tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-54395560668042195622024-02-01T20:29:05.020-08:00ExecCatalystThe ExecCatalyst blog covers topics related to leadership, career advancement, hiring, finding the right job, company cultures and office politics, and general management. The authors have extensive experience in high-tech in Silicon Valley and elsewhere and have gained experience at small, fast-moving startups as well as large, global technology firms.ExecCatalysthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11932658642739412963noreply@blogger.comBlogger26125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5439556066804219562.post-74418923448994802852012-08-23T09:07:00.000-07:002012-08-24T06:21:33.820-07:00Achieve Success from Setbacks: The Secret is being "At Cause"<br />
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<b><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">“I got screwed!”<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">"…but
it <i>wasn't</i> my fault!" Bruce was really
upset and voiced his displeasure with the topic at a two-day offsite management
training. Bruce was rejecting the premise of an exercise that, in hindsight,
taught me the most valuable leadership lesson I have ever learned.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Like
many heavily-technical organizations, Oracle Customer Support had a lot of
first-time managers who came up from the technical ranks, some of whom were
promoted into management based upon their technical "chops" instead
of people leadership skills. During the Ray Lane era, Oracle was growing
rapidly and saw the value in investing their people in order to drive continued
business success by providing training for all
managers. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">The
exercise was simple enough. The facilitators paired us up and asked us to take
turns explaining in 5 minutes to our partner about a recent time when we got
"screwed" i.e. when we were treated unfairly in the workplace. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Suddenly,
things got a lot more interesting. After we told our “story,” the facilitator
then instructed us to "Explain the same situation but describe what <u>you</u>
did to cause or contribute to the situation." Some people immediately "got
it" - they described how they didn't manage up effectively, ignored early
warning signs, didn't make sure there was a clear definition of success, or
made other mistakes. Other people, like Bruce, rejected the idea that they had
any responsibility for what happened to them because they simply could not
re-orient their own thinking. They were trapped in a world where everyone had
wronged them so they were doomed to spend their time just waiting for the next “unfair”
situation to unfold - when the people, the process, or the company would
"screw" them again.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">"At Cause" or
"At Effect"</span></b><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">The
facilitators described these two ways of analyzing situations as the difference
between being "at cause" or "at effect." If you were
"at cause", you looked at historical situations with a focus on <u>your</u>
actions - what you did, didn't do, so you could <i>learn </i>from them and do things <i>differently</i>
next time to get a more positive outcome. If you approached setback in "at
effect" mode, you looked at situations as the unfolding of events and
circumstances that were out of your control. When in "at effect"
mode, the personal conclusions were to "not work for jerks" or to
"not deal with people who play politics" or other defensive rationalizations.
Essentially, they missed an invaluable learning lesson. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">When
looking at a situation that didn't turn out the way you had hoped, here are the
questions to ask to get in "at cause" mode so that you can learn from
mistakes, improve future outcomes, and advance your career.</span></div>
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<li><b><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">"What did
I do?" </span></b><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">-
if you calmly think through a situation after some time has passed, you may
very well realize that you did things without intending to that contributed to
the problem. For example, early on in my career, I approached some <a href="http://execcatalyst.blogspot.com/2011/05/fear-of-conflict-terminal-paralysis-of.html" target="_blank">professional conflict situations</a> with a “winner take all”
attitude. Instead of looking for compromises or creating “win-win” situations, I
acted like a student on the Debate team where the desired outcome was for me to
“win” and for someone else to lose. But after reflecting back on those
situations and asking myself the question, I recognized the pattern, changed my
approach, and was more effective in the workplace.</span></li>
<li><b><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">"What
didn't I do?"</span></b><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">
- Often <i>inaction</i> will cause failure.
I had lunch with a former colleague recently who was let go from a project management
role after only a few months. "Karen" took over a high-visibility
project that was already behind schedule. The date had been moved, and she was
brought in to make sure things stayed on track this time. But Karen quickly
realized that even the new date was unrealistic and that the team couldn't hit
the deadline without a significant change to the resource plan. As a newbie,
she was afraid to bring bad news to her boss and make others look bad. So she
stayed quiet, hoped for the best, and was let go once the news was finally out
that another deadline would be missed. The "at effect" view of the
situation is that the delay wasn't her fault and she "took the fall"
for other people's poor planning and poorer execution. The "at cause"
view of the situation is that she hurt herself by not having the courage to
raise the issue early. If she had done so, it's possible that the executives
could have given her more resources, reset the date, or done other things to
help get it back on track. But she didn't give the organization that chance,
because she was more comfortable "hoping for a miracle" and avoid
delivering bad news than calling out the issue.</span></li>
<li><b><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">"What
would I do differently next time?"</span></b><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"> If the first two questions don't
yield obvious answers, it's time to take a broader and deeper view of the
issue. Sometimes, the answer actually is "I should avoid working in that
kind of culture again" or "I should recognize when my manager is a
weak sponsor and find a way to move into another team." In other words,
sometimes the changes necessary to avoid a repeat situation are not just small
tactical adjustments, but fundamental realizations about the environments and
teams where you’re most likely to succeed. Coming to understand this made a
huge difference in my career choices and progression.</span></li>
</ul>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">It's
easy to spot people who commit to an "at effect" approach and suffer
the consequences throughout their careers. They either stay in the same role
for years and years because they can't get more opportunity, or they bounce
from job to job and have only bad things to say about their prior managers,
teams, and companies. Inevitably, they set themselves up for more failure because
no one rallies around a finger-pointing complainer who seems to have more than
their share of disappointments. In teams and projects, we gravitate towards
people who take ownership and focus more on how to achieve team success instead
of "blamestorming" or making excuses.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">If
you can practice taking an “at cause” approach to challenges and setbacks,
you’ll find that it becomes very natural over time and it will dramatically
improve your ability to learn from prior setbacks and significantly improve
your judgment. It’s also a trait that I’ve looked for when I’ve chosen the next
wave of leaders in my teams. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-language: X-NONE; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: #0400;">If you have experiences or advice on how to
learn from mistakes effectively, please share your comments below. If you liked
any of the ideas in this post, please use the social media icons to share on
Twitter, Facebook, and elsewhere.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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ExecCatalysthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11932658642739412963noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5439556066804219562.post-88529300508767736212012-06-21T06:40:00.000-07:002012-06-22T07:04:24.992-07:00Boost Your EQ – Good Results Alone Won’t Get You Ahead!<br />
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<b><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Good Riddance…!</span></b></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">“He wouldn’t be welcomed back
here again!”</span></i><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"> 11
months ago I was reconnecting with an SVP at one of the “Big 3” in enterprise
SW (I’ll call him “Mike”) and that’s what Mike had to say about a common
connection (I’ll call him “Rick”) that he worked with for several years.
Apparently, after Rick’s startup had been acquired, he demanded numerous
changes to the organizational structure and project prioritization to suit his
interests. Then, having delivered no meaningful results he left for another
startup, and then another. But only 2 years (and 2 startups) later, Rick landed
<i>right back at the same “Big 3” company</i>,
again in a VP role.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">As
shocking as this can be, it’s very common to see high tech executives with
spotty records land on their feet. “<i>Where’s
the justice?</i>!”, you might ask. Well, what Rick lacked in substance, he more
than made up in political savvy and he played “The Game” quite well. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Relationships Trump Results<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">As you
rise the ranks in corporate high tech, relationship skills become even more
important than functional competency. Last week, I was discussing this idea
with Paul Burrin, a VP at Citrix Online, and he summed it up this way <i>“I've worked in environments where
executives with strong relationships could get by with being moderately
competent in terms of their functional knowledge and results.”</i> In other
words, you’ll surely get fired for incompetence, but it’s your high EQ aka <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotional_intelligence" target="_blank">Emotional Quotient</a> (i.e. self-awareness,
empathy, and dealing sensitively with other people) that will enable you to
effectively climb the corporate ladder and stay in the upper echelon. These
“relationships” can take on different forms, spanning from strong relationships
built on mutual trust and respect to self-interested, <a href="http://execcatalyst.blogspot.com/2011/05/difference-between-loyalty-and-cronyism.html" target="_blank">destructive cronyism</a> where individuals put their own
needs ahead of the company’s.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Programmers
pound out code. Engineering managers make sure their technical staff deliver
that code on time with sufficient quality. Directors release products and keep
the “factory” running. At this level, you start to deal with cross functional
dependencies and this is where things get complex. For example, releasing a
product requires coordination with Marketing, Sales, Services and even Finance.
Therefore, as a Director you will be judged not only by your VP, but also those
with whom you work across the company. And even though everyone is “on the same
team,” the <a href="http://execcatalyst.blogspot.com/2012/01/get-comfortable-with-corporate-politics.html" target="_blank">natural tensions between different functional organizations</a> will always create situations that
require collaboration, compromise, or even conflict - testing your
relationships and your ability to preserve them amidst the most challenging
situations. And the stakes are highest for professional success and failure at
the VP and CxO ranks<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Politics, Good or Bad? </span></b><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Every time
the word “politics” is mentioned at one of our corporate workshops or public
events, there’s noticeable discomfort in the room. Business is about making
money and businesses thrive when smart people struggle to figure out the best
way to handle the toughest problems. Corporate politics inevitably play a role
in these situations, but there’s no reason that “politics” have to be
inherently negative, as many people tend to perceive them.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Perhaps
the uneasiness that people have with it is when actions by others conflict with
their own value system. I got this cynical definition from one of my clients, a
COO of a$150M business, <i>“Politics is
people doing things for their own advancement rather than the advancement of
the organization.”</i> That definition makes me uncomfortable, because I don’t
think it reflects how the best companies behave. But these “bad politics” are a
reality in many organizations, putting leaders in a position where their only
choices are to:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">1.<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Compromise their values<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">2.<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Accept “defeat” by a political
adversary<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">3.<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Find a new department or
company that more closely shares their values.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Having
a strong EQ will equip you to deal with and flourish in good and bad politics.
Check out what Jeff Russakow, former EVP at Yahoo!, had to say about <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Shdt7SgyKUY&feature=g-all-u" target="_blank">the importance of EQ</a></span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYssQ7QXLusToUi5pHtzGETZV-FHsQgUqmrFpxkyoXsKccdGJhJaLmi4drS1V4wliIUBQT_7AEF9wYraWLEeLEaMaq3gw82zYIu8Y0oiD7rt5c-FTOjYFx480o9oiwmN35yPmDpGhgIwg/s1600/Emotional+intelligence+-+Brain.gif" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYssQ7QXLusToUi5pHtzGETZV-FHsQgUqmrFpxkyoXsKccdGJhJaLmi4drS1V4wliIUBQT_7AEF9wYraWLEeLEaMaq3gw82zYIu8Y0oiD7rt5c-FTOjYFx480o9oiwmN35yPmDpGhgIwg/s1600/Emotional+intelligence+-+Brain.gif" /></a><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><b>4 Steps to Boost Your EQ: </b><br /><br />Here are some ways that you can build up your people and organizational relationship skills.</span><br />
<ul><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">
<li><b>Embrace Line-Of-Business (LOB) Tensions</b> – when you’re under pressure to get things done, the last thing you want is someone from another part of the business putting road blocks in your way and slowing you down. Instead of getting frustrated and wasting your energy in disagreements and conflict, consider the LOB perspective that person has. LOB tensions are like “checks and balances” for businesses. If everyone is always agreeable, you might be missing something very important. </li>
<li><b>Reframe your “asks”</b> – It’s much easier to get people to do something for you if there’s a benefit for them. If you are a marketer and trying to roll out a new program or campaign for Sales, tell them how it’s going to help them with bookings, revenue and attaining their quota and NOT about how it’s going to increase market share, demonstrate thought leadership, or improve the inner mechanics of Marketing like web lead conversions, etc. </li>
<li><b>Focus on Respect, not being Right</b> – In heat of battle, driving your business and beating your competition, consider the longer term implications of how you “throw your weight around.” I was speaking with Moshe Gavrielov, CEO of Xilinx, and he said “<i>As a CEO, it’s more important to focus on respect rather than being right.</i>” His point is that the most successful executives understand how important establishing and maintaining good relationships are for effective leadership. </li>
<li><b>Keep your Friends Close and Your Enemies Closer</b> – Good and bad politics intensify significantly the higher up you go in the organization. You can’t avoid conflict nor the people who may be creating problems for you. It’s worse to be blindsided by them, so find ways to meet with them on a regular basis. Instead of being surprised, you’ll be prepared. Then you are in a better position to proactively manage the situation, minimize damage to your team, and get the focus back on moving the business forward (rather than personal agendas).</li>
</span></ul>
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<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Forging strong interpersonal and cross organization relationships is critical for any leader. Your functional, domain expertise is likely what got you where you are today BUT it’s not what will get you to the next level and keep you there. Do yourself a favor and evaluate your EQ compared to your IQ.<br /><br />What have you done to build up your EQ and cross organizational relationships? Please share your experience. If you found this interesting, please use the toolbar below to share it with your network.</span></div>ExecCatalysthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11932658642739412963noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5439556066804219562.post-38642937842241001972012-04-17T05:15:00.000-07:002012-04-17T05:15:24.559-07:00Managers be Warned: You Can't Handle The Truth!<div class="MsoNormal"><v:shapetype coordsize="21600,21600" filled="f" id="_x0000_t75" o:preferrelative="t" o:spt="75" path="m@4@5l@4@11@9@11@9@5xe" stroked="f"> <v:stroke joinstyle="miter"> <v:formulas> <v:f eqn="if lineDrawn pixelLineWidth 0"> <v:f eqn="sum @0 1 0"> <v:f eqn="sum 0 0 @1"> <v:f eqn="prod @2 1 2"> <v:f eqn="prod @3 21600 pixelWidth"> <v:f eqn="prod @3 21600 pixelHeight"> <v:f eqn="sum @0 0 1"> <v:f eqn="prod @6 1 2"> <v:f eqn="prod @7 21600 pixelWidth"> <v:f eqn="sum @8 21600 0"> <v:f eqn="prod @7 21600 pixelHeight"> <v:f eqn="sum @10 21600 0"> </v:f></v:f></v:f></v:f></v:f></v:f></v:f></v:f></v:f></v:f></v:f></v:f></v:formulas> <v:path gradientshapeok="t" o:connecttype="rect" o:extrusionok="f"> <o:lock aspectratio="t" v:ext="edit"> </o:lock></v:path></v:stroke></v:shapetype><v:shape id="Picture_x0020_1" o:spid="_x0000_s1026" style="height: 150pt; margin-left: 321.75pt; margin-top: 23.3pt; position: absolute; text-align: justify; visibility: visible; width: 146.25pt; z-index: 251658240;" type="#_x0000_t75"> <v:imagedata o:title="" src="file:///C:\Users\Lance\AppData\Local\Temp\msohtmlclip1\01\clip_image001.png"> <w:wrap type="square"> </w:wrap></v:imagedata></v:shape><b><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";">The “Open Door” Policy</span></b><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHoxia1TBRRua_xziibstvBaDBCAiv32tK82IOP5-tXEqI7ESAD1XJQD0NW7lR-6ZPlJLym5FrkNE4mFNzZe5Pwp328Wk6IzL0Z5-MUXVO2aLe_G-jT3wMkjwnxmVVLIPRl8Fqvv-q_zs/s1600/jack-nicholson.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="217" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHoxia1TBRRua_xziibstvBaDBCAiv32tK82IOP5-tXEqI7ESAD1XJQD0NW7lR-6ZPlJLym5FrkNE4mFNzZe5Pwp328Wk6IzL0Z5-MUXVO2aLe_G-jT3wMkjwnxmVVLIPRl8Fqvv-q_zs/s320/jack-nicholson.png" width="320" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";">“<i>I’ve always been an ‘open door’ manager. My team knows that. And they’re salespeople – they’re not the type to be timid with their opinions.” </i>I was talking with a Sales VP who I’ve known for more than 15 years. He’s a very personable and approachable professional and was adamant that he’d be the first to know if there was any discontent in his organization.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";">“So <i>you haven’t lost any of your top talent in the last year?</i>” I asked. He paused; looking unhappy he said “<i>Well, yes. Three of my strongest athletes moved on in the last year</i>.” I was waiting for the light bulb to go on as I said “<i>You weren’t surprised when they resigned, right? Because they knew they could always come to you if they had an issue. After all, your door was always open</i>.”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";">Suddenly, he got it. “<i>No they all caught me completely off-guard, and by the time they had accepted other offers, it was too late.</i>” <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";">Just because you think your team <i>can</i> talk to you about anything doesn’t mean that they <i>will</i>.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";">It’s Not About You (Unless It’s About You)</span></b><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";">Good leaders make it clear to their teams that they’re not looking for sycophants and “yes people.” They want candid feedback – about the business, the company, and even themselves. Those leaders project a culture of openness where people feel comfortable sharing their perspective even when it isn’t positive.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";">Why would someone on your team who trusts and respects you as a leader still not give you “the straight scoop” about how they really feel?<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"></div><div class="MsoNormal"></div><ul><li><b><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";">You <i>can’t</i> do anything about it</span></b><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"> – “Big issues” are often larger than any single manager or executive. When I was at Siebel Systems in 2002, raises and bonuses had been cancelled for more than a year. During this time Salesforce.com was quickly getting traction in the CRM market and competition from SAP and PeopleSoft was getting more intense. Stock options for some employees were literally $100 “under water.” Layoffs had become a quarterly ritual. Innovation was a distant dream because the company was on a <a href="http://blogs.wsj.com/tech-europe/2011/02/09/full-text-nokia-ceo-stephen-elops-burning-platform-memo/" target="_blank">burning platform</a>, forced to stabilize its core technology foundation before it could even <i>consider</i> any enhancements. One of my key people resigned over these issues. She knew that I hadn’t caused the problem but more so that I couldn’t fix it. “Big issues,” cause loyal employees to give up hope - <a href="http://execcatalyst.blogspot.com/2011/07/avoid-career-damaging-job-transitions.html" target="_blank">packing up to move on to TNBT</a> (The Next Big Thing) </span></li>
<li><b><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";">You <i>won’t</i> do anything about it</span></b><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"> – If your boss is either:</span></li>
<ul><li><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">a jerk</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">focused on the wrong things</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">working from a faulty game-plan</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">fear driven</span></li>
</ul></ul><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">…then he’s probably created a political climate that won’t allow anyone to mention that “<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Emperor%27s_New_Clothes" target="_blank">The Emperor Has No Clothes</a>” without political punishment. Your team may think that you’re afraid to put issues on the table with executive leadership because you’ll just get labeled a “non-believer” and will become isolated as your own opportunities for influence, promotion, equity, and other rewards vanish into thin air. Your team believes that you’ll “play it safe” and won’t put your own opportunities in the company at risk by raising a voice of dissent.</span><br />
<ul><li><b><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">You might <i>actually</i> do something about it </span></span></b><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; line-height: 115%;">– Just because you’re fully aware of a problem, and comfortable voicing it to your manager doesn’t mean you can fully control the “solution” to that problem. I remember when a marketing manager on my team, who worked closely with our Alliances organization, came to me to surface some dysfunction in the working model across the teams. I said, “</span><i style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; line-height: 115%;">This is completely fixable and I want to test a potential solution with our CMO</i><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; line-height: 115%;">.” She was immediately concerned and said “</span><i style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; line-height: 115%;">What if she decides that the ‘solution’ is just to move my function out of Marketing and into Alliances? I don’t want that, and it would probably make the problem even worse.”</i><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; line-height: 115%;"> In that moment, she was telling me that she’d rather live with an ongoing headache than risk a radical tops-down solution.</span></li>
</ul><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";">Ultimately, all three of these scenarios boil down to a feeling among your employees that “You can’t handle the truth!” Being open to feedback and communication is great, but it’s totally unrealistic for you to expect everyone to be bold and courageous in raising issues that will put <i>them </i>at risk.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";">If You Don’t Know About it, You Can’t Manage It<o:p></o:p></span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";">Here are some strategies to uncover concern and misalignment so you can take action before it’s too late.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"></div><div class="MsoNormal"></div><ul><li><b style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Get anonymous feedback</b><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"> – Find a way to get anonymous feedback. This could be an electronic survey or the old-fashioned “suggestion box” or something in-between. Create a visible way that employees can share negative feedback without fear of consequences. Some of it will be painful to hear, but it will be a lot less painful than when one of the “keepers” in your team says she’s leaving.</span></li>
<li><b style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">“Don’t just stand there, DO SOMETHING”</b><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"> – This goes hand-in-hand with the first point. People will only share feedback if there’s some hope of a </span><i style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">positive outcome</i><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">. I remember when an HR admin at a startup company that I had just joined shared the results of last year’s “Employee Satisfaction Survey” with me. The anonymous survey called out a couple of massive dysfunctions in the executive team, including one executive who berated employees and was never open to ideas from his team. I asked </span><i style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">“What was done since the survey to acknowledge the feedback or address the issue?”</i><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"> I was horrified when she said </span><i style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">“Nothing.”</i><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"> It would have been better </span><i style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">not</i><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"> to run the survey at all than to run it and do nothing – which only further aggravated employees for “wasting their time.” That doesn’t mean that every little complaint demands an action from the executive team, but when there’s a widespread issue, ignoring it after it’s been called out dissolves trust in leadership. Taking action will show employees that their feedback matters. And the good news/bad news is that you’ll get more feedback as a result. Confident leaders check their egos at the door and use that feedback to improve. Weak managers use it to identify dissenters and then punish them.</span></li>
<li><b style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 115%;">Lead by Example – </span></b><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; line-height: 115%;">Do you want your direct reports to be comfortable (and brave) enough to come to you with things you might not want to hear? Well, are you willing to do the same with <i>your</i> manager? What if he’s the CEO? What about an investor who just put $25M in your company? If there are issues that are negatively impacting the company’s business and you’re not comfortable sharing these with your management, you can’t be surprised that your team wouldn’t share those same issues with you. If you want to foster a culture where feedback is welcomed, then you have to be willing to demonstrate raising feedback that challenges the status quo. Of course, that doesn’t mean bad-mouthing the company or complaining in the break room – that’s not a positive environment for constructive change. But it does mean stepping out of your “safe” zone and taking some risk to drive change that is positive for the business.</span></li>
</ul><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";">How have you provided this kind of feedback to your boss, or tried to gather it from your team? Please share what’s worked for you…<o:p></o:p></span></div>ExecCatalysthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11932658642739412963noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5439556066804219562.post-15219411495210611682012-03-13T10:27:00.010-07:002012-03-13T11:02:00.329-07:00Hidden Treasure: Stop Wasting Your Valuable Re$ource$ and Recover Lost Productivity<div class="MsoPlainText"><b><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Paralyzed by Priorities</span></b></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">“Yes, those are the key priorities,” said my CEO as he nodded during our one-on-one. I was stunned and a little disappointed. The whiteboard was covered with more than 20 projects that were on my team’s plate. I was hoping to get clarity on which ones were mission-critical, which were important, which were nice-to-haves and which were pipedreams - because even working long startup hours, we didn’t have the resources to execute them all at once.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><br />
</div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Speed is the unspoken core value of every high-tech startup, and even as I explained the challenge, my CEO was very hesitant to treat <i>any</i> of the listed projects as a “lower priority” for fear of letting things “slow down.” I was struggling to untie this <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gordian_Knot" target="_blank">Gordian knot</a> that I’ve since learned exists in many startups.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><br />
</div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Among the many pieces of wisdom in J. Allan McCarthy’s book <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Beyond-Genius-Innovation-Luck-High-Performance/dp/0984723803/ref=sr_1_fkmr1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1329398625&sr=8-1-fkmr1" target="_blank">Beyond Genius, Innovation, and Luck: The “Rocket Science” of Building High-Performance Corporations</a></i> is a creative but <i>proven</i> approach that sidesteps the flaws of traditional planning for startups and large corporations alike. Allan was kind enough to share this method and supporting tools in this guest blog post.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><br />
