The Power of Asking Why?

Why:  Three letters forming a word with the simplicity and, yet, the power to make us go numb, stumble for words or burst into a litany of excuses.  Or whatever we respond could be the essence of the reason why (here's why again) what and how we do what we do. 

Why do you donate money to charity? Why do you go to gym?  Why don't you support party A and support party B instead? Why do you admire the people you admire?  What have you become tired of your job? Why do you keep doing what you do after so many years?

Inspiration, goal setting and pure drive are rooted in the why of things, the reason, motivation and purpose behind plans and actions, leading to desired results.  Thousands of companies complain of bad results due to having deviated from their mission, the why of their existence and reason for being. 

At an individual level. a little soul searching as to why you chose your profession, the company you are with and the job you do, can help revive the passion in you. That can also help you identify new opportunities for change. 

Recommended reading:   Start with Why? by Simon Sinek






 

 

Time Affluence

Time has become a commodity.  What wouldn't we do with more time in a day? 

"I wish I had 30-hour days," I've heard some people say. A day with its 24 hours in it does not seem to be enough to do all we we need to get done, especially at work.  The truth is that, as my mom used to say, "there's more time than life."

Tal-Ben-Shahar, a psychology professor at Harvard University, says that Americans are increasingly getting busier by cramming all sorts of activities in their day, from status updating on social networks to shopping, house work on top of their regular work duties.  Getting busy, or looking busy, he states, has become a norm or a desired state, leaving very little time for 'quality time,' one of the 5 key ways to happiness.

Evaluating how you spend your time against goals (business and personal), goal setting to maximize quality over quantity and allocating  time to your personal life may help decrease frustration and help you feel happier.

You, the Warrior

You go to war to conquer and win.  Results drive you and your firm.

In today's complicated and competitive business world, you live or die by your P/L, market share, ratings, revenue, number of clicks or however success is measured in your line of work.  This is your score card.You may be a business manager or sales person.  You probably work for a truly heroic-type business where expansion and segment domination are the goal. 


In my days as an executive recruiter, I came across many magicians, sovereigns and lovers who were extremely frustrated with how much their companies were driven by results in the form of profits.  Here the war mood prevailed and heads rolled when business goals were not met.

Whether you like it or not, heroic companies along with their staff of warriors, play a key role across industries.  Even the most creative, exclusive and altruistic firms would not be able to thrive and function without a few warriors in their ranks.  I remember my shock when I meet a "sales woman" working for Save The Children. Well, on second thought, how can we save children without a warrior raising funds for them?

You, the Hopeless Lover

Don't get me wrong.  Company employees in this category are not necessarily tree huggers or Mother Teresas.  They,  in some direct or less direct ways, serve the common good.  A company like Pfizer, for example, strives "to improve health and well-being at every stage of life."  What more altruistic purpose than this?

You, the lover, seek fulfillment by helping others by  serving, curing, helping, entertaining them or simply making their lives easier somehow.  Whoever came up with the concept of delivery pizza sought, not only to make a profit by making food for someone, but went the extra mile (literally) by saving you the trip to the restaurant.  A pizza may not save your life in the same way a vaccine does, but the concept of service prevails here as well.

DHL delivers you the world.  Suzlon powers a greener tomorrow.  Burt's Bees "makes people's lives better every day, naturally."  This kind of love for humanity certainly fires you up.

You, Your Majesty

So, you're royalty? 

As an executive recruiter, I have encountered lots of professionals who acted and spoke of their employers as the one and only company capable of (fill in the blank), a league of their own, as unique or the last in a line of (fill in the blank). Their companies have actually done a great job at instilling a sense of royalty or sovereignty in them because of their high quality products or services. 

Maybe you don't aspire to be queen or king, but do focus on excellence and quality work to seek following and loyalty. That makes you a sovereign. You are attracted by companies or employers that seek to be number 1 in their areas, not by results alone, but, by the uniqueness of their product or service offering,  You and these companies also seek to set the standard, be the authority, the Oscars to Hollywood, the Pulitzer to journalists sort of speak.

I remember meeting someone working, not for a company, but THE company that manufactures the balls used by the Major League Baseball teams (MLB). To him, a die-hard baseball fan, his company is royalty (despite being such small  niche).  I agree that, within that category, the company rules.

You, the Magician

 As discussed in my previous entries, most companies fulfill a main purpose, be it innovation or discovery (magicians), excellence (sovereigns), altruism (lovers) or results (warriors).  Obviously, most companies focus on one or two of these traits, but may also have some orientation or specific activity or involvement in the others.

So, say you think you are a magician, turned on by innovation, discovery and freedom to create.  You may be working for a freedom champion or in a department in charge of product development, innovation or new service development. Even if you aren't in any of these roles, you may be the idea dynamo in your team, regardless of your position.

