the project and I’m impressed with how team leadership is using the partnering agreements as a guide. During the partnering process, the team created a team charter as well as clear metrics to chart the success of teamwork. During a meeting of team members from across the project team, one of the first agenda items was to tie the current work and difficult decisions with a renewed focus on the charter and project goals. This refocus encourages team members to resolve issues and design strategies based on their commitment to a common goal.

A Partnering session is a common way to kick-off a project, particularly in the public sector. Many teams recognize its importance as a time to talk about teamwork before the team moves quickly through project meetings and milestone dates. However, many times, that’s the last time a team focuses on partnering unless the team is having problems. As a result, at the conclusion of every partnering session my colleagues and I facilitate, I remind team members that the real work of partnering starts after the session is over. The success of partnering occurs when team members working through challenging issues refocus themselves on the project charter – the agreements they made at the start of the project to work together toward a common good.

It’s gratifying to see that one of the largest agencies in my region not only understands the value of partnering, but more importantly, for this project team to actively use the work they did in partnering to drive success at critical milestones. In recommitting themselves to keep the commitments they made in partnering, this team reaffirmed the importance of teamwork, while improving work processes and creating a common understanding of future deliverables. That’s the real value of partnering.

Making an Investment in the Work of Teamwork

2010-08-30T08:09:00.000-07:00

As I write, my team and I are on our way to a Partnering session for a large Federal project in the Midwest. This is an extremely complicated project, with multiple firms and stakeholders representing hundreds of constituents and their needs and interests. Participants in the session come from the design, development, construction, and support fields. They are coming together to build a framework and foundation for collaboration and team success that will last for the duration of this highly sensitive and critical project. As their facilitator, I think the partnering process has already begun with team members’ commitment to attend the session and bring issues and concerns to the table in what promises to be a very eventful and content-rich couple of days. These team members clearly get it; They understand that they have to work together to achieve common as well as individual needs, goals, and expectations.

Partnering, done correctly, does not involve the singing of songs or the playing of silly games. Rather, it involves team members making a commitment to come together to discuss their needs in an open environment. It involves team members, with often competing interests, aggressively working to identify and meet common goals. And, it involves aligning team members’ beliefs and actions around a common definition of success.

Having completed extensive pre-partnering information gathering, I can tell you that this team faces some significant challenges – most project teams do. Their challenges relate to the usual suspects of time, money, and resources, but they are also facing the added difficulty of a stressful and changing economy where all of the involved organizations are working harder with fewer resources and increased risk. That these firms are willing to come together to for their common success, is both satisfying and humbling. It’s satisfying that the leadership of these organizations understands the value of teamwork and that each are committed to achieving it on this project. And, as a facilitator, it’s humbling to realize that these leaders have done the real work of partnering already – making time in their incredibly busy schedules to talk about the tough issues associated with teamwork.

Building a team isn’t easy – and it doesn’t come without cost or conflict. Teamwork requires airing out concerns and being willing to work through them in an open environment. It requires revealing your issues to team members and asking for their assistance in resolving them. And, it requires making yourself responsible for meeting other team member’s needs. This collection of leaders knows that in this challenging economy, far from being an unnecessary expense, partnering is a proven path to maximizing success for all parties.

Meg Winch, President

For more info about Communication Resources Northwest, click here.

Meg specializes in the facilitation and training of communication and organizational skills, working with project team members to enhance the communication behaviors critical to their jobs. She is a trained facilitator of formal partnering and public involvement processes. She regularly works with teams to develop presentations, manage messages, and develop communication strategies and agreements. Meg also works with both public and private sector clients to develop comprehensive programs of both qualitative and quantitative research.

