Managing Energy

One thing no one ever tells you about executive positions…

…is that a big part of success is simply surviving them!

As a leader it is vitally important that you maximize the energy you bring to your work.

When your energy is low, you are just not very good at your job.

So you need to be clear that part of your job is to make, and keep yourself OK, despite the stress of the job, and the many things lining up to kill you each week.

I picked this topic because I am writing this before leaving on vacation, (and you’ll be reading this while I am on vacation.) I am managing my energy this week, scuba diving in the Bahamas.

Brain Science and Happiness

I have come across some really interesting pieces of information about brain science, as it affects attitude and positive energy.   I wanted to collect them in one place, because together they tell an interesting story.

The punchline of the story:  You need to do stuff on purpose to be happy.

1. How long can you stay angry?

From Jill Bolte Taylor’s book:  My Stroke of Insight, she talks about the fact that there is a physiological response to anger.  She writes: Once triggered, the chemical released by my brain surges through my body and I have a physiological experience. Within 90 seconds from the initial trigger, the chemical component of my anger has completely dissipated from my blood and my automatic response is over.  If however, I remain angry after those 90 seconds have passed, then it is because I have chosen to let that circuit continue to run.

Basically, if you get angry, you’ve got 90 seconds of real anger that is a physiological experience.  If you stay angry after 90 seconds, it’s entirely up to you.

After 90 seconds you are using up energy specifically to stay angry.

2. The Default Mode of the Brain is Negative

A friend of mine is studying the brain science of meditation, and told me two fascinating things, that made a lot of sense to me.

The brain’s default mode is negative. So all those stories, sequences, decision loops, doubts, and obsessions that your brain puts you through — all the negative processing, is actually the default mode of the brain.  Yuk!

The fear response. The other shoe to drop on this negative-default topic, is with regard to the amygdala. The amygdala is the oldest part of our brain that has not evolved since we were cave men waking up at 2am because a tiger came into the cave. Actually it’s not evolved since way before then, which is why it’s often referred to as the lizard brain.

The amygdala is responsible for the fight or flight, survival response — the raw, paralyzing, fear response, that puts you at your most threatened and defensive.

When that response is triggered, blood actually rushes to your limbs (to get stronger for the impending fight or flight), which means it rushes out of your brain! So in the moment of threat, you are actually less mentally capable.

The new piece of brain science emerging from this, that my friend told me about, is that long periods of extended, severe stress can make the amygdala response part of your default brain response.

If this has happened, and your brain has recruited the amygdala to participate in it’s default, negative mode, then even the  slightest nudge or input (think, dropped phone call vs. tiger in the cave) would trigger an extreme anger/stress/threat response. How painful would that be? You can see how stress can build upon itself to the extreme, if you don’t get a break from it.

3. How to get a break? Trade one stress for another!

The third thing I have come across was actually some research from a colleague of mine, Vonda Mills, who is a noted psychologist, and management consultant, which showed that working professional people with children actually had lower overall stress than working professional people without children.

The reason was that the people who had children were forced to “turn off” the work stress because their children required their full attention during parts of the day.  The people who did not have an alternative stress to switch over to, those who alternated between stress and “rest”,  actually ended up more stressed than the people who got to alternate between different sources of stress.

There is more science to say that a stressed brain, gets more useful rest given something else to work on vs. being idle. Remember, idle/default mode is negative.

(This made me think of something I often say — that happy people make bad art.  Perhaps many of the great artists created their works because they intuitively knew they needed to give their  brain something to focus on instead of the stress that was causing their despair.)

4. Stress and laziness

I was traveling through an airport a few weeks ago, and caught a news story about how distracted we all our by the amount of information we have to contend with on all our electronic devices, social networks, and many browser windows (and televisions in airports).

The point that leapt out at me, (which I typed into my blackberry on the spot), was about a study of highly distracted, stressed people… “[in mice] under stress, the areas of their brains associated with habit formation grew, while those linked to decision making and goal achievement shriveled.”  I found the source info here.

Wow, so stress adds real estate to the part of our brain that wants to be a couch potato and shrinks the part of our brain that is required to make new things happen.  Yikes!

OK, so now what?

