Ya Gotta Know Jack

Well, Amazon has quit running the special price on GUST; however, Jack Covert over at 800-CEO-READ is now carrying the book at 20% off the retail price.  So... before you link over to Amazon, check out GUST - The "Tale" Wind of Office Politics at 800-CEO-READ.  I think you'll be pleasantly surprised by this site, if you have not already been there.  Jack has a great thing going... check it out.

Find Your Factum

OK, this post is all about audience participation.  My passion is accomplishment, and I've expounded on the topic a lot - both what contributes to it and what detracts from it.  Now it's your turn to answer one thing for me:

What is your single most significant accomplishment, either professionally or personally?

(Bonus question:  why do you consider it your most significant accomplishment?)

Just call me curious.  Can't wait to read your answers.

Conversion On The Road To "Damn! Ask Us!"

Commuting back and forth between Des Moines and Kansas City presents unique opportunities to observe the locals in rural settings.  Recently, at a Missouri gas station, I heard an agitated customer voicing that she was unable to find a specific item.  The clerk's response, as he pulled the item out from behind the counter, amused me, "Damn!  Ask us!  We always keep them back here."

Damn.  Ask us.

It's amazing how infrequently we ask questions to get what we want.  We'll tell people what we want (and then listen only for what we want to hear).  We'll make assumptions that the response will be negative so we don't ask at all.  We predestine that nobody would want to hear us anyway.  So we don't ask.  And we don't get.

Former First Lady, Eleanor Roosevelt, once said, "We see the world, not as it is, but as we are."  If we see the world as ripe with possibilities, then every question will yield a positive response (even if the response may not lead to the result for which we were hoping).  Jesus once said,  "Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you."  (Matthew 7:7, NIV)  When the Apostle Paul (then Saul of Tarsus) experienced his world-rocking conversion on the road to Damascus (ah...now you get the title pun), the conversation started out with questions... from both parties.

Right now, I'm trying to promote a new book.  I'm doing a lot of knocking, seeking, and asking.  Sometimes the responses are favorable.  Sometimes the door gets slammed back in my face.  Occasionally, there's no answer at all.  But it doesn't mean I've quit promoting.  I learned a lot about self-marketing since Race Through The Forest was released last year.  I can't rely on Amazon or my Publisher to do the work for me.  GUST is my product, and I'm the primary salesperson.  I believe that people want to manage their office politics challenges more effectively, and I want to help them do it.

I've come to the conclusion that the question is the most powerful yet under-used communication tool we have.  There's a statistic that project managers should spend 90% of their time in communication.  I'm curious how much of that time is spent telling vs. asking.  My most popular and requested speaking engagement is titled "What Your Project Team Isn't Telling You" and equips the audience to ask better questions of their project stakeholders.  A lot of the office politics issues that I resolve on the Office-Politics site could be averted by some proactive questions.

What do you want?  Is it a promotion?  A new job?  Information?  A date?  Some time?  Are you asking for it?  How are you framing your questions in such a way to set yourself up for success?

Exit Or Egg-Sit

Steve Alford announced last week that he was leaving his head coach position of the University of Iowa Hawkeyes Men's Basketball team and was heading to New Mexico.  Nobody around here seems to care much.  Give it a year from now, and (regardless of the new coach's performance) people will be saying, "Steve who?"  The long and the short is that he overstayed his welcome.

Why the animosity?  Well, Alford hasn't really been doing the best job for the past few years (some would argue, since he arrived here).  He leaves with a losing record in the Big 10 conference over 9 years of coaching.  His legacy is one of mediocrity.  He started out with a lot of promise, but it all just sort of fizzled over time, and people tired of him quickly.

I've been talking recently with a few people who are considering employer switches.  Surprisingly, there is very little out there on the topic of creating a good exit strategy.  Even my two favorite career advice sources, Penelope Trunk and David Lorenzo, both had alarmingly little advice, and even then I had to go back to last July to find anything relevant on their sites.  I'm not dogging either of them, mind you, but I did find it surprising, given that around 2/3 of the American public is dissatisfied with their jobs and would switch, according to the Herman Group.  A lot of people have advice for finding the right job, but few have advice for leaving the current one.

