The Importance of Succession Planning for your Business

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

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. 

The Benefits of In-House Training on Tight Budgets

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^th of 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.

Managing your Time and Training Employees in a Chaotic Market

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

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

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

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!

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....