Michelle LaBrosse Blogs

Michelle LaBrosse, CCPM, PMP, PMI-ACP, RYT

It takes a solid core to maintain balance – in every situation.

When things feel out of balance, life seems to send you what you need to bring it back into balance. I learned this lesson in my early 20’s when I burned the candle at both ends working hard and playing hard. To make the time to rest, I’d be forced into it with a nasty sore throat. Once I realized the message in this sore throat – I found ways to get more rest so I would not have to suffer from the sore throat mandatory rest requirement.  My sore throats became a thing of the past as I brought my life into balance.

I see the same things playing out in numerous other ways running this business.  When things get out of balance, just as I’m starting to discern things need to shift to bring things back into balance, some external event happens that forces the business back into balance. Balance means many things in this business:

1. Staff is contributing in ways that are bringing value balanced with the rewards they are receiving.
2. New efforts are generating sufficient rewards to continue their pursuit.
3. The energy to sustain a process is commensuarte with the value received from the process (like the accounting processes).
4. Strategic associations bring value aligned with the level of effort to sustain them.

Developing deeper discernment happens over time with running the business – it happens in part with the measurements put in place to judge the performance of our efforts, but it also comes from the experiences developed with running the business.   Experience can be another word for “mistakes.” Learning from the mistakes is crucial to improve discernment of what is required to keep the business in balance.

The biggest challenges I see organizations face with staying in balance is when they replace senior staff with lower cost junior staff not realizing the level of discernment and balance the senior staffer’s perspective brings to their operation.  They essentially weaken their core.  While I’d like to promote some level of a Cheetah Learning course that can improve the discernment of lower cost junior staff member, it’s really about learning the ins and outs of running a business – which well, comes from running a business. Yes it is important to earn the requisite credentials of your craft – the the CCPM and PMP certifications for project managers.  AND put in the  actual time to develop the experience on the ground that makes the difference in developing the discernment required to keep an operation balanced and performing.  One of the ways to tell this with respect to project managers is to see for how long they have maintained their credential – a project manager who as maintained their PMP credential for several decades has far more discernment in running effective projects than someone early in their career who just earns their PMP credential.

One of the reasons Cheetah Learning continues to be the rock solid business that it is  – we run the company in a way that we have very little turn over (with both employees and clients).  We help our Cheetah students who have earned their PMP’s maintain their credential by offering valuable follow on training that can help them master additional skills, at cheetah speed.  We test out new people in the periphery of the business on a new initiative to see how they perform in a myriad of situations before  bringing them into the main team.  We make sure our core with which we maintain balance is strong and wide so not much tilts us one way or the other. The leadership group that runs the business works on the business as well as works in the business so they have the discernment required to know when things need a slight modification here or there to keep things running at peak performance.  This has helped us weather a wide variety of external threats and enables us to stay the market leader in the Project Management training space world wide.

Michelle LaBrosse, CCPM, PMP, PMI-ACP, RYT

The quality of achieving excellence permeates every part of a person’s life. When choosing an education provider, find out how well their course developers did in school.

While I’m a big believer in turning your ship around, second chances, and infinite redemption, I’ve found time and time again, most people show up consistently as who they truly are. The people who were A students, are generally A employees, and so on.  Another attribute, is  the best are usually fairly humble about it – often self deprecating to put others at ease. Yet they have a track record of achieving exceptional results and leave a trail of very satisfied customers and clients. Whereas the charlatans, those that attempted to get by on their “good looks and personality, without doing the work, may be able to  spin a good yarn, but more often than not deliver little more than disappointment.

When discerning a quality education provider, from one that has great marketing material, but little else, look at their track record.  What are the qualifications of their course developers, their instructors?  It literally pays to hire the right people and can cost you dearly when you hire the wrong people – especially with something as important as your education and the development of your capabilities. Think brain surgery here – would you prefer to have the neurosurgeon who aced school and their boards or the one who barely squeaked by but can share great stories in the office?

