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Career Advice

Career Advice

Top 3 things to look for in your first job

December 17, 2015 Leave a comment

It can be hard to find that first job, and sometimes you need to take
whatever you can get to start your career. But whether it is your very
first job or a job search in the first five years of your career, there
are three critical things you should not settle without.

1. A great manager

Having
a great manager early on will by far create the strongest impact toward
your long-term growth. Working for someone who is talented, generous
with their time, and willing to teach you can be a powerful jumpstart.
And working for a turkey is both demotivating and a waste of your time.
Remember, for every way to do something well, there are a thousand ways
to do it badly. Every year counts early on, so partner up with a strong
leadership team, make sure that you are efficient with time and sponge
every skill possible when you are young, hungry and hopefully don’t need
much sleep. Strong management will steer you onto projects that stretch
you and teach you, and catch you when you stumble. Poor managers come
in a variety of flavors: micro managers, absentee managers, inconsistent
managers, and the list goes on, but they share one characteristic, they
deprive you of valuable learning. So pick wisely. Interview your
potential manager so you get a sense of how much they will help you
grow.

2. Growth

Just as a rising tide
floats all boats, finding a thriving environment early on will create an
opportunity for advancement. Think about the people who landed early in
companies like Google and LinkedIn. Were they any smarter than their
peers who joined loser companies? Probably not. But the diligent,
hard-working ones took advantage of the extraordinary emerging
opportunities to grow their own careers, fast. Even in modestly
flourishing/booming times, you will find that growth creates
opportunity. Early in your career, you should be alert for new tasks,
projects and be sure to volunteer and raise your hand up when companies
are searching for aggressive new talent. Take on new challenges, be a
problem solver and stretch your skill set. Stagnant companies make it
difficult to do this, so stay alert for rising tides.

3. Visibility into the business

Too
often I talk with people early in their career, and they don’t
understand the Profit and Loss principles of their company. Being able
to distinguish between decisions that help or hurt the business is
pivotal. Insist on acquiring visibility of cash flows from customer
reports, sales deals, marketing expenses and product development costs.
Looking at the cash trail of a company early on is essential to
understanding how the company makes money. Whether you are the egghead
designing a new product (which will make money), or you are the inside
sales rep selling (bringing money in) or you are the accountant working
on the P&L (watching the money) you want to see it and understand
it. That way, later in your career when you are making decisions that
directly impact the growth, profit or loss of your own company, or the
company you work for, you will have a visceral feel for how the
financials of a company actually work. And if you don’t understand basic
finance in the first 5 years of your career take classes until you do.
The knowledge is well worth giving up a few evenings for.

 Often, I
am contacted by people who want a little coaching as they start their
careers or who are looking for a change in direction. And so often I am
asked my opinion about whether they should go and get an MBA. There are
some circumstances where an MBA is worth the time and money – for
example if you want to switch from engineering to finance – but in most
cases it isn’t. It’s my belief, after managing so many talented people
both with MBAs and without, that in most cases these three things are
fundamental: a great manager, a growing company, and getting yourself
familiar with the money trail.

Career Advice

How to Deal with a Horse’s Ass (in your head)

September 12, 2015 Leave a comment
I love my job and I love meeting 90% of the people I have the privilege to meet, but sometimes, just sometimes, I have to spend professional time with someone whom I have a hard time respecting. Of course I don’t let on, and of course I am professional and respectful, but I have to find ways to manage myself through my reaction to the behavior.

What is the behavior I have to manage my head around you may ask?

What I find really hard is the person who has to be the smartest person in the room, and makes sure you and everyone else reflects that back to him/her. The person who is so sure they have the answers they don’t listen. Who talks over people more junior than them. Who is dismissive of other people they consider lower in the power structure. Who posture to make a point, instead of just being open and direct.

