 |
News
The
Integration Imperative is now
available online!
"Transforming
Consulting Firms into Real Businesses" Management
Consulting News August 2009
I
am quoted in the article - "Build
Your Business by Finding the Right Match"
Principals' Report Issue No. 09-08,
August 2009.
Redefining
Professional Service Firm Marketing and Business
Development, ICCA Newsletter The Independent,
July/August 2009, pg. 25
Do
You Measure Up - Demonstrating the Effectiveness
of Your Marketing Activities is the Best Way to
Shore Up Your Budget in Uncertain Times. Professional
Services Journal Issue No. 2, March 2009.
I am quoted in the cover article.
Branding
fourth among five small business marketing pillars,
PWG Marketing, February 2009 (An adaptation of
my CMO magazine article.)
How to Create a Culture of Growth at Your Firm,
Raintoday, February 2009.
Read a summary of Suzanne Lowe's newly published
book The
Integration Imperative.
Follow
me on Twitter! 
New from the Expertise Marketplace™
Blog
Winning
the Professional Services Sale: My Thoughts
In-fighting
and cliquishness: the genesis of PSF internal
silos?
A
nod to Patrick McKenna
PSF
Managers and Leaders: The Forest and The Trees
See
all the posts at the Expertise Marketplace blog
Subscribe to the blog's RSS feed
for regular updates. (Need RSS help?)
Subscribe
Did a colleague forward this newsletter?
Sign up to receive your own copy.
|
 |
"I LOVE your newsletter. I think
it’s the best one I get. Full of real content
and yet not too long. Kudos!"
Diane Schmalensee, Facilitator and President
of Schmalensee Partners
Recent Issues
Structural
Imperatives: Process, Skills and Support July
2009
Redefining
Professional Service Firm Marketing and Business
Development ,
June 2009
The
Paradox of Doing Things Differently,
May 2009
You can order Marketplace Masters from Barnes & Noble,
Amazon, your favorite online bookseller, or CEO-READ.
|
 |
The Marketplace Master™ is a monthly email publication
on professional service marketing from Expertise Marketing,
LLC.
About
this month's issue
“Change” is one of the main themes
running through the eleven case studies of The Integration
Imperative. (I will start featuring case study excerpts
beginning in next month’s issue.)
And so, for our August 2009 guest columnist,
I’m pleased to feature Susan
Newton, an organization change management expert.
Along with a team of senior colleagues, Newton helped
institute a new performance management system at R.
W. Beck (an engineering and management consultancy,
and one of the book’s case studies). This initiative
resulted in improved teamwork to market, sell, and deliver
client services.
Newton’s article addresses the cultural
aspects that support people to do their best work for
their firms: clarity, collaboration and alignment.
Suzanne
Lowe
President, Expertise Marketing
Author, Marketplace Masters: How Professional
Service Firms Compete to Win and The Integration
Imperative: Erasing Marketing and Business Devleopment
Silos - Once and for All - in Professional Service Firms
Creating
a Culture Where People do Their Best Work
When I wrote my master’s thesis on organizational
change, my favorite quote was, “The only person
who likes change is a wet baby.” In any organization,
regardless of industry, there are people opposed to
any change in the status quo. Perhaps they have worked
within a structure for years, and it provides a comfort
zone for them. Perhaps they helped to create the structure,
and so they feel a sense of ownership. But one theme
runs through all these variables: creating a culture
where people do their best work requires a clear understanding
of the intricacies of relationships within organizations.
In today’s turbulent business environment,
there are critical executive challenges, made even more
difficult in a professional services environment. Trying
to get high achieving individuals to work together,
regardless of function, for the good of the organization,
is not as easy as it sounds. Organizations are often
disconnected when it comes to speed of knowledge transfer,
leveraging differences, and creating partnerships. But
working in partnership with others, in ways that build
on trust, mutual learning and inclusion, has the power
to create organizational agility and business results.
Even though I have years of experience in
the field of organization development, I’m still
surprised to see that people don’t always make
clarity, alignment and cross-functional engagement a
priority. These elements are needed in order for people
to do their best work. And collaborative relationships,
especially when created in ways not done before, can
bring the company new power and successful business
results.
The
Integration Imperative lays it out well. In
particular, the templates provided in the book’s
Appendix provide a “how to” roadmap about
creating new formal collaborations across functions.
As a former Chief Human Resource Officer at R.
W. Beck, I had the opportunity to “live”
the book’s concepts. My partnership with R.W.
Beck’s vice president of strategic marketing contributed
to the success of several cross-functional initiatives
that ultimately benefitted the entire firm.
Organized Resistance to Clarity, Collaboration
and Alignment?
Despite the points outlined in The Integration
Imperative (and other books whose contents directly
address cross-functional collaboration), organizations
resist constantly. Organizational leaders assume that
different functions don’t need to interact unless
it’s obvious. They believe the way the organization
is set up is right. So the real issue is that Leadership
needs to develop a different mindset about how organizations
are set up, and be willing to change.
This belief system exists at levels “below”
Leadership as well. Most managers are trained (and rewarded)
to operate through formal organizational structures,
policies, and processes. This approach is effective
for making some decisions but not necessarily for driving
marketplace success. When I interview people at non-leadership
levels in an organization, too often, they tell me they
cannot see how their work could possibly contribute
to the organization’s overall success. When leaders
hear this lack of clarity and confusion around where
people fit into the company’s strategy, they know
their company’s brand has missed an opportunity.
Clarity and alignment are critical to a company’s
success if its leaders want people to collaborate on
the enterprise’s strategic priorities and initiatives.
As an example of the positive results a company
can realize when overcoming its resistance to clarity,
collaboration and alignment, I’ll relate the story
of a medium-size, national, civil engineering firm.
The leaders of this firm wanted to build a sales and
marketing culture based on the book The
Trusted Advisor. (A culture like this helps
people forge strong alliances and build strong links
between all organizational teams.)
They decided it was vital for others within
the firm, for example, administrative and support professionals,
to understand the importance of developing strong alliances
with their internal clients, the sales and marketing
teams. Through a series of internal workshops, they
built a tremendous sense of camaraderie and respect
among people, for what others did. After experiencing
these workshops, people started offering their own expertise
to help others, regardless of function, where before,
silos had existed. (The “aha” moment had
happened!)
Questions Leaders Should Ask Themselves
Here are some powerful questions that leaders
should be asking of themselves and of their organizations.
The potential discussions support the notion that professional
service firms can change, and that everyone can pull
together toward a positive culture and ultimately, marketplace
success.
Asking – and answering – these
questions can allow leaders to learn what they are doing
right (usually a lot) as well as gain perspective on
some things that may need to shift if the enterprise
is going to continue to be successful. Leaving behind
things that aren’t helping anymore, such as segregating
sales and marketing from the internal focused departments,
is one of them. The best enterprises forge strong alliances
and build strong links between all organizational teams.
 Susan Newton's firm, Development
Strategies Plus, is a national firm building value
for clients across the organizational effectiveness
spectrum. Her focus is on aligning culture, leadership,
goals, and organization structure with overall business
strategy.
Write
me to share your experiences about how your firm
is creating a culture where people do their best work.
Take our
new, confidential, web-based
assessment tests to instantly diagnose your firm’s
structural and cultural barriers to marketing effectiveness.
You can also access our perennially popular professional
service firm differentiation assessment test for
instant feedback on whether your firm is doing differentiation
right.
© 2009 Expertise
Marketing, LLC All Rights Reserved
|
