Is it time to rewrite your job description?

Old Clocks (Photo credit: servus)

There is never enough time. It’s such a common complaint it starts to sound legitimate. Soon, we slip into a state of overwhelm and simply accept it as the new norm.One of the advantages we have when we begin any new venture or new job is the benefit of fresh eyes. We can look at a new challenge and go through a process of evaluating…

• What is most important here?
• What seems to be working?
• What gets the most traction?
• Who are we serving that can’t live without us?

The gift of that new perspective is we have no attachment. We have no idea of right, wrong, good, bad– we simply observe and ask questions. That non-attachment, and absence of being entrenched is why we feel so light and so energized in the beginning.

Can you give yourself that gift or that opportunity to take a step back…get out of the day-to-day craziness long enough to put on fresh eyes?

If you have been in your position for a couple of years or longer, it’s time to write a new job description for yourself. The world is a much different place. Technology is reshaping what we do and how we do it with such speed, it is easy to overlook new opportunity.

If you were hiring your replacement, what are the critical competencies you’d be looking for? What is different about the job this new hire faces vs what you faced when you began?

Our idea of adaptation to change is often “what do we need to add to keep up?”

It’s rarely “what can we stop doing because it is just not as effective anymore?”

We seldom ask “what are the high value activities for today..that 20% of what we do that generates 80% of our results?”

How much lighter would our burden be if we got rid of those things that just aren’t working as well now? Would we have more time to innovate and have a clearer vision for new strategy if we purged all the no-longer-useful or nice-to-haves?

If our organization is well run, we have some version of strategic planning that takes the organization through this process.

Unfortunately, we forget to do the same for ourselves.

Having the presence of mind to look hard at our job with fresh eyes is an opportunity for renewal.

• Sometimes that renewal takes the shape of streamlining our activity in a way that is more efficient.
• Sometimes that renewal takes the shape of reconnecting us with a new vision that is exciting and energizing when we spot new opportunity we want to focus on.
•  Sometimes that renewal takes the shape of a realization that what we are doing…simply doesn’t fit anymore.

Rewrite your job description. Give yourself a fresh start. It’s a great way to get out of overwhelm and feel energized again.

 

 

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Is sticking with what you know killing you?

Exhausted? How out of control is your inbox? How many voice mail messages have you not returned? Were you happy to jump back on that treadmill to nowhere this morning?

Ouch. I don’t like poking you…but you have to admit. With the amount of stuff that gets hurled at you, it is tough to keep up and even harder to direct your attention away from it if you can’t see around the pile! Have you unwittingly put yourself in jeopardy?

Hospital - new operating room - NARA - 299584 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Are you putting your health at risk?

There are two groups of people I had in mind when I wrote this title of what you know may be killing you.

If you recently moved up into a new role OR if you have been in your current position for a long time and haven’t taken the time to look at what is high value today to the stakeholders you serve…you may be a hostage of your really efficient brain on autopilot!

Our brains are an organ and like any organ, designed to conserve energy. Our neurons wire together to avoid having to learn behaviors over and over again. Furthermore, our brains are hard-wired to look for patterns and ignore things that don’t seem to fit. We form habits and ways of looking at our world (jobs) that are what we know.

Because what we know is familiar, we go along piling on more and more…carrying a load that gets heavier by the minute and never set it down long enough to see—do we still need to bring along all that we have been carrying?

If you are in a new role, you may gravitate to patterns because you are unfamiliar with the new terrain and haven’t figured out what you are going to need yet.

If you have been in the same position for a long time but were given the opportunity to write a new job description that focused your energy and insights on what matters most today…what would you redirect your energy and attention to?

Is this as an opportunity for a giant do over?

• What will you immediately stop doing because it is simply not productive for your stakeholders any longer?
• What was your predecessor (or you) doing that no one else seemed to care about?
• How will you decide what matters? What questions do you ask to find out what matters?
• Who do you need to talk to for input?
• What are your signature strengths…the things that you do REALLY well?
• Are those the same things that matter in the context of what is needed in this job today?

Back to the stuff that is getting hurled at you.

Just because it feels familiar and you are in your comfort zone, your load at times will be impossibly heavy to carry if you don’t take time to periodically set it all down and use discernment and right questions to decide what matters most now.

When you stop and discern, you might feel like you are wasting time.