I’ve seen this behavior by execs to people on their teams (sometimes in front of me when I am the vendor). I’ve seen it towards my employees, and sometimes to me because I am selling, or because I am female, or because I threaten them in some way. I’ve seen it in groups which should be peers but where one person thinks he’s better/senior/more experienced/smarter and so throws his weight around. In board meetings, on panels, at dinner parties.

So it happens. You’ve seen it. But enough of the negative. How to deal?

I am inspired by Caravaggio in this circumstance. Caravaggio was commissioned by Tibero Cerasi to paint two paintings for the Cerasi Chapel of Santa Maria del Popolo in Rome in 1600. One of the conversion of St Paul, the other of the Crucifixion of St Peter. At the same time Cerasi commissioned Caravaggio’s competitor Carracci (a conventional Baroque painter, and Caravaggio’s contemporary) to paint the altar piece.

The first versions Caravaggio painted were rejected by Cerasi (only one is known to survive and it is glorious), and the history hints to their rejection being maybe motivated by Cardinal Sannessio’s desire to take them into his private collection. But whatever the reason, the net result was Caravaggio had to paint two more, and this time he chose to paint them in rich, high drama, and to send a message.

Meanwhile, Carracci painted the altar piece and the Assumption of the Virgin takes center stage of the Cerisi chapel. The Assumption is a beautiful, classically baroque painting in romantic pinks and blues replete with cherub angels, but it’s no match for Caravaggio’s stunning, dramatic flanking paintings.

So how did Caravaggio make a point of his opinion of his competitor Carracci?  He painted a horse’s ass pointed towards the Carracci painting!

Here’s the chapel. The Assumption is in the middle above the altar.

You can see the Conversion of Saint Paul on the Way to Damascus is on the right. The horse’s backside is directed squarely at the Carracci painting. And it’s been expressing Caravaggio’s opinion for 415 years.

This is a truly glorious, extraordinary painting. It is Caravaggio at the top of his game, changing the world of painting forever. It has incredible depth, drama and detail and the horse is alive!

So when I have to play the game and be respectful and polite to someone I don’t respect I think about this painting, and how Caravaggio had the last laugh, and remind myself not to take any of this too seriously.

Career Advice

5 Ways To Talk With Your Boss About Money

August 28, 2015 Leave a comment
My Inc post today

For
most people, it’s not easy to talk about money. It can be difficult,
nerve-racking and even fear-inducing. However, being able to talk about
money will directly influence how much you make and the opportunities
you get. We don’t (yet) live in a world where your pay is solely based
on your competency; which means you have to be assertive and find
positive, constructive ways to engage in a discussion with your boss.
For those of you who are uncomfortable with the subject of compensation,
here are five non-confrontational ways to talk with your boss about how
much money you make and ways you can make more:

Check your bonus

Once
you get into management most companies provide some level of variable
component to your pay. It may be based on your performance (such as
MBOs), the company’s performance or both. Nevertheless, bonuses are
typically set as a percentage of your base pay.
It is entirely
reasonable for you to ask about the bonus percentages for different jobs
at your company: What percentage does a manager get? A director? A
project lead? Are the bonuses consistently applied by level or are there
ways to earn a higher bonus percentage? Asking these questions will
give you an understanding of the levels you have available to increase
your variable pay. Additionally, asking these questions allows you to
understand if your variable is set fairly relative to your peers, and it
puts your manager on notice that you are paying attention.

Ask early

Some
people put their hand up for a bigger job before they are ready. Some
wait until they are more than ready. Guess who gets ahead faster?
Building
your confidence to raise your hand early and ask for a bigger
responsibility before you are perfectly ready makes you more valuable to
your company. As a leader, it’s great to have team members who will
jump on challenges and volunteer, even if they are a stretch. Stretching
yourself and taking risk will lead to you more opportunities and you’ll
be rewarded earlier and more often than your peers who hang back.
Asking you manager for more challenging projects and for promotion
opportunities will naturally lead you into a discussion about your pay
and how you can grow it.

