Be Different or be dead

August 14, 2017

10 simple ways to get fired from your job

10 simple ways to get fired from your job.

Much has been written on how to have a successful career and to get and keep a job. I sometimes wonder if the guidance being offered by so many experts is resonating with people.
Volumes of advice in a world with so much communications clutter often goes unheard despite its worth.

So let’s try a contrarian approach and see if it strikes a nerve with young professionals wanting to understand how they can increase their chances of surviving in a world of upheaval, unpredictability and chaos.

The actions you can take to contribute to prematurely ending your employment are:

1. Expect more than your employer offers and make sure others know it

You are entitled to certain things from your employer and when they don’t deliver, speak up (loudly) about it.
You are the new generation of workers, and it is critical that the employment community understands that they need to deliver work differently than in the past.

2. Work your agenda rather than the organization’s

It’s about you and seeking ways to satisfy your own personal needs. They take priority over what the organization wants to accomplish.
Express how the company can support you rather than how you can play a part in helping the organization can succeed.

3. Be ‘the only child’ and do your own thing

Avoid working on teams. Look for tasks that you can do on your own and have complete control over the outcome.
Teams require consensus building and you lose your identity with the outcome.

4. Never offer to step outside your job description

Do only what is expected of your role even if you spot a task that should be done to support organizational goals.
It’s important that you establish boundaries in terms of what you will and will not go beyond.

5. Avoid spending time and engaging with your colleagues

You don’t want to make friends with people at work; it could lead to teamwork projects.
In addition, they could ask you for a personal favour requiring you to step up and step out.

6. Complain about what’s not working in the organization

And never offer to do anything about it. Keep a record of what you find that is wrong with the company’s operating procedures and policies; deal them up when you have the right senior management audience.

7. Be the same as everyone else; copy what they do

Never offer anything creative or different than every other employee. You don’t want to stand-out from the crowd; you’ll be noticed and perhaps rewarded for doing something special.

8. Duck your head

When someone asks for volunteers to work extra time. Play the ‘balance work and lifestyle’ card. Taking on extra work without being paid is verboten.
It signals that you are willing to go the extra mile and that you care about what the organization does.

9. Actively promote yourself to other organizations

And be seen doing it. You want your boss to know you are always on the lookout for better opportunities and that other organizations are headhunting you.
It gives you leverage for feeding the entitlement you feel you deserve.

10. Stay away from any of the company’s social responsibility tasks that arise

Being part of how the organization meets its community obligations will only require you to take time from your personal life.

It’s easy to lose your job if you follow to this 10-step process.

But don’t expect overnight results; it could take months for your boss to pay attention to your actions and fire you.

Cheers,
Roy
Check out my BE DiFFERENT or be dead Book Series

• Posted 8.14.17 at 05:57 am by Roy Osing
• Permalink

August 7, 2017

14 simple things leaders should look for to hire amazing people

Source: Pexels

14 simple things leaders should look for to hire amazing people.

The most critical role of a leader is to populate their organization with competencies required to execute on their business plan.

Yes, academic pedigrees are important but they don’t represent the tipping point for successful performance.

Here are 14 competencies that leaders should be looking for in people. They represent basic human character and define the difference between a mediocre organization and a remarkable one.

▪️Listening — you can’t discover what customers, employees, and colleagues want and desire if you are not a 100% listener. Find those that like to hear themselves talk.

▪️Apologizing — a successful recovery act after you have screwed a customer around (and every organization does sooner or later) begins with ’I’m sorry’. Make sure you covet people who do this naturally. Some can’t. Some don’t want to. Organizations need to be human; stepping up to your faults is the beginning.

▪️Respect for humans — creating memorable customer experiences is all about serving and taking care of people and it can’t be done if your people would rather be doing something else. If prospects don’t like humans, show them the door.

▪️High pain tolerance — greatness doesn’t come without disappointment and pain along the way. If people can’t endure the pain associated with progress no significant advancements are ever made.

▪️Desire to try — progress requires people always trying new stuff and failing along the way. That’s innovation. Look for people with a demonstrated track record of trying and learning from failure.

