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This is the last issue of Kennedy’s
Career Strategist. We’ve
loved producing the newsletter for the past 18 years but everything outlives
its usefulness. Instead of allowing
the newsletter to do that, we’re going to a different format. You will be able to find articles on our
website about workplace issues that we think need comment or trends
we’re noticing. Expect new
material every other month or as needed.
We hope you’ve enjoyed the newsletter and will keep in touch as
issues arise that we might help with.
HOW
TO PROVE YOUR WORK MAKES A DIFFERENCE FIVE
RESOLUTIONS TO MAKE – AND KEEP 1. To gain cooperation from subordinates or
peers, show how it will benefit the individual. Most managers worry about how to
"motivate" people. It can't
be done. Trying to motivate someone is
like pushing on the end of a string.
Persuading a subordinate to do something for the "good of the
organization" is futile. This is
especially true when dealing with Baby Busters who have a lifetime immunity
against organizational loyalty. Treat
organizational change as a political issue and determine who has an interest
or who can be given an interest in the changes the organization needs to
make. To often, no attempt is made to
build a consensus around change because the change is "necessary"
or "logical." The successful
politician's mindset is, "What can I do for you that will make you want
to do it my way?" People motivate
themselves when they see clearly why what you want them to do will benefit
them, i.e., "Working with Joe on this project will really improve your
marketing skills." For
cooperation from colleagues, establishing a peer relationship is
essential. People who don't C or
can't C do
this will encounter jealousy, resentment, or other relationship-destroying
feelings in co-workers whose help they need most. For example, the medical director who
doesn't believe the nursing vice president or hospital CEO is his/her
organizational (if not intellectual) equal had best give an Oscar-winning
performance to the contrary. The
lawyer who wants a paralegal to think as he/she does must exhibit nothing but
egalitarianism. Submerge
all thoughts that because you are better educated and hold a higher rank
you're entitled to respect.
Entitlement is a career killer, whatever the individual's rank. 2. Plug into and monitor
the grapevine. It’s the best way to
establish an early warning system.
It's imperative that you know how people think about organizational
issues. Too many managers (though not
the truly powerful) are disdainful of office gossip. "Petty stuff" or "personal
triv," they say. Wrong! The grapevine is accurate 85+ percent of
the time C and that's a conservative
estimate. It also carries the word
from the grassroots. Unless you are
plugged in, events will surprise you.
You might shoot from the hip and undermine your position. Managers are expected to be in control of
themselves as well as events. Test
your level of knowledge: Has anything
happened in your organization in the past month that you learned about from
your boss before you heard it in the grapevine? If so, there are gaps in your intelligence
system. Fill them by identifying the
entrenched power people, usually long-term support staff, and building
alliances with them. 3. Always exhibit absolutely predictable behavior.
If you asked workers
at every level, everywhere, which boss (and/or co-worker) bothered them most,
they would say, "The one that goes crazy over a missed deadline one
month and does not respond that way next month. I can never figure out how he/she will
react." Predictable responses
allow subordinates to manage up, peers to mesh effectively, and teach
everyone how to manage you. 4. Give all the credit and take all the
blame. The
power position is always giving credit, never receiving it. People who solicit praise for their work
either have ego deficits or no desire for power or both. The grapevine knows who did what. The need for adulation is an infallible
sign of insecurity and undermines the troops' confidence in management. Taking
the blame means that people will hurt themselves scrambling to work with and
for you. They will realize that a
mistake that may have been as much an organizational as a personal failure
won't trash their careers. You, at
least, don't believe that blood sacrifice must follow every disaster to
placate the organization. Don't be
surprised, as you shoulder the blame, when people rush to share a portion of
the disaster. No one is allowed to hog
the spotlight for more than 10 seconds, good or bad. Without
this attitude, getting people to take risks needed to make changes or get the
result would be difficult, even impossible.
Why should anyone put him/herself on the line personally? 5. Anticipate needs before they go
public. Here's
another reason to listen to the grapevine:
Every gripe you hear represents an unmet need and an opportunity to go one-on-one
with someone and meet his/her needs in exchange for whatever you want done. 6. Keep your ego hermetically sealed in an old
mayo jar.
Effective people are (relatively) ego-free. Nobody can aggravate you unless you agree
to be aggravated. No one can insult
you without your willing participation.
