Every thought about dating that co-work down the hall?
The following link has nothing to do with work, but...what the heck, it's funny.
Link
Sunday, August 12, 2007
Art of Executive Conversation
Ever had difficulty talking to a senior executive? The butterflies, the sweaty hands, those moments before walking into a senior executive board room? [Yes....no....senior executive, what are you talking about?]
Okay, for some people, they may not get much interaction with senior executives. But as consultants, we work directly with senior executives whether they be our own in the company or senior executives on the client team.
Working with senior executives presents a whole new challenge that I had never faced before. But with a few tips and some hard work, there is a way to defeat those fears.
There are three steps to managing conversations with senior executives.
1. Focus
2. Engage
3. Manage
1. Before beginning a conversation with a senior executive, it is important to decide what the focus of the conversation should be. Are there specific objectives you are looking for? Do you want him or her to do X or Y? Objectives need to be simple to understand and few in number. You don't want to list too many things in any one conversation. Keep it simple is the key for both you and the senior executive.
2. In the conversation, there is a need to engage the person. Engaging the person change come from many different angles. Does the person have some specific problem that you will address? Is there some common ground that can be found. The purpose of engaging the person is to build a relationship beyond just the conversation. That way, you can move forward in the future when other issues arise with the same person.
3. Managing the conversation is the most important part. Rather than seeing each conversation as independent of each other, try to tie the conversations you have with the same person together in a managed fashion. That way, the conversations turn into something more than just individual conversations and becomes a relationship. To accomplish this, think about how conversations objectivesvaries when you talk with the person. This doesn't mean you need to keep track of every single conversation, but focus on the important conversations that are preplanned. That way, each conversation is a continuation of the previous, if only in a different capacity.
Okay, for some people, they may not get much interaction with senior executives. But as consultants, we work directly with senior executives whether they be our own in the company or senior executives on the client team.
Working with senior executives presents a whole new challenge that I had never faced before. But with a few tips and some hard work, there is a way to defeat those fears.
There are three steps to managing conversations with senior executives.
1. Focus
2. Engage
3. Manage
1. Before beginning a conversation with a senior executive, it is important to decide what the focus of the conversation should be. Are there specific objectives you are looking for? Do you want him or her to do X or Y? Objectives need to be simple to understand and few in number. You don't want to list too many things in any one conversation. Keep it simple is the key for both you and the senior executive.
2. In the conversation, there is a need to engage the person. Engaging the person change come from many different angles. Does the person have some specific problem that you will address? Is there some common ground that can be found. The purpose of engaging the person is to build a relationship beyond just the conversation. That way, you can move forward in the future when other issues arise with the same person.
3. Managing the conversation is the most important part. Rather than seeing each conversation as independent of each other, try to tie the conversations you have with the same person together in a managed fashion. That way, the conversations turn into something more than just individual conversations and becomes a relationship. To accomplish this, think about how conversations objectivesvaries when you talk with the person. This doesn't mean you need to keep track of every single conversation, but focus on the important conversations that are preplanned. That way, each conversation is a continuation of the previous, if only in a different capacity.
Friday, August 03, 2007
Roadmaps of Risk Analysis
Many things happened this week, but I think the biggest was the creation of a roadmap for me to determine where I want to go. The idea came from a Harvard Business School (HBS) article about deciding how to take risks.
Many people make choices that on the surface seem without a plan. We hear stories about people jumping over their bosses to get at a project or fighting against director supervisor order. When these turn out badly, everyone in the room does the, “I told you so.” However, we rarely understand how those few success comes into play.
In the HBS article, the key point was understanding risk. Sometimes, taking calculated risks is part of the process. For an individual, that involves building a personal understanding of the type of risk associated with the action.
Now, what does all this have to do with my roadmap? I realized to get to where I want to go involved some risk taking. Just like the guy who wants to start his own business, there are risks involved.
So I devised a way to articulate my risks by first listing out the situation I’m currently in. This included both the positive and negative ask. Realizing that I was new to the company, possessing little knowledge and almost no corporate experience, you can imagine my list for negatives far outweigh the positive.
But the whole point of this exercise was to pinpoint what the negatives exactly were. I could then create a plan to mitigate or change those negatives into positives. In my case, one negative was the lack of knowledge in what area of consulting therefore limited my ability to articulate and control my career growth. I learned that simply saying I don’t like doing X doesn’t really tell people what I like to do. To mitigate this problem, I created an action plan listing several specific actions I could take to change the situation.
They included:
Networking with other individuals to get an understanding of the type of projects they do, both the positive and negative aspects
Articulate my desire to Senior Executives work on a range of projects to experience first hand what they are
Determine the type of skills necessary to move from one area into another
Having this roadmap, I realized that at the moment, if I were to attempt my choice right now, I would have a high probability of failure with no contingence plan. But if I stick to my road map, in a year, I hope to change the risk/positive/negative ratio to a level where I am comfortable in making that jump.
We’ll see how this pans out in some time.
Many people make choices that on the surface seem without a plan. We hear stories about people jumping over their bosses to get at a project or fighting against director supervisor order. When these turn out badly, everyone in the room does the, “I told you so.” However, we rarely understand how those few success comes into play.
In the HBS article, the key point was understanding risk. Sometimes, taking calculated risks is part of the process. For an individual, that involves building a personal understanding of the type of risk associated with the action.
Now, what does all this have to do with my roadmap? I realized to get to where I want to go involved some risk taking. Just like the guy who wants to start his own business, there are risks involved.
So I devised a way to articulate my risks by first listing out the situation I’m currently in. This included both the positive and negative ask. Realizing that I was new to the company, possessing little knowledge and almost no corporate experience, you can imagine my list for negatives far outweigh the positive.
But the whole point of this exercise was to pinpoint what the negatives exactly were. I could then create a plan to mitigate or change those negatives into positives. In my case, one negative was the lack of knowledge in what area of consulting therefore limited my ability to articulate and control my career growth. I learned that simply saying I don’t like doing X doesn’t really tell people what I like to do. To mitigate this problem, I created an action plan listing several specific actions I could take to change the situation.
They included:
Networking with other individuals to get an understanding of the type of projects they do, both the positive and negative aspects
Articulate my desire to Senior Executives work on a range of projects to experience first hand what they are
Determine the type of skills necessary to move from one area into another
Having this roadmap, I realized that at the moment, if I were to attempt my choice right now, I would have a high probability of failure with no contingence plan. But if I stick to my road map, in a year, I hope to change the risk/positive/negative ratio to a level where I am comfortable in making that jump.
We’ll see how this pans out in some time.
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