Updated - Loyalty vs. Reality: Knowing when to quit your job

Update: January 2012

I wrote the post below in November 2011, to help those who felt trapped in their current roles and were looking to make a change.  Also, I wanted to help those who were simply disastified in their current jobs and really just needed to find ways to make their currentt positions more palatable or interesting.  In any case, I am happy to report that I took my own advice and quit my job.  I now work for Microsoft as a Principle Project Manager in their Public Sector business, Justice and Public Safety Practice.  Yesterday was my first day and I am excited about what the future holds.

If you are unsure about where you want to go and what you want to do, take a few moments and read through the post below. 

Remember:  The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step, and today is the first day of the rest of your life.  What are you going to do with it?

Wake up!  You are going to leave your job

I have heard that every person holding a position in an organization brings joy to their office;  Some when they come... others when they go.  :-) When we walk through the door for the first time as a new employee we typically have high expectations.  Most people seek to make good impressions on their co-workers and managers.  Leaving the place they just worked so hard to get into is the last thing on their mind... But leave they will.  Like it or not it is an inevitable reality.  Everyone leaves... One way or another.

Communicating with Authenticity

The Problem: 
Corporate jargon separates us from those we are trying to lead.

Have you ever been in a conversation with someone at work and when it was over you realized you had no idea what the person just said?  They used so much jargon and "business speak", they were able to keep you mesmerized for 15 minutes while they said absolutely nothing.  Or perhaps you have run across my personal favorite:  You ask a simple yes or no question (Like: Did you install the software on the customers computer?) and you get a five minute monologue that never quite answers it. It usually starts with: "You see, what happened was... "  I hate that so much.  :-)

How to Change, Overcome and Adapt in the Workplace

"If you don't like change you'll like irrelevance even less"
    ... US Army Gen Eric Shinseki June 2002

We must face our fears and stand for what we believe.

When it comes to business, today's marketplace is like the ocean: It is deep and it keeps its mistakes.  It is absolutely vital to the survival of any organization that it stay abreast of the changing tides in the market to be able to position itself to both survive, and thrive in the new environment.  This same necessity holds true for individuals as well.  The recent Great Recession brought new meaning to the concept of "Who Moved my Cheese?"  Peoples' dreams of a comfortable retirement were wiped out along with their retirement savings as investment values plummeted and the mass market contracted like a starving belly.  Some people thrived during this time because they were prepared.  Others simply overcame the obstacles, changed to take advantage of new opportunities, and adapted their outlook to the new environment. 

How to Survive Systemic Challenges at Work

Do you feel like having a workplace meltdown?  There is help.
Every place that I have worked had systemic challenges.  Your workplace is probably no different.  Local and State government, small business, large corporate organizations, non-profit organizations, and the Federal government, all have systemic problems that plagued the team and killed effectiveness.  Systemic challenges or problems in the workplace are those problems that are bigger than just one or two personality conflicts.  They are the problems that are sometimes caused by years of cultural or strategic misalignment with the tactical goals of the organization.  They typically impact all facets of the organization.  Here is an important fact:  Every company has them.  No one is exempt.  At some level, there are systemic issues in every organization that negatively impact performance.  It is what the organization choses to do about it that will set it apart from the others.

The High Price of Bad Service

You have probably experienced the pain of cut backs
As a manager or team member, you probably have heard it before.   Your boss walks in and sadly says  "Sorry but we are going to have to cut your budget so stop all spending and give us the names of the people we need to let go."  Then you start thinking about the lives that will be impacted.  You may even have to let one of your friends go because times are tight.  Alternatively, you may have been one of the people that was let go because the organization was not performing as well as everyone had hoped and people needed to go.  It did not have to be that way.  Worse yet, how do you improve the customer experience with a smaller and potentially demoralized workforce?

Grass Doesn't Grow on Busy Streets!

From the mouths of babes
My daughter was noticing the bald spot in the top of my head today while we were visiting my mom in the hospital. When my mom heard what my daughter said, she wisely commented "grass doesn't grow on busy streets". It reminded me of the fact that our elders have wisdom that transcends generations. Mark Twain said "My Father was an amazing man.  The older I got, the smarter he got.

Avoiding Mediocrity: Three Life Lessons from My Dad

Some People are Destined to a Life of Mediocrity

I interact with a lot of people for work.  Sometimes I am the customer, and sometimes the people I am dealing with are my customers.  Over the years I have become more and more aware of the fact that some people are just not very productive, no matter what job you put them in.  They just are not mentally prepared for success and therefore are destined for a life of mediocrity.  I started thinking about why some people are more driven (and likely) to succeed than others.  One of the many reasons that people think the way they think is the environment in which they are raised.  My father recently passed away.  I took some time over the past several weeks since his death to reflect on what I learned from my Dad and how those lessons have made me the man that I am.  While my Dad gave me plenty of advice (some good, some bad :-)), there were three recurring themes in all of his lessons. They are actually pretty straightforward words to live by.  I have captured them here and hope that they are as helpful to you as they have been to me.

