Category: Corporate Games

A buddy recently went through
several rounds of interviews
with a company
and ended up not landing the job.

She blamed her resume.

That’s bullshit.
No one ever landed or lost a job
based on their resume alone.
That’s not the purpose
of a resume.

As Mike Figliuolo shares
“If you submit your resume
and get a phone call,
you’ve succeeded.
You’ve cut through the clutter
and grabbed their attention.
They’re interested in
spending time getting to know you.
I’ve never heard of
someone landing a job
with nothing but a resume
(and if you have,
I’d submit said hiring company
is terrible at candidate diligence).”

If you landed an interview,
your resume worked.

We’ve all heard about how divorce
is bad for kids
and that’s challenging to hear
because
40% of all marriages
end in divorce.

But we rarely hear about
how divorce can benefit kids,
especially career-wise
later in their lives.

Susan Credle,
chief creative officer of Leo Burnett USA,
shares how having divorced parents
helped her in her career.

“Because I have a family
of stepbrothers and stepsisters
and a younger stepmom,
I now really look at people
in terms of more than
just what they do at the company.
They come with history.
They come with outside lives.
I think that trying to understand them
as human beings versus workers
has really helped,
and understanding that
different people fit in different ways.
I don’t know who I would have been
if I’d had the white-picket-fence upbringing.
As difficult as my childhood was at times,
I think that the texture it added
to my life was worth it.”

My parents are divorced
and I think I benefited from that challenge also.

You don’t need to have a perfect family
to be successful.

I once worked for a manager
who would assign me a task
and when I’d ask why the task was needed,
he’d reply with
“Just do it.”

Yes, sometimes in dire emergency situations,
it is necessary to tell staff
“Do it. I’ll explain later.”
but only in end-of-your-world type scenarios.
Otherwise, it is degrading
and smacks of condescension.

David Peck shares that
delegating without sufficient context
is a managing technique that increases distrust.

“Behaviors:
Making a request or command
to do something
without explaining why,
or where it fits in to the bigger picture.

Unintended message you send:
You don’t need to be
in the loop of the “why” of this.
I don’t care enough about your success
to actually increase the odds
you will succeed here.”

When giving a task,
explain why the task is necessary.

My mom always used to tell me
that she didn’t worry about me.
She trusted me to look after myself.

And I did.
Sure I failed
but I knew she expected me
to get back up
and continue on
so…
I did.

The kids she didn’t expect
to take care of themselves
didn’t.
They failed less times than I did
but they didn’t get back up.
They waited for her to pick them up.

Expectations create reality.

Art Petty shares
that this applies to managing people too.
(the entire article is excellent)

“Expect more
and you might just get it.
While giving your people room to run,
remember to set your expectations high,
share your expectations
and provide support.
Prepare to be surprised.”

Expect a lot
from your team,
your kids,
yourself
and
prepare to be surprised.

One of the favorite things
for writers to worry about
is piracy,
baddies copying their e-Books
and reselling them.

The issue is…
publishers could fix this ‘problem’
tomorrow.
They have the technology to do this.

They don’t want to.
It isn’t a big enough issue for them.

Years ago,
I was stressing about a project.
It was going horribly.
There were delays, mistakes,
and many other issues.

I brought it up with my boss.
He wasn’t worried.

I explained how these issues
were killing the project.
He didn’t care.
I fumed. I tried to call favors.
He didn’t care.

A couple weeks later,
the project was killed.
My boss knew this.
He simply couldn’t tell me.

If your (normally intelligent) boss
isn’t worried about an issue,
ask yourself why.
Then ask yourself
if YOU worrying is a productive use
of your energies.

I hear this… a lot.
And when I respond
with “Get a new job”,
I get a lot of weak-assed excuses.

Steve Tobak has a better response.
(this post on workplace myths
is AWESOME)

“For one thing it’s work,
not happy hour.

Also it’s a free country.
You get to decide
what you want to do for a living
and where you work.

Isn’t that enough?

Sure, the economy sucks.
So if you’ve got a crappy job or
a boss who’s a jerk,
you’re sort of stuck for a while.
Sometimes it’s worse than others,
but the economy is cyclical and
it’s been that way forever.

Besides, if you think your company is hell,
your boss is the devil, and
your coworkers are political, backstabbing creeps,
there’s a fair chance that it’s you.
Nobody wants to believe
they’re the problem.”

If your job sucks,
either change your job
or change YOU.

One of my buddies
was complaining that
while she respected and learned
from her boss,
she couldn’t ever see
her becoming friends with her boss.

WTH would she want that?

It is challenging,
almost impossible, to mentor your friend.
You often have to tell your protege
the nasty truth.
You look at this person
and her actions critically,
NOT what you want in a friend.

And expecting one person
to fill every role for you
is unrealistic
and unfair to that person.

It is okay
or even preferable
to have different people
serve different purposes for you.

Great bosses and effective mentors
don’t have to be friends.

Recently, I told a loved one
he was being too negative.

This wasn’t a spur of the moment sharing.
I knew he wouldn’t be happy hearing this truth
but it was hurting his relationship with others
and his career.
I loved him enough to point out
that his first response on everything
was negative.

His response?
A vehement no, of course.
He listed all of the reasons
why I was wrong.
(which confirmed my statement)

Hearing feedback like that
is always difficult
but hearing it, embracing it,
and changing
is part of everyone’s road to success.

If someone cares enough
to give you negative feedback,
think about it,
truly THINK about it.

One of my buddies
is organizing an event.
Some lucky person is
to drive the guest speaker
to and from the airport.
This person will have
precious one-on-one time with the VIP.

My buddy has worked her ass off
organizing the event.
She’s given the event time
she could be spending with family
or… gasp… sleeping.

Someone told her
she should hold a drawing
and give everyone in the organization
the opportunity of driving the VIP.

No f**kin’ way.

Leadership HAS to have perks.

Leaders spend their time and resources.
They make sacrifices to get the job done.
They make the difficult decisions
no one else wants to make.

There HAS to be rewards.
There HAS to be perks.
Treating everyone equally
is only appropriate if everyone does equal work.

If you want great leaders,
reward them for leading.

We’ve all worked with or for one…
the critic.
This is the person
looking for
and finding
fault in everything and everyone.

You work all night on a proposal.
You show it to her
and she finds the typo on page 20.
That is what she comments on.
Or she’ll tell you it won’t work
and not give you ways to make it work.

Art Petty has a wonderful list
of tactics to use
while working for the critic boss
(I wish I had this years ago).

My favorite is…
“Give the Critic credit for the idea.
“Your comments the other day
made me realize that
what you really want is… .”
Heck yes, it’s manipulative.
I don’t care if you don’t!”

Yes, critic bosses are challenging to work for
but you CAN work for them
and achieve your goals.