Don't Expect Easy-My Top 15 Suggestions for Coping as a Professional

August 17, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Pushing the Rock“Easy” is not a term that should be on your mind, except when it comes to improving the experience for your customers. Outside of making life easier for your customers, there are few circumstances where “easy” shows up or where you are justified in expecting things to go that way.

If you’re at the early stage of your career, the transition from home to school to job is an interesting one.  If you are a recent graduate, chance are that you’ve already discovered that things aren’t so easy in this economy as you pound the pavement looking for a job.  While this awkward phase will pass in time, your immersion in the workforce will underscore why “easy” is a foreign term.

And of course, if you’ve been around the block a few times, you’ve already discovered that “easy” is rare indeed.

Things That Are Most Definitely Not Easy in Business:

  • Working for a difficult boss
  • Becoming a boss
  • Becoming a good boss
  • Finding great people
  • Hiring the right people
  • Undoing the process of hiring the wrong people
  • Competing in the market
  • Competing internally
  • Leading without authority
  • Creating a new strategy
  • Implementing a new strategy
  • Getting others to follow
  • Following
  • Making mistakes
  • Learning from mistakes
  • Developing as a senior contributor
  • Switching jobs
  • Switching careers
  • Continuing your education
  • Reinventing yourself
  • Balancing life and work

Guidance-My Top 15 Suggestions for Coping with “Not Easy”

  1. I’ve known a few people that seemed to have a free-pass through life’s difficulties, but for the rest of us, here are my suggestions and words of encouragement:
  2. Attitude is everything.  Make certain that yours stays positive about the challenges in front of you.
  3. There is no substitute for hard work.  Keep pushing the rock.
  4. Success is in the details.  Don’t be a 70-percenter.  Learn to finish.
  5. It’s all about learning.  Mistakes are your best teachers, just don’t make the same ones over and over again.
  6. As my former boss would say, “Man plans and god laughs.”  Interpret that to mean that things mostly don’t go as you expect them to.
  7. Hope is a crappy strategy.  See also the note on hard work.
  8. You’ll make mistakes.  Don’t wallow for more than a few minutes.  Then shrug your shoulders and move on to your next challenge.
  9. There are no guarantees.  There are no guarantees of how long any of us will be here, much less guarantees of employment and advancement.
  10. You’ll have to work for everything you get.  Get over it.
  11. Fear is the mind-killer. I love that quote from Frank Herbert.  Don’t let fear rule your life.
  12. Measure-twice and cut once.  An extra emphasis on quality will serve you well.
  13. Compensation is nice.  Ultimately enough is enough.  It’s a hollow goal to just chase the money.
  14. The joy is in the journey, not the destination.
  15. Touch people in the right way during your journey.  You go through this once.  Make it count.

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Notes from Art:

-Don’t miss the latest issue of the Management Excellence Newsletter.  Register at Building Better Leaders or Management Excellence (far right column)

-Just announced: The Management Excellence Book Series, with episode #1 featuring an interview with Bob Sutton, author of Good Boss, Bad Boss.

Filed Under: Leadership, Uncategorized Tagged With: , , , ,

Management Excellence Book Series Kicks Off Featuring Good Boss, Bad Boss

August 17, 2010 By 7 Comments

GoodBossBadBossFor as long as I can remember, books have played a major role in my life.

I still recall the day my Mom took me to the Hild Library in Chicago for my first library card.  And I remember distinctly the scene a few months later, when she engaged in a vigorous discussion with the library staff on my need for an Adult card. I had consumed everything worth consuming in the Children’s section and needed to move on.  Mom prevailed, and the rest for me is reading history.

This preoccupation with reading continued through my summers as a child, including one memorable, slow, hot season reading the World Book from A to Z.  While it wasn’t Britannica, it was what we had in our apartment in Chicago. And yes, I read more than the cool transparent overlays.  I read the complete text.  Every entry.  It was a little like work, but I was on a mission.  As a result, I have a remarkable store of trivial knowledge on everything that happened in the world up until 1973.  Beyond that, I’m a bit fuzzy.

