Case Study: 

Situation:

Jennifer,an owner of a financial service firm came to me to help her run her business more successfully. 

Her long term goal was to  sell all or part of the business within five years so that she could spend more time with her family.   In order for this to happen, she needed to improve her management skills and groom her team into a highly functioning team so that her business would be of interest to potential buyers. 

What we discovered was that Jennifer unwittingly had created a culture of entitlement.

She was overpaying them, allowing them to dictate their hours and feel like they had a say in every decision.  This happened because Jennifer was afraid to say no and felt it was easier to give them what they wanted in order keep them happy.

As a result, her team had no qualms about asking for what they wanted.

Her key investment person wanted to work from home, felt like he should have unlimited PTO and repeatedly asked for more money.  One time he even requested what amounted to over a 50% increase in compensation between his base salary and bonus. 

Her office manager worked four days a week and felt that if she had to work five, (even occasionally) she should be compensated for that extra time…even though it was rare for her to work even 40 hours.

Because the office manager did the payroll, she was privy to everyone’s compensation and saw that Jennifer had given a raise of $10K to one of her advisors.  When she saw this, she requested an equal raise saying she did more and had been there longer and was deserving.

Because Jennifer was fearful of key people leaving and worried she would not be able to replace them, she gave in to their demands. 

Intellectually,  she knew that this was a poor decision but didn’t know what to do about it and still keep the team members she thought were critical to her short- and long-term success.

Jennifer desperately wanted to learn how to say no. 

She also wanted to be able to have the difficult but necessary conversations she had been putting off so that she could stop the cycle of entitlement in her company.

We started the process by determining what she really wanted from her team, the actions needed for her to take back control of her company and helped her determine if she could live with the worst-case or not.

Once we had this figured out, we put a plan in place for where she could confidently have those difficult but necessary conversations to gain back control without giving in.

As a result she was able to recognize that her fear of losing a team member was setting her up for giving in to their demands, and her feeling powerless and how it had become a vicious cycle. 

Once Jennifer came to terms with the idea they might leave if she pushed too hard she was able to regain her own inner strength and power.  She learned that people respond best when given a choice. 

Did the investment guy want to make more money or have more freedom in his schedule?  Was he willing to be involved with business development to increase his compensation?  Choices. 

When Jennifer had conversations with her office manager about working Fridays, with no additional compensation she gave her a choice.  Did she want to work every Friday and work shorter days Monday through Thursday or work on Fridays as needed?   

Jennifer’s ability to recognize when she gave her team choices they were more likely to choose one moved her from fear to feeling in control. 

When Jennifer was able to finally shift herself from fearing the loss of an individual team member to focusing on what was best for the firm, her confidence skyrocketed, and she was able to have the difficult conversations. 

The good news was that Jennifer was able to stick to her new ways of managing her team, and over the next several years no one left.   Everyone was able to understand that they had choices, as did she. 

Ultimately Jennifer achieved her goal of selling the business. Because of the work she put in to develop a strong team, she was able to convince the buyer of the value of each team member and as a result,  they kept the entire team. 

The lessons that Jennifer learned were:

• — Fear of losing people prevented her from having the necessary and often difficult conversations.
• — She had choices.  While Jennifer was fearful team members would leave, she was able to recognize that even if they did she would be able to find new people who were just as competent.
• — Ignoring those necessary but difficult conversations only made things worse and without them, things got out of control.
• — When Jennifer gave people choices they were likely to pick one, even if they don’t like either.  On the other hand, if she gave them one choice they were more likely to resist.