So, from now on I will be posting all my blogs to my new consolidated blog titled “Musings of a Business Junkie”, which you can find here. My new blog will still be covering off career management ideas, just now as part of a broader theme about “all things business”. I hope you enjoy the new blog — please don’t hesitate to send lots of comments. Happy reading!

While we all hate making mistakes, making (new) mistakes is a sign of stretching and trying new things… this is definitely an orientation that more and more companies are embracing as they work to stay successful and relevant in ever-increasing volatile markets.  It is how you recover from those mistakes and your ability to learn from them that defines your success. Here is the article:

“John, this could be the end for me.  I’ve done a lot of good work, but where I work there’s little tolerance for screw-ups – the stakes are too big. I need your advice!”

The person speaking wasn’t a client; I’d actually just met him about 10 minutes before.  We were at a party, he’d heard from someone that I help individuals improve their performance; and he came over to meet me. Then I got the download about his screw-up.  Actually, screw-ups.

He’d clearly experienced a “rough patch.” This most recent hassle seemed to be just one in a series of problems he’d experienced. He told me his boss was probably ready to get rid of him.  He wanted to keep his job but didn’t know what to do next.

Everyone, at some point, screws up. How they react afterward can be the difference between a lonely trip downhill and getting a pass for the ski lift to the big slopes.  Here are 6 of my favorite tactics for dealing after you’ve made a mistake:

1. Recognize that this issue doesn’t mean you are a bad manager or that you’re not doing a good job overall.  It means you screwed up this time.  Recognize the difference and vow to do better next time.  And don’t aim for perfection; you’ll be disappointed every time.
2. Listen to the criticism.  Get past your emotions.  Then look at the task at hand. Work through the problem using the same approaches you would if someone asked you to fix a problem caused by someone else.
3. Don’t get defensive.  One way or another, you’ve made a mistake – so make sure you understand the problem or issue.  Ask questions to show that you’re open to the feedback.  The goal is to get a better grasp on where you went wrong and what needs to be done to rectify the situation.
4. Expect heat from others.  If this is a big deal, or one in a series of smaller hassles, it’s likely that those affected (or your supervisor) are going to be cranky.  Let them.  Understand that it’s part of a necessary process.  Once they’ve “shared” with you, it will be easier for all involved to move forward.  At that point, it can be smart to ask what they’d do to improve things.
5. Be a grownup about it – admit that you messed up.  Many, perhaps most, people have difficulty admitting they’ve made a mistake.  Those who will admit their mistakes often gain even more respect for their “objectivity.”  They may even get a reputation of being more emotionally mature in the face of difficulty, which is a sign of leadership.
6. Don’t dwell on this for too long.  Some individuals spend forever focusing on the past.  They review their mistakes over and over, trying to figure out why they did what they did. The smart ones learn from their mistakes.  Then they move forward confidently.  They know they’re not going to do that again. Beating yourself up has a bad impact on how you regard yourself over time.  That, in itself, can be career-limiting behavior.
   

It’s my opinion that the best managers are those who’ve made mistakes and moved forward afterward.  They are the ones who are more likely to be able to guide others effectively as a result of their own learning.  When someone says they don’t make mistakes, it makes me wonder if they have taken enough risks.

John M. McKee is the founder and CEO of BusinessSuccessCoach.net, an international consulting and coaching practice with subscribers in 43 countries. One of the founding senior executives of DIRECTV, his hands-on experience includes leading billion dollar organizations and launching start-ups in both the U.S. and Canada. The author of two published books, he is frequently seen providing advice on TV, in magazines, and newspapers.

Today we have some advice from Kathryn Ullrich, a Silicon Valley-based executive search consultant and author.

Andy Warhol said, “Being good in business is the most fascinating kind of art.” As a passionate executive recruiter, I couldn’t agree more, particularly when it comes to professionals being good in managing their careers. Here, for the New Year, are 11 career tips for 2011:

1.   Look out for #1. Take responsibility for your own career development. Many large organizations have scaled back on training and development-a common outcome of the economic downturn-and small companies can rarely provide significant support. Simply put, your career rests in one set of hands: yours.

2.   Be strategic. Have a long-term career strategy or, at the very least, a sense for where you’re headed. Ask yourself, “What do I really want to do?” or “Where do I see myself in five to ten years?” Seek people in similar roles and ask for their advice.

3.   Work in step with your company’s goals. Connect the dots from your role to your company’s vision and key objectives. How does your work align with the organization’s goals? What can you do to maximize your contributions?