What this all means to me is – the broken record part from me –

Do stuff on purpose. Actively do things to keep your brain out of the default negative mode.

Acknowledge that happiness is not the easy, default state. It requires effort.  Focus on things that make you happy or bring you fulfillment, and do them on purpose.  On purpose = actually schedule time in your life to do the things that fuel your energy.

Be careful of anger. Remember that you have an excuse for only 90 seconds – a physical process that makes you angry, after that it’s up to you.  And the more you choose to stay angry, the more you stay in extreme stress, the more you encourage the already negative default mode of your brain to recruit the amygdala and make it far worse.

When you need a break, try keeping your brain busy with something instead of “zoning out”. Since even switching one stress for another stress has proven to be more restful than resting your brain, next time you need to de-stress, try something that is mentally challenging but fun for you, and see if you feel better than letting your brain fester in a negative “rest” state.

Happiness on Purpose

Finally, from Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat, Pray, Love, describing something from one of her teachers:

…People universally tend to think that happiness is a stroke of luck, something that will maybe descend upon you like fine weather if you are fortunate enough.  But that’s not how happiness works.  Happiness is the consequence of personal effort, [...] and once you have sustained a state of happiness, you must never become lax about maintaining it…

10 IDEAS FROM THE WEBINAR:
DEFENDING YOUR TIME

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Time Challenges

1. Everyone is too busy. The most successful people were not the ones who were less busy along the way.  They figured out how to get the most important, valuable stuff done even though they were overwhelmed with work too.

2.  This is HARD. Remember, your job as a leader is not just to do good work when things line up to support you in getting the job done.  It’s to find a way to get the right stuff done when everything lines up to kill you — THAT’s what the job of a leader is.

Change your Job

3. Your job description is just a starting point. As a leader, you are expected to re-invent your job to be the job that needs to be done, not just the job that is given to you.  We  talked about how to tune and connect your work to key business priorities to ensure your work really matters.

4. You can’t do everything that is asked of you and succeed. We talked about how you need to “catch” all the work and satisfy your boss, without actually “doing” all the work.   Learn  to analyze, and prioritize your workload so you make some room to get the most important stuff done.

5.  Do more smart stuff. We talked about working at the right level and the importance of strategic thinking, planning, communicating, processes, and more high value ways of working.  You must give yourself time to think about your workload, not just work on it.

6. Do less stupid stuff. What work do you get caught up in that is at the wrong level?  We talked about how to identify repetitive tasks, chaos, and reactive activities, and eliminate them from your work.

How to say NO and maintain credibility

7.  What if it’s your boss’s fault? How do you deal with a boss who just keeps piling the work on, and expects everything to get done right now?  We discussed some ideas to get your boss to back off, and see that it’s right for the business.

8. Negotiating your workload: We talked about how to negotiate your workload with your boss and other stakeholders so they understand the value of what you ARE doing, vs. being upset about what you are NOT doing.

9. Stakeholder Communications. You need support of your boss, your team, and your peers and partners.  How to build a communication plan to make sure that there are no surprises, and avoid attacks and judgment about what you are not doing so you build credibility, instead of being known as someone who says, NO.

Deal with Fire Drills

10.  Get ahead of the chaos. Proactively deal with pressures that throw you off course.  We talked about how to budget the right amount of time and to shield and protect resources.   You need to deal with the inevitable urgent demands and fire drills without risking the most significant work.

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See Also:

• Make More Time

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Getting your whole team in the same room these days is rare.

So how do you create a sense of team?

And how do you motivate people you can’t spend time with in person?

Thank you for your ideas

This article includes some thoughts from my first blog post ever! But also, this is a topic that many of you have contributed great ideas to over the past couple of years, so I wanted to collect them all in one place.  Please keep your ideas coming!

1. Virtual Team Building (literally)

I always did team building exercises when I had my team in a room together. But somehow with a remote, virtual team, I never considered that it was possible.

This was a brilliant idea that a member offered on one of our coaching calls.

How to do remote team building

First, prepare.  Distribute a template ahead of time that each person fills out.  It should include a photo of them, and questions which help people get to know each other.

Some examples:

• What is on your iPod?
• What was your best/worst job ever?
• What are your hobbies?
• What is your favorite book, movie, sport, animal?
  
