Stay Alive: 10 Career Tips to Win in Bad Times.

I know - things are bad out there and you're worried about your position. Firings are capricious and no one knows where the axe is going to fall next. Based on many of my current client sessions and 20+ years of management and coaching, here are 10 productive actions you can put into practice to solidify your position. 1. Don't drink the Kool-Aid. The news is sensationalized and fear sells. Things are rarely as good as they seem and things are rarely as bad as they seem. If you allow yourself to give in to the news, you will determine your destiny. When people tell me about the bad economy, I tell them “I have chosen not to participate. So let's get to work.”

2. Reach out to your contacts - NOW. Past and present contacts, colleagues and friends are the lifeblood of any career (“It’s not what you know, it’s who you know.”). The ’robustness’ and recency of your contact list is a great barometer of your career’s health.

• Call your closest contacts & colleagues and ask them how they are. Listen. Don't talk, offer help. Have lunch, drink coffee, and strengthen those contacts!
• Send birthday or ‘just for being you’ cards to keep in touch and make them feel special. No one does this and it makes the recipient feel special.

3. Focus on what you do best. You need to present a extremely positive persona to management - this is the time where they might be looking at cutting the bottom 10%.

• Be a partner to your boss - ask for more work. No one really does it and you will stand out as a “can-do” member of their team.
• Come in early or stay late (or do both!). The perception of a hard worker is a valuable one during bad times. In addition, you might be there when your boss comes back from a grueling exec meeting and needs help with the newly assigned project.
• Be smart and flexible - look at all of your activities and projects - which ones are more important and which are the ones that can be shelved, streamlined or retired?
• The 80/20 rule comes into play - make a list and then review with your boss.

4. Keep your ear to the ground. It is essential in down times to have a clear picture of where your company’s revenues and expenses come from. Companies are retrenching and focusing on the areas that will deliver the highest ROI.

• Stand back and see what projects, departments, or people are slated to be cut.
• Ask questions, read industry journals/blogs, and keep up on the business news.
• Track your company on the web - sometimes you hear something that isn’t currently communicated in your company. But take it with a grain of salt.
• Listen to what your colleagues are saying - but don’t accept it as gospel. Also, don’t add to the gossip or play “what-if” scenarios with them - it will waste time.

5. Look at your “product”. It’s IMAGE, IMAGE, IMAGE. How do you clothes look? How does your hair look? How do YOU look? Hate to say it - it’s perception people. Not only when people first meet you - it’s when they work with you day in and day out. Critically look at yourself and see what you might need to change and how you would go about it.

• Always dress one step above everyone else. No excuses. If everyone is casual, you wear country-club casual. Ensure that your clothes are made of the highest quality and are regularly pressed and clean.
• Spend the money and go to a better barber/stylist. I don’t have much to work with and I still go to one of the most expensive barbers in the area. He makes me look as good as I can.
• Do you need to tone your physique? Hit the gym - watch what you eat. It’s that simple.

6. Connect with new people. The best defense is a good offense. This may be a sports cliche, but right now, it rings true. Now is not the time to go into hiding, based on fear of the recession. It’s the time to ramp up your networking, personal public relations, and marketing to actively remind people of your presence.

• Go to associations, meetings, conventions that are associated with your profession.
• Not only will you meet a lot of engaging people, you will re-energize your batteries AND your might get a lead on a great position!
• Set up coffees and lunches with people that you don’t know, but want to know. We all have people that we admire - reach out to them - take them to lunch. They eat just like you do! And what is the benefit? They are always on the lookout for new talent!

7. Review your resume. Too many people let their resumes grow old gracefully. When they really need them, they have to scramble and cobble together a mish-mash of experience that no one really wants to read. You need to get your resume in order NOW. So some tips:

• Use a professional resume writer. They should run $200-$400, but you will get an incredible document that sells. Call me - I know the best!
• Keep it concise. Unless you have been in the business for 30 years or are a CEO - keep it to 2 pages or less. Again - people are looking for someone who can say less with more impact - your first chance is your resume.

8. Get financially fit. One of the biggest worries people have during downturns is losing their job. They crawl into a hole and hope for the best. Usually, it is financially motivated. How would you feel if you had six months worth of available funds if you suddenly lost your job? A little bit better? A little bit more confident?

• Start now. Having 3-6 months of current income stashed away in a cash account (savings, money market) will allow you to act normally during times like these.
• Worst case scenario? If you do lose your job, you have 3-6 months of full-time looking to find a new one before you begin to really deplete your savings. In addition, you probably will get some type of severance with COBRA - so stop worrying!