</div><div class="MsoPlainText"><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Beyond-Genius-Innovation-Luck-High-Performance/dp/0984723803/ref=sr_1_fkmr1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1329398625&sr=8-1-fkmr1" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" height="288" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjUl8EeQb9QujVgixTHlUzwfT9GuLyMxBwAR2Xs04lEns42chaPvU3Lw4DcxJOlDKw6f_mN8K6ckiycWTxPhogBApqdUt27vRer-4Dx1_dmj95sFOemK1Wz2nerJpQCvHPEo_wQ_uwyvpU/s320/Beyond-Genius-Cover-lo-res.jpg" width="195" /></a><b><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Wasted Time and Money</span></b></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">It’s highly unlikely that your company is using its resources efficiently. Why? The logic on which traditional planning is based is flawed. And, it can introduce huge inefficiencies into the daily operations of a company. On the surface the operational plan might look great and make sense—but if it doesn’t use “sequencing” as the organizing principle, then behind the scenes that same plan is draining productivity by as much as 15% to 27% (1) or more. No kidding.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><br />
</div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">How much money does a 15% to 27% productivity loss equate to? You can do the math for your company. It could be a few million dollars in an early stage organization to hundreds of millions of dollars in lost productivity (and related market opportunity) in a large corporation.</span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><b><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><br />
</span></b></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><b><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">The Problem with Traditional Planning</span></b><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"> </span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">A traditional planning approach goes something like this: <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"></div><ol><li><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">The company defines its vision and purpose. This is why the organization was formed, where it’s going, and what it will look like when it gets there.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Leadership will also define its mission statement or “What they are striving to achieve”—looking out 18 to 24 months.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Next, a string of high-level objectives are typically identified (let’s call these imperatives). Then the functional leaders (Sales, Engineering, Marketing, R&D, Finance, etc…) identify the work needed to be done, meaning, list the key projects and programs in order to achieve these objectives (let’s call these initiatives).</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">The Initiatives identified by the functional leaders are then aggregated into a plan. That’s when the fun begins. Bright, motivated leaders debate priorities and make a case for resources. I call this “resource roulette” because at this juncture, resource allocation might as well be gambling since the logic on which it is based is severely flawed. </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Why?</span></li>
</ol><div class="MsoPlainText"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">When there is a high interdependency between imperatives and initiatives, which is the case in almost every modern-day corporation, then <i>sequence</i>, or the order in which work is performed (like building a house) becomes extraordinarily important. When building a house, a foundation must be built first. There is no debate about this. Next, walls must be erected before plumbing and wiring can be installed. No one would dream of putting on the roof before the walls were built—and in reality it couldn’t be done. When one builds a house, there isn’t debate about priorities. The house is built on the basis of <i>sequence</i> or the logical order in which work needs to be accomplished. And here in-lies the root problem: organizations are very, very complex systems (even start-ups) with a high sequential relationship between imperatives (high level objectives) and initiatives (where the work gets done)—but this sequential relationship isn’t obvious. The “sequence” is further hidden when bright, energetic functional leaders act independently to create their respective plans of work to be performed. Without a sequenced-based plan, the organization is doomed to essentially work against itself as an army of motivated employees pursue goals and objectives that aren’t in unison. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><br />
</div><div class="MsoPlainText"><b><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">The Power of Sequencing</span></b></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Let’s review a powerful, numbers-driven example, to illustrate the power of sequencing in the planning process. (See Excel spreadsheet: <a href="http://www.execcatalyst.com/uploads/Sequencing_Analysis_CTO_Group.xlsx" target="_blank">Sequencing Analysis</a>)<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><br />
</div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">A CTO Group in a large corporation was struggling with their ability to meet general company objectives, made worse by a perceived lack of headcount and funding. The group had 111 employees and an $83M annual budget (excluding R&D capital). Prior to beginning the planning refresh cycle the current plan documents showed: 8 imperatives and 126 initiatives that the 7 CTO Group executives had aggregated from their various departments into a plan.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><br />
</div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">After refreshing the Mission Statement, we identified 10 imperatives that were needed in order to achieve the Mission. Next, we mapped the 126 existing initiatives to the new Imperative set. See column #1 “New Imperatives Identified in Plan” and column #2 “Existing Initiatives Mapped to Imperatives.” Examine the Initiative count by Imperative. (Note: At this stage you can’t read the actual Imperative description to know if, for example, 32 Initiatives is the correct loading for Imperative #1. We’ll save that discussion for a later time.) To this point Initiatives have been identified and put in motion based on executive debate over priorities. Remember, building a company is like building a house. There is always an inherent sequence that should be the organizing principle on which a plan is based. Now let’s demonstrate the impact of sequencing as the organizing principle of the plan.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><br />
</div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Next, the executive team performed a very simple sequencing activity (on the new ten Imperatives) called the Interrelationship Digraph. I've seen companies invest only a few hours of time in this kind of exercise and literally save months of wasted person-hours of effort on out-of-sequence execution. This is a common sequencing tool used for a variety of applications. After sequencing (see lower portion of Excel spreadsheet green and red areas) we learned that Imperatives 8, 5, 4, 3, and 9 (ordered high to low) were the drivers or, keeping with my sequencing metaphor, building the foundation and walls of the house. In other words, these Imperatives needed to be finished (or at least significant progress made) before the lower in sequence Imperatives could be efficiently completed. It turned out that Imperatives 1, 10, 6, 2, and 7 (in this order high to low in sequence) were the followers or the wiring, plumbing and roof of the house. Notice that at this stage there is no debate about priorities! So, for example, it’s very difficult to build a sales plan without a market analysis. This is a no-brainer. Unfortunately, with literally hundreds of initiatives in queue in most companies, it’s very difficult to determine where these might fall in sequence unless there is an explicit mechanism in place to identify it.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><br />
</div><div class="MsoPlainText"><b><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Figure 1.1 – CTO Group Sequencing Analysis<o:p></o:p></span></b></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><b><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><br />
</span></b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.execcatalyst.com/uploads/Sequencing_Analysis_CTO_Group.xlsx" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" height="390" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhR-pOXkO9d2m5A2_d_ikSc9ehZL8F5d2MRTDBOFFMrqH3uSb6u02OSdsnpVIOgjItdOUUnmCUicCQ-Zhye95tfAjrnoV-R4Dx2bpi57LWa4XXfNPEXzN6gvaL_xj4ow1UR6Rtyv2Cpk74/s640/Sequencing+Analysis+Grid.png" width="576" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><b><i><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Green= Initiatives that are Drivers/Precursors identified in Sequencing</span></i></b></div><div class="MsoPlainText" style="text-align: center;"><b><i><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Red=Initiatives that are Results/Followers identified in Sequencing</span></i></b><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">After completing the sequencing activity this is what we learned:</span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"></div><div class="MsoPlainText"></div><ol><li><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><b>63 of the 126 existing Initiatives were cancelled or suspended.</b> These were deemed too low in sequence or simply unnecessary at this point in time.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><b>22 new Initiatives were added</b>—not in anyone’s queue—and deemed mission critical; 14 of these addressed high in sequence Imperatives.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><b>32% of the allocated resources (headcount and dollars) were rebalanced</b> from low in sequence Initiatives to high in sequence Initiatives.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><b>The executive team’s confidence level grew</b> and the weekly staff meeting debate ended over headcount and dollars.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><b>The CTO Group executive team’s confidence in plan execution grew significantly.</b> </span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><b>Stakeholder confidence and sponsorship increased exponentially.</b> The CTO also presented this plan to the CEO and Board of Directors (CTO had previously been challenged by the BOD on his resource requests). He received accolades for plan composition and transparency. </span></li>
</ol><div class="MsoPlainText"><b><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Summary</span></b></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Is the organizing principle behind your company’s plan sequence or prioritization? I’ll bet it’s the latter. This means that you’ve got hidden treasure in terms of significant productivity gains awaiting discovery. Now, go get it.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Allan McCarthy<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><a href="http://www.mccarthyandaffiliates.com/" target="_blank">www.mccarthyandaffiliates.com</a><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">650-823-4253<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><br />
</div><div><div id="edn1"><div class="MsoFootnoteText"><span style="line-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">(1)</span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Research performed on 87 companies between 1999 and 2009 pre and post planning process results. Planning process documented in <i>Beyond Genius, Innovation & Luck: The “Rocket Science” of Building High-Performance Corporations</i>, J. Allan McCarthy, November 2011, 4th Edition Publishing, available at Amazon.com.</span><o:p></o:p></div></div></div>ExecCatalysthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11932658642739412963noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5439556066804219562.post-48660548409345062332012-02-08T09:22:00.000-08:002012-02-09T05:49:19.101-08:00Take Your "Self" out of "Self-Promotion"<div class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">No Way Out</span></b></div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjU9PxtvxO1BaY97pCVvm19WaDQuBcdOK34Kw7q8M6iXxs1x9FmnwfmVZiviqp8ToydmWluShsAqQD7de_0byK7TQKZ1_ase6IM7jELOTKYQ8OmLd9ODl0uZiDkPztiq9T2aut5YnZceGw/s1600/Self+promoter.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="155" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjU9PxtvxO1BaY97pCVvm19WaDQuBcdOK34Kw7q8M6iXxs1x9FmnwfmVZiviqp8ToydmWluShsAqQD7de_0byK7TQKZ1_ase6IM7jELOTKYQ8OmLd9ODl0uZiDkPztiq9T2aut5YnZceGw/s200/Self+promoter.png" width="200" /></a><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; line-height: 115%;">The look on Sam’s face really caught my attention. I wasn’t sure if he was coming down with something, or if he had eaten something bad at lunch. He did not look well. “<i>I have to do it. I know I have to do it. I hate the thought of it, but I know I’ll never get what I deserve if I don’t do it,</i>” said Sam. He wasn’t talking about some brutal new workout program or cleaning the muck out of his rain gutters. He was talking about <i>self-promotion</i>.</span><br />
<div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; line-height: 115%;">I asked what was making him so uncomfortable. He responded, “<i>Well, on one hand, I’ve made a lot of key contributions to the department that seem to go unnoticed. They won’t be visible unless I <u>make</u> them visible. On the other hand, I hate the thought of becoming the new ‘Mark.’</i>” Mark was a notorious self-promoter in Sam’s department. Mark made a big deal out of even small achievements. It had gotten to the point that everyone dreaded his updates in team meetings because it became a predictable laundry list of the “great” things Mark had done that week. And Mark was oblivious to the fact that he was hurting his own credibility, and annoying his coworkers.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; line-height: 115%;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; line-height: 115%;">A Better Approach<i><o:p></o:p></i></span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; line-height: 115%;">Many high-tech professionals rising up the ranks struggle with this. We’ve all seen our share of “Marks.” In the best case, they’re boring. In the worst case, they’re distracting, obnoxious, and <a href="http://execcatalyst.blogspot.com/2012/01/get-comfortable-with-corporate-politics.html" target="_blank">even malicious</a>. But high-tech companies are full of smart, <a href="http://execcatalyst.blogspot.com/2012/01/2012-resolution-keep-your-enemies-close.html" target="_blank">competitive</a>, hard-working people who sometimes go unnoticed. Hoping that your accomplishments “speak for themselves” is a recipe for <a href="http://execcatalyst.blogspot.com/2011/06/dont-make-wrong-case-three-worst.html" target="_blank">slow progression</a>, and possibly even a pink-slip.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; line-height: 115%;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; line-height: 115%;">Here are five suggestions that will increase your visibility without suffering from “Mark-itis":<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; line-height: 115%;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;"></div><b style="text-indent: -0.25in;"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; line-height: 115%;">1. Don’t mistake “Necessary” for “Important” </span></b><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; line-height: 115%; text-indent: -0.25in;">– If you’re working on something that your boss or her boss don’t care about, they also won’t care whether you’re doing it well or not. “Jack” was the Product Marketing Director on my team who maintained the pricing guidelines for our enterprise software company. He worked hard but was frustrated that the CMO never paid any attention to him or recognized the results of his work. Without question, the price list was </span><i style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; line-height: 115%; text-indent: -0.25in;">necessary</i><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; line-height: 115%; text-indent: -0.25in;"> – Sales couldn’t quote deals without it. But what was </span><i style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; line-height: 115%; text-indent: -0.25in;">most important</i><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; line-height: 115%; text-indent: -0.25in;"> to the CMO was positioning, competition, and lead volume. The CMO never woke up in the middle of the night worrying about </span><i style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; line-height: 115%; text-indent: -0.25in;">pricing</i><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; line-height: 115%; text-indent: -0.25in;">, and he never ran around the office high-fiving people because of a great change to the </span><i style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; line-height: 115%; text-indent: -0.25in;">pricing</i><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; line-height: 115%; text-indent: -0.25in;"> guidelines. Jack moved to another Marketing function where his hard work and talent would be “on the radar” with the CMO and his professional “stock” began to rise quickly.</span></div><div><div style="text-indent: -24px;"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 18px;"><br />
</span></span></div><b style="text-indent: -0.25in;"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; line-height: 115%;">2. Align with your manager on your career development plan (CDP) </span></b><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; line-height: 115%; text-indent: -0.25in;">– Most managers like to promote the achievements of people on their team, which is another good reason to make sure you and your manager are aligned on your CDP. If you and your manager agree that your next step is to become a Senior QA Engineer, and that one of the key components is for you to demonstrate <i>process improvements</i>, it’s highly likely that she’ll “advertise it” when you deliver. She wants her boss, your peers, and her peers to be aware of your achievements so that when she recommends you for promotion, those same people will think “<i><u>Of course</u> he’s being promoted. Look at all of the process improvements he’s delivered!</i>”</span></div><div><div style="text-indent: -24px;"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 18px;"><br />
</span></span></div><b style="text-indent: -0.25in;"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; line-height: 115%;">3. Shift from “Me” to “We”</span></b><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; line-height: 115%; text-indent: -0.25in;"> – Good news tends to spread virally in high-tech companies. The best way to make it easy for people to advertise <i>your</i> accomplishments is to make it about <i>their</i> accomplishments. Consider these two emails:</span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; line-height: 115%;">Version 1:</span></b><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">From: Mark<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">To: Sales Team<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">My social media tactics are paying off! We passed 5,000 views on our blog last month! I've been watching our competition, and I think they're starting to copy my moves. Oh well, I guess it's the "sincerest form of flattery," right? ;-)<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">-Mark</span><span style="font-family: 'Courier New';"><o:p></o:p></span></div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Version 2:</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">From: Sam<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">To: Sales Team<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">CC: VP of Engineering, VP of Public Relations<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Good news. We passed 5,000 views on our blog last month. Blog traffic is now contributing more than 10% of our Sales leads. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Kudos to the PR and Engineering teams. Our product innovations and steady stream of interesting news are really getting people to “tune in” to our blog. Let’s keep it up!<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">-Sam</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
<div class="MsoListParagraph"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">The second email celebrates a </span><i style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">team</i><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"> accomplishment, puts the accomplishment in terms that the </span><i style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">audience</i><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"> cares about (Sales cares about leads, not blog views), and explicitly recognizes the</span><i style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"> contributions of others</i><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">. Note the CC: to the heads of PR and Engineering, who will probably forward this good news to their teams (or maybe even to the CEO). “Sam” will be associated with a big success on something he owns (the corporate blog), lots of people will hear about it, and Sam hasn’t annoyed his co-workers with clumsy self-promotion. Score!</span></div><div class="MsoListParagraph"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br />
</span><b style="text-indent: -0.25in;"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">4. Focus on results, not your “hard work” – </span></b><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; text-indent: -0.25in;">You led the project team through dozens of meetings over 6 months. You worked over the weekend to prepare the project summary. You even canceled a planned vacation when the project started to slip early on. <i>Nobody cares.</i> The right people will know what you did behind the scenes – calling it out just makes you a self-promoter. Quantify the results in the context of your department or company KPIs.</span></div><div class="MsoListParagraph"></div><div style="text-indent: -24px;"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><b style="text-indent: -0.25in;"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">5. Take a long-term view</span></b><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; text-indent: -0.25in;"> – If you’re worried that celebrating a “team” win will mean that you don’t get enough “credit” for the critical role that you played, you’re missing the point. Career advancement, raises, bonuses, equity grants and other rewards rarely come from one single, heroic achievement. They come from continuous achievement, being a team player, and delivering bigger and bigger wins for the business over time. Being associated with a big win is enough, whether your efforts drove 80% or 20% of the results. You’ll get the recognition and rewards that your contributions deserve without having to “apportion credit” across the team.</span></div></div><ol></ol><div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpLast"></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">What strategies have you used to make your contributions more visible? Please share your experience. If you found this interesting, please use the toolbar below to share it with your network.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div></div>ExecCatalysthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11932658642739412963noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5439556066804219562.post-23169399606654080052012-01-24T12:18:00.000-08:002012-01-25T05:08:51.682-08:00Get Comfortable with Corporate Politics<div class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">The Proverbial “Love-Hate” Relationship</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Very early in my career, I was a technical support engineer and was pretty good at it. In fact, many colleagues asked me <i>“You’re great with customers. Why aren’t you in Sales?”</i> I would quip <i>“Well, I have to sleep with myself at night.”</i> You see, in my profession, I was dealing with all the problems that <i>bad </i>sales people created e.g. wrong expectations about what the products <i>they</i> sold could actually do. Also, I had a problem with money being the primary driver of my decision making and thereby clouding my vision for what’s<i> best</i> for customers. On the other hand, I also understood that salespeople are “royalty” in the company. They are the ones that take on a lot of risk and deliver the revenues that feed product innovation and ultimately my paycheck. Thus, I had another saying <i>“I love sales people twice a year… when I get my 6-month bonus!”</i> It’s apparent why some salespeople get away with questionable actions. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbKjvNiiYhI12KMjPNqestW7G01DcUQxWYMUKDeiKXDLROojh0dqCFv9fNC3Q7VHaes6ooSeSGxnsfONgWTLbt07NLvGx7O9uApdHozPxdqUUHD79nsmhpDptUfGixROPPqG0elxmmcDU/s1600/Executives+1+-+fighting.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="238" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbKjvNiiYhI12KMjPNqestW7G01DcUQxWYMUKDeiKXDLROojh0dqCFv9fNC3Q7VHaes6ooSeSGxnsfONgWTLbt07NLvGx7O9uApdHozPxdqUUHD79nsmhpDptUfGixROPPqG0elxmmcDU/s320/Executives+1+-+fighting.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">In the latter part of my high-tech career, I <a href="http://execcatalyst.blogspot.com/2011/07/interviewing-fill-in-your-gaps-with_20.html" target="_blank">transitioned into Marketing</a>. I was catching up with Larry, a CMO colleague of mine when he described his “love-hate” relationship with Sales. “<i>When they hit their number, it’s because they are great salespeople. But when they miss their number, it’s because Marketing didn’t deliver the support they needed - air cover, leads, tools and training, competitive intelligence, and more</i>.” Larry also shared a memorable exchange he had when his VP of Sales asked <i>“Why don’t you drop everything and get your whole team to help me make my <b>Q1 number</b>?</i>” Larry responded <i>“Because I have to help you make your <b>2011 number</b>!”<o:p></o:p></i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><i><br />
</i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">CEOs create their leadership team to execute the corporate strategy for the company. Every line of business ("LOB") function has clear goals to ensure the company hits the quarterly and annual plan. But misalignments in priorities frequently manifest in functional and even departmental goals. Although Marketing, Sales, and other departments have a shared commitment to the “corporate plan,” they frequently diverge in how to get there. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Typical Line-of-Business Tensions</span></b><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Every company has natural tensions between business functions. Here are some examples:<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst" style="mso-list: l1 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;"></div><ul><li><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; text-indent: -0.25in;"><b>Marketing-Sales</b>: Marketing is responsible for <i>both</i> near-term (qualified leads) and long-term (market positioning, thought leadership) initiatives that support Sales, but Sales mostly cares about the immediate-term e.g. “how are you going to help me make my number <i>this</i> quarter?”</span></li>
</ul><ul><li><b style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; text-indent: -0.25in;">Sales-Engineering:</b><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; text-indent: -0.25in;"> Sales needs more product features to sell, but Engineering is constrained by resources. They also disagree about which features are most important for customers. And Sales doesn’t primarily care about product quality, </span><i style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; text-indent: -0.25in;">unless</i><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; text-indent: -0.25in;"> customers start complaining – causing Sales to waste valuable “selling time” reviewing product issues.</span></li>
</ul><ul><li><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; text-indent: -0.25in;"><b>Engineering-Services:</b> Engineering frequently wants to release more products faster, and often defines “done” as code-complete, QA-passed. But Services is very concerned about “whole product” – end-to-end product quality, documentation, installation, usability, supportability, support readiness, etc. Low ratings in any of these categories will eat into Services margins and create customer satisfaction headaches.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; text-indent: -0.25in;">The list goes on with Finance, IT, HR, etc.</span></li>
</ul><br />
<div class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Corporate Politics – “Love it or Leave it” is Not an Option<o:p></o:p></span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">In the same way that the US constitution is designed with the 3 branches (Legislative, Executive, and Judicial), each corporate function along with their natural business tensions are like a built-in “checks and balances.” Getting alignment between business functions is not difficult to achieve provided the right leadership team and process is in place. In this economy, high-tech companies are demanding higher productivity and greater results to <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ilSRyYjYcYM" target="_blank">catch up to or out-pace their competitors</a>. This puts you and your colleagues under a lot of pressure to perform. When you depend on another business function to get your job done, you don’t have a lot of time or patience for bureaucracy or politics. However, you need to find ways to embrace these tensions or you will spend all your time “fighting the system” vs. getting it to “work for you”.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo2; text-indent: -.25in;"></div><ol><li><b style="text-indent: -0.25in;"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Build Strong Relationships</span></b><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; text-indent: -0.25in;"> – Once you get to know someone at a personal level (and vice versa), it’s much easier to work through professional difficulties and disagreements. Developing mutual respect and personal connections among colleagues lays the foundation for constructive business relationships. As a former CMO, I’ve had some of my greatest breakthroughs when I’ve vehemently disagreed with my CTO on our Go-to-Market strategy. But since we were good friends, we were able to respect each other’s position amidst our heated debates and got to a common point of execution. This would not have been possible if we had an <a href="http://execcatalyst.blogspot.com/2012/01/2012-resolution-keep-your-enemies-close.html" target="_blank">antagonistic relationship</a>. </span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; text-indent: -0.25in;"><span style="font: normal normal normal 7pt/normal 'Times New Roman';"> </span></span><b style="text-indent: -0.25in;"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Play Psychologist</span></b><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; text-indent: -0.25in;"> – “<i>Seek first to understand, then to be understood</i>” is one of Steven Covey’s famous quotes from “<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Habits-Highly-Effective-People-ebook/dp/B000WJVK26/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1327434564&sr=8-3" target="_blank">7 Habits of Highly Effective People</a>.” If you’re able to understand other people’s incentives and objectives then you will have a valuable perspective and greater ability to <a href="http://www.execcatalyst.com/uploads/executive_communicatorND.pdf" target="_blank">communicate with them effectively</a> – and only <i>then</i> should you advocate your position. We work extensively with high-tech executives on how to successfully navigate through “Line of Business Tensions” so they’re able to <a href="http://execcatalyst.blogspot.com/2011/09/get-what-you-want-from-executives.html" target="_blank">influence decision-makers</a>.</span></li>
