Harsh reality #1

As much as you’d like to believe that good work should stand on it’s own, it doesn’t.

Building credibility and trust is essential.

But you can’t have credibility if you are invisible.

You also can’t have credibility if you are annoying!

People with high credibility get more done.

They face less challenges to their honor and their budget. They face less stupid questions.

They get to work faster because they don’t have to slow down to deal with attacks and doubts about their decisions, plans, investments, and actions.

This is what I mean when I talk about DO Better, LOOK Better and CONNECT Better in my book. Good work is not enough – don’t forget the LOOK Better part.

How to be not-annoying

I want to be clear, I am never advocating creating a publicity campaign for your career instead delivering excellent results. (We all know people who promote themselves without delivering good work, and we don’t like them.)

You must deliver excellent results first. But then put those results where others can see them.

As long as the visibility is based on good work (DO Better) it is not annoying.

Not only is it not annoying, it creates value for others. People like to be kept in the loop. They like to know what is going on. If you make them aware of your team’s good work, they appreciate it.

Stakeholders & Influencers

In my Personal Leadership workshops I talk about being visible with stakeholders and influencers.

Your stakeholders are the people who depend on your work in some fashion, your boss, your team, your peers, and all the people in the chain of events that your work touches.

Your influencers are people who may not have a stake in your work, but have a stake in your career. People like your boss’s peers, and your bosses counterparts in other organizations.

Harsh reality #2

The people whose names are known get more goodies than the people who are invisible.

Here is an example. I have been in many executive staff meetings (think about the meeting you boss or your boss’s boss goes to) where some juicy benefit is being discussed – a promotions, a bonus, a special project… I often knew all of the people a level or two down being discussed and considered — so I had a clear view of who was most competent and deserving.

I can tell you that the person who got the win, was not typically the one who was most deserving. It was the one whose name was known by most of the people in the room.

Ouch!

Is this about being false?

Many people feel that if the goal is to gain visibility on purpose, that it feels false, shallow, showing off, or political. (Or annoying).

Because you need to communicate on purpose, by definition people sometimes feel that just because you are doing it on purpose it is false or forced.

There are two reasons you need to communicate on purpose to build credibility and visibility:

1. If you don’t communicate with people on purpose, you won’t do it at all. It is not part of your job description and your job will fill as much time as you give it. Especially if you are more comfortable putting your head down and working than you are communicating and connecting with people.

2. Just because you communicate on purpose, doesn’t mean it is not valuable, or false.

How to be genuine and add value

With these influencers, if the real goal is just to be visible, and they really don’t have a stake in your work, how can you make yourself visible and add value, if your work has no direct value to add to them?

Here are some ways to be genuine, add value, and get your name known (and build credibility) – all without being annoying or false.

1. Actually add value. Find a way to add value. Just because your job doesn’t directly serve someone, doesn’t mean that you can’t add value. But you have to do some homework and listen. Learn what your influencers care about and worry about. If you find a way to make a contribution, share an idea or offer a bit of help, you are adding real value.

2. Get your boss to invite you to the staff meeting s/he attends. When your boss asks you to prepare information to be presented to upper management, ask if you can go to the meeting with your boss and be the one to present it. All bosses should do this for their top performers. If your boss is not doing it they may just not have thought of it. Once you get there then don’t waste the opportunity. Don’t just present data, perform.

3. Say “thank you”. Send a message to a VIP and tell them that you really appreciate something they said or did. Let them know how it impacted you, what you did with the insight, and what the result was. Most executives get very few “thank you for doing a great job” messages. It will stand out as long as it is sincere and well thought through. Don’t be lazy about this and make a vague gesture. Be concrete and specific.

4. Ask for help. This is a great way to make a connection with a senior person. Send them a note and ask for 10 minutes of their time to get some coaching or advice on something they are expert in. If you are very clear about what you are after, and make it clear you only want a short amount of time, most will say, yes. You will score points for being interested in them, and they will then know who you are.

5. Offer non-business ideas. Executives are people too. Know their interests and hobbies. Send a photo from a scuba dive trip or a bike trip and say you found an outstanding place or resource. “I know you are interested, so I wanted to pass this along”.

6. Conspiracy. I loved a story about a group of women who wanted to get visibility in a large corporation. They all worked in different groups. They agreed that they would each talk each-other up across organizations to get their names known and build credibility. “You know Mary B did something remarkable last month…” It worked. Over the next two years they all got promotions.

Is is political?

If this still all sounds political to you – making a connection with someone who is not directly dependent on your work, you have a choice. You can call it political and use that as an excuse to stay isolated and invisible, or not.

My view is that if your intentions are honorable—if you are creating visibility based on excellent results, and your goal is to add value, you are doing a positive thing.

The reality is that you will have a much harder road ahead of you, and you may even get stuck or sidelined in your career if you don’t make the effort to LOOK Better.

Was this useful?

If you found this article useful, please help me share it (share button below) with others and encourage them to subscribe to this Blog for free.

About Patty
Patty Azzarello is an executive, best-selling author, speaker and CEO/Business Advisor. She became the youngest general manager at HP at the age of 33, ran a billion dollar software business at 35 and became a CEO for the first time at 38 (all without turning into a self-centered, miserable jerk)

You can find Patty at www.AzzarelloGroup.com, follow her on twitter or facebook, or read her book RISE…3 Practical Steps for Advancing Your Career, Standing Out as a Leader, AND Liking Your Life.

Free eBook Download

Do you have the data?

People often ask me if they should keep a work journal of some kind.

I was encouraged to do this early in my career — I did it for awhile.

Was it worthwhile? I wasn’t sure.

But then something happened…

A manager who worked for me was really annoying me. It got to the point where I decided the organization would be better off without him.

