Read The Mobile MBA: 112 Skills to Take You Further, Faster (Richard Stout's Library) Online
Authors: Jo Owen
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Break out sessions
are where groups of 6–12 of you will be asked for your views. These will be written up on some flip chart and then ignored. Since
you will be missed from a small group, attend enthusiastically and make some valid points that support the corporate agenda. Be loyal.
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Informal sessions.
This is where the true value of the conference lies: at coffee breaks, lunch, and other mingling times. This is your chance to network hard to reach executives and colleagues who have interesting skills and agendas. These informal networking opportunities are not the time to make your full pitch: simply set up a full, follow-up meeting for after the conference. Most people waste this time: they speak to friends and colleagues they see every day back in the office, instead of reaching out and extending their network to other people.
If you are asked to lead a session or provide a booth for the conference, you have a choice. If you have little to say, then say it professionally and loyally with the minimum of effort. If you have something to shout about, then really shout. Invest time and effort in making a splash so that everyone remembers your contribution: this is your chance to make your name. If that means busting the budget to get the booth done very professionally, or if it means getting a speech writer for your speech and an actor to coach you on delivery, then do what it takes. Senior management will remember you not by the countless hours you spent working in the shadows, but by the five minutes you were in the spotlight.
Finally, remember that free booze can be very expensive. There is always someone who does not know the meaning of the word “enough”: they make fools of themselves and find that the exit door is opened for them.
There are some industries where everyone seems to have a very low golf handicap and others where you are expected to put your liver on the line. In some industries, corporate entertaining is a mandatory part of corporate life.
Some corporate entertaining is absolutely routine: some managers never eat at home because they have a business breakfast (twice) followed by a business lunch and business dinner. These routine events have an etiquette:
• Avoid talking deals unless your partner wants to talk about them.
• Let people talk about their favorite subject: themselves. They will talk at great length.
• Show interest in your target’s stories, find common ground, flatter, and do not compete with their stories.
• Finally, open discussion about the industry as a whole. After gossip about some key players, let the conversation gently migrate to the challenges the industry faces, to the challenges your client faces and what you can do to help. Even now you do not need to do a deal. Simply take the time to understand the target’s real interests and needs, then follow up after the meal when you are ready.
Some people never get invited to corporate events; others get invited all the time. That is a problem for you. You may think you have done very well to secure tickets for a play or whatever, but your client may groan at the prospect of being invited yet again to the theater. So if you want to make a mark, you have to be different.
Your goal is to construct an event that gives attendees some bragging rights with friends, family, and colleagues. Then you can be sure that your target contact will attend. You need to do something they have not done before, and which their colleagues have not done before. This leads you to:
• Extraordinary events
• Extraordinary people
• Extraordinary places
The extraordinary events have been largely hijacked by the corporate entertaining industry and are costly. So this leads to extraordinary people and places.
The good news about extraordinary people is that there are lots of them, and most of them are for hire. It might be a top politician, or a very interesting academic or professor, explorer, artist, rock star, or journalist. If you have a conference with a headline speaker, then organize for your target to be at the same dinner/lunch table as the speaker and/or organize a personal introduction. Even the most heavily entertained executive is still star-struck. Offer them the chance of being close to a celebrity and they will suddenly take a great interest in turning up at your corporate event. This does not mean you have to go out and hire Bill Clinton and the Rolling Stones. Look through the pages of speakers’ bureaus and you will find a huge array of interesting talent available for a few thousand dollars. Match the speaker to the interests of your client.
Finally, if you do an event then do it somewhere interesting. Some restaurants have private rooms which cost no more than the standard meal. Book it and you are way ahead of people dining in the public area. For larger events, most metropolitan cities have clubs, guilds, societies, and historic buildings that can be booked for an unusual and memorable event.
You do not have to spend a fortune, but you do need to use some creativity to attract the right people. And if you want to attract a number of targets to the same event, be very particular about who you allow to come. If it is an event for CEOs, do not allow them to send their deputy: all your other CEOs will be annoyed.
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Achieving a work–life balance
142
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Managing time: effectiveness
143
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How to get up in the morning
147
Most of us go through life without fully mastering the art of managing ourselves. And the workplace is not the right place for personal navel gazing. But work is an important part of our lives, so there are some basic things we need to figure out to make the most of this slice of our lives.
At its most basic, we have to recognize that we always have choices (even if some of the choices are very uncomfortable) and that ultimately we are responsible for ourselves and our destiny. We all have our sob stories about how life, bosses, and colleagues have been unfair to us. That is victim mentality: if I have ever been a victim, then I have been a victim only of my own folly. Once we accept that we are responsible for ourselves, then we have taken the first step toward taking control of our lives and improving our lot. So this chapter is about how we can make the most of ourselves in the world of work.
How many times have you heard a work–life balance guru advocating that you work harder? The work–life balance debate has become a euphemism for finding ways to work less. This is a surprise because statistically we are the idlest generation in history: we work fewer hours for fewer weeks and fewer years than any generation before us. But it does not feel that way. And there are some big exceptions to the average: some people put in minimum hours, others work endlessly.
To find the work–life balance that works for you, you need to ask four questions:
1. Do you want to succeed?
Few people get to the top through idleness. Success in any walk of life is hard work. If you are determined to succeed, you choose a work–life balance which is more about work than about leisure.
