“She 
tirelessly offers her time and expertise to nonprofits. Deborah has a huge heart!”

The 2011 Positively Powerful Woman Award for Philanthropic Leadership will be given to Deborah Bateman Executive Vice President of Specialty Banking, member Executive Committee and Board of Directors National Bank of Arizona for her establishment of the Women’s Financial Group (WFG) dedicated to providing networking and resources to female business owners; for giving over 500 hours each year to community organizations including the Arizona 
Foundation for Women, American Heart Association’s Heart Ball, Juvenile 
Diabetes Research Foundation, The Phoenix Zoo, and Arizona State University’s 
Women; for serving as an Arizona Skills Standard Commissioner for the Arizona State Department of Education; for being a board member of Homeward Bound, FreshStart and ChildHelp; for increasing awareness to women’s causes; and for charitable efforts in the last three years that have resulted in raising almost $5 million for the benefit of organizations in Arizona.

In her role, Deborah develops, implements and monitors NB|AZ sales, service, and marketing strategies. She is also responsible for several of the bank’s key departments, including Private Banking, Executive Banking, Internet Banking, Nonprofit Banking and WFG. She has more than 35 years of banking experience as Senior Vice President with JP Morgan Chase in New York, Chicago and Phoenix including assistance in the institution’s merger with Bank One.

An active member of the community, Deborah finds substantive ways to make her difference. She brings boundless joy, passion and heart to every commitment. She’s served as Chair/Co-Chair of the 2011 Arizona Foundation for Women’s Sandra Day O’Connor Luncheon, the 2011 Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation’s Promise Ball, as well as the 2009 and 2010 Arthritis Foundation’s Oscar Night America.

It’s no surprise that she has received numerous honors. In addition to being one of this year’s Positively Powerful Women she has earned the national 2010 Stevie Award for Best Executive in the Financial Services Industry, Arizona Foothills, 2011 Women Who Move the Valley Phoenix Business Journal, 2011 Women in Business Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, 2011 Bronze Sierra Award YWCA, 2010 Tribute to Women, Corporate Business Leader Award National Association of Women Business Owners, 2010 Visionary Award SCORE, 2010 Phoenix Small Business Award and Trends Charitable Foundation, 2010 Trendsetters and many more.

Join us by clicking here as Deborah receives the first Positively Powerful Women Award for Philanthropic Leadership. She is a spiritual and loving woman with commitment to her family. She is the embodiment of servant leadership – and that you can bank on. She is a role model for what it takes to be a successful woman in a vital company and important industry.

About the Awards Program. The Positively Powerful Woman Award is given to servant leaders who have founded or lead legacy organizations that have stood the test of time. On May 20th, 11:30am to 2pm, at the Ritz-Carlton, Phoenix we will honor women as royalty for their hard work, resourcefulness and diligence. Following the Luncheon will be networking and “Conversations On Leadership” for professional & business development. Positively Powerful Guest Speakers include Diana Gregory, Susan Ratliff and Dr. Kay Lovelace-Taylor. You will leave inspired to go for your vision with new friends and information that will assist you in getting where you want to be…faster. The public is invited to attend. Triad West, Inc. Dr. Joel P. Martin president is the producer.

About the National Bank Of Arizona: Founded in Tucson in 1984, National Bank of Arizona is a full-service community bank offering personal and business financial solutions for every aspect of your life. As Arizona’s fourth-largest bank with over $4.5 billion in assets, NB|AZ has the resources people need, delivered with the local responsiveness and personalized service people want. With branches in more than 50 communities, they are committed to growing Arizona – to being the only bank anyone could ever need. For more information, please visit www.nbarizona.com.

1st Meeting

In a recent article in the Harvard Business Review the question is asked “how can you as a manager (or business owner) create and nurture that special culture?  These lessons can be useful for new business as well. Wouldn’t it be an advantage when starting out to have in mind a clear leadership message, style and vision of what your company will look like. Given the current economic turmoil, more and more people (which could  mean you) will be doing something you only dreamed about, that is starting a their own business.

