In a recent interview in the New York Times, Ford Motor Company President and CEO Alan Mulally was asked to provide his best career advice. He responded, "Don't manage your career. Think about just exceeding expectations in every job you do, continually ask for feedback on how you can do a better job, and the world will beat down your door to ask you to do more…"
I respectfully disagree. Exceeding expectations and seeking feedback are important but, in my experience, success and advancement come most often to those individuals who actively manage their careers.
I spent more than a decade in human resources at Target and Best Buy. I can't count the number of times that people came to me frustrated over their perceived lack of career progress. The common theme sounded like this: "I work really hard. Feedback is positive. Performance reviews are good. Yet no one seems to notice. The best opportunities go to others."
What I frequently found was that many of these individuals simply assumed that if they "exceeded expectations," someone would notice and ensure that their career moved forward. Also, some of these folks could not answer the most fundamental question, What do I want to do with my career?
There may be lots of people- your supervisor, colleagues, human resource professionals, mentors- who think highly of you and will work to help you advance in your career. But, trust me, no one is going to do it for you. You must take personal responsibility for actively managing your own career.
And if you are going to manage your career, you need to know to what end. Ask yourself some tough questions, and be honest about the answers: Am I happy in my current job? Is it challenging and rewarding? Do I have room to grow, or have I hit a plateau? Where would I like to be one year, two years, or five years from now? Backing up from those goals, what affirmative steps must I take now to get there? In short, you need to be able to clearly answer the question, What do I want to do with my career?
Don't measure your progress or self-worth solely by money, title, power or prestige. It is great to be ambitious. We need people in corporate America like Alan Mulally, who want to rise to the top of their organizations. But remember, just one person gets to be CEO. For the rest of us, at some point, we top out. If you are only seeking more money or the next title, you will be forever unhappy, because someone else will always be richer or outrank you.
Consider other measures of success. Is your work interesting? Are your skills put to the test? Are you learning new things? Do you receive recognition for your efforts? Do you believe in the mission of your company? Are you adding not just to the bottom line for your organization, but creating value for society as a whole? Does your work match with your personal values? Consider the definition of career success as broadly as you can, with a focus on those internal measures of satisfaction that are personally important to you.
I do agree with Alan Mulally on the criticality of feedback. In order to successfully manage your career, you need to be in a continuous cycle of seeking, receiving, absorbing, and adjusting to constant feedback. Seek feedback from as many different sources as possible, not just from your boss. Find those one or two really valuable people who will unfailingly give you honest feedback on how you are doing. Listen carefully to what they say. Insist on specifics.
If you are told you lack good communication skills, ask for details. Do you need to work on written skills? Spoken skills? Ask for examples of when you have fallen short and suggestions on how to improve.
Make changes based on the feedback you receive. Demonstrate flexibility and a willingness to learn and grow. Put together a personal development plan with clear milestones and share it with your boss and other trusted advisors. Work that plan with seriousness of purpose. Adjust the plan when appropriate as your career moves forward.
Finally, don't think of leadership or advancement in your career as simply a matter of managing a checklist, like a boy or girl scout completing activities to earn a merit badge. Sometimes people would say to me, "I've done the three things you told me to do… now I'm ready to be promoted, right?" The very fact that they asked that question told me they weren't ready. Think of leadership and your career not in terms of finishing a to-do list, but as an ongoing journey. A sometimes complex and difficult journey.
Managing one's career is challenging, even in the best of times. These days, when so many of us are in crisis-mode, reacting to rather than shaping the reality around us, career management frequently goes to the back burner. Don't let it.
Remember these suggestions:
• Take responsibility for actively managing your own career.
• Develop a clear picture of what you want to do with your career.
• Measure success broadly, with a focus on intrinsic factors that are important to you.
• Seek specific, actionable feedback and respond appropriately.
• Put together a personal development plan and work it with energy.
• Consider leadership and career progress as a journey.
With these tips in mind, go forth and have a great career. Enjoy the adventure.
