Tag Archives: women in business

by | June 17, 2014 · 5:00 am

What If Everybody Wins?

 

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I just got off the phone with a colleague. We were discussing how to mutually benefit our respective clients who are adversaries in a case so they can end up in a win/win situation…

I love practicing in the Bankruptcy Bar in Nashville, TN, but a few years ago I overheard an attorney from another state complain that our bar was too conciliatory, too nice and not adversarial enough. This attorney felt there was no criticism of our skills and knowledge base and we were not getting a good deal for our clients. In fact, many of us lecture locally and nationally and our judges’ legal opinions are respected and looked to for precedent value in other parts of the country.

It is difficult enough and challenging enough to work in an environment where you have to continuously focus on strategy and the weaknesses and strengths of other parties without attorneys superimposing artificial adversarial positions, constraints, and general lack of civility simply for the sake of doing so.

While the Bankruptcy Bar in Nashville has been doing this for a long time, recently I learned that the Divorce Bar has begun promoting a conciliatory approach as well – called collaborative divorce – where an attorney represents both parties and, if an agreement is not reached, he or she cannot represent anyone. It seems that everyone should be motivated to reach a win/win situation under those circumstances instead of leaving a lot of scorched earth behind them before a divorce is concluded.

I think that if this trend bleeds over into other areas of law, not only would clients benefit greatly, but the quality of an attorney’s work environment would as well.

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by | June 12, 2014 · 5:30 am

How The Heck Did That Happen?

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Running a business is both exhilarating and scary.  It’s exhilarating to have total intellectual and artistic freedom to do what you want as you earn a living.  It’s scary because all the responsibility falls on you as the business owner.

Expect that you will have a few “how the heck did that happen” moments. These moments can arise from many situations.  Perhaps you discover that a trusted employee has stolen company money or property.  Perhaps you learn that a key supplier has gone bankrupt just as you are about to enter your busiest season, leaving you scrambling to meet your sales goals while searching for a replacement supplier.

Planning can make all the difference between failure and success for your business.  Planning involves taking three key steps:

 

  1. The first step is to ask “what if” questions. What if my key supplier suddenly disappeared? Asking this question means that you will immediately begin looking for a backup supplier. Or it could mean that you decide to use several suppliers at all times so that you have an existing relationship and can quickly ramp up orders to the surviving supplier. This type of planning is a component of what the pundits call your “business continuity plan”.  A good business continuity plan works in conjunction with a good disaster recovery plan or emergency response plan.

 

  1. The second step in planning is to buy insurance to cover your risks. If you have employees, it is always a good idea to get a policy that covers employee dishonesty.  These policies can restore you cash flow while your former trusted employee is living in the islands on your money.  At least your business won’t fail due to the sudden, acute loss of cash.  These days, most insurance companies offer package deals on property and casualty insurance that cover the basic liability risks faced by any business.  A basic P&C package can be supplemented with a “rider” that adds more coverage for specific risks.  Your agent or broker can help you decide which coverage best fits your company’s risks.

 

  1. The third step in planning is to remember that your advance planning will probably not fit the crisis that you face in your “how the heck did that happen” moment.  No matter how well you plan, something will boondoggle in unexpected ways. But having a plan means that you can improvise a solution. An existing plan can be tweaked to fit the unexpected and that will save your business. Not planning in advance is a guarantee of failure for your business.

 

If you follow the three key steps outlined here, I believe you will have the basics for a good corporate compliance plan.  After all, the point of a corporate compliance plan is to sort out all those boring back-office details that make the difference between failure and success, when you find yourself asking, “How the heck did that happen?”

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by | June 10, 2014 · 5:00 am

The Other Side of the Couch

couchSo – I am about to jump off into the world of blogging.. I have ideas, thoughts, things to share that I think could be useful for others. I’ve spent a lot of my professional life doing just that – helping others. As a teacher, a school principal, and now a Professional Counselor, helping other people learn has been my life’s work. And yet…how much of my personal self is appropriate to “show” in something like this? …as a therapist I am not the “blank slate” type. You won’t find me sitting across from you just nodding or using the famous “mm-hmm”. I am active, I respond, my clients can see how their words and their concerns affect me. That’s part of how I believe good therapy happens…there is a mutuality of response. That doesn’t mean that I am using my client’s time to deal with my personal issues…but it does mean that I am more open and more present in the relationship than perhaps some other styles of therapy allow.

People in this profession know that the good therapists are the ones who do their own personal work. If you haven’t dealt with (or if you don’t continue to deal with) whatever is going on in your own world, your instrument…your self…will not be clear and available to do the work with others.

Sharing ideas and experiences that come from my own self-understanding and from the work I’ve done over the years with clients in many different situations is something I want to do. This blog, as I now conceive it, will be about my own reactions and experiences . My hope is that I can provide tips to deal with life issues that might be useful to others. Here is a big disclaimer…please take what works for you…and leave the rest! I certainly don’t pretend to have all the answers, but I do have a voice and years of experience that I am willing to share.

SOME THINGS TO THINK ABOUT WHEN CHOOSING A COUNSELOR

1. How do you feel when you meet them?

2. Do they demonstrate respect for you by informing you of their policies and procedures?

3. Do they clearly explain confidentiality…that counseling is confidential with exceptions that include needing to break confidentiality if a person is a danger to himself/herself or others, or if a person has knowledge of a situation of a minor child or elder being abused.?

4. Do you feel understood as you talk about your concerns? Does the counselor listen carefully and is the counselor able to ask questions that help you go deeper into your concerns?

Choosing a counselor is a big deal – a major investment of time, energy, and finances – and you need to feel right about the person you are working with. If you don’t feel like it is a fit, keep looking – because it is the relationship between you and your counselor that creates change.

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by | June 5, 2014 · 3:00 am

Leap?

Woman-leapingI work in a profession where we strive for certainty. As engineers, public health, safety, and welfare is in our hands; it is what we promise to protect when we get our licenses. We need to know we’re making the right decisions. Technically. This has made us a people who are cautious, and rightly so, about forward movement.

However, we are also business people, faced day-to-day with decisions where there is no proof in the moment that the path we choose will be the right one. Where even past experience doesn’t give us the reassurance we need to know we’ll get the outcome we need. Things like striving to capture a new market sector, hiring an outside PR team when we’ve never done THAT before, making an investment in technology that might improve our efficiency. Not public health, safety and welfare issues, perhaps. But, decisions important to succeeding in business.

That’s when I pull out my favorite saying: “Leap and the net will appear.” When you’ve pulled together enough information, ruminated it in your experienced mind, vetted it with trusted colleagues….sometimes you just have to go ahead and act. Even without certainty, even without knowing. Even if….it might not work.

The trick is to know when it’s ok to leap….and leaping.

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