To find the best, ask about the qualifications of the people who developed the curriculum – ask how well they did in school. Ask about their credentials and their commitment to their own continued learning.  Do they have one year of experience repeated thirty times, or do they have increasing levels of curriculum development experience and a strong track record of success?

The reason Cheetah Learning is the continuing gold standard in Project Management education is because the Chief Cheetah, who leads the course development team, was top of the class in a challenging major at a competitive university. Cheetah’s continue to take continuing education, and keep their saw sharp by learning new ways of teaching and connecting with their students. And not because anyone makes them do so. They pursue learning and excellence for its own reward. Every trainer who teaches for Cheetah Learning passes a rigorous certification process to make sure they deliver the programs in the way that Cheetah students can achieve fantastic results at Cheetah speed.

It’s a commitment to excellence at every level of the business that insures when you register to take a Cheetah Learning course, you will achieve amazing results, at Cheetah speed.  It’s why we confidently offer a 100% learning guarantee on every single one of our courses – it’s pretty simple really.  If after completing the course, you did not achieve what you set out to achieve, we refund your money.  This is what quality means to us – that you achieve quality results.

Michelle LaBrosse, CCPM, PMP, PMI-ACP, RYT

We can create the culture in which we choose to swim in – create wisely.

Culture by it’s very nature is the long standing norms of behavior that guide people’s interactions. I define cutural bias as the cultural attributes we prefer.  A couple days ago, I wrote a blog post on my guiding values – the leader of an organization sets the tone and tenor of the culture of their organization. If the leader feels it’s okay to objectify others, satisfy their impulsive base needs at their whim with those they find attractive, then this is going to become the prevailing culture – as abhorent as this sounds.  If this is not the cultural bias you prefer, there are ways to change it.

In the US supposedly we get to “choose” our leaders. We can argue if this is in fact true, because more often than not it seems whoever can create the largest war chest whatever way they can, can get themselves into a position to be elected as the leader, whether they are qualified to be the leader or not. Leaders, from my perspective, are not those who buy their way into power – but those who can attract intelligent, qualified, and capable people willing to help them implement their vision. The real leaders set the culture of the organizations they lead. Buying your way into power won’t necessarily make you the leader, especially if your style is counter to the majority’s cultural bias.

We all get to choose which cultures we wish to swim in – whether it be where we live, where we work, with whom we associate.  When you run a business, you do in fact get to choose your customers based on how you market, the values you promote about your business, how you organize it, who you hire to work in the business, the way you set up your business processes,etc.  You get to set up the culture of your entire operation.  I realized this over twenty years ago. It came from reading George Land’s book “Break Point and Beyond.”  In this he discusses the nature of “autopiotic” systems. That means systems are self-organized around a core value.

When you become conscious of your own cultural bias – that means the culture in which you would prefer to exist,  you can then start to consciously create it. Taking a page from George Land’s playbook, you start by defining your core value.  When I started Cheetah Learning in 1999, I set the core value as “your success is my success.”  It helped me define how I set up every single element of this business. To date we have attracted over 70,000 students who also live by the guiding mantra – your success is my success. It’s a very uplifting and inspiring world to inhabit – being a “Cheetah.” It is because of this core value that is at the cornerstone of everything we do. And the best thing about this – we do not attract those who feel elsewise – those who need to win at the expense of someone else losing, those who need to build themselves up by putting someone else down, those who need to bully their way into getting their way.  These types, they are just naturally not attracted to the Cheetah culture. Believe me this makes everyone happier (including those who love us).

Choose your own cultural bias wisely as it does decide your day to day existence. Every single Cheetah Learning course is designed to help you master the skills you need to become more successful, cheetah fast.  Wherever you plug into Cheetah, you will uplift your life in ways you cannot yet even imagine. Connect with one of our inspiring Career Counselors to see how you can expand your own success story (or to just share a great laugh – they are really fun on the phone) – 888-659-2013.

