Horizon Point Consulting

Category: Beyond Leadership

Beyond Leadership is Horizon Point’s line of resources for managers of people. Managing ourselves is a distinct set of behaviors from managers the work of others, and we are here to help. Read stories in this category if you are ready to take the next step into people leadership (or if you’re looking for articles to send someone else…).

  • Relationships in Business

    Relationships in Business

    Written by: Lucy Orr, Horizon Point Consulting Summer Intern

    My name is Lucy Orr, and I interned with Horizon Point Consulting this summer. In my first blog post, I discussed what I hoped to learn from this experience. Not having a “dream job,” I was able to use this experience to get a taste of several different careers by observing Horizon Point as well as their clients. 

    While I certainly got a taste of different jobs throughout the summer, the part that struck me the most was the importance of relationships in every aspect of the business.

    The most obvious relationships that they spent significant time fostering were with their clients. By taking people out to lunch, forming friendships, and following through with timely expertise, each member of the Horizon Point team valued their relationships with everyone they contacted. This impacted me, not because of the novelty of the concept, but because of the sincerity with which they cared about each person and each business. From my perspective, the intentionality reinforced the quality of business that Horizon Point provides, both being equally important.

    The bond between the women that make it all happen was the most unexpected. I had never considered the importance of encouraging business partners, but it makes sense. They support each other, exalt each other’s accomplishments, and are attentive to each other’s needs. Though I was there temporarily, they welcomed me, were generous with me, and spent time to show they cared about me beyond the things I was doing to help the business. They are honest with each other about their strengths as well as their weaknesses which allows the group to come together and grow more efficiently. This is a great example of the community that is possible in a work environment- camaraderie that I can only hope to find or promote in my future workplace. 

    The last relationship that I noticed this summer impacted me the most deeply was the significance of family in work. I babysat for Mary Ila’s two older children regularly throughout the summer to give her a few hours at a time to focus on work, so I was able to learn from the intentionality with which she balanced these two things: work and family. This experience has shown me the blessing of valuing family. By constantly thinking of fun things we could do that her kids would enjoy or clearing entire days to spend time with them, she showed me that it is possible to work hard while prioritizing family. This balance definitely looks different for everyone, but it was so helpful for me to see such a wonderful example of this aspect of pursuing a career. 

    Horizon Point was a great example of strong relationships in each of these areas. When narrowing down my interests for a future career, I will look at how they play out in the workplace of each field. My time this summer gave me unexpected insight through simply observing Horizon Point’s focus on each type of relationship and realizing the difference it made in the all-around effectiveness of their work.

  • Birthing Babies & Businesses

    Birthing Babies & Businesses

    I seem to have a knack for birthing babies and businesses at the same time.  Blaming the hormones as a cause of a healthy dose of insanity, I launched my first business almost nine years ago when my now nine-year-old son was a newborn. 

    Our second child, a girl, came three years behind her brother. She was a well thought out and planned decision.  Her current personality actually reflects this truth. No businesses were birthed during her arrival but taking a leap to go beyond myself and out of the desire to integrate home and work in a way that was meaningful and purposeful for me, I hired my first employee when she was a newborn. 

    Fast-forward several years later, and my husband had convinced me we were done with babies.   We had two children, a boy and a girl, two thriving careers, a home, and a dog. What more could we need?  But, of course, my heart was telling me something, and after much prodding, my husband got on board as well.  I wrote about this decision in a blog post about Using Your Heart Not Your Head. 

    Our third child arrived almost to the minute of when our son started third grade and our daughter started kindergarten.  Not what I had planned. He was to stay in place until after I walked my ‘baby” who would no longer be the baby, into her first day of real school. 

    For the well planned out people we thought we were, this third child a boy, and the events so far of 2020, has proven to show us that sometimes planning is actually the worst thing you can do.  It impedes risks and can lead us to over rationalize, keeping us from making decisions and steps forward especially ones that come from the heart. 

    Of course, with this child being a boy, birthing a business had to come along with him. The new business was formally incorporated not a week after I found out I was pregnant with him, and we have spent much of 2020 albeit remotely, breathing life into the idea and goals of this new venture.  We would launch into a plan, then stop and change course more times than I can count in response to the ever-changing world and challenges around us. 

