Layoffs

My company announced today that it is reducing its HQ workforce by almost 10%. Approximately two-thirds of this reduction is due to layoffs, effective this morning; the rest is due to not back-filling open positions.
I, and my team, are not directly affected.  But many of our partners and clients are.

I was off-site all day, getting a tour of a sattelite location.  One poor gentleman in our party was essentially laid off over the phone — just as our bosses were contacting us with the official news, he recived a call instructing him to get back downtown ASAP.  Because they don’t do layoffs over the phone.

Since I was off-site, I missed a lot of the angst.  One of my partners emailed me towards the end of the day to say the mood was like a funeral.

My public radio station called me for a quote as I was driving home.  I said no way, I’m not able to speak to the media.  I’d be shocked if they get an on-the-record quote from anyone who wasn’t laid off. I honestly think that’s an easy way to get fired.

How to Tell If Your Goals Are Good

Team, of all places, Babycenter has a great article about how to make sure your goals are reasonable and you’re focusing on what’s important.

How to Fail-Proof Your New Year’s Resolutions is (duh) actually about setting good new year resolutions that you can actually achieve. But aren’t new year resolutions just a type of goal?

Some of the rules tie together good goal setting practice with other key traits of successful people. This list is fresh. Here’s the excerpt:

1. Know the purpose of your list. (Uncover your core values by asking yourself  “What kind of person do I want to be?”

2. Focus on what you already like about yourself and your life, and take it from there.

3. Make sure your goals are intrinsically motivated. (Meaning: Don’t use your life to try to impress other people.)

4. Think about what you want to do, not what you want to have.

5. Keep it fun. (If it’s not, you won’t do it.)

6. Keep it positive. (Language counts. More action, less reaction.)

7. Don’t bite off more than you can chew. (Think small, easily digestible bites, instead.)

8.  Read your list to yourself. (How does it make you feel? Intimidated, empowered, challenged?)

9. Include your wildest dreams, and be ready to abandon, or change any items on the list at any time.

My reactions:

#2. You’re always going to be more successful when you focus on maximizing strengths instead of improving weaknesses.  When it comes to weaknesses, figure out how to neutralize or mitigate them and be done with it.  Why sign up for a goal that’s going to be painful or impossible to achieve? If you’re consistently asked to take on goals that involve fixing a weakness or having to primarily use traits that are weaknesses, then you’re probably in the wrong role.  And PS for resolution-setters: I don’t mean we should give up on difficult outcomes like losing weight.  But if portion control is a huge weakness, don’t focus your goal on portion control – focus it on lifting weights or cooking whole foods, or cycling more often.

#3. This is a big problem for me.  I do like me some extrinsic attention from authority figures.  How annoying! This trait does not serve me at all.

#4.  This is right in line with some of the best career advice I’ve ever been given

#6.  Absolutely. If you focus on eliminating something you don’t like, you’ll still get the outcome you don’t like, because even focusing on something’s absence still keeps the “something” front and center in your conscious and subconscious focus.  My boss & I are constantly trying to get our team and partners to define business cases for projects and strategic initiatives in terms of what we will do instead of what we are not. It’s a much better sell.

#7. Oh, I struggle with this every day during our goal setting process!  I think we absolutely have bitten off too much.  We’re not so good at tightly defining success, and I am weary, weary, weary of trying to boil the ocean.

PS – Gotta credit Free Money Finance for the quote-react format, which he uses all the time. Love it.

Relieved

Back to work = not nearly as traumatic as I thought it would be, although I am shocked and scandalized at how little time remains in the day to be with the babe (bedtime is 7:00).  More later.

Hope & Change

Welcome to the brave new era of hope and change. The way we thought the country “had” to operate is out the window and we are standing on the cusp of sweeping new potentials.

Take a moment today to reflect on your own career situation.  In what ways are you operating because you are “supposed to” or because you always have or because it is comfortable?  What old, tired outcomes are you attracting again and again simply because you have not allowed yourself to focus on change?

Are you rising to your potential?

Do you even know what your potential is?

What do you hope you could do instead? What do you dream of?

What is one small step you can take today,

this week,

this year,

to usher in positive change in your career?

Start working on positive change for yourself right now.  If not now, when? What better time will there ever be? — the entire country is doing this with you!

Make a deal with yourself:  define a new vision for yourself by inauguration day. Take your one small step by inauguration day.  Start thinking differently about yourself, your potential, your hopes by inauguration day. Rethink everything by inauguration day.

Do the visioning work now to hit this deadline. Then move boldy forward on January 20th, taking steps to execute your vision, knowing you have freinds, neighbors, brothers, sisters, fellow Americans, with you like wind at your back.