Today, we’re expected to do so much more with less and although technology allows for greater speed and efficiency, there’s nothing like the motivation you get when you have to deliver for your teammates.

Truly interdependent teams take advantage of the strengths, while downplaying the weaknesses, of its members. And, when there is trust among members, asking for help or feedback is never perceived as weakness. Trust allows team members to stay focused on results.

A lot has been said about teamwork. My favorite thought leader on teams and teamwork to date, however, is Patrick Lencioni. His book and subsequent workshop called The 5 Dysfunctions of a Team provide a clear model and attainable set of principles that can work at any level of your organization.

Developing real teams and teamwork is tough and takes a significant ongoing investment of time.  However, the pay off in company results, individual effectiveness, and employee satisfaction is well worth it.

 Doubt and insecurity reduce the effectiveness of your staff at the exact moment you need them to be at their most productive. If not managed well, this can turn into a spiraling vortex of badness that ends up exacerbating the exact thing a RIF was supposed to prevent.

 In my humble opinion, there is no use trying to spin a lay off. It’s a bad thing. It should be treated with the respect it deserves and trying to twist it into something it’s not is, frankly, disingenuous. However, showing your employees exactly what they can do to keep the company moving forward can be powerfully engaging but it requires information.

 The key to managing this change can be summed up in one word: Access. The last thing leaders should do in situations like this is keep the secret sauce to themselves.

 The employees who are still with you will, certainly, feel grateful for still having a job, but, more importantly, will want to know exactly what they need to do to make sure the company meets its short-term and mid-range goals.

 Give your employees a number to strive for – X amount in dollars in revenue everyday, Y amount of widgets produced each week. In whatever way you measure the success of your company, be sure your employees know what they need to do to hit those goals. And then do one more very important thing. Open the books.

 Opening the books is an incredibly powerful engagement technique. Let your people know how things are going – daily. Good or bad. It will instill ownership, buy-in, and leadership among your employees so the effects of a RIF are quickly mitigated and you get the best out of your people when you need them the most.

In my research for upcoming sales training a quote jumped out at me, “In today’s economy, it’s getting harder to find new clients, but it’s easier than ever to lose the ones you’ve got.” While not necessarily a revelation, I thought it drove home a really great point … establishing solid business relationships and, more importantly, constantly cultivating them, is the key ongoing success. 

I’m not a sales professional. I’ve never aspired to be one. In fact the quote that always comes to mind for me when thinking about sales is from Say Anything. When asked what he wants to do with his life, John Cusack’s character says (paraphrasing) “I know what I don’t want to do, sir. I don’t want to buy anything, sell anything, or process anything. I don’t want to buy anything sold or processed, sell anything processed or bought or process anything bought or sold.” 

While sales has a mixed-bag reputation full of used cars, vacuums, and pressure, the fact of the matter is that the exchange of goods and services for money is what keeps our economy running and sales professionals are a big part of that engine. 

A sales professional, though often measured, in part, by closings knows that the key to success is long-term, repeat business. 21^st Century sales professionals know that the way to get that business is through establishing and maintaining business relationships. Developing a partnering relationship with your clients where the focus becomes each other’s mutual success takes your customer off the market and ensures that you’re selling your products and services at your price.

In 1996 he and his wife left Atlanta, a high paying job, security and a safe career path for Montana, blue ribbon trout streams, mountains and a large measure of uncertainty. The momentum behind this big move was a long trip to Montana after grad school two years earlier, backpacking and travelling, and of course fly fishing, thoroughly enjoying all things Montana has to offer.
This exposure to the Big Sky state and the quality of life he witnessed helped him make up his mind. “It was a huge imbalance with life”, Doug recalls, referring to what Atlanta and his current career path did NOT give him. The couple made up their minds. It was time to jump…

In 1996, after grad school and several years in the corporate grind, Doug found himself in Bozeman, Montana, more or less “chronically underemployed” and looking for his niche and direction. One observation he had at the time was the successful people in town were all small business owners-beverage distributors, a high quality shoe and boot maker, some real estate. They were the familiar fixtures in the community, worked hard, and had carved their own place in the area and were flourishing. This was all Doug needed to realize his own direction-his instinct from his early twenties kicked in-being your own boss is the answer. The soon to be entrepreneur had to step up.