Is there not a cause? Improving Team Performance through Visionary Leadership

Impassioned people do tremendous things

I spent many years in public service as a U.S. Marine and in Law Enforcement here in Central Florida before transitioning to private sector.  I have to say that during my time in public sector, I was constantly humbled by the high quality of the people I met and what we were willing to do for people we barely knew or, in most cases, did not know at all.  When the time came to act, we just did.  I know people who have paid a high price to serve others.  History is filled with those who gave even more... Those who "gave the last full measure of devotion" for a common good and in some way made us all better people.

Lessons on Leading Organizational Change

I have met those that believe organizational change is an exercise in futility.  They feel the amount of effort required to truly change a dysfunctional team is not worth the cost in emotional energy and stress.  Instead, they would rather continually suffer the wiles of errant team or simply quit.  Believe me, there are times when you probably should cut your losses and just find another job.  However, there are many instances in which rolling up your sleeves and engaging with others on the team will net the required results.

The Comfort of Chaos

Why do people prefer to live lives filled with mayhem and dissonance?

Do you know anybody that always has something going wrong in their lives either at home or at work.  If the kids aren't sick, then there are problems at work.  If work is going good, then their marriage is tanking.  If the marriage is good then their job sucks and is draining them completely.  In the workplace this attitude can be seen in people who allow the chaos from their private life to creep into their work life (or vice versa)

Dealing with Difficult (AKA: Crazy) Coworkers

Every office has them

They lurk in dimly lit conference rooms, and dusty cubicles waiting to find fault in everything you say and do.  If you present an idea, they are sure to crush it like an 18-wheeler crushes a cute and cuddly rabbit.  They stonewall, impede, discredit, and otherwise hinder organizational progress so that they can look better...or do less work.  They are what keeps you up at night and makes you hate going to work.  They are your co-workers (term used loosely).

Key Strategies for Rapid Personal Improvement

It's that time of year and many people are deciding on their New Years resolutions.  I personally have never really been into that.  However, I do like setting goals for myself throughout the year.  Over the years, I have found some very basic techniques that I believe have allowed me to move forward in my personal and professional life while others stagnated.  In a nutshell, I take the time to try and learn something new every single day with the singular purpose of being better today than I was yesterday.  Additionally, I set goals for myself and I share them with close friends so that they will encourage me.  Here are six rules that I have used for personal improvement. 

How Making Yesterday Perfect Kills Your Teams' Innovation

Livin' the dream... from last year

Have you ever been a part of an organization that seems to believe that everything they are currently doing is the best and only way that particular thing should be done?  Years ago, the company figured out how to build a particular product or deliver a particular service and make money at the same time.  As time passed they began to believe that they were good at it.  After a few successful years, they convinced themselves that they were the best at what they did and that customers were lucky to be able to business with them.  They stopped confronting reality and started listening to their own press releases.  I think you know the rest of the story.  Arrogance and hubris set in, and the organization begins a steady decline to mediocrity or non-existence as customers find other companies that are willing to serve them.

Organizaitonal culture can kill innovation

Innovation is a fundamental aspect of our human nature.  It is in our DNA to dream big dreams and create what only existed in our minds eye.  Every company has people who are capable of innovation and it will happen whether the company promotes it or not.  The question is whether the organization will benefit from it or if the competion will.  While there are many ways to stiffle and kill innovation in a company, having an organizational culture that refuses to let go of yesterdays successes is one way to pinch off the flow of innovative ideas.  If new team members believe that their new idea will have to compete with, and defeat, long entrenched corporate ideology, they will lose interest in the debate fairly quickly.  They get paid whether management accepts their new ideas or not.  If they are shut down once, it is unlikey that you will be able to get them to open up again without additional effort.

Xerox is an example of a company that was not able to capitalize on the it's own innovations.  Some of the companies most notable inventions during the early 1970's were.

• The personal computer (PC)
• Ethernet networking
• The modern word processor with WYSIWYG editing
• The Graphical User Interface (GUI) (What you see on your computer screen today)
• The computer mouse
• Computer generated bitmap graphics

There are many in the know who believe that the reason Xerox was never able to bring these innovations to market was because the company was in the copier business.  It did not know how to make money with these technologies.  It took a smaller more nimble group of people (Apple computer) to make the dream a reality.

Arrogance and hubris

As companies grow in size and market share, they tend to become more and more confident in their position in the marketplace.  A sense of entitlement begins to infuse itself into the DNA of the company until employees start treating customers like they don't have a choice in suppliers.  Customers naturally get upset and start looking for alternatives.  The market hears the demand and produces another supplier who will deliver the product or service, cheaper, faster and with better service than you do.  This evolution is replayed time and time again.  It is no wonder why many successful businesses lose their winning position to the competition after an extended successful run.

