We recently connected with M. A. Mac Curfman and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Mac, thanks for joining us today. So let’s jump to your mission – what’s the backstory behind how you developed the mission that drives your brand?
My mission, then, is to create life-long learners wherever I go. That’s what I preach…and practice!
My mom would push my brother, my sisters, and me out the door every morning towards the bus stop, and the last thing she would say to us was, “A day without learning was like a day without sunshine.”
That one phase instilled in me a want – a need – to learn every day! It still does to this day!
The late, great motivational speaker Zig Ziglar said that there are three steps to the learning process:
1-Find ways to learn every day.
2-Apply what you learn to make your work and your life better.
3-Circle back and find more things to learn.
It’s a cycle that Zig called “life-long learning.”
M.A.Curfman Learning’s vision is that we see people who learn and apply and who are transformed by what they learn, and in turn, are transforming their organizations from the inside out.
Mac, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
I started my career in local government. I was a regional planner for an economic development organization in central Maine while I was at the University of Maine working on my Masters degree in Public Administration. After finishing grad school, I returned to Western Pennsylvania where I grew up to look for work. I, however, found my first position in Eastern Pennsylvania, near Philadelphia. Now, normally, when you go from one side of PA to the other, you are considered a traitor. I did, however, manage to keep my Pittsburgh sports allegiances…Go Steelers!
Over the course of the next decade, I became a city manager in Eastern Pennsylvania. I managed the daily operations of two small municipalities outside of Philadelphia. I loved that work! I had a chance to work with some of the finest people on the planet; people who would walk through fire to get the job done (both employees and elected officials). I also had a chance to work on some incredible projects; projects like building a new municipal complex, rebuilding roads and streets, and water and sewer systems, and even electric distribution systems. I revamped budgeting systems, brought in new technology, and led those organizations to think differently about what they did.
After 10 years of bridging the gap between the politics and the daily operations of municipal government, I decided that it was time for a change. So I founded a government advisory consulting firm, where I was able to continue applying entrepreneurial ideas in local government. I grew that firm from just me to 20 consultants working for me at one point. Then 9/11 happened. Most of my clients were small municipal governments in the northeast. Right after 9/11, they needed to pivot to security issues and I didn’t provide security consulting. So I ended up closing my firm in 2003 and moved my family from the Philadelphia area to Columbia, South Carolina where I worked in a large national consulting firm for four years. I traveled the country with that firm working in cities and counties throughout the US providing management consulting services. After traveling to 36 states in those four years with two young kids at home, I knew it was time to do something else. So I opened another consulting firm, added training to what I did, and found my true calling. I love training! I love learning and I love helping other people learn.
Today, I am the Chief Learning Evangelist of that consulting firm. I have grown it into a global training and coaching firm where I have been able to speak to, train, or coach nearly 125,000 people in the U.S. and in countries on five continents around the world. I have been privileged to serve people and organizations in almost every industry and to help them become more successful.
I am also the founder and Chief Coffee Guru of Mac’s Java Coffee Roasters, a specialty coffee roasting company. It started as a hobby and has grown into a small business because I love spreading the joy the great coffee brings!
I have also started a small not-for-profit company through which I provide leadership development and entrepreneurial development work in West Africa, North Africa, and the Middle East.
Throughout my 35+ years of work, I have earned a reputation as a go-to resource, a bit of an iconoclastic thinker, and a non-conventional problem-solver.
Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?
In my first job right out of grad school, I was the Assistant Township (read small city in PA) Manager in Eastern Pennsylvania. It was a growing municipality in suburban Philadelphia.
About 21 months into that position, my world changed.
My wife and I had just returned from a long weekend in New England, and that Tuesday morning I walked into the office and the Township Manager caught my eye and motioned me to come to his office. So I entered his office and put my briefcase down. He said to me, “Please close the door.” In my head I said, “Oh no, somethings up!” The next thing he said to me blew me away! He said, “Last night, at the Township Board of Supervisors (read city council) meeting, I resigned.” He continued, “They appointed you (he was now pointing to me!) as the Interim Township Manager.” I promise you that I heard nothing he said after that! I heard nothing he said because there was now a raging battle in my head! It was like a grenade had gone off and I was completely disoriented.
On one side of my brain there was a party going on! This was the opportunity I had hoped for. This is what I had been preparing for ever since interning in the Mayor’s office in the City of New Castle, PA in the Summer of 1982. This is why I went to grad school. I wanted to be a city manager, and now I had an opportunity to prove myself!