Remember, work is a role. You
are not what you do for a living. The
people you work with don't know you well enough to dislike you
personally. That privilege is reserved
for family and close friends.
Disliking your plans for change or reorganization isn't the same as
disliking you personally. By the way,
why do you care whether you're liked?
Isn't respected and followed the key? 7. Keep score from results only. The motto for the new millennium is
"Get the result." Effort
never counts and there no such thing as a magnificent failure. All failures look pretty much the
same. Process-oriented people, those determined
to do things the "right" way, are rarely flexible or creative
enough to dream up the solutions that will get the result. How much or little you like
people is not important; what counts is how well you work with them. It doesn't matter if you love what you do
so long as you appear to love it. It
doesn't matter if you're sincere. Some
fairly terrible things, e.g., giving someone your honest opinion, are done in
the name of sincerity. Righteousness
is another non-starter. People whose
personal values are "right versus wrong" rather than "get the
result" are in mortal danger of bashing their own C and
other peoples' C careers. You
won't be able to oust the CEO by applying these principles but you might be
able to succeed him/her. No one who's really
in tune with Machiavelli has been less successful than someone whose MO is
slash and burn. And the results for
the organization are always more positive! TOP The
major enemies of workers of any age C not
just those over 40 C are obsolescence,
irrelevance, and a lack of self-analysis.
We see plenty of twentysomethings whose jobs could be wiped out with
one new bit of technology or one more merger, not to mention moved offshore,
as many programmers can testify. However, the difference between the
twentysomethings and the fortysomethings is that the twentysomethings
anticipate it. Departing jobs are increasing.
Here are some examples: the
salesperson whose usefulness is being eroded by online sales (stock brokers,
key account sales people, anyone selling a commodity, anyone selling to an uber corporation which dictates what
it will buy and at what price); bankers; actuaries; medical group managers of
small firms which will be absorbed into bigger ones; solo pharmacists. You
can wait until someone hands you a severance package or you could test your
vulnerability and assess your value to your organization, or to one waiting
to be identified. Why wait until the package
is offered? If you knew your job were
about to end wouldn’t you look for others even if you anticipated
generous severance? Part of the search
process has to be serious self-analysis.
When
you're totally absorbed in a job or up against a deadline it's easy not to
recognize (or to ignore) that you're in a rut, your usefulness to the
organization is ebbing, and your skills are moldering. You can be engaged in heavy mouse milking
for years and not see it. If you love
what you do and you're cushioned by a supportive boss and co‑workers,
it's likely you've never considered your vulnerability. However, your boss and co‑workers
won't make the stay/go decision about you.
An outside consultant who knows nothing about you but runs the numbers
on what you contribute versus your salary and benefits will. His standards may be how cheaply you can be
replaced if another worker can take on additional tasks. Are
you vulnerable, regardless of length of service and skill sets? That's hard for the forty‑ and fiftysomethings
to grapple with. They've always had a
strong work ethic, believed that good work would be recognized and rewarded,
and are unaccustomed to defending what they do. A common theme among newly laid‑off
clients of this age is how surprised they are. How can the company get along without
them? Most people, if they think about
it at all, hope they'll never need to justify their contributions to themselves, much less to the
organization. If you're nearing
retirement, are fully vested, or are putting together an exit strategy aimed
at self‑employment, you probably won't. Unfortunately, that's maybe 20
percent of the work force. The other
80 percent are hoping to remain wage slaves.
For them, the idea of justifying their existence is a disturbing idea
but some trigger, possibly a layoff rumor, may force them to do just that. That
happened to Mary R. during a departmental strategic planning session. She was sales manager for the company's
hottest software product. When her
boss floated the idea the division might be sold to staunch cash flow
problems elsewhere, it was a wake-up call.
Virtually any company that bought the division would have its own
sales force. After transition, what
would they need her for C other
than to train her successor? She
researched the potential acquiring companies and none appealed to her. She moved to a better job with a competitor
six months before her division was sold.
