Help your unhappy employees go

In the knowledge economy, the engine and energy of production are in the minds and hearts of employees.  People who have up-to-date knowledge and skills can do more and better; those who are happier in their jobs tend to do more and better.  If your job is to help other people be more productive, efficient or effective, it's your responsibility to help employees get smarter and be happier in their jobs.

Though there are plenty of low-cost strategies for educating and motivating employees, there is only so much a manager can do.  If there are major problems that can't be addressed in an acceptable time frame, then it may be better for the manager to help the employee find another opportunity where they can succeed.  A happy alum replaced by a productive worker can help your organization more than an unsatisfied, unproductive worker.

Some companies in the Silicon Valley are even making the opportunity to leave a fringe benefit of joining a firm.  As The New York Times reported in "Silicon Valley Hiring Perks: Meals, iPads and Cubicle for Spot" some high-tech firms are offering employees classes on starting their own businesses.

Why does that make sense?  Because entrepreneurs tend to want the freedom to control their time and create their own schedules.  No matter how flat or progressive a company is, employees have to report to supervisors. The bigger the organization, the more likely there are to be policies and regulations that inhibit freedom.

What should managers do, and when should they decide it is time to help employees find new opportunities?

First, managers and organizations have to try.

An organization that does not provide reasonable opportunities for employees to update their knowledge and skill sets is one that, frankly, does not value their employees enough.  There are plenty of low-cost ways to train and develop people -- but there is always at least a cost of time.  A consulting firm whose managers say "You can go to free seminars and webinars, but you still have to have the same amount of billable hours" is not making any reasonable effort to develop employees.

And if an organization says it can't afford to train and develop people, it should not be buying new furniture or giving nice perks for its executives.  Smart employees know that organizations reveal what they value by what they spend.  If you spend more money on where you park your assets than on the people who made the spending possible, expect there to be widespread unhappiness.

Harder for many managers is dealing with employees' emotional states.  It's easy to identify skill sets and places where employees can get them.  But sometimes employees themselves aren't sure why they're unhappy, or what motivates them.   Also, if the employees' issues are due to problems outside the office, managers can be rightfully concerned about going into areas of psychological counseling that they are not equipped to handle.  (If your organization has a human resources department, trained professionals there should deal with employee emotional issues.  If there is no HR department, the executives and directors of the firm may have to learn enough to diagnose problems they can't handle themselves.  Organizations without HR departments should be aware of human resources consultants.)

You can start by simply asking employees what they like, or don't like, about their job and the organization.  But be aware that if an employee does not trust you, or you are part of the "don't like" column, the employee is not going to be candid.  If you don't already have a good relationship with an employee, it is better to let someone else ask the questions.

It's useful to know what employees value most.  One way is to ask them, after they complete their lists of likes and dislikes, to identify, in order, what they would be willing to give up if they had to, and what they would be willing to get rid of if they could.

Another tool for understanding what motivates employees is Career Anchors.  It is a tool developed by management guru Edgar Schein that helps those who use it better understand what they want in their careers.  People who value independence above other things will probably be unhappy in rule-bound bureaucratic organizations.  People who value stability more might find it too stressful to work for a small, tight-budget nonprofit.

There may be other tools that your human resources colleague or consultant might recommend as a better fit for your situation.

When you have a better understanding of what most motivates employees, determine what you can change, and what you can't.  If what can't change in a reasonable period of time is important to the employee, then it is time to help the employee find new opportunities.

Having the talk with the employee is difficult.  The employee might think that he or she is going to get fired, and you are providing a subtle form of advance notice.  If that is not the case, make it clear.  If it is the case, let the employee know what he or she can do, if anything, to change the decision.

Then through your contacts, job boards, or other ways you're comfortable with, help the employee find a new opportunity in an organization that can help yours.  If the employee goes to a competing organization, the employee's new supervisors would look down on that person helping you in the future.

Encourage the employee to stay in touch.  Or better yet, create or expand an organizational network to include alumni.  Some large law firms, like colleges, have their own alumni organizations.  These help maintain good relationships and generate good leads.

There are three ways that people in knowledge-based industries leave their jobs:

• They lose their motivation, which reduces the energy they put into the job and makes them less creative, productive and committed to resolving problems.
• They lose their interest, which leads to distractions and mistakes.
• They spend more time away from work, either voluntarily (coming in late, overly long lunches) or otherwise (when the stress causes illness or injury, increasing the number of sick days used)

If unhappy employees are going to leave, help them go in ways that benefit everyone.

--Leonardo Vazquez, AICP/PP

Leonardo Vazquez, AICP/PP, is the Director of the Professional Development Institute and The Leading Institute at Rutgers University's Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy. The institutes offer continuing education courses in leadership and management.  Learn more about the Professional Development Institute, The Leading Institute and upcoming courses.

