by Jared Belsky
Be more rigorous around watching for time lag. You won’t ever feel you moved too quickly, but you might feel you moved too slowly.
Your FROM → TO personal goal:
FROM a leader who tolerates good employees, TO a leader who moves faster on talent decisions and sets the bar for others.
* * *
*Jay Goltz, “The Dirty Little Secret of Successful Companies,” New York Times, February 8, 2011, https://boss.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/02/08/the-dirty-little-secret-of-successful-companies/?_r=1.
Lesson 21
21. Focus
“I feel laser-focused on the important right now.”
—Eric Spett, CEO of Terminus
In order to get the most out of your team, you need to be clear and focused about what is important and what actually moves the needle. As a leader, you will be defined more by what you say no to than by what you say yes to. The opening quote comes from Eric Spett, who is CEO of Terminus, one of the fastest growing B2B software companies in the United States. As CEO of a high-growth company, there are hundreds of things Eric could do every day. However, what Eric does so well is to ask himself not what could be accomplished today, but rather what should be accomplished with focus to move the needle. Eric, more so than most young leaders I have gotten to know over the years, is tremendous at separating the important from the urgent and ensuring that he makes it clear to his leadership team what is important to him. For Eric, this did not come naturally—nor is it natural for anyone really. Focus takes work. Clarity takes work. Saying no to distraction takes work. Feeling comfortable with being unpopular yet respected takes time and work. I would encourage those reading this book to use a few of the strategies in this lesson to help you on your journey to become a principled leader who makes focus a hallmark of your leadership style.
There are two very simple devices you can use for this.
First, create a NINETY-day planning document.
I’ve created a table (see next page) that combines features I have seen from great partners and friends over the years. First, I like how the goals link to objectives, to keys to success, and to deliverables. It’s linear and easy to follow, so anyone on your team can pick it up and find it useful.
The second part of this grid is the “Now, Next, New” concept, which allows you to contextualize the goals from a timeline perspective. “Now” should be what needs to get done in the next thirty to ninety days, while “Next” is thinking about the overall vision of the leadership. “New” should be what gets thought about for next year, or beyond the one-year time period. At the very least, going through the exercise of completing one of these grids is critical for success. A person in client services will simply bounce from client directive to client directive. The Great Client Partner will chart a course to mutual greatness, and that makes all the difference.
CEO Goal
Objectives/Goals
Keys to Success
Deliverables
Timeline/Dependencies
1
Now
New
Next
2
Now
New
Next
3
Now
New
Next
Use this grid for your ninety-day planning strategy and continue to update it as a living, breathing document with your team.
Second, Franklin Covey’s Urgent vs. Nonurgent Prioritization Grid
This is one of the most famous, effective, and simple organizational constructs to prioritization. The key to using this grid is to be practical and tough minded on how you categorize items. The common urge is to put everything in the upper-left box, but that is simply not possible. Something that is both urgent and important means it’s timely (must happen in the next quarter) and will also move the needle on the business you represent. Things that go in the upper-left box should be items that are both very timely in nature and also will move the company forward. The common theme for the upper-left box must be items of consequence. Examples of things that would go into the “Urgent/Important” quadrant could be upcoming business reviews, new business pitches, client crises, or staffing shortages.
If simple management frameworks don’t inspire you to think about the importance of focus, then I would suggest looking to politics for additional inspiration.
In 2012, Barack Obama earned 70 percent of the vote in Cuyahoga County. This was a county in the all-important battleground state of Ohio. It is the densely populated urban area that contains Cleveland. Arguably, that won him the election even though Romney was winning in the suburban (and less populated) counties surrounding Cleveland.* Obama realized this was a county where, with reasonable effort, he could take a massive chunk of the vote. So he focused time, energy, money, advertising, and political operatives on this county. Essentially, the lesson in Cuyahoga County is to focus on what moves the needle, and where you can win an unfair fight.
The idea of Cuyahoga County is that you can’t be amazing at everything, everywhere, every time. With focus and a close look at the odds of success, you can find wins. It is also a very telling story of how research up front and a lens of maximum output for the least possible input is the right currency in client leadership.
