All posts by Carey Smith-Marchi

team dynamics

People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.

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Business success can be defined in many ways – achievement of a firm’s goals and vision, cost reduction, successful strategy implementation, meeting revenue goals, etc. Firm-wide, team based, or individual, not matter your goals or desired outcome, a key success factor is one’s ability to build strong relationships with colleagues, managers, clients and often competitors.

Ed Wallace’s Business Relationships that Last: 5 Steps for Transforming Contacts into High-Performing Relationships proposes that every relationship is built on a foundation of three essential qualities – Credibility, Integrity, and Authenticity.

  • Credibility – the quality that makes other believe in you, your words, and your actions
  • Integrity – being trustworthy in our actions and character
  • Authenticity – being truly genuine and honest with our clients about who we are and what we know

Each aligns with a core tenant and value of the EvMBA program – each difficult to teach or develop in any student (or employee). Each quality requires a level of self-awareness and reflection that can be easily lost in the core or elective MBA curriculum of finance, statistical modeling or product and brand management.

Wallace provides a framework for developing high-impact relationships and introduces a number of activities to spark your thinking about who your key relationships are, what “blockers” are currently holding you back, and actions to take to strengthen your key relationships in a proactive way.

It’s a good and quick read. (Maybe a good one for August, as it’s ~200 pages cover to cover)

Would love to hear your ideas (and actions) on how you build and develop relationships with key stakeholders, colleagues and acquaintances.

04-Managing a project team

Managing Change, One Day at a Time

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http://hbr.org/2014/07/managing-change-one-day-at-a-time/ar/1

Are you currently managing organizational change? Seeking to transform your department, team or company? If so, read the full article as it provides an interesting correlation between effective transformation and addiction treatment programs. Ferrazzi presents 10-steps, but I have no doubt we can identify a few more to round it out to 12.

The 10-steps for change:

  1. Nothing happens without readiness to change.
  2. It’s important to replace old habits with new ones.
  3. Peer support and pressure drives change.
  4. Sponsorship deepens commitment and sparks results.
  5. Community without hierarchy is a catalyst for change.
  6. You are the company you keep.
  7. Continuous introspection is key.
  8. Changes in practice may represent breakthroughs.
  9. It pays to acknowledge small wins.
  10. The goal is progress not perfection.

My two take-aways from Ferrazzi:

  • Be persistent. Change is hard.
  • Know that people can adapt to new ways of thinking and acting you may just have to find some creative ways of getting them there.

I am interested in organizational change and how others have managed developing plans to enact change, worked through the process within your team or organization, and any strategies or success stories. Please share!