The Questions We Forget To Ask With Jess Dewell

by Elizabeth | Apr 8, 2021 | Podcasts

One of the overlooked aspects of communication is the questions we forget to ask. It’s important to consider a question that will get one big idea across because the more ways we say something, the more ways people can perceive and understand it differently. Today’s guest is Jess Dewell, a managing partner at Red Direction and the producer of the Bold Business Podcast. In this episode, Jess discusses with Elizabeth Bachman how to find out what the one big idea is, the role of the head-heart-gut-brain in leadership, and how you should manage up or manage down, especially when you’re not the CEO and many others. Join in the conversation and learn valuable lessons on the importance of communication in leadership. 

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The Questions We Forget To Ask With Jess Dewell

Overlooked Aspects Of Communication

My guest is Jessica Dewell of Red Direction, who has a lot to say about communication. Before we go into the interview, I’d like to invite you to see where your presentation skills rank. You could take our free four-minute assessment at SpeakForResultsQuiz.com. That’s where you can see where your presentation skills are strong and where a little support might help you get to the results and the recognition that you want.

Jessica Dewell brings years of advising and consulting where strategy and operations intersect, both practical and unexpected. Her views tune into the uniqueness of your organization. Companies working closely with Jess learned to ask the right questions and think effectively on their feet. Jess is your strategic advisor and specializes in working with companies at critical points in development who want to make the right decisions right now.

'The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.' - Eleanor Roosevelt. Click To Tweet

In addition to sitting on privately–held company boards and facilitating the CEO Infusion Mastermind, she produces the BOLD Business Podcast. We talked about many things. Some of the notes I took were, how can we talk about head brain, heart brain and gut brain? What is the one idea for your company and how to get it through? What if you need to manage up as well as managing down because you are not the CEO yet? We talked about many other things. Jessica Dewell is one of my favorite people and I’m excited to have her as a guest.

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Jess Dewell, I’m so happy to finally get you on the show, welcome.

Thank you for having me, Elizabeth. Like you, this is a long time coming and that’s okay because everything happens at the right time for the right reason. We are here together for this and I’m all in.

One of the things that are fun is that you were one of the first people I asked when I launched this show. I was looking through my list and I said, “I have a show application from Jess Dewell, but her business has evolved and my business has evolved. Let’s start over.” That’s what I’ve been working on. I’m happy to have you. Before I dive into the many questions I have for you, let me ask you about your dream interview. If you could interview somebody who’s no longer with us and in the public eye, who would it be, what would you ask them, and who should be listening?

There’s a woman who I grew up quoting, and I didn’t realize how cool she was when I was quoting her as a teenager and as a young adult. The more that I learn about her, the more that I’m like, “I wish I could interview her.” That’s Eleanor Roosevelt. She had more than ten kids. I can’t remember the exact number, but she ran a household. She was the first lady. She was much into women’s rights and moving things forward. She also believed in spending quality time with each of her children. I remember reading somewhere that she would spend an hour of dedicated time each week with each of her children.

She dedicated over 20% of her time each week to her family, even though she was doing all of this other thing. Talk about the original figure out what the dance is between work and life and how that equilibrium works, that’s who would want to read. The people who are like, “How do we figure this out? What do we need to do?” If I could guess, I would guess I would know the outcome, which is if we know what we want, we can prioritize the time to make it happen. That would be my guess of the theme of what would come out of my conversation with her.

If you think about Eleanor Roosevelt who was reviled as well as celebrated in her day and how she has become a modern-day icon and a hero to women trying to figure that out. I don’t think that when my mother was marching in women’s lib demonstrations, she was thinking about Eleanor Roosevelt. She was thinking about Gloria Steinem probably.

Questions To Ask: The more ways we say something, the more ways people can perceive what we say and take away a different understanding.

We all come from those who are closest to us in our periphery of we get to walk here because of the people who came before. That’s incredibly important. To your point about the women’s movement and who we could relate to because of the times that we’re in too.

What was the quote that you used to quote her all the time?

The one that I would get on everything I could. It was stickers and folders. I would print it out on my dot matrix printer where you had to peel the paper off. It was the one where if you go after your dreams, you’ll get it, “The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.”

Jess Dewell, I will say to our readers who are meeting you for the first time. I’ve been following Jess for quite some time now and we chat back and forth. I was on your radio show before it was a podcast. One of the reasons why I follow you is because you say many useful and interesting things. With your podcast, you do some not-so-mainstream things. You have several themes along with your podcast. Talk to us a little bit about the thinking behind that, what you were doing, and why we should listen to it.

