Granted, reference is made to “young adults” and being in one’s “prime,” but then our vocabulary falters at “middle age.” Even fewer terms exist to differentiate any age after 65. Unfortunately, the word “senior” has become synonymous with being frail, vulnerable, declining mental capacity and limited ability to learn.
Read Helen’s full article in the Toronto Star.
muniSERV’s professional members know that as part of their membership, we advertise their webinars directly to our municipal members. We know it’s hard to get past municipal gate-keepers so what better way is there to increase your visibility and credibility with municipal decision-makers, than with a webinar?
And our municipal members love webinars – particularly the free Lunch & Learn type webinars. We know this because our open and click-through rates for our newsletters are consistently higher than the industry average rates.
To be successful though your webinar must be educational and address a topic of interest to municipalities. Municipalities won’t register for your webinar if they think it’s just about “selling” your product or service.
“At Emergenetics we are always looking for strong, credible partners as we build our international brand in Canada and I have loved partnering with muniSERV and muniJOBS.
I am continuously impressed by the outreach opportunities we receive with our muniSERV membership, the response we receive to our webinars and the quality of the audience it attracts.”
Gail Green, President – Emergenetics Ontario April 2019
If you sell risk management software, provide some educational – or even scary statistics and inform municipalities on ways to mitigate online losses.
If you sell HR services, speak to the importance of performance reviews and what led you to develop your solution. You can even provide a sneak peek of your solution with a quick demo – but again, it must be delivered as a solution to the problem you are educating them on and not just a sales pitch for your services.
Here’s where I feel a bit hypocritical though. I know the value and the power of providing webinars (that’s why we encourage our members to do so), but I confess, that while I have co-sponsored some webinars, I have never actually set one up myself. (because shamelessly – I don’t know how to do it!)
So, in order for me to help you I had to help myself by learning how to conduct a webinar. Here are some tricks and tools I learned along the way.
Your webinar can be as basic as creating PowerPoint slides and delivering a webinar by using remote conferencing services that use cloud computing, such as Zoom or JoinMe.
I use Zoom to share my screen and provide online demos of muniJOBS. While I pay the annual fee for Zoom, you can use many of their features for free. However, their specific webinar service comes at an additional cost.
If you want folks to register for your webinar (and you will so you can gather leads), you will need a way to handle the registrations even if registration is free. There are many registration tools available, but one I’m familiar with is Eventbrite.
To create and deliver webinars you may want to consider using specific webinar software. Here’s an article by Joe Warnimont for codeinwp, that summarizes and compares the Best Webinar software of 2019.
Once you’re ready to start creating your webinar content, these Six Tips for Success are a great guideline to follow. Don’t forget to engage your audience with a poll, some direct questions or an icebreaker to make it interactive and fun. There’s nothing worse than listening to a “talking head”, with no opportunity to provide input or ask questions!
Also, be sure you turn off any chat windows and on-screen notifications that could (and will) pop up while sharing your screen.
And finally, be prepared with extra batteries for your wireless mouse and a fully charged headset – because we’re all well aware of Murphy’s Law!
Everything I’ve been reading lately tells me that people love a good story and that story-telling is a way to position yourself as an authority in your field.
Anyone who know me well, knows I’d much rather tell a story than create marketing material. Full disclosure here – marketing is not my forte and marketing to me often feels forced and unnatural. That’s just not who I am. I want to help people, not “sell” to them!
However, I do recognize that marketing is critically important to the growth of any business. After all, people need to understand what you’re selling and how it can help them, if you want your business to succeed.
So, let’s give this a try. I thought you might be interested in knowing why I created muniSERV and why I’m so passionate about helping both municipalities and my professional members alike.
In case you didn’t already know, earlier in my career, I was a municipal Chief Administrative Officer (CAO), in small and medium-sized municipalities in Ontario.
We wanted to continually improve service delivery and operate more efficiently but with shrinking funding and legislation constantly changing, we were increasingly under pressure to find new and innovative ways to collaborate and streamline operations.
Frustration #1
It used to drive me crazy when I needed to get 3 or more quotes in compliance with my purchasing by-law, but I didn’t know where to find companies or professionals who provided the services I needed and often couldn’t find one! (I’m dating myself here, but the introduction of Pay Equity legislation comes to mind as an example).
