by - HBR Despite near record unemployment during the Covid-19 recession, plenty of employers will face major challenges in hiring low-skill, entry-level workers when economic conditions improve. This is, in part, because the overall U.S. workforce will grow only 0.4% in the next several decades. A big part of the problem of finding low-skill workers is the barriers employers create when they focus on screening people out. Typical staffing processes are costly, time-consuming, and repeated endlessly. Businesses spend about $4,100 per employee processing resumes, then conducting interviews, background checks, and drug tests. Meanwhile, business leaders are being pressed to increase inclusion and diversity in their companies, whose typical hiring practices often exclude millions of people who are denied opportunities to make a living. They include the formerly incarcerated, the homeless, and those in recovery. What if there was a solution that not only meets workforce needs but also creates economic opportunities for those facing major barriers to employment? While it may not be feasible for every business, the concept of “open hiring” is an innovative, counterintuitive strategy worth considering if your organization finds it difficult to recruit and retain dependable entry-level workers. This approach, which eschews resumes, interviews, and background checks, focuses solely on human potential and provides employment to anyone willing and able to work. Some of these requirements, like background checks, may be necessary in sectors such as education, government, healthcare, and finance. But for industries that rely heavily on front-line talent — manufacturing, distribution, retail, and food services, where candidates can be trained on the job — open hiring offers the opportunity for more diverse talent that would otherwise be passed over or ignored. Open hiring shifts resources to invest in workers, rather than finding ways to exclude them. Most important, this approach allows companies to build more resilient businesses and address one of today’s greatest social challenges: providing economic opportunities for people often viewed as unemployable. Since 1982, Greyston Bakery in Yonkers, New York, which produces millions of pounds of baked goods annually for customers like Ben & Jerry’s and Whole Foods Market, has used this approach while building a successful business with 70 Open Hire employees. New hires are offered a position when their name comes up next on the list of people who have expressed interest in working at the bakery. No resume, job interview, background check, or drug test is required. As a result, the business has virtually no hiring costs. Greyston then invests about $1,900 in hard and soft skills training for new bakers, as well as providing access to extensive wraparound services. Understanding that a job is just the first step for many in achieving success, the bakery connects employees with health, housing, childcare, and transportation needs to resources that will help keep them employed. So, when a young baker starts consistently showing up late for work, a counselor intervenes and may discover the employee’s childcare arrangements have fallen apart. The counselor then works with the employee to find a solution that benefits his family and the business. This model has enabled Greyston to build a profitable business over its 38-year history, while also putting money back into the community of southwest Yonkers. Greyston recently calculated that it generates nearly $7 million of local economic impact annually through public assistance savings, increased tax revenue, as well as reduced incarceration costs. Greyston is now working to scale open hiring and guide other employers in adopting this innovative staffing approach through its Center for Open Hiring (one of us, Sara, is the director). About half a dozen businesses have successfully adapted this model to their operations. One such company is The Body Shop, the international cosmetics company, which piloted open hiring in one of its distribution centers. The Body Shop typically hires 200 seasonal employees to handle the holiday rush in its warehouse located in Raleigh, North Carolina. Adopting the open hiring approach in late 2019, recruiters asked by - forbes - Travis Bradberry When emotional intelligence first appeared to the masses in 1995, it served as the missing link in a peculiar finding: people with average IQs outperform those with the highest IQs 70% of the time. This anomaly threw a massive wrench into what many people had always assumed was the sole source of success—IQ. Decades of research now point to emotional intelligence as the critical factor that sets star performers apart from the rest of the pack. Emotional intelligence is the “something” in each of us that is a bit intangible. It affects how we manage behavior, navigate social complexities, and make personal decisions that achieve positive results. Emotional intelligence is made up of four core skills that pair up under two primary competencies: personal competence and social competence. Personal competence is made up of your self-awareness and self-management skills, which focus more on you individually than on your interactions with other people. Personal competence is your ability to stay aware of your emotions and manage your behavior and tendencies.
Emotional intelligence taps into a fundamental element of human behavior that is distinct from your intellect. There is no known connection between IQ and emotional intelligence; you simply can’t predict emotional intelligence based on how smart someone is. Intelligence is your ability to learn, and it’s the same at age 15 as it is at age 50. Emotional intelligence, on the other hand, is a flexible set of skills that can be acquired and improved with practice. Although some people are naturally more emotionally intelligent than others, you can develop high emotional intelligence even if you aren’t born with it. Personality is the final piece of the puzzle. It’s the stable “style” that defines each of us. Personality is the result of hard-wired preferences, such as the inclination toward introversion or extroversion. However, like IQ, personality can’t be used to predict emotional intelligence. Also like IQ, personality is stable over a lifetime and doesn’t change. IQ, emotional intelligence, and personality each cover unique ground and help to explain what makes a person tick. Emotional Intelligence Is Linked to Performance. How much of an impact does emotional intelligence have on your professional success? The short answer is: a lot! It’s a powerful way to focus your energy in one direction with a tremendous result. TalentSmart tested emotional intelligence alongside 33 other important workplace skills, and found that emotional intelligence is the strongest predictor of performance, explaining a full 58% of success in all types of jobs. Your emotional intelligence is the foundation for a host of critical skills—it impacts most everything you say and do each day. Emotional intelligence is the single biggest predictor of performance in the workplace and the strongest driver of leadership and personal excellence. Of all the people we’ve studied at work, we’ve found that 90% of top performers are also high in emotional intelligence. On the flip side, just 20% of bottom performers are high in emotional intelligence. You can be a top performer without emotional intelligence, but the chances are slim. Naturally, people with a high degree of emotional intelligence make more money—an average of $29,000 more per year than people with a low degree of emotional intelligence. The link between emotional intelligence and earnings is so direct that every point increase in emotional intelligence adds $1,300 to an annual salary. These findings hold true for people in all industries, at all levels, in every region of the world. We haven’t yet been able to find a job in which performance and pay aren’t tied closely to emotional intelligence. Emotional Intelligence Can Be Developed. The communication between your emotional and rational “brains” is the physical source of emotional intelligence. The pathway for emotional intelligence starts in the brain, at the spinal cord. Your primary senses enter here and must travel to the front of your brain before you can think rationally about your experience. However, first they travel through the limbic system, the place where emotions are generated. So, we have an emotional reaction to events before our rational mind is able to engage. Emotional intelligence requires effective communication between the rational and emotional centers of the brain. “Plasticity” is the term neurologists use to describe the brain’s ability to change. Your brain grows new connections as you learn new skills. The change is gradual, as your brain cells develop new connections to speed the efficiency of new skills acquired. Using