Hire Your Own Manager

When an organization needs to add leadership, especially in times of growth and change, the process is fairly straightforward: the senior leader crafts a job and gets help from HR or an executive recruiter to find the best candudate. But what if it worked differently?

What if you helped recruit and hire your own boss?

It is not uncommon for staff to be involved in the interview process and some companies incent employees for referrals, but I am thinking beyond that. What if you thought about what you wanted in a manager and what you thought the business needed in a leader, and actively helped recruit that person into your organization?

Here is 7 reasons why reverse recruiting makes sense. 

1.      You can make sure there is a fit

Each person comes to the job with certain strengths and interests. You have yours and your colleagues have theirs. Who better to recommend the kind of leader that will compliment and cultivate these strengths than you? What are you looking to develop and in what areas do you want to be mentored? Hiring your boss is a great way to ensure that you are getting what you need from your career. It is a wonderful thing when the development path of individual employees and the business needs align, for a long time. And being involved in hiring your manager can start building this tenure and growth into your career at your current employer.

2.      You can be more successful

If you select the manager that is the right mix of mentor and challenger, you will be successful which will translate into more opportunities for you, and your colleagues. And if there is a good fit and complimentary skills, you may find yourself being able to focus on the parts of your job that you excel at, making you even more successful longer term.

3.      You will be happier

Extensive research, like this article in Forbes, has been done on why people leave companies and the analysis shows that people rarely leave companies, they leave managers. Employee engagement begins, and can end, here. Your direct manager has more impact on your job satisfaction than virtually any other factor in your work life, more than compensation, work environment, or specific responsibilities. Choosing wisely, can have an impact on your life, stress-levels, and overall career success.

4.      You position yourself as a leader

Let’s say you are a senior marketing director for a company who needs a Chief Marketing Officer, a Controller, or a head of operations at your company. Do you want to wait until the CEO appoints a new leader or brings in a few final candidates for you to interview or should you be more proactive? To make a recommendation for a new hire is a risk, but no matter how they ultimately end up doing in the role, you having a conversation with leaders in your company to make suggestions on what they should hire and giving them some people to consider, helps position you as a leader and someone committed to the cause of growth.  If you go proactively to the CEO to find out more about the role and how you can help recruit the best candidate, it shows that you are a committed, ambitious, and high-performing employee who connected in the community.

5.      You learn more about your business and the objectives of your boss

When you ask senior leadership what they are looking for in a new hire and how their performance will be evaluated, you are getting a fresh perspective on what a successful candidate might look like and how you can help them be successful once they are onboard. Many functional leaders or individual contributors are surprised to hear how much of their boss’ performance measures are based on things like enterprise value (ie, stock price, market share) rather than on successful execution of activities. This perspective can make you a better leader in the business, as well, able to tie your own activities with the overall business goals.

6.      You can influence the company

Those conversations about the role and success measures, can also put you in a position of influence. What is missing from the job description that you think is critical, but that the hiring manager might not be aware? What competencies would make this person successful leading your team? Want more diversity in your organization? Hire a woman or person of color. Ask what is changing in the function or market that might cause the company to want to adapt what they are looking for and recommend accordingly.

7.      You broaden your network

When helping to recruit, don’t stop with the people you already know. It is always better to build your network before you need it and there is no better way to do so than to reach out to see if people are interested in working for your company. You have something to offer them. If they aren’t interested, they might know someone who is who they can introduce you to. Ask your college professors for recommendations, see who serve on non-profit boards that you respect, attend networking meetings or industry association events and ask around. Scour LinkedIn. Referrals will lead to referrals and pretty soon you have met a dozen people who might be your next boss, at your current employer if things go well, or elsewhere in the future. Or maybe some of them may go to work for you someday.

In his book, Under New Management, David Burkus describes how teams are built at IDEO, the legendary industrial design firm. The teams pick their leader, the leader doesn’t pick the teams. The talent gets to pick their place in the organization chart, under the manager and on the projects that make the most sense to them. Managers who find themselves without teams, can’t execute projects and are probably not in the organization long. I imagine those with too many employees, find themselves with more interesting work and bigger responsibilities and reward. What started as an experiment years ago, still permeates the culture. Perhaps it is time for your organization to do an experiment of its own.

