Monthly Archives: June 2015

A Way to Use Lessons Learned

Some of you have the My Lessons Learned one pager posted where you work, which is really humbling to me that people find it that valuable that they want it as a reminder. Recently, someone told me that she has highlighted the ones that she wants to work on specifically as part of her development plan as a daily reminder.

I thought that was such a great idea: there are times when some of the lessons might be particularly relevant for what you’re dealing with or what you want to focus on improving…and highlighting it is a great reminder to focus your attention. And as you master those, you can focus on others. Until you’ve mastered the whole list.

Full disclosure: it’s been 20 + years, and I’m still working on it.

 

“Be Bright, Be Brief, Be Gone”

I heard this at a training session and love it. This is about how you should handle very senior meetings or encounters.

When you’re presenting/in a meeting/talking with someone who is significantly senior to you, this is the right strategy.

Too often I see people try to fill up the whole hour. They fill their presentation with lots of data. They leave the conclusion to the end. They hang around even though the topic is completed.  They can seem like the wallflower wanting the attention of the football captain.

Without fail, my best presentations to senior people have been the ones which accomplish the objective of the meeting in the shortest time possible. In one meeting, I hadn’t even gotten past the first page before the senior person flipped through the entire deck and said “I agree. Anything you need from me?” At first I was dismayed: “Wait! I spent hours on this deck! I want to go through it!”  But then my boss said to me afterwards, “Great job. Usually she takes the whole hour going through the presentation line by line.”  I prefer the drive by.

Senior folks are smart and they don’t have time. The faster you’re in and out, the better.