Focus on your tasks!

There are many things to look out for to have a successful and gratifying business career. If we compare a business career to a game then your education (and relationships!) is the key to let you play the game and to start the game at a certain level (which in turn will decide, in most cases, where you will end up in your career).
Once you have the education and you're in a job you are ready to play the game but now it's a different game. It is different because now you don't want to get in now you want to get up or you want to have more freedom to make decisions or you want to be noticed or you want to be liked etc.
If you focus too much on what others do, how they do it and why they get what they get instead of focusing on your team and/or work tasks you have a good chance that you won't achieve anything. It is good and smart to learn what your leaders want and how they want to get things done but you don't let that interfere with the tasks you're working on. How do you work with your teams if you are a leader yourself? 
When you have a task (e.g. improve the sales order turn-around-time from x hours to y hours) then you don't need to worry about Team ABC that works on Sales Compensation. If you question why that team has more budget, why some of their team members get promoted while you can't promote anyone or you don't get promoted yourself you focus on the wrong things! You have to focus on your task (improve the sales order turn around time). Learn how you can do it. Who can help you to do it? Communicate and network with the key players in that area and make sure that they understand what your team/you are doing to achieve that goal. An attitude that shows you want to reach that goal (with your team) without putting your team/yourself in the middle of the stage will help. Put all your effort into this and get the task done!
Notice that in every sport (e.g. basketball, soccer) the players are focused on the game! Yes, there are interesting things happening all around them. There may be thousand distractions but they are there to play their sport! Take the current NBA Playoffs, most players are pretty young and they manage NOT to be distracted. This is what makes them successful! They focus on what counts when it counts. Do the same thing for yourself in your job and focus on your tasks!

Efficient Sales Force (sharing an idea)

How does an efficient Sales Force operate? This is a topic that could easily fill a couple of books. So I want to restrict my idea here to a very short list of tasks that I think a small to medium size Sales Force in the IT Industry should perform. Do they perform tasks like account planning, opportunity management, quote preparation etc. by themselves or do they have to have Support Personnel to do these tasks for them? 
My answer is yes they should do most of these tasks themselves because it is beneficial for the Sales Team to be self reliant. It's also fosters a more dynamic culture. The less teams/people are involved in the Sales Process the less points of failure we have. This requires a good and clear partnership between the appropriate business and IT resources/departments.
Asking the Sales Force to perform more tasks by themselves requires the Sales Team to have an "allrounder" mindset. This is only possible when the tools and processes are manageable for one person. To find an environment where the system and process landscape is manageable by one person is more likely in newer and smaller companies. Example: If every product (Hardware, Software, Services) an IT company is selling can be quoted in one process and tool then one Sales Person needs to be trained (in <= 1 day excl. Product training) to use that tool and they are good to go. The good thing about this is that the Sales Reps feel responsible for these tasks. They "own" the process and tools and don't hide behind other teams. Many newer small to midsize company Sales Teams seem to be more self reliant than older/bigger companies.What I mean with self reliant is that the Sales Reps do more tasks themselves. Is that good or bad? Is this approach scaleable once the companies become bigger or not? How can this work for companies that have hundreds of systems and different systems in each part of the world? I don't have the answer and I don't pretent there is an easy solution but it is worth thinking about these and similar questions because the correct answer for your company could potentially yield large benefits.

Here is what I would consider an ideal example of a small to midsize Sales Force (assuming we are beyond the opportunity phase).