When I talked to my boss about it he said, “Oh, I don’t know… he’s been in place for a long time, and I’m not sure you’ll have the support to make that move.”

But then he said, “Can you give me an example of what you mean?”

So, I went back to my journal, and in a moment I was able produce a list of about 20 transgressions which occurred over the last 6 months.

It included things like failing to communicate important information to his team, speaking badly of employees with his peers, not delivering on commitments then blaming it on others, taking credit for other’s work, being out of touch then miscommunicating things that led to confusion and re-work, undermining management decisions… And every entry had a date stamp.

There were two big aha’s for me in this moment.

1. I would not have had support to take action on this without all this data
2. I would never have been able to produce this data after the fact

So the lesson that I learned is this:

Keep a record of things that annoy you

I have given up on general journaling, but now if there is anything that I am struggling with, or that is annoying me, I create page where I note everything that occurs with regard to that irritant.

I note the date and specifically what happened — Not how I felt about it, just the facts.

I still do this in a physical notebook. If you use technology for your notes, you can make a file for things that annoy you, with a page or record for each violator. This can be a person, a task, a process — whatever is annoying you. Then make a note each time something happens.

Why this works

The big benefit of having the actual record in front of you, is that you can clearly see if this is a real problem or not. And if it is, you’ve already got it fully documented. And it makes you feel better.

There are three useful outcomes I have found from keeping a record of what is annoying.

Outcome #1 – This is a real problem and I will act on this

If you look at the data you collected, as I did in my case with this manager, you can clearly see, yes it is a real problem. And the list gives you both the appetite and the support to act on it.

It is almost impossible to re-create data after the fact.

But if you have maintained a list of dates and specifics about what happened, you have a lot of power to act on it.

This approach works for other annoying things too.

A Bad Process

If there is a process (or lack of one) that feels frustrating, feels like it’s wasting your time, make a note of the date and how much time you spent on it when it annoys you.

After a couple of months you can make a judgment if it’s worth addressing. If it is, your notes are automatically a great specification of what the solution needs to look like. You are not starting with a blank page.

An Over-demanding Colleague

If there are colleagues that seem to be complaining about something you’re not sure is important, or too-frequently involving you on things you shouldn’t be involved in, or making too many requests of your team’s time, make a record each time it happens.

You’ll see if there is a trend or not, and if there is, it will become clear what to do about it. And you’ll have the data to support making a change right at your fingertips.

A Bully

If there is someone who is bullying you, or putting you down, make a note each time it happens. I’ve also found that writing it down takes some of the immediate sting out of the situation.

Then you can read over the record to build your confidence that you are not imagining it. It gives you a clear, factual, non-emotional point of view to decide if and how you want to change the dynamic.

If you don’t write it down, you carry the bad feelings longer each time, and when you try to explain to yourself or someone else how bad it is, you lack specifics. So it’s hard to make a clear case that you are being abused. You’ll stay stuck longer.

Outcome #2. This is real problem, but it’s my problem

I was working with an executive who was being driven crazy by a micro-managing boss. He started noting the date and issue of each offense, and after a couple of months he realized that the problem was his own emotional response. He hated being micromanaged so much that when it occasionally happened, he was blowing it out of proportion.

When something really bugs you, it can become a trigger and feel like a bigger deal than it is.

The notes helped him see that the specific behavior from his boss was not that frequent — it’s just that if it happened at all, it made him angry and miserable. The data allowed him to put it in perspective and not get as upset about it.

Outcome #3 – This is a real problem, but I can live with it

One last insight that I found surprising was when I was in a really hard job for about 2 years. During about a year in the middle, I didn’t think I was going to make it. I was miserable. It was a combination of things: my boss, the business challenge, other organizations attacking….

When I read over my journal during this period, I noticed a pattern… There would be about 2 weeks of entries that said things like, “I can’t stand this anymore, I have to get out. I can not take another week”, but then there would be 3-4 weeks of things like, “we won product of the year”, or “I got a nice thank you from my boss’s boss.”

Seeing this pattern helped me realize that I could survive this. It wasn’t a matter of needing to gut it out for years, the pattern was that I needed to survive for a week or two, and then it would get OK for awhile.

This particular job was giving me great experience to put me on a path to becoming a CEO, so I decided to stick it out. I was able to stick it out because I had my own words proving to me that I could survive.

Make your case stronger

Many times over the years, by using this approach, I have been successfully able to drive change, negotiate something, fix bad processes, win-over adversaries, and just generally get the over-processing of annoying things out of my head.

Having a record of the things that bug you puts you in a very powerful position to change them.

Was this useful?

If you found this article useful, please help me share it (share button below) with others and encourage them to subscribe to this Blog for free.

About Patty
Patty Azzarello is an executive, best-selling author, speaker and CEO/Business Advisor. She became the youngest general manager at HP at the age of 33, ran a billion dollar software business at 35 and became a CEO for the first time at 38 (all without turning into a self-centered, miserable jerk)

You can find Patty at www.AzzarelloGroup.com, follow her on twitter or facebook, or read her book RISE…3 Practical Steps for Advancing Your Career, Standing Out as a Leader, AND Liking Your Life.

Free eBook Download

Special January Membership Offer – 3 Months Free

If you have been thinking about joining now is a great time to do it.

How the Membership Program works:

Each month I do a webinar on a topic of Business Leadership and Career Success where you get insights and tools to advance your career.

Also you get me as a mentor in monthly Coaching Hour conference calls. You get to ask me your own questions directly.