One problem is that each exit is unique; hence, giving blanket advice on how to exit in a short blog post is difficult (but Penelope comes darn close).  I'd like to offer some suggestions for helping you understand when it's time to leave the job, the department, the project, or the organization:

1. When it becomes physically and emotionally painful to go to work.  If it's become so bad that your very wellbeing is adversely impacted, it is seriously time to think about an exit strategy from your job.  Nobody needs to work themselves to death.
2. When it becomes obvious that it's just a bad fit.  That doesn't mean that you are bad, or that your employer is bad.  It just means that the two of you should not be together.
3. When you've tapped out your value proposition.  This is a hard one to admit, because nobody likes to think that they are not adding value.  If your primary job contribution is "cubicle warmer" then you may want to consider the factors that brought you to the position in the first place.  If the only praise on your last review was "remembers the inhale-exhale sequenc without prompting" then it is time to update the resume.
4. When a "dive" is inevitable.  If you know that the company, project, or department is going down in flames, unless you've made some kind of sweet golden parachute contractual agreement, don't be a martyr.  Too many good people stay in bad organizations until the bitter end... and in the end, they're bitter.
5. When there's another opportunity.  You are your own career project champion.  If somebody presents you with a legitimately sweet deal, and you honestly think it will help your career, go for it.  Playing it safe has a time and a place.  If opportunity knocks, it's occasionally OK to throw open the door and go running into its arms with wild abandon.
6. When you perceive a significant lack of integrity.  I've been in situations where my superiors' integrity has been called into question.  The bottom line is that it stinks worse than semester-old gym socks stuffed in a locker.  If you don't trust those who direct your day-to-day activities, there is very little to remedy it.
7. When there is no direction.  A lack of leadership is frustrating for all involved.  If you don't know where you are or where you're going, then the answers should be:  A.  At my desk updating my resume, and B.  to the best fit next employer I can find.

Steve Alford, for all intents and purposes, has been not much more than an over-glorified Humpty-Dumpty for the past three or four years.  It's a good thing he found a job and resigned.  I doubt he had too many minutes left on his parking meter.  He was a fragile egg, sitting precariously atop a very shaky wall.

(By contrast, may I point out the splendid job Tom Davis of Drake University did with transitioning his coaching job to his son, Keno.  Once again, go Bulldogs.)

Bet Your Bottom Dollar You'll Lose The Blues

Hey, you!  Yeah, I'm talking to YOU!!!

Have you registered for the SOB (Successful & Outstanding Blogger) Conference in Chicago yet?

WHY NOT??????

I suppose you can give me a whole lot of reasons why you can't go:

• The time
• The cost
• Blah, blah, blah
• Yada, yada, yada

I can only give you a few reasons why you should go:

• The investment of time in yourself (come on... look in the mirror and tell yourself that you've really invested in advancing your career recently.  Yeah.  I thought so.)
• The opportunity to hear the best in the blogosphere talk about their craft (and helping you hone yours)
• The chance to meet some people who (quite frankly) defy the ability to label them with positive adjectives.  (In other words, they're too great for words.)
• The occasion to collect your seven-year-old daughter's American Girl wish list and fulfill some of her shopping requests.  (OK, I just threw that in to see if you were paying attention.)

Tune into the website to see the latest updates on the conference.  (And rumor has it that you can sweet-talk Liz into a price discount... but only if you talk really, really nice and say "pretty please.")

