Until he asked me one question.

“As a new head of marketing, what would you tell the sales rep who says, ‘I’ve been on 5 sales calls this week and I’m frustrated because nobody knows who our company is’?”

What he was probably expecting was a safe, politically correct, positive answer – something like “I’ll do whatever I can to raise awareness for the company” or perhaps a more specific and prescriptive “I’d focus on developing showcase customers and identifying larger trends that we can attach to for a tailwind in PR.” I gave no such “safe” answer. Instead, I created tension in the interview, and I believe that’s why I got the job.

Interviewing for Executive Roles is Different

The nature of an executive interview is fundamentally different. Don’t get me wrong – many if not all of the good interview strategies and tactics still apply. And for executives, the bar is higher. Any new executive will need to drive new strategies and change. They are expected to be the preeminent expert in the business function they lead. Therefore, simply focusing on your skill sets, competence and experience (e.g. how you handled your interviews for staff and managerial roles) will not demonstrate your gravitas and leadership as an executive.

So how do you expand your interview dynamic to go well beyond discussing standard approaches to typical situations?

Get Comfortable with Creating Tension in Your Interview

Most people work hard to be on their “best behavior” on interviews i.e. they want to make a good impression. Therefore, being pleasant, respectful and even avoiding disagreements and conflict would make a lot of sense. So how would seeking out and creating tension during an interview improve your candidacy?

1. Tension distances you from being a tactical executor to a business savvy, strategic thinker with an informed point of view.
2. Tension enables you to pivot conversations from right/ wrong answers to exploring different scenarios and outcomes. Topics become much meatier.
3. Tension helps you to evaluate mutual fit. Once you find a point of disagreement you can readily see how collaborative (or confrontational) your boss/ peer is e.g. does he view you as a partner and open to new ideas or does he insist on being the smartest person in the room and doing things his way? In short, are you impressed and do you think he or she is a winner i.e. someone would you want to work with/for?

A Contrarian Answer that Created Positive Tension

Back to my interview with this startup’s head of Products asking me what I’d say to the frustrated rep who wanted more marketing air-cover.

My answer: “I’d tell the head of Sales that we were hiring the wrong profile in Sales based on the company’s stage. And I’d tell that rep that they were the most important person in fixing their dilemma.” At first, my interviewer pulled back and looked concerned. As I explained my answer, his head began to nod.

I clarified my view that startup sales are often evangelistic and educational sales cycles. In particular, early-stage companies require a lot more effort by sales reps to generate interest from prospects. Unlike rivals at bigger companies, they don’t just have to prove that they can solve the customer’s problem. They have to prove that they can solve it much better, and they have to prove that their startup company is worth doing business with. If a rep joins from Oracle or SAP, they’re used to walking into any executive conversation with immediate familiarity. A startup isn’t in that position and therefore generally shouldn’t hire reps that depend on it.

And as far as the hypothetical sales rep, I also explained that I’d tell the Sales rep that customer references are rocket-fuel for Marketing, and that it all starts with the rep i.e. to win that customer’s business and convince them to share their success publicly.

When I finished, my interviewer’s face had changed – he was smiling and nodding, looking thoughtful, and it felt to me like he had just learned something new. By giving him an answer he didn’t expect, I showed experience, the ability to collaboratively discuss an alternative point of view, and an understanding of how early-stage companies generate those critical “lighthouse” customers in the early days. And I knew from his tone in the interaction that if I joined that team, while I might not always agree with this executive, we could disagree very collaboratively and effectively, which is critical for long-term success in the role.

What examples of positive tension do you have to share? Please provide your comments below.

Drum roll please…

10. I can do a better job than that loser before me

9. I’ll have more power over people

8. I have the longest tenure in my group

7. I’ll get more stock and a bigger pay day when my company exits

6. I need a raise to help pay my over inflated (Silicon Valley) mortgage

5. R-E-S-P-E-C-T!

4. More visibility

3. I want to make the tough calls

2. I deserve it based on my excellent Performance Review track record

1. I’m the most technical/ knowledgeable

Which one resonates most with you? Feeling pretty good about it? Well, there’s one most important reason that is missing from that list…

“What’s the Most Important Job of a Manager?”

In 1993, I was recruited by a competitor which is what brought me to the Mecca of high tech innovation, Silicon Valley! But after only a year, I knew our startup wasn’t going to make it.  I was lucky enough to interview for a 1^st level manager position at Oracle. I made it through the first round with the hiring (senior) manager. And after subsequent rounds with his boss (Director) and his bosses’ boss (VP) you’d think they’d be able to make the “go/ no go” decision. Well, I was both surprised and frustrated that I had to come back yet a 4^th time to meet with the EVP, Randy Baker!

When I met with Randy (I’ll never forget that moment I walked into his office), he only asked me one question “What’s the most important job of a manager?” Without any hesitation, I said emphatically “Fight for my people!” So what do you think his reaction was?

Why Technical Experts Have a Harder Time Crossing the Divide…

Here’s a common path for many Silicon Valley professionals.

1. Straight As in high school and ace the SAT/ ACT
2. Get into a top University and get more straight As on the way to your Bachelor’s degree
3. Get a Master’s degree, sure maybe even a PhD.
4. Now, time to work and make some money to pay off your college debt!

Whether you choose the engineering, finance, marketing or general business path, you’ve likely spent many years collecting knowledge and technical skills. It’s reasonable that applying all that academic training results in early success – congratulations, you’ve made the transition successfully from academia into the “real world!” After earning top ratings in performance reviews and even a promotion or two, you may be at a crossroads – deciding whether or not you should make the jump over to the management track.

Here’s the problem: what “management training” have you had in any of your college courses, undergraduate or graduate? Do you understand how to motivate people? Are you comfortable relinquishing your technical skills and allowing your staff to be even “more technical” than you are? This is a major paradigm shift.

After running the interview gauntlet, I joined Oracle as a first-time manager. I learned that the previous regime in Worldwide Support had promoted many of the best technical people into management positions. One reason was because there was no clear career path for them so they believed that becoming a manager was more prestigious and that managers got more pay. Well, it turned out that because they became a manager for the wrong reasons, they were really bad at it. They had poor people and leadership skills. Subsequently, by mismanaging their staff, they created an attrition problem. Eventually, they too got frustrated with being a manager and left! The result was a very serious “brain drain” problem on top of a terrible leadership sub-culture. Naturally, this led to degradation in customer service which had a very tangible and negative impact on the business.

