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When people steal your ideas…

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by Patty Azzarello

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Look at MY great idea…

It’s really frustrating when someone steals your ideas or work.

1. You say something in a meeting, no one reacts, but then later someone else repeats the exact same thing and suddenly gets all the credit.

2. You achieve a breakthrough or invent something, share it with others, then find that someone else is presenting the idea as their own.

3. You deliver a bunch of great work to your boss, the he puts his name on it and doesn’t mention you when presenting it to others.

It’s at a minimum super-annoying, if not downright unethical.

So what do you do about it?

I am an advocate of staying on the high ground. I have done this in my career when someone else absorbs my work with no credit to me.

1. Take advantage of the difference between talking and doing

When someone re-packages your idea and gets all the glory, it is my experience that they are now out of moves. People who have to steal good ideas don’t typically have the capacity to do anything about them — they max out at recognizing and repeating a good idea.

It can be fun to ask them, OK, so what will you do next to make this happen? While they are giving a shallow, hand-waving, “we’ll need more input, or put it to committee” kind of answer, just take control of the next step.

You be the one to develop the idea to the next level and take decisive action on it. Create a communication plan around the action and the outcomes.

You will get known for the important part – doing something. And the moment in the meeting when he stole your idea will fade into the background. Also take some comfort in the fact that others recognize this idea-parroting behavior too.

2. You are supposed to make your boss look good

I remember the first time my boss absorbed a big project of mine. He put his name on it and the CEO thanked him for the amazing job. I was invisible. I was crushed. This was early in my career.

Later I recognized that you are supposed to make your boss look good.

But you need to make sure that between you and your boss, it’s clear the work was yours.

Write up a case study of what you did to be included in your next review. Document how things were when you started, what you did, and what the outcomes were. Document the benefit your boss received.

If it’s all true you are not doing anything controversial. You are just letting your boss know you are happy for him to have the glory publicly, but expect him to acknowledge your work, and not walk all over you.

Sometimes this is inadvertent, and your boss is actually happy to give you the credit publicly. Ask your boss if you can join him and do part of the presentation. Ask your boss to keep you visible. Tell him that this visibility with his peers will help you deliver the next set of outcomes that he needs (that will also make him look good).

3. Don’t confront in public

Whether it’s your boss or your peer that stole your work, don’t do the confrontation in public. If it’s a peer have a private meeting where you say something like:

I am pleased that you were able to run with my idea. I have documented my work for my boss and his peers in other organizations, so that they may also benefit from this idea.

Let them know that you have let other people know behind the scenes where the work really comes from. They will be less likely to continue to advertise their ownership of it, when they realize that lots of people other than you know the real story.

4. You can’t stay invisible. You need to talk about it.

One big reason I see that people get their ideas stolen is that they are not comfortable talking about them.

I know one person who was repeatedly given opportunities to share an invention, and because he did not enjoy public speaking, he didn’t do it. Someone else stepped in to do the presentations and ultimately the idea became credited to the person doing the talking.

Communicate about your work

You need to stand up for your ideas, your work and your team. When you do something good, you need to make sure that you create positive visibility for that work with the people who care about it.

By staying invisible you are just inviting your ideas and your deserved recognition to be stolen by others.

What about you?

How do you share your ideas? What do you do when some takes credit? Please leave your thoughts in the comment box below.

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Patty Azzarello is an executive, author, speaker and CEO-advior. She works with executives where leadership and business challenges meet. Patty has held leadership roles in General Management, Marketing, Software Product Development and Sales, and has been successful in running large and small businesses. She writes at Patty Azzarello’s Business Leadership Blog. You’ll find her on Twitter as @PattyAzzarello. Also, check out her new book Rise…

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Are you a mentor?

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by Patty Azzarello

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.

Who, me?

I remember when I first joined HP, I was notified by my manager that I was to attend a meeting with HR to discuss mentoring.

I went in thinking, “Boy, I could really use a mentor. I am new here, and this is a big company. A mentor could help me learn about other parts of the company and help me build my network.”

I was stunned in dis-belief when I realized that they were recruiting me to BE a mentor.

At this point in my career I had no idea what I had to offer. In fact, I was pretty nervous. “I’m going to get found out…. My mentee is going to report me as being a useless mentor”.

I tried to humble my way out of this responsibility, because I was afraid to fail, and because I wasn’t sure I had time to be a mentor. (Interesting to note how I thought I had time to work with a mentor, but not the other way around…)

I failed to avoid it!