Members get access to everything in the Member Library and…

• You can download the webinars and listen at your own convenience
• You get all the worksheets and templates from the webinars to put your career plan into action
• You get access to Personal Coaching from me in the Monthly Coaching Hour
• You get the Career Year of Action Guide (an additional $39 value) which provides step by step, month-by-month guidance to ensure you make progress in your career

Surprisingly low cost

For just $179 for a whole year, you get access to a quality of information that is not out there at any price. And you get access to me.

If you join now, you’ll get 3 months free (15 months for the price of 12) AND you can get started with the Career Year of Action guide in January.

Managers: Give membership to your team

Companies find this to be a highly practical, effective, and low cost option to provide meaningful development to their employees.

Contact me for Group or Corporate pricing.

The Chasm

Sometimes even when people agree, they can’t communicate with each other.

I’ve seen this common problem play out with bosses and employees when they are both really smart, capable people, but they just don’t get each other — they drive each other crazy.

The issue is that we all have our own preferred style of thinking and communicating.

When we get a match with our boss, life is easy. When we end up as opposites, the interactions can be highly stressful and annoying, leaving both parties scratching their heads about why this is so difficult.

(If you are thinking Myers-Briggs, yes, that is a good way to explain this. But let me jump to specific point I want to make and I’ll put the Myers-Briggs stuff at the bottom for anyone who is interested.)

The Issue

These two types of people look at making progress very differently.

1. BIG PICTURE/GO
2. DATA/PROCESS

Because of that, what should be simple conversations often fall apart. Here are two examples of the problem.

Problem 1. BIG PICTURE/GO boss and DATA/PROCESS employee

(In Myers-Brigs, NP vs SJ)

Your boss says to you, Make it so.

You respond, OK, but here are the things we need to consider to make that happen. And we need to do this first, learn this, and fix this before we can complete that.

You feel like you are being smart and engaged, but what your boss hears is you putting up roadblocks, or giving excuses about why you can’t do it.

You start to feel your boss’s disapproval and frustration, but don’t get it. What you are saying is, Yes, I’ll do it! And here’s how. In your mind, you are showing your boss that you are capable and ready to take this on.

But what your boss’s reaction seems to be, Why are you arguing with me?

The more you talk about what it will take and how you will do it, the more frustrated your boss gets.

Solution: Stop explaining.

When your BIG PICTURE/GO boss says, “Make it so”, you say “Will Do!” and leave the room.

It’s import and to give him the, “YES and GO” feedback in the moment.

Any more information, explaining how it will work, or noting problems to solve at this point will not only NOT add value, it will aggravate him.

Your BIG PICTURE/GO boss is looking for you to join him on the “GO” wagon. Just say, I’ve got it. I’ll report back later. Then GO.

Once you are off on your own you can say to yourself, oh crap, this is difficult, we can’t just jump to that outcome, this might not work, we need to do all this other stuff first… At this time you can study the situation, get inputs, break the task down into steps, start solving problems, etc.

Stay in the Big Picture

Then when you go back to your boss, your BIG message is, I am making progress.

If you need some help, resist the urge to explain or show your work, and keep it a big picture request.

…I have broken this down into 4 areas. All are moving forward but one. I need you to make a decision on this one and then I can continue. Here are two choices.

Keep all of your sequence and process to yourself and reveal only what is truly required, to your boss.

You don’t need to show how capable you are by exposing the machinery. The good news is that your boss trusts you and doesn’t need as much data and sequence as you need.

Score points on his terms not yours.

Problem 2. BIG PICTURE/GO employee – DATA/PROCESS Boss

What about the opposite, where you are the big picture/go person and your boss is the data/process person.

What happens here, is you say to your boss, I’ve got it, but then your boss wants to see all the spreadsheets and project plans. He is thinking about way more detail than you are, even though you are the one doing the work.

He expresses concern that you don’t have enough data. You feel like he doesn’t trust you.

You just want to get on with it and your boss is slowing you down.You are miserable going on data fetching exercises which are not helping you move forward.

Solution: Switch to productive detail.

You won’t get away with not giving detail. So satisfy his need for data and detail but change the conversation so it doesn’t slow you down.

Always have a flow chart with you that shows what you are doing between now and delivering the outcome. Go into the conversation with at least a block diagram of your process. This can deflect a lot of detailed questions.

Focus his detail energy on getting more data about the outcomes, not the process and activity:

…Are these measures OK? Are there other outcomes I have missed? Can you think of other things we need to test or measure to make sure this delivers what we need?

Bridging the Communication Gap

If you are having these kinds of dis-connects with your boss or employee, stop and think about how you are both reacting. Chances are, it’s a big-picture/go, data/process disconnect.

Once you are both aware of if, you can start changing how you interact, have a much more productive and pleasant relationship, and get better business outcomes.
You might even find yourselves joking about it.

Myers-Briggs Information

If you are interested you can take a Myers-Briggs personality test here:

Here is the short-hand about what the assessment tells you.

On each of 4 scales there are two end-points and a range in between. Most people are more toward one end than the other on each scale, but seldom wholly one or the other.

Below are not the official definitions. These are my practical take-aways that I use as a rule of thumb when I interact with people. (By the way, I am an INTJ.)

1. I or E
How you learn and process information about the world: In your own head (I) or by talking things out with others (E)

2. N or S
How you form your picture of the world from that information: Big picture, top down (N), or bottoms up, built from lots of detail (S)

3. T or F
How do you decide what to do about it: Logic/thinking (T) or Caring/Feeling (F)

4. J or P
How you take action on it: Sequence and process (J), or Go now and learn as you go (P)

Was this useful?

If you found this article useful, please help me share it (share button below) with others and encourage them to subscribe.

