Looking Forward: Invest, Build from the Inside, Incentivize

The Red Sky office was out in full force today, Jessica live blogging from the PRSA International Conference in San Diego, Robin  at Meridian Business Day, myself and Tracy over at the Boise Centre for the 2009 Economic Outlook Forum hosted by the Boise Metro Chamber of Commerce. Almost 1,000 people filled the seats over at the Centre, listening intently to a great cast of speakers with some good news, a lot of caution and some great advice for the business leaders of our state.

The one big takeaway I had was that we need to INVEST.  Not only monetarily, but in terms of time and planning.  John Hale, managing partner of KPMG, pointed out that Idaho will be behind states such as Washington, Oregon, Utah and Colorado in terms of recovery because we have not created a strategic plan (as these states have done).

Boise State University President Bob Kustra also pointed out that “Idaho must build from the inside with our young students.” I found that very profound.  Making sure our kids are well-educated is the number one issue I worry about as not only a mother, but also as a business leader.

The final speaker on the docket, Gary Mahn, Chairman of Fisher’s Document Systems, drove home (and sent us home) with many things to think about.  He emphasized the importance of our state offering competitive incentives to businesses looking to potentially move to Idaho.  I’ve heard this over and over again. . .and, hope next year someone can report that this has been addressed.  Idaho is an amazing place to live and work, but for most businesses in this tough economy it is about being able to afford to operate (the bottom line!)  The great things that Idaho has to offer are just a side benefit, although I think without out fail, once a business gets here—they can’t help but fall in love with the people and Idaho communities in general.  (Amazing outdoor and quality of live opportunities, too!)

Here are Tracy’s notes on each featured speaker that she found “notable and sharable”:

John Church, Idaho Economics
Although we have seen an upturn in Idaho’s economy during the last quarter, it will not last. The last quarter of this year will see a decline again.  Most of the country will see an overall improvement in job growth during the middle of 2010 but Idaho will lag behind and will not see improvement until the 3rd quarter of 2010.

Bill Connors, Boise Chamber
Highlighted the reasons why he and his wife moved here from the East coast.  Not only is it a beautiful and “hip” city, but the people are nice.  He told the story of the polite skate boarder who said “excuse me” to he and his wife on his wife’s first visit to Boise and how they were impressed that even the teenagers were nice here.

John Hale, KPMG
He emphasized the importance of small business and noted that the WaterCooler is an excellent example of what is needed to encourage, nurture and grow small business. Some of the emerging small businesses that have matured and begun to form a sustainable base were mentioned such as INOVUS Solar with 20 employees, Cradlepoint (a Red Sky client) with 65 employees and Balihoo (a Red Sky client) with more than 40 employees.

The areas that need to be focused to strengthen the economic future are software, energy and material science.  One downfall of the Idaho economy is the tax structure that overburdens small business and remains difficult to change.  New companies to watch are Psi Flow Technology, Inc., Adrenity, Recall InfoLink, M2M Communications and WhiteCloud Analytics.

Bob Kustra, BSU
Dr. Kustra talked about “Angels in Residence” which is a group of professional mentors geared towards entrepreneurial-minded students.  They assist with the development of business ideas and connections to resources.

Thanks goes out to the Boise Metro Chamber of Commerce for organizing such a great event, especially the candid and articulate panel of speakers.  Although, many of things that were shared made me worry—they also fired me up and gave me great inspiration to continue to work with my Red Sky partners and colleagues to make our company one that thrives in Idaho.

- Steph Worrell & Tracy Bresina

PRSA: Developing a Strategic Mindseat: How to Become a Trusted Strategic Advisor

(Live blogging from the PRSA International Conference in San Diego)

Last session I’ll be able to attend – and it should be the perfect ending to the PRSA Conference for me. Internationally lauded senior counselor and master adviser James Lukaszewski of The Lukaszewski Group, and author of Why Should The Boss Listen To You: 7 Disciplines of the Trusted Strategic Advisor, speaking on Developing a Strategic Mindset.

On the agenda:

• Four most important things to do in the position of strategic advisor
• analyze the five flawed strategies
• prepare to deliver on the nine things leaders expect
• understand and use the strategic tools that expand your value through the organization
• understand the three kinds of management thinking: process, linear and strategic – recognizing when to apply each and helping your boss to understand why your thinking is so different and extremely valuable.