Great Presenters Start Young

2010-08-17T08:47:00.000-07:00

As a presentation coach, I love working with teams of great speakers who enable me to focus on my first love, developing strategic and winning content. My clients have long suspected it, and I’ll go public saying, that my strength is in knowing what content it takes to win. I’m happiest when I have good speakers to deliver that content. Fortunately, I have talented presentation coaches on staff who love coaching delivery and who excel at working with problem speakers. Kristina Corbitt, one of our associate consultants, can take an almost catatonic speaker and make him/her competent in a reasonably short amount of time. While I’ve worked and won with some pretty poor speakers over the years – coaching them to excellence – I prefer working on developing great, hard-hitting content that keeps the selectors interested and engaged.

So, how does one create speakers who can deliver that content in a compelling and interesting manner? First, we don’t start the training process during an interview coaching session. Great speakers take years to develop and firms need to start early in the training and development process. Fortunately, communication is 100% learned behavior. We learn how to communicate – for better or worse – from our parents, siblings, friends, and later, colleagues. Humans are sponges; we’re constantly adapting our skills to fit the environment and we’re constantly learning new things. That’s the good news. The bad news is that as we age, learning is tougher and takes longer.

The youngest members of firms should take a basic presentation skills course as part of their first year’s training. And, they should be put in front of an in-house audience frequently to showcase new skills and receive feedback on their communication skills. Firms should have regular brownbag sessions to present about project successes and challenges. And, presentation ability should be on every performance evaluation/review form at every level of A/E/C organization. I also think the same could be said for writing and interpersonal skills.

Great speakers start young and they have speaking skills constantly reinforced through training, regular practice, and constructive feedback. I truly believe that anyone can be a good speaker – for those of us who are more senior in our professions, it just takes longer to get there. No one is born a great presenter – great speaking takes time and constant attention to the craft. But, it’s worth the effort. Winning work in this market requires good information, strong decision-making, great content, and compelling speakers. We can’t short our teams on any of these.

Making Presentation Development More Effective: Branding your Presentation

2010-08-09T09:17:00.000-07:00

Most A/E/C firms have spent incredible amounts of time and money on branded marketing materials – logos, PPT templates, imagery, proposal designs, etc. Much like our branded marketing collateral material, a presentation brand reflects the unique character of your organization and your specific approach to particular types of projects. By developing and using a presentation brand, your organization can create more memorable presentations that reflect your unique culture.

A presentation brand makes your team memorable and sets an expectation in the minds of selectors and potential selectors. One firm with which I regularly work (and win!) has created a knowledge-based brand for their presentations. At Communication Resources Northwest, we affectionately call them “presentation nerds” and it’s something that works for them more often than not. Clients routinely say that their interviews are more knowledge rich and research based than any of their competition. These same clients also report their perception that this firm works harder than any of their competitors.

This firm’s presentation brand is “hard working and knowledgeable” and they’ve developed and implemented presentation design processes to keep that brand strong. And, when they are consistent with their brand, they win more often than not.

Getting started with the presentation branding process isn’t that hard. I recommend firm leadership get together (including the Marketing Director!) in a dedicated session to answer two key questions: How do we want our presentations to be perceived? And, What would we have to do in every interview to achieve that perception? For example, if one perception on your list is to be perceived as more creative than your competition, you may want to think about creative approaches to interviews beyond standard PowerPoint slides. Is your team willing to have fun in the interview, stepping “outside the box” to do something innovative and unusual? If a desired perception is to come across as polished and professional, your firm is going to have to select (or train) professionals with excellent presentation skills and clearly communicated self-confidence.

One of the most important things I learned in a training program years ago is that communication – in any form – is intentional. We make decisions about how we want to be perceived and the messages we want to get across. By establishing and reinforcing a presentation brand, firms become more prepared and intentional about every interview. While it won’t win all the time – you have to select potential clients who want your brand – you’ll find your process gets easier, decisions get clearer, and you will see an increase in your hit rate.

Coping with a Chaotic Market: Using Standard Presentation Processes

2010-07-30T11:00:00.001-07:00

It’s no surprise to anyone in our industry that the market is heating up and that A/E/C firms are writing more proposals and preparing for more presentations than ever before. Unfortunately, the extra work isn’t translating into higher hit rates or increases in the bottom line. Firms are working harder for less work, and marketing departments are becoming increasingly stretched and stressed.

