Vareity What’s Up

Here’s the blitz of what’s on my mind and what I am doing right now:

1. Anon vs Brand? Should I keep blogging anon? What’s the value to me in doing that? If I keep blogging anon, nobody connects my expertise and writing skill to me, myself, and my actual brand — which I need. But if I don’t blog anon, can I still effectively write about the tender parts of my career development, and about the object lessons from staff and colleagues? But is blogging about others anon ethical?  I am getting alarmed with myself that I am NOT being ethical! I am leaning towards scrapping this whole thing and starting anew, as myself.
2. Is Penelope Trunk crazy or the true new wave? Is she taking the blend-your-professional-and-your-personal-and-tell-all meme to the non-useful extreme, or is she just the new normal? At least she’s ethical.
3. I am pissed at my boss. And I told him so. But I don’t think I told him effectively enough.  He stripped me of a responsibility (goal) without telling me that he’d done it nor telling me why.  And this after he happily agreed that we should de-prioritize it.  His action was more about getting control of one of my peers (he gave my goal to her boss) than about punishing me.  It’s well known that I don’t effectively influence her.  But not telling me was reactionary, and somewhat chickenshit. I’m pissed at myself for fumbling a great opportunity to be more candid. It will be on my agenda at my next career development status with him.
4. I am doing a personal brand assessment using Reach 360. They are a very interesting company that I have been following for a few years, but I’ve never used their 360-degree brand assessment tool before. I will let you know what I learn. They have good teleseminars – go check them out.
5. I am reading Back of the Napkin, and thinking about how to apply it to both project planning and communication.
6. I got great feedback from two people this week. That’s nice.
7. I am giving up one of my direct reports to someone else. I was expecting this, at about this time of year – her project is ending and she is working on something new.  But I am still bummed. My little empire is shrinking, that never feels good!
8. I think my least-resilient employee wants to kill me. Too bad. That’s her responsibility.  Just imagine how pissed at me she’ll be when I share the consequence of her behavior, hostility and inability to engage with the team — she is missing out on a great opportunity because we the management team won’t offer it to her due to track record of behavior, hostility and inability to engage with the team.
9. I am giving a stretch assignment to one of my other employees. That always feels great!
10. The stretch assignment involves an initiative I own that stems straight from the CEO. THAT always feels good!
11. I am recommitting to networking. I have set up regular lunches and coffees with some key leaders with whom I want to reconnect and talk both work and development. I still need to set up regular connections with three VPs with whom I’ve worked in the past, and one VP whom I’ve never met (but he went to my college and he may be the only other Obie at the F50C).  I have also set up some tracking so I can better manage my contacts, track stuff I want to talk about, and not let so much time go between meetings.

Cheers, y’all!

I Turned Down A Job Offer I Never Even Had

In this economy? WTF?

As mentioned, I’m here to tell you how I turned down a job offer I never even had, and strengthened two key relationships as a result.

Here’s the deal:  I’ve had some small irons in the fire for a while now, around a possible next move to an organizational change team.  They are doing really interesting work with a huge multi-year project that will have wide-ranging impact.  But as I’ve said to my boss & the hiring managers of this and a couple of other teams I’m interested in, I only want to make a move if it’s truly the right role.

Despite the recent layoffs, the org change team was able to post for an opening. Two separate people approached me about applying; the hiring manager was one of them.  The job looked interesting and was an excellent fit with my  strengths.  But I had a few misgivings:

• I’ve just been positioned in my current job to expand my responsibilities as much as I want to — given the goals we’ve set, I can really run as far as I feel like.
• I have a team of direct reports now and the new job has no direct reports
• It is a lateral move
• My job has a very clear upward path, as well as upward/outward options; the new job has no upward or outward path.
• I have long said, and firmly believe, that I struggle with the question of what adds more value to me & to the company: A) staying in my current area and bringing communication, strategic critical thinking and relationship strengths, or B) moving to a communication role and bringing project management & execution strengths.  I wrestle with this question all the time, and talk about it with hiring managers & mentors all the time.  I usually land on option A. In this case I definitely landed on A.
• I have heard some anecdotal feedback that working for the hiring manager of this open position is really hard, that she may require a lot of managing up, and that she may not be open to being managed-up.  On the other hand, I’m excellent at managing my current boss.

