Start ‘Er off on a High Note

January was a grousy month.  The general consensus around the office last Friday was, “Whew.”  It was a tough week getting through the layoffs, and it was a tough month all around at the F50C.  I think it was a tough month for many of us, having to confront 2008 actuals for both our personal finances and our companies’ performance. Good thing I have a blog, because venting here is definately better then pouring out my angst all over my family.

Actuals are in, goals are locked, and all we can do now is go forward.

So I’m done complaining. We’re gonna start February off on a high note. Here’s what I’m excited about at work right now:

• I have almost unlimited potential to expand my responsibilities right now. I think for a little while this was giving me pause — I have a lot of big things do do.  But big responsibilities mean opportunity to make a real impact. And my boss is more of a point-and-push kind of guy, so I have a ton of potential to define my world as big as I want.

• I have a lot of opportunities to make my boss’ life easier by taking on meetings and statuses so that he can exit and focus on other stuff.  And the good news is that these are almost all either decision-making meetings or statuses with folks way above my pay grade. More exposure for me, plus my boss is happy that is world is simpler.

• I am really excited about the direction one of my employees is going in this year. Her major project will be ending and what’s next for her after that is both cutting edge and a great fit for her sweet spot of skills & strengths.

• I totally schooled my Gen Y employee in my expectations — I used him as a guinea pig to talk expectations in a way that was far more specific, blunt & spelled-out than I ever had before. It’s already sooooo much easier to catch issues & redirect before they get big.

• Another employee asked for some really direct & blunt feedback on Wednesday, and I was very honest and gave examples of behavior and consequence. We also talked through tactics and the fact that she’s more empowered than she thinks she is.  Already on Thursday she was applying some of what we talked about. I hope it sticks!

• I had a great presentation on Friday to one of the VPs and his management team. We have good support from them for a new initiative I’m trying to start up.

• After the presentation, I had coffee with my old Director.  She soundly reconfirmed that I’m being positioned to promote (even though the timeline may have slowed for all promotions, given the layoffs) and that she supports me.  Even better, she highlighted for me the exact key strength that she sees me bring to my boss & my peers on his management team and said she’d see a huge gap if I wasn’t on his team.  It’s really nice to have this confirmed by a third party whom I really respect!

• There’s a posting that went out this week (despite the layoffs….It must be one of the only postings in the company) and two people approached me to apply. It’s a communications-specific role, but I’m highly skeptical that it would be a lateral move with no promotion potential. I’m also a little skeptical about whether the hiring manger’s style is a good fit for me.  My former Director said that while she’d love to have me in the role, it’s probably a poor move career-wise.  I’m not gonna lie: I love that I was approached, I love the vote of confidence and mentoring from my former Director, and I love the power of saying, “no, thanks!”

• Oh, and that big, big f#%! up? My client is a total trooper, he got the retraction out within a day, totally took responsibility & ownership, kept it professional and kept it friendly.  We had a big apology fest, apologizing to each other, and he also apologized to my boss.  He models all the best in professionalism, and between the two of us, I think we underscored my favorite career truth: failure and screw-ups are less important than how well you move forward and deal with them.

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?

Miscellany

Team, I am waaaaay too busy tonight making an Amy Sedaris I Like You Lil’ Smoky Cheese Ball for tomorrow’s happy holidays potluck lunch at the office to be bothered with attending to this old blog. Career, schmareer I say. Who needs a career when there is smoky Gouda?

Behold, I present you with some happy miscellany instead.

Good things happen to good people, even in a sour economy.

Case in point: one of my favorite employees got a new job today.  In a climate of unofficial hiring freezes.  And it’s a perfect, perfect fit for her.  And it’s a promotion.  And it’s super well-deserved.

I am on track.

I had a great career development conversation with my boss today.  He is extermely glad I’m back — this from someone who hardly ever vocalizes that type of thing — and unprompted, he made a big effort to make sure I understood his goal is to broaden my visibility to the SVP and across the company, and to get me short-listed as right-fit roles open up.  It’s really, really nice to feel that he and his peers want to retain me.

Happiness is contaigous.

Did I mention this before? It bears repeating. Strangers can make you happy. Wings on the butterfly, people, causing tsunamis.  Get with the program: we all have the responsibility to choose optimism and choose happiness, to rearrange our mental constructs, because we all affect our brothers, our neighbors, our neighbors’ brothers.

People are finding their stride.

At yesterday’s goal & objective setting session, we devoted a good chunk of time to a first pass at employee assessment, to get prepared for the upcoming annual review cycle.  I found out, to my very happy surprise, that two of the folks who last year we considered borderline in performance and of low promotion potential have since that time really found their sweet spots.  They have both shown remarkable improvement and are now outperforming. Turns out one of them was promoted while I was on leave, a truly excellent result.  I certainly think it was a well-deserved promotion, since he added a ton of value to one of my projects, earlier this year.