Here are some of what you should consider.

1. Leadership is critical in codifying and maintaining an organizational purpose, values, and vision. Leaders must set the example by living the elements of culture: values, behaviors, measures, and actions. Values are meaningless without the other elements.
2. Like anything worthwhile, culture is something in which you invest. An organization’s norms and values aren’t formed through speeches but through actions and team learning. Strong cultures have teeth. They are much more than slogans and empty promises. Some organizations choose to part ways with those who do not manage according to the values and behaviors that other employees embrace. Others accomplish the same objective more positively. At Baptist Health Care, for example, managers constantly reinforce the culture by recognizing those whose actions exemplify its values, its behaviors, and its standards. Team successes are cause for frequent celebrations. In addition, BHC rewards individual accomplishments through such things as “WOW (Workers becoming Owners and Winners) Super Service Certificates,” appreciation cards for 90-day employees that list their contributions to their team, one-year appreciation awards, multiyear service awards, employee of the month awards, and recognition of workers as “Champions” or “Legends” for extraordinary achievements or service. Managers at all levels offer frequent informal recognition and send handwritten thank-you notes (which stand out in the age of e-mail). Those who aren’t living up to BHC’s values soon get the point.
3. Employees at all levels in an organization notice and validate the elements of culture. As owners, they judge every management decision to hire, reward, promote, and fire colleagues. Their reactions often come through in comments about subjects such as the “fairness of my boss.” The underlying theme in such conversations, though, is the strength and appropriateness of the organization’s culture.
4. Organizations with clearly codified cultures enjoy labor cost advantages for the following reasons:– They often become better places to work. — They become well known among prospective employees. — The level of ownership—referral rates and ideas for improving the business of existing employees—is often high. — The screening process is simplified, because employees tend to refer acquaintances who behave like them. — The pool of prospective employees grows. — The cost of selecting among many applicants is offset by cost savings as prospective employees sort themselves into and out of consideration for jobs. — This self-selection process reduces the number of mismatches among new hires.
5. Organizations with clearly codified and enforced cultures enjoy great employee and customer loyalty, in large part because they are effective in either altering ineffective behaviors or disengaging from values-challenged employees in a timely manner.
6. An operating strategy based on a strong, effective culture is selective of prospective customers. It also requires the periodic “firing” of customers, as pointed out in our examples of companies like ING Direct, where thousands are fired every month. This strategy is especially important when customers “abuse” employees or make unreasonable demands on them.
7. The result of all this is “the best serving the best,” or as Ritz-Carlton’s mission states, “Ladies and gentlemen serving ladies and gentlemen.”
8. This self-reinforcing source of operating leverage must be managed carefully to make sure that it does not result in the development of dogmatic cults with little capacity for change. High-performing organizations periodically revisit and reaffirm their core values and associated behaviors. Further, they often subscribe to some kind of initiative that requires constant benchmarking and searching for best practices both inside and outside the organization. For example, at Baptist Health Care, all employees are expected and encouraged “to search until they find ‘the best of the best’ in their area of expertise and benchmark against them (and possibly emulate them).”
9. Organizations with strong and adaptive cultures foster effective succession in the leadership ranks. In large part, the culture both prepares successors and eases the transition.
10. Cultures can sour. Among the reasons for this are success itself, the loss of curiosity and interest in change, the triumph of culture over performance, the failure of leaders to reinforce desired behaviors, the breakdown of consistent communication, and leaders who are overcome by their own sense of importance.

What used to be an advantage for well establish companies was that size provided them with all the tools that was to thought to be to expensive for new business to afford. However technology has become both affordable and accessible which gives you the opportunity to concentrate on building a viable business, with people from all over the world like China, India, Argentina or South Africa and with a business culture, leadership and vision that people want to be a part of.