<li><b style="text-indent: -0.25in;"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Embrace Conflict</span></b><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; text-indent: -0.25in;"> – One of our earliest blog posts talked about why <a href="http://execcatalyst.blogspot.com/2011/05/fear-of-conflict-terminal-paralysis-of.html" target="_blank">avoiding conflict is a bad for your career</a>. It’s certainly easier said than done, but when you are in the heat of conflict, don’t take it personally. Business is business so you should expect that each LOB has their own business interest in mind. A good person with the best intentions may disagree with you and that doesn’t make them a bad person. Get on the same page so you can agree to what can and cannot be done. For example, Marketing execs should work closely with their Sales VPs to map out quarterly programs. You only have a limited Marketing budget and resources so get your Sales VP to agree on what’s most important to her and then lock-in the plan with her. That way when her priorities change (and they will), you can both come back to the mutually agreed upon plan. </span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; text-indent: -0.25in;"><span style="font: normal normal normal 7pt/normal 'Times New Roman';"> </span></span><b style="text-indent: -0.25in;"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Stay Focused on the BIG PICTURE</span></b><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; text-indent: -0.25in;"> – You lose credibility when you’re viewed as a person who acts out of self-interest. The more you demonstrate that you are thinking outside and beyond your own personal interests and LOB function, the more you’ll be viewed as a team player and leader. Earning the trust and respect from other executives will give you more influence on big decisions and will swing those decisions in your favor.</span></li>
</ol><br />
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Distractions and disruptions from corporate politics will sap away your valuable time and energy. Your ability to focus <i>solely </i>on what you have control over is a necessary survival skill. Thriving in a corporate culture where people play fair and by the rules is ideal so that you don’t have to waste time an energy looking “behind your back.” On the other hand, if you are able to master the ability to mitigate and filter out the toxic effects from people who are overtly trying to undermine you, you’ll be able to rise up to the next level… where the political dynamics are most certainly even more intense! More on that in a future blog post….<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">What strategies have you used to work through corporate politics? Please share your experience. If you found this interesting, please use the toolbar below to share it with your network.<o:p></o:p></span></div>ExecCatalysthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11932658642739412963noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5439556066804219562.post-78400719548495642402012-01-05T11:18:00.000-08:002012-01-05T13:54:01.869-08:00A 2012 Resolution: Keep Your Enemies Close<div class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">“All’s Fair in Love and War”</span></b><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: right;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPjPYCVY0VR-y2m1xTz5k9RkdauYZLMf-qerFc71hZQAUUieMxKfjUR8JMsOxjAueJvWkt4626wW6H39yHTGQK1dlK1-Art7vTEa1zbulmYNPLlA28aX5tTb12tq8jny_fL5OJvWhCD1U/s1600/unfair-competition+SUMO.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPjPYCVY0VR-y2m1xTz5k9RkdauYZLMf-qerFc71hZQAUUieMxKfjUR8JMsOxjAueJvWkt4626wW6H39yHTGQK1dlK1-Art7vTEa1zbulmYNPLlA28aX5tTb12tq8jny_fL5OJvWhCD1U/s320/unfair-competition+SUMO.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">“Good news!” is what she said to me on the phone. She timed it while I was traveling, so it would be harder for me to react to what I saw as yet another attempt at professional sabotage. Over the years, I had become very suspicious of her because of “honest mistakes” that either hurt me politically, helped her, or both. This one made it crystal clear. There was no <i>chance</i> this one was a "mistake."</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">We’ll call her “Nicole.” Roughly 3 months before, our department had reorganized and our GM decided that Nicole’s favorite direct report (who we’ll call “Martin”) was going to be moved onto my team. Nicole had hired Martin originally, and groomed him for over a year. They had the highest level of respect and loyalty for each other.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Meanwhile, I had just extended an offer to a very promising young candidate. The “good news,” according to Nicole, was that she had suggested to Martin that the new employee joining my team should report to him (effectively promoting him to Manager), and that Martin was very excited about the plan.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Nicole’s tone was enthusiastic and friendly on the surface. But she knew that the position she had put me in would be damaging. I could either go along with the plan, in which case Martin would get an effective promotion <i>orchestrated by Nicole</i>, or I could undo the plan, in which case Martin would perceive me as <i>taking away a deserved promotion</i>. Either way, Martin would end up being even more loyal to Nicole (with the promotion) or would be demotivated in his new role (as an individual contributor) because I blocked his promotion. <i>Checkmate</i>.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">This was a huge professional “wake up call” for me – that there were actually people who would set traps to undermine other employees for their own benefit. Because I was responsible for outbound product marketing and Nicole ran inbound product management, avoiding her was not an option. I came to the realization that I was now at the stage of my career where I had to “grow up” or be crushed by the “big boys” (and girls). I had to find a way to work with Nicole.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Beware of Your Enemy<o:p></o:p></span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Inevitably, everyone in</span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"> high-tech encounters professional enemies i.e. adversaries that undermine your professional reputation, conflict with your value system, and sound your internal alarm for “fair play” and “justice.”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibxOiU8JZ9GSu1ZJjw0J7OCs5jQYmaDiLevsbucKq12akknl88F-zpm-9PF2lzCRgtUqyOfx8-Y-tqzD5-fMLEw9neoBg5Zh13RXrNHblJieOtdzaUEyFvy2qX84sWeekFHZh-YyJa3to/s1600/keep-your-enemies-close.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibxOiU8JZ9GSu1ZJjw0J7OCs5jQYmaDiLevsbucKq12akknl88F-zpm-9PF2lzCRgtUqyOfx8-Y-tqzD5-fMLEw9neoBg5Zh13RXrNHblJieOtdzaUEyFvy2qX84sWeekFHZh-YyJa3to/s1600/keep-your-enemies-close.jpg" /></a></div><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">As common as personality conflicts are in the workplace, they are the toughest problems to solve because you’d <a href="http://execcatalyst.blogspot.com/2011/05/fear-of-conflict-terminal-paralysis-of.html" target="_blank">simply prefer not to deal with <i>those</i> <i>types</i> of people</a> on any level whether professional or social. Socially, you can control who you interact with. However, broken professional relationships can be cancerous to your career success:<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst" style="mso-list: l1 level1 lfo2; text-indent: -.25in;"></div><ul><li><b style="text-indent: -0.25in;"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Wasted Time and Energy</span></b><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; text-indent: -0.25in;"> – it takes a lot of energy to dislike someone. This negative energy is wasted in matters that are counter-productive to the business. It also takes away from your job satisfaction.</span></li>
<li><b style="text-indent: -0.25in;"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Lost Productivity</span></b><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; text-indent: -0.25in;"> – avoiding someone who is on your team or who is part of your natural workstream makes for inefficient work.</span></li>
<li><b style="text-indent: -0.25in;"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Stalled Career Advancement and Promotions</span></b><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; text-indent: -0.25in;"> – it’s easier for your <a href="http://execcatalyst.blogspot.com/2011/06/dont-make-wrong-case-three-worst.html" target="_blank">manager to promote you</a> if she knows that there is consistent support throughout the organization. Adversaries can do a lot of damage to your reputation and make it hard for your manager or others to support your promotion.</span></li>
</ul><br />
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">On the other hand, if you’re able to work through these differences, you can do a lot of good for yourself in building up key skills as well as your reputation. Managed properly, people will recognize you as:</span></div><div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;"></div><ul><li><b style="text-indent: -0.25in;"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">A Team Player</span></b><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; text-indent: -0.25in;"> - Companies spend millions on “teamwork.” At Oracle in the mid-90s, Ray Lane was adamant in rallying every employee in every function to focus all energies on beating Microsoft instead of fighting each other. If you can be a role model for “teamwork” and create highly functional cross-organization teams, you will significantly increase your chances of getting more responsibility and rising up the ranks.</span></li>
<li><b style="text-indent: -0.25in;"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">A Leader</span></b><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; text-indent: -0.25in;"> - Leaders work through differences and come up with solutions. Anyone can point out problems. Great leaders always find a way to work with <i>all </i>types of people and to motivate them to a common cause.</span></li>
<li><b style="text-indent: -0.25in;"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Politically Savvy</span></b><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; text-indent: -0.25in;"> - You simply can’t avoid “Politics,” because “Politics” still exist everywhere and won’t avoid you. Playing good politics is required and it doesn’t mean you have to compromise your values. <a href="http://www.amazon.com/True-North-Discover-Authentic-Leadership/dp/0787987514/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1325790611&sr=8-2" target="_blank">True North</a> by Bill George provides a great foundation for understanding how your personal values align to your professional goals. People will respect you as someone who understands the game, but doesn’t “play dirty.”</span></li>
</ul><br />
<div class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">“Keep Your Friends Close. Keep Your Enemies Closer!”<o:p></o:p></span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">By the time HR gets involved, it’s usually a lose-lose situation or at best win-lose i.e. someone will lose. While it’s improbable that you’ll get along equally well with every person in your workplace, it’s also impractical to think that you can turn <i>all</i> adversarial relationships around. Take the first step to improve a bad situation. It’s to your benefit (as the old saying goes) to “…keep your enemies closer.” Here’s how:<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst" style="mso-list: l2 level1 lfo3; text-indent: -.25in;"></div><ol><li><b style="text-indent: -0.25in;"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Be the bigger person</span></b><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; text-indent: -0.25in;"> - If you lower yourself to internal infighting, people above, across, and below you will notice. And even if you “defeat” your enemy, people will be hesitant to build strong relationships with you because they don’t want to become your future “victim.” Resist innate behaviors to defend and attack by controlling or better yet disconnecting your emotions. Some of my greatest professional missteps were caused by inability to control my emotional response and reactions.</span></li>
<li><b style="text-indent: -0.25in;"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Stay in frequent, close contact</span></b><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; text-indent: -0.25in;"> – this gives you an “early warning system” so you can look out for their tactics. Find things in common to talk about. Look for “windows of opportunity” to make small talk. Then build up to non-work related topics, hobbies and shared interests to discuss. If you can find a “real person” within your nemesis that will help you to relate better to him in business situations down the road. It’s also possible that you can slowly build <i>some</i> trust over time, but don’t be so naïve in thinking that given the opportunity he won’t throw you under the bus!</span></li>
<li><b style="text-indent: -0.25in;"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Keep focused on the business</span></b><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; text-indent: -0.25in;"> - Business is business so don’t make it personal. You will set an example for your team and send a strong message up your management chain if you are committed to put your interpersonal issues aside for the good of the business. It’s useless to worry about things that aren’t in your control. You can’t control what other people do (to you) but you have <i>complete </i>control over what you can do for the business.</span></li>
<li><b style="text-indent: -0.25in;"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Promote your enemy</span></b><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; text-indent: -0.25in;"> - Most of my executive clients have the greatest difficulty with this part. Finding ways to promote your enemies will clearly demonstrate that you are not competing with them and instead are focused on company success vs. your own personal agenda. This is a very powerful technique to disarm your enemies and demonstrate to the organization that you’re well above petty in-fighting.</span></li>
</ol><br />
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Since then, I’ve faced many more “Nicoles” (and “Nicks”) in my travels as a high-tech exec. At best I’ve been successful in turning difficult relationships into productive, collaborative ones. At worst, I’ve kept my arch enemies at bay - limiting their damage by keeping them on my radar.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">What strategies have you used to work through personal conflict situations? Please share your experience. If you found this interesting, please use the toolbar below to share it with your network.<o:p></o:p></span></div>ExecCatalysthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11932658642739412963noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5439556066804219562.post-91284145636919656352011-11-10T10:50:00.000-08:002011-11-10T10:50:03.133-08:00Don't Roll Your Sleeves Up Too Far<div class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";">“I’ll Do Whatever it Takes”</span></b> <span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";">I’ve never been a “not my job” kind of person, whether I was a front-line technical services professional at Oracle or a VP at a billion dollar software company like Business Objects. If the team had a job to do, and if I needed to stretch outside of my basic job description to help get the job done, I’d gladly do it. Moreover, I truly felt that I was modeling the business culture that I wanted my team to embrace and </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">“</span><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";">leading by example.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">”</span><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";"> It’s only in hindsight that I’ve become aware of the pitfalls and downside of that attitude, and how it could hurt me, my team, and even the company.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYK3hN5a3cITI18xIvCKG-cez7cFxEjXxEtgKx4-rz37rQCynopZ5za27KEesksYb0aDZfL2Tqj78EMuzJU-v4G45LVaBWfOyd_mDQtA7RsRALBuuHiswc0v5KSIoakduIPQpbjdMsNL4/s1600/rolling-up-sleeves.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYK3hN5a3cITI18xIvCKG-cez7cFxEjXxEtgKx4-rz37rQCynopZ5za27KEesksYb0aDZfL2Tqj78EMuzJU-v4G45LVaBWfOyd_mDQtA7RsRALBuuHiswc0v5KSIoakduIPQpbjdMsNL4/s1600/rolling-up-sleeves.jpg" /></a><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";">I was a VP of Marketing at a startup company. It was the day before a big trade show and we were inside a large convention hall setting up our booth. I had decided to run the event with minimal staff. That meant that there was only one other person from my team there to set up the booth. Not only would it take much longer with one person, but there were some sections that were physically impossible for one person to assemble. So I did what I thought any team-player and startup person would do. I spent hours helping to screw pieces together, hang graphics, arrange collateral, test demo stations, and more.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";">The new VP of Sales (we’ll call him “Rich”), who had spent most of his career in very large organizations, came by during the setup because he wanted to talk to me about an important partner meeting that we were tag-teaming later that week at the show. Rich and I got our game-plan together and outlined exactly what each of us would do to impress the partner and make them excited to do business with us. As we parted after our meeting, Rich said “Well, you probably have to get back and vacuum the carpet in the booth.” I thought it was a good-natured joke about how I was really “rolling my sleeves up.” <b>It wasn’t</b>. In hindsight, he was clearly concerned and maybe even annoyed that his <i>executive wingman for the big partner meeting</i> was also <i>the guy with an allen wrench assembling the booth.</i> In my mind, I was being a team player. In Rich’s mind, I didn’t know my role and had chosen to apply myself to low-value, manual tasks rather than strategic opportunities. He probably wondered why we hadn’t chosen an “executive” to be our marketing leader.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";">Consider Your “Stage” Presence</span></b><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";">We’ve written about <a href="http://execcatalyst.blogspot.com/2011/08/right-actor-wrong-stage-dont-get-set-up.html" target="_blank">company stages and stage-relevant skills</a> before. As your company grows and evolves, the way you execute your job and even the image and tone that you project must change. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";">Early-stage startups are often wary of “big company” executives coming in. They’re afraid that a new executive will join who’s no longer capable of doing real work, and instead just wants to build out a team, hire an admin, and set priorities and direction without helping on execution. When my startup was only 15 people in total, I often didn’t have any options when it came to handling mundane or administrative tasks here and there. To me, it didn’t matter that in my prior job at 4,000-person company, I had a global team of 35 and an admin. The work had to get done.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";">As we got more traction and our growth accelerated, we got into bigger deals, bigger customers, and bigger partnerships. We got on the radar of our competitors because they saw us as a potential disruptor in a very large market. The culture generally remained team-oriented, fun, and aggressive without being self-important or self-serious and I loved it. By the time the Rich came in, we were significantly larger and still scaling the business. In <i>that </i>world, executives didn’t set up booths. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";">My failure to recognize that perspective (which was also likely shared by other new-hires who came from larger companies) created unnecessary obstacles . In one sense, it’s as if some ideas or initiatives that came out of my team were viewed through one of two lenses 1) a good idea from a strategic, experienced marketing executive and industry veteran, or 2) a questionable idea from a “grunt” who puts booths together. That made me less effective, created some headaches for my team, and was a (minor, but meaningful) negative for the company.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";">Here are some suggestions to avoid typecasting yourself in a “small company” role as your organization grows and transitions to the next stage:<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"></div><ul><li><b><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";">Recognize and embrace organizational change – </span></b><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Once successful, your company will grow and the personalities and attitudes will evolve. This is true for mid-sized companies growing from 1,000 employees to 5,000 as well as early stage startups growing from 10 to 100. Rather than trying to preserve the status quo in terms of culture, approach, and how you perform your job, recognize this change and push yourself to evolve ahead of the curve, not behind it.</span></li>
<li><b><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";">Play your position –</span></b><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">It’s an old marketing joke that you can’t market the same product simultaneously as a floor-wax and a tooth-polish. It’s true for people as well. Earlier in my career, I was a featured speaker at a breakfast seminar. One of the field marketing managers no-showed, so I volunteered to help hand out name tags. That’s when the lone marketing manager said “For this event to be a success, I need everyone here to see you as a subject matter expert when you’re on stage. If they see you <i>first</i> as the guy handing out name tags, they won’t be able to accept you as a thought leader when you’re up there presenting. So do me a favor and <i>don’t</i> help with registration.” It made perfect sense then but I should have internalized it in a big-picture way rather than as an isolated event.</span></li>
<li><b><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";">Do what’s best for the company <i>with a long-term view</i> – </span></b><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">If you’re like me, you feel snobby, self-important, and egotistical when you don’t pitch in to help. But a short-term decision to “help out” can create long-term challenges. It’s not worth creating doubt or potential instability for your team just to fix a minor emergency. Look for other ways to fill in the gaps. In my case, I easily could have spent a few hundred dollars of my budget to get a contractor to help set up the booth, or even pulled in another employee. If I had found another creative solution, it would have resulted in better outcomes not just for me but for my team and for the company.</span></li>
</ul><br />
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif";">How have you adjusted your approach as a leader in a high-growth company environment? Please share your experience. If you found this interesting, please use the toolbar below to share it with your network.<o:p></o:p></span></div>ExecCatalysthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11932658642739412963noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5439556066804219562.post-66517713938428042282011-10-24T16:08:00.000-07:002011-10-25T08:59:14.031-07:00Survive and Thrive with a Bad Manager<div class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">I Quit!</span></b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2e9pcvNypFqz48zgQNW_dl-Nusy07Y6WpfyNNvxULc73JzSW8lOJb1F6vVVVZljtlTQP1xAVOHSu4hSEGd7eXWY0FvedusQw7bGmtQJCZ8mD7BK5nzxSd-IjN0yWxdLYk3AJ-C2nojv8/s1600/Bad+Manager+picture.gif" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2e9pcvNypFqz48zgQNW_dl-Nusy07Y6WpfyNNvxULc73JzSW8lOJb1F6vVVVZljtlTQP1xAVOHSu4hSEGd7eXWY0FvedusQw7bGmtQJCZ8mD7BK5nzxSd-IjN0yWxdLYk3AJ-C2nojv8/s200/Bad+Manager+picture.gif" width="131" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Early in my career, I joined a startup that went IPO. The company was trying to figure out how to scale revenues and operations. I was in technical support and our tiny 10 person department was feeling the stress from a growing customer base with buggy products. While the chaotic, responsive nature of supporting customers really excited me, my manager, who we’ll call Frank, made my life miserable. In short, he redeployed resources <i>away </i>from supporting customers <i>instead</i> to work on “pet projects” that made him look good in front of the <a href="http://execcatalyst.blogspot.com/2011/09/get-what-you-want-from-executives.html" target="_blank">Sales executives</a>. Since I was the guy that was “left behind,” his reallocation of resources effectively doubled my workload and made it extremely challenging (what felt like ten-fold) for me to be responsive to customer needs. Worse yet, Frank kept beating on me about<i> my</i> productivity. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">I loved my job. I was learning, making good money and people told me I was great with customers. However, Frank increasingly made my job unbearable over a 15 month period and my anger and frustration was spilling into my personal life. When Frank was promoted to Director, I thought for sure I was “cooked” because his work priorities were more visible in the company and therefore I expected my situation to get even worse (if that was even possible). Just as I started planning how I would resign, something absolutely unexpected and wonderful happened… I got a<i> new</i> manager! Sherry transferred from the Engineering team and now reported to Frank as a 1<sup>st</sup> level manager. Previously, Sherry and I collaborated on several customer escalations and we had a good rapport. She was very metrics and process oriented. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">After a few weeks in her new role, Sherry called me into her office. I sat down in her guest chair and she turned her computer screen around so I could see it. She had a dashboard that showed I was the most productive member on the team! She then proceeded to tell me that I was doing a great job (fielding and closing the most customer cases in the department) and to keep it up. Over the next 18+ months, I implemented training programs, worked closely with Engineering to improve the products, all while continuing to deliver support and excel with customers. I really hit my stride and leveraged those experiences and strong business contributions get to my <a href="http://execcatalyst.blogspot.com/2011/06/dont-make-wrong-case-three-worst.html" target="_blank">next big role</a>.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Things are Clearer on the “High Road”</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">It’s hard to be rational when you’re under attack. A natural reaction would have been for me to lash out and defend myself against Frank or on the opposite end of the spectrum, to crawl up in a ball and continue to <a href="http://execcatalyst.blogspot.com/2011/05/fear-of-conflict-terminal-paralysis-of.html" target="_blank">absorb the abuse</a>. Here are some steps you can take to gain control of your circumstance and come out with a stronger career position:<o:p></o:p></span></div><ol><li><b><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Stay focused on improving your skills</span></b><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"> – if you enjoy your work content, keep developing your functional and (if applicable) technical skills. Knowledge and experience are key to growing your career. If you stay focused on learning and doing the best job that you can then you’ll also build up your reputation. Just as your “bad manager” may have you under his microscope, consider that everyone else you interact with is also watching how you handle yourself. Are you perceived as hard working and dependable? Many of them may not even be aware of your dire situation so maintaining a good professional reputation is important because that will follow you wherever you go. Spending any amount of time playing “victim” will be counterproductive and slow down your development. One bad (manager) relationship doesn’t define who you are so keep things in <i>that</i> perspective.</span></li>
<li><b><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Fight personal agendas with facts</span></b><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"> – Numbers don’t lie so make certain that you are able to quantify your productivity and work quality according to how you’re being measured. Whatever your manager is criticizing you about, the best way to move from <i>subjectivity </i>to <i>objectivity</i> is to get metrics-oriented. This is the first step in getting on the same page with him or her. Your metrics ultimately tie to departmental goals and objectives that are also quantifiable. Make sure that your work is <i>measurable </i>and <i>aligned</i> to those objectives. Finally, many disagreements have to do with <a href="http://www.execcatalyst.com/uploads/executive_communicatorND.pdf" target="_blank">hidden personal agendas</a>. Get to know what your manager’s personal agenda is and decide whether or not it conflicts with your value system. In his book, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/True-North-Discover-Authentic-Leadership/dp/0787987514/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1305046491&sr=8-1" target="_blank">True North</a>, Bill George discusses the need for every leader to get a hold of his/her “Internal Compass” and how professional failures are quite often associated with compromises in their “values and principles.” My compass was pointing away from Frank’s but completely in line with Sherry’s.</span></li>
<li><b><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Find supporters</span></b><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"> – Although I felt isolated under Frank’s attack, because I had strong working relationships with most others, I was pretty confident that he wouldn’t fire me. Generate support from within your department and also inter-departmentally, especially with your managers’ peers. Make sure that they experience and observe you <i>directly </i>and not just through the “filter” of your bad manager. This up-swell of “fans” will counteract the opinion of your bad manager. Additionally, I was fortunate when Sherry became my manager because she created a shield between me and Frank. I knew she had high regard for my work ethic and contributions and would protect me from further unfair accusations by Frank.</span></li>
<li><b><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Run a marathon, not a sprint</span></b><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"> – Marathon runners are able to endure a lot of pain between mile 1 and 26. They train their bodies and minds to perform under adverse conditions and to get past that pain. Your current circumstance is just one stage in your (career) marathon where you are being tested. Be patient and try to work through your situation. Leaders learn as much from adversity (sometimes more) than when everything is going their way. If you make a quick to move (i.e. transfer out or even quit) then you’ll be robbing yourself of a great learning opportunity. My management and leadership style was significantly shaped from the negative behaviors I observed in Frank and other <i>bad </i>managers. While you can learn a lot from a good manager, it’s the bad ones that teach you what <i>not</i> to do.</span></li>
