Up Your Chances of Success

During my career with Corporate America, I was often surprised by how often the most fundamental question got skipped during the start-up of a project:  What does success look like?

Yes, the scope may have been defined at a high level, but not success.  How can we hit a target if we don’t know what the target looks like? How will we know if we’ve been successful? In the rush to get going so management will feel confident that the team is doing its job, this question does not get the attention it deserves.  It’s often viewed as too much work, or implied.  That might be OK for smaller projects, but the bigger the goal, the more attention this key question deserves.

I know from the school of hard knocks, that the better a team can define and buy into a crystal clear picture of success, the higher the chances are for a successful outcome.  I asked my staff to think a year beyond the end of a project. This long-range planning identified key activities to create long-term success such as ensuring a new system was designed to be enhanceable and the support infrastructure to support a new product was in place before it went live.  

I saw proof time and again that the more specific you can be in defining success the better you can design actions to create that success.

Are you working on a big dream or a goal? Here are some ideas for upping your chances of hitting a home run. 

►   What does success look like, or at least what does it feel like?

Get really specific.  Ask who, what, when, where, why and how questions to paint a really clear picture.  I have a new client who wants to figure out where to go in his career.  He’s reached what he feels is a dead end and doesn’t know what to do next.  He wants to identify his ‘dream job’ and has been trying to find it by reading job descriptions and postings, but nothing is sounding good. I asked him, when you find your dream job – whatever that turns out to be - what will it feel like?  His answers to that question have put us on a path, and a picture is beginning to emerge.  It’s still fuzzy, but to increase clarity he’s looking for opportunities in his current job that feel more like what he wants.

►   What else is going on?

Ah, dependencies. The dreaded realization that you don’t control everything.  But dependencies can also be opportunities - you just have to shift your perspective.

Let’s say you’re about to turn 50 and aren’t happy about it.  You set a goal to lose 30 pounds before your birthday since there’s nothing like a brick wall deadline to beef up your will power.  So, you’re chugging along keeping your eye on that brick wall - that 50 year old brick wall.  That 50 year old, sagging, graying, when-did-I-lose-the-ability-to-run-5-miles brick wall. A goal to lose 30 pounds for your 50^th birthday means you’re turning 50.  Instead of working with this fact, you’ve ignored how you feel about it.  This sends you into a tailspin of emotional eating, and there goes your goal.  But if you accept your feelings about turning 50 and shift your perspective to look longer term, you might decide to adopt new healthier habits to support this new phase in your life.

Cast a wide net and scan the horizon for what’s really going on around you, and deal with that.  You can’t fix what you won’t acknowledge.

►   What resources do I have?

A client said to me last week that she was hesitant to change industries because she didn’t want to go back to square one.  We worked on ‘unbranding’ her experience and found that she has a powerful 20+ year work history and a ton of skills and expertise which would add value in any industry. 

While it’s important to get specific, it’s just as important not to get penned in.  Does that seem contradictory? Sorry.  Give me a call, and let’s explore how you can get specific and stay open at the same time.

Building Your Winning Team

My friend and former colleague Dave and I were chatting last week about this blog.  I said that it was my weekly rant where I get to write about whatever inspires me over the course of the week.  He said, “staff meeting!”

He was, of course, reminding me of the soapbox I used to climb onto during staff meetings.  There are things I miss about my corporate job like health insurance and a steady salary, but there are definitely things I don’t miss including form-over-function processes and the bureaucrats who love them.

What I miss most, however, is my team.  I had the privilege of working with so many great people over the course of my career.  But my last team at Washington Mutual was special.  We were running a program to reduce deposit fraud and then supporting the handover to Chase, but I would have worked on anything with these people.

In 2008 I bought my team and a few coworkers copies of StrengthsFinder 2.0, and we shared our results citing examples for each other of how we saw these talents and strengths demonstrated through our activities. 

Having our individual strengths reflected back to us was enlightening, but what really struck all of us was when we mapped out our strengths because they corresponded to the various phases of a project.  If you needed help designing a solution, who better than Dave and Sheree with their strengths themes of Ideation, Analytical, and Intellection.  No one is better at pulling a team together and executing a complex project than Josh who has strengths themes of Communication, Arranger, and Maximizer.  And if we needed to tune into peoples’ needs and boost morale, we could always count on Stacie for Harmony, Positivity, and Empathy.  My strengths of Strategic, Activator and Relator pulled it all together. Through this process we learned how to leverage our teammates for support on activities that were part of our jobs, but not a strength. 

