Coaching | ClearVision Consulting

Depreciating Employees

January 4, 2017 Tags: coaching, depreciation, development, employee depreciation, employees, growth, plans, value, worksheet Mike Chirveno

Sorry to bring this up, but in just a couple of months it will be tax time. Very soon the Finance folks will be talking with us about deductions, assets, 1099s and more. One of the conversations will likely involve depreciation. Depreciation is the mechanism that allows us to account for the portion of an item’s value we’ve used to create products or services in that year. It’s fairly intuitive – the truck we purchased in 2014 delivered products, picked up materials or made service calls – all allowing us to serve customers and make money. At the same time, the truck is another year older – more wear and tear, more maintenance required and certainly worth less than when we bought it. Even with top-notch maintenance and lots of replacement parts, we’ll not return its value to the original purchase price.

This type of depreciation is unavoidable and, in reality, desirable since it enables our mission and money-making. But there is another type of depreciation that’s damaging and unnecessary. Can employees depreciate? Think about it. You’re most likely handing out raises with those year-end performance reviews. Certainly your benefit costs are going up. So, if you get the same amount of value from those employees this year that you received from them last year, but you’re paying more for them, they are depreciating.

If you get the same value from employees this year that you received from them last year and you’re paying them more, they are depreciating.

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Let me hasten to say, I realize they’re another year smarter with greater experience. That should allow them to successfully ride the experience curve and add more value to your organization. But what if you could supercharge their growth? Unfortunately, I spent a good portion of my former corporate life focused on projects and processes and not on people. It never dawned on me that I was contributing to employee depreciation, since I was giving more of the company’s money (through yearly raises and benefits) to employees whose development was primarily just what they caught by osmosis over the course of the year.

Fortunately, since my switch to consulting and through my own personal and professional growth, I’ve had the privilege of helping clients create and implement robust employee development plans; plans that make people smarter, give them vital experiences that prepare them for new responsibilities in the organization and equip them with new tools that bring them personal satisfaction and allow them to better meet the needs of the organization’s customers.

It’s just the opposite of employee depreciation. It’s employee appreciation. Each passing month, the value of the employee’s new knowledge, skills, abilities and experiences far surpass the increased compensation. This makes for an organization that’s growing, transforming and competing because its team members are growing and transforming.

To download the initial Employee Development Plan Worksheet that my clients use to start the Employee Development conversation with their employees, click here.

Be Like Mick

December 20, 2016 Tags: coaching, mentor, mick, rocky, rocky balboa Mike Chirveno

2016 marked the 40^th anniversary of Rocky – the story of a down-on-his-luck boxer who won the heart of Philadelphia when he went the distance with the undisputed heavyweight champ, Apollo Creed.

There’s no question that Rocky was a compelling character and the star of the movie. But let me make the case for a different hero – Rocky’s trainer Mick. Mick was, all at once, mentor, teacher, friend, cheerleader, butt-kicker, confidant and counselor. He was the voice in Rocky’s head, bringing him back to the truth, when all of life’s circumstances were telling him lies. Even in later reboots of the franchise, after Mick’s death, his words echoed in Rocky’s head giving him strength, instruction and calling him to action when he was literally down for the count.

Rocky Balboa was and continues to be one of the greatest characters ever forged by Hollywood, but if there were no Mick, there might not have been a Rocky.

So, what’s the point? In our professional life, most of us aspire to be Rocky – meeting the challenge, rising above and getting the accolades. Could I encourage a different focus? How about being Mick? Be the voice in the ear of that client or customer that makes them better, stronger, smarter and more successful. Nothing is more rewarding than helping someone else achieve their dreams, meet their goals or just be happier and more fulfilled. Knowing that you had some small part in making that happen is one of the best feelings ever. So, come along side that family member, employee, boss, customer or client and be like Mick.