</ol><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">I had a great 3+ year run at the company, both professionally and financially. I’m glad I didn’t “pack up” and quit while under duress because I wasn’t getting along with Frank. I endured his management tactics and when he eventually moved into a Sales role, I was happy that I “outlived” him. It really would have been a shame to prematurely quit a good job. Instead, I left on my own terms - and for a much better opportunity than I would have gotten after only about a year of experience.</span><br />
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</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">If you have any good stories of how you overcame bad management or what you’ve learned from bad managers, please comment and share this blog with your colleagues using the social media toolbar below.<o:p></o:p></span></div>ExecCatalysthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11932658642739412963noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5439556066804219562.post-66072966052484668312011-10-13T09:40:00.000-07:002011-10-13T10:03:27.261-07:00A Precious (free) Gift from Steve Jobs: Communicate with Impact<div class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">11 Million Views and Counting…</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">With the unfortunate passing of Steve Jobs last week, most people immediately think of his companies (Apple, Next, Pixar) and product innovations (Mac, iPod/ iTunes, iPhone, iPad) as his greatest contributions to modern society. However, his passing has brought even more attention to one of his most famous public appearances. In 2005, Steve Jobs spoke at Stanford University’s commencement ceremony and delivered an inspiring and memorable speech</span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">. In less than 15 minutes, the speech conveys a lot of wisdom and was particularly relevant to the audience of young people just starting their professional careers. He advised on important decisions about character, priorities, relationships, and more.<o:p></o:p></span></div><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/UF8uR6Z6KLc" width="424"></iframe><br />
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</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">There’s no simple scientific formula that would enable someone to replicate exactly what Steve Jobs did in those 15 minutes. That said, Steve makes very effective use of some high-impact communication techniques that you can leverage to <a href="http://execcatalyst.blogspot.com/2011/06/dont-make-wrong-case-three-worst.html" target="_blank">advance your career</a> by improving your speeches, presentations, and even one-on-one communication.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">“Hook” Your Audience</span></b><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">More often than not, people start presentations with something soft, bland, and procedural. <i>“I’m Mike Johnson, Vice President of Channels, and for the next 20 minutes I’m going to talk to you about our 2012 Channel Strategy.”</i> Yawn. These kinds of intros often <i>feel</i> necessary to speakers, but they don’t immediately engage your audience. And keep in mind, your audience is probably used to video-on-demand on airplanes, DVRs, and internet content that lets them switch, in only seconds, from boring content to engaging content. If you don’t engage them from the outset, while they may physically remain in the room, their minds will be “surfing” to other places.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">A <i>hook </i>is a communication technique designed to engage the audience, and it can take the form of a personal story, a controversial statement, a quote, or a question to the audience. Steve Jobs spends one sentence to say <i>“Thank you I’m honored to be with you,”</i> and then goes <i>immediately</i> into a hook to engage the audience. <i>“Truth be told, I never graduated from college.”</i> What a great way to get people’s attention at a college commencement speech!<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">People Remember Stories</span></b><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">At 00:50, Steve explains that he’s going to tell 3 stories, which highlights another powerful communication technique: storytelling. Stories are memorable, so if you want people to recall key points in your presentation, use stories. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Steve also uses a couple of techniques that help increase the impact and richness of his stories. First, he shows <i>vulnerability</i>. Anyone who’s been in high-tech for a few years has heard people tell self-aggrandizing stories about their unbridled success. As an audience, when we hear those kinds of stories we tend to see the speaker as egotistical and phony. Why? Because we’re all human and we all have weaknesses. And most importantly, those stories don’t really engage the audience. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">By contrast, Steve Jobs, one of the most spectacularly successful and innovative people of our time, describes how he was given up for adoption as a child, and passed on by a couple who decided that they wanted to adopt a girl. This vulnerability helps us relate to him and draws us in. Later on, he also describes why he got fired by Apple’s Board and how that was the <i>best </i>thing that could have happened to him.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">He also uses <i>first person dialog,</i> meaning that he uses specific direct quotes rather than simply characterizing what was said. At 1:45, he describes how the hospital called his parents-to-be and said “<i>We’ve got an unexpected baby boy. Do you want him?</i>” While the linguistic difference is subtle, the impact is much stronger than if he had said “<i>The hospital called, said they had an unexpected baby boy, and asked if my parents wanted him.</i>” Use <i>first person dialog</i> to make your stories more vivid.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Perils of the Podium</span></b><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">He may not have had a choice in whether or not to use a podium. In general, in our speaking engagements, we avoid podiums when possible because they tend to restrict and limit you as a speaker. Not only do they create additional physical separation from the audience, they tend to dampen hand gestures, restrict physical movement, and lessen eye contact with the audience. You can see this in Steve Jobs’s speech – he uses very few hand gestures, never leaves the podium, and has to deliberately force himself to look up periodically to re-establish eye contact with the audience. Granted, some of this naturally flows from the fact that he’s reading prepared remarks, but in general, we’d recommend that you either avoid podiums when possible, or be conscious of their limitations and try to compensate in other ways.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Authenticity</span></b><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">More than technique, what makes a great speaker and a great presentation is <i>authenticity</i>, meaning “true to one’s own personality, spirit, or character.” Get comfortable being yourself when you communicate. People dislike and distrust fakers, posers, and phonies. In politics, you hear candidates’ authenticity evaluated when people use phrases like “comfortable in his own skin.” <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Steve Jobs comes across as extremely <i>real</i> in the commencement speech – not as a game-show host, not as a master thespian, not even as the all-powerful founder and CEO of Apple and certainly not as a phony. One great example is at 4:00 when he talks about his love for typography and says “<i>It was beautiful…historical…artistically subtle in a way that science can’t capture, and I found it fascinating.”</i> You can <i>feel</i> his passion and curiosity, and it helps you understand him as a person. You feel like you know him, and that the person up there in front of the crowd is the same person he’d be if you met him for coffee.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Metaphor</span></b><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Metaphor is a powerful tool that can both increase your audience’s understanding of your point and enhance the dynamism of your content. Steve uses metaphor multiple times during the speech, like at 7:20 when, in talking about being fired from Apple, he says “<i>The heaviness of success was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner.”</i> You can almost <i>feel</i> the weight of Jobs’ success at Apple, and the airy freedom when he started over. At 8:15, when he says “<i>Sometimes, life is going to hit you in the head with a brick,”</i> you feel a sense of suddenness, surprise, violence, and pain. It’s compelling and memorable, and that’s why you should thoughtfully use metaphor in your communications including metaphorical language and metaphorical images in your presentation slides.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Bring it Home</span></b><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Just like the weak and boring openings described above, we’ve all seen (and probably delivered) regrettable closes to otherwise decent presentations: <i>“Well, that’s my last slide,” “I’m just about out of time but I can take a couple of questions</i>,” etc. These kinds of closes aren’t memorable, don’t reinforce your point, and don’t maintain the engagement of your audience. For his closing hook at 14:28, Steve uses a pithy quote, “<i>Stay hungry. Stay foolish.”</i> to put a memorable and inspiring finish on his remarks that reinforces the messages of his three stories.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Steve Jobs was a unique and incredible person whose legacy includes fundamental transformations of major industries including consumer electronics, personal computing, music publishing, movie production, and more. While there will probably never be another Steve Jobs, we can all take advantage of the techniques he used in one of the most memorable and widely-viewed speeches of his career.<br />
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<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Master Executive Communication and Presentation<o:p></o:p></span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.execcatalyst.com/" target="_blank">Exec<i>Catalyst</i></a> has partnered with <a href="http://www.hendersongroup.com/" target="_blank">The Henderson Group</a> to create a unique 2-day communication and presentation skills workshop designed for mid and senior level high-tech professionals. <a href="http://www.execcatalyst.com/uploads/executive_communicatorND.pdf" target="_blank">Executive Communicator</a> teaches attendees how to influence executive decisions through more effective dialog and presentations according to Line of Business priorities. One Marketing Director said:<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><i>"This course exceeded my expectations, and I found several elements of extreme value. The most beneficial aspect was the quadruple-barrel feedback circle -- self-assessment, peer assessment, executive assessment and presenter expert assessment. I also compliment the feedback quality of the instructors. The powerful combination of the executives, and communicator expert cannot be overstated. Further, the video provides an immensely rich and relevant tool for participants to tie it all together."</i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Please share your thoughts on Steve Job’s presentation style and technique by commenting. You can also share this blog with your colleagues using the social media toolbar below.<o:p></o:p></span></div>ExecCatalysthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11932658642739412963noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5439556066804219562.post-38705124636397505992011-09-28T08:10:00.000-07:002011-09-28T09:37:12.615-07:00Get What YOU Want from Executives<div class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">An Accidental Enemy<o:p></o:p></span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Dean was a startup colleague of mine from a few years back. As the Vice President of Alliances he was successful in creating a partner channel that boosted our revenues. I always found him to be smart, engaging, and approachable, which I’m sure contributed in part to his success in building relationships. That’s why I was so surprised one day when he called me with a problem.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">“He literally won’t speak to me,” said Dean. Although I had since moved on to my next role, I’m glad he felt comfortable calling me for advice. Apparently in trying to help the organization as well as to help a peer executive, Dean had created a professional enemy on the executive team, possibly permanently. The irony that a person who had developed hundreds of successful organizational alliances had created such a determined enemy dumbfounded me. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Dean explained that in his efforts to recruit new alliance partners, he’d been asking the Product team to invest in developing connectors to third-party platforms. His requests always fell to the bottom of the priority list, so they were rarely addressed in the product. This connectivity was Dean’s #1 priority. Being a motivated and creative leader, Dean found the perfect partner to build connectors. Their references were solid, rates were reasonable, and they could address Dean’s needs while taking low-priority grunt-work off of Engineering’s plate. This was a “win-win” if ever there was one!<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">He shared the plan with the executive team at the next staff meeting, expecting a warm reception for the idea. Instead, a tornado of questions swirled around the room.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">CEO: “We added 15 engineers last quarter. Why can’t they build the interfaces?”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br />
</span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">VP of Sales: “Is our platform so complex that we have to go to third party specialists just to integrate it with other applications?”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br />
</span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">COO: “Who’s going to manage the partner who does the work?”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br />
</span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">CFO: “Whose budget does this come from? Is this already in the expense plan?”</span></i><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br />
</span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Then the VP of Engineering became extremely defensive, and couldn’t address the pros or cons of Dean’s plan because he had never seen it. The tense meeting concluded, and most of the executives left the room feeling concerned about dysfunction in the team, and wondering if there was a problem in Engineering. That’s when the VP of Engineering decided he would never speak to Dean again. From his perspective, Dean had executed a frontal assault on his leadership, his product and technology, his team, and his process. To him, that was inexcusable.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Executive Empathy<o:p></o:p></span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/empathy" target="_blank">Empathy</a> is something we all practice consciously or subconsciously in our closest personal relationships. But somehow that gets left at home when we head off to work. “Putting yourself in others’ shoes” significantly impacts the way we interact with, react, and respond to others. In his book <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Blink-Power-Thinking-Without/dp/0316010669/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1317222124&sr=8-1" target="_blank">Blink</a>, Malcolm Gladwell highlights a <a href="http://www.malpracticeinsuranceagency.com/blog/blink-malcolm-gladwell/" target="_blank">study that supports this</a></span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">. In a nutshell, <i>patients don’t sue doctors that they like</i>. Doctors who engaged with patients and showed empathy were far less likely to be sued for malpractice, irrespective of other factors like training and education and even whether they were at fault. Empathy <i>works</i>.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Executive Empathy puts this concept in the context of an executive. And the point isn’t to “Think like <i>an</i> executive.” The point is to “Think like <i>each</i> executive.” Every business function has different metrics they manage to. Marketing is primarily measured on metrics like lead volumes and sales pipeline. Finance cares about revenue accounting and forecasting, balance sheet, and cash flow. Services is accountable for revenue from services, margin, consultant utilization and customer satisfaction. So while every executive wants the company to be “successful,” they view problems and opportunities through different lenses because they’re <i>measured</i> differently. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Beyond that, there are natural “conflicting interests” that arise from each executive’s metrics. For example, Sales is accountable for revenue, and in most situations doesn’t care a lot about how much money is spent to generate that revenue, whereas the CFO and CMO operate within fixed budgets and have to be careful about overspending. Add in the fact that each executive has their own “hot buttons,” their own leadership style for example, directive vs. consensus driven. Moreover, every executive has personality and character traits that influence their decision making process. You can see that executive empathy is complex. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Stephen Covey recommends “<i><a href="https://www.stephencovey.com/7habits/7habits-habit5.php" target="_blank">Seek first to understand, then to be understood</a></i>.” </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">However, in the fast paced high-tech business environment, people’s natural tendency is to <i>advocate</i> first and <i>understand</i> second, which usually works <i>against </i>their ability to influence executives. Furthermore, they tend to advocate for things from <i>their</i> perspective. While they don’t deliberately ignore others’ perspectives, they don’t <i>seek to understand and empathize</i> either, and that’s a missed opportunity. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">If you want to <a href="http://execcatalyst.blogspot.com/2011/06/dont-make-wrong-case-three-worst.html" target="_blank">advance in your career</a>, you must be able to <i>influence</i> executives, so executive empathy is essential. In Dean’s case, his lack of executive empathy turned a great idea into professional failure. He could have strengthened his relationship with the VP of Engineering and made them both look like heroes. Instead the result was public embarrassment that left him with an enemy on the executive team.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Nurture, not Nature<o:p></o:p></span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">The good news is that you don’t need to be born with executive empathy. It’s definitely a learned skill that you can continually refine. This is one of the key elements of our <a href="http://www.execcatalyst.com/uploads/executive_communicatorND.pdf" target="_blank">Executive Communicator</a> 2-day workshop. To date, attendee feedback has been unanimously positive. In fact, a <st1:stockticker w:st="on">CIO</st1:stockticker> said “I would have everyone on my 200 person team go through this training so that they can communicate and effectively influence executive decisions.” Executive communication isn’t something you want to learn in <i>remedial</i> training after making a public mistake. And for managers, don’t wait until someone on your team has flamed out in front of an executive audience before making this this important investment in their success… and ultimately yours.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">If you have any good stories of a “CLM” (Career Limiting Moment) in front of an executive audience, or insights or highlights to share, please comment below and share this blog with your colleagues using the social media toolbar below.<o:p></o:p></span></div>ExecCatalysthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11932658642739412963noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5439556066804219562.post-23952257325653561642011-08-31T12:58:00.000-07:002011-08-31T13:38:03.222-07:00Right Actor, Wrong “Stage”: Don’t Get Setup for Failure<div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><b>"Death of a Salesman"</b></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">“Tim starts next Monday!” said the CEO at our startup. He had called my mobile over the weekend to share the good news. I was thrilled. Tim was a new Sales executive we had hired to scale up our Sales team and our revenues with it. I had interviewed him and found him to be a very competent professional with deep Sales experience, and on top of all that, he was a genuinely nice and likable guy. But most importantly, he had “<i>been there and done that.”</i> He had come from a major, publicly-traded software company to our small startup having played a key role in getting them from $50M in revenues to well over $500M in only a couple of years. Tim knew how to scale Sales, and that’s <i>exactly</i> what we wanted him to do for us.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">18 months later, Tim was gone. I was professionally disappointed and personally sad to see him go. Our sales volumes had grown and Tim had personally closed some very large deals that proved our solution delivered high value to very big companies. But our revenues had not grown as fast as the Board plan called for, and the conclusion was that Tim just wasn’t scaling things fast enough.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Stage-relevant Skill Sets</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/execcatalyst#p/a/u/0/t9zrHvq_gmY" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" height="257" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiiJn0RUzitlhfJqx6FWeR1aaehqCqOY625CFBGOv7EAufKv_sIH6VS_IQPxGprFF-PzEW-VL0FQHnA00Q0gDrnThjVCKzvKMMZrRvKVY8AdM_dPbpDw7sM48zxhPSJAt5ZsaM3hcQZR1g/s320/Tom+Kippola+Flipchart.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Looking back on it now, I’ve come to realize that the problem wasn’t Tim, and it wasn’t the company, or the product. The best explanation I’ve ever heard for the<i> real</i> problem was what Tom Kippola from The Chasm Group defines as “Stage-Relevant Skill Sets.” Tom illustrates this concept very eloquently in <a href="http://www.youtube.com/execcatalyst#p/a/u/0/t9zrHvq_gmY" target="_blank">this video</a> from <a href="http://execcatalyst.blogspot.com/2011/08/dont-be-accidental-leader.html" target="_blank">Catalyze 2011</a>.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">It’s pretty typical in Silicon Valley for investors and executives (including me in the prior example) to want to “hire ahead of the curve” in terms of skill sets in key roles. When we hired Tim, we significantly modified our go-to-market model <i>while</i> attempting to execute the rapid-sales-growth plan that the Board had signed off on. We changed pricing and packaging, repositioned our services, redefined our market/ competition, and completely revised the way we engaged partners. Some of these mini-experiments were successful. A few were not. The two key issues are so clear to me now: 1) Tim had a proven track record in <i>scaling Sales once a repeatable model was defined and proven</i> and 2) Tim did NOT have experience with <i>iterating and experimenting with go-to-market models in search of repeatability</i>. The company initially took it on faith that the model <i>could</i> scale, and added Tim so that it <i>would</i> scale. In summary: We hired Tim too early, because his skill set was relevant to the company’s <i>next</i> stage, not its <i>current</i> stage.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Successful Transitions<o:p></o:p></span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Consider the opposite challenge, which is also common in Silicon Valley, where you have people in key roles – Marketing, Product Management, Services, Sales, Engineering who have great skills for the early stages of company growth, but have to transition as the company succeeds and moves on to the next stage. Can the product manager who was great at building 1:1 relationships with a handful of lighthouse customers and an Engineering team of 5 continue success when she has requirements coming from hundreds of customers that need to be integrated, prioritized, and managed into a 60-person Engineering team organized into 5 discrete groups? Maybe. Maybe not.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Water-skiing is a very good metaphor to describe the challenge of this transition. If you’ve ever water-skied, you know that the basics are pretty simple. Floating in the water with your skis vertical while you’re waiting for the boat to take off is easy. And once you’re up and out of the water and moving fast, staying on your skis in smooth water is easy (and a lot of fun, by the way). But <i>transitioning from floating in the water to getting up on your skis</i> is extremely challenging. The boat takes off at high speed, the handle starts pulling you forward fast and hard, and you have to maintain your grip on the handle and balance while your skis slowly emerge as you come out of the water, and during this time, water is pushing your skis apart and flooding your chest and face making it athletically challenging let alone physically hazardous.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Startup-to-Enterprise transitions (and vice versa) can be the same way for high-potential individuals and leaders, and it’s not just an issue for executives. It’s an issue at every level of the organization. Even large organizations go through changes that challenge the stage-relevance of every employee's skills. Part of what we do at <a href="http://www.execcatalyst.com/" target="_blank">Exec<i>Catalyst</i></a> is to help people and teams make those transitions successfully. So in the waterskiing example, it’s helping professionals understand 1) how things will be different - measurement, processes, skill-sets, etc. when you’re up and out of the water and 2) how to manage the challenges of each transition - so that you’re not left floating and choking, stuck in the water as the boat pulls away.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">In addition to “Company Stage,” other critical transitions include:<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;"></div><ul><li><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><a href="http://execcatalyst.blogspot.com/2011/06/how-to-nail-your-interview.html" target="_blank">Business Stage</a> (Startup, Turnaround, Sustaining Success, and Realignment)</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Job function (from technical role to business role)</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><a href="http://execcatalyst.blogspot.com/2011/06/dont-make-wrong-case-three-worst.html" target="_blank">Level in the organization</a> (when you get promoted)</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Mergers and acquisitions</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">New manager and reorgs</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Geography and culture</span></li>
</ul><br />
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">If you think you or your team could use some help managing through these kinds of change, please <a href="http://www.execcatalyst.com/About_Us.html" target="_blank">contact us</a>. We welcome your comments below and any examples of stage-relevant matches and mis-matches. And as always, if you like this content, please share it with your colleagues using the social media toolbar below.</span></div>ExecCatalysthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11932658642739412963noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5439556066804219562.post-79595189354808396132011-08-23T11:59:00.000-07:002011-08-23T12:04:53.041-07:00Don't Be an "Accidental" Leader<div class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Leadership Matters</span></b><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">I was a new manager at Oracle when I found out I had been selected as part of a group to get to meet face-to-face with Ray Lane, Oracle’s COO and #2 to Larry Ellison at the time. He gave a short presentation and took questions from the audience and I was amazed at his ability to thoroughly address any question ranging from detailed issues in specific geographies to strategic matters like Microsoft’s intentions in the enterprise database market. A few years later, Oracle announced that he was leaving the company. Oracle lost $8B in market-cap the next day. As a young manager, the headline for me was that “Leadership <i>Matters</i>.” Leaders like that are hard to find, and they aren’t developed overnight.</span><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: black; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-color: black; border-bottom-style: none; border-bottom-width: 1pt; border-left-color: black; border-left-style: none; border-left-width: 1pt; border-right-color: black; border-right-style: none; border-right-width: 1pt; border-top-color: black; border-top-style: none; border-top-width: 1pt; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 0pt; line-height: 115%; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in;"> </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Hot Topic in Silicon Valley</span></b><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6w2cvlL_Fvif4Yahu223qMCkF1F7aVYVr4IfUeCWK3yn7nF6bs7mdkEATOLozXsZVMoUpiM764X4eU_OFEZTCgzlUpxAXY8SWv_uuLG9WtQ7LnWqiE4CdNWpdYkKFcECPlSzPRdLBaU8/s1600/Catalyze+2011+-+Networking+2.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6w2cvlL_Fvif4Yahu223qMCkF1F7aVYVr4IfUeCWK3yn7nF6bs7mdkEATOLozXsZVMoUpiM764X4eU_OFEZTCgzlUpxAXY8SWv_uuLG9WtQ7LnWqiE4CdNWpdYkKFcECPlSzPRdLBaU8/s320/Catalyze+2011+-+Networking+2.JPG" width="320" /></a><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Last Wednesday evening, <a href="http://www.execcatalyst.com" target="_blank">Exec<i>Catalyst</i></a></span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"> hosted a high-tech Executive Leadership forum at the Four Seasons in Palo Alto. It was “standing room only” full of Directors, VPs and C-level execs from market leaders like Salesforce, Oracle, Cisco, National Semiconductor, SAP, Informatica, VMware as well as hot startups like Gluster, Host Analytics, Kapow, KXEN, Intacct, Milyoni, Turnitin, and others. The event topic <i>“Succeeding in the Era of the High-Tech Leadership Paradox”</i> even drew leaders across many industries - from the pharmaceutical industry, health care, manufacturing, renewable energy and also from major leadership organizations including <a href="http://www.montejade.org/" target="_blank">Monte Jade</a></span> <span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">and <a href="http://www.ascendleadership.org/" target="_blank">Ascend</a></span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">. As new software delivery models including SaaS, cloud computing, and open source fuel the frenetic pace of business, these leaders came to explore new approaches to “make room for strategy” while managing time spent on operational and tactical delivery. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">“Leadership Development is Deliberate”</span></b><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"> <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Heidi Melin, EVP and CMO at <a href="http://www.taleo.com/" target="_blank">Taleo</a> </span></span><span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">was one of 4 high-profile executive panelists. Check out <a href="http://www.youtube.com/execcatalyst#p/u/2/2uegwM7g7Ds" target="_blank">this video</a> as she responds to the question “How do you manage strategy vs. execution in a fast moving SaaS company?”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br />