Fast forward to today after a decade in business, Doug Fletcher and North Star Consulting Group is recognized as a leader in the field of global, web-based market and organizational research. This includes projects for employee and client satisfaction surveys as well as comprehensive employee performance evaluations.

I sat down with Doug over a burger and beers to pick his brain, and see what an entrepreneurial Montana transplant has to say about success, the prospect of failure, stick-to-itiveness and fly fishing.

Q: What brought you to Montana?

Doug Fletcher:

“Believe it or not, fly fishing. While I had ‘the Life’ in Atlanta, a house, good job, the right choice it appeared on the surface, but it was not what I truly wanted. After grad school during the summer, my wife and I packed up and headed west to travel, explore and fish in Montana, before my job started in Atlanta. And that was it. When I got back I realized that there was a huge imbalance with my life, and I couldn’t do the things I really wanted to do there [Atlanta]. Fly fishing was part of it, sure, but it was just one thing that represented the quality of life I wanted. When we finally decided it was time to quit, pack it up and move, we were bound and determined to make it work-we had to. And, by the way, I did manage to fit in 100 days of fishing that year!”

Q: How did North Star Consulting come about?

DF: “At an early age, maybe in my twenties, I decided that I wanted to pursue an entrepreneurial life-corporate life was not my bag. So, after realizing that the successful people in the area were their own bosses, I collaborated with two friends, kicked in a little money, made some contacts, and the company was born in 1998-with $7500 between the three of us.”

Q: What does North Star Consulting do?

DF: “North Star evolved into a company that helps other companies and corporations do employee surveys, customer surveys, and recently with our release of Rave Review, performance evaluations for professional HR infrastructures. Our clients are small to medium sized businesses, and we are internet based, using proprietary software. With regard to clients, we do not advertise. We built our business in the early days through networking on a national basis and once we got a critical mass of clients, we have grown via repeat business, organic growth with existing customers and word of mouth.”

Q: What in your view are some of the pros and cons of living and working in Montana?

DF: “To a certain degree, starting from scratch in more traditional jobs in Montana can be an uphill battle-prohibitive transportation costs, small, widely dispersed population, difficulty in moving a lot of goods-all make for a complex go of it. Being web-based with a low cost structure has given us the freedom to be national and worldwide. Additionally, Montana has a wealth of talented people, with a very good knowledge base. The ‘white collar’ population is strong here.”

Q: Who is your competition? How do you differentiate?

DF: “We really have two levels of competition. There is the lower end, quick-hit inexpensive DIY sites and the very large, corporate agencies. Both serve a good purpose; the low-end services are great for college students, non-profits, highly bootstrapped start-ups. Then there are the larger ones that we occasionally compete with. But our advantage over them is twofold: one, when you call us, more than likely you are speaking with me or one other person-the level of service is highly personalized and dedicated. Secondly, we are fast. Many times I can be on a call with a client, have a proposal by the afternoon, and be rolling on a project the next day if need be. That is difficult to do with a much larger company, and that is not the business plan or value of lower end sites.”

Q: What are you doing, or will be doing, to weather the current economic climate?

DF: “We are maintaining a low cost structure, we have low overhead, and we are small enough to be nimble-we can change as we need to, so as to ride out anything that comes at us.”

Q: What are some of your personal goals you have set for yourself and your company?
DF: “My short term goals, say in the next 12 months, are growth related. We are not worried about survival of the company; it is in a good place. But, we won’t be able to probably grow it like we did the previous 5 years at a rate of 10-15%. I want to keep it level. From a long term view, the key is diversification. Too much of the company in ‘one big egg and two small eggs’ can be risky; I want to get more of the company in more places.
My personal goal is to train the next generation of senior management. This is two-part: one, to groom good new managers who our clients will see as competent, and really just an extension of me, and the company, and to get someone in place to eventually transition into my role.”

Q: What is your advice to new entrepreneurs looking to strike out on their own?

