Successful Blog

Be Visible but not Annoying

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by Patty Azzarello

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Invisible doesn’t work

Good work does not stand on its own.

But if you are annoying in the way you pursue visibility, you are also not doing your career any favors.

Visibility is not selfish

Visibility is not just about you. Your visibility is good for your team and your business. People with visibility get more done. Get over thinking you are on the high ground by refusing to pander to politics, because you believe good work should speak for itself. Maybe it should, but it doesn’t.

If you remain uncomfortable with visibility, you remain invisible. So even though you keep delivering great work consistently, you will be disappointed by the lack of recognition, appreciation and rewards you receive.

Get more done

And you’ll also have a harder time getting resources and support for what you are trying to do. No one is comfortable giving great projects and big budgets to people they don’t know.

Visibility = progress for your business and your career.

1. Visibility for Real Results

Annoying: Go for publicity without results to back it up.

I am never advocating visibility INSTEAD of results. It’s always about great work and results FIRST.

You never want to be seen as managing your career more than you are doing work. (We all know and wish bad things for those people.) You don’t ever want to be viewed political with no substance.

Valuable: Be seen as doing and delivering high impact work.

The being seen part is as important as the high impact work. As long as you base the visibility on actual work that delivers value, there is nothing hollow or shallow about it.

2. Visibility with Executives

Annoying: Stalking Executives

Don’t talk to an executive when he has to go to the bathroom. I have seen people keep executives outside the door to the bathroom, and refuse to let them in. How much are they really going to listen to you at that point?

Don’t corner them at parties to pitch your agenda or complain about your issues. They are at a party. Don’t drag them down, they get enough of that when they are not at a party.

Don’t Blame them for things, with no proposals for improvement – Don’t bleed all over an executive about how everything is screwed up in their business, and think your analysis will make you look smart. If you have a complaint, have a proposal. Otherwise you are just annoying.

Valuable: Have a good reason to connect with an executive.

Pay attention to what they care about. Give them positive feedback or valuable inputs to solve issues or expose opportunities. Share a personal point of interest. Don’t start with an ask.

Have them know you as a person, not just a climber. Update them briefly when your work matters to THEM. And be careful that your work actually matters to them before you go on about it.

3. Visibility at Important Meetings

Annoying: Don’t go to meetings just to be seen.

The important people at the meeting notice if you have no function or reason for being there, and subtract points from you career. It backfires.

Valuable: Do high value work. Tune your job to deliver more value over time. Be the reason for an important meeting to happen around your work. Find ways to make that work visible in other ways.

4. Visibility based on truth.


Annoying: Never take credit for work you didn’t do.

You may get a blip of visibility, but it will backfire because it is not real. You get no real benefit from promoting yourself on any false foundation. Ultimately people will see right through it.

Valuable: Make other people famous.

Give credit to other people for good work that they did. The great thing about this is that you still get the visibility for doing the communicating. When you give the credit where it is due, based on the truth of who did the high value work, you get recognized for cultivating stars.

How have you seen people get this really right or wrong?

Let’s hear your best stories — the good, the bad, and the ugly in the comment box below!

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Patty Azzarello works with executives where leadership and business challenges meet. She 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

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3 Ways Leaders Demonstrate Commitment and Intentionally Build Community

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10-POINT PLAN: Negotiate a Commitment from Leadership

Inside the Business, Leaders Are the First Brand Ambassadors

You can’t move on the social web without hearing about building communities. Social media jobs are still filled with positions for community managers. It’s true that now, more than ever, having a loyal base of brand ambassadors is a key to visibility, trust, attention, reputation, position in the marketplace — all of which are critical to a solid, growing company.

The conversation and the new positions hardly mean anything if the people talking and hiring don’t deeply understand and invest in the people who are building, being, and branding that community.

It’s about people, people. Instead of thinking about the corporation as an amorphous entity, executives need to remember the individuals at the heart of every organization. Ok, so it’s not exactly an earth-shattering insight, but it’s a sign of how far we’ve drifted that people’s health, hopes, insights, and talents have come to be seen as mere grist for the grinding wheels of capitalism. –Helen Walters, It’s about People, People, Bloomsberg Business Week

On his blog, Doc Searls said this about how business is doing. It was part of an interview with Shel Israel.

