13 December 2008 
A Code for Virginians: Business in the Commonwealth
The Commonwealth of Virginia is a terrific state to do business.
Alert Readers and my students well know the bias of Your Business Blogger(R) has toward Virginia — a talented labor pool, low taxes, and a right to work state (re: employees don’t have to join a union).
Virginia has had a business friendly culture since the county’s founding. A few decades ago the beliefs were memorialized.
Thus Always to Tyrants
A Code for Virginians
Developed by a special committee of the Virginian State Chamber of Commerce and adopted by the membership in annual session at Roanoke on April 9, 1942
Preamble
Virginia was the scene of the first permanent English settlement in the New World. In its colonial legislative halls the fundamental principles of a new democracy were developed. Here the pattern of a government for a free people was evolved.
Patrick Henry sounded the keynote of the Revolutionary War. Thomas Jefferson wrote the Deceleration of Independence. George Washington led the army that made the formation of the United States a possibility. James Madison fathered the Constitution. George Mason’s Virginia Bill of Rights. Here in Virginia was launched the struggle for freedom that gave birth to a new government conceived and fostered by the sons of its soil.
It is fitting, then, that we who enjoy and seek to preserve the benefits that our forefathers provided for us, should reaffirm our faith in the principles upon which this nation was founded. We should pledge our support and dedicate ourselves, our institutions, our organizations, and our individual businesses to the principles whose adoption has brought our nation and our people to be the exemplars and leaders of the civilized world.
Since a system of free enterprise is not based upon any fundamental human right, the obligation rests upon our conduct of business that under this system the public welfare is best served.
To Virginians and Virginia institutions has come the opportunity to raise anew the battle cry of freedom, to crystallize into fulfilling action the tenets that have made of this a promised land. They who gave to us this priceless heritage will not sleep if we who now enjoy it let it slip from our grasp.
[Free enterprise may not be based on an enumerated right, but capitalism is Biblically based. The Commandment <em>Thou shall not steal </em>is a protection for private property and that property can only change hands -- legally -- with a willing buyer and seller.]
That we may express our faith in and pledge our support of our system of private enterprise the following code has been adopted by the Virginia State Chamber of Commerce to be displayed by all its members and proclaimed to the people pf this state and nation.
1. Business in all its forms, in all its activities, must command the respect, confidence, and support of the public and its own personnel. to this end it must keep its own house in order. only through the adoption and self-enforcement of ethical standards of conduct can business justify the right to freedom of action. By this means business can minimize the need of governmental regulation.
[Any human behavior needs to be protected from evil. Many cultures use government. We are blessed with self-government with self-regulation...enforced not with brute government, but with 'intermediating institutions' -- associations between citizens and government.]
2. The privilege of doing business in Virginia is freely acquired. It is a license to serve which imposes obligations upon business to deal fairly, openly, and honestly with the public, the employee, the investor, and the government.
[Virginia has low taxes and low barriers to entry to open a business.]
3. Laws regarding business should be based on the principle of guaranteeing freedom of action to all. They should prevent the abuse of power. Fulfillment of the statutes in spirit as well as in letter in an obligation of business.
[President Jefferson said that the purpose of government is to restrain evil -- not to do good.]
4. The freedom enjoyed by individuals in a democracy imposes commensurate obligations, applying equally to those engaged in business, professional, and governmental activity. All business enterprises, enjoying rights guaranteed to persons, must recognize the same obligation as are required of the individual.
5. The foundations of our established form of government rest upon the preservation of the fundamental, inalienable rights of the individual expressed in the Declaration of Independence, the Virginia Bill of Rights, and the Constitution of the United States of America. These rights can best be preserved under a system of free enterprise.
6 December 2008
Management Training Half-Day Seminar Outline
This is a brief outline for a three hour seminar reviewing management skills for managers to better manage workflow, expectations, deadlines, delegation and communication.
We normally conduct a full day or two day seminars but the Half-Day training classes are becoming more popular.
Managers work to meet goals, control events or to minimize disasters. They anticipate the future, adapt to the present and learn from the past. Managers are Prepared.
Who: Managers who need to better influence results
What: Management Training
1. Vocation Efficiency vs Management Effectiveness
2. Networks of Management
3. Followership and Leadership
4. Management and “Empowerment”
5. Development of Direct Reports
When: 11am to 2pm [date to be determined]
Where: Law Offices, 1100 New York Ave
Why: Improve Managerial Effectiveness
At the completion of this training, the Attorney will have knowledge and strategies to accomplish tasks through the active support of others.
Goals of Management Training:
1) Develop staff who are “self-reliant” not “boss-reliant.”
2) Control the content and timing of work from superiors.
3) Know what makes managers nervous and why.
4) Who “sells” who; who “empowers” who in the workplace.
5) Know how to delegate assignments, not responsibility.
Part One: Managerial Time vs. Vocational Time
Mission Statement: To control events.
1. Management Defined:
Getting things done through others
Plan, Organize, Lead, Motivate, Control.
a. Getting things done with the active support of others.
You were hired as a manager for your wisdom and judgment – not your manual dexterity.
b. Monkey Story: Every next move or assignment requires 2 people: 1 to work, 1 to supervise.
