Weekly Review 12/21/08

How did I do against the developmental goals I focused on last week?

1. Goal: strengthen reputation as outperformer. MIT: push hard hard hard in the goal/objective setting offsite Monday to ensure the management team in general, and I specifically, do NOT sign up for ANY objectives that are not seriously specific and measurable.

Sort-of accomplished.  The way the goal-setting session was run, it was hard to push for measurable objectives, because we rarely got down to the objective level.  However, I was an active participant and was vocal about making our goals specific and not boil-the-ocean big.  I was also able to ensure all my goals were represented and that I didn’t sign up for anything vague or that I didn’t expect.  And I made it abundantly clear — I was funny, funny, funny about it but very serious — to my boss (shout-out for managing up!) & a couple of peers that I am not signing up for any work that isn’t prioritized, meaning: doesn’t align to my goals

2.  Goal: strengthen my reputation as an outperformer. MIT: once the offsite locks down the management team goals/objectives, lock my g/o into a final draft by Friday.

Accomplished.  I noodled all week and took the the goals I owned coming out of the goal-setting session down to the objective level.  All my objectives are measurable, even the more strategic ones. (Don’t get me started on strategic objectives).  I’m working now on crafting a reference document that actually lays out the measures I’ll use. This will help me track performance and gather data along the way, and I’ll also review this document each Friday during my weekly review at work, to keep me focused.  I’ve also got my G/O document out for review & feedback with to of my favorite (read: smartest & most trusted) peers.

3.  Goal: be courted for new roles & new jobs.  MIT: work on re-opening my network, by scheduling two coffees, lunches or statuses, one with a hiring manager who has a prospect for me, one with a former manager, director or VP, to reconnect, hear what’s up in their world, drop my elevator speech, and remind them (sweetly, graciously) how great I am. 

Not accomplished!  I did set up coffee with that hiring manager, for after the holiday break. But I totally shied away from reaching out to any of my former leadership at that Director or VP level.  Why am I so shy about this? Well, reaching out and taking positive risks is the big weakness in my resilience profile.  What am I so skeezed out about? I have been thinking about it all week: more to come in a post about it some time this week.

Goals & MITs for next week:

1. Goal: strenghten my reputation as an outperformer. MIT: finish crafting the measures for my objectives. Review and revise my goals overall.

2. Goal: Be courted for new roles and jobs. MIT: figure out why I’m so gun-shy about networking with leaders way above my pay grade.

Only two goals this week, and probably fewer posts too: Merry Christmas!

Weekly Review 12/14/08

OK, here’s the deal:  I’m going to stop weekly reviewing about my goals for this blog, because my goals are basically to write great content and to comment a lot on career blogs that interest me.  Those goals aren’t going to change any time soon, so I’ll drop back the blog weekly review to quarterly or so.

What I really want to talk about and what you really want to read about is not how I’m managing the blog but how I’m managing my career development.

So going forward my weekly review here will be all about the career development stuff I don’t put into my public flash status at work.  I’m all about being public about wins, ah-ha moments and regrets, but some career development stuff just isn’t appropriate for my direct reports to read, and/or I just don’t want analysts six pay grades below mine all up in my beeswax.

Recap of last week:

Done, but of course I always feel I could & should & want to write more and comment more, so I will keep focused on that.

On to next week:

1. Goal: strengthen reputation as outperformer. MIT: push hard hard hard in the goal/objective setting offsite Monday to ensure the management team in general, and I specifically, do NOT sign up for ANY objectives that are not seriously specific and measurable. Our work lists towards the squishy strategic side.  It’s very hard to make strategic objectives measurable.  Without measurability and specificity it’s very hard to set a baseline.  Without a baseline, I cannot set a bar.  Without a bar, I do not know what success, or outperformance, looks like. I DO know that performance reviews looks best with outperformance on it, and I want some o’ that:  I’m really good at what I do, but I want to stop relying on subjective assessments and start proving it objectively. (Tim, I am imagining that you’re reading this and chuckling, ’cause yeah we’re often pretty squishy.  Let me know how well you think we do.)

