The musings, advice and inspiration of a mid-level manager just trying to do a great job and the right thing.

Diary Entry #124 – One of My Best Management Tips

May23rd
2013 Leave a Comment Written by Cameron

“I’ve been blessed to find people who are smarter than I am, and they help me to execute the vision I have.” ~Russell Simmons

 “No one who achieves success does so without acknowledging the help of others. The wise acknowledge this help with gratitude.” ~Unknown

Do you want to accomplish more? Do you want to do it quicker? Do you want to foster collaboration? Then practice consciously asking for help at least once a day. You will be AMAZED at the results.

In today’s business environment we simply do not ask for help nearly enough. We may ask for it occasionally, but we almost always err on the side of not asking for help as opposed to asking for it. This leaves us struggling in areas of weakness, spending less time in areas of strength, and making mistakes that could have been avoided. The reasons are relatively obvious:

We will show how much we don’t know – So we struggle to learn something that may have limited value later on, we make mistakes others have made before, and we create a substandard result because of it. All this so that we can manage our image and save ourselves the potential embarrassment.

We will get turned down for assistance – The classic fear of rejection scenario that ignores that you will be successful a certain percentage of the time, focus on the wins, not the losses. Along with this is the fear of being a burden on others, which neglects the fact that you can return the favor of time and expertise.

We prefer to count on our own efforts/knowledge – This confused sense of “ownership” is just an excuse for our unwillingness to listen to others or our poorly developed ability to manage the work of others.

However, when we lean on the expertise and wisdom of the entire organization we create synergies (such an overused buzzword, but without assistance from others it is impossible), and this creates amazing results for a company:

  • Better Products/Results – Sharing the wisdom and experience to get it right the first time.
  • Greater Employee Engagement – Subject matter experts will often come from your staff
  • Quicker Learning Curves – No need to cut a new path when someone else has already blazed a trail before
  • Greater Empowerment – By letting people run with areas they are comfortable with, you can confidently let them take charge
  • Greater Collaboration – The very nature of asking for help, builds greater collaboration between the parties that wouldn’t have existed before.
  • More Time, not Less Time – Less miscommunication, more time in your areas of strength, less time in your weak areas, it’s Economics 101 and it all creates more time for you to accomplish even more.

So start by offering your assistance where you see it could be used and asking for assistance with some small things. As you work on this and see it grow into larger functional areas, you can be look back on it and see that you were the person who helped create greater and greater collaboration within you company. But it starts with you offering and asking for assistance once a day….get to it.

   
Managing Your Boss, Managing Your Employees, Managing Your Peers, Managing Your Work, Managing Yourself

Diary Entry #123 – How to Turn Defeat into Victory

May22nd
2013 Leave a Comment Written by Cameron

“Men meet with failure because of their lack of persistence in creating new plans to take the place of those which fail.” ~Napolean Hill

“Success or failure in business is caused more by the mental attitude even than by mental capacities. ~Walter Scott

At the moment you lose an argument or discussion point, ultimate defeat has not always been decided. You may have lost the battle, but the war may not have been decided. It all depends on what you learn and what action you take. Too often we take discussions of policy, projects and directions and turn them into defensible “Me vs. You” sort of discussions. This is short sighted and neglects a longer term opportunity for you (and the company).

Always remember you are there to serve the company or department, not to just serve your ideas. I recommend three things when you lose an argument that lays out a direction or action items you were opposing:

Invite yourself to the after party – Too often when we lose an argument we shut down, leave the room, and pass on complete ownership to the opposing party. DON’T. Stay and be a part of the planning of the next steps. This proves that you are not a sore loser, that you have something to contribute, and are willing to do what is best for the company/department.

Don’t be a wallflower – Be an advocate for the opposing idea’s success (remember, the battle is over). Offer to be an active participant in some facet of the idea, don’t just observe, pout, and withhold your services. Lending your expertise and abilities helps with overall success and gives you a stake in the success. A little success for you is better than none at all.

Be the life of the party – Look for ways to improve the idea and take it to the next level. You are not looking to take over the idea (this isn’t a coup), just make it as successful as possible. This is where you can showcase your talent and maturity. It also allows you to take some ownership of the direction you may have initially opposed.