Friday, October 23, 2009
Sunday, October 11, 2009
Avoid the Tyranny of Meetings
In a classic Dilbert cartoon, a group of co-workers sits down around a conference table and the team leader says, "There is no specific agenda for this meeting. As usual, we'll just make unrelated emotional statements about things that bother us." In that spirit, I'm about to make an emotional statement about something that bothered me throughout my corporate career, which was an excessive number of interminable, meandering, useless meetings. I counsel any of my friends in business who are willing to listen: Avoid the tyranny of meetings.
I once worked in a retail store where, at the beginning of each day, the general manager would pull his leadership team together for a meeting which lasted, literally, all morning. It was not a discussion with give and take, but rather a chance for him to go on about any subject that popped into his head. Then, meeting complete, he would walk the floor with those same leaders and get genuinely angry when he saw problems in their respective areas. Evidently, he thought we each had a clone that was getting the work done while he blathered on. It was surreal, and the very definition of the tyranny of meetings.
Later in my career, I also spent many hours in meetings where the primary objective was to discuss the fact that we spent too many hours in meetings. It was sort of like being in the U.S. Congress and serving as a member of the Committee on Committees.
In the June 2009 issue of Inc. Magazine, entrepreneur Joel Spolsky discussed how the culture of Microsoft-- where he worked in the early 1990's-- has changed in the years since he left. Then, Microsoft employed about 10,000 people worldwide, and was headquartered in Redmond, Washington, on a campus of a dozen buildings within easy walking distance of one another. Now, there are 90,000 employees globally, and 94 buildings comprise the corporate headquarters. A fleet of company-owned vehicles transports people from place to place on campus.
Most notably, at the new Microsoft, meetings have proliferated. Spolsky says, "Back in my day, meetings were avoided like the plague, and it was considered a burden if you had to go to three or four a week. But today, the average Microsoft manager is scheduled to within an inch of his or her life. The new virtue is keeping a schedule of brisk half-hour meetings, and most of the mid-level managers… [have] consecutive half-hour meetings scheduled for stretches of days at a time."
Though Microsoft's business has understandably suffered like most others in today's recessionary economy, one wonders whether bloated bureaucracy (Spolsky describes the comical series of registration steps he was required to go through just to access the free Wi-Fi network as a guest on Microsoft's campus) and the new "meeting culture" have contributed to relatively poor recent performance by Microsoft, in comparison to the leaner, more carefree days gone by.
With that said, there are clearly times when meetings are appropriate and very necessary. Often, the results that can be achieved in a face-to-face sit-down vastly exceed what can be accomplished through a phone conversation, conference call, or e-mail. Every culture is different, and no set of guidelines applies in every circumstance, but here are some basic tips for meeting organizers that might help improve the quality of your meetings and thereby increase productivity:
• Invite the right people. If the invitees to your meeting do not have the requisite experience, technical knowledge, or decision-making authority, you have wasted everyone's time.
• Start and stop the meeting on time. This will force discipline and eliminate meandering. Assign a timekeeper who has the courage to speak up when things get off track.
• Develop a detailed agenda beforehand and share it at the beginning of the meeting. It should contain specific, actionable outcomes. It should answer the questions: Why are we here and what do we intend to accomplish?
• Assign a note taker. The note taker should review key points before the end of the meeting to ensure consensus on what was discussed, and then distribute notes to all stakeholders after the meeting, including those who may have missed the meeting.
• Stick to the agenda. Don't be inflexible, but try to limit unnecessary digressions and stay on task.
• Use real data, not anecdote or emotion. Remain factual in your approach.
• Allow and encourage everyone to contribute. Listen carefully to what each team member says, even if you disagree.
• Create an environment in which people are comfortable speaking up if they do disagree. Encourage open and honest debate. Thoroughly discuss key points of difference.
• At the end, summarize meeting outcomes and assign next steps. Be specific and make sure each person knows what is expected of him/her going forward.
What is the culture of your company, organization, or team concerning meetings? Do you have too many, not enough, or just the right number of meetings? Are your meetings well-organized and efficient? Do you lose productivity with too much time wasted talking about getting work done, instead of actually doing the work? Do you have time to think and reflect in your job? If you are less than perfect in your meeting disciplines, please consider trying some of the above-described techniques. If you do, you will go a long way towards avoiding that dread corporate disease that saps energy and hinders results: the tyranny of meetings.