Putting The CARPE Back In Factum

In my last post, I talked about the feeling of being overwhelmed by my tasks and schedule.  Having a week in sunny Florida behind me, I've had some time to think about how to handle this situation going forward.  Before I say "yes" to anything else, I'm going to be asking myself some tough questions:

• COST - A significant accomplishment should have some skin in the game.  I'm reminded of King David of Israel, who when Araunah offered property at no cost to make an altar, he declined, simply saying that there's no sacrifice without a cost (2 Sam 24:18-25).  Time is the currency here, and I need to consider how much of it an accomplishment will cost, and what will suffer if I agree to tackle it.
• ACCOUNTABILITY - There are some accomplishments where I'm not the owner... the buck doesn't stop here.  In the future, I'll be looking at my role in making sure the accomplishment is successful.
• RELEVANT - How well does this commitment to accomplish something align with my values and my existing goals?  If it doesn't, the decision to decline should be fairly easy.
• PERPETUATING - Too often, commitments are made based on short-term gains.  While these should not be ignored, one needs to look at the long-term benefits of the accomplishment.  How long will this accomplishment continue to derive benefits?
• EMBRACEABLE - The most important element of any commitment to accomplish something significant should be passion.  If I don't care about it, the other four probably won't matter.  I know myself well enough to know what projects, people, and commitments will derive passion... and which ones will be a mere endurance test to the end.

So there you have it.  Cost... Accountability... Relevant... Perpetuating... Embraceable... That should put the CARPE back in my Factum.  This consultant is doing a course correction in his own career and his life.  What about you?  How are you going to tackle being too busy and accomplishing too little?  How will you mitigate those situations when you feel overwhelmed?  What strategies work for you?

The Carpe Factum Weight Loss Plan

A recent snowstorm blanketed our state with one of the most beautiful snows I've seen in a long time.  Yes, we received quite a bit of snow, but it was just peaceful and tranquil and forced us all to stay in, relax, and take a deep breath.  Our neighbor's tree, unfortunately, did not see the snow in the same light as I did.  Weighted down by an earlier freezing rain followed by a heavy snow, the poor tree just seemed to split down the middle and toppled over on all sides.  Looking at that tree, I realized how much we had in common.  I've been balancing a lot recently, and while those around me have been giving me subtle hints that they've been alarmed at my workload, it wasn't until I looked at that tree that it dawned on me that I needed to slow down a little bit.

That's one of the perils of a "carpe factum" mentality, though.  As long as all of the accomplishments are good things (as opposed to the trivial "busy work" of survival), then it's OK to continue to take on the commitments, right?  Wrong.  I lost sight of one of my own key values:  balance.  And like that tree, I was feeling weighted down by a lot of very good things.  Bottom line:  not good.

Delaney Kirk recently shared some practical and useful tips for dealing with being overwhelmed.  I've taken a few of them to heart, and it has helped to alleviate the stress.  One of Roger von Oech's suggestions is to pause and rest.  In this day and age of unrelenting busy-ness, it is alarmingly easy to fall into the trap of overextending ourselves.  We call a "time out" for our children when they get out of hand; why not do the same thing for our schedules and our task lists?

In my next post, I'll share some ideas for how I'm going to be managing my "accomplishment inventory" moving forward.  For now, a week someplace warm and sunny sounds really, really nice to help recharge my batteries.

It's a Breeze

It's now official:  GUST - The "Tale Wind of Office Politics is available for pre-order on Amazon.  (And it's on sale right now for almost a third off the retail price.  What a great opportunity to buy a batch for your entire team... or your entire company.)

But enough shameless self-promotion...

Before you part with your hard earned money on a book that might just sit on your shelf collecting dust, I owe it to you to tell you a little bit more about it.  GUST is an acronym to describe a process of approaching office politics:

• Game - figure out what is being manipulated and the source of friction
• Understand - determine what is behind the players, the behaviors, and the motivations
• Strategize - establish an approach that will get you as close to win-win as possible
• Take Action - get your ducks in a row as you implement your political strategy

Too often, when we realize that office politics are being played on us, we simply lash out in a reactive approach.  Through dialogue among the characters as well as exercises and thought-provoking questions at the end of the book, you'll be able to diagnose your situation with a little more certainty and confidence and craft an approach that makes sense for the situation, the players involved, and the outcome you desire.

There are all types of "characters" out there, so it was impossible to address every situation.  However, many who have read the book already have attested to their ability to approach their political challenges in a different light... and with better results.

My goals as an author have stayed the same between Race Through The Forest and GUST:

1. Distill take-back-to-your-desk application into an entertaining and informative hour-long-read (we're all busy people, after all)
2. Create a business fable that engages the reader without condescending or insulting intelligence.

