Tag: values

Beyond up and more

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Is up the only way? Is more the only mean to advance?

Certainly, that is the popular view. When you are with a company, you figure what your next step would be in terms of career advancement and salary increase. Companies tend to reward with promotions and bigger paychecks their best performers or people with long tenure. They apply a one-size-fits-all measure that gets along well with the broadest culture, and yet might end up disappointing everyone involved.

Unfortunately, many organizations still offer only one way “up”. Become a manager, even if your strengths aren’t in management. Some people who aren’t really cut out to be managers may do an OK job, but they may never feel quite right managing.

It’s the Manager, by Jim Clifton and Jim Harter

There are terrific opportunities to improve this view of the work environment (and of society at large). Just imagine.

You have done a terrific job lately, I am proud of you as you have achieved this and that, and it’s important to the organisation because of that and this. As I know you had to work some extra hours to achieve that, I suggest you take two weeks off and take your family somewhere for a relaxing holiday. We are happy to pay you normal salary while you’re away, and cover the cost of the flight.

The way you have contributed to taking this team to the next level is really outstanding. In particular, I noticed you have done this with that project, and that with this person. You have mentioned during one of our conversation you’d wanted to complete your Master’s Degree you had to abandon to support your family. We’d be happy to cover the cost of your enrollment at University X for the completion of your studies.

You have been essential in closing this customer. Without you, we would have missed the opportunity to discuss the importance of Y, that eventually turned out to be crucial in convicing them. Thanks for the additional research you put into the case. I know that your true passion is in people’s development, though. I have discussed with the head of HR, and they are happy to take you in their team and mentor you on this new path. What do you think?

This does require extra effort, the effort put into knowing team members‘ strengths, wants, needs, ambitions, passions. You should really start today.

Recognition

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There’s incredible value in emancipating from the need of recognition.

We all want our work to be acknowledged, appreciated, rewarded. And yet, when doing that, we shift the focus of the work itself on something that is beyond our control. We set ourselves up for failure. Others often do not praise our efforts and results, not because they are malicious or do not care, simply because their agenda is front and center to them, just as much as our is to us.

So, the alternative is to find pleasure in what you are doing and accepting the recognition that comes from within. I understand it is something that does not come natural, but it can be trained.

Daily or regular practices are great for this. When you meditate every day, record your thoughts on the page every day, workout three times a week. When you do something that requires a certain effort (mental and physical) and creates something that was not there before. Regularly. Then, after a while you start realising that you are not doing it because of the praises you get, you are committing simply because it is something that makes you feel good.

With work, it’s not different. Of course, you change roles, companies, countries, industries. And yet your work can be a daily activity, a daily practice, that has the potential to make you feel good. No matter if your boss says “great work!”, or if you eventually end up getting that promotion.

People, us in the first place, should get better at opening their eyes and recognise the work of others. That’s a fact. And it’s also something we can do anything about.

While we wait, we can train at appreciating the practice of doing what we do.

Tools

Fabrizio1 Comment

When a company implements a new tool, that is no guarantee the tool is going to fix the issue it was hired to address.

Actually, in most cases, it is quite the opposite.

A tool is merely a helper, enabling you to do something. It has very little to do with the definition of what “something” is, and even less with the act of doing itself.

I have experienced companies changing tools over and over again in the attempt to address, for example, a lack of internal communication. This is quite a typical situation in fast-growing organisations. The new tool is usually a fancy and shiny object for the first five minutes, and then people suddenly realise that: 1. they do not know what to communicate; 2. they do not know who to communicate to. And so, the new tool is mainly left unused, or is misused, and the problem persists.

Tools should always be implemented in a solid cultural and practical framework.

Culture is what tell you what to do. In the internal communication example, it tells what to communicate, how to communicate, who to communicate to, how often, for what purposes, and so on. So if a company is undercommunicating, a new tool is not going to solve it, because most likely it is not in their DNA to communicate. Or at least, they still haven’t defined an idea of internal communication that is worth following.

Practice is the act of doing itself. This is usually not very formal, though it can be (for example, a company can have a schedule for internal newsletters, updates, memos, etc.). And still, people working in an organisation know that there are certain things that need to be done, as it is part of their culture. Needless to say, managers and leaders have a dominant role in translating what to do in doing. If a company wants to be better at communicating, and (for very legitimate reasons) its managers and leaders think of communication as a least important task on the list of to-dos, a new tool is not going to send out messages in their place.

We have the tendency to give too much importance to the tool we choose and its features, when actually most of what is needed is already available. Of course, setting the stage for what needs to be done and for doing it means making decisions, and that translates into having a serious look into what is front and center to the organisation. The scarcity of resources is not something that can be addressed with technology, I am afraid.

It depends

Fabrizio1 Comment

At some point, we started seeing every situation as a binary option.

Win or loose.

Good or bad.

Give or take.

Growth or irrelevancy.

With or against me.

And so on. That’s only a narrow interpretation of how things are. One, perhaps, that makes it easier for us to interpret the complexity of situations right here right now. And at the same time, sets us for a neverending battle.

Probably the biggest lesson I have learned in business school is that there is no single, mystical key. Most of the questions about what to do in this or that scenario were met by professors with a very convincing “it depends”. It’s not a way to be conservative and not accountable, rather a powerful sentence that unlocks deep understanding, analysis, and decision-making based on the current situation rather than on mere knowledge and experience.

Eventually, I am certain this is an approach that better fits learning, change, impact.

A question worth asking

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There’s a question you can ask (yourself or your team) every time you are working on a piece of copy to communicate your brand, your product, your company. Say, for example, you are working on the copy for the hero of your website. The question is:

How many companies could claim exactly this?

We believe in making people’s life easier.

Powering digital transformation.

Shape the world we live in.

Smarter business tools for the world’s hardest workers.

The best customer experiences are built with ______.

All-in-one inbound marketing software.

Help Desk software for personal and connected customer service.

Fastest and easiest way to invoice your clients.

Search 1,346,966,000 web pages.

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