Significant Growth at linguistic Company

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2 INTRODUCTION What do 2 entrepreneurs, a staff of ten full-time employees, and over a thousand highly educated linguists around the globe have in common? They all now enjoy living and working in a ROWE Certified Organization, Choice Translating, a language services company based in Charlotte, North Carolina. Through their global network providing expert translation, interpretation and brand analysis solutions in 200 languages, Choice Translating helps organizations maximize global opportunities and reduce risk due to miscommunication. Michelle Menard, Founder and CEO, says Our clients come to us because they face language barriers. Our purpose at Choice is to give all people a voice! Our vision is a world that is smaller, more connected, and a better place to be. Michelle Menard founded Choice Translating in She and Vernon Menard, COO, have since grown the company to become a niche leader in the language services industry. With a centralized staff that communicates with a constantly increasing number of language specialists around the world, and with an international customer base, Vernon Menard says their company culture has always centered on personal accountability and self-management rather than micro-management. However, he recognized that although several aspects of the culture were operating well, there were remnants of Industrial Age beliefs still alive within the office environment for the full-time employees. In 2012 he decided that Choice should start the process of becoming ROWE Certified in order to reach the next level. I have benefited from working within the ROWE system. I got married not long after Choice Translating became ROWE Certified and have done very well with being able to adjust my schedule to accommodate new routines and new responsibilities personally. Sometimes it is very hard to get appointments and errands done after business hours (for example: DMV appointments, doctor s appointments, etc...) but within the ROWE system I have been able to change my schedule on certain days and work with my team to get some of these necessary things done. It feels good to get work done and get personal things done as well because balance is achieved. -- Accounting Specialist

3 ROWE certification: Dec Results for Improved communication, coordination and cooperation Improved morale Successful hires of A- players to the team Productivity, sales and profits are growing - 38% growth with 35% fewer people Management now focused on strategic projects and client-facing work rather than telling employees what to do. Employees manage themselves Their competition is down, while their growth is up Gross revenue in Q1, 2013 was 13.3% higher than the previous year (Q1, 2012)

4 goals Over time, Choice Translating had tried variations of flexibility programs, but Menard wanted nothing less than 100% autonomy and accountability for 100% of his employees. He knew he couldn t bring about that kind of change himself. He approached CultureRx with two main goals for wanting to become ROWE Certified. 1. To create a culture that would position Choice Translating to attract the highest quality talent, with a system in place for evaluating what kind of person would be the best fit. He knew that in order to make great hires, they needed a better way to identify who would be the perfect match for their company. Menard knew that being ROWE Certified would attract self-motivated, innovative talent to help the company grow. 2. To make the culture change really stick and ensure sustainability, he knew that his team needed a third party of experts to conduct training and validate the change. I wanted to have an objective third party, expert in the ROWE system, to work with my team and deal with concerns, objections, pushback. I didn t want them to think Here s another crazy idea from the entrepreneur. I knew an outside expert would validate the change. It really worked! At the end of the training, the team was on board. -- Vernon Menard, COO, Choice Translating

5 CHALLENGES Bringing about culture change, while necessary, is not easy for any company. The Choice Translating team faced two challenges during the ROWE Training process. 1. Mistrust The biggest challenge the team faced was getting past the fear, doubt, and mistrust that employees naturally have about large-scale change. Although some team members instinctively understood how working within the ROWE system would benefit the business and themselves personally, others were skeptical, wondering if it was just a sneaky way for the company to squeeze more work out them. 2. Defining the work The next biggest challenge was defining the work. As simple as that sounds, we at CultureRx see this challenge arise time and again with companies as they struggle to identify measurable results. Organizations have many "a-ha!" moments during the ROWE training process as they acknowledge that they haven't been as clear as they should have been about results. Case in point: It s pretty simple. Working in a ROWE Certified Organization has made my day-to-day life better. --Client Liaison To learn more about Results-Only Work Environment, visit us at

6 Rather than having people schedule time out of the office, things swung completely the other direction. People all stayed home most of the time at first, perhaps to explore how it felt. Management said nothing, wanting to see what happened. On one day there were no accounting department staff in the office to receive and deposit checks from clients. When that happened, management raised the question of what was the definition of work for the accounting staff (not the question of "Do you think you should be in the office?"). The staff realized that the current definition included getting money into the bank on the same day, which meant that somebody needed to collect the mail, process receivables and deposit checks every day. However, we took the thinking one step further. We realized that the accounts receivable system we had in place was designed around being in the office. What if we decided to change the definition of work to accommodate a virtual structure and therefore set a foundation that set us up for business continuity? As a team we agreed to keep things as is for the moment, with at least one accounting person in the office daily to receive, process and deposit receivables, but that we would explore options for setting up a lock box system with the bank, or, alternatively, to work with our largest regular clients to set up electronic payments. If 80% of our receivables come by direct deposit, and only the smaller, periodic accounts paying by check, we d still be way ahead of the game. Our team has figured out that when something goes a bit sideways within the ROWE system, it often provides us an opportunity to redefine what the work is or how it can be done. The result? We have become more efficient. The hard part is keeping an open mind and not letting the instinct to control everything and everyone take over.