4.   Be customer-centric. Whether your customers are internal or external, know their wants and needs, and be fervent about meeting them. Bring the voice of the customer into your day-to-day work and let it enhance your decisions and deliverables.

5.   Collaborate. Working with and through others is requisite to innovating, creating, and producing business results. Adopt a mindset for teaming and collaborating, and put it into daily practice.

6.   Hone your communication skills. Communication skills can make or break careers. Pick one area that needs your attention-considering skills such as listening, presenting, influencing, persuading, or distilling messages-and commit to improvement. Take a class, practice with a trusted friend or colleague, or join a group such as Toastmasters.

7.   Cross over functionally. Many successful executives have risen through the ranks by taking cross-functional roles, such as moving from finance to sales or from marketing to IT. Follow their lead and you can grow your skills, your network, and your political capital.

8.   Expand your experience. Volunteer for special projects or assignments that are outside your everyday role. Discuss your goals with your boss, an HR representative, or a senior leader, and ask for help in finding opportunities to broaden your experience base.

9.   Find a guide. Mentors can serve as influential role models and provide important guidance for your career. Reach out to a potential mentor within your company or industry and see if he or she would be open to mentoring you for a specific purpose and timeframe.

10. Network-now. The best time to increase your network is today. Starting now, get involved in groups such as professional associations, charitable organizations, or even sports leagues. Step into leadership roles and make your expertise known.

11. Specialize. Today, companies look for specialists, not generalists. Develop a personal brand, distinguish your skills and strengths, and determine how to best market yourself.

My “value-add”…. on tip #11 (specialize), you must be clear on what you are specializing in and whether this has wide applicability to other companies and industry sectors. In some organizations, if you are not careful you can become a very narrow specialist (for example, a very deep skill on an obscure software package) which may only have value in a very small number of places. So while generally companies do look for “specialists”, you want to develop and articulate a “specialist” designation that will have broad appeal to your target market(s).

Great article, Kathryn!

Kathryn Ullrich is a Silicon Valley-based executive search consultant and author of the award-winning book Getting to the Top: Strategies for Career Success (Silicon Valley Press, 2010, $19.95). She also leads Alumni Career Services at UCLA Anderson School of Management.

Steve’s article (When It’s Darkest, Men See the Stars) is well worth reading. In my view, it does a great job of capturing how many of the barriers to entry of building new businesses have been reduced to rubble, clearing the way for inspired people to get out and do their own thing, creating new business successes in their wake. I generally subscribe to his belief that we are entering a new golden age — as with all golden age introductions I suspect we’re talking 20 or 30 years before the dust settles and we clearly see we’re on a different path.

1. “There are better ways to find a job.”

2. “We don’t work for you.”

3. “Until a year ago, I was a car salesman.”

In this case he is exploring human motivation and he comes down firmly on the side of  intrinsic motivators (Type I) being superior (in most cases, and specifically when the work is creative and not extremely mechanistic) to the more classical “carrot and stick” (punishment or reward) extrinsic motivators (Type X).

Here is a great 10 minute video of his book and work that is as entertaining as it is informative — in my view the take-aways are:

• for businesses — think hard about redesigning your employee engagement processes and your incentive systems to get better motivation;
• for individuals — concentrate on some of Pink’s questions and approaches to help you determine when you are “in flow” and what things you really like doing. Then do an inventory of current “motivators” that are in place in your work environment and decide for yourself whether they are in fact truly motivating you to higher performance.

1: College will gain you entry

Having a college or university degree is probably better than not having one however it is no guarantee of meaningful employment. Today, developing career traction is more about how good you are at presenting your skills, interests, and capabilities in a way that allows the prospective employer to readily see how you can help them accomplish their business & organizational goals. Having a formal secondary education as your foundation is certainly helpful however not sufficient in and of itself.

Contrary to traditional thinking, I’m going to go out on a limb and suggest that formal secondary education is going to become LESS IMPORTANT going forward. What’s my reasoning? Increasingly businesses are getting access to lots of very capable people who are proving themselves to be effective researchers and editors (think Wikipedia), software developers (open source projects), creative problem solvers (web-based innovation hubs), and the like. These web-based properties allow people to do what they love to do and to readily show that they excel at it. And ultimately businesses are looking for enthusiastic people who can get the job done, regardless of their formal “credentials”.

I think of college and university degrees as nothing more than “brands” — the thinking being that if I don’t really know what I am hiring, then at least I know that if I am hiring a software designer that earned a computing certificate from a reputable college they are probably competent. Essentially I am buying into the “brand” of the school. However if instead I can pick up some person who has excelled in writing code for an open-source initiative and that has been celebrated by her/his peers as a highly competent designer then I don’t have to rely on some 3rd party brand — I can have extreme confidence in the capability of the individual directly; effectively the open-source community has become the 3rd party brand. There goes the need for a high-powered degree.