I’ve written before about the importance of being more selective in the projects we pursue and about making strong go/no go decisions. However, it is true that even when we do our homework, A/E/C firms are still competing for work and their marketing departments are completely tapped out. So, what can we do?

I’ve recently been working with firms to develop presentation “templates” and standard processes. In addition to standard visuals, such as always having a site aerial (Google Earth and Terraserver.com are great sources), these might include templated presentation preparation processes, including checklists and meeting agendas. And, we might go so far as to design standard presentation visual templates or designs for backdrops, boards, or PPTs.

The more we can do ahead of time, before a pursuit, to make the time leading up to the actual presentation easier, the better. Such planning saves our teams in time, money, and stress. In our “Winning the Shortlist” video instructional materials, we’ve provided some easy to use checklists and preparation techniques. One of these tools is a process to get a team ready for an interview in three meetings. I call this the “Four Stages in Three Meetings Process.” In this process, marketing professionals can establish clear expectations for pre-meeting preparation and for the outcomes of each meeting. Before the first meeting, for example, team members receive a “dossier” of information about the project, including the RFP and the submittal. Each team member is expected to read the material and, if applicable, visit the site prior to the meeting. In that first meeting, the team starts the development of presentation strategy. In the second meeting, the team “stumbles through” the presentation content and finalizes visuals. By the third and final meeting, the team is ready for choreography and rehearsals.

While for a large, high profile project, we may need more time right before the interview, we can establish standard processes to streamline the design and delivery of most interviews. By having a documented process, marketing professionals – with the support of their leadership – can share the responsibility for interview preparation with their teams. The process, and the shared responsibility, helps firms compete more successfully with less cost to their teams and organizations.

I also recommend firms use checklists for pre-interview and in fact, pre-proposal, reconnaissance. This checklist can also be found in the instructional guide and includes basic information that marketing professionals and teams can and should gather. This includes information about the project, the client, the site, the selectors, the competition, the interview, and the selection process. For example, every team member should be able to answer why the project is being done and who stands to gain or lose from the project. And, this information should be integrated into the entire interview. On the presentation I just finished, my team started our coaching process for a $30 million project with a clear understanding of what we needed to communicate to beat the competition. We also finished the coaching by checking the list to make sure our messages were clear and unambiguous.

We can’t change the fact that for marketing professionals and our firms, the market has heated up. But, we can work smarter. Most of us are already working harder. Now’s the time to put in place some templates and standard processes to be more successful in this chaotic environment.

Customer Service 101

2010-07-19T23:13:00.000-07:00

Last week, I received yet another box from Tiffany’s in the mail. In it was a lovely pair of silver earrings. I’m pretty sure my husband thinks I have a boyfriend. I’m trying my best to reassure him of the truth - that this box, and the three previous ones, actually came from a major airline. And, no I do not have a boyfriend who flies for a major carrier.

To reward my frequent traveling on their flights across the nation, this particular airline has sent me hundreds of dollars in gifts from Tiffany’s in the last six months. In other words, I’ve gotten more little blue boxes this year from the airline than I have in 24 years of marriage. (Yes, Mike; this is a hint.) But, seriously, all this swag makes me think about customer service and what companies really need to do to keep their customer’s happy. Let me be clear, I love the Tiffany’s swag. It’s really fun. And, anyone would be happy to get silver earrings in the mail no matter who they’re from. However, truthfully, the little blue boxes do not impact in any way my choice of airline.

There was one memorable moment in the St. Louis airport several months ago when I literally thought I’d be willing to give back all the Tiffany’s boxes if only I could get a courteous counter agent to help me with a horrendously delayed flight. I’d have traded the earrings for someone, anyone, to help me navigate my way home. Customer service is about understanding what your customer’s real need is and then finding a way to either meet it or empathize with his or her pain in some meaningful way.

