Monthly Archives: July 2020

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Anatomy of a Pivot

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As was reported in a July 20, 2020 post featured in the Harvard Business Review, companies are scrambling to minimize the damage caused by the COVID-19 shutdown. There is determination to survive and get in position for the expected recovery. Owners and leaders are taking a close look business models, to tease out a clever pivot that will first, start some cash-flow ASAP and second, open the door to sustainable long- term profitability and growth.

Talk of engineering a pivot always sounds impressive when discussed in a strategy meeting but as we know, not every pivot leads to success. One can pivot the enterprise into a ditch, unfortunately, if an unwise choice or sloppy execution take place.

The HBR authors explain that a pivot is a lateral move that creates a logical extension of the products or services that the venture is already known for, making it comfortable for customers to trust the updates.

Music streaming platforms such as I ♥️ Radio and Spotify have long provided loads of advertising-funded free online music and both companies were able to convert freebie loving listeners to subscribers with a pivot into podcasts and specialized playlists. Fees generated by those subscription services softened the blow caused by advertisers who vanished during the shutdown.

Barnes and Noble bookstores long ago pivoted into the coffee shop business through a hybrid franchise deal with Starbucks. Don’t we all love to sit down and have an artisanal coffee as we look over the new books and magazines we just bought?

My favorite pivot was pulled off at Diva by Cindy, a hair care products company based in Washington, DC. Founder Cindy Tawiah left the salon business, a field where she’d found only intermittent success, and dropped all hairstyling services. Tawiah’s company now focuses exclusively on what are normally salon revenue enhancers, hair products.

The reformatted business now sells the newly created private label Diva by Cindy line of hair care products. Her pivot also incorporated an innovative sales strategy that places the shampoos, conditioners, hairsprays and such only in vending machines and kiosks stationed in airports and malls.

Three conditions are required to set up a good pivot:

1. The pivot will align the company with one or more long-term trends.

A pivot that reflects how we’re living and working during the COVID-19 era may help to pull your organization through an immediate billable hours and cash-flow crisis and allow the company to survive long enough for improved business conditions to arrive.

When trying to envision your company’s pivot, think about how working from home has caused many to rely more on technology and spend more time at home. Think about how shorter supply chains have made the locavore movement, which began 25 years ago, still more attractive. Remember also the Do It Yourself and craft movements, which began a few years ago and are significantly increasing.

Can you see how your business pivot can make use of these trends, which are predicted to be with us for three years or more?

2. The pivot will be a logical extension of the company’s core products or services.

Your venture’s pivot must align with the company’s core products or services and add value for customers by creating or transitioning to a logical adaptation.

Diva by Cindy already had deep experience in the hairstyling sector and a roster of clients. The company already knew what customers valued and the acceptable product price points. Her breakout was to develop her own private label line, which was an extension of her brand, along with the daring and innovative sales strategy of using vending machines stationed at the Baltimore Washington Airport.

3. The pivot offers recognized value and opens a door to sustainable profits.

It goes without saying that the pivot is not successful unless it strengthens the value of the brand, as evidenced through increased market share and sales revenue. The HBR authors predict that while the COVID-19 crisis will not necessarily spell the end of entire industries, there will be a weeding out of companies unable to keep up with the trends of social distancing and virtual communication, remote work, shorter supply chains and an increased, more highly sophisticated use of technology.

Thanks for reading.

Kim

Photograph: Kim Clark. Canada geese swim into a pivot on the Muddy River in the Emerald Necklace, Boston, MA.

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# Red Light

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So off you go, on a mission to reconnect with clients you haven’t worked with since the four month long COVID-19 shutdown began. You gracefully maneuver to position yourself to grab some billable hours before all of your Paycheck Protection Plan money runs out. You’re also on the hunt for new clients, maybe picking up the thread on leads you were checking out in the first quarter, before the rug was pulled out from under.

If good fortune prevails, you’ll bag a live one and generate some much-needed revenue. But do keep your senses tuned to any “off notes” while you and the prospect discuss the project specs. You are trying to work with this person, or someone on his/her team, and by no means do you want to walk into a toxic environment because you will fall. You will not be able to perform at your best. You will not be able to use that client as a reference.

it is important to notice and acknowledge the behavioral cues displayed and statements made by every prospective client. Do not get carried away by a seductive mix of need and excitement. Yes, making money is the point and you may also crave a project that you find not just lucrative, but also exciting. There may be a special skill that you own but rarely have the opportunity to display and at last you could be able to flaunt it.