I’ll tell you why you should listen and check in. It’s because we all hit ceilings in our life, especially when it comes to our business. What the podcast strives for is to be having conversations with people who are growing employees, growing their businesses, and making a difference by the way that they choose to lead. In doing so, that’s the best experience. Subject matter experts are awesome like you and me. We’re subject matter experts.

At the same point in time, the way we do business and being able to be vulnerable with each other so we can learn from each other is empowering, “I don’t have to do this alone.” That’s the whole purpose of the podcast. We all hit those ceilings when we’re at a place where we’re like, “What do we do next? Who do we talk to? I’ve got all these books that are rah-rah-ing me or telling me I’ve got the system. I’ve got the system, but it’s still not working. I’ve got the system, but I have to drag myself to it every single day.” Have other people had that experience? Yes. The BOLD Business Podcast will bring them to you.

The other thing that I love is that you have theme episodes where you explore a theme, and then you do quotes from the many interviews. You’ve been interviewing for many years, so you’ve got a lot of experts to pull from. As a podcast producer myself, I recognize what a lot of work that is. It’s a lot of work to go through and pull the right quote from the right people. Tell us a little bit about the thinking behind that and what kind of results you’re getting.

The thinking behind the way we’ve always done our podcast was first, it was fly on the wall. I had a conversation like this, “What can I glean from having a deep conversation that somebody else could just benefit from reading?” I still do those. I like to interview the kinds of people in different kinds of roles because the place we’re at in our career, the level we are in our company, and the priorities we have for our career and also for our lives are so different that that keeps me excited.

I was thinking about this. I’m like, “These are great conversations, but I’m getting bored of all the variety of all the people I’m talking to. What else can I do?” Scott, our technical producer, calls it more the docu-style of podcasting where I pick a theme around a podcast program, and then I find three people that would be fantastic to share their insights. We have three separate interviews and what comes out of that comes the story.

I bring in the expertise that I have from the experiences, successes and failures of my business experiences, plus highlighting and showcasing the theme that came out of three separate conversations realizing, “We are all in this together. We all do face the same thing.” I have yet to have a program. I have been unable to weave together a story because of the common elements of three different conversations that were held at different times about the same topic, so it keeps me excited.

To your point, you’re right, Elizabeth. What I enjoy about this podcast is we get to do so much with it. I have three hours of amazing interviews with people like you. You’re coming back on the podcast and this is going to be so good. What we do is as that story unfolds, there is a quote that will stand out specifically around something that somebody says and I’ll pull it out. I’ll be like, “That’s the one.” We use it visually. We use it in video and audio as well because we create a trailer for every single podcast episode.

We’ve got the trailer that’s two minutes that talks about the big theme. We have the podcast itself. We have the quotes. I even do a live stream about the topic with our guests that are on this docu-style podcast the month of because we also engage our community. We put together a survey, we ask for our community’s voice, and their experiences because it’s only through the experience of all of us that we can learn. I would love to learn from you Elizabeth instead of walking your shoes through the mistakes that you’ve made. I’ll be real about that.

Everything happens at the right time for the right reason. Click To Tweet

Jess, I wanted to ask you about some of the overlooked aspects of communications because your company, Red Direction, does CEO training, organizational training, operations training and all sorts of things. All of that in my book comes down to communication. How can we consider a question that will get the one idea across? For that matter, let’s take a step back. How do we know what the one idea is?

We have to find what the one idea is. I am big on this. The more moving parts we have in a company and the more people we’re trying to make sure understand. The easier it is to try and tailor a message. The problem with that is while it’s easy on the surface, it becomes difficult and convoluted. The more ways we say something, the more ways people can perceive what we say and take away a different understanding. Coming back to that one single idea is incredibly important and the quickest, easiest way to get there is the mission of our company because if we know what our mission is, every action we take in our work must further the mission. If it doesn’t further the mission, we must not do it. That’s the simplest thing. It’s hard to do in practice.

Often, the mission statement is something you put up on your website and you never look at it again.

Bad idea. The most successful companies do things that others don’t. They understand what that mission is and they use it for the creation of every single initiative. It is present for every single decision and every single goal that is set because it’s from that mission and furthering that, that when it’s actively used, now we know we’ve decided that these goals further our mission. How do we talk about these goals? How do we prioritize these goals? What do we need people to do around these goals so that we can measure some progress, both tangible and intangible?

