Achieve Success from Setbacks: The Secret is being "At Cause"

“I got screwed!”

"…but it wasn't 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.

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.

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.

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 you 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.

"At Cause" or "At Effect"

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 your actions - what you did, didn't do, so you could learn from them and do things differently 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.  

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.

• "What did I do?" - 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 professional conflict situations 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.
• "What didn't I do?" - Often inaction 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.
• "What would I do differently next time?" 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.

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.

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.

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.

Take Your "Self" out of "Self-Promotion"

No Way Out

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 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,” 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 self-promotion.

I asked what was making him so uncomfortable. He responded, “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 make them visible. On the other hand, I hate the thought of becoming the new ‘Mark.’” 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.

A Better Approach

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 even malicious. But high-tech companies are full of smart, competitive, hard-working people who sometimes go unnoticed. Hoping that your accomplishments “speak for themselves” is a recipe for slow progression, and possibly even a pink-slip.

Here are five suggestions that will increase your visibility without suffering from “Mark-itis":

1. Don’t mistake “Necessary” for “Important” – 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 necessary – Sales couldn’t quote deals without it. But what was most important to the CMO was positioning, competition, and lead volume. The CMO never woke up in the middle of the night worrying about pricing, and he never ran around the office high-fiving people because of a great change to the pricing 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.

2. Align with your manager on your career development plan (CDP) – 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 process improvements, 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 “Of course he’s being promoted. Look at all of the process improvements he’s delivered!”

3. Shift from “Me” to “We” – Good news tends to spread virally in high-tech companies. The best way to make it easy for people to advertise your accomplishments is to make it about their accomplishments. Consider these two emails:

Version 1:

From: Mark

To: Sales Team

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? ;-)

-Mark

Version 2:

From: Sam

To: Sales Team

CC: VP of Engineering, VP of Public Relations

Good news. We passed 5,000 views on our blog last month. Blog traffic is now contributing more than 10% of our Sales leads.

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!

-Sam

The second email celebrates a team accomplishment, puts the accomplishment in terms that the audience cares about (Sales cares about leads, not  blog views), and explicitly recognizes the contributions of others. 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!

4. Focus on results, not your “hard work” – 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. Nobody cares. 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.

5. Take a long-term view – 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.

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.

A 2012 Resolution: Keep Your Enemies Close

“All’s Fair in Love and War”

“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 chance this one was a "mistake."

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.

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.

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 orchestrated by Nicole, or I could undo the plan, in which case Martin would perceive me as taking away a deserved promotion. 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. Checkmate.

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.

Beware of Your Enemy

Inevitably, everyone in 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.”

As common as personality conflicts are in the workplace, they are the toughest problems to solve because you’d simply prefer not to deal with those types of people 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:

• Wasted Time and Energy – 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.
• Lost Productivity – avoiding someone who is on your team or who is part of your natural workstream makes for inefficient work.
• Stalled Career Advancement and Promotions – it’s easier for your manager to promote you 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.

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:

• A Team Player - 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.
• A Leader - Leaders work through differences and come up with solutions. Anyone can point out problems. Great leaders always find a way to work with all types of people and to motivate them to a common cause.
• Politically Savvy - 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. True North 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.”

“Keep Your Friends Close. Keep Your Enemies Closer!”

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 all 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:

1. Be the bigger person - 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.
2. Stay in frequent, close contact – 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 some trust over time, but don’t be so naïve in thinking that given the opportunity he won’t throw you under the bus!
3. Keep focused on the business - 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 complete control over what you can do for the business.
4. Promote your enemy - 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.

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.

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.

Survive and Thrive with a Bad Manager

I Quit!

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 away from supporting customers instead to work on “pet projects” that made him look good in front of the Sales executives. 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 my productivity.

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 new manager! Sherry transferred from the Engineering team and now reported to Frank as a 1^st level manager. Previously, Sherry and I collaborated on several customer escalations and we had a good rapport. She was very metrics and process oriented.

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 next big role.