I’d call a neighbouring municipality to see “who they used”, but every municipality’s needs are different, so a one-size consultancy doesn’t necessarily fit all. We couldn’t afford the large firms but were legislated to comply the same as larger municipalities who could afford them. There was nowhere to search for more servicing options (i.e. smaller, independent consultancies, early retirees, etc.). The result of this frustration – the development of the Find Municipal Experts & Services database.
Frustration #2
The RFP process also frustrated me (still does actually). RFP documents were time-consuming to develop, costly to advertise and opportunities for exposure were limited, with no focus on my target (posting in newspapers comes to mind). This resulted in limited and often no responses. A big waste of time and money! The result of this frustration – municipalities can post their RFPs, Bids & Tenders for free on muniSERV and our partnership with bidsandtenders gets them broader, national exposure and tracking of plan-takers capabilities, resulting in more responses and ultimately, more competitive quotes.
Frustration #3
Fortunately, in the municipalities in which I was CAO, we didn’t have too many job openings. In fact, I am pleased to note that some of the folks I placed in positions after restructuring almost 20 years ago, are actually still working in the same municipality! But, when we did need to post a job, the price was high, there were limited places to post it and the ROI was low, often with no one responding to the job ad. The result of this frustration? Working with municipalities to develop muniJOBS – Canada’s only online recruitment and career platform that brings municipalities and talented people together.
Frustration #4
I’m a big believer in coaching and mentoring people to become tomorrow’s leaders. But, sending someone away to a course was out of the question by the time you considered; the cost of the course, the travel, the accommodations, meals, and time away from the office. The result of this frustration? muniLEARN – that provides digital training solutions for today’s environments.
There are numerous other resources, tools and strategic partnerships we’ve developed along the way and I don’t want to go through each one here. But by now you’ve guessed it – the common theme here is that every one of them was developed out of a frustration I felt in the CAO role – and I knew I was not alone!
CAOs are busy people. They don’t have a lot of time to research things and in smaller municipalities they often don’t have the staff resources to do this for them either.
It seemed to me to be a no-brainer that municipalities should be able to go to one platform and quickly and easily find what they need – all in one convenient location.
But that’s not the end of the story!
All of this led me to thinking though, well, then how does a new or smaller consultancy or someone with a new municipal product or innovation for municipalities, reach municipal clients?
When I first entered the consulting world, I’d often hear complaints from professionals, that they couldn’t get past the gatekeepers in municipalities and that attending municipal conferences was cost-prohibitive for them as a new consultancy or business just starting out.
Then, when CASL (Canadian Anti-Spam Legislation) became law, this further eroded their ability to reach municipalities because it eliminated their ability to send emails to them. (and honestly, with my CAO hat back on here for a minute, if I didn’t know who was emailing me, it went straight to my trash folder)
I realized there was a real disconnect here.
Lightbulb moment!
The result of these two merging pain points; a) municipalities not being able to find consultants and services, and, b) consultants and professionals not having one location to market effectively to municipalities, is the premise of muniSERV.ca – “Connecting Canadian Municipalities and the Businesses That Serve Them.”
So, there you have it. That’s my story.
I hope it helps you understand my passion for helping you, why I’m always working on your behalf to find new ways to do things – and why I will continue to always think outside the box!
Please feel free to reach out to me at [email protected]. I’d love to hear Your Story!
Susan Shannon is the Founder & Principal of muniSERV.ca, muniJOBS.ca & muniLEARN.ca
When I became a manager, I made the same mistake myself. It’s the most common mistake that I see many first-time managers make. It’s a mistake that causes so much anxiety and stress in their lives, and it can be avoided. It’s a mistake that’s easy to make, but not so easy to fix.
I call it “The Expert Syndrome”. Let me explain…
In my case, my expertise got me noticed and got me promoted to a management position. I was on cloud nine. I was feeling euphoric. That’s when it hit me. My staff were not as “expert” as me. As a result, I unwittingly communicated to them that I was smarter, more experienced and certainly more effective at their work than they were.
This attitude of mine caused a very interesting dynamic to occur. They would bring me their work, and their problems to solve. I later discovered there was a name for this…upwards delegation! I found my in-tray and inbox overflowing with work that was certainly not managerial. The biggest issue I faced was that I loved the challenge, I loved being the expert!
