The Next Next Promotion

I had an employee resign the other day, which is part of life in an organization. He was in a non-titled role and gave his reason for leaving that the promotions were not coming fast enough for him to meet his career goals. He shared that the job he was offered came with a bigger title, though no increase in pay, and within a year he would be eligible for a bigger title. On the surface this seems like a reasonable argument to take another job; after all it is all about the the next next promotion? This individual was very excited about the prospect that he will be up for another promotion within a year of joining his new firm, however, he didn't spend much time assessing the work he will be doing.

This was an immature reason for leaving a firm. Before signing on to the notion that you can get a promotion in a year think through what the interviewer said. It is easy to tell someone you will be up for promotion if you are a top performer, capable, good or competent. However, great as this sounds there is no commitment in the statement and there is no definition of what you will need to do to be eligible. The burden is on the candidate to figure out what it is that drives the next next promotion. The interviewer dangled the opportunity and the interviewee took the bait hook, line, and sinker and like most young professionals he never asked about the details of the job he will be performing.

The unfortunate reality is he took a role supporting legacy technology that is most often relegated to the staff interested in long term stability and consistency. This was not the type of role an young ambitious professional would normally choose. In his quest for title he sacrificed the opportunity for valuable skills that would improve his resume and future marketability. When you are evaluating an opportunity focus on the type of projects and technologies you will be working with; not the title being offered. Every company and industry looks at corporate and functional titles differently, however, when we are looking to fill a role we are looking at the skills and experience of the candidate (not the cool sounding title).

Human Resourcs your Business Partner

I just had the opportunity to write a recommendation for a Human Resources colleague I have worked with here in Asia when we were assessing, acquiring, building, and even shutting down businesses and while I was having a think about what I looked for in my HR team.

Human Resources is, like all corporate functions, often referred to as unavoidable; employees believe HR is only looking out for the company and the managers believe HR is only looking out for the employees. Both are right in the minimalist's view, however, there are many government-mandated activities they perform also so we have to include that they are also only looking out for the Government. I of course say this with "tongue and cheek" as I have found that a solid HR team is the cornerstone to a successful organization. All corporate functions are established to support the various business functions in the effort to grow revenue. To see HR as a trusted advisor and valued partner look to the following areas:

- Compensation
- Recruiting
- Staff development
- Discipline
- Understanding the people impact of decisions
- Interacting with staff and feeding this information to management

Each team leader and manager cannot act as an expert in these areas they need to focus on the aspects of running their business. The HR team is the partner to assist in understanding, how as leaders, our actions will affect our most important resources...our employees. It was straight forward writing a recommendation for my colleague because he excelled in these areas and I do view him as a business partner.

Talent is always in demand

A friend and I were discussing the economy the other day and yes we both were going a bit negative, well actually really negative. The US government says unemployment is at 6.7%. However, I realized I was focusing on the wrong number, let’s switch the number around and you realize that 93.3% are employed. The Brazen Careerist blog had a great post titled: Reason to give Thanks that pointed out:

- Jobs for low-level candidates are increasing
- There are plenty of entry-level jobs to be had
- College grads are doing fine in today's market

And she is correct; most organizations plan to continue college recruitment programs in 2009, but what if you aren’t entry level? Even when unemployment numbers were much lower it was difficult to find good talent. This difficulty was not for lack of candidates, I would review thousands of CV’s and resumes to conduct lots of interviews only to be disappointed. Why? Because there isn’t a lot of skilled high performance people separating themselves in the market place. I have met many individuals that can say the right buzz words and talk the talk; to actually deliver on the talk appears to be something else. There are jobs out there. If you can walk your talk, then don’t fret about the unemployed and focus on what talents you bring to the table and market them.

- Did you struggled with an exceptionally difficult task and managed to get it completed?
- Was there a new idea that you discovered or developed?
- If you had a project fail what did you learn from it?

My friend was telling me that he had not worked on a “cool” project for about a year, yet he described his work doing business development in Cambodia, Vietnam, Thailand, Shanghai, and Beijing while based in Singapore. I was stunned! His stories of the tasks and projects that he worked on were incredibly interesting, and after describing each project he realized that his frame of reference was wrong. Each of the projects possessed so many interesting facets, challenges successfully overcome, and some very surprising learning opportunities. After our discussion he realized that he could separate himself for the thousands of job seekers; he actually had powerful real world experience.