It’s been about 18 months since I started working on my own at home.  It’s a dream come true, but it has been a huge adjustment.  The core lesson I’ve learned is that I have to build a new team that can help me out where I need it.  For me this still corresponds to solution design, execution and morale. I’ve hired coaches, joined networking groups, and reached out to make new friends. I also have a loose-knit advisory group including former colleagues and friends who I can call on to review marketing copy, pilot new coaching programs that I’ve come up with, and generally provide feedback where I’m too close to the action to be objective. 

I’ve always been independent feeling like I can do just about anything on my own.  I’m therefore doubly grateful for the hard lesson I learned from being a manager which is that you have to foster relationships to be successful.  As humans, we’re hardwired to form communities.  It’s been a key to survival since time immemorial.

How about you?  Who is in your community and on your team?  Have you built a strong support structure that will help you accomplish your goals and dreams?  Do you ask for the support you need or are you stubbornly trying to go it alone?  Many of us are only too happy to be supportive of other people, but we hesitate to ask for the help we need.  It makes us feel vulnerable, weak, dumb, needy.

When you get really serious about accomplishing something, get serious about building the support structure to get you there.  It might require you to swallow your pride and spend some money, but hold your head up and do what you have to do to create success for yourself.

Start with making sure you have support for the idea/planning phase, execution/getting it done, and keeping up your morale.  The more specific about what you want to accomplish, the easier it will be to determine what resources you need, what to ask for and how to ask in a way that makes it easy for people to say yes. Of course, having a coach is a proven success strategy, and I’d love to be part of your team (pam.norton@transitionsparkcoaching.com).

3 Steps to Start Living Your Own Life

A new client said last week, “I want to start living my life instead of feeling like my life is living me.”  I speak with so many people who share this feeling.  They have long (or even multiple)  ‘have to’ lists that don’t leave any time for their ‘want to’ list.

There was a great a great article in Business Week a few weeks ago called The Stop-Doing List:(http://www.businessweek.com/managing/content/dec2010/ca2010126_748962.htm), which started out with this quote from Warren Buffet:

The difference between successful people and very successful people is that very successful people say "no" to almost everything.

The article was targeted to businesses, but there are some great lessons that can be applied to you individually for focusing on what’s essential.  The key point is to stop having a To Do list and start making a Stop Doing list.  Great quote: What's the difference between the two? The essentials are emotional; the important is rational. The essentials go on a to-die-for list; the important you put on a to-do list.

Here are 3 steps you can take to start getting back into the driver’s seat of your life:

Step 1:  Stop meandering and get really clear about what you want.  I can hear you now saying, really Pam?  Really! I’m surprised by how many people don’t know what they want. 

What’s your dream job and how would you like to spend your non-working time?  Not the “OMG I just won the lottery” fantasy, but your “I want to make this happen” dream.  Can you describe your dream job even if you can’t put a job title to it?  Do you spend hours in front of the tube or indulging in activities that self-medicate but are actually taking you in the opposite direction from your goals to get healthy or get a handle on your spending?  Get really clear about what you want to make happen in your life and more importantly get in touch with the ‘why.’  Make a dream board or other visual reminder of your dream and put it where you’ll see it every day.  Then identify small changes you can make to begin down that road. 

Step 2:  Stop overcommiting and agreeing to do things that don’t serve your goals and your life.  It’s not selfish to ask what’s in it for me (WIIFM) next time you get asked to volunteer or contribute your time to something whether it’s at work or in your personal life.  Sometimes you don’t have a choice, but oftentimes you do. 

Get strategic about what you agree to and understand what’s in it for you.  It feels great to help a friend you care about - you’d do anything for them.  And there’s no more rewarding way to spend your time than volunteering or otherwise supporting a cause you’re passionate about.  But if you get asked to spend time on something that’s not important to you by someone who isn’t part of your inner circle, ask WIIFM. 

Making a choice to spend your time with people you care about working towards goals that will make your life your best life isn’t selfish.  It’s being strategic about how you allocate your precious time.  When you’re contributing your best, the world benefits.  When you’re slogging through an obligation with a frown on your face, no one benefits.

Step 3:  Stop being afraid of failure.  OK, that’s way easier said than done.  How about an attitude adjustment regarding failure?   Try this:  you only fail when you stop trying to accomplish your dream.  Zigs and zags along the way are just lessons to be learned and strategies to be adjusted.  Some things may not work out as planned, you may change your mind, you might even fall flat on your face. Big breath in, and get moving anyway.  Then take your learnings and either try something new or decide to walk away.  The key is to make a conscious decision based on what you want. 

Are you taking responsibility for your destiny and your happiness or are you delegating that responsibility to your partner, your boss, or your own bad habits?  What’s on your ‘to-die-for’ list?  If you need help and support along the way, give me a call.