The Power of Asking

In the past month, I’ve had the opportunity to speak with company presidents, university architects, community planners, heads of major healthcare organizations, and the leaders of regional utilities. With each, I spent at least half an hour, and with many, substantially longer talking about their hopes and aspirations for projects and what it takes for design and construction professionals to be successful. These busy leaders took time out of their hectic schedules to tell me in great detail about their project experiences, what was positive and negative about their design or construction team’s performance, and what they are looking for in the future. Why did each of these individuals provide me with such rich and useful information? The simple answer is: because I asked.

Most clients very much want the design and construction professionals in their communities to be successful. They understand the value of profitable firms that have the capacity and interest in performing quality work. And, at a basic level, they buy in to the basic truth of ‘If you don’t ask for what you want, you don’t get it.’ As the project manager and lead researcher for three separate client perception studies, all finishing this month, I’m amazed at the level of detail and the rich body of examples and illustrations our subjects provided us in the interviews. And, I’m impressed that these busy people took time to communicate so clearly about their projects and their needs.

The first step in any successful client perception study is believing in the value of asking great questions of the right people to get your organization the information it needs to plan strategy, train employees, and build better client relationships.  Firm leaders who have no interest in knowing what their clients think probably aren’t as client-focused as they need to be in today’s competitive marketplace to create sustainable strategies for their firms’ futures.

Once a firm’s leadership understands the value of client research, the next step is to determine which of the clients to interview. This is a critical decision point for any firm’s leadership; the real question is “Do we want real data that will inform decisions and actions, or do we want to ‘game’ the research to get the answer we’re looking for?” Successful research programs follow rigorous protocols for the selection of clients that aren’t based on what a particular client might say, but instead are based on objective parameters like size, date of completion, project type, potential for repeat projects, etc. Firm leaders who value accurate data to drive decision-making are not afraid of what might be learned in a client perception study; rather, they take the positive – and the negative – and use that information to guide their firms toward continuous improvement.

The next step in an effective client research program is to develop a clear, consistently used interview guide.  An interview guide covers the range of topics that will be covered in each interview, making a set of interviews consistent enough to enable comparison across topics. Common topics for a client perception interview guide include general perceptions of the firm, performance of the project team, competitor and benchmark information, business development and marketing, and industry or market change. An interview guide should be viewed as just that—a guide, not a script.  A skilled interviewer listens to the answers and probes for additional detail. For example, if the client says, “Our team was fairly responsive to our needs, but they could have been better,” a skilled researcher asks, “What exactly could the team have done better?” and then likely follows up with, “Can you give me an example?”

Relative to who does the research, there are advantages and disadvantages to either using in-house staff or external resources. On one hand, internal resources know the work and the language of the organization; on the other hand, they may not be completely objective and they may not be able to deliver on a tight schedule. Researchers should be selected who understand the industry and client base, have excellent interview skills, and can document completely and clearly. One key selection criterion should also be that the researcher has the requisite time and resources to complete the study in a timely manner.  A client perception study should be completed in the shortest amount of time possible to minimize time impacts to the nature of the collected information.  Most studies of between 30 and 60 interviews take six to eight weeks from the delivery of a complete client list to the scheduling of the final interview.

Response rates are always challenging.  For a while, on-line surveys generated great response rates, but the huge volume of emails most of us receive every day make this method largely ineffective, generating negligible response rates. The method we’ve found both most effective, with the added benefit of being relationship-building, is to have the firm’s president or senior leader personally call each client and ask for participation.  When this happens, we get a response rate between 80 and 100 percent, much higher than for comparable studies in this industry.

The follow-up to any client perception study is an essential element to receiving full value from the research.  While some firms wish to conduct client research anonymously, a well-crafted client perception study provides the ability to follow up directly with clients to resolve issues and opens the door for further conversation. Plus, since clients often clearly articulate exactly what they want from future work, an open study enables a firm to use the information to tailor the marketing approach to a future project.  However, it’s vitally important how the data is managed and how the follow-up takes place.  Starting with a well-written thank-you note from the researcher, the follow up continues with a thank-you note from the company president or sponsoring division. Firms particularly effective at using client data convene firm leadership to develop a tailored follow-up plan for each responding client that might range from a simple phone call follow-up thanking the client for the time to a face-to-face meeting to resolve issues and/or discuss future work.  Key to the approach is that the underlying attitude needs to be one of gratitude versus “Why did you say that about us?”