I left that meeting as an official mentor awaiting an assignment of my first mentee. I was given a brief pamphlet about mentoring, which I don’t recall having learned anything from, and I was off to the races.

Two main reasons people don’t mentor

1) They don’t feel like they have something to offer.
2) They don’t think they have enough time.

Let me talk about both of these.

1. You DO have something to offer

What I learned from my mentees surprised me. They would come and talk to me about what was happening in their jobs, and I would share stories about similar things that I did. (I can’t emphasize enough that it did not feel like I was sharing anything of value.)

I was amazed when they would come back and say, “Thank you so much, I did what you said and it worked wonderfully!” When they repeated back to me what they had learned and what they had done, I was staggered to find out that those stories had been so useful.

The reason this happens makes sense once you think about it.

The things you already know seem obvious to YOU.

So you don’t think they are valuable or impressive. They don’t seem fascinating or important — precisely because you already know them!

But the things you know are indeed fascinating and important to others — all the people who don’t know what you know!
And you don’t have to know how to be a mentor, you can just start.

No matter where you are in your career you can be a mentor to someone.

There is someone who can benefit from what you know. And they will do better from having the encouragement of someone who thinks them worthy of investing in.

I have been a mentor ever since. I have found it to be a huge source of learning and inspiration. I always learn stuff from the people I mentor.

2. You have enough time

When I was at my busiest as an executive, I would relish my mentoring appointments.

It was like having a vacation in my schedule for an hour. Every other hour I was on the hook to solve problems, negotiate, mediate, make difficult decisions, sell something, invent something… When I had a mentoring appointment, it was a lovely break from my own job. I was not going to end that meeting with bigger problems or more to do.

But the more important part is that you feel better about your job when you help someone else. You feel more in control. You feel less overwhelmed.

If you feel like you have no time, when you give a little time to help someone else, you realize that you do have time. It actually makes you feel less overwhelmed if you give time to help someone else.

How to become a mentor

If you are mentoring today, bravo, and thank you from the world at large.
If you are not, volunteer.

Here are some ideas:

1. If you have relationships with your manager’s peers, go to them and say, “I am not currently mentoring anyone but would like to. Is there someone in your organization who would benefit?” By the way this does not hurt your credibility with your manager’s peers! But that’s not the primary reason to do it.

2. Make the offer to someone in HR. Ask if there are any high performers one or two levels down that would benefit.

3. Make the offer to your neighbors. Perhaps they have children entering the workforce.

4. Strike a deal with your peers to each mentor someone in the others’ organization. You’ll also get the benefit of getting smarter about the business. You’ll get a steady stream of information from another part of the business, from another level, which you don’t normally interact with. This is gold.

There is really no downside.

Be a mentor!

Join me for a Special Interview with Tim Sanders

I moved this blog topic up to align with my upcoming interview with Tim Sanders about his new book Today We are Rich.

Of the many valuable lessons in this book — the concept that having something to give makes you rich– is a common thread, whether it is time, money, gratitude, help, positivity, or just spending the energy to move something forward.

Please join us for an inspiring conversation on Wednesday April 20 at 9am Pacific Time.
You can register here.

You can also download Tim’s free eBook ahead of time:

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(by the way, for every click to download, Tim sends a donation to the Smyles foundation to educate at-risk children)

What have you learned as a mentor?

Have you been a mentor? What did you think of the experience? Share your stories in the comment box below!
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Patty Azzarello is an executive, author, speaker and CEO-advior. She works with executives where leadership and business challenges meet. Patty has held leadership roles in General Management, Marketing, Software Product Development and Sales, and has been successful in running large and small businesses. She writes at Patty Azzarello’s Business Leadership Blog. You’ll find her on Twitter as @PattyAzzarello. Also, check out her new book Rise…

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Avoid these 3 business failures

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by Patty Azzarello

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Awhile back I wrote a post about Debate Phase vs. Go Phase.

These labels help timid people raise issues when it’s helpful (Debate Phase) and then keep everyone focused on execution vs. talking more, when it is time to go. (Go Phase).

I got some questions about what to do when people undermine Go Phase with passive aggressive behaviors, when they continue to debate behind the scenes, expecting or trying to get the Debate Phase to re-open.

Let people know you are serious

The basic remedy here is that you need to let people know you are serious about the new work in GO phase.

The natural habit of an organization is not to change. People will always go back to what they were doing before if you are not explicit about making the change stick.