What if your goal is just to make more money?

Same thing. You prioritize the actions that create the biggest impact and in that case, impact equals revenue. By the way, we all go through phases of that in our company. If somebody is reading and going, “I don’t want to be one of those companies,” you will be at one time or another. It doesn’t have to be your sole purpose all the time. We must grow because we must create an impact. We must want to keep delivering on that mission to make a difference. If we want to make a difference, sometimes it’s about finding things that get us the revenue so we can do more of the things that make the difference.

What are the questions we should ask then to get that one idea across?

Questions To Ask: If we know what our mission is, every action we take in our work must further that mission. If it doesn’t further the mission, we must not do it.

If the mission is unclear or there is confusion about it, start there. It’s easy to say and it’s easy on the surface. It takes all of these things. It takes a set of soft skills as a leader with people that have chosen to work for you, work with you, and be a vendor of yours. The way you do your work matters most. That’s the values of our company. The actions we take, if they’re out of alignment with our values, we have all kinds of other problems. We have morale problems and turnover problems. We’re not getting to our goals. We have things that don’t stick.

We have all of these problems that show up and it comes down to the way we do our work together. If we know where we’re going, that path or mission is set for us, and we know the way our values sound, the way they look, and the way that they show up. Part of that also means what do they look like when they’re missing? We know, “Something doesn’t feel right, so let’s explore what’s missing here that we can bring in and leverage what we’ve decided is important to our work.”

It brings me back to one of the things that I’m saying to my clients all the time in a presentation. My coaching is through the lens of presentation skills and how you show up is 93% of what people perceive about you. If I’m talking to a person about how they speak, how they show up, and their delivery style when they’re talking, it’s the same thing for a business. How does the business show up? Only 7% of what people perceive about you or like or dislike about you is from the words. Maybe the mission statement. How do you live by those words and apply those words?

People are like, “I do that.” You can’t unless you know yourself. This comes back down to talking about the company and how to lead a company. That company is only as strong as the core of the leaders in place. We may know the way work is done. We may know what the mission is. We may be able to live it, breathe it, and get excited about it. However, if we’re out of alignment with our own personal values, we haven’t figured out how to show up to our fullest, and bring our strengths to be able to provide certainty to people who need certainty. We’re living in the realm of uncertainty as CEOs, executive teams, and board members, everybody at that level, there’s always more uncertainty and more ambiguity. We have to be more solid in ourselves so that we can provide the certainty that others need to believe that they know we’re on the right path and to believe you that we’re together on the right path.

Investible companies do things that others don't. Click To Tweet

That’s what makes people show up. That’s what makes people excited to get out of bed in the morning. One of the objections that I find is where do I find the time to do this before it becomes a crisis?

Prioritize it. There’s a stat out there that companies spend less than one hour a month talking about and engaging with their strategy for the next 12 months, 24 months, 36 months. If we’re not engaging with our strategy and we are not looking for the things that we can actively do to course-correct along the way, we’re already behind. Crisis is imminent. We have to prioritize the time.

This, of course, is where it’s helpful to have an outside trainer who gives you the deadline. It’s like having a personal trainer at the gym. I don’t know about you, but that’s too easy for me to blow off the gym and do emails unless there’s someone I have to meet to say, “Did you do your sit-ups today?”

Accountability is everything. I will tell you whether that person is an informal board of advisors, that’s your best friend, that’s somebody like Elizabeth or me, knowing that somebody is believing in you for who you are and helping you be who you must be now. At the same time, be stretching to who you must be tomorrow to get through that next challenge, hurdle, and achieve those goals is incredibly important. I know I can’t do it by myself because to your point, Elizabeth, I would much rather stay in bed than get up and get on the elliptical and do my weights and do all that stuff. If I don’t do it first thing in the morning, I won’t do it. I have to prioritize it. I have to decide this is important to me and do it. I can easily spend an entire day a week, 1/5 of my working week, doing nothing but engaging with my strategy for what’s going on at Red Direction, “What are our objectives? Are we on course? Are we on track?” Looking at what we’re measuring and then making decisions.