7 OPPORTUNITIES Menard saw that these challenges provided opportunities for growth at Choice Translating. The opportunities manifested in two ways: an experiment and a new team unity. Experiment The executive team at Choice Translating wanted results and initial success to show to the rest of the team before committing to becoming ROWE Certified as an organization. They chose to do an experiment with one employee, Tanja, a mother of two kids. When Tanja joined the team she had asked for a limited work schedule, around 32 hours a week, because of the scheduling demands of her family. Menard had Tanja experiment with how she worked similar to ROWE principles to see how it fit her. She could work wherever, however and whenever she wanted, as long as the work got done correctly,

8 on time and on budget. She thrived under the new situation she enjoyed more time with her family and her productivity skyrocketed as she delivered much more work for the company than before. Menard knew that ROWE Certification was the right move. What became of Tanja s part-time status after the initial experiment and once Choice Translating became ROWE Certified? We were curious because we often get the question What does part-time and full-time mean in a ROWE? Menard gave this response: Good question. Everyone is now counted as full-time, including Tanja. And they are all working full-time in reality. We don t count minutes any more. Tanja is responsible for producing and delivering projects correctly, on time and on budget. Tanja and her teammates do what they need to do. Period. Team Unity With this initial success story, management approached the team with the next steps that included going through the process to become ROWE Certified.. There was some resistance from two employees. We let the rest of the team counter the resisters. We knew that if there was not enough trust on the team to overcome the naysayers, then the ROWE system would not work. The challenges drew the team together. We prepared everyone in advance for difficul-ties, explaining that these obstacles were the building blocks of better solutions. In the end, the team was united in support of the ROWE system and shortly after becoming officially ROWE Certified, two employees resigned (the resisters!). Menard says they replaced them with two stellar hires. He credits ROWE Certification with giving him the culture and understanding they needed to attract the right kind of employee.

9 Menard had this to say: We lost two people, but not in management. Two of our senior people did have to make a huge adjustment in the way they worked. Like many leaders, they are control freaks, so letting go of the control was initially very difficult for them. However, they trusted that ROWE Certification was a good idea. They found that once the team learned how to communicate, cooperate and coordinate on their own, in alignment with the company s strategic goals, they could spend their energy on productive work rather than on chasing people around. RESULTS With more than a year of being ROWE Certified under their belt, Menard credits the radical shift to the ROWE system with much of their growth in The results so far are clearly positive: Improved communication, coordination and cooperation Improved morale (especially since the underperformers quit) Successful hire of two A-players to the team Productivity, sales and profits are growing - 38% growth with 35% fewer people Management now focused on strategic projects and client-facing work rather than telling employees what to do. Employees manage themselves Their competition is down, while their growth is up

10 Justifying the Cost of Training Menard revealed that the ROWE Training from CultureRx paid for itself within three months. He points out that having two underperformers quit is worth a lot more than the cost of the training, since they didn t have to pay severance or deal with the low morale that results from a firing. The company s profit margin and growth, which he attributes in part to being ROWE Certified, have justified the cost of training and culture change consulting many times over. Ongoing Conversations Continued evaluation of the success of the ROWE system is a priority for Menard. He meets every 60 days with each employee, one-on-one, to ask about what is working well and what needs to be fixed. He adds, Positive results start to manifest very quickly [after training]." To learn more about Results-Only Work Environment, visit us at

11 In conclusion, it s all about Results. Choice Translating experienced record growth at the beginning of Gross revenue in the first quarter was 13.3% higher than the previous year (Q1, 2012). That alone is significant, but what is more important is that they accomplished those results with 35% fewer employees and, according to Menard, the work was handled much more smoothly than the previous year. Menard credits becoming ROWE Certified in December 2012 for setting the stage for dramatically increased productivity without the team members pulling their hair out. The personal benefits for employees are just as impressive. Many of Choice Translating s employees have written glowing testimonials of their experiences working within a ROWE Certified Organization. One client liaison reported Morale is higher. We feel like trusted adults. The team isn t drained every day from a long morning commute. Stress levels are lower than they would have been pre-rowe. Menard concludes, In fact, everyone is more engaged and more positive even though they are producing more. The difference is that now they control their own time and they communicate, coordinate and cooperate more effectively. Topping off the [record performance in QI, 2013], total sales for April 2013 rose 38% over the previous month, an all-time company sales record. I enjoy not chasing everyone and managing everyone s schedules all the time. I also think the team has learned a lot about why managers have to say no sometimes. They are now working together to find common ground. Before, I had to be the bad guy. - Office Manager

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