I had to find a way to let go of the need to solve all their problems. That’s when my mentor showed up. He was an experienced manager, and quite successful too. He asked me to describe my role as a manager. As I reached for the job description that HR had given me, he stopped me in my tracks. “You don’t need that” he proclaimed. “Just tell me in your own words what your role as a manager is, and make it brief!”
I was stuck. You see, I thought that the role of a manager was complex and multi-layered. Too difficult to explain in just a few words. He left me to ponder on it for a few days. When we met again, I was still struggling to come up with a clear definition of the role of a manager. My mentor was not about to let me off the hook. He knew I was struggling, but he felt the struggle was natural and would pay off in the end. He left behind a little booklet titled “Servant Leadership” and suggested I read it.
That little booklet set me off on a journey that continues to this day. At times, it’s been a somewhat crazy yet exhilarating journey. I’ve now reached a point on that journey where I can explain the role of a manager in a few words, here they are:
Your Role As A Manager Is To Help Other People Succeed
Now I know, with all the articles, books, courses, online content on management and leadership out there, that this definition may seem to be overly simplistic to many of you reading this. I understand. It’s my definition, unique to me. It works extremely well for me. It may or may not work for you. I get that.
I learned along the way that all the management and leadership competencies (and there are many!) I needed to master could be summed up in what I call The Management Trilogy:
You need to help others succeed in these three areas. When they succeed, you succeed.
To learn more about The Management Trilogy, subscribe to our free four-part online course at Management4m.com
Every successful leader I know learned to be a leader, not by attending classes on leadership, but by “being” a leader. When I look back on the successful leaders I personally know, and examine those larger than life leaders in history and business, a number of striking similarities emerge:
I call the above the 4Ms:
I know many people who are leadership development professionals. I have the utmost respect for them. Yet every one of them I know will attest to the fact that despite billions of dollars spent annually on leadership development, effective leaders are still in very short supply. And the same leadership development professionals will tell you that the demand for inspiring, transformational leaders in their organizations is huge. I believe that people in organizations are disengaged for this reason alone.
Why is this? My own take on this is that leadership is a decision, not a position. By that I mean, if you really want to be a leader you need to make a decision to go after an ambitious goal. Too many people in leadership positions, especially senior ones, avoid this because their career and pay-check are guaranteed to them regardless of what they achieve. If a CEO decides to play it safe, then that decision has a trickle-down effect in their organization where everyone in a leadership position plays it safe. I’m not advocating reckless goal setting, but I am suggesting setting the bar high to begin with.
You start your journey to becoming a great leader by getting motivated to achieve an AMBITIOUS goal, not by attending more leadership development courses. Leadership skill-building and courses are important only after you make the decision to lead by setting an AMBITIOUS goal. If you are having trouble setting a truly ambitious or big goal, here are some real-world examples (some are missions/visions, some are strategic goals):
Leadership is a decision, not a position or title. So you first have to make a decision to lead others towards a worthwhile goal. After that, by all means, attend courses on leadership that will help you develop the skills and insights necessary to lead effectively.
About the Author
Brian Ward is co-founder and CEO of Affinity Consulting and Training. Based in Edmonton, Alberta he provides leadership and management development to organizations in the private and public sectors throughout Canada.
Receive a free downloadable copy of his book Lead People…Manage Things: Master The Five Key Facets of High-Performance Leadership when you subscribe to his weekly newsletter Monday Morning Mentor.
September 5th, 2019
muniSERV and ASI Technologies Announce Exciting New Partnership
muniSERV.ca and ASI Technologies have joined forces to bring even more value to our respective customers and members to bring enhanced membership value to clients of both organizations!
Both companies offer well-known, powerful online platforms that focus on the municipal marketplace throughout Canada. This unique alliance will provide additional reach to hundreds more municipalities through our numerous partnerships with municipal associations and organizations across Canada.
By working together muniSERV and ASI Technologies are able to provide incredible savings to our professional members to boost their exposure with both joint advertising opportunities and joint memberships, including The Road Authority™ (TRA), which is delivered in partnership with the Ontario Good Roads Association (OGRA).
See the Press Release – TRA and MuniSERV announce partnership to learn more details on joint advertising and membership opportunities.
Susan Shannon, Founder & Principal, muniSERV & muniJOBS – [email protected]
Steven Desrocher, President, ASI Technologies Inc. (The Road Authority) – [email protected]
In short: leaders create risk, and managers reduce it.
