35: Maria Page on How to Get Clear on Who’s Responsible for What

Speaker1: [00:00:00] Hello, my time to level up, listeners, welcome back. So today I am talking to Maria Page. Maria is a mom, a wife. She's also part of the leadership team of a local law firm and the law firm, they are doing well. They are serving their clients. They are profitable. They're having fun along the way. But they knew that they could be even better, better as an organization and better as individuals. So we started working together eight months or so and they have seen tremendous growth all around. We're going to talk about today how that has happened and what that growth has meant for them as individuals and as an organization. So sit back, buckle up and listen in to my conversation with Maria Page.

Speaker2: [00:00:59] You are listening to the Time to level up podcast, I'm your host business life coach, Andrea Libros. I helped women in business commit to their own growth personally and professionally. Each week I'll bring you strategies to help you think clearly, gain confidence, make your time productive, turn every obstacle into an opportunity, and finally overcome the overwhelmed so that you can make money and manage life. Let's create a plan so you have a profitable business, successful career, and best of all, live with unapologetic ambition. Are you ready to drop the drama and figure out the how in order to reach your goals? You're in the right place. It's time to level up.

[00:01:48] Let's do this.

Speaker1: [00:01:55] Hey, time to level up, listeners. Welcome back. This week, I have Maria Paige with me, and she and I have known each other for a while. We started working together probably eight months ago. But interestingly, I was a guest on her podcast once, so the tables have turned. She knows what it's like now to be on the other side. She's waiting to talk right now. But I think her journey over the past eight or so months, both just as an individual and as a member of a team, because I've been working with the whole team, too, can give us some perspective on how you really can create the role you want to be in, No. One, to how an organization can really create what I call kind of a run way to freedom in the sense that everybody knows what they're doing and can depend on each other and get that freedom to do what they do best. And then also how kind of coaching has infiltrated her personal life, too, even though it really was approached from a professional standpoint at first. OK, enough of my talking, Maria, tell us, who are you? Introduce yourself.

Speaker3: [00:03:19] Well, I definitely like being on the other end of the podcast or the interview, but a little bit about myself. So like Andrea said, I've known Andrea for a couple of years now. When we first met, I was managing this really small consulting business for the boss that I have right now or the manager of Applegate and an elder law. So I was working for her for three years, I think, in that consulting firm. And it was a lot of wearing, a lot of different hats, trying to find new business, trying to nurture that perspective business and building events, managing the behind the scenes in the day to day finances and budget and all that kind of stuff. So very early on, I learned that I like to do a lot of different things, but majority of the revenue for that business came from events which with covid got shut down. And so having worked with Lisa for a while, I've known her for over a decade. She brought me into her law firm and at that time there wasn't really an open role for me. So she kind of just stuck me in the marketing area because she knows that I had some experience there. And when I do, then I learned a lot about kind of what they'd been doing, which was very reactionary.

Speaker3: [00:04:39] It was a lot of, well, this this department needs more leads or more new clients. Let's put all of our efforts there. I kind of found a passion for that and started digging in and asked Lisa at the time if I could create this sort of marketing analyst role. And I did that for about six months. But in our review meeting one day, she was kind of asking what I saw for myself in the firm and the things that I were talking about that I was saying to her were very growth oriented. There was some of the marketing sales pitches. There was some of the strategy, some of the systems and processes which being in a law firm, you have those systems and processes that each individual practice area may follow to provide work for their clients. But there were some lacking, lacking systems, that's for sure, especially top down because the manager of the firm is also a full time attorney at the time to really create this. So it kind of transformed into this conversation around having a director of growth or having somebody who's in charge of both internal and external growth or growth externally. And how do you put the systems in place internally to support it?

Speaker1: [00:05:55] So I think when I met you, you were still in that consulting role. Right. And that's when we did our podcast together. And then when I came on the scene, something I noticed, which we kind of spoke to, is that things are very siloed. There were systems and processes in place for different practice areas, but there really weren't there weren't firm wide systems and processes. And then the other thing to speak to that point about your reactionary now, I think law in general tends to be both reactionary and planning. There's a part of it that has to quickly react. And then there's a part that's like a long, drawn out process I got when I came in. You guys were definitely in the mode of, OK, we have to get our act together. We had only so much energy and time, right?