Understand the bias in the system

The
debate continues to rage about the pay gap between men and women (women
make 78 cents for every dollar a man makes, in full time work) and a
recent study shows the gender pay gap is even greater when it comes to incentive pay.
It’s
such an active discussion that if you are in a minority (or even if you
are not) it is OK to ask about the company’s approach to understanding
and correcting gender or racial bias in their pay practices. Ask if they
have run an audit on pay differences and if they have a plan of action
to correct any existing gaps (which you can be sure exists).
Some
companies, like GoDaddy and Salesforce, say they are aggressively going
after this issue and plan to remove the gender-based pay gap over the
next few years. It’s a fair conversation for you to have with your boss
and HR, provided you stay positive and don’t play the victim.

Negotiate positively

“You
get what you negotiate, not what you deserve.” This is the motivation
behind the thousands of self-help books and classes on negotiation, and
it’s true. That said, when it comes to your pay, it really helps to come
from a positive perspective.
Approach your conversation with your
manager from a perspective that you know you are contributing but you
want to contribute more and in doing so, make more money. Let her know
you want to negotiate, but don’t focus on how you are paid relative to
others, instead focus on your impact and ways you can advance the
company as well as your own career. Asking for more responsibility
naturally leads to more pay over time.

Pick your timing

Timing
is everything. Be smart about when you open up the conversation. Don’t
do it when your boss is about to go on vacation. Don’t do it when she is
slammed with preparing a presentation to the board. Don’t do it around
quarter end or a project deadline. Find a time when your boss can listen
with both ears, when you can bring up your questions in a relaxed
atmosphere, and then go for it!

Career Advice

Speaking Truth to Power

August 28, 2015 Leave a comment
My Inc post – August 14

What
is it is that prevents us from speaking truth to those in power: Fear
of punishment? Fear of attack? Fear of being noticed? There are many
reasons we don’t deal in the truth, but great teams, whether a small
company leadership, a public company board, or a political team, learn
to speak and deal in the truth.

Knowing the truth about whatever
situation you are in, or the problem you are solving, is absolutely
critical, and yet so often people can’t overcome their own barriers to
tell those above them the honest truth. From my experience, here are
five reasons that people don’t speak up and some ways you can conquer
these concerns for yourself:

  1. “I can’t get to her”–If
    you’ve ever tried to reach a senior executive at a large company, you
    know how hard it can be to steal a few minutes of their day. They have
    layers of people protecting them and their time: a chief of staff, a
    fierce admin and a busy schedule that seems to create walls of
    unavailability. However, the best executives will make themselves
    available if you bring value. Some of these executives answer emails,
    sometimes they eat lunch in the cafeteria, and if you explain what you
    want to talk about in serious terms, their admin will make time for you.
    Be persistent and when you get your 15 minutes, be sure that you bring a
    solution or suggestion for improvement, as well as the problem you
    believe they need to know about. As a CEO there is nothing more
    frustrating than someone bringing me a problem, dumping it on my lap and
    having no part in helping me solve it. I’d still prefer to know, but it
    is certainly easier to hear a problem when it comes with a proposed
    solution.
  1. “It’s not my place”
    -It’s a self-limiter to believe that just because someone is in power
    above you in the organization chart that they are in some way better
    than you, or superior to you. Everyone has a role to play in the
    organization, and as human beings, everyone is equal. Some jobs carry a
    greater span of decision-making than others and a wider range of
    responsibility, but no one is “better” than anyone else. It’s true that
    in some company cultures executives start to believe that they are
    better and look down on people they don’t consider their “peers,” but
    they are weaker for it and I can tell you from experience that when they
    are looking for a job later they forget that they once thought you were
    beneath them. Remember, you have a place and a voice; your perspective
    is valuable to power and you have a responsibility to share it.
  1. “He won’t like it”–Some
    people don’t like to hear bad news. They would rather you wrap
    everything in the positive, especially if they are conflict averse. You
    need to be aware of your audience’s personality to figure out how to
    deliver a tough message, but don’t be fearful. Fear will only prevent
    you from getting to the real problems and finding solutions. People
    don’t get fired or shut out for telling the truth. If you are
    constructive and are doing a quality job, you will not be fired for
    expressing your opinion on a situation (and if you do, go and work for a
    better leader). Good leaders want to hear the truth, even if it’s
    painful to hear. So, speak up! Have confidence in yourself and don’t
    worry about whether the power player you are speaking with will “like”
    your message.
  1. “She should already know” –
    It’s a myth than people in power have all the information. In an ideal
    world, they do, but in a fast-paced business, there is no way that your
    leaders knows everything. You can be sure leaders are talking with
    customers, sales people, your manufacturing leads and your engineers to
    try and getting the information they need to make the right decisions,
    but they never know everything. If you know something that you think
    they should know, tell them. If they were already aware of your concern,
    you just confirmed it. If they were unaware of your concern, you were
    able to bring value and help them be better leaders.
  1. “He shuts me down”–Getting
    shut down is the one obstacle I find the hardest to overcome. This is
    the person who raises his/her voice, gets aggressive and bullies to
    intimidate a speaker into silence. It’s important to remember when
    someone does this to you that it’s a tactic that has been learned
    because it can be effective. I have particularly seen men use this on
    women, but I have also seen men do it to other men. This often happens
    when someone raises a controversial point, particularly if she is
    “pushy,” and a man will get angry as a way to shut down the
    conversation. If this happens to you, remember that others in the room
    probably do not respect this behavior. However, most people will not run
    to the aid of the person who spoke up, because they don’t want to draw
    the anger in their direction. When you speak up and someone attacks you
    with anger, don’t back down if you believe in the truth you are
    speaking. Stay calm and stick to your guns. You might be surprised to
    know that many people in the room agree with you.