DF: “My advice to anyone looking to go out on their own and be their own boss is pretty straightforward. First, take a long, hard look your personal strengths and weaknesses. And don’t just trust your own opinion-talk to others, people you respect, who can give it to you straight. Second, be very honest and conservative with your financial resources-we started North Star with $7500, and in the last 10 years, we have done roughly $5 million in revenue, with 2 full time employees and 2 part time. If you drain all your resources to get it going, or go way beyond your means There is no such thing as an overnight success-you hear about the story of Google and the like, but that is not the norm. It takes consistency and that day-to-day presence in the market. Additionally, whether you call it luck, good timing or opportunity, every start-up will get that chance, that time at bat where you will get a shot. The trick is to make it work, recognize the opportunity, and start climbing up.

I think about what it took to get North Star off the ground and start being successful, and really it was like ‘burning the ship’. The Spanish explorer Hernando Cortez would literally burn his ships upon entering uncharted territory, thereby making it essentially impossible to just turn back and head to safe ground. They had one direction to go-forward. That is how I viewed it. There was no safety net, no deep pockets-I felt I had to succeed, and I would.”

Doug Fletcher, 42, is the co-founder and CEO of North Star Consulting Group. He is an avid (you guessed it) fly fisher, bowhunter, traveler, runner and trains and competes in triathlons whenever he can. He has completed an Ironman, the Bridger Ridge Run (more than once), and completed a (nearly) cross-country solo bike trip, from southeastern United States to Montana. He and his wife, Brigitte, have two children and make their home in Bozeman, Montana.

The point of the $700 billion dollar bailout was to ease the pressure on the banks and free them up to extend credit to Small to Medium Businesses (SMBs) in order to keep our economy moving in the right direction. With all the money being thrown at large corporations with little to no effect, SMBs are feeling the squeeze more than ever. In short, banks still aren’t providing loans and SMBs aren’t getting the credit they need to keep their businesses running.

Andrew Field, CEO and Founder of PrintingForLess.com and contributor to this blog was featured in Forbes.com today outlining his idea for providing loans to SMBs who keep and create jobs.

The essence of the plan is to preserve and increase small-business jobs by letting them be used as the security for low-interest loans. Make available to small businesses $20,000 in unsecured loans for each full-time employee … The proposed plan would immediately halt the loss of jobs in the SMB sector and keep alive many businesses that suffer from the sudden drop in revenues …

Andrew’s article has caught the attention of Montana’s own Max Baucus as well, one of our US Senators and chairman of the Senate Finance committee.

The plan is simple, smart, seems easy to implement and more importantly, is desparately needed to keep the engine of our economy going. If you like what Andrew has to say, particularly if you’re a small to medium business owner, be sure to let your elected officials know.

The people at SPRANQ think they have an answer. It’s Ecofont. This was forwarded to me and I thought it was a pretty intriguing idea. Toner and ink for office and home printers is insanely expensive and Ecofont purports to use up to 20% less ink when used because of the design of the font. They suggest using it for “daily use” printing where the quality of the print-out does not need to be the highest.

The name suggests a greening opportunity and their website offers a few suggestions for end users, designers, and offset printers as well. It’s a free download and in this economy don’t we all need a little bit of free?

There are  very real factors that can weigh in on what we can and cannot control–most of which are subjects for other posts on other blogs. Socioeconomic, education, and social-justice issues are just a few. However, when we go back to basics and follow simple principles they usually don’t let us down.

Keep costs down. Renegotiate with your vendors. They might be going through tough times too, but one thing you can count on is that they don’t want to lose your business. Save when you can: Having cash on hand during a credit crisis for home or business will make it easier to pay for the things you need going forward.

Invest in your employees. Numerous studies have proven that it is always more expensive to hire a replacement for an employee than it is to invest in the good ones you have. In the end, the ROI will be increased productivity, increased loyalty, and happier customers. Do right by your customers. We’re all feeling the squeeze, but I would wager that even the squeezed-iest among us would still rather pay a little more for a great product at a fair price that comes with great service than a mediocre product at a cheap price that comes with terrible service. Any joker can lower his price; don’t fall into that trap.

Invest wisely in a marketing plan that has a proven track record for you. Maybe that means going after loyal customers with a call to action that will encourage them to spend more or seeking out new customers that you can wow and retain for the long haul. 

When it comes to facing down the downturn, getting back to basics is all about what you can control.

How are you handling the economic crisis? Or, in the words of the new contest that PFL recently announced, “What recession-busting marketing tactics will you use to ensure your business comes out on top?” Share your ideas in comments, or enter the contest.