Category Archives: Tips & Tricks
Quick Totally Awesome and Creative Business Ideas
Click the link below to check out my latest guest blog post. You will find some great (FUN) management tips that you should use.
BE AWESOME!
-MR. BIZ
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The dreaded org change
Organizational changes suck, no doubt about it.
It doesn’t matter what position you are in or how good you are at your job, an “org change” means that things will be different, which often threatens your normal day-to-day.
Org changes sometimes mean a new boss, moving offices, a new job title or even new responsibilities. Departments are combined, outsourced or expanded. The flavors of org changes are numerous. From my experience, in amidst org changes almost no one is safe (no matter how high up the corporate chain you go). At my company a few years ago, I saw how a merger integration meant that a significant number of VPs and senior executives found themselves demoted or jobless.
While through many org restructurings I have been lucky (for example only experiencing a departmental name change… in a previous sales leadership role my team organization changed names 4 times in 3 years), the dreaded org change finally caught up with me a little over a year ago.
When the org changed was announced (in this case, the combining of two sales organizations), I thought that it would be like every other org change I experienced before. My boss always had the top results (as did I) and I had made a name for myself, even being temp-promoted to manage an entire of the country. At the very worst, I may lose one of my employees and inherit a few from the department we were combining with.
Man was I dead WRONG!
With this org change, my boss moved to another state and took over another department. Plus, my new chain of command was all from the other organization we combined with. I had managed the #1 team in the region for 4 years straight. My territory was the city where I worked and I worked in the city where I lived. My stellar reputation (apparently) didn’t matter at all, as I was given a brand new team (or low performers) and my office was moved 40 miles away while my new team’s territory was actually 80-100 miles away. Additionally, my new boss did not even out the new teams, given better performers to the managers from his previous team.
What’s even worse was that a reputation of being the best for 4 years (while being at the top of the list to be promoted to the next level) was completely erased. I was back to square one. My new department leaders had their own list of favorites and a different way to measure who was good and who wasn’t. Moreover, since I was given a suboptimal team, it would be even harder to re-prove myself.
In case you experience what I did, here are some quick thoughts on how to handle things the right way:
- Don’t complain- While you may be known as a successful hard worker with your previous co-workers, the new ones don’t know you will and will brand you as a bitter complainer if that is what they hear out of you when you first start working together. Make sure to keep your good reputation in tact.
- Be agile- Learn what the new team is going to be like ASAP (from a business culture perspective as well as from an expectations standpoint). If you are flexible and closely in tune with what is going on, you will be successful no matter what they throw at you. Resiliency is also important, sometimes you need to muscle your way through a tough situation (it will make you stronger).
- Know when it is a good time to move on- Don’t assume that because of an org change that it is time to get a new job or that things will automatically be terrible (sometimes org changes end up being a good thing). At the same time though, realize that sometimes these changes mark a good time for you to move on. These moves are not always instantaneous but a reorg may be a signal to start looking. For me, I had been in my role for almost 4 years, had weathered 4 restructurings and had accomplished all I wanted to accomplish. While it did take 5 months, I was finally able to secure that promotion I was being groomed for, and I love my new job even more than the one I had before the reorg.
Remember, reorgs do not signal the end of the world and may be are a great time to take a step back; with the purpose of both figuring out new ways to be successful in an adapted work environment and to decide whether it is time to do something new.
BE AWESOME!
-MR. BIZ
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Keep more of your $$$
With the holidays in full force, as we spend hundreds (and maybe thousands!) on gifts for those we love, the topic of money invariably crosses our minds.
Transitioning from college (where we are all basically broke, depending on allowances from our parents or working our way though school) to the work world is a great step when it comes to money. We finally have some! Yet after a while (or a short time for some of us) whatever that salary is get filled up, assigned to cars or hobbies or vacations.
Money management becomes an area of interest. While I will leave the discussions on developing credit and getting out of debt to the plethora of bloggers who focus solely on the subject like Money Under 30, I will offer a few simple tips on how to keep more of the money you are earning. With modern medicine we are a whole lot more likely to live a VERY long time an planning accordingly should be done sooner rather than later.
Here are Mr. Business’ Ideas on Saving $:
- What to have for lunch- The cost of lunch during the month can really add up (especially if you live in a big city). One idea is to bring your lunch to work every once in a while. Whether you go out and take home a doggie bag or make a little extra food when you cook to have leftovers (many people say they hate cooking for one, why not cook for two- one for your dinner and one for your lunch). I am not saying to go as far as starving yourself or eating unhealthy (I remember hearing a story about a software engineer who saved money during the first dotcom boom by eating nothing but Taco Bell), but there are ways to find economical eating options (there is always cheap sandwiches at Subway, “eat fresh!”)
