Career Acceleration: 4 Essential Elements (pt 2, the 4-eye'd employee)

The following is based on a presentation made to the UBCO (University of British Columbia Okanagan) female business students affiliated with the Sauder School of Business on January 28, 2011. (Presenters: Meryle Corbett, CMA,FCMA CFO of Kelowna Flightcraft Group of Companies; and Paulette Rennie, President of ValleyFirst Credit Union)

What strategies will make YOU successful in business? A group of C-suite executives agreed that the key to a rising business career includes four main characteristics. They are described below in our series, "The 4-eyed employee" :

So what are we talking about? The first "eye" or "I" attribute is the underlying foundation for business success:

INTELLIGENCE

The second "eye" or "I" attribute is the underlying foundation for business success:INTEGRITY

1) Your Reputation is Forever - you own it (no one else)!!
Your reputation is your own personal brand. How you develop and nurture it is totally up to you. Large corporations are increasingly protective of their brand an reputation - the latest trends in risk management are related to "reputation risk". 

                                                                                                                

I learned a great lesson early in my career when I had a choice to exercise a little-known clause in a contract that was to my company's advantage and the supplier's disadvantage. The spirit and intent of this contract did not intend to provide such a favorable advantage to my company, and would have been a significant "sore point" in the supplier's view. My choice? Exercise the clause and make a few more dollars, or forego the clause to keep the longer term relationship.

Have your own moral dilemma? consider the impact of your options in the next 10 minutes, the next 10 months, and the next 10 years before you make your final decision (click here to see the book by Suzy Welch, 10-10-10)

2) Take the "high road" - it will pay off later!
There will be moments in your career when you are the object of gossip or nasty politics. Sometimes our first reaction is to "fight back" and knock down our opponent regardless of the impact on others.

a) What goes around comes around:

A former colleague of mine gained a reputation as a tough-minded negotiator who loved to find weakness and then exploit it to the maximum. Deals were a game, and he had no mercy dealing with staff, nearly always leaving them frustrated or in tears. After a few years, people hated to deal with him. Eventually he moved on to another company and I have heard that many former colleagues have declined to do future business with him.

Here is a great book about eradicating negative people in the workforce:      

The No Asshole Rule-Civilized Workplace Surviving 

Career Acceleration: 4 Essential Elements (pt 1, the 4-eyed employee)

The following is based on a presentation made to the UBCO (University of British Columbia Okanagan) female business students affiliated with the Sauder School of Business on January 28, 2011.    (Presenters, Meryle Corbett, CMA,FCMA, CFO at Kelowna Flightcraft Group of Companies; and Paulette Rennie, President of Valley First Credit Union)

What strategies will make YOU successful in business?   A group of C-suite executives agreed that the key to a rising business career includes four main characteristics.  They are described below in our series, "The 4-eyed employee" :

So what are we talking about?  The first "eye" or "I" attribute is the underlying foundation for business success: 

INTELLIGENCE  

 1) Education will amplify your career potential

A degree, diploma or certification will give you the fundamental knowledge in your field to be successful.  

Statistics show higher education leads to higher lifelong earnings.  

My mother always told me "get a career so you never have to rely on a man" -- maybe that comment dates me into that 70's generation, but Mom's advice has served me well over the past 30 years:   I always know I bring a full contribution to the table, both at work and in my relationships.  When I feel my back is against the wall, I still have exit strategies and options.

Worklife Balance: 6 Tips to ease the workload

If you are one of those type "A" personalities that always has a dozen projects on the go, your spouse is on your case to reprioritize in favor of your family, here are some ways to "ease the load" and regain control:

     
         Do you feel like the candle with both ends burned down to the core?

 1) Set aside 1/2 hour at the beginning of each day to plan and prioritize.

This may mean getting up a half hour earlier, but make yourself a nice cup of coffee and give yourself the gift of "reflection time".   This will allow you to plan and organize more efficiently, saving you stress the rest of the day.

 2) Set up new habits that save you time or hassle:

- Use a crock pot and prepare meals ahead of time.

You will have one less task to compete with your other priorities at the end of the work day.

The internet has great ideas for pre-cooked meals that use cheap cuts of meat (save $$) for home-cooked dinners ("comfort food").

Http://www.a-crock-cook.com/slow-cooker-recipe.html

-Assign more chores to your kids - ease your burden of doing it all

-Hire out or hire in support where you can afford it

-Use a cleaning lady, hire a neighbour kid to cut the grass

-use drycleaning pickup and delivery (many stores offer this service right to the workplace)

 -consider on-line shopping and direct-to-door delivery (this is an increasing trend:  everything from groceries to all kinds of consumer items -- on numerous websites)

What's your sentence? ...how will YOU be remembered?