▪️Mellow yellow — you really do need folks that react well under extreme pressure. STOP—PAUSE—THINK—RESPOND THOUGHTFULLY. It’s virtually impossible to train people in this. Hire for it.

▪️Great memory — a good memory will go a long way to dazzling a customer. It shows you paid attention the last time you connected with the person. It shows you care enough to remember. And it’s a competitive advantage for the organization.

▪️Nano-inch seeker — progress is made by executing the game plan of the organization flawlessly, inch-by-inch-by-inch. There are few silver bullets that result in quantum leaps. Look for people who have demonstrated the capability to ‘get an inch of progress’ fast.

▪️Lifelong learning — if people aren’t always learning something new, how can they help the organization innovate move forward? They can’t. Look for evidence that prospects are constant learners and have a passion for probing the unknown.

▪️Infecting — the ability to ‘infect others’ with the virus of your strategic intent is critical in terms of executing it. Some people have the interest, passion and tenacity to get others excited about advancing the cause. This is an invaluable asset. Remarkable results are created through energy and passion, not from pondering.

▪️Making friends — deep customer relationships and loyalty are the result of trusted relationships built over time. If a prospect has a shallow friend network, ask why. It could be they don’t value relationships. Stay clear.

▪️Storytelling — stories ‘breathe life’ into a strategy. They paint pictures of what it looks like when the plan is being successfully executed in the field. You need people who can “light peoples’ eyes up” with a story about some aspect of your strategy. Talk the event. Talk the person. Talk…..

▪️Simple thinking — great performance originates with simplicity. Execution is simplicity. Elegance that can’t be implemented is worthless. Think simple. Find simple. Discover folks with the natural ability to dumb things down.

▪️Connecting with others — results are produced through processes working across the organization through a team of people working together to get the job done. This requires the ability to connect with others and build effective relationships with them.

The real important competencies to covet are basic human skills because it’s people that make organizations successful.

Cheers,
Roy
Check out my BE DiFFERENT or be dead Book Series

• Posted 8.7.17 at 05:37 am by Roy Osing
• Permalink

July 31, 2017

Why your speech really sucks and stops me from listening

Source: Unsplash

Why your speech really sucks and stops me from listening.

It’s not about what you are saying; it’s about the experience I have when your words hit me

Why don’t I listen?

1. Your message is irrelevant to me

I don’t particularly care about your topic.

People listen when your topic stimulates their emotions; when they feel your words. You might love your subject because you think it is intellectually interesting, but if it doesn’t touch me in an emotional way I tune you out.

You didn’t do your homework on what I want to hear. Your topic choice will either make or break my response.

2. You are like every other speaker who came before you

There is nothing particularly special about your ‘performance’ (and it IS a performance). There is nothing endearing; if I close my eyes you could be anyone; you are forgettable because you don’t stand-out from the ‘speaker herd’.

You look, talk and perform like every other speaker before you. You’re insipid and boring.

3. You are a ‘stiff’ on stage

Your stage presence is too formal and you exhibit no free-styling ability. You are monotonic and in your delivery. You are chained to the podium or some other device which protects you from the people in the audience.

You appear to have no energy and passion for your topic. You appear to be anxiously awaiting the end of your ordeal. I feel uncomfortable for you and wonder why you do what you appear not to enjoy.

4. Your message doesn’t ‘flow from your veins’

It doesn’t have a natural expression that exudes confidence from me. I don’t feel comfortable that you really know your material and that you are sold on it. You appear to be sharing someone else’s message as opposed to your own personal convictions.

5. You’ve obviously never been criticized for speaking too loudly

‘Volume of voice’ is a strength possessed by awesome speakers. They project themselves in the room so well they sometimes are criticized for shouting. Of course their passion and exuberance over their material are misunderstood by some as overbearing; but that can be forgiven.

Your timidity mask unfortunately dilutes your stage presence and prevents me from truly engaging with you.