2.  Goal: strengthen my reputation as an outperformer. MIT: once the offsite locks down the management team goals/objectives, lock my g/o into a final draft by Friday. Let’s get this crap out of the planning stages and get some game ON!   Bias for action, holla!

3.  Goal: be courted for new roles & new jobs.  MIT: work on re-opening my network, by scheduling two coffees, lunches or statuses, one with a hiring manager who has a prospect for me, one with a former manager, director or VP, to reconnect, hear what’s up in their world, drop my elevator speech, and remind them (sweetly, graciously) how great I am. D’oh, better update that elevator speech!

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.

Weekly Review 11/30/08: Held Over

I grossly underestimated the insanity that is Thanksgiving Week.  Between cooking the bird, visits with both sides of the family, Christmas-ifying the home, making turkey stock, and cruising out to find a high chair and the next size car seat for the kiddo (Stop growing up so fast! Where is my newborn?), it hit me:

Take the vacation week that this is!

Holiday week is no time to recommit to daily writing, aggressively managing this new venture, and trying to get promoted at work.  Sometimes you just need to stop pushing.

So my prior week’s goals are held over for the upcoming week.

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.

Weekly Review 11/14/08

The Weekly Review is my fast weekly check in to keep myself on track against my goals.  I review progress against the most important tasks (MITs) of this week, and set up goals and MITs for the upcoming week.

I should note that when I set up goals/MITs for the upcoming week, I do so in light of my overall goals for the current period.  At work, my current period is always 6 months, the interval between formal reviews.  For this blog, the current period is a calendar quarter.  Periodically, but less frequently, I also review my long-term goals, which are set up over a 5 year horizon.

This week’s progress:

1.  Goal: Increase Placeholder name recognition. MIT: make at least 5 comment on career and related blogs.

Achieved!  It’s important to make goals specific but also achievable.  Two weeks ago, my specific goal was 10 comments, but it wasn’t achievable.  Looks like a comment per weekday is do-able for now, and I can work on increasing that frequency in the future.  Of course, this goal partially depends on factors outside of my control:  blog postings that are relevant and worth commenting on.  No sign of a shortage of that in the near future, though!

2. Goal: Expand Placeholder content to interviews. MIT: prep question sets for two interviews and send them to the interviewees.

Achieved! They are now in the hands of my interviewees.  Hopefully I’ll get responses back soon and can share their interesting perspectives with you over the next couple of weeks.

3. Goal: Smackdown Mr. Angst. MIT: get psyched up and calmed down to return to work next week, and share my process with Placeholder readers.

I’m going to call this one not achieved.  I am still a lot discombobulated about returning from maternity leave, but at the same time I am finally eager to get back to work.  I’m sure it will be easier when the new routine is settled in place – I’m a creature of habit!  I also owe you readers a more extensive post on the topic.

Next week:

1.  Goal: Tighten up the brand message. MIT: Re-launch this blog with my new permanent title!

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

3.  Goal: Increase blog readership/awareness. MIT: add the new career and related blogs I found to the blogroll — hopefully I can increase their readership and also the pingbacks will draw attention to this blog.

Weekly Review 11/07/08

First, to recap this week’s performance:

1.  Goal: Increase Placeholder name recognition. MIT: Make 10 comments on other career and related blogs.

Not accomplished.  I think I’ve made a total of 3 comments, and on blogs I usually haunt, as well.  I will blame it on my election angst this week, and on hanging out all day with a cute three-month-old.  I just haven’t been reading the career blogs at all this week.

2. Goal: Get ready for opportunity knocking. MIT: Update that resume!!

Not accomplished.  Small catastrophe accomplished instead.

3. Goal: Share my background with Placeholder readers. MIT: Post a masked version of my resume. (Masking out information that identifies me or the F50C while still accurately describing my experience and value proposition.)

Sigh. See #2.

Now on to next week:

1.  Goal: Increase Placeholder name recognition. MIT: make at least 5 comment on career and related blogs.

2. Goal: Expand Placeholder content to interviews. MIT: prep question sets for two interviews and send them to the interviewees.