2. Managing Vocational/Management Time:
a. Two kinds of time. Individual contributor – Bricklayer, Brain surgeon, Accountant or Actor or Attorney.
Individual Contributor: Competence = Results
Manager: Competence + Support = Results
Individual Contributor = efficiency. Get more done in less time; to turn out products or services faster/better/cheaper.
b. Managers, those with direct reports with power to hire and fire with a budget, are measured by their effectiveness. Mangers are a type of knowledge worker with “efficiency” that is nearly impossible to measure.
c. Time management is not management time. Aim for discretionary management time.
3. Managers Formula for success:
If this were a vocational or technical seminar, the formula would be: competence equals performance.
But the minute you get in a management or leadership position, your performance is the sum of two items: support and competence.
Part Two: Network of Management
Desert Island Story, Now, if you or I were on a desert island growing tomatoes and we had no boss we were accountable to; no peers we had to coordinate with and no staff we had to lead, we could do what we want, when we want, where we want…
1. Baseball analogy 300 batting average. The manager is not perfect. Not always in direct control, Mario Andretti If you are under control – you’re not driving fast enough.
a. You may be in the driver’s seat but you are not alone.
Boss – The Golden Rule
Peers YOU Peers — Monopoly
Them – The Ball
2. Relationships
a. Golden Rule of money.
b. Monopoly of scarce resources.
c. The Ball is where the doing gets done.
3. The 3 fundamentals of management in order of importance:
1. Followership
2. Teamwork
3. Leadership
Part Three. Followership and Leadership
Everyone has a boss. Is Followership merely apple polishing—booting licking?
Followership between Boss and YOU
Leadership between YOU and Them
1. Followership.
a. Relieve the boss’s anxiety. A nervous boss is terrible, especially if you are the one making him nervous. Boss will put his efforts where his anxieties are – not logical – not where his brains but where his worries are.
b. Yes-man versus compliance. This is discipline — prompt obedience to orders – appropriate action.
c. When subordinates turn their judgment off and do exactly what their boss told them to do – even though they know that it is not to his advantage – they are practicing Vicious Compliance.
d. A pro, when the boss makes a bad decision, will turn it into a success through execution. Our Job is to protect the boss – even from himself.
e. Managers have 2 fears:
1. Employee will not do exactly what told to do.
2. Employee will do exactly what told to do.
f. Army: A poor plan properly executed is better than a good plan poorly executed.
Football quarterback story: QB represents the coach’s call on the field. Do exactly as he says?
2. Leadership
a. Gaining the active support of your subordinates is
A NOT Your Right
B NOT Automatic
C Takes Tireless work
b. If you are not able to get and hold the active support of your network, you should make a career decision and seek alternate employment.
c. Your boss is the most important aspect because he sets your priorities and allocates resources.
d. Company politics are essential to the survival of an organization.
e. When the plans of a subordinate and those of his boss are on a collision course, the boss always has the right of way.
f. But if it is to the boss’s advantage to yield his right of way to the subordinate’s plans, it is the subordinate’s obligation to speak up.
Part Four: Management and Persuasion (Selling)
Many managers feel that if they just do the best job they know how their future will be assured. Nonsense. Nothing moves unless it’s pushed.
Your role as a manager: Anticipate future events and their impact on our organization. Managers need personal and organizational flexibility:
1. Managers need to:
a. Make the necessary judgments, and
b. Exert the necessary influence.
2. Empowerment is the new buzz word and it is wrong. It is often seen as delegation, but with most employees, empowerment is abdication.
3. In any human transaction, someone is buying and someone is selling. Managers – in today’s egalitarian climate of nonsense – always get this wrong.
4. The customer or client is always right? Wrong, the customer must always be happy. The customer is always the judge.
5. What is making the boss anxious? Nervous? What is causing him Pain?
6. The purpose of sales is to go to the bank. To sell, look for Money, Authority, Pain.
a. You can feed your ego – or you can feed your family – let’s learn how we might be able to do both.
b. Selling is the transference of emotion. This is politics. This is persuasion.
c. Selling tangibles and intangibles. Nothing harder that to sell the intangible of counsel.
Part Five: Development of Direct Reports
Another strategic goal of the manager is to train subordinates who would act in the manager’s absence: the manager must develop deputies.
1. A deputy is a trusted subordinate who would decide as the boss would decide – if the manager had enough time.
a. Sign for the commander.
b. Groom deputies.
2. You cannot gain the freedom to act unless you gain control of the Timing and the Content of what you do. How do you get this Freedom?
a. Salesman
b. Freedom Scale
3. Five Steps for staff development:
1. Act on own – deputy
2. Act But Advise at once
3. Recommend, Then Take Resulting Action
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4. Ask What To Do.
5. Wait Until Told What To Do.
4. Completed Staff Work Research possible course of action.
To help your subordinates become better followers by taking more initiative, you should not allow them to Ask Me What To Do. Instead you should require that they Make Recommendations.
Very truly yours,
MANAGEMENT TRAINING OF DC. LLC
By: ______________________________
John Wesley Yoest, Jr.