Learning by Leveraging Listening: The Strategic Power of Valuing Differences

Over the past 35 years, I’ve had the honor to work with project teams from across the world to help them win projects and then deliver them successfully by applying best practices in client and team management. Strategy is the core of my work—finding patterns, analyzing strengths, and defining differentiators. Strategy is seldom obvious; finding the strategic approach to an interview, a team problem, or a project issue takes understanding multiple perspectives. And no matter how smart a coach or a consultant is, we can’t find the right approach alone. The ‘secret sauce’ in all of my work has been something that might seem unexpected: maintaining an uncompromising commitment to listening deeply and valuing differences.

We must listen deeply to our clients’ and our team members’ needs, perspectives, and other points of view. Listening deeply is more than paraphrasing to signal that we’ve heard them. It’s taking the time and energy to find the meaningful content that even the most challenging communicators convey. With time, experience, and maturity (okay, age…), I’ve learned the power this has in making others feel heard and valued. From my perspective, this is the only way teams achieve their aspirations and their potential.

Making The ‘Aha’ Moment

If you’ve worked with me or my team in proposal development and interview prep, you’ll sometimes see the moment we find the strategic throughline that forms the basis for an entire proposal or presentation. Developing the strategy—finding that throughline—takes hard work and a commitment to putting our own perspective temporarily on hold, learning from others through listening, and helping teams connect their dots. Coaches who come to an assignment thinking they have all the answers can’t help a team reach its true potential; the best proposals and interviews and the most resilient strategies come together from the magical combination of the individual members of the team, the diversity of their perspectives, and the context we create by bringing them together in a way that results in something greater than the sum of these parts.

Expanding our Horizons

People are limited by our experiences and, oftentimes, by our privilege, and that is also true for me. With the blinders we have on all the time—that most of us don’t know we’re wearing—we often become entrenched in our beliefs about how the world—or the project or the presentation—should be. However, the very things that make us different also make us interesting. I’ve learned over the years that those differences are part of the magic; they are key ingredients of the ‘secret sauce’ that creates differentiating strategy, great design, and creative problem solving. They help leaders, consultants, and teams who are open to a diversity of perspectives find the right path forward.

For example, in a recent coaching for a signature pursuit, I watched the lead designer work with her team during the pursuit process in a way that is all too rare yet so, so powerful. This world-class designer made every person in the room feel valued and heard, regardless of role, position, or affiliation. She took the time to listen and respond to every suggestion; I believe she took what she learned and used her incredible talent to create the pursuit concept, using the variety of perspectives to inform, challenge, and inspire creative thinking. The intangible she created in the process was team cohesion—each team member felt meaningfully included in the design and delivery, and became wholly committed to doing whatever it took to advance the team to a win. It was magical.

The Only Way Through It Is Through It

One of my favorite authors, Anita Shreve, famously wrote, “The only way through it is through it.” I think about this a lot when faced with a new team, a complex project, or a challenging pursuit. Even when—and especially when—time is short and costs are high, strength comes in considering multiple ways forward to find the right one. We must take the time and commit to listening and learning from each other; we can’t short-circuit the process of listening and learning. To do otherwise risks disconnecting our partners when we need them the most and/or missing something critical that could be central to our success.

Going Beyond Empathy

I read a lot, and I’ve followed the work of John Stewart (not the one you’re thinking of), now professor emeritus at the University of Iowa, since I was in graduate school (“some years ago—never mind how long precisely...”) John is a pioneer in understanding the role communication plays in building relationships. His book Bridges Not Walls is an excellent primer on dialogic listening, a practice that goes a step beyond active listening to prioritize relationship-building through deep listening. In Behavioral Science last year, Stewart proposed that, “Getting to know the other person as a unique human being goes beyond empathy and enables a sense of intimacy and an enriched relationship based on understanding individual differences.”

We work in a relationship-based business; all of us need to fight against the urge to look at projects and pursuits as transactions and take the time to listen to each other, to learn with and from people, and to keep our hearts and minds open to different perspectives. That’s the real secret of success. Our pursuits and projects and the relationships we create with others will be richer, more meaningful, and ultimately more successful for it.

Five Ways to Improve Survey Response Rates

No one wants to take as survey. We’ve all probably lost count of how many times that we’ve stopped answering a survey, and we could all list a variety of reasons why: it was too long, the questions felt too personal or sensitive, we had other priorities at the time, or the survey just didn’t seem worth our time.

When designing a survey, it’s tempting to try to get as much information out of respondents as you can, but remember that you want people to actually take your survey. You’re asking for their time and attention in addition, which is required before you can get access to the content of their responses. The following considerations can go a long way toward getting people to devote their full time and attention to answering your survey.

1. Limit length – This is hard. We want to get as much information as possible, but the more questions you have, the longer the survey is going to take respondents to complete, and the more likely they’ll stop midway through. It’s better to have thoughtful answers to a few questions than no answers to a lot of questions. A good target time length is 15 minutes; this means you can include about four banks of five quantitative questions (20 unique questions) and two open-ended qualitative questions.

2. Identify what you really want to know – Chances are you’ll want to ask more questions than our suggested 22-questions limit, so you’ll need to separate out your ‘must haves’ and your ‘nice to haves’. Identify the questions you’d like answered and the questions you really need to have answered. Keep your top two must-have qualitative questions, then assemble your banks of quantitative questions, starting with your must-haves and adding in any nice-to-haves for which you have room

   If you still find yourself with too many questions, explore whether another data gathering tactic might work. Focus groups, for instance, can be an excellent way to take the pulse on a variety of topics where precise statistics are not needed. When assessing something like the responsiveness of a heating or cooling system, data points like temperature can be measured directly, without asking building occupants about their thermal comfort. In fact, in this scenario, measuring temperature directly may yield more accurate results by avoiding potentially confounding factors, such as someone who runs cold having control over the thermostat. In a situation like this, one person’s preferences could skew the results, with many people reporting feeling too hot, even if the heating and cooling systems are performing optimally.

3. Limit demographic questions – Demographic questions can make people very uncomfortable. The more you ask, the more suspicious your respondents will feel that their responses may be traced back to them. Limit your demographic questions to things you genuinely need to know in order to conduct your analysis. It can also be a good idea to include a sentence or two explaining why you’re asking the questions. A little clarity can go a long way toward dispelling suspicions of nefarious intent.

4. Target questions to a specific audience – It’s okay to ask questions that may not apply to everyone, but if you do, make sure that questions for a subset audience only go to that audience. Presenting questions to an audience to which they don’t apply is a great way to make them feel like you’re misusing their time. When you ask people questions that they shouldn’t answer, you’re not just asking them to stop filling out your survey, you’re also asking them to start it back up a few questions later. A respondent might easily stop, but getting them to start again can be a significantly bigger ask. Fortunately, platforms like SurveyMonkey allow you to implement skip logic that will only display questions if certain requirements are met, such as the response to an earlier demographic question, for example. This feature enables targeting questions to the appropriate audience without putting unnecessary questions in front of other respondents.

5. Understand your audience – User mindset can have a significant impact on how people answer questions, so think strategically about your audience and the conditions that may affect their ability to fill out a survey in a meaningful way. Who are you asking? When are you asking? For instance, if you attempt to survey a student population the week before Finals, your response rate will likely be drastically lower than if you asked at a less busy time. Even if your response rate ends up being excellent, the timing of the survey may make the conclusions misleading—responses will reflect the mental state of a population dealing with far more stress than they likely would be at other times of the year.

   As another example, the week after distributing bonuses is a time when people tend to feel good about their company. Giving an employee satisfaction survey at that time may end with a high response rate, but it will also skew your responses and undermine the validity of any conclusions.

   In sum, we want data, but how we go about collecting it will influence whether the data we get is meaningful and can be reliably used to make good decisions. The key to this is always to remember your audience, and design with them in mind at all times

5 Key Elements of Effective Survey Design

Surveys of employees, clients, and end users are an excellent way to gather data about human experiences and perspectives that can inform future decisions and initiatives. In recent months, we’ve noticed a definite uptick in surveys being used by both public agencies and private design and construction companies. While effective, surveys are not without their limitations; without a careful approach to both design and data analysis, we may end up getting limited data—or worse, misleading data.

As survey designers and data analysts, these risks are foremost in our minds when we’re developing and implementing surveys for our clients. Here are five of the key elements we think about when designing surveys:

1. If you wouldn’t take it, don’t give it – When you implement a survey, you’re asking people to spend time answering your questions instead of whatever else they’d rather be doing. Make it worth their while so you’ll get good data back. There are many reasons a person might start a survey then stop without submitting any data—perhaps they find the questions too personal, or irrelevant to them, or the survey just seems too long. These are just a few reasons someone may become disinterested in a survey and stop partway through.

   Since some data is better than no data, think critically about the length of your survey and the types of questions you ask to distill your survey down to just what a reasonable audience would be willing to answer. Put yourself in your audience’s shoes—if you wouldn’t want to take the time to respond to your survey, neither will your audience.

2. Keep your scales consistent – Everyone likes attaching numbers to things to make them quantifiable, even people who don’t like math (or ‘maths’ if you’re one of those who think ’mathematics’ is plural and, therefore, that a single ‘mathematic’ is a thing). Attaching a number to scaled responses is a necessary practice in analyzing data, and it’s important to keep in mind that scales are all relative: a mean of 4.2 would be bad in a 9-point scale, middling in a 7-point scale, good in a 5 point scale, and a sign of something very wrong in a 3 point scale.

   To save yourself the hassle of constantly checking back to see if a number is good or bad in the scale context of each particular question, do yourself a favor and make sure that the numbers you end up with can always be interpreted in a uniform way. Simply having the same number of scaled options in every question is the best way to ensure this. I like using the seven-point Likert scale: it provides enough options for nuanced responses (e.g., slightly positive, positive, and extremely positive) without providing too many options that distinguishable meaning breaks down (when was the last time you ranked something out of 10 and had strong feelings about something being a 7 and definitely not a 6 or an 8? I’m guessing never). In the rest of this post, we’ll be using a 7-point scale whenever numbers are mentioned.

3. The importance of Mean and standard deviation are not what you think – Mean isn’t as important as most people think. By itself, the mean is just a way of measuring the middle point in your data. Consider a mean of 4 on a 7-point satisfaction scale. This could be attained in many ways, but two extreme examples are Scenario A: having all people surveyed respond with a 4, or Scenario B: having 50/50 split between of respondents answering 1 and 7. In this situation, you wouldn’t be able to tell if you had an extremely bored population or were days away from a revolution.

   This is where the standard deviation comes in and why it’s more important than most people think. Without getting overly technical, the standard deviation sort of measures the average distance between the mean and the data points (if you’d like to geek out with me about the differences between the  and norms, which is what’s going on here, please give me a call. It’ll be fun, I promise). In other words, it measures how spread out the data is.

   In Scenario A, where all of our participants responded with a 4, the standard deviation is 0—the data is clustered and not spread out at all. In Scenario B, where participants split between 1 and 7, the standard deviation is 3—the “average” distance between a data point and the mean is 3, so the “typical” data point is either a 1 or a 7. The standard deviation along with the mean allows us to identify that while both populations have the same mean, the population sampled in Scenario A don’t really care about an issue, while the population in Scenario B is completely polarized.

