Management is more of an art than a science. Every person is different, which requires a manager to understand each person separately rather than managing everyone in the same way. Saying something to an employee in one way can be interpreted by another employee in a completely different way.

One thing that does change when managing people is holding them accountable to their work.

While the style or approach a manager takes with people may be different, each employee must be held accountable for their work regardless of what part of the business they function in. This is very important in a small business where roles can often be shared, changed, and undefined due to the growing culture.

David Schnurman, CEO of Lawline.com, believes in order to make people accountable for their actions agreements must be in place. “I learned early on in starting my own company that people will do their best work on things they do not want to do or enjoy. This is why when I speak to my employees I want them to tell me they can do something or they will get the work done.”

David believes in asking people if they can complete tasks rather than telling them.

“If I say to an employee ‘Create 40 new CLE courses for us this month’ this is an order coming from me. They can easily tell me at the end of the month that I have set the bar too high for them and it was impossible for them to get the work done. But if I ask them ‘Do you think you can create 40 CLE programs this month?’ then it becomes an idea they are agreeing to. They have the choice to say no and suggest a different number, but now it has become their idea.”

This accountability and management style is what has allowed Lawline.com to grow with confidence to now 35 employees! (with more on the way!)

However, along the way, a few problems came abound…

First, the company sent him the wrong camera, then the right camera they sent didn’t work. Next the cable they sent with it was wrong. After this, he got the control pad and it took two hours of calls with their customer support staff to get it to work. Afterwards, the audio was not working and he needed to get a new device.

Further, the mount was not in and he had to find a new one.  Once this happened, Micah needed to find a solution to get it to work remotely, and he came up with an original mix between Skype and Logmein as well as a screen capture solution to back it up…

Bottom line any mortal would have been stopped in his tracks, but each obstacle just pushed him further to make it happen. He continues to learn and this in combination with his drive leads him to consistently innovate.

1. Change is always hard, and we have focused on selling 1-2 year subscriptions over the past few years.
2. Though the price is small for lifetime, it is still a large upfront cost.

Corey saw this as a great opportunity, however, to reach his monthly goals at a faster rate. For customers that purchased the unlimited subscriptions, he went for upgrades. For customers that were interested, he carried the conversation forward by introducing the product. He did not push the product toward anyone, rather, he creatively wove the new price and offer into his discussions and used his intuition to target opportunities.

This has led him to a team leading amount of lifetime sales, along with keeping him atop the leaderboards over the past few months. Over the past few months Corey has continuously set the bar for the Lawline sales team through following his creative intuition on the phone in optimizing his performance with Lifetime CLE.

In our efforts in corporate sales, for example, you can find him going on a sales trip with Ken and providing the support and knowledge of our company’s programming. During Dave’s presentations and webcasts on company culture, you can see him on screen providing insights.

With hiring, you can see him taking on a full-fledged effort to find the perfect new recruits for our production department, including our staffing in Florida. In marketing, he allots his feedback and corrections on our email newsletters regarding our customers, and has actively brought out our “free credit” campaign in which faculty can distribute their courses to whoever for free. Further, in the AM huddles, Kyle can be found as leading the discussions and the daily reviews, getting the team prepared for the day ahead.

These are only a few of the areas he can be found, and a complete list would not fit this section of the newsletter. His ability to help the company in every aspect has allowed us to move ahead in every department.

Sal has continued to be a driving factor in the company’s shift in its Lifetime CLE campaign. Every day he consistently provides feedback on customer reactions and continues to find ways to optimize the product.

This optimism and consistency in performance has led Sal to raise Customer Outreach to his level. With recent changes in the department, Sal’s presence leaves an aura of success and optimism regarding the coming months. Even in the most recent days where he has been solo in his efforts, he has continued his consistent attitude and perhaps even brought it out more fully through his adaptability in training new hires, answering CS calls, and overall doing everything needed to help the company.

With his leadership and presence through this optimism, the Customer Outreach department is one that is going to have very rapid and immediate growth over the next few months.

On the week of the 15th, the development made a commitment to revamp the mobile site. Though it was thought it would take over a week to complete, the combined effort of the entire team enabled it to be done midweek. The highlight of this process was an all-day focus on Wednesday of the week to see the project to its completion. On that day, Joe and Todd switched the Lawline main site to an HTML 5 format, allowing our normal course center to play on the iPad. If you haven’t seen this, take a look… the course center was made for the iPad.

Next, Todd led the charge in assuring all our courses would now flow and function smoothly, which wasbasically an entire re-recoding of the site due to our recent Amazon Server switch.
Last, within one day the team, with the help of Seth, designed a completely new homepage, integrating the key features and the endless universe that we use symbolically within the company.

After only a week and without yet launching our marketing side, the site has already received astounding feedback. Below is an inquiry from a developer who came across the site:

“Hi i am a web developer for 3m and I just wanted to give your mobile developers some good feedback. I see it is made using jquery mobile, I also develop jquery mobile sites and yours is one The best yet, good job!”

This is only a small portion of the accolades and recognition our development team will be embracing in the near future!

Alex: No video sums up optimism more than a video of a little boy learning to ride a bike and the resulting speech he gives after, telling every kid that “If you can’t do it, you keep trying until you can!”.

