by Jared Belsky
Are you a builder, an evolver, or a caretaker?
Here you are looking to understand: (1) how self-aware that person is; and (2) what their prime mode of operations is.
Sell me this pen.
What to look for in an ideal answer: Is someone a creative thinker? Many people will come up with simple uses that are visually obvious for an object of this size and type, like it’s a great solution if you need something to write with. Or, they might get creative and suggest it can be used as a vase. A really creative person melts down the plastic and makes jewelry or rethinks dimension, making the cap a sled for a mouse!
Go up to the whiteboard with a marker and tell me how many Mach 3 razors can be sold each year in the US by doing a market sizing exercise.
What to look for here are a few things: (1) Will this person crumble when given a marker, or will they have a structure to get the answer? (2) Do they know and realize to first ask questions? (3) Do they have a thesis (even if incorrect) to pull through the entire answer?
You aren’t limited to these example questions. The point is to ask things that unsettle the candidate. Other subjects would include, “When did you last lose your cool?” or “What do you think is wasteful in the world?” or “Why do you want to work at all?” All of these things get to the root of the candidate’s thinking and are prone to show their philosophy.
Three Habit Changes
Ask better questions when interviewing. Use the above list or something that creates a bit of real-life pressure. And know ahead of time what you want to hear from every question you ask.
Use your interview time wisely. There’s a lot you cannot address because of the time constraints, but if you’re prepared, you can at least have a general discussion with the candidate about this limitation, and that discussion can show a lot about their personality.
Don’t be afraid to get unorthodox when interviewing, and not just with your questions or expected answers, but with your overall approach. Always start by asking how you can change the environment. Don’t be afraid to switch things up.
Your FROM → TO personal goal:
FROM a leader who asks about strengths and weaknesses, TO a leader who probes deeper to get the best talent.
Lesson 29
29. Alignment, Alignment, Alignment
If the central thesis of this book, and the crux of working with people in general, is the importance of building trust, then the fundamental question is how do you do that? A book that deals profoundly with this question is David H. Maister’s The Trusted Advisor (which I referenced back in Lesson 11). It distills the ingredients of trust into three parts:
Credibility
Reliability
Intimacy
The Trusted Advisor is one of the most influential books I have ever read, and I still follow the coauthor’s every word and tweet.
However, this equation of credibility, reliability, and intimacy misses out on what I now believe is a very fundamental piece of the equation: alignment.
Without alignment, all is doomed to fail in a client-agency relationship. You can have the pope of account management who is skilled in intimacy creation, deft at being reliable, and more credible than Walter Cronkite, but if there is no alignment, then you are doomed.
So what is alignment and how do you remember that in your client relationships?
Alignment is simply the art of ensuring that the interests, backgrounds, and intentions of both parties are being considered when calculating a move of any type.
Here is what happens when there is poor alignment between an employee and a manager. When I was a younger man, I was the account director for a big pharma account. I had done very well and had grown the account. So, after some time, I approached our president and asked to become the first ever pharma category lead at our agency. For me, it would mean more prestige, a better title, and more responsibility than my peers. I felt very proud of my ask.
But for my president, what would it mean? Well, it turns out the answer was headaches. Jim looked at me and said, “Jared, this does not align with our strategy or our title structure, and we do not need a vertical lead of pharma.”
He was polite but pointed, and I left the room with a bruised ego. But it was my fault. I did not think of mutual alignment. What was in it for my boss or the company? Not enough. There was no alignment.
Financially, it would have benefited me, but it also would have been extra resources the company would have to spend without getting much in return. Hence, no financial alignment.
Emotionally, this would have boosted my self-worth, but it would have confused other employees. It would have caused more headaches. Hence, no emotional alignment.
In terms of focus, this would have focused me on healthcare, but that was not the strategy the company wanted to pursue. Hence, no focus alignment.
Alignment failure.
How to achieve alignment, the core of trust, can be visualized by a triangle with equal weights at all three corners. Those three corners of alignment are: financial, emotional, and focus.
Financial: There are two parties in every financial equation: the buyer and the seller. You can pretend to be partners all you want, but this is almost never the case in the services industry without meaningful investment. However, whichever side of this dynamic you are on, understand that your only goal is to create mutual alignment in the financial arrangement. For a services business, financial alignment is relatively simple. The client needs to receive a service at a rate they are comfortable paying, and the agency must be able to profit. Actually, the agency profiting is in the best interests of the client because a healthy agency provides better work for the client.