4. There is a difference between “Neutral” and “No Opinion” – In the English language, we sometimes treat “Neutral” and “No Opinion” as interchangeable. They are not, especially on a survey. On a positive/negative scale, neutral means that you don’t have strong feelings in either direction. You still have feelings, they’re just neither positive nor negative. As such, coding neutral as the midpoint value of 4 is the way to go. On the other hand, ‘No Opinion’ means that you have no real feelings at all. This is what you answer when you’re asked about lighting in a room you’ve never been in, or the airflow in a restaurant you didn’t know existed. This answer cannot be quantified because there is simply nothing to quantify, and if you have a “no opinion” option instead of a “neutral” one, you’re working on a 6-point scale with no middle option.

   Now, one may think that this is just semantics and that the person taking the survey will understand the intent. Unfortunately, this is not always the case, and that uncertainty undermines the responses we get. Because of the human tendency to confuse neutral feelings with no feelings when we’re not being mindful, we don’t know if someone who checks the no opinion box has neutral feelings on the question’s subject—which we want to record—or genuinely has no opinion—which we’d like to ignore.

5. Anonymous is not the same as confidential – Keeping survey responses confidential is what makes your audience feel comfortable enough to give honest answers to sensitive questions. While true anonymity would be enough to ensure confidentiality, the simple fact is that survey data isn’t truly anonymous. To those inclined to use it, demographic information, survey metadata, and answers to a few key questions—especially qualitative questions where writing style becomes a factor—are often enough to determine who filled out a survey to a handful of people.

   If participants have been assured of confidentiality, then the survey should be conducted by a neutral third party and that third party should never share the specific responses received. Instead, the third party should analyze the quantitative data and share only the aggregate data and conclusions in a summary report. For qualitative data, we should partially quantify it (e.g., 23% of respondents were concerned about the pool, 10% had positive comments about the water features, etc.) and summarize it so that conclusions may be drawn. These summaries should discuss repeated themes and comments, but they should never directly quote a respondent, lest said respondent be identifiable by speech patterns evident in their writing. For instance, no one else could possibly have written that last sentence, because no one else in the modern United States uses ‘lest’ unironically.

   I cannot overstate how important the commitment to confidentiality is in survey responses to ensure the integrity of the data and the validity of the conclusions that can be drawn from it. If you find yourself conducting a confidential external survey, you must ensure true confidentiality. If you find yourself needing a confidential internal survey, find a third party to do it.

Lucas Chaffee leads CRNW’s research services. He holds a PhD in Math and recognizes that words ending in S aren’t always plural.

End of Year Reflections 2021

As we end a holiday season with a yard full of snow, I’m watching the hummingbirds who call our yard home drink their fill multiple times a day from the hummingbird feeder outside our back door. They had a tough week; our normally temperate climate turned bitter cold, atypical for Seattle winters. I spent several nights worried about the birds’ welfare, getting up an hour before dawn to warm up their food and then checking every several hours to make sure it didn’t freeze. This was not a sustainable strategy, but I was able to keep my bird friends alive until ‘the cavalry’ arrived by way of my ‘no task is too challenging’ son and my like-minded husband, who rigged a heat lamp just close enough to keep the food from freezing, but not so close to disturb our feathered friends. Whew, what a relief!

Our year has been a lot like this: watching the seasons change, experiencing circumstances so different from what we expected, adapting on the fly to fit new conditions, and figuring out new ways of doing things to keep our homes, our businesses, our families afloat. And, like my hummingbirds, we await a brighter, warmer, and more comfortable New Year.

 The marketplace has certainly been tumultuous during these pandemic times. At the start of all this craziness, I remember wondering how our company would survive as clients cancelled contracts and our regular partners found ways to move what we did for them in-house. But we ended last year busier than ever, with a market gone wild and new clients asking us for assistance every day.

2021 dawned in one of the busiest times I’ve ever experienced as a communication professional. Thank you to our clients and business partners for sharing this journey with us. We ended the year as we started it, winning dozens of projects with talented teams from around the world. What fun that has been for all of us! We got to help with multiple enormous civil infrastructure projects, transportation projects, hospitals, university buildings and schools, justice facilities, laboratories, and waterfronts. We facilitated partnering for some of the most visible and exciting projects in the US, and we’re poised to work on more in 2022. And we were invited into the leadership teams of utilities and governments across the US as they sought new ways to help the communities they serve. It’s been an honor to work with all of you.

Over the course of 2021, we focused on growing our leadership team and expanding what they can do to serve clients. We ended the year with a full house of talented coaches, strategic planners, facilitators, graphic designers, and proposal managers ready to serve our clients, existing and new. We also expanded more strongly into the public sector, making a significant commitment to serving the communication, training, and planning needs of city, state, and county government. I’m reminded daily how much I really love working with professionals from the public sector who keep our communities running behind the scenes every day.

We also kept adapting our means and methods, learning new and innovative online tools to facilitate teams and processes from across the world and right here at home. While we had so much fun going back to in-person engagement for two short windows of time this year, we are also committed to being able to work virtually as it expands our reach nationally and internationally and delivers efficiencies to almost every project type. Our technical facilitation team has grown to accommodate, and they’re even often called upon to help our clients develop internal ways to work remotely. So, while I hope we go back to more in-person work, virtual is here to stay and will continue to benefit our projects and our clients.

As we leave 2021 and look ahead to 2022, I’m evaluating what I want to leave behind. First is fear of a changing market because I’ve seen how resilient my team is and how they rise to each new challenge. I’m leaving behind a dogmatic attachment to old processes because I’ve seen how we can do better work by thinking and acting differently. Finally, I’m leaving behind prioritizing working harder for working smarter. Over the last weeks of December, I’ve enjoyed sleeping more than I have the entire last year, and I’m realizing, like my hummingbirds, that as busy as we fly back and forth during the day, getting rest at night makes a real difference in my life and my work.

So, what about 2022? As I leave behind three things, I’m going to pick up three more:

Our hummingbirds remind me of the importance of relationships. They’re demanding of time and attention, and unlike people, they’re really clear about what they need, even buzzing the door when they need something. They remind me that I have to put time and attention into relationships to keep them alive. With that in mind, I’m committing 2022 to building stronger relationships, internally with our team and with each of our clients.

I’m embracing kindness. Having watched, often from a front row seat, how ugly some communication between people has become during this pandemic, I’m recommitting my team and myself to communicating with kindness and grace, even in the worst of situations. And as an extension of this, we’re all recommitting to gratitude for all that we have and for the capacity to give back. We’ve been privileged to be able to donate time and resources to agencies focused on ending homelessness and supporting children. That’s something my team and I will continue into this New Year.

And I’m welcoming change, getting comfortable with knowing that whatever I think 2022 will be, it’s going to be different than anything we expect today. But we’re jumping into 2022 with confidence: My team and I are ready: the feeder is full; and like our hummingbirds, we’re ready to fly!

End of Year Reflections for 2020

As I sit working at my kitchen table amidst the detritus of a decidedly odd holiday, I’m reminded anew what a strange year it’s been—quite a bit different than we all envisioned at the same time last year. With so many ending the year sicker, poorer, and more divided, it’s hard not to be pessimistic as the new year starts. Despite all of this—or maybe because of it—I choose to end the year with hope, gratitude, and commitment, not because I’m Pollyanna, but because in this season of darkness, so many of us also have much to hope for, much to be grateful for, and much more to do in 2021.

Business books abound with reminding us that “hope is not a strategy.” While this is likely true, our teams, our clients, and our communities need hope now more than ever. Hope that a vaccine will come soon enough for our loved ones and our community. Hope that our businesses can continue to ride out this ever-changing storm of events. Hope that the things that divide us will be overwhelmed by our collective desire to create better and more resilient relationships. So, even if hope is not a strategy, as leaders, I think we need to strategically offer hope nonetheless to our employees, clients, and colleagues.

 In Gallup’s Strengths-Based Leadership, the authors posit that our employees need trust, compassion, stability, and hope from their business leaders. I’ve taken this idea to heart as I work with my team, reminding them daily that their work matters and that we’ll get through this challenging time as an intact team. As leaders, taking the time with each of our employees has never been more important, providing them stability in an unstable world and helping them do their best work in an uncertain time. While I kvetched about having to take an hour out of each day for our virtual “Daily Download,” I’m ending the year so thankful for this consistent time to connect, create, share, and collaborate. And I’m committed to keeping daily team engagement going when we finally come back to working face-to-face.

In times mid-year when we were lower on work than I’d have liked, we took the time to complete value-added work to strengthen our team. What a gift this has been now that our collective schedules maxed out at the end of the year. I’m grateful for my father’s advice to approach each challenge strategically, staying focused on the end goal, and always putting the needs of the team first. That’s been great advice; I’m committed to keeping it in mind for the inevitable chaos 2021 will bring our way. So long as ancient Mayans weren’t dyslexic when they created their calendar, we’ll survive the changes ahead by staying focused on the long game for our businesses and our teams.

I’m grateful every day for the people—clients, partners, team members—with whom I get to work. While we suffered the uncertainties of the market in the early days of the pandemic, we’re ending the year strongly, with new and established client and colleague relationships. I’m also grateful for technology that has enabled my team to do some of their best and most creative work to date. And I’m grateful for my team, amazed at their resilience and ability to deliver incredible work during the pandemic, including high-impact virtual partnering, presentation coaching for teams from across the globe, and in-depth strategic planning with teams we’ve never physically met.

I’m also grateful for the trust our clients place in us as we help them build relationships, develop programs, and win work. Even though the market is uncertain, your willingness to engage with us in new ways has been both gratifying and exhilarating. While at times we’ve collectively chafed at the restrictions of the virtual world, together we’ve navigated some challenging circumstances to win work and develop stronger teams. To all of you near and far, thank you for working with us, innovating with us, and trusting us with your teams and projects.

Turning to a look forward, I’m committed to continuing to build a strong and intact team, keeping us growing and resilient in the months ahead to respond to the evolving needs of our volatile market. From my kitchen or my office, I’m committed to rethinking old models to find newer ways to engage with teams, creating better proposals, interviews, and processes. The marketplace demands our very best right now, delivering better products and continuing to innovate in how we work with each other and with our clients. By looking at these challenging times as a catalyst for change, we may come out of this pandemic stronger and with new tools and strategies to fuel better work.

Finally, my team and I are committed to giving back our time and our treasure to build a better community. Many of you will note that you didn’t get chocolate from us this year; instead, we helped Housing Hope support families in Snohomish County, and I commit to doing much more of that in the months ahead. I hope you will join with us to support fair, equitable, safe, and available housing in our communities, if you are able.

So, here’s to more hope, gratitude, and commitment in 2021. The days ahead may continue to be challenging, but I choose to focus on what’s on the other side. My team and I wish you and yours the very best in this new year. May we all celebrate next year with better health and stronger connections to people and place. And, I owe each of you a chocolate bar and a hug when we see each other again.

Get Ready…Get Set… Get Your Virtual Shortlist Presentation Ready to GO!

By now, we are all pretty comfortable working and meeting in a virtual environment. So comfortable, in fact, that loungewear, messy hair, barking dogs, piles of laundry, and screaming kids are the new norm. However, this is exactly why we need to be more vigilant when it comes to virtual shortlist presentations. How we present ourselves in a virtual environment can have a significant impact on the selection process. Ensuring the basics are covered before the presentation starts will showcase the level of professionalism, competency, and engagement that the client can expect to see after project award.

Through coaching dozens of successful virtual shortlist interviews over the past nine months, we’ve developed the following checklist of items to help get you ready to be your best on the day of the interview.