Making a positive impact on me is all about establishing an emotional bond between you and I in the little time we have together

Your challenge is to deliver a superlative performance and leave me wanting more.

Cheers,
Roy
Check out my BE DiFFERENT or be dead Book Series

• Posted 7.31.17 at 05:03 am by Roy Osing
• Permalink

July 17, 2017

How to build a great business plan in 3 simple steps

Source: Pexels

Unfortunately, many organizations don’t develop a strategy to guide them into an unpredictable future; they rationalize the current planning process to be too complicated, time consuming and expensive.

And they’re right.

Numerous people gather in a room for a strategic planning session. Subject matter experts descend of the group and try to impress everyone with their detailed knowledge of the many governing factors that need consideration in the strategy building process, and many days are consumed — in my experience wasted — to get the strategy perfect.

Normally the services of a third party firm are used to both facilitate the session and provide expert content to the plan direction and efficacy. This is a clever way of avoiding having the people responsible for the strategy’s success taking ownership of the direction taken by applying their own opinions and good judgement.
The planning team is presented with material, they ask questions about various aspects of it and in the end most of the time they agree with the results of the analysis and direction proposed.

But at the end of the day, the traditional planning process takes so much time and energy, there is insufficient time left to develop how the plan will be executed in the trenches by real people. And the planning team is left with a strategy that may make sense on paper, but can’t be executed effectively because there was insufficient time devoted to implementation.

Get insanely focused on execution

Given that eventually any strategy or plan must result in action, the best planning process is predicated on the premise: keep it simple, get to the gut issues quickly and ACT.

Minimize the strategy direction setting time; maximize the implementation action planning time.

Loosen up on strategy development; tighten up on execution.

The strategy-building process I developed was necessary because although the field of experts who could help me develop a theoretically pristine direction was wide and deep, the number who actually could help in plan execution was close to zero.

The process I developed was simple, fast and time efficient. And unlike its brethren, it used the knowledge and experience of the planning team members rather than going with a third party planning expert — added benefit was the team building that went on during the process.

My process — the strategic game plan — was based on discovering the answers to 3 questions; the answers defined the strategy.

Growth — HOW BIG do you want to be?
Most planning processes end with financial results. They calculate the growth results of executing the strategic direction chosen.
My process starts with your growth intentions, and builds the strategy from HOW BIG you want to be. The reason is simple: more aggressive growth goals require a more aggressive — and risky — strategy, and more moderate growth goals need a more incremental — and less risky — strategy.

The traditional planning approach forgets that there is an extremely tight relationship between revenue growth and strategic intent; my strategic game plan doesn’t and that’s what makes my approach DiFFERENT than others.

Customers — WHO do you want to SERVE?
You have a goal to grow revenue 25% annually over the next 36 months. The next question is where are you going to get it? Where are you going to invest your scarce resources of time and money.

It boils down to selecting a group of customers who collectively have the potential to generate the revenue you have decided to go after.
To get the right answer to this question requires an intimate understanding of the various customers you serve. You can’t choose the customer group to generate the revenue you covet if you don’t understand the propensity of your various customer segments to buy from you — discover their secrets and success will follow.

Competitors — HOW will you compete and WIN?
It would be nice if you were the only provider of products and services to the customer group you’ve chosen, but that’s not likely to be the case. There is likely to be healthy aggressive competitors targeting the same customers you want to target, so the challenge you face is to determine how you will differentiate your organization from all others you will be competing with.

Why should people choose your organization when they have other choices available? What makes your team special in view of the alternatives available?
HOW will you compete is intended to explore the competencies of your organization that you can exploit to gain competitive advantage, with emphasis on how you can be positioned in the customer group you’ve chosen as the ONLY one that does what you do.

By answering these 3 questions using the expertise of those in the room you will have your strategy quickly (less than 3 days) and inexpensively (a personalized experience for your team). And it will be owned by every person who has contributed to it which means execution will follow.

Cheers,
Roy
Check out my BE DiFFERENT or be dead Book Series

• Posted 7.17.17 at 04:10 am by Roy Osing
• Permalink