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.

Triggering a full reorganization

How often do you stir things up in your company? I was turn to this topic by a conversation I had about operational efficiency. I was thinking about how often you should look at what you are doing and look for ways to improve it. If you go by the Kaizen methodology, then you are doing this constantly... this works great for small changes but not for big ones. Full-on reorganizations can be triggered by traumatic events but the price you pay in organizational stress is great.
I recommend you are always on Kaizen mode; it is a great way to do business and life in general. But, how do you decide is the right time to do a full-on reorganization? The conditions I think could trigger a full reorganization are:

• Financial results are not there for 3 quarters or more. You are underperforming and it is not the result of a disaster, and the recovery trend is not there.
• You tried incremental enhancements and they are not having enough impact.
• Your key decision processes are convoluted or ineffective.
• Key players leave or arrive into your organization (for example, after a merger or acquisition).
• Your market conditions have changed dramatically (new and strong competitors; new business models)

These are a few of the conditions; your individual reasons may vary and add to this list. If you decide that a reorganization is in order, just be careful to fix the issues with a holistic approach.

Deciding on controversial features for products

I’ve just discovered that leaving your account logged on Facebook allows CNN.com to somehow connect to it and see who of your friends have linked to CNN stories. To say the least, I was a little surprised to see a friend’s name with a link to a CNN.COM article, since I wasn’t logged into CNN and they didn’t ask for permission to connect to my Facebook account. My first instinct was to see behind my shoulder to see if the illuminati were behind me.

I did a little experimenting, logging out of Facebook and reloading the CNN page got me blank box with the caption that friends’ links would be shown there. Logging to Facebook again reintroduced the news about my friend’s link. Somehow they were getting access to my friend lists.

From the Product Management perspective, how do you decide on this type of features? I can think of several people who will love it, and a many more that will hate it. Obviously you want your product to remain competitive and offer features that go the extra mile for your customers. At the same time, if it takes a PhD to customize your preferences that would be a turn off.

To address this type of features, the steps I would follow would be:

• Prototype the hell out of it.

• Use customer’s panels and demo it in front of large groups

• Announce it and highlight it when it is shown for the first time.

• Build a “quick kill” or “shut down” button into the feature.

• Prepare for fallout in case it goes the wrong way.

Obviously I am simplifying the situation but the approach may help your company avoid Facebook-like privacy problems.

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.

Why not a short term strategy?

If you, as management, are not clear on the strategy and do not communicate it; How can your employees deliver? I am surprised how many companies ask their employees to read management's mind, find the right intentions in there and execute to specifications. It makes no sense. Is like having a neurotic spouse with the power to fire you. You want to succeed in business? You have to be clear as to your objectives. If those are not clear, nothing will please you and your company will sink (unless you are really lucky).

It is OK to have temporary strategies. We have them for emergencies, why not for times when life is not clear (is it ever?). Why do we feel that is not OK to have shorter looking strategies? Square was in the brink of collapse with their games. They set out to build their last game (after that they were expecting to close). They put all their effort into the game but with a pessimistic feeling, they called it: Final Fantasy. They wanted to bow out with a last great hurray. Guess what? The game was a huge success. As well as FF2, 3, 4,... They are now one of the most powerful and well recognized game development companies in the world (it is now called Square-Enix) and they are working among other things in: Final Fantasy XIV.  What worked? Having a finite narrow strategy: Make their last game great!

In the middle of a M&A or bankruptcy debacle? Come up with a short term strategy and communicate it to all employees. They'll appreciate the honesty and the direction. They may very well build you a Final Fantasy.

Stopping the launch of weak products

A weak Product Management function can result in features that are not introduced in response to customer needs but in response to internal wish lists (that may be out of touch with the market), or in cost structures that are not being revised strategically to enhance profit margins (like outsourcing vs. internal development). To change a Product Management function takes making an assessment, mapping out where we are today, where we want to go be and what are the best practices in what we need.

After the initial assessment and once you understand where you are and where you want to be. Choosing the right framework will be one key to your success. There are several frameworks about what Product Management should be, for example: the PDMA model has one, author Steven Haines documents another, and author Marty Cagan shows us yet another one. All frameworks list a set of skills and functions that every organization should have. But just using any of these frameworks will not work for a company, as with everything in life, each situation is unique and your framework should be tailored to your needs. Best product management practices will come from a consultant (you are hiring one, right?), current literature and studies on the matter.

Another big factor is if your company wants to change its culture – for example, is the organization willing to let a Product Manager team define and control the product? Or are they convinced that it is a function of the Marketing department? Whatever the answer to the culture question, it will mean a lot of changes to marketing, product development, service desk, platform development, etc. If your company is not willing to change the culture, the best way is to look for a framework that will reinforce current weaknesses and strengthen what is being done today.

