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Collaboration: Current Organizational Cultures

October IMC AZ presentation recap

Guest blogger: Don Thoren, co-founder of IMC AZ and owner of The Thoren Group

Topic: Collaboration: Current Organizational Cultures

Don coaches and mentors organizations, high-pressure teams, and key individuals. He also focuses on innovation and converting naturally occurring conflict into creative new “3^rd Ideas.” His skills focus is on joint productivity, tactical planning, speaking skills and people skills.

…………………….

Ideas are the life blood of organizational success and personal satisfaction, but...34% of the time*, old ideas get “locked in,” or new ideas get “locked out.” because:

•   People don’t trust others enough to reveal their best ideas, or
•   People don’t trust themselves enough to challenge the ideas of others

* Sample of 1,100 engineering, manufacturing and service people in North America, early '90s

Collaboration skill development is one way to increase trust of self on the way to managing our own vulnerability as we test the trustworthiness of others. Collaboration requires both process and dialogue skills and can be a frustrating and non-productive experience without both of them.

Communication related to dialogue is great in the search for mutual understanding but often comes up short in authoring timely action plans.  Communication related to persuasion is great in securing commitment but often it is short lived if not based on full understanding.

Here is my idea: Why not use dialogue skills for accurate diagnostics and problem/potential solution identification; then fully integrate persuasion skills to assess criteria, options and ultimate commitment to action!?!?

Most people know what is going on and are aware of what solutions are being proposed.  Often there is disagreement over ideas for the solution.  Ideas don’t compete well at the conclusion level as you either agree, disagree or compromise everyone’s best ideas.  The potential for real collaboration and mutual commitment comes from the search for each others’ “why.”  The why explains the formation of the idea and there is much opportunity for collaborative investigation, comparison, and discovering of innovative new 3^rd ideas which can be better than the original ideas or any compromise.

Most people are unaware (softer word than ignorant) of how they use/don’t use various dialogue and persuasion skills in ways that limits the search for creative 3^rd ideas.  Feedback is a critical step in the growth process of people who become highly effective collaborators.  Not all lack of skill is under-developed.  Much of the problem stems from skills that are under-demonstrated and unconscious. Thus, the importance of feedback.

Consultants can help their clients reap the staggering rewards of collaboration if they force their clients to consider the price in process and skill development required.  We all get scared that the client won’t move forward if they fully understand the cost of preparation for profitable collaboration.  This is where we need to use all our great change agent ideas on ourselves!!!

From the old “management by objectives” to the newer “lean” concepts and software standards, our role as professional consultants requires us to inspire, prepare and sell our clients.  That is why we earn the “big bucks!”

Don Thoren

480-560-3525

Thoren Group, LLC

Financial management ideas to "unstick" your organization

September IMC AZ presentation recap

Guest blogger: David C. Monroe, co-panelist from the September IMC AZ meeting

TOPIC: Is Your Client Stricken with Inertia?
Ideas to help “unstick” clients’ operations, finances and employees.

 As Managing Director, of The Interim CFO in Scottsdate, and a CPA and seasoned CFO David brings both significant financial and operating management and consulting experience in private and public companies in different industries.

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Managing In An Economic Downturn: Tips on Restoring and Maintaining Profitability

Take Your Company’s Temperature -- Year-to-Year Trends and Performance

• Understand and analyze your financial statements – dig into items that changed
• Evaluate financial performance – sales trends, profitability, cash flow, working capital
• Understand how sales, costs, and profitability are determined – changes in year
• Understand how various costs and expenses impact profitability – look for trends
  • What’s In cost of sales – profitability of product lines, sales in different markets
  • Total employee costs – monthly trends and changes -- salaries, taxes, benefits
  • Fixed expenditures – expenses not easily changed -- building rents, taxes, etc.
• Has your cash and cash flow declined – are you now having trouble paying bills?
• Make sure you know makeup of inventories – find ways to cut, improve cash flow
• Customers taking more time to pay –your cash flow will suffer and you must finance
• Recognize deficient financial reporting – fix it – affects management decision-making

 

Is It Time to Find A New Way -- New Strategies -- Go In A New Direction? 