Good breeds good better.

Good things keep happening, even if the news is telling us otherwise in order to boost audience and sell more ad revenue.  Choose life, as they would say in Trainspotting, (hands down my favorite movie of 1996) but I mean it noncynically, I really do, maybe I’m a polyanna.  Look for the good, bias towards the good, and in turn drive out even more good.

Now I Will Eat My Hat

No one has gotten promoted.

Contrary to my complete knee-jerk reaction, it was all a complete fabrication that I myself fabricated in my crazy old head.  Rather: titles were changed across several positions to bring title, pay grade and bonus status in my pyramid in line with title/pay grade/bonus combinations throughout the rest of the company. This is really good news, as now peer relationships with partners are more symbolically and factually even.

I have to eat my hat now, because I’m not an idiot, I’m not falling behind, I’m not on the slow track.  But because I let my icebergs take over I spent all weekend in a shame spiral, making all kinds of wild assumptions about what a non-promotable loser I was.  Icebergs suck.  They don’t serve me at all.  I am not a non-promotable loser, and there is objective proof to the contrary.  If I had just asked about it (neutrally, gracefully) when I first noticed the new titles, I would have gathered facts, and  facts are not a problem for me.  Crazy mangy headbees are my problem and without facts they swarm.

Please, please, the next time your icebergs pop up, or your hot buttons get pushed, or you receive news to which your first reaction is to be devastated, or your headbees buzz, please remember this incident.  I know I will.  Remember how crazy I went over nothing.  It’s no good for your mojo.  Remember to step back, stop making assumptions, and start gathering objective facts.  Remember that your icebergs don’t serve you.  Remember that your inner critic doesn’t have your best interest at heart.  Save yourself a lot of time and energy. You can mitigate your icebergs.  They don’t have to control how you feel or react. You can learn to be more optimistic.

Remembering this incident, and the fact that I did it publically on my blog, and how very delicious my hat tasted:  this is my new iceberg-melting heat lamp.

Promotion vs Lateral Move

I have an interesting problem, and it’s a really good problem:  do I engineer a promotion in my current role, or do I engineer a lateral move to an over-the-moon-ideal role?  Both are real, likely possibilities, they are somewhat mutually exclusive, and both have serious pros & cons.

Real, likely possibilities.

Promotion in Current Role:

• My boss and my former director have each stated explicitly that they are positioning me for promotion.
• Each are big advocates of mine who know and advertise the value I deliver.
• My current role has been tweaked in order to give me more visibility to senior management, an important part of the positioning.
• My former boss (an interim boss from earlier this year) told me I need to change my mindset and should expect promotion within the year. This was before my pregnancy was announced, so the timeline has shifted somewhat due to my leave.
• My current role plays to my strengths and I have a reputation for delivering results, cutting out confusion & spin, and moving teams forward to deliver results.

Lateral to Ideal Role:

• There is a director in the department I am targeting who is a big advocate of mine and a big supporter of my coming over.  He believes I would be a great fit.
• He is actively working to help me expand my network within his department, so that I can build relationships, understand what role(s) would be best for me, and help others think of me first when roles open up.
• He knows I am goaling to promote to manager Level 2 and has stated he would absolutely not stand in my way (there are consequences to this; Mutually Exclusive, below)
• The VP of this department also knows me, thinks well of me, and believes I would be a good fit.
• My former director from my current role also understands I’d be great in this department and has been a supporter of the idea so far.

Mutually Exclusive.

• Promotion in current role makes me a Level 2 manager.
• In the department I am targeting, a Level 2 manager usually has 10+ years of communications-specific experience, often both agency and corporate.
• I do not have communications-specific experience.  Rather I have communications talent, managing-people talent and a deep understanding of my company language, culture & finance organization.
• It is tricky to even move me over as a Level 1 manager due to my current pay grade.
• If I promote before moving it will be extremely hard to make it a lateral move, and step-down moves aren’t that much easier.

Pros & Cons.

Current Role:

• PROS – Promotable very soon. The role plays to my strengths and I have a reputation for delivering results, cutting out confusion & spin, and moving teams forward to get things done.  I can leverage existing relationships. I have been in variants of this role for three years so I have both context & expertise.  I am very good at managing my boss because I’ve worked for him for so long.  My boss is somewhat challenged in the feedback and career development mentoring/coaching department so it would be refreshing to have a new boss who has a different style.
• CONS – The next important stage for my boss’ organization is to move away from IT project work and into hard analytic & reporting consulting for clients: I’m not talented at hard analytics and I dislike doing it; would I be stuck with golden handcuffs in a role I hate?  And I can’t keep working for my boss.  In my organization it is very important to work for a variety of people and demonstrate that your success isn’t linked to just one person. I’m overdue for that change.  Finally, my current role is starting to feel like running in place, trying the fight the same old boring fights and solve the same old tiresome problems over and over again.

