Category: Career

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Ashley Career

Podcasts, Teamwork, & “Kaizen”

I’ve been totally into podcasts recently. We did a lot of travel this summer, including three weeks in Europe, and we even nerded-out to the point of using Rick Steve’s podcasts as walking guides in the cities we visited. Before our long, late summer trip, we spent 12 hours in the car to drop our sweet pup off with my parents, and opted for some great episodes of This American Life for the journey. One episode from earlier this year on NUMMI, a joint venture car plant in California that was Toyota’s first on-the-ground project in the U.S., immediately appealed to my husband because of his Michigan and GM family roots.

I expected to be clued in/interested in the NUMMI episode, but I didn’t expect to take away such a major lesson on organizational change. I recommend you go listen, but here’s the jist. In the early 1980’s, Toyota was looking for a U.S. project that would allow them to take advantage of U.S. tax incentives and help them better understand American production and business. GM had a failing plant in Freemont, California, with a cranky, dysfunctional, union workforce, so they put the Freemont plant on the table for the Toyota deal. Since the Japanese were going to run this plant, and they had no desire to perpetuate the American union model, GM decided to fire all the union plant employees. Crazy thing is, for the partnership, they proceeded to hire back about 80% of the former plant team, and shipped them over to Japan to train on the Toyota production line alongside their Japanese peers.

The Toyota business model was so foreign to the American workers – for starters, the Toyota crew believes in 100% teamwork. That means your colleague cares just as much about completing a task or project as you do, regardless of their management level, and will stop their work to lend a hand and complete the goal. On the GM line, there’s one thing you never do: stop the production line. Union workers let imperfect cars go all the way through production on the GM line, never pulling the stop chord; but the Japanese let anyone stop the line if it meant finding a solution. Together, they’d find a solution and get the line back up and running. This was Toyota’s secret to high quality cars, something GM definitely wasn’t known for at the time.

The partnership was brilliant and Nummi was a huge success. The joint venture played out well for Toyota as they entered the U.S. market. Looking back, experts say GM couldn’t implement the lessons they learned from the joint venture company-wide, for a variety of reason. Toyota’s willingness to let them in on their production secrets and emphasis on teamwork was huge, but GM was missing a key ingredient of Toyota’s philosophy for success. Toyota strongly believes in the Japanese practice of kaizen, or continuous improvement. Any Toyota employee is encouraged to look for ways to improve their product and process, even if it means pointing out a flaw in the production line, recommending a solution that could save 10 seconds per car, or coming up with an idea for a new tool to fit those bolts just right…anything you could imagine. And Toyota would take those ideas for improvement, explore them with engineers or whomever needed to be involved, and implement them as soon as possible. Wahlah! Continuous improvement.

Anyway, you get it: GM went bankrupt, the top quality car makers in the world are now Japanese, and I don’t know about you, but I’ve yet to see an American company that practices kaizen at all levels of management.

Have you heard any great case studies on organizational change, good or bad, successful or not? Better yet, please tell me you have some podcasts to recommend!

– Ashley Respecki

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Career Libby

Back to School

As of this week, summer is officially over. My son has been in school since August 31, but we went on a family trip to the beach last week and now it really feels like the end. It makes me feel a little sad, but I also embrace the seasonal transitions, both personally and professionally.

Personally, I’m getting back into my routine: less cocktailing and more working out, along with less staying up late and more getting up early. Professionally, I need to do the same thing.

September is the start of our fiscal year. We tie our performance reviews to the start of the fiscal year so that we can see whether or not we met our goals for the prior year organizationally, departmentally and individually. I think it’s a decent process – it allows for reflection and a kind of kick start to the new fiscal year…a back-to-school bump if you will!

As I begin to reflect on what my department, and specifically what I, accomplished last year, it’s pretty impressive: we brought in almost $8M in revenue by holding over 150 programs. Out of that 150, twenty-one of them were my programs – all face-to-face and some lasting 2 hours, others 5 days…not too shabby for a part-timer. (I won’t say that I contributed significantly to the revenue numbers, but I helped!)

I think it’s important to periodically check-in with yourself and review your body of work. Work can sometimes feel like, well, work, so understanding all that you’ve accomplished is essential to maintaining forward progress and staying energized. It’s okay to be proud!

