One of the things I talk about is skill and will. Marla Malcolm, the CEO of Bluemercury adds one more: FIT.

What I love about her interview (see article here) is that she is the “queen of the seven minute interview.”  I too, believe in the 7 minute interview but was too embarrassed to admit it.  Skill you ascertain through the resume (what has the person done), and will is about how hungry they are. Fit is also hugely important: not everyone can fit.  You can be successful in one culture and an abject failure in another.

I interviewed someone I knew wasn’t a good fit. But my colleagues really liked him, and made me interview him twice. I didn’t like him any better the second time. But I caved in, and we hired him. We ended up having to terminate him 10 months later. Did he have the skill and will? I think so. But the fit wasn’t there.

So when you interview someone, or interview for yourself, remember the three things.

One of the things I see people struggle with most is telling the story.

It’s been proven that people remember stories. They don’t remember facts and data. I have sat in so many presentations which were nothing more than a recitation of facts. But once in a while, someone will tell the story. Continue reading →

This is probably one of the most challenging things you’ll come across in your career. Usually, you’re fast OR accurate.

The people who truly rise to the top are the ones who can master both. It doesn’t matter if you’re accurate if you’re always late with the presentation. And it doesn’t matter if you’re fast if your work has errors. So how to deal? Continue reading →

Looking back, this is one thing I didn’t do well. I always dreaded feedback time: I didn’t really give myself credit for the good stuff, and I saw all the bad stuff as a criticism.  Here’s my lessons learned: Continue reading →

Remember Andrew Faslow? He was the 37 year old CFO for Enron….an shining example of intellect, hard work, and success. Until Enron imploded, and he went to prison. Continue reading →

This is an interesting article called “Beware the Winning Streak”.  Essentially, it points out the obvious, which is that it gets harder and harder to improve performance the better your performance is.  As one of my people used to tell me… “Happiness is a low base.”

I see this concept come up often: it’s usually the reason why you don’t aim for 100% targets on your performance standards. If you’re at 90%, it gets very expensive and much more difficult to chase down the final 10% to hit 100%.

For people, I think you can keep striving to get it right. But you shouldn’t feel bad if you’re not perfect. Some things don’t matter as much as others.  Some things have to be 100% (responses to 911 calls for example). But not everything. Just make sure you pick the right things.

I read this interesting article from MIT/Sloane that talked about how to categorize the relationships you have at work.  Essentially, every relationship you have is based on whether or not they are conditional or unconditional. Continue reading →

As you progress, you’ll be writing emails to more senior people. Here are some tips and tells on whether you’re doing it right.

1. Your email has to be clear and crisp. If your email looks like one big paragraph, it’s probably a run on stream of consciousness, not a well crafted email.

Opening sentence: explain intent, context, the why. “As you know, the project is in amber status and I wanted to make you aware of what actions we are taking to mitigate the situation”, “You’ll see in today’s report, the following areas are flagging amber, and I wanted to make you aware….” Usually, it’s a statement of fact, and wanting to make the person aware of something related to that.  This sentence makes you credible.

2. If you are asking the person to do something, make it clear as a stand alone sentence. “As a result, we’d like to ask that you attend a meeting, talk to Tom, something.” What do you want me to do? This sentence makes you clear…”What do you need me to help you with?”

3. Copy those people who need to be copied. If it’s someone really senior, you need to copy your boss. And your boss shouldn’t be surprised that you sent the email.

Here’s the tell on whether or not you did it right: if the person responds back. If you get nothing back, chances are you didn’t hit the mark.

A friend who reads my blog sent this to me. It’s a great article by Fay Vincent, who was the president and CEO of Columbia Pictures and was a commissioner of Major League Baseball. One quote I like from his article:

“Be careful about the use of the word ‘average’ – one can drown in a river the average depth of which is six inches.”