• What is something from your childhood that has stayed with you and you use in your work?

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Then when you have your virtual meeting over a conference call, show each person’s template and photo, and have them talk about it.  It is an amazing way to help your team get to know each other as people, and build a much more productive working relationship.

Photos! Photos alone go a long way to build trust and camaraderie.  If your team is comfortable with photos, create a social media, facebook sort of page for your team to share non-work things with each other.

This is something you can easily assign to someone on your team who is inclined to set it up and keep it alive.  Refer to recent posts in your meetings.

(note: if someone refuses to submit a photo, let it go, don’t force the issue.)

2. Improve the Quality of Communications

Another issue with virtual teams is often that they are spread around the world, in different countries with different native languages.

Conference call communication is difficult enough, but if it’s not in your native language it’s excruciating.

Suzanne Pherigo created a brilliant process to deal with this.  (You may know Suzanne from Azzarello Group Webinar fame, as my Co-Host).  Suzanne runs an international R&D organization.

Add written reinforcemnent to conference calls

On all of their multi-country conference calls they use an additional IM window where people in each country type out the key points being made, translate any jargon, highlight questions and decisions, and clarify areas in the discussion that were moving fast, or unclear.

They also use blog updates which capture the key ideas and decisions from the conference call in writing, to re-inforce the key outcomes and have a record for later review and understanding.

Adding written communications to conference calls, improves understanding, relationships and productivity dramatically.  Brilliant, Suzanne!

(I would think these were good practices even if there were not language issues.)

3. Timing

Being sensitive to time zones can go a long way to make people feel like they count.

Use their time zone: Whenever I recommend a meeting time, I always note it in the time zone of the other person.

From their perspective, if they are not in the headquarters time zone they need to translate every single meeting. Just doing that one step for them makes a big difference.

Use GMT: Another idea that came from a member was to always note times in GMT so everyone has to translate equally.

Share the suffering: Also, if you need to get the US, Europe, and Asia on the phone at the same time, alternate the suffering.  Have the meeting on rotating schedule so that one time zone is always comfortable.

4. Individuals must exert their presence

As a leader, another thing you can do is let individuals who are remote know that part of their job is to make sure they are not invisible.  The more they step up to make their presence felt the more included they will feel and the more motivated they will be.

It just works so much better for the remote individual to own this.

5. Have Better Virtual Meetings

Finally, re-published from my original post…  How to have better meetings when no one is in the room.

When people are in a meeting I expect them to be “present” – listening, participating,
contributing, and NOT doing email. If people are not going to be present why have a meeting?

Here’s how I do it.

Insist on starting On Time.  Everyone is to call in 5 minutes prior and be ready to go on time.  If need be, start the meeting start at 5 minutes after the hour – sharp! No excuses. Being late degrades accountability for presence, and is a huge time waster.  Don’t tolerate it.

Start with a weather report (or another personal topic) from each person on the call.  This gives every person’s presence a chance to be felt even though you can’t see them around the table.  And it gives you an opportunity to treat people like humans, which always helps.

Insist that no one mutes their phone. I don’t care if I hear children or dogs.  This also makes it harder to type, or watch TV without getting found out.  Mute degrades presence.  And it’s another big time waster.  After a discussion has gone down the road a bit, someone will chime in and say, “sorry, I didn’t realize my phone was on mute and I need to go back to …”

Be there. Make it clear that if this is an important meeting you are supposed to have it on your schedule, be on a landline, and not be driving somewhere between more important things.  You need to set the example for this yourself too – or don’t have the meeting.

Have a clear desired outcome and the promise of a shorter meeting.  “We will finish this meeting at 9:45 so that you can hang up and do 15 minutes of something else before your next meeting.”

Reinforce the fact that you value each other’s time. “The reason we have a shorter meeting, keep our phones un-muted, and don’t do email is because we respect each other’s time and therefore commit to being present, even though we are not in the same room.”

Thanks, everyone!

Creative Thinking vs. Job Skills

OK, so I am stealing a story I read about 15 years ago in an airline magazine.

If anyone out there recognizes it and can help me attribute this please let me know!

