Who in the company participates in this process?

Typically, in larger companies, it's the management team. In this case, the radio station has only 20 employees, so we had the general manager, three people from sales, two radio announcers, the person who writes the commercials, the head of marketing, another person who does events, the person in charge of scheduling, and a person in charge of finance and accounting. It wasn't all managers.

Were the people involved initially enthusiastic about the program?

No. I think that the employees were surprised that the general manager, a "Controller/Driver" type, stood back and let this be a team effort. I interviewed them all beforehand by sending them a survey asking them what we would have to do to be a success and what their major concerns were about this whole process. So I had a lot of initial feedback on where the problems were going to be coming from, where the sources of skepticism and cynicism would be.

What types of companies approach you? Who are your clients?

The companies I tend to work with are service-focused and customer-focused, which means that they see that the customer is the most important part of the equation. They want very happy customers, and that's part of why I'm there. My job is to make companies better so that customers will continue to be pleased. This is how good companies stay on top and how growing companies achieve their goals. I often deal with owner-managed companies or family-owned businesses. With the exception of banks, most clients have 50 or fewer employees. It's still manageable, we can still get everyone together in one room. I prefer dealing with the owner, the person who makes the decisions and controls the budget. They're usually companies that want to grow, that want to continue to be successful. I also work with educational institutions, for marketing advice or training. If I look back on my whole history, there is a common thread of companies seeking to preserve something valuable: rights, knowledge, or simply to restore their core values.

What sorts of problems bring clients running to you?

It's usually things like complaints to the board of directors about customer service that reach the president, or employee problems where the owner spends more time managing employee battles than doing his job. Some companies want to do more with teams.

How do you get started?

I try to help people understand that we all have different styles and different needs. If we understand how we're different from other people and the way we need to behave in order to get the best out of another person, then people start to feel better about each other. That's usually the beginning. Then they like having me around, they trust me. I am a "trust catalyst" -- someone who can be a link between management and the employees -- or I serve as the link between the president and the management team. I often find the president has not been using the people who work for him as a team, and he's had to do everything by himself. It's typically a marketing challenge, morale challenge, customer-service challenge that gets me in the door. And frequently, they've heard me speaking somewhere.

Do your companies experience sustainable change, or is this a week of pep-talk followed by back to the "same-old, same-old"?

There's a book called "You Can't Teach a Kid to Ride a Bike at a Seminar." The idea of riding a bike has to do more with being out on the sidewalk, getting on a bike and falling over. It takes time. Any kind of change requires ongoing reinforcement. You have to have the skill, desire and knowledge to create a new habit. What I've come to realize is that for any lasting change to happen, I have to be inside the company for up to a year providing ongoing support, because as soon as I leave, a company will go back to doing the things the way they were habitually done. My visits becomes less and less frequent, but they always know that when I show up it's time to have met the goals that they said they were going to meet. So, we build in accountability, responsibility, action plans, timelines, deadlines that they're going to meet.

From a business owner's perspective, what's the payoff in bottom line terms for this kind of expense?

When I'm with a consultant, I feel like I'm in a New York City taxicab in rush hour with the meter running, and I damned well want to get my money's worth. That's the way I go into every situation with a client -- they damned well better feel that they got their money's worth when they are with me. So I don't do anything that isn't leveraging every penny that they invested. I'm very fast. One firm that I worked with wrote that my "time management made us pay more attention to our own time management practices."

I document what I'm doing by category and by week, by hour, and record by quarter hour, so that people know how their money is being spent. And, we can change it. Often I give them an estimate of how long it's going to take or I give them a project fee and then they can relax, knowing that it's not going to exceed the quoted price even if it does take me longer. In a case where a client can't commit, we begin a process on an hourly basis.

What else do you bring to your clients?

One thing I really like about what I do is finding gold and jewels within a company -- the ideas and talents of its own staff. I share that information with management. I'm the one who hears that, for example, Tracy in shipping has a background in carpentry. I find out that someone's got skills that aren't being utilized because no one knows about them. That suddenly can move the person forward, can make them the natural person to be head of a new department. A year or two later, management will call me up and say, "We have an opening -- who did you interview that makes the most sense for this job?" I'm also an advocate for the employees to get more skills so that they can be more valuable to the company.

I assume you have relationships with other business consultants. Who are your associates?

I'm a generalist. There are some things I'm better at than others. But I'm wise enough to know that when a good specialist is available, I bring them in. For example, a business writer for position descriptions or employee manuals, or a mediator for conflict resolution. Typically, my associates are people like me, who have a similar way with people, and who are efficient and affordable. I can simply link you up with that resource, or I can manage that resource for you as part of an integrated package of services.

What is so special about Susan Bellows & Associates, and what's your particular gift?