</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/execcatalyst#p/a/u/2/2uegwM7g7Ds" target="_blank" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="187" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizW8q-F1cnk1-WyXIJgm1bgSSWj6NPX_qzbQ0DsLRP4lr3HV5_IFocMdY_MPBvZJyQRNaCAJdwxO2SxqxNRrc8Ua0ppzgWmz3nmlHadCbwkfrKDTjDdIIQTSIKo275jquKP94dluaWln0/s320/Heidi+Melin+Panel.jpg" width="320" /></a><span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Her point that leadership development is deliberate really struck me. High-tech certainly does moves fast and the pace even seems to be accelerating. I’ve seen many managers and even organizations ignore the need for <i>deliberate</i> development of high potential leaders. But leadership development won’t happen <i>by accident</i> while you and your team are busy executing against your task list. It takes prioritization, commitment, and investment – <i>deliberate</i> activity. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br />
</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">I was very fortunate early in my career when Oracle invested in <i>my</i> leadership development. It only happened because my EVP, Randy Baker, had the vision and commitment to invest in developing every manager in his 5,000+ organization. He made it<i> his</i> priority, committing time and dollars to leadership development programs. Over the course of 1 year, I spent 2 weeks out of the office and away from the business while attending leadership training. Huddled up with 40 other managers, I thought, “Wow, Oracle is investing quite a lot of money and time into us!” Years later, I reconnected with Randy, and he shared with me <i>“</i></span></span><i><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">The realization that in order to be successful as an organization we needed to develop a 'culture' of teamwork and that once operational, it would be obvious to other organizations in Oracle and more importantly our customers.”</span></i><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"> <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br />
</span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Leaders are patient and intentional to set up and measure the hard, fast ROI. Randy continued, <i>“Were the results measurable? Absolutely! We had all the measurements in place that demonstrated positive results on all fronts, most importantly customer and employee satisfaction- the drivers of everything. I could pull up, in my office, the customer and employee satisfaction for any manager in support worldwide! All this data was updated quarterly.”</i> <i><o:p></o:p></i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><i><br />
</i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Intuitively, every <i>good</i> manager has an internal compass that justifies investment in developing talent and building leaders. However, <i>great </i>managers <i>act</i> on the obvious and make investments today that will pay big dividends in the future. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">If you like what you read from Exec<i>Catalyst</i>, please share it with your friends on Twitter, Facebook, and elsewhere using the “sharing toolbar” below.<span class="apple-converted-space"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div>ExecCatalysthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11932658642739412963noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5439556066804219562.post-38186225335612675192011-08-10T08:04:00.000-07:002011-08-10T09:06:32.407-07:00Avoid Career-Damaging Job Transitions - Part 2: Hit the Ground Running<div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">In last week’s blog post, we focused on <a href="http://execcatalyst.blogspot.com/2011/07/avoid-career-damaging-job-transitions.html" target="_blank">assessing with clarity whether an opportunity is the right fit for you.</a></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"> In this post, we will explore how best to approach your on-boarding into a new company so you get traction quickly.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">A Very Rough Landing<o:p></o:p></span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">She came in with the reputation of a corporate “rock star.” We’ll call her Paula. She was considered a key player at a highly successful applications company and widely credited with helping to build up an Alliances program that had exceeded its target metrics for six years in a row and in some ways was the envy of the industry. People talked in the hallways during her first week. “That’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">her</i>. That’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Paula</i>. She’s the one who’s here to ramp up our Alliances.”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">I was in the leadership meeting when she was “given the floor” to talk about her plans. She leaned back in her chair, talked about how she would bring in her playbook, and immediately outlined how she would revamp the partner program to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">drive more partnership fees</i>. There was an awkward silence that she didn’t appear to notice, and I could tell by the looks on people’s faces that they were having the same reaction I was. At our company, we were trying to drive more revenue <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">with</i> partners, not <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">from</i> partners. The “myth” shattered fairly quickly as people realized that she thrived under a different game-plan and set of objectives that were <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">nothing like ours</i>. She lost the confidence of the team and never recovered from her early misstep.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">“Non-Portable Assets”</span></b><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Your on-boarding process is a <a href="http://www.amazon.com/First-90-Days-Critical-Strategies/dp/1591391105/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1305236232&sr=8-1" target="_blank">compressed 90 day period</a> for you to secure “quick wins” and cement your <a href="http://execcatalyst.blogspot.com/2011/05/fear-of-conflict-terminal-paralysis-of.html" target="_blank">leadership position</a> in the company. And when you’ve had a great track record of success, it’s natural to assume that it was entirely due to your own talents and hard work. While talent and hard work count for a lot, the fast-pace and pressure of the high-tech workplace and the wildly-different corporate styles and individual personalities are also significant factors in determining your success or failure. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">What steps can you take to make sure that you avoid stepping into potholes or tripping up on stumbling blocks that will derail your success in your new company?</i><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><br />
</i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">It starts with the concept of “non-portable assets.” While you can take your talent and work ethic anywhere, you may not realize how many <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">non-portable assets</i> you have that made you successful in your previous role. And just like your desk phone and your file cabinet, these things stay behind at your old job, and are replaced with new ones at your new job. You simply can’t take them with you. Recreating them in a new role essentially amounts to “learning the system” – adapting your skills and approach to the new environment. Here’s how to recreate these assets in your new role, so that your upward trajectory accelerates instead of stalling out in your new job:</span></div><div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;"></div><ul><li><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Your Reputation Is Yesterday’s News </span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">– Although your professional experience and accomplishments had everything to do with you getting your new job, they mean nothing to the people who you’ll be leading because they weren't there to see you in action. On your first day, your new manager will probably send a nice note to the department or company stating how excited he is to have you on board. He may even mention your great track record, citing some accomplishments that you probably scripted for him. But unless you’re a family member of the CEO, you’ll need to get big wins under your belt at the </span><i style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">new</i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"> company before you get that “rock star” designation that was previously so familiar. As new leader, your great success in prior roles doesn’t automatically get you on-the-ground and in-the-trenches respect. In fact, </span><i style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">raised</i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"> expectations will <a href="http://execcatalyst.blogspot.com/2011/06/perils-of-probationary-promotions.html" target="_blank">make success even harder for you to achieve.</a> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Leave your reputation in the past and focus on creating your new list of big wins.</span></li>
<li><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Be a “Student” First, a “Master” Second</span></b><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"> – When changing jobs, you know what it’s like to go from “having all of the answers” to “having all of the questions.” In your previous company, you knew <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">how to get things done</i> in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">that </i>environment i.e. people, process and tools. You also knew a lot about the product and market e.g. customers, competitors, etc. However, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">any</i> new company is going to be a step back for you on all of these fronts. On top of that, if you are changing industries, say from an on-premise database company to a SaaS applications company, you’ll be in a very steep ramp-up for a while. As eager as you are to make a big impact and as much as you may put pressure on yourself to quickly implement visible change, the worst thing you can do to is to make impulsive decisions without being fully informed. When I was at Hyperion Solutions, Jon Temple joined as the new head of field operations. He spent 3 months meeting with key managers and individual contributors before he laid out his master plan. He was in active learning mode and gathering facts about what worked well and what was broken. Jon’s investment to get the perspective of the team didn’t just help him make better decisions; it rallied people to get behind his plan because they knew it was a fully <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">informed</i> decision.</span></li>
<li><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Make Deposits in Your (Empty) Goodwill Bank Account - </span></b><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Driving big initiatives in any company requires strong collaboration and influence. But the ability to influence others is something that accrues <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">over time</i> e.g. when you help a colleague hit a critical deadline, when you adjust your priorities to support another organization, or when you give someone advice that makes them look like a corporate hero. Unless you’re working for a company where the <a href="http://kellblog.com/2011/05/19/a-fun-taxonomy-of-technology-executives/" target="_blank">executives are “getting the band back together”</a>, you don’t have any of that on Day 1, except that the people who hired you have a vested interest in you being successful. Think of it this way: you have zero “credits in the bank” (also known as “political capital”) and you have to rebuild your “account balance” (relationships, favors, etc.) to get back to the level of influence you had previously. Without support, you will have a hard, lonely, and treacherous path ahead. Make a list, or use the org chart to identify what individuals are most important to your success. Put a plan in place to use your ramp-up period to build those relationships and get some quick wins. And don’t over-commit. If you’re a new sales ops leader working with various sales executives, don’t ask for the laundry-list of things that could be improved and then commit to solve it all in only 30 days. Look for common pain points and pick one or two that you can address within a reasonable time frame. Then your “account balance” will begin to rise quickly.</span></li>
</ul><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Changing jobs presents great challenges and learning opportunities. And with some luck you make be in a perfect position to capitalize on that opportunity with the<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> next</i> Silicon Valley breakout company. However, there are no guarantees. Trying to replicate success by just repeating what worked for you before will jeopardize a positive, favorable outcome career-wise (a meaningful “stint”) and financially (stock option vesting). <a href="http://execcatalyst.blogspot.com/2011/07/avoid-career-damaging-job-transitions.html" target="_blank">Approach your next career transition with objective clarity</a></span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"> and a practical assessment of how your skills and experience will flourish in the “new system.” Sustainable leaders don’t let their egos get in the way of their own success. Instead, they adapt and even grow new leadership skills in all situations. Paula was able to make these adjustments in her next transition and the word on the street was that she acclimated well and was very successful.</span><br /><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">What other perspectives do you have in preparing for a successful on-boarding? We appreciate your comments.</span></div>ExecCatalysthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11932658642739412963noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5439556066804219562.post-26631979600617096172011-07-27T10:01:00.000-07:002011-11-28T09:17:33.039-08:00Avoid Career-Damaging Job Transitions - Part 1: Seeing with 20-20 Vision<div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">A High-Risk Career Move<o:p></o:p></span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Colin was 2<sup>nd</sup> in command on the high-powered marketing team of a hot, market-disrupting high-tech software company that was about to eclipse the $1B revenue mark. He had started as a Director and over the course of 4 years, established a solid track record and gained the trust of the CEO. His personal “stock” was at a career high, but he wanted more. He wanted to be the CMO, b</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">ut knew that would not happen in the near term so he decided to pack up his talents and take them elsewhere. </span><br />
<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">He joined an up-and-coming startup and got the CMO title and “executive staff” prestige he was looking for. However, within 5 months, he unceremoniously left the company after never really getting traction or having an impact at the new company.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">How can a smart, experienced, successful executive put his career at risk by making such a bad decision? Interestingly enough, this is an all-too-common occurrence in Silicon Valley. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">In Search of “Fame and Glory”<o:p></o:p></span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Let’s take a close look at some of the factors that cloud the vision of high-tech rock stars. Being heavily recruited can certainly boost your ego and fuel emotional-based decision making. Here are the “blind spots” to look out for so you are sure you make the best and most informed decision for your career based on a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">thorough</i> assessment.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;"></div><ul><li><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">The “Big Pay Day”</span></b><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">– It’s easy to get caught up in all the hype about your own success and role you played in your current company’s success – anxious to “monetize” your growing skill-set and contribution quickly. More money, more options, <a href="http://execcatalyst.blogspot.com/2011/06/perils-of-probationary-promotions.html" target="_blank">more responsibility</a></span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"> and a <a href="http://execcatalyst.blogspot.com/2011/06/negotiating-your-vp-title-when-changing.html" target="_blank">bigger title</a> at a new employer are hard to turn away from.</span></li>
<li><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Just give me the ball</span></b><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">! – The thrill of making game-changing decisions that dramatically impact the business gets your endorphins surging. However, the intense desire to finally be the “big cheese” and to “do it your way” can be a seed of impatience and even impulsiveness.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Symbol;"><span style="font: normal normal normal 7pt/normal 'Times New Roman';"> </span></span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">The grass is greener on the other side</span></b><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"> – Working at your current company for any period of time provides you with first-hand knowledge of all the warts and wrinkles. There are likely varying degrees of frustration on things you feel should be done faster or in a different way. As frustrations reach intolerable levels, you’re ready to make a move - perhaps prematurely.</span></li>
<li><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Follow the Leader</span></b><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"> – Having a <a href="http://execcatalyst.blogspot.com/2011/05/fear-of-conflict-terminal-paralysis-of.html" target="_blank">great manager</a> is one of the most important factors in your success and job satisfaction. So it’s natural to want to <a href="http://execcatalyst.blogspot.com/2011/05/difference-between-loyalty-and-cronyism.html" target="_blank">follow that manager</a> to her next role. The danger here is that you are easily swayed to join the company based on your manager’s reasons, not yours.</span></li>
</ul><br />
<div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Look Before You Leap<o:p></o:p></span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">In the fast paced high-tech industry, you are usually reacting to new opportunities that come onto your radar. This reactive, reflexive approach makes you a slave to the process that is being dictated by recruiters or the companies that are courting you. Here are some keys to help you take a proactive approach to your <a href="http://www.execcatalyst.com/Services.html" target="_blank:">career management</a>.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;"></div><ul><li><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Money Doesn’t Buy Success</span></b><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"> – Financial success is a big motivator in high-tech. But don’t just compare your last paystub with what’s in your new offer letter. Think about your finances over a 3-4 year horizon. Guaranteed cash comp, incentive comp, and options create complex earning potential scenarios. What’s your compensation growth potential in each role? What about things like employee stock purchase plan? Matching 401(k) programs? What are the growth prospects for each company and how will that affect each company's valuation? However, while figuring out which role and company puts you in the best position to make more money is an important task, it doesn’t really matter if you don’t <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">survive </i>through your vesting schedule i.e. like Colin.</span></li>
<li><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Don’t believe your own press – </span></b><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">It’s easy to get caught up in the excitement and ego gratification of being pursued by a new potential employer, but their enthusiasm to recruit you doesn’t mean that it’s the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">right</i> move. Get objective counsel. Use a trusted resource who doesn’t have any strong connections to your current or prospective employer. Everyone could benefit from getting a unique perspective to evaluate high-tech companies in the Valley and relate that to your goals and skill-set. Let them ask you tough questions to help clarify your thinking and get you away from the emotion and excitement frenzy.</span></li>
<li><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Patience is a virtue</span></b><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"> – Recruiters and potential employers will push you hard to make a decision quickly, maybe even with an “exploding” (expiring) offer letter. Those timelines are usually artificial so you should negotiate the decision timeframe that works for you and set expectations up front when you know the offer is coming. Switching companies is a huge decision and you should take the appropriate time you need to consider your options. You will have a different perspective when you have enough time to think it through “away from work.” You should assess whether a few changes in your current workplace would make you want to stay. In other words, if you could outlive the situation that is frustrating you (e.g. a bad manager, difficult co-workers, less than exciting work, etc.), being patient would pay off.</span></li>
<li><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Know what you “don’t know”</span></b><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"> – You know all of the unattractive things about your current workplace. Challenging personalities, bad decisions that have been made, frustrating processes and norms. You don’t know any of those things about the prospective employer, but you should <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">know that they exist</i>. Their special warts and wrinkles will inevitably surface as soon as your “honeymoon period” in the new role is over. Even if you’re the one calling the shots, “wiping the slate clean” in a new company doesn’t guarantee that everything will go your way, so be careful that you remain objective about the new opportunity in front of you. Moreover, investigate. Reach out to your LinkedIn network to see who’s worked there, can give you direct feedback, political insights, and if you are replacing someone, why did that person fail?</span><div class="MsoListParagraph" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div></li>
</ul><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Throughout the <a href="http://execcatalyst.blogspot.com/2011/06/how-to-nail-your-interview.html" target="_blank">interview process</a>, both sides are “showing their best.” In fact, you’re likely <a href="http://execcatalyst.blogspot.com/2011/07/get-offensive-in-your-interview.html" target="_blank">“playing the part”</a> so well that you’ve convinced yourself that it’s the perfect match. Force yourself to challenge everything at face value and to probe deeper to see if it still holds true. Unbalanced optimism tilts the scale toward unrealistic expectations that could lead to an abrupt, premature exit similar to Colin’s. There is no perfect job so having more of a “critical eye” will give you the 20-20 vision to clearly assess the pros and cons of each scenario.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">In next week’s blog post we will explore the potholes and stumbling blocks associated with on-boarding into a new company and role and how to avoid them so that you get traction quickly. Download our <a href="http://www.execcatalyst.com/uploads/ExecCatalyst_High-Tech_Job_Search_Advantage.pdf" target="_blank"><span style="color: #3778cd;">High-Tech Job Search Advantage Program</span></a><span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="color: #2f4867;"> </span>brochure to see more client service benefits.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><span class="apple-converted-space"><br />
</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">What other insights can you share on career-damaging job transitions? All comments are welcomed.</span></span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>ExecCatalysthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11932658642739412963noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5439556066804219562.post-58392193134064491752011-07-20T11:24:00.000-07:002011-07-20T11:49:21.976-07:00Interviewing: Fill in Your “Gaps” with Indirect Experience - Part 2<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">In <a href="http://execcatalyst.blogspot.com/2011/07/interviewing-fill-in-your-gaps-with.html" target="_blank">last week’s blog post</a>, I featured a successful enterprise Account Manager, William, trying to move into Marketing by <a href="http://execcatalyst.blogspot.com/2011/07/interviewing-fill-in-your-gaps-with.html" target="_blank">leveraging his indirect experience.</a> <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">I focused on becoming fluent in the “head knowledge” of the role you’re targeting. This post picks up from there to review specific techniques to use to secure the opportunity.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Making it Happen<o:p></o:p></span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">One of the great things about high-tech is that the door is wide open with plenty of opportunities to successfully make these kinds of moves - <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">if</i> you understand how to sell yourself throughout the interview process. Here are some strategies to complement the “head knowledge” so you can make your move:<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; tab-stops: list .5in; text-indent: -.25in;"></div><ul><li><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Be a good storyteller</span></b><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"> – Story-telling is one of the most powerful communication tools that you can use. One of our partners, <a href="http://www.hendersongroup.com/" target="_blank">The Henderson Group</a>, helps people master story-telling as part of their <a href="http://www.hendersongroup.com/selling/complete_comm.asp" target="_blank">Complete Communicator </a>class, which I attended recently and strongly recommend to anyone who wants to go from being a <i>good</i> communicator to being a <i>great</i> communicator. People relate to stories and remember them, and if you’ve been paying attention to people in the kind of role that you’re targeting, you should have some powerful stories to tell your interviewer. Focus on the positive, show empathy for the challenges of the position, and “name names,” especially if there are rock stars or role models in your company performing in your target role. In the example of William, he could mention his conversation with Nancy (a rock-star product marketer) about the highlights from the analyst tour as part of the last product launch. This would show that he’s already learning from people in the department i.e.that he’s “paying attention,” and getting exposure to aspects of Marketing that typical Sales people don’t often care to understand.</span></li>
<li><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Market Your Uniqueness </span></b><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">– If you focus on <a href="http://execcatalyst.blogspot.com/2011/06/how-to-nail-your-interview.html" target="_blank">positioning your uniqueness</a>, you can turn a perceived weakness (no experience in Marketing) into a strength (with great experience in Marketing’s biggest “internal customer,” which is Sales). William did a great job in his process talking about how as a salesperson, he used Marketing’s materials, training, product roadmaps and more. He showed how his “internal customer” perspective would make him a better marketer because he had a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">unique</i> understanding of the needs and challenges of a front-line salesperson. Now instead of his interviewer telling her colleagues “William has no Marketing experience,” she told people “William will bring much-needed front line <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Sales</i> perspective to our content and processes.” Huge home-run for William!</span></li>
<li><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Use the Team, and Use Your Manager</span></b><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"> – In the absence of direct experience, there will still be some doubts about your ability to perform in the target role, so <a href="http://execcatalyst.blogspot.com/2011/07/get-offensive-in-your-interview.html" target="_blank">be proactive</a> and talk about what you’ll need from the team and from your boss to get off to a fast start and be successful. Be careful here. Do not send the wrong message that “I’ll need a <u>lot</u> of help to pull this off,” but instead, show that you can own the game plan for your own success. In William’s example, he said “I know Mark has a lot of experience creating sales tools, so when I have to create one, I’ll draft an outline and get Mark’s feedback before I start writing.” This also tells your potential boss that he won’t have to “spoon feed” you in order to quickly ramp up. You can do this even if you’re moving into a new company and don’t know the new team members well. Talk about the different experiences and expertise that you’ll want to draw on from the team, and give examples of when and how you would efficiently leverage them for your ramp up.</span></li>
<li><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Find a friend on the “inside” – </span></b><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Do you know people in the team or department that you’re targeting? Get their feedback before starting any formal processes. Find out what concerns they or the hiring manager might have in considering you for the position. Let them know that you want to make a change, and why you’re excited about the role (and don’t complain about your current role). Find out what the big upcoming projects are, and what adjustments the organization has been making so that you’ll be <a href="http://execcatalyst.blogspot.com/2011/06/how-to-nail-your-interview.html" target="_blank">well-prepared for your interview</a>. If you can build a good relationship and get a supporter “on the inside,” they will advocate for you whenever anyone on the team asks whether you’d be a good fit for the job.</span></li>
</ul><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">William executed all of these strategies with great effectiveness. He made the transition into Product Marketing, and only 18 months later he <a href="http://execcatalyst.blogspot.com/2011/06/perils-of-probationary-promotions.html" target="_blank">was promoted </a>and was running the largest product launch in the company’s history. He’s had a very successful and rewarding career in Marketing since then, and it all started with his ability to make a major career move based on leveraging his <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">indirect</i></span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"> experience.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">This is all part of what we teach in our <a href="http://www.execcatalyst.com/uploads/ExecCatalyst_High-Tech_Job_Search_Advantage.pdf">High-Tech Job Search Advantage Program</a> for our clients.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br />