Solve this problem…

Here is the story.  This was a science class and there was a homework problem which was the following:

If you needed to find out the height of a tall building using only a barometer, how would you do it?

The “correct” answer involved measuring the air pressure at the top of the building and on the ground, and using the difference in air pressure to calculate the height of the building.  Kids that used that approach and got the math right were marked correct and given full credit.

But there were two other answers that stood out to me, that the teacher marked wrong, with no credit.

I would have marked these correct and given these two students a job!

The first “wrong” answer:

One student said he would take the barometer to the top of the building, drop it off, count how many seconds it takes to hit the ground, and calculate the height based on the time of the fall.

This is probably at least as accurate an answer as using the air pressure based approach.

The second “wrong” answer – even better!

This student said, I would find the general manager of the building and say to him. “If you tell me how tall this building is, I will give you this barometer.”  – Fantastic!

Not only did this solution meet the requirements of solving the problem, it was likely to give a far more accurate answer than the correct answer based on air pressure!

What a shame these two students were marked wrong. These are precisely the kind of creative thinking skills that help people solve important problems when the by-the-book way does not work.

Be careful what you ask for

I have made many hiring mistakes by looking for job skillls — by keeping my interview only to the spec of what needed to be done by the person in the next 6-12 months.

People would come in with very impressive experience and just the right skills to do the job that needed to be done right now.  These hires are so tempting because you can see how they will immediately take some pain away.

But, what about when the job changes?

But more often than not, when the world changes around them, they get stuck.  They don’t adapt easily.  They need to find another job that matches their skills vs. being able to step up to do the new job that needs to be done.

Hire Fast Learners

The most valuable hires are the ones that can do the job today, but also can learn and adapt.

You are far more likely to hire a star if you ask questions that get at how the person thinks, and hire creative thinkers that are fast learners.

In your interview process you need to try and assess how much potential the person has to learn, and judge how fast they will grow.  People with the most room for growth and the most acceleration (smarts and ambition) are your best hires.

This approach is valuable from hiring summer interns, to top executives.  I have used it at every level, once I learned that sticking to the job spec doesn’t work very well.

See also Leading a High Performing Team.

Some approaches…

1. Puzzles: Actually give someone a puzzle to solve.  Some people will get annoyed and refuse to engage,  some will give up very quickly, and others will visibly start thinking and working it out.  They will tell you how they are thinking about approaching the problem.  They will ask you more questions about it.
Hire the person who is doing something with the problem.

2. Stories: Ask for stories about how the world was different when they first got into a job compared to how it is now.  What did they think needed to be done?  What new ideas did they come up with?  What changes did they drive?  If they just did the job as-is for a few years, and did not grow the responsibility or usefulness of their role, they are not a top hire.

3. Actual Problems: Tell them a situation that you are facing that needs a solution.  Ask them to talk through how they would approach it.  The ones that say, I don’t know yet, I’d need to get into the job first, are not your top people.  The ones that ask a bunch more questions and say, of course I’d need to listen and learn more, but from what I know right now this is what I think… and start offering insights, have stronger creative thinking skills.

Your ideas?

If you have used some great questions, puzzles, problems or other approaches to learn more about your candidates creative thinking, and learning skills, and are willing to share them with us, please leave a comment.

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“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, therefore, is not
an act but a habit.” –Aristotle

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Consistent Behaviors

I am always talking about how Brand is about consistent behaviors.

In fact, I just was interviewed by a Forbes Magazine editor for 90 minutes on this topic.  Turns out, I was scooped by Aristotle!

As Aristotle will tell you, what I am saying about branding is not a new idea.

The Big Idea

But the big idea here for me is that we build or degrade our Personal Brand every single day — in every single conversation, meeting, email, presentation, and interaction we have with others.

You are broadcasting your Personal Brand

The behaviors people experience most consistently from you, ARE your Personal Brand.

(By the way this is true for corporate brands too.  Your company’s brand is granted to your company based on your customers’ cumulative experience with all the products, services, processes, communications, and employees that interact with customers.)

You have a personal brand today whether you know it or not.

The question is –  is it what you want it to be?  And are you doing anything consistently, on purpose, to give people any particular impression of you?

Choice #1 – Build  your Personal Brand on Purpose

If you want to build your Personal Brand here are the steps.