strategies to increase your emotional intelligence allows the billions of microscopic neurons lining the road between the rational and emotional centers of your brain to branch off small “arms” (much like a tree) to reach out to the other cells. A single cell can grow 15,000 connections with its neighbors. This chain reaction of growth ensures it’s easier to kick this new behavior into action in the future. Once you train your brain by repeatedly using new emotional intelligence strategies, emotionally intelligent behaviors become habits. by - aya sameer- hbr What makes a brand last? Knowing the answer is what separates sustainable success from eventual obscurity. Almost every company devotes significant resources to defining their brand. But few ask the equally important question: how to protect it? Historically, brands have risen and fallen in prominence slowly. Look at almost any decade from the 1950s on, and the world’s most valuable consumer brands – from Oreo to AT&T – barely changed in ranking. Even as recently as the new millennium, this trend continued. Between 2000 and 2010 just two of Interbrand’s top 10 brands fell off the list. But only half of the brands on the list in 2010 remained as of 2019. The internet era makes brands less durable in part because consumer habits have digitized, creating new business models that have blindsided many traditional brands. But there is nothing inherently antagonistic to legacy brands about digital lifestyles. Coca-Cola remains one of the world’s most valuable brands – and it was invented in 1892! What, then, is it that makes a brand durable even as business models, technology, and consumer behavior radically change? They key is that durable brands are adaptable brands — even legacy ones, as we’ll see. So let me share what I have learned from working for the past five years as an entrepreneur and expert on esports. While esports brands certainly aren’t legacy brands, their rapid explosion holds lessons on the art of adaptability for any company. Esports has skyrocketed this decade to become a $27 billion dollar industry, more popular than the NBA. Pro gamers number among this generation’s highest earning celebrities. And the primary platform for watching esports, Twitch (acquired by Amazon for $1 billion in 2014), outperforms traditional broadcasters like ESPN. But arguably esports’ greatest success is the popular game Fortnite. In 2019, Fortnite grossed $1.9 billion dollars. NFL quarterbacks perform Fortnite victory dances in the end zone. And Star Wars announced the return of its arch-villain, the Emperor, by broadcasting his interstellar message inside the game. Fortnite wasn’t always a hit. In fact, the game launched in 2017 as a me-too zombie shooter that struggled in the face of an entrenched competitor: Player Unknown’s Battlegrounds (PUBG). PUBG sold more than five million copies of its innovative “battle royale” format which allowed one hundred players to simultaneously engage in free-for-all gunplay. To recover, Fortnite rushed out its own version of a battle royale mode in just two months. But, crucially, Fortnite didn’t slavishly imitate PUBG. Its designers noticed that PUBG’s chaotic battles made hiding more effective than fighting, emphasizing patience over skill. So Fortnite allowed players to erect defensive structures anywhere on its map, favoring strategic thinking. As a result, Fortnite deeply rewarded mastery. Spending the time to learn the game’s unique building mechanics alongside traditional shooting skills resulted in consistent victories. Secondly, Fortnite made itself accessible, releasing as a free-to-play game, compared to PUBG’s $29.99 price. Furthermore, it employed a cartoony all-ages aesthetic, in contrast to PUBG’s gritty military look. And the game quickly made itself playable on any device: from high-end gaming PCs to mobile phones. Fortnite also recognized that not every gamer wants to shoot things in the head, and so launched concerts and creative play modes to appeal to the broadest swathe of consumers. Third, Fortnite committed to delivering a fast cadence of new content, releasing new character abilities and weapons almost every week. These changes kept the game constantly fresh and top-of-mind. Lastly, Fortnite ensnared its customers by introducing social features, matchmaking algorithms to pair players of equivalent skill, and a massive catalog of cosmetic items, such as NFL co-branded uniforms. These locked in its player base with network effects and switching costs. These four strategies catapulted Fortnite to meteoric success. By the end of 2018, Fortnite boasted 200 million registered users, while PUBG’s player population collapsed by 66%. The MACE FrameworkThese same tactics — what together I call the “MACE framework” — are not one-offs, but generalizable to all brands. Let’s look at them more closely. Mastery: Give your consumers non-transferrable rewards for using your products and engaging with your content. Ideally, these rewards require public displays of affinity or small (non-monetary) sacrifices to exploit the endowment effect (overvaluing losses) and familiarity effect (overvaluing affinity). For example, Hasbro’s brand Magic, first released in 1993, grew 30% year-on-year in 2019 on the back of innovative products like Secret Lair, which are short-notice, 24-hours exclusives requiring a “digital queue” to purchase. Accessibility: Make your brand easily available to as many consumers as possible by following three simple rules. First, make your entry-level products as cheap as you can, and ideally free. For many industries, this means leveraging alternative pricing models (such as deferred payments, leases and subscriptions) to minimize upfront costs. Second, distribute your product or service through as many sales channels as possible. And third, design and market your products to appeal to younger and first-time customers. While older or existing buyers are likely higher margin, focusing primarily here limits the growth of your long-term customer base. For example, Marvel’s superhero films have significantly outperformed rival DC’s at the box office, in part because of a strategic decision to focus on PG-13 ratings and light-hearted humor that can appeal to all ages. Cadence: Constantly create news and content around your brand. First, frequently release new products (or product updates). Second, maximize promotional assets, such as marketing videos, by editing long-form media into micro-content. Third, encourage user generated content wherever possible. And fourth, communicate everything; even failure. Have a product launch that bombed? Start talking about it publicly. You’ll be surprised by the results, as Apple was during its feud with Taylor Swift. By directly admitting exploitative royalties, Apple transformed bad PR into viral social media praise, culminating in Swift herself advertising Apple’s products. Ensnarement: Make your brand as sticky as possible by building in switching costs and creating network effects. Two generalizable strategies for accomplishing this — systemization and spawning — involve product development: Systemized product lines are best embodied by LEGO. The brand eschews one-off releases (bricks) in favor of selling entire systems (LEGO model kits). Imagine how vulnerable LEGO would be to low cost brick competitors if all it sold was individual pieces! Spawning products include a built-in reason to share. Consider Coca-Cola’s Share-A-Coke promotion. By printing common names on Coke cans, the brand encouraged gifting amongst friends – helping grow sales from 1.7 billion to 1.9 billion servings a day. To illustrate the generalizability of the MACE model, let’s apply it to a more mundane world: thermostats. At first blush, you’d think home appliances have little to do with Fortnite’s multiplayer shootouts. But in fact their brand strategies are surprisingly similar. The success of the original smart thermostat, Nest, is a perfect example of how even staid, CPG products can be reinterpreted as MACE-ready brands for the digital age. Here’s how Nest strategy layered in MACE factors over its lifetime: Mastery: Nest thermostats reward mastery in a direct way: by saving customers money. The thermostats tracks energy savings, rewarding eco-friendly settings by displaying a Nest leaf. This leaf becomes more difficult to achieve over time, encouraging users to continuously interact with the device to further economize on heating and cooling costs. Accessibility: This was arguably Nest’s biggest point of differentiation at launch. The thermostat are designed for the digital generation: app-integrated, intuitive, and elegantly styled. Cadence: You might not think of a thermostat having a content cadence. Traditional thermostats are programmed once; then likely never again. But Nest updates its users, usually via its app. It automatically adjusts routines, such as lowering temperatures at bedtime. It