Work Lab
Employee morale is often taken for granted until it's too late. One proactive leader wrote and asked me how to improve and keep spirits high at work. Here are my thoughts...
In short- think connection, recognition, and resolution. These are the three essential pieces to building and keeping morale high.
I got a question from a reader last week about how to prepare for his boss's return to work from maternity leave. I answered here with some help from my little guy, Linc.
For the team welcoming someone back into the office after any extended absence: let them set the pace. Ask when when and how they get briefed on what's happened while they were out and then honor those wishes the best you can. By the middle of the second week, the person transitioning back into work should largely have their routine down and start feeling somewhat "normal."
Answering this question, though made me think about the flip side-- what if you're the one coming back?
My take is this. When coming back from maternity leave, your first two words in the office should be, "thank you." And you should mean it.
Some (thankfully few) returning moms come back with the completely wrong attitude. If you expect to be an exception to the rule now that you have a family at home, think again. Of course, no one would say this out loud. However, thinking you're owed something because you're a mom now becomes obvious when your problems suddenly become everyone else's to solve. Spreading this unique brand of entitlement around the office only fuels frustration and resentment on your teams. And if you're the boss? Woah, it's just worse. Avoid the heartache and hassle with a little appreciation for everything that was accomplished in their absence.
Thank you.
Performance metrics matter. We know this and yet we continue to track things that have little to do with our goals. The better alternative is to make sure that you're measuring progress against the things that matter most to you and your future. Here are four steps to think through that process.
I'm trying to move away from outputs-- such as number of contracts-- and focus more on outcomes. Did I create a connection with a client? Did a client come back after the project to ask more questions or start another task? Would we both want to work together again?
What do you track on a regular basis?
Spotted on the WO&D: "It's effective...to be reflective." The signs are there to encourage cyclists to wear reflective clothing for safety when riding at night. The double-meaning gave me something to think about on my chilly 7-miler yesterday.
Over drinks the other night, it broke my heart to see a friend and colleague tear up--especially after we were just laughing about how ridiculous our shared client assignment had become. She's so upbeat and positive normally that it was jarring to see her sad. I felt her frustration and could see the disappointment in her face. She told me that she'd just had her annual review and wasn't getting promoted. She was understandably upset.
On the last day of the year, there is often much to celebrate. It's also a time when many of us reflect on our accomplishments and hold them up to our most personal measuring sticks. Was it a good year? That is often one of the toughest question to answer.
On paper, the facts might appear simple and straightforward. In reality, these self-assessments are more nuanced. You're so eager but are feeling stuck. You're so smart but are feeling unsure. You're so capable but are shutting down without clarity about what to do next. An internal debate might have started a long time ago, and these competing thoughts are sapping your focus.
I totally get the frustration that results from being in one life stage for longer than you'd ever imagined you would be. Your dreams are taking their sweet time, and now you're wondering if they will ever be more than dreams. What were those dreams were to begin with? What was a hurdle at work now seems to be rippling out into challenges with friends, getting a better home, and finding love.
And the funny thing (definitely not the ha-ha kind) is that everything is fine. Actually, you'd say it's good in the scheme of life. You're healthy, and you have a job, and you're grateful for those. You just know that things could be better. Something is missing, and you aren't quite sure what or how to get it.
I "get" this internal debate because I've had it myself. Just like you, I don't have it all figured out and am not past having points of confusion or self-doubt. In fact, I regularly share those same feelings. Yet I see something in this moment that maybe you aren't seeing. It's how truly amazing you are and how much you have to offer. Listen to a few of the truisms about realizing our potential:
Given these truisms, I've made one of my goals real with a plan: to focus my writing in the coming year on the inspiration and encouragement needed to make sure that your next year is your best year yet.
Seth Godin encouraged his readers this morning to read more blogs. He points out that they're free, full of good information, and a respite in a way from the noisier more marketing focused messages we're subjected to each day. Of course, I enthusiastically agree!
So, I thought I'd share some of the blogs I enjoy reading regularly.
In addition to Seth's, the two other broad categories of blogs I like are food and things I think will make me laugh.
