by Charles Plant | Nov 28, 2013 | Leadership Development
Office politics and turf wars seem to hit a nerve with people. The thing is that it’s all so unnecessary and can be easily eliminated if companies realized what a toll it’s having on the organization. Here’s what I think is causing office politics in the first place.
- Executives are creating their strategic plans but not properly communicating those plans down the line.
- Thus workers are confused as to what exactly they should be doing.
- So they make up an answer and proceed to do whatever they think is best.
- Which leads them to compete with people who also think that they have responsibility for the same thing.
- So they compete for resources, budget, attention, whatever is necessary.
- And they frequently end up duplicating efforts.
- Wasting resources,
- And pissing off customers who retreat confused.
The poor schlub who sits at the bottom of the chain spends his life (notice that I said ‘his’ because schlubs are never female) battling turf wars. The thing about turf wars is that they are impossible to win. You’ll always be fighting a rear-guard action against the enemy trying to encroach upon your turf.
Of course I turned to Sun Tzu to hear what he had to say about turf wars: “The good fighters of old first put themselves beyond the possibility of defeat, and then waited for an opportunity of defeating the enemy.”
Good old Sun Tzu. Always something pithy and apropos to quote so the writer can seem erudite, well read, and intelligent.
by Charles Plant | Oct 16, 2013 | Leadership Development
Are you sitting doing your job quietly while everyone else is getting all the glory? Do you wish that more people paid attention to what you know? Are you upset when obvious phonies get all the attention?
It sounds like the beginning of a Charles Atlas ad that promises to turn the 98 pound weakling who gets sand kicked in his face to a super buffed guy who gets all the babes. But at work it is truer today than ever before.
If you can’t promote yourself, why would anyone else do it for you?
Oh yes, you can say that self-promotion is a waste of time. Eventually someone will notice what you do but that just isn’t the case. Unfortunately, people who don’t promote themselves rarely get anywhere. This is why effective self-promotion is one of those skills that a leader can’t do without.
Now I’m not one to ask how to do this because I actually suck at it. I would rather learn something from someone else than talk about what I’m up to. I just can’t figure out the right balance. That’s why I’m not very good as an entrepreneur, not very good at sales unless I’m dealing with someone who makes decisions based on evidence versus personality.
Now several weeks ago, I admitted I wasn’t very good at networking and it’s all part of the same gene. I haven’t figured out how to network well and I’ve not figured out this self-promotion thing yet. I think I’ll have to develop a process.
If you have any ideas on this, I would love to hear them.
PS: As I finished this and went looking for an image to steal and post to accompany the article, I discovered that there is a Dummies book on Self-Promotion. MUST BUY.
by Charles Plant | Oct 11, 2013 | Leadership Development
Of all the questions you need to ask when you’re looking for a new job, perhaps the most critical is “How will I know when I’ve succeeded?” This is the same as saying, when is enough enough?
Let’s say you’re sitting down to write a report for the first time to recommend a certain course of action. You’ll have to ask yourself a few questions.
- How many alternatives should I examine?
- How long should the report be?
- What level of detail should I include?
- How will I know when I’m done?
Typically what happens in situations like this is that the work expands to fill the time available. The report is done when it’s due. This means that you work away at it slavishly just until you can’t work any more because you’ve reached the completion deadline (or slightly over it) at which point of time, it’s finished.
If you’re looking for a new job, you’ll need to figure out how the company looks at things like this.
- What feedback do you get when you finish a major project?
- How does this influence the appraisal process?
- How does it influence compensation?
- How will it influence opportunities for advancement?
Questions, questions, questions. If your prospective employer can’t answer these things then watch out.
by Charles Plant | Oct 8, 2013 | Leadership Development
Yesterday I set out four questions you need to get answered in an interview to tell if you’re going to be working for a good boss. In case you’ve forgotten or too lazy to check, the four questions are:
- How will I know exactly what is expected of me?
- How will I know how I’m doing?
- How will I know how to get better?
- How will I know how I’ve done?
Today we’ll look at the first one. You probably got a job description from the company before you applied. That must have gotten you so excited by requirements like: “Must have good knowledge of Excel” and others like “Responsible for inter-departmental process facilitation.”
Whatever. It’s a job and you need one but will you be working for an idiot? Does the job description tell you what you need to know? How will you know what’s expected of you?
Most job descriptions only talk about the process and not the results that are expected. What should be key for you is figuring out what results they want. This might not be in a job description but it should exist somewhere.
Wherever it exists, does it tell you what results are expected? And exactly, with measurements like; “Responsible for 13% net profit on sales to new markets?”
Does it tell you what your limits of authority are like “Must get all sales above $100,000 approved by manager in advance.”
This will tell you something about how good your new boss is at delegating. If she has thought through metrics it will mean that you’re responsible for results and have the authority to do the job. Otherwise, micromanagement here we come.
by Charles Plant | Oct 7, 2013 | Leadership Development, Uncategorized
I was asked an interesting question the other day by someone who is looking for a job. She wondered that with all the idiot bosses out there, how can you tell in an interview whether or not you’re going to have a good one.
I didn’t have a good answer so I thought a while on this one and here’s what I decided:
If you want to be successful in your next job, you”re going to have to be working in an environment that supports success. This is your boss’s job, to ensure that you’ll be as successful as possible.
I hadn’t thought about this as the boss’s job but when you get down to it, this is what a boss has to do. A boss has to manage or lead you in a way that makes you successful. So to figure out whether the boss will be any good, that’s what you’ll have to find out, whether she’ll do the things necessary to make you successful.
I’ve said before that if an employee fails, it’s the boss’s fault. He has failed to hire correctly, train correctly, or supervise correctly. But what about an employee’s perspective? What does an employee need besides native capabilities to be successful.
Well it comes down to four things. Besides the right resources, an employee needs to:
- Know exactly what is expected of them,
- Know how they’re doing,
- Know how to get better at it, and
- Know how they’ve done.
If a boss can do those things then you should succeed. For the rest of the week I’ll propose questions that will attempt to get at answers to these questions.
by Charles Plant | Oct 4, 2013 | Leadership Development
There is a great Peanuts cartoon that exemplifies the problem of competing visions. In it, Lucy is talking to Charlie Brown.
‘Charlie Brown, life is like a deck chair on a cruise ship. Passengers open up these canvas deck chairs so they can sit in the sun. Some people place their chairs facing the rear of the ship so they can see where they’ve been. Other people face their chairs forward – they want to see where they’re going. On the cruise ship of life, which way is your deck chair facing?’
Replies Charlie, ‘I’ve never been able to get one unfolded.’
While RIM’s problems of competing visions are well publicized, the problem seems to be a staple of today’s environment.
- Microsoft’s board is now feuding with Gates and considering removing him as they feel he has too much influence.
- Dell has just won his fight with Icahn over the future of Dell Computers.
- The US is mired in a fight over what role government should play in a free society.
Vision intransigence and competition are not something new but seem to be growing in business. As the role of the company founder diminishes, boards have no clear person to turn to to foster a new vision. Their problem is one of building a vision around shareholders or around customers, or have some have done it, around employees.
When there are founders running private companies, vision is clear and the responsibility of one person only. When the company is public or the founder is no longer there, does the CEO really own the vision? In theory yes, but that isn’t always the case.