displays time to reach desired temperature. It tracks activity patterns based on the weather. And much more. Smart thermostats don’t need to generate content, but Nest does. Ensnarement: Finally, Nest locks in its users with switching costs and network effects. As part of a broader Google smart home system of cameras, doorbells, alarms and locks, out-of-ecosystem purchases are painfully isolated. Even more cleverly, Nest leverages network effects by aggregating user behavioral data to create better algorithms for temperature adjustment. MACE is a blueprint for any brand — even traditional ones — to evolve for long-term relevancy. It is true that brands without inherent, digital connectivity require clever thinking to leverage this framework. But companies that cannot effectively engage with consumers on digital platforms are destined to be dinosaurs. Even the most traditional products, like thermostats can, and must, effectively do this. Manage with MACE in mind, and ensure your brand endures in our increasingly digitized world. by - aya sameer - PR & Marketing T he #MeToo and Black Lives Matter movements each took the working world by storm, bringing to the forefront issues of workplace sexual assault, sexual and racial harassment, and discrimination. But while heightened awareness is making workplace conversations about sexism, racism, and other injustices more common, these interpersonal conversations alone will not remove the systemic challenges keeping inequity in place. One of the alarming symptoms of these challenges is the low rate at which employees report incidents of assault, harassment, and discrimination. Too many people don’t feel safe at work, and, fearing repercussions, aren’t willing or able to speak up about it. This vicious cycle keeps systemic inequity deeply entrenched within many workplace. Despite the high rates of sexual assault and harassment — affecting up to 90% of women in some industries — and pervasive discrimination based on race, gender, age, and sexuality — experienced or witnessed by 61% of U.S. employees — reporting rates remain extremely low. A report by the EEOC found that only 30% of employees experiencing harassment on the basis of gender, race, national origin, disability and other protected classes make internal complaints, and less than 15% file formal legal charges. A meta-analysis similarly found that fewer than one-third of workers even informally talked with a supervisor about the sexual harassment they experienced, and less than 25% filed formal reports with their employers. These studies consistently found that the primary reason for low reporting rates is retaliation, where employers or individuals respond to reports of discrimination or mistreatment by further punishing or marginalizing the victim. Retaliation is astonishingly common: 68% of sexual harassment allegations and 42% of LGBTQ+ discrimination allegations made to the EEOC also include charges of employer retaliation. (Because the EEOC considers charges of retaliation a separate “issue” from charges of discrimination on the basis of race, sex, national origin, and other protected classes, reliable data showing both retaliation and these other forms of discrimination together is sparse.) There are several additional factors that drive low reporting rates. One is the likelihood that victims receive any benefit from reporting in the first place. While companies encourage victims to go through internal reporting channels, these are often legalistic grievance procedures meant to reduce the risk of a lawsuit against the company. Forced arbitration, a policy adopted by many companies, requires that employees go through mandatory arbitration to resolve disputes and waive their right to sue. And even if they do, reporting to the EEOC rarely results in benefit to victims, with only 1% of federal discrimination, harassment, or retaliation claims succeeding in U.S. courts. Another is the inflexibility of options available to victims. When MIT made an informal, confidential process available to employees in the 1980s, they found that 90% of those filing sexual harassment complaints preferred that route to the more formal one. Even 40 years later, many employers still lack these types of processes, discount informal reports of harassment or discrimination, or offer few choices for victims looking for resolution. The lack of anonymity offered by most reporting processes is also an issue. Research has consistently demonstrated that offering anonymous reporting channels increases reporting rates by making it easier for people to report and protecting victims against retaliation. While many companies have some form of anonymous reporting channel, resolution typically requires that employees come forward and expose their identities and themselves to potential retaliation as a result. Toxic company cultures play a final role in low rates of reporting, with 53% of employees in one study citing hostile work environment as a reason for not reporting. If victims feel that not only is it unlikely that their report will result in a harasser being found responsible, but that their company would also then disregard the finding or shield the harasser from consequences, there is very little chance they’ll choose to report in the first place. Opaque, legalistic, and inaccessible reporting practices designed to prioritize lowering company risk rather than focusing on resolution and recourse for victims are a major part of the problem. In fact, companies that promote a fairer, flexible, and transparent process for victims may be better equipped to both address deep-seated problems in their workplaces and lower the likelihood that they will be the targets of highly visible discrimination or harassment lawsuits. If you want to increase reporting rates at your company — and thereby make your workplace a more equitable, inclusive, and safe place to work — here are four practices that you can adopt to rebuild employee trust in reporting. Demonstrate commitment to accountability from the top. To build buy-in for any new reporting processes or tools, company leaders must build trust through their words and actions from the start. You can do this by not only making a public commitment to doing better, but by establishing and publicizing metrics to hold yourselves and the company accountable. If your efforts to develop a better process are driven even partially by a mishandling of a discrimination or harassment incident, you should focus on re-earning trust that has been lost. Strongly consider reaching out to any remaining employees who were affected, apologizing for harm done, and offering recourse to the extent possible. Invest in neutral resources to support victims of harassment and discrimination. One option is bringing in external resources through a private therapist or Employee Assistance Program (EAP). By giving employees explicit permission to access these services and making it clear that these providers are independent from the company reporting structure, you can provide employees with confidential support, counseling, and advice. While these resources can be expensive, workplace mental health interventions have been shown to have a high return on investment and similar approaches could provide much-needed support to employees facing harassment and discrimination. Establish an ombuds office. An ombuds is an off-the-record resource currently used by at least 13% of US companies to provide information and guidance to employees considering reporting. Because they are not an official reporting channel, ombuds can talk candidly to employees about fears and concerns and walk them through the options available to them, including but not limited to making a formal report. Importantly, ombuds serve as an alternative to legalistic hearing processes and allow employees some degree of flexibility in communicating their complaint to the individual(s) accused. Create anonymous formal reporting channels that both protect reporters and inform organizational change.A large range of anonymous reporting tools are available to companies, including hotlines, chatbots, website forms, and phone apps. One company in the food industry with a few thousand employees partnered with a third-party platform for their anonymous reporting and found that after 6 months reporting rates had increased by 30%. Faith in the new anonymous channel led employees to come forward earlier with issues that previously may not have been reported for months, if ever, allowing the organization to address problems before they developed into major incidents. While each tool has its own strengths and companies should design their solutions to best fit their own needs, effective solutions (whether fully internal, through an external platform, or a mix of the two) should be:
by - aya sameer - PR & Marketing A company’s most important asset isn’t raw materials, transportation systems, or political influence. It’s creative capital—simply put, an arsenal of creative thinkers whose ideas can be turned into valuable products and services. Creative employees pioneer new technologies, birth new industries, and power economic growth. Professionals whose primary responsibilities include innovating, designing, and problem solving—the creative class—make up a third of the U.S. workforce and take home nearly half of all wages and sala-ries. If you want your company to succeed, these are the people you entrust it to. That much is certain. What’s less certain is how to manage for maximum creativity. How do you increase efficiency, improve quality, and raise productivity, all while accommodating for the complex and chaotic nature of the creative process? Many academics and businesses have made inroads into this field. Management guru Peter Drucker identified the role of knowledge workers and, long before the dot-com era, warned of the perils of trying to “bribe” them with stock options and other crude financial incentives. This view is supported by the research of Harvard Business School’s Teresa Amabile and Yale University’s Robert Sternberg, which shows that creative people are motivated from within and respond much better to intrinsic rewards than to extrinsic ones. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi at Claremont Graduate University in California has documented the factors that generate creativity and its positive effects on organizations, advancing the concept of “flow”—the feeling people get when their activities require focus and concentration but are also incredibly enjoyable and rewarding. While most students of the creative process have focused on what makes individuals creative, a growing number of thinkers such as Andrew Hargadon at the University of California, Davis, and John Seely Brown, former chief scientist of Xerox, are unlocking the social and management contexts in which creativity is most effectively nurtured, harnessed, and mobilized. Eric von Hippel of MIT and Henry Chesbrough of the University of California, Berkeley, have called attention to the critical role played by users and customers in the creative process and to a new model of “open innovation.” Duke University’s Wesley Cohen has shown that corporate creativity depends upon a firm’s “absorptive capacity”—the ability of its research and development units not just to create innovations but to absorb them from outside sources. Business history is replete with examples of companies—from General Electric and Toyota to the design-intensive Electronic Arts, Pixar, and IDEO—that have tapped into the creativity of workers from a wide range of disciplines, as well as the creativity of users and customers, to become more innovative, more efficient, or both. Despite such insights and advances, most businesses have been unable to pull these notions of creativity together into a coherent management framework. SAS Institute, the largest privately held software company in the world, is a notable exception. Based in Cary, North Carolina, SAS has been in the top 20 of Fortune’s 100 Best Companies to Work For list every year it’s been published. The employee turnover rate hovers between 3% and 5%, compared with the industry average of nearly 20%. The governments and global corporations that rely on SAS’s sophisticated business-intelligence software are overwhelmingly satisfied: The subscription renewal rate is an astounding 98%. And in 2004, the company enjoyed its 28th straight year of revenue growth, with revenues topping $1.5 billion. What’s the secret to all this success? As an academic and a CEO, the two of us approach this question differently, but we’ve come to the same conclusion. SAS has learned how to harness the creative energies of all its stakeholders, including its customers, software developers, managers, and support staff. Over the past three decades—through trial and error as well as organic evolution—SAS has developed a unique framework for managing creativity, one that rests on three guiding principles: Help employees do their best work by keeping them intellectually engaged and by removing distractions. Make managers responsible for sparking creativity and eliminate arbitrary distinctions between “suits” and “creatives.” And engage customers as creative partners so you can deliver superior products. These principles are driven by the premise that creative capital is not just a collection of individuals’ ideas, but a product of interaction. As University of Chicago organization theorist Ronald Burt has shown, long-term relationships between employees and customers add to a company’s bottom line by increasing the likelihood of “productive accidents.” Thus, when SAS nurtures such relationships among developers, salespeople, and customers, it is investing in its future creative capital. Managing with a framework like SAS’s produces a corporate ecosystem where creativity and productivity flourish, where profitability and flexibility go hand in hand, and where hard work and work/life balance aren’t mutually exclusive. Help Workers Be Great Creative people work for the love of a challenge. They crave the feeling of accomplishment that comes from cracking a riddle, be it technological, artistic, social, or logistical. They want to do good work. Though all people chafe under what they see as bureaucratic obstructionism, creative people actively hate it, viewing it not just as an impediment but as the enemy of good work. Do what you can to keep them intellectually engaged and clear petty obstacles out of their way, and they’ll shine for you. Stimulate their minds. SAS operates on the belief that invigorating mental work leads to superior performance and, ultimately, better products. It does not try to bribe workers with stock options; it has never offered them. At SAS, the most fitting thanks for a job well done is an even more challenging project. An InformationWeek survey of tens of thousands of IT workers confirms that theory: On-the-job challenge ranks well above salary and other financial incentives as the key source of motivation. This is no surprise—since the pioneering work of Frederick Herzberg, managers have known that learning and being challenged motivate workers more than money or fear of disciplinarian bosses. What’s different about SAS is that it goes to uncommon lengths to find the right intrinsic motivator for each group of employees. Artists are inspired by the desire to create beauty. Salespeople respond to the thrill of the hunt and the challenge of making their quotas. Whatever the particular incentives, companies can take steps to help employees realize their goals. To ensure that its salespeople could make their quotas, for example, SAS developed a product-knowledge management system and created the position of sales engineer. That person’s job is to answer staff questions and solve technical problems, so the sales reps can spend more time chasing down leads and less time digging up product specs. Since developers thrive on intellectual stimulation, SAS sends them to industry- and technology-specific conferences, where they can hone their programming skills and build relationships within the larger software community. SAS stages its own R&D expos, where SAS developers share their work with the nontechnical staff. The company also encourages employees to write white papers and collaborate on articles and books in order to showcase their knowledge. And SAS maintains a healthy training budget so individuals can keep up with cutting edge technologies. When employees return to the office, they are energized to apply what they’ve learned to their own projects. Another way SAS keeps employees engaged is by frequently updating their tools. With the most advanced third-party productivity tools on the market, it’s hard to get bored. Homegrown defect-tracking tools and source-control tools are continually refined, as well, and help workers do their jobs efficiently. In all cases, form follows function. As much as leaders at SAS value technology, they strongly believe that it’s people who make technology useful, not the other way around. If a tool is constrictive or makes people change their preferred ways of working, then it gets scrapped. The goal is always the same—to help workers be great. That holds true for all types of positions. Everyone working on the SAS campus is an employee; the company doesn’t outsource any job functions. Whether you’re a chef or a programmer, a groundskeeper or a director, you are a full member of the SAS community, and you receive the same benefits package. SAS recognizes that 95% of its assets drive out the front gate every evening. Leaders consider it their job to bring them back the next morning. SAS recognizes that 95% of its assets drive out the front gate every evening. Leaders consider it their job to bring them back the next morning. Minimize hassles.In the creative economy, time is