Take control of your personal brand

Have you googled yourself lately? What would google say about you? That you are a great professional?, that your rock climb?, that you are a drunken frat boy/girl with antisocial behavior?  Most people pay very little attention to what is published about them on the web and most will recklessly document their good, the bad and the infamous part of their lives in Facebook, twitter, instagram, pinterest… but being so non-chalant about the information out there will not help us in our career or our personal lives. It can even affect your credit score. Dispel your illusion than your personal and professional lives are separate.

As more and more companies use some sort of social media background check, it has become increasingly important to own what your presence is on the web – you need to take control of your personal brand. These are the first five steps to take:

1)    Define your personal brand – what do you want to represent?

2)    Google yourself and figure out how far from your personal brand you are – document what you find, and your ranking in the page. Identify possible issues – somebody with the same name a rapist? A convict? A novel laurate?

3)    Visit your Facebook page as a friend – what does it show? What are your security options? Are there photos of you drinking? Doing something stupid?

4)    Take control of your name:

a.    Buy your domain name (if available) and establish a web presence for your brand.

b.    If you haven’t. Create appropriate profiles in all relevant social networks: Facebook, Linkedin, Google+, Plaxo, etc.

c.    Register in all appropriate professional associations.

5)    Update or establish your online presence

a.    Update all social networks with relevant information (remove everything that doesn’t fit your brand)

b.    Start a professional blog  - keep it updated

c.    Visit professional forums and blogs and leave opinions and tips, be sure to add value to the conversation – use your real name for all professional forums (nobody knows who dirk117 is)

After a few weeks of this, google yourself again and check if you ranking or your presence have improved… keep at it. It takes time to build the online presence that you want.

BTW, let me know what you find about yourselves.

Avoid the Startup Trap

Working in startups can be fun and engaging (when they are succeeding) or can be overwhelming and depressing (when they are failing).  As team members, we invest our lives in the companies we work for (and sometimes they even deserve it) – nowhere this is more true than in startups. Sometimes, in large companies we can coast on the inertia of the company and hide in the employee herd, as long as we don’t stand out we will be fine. But in a startup, every character flaw in our business makeup is exposed to the team, every bad decision is apparent to everyone and any cracks in your armor are plainly visible (think small town hell).  Avoid dreams of working in a startup if:

1. You hate motivating yourself – in a startup you have to drive as much as being driven. There won’t be long strategy sessions or project management meetings or detailed job descriptions. This is do or die.
2. You dislike confrontation – if you dislike having to defend your ideas or expose them to criticism (often without warning), a startup is not a place for you.
3. You hate arriving early and leaving late – very often, startups are a collection of teams of one. When there is only you to rely on, expecting to keep a 9 to 5 is unrealistic.
4. You hate having savings – startups can be easy on, easy off. That is, teammates may change faster than you can say Constantinople. In startups, company pockets may not be big enough to let you go with a nice parting bonus.
5. You hate open spaces and sharing your browsing history – a lot of startups are open floor, open desk and visible screens all the time (it is cheaper that way). So if you like to read CNN for 45 minutes after you arrive, it will get uncomfortable fast.
6. You expect a large payout – two issues here
• The days when every employee got nice stock options are gone. You may get some, but never enough (unless you are close to the founders)
• Most startups fail… enough said.

By now, you should have a very good idea of whether you can work in a startup. If it is not your cup of tea, by all means remain in corporate America (not a bad option by the way).

The mobile financial services space is exploding

A good indicator for an industry is the number of job it requires to fill. In recent years the mobile financial services space has seen tremendous growth as you can see from the increase in the number of job postings with the words mobile financial services. From indeed.com we can see an amazingly good upward trend.

mobile financial services Job Trends

Mobile Financial Services jobs

This is good news for the financially underserved as they will certainly benefit from some well thought out services. MFS companies have their work cut out for them as they are creating a new space and as usual a lot of them will choose the wrong business model. Some of the biggest concerns for these type of services are:

• Legislation - In LATAM countries like Peru are issuing a whole new set of regulations regarding emoney and the type of companies that can provide services. In others, like Argentina, this is a grey area and in others there is no regulation.
• Adoption - making services that people use is difficult. Earning the trust of the consumer, being user friendly- and fast- enough to be practical. Having the right product mix, etc. etc.
• Competitors - everybody and their uncle is getting in on the action. Although, the primary entrants are the incumbent financial industry and the MNOs legislation may open the door to new entrants (like in Peru where MNOs are by law required to open their USSD channels).
• Competing technologies - USSD, SMS, apps, email. There are plenty of technologies to choose from and not a single one is a clear winner.
• Price - this one seems like an easy one, but remember that you are competing with cash so the price of the primary competitor is zero. Pricing a P2P under these conditions is hard. At the end of the day somebody has to pay for the service (infrastructure, commissions, etc.)