I met with my director-level mentor and the hiring manager, and talked through my concerns, with the exception of the last bullet point (which I did not discuss at all – that would be sooooo not Kosher in any situation).  By doing so, I also reinforced my personal brand, Of COURSE you want me for this position, you want me for LOTS of positions!

Each confirmed that they would love to see me in this role and that it would be a win for the org change team, but that it would be a bad idea for my career.  Each seemed pleased I was making this assessment, and thought I was assessing accurately.  I was able to get to, Thank you for eying me seriously for this role and keeping me top-of-mind, but I’m not going to apply ’cause I don’t want yer ‘ol  job. Not in so many words, right? But I was able to turn down something that was never even mine, reinforce that I should be sought-after for open roles, remind them of my strengths, and build credit in my relationships with these two leaders who are important to me.

It feels really good. And I’m blogging about it to reward this behavior in myself and remind myself how good this feels, so that I keep doing it.  One of my weaknesses is hesitance (and self-perceived low ability) to self-promote; it’s fantastic to practice self-promotion and get positive feedback and  results.

Your Health Condition Is Not An Excuse

I found out recently that a colleague who has been acting poorly at work — paranoid, hostile body language, disengagement, scattered — is totally pregnant.  And had a rotten first tirmester.

Believe me, that first trimester can be a B-I-T-C-H.

But pregnancy (which I frimly believe is NOT a medical condition) or any ACTUAL health condition are not,

NOT

may I repeat NOT

An excuse for acting poorly at work, an excuse for paranoid, hostile body language, disengagement, scattered, or any other behavior that gets in the way of delivering results, building trust and making your boss & clients happy.

If you are having a rotten pregnancy but aren’t public with it yet, have a health problem, are going through a major life change like home sale or divorce or custody battle or aging parents with problems or whatever, find someone to talk to.  And take care of yourself with some vacation or a sick day here and there. Or take a leave of absence. Or reach out to your manager and ask for confidentiality.  Or make some other kind of change. Or cry in public. Or get a mentor. Or tell folks, I have something external to work going on, but nonetheless I want to keep being your trusted partner. Or find someone to talk to.

But don’t take the risk of pissing off a boss or clients, or not delivering results. Don’t risk eroding your personal brand. Or worse yet, creating a new, negative personal brand.  Hold it together or take a breather, but your external condition is not an excuse.

I F#%!ed Up

Days like today are the best days to have a blog, because what else would I do with my angst? With a blog, I can store it all neatly right here and get it out of my head.

So….I f#%!ed up today in a very big and very public way.

Actually, I messed up back at xmastime; it just came out today.  I have a client, who is sunsetting a Small Subject-Area Tool.  At xmastime, I proofread a newsletter release he wrote about the sunset.  I failed to catch a critical error: He stated that Large Important Tool (the parent of Small Tool) was being eliminated entirely in 2009.  Not true. Only Small Tool is being eliminated.  It was my responsibility to catch the error — my client wasn’t in a position to know.

The newsletter went out over email today, to a third of the company.  The newsletter clearly & falsely stated that Large Tool is being eliminated. This caused quite the shock & surprised, and the newsletter began being forwarded.  Within minutes it had hit my boss’ boss’ inbox.  She’s the SVP.  If she got it that quickly, it was only minutes before the Executive Committee and the CEO got it.

The Executive Committee and the CEO loooooove the Large Important Tool. News, even false, of its demise  has likely triggered heart attacks.

But you know what? I’m not worried.

Sure, it’s an incredibly public mistake. Right before review time.  Visible to important people who control my promotion. And I have to publically issue a retraction. And apologize to my client for my mess-up, since he never would have released the news item if I hadn’t green-lighted it. And I don’t get to be a jackass and hide, or point blame at my client, or in any way deflect my responsiblity.

I‘m not worried, because I’m confident that I’ll be judged not on the fact that it happened, but on how I fix it. The fix — the retraction — is already underway, and I’m managing my SVP’s expectations. My boss is in the loop, and I’m over-communicating to him (insurance he likes).

Bear in mind, my personal brand is protecting me. If I wasn’t a great performer, and if my past actions hadn’t consistently showed I deliver results, prevent problems, fix problems and communicate well, then I would be judged on the fact that I caused the problem.  I think about a couple of my employees, past & present, whom I would have judged very harshly if this had happened on their watch, because they were inconsistent performers and this would have reinforced my perceptions of  spotty performance.