Plan what you are going to wear:

• Plan what you are going to wear. Clothing should be brighter colored to warm up your face and look pressed and well-fit when you sit down. While no one can see your pants/skirt, wear something comfortable that works with your top. Consider wearing an undershirt if you sweat when you get nervous.

Prepare your notes and visual tools:

• Tape a sticky note with a drawing of a stick figure or an eyeball behind or near your camera lens to remind you to look directly at the camera, especially when speaking.

• Tape your outline of bulleted notes behind or near your camera so you can see them without looking away from the camera. (Hack: Print or write on card stock to make notes rigid enough to stand up when taped to the edge of your monitor.) Make sure your notes are easy to see and not so detailed that you have to read. Use a Sharpie to get the text large and bold enough to see.

• Attach your Q&A prompts to the edges of your screen so you can see them and use them during the interview.

Prepare your computer:

• If your computer has not been turned off and restarted for a while, go through your update and restart process. Do this several hours or the night before the interview in case you have any technology challenges that need to be resolved.

• Turn off any programs you are not actively using. You should only open Zoom or Teams and any files you will need to share during the presentation. Be sure to turn off your email once you have used the link to get into the meeting.

• Turn off background programs that take up bandwidth on your machine. In the lower right-hand corner of your desktop screen, click the small up arrow. This will show you background programs. Do not shut off your virus protection but do shut off other unneeded programs.

• Turn on Zoom or Teams early, and before you join, check how you look on screen. Sit up straight, check your background, look into the camera, and smile. You should turn off the self-view to avoid distractions. Make sure your camera is working and your sound is clear and strong.

• If you need more time to set up and adjust your settings, open a new meeting where you are the only participant. You can use this to check your sound and image.

• Check that your video feed label shows your name and role, consistent with the rest of your team. Check to make sure your background is correct (especially if you were Zooming with your kids and still have the dinosaur image behind you).

  In Zoom, click the three dots in the upper right of your tile and choose Rename. You can then type in your name and role. Check your spelling and capitalization to make sure you are consistent with the team’s protocol. Remember, for most people, these settings change each time you log in, so even if you’ve done this before, do it again.

  For your background, click the up arrow to the right of the camera button on the bottom left of the Zoom screen. Choose Select background. You can either select the approved background for the presentation or None.

• Know where the mute button is and how to turn it off and on. Stay vigilant to make sure you are unmuted each time it is your turn to speak.

Prepare PLC (posture, light, center):

• Posture: Sit up straight; do not lean against the back of the chair. Lean forward slightly to free up your diaphragm and look engaged.

• Light: Check your lighting for shadows and dark spots. If possible, get in front of natural, filtered light. If your lighting is challenging, get help well before the interview.

  • Quick fixes: Orient yourself to look out a window. If sun is hitting your face, use sheers or a thin sheet to filter the light. Place a large sheet of white paper in front of you to bounce light onto your face. Avoid mixing tones of light (e.g., fluorescent with incandescent)—light should be in the same color family. Turn off overheard fluorescents or cover with architectural trace or thin copy paper to filter the light and avoid glare.

• Center: Center yourself on the screen—side-to-side and top-to-bottom. Make sure you aren’t filling the whole frame or positioned too far back. If needed, adjust your chair or camera height to vertically center in the screen.

Prepare yourself:

• Have a glass of water nearby but keep it out of range of your computer and camera. Also consider having cough drops and tissues similarly positioned.

• Smile, lean forward, look into the lens, and get ready to win!

Thank you, Dad

On this Veterans Day, I want to say Thank You to our veterans, to the men and women who put County ahead of self and who protect the freedoms all of us as Americans too often take for granted.

My father, Colonel Robert S. Gruhn, served 38 years in the US Army; my siblings and I grew up under the steadfast influence of a man who commanded troops through the liberation of Paris and the post-occupation of Germany. Dad sheltered us from knowing the horrors of the aftermath of the concentration camps and living through the deprivations of war as a soldier and a leader. It was only after Dad died that we found the photos Eisenhower encouraged troops to take to ward against those who would rather forget the past and the inevitable deniers of truth. Wrapped up tightly in tape in multiple layers of envelope but tucked away carefully in the side of his military trunk, he moved forward, but he never forgot.

Dad also served in the Korean conflict and then moved on to be responsible for the protection of our nation’s capital. He’s still there, resting in peace in Arlington National Cemetery with his comrades from across military branches. He stayed in the military as part of the Reserves, serving as part of the Judge Advocate General’s Corps until retirement. Serving our country was the central focus of Dad’s life, and it shaped everything he did, whether raising kids or leading a department for his employer.

Though I’ve personally never served our Country as he so honorably did, Dad’s lessons continue to shape how I work and how I lead in business. My father reminded me what an honor it is to serve and to lead. As business leaders, we have a choice to do what is right over what is expedient. Our words and actions matter. The greatest service we can give is to take care of our teams when things are tough, helping them stay safe and focused on the work ahead. I’m reminded of this particularly now as we help our employees navigate the uncertainties of a pandemic world.

To Dad, leadership was about service not self. He reminded me that leaders stay later, they work harder, and they stay focused on the task. Leaders take responsibility, and they are accountable to their teams, their clients, and their community. After 30 years leading a team, I try to take these lessons to heart every day.

To a man who crossed the English Channel to fight a war on foreign soil, Dad didn’t suffer complainers lightly. I’m sure that there were days, weeks, and years when working in the private sector that Dad felt both the ups and the downs of work. But I also know that every day he got dressed, went to work, fought the good fight to do what was right, and supported his team and his family. When I’m having a bad day during these pandemic months, I often remind myself that getting ready for work in Normandy in 1944 was a heck of a lot harder than it is for me to crawl out of my warm bed and get back to work.

To all of us who benefit daily from the service of our veterans, let us thank them today and every day that we have the ability to work and to lead our own teams. It is only through their sacrifices that we are able to do the work we do every day. And let us honor those sacrifices by being better leaders, focused on serving our teams, supporting their families, and working tirelessly to build stronger and more resilient communities.

Video Killed the PowerPoint Star

PowerPoint Best Practices in the Age of Video Presentations

As consultants, we generally recommend that clients avoid PowerPoint for short-list interviews. However, in this new world of social distancing where we meet, present, interview, and train via virtual platforms, we have reached a truce of necessity with this oft-maligned tool. PowerPoint is taking a stronger role in how we help selectors visualize content—and we believe it should—but with the right amount of strategy and restraint.

Without the social and visual cues of an in-person presentation, it is even more important to find effective ways to connect with and engage your audience. PowerPoint can be a highly effective tool, if used appropriately. In this new environment, more than ever, we have to resist the urge to revert back to bad PowerPoint decks with endless bullets, unreadable copy, and complex animations. We can use PowerPoint well for presentations, interviews, classes, and meetings, we just need to think about our slide decks more strategically.

Screen Size Matters

Your audience members, like you, are most likely working from home with a laptop and a monitor (two if they are lucky!) We are no longer designing slides to project on a large screen in front of an audience seated 10 feet away. We need to think about how content will look on a personal screen.

Font size can be slightly smaller, since we are closer to a higher-quality display, but it still needs to be readable on smaller monitors, laptops, and tablets. Always test your presentation for readability on a variety of screen sizes and display qualities.

Density is always an issue with slides. Keep to a few key words and bullets, use one full-bleed image per slide, and keep diagrams simple. Even though the audience may be looking primarily at the slides, you also want them to hear you. As always, the slides should support rather than overwhelm what you are saying.

Font colors are also important. High-contrast colors work best, but test a variety of color combinations. For example, we have found that yellow highlighting on a light background is not effective via video.

Control the View

There are many, many different ways to view speakers and content across the different online platforms, and each user can choose their own settings. That said, don’t be afraid to control your audience’s view. Take a few minutes at the beginning of your presentation to direct your audience to adjust their software for optimal viewing of your slides. For example, you can designate a small area at the upper right corner of the screen and use “speaker view” to show the speaker over the slide. Create a slide that shows exactly how the audience’s screen should look and verify that everyone has the same view. Keep in mind that whatever view you choose will also drive the design of your slides to avoid overlapping with content.

Keep It Simple, But Interesting

Your slide deck needs to capture attention in an environment where it is far too easy to become distracted. At in-person presentations, it would be rude for your audience to look at their phone or have someone’s large German shepherd wander into the room. Over video, these things can happen and can draw attention away from your presentation.

As consultants, we are used to working with our clients to do more with fewer slides, but with the need to keep your audience’s eyes on the screen, a video environment demands that we do less with more slides. Use additional slides to show more images, go into more detail, or show more examples to keep things interesting and moving as a speaker talks through their topic.

In the case of a complex topic, use multiple slides to walk through detailed segments of a process diagram or zoom-in on a specific area of a site plan or aerial photo. Deconstruct an organizational chart or project timeline. Include key words, differentiators, and messaging that you want your audience to hear and remember.

Your first inclination may be to add animations to slides to keep them visually interesting. Conceptually, this works well, however use a series of single, static slides to create movement, rather than adding animation, fades, and other fancy PowerPoint features. This may be considered old school, but in this more complex presentation environment, it can also reduce risk. It allows the deck to be exported and displayed as a PDF, in the case of a technology failure. It also keeps the audience focused on content rather than moving objects.

Finally, remember that your slide deck may become your leave-behind, so design it wisely. For in-person interviews, we are used to creating a variety of leave-behind materials ranging from placemats to marketing booklets and handouts—all beautifully designed and printed on the nicest 32lb paper stock. The new reality is that the slide deck may be the only item we create that lives on after the interview. Adding photos of your team and slides that clearly state your team’s differentiators may help selectors remember the best parts of your presentation and your team’s value propositions.

Create Smooth Transitions

Over video, it is much more difficult to appear seamless and avoid talking over each other. This means that it is even more important to know your content and practice it with your team.

Start with a detailed outline for the presentation that notes main points for each speaker and their slides. As individual speakers develop their content, each should develop “conversational markers” that act as cues for slide and speaker transitions, including lean-ins. If everyone on your team is listening for those conversational markers, they will know what is coming, when to speak, and when to advance the slides. This avoids speaking over each other and wasting time with verbal transitions, such as “John will now talk about design” and “next slide, please.” It requires a commitment to focused practice, but your team will appear much more prepared and coordinated.

Including transitional slides is another technique to cue both your team and the audience through transitions in your presentation. Between each main topic or speaker, insert a slide that punctuates the transition. The slide could be a simple image, a short tagline heading, and/or a headshot of the speaker along with their name and role. An intentional pause while the transitional slide is shown will allow both speaker and audience to orient.

Vitally important to a smooth presentation is the person running the slide deck. This could be anyone on the team, but they must be intimately familiar with the presentation’s content and conversational markers, PowerPoint technology, and the video software. They need to rehearse with the team until everything runs smoothly.

Minimize Technology Glitches

Based on our recent experience, we’ve learned a few things to help avoid technology issues while using PowerPoint during a short-list presentation via video:

• The person running the slide show must have an excellent Internet connection. The ultimate quality of the video will fall on each audience member’s connection, but the source connection should be as good as possible.

• Compress presentation files as much as possible and run them off of your local drive rather than a remote server. If using video clips, test different ways of running them through your PowerPoint slides. You may find that using a local file embedded into the slide works better than a linked YouTube video or vice versa.  

• Test everything on the equipment you will be using for the actual presentation to avoid software incompatibilities, font availability issues, and other last-minute issues. Set PowerPoint to embed fonts and export a copy of your slide show to PDF to avoid panics.

• Have a backup person designated and ready to run the slide show with everything pre-loaded on their system. Make sure the backup person rehearses with the team a few times.