In the original website version of Cluetrain, Chris Locke wrote, “we are not seats or eyeballs or end users or consumers and our reach exceeds your grasp. deal with it.”

Recognizing a situation and dealing with it, however are two different things. The “dealing” has barely begun.

Maybe there’s a reason that the best known experts at community building seem to come from solo practices and smaller firms where those self-same experts have been both the leadership and the hands-on people doing the community building.

Because the first and possibly most critical step “dealing with it” — establishing community over transaction” is to negotiate a commitment from leadership.

3 Ways Leaders Demonstrate Commitment and Intentionally Build Community

A conversation from a time in my publishing career.

Editor: “Do you ever want to be president of the company.”
ME: “No.”
Editor: “Why not?”
ME: “Because I don’t want everyone to be discussing what mood I’m in every morning.”

Whether it’s a dynasty, a corporation, a project team, or a two-person operation, the person who controls the finances and the paychecks gets a lot of attention and approval controls. With that power of position comes the responsibility to the health and vibrancy of the organization. That responsibility cannot be delegated, because everyone looks to that position to see which behaviors are modeled, supported, and rewarded.

The emperor sets the culture.

It also makes clear sense that to inspire fans, you have to be one. Know what you love bring it with to ignite the community fire.

Build the first fire under the folks who set the culture. Their behavior will telegraph and prove whether the community you’re offering has a chance to grow and thrive.

The Role of Leaders in Lighting the Fire

Whether we start a community initiative with a team, a department, a corporation, or a company of five — the role that the highest leader takes in the process will have a tangible effect on speed and depth with which a community forms. Leaders who demonstrate commitment and intentionally invest in building community offer living proof that the business believes is there for internal customers.

The people becoming a newly forming community want to know they’re investing in something real and lasting. Based on past promises and experiences, they will mete out and measure the depth of their own commitment by the commitment they see offered by loyal leadership. Leaders who show up — not to run the show — but ready to learn, participate, and work as colleagues and partners are irresistibly attractive. They add credibility, power, and meaning to the idea of community.

Leaders live values-based leadership by finding every opportunity to build a high-trust environment. Here are a few ways that leaders can help build an environment where community can take form, thrive and grow.

  1. Leaders announce their intention to participate. The most important sign that a new loyal community group relies upon is the public words and actions of the “guys” at the top. If we want loyal fans to invest in us, we have to invest in them. Leaders talk about their commitment to the community. They say it out loud and often. They also say how and why. They demonstrate that commitment by making specific promises about observable behaviors and keep them. A simple promise to refocus the role of leader to advocate for internal customers as heroes and one way of doing that is enough to start the community investing.
  2. Leaders come out of their office. An open door isn’t enough. The “open door” policy is a myth. An open door expects the less powerful to interrupt the work of leadership. Community grows where the people spend their time. Loyalty is a relationship built on communication, compassion, competency and consistency. Leaders who are committed to building a loyal community invite a two-way relationship. They demonstrate that commitment becoming friendly, familiar faces — ready to listen, help, and solve problems — in the places where people actually do the work. They see their role as service to the internal customers who help the company thrive.
  3. Leaders are learners and schedule time for it. They reach out to heroes in the business to gather ideas and information. They schedule time to learn more about what makes people good at what they do. They demonstrate their commitment by asking more questions than they have answers and by dedicating a consistent block of time on the calendar — 5 – 10 hours a month — learning from their internal customers what motivates them and how to help the community thrive.

Leaders who see the value of an internal community of loyal fans understand their role and responsibility in helping that community thrive. They make a great place to work and they let employees help define what that is. They establish systems that protect and manage the environment so that folks can work without worrying.

Leaders model and reward high-trust behaviors that bring out the best in others. They admit their own mistakes, speak with care, and share information because they value and respect the people who work with them. Even more they plan and provide opportunities every one in the community to grow, knowing that growing community members mean a growing community that thrives.

How to negotiate these points with leadership?

Be a leader and a fan yourself. Be willing to start small and prove how performance can rise when people are truly engaged in what they’re doing. And remind leadership of the 7 Reasons Why Investing in an Internal Community Makes Solid Business Sense that I wrote about last week.