Great performance, a willingness to take partners and consistent ownership of weaknesses & mistakes are like money in the bank: I’ve got a little checkbook balance now I can spend, without being over-drawn.  If I handle the fix well, I might break even or end up with net positive credibility.

But GOOD GRIEF, there’s nothing like public massive fail in an area of strength to really make a gal feel like a million bucks! Plus, I broke my mother’s car key today, the remote-access kind of car key that costs $300 to fix/replace. MASSIVE FAIL.

Guess all I can do is keep on dancing, and laugh a little, so as not to end on a sour note.  HAHAHAHAHA!

Weekly Review 12/6/08

As mentioned, I skipped the holiday week and held over the 11/21/08 Goals & MITs to this week.

How did I do?

1. Goal: Add more great content.  MIT: Update resume and post masked version.

Yep, that one got done during the holiday week. Check out my resume here. If anyone would like to read it and offer critique or advice, please do! And by the way, there is some great resume advice over at Free Money Finance.

2. Goal: Add more great content. MIT: Write 5 days minimum (this is an interim goal to help me work up to writing every day – I’m still trying to work out the baby/day job/moonlighting schedule)

Well, I wrote every day but Friday and I’ve decided I’m taking Fridays off: it’s pizza night wherein we make our own pizza after work.  Can’t be working 100% of the time, need to increase the fun quotient! BUT, I’m still not writing as much as I want to. That’s partly a function of the baby/day job/moonlighting balance, and partly because I think up great posts when I’m out & about but I just can’t type fast enough on that damned tiny iphone virtual keyboard.

3. Goal: Increase readership & recognition. MIT: Continue commenting on career & related blogs; expand to working mom blogs.

Yep, doing this and nope, not doing this as much as I want to. See comment above.

What’s on deck for next week?

1.  Goal: add more great content.  MIT: write write write write write write. Also, mix up shorter & longer posts.

2.  Goal: increase readership & recognition: MIT: comment comment comment guest post comment comment comment comment.

3.  Goal: add more great content.  MIT: write the next two interview question sets and send along to the interviewees.

Blunt Feedback I Wish I’d Given

Some of this is blunt feedback I wish I’d been given, early in my career.  Some of it is blunt feedback I wish I — or someone — had given various colleagues & employees. Why is it so hard for people to be frank about this stuff?  Maybe it’s because I live in Minnesota, where the official state personality is passive aggressive, but sugar coating or ignoring this stuff doesn’t do anyone any favors.

1.  Stop obsessing about pay grade. Obsessing about pay grade is the wrong strategic move. The more you obsess about your pay grade, the more I think you have no common sense and the less I want to increase your pay grade.  Why? You care about pay grade because you want to make more and feel like you’re being promoted.

But to make more and get promoted, you should instead obsess about outperforming in your current role, getting new marketable experiences, and getting marketable title advancement. These are the things you talk about on your resume and in your interviews, not pay grade.

Plus, pay grades usually overlap by enormous amounts, so is not necessarily an indication your compensation,  just your upside. Jumping pay grades doesn’t guarantee more cash.  But outperforming and racking up marketable experience both increases your likelihood of getting a raise (more cash) and jumping pay grades (more upside).

PS: title is more important than pay grade because title goes on the resume and sets compensation expectations.  For example, in my company, there are certain Analysts who are higher pay grades than some Managers.  But Manager flags as higher-compensated on a resume.

2. Fix your image. Sorry to remind you but humans are evolutionarily wired to make snap judgments based on appearance.  Image includes clothes, hair, makeup, ironing, tie, jewelry, fingernails, etc.  For goodness sake, use a q-tip! Want to advance? Dress like you mean it. Don’t dress like your kid, or yourself from ten years ago,  or the funky free spirit that you think you are.  Right now, you are over estimating how professional you look. If you tell me that “suits are uncomfortable,” or “suits don’t fit me,” than I believe believe you’re not thinking maturely or strategically about your career, because it’s plenty easy to find a suit that fits, and by the way you need to get comfortable with using a tailor.

This rant about suits comes from the suit culture I work in:  you need to carefully examine the culture of your own organization.  How do the leaders in your company present their image? How do the people you admire in the job you want (not the job you have) present their image? Follow their lead.

