Career Development for Fools and Foolers

Here is a story of vision, execution and relationship building that catapulted a career from obscurity to success. The career belonged to my husband and it all happened on April Fool’s Day.

Actually, it started before that. We had been working at Arthur Andersen as freshly squeezed college graduates. The crew consisted of me, 6 perfectly coiffed young men from top schools, and Paul. Paul arrived on the, albeit casual, client scene in high tops, a flannel top, and an earring. He also looked like he was 15 years old. The managers told us he was an “assistant” and we took that to mean “ignore him” and “forget to invite him to lunch.” (I will never live that down.)

Over the next few months, Paul grew on us. He was kind of funny! He liked basketball! So, when he came to us with an April Fool’s plan, we listened. We even laughed and agreed. It was an elaborate plan, leveraging the nuances of our particular project (inventorying assets at Stanford University), the current sensitivities of the climate (the loss of a master key – not by us, mind you – had just cost the University a bundle of money) and the tricky position of our manager (having to manage a brood of 23 year old yahoos). Paul’s plan required that, over the course of the day, each of the inventoriers (us) get their Stanford contact to call our manager in disgust, complaining of missing keys and irresponsible behavior. What fun – a group joke on our manager! We were IN!

But a week before, every single person wussed out. Except Paul. He was still going to do it! So we rallied around him. We went to lunch and talked over the plan. We knew the precise times of when it was all going to go down. That day, we were bonded together in anticipation!

I was the only one in the office at the time (as I had the *higher* position of scheduler rather than inventorier). Silence. And then, I heard a notebook slam on Paul’s desk. I hurried over (still filled with anticipation). “What happened? How did it go?” I asked eagerly. Obviously, not well, based on the look on his face. “He’s pissed. He sent me home.” Oh my.

Just then another inventorier returned. The 3 of us headed outside for a pow-wow. “That’s not fair!” we cried. “It was just a joke!” “Did you tell him that we were all part of it?”

“It doesn’t matter,” Paul said “I’m kicked off the project and he said I might get fired.” With a grave face, Paul left.

The rest of the crew returned. We were all stunned! What’s going on? Our manager was out of the office. And so we started to plan. What would we say? How would we save Paul? “If Paul goes, we all go!” I found my manager’s manager and pleaded the situation. She said she would look into it.

Our manager called an emergency meeting that afternoon. We were all sweating buckets. Could we save Paul? Could we save ourselves?

We filed into the conference room, took our seats and listened as our manager laid into us. “Arthur Andersen is a prestigious and respectable firm. This sort of behavior is unacceptable. The missing key situation is not a joke …” We were speechless. My burning eyes bore into his skull, making clear my distaste for his reaction.

And then, in walked Paul.

Paul??

Paul and our manager hugged, shook hands, and started laughing. “April Fool’s!” they exclaimed.

Wha-wha-wha??

Yes, that’s right, folks, the biggest turnaround, in-your-face, jokes-on-you-suckers I will ever (hopefully) experience!

A week back when Paul saw the writing on the wall – the high wuss factor of his compatriots – he went to our manager and laid out the new plan. Our manager was giddy with the thought and signed up immediately. From that point on, he played us. Oh, he played us good.

The crew remained mad at Paul for a total of 4 hours. After that, we couldn’t help but laugh and re-tell the story from different perspectives over and over again. Paul and our manager developed a close, mentoring relationship. Paul was promoted a few months later and by the following year, was promoted to senior associate along with the rest of the original Stanford crew. Paul had found his niche – not only was he intelligent and capable, but he also brought a much appreciated light-heartedness to the office setting.

I won’t go into the details, but April 1, 1996 (when Kentucky beat Syracuse in the NCAA championship game) is our non-wedding anniversary. And, for the last 13 years I have lived in fear of what his next April Fool’s plan could be …

Ada Lovelace Day – First Female Railway Engineer in NSW (Australia)

“Ada Lovelace Day is an international day of blogging to draw attention to women excelling in technology. Women’s contributions often go unacknowledged, their innovations seldom mentioned, their faces rarely recognised. We want you to tell the world about these unsung heroines. Whatever she does, whether she is a sysadmin or a tech entrepreneur, a programmer or a designer, developing software or hardware, a tech journalist or a tech consultant, we want to celebrate her achievements.”

Thanks to Thomas Otter for reminding me (through his blog on Bertha Benz)  that Ada Lovelace day was due this week! I am three days late for this international day of blogging – but perhaps I am just 362 days early for the next one!  

In any case, I’ve decided to pay tribute to the female engineer who led the engineering design for the railway track design from Sydney airport to the Olympic Park (Homebush) in preparation for 2000 Olympics in Sydney.  

