Paul Savage - Victory Quest Business Advisory

06/30/2020

Hi Friends:

In an effort to help combat the spread of COVID 19, my company is beginning to market antibody blood tests that use only a single drop of blood from your finger to determine if you are infected now or have ever been infected.

The test is 97% accurate (compared to 75% accuracy of PCR antigen tests using a nasal swab) and gives results in only 10 minutes. Possibly the best feature of this test is that you don't have to endure a nasal swab that extends to the back of the throat!

Before we begin marketing in earnest, we are conducting a pilot program to gather data using these tests. We are offering these tests at no charge, and Dr. Hansen (an ER doctor from Riverton Hospital) has generously offered to perform the testing.

In order to gather the right data, we are looking to perform the antibody tests on 1-2 people in each of the following categories:

We want a few people that

* have tested positive on a PCR antigen test (nasal swab) – but had no symptoms, or

* have tested positive on a PCR antigen test (nasal swab) – with mild symptoms that are now cured, or

* have tested positive on a PCR antigen test (nasal swab) – with significant symptoms that are now cured, or

* have tested positive on a PCR antigen test (nasal swab) – that still have symptoms, or

* have had a different antibody blood test and tested either positive or negative

Since we have a limited amount of tests to administer, this will be on a first come, first served basis. And we don’t want to double up too much in any 1 category, so if you would be interested in having the test performed, please let me know, and indicate the category in which you fit.

We plan on offering the test next Monday, July 6, at 2:00 pm and again at 6:00 pm at my home in Daybreak. (If you fall into the category of still having symptoms, we will come to your home at a time that works for you.) If you or anyone you know would have an interest and fit in any of the above categories, we would love to include you in our study.

03/04/2019

Savage Enterprises is now Victory Quest Business Advisory. So why this name change? Well, after receiving some feedback from my mentors, (everybody needs mentors, by the way, and the more, the better) and after careful pondering, I began to realize that the name "Savage Enterprises" doesn't convey the message that I want all of my clients and prospects to hear. In fact, it doesn't convey a message at all, really, other than that I like to hear the sound of my name. 😜So I knew I needed to make a change.

It took a lot of soul-searching on my part, as I looked back over the past 20+ years of being an independent consultant, to discover the patterns of success that I had witnessed in the lives of my customers. And then it hit me: I am a hyper-competitive person by nature, as evidenced by various personality tests I have taken over the years. And my wife would totally agree.

So it shouldn't surprise anyone that my consulting practice would have a heavy emphasis on winning. But I'm not talking about winning at the expense of others; the type of winning I promote is through mutual understanding, cooperation, and authentic feedback loops.

Victory Quest is all about gaining increasingly greater mastery over 5 key Intelligences: Strategic, Process, Human, Leadership, and Organizational. As these intelligences grow at both a personal and company level, everyone in the firm will begin to win--to claim victory--in their personal growth, in their leadership abilities, and in their interpersonal communication skills. As a result, companies grow, families become stronger, and personal relationships become more fulfilling.

If any of this sounds interesting to you, I would love to discuss it further. In the meantime, have a wonderful day!

05/29/2018

Here's another question for you: Is your organizational structure fully optimized and in alignment with your strategy, people, processes and metrics? Are you fully confident that you know how to answer this question? If not, believe me, you are not alone! That is because proper organizational structure is one of the most difficult aspects of leadership to define.

The problem many firms encounter is that they try to develop a good structure and then attempt to force their processes to fit into that structure. Unfortunately, this approach rarely brings about the desired results. This problem is especially acute in mergers and acquisitions and cross-company collaborations, when two entirely different teams and cultures are under the necessity of creating a new, dynamic operating structure.

I have a unique expertise in being able to facilitate a redesign of organizational structure in a way that is completely aligned with the goals and strategy of the company (or companies) involved. I would love the chance to show you how a well-defined structure can help your business catapult to the next level of achievement.

05/07/2018

Here's a scary question for many of you: have you ever considered hiring a coach? Contrary to popular belief, it’s the strong people—not the weak—who seek help for their personal development. The most talented athletes and business people in the world have demonstrated that having an outside perspective is critical to keeping them “on their game.” Over the years, some of my very best work has been done in one-on-one coaching sessions. This isn't meant to imply that I am all that amazing or gifted; it’s simply a reflection of the truth that outside feedback is a vital factor in successful performance improvement. It doesn’t matter if you are a rising star, a highly talented person who has a hard time getting along with your peers, or the company CEO: everyone can use a coach from time to time. Utilizing a suite of highly sophisticated personality profiles and a proven coaching methodology, I help talented people create a personalized development plan that enables them to fully utilize their strengths in the workplace, while overcoming the most debilitating of their weaknesses. Working together, I help my clients place special emphasis on the all-important leadership skill of Emotional Intelligence, or EQ. This is not a skill readily learned in business school or in the home, and if you do not have it, you can be assured that it is definitely holding you back in your career. Why not give it a try? Let me assist you in honing the best parts of your personality to give your career and family life the boost you’ve been searching for.

