One, but not the same

This weekend marks the anniversary of the birth of a nation whose motto is about unity of purpose while acknowledging the differences in those who contribute to that purpose. That’s a very interesting duality that effective networks share; each person in the network has unique capabilities and individual goals, and different ways in which they contribute, but the network is unified in purpose.

As social networking tools gain acceptance in the enterprise, folks are recognizing that first, networks have always existed inside companies and second, that these network tools are more about making the networks more visible and more easily acted upon and utilized. As a result, when properly used, these tools accelerate productivity, innovation and engagement. However, like any tools, used improperly, these tools can damage those objectives as well.

Previously, we discussed how networks are inherently “opt-in” since they are usually not formal organizational structures. This means social factors such as trust play a large role in whether people will participate and make the network effective. But even after you achieve participation, the potential to wreck the network still exists in subtle and insidious ways.

One way is in the very structure of networks themselves. We know that the more connections that exist in a network, the higher the likelihood of information finding its way to the right person. Of course, everybody knows you can’t have ridiculously high levels of connections (although whether the number in 150+ or 1,500+ is debated) but is it right to assume that people in the network who have a significantly lower number of connections than others are somehow not as effective (or vice-versa?) As Steve Boese commented on a previous post, simply measuring the number (or extent) of connections doesn’t really tell you whether or not it’s working; it depends on the role or the person’s objectives. It can go beyond that as well; in some roles, some individuals might simply be more effective having only a tight set of connections with just a few of which reach outside their close circle of colleagues. Now, imagine a manager who simply measures effective use of the network by number and extent of connections dinging that individual for not having a high enough “social score.” Why risk their departure or reduced participation if the individual was an expert in a particularly strategic area and had contributed perfectly well through a “bridge” connection into the network?

What’s a better way? Managers need to look at the big picture and understand first what the purpose of the various networks are that their employees are members of. In that context, the manager can than understand what role an employee has in that network and then coach the employee if it seems that either the network is not getting what it needs, or even more effectively, if the employee is feeling they aren’t getting the most use from the network.

The most energetic proponents of network tools in the enterprise are not surprisingly heavy users of these tools. As such, they can easily fall into the perfectly natural human behavior of thinking other participants should be just as active, or more subtlety, not pay effective attention to those who aren’t as active. They can unwittingly alienate the very kind of employee that otherwise might not have had as much voice or impact on the success of the company from using the very tool that would have overcome the obstacle of organization structure, etc. Especially during the delicate initial phase of encouraging the use of network tools, it’s a good idea to look out for the non-productive effects of social pressure. As the culture becomes more familiar with their use, social norms will start to take effect and help people understand the different ways everyone contributes. Gradually, job and role requirements can then be added where appropriate in order to more clearly communicate expectations and guide career development.

Photo by: pursuethepassion

Smiling more

I am coming up on the one year anniversary of a personal goal to smile more.  This specific goal came from some coaching I received that suggested I should.

Well, to be more clear, I got this feedback years ago from my husband, but of course, I ignored it, as often happens, with personal feedback from family members. 

To be fair, his suggestion was don’t frown so much, which somehow sounded critical where the coach said, you have a great smile, you should smile more which somehow sounded enlightening.  Note to self — coaching works better with positive spin.

In general, I’m a pretty happy person, so it was a bit of a shock to hear that I do so much frowning.  The truth is, I’m in my head a lot and when I do that my facial expression is a bit dour.  The other bi-product of being in my head, is that I walk around a lot not noticing people around me.   

For the last year, I have focused on two primary things — looking people in the eye and smiling at them. 

Today, I noticed that people regularly smile at me unprompted.  It really was a great feeling to know that people naturally expected I would smile at them and occasionally beat me to it.  

I decided to congratulate myself on this publicly, to give others a chance to consider if they might be perceived better by trying to smile more.

One interesting benefit, is that when you make a conscious decision to smile, you often tip the scales from a normal day to a happy one, and since happiness is contagious there is a follow on effect that benefits everyone.  So you see I really wasn’t taking this goal on for me, I was doing it for you. 

Now how is that for positive spin?

Team you

Have you identified your team?  Not the team you work with, the team who is going to help you achieve your goals?  I actually have several “Team Meg’s” who I consider extremely critical to my success.  

I hand pick those on the team based on what kind of help and support I need.  Do I need someone to help motivate me?  Teach me something?  Keep me focused?  Hold me accountable? 

My team makes that happen.  For example, I might realize that I don’t have the best grasp on (or respect for) grammar, and yet I love to blog.  No problem, my team has my back. 

