A Monthly PS Principles Newsletter For Decision Makers [December 2022]

Call for Contributors

As we take a hiatus over Christmas there is an opportunity for you to contribute. If you'd like to contribute an article on any of the following topics, please let marketing@psprinciples.com know immediately. Deadline for nomination will be December 18th, 2022 with content submissions due by December 28th, 2022 for the January Edition.

• Professional Services Industry or Economy
• Portfolio or Project Management
• PS Management or Operations
• Customer-facing Service Delivery

In this edition...

Mastering the Sales Cycle

• 5 Steps to Sales Success
• Win deals that make you work!

PS Manager Philosophy

• Do you have a PS Management Philosophy?
• Here's a simple philosophy to get you started...

Employee Engagement Framework

• Are your employees engaged?
• A simple way to ensure that they are.

Mastering the Sales Cycle

PS Management Philosophy

What is your management philosophy? Do you have one?

When talking to P&L owners of a professional services team, I typically find that one of the areas they struggle with is the sudden switch from project ownership to portfolio ownership. "How do I get my rms around the portfolio?" While I've written before about operational cadence and the value of settling into one, I want to look at something a little simpler in this instance, which is a simple mind shift that can help many P&L owners to manage their P&L's better.

Managers aren't paid to report results,

they are paid to make them happen!

Too often I work with organizations where the middle managers are out to report on the mechanics that are occurring within their team. "It looks we will generate $750k this month and fall short of our $800k target." Such a statement is always bothersome.

A great manager never resigns to failure. A great manager says, "While the most likely outcome is $750k, we are doing this and this to attempt to make the $800k." Maybe the "this and this" are ludicrous potshots that have very little chance of paying off, but at least there is a chance because we never stopped trying. The more we keep trying different ways to find unlikely wins, the more we learn about what works and what doesn't.

This mentality has become a critical component of our PS Manager training. PS Management is about taking control of your P&L and leading your team to achieve greater outcomes, not just to simply report on the team's efficiency of converting backlog into revenue. It's about setting targets for future achievement, establishing changes in process to try and make them happen and then being able to execute.

So today, spend a minute thinking about your monthly, quarterly or even end of year targets. What do you have to do to make them happen? If you aren't in a good position to make them, how can you save the day with a Hail Mary? It's never too late to try. No idea is too outlandish provided it is legal and not in violation of your firms code of conduct. Propose a plan to your direct manager and ask, "What do you think?" Even if they don't like it, they are seeing that you haven't given up and you are trying to "make" the number, not just "report" it.

Employee Engagement Framework

When teaching managers about people management, we use a 4 staged approach which helps managers identify the key areas of focus they must give to their employees.

1. Scheduled Contact

If you have direct reports, you must have scheduled one-to-one contact with them. An employee who has no or infrequent contact with their manager is an immediate attrition risk no matter how "self-sustaining" they may appear to be. If you manage people then make sure you have scheduled time with every one of your direct reports; if you want them to stay.

2. Business Performance & Priority Framework

When you meet with your people you have to ensure that you focus on the things that are important to both you and them. To do this, you need two critical frameworks.

The first is a clear definition of the employee's achievements upon which their performance will be based. While this sounds easy, you would be surprised how many times we investigate business objectives for employees only to find that they are lacking in both clear articulation and measurement.

The clarity in defining the metrics through which achievements will be measured is then mimicked by the clarity you will achieve in reporting progress. When the objective is clearly defined, then the progress towards that objective should also be equally clear. This is not a given of course, but you certainly cannot achieve clarity of progress definition without first defining the achievement towards which this progress represents.

The second is a determination of how you will decide on priority. This is something that poor managers forget and something that great managers maintain. It is a priority to discuss priority management with your employees.

Agreement on priorities tells your employees what you want them to achieve first as well as explain how you will view their achievements in the context of a performance review. It tells them that achieving the lowest item on your priority list is of lower importance than achieving the highest.

On occasion, you may shift priorities to temporarily progress efforts in areas outside of the employees performance scope. It is OK to do this, provided that you are also aware of how the shift in priority is likely to affect that employee's ability to achieve their performance targets.

3. Skill Development Performance & Priority

Outside of the business objectives an employee is attempting to achieve, the next most important aspects of your communication should be in helping them develop their skills. These skills should be focused on helping your employee achieve the level of performance you have outlined in the previous discussion.

As managers, we tend to forget to apply the right level of priority to skill development. As a test, you should ask yourself, at what point does the need to develop an employee's skill ever outweigh the need for that employee to generate revenue? If the answer is never or only when it becomes an attrition risk, then you need to rethink your management strategy.

4. Succession Planning

While you may not talk specifically to your employee about succession planning, the conversation you need to be having with them is in the context of your broader succession planning framework.

"Where do you think you might be in 2 years time?" or something similar is a great question to know the answer to for each employee. Collecting the desired career direction of every employee gives you the information upon which you can formulate your succession plan.

Alternatively, this information may also help you guide people in the direction of career advancement that best suits their skills. If you have someone who simply won't beat out the other people who also want to move in that direction then maybe that is a conversation worth having. Maybe there are alternatives that this person may also accept as being a good career fit.

The general idea of this framework is that it is an easy way to structure your thoughts when it comes to people management. Do I have time scheduled with my people? Do I talk to them specifically about how I will measure their performance and how they should prioritize their work? Do I help them prioritize their own skill development? Am I helping them identify and work towards career advancement? If you can answer "yes" to all of these, then guess what? You are a darn good people manager!