One of the biggest reasons people don’t speak up is not about their
leadership, or fear, it’s about being liked. I’ve always been outspoken
and I am very conscious about speaking truth to power, but not everyone
likes it. I have found that some people admire me for it, and when I
leave a team (a company, or a board) those people will thank me for my
contribution. But others think of me as too aggressive and
controversial. For those people, it’s a relief when I leave the group.
It’s hard not to care when people don’t like you, but not everyone will
like you, so get used to it.

Finally, I realized I can’t please
all the people, all the time. It’s most important to be authentic, stop
worrying and speak the truth. You will find that when you do, the
people–the power – that matters will thank you for it.

Career Advice

5 Reasons You Need To Work Hard To Get Ahead

June 29, 2015 Leave a comment
My latest in Inc from June 25, 2015



So many times, I’ve been asked, “how did you balance your career and
kids?” Many young people want to hear that I found the answer to balance
and hope I have the formula, but I don’t. Unless you have a fairy
godmother who can guarantee early success in the next big thing, then
you are going to need to work hard to get ahead, make a great living and
have a strong career. In my experience, there are no short cuts and
there is no such thing as “balance.”

We live in a competitive, global world, connected 24/7. Understanding the implications of that is half the battle:


1. It’s a competitive world (part 1).
Yes, the person sitting next to you wants your job. Or they want to get
promoted ahead of you. You are competing, whether it is visible to you
or not, and it has always been this way. The ambitious ones among you
know that getting a promotion is very competitive. Unless you are
computer scientist (in which case there are more jobs than people), you
need to work hard to hold your job and advance, and you need to be
better than the person next to you. When opportunity knocks in the form
of a new project, or a request from your boss, do not say, “that’s not
my job” or “I’m trying to keep balance in my life”–instead, grab it
with both hands and show your boss that you are ambitious and that you
understand your hard work and smart results will be rewarded.

2. You can lean on your partner. This one is probably easier for many men reading this than women, since women typically spend
twice as much time doing housework every day as men. However, whether
you are male or female, learning how to lean on your partner as you push
your career ahead is critical because you are going to need time to
work. Everyone in the household needs to step up and learn how to cook
and clean the kitchen! For many women that means learning to give up
control and letting their partner take an equal role in running the
household. The good news is that a natural shift of equal responsibility
in the home is happening as millennials are twice as likely
to have dual income families. This younger generation knows better
than their parents do that a happy, functioning, two-income household
means sharing the work! Of course, if you are single, you are probably
trying to find the time to date, which can be a challenge and interfere
with everyday chores.