Behaviors don’t change for 2 key reasons

1. Dissenters. Passive aggressive people really don’t agree, and they are trying to do something different on purpose.

2. Reality strikes back. People with the right intentions cave when the reactive pressures of the day re-assert themselves, and they get nervous about doing something different or strategic.

As soon as the first person jumps ship and goes back to the old way of doing things, then others will think, “oh I guess we are not doing this new thing any more and I better get back to reacting to the emergencies like before, because that is what is valued. I believe this to be true because I can see people acting the old way, and I haven’t heard about the new thing in awhile”.

I recommend these strategies to my clients to avoid 3 common failures to predictable, on-time execution and to make change stick.

1. Track Progress Better

Have someone help you track progress.

Do you find yourself communicating strategy, assigning work and owners, and then absolutely hating doing the follow-up to keep checking in with everyone to see if things are on track? Or just being too busy with customers and other things to do a good job at this. When I was a CEO and GM, I know I struggled.

I was lucky early in my career to have someone on my team who was great at this. I assigned the work. He wrote it all down, he made sure I didn’t fail to assign specific owners or dates. Then he relentlessly followed up with everyone involved, and created tracking reports for how we were doing on finishing the things we committed to.

If you are not doing a good job tracking progress you will fail to execute.

If you are not good at this yourself, get someone on your staff to do this for you, or you will never get the important things done. I had a person on my staff to do this for me for the next 15 years of my career once I learned this lesson. I would have failed without it.

2. Communicate More

Have someone help you communicate.

Once you make your decisions and you are in GO phase, communicate a lot. Communicate more than you ever thought you could. Get bored to death with your message.

Talk about key initiatives in every communication, in every meeting, in every 1-1 discussion. Make sure that when people see you coming, they know you are going to want to hear about the key initiatives that are in GO phase.

If you are not communicating regularly, you will fail to execute.

If you are not in the habit of communicating regularly, or other things keep you too busy to focus on it, get someone to help you do this.
Have them put you on a schedule for email and group meetings.

Have them write up a straw-man of the communication. Have it include milestones and great examples of how people supported the new strategy, and questions for you to answer about what people are confused or concerned about.

Don’t ever go more than 1-month without revisiting and communicating your progress on key initiatives with everyone involved.

3. Set a good example

Don’t let sloppy behaviors get in the way

I have seen leaders who say they are serious about execution, that it’s the most important thing to them, but then they are late to their own staff meetings. Or they let missed deadlines come an go and never mention it or deal with it.

If you want your organization to be good at executing, you to set a good example for the quality of execution you expect with your own behaviors. And you need to hold people accountable when things don’t get done.

If you have people helping you track and communicate, it’s just a matter of your following through. (but you still have to be on time for meetings!)
What do you think?

What has delayed execution in your organization and what have you done about it?
Share your thoughts by leaving a comment!

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Patty Azzarello is an executive, author, speaker and CEO-advior. She works with executives where leadership and business challenges meet. Patty has held leadership roles in General Management, Marketing, Software Product Development and Sales, and has been successful in running large and small businesses. She writes at Patty Azzarello’s Business Leadership Blog. You’ll find her on Twitter as @PattyAzzarello. Also, check out her new book Rise…

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How to say NO to your boss

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by Patty Azzarello

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What can you do when demands pile up so high that you and your team are constantly over-booked and the work just keeps coming?

I always talk about how you need to rise above the tactical workload and be more strategic — but what do you do when it’s your boss that is causing the problem?

The disconnect

There is a built-in disconnect that I find very interesting:

When you are working in the business, generally speaking, your job is get work done.

But when you are running a business, generally speaking, your job is to go out into the world, learn things about the customers, the competition, and the market and figure out new stuff to do.

Then you come back all excited about what you’ve learned, and share your ideas with your team about how to improve the business — and they are exasperated. You see it as great new ideas. They see it as more work, changing direction, or fire-dirlls.

There will always be a disconnect between what the boss thinks up and what the organization can deliver.

The secret

Here is the secret. Your boss wants you to push back. Your boss is expecting you to think through the business strategy and the workload an offer advice – not to just try and do everything.

“Oh, no. She’s back…”

I know that when I would come back from a trip, my staff would brace themselves and think “Oh, no, she’s back. Now what? What else is she going to want us to do? We are already too busy, why does she keep piling it on?”

As the boss, I wanted my team to listen and internalize what I had learned. But I did not want them to treat all ideas and requests equally and immediately.

I did not want my team to just try and take on all the work and have it kill them. I did not want or expect them to do everything.