This article was originally published on LinkedIn Pulse.

Who is Your Boss? The Answer Might Surprise You

This seems like a simple question. One that would be easy to answer. But for those of us in a customer-facing and customer-impacting role or with big ambitions for our career, it is the kind of multiple choice question that leads to new insights and creates different day-to-day priorities and strategies. 

WHO Do You Work for?

Option 1: You work for your employer. This is the most obvious one. You are employed by an organization from which you receive a paycheck. You have a boss (or several). Your boss might have a boss. Your goals are aligned to the financial or strategic goals of the business and the goals of those bosses. And your primary job is to advocate for the company with customers to create enterprise value for the investors of your company and the leadership who is advocating their interest. With this mindset, the importance of “managing up” is clear. Internal relationship building and being visible in the organization is critical. Whether your manager is collaborative, a micro-manager, or empowering, this view dominates the work landscape.

Option 2: You work for your customers. For marketing professionals and other customer-facing roles, this can be a very useful perspective for day-to-day prioritization. Customers ultimately pay the bills and drive growth and profit in the company. Often customer advocacy and resulting business results can lead to personal rewards. If your goals are aligned to the business goals of your customer, this can lead to great partnership and can optimize long-term customer value. Customer experience and customer service are paramount and are driving enterprise value (not the other way around). With this mindset, the importance of customer relationship building is clear. You need to spend time with your boss, after all.  And your primary job is to advocate or the customer within the company.

Option 3: You work for yourself. Perhaps you are self-employed, consult, or rocking the gig economy, but even if you are not, it is helpful to consider this perspective. Even if you are an employee, you own your own career. You own your own development. And for most of us, we own how we apply our time and energy to the various problems and opportunities we face daily. Ultimately, you choose to join companies, which customers or markets you focus on, and how you pursue your personal passions over time. And with this approach, your primary job is to advocate for yourself with customers and the company, to align their goals with the work you want to pursue. In my experience, this perspective comes to the forefront in times of transition or discontent, but otherwise is under-prioritized. 

As you consider your answer, know that it truly is a multiple choice question. Your answer will likely be a mix of all three and will vary over time as needs and priorities changes. 

In any case, I highly recommend you spending time, being mentored by, and really understanding the needs of all three of your bosses - your employer, your customers, and yourself – to ensure that you are performing up to your fullest potential.   We often don’t listen to ourselves or give ourselves the same compassionate and honest advice we would give to colleagues or our employees, even though we could benefit from the self-reflection. And most of us don’t ask or receive advice frequently enough from our employers or our customers and we should regularly seek out the gift of feedback. Armed with these insights, we can confidently answer the question and focus on the highest impact priorities.

This article was originally published on LinkedIn Pulse.

Good Talk, Coach: 3 ways to inspire greatness

I overheard the half-time huddle at a soccer game this weekend.  The sweaty 11-year-olds were sitting on the grass when their coach gave them two simple pieces of advice:

1. “Girls, we always play strong in the second half,” he started.  “Let’s go out and do that.”
2. “Now that we switched sides at the half, our goal is in the shade.  So, let’s try to keep the ball in the shade.  We’ll score more and stay cool.”

“Good talk, coach,” I was thinking as I smirked at his no nonsense style and how we matched the length of his speech to the attention span of his pre-teen audience.

But later, I was thinking of the simplicity of his practical advice.  He did three things that good leaders should do in any environment, whether it be the soccer pitch or in the board room.  He gave them confidence (we always play strong in the back half), he gave them an easy-to-remember strategy to follow (stay in the shade), and he tied it to their own personal objectives (win and stay cool). 

If we could all do this in our own businesses and with our own teams, we would end up winning more often.

The Momentum of Business: Pace in Practice

My son just finished up his junior high basketball season and watching him and his patient and passionate coaching staff, I made the following observation: the game isn’t won or lost just by the skill of the players or even by the teamwork of the individuals, but also by the momentum or pace of the game.  Even in professional sports, in leagues like the NBA or FIFA, games are often won or lost for reasons that have little to do with player capability, and everything to do with player performance, which has a context on the court or field, and in the minds of the players.  Just like anything, there is a balance between speed, quality, and scope and in sport, as in business, pace can account for a lot.