The hardest thing is making the decisions of the opportunities that keep coming up, “It’s on the line, so maybe we should make it part of our mission.” If we get too distracted and we have too many things going at once, it becomes spaghetti on the wall and all we can do is hope. Whereas when we’re prioritizing that time, focusing on that strategy, and understanding what furthers our mission, then we can more easily know what aligns with that mission and what does not, what aligns with our goals now and what might align with our goals later.

Questions To Ask: Sometimes we must follow directions, and there’s nothing wrong with that. Directions are incredibly important because somebody’s been where you are now.

We want to be working on the now always with an eye on where we’re going because if we get off the path for where we’re going, what we’re working on now isn’t quite right. That is a discipline that comes with engaging in that time doing nothing but planning, dreaming, and assessing ourselves, our companies, and our opportunities all at once. It’s hard to go into the forest and look at each of the trees, come out, go up the hill, and look down at the trees. Having a dedicated period of time does help so that we have a regular cadence of this view of our forest that we’re cultivating and creating, and then we can go be in it with everybody else.

That’s why I spend a lot of money on my business coach and my other coaches to make me every two weeks, “I know I’ve got that appointment so I’d better sit down and look at what I was going to do.”

Have you gotten to the point where you schedule it at the same time before each of your meetings?

Mostly, not always. That accountability makes me say, “What did I say I was going to do? Did I do it? Where am I doing it?”

Being able to do it for yourself too on the weeks that you’re not meeting with those people. That’s the thing I learned, Elizabeth, from quarantining and at the beginning of COVID when everything shut down. Everybody’s life was upended in different ways. Our life upended and I needed to be a part-time teacher. My husband needed to be a part-time teacher only to make sure that schoolwork was happening. Our son is the age where we had to be there to help him at that beginning during that initial crisis. I call them present retreats. I gave up my CEO time. I gave up that protected time. By the time I realized it, it was dire.

I couldn’t believe how much I began to rely on that time and what that did for my own personal accountability. Helping me hold my team more accountable and being able to show up the way that I needed to in a situation. It was my anchor for the whole week, for the whole looking forward. To your point, I am not 100% good at it still. There are some days where I’m like, “A client needs something. This is the only time I have left in my calendar this week. Maybe I’ll give it to them.” That’s something that I’m working on protecting even more. I’m at that level. I’d say I’m over 90% there and I’m happy with that for where I’m at. I do want it to be more though.

I am in awe of being able to be at least 90% there. I’m working on it. I’m making progress little by little.

It’s like the sit-ups. All we can do is a little bit at a time.

We’ve talked about it, but let me go back to one of these other questions. What makes it so hard to cut through the noise in order to be heard?

We’re being pulled in every direction all the time. If our single message is disguised, unclear, or unknown and we’re working with the best with what we have and all this imperfect information, there’s too many other things and mostly habits that will pull us away from that message. To your point, until we build new neural pathways and new habits of, “I’m going to do my sit-ups every day before I have my first cup of tea,” or whatever it is. What we’re prioritizing becomes incredibly important. If we’re not prioritizing the things that will help everybody else do their job to be able to hear what the obstacles are to remove what’s in our people’s way and what’s in the way of our clients. They’re going to be like, “I might be interested in that later, but not right now. Something else has my attention right now.” That one message where we started is the answer and knowing, “Here’s what I want to say and how I want to say it.” By the way, it always takes more time than we think.

We might be able to come up with a message quickly then we have to sit with it. We have to experience it. We have to try it out a couple of ways to get that feedback. “Am I getting the response I want? If I’m not getting the response I want, I need to go back, sit with that, and work with that more.” By the way, sometimes, it is sitting. I don’t know about you, but I have the best ideas and the information that I have been collecting synthesizes when I’m out taking a walk in nature, sitting around with a cup of tea on the weekend or working on a puzzle. Always when I’m reading a book. It doesn’t matter if it’s fiction or non-fiction. We all have those times. We could lean into that and say, “Where do I get my best ideas? Where does the a-ha come from?” Put an intention of looking at it, “This is my message. I’m looking for what will make it clearer,” and then let it go for the day and see what shows up that day or a week from that day.

It’s like the idea in the shower. Often, I’ll wake up in the middle of the night and roll over and I’ll think for a little bit, and then I’ll go back to sleep and I’ll wake up and I’ll go, “I know what it’s supposed to be.” I’ll shoot off an email to the clients saying, “I figured out your acronym. Let’s go.” How can we use what we know or what we think we know to impact the outcome so it hopefully comes out the way we want it to come out?