You will in fact need to spend a bit more energy critically thinking about where you are putting your energy and your energy ROI.  In spite of the momentary set back of putting it all down but because you are using your power of inquiry and discernment, you have the opportunity to decide what gets carried forward.

What gets carried forward then will be what matters most. You are smart enough to figure out what has high value, and what needs to be left behind.

You are also smart enough to decide if what you are being asked to carry is still the best fit for you and your signature strengths or is it time to look for a new adventure?

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How about a tool that helps you describe your personal brand?

At the speed of change we live with, what we know and the work experience we have can be out of date quickly. To stay relevant requires life long learning. To market “our brand” beyond the boundaries of  past experience requires that we understand what value we have that transcends our past, and have the ability to articulate that value in a way that highlights our strengths and the benefits we bring to the workplace.

Marcus Buckingham, at one time a part of the crew at Gallup that brought strength based leadership to the forefront, has given us a new tool.

StandOut, his latest book and introduction to a new online assessment is positioned as a tool that helps you find your edge with qualities that transcend “what you know”.

Buckingham reports that what makes this assessment different from the Gallup Strengths Finder assessment is, it reflects how others experience you. I took the Strengths Finder Assessment years ago. You scored yourself. While any tool where you self assess is limited by not providing the equally important context of do others agree with how you see yourself, it was a handy way of looking at where you placed value and by extension, a useful tool in deciding where you probably felt most in alignment.

This new assessment asks you to answer situational questions with a timed response rather than “rate” what you think your strengths. There are details about the methodology and statistical validation in the book. Rather than detail those here, I will focus on what the value of this new tool was for me and why I recommend that you buy the book and take the online test. (I am not an Amazon affiliate and get no pay back for this recommendation).

The work outlines nine different styles or “roles” that characterize the strength you bring to your work environment. Whether or not you are currently in the job market, I advocate keeping an archive of information about your signature strengths and a running diary of “success” stories. Unplanned breaks from work are often not a matter of “if” but “when”.

The roles are easy to remember and articulate benefits that correspond to the strengths tied to each role. The nine roles are; Advisor, Connector, Creator, Equalizer, Influencer, Pioneer, Provider, Stimulator, Teacher.

I like that the book is prescriptive in:

• how to parlay your top strengths with suggestions of when you are at your most powerful
• it has phrases that illuminate opportunity for how to articulate those strengths in interview and personal branding situations
• it has suggestions on how to leverage your top strengths to take performance higher
•  and cautionary notes where too much of a good thing could get in your way.

By focusing on your top two profiles, the book is not as overwhelming in detail as the Strength Finders material and more practical if, as the author suggests, it is a reflection of how others experience you.

At the end of your detailed report, you get a strengths map that serves as an action planning form to help you digest your results and choose key action items you can use to put your competitive edge to work.

Note: you can not purchase this book used and get the key that enables you to take the online assessment. If you purchase the Kindle version, Amazon should email you a key. If you do not receive your key in a timely fashion, the customer service folks at TMBC emailed mine immediately upon request.

Flaming out from the speed of change

World Heat Engine (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Thriving at the speed of change means having a healthy perspective and good strategy. Spending most of your energy reacting to everything that comes at you is a sure-fire path to flaming out from a world on fire!!!!!!

Where is that smell of smoke coming from?

I want to frame this conversation in a way we can have some fun.

Imagine your life energy being like water in a bucket. If you are lucky and you wake up after a good night’s rest, your bucket is pretty close to full.

As you go through your average day, what are you using most of your water (energy) on?

When you are running fast and hard in a reactionary mode, are you thinking about what is happening to the water in your bucket? In your mind’s eye, do you see the water sloshing over the sides?

Are you mostly putting out fires with your water or, do need to use some of it to grow things?

Are you primarily a first responder firefighter or a master gardener? Interesting contrast. Let’s take this analogy a little further.

Which one of these roles do you attach more self-esteem to?

Which makes for a better story for why what you do is important?

This is not an either/or problem to solve. The reality is, at the speed of change we all need to be both fire fighter and master gardeners at different times. The value in having this conversation is to talk about how to balance both.

Now is a good time to take a step back. Do you have a strong attachment to one role/perspective to the detriment of another? Is it easier to mistake the activity of putting out fires as more important because the sense of urgency seems to match what we think is needed? How much water does it take to fight fire after fire? (Some fires can be safely left to burn themselves out with careful monitoring.)