Speaker3: [00:06:48] Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the business is doing well and for the most part, things are functioning. Great for finding new business and and reaching goals that we have set for the year and for a few years out, but you get caught in the weeds where they start to seem really long. And rather than feeling like you're moving forward and making progress, feels like you're always one step forward, two steps back.

Speaker1: [00:07:16] Right. So I guess to Lisa's credit and to all of your credit, you saw growth potential in individuals and as a whole organization. Right. Like both. Right. So and again, like nothing. What you are bringing great business, plenty of clients. None of that was broken. It just was you weren't growing at the rate or that you weren't living up to your capabilities. Yeah. So we started working together and I, I think I still remember that first meeting where I introduced the concept of an entrepreneurial operating system and everybody's eyes fell out of their head and thought, oh my gosh, this is going to be so much work. And how do we even start this?

Speaker3: [00:08:05] Is that fair? Yes, yeah, that's fair.

Speaker1: [00:08:09] So they were all you guys were all very willing, but it seemed like a lot.

Speaker3: [00:08:17] Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think from my standpoint, it was exciting that sort of the leader of the business was wanting to take a chance at investing the time and energy and her leadership team to not only help them become better in their own roles, but to put real, tangible systems in place, to put a real vision in place for what the future of the firm looks like, so that everyone was kind of working towards a unified goal. It was it was encouraging and exciting, but definitely daunting. Yeah. Seeing the time and the things that we would have to do and knowing we had a pretty fair warning for me of the the difficult conversations we'd have to have and it being uncomfortable. Yeah. So daunting, but also exciting.

Speaker1: [00:09:07] It was. And I think any organization that I've gone through that process with, everybody's excited in the beginning. Then your eyes kind of out of your head. Oh my gosh, what are we getting ourselves into? It gets going. It gets hard. But in the end it's extremely rewarding, I think. What do you like? So tell me, what do you think from a personal level or from you as an individual, but also as a firm? What have you seen now that we're kind of on the other end?

Speaker3: [00:09:34] So the world now that we're on the other end, some of the things that we've really worked hard on in the last six months are in place, and now we're kind of seeing the impact that it makes on a daily basis, like, for example, these accountability pieces where we kind of struggled at first. We didn't have defined job descriptions or roles just because the size of business has a lot of people wearing a lot of hats, a lot of duplication of efforts and work which led to who's accountable for what. Also, there was there's conflict on. OK, well, if it was your responsibility, was it not done? So it was causing unnecessary conversations and repetition. Seeing those job descriptions of that was some of the work that we did be laid out very firmly, things that really the director of finance shouldn't be handling, but it should be somebody who is in charge of operations, having to remove a lot of their responsibility and give it to somebody that's a little more fitting. And it was hard to let go of pieces. It was intimidating to think about the new responsibilities that you may have in your new role in in my role in particular, didn't exist prior to this conversation on how you should be doing what who's in the right seat? How do we divvy up the work to where it makes sense and there's not duplication. My role didn't exist and it was a kind of a combination of a lot of what Lisa was doing, didn't have time to do. A lot of it was just sort of created from scratch in charge of these processes and systems.

Speaker1: [00:11:13] You are doing a lot of like what no one else had time to do. Yeah, right. When we really looked at it,

Speaker3: [00:11:21] It was a lot of well, babysitting and doing. Yeah. Babysitting and doing things that Lisa didn't have the time to do or another attorney didn't have the time to do. So it was handed off.

Speaker1: [00:11:34] So OK, so when I think about this I just scribbling down a few things. Something I've seen is you guys have gotten really good at getting to the root of the problem. Yeah. Getting to the root of the problem and not. Skirting the issues which goes into having difficult conversations.

Speaker3: [00:11:56] Yeah, I think that's for me coming out on the other end of the last six months. The the one thing that I've learned the most is that radical candor, having hard conversations, especially being in a firm where the age range is so drastically different between some of the leadership team that we have people with a lot of lot more experience than you. But you have to be in a position or have to have that difficult conversation and tell them that they're wrong or they need to do things differently or just acknowledging that there's an issue at all. That was a conversation that nobody wanted to have and nobody wanted to say it out loud. But it made it.

