Top 15 Things I Love About My Job

Gee, I’ve been feeling & blogging somewhat a Negative Nancy lately.  Let’s review what I LOVE about my job, for a change!

1. I’m trusted.  My boss told me outright recently to design any kind of flexible/split location/time-shifted schedule I want and that he doesn’t care about face time at all because I’m conscientious and I drive outcomes.
2. People think I add value. Clients have told me they’re glad I’m back from leave because I think strategically, ensure details aren’t dropped, am a powerfully calming influence, provide leadership, and drive outcomes.
3. I love my company culture.  It’s fun, it moves fast, people are nice, people are trendy, the company communication is always on-brand, the internal behavior of the company is just as groovy as the external behavior of the company.
4. Awesome 401k investment options.
5. Healthcare benefits suck. BUT they suck way less than the health care benefits at many of my friends’ firms, including the local health care insurance firm. So perhaps a more correct statement is that healthcare benefits in the USA, in general, suck and yet my firm’s are decent, considering.
6. I like working downtown.  There are a lot of good restaurants for lunch, and shopping is handy.
7. The F50C gives a lot of money to charity.
8. I’m turning out to really like my two+ mile round trip walk every day, to/from daycare, in the skyways.  It is a good stress reliever, mild cardio benefit, and I get to listen to This American Life podcast.
9. We used to be business-casual, and now we’re all SUIT UP.  And it turns out I love wearing a suit every day. It’s a no-brainer uniform that takes all the thinking and all the stupidity out of looking sharp and on-brand every day.
10. If I tell my boss I’m bored, he will fix that for me.
11. If I tell my boss I’m failing, he will help me.
12. Systemically, reviews & performance compensation are mostly merit-based. Instead of who-you-know- or how-much-you-kiss-ass-based.
13. I am still learning a lot. I really believe I am learning things that will help me in my future ventures.
14. When I tell people where I work, they always say, “Oh my god I love that place!”
15. Once, the recently ex-CEO of Carlson Companies even said that to me. No shit!

Can you name 15 things you love about YOUR job?

My Performance Review

My mid-year performance review was yesterday. (Mid-year huh??)  It went very well! One of the things I really appreciate about my company’s culture is that reviews are expected to be no-surprises events.  You should be hearing about your strengths & weaknesses all year long in direct and actionable feedback from your boss.  Your boss is supposed to be  your partner in this — I like that expectation.

Here are my results:

+  I keep teams focused on delivering the high-value items, especially when chaos or scope creep starts up.

+  Excellent communication

+ Excellent execution, especially with large, complex projects.

+ Several partners, including three directors, expressed relief that I’m back from leave. One said, “I just feel more comfortable with her around.”

- Don’t over-use my communication strength.  Influence the communication strategy but hold others accountable to deliver, instead of stepping in to do it for them.

- Leverage my communication and relationship-building strengths to influence more without authority, particularly with a project that is at risk for derailing.

No promotion yet, but I’m working on it!

7 Tips for Early Success When You’re New to the Organization….

….Or, What I Realized Today While Putting Out an 8:00a.m. Fire Involving the New Person, and Also Later While Eavesdropping Against My Will on the New Person:

1. Figure out the organization’s culture, and let go of your prior job’s culture. Invest some time in this; do it thoughtfully and deliberately. Is it command/control? Is it consensus-based? You have to be successful in this culture, because this organization is where you now work.  Don’t try to force your old culture onto your new job: nothing pisses off consensus people more than a dictator and nothing annoys command/control folks more than someone wasting time trying to build consensus.

2. Meet the communication needs of your clients & peers. You are new.  You will not be able to influence well right off the bat. You have to build relationships and deliver results in order to build credibility, reputation and influence.  You cannot build relationships if you are not communicating well.  Communicating well means figuring out what your partners need to hear from you and how they need to hear it.  It means explaining the context and the why’s of what you are doing and recommending. It means asking more and talking less.

