Cornelia Shipley is the founder of 3C Consulting and a sought after speaker, professional development and diversity consultant and strategic planning expert who works with clients to expand their capacity, increase their capability and drive clarity in the organization to ultimately increase the retention and advancement of mission critical talent.
As an executive development strategist, Cornelia and her team have worked with leaders at Procter and Gamble, Turner Broadcasting ,DaVita, Kaman Industrial Technologies, VMware, Deloitte, GlaxoSmithKline, Hewlett-Packard, Pfizer, Lockheed Martin, Mondelez, Blue Cross Blue Shield, Blue Care Network, Comerica Bank, Edward Jones, Ascension Health and others as a coach, strategic planning consultant and professional development facilitator.
Cornelia has more than twenty-five (25) years experience in sales, sales training and development, and human resources and is considered among the best in personal and professional development with extensive experience in the consumer goods, health care, financial services, consulting, social enterprise, education, and entertainment industries�
Cornelia has been credentialed as a Professional Certified Coach by the International Coach Federation. In addition, Cornelia is a Master Practitioner of Energy Leadership (ELI-MP) and holds the Board Certified Coach credential. Cornelia is the creator and founder of the Women’s Mastery Program, an annual development program for Women at the Director Level and above, designed to empower their career advancement and strategically plan their life and work.
Cornelia is the author of the book Design Your Life released in 2014 which spent a week as a best seller. She is currently finalizing her second book as part of her Doctoral Program in Conscious Business Ethics.
Cornelia holds a Master’s of Business Administration degree from the Cox School of Business at Southern Methodist University where she studied abroad at Melbourne Business School and was a part of the Global Leadership International study program in Hong Kong, China, Taiwan, and Japan. . She holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Communication from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor
Connect with Cornelia on LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter.
Transcript
Intro: [00:00:04] Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX Studios in Atlanta, Georgia, it’s time for GWBC Radio’s Open for Business. Now, here’s your host.
Lee Kantor: [00:00:19] Lee Kantor here. Another episode of GWBC’s Open for Business. And this is going to be a good one. Today, we have with us Cornelia Shipley with 3C Consulting. Welcome.
Cornelia Shipley: [00:00:30] Hi, Lee. How are you this morning?
Lee Kantor: [00:00:32] I am doing great. I’m so excited to learn what you’re up to. So, can you please share a little bit about what 3C Consulting is doing for folks?
Cornelia Shipley: [00:00:41] Absolutely. So, we are a firm that specializes in the retention and advancement of mission and critical talent. So, what that really means is we help organizations really think about their recruiting, hiring, development, advancement, promotion, and retention of their key talent.
Lee Kantor: [00:01:01] Now, most companies will say that their people are their most important asset. What are some clues that, maybe, they’re struggling in that area and they need some help?
Cornelia Shipley: [00:01:11] One of the quickest ways for a firm to really check on its reputation as it relates to their people and get a sense of their culture is actually delivering what they want is through a company called Glassdoor, glassdoor.com. It’s a place where employees have the ability to anonymously share what’s happening for them in their organizations. And so, we have a lot of clients that – we, actually, recently got a call from a client who had gone and check their Glassdoor results. And we’re having some problems they didn’t even know that they were having. So, it’s one of the places when we start working with clients, we check and when we find things, we tell them to check.
Lee Kantor: [00:01:54] So, a lot of times you said that this is like kind of news to them. They weren’t aware that there were issues.
Cornelia Shipley: [00:02:00] Sometimes, yeah. Sometimes their employees haven’t been as candid as they would have liked. Their culture hasn’t created an opportunity where people either feel like it’s safe to speak up. Or when they’ve spoken up, there hasn’t been effective action taken. And so, people are sharing their experiences and the results they’re getting or not getting in terms of promotion, and development, and advancement in public forums. And so, that creates real challenges when you’re trying to recruit key talent, especially millennial talent and younger, that are so computer savvy and so used to using these resources as part of their evaluation processes to whether or not they’re even going to work with you.
Lee Kantor: [00:02:46] So, now, what does an engagement look like with your firm? So, your client sees that, “Okay. I got some issues. Let me call the 3C folks. Let’s have a conversation.” What does that initial conversation look like? And then, how does an engagement typically progress?