Have you ever been part of a company that has been around for more than 10 years and has met with reasonable success.  Often, the organization seems bent on keeping the streak going by doing the same thing over and over.  This strategy simply doesn't work because the external environment changes.  The ability to succeed becomes harder and harder.  The company begins a slow and uneventful demise as both customers and talent leaves.  Jason Jennings wrote the book "Its not the big that eat the small... it's the fast that eat the slow".  (Its a great read and I highly recommend it.) In it he presents the idea that quick thinking and appropriate action has taken the place of size and longevity as a competitive advantage.  It is no longer sufficient to be the biggest and oldest company in the market.  Companies that rely solely on what they did yesterday will find themselves left in the dust.  Innovation has a shelf life and every year it gets shorter and shorter.

Some final thoughts

Making Yesterday Perfect is a term used by Gordon Sullivan and Michael Harper in their text "Hope is not a Method."  According to Sullivan and Harper, a "Making Yesterday Perfect" leader is often aggressive in making change and demonstrating progress, but always in terms of they old paradigm.  This type of resistance to change is espcially bad because it gives the appearance that people are actually effectively working to address the situation.

If you are in an organization that seems to struggle with the reality of today's business environment you have options.  You can be part of the problem, or you can be part of the solution.  Take a stance and encourage your organization to foster a culture of learning and innovation.  There are many texts, articles, and information on innovation.  I would start with the works of Clayton M. Christensen and learn about Disruptive Innovation.  If you are unable to create change in your organization, it may be time to look for an team that is willing to grow and learn, or maybe even start one yourself.

Do you have any suggestions on how to help your organization become more innovative?  Have you been able to work with your management to get new ideas to take root?  Please comment and let us know how.

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Woulda, Coulda, Shoulda

Where are you along the road of life?

I believe that every person will come to a crossroads in their life.  A point of realization, be it ever so brief, where they take account of where they have been and where they are going.  We do it both in our personal and professional lives.  Have you hit that crossroads yet?  If so, which way did you decide to go?

Think about all of the occasions where you wish you could have gone backwards in time to a particular situation.  You think about all of the things you would have done had the situation been different or if you had the opportunity to do things again.  Hindsight is 20/20.  I often wonder how many people would actually take advantage of the situation if it actually presented itself.  If you were actually able to use a DVR on your life and you were able to do a quick rewind, what would we acutally change?

Do you "wish" things were different?

Are you really happy with who you are and what you have become in this life?  That is a question only you can answer and I hope you have something to say about it.  From a career standpoint, have you achieved what you hoped you would have achieved by this point in your life, or have you missed your mark.  I had a High School Business Education teacher that used to say that if I aimed for the stars that one day I might hit the moon but that was better than not aiming at all.  I agree.  What did you aim for?  Did you hit it?  What are you aiming for now?
In my adult life I have had many jobs with many co-workers, bosses and direct reports.  One thing has always struck me as odd.  Everyone complains.   Everyone wishes that things were different.  Everyone says "Man, if we could only _______ (fill in the blank). "  But most people don't do something different in order to get different results.  They don't realize that they are hitting exactly where they are aiming.  They have zero goals and have an equal number of successes in their life.  One thing I do know is that life is short and we pass this way but once.  I don't want any instances of "Woulda, Coulda, Shoulda"

A dream is just a dream until you couple action with aspiration

(I just made that up but I KNOW that it is true. :-)) If you are not happy where you work and there is something that you would rather go do, you should make a plan to go do it.  I have a very close friend of mine who taught me that lesson.  He asked me what I would do for work if I could do anything I wanted, and didn't have to worry about money.  I told him that I would be a bass guitar player in a Chicago blues band.  He responded, "Do you know how to play bass guitar?"  "A little" I said.  He said, "Do you own a bass guitar?"  "No" I responded.  He said ok, and then started talking about something else.  A few months later he asked me how my bass guitar lessons were going and if I had actually bought a bass guitar.  My answer was hard to say.  I hadn't done anything to move me towards the goal I had told him I wanted to do so passionately.  It suddenly hit me that my dream was just a dream and would always stay a dream, as long as I did nothing to work towards it.  Additionally, if it was really something that I wanted to do, I would figure out a way to make it happen.  This also caused me to reevaluate what I really really wanted to do.  I had to figure out what I was really passionate about and to make that my focus.

Some final thoughts

As we come into the season of New Years resolutions and self-commitents to make a better you, we should take a moment to look at ourselves.  We should evaluate where we are on the road of life.  Are we on the right road, heading in the right direction?  Have we veered off course?  Did we miss the an onramp?  Decide now what you want and go for it.  Do not let your days end with any Woulda, Coulda Shoulda's.