On the other side of my brain, I was terror-struck! That municipality was in bad shape! To be honest, the Township Manager resigned about five minutes before the Board was going fire him. We had spent the last couple of years spending down all of our financial reserves. We were borrowing money to pay bills. The Board, in fact, was forced to raise taxes, and the public was very upset and vocal! The morale of the employees was in the toilet; everyone was looking to leave that sinking ship. Every project that we were engaged in was going very badly. They were way over budget and far behind schedule in all of our projects. That side of my brain left me frozen and dizzy!
I was partially revived from the fog when the Township manger stood up from behind his desk. Now, Paul was a large guy; he had played football in his college days and his size always intimidated me. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a large wad of keys. I think he realized that I was still not completely coherent yet, so he reached over to me, grabbed my hand and opened it, and placed the keys into my palm. Then he turned, walked out the door, got in his car, and drove way!
I don’t know how long I stood there, but the next thig I remember, the Manager’s Executive Secretary, Rachel, was standing beside me asking me if I was okay. I paused for a moment, because the terror-struck part of my brain, in that moment, said “Throw the keys on the desk and RUN!” I eventually responded to Rachel by saying, “I don’t know, but we need to call a meeting of all the employees right now.”
An hour later, all of the employees of that municipality were staring at me. I was later told that that was the first time in that Township’s history that all the employees had sat in the same meeting together…a sad commentary. I was all of 26 years old, and, at that point, the youngest city manager in all of Pennsylvania. I somehow had to manage the strength and ability to lead these people, some of whom had been in their jobs longer than I had been alive! Talk about intimidating. But I had been in the city about a year and nine months and I had built good relationships with the employees and they trusted me.
In the meeting, I told the employees what had happened the previous evening and that I had been appointed Interim Township Manager. And then I said to them “I need your help! I cannot do this job without you! Let’s talk about how we can do this together.”
We had a three-hour meeting. The first hour of the meeting was spent laying all of the problems that we were dealing with on the table, and there were a lot of them. In the second hour of the meeting, we set short-term objectives. We knew that the Board would hire a new Township Manager in about 6 to 9 months. So, we set a peg in the ground at nine months. We spent the second hour talking about what we wanted this Township to look like in nine months. The third hour was spent talking about what kinds of changes that we needed to make. We knew we couldn’t do our work the same way that we had been doing it and then expect different results. We knew we needed to change. We ended the meeting, but each department continued those discussions for two days.
At the end of two days the department heads and I got together, we crafted a plan, and we took it to the Board and got their approval. Nine months, when the Board appointed a new Township Manager, every single issue that we had placed on the table that day had been positively resolved! Not because of me…because of my team! My team walked on hot coals for nine months to get the job done.
In fact, in those nine months I can really claim to have done only one thing right! Only one thing! And that was on the first day when we called a meeting of all the employees and we sat down and cast a new vision for that Township. We didn’t call it a vision, but that’s in fact what it was. The only thing I did right was help those employees to describe what they wanted their workplace and their community to look like and then give them the confidence and the tools to accomplish the job.
That was 35 years ago and I am still so incredibly proud of that team!
That was a baptism-by-fire experience; one that I’d like not to repeat! However, that experience taught me so much and changed the entire trajectory of my career, as I became known as a unconventional problem-solver.
Are there any books, videos, essays or other resources that have significantly impacted your management and entrepreneurial thinking and philosophy?
I am a bibliophile; I love books! I usually read about 100 books every year and have a library at home of about 4,000 books. I read books that help me in my work and my life. There are three books that have had an effect on my life, in addition to The Bible. The first is Dale Carnegie’s book “How to Win Friends and Influence People.” Carnegie talks about 30 human relations principles; principles about how human beings connect to each other. That book, which has sold more than 30 million copies globally, is as relevant today as it was in 1936 when he wrote it, because those principles have not changed! I have used these principles to connect with diverse people in countries around the globe.
The second book is the “Seven Habits of Highly Effective People” written by Dr. Stephen Covey. In his book, Covey says that values govern people’s behavior, while principles ultimately determine the consequences. He teaches though seven habits, organized as a progression from dependence through independence on to interdependence. I re-read this book every two or three years because, for me, these habits are both a journey and a destination.
The third book that has had a tremendous effect on how I live my life is a book titled “Re-imagine” by Tom Peters. Peters is a maverick business writer and consultant. True to his form, this was an eye-opening book and completely unconventional, from the layout of the pages to the content of the book. Peters shows how to take advantage of the opportunities in a world that is in constant flux; to push disruption, to seek out those opportunities, and be willing to change your entire approach and business model. This book is required reading for those who want to accomplish something of value in an environment where nothing stays the same!
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.macurfman.training/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mac.curfman
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/macurfman/
Image Credits
Sarah Elizabeth Photography- https://sarahelizabeth.photography/