One of the many accolades bestowed on Jim, and my favorite so far, is that he’s on the list of
28 experts to call when all hell breaks loose.

Much of public relations, in general, is well-known. So what separates you from the other consultants? It’s your recognition that management problems and issues are just that – management problems and issues – before they are any other kind of problem.

Look at the issue from a different ‘altitude’ and from a different attitude.

Our job is not just to be ‘problem solvers’ but our job is made up of what we bring to the table – the ingredients of solutions.

Myth #1: How do you get a seat at the table?
The ‘Table’ is a convenient myth. ‘You’ are the table. When you are in the room, the table is full

Company leaders/management look to strategic advisors to:

1. provide advice/information on the spot
2. say things that matter from the bosses’ perspective (consistently put yourself in their shoes)
3. keep them centered
4. help them with things they don’t already know
5. help with what to do next

Every boss makes up 25% of what they do every day because there is no instruction book for this job. The only way to learn this job is to have this job.

If you want to be a trusted advisor in this culture – read Harvard Business Review. How can you advise these leaders if you don’t study and learn what they need to know – about business and as a student of leadership. Recommendation: Jack Welch’s Straight from the Gut. Insights into how CEO’s think, lead and plan. And John Kotter.

The worst company to work for is the company that has no where to go – lead by someone who doesn’t know what to do.

The average tenure of a new CEO is down to 41 months (in US, Canada, Europe)
The loneliest person in your business is the one at the very top. Their life focus is only on ‘what’s coming next?’

In the old days, being a CEO was the capstone of your career. Today – 40% of a CEO’s job is consumed by non-operating issues. Angry employees, angry shareholders, upset neighbors, lawsuits, government intervention. There exists the opportunity for strategic communications advisors – we deal with contention daily.

Questions to ask yourself before proposing a new idea or strategy:

• Does it help your boss achieve their objectives?
• Does it help the organization achieve it’s objectives?
• Is it really necessary?
• What will fail, or not proceed or succeed if this idea is not undertaken?
• Is it important?
• Will it matter?
• What will it change?
• What will it move forward?

Don’t ask ‘What’s the key message?’… first ask ‘What’s the truth?’ ‘What’s going on?’ ‘Who is at risk?’ ‘What is happening?’

The message is – suggest fewer things. Ratchet down the number of times you are told ‘No’. Put a cork in the ideas. Suggest less – but make those suggestions really valuable. Always say things that matter.

Say less, make it more important
Write less, make it more important
The higher you go, the less you want to know.

Top Reasons CEOs Get Fired

1. Lack of Performance
2. Over-optimism
3. People problems – the leader of an organization has one job, understand the difference between leadership & management
4. Being absent without lead (AWOL)

7 Disciplines of a Strategic Advisor:

1. Be Trustworthy: Trust is the first discipline and the foundation for a relationship between advisor and leader or boss.
2. Become a Verbal Visionary: the major currency of transaction with leaders (Becoming a Verbal Visionary)
3. Think Strategically: strategy is mental energy verbally injected into an organization to move it forward. Jack Welch’s definition: A core idea moving through changing circumstances. Strategy is always a positive concept. Strategies fail when the avoid dealing with the truly tough stuff. Don’t look the other way – confront, deal. Look at what’s going on and say what it is. Candor rules.
4. Develop a Management Perspective – understand how managers & leaders think – they are taught to systematically deconstruct problems in a process to find a solution/answer. We are driven by the deadline to get something done. You must translate your thinking/advice giving from an intuitive model to a systematic/process-driving approach.
   1) Describe – explain describe the issue in 60 words
   2) Analysis – why are we talking about this? What is the threat, opportunity or urgency – 60 words or less
   3) Goal – where are we headed/what’s the outcome? 60 words
   4) Options – Offer 3 ideas/concepts with every recommendation. Options to mull over: doing nothing (0%), doing something (100%), doing something more (125%) 150 words
   5) Recommendation – be ready to make a recommendation. 60 words
   6) Justification – Why you chose one option over the other 60 words
   450 words in three minutes
5. Be A Window to Tomorrow: Always frame suggestions in ‘getting to tomorrow’ Is it a concept or idea for tomorrow or an outcome of yesterday? Tomorrow is where the boss is. We are paid to manage yesterday, but there’s nothing you can do about that. Anticipate and forecast tomorrow. Understand and use the power of patterns.  A sophisticated
   advisor is one who can forecast tomorrow with some level of accuracy.
6. Advise Constructively: Giving advice starts where the boss is and where he or she has to go (where the advisor is or has been).
7. Show the Boss How to Use Advice: If you want to see your recommendations come alive, teach the boss how to accept and use advice.