You see, like most things in life, accomplishing your goal is easier with help.  Sharing your goals with others will focus your energy and keep you accountable, whether this is a performance goal, a fitness goal or a career goal, leveraging your friends and your network increases your chance of success.

Learning to share your goals first requires you to see the bigger picture and realize that you can have a much bigger impact and make much more progress when you learn to collaborate.  You might suggest I’m cheating, taking things that are hard and getting a lot of help to make them easy and I would say, exactly. 

No one said that you couldn’t get help, so why wouldn’t you give yourself that edge?

One of the biggest tricks to getting the right “team you” is to have a good sense of what you are good at and what you are not.  You might be surprised to find out that there are people you know who are good at what you lack. 

So I ask you, have you assembled the right team?  Are you sharing your goals with them so that they can help you?

Shock and awww

Warning!  This post contains outright bragging and shameless pride.  Read at your own risk.

As many of you know we’ve been working on the project that must not be named over here at ORCL for quite a long time.  So long, that it has been easy to lose sight of just how big it is. 

Of course, we’ve had a lot of support, and that helps.  For example, our good friend Naomi Bloom called our products the second coming, clearly a sign of her deep religious belief (and faith) in our plans.  I totally understand too, why wouldn’t people get excited about a project that is entirely secret and vague.  Frankly, there are days when I’ve wondered myself if it was real and I’m being paid to help build it.

I am not new to the idea of re-architecting large-scale products.  In fact this is my fifth time redesigning a major product for technical and functional architecture improvements.  Of course, not every time was actually successful.  The time, effort and commitment to do a project of this scale makes it risky at best.  Let’s just say, if I were Stephen Colbert I’d know exactly how to describe what it takes to make something like this happen, but since this is a family blog, I will use the word brave.

So, while I am still not giving you any details on the what, when or how of this product, I am telling you today how amazed and honored I am to be working on a product that requires such commitment and bravery.  This is a project that could have failed many ways, but only succeeded with tenacity and vision. 

This Fusion project is one I will be proud of forever, and I fully expect it to cause people to stand up and take notice.

So, to everyone who has been working on making Fusion a reality, at every level, I would like to take a moment and tell you that this has truly been one amazing and exciting ride.

Check out the June Carnival!

Mark of Inflexion Point has put together a very entertaining circus act. In addition to your carnival favorites like Laurie Ruettimann walking a high wire, Wally Bock’s ham hands and Jason Seiden’s rubber-skinned man, our mute clown is featured with a plea to Speak up More, along with 18 more insightful, thought-provoking posts.

Enjoy the show and please, stay away from the blue cotton candy!

Career Gifts

Beware of geeks bearing gifts

I mentioned last week about reading the book the Leadership Pipeline.  When thinking about the phases of leadership outlined in this book, and the values and traits that are required at each level, I’ve had a few moments of pause. 

Frankly, there has been some internal cringing as I am reminded of Michael Scott -worthy behavior I have exhibited.  Then there was the realization about how lucky I have been.

Sorry, for those who were looking for entertainment in this post, today I want to talk more about those career gifts I was given that I didn’t recognize at the time. 

The first falls under a category I think of as micro-coaching.    The feedback you are given informally, often as just a passing comment, that makes you think and helps you grow.

My best example of micro-coaching was from a colleague and good friend (we’ll call him Max) who helped get me promoted to my first Vice President role.   

I was complaining to Max about the extra workload and wondering if I was going to be able to do the job.  He explained to me that the nature of the job was that there was always going to be more work than time and that my job would be to decide which things got done and which things did not. 

At the time I thought he was crazy, now I realize this was exactly my blind spot.  If I had not shifted my perspective on this topic, I would never have been able to scale as the job required.  I will not say that the change came easily, but it helped a lot to be pointed in the right direction.

My other big career gift, was when I got a job that stripped me of all my technical resources.  I was put in charge of a development team, who worked in a technology I did not know myself.  While, at the time, this was terrifying, it has proven to be one of the biggest career gifts I was ever given.  Being required to learn to manage people to do tasks I had no ability to do myself, gave me so many great tools.  When you cannot take a task on yourself, you value the skills of your team so much more and you have no choice but to learn to delegate to the appropriate level.

Both of these career gifts are powerful since their value is about perspective.  At the time I would have described the events so differently, but today I see them as seminal to my professional development. 

What career gifts have you given to others?  What have you received yourself?  How do you view them differently today than you did when you got them? 

