A Kick in the Career: Disrupt This!

The theories of business innovation expert Clayton Christensen seem to be in my inbox a lot lately. Sometimes that happens: when an idea is destined to find you, it keeps turning up. I don’t know what that says about the emails for knock-off Cartier watches or bizarre herbal testosterone boosters that also keep turning up in my inbox, but perhaps that’s the subject of another blog.

One of Christensen’s best known theories is Disruptive Innovation. This proposes that as big companies get bigger, they tend to chase profits by going after their most sophisticated customers and charging them more. But by so doing, they leave the bottom of their market vulnerable to disruption: upstart companies can target the needs of consumers the big company has neglected.

For example, maybe someone out there could go head to head with Victoria’s Secret by offering basic lingerie that doesn’t make a woman (or her partner) feel she has to compare herself to Heidi Klum trying to walk half naked in stiletto heels on a runway.

How about on the level of job seeking? It seems like Disruptive Innovation could easily apply to making a candidate more appealing to an employer. Isn’t it just another way of saying, “What have you got that can shake up the company you want to work for?”  With a little research, you can easily discover the history of the outfit you will be meeting with.  And with a little finesse you can mention things in your interview that tap directly into what the boss may have been secretly thinking about all along. 

Interviewing with an insurance company? Identify their most sought after demographic and bring a strategy to win it.

Meeting with a marketing firm? Look into their campaign history and mention strategies they haven’t tried.

Working for a movie studio? Why not suggest they stop making junk movies for a change?

Okay, that last one was facetious, but you get the idea.  What works for an upstart company can work for an upstart new employee.  You’re supposed to let every interviewer know what personal qualities and experience you have had that make you stand apart, blah blah blah. But no one is expecting to hear how a company’s profits or market share can be increased by laser-beaming in on something they didn’t know they needed.  When the unexpected happens, light bulbs go on. When light bulbs go on, futures are made.

Practice Disruptive Innovation when you market yourself to employers. But I hasten to add that does not include making stiletto heels and revealing lingerie part of what you bring to the table.

Clayton Christensen’s website:
http://www.claytonchristensen.com/key-concepts/.

Your Inner CEO: No Doubt About It

Doubt – the feeling that things just might not work out as planned – is a negative viewpoint that, in business, can easily turn into a self-fulfilling prophecy. Doubt is a way of saying, “What’s the use?” without even knowing you’re saying it, or perhaps being afraid to say it. In fact, doubt is really a form of fear.

Since doubt is of course a mental and emotional process, the best remedies for it are also ways of thinking and feeling. For example, if you’re going into an important meeting or presentation, being prepared with a strong and well-defined sales agenda can take guesswork (and doubt) out of the picture. You feel confident, and the client naturally picks up on that. You don’t have to wonder where you’re going because you’re following a clearly defined template throughout the encounter. Within that template there’s room for freedom and creativity, but there’s no room for doubt.

Along those lines, let’s look at a few general principles to follow. For example, when preparing for an important event, ask yourself this question, what has been your most successful experience since you’ve been in business? And by the way, how often do you think about that experience? The chances are, you don’t think about it enough. For some reason recalling setbacks is a much stronger reflex than re-living success. That reflex is perfectly designed to foster doubt – but confidence is what you need.

When you have some time, write down some notes on your most memorable successes in the sales profession. Describe not only what happened, but how you felt about it while it was happening. As you do this, notice how you instantly feel better about yourself. Notice how your vague sense of self-doubt that’s often in the background starts to lift like a fog. That’s the power of focusing on times when things went right.

A second strategic technique is to model confident, successful people. This means analyzing and understanding the success techniques of people you admire. It is based on the simple fact that if one person can do something, so can another. If one person can be complete professional, so can you.

So think of someone who is really achieving what you plan to achieve. It’s especially valuable to pick a man or woman who’s noted for a sense of confidence. With whomever you choose, think about  their values, beliefs, and behaviors -- and then try adapt them to yourself. Do this mentally at first, and then the transition to real world action will happen naturally by itself.

One advantage of this technique is that you can model not only people you know but also people that you’ve read about or know of. The more information you have, the more effective this approach is likely to be.

A third strategy is one you can use just before initiating a business contact -- whether it’s a cold call, a sales meeting, or a negotiation. Here’s what to do. Take some time beforehand to mentally ask yourself some questions that will focus your mind on how you can be more confident. These pre-selected internal questions will sharpen your thoughts and positively impact your emotions. That’s because the content of your internal dialogue is the determining factor in banishing doubt and fear.

For instance, you might want to ask: “How can I feel confident in this situation?” “How would I behave if I were totally confident?” “What do I need to change in order to feel confident all the time?” There are lots of variations to these questions – but the key lies in challenging yourself to answer them with confidence and positive belief.

So now you have three strategies for transforming doubt into confidence in your career as a whole. Write descriptions of your successes. Model successful individuals. Ask and answer empowering questions. With those strategies in place, you’re ready banish any doubt from your professional life.

YOUR INNER CEO: Thought For Food

Eating and deal-making often go hand in hand. We are more ourselves when consuming food; our guards are down, our comfort level up. Even if there is tension in the air about a prospective job or some friction between the companies represented at the table, there is automatically a more convivial atmosphere around sharing a meal. I have closed some of my most important searches in restaurants. And there’s nothing like nearly choking on a fishbone to elicit warm, protective feelings from clients. My simple rule: if you can get them to give you the Heimlich, they’re yours for life.

In a recent New York Times article, a profile of the 103-year-old Harry Rosen seems to indicate that fond memories of the boost we get from our successful business interactions in restaurants can sustain us well into retirement.  Rosen ran a highly successful custom stationery business in Manhattan, winning clients like the Walt Disney Company and the Hearst Corporation while breaking bread.

