Cindy Allen Stuckey is the founder of Making Performance Matter. She works with small to medium sized businesses in order to grow their business and reach goals that they never ever thought possible.
In the past, both as a teacher and in the corporate business world, helping people reach their true potential was her passion. She realized early on, the only true advantage one particular business has over another is their people. She helps businesses highlight that advantage to gain a competitive edge.
Cindy spent ten years in elementary education after graduation from college, teaching kindergarten and first grade. When her son was born, she resigned from teaching and found a job with a sales firm and she soon found a whole business world that she knew nothing about.
She was able to combine her teaching skills inside the business world to break down training programs to track various behavioral changes and learned skills. She did this in a manufacturing plant to improve production.
Her background includes working in HR, organizational development and training mostly, in three global manufacturing organizations, Cummins Inc., Keihin IPT Manufacturing, and Knauf Insulation USA. Throughout her corporate career, she was able to bring all of her educational and training expertise to help the business grow and the people to enhance their work skills.
The corporate world began to lose it allure and she decided that her skill set was also needed by small to medium sized businesses. Five years ago she resigned from Knauf and struck out on her own. Making Performance Matter was the result.
Stuckey has seen her company grow and evolve over the years.
When she first started out she was providing a broad range of human resource solutions for her clients, especially training and development. She found that many small to mid-sized companies did not have proper training practices in place and due to legal issues involved, also needed help establishing policies and procedures.
Making Performance Matter started in that area of HR and over time has also added business coaching for even smaller businesses and individual entrepreneurs. She said:
“As I evolved and Making Performance Matter evolved, I started realizing that at times I was serving as a business coach. As I built trust and rapport within the organizations I was working with, then other things started coming to light that happened to be going on there. I was able to serve as a coach/consultant and I loved that piece. If you think about it, it still is all about helping people see their potential. “
This is what Stuckey enjoys most about her current career path. Helping small business owners realize the correct answers and path to solve problems and then putting the processes in place to improve the business. It isn’t much different from when she worked with those first graders and got to see their eyes light up and come to the realization, oh my gosh, I really can do this!
Cindy has a vision for Making Performance Matter which involves empowering businesses to manage their business plan. Being able to strategize, set goals and then execute them to move the business forward. Many small businesses may only include a handful of employees, but everyone has to be on board with established goals and they have to be managed daily. If the employees are not in line with the overall goal, then they will fail.
She can help train, inform, and manage the business plan from conception to implementation. She also specializes in Leadership Training and enjoys providing workshops or keynotes for groups of people from a single company to individuals from a Chamber, other group or organization.
One of the key pieces of advice that Cindy gives to all of her clients is,
”You Can’t Do it All and Do It Well.”
You need a team of experts. Most solo entrepreneurs, however, don’t have the resources to hire outside help and try to do too much on their own. She admits that she has been guilty of this mistake, but learned it is much more expensive to try to do too much yourself than bite the bullet and hire outsiders to do some of the more mundane parts of the job.
Business owners that do that miss opportunities because they don’t have enough time left over to focus on sales or networking. This results in a huge cost for a small business.
Cindy works diligently with her clients to put a value on what they are actually doing versus what they are missing and what they should be doing in their business.
She feels the best value she brings to her small business clients is the ability to identify and assess the various pieces of the business and make them fit into the whole. To quantify what each segment is worth versus the cost and what other opportunities are being missed. That is the strategic advantage she brings to the table for her clients.
3 Traits of People Who Soar to Success
When asked to name the three traits that she identifies with successful business people, she first mentioned a Passion for what they are doing. They have to be so passionate about what they are doing that they eat sleep and breathe the job. It becomes part of their life.
Second, they need to be Coachable. They must be open to considering alternate ideas and methods. It is very easy for business people to come up with a new idea, but they may need to run it by an advisory board before implementing it or accept some change to make it work properly. They need to be able to really listen and accept the coaching or advice.
Third, every entrepreneur needs to separate his/her Passion for their business from the managerial or practical side. They need to be able to take the emotion out of business decisions. Again this is an area where an outside consultant or adviser can help and take the un-emotional side of the argument to make sound business decisions.
These last two involve surrounding yourself with trusted and valuable advisers. It comes back to my original comment,
“You Can’t Do It All and Do It Well.”
Cindy is very excited about the next phase of Making Performance Matter, which involves a processing tool to help companies develop a business plan and then execute it. She is also creating a virtual training program, which will involve a Facebook group for coaching and accountability for business owners and entrepreneurs.
Cindy is very happy outside of work. She now has more flexibility and can spend quality time with her husband and great niece and twin great nephews. She has identified the important pieces in her life, as well, and can still keep her business running smoothly.
If you would like to contact Cindy for more information about her business or have her speak at your next meeting, visit her website: MakingPerformanceMatter.com.
Her office phone is: 862-269-8676 or find her at various networking events around the Indianapolis area.