</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">We appreciate your thoughts, so please weigh in with your comments.</span></div>ExecCatalysthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11932658642739412963noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5439556066804219562.post-63777850774447548382011-07-13T07:49:00.000-07:002011-07-13T07:49:03.834-07:00Interviewing: Fill in Your “Gaps” with Indirect Experience – Part 1<div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">A Gutsy Lateral Move<o:p></o:p></span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">William had been a successful Enterprise Account Manager for 4 years. He was one of the young rising stars on the Sales team at the enterprise software company where we worked at the time. He had consistently made his quota in the challenging Central region, heavily concentrated with manufacturers whose businesses were in turmoil due to the growth of overseas manufacturing. I wasn’t the only person who thought that William was crazy to move from Sales into Product Marketing. He was making great money, had very strong account relationships, and had all of the skills for a very successful long-term run in Sales.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">However, William was thinking about his career. He liked selling and was good at it, but had a strong desire to be in a very strategic executive role. He believed that Marketing was a better path to that goal than Sales management. Nevertheless, he couldn’t afford to come in at an entry-level Marketing position because he would lose too much income at a time when his family was growing (note that Salary.com estimates an approximate <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">$30K reduction in salary</i> moving from a <a href="http://swz.salary.com/SalaryWizard/Account-Representative-Sr-Technology-Sales-Salary-Details-94065-Redwood-City-CA.aspx" target="_blank">Sr. Technology Sales role at $100K</a> to a <a href="http://swz.salary.com/SalaryWizard/Product-Marketing-Analyst-I-Salary-Details-94065-Redwood-City-CA.aspx" target="_blank">Product Marketing Analyst role at $69K</a> in the Bay Area). William had to figure out how to make a lateral move, preserving as much of his compensation and seniority as possible. Given that he didn’t have any hands-on, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">direct</i> experience in Marketing, what would he say in the interview when asked “What qualifications do you have to be a Senior Product Marketing Manager?”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Many high-tech professionals who are a few years along in their career path face this same challenge: <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">How do you get the job that you’ve never done before?</i> They get enough exposure to another job function or role know that they want it, but they have to try to make a lateral move with little or no direct experience to lean on. If you prepare properly and understand how your interviewer will make the decision, you can take yourself from dreading the “experience” question to <a _blank""="" href="http://execcatalyst.blogspot.com/2011/07/get-offensive-in-your-interview.html%20target=">anticipating and even embracing it.</a></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Positioning <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Indirect</i> Experience<o:p></o:p></span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">The answer for William was that he had to effectively position his <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">indirect</i> experience. Yes, he had never held a Marketing role, but he had worked <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">closely</i> with Marketing for years as part of the Sales team – through product launches, development of customer references in his accounts, sharing sales tools with his prospects, and even using competitive intelligence from Marketing to win deals. One key to success in any role is having the “head knowledge” to successfully execute that role. To convince your interviewer that you intellectually understand the role, do your homework on the target role in these key areas: <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst" style="mso-list: l1 level1 lfo2; tab-stops: list .5in; text-indent: -.25in;"></div><ul><li><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Understand the Key Metrics</span></b><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"> – How is the position measured, and how do those metrics fit into the way that the overall organization is measured? For example, if you are interviewing for a field marketing role, talk about “Cost per lead,” “Campaign response rates” or “Percentage of leads accepted by Sales.” This will leave a much stronger impression than talking about how you think field marketing looks fun and challenging. You don’t need to know every single possible metric but knowing the top 3-5 will go a long way in building your credibility and giving your interviewer a strong impression that you could “hit the ground running.” Essentially, you are painting a picture of what success looks like.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><b>Be "Process-Literate" </b>– </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">What are the most important processes that your target role manages or participates in? For example, if you want to become a product manager, be prepared to talk about how a Product Requirements Document gets created. Where does the input come from, who reviews the document, who signs off, and what role does it play in the development of the product? Showing process knowledge will demonstrate to your interviewer that you understand how things get done and can <a href="http://execcatalyst.blogspot.com/2011/06/how-to-nail-your-interview.html" target="_blank">positively impact the business</a>.</span></li>
<li><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Show Political Savvy</span></b><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"> – This is closely related to process. Who are your “internal customers,” and what will they expect from you? What other functions or roles will you depend on, and for what? Sticking with the Product Marketing example, your primary “customer” in most organizations will be Sales who may look to you for tools, pricing and packaging, or support for specific sales cycles. Corporate Communications will depend on you for messaging and support as a spokesperson with press and analysts. Engineering and Product Management will likely want market analysis and product requirements input from you. Knowing how the role interconnects to other roles and teams will give your interviewer confidence that you understand more of “the big picture."</span></li>
</ul><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; tab-stops: 0in;"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">We used the Marketing example for continuity, but this approach can be adapted to any lateral move. This is all part of what we review in our High-Tech Job Search Advantage Program for our clients (<a href="http://www.execcatalyst.com/uploads/ExecCatalyst_High-Tech_Job_Search_Advantage.pdf" target="_blank">click here</a> to learn more about it).<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; tab-stops: 0in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; tab-stops: 0in;"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Next week, we’ll build on this “head knowledge” and review some specific activities and techniques to position your indirect experience and make your desired role-change a reality. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; tab-stops: 0in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; tab-stops: 0in;"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">As always, we welcome your thoughts and perspectives so please share your experience and feedback.<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><o:p></o:p></b></span></div>ExecCatalysthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11932658642739412963noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5439556066804219562.post-37248439206646818692011-07-05T11:24:00.000-07:002011-07-05T14:28:15.977-07:00Get "Offensive" In Your Interview<div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">I Thought I Had the Job “In the Bag”<span class="msoIns"><ins cite="mailto:Lance" datetime="2011-07-05T09:11"></ins></span><o:p></o:p></span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Justin was heading into final round of interviews for a VP of Services role at a hot Silicon Valley startup. He was very confident since his future boss-to-be, the General Manager, had indicated to Justin that he was her first choice. You see, Justin had worked with both the GM and CEO of this new company at Hyperion Solutions before it was acquired by Oracle. He approached the interview thinking that it was his to lose. It sure was. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">The CEO greeted him. “Hey Justin, it’s great to see you again!” After they finished getting reacquainted, the CEO proceeded with “I knew you at Hyperion as a Marketing guy, and never thought of you as a ‘VP of Services,’ so what do you do you really want to do?” Without a hitch, Justin responded “Yes, my early career was well grounded in technical services and the latter part of my career in marketing.” Delivering what he thought was his <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">power position</i>, Justin completed his response with “so as you can see I have a wealth of experience across different business functions and therefore can do <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">anything </i>you or the business needs me to do!” Justin didn’t get the job.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Offense vs. Defense<o:p></o:p></span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Most people are familiar with the phrase “bring your A-game.” However, in the competitive job search game and interviewing, that A-game needs to be <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">offense</i>-minded. You’ve got to compete for the job with the perspective of the interviewer - <a href="http://execcatalyst.blogspot.com/2011/06/how-to-nail-your-interview.html" target="_blank">what are her top pain points and what needs to get done</a>? Instead, Justin made the common mistake of playing <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">defense</i>. He told them what he thought they wanted to hear and delivered a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">generic</i> response to a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">pointed question</i> and by doing so, closed the door of opportunity. The company was hiring for a very specific role, VP of Services. However, Justin presented himself as a “Jack of all trades.” He assumed that his broad “wealth of business experience” would be viewed as a valuable asset but instead he was viewed by the CEO as someone who was “confused” and uncertain about his career path, and not committed to the VP of Services role. Offense employs <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">deliberate</i> action of attack with the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">intent of scoring</i> (i.e. competing for a job on your own terms). Defense, on the other hand, involves tactics that prevent scoring (i.e. reacting to the questions and going along with the interview process “<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">not</i> to lose the job”). The difference, while subtle, will make all the difference in whether you will impress the prospective employer and get the offer or not. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">3 Keys to Execute Your Offensive Attack<o:p></o:p></span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">The longer you go without having a job, the more emotional and financial stress can undermine your confidence. The pressure of landing a job together with one rejection after another can erode your poise and positive attitude. And before you know it, you’ve slipped into “desperation mode” without even realizing it. <u>This</u> is the root of becoming “defensive” in your job search and interviews. It’s crucial for you to turn this around because these signs are more obvious to the interviewer than they are to you! Remember, they’re not evaluating whether you can competently perform the job, they’re evaluating whether you’re <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">the best</i> among the many candidates they’re interviewing. So “not blowing it” in the interview is a losing strategy. Here are some points to consider that can make you much more effective in your interviews: <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;"></div><ol><li><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">“Need a job” vs. “Want<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> that</i> job” – </span></b><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">When you act like you “need a job,” <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">any</i> job, it’s impossible not to project negative attributes like anxiety, fear, and self-doubt. Justin had been out of work for over 6 months. His previous job was VP of Marketing at a well-established SaaS leader. At this point, he was willing to take <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">any</i> job so he opened up his job search to Services roles, falling back on his experience and professional track record from 10 years earlier. Justin <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">needed a job</i> and he unintentionally projected that very clearly to the <st1:stockticker w:st="on">CEO</st1:stockticker>. However, Justin didn’t really want to go back to Services, he wanted to pursue his career in Marketing. Once he changed his mind set to “want <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">that</i> job” (i.e. Marketing), he was able to focus on what made him an excellent marketer, what kinds of companies and environments he’d thrive in, and he pursued those marketing roles with new-found confidence (which he leveraged to <a href="http://execcatalyst.blogspot.com/2011/06/negotiating-your-vp-title-when-changing.html" target="_blank">effectively negotiate his next role</a>). Put another way, interviewing for a job you don’t really want makes you far less likely to get it.</span></li>
<li><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Reactive vs. Proactive</span></b><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"> – Another symptom of being defensive is not wanting to “rock the boat.” When an interviewer takes you through an endless list of questions, it’s hard for you to do anything else but to fire back with your answers. The best interviews are when 2 people are having a dialog, not a one-way “interrogation.” Interview dynamics are very tricky and the worst thing you can do is to be reactive and just respond to questions that are thrown at you. This is even more true when interviewing for senior roles. How can someone hire you to manage a team, a project, or a product line if you can’t “manage” an interview? So when you find yourself in this situation, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">take control. </i>Be proactive by asking questions to disrupt the Q&A pattern. Find a way to up-level the discussion with an <a href="http://execcatalyst.blogspot.com/2011/06/how-to-nail-your-interview.html" target="_blank">insightful question</a> that will get the interviewer to share more about his pain or needs. Then you’ll have an opportunity to promote your experience and skills <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">in context, </i>directly mapped to the interviewer’s needs. Otherwise, you’re just guessing and hoping that something in one of your answers resonates and “sticks” with your interviewer. Speaking as an experienced hiring manager, I <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">appreciate</i> when candidates ask smart questions and turn the interaction into a dialog. I dislike interviews where I’m pulling reactive answers out of a candidate one-at-a-time.</span></li>
<li><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Eliminate the Guessing Game </span></b><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">– All too often, people tell me that they <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">think</i> the interview went fine and are later surprised to find out that they were not selected to go further in the interview process. Before you end any interview, you should ask the interviewer “How do I fit with your expectations for the role?” or “Do you have any concerns about my ability to perform well in this role?” Not only will you find out <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">exactly </i>where you stand, but most importantly, in the event that there are any reservations about your qualifications then you’ll still have a chance to address those concerns and to convince them that you can do the job better than any other candidate.</span></li>
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<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Having the discipline to stop looking for the “wrong job” and start focusing all of your efforts on getting your “ideal job” will pay off by giving you self-assurance and poise that are contagious. You may surprise yourself in how direct and bold you can actually be, and better yet, those traits will be viewed as valuable leadership attributes. In fact, once Justin made the shift from defense to offense he got his swagger back landed his VP of Marketing role within one month.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">We appreciate your thoughts, so please weigh in with comments.</span><br />
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</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">For more information on leadership development and career management, please visit <a href="http://www.execcatalyst.com/Services.html">Exec<i>Catalyst</i></a>.</span></div>ExecCatalysthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11932658642739412963noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5439556066804219562.post-14595974005334497872011-06-28T10:26:00.000-07:002011-07-04T11:27:20.771-07:00How to Nail Your Interview<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">No Trophy for 2<sup>nd</sup> Place</span></b>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">I was leading our monthly Job Search Advantage workshop and most of the attendees voiced frustration and discouragement that they made it all the way to the final rounds of interviews numerous times but always got beat out. They came to the realization that being “good” or even “very good” was just not enough in this job market. Those of us who’ve punched our career ticket with a couple decades worth of rides on the up-and-down high-tech rollercoaster know that the laundry list of “experience” on our resumes alone are not enough. Interviewing, or better yet, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">selling-yourself</i> skills make all the difference from being “The Chosen One” vs. the proverbial “runner up.”</span> <br /><br />
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</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Surely, if you knew what you were “missing” then you’d have a great chance at making the necessary course-corrections for the next job interview. Ah, if it were only that easy. One of my clients (we’ll call him Steven) made it to the “final presentation” stage twice, at both a disruptive startup and a SaaS giant. He didn’t get an offer from either. And as it typically goes, he never got the crucial feedback telling him why they didn’t feel he was the right fit. Unfortunately, the cold hard truth is that hiring managers are way too busy with their day jobs and working through the interviewing process with numerous candidates that they don’t have time to provide people like Steven with the simple courtesy of feedback. So left to his own devices, Steven’s best guess was that he needed to get coaching on his “interview and presentation” skills to ensure that he didn’t flame out again.<o:p></o:p></span> <br /><br />
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</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">It’s an Employer’s Market</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Although unemployment is improving slightly,<a href="http://www.dailynews.com/technology/ci_18302579" target="_blank"> <span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial;">1 in 10 people in Silicon Valley</span></a></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"> are out of work and still looking. Just last week <a href="http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Oracle-hardware-sales-drop-rb-2934458979.html;_ylt=AhOMzgnyoNCmPZ_VaROSX0.cba9_;_ylu=X3oDMTFlczhsOGwzBHBvcwMxNwRzZWMDbmV3c0h1YkFydGljbGVMaXN0BHNsawNvcmFjbGVoYXJkd2E-?x=0" target="_blank">Oracle’s fiscal year earnings failed to impress</a> and its stock price paid dearly the day after. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Earlier this year, <a href="http://www.cioinsight.com/c/a/Latest-News/Cisco-Restructuring-Could-Lead-to-Massive-Layoffs-Analysts-Warn-827421/" target="_blank">Cisco announced major restructuring</a>, which resulted in killing off the Flip camera business (500 jobs lost instantly) and forecasted additional job cuts of around 4,000. My friends who’ve been at Cisco for 10+ years are still “waiting for the other shoe to drop” as the management restructuring works itself through and while HR tallies up how many people take the early retirement package.</span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Even though these two Silicon Valley tech giants are showing signs of weakness, there are indications that hiring is picking up. That means more interviewing opportunities but still too many candidates for too few jobs - giving hiring managers and their companies the upper hand with interviews and candidate selections, offer terms, and more.</span><br /><br />
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</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">While <a href="http://www.dailynews.com/technology/ci_18302579" target="_blank">Silicon Valley appears to be leading the comeback in California</a>, the job market in the Valley has never been more competitive. So how do you make certain that you stand out from the crowd of hundreds if not thousands of other professionals who<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> seemingly</i> have the same experience that you have? But that’s really the point isn’t it? Those who are able to find key areas of uniqueness and to present and sell themselves in a way that distances them from everyone else will be viewed as the most valuable asset i.e. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Chosen One</i>.<o:p></o:p></span><br /><br />
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</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">On face value, people really aren’t that different in the things that headline their resumes. If yours is anything like the thousands of resumes I’ve reviewed as a hiring manager, you’re putting a lot of focus on things that may not make you as unique and special as you might think. For example:</span></div><div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst" style="mso-list: l2 level1 lfo3; text-indent: -.25in;"></div><ul><li><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">You’ve worked at Oracle? Good for you. LinkedIn shows nearly 12,000 former Oracle employees in the Bay Area.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Maybe you think Oracle is “old school” – you’re a Salesforce.com Alumni. Congratulations to you and the other 1,200 of you living in the Bay Area.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">What if you worked at Google, the one company known as a major internet innovator who generally hires only top-quality talent? Well, there are more than 5,000 ex-Googlers in the Bay Area job market.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">But <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">you’ve</i> got a degree from Stanford, one of the<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> elite</i> universities in the world? You and the other 45,000 Stanford grads in the Bay Area would more than fill the seats at AT&T Park in San Francisco!</span></li>
</ul><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">So the question is: <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">what really makes you unique</i>? What can you bring to a potential employer that <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">no one else can</i>? The examples above are all things to be proud of, but those alone aren’t enough to make you truly stand out from the crowd. <o:p></o:p></span><br /><br />
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</span></div><div class="Default"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"> </span></div><div class="Default"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">The answer comes in how you tell “your story." </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Does your resume read like a laundry-list of roles and responsibilities?</span> <span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">No one has the same combination of skills, experience, and accomplishments that you have so you must position your <i>unique</i> professional assets as your competitive advantage. Construct key messaging points to explain how you are <i>different</i>. Formulate well thought out themes together with your "career lessons" that are essential in shaping your story and explaining your career trajectory.</span><br /><br />
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</span></div><div class="Default"></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">“I Nailed it!”</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">One of my prior clients (I’ll call him David) was in the <a href="http://www.execcatalyst.com/Services.html" target="_blank">“job search” stage</a>. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">David has a stellar track record as <a href="http://execcatalyst.blogspot.com/2011/06/negotiating-your-vp-title-when-changing.html" target="_blank">VP of Engineering</a> for over 15 years at large as well as startup software companies. In the first week of our engagement, we focused on preparing him for CEO and founder interviews with startups. But the following week he had an interview with the EVP of one of the largest companies in the Valley. As you can imagine, those company environments are totally different which required us to tune his “story” in ways that were very <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">targeted and relevant</i> to those business scenarios. As a simple example, consider how managing a team of 20-30 developers trying to get its first product to market is worlds apart from managing an army of 200+ developers that are releasing the next version of a mature product to an installed base of 10,000 production customers.</span><br /><br />
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</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Well, David and I spent 2 hours preparing for the EVP interview. Fast-forwarding, David called me hours after the interview and his 3 words made my day: “I nailed it!”</span><br /><br />
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</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"> </span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Which “Nail” Are You Going to Use?</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">So how do you “nail it?” Preparing for an interview requires much more than reading up on the company, its website and competitors. You need to have a very clear understanding of problems that need to be solved and what challenges still exist that others have not been able to figure out. In other words, your unique skills and experiences are the “nails”. You need to pick the right nail according to the situation, and aim it squarely at that organization’s need. <o:p></o:p></span><br /><br />
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</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">The very first thing David and I did was to understand and categorize the business scenario with respect to the company and department he’d be managing i.e. Startup, Turnaround, Realignment, or Sustaining Success. For a deeper understanding of these stages, I’d recommend </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.michaeldwatkins.com/book-90days.php#" target="_blank">Michael D. Watkins book <i>“The First 90 Days.”</i></a></span><br /><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">The business stage dictates the internal and external drivers of what needs to get done and what specific tactics (drawing from your experience) you must use. We also made sure that he used the right business language associated with the business scenario.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br />
Here’s a series of questions that you should be asking yourself:<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst" style="mso-list: l1 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;"></div><ul><li><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">What are the hiring manager’s business pain points?</span></b><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"> There are some hidden pains that may not be readily disclosed. Try to find people in your network on LinkedIn who are willing to give you the inside scoop.</span></li>
<li><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Where, when, and how did you solve those similar problems?</span></b><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"> Get your success stories ready and make sure they are convincing and relevant.</span></li>
<li><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">What makes you uniquely qualified and different from anyone else who has the same “on-paper” experience you have?</span></b><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"> You’d better make sure this passes the “me too” test! If anyone else could say “me too” to your story, it fails the test and needs more work.</span></li>
<li><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">What insightful questions can you ask to elevate the conversation? </span></b><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">You need to get out of the “defensive Q&A” death trap ASAP. Asking thoughtful questions about business challenges will get you off the hot seat, let you gain insight that you can use in the next interview, and make for a lively, strategic business discussion.</span></li>
</ul><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Answering questions like these force you to dig much deeper and below the surface. It gets to the core of your skills, experience, and abilities.<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: yellow; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial;"><o:p></o:p></span></b></span><br /><br />
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</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"> </span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Whip out your hammer and take a good firm whack:</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Once you know which nail to use (i.e. what you want to say), you need to get ready to drive that nail in. Making little taps won’t get you very far. In every interview, you only have 3-5 minutes to make a great impression. And remember, you only get <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">one shot</i> at a first impression. You need to come in and make a strong impact and a strong connection, or you’ll be spending the rest of the interview trying to recover. <o:p></o:p></span>