Supervisors: how to handle confidential leaks

Have you ever had confidential information leak that reflected on you or your department?

One of the worst surprises for a supervisor is having confidential information repeated back from an inappropriate source. How could this have leaked? Who leaked it?

Tracing back information to the source may be easy or difficult.

 - Sometimes there is a twist of the facts or misinterpretation embedded in the confidential feedback that makes traceability easy.

 - Sometimes if you simply ask, you can trace back through the individuals participating in the gossip.

 - Sometimes too many people were in on the original confidential meeting, making a successful trace extremely unlikely.

Funny Office Stories: embarrassing email moments

We have all been there - sent an email you regret.  How do you handle the aftermath?

This happened about a year ago.....  

I call it "Sorry, dialed the wrong number! "

It was very late on a Friday night,

in the middle of heated, nose-to-nose negotiations with a critical supplier who had threatened to withdraw services essential to our core business.  

I was writing a strongly worded, very frank email to a board member discussing this supplier's flawed approach, their (outrageous, in my view) proposal, our internal assessment of the situation and my counter-proposal and our internal "give-away" points in the negotiations.  

My mistake?  Both the suppier and the board member have the same first name.  Guess who actually actually received the board member's email ?  --the supplier! (yes, the auto-naming feature in Outlook outdid itself by grabbing the most recent firstname email in my history)

Cartoon video: Money does not motivate most of us!

Twice in my career I have left employment for reasons other than money.    This video explains it......

Pay me more, please: Effort vs. Results

Over the years, many employees have expressed unhappiness when they receive an "average" pay increase.

My first question to them is, "Why should you receive a higher increase than the rest of the group?"

The answer?    ... "Because I have worked harder than anybody else".

The dilemma here is this: just because an employee works harder, does not mean he/she creates better results.  In fact, an employee who stays late often, plugs in more hours (but does not complete any more volume of work or add improvement to the business) might be actually more INEFFICIENT.

How does an employer look at compensation?

Confidence

Prof. Michael Roberto's Blog: Reverse Mentorship

Many of you may have heard of the idea of reverse mentorship.

In this process, a senior level executive finds a young person in the organization to serve as a mentor to him or her. The relationship focuses on certain skills and ideas that the young employee can share with the more senior person. For instance, the young person may have much more knowledge and expertise with regard to new technologies or social media. The senior executive can use this reverse mentorship opportunity to learn from the young person, to insure that he or she keeps abreast of key trends and developments important to the organization.

Generation Y: Combining Profit and Non-profit

Rumeet Toor is part of a growing number of Entrepreneurs combining profit and charity.


The idea that capitalism and social causes can co-exist may be anathema to some, but a growing number of businesspeople are using their corporate savvy and innovation skills to address sweeping social or environmental issues alongside the traditional business goal of generating profits. It's called social entrepreneurship, a 30-year-old term that is still gaining awareness even by those who practice it. "I had to Google it," says Rumeet Toor, owner of Jobs in Education, an online employment board that also helps fund her Toor Centre for Teacher Education, a teacher's college and general training facility in Kenya that opened earlier this year. "I didn't even know what a social entrepreneur was until someone asked me to give a talk about it."

Definitions aside, Toor is a textbook example of someone using use her skills and earnings as an entrepreneur for a broader social purpose.

Funny videos - using humor to build your business

The attached video is a great example of using humor to build your business.  Westjet and Southwest Airlines also use humor to engage their customers.   The  rules and regulations from Aviation Authorities can be pretty dry; these folks at Air New Zealand have been able to weave some fun into the mandatory spiel.    Click and enjoy!     

Job References DO count - never burn a bridge!

This week, I've had several scary job reference requests.  Three out of four had an unhappy ending.  So do job references really make a difference?  Listen to 4 stories and decide for yourself......

Supervisor Stories: Duelling staff, who to believe?

Ever have a dilemma in your office where two employees are having a clash? Where you trust both of them? Where they have conflicting stories and positions on an issue? Where they cannot get along with each other? Where you have no idea how to resolve the issue?


A few times in my career I have come across this phenomenon. It's tough when you trust, respect and believe both parties but it is one person's word against the other. Often there is a "blame game" going on, and the two parties cannot work together so one must go. How does one get to the bottom of the issues and do what is right for the company and those individuals?