How does this apply to A/ E/ C firms? I think one of the fortunate aspects of doing business in a difficult economy is that we don’t give away as many useless key chains, flashlights or bottles of wine. We have the opportunity to build far more customer loyalty by focusing on the basics of customer service - really listening, and going out of our way to make our clients’ lives easier, and keeping our commitments. Perhaps the greatest gift we can give our clients is good advice and an open ear when they need us. When we “pull the rabbit out of the hat” or “leap tall buildings in a single bound” to solve a client problem or avoid catastrophe on a project, that’s the real gift. I’ve gotten more positive client feedback by coming in after a long day to help a client fix a challenging proposal or write a budget paper for Council than I ever did sending even a great bottle of wine.

And, so to my airline friends, I choose my airline partners based on how well you treat me when times are good and by how hard you’ve worked to get me home when things go badly. I don’t expect you to be perfect and I’m really a very understanding business traveler. My clients certainly know that I’m not perfect, and I don’t expect perfection from you. But I do expect you to try harder to gain my trust and loyalty by being there for me when I need you with kind and courteous service. So, leave the little blue boxes from Tiffany’s to my husband, and stick with your core business – flying planes.

Oh, and buy the way, that whole charging for baggage thing? Let’s get rid of that too.

Presentation Visuals

2010-07-12T11:51:00.000-07:00

I hate PowerPoint. Please forgive my bluntness. No aspersions to our neighbors at Microsoft intended, but, I have to say that the worst thing that ever happened to presentations in the A/E/C industry was the advent of PowerPoint. I have seen many PowerPoint Presentations that constrain creativity, make content boring, and serve only as a crutch that diminishes the quality of a team’s short-list interview. Oftentimes the biggest challenge I have as a coach is convincing a team that they are better than the technology they’ve chosen to communicate their message.

In many cases, the best thing that can happen to the presentation is to have a hard drive malfunction right before they go live. The best presentations I’ve seen in the last 18 months, have been executed seamlessly without the use of PowerPoint. These teams used beautiful banners, life sized time-lines, and interactive 3D models. They turned on the lights and looked audience members right in the eyes. They talked right to selectors, not at moving bullets or even beautiful images. The speakers on these teams said something meaningful about the project and they illustrated their points with low tech, but high impact visual aids. They proved the point that illustrating your points is not the same as simply typing your notes into Power Point.

PowerPoint was never intended to make words fly – that’s an unfortunate feature that has been misused by everyone since the program’s creation. In fact, anyone over the age of 13 who uses such distracting PowerPoint transitions as “flying”, “boxing”, or “wiping” should have his/her license to use the MS Office suite permanently revoked. That said, used correctly, PowerPoint is actually an amazing tool useful to animate a site plan, make an image big enough for people to see or to show a phased site build-out. None of these involve flying, bouncing, or fading words.

While the impact of PowerPoint on your budget may appear small, consider how long it takes for your team to create endless slides while it draws their focus away from creating compelling content. Consider also that the use of PowerPoint no longer differentiates a presentation. And, a bad PowerPoint is worse than using no visuals at all.

If you want to distinguish your presentation in this industry, take a risk. Use images rather than words and more often than not, step away from the visual crutch to look selectors in the eye and really talk to them about their project. That’s what wins.

There’s no award given in the industry for PowerPoint prowess. As far as I know, the AIA has no special award for Most Beautiful PowerPoint Presentation. But, I’ll bet each of us could personally give an award for the Worst PowerPoint of the Year. It is certainly odd that the best of them isn’t memorable but, that the worst stay with us forever.

The Importance of Succession Planning for your Business

2010-07-05T11:24:00.000-07:00

Succession Planning doesn’t just happen. While a crucial part of the future for any firm, it is often an unpopular topic.