1. Prepare the customer visit (determine what Customers to visit, determine products that these customers would benefit from, determine contacts at company etc.)
• Sales Rep uses one tool to access information
• What products at what price did we sell to the customer before?
• What competitor products are out there? How are they different from the products our company offers?
• Who is the contact person in that company?
• Is there any cross or up sell opportunity?
• special notes about company contacts (e.g. upcoming birthday, lunch/dinner preferences etc.)
2. Go to the customer and build a mutually beneficial relationship
• Capture Opportunities (e.g. current issues with xyz ...customer might benefit from our product/service abc)
3. Prepare a quote for your customer
• Sales Rep should be able to prepare one (preliminary) quote for all products in one system
• Configure complex products in configuration tool (e.g. SAP Variant Configuration, Big Machines etc.)
• Show cross and upsell opportunities
• Tools shows what products/services this customer bought from us before
• Determine VSOE compliant Price with applicable Discounts for customer (based on Sales Rep authorization levels)
• Show price on header/item level to Sales Rep (to determine potential discounts)
• If additional price approvals are needed a workflow routes it via email to the correct people
• Prepare customer presentable quote
4. Turn the quote into an order
• typical ERP functionality (e.g. Credit Check, Global Trade Checks etc are performed)
• trigger sales compensation for Sales Reps that they can follow

This list could obviously be much longer and much more detailed (!) but for the Blog Post this should suffice. Note that there are many different situations and circumstances and hence the "ideal" answer I describe above does very clearly not apply to everyone.
How can you make your Sales Force more efficient? Think about it! There are improvement opportunities in EVERY companies. What can YOU do in YOUR company today?

Executive Communications

What you have to keep in mind when you communicate with Executive and Senior Management is that they usually don't have a lot of time. What I mean by Executive and Senior Management is a manager that manages more than 100+ people.  If you are not at the peer level with them you will have to schedule a meeting ahead of time with their Admin. When you schedule this meeting treat their Admin like you would treat the Executive or Senior Manager themselves! Explain clearly what the purpose of the meeting is. Why do you need to meet with them? What do you expect to get out of the meeting? How can the Executive or Senior Manager help? Don't ask for more time than you really need. These people are busy and if you ask for too much you might not get anything at all. So keep the meeting request to the minimum amount of time because in that case you might get a chance to present your case.
Expect that even the Admin might not be very patient and friendly. There are many people who would like to spend some time with these Managers so they might not always be as patient as you would like.
Once the meeting comes it can happen that the meeting is shorter than you expected. So if you have scheduled 30 minutes for your discussion, plan to finish it in 15min or less. Note that I mentioned discussion and not a PowerPoint slide presentation! If you have to have a Slide Deck than just use it to guide the conversation. Keep the slides to a minimum --> don't use any font size smaller than 14 (the bigger the better). Don't add more than 3 bullets on a slide etc. Test the communication (if possible) with someone before you have the real discussion! This will help you to improve your communication and to have a higher chance to get what you are looking for.
Make also sure that you don't present details! These people are used to work on a higher level and will not appreciate if you bring up topics that they don't understand. Their job is to connect the dots and to lead the organization in the right direction, not to understand each and every single dot in detail! This obviously means they can't afford to get lost in details. So don't go there! If they ask for it (and you should plan ahead of time for these potential questions) give them just as much information as they need but don't give in to the temptation to show off your Subject Matter Expert knowledge. Short, clear, precise and goal focused communication is the key to any success on that level.
Last but not least keep in mind who you are talking to and prepare accordingly. If it is a Finance person then they will most likely look for numbers to verify the information you're presenting.
Even though this list sounds probably somewhat long and frighting it is well worth the investment. If you get on the same page with an Executive or Senior Manager that can have career changing implications! So yes, it's tough but well worth the effort if you do it right. Put some effort in it and prepare these communciations well and they will pay off!.
Good luck with your Executive and Senior Management conversations.

Success measures

Who is measuring if you are doing a good job? How do you measure if your team is doing a good job? In order to determine that you have to agree on some meaningful goals ahead of time. In some cases you might set the goals in some other cases the goals are set for you. All this is pretty basic HR stuff that most people are very familiar with. In any case it is important to discuss your business goals ahead of time because they will, most likely, influence your career. Are these goals something you really want to do? Is it something that you are truly passionate about or is it just some "stuff" that you have to do? I think we all have some goals that we have to do and that we are not passionate about but since we just have one life I would love to spend the majority of my time on things that I really care about.  If that is the case your career is on the right track. If it isn't than you have to do some work to get your career back on track.
If you can't agree to many of your business goals then you should start thinking about how you can change the goals or if that is not possible about leaving the team. If you want to or have to stay with the team then you should focus your energy on your goals. Have a successful career by that measure until something else comes up.

