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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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What is the job worth?

Many people ask me how to go about negotiating their compensation.

They struggle to figure out “what they are worth”.

Or sometimes when I suggest they are not paid enough and they should ask for more, they ask “am I worth that much?”.

What you are worth is never the point.

Whenever you negotiate for salary or contract rates, don’t focus on what you are worth, focus on what the job is worth, and what the outcome that job delvers is worth to the company.

You need to do some homework to figure this out. Find out what others in a similar role are getting paid. Understand what outcomes the business values most.

If anyone ever says, “You are not worth that much”, You can come back and say,
“If this job delivers these outcomes at this level, my data shows that it is worth x in this market, what does your data show?”

“You don’t have the experience…”

I was thinking back to a time in my early career when I was a field-based sales engineer. It was my job to be the technical counterpart to a sales person. I needed to demonstrate the product, and show customers how our product could be configured to meet their needs and improve their business.

It was my second job out of college and I was about 22. (I graduated at 20).
My salary was $30k/year. About 6 months in, the only other female in our peer group said to me, “Do you know that all the guys in this job are making $36,000 a year?”

My first reaction was, “I guess it’s because they have more experience”. She said, “It’s not fair”. (She got paid the same as me, but had more experience than I did).

Gather the data. Build the business case.

So I thought about it for a few weeks. Then I watched how the guys did the job. I looked at what they were doing and not doing, and compared it to what I was doing.

It turned out that on every aspect of the role I was performing at the same level or at a higher level than the guys. In addition to that, I was doing a bigger job. I was being used in sales in situations on additional parts of our product that some of these guys either, couldn’t or wouldn’t do. I was being left alone with customers to close business, and develop marketing and training with reseller partners.

So I then I finally thought, “this doesn’t add up.” ( I was a little slow…)

Ask for it

Back to the plot, in my next meeting with the VP of Sales and the CEO, they thanked me for my good work and I said, “You’re welcome, and I want a raise”. Their first response was, “You haven’t been here long enough”. I said, “All of my peers are making $6k more than I am”. “They said, “They get paid more because they have more experience.”

So I then said, “But I don’t seem to be getting any kind of slack or break on the work because I have less experience. In fact I am doing more advanced work than they are. I do everything thing they do, and more, so why is their attendance record worth more than my results? I think my salary should be raised at least to what you are paying the others.”

They agreed to raise my salary shortly after that.

The final point in the story is that the other woman called me later and said, “Thanks, you got me a raise.”

What are the lessons here?

1. If I didn’t ask, I wouldn’t get
2. If I didn’t do my homework on knowing what the job was worth, I would not have had a business case to base my request on. Learn the market rate for your job.
3. A business case is much harder to argue with than, “It’s not fair”
4. A business case is much more productive than, “You are discriminating against me because I am a woman.”

It’s worth expanding on this fourth point. Looking back, of course they were paying me and the other woman less than the men. It took me about 15 more years to notice that by the way. (Again, I was a bit slow on this point…)

Business results speak loudest

But I’m glad I was oblivious. If I had become upset about being treated unfairly as a woman, I would have used up a lot of energy and emotion on that. I might have argued on that basis. I might have got labeled, even unofficially, as “difficult” and that might have cut off future opportunities.

By focusing on the business case, I was putting all the right energy in all the right places. I was distinguishing myself on the value I was adding to the business, instead of complaining about how the world works.

No one is completely immune from stingy bosses or companies trying to get you to work for the absolute minimum they can get away with.

But I can tell you, at any level, whether it’s an entry level job or a C-Level position, it is always more productive and compelling to focus on building and selling a business case for the compensation you want, based on what the job is worth the the company, than debating about fairness.

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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.

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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)

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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.

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Corporate Crap

Corporate crap is all that extra, low-value work and random pressures that interfere with delivering on your job…

It’s the stuff that drains your time and energy, and annoys you a lot…

It’s the stuff that makes you feel like you are not controlling your own destiny.

It’s things like needing to defend what your group does, or deflecting low value initiatives and useless demands on your time.

The reality

Your job is to deliver what is in your job description AND deal with all the crap that gets in the way of delivering on your job description.

By the way, the higher you advance in a corporation, the more crap you get to deal with.

It’s part of what they pay you for.