I once worked in a retail store where, at the beginning of each day, the general manager would pull his leadership team together for a meeting which lasted, literally, all morning. It was not a discussion with give and take, but rather a chance for him to go on about any subject that popped into his head. Then, meeting complete, he would walk the floor with those same leaders and get genuinely angry when he saw problems in their respective areas. Evidently, he thought we each had a clone that was getting the work done while he blathered on. It was surreal, and the very definition of the tyranny of meetings.
Later in my career, I also spent many hours in meetings where the primary objective was to discuss the fact that we spent too many hours in meetings. It was sort of like being in the U.S. Congress and serving as a member of the Committee on Committees.
In the June 2009 issue of Inc. Magazine, entrepreneur Joel Spolsky discussed how the culture of Microsoft-- where he worked in the early 1990's-- has changed in the years since he left. Then, Microsoft employed about 10,000 people worldwide, and was headquartered in Redmond, Washington, on a campus of a dozen buildings within easy walking distance of one another. Now, there are 90,000 employees globally, and 94 buildings comprise the corporate headquarters. A fleet of company-owned vehicles transports people from place to place on campus.
Most notably, at the new Microsoft, meetings have proliferated. Spolsky says, "Back in my day, meetings were avoided like the plague, and it was considered a burden if you had to go to three or four a week. But today, the average Microsoft manager is scheduled to within an inch of his or her life. The new virtue is keeping a schedule of brisk half-hour meetings, and most of the mid-level managers… [have] consecutive half-hour meetings scheduled for stretches of days at a time."
Though Microsoft's business has understandably suffered like most others in today's recessionary economy, one wonders whether bloated bureaucracy (Spolsky describes the comical series of registration steps he was required to go through just to access the free Wi-Fi network as a guest on Microsoft's campus) and the new "meeting culture" have contributed to relatively poor recent performance by Microsoft, in comparison to the leaner, more carefree days gone by.
With that said, there are clearly times when meetings are appropriate and very necessary. Often, the results that can be achieved in a face-to-face sit-down vastly exceed what can be accomplished through a phone conversation, conference call, or e-mail. Every culture is different, and no set of guidelines applies in every circumstance, but here are some basic tips for meeting organizers that might help improve the quality of your meetings and thereby increase productivity:
• Invite the right people. If the invitees to your meeting do not have the requisite experience, technical knowledge, or decision-making authority, you have wasted everyone's time.
• Start and stop the meeting on time. This will force discipline and eliminate meandering. Assign a timekeeper who has the courage to speak up when things get off track.
• Develop a detailed agenda beforehand and share it at the beginning of the meeting. It should contain specific, actionable outcomes. It should answer the questions: Why are we here and what do we intend to accomplish?
• Assign a note taker. The note taker should review key points before the end of the meeting to ensure consensus on what was discussed, and then distribute notes to all stakeholders after the meeting, including those who may have missed the meeting.
• Stick to the agenda. Don't be inflexible, but try to limit unnecessary digressions and stay on task.
• Use real data, not anecdote or emotion. Remain factual in your approach.
• Allow and encourage everyone to contribute. Listen carefully to what each team member says, even if you disagree.
• Create an environment in which people are comfortable speaking up if they do disagree. Encourage open and honest debate. Thoroughly discuss key points of difference.
• At the end, summarize meeting outcomes and assign next steps. Be specific and make sure each person knows what is expected of him/her going forward.
What is the culture of your company, organization, or team concerning meetings? Do you have too many, not enough, or just the right number of meetings? Are your meetings well-organized and efficient? Do you lose productivity with too much time wasted talking about getting work done, instead of actually doing the work? Do you have time to think and reflect in your job? If you are less than perfect in your meeting disciplines, please consider trying some of the above-described techniques. If you do, you will go a long way towards avoiding that dread corporate disease that saps energy and hinders results: the tyranny of meetings.
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