Enthusiasm needed

If you are really excited and curious about the things that you do on a daily basis you have a chance to become really good at them and to be happy and successful. Focus on what you like and don't measure it only in Dollars or recognition. You might end up doing what you do only because of the money or the respect but not because you love doing it. Is that how you want to spend the rest of your life? In order to be successful for yourself you have to be able to spend your time in a way that you enjoy! You have only one life so spend it wisely. There are many ways to be successful in almost any way of life. If you are a roofer or a dean at a university or a CEO, everyone can be successful finacially and personally. It's up to you to focus on your strenghts because you don't think about your pay check all day long, right?

Working from home

More and more jobs allow you to work from home, at least partially. I think there are some jobs where you can do that well and others where that is not really a good option. For Retail or Service oriented jobs it is pretty obvious that you can't work from home but for other jobs like for example consulting or professional training it is not always that obvious.If you do it right it can be very efficient and convenient. The most important aspect you need to consider, beside finding an employer that let's you work from home, is that you have enough self discipline to schedule your day as if you are in the office. Start the day like you would start a regular office day and dress as if you would go to the office. If you can do this then you can work more effectively from home as when you're in the office because you have less interruptions.
To work from home all the time, like a teleworker, requires a very high level of discipline and is definetely not the right option for everyone. In my experience many people can work from home effectively for 1-2 days a weeks but they struggle to do it all the time.

Selling yourself

You should be prepared at any time to explain quickly and simply what you do. Why is that? Because if people don't understand what you do they will not appreciate what you achieve. To say this very bluntly is you will get stuck in your career because people (managers, peers, direct reports) don't know what you can help them with. To make sure that people understand what you do you have to take some time to think about it and then tell them without jargon or long winded explanations. In short you have to sell yourself on a regular basis and in a non-intrusive manner. Just make sure that the people that most influence your career understand why it is good to have you on their team.
Here is an example: If I tell you (as my manager) that I'm working to optimize Sales Processes and Tools in the High Tech Industry does that mean anything to you? This is so generic that it is useless. It has to be something more specific like I'm working on the quoting process for my company to make sure that our quotes get faster to the customer (e.g. within x hours) and by ensuring we do that with less money and effort (e.g. cut our current costs by 20%)  by June 2011. 

Commander's Intent

Do you know the saying “no plan survives contact with the customer?” It comes from the military saying “no plan survives contact with the enemy”. Since the army knows that this is true they came up with a high level concept in the 1980s that is called the Commander’s intent (CI).  CI is a crisp and clear statement that is used at the top of every order. It specifies the plan’s goal and the desired end-state of the operation.  On different levels of the organization there can be different CI’s.  A high level example might be “Make Afghanistan peaceful”.  The Army suggests 2 questions to arrive at the CI

1.       If we do nothing else during tomorrow’s mission,  we must …

2.       The single, most important thing the we must do tomorrow is …

Read “Made to stick” from Chip & Dan Heath if you want to learn more concerning CI and many more valuable concepts. What is your Commander's Intent?

Change

Is change good or bad? I guess it depends on what kind of change it is and how you perceive the change. A change can be an exciting opportunity to improve a situation or it can be the first step in the wrong direction.
Most of the changes in our lives form first in our heads and then they happen in real life. So make sure you approach change as positive as possible. That sounds much easier than it is! Think about a Merger & Acquisition situation or on a more personal level on a separation from your partner. These are big changes and they are not easy to deal with. Another example could be a project that you get assigned in your company. Let's say it is a very challenging and critical project for your company and you know that senior management is paying very close attention to this particular project is this good or bad for you? Is this something great for you because you can show what you and your team can do or is it something scary?  Your judgement of the change will determine how you approach it. Don't waste energy and fight the change but instead try to make the best of it!