• Learn what you are known for.  Get some feedback from people who know you and work with you.
• Decide what you want to be known for.  Understand if there is a gap.
• Define some specific behaviors that support your Brand.
• Do them on Purpose every chance you get.
• Get help with this.

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For example if you wanted a Brand of being…

• Efficient: Don’t write long emails, ever.  Do present (every time) how your solutions save time and resources along with getting the desired outcome.
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• Well Connected in your industry: Don’t take on projects alone, engage your network.  Do expose the virtual team you’ve created and always include externally sourced content in your communications.
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• Cutting Through Chaos and solving complicated problems: Don’t ever participate in group email debates, offer obtuse suggestions, or let issues fester.  Do offer concrete ideas and close off loose ends – every day.

Choice #2 – Leave it to chance

Why now?

If you have made it this far in your career without bothering to build your Personal Brand, why should you worry about it now?

One hazard of leaving your Personal Brand to chance is that you remain somewhat of a blank.

Even if you are generally known as “good”, when opportunities come up, if you are not known for anything in particular so you don’t stand out very much.  You don’t stand out as much as someone who is known for something specific.

Many people are striving for more recognition,  relevance,  and respect.   Building your Personal Brand is a key factor in positioning yourself to attract the respect and the rewards you deserve.

Stand out more.  Be more Credible.

You become a much more credible and powerful presence in your company if everyone around you says similar, specific things about their impression of you.  Your Brand becomes significant and believable.

Your intentions do not equal others’ perceptions

It doesn’t matter what you think or feel, or intend to do.  Those things only matter to you.  No one else can see them.

Others can only experience what you DO.

Another hazard of leaving your Personal Brand to chance are that you can be giving negative impressions that you don’t intend.

For example, I remember once when I did a 360 review, I got low scores on being a good listener.  I was totally shocked, because I always considered myself to be a great listener.

What I learned when I dug in was that the few people I listened to, indeed thought I was a good listener, but the vast majority of my organization never observed me listening.

Build your Brand with visible behaviors

So to build my Brand as a Listener, I created more opportunities to listen.

By investing some thought and energy in building your Personal Brand on purpose you will increase your credibility and your value.

Build your Brand with My Career Workshop on DVD.

10 IDEAS FROM THE WEBINAR

LEADING A HIGH-PERFORMING TEAM

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Motivating High Performance

1. Who cares? You need to motivate your team to want to be a high performing team.  We talked about how to create meaning for the work so people will be personally motivated to care, and want to step up.

2. What does the business value? You need to connect the dots between what the business values and what your team delivers.  It’s important that everyone on your team knows how the business makes money.  How will you increase your team’s impact on critical business outcomes?

Set Clear Expectations

3. Roles: Define roles in a way that builds higher performance right into the job description. The worksheets for this webinar have a great template for defining job requirements beyond the work and skills.  They help you articulate and define higher value performance factors.

4. Clear expectations: You need to be really clear up front to define your expectations of high performance. Only then will you have a concrete way of measuring if it happened, and assessing the gap if it didn’t. Clarity up front lets you make the poor performance discussion less personal and emotional, and more fact based.

5. Measures and Consequences: We talked about how to build trust and motivation by how you manage performance across the board. Differentiate. Deal with low performers, reward high performers, and motivate average performers to step up.  Nobody coasts.

Learning and Stepping Up

6. Learning: Each year you need to set a goal for something beyond the work that your  team should learn about.  Should it be about customers, financials, process, social media?  What should your team be learning? How will you make sure your team is better and smarter next year?

Visibility and Recognition

7. Team Brand: How do you build your team’s Brand to create new habits of high performance that will be recognized by others?  What does your team want to be known and recognized for? And what specific behaviors will you agree upon, and commit to, to support that?

8. Fun vs. Boring Work: How do you  handle motivation between teams that do the exciting, fun work and the teams that are stuck with the boring work?  How do you show business value for the work infrastructure teams do?

Innovation & Bonuses

9. Innovation: How does innovation fit in?  What does high performance look like for innovation? Does it need to tie to the business goals?  Who gets to participate?  What are the right measures to motivate innovation?

