No-Regrets Career Development: You Own Your Career
In a perfect world, the firms and managers that we work for would recognize the importance of cultivating talent and they would focus their energies on working with us to develop and advance. In fact, some good leaders and managers do provide this support, but unfortunately, they tend to be in the minority.
A great manager focuses on employee development, is active in coaching and spends his/her time working with team members to define development experiences and opportunities that prepare individuals for next steps. They are also working one-on-one with people to understand career objectives and to define long-range roadmaps and assignments.
If you work with this “great manager,” consider yourself fortunate and leverage the experience for everything that it is worth. If like most of us however, you find yourself working for someone that is well intentioned but otherwise focused on things other than your development, I have a few words of advice:
“Get over it!”
And a few more:
“Get on with it!”
One of the realities of your professional life is that ultimately you are the only one responsible for your own career growth. The sooner that you face up to this responsibility and then do something about it, the better prepared you will be to seize opportunities and to compete in the workplace. If you’ve moved beyond that point in life where competing for the next rung is a priority, then the issue is all about investing your time in work that you find rewarding.
In my work with mid-career professionals, one of the consistent themes that I hear is the “I should have” recognition. It usually goes something like, “I should have taken the time to improve my leadership skills.” Or, “I should have taken the time to become a better communicator.” Or, “I let someone else pick my jobs for me, and I should have been more involved in choosing my own path.”
Regrets are horrible things.
The good news is that we all have it within us to avoid the regrets of omission in our careers. Instead of passing time and then wondering what happened, take the time to establish a long-range destination and then to define the roadmap, experiences and skills that you need to reach that destination. You might change targets over time, but you will never regret investing in your own skills or taking the time to identify your next challenges.
I would love to help you, but regardless of where you turn for help and mentoring, take the time and do it. And remember that the goal is for you to have no regrets!
Leadership Caffeine: Five Simple Suggestions for Minimizing Management Myopia
Filed under: Leadership, Leadership Caffeine, Management Education, Management Innovation, Middle Management, Organizational Transformation, Performance, Professional Growth, Strategy, Your Professional Development "To Do" List
Participate in or monitor enough management team conversations and you will invariably conclude that it’s darned hard for these teams to spend quality time discussing external issues.
The gravitational pull of internal “stuff” is overwhelming and resists all attempts to move the conversation to topics outside of the firm’s four walls, preferring instead to keep managers focused on the nuances of their own operations. The result is a self-fulfilling management myopia where the view on the world is grossly limited to the immediate surroundings…and ranges as far as the eyes can see outside conference room windows.
Myopic firms miss market moves and focus incorrectly on improving yesterday’s systems and products and services while customers are looking and moving forward in search of new solutions to emerging vexing problems.
Overcoming this myopia requires extraordinary effort on the part of key leaders to train and enable their teams to move outside of the four walls and to build a more comprehensive market view that is constantly in the process of being refreshed.
5 Simple Suggestions for Minimizing Management Myopia:
1. Start by scheduling regular forums where the only items discussed are external in nature. Create a series of core questions that challenge team members to show up prepared to talk about what’s going on with customers, competitors and other industry ecosystem players. Resist the urge in these forums to move towards actions and internal items with one exception.
2. The one exception to the “no internal discussion rule,” is to teach your team members to end their discussions of external forces/factors/changes with “What this means for our firm is… .” Capture these notes.
3. Charge team members with the task of monitoring specific competitors and industry participants and providing regular updates to the group as well as instantaneous updates as conditions change. Remember, that the insights must always be accompanied by, “What this means for our firm is…” statements. Rotate assignments periodically to keep people fresh.
4. Interview customers. Regularly. It’s interesting to sit around and speculate on what customers are doing or thinking, but it’s much more compelling and actionable to truly understand what’s on their minds. Again, create a simple customer survey script and charge your key managers and contributors with keeping tabs on specific customers. I’ve done this with development resources, product managers and of course executive managers, and it gets people on your team connected to someone in the market. Bring the findings into your “external forums” and share.
5. If your team is internally focused such as IT or an internal support group, make certain to forge relationships with external facing colleagues and departments. Invite members of these groups to join your meetings and to share updates on current market issues. Pay attention for opportunities to better tune your function’s activities and priorities to issues and opportunities that your external facing colleagues see in the market.