- More food tips- I save at least $50 per month by not ordering soda when I have lunch. Soda tastes good, yes but it is also the highest margin product at restaurants and in comparison, overpriced. Save money by staying away from the higher margin items. One more idea is to snack. If you are snacking throughout the day (you pick what kind of snack you fancy), odds are you won’t eat as big of a lunch (saving you money and helping you avoid FOOD COMA that always seems to hit me after I eat a huge burrito for lunch).
- A secret to get more money from your company- While not applicable for everyone, many jobs require employees to drive beyond the normal commute that we take each day. By law, employers must reimburse employees for any and all mileage above and beyond your regular commute, at $.55 per mile. While we have to pay for the gas these extra miles take, this $.55 per mile more than covers the gas of even the worst gas guzzlers. Most people I know leave this money on the table and never fill out the forms to get paid back. Don’t be one of these people. I generally make a extra couple hundred dollars a month on the extra mileage I have to drive.
- Write-offs!- I don’t want to offer any official financial advice (as I am NOT a professional in this area. I will leave that to your accountant and financial planner), I do know that there are numerous things related to your job that you can write-off each year to lower your tax liability and get a bigger refund (or have to pay Uncle Sam less). For many, our “education” does not end when we leave college. There are many things that fall under the realm of professional development that can be written off. If you are part of a professional organization, if you purchase any books related to your field or career development, if you attend any conferences or seminars- all expenses related to this can be deducted from your taxes. This includes all expenses. So for example, if you take a trip from LA to NYC for a short seminar but end up staying a few more days to chill with friends and relax, you can write off most of the trip expenses. I would also recommend having a side business entity (sole proprietorship or corporation, that actually makes a little bit of money doing something. You can make scrapbooks or wash windows, whatever) that you create. This will allow you to tie certain expenses you have to your business. For example, if you have a side business that people call you for, you can write-off your $100+ cell phone bill, among other things.
- Pay your most important bill first, SAVINGS- This tip makes almost ever experts list but nonetheless is really important. If you don’t set aside money for your savings first there is often a (VERY HIGH) likelihood you will find a way to spend it. My advice is to set up a monthly EFT from your checking account to your savings account with a set amount of money. You can always transfer the money back if there is an emergency, but setting this money aside will really help later. Also, take advantage of any 401k plans that your employer contributes to. For example, my company matches 80% of up to 6% of my salary in a 401k plan. Think of it this way, if I set aside this 6% I am automatically getting an 80% return on my investment on day 1!
Money is always an important topic and should not be avoided or ran from (although don’t go too far on the spectrum and let it run your life). Keep these 5 simple tips in mind. There are many FREE tools like Mint that can help you budget and keep more of your money.
This is my last blog entry for the year (we all need a little break to refresh and plan for the year ahead). I wish all of you and your families a happy and healthy holidays. Live it up on New Years and I will be back in a couple weeks ready to make sure we all have a FREAKIN’ FANTASTIC 2012.
BE AWESOME!
-MR. BIZ
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Getting your Boss to Say Yes- selling ideas internally
Sales is an important skill to master, even when you aren’t in a sales position.
In non-sales roles, the “product” you are most commonly selling when looking for support within your company is an idea. This generally takes shape from something you are passionate about or that solves an issue you see that keeps you or your organization from reaching peak performance.
It is great to have an idea, but it means almost nothing unless the idea leads to action.
The question beckons, HOW do you go about selling an idea within your company? The following 6 strategies outline the most important things to keep in mind to ensure your ideas are agreed with, but also more importantly, supported and acted on. For illustrations sake, let’s assume that you want to create an internal web tool that helps you improve your ability to manage projects.
- Who is who? Figure it out- The initial step in the process of selling an idea internally is to determine the right stakeholders that need to approve a decision. This could be a simple as getting agreement from your boss or it could be as complex has needing to get your VP and the VP from 2 or 3 other business units to sign off on it. If you miss this step, you may get lost in an ocean of red tape that could prolong or even kill your idea. But if you get an understanding of the path to take at the start, then you can streamline the process. For the internal web tool example, you would need to coordinate with not only the end users and your boss but with IT (who will develop the tool) and the internal communications team and training organization (who will help everyone become aware of the tool and teach them how to use it).