10. Do bonuses work? Do bonuses motivate higher performance?  Do they result in higher quality work?  Do they annoy others if not everyone has access?  What is the best way to use bonuses to motivate high performance?

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Adding Value

I am always talking about “adding more value” or “working at a higher level of value”.

How do you know if what you are working on is valuable?  Are some jobs more valuable than others?

What is valuable?

One of my favorite stories I read in a book long ago, was about a a CEO of a bank who walked in one day, and saw a young intern looking dejected in the bank lobby.

He asked the boy, what is it you do for us here?  The boy replied, I have a stupid job… I was told to make sure that the containers for the deposit slips are never empty, and that the pens always have ink in them.

The CEO said to the boy…

You have the most important job in the whole bank.  You are responsible for our clients’ very first experience with us when they walk in the door.

…A bank survives on its deposits. It is your job to make sure that our clients who come in to deposit money have confidence in our bank. How would they feel if the pens had no ink? Your job is to make sure their first impression is a great one, so that they keep doing business with us.

Connect the dots

What is so great about this story is that the CEO connected the dots for the intern.

It is not that any particular job is more valuable than another.

The trick is to understand what the business values and make sure your work is impacting that, no matter what job you are in.

Don’t treat your job description as a life sentence.  Change it. Do more and different than you are asked to do.  Understand what the business values and then tune your job to make sure you deliver on it.

How do you connect the dots between what you do and what the business cares about?

Sometimes people tell me that their job is too low level — it’s too far removed from the big business initiatives for them to see why it’s valuable.

Major red flag: If you can’t connect the dots, no one else will either.  You need to map it out.

Ask, So What?

For example:

A manager of a team of tech-writers: We produce documents that explain how to use our products.  So what?  Customers can be successful using our products. So what?  They don’t need to contact us as often.  So what?  Supporting our products costs less.  So what?  That impacts our profit. There you go!

Then think about how to add even more value.

You could interview the web and phone support people and understand what questions are most frequently asked.  That would give you ideas for what to include in the documentation to reduce the support load even more.  There you are adding more value.

As you learn more from the support teams, you might even get an idea to share with the product development team about how a feature of the product is causing a lot of confusion.  If they implemented it differently it would require less support and less documentation!  Value again.

Don’t wait to be asked.  Find the value.  Add more.

Make your job more valuable

If there is a secret to succeeding at work it is to make sure your work is highly valued, and that you get recognized for it.

1. Understand the business strategy. What does the business need? And what does the business think is important to get done right now? That stuff = “the value”.  As a manager you need to always be learning this (because it changes), and sharing it with your team.

2. Change how you work. Make sure the work your team is doing is impacting those things.

3. Get recognized for it by connecting the dots for people. You have the responsibility to show how your work is impacting what the business cares about. You need to show how you are adding value.  Don’t wait for others to figure it out or to discover how valuable you are.

4. Impact Profit. One way to specifically add value, that is available to anyone in any role, is to make the business more efficient or productive.  That way you impact the bottom line. Profit is always something that is important to the business!

Not everything we work on adds value.

Sort through your workload and understand which things really make a difference.

I have always done my best to make sure that every single person in my organization understands how the business makes money, and what the drivers of revenue, cost and profit are.

If you can get everyone on your team focused on adding value, you can motivate and challenge them to step up, and it will be clear to everyone how you are impacting the business.

Your Job

Your job description is not a life sentence – you can change it.  You need to change it.

If you want to make more progress in your career, (and suffer less along the way), you need to rethink how you work.

I had an opportunity to speak about this at the Design Automation Conference in Anaheim this week, to the Women in Electronic Design Group.

My talk was on Managing your Career on Purpose.

Add value to the business

Something that has been on my mind lately is how important it is, for people at any level, to take control of re-defining their job so they can put themselves in a position to add more value to the business.

The only reliable way to advance your career is to understand what the business needs and make sure your work is impacting it.

Working hard is not enough

In fact, working too hard, trying to do everything that is asked of you, is what gets you stuck.  You need to understand what the business values, and then tune your  job to deliver more value, not just deliver more work.

You need to refuse to burn your time, energy, and career capital working too hard, the wrong way, on the wrong things.

