At some point the world will change and you will be in a re-organization.

Get support before you get buried

When I talk about my DO Better, LOOK Better, CONNECT Better model, I know people struggle with this (support) part.

They sigh and think, I really should do this, but I don’t have the time.

It gets put on the back burner, because it doesn’t feel like part of the day job.

Excellent work alone does not protect you

It’s happened to me.  I’ve been buried.  My results were outstanding, but they were not visible or relevant to the people making the decisions.  My work mattered to me and my team, but not to them.

The world changes and you get pushed down a level, or your job gets smaller, or you’re pushed out entirely.

My heart always goes out to people in this situation, and when they ask me for advice, and I give them some ideas about what they can do to make the best of it right now.  But then I reluctantly tip-toe into that, “Take this as learning, and don’t let this happen again”, place.

My annoying lecture goes something like this:

Air Cover

If you had been creating more air cover (people at high levels that know you and care about your career), and building your credibility and relevance over time, you might not be in this position…

Someone in a position of power might have said, Wait, we need to watch out for this person.

This person is really valuable, and if we just put them somewhere organizationally convenient for us, but bad for their career, we run the risk of losing them.  We need to create a spot for them in the new organization that does not feel like a step down.

That’s what you want to happen in a re-org.

If you want some additional help building this type of support, check out the free resources at the bottom of this article, but in short…

How to build support

Let’s face it, the urgent stuff typically falls into the DO Better category – get the work done, deal with the crisis, close the deal, respond to the customer.

Then the tasks to build support both in LOOK Better — necessary to build your credibility and relevance, and in CONNECT Better — to build a strong network of support,  get pushed aside.

A tempting trap – the “high ground”

It’s tempting to work this way because it feels like you are doing the right thing because you are working really hard and delivering results.

Or sometimes people feel like they don’t want to be one of those people protecting their job, instead of doing their job.  That is not what I am talking about.

Take care of the future now

OK, so since we can’t travel back in time, let’s work on taking care of the future.  Don’t wait until you are in a bad situation.

Act now:

• Do an Assessment.  How much air cover do you have?  Do you have a relationship with your boss’s boss or boss’s peers?  Do you have relationships with people running other organizations?
• What is the context for talent assessment in your company? Who is in the room when people at your level are talked about?  Do you have a good relationship with any of those people?  How many of them know who you are?
• Do you have a mentor?

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Start finding ways to meet and engage with these people, and get at least one of them to be a mentor — to officially care about what happens to you.

It’s not just politics

Before you start heading for high ground again and saying, that’s politics.  I don’t do politics.  Remember that high Credibility and Relevance are not just about protecting your job.  They as much, or even more about increasing your effectiveness.

They let you get more, higher value work done.  They are necessary to deliver the RIGHT results that decision makers care about.

Even though you are really busy with the work, it’s important to remember that this is a vital part of your job longevity and success.

Communicate with Stakeholders

In my Career Workshop, we cover the concept of a Stakeholder Communication Plan™

Know who your stakeholders and influencers are and communicate with them on purpose, consistently, in ways that they find valuable.  Be relevant, to them by visibly working on things that matter to them.

Build your credibility by having a strong Personal Brand, clear communications and executive presence.

You are better off

This is not a perfect system.  For example, when a company gets acquired it is often assumed either that 1. all the people in the acquired company are stupid, and all the good jobs go to managers in the parent company, or 2. that all the incumbents are stupid, so all the good jobs go to the people in the new company and all the “legacy” people get pushed out.

Or sometimes your mentors retire, or your Air Cover leaves the company and you need to start again.

You can’t always stay on top in an re-org, but you are always much better off if you have relationships and air cover than if you don’t.

With the right support there is a chance you will land on your feet.

Have a head start, at least

Even if you don’t land well in the new organization, you have a huge head start of connections, useful knowledge, relationships,  and good will in your network, with the people who can quickly help you find a different job.

I encourage you to spend a few hours a month on these things to put yourself in the strongest possible position, and to develop relationships with key people BEFORE you need their help.

Some FREE Resources to build Air Cover

I’ve collected some articles below that can help you focus on the LOOK Better and CONNECT Better aspects of building enough air-cover so that you will have more organizational clout and support when the world changes.

