English and Writing Tutoring
Writeheightsllc provides one-on-one tutoring in English, Writing, and student skills for grades 8-12 and college. .
CONCIERGE College ESSAY Editing, SAT/ACT PREPARATION
Executive Coach, Leadership Development, Business Consulting Services
Words of Wisdom for Holiday Break
Leadership Development and Business Consulting
- Talent Cycle consulting
- Leadership Development
- Executive coaching
- High-Performance team development
- Business coaching (tactical/strategic)
- Motivational speaker
College Entrance Assistance
Writeheightsllc provides one-on-one tutoring for SAT and ACT preparation and college admission essay brainstorming, writing and editing services.
As we are all getting prepared for a break and spending time with friends and family over the holidays, I thought I would blog/share a collection of WOW (words of wisdom). Think of these as the random thoughts that typically come from your parents or grand-parents or in-lawsJ Take them for what they are worth, which could be marginal. Some of them may resonate, some most likely will not. I have collected these over the years by working in the consulting business. There is the famous song the 12-Days of Christmas, so in that vein here we go. So, if you are interested, grab an eggnog and read on.
How to be a great talent generator -
On the first day you need to hire well. You should always try to hire someone who is completely qualified or demonstrates a track-record of closing skill gaps effectively. Always try to hire people smarter than you and with the drive and ambition that will keep you and others on their respective toes. Always recall that the best talent is never cheap. You simply get what you pay for. Yes, every now and then you can find a bargain, but we should be prepared to pay for the best talent for Avanade. Also, beware of the superstar; remember we are a team game. We need superstars that want to play for super-teams. Finally, when thrashing about an offer for a candidate, when there is something that you cannot put your finger on, but just can’t quantify. My advice, pass on that person. Your gut is a final great test for a candidate. I have made the mistake multiple times, when the CV was great, the interviews were great, everything looked good, but something still bothered me. I made the offer and most of the times I made a bad hire. Resist the temptation to close the deal and move on.
On the second day you need to manage to performance extremes. We are all human and have a baseline of compassion. However, we also have a fixed amount of time that we can allocate to the development of the talent that we have been entrusted with. Do not make the mistake of spending too big a slice of this time with the C player, who with a lot of effort and work hard you can possibly make them a C+ or B. I am sure you can accomplish that; you are a talented developer. However, the company is much better served if you spend that time on the A players giving them freedom and stretch assignments (see day 3). Or spend the time on the B/B+ player making them an A player. As for the C players, you are better off letting them continue their career elsewhere. They might will be stars somewhere else and would be happier.
On the third day you need to take risks with your talent. Consulting is learned on the job; it is an apprenticeship model. People learn new skills when others give them an opportunity to view it, inquire about it, try it, and then refine it. If we do not give our people the opportunity to try it and refine it then we are slowing down their development. We need to maximize their respective learning ability with giving them new experiences that provide learning opportunities. Everyone has a different learning capacity; our role as leaders is to maximize this. We control their exposure to experiences, so take some risks, go ahead and delegate while providing effective coaching and a safety-net.
On the fourth day you need to practice/refine your teaching skills. This is our core tenet in Avanade around our leadership agenda. Your role as a leader is one as a teacher. It rates right up there with being a strong business operator. It is mentioned multiple times in our Leadership Profile of Excellence. And it is such an important behavior that I mention it again here in day 4.
How to keep great talent from leaving -
On the fifth day you need to focus on always making an optimal first impression. We all know that when you meet a person for the first time your brain immediately does a quick analysis and pattern matches with prior experiences and miraculously creates set of baseline assumptions. These are used in subsequent decisions and judgments. It takes many contrary experiences to reform a faulty initial baseline. The input to this baseline is extremely holistic. It is verbal, written, visual, body language, etc. It includes what they experience and very importantly what they don’t and also what they expected to experience. To me this is setting the proper roots for our new hires, for our new additions to our project teams, and to new members of our leadership teams. You only get one time to make the correct first-impression. Make time for proper orientation for our people. Don’t assume that either they do not need it, or that someone else will take care of it. If you set the proper roots, than the tree has a much improved chance of healthy growth.
