Tag: change

Reactive or intentional

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At work, you can be reactive or intentional.

When you are reactive, you drop everything you are doing every time a new urgency comes in. You are stuck in a spiral of novelty and unfinished work. You feel powerless and you often end your days with the overwhelming impression of not having accomplished anything important.

When you are intentional, you respond to a new urgency with a deep breath. You finish the work you are doing, or at the very least make sure that you have a solid plan to finish it or to delegate it to someone else. You take out your plan and you check how the urgency can fit. You say no. You feel in control and you often end your days with the priceless recognition of being done.

The reactive mode is fascinating, because it gives us (and others) the illusion of being relevant, important, busy. It’s what most people call “good job!”. Of course, in reactive mode nothing ever changes, and in the long term you are simply drained.

The intentional mode is a choice. It might go unnoticed for a while, because you are not waving your arms in the face of everyone. And of course, in intentional mode you can affect real change.

To understand your default mode, take note of what happens next time your boss calls with a new thing to do.

Then, make the choice.

Inexperienced

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Would you rather.

Learn how to cook from someone who is cooking every day or from someone who has read a book about cooking?

Hearing how to establish healthy habits from someone who has done that consistently over a long period of time or from someone who knows all the theory behind establishing healthy habits?

Take marketing lessons from someone who has successfully established marketing functions at growing companies for years or from someone who has been working at an agency for the past ten months?

Read from a start-up who has just raised €500M or from a start-up who is celebrating their 1,000 followers on Twitter?

There are two lessons here.

First, be mindful about who is advising you.

And second, the safer choice between adding some more knowledge and starting to do the work is the latter.

An interview is two-way

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Your next boss is going to be disproportionately more important than your next role, your next company, your next sector. So, when the time comes for you to ask questions, be ready to interview them. A few ideas.

Tell me about the last time you changed your mind.

What would you do if a colleague and I disagree on how to move a project forward?

What were you doing at my age / at my level of seniority?

Tell me about the last organizational change you managed and what did you do?

What of my background do you find most interesting?

What is the number 1 problem you are trying to fix these days?

How would you react if I’d told you that I want to invest part of my working time for personal development?

I understand, it is challenging to get yourself to ask those questions. That’s because we have been told that during an interview, we ought to do anything to land the job. And that includes being nice and pleasant. And that does not include asking questions that might make the hiring manager uncomfortable.

But if they are uncomfortable with that, isn’t that a sign already? Does it not tell us they will be hiding when the time comes for them to support us? Or to tell us we are not doing a good job? Or to find a better role for ourselves, so that we could thrive in the company?

Interviews are always two-way. You can get better at extracting the information you need out of them.

Follow or not

FabrizioLeave a comment

You can read that your product makes one out of three girls feel bad about themselves, and still comment that it is more likely for it to have positive effects (it’s one out of three, after all), or that the number is only a reflection of what happens in the world.

At the end of the day, the way you choose to interpret the world is up to you.

What is up to us all, though, is choosing if we are going to follow or not.

Replaceable

FabrizioLeave a comment

If you leave tomorrow, the company you work for will continue with their business as usual.

It doesn’t matter if you are doing great work. It doesn’t matter if everybody loves you. It doesn’t matter if your project has shattered all previous records, if the product you are leading is dominating the market, if your last campaign has brought in more business than all other campaigns combined.

It doesn’t matter if you are a regular employee, a manager, an executive, or the founder.

For as much as you think of yourself as the center of the world, most things will continue without you.

And that’s liberating.