THAT is why Randy Baker needed to interview every single manager candidate. He wanted to make sure that before anyone got an offer, they clearly understood that managers are responsible to “fight for their people,” e.g. protecting and grooming their staff. In other words, solid businesses are built upon strong leaders. The problem with the Top 10 List above is that it’s all “me-focused” and makes no mention of the rank and file. Great managers naturally think about the well-being of their staff BEFORE themselves. Technical experts have difficulty with this mindset shift because their analytical brain fools them into thinking they are the most “qualified” to be a manager. Randy didn’t ask me any questions about how to install Oracle software or recover from a corrupted database. You see, having all the right answers and telling people what to do – promoting them when they do a great job and then firing them when they don’t – is not what management is all about.

This excerpt from the NY Times’ interview with Laszlo Bock, Google’s VP of People Ops (aka HR) sums this up perfectly:

For much of its 13-year history, particularly the early years, Google has taken a pretty simple approach to management: Leave people alone. Let the engineers do their stuff. If they become stuck, they’ll ask their bosses, whose deep technical expertise propelled them into management in the first place.

But Mr. Bock’s group found that technical expertise — the ability, say, to write computercode in your sleep — ranked dead last among Google’s big eight [aka “8-Point Plan to Help Managers Improve”]. What employees valued most were even-keeled bosses who made time for one-on-one meetings, who helped people puzzle through problems by asking questions, not dictating answers, and who took an interest in employees’ lives and careers.

“In the Google context, we’d always believed that to be a manager, particularly on the engineering side, you need to be as deep or deeper a technical expert than the people who work for you,” Mr. Bock says. “It turns out that that’s absolutely the least important thing. It’s important, but pales in comparison. Much more important is just making that connection and being accessible.”

Learn from “Bad” Managers

You don’t need a degree or even a certificate to become a good manager – those have very little to do with it. Although I’d never been a manager before I joined Oracle, I had a lot of experience learning from “bad” managers. For example, my first manager (we’ll call him Rich) would take off for days at a time but wouldn’t tell everyone on the team. When I’d come into the office, I’d ask “Where’s Rich?” And one colleague would respond “He’s on vacation.” I’d say to myself “Boy, that’s pretty rude to take off on vacation and not tell your staff.” Then I’d asked “So why does that bother me?” Well, because managers should communicate and keep their staff informed about all things from company happenings and of course disappearing acts too. So I made a mental note that when I become a manager, I won’t be like Rich! Instead I would be an open communicator, make sure I have regular team meetings and 1-1s to ensure that I’m doing my best to pass on what I know so everyone on my team feels connected.

How many “Riches” have you had in your career? There’s a case to be made that you can shape your management and leadership style by developing strong opinions about the do’s and don’ts.

Get in the 5-Step Manager Self-Help Program

1. Choose one “Rich” learning and apply that with your directs today!
2. Pay it forward and share that with another colleague (and in the comments box below).
3. Take courage and ask your directs how you can improve as a manager (zip your mouth and refrain from getting defensive).
4. Think higher up the management chain and make a list of things executives do that inspire/ demoralize you.
5. Repeat #1 above.

What have you done to successfully cross the technical-managerial divide? Please share your experience. If you found this interesting, please use the click “like” and “share” so your network can see this blog post too.

Back in the day when Oracle was a tiny 20,000 person company, I remember attending quarterly all-hands meetings held by our EVP, Randy Baker. Our President, Ray Lane, would attend as a guest speaker at least once a year. These meetings were held at Hotel Sofitel so we could cram 600+ people into the Grand Ballroom and would typically last anywhere from 90-120 minutes. I’d spend the whole time listening intently, thinking to myself “What insightful question could I ask when the Q&A starts?” and “How can I connect what I’m doing to Randy or Ray’s strategic direction?”

After one of these meetings when we got back to our offices at 300 Oracle, a senior manager (we’ll call her Laura) came up to me and said “You always ask questions that I’m thinking about but am afraid to ask.” At the time, I just thanked Laura for the compliment and felt good that I didn’t embarrass myself since at least one other person in the room found my questions to be relevant.  But reflecting upon that now, it’s evident to me that Laura missed her opportunity to “show up” i.e. demonstrating to the most senior leadership at Oracle, her peers and her directs that she was a leader with good ideas.

Why Silence is NOT Golden

While we can all agree that keeping your mouth shut at movie theaters is proper and courteous behavior, it’s not appropriate in Silicon Valley companies where ideas need to be surfaced, shared, debated and validated.  Logical, right? As a manager, I’m continuously evaluating my team not solely on what they deliver (sure that’s important), but how they complement me.  For example, are they just following my directions or are they thinking about things that I may not have considered (I lost that part of my ego where I had to always be right or I had all the right answers a very long time ago). So who’s bringing new ideas to the table? Who’s challenging the status quo? Who’s willing to take a stand for what they truly believe in? If you don’t speak up in meetings, large or small, you will not elevate yourself in the eyes of management. And this will certainly have a direct effect on your promotion path and career advancement.

Finding Your Voice

Going to Toastmasters to get comfortable speaking in public may be helpful, but is not the solution.  Let’s look beyond the obvious “introversion vs. extroversion” discussion since there’s plenty of great research on that.

The key is first to understand why you don’t do what you know you should.  For example, technical professionals (e.g. engineers, finance, IT workers) have one major handicap—their intellect. They excel in their roles because they can analyze and compute amongst the best. However, in meetings there isn’t time to “do more homework” in order to get to the precise “right” answers. Many technical people aren’t comfortable sticking their necks out when they aren’t 100% sure that they can back it up with details.  You’ve got to get comfortable operating in the gray-zone i.e. when you only have 80% confidence and rely on your judgment or instincts to fill the rest of the 20% gap.  This is particularly important in the technology industry.  If you wait to be absolutely sure, another more agile competitor will beat you to market every time.