Things are Clearer on the “High Road”

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 absorb the abuse. Here are some steps you can take to gain control of your circumstance and come out with a stronger career position:

1. Stay focused on improving your skills – 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 that perspective.
2. Fight personal agendas with facts – 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 subjectivity to objectivity 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 measurable and aligned to those objectives. Finally, many disagreements have to do with hidden personal agendas. Get to know what your manager’s personal agenda is and decide whether or not it conflicts with your value system. In his book, True North, 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.
3. Find supporters – 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 directly 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.
4. Run a marathon, not a sprint – 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 bad managers. While you can learn a lot from a good manager, it’s the bad ones that teach you what not to do.

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.

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.

A Precious (free) Gift from Steve Jobs: Communicate with Impact

11 Million Views and Counting…

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. 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.

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 advance your career by improving your  speeches, presentations, and even one-on-one communication.

“Hook” Your Audience

More often than not, people start presentations with something soft, bland, and procedural. “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.” Yawn. These kinds of intros often feel 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.

A hook 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 “Thank you I’m honored to be with you,” and then goes immediately into a hook to engage the audience. “Truth be told, I never graduated from college.” What a great way to get people’s attention at a college commencement speech!

People Remember Stories

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.

Steve also uses a couple of techniques that help increase the impact and richness of his stories. First, he shows vulnerability. 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.

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 best thing that could have happened to him.

He also uses first person dialog, 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 “We’ve got an unexpected baby boy. Do you want him?” While the linguistic difference is subtle, the impact is much stronger than if he had said “The hospital called, said they had an unexpected baby boy, and asked if my parents wanted him.” Use first person dialog to make your stories more vivid.

Perils of the Podium

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.

Authenticity

More than technique, what makes a great speaker and a great presentation is authenticity, 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.”

Steve Jobs comes across as extremely real 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 “It was beautiful…historical…artistically subtle in a way that science can’t capture, and I found it fascinating.” You can feel 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.

Metaphor

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 “The heaviness of success was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner.” You can almost feel the weight of Jobs’ success at Apple, and the airy freedom when he started over. At 8:15, when he says “Sometimes, life is going to hit you in the head with a brick,” 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.

Bring it Home

Just like the weak and boring openings described above, we’ve all seen (and probably delivered) regrettable closes to otherwise decent presentations: “Well, that’s my last slide,” “I’m just about out of time but I can take a couple of questions,” 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, “Stay hungry. Stay foolish.” to put a memorable and inspiring finish on his remarks that reinforces the messages of his three stories.

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.

Master Executive Communication and Presentation

ExecCatalyst has partnered with The Henderson Group to create a unique 2-day communication and presentation skills workshop designed for mid and senior level high-tech professionals. Executive Communicator teaches attendees how to influence executive decisions through more effective dialog and presentations according to Line of Business priorities. One Marketing Director said:

"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."

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.

Get What YOU Want from Executives

An Accidental Enemy

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.

“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. 

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!

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.

CEO: “We added 15 engineers last quarter. Why can’t they build the interfaces?”

VP of Sales: “Is our platform so complex that we have to go to third party specialists just to integrate it with other applications?”

COO: “Who’s going to manage the partner who does the work?”

CFO: “Whose budget does this come from? Is this already in the expense plan?”

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.

Executive Empathy

Empathy 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 Blink, Malcolm Gladwell highlights a study that supports this. In a nutshell, patients don’t sue doctors that they like. 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 works.

Executive Empathy puts this concept in the context of an executive. And the point isn’t to “Think like an executive.” The point is to “Think like each 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 measured differently.

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.

Stephen Covey recommends “Seek first to understand, then to be understood.” However, in the fast paced high-tech business environment, people’s  natural tendency is to advocate first and understand second, which usually works against their ability to influence executives. Furthermore, they tend to advocate for things from their perspective. While they don’t deliberately ignore others’ perspectives, they don’t seek to understand and empathize either, and that’s a missed opportunity.

If you want to advance in your career, you must be able to influence 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.

Nurture, not Nature

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 Executive Communicator 2-day workshop. To date, attendee feedback has been unanimously positive. In fact, a CIO 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 remedial 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.

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.