9. Talk with your boss. During an economic downturn everyone is skittish and hungry for information. You’re wondering how the company is doing, whether the team is vulnerable to layoffs, or if the strategy for the next few quarters has changed.  Even if the situation is tight, being upfront with your boss about your concerns creates and reinforces an environment of trust.

• Catch them at the end of the day - sit down and just converse with them. During a pause ask (in a very light interrogative tone): “So how are we doing? Is there anything we need to worry about?”. Your boss will probably open up and tell you info that normally they would not tell the team. Try it - it works.
• But if you have a boss that tends to keep information or hide things, watch their body language - if their eyes look downward or away from you when talking - they might be hiding bad news.

10. RE-vision your career. I love downturns in the economy. Why? When executives get scared, they get going and they get SMART. They begin to look at everything they do - how can they use time more effectively? If the company is losing customers, where can they find new and different customers/clients?  Take a step back and RE-vision your career - understand your key interests and strengths and investigate new opportunities in YOUR marketplace.

• Are you still a hot commodity on the market?
• If yes, great - get out there and sell YOU to potential new bidders.
• If no, you need to re-vision your career - measure your capabilities and apply them to the NEW marketplace. I know of a lot of realtors, hedge fund managers and financial planners that are doing this right now.

You need to partner with an expert and co-create your new career vision and direction.  So get going!

On The Job, But On The Lookout for Work.

With the economy in the tank, one can never have too many friends. By Laura Holson at The New York Times

So a few weeks ago, Katherine Wu, an executive at NBC Universal, packed an overnight bag with her yoga mat and drove 80 miles to Mohonk Mountain House in New Paltz, N.Y., to a retreat organized by 85 Broads, a women’s networking group. In between spa treatments and sun salutations, she and 17 fellow executives discussed career prospects in an unsettled economy.

It was not her first time at such an event. Ms. Wu, 30, found the job she has now through 85 Broads. A self-described “networking evangelist,” her profile is posted on LinkedIn and she gets five to seven calls a month from people looking for jobs. She answers every one. It makes good sense, she explained. Someday it could be her placing the call.

“I equate this to dating,” Ms. Wu said. “Networking is a basic numbers game. If you don’t get out, you won’t meet as many people.”

With companies firing workers in droves and those with jobs worried that they could be next, 2009 is shaping up to be a golden era of networking. Universities have shifted alumni outreach efforts to focus on career counseling and networking instruction, rather than social gatherings.

The Center for Networking Excellence in New York, which advises companies, says requests for corporate seminars have increased 50 percent in the last year. Informal groups are popping up everywhere, inspired by people’s hopes that any connection might lead to the next job.

Although networking has traditionally been the urgent preoccupation of the unemployed, these days many are subscribing to the axiom that it is easier to find a job if you already have one. Networking before the pink slip arrives is a measure of the anxiety seeping into nearly every corner of the work world, during a recession that has already claimed 1.5 million white-collar jobs.

“People are worried about where the next job will come from even before they lose their old one,” said Janet Hanson, a former Goldman Sachs executive who was a founder of 85 Broads in 1997. “They know that three months from now, they could be gone, too. What we are seeing and what we expect to happen even more is that people are going to become chronic networkers.”

If anyone appreciates this, it is Vincent Lauria, the 29-year-old organizer of the Silicon Valley NewTech Meetup Group, whose membership has swelled 75 percent since last fall, to 3,500. Since December, attendance at a monthly gathering that Mr. Lauria organizes at a Palo Alto, Calif., law firm has tripled. He cuts off the guest list at a generous 200 and is still forced to turn people away. “I don’t want it to turn into a convention,” he said.

But clearly he is filling a need. Conversations among guests, Mr. Lauria said, tend to focus on two things: how long will the recession last, and whom can they meet who will help them if they are laid off.

Mr. Lauria said there is an increasing wariness in Silicon Valley among engineers and developers who are concerned about their own job security and, at the same time, are being hounded by peers desperate to connect. Two weeks ago, he had lunch with a friend who asked him for a contact at Twitter.

“I e-mailed two people who are connected to people there, but they both said ‘no’ because they have been asked to make too many referrals,” Mr. Lauria said. “They didn’t want to waste the political capital on someone they didn’t think would get a job.”

In this on-all-the-time generation, ubiquity is key. Consider Sonja Kosman, a 32-year-old executive at the online video advertising firm Spotzer Media. She attends two career-related events in New York each week, she said. Some are sponsored by Columbia University, from which she graduated in 2008 with an M.B.A. Others are through professional groups like Sobel Media NY: Media Information Exchange Group.