Another root cause for Silicon Valley career-limiting silence is culture. There are many cultures (e.g. Asian) that teach “deference to authority,” for example “respect your elders” or “children should not speak unless spoken to.”  These values are responsible for deeply ingrained behaviors that affect how we interact in our Silicon Valley jobs.  There is excellent research in this area originated by Geert Hofstede in his book “Cultures and Organizations: Software of the Mind” and further substantiated by The World Values Survey. For example, Power Distance Index (PDI) is one of six measurement dimensions that enables us to quantitatively compare cultural differences.  PDI measures the amount of inequality in society by which people prefer more hierarchy/ less hierarchy.  More specifically, it can indicate that low ranking people in an organization (e.g. family, company) accept that there is unequal distribution of power.

Looking at over 30 years of data, the US registers 40 out of 104 points (ranking of 59^th out of 76 countries) where China registers 80 and 12^th respectively on PDI.  Simply put, Americans are much more willing to speak up and raise questions (e.g. challenge decisions, debate with others, and advocate their own ideas) where Chinese are focused on obedience within the “chain of command” (e.g. letting their managers speak while they remain silent).

Launch Your “Analysis Paralysis” Counter-Attack

As highly academically accomplished graduates and technical experts, we love to learn by collecting and processing information.  In this case, it’s dangerous to fall into a false sense of progress because you “understand” why you are the way you are.  How many times have you set goals and fallen short?  New Years resolutions are a perfect example.  Here’s what you must do to make sure these concepts don’t get stuck as just an interesting concept in your head:

1. Zero in on the top 1-2 reasons why you are not comfortable speaking up more. Is it your fear of taking risk? Or is it tied to your cultural upbringing or some other reason?  Sorry, but it’s not possible to work on 3+ things at one time.
2. Commit and motivate yourself to transform. Are you completely convinced that you cannot “think” yourself through behaving differently?  It’s too easy to get stuck in intellectual entertainment.
3. Work on the root causes to unlock your vocal chords.  This is action and practice, not just thinking.  Yes, taking a stand when you don’t have all the data is risky.  Rewiring your cultural DNA is even more difficult.  In fact, it’s been shown that changing deeply ingrained behaviors takes at least six months.

What have you done to improve your communication visibility? Please share your experience. If you found this interesting, please use the toolbar below to share it with your network.

We will be diving deeper into this topic at our next ExecCatalyst live event in Mountain View, CA on Thursday, October 29^th from 6:30-9:30pm. Register here.

Suddenly, I was reminded of the something I learned in The Henderson Group’s Complete Communicator workshop. I had attended just weeks before. As my conversation with Anna began, I started listening to what she was saying and tried to understand why she was asking for what she needed from me. The most amazing thing happened. Anna came to my position without me having an ugly argument with her about how I was right and she was wrong!

The Problem with Being “Right”
As early as I can remember, I was taught to fight for what I believe in. While that can be a good principle to guide your life direction, “fighting with others” is a recipe for disaster in your job and career. Even if you “win” an argument or debate, you will “lose” because you’ve damaged a professional relationship. Creating an “enemy” will come back to bite you at some time in the future.

The Difference Between Boxing and Ballroom Dancing…

While boxing can be a form of entertainment for many, the result is usually a bloody mess. When you’re faced with opposition, don’t create a boxing match. Although knocking out your adversary may bring personal satisfaction, you’ll have a much better outcome if he isn’t “out for the count.”

The perfect metaphor for what I experienced with Anna can be explained in this way. Ballroom dancing is full of drama and passion by both partners where each movement is complemented by the other’s. Moreover, instead of using this emotion and power against each other, the outcome is positive for both.

I didn’t have to expend much energy (or political capital) at all with Anna. By demonstrating that I heard her and understood her position, she retracted from her aggressive approach towards me – which led to a great result for both of us!

Focus on Respect vs. Being Right
Moshe Garielov, CEO of Xilinx, told me that one of his most important career lessons was to “focus on respect vs. being right.” Fortunately, he realized that the way he treated people directly impacted how they felt about him, and ultimately, how they viewed him as a leader. As a manager, you have position power over others and it’s very easy to flex your political muscle to get others to comply with what you are demanding of them. On the other hand, it’s hard to resist the urge to direct and let others come into alignment with you.

In my situation with Anna, it was extremely difficult to keep my mouth shut (and ears open) and not cut her off with my counter-points. I suppressed my urge to “fight back” – to lay out all the reasons why I could not do what Anna was asking for. When I started repeating back to her what I had heard and why those things were important to her, something very different happened. Instead of a tense, emotion-charged discussion (where both are talking over each other) there was calmness to our interaction. We replaced a relationship-damaging boxing match with a relationship-building dialog.

One of Steven Covey’s most famous quotes is “Seek first to understand, then to be understood.” Turning this into practice gives you a powerful tool that can be applied in many areas of application. I’ve seen the same results in sales situations as I had in my conflict situation with Anna i.e. the person that I was negotiating with “gave in” to me without me having to present my terms. Demonstrating “understanding” is most effective in diffusing the tension that comes along with back and forth counter-proposals. When you show someone that you are agreeable then you make it easier for them to give you the benefit of the doubt… and then some!

These communication techniques are so effective that we’ve adapted them to high-tech executive influence scenarios in our Executive Communicator workshop.

If you have similar experiences or advice on how to create a “win-win” from a bad situation, please share your comments below. If you liked any of the ideas in this post, please use the social media icons to share on Twitter, Facebook, and elsewhere.

Like many heavily-technical organizations, Oracle Customer Support had a lot of first-time managers who came up from the technical ranks, some of whom were promoted into management based upon their technical “chops” instead of people leadership skills. During the Ray Lane era, Oracle was growing rapidly and saw the value in investing their people in order to drive continued business success by providing training for all managers.

The exercise was simple enough. The facilitators paired us up and asked us to take turns explaining in 5 minutes to our partner about a recent time when we got “screwed” i.e. when we were treated unfairly in the workplace.

Suddenly, things got a lot more interesting. After we told our “story,” the facilitator then instructed us to “Explain the same situation but describe what you did to cause or contribute to the situation.” Some people immediately “got it” – they described how they didn’t manage up effectively, ignored early warning signs, didn’t make sure there was a clear definition of success, or made other mistakes. Other people, like Bruce, rejected the idea that they had any responsibility for what happened to them because they simply could not re-orient their own thinking. They were trapped in a world where everyone had wronged them so they were doomed to spend their time just waiting for the next “unfair” situation to unfold – when the people, the process, or the company would “screw” them again.