I am interested in hearing what you would do if all of your bills were paid and you could just pick the thing that pleased you the most.  What would you be doing?

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Why Other People Have More than You

Are all people created equal?

I often ask myself why people do the things they do.  I see people making their lives miserable when they could be taking steps to minimize their efforts and maximize their producitivity.  Why do otherwise smart people do seemingly dumb things?  Alternatively, why do some people know exactly what to say to close the sale.  How did they know the right time to start that new business or to create that new product.  I am reminded of that quote from Peter Drucker, one of the greatest business minds of the past 50 years.  He said that when sane, rational and moral people behave in ways that seem inexplicable, its because they see a reality different from ours.

Do Women Make Better Project Managers?

Are women better than men?

Plenty of people have questioned whether women perform as good as men in the workplace.  Women have made in-roads into virtually every profession from Astronaut to Zoologist and show no signs of slowing down.  As a manager of project managers, I absolutely have an opinion as to whether women are better at the PM role than men are.  I have managed PM teams with 20 plus project managers with both men and women serving in the role.  Anecdotaly I would say that the female project managers performed better than their male peers.  What I found is that they were more likely to execute in accordance with organizational PM practices and deliver on time and on budget.  In my opinion, because they paid attention to the details, their projects performed better.  In fact, one of the best PM's I know, worked for me at Motorola and is a woman. (Shout out to Deb Wineland)  However, I wanted to poke around to see what research has been done in this area and what empirical, scholarly research has revealed.

Recent research conducted by PMPerspectives.org focused on this topic.  They found that there is some credence to what many managers have already figured out.  In a study reviewing the impact of gender on project performance, researchers found that female PM's significantly outperform their male peers in several areas.  Primarily in their ability to deliver projects on time, on budget, and on scope.  Male counterparts were more likely deliver projects that went beyond the scope of the original agreement.  There are clearly times when this is valuable, desireable, and necessary.  The team of project management researchers offer some advice for taking advantage of the difference between male and female project managers.

• If you are looking for better all-round project performance against budget, schedule and scope, then appointing an experienced female project manager increases the probability of a good or better outcome.

• If minimizing variance against budget and/or schedule is important, then appointing an experienced female increases the probability of achieving this goal.

• If maximizing business benefits is more important than considerations of budget and schedule, then appointing an experienced male increases the probability that you will achieve more than was asked for.

Source: PMPerspectives.org (Please visit this site if you would like to see their article)

Conclusion

While this may be a delicate topic for some, research has shown that there are in fact advantages to having females running your projects.  I don't believe however, that this is a "one size fits all" model that can be applied to every situation.  In short, everyone deserves a chance and women are just as capable (in some instance more capable) than men in delivering the project on time on budget and within scope.
Have you had an opportunity to work with both men and women as project managers?  What has been your experience?  Do you believe that women make better project managers?  If so, why or why not?  Let us know what you think!

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Buzzwords on Your Resume = FAIL!

We all do it

We want to look good.  We want to be employed and we want to take care of our families.  So we start selling ourselves to potential employers. We talk about how good we are , we talk about what we know and elaborate on our virtues.  We accentuate the positives in minimize the negatives.  I guess a certain amount of that is expected and realistic.  I also beliee that some people just take it to "whole... notha... level..."  I know of one instance when I was a background investigator that a police candidate puffed up their resume so much we actually passed him over because he essentially lied on his application.

Another way that people try to puff up their resumes is by using buzzwords they think will get picked up by search engines.  I saw a CNN article by Mark Millan that talked about the 10 most overused words on resumes.  This list was compiled by LinkedIn, the social networking site for professionals.
According to LinkedIn, these are the top 10 overused phases on job seekers resumes.

1. Extensive experience
2. Innovative
3. Motivated
4. Results-oriented
5. Dynamic
6. Proven track record
7. Team player
8. Fast-paced
9. Problem solver
10. Entrepreneurial

But I AM a team player!

By now you might be saying to yourself that you ARE a team player.  So how should you say that without using the words "team player"?  You can give examples of what you did rather than just using the buzzwords to describe it.  If you cant find solid examples of what you did that makes you a "problem solver", then I guess you might be challenged on a couple of different levels anyways making the placement of that term on your resume a misnomer. :-)

In short, take time to review your resume and ask yourself if you can really do all the things you have put on it.  You will look (and will probably feel) pretty stupid when you are asked questions about things on your resume that simply are not true or are embellished.  If you find areas where you think you need to beef up your resume, it would probably be more prudent for you to actually beef up your skills first.  Get a book, listen to a podcast, or ask a friend.  Get the skill any way you can.  In the end, this is much more credible and will show your future employer that you are a good catch.

Have you seen people embelish their resume with buzzwords?  Have you done it?  I would love to hear about how that has worked out for you or what you thought of the people that did it.

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