A well-designed and professionally implemented client perception study has value even beyond the data itself.  One of the most frequent comments I get from the clients of my clients when I conduct an interview is, “Thank you; they must really care about their clients to bring in someone to ask me my thoughts on their performance.” A well-designed study can open doors, help firms resolve issues, and enable training and development of future team members. Knowledge is indeed power; client knowledge about projects and needs is readily available and most clients are craving the chance to give it to you. You just need to ask.

Introducing the Presentation Coaching Skills Toolkit!

Communication Resources is pleased to announce the publication of our 

Presentation Coaching Skills Toolkit!
  

Because those of us who coach teams to winning presentations tend to be busy people, we’ve kept the toolkit short, easy to read, and straightforward to use when preparing for interviews. It contains clear cards outlining strategies and tactics that follow the logic of the interview preparation process:

Alignment:  Steps for conducting research necessary to understand the project and the client as part of the overall win strategy

Strategy:  Tips and tactics for selecting and coaching team members through the development of clear, memorable content

Choreography:  Design strategies to make teams come across as cohesive and approachable, using staging and visuals to communicate enthusiasm

Rehearsal:  Tested techniques for getting even the most challenging team ready to interview with purpose and passion

In this easy-to-digest format, the toolkit passes on 20+ years of knowledge about how to create winning interviews – faster. These are the same tools that have helped teams win smaller fisheries projects and enormous replacement hospitals. We’ve included a broad range of tactics that work for even the most challenging team - from different ways to organize content to strategies for rehearsals and using notes.

Far from “reinventing the wheel” for each interview, this toolkit should help internal coaches and their teams use a logical approach to guide interview preparation and presentation. This process results in more creative, more persuasive, and more differentiating content. And, it helps speakers rapidly gain comfort in the process, enabling them to speak with passion and conviction in the real interview.

From the most well-known museums in the country to smaller local projects, these tools work, resulting in higher hit rates for our clients and strategic wins on important projects.

Check out the toolkit on our website at www.communication-resources.com.  We had fun writing it; we hope you’ll have success using the tools with your teams! 

Once Upon a Time...

In marketing materials, proposals, and presentations, teams and firms struggle with the best ways to present their experience and their portfolios in the best, most memorable way possible.  Unfortunately, from the audience’s perspective, our experience, no matter how delightfully presented is never as interesting to them as it is to us.  Since experience in the A/E/C industry is certainly proof of past performance and a strong indicator of future performance, we have to find ways to communicate our experience in a way that resonates.

To engage readers of our marketing materials, teams need to select images and projects that fit both a client’s vision of the new project as well as enable us to tell “epic stories” of how we solved similar challenges to those faced by our clients.  In the combination of the client being able to visualize his project through evocative imagery with a vivid and interesting story, our experience becomes not only interesting, but compelling to the potential client.  If we can tell that story in an engaging way and show images that tell the story of people and place, now we’ve got something we can use.

Ellen Jaskol on location in Afghanistan

Making experience come to life involves both the images we use and the story we tell. Starting with the imagery, photos become part of the overall story, communicating a sense of people and movement that the traditional project photos largely do not.  For proposals, presentations, and brochures, our coaching/writing team has recently been partnering with an incredibly talented Pulitzer Prize winning photographer, Ellen Jaskol (you can see her work at www.ellenjaskol.com), to help our clients communicate their experience – and their process – through both images and stories.  Ellen captures projects at work – people experiencing architecture and construction in incredibly rich ways. Through photographs, she brings readers into the context of the project, helping us understand the meaning behind the words in a brochure, proposal, or presentation.