Cornelia Shipley: [00:03:03] Yeah. There really are kind of five key times when clients will call us. The first of which is when there’s a change in the company’s strategy or senior leadership. And the reason for that is because when you have a change in management issue, that’s going to impact the retention of your people when someone’s been promoted to the director level or above for the first time, when there are challenges from a diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging perspective. Including work with their employee resource groups, development of critical populations as it relates to diversity and inclusion, whether that be the LGBTQ community, people of color, or women, et cetera.
Cornelia Shipley: [00:03:51] We’ll also get phone calls when there’s a desire to do development programming or executive coaching, typically, at the director level and above. And so, those are the most frequent times clients will call us.
Cornelia Shipley: [00:04:07] And then, what happens on our end is we, typically, start with that client, especially if they’re a new client, with some sort of discovery phase. Where we’re going to be doing things like going out on Glassdoor, taking a look at critical assets of the organization, strategic plans, and training history, and performance history to understand what’s happening in the culture. We’re, typically, going to go in and take a peek around, kick the tires, as we would say. And then, we’ll craft a plan with them about what we think the best recommended solution is. And then, adjust that plan based on their culture and specific objectives.
Cornelia Shipley: [00:04:50] We also, on the front end, will work with our clients to determine their return on their investment, which we think is really important. It’s hard when you do services instead of a product that there’s a plan for measuring that ROI. So, we’ll do that with a client upfront and then we will customize our solution. It’s very rare that we deliver the same exact solution the same way twice. Because company’s culture, we call it corporate America for a reason. It’s similar, but it’s not the same.
Cornelia Shipley: [00:05:24] And so, we want to make sure that the solutions we’re providing are culturally competent to the organization. We’ll deliver that to the organization and then do some measuring of their return and determine what, if any, additional support that they need. So, that’s our process.
Lee Kantor: [00:05:42] And then, your work is holistic for the organization or sometimes you go in and triage, like, an individual if they’re struggling?
Cornelia Shipley: [00:05:51] We do both. Yeah. So, we’ll get a phone call if we got a group or an individual leader or leaders who is struggling or who, more often, from a proactive perspective has been promoted to a new role. And that role is critical to the success of the organization. And they want to surround that person with the right level of support.
Lee Kantor: [00:06:15] Now, during this interesting time in the history of our country, really, a lot of things are happening simultaneously. They’re really stressing organizations. And I would imagine most organizations don’t have the kind of people or the skill set to, at least, navigate how they communicate and how they work with their individual organization. Are you finding a lot of work nowadays and helping people deal with pandemic, remote learning, this unrest? All of the stuff that’s happening, it seems, simultaneously.
Cornelia Shipley: [00:06:47] Yeah. So, we’ve been doing work both around COVID and the civil unrest we’ve been experiencing. We’ve been helping many of our clients think through strategically if they’re going to be returning their employees to work. And if so, when and how. And we’ve been helping them think through the impacts of that from a performance perspective, from a retention perspective, from a data security perspective, and from a promotion and advancement perspective.
Cornelia Shipley: [00:07:18] So, this is the first time, in my history as a professional anyway, where leadership is acutely aware that the decisions that they’re making for their employees are now life and death. And I think it’s been different in terms of the level of intensity and the level of care that so many of our clients are taking to really determine how to return their employees to work responsibly. We’re also helping them think through, because of the pandemic and because of the nature of work from home, whether it’s now the right strategy for them to keep their workforce at home, one.
Cornelia Shipley: [00:08:00] And then, what does that mean in terms of access and upgrade to talent? Because if you now have a remote workforce and you were in Atlanta, Georgia, you have an option now to get talent from anywhere. So, what does that mean in terms of your recruiting strategy? What does that mean in terms of your development strategy? What does that mean in terms of how you leverage technology to really keep your employees engaged? So, we’re helping them with that as part of the pandemic.
Cornelia Shipley: [00:08:27] And then, when we think about the social uprising, we do a significant amount of work in the diversity and inclusion space. And so, we typically start with the senior most leadership in the organization to really understand what their actual goals are as it relates to diversity and inclusion. And then, help them, really surround them, with the tools that they need to be successful to be leaders and advocates for the change that they want to see. And then, we start doing the work of educating and empowering people with things like bystander training and allyship so that they really understand how they can be behaving and really change the culture so that everyone can show up, contribute fully, and deliver their best work, to bottom line drive the profitability of the organization.
Lee Kantor: [00:09:22] Now, in your work, do you kind of have a sweet spot, an industry that you specialize in, or is this kind of industry agnostic?