I personally feel that marketing, promotion and advertising agencies are probably the best example of magicians at work.  Here, executives and creatives are under great pressure to develop that new idea that well help their client achieve business purposes whatever they are.  I personally feel great respect for designers and creators who have the power to awe us with their work.  If you don't agree with me, check out a great example of creativity. I'm sure you've seen equally cool ads before.

 

Magicians, Sovereigns, Lovers and Warriors

In my opinion, purpose, more than faith, moves mountains. Nikos Mourkogiannis, a renown strategic consultant, states that every company has been created with a main purpose in mind and is populated by 4 types of people:  Magicians, Sovereigns, Lovers and Warriors.

Larry Page and Sergey Brin, founders of Google, the Magicians, set their eyes on an ever evolving free-access system that would put vast amounts of information on people's hands. Their emphasis has been on a free-spirit of innovation and discovery open to all.

Giorgio Armani, the Sovereign, is not out to save the world or clothe every man, woman and child on the planet for free, but a selected few who can afford his expensive creations. He strives for excellence, seeking to be admired, adored and followed.

Blake Mycoskie, the founder of TOMS shoes (www.toms.com), is the ultimate Lover who set out to give one pair of shoes to a shoeless child in the developing world for every pair sold at his store.  The One-for-One movement he leads is fueled by the purpose of altruism and desire to help others and improve their lives. 


Bill Gates is a Warrior who did not start Microsoft to develop software used by a handful of people; instead, he envisioned putting it in every PC on the face of the earth, earning him monopoly lawsuits in Europe. Results drive at its best.

Are you a magician, a lover, a sovereign or a warrior and, most importantly, is your personal purpose in line with that of your employer?

The Purpose of a Business

All companies and organizations, for or non-profit, public or private, are created for a purpose; be it to improve people's lives, fulfill a need, dominate a segment, improve on existing products, help humanity, etc.

In the case of businesses, their founders, owners or leaders develop products or services with a business purpose in mind, an ultimate goal and reason for being usually found in their mission statement.  Business strategies are ideally anchored on this ultimate purpose. Employees alike join these companies, attracted to the company's business purposes in addition to their personal and professional goals.

Unless you live under a rock, you must have heard about Toyota's problems and Mr. Toyoda admitting that the company, the epitome of efficiency,  had focused too much on expansion and ended up losing its direction. Howard Schultz, the founder of Starbucks, similarly stated that the coffee chain had grown too big and, therefore, also deviated from its original mission.  It may sound like an excuse, but, there is certainly a lot of truth in their statements. No company can succeed if their strategy is not guided by their main business purpose.

Nikos Mourkogiannis, an strategic consultant to the likes of Johnson & Johnson, Alcatel and Braun and an authority on strategic leadership, speaks of 4 types of business purposes that drive most companies.

Discovery:  Here companies focus on idea creation, innovation, discovery, newness and setting new directions e.g. IBM, Apple, Google.

Excellence:  These are enterprise that strive for excellence and uniqueness, seeking to be at the top and obtain adoration and following e.g. The Economist, BMW.

Altruism:  Here the emphasis is on service, altruism, improving quality of  life and relationships e.g. Pfizer, The Body Shop, Federal Express.

Results:  Here companies fight to be heroes, obtain results, and totally dominate their segment e.g. Microsoft, Goldman Sachs, Ford.


Think for a minute:  Who do you work for and what purpose drives your organization?
Another key question here:  Are YOUR personal values in line with those of your organization?

Motivation 3.0

I sometimes forget that the subject of this blog is career crisis and may occasionally drift a bit.  In my last 2 posts,  I touched on how the Costa Rican economy is becoming much more competitive and the issue of employee motivation and retention.  One of the underlying threads here is the importance of what companies do to motivate staff, increase employee satisfaction and, as a result, boost productivity and business results.


Your questioning and doubting your place in your current company may be rooted in you being the object of the wrong kind of motivation.  In light of the recent economy downturn and changes the world is going through, Daniel Pink describes a new theory of motivation 3.0 taking root among renown multinationals.  It  includes 3 key ingredients:  Autonomy, mastery and purpose.

Autonomy:   Employees should be encouraged and challenged to work flexibly, engage in individual projects of their liking and contribute beyond their call of duty or what is written in their job description.  This may imply changes in work schedules, sitting arrangements and involvement in task forces or committees all with the purposes of stimulating participation.


Mastery:  Companies that correctly spot, nurture and nourish their staff strengths motivate them to create bigger and better things.  The phrase "train like crazy" is thrown around very often with training programs, rarely hitting the spot and delivered in a cookie cutter, one size fits all manner.  What best motivator than a company caring about the employees' personal and professional growth?