2. Do you enjoy work?
Whisper it quietly, but work can be good. It gives meaning and structure to life. The work itself can be rewarding. If you do not enjoy work, then your challenge is not about a work–life balance. Your challenge is to find work that you do enjoy. For people who enjoy work, the work–life balance discussion is irrelevant.
3. Do you have non-work commitments which are as important as work (such as family)?
This is where the work–life balance debate becomes real: you have a real trade-off to make. Flextime, part-time working, and working from home can all help at the margins, but they are compromises that avoid the fundamental questions about whether you want to succeed and whether you enjoy work. The reality is that you cannot have it all: you have to
make choices about what you really want and then make those choices work for you. Wanting perfection and wanting it all is a recipe for discontent.
4. How much do you really work?
Keep a log for a month. How often are you caught in the rush hour at 7.45am on Sunday morning? How many meetings are you attending at 8pm? Often, the problem is less to do with formal hours and more to do with informal hours. We may leave the office, but the office never leaves us: we have no “off switch.” Technology is an electronic ball and chain which ties us in, and the nature of managerial work means that we can always do something more to reach the mirage of perfection. So work never stops in our minds.
The prime solution to the problem of informal work is to compartmentalize your life: use the off switch when you are away from the office. Turn off your mobile, your email and your worry function. See if the sky falls down when you do not answer emails overnight. In some places, using the off switch is seen as a sign of idleness and lack of commitment, in which case you need to ask the first two questions: “do I want to succeed?” and “do I enjoy work?”
Perhaps the most important thing to remember is that we always have choices, even if they are uncomfortable choices. Do not simply accept what you currently have: if you like it, make the most of it. If you do not like it, then create some options and make your choice.
Time is running out until we reach our inevitable sell-by date. We cannot make more of it and we do not have enough of it. So we need to make the most of it. There are two ways of making the most of time:
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Use time more efficiently:
fit a quart of activity into each pint of time.
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Use time more effectively:
focus on doing the right things.
To illustrate the difference, think of Charles Darwin. If you read his
Voyage of the Beagle
, you discover that he was a nineteenth century toff idling his time away as he slowly went around the world courtesy of the Royal Navy. He visited acquaintances, went hunting, and messed around. He would have driven any time efficiency expert crazy. He was so inefficient compared to the school run parent who is simultaneously driving, listening to the radio, having a phone conversation (hands-free of course), giving the kids some quality time, and having the washing done at home in the washing machine. Very efficient use of time. Except, of course, that Darwin will be remembered for slightly longer than the school run parent, because he was being very effective in the use of
his time. His idle manner belied an intense curiosity about how species evolved, and led to his revolutionary theory of evolution. What he lacked in efficiency, he made up for in focus.
Ideally, you need to use time both efficiently and effectively. Most time management courses focus on time efficiency. So let’s focus on time effectiveness instead. First, try an exercise:
• Remember 10 (or even 20) years ago: what do you remember most about that year?
• How do you want to remember this year in 20 years’ time?
Here are some of the things you will not remember this year for:
• Beating or missing budget by 7.23%
• Getting a 3.8% pay raise
• Sending 3,400 emails
• Working 2,125 hours
There are some years where I can remember nothing of note: I succeeded only in getting one year closer to death. That is a lost year. Life should be lived with the record button on and in full Technicolor, so make it memorable both inside and outside work.
life should be lived with the record button on and in full Technicolor
To make the year memorable, set some goals. Some goals may take more than a year to complete. That is good. Set the goal now and work toward it. And to test the value of the goal ask yourself how you will remember this year in 20 years’ time. If your goal is forgettable, forget it. Find a more worthwhile challenge.
Once you have set your goal, be ruthless about pruning away everything which does not help you get there. Top chess players, pianists, and performers are notorious for their complete dedication and focus to mastering their craft. As you focus on a goal, you will find that a large part of your daily and managerial life is noise. Cut the noise out and you will create huge amounts of time to focus on the few things that will really make a difference to you.
You have two powerful tools for making sure you focus on the right goals at work:
• Negotiate the right goals at the start of the year.
• Delegate everything you can.
If you cannot delegate well and you work toward worthless goals, no amount of time management training will help you.
Try this exercise. Get a large jar. Put some decent sized stones in it, until the jar is full. Full? There is still plenty of space to put some small stones in until the jar is really full. Full? There is still plenty of space between the small stones. Fill the gaps by pouring some sand into the jar until it is full. Full? Not yet. You can still pour some water into the jar until it really is full.
The jar is your working day. You can get a larger jar (work longer) but ideally you get all your tasks done inside the normal day. The stones, sand, and water are your tasks.
• First, focus on the big tasks. These may take months to complete. Some tasks are so big that they are like stones which will not fit into your jar. So break them down into small, bite-sized chunks. If all you can do today is to have a conversation with one key executive about that task, then make sure you have that conversation.
• Second, focus on the middling tasks, the pebbles in the jar. Find some solid chunks of time in the day when you can make real progress on these tasks and then move on.
• Finally, deal with the noise of day-to-day management (the sand and water). Fortunately, lines and commutes were invented especially for this: deal with emails, routine phone calls, and administration in all the small, dead gaps that you have in any working day. Put dead time to good use.