You should also be able to articulate your role on the team. While your individual successes are what make you shine, your part in elevating the entire department or in helping the organization meet their goals is what makes you valuable. Together, these are the things that keep you employed, but they are also the recipe for increasing your own self-esteem and a metric for whether or not this job is still the right fit for you.

– Libby Bingham

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Career Libby

Be a Rockstar

As I write this, I sit in the common area of my son’s music school, the School of Rock. There’s a video of various student performances playing, a private lesson or two going on in the rooms behind me, teens plucking away on their guitars while they hang out eating snacks and my son’s “band” doing their best to rock Seven Nation Army – cacophony! But amazing – how many of you are brave enough to get in front of an audience – even a small one – and do something that you’re not 100% sure that you’re terrific at? And you’re only seven, or eleven or fourteen? It’s pretty impressive, isn’t it? I’m inspired to think about how we can all be rockstars at work:

  1. Try. As we get older, we sometimes forget to try something new – it’s too embarrassing to take a crack at a presentation or the creation of a program description without being sure that we’ll succeed. You know what? It’s still okay to try. What’s the worst that can happen? You’ll still have your day job!
  2. Take a back seat. This is a strange one if I’m telling you how to be a rockstar, but letting other people shine is what makes a really good band. By allowing your own talents to support someone else’s makes everyone better – just as Jon Bon Jovi would be nothing without Richie Sambora or Steven Tyler just odd looking without Joe Perry, your CSE or boss is nothing without your kicka** talents and efforts at budgeting, marketing or meeting planning. Own your place in the band.
  3. Rock your solo. When it actually becomes time for you to take your solo, go for it – Angus Young it on the floor, freak out like Flea, channel Neal Pert – and give it your all. Don’t phone it in, really make it count: prepare, practice and crush it.
  4. Practice. Despite various mythologies and seven year old fantasies, no real rockstar ever made it by just picking up a guitar and starting to play – it takes years of practice, hours of repetitive exercises and the like. If you’re new to the game, respect your elders – they’ve been doing scales and chord work for a long time…you can learn something from them. And you who have been at it a while – doing the road tours and setting up your own gigs – don’t forget what it’s like to have a fire in your belly; give them some space to try (see numbers 1 and 2).
  5. Have fun. Some of us have Very Important Jobs. Some have less cachet. But we all have people depending on us to perform some duty and we’ll all do better if we’re having fun while we’re doing it. You know those bands that totally gel? The ones who have been together forever? It’s mostly because they’re having fun. You should too – the band will be stronger for it!

– Libby Bingham

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Career Karen

Frustration is the Opportunity to Reinvent

Frustration is an indicator that what is going on in your life or at work is simply not “good enough.” It’s the opportunity to re-think and re-invent how you do what you do, why you do what you do, how you think, how you perceive and how you will move forward.

A phrase I say often in coaching is, “What are you going to do about it?”

Frustration is an indicator that something indeed needs to be done. Whether it’s a conversation, a plan of action, a new goal or a different perspective, something needs to be done.

Frustration = Opportunity.

Frustration = Something more and something better.

Frustration = Change, adjustment

Frustration = A sign that it’s time to reinvent!

Note the word “reinvent.” Not all change is dramatic or drastic. Not all change is cut and dry. And not all change requires you to choose between options. Often, change is as simple as a reinvention of your life.

For example, a New Year’s Resolution is not about dramatic change; it’s usually associated with incremental change; an adjustment to how we live or view our lives.

In the business world, frustration is good news! It is a barometer on how a company moves forward. When frustration hits, stop! Evaluate. Assess. Analyze. Examine. Explore. Get feedback. Research. Find out more information. In other words, do something about it!

Create a think tank or have a group of friends over and begin to address the area of frustration you and/or your organization is experiencing.

We are to move through frustration, not settle for it.

– Karen Thrall

*also published on www.karenthrall.com

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Career

Starting Over

A friend of mine recently shared a LinkedIn post with me, “Competition can copy everything but not your culture.” While there are definitely some good reminders about creating and strengthening your culture in here, both of us were intrigued by one specific suggestion:

Keep disrupting your own organisation structure. An interesting exercise which we do is assume all of us got fired one day, and someone with no emotion of the past was re-building our team based on where we are today. It is amazing how many insights come out of this exercise, and while no one actually gets fired, many of the organisation’s priorities evolve in a refreshing way.

