Mark Zweig - Shake Things Up

EXCELLENT Keynote Speaker - GREAT start to the Wave! Mark Zweig started with a fair amount of background information about his life and how he came back to ZweigWhite after a 7-year hiatus. And then things really got rolling. This is about shaking things up at your company to reinvent, reinvigorate, and revive your business. I typed as fast as I could... And this is unedited; harsh language and all.

When do you need to Shake Things Up?

• Best people leaving
• When ownership transition program dies because no one wants the company stock
• When founder’s idea about what the company should be is being ignored
• When it is too easy to do the work (always precedes a fall)
• When you aren’t having any fun anymore, spending more time thinking about doing something else

A lot of things you can do

1)      Pay somebody outside your firm to interview past, potential and current clients. Share the unedited results firm-wide.  (Don’t let partners edit)

Keep doing it – every month – to keep finger on pulse of what the market thinks about us. Keeps you from denying what your problems are. If someone inside firm does it, it won’t get done or will get filtered. Give outside firm a locked-in 12-month contract.

2)      Develop an all-new business plan and take a radical approach. Decide what you really want to do – question everything, especially the markets you serve and the services you provide. 

Maybe you need to be in technical temporary help, recruiting, business planning for municipalities? Or something else related but completely different than what you currently do. Get exposed to different people, and different margins associated with it so you differentiate yourself.

If you keep doing the same stuff that a million other firms do, then nothing is going to change for your firm.

What gives you the right to charge $400 an hour? Look in the phone book under structural engineers – how many do you find? About 400 of them. Now look under A/E Management – how many firms? None. EXACTLY. Make yourself different and you can charge more.

3)      Focus on client needs. Look at their business as a system; what is it that clients expect in every aspect of their business; then deliver that. Do something truly new for a client – the best place to try something new is with someone who already trusts you. What services have you never provided that you could do?

We’ve got to keep bringing out new stuff – the problem is in this business that we’re so constipated at the top that every single thing we want to try, they will come up with all the reasons not to do it; by the time we could have started it and done something, they’ve studied it to death and the opportunity is gone. Do SOMETHING. If it doesn’t work, try something else.

4)      Do something you have always done in a new way for a client. What can you do in an ALL NEW way? What can we do that makes it a completely different experience and compelling offer for the clients?

Make a commitment to do a project that the rest of the people in your firm think is impossible to do on that schedule, then make it happen. When you do this, you communicate to everyone that anything is possible.

5)
Take jobs away from people aren’t getting them done. It’s a problem in this business, that we hang on to people FOREVER. Even if they are losing the firm money, we don’t seem to be able to get them out. It doesn’t mean you have to fire them; you may be able to put them in another job. Farm things out. Things get done that way. Try somebody outside the company to get it done. If you don’t like them, hire somebody else. Do not just live with these people who think they have the job for life.

6) Ugly truth – fire some people. Some people need to go. Dysfunctional? Toxic? Cranky? A good firing of someone(s) you know needs to go is always helpful to morale and to shaking things up. Same thing with partners – don’t just look at the lower levels of employees. Look at the top – stop cutting from the bottom. The “top” can probably afford to be laid off. Are there principals who are just “coasting”?? Move them out. Free up some money and nice office space; and opportunities for some younger people so they don’t have to quit to start their own business in order to have upward mobility. 

Let everybody know WHY these people were fired, too. Stop being afraid of being honest. [HR people have us scared sh**less.] We need to say we let them go because they didn’t do a good job, or whatever the reason is.

7) Hire some new people. New people bring positive energy and “can do” spirit to the place that can help. Load up on interns/co-ops. They’re energetic, positive, know a lot about technology. Then if you hire them after they graduate, they last twice as long as other first-time employees. They don’t have that first “shock” of what “real work” is. Really smart people at the intern age. Young people will work the hours – if you give them a good opportunity, encouragement, someone to talk to, responsibility, recognition, opportunity to learn something new, treat them decently and with respect, have some fun at work, and time off. Wouldn’t you?

8) Stop giving performance appraisals privately, and start giving immediate feedback publicly. Don’t insult people – engage them in the conversation. “What did you think about… How do you think that could have gone differently to get a different result?” And have others in the conversation – they might learn something.

9) Implement a new organization structure. It is not just an academic exercise. Make the critics in charge of the areas they criticize. “You think you can do better? Put up or shut up?” Sometimes they actually do fix the issues. They obviously have a passion for it! Make the best people at any function in charge of that function. [In charge of QA/QC – here’s someone they didn’t know what to do with. Doh!] Is the best marketer in charge of marketing?