LEADERSHIP ANTICIPATES THE BEST OUT OF PEOPLE, AND MANAGEMENT ANTICIPATES THE WORST. While leadership invites others to follow, management ensures the followers are following.
Leadership is the act of inviting others to a new and better future. A leader inspires and creates change by casting a vision of a destination that is different, better, and achievable.
Management is the ensuring things happen by creating, communicating, and monitoring expectations. It tracks individual people to see that they perform as expected, as opposed to inspiring a number of them.
Leadership skills can be summarized as those skills relevant to interacting with large groups of people, and to inspiring and creating vision. Conversely, management skills are those which are relevant to interacting with individual people, and to specifying and monitoring performance.
Many of the skills required to lead people are also the ones used to manage people. However, the expression of these skills can be significantly different. For instance, a leader needs to effectively communicate to be compelling and inspirational, and a manager needs to effectively communicate to be precise and personal.
Because of the skillset overlaps between management and leadership, it is quite possible that a single person assumes either of these roles.
Want to learn more about leadership? Check out EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT LEADERSHIP.
This blog first appeared on the website of Skorski Web Design, May 31, 2019 where we were quoted providing tips on why and how to blog.
More and more experts are telling us about the importance of video and about how crucial it is to connect with customers in a visual way. It IS important – we won’t dispute that. But it’s not the only way to connect with your customer and sometimes it might not even be the best way. If you’ve been wondering if there is still space for the written word when it comes to promoting your business, the answer is a resounding yes.
Here’s why:
Blogging helps position you as an expert
Someone with subject matter expertise and who blogs regularly about what they know helps to both obtain and maintain a position on Google as an expert. Add in a dash of humor and people will keep clicking on your site because they know you to be entertaining too!
Blogging is shared across multiple platforms
You’ve heard of “old school” and “new school?” Well, if you want to appeal to a wider demographic it’s best to incorporate a variety of strategies into your marketing campaign. Some folks still prefer to read content and some platforms are more reader friendly. Think about LinkedIn. People who are posting blogs regularly to a forum like LinkedIn are business and thought leaders considered to be leading experts in their field. The written word holds more value on a medium like LinkedIn. Know your audience and where (and how!) to reach them.
Blogging is offering and / or sharing information of value, for free
Want to build some customer and / or brand loyalty? Give something away for free. What you are trying to accomplish here is building your “know, like and trust” factor amongst a wider audience. It costs very little to share some of your knowledge with potential customers for free but it could cost you a whole lot more if your competitors are doing it and they’re getting all the website traffic.
Blogging leads back to your website
Writing an article or blog is a great way to actually increase your Google reach. Search engines LOVE new content so blogging regularly and linking your blogs back to your website will help drive traffic to your website too. Make sure when you’re blogging you’re finding ways to incorporate key words into the paragraphs you write in order to capitalize on search engine optimization.
Blogging must be current to be relevant
Blogging frequently keeps you top of mind and helps keep content on your website fresh. You might not always be able to update your website but writing and posting a blog, that links back to your website, is a surefire way to stay current.
Blogging also encourages reader engagement and interaction because it allows followers to comment, share and post on your social media channels. Just make sure that you are as equally committed to engaging with customers as you are to writing the blogs in the first place!
Need some tips and tools on how to get started? We asked Sheralyn Roman, of Writing Right For You, to comment. Here’s what she had to say:
• Be scheduled and consistent. Frequency isn’t as important as the consistency of your posting schedule.
• Your goal is to create an audience and encourage reader engagement.
• Offer something of value for free.
• Write from your own life experience.
• It’s not a novel! K.I.S.S. (Keep it short and simple!) About 500 – 800 words.
• Practice “spontaneous” creativity – if you don’t write regularly you might have to practice. Think of it as a muscle that needs developing and start training!
• Keep a diary – use the “Notes” app on your phone to jot down ideas you have that could later be turned into blogs.
• Write what you know – stick to your area of expertise and become known for it.
• Your first 5 blogs? – Answer the 5 W’s. Who you are, What you do, Why you do it….you get the idea……
• Stay relevant by incorporating current events into your blogs.
• Always include a call to action – it’s fine to do so…make it a part of your final sentence or a tag line at the bottom of every blog.
• Use Key Words – make sure to maximize SEO by incorporating key words from your business / website into every blog you write.