Special thanks to some of the other bloggers who were kind enough to read the manuscript and provide an advance praise:  Steve Farber, Liz Strauss, Mike Wagner, Phil Gerbyshak, Delaney Kirk, Rajesh Setty, Roger von Oech, and Franke James, just to name a few.  So... enjoy the read.  More book launch information to follow.

Putting It On Nice

Sorry for the silent week, folks, but I've been doing a lot of thinking this past week.  Some of my interactions, conversations, and observations have all been culminating around one single adjective:  NICE.

I'm finding that "nice" is one of those two-edged swords.  Here in central Iowa, we have our fair share of people who have turned passive-aggression into a lifestyle (some might argue, a food group).  For them, being "nice" is only a face thing, and the hug is meant as a vehicle to stab someone else in the back.

My wife often will use "nice" as a first defense for an acquaintance who might be lacking in competence or other social skills.  She's always pointing out to me, "Yeah, but they're nice."  My inside voice almost always retorts with the old line, "...and Hell will be filled with 'nice' people."

The kicker was Peggy Noonan's article in the Wall Street Journal on Saturday.  The entire essay was on being nice.  She talked about how we need to listen to grandmotherly wisdom about what is and is not nice.  Ms. Noonan talked about how we need to be more conscious of what makes people wince.  When people wince; somebody is not being nice.  Her summary was nothing short of eloquent brilliance:

"As long as political correctness reigns, the more antic among us will try to break out with great streams of Tourette's-like forbidden words and ideas.  We should forbid less and demand more.  We should exert less pressure from without and encourage more discipline from within.  We should ask people to be dignified, hope they'll be generous, expect them to be fair.  When they're not, we should correct them.  But we shouldn't beat them to a pulp.  Because that's not nice."

I've been writing on Office-Politics.com for two months now.  The owner and founder of the site, Franke James, pointed out to me that the writers to the site carry a common theme of moral justice and fairness.  Their antagonists, more often than not, are accused of being mean, or at a minimum of not being nice, not playing fair, or not caring about anybody but themselves.  Maybe that's it.  Maybe there's an inverse correlation between being apathetic and being nice.

I'm not sure what the answer is.  However, as I was driving home from class tonight, I noticed a bumper sticker I've seen a million times before:

How Sweet It Is

A year ago today, I posted Why Carpe Factum?  It was my very first blog post.  And now - 164 posts later - I want to thank all of you for an awesome year.  (And thanks to my wife for the "Blog-iversary Bar.")  We'll see what Factums I can Carpe in the coming year.  For today, I'm going to enjoy the past 365 days and all the great relationships that have been built.  Thanks for reading.

A Mall And The Night Visitors

A little over a week ago, I sent my creativity students out on a sort of scavenger hunt.  We had been studying Michael Michalko's approach to creativity called the SCAMMPERR method (Substitute, Combine, Adapt, Magnify, etc.).  Divided into teams and armed with digital cameras, I sent them to the mall of their choice to find one example of each of the nine elements we discussed.  Less than a half hour after I sent them out, one of my students called, informing me that mall security at one of the local malls would not let them take pictures inside the mall.  I thought it was odd, never having had this problem in the past, so I told her team to do what they could with what they had (a teachable moment for creativity).

The next morning, I received a voice mail from the general manager of Merle Hay Mall (the place of trouble from the prior evening), explaining that there had been an issue with my students.  I returned her call promptly, and I proactively and sincerely apologized for any issues and inconvenience there may have been, taking the time to briefly explain the context in which they had been sent to the mall in the first place.  With most people in the retail service industry, that would have been enough, and I would have received a "Thank you for returning my call, and thank you for understanding."  Nope.  She had a SPEECH prepared for me.  She informed me that HER mall was PRIVATE PROPERTY, and that my students were BELLIGERENT.  I stopped her and asked if she could provide examples of the belligerent behavior, in case there were specific classroom management issues to deal with.  She could not, other than to let me know that her security guards were inconvenienced.  Then she proceeded to let me know that her FIRST PRIORITY was to her NATIONAL FRANCHISES.  I again simply apologized, and assured her I would research the issue further and she would not be troubled by my students any more.  This seemed to please her, and the call ended.

