On a flight this week I had a fun conversation with a top sales executive about the profession of selling.

The best sales people have some fundamental things in common:

• They put themselves out there over and over again with no fear
• They hear “NO” a lot, and always keep trying
• Disappointment, hurt pride, and failure have little impact on their continuing to do the first 2
• They always tune their offer to what their customer values most.

Skip the disappointment

The best sales people get over disappointment quickly and jump right back in the game. They don’t let failures along the way discourage or stall them, or damage their confidence.

One of the best stories I heard about this was a sales person telling a non-sales colleague:

The difference between you and me is that if you went up to every woman in this bar and asked them for a date, and they all said, NO, you would not talk to them again. If I went to every woman in this bar and asked them for a date, and they all said NO, I would go back and ask each one of them again. And a third time…

Three Sales lessons for your Success

1. NO is never a dead end

Every good sales person I know, can tell you how many NO’s on average it takes them to get to a YES. If their number is 17, when they hear NO for the 14th time, they don’t get discouraged.  Their reaction is more like, “Great, I’ve got through one more step to YES!”

NO, is not only a critical step in the process, it’s viewed as a positive step forward. This is so important in building your career as well.

You need to get turned down.

You need to get over disappointment quickly, and see this rejection as a step forward in the process. Then you need to put yourself out there again – as many times as it takes.

Don’t Stop Trying

I can offer my personal example.

While my corporate career, and sequence of promotions was highly successful by any external measure, people didn’t see all the failures. They didn’t see all the times I heard, NO, and all the times I went for promotions and was passed over or turned down.

The success came from acting like a sales person, improving my value, and putting myself out there — and to keep asking.

So out of about 25 times at the plate, by putting my fears aside, and selling myself again and again, I got about 20-something NO’s and 3 life changing YES’s

You don’t get to the YES without the NO’s.

I see people make the mistake of going for promotion once or twice, getting turned down, and getting discouraged. Then they stop trying.

They blame the unfairness of the environment. Or they manufacture an imaginary high ground, and cite that they refuse to take part in the political maneuvers they believe are required.

The biggest thing holding these people back is that they got turned down, discouraged and then stopped trying.

If you are not willing to keep trying, you are the one creating the obstacle to your success.

2. Find a Bigger Pond

Good sales people go where the opportunity is. If they are assigned a “bad territory”, they find a way to expand or develop it. If they are assigned a genuinely bad territory, they move on and get a different job.

I see many people make the mistake of not moving on, when their environment can no longer support their advancement. They will stay for years, frustrated that there are no promotions available.

I’m all for advancing within your company, and much of what I write about is to help you do exactly that. But if there are no jobs, and several people above you need to die before a position opens up, you need to take it upon yourself to move on if you want to advance.

Or if you have an incompentant manager, you will get stuck. You need to get yourself into a different spot.

Go outside your comfort zone, go get some NO’s from new people, and keep trying!

3. Increase Your Value

When a customer is not buying, a great sales person will pump up the value of what they are selling.

They do this by getting a better understanding of their prospect’s needs, and putting together an offer which is more useful and valuable, and therefore much harder to refuse.

This is also critical in you career.

If you are not seen as promotable, ask yourself why.

Go the extra mile to really learn about and understand what is most relevant to your executive management. Is it new customers? Is it innovation? Is it cost cutting? Is it developing people?

Learn what counts and tune your job to offer more of it. Build up your value.

No one will instruct you to do this. It’s up to you.

Doing your job as written is more like selling a commodity product. Instead create a new product, higher value product. Differentiate your value by tuning your job to have more business impact.

The only way to reliably advance your career is to be always be adding more value to the business.

But don’t forget to keep selling !

Managing Energy

One thing no one ever tells you about executive positions…

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

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

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

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

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

Brain Science and Happiness

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

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

1. How long can you stay angry?

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

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

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

2. The Default Mode of the Brain is Negative

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

4. Stress and laziness

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

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

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

OK, so now what?

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

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

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

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

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

Happiness on Purpose

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

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

10 IDEAS FROM THE WEBINAR:
DEFENDING YOUR TIME

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Time Challenges

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

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

Change your Job

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

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

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

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

How to say NO and maintain credibility

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

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

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

Deal with Fire Drills

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

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See Also:

• Make More Time

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Goals

No one cares how hard you work.

… So make sure you are getting somewhere.