3. Goal: Smackdown Mr. Angst. MIT: get psyched up and calmed down to return to work next week, and share my process with Placeholder readers.

Hot Jumbled Mess

I am a hot jumbled mess and the only career advice I have for you today is to please, please back up your home computer on a regular basis. Oh, and also don’t keep important personal documents on your work computer.  Duh, right?

As you know, my main MIT this week is to update my resume. I’m returning from maternity leave soon and will be engineering a change in role.  It pays to arrive prepared with an updated resume.  As well my LinkedIn profile is several roles out-of-date and I will use my resume language to update that.

Prior to my leave, I spent considerable effort purging and organizing my career development files.  These include an extensive library of articles, my reviews over several years, current and prior resumes, accomplishment and feedback tracking, interview prep materials, goals, official job descriptions and more. Until this point, I had them stored mainly on my work computer as that’s where I mainly used them; part of organizing them involved exporting them to home, as that’s just the smart thing to do.

And my file structure on the home computer was a hot jumbled mess.  Random crap. Really old versions of important documents, but no current versions. The kind of jumbled mess that stems from an aversion to wanting to deal with career issues when at home on “me” time.  The kind of jumbled mess that comes from keeping every random thing “just in case,” but finds keeping a current resume or being prepared to interview at any time a chore.

You’re a smart bunch. You see where this is heading, don’t you?

So I go to access my current resume in order to update and find only a version from 2006.  Two years ago, people!  Shortly before my maternity leave, but after all my hard purging and organization work, my computer crashed.  And I restored from an outdated backup.  Because I don’t back up often enough.  And of course any current versions of my resume, reviews and feedback documents are still on my work computer. If I didn’t erase them entirely when exporting home.  And did I mention I’m locked out of my work files while on leave?

Is this the outcome of a savvy, responsible, truly talented and rockin’ leader who is going places? No, not really. But I’m going to make it right.  We now have a Time Capsule networking the house and backing up both computers hourly, with a side benefit of wireless printing.  I am reworking my file structure to be more simple and user-friendly than ever.  And I will update my resume (and post a masked version for you) after I return to work, in hopes that I’ve got the most recent version there.  I will commit to updating by November 30.

For you organization junkies out there, I’ll share my simplified file structure in a future post.

Onward and upward!

Weekly Review 10/31/08

It’s time for the weekly review and MITs (Most Important Tasks) for next week.

One thing I want to use the Placeholder weekly review for is to actually look back at my prior week’s goals and assess how well I performed against them.  Kind of like an…..um…..review.  Yeah, that’s it.

This Week’s Performance:

1. Goal: post rich content regularly. MIT: daily weekday posts with at least two as in-depth posts.

Achieved!  And lots of fun, too. I’ve also complied punch lists for topics & interviews, to give me jump-starts for future posts.

2. Goal: increase readership (by any amount, since readership is at zero now). MIT: offer at least two comments on each of three of my favorite other sites; provide Placeholder URL.

Not achieved.  I commented on several posts of interest over at 101 Smackdowns, but made only one post (at Brazen Careerist) on other career blogs. Part of my problem is that two of my favorite career-post blogs don’t post in the career category regularly, so I am waiting for relevant posts.  The other part of my problem is that I am not researching and following the internerd rabbit trail enough to find new-to-me, career sites with robust content. Watch for this goal to keep recurring; we’ll see how I do.

3. Goal: increase readership. MIT: leverage my awesome network with a broadcast email announcing Placeholder.

Achieved.  Thanks to all of you who clicked in to check out Placeholder!  Keep lurking around, and better yet keep commenting!  It’s very motivating to know I’ve got an audience and that others are interested in career development hacks, tactics and creative thinking.

Next Week:

1.  Goal: Increase Placeholder name recognition. MIT: Make 10 comments on other career and related blogs.

2. Goal: Get ready for opportunity knocking. MIT: Update that resume!!

3. Goal: Share my background with Placeholder readers. MIT: Post a masked version of my resume. (Masking out information that identifies me or the F50C while still accurately describing my experience and value proposition.)