• Consider sending an advance PDF copy of your slide deck to your audience. A PDF can be printed and used for note taking, act as a back-up in case of technology issues, and becomes a leave-behind for decision-makers.

Think Beyond the Slide

In any venue, your content and messaging should always be the driver for your visuals. You don’t want to become enamored of PowerPoint’s fancy features and try to fit your content into bells and whistles. At the same time, you have a literal small window to make a big impact and PowerPoint may be your primary visual tool. Look for creative ways to engage the audience through your slide deck.

If it helps communicate your message, use PowerPoint’s laser pointer to lead the audience through a diagram. Use Zoom’s live drawing tools to show campus connections to the project site or outline programmatic massing. Embed short videos of live sketching, virtual model fly-throughs, or aerial drone flyovers, and use these as relevant backdrops for speakers. There are so many ways to make your presentation more than just a slide show.

Practice Still Makes Perfect

The most important thing is to practice and become comfortable with whatever tools you plan to use. Practice with your team, practice using the technology, and have your backup plan ready.

With strategy, creativity, and intention, we can still be the stars of our presentations as we learn to master this virtual world.

Becoming Closer While Far Apart: Client Research for Enhanced Client Engagement

For many of us, the idealized image of working from home has been replaced by a harsh reality of barking dogs, fighting kids, and questionable internet connections. Fortunately, we’re figuring out how to work in this ‘new normal’. We’re using Teams, Zoom, and other vehicles to connect more regularly with our internal colleagues and our project teams to keep projects moving. In some cases, we’re communicating more often than we did when we were physically collocated; the distance has brought us closer because we’ve had to be more mindful about communicating.

What many of us are missing, though, is similarly mindful and deeper connection with our clients outside of day-to-day projects. As one way to build connection, now is an excellent time to start a program of focused client research, either implemented in-house or with a trained research consultant. As a communication strategist and facilitator of more intentional communication between AEC professionals and their clients, I have some thoughts about how to get started on both an immediate engagement strategy and how to continue that strategy once we are back working in our offices in a new way of engaging.

Understanding the Value of Client Research

The first step in any research program is to consider the value of research as a catalyst for more effective client engagement. A focused performance interview with a client or prospective client takes about an hour, is 100% focused on the client and their perceptions rather than on selling the capabilities or portfolio of the team, and yields a treasure trove of valuable insight that can be immediately integrated into how firms engage with and serve their clients. Clients will tell you exactly how they’re feeling and what they need—we just need to listen.

Get Ready: Develop an Interview Guide

A great research program starts with a well-developed interview guide that contains the right questions and follows a logical flow. With a clear guide, interviews can be conducted by in-house team members or by an outside consultant, both with effective results. I’ve helped several design firms develop interview guides for their own engagement with clients, both for pursuit debriefs and project performance reviews. For example, we helped a national design firm develop an interview guide, and then we trained eight of their internal team members in how to effectively conduct and document interviews. My team and I have also conducted focused performance interviews with clients on behalf of both design and construction firms that yielded critical current perception information these firms can use to inform their engagement strategies.

Get Set: Develop a Target Client List

Concurrent with developing an interview guide, the firm must also develop a list of targeted clients and decide whether they wish to engage in a singular data-gathering engagement or establish a more regular engagement program. This will determine the selection criteria for participation in a study.

Some firms decide to do a one-time gathering of data, selecting a complete list or logical subset of clients over a certain size or of a certain type. Others decide to gather data regularly, selecting a subset of clients to participate in a set number of interviews each month or at key points in the project delivery lifecycle. In fact, most healthy firms create a regular program of client research as a central element of their client engagement and development efforts.

Go! Gather Data

Once you have an interview guide and a client list, you are ready to gather data. If using an outside consultant, make sure to select a team or researcher with two key attributes: the personality to engage clients in a friendly and detailed interview and the industry background to understand what they are hearing to facilitate follow up on fruitful lines of discussion.

I recommend interviewers document the conversation in real time; this results in an incredibly rich set of discussion notes and a detail-oriented write-up that can inform decision-making and discussion by the team and the firm. We’ve learned the value of not only documenting in real time but including a research associate on each of our calls whose sole responsibility is to document. This provides two sets of notes, increases the quality of the final write-up, and enables us to turn around the write-ups much faster to drive discussion within our client organizations.

To Participate, or Not to Participate?

Here’s the question I get all the time: “Will our clients really want to participate in this?” The answer: Yes and no. Clients with which you have strong relationships and who value you as a design or construction professional will participate, and with enthusiasm. Those who see you as a commodity probably won’t. That distinction in itself provides a valuable data point.

For those clients who will participate, the interview and your follow up can be one of the most beneficial relationship-building things a firm can do. When we conduct interviews on behalf of our clients, we ask each interviewee if they’d like to add anything about which they haven’t already been asked (typically at the conclusion of the interview). In at least one in five interviews we do, the interviewee says a variant of the following: “I know XX cares about clients like me because they are asking you to speak to me.” Interestingly, we get this type of comment even from respondents who are otherwise negative about the firm for which we’re gathering data.

The Critical Step: Follow Up and Follow Through

How the firm follows up with their clients and what the firm does with the data gathered are the most important steps in a client research and engagement process. Each interaction in the interview process is an opportunity for enhanced client engagement: at the point in time the client manager contacts the client to ask for interview, in the thank-you note you send to the client for giving you their time and candid feedback, and in the more detailed, focused conversation to follow up from the interview. Make the most of each interaction with timely and sincere engagement.

Firms can also deeply integrate what they learn from the aggregate of clients in their business development, marketing, and project execution strategies. We’ve had clients use what they learn to update their websites and create branded collateral highlighting key strengths or a summary of what they learned from industry-related questions, and to write focused publications about client-directed values and innovations.

Making Lemonade

Our clients who learn negative information from their clients about projects, team members, or reputations have a tremendous opportunity to heal relationships and to learn from experiences to improve performance on future projects. Even if the feedback received seems one-sided or even unfair, our clients learn information they can use to change the optics of a situation or to change how their teams communicate with clients to create more positive outcomes. Again, the value is in what you do with the information you receive.

Key Takeaways:

• Whether you engage in client research using in-house resources or trained consultants, do it. Don’t wait. This is an excellent time to engage with clients through focused interviews. Clients are also feeling disconnected from their project and consultant teams. As a result, a focused program of research – even a small number of interviews – can reinforce a positive relationship with an existing client or keep you and your team top-of-mind for a prospective client.

• Make sure your research process is well-designed and executed using a logical and flowing guide and conducted by a skilled, flexible, and engaging interviewer.

• Document the results objectively, completely, and quickly.

• Send thank-you notes quickly that respond to the client with an attitude of gratitude, regardless of the positive or negative nature of what you learn.

• Follow up strategically, without defensiveness, to build a stronger partnership or to repair a process or a relationship.

• Use aggregate data to review work processes, communication protocols, and the alignment of marketing collateral (websites, proposals, brochures, etc.)

All In

Clients, even busy clients, understand the value of teams learning about how they are perceived and how projects are going. Most clients are grateful for the opportunity to participate and to share their thoughts and ideas. Don’t assume your clients are too busy, and don’t assume that regular client meetings substitute for the opportunity for a client to say what they think and what they need in a non-threatening and engaging conversation. Research has value, and client conversations matter. We don’t have to wait until we can be physically closer again. We can, and we should, build closer relationships right now.

Effective Q&A in a Virtual Interview

The sudden industry shift from in-person interviews to the online realm has fundamentally altered the way that we prepare for and conduct interviews. Rather than agonizing over the details of a physical model or debating whether to distribute tablets for an interactive presentation, we are acutely focused on understanding the constraints as well as the opportunities of our digital space.

As the most interactive portion of a virtual interview, Q&A introduces the greatest amount of variability that a team is likely to experience. However, it also represents the greatest opportunity to demonstrate team cohesion and flexibility in an online environment. The Communication Resources Northwest team has developed a list of best practices, tips, and tricks to help you approach Q&A in a virtual interview.

Listen to the Question

Answering the wrong question is the biggest mistake that teams make. Always remember that it is okay to ask for clarification. Even in timed Q&A sessions, it is better to take a moment to be sure that you are giving the interviewers the information that they want than to give an answer that doesn’t follow the intent of their question.

Listening is hard in any interview, but for some reason, teams are finding it harder in the virtual context. We recommend keeping a sticky note pad and a Sharpie marker close at hand. Write down the gist of the question on a sticky note and stick it to the side of your monitor near the camera lens. This way, you can maintain eye contact with the lens while keeping focused on the question, especially when responding to a complex or multi-pronged question.

Designate your Quarterback

Nothing comes across as more chaotic and disorganized than team members speaking over each other to answer a question. Since you won’t have the ability to cue off of body language to establish a speaking order, it becomes vitally important in a virtual meeting to designate who will take the lead in answering any question that isn’t already directed to a specific team member.

Since you don’t always know what questions to expect, designate a team member to field questions and pass them off to the appropriate subject matter expert. This ‘quarterback’ will generally be one of the primary team leaders, most often the project manager or project executive. They don’t need to address the content of the question (unless they are the subject matter expert); they simply need to verbally designate who on the team will be answering it.

An added advantage of this approach is that the quarterback can give team members a ‘heads up’ that a question is coming their way, allowing them a moment’s pause to outline an answer, perhaps even using sticky notes to post an outline on the computer screen for reference when answering. Again, post the note next to the lens to create the illusion of eye contact while you are referencing your notes.

Stick to Your Area of Expertise

It’s important to stay inside your area of expertise. Many questions are multi-part questions that span multiple topics (scheduling and estimating, or building systems and sustainability, for example) and will need input from multiple team members. The quarterback can keep handoffs organized by identifying which team members will speak to each topic and in which order.

If the quarterback has passed you part of a question, answer simply and directly and then transition the speaking role to the additional subject matter expert to add content relevant to their area of expertise. Or, if you wish to add something, wait for a pause, and then interject. Remember though, what you say must be relevant and additive vs. repetitive. Nothing kills teamwork and makes you look uncoordinated like saying, “I’d just like to reiterate what XX just said….”

Avoid the ‘Endless’ Answer

The ‘endless answer’, sometimes called a pile-on or a hitchhike, occurs when multiple team members interject, leading to an endless loop of often redundant and sometimes irrelevant answers. It’s the quarterback’s job to mitigate this, but every team member should be aware of the ground rules to avoid falling into this trap in the first place.

First and foremost, don’t overexplain, and NEVER pile on. The relevant speaker should provide a simple answer to a simple question. For more complex questions, remember the ‘rule of three’: only up to three speakers per question. The first speaker answers the question, the second speaker adds pertinent information (hopefully after an orderly handoff from the first speaker), and the third speaker can add an interesting—and relevant—illustration.

If you feel that the question was not answered clearly—or worse, if you feel the speaker answered incorrectly—you can wrap it up with a phrase such as, “Let me add a different perspective.” Avoid phrases like “Let me reiterate” or “To restate…” or “What so-and-so was trying to say is”.  A senior leader should be the one to do this vs. just anyone on the team. Remember, just because someone said it differently than you would doesn’t mean they got it wrong.

Maintain Your Grace

In many interviews, the team—or even a specific team member—will get an openly hostile question, asked in a way that is neither fair nor polite. However, encountering someone on a selection committee who doesn’t understand the polite rules of interview engagement is an all too common occurrence. Unfortunately, the impersonal nature of a virtual interview may further enable these types of questions.