Use your longer term employees to fuel and drive strategy success

With low confidence in the economic recovery, a lot of companies are filling their work needs using project based employment and short term hires. For your short term operational needs, these are great sources of relatively cheap labor (I will discuss this in another post). But for strategic initiatives, you need people thinking about the long term success, not just next quarter or the end of the project. The incentives for short term work by their definition are not aligned with long term objectives. Why would temporary employees care about the welfare of the company three years down the road if their involvement ends in one month?

For strategic initiatives you need longer term employees - people who will face the consequences of their actions and decisions. They also provide cohesiveness from one project to the next, and make decisions based on the long range business goals and not only on the short term project objectives. They represent and transmit the culture of your company. They provide the history and traditions that have made you a success in the past.

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.

Thinking about strategy: too many leaders

If you find that for your company, thinking about strategy requires a monumental effort it may be because you are including every possible variable in your analysis. Sometimes this approach to strategy comes about because there isn't a dominant leader in the company but several strong-willed executives. Without a charismatic leader - a company may flounder without direction. Just like two people can't drive a car, too many executives can't drive a company.

Instead of really working cooperatively, the dominant executives will try to control the situation by introducing variables in the analysis that will lead to their desired outcomes. The result will be an ineffective strategy:

• Too broad: being the no 1 position in the whole wide world (what does this mean?)
• Conflicting objectives: being the premium brand using the cheapest components.
• Unattainable: going from pure software development to software integration without making real changes to the way things are done.

If you are not one of the strong-willed executives, there isn't an easy solution to your problem (but that is why you are reading this post). What you need is a third party that breaks the stalemate and takes over - sometimes it can be you! Sometimes you need to use somebody on the board or the CEO. You need somebody with enough authority/clout to break the stalemate and take over completely. If there isn't any single person who can do this, then you will have to play Big Brother or Survival and make alliances with enough power to take over. Make sure you control the alliance or you will have the same situation but with even more people involved.

If you are one of the strong-willed executives (BTW, thanks for reading the post) the solution is even more simple: get another job (find your own company to play with without sharing) or get the the other person another job. If you are evenly matched (the unmovable object meeting the unstoppable force kind of situation) why are you complicating your life? find another company and take over. Do avoid anything with the N1H1 virus or Facebook photos in the mix.

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.

Thinking traps

I was reading an interesting blog post by Litemind about thinking traps. A lot of them have to do with our natural bias:

• Thinking we are better than we are (overconfidence in our abilities, memory, intuition or gut)
  
• Trying to confirm decisions we already made (shopping for confirmation, protecting our status quo or sunk costs)
  
• Unquestioning our thoughts and assumptions

We can avoid some of the traps by talking to people who hold different points of view. This article reminded me why it is important to have diversity in our teams. Our teams can protect us from some of the traps. There is one trap that is not in the article and that is intrinsic to groups: the "group think" trap. This trap makes the team assume one position or opinion and none others are considered (from wikipedia: groupthink).

To avoid falling into "group think" we have to make sure that dissenting opinions are heard, that timid or softspoken team members get a change to talk, and that critical thinking is always on the table. As a team lead or member, we all share that responsibility. Remember that this trap can make a team behave like lemmings and jump off the cliff.

Going to the moon

Today we are celebrating the 40th anniversary of the US moon walk. This gives us a great opportunity to think about setting challenging goals for our companies, departments and endeavors. If we do not challenge ourselves, the status quo and everyone around us, we will find ourselves in the same spot year after year.

“We can challenge ourselves to do great things again by joining forces, cooperatively, with patience and perseverance, by setting our objectives high and helping other people to join us in the quest for expansion of our thinking, of our capabilities.” – Buzz Aldrin

Note: For those of you who don't know, Buzz Aldrin is the astronaut that piloted the lunar module of NASA’s Apollo 11 who took him and Neil Armstrong to the moon.

Too many priorities

When setting priorities people are usually overoptimistic about what they can realistically accomplish. We see individuals trying to do everything at once: lose weight, exercise, eat healthier, be a better spouse, dedicate more time to the children, fix the house, reinvigorate their careers, build a better network. The reality is that you can’t do everything at once. If everything is a priority; then, nothing is a priority.

Companies don’t fare better than individuals. The illusion is that 100 employees should be able to handle 100 priorities. But companies have to understand that the average employee probably can’t handle more than 3 priorities at a time.

The impact on a business is that employees can’t find optimal solutions to problems that satisfy all priorities: should they be focusing on client experience or on cost management? Product innovation or bug eradication? This in turn can create paralysis in an organization while the decisions makers figure out which one is the most important priority.

Another side effect is that the company makes it impossible to do something that would please everybody. If they execute something thinking of customer experience, then somebody complains about cost management. Thus the actions of employees are based not on the priority but on who they do not want to anger.

The way around this problem is simple: first figure out what the top priorities are, then execute on them. Everything else doesn’t get a pass.