Really take a minute to reflect on and observe yourself as you think about your relationship to urgency. A lot of our environment creates an artificial sense of urgency. Are you confusing urgent with important?

The perspective I am working to uncover with this is you can spend all of your energy fighting fire after fire and never have enough water to grow things without making a conscious decision about how you choose to use your finite resources.

Let’s go back to the first responder and master gardener analogy to look for ways to balance how to use your bucket of water (energy). I encourage you to play with the analogy and how the activities below serve as a metaphor for how you are investing your energy each day. Notice how the activities metaphorically conserve or deplete the water level in your bucket.

First rules of fire safety?

• More prevention (uses less water)
• Earlier detection (uses less water)
• Right response i.e.don’t try putting out a grease fire with water. (sometimes water is the wrong solution)

Ground rules for best harvests?

• Don’t strip nutrients…enrich the soil (when the soil is poor, watering isn’t enough)
• Water just enough (plants can get too much or too little for optimum growth)
• Weed (are you watering the right plants or nearby weeds)
• Prune (no amount of water will revive dead branches)
• Harvest (and enjoy!)

Water and energy do have something fundamentally in common.They are precious resources we can run out of if we don’t pay attention to what we do with them.

You’ll have more water (energy) for growing things if you practice the fundamentals of fire safety and not get caught up in the excitement and adrenaline rush of putting out fire after fire.

 

 

High value activity creates worth

Some of my closest friends are adrenaline junkies. The surge of adrenaline that comes from making deals, feeling needed, being important, the rush to make deadline– all contribute to helping us FEEL something.

Are we deluding ourselves by misreading the experience we have of being really busy and attributing that rush to a sense of accomplishment and relevance or even dare I say…value?

How much of what you do everyday would you call high value activity?

What do you consider as having high value? How does it line up with what your team mates or organization would agree has high value? Do you know because you’ve talked about it or you are just guessing?

Resolution - better time management (Photo credit: vpickering)

This topic comes up for me every time I am asked for help with time management or stress management. It’s easy to see why the topic fits within those contexts. But more importantly, periodically taking time to reframe what we are devoting energy toward and what is important about it keeps us moving with a focus of creating value as an overarching goal.

With the insane level of interruption and disruption you can potentially be exposed to in an average day, having a clear concept of what are the highest value activities you will prioritize for is the only way to stay focused on achieving bigger goals.

Tim Ferriss, author of The Four Hour Workweek uses something he calls the Heart Attack Rule: On doctors orders, if you could only work two hours a day–what would you do?

That sounds like an impossible challenge. No one is advocating that two hours a day is enough to attend to all of the legitimate work challenges you face. Yet, that laser focus does invite some interesting reflection.

• What are the most critical, high value activities you will devote your energy to?
• What makes them critical?
• Have you looked at them against a lens of nice to have vs need to have?
• Who else is empowered to contribute energy to these activities? Should someone be?
• Who and what is this activity/goal providing value for? Who is missing from your value equation?
• What would it take to extend the value and increase its impact even more?

Do you believe you don’t have time for this exercise?

It is my hope that by taking time to scrutinize your week through this lens, you are emboldened to delegate activity as stretch and learning opportunities for others in your sphere or you discover opportunities to cull activity that has outlived it’s usefulness as a need to have and is now a nice to have.

It is also my hope that by introducing the perspective of value to your analysis, we’ve added a filter that builds relevance and continual rejuvenation not just for what you do, but for your sense of accomplishment as well.

 

 

 

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What are you doing to develop your capacity for divergent thinking?

Is expanding your personal capacity for divergent thinking even relevant or important to you? Or, do you believe that our individual capability is decided primarily by what we know?

What do you do when what you know becomes outdated?

That exploding mountain of data you face while trying to keep up is a huge challenge. Thankfully, our computing and search power give us new tools to wrestle with it daily.

How does that change what value YOU bring in an environment made most efficient driven by process, search and computing power?

That brings me back to where I started:

What are you doing to develop your PERSONAL capacity for divergent thinking? How are you building your value beyond what you know today? What are you learning to bring new insight and creativity into your day? What are you doing to enrich your life experiences?

What about these:

• Find opportunities to have deep listening, one on one conversations with people who are very different from you and those you typically interact with.
• Take time for a creative outlet for self-expression that you haven’t already mastered. Is there a musical instrument you always wanted to play? What about painting? Poetry? Photography? Cooking different ethnic foods?