Fast forward a few decades, and books are still a major part of my life.  I’ve authored one, I’m working on another and I consume content in history, business and science in an unquenchable thirst to learn more. Given this preoccupation with the written word, it’s fitting and about time that I extend my love of books and regard for the hard work of authors to a feature here on the blog.  Thus, welcome to the first post and first interview for the Management Excellence Book Series.

About the Management Excellence Book Series:

First, I’m not a book critic, I’m a book lover.  You’ll never find a negative review here, because, if I don’t like the book, I won’t write about it or interview the author.  It is my intent to offer a resource with this series that extracts and shares insights and introduces you to new or time-tested great ideas.

I intend on using a mix of audio interviews (podcasts) and posts with transcribed interviews to share ideas and learn more from management book authors that have labored long and hard to help us learn and grow.  My mission is to search for the pearls of wisdom, the fresh ideas or the classic ideas that help us all make a difference.

While my audio interview skills are clearly in need of practice, there’s no reason not to start.  We are living in a period of time rich with the flow of information and ideas, and I’m excited to help all of us gain just a little bit more insight and context from great management thinkers for use in our professional and personal lives.

I look forward to sharing with you via the interviews.  Enjoy!

Art Interviews Bob Sutton About Good Boss, Bad Boss

Art Petty Interviews Bob Sutton on Good Boss, Bad Boss [ 33:49 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Good Boss, Bad Boss by Robert I. Sutton, Ph.D.

Just about everyone is familiar with Bob’s prior work, The No A**Hole Rule! Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviving One that Isn’t. That great read talked about what many of us have been thinking, and even made the “A” word acceptable business meeting and cocktail party discussion fodder (in the context of the book, of course!).

Bob is back with a tremendous new book, Good Boss, Bad Boss-How to Be the Best and Learn from the Worst, available for pre-order from major booksellers now, with a scheduled publication date of September 7th.

His emphasis in his latest work is on describing the good habits of great bosses, and once again, Bob is saying what many of us are thinking or, living through in our working lives. In this era of the seemingly “disposable worker,” and after a decade of corporate scandals and a great number of bosses doing the “perp walk,” Bob focuses squarely on what the best bosses do day-in and day-out. He contrasts the great habits of good bosses with the equivalent lousy habits and approaches of bad bosses, providing anecdotes and vignettes that we can relate to or anguish over.  We all know a few of the bad bosses.  Let’s hope that our good boss experiences outweigh those others.

I had the great fortune to connect with Bob recently on a phone call/interview, and our scheduled 10-15 minutes turned into 30 minutes of fascinating insights about the book, and about Bob’s work as a professor and consultant.  He was a delight to interview and I sincerely believe that you will find his insights and anecdotes as fascinating as I did.  Enjoy the interview and enjoy the book!

And finally, this section from the preface of his book sets the tone well:

“The best bosses don’t ride into town, save the day with a bold move or two, declare victory, and then rest on their laurels. There is no final victory.  The main reward for success is usually that you get to keep doing a damn hard (but often satisfying) job for a while longer.  Despite the horseshit spewed out by too many management gurus, there are no magic bullets, instant cures or easy shortcuts to becoming a great boss.  Anyone who tells you otherwise is a liar.  The best bosses succeed because they keep chipping away at a huge pile of dull, interesting, fun, rewarding, trivial, frustrating, and often ridiculous chores.  …Devoting relentless attention to doing one good thing after another-however small-is the only path I know to becoming and remaining a great boss.“

Nine chapters of pure boss gold!  Thanks, Bob!

Note from Art: Bob supplied me with a pre-release copy of his book for this interview.

Filed Under: "To Do" List, Career, Leadership, Professional Growth, Surviving Lousy Leaders, Values Tagged With: , , , ,

Leadership Caffeine: 5 Ideas for Infusing Fun Into the Workplace

August 16, 2010 By 5 Comments

A Cup of Leadership CaffeineYou heard it here first.  It’s OK to Have Some Fun as a Leader.

Most of the popular press on leading and leadership focuses on the challenges, strain and pains of leading, leaving one to assume that signing on for the role is akin to a vow of chastity or at least a vow of silence.