Dr. Joel Martin says, “There are many groups dedicated to entrepreneurial success, I say not only is this one of premiere in the Valley but anywhere. I’ll be speaking at the Boot Camp about personal and organizational branding. This is also the event I’ve selected to launch my new book: GET THE “ME” BRAND AWARENESS (MBA) THE POSITIVELY POWERFUL WAY.”

This is one of the events that I, like hundreds of others, look forward to. Each year, Susan brings together a stellar group of women speakers, business experts, exhibitors (corporate products and services for professional and personal development shopping), fun activities, meet and greet networking opportunities for use in accelerating ones business plus each year her event raises funds for a worthy local nonprofit organization. Here is information on this year’s:

The 2011 Women Entrepreneurs Small Business Boot Camp is proud to support Wings to Fly, a national, non-profit organization that promotes life long self-esteem in young women. Beginning with a fun, educational and inspirational one week educational camp, Wings to Fly focuses on the 4 building blocks of life: emotional, physical, spiritual and financial. By integrating inspiration, knowledge, research based resources and coaching into her daily life, a young woman can aspire with confidence and self respect to design the life she dreams and become a leader of tomorrow.

Susan Ratliff is President of an award-winning display company that helps thousands of businesses stand out from the competition. She is an author and authority on trade and consumer show marketing that gives relevant tools and practical strategies to maximize return on investment. Susan learned the exhibit business from the trenches, discovered the shortcuts and made the mistakes so her audiences don’t have to. She knows what attendees want, how exhibitors think and what they both need to be successful. As the producer of the Bootcamp, Susan insures that the event is unforgettable.

Susan Ratliff is also a POSITIVELY POWERFUL WOMEN AWARD recipient. This award is given to women in business, corporate America, non-profit organizations and the arts who have led or founded legacy organizations. As with the other years’ awardees, Susan received this recognition because she empowers her organization to breakthrough performance, makes a significant contribution to communities and is a positive role model.

Our customers know that they are receiving a scripted response. They are hearing it robotically repeated with every interaction that they have with us and conclude that they are not being heard or served.  Saying we care is not enough. Our customers have to be able to recognized that they are being cared for, otherwise it is just lip service. Time to eliminate the scripts

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What is the method that you use to find the point where everything started to go off track. Do you go back to the original idea? Do you guess? Or do you start peeling back every layer of the project, like an onion, until you’ve totally reconstructed it?

What is your process?

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Making Time for Family Meals

Technology is changing the workplace and where and how people work together and remotely. People are benefiting from a flexible work schedule. It’s a win-win for…The mother who went back to school while taking care of her child and working full time. The software designer who wants to write a novel. The Care Giver who needs flexibility to take care of aging parents. The business owner who requires 24/7 customer care.

But every coin has two sides. Depending upon your point of view this change is either positive or positively challenging. The challenges for the virtual workforce environment challenges include work life balance, surfing the web, instant messaging and emailing, working outside the office, and flex time.

What are benefits? What are the solutions? And what are the best practices?

Use virtual workplaces wisely and your company becomes a more attractive employer. You’ll retain the best of the best by addressing the needs of workers’ demanding professional life and busy personal life. You’re more apt to get harder working, more dedicated, happier employees. Other benefits are that these flexible arrangement can reduce your costs for those that can work part time.

Flex time and the virtual workplace. Smart move. Consider these statistics: According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, from 2005 to 2006:

• The number of families in which both parents worked rose from 61 to 62 percent.
• Almost 71 percent of all mothers were employed out of the house.
• 56.1 percent of mothers with children less than a year old worked.

To make this work, you’ll need to develop leadership.

As a diversity expert, I tell my classes how I look forward to the day when I will be out of a job because the race that we are talking about is the human race…a group that willingly and intentionally shares a bond above and beyond what is dissimilar. There are many such groups occuring in every community.

