Breaking Down POSDC, Part 1 – P is for Planning

My dad has a lot of “isms;” you know, phrases said so many times that you can finish the sentence before it’s out of one’s mouth.  His first name is Keith, so I call them “Keith-isms.” He has so many that I’ve begun printing them on shirts for my family as Christmas presents. Some of my favorites are:

• Learn one thing! He said this to all the kids as we were exiting the morning car-pool in elementary school.

• Your first wealth is health. After seeing both of his parents age and pass away, my dad has determined that no matter how much money or success you have, it’s secondary to a pain-free, disease-free existence.

• Red wine and chocolate is a happy marriage. My dad discovered red wine later in life, and he’s determined that drinking red wine while eating something chocolate-y is a great combination.

One of my dad’s most popular “isms” is listing the responsibilities of management, or POSDC – Planning, Organizing, Staffing, Directing and Controlling. Over the years, as my sister and I have taken on more responsibilities in our jobs, we hear this reminder a lot, and I think it has served us very well.

In this first of five posts breaking down management responsibilities or POSDC, I’d like to look at Planning…

“Plan” is both a noun and a verb. It can be a document, system, method, drawing, diagram, list or outline to guide how things get done. “Plan” is also an intention or the act of creating the things previously listed. So, planning has two parts – the hard copy “plan” and the very act of preparation.

Why is Planning important in an organization?
Plan (noun) is important because it outlines how things get done. It includes processes and steps, time frames and deadlines, goals and deliverables, staffing levels and budgets and other important things related to producing and selling a product or service. Without a plan to follow, how do teams arrive at a common understanding? Whether it’s a single project plan or a company-wide strategic plan, the plan itself gets everyone on the same page, determines who should work on what and for how long.

Planning (verb) is important because without it, the above plan (noun) would not exist. Creating a plan takes research, time and teamwork. The act of planning helps an organization forecast revenue, create budgets and make hiring decisions; it helps determine what resources are needed, and when. The act of planning is also important because it gives staff an opportunity to ask questions, challenge one another and think critically about how the business or department is functioning.

Why is Planning an important responsibility of management?
Because company management, or ownership, has the 30,000 ft. view of the business (or at least they should.) They use information from all the different internal functions: marketing, sales, finance and operations as well as monitor external trends in the industry in order to determine a direction for the firm (we’ll tackle Directing later.) In order to move many people in a common direction, there needs to be a guide – the plan.

The act of planning is meant to focus managers on the future and answer the question, where are we going? Having been in a few organizations where that answer was unclear, I can tell you, it’s disturbing to your staff when management can’t articulate a direction.

Planning is also important because it helps determine all the other parts of POSDC. Without a plan, what do you organize around? What guides your staffing levels? In what direction do you tell your people to move? Planning gives managers a basis from which to engage in all the other tasks necessary to get things done.

Over the next few weeks (or longer, depending on how quickly I can get the posts finished!) we’ll explore the remaining management responsibilities: Organizing, Staffing, Directing and Controlling. But it’s important to remember that Planning comes first.

Would love to hear your comments about Planning…

Biz Stone – Innovating to Move Humanity Forward

I recently attended the 2011 TMA Annual Convention in San Diego and had the pleasure of listening to remarks by Biz Stone, co-founder of Twitter. (I have to admit, I think Mr. Stone was a strange choice for this predominantly male, over 50, finance crowd, but what do I know?) I wanted to share some of the points he creatively illustrated using both images and stories.

Biz began by sharing the creation and evolution of Twitter, which really took flight in 2007 at the SXSW festival in Austin, TX. Biz watched as a large group of attendees got up and left a panel session after reading on Twitter that the discussion across the hall was much more interesting. A similar scene unfolded that evening, when an attendee tweeted the name and address of a bar and within hours, there was a line around the block. Biz referred to this behavior as flocking – the many acting as one, coordinating in real-time. That’s when he realized that Twitter would succeed – and succeed it has.