    Our new “baby”, MatchFIT, takes me down a different path than the first one.  This one requires even more risks than the first to be able to capitalize on the need to scale and scale quickly and to bring a team together at a faster pace than one every two to three years.  Just like the third child brings about more challenges than just the one. We are playing zone defense now, not man to man.  Of course, the business launch has hit a time when our product, a hiring tool, seems to be unnecessary when most businesses aren’t hiring.  

    Should we just quit? I’ve thought that more times than I can count. But our heart has told us to keep moving forward because we are passionate about our purpose. 

    Our need for moving forward sent us down a path of applying for Alabama Launchpad for seed funding. We made it to the finals last week and pitched our idea to the judges and then live through a social media streamed event.  It was a risk, and we lost.  

    As my husband said, we literally lost to sh*t, as the winner was a compost company.  The people running the venture we lost to were far from sh*t, though.  They seemed to be genuinely nice guys with a passion and heart for their business idea.  It was almost impossible not to be happy for them. 

    At the heart of this business and its start-up are the core values of innovation and creativity. We help organizations and job seekers also define their core values and find opportunities and relationships that allow for workplace engagement to take shape. 

    I find myself engaging in the best of myself when I live out innovation and creativity, even though it forces more risk-taking, especially because it requires more risk-taking.  And with risk-taking also comes the risk of embarrassment –  of literally losing to sh*t, live and publicly. 

    Just like the decision to have our third child, applying for Launchpad and pursuing a business venture amidst a global pandemic and global unrest seems to be a huge risk. 

    But what often seems counterintuitive from the outside looking in is usually an active process that is occurring from the inside out. One that is a step out in faith. One governed by living out the values that make us and businesses unique and allow us each to thrive. 

    More often than not, these steps out in faith lead to more joy than each of us can possibly contain.  The joy our third son brings to our lives is contagious, and the joy I felt despite the loss via Launchpad, in innovating and creating in a collaborative way with my business partner and the team at MatchFIT is full of joy in the journey. 

    I told the team we’d lick our wounds of loss over the weekend and then rise this week having learned and grown, thankful for the experience and exposure Alabama Launchpad has given us.  But most especially, for the opportunity to live out our workplace values in the process, and to be a business that helps others discover workplace relationships that do the same. 

     

    Do your organization and your life decisions allow you to live out your values?

  • The Misconceptions of Business Continuity Planning

    The Misconceptions of Business Continuity Planning

    Last week I had the privilege of leading a workshop in partnership with the Huntsville-Madison Chamber of Commerce to discuss Business Continuity Planning with leaders in our area. The Covid-19 Pandemic caught many organizations unprepared and they have struggled through how to keep their business going during this time.  One reason for the lack of preparedness is misconceptions organizations have regarding Business Continuity Planning. 

    Misconception #1: My organization doesn’t have the time to create a Business Continuity Plan. And besides, we’ll never need it. 

    Yes, Business Continuity Planning takes time. It’s not something you can create overnight. And it takes input from multiple sources within your organization and possibly even outside of your organization. A successful Business Continuity Plan is designed by a team, not an individual. And even once designed, it requires regular review and updates. But the time you spend up front to create a solid Business Continuity Plan will save you time should you ever need to respond to a large-scale emergency. It will also ensure that you’re able to get your organization back up and running quickly and efficiently and minimize the impact to your employees & their families, clients, vendors, and your revenue. 

    I think it’s safe to say that many organizations now understand and acknowledge that they do have a need for a plan. But they’re scrambling to try and create that plan as they respond to the impact of the pandemic and doing so could be detrimental to the design of the plan.  

    Misconception #2: My organization isn’t big enough to need a Business Continuity Plan. 

    Regardless of the size of your organization, you need to assess your potential risk due to possible large-scale emergencies and determine how you would need to respond in order to keep your organization afloat and to insure the safety and well-being of your employees, their families, and your customers.

    One of my biggest concerns during the pandemic has been small businesses and how they will survive. Many small businesses were required to close their doors and that had a major impact on their revenue and their ability to retain employees. Sadly, some may not survive. Creating a plan to help assess the impact and determine how to respond could be the difference between surviving a large-scale emergency or having to close your doors permanently.  