Cornelia Shipley: [00:09:30] We get calls from almost every industry. We’ve worked in consumer goods a significant amount. My background is in consumer goods. I work for a very large food manufacturer and the largest consumer goods company in the world for ten years. So, we get a lot of consumer goods calls. We do a lot of work in the entertainment space. We do a lot of work in the construction space. And then, we do interesting work in the healthcare space. As you can imagine, healthcare is an interesting place to be right now.
Cornelia Shipley: [00:10:00] When we actually get off of this conversation today, I’ve got a call with a chief people officer at a large healthcare system to really talk through what they’re thinking through in terms of their doctors and nurses, not only their development, but ensuring that they’re actually able to get some respite before the anticipated next surge comes. So, we’re getting a chance to do really interesting work with our clients because of the unique challenges of the time.
Lee Kantor: [00:10:29] Now, is there any significance for the 3C? Are there three C’s? How did the name come up?
Cornelia Shipley: [00:10:36] There are. There are. So, the three C’s stands for clarity, capability, and capacity. So, organizations need to be really clear about where they’re going. They need to ensure that organizations have the capability, the skill sets to be able to be successful. And that their systems are designed to be successful. And that their leaders have the capacity, both to lead and empower people. And then, to deliver on their daily objectives. And so, that’s what the three C’s stand for.
Lee Kantor: [00:11:09] Now, do you have any advice for businesses out there, maybe some low hanging fruit that you’re like, “Why aren’t they doing this? Like, if they would just do this, this would solve a bunch of problems.” Is there any kind of easy stuff out there that people just, typically, aren’t, you know, paying attention to or aren’t taking advantage of?
Cornelia Shipley: [00:11:28] I think one of the biggest things we find in organizations where they’re really struggling is, they haven’t figured out how to close the feedback loop with their employees effectively so that they can actually take action on what they’re hearing. Part of the reason that so many organizations are getting poor representation and ratings on websites like Glassdoor is because they’re not listening to their employees. So, employees will say this is a problem. They repeat that, you know, on numerous occasions, numerous people raise the problem. And, systemically, the organization doesn’t have the capacity or the capability to address the issue. And so, they lose people. And if those people are disgruntled, it’s creating an image and brand problems in the marketplace as an employer of choice.
Lee Kantor: [00:12:22] Now, you spend a lot of time working in the conscious business ethics space. Can you explain what that is and why that’s so important to you?
Cornelia Shipley: [00:12:32] Absolutely. So, I’m actually getting my PhD in Conscious Business Ethics. It’s been a fascinating research journey for me. And it’s really about what does it mean to be intentional, conscious, and aware of the results you’re intending to get in the organization. And to be conscious and aware of the culture that you’re creating and the systems you’re creating to drive that productivity and that bottom line results. And so, we help people think through how are they designing the organization for maximum productivity and culture impact to create the culture that they both want and need for the people in the organization to be successful?
Lee Kantor: [00:13:16] I think business needs a better PR agent because there’s a lot of kind of bad reputation of business. Like, business leader is greedy, exploitive. But I’ve found in my career a lot of business, especially small and midsize business, are just doing the best they can or they’re trying to be a good steward and be a good stakeholder to their community. Do you find that to be so as well?
Cornelia Shipley: [00:13:44] Yeah. I think, at the core, people want to do the right thing. I think part of the challenge is we’re finding that that potentially can mean different things to different people. And so, if you believe you’re doing the right thing, but you’re getting feedback in your organization that says you’re not, the challenge becomes being able to have the space and awareness to listen to that feedback. And then, the skillset and capacity to make a shift.
Cornelia Shipley: [00:14:14] And more often than not, where we see resistance show up in leaders, it’s because, one, they feel personally attacked, especially as it relates to diversity, equity and inclusion work. If you’re a white male in an organization and you have, let’s just say, been an advocate for civil rights for most of your life. And suddenly, people like me show up and say, “You know, we need to do this diversity initiative.” One, you may have seen it a hundred times before and you might not be bought in. And two, you might be personally offended because you’ve been committed to these issues and that’s not been recognized.
Cornelia Shipley: [00:14:51] So, I think it’s important when we start to dig into this work that we recognize that people are in all kinds of places. And you have people in the organization who think it’s a great idea to be inclusive and people in the organization who don’t. And you’ve got to have an integrated plan to talk through how you deal with that. And, typically, we help our organizations really connect issues around diversity and inclusion back to their core values. And help them to treat it like any other business issue, so that there’s not this sense that the issues around diversity and inclusion are treated differently than the issues around selling widgets in the organization.