My goal for this blog is to provide useful insights and practical ideas so you can:

Step up  the value and relevance of your work to have a bigger impact on the business,  and a better career.

But I also wanted to make  this blog a guide you can refer back to when you wanted to read up on a particular topic.

The issue…

There was no easy way to find what you were looking for!

There used to be an “Archives” section in the left column which organized past content by date.

Alas, the date is irrelevant.  There are articles from 2 years ago that are just as relevant today as they were then.

Also, people kept asking me for links to collections of blog posts on specific topics that they wanted to brush up on.

So,  I have now organized all the blog posts based on topics !

Here’s how it works:

<– In the left column of the blog you will see a CATEGORIES section.
These are clickable.

All the prior articles are now sorted by these categories.

If you want to see all the articles on implementing your business strategy you can click on the Strategy Implementation category.

If you want all the articles about networking, you can click on Build Your Network category.

You get the idea…

Nuisance: After you scroll down through the articles in a category, you may need to click on “Older Entries” at the very bottom to make sure you see ALL the articles in the category.

Pass it on

If you enjoy my blog and get value out of it, please encourage your team and your colleagues to subscribe.

Have more impact

This blog supports my work in helping organizations to execute better, from the executive team to all all the employees across the organization.

The more people in your organization who take ownership for the outcomes I talk about in my blog, the stronger your organization will be,  and the more business value you will create.

And it’s still free.

Ways to get this blog:

If you prefer an RSS feed instead of email you can subscribe here.

Or if you would like to get this blog sent directly to you via email, you can subscribe here.

Milestones

I recently passed a milestone of 100 blog posts, so I thought it was a good time to step back and assess how the blog was doing.

I hope you find the new organization of the blog to be useful.
Please leave a comment or give me your feedback about the blog.

Since the first post, the readership has grown from hundreds to thousands, so thank you!

Using the stage…

I’m paraphrasing something that
Simon Cowell (the one who’s the real music industry pro on American Idol)  said to an early contestant:

You do not seem to be taking advantage of using this stage to perform for millions of people.  You are acting more like this is a try-out than a performance.

I got to thinking about how people go about communicating, presenting, and behaving at work, and I think this is such an important point:

Are you performing when it counts?

…Or  are you just presenting, clarifying, and getting through the information?  Are you  defensive — like this is a try-out or a test you need to pass?  Or are you really owning it and using the opportunity to its full advantage?

It’s a valuable insight:

Think of any communication as an opportunity to perform.

And I don’t mean a shallow, disingenuous performance.  Or one that is data and quality free.

I mean a performance that is compelling because you really care about it, you invest in how you will present not just what you present, because it matters to you personally to have an impact.

Make something happen

Own the Outcome, not just the communication.

A good way to think about this is, what would you do differently if you were taking responsibility for the outcome and the actions this communication drives, not just the transmission of the information?

To turn a communication into a performance, you need to think about not only what you want to communicate in terms of the content, but how you will capture and hold their attention.

• How will you motivate, interest or excite them?
• What is the difference that you want this communication to make?
• How will people’s point of view be altered if you succeed?
• What will they do differently?
• What will they remember about the topic? About you?
• How will they be entertained or bored?

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This is really one of those things that sets high achievers apart.

They have the ability to inspire others with their ideas – to cause motion and action with their words.  They invest in the performance.

Here are some examples:

Performing a product roadmap presentation

If you are presenting a product roadmap recommendation, your goal is to share the information clearly. You can show timelines, technology choices, product feature additions, costs, competitive data, etc.

Get people excited.

But If you are performing a product roadmap presentation, your goal is to get people excited enough about the future that they give you the funding now, and continued support along the way.

You might include videos of user experiences and requests, physical prototypes, an interactive demo, or mock headlines that trounce the competition.

Performing a Business Review

For these, we always spend so much time on the data, presenting — covering every detail and defending against every hard question in the financials.

You are so much better off if you spend some time performing proactively, off the defense.

• How are you going to inspire your reviewers most about the business?
• What kinds of ideas will they personally respond to, over and above the numbers?
• Why do you personally believe in this business?
• What are the most exciting customer stories about how your products and services changed their business?
• What is your top sales person doing that you are excited about replicating?

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I’m not suggesting that you skip the data and put on a song and dance show instead of managing the business.

But you can get a lot further with your stakeholders if you take responsibility to excite them with the right images and stories, instead of only boring them with a straightforward presentation of data, progress, and plans.