About Patty
Patty Azzarello is an executive, best-selling author, speaker and CEO/Business Advisor. She became the youngest general manager at HP at the age of 33, ran a billion dollar software business at 35 and became a CEO for the first time at 38 (all without turning into a self-centered, miserable jerk)

You can find Patty at www.AzzarelloGroup.com, follow her on twitter or facebook, or read her book RISE…How to Be Really Successful at Work AND Like Your Life.

Free eBook Download
LIMITED AVAILABILITY – find out more

Subscribe for free
If you found this article useful, you can subscribe to this blog for free and get updates in your email or RSS reader.

Get Facebook Updates.
Click “Like” to get more great business leadership updates on Facebook

I was doing a series of leadership workshops last week and one of the things we talked about was creating a thank you habit in the organization.

Create a “Thank You Habit”

What I mean by a Thank You Habit is to make it known to everyone that the organization wants to acknowledge good work.

Make it clear that the executives want to be informed when good work happens, so they can personally say thank you.

This in itself builds good will, and a helps build a culture of trust.

Create a process for recognition

I don’t think organizations are necessarily stingy with saying thank you, the problem is that good stuff happens all the time and you don’t know about it.

Everybody’s busy, people travel, people are in different sites, so great work happens all the time and you just don’t see it.

All you need to do is create a simple process for any individual in any location to feed a suggestion for recognition of a peer up the management chain.

Make it personal

Commit that when a thank you request comes in, an executive will personally say thank you to the individual, whether that is by a drop-in, a phone call, or a hand written note. (Notice I did not say email).

The more personal the thank you is, the more value it has.

If an executive goes to an individual and recognizes the good work personally, not only does the individual feel great, but everyone in the group is left saying “Wow, they actually know what we do here!”.

It costs nothing

Many organizations over-engineer their recognition programs and it becomes a exercise in spreadsheets and gift certificates.

If you have a reward system in place, that’s fine, but don’t forget about the personal part — the part that takes more time and trouble, but costs nothing.

Make a genuine connection with someone who has done something you appreciate and let them know.

Act on the Thank You

We all fall victim to appreciating things people do for us and never saying anything. I have a far from perfect record on this myself.

But I find that it helps to create a task for yourself that turns into a habit — when you feel gratitude or apprecation, always say so.

So finally…

Thank You!

I am very honored that so many people read my blog and my book, and share it with others. THANK YOU.

I am very grateful for those of you that hire me to come and speak to your group or work with your team. THANK YOU.

And I am very thankful for all the kind words, feedback, and ideas you share with me.

Thank you all. And to those of you in the US,

Happy Thanksgiving!

Was this useful?

If you found this article useful, please help me share it (share button below) with others and encourage them to subscribe.

About Patty
Patty Azzarello is an executive, best-selling author, speaker and CEO/Business Advisor. She became the youngest general manager at HP at the age of 33, ran a billion dollar software business at 35 and became a CEO for the first time at 38 (all without turning into a self-centered, miserable jerk)

You can find Patty at www.AzzarelloGroup.com, follow her on twitter or facebook, or read her book RISE…How to Be Really Successful at Work AND Like Your Life.

Free eBook Download

Subscribe for free
If you found this article useful, you can subscribe to this blog for free and get updates in your email or RSS reader.

Get Facebook Updates.
Click “Like” to get more great business leadership updates on Facebook

Driving Action

In this month’s webinar we talked about how to optimize your communications to drive action in your organization.

HIGH VALUE COMMUNICATIONS

Listen or download the webinar to learn more.

Trust & Confidence

Useful assumptions: It’s useful to assume as a starting point, that people don’t listen to you, don’t believe you and don’t trust you. If you then proactively work on trust, your communications will stick.

Consistency: The repetition and consistency of your message is as important as the content. If people don’t hear it over an over again, they won’t believe you are serious. We talked about methods and technologies to show that you are serious this time.

Concrete language: The more concrete you make your language the better. We discussed the use of a timeline, and how to use it to create concrete examples of goals and progress.

Communicate on their terms: It’s important not to modify your communications into sanitized “business speak”. Address tough issues head on and answer questions in the same language as people ask them.

Decisions: Don’t undermine your communications with decisions that go against what you are telling people. We talked about the kind of mistakes organizations make that leave people suspicious and skeptical. (So action stalls.)

Getting Action

Keep it Simple: Greatness of Strategy = Strategy * Execution. You should be able to explain your strategy in straightforward terms that anyone can understand. Complexity undermines execution. If execution is zero, greatness is zero.

Spell out the next steps: High level strategies can be exciting and motivating, but don’t tell people what they need to do differently when they get to work in the morning. We talked about how to give people clear direction and measures that increase accountability across the organization.

Getting Communications to Spread

Get more people talking: You know you have communicated successfully when you are not the only one communicating. The goal is to get all the people talking amongst themselves about what you are communicating. We taked about a few ways to do this.

Create a new social norm: The pull for people to go back to working the old way is very strong. Unless you build communicating about the new way of working into the work day, people will think that you have given up on it and go back to what they were doing.

Get Personal: The more you personalize communications the more impact they will have. Get inputs, and ask questions and get more people communicating about what matters. Things like brown bags and breakfast meetings work well.

Use Social Media: We talked about how internal blogging and community sharing technologies can help groups of people share knowledge efficiently and reduce the email load.

Want more?

Listen or download the podcast – High Value Communications
Download the complete webinar – High Value Communications
(includes the presentation and the worksheets from the webinar)

Become a member – Get this webinar and all the other Webinars

If you found this article useful, please help me share it (share button below) with others and encourage them to subscribe.