Image via Wikipedia

Is your first thought that these are unrealistic, unproductive uses of your time?

Now you see the dilemma.

If we always spend our time DOING things with a specific, familiar outcome in mind and simply read about or think about DOING something different, nothing changes.

 

Without committing energy to DOING and experiencing something way off the track of our typical route…we simply don’t expose ourselves to new fuel.

What have you tried that is working for you? Please add your ideas in the comment field below.

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Empowering people to think and act from their individual strengths

Image via Wikipedia

“Evidence from science suggests that business people must be insane  to use brainstorming groups”

writes Susan Cain (quoting organizational psychologist Adrian Furnham) in her book Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking.This nugget is deep within chapter 3 titled: When Collaboration Kills Creativity; The Rise of the New Groupthink and the Power of Working Alone.

The book is not nearly as one-dimensional as I have made it appear with these two snippets. I highlighted these sentences to provoke your interest and illustrate a point that Cain does a much bettter job of exploring and elaborating on in her work:

Without clear sensitivity to a full spectrum of environmental and organizational dynamics, we rob ourselves of the engagement of and best work of all members of our teams. Cain addresses the strengths and benefits BOTH introverts and extroverts bring to our organizations and personal relationships–when given the opportunity to think and execute within the context of their individual strengths. (Kinsey)

Cain does a nice job of drawing on additional social research to point out that there are ways to balance the social glue produced during group brainstorming sessions, with the productive power of online brainstorming tools that tap individual problem solving suggestions (given room for thought and consideration) with a transparency that invites others to build on an idea or observation. By including opportunities for individual problem solving outside of the group context, introverts have more opportunity to do the reflective thinking and processing which can typify the conditions they need to contribute their best.

The book is a good read:

• For employers AND educators who rely on group problem solving, brainstorming or teams for group learning. In it, you’ll find some additional structures you can provide to increase the engagement of potentially some of your deepest thinkers and what you can do to increase participation and best practices by engaging all members of your team by playing to their individual strengths.
• Anyone in relationship with a person who seems to need a fair amount of alone or quiet time to recharge or someone who is reflective. Introvert does not mean shy and learning to distinguish what an introvert needs to be the best version of themselves can make parenting easier, marriages easier and set up the workplace to get better engagement from all members of your teams.
• If YOU are that introvert, this book is full of strategies for asking for what you need to be your best.

Because Quiet covers such a broad range of topics, you may be inclined to page past a chapter or two that is less relevant for answering specific questions you have (employers may find themselves skipping past advice for parents)…but all in all, it’s an interesting and insightful work.

I rate QUIET a must read for advocates of strengths based leadership.

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Do you have an innovation partnership paradox? Will you fix it?

” Great business collaboration is fueled by people who mix their commercial savvy with emotional intelligence and an interest in what others think. What is required is a new breed of executive and management that is willing to be open, to pioneer valuable new relationship, who can build trust and mutually rewarding collaborations. Those that can do this – or who are more willing to engage with it when partners approach them – will thrive and innovate.

Those that cannot will be stuck in the Partnership Paradox.”

says Andrew Armour, Fellow of RSA for 21st Century Enlightenment and founder of Benchstone Limited in this article entitled “The Innovation Partnership Paradox” .

What was most interesting to me in this article was Armour challenges us to explore collaboration in the context of building alliances, partnerships and connections with others outside of our four walls.

The paradox Armour says, is while a vast majority of corporate leaders are calling for innovation, very few are personally engaged in cultivating the behaviors and mutually rewarding collaborations that position their organizations for sustainable innovation.

Do you have an innovation partnership paradox? When you take the mirror test what do you see?

What activities will you personally engage in as a senior leader building alliances and partnerships outside your four walls?

Are you building your personal capacity for the soft skill sets needed to effectively play in this arena?

Full disclosure: I am a coach. My point of view is I wish more CEOs, COOs and business owners saw the value of building their personal capacity for soft skills and the five demonstrated behaviors that Clayton Christen outlined after eight years of research in his book The Innovators DNA: Mastering the Five Skills of Disruptive Innovators.

You have demonstrated leadership and your ability to execute or you wouldn’t be where you are.

 What will you need more of to stretch beyond your current success and more fully engage disruption?

How are you disrupting yourself?