In today's economic climate, everyone needs to be a rainmaker

Now more than ever in our lifetimes, the job security of many placebuilders depends on their being able to bring in resources.

In the private sector, infrastructure spending hasn't led to widespread bumps in job hiring.  According to the U.S. Department of Labor, there are about 21,000 fewer jobs in architectural and engineering organizations in the United States, compared to September of 2009.  In good times, technical professionals who hate marketing and networking could rely on others to bring in the money.  Today, any professional who is not overly busy doing billable work or generating it might be seen as a cost that a firm can't afford right now.

(The back office professionals -- mapmakers, researchers, and others who do little direct work with clients or communities -- are especially vulnerable.  Technology is making it possible for others to do the same work at less cost.  And that's not going to change, even when the economy fully recovers.)

To make things more difficult, the lean times are causing more competition.  In strong economies, bigger firms can afford to turn away smaller jobs, confident that something else will come around.  Now, they are chasing the smaller game.  (This is especially tough for the mid-size firms, which might not have the resources of large firms or the flexibility and low overhead costs of small ones.)

In difficult economies, many nonprofit organizations tend to struggle with increased demands for services and reduced giving by foundations and corporate entities.  Community based organizations, most of whom were created to address social issues, tend to spend more time on direct service and less time on planning.

The public sector has been a good landing spot for placebuilders who wanted to do good works without the risks and uncertainty of working in the private and nonprofit sectors.  Not anymore. Since September 2009,  around 249,000 public sector jobs have been lost, according to the Department of Labor's September 2010 jobs report.  Placebuilders are especially at risk because unlike the work of police, firefighters, teachers and road crews,  it is harder for placebuilders to show direct or immediate benefits from their work.

What if you have someone in your organization who is great at raising funds, getting contracts or retaining clients.  Those people are going to be the ones in most demand from other places.  It's a big risk to rely on just a few people for sustainability.

If you want to be seen as more valuable to your firm, organization or agency:

• Demonstrate how your work can or does generate more revenue or helps the organization retain clients. Being smart is not enough.  There might be plenty of other smart people who are willing to do your job for less money.  Talk about the value of your work, and your organization's work, to everyone who might affect it -- elected officials, civic and business leaders, potential clients. Urban planners in particular need to be promoting the value of planning.  Consider: If they don't know what you do or what value it gives them, why should they pay you to do it?
  
• Always Be Marketing.  If you're not writing proposals or meeting with potential clients, you should be looking for opportunities and being aware of trends or conditions that could pose threats or provide opportunities for your organization.
  
• If you don't have experience in marketing or business development, learn how to do this work.  It's more difficult and complex than it looks. If you think it's just putting a nice spin on what you already do, you need to learn more about this work.
  
• Offer to get more involved in marketing and business development. Work with others in your organization who are good at getting contracts and grants. But don't just copy what they do -- find ways of marketing and business development that work for you and your organization.  If you're uncomfortable asking your supervisors for this kind of work, volunteer to help raise money or write proposals for a nonprofit that you believe in.  They are likely to appreciate whatever help they can get, and you can develop experience and a track record for generating revenue.

--Leonardo Vazquez, AICP/PP

The Bloustein Online Continuing Education Program offers several classes to help you get more contracts and grants, and retain clients.  The next course in this topic is Business Development for Planners, running from November 3 to December 18, 2010. (Scholarships still available at the time of this writing.) Questions about BOCEP or the class?  Contact us

A business model for the 21st century planning, engineering or design firm

The recent demise of one of New Jersey's largest engineering and planning firms,  CMX (formerly Schoor-DePalma), has made us think about what could be a winning model for private sector land use firms in the 21st century.

In the 20th century, such firms could rely largely on the expertise and relationships of influential professionals (such as Olmsted, Bartholomew and Schoor).  As the firms grew, more work would be farmed out to junior and mid-level associates in a central office, who generate the greatest revenue margins in the private sector.  Bigger firms could better afford the hardware and manage the human resources to become sources of expertise for their clients. With the reduction of travel costs and the growth of the Internet, bigger firms could afford to have more branch offices to compete against smaller local firms.

Here's why the 20th century business model won't work as well in the upcoming decades:

• Globalization.  Globalization doesn't just distribute goods around the world -- it distributes brain power.  Within the next decade, if not already, there will be thousands of English-speaking professionals in lower-wage countries like India and China.  Some will have trained in the United States.  Some, like those in the Middle East, will be trained in their home countries by American universities.  And of course, there are plenty of fine universities throughout the world.

• Information technology. As more information gets digitized, and there is more bandwidth to distribute it, there is less need to keep it in any central location -- especially not in high-rent locations like New York City or San Francisco.   Videoconferencing and cloud software (such as Google and Zoho applications) allow professionals to collaborate from anywhere they can get an Internet connection.