About Patty
Patty Azzarello is an executive, best-selling author, speaker and CEO/Business Advisor. She became the youngest general manager at HP at the age of 33, ran a billion dollar software business at 35 and became a CEO for the first time at 38 (all without turning into a self-centered, miserable jerk)

You can find Patty at www.AzzarelloGroup.com, follow her on twitter or facebook, or read her book RISE…How to Be Really Successful at Work AND Like Your Life.

Free eBook Download

Subscribe for free
If you found this article useful, you can subscribe to this blog for free and get updates in your email or RSS reader.

Get Facebook Updates.
Click “Like” to get more great business leadership updates on Facebook

A story…

Recently, I have found myself re-telling a story I read a long time ago, in a leadership book, that really stuck with me.

It was about a boy who had a summer job at a bank. I’m paraphrasing…

One time the CEO of the bank asked the boy, “So, how do you like your job”?

The boy replied somewhat discouraged, “I have a really stupid job. All I do is replace the pens and the make sure these containers that hold the deposit slips are never empty”.

What matters

The CEO then said, “Not only is your job not stupid, you have the most important job in the whole bank!”

“Our bank can’t exist if customers don’t deposit money, and customers won’t deposit money if they don’t have confidence in our bank. It’s your job to make sure that our customers’ very first experience when they walk through our door is a good one. What could be more important than that?”

“How do you think our customers would feel if the pens didn’t write or they needed to go through the time and hassle to ask someone to get them a deposit slip? Would they feel welcome and confident in us?”

Motivation and Effectiveness

The boy suddenly felt much better and kind of proud. Once he thought about his job the way the CEO had explained it, and realized why his job did matter, he thought of ways to do an even better job to make customers feel more confident and welcome. So he started cleaning the counters each day, and making sure every thing on them was neat and organized. And he started greeting people as they walked in the door.

I think there are three important lessons in this story.

1. Every job matters.
2. Make sure each employee knows why their job matters.
3. Employees who understand why their job matters will do a better job.

1. Every job matters

If you can’t explain why each job in your organization matters, you need to question whether or not you need the job in the first place.

You need to make sure you can explain how everyone’s job contributes to the business, both to make sure that you are maximizing your resources, and so you can explain it to the people doing the jobs!

2. Make sure each employee knows why their job matters

As a leader, it’s your job to make sure you explain to everyone why their job matters and how it impacts the business. You need to make sure that the experience that boy had with the CEO happens for every one of your employees.

People want their work to matter. There is no better way to have employees understand why their job matters than for you to connect the dots for them, and give them a clear line of sight both to the top of the organization, and to the outside customer.

Make time to connect the dots

I would always make time in my schedule to talk to individuals and mid-level managers to understand how they felt about their job. I would learn what parts of the business and external world they could (and couldn’t) see from where they were sitting.

I would then connect the rest of the dots for them.

I did this in 1-1s, talking with people in the cafeteria, breakfast meetings, riding in the car for sales calls, brown bags, attending staff meetings of the managers who worked in my organization, and any other opportunity that came up.

If you make an effort to share with people how their work fits into the bigger picture they will be more motivated and more effective. Which gets me to the third point.

3. Employees who know why their work matters do a better job

Once people truly understand how their job contributes to the business and why it matters, they are more likely and able to step up, solve more problems, and add more value.

Once the boy understood it was about customer confidence, not pens and paper, he developed more ideas of how to deliver that outcome on his own.

With personal knowledge of what business outcomes their roles need to drive, people will do more of what the business needs them to do.

Get your people to step up and creatively do the job that needs to be done, not just the one that was defined for them.

Here are a few examples:

Product Development:
I would explain to my product development organization how we made money, and where the profit came from. I would explain how getting new products out sooner would benefit not only our competitiveness, but also cost less.

I helped them understand how their salaries fit into the P&L, and gave them ideas of the kinds of things they could do to impact sales (make it easier to demo) or impact expenses (make it easier to test.)

Tech writers:
I would give tech writers a chance to interact with customers, and share the business model of our customer support function with them. I’d have them talk with customer support people.

They realized that if they could improve the product documentation it would result in both a better customer experience and a lower support cost.

IT department:
I explained the business model to the IT department and how much each sales rep needed to sell, and what all the steps are in the sales process.

I told them about the length of sales cycles and how special deals were often given in the last 24 hours of the month. That helped them to understand why the IT systems had carry a to carry heavier load (and better stay working!) at those times.

They realized that they could change the way they planned and managed IT services to support the sales team to make closing business and handling special pricing easier.

Taking  the time to share and explain

Taking time to share with every group, how the company makes money, where the revenue comes from, and where the profit comes from, motivates people to step up and do more for the business.

Helping them understand how the P&L works and  if their job is part of the P or the L, and how their job impacts the profit, makes a big difference not only to morale, but to cost reduction, creative thinking, and innovation.

Was this useful?

If you found this article useful, please help me share it (share button below) with others and encourage them to subscribe.

About Patty
Patty Azzarello is an executive, best-selling author, speaker and CEO/Business Advisor. She became the youngest general manager at HP at the age of 33, ran a billion dollar software business at 35 and became a CEO for the first time at 38 (all without turning into a self-centered, miserable jerk)

You can find Patty at www.AzzarelloGroup.com, follow her on twitter or facebook, or read her book RISE…How to Be Really Successful at Work AND Like Your Life.

Free eBook Download

Subscribe for free
If you found this article useful, you can subscribe to this blog for free and get updates in your email or RSS reader.

Get Facebook Updates.
Click “Like” to get more great business leadership updates on Facebook

What do YOU do?

On one of my recent coaching hour conference calls with Azzarello Group members, someone asked me,

“What things do you when you start a job so you make sure to get off on the best possible footing?”

I gave an answer along the lines of my DO Better, LOOK Better, Connect Better model about building credibility and getting an action plan in place, but the person said, “No, I meant, what do YOU do?