“At Cause” or “At Effect”.
The facilitators described these two ways of analyzing situations as the difference between being “at cause” or “at effect.” If you were “at cause”, you looked at historical situations with a focus on your actions – what you did, didn’t do, so you could learn from them and do things differently next time to get a more positive outcome. If you approached setback in “at effect” mode, you looked at situations as the unfolding of events and circumstances that were out of your control. When in “at effect” mode, the personal conclusions were to “not work for jerks” or to “not deal with people who play politics” or other defensive rationalizations. Essentially, they missed an invaluable learning lesson.

When looking at a situation that didn’t turn out the way you had hoped, here are the questions to ask to get in “at cause” mode so that you can learn from mistakes, improve future outcomes, and advance your career.

• “What did I do?” - if you calmly think through a situation after some time has passed, you may very well realize that you did things without intending to that contributed to the problem. For example, early on in my career, I approached some professional conflict situations with a “winner take all” attitude. Instead of looking for compromises or creating “win-win” situations, I acted like a student on the Debate team where the desired outcome was for me to “win” and for someone else to lose. But after reflecting back on those situations and asking myself the question, I recognized the pattern, changed my approach, and was more effective in the workplace.
• “What didn’t I do?” - Often inaction will cause failure. I had lunch with a former colleague recently who was let go from a project management role after only a few months. “Karen” took over a high-visibility project that was already behind schedule. The date had been moved, and she was brought in to make sure things stayed on track this time. But Karen quickly realized that even the new date was unrealistic and that the team couldn’t hit the deadline without a significant change to the resource plan. As a newbie, she was afraid to bring bad news to her boss and make others look bad. So she stayed quiet, hoped for the best, and was let go once the news was finally out that another deadline would be missed. The “at effect” view of the situation is that the delay wasn’t her fault and she “took the fall” for other people’s poor planning and poorer execution. The “at cause” view of the situation is that she hurt herself by not having the courage to raise the issue early. If she had done so, it’s possible that the executives could have given her more resources, reset the date, or done other things to help get it back on track. But she didn’t give the organization that chance, because she was more comfortable “hoping for a miracle” and avoid delivering bad news than calling out the issue.
• “What would I do differently next time?” If the first two questions don’t yield obvious answers, it’s time to take a broader and deeper view of the issue. Sometimes, the answer actually is “I should avoid working in that kind of culture again” or “I should recognize when my manager is a weak sponsor and find a way to move into another team.” In other words, sometimes the changes necessary to avoid a repeat situation are not just small tactical adjustments, but fundamental realizations about the environments and teams where you’re most likely to succeed. Coming to understand this made a huge difference in my career choices and progression.

It’s easy to spot people who commit to an “at effect” approach and suffer the consequences throughout their careers. They either stay in the same role for years and years because they can’t get more opportunity, or they bounce from job to job and have only bad things to say about their prior managers, teams, and companies. Inevitably, they set themselves up for more failure because no one rallies around a finger-pointing complainer who seems to have more than their share of disappointments. In teams and projects, we gravitate towards people who take ownership and focus more on how to achieve team success instead of “blamestorming” or making excuses.

If you can practice taking an “at cause” approach to challenges and setbacks, you’ll find that it becomes very natural over time and it will dramatically improve your ability to learn from prior setbacks and significantly improve your judgment. It’s also a trait that I’ve looked for when I’ve chosen the next wave of leaders in my teams.

If you have experiences or advice on how to learn from mistakes effectively, please share your comments below. If you liked any of the ideas in this post, please use the social media icons to share on Twitter, Facebook, and elsewhere.

As shocking as this can be, it’s very common to see high tech executives with spotty records land on their feet. “Where’s the justice?!”, you might ask. Well, what Rick lacked in substance, he more than made up in political savvy and he played “The Game” quite well.

Relationships Trump Results
As you rise the ranks in corporate high tech, relationship skills become even more important than functional competency. Last week, I was discussing this idea with Paul Burrin, a VP at Citrix Online, and he summed it up this way “I’ve worked in environments where executives with strong relationships could get by with being moderately competent in terms of their functional knowledge and results.” In other words, you’ll surely get fired for incompetence, but it’s your high EQ aka Emotional Quotient (i.e. self-awareness, empathy, and dealing sensitively with other people) that will enable you to effectively climb the corporate ladder and stay in the upper echelon. These “relationships” can take on different forms, spanning from strong relationships built on mutual trust and respect to self-interested, destructive cronyism where individuals put their own needs ahead of the company’s.

Programmers pound out code. Engineering managers make sure their technical staff deliver that code on time with sufficient quality. Directors release products and keep the “factory” running. At this level, you start to deal with cross functional dependencies and this is where things get complex. For example, releasing a product requires coordination with Marketing, Sales, Services and even Finance. Therefore, as a Director you will be judged not only by your VP, but also those with whom you work across the company. And even though everyone is “on the same team,” the natural tensions between different functional organizations will always create situations that require collaboration, compromise, or even conflict – testing your relationships and your ability to preserve them amidst the most challenging situations. And the stakes are highest for professional success and failure at the VP and CxO ranks

Politics, Good or Bad?
Every time the word “politics” is mentioned at one of our corporate workshops or public events, there’s noticeable discomfort in the room. Business is about making money and businesses thrive when smart people struggle to figure out the best way to handle the toughest problems. Corporate politics inevitably play a role in these situations, but there’s no reason that “politics” have to be inherently negative, as many people tend to perceive them.

Perhaps the uneasiness that people have with it is when actions by others conflict with their own value system. I got this cynical definition from one of my clients, a COO of a$150M business, “Politics is people doing things for their own advancement rather than the advancement of the organization.” That definition makes me uncomfortable, because I don’t think it reflects how the best companies behave. But these “bad politics” are a reality in many organizations, putting leaders in a position where their only choices are to:

1. Compromise their values
2. Accept “defeat” by a political adversary
3. Find a new department or company that more closely shares their values.

Having a strong EQ will equip you to deal with and flourish in good and bad politics. Check out what Jeff Russakow, former EVP at Yahoo!, had to say about the importance of EQ.