Best presentation of the conference. Hope you’ve enjoyed the two+ days of live-blogging. Look forward to your input, feedback and thoughts.

- Jess

PRSA: Way Beyond Research 101 – Better Engagement Through Voice of the Stakeholder

(Live blogging from the PRSA International Conference in San Diego)

I’m a research and data geek – so while the weather was beautiful and enticing outside – I really am looking forward to this workshop lead by the marketing faculty from UC San Diego Chris Stiehl and Henry DeVries.

 

 

Up for discussion – how can you truly understand another person’s pains and priorities? Can you really learn how to think like a stakeholder? The workshop goal is to share techniques that companies like Cisco, Palm and Johnson & Johnson are employing to organize data in the way stakeholder think. They’ll share how to conduct a dozen in-depth interviews that will yield more actionable information than facilitating sessions with 70-100 focus group participants, and the five key listening techniques to understand the pain of the stakeholders.

CS: When people tell you the things they want from you, it’s usually based on a negative experience in their past. People spend 19 times the time effort and expense to solve a pain than to reap a benefit.
Don’t ask them for the features and benefits they want – ask for the pain they have.

‘This’ is the stakeholder you want to reach – the one in the most pain.
HD: (channeling Pat Jackson) Success must be conferred on us by outsiders: customers, opinion leaders, neighbors, elected officials, vendors, voters, prospective employees, coalitions.

CD: Research has shown you get more data by talking to 15-20 people one on one than to 8-10 focus groups. Don’t think quantitatively about qualitative research. 15 in-depth interviews produce better data than 7 focus groups.

The Voice of the Stakeholder Process

• Identify the Issues: understand what you are trying to accomplish (seems pretty basic!)

1. Write down what we already know (i.e. – your mission statement)
2. Understand what ‘pains we know in our membership, if any
3. Communicate to the stakeholders’ pain; work on what is painful to them
4. Know what can/can not be said

• Write Interview Guide: An encyclopedia of what might come up

1. Your objective is not to cover the whole interview guide in 1 interview, but the whole guide by the end of all the interviews
2. Cover the waterfront – everything that might come up
3. Skip around, follow the passions of who you are interviewing
4. Group questions into a natural flow or pattern
5. Types of questions to ask:
   what are the three most important things that you do
   what gets in the way of doing those things
   where do you spend most of your time
   where would you like to be spending most of your time
   if you could change one thing about your job what would it be
   what is the biggest pain about working with our type of organization
   what things are a big help, i.e. what data or tools have been provided that really work well
   describe for them the ‘ideal’ association for your company
   describe for me a recent time that your experience with an organization like ours was less than ideal
   tell me more…
   The best interviewers talk less than 20% of the time

• Learning How to Listen for Pain

1. Be able to be tabla rosa, a really good poker player, no judgment on the answers
2. Learn active and passive listening.
3. What frustrates them, worries them, concerns them – in their own words
4. Listen for Growth Opportunities/Pains/Changes
   …Product/Service Quality (rework)
   …Problem Correction (make it right)
   …to Foster Customer Loyalty (repeat business)
   …to Improve Brand Management (str. & weak.)
   …Market Research (trends in real time)
   …Competitive Advantage (possibilities)
   …Context (identify exact likes and dislikes)

• Create hierarchy of the needs based on the stakeholder, card sort the issues to create a structure of customer needs

1. most important to least important to you
2. how are we doing
3. 

• The Hierarchy of Needs (developed from member card sorts)

1. Boil down the detail of hundreds of input points (detailed descriptions of the ideal) to create categories that are your survey questions
2. Written in the language of the stakeholder – not your voice, theirs



You should never be surprised by external survey results – if so, you don’t have good internal metrics. Your internal metrics should be able to predict how a customer will react.

Voice of the Stakeholder presentation