“Is there something you did the same way each time you started
a new executive job?”

So I thought about it and in fact there was one thing that was part of my playbook pretty much every time I started a new job. And it worked really well.

After we discussed it, someone on the call said, “you should write a blog about this”. So here you have it…

Getting Started Strong

This approach is not only useful for when you are new to a role or a company, but you can use this technique to give yourself a boost in effectiveness and credibility within your current job as well.

Create two lists.

Desired Outcomes
Recommended Actions

Get feedback on both lists from pretty much everyone.

1. Desired Outcomes

On this list I would write a list of what the world would look like after a year of my making it better. Here is where I would bring to bear my external or fresh perspective and big picture thinking.

For example it would have things on it like:

• Perception of our products goes from unknown to desirable and credible
• We are spending money more effectively and can see budget tied to specific business outcomes
• Morale and motivation of sales team is greatly improved
• Industry analysts will reinforce our strategy
• We will have reference customers that support our new strategy in each super region

2. Recommended Actions

I would then create a list of actions that I believed would drive progress to achieve these outcomes.

On this list I would have things like:

• Resolve internal competing efforts on products and clarify product and service roadmap
• Improve our sales enablement function (list top 3 ideas…)
• Work with services organization to identify, secure and create reference customers in each region
• Orchestrate interaction with analysts and reference customers to prove our strategy

Get Feedback

Then what I would do is I would walk around and talk to everyone about these 2 lists.

I would present these two lists at management meetings for each function, team meetings, and 1-1 meetings with peers and executives and get their feedback.

I would ask, do you agree that these are the right outcomes to be targeting?
Do you agree that these are the right initiatives to achieve these outcomes?

Thinking back on it, this approach quickly let me establish myself in a very productive and credible way.

On the DO Better front:

It allowed me to zero in on the most important business outcomes. It helped me both create and prioritize the action plan to get there.

On the LOOK Better front:

It helped me build credibility quickly because I was “out there”.

I was having conversations with business stakeholders far and wide. I was establishing my presence. It gave me a chance to establish myself as a strategic leader that could see beyond the current situation.

Outcome focus

Hint: driving an outcome-focused conversation always makes you appear more credible, than talking about things that are happening today.

On the CONNECT Better front:

Having these conversation based on these two lists gave me a reason to connect with people.

The outcome-focused perspective put people in the mood to help me.

Because I was getting their feedback, they felt like they had a stake in what I was doing and because it was a motivating outcome we were both now heading for, they would offer to help me.

I was able to build up an extra team of connections very quickly by sharing my thoughts on these two lists of outcomes and actions, and asking people far and wide for their inputs and ultimately their help.

By the time I got 30 days in, I had a very solid plan that I put into action. It let me start putting points on the board to maintain the credibility I built initially with this approach.

Was this useful?

If you found this article useful, please help me share it (share links below) with others and encourage them to subscribe.

Membership Info

If you’ve been thinking about becoming a member and joining the coaching hours, now is a great time to sign up. Get a head start on your career progress for next year. Learn more or join.

About Patty
Patty Azzarello is an executive, best-selling author, speaker and CEO/Business Advisor. She became the youngest general manager at HP at the age of 33, ran a billion dollar software business at 35 and became a CEO for the first time at 38 (all without turning into a self-centered, miserable jerk)

You can find Patty at www.AzzarelloGroup.com, follow her on twitter or facebook, or read her book RISE…How to Be Really Successful at Work AND Like Your Life.

Free eBook Download

Subscribe for free
If you found this article useful, you can subscribe to this blog for free and get updates in your email or RSS reader.

Get Facebook Updates.
Click “Like” to get more great business leadership updates on Facebook

Remoteness

Many people have asked me recently how to build your personal brand and get positive visibility when you work remotely and no one can see you!

Change

Organizations are changing so much and so frequently that many people have never met their boss or their peers. Many companies right now have zero-travel policy for internal travel.

So many people find themselves trying to build their credibility and their career without every getting face time with their stakeholders.

If you are a remote employee trying to exert your influence on the business, you can feel invisible, isolated, and powerless. And no one can see how truly impressive you are in your slippers.

The big issue for you Presence

Any leader needs to make their presence felt –  in the room or from afar.

If you want to build credibility and influence you need to build up your personal presence.  It’s harder as a remote employee, but not impossible. And it’s even more important.

Face time first

OK, so there is no substitute for face time.

Every time I have had a remote assignment or managed a remote employee I required a 2-4 week break-in period where the person begins the assignment in the office with the team.

If you “live” with people for awhile first, you’ll do MUCH better later.

You will build up some social comfort with each other, and then remote is not nearly as distant.  I would not accept a remote assignment if this was not how it began.

With travel budgets frozen it’s not always possible to spend time with the people you work with.

Consider footing the bill for your air travel yourself.

Find someone to stay with. Tell your manager that you are going to be in town for personal reasons (at no expense to the company) and that you’d like to work at the main office for a couple of weeks while you are there.

This is a very worthwhile investment you can make in your career. After you get the face time, you will be more effective and respected forever after.

If you can’t establish the face time, the additional ideas below are even more important.

Don’t Hide on Conference Calls

Don’t dial in 5 minutes late, do your email and not speak.  Instead dial in 5 minutes early.  Greet everyone who joins.

I knew a guy who worked remotely who took a picture of himself every day, and when ever he was on a conference call with the group at headquarters, he would email the picture of himself with a note that said something like, “thought you would want to see what shirt I was wearing today”.

It may sound silly, but he was exerting his presence. He was well known and respected.

Exert your presence in words too. Tell them about the weather where you are at and what you have been working on.  Learn about their life. Then don’t check out during the call.

