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.

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?

Manage your energy

I used to think that I was the only one that had large swings in energy, but lately I have come to realize that this is just one of those things that we don’t want to share, so we might think it’s unique to us.

The reality, for me, is that I have pretty wild swings in energy (and thus productivity). It’s incredibly frustrating to me to have days of low energy, since on those days everything is hard.

On low energy days, often I can’t even muster up the will to work on anything even moderately difficult. I begin to procrastinate, since everything is too hard to start. If I stack up too many low energy days, complex tasks take a very long time, and my quality and quantity of output suffers.

Conversely, on high energy days everything is easy. I get huge amounts of work done, I am proud of what I did (and often those accomplishments give me more energy so everything goes great).

Lately I’ve been observing myself more closely, attempting to find out both what things give me energy and if I can will myself to have more of it.

While I can’t say I’ve perfected this, at any level, I have started to make some progress in actively discovering what gives me energy. I’ve started to predict when I will have high energy. I’m attempting to adjust my work, to better align with my energy flow.

I have always done this to some extent, but I’ve decided it’s time to be purposeful about the management of my energy.

I have given myself permission to do things that might appear less critical to my work, if it gives me energy. I have adjusted the things I work on during my high energy times of the day and week. I have saved administrative (and mindless) tasks for my low energy times.

I am learning that building energy is something I need to perfect. My job is not going to get smaller, I need to get bigger. I do not intend to grow my capacity by putting in more time, I intend to grow my capacity by getting better. Better at channeling my energy, better and creating energy and more efficient on how I use my high-value time.

I have noticed a real difference already, and I’m liking the results. Turns out, having high energy feels good and makes me want to do more.

What are your tricks for building energy? Specific things that build energy for me include:

• thinking and talking about “big” things. Problems, ideas, concepts and trends that do not have easy or simple solutions — things that require learning
• sleep – without sleep I’m cranky and that hits my energy hard
• challenges met – identifying and conquering challenges give me enormous energy — thinking about things I did well and how I can do better
• processing time — without some processing time, I get too overloaded with all my thinking. I process best by not thinking directly on a topic: sleep, reading something completely unrelated and effortless, driving, yoga, meditation. Anything that gives my brain a break
• reading blogs and getting new ideas

What works for you? Have you learned to create energy for yourself?

Let it go already

 I probably have one of the most interesting jobs when thinking about the topic of career development. 

As someone who designs systems for talent management, I’m actually paid to study things like career development. 

As someone employed I, of course, care about the topic for myself and as a manager of managers, developing people to face the future needs of the business, is a big part of my job. 

Then, of course, as a geek, I totally love having a problem that I care deeply about, and am required to look at from all angles. 

Yup, good to be me.

In the last few months I have heard some advice that was very specific and unexpected in two entirely different contexts and from two different people.  This is the kind of phenomenon that makes me pause and take notice.   

The advice was to get over it. 

The specific topic was how not getting over it can hold you back in a serious way.  Focusing energy on disappointment and angst  is energy not spent on something productive and that lost opportunity cost hurts you much more than the thing you are fussing about.

So, next time you hear that some complete git got a promotion or recognition that they didn’t deserve consider the following:

1. Are you sure that they didn’t deserve it?  Disconnect your emotional brain and recognize that even jerks can do good stuff.  Sure, maybe they didn’t do something as great as you, but really this isn’t about you is it?
2. Maybe you should learn from them.  Not to be a jerk of course, but to understand why they are being recognized and you are not.  Is your desire to label them really a green eyed monster coming out?  Does your higher self recognize that they have done a better job of self promotion or focusing their energy on more career relevant connections or tasks?  Is that something bad about them, or something lacking in yourself?
3. Are you still under the misperception that careers are fair?  The sooner you let that go, the better equipped you will be to succeed.

So, time to dust yourself off and let it go.  It’s not helping you. 

You are uniquely skilled and you know what it takes and most importantly, you learn from what doesn’t work and build a plan that gets results.  Any energy you waste on jealousy or angst is energy you are not focusing on your own objectives and that is holding you back. 

Seriously.

Are you limiting your options?

Recently I was giving advice to a college student, that many will remember receiving themselves.  Essentially, I explained that the key to picking an undergraduate degree is to pick one that:

 a) will keep you interested enough that you will graduate 

 b) gives you a good number of options when you are done.

I realized that the same advice holds just as true for making  a career move.   When you think about places to go in your career, it is useful to think about how that experience will help build your resume.  