I’m working with an incredible organization in St Louis that makes me believe in the positive things that forward thinking leadership teams can do for their companies. This firm, Alberici Construction, has been around for a long time but their group of leaders is not content to rest on their current successes. They are taking active steps to identify and train their next generation of leaders, looking two, five and 15 years into the future. In thinking about how they develop leaders, train them, and mentor them, Alberici is charting the course to maintain its values as it adapts to a changing world.

It’s refreshing to see a group of busy managers pause to reflect on not what they want their firm to do for them, but rather on the future company that few of them will still be around to enjoy.

What is particularly impressive about this firm, is that every single one of their leaders - from the President of the company to the CFO and the market leads - is participating as a training developer and as a trainer/coach in this program. Not a single one of them is bowing out.

Each leader is actively excited about being a part of the leadership development team. No executive is too busy or too important. This is clearly a team that “gets it.” They get that their primary job as leaders is to develop the next generation of employees to be better skilled and better prepared for an uncertain future. I’m feeling truly honored to be part of this team and learning many lessons about getting ready for the future right now.

For more info about Communication Resources Northwest, click here.

Meg Winch, President

The Benefits of In-House Training on Tight Budgets

2010-06-21T10:35:00.000-07:00

Designing specific in-house training can be both extremely cost-effective and can maintain consistency across learners. The cost of creating a credible in-house training video has gone way down in the last several years. Creating a training video is now more accessible even to moderately sized firms in our industry. Once created, the training program can be used again and again within the company. We just completed a video for one of our clients at a 5^th of the cost that a similar video would have cost several years ago.

Managing your Time and Training Employees in a Chaotic Market

2010-06-15T10:07:00.000-07:00

Communication Resources has grown by leaps and bounds in the last year. In a relatively short time frame, we have grown from 3 employees to 8 communication professionals. I’m learning that growth is tough but can also be pretty exciting. I’m enjoying having a team who can back up my clients with strong research, training design and technical skill. However, more employees and more projects means that I need to practice what I preach relative to strong project management.

Like many of my clients, I’m finding that the market is moving faster and is less predictable than ever before. I may find myself in St. Louis one week and in Austin or Orlando the next. Some weeks I might just find myself working at my desk. It’s extremely difficult to predict which way the market will swing or where my time will be needed next. Schedules are tighter, clients are more demanding, and it’s getting tougher to balance all the demands on our time. At Communication Resources, we like to say that “We pull the rabbit of the hat,” for clients. When I created this saying, I never realized just how tired the rabbit was going to get.

So, the real question is, how do we learn to manage this chaotic market? I’m finding that, as a manager, I need to lean more on the incredible staff members I’ve brought on board. From technical writing and proposal review, to presentation research and training design, we can only get it all done by working as a team. Utilizing the skills of my staff provides an incredible opportunity for me to mentor the next generation of professionals, while growing my business. I’m still leading incredible presentation teams to win great work, and flying from one end of the county to the next. But, I like to think we’re all working smarter while, by necessity, we work faster. Maybe this new market reality is a good time for those of us who are in the middle to later years of our career to intentionally mentor younger professionals and start thinking about the firms we’ll leave behind. The professionals we develop and pour into today will be the ones who will take this industry to the next level. I’m not leaving any time soon but, this period of growth and chaos is making me think harder about my responsibilities as a professional and about the real value each of us brings to our profession.

The best strategy firms can use to thrive in this chaotic, unpredictable market is to invest in mentoring and training employees. During busy seasons, it is often difficult to implement strong project management skills. But, constantly running a hundred miles an hour with our hair on fire and simply reacting to crisis isn’t a healthy, sustainable business model. All our firms could benefit tremendously from taking a collective deep breath, and from a philosophy that prizes employees and invests in their professional growth.

Meg's Corner: Better than your Average Potato Chip

2010-06-07T10:01:00.000-07:00

I sat on an airplane with a man the other day whose company makes potato chips. Before I met this man, I never knew that the vast majority of potato chips are actually made from a slurry of potatoes molded into the shape of a chip. This man’s company manufactures a potato chip that is actually made from a sliced potato. What an amazing concept!