• Diversity.  Olmsted, Bartholomew, Schoor and others were almost always building business relationships with other white men like themselves. They could build connections in the Rotary Club meetings and golf courses, then close the deals in the conference rooms.  In the 21st century, more decision-makers are going to be women and people of color.  (And not just in the cities.  American suburbs are becoming more diverse.)  It's easier to work with people who are like yourself, and so large planning, engineering and design firms tend to go from lighter to darker, and from more male to female, as you move down their organization charts.  Decisionmakers who are women or ethnic minorities are going to wonder how well your firm can serve their communities if your staff look like the people who used to live in those communities. 
  
  (By the way, you know that technique of tossing 5% of the work to a women-owned or minority-owned business, then showing up with someone from that firm at the interview to show the diversity of your team?  Yea, decision-makers will catch on to that soon.)

  So what might the successful 21st century American business model be?

• It may be based anywhere in the United States, but its technical and analytical work will be done in India, China or other countries with large numbers of English-speaking professionals and lower wages than in the United States.  Teams will collaborate by videoconference and large files will be sent through the Internet.  Anything you can do from your desktop in the United States can be done by someone else anywhere in the world -- for less money.  

• Branch offices in the United States will be boutique offices.  They will have a small number of staff -- mostly people who are good at getting contracts that can be managed somewhere else -- and be in locations that clients will enjoy visiting.  (Hint: Nobody wants to visit an exurban office park.)  Because information is so cheap to get and hold, more professionals will look the same to clients.  Building personal relationships with a wide variety of people will be more important than ever.

• It will be more diverse and culturally competent.  No, no, no -- it's not that clients want to hire only those people who look like themselves.  Clients will know that everyone who pitches to them has the same basic level of expertise. Contracts will be given not for being smart, but for being able to understand the concerns of the client at a deep level. 

• It may not even be a single firm, but a consortium of boutique businesses sharing resources. Why carry the overhead of full-time staff when you can have friends in the business who are on-call? (By the way, this is happening now, and it is a threat to mid-sized firms.)

If you are a professional in the United States with at least 20 more years left in your career, you should build skills in business development, cultural competency, team building and leadership.  Even if there is more demand for planning, there may not be much more demand for mere technicians in the United States.

--Leonardo Vazquez, AICP/PP

If you want to learn business development skills, try the upcoming BOCEP Deep Learning course Business Development for Planners, from May 26 to July 3, 2010.

Should you go after that RFP?

Whether we are consultants or nonprofit or public sector professionals, we all at some point wind up getting requests for proposals (RFPs). Hopefully, we get more of them than we can respond to. How should we choose among them?

The first step is to decide whether the work that is being asked for is in what the requesters would see as one of your core strengths. That is, it's not about whether you can do the work, but whether the person who reads your proposal thinks you can do the work. If not, you will be better off ditching the RFP or seeing if you can collaborate with another organization that specializes in the work.

Think about how you heard about the RFP. If someone at the requesting organization told you about it before it was issued, that's a good sign that you might be a strong candidate. If, on the other hand, you found out about it from someone outside the agency, and had to request a copy of the RFP, you are going to have a harder time proving yourself against your competitors. If the agency didn't send your group an RFP for something that you would normally do, the most likely reasons are that the issuers don't know you, or don't want you to respond. (Or it might be that the intern assigned to mail out the RFPs overlooked your address.)

Before you begin to write your proposal, get information from the issuer. Some of the things you want to know are:

*Does the requester have the money committed to the project? As strange as it sounds, some public agencies send out RFPs without having the money to pay for the work. What someone at the agency is probably doing is getting respondents to do the work of building a case to pay for the project. They may get the money, but that doesn't mean you will get the job. Note: this kind of practice is harmful to society in the long run. It increases the operating costs of responding organizations, which are then passed on to clients or employees.

*How much does the requester plan to spend? Any response other than a range of figures is a bad sign. "I don't know" means the agency might just be fishing for ideas -- which the agency might take on itself. "We can't tell you that" (or words to that effect) is a sign that the potential client might have a habit of hiding information. Clients that withhold important information will generate additional administrative and time costs -- and may blame you for the overruns.

*Why is the requester sending out the RFP? Clients and funding agencies aren't always clear in an RFP about what they want in a consultant or grantee. By asking questions such as: "Why do you want to do this?" "Why now?" and "What have you tried before?" you can get a richer sense of the requester's needs and beliefs.

There may be times when you should respond to an RFP, even if you sense some warning signs, or think you will be a long shot. Respond to the RFP if:

*You're trying to build a relationship with the requesting agency. You can use your proposal as a 'calling card' that might help you get future interviews on other projects.