This is someone who was driven by her passion and love in the field of Railway Engineering and was chosen to lead the design of such an important project that had to succeed.

Originally from China, where she taught Civil Engineering at universities for over 16 years, Lilian migrated to Australia with her two children in the early 80s. Since her credentials and experiences were not recognized in Australia, she  went back to school to receive her Engineering degree (while working two jobs to support her children). She first joined SRA (State Railway Authority in New South Wales – now renamed to RailCorp) as a trainee in 1985 and was then promoted to assistant Engineer.  In those days, being an Asian female in late forties, with broken English,  was not easy in her male dominated, technical world. She once joked that one good thing about being the only female at work is that the ladies bathroom is never crowded.

At one time, the entire department was sent to computer (CAD) training, except her. 

Racial, gender and age discrimination?

Perhaps. But she was never daunted by it. She taught herself how to use CAD, and became a CAD expert in her department. She later took the initiative to create a master template in Excel to automate complex computations (using Macros) to minimize human calculation errors for her division.  Through her positive attitude, desire to excel, meticulous work, dedication and generosity to others, she often helped (and taught) her colleagues in solving complex design issues and quickly became her division’s secret weapon in auditing designs and rescuing projects.

A few years later, now in her fifties,  Lilian competed with more than twenty male colleagues (many were ten to twenty years junior) for a Professional Engineer position and became the first female track design engineer at SRA in 1993.

Her reward for  successfully leading the design for 2000 Olympics project? A free ride on the train.

Lilian has recently retired and picked up Art painting. True to her form, she puts love and passion in everything she does and now has an impressive portfolio. Her name is Lilian Wong, and you guessed it, she’s my mother. I am lucky to have her as the best role model and the best mum one could ask for.

Next time you take the train in Sydney, I hope the ride will bring a smile to your face – knowing your route was designed with love and safety in mind!

The downside of 10k hours experience

I’m sure you know that many of us at TalentedApps have been looking for ways to incorporate deliberate practice into our work.  This makes sense, given the number of years that we have been working in this field.   A practical recommendation from our research arm, was that we read Made to Stick.   

Reading this book had an “a ha” moment for me around concept called “The curse of knowledge“.  In a nutshell, the curse of knowledge suggests that when you know too much about something you often are bad at explaining it to others. 

My husband has this problem with skiing, he is way too good to comprehend what beginners struggle with (fear, balance, skill).   This lead to establishing a personal policy to never attempt to learn a sport from someone you sleep with.  If you don’t have a similar policy, you might consider adopting mine.  You’re relationship will be better for it (and so will your sports-abilities).

I don’t tend to experience the curse of knowledge as much when explaining concepts, but I do have it in spades when I make decisions.  Here is my issue, most of the time I have no idea why a specific decision is the right one.  I just know.  I know that might sound arrogant to some, but honestly I don’t mean it that way.

I’m not really a numbers person, but somehow my brain that does a frighteningly rapid number of calculations (usually without bothering to involve me) when presented something that impacts my products.  I’ll give you an example:

For sake of discussion, lets say someone named Amy, comes to me with an idea for the product  “we should do X in Y release“.  

My brain immediately kicks in and does something wacky — it calculates weather patterns, team skillsets, technology options, performance considerations, regional holiday schedules, religious preferences, flight risks, team career aspirations, political barriers, organizational strengths/bureaucracies, horoscopes, release schedules, etc. and comes back with essentially one of three possible answers.  It is at this point it will let me in on the process (I guess it figures I can’t screw it up from there).  My three answers look something like this:

• Wont Work
• Might Work (but risky)
• Will Work (if)

Here is where the curse of knowledge kicks in.  I will respond to Amy’s suggestion with the answer no, yes or maybe. 

As you can imagine the yes and the maybe don’t get me into too much trouble, but the no answer is a mess.  You’d think it might occur to me to explain why I say no.  You’d think I’d want to let people in on my decision process, so that they also conclude that no is the right answer. 

The problem is I don’t really know myself, or at least I can’t explain why I know.  Instead, I tend to channel my best teenager and do the adult equivalent of the big-sigh + eye-roll. 

Truth is, I just want everyone to trust the mechanics of my brain.  Experience has proven to me that it’s way smarter than I am, and really should not be questioned.  I am not exaggerating when I say that I have required up to three days to put into words (that make any sense) the why for one of these “wont work” responses.

Now that I know about this curse, I will hopefully be more empathic about the need to understand the why.  I can’t say it will take away the sigh, but hopefully it will help me have the patience to figure out and explain the calculation. 

I’m guessing, it might also allow others to have confidence in the decision.  Seems worth a shot anyway.

How do you navigate barriers?