Lateral Move:

• PROS – Communications work is the stuff that feels not like work but like play to me.  Since communications is one of my core talents, the long-term upside of being in that organization is probably greater than the long-term upside of staying in business intelligence.  I am sooooo ready for a new challenge and new problems to work on. I’m wanted by a director and a VP;  They both assure me that extensive communications or agency background is not needed.
• CONS — No roles are currently open, and due to the external economic environment, nothing is guaranteed to open soon. If I promote first, I may not be able to come over; if come over at my current pay grade,  I may not be able promote for a looooong time.  I will have to learn a whole new organization, departmental culture, client set, etc, which is a big learning curve and a big investment.  I may be managing people with extensive communications background and agency experience — how weird or problematic would that be? I will have to learn a whole new boss’ style and figure out how to manage up. I’m untested formally in this type of role so there’s some risk & fear there.

What will I do?

See what an exciting problem to have? I’m so refreshed to have a “good” problem for once!  May I learn how to always see the good in my problems as a result.

In any case, here’s my plan: be very open and honest with my current boss, my former director and my advocate director about my interests and plans.  Continue to pursue promotion in my current role because, hey, promotion will open more opportunities than no promotion, and it doesn’t rule out a lateral move, just makes it more tricky.  Plus, no roles in my targeted department are guaranteed to open soon, whereas my existing role isn’t going anywhere. Continue to network with my targeted department, build relationships over there, and seriously review/consider/pursue (if right fit) positions that post.

Play it by ear.

Make no moves for at least 30 days.

And continue to focus on attracting my true desired outcome: Promotion to Level 2 manager and lateral from there into my targeted department.  Just because it’s tricky doesn’t mean it’s impossible.

Really Good Problems to Have

Happy Thanksgiving week, everyone!

I want to take a minute and remind myself — and all of you — that the problems I talk about on Open-Source Career, and that the other HR, career management and personal finance blogs talk about, are often really excellent problems to have.  I’m reflecting this Thanksgiving week on my situation and I’m finding myself lucky.

Here’s how I’m answering my Inner Critic, and reminding myself of just how much I am blessed:

1.  I haven’t been promoted yet, and people I used to know are promoting past me. That may be true, but the economy is melting down and I have an excellent job.  And I still have the job.  And there is no talk of layoffs at this time in my company.  Not only that, but I know how the pay grade structure works — they overlap by quite a bit — and I may easily be making more than some people with more advanced titles.  Finally, I know some folks who fast-tracked it up there.  I also know from conversations with others “up there” that there are not a lot of places to go once you’re there, that it is still an up-or-out track once you’re there, and that it’s incredibly competitive, disingenuous and bordering on back-stabby “up there.”  Bottom line: I’m on a marathon, not a sprint, what I do is basically very easy for me, and I don’t have to worry about back-stabby politics.

2.  I haven’t found or engineered my perfect role yet. Wow, talk about a navel-gazing, first-world, privileged problem to have. This is a GREAT problem.  I’m actually on easy street:  I’m well paid for what I do, and my industry is still relatively healthy.  I do not have to do manual labor.  I don’t work around dangerous equipment or chemicals, and the worst health impact my job could cause is carpal tunnel syndrome.  I can spend my time and angst focusing on finding the perfect role because I’m not spending my energy walking eight miles to get water (and plenty of folks in the world have to do that), surviving in a war-torn city, or dealing with abuse.  Bottom line: I’m really lucky, and I’m grateful for that.

3. I am deeply torn between being a working mom and a stay-at-home mom. Another great problem to have. Because the problem implies that I’ve got a choice.  Theoretically, I could choose to stay home, even though I’m more of the breadwinner.  Our standard of living might change drastically, or it might not, since by staying at home I’d have more time to do the artisan and homemaking things that I pay for now: cooking, housekeeping, gardening to raise our own food, acting as my own car mechanic, doing my own major home improvement projects.  Hell, I could even homeschool – he’d be able to figure compound interest by age seven! On the other hand, I’ve undertook a series of really big projects all throughout my maternity leave — I needed something challenging and interesting to do all day. Plus, while it’s a lot harder to work while my kiddo is very young, if I step off the career track now and find myself wanting to work on something difficult, competitive, lucrative and interesting once he’s in school, I might never get back on track.  A recent study shows that women who keep their careers end up happier in middle age. I’ll continue to re-assess full time vs. part time and work vs. stay at home.  As my mom always reminds me, being a stay-at-home mom is hard work. And no big changes for at minimum 30 days. Bottom line: at this point in time I want and need to work, and that’s not a bad thing.