You don’t often hear the “F” (for fun) word used in sentences with the words, leader, leading or leadership. And while I’ll encourage you to keep the red noses and floppy shoes and squirting flowers safely at home for your own use at birthday parties, I’m going to step out on a limb and encourage you to not make this a miserable experience for you or your team members.

And let’s face it, there’s not been much fun to go around in the world for at least a few years.  Just be really, really careful what your definition of the word fun is, or, you’re liable to feel like you took a vow of poverty once you and your floppy shoes get bounced out of the show for inappropriate actions.

5 Ways to Infuse Fun Safely into Your Workplace:

1. Start by smiling a lot more. Smiles are contagious and that’s more than just popular lore.  Our mirror neurons fire when we observe someone engaging in a particular behavior, and the positive act of smiling is one that all of us appreciate.  Your smile as the leader will have an uplifting impact on everyone that you encounter.  Of course, choosing to grin during a crisis will have the opposite effect. Use this technique liberally when the seas are calm and the wind is at your back.

2. Improve the quality and frequency of your positive feedback delivery. Effective positive feedback reinforces the right behaviors, offers encouragement and provides motivation for the receiver and for observers.  Avoid calling out “Atta boys” for trivial reasons.  “Way to make that pot of coffee this morning, Smith.”  Be specific, link the feedback to business issues and dispense the positive encouragement in a ratio in excess of 1:1 versus constructive feedback.

3. Celebrate the right victories.  If your team or organization is in crisis, celebrate the small victories that help propel you in the right direction.  Depending upon your role or level, some of these small victories might seem insignificant, but each success strengthens the foundation for future successes.  Spring for pizza or, at least take a few minutes to thank everyone.  Remember to provide visibility to the teams that drove the results and then drive home with a smile on your face, knowing that this was the right thing to do.  Remember to adapt your definition of the “victories to celebrate” as conditions improve or worsen.

4. Ensure that people know that their work is important. There’s almost no stronger motivational technique than ensuring that your team members understand that what they are working on is important.  Whether it’s important to internal customers or external customers doesn’t matter, as long as they have context for the value of their work. Working on something important makes work relevant and yes, even fun.

5. Increase involvement. There are individuals laboring in all sections of firms that have ideas of value to offer, but have no outlet for those ideas.  When is the last time that you invited someone from Accounting to one of your team’s brainstorming session?  Mix things up, break down some walls and get people involved!

The Bottom-Line for Now:

OK, so my definition of “fun” might be a little more mundane than many others.  It’s unlikely that I’ll be invited to choreograph any big Fun Fairs soon.  However, if nothing else, take away from this post the reality that you as the leader have a tremendous impact on the working atmosphere at your place of business. Apply some or all of the 5 simple ideas above, and you’re likely to see a palpable increase in enthusiasm, motivation, performance and yes, even smiling and occasional light conversation.  And you’ll have a lot more fun in the process.

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Updates:

-The August Management Excellence Newsletter is out on Tuesday, August 17th.  Sign up to receive this newsletter (I guard your e-mail address with an unrivaled ferocity!), and you’ll be on the receiving end of subscriber-only content.  Register at Management Excellence or Building Better Leaders (far right column).

-Look for the Management Excellence Book Series to launch this week with my podcast interview with Bob Sutton on his new book, Good Boss, Bad Boss!

Filed Under: "To Do" List, Leadership, Leadership Caffeine, Performance, Professional Growth

Art’s Updates and Coming Attractions

August 14, 2010 By Leave a Comment

construction conesNote from Art: this is a Saturday update on new programs, blog features and some of my latest offerings.  Thanks for letting me share!

This has been a productive period for my development of new programs and information offerings.  While we all write and talk about the impact of great people on our organizations, it is truly palpable when you are on the receiving end of that help. Thanks to two outstanding young professionals, Eric and Amber, that are busy helping and holding me accountable to getting my work done, we’re adding new programs, tuning up prior offerings and extending our line-up of information products.