Michelle LaBrosse, CCPM, PMP, PMI-ACP, RYT

Being able to discern real from imaginary threats in business requires over riding your limbic brain and activating your executive functioning brain.

Whether you’re running a business or leading a project, there are times when you can be shaken to your core. The challenge is to discern the relevant threats from imagined threats.  Usually the imagination of what could go wrong is far worse than what could actually happen.

I developed a tool I call the “worry o-meter” to help me calibrate my senses on perceived threats. Being an empath, sometimes I pick up on another’s anxiety. I needed a system to be able to discern if what I was sensing required elevated action.  The worry-o-meter is pretty simple. I stop the internal chatter with ten deep breaths, a couple arm circles, toe touches and a quick run up and down the stairs. Then I assess the risk that concerns me. I evaluate the probability the risk would occur and then I look at the impact if it did occur.

I got to use this the other day. We had to terminate an employee for something fairly egregious related to a company computer and pornography. He was very angry, lashing out to everyone around him and engaging his family in his ire. One of the employees whom he was lashing out at, thought he saw his car pass by the office several times (it was dark out – it did not look like his car to me). But I felt myself getting anxious as well. While this terminated employee was angry, I did not feel that he was a threat. But  we do often see stories in the media about disgruntled terminated employees coming back to the office with automatic weapons and killing everyone in site so I could understand the anxiety. I evaluated the probability of this happening – it seemed very low – for a number of reasons – access to a weapon, level of emotional stability, location of the office and our ability to see people entering our space, and the existing security in place around the office. The impact – well of course the impact would be horrific.

Several months ago, I had a guy over repairing my refrigerator who over heard a conversation I was having with a family member about concerns for my father’s well being. After I got off the phone, he put a gentle hand on my shoulder and said – turn it over to Jesus.  After I had done the risk assessment, and realized, well the probability of this imagined threat happening was very low, and we had mitigated the chances of it happening anyhow, maybe the best course of action was to take the refrigerator repairman’s advice.

Discernment happens best with a clear head. The worry – o – meter helps with creating the space to assess what is really happening when your physiology is sending you into the fight or flight mode – and you are operating out of your limbic brain.  Learning how to make decisions with your higher level executive functioning brain rather than your limbic brain is what discernment is all about.

Moving from your limbic to executive functioning brain is also a very important skill to have when taking difficult tests – which is one of the skills Cheetah Learning students master that enables them to pass the PMP exam after only four days of prep in Cheetah’s Accelerated Exam Prep program.  You can learn more about how to do this by downloading the free Cheetah Smart Start Guide for the PMP.

Michelle LaBrosse, CCPM, PMP, PMI-ACP, RYT

Discernment comes from knowing yourself and aligning with your core values.

Living in Alaska I am lucky to observe whales as they travel north to their summer feeding grounds. They have an internal compass that guides them to the best locations to sustain their life. Reflecting on this. I created a mind map of my guiding values that calibrates my internal compass. This helps me stay on the life path that best sustains me.

This months theme is on the role of discernment in creating a high performing business. Discernment comes from knowing yourself. Taking some time to reflect on your guiding values is a recurrent theme in many of our Cheetah Learning courses – especially the one we call “The Happiness Project.”  For me, when I live in alignment with my core values, I’m more at peace and happier – the formula is that simple.  Clarifying core values and then developing the internal fortitude to live in alignment with them is the prize for Cheetah students who complete the 30 hour online Happiness Project course.

Michelle LaBrosse, CCPM, PMP, PMI-ACP, RYT

Tricks or treats – sometimes it’s hard to tell.

When people engage with you or your business do they feel tricked or treated?  You can tell almost immediately the integrity of leadership by the strategies employed to inspire your patronage and grow the business.