The group at the right for example is one such group. They include women working in high levels of city government, founders of significant nonprofit organizations doing good, marketing professionals, global entrepreneurs, corporate consultants, producers…several wearing all of those dimensions at once. What they have in common beyond their friendship is a caring for community and a positively powerful connection with like minded others for causes that matter. This is what diversity looks like today…a mixture of generations, etc. working together.

Positively Powerful Friends left to right: Linda Walton, Diana Gregory,  Pam Gaber (Gabriel’s Angel 2009 Positively Powerful Woman Award Recipient), Fatimah Halim (Life Paradigms – Blueprint for Womanhood Positively Powerful Woman Award Recipient), Christine Breeze, Maria Arnold-Haydn, Dr. Joel Martin, and Shelle Cleveland.

Recently Dan Pink gave this talk at TED. If you manage people you must hear his perspective. It makes perfect sense, is clearly presented, and illuminates why…

• There is a mismatch between what science knows and what business does. (This might be why we’re in the mess we’re in.)
• Rewards and incentives of the 20th century don’t work in the 21st century.
• Stick and carrot ways of engaging employees is a de-motivator.
• You don’t need to pay the big bucks to get breakthrough performance and creativity from your staff. There is another way that works better!
• Transformational trainings like those produced by Triad West are a must-have way of engaging and rewarding employees. (Dan Pink didn’t say that but when you get to the end of the video you’ll see why I say that and mean it.)

Now that you’ve read the post, watch Dan. Let me know what you thought about his video and how you’re incorporating newness and transformation into your employee interactions. Thanks.

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1. Loans: If you are starting a business that requires “blue collar” workers, which may be many people out of work these days, banks may not be keen on lending money for this type of enterprise. On the other hand, some SBA banks are still giving out loans to those that can meet the requirements of collateral, good personal credit, a plan. Whoa….many folks with great ideas might get knocked out of the box on those qualifications. For those who want the “white collar” workers, the same rules apply.
2. Certification: How does certification support the creation of something that never has been done before. And the Fortune 500 companies want a solid track record and big revenue streams as well.

I am sure there many more obstacles in the way.

While it has been said that it will take the creation of 20 new firms to produce just one (1) employee, more and more people are braving the entry into small business land and finding new ways to get the financial and personnel support they need. They are not on six degrees and 4 certifications before starting out. The difference is that they are focused on producing a product or service that has real value.

Jim Collins (Good to Great and How the Mighty Fall) says that lack

E&K Poole usm.edu

amateurism, people who don’t have all the answers but just love trying to get it right, has in part been a contributing factor in the hiccup ours and the world economies have experienced. Amateurs don’t do it for the money. An often repeated phrase “I can’t believe I’m getting paid for something I love”.

“I can’t believe I’m getting paid for something I love”

The Costs of Entrepreneurial Job Creation an article by Scott A. Shane in the N.Y. Times paints the cost of creating entrepreneurs and then jobs to replace the jobs that have been lost during the current recession at $225. billion or ten times the US governments’ original cost estimate. One question that Shane is asking is, should our government try to target entrepreneurs who say their goal is to have employees or should they treat all new business start-ups equally. Our answer is did Google know that it wanted to have a staff of thousand? We don’t think so.  We think they were looking to create value and were passionate about what they were doing.

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Here is a bit of research for you: 25% of employees who use the Internet visit porn sites during the workday, and hits were highest during office hours. (Newsweek) Why?

o   They were looking for an escape.

o   Managers are too busy to pay attention.

o   Younger workers don’t see a problem with it.

What’s the big deal…it’s being done on your time. It can lead to a hostile workplace environment which can lead to a law suit. As a result more and more companies are monitoring the Internet activities of their employees. Yes, we have to let it be okay to surf the web. As a part of your leadership directive to your managers and staff,  create policies that clearly outline what are appropriate usage of the Internet at work. The Internet impacts all size business and even if you are starting a small business and intend to hire staff, these polices need to be in place.