4 Steps to Boost Your EQ:
Here are some ways that you can build up your people and organizational relationship skills.

• Embrace Line-Of-Business (LOB) Tensions – when you’re under pressure to get things done, the last thing you want is someone from another part of the business putting road blocks in your way and slowing you down. Instead of getting frustrated and wasting your energy in disagreements and conflict, consider the LOB perspective that person has. LOB tensions are like “checks and balances” for businesses. If everyone is always agreeable, you might be missing something very important.
• Reframe your “asks” – It’s much easier to get people to do something for you if there’s a benefit for them. If you are a marketer and trying to roll out a new program or campaign for Sales, tell them how it’s going to help them with bookings, revenue and attaining their quota and NOT about how it’s going to increase market share, demonstrate thought leadership, or improve the inner mechanics of Marketing like web lead conversions, etc.
• Focus on Respect, not being Right – In heat of battle, driving your business and beating your competition, consider the longer term implications of how you “throw your weight around.” I was speaking with Moshe Gavrielov, CEO of Xilinx, and he said “As a CEO, it’s more important to focus on respect rather than being right.” His point is that the most successful executives understand how important establishing and maintaining good relationships are for effective leadership.
• Keep your Friends Close and Your Enemies Closer – Good and bad politics intensify significantly the higher up you go in the organization. You can’t avoid conflict nor the people who may be creating problems for you. It’s worse to be blindsided by them, so find ways to meet with them on a regular basis. Instead of being surprised, you’ll be prepared. Then you are in a better position to proactively manage the situation, minimize damage to your team, and get the focus back on moving the business forward (rather than personal agendas).

Forging strong interpersonal and cross organization relationships is critical for any leader. Your functional, domain expertise is likely what got you where you are today BUT it’s not what will get you to the next level and keep you there. Do yourself a favor and evaluate your EQ compared to your IQ.

What have you done to build up your EQ and cross organizational relationships? Please share your experience. If you found this interesting, please use the toolbar below to share it with your network.

“I’ve always been an ‘open door’ manager. My team knows that. And they’re salespeople – they’re not the type to be timid with their opinions.” I was talking with a Sales VP who I’ve known for more than 15 years. He’s a very personable and approachable professional and was adamant that he’d be the first to know if there was any discontent in his organization.

“So you haven’t lost any of your top talent in the last year?” I asked. He paused; looking unhappy he said “Well, yes. Three of my strongest athletes moved on in the last year.” I was waiting for the light bulb to go on as I said “You weren’t surprised when they resigned, right? Because they knew they could always come to you if they had an issue. After all, your door was always open.”

Suddenly, he got it. “No they all caught me completely off-guard, and by the time they had accepted other offers, it was too late.”

Just because you think your team can talk to you about anything doesn’t mean that they will.

It’s Not About You (Unless It’s About You)

Good leaders make it clear to their teams that they’re not looking for sycophants and “yes people.” They want candid feedback – about the business, the company, and even themselves. Those leaders project a culture of openness where people feel comfortable sharing their perspective even when it isn’t positive.

Why would someone on your team who trusts and respects you as a leader still not give you “the straight scoop” about how they really feel?

• You can’t do anything about it – “Big issues” are often larger than any single manager or executive. When I was at Siebel Systems in 2002, raises and bonuses had been cancelled for more than a year. During this time Salesforce.com was quickly getting traction in the CRM market and competition from SAP and PeopleSoft was getting more intense. Stock options for some employees were literally $100 “under water.” Layoffs had become a quarterly ritual. Innovation was a distant dream because the company was on a burning platform, forced to stabilize its core technology foundation before it could even consider any enhancements. One of my key people resigned over these issues. She knew that I hadn’t caused the problem but more so that I couldn’t fix it.  “Big issues,” cause loyal employees to give up hope - packing up to move on to TNBT (The Next Big Thing)
• You won’t do anything about it – If your boss is either:
• a jerk
• focused on the wrong things
• working from a faulty game-plan
• fear driven

…then he’s probably created a political climate that won’t allow anyone to mention that “The Emperor Has No Clothes” without political punishment. Your team may think that you’re afraid to put issues on the table with executive leadership because you’ll just get labeled a “non-believer” and will become isolated as your own opportunities for influence, promotion, equity, and other rewards vanish into thin air. Your team believes that you’ll “play it safe” and won’t put your own opportunities in the company at risk by raising a voice of dissent.

• You might actually do something about it – Just because you’re fully aware of a problem, and comfortable voicing it to your manager doesn’t mean you can fully control the “solution” to that problem. I remember when a marketing manager on my team, who worked closely with our Alliances organization, came to me to surface some dysfunction in the working model across the teams. I said, “This is completely fixable and I want to test a potential solution with our CMO.” She was immediately concerned and said “What if she decides that the ‘solution’ is just to move my function out of Marketing and into Alliances? I don’t want that, and it would probably make the problem even worse.” In that moment, she was telling me that she’d rather live with an ongoing headache than risk a radical tops-down solution.

Ultimately, all three of these scenarios boil down to a feeling among your employees that “You can’t handle the truth!” Being open to feedback and communication is great, but it’s totally unrealistic for you to expect everyone to be bold and courageous in raising issues that will put them at risk.

If You Don’t Know About it, You Can’t Manage It

Here are some strategies to uncover concern and misalignment so you can take action before it’s too late.

• Get anonymous feedback – Find a way to get anonymous feedback. This could be an electronic survey or the old-fashioned “suggestion box” or something in-between. Create a visible way that employees can share negative feedback without fear of consequences. Some of it will be painful to hear, but it will be a lot less painful than when one of the “keepers” in your team says she’s leaving.
• “Don’t just stand there, DO SOMETHING” – This goes hand-in-hand with the first point. People will only share feedback if there’s some hope of a positive outcome. I remember when an HR admin at a startup company that I had just joined shared the results of last year’s “Employee Satisfaction Survey” with me. The anonymous survey called out a couple of massive dysfunctions in the executive team, including one executive who berated employees and was never open to ideas from his team. I asked “What was done since the survey to acknowledge the feedback or address the issue?” I was horrified when she said “Nothing.” It would have been better not to run the survey at all than to run it and do nothing – which only further aggravated employees for “wasting their time.” That doesn’t mean that every little complaint demands an action from the executive team, but when there’s a widespread issue, ignoring it after it’s been called out dissolves trust in leadership. Taking action will show employees that their feedback matters. And the good news/bad news is that you’ll get more feedback as a result. Confident leaders check their egos at the door and use that feedback to improve. Weak managers use it to identify dissenters and then punish them.
• Lead by Example – Do you want your direct reports to be comfortable (and brave) enough to come to you with things you might not want to hear? Well, are you willing to do the same with your manager?  What if he’s the CEO?  What about an investor who just put $25M in your company? If there are issues that are negatively impacting the company’s business and you’re not comfortable sharing these with your management, you can’t be surprised that your team wouldn’t share those same issues with you. If you want to foster a culture where feedback is welcomed, then you have to be willing to demonstrate raising feedback that challenges the status quo. Of course, that doesn’t mean bad-mouthing the company or complaining in the break room – that’s not a positive environment for constructive change. But it does mean stepping out of your “safe” zone and taking some risk to drive change that is positive for the business.