And that does not include Ms. Kosman’s online forays. Last year she joined a group through the networking site Meetup.com. And she has profiles posted on LinkedIn and Facebook, where she currently has 460 friends.

“You don’t know where the opportunities are going to come from,” she said. “They could come from sites. You could meet someone at an event, at the grocery store. You have to be open to anything.”

Social networking sites, particularly the business-oriented LinkedIn, are aggressively taking advantage of the hunger to connect in the current economy. LinkedIn has more than 37 million members and says it is adding a new one almost every second. Requests from people using the service to find jobs are up 48 percent from a year ago, the company says. The number of members writing recommendations for friends or colleagues (which are included on users’ pages) has grown 65 percent a month since December.

But so much networking comes at a price.

“If you are a good networker, it takes a lot of time,” said Cathy Stembridge, the executive director of the alumni association for Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill. “It’s not everyone’s cup of tea.”

Recently, Northwestern shifted its focus from organizing alumni parties and social events to offering job counseling seminars instead, Ms. Stembridge said. In February and early March, it held networking events in New York City, Austin, Dallas and Minneapolis. It also offered a new, four-part Web series with classes such as “How Do I Develop Lasting Connections?”

Anxiety about economic uncertainty has forced many to adapt in ways they might not have imagined a few years ago.

Joseph Farren, a vice president for global public affairs for Waggener Edstrom Worldwide in Washington, recently joined Twitter. He also began reaching out to old high school friends through Facebook. He said he feels the pressure to network more than he used to. “People are doing things differently because they feel vulnerable,” he said.

It is not just individuals promoting the benefit of having as wide a network as possible. Large institutions do so as well, said Liz Lynch, the founder of the Center for Networking Excellence. Recently, Ms. Lynch said that she was hired by both Google and Boeing to instruct employees on how to network within their own companies. “That is as vital to keeping a job as finding a new one,” she said.

Attending a yoga retreat or reminiscing online about the senior prom is strictly beginner stuff for the most enterprising networkers. A few weeks ago, while Scott G. Cooney, a real estate developer in Missoula, Mont., was getting his monthly $14 haircut, he was approached by an engineer who wanted to switch firms. He took the man’s card but he didn’t hire him.

The most enterprising job seeker he has seen, however, was a woman who for three months last year attended local planning commission meetings, introducing herself to Mr. Cooney each time. She was working part time at a construction company but wanted full-time work. Mr. Cooney finally hired her as his outreach coordinator.

“It has gotten quite interesting,” he said.

So, too, for Robert Raciti, a senior vice president at GE Capital. Recently a colleague asked him if he could get a free ticket to a media conference for a friend, a prominent employment recruiter. Mr. Raciti happily obliged.

“I thought, ‘Why not?’ ” he said with a laugh. “He’s a job recruiter. It couldn’t hurt.”

No Time? Focus on the Important.

Busy people have two options when they decide how their workdays will go: they can choose to be reactive to urgent demands on their time, or proactive about focusing on what they decide is important. The only way to actually get things done is to mitigate the urgent to work on the important. Let's differentiate between what I call urgent and important.

Urgent tasks include things like that frantic email that needs a response RIGHT NOW; a sudden request that seems like it'll only take two minutes but often ends up taking an hour; a report you've got to write up before a meeting. More often than not "the urgent" is putting out fires, or busywork, or tasks that you'd rather do first because they're less intimidating than your current project list.

Urgent tasks are usually short-term and we're drawn to them because they keep us busy and make us feel needed. (If we're busy people, we must be important people.)

But dealing with a constant stream of urgent tasks leaves you wrung out at the end of the day, wondering where all the time went, staring at the undone actual work you've got to complete.

On the flip side, important work moves you and your business towards your goals. The important stuff doesn't give us that same shot of adrenaline that the urgent requests do. It can involve thinking out long-term goals, being honest about where you are and want to be, and just doing plain hard work that feels boring and tedious. On a personal level, important stuff may include making time to get to the gym every day. On a business level, important stuff may be devising your yearly plan, breaking it down into quarterly and monthly deliverables, and evaluating your current performance against last year's plan. (Doesn't the mere thought of going to the gym and deciding on this year's goals make you want to check your email? Still, that's the work that will help you meet your goals.)

If your workplace encourages that frantic vibe of headless-chicken running and constant urgency, it can feel impossible to focus on what's important versus what's urgent. Still, an awareness of the difference and a few simple techniques can help.

