These are my live blogged notes from the opening keynote at ATD
TechKnowledge 2016, happening this week in Las Vegas. Forgive any
typos or incoherencies.
Talking today about SUCCESS. Goal: one or two things from
today that you can bring back to your office to be more successful.
Merit no longer is the way we get ahead. What happened to merit?
Four parts to her
success formula:
1. Chess
2. Cake
3. Oprah
4. Mickey Mouse
The new world of
tech:
We’re all really busy today.
Most people are distributed – we work from home offices, we
communicate online and face to face time is less frequent
We often have to define the work we’re doing and the
projects
It’s a different world and we have to think about our
careers a little differently.
1. CHESS
Chess is about strategy. Like a game, you have to think of
the work you’re doing as a series of moves. It’s gotta be part of a bigger
plan. And what limits you is time and
energy.
Make sure you’re on the right path. Invest in something
that’s going to make sense for you. Choose the right game to play. Pick what
you focus on.
Build skills that are rare and valuable. You’ll earn more
money, have more flexibility, have more control.
Following your passion is for suckers.
As you think about your career path – think about what your
doing now that you really like. And then think about how to make those skills
rare and valuable.
It’s a craftsman mindset. Think about your rare and valuable
skills and then make a plan around it.
So Good They Can’t Ignore You by Cal…
Set aside time to be strategic. The idea of DELIBERATE
PRACTICE.
The notion of spending 10,000 hours to get really good at
something – new research shows that number may be more or less – what matters
is the quality of what you’re doing and how you spend that time. Get thoughtful
about how you spend your time.
Have a plan. Do you have a target? It’s hard to hit a target
that you can’t see. You need a plan and a direction.
Make a list of your skills that are rare and valuable
Take time for deliberate practice
2. CAKE
A wonderfully baked cake is about getting great results. In
a study at her former company, they asked people “what was the one thing that
contributed to your success?” And it was getting results.
Make sure you’re doing work that matters. Every to do list
item needs to answer a question “how does this help my company?” Can you tie
this in a concrete way to business goals?
Work on the right
things.
It’s not enough to just do your job. Fill in the gaps. You
get paid to do your job. The more you add value, the more successful you’ll
become.
A key part of doing more, is making sure that people know
about it. Your manager is your most important relationship at work. Make sure
your boss is your advocate and your mentor.
Not all bosses are good ones. But you can make your boss a
good boss.
Make sure you have regular meetings with your boss. Build
rapport.
If you’re only using one on ones to talk about work, your
missing an opp. Ask questions like “what’s the most important thing for our
team to accomplish this quarter?” or “is there a project like this that
happened in the past that went really well?”
When they coach you and answer your questions, they’re
investing in you. And it’s hard not to like someone that you’re investing in.
Manage your manager.
If you have a lot of autonomy, no one knows what you’re
doing all do. Make sure you communicate what your doing. Send regular status
updates – every week. And make them short enough to fit on a phone screen.
Get good at estimating your time and be on time with your
deliverables.
Be on time to things. Show up and be respectful.
Make the most of your time. Use it efficiently. The secret
of time management is knowing what to do when you have a spare 15 minutes.
Break your work up into 15 minute chunks so you can do something productive.
Have a system. Think about how to work smarter (time blocking, pomodora ?)
Making it work for
you:
Manage your manager – have regular meetings and ask good
questions.
Share your status and make your work known
Be on time
Work hard
3. OPRAH
Like Oprah, your success and influence is really important.
Successful people are influential.
Influence comes from power.
Power means that you have the ability to get things done, people listen
to you.
Three sources of
power to help you become more influential:
1.
Expertise
– you have knowledge about a topic and people look to you. You know a lot about
how your world works and how your company works. Build your expertise.
2.
Charisma
– people do things because they like you, because of your personality. Read the
Charisma Myth if you need more help. Some great leaders weren’t charismatic.
3.
Relationships
– an area where all of us can be better. When you have great relationships, you
get more done. Relationships are about trust. If you have no trust, you have no
relationship. Think about whether you and your boss have a good relationship.
Do they trust you? Your boss wants to know if you’re going to be a good
investment in his/her time.
So think about how you build that trust.
How do you assess performance? Hours worked is not a good
indicator. Features? Talk to the people that your people work with.
Trust in an organization is all about the relationships in
the org.
Elements of trust: Contribution, Reputation, Relationship
Architecture
Relationship
Architecture
Make two lists
1.
Who are the most influential people at your
work?
2.
Who do you spend the most time with?
If there’s not a lot of overlap in your list, then you’ve
got a lot of work to do. Your relationship architecture is all about your trust
graph. The people who are influential are only going to get more influential
over time? If they know about you and have good things to say about you, it
helps…
Relationships are like filmstrips – every interaction with
someone is like a frame in a filmstrip. Find ways to add frames to that
filmstrip. Go out for coffee, have conversations, etc.
If you want to be really influential, rebuild bridges with
people. Generate positive interactions with those people. If you’ve had an
issue with someone in the past, ask them to help you with someone. Ask them for
advice. When we help people, we can’t but help like them (see more on this from
Benjamin Franklin).
It takes six positive interactions to counteract one
negative interaction. Take the long term on rebuilding that bridge.
Where does success
come from? It’s not from your work, but from people. These relationships
and your influence is what you should work on.
And then you have more power, like Oprah.
How can you build better relationships?
Expand your relationship architecture; make influential
connections with people outside your work
4.
MICKEY
MOUSE
This one is about your attitude. Who doesn’t like Mickey?
Rate yourself on a scale from 1-10. Now think about what you
need to do to be amazing. Write a few things down.
Imagine you come back from a conference and your boss has hired
someone to replace you – someone who is way better than you. What do they do?
Do they work more hours? Do they have more knowledge? What do they have that
you don’t?
It’s less about how you work and more about the
relationships you have. It’s these soft skills.
It’s not just about what
you do, but how you do it.
Work on being better in those softer areas.
Be someone people want to work with. Inspire others and
motivate them. Be a person that people want in their meetings because you add
value.
Learn to be open to new ideas. Don’t be the person who just
tells others all the way their ideas are wrong. Help other people foster and
grow their ideas.
Bring solutions.
Don’t just complain.
Don’t commiserate and jump on other people’s pity party
bandwagon. Don’t badmouth people. When you bad talk and then act differently –
well, that just erodes trust.
Empathy with a
positive attitude. Don’t erode your own power and influence by falling to
other people’s negativity.
Try to reframe the situation – if someone is negative, ask
“why may that be?”
Think about the long term. How many people remember about
stressful situations from five years ago.
Think about every speed bump as a chance to grow.
There’s no right answer. There may be some wrong ones.
Make others feel
important. If someone talks to you, be present. Make other people’s days
better. Have a good attitude.
Be coachable. Solicit regular feedback. Not “how am I
doing?” but “I did this presentation, is there any way I could have improved
the slides?”
And if they give you feedback that you don’t like it or
don’t agree with it, take it as valid. Say thank you. Take it as a gift to
learn from.
Making it work for
you:
How are you coming to work?
Be present. Be an active member of the team.
Ask for feedback and try to be better from it.
So chess, cake, Oprah, Mickey Mouse = strategy, results,
influence, attitude – all come together to make you more successful.
Time and energy are limited. Maximize your energy. Know when
you write best (maybe not late afternoon, but morning – work to your energy
flows).
Manage your email and social media. Eliminate distractions
so you can use your time more effectively.