What I wanted was for them to catch all the work, analyze it, make judgements about business priorities and come back to me and negotiate.

Advise your Executive

Big Idea: You need to CATCH all the work, but not DO all the work.

I wanted them to stay focused on the strategic stuff we were working on, but be aware that key triggers were occurring in the market.

I wanted them to think it though and recommend to me how we could stage out all the work. How could we keep focused on the right strategic stuff, but then also come up with a way to prioritize the new ideas and take some of them on over time?

I wanted them to suggest ways of streamlining or stopping things to make room for something new.

I wanted them to debate with my about what is most important and why, and suggest how to re-work the plan to do the most important things first.

Who stands out?

The people who would come back to me with a thoughtful proposal for what to do, in what order, that would be good for the business, and do-able for the team were the ones that stood out as high performers.

The ones who didn’t just accept all my ideas and requests, and helped me think through the strategy and priority stood out as high performers.

The ones who tried to take on all the work and do everything, resulting in everything slipping were not so impressive.

The ones who simply ignored my inputs, kept their heads down, and did not step up to the strategic thinking and debate were not so impressive either.

How to negotiate the workload:

  • Keep a list of everything your boss asks for
  • Keep a list of the top strategic priorities you are working on
  • Have regular meetings with your boss where you take out these lists
  • Make recommendations about what to prioritize based on the context of business and the content of these two lists.

When you show your boss these lists several things happen:

  • They get embarraseed not realizing they have aksed for so many things. When they see it spelled out right there in front of them, they can see it’s unreasonable.
  • You win lots of credibility for keeping the list, catching everything, and not dropping anything. You make them comfortable that you’ve got it covered. They trust you.
  • You can ask them “Is this still important”? You will find they have forgotten about several of the requests and have decided that others don’t matter anymore.
  • You will realize that you are not beholden to everything on the list!
  • You will be able to negotiate timelines and suggest priorities.

Your boss forgets

There is a tendency to treate all requests from the boss equally.

You need to resist this because they don’t intend them all equally.

They can seem equally excited or serious about a wide range of ideas. Some are vitally important, others are just musings. It’s hard to tell. They will often forget things that asked for, or change their mind without telling you.  You need to check. They need you to help them with their thinking.

You are being paid to judge and decide, not just to do everying you are told.

What do you think?

How have you pushed back successfully? How have you found ways to reinvent your workload to add more value. Please leave your thoughts in the comment box below.

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Patty Azzarello is an executive, author, speaker and CEO-advior. She works with executives where leadership and business challenges meet. Patty has held leadership roles in General Management, Marketing, Software Product Development and Sales, and has been successful in running large and small businesses. She writes at Patty Azzarello’s Business Leadership Blog. You’ll find her on Twitter as @PattyAzzarello. Also, check out her new book Rise…How to Be Really Successful at Work AND Like Your Life

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Dealing with annoying people

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by Patty Azzarello

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I often say that your job is your job description AND dealing with all the crap that gets in the way of getting your job description done.

Stupid obstacles often come in the form of people’s opinions, corporate policy, changes of direction, fire drills, conflicting goals, delayed decisions, unclear strategies, shall I go on?

It’s always important to remember that you can’t blame your failure on other people being stupid.

Six months or a year down the road, if the reason that you didn’t get something done is because someone else has or hasn’t done has something, or someone else has blocked you, you are still the one who has lost.

1. The right language

Clearing an obstacle that is being put in place by another person or policy has everything to do with language.

And there are two language techniques I have found to be really useful to get things going your way again when you are confronted with difficult, rigid, indecisive, or stupid people.

What is the NAME of the Meeting the other person would WANT to attend?

For example, If your requests for a program change in other organization are going ignored, the name of the meeting YOU want to have with the manger is called something like,  “You are doing this wrong and I need you to change it, because it’s killing me”.

But would they really want to attend that meeting?

Change the name of the meeting to name their problem, not yours.

When you are trying to get someone to do something for you, you need to name the meeting something that is relevant and motivating to them.  “I want  to discuss how my team can solve your most critical competitive issue, with no increased cost on your part”.

Then when you have the meeting, make sure to stay relevant to them.  Describe your problem in the context and actual vocabulary of the business problems they are facing right now, and how the action you are requesting is directly beneficial to them.

If you don’t use the right language, you will not be relevant to them, and you will continue to go unheard, and un-helped.

