Sometimes with the best of intensions we steer our ships into disharmony...
And, then we must embrace the "IS", the TRUTH and redirect...
t has been brought up by several people several times... and I apologize for not reacting sooner.
In the spirit of being “transparent and clear”, I always talk about our business DIVISION by DIVISION.
While that rationally makes sense, it also creates a:
- WE/THEY breakout for every company conversation
- A competitive, all be it generally healthy, “who’s doing better” mentality
- A dialogue that speaks to us as “4 little companies” instead of ONE big one.
SO, I think Gus, Ron and many others are correct and we MUST change how we talk about the company TO the company. At Town Halls, in Company Emails, and in general conversations about “How is the company doing?”, I am no longer going to talk in divisions or division by division. And, I am asking you to do the same.
Let’s instead talk about the ONE company, how it is doing in a single thought… “growing the top line, flat on the bottom line – we need to keep our focus on accountability and profitability. We are focussed on selling more of our services to all of our clients, and raising our value from being a report provider to our client’s partner in assessments and project management.”
Whatever the sentiment is – I will be talking as ONE company.’ And, it is ok and appropriate to talk about PARTS of our business in terms of SERVICES and MARKETS… “We are working to grow our ADA services” (not our AM or PM division). “We are seeing great growth in being able to help our clients execute projects.” (not our PM division is kicking ass). “The CMBS market is down and that affects our Phase Is and PCA sales.” (Not our Transactional Divisions are down). We can speak to OUR business – our services, our clients our markets… but let’s not speak to our DIVISIONS – when talking to internal or external groups about the health of our company or our company narrative.
We want people to know how we are doing as a company and to understand how we can do better without creating a narrative that divides our minds and our company into 4 parts.
Two important details:
IMPORTANTLY, we will continue to look at the financials by Division as part of our monthly reviews. We are built financially by divisions and need to optimize the numbers by divisions to optimize the numbers for the company. But we will do that only in Executive meetings.
We should ABSOLUTELY share EACH DIVISIONS GOALS with EACH DIVISION. It is expected and necessary for each division to KNOW their goals, objectives and metrics. In discussions with Program Managers, with SECs, or with Divisional Leaders – the Divisional goals and actuals should be an IMPORTANT part of that conversation.
I/We don’t want to be constantly comparing divisions against divisions. We want to be optimizing our own division (if I am in one), and I want to be optimizing the company’s results.
How we talk is how we think, and how we think is how we talk.
My narrative is a big part of the problem. And, my narrative is changing effective immediately. Please help me (and help us) continue to grow as ONE!
in harmony,
Nestor