Love the One You’re With

Ok, I’m pretty happy about work right now for two reasons.

The first is that our goal-setting process is coming to an end and I’m locked. My colleague spoke up today in front of my boss and said he thought I’d been asked to take on too much given the resources I have, and I appreciate that. But even though I’ve been tasked to boil the ocean, I’m OK with failing on some of my objectives since you learn and grow most from failure.  And because of the way our points system is set up — voluntary assignment of points, and no hard correlation of points-to-objectives — I’m already strategizing to game the system and claim full points no matter how many objectives I actually achieve. Broken system, loose rules, break the rules, set new rules: learn to love the broken system, love the one you’re with.

Second reason I’m happy, and second way to love the one you’re with:  my current job is my dream job. Here’s how this works.  Under the theory that if you don’t define yourself others will define you, I’m going to define my current job in ways that establish me as working on, known for, an expert in, etc., my dream job.

The thing I’ve been craving to do is to have a leadership role in the communications field.  This is problematic for several reasons, the first being that there is zero up, down or lateral movement going on at my company right now — as with many firms these days.  Even more problematic is that leadership roles in the communications department and my current pay grade totally don’t jive.  I’m over-paygraded for a leadership role in that field. (People with director and VP titles in small agencies come to our communications department as individual contributors, manager titles at best, sometimes even specialist titles.) Finally, I have no direct experience in that field and I know I often over-romanticize what’s on the other side of the fence.

But thinking about my goals for 2009, I relized: I’m already doing much of what I think my fantasy job is all about. I am managing director-, possibly up to VP-level leaders. I am doing complex, cross-functional communication and change management with a huge group of stakeholders. I am developing strategy, then seeing it executed. For the applications & projects I own, I am steering them for the future.  I have a nice balance of extremely strategic and precise, tactical actions.

So I am going to talk about my work in ways that establish me as deputy-chief (I think my boss gets to be chief) strategist for EBI from the business side, and EBI communications director.  And I am going to talk about strengths & weaknesses in ways that support this. Establish goals in a way that supports this. Take on new work only if it supports this. Help my boss continue to position me, market me and brand me as chief strategist and communications director.

Two titles I’ve always wanted!

It’s an evolutionary process, but I’m very inspired and now firmly believe that anyone can evolve their current situation into their dream situaion — without a lot of fancy interviewing, jumping-ship, or etc.  My formula (and I didn’t realize this was a formula; hindsight is 20-20) is this:

• Consistently outperform in current role
• Consistently build deep, sustained relationships with boss, peers, clients
• Build trust and get known as a reliable expert and learner
• Fill gaps no one else fills. In my case it’s a sophisticated level of communication, and successfully guiding teams through confusion/ambiguity.
• Talk about the type of experiences I want, not just the job or title I want. In my case, for a couple of years I’ve been a broken record talking about managing people, communications, strategy development, managing complex virtual teams/stakeholders and the ability to execute a few very tangible deliverables.

Since I’m trusted, fill gaps and am known for delivering outcomes, it’s been easier for my leadership to keep attaching me to new work & open opportunities that match the type of experiences I’m looking for.

So since I don’t have the title I want yet, and moving to the communicaions department may not be the best/easiest/smartest/possible move, I will now just:

• Behave as though I already have the title I want
• Behave as though my current job is my dream job, to the point of describing what I do in the terms of my dream job.

I apologize if this all is total Duh to you but I suddenly put it all together today and I’m very inspired to create my own reality right now.

Do any of you create your own career reality like this?

10 Years Out

As a follow-on to the lottery exercise, I’m going to answer Anastasia’s questions from this post here in its own post.

In a nutshell, she asks: what does my ideal career situation look like in 10 years?

Now, I’m not generally one to make a heavily scripted 1o-year or even 5-year plan.  This works well for some, but doesn’t mesh well with my thinking style.  On the other hand, Anastasia is right to ask what my ideal outcome is, since you can’t attract or achieve what you can’t describe.  So I know generally what my ideal situation 10 years out will be, and I can dive deeper into the specifics of that situation as I need to (e.g. when I’m ready to move more quickly towards that destination, or if I need to tweak what that destination looks like).  But at this time I won’t script out the specific steps I’ll take.

10 years out, I :

• Have an equity stake in a small, high-growth private firm,
• Am probably not the original founder of that firm (not really my style) but came on board early on,
• Lead strategy and new business development for that firm (my favorite kind of stuff to do),
• Probably also own the back office functions and staff (also stuff I like to do)
• Carry a highly marketable title, such as VP of Strategy and Operations,
• Am highly compensated in salary and benefits, more so that I would have been at the F50C by this time,
• Work highly flexible, adaptable hours (my kiddo will be 10 by this time and I want high flexibility to be involved in school and lots of time for my family),
• Write: I Enjoy my work enough, and work flexible enough hours that I also easily have room to publish a relatively sophisticated blog and do some highly-selective freelancing & column work,
• Volunteer: I Enjoy my work enough, and have enough room in my schedule to have a leadership role again on a nonprofit board (larger nonprofit with multi-million dollar budget and/or statewide reach — this is a size I like),
• Am well-regarded (at least locally, not sure if I care or not about nationally) in my field and am sought out as an expert and collaborator,
• Run every day and race regularly; have completed a marathon,
• Have plenty of time to read widely (fiction, news & business),
• Have big & small adventures, and cozy home time, with my family,
• Laugh a lot,
• Wear jeans most days to work

Like the lottery exercise, 10-Years-Out is another great exercise to do when times are uncertain or scary. Thanks, Anastasia, for the prompt!