3. Your communication style is getting in your way. If you are not an excellent communicator, people aren’t recognizing your smarts & your contribution.  People are getting tired of fighting the communication battle with you, or being eternally confused by you. The more tired you make them, the less they will want to work with you, or for you, and to promote you.

4. You need to manage up more. If you don’t know what that is, you need to find out or get a mentor.  It is not the same as brown-nosing: it’s managing expectations, ensuring your actions are aligned with your manager’s goals, appropriately triageing issues, ensuring your manager knows your successes, making life easy for your manager and making your manager look good.  Everyone wants their manager to have their back, right?  Think of managing up as returning the favor.

5. Invest more time in your boss and your boss’ boss. You can have the greatest relationship in the world with the client or your team, but if you don’t ALSO invest in having a great relationship with your boss – and for that matter, your boss’ peers, your boss’ boss and anyone filling in for your boss  – than you are not going to have a great review or get looked at as promotable, or get great new assignments. Or be able to have a candid enough relationship with your boss such that you can say no, influence priorities, and call her on her bullshit.

6. Own your own weaknesses, start mitigating them and take off the blinders.  Why is are so many people so reluctant to own their weaknesses? Maybe because so many of us have been punished for weakness in the past. But what, do you think you are perfect? Only a perfect person would either have no weaknesses or not have to mitigate them.

7. Stop taking everyone’s advice indiscriminately. Instead ask: out of the menu of advice I’ve gotten, which is most applicable for this current situation or this current culture or this current personality?

This goes for my advice, right here, too.   I’m just a data point for you, and you can’t use every data point — I might be an outlier. I don’t have some magic solution or the key to it all.  If I had the key, I wouldn’t need to be writing this blog to figure out what I am doing.

Is She Good?

Today I have to write about someone else’s performance, in order to write about my own performance.  For both of us, the question to answer: Is she good?

Let me start by saying that I firmly believe that my first job as a leader of people is to coach, develop & empower my team to be highly productive and to advance in their careers. (Be that advancement to higher levels or advancement as individual contributors to higher challenges).  Of course, I also need to set vision & strategy and at my management level I also have individual contributions, but my primary job is my team.  Why else am I managing people?

On all my teams, I’ve had mixes of star, average and poor performers.  Any team would have this, yes? And where my people land on that continuum — where any of us land — is not fixed through time.  Performance improves, performance slips, new challenges emerge and we rise to meet them, or not.

So when my client, who is several pay grades above me, asked today of one of my team, “Is she good?” it broke my heart but I had to assess fairly and answer no. She is good at some things, at work that is tightly scoped and appropriate for her pay grade. But my client was questioning whether she is good at handling the challenges before us, challenges that have evolved over the year.  And she has not risen to them. As much as the skills required to meet these challenges are crucial to moving our initiative forward, my client was also asking, “Is she good enough to promote?” and the skills are even more crucial at leadership levels.  So: No.

Here is why this is also about my performance: My primary job is to develop and empower my team.  In the first half of the year, I considered this employee one of my stars.  But over the year, she has slipped from star into average and seems to be continuing her slide. Granted, I was on maternity leave for part of this slide, but I have been asking myself what I could and should have done better to help her prevent her slide (and the disengagement that is going with it).  I have also been asking myself whether I even assessed her correctly in the first place.  And this is soooo important to me, because my primary job is my team.  How could I not have seen this coming, or stepped in to prevent?

Here are some of the things I have learned from the situation, that I’ll try to apply going forward:

• I bias towards seeing the potential in people.  This is a good thing.  But some people give strong early impressions, and then can’t follow it up.  I’m going to be more cautious about assessing people as high-potential for promotion until I see a longer period of consistent strong results. And a long period of not being overly dramatic and acting overly entitled.

• The higher you go, the more important become communication, ability to reduce confusion & ambiguity, delegation, and ability to see the big picture and focus on what’s important.  When giving feedback in the future, I’m going to be more blunt about these being big limiting factors if people can’t get a handle on them and mitigate weaknesses in these areas. I’m good at giving actionable, behavior-based feedback but I think I haven’t been as blunt as I should have been about consequences, particularly promotion consequences, of not addressing problems in these areas.