The man was incredibly excited about his product and talked to me about the wonders of high quality potato chips for several hours. He believes wholeheartedly that American consumers want and are willing to pay for a higher quality potato chip – made from sliced potatoes and natural ingredients. As a frequent consumer of fried potato products, I agree.

Got me thinking: What if our industry thought like this man about his potato chips? Is it possible that our clients are looking and willing to pay for excellence in design and construction? I think so. Like my neighbor on the plane, we in the A/E/C industries need to be able to "wax poetically" about our services. We absolutely must be able to tell our clients what is unique and special about what we do and about what differentiates us from the competition.

Unfortunately, in many of our markets, our clients have gotten used to a slurry of design or construction ideas molded into average 'potato chips'. In our proposals and presentations, we need to be able to articulate why our chip is better, why it is unique, elegant, and wonderful. We need to train our teams to speak with as much passion about our projects as this man did about his potato chips.

I’m privileged to work with a range of clients and firms who are indeed sliced potatoes. The challenge for all of us is to explain this clearly and creatively to the marketplace.

Meg's Corner: The Importance of Training in a Tough Economy

2010-06-01T13:13:00.000-07:00

Across industries, in nearly every corner of the globe, budgets are tight. Companies that once dedicated exorbitant amounts of money to employee training and education are now slashing spending and cutting back on “non-essential” expenditures in order to stay in the black.

In this tough economy, there has been a troubling tendency for firms both large and small, to cut training budgets. Let me be clear: This is exactly the worst time to take educational opportunities away from employees. Because most firms are working with fewer staff, the quality and development of the remaining staff has become paramount. We’re all trying to do more with less. From a communications standpoint, firms need team members who can write and speak well in a variety of different contexts. Without ongoing training, how can managers expect their staff to deliver exceptional proposals and presentations? How do we ensure that our employees can continue to perform and engage in significant ways? The answer is consistent, effective, relevant training.

In this marketplace, it’s no longer enough to have talented technical professionals. While technical professionals like engineers, contractors, and architects, bring incredible skill and expertise to the table, they also must have the skills to convince and persuade. If they cannot communicate their value effectively to new clients in particular, they will not be able to win new work. Unfortunately, the most talented technical professionals can easily lose projects because of poor communication skills.

For 20 years, I have specialized in coaching A/E/C project teams through the short-list interview process. I have come to believe that in this marketplace, companies should not ever be losing projects in an interview due to poor speaking skills. Smart professionals are intentionally sharpening their communication repertoire and taking steps to learn to communicate effectively in a full range of venues. Fortunately, communication skills are 100% learned behavior. This is an incredibly encouraging statistic! This means that firms can proactively provide communication training to make their employees more effective in client meetings and formal presentations. And, they can provide resources to help their technical professionals write more efficiently and clearly, producing better proposals and RFQ’s. Better proposals and RFQ’s results in more projects won.

Companies simply cannot afford to cut back on communication training for employees. Firms live and die on their ability to communicate their values, mission, and experience in ways that differentiate them from the competition.

Meg’s Corner: Creating Engaging Short-List Interviews in Today’s Market

2010-05-17T12:00:00.000-07:00

In today’s market, it is absolutely essential that firms design short-list interviews that stand out, ones that differentiate them from the competition. In the context of this depressed economy, competition for work has increased dramatically. And quite simply, companies cannot afford to lose projects because of poor presentation performance.

Each month, I have the privilege of traveling across the United States to coach project teams through the short-list interview process. I’m noticing a disturbing trend in short-list interviews. Because firms are chasing so much more work in hopes that one will stick, the quality of proposals and presentations has gone downhill.