Purpose:  The company does not exist in a vacuum.  Churning out widgets or generating gross profits alone may not be motivating or purposeful enough in today's work environment.  The community now has plenty of choices and communication weapons to favor companies that serve a higher and common  purpose, be it improving and saving lives, helping the environment or any good cause you can think of.

Never before had companies and their staff been under such pressure and faced with such opportunity to consider the importance of the human capital in business. 

 

Is Your Employer Motivating You the Right Way?

"Your salary is your motivation," we were told by our branch manager after a great number of employees complained about the company not doing enough to motivate staff. This was at an education services provider long ago. I remember a pretty upset colleague replying that a salary is the minimum and actually the least required form of "employee motivation."

The manager was partly right, though, as money is one, just one, of the sources of motivation for employees.  Very logical indeed:  You work and you get paid, unless you work voluntarily.  He was also VERY wrong as well simply because not everybody is motivated by financial rewards alone. 

The business world has moved from a purely manufacturing and production driven business model to a more intelligent content and service driven one and so have the needs of employees from a motivation standpoint.  The carrot and stick style of the industrial area is a simplistic view of employee motivation.  Fast forward to now and enter equal opportunity, social networking, CSR, the environment, etc. all having a great impact and why we work.

Ask yourself:
- Is my company environmentally friendly?
- Are we a socially responsible firm?
- What is the company doing to give back to the community around it?

- Does the company internally encourage team work and a sense of family and community?
- Am I being given the opportunity to be creative?
- How much control do I have over my work schedule?
- How's my company contributing to my personal and professional growth?
- Do we all have equal opportunities to be promoted and rewarded?
- Do I have a say in company matters?
- Does the company care about me as an individual?

- How does the company celebrate achievement?
- How does the company deal with underachievement and bad performance?
- How has the company dealt with the economic downturn in terms of staff relations?

A lot of stuff to digest indeed, but a glimpse at other factors, other than compensation, that influence employee motivation.

In my next installment, motivation 3.0.

Change in Motion

On a recently visit to Costa Rica, I noticed that the local business scene has undergone radical changes. Changes that have a great impact on the working professional as well.

More and more multinationals are opening shop in the country, creating very high demand for educated bilingual and highly qualified professionals.  The quality of costumer service evolved from the take-it-or-leave treatment given especially at government entities (banks, hospitals, etc.)  to a costumer is king type of mentally rarely seen before.  It was nice to get quick friendly efficient service at a state bank (unbelievable!), a humble bank physically a stone's throw away from giants like HSBC and Citibank.   I remember being told off by a moody clerk at a state bank once many years ago for not speaking loudly enough. Without a doubt, competition is the biggest incentive for improvement.
 
Slowly, but surely, more government run services like telecommunications are due to become open to private providers; a slow death for the bureaucrats that kept the golden goose in a cage, but a blessing to the consumer.  There is even talk of decentralizing the health care system, state owed, managed and supported by taxpayers just like Canada and the UK to allow private clinics and all kinds of health care providers to offer services and get paid with the same funds.  Waiting for 3-6 months to get a liver scan will hopefully be thing of the past.

The aim of the government is to become a little Singapore-like state where the government takes a regulatory stand while businesses compete for a piece of the pie in their respective industries. All the changes, positive overall, though controversial for some, pose both challenges and opportunities for local professionals who will be feeling the pressure to get better to stay competitive. Businesses alike face fierce competition for talent acquisition and retention as well as to improve their service offering. 

And speaking of retention, on my next entry, a glimpse at what your company is doing (or otherwise) to keep you motivated.

AQ: Adaptability Quotient

Much has been said of IQ, intelligence quotient, and EQ emotional quotient or emotional intelligence. In this day and age of battered economies, corporate bankruptcies, recalls, deflation and debt, AQ or Adaptability Quotient becomes one of the key traits to professional success.  Developing your ability to embrace and adapt to change is now a key professional must.

Stuart Parkin in his Ad Age article What Makes you Employable in 2010? states that, as important as raw intelligence and personality traits are, now more than ever, being able to adapt to change will profoundly determine your ability to survive in the current job market or get re-employed if you are in a transitional period.


Has your employer changed strategies?  Are you expected to do more with less, be it staff, budget or other resources? Are you expected to work less or more hours?  Has your office moved to a less desirable location? Will you need to acquire new skills? What skills will you need to transfer to remain in your current post or adapt to a new one? All these questions relate to adaptability. 

Parkin also states that willingly seeking and promoting change can help you succeed.  Resisting changes that your organization enforces to ensure commercial and operational success will not viewed positively in the current economic environment. The new economy requires employees that seek, promote and embrace change.

Take a Needed Break

I just came back from a 3-week visit home that really helped me take care of personal matters, rest and, most importantly, clear the mind to re-evaluate my next career step, my next step in life. 