Participate, interrupt, contribute. Make your presence felt.

Make people feel like you are “in it”.

Use Video

I have to say that I am blown away by Skype video.  I have clients around the world who I have never met, but after a few hours of conversation with and skype video I feel like they are colleagues and new friends that I know personally.

Unfortunately many corporate firewalls do not allow Skype. 

If I were a remote employee, I would encourage all of my key colleagues and stakeholders to take a Skype call with me from home once in awhile (convenient in their time zone), so we could connect “in person”.  It makes a huge difference.

Video Mail

If you can’t arrange skype, try sending a video mail once in awhile. It’s easy and it’s free. Google “free video email” to find options. Eyejot.com is one that I have used and works well. A 30-second video can exert way more presence than a bunch of email.

Lead things

Step forward when things need to get done.  Take the lead.  Put yourself in the center of a project even though you are not there.

Of course it needs to be something you can succeed at remotely, but don’t fail to ever take the lead just because you are remote.

If you want to be relevant — be relevant!

Network More

As a remote employee you miss the company lunches and the discussions around the coffee machine.  But you don’t need to miss connecting with people.  Identify people in the company you need to have a relationship with, and build a relationship with them.

You should spend at least an 2 hours a week (if not a bit more) just connecting and talking with people at your company.  Live connections = presence.

Get Personal

Reach out to people. Get to know them as people beyond the work discussions. Learn what they care about and enjoy. Contribute things of interest. Where you have key relationships with people, invite them to connect with you on Facebook.  Keep yourself current and present in their thinking. 

When you become a full person, you are far more visible than when you are just a work conversation.

Share your ideas and knowledge

Become a thought leader in your area of expertise.  Consider writing an internal blog.  Share interesting news that people at corporate don’t see. Seek out external information relevant to your business and be the one to share it.  Have a point of view.

Just because you are remote, doesn’t mean you need to be invisible.

Don’t wait for people to find you

Be the one to exert your presence, build relationships, share information, and engage. You can build a strong personal brand, even if you are not there.

Was this useful?

If you found this article useful, please help me share it (share links below) with others and encourage them to subscribe.

About Patty
Patty Azzarello is an executive, best-selling author, speaker and CEO/Business Advisor. She became the youngest general manager at HP at the age of 33, ran a billion dollar software business at 35 and became a CEO for the first time at 38 (all without turning into a self-centered, miserable jerk)

You can find Patty at www.AzzarelloGroup.com, follow her on twitter or facebook, or read her book RISE…How to Be Really Successful at Work AND Like Your Life.

Free eBook Download

Subscribe for free
If you found this article useful, you can subscribe to this blog for free and get updates in your email or RSS reader.

Get Facebook Updates.
Click “Like” to get more great business leadership updates on Facebook

Personal Brand and Defense

Sometimes you find yourself in a situation where your gifts and skills don’t line up with the type of skills that are valued in your environment.

You might get shut out or pushed down because of it. It is stressful and uncomfortable.

When this happens, there is a tendency to go on the defense — to prove that you belong there, and to try and show that you can be more like them.

But you’re not.

When you try to do this you put yourself on a back foot.

You are not at your best. You are caving into the pressure and expectations of the group, and trying to win them over by being something false, that you are not good at.

Use your brand to turn the situation around

When I talk about the value of building your personal brand, solving this problem is one of the big payoffs.

Having your personal brand defined lets you put your best foot forward with great confidence all of the time, especially when you are in a situation or environment where you are not comfortable.

If you are clear about your personal brand, you don’t need to be defensive when you don’t fit. You can use it to sell your strong points.

You’ll be more confident and more impressive.

Confidence and Advantage

Here are some examples of ways people have used their personal brand to go on the offence, build confidence, and get an advantage.

Example 1: “Boring old person” in an internet startup

I loved this feedback from a woman who heard me speak on personal brand, and put the idea into action.

She found herself bidding for work in an internet startup company full of hip 20-somethings. She was initially concerned that she would not fit with their culture — like she might be viewed as their mother! As a result, she was concerned she would be under-valued even though she believed she could help them.

Don’t even try to fit in.

But with her Personal Brand in focus, she decided not to even try and fit in, and not to worry about it. Instead she decided go in unapologetically with her personal brand which was about focus, achieving clarity, and translating ideas into revenue.

Staying on brand made it easy for her to engage this group. It removed the stress and the uncertainty. By focusing on her brand, she gave herself the opportunity to sell her strengths without hesitation. She was able to demonstrate truly authentic confidence.

Instead of being cautious and defensive and trying to earn their respect on their terms, she wowed them on her terms.

She got the job.

Example #2: Business Person in a Technology Organization

This was me at various points in my career – Although I have a technology background and an engineering degree, I am a business leadership expert, not a technology expert.

I know many people who have this particular problem in technology companies. The environment doesn’t respect you because you are “not technical enough”.

What I did, is to go back to my brand, and build my confidence from an authentic position of strength. Instead of defending my right to be there by trying to convince them that I was technical enough, I went on the offense.

“You don’t need another one of you”

I would say, “the last thing you need is another technical person. We have plenty of them around here, and I’ll never be as smart as you on technology.

What I contribute is an understanding of the people who use our products and what motivates them. I can translate all this technology into things that they not only care about, but want to spend their money on. I can help bring revenue in. You don’t need another technical person, you need one of me.” (Implied, respect me. I’m different, but I can do things you can’t.)

It put me on solid ground. It made me feel confident. I didn’t’ care if they thought I wasn’t technical enough, because I had real value to offer. It gave me strong executive presence, because I was using the part of my brand of being straightforward, business-focused, and making real and useful connections with people.