Listing these just now, I realized that I've also read all of their books-- and each I loved as much as their daily material on the blog.
If you have a blog you write or enjoy reading, let me know! I'd love to check it out.
Pardon me while I crawl under my desk and just die.
I recorded this video this morning about the upcoming eBook launch. If you're someone who likes amateur, awkward, and eye-blinky material, please check it out! When you're done, subscribe to the blog to be the first to get Own It: Drive Your Career to a Place of Happiness and Success free on Thursday, June 2nd!
Vote for the title for the new eBook Own It: Drive Your Career to a Place of Happiness and Success by Robin Camarote to be launched on June 2, 2016. This book is a how to guide for professional women looking for more impact, purpose, and passion in their careers.
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How to get your meeting started right with excellent introductory talking points.
Read MoreWe all want impact. It is as fundamental to being human as our basic need for comfort and connection. When we’re feeling effective and seeing results, we’re high. Conversely, when our ability to effect change at work ebbs—as it does from time to time—we get restless and even question our fit, our purpose, and whether it’s all worth it.
To have professional impact and see our ideas take off, two essential conditions must exist:
1. A quality idea
2. Support from our leadership.
Often, the challenge isn’t hatching the idea. It’s getting it off the ground. Sometimes the greatest hurdle is right in front of us: our boss, our leadership. Our leaders, by definition, question goals and objectives—to approve the time and money to be invested in achieving them and, ultimately, to support or squash the transition from “I have an idea” to its reality.
The interesting part of this challenge is not that our bosses are out-of-touch and intent on defending the status quo as the stereotype might suggest. In fact, they’re often as eager to see positive changes as we are. The decisions on which problems to tackle first and how to solve them are what creates friction in our workplaces.
Because our bosses’ role is to cheer, guide, and control, you’ll need to get them onboard to bring your best ideas forward. Passive approval leading to an “okay, fine” from our bosses is not enough. You want—and ultimately need—more than that knowing that you’ll hit bumps along the way. Instead, you want a “Yes!” backed by enthusiasm that comes from a place of real buy-in.
Because we can’t be the sole developers and implementers of our ideas, convincing leadership to get onboard with our proposed ideas is the first step in making an impact and creating a career with a body of work that matters. Without their support, our good ideas and intentions may be stuffed down further on our “to do” lists, put off, or forgotten.
Many of us work under a broad assumption that if our idea is good enough, it’ll sell itself. Any plans we do make to build senior-level buy-in for that idea tend to be vague and optimistic in terms of the time and effort required to bring key leaders along. We’re then frustrated when fragile new initiatives are squashed or canceled because they lacked needed leadership support.
It is curious to me that we don’t typically treat building leadership buy-in as something that benefits from a defined process. Why not? My guess is that we have traditionally viewed buy-in as something highly specific to the individual leader and the relationship we have with that individual. In other words, the buy-in process is so unique and nuanced that any effort to document it wouldn’t apply to enough people in a broad range of environments and situations to be worth it. Under this view, our ability to convince our boss to follow us is dependent on undefinable, intangible variables, such as how much they like us personally, how much we have in common, how open minded they are as people, or what great sales people we might be.
In my experience and after talking with dozens of colleagues, clients, and leaders on this topic, I have found that we—as a workforce-- have much more common challenges when building leadership buy-in than previously thought. More good news is that most of us have leaders who are highly amenable to being approached—if we approach them in the right way—and who are engaged in finding fresh ideas and new solutions.
To effectively build understanding and gain buy-in to get our leaders to follow us, we have to start with the solution. This might feel a bit backwards because nearly every other workplace process—technology innovation, program development, or conceptual design for example—all start with understanding the problem and end with the solution. This leader followership process picks up precisely where those others leave off.
So, what do you need to do to achieve that seemingly elusive buy-in from your leaders? It turns out that a couple of concrete actions yield a much greater chance of success. Buy-in starts by glancing inward and evaluating your mindset and perspective. In Flock, Getting Leaders to Follow you can read more about how to toss out the generic process prescriptions and instead create an “ask” that focuses on the anticipated greater good. It is this approach that will yield true leadership support and ensure that your best ideas are more than just heard.