    Misconception #3: Our employees will know what to do in the event of a disaster. 

    Employees are trained and prepared to handle small-scale emergencies and can usually do so without much direction. Your system goes down temporarily, your power goes out for the day. But they aren’t trained or prepared to handle large-scale emergencies. They look to leadership to guide them and through that guidance to put them at ease. And leadership needs to be prepared in advance to provide that guidance, to make critical decisions and implement those decisions, to reroute employees to assist with the restoration of critical functionality, and to honestly be the calm in the storm. 

    Watching leadership flounder in a time of crisis could be devastating to an organization’s employees, customers, and vendors. It could also have a negative consequence on your organization’s public image and reputation. 

    Misconception #4: We’ll just communicate with our employees if the need arises. 

    Last summer my father had open-heart surgery which resulted in pneumonia and a second surgery. I remember talking with my mother when he was readmitted to the hospital trying to determine who needed to be notified, who was going to notify them, and what they needed to be told. Neither of our minds was in the right place to be making those decisions at that time (and I’m sure we forgot some people). 

    The same goes for organizations. Determining who needs to be notified, who is responsible for notifying them, and what information to share should not be done in the middle of a stressful situation. Plan your communication in advance. By doing so, you can create a checklist of who needs to be informed and when, who will handle that communication, and what needs to be shared. The information you provide to your employees may be quite different from the information you share with customers and vendors. And some notifications may need to be made as soon as possible, while some can be delayed. By creating a list in advance and drafting scripts for each group, you can efficiently get that communication out and be sure that all necessary parties receive notification. 

    Misconception #5: We have insurance policies to cover us. 

    Most insurance policies will cover physical damage, many will not cover, or fully cover lost revenue. Review your insurance policies and determine if you need to adjust limits on a regular basis. In addition, your organization may want to consider adding Business Interruption Coverage. 

    While these policies can certainly help in a time of need, none of these insurance policies are going to get your organization back up and running. They may provide financial assistance to do so, but it is up to your organization to respond to and recover from an emergency. 

    Designing and implementing a Business Continuity Plan is no small feat, but if the Covid-19 Pandemic has taught us anything, it’s that the unexpected can happen and we need to be prepared for if and when it does. Is your organization prepared? 

     

    Here are some additional resources on Business Continuity Planning: 

    Preparing for the Worst: Business Continuity Planning

    Defeating the Kobayashi Maru, the No-Win Situation 

    4 Keys to Leading Through Crisis

    Creating a Business Continuity Plan Webinar & Worksheets

  • 3 Ways to Go Upstream

    3 Ways to Go Upstream

    “What the world needs now is a quieter breed of hero, one actively fighting for a world in which rescues are no longer required. How many problems in our lives and society are we tolerating simply because we have forgotten we can fix them?” Dan Heath- Upstream

    I just finished one of the most thought-provoking books I’ve read in a long time.  But what made the book great was that it took the thought-provoking a step further and provided some keen insights and tools about acting on the information.   Upstream: The Quest to Solve Problems Before They Happen, by Dan Heath is worth the read. 

    As the subtitle implies, the premise of the book is that we spend so much time and resources on downstream issues.  It provokes a focus on the upstream to fix things before they happen.  How can we stop firefighting and be proactive? And how far upstream can we go? 

    The three key takeaways in the book to focus upstream are: 

    1. “Be impatient for action but patient for outcomes.”  Quoting Maureen Bisognano,  Heath says, “Change won’t come without action.”  And it also won’t come without patient diligence. 

    2. “Macro starts with micro.”  The key takeaway here is that you can’t fix big problems without getting close to them. “You can’t help a thousand people, or a million until you understand how to help one.”  You have to name the person(s) and the problem by getting “proximate”. 

    3. “Favor scoreboards over pills.” “The problem comes when the obsession with testing becomes a hindrance to scale and learning.”  You’ve got to be able to pivot once your impatient actions and microfocus tell you that a different direction is needed to get the outcomes and macro picture desired.   Ask yourself, “How can we make progress this week?” “Take ownership of the problem and start slogging forward.” 