What I find really interesting about this when I work with companies, is this gaping disconnect:

• The Employees: When I talk to the employees and mid-level managers, they tell me they feel like they are working themselves to death, and their work is not being appreciated or recognized.
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• The Executives: Then when I talk to the executive management, they tell me that they are frustrated that their people are stuck in the details and not stepping up to deliver at a higher level of value, and failing to drive the strategy forward.
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What this implies, is that improving your career is not just good for you. It’s good for your company.  They are waiting for you to step up.

The secret:

• Your management doesn’t just want you to do what they ask of you.
• They want you to do the job that needs to be done, not just the one they gave you.

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Think about it this way.  If your job as a manager was just to get your team to do everything that is asked of you, your manager wouldn’t need you.  They could just assign all the work directly to your team.

You need to change the game

You need to catch all the work, but not try to do it all as it comes across the table at you.  You need to step above it, analyze it, sift through it, prioritize it, and recommend a better way to do it.

Your management wants you to think strategically about the workload that is dumped on you.  It’s up to you to figure out how to change the game, figure out what the most important stuff is, and find the best way to do it.

Don’t wait to be asked

The people who figure this out and do it without being asked or instructed to do so are the ones whose careers advance.

They are not burned out, working tirelessly, without recognition, on everything.  They have figured out a way to be less busy, but add more value to the business.

Good for business

From the perspective of the business, having more people and managers who are personally motivated and capable to step up, the better the business strategy will be executed.

Execution stalls happen when managers and employees are so overwhelmed with activities and demands of their current jobs, that they don’t even have time to think about how to do things in a better way, or implement a new strategy.

Stepping Up

Make sure you know what it means to lead at the right level and manage talent and team performance, not just projects and work output.  Increase the reach and breadth and significance of your impact.

Communicate better.  Build a strong network of support.  Delegate better, and always raise the bar.  You need to step up and pull your people up. It is what your business is expecting of you.

Individuals:  If you’d like some help to step up, check out these resources.

Executives:  If you’d like to discuss how to give your managers tools and support to step up, contact me:

In a struggling economy, companies are asking employees to go without raises and bonuses.

Why humans work

Do your employees get angry and check out? Or do they keep working hard with little to no cash incentive to do so?

The good news is that humans work for more reasons than money — and money is not even at the top of the list.

What is at or near the top of the list for people is to feel like their work matters, that it counts for something.

The companies who create meaning for the work keep their employees engaged and productive through the business downturns.

Companies that do not go the extra mile to create meaning, have a workforce doing as little as possible.  I see this often.  It is a shame for everyone involved, including the shareholders.

People want their work to matter

I was preparing to write this blog about how to make work more meaningful for people, when I heard a piece of an interview with Dan Ariely about his new book, The Upside of Irrationality.

I didn’t hear the whole interview, but he talked about a test he did to measure how important meaning was in one’s work. The test was to complete a task repeatedly, until you wanted to stop.

The task was to build a Lego robot.

When you completed it, you got asked if you would like to build another robot.

In one case the robot you built was placed to the side so you could admire it while you built the next one.

In the other case if you said you’d like to build another, they dis-assembled the one you just built right in front of you,  gave you back the pieces and said, OK build another one.

How to drain all meaning out of someone’s work

I’m sure I am doing a dis-service to Dan Ariely’s work by taking this out of context, but that is one of the best metaphors I have heard for taking the meaning out of someone’s work!

It got me to thinking, what are all the ways we drain meaning from our employees work, dis-assemble their robots right before their eyes, mabye even without recognizing we are doing it?  And how can we build up the meaning instead?

1. Changing your mind all the time

Someone completes something you said was really important, but you changed your mind since you first assigned the task.  Now instead of accepting the work and thanking them, you gloss over it and ask them to do something else instead.   Then later you change your mind again, maybe even back to the first thing.

Robot parts are flying at this point!

Let people finish things.  Don’t keep switching the task before people can complete things.  Consider the full cost of changing your mind.  If you really have to change your mind, don’t skip the closure.

Thank people for the work, and communicate a reason why THEIR work still counts,  even though YOU have changed your mind.

2. Not accepting something different than you do it

Be careful here, just because it isn’t like you would do it, doesn’t mean that it’s not good enough, or maybe even better.