So, while much of the workforce will continue to enter the working world from secondary schools, there are alternate paths emerging where other activities can also gain you ready entry — it is really about building the confidence of the employer that you can do what you say you can do and what kind of credible 3rd party endorsement you have.

In Canada anyway, I don’t get the sense that the universities have figured out that their monopoly position might be in danger. I believe they are in for a rude awakening over the next decade or so…

2: You will climb the career ladder

The point the author of the original post was making was that we used to believe in some relatively straight, upward career progression through the hierarchy.  However organizations these days are much flatter and much more volatile, and senior management increasingly recognizes the value of having employees who have more varied backgrounds and have worked in multiple different functions, divisions, continents, and even other companies. So now career progression often looks like a series of lateral moves and upward moves. The “ladder” inside a company looks a lot more like an escalator or a moving sidewalk.

3: You will work for one company

I worked in the high technology sector (telecommunications) for 25 years and in that period I worked for a university research lab, 2 mid-sized firms (from $500M to $2B in annual sales), 2 global firms ($15B – $30B size), and 2 start-ups. I firmly believe that the high tech sector is indicative of where all industries are heading — it is the bleeding edge of the “creative destruction” theory of Schumpeter (see Wikipedia entry for more context). All private-sector industries are becoming as volatile as the high tech sector, driven by new technologies, relentless competition, and globalization.

4: Your career will bring you happiness

5: You will have one area of expertise

6: You will retire with the highest salary

7: Benefits will remain part of your pay package

8: You will be able to retire when you expected

9: Your pension plan funds will be there for you when you retire

10: Social Security will be there for you as promised

I’ll lay out my thoughts on myths 4 through 10 over the next few blog entries.

The cold hard truth – at least in the private sector — is that you are worth more than you are making. And if that is not true over some reasonable length of time then you are not affordable and your current job is in serious jeopardy.  A business exists to make money, and if they can’t make more money utilizing your talents than they are paying you, then the equation doesn’t work, and so neither will you. At least not there.

Company managers often state that “people are our most important assets” and then go on to link that to statements about how much they care for and support and develop their employees. And of course, we want to believe we will be well treated, so we buy-in to this particular idea quite easily. However, it seems to me that they are only really sharing with us the first part of an entirely different statement: “People are our most important assets, until they become liabilities. When that occurs, we must reduce our liabilities as quickly as possible to help secure the financial position of the company.” And of course, since your employment contract is of an indeterminate length, it – like most other legal contracts – can be terminated by either party within a stated notice period.

How does one go from being an “asset” to a “liability”? There are any number of ways, including skills that are no longer current, being a part of a business we no longer wish to compete in, or the outsourcing of a previous inhouse function. It is really a long list, and it is the very nature of how businesses evolve.

Unfortunately, company managers don’t have much incentive to let you know in advance when you — and quite possibly a number of your coworkers — are being considered for the reclassification from “asset” to “liability”. They typically only share that information with you after the decisions have been made. It is delivered in a mostly one-way conversation that usually starts with “…due to financial challenges, we’ve had to make some very difficult decisions that unfortunately impact your future with this company…”.

Now, I’m not arguing that this treatment is wrong. Businesses must actively manage their costs and in many companies the employee base represents the biggest cost contributor. Unfortunately when managers continually articulate only the first part of the asset/liability phrase to their employee base, they do tend to misrepresent the reality of the “job security” that is actually on offer.

So, what can one do about it? The key is to know what you are worth.

To know what you are worth, you need to be able to translate your daily and weekly efforts into terms the business understands and can readily value. The more directly you are able to pin your efforts to activities that the company acknowledges as “value-adding activities” the more leverage you have in driving up your perceived value to the organization. And when the organization understands that value, you generally get to stay in the “asset” column when the shuffling starts.

However, the above “translation” is not always straightforward, and becomes a little more daunting when you discover that in many organizations, up to 70% of activities are in fact “non-value adding” activities. And if that is where your efforts are generally focused, you’ve most likely got a rocky road ahead of you…

Let’s say, for instance, that a large part of your job entails collecting data from various sources, consolidating and analyzing it, and packaging it up for downstream consumption. So far, so good. Now, here’s the kicker — do you know who actually reads your report? It’s not good enough to just know that the 12 people on the TO: list and the 43 people on the CC: list receive your report. Who actually reads it and makes decisions based on it? If your report didn’t come out for a week, would anything fall apart in the business? Would anyone notice? Would anyone (other than the manager making you publish the report) really care?