precious. And as much as creative people like to feel challenged, they don’t want to have to surmount unnecessary obstacles. The former situation inspires greatness; the latter, migraines—hardly an ideal condition for creative thought. So SAS takes great pains to eliminate hassles for workers wherever and whenever it can, both off and on the job. People who are preoccupied wondering “When can I fit in time at the gym?” or “Is that meeting going to waste my whole afternoon?” can’t be entirely focused on the job at hand. The more distractions a company can remove, the more its employees can maximize their creative potential and, in turn, produce great work. The Oprah Winfrey Show, 60 Minutes, and lots of newspaper and magazine articles have publicized the perks SAS lavishes on its employees, but the company isn’t just doling out treats willy-nilly. There’s a deliberate process for choosing which benefits to offer (or, put another way, which distractions to eliminate). First, by conducting annual surveys and fielding employees’ suggestions, HR finds out what people need. Next, it determines whether SAS can reasonably meet each need, asking, “Will we get enough of a return in terms of employee time saved to merit the investment?” If the answer is yes, SAS provides the benefit. If it’s no, the company explains why. Even when SAS says no, it earns workers’ trust and respect by engaging in a dialogue rather than issuing a seemingly arbitrary decision. SAS has said yes to quite a lot. On campus, it has medical facilities for employees and dependents. Additionally, there’s a Montessori day care center, and children are welcome in the company cafeteria, so families can eat lunch together. There are also basketball courts, a swimming pool, and an exercise room on-site, all of which make it easier for employees to fit a workout into their day. The company’s Work-Life Department provides educational, networking, and referral services to help employees choose the right colleges for their teenagers, say, or find the best home health aides for their parents. Massages, dry cleaning, haircuts, and auto detailing are offered on-site and at reduced costs. (But SAS doesn’t have, for instance, a doggie day care center because the numbers didn’t add up.) Obviously, the perks cost the company something, but think about the net gain. Not only do the benefits make workers more productive, but they also help retain those workers, reducing the company’s expenses for recruitment and replacement. SAS saves about $85 million a year in such costs, according to Stanford University’s Jeffrey Pfeffer, a leading scholar of talent-based organizations. It takes roughly six months to get a new worker up to speed in terms of technical knowledge, but it takes years for the employee to truly absorb a company’s culture and forge solid relationships. By retaining workers, SAS protects and continues to enrich long-standing relationships among sales and support staff, developers, and customers—and it is in these relationships that creative capital resides. Of course, there are other, less tangible advantages. Having health care on-site, for instance, reduces the amount of time employees are away from work for doctor visits. And medical conditions are generally caught earlier—because if it’s not a hassle to set up an appointment and there’s no need to travel across town, most people will see a doctor in the earlier stages of illness. As a result, employee productivity is bolstered, and less time is lost for medical reasons. Likewise, subsidizing two-thirds of the cost of day care is an investment for SAS, not an unnecessary expense. It helps parents afford to come back to work, which means both the company and the employees win. SAS acknowledges and respects that employees have lives outside the office. The corporate philosophy is, if your fifth grader is in his first school play, you should be there to see it. SAS has earned a spot on Working Mother’s list of best companies so many times that professionals are lining up to apply. SAS takes equal care to reduce administrative and other on-the-job hassles for its employees. At SAS, you won’t find two-hour weekly staff meetings slotted into everyone’s day planner. People meet when demands warrant it, not because “it’s time.” The CEO has been known to stand up and leave the room when a meeting becomes unproductive. The informal culture fosters impromptu discussions, and one of managers’ responsibilities is to make sure the people who need to be sharing information are talking to one another. It’s not just useless meetings that SAS is out to eliminate—it’s also outdated beliefs about proper ways of working. Take the standard workday. Creativity is a fickle thing. It often can’t be shoehorned between the hours of nine and five; the Muses don’t always show up on time for appointments. It’s more important to capture the innovative insight—whenever it strikes—than to keep rigid work hours. To support the creative process and meet the demands of family life, flexible workday guidelines encourage people to start each day at whatever time is best for them. Some SAS jobs do require set schedules. Landscapers, for instance, arrive at 6 am to get the bulk of their work done before the sun gets too hot. But in general, flexibility is appropriate, and it yields more output from workers, not less. Creativity can’t be shoehorned between the hours of nine and five. The Muses don’t always show up on time for appointments. Although the press has played up the company’s 35-hour workweek, the truth is, employees often put in extra time to complete a project or fulfill a responsibility. But make no mistake: This is a far cry from some Silicon Valley start-up. The company actively discourages people from working 70-hour weeks. “After eight hours, you’re probably just adding bugs” is a company proverb, repeated often enough by the CEO and others that managers take it seriously. SAS encourages employees to disconnect from work for a time and then come back recharged. Creative people can be trusted to manage their own workloads; their inner drive to achieve, not to mention accountability among colleagues, compels a high level of productivity. We’re All Creatives Few companies place as high a value on an egalitarian work culture as SAS does. There’s no artificial dichotomy between suits and creatives because everyone there is a creative. The fact that the CEO still writes code is well known, but all of SAS’s managers do hands-on work. Gale Adcock, the director of SAS’s on-site health care center, for instance, is a nurse practitioner who sees her own patients one afternoon a week. The willingness—even eagerness—of managers to roll up their sleeves and delve into the “real” work of the organization sends an important message: We are all on the same team, striving toward the same goal of providing a superior product. The importance of that point cannot be overstated. Knowing that your boss thoroughly understands and respects the work you do—because he or she has actually done it—has many positive outcomes. In addition to feeling that your contributions are appreciated, you’ll probably be less hesitant to ask questions, because you know your manager “gets it,” and you’ll have more faith in your boss’s decisions. Business life abounds with stories about managers who’ve failed to earn the respect of professional, technical, and other creative employees: the university president with no scholarly credentials, the law school administrator who’s not a member of the bar, the movie studio executive who provokes a rebellion among directors, actors, and other talent. Because colleagues at SAS earn one another’s respect by producing excellent work, not by having a position near the top of the org chart, people aren’t overly concerned with titles. Consequently, it’s not in keeping with the corporate culture to withhold constructive criticism of higher-ups or hide problems from them; doing so would just result in an inferior product. In fact, most of SAS’s leaders have an open-door policy. People are free to pop in to talk over an issue or pitch a new product idea. And the CEO might stop by your office to ask you questions about the project you’re working on. As egalitarian as they may be, creative companies must find the right role for their managers. At SAS, that role is to spark the creativity of the people around them. Managers do that, first, by asking lots of questions. As Carl LaChapelle, director of the Display Products Division, explains, “If you tell everyone, ‘Here is how to do it,’ then all you are really measuring is their typing skills.” The managers also bring groups of people together to facilitate the exchange of ideas and to spur innovation. For example, a number of years ago, the CEO believed so strongly in the importance of creating Enterprise Guide—a Windows-based forecasting application for business analysts—that he moved developers from