The Bottom-Line for Now:
Inevitably the best outcome of good external awareness is the reflection of insights in program, product and service improvements that create value for customers and profitable growth for your firm. You will need to develop a good mechanism for translating external awareness into internal execution, however, that’s a post for another day.
For now, set a goal to increase your team’s external IQ and try the suggestions here on for size. And be certain to double-back and share with us your own suggestions. After all, your input is part of my program to stay externally aware!
Building Better Leaders: What’s in a Name?
When developing the Building Better Leaders concept, a number of advisors suggested that given my vision and target audiences, the name was too limiting.
My response…balderdash! (I’ve always wanted to use that word in a post!)
My vision is to help individuals in a wide variety of professions develop as leaders AND as senior contributors. The planned program for Marketing and Event Managers on High Performance Event Marketing practices has little to do with core leadership practices and everything to do with developing and employing tools of senior contributors. The same goes for future course on business planning, small business marketing and strategy.
On the other hand, as readers of the Management Excellence blog know, I put a great deal of emphasis on the development of leadership skills whether you lead formally or not. Frankly, the same skills and thought-processes and approaches that we associate with effective leaders are powerful tools for individual contributors and informal leaders.
And of course, core leadership training for those considering this formal role…those in it for the first time or those looking to develop as senior leaders, are important components of the current and planned future program development.
At the end of the day, my goal is to provide professional audiences with a development experience that exceeds that of traditional training…and to do it in a way that provides you complete flexibility and at a price that is never a stopping point.
The name has “leaders” in it, and I’ll certainly infuse all of the programs with leadership practices and effective leadership thinking, but at the end of the day, this is all about Building Better Professionals…one at a time. I’m looking forward to serving and to helping you build your career!
-Art
Leadership 2009 Style-What We Learned
Filed under: Crisis Leadership, Leadership, Leadership Skills, Leading Change, Life and Business, Organizational Transformation, Performance, Professional Growth, Strategy, Talent Management
Mix one part global economic crisis with ample quantities of uncertainty and ambiguity. Stir in two-parts ever-changing global competition and a dash of geopolitical instability and you’ll end up with something that looks and feels a lot like the world of today, complete with the mild aftertaste of fear.
You’ll also end up with a remarkable living leadership laboratory, where the best leaders are rediscovering the importance of leadership blocking and tackling while simultaneously developing the new skills and approaches required in this complex environment.
The basics of effective leadership never go out of style. Articulating a compelling vision, backing words with actions and support, offering coaching and feedback and driving strategy are all table-stakes for good leaders and effective leadership in any era.
However, this is no ordinary era, and what worked during the last boom or even the last recession almost a decade ago, no longer fits and certainly doesn’t match or meet the needs of organizations and workers today.
The variables are different, the risks higher and the way forward for many firms in many industries masked by the fog of complexity and ambiguity.
Welcome to leadership circa 2009!
This high-anxiety environment that we’re all living in and working through has catalyzed an accelerated evolution in leadership practices, and while the period is painful for many, I truly like where this is taking us on the leadership front.
We’re learning to build the new airplane while flying the old one, and this balancing act requires remarkable leadership agility and creativity.
Consider:
- Practices that reflect transparency, honesty, accountability and straight-talk on the tough issues are increasingly de rigueur.
- Effective leaders are spending less time in boardrooms and behind closed doors and more time out where the work gets done, particularly in the factories and stores of their customers.
- Employee involvement is popular again with the smartest leaders recognizing the need to enlist front-line employees in identifying and sharing customer insights and to challenge everyone else to turn those insights into improvements and value creating services, products and systems.
- There is no “rising tide” effect lifting industries and companies. Leadership is on display and under a magnifying glass, and the collective good results of prior years have unmasked the ineffective and in some cases, corrupt leadership practices that were glossed over when the numbers rose in defiance of poor leadership approaches and lousy leaders.
What a great time to be a leader!
Critical Leadership Lessons of 2009:
The best leaders are heeding Deming’s advice to work on eliminating fear in the workplace. Fear is an organization killer, and the cure for this cancer is for leaders to attack it with transparency and visibility. Those comfortable with leading from the rear have learned the necessity of moving to the front and leading the charge with a constant flow of unvarnished information on the real issues.