Whether the ninety-day plan inspires you or perhaps the urgent/important prioritization grid, or even the Cuyahoga County story, all that matters is that you look yourself and your team in the eyes and demand greater focus. Demand of yourself relentless pursuit of the important, and don’t let the urgent run your business.
Three Habit Changes
Use the Urgent/Important grid at the start of every quarter. Have those who report to you do the same to ensure your visions are aligned.
Utilize a ninety-day planning sheet to ensure you have a plausible and detailed plan of attack. Also, distribute this to those who report directly to you.
Be flexible on your planning tools. They can and should change with time. The important thing is that you’re clear about your goals and how they impact your team members (and how your team members are essential in helping you achieve those goals).
Your FROM → TO personal goal:
FROM a leader who bounces from one thing to another, TO a principled leader who applies a laser focus to needle moving and important opportunities.
* * *
*Frank Bruni, “The Millions of Marginalized Americans,” New York Times, July 25, 2015, https://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/26/opinion/sunday/frank-bruni-the-millions-of-marginalized-americans.html?_r=0.
Part Three
Part Three: Behave Like a Leader
Lesson 22
22. Don’t Confuse Like and Love, and Avoid Sweatpants!
“Who does this client love? Who is the one person this client absolutely cannot live without?”
—Sarah Hofstetter, Former CEO of 360i, President Comscore
If you don’t know whether your client loves at least a few people on your team, then you are closer to getting fired than you are to getting a renewal.
I would advise you to keep yourself honest by keeping an inventory of client satisfaction as it relates to your team members. This is not just another net-promoter type survey. Instead, this is a love survey. It is very important to be honest with yourself. The idea is pictured in the next chart. To put it simply, as the leader, you keep a running tally of each of your team members and how you see them perceive
d by the client. If you see too many “likes” and not enough “loves” on your chart, then pause and ask yourself and your team how to raise the bar to love. Remember, the idea here is not to be fake or to try and force love. Love comes with time, trust, respect, wins, fights, and being in the trenches together.
Client
Q1
Q2
Q3
Q4
Billy
Love
Love
Love
Love
Sally
Love
Like
Like
Love
Jason
Like
Like
Hate
Like
Why care so much about love and why pick that word in the first place? Love triggers a different stimulation in the brain than simply liking a person. It’s more intense. You want your clients to feel something profound when they think of your team: genuine fondness and total trust. Like, on the other hand, is a practical consideration. You can share a cubicle with someone you like, but your relationship with someone you love can weather much more than that.
You don’t fire love. You fire like. Love is harder to earn, but it lasts longer.
Beyond just taking the pulse of how clients feel about your individual team members, it’s important to help your team get in a position to be loved in the first place. Here is a good example of a worksheet you can create for you and your team to try and jumpstart some love if it’s not there naturally.
Love Inventory
What clients might be looking for in their agency (they love)?
List achievements in the past three months
Exposes me to thinking about something in a different way than I had previously
Brings skillsets we do not have in-house
Makes me look smart
Helps me understand and contextualize what my competition is doing in this space
Brings me actionable insights
Gives me a regular holistic look at the health of what we’re doing for them
Understands my brand
Synthesizes data, gleans meaningful insights, and evolves measurement
Collaborates with internal and external partners
Provides strategic thought leadership
Vertical knowledge
Brings me new suggestions of things to do to help my business
Exposes me to new platforms with analysis of why it’s good or not good for my business
So, how do you cultivate love from your clients while still being authentic and real?
Five Golden Rules
Respond ridiculously fast and show bias toward names, dates, and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)—If this needs explaining, put down this book, back away slowly, and find a new gig. Fair or unfair, a client won’t love you if they don’t think you care. Sarah Hofstetter is a longtime friend and a founder of so many firsts in the advertising industry. One of her simple mantras is instructive to the Great Client Partner: “If it does not have a name, a date, and a KPI…it is not real.” She’s right. If you send a rally email, and you have not assigned owners, dates for deliverables, and how each will be measured, you are not leading.