I watched a team rehearsal several weeks ago that took me back easily 15 years to a time when word visuals were the standard, and boards contained so much content that they were unreadable. In this presentation, the team created an outline using Power Point and then proceeded to deliver that outline, word for word, with few deviations. In truth, I am fairly confident that our audiences can read and that they really don’t need to see our speaking notes. Reading verbatim from a slide show presentation is a visual strategy that is both outdated and mind numbing.

There are a couple of lessons we can take from this experience. First, because there is more work out there to chase, and because the market is more competitive – firms have to find easier ways to create better presentations. For some of my clients, I’m advocating that we create presentation templates that enable us to tailor key parts of the process without having to re-invent the wheel every time. This might include a presentation checklist or even standard Power Point or board templates.

I’m also recommending to my clients that they take a harder look at their Go/No Go processes. Firms should be vigilant in protecting against the endless exceptions to their Go/No Go rules. Because the cost of chasing a project is so high, firms need to think realistically about the real chances of winning the job and be more strategic and selective in the projects they go after. Some interesting math might be to calculate just how many lost projects equals one FTE in your organization. In most organizations, it’s 5-6. This means for every 5-6 ineffective proposals and presentations a firm submits, they could be retaining or hiring a staff member.

Further, the costs of a bad proposal are not just dollars and cents in a marketing budget. The greater cost might be in the firm’s reputation in the industry. A great proposal or a dynamic interview leaves an impression of quality, even if the firm doesn’t win the job. In some cases, we’ve seen this translate into future work for a project and the firm did not even have to compete for it. By chasing too many projects and diminishing the quality of presentations or proposals, we can project an image of unprofessionalism and sloppy work, which is not conducive to a strong future in the industry. In short to win new work, firms need to work smarter, not harder.

Best of luck to all of you working on proposals and presentations this week!

Snohomish County Business Journal Features Communication Resources Northwest!

2010-05-17T11:47:00.000-07:00

We were just featured in the Snohomish County Businesss Journal this month. You can check out the article here.

"Communication Resources is a unique organization that helps project teams communicate. Although locally based, the company has clients all over the U.S. and is involved with such diverse projects as the Fantasyland upgrade in Disney World, the National Museum of African American Culture and History in Washington D.C., and the Minnesota State Capitol Dome project.

Something that has made the company especially notable is that it was founded and is owned and operated by a woman and it is primarily staffed by women. Company president Meg Winch started Communication Resources in 1989 when she was four months pregnant with her first child.

“I was working for another consulting company at the time and found that I couldn’t have control of the timing or the quality of my work — consulting agencies sometimes overload consultants— so I decided to go out on my own,” Winch said." Read more....

Meg's Corner: Tracking the Latest Trends in Short-List Interviewing

2010-05-10T11:00:00.000-07:00

Thoughts from Meg Winch, President of Communication Resources Northwest:

Having coached several winning and losing presentations for architectural and construction firms this month and last, I’ve been reflecting on some of the changes this new market is requiring of all of us in working on short-list interviews.

The successful interviews I’m seeing are less focused on the use of Power Point and flashy graphics, and more focused on interpersonal relationships and conversations with clients. While the visuals the project teams used in the presentations were sophisticated, there were fewer of them. These were used to make very specific, compelling points about the process.

In these interviews, the presentation teams were visibly relaxed and even felt comfortable joking with each other. This doesn’t mean that the interviews were informal. Rather, they were very well choreographed and focused on building relationships. The selectors seemed significantly more relaxed and friendly. I think in these tense economic times, selection teams may be looking for people with whom they can communicate, rather than flashy presentations full of unconvincing promises. Successful presentations seem more honest to me somehow. They are not delivered by the best speakers of the firms with the most experience but, by real people who’ve taken the time to understand the client’s needs and the details of the project.

On the flip side, I just worked with a team who lost a presentation solely on price despite having delivered the best presentation. This was a hard loss both because it was a strategic project and because the team really needed the boost that a winning presentation can give. What this tells me is that in this economy, we have to look at all the aspects of the deal in order to be successful. While a great presentation with a clearly communicated value proposition can overcome some price difference, we can’t expect to overcome a huge price difference. That said, we have to help clients make sure they are comparing apples to apples and not buying a deal that is really too good to be true.