On the trick end of the spectrum, are you lured into engaging with captivating headlines, lengthy teasers, to be tricked into acquiring goods or services you were not even considering but that play on more base level emotions of survival?  This is a strategy of emotional hijacking – where more limbic orientied fight or flight decision making happens. Expensive ad campaigns that promise incredible results are the norm for this strategy. This approach may initially capture clients but it’s expensive and not sustainable

In the treat end of the spectrum – the strategy is to under promise and over deliver where the business is built through word of mouth referrals. When asked how people heard of Cheetah Learning, nine times out of ten, it is from a co-worker or family member.  The treat approach requires enabling clients to consistently achieve excellent outcomes because of patronizing your business – at every level of engagement with your business.  Treat oriented strategies generate sustaninable rewards and when based on processes proven over time to deliver excellent value, are the most cost effective to implement long term.

The treat strategies also attract best in class people to work in the business as well.  There are no discontinuities in life – when people leave feeling spoiled, and well cared for, the business at every level can thrive.  In the Cheetah Negotiations classes, Cheetah students learn how to negotiate in a way where every one feels they were treated well.  They learn how to spot the tactics others may use to trick them into a course of action not in everyone’s best and highest good.  Trick or treat – it’s ultimately your choice in how you wish to engage with others.

Michelle LaBrosse, CCPM, PMP, PMI-ACP, RYT

Taking action, regardless of the direction, opens you to many more possibilities then if you sit around and do nothing.

Being a life long entrepreneur, I know certain things about uncertainty. What I know is that when nothing is certain, anything is possible.  What creates the possibilities though is taking action, seeing what happens and then modifying accordingly.  I get to practice this just about every day in my entreprenurial adventures.

We’ve been creating operations at our home base in Carson City for expanding our Cheetah Micro Greens effort. Like every viable strategic initiative, we have multiple projects happening – from designing micro green growing systems of various sizes, to developing our micro green farm, to getting two vehicles ready for our promotional tour, to teaching others how to set up their own micro green systems in our Project Micro Green program.

We started our community out reach efforts yesterday – our first round of micro greens were ready for show and tell.  We have a fantastic lead generator on our team who was tasked with getting us four appointments at local restaurants.  We met some encouraging people who are very excited about what we are doing and also connected us to others who might be interested as well.  I got more insight into how to best present the micro greens and which ones to grow for our next out reach effort.  I also got some better ideas on what is going to be required for our micro green farm and how to better organize our efforts.  This led to a whole bunch of excitement today and more energy in the team.

Taking action, especially when you have no idea of the outcome, is a crucial step on the path to success for every new initiative.   One of the guys working with us to get our promotional vehicles ready for our micro green tour asked me – “Do you get nervous going out and meeting people?”  I said – “well yes, but I do it anyhow. It helps me discover what is possible with this idea.”   This isn’t just an innate talent though – while some people think I’m a natural at the meet and greet, it’s not something that came to me naturally – I had to learn how to do this and continue to practice at it.  I’m more comfortable in course development and teaching classes.  You too can learn the skills that help you become comfortable with exploring all your possibilities in Cheetah’s Project Breakthrough course.

Michelle LaBrosse, CCPM, PMP, PMI-ACP, RYT

Instead of butting head with the competition, create a strategy that makes you the winner.

I absolutely love competition as it makes me sharper, hones my attention, and helps me see new ways of delivering value.   When working on a new project, I use a technique we teach in our course Project Breakthrough to evaluate our competitive positioning.  I look at it through the lens of Michael Porter’s Competitive Strategies work to see where we can differentiate our offering.

In Porter’s work on Competitive Strategy: Techniques for Analyzing Industries and Competitors, he identifies five forces that increase people’s abilities to be competitive in a market.

Barriers to Entry – this is how hard is it for you and for others to enter into a market.

Bargaining Power of Customers – to be more competitive, it helps if you are creating a unique niche that is underserved by others. It is far harder to get into a market that is already well served by many others.

Threat of Substitutes – this is how unique is the solution to solve a particular problem.  If the problem can be solved many other ways, the solution is not as good.

Rivalry – this is how strong is the base of competitors in the market.  It is based on the number of competitors, the opportunities for growth, the stability of the industry, how easy is it for you to differentiate yourself, the ability to scale to meet demand, and the investment people have to keep making to stick around in the industry.