What examples of great leadership promoting an internal community can you offer?

Related
To follow the entire series: Liz Strauss’ Inside-Out Thinking to Building a Solid Business, see the Successful Series Page.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Man, This is all screwed up…

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by Patty Azzarello

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As a leader how do you deal with with negative energy?

Leading in rough times

This has come up a lot lately, so I wanted to talk more about this point I often mention as one of my top Leadership Values:

It is never the wrong idea to be positive and to lead.

When I say this I do not mean you should bury the problems and pretend everything is OK. Quite the opposite.

Face reality.

I mean jump in with both feet, acknowledge how ugly it is, and personally help find a way out of it.

When it gets bad…

OK, so they said there would be no layoffs, and now they are laying people off. They are treating people like crap. They don’t care. People are pissed off. Now there is even more pressure on schedules and cost cutting. My boss has checked out. No one has my back. I am getting blamed for things that are not my fault. My organization is likely to be shut down, so why should I care. Nothing I do matters.
What will you do next?

Winston Churchill once said,
“If you are going through hell, keep going!”.

You have a choice: Jump on all the crap with an equally negative attitude, or face it head on as leader who intends to make a positive difference for the business and the people.

Why do people choose to be negative?

It’s funny.

It is a wonderful comedic platform to go on about how messed up everything is and how stupid all the managers are, and how no one gives a damn about the employees.

It’s cool.

Being cynical and subversive is way more cool than being the boy-scout, showing that you are aligned with the lame corporate way of doing business.

You look smart.

If you can use a lot of details and data about why everything is screwed up, and dive into endless root-cause analysis, and catalog all the blame at a very granular level, some people will think you are really smart.

It’s easy.

Being negative and generating lots of data and commentary absolves you of having to do any work to fix anything.

But…

Being Negative is Toxic

It doesn’t help.

Nothing moves forward or gets better. This type of negativity draws people in because it a source of energy, and camaraderie in the absence of positive leadership. It becomes the way things are. And then it defines the future.
What does it look like to be positive and to lead?

Acknowledge the bad.

This is a really crappy time. I’m disappointed too. What do you think?.

Invite some discussion.

Let people tell you how this is impacting them. But then close that discussion off and make it clear you are planning to go forward. Ask for their help.

You have my commitment and support to create a new plan of attack. We can’t keep doing things the same way because it is killing us, but we need to move forward. Let’s focus on one thing that we can do well and start doing it right now. Or, at a minimum, let’s focus on how we can build our career capital for the future.

Life is long

If you choose negative path, or if you choose to checkout, or broadcast how screwed up everything is, in reality it might not make a big difference in that moment. So what are you hurting? You are having some laughs.

Sometimes there is no way practical way forward. Your organization could be being dismantled, outsourced or eliminated entirely. So who cares, right? What’s the big deal if I check out? It doesn’t matter anyway..

I have faced this many times at the helm of an organization who was being acquired or laid off… it might not seem like anything we do matters right now because this is all going away.

What you do now matters to YOU

Just remember that even though it might not matter in the current business situation, all of those people around you will eventually move on to other jobs in other places.

They will remember how you acted NOW.

Will they remember someone taking cheap shots at everyone and everything and checking out? or will they remember someone who stepped up tried to find a way to help?

If you can’t help the business, help the people.

People need you to be positive and to lead. It is never the wrong choice.

If it’s too bad, get out

If it’s really bad, get out. But while you are on your way, it is still the right choice to be positive and help others — if for no other reason, because it’s better for you.

You can build a hugely positive reputation for leadership in tough times.
People are always watching. It always matters.

How have you dealt with negative energy as a leader?

It’s so important (and at times really difficult) to stay positive. How do you it? Please share in the comment box!

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Patty Azzarello works with executives where leadership and business challenges meet. She 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 The Azzarello Group Blog. You’ll find her on Twitter as @PattyAzzarello

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5 Ways to start a mutiny!

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by Patty Azzarello

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People want their work to matter

I was preparing to write this blog about how to make work more meaningful for people, when I heard a piece of an interview with Dan Ariely about his new book, The Upside of Irrationality.