Leading has always been about coping with ambiguity, but in today’s fog enshrouded world leaders are learning to reshape their cultures and their operating approaches to facilitate fast recognition and response to emerging opportunities and threats. Easy words to write…hard culture to realize, but the best leaders are working tirelessly to breed the right people, systems and behaviors to produce this sense and respond culture.
Good crisis leaders are capable of admitting, “I don’t know,” in answer to some of the most complex issues, as long as the admission is backed and packed with action. Few crisis leaders understand the details of the path to prosperity, but the good ones recognize the power in Drucker’s comment, “Actions in the present are the one and only way to create the future.” Good leaders mobilize teams, choose a direction and go based on their best intelligence and gut hunches. If the course turns out to be wrong, they correct without looking back and keep moving.
Organizations and leaders that recognize the complexity of this new world have jettisoned traditional planning models and approaches in favor of dynamic, fast-moving methods that facilitate market monitoring and organizational learning and place a premium on acting. These approaches require experimentation and embracing frequent small failures on the path to success.
The foundation of any successful business is talent and while much lip service is paid to this topic, and the smartest leaders are carefully navigating the most remarkable talent pool in many generations for those anxious and motivated to contribute and prove their former employers wrong. While it is too soon to see if talent management and leadership development will become part of the DNA of tomorrow’s organizations, the need has never been more apparent.
The Bottom-Line for Now:
The leadership observations and trends above might seem like the domain of jumbo-sized global firms with deep pockets and robust talent systems. And while some firms of this ilk do have natural advantages and are pushing the envelope on breaking down walls and experimenting with new approaches to leadership and management (think Cisco), I’m seeing these practices in small start-ups, old-line manufacturers and innovative retail and service establishments on Main Street.
I have every reason to believe that the way forward is filled with obstacles that rival the labors of Hercules. There are no silver bullets, no easy answers and no magical leadership or management fads that offer miracles cures.
I do however believe that necessity is pushing us to innovate in management and operating approaches, and that a new style of leader must emerge to help firms cope with the modern day Herculean labors of ambiguity, fear, complexity, speed, ever-changing adversaries and a capable but shell-shocked talent pool. For right now however, the leader circa 2009 is busy mucking today’s equivalent of the Augean stables. Grab a shovel and we’ll finish this together.
Leadership Caffeine: A Leader’s List of Thanks-Giving
Filed under: Career, Leadership, Leadership Caffeine, Life and Business, Management Education, Middle Management, Values, Your Professional Development "To Do" List
Note from Art: I’m getting a jump-start on my Thanksgiving post in the hope that you have the opportunity during this holiday-shortened work week to reach out and say “Thanks” to those that you have the privilege of leading and serving.
The Leader’s List of Thanks-Giving:
- Be grateful for your unique chance to serve others.
- Be thankful for the patience and forbearance that your colleagues and team-members show as you learn over time and through trial and error what it truly means to lead.
- Give thanks for your chance to learn from others.
- Pay honor to those that came before you and took the time to pass along their wisdom…even if you didn’t realize how valuable it was until much later.
- Be in awe of the opportunity that you have in front of you to positively impact lives in ways that few other jobs or professions provide.
- Be inspired to motivate, coach and teach those that invest valuable time in their lives and careers with you.
- Give thanks for the opportunity that you have to create value for your organization. You might not engineer new products or services, but the people that work for you enable others to perform their jobs creating or building or supporting at high levels.
- Be grateful that you were given or developed the patience to cope with the daily stresses and strains of leadership and to keep reminding yourself that it is all worth it in the end.
- Give thanks for your chance to participate in the journey of a lifetime.
- And most of all, just give thanks by speaking up and remembering that a well-placed, heartfelt “Thank you” is one of the most powerful and important of all leadership tools.
And yes, please accept my sincere Thank You for your readership and conversation. I am truly grateful for you.
-Art
-
Podcast
-
Available Now!
-
Practical Lessons
-
e-book
e-book-Leadership and the Project Manager - Developing the Skills that Fuel High Performance