Her former co‑workers now call her for job leads. As she said, "Why be a ghost at the
banquet? There are other opportunities
out there." There
are ways to test vulnerability and assemble some hard evidence that your work
makes a difference. Can the latter be
definitively proven? Of course not,
nothing can. There's still a Flat
Earth Society. The process has value
regardless. Whatever truths you
discover, your thinking about your value will never be the same, nor will
your resume. You must assess the level
of your skills, evaluate your role (how you deploy those skills within the
organization), and factor in the value of your experience with the
organization and elsewhere. Are
your skills state of the art? Are
you tethered to a support person who costs the company a minimum of $50,000 a
year (including benefits) because your computer skills, i.e., common
software, e‑mail, and voice mail, are between poor and non‑existent? How do the other skills critical to your
job stand up? For instance, how would
you rate your marketing skills, financial analysis, and the ability to
identify, frame, and solve problems on a scale from one to ten? As a manager, how do you compare with
others doing the same, or similar, job at competitors? You
must do a self‑test for obsolescence and only field research can
provide the answers. You might
benchmark co‑workers but what if they're marginal as well? Network with members of your trade or
professional association to identify industry stars. What skills do they have? What do their job descriptions look
like? If you have a good relationship
with your contacts, you may be able to find out what kind of feedback they
get in performance appraisals and from customers and clients. How do they measure their value to the
organization? Retained search
consultants C if you build relationships
with them C can tell you what an
organization demands when seeking candidates for a job like yours. (If you can't find people who do
approximately what you do, it's a red flag that you're in trouble. What if what you do has been eliminated by
competitors?) If you
discover skills deficiencies, can they be corrected through mentoring and/or
continuing education? Don't be
comforted by the fact that your boss's skills are even more outdated. There's nothing worse than being laid off
because your skills are obsolete when, with some effort and a fire under you
feet, you might have become cutting edge.
A client who'd always been shaky in budgeting got help from a peer in
exchange for help with the peer's computer skills. They're both less vulnerable. Is
your educational background different from peers? They all have MBAs and you don't. Rob, 54, enrolled in an MBA program when he
realized that he was the only one without one. He was half‑way through when offered
early retirement. The irony? Hanging out with younger classmates opened
a new world of information and contacts.
They rallied with introductions and job leads. He banked his entire severance. Does
your role matter? Where does your job fall in the big
picture? Have you been in your current
job for five years? Do you take all
your vacation every year and never come back to problems no one else could
solve? Last year you didn’t even
take your cell phone. Does your work
exclusively benefit internal departments most of which are staff
support? Is your department or
division prime for euthanasia if the current management gets into a financial
bind or is deposed? Would profits or
customer satisfaction be negatively affected if your department disappeared? If you
conclude that your skills are above reproach but your position in the
organization still makes you vulnerable, you have two choices: Wait for the axe C which
may or may not fall C or change jobs. If you consider the latter, it doesn't
necessarily mean you must change employers.
Could you reposition yourself internally by transferring to a more
profitable or significant division? If
the company is fighting for its life, it may not be worth it. However, it could allow you to test a new
role and refine your skills before moving into the marketplace. One of our clients realized that while he
did management consulting from the accounting side of the firm, the action
was in the consulting division. He
cultivated rainmakers in that division and moved C one
year before the decision was made to phase out his old division and two years
before the consulting division seceded from the rest of the company. Can
you be easily replaced? Let's assume your skills are cutting edge C they
stack up favorably against any challenger C could
someone half your age and half your salary perform equally well? In other words, does experience influence
outcome? People whose primary skill
set is managing others need to think hard about this. Despite all the talk about the importance
of experienced managers in producing results, it's still an
imponderable. It can be argued that a
customer service representative with ten years experience can solve a
customer problem quicker than someone with one year's experience because her
knowledge of the company and its systems transcends anything a new employee
could know. A recent study indicated
that longevity is important when the product or service has a Along
shelf life," i.e., a law
firm partner may interact with certain clients better because her experience
and shared history with the client matter.
Experience is not so important when the product or service changes
regularly C technology comes to mind C or is
a disposable. However, relationships
with customers and clients, built and maintained over years, are cash in the
bank, especially if top management believes the client's loyalty is to you,
not the firm. That makes it easier to
justify one's existence in a service business. If a
thorough examination of your skills and role convinces you that your
contribution returns more to the organization than your salary, can you prove
it? What if those gray‑faced
consultants come sniffing in your direction?
Can you quantify your contribution?
How can you document that you're state‑of‑the‑art or
even ahead of the wave? Can you demonstrate
that you personally, and your experience, matter to clients or
customers? Consider these
strategies. Put
together a portfolio. When you
compared your skills to the stars, were you faster, more efficient, and/or
used fewer resources to get the result than they did? Construct a chart which shows how you've
raised efficiency over the past few years.