I didn’t hear the whole interview, but he talked about a test he did to measure how important meaning was in one’s work. The test was to complete a task repeatedly, until you wanted to stop.

The task was to build a Lego robot.

When you completed it, you got asked if you would like to build another robot.

In one case the robot you built was placed to the side so you could admire it while you built the next one.

In the other case if you said you’d like to build another, they dis-assembled the one you just built right in front of you,  gave you back the pieces and said, OK build another one.

How to drain all meaning out of someone’s work

I’m sure I am doing a dis-service to Dan Ariely’s work by taking this out of context, but that is one of the best metaphors I have heard for taking the meaning out of someone’s work!

It got me to thinking, what are all the ways we drain meaning from our employees work, dis-assemble their robots right before their eyes, mabye even without recognizing we are doing it?  And how can we build up the meaning instead?

1. Changing your mind all the time

Someone completes something you said was really important, but you changed your mind since you first assigned the task.  Now instead of accepting the work and thanking them, you gloss over it and ask them to do something else instead.   Then later you change your mind again, maybe even back to the first thing.

Robot parts are flying at this point!

Let people finish things.  Don’t keep switching the task before people can complete things.  Consider the full cost of changing your mind.  If you really have to change your mind, don’t skip the closure.

Thank people for the work, and communicate a reason why THEIR work still counts,  even though YOU have changed your mind.

2. Not accepting something different than you do it

Be careful here, just because it isn’t like you would do it, doesn’t mean that it’s not good enough, or maybe even better.

Build the robot again, but this time use the blue legos for the feet and the red ones for the arms because that is how I do it.

You are far more likely to create meaning if you accept good work, than if you tweak it to death just to make it exactly like you would do it.

3. Skipping the closure

The urgent customer issue or demand has disappeared because you either won the deal or lost the deal. The team has been working frantically to produce or defend something.

When you no longer feel the urgency, you either forget to call off the team, so they keep working round the clock — oops!   Or you just never go back to collect the work, because it no longer matters to you.

Just because it no longer has meaning for you and you have moved on to other things, doesn’t mean you should take the meaning away from the people that did the work.

Save the robot as a resource

If the work is no longer necessary, close out the project, thank them, and have a quick brainstorming about how we can use this important work for another customer or to solve a general issue.

It’s so much easier to just move on to your next urgent thing, but you are sacrificing your team’s motivation an ongoing performance and support if you skip this step.

4. Not being clear about the strategy

This is probably the biggest and most common hazard I have seen.

Companies are fuzzy about what their strategy is.  But they demand lots of hard work from people, and it is utterly impossible to understand if the work matters to the strategy or not.

Unclear strategy causes lots of wasted time and energy working on the wrong things, or waiting for decisions to be made, but it is really de-motivating for people to deliver work into a strategic black hole.

That is like throwing their robots directly into the trash can.

Make the strategy clear.  It’s what creates meaning for the work.

5. Not connecting the dots for people

Even if the strategy is clear to you, don’t expect your staff to automatically see how their work fits into supporting the big picture.

You need to spell it out and show them why their work matters. If you never connect the dots about how their work specifically supports the over-all strategy, there is no meaning in it for them.

Otherwise, they are just putting their robots on a conveyor belt to be used for unknown purposes.

Ensuring that all your employees understand how the business works, and how their work helps move it forward, motivates and enables them make better decisions and add more value.

With our without financial rewards your employees will do better work, faster, if they can personally see why it matters.

How do you create meaning for your employees?

This is a topic where concrete examples are so valuable. What’s worked for you? Please share your ideas in the comment box.

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Patty Azzarello works with executives where leadership and business challenges meet. She 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 The Azzarello Group Blog. You’ll find her on Twitter as @PattyAzzarello

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3 Sales Lessons we all need

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by Patty Azzarello

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On a recent flight I had a fun conversation with a top sales executive about the profession of selling.

The best sales people have some fundamental things in common:

  • They put themselves out there over and over again with no fear
  • They hear “NO” a lot, and always keep trying
  • Disappointment, hurt pride, and failure have little impact on their continuing to do the first 2
  • They always tune their offer to what their customer values most.