Sometimes you must speed up.  When the other team needs time to set up their play or you want the kids to keep the head in the game, I observed how useful it can be to speed up the game play.  To pass the ball more.  To run a play quickly to take the other team off-guard.  Our local college football team, the University of Oregon Ducks, made a strategy in the last few years of the “hurry up offense,” which played the athleticism of the team and could effectively wear out opponents by not giving them time to rest or set-up.

Staying ahead of the competition requires some hurry up offense in business as well.  Sometimes the spoils go to the company that is first to market with an innovation, who out maneuvers their competitors in devising winning channel programs, or who establishes a new category, positioning their products as the benchmark to which other offerings are compared.  Although the idea of a “first mover advantage” is often-overstated (as market pioneering is a high-risk strategy), there is something to be said about being first to do things well.  Marvin Lieberman and Steven Blank have both written that what is often attributed as a “first mover advantage” is often a “fast follower” advantage instead.  In any case, it requires a speed and responsiveness to take advantage of market shifts, technology changes, and customer insights to deliver sustainable advantage.

Sometimes you should slow down. My son’s coach would often counsel the boys to slow the game down when their play because too erratic or error-filled.  Sometimes they’d let the game get the best of them and make simple mistakes.  Just slowing down the game, improved their ball handling, their passing, and their shooting percentages.

Sometimes this is true in business as well.  As a person with a well-developed sense of urgency, I want to rush into new ideas or start experiments without all the information.  Sometimes this works well, but often if you take a moment to bring other team mates on board, to plan for contingencies, or to research alternatives, you can arrive at a better outcome.  “As fast as possible, as slow as necessary” can be a much better approach.

Momentum affects your perception of the outcome.  Of course, “momentum” is a physics concept describing the ability of an object to continue moving because of its mass and velocity.  But in sport, psychological momentum is the effect that preceding events have on the perception of the probability of winning or losing.  Sports commentators will often comment on momentum changes in a game and credit momentum with changes of energy or confidence.  A team on a “hot streak” will inevitably win the game, it seems.  Teams that are on the losing end of a change of momentum, can appear to do nothing right. 

Whether momentum actually affects the outcome or simply the mindset of the players (causing them to get flustered or make simple mistakes) can be debated and has been the topic of articles in the Journal of Sports Behavior, Perceptual and Motor Skills, Journal of Applied Sports Psychology, and Cognitive Psychology, to name a few.  The consensus appears to be that the concept of a “hot hand” is a fallacy.  In fact, a study conducted by Jonathan Koehler and Caryn Conley and published in the Journal of Sports and Exercise Psychology sought to find evidence of sequential dependency across shots and in general they found that no shooter they studied had significantly more runs that would have been predicted by chance.  Yet, there is a perception among fans and players alike that momentum can change the confidence of the players and the energy of the game.

The same is true in a business context.  If a sales person is rejected three times in a row, they are a bit less confident the fourth time.  If a marketing team perceives that the customer has launched a winning innovation, they can begin to doubt their strategies and might pre-maturely abandon what would have been a better approach long-term.  Companies with strong brands can leverage their reputation to a string of successes which are made easier by their valuable brand or history of innovation, but it hardly guarantees product success.  If the scale of the risks matches the appetite and capabilities of the company, nothing in a business context is truly final or fatal.  If you treat your customers with respect, you nearly always have time to course correct and make changes.  But only if the leadership keeps their problem-solving wits about them and applies what they have learned in failure to their next opportunity for the win.  No company has a “hot hand” forever.  And no company is a chronic loser, if they are taking advantage of the learnings along the way.  And they remember the things that are within their control and seek to maximize their choices along the way.

I have spent my career in technology, where the pace of change and innovation is high.  This has illustrated to me vividly the importance of controlling the pace of the game you are playing.  Going quickly when the circumstances allow.  Slowing down with the circumstances warrant.  And keeping your head in the game, in good times and in bad.  And with great teamwork and customer engagement, the record can show great results!

This article was posted on LinkedIn Pulse. 

Avoiding Drift

“Without a purposeful toolbox of culture, behaviors, and management training, you get drift and inconsistency.” – Andrew Quinn

It’s like an axle out of alignment.