But if the prospect makes you feel uncomfortable before the project work has begun, the smart Freelancer must find the strength to stop and walk away from someone who is already telling you that they’re a jerk who is out to hurt you. Assuming that this individual even pays the full amount of your invoice, in the end you will have to admit that the money earned from working with this guy or gal was not work the aggravation.

The best damage control that a Freelancer can take is to stop the process and walk away. Let’s examine a few examples of bad guy/ gal behavior:

“I’ve tried working with Freelancers before. I never get what I want.”

This prospect either doesn’t understand how to write and explain the project specs; doesn’t know what actions will achieve company goals; doesn’t understand and refuses to provide the support or authority a Freelancer needs to successfully complete the task; is a rabid micro-manager who is never satisfied by any work other than his/ her own; or cannot/ will not allocate the budget to hire a Freelancer who is able to do the work.

Do you see yourself swallowed by a giant whirlpool? You should. Stop. Turn around. Walk away.

Prospect don’t trust your references

You’ve supplied two or three solid references, clients for whom you’ve done work similar to what the prospect is looking to get done and the clients were very pleased. You exceeded expectations and created a positive experience. But the prospect is not convinced. Your references are not good enough, as far as s/he is concerned.

A dear friend of mine has often said that there are some people who will not take Yes for an answer. This prospect is not ready to become your client, for whatever reason. Maybe the prospect now feels uncomfortable with outsourcing this project to any outside expert?

Whatever. You cannot satisfy this individual. Shake hands and say goodbye, while you can still pretend to smile.

Prospect questions your fee and the value you’ll bring

The shutdown caused most businesses to take a significant financial hit and the impulse to keep all costs low is in the air. Freelancers are wise to be flexible about balancing their project fee against the work that clients need to do to get their ventures moving forward and the lower budgets that clients now live with. However, exploitation is never acceptable and must never be tolerated by a Freelancer.

Before your proposal is in writing, project specs should be discussed, including a ball park budget figure. Using that information, Freelancers can with confidence draw up a proposal with budget and submit it to the prospect. In this way, there will be no surprises. When the prospect shares some indication of the earmarked project budget along with the project specs, the Freelancer will quickly know whether or not s/he can do the job for that price.

But when the prospect wants to be secretive, it’s a bad sign. People need to be transparent and if they don’t want to do that, it will be unpleasant to work with them. Moreover, if the prospect alludes to the fact that his/ her team has the ability to do the job themselves, you may need to diplomatically hint that they might need to do just that because the work to be done demands a certain amount of time and skill.

You are willing to be flexible, you are willing to do a smaller piece of the job for the money that the client has suggested for the entire project, but you cannot give your work away. Then shut up and hear what s/he says in response. The specs will either shrink or you’ll walk.

Project timetable and other guarantees are unrealistic

Timetables and deadlines may require some help from the client if they are to be met and the smart Freelancer will put into writing the kind of resources that the client will provide and by what date. Furthermore, in certain cases the full scope of the project cannot be known until the work has been started. Obtain as much information as possible about the project specs to minimize risks and promote client satisfaction.

If you’re having trouble either reconnecting with current clients or signing new ones, you may need to tweak your pre-COVID-19 business model. Things have changed. No one has a written-in-stone game plan. Pivot has become the word of the month, if not the word of the year. Your first assignment may be to get a fix on what services are in demand now and how you can package and promote your entity to be considered a trustworthy and reliable purveyor of those services.

When speaking with current clients, even if you send out an email to say hello and get the ball rolling, ask how doing business has changed and make it known that your goal is to help them cross the river without taking any more of a bath than they may have already done.

When approaching a prospect, a version of the previous question can be asked, perhaps as a statement, “As you and your team work to help the organization regain its bearings and serve your customers in the way they now want, or legally must be, served, I’d love to talk to you about how I can help you do that efficiently and cost- effectively.”

Thanks for reading,

Kim

Photograph: Kim Clark. Massachusetts Avenue leaves the Back Bay and enters the South End.

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What Scientists Know About Virtual Meetings

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Experience has shown us that video meetings and face2face meetings are not interchangeable. Videoconference meetings, while very appealing in ways too numerous to list, nevertheless come with some noticeable drawbacks.

Video meetings are often a little stilted and sometimes borderline awkward. Participants can have trouble signing on. Wavering WiFi signals will cause one or two people to drop out for a couple of minutes, leaving them to struggle to reconnect, maybe by walking to another part of the room in search of a better signal.

Still, video meetings are great for remote team check-ins and board or committee meetings. We are social creatures and enjoy being able to see who we’re talking to. But as the meeting progresses it becomes clear that communication does not flow nearly as well as in our face2face meetings.