Strategy and operational solutions

According to the Oxford dictionary this is the definition of strategy: "a plan of action designed to achieve a long-term or overall aim". In many companies this is a plan that covers somewhere between 2-5+ years.
The strategy is key to any organizations success because in that plan the organizations leadership should clearly state what the organization is going to do and what it is not going to do. Note that the decision what to do and what not to do is a key element of any strategic plan. A crisp and clear strategy will make it easier for your operations team to actively support you. In addition to the strategic goals there are also short-term or tactical or operational plans for up to 12 months.
How often are your short-term goals in conflict with your organizations long-term goal? I see on a regular basis that we have to come up with short-term solutions that might present a considerable departure from the strategic goal. In some extreme cases it might even be the opposite from the strategic goal. While I agree that in some special, isolated cases it is necessary to have these workarounds I disagree that this can be a valid default answer. You shouldn't always have to come up with a short term and a long term solution. If you have to do that you should have a hard look at your strategy process.
Make sure that the strategic goal setting provides a workable framework for your operations team. Stretch goals are desired but unrealistic goals should be prevented.

Make sure your good ideas don't get killed

As I mentioned in my last blog post I'm currently reading the book "buy in" from John P. Kotter. This book is trying to explain how you can successfully get buy in for your ideas. As you well know whenever you are trying to get others to buy in to your ideas you can expect some resistance. Kotter identifies four different ways on how good ideas get killed. He refers to them as attack strategies.

1. fear mongering: He identifies this as an attack strategy that is raising anxiety. People start with undeniable facts and then tweak the story in such a way that it becomes frighting.
2. delay: Killing the idea by delaying it. An example might be: We have so much on our plate now we can't do it.
3. confusion: Bringing up irrelevant facts or offering too many options makes it impossible to get a clear message out and hence to get buy in.
4. ridicule (or character assassination):  Sometimes people try to make you look silly. They may raise questions about your competence etc.

Here is how he suggestes to deal with these attacks

• Get everyone included in the discussion and give them a chance to shoot at your idea. This is to get peoples attention.
• Don't try to react to attacks with data and logic. Respond instead with short, clear language (no jargon or complex arguments). This is to keep their attention.
• Don't counterattack! The negative effects of the counterattacks will overshadow any kind of short term satisfaction that you get out of it.
• Don't focus on the attacker and their arguments e.g. if 20% of people provide these attacks, focus on the 80% of people that are with you
• Be prepared. Even when you need to get only buy in from a small and friendly group. Always prepare

This is obviously just a very short summary. If you're interested read the book. I think it is very helpful to go into more detail on these ideas.

Listen effectively

In order to learn anything we have to listen. Naturally we seem to have the ability to do that since we listen to our parents and others from early childhood on. We do it unconsciously but we do it and that is how we learn to speak. As we get older it seems to get harder to listen. We are more focused on our own interests and less on what others want. The interesting and sad thing is that the more we focus on ourselves the less we will achieve with others.
Let's look at a simple example: Wayne the Project Manager has a meeting with Mary the Controller about a potential budget cut for one of Wayne's Projects. Wayne has learned about the potential budget cut through the company grapevine and he is getting suspicious when Mary sets up a meeting with him. Wayne is preparing his defense and getting in his full battle mood even before he meets with Mary.
In order to have a meaningful and constructive meeting it would make sense for Wayne to first listen to Mary to understand her point of view better. He doesn't have to agree with her (!) but he needs to understand why she considers a budget cut. Once he has this information he can much more effectively address Mary's point of view. If Wayne prefers to just voice his frustration then he doesn't need to listen(!) and he will not achieve his objective to reverse or at least minimize the impact of the budget cuts. So listen really means that you have to stop thinking about yourself, put all your thoughts and interests aside for a moment and focus on the other person 100%. That is hard to do if you don't have a real interest for others.
You might be able to fake this for a little bit but the truth will come out quickly. Therefore stop faking interest because real interest has to come from the heart. Listen, learn and evolve!