Lee Kantor: [00:15:34] And then, that gets back to one of your C’s of clarity. You all have to be on the same page and clear, and each party has to feel safe to be sharing and be vulnerable to have these kind of deeper discussions.
Cornelia Shipley: [00:15:47] That’s right. That’s right.
Lee Kantor: [00:15:50] Now, let’s talk a little bit about your book that you released a while ago, Design Your Life. How did that come about and what kind of compelled you to write a book?
Cornelia Shipley: [00:15:59] So, I started to work on Design Your Life back in 2003. I was living in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. And the culture there really struck me. The whole no worries attitude and just the way that people in Australia live their life. And when I got back to the United States, I really realized, for me, there were so many people in the US who were, quite frankly, just exhausted. And who were asking me the question, how did I get into this position, this job that I hate, in a marriage that’s not making me happy with children that I’m constantly arguing with. All of these things that were negatively impacting their quality of life.
Cornelia Shipley: [00:16:42] And so, I wanted to write a book that would help people actually create more meaning, joy, and that sense of contribution in their life. Because there’s only so many people our boutique consulting firm reaches, right? Every year, we work with a handful of companies. Some of which we’ve been working with for several years. And so, I wanted to write this book so that every person could potentially read it. I mean, I’m not conceited enough to think everybody will, but it’s available as a resource to help people really strategically plan their life and their work.
Lee Kantor: [00:17:22] And then, what are some of the steps that a person can start taking in order to start designing a more meaningful life?
Cornelia Shipley: [00:17:28] One of the biggest things that people tell me once they’ve read the book or my clients who’ve read the book say to me is that, this notion of deciding what you want to say yes to, especially as a woman, is critically important. So, women, typically, won’t ask for a promotion until they’re 90 to 110 percent ready for the job that they want. Men, on the other hand, will ask when they’re about 30 percent ready. And on that journey, women will accept a lot of work that they don’t necessarily want to do or they’ll accept work that isn’t in alignment with their goals and objectives.
Cornelia Shipley: [00:18:07] So, when they read the part about crafting your say yes standards and really being clear about the seat you’re trying to take and crafting a plan to get there strategically, instead of having that happen to you by happenstance. That has been the biggest impact for people on their professional career side.
Lee Kantor: [00:18:29] Yeah. I’ve heard that a lot, that a woman has to feel like they’re exactly the right fit, that they have every single qualification before they raise their hand. And where a guy will be like, “Yeah. I can figure that out later. You know, I’ll just go for it.”
Cornelia Shipley: [00:18:46] Yeah. That’s right. That’s right.
Lee Kantor: [00:18:46] And I mean, that has to be something that’s happening at childhood, right, where these kind of thought patterns start?
Cornelia Shipley: [00:18:55] That’s right. So, from the time you are born until the time you’re seven years old, your subconscious mind doesn’t have the ability to reject any idea. And so, as parents and as people who are creating environments for children, we have to be very careful about the messaging we give them. And so, we give messaging to young girls that says you have to be prepared. We don’t give those same messages to little boys. We tell little boys, you be adventuresome, meet challenge, you can overcome. And so, they take those two very distinct and different mindsets into their organization. And that has them show up and do work and approach work very differently.
Cornelia Shipley: [00:19:40] So, absolutely. We do a lot of work in our executive coaching and strategic advisory space where we’re helping people understand their programming, their thoughts, and beliefs that are driving their behaviors. And so, once we help them see what those are, if they’re working for them, great. If not, they have the decision about taking on a belief that actually will support them to get what they want. So, it’s a critical part of our process.
Lee Kantor: [00:20:11] Right. And then, it’s funny how important language is and the words you use to describe something and the words you use to describe yourself.
Cornelia Shipley: [00:20:21] Absolutely. And the bigger impact is the words that you use to describe yourself and the words that you accept of other people’s descriptions of you. Because you will live up to or down to people’s expectations of you.
Lee Kantor: [00:20:36] Yeah. That word clarity comes up a lot in your work.
Cornelia Shipley: [00:20:39] It does. It absolutely does.
Cornelia Shipley: [00:20:42] Well, now, tell us about GWBC. How has that organization impacted your business?