On the sixth day you need to make sure that they have a manager who cares and is engaged. We are all either career managers or the more senior of us additionally have career managers that work in our organizations. It is a simple fact that the major reason people leave a company is that do not connect with their manager. I can think back on some of the great managers that I have had. I learned so much, they listened, they cared, they were engaged, and they were genuinely interested in me and my aspirations. I can quickly recall their names even though I knew some of them 20+ years ago. Btw, I can also remember the other extreme and relate back to how I removed myself out of that situation. My advice is be the kind of career manager to your people that you desire from your career manager.
On the seventh day you need to keep people interested in their assignments. Over the long haul there will be times when you get stuck in a role or a situation that simply just does not do it for you. We all have had them and I am sure that we all will get more of them. However, you need to try to keep these experiences as a consistent definitive minority. If you are now experiencing this, then work a plan for a successful transition for you and the business. Openly communicate with your career manager and balance the company first with your desire for challenging varying experiences. As a leader who creates and staffs people into roles, keep a scorecard of what everyone is doing. Play it fair across your talent pool and keep the talent engaged, interested, and learning. For people in the tough assignments, provide them a vision and path to a better place with the realization that we all go through these in our career.
On the eighth day you need to provide your people a vision for their future. We spend a lot of time talking about the Avanade vision and our Core Values, and our Leadership Profile of Excellence and Career Advancement Model. These are all focused on what is good for Avanade. We need to take the time and relate how this vision and defined behaviors are good also for the individual. The second dominate reason for a person leaving (see day 6 for the first) is that the person does not see a future for themselves. Maybe there isn’t one, but most times there is a great story but it has never been effectively communicated and internalized by the employee. We cannot expect our people to figure this out themselves. We need to help them shape how their future is aligned with Avanade’s.
On the ninth day you need to provide your people with a fair financial deal. What is ironic is that most people say the reason that they leave a company is for a better financial deal. However, I contend that we do not have be at the top end of the competitive market to keep our best people. We need to give them a fair deal, BUT along with that we need to focus on the lessons of day 6, 7, and 8. If we do that and we give them fair financial deal, then why would anyone leave if they have a great manager, interesting work, and a clear vision for their future? Also, it must be noted that if there is a bad financial deal (one that is way off market), it can trump the other factors even when they are very strong. But, in my experience, these situations are rare.
How to keep yourself at the top of your game -
On the tenth day please remember not to be average. This is advice that my father told me many times. People as well as most things in nature fall in a bell curve. His advice to me was to make sure that you are on the right side of the peak. If you understand statistics than 0 to 1 sigma is perfect. More than that and you are probably working in an environment/population that is too easy and not challenging enough. Please do not forget that we hire great talent at Avanade (see day 1 and 2), so being placed in the median part of the curve is pretty darn good. Focus on being on the right side of the inflection point of the curve.
On the eleventh day please remember not to be bored. This reflects back to the day 3 lesson; it simply applies to you. Once you stop learning, then you stop progressing, and your role becomes a simple paycheck and not an adventure.
On the Twelfth day please remember it is team game and it is not about you. It took me awhile to learn this lesson in my career, even though in sports I learned this lesson early. We are a team sport and when we build teams we need to meld the right pieces together to form high-performance teams. We all cannot always be the goalie, the quarterback, the point-guard. But, in Avanade we are constantly forming teams around customer engagements, internal task forces, functional organizations, etc. The trick is finding the right mix of talent and fit (chemistry) that gets the collection of high-performance individuals into a world-class high-performance team. Look for the talented people who naturally make the people around them better (classic 1+1=3.). I have put a lot of thought and research/reading into the topic. I will save that for a future blog. Suffice to say that this skill is key to Avanade’s continued success.
On the bonus thirteenth day (holiday inflation day) please remember that you need to leave a legacy. This directly reflects back to 12 prior days of WOW. You can always tell when you have done a great job on day 13. It is when you are asked to move onto the next experience and leave your high-performing team behind, and guess what: nothing happens. The team continues to perform at or above the prior level. That is when you have left a legacy for the next leader to build upon. Your team understands their individual and team related roles and they continue to drive superior results. Think of it this way: your team developed in specific ways under your leadership and now it is time for them to continue their development with potentially additional skills and behaviors under the next team lead.
Till next time, have a great holiday, a restful break, and a happy new year.