Psyched Up Interviewing

I have been thinking a lot about job interviewing lately. I will be looking for a new role once I return to the F50C (but not before at least 30 days are up), and I’m already starting to get psyched up to interview.

My nurse friend A will be also be looking for a job soon and we’ve been talking about how scary it is to interview when you haven’t had to do it for a decade.  She’s never had to face down a corporate interview, either: talk about intimidating! Coincidentally,  101 Smackdowns just did a great post on facing down your fears.

Here’s what I commented there and what I told Nurse A:

I went to grad school with someone I’ll call the Very Wealthy Individual (VWI). It seemed as though this person hadn’t needed to fight for a job in their life — that most likely they’d used family connections and networking to get in the door. One day during the height of MBA job-hunt season, the VWI cornered me in the hall one day and went on at length about how much they loved to interview.

Loved to interview? I had never heard anyone say such a thing!  The VWI went on at length about how much they loved to make a connection with the interviewer, how much they loved to talk about themselves, how easy (easy!) interviewing always (always!) was. And the VWI went on to say they were always successful – always got the offer.
Was the VWI insane? Interviews were always easy for them? Were they putting on a big fat front?

Then it occurred to me: the VWI believed interviews were always easy and that the VWI would always be successful.  And so both consciously and unconsciously, the VWI comported themself with an air of confidence, competence, grace, and relaxation during interviews.  The VWI believed success to be inevitable and it was, because belief attracts outcomes.

Now, I was not at all this comfortable interviewing.  And I was interviewing for MBA-level jobs but I had a liberal arts undergrad degree (in writing, no less) and had never worked in the private sector before. You can imagine how confident I felt. I was intimidated, embarrassed by my lack of experience, and fairly pessimistic. But I could not shake off this odd lecture from the VWI. And I so I decided to play “Fake It ‘Till You Make It” and put on my own big fat front.

Before each interview, I psyched myself up into my character, “MFK who LOVES interviewing and is great at it.”

• I went around telling everyone I loved interviewing (just like the VWI did to me)
• I intensely visualized having profound and meaningful conversations with my interviewers, making a real connection with them, and having them get excited about me as a great fit for the job.
• I practiced my answers out loud over and over so that they began to feel like natural, interesting stories.
• I stubbornly fought back pessimistic thoughts and instead deliberately practiced thinking about my non-traditional background as unique, valuable, useful and differentiating.
• Then I become that interview-loving and interview-acing character.

And it totally worked.  And it works to this day.  Because belief attracts outcomes, and you can talk yourself into being confident.

Try it out yourself. Don’t you deserve to shed the interview angst?  Of course you do!  For some great tips on how to psych yourself up to face a fear like interviewing, head here.

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.

Blew My Mind

Well, really changed my frame of reference anyway.

Sometimes I need to see my situation through someone else’s eyes to really articulate the value I bring.

The deal is that I often have trouble explaining what I do;  I used to complain that I never had anything concrete to put on my reviews.  What I do is manage project managers.  Also what I do is get the right people to the table and make them talk to each other. I get people out of spin mode and get them executing instead.  And most importantly, I define & launch big, high-visibility, complex new initiatives and then hand them off to the people who will run them in the steady-state.  I hate running things in the steady state.

This stuff can sometimes be kind of abstract, especially when we’ve been herding cats for eight months just trying to define the strategy — and haven’t gotten to the execution part yet.

I often answer the question, “What are you up to?” with: “Not much,”  because it’s easier than trying to explain all the abstract stuff. This isn’t good personal branding and it isn’t good on my review.

So I was pleasantly surprised at my last review when my boss at the time re-framed my entire way of thinking about what I do.  He reminded me that over the last two initiatives I’ve led, I’ve done things that no one else in the company has ever done, simply because I’ve worked to establish initiatives that have never before existed. Needed initiatives.

Lesson learned: get someone else to describe to you what you do, or the value you bring, or the impact you made, in order to see your work in a new light.  For me, this generated new inspiration, and I return to this review in my mind all the time to remind me even though it’s easy for me, doesn’t mean it’s not value-add to the F50C.

Be Ever Vigilant

This morning I awoke after a night awake again and again with the baby. I awoke to a voice in my head,

This open source career blog is silly. Why are you doing this? You’ll just look like an idiot. You don’t have time, you’ll never work it in. Why are you even trying to design your own ideal career – you don’t deserve this and you’re probably not clever enough anyway. Better stick with status quo and accept that working sucks.

I immediately realized I had to counter this voice. I told myself I simply wasn’t going to listen to myself after a night of sleep deprivation. I remembered the best advice I ever learned: never make a major decision in the throes of illness, crisis or major discomfort – the human brain is way too susceptible to buried emotional icebergs, wrong-logic pitfalls and other pessimistic traps during periods of intense stress.

Be ever vigilant, team. Quickly, or pessimism wins.