Here’s the rule: the more hostile or negative the other person or their question is, the more gracious and charming you become. If a selector asks a question in an inappropriate way, it’s important to remember that the other selectors are likely to be embarrassed by the behavior and potentially sympathetic to you. If you answer in-kind with rudeness or anger, you are validating the person who asked the question. On the other hand, if you are charming, gracious, and kind, you give relief to the other selectors. So, always err on the side of nice. Always.

The ‘Extra Point’

In every question, there is an extra point to be gained. Answer the question directly, and then provide a short, value-add detail or conclusion that pushes your answer to the next level, making it memorable, poignant, and powerful. The speaker answering the question can provide the extra point. Or, the quarterback can provide it as a summary, effectively taking control of the floor back from the team.

Additional Tips & Tricks

The above items are applicable and valuable in both in-person and virtual interviews. The following are a few extra things you can get away with in an interview conducted from behind a screen that will enhance your performance and reduce your stress:

Take notes with pen and paper: Remember that everyone can see you, but nobody can see your screen. While typing notes looks identical to replying to an email, writing by hand suggests that you are engaging with the conversation. Using sticky notes and a Sharpie allow you to jot down a quick item or outline that you can then stick to the edge of your monitor, enabling you to reference your notes while still speaking directly into the camera.

Find the ‘One Thing’: Think about the one thing you would say to win the job and find a way to emphasize it through the interview. Again, sticky notes on your monitor with your key points help keep them in the front of your mind. Write your key point—or points—on a sticky; pull it off when you have ‘scored’ the point.

Watch the ‘Clock’: Disable notifications on your phone and use it as a Q&A timer. Remember, the more questions you can answer the better, so if you find yourself or a team member going too far over time, tighten up and move to the next question.

Practice, Practice, Practice: Did we mention, practice?! Q&A in a virtual interview requires more practice vs. less. Teams must practice together to learn the timing and the flow and to build confidence in the team’s online process. Plan your lean-ins and your illustrations.

Turn off the PPT: If you are using a PPT, and most are, turn it off during Q&A. In both Teams and Zoom, this will make your faces bigger, which enables the client to interact with you more during this important part of the interview.

Be ready with questions: In a virtual interview, we’re finding an increased amount of ‘dead time’. Be ready to ask the audience a relevant and interesting question or two that gets them talking with you about their project.

Don’t forget you’re always ‘on’: Finally, everyone should remember the unique requirements of the virtual interview. Because you are on camera the entire time, be aware of your body language and stay connected to the process. Practice in front of the computer. Don’t write out and read answers; just like in a ‘live’ interview, you need to be fully engaged. Nod your head, pay attention, and really listen. Just because the person speaking isn’t looking right at you, pretend they are. Make sure you are appearing totally focused and interested. Particularly in Q&A, when selectors are watching you and listening intently, this can make the difference to look.

Facilitating Partnering and Project Kick-off Meetings in a Social Distancing World

As facilitators of partnering for projects around the world, our team has developed techniques and strategies for making these meetings impactful to participants as they set a team up for project success. Typically, these meetings have been held in conference rooms, event centers, trailers, and hotels, but the world has clearly changed, and teaming is still critically important, perhaps now more than ever. We can’t stop working on teaming just because we can’t be in the same room at the same time. Fortunately, great facilitators can overcome this challenge.

Embrace Technology
Like many of you, our team has been using Zoom and MS Teams to maintain face-to-face coordination. We meet daily to plan our work, keeping each other apprised of what we’re working on individually and clearly communicating what requires a team effort. Almost hourly, one or more of us are checking in with each other on projects. So, while we miss being in the same physical space, we’ve had more contact with each other because we’re mindful about connecting, and we’re using technology in new and creative ways.

So why can’t we hold a partnering session or a project kick-off meeting via technology? We can. Here are some strategies we are using:

Plan with Intention
Establish a clear, realistic agenda with defined objectives, deliverables, and participation requirements. In a live meeting, you might get away with being flexible or even flying by the seat of your pants as we’ve seen some other facilitators do. In an online environment, you can’t be successful without great planning. Facilitators must be clear, structured, timed, and focused. This doesn’t mean we’re not flexible; it just means we have put the time in to anticipate what our participants need, and we have everything ready and tested to make the meeting successful.

Learn and Leverage Tools
Use the technology to help you do the traditional things we might expect in a partnering or kick-off meeting. Zoom, for example, has a wonderful break-out-room feature. This enables the facilitator to break a group into teams to work on a specific deliverable, establishing clear instructions and time limits. The facilitator can also check in with each team during the breakout to see how they are doing. At Communication Resources, we always use two facilitators on any partnering session because it helps us turn around notes faster. Because of this, we can assign one each to two breakout groups. In our experience, this works better—live or via technology.

We can also use the whiteboard function to write down participant comments and keep a running log for the team. The virtual whiteboard can be used for parking lot issues or even for a team to document the results of their conversations. Creating a real-time, ongoing record of what a team has done and enabling them to see it during the discussions is essential to the flow of a partnering or kick-off meeting.

We can also use linked technology to make our meetings more dynamic. We use an additional camera to enable the lead facilitator to draw diagrams or connect ideas during the discussion. Or, we use the speaker selection in Zoom to highlight who is speaking and make sure everyone can get the benefit of seeing the speaker while that individual is talking about their thoughts and ideas.

We’re excited about some of the more advanced Zoom features, such as polling or the ability to showcase different screens. This way you could show site options to a team, facilitate a discussion, and then even have them vote on different aspects. For example, in a recent in-person partnering session, my colleague, Rowan, and I facilitated a live discussion about team members’ perceptions of their current performance against established success metrics. In an online environment, we can also do this live using the polling feature, showing real-time results from anonymous ‘voting’. Cool, right?

Pairing Technology and Purpose
As we evaluate technology for different types of meetings, we’re becoming more enamored with Zoom and with Teams. Teams is great for smaller meetings of less than five people. This might be great for a kick-off meeting, for example. Teams enables your face tiles to be larger, which reduces the chance that someone is going to be doing something other than engaging in your meeting. However, for larger groups, Zoom is clearly superior as you can ‘see’ more people at the same time, and the technology seems to have more bells and whistles to help the facilitator.

Realistic Schedules
Most things we need to do in partnering can be done in this new environment. But what we can’t do is take a full day in which to do them. So, we’re having to be creative in how we schedule partnering. A kick-off meeting can be done in several focused hours online but partnering just takes longer. In some cases, we’re scheduling a morning and an afternoon meeting; in others, we’re scheduling the meeting across two mornings. There are advantages and disadvantages to both approaches, but any facilitator should be mindful about the goals of the meeting and the attention spans of participants and be creative both with the schedule and with how we choose different engagement strategies.

Remember, the goal of the meeting is NOT to hold the meeting, nor is it to endure time together; the goal of any good partnering session or kick-off meeting is to help team members forge the relationships and build the agreements needed for success. Schedule your meeting appropriately to get the maximum attention from participants and plan your agenda to facilitate maximum connection among them.

Creative Connections
So, now you might ask, “What about the team charter?” We can do that, too. We can create the charter document using a photo from the event (lots of tiles together) and the team statement/agreements. The team can send in virtual signatures, and we can create the charter document. We can even send a signed copy out to everyone at the end of the meeting, both immediately and as part of the partnering notes. This just takes preplanning and coordination. With the virtual backgrounds feature in Zoom, we can even create a common background for all participants, so they sort of feel like they’re in the same place. However, do note that the quality of each participant’s camera determines whether this feature will be effective.

Strategic Preparation
Preparation is clearly key, and our advance work has never been more important because we must get participants ready to engage. This means sending out instructions for using the technology most effectively, our expectations for the meeting, and an agenda.

We use pre-meeting engagement to gather information early to fuel the development of the focused agenda; we’ve found this builds team ownership of the meeting and makes them more ready to work when the meeting starts.  To build camaraderie with our teams, we’re sometimes even sending advance kits to participants that include the things we used to bring with us in person such as snacks, pens, tablets, and anything else to make them more comfortable. The little details still count.

Still in This Together
The most important message here is this: Just because we can’t get together in person right now doesn’t mean we can’t get together. There’s a strong link between project success and both well-facilitated partnering processes and well-developed kick-off meetings. We can use technology to partner at the beginning of a project, and we can continue using technology to keep partnering going. We might even find when we reemerge from our homes into a new normal that some of these processes and strategies change how we keep partnering going for the better.

Feel free to use these ideas when planning your next partnering, kick-off, or team meeting. Or, call us; we’re happy to help.

-The CRNW Team

Delivering Short-List Interviews Via Video

We are entering a new world; one where clients are quickly switching to video tools to keep projects moving forward while adhering to current and changing pandemic guidelines. While things will likely return to “normal” in the future, this is where we are right now, and we need to make the most of it. In fact, if done well, video can become another mainstream tool in our belt for collaborating and working together successfully.

Short-list interviews, in particular, are very different than typical meetings and should be treated as such. Many of the things we do to prepare for and approach a live presentation can be translated to video, however, the video environment brings a new level of complexity and challenges during delivery. While some of us have been using Zoom and working remotely for some time, this is a new world for many. There will be bumps and questions and learning. It will get better. In the meantime, here are some tips that my team put together as we’ve coached clients to win work in this new environment:

Appearance: Dress as you would for an in-person presentation; your appearance still matters. Talk about this as a team and agree on a consistent approach and appropriate level of dress for the client.

Lighting: Make sure that your face is well lit and that lighting levels are consistent across the team. The best lighting is natural light (not direct sunlight) coming from behind your camera. If windows are not accessible, try various lights to determine what works best.

Backgrounds: Zoom and other video conferencing programs allow for image or video backgrounds. These may be preferable to showing the inner workings of everyone’s home office. Choose these carefully. Images should be relevant (project images, sketches, etc.), not too distracting (no video or “wordy-ness”), and have a consistency across the team, including a small company logo in the same place on each. If any words are included (such as name/role), make sure they are readable on small laptop screens.

Audio: Test to make sure your mic is working well. If you’re in a quiet room, leave your mic on, so you don’t forget to turn it on when you need to speak. If you have the potential for loud or unexpected noises in the background, leave you mic muted, but get in the habit of making sure it’s turned on before you speak. Taking the extra second to check is less distracting than having a teammate remind you to turn it on after you’ve started speaking. Consider a post-it note on the edge of your screen as a reminder.

Camera Position: Treat the camera as if it is the eyes of a live audience. Think about where your camera is located and make sure it is not too high or too low, too close or too far, or at an angle—all of which can be unflattering and affect proper lighting. If using a laptop with a built-in camera, prop it up. If using multiple screens, make sure the camera is centrally located, so you can maintain “eye contact” and not turn away during the presentation.

Camera Operation: Leave your camera on for the entire presentation. Turning your camera off is the equivalent of leaving the room. You wouldn’t walk out during the middle of an interview, so don’t do it now.

Self-Awareness: Keep your self-view on, so you can see what you’re doing, especially while others are speaking. It’s easy to fidget or get distracted when you’re alone in your living room. Always remember, you’re live in front of your audience.

Distractions: Eliminate as many distractions as possible, including those on your computer and other devices. Make sure all other programs and windows are closed while practicing, and especially during the presentation, to avoid unnecessary noises or distractions (email/texts coming in).

Technology & Tools: Practice with your technology and be sure you (or at least one person on your team) know all of the ins and outs of the software to respond to any issues during your interview. If you plan to use tools, such as sharing your screen or drawing on the screen during a presentation, be sure you are comfortable and practiced with all the functionalities to minimize mishaps.