I would like to say thank you to everyone who has helped show me the way in my career so far, and for those of you who are still helping me today.  These gifts are the ones I cherish forever.

Leadership Pipeline vs. Succession Planning

In typical fashion I’ve been thinking a bit too much these days, and the current topic is Succession planning.  I mentioned awhile back that I was under the impression that the concept of Succession Planning was too limiting. 

Recently, we had an excellent series of discussions with a real thought leader on the topic Kim Lamoureux at Bersin and she got me looking more closely at the relationship between Career Development and Succession Planning (sort of a top down vs. bottom up lens).

Then, I had the opportunity to attend an outstanding workshop by Patty Azzarello and she suggested a great book I’m currently reading called the Leadership Pipeline. 

All this has brought me to the conclusion that thought leading companies are not just thinking about succession, they are thinking about the entire leadership pipeline.

It is this desire to think more broadly about leadership and top talent that makes a scalable Talent Review process so critical.  Identifying (and investing in) future leaders is a process that allows companies to build a pipeline for future success.

The macro-economic climate including globalization, recession, M&A, etc. make this even more important for companies who consider human capital a competitive advantage. 

So I ask you, can you afford to leave this to chance?  Do you really believe you can hire your way to all the talent you will need to compete in the marketplace today?  What about in ten years time? 

Can you afford to under-utilize your talent? 

What about your competition?  Are they going to do this better or are you taking steps today to win the long game?

The June HR Carnival Oasis is Here!

Rowan Manahan has built a fortified oasis of a carnival from 23 different blog posts contributed by “a varied and eclectic bunch with light, heavy and fully caffeinated posts abounding”. Included is Meg’s post – Manage your energy.

Lucky for you, this presents a great opportunity for you to sample a wide selection from different blogs, some of which you made not have been aware of. Who knows, you may find one or more that you’ll want to subscribe to. So go check out the carnival!

Photo by infomatique

The secret code of a charismatic leader

Did you ever work for a leader and thought s/he was more powerful and credible because s/he was charismatic?

So what is charisma anyway? How do you become “charismatic”?

According to research, “Those who were charismatic were simply more animated than others. They smiled more, spoke faster, pronounced words more clearly, and moved their heads and bodies more often. They were also more likely to touch others during greetings. What we call charisma can better be understood as human expressiveness”.  (The leadership Challenge – Kouzes James M and Barry Z Posner)

There you have it!

A dose of truth – what does your non-verbal language say about you?

No... This is not the blog author

I took a personal development class last night as part of my ongoing effort to upgrade myself.

The instructor got us to do a fun exercise to get to know each other, and more importantly, ourselves.

The first part of the exercise was for each student to stand in front of the class and do a quick self-introduction. Piece of cake.

The second part of the exercise was way more fun. Each of us had to stand in front of the class again, and tell the class what first impressions we think we had left on others, and then we had to stand there and hear the brutal and honest truth from everyone in the class. (We were not allowed to justify ourselves or argue with the feedback – we just had to listen.)

Words that were used to describe individuals were: confident, attractive, engaging, arrogant, shy, fun, funny, sweet, friendly, aggressive, smart, nice, professional, comfortable, stylish, good looking, snobbish, present (live-in-the-moment), pretty, open, carefree, fashionable, self-conscious, nervous, well dressed, nerdy, honest and… bitchy.

Impressions were clearly formed by examining a speaker’s overall appearance and non-verbal language that includes style, expression, physical attributes in addition to hearing what the speaker had to say.

When it was my turn to stand up in front of 15 new faces, I was nervous and hoped that they’d use words like open and friendly.

I got way more than I had bargained for: friendly, confident, smiles a lot, smart, mature, interesting accent, stylish, accomplished, driven etc. (Boss, I think these guys need to be included in my next 360 review ).  My head started to swell until someone said: “You remind me of my aunt!” (I sure hope her aunt isn’t too mean or too old for what it’s worth.)

It turns out that the first impression I left on my fellow classmates was NOT based on my self-introduction in front of the class – it was mostly formed when others saw me walking into the lobby to talk with the receptionist (as it turns out, she was actually our instructor).

The first impression is often long lasting and you never get a second chance to make a good first impression. The first impression isn’t always formed when you stand in front of your audience, it happens much earlier than that.

So… what impressions do you THINK you leave on your interviewers, interviewees, employees, managers, colleagues, employers, customers, suppliers, friends and strangers?

What impressions do you WANT to leave on people?

Is there a difference? If so, can you or would you do something about it?