various units down to the basement of one building so they could collaborate on the project full-time. To help shepherd it along, the CEO kept a satellite office in this Skunk Works area. Having him there not only motivated the team but also broadcast the company’s commitment to the effort. Finally, the managers clear away obstacles for employees by procuring whatever materials they need. Larnell Lennon, who leads the software-testing team, describes his job as “Go get it, go get it, go get it.” When his people come to him asking for a software package or financial support, he doesn’t pepper them with questions. If it’s a reasonable request, he takes care of it. He knows he doesn’t have time for anything less than complete trust in his employees, and vice versa. If the outcomes aren’t up to snuff, that’s a different matter. But in his seven years in the position, he says, he hasn’t been given one reason to mistrust his people. That’s not to say that SAS never has difficulties with employees. With its enticing array of benefits, SAS is bound to attract a few people who would rather enjoy the perks than do the work. The company uses rigorous hiring practices to prevent such candidates from getting in the door; applicants may have to wait months for a decision while the company conducts a thorough vetting. Once they make the cut, they enter a highly collaborative work culture. And since peers as well as managers are technically savvy, it becomes clear pretty quickly when someone isn’t performing up to expectations. That person is given a corrective action plan and can either try to improve his or her behavior in the next three months or leave immediately with a parting compensation package. Either way, the process serves both the company and the employee well. Some have described SAS’s philosophy as “Hire hard, manage soft.” But “Hire hard, manage open, fire hard” is more apt. SAS, in other words, takes a relaxed approach toward controls; but the culture is allergic to couch potatoes. There’s absolutely no penalty for making honest mistakes in the pursuit of better products, though. Experimentation is crucial for breakthroughs, and some paths are bound to be dead ends. In fact, senior research and development director Deva Kumar gets upset only when people don’t do something, because stasis can’t lead to new insights. A few years back, SAS announced a new video game division, and managers let developers migrate there. When the department ended up failing, the developers were welcomed back where they came from. Even though the initiative didn’t succeed, it taught management some valuable lessons and reminded employees that their company supported them, earning their loyalty. Keep the Customer Satisfied So far, we’ve shown how SAS keeps workers stimulated and provides perks that make employees at most other companies green with envy. We’ve described a management system that builds collegiality and trust. In the business world, though, it all boils down to deliverables. There are plenty of companies whose supposedly enlightened, “new age” management policies led them straight to financial ruin—and where new management came in and imposed neo-Taylorist controls in an attempt to undo the damage. Ultimately, if you don’t build a product that people want (or, better yet, need), you won’t be around for long. Engaging customers—the final piece of the management framework—is what keeps SAS from turning into a country club for talented techies. Every company needs a constituency that holds its feet to the fire. For publicly held companies, it’s Wall Street. Sure, they have customers, too, but Wall Street is so quick and ruthless that, in practice, it’s hard to do the right thing by customers if the Street wants something else. SAS needs discipline as much as any company, but being private, it gets that from customers. That has big advantages, the greatest of which is this: While the stock price just tells you thumbs-up or thumbs-down, a customer tells you why, and how to get better, and will work with you to improve. But because the message from customers is more nuanced, it can also be more ambiguous. It’s important, therefore, for management to make sure people throughout the organization hear customers’ voices loud, clear, and unfiltered—so they’re as unambiguous as a stock quote. It’s important to make sure people throughout the organization hear customers’ voices loud, clear, and unfiltered—so they’re as unambiguous as a stock quote. Day in and day out, SAS gathers—and acts on—customer complaints and suggestions through its Web site and over the phone. The company also solicits feedback once a year through its Web-based SASware Ballot, which asks users about additional features they would like. SAS prioritizes complaints and comments and routes them to the appropriate experts. Problems and suggestions are tracked in a database. When it’s time to develop the next version of software, SAS resolves all recorded glitches and incorporates as many suggestions as feasible. For most of the company’s 29 years, it has implemented the top ten customer requests. It has taken action on approximately 80% of all requests fielded. Additionally, SAS collects feedback at an annual users’ conference, which is quite unlike the usual sales-pitch-in-disguise event. Jeffrey Pfeffer described it as more like a Grateful Dead show than a standard software-industry hole-mending session. What it is, really, is a hotbed of creative energy. It’s a forum for two groups of mutually respectful stakeholders to challenge each other to improve and innovate. Imagine for a moment the vast creative potential of millions of users—highly intelligent professionals hailing from diverse disciplines and 110 countries. (SAS provides software to 96 of the top 100 companies on the Fortune Global 500, and to 90% of all 500.) This is the biggest and best focus group that loyalty can buy. Since these customers have access to all the latest software on the market, they’re in a unique position to think comparatively about what the product they need should do, as well as what it shouldn’t do. According to SAS’s marketing creative director, Steve Benfield, it’s difficult to develop software “when you don’t have some external validation of one particular set of ideas over another…. But finding out what resonates with those beyond the office walls—that’s gold!” Creative capital is generated every time SAS’s employees and customers interact. Consultants and technical support staff don’t just troubleshoot; they collaborate with users to invent new solutions. Salespeople don’t just sell software; they build long-term relationships and, in the process, learn surprising things about their clients’ needs. SAS might be the only company that prints the names of its software developers in product manuals. Customers can—and do—call them up. And because employee loyalty is so high, the developers actually answer the phone: They haven’t moved down the road to start-up number seven. In large part, SAS can thank its subscription-plan business model for these regular interactions between employees and customers, and for its relatively stable revenue flows in a volatile industry. Customer loyalty is so high that the company saves money on advertising and other sales efforts. As a result, fully 26% of SAS’s budget gets channeled directly into research and development. The average for high-tech companies is 10%. A well-funded R&D department leads to better products, which leads to happier customers, which leads to—you can see where this is going. Another factor in customer allegiance is SAS’s devotion to creating bug-free products. Users of most software products have been conditioned to accept glitches as inevitable in new releases; imagine their surprise (and gratitude) when that isn’t the case. Twenty years ago, a particularly costly coding mistake was made at SAS. The product was sent to market, and fixing the error proved to be enormously expensive for customers and technical support staff alike. Lesson learned. These days, SAS performs some of the most robust premarket testing in the business. Testing teams run through a product from a developer’s standpoint, a salesperson’s standpoint, and a customer’s standpoint. If the product isn’t painless to evolve, sell, and use right away, SAS goes back to the drawing board. SAS doesn’t waste time and money patching up what it could have gotten right from the start. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of, well, tech support. That doesn’t mean support people aren’t needed. But those creative professionals should be spending most of their time working with users to find ways to make the products and relationships better, not untangling messes that could have been avoided. By all accounts, that’s exactly what happens. The average wait time on the tech support line is 34 seconds. And more than three-quarters of customer issues are solved within 24 hours. These are motivated employees providing first-rate solutions to very happy customers.• • • The creative economy is here to stay, and companies that figure out how to manage for creativity will have a crucial advantage in the ever-increasing competition for global talent. We believe that executives can look to SAS’s management principles for guidance in boosting innovation, productivity, and business performance. If you leverage the intrinsic motivation of creative workers by stimulating their minds and minimizing hassles; if you raze barriers between managers and workers by ensuring that your managers are creatives, too; if you tap into the creative talents of your customers instead of looking just to your workers for new ideas; and if you nurture long-term relationships with users and employees alike, you will increase your creative capital manifold. There’s a virtuous cycle in play at SAS. How quickly other corporations can readjust the way they manage their own creative workers will determine how gracefully we are all able to transition into the creative age. Many lawyers can have a difficult time in working with demanding business clients. It can be challenging to try to meet all of things that need to be done in fulfilling your legal obligations with the people you do business with.