In any case, this is an interesting time to be in this space and the company that gather momentum and volume (like MPesa in Kenia) can reap the benefits or dominating this market.

What to do with self-sabotaging people – Part 1

I was just in a discussion with one of my Linkedin groups as to how to handle people who are self-sabotaging. First things first, how do you spot a self-sabotaging person? Here are a few of their characteristics:

 

1. Self-sabotaging people are aware of what needs to be done, but do something else.
2. They stop learning and listening - they believe they already know what they need to know.
3. They stop asking for counsel or use the wrong advisors [we should use only wise and trusted advisors].
4. They spend their energy in menial things and events; they don’t pick their fights – they sweat the small stuff and everything is a conflict to the death.
5. They’re forever looking at the past: what mistakes they made, what [they think] people did to them, how they were wronged.
6. They are always looking at the future [but do nothing to achieve it] – they wish upon every star but never lift a finger to make things happen.
7. They make excuses for their behavior and don’t take responsibility – my parents treated me bad, my [condition] excuses my [behavior].
8. They believe the labels they apply to themselves – I am [neurotic, unlucky, ugly, fat] so I can’t change [something]
9. They always believe things are too difficult and find the negative in everything.

They not only waste their time, but yours. They come into your office and take precious energy away from people and things that really need it, they leave you exhausted and little less alive than before, they don’t leave anything behind but stress and desperation. But, what should you do with them? In my next post, I will present a good list of solid advice as to how to handle this type of person.

Don't steal their thunder

I was in a conversation with an HR person today and the topic turned to good and bad coworkers.  The conversation brought me the following memory:

"I was part of a team of four that was working on a new strategy for the company. We worked for several days putting together a document that would help launch the strategy effort  and sent it to the VP in charge of the new strategy. The VP, who didn't really help with the document, changed a few words and sent a message to the CEO and others saying that HE worked on the document ALL NIGHT and asking them for feedback. We would have never learned of this, if not for the fact that the CEO sent a reply to the whole team saying that the document was brilliant and thanking HIM for the effort"

We were speechless. He had passed our work as his own! Nobody, but me, in the team confronted the VP and he ended up taking the glory (and later, a promotion). Our associated continued for several years, and I never forgot the incident. I was very cautious as to what material I sent him, and always made sure that people who needed to know were CC'd.
My takeaways are:

1. Always make sure to let the right people know the job you are making - there is nothing wrong with proper self promotion.
2. Give credit where credit is due. People will ALWAYS remember if you steal their thunder.
3. When in this situation, confront the person. Don't shy away from establishing your role in the effort. It is not humility to let somebody steal your credit.

Has this ever happened to you? How did you manage/resolve it?

You should know your economic environment style

I am always thinking about ways to make a business more efficient and cost effective. When functions, processes and companies are not well organized I can almost see the destruction of economic wealth. Because of this, there are two economic environments that suit me rather well:

1. The downturn. Companies are looking for ways to be more efficient and reduce costs. This plays beautifully into my natural way of thinking.
2. The boom. Increasing capacity by increasing efficiency is the name of the game. Companies recognize that it takes time to put new resources into place - so the more well thought out the processes, the better they can cope with accelerated growth.

What about you? Describe the variables that make your work more interesting (for you). Think about your strengths and apply them to the current environment. This should give you some insight into why your work feels so rewarding sometimes and why in others it just feels blah.

Now, turn the thinking around. Think about your company and what different environments increase your worth to them. Make sure they know your value proposition based on the current economic environment.

Don't fail at your career strategy by choosing the now job

I have been having a lot of discussions about career strategy with people looking for jobs, and I am seeing the desperation setting in, the prevaling strategy right now is: "get anything, NOW!" If you have reached the end of the rope (no more savings, no extra income from spouse/partner/family), then by all means it has become an issue of survival and the right strategy is: "whatever it takes". But for everybody else, it is a very bad move to take that attitude. If you read beyond what this Forbes article is saying it looks like at the end of the day this recession is a career killer.

The downside to the quitters line of thinking is that you are adjusting your expectations and your search accordingly: are you looking for jobs at your level or lower? have you in your mind already taken a pay cut? are you thinking value or price for your services?

The decision of what jobs to pursue and what to take is not only relevant to this job now but to your career. If you take a 50% pay cut, do you honestly believe you will get it back next year? I can assure you that you wont. If you go two levels down, do you think your next position will resume where you were pre-recession? No, you will have to fight your way back up again - think about it as lost years.