I’ve decided that one of the public services I must do with this blog is to tell you guys the truth.  Not the we hold these truths to be self-evident  kind, but the career-impacting truths, that most will not say out loud.

Here is one of those hard truths:  there are two kinds of people in my professional world, those who get stuck by barriers and those who find a way through.  It really is that simple.  In fact, it’s so simple that I’ve begun to wonder more about why. 

Of course, I don’t wonder about why I see the world that way.  My job is to get stuff done.  If you are able to get through barriers you are able to get more stuff done and thus my life is easy.    I like easy. 

What I wonder about is you.  What makes it possible for you to get through barriers when others cannot?  (See what I did?   I just gave you credit for being a make-it-through person.  As a reader of TalentedApps, of course you are on the plus side of this equation). 

Did you learn this from your family?  Were you born with it?  Can others learn it to?  Frankly, I’m not sure.  What I do know is that the right  mix of persistence and confidence is a winning combination.  

If you are a person who finds a way through barriers, odds are your manager is noticing.   The more barriers you surmount, the more opportunities you are going to have, and that, in turn, will lead to more successes.

Something to think about.

Hiring freeze = Firing freeze

The hiring freeze is an admirable way for an organization to prevent future lay-offs and other cost-cutting measures. In fact, I don’t hear too many people with a job complaining about hiring freezes these days. There are far worse things to complain about (like the new Facebook layout, for example).

That said, the hiring freeze does have its drawbacks. You just can’t fire like you used to. And don’t get me wrong, firing has never been easy. A front line manager is in a tough spot when he encounters a performance problem. Addressing it, dealing with it, trying to improve it – all hard things that take work. However, the work can be worth it if a) the person makes a remarkable turnaround or b) the manager can replace the person with someone 50x better. A light at the end of the tunnel! A hiring freeze crushes that light.

Conventional wisdom suggests that a poor performer drags down the morale of co-workers and so it is best to get rid of them. But is this true when there is no replacement? Let’s do some math. Let’s say the manager gets 15 hours/week of productivity from the poor performer. Meanwhile, the other 3 people on the team are putting forth 50 hours/week of productivity (including taking on a large chunk of the poor performer’s work). How will the team’s morale fare if they have to take on 5 additional hours of work when the poor performer is let go? Is it really worth it to the manager to deal with the performance problem?

A line manager has deadlines to meet and does the best he can with available inputs. When he is unable to replace, he lacks the incentive to remove poor performers. And, in this way, it is impossible to build a high performing team, now or in the future.

What’s the alternative? It may take more work, but why not consider the budget freeze? Set the budget (and, by all means, change the budget according to business priorities) and then, push it to the line manager. Give the line manager the decision power over hiring and firing. Hold that budget tight, but give the line manager an incentive to create a high performing team especially when times are tough.

Bad news bears. Or other unlikely misfits.

A very big Thank You to the people who voted for us in the FOT Talent Management Blog Power Rankings March Madness tourney. We’re honored just to have been selected along with the other top quality blogs. They are all working in their own way to help companies, hard-working people, and those caught up in this economic crisis see it through.

The TalentedApps team reaffirms our mission to help create change by improving the awareness and knowledge of our community in an entertaining and informative way. We are grateful to FOT for giving us a chance to join with the Talent blogging community to better achieve our united goals of improved engagement, productivity, innovation, and business results.

Involuntary attrition of .03% is not high performing

 I’m  no Norma Rae, but I do have a general appreciation for unions.   I think unions are an excellent way to promote rights for workers.  Rights to safe work environment, fair pay, benefits, etc.  I do not, however, think that unions should be in the business of protecting workers who do not perform. 

Why?  Simple, if you cannot fire non-performers you are hurting the rest of the employees.  Frankly, the poor performer, if not cut loose, will drag the whole group down.

This is my first year participating in the California public school system (well since I left it myself), and so far my experience has been great.    Of course, I am fortunate enough to live in a neighborhood that is very committed to the schools and puts an overwhelming amount of time and energy into their success.   My daughter is also lucky to have an excellent teacher.

So, you can imagine that I was blown away to learn that  once given tenure (after 2 years of service) teachers cannot be fired.  At least those that are merely incompetent cannot, I guess you could fire the Humbert Humbert types.

In 2003, one Los Angeles union representative said: “If I’m representing them, it’s impossible to get them out. It’s impossible. Unless they commit a lewd act.”

This sounds to me, like the tenure system is a racket.    Look at the stats for Los Angeles for 1995-2005

Between 1995 and 2005, only 112 Los Angeles tenured teachers faced termination — eleven per year — out of 43,000. And that’s in a school district whose 2003 graduation rate was just 51 percent.