What a fascinating idea. If we could detach ourselves from the knowledge of how things came to be, would we make the same decisions? So often we get attached to structure and roles because that’s just how things are. We end up with workarounds or solutions that are almost right because we’re too focused on keeping things the way they are because that’s the way we do things.

While I think we might lose a lot if we regularly fired everyone and started from scratch, the idea itself of staring over can be very freeing. Not only can organizations get stale, but we can get stale. Does there continue to be a need for the service or product we provide in the way we provide it? What needs might we anticipate now that we couldn’t have dreamed up five or ten years ago? Is there a way I could better be utilizing my skills? How has our organization grown since we last evaluated? How have I grown? What could I share that maybe I couldn’t have a few years ago? What if our organizational politics didn’t exist?

Whether it’s your work structure or the way you’ve structured your personal life, what would you do if you were starting from the beginning?

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Career Libby

Being a Good Guest

I am on a “working vacation” for the month of August – I am taking my seven-year-old son on a road trip to visit family and friends throughout New England*. While he and his cousins enjoy swimming, running, biking and playing, I continue to work remotely with pools, ponds, mountains and meadows as my office view. We are nomadic, staying anywhere from two nights to a week in each place. Along the way, I’ve picked up some tips on being a good guest that I think translate really well to the work place.

  1. Pick up after yourself. When you don’t have any place to put your stuff, it can start migrating all over the place. Not only is that inconsiderate of the people who live there, but it makes it harder to pack up and you can lose stuff in the process. At work, keep your workspace neat and tidy – it shows respect for your co-workers and makes it easier to respond to them when they need something from you.
  2. Help with the chores. While you are a “guest,” you are also family! You are not there to be waited on – pitch in and help with the dishes, the laundry, weeding or childcare. Not only does it build a stronger bond and sense of community, but if you don’t, it can lead to resentment and a less pleasant environment. At work, if you’re not too busy or have finished a project, look around and see who else needs help – this not only strengthens your team, but it will come back to you next time you’re in a crunch.
  3. House rules. We have a lot of rules for our son – and they are not always the same at every house we visit. While some are non-negotiable (no-hitting, no stealing, no knocking over of Mommy’s cocktail), there is a need for flexibility. If something is a no-go in that house, it applies to my son, too; if they are allowed to do something that he normally would not be (we’re talking extra sweets here, not R-rated movies and cigarettes), it’s okay to loosen the reins and let him have that experience. It is more fun for everyone and I am often surprised how well he navigates a different routine or set of rules. At work, the way you do something is not the only way to do it – people have different ways of working or accomplishing a task – try letting go of the how and focusing just on the results.
  4. Ask for what you need. The people hosting you want you to be comfortable (not too comfortable, see #2 above!), but they don’t always know what you need. Do you prefer a certain type of milk or yogurt? Let them know next time they go to the store. Does your kid need to go to bed early? Say goodnight when it’s the appropriate time. Do you need to do some laundry? Ask if you can throw some things in next time they do a load. If you don’t let people know what you need in order to have the best experience and settle in to their routine, it can become a bit awkward – negative or uncomfortable energies are easily picked up on! At work, if you need help, ask someone – you may need extra resources, more time or a hand with something. If you don’t ask, your boss will still pick up on your less-than-positive energy but won’t know why and that can lead to all sorts of communication problems. Articulating what you need makes things clear, allows others to participate in finding a solution, and still lets you shine.
  5. Don’t forget to pick up the check. One of the nice things about a trip like this is that it can really reduce the cost of hotels and eating out – this is a good thing! However, it’s not free: you are adding costs to your hosts like a longer grocery list, a higher energy bill and a bigger laundry load. Be cognizant of their expenses and try to contribute where you can – do the grocery shopping sometimes or chip in for their weekly expenses. Take the kids out for ice-cream or a trip to a local activity, and definitely take them out to dinner at least once while you’re there – it’s a nice way to say thank you and no one has to cook or clean. It can be a vacation for everyone! At work, it is important to share the spotlight – chip in on others’ recognition and participation, share the credit for a project you worked on, let them work with the best volunteer – ensuring that they get some of the good stuff helps your office experience be a little less like work and just a wee bit more like vacation.