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</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Here are the keys to make sure you “hit the nail on the head”:</span></div><div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst" style="mso-list: l1 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;"></div><ul><li><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Match your energy to the company culture and management style</span></b><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"> – The question that every interviewer asks <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">without asking</i> is “Is he a fit for this environment?” If the environment is intense and internally competitive, they’re not going to like a laid-back, measured, collaborative style. If the environment is entrepreneurial and non-conformist, they’re going to screen out anyone who seems like a “pattern-matcher” or a big company political gamesman. Also, what is the personality of the interviewer?<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"> </b>Matching or complementing his ego is key for good communication. Again, use LinkedIn to find people in your network who know your interviewer and can give you clues about what makes him tick.</span></li>
<li><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Describe how you <i>operate</i> vs. how you <i>think</i></span></b><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"> – too many people approach an interview with an intellectual and philosophical mindset. Give concrete examples of tough decisions you had to make instead of starting off with “I think…” For example, saying “I once allocated my entire bonus pool to only three of my six employees” (i.e. making a tough decision to only reward my top performers) sends a lot stronger message than “I think it’s important to reward top performers.”</span></li>
<li><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Project confidence with an edge</span></b><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"> </span></i><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">– The higher you go, the bigger the stakes in your decision making. They <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">expect</i> you to have an opinion. They’re hiring you for a role where you’re going to need to convince and lead people who don’t agree with you. So coming off as overly-sensitive or wishy-washy with a lot of “that depends…” answers won’t serve you well. Don’t ramble. Rehearse so it flows naturally.</span></li>
</ul><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">In addition to extensive role-playing, David and I carefully deliberated on how he’d handle tough questions like “You’ve been in startups for the last 7 years, so why ‘big company’ again now?” We closely examined the specific political and organization dynamics that existed within his target companies. Having a strong network to complement his also enabled me to reach out to a contact that had recently worked in the organization where he was interviewing and I found out that one of the key issues was lack of collaboration across different development teams. <o:p></o:p></span><br /><br />
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</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">The stakes are too high not to be fully prepared for final round interviews. Getting yourself organized in both content and form is most efficient and productive when you do it with someone you trust. Fumbling through your practice sessions will only help you to get better. Be prepared, because a misstep during game time could mean “game over."</span><br /><br />
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</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">For more information on leadership development, visit </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.execcatalyst.com/">Exec<i>Catalyst</i></a></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">What techniques do you use to prepare for late-stage interviews? Please share your thoughts.</span></div>ExecCatalysthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11932658642739412963noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5439556066804219562.post-53432014541298882882011-06-22T08:20:00.000-07:002011-06-28T11:24:54.112-07:00Don't Let Your MBA Work Against You<div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Moving Walkways and Secret Weapons…</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">I remember a particular lunch I had with a colleague in the early 2000’s. We’ll call him Henry. He was an MBA graduate from Kellogg and was explaining in a matter-of-fact tone that he was entitled to a Director promotion because he found out recently that 2 of his classmates from business school <a href="http://execcatalyst.blogspot.com/2011/06/dont-make-wrong-case-three-worst.html" target="_blank">had recently become Directors</a>. He believed his graduating class was on the same timeline (as if they were all standing together on a moving walkway you’d ride at major airports) and should all be advancing in parallel, even though they were in many different industries and roles.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">As background, I was working at Siebel Systems at that time as the result of the acquisition of Onlink Technologies. Onlink’s Product Management team was folded into Siebel Product Marketing, which was staffed with roughly 80% recent MBA graduates from top programs. It was a very talented (and competitive!) employee pool.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">At the time of this conversation, Siebel had been struggling for a few quarters in a row and quarterly layoffs had been the norm for more than a year. The economic slowdown, 9/11, ERP players like PeopleSoft and SAP grabbing market share, and the emergence of Salesforce.com’s disruptive SaaS offering were all contributing factors to disappointing results. The company’s “We’ll just succeed by being <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">more ‘Siebel’ than we’ve ever been</i>” mentality wasn’t turning things around. It was making them worse.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">We were faced with yet another wave of layoffs, and some of the people being laid off this time were recent MBA grads who had been hired in just the previous 3-4 months! Managers had to make the tough call to let some promising new recruits go simply to save proven A-players who had 2-3 years of experience at the company. I felt very bad for the employees who were being let go and asked Henry the question “Why do you suppose our organization still hired a large class of new MBA grads when there was obvious risk that many could be cut only a quarter later?” <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">He answered immediately, with a tone of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">absolutely certainty</i>. “To keep them from falling into the hands of the competition!” <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Seriously?,</i> I thought. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">As if every single new grad was capable of radically tipping the scales in our competitive market?</i> I asked him why, if our market was so competitive, and new MBA grads were the “secret weapon” that would shift the balance of power, those same competitors wouldn’t instead come after MBAs on our team who <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">also</i> had 2-3 years’ experience at Siebel, the CRM leader. His puzzled look and inability to answer betrayed the fact that he had a deeply-internalized belief that new MBA grads (which he had been a couple of years earlier) were the single most high-value asset in the high-tech marketplace.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br />
</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Enlightenment or Entitlement?<o:p></o:p></span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">The potential problem with getting an MBA from a top school is the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">attitude</i> that many new graduates develop. For numerous reasons, the system itself and the expectations it creates actually work <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">against</i> many graduates’ initial professional success. Business school staff, alumni, colleagues, and media can create a “Chosen One” aura for a new MBA graduate. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">On-boarding into a new organization with an entitlement mentality, or confidence that borders arrogance will fail more often than it succeeds. And don’t forget that in high-tech laden Silicon Valley, many of your peers don’t have MBAs, but do have advanced Engineering degrees, or have successfully launched $100M product lines, or have otherwise <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">proven</i> that they can deliver results. You’re not likely to be working with a lot of “second-stringers,” in this neighborhood, and if you are, you chose the wrong company.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Many MBA graduates are incredibly talented and successful. But I believe that in most cases, those people are successful for their own talents, not for the prestige or even the education of their MBA. It’s a question of correlation versus causation. Do incredibly talented people who are highly likely to be successful get MBAs? Yes. Do MBAs make <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">that same person</i> far more likely to be successful than if they had not gotten an MBA? That’s unclear.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br />
</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Making it Work for You<o:p></o:p></span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">If you are a new MBA entering the high-tech workforce, here are some keys to help you get traction quickly, sustain it, and reap the benefits that you deserve as you make a huge contribution over time.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;"></div><ul><li><span style="font-family: Symbol;"><span style="font: normal normal normal 7pt/normal 'Times New Roman';"> </span></span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Stay hungry</span></b><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"> - In almost all cases, when you’re a new, non-executive employee, people will respect and respond to an attitude of “I’m here to learn and contribute (and by the way, I’ll learn fast because I’m talented)” far more positively than an attitude of “I’m here to teach” or worse, “I’m here to get what I deserve.” You even see this in professional sports. A star athlete moves to a new team. Their new teammates, coaches, and fans embrace them when they project an attitude of “I want to learn the system here, see how I can make a contribution, and prove that I can deliver a lot for this team.” When they project an attitude of “I’m a proven star. Now watch and learn and try to keep up,” they lose support and suddenly a bad game, bad practice, or even a bad <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">play</i> can generate significant criticism because some observers want to see the “star” fail just because of his arrogant attitude. Stay hungry, and you will reap the rewards of your education far more quickly.</span></li>
</ul><div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;"></div><ul><li><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Show it off without “showing off”</span></b><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"> - There isn’t much value in spending the time and money to get an MBA if you can’t use that knowledge to enhance your contribution to your employer. The issue is <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">how</i> you demonstrate that knowledge. Recently, another colleague of mine who’s a Director at a $1B+ software company described a direct report of hers by saying “In between constantly reminding us that he has a Business degree from Haas, he actually brings some great ideas to the table.” Of course, talking directly about business school is probably the clumsiest way to try to showcase your knowledge in the workplace, but using obvious “B-school vocabulary” or citing a case study will often invoke the same eye-rolling reaction from your peers. Imagine the example without the “In between constantly reminding us” qualifier. Her direct report would get the recognition and respect for her great ideas from her manager and peers without the distraction or annoyance. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">That’s</i> the way to demonstrate that you got a great education from a great school.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"></span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">“Pick your spots”</span></b><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"> - Choose the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">right</i> opportunities to demonstrate strategic thinking. One of the most useful things I’ve noticed in many of my MBA colleagues is that it becomes quite natural for them to approach challenges and opportunities in high-tech with a more strategic view. But it’s important to consider at <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">what time</i> and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">what level</i> to raise strategic issues because it doesn’t <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">always</i> help you to come off as the “strategic thinker.” When a critical, mid-stream project that’s behind schedule needs to be completed and you’re in a meeting discussing ways to get it back on track, talking about how the company needs to re-think its market segmentation is inappropriate. You’ll likely be seen as an academic who lacks either the sense of urgency or the work ethic to jump in and help out. It’s also wise to keep your strategy recommendations at your manager’s level unless you’re specifically asked to participate in a higher level strategy project. For example, if you suggest how a certain major acquisition should have been made and wasn’t, without having been involved in the due diligence, you’ll make it look like you think you should be running the company, not that you’re thinking strategically.</span></li>
</ul><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Avoid an attitude of entitlement like the plague. Focus on how to effectively bring your new skills to bear in your workplace and you will earn the respect and support of your coworkers and reap the rewards you deserve over time. <o:p></o:p></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">For more information on leadership development, visit <a href="http://www.execcatalyst.com/">Exec<i>Catalyst</i></a>.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">We appreciate your thoughts, so please weigh in with your comments.<o:p></o:p></span></div>ExecCatalysthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11932658642739412963noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5439556066804219562.post-73163489639229004892011-06-14T09:48:00.000-07:002011-06-14T14:59:09.542-07:00Don’t Make the Wrong Case: 3 Worst Reasons Why You Should Be Promoted<div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><i>Due to popular request, we continue with the 3rd part in the “Promotion” blog topic series.</i></span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br />
</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">A Not-So-Happy Birthday… </span><o:p></o:p></span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">A few years ago, a Senior Manager who reported to me (I’ll call him “Rick”), with whom I had a very good relationship, greatly disappointed me when he asked for a promotion. It didn’t bother me at all that Rick asked. It was <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">how</i> he asked that troubled me, and it’s a good lesson in how <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">not</i> to justify a promotion.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">We were having our weekly one-on-one meeting, and after getting through the fairly standard update on key projects and metrics, Rick said “Can I ask you about something?” with a tone that implied we were about to shift gears into a more serious conversation that he had clearly prepared for. He grabbed a small pad of post-it notes that was sitting on my desk, wrote on it for a moment, and passed me a post-it that said “Age 30: Director.” Rick proceeded to explain - “My thirtieth birthday is coming up next month. It’s been a goal of mine for years to be a Director by age 30, so I’m here to discuss my promotion and see how I can meet my goal.”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">I was stunned and took a few moments <a href="http://execcatalyst.blogspot.com/2011/05/fear-of-conflict-terminal-paralysis-of.html">gather my thoughts and remain composed</a>. This “title X by age Y” reason for a promotion was an incredibly myopic way to plan one’s career, but more than that, the weak justification <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">based on his birthday</i> demonstrated that he had no understanding of the promotion process and hadn’t considered what actions I would need to take to promote him. Moreover, it showed that he didn’t respect the Director role for anything beyond being a nice title. It made me think that I had overestimated him because he clearly was not thinking at the next level. Put another way, asking for a promotion in this manner actually proved that he wasn’t ready for it.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Three Proven Paths to Promotion Failure</span><o:p></o:p></span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Rick isn’t the only colleague I’ve worked with who demonstrated weak reasoning to support a push for a promotion. Here are the three that I’ve seen most frequently in my years in high-tech:<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;"></div><ul><li><span style="font-family: Symbol;"><span style="font: normal normal normal 7pt/normal 'Times New Roman';"> </span></span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Comparative justification – </span></b><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">using someone else at the target promotion level as a comparison to prove that you’re deserving of the same level</span></li>
<li><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">“It’s about time”</span></b><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"> – using time-in-grade, performance ratings, or a combination as the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">primary</i> justification for a promotion</span></li>
<li><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Non-business justification </span></b><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">– using something that’s completely extraneous to the business to justify a promotion</span></li>
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</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: large;">Comparative Justification</span></b><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">We’ve all heard people say “I’m contributing a lot more than she is, and she’s a Director” or “I’ve been in the industry and the company longer than he has, and his department just made him a Director.” I’ve never seen this work. While those comments might be true, they set you up perfectly for an argument with your manager. Now, instead of focusing on what <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">you</i> bring to the company and <a href="http://execcatalyst.blogspot.com/2011/06/perils-of-probationary-promotions.html">how you could contribute even more at the next level</a>, you’ve put your manager in a defensive posture, forcing him to justify why someone else got promoted. It’s more productive to spend time talking about <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">you</i> than getting side-tracked by talking about someone else. Worse yet, your manager might even feel compelled to lay out a case <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">against</i> you to explain why you really aren’t as deserving of a promotion as the person to whom you’ve compared yourself. An inexperienced manager might even <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">agree</i> with you, effectively undermining another manager by agreeing that the other<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> </i>employee was not deserving of the title. But every one of these outcomes is a distraction, a potential setback, and has nothing to do with your manager partnering with you to put together a promotion plan. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Even a passing mention</i> of a comparison jeapordizes any chance of a positive outcome for you.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
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</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">“It’s About Time” </span><o:p></o:p></span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">When you’re in low-level, individual contributor roles, promotions are fairly simple and easy. Your manager can probably promote you from Product Manager to Senior Product Manager without any other approvals, and can do it just to reward your hard work while sending a good message to the rest of the department. Time-in-grade and performance-based justification alone don’t work for promotions at the Director level and above. The primary justification for your promotion needs to be built on why it’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="http://execcatalyst.blogspot.com/2011/06/perils-of-probationary-promotions.html">better for the business</a></i> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">for you to move up. Your talent and initiative are great <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">supporting</i> arguments, but you want to engage your manager in a conversation to create a plan for you to move up, not to review your timesheet or your performance ratings.</span><br />
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</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: large;">Non-business Justification</span></b><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">I’ve also seen experienced, talented people completely undermine their manager’s willingness to promote them by using <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">non business- related</i> reasoning. There’s the example from the opening about the employee who tried to drive a promotion discussion based on his upcoming birthday. Others have mentioned that they just bought a house and need to make mortgage payments, that they’re getting married this summer, or that their Business school classmates were all recently promoted. I knew a manager back at Hyperion Solutions who told me that he was going to explain to his boss that he needed a raise because he recently purchased a new BMW and had not realized how much more he would have to pay for insurance. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Again, much like the “comparative justification,” any mention of non-business justifications will kill your credibility with your manager.</span><br />
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</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Put Yourself in Your Manager’s Shoes</span><o:p></o:p></span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">We’ll continue to discuss the key ingredients that go into successful ongoing promotions in future blog posts. Meanwhile, as you consider how to make a strong case for your promotion, simply <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">put yourself in your manager’s shoes</b>. Imagine your manager having a conversation with <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">his</i> manager, advocating for approval to promote you. What would you want him to say? <b>Would you rather have your manager outlining how promoting you would help the department (and overall business), or lobbying for you based on your birthday or even explaining how there was a promotion mistake in another department?</b><o:p></o:p></span><br />
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</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Which brings us back to Rick. As we wrapped up our conversation, I asked him to “Put yourself in my shoes, and think about what Director-level skills you can demonstrate and what projects you can deliver successfully so that I’ll have a strong case for your promotion down the road.” Within a year after he successfully delivered against his plan, </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">I was very happy to promote Rick.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"> </span><br />
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</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">What lessons from the “school of hard knocks” have you learned from when pushing for a promotion or discussing with your direct reports? Please share any other insights you have.</span><br /><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">For more information on leadership development, visit <a href="http://www.execcatalyst.com/">Exec<i>Catalyst</i></a>.</span></div>ExecCatalysthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11932658642739412963noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5439556066804219562.post-27607955327835999492011-06-08T13:57:00.001-07:002011-06-14T15:01:11.257-07:00Negotiating Your VP Title When Changing Companies<span class="Apple-style-span"><b>How to Secure Your VP Title Upfront</b></br>
Last week we scrutinized the practice of <a href="http://execcatalyst.blogspot.com/2011/06/perils-of-probationary-promotions.html">probationary promotions</a> and focused on the importance of getting the higher title that’s commensurate with the level of responsibility. Negotiating your title when you are joining a new company can be equally as arduous. A friend of mine (we’ll call him Mark) was interviewing for his first VP of Marketing role at a startup after holding Director titles at much larger, public companies. The CEO wanted Mark to lead the Marketing organization (reporting directly to the CEO), but proposed that Mark come in initially as a Director, deliver results, and then be promoted to VP after 6-12 months on the job. Basically, the CEO wanted to “de-risk” himself so he could “test drive” Mark before spending the political capital to make him a VP.</br></br>
Mark was faced with an important negotiation. Here’s the advice I gave him:
<ol><li><b>First impressions mean a lot</b> - You only get one shot at a first impression so bringing you in at a Director level will set the wrong expectations when you join the company. You will be introduced at a lower level and everyone will think of you in that light.</li><li><b>Use your compensation leverage while you have it</b> – Your greatest ability influence your compensation structure is before you join a new company. Remember, if you are in the Offer Phase then you are the person they want. The CEO has “chosen you” and doesn’t want to keep looking so he’s very motivated to bring you on ASAP. Once you join the company then you are part of the standard HR process and it’s more difficult to negotiate your terms. And in the executive ranks at startups, equity (i.e. stock grants, options and RSUs) is a much more significant component of your compensation package. There are some rules of thumb and expectations among investors about what amount of equity is appropriate for a VP, and it’s substantially more than what a Director would typically be offered. Theoretically, Mark could get the additional equity once he’s promoted to VP, but companies are much more willing to allocate equity to attract a new rock-star talent than to thank/reward talent that’s already on board and committed.</li><li><b>Expect and enjoy the negotiation </b>– As I mentioned in <a href="http://execcatalyst.blogspot.com/2011/06/perils-of-probationary-promotions.html">last week’s blog post</a>, how you handle your title and compensation negotiation provides your new employer with a preview of how you will conduct yourself in business. If you are unwavering in your terms, it could be a major turn off. On the other hand, if you cave in too easily, you will project weakness i.e. how you will handle negotiations with peers, vendors and customers. Focus on the business reasons that support why it’s better that you come in as a VP. And as anxious as you may get, don’t rush the process. I know one executive that took 2 months to agree to terms… now that may be stretching it.</li></ol><b>How to Negotiate Your Future VP Title</b></br>
While it’s usually best to secure your VP title upfront, there may be extenuating circumstances that call for you to switch to “Plan B” i.e. negotiating your future VP promotion into your offer letter. Before I joined one of my early startups, I came across a Director role in my job search that was reporting to the CEO. Given that I’d been at the VP level for several years, I didn’t want to take a “step back,” but with this opportunity I felt that as long as the role was reporting to the CEO then I was at the right level. Within 20 minutes of my first meeting with the CEO, I knew I was his top choice. At the end of our meeting, we started talking about title and compensation ranges. I then came to understand that he had set the expectation with the Board (and the rest of the company for that matter) that he was not going to hire a VP. The company had previously made “big bets” on VPs that didn’t work out (which is why he posted a Director job). This was important company history to understand and I leveraged this knowledge to create a win-win. Here’s the success strategy I used:
<ol><li><b>Make the boss look good </b>– I knew if I forced the CEO to bring me in as a VP then there was a fair amount of political damage for him if he were to “change his tune.” I made sure that he understood that preserving his leadership credibility was of upmost importance to me and that I was ready to come on board to help him work through this challenging time in the business. However, I made it clear that I was not coming to the company to be a Director i.e. my pride made it hard for me to take a Director title</li><li><b>Secure the VP role commitment</b> – I helped him understand that my career progression would be shot if I took a step down at this stage e.g. if he hired a VP above me. So I suggested that we have a 6-month review. If I was doing what was expected then I would be promoted immediately. And if not then I would leave the company, giving him an “out.” This made it really easy for him in either scenario i.e. back to point #1, “making him look good.”</li><li><b>Negotiate built-in promotion terms</b> – We were very specific on the triggers for the promotion and also built in the VP compensation elements (i.e. salary, bonus, and stock) into the offer letter. This made the 6-month review a very simple cut and dry process. In fact, he seemed more comfortable with this part of the negotiation because from his perspective, it was a “safe bet” – he’d only have to provide that compensation if he was convinced after 6 months that I would be a great VP.</li><li><b>Put walls around the Director role</b> – Here’s the part that’s easily overlooked. I made sure that the VP and the Director roles were clearly distinguished, for example, the VP role had direct reports and the Director role didn’t. This is counter-intuitive for people who think that taking as much responsibility as possible would create the fastest path to VP. We clearly outlined the focus, responsibilities, and tasks as a Director and the comprehensive responsibilities as a VP. If the roles were not markedly different then the VP title (and compensation) would be less significant. I was very careful to make certain that I didn’t creep into doing the VP job without the official promotion.</li></ol></span><span class="Apple-style-span">
Within months of joining the company, things were going very well and the CEO was so pleased with the immediate impact and contribution I brought to the business that he wanted to start giving me more responsibility. With Point #4 above in mind, I told him “If you’d like to accelerate my promotion to VP, I’d be very happy to take on the full VP responsibilities."</br></br>
There is another key lesson here. Coming in as a Director lowered the expectations and optics around my on-boarding period. Given the company’s history with prior VPs who didn’t work out, my near term focus on prioritized projects took the tremendous pressure out of the system that would have existed if I had come in with the VP title i.e. needing to “walk on water” and fix everything that was broken. The success criteria were certainly more realistic which is important for anyone starting a new job.