I can feel what's going on and I can see what's going on. What I hear over and over and again about my services is "She took a tough group of people, and she got them to come together." I often hear from management how happy people were to engage in a learning process with their co-workers. What I'm doing is eliciting the best out of the people who are in the room. I'm not the star, I'm the catalyst. I'm the facilitator. I listen, and I watch the body language of people so if someone doesn't agree, I make sure that everyone has their say. I create a forum for each person in the room to be a participant.

One of your programs discusses making your employees feel like owners. Is that part of your personal business philosophy?

Absolutely. If I could be known for anything, it would be the Triple Win System. If companies would treat their employees with dignity and respect, then employees would treat the customers with dignity and respect, the customers would want to continue doing business with the company, and the management/shareholders of the company would profit. Everyone would win in this environment. Smaller, growing companies traditionally operate like this. Then as companies get bigger, that feeling that workers are important goes away.

There's something called the Brain Line. It's an imaginary line cutting across a company's pyramid structure. The people above the line are supposed to think, and the people below the line are supposed to do -- the hired hands or the workers. What I try to do, and what I believe is the most important thing that can happen, is to help companies erase the Brain Line as much as possible so they can get the most creativity, productivity, and enthusiasm out of their people. No one gets up in the morning and thinks, "I want to go do a bad job somewhere."

Let people do their jobs, empower them to be all they can be, help them to grow in the same direction with you by helping them discover where the company is headed. As they say, "It's common sense; it's just not commonly practiced."

In your experience, can companies learn this lesson?

What we found over and over again is that if the owners are level with the employees and treat them fairly, they can gain respect, honesty and compassion. Communicate with them, be fair with them. If you really want a company to be all it can be, you have to remember the "magic words" we learned as children: "please" and "thank you." Once we get into business we forget to use them.

It comes back to dignity and respect. Employees feel like they can trust you when they can see that you want them to develop their potential, that you're going to provide opportunities for promotions, salary increases, bonuses, profit sharing. A lot of this can come gradually, but it starts off with keeping your word and having each employee feel like there is someone there to go to bat for them. Trust builds when employees know that management won't be playing favorites.

Obviously, you enjoy this work and find it satisfying. What is the best thing about your work?

My life purpose is to make a difference in the world, and if I'm not making a difference I don't want to do it. So, it makes me incredibly happy to see that by being fast, flexible, intuitive, and willing to engage people in discussion, I help people interact with themselves and with each other. If I notice when I'm teaching that the material is over their heads or not appropriate, I'll jettison whatever I had planned and go to something else. I'm not locked in to some way of doing it. I also solicit feedback from the group. They talk about the issues, and we come up with something that makes sense.

I like being part of the team without having to be part of the team. I get to leave. I don't have to stay around. It's being a mentor, one of my favorite things to be. I'm there for the event. I leave. Then I come back in and help people move towards something that they say they want but it's hard for them to make a priority.

You're a small consulting outfit. Why do companies put their trust in Susan Bellows & Associates?

I'm referred a lot, so there's a "trusted other" who refers me. And then I have to prove myself when I go in the door. I build rapport with people quite easily. I can help almost any company if I can understand their business. I have to understand what they do for a living, and I have to trust and respect that. Typically when I go in and talk about what I do, I do a brief presentation where I say, "Whether you hire me or hire somebody else, let's brainstorm, let's figure out what you really want to achieve at the end of this thing so that you'll all be clear." They get a sense of who I am.

One of the things I find is that companies want someone they can see face to face, so typically I'm no more than about an hour away from a client. I've been in situations where I've been competing with national companies, bigger companies, and what they've liked about us is that we are "local," that we were available to come in immediately, and that they were going to be dealing with the principal of the business.

Companies see that we have a very unusual range and blend of talents because of our broad industry and consulting experience. The other thing is that we're very "in-the-trenches" and practical. My work is all practical, easy to implement, and affordable. My fees are reasonable. The things I recommend are not high-falutin'; they are grounded, result-oriented solutions.

Why couldn't a company create a program for themselves and save some money? Why should they hire you?

Everyone I've ever worked with can learn how to do this themselves, and if they didn't have to run the company they probably could do this themselves. It does require a certain personality style to be able to facilitate discussion without bossing people around too much. I find that owners are busy running their company, and this program is just one more thing they'd have to go out and learn. It's not an A-level priority for them. Most companies spend their time doing "urgent and important" work, fighting all those day-to-day fires.

Suppose I'm a CEO of a small company, proud of what I've created, and I'm suspicious of this training stuff. It seems like a lot of money, I don't really know whether it's going to do anything, and my resources are limited. What convinces a manager like me that this is worth it?

There are a number of things I can do that are very low-cost just to get your toes in the water to see whether this is something you'll want to invest in. I can do a two-hour workshop. I can do 15-minute interviews. I can send a paper inquiry ahead and have your employees take a specialized test of communication/behavior styles, and I can give you a compilation of the results.

I have a 100% money-back guarantee. Whatever we do, in the beginning, if the customer isn't satisfied, there's no charge for what we did. I give them a trial run. It's a no-risk situation.

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