My students were incensed by her accusations.  For starters, groups at other malls did not have run-ins with mall security.  If questioned, they explained the assignment and the guards did not hinder them.  Second, belligerence (like beauty) appears to be in the eyes of the beholder, because they felt harassed by the guards from the second they came into the mall.  Third, the individual store owners from whom they asked permission were thrilled to have their store featured in an assignment about creativity.  And finally, I went back to the mall and photographed their posted code of conduct myself.  There's no mention of a photography ban listed anywhere.

My question is this:  Why do organizations let myopic rule following get in the way of context?  My follow-up questions flow closely behind:

• How many of us follow "made up" rules that really aren't rules at all?  They're sacred cows that are mooing and stinking up the pastures of our accomplishment.
• How many people are incapable of separating the rule from the people involved?  My students were not the teenage gangs I usually see loitering at the mall; they're accomplished professionals in their 20's through 50's with disposable income (don't stores generally want that type of person to come in?).
• Why is it that people in authority let it go to their heads?  While I'm not going to fault a minimum-wage mall security guard from doing what he's been told, it seems odd that a mall general manager would get her jollies by scolding a person who has access to sharing this story with a whole lot of people.
• How can we get these people in authority to get their priorities straight?  Yes, I understand the whole landlord-tenant thing, and I get the legality of private property.  However, I always thought the goal of a mall was to get people into the door so they would spend money.  Telling me that I, as a potential customer, was not only not her priority, but also that my students and I weren't welcome in HER mall (yes, the personal pronoun was used), that threw me as a paradigm shift.

I guess I'd be curious how Old Navy, Pac Sun, American Eagle, or Wilson's Leather feel about their landlord's approach.  Do Target and Kohl's and Sunglass Hut and Victoria's Secret really want to be protected from all of that evil paparazzi?  Are Finish Line and Footlocker and Sprint and U.S. Cellular happy that young professionals with disposable income will not be shopping at their stores now?  Are Brodkey's, Kay Jewelers, Franklin-Covey, and Lenscrafters appreciative of the job that security is doing supposedly to make their mall a better place?

Don't worry, Merle Hay Mall, I take accountability for my students' actions.  I've been spending this semester encouraging them to challenge the rules that don't make sense so they can tap into their creativity.  They were just showing me that they were listening.  I promise to do everything I can in the future to keep their alleged belligerence, their digital cameras, and their displosable incomes away from YOUR PRIVATE PROPERTY.  It would be interesting to hear how Mike and Mike and Phil and Adam and Ann and Liz would have handled this situation if they were in my shoes.

Just Blown In

And as long as we're talking about books, check out the new cover for GUST - The "Tale" Wind of Office Politics.  The great folks at Lexicon have been feverishly working toward an April 13 release date (the first run is about to go to the printer).  A special thanks to Roger for some advice on the cover design.

For those who read my first book, Race Through The Forest, you'll notice that this book has a bit more edge to it.  Gone are the quirky character names (a la feedback from Steve and Phil).  What stays constant is a commitment to write a business fable with immediate, take-back-to-your-desk application.

I'll continue to write more about this book in specific as well as other office politics issues on this site.  And you can also continue to read my commentary on the subject on Franke James' Office-Politics site.

Stranger Than (Business) Fiction

OK, this is one of those odd things that I'm still scratching my head about and finding somewhat surreal.  Last year, after Race Through The Forest was released, my publisher was approached by a Korean publishing firm about releasing my book in Korean (no... seriously... there's no punchline coming).  My publishing contact got my approval, we took care of all of the international contracts, they gave us a small advance, and I subsequently forgot all about it.

Until this week.

There was a package from my publisher in my mailbox on Monday.  I opened the box and spent the next 30 minutes staring in disbelief and laughing my tail off.  Race Through The Forest is now available in Korean.  I'm officially an international author.  What a hoot!  Life sure is fun and funny.