Wow!  What can that possibly be doing for the engagement levels of the awesome teachers ?  Where are the non-fired bad teachers going?  I’m guessing there are more than a few employee hot potato situations. 

I’m all for paying teachers more, a lot more, but I cannot see how we get better schools for everyone, until we start requiring performance for that pay.   In my experience, numbers like these do not reflect reality.   

I’m not suggesting we need to go Jack Welch, but I do think that some level of workforce trimming is necessary for a healthy organization to grow.

Hit me with your comments readers, tell me what is being done to fix this?  How do I get involved?

The HR Carnival on Productivity is up

Check out the new  HR Carnival at Erik Samdahl’s excellent Institute for Corporate Productivity (I4CP)’s Productivity blog. The theme is naturally enough around productivity, and there are an amazing number of terrific posts in this carnival. This provides you an excellent chance to sample from a wide diversity of thinking regarding a particularly important topic for the economy. You may discover a blog that you’ll want to subscribe to that you were not aware of before!

 

One of our social networking articles has been featured, relating to the productivity boost derived from richly networked employees. Check out the carnival!

“Made to Stick” will help you with Presentation Zen

Folks on the TalentedApps team and our Oracle colleagues have been exercising deliberate practice in applying the principles from “Presentation Zen” to help make our presentations better at getting our message across to the audience in an engaging, memorable way. We’ve found that the concepts presented in “Made to Stick” help immensely in doing so. If you haven’t had a chance to check these books out, they are worth the time.

Here’s a very brief summary of what “Made to Stick” covers, taken from an example used in the book:

Do you remember the Subway ad campaign about the obese guy who lost a bunch of weight on a diet of nothing but Subway sandwiches? Most of us do – it was one of the most successful campaigns and turned Subway around, increasing sales by over 15% year over year – twice that of their competition. Did you know the campaign almost didn’t happen? It has a lot of the six elements described in “Made to Stick” that help make ideas stick: 

1. Simple – not simplistic, but having *one* core, profound idea. “Eat subs and lose weight.”
2. Unexpected – it takes you from “Huh?” to “Aha!” A guy lost a ton of weight eating fast food! (“Huh?”) What mattered was which sandwiches he ate (low fat ones – “Aha!”).
3. Concrete – not abstract. They showed his oversized pants, how much weight he lost (450 lbs down to 180 lbs), what sandwiches he ate.
4. Credible – a guy who wore 60-inch pants is giving us diet advice! He’s been there!
5. Emotional – we tend to care about individuals more than about a mass (which tends to just make us analytical and therefore detached – not what you want.) It also taps into the more profound levels of Maslow’s hierarchy; it’s about a guy who reached his potential with the help of a subway shop.
6. Story – our protagonist overcomes big odds to triumph. It inspires us to act.

Gimmicky or not, the six elements turn out to spell SUCCES(s), a nice mnemonic.

When we are trying to get an idea or message across with Presentation Zen, we are after the same thing: get that idea or message to “Stick”. Simple messages are easier to remember. Unexpected things get people’s attention. Concrete examples help them imagine. Credible sources help them to believe. Emotional content gets them to care. And stories get them to act.

 

We hope you find both Presentation Zen and Made to Stick as helpful in your efforts. Please share your experiences and any helpful suggestions or sources.

 

Performance Review, what’s in it for me?

As luck would have it, we are doing our own mid-year review cycle right now.  Being an overly introspective person, I have been thinking that I’ve rarely seen communications about the review process that give a sense to an individual WIIFM (What’s in it for me?).

Reviews are often thought of in terms of measurement or drudgery but rarely is the point emphasized that they are about being heard.

As with all advice here at TalentedApps, the message is simple.  You get what you settle for.  So I would like to suggest that a Performance document is your chance to

• Articulate and align with your manager about your key strengths.  What is great about you and why?  How are you leveraging that greatness for the benefit of your manager and your company?   Is there more that you could be doing  to better highlight your awesomeness to a broader population?

 

• Talk about your near and long term goals.  What they are and what they should be?  What do you want to continue doing and what do you want to quit doing?  Why?

 

• Build an action plan for greatness.  Who should you consider being a mentor to?  Who should you be getting mentoring from?  What learning would benefit you?  How should you stretch yourself to grow?

In summary, the performance review is really only as useful as you make it.  If you are waiting for your manager to take the lead, you are seriously missing the point.  Your manager is required by the organization to rate you against your peers and against your objectives.  S/he is required by you to help you succeed. 

Are you helping your manager make sure both objectives are accomplished, or are you wasting the opportunity and only letting the organization benefit from the exercise?

Or as Dr. Seuss said so well

Shout loud at the top of your voice, “I AM I!
ME!
I am I!
And I may not know why
But I know that I like it.
Three cheers! I AM I!