Cornelia Shipley: [00:20:48] It’s been great. I’ve had the really big pleasure for the last couple of months to be the keynote speaker for the Wells Fargo R3 Boot Camp. And so, we’ve done one session on retool. We’re getting ready to do two more sessions over the course of the fall season. And so, that’s been amazing. It’s also been great to get a chance to really connect with some of the women in the organization, find some collaborative partners. There’s some people that we collaborate with here in the Georgia market to do work with we recognized, especially in the pandemic, but this was true pre-pandemic as well. You can go further, faster, farther when you partner. And so, that’s been really great to really find some good strategic partners that were already in the GWBC community that we could leverage their skill sets and they could leverage ours.
Lee Kantor: [00:21:51] Do you have any advice for women business owners who aren’t familiar with GWBC? Some of the benefits that you’ve gained just in having, I would imagine, this safe network that is kind of people in the same boat as you, that look like you, that sound like you, that, maybe, experienced similar things. To have that kind of a group together where you can, you know, share, and help, and advise in a way that, maybe, is more comfortable than it would be in their real day job or in their day to day life.
Cornelia Shipley: [00:22:21] Yeah. I think the biggest piece of advice I would give to women business owners that are considering GWBC or who are new to it is, get clear about what you’re trying to get out of it. And then, position yourself in the organization in the spaces and places, either where your potential prospects and clients will be. So, taking advantage of the matchmaker opportunities that exist in GWBC. Making sure that you’re attending the conferences that happen so that you can actually connect with both your business clients and potential collaboration partners and mastermind groups. And then, that you consider taking on a leadership role, because it’s a great way to get visibility and to have Roz and the rest of the GWBC team understand the work that you do. So, when they’re getting those phone calls saying we need help solving problem X, they can immediately say there’s a great woman business owner who can help you solve that problem.
Lee Kantor: [00:23:25] Right. I think that’s great advice, especially, for people at the beginning of their career to really find those organizations that are the right fit. And then, lean into them and then just immerse yourself. Volunteer, you know, you’ll get great opportunities to lead, you’ll get great opportunities to network and demonstrate your skills in front of people that can really catapult you to the next level.
Cornelia Shipley: [00:23:47] Absolutely. Absolutely. There’s a great saying that givers gain. And so, the more that you give, the more that your top of mind. Especially for people like Roz, who are getting phone calls every day from some business leader in the metro Atlanta or North or South Carolina community saying we have this problem. If she understands what you do and she’s had an experience with you, she’s better positioned to be able to refer you.
Lee Kantor: [00:24:18] And then, I’m sure that you will agree that the more people that do that, they’re living into that conscious business ethic kind of way of thinking, right?
Cornelia Shipley: [00:24:26] That’s right. That’s right. They’re being very intentional in terms of managing, not only their personal brand, but their company’s brand. And we know that even in this technology age, people do business with other people. And the more social proof and the more raving fans you have in your business, the easier it is for you to continue to grow your business and your bottom line profitability.
Lee Kantor: [00:24:52] Good stuff. Well, it’s been great speaking with you. If somebody wants to learn more about your organization or if they need some help in the challenge that they’re experiencing, what is the best way to get a hold of you and/or some of your books? Because you have a second book coming too, right?
Cornelia Shipley: [00:25:07] Yeah. So, the second book is not done yet. We’re still in the middle of writing, which has been amazing – researching and writing. But my book, Design Your Life, is available on amazon.com. It is the yellow book cover. I tell that to people because there’s a couple of books titled Design Your Life. So, it’s the yellow book cover. And people can find me online. Our website is 3cconsulting, so that’s two Cs, 3cconsulting.com. Our email address is info, I-N-F-O, @3cconsulting.com. And I am Cornelia Shipley on LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram. And those are the three biggest social media that I use – and Facebook. So, there’s four, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn. And it’s all Cornelia Shipley.
Lee Kantor: [00:26:06] Well, thank you so much for sharing your story. You’re doing such important work and we appreciate you.
Cornelia Shipley: [00:26:12] Well, Lee, thank you so much for having me on today. This was great.
Lee Kantor: [00:26:15] All right. This is Lee Kantor. We will see you all next time on GWBC Open for Business.
About GWBC
The Greater Women’s Business Council (GWBC®) is at the forefront of redefining women business enterprises (WBEs). An increasing focus on supplier diversity means major corporations are viewing our WBEs as innovative, flexible and competitive solutions. The number of women-owned businesses is rising to reflect an increasingly diverse consumer base of women making a majority of buying decision for herself, her family and her business. 
GWBC® has partnered with dozens of major companies who are committed to providing a sustainable foundation through our guiding principles to bring education, training and the standardization of national certification to women businesses in Georgia, North Carolina and South Carolina.