How have you provided this kind of feedback to your boss, or tried to gather it from your team? Please share what’s worked for you…

“Yes, those are the key priorities,” said my CEO as he nodded during our one-on-one. I was stunned and a little disappointed. The whiteboard was covered with more than 20 projects that were on my team’s plate. I was hoping to get clarity on which ones were mission-critical, which were important, which were nice-to-haves and which were pipedreams – because even working long startup hours, we didn’t have the resources to execute them all at once.

Speed is the unspoken core value of every high-tech startup, and even as I explained the challenge, my CEO was very hesitant to treat any of the listed projects as a “lower priority” for fear of letting things “slow down.” I was struggling to untie this Gordian knot that I’ve since learned exists in many startups.

Among the many pieces of wisdom in J. Allan McCarthy’s book Beyond Genius, Innovation, and Luck: The “Rocket Science” of Building High-Performance Corporations is a creative but proven approach that sidesteps the flaws of traditional planning for startups and large corporations alike. Allan was kind enough to share this method and supporting tools in this guest blog post.

Wasted Time and Money

It’s highly unlikely that your company is using its resources efficiently. Why? The logic on which traditional planning is based is flawed. And, it can introduce huge inefficiencies into the daily operations of a company. On the surface the operational plan might look great and make sense—but if it doesn’t use “sequencing” as the organizing principle, then behind the scenes that same plan is draining productivity by as much as 15% to 27% (1) or more. No kidding.

How much money does a 15% to 27% productivity loss equate to? You can do the math for your company. It could be a few million dollars in an early stage organization to hundreds of millions of dollars in lost productivity (and related market opportunity) in a large corporation.

The Problem with Traditional Planning

A traditional planning approach goes something like this:

1. The company defines its vision and purpose. This is why the organization was formed, where it’s going, and what it will look like when it gets there.
2. Leadership will also define its mission statement or “What they are striving to achieve”—looking out 18 to 24 months.
3. Next, a string of high-level objectives are typically identified (let’s call these imperatives). Then the functional leaders (Sales, Engineering, Marketing, R&D, Finance, etc…) identify the work needed to be done, meaning, list the key projects and programs in order to achieve these objectives (let’s call these initiatives).
4. The Initiatives identified by the functional leaders are then aggregated into a plan. That’s when the fun begins. Bright, motivated leaders debate priorities and make a case for resources. I call this “resource roulette” because at this juncture, resource allocation might as well be gambling since the logic on which it is based is severely flawed.  Why?

When there is a high interdependency between imperatives and initiatives, which is the case in almost every modern-day corporation, then sequence, or the order in which work is performed (like building a house) becomes extraordinarily important. When building a house, a foundation must be built first. There is no debate about this. Next, walls must be erected before plumbing and wiring can be installed. No one would dream of putting on the roof before the walls were built—and in reality it couldn’t be done. When one builds a house, there isn’t debate about priorities. The house is built on the basis ofsequence or the logical order in which work needs to be accomplished. And here in-lies the root problem: organizations are very, very complex systems (even start-ups) with a high sequential relationship between imperatives (high level objectives) and initiatives (where the work gets done)—but this sequential relationship isn’t obvious. The “sequence” is further hidden when bright, energetic functional leaders act independently to create their respective plans of work to be performed. Without a sequenced-based plan, the organization is doomed to essentially work against itself as an army of motivated employees pursue goals and objectives that aren’t in unison.

The Power of Sequencing

Let’s review a powerful, numbers-driven example, to illustrate the power of sequencing in the planning process. (See Excel spreadsheet: Sequencing Analysis)

A CTO Group in a large corporation was struggling with their ability to meet general company objectives, made worse by a perceived lack of headcount and funding. The group had 111 employees and an $83M annual budget (excluding R&D capital). Prior to beginning the planning refresh cycle the current plan documents showed: 8 imperatives and 126 initiatives that the 7 CTO Group executives had aggregated from their various departments into a plan.

After refreshing the Mission Statement, we identified 10 imperatives that were needed in order to achieve the Mission. Next, we mapped the 126 existing initiatives to the new Imperative set. See column #1 “New Imperatives Identified in Plan” and column #2 “Existing Initiatives Mapped to Imperatives.” Examine the Initiative count by Imperative. (Note: At this stage you can’t read the actual Imperative description to know if, for example, 32 Initiatives is the correct loading for Imperative #1. We’ll save that discussion for a later time.) To this point Initiatives have been identified and put in motion based on executive debate over priorities. Remember, building a company is like building a house. There is always an inherent sequence that should be the organizing principle on which a plan is based. Now let’s demonstrate the impact of sequencing as the organizing principle of the plan.

Next, the executive team performed a very simple sequencing activity (on the new ten Imperatives) called the Interrelationship Digraph. I’ve seen companies invest only a few hours of time in this kind of exercise and literally save months of wasted person-hours of effort on out-of-sequence execution. This is a common sequencing tool used for a variety of applications. After sequencing (see lower portion of Excel spreadsheet green and red areas) we learned that Imperatives 8, 5, 4, 3, and 9 (ordered high to low) were the drivers or, keeping with my sequencing metaphor, building the foundation and walls of the house. In other words, these Imperatives needed to be finished (or at least significant progress made) before the lower in sequence Imperatives could be efficiently completed. It turned out that Imperatives 1, 10, 6, 2, and 7 (in this order high to low in sequence) were the followers or the wiring, plumbing and roof of the house. Notice that at this stage there is no debate about priorities! So, for example, it’s very difficult to build a sales plan without a market analysis. This is a no-brainer. Unfortunately, with literally hundreds of initiatives in queue in most companies, it’s very difficult to determine where these might fall in sequence unless there is an explicit mechanism in place to identify it.