Choose three important tasks to complete each day. Write them down on a slip of paper and keep it visible on your desk. When you have a moment, instead of checking your email, look at the slip, and work on an item. Keep the list to just three, and see how many you can complete.

Turn off your email client. Shut down Outlook, turn off new email notifications on your BlackBerry, do whatever you have to do to muffle the interruption of email. When you decide to work on one of your important tasks, give yourself an hour at least of uninterrupted time to complete it. If the web is too much of a temptation, disconnect your computer from the Internet for that hour.

Set up a weekly 20-minute meeting with yourself. Put it on your calendar, and don't book over it — treat it with the same respect you'd treat a meeting with your boss. If you don't have an office door or you work in an open area that's constantly busy, book a conference room for your meeting. Go there to be alone. Bring your project list, to-do list, and calendar, and spend the time reviewing what you finished that past week, and what you want to get done the following week. This is a great time to choose your daily three important tasks. Productivity author David Allen refers to this as the "weekly review," and it's one of the most effective ways to be mindful about how you're spending your time.

by Gina Trapani at HBR.

Want to keep your job? Be happy.

Study shows that a bright disposition helps workers navigate darker times. By Becky Fleischauer

Does the recession with its rampant layoffs and cutbacks make your job look better all the time? Believe it or not, donning a pair of "recession goggles" can be good for your career and your mental health. Research shows that an attitude of gratitude in trying times can not only help you keep your job, but get you the job you want.

It's a counterintuitive concept, for sure. In today's economic maelstrom, the most common responses are panic, fear, anger, distrust, and even hostility. But a Harvard Business Review article "How to Protect Your Job in a Recession" studied the characteristics of recession survivors and found that those who avoided being cut were cheerful, likable, generous contributors, and not necessarily the most skilled and proficient.

"Just don't be the guy who's always in a bad mood, reminding colleagues how vulnerable everyone is. Who wants to be in the trenches with him?" caution authors Janet Banks and Diane Coutu.

Workplace relationship expert Courtney Anderson agrees, and observes that tolerance for bad actors – particularly those higher up the food chain – is shrinking.

"The handwriting is on the wall for them in a lot of organizations," says Ms. Anderson, founder of Courtney Anderson & Associates, a human resources firm in Austin, Texas. "When times are good, companies will tolerate a lot. But in this economy, every single decision is double- and triple-checked. It will be tough for the really poor managers to make it through,"

This could explain why the ax is falling higher up the management chain. Companies are looking to save more money, and bigger salaries yield larger savings. Today's unemployment rate for college-educated workers, 4.1 percent, is the highest it's been since the US Bureau of Labor Statistics began tracking the data in 1992. It is more than twice its prerecession level, according to the Center for Economic and Policy Research, putting the risk of being unemployed proportionately higher for college-educated workers than for less-educated ones.

When productivity is in decline, Anderson says, other factors gain more value in the decisionmaking process about who stays and who goes. "I used to go to organizations," Anderson says, "and they would describe a horrible situation: 'Felicia curses people out, she yells and is mean, but she delivers.' They would want me to figure out how to keep the person and be flexible because the person delivered. Now, with the current macroeconomic picture, they won't put up with it. There is a financial opportunity to get rid of the people who create problems."

Anderson says corporate leaders are now placing more value on workers who add positive energy to the atmosphere beyond increasing sales and visibility. She says that includes placing those who are grouchy and unpleasant on the layoff list, but also the person who never says anything, the colleague who is invisible and flies under the radar.

"All variations of not contributing and making it a positive, efficient workplace are being considered," Anderson says. If striking a cheerful pose in tough times doesn't come naturally, consider that it does require conscious effort. And even the act of trying to be happy can make a difference.

"If you stay positive, you'll have more influence on how things play out," advise Ms. Banks and Ms. Coutu. Banks is a veteran of at least a dozen corporate downsizings, and Coutu has studied resilience in many settings. They say survivors and those who leverage layoffs to their advantage focus on anticipating the needs of customers and those above and below them inside the office.

During periods of numerous layoffs, vacuums occur at all levels, leaving many opportunities to help your boss and the company get more accomplished. "Prove your value to the firm by showing your relevance to the work at hand," Banks and Coutu note, "which may have shifted since the economy softened."

The key to donning recession goggles is to make decisions you won't regret when the recession fades and more prosperous times return.