2009 may prove to be a difficult economic environment. Even so I subscribe to the philosophy of Robert H. Schuller’s aptly titled book: Tough Times Never Last, But Tough People Do! Take some time rethink your skills and experience and have a successful 2009.

Annual Review and Goal Setting

The ability to deliver solid cost efficiencies and bottom line profits will be the measure of success for 2009. We are at the end of what I would consider to be a very difficult year and by many accounts a challenging year into the 3rd quarter of 2009. It is with this in mind that I wanted to look into the year end review and goal setting process with an eye for accomplishment. Rich Vosler in his blog post, "This Goal Setting Process Works!" said, "If you do a Google search for Goal Setting you’ll get over 9 million results" and I agree with him. Not a lot of these results were focused on goal setting for individual contributors within the corporate functions of an organization.

Kathy Sierra in her blog post "how to be an expert" said,”the most troubling--and where we have the most leverage--is with the amateur who is satisfied with where they are. These are the folks who you overhear saying, ‘Yes, I know there's a better way to do this thing, but I already know how to do it this [less efficient, less powerful] way and it's easy for me to just keep doing it like that.’ In other words, they made it past the suck threshold, but now they don't want to push for new skills and capabilities.” It is the manager’s responsibility to encourage the employee to step out of the comfort zone and further develop their skills.

There have been tremendous work done on studying goals and lots of evidence that if you just write down your goals you are already ahead of 90% of the population. As business managers it becomes our responsibility to look to our staff and like a coach or teacher build the goal setting process as part of the annual review. The purpose of goals at the individual contributor level is to encourage the further development of skills and the adoption of technology and efficiency enabling the individual to have more time for additional opportunities within the organization including improved personal fulfillment through their work. Goal setting will enable the employee and the manager to:

- Decide what is important for them to achieve their job functions

- Allow for prioritization of activities

- Develop a measure of how well the individual is doing

- To build self-esteem

performer the goal isn't just repeating the same thing again and again but achieving higher levels of control over every aspect of their performance...each session they are working on doing something better than they did the last time.” How do we as managers help our staff to do this by setting good SMART goals: specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time bound.

Specific: For a goal to be specific it should be stated in one or two sentences. If the goal is extended into a paragraph or more the result is confusion. It is much better to break the goal down into several goals rather than have a complicated statement

Measurable: How will you determine the outcome of the goal; timed completion of tasks, certifications, or customer feedback ratings? Adding a measurable component to the goal setting process will enable straight forward determination of success or failure to complete the goal. Measures should be agreed between the manager and the employee and should be straight forward so that even an unknowing third party would be able to agree with the result.

Achievable: Achievability is the most important component. If we are going to work with staff to stretch to the next level we have to ensure that we are not setting targets beyond their capabilities. If the employee does not believe they can accomplish the goal then when they encounter their first setback they will choose to quit.

Relevant: We are talking about setting goals for the workplace; therefore, the goals should be targeting areas and practices that will benefit the company, within the employees’ role, or a development area.

Time Bound: After agreeing to the previous four items the manager and the employee will agree on an appropriate time frame. Generally these goals are defined on an annual or semiannual time frame so that they fit into the management and feedback cycle of the organization.

The best guideline for goal development with staff is to set three to five major goals for the year and then break these into quarterly sub-goals or deliverables. The result should be a collection of mid-term deliverables enabling staff members to verify that they are still on the correct path of achievement. . Michael Hyatt in his blog post, “Goal-Setting: The 90-Day Challenge” talking about adding 90 day based goals into his organization said, “I believe it has gone a long way toward creating a focused and disciplined organization that produces consistent results”. Three to five goals with 90 day deliverables and monthly check points moving team members forward along the path to success; each accomplishment building upon the earlier and ultimate completion at year end.

Zig Zigler recommended using the question, “does this bring me closer to or further from my goal.” To effectively answer this question requires breaking down the goals further into monthly, weekly, and daily tasks. For the purposes of the annual goal setting process annual goals with quarterly deliverables will generate consistent results from the team. To further break the goals down into daily activities I recommend looking into some great blogs for more information.

Zen Habits

Minezone

Lifehacker

Getting Things Done in Academia

My Stuff for Getting Things Done