• “Strategic plan” -- Tweak your old plan or is it time to develop new strategies
  • Use the information gathered above to help you rethink how you do business
  • Challenge your business model – test prior assumptions and allocations of resources
  • Are sales dropping, identify why – market conditions, pricing, outdated products?
  • Top 5 to 10 customers -- What’s your sales trends, profitability, and selling costs?
  •  
    • See if they will provide you with their forecasted needs for next year +
    • Be prepared for requests for lower price(s) and for more support and services
  • Can you identify promising new markets and sales channels – risks and resources?
  • Evaluate pricing – resist urge to compete on price, but watch competition
• New budgets – Resizing your company to be profitable in down business climate
  • Test If organizations are efficient – define responsibilities, cut bureaucracy first
    • Get employee inputs – they often know what needs fixing and how
    • Employee participation will increase commitment to strategies and changes
  • Question costs and expenses – do you really need to spend that money and why?
  • Budgets are a good management tool that helps you delegate and hold accountable

Actions – Things You Can Do to Improve Performance and Morale 

• Cash is king – Always know how much cash you have and always plan cash flow
  • Manage working capital –increases tie up your cash and limits your flexibility
    
    • Receivables: stay in touch with customers with past due amounts owed
    • Inventories: buy only what will be needed for current sales – no stockpiling
    • Vendor payments -- do not surprise vendors – seek more time, if needed
  • Identity if and when more funding will be needed – identify funding sources
• Take care of your people – foster a culture of integrity, communication and service
  • Pay employees fairly – pay equally for like jobs and responsibilities and for time off
  • Provide financial incentives for key personnel to improve cash flow and profitability
• Manage Risks – Ensure employee safety first and train to them to be efficient, effective
  • Have a disaster plan –inform employees where to go, be able to account for them
• Have an advisory board – Advice from experienced outsiders provide new perspectives

 

David Monroe, CPA
The Interim CFO
6735 E. Greenway Parkway - #1157
Scottsdale, AZ 85254
602-318-2288
davidmonroe.az@cox.net

Interim and Part-Time Financial Management Services
Helping startups and mid-market companies improve performance
Business Plans, Strategic Planning, Budgeting, Accounting, Funding

Employee management ideas to "unstick" your organization

Guest blogger:
Dante Fierros, co-panelist from the September IMC AZ meeting

TOPIC: Is Your Client Stricken with Inertia?
Ideas to help “unstick” clients’ operations, finances and employees.

As a leader of his own company and an association of local manufacturers, Dante shared some of the following personnel issues of import to business owners and techniques to use with your employees to strengthen retention and productivity.

........................................................................................................................

The “For Want of a Nail” disconnect.

For Want of a Nail

For want of a nail the shoe was lost.
For want of a shoe the horse was lost.
For want of a horse the rider was lost.
For want of a rider the battle was lost.
For want of a battle the kingdom was lost.
And all for the want of a horseshoe nail.

Individuals often find it difficult to connect their specific role and actions with what often appears to them as lofty management goals, or mission and vision statements of the company. They don’t connect the dots because management fails to communicate this connection with measurable effect.

What to do:

· Explain the total picture from management's perspective and how the individual effort contributes to the process of accomplishing the goal.

· Measure their specific performance on that aspect of the process you wish to improve.

· Post the performance along with their peer group's performance as a comparison

· Watch the performance increase

· Review performance with individual for feedback....reward.

The one-man-band will never sound like a symphony

A person who attempts to run a business as THE resident expert, accomplishing many critical tasks to "ensure proper completion" accomplishes the following:

· He could not possibly do many tasks optimally.

· He takes away from the responsibilities and authority of his team to accomplish the task.

· He will never attain maximum performance.

· He will always perform and sound like a one-man-band and never like a symphony orchestra.

Allow your people to perform their roles and responsibilities

· Define specific roles, responsibilities, AND authority and clearly communicate same.

· Ensure understanding (ask them to repeat back)

· Monitor and measure frequently.

· Give feedback, direction and consequence (positive/negative).

· Result: Subject matter experts performing optimally in their trained tasks for the attainment of goals.


Dante Fierros
President
Nichols Precision
480-804-0593 office
480-804-0527 fax
602-980-1907 mobile

www.arizonatooling.org/

Our chapter meeting speaker on Fri., Oct. 14, is one of the founders of the IMC chapter, Don Thoren. He's going to talk with us about "Worshipping at the Altar of Collaboration."

Below, I'm posting his hand-crafted blurb about the meeting a his full bio. For the official announcement and to RSVP, please visit http://www.imcusa.org/events/event_details.asp?id=177902

Ann Videan, APR
Co-Chair, IMC Programs
.................................................