As a result, these situations can cause a lot of anxiety and depression for the lawyers who are involved in working with people who are difficult to please. Here are six tips on how lawyers can effectively work with those clients who give them hard time without getting overwhelmed with anxiety, stress, and frustration. No. 1: Prepare ahead of time Regardless how good you are or how many awards you may have won, it is impossible to please everybody all of the time. It is important that a lawyer develops a good reputation in their area of expertise to buffer the possible problems of dealing with difficult customers down the road. No. 2: Get everything in writing Sometimes it is your loyal customers who are most difficult. It is important that you get everything in writing when dealing with difficult people. Misunderstandings will happen and expectations will not always be met. In dealing with anybody, put everything down in writing to save money and heartache down the road. No. 3: Learn to communicate effectively Do not assume that you know what your clients want. Listen to your customers and view your client’s circumstances through their eyes. Ask questions and make sure that everyone is on the same page. Effective communication with your customers will prevent misunderstandings down the road. No. 4: Learn how to organize, delegate, and plan ahead Although there is not enough time in a day to get everything accomplished, you have to be smart in how to get things done. A lawyer can delegate part of their tasks to members of their legal team. In addition, organizing your tasks and planning ahead can reduce the chances of getting burned out. Finally, do not put things off until the last minute. Managing your tasks effectively can prevent you from getting overwhelmed and getting fatigued. No. 5: Ask for some assistance If you find yourself overwhelmed with a specific case or client, ask others in your firm for advice and assistance. Many lawyers may be reluctant to ask for help because of pride, but it doesn’t do you any good if your depressed, anxious, and fearful. Getting advice or assistance from others on how to deal with a difficult client will prevent any problems from happening that could damage your reputation in the future. Its better to be safe than sorry. No. 6: Learn from your experiences Over time, lawyers can get a feel of what makes them stressed out and anxious at their legal profession. If possible, find ways to help overcome your stresses and anxieties. For example, some clients are more difficult to deal with than others. If possible, pick those cases that are less stressful to deal with. A lawyer can also decide to work for another firm that better suites their needs and work habits.Every lawyer wants to be successful and have a great reputation among their peers, but the key is not to sacrifice your mental and physical health in the process. Remember: A lawyer can’t do their job if their anxieties, depression, and other mental health related issues are out of control on a daily basis. Have many of us feel like we are living in an alternate reality? With national shelter-in-place orders in place now for over a month with little information available on resuming business in the new normal (whatever that may look like), lawyers must consider pivoting how they operate their businesses in today’s sub-normal climate. Below are seven pragmatic steps you can take to effectively navigate these uncharted waters (how many of us has ever lived through a pandemic before?) to maintain serving your existing clients, increase visibility and relevancy] in your network and emerge stronger as a result. Spoiler alert: Similar to other proven business methodologies, there are no magic bullets or shortcuts outlined below but rather actionable steps you can take today to effective pivot multiple aspects of your business. #1 Pivot Your AttentionConsidering the non-stop uber sensationalized news media, 24/7/365 digital world in which we all live, it has never been more critical to monitor where you are focusing your attention. For some, the news channels play in the background all day long and you consistently check “breaking news” online. Stop it. Leading psychiatrists have shown us the neurological impact of too much negative information, which the news cycles are all about, leads to greater anxiety, stress and depression. The brain is not equipped to absorb and process all the negativity. In fact, the U.S. National Institute of Health recently issued a warning alert in light of the Covide-19 outbreak. Nothing is changing quickly amidst the pandemic and you will learn, inadvertently, what you need to know by checking news once or twice a day. #2 Pivot Your HealthFirst, you must stay healthy, for you and your family. During this wacky time, ensure that you are taking extra steps to get enough rest, eat balanced meals, engage in moderate exercise and take other self-care measures to manage the inherent stress and anxiety that comes along with working from home (if you not accustomed to doing so), home-schooling children, being confined and other abnormal living conditions. To this end, I have provided a Pivot Your Business Resource Guide with numerous useful links. We know that our physical and mental health is linked, inextricably. Struggling in either area can adversely affect how you show up for your clients, colleagues, subordinates and yourself. Conversely, maintaining your long-term physical and mental health wellness boosts your ability to show up more positively and creatively in your business. Focusing on increasing your immune system proves to be a worthwhile goal as we know that maintaining a high immune system protects us from illness and disease. Watching what we eat now is critical to support wellness when we need it most. (A list of immune boosting foods is provided in the Resource Guide). The quality of your thinking is predicated upon the quality of your body’s organs which stems from the health of your blood, which is directly affected by the quality of the food you intake. Choose carefully. #3 Pivot Your MindsetNow more than ever, how we think about our business and, by extension, our lives is likely more impactful than whatever chaos may be swirling around us. You should ask yourself not if you could do business in the current climate but how you can do business. Dwelling on the “what if” of the situation not only compromises your immune system but also takes you to a negative mind space that is not conducive to pivoting and effectively navigating your way through this trying time. Our success and that of our business is dependent upon finding meaning in our work. Pause to consider how you can leverage this obstacle (CV), as tragic as it is, to the greatest advantage for your business. Consider “what if” from a positive perspective, this powerful global pause is part of a grander plan for greater profit, for greater impact and, ultimately, greater success. How does that sound? Today, scientists know that everything found in this universe is comprised of energy. This speaks for both physical things and non-physical things, like thoughts. What you think about, you bring about. What you focus on, expands and will be attracted to you. (Reference: The Law of Attraction defined). During this time, it is imperative that we raise our energetic vibration to help shift our mindset from scarcity to abundance and positivity. Taking 10 minutes several times a day to meditate, sit in silence to quiet our minds, creating and repeating positive affirmations (reference: Develop Good Habits), even journaling what you are grateful