One of the most important tools you have to manage a project is the “one pager”. This is the one page that everyone will look at, through the life of the project to see if the project is on track. It doesn’t fundamentally change: it gets updated.
So what does the one pager need to show? 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.
This is a great article “11 Things I Quit to Get Financially Healthy”..written by Chelsea Fagan that’s practical and fresh. She realized that she needed to take control of her spending, but what I love about her article is that it’s real…not vague statements that we all know like “Pay yourself first.” Huh?
My favorite? “A memorized credit-card number”. How many times did you end up just not buying something because it was too much of a pain to get up and go find your credit card?
In your career, you’ll work on the one project that will change you forever. It will be something huge, your role will be key and terrifying, you’ll fight with each other, you’ll give up your entire personal life…all to make sure something happens the way it’s supposed to.
I got to be a part of something like that: what I call “living a real life Harvard Business School Case.” We had a reunion the other day and here are my lessons learned:
1. You never lose the connections you have created with these people. They will always mean something important to you.
2. You appreciate the bravery. Sure, it’s easy now that it’s finished for others to dismiss the effort. But you know how terrifying every day was as you were trying to complete the impossible.
3. You realize that people are NOT replaceable. Sure, you can put someone else in a role. But the reason why it all worked was because of who was in the role at that time. Movies succeed or fail due to casting. It’s the same at work.
Most importantly, great things happen because there is leadership throughout the organization. It’s not just top down, it’s every person who’s involved exhibiting leadership in their own way.
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
“For human beings, life is meaningful because it is a story.”
Atul Gawande, Being Mortal
When people ask me how being Asian has affected me at work, I don’t have a great answer. I wasn’t aware that anyone was doing something to me because I was an Asian female, but I know that growing up in an Asian household affected me. Here were the things that hurt me at work: 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.
Reddit asked people to submit “the most beautiful paragraph or sentence you’ve ever read”….This brought tears to my eyes. Read the post here.
Piglet sidled up to Pooh from behind.
“Pooh?” he whispered.
“Yes, Piglet?”
“Nothing,” said Piglet, taking Pooh’s hand. “I just wanted to be sure of you.”
A.A. Milne