This Blog is on Hiatus (and on the move)

I have put this blog on hold while I redesign my web site and look for ways to integrate my blogging efforts into my main site at Best Training Practices.

Thanks.

Are Employees Really Smarter than Executives?

Most of the projects that clients hire me to design and develop end up being delivered one time, to any given employee. (They may be offered multiple times to catch everyone, but each employee only goes through the training once.

They can't see the value of repeating their messages as often as they should, which is ironic, because in many of these companies, the executive team gets a lot of help from consultants, and most of that help goes over the same principles again and again.

Now, I think most of these executives think they are a little smarter than their average front-line employee, and they certainly think they are more determined to enhance their contribution to the company's performance.

So if they are so smart, why does it take constant repetition for executives to modify their behavior, while front-liners are supposed to hear or see something once, and immediately adopt best practices with optimal performacne and no backsliding?

The language we use for these two situations certainly provides some clues. The employees get "training," but the executives get "coaching."

I still can't figure out much difference, except that coaching is a long-term, frequent-contact type of training. Some would say that training is telling people what to do, while coaching is helping them to figure it out. But in truth, coaches do a lot of telling, too . . . including telling the people they are coaching how to figure out what they want to, or should, do.

I don't think the employees are any smarter, or any less so, compared to executives. And I know their performance would benefit enormously from repeated messages.

So we probably have to look elsewhere for explanations. Perhaps the executive team doesn't want to invest any more than they have to in trainng employees. After all, training is one of the first things to take a hit when times get tough.

It seems likely that 1) top management has never really thought about this comparison; 2) they overestimate the costs of providing more frequent training (which could be in smaller chunks, and 3) they underestimate the return on investment in doing training better. (In fact, they tend to underestimate the return on infestment in training their employees, period.)

In teaching, we often assume that the brightest students will learn how to do things with less time and individual attention than their less perceptive classmates. But move into the corporate training environment, and suddenly we have we think the opposite approach applies.

No wonder employees so rarely carry out the strategic vision of executive management as well as they might!

Overcoming the Cons of Freelancing

In my previous post, I highlighted some of the cons of the freelance life (inspired by a Nick Usborne newsletter article).

After all, there are so many sites and articles and other sources extolling the wonders of freelancing, of being self-employed, that a lot of good employees probably feel guilty just because they don't work for themselves!

But freelancing is not for everyone, which is what Nick was pointing out. My reaction was that sometimes people try freelancing, discover they aren't happy with the life, and give up. And some of the most common frustrations that I pointed to included the amount of work it takes to run your own business, the loneliness you can experience, and the challenges (and fears) of marketing yourself.

All of these frustrations stem from the same common confusion, that "working for yourself" means "working alone." Most freelancers can't even imagine where "delegation" fits in their business, yet that's exactly what they need.

Add to that some external advice, a few trusted sounding boards, and you may discover an entirely different "freelance life" from the one you have been struggling with.

Here's one way to look for help. Imagine that you're an employee in a fairly large company again, except that the company's business, market, etc. are exactly what you are trying to do as a freelancer.

Ask yourself two questions:

1. What parts of the company's business that directly or indirectly affect you would typically be handled by someone else?
2. Who else would listen to your ideas, suggest better methods, or alert you to resources you need?
   

Answers to the first question might include routine mailings, billing clients for work, archiving past projects, scheduling travel and meetings, and technical support for your computer system. Answers to the second would include managers, colleagues, and people from other departments who are part of the process of delivering a service, creating a product, or capturing a customer.

Now, look at all of those things as opportunities to get someone else involved in your work (and not all for pay, either). Hire a virtual assistant, or contract tech support. Develop a brainstorming network -- no selling! -- with people who are not only in your business, but people who are in other markets or functions. (Sometimes a writer and a graphical designer see things in one another's work that a fellow writer or designer will miss.)

Building a team of subcontractors and associates will decrease your work load, reduce your loneliness, give you new ideas (and refine the ones you come up with yourself), and give you the support you need to tackle challenges like marketing.

There's a best of both worlds approach, between freelancing and employment, if you look for it.

The Cons of Freelancing

I'm a freelance training developer, and you're probably either currently a freelancer, or someone exploring the freelance life.

Trouble is, a lot of freelancers tend to pay attention to mainly people just like ourselves. We read their blogs, exchange ideas on various fora, get ideas for growing our businesses from people who are doing what we're doing.

Nick Usborne recently reminded us that there's nothing special, or more virtuous, or worthier, about being a freelancer. It's a matter of fit, and an awful lot of that fit has less to do with skills and abilities, and more to do with lifestyle and execution.

Nick runs a site called Freelance Writing Success, and puts out a newsletter that mostly goes to freelancers and freelancer wannabes. He recently posted his thoughts, heretical as they may be, on "Is the Freelance Writing Life for You?" (Note: although Nick talks to his audience as writers, most of what he has to say applied to freelance content developers of any kind, including people in the training and employee communications field.)

Besides busting the myth that freelancers are automatically better at what they do than are employees, he actually suggested that freelancing might not be for everyone!