Strength of Suppliers – this is how much power the suppliers wield over companies who are creating services and/or products in the market.  It’s based on how many suppliers are in the market and how big of a role can you play in getting price breaks based on the volume of business you can give a supplier (which changes as the economy changes).

When I look at what we are creating with the Cheetah Micro Green program to help people easily and inexpensively grow their own food year round, the five force analysis helped us develop our strategies:

1. Barriers to Entry –  The know how to develop a small scale indoor vertical hydroponic system,  the logistics support system to coordinate multiple vendors and support product shipment nationwide,  the ability to create curriculum that enables people to quickly develop and apply the required skills to have success with growing micro greens, and an existing marketing base eager to expand their options for a healthier existence.  It’s a special mix of infrastructure and capbilities our team has that creates a significant barrier to entry.
2. Bargaining Powers of Customers –  We’ve heard from a few people that say they can just create this system on their own. To them we say “good luck.”  When you purchase the Cheetah Micro Green program, in less than a month you are fully operational and growing your own micro greens.  By going it alone, it takes people several years to get to the levels of success Cheetah students have in one month.  Plus for those doing it as a micro business, they start generating income within a month and can expand their business faster, then the person who wants to take a couple years to figure all this out on their own.
3. Threat of Substitutes – We started this in rural Alaska.  The substitute is greens that are past their shelf life before they even show up on the store shelves.  Growing things on your own, you are completely in control every step of the way – and in the case of rural Alaska, you actually have a produce that his high quality year round.  In grocery stores in more populated areas, we have seen packaged micro greens that have a very short shelf life.  Other greens from commercial farms are implicated in food borne illness breakouts throughout the year. The capability to grow your own food year round brings a sense of security, peace, fulfillment, well being, and connection that cannot be replaced by just purchasing greens shipped from far away at your local grocery store.
4. Rivalry – in food “deserts” – that is in areas where it is difficult to grow your own food year round, there are not significant rivals for home based year round food growing solutions. There are few companies with the ability to truly teach others how to become more capable with their own year round food production.  There are agricultural extension services through local colleges but they are more focused on larger scale and conventional operations done during growing seasons. Very few focus on small scale climatically controlled agriculture. Scaling to meet demand with the way we have created our systems is fairly simple (addressed in strength of the suppliers).  There are hydroponic equipment suppliers who need to invest in maintaining their inventory – but the way we design our programs, we manage it by just in time  (JIT) inventory management.  The one company that makes a high end micro green system, has to make significant investment in ordering large quantities of expensive applicances and distributing them to a far flung world wide distribution base.
5. Strength of Suppliers – we have created every element of the Cheetah Micro Green system with simple off the shelf components that are easily purchased from a wide range of suppliers.  We can and have easily substituted out parts when something we had been using is no longer available.

It literally pays to do this level of analysis BEFORE you make commitments to one specific strategy over another.  It helps you hone your competitive strategy and evolve it as market conditions evolve.

Michelle LaBrosse, CCPM, PMP, PMI-ACP, RYT

Nurturing the strategies that help achieve our vision through our mission is job one as the Chief Cheetah.

We have a bold vision with our new initiative – Cheetah Micro Greens.  This was a product line we created from our research efforts with Alaska Research Garden this summer.  Our goal with Alaska Research Garden is to research various ways to cost effectively create a year round food production system in rural Alaska.  Over the summer we pursued three different research projects – hugel culture raised beds,  geodesic dome green houses, and indoor climatically controlled agriculture.  For the indoor climatically controlled agriculture, we tested out if we could efficiently and cost effectively grow micro greens in a grow tent (originally designed for the marijuana industry).  Our goal was to create a simple, and inexpensive system easy enough to set up and run by a middle school science class.  There is a similar sized system by a company called Urban Cultivator, that requires a plumber and an electrican to install and is over $10,000 US.  While the system is beautiful, we felt this was outside the price range and installation complexity for most people – especially in rural Alaska where it is difficult to retain skilled tradesmen for the installation (and possible repair as there are complex electronic controls in the Urban Cultivator system).