Just a few highlights:

The Management Excellence Book Series:

On Tuesday, I will launch the Management Excellence Book Series, where I will regularly connect with leading, new and experienced authors and share their insights and perspectives.  I couldn’t be more thrilled to have Bob Sutton as the lead-off interview, where we focus on his forthcoming book, Good Boss, Bad Boss. Next up, I’ll share some insights from Jim Murphy on his book, Inner Excellence, and the September and October schedules are building with:

  • The authors of Strategic Speed
  • Gary Harpst on his book, Execution Revolution
  • Scott Eblin on his upcoming new release

The format will emphasize sharing and gaining insights from the authors.  I’m less interested in reviewing the book, and instead, I’m focused on gaining and sharing insights that can help all of us.  While I suspect that my audio interviewing skills need a lot of development, I plan on having fun with this exciting new program.  I hope that you’ll join us.

And yes, if you’re an author that would like to get involved, drop me a note.

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The August Management Excellence e-Newsletter

This is the 3rd issue of this new offering, featuring subscriber-only content.  The August issue offers up a bevy of suggested management resources, including:

  • A feature article on honing your leadership skills to cope with a very new and different emerging business world
  • A nod to the late management thinker, C.K. Prahalad in my article, “Overcoming the Dominant Logic of Teams and Executives.”
  • Comments on must read books and links to some great blogging resources
  • Access to the archived issues of the e-Newsletter
  • And a few promotional opportunities from me. (Remember, we’re all in business!)

To sign up for the Management Excellence e-Newsletter, you can subscribe at either the Management Excellence or Building Better Leaders sites (right column, e-newsletter subscribe field).

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Updates and New Building Better Leaders Programs:

I love the feedback that I’m receiving on my on-line leadership and management offerings, and our growing team is both tuning up existing programs based on client feedback, and adding new items.  These programs are ideal for individuals or groups and depending upon your selection, they include mentoring and non-mentoring options.

In the spirit of Back to School, there are some new pricing options, and look for the early September release of the program, “How to Deliver Feedback.”

“How to Deliver Feedback,” will include 5 on-line lessons (and one bonus lesson on positive feedback), plus developmental assignments that you and your team members can complete on your own time and at your own pace.  This self-guided (un-mentored) tutorial on how to improve at this critical leadership power-tool will be available for early enrollees for just $55. Contact me to pre-enroll or discuss group options.

Look for additional program announcements during September.

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Thanks for letting me share and thanks for your input into my programs and involvement here on the site.  Back Monday with the latest Leadership Caffeine post!

Filed Under: Career, Professional Growth Tagged With: , , , ,

Beware the Pull of "Us Versus Them"

August 13, 2010 By 2 Comments

bad business

It’s easy to get caught up in departmental or team squabbles inside of organizations.  My advice: stay clear, stay out of it and learn to think and act for yourself.

Some functional squabbles are legendary.  Sales versus Marketing.  Marketing versus Development. Marketing and the rest of the organization.  Hey, maybe Marketing is the problem here! Perhaps if we put that group in their place… . (Just testing you.)

Stay clear!

Us versus Them squabbles are commonplace and destructive. “They don’t understand what we do.”  “They’re not in front of customers like we are.”  “They think that we just sit down at our computers and magically, new software code spews forth.”

It’s not about they or them, it’s about us and we.

People that view departmental walls and boundaries as fixed and even as important are misguided.  The focus is and must be on creating value for customers, on differentiating versus competitors and on finding as many ways as possible to improve efficiency and effectiveness.  While people might have a home base and a vocational orientation (marketing, sales, engineering etc.), there is no one group more important than the other.

You are all dependent upon each other.

The challenge to innovate often breeds dedicated “innovation” teams where a new form of “Us versus Them” develops.  One group, the innovators are cool and free from much of the bureaucracy that everyone else lives with on a daily basis.  The other group: operations, work to provide the funding that allows the innovators to do their thing.  Managers best beware of the potential for this situation to create divisions and hard feelings.

The challenges and solutions for managers to resolve silo problems and turf wars revolve around attention, constant communication, mutual respect and the creation of an environment of accountability for working together.  All groups are critical…all groups are valuable for many reasons.

As for you as an individual contributor or leader, steer clear of attempts to draw you into the divisions. The temptations is strong.  When you feel the urge to rail about another group, skip the moaning and reach out to a counterpart in that group and find a mutual way forward.  You’ll be happy that you did.

Filed Under: Leadership, Uncategorized Tagged With: , , , ,
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