Speaker1: [00:12:36] It did. And I think something else that I've noticed is and this is, again, something that lots of businesses say we want to maintain that family feel we want it. We want it to be friendly and family oriented and. Right. So those kinds of words come up a lot in lots of businesses. And I think. What they're really avoiding in saying that is they don't want to have these difficult conversations, right. But I mean, I guess you're better than I am now that you are having difficult conversations. Does it feel any less family oriented or like.

Speaker3: [00:13:11] Right. Mean if anything, it feels the opposite. It feels there's a higher level of trust because people are saying what they're thinking. And rather than avoiding that hard conversation or sugarcoating or telling somebody else about the problem to see if there was a different way to come about it, it was just honesty and things got accomplished a lot faster. And yes, we move quicker because you're just saying exactly what the the issue is.

Speaker1: [00:13:39] So I think if anything, it's I've only seen it contribute to the cohesiveness of the team. So if we call, like, family friendly, family oriented, if that has something to do with bonding, I think this only makes it stronger. Right. And, you know,

Speaker3: [00:13:54] When we when we hop on our leadership team every week, there's no tension.

Speaker1: [00:13:59] There's no everything's

Speaker3: [00:14:01] Out on the table. And it definitely takes time to get to that point where you can have the hard conversation and let it have it and it's done and you move on.

Speaker1: [00:14:13] So, I mean, that's like that's like a handful of months. I mean, that was kind of working through that. But speaking of meetings. I would say one of these benefits is that your meetings are way more productive and efficient and you are not wasting time rehashing the meetings aren't really like a rundown of anymore, right?

Speaker3: [00:14:35] True. Yeah, true. Across the firm, we really put in place the same agenda for every type of meeting or very close, and it keeps everybody on track, keeps things moving. And at the beginning of all of this, I remember thinking, oh my God, there's never going to be a time where I'm not in a meeting. How am I supposed to get any of my work done? I feel I

Speaker1: [00:14:57] Remember you and I having this conversation. You totally felt that way.

Speaker3: [00:15:01] Yeah, I like my whole calenders meetings. How am I ever supposed to actually do anything? They just felt like just a big giant waste of suck of time, having that having those more productive meetings and agendas, putting canceling meetings that didn't really need to be there in the first place, or making sure the right people were in the right meetings and getting rid of unnecessary people. Yeah, it's it's definitely helped.

Speaker1: [00:15:25] So part of that, too, was everybody being really clear on what their role was. Right. Which again, there had to be some difficult conversations around that, like who's doing this? Who should be the right person in the right seat is just the phrase that keeps coming up. But that is all part of this process of establishing an entrepreneurial operating system, getting the right people in the right seats and to be accountable for what they're supposed to be accountable for. So, again, hard process, but worth it in the end, I think.

Speaker3: [00:15:56] Yeah, no, absolutely. And we have we've implemented firm wide at an accountability system just through the meetings and through kind of systems that we already had in place, like do our software and things where it's easy, it's easy to stay on task. You know what your day looks like, your week looks like you know, what your month looks like. What are your quarterly projects? What are your yearly goals? Everything is still broken down and and more myopic that. We're accomplishing things a lot faster. We're staying on track. We're afraid to come to a meeting and say something isn't done. Which is why

Speaker1: [00:16:33] You never say that.

Speaker3: [00:16:35] I know. So things that would have taken a year are now taking a couple of months

Speaker1: [00:16:40] We went through. OK, so we recently went through their Q two goals because it's recording us at the end of June. And I think you what was it like eight out of ten you had nailed. Yeah. And that's, that's good because. I think he probably would have thought maybe before it would be two out of 10

Speaker3: [00:16:59] Right now and we're looking at what quarter three is and it's launching new practice areas. It's things that are really big tasks that may have been we talked about for years

Speaker1: [00:17:10] That we want less than three months and there's some hiring going on. And I think having part again, the system is knowing what your core, the organization's core values and focus are and then hiring so that it aligns with those core values and careful focus. It makes hiring a lot easier, doesn't it?