Click the cute kid below to believe in yourself!

I showed another video of Ellie Goulding which she came up with a way to successfully market her new album “Lights” through different marketing channels..  The video is an interactive music experience. If you retweet the link, your twitter name, and picture it will show up in the video in live time. That in turn encourages people to share the video.  Whether in marketing or sales or any other position, we can all learn from a little creative solution seeking.

Click the picture below for an interactive experience!

Ann: “All of them wanted to be heard. What I do hope that these kids will be more confident of the future and not be afraid to ask questions. To see them hungry for answers and that fact I could answer them was great.”

Casey: “The best part of the program definitely hearing the kids thank us for coming in. Also, when we would reflect on the end as a class what they had learned. What also really upset me was the fact that there was no health education classes at the school.

Chris: “I would say taking the kids away from their element was the best. Many times kids are talked at and not to. Most of the kids were young and still getting used to the High School routine”

Frank: “It is great to hear from them and offer assistance that you can. Hardest part of the program is the reality of the resources some children have.  Some have a lot of support at home.  Some have none. I think the experience had more of an impact on the student’s and myself than I could have imagined.”

Jeff F(I): “I spread the word about Linkedin to every group I spoke to, as that is how I was introduced to Lawline and not a single student had heard of it. I thought the best part of the program was seeing how much the teachers appreciated us being there and getting to hear their students talk about future plans and goals. ”

Joe: “A lot of them are motivated for different reasons than I was, like being the first to complete college, seeing others in their family succeeding for the first time and wanting to emulate that. I feel like the one thing that got through to the every group was that interviews were conversations, it was a two way street. You are interviewing them as much as they are interviewing you. I think that empowers people as they walk into interviews, gives them a vote of confidence.”

Melissa: “I think the best part was being able to really think about the things I wish someone told me when I was beginning to think about college and the direction I wanted my life to go in.  Simple things like managing your time, finding a mentor or meeting one on one with an admissions person to talk about scholarship possibilities were things I either found out after the fact, or had to find out by going through the process with no guidance. The hardest part for me was to hear the kids didn’t have access to sports.”

Mike F: “I think the best part of the program was just getting some 1 on 1 time with students and understanding what it is like to be a kid in public school in the city in today’s age. Hopefully I gave some of the kids good advice that they will actually follow.”

Sal: “The best part of the program was going group to group and teaching them the proper handshake. I would introduce myself to each student, and then have them re-do the introduction with a different scenario: I told them that it’s 10 years down the road and I am the person deciding whether or not they get their dream job. I asked them to look me in the eyes and shake my hands with the confidence of a “there is no way I’m leaving this interview without this job” mentality. They laughed amongst themselves, but when it came down to it the introductions significantly improved.”

I approached the event with some hesitation, not doubting that the kids would find useful the information I had to share, but anticipating challenges inherent in the fact that I’d be addressing them from what would often be a very different economic bracket. It seemed likely that the children would assume that my experiences weren’t relevant to them, or would push back against what might seem a condescending effort to “bestow knowledge from on high.” While that was somewhat apparent in a number of interactions, I was impressed by how many kids were genuinely interested in the work I did, asking questions such as “What do you like most about your job?” and, “What do you find most difficult?”

The best part of the program for me was the degree to which nearly every student had either something in their lives about which they were passionate or a goal to work toward. I at times had to coax it out of them, asking such questions as. “You don’t know what you’re going to be? Okay, well, do you have any hobbies? Could you see those hobbies growing into something career-oriented?” In the end, however, there was always something there: “I want to be a molecular biologist. I want to be musician. I want to be a fashion coach.”

I made a point to ask questions as often as possible. Rather than functioning as a talking head, bombarding them with info, I asked them what they liked about school, what they didn’t like, what they wished they could change, what subjects they most enjoyed learning. The moment a given kid started to lose focus, I’d hit him or her up with a question. In the long run, this may have prevented me from dispensing as much info as I might have otherwise, but for me it was a worthwhile sacrifice, as everyone was listening as a result, and grabbing whatever info they could.

As expected, the most pronounced lesson I learned from the kids was how important it is to keep pushing forward in spite of personal difficulty, which in their case was often enormous.

I was also reminded of how fortunate I am to doing precisely what I love. For many of these students, the obstacles between themselves and their dream occupations seemed insurmountable, much as mine once did. That I can now work in video production, after pursuing a major that I was repeatedly told would take years and years to be lucrative, is quite a moving detail. I feel certain these students can realize the same!

I split everyone into two groups and had each group pick different “actors” for each turn. The actor/actress picked from a bag an adjective to act out while the situation was meeting up for lunch. At the end of the 45 second skit, their group had to guess what their adjective was. We had Happy vs Macho, Cultured vs Busy, Nasty vs Content, and Suspicious vs Charming. People had different perspective on Cultured. One thing that became very evident was Happy, Content and Charming stayed positive and tried to calm Macho, Nasty, and Suspicious. They didn’t let the negativity phase them and keeping a cool head in difficult situations is important!

Afterwards, we discussed how the actors portrayed their emotions and how they could have displayed that feeling better. The reflection was to help everyone identify effective cues and to better understand how they displayed their own cues.