Figure 1.1 – CTO Group Sequencing Analysis

Green= Initiatives that are Drivers/Precursors identified in Sequencing

Red=Initiatives that are Results/Followers identified in Sequencing

After completing the sequencing activity this is what we learned:

1. 63 of the 126 existing Initiatives were cancelled or suspended. These were deemed too low in sequence or simply unnecessary at this point in time.
2. 22 new Initiatives were added—not in anyone’s queue—and deemed mission critical; 14 of these addressed high in sequence Imperatives.
3. 32% of the allocated resources (headcount and dollars) were rebalanced from low in sequence Initiatives to high in sequence Initiatives.
4. The executive team’s confidence level grew and the weekly staff meeting debate ended over headcount and dollars.
5. The CTO Group executive team’s confidence in plan execution grew significantly.
6. Stakeholder confidence and sponsorship increased exponentially. The CTO also presented this plan to the CEO and Board of Directors (CTO had previously been challenged by the BOD on his resource requests). He received accolades for plan composition and transparency.

Summary

Is the organizing principle behind your company’s plan sequence or prioritization? I’ll bet it’s the latter. This means that you’ve got hidden treasure in terms of significant productivity gains awaiting discovery. Now, go get it.

Allan McCarthy

www.mccarthyandaffiliates.com

650-823-4253

(1) Research performed on 87 companies between 1999 and 2009 pre and post planning process results. Planning process documented inBeyond Genius, Innovation & Luck: The “Rocket Science” of Building High-Performance Corporations, J. Allan McCarthy, November 2011, 4th Edition Publishing, available at Amazon.com.

The look on Sam’s face really caught my attention. I wasn’t sure if he was coming down with something, or if he had eaten something bad at lunch. He did not look well. “I have to do it. I know I have to do it. I hate the thought of it, but I know I’ll never get what I deserve if I don’t do it,” said Sam. He wasn’t talking about some brutal new workout program or cleaning the muck out of his rain gutters. He was talking about self-promotion.

I asked what was making him so uncomfortable. He responded, “Well, on one hand, I’ve made a lot of key contributions to the department that seem to go unnoticed. They won’t be visible unless I make them visible. On the other hand, I hate the thought of becoming the new ‘Mark.’” Mark was a notorious self-promoter in Sam’s department. Mark made a big deal out of even small achievements. It had gotten to the point that everyone dreaded his updates in team meetings because it became a predictable laundry list of the “great” things Mark had done that week. And Mark was oblivious to the fact that he was hurting his own credibility, and annoying his coworkers.

A Better Approach

Many high-tech professionals rising up the ranks struggle with this. We’ve all seen our share of “Marks.” In the best case, they’re boring. In the worst case, they’re distracting, obnoxious, and even malicious. But high-tech companies are full of smart, competitive, hard-working people who sometimes go unnoticed. Hoping that your accomplishments “speak for themselves” is a recipe for slow progression, and possibly even a pink-slip.

Here are five suggestions that will increase your visibility without suffering from “Mark-itis”:

1. Don’t mistake “Necessary” for “Important” – If you’re working on something that your boss or her boss don’t care about, they also won’t care whether you’re doing it well or not. “Jack” was the Product Marketing Director on my team  who maintained the pricing guidelines for our enterprise software company. He worked hard but was frustrated that the CMO never paid any attention to him or recognized the results of his work. Without question, the price list was necessary – Sales couldn’t quote deals without it. But what was most important to the CMO was positioning, competition, and lead volume. The CMO never woke up in the middle of the night worrying about pricing, and he never ran around the office high-fiving people because of a great change to the pricing guidelines. Jack moved to another Marketing function where his hard work and talent would be “on the radar” with the CMO and his professional “stock” began to rise quickly.

2. Align with your manager on your career development plan (CDP) – Most managers like to promote the achievements of people on their team, which is another good reason to make sure you and your manager are aligned on your CDP. If you and your manager agree that your next step is to become a Senior QA Engineer, and that one of the key components is for you to demonstrate process improvements, it’s highly likely that she’ll  “advertise it” when you deliver. She wants her boss, your peers, and her peers to be aware of your achievements so that when she recommends you for promotion, those same people will think “Of course he’s being promoted. Look at all of the process improvements he’s delivered!”

3. Shift from “Me” to “We” – Good news tends to spread virally in high-tech companies. The best way to make it easy for people to advertise your accomplishments is to make it about their accomplishments. Consider these two emails:

Version 1:

From: Mark

To: Sales Team

My social media tactics are paying off! We passed 5,000 views on our blog last month! I’ve been watching our competition, and I think they’re starting to copy my moves. Oh well, I guess it’s the “sincerest form of flattery,” right?

-Mark

Version 2:

From: Sam

To: Sales Team

CC: VP of Engineering, VP of Public Relations

Good news. We passed 5,000 views on our blog last month. Blog traffic is now contributing more than 10% of our Sales leads.

Kudos to the PR and Engineering teams. Our product innovations and steady stream of interesting news are really getting people to “tune in” to our blog. Let’s keep it up!

-Sam

The second email celebrates a team accomplishment, puts the accomplishment in terms that theaudience cares about (Sales cares about leads, not  blog views), and explicitly recognizes thecontributions of others. Note the CC: to the heads of PR and Engineering, who will probably forward this good news to their teams (or maybe even to the CEO). “Sam” will be associated with a big success on something he owns (the corporate blog), lots of people will hear about it, and Sam hasn’t annoyed his co-workers with clumsy self-promotion. Score!

4. Focus on results, not your “hard work” – You led the project team through dozens of meetings over 6 months. You worked over the weekend to prepare the project summary. You even canceled a planned vacation when the project started to slip early on. Nobody cares. The right people will know what you did behind the scenes – calling it out just makes you a self-promoter. Quantify the results in the context of your department or company KPIs.