for during this period (there is positive there, I promise), can help position our mindset into a positive space to support pivoting our business. It directly influences how we show up for our clients, team members, and network, not to mention our loved ones. Remember, people have not stopped doing business, they have just changed how they are conducting business and living, for now. It is essential to show up positively and boldly and practicing a growth mindset will enable that to happen. #4 Pivot Your AccountabilityWith many business professionals’ lifestyles completely upended as a result of the CV era, many don’t even track what day it is anymore as one day drifts into the next, as individuals and families shelter in place. That’s one of the reasons why you want to identify and invite an accountability partner to offer incremental friendly nudges to help you stay on task with your client service offerings, team management and business development efforts in an otherwise chaotic situation. While you may not consider now a favorable climate to attract new work, if you hold yourself to a schedule and reasonable deadlines, this wonky time could be a boon for your business. When you schedule quick check-ins, daily or regularly with your accountability partner, you are much more likely to keep yourself and your business moving forward. And, as a residual benefit, you benefit from the connection and friendly voice and/or face. #5 Pivot Your ResourcesWhen we consider our resources — time, finances and talent, there is great opportunity, especially if you view them through the lens of abundance, not scarcity. Steps you can take to pivot your resources includes finding the cash in your business. Cash flow may have slowed, client receivables are down yet your payables are constant. In times like these, everything is negotiable. Reach out to clients who have outstanding receivables. Negotiate for faster payments…payment plans, extending a courtesy discount for remitting a balance due. Make it easy for clients and others to pay you, to increase cash flow. On the other end of the equation, assess your payable and reach out to creditors for financial consideration. Request payment deferments for several months to ease the financial burden for now. We are in this altogether; many creditors will be obliged to extend payments until a more favorable business environment emerges. A third step to pivot your resources includes making a list of the low-hanging fruit in your business. Review your top client list. Assess the status of the services you either are providing to them presently or have in the immediate past. Then, retrace your steps. At the very least, reach out to these clients out of concern for their well-being. In the course of the conversation, broach the topic of the status of their business, whether there are similar projects planned or services needed in the near future. You want to over service your clients now for greater impact, now and/or later. This is another area where showing up boldly is critical. Along with pivoting your finances, you want to pivot your time, tenaciously. If you are anything like me, I have never experienced such a powerful pause across the globe as we are now experiencing. First, recognize the greater meaning in this confluence of circumstances such that you are afforded the time to work on your business perhaps more than you are working in your business. The time is absolutely ripe now for planting seeds of business growth for harvesting as the crisis subsides. What does this look like?
Now is the time to hunker down to create and expand your mind. One of the greatest lessons I believe we are all learning as a result of the CV era is how much technology impacts us now and will continue to greatly impact our professional lives moving forward. I don’t know about you but some days I am completely “Zoomed out” from all the video conferences on which I either facilitate or participate. Denying or shying away from learning and adapting to new technologies could be a death knell to a business. Take advantage of the time now to hop on board and learn what you have been resisting. Social media – what we are seeing here is yet another compelling reason to jump on LinkedIn and build your online network. No, having an online network will never replace in-person connections nor was it intended to however there are super powers on LinkedIn, if you choose to learn and leverage them. As a longtime LinkedIn user and facilitator, I demonstrate to lawyers across the globe regularly how to build and grow a targeted network and leverage it for new business and connections. Moreover, with 650,000,000 verified Linkedin users, the opportunities are endless to demonstrate your expertise, offer thought leadership in front of specific industry groups and to attract new clients. So many of your competitors are in full-blown LinkedIn mode. If you are receptive to learning, now is the perfect time. #6 Pivot Your OutreachGiven that we are unable to gather in person, presently, connecting virtually with clients, our team and our network, at large, has never been as critical as it is now. With client retention and attraction at the forefront, we must reach out with a multi-touch approach (via email, telephone, eblasts, social media posts, etc.) to get and stay connected. I recommend reviewing your contact lists of those individuals with whom you have had discussions of doing business together but whom have yet to retain you. Review the list and reach out those individuals, with a service mindset. How can you be of service and/or resource to them? How can you support them and/or their business? Can you make a connection from your network that would be useful for them? Think creatively as you reach out and consider what would be valuable connection. Staying visible now and showing up boldly will differentiate you and your business from those of your competitors. Not only is it the right thing to do for your clients, but others in your network will be grateful for your concern and support and it will pay dividends when the CV era has subsided. Consider how you can be most relevant to “your peeps” now. In the course of reaching out to your closest clients and network, pose the question ‘how can I help”? Relevancy is key. Examine potential business growth opportunities that you may not have considered seriously in the past. Is there a potential rising star whom is well poised to join your firm or connect as a strategic alliance? Are there collaborations among your colleagues that could work to boost your respective businesses? In all these outreach efforts, remember that the day you plant the seed is not the day you eat the fruit. Reach out consistently, not in a “one and done” fashion. #7 Pivot Your Business ModelSheltering in place has thrust many business owners and lawyers into an uncomfortable and unfamiliar work environment. For those whom are adapting well and course correcting, I applaud you. It can be a huge leap to make, technologically, to conduct business so dramatically differently than you are accustomed to. Potential teaching moment: consider how to shift a piece or all of your business model online – perhaps the intake (to replace in-person client meetings). How can you do business online in this climate? Could you assemble practical information from your deep knowledge bank and create an online course? Could you train the trainer in your clients’ businesses? In most legal services, there are plenty of resources that you could shift online to create systems that meet a need, now. Creativity is the challenge. Not so much the “what” as the “how.” Show Up Boldly, NowDisruption breeds context and fertile soil for innovation and creation. We are living in a very disruptive time, in so many ways. To show up boldly now is to demonstrate thought leadership via uploading, sharing, contributing, direct messaging timely, topical and relevant content via eblasts and across all communication platforms. Print and digital publications are hurting for content. Reach out to contribute wherein you will appear in front of your targeted audiences. Leverage Zoom technology to get and stay connected with your targeted audiences. Collaborate with colleagues and other subject matter experts to offer online programming, workshops, LinkedIn Live Q&A on our areas of practice focus. The possibilities are endless. “If it is to be, it is up to me”. Yes, living in the CV era presents many uncertainties. So many are suffering and too many, tragically, are passing on from it. Yet, you are still here. Every day that you are not ill, you have another opportunity to show up boldly for your business, your clients, your team, your network, for yourself. How you choose to pivot now, will directly impact how you grow, or not, later. The choice is yours. Best wishes for great health and well-being. |
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