Traveling Light Blog

If you live in the San Francisco Bay Area, I invite you to join me at Books, Inc. in Mountain View on Sunday, July 12 at 2:00 p.m.

My topic: Never Waste a Good Crisis. I’ll discuss how you can use the rare opportunity presented by the Great Recession as a springboard to tackle the task of taking on your own financial planning.

I’ll talk about the barriers that block the four money personalities, and how to overcome them in each case. I’ll also talk about how each type could get the most from working with a financial planner, if you choose to do so.

Also, Peter Johnson and Steve Lewis will be speaking at the same event on “Where are we now and what’s next,” Denise Hughes on “Creating a Right-Sized Spending Plan” and Peter Johnson on “CPR for your 401(k) - and the rest of your portfolio.”

This is all part of the “Surviving the Financial Tsunami” series sponsored by the Financial Literacy Project. It’s making a tour of independently owned bookstores. For more information, please visit http://www.thefinancialliteracyproject.org/?p=25.

As I drove up to 24 Hour Fitness, two squad cars were parked outside. When I entered, the visibly rattled receptionist apologized for the drama. The tension in the air was thick and the women were all fuming. Two police officers were talking quietly to a very strange woman and her husband. The regulars at the gym, all women in their 40’s - 60’s, were talking about the incident I had just missed.

For the second morning in a row, the female receptionist had been accosted by this bizarre woman after telling her she was unable to give her change for the parking meter, which triggered a stream of screeching racial slurs and threats.

Because no manager had appeared on the scene the day before, nor had any representative of management followed up with the customers or employees who had been present, one of the female customers had become fearful this second time around — and called the police.

By the time I arrived, not only had the female employee repeatedly asked the woman to leave, the other female customers had also pointedly told her to leave. Now it was the police officers suggesting she leave in lieu of getting arrested and thrown in jail.

The police asked the employee to sign a paper and she began to cry. She was completely overwhelmed. The other women gathered around her in support. This is more than I can say for the representatives of 24 Hour Fitness management, who were still noticeably absent.

I watched the employee repeatedly try to locate a representative of management to advise her by phone. The other women and I openly shared how mortified we were and how fully unsupported we felt when the employee was told that no manager would come to the phone - let alone come to the gym - because of a meeting. A meeting.

The police are in the gym, the employee’s voice is shaking, the customers are furious, one called the police, and now another has just called an employment attorney — and a meeting is more important than the crisis unfolding directly in front of the customers.

A bit later, a manager did somehow find time to cut away from this meeting to listen to the crazed, racist, and the violent customer rant on for 15 minutes on the phone. That was it for me. I had had enough.

As a female customer, the debacle at 24 Hour Fitness made it clear to me that 24 Hour Fitness doesn’t understand what women want, nor do they appear to understand that they are legally obligated to provide a safe workplace for their employees.

So here in a nutshell, is my opinion of the basics women want:

1. Women want to be physically safe. The complete lack of responsiveness by 24 Hour Fitness management to a repeat incident led the employee to believe that she was not safe. It also led the older women in the group to form a protective circle around her. It’s instinct.
2. Women want to be free of harassment. That includes harassment from customers. Yes, amazingly, the crazed woman was a dues-paying customer who went off the deep end — twice.
3. Most women want a sense of personal connection. By showing no management support in a time of crisis, the company created a lack of trust with the customer (and, I assume, the employee), because their behaviours demonstrated that our crisis wasn’t their priority. Amazingly, only the shaken employee demonstrated caring for the customers, as she kept apologizing to us about the commotion and how that must make it hard for us to work out. End result: we still trust her, but we don’t trust the company. The sense of loyalty to the company was shattered.
4. The majority of women want management to do the right thing. Setting aside the obvious oversight of their legal responsibilities, the gym failed to respond in the morally right way, to simply do what’s right - which is to send a representative of management to the scene of a repeated crisis. Most men would not have been rattled by this situation, but women aren’t just short men. We’re different. When we see our own safety or the safety of another woman threatened two days in a row, at the same place, at the same time, with no response from the company, we decide we’ve had it with the company and start looking for somewhere else to take our business.
5. The majority of women want and prefer collaboration and harmony. For example, using our MBTI® lingo, 75% of women are highly energized by harmony and/or values, and the other 25% still prefer and choose collaboration as their primary mode of conflict resolution. As such, if you don’t manage a situation in which your female customers feel threatened, they will “flock together” and manage it themselves, whether in a way you like or not.

Having worked out at this location for a while, I can say that the club has been generally well-managed on a day-to-day basis, which indicates that in this instance, the problem lies higher up the food chain, in fundamentals of policy and management practice.

