In October, a long and tempestuous relationship between the owner and coach of the New York Yankees came to the breaking point. Even if you aren’t a baseball fan, or hate the Yankees, what lessons can we all learn on managing the leaders of our businesses?

To review, Joe Torre, with only a couple of years left before retirement,  expected to remain with the team he took to twelve (12) playoffs and four (4) world championships. With his track record and penchant for managing to the highest standards of integrity, respect and consideration for his players and fans, Torre felt he was beyond evaluation or a performance-based contract. George Steinbrenner, the owner, was in complete disagreement. As the boss of baseball’s most storied team, he and his sons have a singular expectation–World Series Championships–and pay the price for victory at any cost. As we all know, the opera of Joe and George had its finale when Torre rejected Steinbrenner’s victory-based one year contract out of hand, leaving both without a contingency plan.

As business owners, what we can learn and avoid from this sudden ending to one of baseball’s greatest successes?

If you and your president:

•  Personally or professionally disagree on objectives, get on the same page now for your organization’s sake.  Otherwise your people will try to reconcile your differences and in the process waste everyone’s time, money and energy.
•  Have to compromise on how your objectives will be met, determine your personal threshold of acceptable disagreement that you will not only tolerate.  Never fight in front of the “children” whether they are customers, employees or vendors.
• Create a contingency plan or go-to resource for resolving differences, you can avoid needless escalations that can bring you to business divorce.
• Prepare a doomsday scenario and a triage plan if you have to eject your president or if he/she walks out.  Understand that the more you have prepared for a crisis, the less it will be seen as one

Managing a talented, capable leader can be one of the most trying challenges for you as the owner. And if your president becomes respected by your customers, employees or vendors, you may have created a peer who threatens you.  But if you recognize you cannot lead your business all by yourself and have found a talented second in command, managing through your two egos, testosterone and quirks will be a lot easier.

Dear Clients, Colleagues and Friends,

Do you need a jolt to shake out of your ownership doldrums? Use the virtual world to generate some of your own buzz. Recently, I was bemoaning what a boring and challenging a month October had been when:

• My business was named a HB100 winner here  where I ranked 7th!
• Last month’s www.birolsblog.com post was featured by Carnival of the Capitalists, the web’s premier reviewer of business blogs
• A clip from my recent NYC speech appeared on YouTube Link
• I was contacted by a Vietnamese publisher who wants to translate my book, The Five Catalysts of Seven Figure Growth and market it in his country.

(WITAFYB) What’s In These Anecdotes For Your Business?

With and through Web2.0, if you share your message and value, the Internet continuously and economically promotes your expertise and your business.

Are you interested in a new idea for doing this in your business? Ask me below and I will respond with an idea for you!

In writing The Five Catalysts, I described how confidence and conviction is any owner’s first catalyst for growth. And this confidence and conviction comes from a defining point that pushes on owner to turn her or his passion into action.  With October being National Women Business Owner’s Month, I got to thinking how so many successful women-business-owning clients of mine got started and how they built their businesses successfully despite surviving divorce, being widowed, or having to support a family where success was not an option but an imperative for survival.

And as their businesses have grown, I see that “women’s intuition” has caused many clients to make better decisions based on reasoned judgement.  Certainly, fewer women owners are “too smart to help” and aren’t making testosterone-driven decisions based on ego and “diminishing capabilities.” Maybe I have just been lucky, but women are more willing to listen to outside advice which has made them great clients I have been able to help more than average.

In this time of changing business environments, customer demands,and irrational financial markets, there are a lot of women business owners whose patience and perseverance have brought great value to their customers, employees and vendors!  And on top of this, many are also raising families at the same time.  Do you agree, why?

Last Friday October 5th, Birol Growth Consulting sponsored Ed Poll of LawBiz who led an excellent workshop to an invited group of lawyers on practice development.  Attendees were Managing and Senior Partners of a cross section of large, medium, and small Cleveland firms. Here are my notes amd observations from the presentation.

Please post your comments, reactions or questions at the bottom or contact Ed Poll atedpoll@lawbiz.com or Andy Birol at abirol@andybirol.com.

• There is a direct correlation between a law firm’s business proficiency (not their legal prowess) and a law firm’s profits.

• Lawyering is a true team sport. If your client participates in the process to achieve their outcomes they won’t criticize themselves or their lawyer. Show your client that you are on the same team in implementing their success.

• Most lawyers don’t bill for learning curves when starting to work with a client and lose 15% of revenues for not doing so. Lawyers also lose revenues through pre-bill write-offs (due in part to the learning curve problem lowering their realization rates. Lawyers finally lose more if they don’t collect at least 90% of what was billed.

• The reason lawyers lose so much in uncollected work is by not knowing enough about their client. Since the client assumes the lawyer is an authority figure there are only three reasons the client won’t pay:- They did not want the work

  - They did not expect the bill

  - Too much time was spent on the work

• Raise rates annually and gradually by selling first to yourself, then to prospects and finally to clients.

• Rainmakers are the most valued people in a firm, despite most lawyers preferring not to sell. You can always find a lawyer to do the work if you have sold the work!

• Remember 60% of prospects come from referrals. You start a client relationship with full trust and can only screw it up with insufficient service

• It is never the client’s fault that they don’t pay it is always your fault you did not do something right.

• Running a successful law firm means being proficient at getting business (marketing), doing the work (being productive) and thirdly getting paid (administration).

• While the bar association will never give continuing education credit for developing sales or marketing expertise, it will do so for repositioning the lawyer’s need to better communicate with the client which falls under the category of ethics so lawyers should seek out educational opportunities accordingly.

As the host of the event, I found it eye-opening to listen and learn how lawyers see their businesses operate from “their side of the table” and how similar yet different a law firm is from any other service business. While the legal vocabulary is quite different from that of other industries, I saw common ground in the challenges of balancing any firm’s need to sell, deliver and develop their businesses all at the same time as I have defined here. Whether you could attend or not or are a lawyer or not, what do you think?

If I am asked once, I am asked too often, “Why are you a consultant?”

Because (with my apologies to gym teachers)

1. Those Who Can, Do

2. Those Who Can’t Do, Teach

3. Those Who Can’t Teach, Teach Gym

4. Those Who Can’t Teach Gym, Consult

5. Those Who Can’t Consult, Do!

So if you ever wonder how and why people become or stop being consultants, I hope I have solved this conundrum for you!  Your comments and any consultant jokes are welcomed.

Here is one serious article on how to choose a consultant and another on how to be a consultant. Enjoy!

What do We Business Owners need most to “Get There?”

Regardless of our industry, success or condition, I believe we should have the

• Appetite (do we really want to do it)

• Capacity (do we have the money, time and talent to do it) and

• Timing (not too early or too late) so profound change pays off as quickly and  profitably as possible

I find I am always short on time or money so the more I focus on what I actually need to do to get there, the more likely I am to succeed.

 Your thoughts?