– Libby Bingham

*Connecticut, New York, Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts and back to Connecticut in 25 days by car! [Editor’s Note: Libby is a brave, brave woman!] 😉

 

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Career Libby

Time to Move On

My brother is a commercial diver by trade (helmets not tanks). He has been diving for almost twenty years and working for the same company for the past seven. Last week he just up and quit. He was reluctant to tell my parents and me and my husband about it, feeling it was an irresponsible move, but he did finally tell us. Here’s our collective take on things:

  1. Always do your best. This is something instilled in both my brother and me from birth and the message is usually delivered as, “Don’t do a half-assed job.” When whatever your co-workers or company is doing impedes your ability to do your best, it’s time to move on.
  2. You can’t change other people. You can only change yourself and how you receive other people’s interactions with you. If you’ve done all you can to adapt to the inane behavior of others and they continue to encroach on your sanity, it’s time to move on.
  3. Safety is no accident. This is true no matter what, but when you’re on a boat in the middle of the ocean responsible for the lives of a five man crew, it transforms from catch phrase to survival tactic. My brother would never be considered lackadaisical, whimsical or frivolous. If he asks you to do something on his boat, you do it or risk an injury to yourself or others. If you’re working with people who do not value your health and well-being, it’s time to move on.
  4. Loyalty is a tricky thing. Loyalty is something you want in a business environment – some level of trust and comfort allows people to settle in and do their best work. It is helpful when building a team and growing an enterprise. But it must also be paired with buckling down, looking out for the company interests and a subordinated ego. If your boss chooses a slacker crony over your hard work and productivity, it’s time to move on.
  5. Your reputation will proceed you. If you work hard, do your best, act in the best interests of the company, and behave like a brand ambassador at all times, people notice you. And if you’re one of the few people behaving this way in your organization, they will notice you even more. If your principles are being compromised, it’s time to move on.

When you have a tried and true work ethic, when you have spent years gaining experience and expertise, when you have treated all your co-workers – those both above and below you in the organization chart – with respect, you can move on. Something else will come along. It would be ideal to have something planned before making a move, but life doesn’t always work like that. Though if you behave in such a way that people want to be associated with you, you won’t have any worries when you finally say, “Enough is enough. It’s time to move on.”

(P.S. Within a week of quitting his job, my brother got a new full-time job, a part-time job AND an offer for a seasonal job. He’s fine and we’re all very proud.)

– Libby Bingham

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Career Libby

Making the Pitch

Last week, I was asked to present an idea about moving a beloved face-to-face (f2f) program to an online format. I was actually quite nervous about it, but my boss assured me that it was a casual situation and I only needed to talk for five minutes. Here’s what I learned:

  1. It is a fantastic opportunity to be able to present my idea to decision makers before spending a lot of time on a written proposal. That isn’t to say I didn’t do a lot of homework beforehand but since it was verbal, I didn’t worry about typos!
  2. Five minutes is not enough time! It is important NOT to rush through your pitch. If people are going to be green or red lighting your project, you need to present them with all the relevant information for them to make that decision. For me – taking an existing program and radically changing it – it was important to give them some history, an idea of my level of involvement and expertise, and an understanding that I’d thought through the majority of angles and considerations. While this took more time upfront, it allowed them to focus on the whole picture rather than the details that can make things sticky moving forward.
  3. No matter how well you know the subject matter, smart people can add value. Even not-so-smart people have their contributions to make! By talking through an idea out loud and with the necessity of answering questions right then and there, you can be assured (or not) of the soundness of what you’re trying to do, and make it even better.
  4. The small stuff does matter…at least in an implementation phase. Being aware of what other stakeholders are concerned about (How will this affect me?) up front, leads to more diplomatic approaches when sharing information. Indeed, they can be presented as opportunities and can get people excited about change, even if it encroaches upon their comfort zone.
  5. Be open-minded. It’s hard to distance yourself from a project that you’ve worked long and hard on, and when people offer criticism or question the value, it can be hurtful – if you let it. But if you approach it from the viewpoint of thinking through all the angles before investing time and money, you are less likely to personalize it and more likely to be successful. Assume people want to help you, not impede you!

I am not a fan of process when it comes to innovation (too many rules!), but having an arrangement where open, honest and constructive questions and feedback can be shared at a very early stage, can lead to much sounder outcomes. If you make the pitch the right way, you may find yourself with a lot more support than you ever thought possible.

What will you pitch today?