Choreography: Video conferencing adds a layer of audio complexity for transitions, which makes it even more important to practice and map out your choreography ahead of time. Knowing when each person is going to speak and take over the audio (or “lean-in”) can help avoid overlap and bumpy audio. With varying network speeds and computer lag, it is best to maintain longer-than-usual pauses in between speakers to ensure there is no audio overlap. Develop and practice verbal cues for speaker transitions. This holds true for Q&A as well. Know who is assigned to each potential topic to answer questions or have a designated “moderator” to hand off topics as they come. Uncoordinated teams will appear even more so over video conferencing.

Delivery: Video audio can be difficult to hear, depending on the quality of equipment and network speeds. Make sure you enunciate and speak very clearly. Pause deliberately between topics and points. Practice with your equipment to make sure that you adjust your voice cadence and pitch to sound as clear as possible.

Supporting Graphics: While it is tempting to resort to PowerPoint slides now that we are all “screen-bound,” keep in mind that you are still trying to make a personal connection. This is even more difficult via video than in person. Slides will certainly be useful in this environment, but consider using only full-screen images, and only a few words per slide (if any). If the software allows, consider instructing your audience at the beginning of the presentation to split their screen, so they can see both the speaker and the slides at the same time. Take control of the environment as much as you can to maximize your effectiveness.

Recording: If your technology has the option, consider recording your session (with the advanced, explicit approval of all participants). This will allow you to review individual and team performance, as well as any nuances to presenting in this format.

Follow-Up: As per in-person interviews, don’t forget to send a thank you email after your presentation. Use the opportunity to reinforce your message, answer any lingering questions (it’s okay to say “I’ll get back to you” during a Q&A”) and briefly clarify points, if needed. Do not become defensive or go into detail trying to explain.

-The Communication Resources Team

The Imperative of Respectful Discourse: A Request to My Colleagues

Today I unfollowed someone on LinkedIn; I’m done reading what this person writes or posts. This unnamed individual once again responded to a post about a political candidate that was unnecessarily petty and mean. It was written at the sophomoric level I might expect of a ‘mean girl’ in high school, without discernment of the place in which they were writing or the diversity of opinions that might exist around the particular topic. Regardless of whether I sometimes actually agree with this individual’s opinions, I think the level of discourse is beneath them and beneath all of us as professionals.

 I read LinkedIn posts to learn about what others are doing, to celebrate with them their work accomplishments, to get ideas based on what other companies (and sometimes competitors) are doing, and to link with my fellow business professionals around issues that impact all of us. I don’t think that I’m in the minority for using LinkedIn this way. LinkedIn should be—like all business communication—civil, open-minded, and considerate of others’ opinions, even—and especially—when others disagree with us.

So, why is this a business issue? Two reasons:

First, I think all of us have to be careful about what we post in this and all business forums. Our clients, colleagues, partners, and work friends will read what we write and form opinions about how we are to work with, how we might respond to sensitive issues on projects, and/or how we might work with others with divergent opinions.

Second, when we write petty, overly partisan, or ‘mean’ comments that are political or socially questionable, we broadcast our lack of sensitivity and our inability to discern based on the nature of the event or context. I’m not sure which of these is worse.

The really awful part of these types of posts, even beyond how they reflect on us personally, is that they can result in others making assumptions about our firms and our teams. Particularly when we hold a leadership position in our organizations or on our projects, what we write and what we say reflects on how others perceive our firms and our teams. For the reader, when they see our titles of president, vice-president, chairman of the board, etc.; it’s reasonable for them to think that we speak for our organizations. It’s reasonable to expect that we speak for our teams. It’s reasonable to expect that we reflect the best of those we represent.

So here’s the ask: Let’s all commit to being mindful of what we say, do, and write. Our world is so divided politically, socially, economically. Though businesses can and do take positions on issues and politics, we can and should be civil and kind in our discourse. We should encourage a diversity of opinions, and we should disagree respectfully.

To the vast majority of my colleagues who communicate sensitively and who steward the impressions others have of our organizations and teams, thank you. LinkedIn is a valuable forum for the open sharing of business news and ideas. I for one would like to see it stay that way. Wouldn’t you?

Thank you.

A Million Miles

This weekend I flew my millionth mile on Alaska Airlines. I’m told this means I’ve flown the equivalent to the moon and back…twice. That’s a lot of flying. The flight attendants congratulated me; candidly, I’m not sure for what. My first reaction is that I’m going to have to up the carbon offset for my contribution to global warming (yes, we should all do this). Despite the wonderful service from our fine folks at Alaska, I’m not in much of a celebratory mood relative to travel. It means long nights, questionable dietary choices, and time away from my husband and dog.

That said, I actually wouldn’t have it any other way. I love what I do, and this career has given me a chance to work on some of the most interesting and transformative projects of my generation. If I could do what I do without flying, though, I’d do it. But, presentation coaching, communication consulting, and facilitation requires face-to-face interaction. It requires connecting at a deep level with my clients, understanding their challenges, and designing strategies and frameworks to help them and their projects be successful.

This year I’ve been fortunate to be a part of teams winning some of North America’s most significant projects, from the largest airport project in the US to transformative new healthcare environments, bridge rehabilitations, a campus innovation building, new schools in communities across the US, and the most beautiful corporate headquarters I’ve ever seen. I’m also leading the transformation of marketing departments, and I’m facilitating strategic message planning for a large multi-dimensional infrastructure team. Our team also just kicked off a new project for a university with a tailored partnering process. Never a dull moment.

So, this job of mine is not without excitement. And, I have been blessed to work with some incredible people who live across the country and around the world. From Toronto to Copenhagen to Los Angeles, and all the places in between, you’ve welcomed me into your offices and your lives. Thank you. Thank you. What flying gives me is the ability to connect and to be a part of your teams and your projects. Ours is a relationship business, and we’re changing the way teams communicate one presentation, one project, one proposal, one team at a time.

So, what’s next? Not sure I’ll make it another million miles, and frankly, the moon can wait. But, I’m also sure there will be more flights in my future, unless of course the transporter Star Trek promised me materializes in the near future. I’m also expanding our team and our reach at Communication Resources with the addition of two new team members to join our small, but talented collective. I’ll introduce them to you in coming blogs, but suffice it to say, we’re growing so I can spend more time in one place, on projects and with teams, building stronger relationships.

What have I learned as I fly around the world? Everyone has a story, and you meet the most interesting people from the center seat. The test of a great airline is not how they treat you in first class, but how they treat the parent with a crying baby. A smile and being told your work matters makes the travel worth it. And, you really can’t take it with you, so pack lightly whether in your suitcase or in your life. And, Alaska, I should probably be congratulating you for making my job easier with understanding, accommodation, and endless cups of tea.

Seeking the Next Home Run: Using Metrics to Change BDM Processes

A huge thank you to all of you who attended SMPS presentations in Napa and Atlanta over the last month and a half. I enjoyed seeing so many friends and industry partners, both new and old. What fun it is to reconnect and remind ourselves that in the often-solitary work of proposals and research, we’re all fighting the same fights and working hard to deliver exceptional results for our respective clients and firms.

Last week I was honored to give the closing keynote at the Atlanta SMPS SERC conference. In a venue overlooking the new Atlanta Braves stadium, I spoke about the need for metrics in AEC business development and marketing. In the season of Spring training (in Mariners’ country, I like to call this the ‘Season of Hope’), linking sabermetrics to what we do in AEC marketing seemed particularly apropos.

The backstory of this presentation was that when my team at CRNW learned I was giving a presentation next to a baseball stadium, I was exhorted to watch “Moneyball” (no challenge there since it stars Brad Pitt) to learn more about sabermetrics (the search for objective knowledge about baseball through analysis of key metrics that enables teams to pick the right team versus invest in a single high-dollar player). The link between baseball and AEC marketing seemed clear. Just as in baseball, where savvy team managers have learned the importance of creating high-performing teams by combining players with the right set of skills under exacting conditions, firms seeking to improve their pursuit hit rates can create a winning combination of team members and conditions.

Part of the problem in making lasting change in AEC marketing is, in my view, the lack of measurable predictive analytics that would enable us to use past behavior/outcomes to predict future success. The problem with many good ideas in both organizations is that we lack the structure to objectively talk about behavior; when we can measure something, it’s easier to track—and talk about—performance. Absent metrics, in fact, many good ideas relative to streamlining work flows, making better go/no-go decisions, reducing the waste in our work, etc. need objective measures to help teams and their organizations make meaningful and lasting change.

I propose our organizations consider several objective measures around which to manage our work. These are still in process, and I’m interested in feedback. However, in an environment focused on lean practices in the design and construction marketplace, it is timely to be considering the use of metrics to guide our work in AEC business development and marketing. While making these metrics purely objective will be difficult, they may be a good start to informing the decision-making and team practices that guide our work in a way that more subjective processes have not.

1. SERR = Strength of Early Relationship at RFP
2. SLPR = Short-List Proposal Ranking
3. SSPE = Speaker Skill Performance Evaluation
4. RRSR = Repeat/Referral Selection Rate
5. ACPM = Average Cost/Presentation Minute

What if we created an easy way to calculate the strength of the existing relationship? This ‘score’ could be used to inform the go/no-go as well as the design of the proposal and the development of a compelling interview. Perhaps by having a metric, firms would value early relationship development more and make it a priority, spending more time and resources in early positioning versus. wasting dollars on chasing work they can’t win.

Strength of Early Relationship at RFP (SERR)

SERR can be calculated using a series of yes/no questions, each awarding a predetermined number of points. I’m still working out the scale, but for consideration, following are some contenders that get us to an easily used five-point scale.

• Have we had a meaningful interaction with key client decision-makers in the last six months? (Yes=2 point; No=0 points)
• Have we been able to discuss the project with the client in a meaningful way before the RFP hits? And/or Did the client invite our team, either exclusively or as part of a select group, to the project? (Yes=1 point; No=0 points)
• Do key members of the client organization know members of our team (those we’d propose for the work) by face and name? (Yes=1 point; No=0 points)
• Has the potential client attended an event/conference, etc. with our team—and interacted with the team there in a meaningful way? (Yes=1 point; No=0 points)

I suspect that if firm leadership created a simple five-point scale using the questions above—or your own—and tracked them rigorously against both the conversion rate (proposal to short-list) and hit rate (presentation to award), they might realize the value of investing in client relationships as precursor to pursuits. While anecdotally, most leaders know the value of relationship development, but nonetheless push to pursue projects that are marginally winnable even with exceptional proposals and/or presentations. Perhaps by using data, even an imperfect scale, leadership would either push for greater investment in relationships or make fewer ill-advised go decisions.

Short-List Proposal Ranking (SLPR)

SLPR is fairly simple, relating to how proposals are ranked in the field of pursuit contenders. While oftentimes this is difficult to determine in the midst of a pursuit, when asked after-the-fact, many selectors are willing to disclose the ranking. In fact, if selectors are told why a firm wants the data (to track ROI and evaluate go/no-go decisions), I suspect many more might be willing to provide this information, even if just for the requesting firm.

Having not gathered this data industry-wide, I can only use conjecture from the thousands of interviews my firm has completed with owners across our almost 30-year history. It seems that a proposal that is ranked more highly  in the short-listing process has a greater likelihood of resulting in a team’s win. Of course, there may be a slew of intervening factors at play: skills and experience of the team, relevance of the portfolio, approach to the work, etc. However, I suspect that better written, more complete, and more visually compelling proposals outrank their lesser counterparts more often than not.