Performing a Budget Approval presentation

Not just numbers

If there was ever a reason to step up your performance, it’s to get your budget approved.

Loads of data and metrics will not help as much as exciting them about what they will get for the money, and showing them how much you are personally motivated to make a big impact on the business.

Even the most number conscious executives will respond to a compelling story about something that transforms the customer experience or the market.

If it’s a big deal, invest the energy to get your creative, marketing, and sales people to help you with content.

One good story can be worth a thousand spread sheet cells.

For more ideas on communicating better see:

Do you stand out enough?
Fight the Bull
Don’t Bury the Lead

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10 IDEAS FROM THE WEBINAR:

HAVE MORE INFLUENCE

Dowload the PODCAST to learn:

Get More of the Right Stuff Done

1. Influence is one of those career lessons that no one ever seems to tell you about directly. Know that this is part of your job no matter what your level. Without strong influence skills you get stuck.

2. Be more effective – Get more work done. You need to multiply your resources.  If you rely only on what you and your team can deliver directly, you will fall behind. We talked about how to get more people working for you!

3. Broaden Your Impact. You need to look at your work in the context the bigger business needs, and increase the breadth and value of the outcomes you drive.  We covered how to demonstrate an impact beyond your team.

4. Sell Your Ideas. Having good ideas is very different than successfully selling them and getting them acted upon. You need influence skills to get your ideas adopted by the organization.

Manage Your Career

5. Influence Perceptions – Managing how others perceive you is vital to your career growth. Use your influence skills to do this on purpose. See also Tuning Your Personal Brand.

6. Win the Promotions - Know that ability to influence is a key factor in deciding who is promotable.  If you are not seen as someone who has support across the organization with broad influence, you will get passed over.  See also Manage Your Career

How to Influence

7. Control vs. Motivation. The most important thing is to give people a reason to personally care, and WANT to help you, whether or not they report to you.   If people care, they will deliver for you.  We talked about tactics for how to motivate people to want to help you.

8. Be a Communicator. The more you share knowledge, reach out to people and communicate, the more you will be seen as giving back to the organization, doing important things, and being someone worth helping.

9. How to get others to do work for you – We talked about a number of tactics to get people  to help even when they are not motivated.  A big piece of this is being gracious in your request and grateful in your follow-up.

10. Time, Trust, Relationships – Influence does not happen over night.  We talked about the things you need to be doing over time to build up your ability to influence.  Understand the power structure across your organization and start communicating and building relationships now.

How YOU can increase your influence NOW.

• Download the PODCAST for details on what to do and how to do it.
• Download the  WORKSHEETS to plan your specific actions and communications.
• Download the Career Year of Action Guide to help you use your time better.
  Give yourself the time to do what is necessary beyond your job description to be successful.

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* Be a Better Leader
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When I was in my early 20’s I learned an important lesson.

I was working in a start-up company and had gone 3 years without a raise.

The wrong way…

I went to the CEO and asked for a raise.

He said, Why?

Among other things,  I said that I had been working for 3 years without a raise, and that I had taken on more and more responsibility over that time, and that I always delivered and often exceeded expectations.  I told him it was becoming un-motivating to feel I was working so hard and not moving forward in pay, and peers in other companies were making more money than I was…

He said, I don’t’ care.  It’s not my problem. I only care about what the cost is to replace you, and I could replace you for your salary or less –  so no raise.

(In reality I was valued more than that conversation would lead you to believe, and ultimately got rewarded for it, but I was being taught an important lesson.)

Your job is a contract with your company

You don’t get a raise for good attendance, or because you feel like you deserve one.

You earn a raise by increasing the value of your contribution.

And if you want to get that raise, you need to re-negotiate your contract on terms that are relevant and valuable to your company, not based on what you want or need. And you have to ask.

1. YOU Drive the process

If you are uncomfortable having this conversation with your boss either get comfortable with it, do it anyway, or don’t be disappointed if you get overlooked.

Know that you are at a disadvantage by not having this conversation.

It is vitally important that you and your boss share a common view of your performance and your expectations for promotion and compensation, even if your boss does not drive this discussion.  Of the 20-something years I worked in a corporation for a boss, I did my own performance review 17 times, just to make sure that there were never any disconnects.

2. Understand how you and your role are perceived

It is important to know if you are perceived as a high, average or low performer.  Don’t ever guess about this. There should never be any surprises about this. Find out.