• I am going to talk to my boss and my most trusted manager peers more regularly about their impressions & assessment of my team members. We do this well at my company at review time, and I do regularly ask the vague, Do you have any feedback for my team? I want to start asking specific things like, What do you see as the biggest value [name] brings, or How do you think [name] has been doing at [activity] or What do you see as [name]’s next destination? Also: How do you think I am doing coaching [name] around [issue]? Asking these things throughout the year will give me a pulse check on my assessments of their performance and my success at coaching, and give me insight into behaviors or interactions I may not be seeing directly.

Archive Post: Contest!

Edit 11/25/08: This post archives the former page, Contest!, wherein I asked for crowdsource suggestions to name my blog.  I had launched Open-Source Career originally under the name Placeholder, in an effort to get the blog started even though I had not finalized my branding strategy.  Hence the placeholder title, ha ha ha.  Of course, at launch my readership was not huge so I only got two suggestions:  “In It To Win It” by Richard, and “The [last name redacted] Word,” by Brad. Thanks to them both! I selected Brad as the winner because while “In It To Win It” is catchy and a great suggestion, I’m not necessarily actually in it to win it — at least not by an external/traditional definition of corporate-ladder climbing success, which is what “win it” signals to me.  If I wasn’t totally anonymous (because I don’t want to be dooced), Brad’s suggestion would be excellent because it creates the brand out of my name.  Note that the contest rules below state I can pick a winner but not use their suggestion.

Edit 11/15/08:  Blog has re-launched with the permanent title, Open-Source Career.  Brad is the contest winner; look for an interview with him to be posted soon.  I’ll leave this page up for a little while and eventually retire it.

WTF is this “Placeholder” business all about?

Placeholder is the (possibly) temporary name of my blog.

I didn’t want to wait for the perfect title to get started, so I am using a Placeholder, ha ha.

Placeholder is growing on me: it reminds me that too often we live our lives in place, forgetting to learn and grow — yeah, I like irony. It reminds me that substance (blog content) is often more important than style (fancy title). So I might keep it. But until I decide, I’m keeping a list of brainstorms for a better title. And I want you to contribute your brainstorms too – I’m having a contest. Help me brand my blog!

Here are the rules:
* Leave your title ideas in the comments on this page.
* Contest ends at a random date/time TBD by me
* I will pick a winning reader-suggested title
* I may or may not use that title for my blog

What do you win?
* Satisfaction of being a big ol’ winner
* You’ll be interview by me, using a question set of my choice, to be published on this blog

Here is my punch list; I’ll be updating it as I brainstorm more:
* MFK
* Deliberate Serendipity
* Open-Source Career
* Success Hacks
* You Can’t Win If You Don’t Play
* Linchpin
* [edit: 11/05/08] Practical Optimist

Weekly Review 11/21/08

Team, it’s time for the weekly review!

How did I do this week?

1. Goal: tighten up brand message. MIT: re-launch blog with new permanent title.

Accomplished. Leo from Write To Done and Zen Habits has some great points about blog branding.  “Placeholder” didn’t clearly convey what this blog is all about but “Open-Source Career” sure does.

2. Goal: Smackdown Mr. Angst. MIT: return to work from maternity leave and write at least two posts about it.

Accomplished. I’m back and I’m actually daylighting as I write this very post.  Mr. Angst is pretty well vanquished -the anticipation was much worse than the reality.  But my posts aren’t really about how I vanquished my angst, they’re about my performance review and promotion goals.

3. Goal: Increase blog readership/awareness. MIT: Add new career and related blogs to the blogroll, get attention through pingbacks.

MIT accomplished, but goal not met.  I have found some great new (to me) blogs that I’m enjoying and I’ll continue to add great reads to the blogroll.  But pingbacks aren’t a great way to get attention, commenting and guest posting is. Incidentally, Kimmy B, “The Prosperity Blogger,” has a great branding technique: when commenting, don’t just rely on the link to your blog that the comment sets up.  Sign your comment with alias & URL as well.

Upcoming Week:

1. Goal: Add more great content.  MIT: Update resume and post masked version

2. Goal: Add more great content. MIT: Write 5 days minimum (this is an interim goal to help me work up to writing every day – I’m still trying to work out the baby/day job/moonlighting schedule)

3. Goal: Increase readership & recognition. MIT: Continue commenting on career & related blogs; expand to working mom blogs.

Relaunch!

Placeholder is now Open-Source Career.  Welcome to beta.