You want to love your job but you just don’t. On top of that, you can’t quit—at least right now. Perhaps your job was better when you first started and the environment has changed. Or maybe you’ve changed and you’re now struggling to get motivated to do the same work. Maybe you got a new boss who you’re not that crazy about. Whatever the circumstance, not loving your job AND not feeling able to quit can leave you feeling really stuck.
This easy-to-follow worksheet was designed to help you better your immediate circumstances while keeping your eye on your long-term vision and dreams. By completing these simple lists and questions, you will identify what you like about your current job, what you don’t like, and what you can reasonably change. Do this with the intention of:
Are you interested in the internet of things? Whether you're in facilities or federal program management or general business, here are a handful of articles I found helpful when I went looking for more than just the basic definition to try and wrap my head around the magnitude of all of this stuff that will be connected and communicating in the future.
Fascinating, right?!
The Internet of Things Is Far Bigger Than Anyone Realizes, by Daniel Burrus
A Simple Explanation Of 'The Internet Of Things', by Jacob Morgan (INCLUDES A VIDEO!)
The Internet of Things, by Michael Chui, Markus Löffler, and Roger Roberts
Each individual's leadership skills fall somewhere along a broad spectrum from truly terrible to incredibly inspiring. I believe that wherever we are in our leadership development, there are simple, daily exercises that we can do to improve our skills-- in between courses, trainings, coaching, and just doing the hard work of leading and motivating staff.
Here are 5 exercises with accompanying questions and examples to spark some reflection and self-assessment.
Collections aren't cool as they used to be, you know, with all of this tidying up we're doing. So if you've been good about clearing stuff out but still have the urge to pile up some random stuff in one place, consider adding to this short, e-collection of bad boss stories.
Emily Johnson from Omnipapers created this clever infographic on getting organized for greater productivity. She's focused on writing but her tips will work for all kinds of work.
Great stuff!
Social media is overwhelming. The very thing that makes it remarkable and powerful also makes you feel like you're lost in the woods, at night, in heels, with only half of a Lara Bar in your purse. The volume and constant flow of messages can lead to an urge to stay constantly engaged to keep up-- let alone make any progress in getting your message out.
In working on a piece for Inc.com in collaboration with Vendeve, these bonus tips were shared with me. They come from Julie Lowe. Julie is a Facebook Ads expert whose mission is to make online marketing feel accessible and empowering - rather than mysterious & stressful - for every online entrepreneur.
Here's what Julie says...
You can find Julie at SociallyAligned.com
Since I started freelancing (or independent consulting as it's more commonly referred to in my industry) people reach out for advice on whether or not they should do the same. I'm delighted to take these calls and talk. The question, to me, seems to boil down to this... "will I be happier freelancing or staying put?"
I like to talk through their expectations and what they imagine post-corporate life to be like. I captured the key concepts in this quiz. Answer the questions to determine where you'll be the happiest and able to do your best work in the coming year.
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In the comments below or in a private message, let me know if the answer surprised you or got you thinking about an alternative way of working. I'd love to hear from you.
I love Chris Stapleton and his soulful, down-on-his-luck country songs. I can imagine a life filled with whisky, smoky bars, and life on the road but... Let's be real. His days are so different than mine. So just for fun on this pre-holiday, throw-away workday, I adjusted the lyrics below to better reflect my reality as a federal meeting facilitator.
This was done with a lot of love and respect for Chris and my cherished clients-- and apparently because I have nothing better to do. You can buy the real song and sing along here.
Big hugs and Happy Thanksgiving!
Our approach to designing and starting projects is flawed in a couple of important ways that make completing them as we intend really difficult. We create projects that are too big, too long, and without consistent leadership support—or hang by a thread as a “must do” from a senior official in a position with high-turnover. When projects come crashing down, we blame ourselves, our leadership, our contractors—luckily, there is no shortage of people to point at.
Let’s focus on the problem of project size because it’s so common, at the root of most project failures, and is so easily fixed. Smaller projects win. And when I say smaller, I mean really small. Work that can be done in about two weeks is ideal.