I had never seen so much of my country as I did in the last 3 weeks, traveling north to south and east to west and traveling to places that draw foreign tourists like bees to honey and that I was too lazy or too uninterested to consider visiting in the past.  While visiting one of the most impressive rain forest reserves in the world, Monteverde Cloud Forest, and marveling at the beauty of the hundreds of moss-covered 10-meter-plus tall trees there, I arrived the the following conclusion:  Nothing clears the mind and the spirit like a holiday.

I don't know about you, but solo-traveling and purposeful solitude did it for me.  I do not think I had been so relaxed, especially in the last 6 years as when horse back riding in the humid plains of the tropical north east.  I found the Pacific beach sunsets, full moons over the valley and the sounds of the green jungle truly humbling. 

I cannot confidently say I defined what my next step will be, but I did conclude the following:
- It is in my power to decide and take the necessary steps to achieve my goals.
- I am a fighter with the track record and results to prove it and further advance professionally.
- This transition I am going through is just that, a temporary situation that will lead to better and bigger challenges.
- Work, in whatever shape or form, be it viewed as monotonous, prestigious or complex, gives one the chance to shine.
- Work is what you make of it:  It is in our power to transform our work to give our very best regardless of the activity.

It sounds like a cliche, but a holiday does help clear the mind.

The Role of Adaptability and Reinvention

A few years back, an engineer at SONY predicted that music CDs would eventually disappear, rendering the SONY Discman unusable. This was due to the rapid advancements in the internet and information storage and transmission. This is commonplace now, but imagine 10 years ago.

Word has it, the engineer suggested a switch to a device that would store and reproduce music, rather than a device that would depend on external means of storing data like discs and the like. SONY executives ignored him claiming that the switch would be too costly and that it went against Morita-san's original vision of the Walkman. Poor guy. And then came the Ipod and the rest is history....

The point here is that adaptability, reinvention, innovation and vision should be at the core of a company's development. I think the same of our career lives. Adapt and grow or risk stagnation. 

I previously mentioned the Adverting Age article Reinvention, Not Just for the New Year by Darryl Ohrt.  Darryl suggests innovating and revisiting various aspects of the company quarterly or biannually.  I suggest regularly revisiting the following points to avoid career stagnation:

Your brand: How are you seen by others or portray yourself within the organization?
Your operations: How can you innovate in your day-to-day activities to further improve?
Your role in the organization:  What other roles can you play to further contribute?
Your network:  How solid and updated is your professional network?


What can you adapt or re-invent to spice up your work?

Reinventing Rather Than Resolving

The first week of the year has gone by.  We're into a new decade and what a decade the last was. Have you kept up with those resolutions?  You may have started off  the year trying to lose weight and make up for the lack of exercise over the holidays.  By the way, my gym was deserted last week and packed today.  I knew it.

I would presume that most of the resolutions you made are either now history or will become a thing of the past in the coming days.  To give you the benefit of the doubt, let's say your resolutions like mine spread over the year rather than come alive by year end and die at the beginning of the new year.

I came across a great article on Adverting Age:  Reinvention, Not Just for the New Year by Darryl Ohrt. The article is aimed at small advertising agencies with the suggestion to revisit their brand, operations, employee relations and social  media presence every quarter, rather than annually in view of the drastic changes in social communication and the economic climate we now live in.

Darryl suggests ditching the resolutions and annual plans and going with clear conscientious revision and reinvention of these key aspects of the company.  The world as we knew it in 2007 or 2008 is no more, especially in the area of job estability and employment, so I would also suggest that we apply the same advise to our professional goals, ditch the resolutions and annual plans and take a more regular and proactive approach to our work lives.  More on that to come.

Forget New Year's Resolutions

It's that time of the year again: Celebration, gift giving, partying and well-wishing. All very well intended and deserved. Then, we are confronted with the reality of the reading on the meter below our feet and the prospect of going back to work after yet another holiday that came and went without us even noticing (or so we say).

But we can always come up with New Year's Resolutions to feel better after all the eating and drinking and lazing around during the holidays. I do not want to sound negative, but NYRs end up being just that, wishes made out of guilt or feeling that making a promise we will probably not follow through with will make us feel better, at least for a while. Where will the resolutions be by January 20th or so? Forgotten maybe?

Instead of New Year's Resolutions, we should identify, schedule and execute quarterly goals, even bi-annual and yearly goals made out of true resolution and objective planning, not guilt. Simple example: You should make it a point of updating your resume at by the end of every quarter to record achievements and successes (not just before applying for a job..which usually happens when you desperately need to....the worst timing ever). Have the discipline to schedule the 'Update Resume' task on your calendar and actually sit down and do it. Ask a friend or 'resume buddy' to work on his/hers with you and exchange feedback and views.

A resolution is just an empty promise if it lacks continuity and a clear plan or schedule for completion. Build accountability and support around any goal you set for yourself.

Thank you for your support this year and may 2010 be full of new challenges.