You will win some and lose some, but the person who leverages the losses in a positive way will gain either way. When you set Pride aside and move quickly from the failure of your argument to the success of the decision, you open up opportunities for you to shine and use your abilities. Depending on how it goes, it could be an even bigger success for you down the road.

   
Managing Your Peers, Managing Your Work, Managing Yourself

Diary Entry #122 – Quick Draws Aim Poorly

May20th
2013 Leave a Comment Written by Cameron

“If you don’t have time to do it right, what makes you think you will have time to do it over?” ~Seth Godin

“It takes less time to do a thing right, than it does to explain why you did it wrong.” – Henry Longfellow

Short cuts and cutting corners will work out some of the time, but other times they will blow up in your face. I’m from Vegas, and I assure you the odds aren’t worth the price. If you are going to put in the work, make sure it is something worthwhile. It is a terrible thing to go home at the end of the day and not be proud of what you have accomplished. Every bit of work that you do is a reflection on you and your abilities, make sure you are conveying the very best of yourself through your work. Furthermore, you risk creating more work for yourself if the project doesn’t reach its full potential, or worse, outright fails.

OK, so we all knew that already didn’t we? So why do we short change ourselves and our projects? Let’s tackle the most common reason sited for taking the quick route to the end of our task:

Efficiency – We often think it is the smart thing to do. While you may be looking to cut corners and save time and effort, you are often pushing the work to others, or pushing it off to yourself later. If you were to look at the total amount of work for the task (including what others do and the cost of redoing things), you’ll usually find that spending the extra time to do it right comes out well ahead. Have you ever cleaned up the mess left by someone cutting corners? Probably. Did you think highly of the person who did it? Probably not. Think about that the next time you want to take the shortcut.

If you chronically take short cuts or cut corners, it will eventually catch up to you – either by reputation or horrendous mistake. Make every instant the best example of your capabilities. Put another way, make your work worth it.

   
Managing Your Work

Diary Entry #121 – The Pathway to Leadership

May19th
2013 Leave a Comment Written by Cameron

“It is a mistake to look too far ahead. Only one link in the chain of destiny can be handled at a time.” ~ Winston Churchill

“Only those who constantly retool themselves stand a chance of staying employed in the years ahead.” – Tom Peters

Career progression naturally lends itself to the correct leadership “path”. You are a great employee, so you are promoted to lead. You are a great lead, so you are promoted to Supervisor, then manager and higher. Along the way, you typically acquire a staff, and as you grow the number of staff members tends to as well. To put it succinctly:

  • First you Lead Yourself
  • Then you Lead One
  • Then you Lead a Team
  • Then you Lead Many Teams

But as with a familiar hiking trail that is always great to revisit because you see new things you never saw before, so you should revisit your path to leadership during times of change, or even at regular intervals to see if there is something new to discover. Those leaders who are constantly evaluating themselves and their techniques are the ones who get ahead quickest.

Lead yourself – You adjust with each role as the demands change. You adjust as the dynamic in your department/company changes. You adjust as you mature and discover what works and what doesn’t.

Lead one – Has your successor or sounding board changed or moved on? Once this person moves onward and upward do you have another protégé in mind? Is how you are leading them needing an evolution due to the ideas presented in the point above?

Lead a team – Are you getting the results you anticipated? Is the team coming together as one unit? Are there new opportunities/dangers that have come along? Are you creating a structure that can “scale” to more teams?

Lead many teams – Have you created metrics to help oversee the departments closely? Have those metrics changed? Are there new opportunities to build synergies between teams?

The Pathway to Leadership is a long one, but has familiar milestones along the way. As you pass these milestones, reflect on what you have learned, what the present situation demands, and make the correct changes to your style and technique to fit the situation.

   
Managing Your Employees, Managing Your Peers, Managing Your Work, Managing Yourself

Top 10 Retweeted Quotes of Last Week

May18th
2013 Leave a Comment Written by Cameron

73 Retweets – “Before you are a leader, success is all about growing yourself. When you become a leader, success is all about growing others.” ~Jack Welch

71 Retweets – “It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.” – Charles Darwin

68 Retweets – “The pessimist complains about the wind. The optimist expects it to change. The Leader adjusts the sails.” -John C. Maxwell

62 Retweets – “If everyone has to think outside the box, maybe it is the box that needs fixing.” ~Malcolm Gladwell

62 Retweets – “A successful man is one who can lay a firm foundation with the bricks others have thrown at him.” ~David Brinkley