His article lists both pros and cons of the freelance life. But if you're looking at going freelance, you've probably seen lots of the pros. In addition to Nick's cons, I'd highlight the following as the biggest challenges, what I see in people who aren't happy out on their own:

• It's a lot of work. A Lot! Think of all the things that someone else handles for you in a large corporation (phone and internet service, tax withholding, a lot of marketing and contact management, "billing" for your services), and then do them all yourself.
• It can be lonely. Some people never realize how much they miss bumping into people around the office, those random conversations outside of formal meetings.
• It's scary. There aren't too many things that will get you fired from a "real" job, but there are lots of ways you can end up with few customers, and little income, on your own.
• Marketing is a major challenge for most of us. Taking the initiative to identify prospects and ask them for business is something that just isn't second nature to most people. That's why good salespeople should be rightly respected as specialists, but every freelancer has to do sales.

My main piece of advice for the wannabe freelancer, or the freelancer who is unhappy with his/her situation? Freelance conditions aren't either-or. You don't have to either be lonely or be in an office, you don't have to either work for a large company, or handle all the billing details yourself.

In my next post, I'll suggest some ways to keep the pros in your freelancing and overcome these cons.

Hard Choices

I recently got an urgent call from a client who needed some fast, but in-depth, work. His company had generated a pile of survey data from various functions within a crucial business process, and they were on a very tight schedule to present some clear conclusions and recommendations for action to the board of directors.

I only had a few days, over a holiday weekend to boot, to tackle this stuff. The short version of the story is that I decided I could pull it off (if I didn't want to sleep too much), that I would have to charge them higher rates because of the timing considerations, and I got the job done.

But it reminded me that sometimes business comes along that offers some tough choices:

1. I could, as I did, say "yes." This is what we usually do, because we hate to turn down any business, and because we always think we can get things done faster than is really the case.
2. I could, very reasonably, have said "no, I can't possibly do it." Besides the pressures of the holiday weekend, I might have just decided I couldn't get it done (I barely made it, and I'm pretty fast at this stuff).
3. I could have said "no" on the grounds that I couldn't do a decent job. Now, in that situation, I might have told the client that I simply couldn't fit it into my schedule at all. But my decision would really be based on the fact that I would not be able to do it well in the time allotted. Poor work doesn't help my client, and doesn't satisfy me, and there is no sense in running your own business if you're going to get involved in projects you can't be proud of.
4. "Yes, but . . ." I could have negotiated partial results. That is, I could have said that I would take on the project, but spelled out what I could do for them. I would give them less than they would get if I had a longer time to work on it, but I would still give them something of value.

Now, of all these, which is the hardest one to offer the client, and stick to?

For me, it is the last one, #4. It isn't easy to say "no," but saying "yes, but" is often even harder. The client always wants it all, the entire project, no matter what the timeframe. They are used to me pulling off minor miracles. And as consultants, we tend to think that we can indeed always get it done, no matter what "it" is.

The worst outcome is producing results that don't meet your own standards. Saying "yes" without the "but" is the easiest way to end up doing just that.

If you can't put the "but" in there when it is needed, if you can't negotiate services down to the level that either the budget or the timeframe dictates, then say "no." Simple as that.

The Guerrilla Consultant on the Perils of Experience

Last month I wrote several posts on "The Perils of Experience" (see Parts I, II, III, IV of that discussion).

In a recent edition of his newsletter, The Guerrilla Consultant, Mike McLaughlin talked about "What Clients Want".

And lo and behold, much of his discussion was about how experience and expertise blinds some consultants to obstacles, in the client situation, to implementing effective solutions.

It's a good, thorough discussion on this theme, take a look when you get a moment.

Lessons From a Mime: Part II

I mentioned, in my last post, the passing of famous mime Marcel Marceau (and his character "Bip").

I think we can safely make the following observations about Bip:

1. He was a great communicator, indeed, that's what everyone loved about him.
   
2. He did not make use of the latest technology.
   

Bip got the most out of the tools he had. He couldn't use some fancy "delivery modes" like . . . talking, but he really knew what you could do with the limited "modes" at his command.

And he could work cheap. Think about what was invested, in terms of technology, materials, objects, etc., and the return on investment -- the power of the communication he produced with no sound and no props -- was phenomenal.

Now, admittedly, one of Bip's flaws was that he never thought of trying to communicate in other ways. This is pretty common in employee communications and in training projects. The client has discovered the "one true way" to communicate, and that's all they can think about.

These days, more often than not, it is some kind of on-line training, courses that you can take on the Internet or your company intranet simply using a web browser. But that's just the latest and greatest fixation, there has always been a tendency to try to make one method of communication do everything.

The pecking hierarchy starts with the latest technology, and the client tries to jam everything into that mode. If they find things they simply can't make work -- or can't afford to make work -- through that delivery channel, they reluctantly drop back to more "primitive" tools. Some of them are even forced (dreadful as the thought may be) to have a face-to-face meeting or class, or to print things for people to read, or maybe call people and talk to them.

Now, if Bip were to adopt some other tools, I think he'd develop them the same way he did his physical, visual communication channel. I think he'd figure out everything he could communicate with no props and no sound. Then I think he would add some props and some sound, and get everything he could out of those. And then he might do the same with media, and eventually with on-line delivery.

In other words, instead of starting from the top of the techology ladder and trying to twist a single tool into every imaginable shape and use, he would start from the bottom. He would get all he could out of the basics, probably generating a terrific return on investment, and when those basic tools weren't good enough -- because they didn't achieve results, or were too slow, or even too expensive for certain applications -- he would look for the next tool to handle what was left.

Instead of saying, "if only Bip could talk", I'd like more clients to say something like: "If only we could talk as well as Bip doesn't!" When the focus is on communication by the best means (best being both impact and cost), rather than on "talking", spreading best practices effectively among employees, enhancing their performance, suddenly becomes a lot easier.