10) Change to a market-driven structure, vs. discipline or geographical based one. Make the best use of the resources firmwide. The only way to do that is think about what we really do, and put them into the right pockets. You will meet resistance. But it serves the clients the best – you can provide ALL the services to the market segments.

11) Move people around physically. Rearrange them in the office. Breaks up the “factions” and groups. If people stay in one place to long, they hunker down and cocoon themselves. Put people who don’t get along next to each other. If forces them to learn about each other. Move the bosses to the cubes and cube dwellers to the offices. Get out there among the people. Sit at the reception desk. See who is coming and going.

12) Redo your offices. Some folks live in pig pens. Clean it up. Paint it. Decorate. Pull the blinds up. It says to everybody – it’s not business as usual. We’re going to make things better in small ways and large. Why are you living the way you are living? Make it better. Buy some crazy posters and hang them throughout the office. Don’t buy those condescending “success” posters. Jazz it up. Have some fun. “Professional” atmosphere doesn’t appeal to the humanity.

13) Implement a new graphic image. Isn’t it time? Signage, business cards, letterhead, nametags, brochures, etc… Does this really reflect what we’re all about right now? Makes people feel like something is happening – inside and outside the office. Show that you look different to the outside world.

14) Track and report the numbers differently. If you’re organized by market segment, then track the money by market segment. You can’t track one way, and “function” another. Because people perform to the numbers – if they can’t see themselves in the numbers, they will adjust to the numbers. If you really want to shake things up, put the emphasis on individual performance – instead of calling it “Land group” call it “Bob's group” and put the accountability on a person, not a nameless group.

15) Reinvent a process. Why do you have to have the same marketing meetings that you’ve always had? Maybe there’s a better lead-tracking system? Or cut some steps out? Challenge why things are done the way they are and remake them.

16) Employ some new marketing tactics. Make everybody sign up on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. If you devote some of your time to it, you will get a lot out of it. “I don’t want to” is not acceptable. If company cell phone, LIST IT on company list. Do a 40 postcard direct mail collection. ZweigWhite comes out WEEKLY – therefore it dominates the market. Higher frequency is BETTER. Open up your eyes to how consumer product companies market – they know more than we do about how to affect consumers. 

Create a deck of playing cards with your “most wanted” employees on them – go recruit!

Rent billboards – not as expensive as you think, and super effective. How many A/E firms have billboards? You’d be unique. You’d have name recognition before you ever send in a proposal.

17) Get some new company vehicles that are identical and paint them all the same unique scheme. [Geek Squad] Do something different.

18) Examine every single customer touch point with your firm.  How does the client interact with your firm? Make it better. Web, phone, reception, email, etc. How can you make it a better experience?

19) Send out a different press release three times a week for a year. Press list of 500 people – or different lists for different topics. Be in the news as much as possible.

20) Do some stunts. Wear a wig to work. Hold a go-cart racing contest with your clients. [Instead of golf…] Community outreach? Bring in surprise to your meetings.

21) Force your people to be creative. Have employee painting contest. Have a talent show at annual business planning meeting. Hold contests for various things. [Delta collects the napkins customers draw/doodle on and frame them at various airports]

22) Call an unplanned meeting to ONLY talk about ways to shake things up.

Final thoughts...

Just because the industry is HAMMERED, doesn’t mean you have to be.

The problem is this - -not everyone likes being shaken up. There will be casualties. There will be challengers that want proof that every idea you have will work. They won’t get the proof, and not everything you try will work. So try something new. So what – move on. Do it fast. The key is doing it fast.

You have to be ready for change, too. But change is essential. Change of die.

Final advice for marketers….

Sell yourselves inside the company. If you don’t do that every single day – what you’re doing, what you’re getting done, how you’re making a difference. It doesn’t matter how great you’re doing, if they don’t know it, you’re going to be criticized and unsupported.

If all you’re doing is RESPONDING to every single thing that moves, or there is no time to do the new stuff/innovative stuff you NEED to be doing to win work. Seriously, response is not the answer.

Marketing is an investment in the company. You have to throw gasoline on the fire. It is the advance work marketing can do that makes you a higher growth firm than other firms. All highly successful firms spend more on marketing than their peers. Gotta spend the money to make the money.