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Working our way through being in-between

The zeitgeist of our time is being in-between. What we know how to do won’t get us to where we need to go. What does it take to navigate disruptive change?

One simple, but hard place to start is to eliminate words like vs., or, either, but, from our vocabulary. Sound silly? I believe eliminating those words– those ways of setting up our thinking might lead to a profound change.

Here is where it gets tricky because I need for you to do some thinking to illustrate this point.

Below are word combinations that represent duality (for me). Here is the exercise. Where you see the dash- put in the default words above. Choose anyone of them, doesn’t matter. Choose one combination at a time and play with where that sends your thoughts.

For example, think about the relationship of :

Divergent Thinking vs Convergent Thinking (Photo credit: visualpun.ch)

 Convergent thinking or divergent thinking.

Convergent thinking vs divergent thinking.

In a process driven, data analyzing, looking for the best way world we have lived in, we have been taking what we know– the information that we have and applying critical thinking to choosing a path. (Should we use convergent OR divergent problem solving?)

But in a world where we are at the boundaries of what we know…where all the data isn’t in…where we need discovery, imagination and leaps of iconoclastic thinking– is there another frame of reference– another way of communicating value that opens up communication, exploration, collaboration and allows for new possibility?

Let’s go back to our example: Convergent thinking-Divergent thinking and this time let’s explore what happens when we use an AND context to direct our thinking. (What happens if we use convergent AND divergent thinking in our problem solving?)

Convergent thinking and divergent thinking?

 Both convergent thinking and divergent thinking?

It’s different isn’t it? I notice for myself when I am having a conversation with someone and trying to explore new options, the later way of having the conversation reduces the tension in the conversation and allows us to talk about how we want to balance the duality. Having an AND point of reference invites a dialogue and discovery instead of debate.

Can you see how discussion invites more opportunity than debate? This all sounds so basic, so obvious– until you observe yourself.

Take time to notice the vocabulary you use in the next couple of days.

Are you using choice by default or opening a conversation to discovery?

We are in between. We need different ways of engaging our thinking and the way we interact with others and ideas if we are going to create or innovate new ways. Being aware of dualities and the opportunities they present opens conversations and thinking.

Does this shift in vocabulary open a door for you?

Below are some additional word combinations expressing duality. Take some time to play by taking each combination and substituting or/vs, with both/and to see what opens up!

Image via Wikipedia

One-Many

Doing-Being

Artificial Intelligence-Human Intelligence

Yin-Yang

Principles – Holding truth in more than one perspective

Narrative-What lives outside the story

Truth-What we believe

Duality-All is One

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Redefining who we call on for leadership

Yesterday, I heard Daniel Pink interview Gary Hamel , author, speaker and business thought provocateur. That last part of the description is mine…and frankly why I found this interview on Daniel Pink’s Office Hours so darned interesting.

To construct something really new, we need to deconstruct what we have…pull it apart, take a look at the pieces and purposefully decide what we’ll use in creation 2.0. A lot of the call yesterday talked about management models, leadership and the current paradigm for how we think of leaders. For me the most interesting takeaway was this big juicy question:

 If as a leader, you did not have situational authority and no ability to sanction others, could you get things done?

This question gets at the heart of what it means to be a leader–not in an ordained, conferred sense…but it a true sense of:

Do you have the personal capacity to draw the best ideas out of those you come in contact with?

Do you have the emotional centeredness to self manage, support and develop others?

Do you have the ability to persuade?

Do you have the personal capacity to embrace a variety of perspectives and points of view while new ideas unfold?

I can go on…but you get the picture. Leadership is composed of qualities of who we are as human beings…how we interact with and affect those we come in contact with.

 It has nothing to do with a title or our role.

The other thing that Hamel’s newest book, What Matters Now: How to Win In A World Of Relentless Change, Ferocious Competition and Unstoppable  Innovation does, is to take a closer look at organizations experimenting with challenging traditional leadership roles and eliminating hierarchical management structures altogether.

The experimentation takes on all shapes and sizes…sometimes with just one tiny piece of an organization truly innovating the PROCESS and PEOPLE part of how they get things done, taking the learning and massaging and analyzing it before deciding if it is scaleable.

This kind of innovation of management models and process is an exciting part of the discovery of what it will take to have sustainable innovation down the road.

Everyone expected to exhibit true leadership qualities without the structure of their formal role? It’s provocative thinking to be sure.

 

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