Emotional: If you are reading this and you’re in the creative services industry, then you understand you are in the enthusiasm business. Emotional alignment simply means that both parties care roughly in equal measures about the assignment. If a client has a launch of a new bacon product, the team better feel as though this is the single coolest and most innovative food launch ever.
Focus: Focus alignment simply is the notion that the agency and the client are both zeroed in on the task at hand. The work has to be equally important to both client and agency, and the mutual investment must also be one that ensures importance. To aid in focus alignment, I would caution that the staffing model must indicate that a vast number of folks in the staffing model are at least 75 percent. Only if that is the case will the client feel equal parts focus. This is because in the agency business, too often staffing models are built in such a way where focus is not a possibility. I can tell you from experience that when Billy, the media planner, is 8 percent staffed on a client’s business, that simply does not allow for focus. For a typical midsized media engagement, we tend to see the left column (from the following chart) play out. Instead, I would argue that FTE allocations need to be far greater, as indicated in the right column.
Typical Staffing Model
Focus Alignment
Account Director
15%
50%
Group Media Director
30%
50%
Media Supervisor
50%
100%
Media Manager
25%
100%
Media Coordinator
25%
100%
Data Analyst
10%
50%
Project Manager
5%
25%
How does this create focus alignment? Simple. Every morning, the team represented in the right column is only, or mostly, waking up with that client’s business on their mind, and not projects for eight other clients.
Focus, focus, focus.
Alignment, alignment, alignment.
Three Habit Changes
Before proposing any changes, consider if your motives are aligned with the motives of everyone else the change will affect. It helps to take out a pen and make a list of what you want and why.
When evaluating a key client relationship, take out the Alignment Triangle and do a brief audit to see how well you are aligned financially, emotionally, and from a focus perspective.
Find a way to use the Alignment Triangle, directly or indirectly, to build trust with your clients. After you audit the relationship, let the client know you understand their goals and that you share them.
Your FROM → TO personal goal:
FROM being a leader who looks for wins from only your perspective, TO always thinking about mutual alignment.
Lesson 30
30. Understand the Profound Difference Between the FYI and Banging the Desk
Client Partners need to be self-aware. What they don’t see very often is how they are judged by executive management, but their ability to understand those impressions will define their careers.
One of the biggest beefs execs have with client partners is the manner by which bad news moves up the chain. The expectation gap is that a client partner thinks they have put management on high-alert about a problem, while management believes it is just a small issue. As an aspiring client leader, you have three modes available to you, but it’s essential to understand the differences about what each one is, what they signal, when to use them, and how to follow up.
The FYI
What it is: The FYI lets someone know about a situation. It’s often misused as a CYA (cover your ass), but it can be proactively effective if used early enough.
How to use it: The right way to use it is in advance of an activity or immediately after something happens, which that person would benefit from knowing. It’s passive. It’s helpful. It’s even important.
What it signals: The FYI does not create urgency. It simply lets the recipient know that something is going on. Your FYI, even if a shout for help in your head, is not taken as such by a busy leader.
Raising the Red Flag
What it is: This is a tool to foreshadow that there is a problem. Perhaps your client is ninety days late on payment and you want to tell your CFO. Perhaps you have a client that is dropping signals they are looking for another solution, and you want to raise it urgently to your CEO. This is when you raise the red flag.
How to use it: A red flag should come with an urgent-sounding email that speaks about risks, a risk mitigation plan, what dollar value is at risk, and what help you need from management.
How to follow up: Put a time box in the original communication. Indicate that you are giving the situation thirty days and no more to come to a conclusion, and then you will revisit the problem. Without a time box, there is no signal of urgency or end in sight.
What it signals: There is a problem. It needs work to solve, and soon.
Banging the Desk
What it is: This is what you do when there is a major issue, a fork in the road. This is what you do when the creative you are presenting in a few hours is horrible and one more slip up will lose the client’s confidence. You go to your chief creative officer and you bang the freaking desk.
How to use it: sparingly.
How to follow up: It’s immediate. Rapid and constant follow-up. Texts, in-person visits, and hounding of those who need to be hounded. Don’t wait for someone to get back to you, hound everyone until you can’t hound anyone else.
What it signals: There is a fire, a major issue, and clients and revenue are in danger.