I did not need to be defensive. (or technical). I became respected.

Example #3. Program Manager in an Engineering Organization

Another non-technical person I work with used a similar approach in a highly technology focused engineering organization. She was being challenged on her lack of engineering pedigree. Did she really belong here? Many people thought not.

Pedigree doesn’t matter. Results Matter.

Instead of getting defensive she said, basically, “you’re quite correct I am not an engineer. That’s a good thing. I wouldn’t be as good at my job if I was an engineer. What I contribute is an ability to drive complex projects through to completion. The fact that I don’t get involved in every technical detail is actually an asset. I can keep the program focused on the finish line, and get it out on time and on budget. That’s what you need, not another engineer doing a deep dive on technical detail.”

Steady Confidence

When you have your personal brand defined you are more powerful and more impressive for two reasons.

1. You are leading with your strengths, so you’re good at what you are doing and it truly impresses others.

2. But even without that, by using this approach you give yourself the gift of confidence. You give yourself solid ground to stand on. You define the terms you are going to interact on, and it’s a place where you feel comfortable. You give yourself an advantage no matter what the situation. Your executive presence soars when you are confident.

Next time you feel like you don’t fit, and people are under-valuing you, don’t try to be like them. Lead with your brand. Lead with your strengths.

Being clear about who you really are, and what you are naturally good at and building that into your personal brand is a great way to increase your confidence and your value.

Building your Personal Brand

If you want some help building a strong Personal Brand based on your natural strengths, you can use my Personal Brand Building workbook.

THINGS YOU CAN DO NOW

1. Subscribe.
If you found this useful, you can subscribe to this blog for free and get updates in your email or RSS reader.

2. Get Facebook Updates.
Click “Like” to get more great business leadership updates on Facebook.

3. Check out  my new book
RISE…How to Be Really Successful at Work AND Like Your Life.
Free eBook Download

Difficult People are Everywhere

In this month’s Business Leadership Webinar
we talked about how to deal with difficult people, stack the deck in your favor, and get your way more of the time!

INFLUENCE DIFFICULT PEOPLE

Listen or download the webinar to learn more.

Here are some of the things we covered:

Influence, not Defense

Don’t get stalled. You WILL get bullied, blocked and let down. If you view this as an inconvenient nuisance that interferes with your real job, ignore it, or expect someone else to fix it for you, you will get stuck.

It’s part of the Job. Accept that dealing with difficult people proactively, and clearing the obstacles they create, is an official part of your job. We talked about how you can make more progress, and get less personally damaged by.

Defensive doesn’t work. You are never in a stronger position by getting defensive. Create a positive way forward. Fight personal attacks with forward progress.

Outcome vs. Emotion.

Don’t get drawn in…
One of my favorite quotes is: “If you get drawn into an argument with a stupid person, he will drag you down to his level, then beat you with experience”.
–unknown.

Whether it is a stupid person or an evil genius, you are better off to stick to the high ground and stick to the non-emotional facts. Keep it simple. Don’t react to emotional attacks, it only gives them more hooks to drag you down.

Focus on the Desired Outcome. We talked about how to defined a clear desired outcome — and how this shifts the focus to a less controversial, less emotional point in the future. What to do next is way more contentious than “What are we trying to accomplish big picture, long term?”

Outcome vs. Opinion. Remember, your opinion is not more valid in an argument. We talked about how to shift the discussion from conflicting opinions to desired outcomes, so you can get to work on achieving a useful outcome.

Get the Data

The Voice of the data. When you collect the data you can speak with the voice of the customer or the voice of the market, not your voice. You are not smarter than your adversary, but 100 customers are.

The Value of the data. When someone is attacking you, blocking you, or not performing, keep a log of it. What are the specifics? When? What? What was the impact? This helps you assess if it indeed is a big deal, or if you are overreacting because it bugs you. If it is a real issue, then you will already have the data record to address it objectively.

Be super-specific. We talked about how to define a very specific outcome. Make sure you spell out how it will be measured, by who? Have a check list for what completeness and quality look like. Allow no wiggle room. That way if you are not satisfied with the outcome, you have a super-clear, completely objective way for communicating the gap.

There are ideas for doing this in the webinar worksheets.

Don’t give away power. When you are fuzzy in defining the outcome and the measures, you give away power. You’re left saying, “That’s not good enough”, but by not having a super-clear way to say why, you risk sliding back into a disagreement with the person, not the outcome.

Sell the Outcome

Recruit Support. You need to build your power relative to your adversary. You need to actively sell the business value of the outcome you are proposing. We talked about how to recruit support so that you are favored in a stand-off.

Credibility. You will find occasions when you and your adversary have an equally strong case. There are two factors that tip the scales in your favor.
1. Which proposal is more likely/trusted to be executed?
2. Who has more personal Credibility

Short and Long Term View. I can say that in my career, the times I got my way against adversaries included both using these desired outcome, facts-oriented techniques in the moment, AND as a result of having taken care to build my credibility over the long term.

Build a Relationship

We are all people. Even though your adversary is probably the last person that you would want to have lunch with, do it anyway. Try to find some reason to respect them. Try to find a common interest outside of work. Even a small human connection will make work negotiations easier and reduce back-stabbing.

Want more?

Listen or download the podcast – Influence Difficult People
Download the complete webinar – Influence Difficult People
(includes the presentation and the worksheets from the webinar)

THINGS YOU CAN DO NOW

1. Subscribe.
If you found this useful, you can subscribe to this blog for free and get updates in your email or RSS reader.

2. Get Facebook Updates.
Click “Like” to get more great business leadership updates on Facebook

3. Check out  my new book
RISE…How to Be Really Successful at Work AND Like Your Life.
Free eBook Download