"We should affirm to ourselves each day why we are doing what we do," Anderson says. "If you are truly, truly miserable, even in a bad economy, you may be better off doing something else: taking a break, going back to school, or working part time. It's valid to ask ourselves: 'Do I enjoy this? Why am I here?' Reevaluate."

She reminds us that if you find you are in a job exclusively for the paycheck – that is, uh, OK. It is a superb reason to go to work and be satisfied in this economy.

"You can still go to work and have a good day," Anderson says. Especially pay day. "Bad times remind us all of the basics.... We shouldn't take things for granted."

How To Manage The Unmanageable.

Due to many interpersonal, generational, or behavioral elements — you will always bump into the troubled employee. How do you manage them?

Many times during my 20+ years of corporate management, I ran into certain team members who just didn't play by my rules. This is not a rare situation in business and there are three clear outcomes:

• You ultimately fire them. (bad)

• You understand how they 'operate' and then you integrate their style into your processes. (better)

• You teach them how to work within your management structure. (best)

Of course the first is the last resort, but I've had to do this on a number of occasions — usually do to the associate's disinterest of their position. In the end, it's better for the both of us.

The second outcome, being flexible, is a better outcome, but causes you to modify your management, their communication, work habits, delivery for each of your team members. That's okay when you have 1-2 direct reports, but it becomes unmanageable when you have 5-7.  Now some will disagree with me (and I encourage your comments!) - and you might manage your team this way presently - but the personalized nature of this management style will cause you to spend more hours than necessary trying to understand, manage, and navigate each personality.

So, the third — have them work within your management style is the best. Why? They ascribe to your schedule, your input/output of communication, and they align with your measures of interaction with their teams. Another side benefit is that they learn another management method that might be better than their own, developing a flexible work style that will benefit them for their entire career.

One way I got my team to report to me is to use this basic template each time we had a status meeting:

1. What did I accomplish?

2. What is planned for next week?

3. Long Term Projects (with deadline dates)

4. Concerns & Issues (with solutions)

If each team member filled this out, I could immediately see what they got accomplished, what they will be working on, what is on the horizon, and what obstacles they are running into. The only two rules — they have to keep it to one page and the bulleted items underneath each area must be short phrases - not run-on sentences. This allowed me to review quickly and make comments. Our meetings were quick, focused and powerful.

In addition, they then review their week and slowly become more delivery focused. No more run-on projects without an end date. At the end of the year, it also makes their review soooo easy - they just review a summary of their sheets.

There are three types of people in this world.

Those who make things happen.Those who watch things happen. Those who wonder what happened.

Which one will you be today?

We use the Robert Langdon/Sophie Neveu characters from Dan Brown's The DaVinci Code as examples with many of our clients. What are they like?

• Smart - top of their professions.

• Heroic - will do what has to be done.

• Action-oriented - when confronted with a problem/obstacle, they take action.

• Focused - thinks deeply about the topic at hand.

• Clever - thinks outside of the box.

• Communicative - takes charge, but not in an offensive way.

We can go on and on. Bottom line, these two characters present personas that one can use to take action, rather than retreat and let someone else take a chance. It might sound funny or ridiculous - but next time you find yourself in an uncomfortable situation, one where you are forced to step out of your comfort zone - pick a character - and focus on their strengths, make them yours, and you will initiate action immediately.

Focus on your career, not work.

highway1

Sounds a little contradictory, doesn't it? Aren't you supposed to work at work? Doesn't your career progress based on your work? Yes and No. Of course you are supposed to work at work. That's how you get things done. Unfortunately, most executives spend too much time working and not enough time on their career. What do I mean by career? Here are some examples:

• What is your 30/60/90 day plan for your career?

• Who do you know? Who do you need to know, meet and develop a relationship?

• Are the projects/initiatives you manage important/critical to your company? Which ones are?

• How is your company doing? How are your competitors doing?

• Should you stay or go to another company?

Most of the time, we get so caught up in the meetings, the emails, the reviews, and the interpersonal crises, that we lose our long-term vision. Worst-case, after 3-5 years, you are still doing the same-old-stuff, working the same old projects, with the same old people - and you are ripe for a layoff.

Your job is to look at your career through career glasses - monitor and measure where you've been, where you are, and where you're going. Regularly measure what have you accomplished, what are you doing right now, and what you're future prospects might be. Ask yourself the bulleted items above — you'll find that you will have direction, defined activities, and clear goals.

When you are on a trip (that's really what your career is - a loooong trip with regular stops), you need to always know where you are going to end up. If you don't, then it's just a ride — and you don't want to just coast through life.