Worshipping at the Altar of Collaboration

In your consulting career, how many of the following change initiatives has your practice implemented or supported?

Management By Objectives, Zero Based Budgeting, Japanese Management, Quality Control Circles, Benchmarking, Best Practices, Continuous Improvement, Concurrent Engineering, Total Quality Management, Globalization, Cross-functional Teams, Downsizing, Rightsizing, Flattening, Delayering, Reengineering, Organizational Transformation, The Learning Organization, Six Sigma, Black Belt, “WOW” Customer Service, The Magic of Teams, etc. Whew!!! What a list!

So today we worship at the altar of “Collaboration???”

Is it appropriate to ask questions like, “To what degree is collaboration just another fad or flavor of the month?” “How important is it for consultants to know how to help with collaboration?” “How much of your consulting future do you want to bet on collaboration?”
Don answers those questions by sharing his surprise to learn that the Defense Department (and others) have partially shifted from company by company contracting and are more frequently asking companies to collaborate their technology together themselves and bring DOD a comprehensive solution using the best from each company. Imagine the Chief Technical Officers of Company X and Company Y being asked to share their technology with each other before jointly contracting with the customer? Don concludes there is an undeniable need for collaboration processes and skills training, including ways to protect intellectual property in B2B collaboration.

But, is collaboration the be all and end all today? When and where should you forget about collaboration and let individuals exercise individual initiative and do their thing? Don Thoren will stimulate your thinking with his ideas about the why, where and how to get the maximum effectiveness when you consciously choose to use collaboration. Don anticipates he will generate several differences of opinion among us, plans to challenge our thinking and hopes we challenge his, hopes to avoid fist fights and hair pulling, and expects we all will gain more realistic expectations of the costs, trade-offs and benefits of collaboration. It is Don’s hope that such realism will help all of us consult more effectively and profitably around the broader issue of collaboration, creativity, organizational effectiveness and profitable joint ventures.


●●●Speaker Hall of Fame ●●● 30 years experience: Manufacturing at GE, Field Sales, Entrepreneur ●●● Certified Management Consultant by IMC ●●● Class of 2006 Legends of the Speaking Profession ●●● Executive and Political Speech Coach
 

HISTORY

I was raised on a cattle ranch in Wyoming and graduated from the University of Wyoming. I learned that joining Army ROTC in college would pay $28 a month, the exact amount of my married student housing rent, so I picked up a rifle. I had 2 marvelous (and peaceful) years as a training officer at Ft. Meade, MD and then got accepted to an incredible 3-year management training program with General Electric. I left GE to sell big motivational rallies, and after selling other speakers, I concluded I could be one too! Cavett Robert, founder of the National Speakers Assn. was my mentor at the time and he told me I was the best young speaker in America. Later, I found out he told Somers White and a several others the same thing! (At least that is what Somers claims)

I called myself a management consultant (self-ordained) and looked in the yellow pages in 1969 to find my competition. I contacted all of the numbers listed (5 or 6 as I remember) and only Jim Soudriette [please be sure I am spelling Jim Soudriette’s name correctly-is it Jim? Ha ha] and Somers White were actively in business. I had it made, or did I? I used the manufacturing, interviewing, performance appraisal and management by objectives I learned at GE as a start. I coupled that with the motivational and sales principles I learned from Earl Nightingale, Paul Harvey, Ronald Reagan, Maxwell Maltz, Zig Ziglar and others to complete my offerings. Potential clients were less than impressed until one day I was able to announce I had just returned from a speech and training session in Chicago. Finally, I was an expert who had at least been out of town even if I wasn’t from out of town!!

Among my first clients were Shasta Pools and American Fence where I conducted sales training meetings twice a month. Also, Dr. Joyce Parker of the State Fund hired me to design and implement a performance appraisal and coaching procedure; plus do the training. $800 for the week – I was in the big money!

Management by Objectives was big at the time and I conducted public seminars on that topic as well as implementing MBO within a few organizations. Sales training was also a frequent need. There was a Phoenix area “club” called SAM – Society for the Advancement of Management and a few consultants, corporate trainers, corporate and government managers, professors from ASU and assorted hangers-on were members. I really enjoyed it and am not sure what happened to it. For one thing, Somers alerted me to IMC and some of us, including Jim Soudriette, got that started in Phoenix. Earning the CMC seemed like it would add valuable credibility to those of us (me) who felt we sure needed some!!