Don’t say yes all the time. A well-considered no can go a long way—I remember a talented VP Group Account Director who gained more eventual business by telling the client to take their performance creative business to a partner who specialized in cheap production and lightning speed. This allowed the client to create more banners, segmented in more granular ways, which in turn helped the client and even us as their agency. This exceptional VP understood this was a time where a “no…and” was a lot more useful than a yes. Trust was built on the memory sticker that we did not give all recommendations based on our own bottom line. On the other side of the coin, I worked with a very senior person who always answered, “Yes, no problem” whenever he was asked a hard-nosed question by a client. That just eroded credibility.
Have thoughts that lead—Today it’s not good enough to be a character from Mad Men. No concert or bottle of wine can make up for the frustration a client will feel about you if you clog up the works as opposed to add value. Beyond just helping the system move fast, challenge yourself to have thoughts that lead. Don’t just rely on the SMEs, or you will make yourself obsolete. Invest in this through reading, curiosity, and listening more than talking. What it means to have thoughts that lead sounds simple, but it’s not easy. It means you have to do your own exploration and then know how to synthesize that into predictions and implications.
Make sure you’re not wearing sweatpants—When you are in a relationship for many years with someone, you might show up in sweatpants for a casual evening. This is something you would never have done when trying to win their heart all those years ago, however. You would have brought flowers, done your hair, and put on your best clothes to impress. Perhaps if you have a patient spouse, you can get away with sweatpants in marriage. But you certainly can’t do so in a client-based business. Do what you need to do as a Great Client Partner to do a sweatpants inventory. Ask your team a few basic questions:
What is the last new thing we have done for the client?
Are we making weekly calls exciting, or are we just rolling over the playbook?
What is the last innovative idea we have brought this client?
When did we last shake up the team?
Avoid sweatpants at all costs.
Always communicate in plain English—Clients hate doublespeak and jargon. People use bigger words when trying to confuse a client or when they don’t understand the facts. Try and use fewer words and words that are simple. Don’t say, “We will touch base once we get traction,” when you can more easily say, “We have work to do, and we will get back to you by August 12 with answers.”
Three Habit Changes
Do a quarterly inventory of what—and who—your client is responding to on your team, both positively and negatively.
Think of ways you can help your client beyond what’s in the SOW. How can you make your contact’s life easier? Can you even get him or her promoted?
Listen to yourself when you speak and read your writing. Are you using unnecessary jargon? Regularly make a list of unnecessarily complex words you might be using too frequently and practice simplifying your communication.
FROM liked TO loved.
Lesson 23
23. Get Up and Draw
Leaders must persuade for a living. At times, they also have to be peacekeepers or arbiters. The most basic problem with human relationships has to do with fighting over words. When you fight over words, the fight tends to continue on and on because people develop an attachment to their own words, manner of speech, and their belief system. From that vantage point, it becomes harder to find compromise and progress. Let’s look at a real verbal exchange between an account person and a client I witnessed:
Client: I need that production estim
ate within the next ten hours.
Account Manager: I can’t do that. It’s too fast a turnaround request.
Client: Do you mean to tell me you can’t be nimble?
AM: We are very nimble. We just don’t have enough people on the team to handle that timeline.
Client: Are you now telling me you need to add FTEs and money all because I need a simple production quote? Agency Y would be much faster. I just want something done fast, and now you are telling me we have a staffing issue.
AM: No, that is not what I meant to say. Um…I just need to push back here a bit and ask that we prioritize this request given the other items you have asked for.
Client: Frankly, I think I already get enough push-back.
And it goes on and on. Words just seem to spin and create ill will sometimes. Here, we witness an account person trying to advocate for quality work, timelines, and even prioritization. We see a client advocating for a nimble world. In truth, they want the same thing, but they can’t hear each other.
All they can hear are these keywords that are sparking off their worst instincts.
The war of words allows for almost no middle ground or genuine problem-solving. As account managers, the holy grail is to create the space in which two parties can illustrate what they need and paint a way forward.