3. Your business is global.
 Unless you are an hourly worker it is likely that your job is
increasingly around the clock. This is the side effect of globalization
as you bring together teams from around the world to solve problems and
meetings happen at 11 p.m., 1 a.m., or 5 a.m. Sometimes this can feel
grim, and yet it is actually an opportunity to spend more time with your
family. Unlike 20 years ago when I would have to stay in the office to
be connected, I can now go home, work out, have dinner with my family
and then login to work from my home office.

4. It’s a competitive world (part 2).
Not only are you competing in your global workplace, your company is
also competing in a global world. It is very likely your company has
competitors in China or India with employees who are driven to improve
their economic status in the world and for their families with their
time and dedication. To use the old cliche “a rising tide floats all
boats”–you want your company to be the rising tide so you and your
teammates can grow your careers. Your global competitor is willing to
sacrifice balance in their lives to get ahead and so should you.

5. Kids are resilient.
This one was a hard lesson for me to learn and my guilt was the enemy,
but I did learn. In my experience, kids do better when they learn to be
independent and they are incredibly resilient if they are loved
unconditionally. Yes, you want to be at their games so they know you
care and so you can share your pride with them, but I don’t think the
phenomenon of the helicopter parent is good for kids. They will be
stronger and more competitive adults if they have learned independence
and they will have a better understanding of what it takes to compete
when their turn comes.

6. Life is not fair. It just isn’t. You need to make your own luck. For 99 percent of us that means hard work.

Career Advice

5 Ways Trust Impacts Your Productivity In The Office

January 12, 2015 Leave a comment
Published in Inc January 8, 2015

So you want to create something fabulous and new. You want to innovate and
create a breakthrough no one has thought of before. Well, you probably
have a list of ingredients you need: a few computers, some smart people,
project funding… but there is one critical ingredient you need which
can’t be measured but will have a huge impact on your success. That
ingredient is Trust.

Trust allows your team to
move fast, fail fast and create. It’s a simple but true fact so often
neglected inside companies. Two simple issues that can be an advantage
in a culture of trust and a huge liability in a culture of politics and
mistrust: 1) how long it takes to make a decision 2) the quality and
stickiness of the decision.

1. In Development.
Think about agile development for example. One of the 12 key principles
to be mindful of is, “Build projects around motivated individuals. Give
them the environment and support they need and trust them to get the job
done”. If managers don’t trust the technical team to get it right they
will slow down the development process and inject themselves into
decisions that need to be made by the engineers, often resulting is
lower quality decisions, or decisions that get made and then unmade.
Begin by hiring great people and most importantly trust them.

2. In Planning.
How often do executives posture in the annual financial planning
process and ask for more resources than they need, on the premise it’s a
political negotiation? Blustering, ego-driven demands! If, instead, you
have a team who truly trust each other then the dynamic will be quite
different. Team members will have the freedom to advocate for projects
and priorities, regardless of who gets the resources to get the project
done. Too many times I’ve seen people equate headcount and budget with
success–but in a trust based environment the focus is on the team’s end
result, regardless of where each person sits in the organization.

3. In Hiring.
As your team beings to grow, the talent you hire will have the single
greatest impact on your potential for success. The hiring decision needs
to be open, transparent and filled with honest assessment -setting up
an initial hiring process that counts on trust. An example of this
process can include: a hiring manager assigns an interviewing team,
everyone meets the candidate and then the team assembles for a “round
table.” At the round table everyone is required to express their
opinions is an open, constructive way, but maintaining the premise that
all input is OK, both good and bad. The process moves more efficiently
towards productive results due to trust from the hiring manager truly
wanting the team’s input, and that the team working towards getting the
manager to the best decision. Without trust, you see posturing, cronyism
and manipulation of the process. Unfortunately, I’ve worked in
companies where senior executives bring in friends with no interviewing
process whatsoever. Now that’s a recipe for others to trust–not!