We tested installing our efficient grow tent throughout the community in our small rural town in Alaska.  We wanted to verify other people could generate good results with this inexpensive approach as well.  Buoyed by the success the school, local grocery store, and two small farms had in Alaska with our system, we decided to head south and expand it into the lower 48 through our headline brand “Cheetah Learning.” We call our system Cheetah Micro Greens – since our  climatically controlled system does in fact grow the micro greens faster than the conventional ways of growing them outdoors and in green houses.  (We do not know how quickly we could grow micro greens in the Urban Cultivator but the grow times they provide for their seeds are about twice as long as what we see in our system for similar seeds).

The vision for “Cheeth Micro Greens“is pretty simple: With the right training and systems, most people can efficiently and cost effectively grow their own food year round. Our mission is to: Create inexpensive, easy to set up, operate and maintain systems that enable people to grow micro greens year round (cheetah fast) and provide training for ways to use, share and/or sell the micro greens in their communities.  Strategies are the way we achieve our vision through our mission.  Our strategies are defined through the lens of a strategy map process I learned in the Harvard Business School’s Owner President Managed (OPM) program (I graduated HBS OPM 35).  The strategy map shows how we integrate the team, with our internal processes, our customers, and our core growth strategy.  The three core elements of our strategy are:

1. to use research based methodologies with accelerated learning to grow ours and others capabilities to mastery.
2. to create inexpensive systems that are easy to use and generate great results, fast.
3. to interact with others using our best friend service model.

Back in full blown business development mode here as this initiatve takes off, I find myself nurturing the various elements of these strategies, as we develop the team that is bringing this vision to life through our mission. We now have a team of  14 helping to launch this new product line.  I’m using Cheetah Learning’s well proven strategies to build these new capabilities and sharing them with others through the Project Micro Green class.

High performing businesses create a culture of respect with a zero tolerance approach to harassment of any type.

Muchelle LaBrosse, CCPM, PMP, PMI-ACP,  RYT

High performing businesses create a culture of respect. The leader of every organization sets the tone for the level of respect in the organization by how they handle challenging issues – such as sexual harassment.

I move quickly on any allegations of sexual harassment in my own business (and yes there have been several). On my first job as one of the first morning newspaper girls in my town I got introduced to sexual harassment in the work place (I was 15). It took six months for people to believe me that one of my customers was flashing me every Saturday morning. A neighbor finally got a picture of him. He was arrested and pleaded guilty. But it took six months for this to happen and I was labeled a liar and a trouble maker even up to the time he was arrested. Dismissing an allegation of harassment harms everyone and creates a toxic work environment.

There are extensive laws employers must follow relating to sexual harassment in the work place. But even without these laws – every person deserves to feel safe (and respected) in your business, or on your project.

Here is how to create a safe and respectful environment for everyone:

1. Listen to complaints and investigate discreetly, immediately. Never dismiss a complaint of harassment.
2. When someone is sharing their experience, acknowledge it happened just as they shared. Protect their anonymity while you discreetly investigate.
3. Remove the accused immediately from the situation while you investigate. Take these complaints seriously.
4. Require every person in the organization to take a class on what is sexual harassment and how to prevent it –  for even just one allegation.  (it’s actually the law).  Let it be known under no circumstances do you allow this type of behavior in your organization – think zero tolerance here.
5. Involve your legal counsel immediately to protect everyone – the victim, the alleged perpetrator, and the business.

I got introduced to the difference between appropriate and inappropriate behavior very early in my professional careee in Air Force officer training   The rule of thumb is how would it look if this appeared as a news headline?  If it would bring shame on you or the organization you were serving – don’t do it.

Being an effective leader means bringing out the best of everyone – this can only happen in an environment with mutual respect as it’s foundation.