In this economy, we do know that some firms are winning new clients by undercutting fees. Some of these firms are keeping their commitments for the quote and price and I applaud their willingness to offer the client the kinds of deals that bring these firms the work. I do, however, question whether this is a sustainable marketing strategy. Firms are hoping to draw in new clients with low initial offers assuming that the client will remain loyal even when prices go up on future projects. Firms need to be careful that their promises of excellence are kept along with their promises of low prices. Savvy clients are getting increasingly good at seeing through a low-ball initial offer. So, we shouldn’t assume that the only way to get projects is to engage in price wars with our competition. In fact, when we put ourselves on sale, I’m not sure the industry is better for it. Rather, I think we should be looking at value propositions that are meaningful to our clients to help us understand the competitive difference they get with our organizations and help them overcome the natural urge to be easily seduced by a low ball offer.

For more information on how to deliver compelling, successful presentations, check out Communication Resources Northwest’s new training DVD entitled “Winning the Short List.” This affordable training tool teaches our proven method for delivering winning short-list interviews and includes an Instructor’s Guide and Participant Handouts.

Meg Winch is the President of Communication Resources Northwest, a consulting and communication firm specializing in helping project teams communicate. For 20 years, she has helped project teams from Architectural, Construction and Engineering firms win new work by coaching them through the short-list interview process.

She specializes in the facilitation and training of communication and organizational skills, working with project team members to enhance the communication behaviors critical to their jobs. She is a trained facilitator of formal partnering and public involvement processes. She regularly works with teams to develop presentations, manage messages, and develop communication strategies and agreements. Meg also works with both public and private sector clients to develop comprehensive programs of both qualitative and quantitative research. Meg holds BA degrees in Communication and German from the University of Washington and an MS in Communication and Group Dynamics from Purdue University.

Helping Architects, Contractors, and Engineers Win New Work in the Middle of a Recession

2010-05-04T11:33:00.000-07:00

Architects, Engineers and Contractors have been hit hard by the nation’s recession, and Communication Resources Northwest is offering drastically discounted training to help them obtain new projects.

In response to the nation’s depressed economy, we have made our nationally renowned Presentation Coaching available at a fraction of the cost to Architectural, Engineering, and Construction firms to help them win new work. “Winning the Short-List” is the secret weapon firms who have been short-listed for projects need to refine their critical interview skills and edge out the competition.

The state of the nation’s economy has created a deficit of available projects for those in the “building” industry. Firms must fiercely compete with one another to win what little work is available.

Clients who utilize Communication Resources’ Presentation Coaching Service win the projects they are interviewing for 75% of the time.

“Key to our winning strategy for the MN State Capitol project was leveraging critical research and interview coaching by Communication Resources. We have an extremely high success rate on projects when adding their expertise to our team early in the pursuit process. We just hope our competition never learns our secret weapon!” says Communication Resources Northwest client Jeff Callinan, LEED AP and Vice President of JE Dunn Construction.

The methodology showcased in the new training DVD, “Winning the Short-List” has helped teams from large and small firms win billions of dollars in new work across the nation.

Now, instead of spending thousands of dollars on customized interview coaching and consulting services, Architects, Engineers, and Contractors can drastically improve their chances of winning projects for just $350.00. In a tough economy, affordable training is a crucial part of survival for those in the building industry.

“Winning the Short-List” is a short instructional film that provides instruction, examples, and a sample full-length interview. It comes with participant’s workbooks that can be copied as many times as an office needs. The goal of the training DVD is to make interview design and development both easier and more successful for project teams.

For more information, contact Meg Winch at Communication Resources Northwest, LLC at (425) 316-8300, info@communication-resources.com http://www.communication-resources.com