Done? Learning from Biscuits and Resumes

December 16, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Not much beats a warm, from-scratch biscuit.  My favorite 12-year old can get mighty impatient, doing the “Are They Done Yet” dance in front of the oven.   It’s a delicate, delicious balance.  Pull them too soon and you lose flaky layers to dense dough.  Wait a hair too long and the outside is sawdust dry and crumbly.  With biscuits, perfect does make a difference and the standard for “perfect” is fairly discernable.

That’s not necessarily the case with other creations.  Take resumes for example.  Ask 10 people for input on your resume and you’ll get 12 different ideas.   How do you decide who knows best?  What’s the standard?

A brilliant client once set a goal of getting her resume “80% there.”  She figured 80% was good enough to get her in the door.  Striving for more than that would tether her to wordsmithing for weeks instead of actually meeting people.  Besides, she observed, with a resume you can always modify it for the next person,  so there’s no need to add a bunch of  “perfect” pressure to an already stressful situation.

I’m grappling with the 80% rule now regarding our Daily Debrief App.  Is introducing an app like baking biscuits or writing a resume?  Sure feels like the former when you’re in it, although it’s really the later.  I’d say Eric, Spike and I are at about 70%.  Not ready to submit to the app store, but awfully darn close!

An almost there icon

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Filed Under: Daily Debrief App, Professional Development Tagged With: , , , ,

Seth Godin on Doing Your Best

November 15, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Really liked Seth Godin’s post today:

After you’ve done your best (and it didn’t work)

His last few lines are particularly useful, especially when tough times tempt us to hide in a dark place:

“If you believe that righteous effort leads to the shame of personal failure, you’ll seek to avoid righteous effort… Successful people analytically figure out what didn’t work and redefine what their best work will be in the future. And then they get back to work.”

 

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Filed Under: Comfort Zones and Other Arbitrary Boundaries, Professional Development, Self Awareness, Transitions Tagged With: ,

The Other “A” Word

November 9, 2011 By Leave a Comment

(No, I’m not talking about that again.)

“A” as in Accountability:

  1. Doing what you say you’re going to do, by when you say you’re going to do it.
  2. Constructively following up with a colleague who didn’t do what they said they were going to do, by when they said they were going to do it.

Some organizations seamlessly weave accountability into the fabric of their culture.  Others fear and avoid it.  They don’t want to make a colleague look bad, spark a conflict, or invite embarrassing accountability turnaround.   If individual accountability is high for all involved, then good things still get done on time.   A couple of weak links, though, can lead to missed deadlines, grumbling behind people’s backs, and lost opportunities.   You know what I’m talking about.

One team of really smart, committed software as service professionals would get very quiet any time our conversation steered toward accountability.  Lots of big eyes looking all over to escape eye contact with me.  I think one person even stopped breathing for a bit.

Naturally, their determined avoidance meant we were going there!

The team wasn’t sure how to create more accountability, or be brave enough to hold each other accountable.  They were, however, very astute in describing their current relationship with accountability:

  •  It’s squishy, hard to interpret and inconsistent.
  • Thinking about holding others accountable is stressful.
  • Without it, we’re a bunch of individuals without cohesiveness.  It’s easy to stay in our own little area.
  • We don’t tend to assign work to people who don’t meet goals, but we don’t tell them that.
  • We’re great at pulling things together at the last minute and enjoy the buzz and collegiality of that pressure.

This last comment jiggled them out of their stuck place.  In the early days, it was exhilarating for a bunch of single twenty-somethings to crank through an all-nighter and just barely meet a client deadline.  Now, years (and spouses and babies) later, it’s not so much fun.  Regular sleep has also become more delicious than 2am pizza.

Through this lens, accountability wasn’t such a bad guy after all.  It could be the key to:

  • Freeing up time to do things outside of work.
  • Getting behind objectives that point toward success.  (Without accountability, objectives are just something we’re supposed to do, but no one really pays attention to them.)
  • Securing timely access to resources and information.
  • Providing genuine recognition; accountability flags it when people do what they were supposed to do.
  • Having more fun by getting into a flow of accomplishment and knowing others are too.
  • Being acknowledged for something of which we’re proud, versus our capacity for martyrdom (i.e. lack of sleep).

I wish I could say “Ah ha!  Problem solved!” but big change takes practice.  What I can say is that their bravery in naming That Which Shall Not Be Discussed has broken a barrier, opening the way to practice.

What’s your team’s relationship with accountability?


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Filed Under: Comfort Zones and Other Arbitrary Boundaries, Difficult Conversations, Professional Development, Team Performance Tagged With: ,

Transistions Made Easy (Or At Least Easier)

October 11, 2011 By 1 Comment

I get to work with a lot of people who are ready for a change, by their own design or not.  Some know what they want:

  • New position at the Same Company
  • Similar Position in a Different Company or Industry
  • Different Everything

Others just have an itch that needs scratching but don’t know much beyond that.

Whatever the situation, most people can work out the tactical aspects of change. The trickiest steps in the transition tango are usually associated with uncomfortable, often unfamiliar, feelings*:

  • Overwhelmed
  • Lost
  • Scared
  • Self-Conscious
  • Excited
  • All of the above

*Supposedly women shouldn’t use “feeling” in business because men won’t get it and using that word makes us seem soft. Well guess what? After 10 years of doing this work, I can safely say that men “feel” these things too.

In response, I’ve developed the Multiple Paths Approach, which helps people become more calm, open, focused, and successful during their period of change-in-the-make. There are 2 basic steps:

1.  Name several possible “paths”   A path is a direction you are curious about, for example “I wonder what it’d be like to work in healthcare.”  Instead of thinking sequentially along just one track however, imagine exploring several interesting possibilities simultaneously, e.g.  “Healthcare is very dynamic, but I also love international travel.”  Write down a handful of possible paths.  It will allow your brain to relax since it doesn’t have to remember everything that’s buzzing around between your ears.  Naming many paths also shows some respect for the shy desires that get pushed aside if you’re only looking at the “practical” paths.  A path may relate to a position, company, industry, course of study, or new business idea. One path should always be Make the Current Situation As Good As Possible.

2.  Focus on the One Next Step for each path Following through on this piece is how you prevent overwhelm and build momentum.  For each path, determine what tiny step will carry you farther along the way.  It may involve researching online, talking to someone, or creating something.  You might not know what the next step is.  In that case, the “next step” is to calendar a time to figure it out!

3.  Steadily progress along each path Okay, I know I said “2” steps.  This last bit is just repeating the above step over and over until you reach a particular path’s “summit”.  For some paths, the summit may be a dead-end where you’ve learned enough to know that this isn’t for you. Use that knowledge to propel you along on a different path.

Years ago I was excited (for a week) about following the Be A Vet path.  That was until a “one next step” had me shadowing my vet and holding unhappy animals while the tech poked their innards for stool samples.  In one day I discovered that I get antsy if left in windowless rooms too long, and am more uncomfortable with cranky animals than cranky people.

Other summits may lead to beginning graduate school, starting a business or securing a new position at a different company. Clients have also earned an elusive promotion at their current organization because they did such a good job Making the Current Situation As Good as Possible, even while they were looking elsewhere!  Sometimes there’s no place like home, Toto.

This tool is most helpful when you’re:

  • Defining your paths with candor
  • Working your paths diligently
  • Looking for ah ha’s and applying that learning

The process also works better when you tether any sense of “already knowing” what lies ahead and walk the different paths with the sense of a true explorer.

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Filed Under: Professional Development, Transitions Tagged With: ,
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