Skip the disappointment

The best sales people get over disappointment quickly and jump right back in the game. They don’t let failures along the way discourage or stall them, or damage their confidence.

One of the best stories I heard about this was a sales person telling a non-sales colleague:

The difference between you and me is that if you went up to every woman in this bar and asked them for a date, and they all said, NO, you would not talk to them again.

If I went to every woman in this bar and asked them for a date, and they all said NO, I would go back and ask each one of them again. And a third time…

Three Sales lessons for your Success

1. NO is never a dead end

Every good sales person I know, can tell you how many NO’s on average it takes them to get to a YES. If their number is 17, when they hear NO for the 14th time, they don’t get discouraged.  Their reaction is more like, “Great, I’ve got through one more step to YES!”

NO, is not only a critical step in the process, it’s viewed as a positive step forward. This is so important in building your career as well.

You need to get turned down.

You need to get over disappointment quickly, and see this rejection as a step forward in the process. Then you need to put yourself out there again – as many times as it takes.

Don’t Stop Trying

I can offer my personal example.

While my corporate career, and sequence of promotions was highly successful by any external measure, people didn’t see all the failures.

They didn’t see all the times I heard, NO, and all the times I went for promotions and was passed over or turned down. The success came from acting like a sales person, improving my value, and putting myself out there — and to keep asking.

So out of about 25 times at the plate, by putting my fears aside, and selling myself again and again, I got about 20-something NO’s and 3 life changing YES’s

You don’t get to the YES without the NO’s.

I see people make the mistake of going for promotion once or twice, getting turned down, and getting discouraged. Then they stop trying.

They blame the unfairness of the environment. Or they manufacture an imaginary high ground, and cite that they refuse to take part in the political maneuvers they believe are required.

The biggest thing holding these people back is that they got turned down, discouraged and then stopped trying.

If you are not willing to keep trying, you are the one creating the obstacle to your success.

2. Find a Bigger Pond

Good sales people go where the opportunity is. If they are assigned a “bad territory”, they find a way to expand or develop it. If they are assigned a genuinely bad territory, they move on and get a different job.

I see many people make the mistake of not moving on, when their environment can no longer support their advancement. They will stay for years, frustrated that there are no promotions available.

I’m all for advancing within your company, and much of what I write about is to help you do exactly that. But if there are no jobs, and several people above you need to die before a position opens up, you need to take it upon yourself to move on if you want to advance.

Or if you have an incompentant manager, you will get stuck. You need to get yourself into a different spot.
Go outside your comfort zone, go get some NO’s from new people, and keep trying!

3. Increase Your Value

When a customer is not buying, a great sales person will pump up the value of what they are selling.
They do this by getting a better understanding of their prospect’s needs, and putting together an offer which is more useful and valuable, and therefore much harder to refuse.

This is also critical in you career.

If you are not seen as promotable, ask yourself why.

Go the extra mile to really learn about and understand what is most relevant to your executive management. Is it new customers? Is it innovation? Is it cost cutting? Is it developing people?

Learn what counts and tune your job to offer more of it. Build up your value.

No one will instruct you to do this. It’s up to you.

Doing your job as written is more like selling a commodity product. Instead create a new product, higher value product. Differentiate your value by tuning your job to have more business impact.

The only way to reliably advance your career is to be always be adding more value to the business.

But don’t forget to keep selling !

What about you?

When did having the guts to be persistent make a big difference in your success? I’d love to hear your story in the comment box below.

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Patty Azzarello works with executives where leadership and business challenges meet. She 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 The Azzarello Group Blog. You’ll find her on Twitter as @PattyAzzarello

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5 Ways to Motivate Virtual Teams

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by Patty Azzarello

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How do you motivate people you can’t spend time with in person?

1. Virtual Team Building (literally)

I always did team building exercises when I had my team in a room together. But somehow with a remote, virtual team, I never considered that it was possible. This was a brilliant idea that one of my members offered. I wanted to share this because it is a great idea that I wish I had thought of ages ago.

How to do remote team building

First, prepare.  Distribute a template ahead of time that each person fills out.  It should include a photo of them, and questions which help people get to know each other.