Speaker3: [00:17:29] Yeah, it does seem that any person is going to come on and have soapies an account in and things that are already built out for them because that's been a part of this whole process. Yeah. So they'll step into that role and have a real role. It's not going to be thinkorswim. Figure it out as you go. There's things that will be laid out for them and a structure in place.

Speaker1: [00:17:50] So they're kind of already have a jump start when they when they actually come on board, which is amazing. So, OK, so this whole process, it's created definitely made things more efficient and productive time that you can now use your time and in a way, better way. Right. Meetings, there's no death by meeting, just meetings, meetings to accomplish things. And I think gradually, Lisa, we're going to speak for Lisa, although she's not on this, but although she's still the chief. Right. You guys are not going to her for every decision. People are taking agency over their own decision making, which is, I think for her, one of the biggest things that she was looking for so that she can actually do the work that she wants to do right now. I do that or maybe even take a vacation.

Speaker3: [00:18:39] Imagine that that vacation will kind of vacation, I guess, next week. So it's a trip, right? Yeah. And she asked me today, are you feeling nervous that we're going to be out? I think everyone's fine.

Speaker1: [00:18:52] Everybody's fine. Right. So that's new because before you would have that, oh, my gosh, everything's going to fall apart. So so speaking of everything falling apart, tell me or just tell everybody in you words like what? How has this impacted home at all? How was this new thinking kind of impacted on

Speaker3: [00:19:09] In a couple of different ways. So I don't know if I can say a few words,

Speaker1: [00:19:13] Say it, say it in a lot of words.

Speaker3: [00:19:15] So I'm also I'm a mom of a toddler. I am pregnant with my second. And both my husband and I are obviously full time working parents. And it's been a lot of. Harder conversations that we've just had up front, so those that confronting issues in the office has also translated to confronting issues at home, just saying what I mean and meaning what I say and also having a little bit more structured it to. How our schedule is saying no when I want to say no, not feeling obligated to things that are serving me or him or our daughter and putting priorities in place, I just feel like it's it's kind of streamlined my mindset at work and also at home.

Speaker1: [00:20:04] It's good because it's when in those conversations at home, there's even more of like what you say, what you mean by what you say with the other person here and what they're making it mean. Right. So if you can get better at communicating. It really helps. All around, I remember you and I having a conversation about what you do on weekends. Yeah. You feeling like, oh my gosh, it's already Sunday night and what did we do? And feeling like the world was ruling you versus you ruling the world.

Speaker3: [00:20:38] Right? We are just saying yes to everything because you feel like you need to do it. And then you had no time to really focus on yourself or or relax

Speaker1: [00:20:48] Or what's that relaxing. What is that? Right. I remember

Speaker3: [00:20:56] My husband, so I read that this book called Radical Candor to saying something to me like, wow, you really took that radical candor book and ran with

Speaker1: [00:21:08] It. You really careful what you wish for. Right. Right. But now I think it's it's been wonderful in my own life is good. So. OK, so what this as a rapper, there's lots of I have lots of things I say. Right. So are there any phrases that stick out in your head as what sometimes people say, I hear you talking to me. You're not there. What do you what do you hear?

Speaker3: [00:21:39] I actually was talking about this with one of the other girls on our team, too. And she was like, oh, I can think of so many, but the one that sticks out to me is it doesn't have to be perfect because I feel like there are so many times where we want to think through things so much that we wanted to get it exactly right before we do anything. And we're hiring for a new position right now and we're trying to lay out all the pieces. And it's like it doesn't have to be perfect. You just need to get that person in the seat and move forward. They're not going to know what what to do or what they need, but you'll figure it out. And I think that has that's something that I personally struggle with this, wanting it to be exactly the right way. And sometimes you just need to move on it.