3.  Don’t assume you know how the process/business/department works. Instead, watch, listen and learn. Listen three times more than you talk.  Draw out your partners, ask them what do they do, why do they do it? What are they concerned about? How do they measure results? What are they frustrated by?  Find out what are the sacred cows.  Don’t challenge the sacred cows too much until you have built up some credibility.

4.  Build up some credibility. Deliver excellent results.  But ensure you bring your partners & staff along fro the ride.  Great results alone don’t give you credibility, if they aren’t embraced by the client, or understood by your staff.  Develop a reputation for delivering, for innovating, for adding value to other teams, for helping other people.

5.  Keep a pulse on perceptions and manage them. The last thing you need is to have a client or partner think what you are up to is a direct threat to their job, methodology, way of life. If you were not hired to threaten or change those things, then monitor for signals that you are sending a threatening message, figure out what you are doing that sends the message, and stop doing it. If you were hired to threaten or change those things, then work hard to bring your partner along for the ride and generate buy-in instead of just compliance. Either way, reach out to those who feel threatened and clear the air. Approach it as a partnership and appeal to shared goals.

6. Be graceful in how you challenge & debate. Don’t be a steamroller, deliberately or accidentally.  Aknowledge you are debating; state when you are playing Devil’s Advocate.  Paraphrase back others’ points to demonstrate to them you heard and understand. (Engage in a little meta-communication).

7. Don’t assume your analysis is better. If your analysis is better, you’d better employ change management!

Hmmm, I’m seeing a communication theme here.

Well, good communication is 50% of the battle.  Does this battle sound too hard or too time consuming?  If you think like that it’s going to be a big limiting factor for you.

30 Days

I have a policy of never making major career decisions under duress, specifically during or shortly after:

• Illness
• Big life events
• Crisis

My friend Y takes this policy a step further:  No major decisions within 30 days of one of the above.

Great advice!

Our culture is so fast-paced, we can all stand to be a little more thoughtful when it comes to career decisions or other major choices.  I know I can!

Time and Winning

Let’s think about time today. Let’s think about the fact that despite what our panicky, instant-gratification culture routinely tells us, we all have more time than we think. In particular, we all have more career time than we think. But if we don’t pay attention to the journey, if we don’t live in the present just a little, if we are always in blind sprint to the next role, the next promotion, the next big move — then time truly will slip past us and we will wake up one day asking where it all went and whether we have had any true success.

There is no point in trying to win at life, because you cannot win at life by arriving in your dotage with the fattest title or the most cash or the highest published article cash. You win at life by living it, savoring it, paying attention to all the wonderful mundane moments along the way, enjoying the challenge and thrill of competitiveness but understanding there is so much more to life than competitiveness.

And if we all continue to support the insane cultural notion that our career = our life and our title, cash, article count or what have you = our worth as individuals and as humans, than we are all doing our part to ensure we lose at life and that everyone around us also has to lose at life. Because we are all doing our part to uphold a culture that will wither our souls.

So please act now, as the cycle seems to be shortening — now winning by the end of life seems not to be enough. One must “win young,” or one really hasn’t won. Bullshit.

Fifty or sixty years ago, one was likely to work until 55 for a single company, retire, go away quietly and die relatively quickly. Perhaps one’s career really did = one’s life. Today, one is likely to work until 65 or later and still be in the prime of one’s middle age. Today, we will have multiple careers — I am only midthirties and I’ve already had three. Today, we retire from one career and start a business or found a nonprofit or become teachers.

Today, we have all kinds of time and opportunity to win life in all kinds of different directions.

Why are we here at all, if not to embrace the journey?

It is absolutely not true that if you don’t “win young” you don’t really win at all. Malcom Gladwell (the tipping point guy) has a wonderful article in The New Yorker about the fallacy that genius is tied only to youth and precocity, that the window for genius or success closes at a certain young age. Go read it. Be inspired.

Are you winning in the broad sense or the narrow sense? What do you want to change? What will you have the courage to change?