Even in an economy where there are not a lot of raises going around, you still need to be communicating with your boss about your performance and what it is worth, so when there is money, you have done all the groundwork.

Also make sure you know how much your ROLE is valued by the company. For example you don’t want to be the superstar performer leading the support team for an obsolete product.  You may be great, but need to move into a higher valued role to get a raise.

Once you confirm that you are a high performer then go on to build your case for what you want.  If you are not perceived as a high performer – fix that first.  Understand what it takes, and focus on adding value, before you start asking for things.

3. Discuss your raise as part of a business outcome

The basic premise here is:

If I do this, what is it worth to the company?

Here are some things you can say:

• Last year, this is what I accomplished and this is my current compensation.
• I would like to raise the bar for the upcoming year, and deliver more value to the company.
• And If I were to add these additional business outcomes, exceed these goals, etc, would that be worth more to the company?  How much more?
• What business outcome would I need to accomplish that would be worth this level of pay, or this promotion?
• Can we agree that if I deliver this, you will give me that?

4. Follow up on the specfics…

• 9 months ago, we agreed on performance objectives which if accomplished would
  result in increased compensation.
• I believe I have delivered on all of these and then some,  and I also took on this additional project which has benefited the company by increasing our margin on this product line.
• Do you agree? Can I get your feedback on my accomplishments? … (Assuming it’s very positive then…..)
• Will you be increasing my compensation for next year, per our agreement?

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If the answer is, No, for some reason outside performance, you need to get a next agreement.

As long as you keep focused on business outcomes, you are on the high ground.

• If your hands are tied right now, I would like to understand the timeline of what is possible, and if it’s not a raise, is there [stock, bonus, promotion, etc.] that could be possible?
• I’m very motivated, but I think you can understand that at some point this level of performance will be hard to keep delivering if it is not recognized by the company, what do you advise?
• You have my commitment to keep delivering for you, but I can you help me understand what I can expect over time in terms of the company being able to hold up our prior agreement about my performance and compensation?

And my personal favorite…

• If you were in my position, how long would YOU keep performing at this level with my current compensation?

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Note to high performers:

One of the hazards of being a high performer is that your career advances quickly, and you are always at the bottom of the pay curve.

Your company acts like it is doing you a favor by taking a chance on you in a bigger role (and in the beginning they are), but then you can get stuck. You end up performing at or above the level of your peers and getting paid far less.

It is up to you to show the value of your work and re-negotiate your contract based on the business outcomes you deliver, instead of the history of how you got into the role.

Focus on what you are delivering,  and mention the fact that you are not getting any slack for having less time in the job, or delivering any less value than your peers.  You should be paid what the job is worth.

Two things to never do

1.  I need a raise because my mortgage has adjusted, I had another child, I am supporting my extended family…  Your company does not, and should not care what you spend your money on.  They only care about the value you deliver.

2. Give me a raise or I’ll quit.  This can work… if you are serious.  But you better actually quit if you don’t get the raise.  If you don’t quit, you will have caused so much bad will, and lost so much credibility that your career at that company will never quite recover.  And that story will be part of your back-channel reference forever after too.

I often say that your job is your
job description AND dealing with all the crap that gets in the way of getting your job description done.

Stupid obstacles often come in the form of people’s opinions, corporate policy, changes of direction, fire drills, conflicting goals, delayed decisions, unclear strategies, shall I go on?

It’s always important to remember that you can’t blame your failure on other people being stupid.

Six months or a year down the road, if the reason that you didn’t get something done is because someone else has or hasn’t done has something, you have lost.

The right language

Clearing an obstacle that is being put in place by another person or policy has everything to do with language.

And there are two language techniques I have found to be really useful to get things going your way again when you are confronted with difficult, rigid, indecisive, or stupid people.

1. What is the NAME of the Meeting the other person would WANT to attend?

For example, If your requests for a program change in other organization are going ignored, the name of the meeting YOU want to have with the manger is called something like,  “You are doing this wrong and I need you to change it, because it’s killing me”.

But would they really want to attend that meeting?

Change the name of the meeting to name their problem, not yours.

When you are trying to get someone to do something for you, you need to name the meeting something that is relevant and motivating to them.  “I want  to discuss how my team can solve your most critical competitive issue, with no increased cost on your part”.

Then when you have the meeting, make sure to stay relevant to them.  Describe your problem in the context and actual vocabulary of the business problems they are facing right now, and how the action you are requesting is directly beneficial to them.

