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Well, this is typically the time when you make New Year’s Resolutions, and maybe one of those is timekeeping compliance. But rather than starting with the thinking behind all this, we’ll save that for last and instead dive right into some suggestions on how to get better participation. If you’re an employee (vs. a principal) reading this, you might want to feather your own bonus bed by taking the lead here and rallying the troops. That sort of sucking up never goes unnoticed. (Though you may never again be asked to join your peers at lunch.)

Before giving you specific suggestions, though, let me note that these are presented in reverse order. That’s because none of them have any teeth unless the last one (getting fired) is a legitimate possibility. That sounds harsh, I know, but there it is. The goal isn’t to fire employees–the goal is to make money in an environment that doesn’t kill creativity. There are many steps that lead up to that harshest of options, but it is there at the end of the steps.

Here’s what we’ve found to be effective in timekeeping compliance.

Escalating War on Deadbeat Timekeepers

1. Start with an assumption that you’ll fire them if they don’t do it. It really would come to that very rarely, but you have to be willing to do it (eventually) or the previous steps don’t work. Building on that, you work backwards to come up with a plan. So just before this step…
2. Dock them a day’s pay by asking them not to come in to work one day. Just before that…Provide a written notice of discipline to put in their personnel file. Just before that…
3. Public humiliation in the town square, like a posted list in a prominent place stating who didn’t complete their time sheet the night before. Just before that…
4. Peer pressure from missed goal. E.g., “if everyone does their timesheets, every day, by 6p, we all get pizza on Friday.” So if one person screws it up, the others will be all over them. Just before that…
5. Throw the problem back to employees. “Timekeeping is very important. That much we know for sure, but what I don’t know is how to get 100% compliance, so you as employees meet and let me know what you think will work. That’ll be better than any plan I come up with and impose. I’d rather you work it out.” Just before that…
6. Apply the policy consistently, which means the principal, too. Yep, unless there’s compliance at the top, you’ll never get anywhere with it. Just before that…
7. Communicate your expectations clearly. For example, what is the policy, and why is this important? More on that later.
8. So those are the steps I’d use. Start by asking yourself if you’d be willing to take the most severe step. If you would, start at the least severe and just work the list. Whatever plan you come up with, make sure it’s consistent in application, it is collaborative as you seek solutions, and that you stage your responses, from friendly grandparent to ruthless czar. Read more

For just a few minutes, I want to get you thinking about how the mix of things you do for clients can have a significant impact on the value they place on your services. Your clients typically have this need to compartmentalize what you do for them, separating the higher and lower level activities and then drawing inferences that put you in a box. Even more than the services you do for them, how you position those services will have a significant impact on the nature of the relationship. After laying out the rationale behind this thinking, this article concludes with five very specific suggestions on wedding strategy with execution.

In many cases there’s no simple way to avoid providing both higher and lower level services to clients, but unless you combine them in a manner that carefully takes your positioning into account, you may find yourself swimming upstream all the time, wishing for a different kind of client relationship.

How It Looks from the Outside

You know what you do, and you aren’t bothered so much by the mix of activities that consume your day. You know what you are capable of and what role the more implementation-oriented activities play in your business. But what does is it look like to an outsider who is trying to absorb every little clue about your positioning? Be honest for a minute and just consider these areas:

• First, does your web site highlight implementation? What do the images capture–the thinking process or the implementation outcome? Does your presentation feature any strategic work you do for clients that might be presented to them in nothing more than text? Would the look of how you tell these stories vary all that much from how the commercial printers you work with might tell the same story?
• Second, look at your billing structure. If you have a tiered hourly rate structure (which you should not), at what level is most of your client activity billing? Is the weighted average toward the lower end of the hourly rate options?
• Third, look at the titles of all the people your clients interact with, and see how many of them are upstream or more on the implementation side.
• Fourth, if a new client has limited time and/or money, what part of the process do you reluctantly compress at their insistence? I’ll bet it’s the analysis and strategy in order to dive into the implementation quicker because they are coming to you more for short-term solutions.
• Fifth, get a cheap digital voice recorder and record just your side of the conversation by setting it on your desk during the phone call. Then listen to it and analyze the type of questions you are asking your clients. Are you guiding them or are you reactively getting the information you’ll need in order to fulfill their implementation requests?
• Sixth, look at where your clients have stepped out of the relationship they already have with you to buy related services. When they do so, are they typically buying upstream or downstream from your firm’s role? Are they spending money on services you think you should be doing for them (if you were positioned appropriately in their minds), or are you glad you don’t have to muck with the stuff they’re giving to someone else?
• Seventh, who have they assigned on the client side to manage the relationship with you? How high up the ladder are they, and do you think you should be working at a higher level within the client organization?

