The key lessons I learned throughout my career

I started my working life in 1980 right out of High School.  Over the next 4 decades, I worked in numerous companies and roles, not always with increasing responsibility.

These are some of the more important lessons I picked up along the way.

• The benefits of learning discipline and rigor early in your career.
• Being flexible but doing what makes sense.
• It's not enough to work hard and do the job, you have to differentiate yourself against your peers.
• Sometimes you may not be the most knowledgeable, but never underestimate passion and desire.  It's easy to acquire job knowledge.  It's much harder to be passionate.
• Take your career into your own hands.  Don't wait or expect someone else to manage your career for you.
• Build a great network early and continuously.
• Build your credibility, but make sure other people know how good you are too.
• Find things that motivate you, but don't let them define you.  Be open to new possibilities.
• Become known as the "go-to" person who can get anything done.  A broad set of transferable skills really helps.
• Have the courage to take bold career moves.  But manage your stakeholders each and every day.  If you wait till "evaluation day", it's too late.
• Things are not always as bad as they seem​.
• Never play a bad hand​.
• As a Senior Leader, you are expected to change the status-quo​.
• The need to be resilient in the face of challenge and difficulty.
• The value of partnering with a great leader​.
• The value of great leadership skills​.
• The value of a high trust relationship​.
• An upward career path may not be the most important thing.  Why you come to work is the most important thing.
• Know why you come to work​.  It's probably because of that project or analysis that needs to get done.
• Know what makes you happy at work.

#leadership

Leadership Lessons from Ted Lasso

Leadership lessons from Ted Lasso. Leadership means having courage

• You don't have to be a subject matter expert to be a great leader
• Recognize that everyone on the team is valuable
• Never take things personally
• Believe
• Embrace change
• Success is not always about winning
• Be curious, not judgmental
• Lead with empathy
• Be a Goldfish

#tedlasso

How to minimize your strongest social threats and maximize your strongest social rewards

The STRONGEST threats and rewards are actually SOCIAL

There is a model based on neuroscience to understand how the brain’s processing of threats and rewards can influence engagement, teamwork and inclusion.

This model explains what is happening in anyone’s (and everyone’s) brains. It’s a simple acronym to help us think through ways to identify and mitigate social threats.

How it helps is by gaining a basic understanding of the neuroscience of inclusion you can then make and support intentional choices that cultivate a sense of belonging for yourself and everyone around you.

The main organizing principle of the brain is to see things as either a threat or reward.​

If the brain perceives a threat, it will send signals to you to get away from it.​

If the brain perceives a reward, it will send signals to you to move toward it.​

The SCARF model describes the five primary triggers of threat and reward in the social brain. ​

What motivates and de-motivates us with regard to our SCARF domains is very personal and unique to each one of us. ​

Knowing what can cause a threat response enables us to create interactions to minimize threats.  ​

Conversely, knowing about drivers that can activate a reward response, enables us to influence others by tapping into internal rewards​

Being aware of your own drivers of threats and rewards will also help you to 

• Status is about wanting to feel valued, esteemed, the reward message is “I am valuable and valued”​
• Certainty is about wanting clarity and context, the reward message is “I know where I stand”​
• Autonomy is about wanting to be able to do my own thing, the reward message is “I have a choice”​
• Relatedness is about wanting to connect with the group, the reward message is “I belong”​
• Fairness is about wanting things to go along relatively impartially, the reward message is “I am treated fairy and with respect”​

A negative/threat response heightens momentary alertness, but decreases wider perception, cognition, creativity and collaboration. ​

We lessen our ability to clearly see issues, solve problems and work with others. 

In everyday language, this means we get tunnel vision, can’t think as well, our creativity and ability to solve problems decreases and we aren’t as good at working with others. A threat reaction can have big implication on performance. In short: We get dumber.​

A positive/reward response can increase our field of view, cognition, creative insights and collaboration.​

These are attributes and actions that are important to effective teamwork.​

If people feel reward within at least some or all of their SCARF domains, they are more likely to work well with others, develop creative insights, hold a broader perspective and access more of their working memory. They are more likely to be a strong performing teammate.​

So to wrap up, think of a variety of scenarios where you can:​

• Identify the most likely SCARF threat​ for example Autonomy
• Identify the domain to offset with reward​ for example Certainty
• Identify a specific action to take ​

There is often more than one SCARF threat (focus on the biggest one)​

There is often more than one option for offsetting the threat with reward – again select the one that will give you the biggest shift towards reward​

The most important thing is to be really specific about the ACTION to take (otherwise it just stays as an idea)

Improve the success rate of your projects significantly by doing this one thing

Having a proper project charter is the single most important thing you can do to improve the success of your projects.

Purpose​ - Gain authorization to move forward with the project – so that’s all the information you need to provide

Outcome​ - You and your team are aligned with your Executive Sponsor and Key Stakeholders.  No questions on your part and you are ready to plan and then execute.

Key Elements of the charter

• Strategic Alignment to organizations strategy - How does this help to accomplish the overall organizational strategy
• ​Problem Statement​ - What problem are you trying to solve?​  Why are we working on this, how do we know this is the right thing to work on above all others?​
• ​Objective - What are you trying to achieve; what does success look like?​  If we solve the problem, what is the outcome?  What is the vision of the future state?​  It’s the team’s “common purpose” or “rallying cry”​
• ​Goal​ - How do you measure that success of reaching the objective?​ Usually an X to Y by when statement​.
• ​Identification of key stakeholders - Ensure key dependent groups are committed to support the project​.

How to respond to your critics

Being a leader is tough.  There is always someone who thinks it's their job to point out everything you are doing wrong, and not in a constructive way, but in a destructive manner.  Think of our current and former President.  They certainly have their critics and probably so do you.  On those days when you feel as though you can do no right, here is something to think about.

On April 23, 1910, Theodore Roosevelt gave what would become one of the most widely quoted speeches of his career.  After he left office in 1909, he spent time hunting in Central Africa before embarking on a tour of Norther Africa and Europe in 1910.  He stopped in Paris on April 23rd and delivered a speech called "Citizenship in a Republic", which, among some, would come to be known as "The Man in The Arena".

In that speech, Roosevelt railed against cynics who looked down at men who were trying to make the world a better place.  Then he delivered an inspirational and impassioned message that drew huge applause.

"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat." - Theodore Roosevelt