61 Retweets – “Management is the art of making problems so interesting that everyone wants to get to work and deal with them.” ~Paul Hawken

69 Retweets – “A leader is not an administrator who loves to run others, but one who carries water for his people so that they can get on with their jobs”

55 Retweets – “To be successful, you have to have your heart in your business, and your business in your heart.” ~Thomas Watson

55 Retweets – “Be clear about your goal but be flexible about the process of achieving it.” ~ Brian Tracy

55 Retweets – “Leaders don’t create followers, they create more leaders.” ~Tom Peters

   
Quotes

Diary Entry #120 – Tough Project – Bring a Friend Along

May17th
2013 Leave a Comment Written by Cameron

“A friendship founded on business is a good deal better than a business founded on friendship.” ~John D. Rockefeller

Sometimes we come across one of those tasks or projects that we just don’t want to do, or just can’t find the motivation to do. When that happens I will often try to work on it in the presence of someone else, or if appropriate, team up on it.

We are all social creatures and camaraderie is almost always uplifting and makes the task much more fun to do, and more likely to get accomplished and accomplished well. Sometimes even just the physical presence of someone in your office, at the conference table, or in a cube next to you can have a big impact on your mood. This does require that you both have work or a project (if not teaming up) that you need to get done, it cannot be a waste of efficiency, it needs to be an increase to efficiency. Other than that basic parameter, here are the others I use:

Friendly, but not best friends – It is tough to get anything done when you are talking constantly, you want a companion who’s company you enjoy, but who you won’t spend too much time socializing. I find best friends too distracting in this context.

No distracting work for another – Neither of you should be doing work that is distracting (conference calls, loud construction work, etc).

Can be an employee – I’ve brought employees in to work with me, this has a double purpose in that I have someone there, and they often have little questions/comments about their work that come up that give me a chance to improve the operation, or at least gain a better understanding.

Accountability – At the outset, tell them what you are working on and that you need to get it done. This helps keep you on track and puts a little extra pressure to get it across the finish line.

So consider this tactic the next time you have a “dreaded” task, you may find it useful.

   
Managing Your Employees, Managing Your Peers, Managing Your Work, Managing Yourself

Diary Entry #119 – Recovering Quickly Speeds Up Success

May16th
2013 Leave a Comment Written by Cameron

“Sometimes when you innovate, you make mistakes. It is best to admit them quickly, and get on with improving your other innovations.” ~Steve Jobs

“Failure is a prerequisite for great success. If you want to succeed faster, double your rate of failure.” ~Brian Tracy

We talk a lot about learning from failure and how failure is a key to eventual success, but what I wanted to speak briefly about is the importance of increasing the speed with which we recover from failure. While we must take some time to reflect on our mistakes, it is also beneficial to “get back on the horse you fell off of” as quickly as possible. You have to keep moving toward your goal. Taking action to better your circumstances is one of the keys to happiness, and in this case, turns a negative situation back towards the positive.

So because I find it easier to take action when I have step-by-step instructions to follow, I offer the following when you incur a mistake:

Acknowledge the mistake – The quicker you acknowledge that there was something you could have done to prevent what happened, the better for everyone. It is important to not deflect blame, but to acknowledge who was really responsible.

Determine what went wrong – Make sure you understand what went wrong. I know this seems simplistic, but what went wrong on the surface is often caused by something under the surface. With that said, be careful not to overanalyze and get stuck the “paralysis by analysis” trap.

Find a solution – How can you fix what went wrong? Do a quick brainstorming where you don’t take into account the implementation of the solution (this opens the door to potentially new solutions). Once you have your list, THEN evaluate ease of implementation and how well it will solves the issue.

Get back going – Put the fix into place and get going toward success!

Don’t dwell on your mistakes, tackle them head on with passion. If you speed up your resolution of mistakes, you speed up your rate of failure and therefore get to success faster.

