677. Expert Interview: How to Be a People Catalyst

Karla Nelson

Karla Nelson has built several businesses since her early 20s and learned that in business and in life, relationships are everything. Now, she’s put it all in a form that’s easy to learn and apply. Karla and her team have trained the Who-Do Method to 20-plus of the Fortune 100, and hundreds of mid-market companies and startups. Typically, companies cut 50 to 80 percent off cycle time and produce better results, with happier people. The Who-Do Method’s client list includes Disney, Comcast, Amazon, Coca-Cola, IBM and many other market leaders.

How to Be a People Catalyst

“There are three key relationships that are critical to being successful in business. The first is your team. The second is your clients. The third is your promoters. Those are three very different contexts of relationships. It’s critical to understand the three different key relationships and how you interact, based on what’s important to each one.”

Why Is This Important?

“The Who-Do method is based on the law of diffusion of innovations. Within each organization, there are movers, shakers, provers and makers. These describe individual core strengths. What we do with people in each of these roles is identify what each one is brilliant at doing. Typically, what often happens instead, both in Corporate America and in small businesses, is to focus on what people are not, instead of on what they are. Our method focuses on core strengths.”

What Are the Key Lessons Learned Here?

“What’s great is we need everybody! We need people with each of the four core strengths, but we just don’t need them all at the same time. In business and in life, there’s a tendency to chuck everybody into a meeting and say, ‘Good luck!’. We engage individuals in the work they can do brilliantly and within their own strengths. So, in an average day, the things that you are great at doing—the things that energize you and make you love what you do—take about 10 percent of your day. The other 90% is soul-wrenching.”