Regardless of the recession, your value and your level of preparedness are what determines your strategy. If you have a strong war chest (or emergency fund or other income sources), you have to ride the storm. The income you aren't receiving is your opportunity cost. It will hurt in the short term but it will pay in the long term.

Pushing boundaries to grow

You don't notice, but your comfort zone is always shrinking. It behaves like an slippery slope... First, you are uncomfortable giving speeches to large groups, so you refuse. Then you are uncomfortable to talk to medium sized groups so you make up excuses to not talk or rush to finish. After a few years of this, you can't give speeches to groups bigger than eight to ten people without having nightmares the day before. This slippery slope can be public speaking, new ventures, new ways of doing business, or adopting new technologies (are you using social media?).

In the business world, we should be always push to expand our comfort zone - as in commercials every year we should be bigger and better or a new and improved formula. To make this happen just follow these simple steps:

1. Make a list of your strengths and your weaknesses
2. Have your mentor, significant other or trusted adviser review and help with the list.
3. Together, define what strengts and weaknesses you should work on
4. Set goals and exercises that you should do
5. After an appropriate time, review the results
6. Rinse and repeat

It is very important to work on your strengths as well as your weaknesses. For example, if you are a good public speaker become a great speaker. We setup aggressive goals for our portfolios, why should we be any  different with ourselves.

BTW, I am following my own advice, I will be filming three business segments for a business program tomorrow - this is something new and exciting.

Survival: Understand your position in the job market

To get a job in this job market you have to understand your position: generalist vs. specialist. If you don't, you will be climbing the stairs using your nose. If you are a specialist and your specialty is in demand, then you will not have a problem. If you are a generalist, my friend, you have to do things different because you are in trouble.

There is a common complaint from job seekers lately: that the market has such deterministic needs that if you do not comply 100% with whatever checklist the recruiter has you are out. There is such abundance of general types (or at least people willing to do anything) that the barriers to entry for any position have risen. In the past, recruiters and HR departments were willing to talk to people that didn't quite fit or didn't meet all the criteria but were bringing something extra or worthwhile to the table. They don't do that anymore, mainly because of two things: one, a lot of screening is done by software so they won't even see your resume. two, they have hundreds of applicants to any position, so why do you think they will bother with people that have to be sold (because they don't match part of the criteria), they will just pick a candidate that has 100% of the requirements.

If you are a generalist, my advice to you is: stop wasting time applying for positions where the match is not 100%. Either get the 100% qualifications (invest in certifications when it makes sense ) or skip to the next position.

Your real option is networking. But not the networking of old when you went to a dinner and met X and they referred you. You have to do new networking: blogs, talks, Twitter, Facebook, et al + old networking. Call your dad and/or mom's friends; hell, now is the time to be calling on favors. If you are smart, you will pay them back latter with interest - once you have that network (and a job) then is the time to launch your career into the stratosphere.

Dream teams

We all desire to have dream teams in our organizations. A dream team is one that is high achievement, high performance and where everybody gives their personal best. Dream teams are those that achieve excellent results consistently. Sometimes dream teams form as a result of a deadline, a company event or a special project. The camaraderie, support and understanding amongst the members create the environment necessary for high performance. The manager roles in this case are to get out of the way and keep the team focused. If you are lucky to have a dream team keep it going as long as possible.

There are some special circumstances that may prove fatal to your team:

• 11th hour stress – The team may be great but unnecessarily taxing them will only frustrate the members. If the project has some unrealistic expectations, such as impossible requirements or too short datelines, the stress may get to the team. While some stress is unavoidable, try to set reasonable deadlines, or move the emergency period up front so as to flatten the final spike as much as possible. If the project becomes a death march, the first casualty may be your dream team. Think about project management and executive expectation management.

• Company instability, like reorganizations – Even when the reorganization (use appropriate euphemism here) will not affect the team directly, it is sure to distract them. Try to contain office gossip as much as you can, and keep reaffirming them that their positions are safe (as much as it is true). If their positions are not safe, then give them as much information as possible and help them prepare. They will remember if you work them to the bone before firing them.

• Uneven recognition or compensation – If you are giving out bonuses or awards, make sure the whole team is included – not just the leader or your protégé. Identify their individual contributions to let them know that you were watching. If resentment builds in your dream team, their days are numbered.

All teams have a life cycle and eventually all teams must dissolve. Know when to let go. If the team has grown beyond their assigned task, or the members are getting bored by the assignments, or they want to grow their careers in a different direction, you let them. Help them reach their objectives. A dream team may be short lived, but the repercussions to your career and theirs may be long lived. Who doesn’t remember that team where everything just clicked?