4. In Time.
While running a young, growing company or a highly innovative team you
will most likely be making hundreds of decisions a day. Risky decisions
with limited input. And truthfully you know you won’t get them all right
(although you do have to get the majority right). If you are working
with a team who you trust, and who trust you, you can move that decision
process quicker. You can be transparent, share your thought process and
quickly poll for advice. When you make a mistake, your team has your
back. In a political environment where information is power, decisions
take much longer because it’s not shared so openly. In a nutshell, trust
allows a team to identify problems quickly and without fear–no
baggage, no personal positioning. It’s incredibly efficient.
Trust takes time to build, which is why people who work well together often stay together from company to company.

5. In Fun.
Unless you are a master manipulator and play office politics for sport,
teams that trust one another are just more fun to work in. Having that
professional comfort allows for more laughter, more shared wins and more
support when the going is tough. Given how much time you are going to
spend working with one another, why not invest the time and effort to
build trust so that work is fun?

Career Advice

Why dating where you work is a dangerous sport

July 1, 2014 Leave a comment

As the current fashion of writing about women in tech surges it’s not surprising that tales of sexual harassment are emerging. Men in power, women climbing into power, money, ambition, attraction, alcohol – what could go wrong?

Consider today’s latest – the suit being filed against Tinder. While the filing is by nature one sided it does appear one person dated another, things went bad and harsh words were spoken. It’s a scene being acted out all over the world today (most relationships do break up after all) but this is one that’s particularly ugly because one person works for the other, they’re executives and it’s public.

California law is known to be favorable to employees especially when it comes to harassment and protection of employee rights. In California, your employer is responsible to “take all reasonable steps to prevent harassment or discrimination from happening.” Practically, what that means to many companies is once they have 50 employees, they run sexual harassment training for at least 2 hours, every 2 years. Online or in-person, a company needs to remind every employee of their responsibility to respect other employees, regardless of gender, sexual orientation etc. Simple, right?

Most people I have worked with in my career are very rational, responsible people. And yet, I have found the discussion, and the training, more necessary than I would have expected because of unintentional harassment rather than deliberate unpleasant behavior.

For example, don’t date within your “cone of control.” Don’t date anyone within your piece of the organization (which means if you are a CxO don’t date at work). You have too much power. Whether you misbehave – positively favoring or negatively retaliating – or you don’t, there is too much risk for you and the company. HR or your CEO should step in and remove the risk. If you find the love of your life in your organization, put your relationship first and ask your love to move to another organization far away from your professional scope of influence. And if you’re married and having an affair at work, it’s especially ugly if your lover is within your organization, and everyone knows it, so for heavens sake either don’t do it or make sure absolutely no one knows. I watched one of those trains wrecks close up and wreck doesn’t begin to describe the damage done.

A second example: always pay attention to what you say. If you’re a manager the people around you are listening to what you say. They’ll even emulate you if they admire you. Especially sales guys when they are fueled up and winning. So making sexual innuendos and jokes is going to offend someone soon enough. Keep it for your friends outside work. I try hard to not say anything I wouldn’t have said in front of my mother. It’s a good guideline for me, although one I do fail at sometimes.

Or don’t touch your coworkers. Even if in your culture it’s ok to touch someone on the arm as you talk with them, or lean on their shoulder. For many people (like the English) touching in public is uncomfortable—and open to misinterpretation. Having been felt up by men in the office earlier in my career (before I was so fierce) I can tell you the “I was only joking” line doesn’t wash when someone has made you feel physically uncomfortable. Save touching for your family and close friends.