5. Take a long-term view – If you’re worried that celebrating a “team” win will mean that you don’t get enough “credit” for the critical role that you played, you’re missing the point. Career advancement, raises, bonuses, equity grants and other rewards rarely come from one single, heroic achievement. They come from continuous achievement, being a team player, and delivering bigger and bigger wins for the business over time. Being associated with a big win is enough, whether your efforts drove 80% or 20% of the results.  You’ll get the recognition and rewards that your contributions deserve without having to “apportion credit” across the team.

What strategies have you used to make your contributions more visible? Please share your experience. If you found this interesting, please use the toolbar below to share it with your network.

“Good news!” is what she said to me on the phone. She timed it while I was traveling, so it would be harder for me to react to what I saw as yet another attempt at professional sabotage. Over the years, I had become very suspicious of her because of “honest mistakes” that either hurt me politically, helped her, or both. This one made it crystal clear. There was no chance this one was a “mistake.”

We’ll call her “Nicole.” Roughly 3 months before, our department had reorganized and our GM decided that Nicole’s favorite direct report (who we’ll call “Martin”) was going to be moved onto my team. Nicole had hired Martin originally, and groomed him for over a year. They had the highest level of respect and loyalty for each other.

Meanwhile, I had just extended an offer to a very promising young candidate. The “good news,” according to Nicole, was that she had suggested to Martin that the new employee joining my team should report to him (effectively promoting him to Manager), and that Martin was very excited about the plan.

Nicole’s tone was enthusiastic and friendly on the surface. But she knew that the position she had put me in would be damaging. I could either go along with the plan, in which case Martin would get an effective promotion orchestrated by Nicole, or I could undo the plan, in which case Martin would perceive me astaking away a deserved promotion. Either way, Martin would end up being even more loyal to Nicole (with the promotion) or would be demotivated in his new role (as an individual contributor) because I blocked his promotion. Checkmate.

This was a huge professional “wake up call” for me – that there were actually people who would set traps to undermine other employees for their own benefit. Because I was responsible for outbound product marketing and Nicole ran inbound product management, avoiding her was not an option. I came to the realization that I was now at the stage of my career where I had to “grow up” or be crushed by the “big boys” (and girls). I had to find a way to work with Nicole.

Beware of Your Enemy

Inevitably, everyone in high-tech encounters professional enemies i.e. adversaries that undermine your professional reputation, conflict with your value system, and sound your internal alarm for “fair play” and “justice.”

As common as personality conflicts are in the workplace, they are the toughest problems to solve because you’d simply prefer not to deal with thosetypes of people on any level whether professional or social. Socially, you can control who you interact with. However, broken professional relationships can be cancerous to your career success:

• Wasted Time and Energy – it takes a lot of energy to dislike someone. This negative energy is wasted in matters that are counter-productive to the business. It also takes away from your job satisfaction.
• Lost Productivity – avoiding someone who is on your team or who is part of your natural workstream makes for inefficient work.
• Stalled Career Advancement and Promotions – it’s easier for your manager to promote youif she knows that there is consistent support throughout the organization. Adversaries can do a lot of damage to your reputation and make it hard for your manager or others to support your promotion.

On the other hand, if you’re able to work through these differences, you can do a lot of good for yourself in building up key skills as well as your reputation. Managed properly, people will recognize you as:

• A Team Player - Companies spend millions on “teamwork.” At Oracle in the mid-90s, Ray Lane was adamant in rallying every employee in every function to focus all energies on beating Microsoft instead of fighting each other. If you can be a role model for “teamwork” and create highly functional cross-organization teams, you will significantly increase your chances of getting more responsibility and rising up the ranks.
• A Leader - Leaders work through differences and come up with solutions. Anyone can point out problems. Great leaders always find a way to work with all types of people and to motivate them to a common cause.
• Politically Savvy - You simply can’t avoid “Politics,” because “Politics” still exist everywhere and won’t avoid you. Playing good politics is required and it doesn’t mean you have to compromise your values. True North by Bill George provides a great foundation for understanding how your personal values align to your professional goals. People will respect you as someone who understands the game, but doesn’t “play dirty.”

“Keep Your Friends Close. Keep Your Enemies Closer!”

By the time HR gets involved, it’s usually a lose-lose situation or at best win-lose i.e. someone will lose. While it’s improbable that you’ll get along equally well with every person in your workplace, it’s also impractical to think that you can turn all adversarial relationships around. Take the first step to improve a bad situation. It’s to your benefit (as the old saying goes) to “…keep your enemies closer.” Here’s how:

1. Be the bigger person - If you lower yourself to internal infighting, people above, across, and below you will notice. And even if you “defeat” your enemy, people will be hesitant to build strong relationships with you because they don’t want to become your future “victim.” Resist innate behaviors to defend and attack by controlling or better yet disconnecting your emotions. Some of my greatest professional missteps were caused by inability to control my emotional response and reactions.
2. Stay in frequent, close contact – this gives you an “early warning system” so you can look out for their tactics. Find things in common to talk about. Look for “windows of opportunity” to make small talk. Then build up to non-work related topics, hobbies and shared interests to discuss. If you can find a “real person” within your nemesis that will help you to relate better to him in business situations down the road.  It’s also possible that you can slowly build some trust over time, but don’t be so naïve in thinking that given the opportunity he won’t throw you under the bus!
3. Keep focused on the business - Business is business so don’t make it personal. You will set an example for your team and send a strong message up your management chain if you are committed to put your interpersonal issues aside for the good of the business. It’s useless to worry about things that aren’t in your control. You can’t control what other people do (to you) but you have complete control over what you can do for the business.
4. Promote your enemy - Most of my executive clients have the greatest difficulty with this part. Finding ways to promote your enemies will clearly demonstrate that you are not competing with them and instead are focused on company success vs. your own personal agenda. This is a very powerful technique to disarm your enemies and demonstrate to the organization that you’re well above petty in-fighting.

Since then, I’ve faced many more “Nicoles” (and “Nicks”) in my travels as a high-tech exec. At best I’ve been successful in turning difficult relationships into productive, collaborative ones. At worst, I’ve kept my arch enemies at bay – limiting their damage by keeping them on my radar.

What strategies have you used to work through personal conflict situations? Please share your experience. If you found this interesting, please use the toolbar below to share it with your network.