Interviewing: Fill in Your “Gaps” with Indirect Experience - Part 2

In last week’s blog post, I featured a successful enterprise Account Manager, William, trying to move into Marketing by leveraging his indirect experience. 

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.

Making it Happen

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 - if 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:

• Be a good storyteller – Story-telling is one of the most powerful communication tools that you can use. One of our partners, The Henderson Group, helps people master story-telling as part of their Complete Communicator class, which I attended recently and strongly recommend to anyone who wants to go from being a good communicator to being a great 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.
• Market Your Uniqueness – If you focus on positioning your uniqueness, 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 unique 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 Sales perspective to our content and processes.” Huge home-run for William!
• Use the Team, and Use Your Manager – In the absence of direct experience, there will still be some doubts about your ability to perform in the target role, so be proactive 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 lot 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.
• Find a friend on the “inside” – 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 well-prepared for your interview. 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.

William executed all of these strategies with great effectiveness. He made the transition into Product Marketing, and only 18 months later he was promoted 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 indirect experience.

This is all part of what we teach in our High-Tech Job Search Advantage Program for our clients.

We appreciate your thoughts, so please weigh in with your comments.

Don't Let Your MBA Work Against You

Moving Walkways and Secret Weapons…

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 had recently become Directors. 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.

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.

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 more ‘Siebel’ than we’ve ever been” mentality wasn’t turning things around. It was making them worse.

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?”

He answered immediately, with a tone of absolutely certainty. “To keep them from falling into the hands of the competition!” Seriously?, I thought. As if every single new grad was capable of radically tipping the scales in our competitive market? 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 also 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.

Enlightenment or Entitlement?

The potential problem with getting an MBA from a top school is the attitude that many new graduates develop. For numerous reasons, the system itself and the expectations it creates actually work against many graduates’ initial professional success. Business school staff, alumni, colleagues, and media can create a “Chosen One” aura for a new MBA graduate.

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 proven 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.

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 that same person far more likely to be successful than if they had not gotten an MBA? That’s unclear.

Making it Work for You

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.

•  Stay hungry - 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 play 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.

• Show it off without “showing off” - 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 how 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. That’s the way to demonstrate that you got a great education from a great school.
• “Pick your spots” - Choose the right 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 what time and what level to raise strategic issues because it doesn’t always 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.

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.


For more information on leadership development, visit ExecCatalyst.

We appreciate your thoughts, so please weigh in with your comments.

Don’t Make the Wrong Case: 3 Worst Reasons Why You Should Be Promoted

Due to popular request, we continue with the 3rd part in the “Promotion” blog topic series.

A Not-So-Happy Birthday…

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 how he asked that troubled me, and it’s a good lesson in how not to justify a promotion.

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.”

I was stunned and took a few moments gather my thoughts and remain composed. 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 based on his birthday 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.

Three Proven Paths to Promotion Failure

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:

•  Comparative justification – using someone else  at the target promotion level as a comparison to prove that you’re deserving of the same level
• “It’s about time” – using time-in-grade, performance ratings, or a combination as the primary justification for a promotion
• Non-business justification – using something that’s completely extraneous to the business  to justify a promotion

Comparative Justification

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 you bring to the company and how you could contribute even more at the next level, 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 you than getting side-tracked by talking about someone else. Worse yet, your manager might even feel compelled to lay out a case against 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 agree with you, effectively undermining another manager by agreeing that the other 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. Even a passing mention of a comparison jeapordizes any chance of a positive outcome for you.

“It’s About Time”

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 better for the business for you to move up. Your talent and initiative are great supporting 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.

Non-business Justification

I’ve also seen experienced, talented people completely undermine their manager’s willingness to promote them by using non business- related 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. Again, much like the “comparative justification,” any mention of non-business justifications will kill your credibility with your manager.

Put Yourself in Your Manager’s Shoes

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 put yourself in your manager’s shoes. Imagine your manager having a conversation with his manager, advocating for approval to promote you. What would you want him to say? 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?

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, I was very happy to promote Rick. 

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.

For more information on leadership development, visit ExecCatalyst.