I loved IMC and we had some great meetings. I don’t know what happened to my membership there either – there is always the possibility I was excommunicated! I have enjoyed membership in IMC, National Speakers Assn, ASTD, Meeting Professionals Intl., the Facilitators Group, the Arizona Organizational Development Network and probably some I forgot.

During various times since 1969, I have been a sole practitioner and at one time had 15 employees with sales offices in Dallas, Houston and San Diego (Why didn’t I move to San Diego I keep asking myself during each Phoenix summer!). Often we were helping teach skills required to successfully implement most of the change strategies I list in my session description.

I am looking forward to seeing old (and I mean really old) friends and meeting new ones at the October meeting. It should be a blast.

Don Thoren

Submit a blog entry for consideration

Do you have an idea to share with the Arizona Institute of Management Consultants? Submit a blog entry for consideration to Ann N. Videan, APR, avidean@videanunlimited.com, 480-813-2408.

Consultant's Speed Networking

This month's IMCAZ meeting will be a fun and fast paced version of speed networking. Get to know your fellow consultants and discover what new business you can generate in 2010.
 

Sylva Leduc, MEd, MPEC
Leadership Strategist
Co-Author, Roadmap to Success

Shift Happens: Did You Know 4.0?

Fascinating video on how how the world is changing (and accelerating) because of technology and more recently, social media. 

This is the new Fall 2009 version and it includes facts and stats focusing on the changing media landscape, including convergence and technology.  It was developed in partnership with The Economist.

Shift Happens: Did You Know 4.0?

Your VP of Programs,
Sylva Leduc, MEd, MPEC
SageLeaders.com

Brand Building 101 with Vickie Sullivan

This month, Brand Strategist, Vickie Sullivan will be sharing some of her best practices in building a business brand. 

In Arizona as we slowly make our way out of the recession, the businesses which remain top-of-mind for clients and prospective clients will be leading the way.  Make sure that YOUR consulting business is one of those which will thrive in 2010.

For more, information and to register, go to

http://imcaz.org/meetings/current/index.html

See you there,

Sylva Leduc, MEd
Leadership Strategist
Sage Leaders Inc.

How might I "punctuate" a project?

Are there any tips out there for this situation?

I've just gotten an extension on a 10 month project for another 10 months.  This is for expanding a leadership program, as well as continuing to support the current group I have been working with. 

I am aware of how ending a project often has a great impact on people -- they hurry to get results, they take steps because they are running out of time to act while they still have the support they need, etc.   So by announcing I'm staying on, I worry that people will slip into the next phase without having the benefits that a "close" brings.

Does anyone have a suggestion of how to "punctuate" a project, so that there is a sense of closing with phase I, in order to reap as much results as possible?  Or other idea to leverage this transition?

Thanks for any suggestions.

Do Your Clients Constitute A Tribe?

Definition of Tribes
(Culled from Seth Godin’s book Tribes)

Recently, our IMC Mastermind group met and discussed this short, thought-provoking book and how we can use its ideas in our consultancies. Our discussion led me to make tribe development a key component in my business's word-of-mouth marketing strategy development. Why? Tribe members are loyal, energized about their goal, and eagerly share information with each other and their networks.

Seth Godin's main concept shows us that the new "Marketing" is simply "Leadership." Form a group using the following characteristics, lead it, and you've begun your own tribe.

Characteristics of a tribe:

• Members must have a common goal/cause/interest
• Its leaders(s) lead, they don't manage
• The leader(s) create a space for members to communicate easily
• Members create what they will, organically, with a few pointers from the leader
• Members are exclusive to a certain group (some folk can't or won't join)
• It's not a group or crowd, but an interactive community

Established tribes:

• Oprah followers
• Homeschoolers
• Apple computer users

Here are some ideas to help you jump-start your own supportive tribe of clients, vendors, or associates:

• What common goal might your clients get behind to talk about? Make it something germaine to their lives and work, so they see what's in it for them.
• Easy communication/gatherings are paramount to the success of a tribe. Luckily, today's online tools make it relatively easy. In-person meetings are a great idea, too.
• How can you as a leader spark ideas/action within the group?

Ann N. Videan, APR
Videan Unlimited marketing connections
www.videanunlimited.com