2. “I’m hoping you can help me…”

The angrier and more frustrated you are, the more you are likely to start a conversation with something like, This is all messed up because [of something you, (or the people you represent are doing)]

Do you really expect their reaction to be helpful at this point?

Wow. thank you for telling me how stupid and wrong I am.  You are so smart, please tell me what do do next? I am at your service.

Even if it is all their fault, if you need to influence them to do something better or different, a far more useful approach is to open with, “I’m hoping you can help me”.

I use this not only colleagues, but with utility companies, hotels, and health insurance providers all the time.  It works like a charm.  I guess, because you are using some charm…

Engage people to WANT to help you

When someone says to me,  “I’m hoping you can help me…”, I always think, “hmmm… I wonder what this challenge might be?  Can I really help? I’m kind of hoping I can help …

This approach builds people up instead of cutting them down.  They have power to help if they choose to.  Giving this small bit of respect makes them want to help you.  People generally like to help.

If you don’t attack them first and tell them how wrong and incompetent they are,  you stand a far greater chance of getting what you need from them.

I know it is frustrating when the people you are dealing with are actually wrong and/or stupid, but if they are indeed creating an obstacle, it’s your job to clear the obstacle and get the job done, not to prove that you are right and demand their support.

How have you persuaded difficult people or adversaries?

Leave your ideas in the comment box below!

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Patty Azzarello is an executive, author, speaker and CEO-advior. She works with executives where leadership and business challenges meet. Patty has held leadership roles in General Management, Marketing, Software Product Development and Sales, and has been successful in running large and small businesses. She writes at Patty Azzarello’s Business Leadership Blog. You’ll find her on Twitter as @PattyAzzarello. Also, check out her new book Rise…

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Debate or GO?

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by Patty Azzarello

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Organizations waste a lot of time communicating badly.

They fall into the trap of talking about things that have already been decided, or not talking when input is genuinely needed.

Problem 1. People don’t speak up when they should

Executives don’t know all the answers (even if they act like they do).

They rely on healthy debate from their team to get all the important information, opinions and concerns out on the table.
Without that, they can’t make a good business decision.

But the other side of the story is that people often feel punished for speaking up.
When they try to give feedback to the executives they get shot down. It feels like their inputs are unwelcome.

If this happens often enough they stop even trying. Why bother if my ideas are never acted on, and I only get grief for speaking up?

Problem 2. People keep talking when they shouldn’t

I have seen management teams waste huge amounts of time by revisiting decisions over and over again, questioning the direction and circling back for more data.

When this happens, the organization is slow to engage because they perceive the continued discussion to mean that the direction is still in question. So they wait for the answer instead of moving forward. Or they continue to add to the conversation, raising even more issues or data to help inform the decision.

SInce the executives think the decision has already been made, they get really frustrated that people are slow to act, not engaged, and stalling forward progress with more questions, inputs and arguments.

DEBATE or GO?

One of the best tools I have used to fix this is a simple model of Debate Phase vs. Go Phase. I make it clear that for every initiative or decision, there is DEBATE time and there is GO time.

Debate Time: Talking, Questions, Input, Arguments are welcome.

During debate time, I make it clear that I want to hear people’s opinions. I want to hear the arguments. I want everyone to fight for their point of view.

That’s how I get the best and most complete information.

Make a Clear Decision

After debate time is over, I make it clear who owns the decision, and make sure the decision gets made.

GO Time

Then I make it clear that we are in GO time. The decision is communicated and the action is officially kicked off. This is the time to engage in the work, not in the debate. The debate phase is over.

Expected Behavior & Trust

This simple frame and set of labels builds an atmosphere of higher trust because people can understand the rules of the game. They know when and how to participate without getting their head handed back to them.

You give them a chance to feel safe raising their opinions or arguing the point (which you need them to do) because by definition you are in debate phase.

By setting this structure, you can make it clear that during debate time, the expected and valued behavior is to speak up.

Then once you announce the decision has been made and make it clear that it’s GO time, people trust that you will stick to the decision, and that the expected and valued behavior is action, not more talking.

How do you get your team to decide and move forward?

Leave your ideas in the comment box below!

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Patty Azzarello is an executive, author, speaker and CEO-advior. She works with executives where leadership and business challenges meet. Patty has held leadership roles in General Management, Marketing, Software Product Development and Sales, and has been successful in running large and small businesses. She writes at Patty Azzarello’s Business Leadership Blog. You’ll find her on Twitter as @PattyAzzarello. Also, check out her new book Rise…How to Be Really Successful at Work AND Like Your Life

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