04/26/2018

How are your people feeling?

Does your organization have “deadwood”? (i.e.; employees that are “retired” but still showing up for work?) If you answered in the affirmative, then the next question I have for you is, “Did you hire them dead? Or did you kill them?”

Most of the company leaders who reach out to me for help usually identify people challenges as their biggest barrier to growth. But I find that the actual problem is usually much more complex and involves the entire company as a whole. For one thing, many firms lack hiring discipline, and so the people they hire, while good people, are not always the best fit for their roles (i.e. “hiring them dead”). Secondly, assuming that good people were hired in the first place, I have discovered that poor leadership and poor processes are what “kill” good workers. And when those barriers are addressed, through hiring discipline, individual coaching programs, and process improvement efforts, formerly poor performers can become stars.

In my 13 years of consulting successes, I have seen this happen over and over again. So, if you have “people problems” in your firm, let me help. I’ll collaborate with your teams to make sure your hiring, leadership teams and work processes are all aligned to keep your people engaged and productive. This will create a virtuous spiral that will carry your firm upward to greater and greater heights.

04/20/2018

Let's talk about your core business processes:

On a scale from 1-10, how would you rate the level of interdepartmental communication and cooperation in your firm? If you rate it as anything less than a 9, then we should talk; because this lack of coordination is holding your business back. Business process dysfunctions are easy to see, but difficult to change, because any one change in isolation is unlikely to help the overall effectiveness of the firm. I have a unique expertise in bringing together cross-functional teams and facilitating them in redesigning their complex, core business processes in a way that not only makes sense to all, but that increases efficiency AND effectiveness. Over the past 13 years, I have helped many teams improve their process efficiency by anywhere from 50-2,000%! Let me show you how I can help your employees experience similar breakthroughs in performance and job satisfaction; often with little or no capital investment. You'll be very glad you took the time to do this. :-)

04/12/2018

Let's talk business strategy:

What are the top 3 goals of your organization? While this may seem like a fairly innocuous question, misaligned strategy is one of the most common dysfunctions in American business today. Even though you may feel your strategy is “obvious" or “straightforward;” chances are, your employees don’t see eye to eye with you regarding company strategy and how their individual goals fit into the overall whole. Not only that, but your employees often understand your customer base and certain elements of your market sector better than you do. As a leader, it can be very challenging to balance your time between the daily demands of your job and getting your team (and self) fully aligned around a cohesive strategy. I can help with that. I not only have processes to diagnose any elements of your strategy that are misaligned, but I can also make sure that you and your team have complete clarity on how to execute that unique strategy that will take your business to the next level. I'd love to hear from you about this important topic.

10/04/2017

02/04/2016

Is it People? Or is it Process?

When poor performance is evident in an organization, senior leaders almost always have a knee-jerk reaction to "clean house," and get rid of the "dead wood," so to speak. What I have found in nearly every case, is that poor performance is more a reflection of poorly designed business processes than of bad employees.

I often ask my clients, "Does your organization have any dead wood?" The response is usually an enthusiastic "Yes!" So then I ask a follow-on question: "Did you hire them dead, or did your organization kill them?" If they are being honest, most will admit that they played a part in "killing" what was once a good hire.

Here's what I have found: BAD PROCESS KILLS GOOD PEOPLE. So if your people are performing poorly, first take a look at your core business processes before you start firing people. In my experience, up to 85% of the problems in a business are process related, and only 15% are employee related.

Here's a good example. I was asked to help an underperforming Call Center for a Transit Authority. The job of the Call Center was to help public transit users map out the best route to get from point A to point B in the transportation district. However, wait times were over 15 minutes on average; frustrated callers dropped off without speaking to an agent 50% of the time, absenteeism was high, morale was extremely low, the loyal members worked a lot of overtime, and the Call Center only fielded 30,000 calls per month.

I convinced the leadership team to let me work with the operators at the Call Center to redesign their core processes in a way that made sense to them. After working together for a week on the process redesign, they went on their way, confident that they had figured out what their greatest obstacles to performance had been.

This team NAILED it! When I checked in with them 1 year later, wait times had dropped to 45 seconds on average, with half of the calls answered in 15 seconds or less. Dropped calls were completely eliminated, attendance improved by 5 weeks per person that year, and the Call Center was successfully fielding 85,000 calls per month!

All of this occurred with the exact same team of operators as the year prior: none of the existing team was fired, and no new members were added. Overtime was almost completely eliminated. Why? Because they weren't "bad employees:" they were simply victims of poor process. Once they were given a chance to redesign their existing process, they took off and became a high performing team.

If you're unsure how to examine your existing processes, feel free to contact me: I'd love to help.