Year: 2012

(part 3 of 6)


With that being said, there are a couple of good answers to the question “What do I need to do to advance my career within the organization?”  The first one is: You gotta believe!

It’s just that simple.  You’ve got to be convinced that the  organization is going in the right direction or that you have the ability to get it turned in the right direction in short order.

Think about it.  Whether it’s a sports team, a religious order or a business, success comes down to one little word – faith!  You’ve gotta believe. (And then once you believe you’ve got to do the work that illustrates your faith in action.)

It starts with the leaders.  Do they have a plan?  Can they tell you what it is? Are they working as hard as you are to achieve the goal?  Are they honorable?  What is their vision?  Does it matter to you?  Do you believe?

We’ve all had co-workers who watch the clock or who put down even the best ideas.  These people don’t believe and are tough to work with – they make everyone else’s job a little harder.

We’ve also had colleagues who are “all-in.”  They work tirelessly, are always smiling, seem to always be championing the bosses cause (and even seem to get away with bending the rules a little more than most.)  These people can be a pain to work with too – because they make the rest of us look bad.  But these people believe. And just imagine how much more fun it would be to come to work and how much easier it would be to achieve that lofty goal or grand vision if you believed too.

Call it naive, drinking the Kool-Aid or selling out… but, you’ve got to believe.

In fact, if you don’t believe, won’t believe or can’t believe then you’re wasting time – yours and the company’s.  Do everyone a favor: go work somewhere where you can believe.  If you do believe then you’re halfway there.  Just take the next small step – commit.

(Part 1 of 6)
From time to time I am asked that most common of career progression questions.
Periodically, a colleague, mentee, direct report or recent college graduate will ask “How do I get ahead in my job?”  “How can I become a leader in my company?”  “How can I get a bigger opportunity in the organization?” or some similar variation on the question “How can I be down!?”

This is an earnest and sincere inquiry.  Shrouded in concern for the business, and for one’s own professional development, these are the kinds of conversations that cause leaders to pause, to move appointments around and to make room on the calendar to have.  Executives pride themselves on being coaches, on being communicators, on being concerned about the individual and on having the desire to maximize our human capital…

And so, we schedule meetings over breakfast or cocktails to have these chats. They are the most important meetings of the day!

With all of this significance then, we’ve got to make the content good.  “Tell me what you want to do.”  “Tell me what obstacles you are facing.”  “Tell me what your long range goals are.”  “Tell me what I can do to help!”

Lots of talking, a little bit of listening, a few words of advice that may or may not be useful and a word or two of organizational insight that may provide a different perspective; and before you know it your hour is up!  The boss picks up the tab, give you a sharp pat on the rear, swells up his chest and sends you back into the game – whether you know the play or not.

By a show of hands, how many of us have been there?

Ok, so let me clear this up.

Over the next several posts I will make five points to do that:

1.       The question is false
2.       You gotta believe
3.       Commit
4.       Think with me
5.       Execute

Look for posts in this series on Thursday’s and Monday’s over the next few weeks.

In a recent post I wrote about the untimely death of my Aunt Ciby (The Fallacy of facebook, February 2012).  I was able to attend the funeral in St. Louis and was pleasantly surprised when the eulogist referred to my aunt as the “most interesting woman in the world” and entitled his homily “Stay Thirsty My Friends!”
I was reminded of Aunt Ciby and her eulogy when watching basketball this weekend and a Dos Equis commercial came on, naturally featuring the Most Interesting Man in the World and his tag line.  Of course, the minister at the funeral wasn’t referring to a high-end beer, but rather Aunt Ciby’s thirst for knowledge.

Aunt Ciby earned her PhD, she was born in a small Alabama town but had traveled the world, and she was interested in the work and perspectives of other people. But most importantly, as the reverend pointed out, Aunt Ciby was thirsty to learn more about God and the work that He placed her on earth to do.

The bible talks about thirst in many places – symbolically and literally:

Psalms 42:2                        I thirst for God
Psalms 63:1                       O God, my soul thirsts for You
Isaiah 41:17                       Their tongues faileth for thirst
John 6:35                          Those who believe in me will never thirst
Proverbs 25:21                  If your enemies are thirsty, give them water to drink
Thirst is a condition that causes us to want something to make us more comfortable or to need something to survive.  Thirst shouldn’t be taken lightly.  When we are thirsty our bodies are telling us that something is missing, that we are weak or incomplete…
Quenching that thirst satisfies, enlightens; makes us feel better, stronger, more alert and better prepared.  Thirst causes us to stop and think, to study, to give and to seek out a source for our satisfaction.
Are you thirsty?
What are you missing?  What is standing between you and your goal?  Do you need to learn more?  Do more?  Give more?  Do you need to drink more?… with respect to your calling, your giftedness or talent, your profession or your family?
That dry, parched feeling you have in your throat is thirst.  So is that feeling of discomfort at work or that strange incomplete thought that you can’t get out of your head.  Thirst may be the reason that you wake up just in time to make it to church even though you were out too late the night before.  Thirst may also be that doctor’s appointment that you procrastinate about making or the conversation that you and your spouse often start, but never finish.
Are you thirsty?  If so, I recommend that you not ignore it for long. Prolonged periods of thirst can lead to death (Isaiah 5:13, “the multitude dried up with thirst”).
What’s interesting though is that even once we’ve quenched our thirst, we’ll get thirsty again!  Thirst is what keeps us growing.  Thirst helps us expand. Thirst helps us get better and smarter.  Thirst can be frightening, but it’s a good thing.  You just have to know where to go to get your water – or your beer.

Stay thirsty my friends and #XEQTE!

I found this post more difficult to write than most.

The last month or more has been busy and professionally not much fun.  I’ve been focused on things that I don’t like to do.  The winter months are the slowest in my business, and this year, in some respects, it seems tougher than others.  So right now every day is a 12-hour day – working to secure new business, protect existing business, collect receivables and manage payables… I think that the accountants call that cash flow management.

One day recently when I was in my office and hard at it, the former owner of the business, Dennis, came around the corner and caught me there with my head in my hands and staring at the computer screen.  He was apparently in a good mood and simply said with a big smile “Henry, if it was easy everyone would do it!”  And before I could mutter a response he was gone.

I think that Dennis was just glad that it wasn’t his job to do it anymore!  But truer words may never have been spoken.   And to continue the thought – If everyone could do it, it wouldn’t be worth doing!

You and I were created uniquely.  We were given unique gifts and talents, and have cultivated unique skills.  These are the things that give us the ability to do things that others can’t and make it look easy – even when it’s absolutely not.

So, with nothing left in my office but me and the echo, all that I could do was smile.  I sat back in my chair, saved the Excel spreadsheet, shut down Outlook for the day and grabbed my coat.  A light dinner, a glass of Scotch and a good night’s sleep is what this situation called for.  I guess that if I’m the only one who can do it then I’ll need a clear head so I can get back at it tomorrow.

Just #XEQTE.

The last couple of months at work have been rough!  Never a dull moment. Lots of moving parts.  Challenges, changes and complications galore.  Every email – urgent; every phone call – important; every meeting – critical!  (Or at least it seemed.)

So I decided to take a week off…  Well, sort of.  I worked half-days for a full week to try and bring it down a bit.  But at the end of that week a friend and advisor commented that my stress level was off the charts and that I needed to go on spring break. Not two days later my business partner ordered me to go on vacation. Message received.

Clearly, I needed to slow down (*singing* in my best Loose Ends interpretation).  In the midst of this, something unusual occurred… We had an email server change.

Not normally that eventful an occasion, but in this case it caused my Blackberry to stop receiving emails.  PANIC!? Surprisingly, no.  Given that I needed to de-stress a bit anyway, I decided that it was ok.

And now, for the third consecutive week I’ve permitted my only partially functioning Crackberry to be devoid of email.  What a difference it’s made!

I am noticeably less tethered to my phone and less concerned about providing an instantaneous response to the issue of the moment.  As it turns out, every question is not urgent, every problem is not an emergency and every meeting request is not a good use of my time.

I am not yet free of my addiction, far from it.  But, I am learning to slow down – just a little.  A round of golf, a leisurely drive down to Florida, a couple of afternoon naps, a book by the

pool and a broken phone did the trick this time.  And having a “laptop only” email policy hasn’t cost me much more than a little less stress.  I’ve found out that if it’s really important people will pick up a phone and call or come find me – the old fashioned way.

The lesson may even be sinking in.  I’ve already scheduled time off in each of the next few months.  I’ve gotta slow down.

And you may need to do the same.  Sometimes to XEQTE you’ve got to take it easy.

A hard lesson to learn?  Yes, but let’s work on it.

One of the things that I enjoy doing most is working with others to build businesses.  Lots of things go into doing that.  Customer service, meetings, sales calls, financial projections, negotiations, quoting new jobs, travel, technology challenges, and responding to emails all come to mind – and each of these things may occur in just a single day.  In short, there can be a dizzying, complex and exhausting array of activities required to build a business.

But wait…  At the week’s end, when we are so beat that we can hardly make it to happy hour and we’re still certain that  we’re nowhere close to checking everything off the list, how do we know if we are actually getting the most important goals accomplished? It’s surprising when you think about it, but given your schedule and mine, it’s easy to go a week, months or even a year without measuring our progress.
Unacceptable… and Dangerous!