Here’s what this means: when clients have a choice in cuing their positioning for you based on the higher level things you do or the lower level things you do, they are inevitably drawn to the lower things. So with them both lying side by side on the table, their eyes are drawn to the lower level implementation activities and the more strategic ones don’t register like they could.Here’s a simple illustration of that. Suppose it isn’t ordinarily your role to answer the phone, but one day you hear it ringing at the front desk as you walk by, with no one there to answer it, and so you decide to answer the call before it goes to voicemail. What happens if it’s your client on the other end? If this has happened, you know that they’ll crack some joke about you being demoted, couching the surprising (and jarring) positioning message you’ve just sent with humor. They’ve thought of you at a higher level than what you’ve just done (answering the phone), and they aren’t sure how to reconcile the two extremes. Read more

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Holiday - This word derives from haligdaeg, a 14th Century Old English term deriving from halig, “holy,” and daeg, “day.” Back then the word meant both “religious festival” and “day of recreation.” By the 16th Century the word had taken on its present-day meaning.

Hairsbreadth or hair’s-breadth - A small space, distance or margin, referring to the width of a hair. The word breadth has its origins in 1523, coming from the Old English “bread” probably an analogy to length because bread loafs were sometimes long. The thickness of a hair is generally between 60-90 microns (millionths of a meter) in European populations, but can average 120 microns in some Asian populations. Pretty small!

Sloe gin - A sweet reddish liquor consisting of green spirits flavored chiefly with sloes. As a kind of gin, the term came on the scene about 1895. What are sloes? A small dark astringent fruit of the blackthorn.

Auld lang syne - This phrase comes from the Old Scot dialect, meaning “old long ago.” Two versions of the poem set to music remain; at one time there may have been others. Allan Ramsay’s version was set down by Samuel Johnson in 1788, and Robert Burns’ version in 1796; however it is Robert Burns’ poem that became enshrined by generations of New Year’s Eve revelers down through the ages as the quintessential song of friendship and fond memories.

Baubles - This word got its start around 1320. It derives from the Old French baubel meaning “child’s toy” or “trinket.” It probably derives from bel, from the Latin bellus, meaning “pretty.”

Bubbly - Bubble derives from the 14th Century, 1398 to be exact, coming from the Middle Dutch bobble and/or the Middle Late German bubbeln. The first reference to bubbly as champagne came in 1920, shortened from bubbly water (1910).

Adieu - The word comes from the phrase, “a dieu (vous) commant,” meaning “I commend you to God.” It is Old French and date from around 1374. The word was originally said by the person leaving. The person staying behind would answer by saying “farewell.”

Note: The fact that baubles, bubbly and adieu come from the 14th Century reminds me of Ken Follett’s new novel, World Without End, about events taking place in Kingsbridge, England, beginning in 1327. My fiance was given the book as a gift. I plan to abscond with it and take it into a room just off the bell tower and not emerge until it is New Year’s Eve 1400.

Cheers - By the Middle Ages, the Anglo-Norman chere, meaning “face” had morphed into a word meaning positive outlook and demeanor. A “cheer” as a shout of encouragement first came into usage about 1720. Cheers as a salute or toast when taking a drink is British and became popular after World War I, in 1919. The television show Cheers premiered in 1982.

Gift - This word is a gift from the Old Norse word, gift, earlier on from the German mitgift, which means “dowry.” The Old English gift meant the same thing, “dowry or marriage gift by the groom.” Obviously in those days, when it came to a wedding, giving went both ways. The meaning we have of gift being a natural talent dates from around 1300.

Sparkle - Making its first appearance around 1200, sparkle comes from the Middle English verb, sparke, to light a fire. Sparkle was first used to describe a carbonated wine in 1422. The first use of this word to describe a kind of fireworks came in 1879.

I hope your Holidays have a sparkle that comes from inner peace and joy. And with that I bid you an adieu until January 2008. Cheers!