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And what happened to Mark? Well, Mark successfully negotiated and helped the CEO to see that he, the CEO, and the company would all be more successful if he came in as a VP. And here’s the kicker: Mark found out later that the company’s Director of Product Management, who joined at the same time, came in with the “test drive” deal. More than a year later, that Director was still struggling to create a sense of urgency for the CEO to finally promote him to VP.</br></br>
What promotion negotiation strategies have worked for you? Please share your thoughts.</span><div><div><div><span class="Apple-style-span">
</span></div></div></div>ExecCatalysthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10918323126840814848noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5439556066804219562.post-64382750148309488852011-06-01T09:33:00.000-07:002011-06-14T15:03:18.421-07:00Perils of Probationary Promotions<div><span><strong>The Win-Win-Lose Proposition</strong>
<span><br />When I was at Oracle, there was a major reorganization and a new department was formed. I was a Sr. Manager in operations and my boss, a Director, was tapped to join a temporary global taskforce and disappeared for 3 months. Here’s where it gets interesting: his manager, the VP, needed me to do my boss’s job but he couldn’t promote me, at least not yet. I was offered the “job of a Director,” but didn’t get the title. On face value everything seemed fine:
<ol><li><i>The company wins</i> – The job gets done and business moves forward.</li><li><i>The manager wins</i> – The job gets done and s/he also feels good about giving you the “opportunity.”</li><li><i>You win... really?</i> – You get more responsibility and learn more skills.</li></ol>Here’s what’s wrong with the picture: You lose too! From a financial perspective, you get more work but have the same pay. You lose salary and bonus upside because you were compensated at the lower pay grade.<br /><br />
But the political ramifications are more serious. You have accepted a new role but don’t have full organizational support. Titles are important, particularly in mature organizations, because they give you the clout to represent your business function and to make decisions. Without the formal title and recognition, you are vulnerable to complexities and delays because people are questioning your authority. It’s effectively “the buck stops here” credibility that encourages people to work with you instead of going around you to make things happen. Also, without the title you have to swallow your pride because people in the organization will ask “why are Karen and Mike (your peers) Directors and you are not?” or “if you’re doing your boss’s old job and he was a Director then why aren’t you a Director?” Furthermore, when your promotion is finally official, the formal announcement is anti-climactic because you’ve already been doing the job. And worse yet, if you still haven’t been promoted then you are floating in limbo, while others are trying to figure out how they can get that promotion before you do.</span></span></div><div><span>
</span></div><div><span><br />
<b>How You Got Into This Predicament</b><br />
Probationary promotions are commonly practiced within high-tech companies. They happen for several reasons: 1) your manager doesn’t have the power (or possibly the political will) to authorize your promotion 2) it’s outside of the focal/annual review process so you have to wait as a matter of policy. At any rate, managers play this card in order to get you to take on more work and hope that this “new responsibility” will be enough to keep you motivated and happy for a little while longer. One argument for the probationary promotion (instead of the “real deal”) is that it’s a good way to observe you in the role. It’s a low-risk “test drive” for your management where they can watch and see if you succeed without risking their political capital of officially promoting you first. That’s hogwash so don’t fall for it. If you are qualified enough to be given the responsibility, then you are surely qualified to get the title promotion and compensation that’s associated with it.</span></div><span><div>
</div><div>
<br /><strong>Negotiating Your Promotion</strong><br />
Let’s discuss how you can gain control over the process. Every high-achiever will chomp at the bit to get more responsibility and looks forward to being hand-picked to lead a new project. When you’re early in your career, taking on new challenges is a good way to get visibility and to demonstrate that you have high potential. Negotiating hard for that promotion at this early stage of your career is less important than when you are vying for Director and VP roles. At these levels, much more is at stake with respect to business need and impact as well as the professional risk and personal sacrifices that you take on. Here are important points to tip the balance in your favor:
<ol><li><b>Build your business case</b> – articulate why it’s better for the business that you are promoted. Focusing solely on your own motivations can put your manager in an immediate defensive posture if he is not ready or able to promote you. Whatever you do, don’t build your case for a formal promotion around your needs and goals. Your boss might be able to ask for an exception to company policy for the good of the business, but he’ll never be able to ask for an exception because of your individual needs and goals. So equip him to make a case that his superiors can respect and support based on the business need.</li><li><b>How it benefits your manager</b> – it’s in your manager’s best interest for you to be successful. Sending you off into the company to drive change, manage critical projects, etc. without the proper support can come back to bite him or her if you fail. Help her to realize how sending you in at the wrong level can undermine the projects that are most important to her. Another point is that the more senior her direct reports are, the stronger the case is for her next promotion since she’ll be managing Directors instead of first-line managers.</li><li><b>Show your political savvy</b> – your promotability has as much to do with acceptance up, down, and across the organization as what your manager thinks. If your manager promotes you and then receives a backlash of criticism, his own credibility is shot. Do you know how others feel about your expertise and contribution to the business? You should have a strong understanding of this before you push for your promotion. If there are any concerns raised, then this is your opportunity to correct any misunderstandings. Removing these barriers will help to align the political timing of your promotion to the benefit of your manager and the overall business.</li></ol></div><div>
<strong>Give Yourself a Promotion</strong><br />
How you handle and present your case for promotion is an important preview of your leadership skills and style. Your ability to demonstrate balanced thinking around business, managerial, and personal benefits will provide insights to your potential as a leader and future executive. The more you think and act like the level you want to be at, the more people will view you as already being there. Moreover, applying the principles of SMART objectives (specific, measureable, attainable, realistic, and time bound) helps to ensure that you and your manager are on the same page regarding your promotion expectations. When the requirements for your promotion are “SMART”, you’ll be working hard based upon a clear set of objectives vs. suffering from the “moving goal post” phenomenon where your manager just invents a new requirement or throws out a new challenge for you to overcome before the promotion process can continue. </div><br />
Observing how your manager handles this situation is equally telling. If he’s fully committed to your success, then he will work with you according to the principles mentioned above instead of keeping things very loose, unspecific, and open-ended from a timing perspective.<br /><br />
</span><div><span><span class="Apple-style-span">Have you ever taken a probationary promotion? Did it work out eventually, or did you get stuck in the “slow lane” as a result? How did you deftly avoid a probationary promotion or accelerate a formal promotion? Please share your thoughts.</span>
</span></div>ExecCatalysthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10918323126840814848noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5439556066804219562.post-70169174328161053052011-05-24T11:19:00.000-07:002011-06-14T13:18:20.227-07:00Combat Cronyism. Inspire Loyalty.<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: large;"><b>“Loyalty’s Very Important to Me”</b></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Back when I was working at Siebel Systems, I knew a VP who would frequently say “Loyalty is very important to me.” He over-emphasized this point, sounding more like a mobster out of a 1960s movie than a manager. Although his words implied that he rewarded people who were loyal to him, his tone made it crystal clear that his intention was to punish disloyalty. As I got to know him better, it became clearer to me that he didn’t understand the difference between <i>loyalty</i> and <i>cronyism</i>, and what he really meant was that <i>cronyism</i> was very important to him.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: large;"><b>Loyalty Defined</b></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Loyalty is built over time with mutual respect, based on trust in the other person’s intentions and competence. The foundation of loyalty in the workplace is:</span><br />
<ol><li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: small;">A willingness to put another person’s needs or goals ahead of yours, though generally not ahead of the needs of the team or company.</span></li>
<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: small;">Ongoing support whether you stand to benefit from the person you’re loyal to or not.</span></li>
<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: small;">Mutual respect and admiration rather than self-interest. </span></li>
</ol><ul></ul><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: large;"><b>Cronyism Defined</b></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">When I think of the “crony” types I’ve worked with, a few traits and behaviors stand out.</span><br />
<ol><li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: small;">A willingness to put their individual needs and goals above those of the team, the organization, and the company. Cronyism is rooted in self-interest rather than mutual respect.</span></li>
<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: small;">Cronyism is symbiotic, and includes colluding with someone else to manipulate situations or people to support the goals in item #1. Sometimes both cronies are helped at the same time, but more typically, cronies “take turns” i.e. one manipulates today’s situation to help the other, knowing that the other will manipulate the next situation to “pay them back.” It also frequently takes the form of “covering their tracks” i.e. if Crony A underperforms or mismanages a situation, Crony B helps them to shift blame or otherwise excuse it. </span></li>
<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: small;">An expectation of unfair advantage over peers, granted by a person in power to whom the individual is a crony.</span></li>
<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: small;">Cronyism is different than being a sycophant or “sucking up” in that cronyism involves<i> taking direct action</i> that may be detrimental to the organization, not just saying “Great idea, boss!”</span></li>
</ol><ul></ul><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: large;"><b>The Impact of Cronyism vs. Loyalty</b></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">In my experience, cronyism has negative effects on almost every part of the organization except the cronies themselves. It’s bad for the team, because individuals perceive unfairness and lose respect for the leader who favors his or her cronies. It’s bad for the organization because it can create general suspicion and distrust of people’s motives, and we’ve all seen how hard it is to make progress on complex projects when people don’t have a foundation of trust with each other.</span><br />
<div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">When left unchecked, cronyism can become a cancer in the company culture that spreads and turns into factionalism e.g. large groups protecting their interests over the company’s. I worked at a very large software company that literally<i> lost hundreds of person-years of productivity</i> because Engineering became factionalized due to pervasive cronyism. Products were delayed by months. In some cases, products had to be rewritten because the organizational factionalism manifested itself in incompatible APIs, data schemas, security models, etc. And this was in a large company where integration was a key value proposition for customers!</div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Loyalty, however, is developed throughout the organization by good leaders at any level and has mostly positive effects. It gives people another good reason to follow and work harder for their leader. People then become more loyal to the company because they see the leader as an agent <i>of the company</i>. And it creates an additional bond to a leader that can provide a stabilizing effect in the constantly changing high-tech workplace i.e. re-orgs, mergers and acquisition, layoffs, management changes, etc. </div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><br />
</div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">It’s worth mentioning that loyalty can have</span> negative consequences when taken to the extreme. Anyone who has watched a “group exodus” where loyalists <i>immediately</i> follow a new leader to a new role has seen this. Just because someone’s a good leader doesn’t mean they’re always going to pick winning companies, and beyond that, while the particular role may be a great next-step for the leader in question, the same may not be true for every follower. Many years ago, I watched a leader I worked with go to a small marketing automation company, and 3 other people from the Alliances team followed him within a few weeks. The company couldn’t get traction, the leader left in less than 12 months, and the followers had to recover from a bad career mistake due to excessive loyalty. </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: large;"><b>Dos and Don’ts in Coping with Cronyism</b></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Cronyism is hard to address if the problem is at your level or above you in the organization. There’s really no “silver bullet” answer when dealing with cronyism, because individuals, cultures, and companies are unique. Here are some recommended dos and don’ts.</span><br />
<br />
<b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Do:</span></b><br />
<ol><li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><b>Escalate to a trusted leade</b>r - If there’s a trustworthy leader further up the hierarchy <i>and</i> a company culture that generally rejects cronyism, it’s possible to give the senior leader visibility into the situation and let them drive change, but be aware that the change is unlikely to happen overnight, and you are taking a personal risk by being the messenger with this news.</span></li>
<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><b>Get external feedback</b> – Because the options can be complex, it makes sense to share your ideas and get feedback from someone that you trust. While some people will choose a confidant who is inside their organization, this brings the downside of potential bias (because they may be impacted by the cronies as well), and creates some risk for you if word leaks out.</span></li>
<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><b>Vote with your feet, if necessary</b> - It’s very common for talented, high-performing employees to simply remove themselves from an environment of cronyism, either by making an internal move to another organization, or finding an opportunity at another company. This obviously depends on what else you’d be giving up in your current opportunity, and what your other options look like, but if the cronyism is entrenched and significantly affecting you, it may be time to move on.</span></li>
<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><b>Recognize that time is your ally</b> - The worst enemy of cronies is <i>time</i>. If you’re in a situation where the cronyism isn’t repeatedly and directly damaging you, you can “wait it out.” It may take months or even years, but cronyism eventually catches up to the vast majority of its practitioners. As John Lennon once said, “Time Wounds All Heels.”</span></li>
</ol><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Don’t:</span></b><br />
<ol><li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><b>Escalate to Human Resources</b> – I’ve seen many colleagues fail when escalating situations like this to HR. Seasoned cronies are usually able to “do their thing” without violating the letter of HR law, so you will be viewed as a complainer, and you will have partnered with an organization (HR) that, in the absence of a clear violation, can’t really fix the problem. The cronies won’t adjust their behavior, they’ll just team up to undermine your credibility and minimize your role.</span></li>
<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><b>Act out of anger</b> – Taking any action to deal with cronyism can have significant positive or negative consequences, so approach it thoughtfully. Don’t act out of anger or impulse, as we discussed in </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><a href="http://execcatalyst.blogspot.com/2011/05/fear-of-conflict-terminal-paralysis-of.html">last week’s post on fear of conflict</a></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">.</span></li>
</ol><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Have you personally observed or experienced cronyism? How have you dealt with it, and what was the ultimate outcome?</span><br />
<div><br />
</div>ExecCatalysthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11932658642739412963noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5439556066804219562.post-19475798310646028282011-05-17T13:44:00.000-07:002011-05-20T10:08:13.563-07:00The Fear of Conflict: Terminal Paralysis of Great Managers<div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Calling All Managers!</span></span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Interviewing at Oracle in 1994 (when it was a tiny 20,000 person company!) for my first managerial role, I remember having to climb my way up through interviews with 4 levels of management. When I finally got to the last interview with the SVP, he only asked me one question, “What’s your most important job as a manager?” Without skipping a beat, I responded with confidence “To fight for my people.” He replied immediately by saying “You are right.” I knew I got the job!</span> <br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Managers get promoted into positions of leadership for various reasons depending on the business need, and it’s likely because they are hardworking, high achieving, and competent. However, being a successful manager requires much more than being the technical or functional expert. Your ability to deal with different personalities (e.g. motivating your direct reports) becomes more important than being able to do <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">their</i> job better than <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">they</i> can. Moreover, dealing with other managers and upper-level management will define how good a leader you are. </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who’s the “Best Manager” of them all...?</span></span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">So on Day 1 at Oracle, I did as I said I would and started “fighting for my people” and quickly worked to understand what my team needed to be successful in terms of tools, training, and other resources. I was their #1 advocate. The problem this created for me as a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">new</i> manager was the perception (which is reality in the corporate world) that I was overly aggressive and power-driven. With this “wake up call,” I needed to adjust how I dealt with people at all levels to correct this major misperception i.e. I am not a “power monger.”</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Successful managers are leaders, and leaders must have a keen awareness of how their own characteristic traits influence how they deal with different people in different situations. Having that understanding about how you’re wired makes you dig much deeper than “are you a ‘type A’ or ‘type B’ personality?” Family upbringing and cultural heritage are major contributors to how you view, react and respond to adversity and conflict situations. Did your parents handle disputes by yelling or by implementing the “silent treatment?” Some cultures avoid conflict and promote “respecting superiors” no matter what. Some people avoid conflict for the simple fact that they are afraid of losing their job. For leaders, conflict avoidance is not an option.</span></div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Know Your “Conflict Mode”</span></span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Personality tests are readily available. But there is one tool known as the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Kilmann_Conflict_Mode_Instrument">Thomas Kilmann Conflict Mode Instrument</a> (TKI) that I’ve found most useful when discussing conflict resolution. It simply measures your tendencies along 2 axes; <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Assertiveness </b>(y-axis) – the degree to which you try to satisfy <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">your own</i> concerns, and <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Cooperativeness</b> (x-axis) – the degree to which you try to satisfy the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">other person’s</i> concerns. </span> <br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Which of the 5 TKI Conflict Modes do you find yourself in most often?</span> </div><div class="MsoNormal"><ol><li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><b>Avoiding</b> – Low Assertiveness, Low Cooperativeness<br />
Everyone loses here and this is clearly the worse place to be.</span></li>
<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><b>Accommodating</b> – Low Assertiveness, High Cooperativeness <br />
You lose while others get what they want.</span></li>
<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><b>Compromising</b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"> – Medium Assertiveness, Medium Cooperativeness </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">This is a tricky one. On face value it seems like a good outcome but the reality is that everyone has to give up something.</span></li>
<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><b>Competing</b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"> – High Assertiveness, Low Cooperativeness </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">The bulldog (you) wins, but others lose. You may feel good about it in the short run, but what impact will that have on your leadership reputation?</span></li>
<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><b>Collaborating</b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"> – High Assertiveness, High Cooperativeness </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Yes! This is the perfect win –win scenario. While it’s the preferred solution, it takes a lot of time an effort which may not be an option in some scenarios.</span></li>
</ol></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Knowing which mode is best to use in each particular situation requires thoughtful consideration of short term and long term impacts.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"></span> <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> Can You Feel the Heat?</span></span></b><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS';"><strong><span style="font-size: 100%;"></span></strong><span class="Apple-style-span">As you move up the management chain, the level of conflict (and therefore politics) increases exponentially. As I rose up the ranks to Director, I could immediately feel the increased intensity of politics and therefore conflict. And when I left Oracle for my first VP role, I was met with the harsh fact that I was a “minnow in the shark tank” from a political perspective. Not only were my peers more skilled at “the game,” but also the management culture encouraged frequent, direct conflict. Not being prepared for this, I started checking in with my CEO for every important decision I had to make. I thought I could avoid conflict by making certain that the boss was fully on-board and supportive. Before I knew it, I lost my confidence and stopped being a leader. I was paralyzed by the conflict.</span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">How you react to conflict directly affects how you will be viewed as a leader.</span> <br />
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: large;">Fatal Mistakes in Handling Conflict:</span></b><br />
<div class="MsoNormal"><ol><li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><b>Ostrich Syndrome </b>– burying your head in the sand and pretending, even hoping that the conflict isn’t there or will resolve itself will take away your leadership credibility with everyone i.e. your direct reports, peers, and manager.</span></li>
<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><b>"Human Tornado"</b> – beware if you are more apt to be emotional. Visibly demonstrating that you are upset in a conflict situation (e.g. losing your temper, having an outburst and leaving a path of destruction) will do nothing good for you. It will only damage your reputation. Moreover, making rash decisions in the heat of the moment is a recipe for disaster. You cannot think clearly when you are being attacked and in a defensive posture.</span></li>
<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><b>Looking for the Water Cooler</b> –discussing your conflict with others (i.e. at the water cooler)as an outlet for stress will perpetuate office politics, causing people to take sides and worse yet, gossip. Influencing through gossip is not leadership.</span></li>
</ol></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Successful managers are able to rise above conflict situations and come through as stronger leaders. Some actually enjoy it. However if you’re not one of them, <i>embracing</i> conflict doesn’t mean you have to like it, merely that you are <i>prepared</i> for it and conduct yourself in manner that is consistent with your own values and how you want people to view you. </span> <br /> <br />
<div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">3 Key Lessons from Sustainable Leaders:</span></span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><ol><li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><b>Count to 10… How about 86,400 instead?</b> - Waiting 24 hours to respond to a high conflict situation can’t hurt, it can only help. Don’t hit “send” on that flaming email response or you will regret it later. If you’re in a meeting, bite your tongue and take the action to respond later. Buying time to calm your emotions and to think through the situation logically and analytically will lead to better actions by you and favorable outcomes for everyone.</span></li>
<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><b>“Punch a Wall”</b> – No, not literally. I remember as teenagers we would punch walls when we were upset. Why? Well, if your hand hurts then you’ll forget why you were upset. Find a way to remove and distract yourself from the immediate conflict e.g. take a walk, go work out, meditate, or whatever you do to relax. The faster you can diffuse your emotional tension, the sooner you’ll be able to deal with the conflict in a reasonable manner.</span></li>
<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><b>Call Your “Dr. Phil”</b> – Yes, it’s very lonely at the top and you need to find someone who will allow you to vent and be your “voice of reason.” Calling a friend or talking to your spouse is a good first step but they are not likely to fully understand your crisis. While they can give you moral support and be a good listener, they aren’t likely able to provide you with sound business advice. Find someone you would consider a mentor or coach. Most CEOs have executive coaches to help them work through high stress situations. Having someone who understands your strengths and weaknesses, has context and continuity to your unique business dynamics, and can work with you to create viable resolution approaches (e.g. utilizing the 5 TKI Conflict Modes with you) is invaluable.</span></li>
</ol></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Sustainable leaders lead by example wherever they are. They weather the storms and stand through the test of time. What are your conflict survival stories and tactics?</span><o:p></o:p>ExecCatalysthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11932658642739412963noreply@blogger.com2