In our interviews, I frequently hear from selectors who commit the hours it takes to really read a firm’s proposal. While in competitive environments that yield more than a dozen proposals, reading every word may be impossible, it appears many selectors take their jobs as reviewers seriously and seek to honor the investments made by submitting firms. That said, savvy firms use every strategy to make proposal review easier, including design, organization, and emphasis, both visually and in the writing itself.

Speaker Skill Performance Evaluation (SSPE)

SSPE refers to the skills of individual speakers. While the combined skills and chemistry of a team is more important—most of the time—than an individual speaker, speaking skills do matter. Owners needs to have confidence that individual speakers can represent the project to stakeholders, constituents, regulators, etc. And, the selection of a team is a statement of confidence by a selection committee that the selected firm and its team leadership reflect the aspirations and values of the selecting institution.

While a talented coach can bring out the best in any speaker, nothing beats a team of skilled and competent speakers able to focus on content and creative, dynamic delivery versus remedial skill building. High-value speakers for any team are those who are skilled in vocal and non-verbal communication (posture, movement, sound), can develop differentiating and well-organized content, and can deliver extemporaneously and conversationally across contexts.

SSPE could be used to both evaluate individual speakers to enable earlier skill development and could help leaders balance speaker skills across a slate of presentation participants. For example, I could use the following analytics:

• Ability to self-develop relevant and well-organized content
• Ability to deliver content in compelling and conversational manner
• Ability to work as part of an integrated speaking team
•  Ability to adapt to changing interview conditions/requirements
• Ability to present information clearly in an impromptu setting (relevant to Q&A)

If each potential participant were evaluated on a five-point scale, we could track the development of an individual over time, we could determine the right combination of speaker skills that more frequently lead to team success, and we could even balance skills/strengths across team members on a single speaking team.

More importantly, however, I offer the idea of an SSPE metric as a development tool, highlighting the skills speakers need to bring to the interview. This should spur their organizations to value professional development and growth. Effective speakers have both content development and delivery skills. Potential team members need training in both types of skills, as well as regular opportunity to practice. Because speaking skills are 100 percent learned behavior, future interview participants need regular, frequent, and endorsed opportunities to practice their craft, building confidence and competence over time.

Repeat/Referral Selection Rate (RRSR)

RRSR refers to the win rate on projects for repeat or referral clients. While many firms track their repeat/referral work, few track their pursuits in this context. To state the obvious, the win rate for this type of pursuit should be very high. In both politics and pursuits, it’s hard to beat a well-regarded incumbent. Unfortunately, for many teams, they are not maintaining strong client relationships at the very time they have the greatest access to their client. A low win rate for repeat/referral clients suggests problems in project execution and/or ineffective relationship development or management.

Calculating RSR should be relatively easy and objective. Categorize each pursuit into one of two ‘buckets’: Clients for whom we have performed similar work or related projects within the previous ten years. Clients for whom we have no previous work/contractual relationship. Calculate both your firm’s conversion rate and hit rate for both types. If firms are doing all they should to build and maintain strong relationships with existing clients, the conversion and hit rate should be significantly higher for repeat clients.

Some firms are clearly better than others in developing and maintaining strong relationships with their clients, both during the project and after completion. During the project, firm leadership should make relationships a priority, setting aside time and resources for regular check-ins and, when necessary, course corrections. After the project is over, clients with whom a firm wishes to maintain a strong relationship should also be prioritized, with champions assigned and performance managed. Unfortunately, for most of us, while we are fully engaged during the project, making time for relationship management after the project is challenging. Successful firm leaders empower their team members to maintain relationships and, in some cases, reward them for keeping client relationships strong and relevant.

I believe all firms should have a robust client research program to identify issues, inform both macro and micro project and client decisions, and enable leadership to make course corrections in processes, tools, and even teams. If well-designed and implemented by mature internal champions, client perception programs can be managed in-house. Firms can also look to external resources for objective and timely data gathering and reporting.

Average Cost/Presentation Minute (ACPM)

Finally, the metric I use most often to inform my work as a presentation coach is ACPM.  While the rest of the metrics above deal with broader issues of positioning, go/no-go decisions, professional development, and client retention, this metric is useful for changing behavior in a single interview. From a utility standpoint, I find this one the most useful for transforming how teams and individual speakers evaluate content and make decisions relative to emphasis, timing, and visuals.

For larger firms spending bid dollars on significant pursuits, the ACPM across presentations is often staggering, upwards of $3,500 per minute (average length of an interview = 30 minutes; average cost of a major pursuit = $100,000). For smaller firms or different markets, this number is, of course, lower, but even considering a range of $1,000 to $3,500 highlights the importance of a single minute. I use this metric to emphasize the value of what each speaker says in each minute, usually in an attempt to move speakers off of reminding a client why they are excited (or passionate or committed) about the project or away from spending multiple minutes reminding a client of their firm’s history.

If every minute in the interview is valued the sameand each has a high value—then team members should make better decisions about content and delivery. Teams and team members should embrace lean in their development and delivery, eliminating waste and maximizing value. By stripping out the content that is low impact and by honoring the firm’s investment in the presentation by coming to each meeting prepared and practiced, team members reduce the cost per minute and return value to their firms by way of a higher hit rate.

Leading Effective Change

After nearing three decades in the industry, I think it’s time to rethink how we encourage firm leadership to change entrenched and ineffective pursuit processes. Anecdotal evidence of the efficacy of different strategies suggests the strategies I’ve outlined above work. However, using objective and quasi-objective pursuit metrics, tracked over time, would enable firm leaders to see how changed behavior impacts the hit rate and ultimately, the bottom line. Pursuit metrics can enable firm leadership to see the impact of changes in both processes and behaviors.

Just as sabermetrics transformed how many ballclub managers think about baseball, our firms may be able to use pursuit metrics to change how our leaders and our teams think about pursuits. Star players will continue to be valued across organizations, but in the long season of both baseball games and AEC pursuits, finding the right combination of players and strategies across games can be a more effective strategy in the long run.

Roses in the Vineyard: Marketers as the Vintners of Pursuit Health

This week, I’m thrilled to present some new ideas about proposals and presentations to my clients and colleagues at the SMPS Pacific Regional Conference in Napa. Given the location, there are a lot of presentations, mine included, using a wine theme. But, that’s okay; wine works….for so many things.

Going through high school in eastern Washington, I came to love the dry, arid climate and the rolling hills, many of which are now covered by vineyards. What I didn’t know at the time is these nascent vineyards would grow the Washington wine industry into the second largest in the country (behind California) and producing some of my favorite wines (thank you, Leonetti Cellars!).

If you’ve been wine tasting, and I highly recommend you do (note: this is different than the celebratory bottles we open and guzzle sip at the conclusion of a particularly difficult proposal), you’ll notice something interesting about vineyards. In many vineyards, at the ends of the rows of vines are rose bushes, beautiful spots of color in the palette of brown and green.

I actually worked as a grape harvester for a season in college (best job….ever!), and I do know that few things in a wine making operation are purely for aesthetics. Roses in vineyards serve multiple functions. Yes, they are beautiful, but they were originally planted as early harbingers of disease and because they both attract bees for pollination and provide habitat for beneficial bugs.

These roses are a lot like marketing professionals. As marketers, we don’t create the technical content, but we do ensure our firms are set up for success in the BD/Marketing process, create compliant and compelling content in proposals and presentations, and coach our teams toward many a project win.

So what makes a great wine? I’m not a connoisseur, but my mother used to make wine in the basement, so I’m practically an expert. Fine wine comes from good grapes grown under favorable conditions under the nurturing of a talented vintner who coaxes the right mixture of flavors through careful additions and an exacting process. Sounds like most successful pursuits I’ve been involved with in the past 35 years.

The right grapes are the right team members who bring the right portfolio to win – and deliver – the project. They have knowledge of the project and the client’s needs; they are passionate about the project type, the client, and/or the delivery method. They bring strong writing and/or speaking skills, and they are coachable, able to work as part of a well-choreographed team. When we don’t have good ‘grapes’ it’s almost impossible to create a winning proposal and/or presentation. Firms that are thoughtful about matching people and portfolio and who value training, professional development, and coaching are ones that consistently deliver the right ‘grapes’ to the pursuit process.

The right climate is a supportive organization that values performance in the proposal and interview; leaders choose pursuits carefully in a rigorous Go/No Go process, and always choose investing in developing quality pursuits over quantity. Markers support a favorable climate by providing project, client, and context research. Team leaders participate in early client engagement. The firm values industry and targeted positioning to establish the optimal climate for a future win.

The right additives can make a difference in the success of a pursuit. While I was surprised to learn about the addition of beet sugar to up alcohol content or the introduction of sulfur to control wild yeasts, it makes sense. Sometimes having the right grapes isn’t enough. We’ve all worked on pursuits where we struggled to get a talented team of the right experts to deliver the content and/or the delivery required for a strategic win. Over the years, I’ve learned the value of being an outside coach and the importance of partnering with internal leadership to ensure consistent and quality engagement by team members. And, sometimes the best addition to the mix is the meaningful engagement of one of our outside consultants or subcontractors who bring a perspective from outside the organization.

The vintner is the presentation coach and/or pursuit champion. As a coach, I’ve been honored to work on multiple winning pursuits. In fact, as I write, I was just notified of a $40 million win with a talented team of contractors who eagerly embraced a rigorous, creative way to design and deliver strategic content (yea, team!). However, as much as I  love to help winning teams, at this stage in my career, I’m enjoying transferring coaching knowledge more, creating vintners in many of my client organizations who are able to distill content from their teams, helping their proposals and interviews be both compelling and compliant.

So, to all you roses out there: What marketers do is critical to the success of a high performing organization. We aren’t window dressing, and we don’t just create ‘pretty’ proposals. Our work creates the climate for a successful pursuit; our care of the team during the critical stages of message ‘ripening’ creates the quality experience our audiences expect.

This conference and the SMPS organization is great fertilizer for me – and I hope for my marketing colleagues – to share ideas, give and receive support, and be inspired. I’m looking forward to presenting, listening, learning, and drinking some wine as we celebrate the pursuit roses in our marketplace.

Moving Through Writer’s Block

At some point in our professional lives, each of us will experience some form of writer’s block – or speaker’s block, and it will be painful, fattening, and unproductive. Sometimes our block comes from being too busy as in “I’ve been too busy to even think about a blog much less write one,” or because we don’t know what to write as in “I don’t understand what they’re asking for in this RFP,” or because we just don’t want to write what we’ve been asked to write as in “Surely someone with more background in this topic can figure this out…”

So, what’s a talented, but blocked professional to do? After you’ve raided the kitchen and eaten half a package of Oreos (a tactic I’m not proud to admit trying on more than one occasion), following are some more productive, and certainly healthier, alternatives. These strategies are not designed to create a superior document, but rather to get a writer started by having content to consider and evaluate. Sometimes they result in a working draft for a document, other times in a more logical exploration of ideas I can use to frame a future document.

Just do it. This is not an attempt to parody a Nike ad, but rather the truth. In a book I just read, when faced with an epic challenge, the protagonist recognized that ‘the only way through it is through it.’ I use this a lot, recognizing that as much as I don’t want to write a document, the only way I’m going to get started is if I actually get started. Sounds simple, and in reality, it is, but it seems so hard.

Write the first line, then the second, then….and see where you are after you’ve written for a while. Don’t worry about the quality of each sentence, nor if each sentence flows seamlessly from its predecessor. Just write.