Speaker1: [00:22:23] You do. And I think in a law firm, I've noticed because I've worked with a bunch of professional services organizations, especially in law firms I like, we're not going to trial. You have more than one chance to get this right. Right. This does not have to be perfect. I think that was a huge learning curve in the very beginning when we started putting the system in place. Like you guys, we get stuck on whatever. And I would just say, OK, let's keep going, but we'll go back to it. We will. Wasn't perfect. That's OK. That's OK. Let's try it out. And we've seen that now and having gone through a quarter with this in place. But yeah, we had to we've had to make adjustments because not everything did kind of pan out as we originally thought. And that's OK. Right. Right. It's OK. And you wouldn't have really actually known that

Speaker3: [00:23:16] The and that's OK is one of the things that Aaron said. She was like, OK, that's OK.

Speaker1: [00:23:23] It's amazing. Yeah, it's OK. Yeah, but you these lawyers, man, they don't want they want to throw all their ducks in a row,

Speaker3: [00:23:31] You know, and then if it doesn't work out exactly how you planned it to this crisis, they want to go back and redo it. All right. Rather than

Speaker1: [00:23:41] Just adjusting. Right. So I that's kind of what I call that's like low value cycle. When you put something in place, you make it run, you realize it's not great and you throw it out and you go back to zero, OK? It's like crumpling up the paper and throwing it in the trash versus. Kind of maybe crumpling it up, but then smoothing it out and seeing what pieces we want to keep and then keep going, that's really more of a high value cycle. And a lot of organizations struggle with that. They want to get everything right the first time. And that's not how this works. That's not how life works.

Speaker3: [00:24:18] Yeah. I mean, we just what we're going through that right now with a right person in a right seat. Is it really not the right seat or is it that we just need to adjust some things before we totally pick her up and put her in a different place? Yeah.

Speaker1: [00:24:30] Yeah. Well, it has been super fun to work with you as well as all of the Adell. That is their acronym, Dave and Dilman Elder, and took me a little bit because when they first set a deadline like a singer and it's just about and there's a lot of women in your audience,

Speaker3: [00:24:51] All women except one. So.

Speaker1: [00:24:53] Yeah, right. Right. It's really been a pleasure to watch everybody evolve. All of everybody, the whole thing as a group and as individuals. I've loved it. So thank you.

Speaker3: [00:25:03] Yeah. Thank you. Thank you for everything you've done for us in the last six months, seven months. I don't know how many months and

Speaker1: [00:25:10] I know a bunch of months.

Speaker3: [00:25:11] Yeah, it's changed everything.

Speaker1: [00:25:13] I think that's what I aim to do. Aim to do. All right. So as you listeners are listening, if you feel like and it really doesn't matter the size of your organization, I mean, you guys aren't huge. There's 20 a little bit less than 20 people in their organization. And there can be five to if you feel like you need kind of a fresh look at your business and you want to have a little more freedom to focus in on what you want to focus and you want to have the confidence that you can go on vacation. You also want to have the confidence to have the hard conversations, even if you want to maintain that family, feel it can happen. It can happen. So let me know if I can help you. So thank you, Maria, for being here.

Speaker3: [00:26:03] Yes. Thank you for having me.

Speaker1: [00:26:04] I appreciate you. OK, until next week, remember that there's always time to improve and it's always a good time to level up. So I hope you had fun listening to Maria explain the transformation and the changes that she felt as a member of the leadership team, as a mom and a spouse. And what she's observed has changed within her organization. I think we all can relate in some way. Imagine if your meetings were more efficient. Imagine if everybody knew exactly what they were responsible for imagining doing all of your hiring based on an agreed upon set of values and focus. And what if you could get to the root of the problem versus trying to put bandaids on things that maybe weren't causing the problem? So if I can help you and your organization do what Applegate and Dilman has done over the past six months or so, let me know. I'm always available for a conversation. And if you have never taken part in one of my five days of clear and clean thinking challenges, make sure you head over to the website and register for the next go round, which will be sometime in August of twenty twenty one. It is a free challenge that helps you get clear on how you can make the best use of your day. All right. Have a great week. I will talk to you soon.

Speaker2: [00:27:53] Thanks for tuning in to today's show, if you're ready to commit to personal and professional growth, move forward, make money and manage life. Head to Andrea Libros Dotcom. That's a and a l i e b r o. S s dotcom to find out about the ways we can work together until next time, go level on.