Today, Twitter boasts 200 million users, (socialtimes.com) many of them global brands, and logs 250 million tweets per day. Biz mentioned that in 2008, Twitter found its way into almost every significant global event – political uprisings, natural disasters and other events across the globe. He refers to this phenomenon as the Triumph of Humanity – our desire to collaborate and support one another. He’s careful not to credit technology itself with Twitter’s success; and makes the distinction that technology is simply a framework for building tools that move humanity forward.

After sharing his Twitter story, Biz shifted gears in order to share some lessons from his life experiences, using a photo to introduce each one.

Lesson 1: Opportunity can be manufactured.
Photo: a group of American Indians playing La Crosse.

Biz never played sports as a child so when he got to high school he found it extremely difficult to make any of the athletic teams. He had however participated in a group called the Boy Rangers which he described as a pre-cursor to Boy Scouts with a nod to the American Indian. Turns out, the Boy Rangers played a game that was similar to La Crosse, so Biz asked his high school if he could start a La Crosse team. He found a coach, recruited other students and was voted captain of the team. He became a talented La Crosse player even though he had never participated in organized athletics as a child.

His point: current circumstances shouldn’t define the available opportunities – by re-arranging the circumstances, opportunities can be manufactured.

Lesson 2: Creativity is a renewable resource.
Photo: Sketch of a bird.

Biz went to college on an art scholarship and to make extra money, accepted a job at a large publishing house moving boxes. One night after all the graphic designers had gone home, Biz sketched a design for a book jacket and slipped it into a large pile of options to be sent to the client. To his boss’s surprise, they chose his design and he was offered a position as a graphic designer.

His point: there are infinite solutions to good design and they may come from people/places unexpected or unexplored.

Lesson 3: To succeed spectacularly, you must be willing to fail spectacularly.
Photo: Scene from Winds of Desire – an angel standing atop a building ready to fall to earth.

In this 1987 Franco-German film, an angel renounces immortality in order to become human and fall in love with a woman. (If this sounds familiar, you may have seen the American re-make, City of Angels, with Nicholas Cage and Meg Ryan from 1998.)

What if the woman didn’t love him back? What if being human was a real downer? What if he got to earth and immediately got hit by a bus?

His point: great success requires great risk – odds are you won’t achieve the former without the latter.

Lesson 4: There is compound interest in helping others.
Photo: a healthy African family.

While working with (Product)^RED to help treat HIV in Africa, Biz was introduced to something called the Lazarus Effect – after taking a certain drug cocktail for a period of time, a deathly ill HIV patient would come back to life. Adults would go back to work, children would go back to school and entire village economies would recover. These results created measurable success not only in the fight against HIV, but in the economic condition in multiple areas of Africa.

His point: helping others may yield compound results you never envisioned.

To close the presentation, Biz shared a number of assumptions he holds true and expects his colleagues to adhere to daily:

• We can change the world, build a business and have fun.
• We don’t always know what’s going to happen.
• There is a creative answer to every problem.
• There are more smart people outside of our organization.
• We will win if we always do the right thing for the users.
• The only deal worth doing is a win-win deal.
• Your co-workers are smart and have good intentions.

As I mentioned above, I’m not sure Biz Stone was the most appropriate or relevant speaker for the TMA crowd, but I enjoyed his remarks and applaud many of the perspectives he shared. I hope he continues to innovate in order to move humanity forward.

The Six R’s and other wisdom from Deloitte’s Luis Gallardo

I recently attended BrandSmart 2011, the flagship event of the year for the Chicago Chapter of the American Marketing Association. BrandSmart consistently draws impressive speakers and over 200 marketers for the day-long conference, which this year was held at the Spertus Institute. While many of the presenters represented consumer-focused products and services (this has been my frustration with the Chicago AMA for some time), I was especially excited to hear from Luis Gallardo, Managing Director, Global Brand & Marketing for Deloitte. I wanted to share a few take-aways from his presentation.

Luis took his current position in 2005, at which time Deloitte had 750 separate legal entities and more than 900 physical offices. He was charged with taking a decentralized organization and creating a single brand – quite a challenge. So, how is he doing it?