   
Managing Your Work, Managing Yourself

Diary Entry #118 – BIG Opportunity in Instability and Uncertainty

May15th
2013 Leave a Comment Written by Cameron

“Successful leaders see the opportunities in every difficulty rather than the difficulty in every opportunity.” ~Reed Markham

“It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.” – Charles Darwin

Your greatest sources of opportunity in your work and in your career will almost always coincide with instability and uncertainty in the workplace. Those who accept it and deal with it quickest and best will have the edge over others. Let me use this analogy:

If you are running a race, and all of a sudden the Race Marshall comes out and says that the course has changed and points a different direction, who will take the lead? Those who argue with the Race Marshall that the prior course was better? Those who sit down and whine that they didn’t sign up for this new course? Or those who make a turn and start running in the new direction?

While the analogy is simplistic, make no mistake, instability and uncertainty is a test for your peer departments, peer companies, peer employees and peer managers. Those who find the most constructive means of navigating the environment, and do not let emotion run wild will win.

Instability and Uncertainty is not something most of us go looking for, or necessarily enjoy, but try to see that there is an opportunity for you to shine and to differentiate your company, department, or self in this environment. And THAT is something to look forward to.

   
Managing Your Work, Managing Yourself

Diary Entry #117 – Jump Under the Bus

May14th
2013 Leave a Comment Written by Cameron

“A good manager is a man who isn’t worried about his own career but rather the careers of those who work for him.” ~H.S.M. Burns

“A real leader faces the music, even when he doesn’t like the tune.” ~Author Unknown

Great leaders, and I mean GREAT leaders, not only never throw anyone under the bus, but actively throw themselves under the bus in place of their staff. Do you know any leader like this? Would you admire them if you saw them? The fact that it is so rare is a testament to how difficult it really is.

So why do they do this? OWNERSHIP & EXAMPLE

Any mistake in their area of oversight is their fault – They should have seen it coming, should have prepared better, should have audited work better, or should have set up better processes. They understand that there is always something they could have done to prevent the mistake from occurring, and while the employee or peer may have had culpability as well, ultimately they are the leader.

Setting an example of accountability for their staff to follow – If your boss is owning ANY mistake that could possibly be their fault, how much easier is it for you to see that owning up to mistakes is OK. Just as you take a wide area of responsibility, your staff will begin to emulate that and take accountability for overall department performance not just their area.

Letting the staff know that they are supported – You are demonstrating that they do not stand alone. This can be incredibly freeing for your staff, mitigates fear of failure, and based on both of these facets, significantly increases productivity.

Building Goodwill – How much harder would you work for someone who took the heat for you? Or at bare minimum stood alongside you? Just saying.

This isn’t easy, especially in a corporate environment that uses a heavy hand regarding mistakes, but the maturity you show by doing so can reap enormous benefits for the productivity of your department and your career. To use a battle analogy: Your staff is not cannon fodder, lead them from the front lines. Just as their success is your success, their failure will be yours as well.

   
Managing Your Employees, Managing Your Peers, Managing Yourself

Diary Entry #116 – You Should Not Heed All Advice

May13th
2013 Leave a Comment Written by Cameron

“The worst vice is advice.” ~Al Pacino – The Devil’s Advocate

“Don’t follow any advice, no matter how good, until you feel as deeply in your spirit as you think in your mind that the counsel is wise.” ~David Seabury

In an effort to brainstorm, get new ideas, get past the struggle, or just get unstuck, we are likely to try any number of things. One of those is to ask advice or to talk about the issue with others, then get unsolicited advice. But what do we do with that advice? Getting opinions is great, but sometimes those opinions come from questionable sources. You need to ensure you are taking advice from the right sources, so consider the following when looking to act on any advice:

  • Do they have relatable experience? Have they walked a mile in shoes similar to yours? Have they dealt with this issue, or a similar issue, before?
  • What is their motivation? Your peer may have competing ideas, or an axe to grind with another department. Your wife may want you home more to help with the house and the kids. You just want to ensure that there are no ulterior motives.
  • How has their own advice worked for them? It pays to look at where their decisions have led them. Are they fulfilled in work and life? If they aren’t then consider their advice with a grain of salt.

Only when you have vetted the advice should you move forward. Not all advice is created equal: advice from my 4 year old on driving is usually not good advice (though telling me to slow down is sometimes correct). This method of review can be good when you have been given different advice on from different people.

So just make sure that the advice you are given, is weighted with some reality. Remember, just because someone gave you advice does not mean that you are not ultimately responsible for the results. After all, it was YOU that acted on the advice.

   
Managing Your Work, Managing Yourself
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