Ask Human Resources what one hour of your time is worth, including
benefits. That's your billing rate.
Show that by decreasing the time it takes to do a task you've saved
the company a specific number of dollars.
For ease in calculating, imagine your rate is $50. Your responsibilities include analyzing
marketing data and number crunching.
Last year, it cost $500 to generate a report on a product. This year it cost $350 because of your
experience and increased efficiency.
Or, show you caused your direct reports to improve efficiency while
saving money. Use the same method with
your actual rate. Can
you show an increase in customer satisfaction C internal
or external? Rising customer
satisfaction matters. It's also
measurable. Have you mined your files for testimonials from satisfied, even
delighted, customers or C
here's a radical idea C solicited some from people
who will put in writing that your work made a difference for them? Here's
another way to value your work. What
would it cost the company to recruit and train a replacement for you? How long would it take the person to master
the job? As a manager, your strongest
argument might be that your job has value because you retain direct reports
longer than other managers, saving the company recruiting and training
costs. Pie charts can be constructed
to show that the average employee who works for you stays six months longer
than the company average and three months longer than the department
average. HR may be induced to share
with you an average cost for recruiting and training a new hire. If the data is so terrible they refuse to
share it, use industry data from your trade or professional society. Failing that, call the Bureau of Labor
Statistics C or visit their Web site. Suppose, after research and consideration,
you believe you can prove your work makes a difference, who do you tell? One of the unknowns in any layoff situation
is whether your boss will argue to save your job. How do you stand with your
boss? Review your performance
appraisals. Are there training or
performance issues mentioned several years in a row that, because your boss
never pressed and you got a raise anyway, you haven't addressed? If so, fix them this minute. A boss who values your contribution is
worth cultivating, even if he/she is also vulnerable C think
of it as maintenance‑level proving your worth. Many people have kept their jobs because a
motivated boss argued strongly for their retention. What qualities did those bosses cite? We've asked a lot of managers who've had to
make layoff choices about that and their answers are interesting. All emphasized technical and soft
skills. They worked to save the people
who were easiest to manage C
hardly a surprise C and they worked to save the
most productive. They offered to
sacrifice workers who were computer will‑nots, those who always took the
opposite view from the manager, and those who lacked people skills. This is self‑serving but true. How do
you stand with your boss's boss? The
farther you climb the ladder the greater the influence in who stays and who
goes. If you're invisible to your
boss's boss that's a problem. Your
boss may never acknowledge your contribution.
There is no corporate court of last resort so raising your visibility
outside your immediate department matters. Are
you plugged into the grapevine or have you been lulled into non‑participation
by a crushing workload? That's a
mistake. The grapevine is listened to and believed, especially by those too
remote to see first hand what goes on.
The phrase, "I heard it in the grapevine," gives even the
wildest rumor a veneer of credibility, at least temporarily. The boss's boss's secretary can be an ally
if you build a long‑term relationship by sharing a tidbit she hasn't
heard now and then. Even consultants
listen to, and are influenced by, corporate intelligence. They call it "information
gathering" or "doing a needs analysis." They want to know who's productive and
who's an also-ran. In the end, it's up
to you. If you're not sharing your
successes with the grapevine, "Wasn't that project a
success? The team was thrilled!"