Some thoughts on Business Goals

A common business practice is to distinguish between short-term and long term business goals. Short-term goals are less than 12 months, therefore they are more tactical in nature. Everything above 12 months is a long-term goal and is more strategic. Short-term goals should be detailed, specific and measurable. The timelines should be realistic but challenging so that you have a reasonable chance to achieve them. A project plan with specific actions by specific people would be an example for a short-term goal. The tricky and most important part is to tie the short-term goals to the more lofty long-term goals. Have you had a situation where you implemented a “quick fix” just to see it becoming a permanent fix? Keep track of your “quick fixes” and ensure they don’t contradict your long-term goals. Also don’t set too many long-term goals because you

• want your team and you to remember all the goals
• want to decrease the chance that some of the goals are contradicting
• want to keep your team motivated by making progress towards these goals

Three Top Priorities

What are you're 3 Top Priorities at work? I mean what 3 things are most important to you and your organization? If you don't have a good and fast answer for this question you probably should do some work in that area. From a business point of view it is dangerous to not have an answer because if you don't know what your top 3 priorities are then how do you and your team spend your day at work? If you want to increase your teams and/or your own efficiency, engagement and focus you have to know what your 3 most critical business challenges are. Write it down and review it with your Key Stakeholders and the Team. Get agreement that these are the most important tasks to work on. Without agreement it will be challenging to get the necessary commitment from the Team to really own the tasks. These Key Tasks should be communicated regularly to everyone. Be transparent, show what you and your team are working on, review it regularly in your Project or Staff meetings.
Why 3 priorities? In general 3 priorities is a good guidance based on my experience because most people can remember up to 3 objectives. If you use more you're running the risk of diluting your objectives. Don't try to be everything to everyone.

Teamwork

As a (Project) Manager you can't always pick the team members or the topics you have to work on. Nevertheless you're still expected to build, or to be a part of, an effective team quickly.This is a challenging task because it usually takes time to get to know each other while you work toward a common goal. A good team requires a certain degree of trust and respect in each other. Everyone in the team needs to have a desire to contribute to the teams objectives and to help each other out. Only when you achieve mutual trust within the team you can expect real teamwork. This means that indiviuals place their own interests beneath the best interest of the team. In order to have this success you also have to be willing to pay the price for it. Every Team member has to be willing to sacrifice time and energy and to be accountable. In the end it will come down to the desire, dedication and enthusiasm of every individual on the team.
In a successful team people look out for each other. When team members care only about themselves the whole team suffers. Based on my experience I think that the best way to build relationships is to get people together outside of a work context. What are you doing to build a successful team?

Grow your Team

As Peter Drucker said "No executive has ever suffered because his subordinates were strong and effective."
If you want to have a strong team you have to have strong team members. That applies to Project Teams as well as to functional teams. One way to grow your team is to ask for advice from your team before a decision is made. This gives the team a possibility to contribute and to help you form an opinion before a decision is made. This is very different from going back to the team after a decision has been made and then explain why you did what you did. For most Leaders there are so many tasks to be done that you can't do them all by yourself. You need help, sooner or later. If you try to do it all by yourself you get burnt out quickly. Therefore I consider it the responsibility of a leader to develop other leaders. What do you do in your team to develop leaders? Here are some benefits of developing leaders in your organization: They can help you to

• see things you might not want to see,
• get things done
• make better decisions 
• provide security and direction to others

What are the Qualities of a leader?