…all conversations I have had with my managers at some point …

But we’re all human and make mistakes (yes, everyone does) and training helps because it’s a good reminder of what’s ok and what’s not. So while mistakes will happen, you can ensure they won’t be from ignorance of what’s OK in the workplace. They’ll be from insensitivity, or poor management oversight or maybe even deliberate.

But whichever way mistakes happen, the company is responsible to do everything it can to prevent them, which in most well-run companies means putting some distance rules around dating at work.

Photo: http://uncorneredmarket.com/tandem-bungy-jump-valentines-day-video/

Career Advice

Do all CMOs have to be data geeks now?

May 20, 2014 Leave a comment
Written by me in the The Economist Group today

Few would argue against data’s importance in marketing today. Data is
essential to every marketing decision now, and the techniques used to
transform that data into actionable market insight can make or break a
company.

DataCMO
Given
this, some data-intensive companies now require their CMOs to have a
background in data science—but will we get to a point where all CMOs and
senior marketing leaders have to have a background in data science? Or
will tools continue to emerge that will help marketing leaders better
interact with big data and enable them to make strategic decisions?

As the Internet and sheer amount of available data expand, companies
are rushing to take advantage of it—but they are finding themselves
overwhelmed, and many marketing organizations are reacting by hiring
data scientists. In fact, data scientists are in such high demand that a recent McKinsey study found that there would be a deficit of up to 190,000 data scientists in the U.S. alone by 2018.

Because so many marketing decisions are data-driven these days,
having someone adept at finding relationships, identifying anomalies and
making predictions based on data can be key to an effective
go-to-market strategy.  CMOs absolutely need to understand how to
interpret data. To quote a column by Computerworld Executive Editor Julia King, “Data science is all about predicting the future.”

The particular responsibility of choosing and driving strategy based
on where the market is headed lies with the CMO. But if the CMO arms
herself and her team with the right tools, she doesn’t need to be a data
scientist—and she doesn’t have to fill her bench with data scientists,
either.

Senior leaders will find more and more that cloud-based apps—like
emerging personal business analytics and marketing automation
solutions—will become their go-to tools to solve their big data overload
problems. These solutions will allow the business user to make better
real-time decisions, helping them to embrace not just analysis, but also
synthesis of the data.

Solutions whose analytics are easily embeddable into existing
platforms and apps, and which provide clear visualization and
collaboration tools, will ultimately help leaders strategically grow
their businesses without requiring a team of onsite data scientists.  By
choosing the right solutions, CMOs can save themselves the headache of
searching for a team of data scientists, but reap the same benefits
quickly and economically.

Career Advice

Why Personal Positioning is Toxic in the Office

April 16, 2014 Leave a comment
Which matters more – how you are personally positioned, or what you get done?

Sometimes popular wisdom would tell you personal positioning truly matters. Who you know, what they think about you, how much “face time” you get, are you networked… but while this strategy may be effective in some large or political companies, it’s death in a fast moving, apolitical one.

I define politics in the office as any person, or behavior, that puts their personal interest in front of the company’s interest. When you’re growing fast, and making a thousand decisions every day, there simply is not room for people’s self interest if it’s not aligned with the company’s. But the learned behaviors, from larger political organizations, still hang around with new employees until we stop them.

Behaviors like obfuscation of the details – let me make broad statements as if I know what I’m talking about to shut you down, but I don’t actually have the details to solve the problem. Or CYA – let me tell you why the problem I am bringing to your attention is a result of something that happened before I had the job to solve it. Or the “Well everything’s all effed up so I’m the hero for trying to fix it”. Or the eye roll when describing someone else’s problem. All behaviors designed to position the source as superior and not responsible for whatever problem you are tackling.

But in a rapidly moving company, I want my staff to be responsible. Even if it is effed up, and the fire was burning before you arrived. Personal positioning is just a waste of my time.

A customer is unhappy. Bring me specifics. This happened. I think the issue is A or B. I’ve formed a small team to get to the bottom of it. We’ll tell you if/when you need to speak with the customer.