What Would You Do If You Won the Lottery?

I think one of the best time to do the lottery-what-if exercise is when times are scary.  Because if your current circumstances — your Plan A — go away, wouldn’t you rather have a Plan B that you really love (or at least a vision if not the actual plan), instead of a Plan B that’s more of the mundane same-old same-old?
Make a mere repeat of your Plan A, your Plan C.

Make your Plan B really special.

That way, if Plan A collapses, you’re well poised with a clear vision to start to execute that vision.  And if times start feeling abundant again, and Plan A is going well, why not consider: now that you have a great vision, what’s stopping you?

The lottery-what-if game is a great way to brainstorm some truly soul-nourishing Plan B options. Here’s what I’ve come up with, sort of in rank 0rder:

1. Focus full-time on this blog, freelance writing & writing columns.
2. Open the COOLEST skyway convenience shop ever, in downtown Minneapolis. Filled with what you need and expect but also with amazing oddities & unexpected fun crap.
3. Open an Etsy shop and sell custom-order poetry.
4. Consult for non-profits on back office management, career development & grant writing.
5. Run the back office of a small creative business and get an equity position.
6. Be a courier or concierge.
7. Stop working entirely, and work at home on artisan & homestead things (growing & preserving my own food, remodeling my house, keeping chickens, converting my car to run on biodiesel, you get the drift.)
8. Buy and manage all the properties on my block.

See, some are kind of crazy, some are do-able fantasies, and many are things I can start doing very easily and quickly!

A Little Paranoia

WSJ.com has one of those boilerplate doom-and-gloom economy stories in their career strategies section: Five Signs You May Be on the Layoff List.

In a nutshell,

1. Others are losing their jobs
2. Hiring freeze
3. Training budgets cut, projects slow down
4. Office gossip
5. Company is missing targets

At the F50C, 3 of 5 of these situations are already occurring, and a fourth, #4, is starting in some sectors.

I will be frank here: I stripped back my 401k withholding to just meet the company match, not because I’m concerned about how much I’ve lost in the last two quarters (a lot – but I have a long term view), or about buying equities (in fact now’s a great time to snap up tons of shares on the cheap), but because I want to maximize my cash flow and move those savings rapidly into cash. This is temporary, but:

In case.

In case something goes very wrong.

Because while senior management is not at this time sending any signals into the employee community about layoffs, my industry is extremely sensitive to macroeconomic forces, consumer confidence, and most importantly credit-fueled consumerism. And the latter is not just in practicality impossible for most people at this time, it’s also waaaaay out of vogue.

Also my company, within that industry, is not the low-cost leader nor do we have the low-cost perception among our customers.  We differentiate on style, quality and brand experience.

So I’m moving into cash.

Careful, MFK, that you don’t attract a layoff by dwelling on layoffs. Law of Attraction and all that.

If you were unexpectedly laid off, would you feel a tremendous sense of loss or a tremendous sense of relief? I’m not sure I know my answer to that question!

PS to E: good luck on your interview today!

The Trouble With Strategic Objectives

Much of the time I operate on instinct, and it serves me well, because I have excellent instincts.  I firmly believe that instinct is much more sophisticated than simple “gut feel.” It’s born from data gathered via years of experience, that our higher and subconscious levels of the brain analyze and deliver to us in the package we call instinct.

And I’m very strategic.

So I should love strategic objectives, I should loooooove them like a schoolgirl in a pleated skirt, since they fit my Hermann Brain Dominance profile so well and since they are a kindred spirit to instinct.  (Well, maybe that’s just my brain, but the right strategic choice almost always feel like the right instinctual choice.)

Oh, but I hate them, I’m growing to hate strategic objectives with a passion.  Why? Because they are not measurable.  Oh, sure, you can measure them with some very soft, strategic, instinctual, qualitative type metrics, but in this economy who the hell wants soft outcomes?
We are in the process of setting 2009 goals & objectives at work, and looking at my SVP’s goals, I see she has 60 points allocated to hard goals with measurable, factual bottom-line objectives, and only 20 points allocated to strategic objectives.  (The other 20 points I’m glad to say are team and leadership oriented).  I’m under water compared to her: my job is by nature strategic, so I have far fewer bottom-line, measurable objectives.

My job entails verbs like “align,” “influence,” “synthesize,” “promote” and “expose.”  Most of this stuff doesn’t seem measurable other than on a pass/fail scale. I struggle with doing things like signing up to promote best practices via the stakeholder group — this is a group of 20 or so Level 3 managers — and then attaching a hard measure like “all departments will adopt six best practices,” because a) I don’t own the best practices, I’m just promoting & exposing them and b) I can’t legitimately hold that many people at several pay grades above mine accountable.  All I can actually control is that I promote & expose.

Here’s another example: my boss once put on his annual review the key accomplishment of “getting an enterprise focus on data.”  That’s a direct quote.  And a soft outcome.

I’m tired of not having hard stats on my resume, and I’m tired of not having proof that I accomplished anything or that I outperformed.  How can you outperform when you don’t actually have a bar to raise? My former director and I have a running joke that I used to complain I didn’t know what to put on my review.

Whatever you do, don’t google “how to write measurable strategic objectives.” All you get is the same tired crap about SMART objectives.  I know they need to be measurable.  I just don’t know how to make them legitimately and achieveably measureable.

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.