Category Archives: Perform Better

5. Add value to every communication you send. If no one’s commenting, no one’s reading it.

My pet peeve are those emails that come out every week, or even every day. They have one or two lines that say “please find attached the weekly x. If you have any questions, let us know”, with an attachment. Which I can’t really open on blackberry.

Take the time and write a few sentences on the key soundbites. Why do I care? What is the report telling me that is of interest? If there’s been no change, tell me that. If there has been a deterioration in something (metrics, project status, etc.), tell me that too. Give me some indication of whether or not it’s good news or bad news. More importantly, give me the sense that you know what’s going on. Don’t make me work for it by trying to put the pieces together.

Pushing emails like this out without taking the time to summarize is an opportunity wasted. You have my attention….what do you want to tell me?

Having a sense of urgency

This is one of those attributes which act as an early indicator for promotion.

An old boss said to me once that he could figure out whether or not someone had drive just by the way they walked around the office. If they had a slow pace, sauntered, “hung out”, he knew they were unlikely to be someone who was going to push to get things done.

It sounds arbitrary, but here’s the thing: it’s one thing to be relaxed and  laid back  from a style perspective, but never let that become who people think you are at work. There are very few jobs where being relaxed and laid back is cited as a job requirement.

Now, if your style is relaxed and laid back, but you know when to dial it up when you need to, you have acute attention to detail, you make sure things are right, are constantly looking for continuous improvement, it’s not an issue.

Just make sure your style isn’t conveying to your manager that you don’t care.

10. Prioritizing gives time back to you.

You will always have too much to do. Here’s an easy way to figure out what’s important to you: what do you spend your time doing?

Now work will always take up a big part of your life as long as you have a 5 days a week, 8 hours (or more) a day schedule. But what you can do is figure out what you should be doing in the time allotted…in other words, manage your day instead of letting it manage you. What are the important things you must do versus what do you spend time doing? So, my lessons learned: Continue reading →

22. All presentations need to tell a story.

It’s almost always “Where we are, where we want to be, and how we’re going to get there.”

In my 25+ years working, I have given, received, reviewed many presentations. To small groups, to large groups. To friendly audiences, and to hostile ones. Met with applause, met with the sound of crickets. With paper presentations around a table, and on a screen on a stage. So my lessons learned….it’s a story. It starts out “Once upon a time”….and ends….well, that’s the question right?

Continue reading →

13. Most things we worry about never materialize.

I got this lesson from the book, How to Stop Worrying and Start Living by Dale Carnegie.  It is something I try to remember.

Most of us are trained to think about every possible outcome and every scenario in order to come up with the best approach to tackle a problem. While that kind of “worst case scenario thinking” can be helpful, it can also become overwhelming. Couple that training with the desire to not make a mistake and to always be right, (who wants to make mistakes and be wrong?), you have a perfect set up to constantly worry.

Worrying is thinking that the worst might happen. For some people, it’s a fleeting thought. For others, it becomes a nagging preoccupation that takes energy and time. Continue reading →

8. Never underestimate the power of pre-selling.

This is something I learned that takes time, but is definitely worth it…what I used to call “spend 5 hours now to save 60 later”.

This is particularly important in situations when controversial recommendations or findings will be presented. They tend to be large committees, cross functional, dealing with thorny issues where there will be “losers” and “winners” (like a change in cost allocation. Or recommended budget cuts. Or recommended process changes. Or any change). Or they can be situations where the team is now at a crossroads and needs to make a big change in strategy in order to get back on track. Or situations where what people think isn’t what’s actually going on, and it falls on you to communicate that.

For those situations, I have seen the value of “pre-selling”. Continue reading →

26. Say hello.

So basic, so simple. But it was (and still is) so hard for me to do.   I am shy, an introvert…INTJs unite!  I would get embarrassed saying hello to people I didn’t know. It just got easier to look at the ground and walk by.   Except it’s not polite. It’s not nice.  People interpret the absence of saying hi to mean something else: you’re not important, I don’t care about you, I have other things to do, I’m annoyed about something you did or didn’t do.  Nature abhors a vacuum.   So when you are at work, say hi. And smile.

31. Provide feedback quickly and frequently.

I’ve always disliked getting performance reviews. Not because they were necessarily bad…I just didn’t really get the point of them. They always seemed to be very carefully worded and somewhat arbitrary. They told me what I already knew, and seemed to hint at what I needed to work on….but lightly. Plus, it seemed like everything got stored up for the big reveal: first hint at midyear, then the big discussion at year end…when it seemed too late to really do anything.

As a manager, you need to give feedback quickly and frequently, good and bad. You want people to make mid-course corrections and to learn. Similar to advice on disciplining children, you should focus on the behavior, not the person. I think this applies as well here. Feedback should be about every day performance. And eventually, all that feedback helps someone answer the bigger questions such as promotion and potential. But first, the day to day. Continue reading →

20. Assume Positive Intent

Often, people misunderstand other people’s intentions….especially when the majority of our communications are non-verbal. Hastily sent emails on blackberry are not the best ways of conveying information, yet it’s the majority of what we do.

So when you get the email which strikes you as nasty, rude, abrupt, condescending, embarrassing, humiliating….(add adjective) and you start drafting an equally annoyed response….

Or when a peer tells you that they were talking to your boss, and your boss is “upset that you’re not pulling your weight”, “you’re not competent”, “unhappy with you”…

Or when someone is giving you feedback that strikes you as wrong….

Assume positive intent.  Assume that they are not trying to get you upset, angry, humiliated. Assume that they want the best for you, but the way they are communicating it is not making you feel that way.

Continue reading →