One way to think about this is… if you were to go from a corporation to a startup, you would notice two things:

1. There is no corporate crap. You spend virtually 100% of your time moving the business forward. This feels great.

2. You get paid a lot less. This feels less great.

But it’s a trade-off. I always thought of this difference in pay as the money they pay you for dealing with your allocation of corporate crap.

Politics and The High Ground

One of the biggest time and energy sinks is politics. There is an endless source of negative drama you can get drawn into at work. This is not the high ground. But avoiding it is not free of time and energy either. Crap.

For example, if you get so wrapped up in staying on the high ground that you say, “I refuse to engage in politics. It doesn’t add value, and it’s wrong” this can come back to bite you.

It’s important to realize that if everyone else is playing politics, and you are not, you can get damaged by being invisible, or by having the wrong story out there about you. So you need to do something…

Defensive Politics

One of my mentors gave me some advice that really stuck with me when I was taking the high ground and refusing to engage in a political war.

I told him, “I won’t engage in empire building because it’s wrong. We are trying to cut costs and having a big organization doesn’t mean you are adding more business value. I would rather deliver on my business then spend time building an empire.”

He said to me, “Patty, the only problem with that approach is if you are the only one who is not empire building, you will be left with no people”.

So how do you stay on the high ground when others are being political and you need to defend yourself?

Visible, but not Annoying

I never ever advocate politics and publicity instead of excellent results.

The most important thing is to deliver excellent results first,
THEN make sure to get visibility for it.

This is how you accomplish what I describe as “Be Visible, but not Annoying”. If you are known for outstanding results, visibility does not look shallow or political. People value knowing what you are doing when you are doing great stuff.

Control your story

For example, if someone is spreading the word that “Patty is doing the wrong stuff, her business is not going well, and she is a weak leader”, that story is getting air time. Even if it’s completely untrue, people might be saying this because they are trying to steal my people, or knock me out of the competition for a promotion. And other people might believe it.

I don’t engage in that type of conversation at all, either to defend myself or to go on the offense. It adds no value. But you have to do something.

Saying nothing by refusing to engage in politics can damage you.

You need to control the story about you. So what I would in this situation is to make sure to communicate about the value of what I was doing to key stakeholders. Yes it takes time. Yes you can call it politics. But if your intentions are honorable it is not a negative thing.

By putting excellent work and high-value results out there where people can see them, you “respond” to the political attack, you take control of your story, preserve your Brand, and still stay on the high ground.

Preserving the empire

Ok, back to the plot. Although I didn’t go on the offence and try to build a big empire, I participated in enough discussions and debates to create positive visibility for my team’s work. I was able to control the story about me. I sold the value of what my team was doing which made it clear to everyone involved that my team needed to remain intact.

I was able to stay on the high ground. And by engaging in the game and making my team’s work visible, I was able to defend against the empire builders.

You don’t have to engage in shallow, ugly, negataive politics, but you do need to be aware that others are doing so, and stake your claim on the high ground in a positive, high-value and visible way.

It takes some time

The unfortunate reality is that it does take time. And it’s time taken away from moving the business forward. But once you see this as part of your job, and allocate some time and energy to it, you can proactively eliminate the issues, and take a lot of the stress out of the situation by taking control of the outcome.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Take more control of how you work

In this month’s webinar we talked about how the most successful people rise above the work and add more value to the business.

WORK MORE STRATEGICALLY

Listen or download the webinar to learn more.

Here’s what we talked about:

Re-define your work

Add more value. Adding value = doing what the business values. We talked about how to map your work to key business initiatives, then tune how you work to have more impact. Don’t wait for your boss to do this for you.

Ruthless Priorities. Decide which things you will finish first and best. Map them to business value. Refuse to put them at risk.

Do less stupid stuff. We talked about a number of time wasters and how to eliminate them such as: The “don’t do” list, improving poor communications, and leaving certain things unresolved.

Negotiate your workload

Don’t do everything. Your company can absorb an unlimited amount of work from you and not really care. You be the one to make sure you get to focus on important things.

Educate your executive. Push back. We talked about how to build credibility by catching all the work, but then analyzing it and making recommendations back to your boss about how to prioritize it.

Responsive or Reactive. We talked about the difference between being known for being responsive on the most important things vs. reacting to everything.

Own the outcome

Situation + Response = Outcome. We talked about how teams get stuck endlessly talking about the situation (admiring the problem), and how to break through this by focusing on the outcome and action plan (response).