Be the voice in the ear of that client or customer that makes them better, stronger, smarter and more successful. #belikemick @cvconsulting

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One Shining Moment

March 11, 2011 Tags: basketball, NCAA, one shining moment, preparation, readiness, sully sullenberger Mike Chirveno

I love March Madness – three weekends of great college basketball filled with drama, athletic prowess, underdogs and Cinderellas. Between TV, radio, print and the web, each team’s journey through the NCAA tournament is chronicled hundreds of times. We learn about universities, individual athletes and coaches. Often times, these stories propel people into the national spotlight and we never forget them. I vividly remember Jim Valvano taking North Carolina State to the Championship in 1983, delivering the speech of a lifetime in 1993 and succumbing to cancer just eight short weeks later. There was “the shot” – Christian Laettner’s last second jump shot to beat Kentucky in the 1992 East Regional finals. How about UCLA guard Tyus Edney’s coast-to-coast drive with 4.8 seconds left to push them past Missouri and ultimately to the 1995 NCAA title?

In all the flurry of games and fascinating stories, there’s one thing I always look forward to. At the end of the championship game, CBS plays a compilation video of the championship team’s rise to the top of the college basketball world. There’s nothing quite like the “One Shining Moment” video. This year (2011) will mark the twenty-fifth time David Barrett’s “national anthem of college basketball” will immortalize one team’s achievement of the ultimate college basketball dream. I can’t wait to watch.

I’ve been thinking quite a bit about “one shining moment” – not the song, but the fact that so many lives are defined by one of “those” moments – and not just in athletics. I just finished reading Sully Sullenberger’s book. His life will forever be defined by the moment he successfully ditched his disabled US Air passenger jet in New York’s Hudson River in January 2009 saving all 155 people aboard. After being injured on her previous attempt, American gymnast Kerri Strug landed a spectacular vault in the 1996 Atlanta Olympics. After nailing the landing, her ailing ankle gave way and she collapsed on the mat. Her performance guaranteed the Americans a gold medal.

Around the time of Christ, Seneca, the Roman philosopher, opined that “luck is when preparation meets opportunity.” That thought has surfaced often as I’ve pondered “one shining moment”. Was Sully Sullenberger lucky when he piloted the plane to safety in the Hudson? Was Kerri Strug lucky when she landed her medal-winning vault? Was Christian Laettner lucky when he hit the game-winning jumper? I’ve got to think not. That one life-defining moment was the result of hundreds of hours of sacrifice, study and practice. While others enjoyed the love of family, the companionship of friends and the enjoyment of recreational activities, these people spent an extra hour in the flight simulator or in the gym. For these folks, and a relative handful of others down through history, it was obviously worth all of the blood, sweat and tears. But what about the rest of us? More than likely, we’ll labor in obscurity until the end of our career or the end of life.

I want to spend the rest of my post putting in a shameless plug for preparation as if your “one shining moment” was guaranteed and was imminent. If I were to orchestrate life, I’d move from one success to the next, each one building on the previous one. But I don’t orchestrate life and that’s not the way it works. Instead we alternate between success and failure, victory and defeat, prosperity and leanness, peace and strife. The method of the “lucky” is to wring every bit of learning from each of these – continually adding new skills and knowledge to our bag of tricks. We learn from those who went before us – successfully and unsuccessfully. When we’ve leveraged everyone of life’s experiences into deeper levels of understanding, we’ll be ready when or if our “one shining moment” comes.

But what if it never comes? Will all of the work be worth it? A million times over – and here’s why.

The relationships that are strengthened, the wisdom that is gained and the discipline that is built are far more valuable than the fame that comes from the “one shining moment”.
In almost every case, “one shining moment” comes looking for us, we don’t go looking for it. Our only responsibility is to be ready when it come. The readiness for “one shining moment” makes us ready to tackle with excellence the multiple obscure moments we encounter every day.
“One shining moment” almost always comes in the course of carrying out our regular responsibilities. In the examples I cited earlier, each of these folks experienced their “one shining moment” in the context of something in which they were already involved. They were just doing their jobs and their “one shining moment” swooped in unannounced.

The odds of filling out a perfect NCAA bracket are about 1 in 9 quintillion – a 9 followed by 18 zeroes – and that’s not counting any play-in games, just the main 63. I don’t know what the odds are that any of us will experience “one shining moment”. But I do know the odds of getting value from a life of passion, purpose and preparation – they are 1 out of 1.

We can prepare for a public “one shining moment”. Maybe it will come and maybe it won’t. We might never be immortalized while David Barrett’s music plays in the background, but we can build value in the people and organizations around us.