If you don’t use the right language, you will not be relevant to them, and you will continue to go unheard, and un-helped.

2. “I’m hoping you can help me…”

The angrier and more frustrated you are, the more you are likely to start a conversation with something like, This is all messed up because [of something you, (or the people you represent are doing)]

Do you really expect their reaction to be helpful at this point?   Wow. thank you for telling me how stupid and wrong I am.  You are so smart, please tell me what do do next? I am at your service.

Even if it is all their fault, if you need to influence them to do something better or different, a far more useful approach is to open with, “I’m hoping you can help me”.

I use this not only colleagues, but with utility companies, hotels, and health insurance providers all the time.  It works like a charm.  I guess, because you are using some charm…

Engage people to WANT to help you

When someone says to me,  “I’m hoping you can help me…”, I always think, “hmmm… I wonder what this challenge might be?  Can I really help? I’m kind of hoping I can help …

This approach builds people up instead of cutting them down.  They have power to help if they choose to.  Giving this small bit of respect makes them want to help you.  People generally like to help.

If you don’t attack them first and tell them how wrong and incompetent they are,  you stand a far greater chance of getting what you need from them.

I know it is frustrating when the people you are dealing with are actually wrong and/or stupid, but if they are indeed creating an obstacle, it’s your job to clear the obstacle and get the job done, not to prove that you are right and demand their support.

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One of the most important things you can do for your career, your success and your sanity, is to be more Responsive and less Reactive.

There is constant pressure to do the urgent things that come in, and these days people are trying very hard to preserve their value in a tough economy and job market.

So they don’t want to be seen as saying “no”.

Put points on the board

It’s important to realize that the real hazard is not about saying  “no”,  it’s in trying to do too much, then failing to deliver on the few things that really matter.

Being reactive is shooting yourself in the foot.

You may think you are being valuable to your company by working tirelessly on everything that comes your way, but if you don’t deliver excellent and visible results where it counts, your company will not give you any credit for being responsive or working hard.

Be Responsive on select things

Success, relevance and recognition come from getting things done that impact the business.

The trick is to appear to be responsive without actually responding to everything.

Here is a key thought:

Always think about aligning your responsiveness  to your Ruthless Priorities, instead of trying to be responsive everywhere.

(Ruthless Priorities are those few things that have so much impact on the business that you refuse to put them at risk, and are willing to risk other things to make sure they get done.)

Be extra-responsive where it matters most, instead of putting all that pressure on yourself to react to everything that comes in.

1. Know your Ruthless Priorities. This requires you give yourself some strategic thinking time.  Be clear with yourself and others about what  your Ruthless Priorities are, and make sure they are the things that have the biggest impact on the business.

2. Filter all emails and requests of your time based on your Ruthless Priorities.  if actions and requests help you get your Ruthless Priorities done, be highly responsive — if they don’t, delete or delay.

3. Focus on your most important stakeholders, your boss, board members, key clients, etc.  Filter all your email and requests so you can respond quickly to those few key people — the ones you  most need to see you as being responsive.

Ways to appear extra responsive,

…without getting sucked into being reactive.

The well placed weekend Email:

You don’t need to do email all weekend or all evening (reactive), but take 10 minutes each evening or weekend and do a quick triage.  If you get something from a key stakeholder and can answer a question quickly, do it.   You get lots of responsiveness points for the quick reply and the weekend time stamp, without actually working on the weekend.

If it is a much longer task, but not required to be completed on the weekend, just fire back, got your message, will be thinking about it and get back to you by noon on Monday. That is the difference between responsive and reactive.

Got it, thanks

When people send you things, respond immediately with something like, “got it, thanks, more later…” That may be the only thing you will ever have to do!

Remember,  you don’t have to DO everything.  But that simple acknowledgment will show you as someone who is responsive.

Think about it… when you send off something that matters to you, don’t you wonder and want to know if they got it and what they think?  Just hearing back from them at all, makes them register with you as someone who is responsive.

Why do you care?

When people ask you to do work for them, read something, review something, call someone, etc., if it does not help one of your ruthless priorities, deflect it, delegate it, or say no.  Since it is not critical to your Ruthless Priorities, if it is not perfect, what you do you care?  Let it go.  Don’t try and add value everywhere or resolve everything.  That is being reactive.

When it matters, get all over it.  Be responsive and be seen as being responsive. Respond with an action plan and a schedule.  I will get this done by Thursday and will let you know that it is done. That is being responsive.