If the answer is that you don’t know the answer because you are so busy doing the work that you don’t know how it is being used, then that should put up a great big yellow “caution” flag — if you don’t really know how your work is being used, you can’t know if or how it contributes to the company’s wellbeing. And if you don’t know that, then it is pretty hard to figure out where in that “asset/liability” spectrum you are, and which way the tide is carrying you.

So — what was the project you were working on before you stopped to read this? Do you really know how that specific project fits into the current health of the company, and if and how your work is going to be used once you “throw it over the wall”? Your “job security” may just depending on knowing those answers.

“It used to be that a business (think “career” here) transformation was a once-in-a-lifetime event, the sort of fundamental reset prompted by a rare, short-lived disruption such as a new technology, a devastating scandal, or a dramatic shift in costs. But if the recent economic upheaval reveals anything, it is that companies (replace with “employees”) of all sizes, in all industries, are operating in a more volatile, less predictable environment, and that change has become a way of life. To navigate such a rocky landscape, companies (insert “people”) must be ready to repeatedly transform themselves — indeed, to institutionalize the capacity to alter strategies again and again — as business (add “working”) conditions require.”

The article goes on to identify and describe 3 basic strategies for dealing with this business transformation imperative, which are:

“1. Reactive. This is the default transformation strategy; it is minimal, and has become second nature to most seasoned executives. A change in circumstances provokes a short-term response, generally an abrupt shift…” – this is akin to the typical personal “reactive” response to a losing one’s job through a downsizing, business sale, restructuring, or whatever. The employee is often quite unaware that their job is in jeopardy and/or perhaps doesn’t really want to think proactively about that possibility since it can be stressful. Unfortunately when the change does happen they are unprepared for it and the levels of stress experienced are dramatically greater.

“2. Programmatic. This strategy is more comprehensive and is appropriate when major change is required and a company has sufficient lead time. In such circumstances…” This compares to managed career change, when unhappy employees recognize their need for career change and begin to take action themselves (eg: updating resumes, stepping up networking activities, reviewing and responding to job postings, etc.). This could include instances where employees are given significant “warning” about impending job changes and provided long time lines for managing change, access to career transition services, and the like.

“3. Sense-and-adjust. This is the most long-term and sustainable strategy, but only a few companies have successfully implemented it. Unlike the first two approaches, sense-and-adjust is dynamic, constantly and consistently smoothing out volatility in areas of business subject to swift and dramatic change…the sense-and-adjust process is continuous, incorporating new information and forecasting outcomes and expectations constantly..”. We rarely see this in the employment world also; these are those rare workers who work to stay aware of overall business and industry trends and are continually working to understand what new skills and experiences might be valuable to gain to improve their flexibility and fit in the evolving workplace. These are people who work to keep on top of routinely documenting what they have been doing and learning and adding along the way such that it is that might easier to translate their interests and experiences into new opportunities that present themselves.

At almost all career management companies (including CCI currently), offered programs are generally structured to respond to the ‘reactive” and “programmatic” strategies — in the CCI case, our clients typically approach us for our help because either their career has been disrupted ( through job loss or physical location changes brought about by a family consideration), or they approach us as  part of a  “programmatic change” such as a desire to find a job that is a much better fit than what they are currently experiencing.

Where our industry needs to evolve to, I believe, is providing much better support in partnering with our clients in a “sense-and-adjust” world of ongoing career development. The questions I ponder these days is “how can we best support people so that they can proactively manage their career choices, growth, and development? What kinds of tools and coaching can we provide that will help people (i)  better gauge their career progress; (ii) identify skill and competency gaps/shortcoming that may require addressing, and; (iii) develop, execute, and monitor those “career development” plans such that clients are more truly “in control” of their careers?”

From my perspective, those are the tools, support, and mentoring that all people will benefit from the most in our rapidly evolving and highly volatile “world of work”.

The article — aptly titled “It makes Sense to Adjust”, by the way — closes with the following thought; again I’ve added in bold the alignment to people:

“If nothing else, all companies (people) must recognize that the pace and magnitude of change is far faster and greater now than ever before and that transforming their business (work, job, or career) is no longer something they can avoid, defer, or out-manage. Even small moves to increase an organization’s (individual’s) sense-and-adjust skills will reap significant and sustainable rewards.

Any comments on this comparison of business transformation to career transformation? I’m interested in your perspectives…