- Have Jerry Maguire’s Attitude, “Help Me, Help you“- An equally important part of selling your idea after determining who would be involved in agreeing to your idea, is to take this insight and tailor how you socialize the idea. In the project management tool example, if you need to get the product team to agree to your idea then you would talk about all the efficiencies the tool will create, but if you are talking to the IT team that would build the tool, you want to focus in on how easy the tool would be to create and how you could use existing systems to build this new one. You always want to keep a “service mindset” where you are making the goal more about how the idea helps them as opposed to being self-centered. Talk in WIIFM language- while recognition and satisfaction await you when you get agreement on your strategy, it is important to focus your internal selling on What’s In It For ME (from their point of view). Someone will care more and is more likely to support you if they can clearly see their benefit. Help facilitate this by clearly stating how they will benefit.
- Chip away at it, there are multiple steps- When putting together a plan to sell your idea, realize there are multiple steps. As any good marketer knows, a “customer” needs to encounter a message multiple times for it to sync in. Often times it is important to present each step in a different way. For example, I have been working on a strategy idea for an emerging market for my company. In my “internal sales” plan I wrote a whitepaper, formally made a pitch deck for executives and brought in industry experts to expose internal decision makers to industry trends. I even started sporadically sending out applicable articles written by industry journalists that supported my idea to key internal people.
- Be prepared to run with it- One of the coolest parts of sharing your ideas and working to get them implemented is that you can have some control over the finished product. Sometimes, though, this comes at a price, as your boss may pass an assignment right back at you when you present a good idea. Be ready (and eager) to run with the tasks necessary to get everyone to agree on your idea. It shows initiative, which will be rewarded.
- Things change- With more “cooks in the kitchen,” realize that your idea may not be accepted by everyone in its original form as you tell more people about it. With regards to the project management tool example, IT may say implementing a certain feature is not possible, so you may need to adapt. This is okay. Stick to your principles with the core part of your idea and accept changes as long as they do not conflict with the main goal your idea is seeking to accomplish.
- Rome wasn’t built in a single day, but it burned in one- Patience is a virtue, but especially for young professionals can be hard to develop. It is natural to want quick results. Some ideas will be quick and easy, but many will take time (especially if it involves multiple departments). If you are not patient you may give up on your idea too soon and if you mismanage how you sell it internally then one key person who doesn’t like it may shut it down.
Whether big or small your areas are your differentiating factor. They are what makes you unique. They are actually one of the primary reasons that you were hired into your job. Don’t be afraid to let your voice be heard. Remember that hall of fame baseball players only get a hit 3 out of every 10 at-bats. Not every one of your ideas will be brilliant, and even the brilliant ones will not all be implemented. Keep the ideas coming. Your great ideas and more importantly, your keen ability to sell these ideas to your boss and others will be one of the main driving forces behind big promotions and bigger raises.
BE AWESOME!
-MR. BIZ
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The 9 Rules of Improv That Will Help Your Career
Most of us have heard of (if not seen) improvisational acting before. While many would just consider it a theatrical art, its rules and techniques have a much broader application. It may not always be theatrical, but it is definitely an art.
The following 10 rules, when properly used, can help give your career the edge it needs to get to the next level:
- Say “Yes, And…”: This is typical the first rule of improvisation. Saying yes to something someone in your work team wants to do (even when you don’t 100% love the idea) builds trust and support. The “And” is where you can add your input and leave your mark on the project. Doing both together builds group cohesion and gets others to buy-in to your ideas later
- You can look good if your make your partner look good: In a scene, the better you make your partner look, highlighting the their skills, but better the scene will go. The same is true in business. The better a team project is, the better the whole team is going to look.
- Tell a Story: It’s a fact that everyone loves storytelling in some shape or form. It helps ideas stick and before written language was the original way to pass along lessons and history. When you are communicating an idea, tell a story, relate it to your audience and the message will stick.
- Make the Active Choice: Your career is about “doing” not “talking” or “planning.” Audiences inside and outside of work are drawn to doers. Even if you are not successful 100% of the time, taking more action will ultimately lead to more positive results than staying stagnant
- Everyone is a Supporting Actor: This is an important lesson I learned early in my career. Whenever I made things all about me and how good I could look, it left me open for office politicking and criticism but when I made it about the team and the vision we were all working toward then (almost magically) I got more support from people and the results were better. It’s about playing off of each other, not competing against each other.
- Move Forward: When you are playing off of our co-workers and making active choices together, an almost outside force takes over to bring things along. Either way, the focus should be on going to the next level. In your career you shouldn’t allow yourself to get too comfortable. If you do that too often then you will miss out on opportunity and your will get behind. Don’t just argue and create conflict (see Rule #1), this stops the scene. When disagreements at work arise (and they always will) focus on what is at the core of the conflict and make sure to move the conversation toward everyone’s common goal instead of making it personal.