*You're trying to build your image with competitors or potential clients. Requesters are more likely to pick the consultant or grantee that they know -- or at least have heard of.

*You don't mind taking a risk. Like the slogan for the New York Lottery -- Hey, you never know.

--Leonardo Vazquez, AICP/PP

For more information:
The Bloustein Online Continuing Education Program offers several courses to help you enhance your practice and business.  They include Business Development for Planners, Professional Writing Studio, and Who Do They Think You Are? Branding for Planning, Design and Development Professionals. To learn more about these courses, go to http://www.policy.rutgers.edu/bocep

Conference networking tips

Whether you're a gregarious extrovert or a shy introvert, the tips below can help you get the maximum benefit from a conference.

Engaging and disengaging individuals

Most professionals go to conferences to meet other professionals.  So it's perfectly appropriate to go over to someone and introduce yourself.  Make sure that the person is not otherwise engaged in a tight conversation or other activity.

You don't need a "line."  Just introduce yourself, say what you do and where, and then ask the people you talk to their names, what they do, and where they work (or used to work.)

Aim to spend more time listening and asking questions than talking.  Most people love talking about themselves.  Everyone appreciates being listened to.

Asking "how," "why" and questions asking for clarification are good ways to keep your audience engaged.

If you're not interested to someone, you can quickly excuse yourself by saying something like, "It was a pleasure to meet you," and walk away from the conversation.  If you're not comfortable being so direct, you can pretend to have a phone call or urgent message.

Don't worry if someone excuses him or herself after a few minutes.  He or she may have different networking goals than you.

Aim to get at least five business cards per day of the conference.  On the back of each one, write a note to remind you when and where you met the person and a word that indicates what you talked about.

Ideally, you would follow up with everyone you met.  At least follow up within a week with those people who you would most like to meet or engage later on.

When talking to someone for the first few minutes, avoid trying to "sell" your organization, services or program.  Work to make the person feel comfortable with you.  If the person gives you his or her card, you're welcome to follow up. 

Increasing your visibility

Do you remember the person who sat in the back of the room during the presentation and asked no questions?  Neither does anybody else.  Make yourself more visible by asking questions or asking a speaker to add to an earlier comment that he or she made.

Disagreeing directly with the speaker, or adding a tangential comment, can make you look pushy or arrogant.

Feel free to introduce yourself to the speaker(s) at the end of the session.  In most planning and related professional conferences, the majority of presenters do not get paid.  Many are themselves looking to increase their own visibility or awareness of their ideas. 

Special tips for networking at mealtimes

If you came with colleagues or associates, sit at different tables.  You don't need to network with your friends or co-workers.

If you see empty seats at a table, ask if you can join the group.  When there is an appropriate opportunity, engage the people closest to you.

Avoid ordering or eating long pastas (spaghetti, linguini, etc.) or any food with a lot of sauce.  It could get sloppy, which could distract your audience.

Avoid a table where everybody sitting there is "huddling."  Those people have probably closed the networking circle and you would find it difficult to enter without seeming pushy.  On the other hand, if someone at the table isn't part of the huddle, he or she would probably welcome some conversation. 

Chain networking
Chain networking is the practice of networking with people who are networking with people you already know.  It works best if you go to the conference with friends or co-workers, or already know people at the conference.

If you see that your colleague is talking with someone, feel free to join the group.  Introduce yourself by your affiliation with your colleague.  This will make the other person more comfortable in speaking with you.

If your colleague joins you while you're networking, make the introductions.    

Networking with groups
When three or more people talk together, they tend to form groups.  Read their body language to determine if you should try to join them.

If they form a closed circle (facing one another, backs to rest of the room), avoid trying to join them.  You might be perceived as an interloper.

If you are on good terms with someone in a closed circle, you can probably enter it comfortably.

If the circle is more open, you can try to enter it casually.  For example, you can listen from the side, and at an appropriate moment say something like "that's an interesting point.  Why do you think that?" 

Networking around conference sessions

If you don't need the continuing education credits, or aren't interested in any of the sessions, hang around the hallways outside the session rooms.  You'll probably find others like you there.

Avoid standing in the refreshment line during the coffee breaks.  Lines usually give you an opportunity to network with only two people at a time. 

If you're looking for a job 
Fight the urge to ask the person you just met if there are jobs available at his or her workplace.  Instead, ask if there is someone you could follow up with to 'learn more about' the person's office.

In this economy, it's ok to let someone know that you're in between jobs.  It's better to say your position was cut, or you were one of several laid off.  If that's not the case, or you don't want to say any of those things, call yourself an independent consultant.

--Leonardo Vazquez, AICP/PP

Do you have a professional development tip you would like to share?  Have a question that you would like to see answered here?  Please send it to Leo at vazquezl@rutgers.edu