On top of access and connectivity issues that interrupt the meeting pace, normal conversation rhythm is also stymied, because video signals are slightly delayed. We try to compensate for unnatural pauses that cause people to talk over one another by waiting (usually too long) to respond.

Scientists who study human perception say that aside from the technical annoyances, the big problem with video is that it disrupts normal eye contact, especially how long and how often we look at each other. In a study led by Isabelle Mareschal, PhD, Psychology Department Chair at Queen Mary University in London, and her colleagues at their visual perception lab asked experiment subjects to watch a video of a face that turned to look directly at them. Study subjects initially found the gaze enjoyable, but after as little as three seconds most found the gaze to be unsettling.

Now consider the protocol at a virtual meeting—- we are expected to maintain unbroken eye contact with the speaker or risk being considered inattentive, if not rude. It’s just that our brain is uncomfortable with this practice. No wonder we find more than one videoconference per day to be draining.

Videoconferencing also disrupts what is known as synchrony, the unconscious call and response speaking rhythm that we lapse into when communicating face2face. Synchrony also persuades us to unwittingly mimic the body language and posture of the person we’re speaking with.

So we smile when we receive cues that our conversation partner will respond favorably if we do, or we’ll put on a serious facial expression when people in the room look worried or upset. “People start to synchronize their laughter and facial expressions over time,” says Paula Niedenthal, PhD, a psychologist and expert in the science of emotion at the University of Wisconsin/ Madison. She continues, “That’s really useful because it helps us predict what’s coming next.”

The ability to unconsciously and accurately predict our conversation partner’s emotional state is crucial to feeling connected, research shows. The problem with videoconferencing is that so many facial expressions—-that sparkle or cloud in the eyes, or subtle posture and hand gestures—-are obscured. We cannot consistently predict and validate the nonverbal cues of virtual meeting participants. We become vulnerable to feeling awkward and eventually, alienated.

Andrew S. Franklin, PhD, a psychologist at Norfolk State University in VA, says the first problem with Zoom is that the platform is programmed to continually show the user an image of him/herself, “So you’re trying to get out of the habit of staring at yourself.” That fascination, or discomfort, breaks the participant’s attention, drawing it away from the speaker and disrupting the transmission of whatever facial and body language cues one might otherwise pick up. Worse, that Brady Bunch Zoom meeting line-up, whether shown in a horizontal or vertical configuration on your device, brings in too many pairs of eyes to confront.

Daniel Nguyen, PhD, a scientist and director of (the global consulting firm) Accenture Lab in Shenzhen, China, investigated how people bonded (or not) while videoconferencing. For the experiment, Nguyen and his team divided study subjects into pairs: some conversing pairs used a video set- up that showed only faces; another video pairing set- up displayed face and upper body; the third conversation design was an in-person chat. As revealed in observations, the in- person pairs developed the strongest bonds and the face and torso set- up elicited bonding that was fully twice that of the face only set- up.

Furthermore, Nguyen prefers the vertical screen view on our phones over the horizontal screen view that desk models, laptops and tablets give us because the vertical view showcases more of the body and less background scenery.

Guided by the results of their experiment, Nguyen and his co-authors now sit a few feet away from their keyboards when in video meetings, so that their upper body will be visible. Providing your videoconference partners with a more expansive view of you helps them achieve synchrony with you and the potential for mutual bonding will be enhanced.

Nguyen and colleagues also have recommendations for your videoconference vocal style. “Ramp up the words that you’re saying,” he advised, “and exaggerate the way you say it.” To be honest, I don’t know how to interpret that bit of stage direction. How about we just avoid speaking in a monotone and add a little energy to our speech, taking care to speak a little more slowly and remembering to enunciate clearly?

Probably the most formidable obstacle of videoconference communication is how to develop trust when doing business. It’s not easy to build bonds, to truly get to know someone and develop lasting rapport through online encounters, even when you see who you’re talking to. Nguyen said his research found that, “In a videoconferencing situation, trust is quite fragile.” He and his team demonstrated that in video, “Trust is diminished overall.” Nguyen suggested that when building trust is critical, opportunities to meet in person at least some of the time will help build bonds that make remote collaboration more successful.

Elena Rocco, PhD, in a 1998 study at the University of Michigan Collaboratory for Research on Electronic Work, demonstrated that groups that connect solely online (in her study email was the online format) do not collaborate effectively. But when her study subjects were able to meet face2face for brief periods, their willingness to cooperate and collaborate rose dramatically. Face2face meetings make a difference and opportunities to allow in person meet- ups should be made, even when online communication is more convenient.