While I was coaching a recent presentation team for a large healthcare provider, Ellen collaborated with us to tell the story of the team and the potential of the site and the building.  As the team worked on presentation content, Ellen watched us through her photographer’s lens, shooting hundreds of candid team images showing programming and design happening in real time.  Combined with the words presenters said in their presentations, the photographs communicated how our team worked at a much deeper level.

On a brochure we created for a housing authority in Washington State, Ellen photographed people and the places in which they live in a way that brings the reader into the image and makes one want to read the story. And, in a brochure for an electrical contractor, Ellen’s work showed the beauty of a duct bank and the human story behind the walls in a building.  The synergy of words and images communicated a different side of each client that is much richer and more compelling.

Though not a traditional architectural photographer, Ellen’s work has a sense of richness and movement that we don’t typically see in our industry. Her images show people interacting with spaces. She captures images that help us see buildings or infrastructure in new and beautiful ways.  By themselves, the images tell a story and encourage the reader to dive into the content and learn more.

When we combine these types of images with a good story, people keep reading.  Great stories are larger than life, telling the adventure of accomplishing something heroic.  A well-written story in the A/E/C industry tells of adventures in design and construction.  The story starts with a problem, a significant challenge such as the fire breathing dragon terrorizing the village.  Then, there has to be suffering in order for the reader to really understand the urgency of resolution: many young maidens have been sacrificed to feed the dragon.  Then, we need a hero; of course he is both brave and kind (handsome and modest…).  In an epic battle, our hero faces the villain (think Prince Charming and the fire pits in Disney’s Sleeping Beauty).  Finally, our hero is victorious; he saves the beautiful young maiden, the villain is vanquished, and peace reigns in the kingdom once again.

So, while our stories don’t often involve fire breathing dragons (a pity, really), consider two examples of project summaries, both conveying similar information. Which would you prefer reading?

•             Our team recently completed a 400-bed elder care and rehabilitation hospital in Pleasant Valley.  The new integrated facility replaces three 1960s nursing homes and expands geriatric care services to meet the needs of the growing elderly community in the area. The facility was built to LEED platinum standards and saves the hospital more than $200,000/year in operating costs; the facility includes many innovations in care delivery and rehabilitation.  The team worked with more than 25 independent user groups to design a facility that meets the functional needs of each group, while maximizing patient and family satisfaction.  ABDC has a strong reputation for innovation and excellence in healthcare design for targeted populations. Pleasant Valley hospital is one more example of our focus on quality delivery for a community and a specialized patient population. [Include photo of hospital exterior a night – focus on Pleasant Valley Elder Care sign.]

•      Pleasant Valley has long been the nation’s center for elder care with one of the fastest growing elder populations in the United States, confluence of care providers, and a pleasant year-round climate.  Unfortunately, for infirm or rehabilitating patients, few options existed beyond five separate 1960s traditional nursing homes.  ABDC worked collaboratively with the hospital’s 25 user groups over a two-year period to design and construct the nation’s first inclusive 400-bed geriatric hospital, featuring the latest innovations in care delivery and geriatric rehabilitation.  The hospital exceeds LEED platinum standards, meeting the mayor’s energy mandate and saving the hospital more than $200,000 per year in operating costs.  Six months after opening, the hospital director, Mary Sneed said, “We finally have a facility that meets the real medical and rehabilitation needs of our elderly population, and we’re able to attract and retain the dedicated staff to make this level of care possible for everyone’s parents.” [Include photo of nurse tending to smiling rehabilitating seniors in the aquatic center.]

Combining the imagery with the story is an art that incorporates a journalistic sense of photography with the ability to tell a good story.  While we seldom slay dragons or rescue beautiful maidens, our teams do perform incredible feats, heroically solving client problems with amazing outcomes.  When we bring the right story and the right image together, readers engage with the content and absorb messages more readily.  As a result, our experience becomes both memorable and interesting.  Telling a good story and using great photographs doesn’t cost any more than creating the standard, flat descriptions and images of projects. Writing well and using brilliant photographs means our readers will actually read what we write, hopefully wanting to know more about our firms and our teams.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

1. We engage our entire team in the identification of stakeholders.
2. We will use social media to engage difficult to reach stakeholders and bring them in to the project "conversation."
3. 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.