Communicating with Stakeholders
Do you stand out enough?
Don’t be boring
Fight the Bull
Don’t bury the lead

Being Relevant
Responsive or Reactive?
Be more Relevent

Bulding Credibility
Executive Presence
Tuning your Personal Brand

Building Support
Authentic Networking
5 Mentors Everyone Needs

Additional Help

If you want some help fitting this type of work into your schedule, check out:

Career Year of Action Guide

The Career Year of Action Guide will help you plan your time to optimize your DO Better tasks, to get more of the right, highest value work done, AND help you make time for the necessary LOOK Better and CONNECT better tasks, to build credibility, relevance and grow your network of support.

Membership

And if you want to get monthly reminders and direct support from me to keep your career on track, become a member.

How do you manage when your budget keeps getting cut, but the expectations don’t?

You need to support 30 percent more products or customers and your budget is flat or down.

The level of quality demanded is higher.
The business is more complex.  But you have less money…

It’s important to remember:

• This is not a unique situation.
• Every leader in every company is in this same boat at one time or another.
• This is what your job actually IS

Any smart person can do more good stuff with more money!

That is not what your job is. Your job is to do great stuff no matter what the budget.

If you walk around saying “I can’t do as much as I did last year because my budget is smaller” you are putting a bulls-eye on your chest.  The most effective leaders don’t worry about how much money they don’t have and how much harder the job is, they just get to work making the right, few things happen.

“Do Less with Less”

The goal is not to do “More with Less”.  More with less just doesn’t work.

Just piling more work on with less resources and telling everyone to deal with it, is not a formula for success.

At one point in my career I had to cut my annual budget from $140M to $60M.  The details are not necessary.  That is a cut!  My mantra became “we are going to do LESS with LESS”!

I learned that when you are faced with less budget you need to do less stuff, but you need to make sure what you do now, is  better stuff than what you used to do!

Do less, but achieve more

That’s where the leadership comes in. Here is when you personally need to step up to drive change.

It’s about challenging yourself and your team to do things in new and different ways to achieve better results with the same or fewer resources. This is what I refer to as “Better with Less“.

Your job as a leader is to find a way forward when expectations don’t match  resources.

It is to find different ways of working that accomplish more.  It is to:

• Make your team less busy on things that don’t matter
• Make trade-offs on purpose
• Decide things with less study
• Emphasize a few key things over everything
• Make cuts without being asked

Focus on key outcomes, then make cuts to make room

So many managers get into the mode of trying to take on everything without enough budget, and don’t think of making cuts on their own unless they are forced to do so from above.

You need to step up and take the ownership and initiative to make cuts to make room for the most important stuff, whether or not you are asked to do so.

Avoid across the board cuts.

Another sign of whether you are doing your job as a leader is that some things get less money and some things get more money.

This shows you have chosen things to emphasize to drive the business, and that they will succeed because they are well funded.  If everything gets cut equally, you are not doing your job.

For more ideas see Better with Less.

As managers it is critical part of our jobs to steadily build capacity in our teams – not just to deliver work.

It’s important not to get too drawn into, or stuck in, the content of what your team delivers.

You need to be leading the people and developing the team, vs. managing (or doing) their work.

We all get tempted to jump in, especially when you feel like it’s easier to do it yourself, or that you are better at it than the people that work for you.

Remember — That is not your job.

You create way more value for the company by developing 10 people to deliver at your level, vs. adding one more person “you” to deliver at their level.

Each time you step up to a bigger job, you need to let go of more content and more detail.

You need to do more strategic things specifically to build capacity and capability in your team so they can contribute more and more value (not necessarily more and more work).

Some people think that if they stop doing the work at a lower level that they are slacking off or that they will lose credibility by not knowing all the details, or will be viewed as not carrying their share of the load.

You are actually more guilty of slacking off by staying in the detail, and not putting in the effort to think and act more strategically.

Some ideas to build capacity and work at a higher level of value as a leader:

1. Build a plan to drive the overall strategy for your team and its contribution to the business.  Look for game-changing opportunities.
2. Create systems and frameworks to execute, track, and measure the work so you can feel comfortable that you know what is getting done without diving into the detail.
3. Create a specific learning agenda for your team such as understanding the financial realities of the business, getting closer to customers, or competitive awareness & positioning.
4. Help them become better leaders, and to focus on the development of their top talent.
5. Focus on energy on defining clear outcomes, and improving team alignment, effectiveness, and communication.
6. Find ways to steadily reduce the cost of things you do every year to make room for new things.
7. Continually make connections outside your direct organization to create positive visibility for your team and a broader base of support.

By staying over-busy with the details, you are not doing the job the company needs you do to.  Even though you are delivering work, you are depleting value vs. building capacity.

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