Don’t add weight. Get known as someone who “takes weight away”. Always move the business forward. Defining and owning outcomes is one great way do this.

Recognition and Satisfaction

Stand out: Get known for driving important outcomes, not just doing work. Upgrading your work to be more strategic will build upon itself and you will find yourself being engaged in even more strategic work over time.

Increase YOUR value: By tuning your work to have greater value to the business, you will find yourself more valued, and your work will feel more satisfying.

Want more?

Listen or download the podcast – Work More Strategically
Download the complete webinar – Work More Strategically
(includes the presentation and the worksheets from the webinar)

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

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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.

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To act or to suffer?

As managers, at some point we all
encounter an employee who frustrates us, and drains the life and energy out of the team.

When you are in this situation with someone, you know it in your heart that
you should act …

…particularly when they really annoy you … but you don’t act right away because you second guess yourself …

and you keep thinking… they really do some things very well… sometimes…

Won’t

A colleague of mine shared this decision tree with me, and since then life has been easier.  When you are questioning yourself, whether or not to act, look at this chart. It makes it pretty clear.

Since a picture is worth a thousand words, I could probably stop here, but I’ll make a few additional points.

Reasons Managers don’t act

• The person has flashes of true brilliance, interspersed with being a drain, so you keep changing your mind about their value to the team
• You are afraid to lose a person doing some work even if they’re not the best
• They are doing work that you don’t know how to cover without them
• They have political support from elsewhere in the organization that may be hard to manage
• There is a “no replacement” rule and you don’t want to lose a headcount
• It’s hard.  On any given day it’s easier to ignore the problem
• It’s not fun
• It takes time away from “real business”
• It’s legally complicated

Poor performance is contagious

I am seeing more and more research that says that the overall team performance is defined by the lowest performer, not the highest performer.

One of my favorites was the NPR, This American Life Prologue, where a researcher got an actor to join a work team and act like a jerk, a slacker or a depressive… the rest of the team followed suit! Fascinating.

(By the way if you go to this link, don’t miss the second act, the Mike Birbiglia segment, on a comedy routine gone horribly wrong, it’s wonderful.)

Even though it’s tough to act, it is worth it.

If you have a  Won’t on your team – someone who may be capable, but is fighting you at every turn, annoying others, being negative, checking in and out, working against what you are trying to do, or damning it with superficial support, the payoff for dealing with it is big.

Rewards for taking action

My experience has been, 100% of the time, that getting a won’t out has a remarkably positive impact:

• You will be more productive, as you will no longer waste time dealing with the variety of annoying, draining, damaging, needing to be corrected or re-worked, “not good enough”, or otherwise apologized-for issues that this person causes
• The motivation and productivity of whole team goes up, even if they have to cover the work
• Everyone feels the positive impact that results from the negative energy being removed
• Your top performers stay motivated to keep performing
• You build trust with your team, by showing that good performance counts for something
• If you position this as a critical skill replacement, you will often get your replacement headcount, even if the rules say no

Taking Action

Here are a few thoughts for taking action on poor performers:

Be honest with yourself
Don’t shy away from the situation or just hope it will improve. Face it head on.

Get your data together
Start making notes as soon as someone’s performance starts bugging you.
After a couple of weeks you will have suffering + data vs. just suffering.

Get support from HR
Let your manager know and HR know what you are considering, early in the process. HR can help you with the process.

Reinforce your performance standards
Reinforce your standards and the level of performance you expect with the rest of your team, before, during and after dealing with a problem employee.

Everyone is watching

It’s also important to note that the problem between you and a poor performer is not just between the two of you. Your whole team sees it and they are watching and waiting to see what you will do about it.

The longer you don’t act, the more you degrade your credibility and trust with the rest of your team, and maybe even your peers and boss.

This is the least fun part of management, but I bring it up from time to time because upgrading low performers has such a big impact on the success of your business, not to mention your sanity.

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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.

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Time to be strategic

Pretty much everyone I talk to says they would be better at their job if they had more time to think.

Also, when I ask, “What are your biggest time sinks?”, the vast majority of people say “email”.

But almost no one says that email is the most important thing they do.

The need to be responsive

The reason so many people remain a slave to email is because they are afraid to be seen as unresponsive in today’s, always-on world.

You are putting this pressure on yourself.

I had a fascinating discussion with a group of peers, about half of whom worked at home. They communicated on instant messaging as well as email.