- Listen: This is a simple but often forgotten rule. Improv actors needs to actively listen to their fellow actors in a scene to find ways to move it forward. The way listening can give an actor ideas for what to say next, listening in a work setting can help you uncover important trends and find support of the ideas that you have.
- Change, Change, Change: I have said that change is really a “business as usual” state in the corporate world. We all need to be comfortable and adapt with change to be successful. If our idea that everyone once loved now is put on the back burner for another area of focus, go with it (and do so following all the other roles listed).
- Know when to end the scene: This rule is more my own than one you would find as part of typical improv rule lists, but it is really key. It is important that we learn when it is time to move on to the next thing (the next project, position, company, stage in our lives). This is also one of the most difficult things to do. We must remember to be patient and not move on to the next thing too early. End at the right moment, end on a high note. There is a reason why many athletes retire after winning the Super Bowl or World Series- it marks being at the apex of the mountain, and is an indicator of when to go climb another mountain.
For those who are interested, here are a few more rules… look at them in the context of work, you can see a great deal of crossover: http://improvencyclopedia.org/references//Alger%60s_Next_10_Rules.html
Remember of art of improv in how you approach your day-to-day work and career as a whole.
Mr. Biz, OUT!
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I Got Promoted, No What?
Check out an article I wrote that was just published on the website SplashLife.com
http://www.splashlife.com/article/i-got-promoted-now-what
Splashlife is a resource and advocacy group for the rising generation of 75 million young Americans, offering focused content, membership benefits, opportunities, and tools necessary to improve their lives and the lives of others.
3 Quick (and Easy) Tips
I think we all have heard some derivation of the old saying that little things make a big difference.
In this spirit, I wanted to share a few quick things that I do that have helped me in getting promoted faster and building strong relationships both within my company and with other professionals.
- Nice to “see” you: This is a simple one, but it’s effective. When most people are networking and meet someone new they say, “nice to meet you.” While this is the automatic response for most of us, it can be really disastrous for building relationships if you had already met them but forgot. Imagine this, you are at a company networking event, talking to a colleague about how you had a great conversation with an executive at your company. And let’s say you also had presented something to the executive as well, so you are not just anyone. Now you and your colleague go up to this exec and say hello and he replies, “nice to meet you.” Oh no, he doesn’t remember you at all… granted execs talk to a lot of people every day, but at the same time he has made you look terrible in front of your colleague. That is why it is best to say nice to “see” you instead of “meet” you. Sometimes you can’t remember that you had met someone for just a second a couple years ago as you were heading out the door from an event. Don’t make anyone else feel the way the exec made you feel.
- Emailing at all hours: The nice thing about email is that there is no “business hours” limitation like there is when you have to call someone. Generally I work during the day, hang out with friends/grab dinner/go to an event in the evening and then come back late at night and work a little more (I guess the night owl that college brought out of me has stuck around). Because of this habit I have sent out many emails in the middle of the night to my bosses and colleagues. Originally this was unintentional but as time went on I saw that doing this made my co-workers and boss think that I was a harder worker than anyone else. Now here is the key: whether you are actually working or not, you should wait to send some emails out late at night. Draft the email earlier in the day, finish up the project before going home, but wait until 11pm or midnight to send it to your boss. Trust me, it impresses people and the best part is that you don’t even need to be actually “working” to send the emails out.
- Handwritten Thank You Notes: This is a BIG one. I cannot stress it enough. I would venture to say that sending out a handwritten thank you note is a lost art. With the ease of email and general distractions of our lives, common courtesy has often been thrown out the window. I used to hate how my mom would nag me over and over to write thank you notes as a grew up; to friends and relatives for birthday gifts and to teachers or other adults who had helped me with things. I despised writing them, but today I can say that there are NUMEROUS times when the extra note has helped my career. I can recall at least one of my promotions where I sent a handwritten note to the hiring manager after my interview and he mentioned it made the difference between me and another candidate. Plus a thank you note is tangible and physical, not just one of 100 emails coming into the person you’re thanking’s inbox. It does take a little more time, but it is worth it. Just find a way to get person’s mailing address (internally look at a company directory, if the person is not from your company ask for their business card). I have sent thank you notes to bosses and to mentors for teaching me good lessons, among others. I am sure that when my boss was determining who got the best raises, the thank you notes I had sent (that almost anyone would keep somewhere, because most people keep cards people send them) didn’t hurt me… and my paycheck is evidence of that.
I know these were a bit off topic, but I wanted to share. Next post I will get back to the topic from a couple posts ago: how to take ownership of how engaged and successful you are at work