So what straightforward steps can you take to ensure that the women who enter your place of business, work for you, or interact with your sales force, get what they want?

1. Scrupulous attention to physical safety is a foundation. Is your place of business safe? Is your building safe? If you’re a man, you may have to ask the opinions of women. There may be something about your place of business that screams, “Unsafe!” to women but men would not even notice.
2. Should a potentially threatening situation occur, get a representative of management to the location immediately. It can be the site manager, an HR manager, a regional manager, or a sales manager who happens to be driving by. My opinion - the title doesn’t matter, the gender doesn’t matter, the age doesn’t matter, as long as they’re well-trained in dealing with emotionally charged situations and have good judgement.
3. Be serious about ensuring that both the men and the women in your organization don’t just go through the motions of Diverse Workplace training (which one of my more boisterous colleagues jokingly calls, “spay and neuter clinic”). Ensure that they understand the basics of respecting physical space, for example, and of the types of humour that don’t work well in a business.
4. Be beyond reproach in hiring, promoting and rewarding your staff on the basis of contribution to the business and results. If the top spots are continuously occupied by men, while the middle spots are 50% women, figure out the root cause and deal with it. Many business owners and leaders fail to understand the incredible power of visual symbolism. A male African-American client recently told me of the sinking feeling in his chest when, at his company’s annual management meeting, the CEO of the company gave a rousing speech on their diversity initiative - and followed his impassioned speech by announcing the four top-level promotions for that year, which were all white, US-born males of the same age group. Every single thing he said in his speech was immediately wiped out by the visual evidence that, of the enormously diverse tier below, he had chosen four more just like him for the top rungs of the ladder.
5. Openly give serious consideration to both the business consequences and the ethical questions of every business decision. Most women judge your effectiveness as much on the first as the second. They demand both, not either/or. I’ve noticed many men do, too!
6. Try collaborating with your clients and employees in an appropriate way. Simply fighting to win leaves most women yawning with boredom or rolling their eyes. If you want them as devoted employees and rabid fans of your products or services, you need to engage with them in a collaborative manner.

These steps are so simple and straightforward. It’s just a matter of increasing awareness, acting on that awareness, and changing a few entrenched habits. Truly, any business can do it. Certainly every employee is an individual, and there will be variations on any theme, but as an overall approach, the above six steps will go a long way toward meeting the needs and gaining the loyalty of many women.

On June 2, I hosted a content-rich tele-seminar for financial advisors who had attended my talk at the NorCal CFP Conference: “Jennifer’s Top 10 Recommendations to build trusting, effective relationships!” If you weren’t able to attend the call, you may download the call here. We also had many consultants and coaches on the call, so I included practical tips for consultants and coaches, too.

Life is too short to work with clients you don’t trust or love!

I hope you find these tips to be helpful to you regardless of your particular role or level of responsibility in your business. Even if you don’t work directly with clients, there are plenty of tips you can apply to any relationship, maybe even in your personal life!

Hey – I owe you a little fun after taking you so deep in this month’s feature article.

Props to MBTI® expert, workshop leader, and author Katherine Hirsh, perhaps the world’s best houseguest. On her most recent visit, Katherine gave us a CD she had personally mixed for us, an excellent bottle of scotch, and a bar of Bloomsberry & Co. dark chocolate in the hysterical packaging pictured here. Attention all prospective houseguests: Believe me, this is how you get invited back.

Moving on to lighter territory, the publisher of the MBTI®, CPP, Inc., has become a co-sponsor of my research on how gender and personality influence a person’s relationship with money and financial behaviors.

This turbo-charges the depth of the research to a level I could not possibly reach through Selby Group – we’re management consultants, not full-time researchers, whereas CPP has an entire department filled with highly trained and experienced researchers.

An even newer aspect of my collaboration with CPP is that I can now offer free trials of their newest interactive leadership and interpersonal relationship tool to a select group of clients, even before it is officially launched. To apply for a free trial of the new MBTI® ThinkBox, please email us at info@selbygroup.com.

I’m excited to have these opportunities to collaborate with CPP on multiple levels. One of my top personal goals for this year was to engage in at least three meaty collaborations, and my collaboration with CPP has already exceeded my criteria by a good margin.

Given the title of this article, I guess I’m a poet and don’t know it. Well, in the article, we’re going to travel a little heavier than usual, but this is just too important to treat lightly.