In my career, I have seen far too many people think they are banging the desk when, in fact, they are raising a red flag. We had a very important client in the financial services industry for a long time. We were in the midst of creating a brand new website for them, and we were two months past deadline. Our leader on the account wrote me a pleasant email in which he told me he officially needed to “raise the red flag,” because the site was so late and because costs had now overrun those afforded in the SOW.
However, this was not a red-flag situation. This should have been a desk bang, and it should have occurred two months earlier. Three months earlier, perhaps, he could have raised a red flag, asking for more resources or input on the deadline priorities. A month before that, an FYI would have been appropriate.
Three Habit Changes
Discuss escalation procedures with your direct reports. Do they understand the differences between the FYI, the red flag, and banging the desk?
Hold a fire drill. Invent a situation in which you need to go bang the desk, and actually go through the motions with your team. Not only will this teach your team about the expectations for behavior in the case of an emergency, but it will also inure them to the potentially uncomfortable behaviors inherent in those situations.
As a manager, create an environment where it’s acceptable (and applauded) for your direct reports to bang the desk without fear.
Your FROM → TO personal goal:
FROM covering your ass, TO banging the desk
Lesson 31
31. The Hard Things about Hard Things for Leaders
I have been inspired by an incredible book called The Hard Thing About Hard Things written by Ben Horowitz. It’s a great book for any aspiring Great Client Partner. It discusses the trials and tribulations of entrepreneurism. Unlike so many famous leadership books where things are always sunny and seventy-two degrees, this particular book shows the underbelly of business really accurately. It got me thinking about the hard things related to client leadership and how they need to be discussed bluntly.
There are specific things that you have been trained to do as an account person. These include:
Things that are routine (i.e., status sheets)
Things that have a recipe (i.e., how to present)
Things that have frameworks (i.e., the four Cs)
Things that are easy to coach/correct (i.e., professionalism)
And then there are some things that are harder to learn. Here are the hard things about those hard things.
Have a Foil
Our moms, brothers, and best friends all tell us what we want to hear. Your grandma always tells you how good-looking you are. As account folks, we relish that positive feedback. (Hey, it’s the truth.) Our review scores and test scores cement what we want to believe—that we are all perfect snowflakes and brilliant in every way. Account people by nature crave positive reinforcement. We need to know we are snowflakes and wonderful and unique in every way.
Actually, what you don’t need is another person telling you how great you are. What you do need is a foil, a truth teller. I am lucky enough to have several foils. One is Scott Daly. Scott is smart, he is a contrarian, and he is never afraid to provide advice. This advice is a gift, even if I don’t always want to hear it. For a long time, I was of the personal belief that hiring folks directly out of college was a potential financial risk. Scott played my foil and helped me to understand that he and his team can train them up and also recruit college graduates faster. He was not content to just listen; he wanted to be part of a better and different tomorrow. He cared only about the solution. He is a great foil.
If you are going to eat crow, don’t nibble.
As discussed briefly in Lesson 24 about communicating without obfusca
ting, we are conditioned to ease our clients and internal partners into bad news. We phase things. We drivel out details. We drop breadcrumbs. We love to say things like, “It’s just another small iteration that’s left.” We hope things will get better when we know they will get worse. It’s the human account-leader condition. This is wrong. When you have bad news or something tough to do, take care of it once with decisiveness, compassion, and honesty. Then move on to the next play.
If people understand the cause, they will work harder for it.
Client leaders are trained to explain, measure, and judge the task at hand. This is unfortunate because the task alone is not motivating. Account managers (especially younger ones) forget to share the cause with the team. The cause (i.e., what it is you are fighting for) is the reason someone should care enough to find another gear in their drive to succeed. Too often, managers assume an employee should not hear the cause for some reason or another. This is almost always a mistake. Taking an extra minute to explain why something is important will mean an extra hour’s worth of energy from those working the problem. Do you have a minute to spare in order to gain an hour back? Always try to share the cause with your troops.
There is war time and peace time. Don’t confuse the two.
Remember the Accurate Fire Prediction Ratio? Client leaders have to understand when they are at war and when they are at peace. Not knowing which one you are in the midst of means certain death for your team. When you get that FedEx note that you lost the business, it was because you failed to see you were at war in the first place. War means entirely different behaviors, work levels, team needs, investment, and executive-level escalation. War means you need a battle plan that ends in victory. Understand when you are at war and act accordingly.