Build the robot again, but this time use the blue legos for the feet and the red ones for the arms because that is how I do it.

You are far more likely to create meaning if you accept good work, than if you tweak it to death just to make it exactly like you would do it.

3. Skipping the closure

The urgent customer issue or demand has disappeared because you either won the deal or lost the deal. The team has been working frantically to produce or defend something.

When you no longer feel the urgency, you either forget to call off the team, so they keep working round the clock — oops!   Or you just never go back to collect the work, because it no longer matters to you.

Just because it no longer has meaning for you and you have moved on to other things, doesn’t mean you should take the meaning away from the people that did the work.

Save the robot as a resource

If the work is no longer necessary, close out the project, thank them, and have a quick brainstorming about how we can use this important work for another customer or to solve a general issue.

It’s so much easier to just move on to your next urgent thing, but you are sacrificing your team’s motivation an ongoing performance and support if you skip this step.

4. Not being clear about the strategy

This is probably the biggest and most common hazard I have seen.

Companies are fuzzy about what their strategy is.  But they demand lots of hard work from people, and it is utterly impossible to understand if the work matters to the strategy or not.

Unclear strategy causes lots of wasted time and energy working on the wrong things, or waiting for decisions to be made, but it is really de-motivating for people to deliver work into a strategic black hole.

That is like throwing their robots directly into the trash can.

Make the strategy clear.  It’s what creates meaning for the work.
See also: Uncertainty is Expensive

5. Not connecting the dots for people

Even if the strategy is clear to you, don’t expect your staff to automatically see how their work fits into supporting the big picture.

You need to spell it out and show them why their work matters. If you never connect the dots about how their work specifically supports the over-all strategy, there is no meaning in it for them.

Otherwise, they are just putting their robots on a conveyor belt to be used for unknown purposes.

Ensuring that all your employees understand how the business works, and how their work helps move it forward, motivates and enables them make better decisions and add more value.

With our without financial rewards your employees will do better work, faster, if they can personally see why it matters.

10 IDEAS FROM THE WEBINAR

PACKAGING & POSITIONING YOURSELF

• Download the Podcast
• Download the Podcast, Presentation & Worksheets

Have the Right Strategy

1. You, the Product. You will come across as much more powerful and compelling if you develop your approach to present yourself.

You need to think of yourself as a product to be marketed, and create a communication strategy for each audience you need to influence.

You have a lot of control over how you are perceived, and can stack the deck in your favor, if you do the right things on purpose.

Create the Right Materials

2. Your Marketing Materials. We talked about creating an inventory of marketing materials way beyond a resume.

3. The worksheets for this Webinar are loaded with checklists, examples, and templates for creating a compelling marketing package for your job search or stronger positioning within your company. (download)

Define Your Unique Offer

4. Your Offer: You need to talk about what you offer in a specific way that opens doors and gets people making introductions for you.

5. Thought Leadership. If you want a big job, people will Google you. Make sure they find something impressive! We covered how to create presence and thought leadership internal and external to your company.

6. The Right Stories. Having the right stories prepared ahead of time is critical to making the right impression.  How to package your key accomplishments and proudest moments, and use them to gain a real advantage in how others perceive you.

7. Story Telling: Don’t be boring! How to wrap the right, different titles and
punch lines around key stories for each specific audience, and your desired outcome with them.

Take the Right Actions

8. How to get on “the List”: There is always ” A List”.  Learn how to get on it.  Make connections and get the support of people who are in a position to help you.

9. Make the Connection: We talked about how to map what you offer to what companies are looking for, so they will recognize that you are what they are looking for.

10. How I did it: I walked through an example of how I used all of these techniques at a time in my career when I was going for a big job.

The feedback on this session was amazing, thank you!

Download the Webinar now.

(FREE Downloads for members of Azzarello Group)

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3 Months FREE Membership Offer

Based on the great response to the Membership program and this particular webinar,
I have decided to extend the 3 free months offer to June 9th.

If you become a member by June 9th, you’ll get this podcast and the worksheets,  as well access to all the other resources in the Member Library until September 2011.

Become a member now and get 3 months free.

Or you can:

• Purchase this single podcast.
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