• Commit to engagement – interacting with your followers is crucial – create a two-way conversation!
The bottom line – blogging is still relevant. In fact, we would suggest blogging must absolutely form a part of your marketing platform. We design stellar websites that exceed customer expectations but if you want to keep customers coming back, your website needs to stay current and be updated frequently. A blog is just one of the ways to drive traffic back to your core website content.
Don’t have time to blog? Hire an expert to do it for you. From art scratched on a cave wall, to text recorded on papyrus, mankind has relied upon some form of “graphics” and the written word to communicate since the dawn of time. Websites and blogging are just the most current method! Words and art were important then. They still are today!
If you’re looking to reach a specific target audience look for websites that provide the opportunity to publish on their blog. For instance, muniSERV.ca helps consultants connect with municipal clients. As part of your muniSERV membership you can publish articles on the muniBLOG where they will be seen by your exact target market – the key municipal decision-makers you’re trying to reach. Not only should you blog – you should be blogging with muniSERV!
About Sheralyn Roman
A strong background in Corporate HR and a former Teacher with Sheridan College School of Business, Sheralyn Roman is now the C.E.E. (Chief Executive Editor) of Writing Right For You. A Communications Strategist for small business, she is a blogging and web content expert! Sheralyn is also a published author and writes freelance for a variety of publications.
If you’d like Sheralyn to help you with your blogging needs, learn more about Sheralyn.
or view her video.
Bad bosses can be deadly. One 15-year study found that when employees had a difficult relationship with their boss, they were 30% more likely to suffer from heart disease. Perhaps really bad bosses have lower coronary disease because their hearts are seldom used!
If you have ever said, “My boss makes me sick!” you might be right. A British study found that stress induced by a bad boss lowers immune response, and participants were more susceptible to a cold virus.
As with much in life, it’s not what happens to us, but what we do about it. A bad boss might victimize you, but you choose whether to be a victim. Strong leaders don’t wait, they initiate. If you have a bad boss, you can decide that he or she’s not unbearable and live with your situation, fire your boss by leaving, or practice upward leadership with some boss management.
Boss management or leading upward is one of the most popular topics on our website. Recently The Globe & Mail published my column on Five Ways to Deal with a Bad Boss in their Leadership Labs section. I condensed years of writing and coaching on this topic into five steps:
Click here to read the column for a brief description of each step.
A reporter once asked the Dalai Lama why he didn’t hate the Chinese Communists. Now they have some bad bosses! The Dalai Lama replied, “They have taken over Tibet, destroyed our temples, burned our sacred texts, ruined our communities, and taken away our freedom. They have taken so much. Why should I let them also take my peace of mind?”
Many studies have shown the impact that control of our situation has on our health, happiness, and effectiveness. In one experiment a white-footed deer mouse was placed in a brightly lit cage. The mouse could press a bar to alter the light. The mouse reduced the lighting to a dim level. The next morning experimenters set the lights to dim. The mouse immediately stepped up the lighting to bright. The mouse didn’t seem to care about its level of lighting. The critical issue was having control.
Another autonomy and control experiment was in a nursing home. One floor of residents were allowed to rearrange their room layout, schedule their time, and given a plant to keep and look after. Another floor or residents were told about all the good things being done for them. The staff arranged their room, scheduled their time, and gave them a plant that the nurse looked after. Eighteen months later, the residents on the floor with more control were more active and healthier than their controlled peers. Only 15 percent on the control floor died compared to 30 percent on the other floor.
Countless organizational studies show that autonomy, participation, “having some say,” and a modicum of control in the workplace are vital to employee engagement. Here are a few ways you can engage your work teams:
Resistance to change often frustrates managers. But most of us enjoy change — especially for the better. What we resist is being changed. Effective leaders “do it with” their team or organization rather than doing it to or for them.
I want to use muniSERV’s suite of tools to find services, post RFPs, find experienced CAOs, see and post events, find or sell surplus equipment, and learn about municipal innovations.
I want to reach municipalities to showcase my business to them. I'd like to find RFP's, post articles, see events, and advertise directly to municipalities.
I want municipalities to see my employment and CAO experience. I want to post my resume, see CAO job opportunities, read articles and see upcoming municipal events.
None of the above? Visit our About Us page to learn more or visit our Advertising page.
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