Last weekend we watched the DVD of Talking Heads’ Stop Making Sense concert. As David Bryne launched into Once in a Lifetime, I was struck to the core by the immediate relevance of the song: it was recorded in 1979 – early in the deep recession which continued through 1982, the recession which most closely resembles the one we are in right now.

In the song, a young man, having gone with the general zeitgeist of boom times, lost his money. Now he reflects on his life and the lives of those around him:

“And you may find yourself living in a shotgun shack
And you may find yourself in another part of the world
And you may find yourself behind the wheel of a large automobile
And you may find yourself in a beautiful house, with a beautiful wife
And you may ask yourself-Well…How did I get here?”

He tries to enter his unconscious mind, to go deeper and find meaning in his life. While there, he experiences fleeting peace. Byrne and his co-writer Brian Eno, use water as a metaphor for our deep unconscious:

“Letting the days go by/let the water hold me down
Letting the days go by/water flowing underground
Into the blue again/after the money’s gone
Once in a lifetime/water flowing underground.”

But he struggles to stay there, to reconcile his life with his glimpses of deeper meaning. Have you ever had this struggle? If not, it’s a struggle worth having:

“And you may ask yourself
How do I work this?
And you may ask yourself
Where is that large automobile?
And you may tell yourself
This is not my beautiful house!
And you may tell yourself
This is not my beautiful wife!”

But it’s not easy to reconcile, to make sense of it all. In frustration, Bryne hits himself on the head repeatedly, chanting:

“Same as it ever was…Same as it ever was…Same as it ever was…
Same as it ever was…”

Which will it be for you? Same as it ever was, or something new? The economy is showing early signs of stabilization, and this means time is running out for your once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to use difficult financial circumstances to facilitate a connection with the deeper meaning in your life and in your work.

It’s only through challenges that force us beyond our comfort zone that we dive into our unconscious selves, face tough facts, and grow. It’s when our backs are against the wall that we look beyond the façade, and deeper inside ourselves, to find reserves of strength, creativity, and new insights – the insights that raise us to new levels of success we could never have achieved had things stayed comfortable.

What do you want? How did you get here? What do you need to change? Soon the money will be flowing again, covering up the pain, softening the edges, soothing over the tough questions. But the rocks and stones will still be there. Will you have faced yourself? Will you have grown to the next level of meaning, of service, of a full life?

“And you may ask yourself
What is that beautiful house?
And you may ask yourself
Where does that highway go?
And you may ask yourself
Am I right ?…Am I wrong?
And you may tell yourself
MY GOD !…WHAT HAVE I DONE?”

What do you want to be asking yourself after the next boom comes and goes? Do you want to be where you are now, or somewhere else? Now is the time to begin. When the money flows, the temptation to never connect the life to spirit becomes strong. What do you want?

“Letting the days go by/let the water hold me down
Letting the days go by/water flowing underground
Into the blue again/after the money’s gone
Once in a lifetime/water flowing underground.”

It’s up to you. Our lives are in our own hands. You make your own choices, and are solely responsible for where you are now. You will be solely responsible for where you are in the next boom, and the next bust. Ask the questions now. Go there. Do it. After the money’s gone. Don’t wait until the money comes back. Do it now.

The tough economy has employees stressed in nearly every organization of every size, in every industry — particularly those who have seen their coworkers laid off.

The sickening fear that pervades an organization, ironically, interferes with productivity at the very time when you need the most productivity per employee that you’ve ever needed and employees most want to be at their very best.

The fear manifests itself differently for each employee, but generally you should be on the lookout for three signs:

Freezing, generally in the form of reluctance to make any decision that involves even the slightest risk of alienating a powerful person, and an increase in escalations of matters they used to work out themselves.

Wasting time by advocating a point of view without any facts to back it up, although the employee will be quite certain his or her point is correct.

Taking a great deal more time to accurately complete tasks that used to come easily and quickly, despite the employee’s best efforts to work quickly and accurately.

There are seven expedient ways to create an environment in which employees can better deal with the seismic change and volatility around them and get back to optimum productivity:

1. Fully engage the front line in improving operations and customer intimacy. The best improvements come from the people doing the work. In my own consulting, I spend a great deal more time with those doing the work than with the executive team. They best understand the challenges in acquiring customers, keeping customers happy, creating and delivering products and services, keeping track of it all, and maintaining compliance with all laws and regulations and often have the best ideas for improvements which can be quickly implemented.

2. Reserve unilateral top-down decisions only to those which need extremely fast movement, or which are so sensitive that collaboration would be inappropriate. I’m reminded of the executive who actually asked each of his direct reports for their recommendation of which of the team members should be let go - not their team members, their peers who were also his direct reports. Yikes. O.k., there’s one situation in which a unilateral, top-down decision would actually be a good thing, but workforce buy-in and quick implementation of most other decisions will be greatly improved by involving the next level down in making the decision, not just implementing a decision made by the level above.

