Seeing the Big Picture
“To see the big picture, sometimes you must rise above the puzzle!”
– Anonymous
In our experience, some clients acquire a training seminar and go home happy. But others, a few, go “All In!” and acquire, install, operate, manage and evolve an entire complex winning system.
Puzzle Piece or Big Picture? Seminar or System? That’s the choice…
Clients have asked: “Suppose we go All In? What’s the Winning Formula? What’s it gonna take? Oh, and What’s the payoff? How’s it supposed to look when it’s done?”
What’s Required?
Well, Training of course; but also the organizational development wisdom behind the training. The long view — the awareness that greatness takes time. It’s not just a switch to be turned on, or a single seminar, but a system to be installed, maintained and managed.
Component parts of the “All In” model?
* One STORY: Well conceived and beautifully structured for recall and repetition.
* A Sales Force: Can turn on a dime and make it appear original in Tempe or Tampa.
* Management Team: Holds onto the big picture as they nudge everyone into position. (“I know you have a killer opening Jack, but while you’re getting noticed, nobody’s remembering the firm! Get with the program!)
* Marketing: Takes it to print, PowerPoint and the web. Every medium telling the same beautifully choreographed story.
* Sales Desk: Short Story gets told, while matching literature is dispatched with a keystroke.
* Collaborative Story Development System: With Input from the field, the phones, compliance and product; usually managed by a senior marketer.
* Internal Software Tools for Building & Managing the Modular Library.
* Universal Standards of Expectation for Spoken, Written & Marketing Communication.
* Outcome: “One Story, Many Voices!”
Fusion can be a dynamite seminar, or also an interlinked system combining story development, storytelling, selling, management, and strategy, driven by a lofty vision of what a firm can do if it aligns what it believes with what it does and says.
When it’s a seminar, you start with a single committed manager. When you’re going “All In!” there’s got to be a Leader and a team who gets, and keeps the vision all the way to fruition.
Over the years, we’ve been privileged to have many seminar clients and an even dozen firms who decided to invest in creating a Culture of Communication. It’s interesting though, that very few began with the lofty vision. Most of them began with a seminar and slowly found their way to the mountaintop. First Presenting, then Story Development, then the entire Sales Force, then Manager Coaches, then Marketing, Counselor Selling, Strategic Planning, Executive Counsel, Management Practices, then the Sales Desk… There’s no one path, but each client has assembled their unique puzzle in their own unique way. Always though, the relationship begins in order to solve a problem — which reveals other problems, which require other solutions. And so it goes…
Three Tests that prove you achieved it:
1. Your receptionist can deliver the elevator pitch — with passion!
2. Your clients can give your elevator pitch — with conviction!
3. They are both saying the same thing…
A single piece can be useful, but if you want the big picture, you have to rise above the puzzle!
Applications
1. Personal
Attending a seminar is a start, but to validate the investment, you may have to go “All In!” Start on yourself. Make the skills a consistent part of your career. It’s not simply knowing how to present, listen or sell; it’s practicing until the arts “infuse” your life.
2. At Home
It’s not simply buying a guitar for your son. It’s enquiring about how this week’s piece is going. Has “Dead or Alive” become listenable to mortal ears? Dad wants to hear — and sit through the entire painful play-through! It’s not the guitar — Going “All In!” is creating a musical environment.
3. At Work
Investing in a seminar is a start. But going “All In!” begins with modeling — demonstrating — your mastery of the same seminar you took twenty five years ago; then demanding and supporting the same skills in your people today. Then holding out against the flood of “new,” “hot,” “unique” and different things that don’t add value but simply confuse the issue. Leadership is knowing that what works is what always worked: sustained, simple, re-callable repeatable messages about simple, clear, useful products that serve client needs.
Looking for the big picture? Rise above the puzzle and “Go All In!”
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