I believe Mateo has learned the art of the occasional yield.

Mateo is a big black dog. At his last weigh-in at the vet’s, he tipped the scales at 97 pounds and he’s likely over the century mark at this point. He’s a gentle soul who is likely to do more damage with his wagging tail than anything else.

Mateo is a rescue we adopted soon after we moved here. He had languished for weeks at the shelter probably because he was big, black, and not a puppy. We don’t know anything about his previous life and he’s never said much about his past.

It’s amazing  how many life lessons can be applied to the business world as well.

I’ll just go ahead and tell the story.

“Step up, tell the truth and take responsibility for your actions and all will be big medicine.”

When I said those words I was the newly-minted director of a small Emergency Medical Services department in suburban Montreal attempting to establish an organizational culture wherein the medics had only a few rules to follow:

• Respect yourself
• Respect your colleagues
• Respect your clients
• Respect your community

Prima Donnas? Shooting Stars? High Maintenance?   Every one of those terms has been used in the coffee room to describe business development /sales people. The CEO may have used the term when tempers fray.  How can a company build a culture in which the sales and business development team integrates smoothly into the entire company?

By: Jeri Epstein, Managing Director (Part 1 of 2)

Integrating the business development team into the rest of your company takes planning and a high EQ.  EQ is an Emotional Quotient. In smart leaders, it complements a high IQ.  Strong leaders have both.

The financial department, engineers, IT professionals often view the Business Development team in your company as the flighty, high-expense account, travel-everywhere crowd. They are the ones flying to interesting cities, eating lunch on the company’s credit card and having drinks with prospective customers while the “real employees” work every day in cube farms and closed offices. It sets up a potential source of friction.

I don’t miss 2011. It was a rugged year and I don’t mind saying that I’d have kicked it into a pig-manure-slurry-filled ditch if the option had presented itself.  Hell, I’d have put the year to bed in late November because right after that is when I became aware of a whole new meaning for the words ‘Stranger danger.’

by: Jeri Epstein, Managing Partner

Our parents’ generation went to work for a company, stayed there for 35 years, and then received a gold watch and a retirement package. Those days are gone. Until the financial collapse four years ago, women were the primary victims of discontinuity in their work lives. They would start a job, marry, have children, and take time to raise them. When they returned to the office, trying to juggle families and jobs, their male counterparts had moved steadily ahead into executive management positions. With the financial downturn, men were unemployed and their dream of working for large, established corporations with pensions and benefits were disrupted as well.  Discontinuity became a universal problem.