3. Use your crisis recovery team, if you have one, for input on how to respond to various crises which erupt along the way. Their preparation may have been for earthquakes, floods, and major power outages, don’t underestimate their ability to apply the same skills, mindset, cross-functional collaboration, and processes to providing outstanding recommendations and implementation in other fast-moving situations.

4. Give extra effort to ensure the ongoing successful integration of executives who were hired from outside. Fully 40% of these executives are pushed out, fail, or quit within 18 months of their hire date. I’m not exaggerating here - three separate studies support the same point. Your workforce doesn’t need this additional volatility, created entirely from within rather than by economic pressures. The power to help these executives go from outsiders to insiders lies entirely with you.

5. Let employees be friends. Often employees will shake themselves out of an unproductive funk because they don’t want to let down or burden the friends with whom they work. While many managers tell me they are uncomfortable with this idea of friendships at work, it’s been proven time and again to improve loyalty and productivity in organizations. People bond. Don’t try to stop it.

6. If you are a manager, ask your team to frankly tell you the greatest obstacles to their productivity and then work with them and on their behalf to address these. A Canadian study confirmed what I’ve observed - that employees give their best efforts for a boss who is strong enough to directly address obstacles to productivity instead of passively just telling them to work around it.

7. Publicly acknowledge their contributions and take extra precautions that you do not imply that their ideas were yours or that the success is yours, not theirs. This can not be overemphasized in a fiscal environment in which monetary rewards are so limited, and in truth, for most employees who earn enough to cover their bills and put food on the table, the money has never mattered as much as proper recognition.

Earlier this year, I posted a list of top ten tragic mistakes and top 10 best practices in current economic conditions, created by the members of the Society for the Advancement of Consulting®, a group of us who’ve been in business for several years with demonstrated records of excellent results.

To dive deeper into two of these, which stretch a bit beyond my area of expertise, I asked Vinnie Zinck, former global banker and top-notch business finance and banking consultant at Tatum, LLC, for his advice.

I’ve personally worked with Vinnie on several projects, so I know firsthand his incredible breadth and depth of knowledge. Vinnie is a partner at the largest executive services firm in the US with a single focus on the office of the CFO.

Even if you don’t work in finance, it’s essential for leaders to understand the business side of their organizations, now more than ever, because the problems in the credit industry and the economy in general impact your department, too. It helps build your strategic competency to understand the CFO’s perspective as well.

Vinnie and I talked about two items:

• The best practice of creating banking relationships, credit lines, and financial reserves
• The mistake of making poor use of existing credit and financial reserves

What follows is an excerpt from our enlightening conversation:

TL: So, Vinnie, let’s cut right to the chase. What should executives do to successfully manage their business finances in these very strange and challenging times?

VZ: First, focus on your core business. Get customer intimate – understand their economic climate and use it. Do profitability by product/customer and eliminate as necessary, review your customers’ credit worthiness, cancel ancillary activities, review loss-leaders with a critical eye, and develop an EVA mentality.

Secondly, scour your balance sheet. Cash is king so focus on accelerating working capital velocity (collections, collections, collections), convert assets to cash, consider supplier financing, sell unneeded fixed assets such as old machinery or plants, and evaluate your real estate assets.

Thirdly, make your workforce flexible. Augment staff and outsource functions. Use overtime and flexible scheduling. Use external advisors to your benefit – let them be the bad cops sometimes, erase boundaries – cross functional and workforce and job descriptions, make sure to preserve or document tribal knowledge, and be aware of system security.

TL:  Ah, now you’ve entered my territory. I’ve increased workforce flexibility, been the bad cop, built cross-functional collaboration, and ensured that tribal knowledge was documented.

The big difference I see between these initiatives during stable periods vs. now is in tough times you can get the workforce moving on these initiatives with somewhat less resistance, as long as you have the right advice, the right process, and the right support.

Even if your company is stable with excellent cash flow, now is still an excellent time to consider making these improvements in your organization. They virtually always improve long-term productivity if done well, and there’s little hard cost to execute them.

VZ: This is also the time to pull your audit committee in. Increase communication. Partner with them to decrease audit fees, have external auditors meet with you, use them to advocate for needed resources, check all insurance coverage, and depending on your governance structure, think about benefit plan fiduciary duties. Talk to your auditors, too. Is there any chance for a going concern option? Can you pick up more work internally to minimize fees this year?