Prioritize the actions that create the biggest impact. Click To Tweet

My first thing is going to be like, “Whatever I say, Elizabeth is going to have way more information on this particular one than I do, so I’m going to add to Elizabeth’s information and her positioning from my experience because that’s where we get to learn.” I’m going to start here. I know I’m all over the board, but it all showed up in my head and it’s fighting to get out of my face to share with you. This is the way it works. There’s this great research about head brain, heart brain, gut brain. There is an article by a man whose last name is Oka and a man whose last name is Soosalu. They wrote an article called the Neuroscience and the Three Brains of Leadership.

When I found that article, they’ve gone on to do a whole bunch of studies. They have a book and they have these great programs out there. They call it mBraining. What I appreciated about their work is that as a human, we know we get distracted and we know we want to belong. In business, when it matters most and in negotiations, when something is on the table that we’re working toward, we tend to go to our training. In negotiations and business, our training tends to be using the one brain between our ears. When we use it by itself, that’s when we feel imposter syndrome. That’s when we feel like we’re not enough. That’s when we’re worried nobody is going to follow us when it matters that they follow us. The other two brains that they talk about are the heart brain and the gut brain. Some of you are that are reading know, “I hate using my head brain in business. I only use my heart.” That’s great. They’re both necessary though. I’m a gut person so I’m like, “I’m going to go take action. I’m going to get some results.” I’ll use my brain between my ears, my head brain to balance it out and see. There’s a lot of emotion and heart along the way.

I was naturally using all of my three brains, not fully but I was like, “There’s a thing out there that they’re discovering that we can become more capable leaders and better communicators because we can synthesize information, hear information, and sense what’s missing to formulate better questions.” When we incorporate our head brain, heart brain, and gut brain, it is amazing in that. The how for me is, “If something isn’t working the way that I want, let me tap into each one of those.” If one is overused like in business, mostly it’s our head brain, we miss the opportunity, empathy and connection. If we’re only using our gut, we may be moving faster than everybody else around us. Our slow is everybody else’s fast. If that’s the case, we also have to pause because we need some heart and we need some head to sense and see because as a leader, we can be a lone wolf. Lone wolf leaders are not nearly as effective as leaders that can incorporate. The First Follower is a cool concept. Those people who choose to hitch their missions to yours, on your team, and the company that you work with.

What this makes me think of is consciously enrolling the people who lead from a different place. That’s where your personality type projects and ratings and so forth are interesting. When I first started training, I am an auditory learner. I learn best by hearing things, especially if I go somewhere and I put the audio on my phone. I used to put the cassette in my car and go driving in my car radio. When I’m walking and then listening, that’s fine. When I first learned how to be a coach instead of the opera director and the opera producer that I was, I would see my trainers with flip charts and slideshows. I thought, “These are so silly. Who needs a flip chart?” I went, “The visual learners and the kinesthetic learners who feel things.”

Once I figured that out, I thought, “I know where my strengths are so that means I have blind spots in other places.” I should enroll some helpers who will say, “You’ve hurt that person’s feelings.” I went, “I did? I was just focused on getting it done.” Consciously saying, “I may miss these cues. I want you to notice and remind me.” Have the people who will stop you and say, “Did you notice that such and such what’s happening?” I’ll go, “No, I was just focused on getting the test done.” Where does that fit in your training and the work that you do?

Practice and reflection. A lot of what we do in the consulting realm does incorporate a coaching element because we need a place to experience emotion. We need a place to be able to show up and say, “I screwed up and I’m not sure what to do about it.” In fact, I had a conversation with a client like that one time. I got a call, “Can I talk to you in a little while?” I said, “Sure.” We get on the phone a little later and what ended up happening was a situation that caused a trigger, and that trigger caused a bad reaction and that bad reaction was taken out on the people.

The conversation was, “I admitted I was wrong because I realized it at the moment. Now, I have to do a better job of making it right. Here’s what I’d like to do from my practicing. Here’s what I’d like to do from what I’m understanding I can lean into my strengths with. What do you think?” We’ve worked with that and I helped plug a few holes in the idea. They are off in a staff meeting and they are going to work on the repair, accountability with themselves, and stepping into the accountability with themselves so that they can also then turn around and expect that from their people. That’s not okay to do here.

Was that just the leader or is it also the rest of the team who might know, “If you do this one flippant thing, that’s going to trigger your boss?”