– Libby Bingham

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Career

The Good About Pain Points

Pain points – we all have them. We have them in our personal and professional lives, and our companies and organizations have them, too. In the past week, I’ve come across two unique takes on addressing company pain points. The first was this Forbes article on pain letters. Don’t worry – they’re much less scary than they sound (and they’re very smart!).

The basic premise is that rather than telling a prospective employer about yourself through your resume and traditional cover letter, you flip the focus to one of their pain points and then share how you can help. Not only does it provide a nice introduction to yourself, but more than that, it tells your potential employer that you do your research and understand where they’re coming from. Who doesn’t like to be presented with a solution rather than a sales pitch? This was the first time I’ve heard about this particular form of cover letter and it certainly makes a lot of sense to me

So with that rattling around in my head, I’m also reading Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In. I’m really enjoying it, and will share more in a future book report post, but I was struck by a story she told that reminded me of the pain letter. Shortly after she started her job as Facebook’s COO, Sandberg talks about an acquaintance, Lori Goler, who called her and said she wanted to work with her. Rather than go through her own skills and ask Sandberg what openings may be a good fit, Goler asked Sandberg what her biggest business problem was at the moment and whether or not she thought Goler could help fix it. The way that Sandberg tells the story, the approach was so novel and so helpful, her “jaw hit the floor.” She needed help with recruiting new talent and while Goler didn’t necessarily have that exact background, she had skills that were transferable enough that they thought it could work. And it did – exceptionally well. I’ll let you read the book to learn more.

I can’t stop thinking about the notion of pain points as a starting place. What would happen if we stopped selling ourselves first and started with understanding someone else’s pain points? How much further could we go, and how much faster? What untapped capacity could we find within ourselves that we didn’t know existed? Rather than thinking of ourselves as one particular skill set, what if we identified problems and then were able to figure out how we could help? What teams could we build and what amazing things could we accomplish? These are the things that will continue to rattle around in my head for quite some time, and I can’t wait for the next opportunity to help someone with their pain point.

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Career Inside My Head

Choices

I’ve been thinking about choices a lot lately.

Scratch that. I’ve always thought a lot about choices. Probably because I’ve never been very good at making decisions, since ultimately, choosing one thing means not choosing another. That’s the part I have a hard time with. I’m pretty good about knowing what I don‘t want, but there are so many interesting possibilities out there that it’s really hard to narrow down what I do want.

In high school, I ran myself into the ground because I couldn’t choose – I was one of a handful of kids who got permission to be on the swim team and participate in the fall musical. I juggled track practice and the spring play. But let’s be clear, here – I was fine at all these things. Not great, but fine. It wasn’t like I was a huge talent and the show wouldn’t go on without me (was Villager #2 really critical to the plot?). But as fine as I was, I really liked all these things. I wanted to be a part of them and enjoyed having these experiences in my life.

I don’t have trouble letting go of things I’ve tried that have no interest for me (softball, the flute, Girl Scouts). I enjoyed all these things just fine, but they didn’t hold my interest long-term. In college, I knew I wasn’t going to be an engineer or a math professor, so I dutifully completed my math and science requirements and moved on. But I couldn’t narrow down my interest in the liberal arts, so I double majored in communications and political science and minored in business administration. And now as an adult professional, I’ve finally settled on consulting as my career so I can work with lots of different people and organizations.

Clearly, I have trouble choosing.

A friend recently shared this blog post, Work-Life Balance is Absolutely Bogus by Deirde Maloney. And while I don’t necessarily think I have trouble with work-life balance specifically, the first truth she asserts is that there’s no such thing as having it all. Maloney writes:

The idea that we can “have it all” if we just get better at time-management or set some boundaries is a fallacy. When we try to squeeze our never-ending list of activities (and relationships) into a given day, our time and energy run out. We wind up doing a bunch of things partway. Which means we do some things well and some things … not-so-well.

I’d like to think I’ve gotten a little better about life balance since running myself into the ground in my high school days, but Maloney’s words ring true to me – trying to squeeze it all in means that quality of work and the quality of the time spent suffer. We have to make choices about what we want to do well and there’s just no way to get around that. And that’s just the reminder I need when I start to think about all the things I might be missing out on. It’s probably not a coincidence that the one sport in which I excelled was skiing and I devoted myself fully to that sport for the entire season. So as I think through the choices I make, I need to stop thinking about what I might be missing and start thinking about what I want to do well and let that guide me.

What do you want to do well?