TL: You’re singing my song, Vinnie. Even though communication adds more to a leader’s overflowing plate, you almost can’t overdo it with your key constituencies.

VZ: And now for a key item: obsess about your liquidity. Keep and continually update a 13-week cash flow. Check and keep checking debt covenants and keep in touch with lenders. If you are in Finance, read ALL financial documents with an eye for now-sensitive spots: cross defaults? Debt ceilings? Rating triggers? Attempt to re-negotiate debt terms and loosen covenants. Keep in touch with major customers and key vendors – and anyone else whose support is critical.

TL: What are your thoughts on incentive plans? Employees in some sectors (financial services comes to mind) are stinging from receiving no bonuses or raises this year, despite hitting their personal and team objectives, because their companies tanked due to reasons they could not control or even influence. A lot of these employees worked hard and delivered on their goals, but watched their incomes go down.

VZ: This is the year to de-couple your incentive plans. While internal performance metrics have been a good measure historically to drive incentive dollars, this is very risky for 2009 and made more complicated if the budget changes throughout the year (as is likely).

In this climate, it may make more sense to measure performance against peer company metrics or industry indices. Especially for public companies, such information is often readily available and can serve as a fair and transparent yardstick to measure your management team’s execution amid the same head winds your competitors are facing.

TL:  Vinnie, I can see how much of your advice applies to the senior finance team, but what about our readers who are in general management or mid-management, or are influential individual contributors? What should they be doing?

VZ:  There are several things every key person can do, whether an executive or not. The first is to remember to lead. Your people need to hear the truth. Closed doors are evil. Show the flag. Despair breeds despair – focus on what needs to be done and the opportunity set. Make tough calls. Lead communication to whoever is in your area of responsibility: major customers, key suppliers, bankers, auditors. Get out there.

The second is to think outside the box. Talk with and read journals from external constituents looking at your industry. How are they thinking? What are they recommending? Get out and about; talk to others facing similar challenges.

If you have responsibility for capital investment, develop a capital plan but wait to actually commit to purchases until later.

Choose variable expenses over fixed expenses. Outsource and use consultants, for example.

Look for opportunities and alert your boss to them. Now might be the perfect time to buy a competitor or change the supply chain.

Build strong relationships with your counterparts at other companies so you can be clued in on what’s going on. For example, an accounts receivable clerk who’s on excellent terms with a customer’s accounts payable clerk can flag a late payment, place a call, and ask what’s going on. If it looks like there’s a problem at the customer’s company, alert your supervisor.

Budget conservatively. Look at your budget and test every assumption. Do you need a name brand firm to supply services, or would a smaller firm with lower fees be able to deliver the results you need?

TL: Oh, Vinnie, I didn’t pay you say that, but thanks. During the last recession, we successfully helped a manufacturer and distributor implement an ERP system that was many months behind after two global name-brand firms had utterly failed. Our fees were a fraction of theirs, and our commitment to the project was 110%, because we valued them so much, but to the global firms, these guys were just pocket change. To us, they were rock stars. And our fees were considerably lower because we carry low overhead.

Thanks for helping us all to better understand how to manage in these times, Vinnie.

VZ:  My pleasure.

I’m up to 315 followers on Twitter and I’m following a few more than that myself. I’m just starting to get the swing of things.

It’s been interesting to hear people’s reactions. Some demand to know what the return is on this exact marketing tool. I don’t know, yet. It’s so new; I don’t think anyone knows, yet.

However, we all need to do the occasional small experiment and try the unproven approach. I am reminded of Guy Kawasaki’s advice to fail fast and fail cheap, by which he means that not everything you try will pan out, so do quick, inexpensive experiments instead of placing all of your eggs in one big, expensive basket.

For those considering tweeting, it may help to know that I limit myself to no more than 30 minutes a day in total, and in truth, it’s more like 15 minutes, weekdays only. While it can be addictive, it doesn’t have to be.

I’ve certainly come across interesting articles and perspectives so, if nothing else, it’s been a quick source of perspectives and information.

Currently my ID is JenniferSelby, not JenniferSelbyLong, due to constraints on name length which bias against those of us with long names!

I share useful business, professional growth, and personal growth links and tips and a few other items.

Follow me and I’ll follow you!

Not to put too fine a point on it, but instead of recommending a book, class, or video this week, I’m recommending self-care. This is the third cold I’ve had this season and it’s turned into bronchitis. A slip in my usual standard of self-care is to blame. Eat your veggies. Get your exercise. Get some sleep. All the stuff Mom says is true!