    The downstream problem I deal with the most in the work we do is workplace disengagement. Gallup estimates that the cost of disengagement in the U.S. is $450-550 billion per year.  The cost comes in many forms, such as turnover and loss of productivity, but this figure only quantifies the cost to business. It does not quantify the cost to individuals experiencing a misalignment in their job and/or organizational choices.  

    Can you name someone (getting proximate) that has suffered the negative effects of hating what they do and where they do it?  You may be able to name yourself.   And if you can name someone or yourself, you know what negative effects come by working for the wrong organization because of workplace misalignment. 

    We are working now through impatient action and scorecards, not pills to help tackle the disengagement problem with MatchFIT.  In seeking to help individuals and organizations find the right fit, we are workplace matchmakers.   We start upstream at the beginning of the hiring process, and our goal is to make the workplace better through meaningful employment relationships. 

    We will be pitching our idea on Thursday, June 11th via the Alabama Launchpad competition. You can join us on Alabama Launchpad and EDPA’s (the host of the program) website and social channels to learn more about the details of our upstream effort.  The event starts at 6:00 pm and we are scheduled to pitch at 6:40 pm.

    What problem are you trying to tackle upstream? 

  • Do Only the Really Smart (or Stupid) Fly Without PowerPoint?

    Do Only the Really Smart (or Stupid) Fly Without PowerPoint?

    When I get ready for a training or a speech, the first thing I do is outline content in PowerPoint slides.  It helps me frame my thoughts and gauge for flow of material.  Then I go back and provide content for a supporting document like a handout.  And I’m lucky, I hand it off to someone else to make it all look pretty, cohesive, and professional before it ever goes live. 

    I’m working on a pitch now for some seed funding, and my first thought is how do I organize the pitch through PowerPoint slides.  The information on guidelines for the pitch session even specifically references using “supporting slides.” 

    PowerPoint seems to be the default when we want to present ideas to a group.  Whether there are words on a slide or just graphics, it seems to be the way everyone thinks when it comes to sharing ideas. Even the more innovative talk formats like Ted and Ignite talks almost always use slides.  I’ve written some do’s and don’ts based on experience for creating a winning presentation, but what if we ditched the slides all together in favor of another way? 

    It’s well known that Jeff Bezos at Amazon called for just that in 2004.  He deemed presentation slides out and narrative text in.  Why? From his email announcing this: 

    “A little more to help with the questions ‘why.’

    Well structured, narrative text is what we’re after rather than just text. If someone builds a list of bullet points in Word, that would be just as bad as PowerPoint. 

    The reason writing a good 4-page memo is harder than ‘writing’ a 20-page PowerPoint is because the narrative structure of a good memo forces better thought and better understanding of what’s most important than what, and how things are related. 

    PowerPoint-style presentations somehow give permission to gloss over ideas, flatten out any sense of relative importance, and ignore the interconnectedness of ideas.” 

    He went on to say at another time: 

    “Great memos are written and re-written, shared with colleagues who are asked to improve the work, set aside for a couple of days, and then edited again with a fresh mind.  They simply can’t be done in a day or two.” 

    To summarize, Bezo (and I would agree) believes that this version of presentation style: 

    • Increases thinking and clarity of thought
    • Increases collaboration
    • Requires and builds patience

    All this leads to better communication. 

    Great narrative written format, like someone who can fly without PowerPoint in a pitch or presentation and opts only for narrative verbal prose to make a lasting point(s), is hard.  It’s really hard.   

    I think Bezos also would say, ditching the PowerPoint helps me see who is smart, really smart.  And also, a really hard worker. 

    So, if you are going to fly without the slides, you need to be a very good storyteller in written and/or verbal prose and know if your audience is geared well towards the shell shock of another format.  Amazon created an environment where no PowerPoint was the norm. Almost everywhere else this isn’t.  

    So, should I fly solo with no PowerPoint in my pitch in June? You tell me.  Could it show that I am smart, hardworking and different or will I crash and burn given that the instructions for format already tell me my audience is expecting slides?  

    Am I smart or just plain stupid ditching PowerPoint? 

     

    Like this post, you may also like:

    The Most Popular Slide in All My Leadership Trainings

    7 Pieces of Advice for Becoming a Great Speaker

    3 Ways to Create Insights for Learning

    Why? Again.