you're missing an easy opportunity to toot your horn. Clients swear this is the tenuous cord that
binds them to their jobs. One key
regional sales manager, far from headquarters, emails his boss's secretary
every Monday with a recap of the previous week. His boss gets the message and the secretary
spreads the word. You
must also work on your reputation with members of your trade or association
group, locally and nationally. If
you're not at meetings regularly to see and be seen, you're invisible. Have you been a committee chair or held
office? Where do you think recruiters
troll for candidates? One client was
membership chair for the local chapter of her association, then program
chair. Both were hassles but her visibility is high. She's called regularly by headhunters who
value her leads and have placed her every few years in increasingly better
jobs. When
you think of recruiters, consider that, for your company's management, there is
no clearer proof that your work has value than when you turn up with a
written job offer in hand. That says
that someone else is willing to bet money that your work will make a
difference to them! If this is obvious
why do recruiters tell me that, good times and bad, about 60 percent of the
potential candidates they call don't return their telephone calls! Clearly that crowd doesn't really care
about proving their worth to anyone. What
are the risks in continuing to do your job well, enjoying your life, and
trusting that you'll survive? Anyone
who argues that jobs are cut and created solely on a logical and sound
financial basis needs a drug test. We
have never heard a CEO, publicly or privately, make that claim. How many companies have ended up rehiring
the so‑called redundant when it was discovered those skills had more
value than a superficial analysis would indicate? How many companies got rid
of employees they later used as independent contractors? You may never become state‑of‑the‑art
in PowerPoint and you and your secretary may retire on the same day so who
cares? The
best reason to spend the time and
effort to analyze your value to the organization is that if you are laid off,
getting a comparable job C or a
better one C will be far less hassle than
if you have to cudgel your memory for details of your past successes. Most of my clients are more careful about
keeping performance data, testimonials, unsolicited co‑worker
compliments, etc., than they were five years ago. They also return every recruiter call and
never fail to give a headhunter names of as‑yet undiscovered
stars. They haven't completely gotten
over the idea that organizational loyalty won't save them but they're in
recovery. Three
people who did it right: Justin survived three bank mergers, a.k.a.
takeovers. As a director of
compensation and benefits this was something of a miracle because each
acquiring bank had people with identical skill sets. As rumors emerged that the bank was again a
likely takeover target he decided to assess his vulnerability. Because he was an active networker it took
no time to find out that he knew his counterpart at the acquiring bank. Between them, he had to admit his
counterpart was the likely survivor.
In previous takeovers his skills had been superior. They weren't now. He looked at all the banks in town and
found one where his big bank experience might be valued because the bank was
in a growth spurt. He talked to
contacts and got an interview. He got
the job, a month before his old bank was acquired in a hostile takeover. "I never discount rumors, never. I didn't like admitting my counterpart had
superior skills but it's a fact. I'm
so glad I moved. My severance package
would have been nothing." Liz
managed the internal audit department for a large manufacturing firm. When the company changed accounting firms,
it was obvious the new firm thought her department was expendable. Instead they proposed putting in a couple
of their junior people occasionally, declaring it would save the company
money. Liz determined to prove them
wrong. She crunched the numbers and
prepared a report that proved the cost‑per‑hour for her
department's work was less than the cost proposed by the firm. Anticipating the argument, she also proved
that internal auditing made a difference to internal clients by offering
testimonials from several of them. The
capper: Another public accounting firm
offered her and her two subordinates jobs as a group. She's still at the company. As
account supervisor for a public relations firm Jack, at 50 plus, was
considered old for the business. His boss kept hinting Jack was burnt out but
the fact was a hard charging thirtysomething coveted his accounts. Knowing his boss saw them as
interchangeable, Jack began to float the idea of leaving and starting his own
shop. Never once did he mention taking
his accounts with him. He didn't have
to. When the boss questioned the
clients they expressed their great satisfaction with Jack. The hard charger was reassigned.
2. You will attend the organization’s holiday
gathering. Work the room twice so
you’re absolutely sure you’ve thanked, acknowledged, and/or
plumped the ego of all co-workers and bosses alike. It will be remembered. Too many twentysomethings believe they
don’t need to appear or even RSVP because the
invitation is not personal. Who really
cares if they come or not? The
answer: The person charged with
planning the party cares. That person
is inevitably tight with management.
That’s who you’re offending, the planner and the payer. 3. You will keep your resume updated and accept all
offered interviews. The process of considering what kind of job you
want next and updating your resume to reflect that goal is a process with no
down side. There is no substitute for
real world information. It’s all
theory until you declare a job objective and interview with a real
hirer. You need the constant
interaction with reality to do well the job you’ve got. Don’t fall into obsolescence because
of inertia. 4. You will update your education. Your ten-year-old MBA
might as well be forty years old. What
have you learned lately? Do you sound
as if you graduated this year? If not,
you are courting obsolescence. Even
one seminar a year with peers could keep you current. 5. You will challenge yourself. Never trifle with boredom or reprise yourself. You will put not only your job but your
career at risk. It’s so easy to
forget that comfort is the enemy of effectiveness. If you’re hosting a party and
you’re having a wonderful time you’re either drunk or the
party’s dying. If there’s
nothing new to do on the job, move on before they brand you as an
underachiever and escort you out. |
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