Some options:
A) Stick to the facts and how performance is delivered. In one instance I spent about 8 hours reviewing the details of job expectations and actual job outputs of each individual. It became clear that one of the two individuals was talking a good story, but did not actually complete all the detailed job requirements nor fully understand what was required or why it was important. We were then able to deal with the issue as a performance problem. In the end, that particular individual resigned the day before their formal performance review.


B) If you cannot identify the root cause after investigation, ask yourself: "which one of these people can I NOT afford to lose?". Turns out the person who left in (a) above was newer to the company and had had a few minor personality clashes with others (all those stories came out of the woodwork after they left the business, of course). The person who remained had demonstrated impeccable results for many years and had one of the highest job standards and work ethic levels I have ever seen. If they had left, there would have been a huge loss in my department.

In times of dilemma, weigh the two alternatives in your mind, and usually the highest risk alternative will "pop out" and give you the right gut answer.

He said/She said: differences between the sexes

Are there really differences between male and female when we're working in the office? 

Example:  She sits through the meeting, wanting to make a point about errors and mistakes happening from one particular group.  But because she doesn't want to be perceived as a b**ch, she says to everyone in general, "There are some areas of our business that are making significant mistakes.  We all need to fill out paperwork correctly so we are accurate when paying our invoices."    What the guy (who was actually causing the actual problem) heard?  "There are some areas of our business that are making significant mistakes.  Good thing it's not me."
......moral of the story:   go privately, one-on-one, to the individual and politely explain the IMPACT and RESULTS of making the mistakes.  ASK SPECIFICALLY  for better accuracy and follow-through.   A close guy friend of mine once told me, "We guys are dense and you need to be specific -- do not assume we will fix anything unless you say to our face that it is an issue."

Do your employees have clear expectations?

They say that employees vote with their feet.   Research tells us a high percentage of employees leave companies because they have a problem with their direct supervisor or boss. 

And, if you ask employees, one of these key frustrations is a lack of clear job expectations.  Imagine assembling a toy for your kids without the diagram/instructions.   Or putting together a 1000-piece jigsaw puzzle without a picture on the cover to guide you!   Some employees feel exactly like that.

So, how do we make sure an employee knows the job expectations?   A list of questions below, for supervisors to consider:

1) Does my employee know the tasks that must be finished, and by when? 
2) Does my employee know the approximate time and effort it should take to complete each task?  
3) Have my employees been trained on how to accomplish their tasks?
4) Do employees know which tools and resources they should use to accomplish their job? 
5) Do staff receive individual recognition (positive or constructive negative) on a regular basis (that is, at least weekly)?
6) Do employees have the opportunity to correct their mistakes and learn from them?
7) Do I review my staff's workload periodically and ensure that the right training, resources and corrective action are available to help make my employees successful? 

The above questions are easy to ask - but take work and effort to make a reality.
The payoff for clear expectations?  Strong employee loyalty and results-oriented focus in your department.   The results - and business savings - will flow from that!

Surviving office overload in 2011

Ever feel like your brain is already drained and it's only 10am in the morning?  In our office, the post-December crush means finishing the financial results for 2010 and then getting ready for auditors.   Spreadsheets, journal entries, status reports, reconciling calculations, spreadsheets, analyzing the numbers, more spreadsheets.........


So how do you refresh yourself and keep from sinking into a mental fog?   Try one or more of these ideas to shake up the doldrums:


1)   Skip the inter-office mail and take a quick walk to personally "deliver" a document from your out-basket.  You can add a quick verbal comment and "context" about the document to your intended recipient -- saves them time and gives you a mental break


2)   Turn on a music channel for background on your computer (quiet, though, so you don't disturb your neighbours!)


3)   Stand up and stretch, then pop a couple of TicTac mints from a stash in your desk (yes, we all have a stash of goodies in our desk, don't we?).  This will shift your environment and liven different sensors in your brain.


4)   Walk to the water cooler and top up your glass with water, and even add a flavor packet like Crystal Lite.   While you are up from your desk, do a few arm or leg stretches.  When you get back to your desk, check your email or return a phone call to change up your routine.


5)   Sort your desk into piles of work:
       "A" pile is the most critical (must be done today),
       "B" pile is important (could be delayed to end of the week)
       "C" pile (nice to do or small quick items,with no deadlines expected). 
Then process ONE THING in any pile that has been annoying you or that you have been avoiding completing.  You will feel so much better getting organized and removing irritations off your desk!  After that, focus on the A pile first for the rest of the day.