Whatever it is that you are intent on achieving is measurable.  You’ve got a revenue, fundraising, fitness or savings goal; a grade point average target or a project deadline.  These things are measurable.  BUT, if we’re not careful we can become so busy that we lose sight of the goal.  That’s risky.   If you lose sight of where you are going, any bumpy road will take you there.
So we’ve got to fix that.  We’ve got to find a way to keep ourselves reminded and focused on our goals.  And we need tools to help us.  I can think of several that might help.  Budgets and financial statements are great tools, as are journals, check book registers, report cards and work plans.  KPI’s (key performance indicators), OGSM’s (objectives, goals, strategies and metrics) or GAM’s (goals, actions, and metrics) and task lists can also help.  But, one of my favorites is a simple sales pipeline report.
Using a simple spreadsheet you can track people, dates, comments, dollars, and clients; easily updating each category and sorting as needed for whatever purpose.   When I worked as a sales manager I insisted that all sales representatives update their pipelines each week.  Reviewing this data gave me a good sense of how we were tracking towards budget, when things were really running behind schedule and what projects I should jump into to help get closed.  The data included in the pipeline kept me and my teammates focused on the most important goal – Closing The Deal.

All of us get up each morning and roll out of the bed for a purpose. That purpose is measurable. Let’s not be so busy that that we rob ourselves of the satisfaction of    accomplishment. Measure your work.  Be diligent about it, insist on it and enjoy it. Give yourself that gift of knowing when you are not progressing (so you can fix it) and of knowing when things are on schedule (so you can relax a bit).

Dreaming big is easy.  Without metrics it can be tough to be sure that you are executing.

I have several friends who choose not to become a member of the large and growing facebook community.  They each have different reasons – generally none of which make sense to me.
facebook is fun!  It enables me to stay in touch with folks, to send messages, to see photos and play games – even exchanging pithy dialogue with friends(acquaintances) as varied as those whom I haven’t actually seen or spoken with in nearly 40 years, those whom I may have met only once in passing, and those whom I see and speak with daily.  What could be better or more convenient than that?
Besides, I will typically argue, “You are on facebook anyway!”  Whether you have an account or not, others are likely to mention your name or include your image in their postings.

I am a fan of facebook.  And I believe that facebook has a valuable, useful and permanent role in our post-modern community.  Participating on facebook is becoming less and less optional.   So we might as well get in the game and enjoy it.  But, I discovered this week that there is a fallacy in facebook.

My Aunt Ciby was killed in a head-on collision this past week.  This was shocking and sad news.

When I moved to St. Louis in the late 1980’s Aunt Ciby’s house was the first stop I made.  She went apartment hunting with me and argued with me about picking up the dinner check after we got my mother’s approval for the choice that I made.  She and Uncle Charles, along with my cousins Ronnie and Carlos, just enveloped me as one of their own as I took my first steps towards being a grown-up – and they made it seem effortless.

Aunt Ciby was my also facebook friend.  Though we’d traded many messages, comments and likes, I probably hadn’t actually spoken to her in the last year or two; and it had been much longer than that since I’d seen her last.  That makes me sad too.

Aunt Ciby paid attention to my facebook and blog posts, and to those about and by my immediate and extended family.  She would often comment, reminding us about the significance of a post or encouraging us to stay on the path we were following.  You could hear her voice and feel her intention through the computer screen – and it mattered.

But despite the importance of these interactions, this is also the fallacy of facebook.

Without facebook would I have taken a few minutes to pick up the phone
and share some laughs with my aunt?  Might I have made it a higher
priority to get to St. Louis and share in a family event?  I don’t know the
answer to these questions – and certainly won’t definitively answer
that I would have.  Being an adult is a full time job, and unfortunately
that means that we too often sacrifice time spent with the
ones we love for the day-to-day activities that pay
the bills and seems so much more immediately important.

But I do know that there is a fallacy in facebook that we should all be wary of. facebook made me believe that I had been much closer to Aunt Ciby recently than I actually was.  The reality is that facebook is a poor substitute for building or maintaining relationships.  As interesting as they sometimes are, it takes more than a regular status update to stay close to someone.
Yet, I encourage you to make the most of facebook.  Scroll through your friend list and consider which of these people really mean something to you. Pick out a few and give them a call, schedule lunch or drop by the house after work today.  Use facebook as a tool to develop real relationships with those whose friendships matter the most.  Take joy in the friends who are really just acquaintances, but protect, cherish and grow the interactions that are full and genuine.
That is not to say that there is no love and affection within the facebook community.  Of course there is.  Just don’t allow the fallacy of facebook to create a false sense of intimacy with your friends and family.
Rest Aunt Ciby, rest.  You will be missed – by me and by your 417 other facebook friends.