A release is late. Tell me what and why. This piece of code took longer than we expected to deliver, or that piece is unstable and we need two more weeks to test it. We’ll come to you if we need more time or resource to solve it.

To the point, specific, centered on action and resolution.

And blame is simply not helpful. Things go wrong some times and individuals are to blame. But the time for blame (if there is ever a time) is after the problem has been solved and then in a post mortem. Bring the team that failed in a situation together and debug what went wrong – with no blame. That allows you to make sure it doesn’t happen again.

I have a friend who, early on in his career, proudly called himself the vice president of personal positioning. He had it down to an art form. He was smart, articulate, good looking and senior management loved him. This served him well for a while. Then he came to work for me and I called him on his BS, repeatedly, until he figured out he was capped until he solved real problems. Because he’s smart he stopped it, and is now an SVP at a large enterprise software company.

People who are repeatedly successful, across multiple companies, figure this out. They focus on action. On creating solutions, solving problems, helping others. Despite the number of blogs written that say you should manage your brand, and how you are perceived, the truth is power accumulates to the people who know what to do and how to get it done (See my post about Pfeffer’s books on Power if you are not familiar with this concept). Not people with friends. Not people who know how to network. It accumulates to people who know what to do and how to get it done. Period.

So if you find yourself worrying about your personal positioning, yes, you’re human, but put it aside and set about solving the problem you’re faced with.

Career Advice

Don’t confuse Visibility with Success

December 18, 2013 Leave a comment

It’s the age of social media no question. It’s ubiquitous and if you are in business you need to be active, but it’s also seductive and can make you confuse visibility (wow, I’m famous) with success (I’m truly making a difference). I know a few entrepreneurs like this – do you?

Do you know people who are more concerned with how they look on Facebook and landing speaking gigs than they are with how the company’s quarter went? Are they distracted in the office more than involved? Did they make it onto a “top something-or-other” list but you know their business is fluff?

It’s understandable why people get caught up in being “visible.” Fame is seductive. Celebrity is followed more by the media every year. Even something as simple as getting a like or a comment on a blog post makes you feel good. Research by Dr. Dinah Hurwitz, a psychology professor at California State University, Northridge, shows that people become hooked to the endorphins that come every time someone responds to their post. She said the symptoms are almost the same, when comparing heavy social networking users to drug addicts. It’s gotten to the point where, as an HBR blog post stated, “our unending use of social media has radically elevated the level of ego in our personal lives… we are in the middle of a narcissism epidemic.”

Take that in for a second: It’s an epidemic—that means thousands of people, millions even, are suffering—from narcissism!
I’ll bet you know some of the people I am talking about. People who are so wrapped up in their social media presence that, like Estelle in No Exit, they can’t see that everyone else can see how self-serving they are.

If your goal is to be a celebrity, then it makes sense. For example, the Kardashians’ whole empire is built on a good social foundation and Lady Gaga turned social media fame into a market development strategy. But if you want to be a high growth corporate professional, beware of substituting celebrity for the substance of your business. Because if your business fails, you won’t have much with which to carry on being famous. It’s important to find a balance between growing your own brand—which, don’t get me wrong, is certainly mutually beneficial if done correctly—and growing the business.

One way to ground yourself is to never forget what “success” is. Successful businesses are ones that make and grow revenue or have millions of users as proxy for future revenue. Brand recognition (and, yes, that includes you as a representative of the company) is an important cog in the growth wheel. But visibility is not success in and of itself.

So if you find yourself checking Facebook more than a couple of times a day, or promoting yourself on Twitter endlessly, come up with a scheme to strike a balance between your own social presence and your business success. Maybe you allocate only a certain amount of time per day (outside of working hours, perhaps?) to social media. Or limit the number of tweets you send per day. Or, even, have your marketing team help you (they have their own work to do, so they’ll help you if it will help the business—that seems like a good barometer to me!)

The bottom line is: before you set out to make yourself a corporate household name, know what your success metrics are and make sure you don’t confuse celebrity and visibility with true success. Those who really matter know the difference.