I feel that although working from home is all the rage now, in two or three years companies will move to reverse the trend and bring employees back to the office, at least for part of the week. Without reading any studies, I knew that virtual meetings can never adequately replace face2face interactions.

Ben Waber, President and co-founder of Humanyze, a company that creates software that allows organizations to map internal communications, understands very well how employees communicate and how their communication correlates to their company’s health.

Waber suspects that in the long run, a company’s culture and creativity risk declining in a heavily remote-working structure. Employees can’t get to know one another as well when they don’t regularly interact face2face. He predicts that profitable companies will initially continue to be profitable despite their significant dependence on virtual communication but damage will become evident a year or two down the line, when the quality of new ideas become less bold and innovative. He concludes, “I think we’re going to see this general degradation of the health of organizations.”

Thanks for reading,

Kim

Photograph: Kim Clark. Doorway of the original location of the Forsyth Dental Infirmary for Children.

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Business Building Essentials

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While you’re thinking about how to give your business an injection of growth hormone, uniquely formulated to push your billable hours up and out of the doldrums, it’s also a good idea to reconsider some ground level business building essential practices that will confirm what you’re doing right and reveal what needs an edit.

Business founders must perfect not only the functionality and value of the products or services that are sold, but also create the organizational structure that will launch and support those products or services. You, founder and owner of the company, must ensure that you have your arms around each of these six elements discussed here. If ownership is shared by partners, then the responsibilities will be divided between you.

One division of labor method can be based on the percentage of the business owned, governed by abilities and preferences. Another method is to let ability and preference rule and choose a Managing Partner. That individual might own the largest share or the smallest share of the business, it doesn’t matter.

Managing Partners are compensated for the work they do, beyond the share of profit (or loss) that their ownership share entitles them to. Whether the business structure is Inc. or LLC, a W-2 salary can be paid to the Managing Partner. Discuss the matter of partner duties and compensation with your business attorney and put the agreement in writing.

A third option for monitoring and managing these responsibilities is to hire a W-2 employee or a 1099 Freelance consultant. There is no shame in calling in outside experts.

Positive cash- flow

The responsibility for positive cash flow belongs to the Finance Department, but the Sales Department is responsible for generating the revenue that keeps the business solvent. The Finance expert will monitor Accounts Receivable and Payable and enable a healthy cash-flow. In addition to generating sales, invoicing on time is critical to the process.

Operations

Inventory, quality control, managing employees and Freelancers, product manufacturing, delivery of core services, insurance and licenses and permits all land in this far- ranging category. IT, the telephone system and HVAC are other responsibilities that land in the Operations in- basket.

Operations functions are the nuts and bolts, where the rubber hits the road, hands-on aspects of the business. Excellent organizational ability is the key factor in successful operations management. Ownership of these duties can be assigned to whomever is best qualified to handle them. Sharing of theses duties by the partners and/ or hiring outside experts to oversee specific sectors will be wise.

Metrics to measure

The metrics used to measure business performance will change over time, but do some research of similar organizations and get insight into what numbers you should follow and the story they will tell, separately and together.

Plan to pivot

Doing business is so volatile now, it’s safe to say that a pivot is on your future, so why not anticipate it? Think about potential Plans B and C. Should your business venture falter, whether a flashy and well-funded competitor moves in or, gasp, you must contend with an unheard-of government mandated shutdown of your enterprise, how might your organization retool, pivot and survive?

You can help yourself by engaging and communicating with your customers to confirm why they buy from your company. You can also find out what competitive products and services may be appealing and why. In this way you can learn what you might adapt and hold on to customers should the business environment change. Staying abreast of new technologies on the horizon, new legislation, new competitors and even changes in local zoning

Culture and values

Bake into your business practices integrity, the expectation of excellence, first-rate customer service and, when necessary, the willingness to admit that a mistake has been made and an apology and/or a do over is in order. Let your customers, partners, suppliers, vendors, employees, Freelancers and most of all yourself see your humanity and your humor, too.

Coaching and mentoring

The founder(s), C-Suite leaders and staff deserve opportunities to sharpen their skills and even discover and nurture new competencies. Company sponsored professional development benefits a business in so many ways. Employees (and leaders) who feel confident about their skills and career possibilities and trajectories are nearly always happy to give back and do their best work.

Thanks for reading,

Kim

Photograph: Kim Clark. Construction site on Ipswich Street adjacent to Fenway Park.