But, of course, small projects have to fit into a larger, intense and vibrant vision for the future. Too often, we have a sketchy, faded sense of where we’re going and a completely useless set of mission and vision statements. Instead, you need a vision that is clear, imaginable, and well-understood by all stakeholders (to be PMP-y about it.)
Why smaller projects work is that each is created within this glorious vision. How they support it and take the organization one step closer is obvious to all. The resources are allocated incrementally. The team can focus—coming together for the specific purpose and dispersing when it’s done—a short time later.
All of the documentation and artifacts pushed through the PMP should, in fact, be part of the organization’s standard operating procedures and not recreated at the project level time and again. Communications plans, risk management plans, resource management plans and on and on are a waste. In the smaller project model, we don’t bother to create these for each project. We commit instead to adhering to the broader organizational expectations for planning and reporting—actually, we don’t even have to make any formal commitment. It’s just how we work.
I want to write something about construction projects because I think they’re different and possibly the opposite—more “go big or go home.” One of my favorite clients has undertaken the massive transformation of a cherished cultural site. There are about one million moving pieces that make her project incredibly complex but it is working. I think the difference with construction projects is that there are literally years spent planning and designing the end result. Each step along this process includes hundreds of check points when other people get together and weigh in. Problems are identified then painstakingly addressed. The plans are refined then everyone moves on together.
It seems like a difficult job from the outside. Progress can feel slow but she sticks with it. She has to listen to and find the middle ground among people with clear biases but she sticks with it. The actual funding needed to bring the project to reality is uncertain but she sticks with it. It’s pretty remarkable, actually and I’m thankful she’s so dedicated.
But most of us don’t work in construction or even on big, lumpy system implementations. Instead, we spend oodles of time on project work and many days, we’re not sure if we’re making any progress at all. It’s frustrating. To regain that sense of accomplishment—and not even the sense of it—to regain actual accomplishments, we have to make the project smaller.
And, how is that we staff projects?
The nicest way to say it that we collect the crumbs of available time, ball them up, and make assignments. One thing we do well is identify the project manager and a handful of task leads who have technical expertise in the subject matter. What we don’t do well is take other competing responsibilities off their “to do” lists. We then fill in with staff who meet one important criteria-- available.
Once the team is assembled, the first order of business is to build a timeline to deliver the final product precisely on an arbitrary due date set by someone else. Then comes a scramble to finish some of the other planning documents.
These project planning activities are almost always overtaken by technical work that is somehow due all of a sudden. The status of the first looming milestone has to be presented to leadership so we turn our attention to preparing for that meeting. We wouldn’t want to look bad in front of the bosses right out of the gate, right? (As a side note, have you ever worked on a project where you spent so much time preparing for and participating in status meetings that you had limited time in between to make any actual progress? I have.)
And so with the project kick-off, the relentless cycle of meetings begins. This is often the one constant throughout the project.
Another constant throughout the project is systematic complaining about the budget. But, in my experience, the budget was never really the problem. Too often we go in complaining about limited resources as a subconscious (or deliberate) way of hedging our bets. We suspect the project is going to fail (as so many do) and we need to be on record early as to why. Blaming the budget tends to be safe excause because it's not really personal.
And while we’re at it, I've found that the schedule isn't typically a real problem either.
Contrary to our common complaints, a tight budget and a deadline are on our side. Limitations excite and inspire people to do amazing things.
So, what is the problem? More on that and the solution in my next post…
Despite the massive increase in certified PMPs in the last 20 years, projects are no better off. In fact, they fail more often than they succeed. Inputs, outputs, and techniques- part of the organizing framework of the PMP- are, at best, interesting considerations. However, standard processes won’t fix a project doomed from the start with an oversized scope, an unclear goal, and dim or flickering leadership support. Couple these common problems with our standard approach to project staffing and we set ourselves up to fail.
Read MoreThe Work Life Lab is a place to explore what works- and what doesn't- when trying to strike that elusive sense of work-life balance. I'm a working mom with three kids. I try things and share my experiences with the hopes that some of the best strategies might work for you too.
Robin Camarote, LLC | , Falls Church, VA