Some examples:

  1. What is on your iPod?
  2. What was your best/worst job ever?
  3. What are your hobbies?
  4. What is your favorite book, movie, sport, animal?
  5. What is something from your childhood that has stayed with you and you use in your work?

Then when you have your virtual meeting over a conference call, show each person’s template and photo, and have them talk about it.  It is an amazing way to help your team get to know each other as people, and build a much more productive working relationship.

Photos!

Photos alone go a long way to build trust and camaraderie.  If your team is comfortable with photos, create a social media, facebook sort of page for your team to share non-work things with each other.

This is something you can easily assign to someone on your team who is inclined to set it up and keep it alive.  Refer to recent posts in your meetings.
(note: if someone refuses to submit a photo, let it go, don’t force the issue.)

2. Improve the Quality of Communications

Another issue with virtual teams is often that they are spread around the world, in different countries with different native languages.

Conference call communication is difficult enough, but if it’s not in your native language it’s excruciating.

A colleague of mine created a brilliant process to deal with this. 

Add written reinforcemnent to conference calls

On all of their multi-country conference calls they use an additional IM window where people in each country type out the key points being made, translate any jargon, highlight questions and decisions, and clarify areas in the discussion that were moving fast, or unclear.

They also use blog updates which capture the key ideas and decisions from the conference call in writing, to re-inforce the key outcomes and have a record for later review and understanding.

Adding written communications to conference calls, improves understanding, relationships and productivity dramatically.  Brilliant!
(I would think these were good practices even if there were not language issues.)

3. Timing

Being sensitive to time zones can go a long way to make people feel like they count.

Use their time zone: Whenever I recommend a meeting time, I always note it in the time zone of the other person.
From their perspective, if they are not in the headquarters time zone they need to translate every single meeting. Just doing that one step for them makes a big difference.

Use GMT: Another idea that came from a member was to always note times in GMT so everyone has to translate equally.

Share the suffering: Also, if you need to get the US, Europe, and Asia on the phone at the same time, alternate the suffering.  Have the meeting on rotating schedule so that one time zone is always comfortable.

4. Individuals must exert their presence

As a leader, another thing you can do is let individuals who are remote know that part of their job is to make sure they are not invisible.  The more they step up to make their presence felt the more included they will feel and the more motivated they will be.
It just works so much better for the remote individual to own this.

5. Have Better Virtual Meetings

How to have better meetings when no one is in the room:
When people are in a meeting I expect them to be “present” – listening, participating, contributing, and NOT doing email. If people are not going to be present why have a meeting?

Insist on starting On Time.  Everyone is to call in 5 minutes prior and be ready to go on time.  If need be, start the meeting start at 5 minutes after the hour – sharp! No excuses. Being late degrades accountability for presence, and is a huge time waster.  Don’t tolerate it.

Start with a weather report (or another personal topic) from each person on the call.  This gives every person’s presence a chance to be felt even though you can’t see them around the table.  And it gives you an opportunity to treat people like humans, which always helps.

Insist that no one mutes their phone. I don’t care if I hear children or dogs.  This also makes it harder to type, or watch TV without getting found out.  Mute degrades presence.  And it’s another big time waster.  After a discussion has gone down the road a bit, someone will chime in and say, “sorry, I didn’t realize my phone was on mute and I need to go back to …”

Be there. Make it clear that if this is an important meeting you are supposed to have it on your schedule, be on a landline, and not be driving somewhere between more important things.  You need to set the example for this yourself too – or don’t have the meeting.

Have a clear desired outcome and the promise of a shorter meeting.  “We will finish this meeting at 9:45 so that you can hang up and do 15 minutes of something else before your next meeting.”

Reinforce the fact that you value each others’ time. “The reason we have a shorter meeting, keep our phones un-muted, and don’t do email is because we respect each other’s time and therefore commit to being present, even though we are not in the same room.”

What has worked for you?

Having your whole team int the same room these days is a rare exception.
How have you motivated your people around the world?
How did you improve productivity, communication or motivation for your virtual teams?
Please share your experience and ideas in the comment box so we can all get better at this.

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Patty Azzarello works with executives where leadership and business challenges meet. She 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 The Azzarello Group Blog. You’ll find her on Twitter as @PattyAzzarello

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