Today I read a book that stated that these are the qualities of a leader:  good character, influence, positive attitude, excellent people skills, proven track record, confidence, self discipline, effective communication skills and he/she should be discontent with the status quo.
Now a couple of these are pretty self explaining like confidence and effective communication skills. Others are pretty fuzzy like good character. What is a good character? It might be something different for you than it is for me. Then I think some characteristics are missing like: appropriate functional knowledge, someone who cares for his/her team and passion for your work. We could go on and add more but I think all this is trying to do is assigning labels to people. That makes live easier because you meet someone and give him a label and then you don't worry about it anymore. In turn this also shuts the door to some learning opportunities. I think it's worth to take the time and acknowledge that different industries, teams and people need different leaders. You can't just read a book or practice a certain Leadership style and assume that this is THE way to do it. Stay open and learn. There are many right ways so learn as much as you can and adjust your leadership style as needed.

Email, IM or Meeting?

It's worth to think about how you can address an open question or requirement before you send out the next level of an email chain or setup another meeting. There is a place for every communication (e.g. email, IM, Phone calls, face-to-face meetings, blogs, wikis, SharePoint etc.) it's up to you to use it appropriately.
Take some time and think what you really need and who can help you to get it. Don't give in to the temptation and just "throw it over the fence" to the next team. Also don't involve people just FYI (for your information) because they don't care in most cases. In addition to that you might earn a reputation as someone who sends meaningless communications.
I sometimes get long email chain's where the last person doesn't repeat the question/requirement but instead refers to a statement within the email chain. Now I have to go back and read the whole email or send it back to the sender to clarify. This is a serious time waster! Almost always multiple people are copied on these emails and so the waste is multiplied. Here I have some example guidelines that help me to choose a proper communication tool.

• IM: If you have a quick question and know that it can be answered without typing a novel
• email: When you want to clarify a situation, maybe even ahead of a meeting. The email should be concise and focus on some key points. As a guideline I always use 3 points, if it has more I keep refining it. If I have to read the email multiple times to make sense out of it, it is too long
• Meeting: (Phone, Face-to-Face, Web) When you have multiple stakeholders and a problem where not everyone has the same understanding it is good to have a meeting. To make the meeting successful you have to prepare it. Don't schedule meetings that you can't prepare.

Idea Sharing - Share people, not documents

What is the most effective way to share idea's? When something works well in a project or program it is always a question how you can spread this idea to more teams/people. In many cases the approach will be formalized and added to a "Best Practices" Document. While this might spread the idea, maybe via a Project Management Office,  it also takes some life out of it.  Generally people are excited if something works and they are typically glad to share what made them successful. When you just write it down in a document you take some life out of the idea.
To keep the idea alive and get the excitement to more teams have you thought about sharing people instead of documents? You can get some "live" feedback from "future idea adopters" and see what they consider good or bad and improve the idea even further. In addition to the feedback itself, the process of getting together and sharing the idea improves the relationship with colleagues/clients. Whenever your idea lends itself to being spread in such a way, do it. The idea will spread faster and will have a longer lasting impact.

Increase efficiency by taking breaks

When I walked my dog a couple of  weeks ago I listened to a Podcast from the Cranky Middle Manager show.  This episode was with Tony Schwartz and was about 4 needs (physical, emotional, mental and spiritual) that we all have. I thought it was 25 minutes very well spend especially since he had some interesting, practical idea's combined with scientific evidence like planning your day in 90 minute blocks. Focus 100% on a task for 90 minutes and then take a break. Breaks are important!
A couple of years ago I didnt' take any breaks. I was in projects where I was so consumed by some tasks that I didn't want to take a break. I wanted to get the tasks done, I needed to know that the open tasks were properly addressed. So I spend many late hours without any breaks and still didn't get it done properly. Then in the late evening I even had problems getting to sleep because the open tasks/questions were still following me.  When I got up the next day I was exhausted and the tasks got even harder. Then a couple of days later ,after I had a short break and some distance, I was walking the dog or running and I got the idea that helped to solve the task. Tony Schwartz describes some of these learning's in an entertaining and concise way in this podcast. Listen to it! It can help you to plan more efficiently.