Are you doing tasks that you are likely to complete successfully?    Is the role you are taking, one that you are well suited for?  Is it likely that you are going to be able to do a good job ?

In addition, you need to think about what kinds of roles you might progress to, after the current one. 

Are you picking opportunities that give you more choices later or are you typecasting yourself always doing the same things?  It’s not to say that you should not build depth in a specific area, but it is saying that you cannot define your career as a single step.  You need to be thinking not only about your current move, but the next one as well. 

Taking steps now, to have more options later, can give you that edge over time.

Huh? Asking questions does not mean you are dumb

Maybe it is having some experience looking dumb, or possibly I’m incredibly authentic, but I find that it is very easy to me to sport a puzzled look and say, huh?  Be honest, you can visualize me doing that can’t you?   I am also very willing to ask for directions (but that is an entirely different topic).

I find myself completely baffled, when people do not want to admit they are confused.  The fear of looking dumb seems to be so strong in many of us, that we will keep quiet and never ask vs. risking the idea that we are the only one with a question. 

Too many times, I have seen people choosing to go in an entirely wrong direction, hoping vs. knowing.    That’s right, in an attempt to not look stupid, they increase their risk of just that.

People, not understanding something is normal and expected.  Pretending you do understand, when you don’t, is dumb.

Gathering up the personal courage to admit what you don’t know, will set you apart and make your peers appreciate that you asked the question they could not bring themselves to ask. 

That’s right, asking questions doesn’t make you look dumb, it makes you look brave.  Quit trying to fake it people, it never works out in the long run.

Missing the point, so you don’t have to

Having had a career of [ahem] some length, I have learned a few hard lessons along the way.  Today’s topic is the performance review.

Now, I’ve mentioned before about the need to think about what a performance review means for you.  What I left off was a good story about what can happen when you get it wrong. 

There was a point in my life, when I worked in consulting.  As can happen in that profession, the person responsible for writing my performance review was not the person who observed my work.

Being young, idealistic and very new to the concept of formal performance reviews, I managed to make a series of rookie mistakes that taught me some life lessons about managing my career.  Thank goodness this firm had bi-annual reviews, so the results of my lameness, only set me back for six months.  For, while I was clueless, I am a fast learner and am inclined to put a lot of energy into fixing things that aren’t working.

To be fair, I did not receive a bad performance review, it would better be described as a lackluster.  The problem was that, being a typical over-achiever, I was not at all happy with getting mediocre recognition for hard work.

So what did I do wrong?

1. I assumed doing a good job was sufficient.  I knew I needed to be billing at a certain rate, complete my projects on time and keep my customers happy.  I did that.  What I did not do, was get any proof points that showed I was doing that better than average.   I did not think it was my job to prove my worth, I thought that was SEP.
2. I assumed the person writing my review would have an interest in adding information to my self-review, vs. just using the material I supplied.  This was particularly clueless on my part since I also didn’t ever attempt to provide my boss with status or progress.  He never asked and I never offered.  I decided that no news was good news and left it at that.
3. I left off the other things I had been doing that were unwritten and critical, to my success with the firm.  This included networking events, community work, etc.  I decided that those other things were small and unimportant (of course my peers did not take this narrow view).
4. I failed to calibrate with my boss, using his thoughts as input to my self-review to make sure I was exceeding expectations.

In summary, I thought it was all about doing the work, and not about the process.  And as a result I got what I deserved in my review.   I made no attempt to distinguish myself.

Since then, I have a whole different attitude about performance reviews.  I take them very seriously and I consider them my job.  I now see the performance process as an ongoing focus not a once-a-year drudgery.  

Things I do today as a direct result of this experience.

1. I keep a performance journal.  I regularly jot down things I have done that might be worth noting when I write my self-review.  I don’t always use them, but I am never lacking in material as a result.  I do not consider any accomplishment too small to note in my journal, since often it’s the sum of several small accomplishments that become meaningful.
2. I regularly ask for feedback of others, in writing.  I use this to support my case when appropriate.
3. I set quarterly goals for myself, trying to make sure I have a variety of things I’m attempting to do, across different perspectives and sizes (short term, personal, professional,etc).

I firmly believe that the bonus I lost with my lackluster review, has been made up from over the years as I learned a much more valuable career lesson as a result.   What about you?  What hard lessons have you learned about the performance process (and yourself) that others could benefit from?