Q. How do you keep the vision simple?
You need to understand your organization’s strengths. Wherever possible, you need to align your vision with the things you do well or with those things you think you can get good at in a very reasonable amount of time. Then, execute against those.
The other thing is, you need to be realistic in your assessment of your organization and the market. You need to be realistic in your assessment of your resources and then what you can accomplish.
Q. How do you monitor the vision?
I think being appropriately hands-on. Being engaged with your team throughout the day, throughout the week, continuing to share the vision and then understanding what is going on to make sure it’s in alignment with what you are trying to accomplish.
Being accessible to employees and staff at all levels is important, and being responsive. When someone comes to you for help or looking for assistance in one of these activities, you are responsive and available.
Maybe another way to say it is consistency in terms of message, consistency in terms of availability, and consistency in terms of follow-up and monitoring.
Q. How do you identify your strengths?
Leaders need to be involved in client service. The leadership throughout our firm — and I would be included in that — still have client responsibilities.
That allows us to stay in touch with what our clients are looking for, what we need to be doing in terms of service delivery, what we need to be doing in terms of value proposition.
That gives you the opportunity to identify and understand what your strengths are.
The other side of it is in knowing your internal resources. So I have the opportunity to interact in those client service situations with staff and other partners.
Just by having an active role in client service, a leader then gets to have an … understanding of how people are performing and where maybe we need additional resources or where we think we can leverage those we already have.
How to reach: Plante & Moran PLLC’s Chicagoland offices, (312) 899-4460 or www.plantemoran.com