One woman was literally afraid to go to the bathroom when she was working at home, because she thought that if she did not respond instantly, her colleagues would think she was goofing off.

I asked her in-office colleagues, “What would you think if you sent an instant message to someone on the team working at home and you didn’t hear back for an hour?”

The resounding reply was, “that they were working on something important”.

Responding instantly doesn’t add value

Taking the time to think through your work strategically, and focus time an energy on the things that have the biggest impact on the business adds value. Improving the way you do your work to be more effective or efficient adds value.

I have talked to managers who say that people who always respond instantly to email seem less effective because they never seem to be working on anything. Ouch!

Free yourself to work more strategically and not let email take over your life.

Here some of the best practices I have collected to spend less time on email, and build your credibility along the way.

7 Ideas to make email less painful

I encourage you to add your ideas and best practices in the comment box below as well.

Spend less time

1. Make the container smaller.
Email will fill any amount of time you give it. If you are doing email every night for hours after dinner you are doing something wrong.  How much time in your day is email actually worth? 

Set a time limit based on what email deserves compared to other things.

Think about budgeting only one hour per day for email.  How would you make sure you got to the most critical stuff?

2. Get the Time of Day Right
We all have a part of the day when we are most brilliant and focused. If you are at your best first thing in the morning, or right after you take a walk at lunch, do your most thinking-intensive, hard, strategic work then.

Don’t waste your best brain on email.

3. Turn off the temptation
Turn off the beeps, the alerts, and the pop-up windows. Don’t keep checking your email all day.

Give your boss a heads up, then set up an auto-responder that lets people know that you answer email at noon and 5pm. That way you are giving an immediate response and you are also signaling that you are working on something important.

Do Less

4. Don’t read all your email
Know your Ruthless Priorities. Keep a list of them with you at all times. Then deal first with the email that impacts your ruthless priorities. You will be seen as highly responsive on the most important things. Everything else does not need the same level of care and responsiveness.

The phone will ring if you miss something really important.

Getting your Ruthless Priorities done will always add more value than doing all of your email.

5. Catch what’s most important
Use filters to find the emails coming from your boss, board members, top clients, etc. to make sure you don’t miss those.  Only read things you are in the “TO” list not just “CC’d”.

Respond differently

6. File instead of read
One woman I met had a goal for email that was simply to never lose an email from a key client.  When she got emails she didn’t read them as she got several hundred a day.  She would just file them in a folder for that client, and if something ever came up that was in an email, she would search for it in the moment.

7. Quick reply
When you get an email from someone who wants to give you input or get your opinion, sometimes “got it, thanks” is all you ever need to do.  You will be seen as being very responsive without spending lots of time responding to everything.  Always acknowledge input from people.

Zero-inbox

Zero inbox is not for everyone, but when I stepped back to think about my own time-wasters, I realized that I personally wasted a lot of time searching for messages I sent, received, deleted…(where was that message?).

Or I would waste time just mindlessly poking around the 1200-2500 messages in my inbox at any point in time to see what I might need to act on.

I now have had zero messages in my inbox for the past 3 years. This saves about 2-4 hours in my week, and a lot of frustration.

Here is how I do it:

Act on any message you can in the moment.  Deal with it or delete it. For the others:

File them. You need two types of categories: Action and Save.

My Action categories are:

DO: I need to do something, call someone, do research, write something, etc.
REPLY:  I need to send an email reply but can’t do it at the moment
FOLLOW UP: date stamp it for follow-up and get it out of the inbox.

My Save Categories are:

CLIENTS OR PROJECTS: one folder for each
TRAVEL: Itineraries & Travel Logistics
LOGINS & ACCOUNTS:  login and account info for various online systems
RESOURCES:  pointers to vendors, services, utilities, websites and other resources
GOOD STUFF: miscellaneous things worth saving
WAITING:  information I will need to act on later but not now

The Dramatic Improvement:

It took me about 6 hours one day to re-classify or delete everything in my inbox.
But now it takes me about 1-10 minutes each day to clear my inbox.
I do not search for “lost” messages any more.
I do not poke around in my inbox any more.

I schedule working time to take action on email.

Then I get right to the DO and to the Reply folders without needing to look for anything.  I’m more productive.

What things have you done to keep email from taking over your life?  Please share what works best for you.

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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.

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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.

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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

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