It’s both. However, in this particular case, I am working with just the owner of the company, the CEO. What has ended up happening was the people in the organization are following this CEO’s lead. By me working with this CEO to help them change their patterns, leverage and use prioritization, creativity, reflection, use some other skills that are needed for planning and assessing, they’re changing the way they show up, which slowly changes the way the people show up because it’s clearer about the fact that, “Here’s the way we work together here.”

Out of curiosity, what happens when you want to do something like this but you’re not the CEO, so you have to deal with managing up as well as managing down? Do you ever address that?

I lived it for the first half of my career. My first company was purchased. I was 1 of 4 owners that stuck around. I ended up being in a boardroom and it had an executive table with people 2.5 to 3 times my age. Sometimes, I was the only female and definitely the only one in my twenties. Even though I had the title, I did not have credibility with them for whatever reason. It doesn’t matter. There are a lot of reasons that I could go into, but that’s not the point of the story. The point of the story is you always are managing up and sometimes, you’re managing up to manage yourself.

In a role where you’re not the CEO, it’s incredibly important that you know who you are, what you bring to the table, and how you add to the mission because, in the end, all metrics come down to, are we delivering on what we say we’re going to deliver? Am I able to prove, add value and show that what I’m doing is doing that? All of that matters. We have to be more solid in ourselves and we can build our own awareness because sometimes, we have control and can add to the way work is done. Sometimes, we must follow directions and there’s nothing wrong with that.

Directions are incredibly important because somebody’s been where you are now. If you don’t get the guidance to help you move forward on your path, that’s a whole other ball game. In the role you’re in, if you know what you value and you know why you’re doing your job to help you with your path and what you want to do in this life, that’s all that matters, and then you’ll know. I know when I work with clients, I am assessing how long are we going to work closely together? How long are we going to work on more of a check-in ongoing basis at certain points? What are the triggers to move back and forth?

For a long time, I wish my twenty-year-old self knew this. I wish my twenty-year-old self had been able to say, “It’s okay to make a commitment to two years because I can learn 1 or 2 of these 3 things or whatever they are. I can have experiences, and then I can reevaluate for myself. Is there more for me to learn here or do I need to go find something else?” Two years is a great time. Six months is not enough, a year is not enough. Three years could be too much sometimes, but two years allow us to get beyond that excited phase into the daily, into a little bit of a grind. Find our own ceiling that we have to break through, that we get to practice our awareness. What do I hear myself saying? What do I hear people around me saying? What am I not saying? What are the people around me not saying? Learn how to ask those questions for every situation to be better, “To be better in this situation, I got to ask the right question and that comes with practice.”

We have to be more solid in ourselves so that we can provide the certainty that others need to believe. Click To Tweet

Jess Dewell, it has been such a delight and an honor to have you on this show. We’ve had a big conversation. Where could somebody start?

I’m going to give you four tips to be a better communicator, a four-step process that I have watched and seen work overtime. They’re high-level meaning, you get to bring your whole self and your own brains, own heart, own head, own gut, and your own intention of your one thing. The first is being committed to being intentional. The second is to define the elements that you want to make sure to get across in your work, words and interactions. The second is to describe what elements that are already in a conversation that may not be serving the conversation or holding us back. The fourth is to recognize that gap and be able to find it as quickly as possible so that you can work to that ideal of your original step one of intention. It’s a circular path that we get to follow. Every single situation can be different but we can still take those four steps with us and use that.

I love the idea of circular paths too. Jess Dewell, I’m so happy we finally made it happen. I’ve got you on the show. This has been Speakers Who Get Results. I want to remind you that if you’re curious about your presentation skills and how they are helping you in your leadership journey, you can take our free four-minute assessment at www.SpeakForResultsQuiz.com. That’s where you will see where your presentation skills are strong and where a little support could help you get the recognition and the results that you want. This has been Elizabeth Bachman. I’ll see you at the next one.

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About Jess Dewell

Jess Dewell brings over 20 years of advising and consulting where strategy and operations intersect. Both practical and unexpected, her views tune into to the uniqueness of your organization. Companies working closely with Jess learn to ask the right questions and think effectively on their feet. Jess is your Strategic Advisor, and specializes in working with companies at critical points in development who want to make the right decisions right now. In addition to sitting on privately held company boards and facilitating the CEO Infusion Mastermind, she produces the BOLD Business Podcast.