Let’s be clear, this will not transform you from blocked writer to ‘great American novelist.’ Rather, it will simply get some ideas down so you can see them. Being on paper doesn’t mean good or done; it just means you’ve got something written on paper. The result of this exercise is what we politely call a ‘visual brainstorm’ or a ‘data dump.’ You are free to fill in another metaphor more appropriate to what you actually write down.

You can also start with a topic sentence (sometimes called a ‘central claim’) that synthesizes your content into a single statement of truth as in “Because today’s employees can work from anywhere, we must design workspaces that are both flexible and accommodating.” Then, ‘draw’ content pathways from your claim to see where the content takes you. Different from traditional brainstorming, this method of breaking through writer’s block pushes you to consider different directions on a topic without investing significantly in any one path.

Conducting this exercise on the computer is fast, enabling me to quickly spew a range of ideas upon the page from which I can pick and choose. I can quickly visualize what I know–and sadly, sometimes what I don’t know –to ‘prime the pump’ for the real writing to come. I’ve also found it useful to engage in this exercise on a whiteboard or large sheet of paper, physically drawing links between ideas, crossing out those that don’t bear fruit, and expanding others. As a visual learner, I find the combination of a large board and different colors of pen spurs my creativity and enables me to see linkages and content ideas or direction that I couldn’t see on the computer screen.

Whatever method you choose, a visual brainstorm will show you a pattern of content from which you can develop a logical outline for writing better content. Or, it will help you realize that you don’t know enough to write what it is you’ve been asked to write. This either means that you’ve got a wrong topic, or that you’re the wrong person to be writing about it. For example, when recently asked to write a proposal section for a client, it took me starting a section before I realized that the client hadn’t supplied me with the information I needed to complete the assignment. I wouldn’t have realized that until I actually applied ‘pen to paper’ (or in my case, fingers to keyboard). Only by getting started can you realize what you know and what you don’t know.

Even for those of us who write for a living, writers block happens, and when it happens, it can be professionally challenging and personally frustrating. There are no surefire ways to prevent it, but there are ways to work through it.

For me, there’s a quote from one of America’s greatest writers, Maya Angelou, that pushes me forward, “What I try to do is write. I may write for two weeks ‘the cat sat on the mat, that is that, not a rat.’ And it might be just the most boring and awful stuff. But I try. When I’m writing, I write. And then it’s as if the muse is convinced that I’m serious and says, ‘Okay. Okay. I’ll come.’”

New Year, New Commitments - You In?

In response to the ill political winds of the previous year, Communication Resources committed to donating a significant amount of staff time to charitable and community causes in 2017. When we made our commitments, I promised to write about what we did, so in the spirit of keeping that part of our 'deal', I’m reflecting on what we did last year and where we still need to go in the coming year.

Our volunteer work and giving this year focused on programs that support community and enhance family and social connections.

Interactive installation at the BattleGround Public Library: A conversation between parents and Kids.

Our team donated almost 100 hours to Battle Ground’s Prevention Alliance to support a broad-based community outreach campaign designed to encourage kids and parents to talk about drug and alcohol abuse. Noah Pylvainen led our efforts for the Alliance, designing the Talking Points campaign to spur positive conversations among teens and parents. The campaign included a broad range of collateral materials and support of several of the Alliance’s community events. Research has found kids who learn about the effects of drugs and alcohol from their parents are 50% less likely to use drugs or alcohol than those who do not. Talking Points is designed to make these conversations easier and more regular.

Our team also continued our long-term support of Housing Hope in Snohomish County. Housing Hope has created a successful model based on stable housing that moves families into economic sustainability. Laine Potter continued her years-long work with the organization that started with rocking babies and where she now serves on HH’s Resource Development Council. Our entire team assisted by providing time and dollars to support annual fundraising programs. Mike and I were also pleased to be a part of the original investment team for the HopeWorks Station project in Everett as it moves from concept to reality in the coming year.

In 2017, we exceeded our time and resource commitment. But, more importantly, what’s next? After this year, we learned how hard it is to sustain charitable giving and volunteering over the long haul, particularly as we serve clients and ‘feed’ our growing practice. Community giving takes a dedicated focus and team members who are willing to champion our efforts.

This year, I’m committing to continuing our efforts on behalf of local organizations and causes that support both communication and community. Internally, we’re going to talk more about charitable giving and volunteering, and we’ll make both a more regular part of staff discussions. And, I’m designating a team champion to coordinate all of our efforts. It’s not enough to make the commitment; we need to designate the time and develop the internal infrastructure to support that commitment.

At a time when corporations are given tax breaks while private citizens are hurting, all of us who own businesses need to either step up or continue to step out in front of community giving. So, here’s our commitment and (in the spirit of the week’s political tweetstorm), my challenge for 2018:

I’ve got a ‘charitable giving button’ on my desk that I’m going to push frequently to support important programs in our state and our community. It’s huge, and it works! We’ll give the value of 40 hours/ full-time employee this year to our community. I challenge each of my colleagues across the industry to do the same. Let’s see what we can do together to support the communities in which we work and live. Game on!

A Tale of Two Emails

I received the nicest email yesterday afternoon. The email was a form ‘letter’ from a State of Washington agency to which my team and I had submitted a proposal. The short note thanked me for submitting, acknowledged how much work the proposal had certainly taken, and apologized for a delayed decision. It provided a date when the decision would be made and let me know what to expect in the process. For some reason, this short note made me feel good, that my work mattered, and that the man at the other end of the email really did care about the impact his words and his agency’s actions have on my organization. Uncharacteristically, I actually sent a short reply thanking him for his email and letting him know his ‘nicety’ had made a difference in my day.

Compare this to the email I received this morning. This email was another mass email asking me to submit a proposal to a local county for a project that looked quite enticing. The difference is that we aren’t interested in responding for this project—or for any project with this agency. About a year ago, my team and I submitted another proposal. We’d made the requisite phone calls, researched the project, wrote a responsive proposal, and even drove out to the peninsula from our office in Mill Creek (a four-hour round-trip journey) to hand deliver it.

It wasn’t the fact that we weren’t selected that bothered me and caused me to hit delete after reading today’s email. What still ‘sticks in my craw’ is the officious and cold letter I received almost six weeks after we submitted our proposal after I’d left a voice message requesting information about project status. Despite this individual having sent me a personal email asking me to submit, having had several conversations about his agency’s interest in working with us, I received a form letter, not addressed to me nor even coming to my email but delivered to our info@ address. The letter was brief and to the point, letting ‘to whom it may concern at Communication Resources’ know that we had not been selected for the ‘aforementioned project’. I decided then and there that I’d hit ‘delete’ any time an RFP or request solicitation came from this individual or agency.

How we deliver information matters and how we make requests matters. Having served in both City and County government, I’m very aware of the time constraints on public servants. I’m also keenly aware as a consultant how much time and effort goes into the average proposal, even those when a procurement officer has tried to make the process as easy as possible. The average proposal, even a short one takes an organization 50—100 hours to analyze, write, edit, design, proofread, and produce a document that will be responsive to the prompts, reflect the character and quality of your organization, and that respects the unique nuances of the project. That’s about $10,000 for a small organization, much more for a larger organization on a more complex project.

For most of my A/E/C clients, the average cost of a proposal is between $20,000 and $50,000. For any sized organization, this does not count the cost of business development, industry outreach, collateral development, and the maintenance of an overhead function within the organization. With overworked marketing departments, principals writing into the wee hours of the morning to get proposals out between client and project requirements, and ever challenged budgets, two things must happen: our firms need to get smarter about what we pursue and our clients need to be more thoughtful about what they ask for and who they ask.

I’ve written and spoken before about making effective Go/No Go decisions as being the most important thing any organization can do to positively influence its hit rate. Today, however, my message is more direct: I think we need to augment our Go/No Go decisions to consider the ways in which our potential clients procure work and make requests for proposals or bid. We need to push our clients and potential clients to consider the cost of the pursuit and the adverse impact on businesses that their actions in the procurement process may have.

I have three requests to potential clients, particularly those in the public sector:

1. Take time to write your RFP document in a way that is clear, concise, and direct. Only request information that you need to make a good decision. Read your document and ask yourself how much time it would take your agency—and you in particular—to respond to this request. Read it again to make sure the requested information is not redundant and that the prompts are clear to the reader as to what exactly you request. Align your page limitations to the realities of the questions you’ve asked. Simply asking for a ten-page proposal is not enough; you have to limit the questions to enable a writer to fit what you’ve asked for in that space.
2. Only short-list firms you really would consider for the work. And prior to that, don’t lead a marketer or firm principal on who calls you for information, wanting to know if their firm or team might be competitive. I know there are procurement rules that limit what you can say. But, make sure the RFP and your comments about the RFP make it really clear what you will and what you won’t accept as minimum qualifications.
   For example, I’ve worked with smaller construction firms struggling to get noticed in my state’s relatively new GC/CM procurement environment (Washington State’s version of construction management at risk procurement). They’d been encouraged by friendly procurement representatives to throw their hat in the ring, told that indeed their negotiated work portfolio would be enough, only to find out in the debrief that their lack of specific GC/CM experience kept them from being awarded the work. This after spending tens of thousands on the proposal and another huge sum on the interview.
3. And, when you must write the inevitable letter or email telling a firm they have not been awarded the work, be specific, gracious, and kind. Thank the firm for taking the time and making the investment in the pursuit. Address the individual who signed the proposal letter directly and make sure the firm’s name is spelled correctly. Acknowledge the significant effort of the people who wrote the response and participated in the interview. Remember, you may not have selected this team or firm for the current project, but you want them, and their colleagues from other firms, to consider your agency for future pursuits.

If agencies really do support small business, and business in general, they will think carefully about the incredible expense it takes to compete for their work. And, they will align their practices to truly be supportive of those businesses. While my requests may not make a difference, I hope they get read by an owner or procurement officer or two. I think it’s time for agencies and organizations to recognize that it is in their best interests to rethink their procurement practices, returning to a more intentional way of asking for proposals or presentations and a more gracious way of doing business.

My clients and colleagues, and my own team, need to remember that the way we are treated in the procurement phase is likely a good predictor of how we will be treated when working on the project. For example, my team and I are working for a wonderful client in the Seattle area, one who values our team’s work and who reminds me on a regular basis that we are a valued part of their team. I think back to what happened in the procurement process. What sticks out is when my team delivered the proposal to the front desk, the security guard called up to the main office and the Director of Operations came down personally to thank my team for submitting. He was charming and gracious. In the interview process, the selection committee was welcoming and interested, and they had carefully read our proposal. How they were in the selection process paralleled exactly how they are to work with on projects.

I’m certain most agencies and organizations want highly qualified teams and firms to compete for their work. So, as teams, we need to be more selective, not just for the project for which we complete but the people who make the request who are the first and most visible representative of the culture of the organization. I’m advising my clients, and my own organization, to make the procurement practices of the agencies with which we work matter a great deal in our business development and marketing decisions.

So, let me send an anonymous shout out to the representative who sent me the nice email about the status of your agency’s procurement process—and who is very likely not reading this blog. (I’ll send it to you after you make a decision.) Thank you for being gracious. Thank you for writing an incredibly clear RFP document, one that minimized our time and maximized our ability to think creatively about your work. Thank you for keeping us informed. As of this writing, I don’t know if we’ll get the chance to work together, but I do know that my team really wants to work with you and your team—as much for how you treated us in the marketing process as for the scope of your project.