Interview With Rachel Yoka on Productivity
In the February 2011 issue of SMPS Marketer, I interview Rachel Yoka, Vice President of Strategic Business Planning and Sustainability at TimHaahs. Much of what we talked about couldn’t fit in SMPS Marketer. But I felt the unused portions provided a perspective that would be useful to the HelpEverybodyEveryday readers. In this unpublished piece, we discuss productivity, managing unreasonable proposal demands, cutting the pie, paper versus electronic, and closing your office door.
Matt Handal: What was the marketing coordinator job like at Pennoni? Doesn’t Pennoni have an extremely productive and efficient proposal operation?
Rachel Yoka: Day one when I walked into Pennoni, I was surprised by the volume. I wasn’t used to working on 30 proposals in a month. It is really good practice.
M: That’s because it is a centralized marketing department?
R: Yes, at the time it was a very centralized operation serving all thirteen offices. At that point, we were doing everything on paper. There were not many electronic submissions.
M: So, tell me about your progression while at Pennoni.
R: I like to say that I cut my teeth there and learned so much about how to do proposals and respond to client’s need. But more importantly, I learned about time management and personal management. If you have 10 proposals going out in two days and you don’t organize your time, you are never leaving. It was very important to me to get things done quickly. That’s really where I learned to use my time well.
M: I think it is good to be schooled in those situations where you have too much to do versus learning the ropes at a firm where you may not have those demands.
R: You can always do fewer things. But if you know how to manage multiple deadlines, it’s invaluable. I think that’s part of why I ended up doing some project management for TimHaahs. It is something that applies to many aspects of business.
There are only so many things you can do before you don’t do any of them well. You can only cut the pie so thin. I really feel that three to four major pieces is when you begin to get stretched, because you are not devoting enough of your time, focus, or energy to any of those things.
When my pie started to get to five or six pieces, I needed to re-examine what I was doing. I think that’s what many people are questioning in the market place, “where am I giving the most value and where should I be focusing more of my time?”
M: I think that’s a very hard thing to do. When I came to this office, we had a marketing coordinator (me), a business developer manager, and a marketing director. Now, that’s me. So, there are too many hats.
R: And something has to go.
M: Lots of things go. You can’t do in 2,000 hours everything that was done with 6,000 hours.
R: And that’s the thing, they either go by choice or it goes by the wayside and gets lost. There are just so many hours in the day.
You should consciously divide the pie. You should figure out where you are having the impact. Then, make the decision to do this and stop doing that. It’s going to get lost anyway. I think we are under the impression that we can do it all. We just add one more thing, one more thing, and then one more thing. As a result, some of it starts not getting done well. That’s a position none of us want to be in.
You need to be focused on those three to four areas (or more if you can really handle it).
M: Like you said, there are three to four major pieces. Beyond that, it’s very hard to keep everything together.
R: And it’s not just keeping it together, it’s doing it well. If you are not doing it well, why are you doing it? Your impact just isn’t there if you are not doing it well. That’s my take.
You strive to do everything well and you do your best. But you have to make the decision and say some things just won’t get done if this is the way we are structured. I think most management and leadership recognizes this, but it sometimes goes unspoken.
M: You moved into a BD role in a time where it seems to me that the role of the business developer may be becoming somewhat of an endangered species. What’s your take on that?
R: I think that depends upon the organization. We don’t have dedicated business development personnel.
For me, I have a multi-faceted role. I’m managing all the marketing efforts, communications, public relations, and all that goes with that. I’m also doing business development and sustainability consulting. So, I’m not a dedicated business developer either.
M: I know you use Dragon (speech recognition). I got it. I was showing it to my boss. It’s a great idea. But just the fact that it’s not 100% accurate, is a huge problem.
R: I feel that even with some of the mistakes, it saves me a lot of time when getting stuff out of my brain and onto the paper. Then later, I clean up.
M: I’m fast with the writing, so I just keep the cursor moving. Then I go back and edit it.
I was talking to a real estate agent that says he gets someone else to write his listings because he’ll write for an hour and only come up with two sentences.
R: No, you just have to start and keep going. I’m sorry you don’t like it. You should ask for your money back.
M: When you wear so many different hats, how do you manage that? How do you determine what you are doing today?
R: I’m a big list maker. I still do that, for the most part, manually. In our office, we all have our black books. We use that to write down everything. It’s a cultural thing at our firm. When you are hired, they give you a book. If you are sitting with Tim and he asks you to do something, you write it down in the book.
M: So, you are a paper person?
R: Not completely. I have my iPad and iPhone. I organize many tasks on email. But when it comes to strategizing my day, I manually write out a list.
That’s how I do it because then I know what I absolutely must do each day. But you always have to leave room, because the “absolutely must do” changes. You can get a phone call at 4pm from a potential client who says they need a custom qualifications package and that’s what you do.
M: You can get that one email that completely changes your day.
R: I have a team that’s so great. It’s nice to be able to say, “can you do this?” and know that, once you pass it off to that person, you don’t need to worry about it. That is outstanding.
People who work as hard as I do, those are the people I want on my team. Your plans can get derailed, but you need to know which things need to be done and which can be pushed. That’s the art of balancing the day. But, you know, then your kid gets an earache and you have to work from home. You need to be able to work from anywhere.
M: I’m moving to paper in January, primarily because of syncing issues.
R: You are moving to paper? You are moving backwards.
M: Some people might think that’s insane, but the people you talk to who really have their stuff together always use paper.
R: I’m a Kinesthetic learner. When I write things down, they become ingrained in the way I think and what I’m doing. I will remember them later. It will come back to me because I wrote it down.
The act of writing down something is very powerful. It’s not the same as typing it on a keyboard. It is like the difference between reading a book and reading something on the screen.
I’m sure there are people whose iPhones organize their entire life. I’m just not there yet.
M: But now that iPhone has to play nice with your computers and other devices.
R: The management of your IT becomes interesting. We have all these devices and all of these email accounts. They are all demands on our time.
Knowing you can work on something and turn off your email is invaluable. Yet, there are so few people who do it. If the building is burning down, they are going to tell you. If your “A #1” client calls you, they’ll tell you. I don’t know what you could miss if you turn off your email. I find that those are my most productive times.
We have an open door policy in our office. Anybody can go to anyone at any time. So, very few people shut their doors. Once Tim realized that I was shutting my door to do something I considered a priority, he came in and made the comment, “I want to see your door shut more often.”
I’m pleased that I have that ability. I also think giving your staff that ability is important too.
