Bonus Episode - TZL - ElevateAEC

accomplish your initiatives? And you stick to that regardless of what happens. If you're truly committed to that initiative or that imperative, if you're not putting the pre-planning into it, if you're not accounting for it and you're annual operating plan or however your business operates, you're not going to be successful because it won't become a priority. But putting it in your budget at the beginning of your year ensures ruthless prioritization. And everybody's going to know and be committed to it. And that takes it all the way to the top. My opinion. Justin Smith: Perfect. I mean I think what's interesting is right at the top, we look at it, we say, we know that this initiative has support at the top of the company if it appears in our operating budget or our operating plan, whatever it is. And we know that it is just an extra thing if it's not there. If it is a pet project that is being championed by one person, one is likely to work and gain support quickly. One is likely to be a fight the whole way. Tierra Marcus: And we don't use utilization rates at ISQg. We just, you know, we want the behaviors to be driven and a little bit different. It's just our culture. Right. So I think from like a billable, non-billable. We also focus a lot though on project-based mentorship. Right. Where we're using an actual project to coach these best practices and how to lead 01:00:00 Tierra Marcus: It's a partnership and very strategic alignment with somebody who's experienced that client-type training, somebody else who's coming in new to that space. So it is essentially billable. Right. But from a regard of the overall intent of. It's not necessarily something we're financially looking at. We know that it will reap the benefits. The ROI is tricky to measure, but it will and it has been increasing our profitability. Aaron Lauinger: Those initiatives often aren't just people's time. It's awesome consultants who are partners with you that have fees, it is marketing material, it is training publications, it is reinforcement, it is buying lunch and travel, and lots of expenses that go with these initiatives. Justin Smith: Yeah. And I think one thing that's a big risk is if you put it in your operating Budget, you're planning for it, but you don't plan for it appropriately. The first time that you see an expense that falls outside the boundary, outside what it is that you thought was going to be [inaudible] , it would be easy to say, oh gosh, this thing is a runaway train already and I've got to kill it before it gets started. So putting time into that, and having a plan before you act is critical to success. But we are a business of at times impatient people who want to kind of act, see the results and then hopefully be able to come up with some arithmetic to justify it. And for things like this, it's. There's got to be planning that goes into it, and real commitment to it. Completely agree.

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