First, Luis reinforced something that I believe strongly as well – much traditional marketing wisdom doesn’t work in consulting and other professional services organizations. He used The 4 Ps – Product, Price, Place, Promotion – as an example of where traditional theory falls short. Our Product is our people and their skills, our Price is an hourly rate that changes with skill level, our Place is wherever our relationships take us and our Promotion is often positive results from an engagement. And with a workforce empowered to make decisions at the client level, maintaining consistency can be extremely difficult. Luis offered the following to replace The 4 P’s (or The 4 C’s – Consumer, Cost, Convenience, Communication):

The 6 R’s

1. Reason – what is your organization’s internal compass? Why are you in business? He encouraged everyone to be a “brand driven by purpose.”
2. Revenue – Luis encouraged all of us to link what we do to revenue, even if it’s intangible. We must show our CEOs that we know what drives revenue into the business.
3. Reputation – who are your key stakeholders? What do they think of you? If you don’t know, ask them.
4. Relationships – in a consulting organization, relationships are critical to winning work. If I had to pick the most important ‘R’ in this list, it would be this one.
5. Rousers – this means leadership. Who is a catalyst in your organization? Who drives your Reason?
6. Resilience – everyone falls down, but we must get back up, every time. This is essential in a highly competitive, crowded marketplace like consulting.

In addition to the above, Luis shared that 80% of his budget is spent on training and development for the Deloitte team. This is a break from traditional marketing wisdom yet again. We are trained to think of the customer first, but what we (professional services marketers) often forget is that our consultants or client facing service teams are our best marketing tools, and therefore they should be the customers we serve.

As the Senior Marketing Manager for a consulting organization, I was inspired by Gallardo’s presentation. This is a frustrating job sometimes, but if he can serve 10,000 partners, I think I can manage seven!

Congrats to the Chicago AMA on another successful BrandSmart conference.

Any work is good work, right?

One of my Partners told me that we lost a few engagements based on price recently. In one instance, we were competing with a two-man shop and in another instance, the chosen consultant agreed to do the work for one-third of our quoted rate – yikes! I asked him this, “Doesn’t that imply that those were the “wrong” jobs?” He agreed, but there are folks in my firm that probably wouldn’t… let’s break this down a bit.

What’s (not) in it for us?
In my organization there are a couple of things that make a job desirable; profitability and complexity. (There are others, like industry expertise, location, etc. but let’s concentrate on these two.)

• If we had dropped our price to beat our less expensive competitors, the job ceases to be profitable. And, unless we’ve changed our business model, I think we’re still in this to make money, right?
• Neither one of the jobs was overly complex, so the opportunity to train our staff and expand their skills sets was nonexistent.

Unprofitable and no learning opportunity… I’m glad we didn’t win! This is a great example of how we chose not to adhere to the features and characteristics we’ve defined for attractive engagements.

What is it about winning any work that drives us to pitch the “wrong” jobs?

1. Let’s be honest – compensation. We are a billable resource industry and our consultants are compensated on billing hours – not the “right” hours, just hours.
2. Let’s be honest again – ego. Who doesn’t feel great when they land a job? And we should! We earn respect in our organizations if we can make it rain – not the “right” rain, just rain.
3. Human nature and impatience – I think we can all agree that being patient and waiting for the “right” opportunity is extremely difficult and often contrary to our desire to be busy. Many of us feel much more productive if we’re chasing work – not the “right” work, just work.

So how do we get it “right?”

Ask yourself and the leaders in your organization the following questions:

1. What types of jobs/clients do you want? What makes them desirable?
2. What is your firm’s greatest skill set(s)? What do you do really well? (FYI – you don’t do EVERYTHING really well.)
3. Do your answers to the above two questions match? Do your most desirable clients need your greatest skills? Do your skills meet the needs of your most desirable clients? If you answered no, you may have a bigger problem, but one more question…
4. Have you communicated to your staff/sales force the criteria for a desirable client/job? When you encourage your team to go out into the marketplace and source work, are they clear on the types of prospects they should target?

Ask the above questions and communicate the answers throughout your organization so everyone is on the same page. Be disciplined and encourage your team to adhere to the attributes of the “right” clients and jobs, as you’ve defined them. It’s difficult and as outlined above, slightly counter-intuitive, but it will maximize the utility of your business development resources and create much more rewarding experiences for your staff and clients.