Now, the centenarian-plus-three continues to dine out on his own every night, using the profits from his company. He claims that allowing himself the luxury of this routine extended his life through the release of positive endorphins. He is also fairly certain that those endorphins come from reliving the joy he felt when wooing clients in restaurants all those years ago.

A football player has fewer chances to revisit the scenes of his former glory. Yes, rushing onto an NFL field to join a game in your golden years would get you a million hits on YouTube, but it would not be worth the three dozen hits to your collarbone.

A race-car driver would hardly have access to a track, let alone be able to take the tight corners after turning 80.  Perhaps a surgeon could continue to visit operating rooms for a buzz, but I suspect he or she would get in the way when leaning over the surgery team to observe. We would hate for an unlucky patient to end up with a pair of reading glasses stitched back into his stomach by accident.

But here is a readily available outlet for us businesspeople to stay vital and joyful for the rest of our lives.  And a clarion call to all of us, as well, to start treating every breakfast, lunch, and dinner business meeting as a prime adrenaline-charged experience; to see the beauty in the art of closing over minestrone; to begin associating the thrill of a competitive edge with the easy camaraderie afforded us by breaking bread with our colleagues. And, finally, to carry the traces of that experience with us, so that when the last business lunch is expensed, and we settle into eating without conquests to make, we can remember what we loved about people and food. And the wonderful new horizons they opened up for us.

And if you absolutely can’t pack it in, well, see what kind of deals you can still make at 103 years old.  And don’t think for a minute that waiter over there doesn’t know somebody who knows somebody.

You can link to Harry Rosen’s story in the New York Times here:

 http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/29/nyregion/a-nightly-dinner-out-thats-like-therapy.html?_r=1&

Perfect Pitch: You Are The Work Beneath My Wings

Oddly enough, the closing moments of a wedding ceremony as a metaphor for good communication at the workplace. After reading a recent contribution to my always interesting "Change Management Network" listserv, I realize there is another aspect of marriage that can lend itself to a business interpretation: the vows. The listserv post explored the topic of “recruiting the employer,” a counterintuitive idea that immediately creates an image of flipping the recruitment process on its head. And since I am someone who spends his days recruiting employees, and who very much enjoys flipping things on their heads, this notion intrigued me.

Hence, the idea of putting the onus not on the prospective job holder, but on the company that is considering doing the hiring. What are they offering besides the usual competitive salary and benefits and buzzword-laden reasons why their organization provides a challenging work environment? 

Every company enters into a hopefully long-term arrangement with their new hires, and it is most certainly a kind of marriage. Therefore, a commitment ceremony is certainly in order, and since the fashion these days is for couples to write their own vows, we can imagine that the new employee will promise loyalty and hard work and innovation and team playerdom. (Hey, if you can’t invent words in a commitment ceremony, when can you invent words?)

But what of the company doing the hiring? What might their marriage vows contain?  Here is a hypothetical example.

To Our New Hire:

·        We never thought someone like you would come along.

·        A good friend.

·        A trusted confidante.

·        Excellent in all you do.

·        We will honor this excellence in many ways.

·        We promise to never frustrate you with our tendency toward bureaucracy, which can create a work environment in which all the decisions appear to be made by highly trained gibbons.

·        We promise we won’t expect you to work yourself into the grave for us, and that we won’t make you feel like a loser for wanting to take the occasional weekend with your family.

·        We will have senses of humor. We realize how important this is because working for people who do not know how to make fun of themselves is tantamount to working for soulless robots.

·        As you come to work for us, remember our core beliefs in beginning this relationship:

Work is patient, work is kind.

Work does not envy

Work does not boast

Work is not proud.

Work is not rude

Work is not self-seeking,

Work is not easily angered.

Work keeps no record of wrongs.

Work does not delight in evil.
Work rejoices with the truth.

Work always protects,
Always trusts,
Always hopes,
Always perseveres....

This is a heck of a good start, new employer. I would definitely work for you, and I suspect all my clients would, too.  So the only question remaining is, “who giveth this employee to be married to this job?” May the best man (or woman) win.

Perfect Pitch: Please, Grammar, Don't Hurt Me!

I suppose I have slipped in the grammar department from time to time. Just writing a post about the subject escalates my paranoia, as I imagine every grammar enforcer out there scanning the material for errors in usage that may seem inconsequential to me, while setting off cringe-inducing alarm bells in the minds of truly qualified experts. I mean, I could split an infinitive or misuse a gerund at the drop of a hat and not even notice it. And believe me, you do not want to end up on the wrong side of the gerund police. I’ve heard tell they will take you into a back room and cut off your dangling participle. 

So the recent Harvard Business Review blog I Won’t Hire People Who Use Poor Grammar. Here’s Why raised some intriguing issues that are worth considering. The blog, by Kyle Wiens, is not without precedent, of course. The subject is fodder for much humorous wordplay on Twitter, and there is even a best-selling book entitled I Judge You When You Use Poor Grammar. However, dumping a potential job candidate for the selfsame reason certainly takes judging to the next level. Imagine being voted off the island on Survivor just because you couldn’t tie a sheepshank knot.

Mr. Wiens' most salient point is that a candidate who takes the time to get grammar right will likely be someone who also takes the time to get the job done right. The attention to detail in the first aspect of one’s life crosses over into the second.  I certainly agree, as I do, ostensibly, with the entire thesis put forth in the HBR blog.

But let’s play Devil’s advocate for a moment. (Wait a minute, was I supposed to capitalize the word “Devil?”) We are, as a nation and world, at the middle ground now between a print culture and a visual culture. Like it or not, there are new generations coming up for whom grammar is not on the radar. Some of these young people will grow into geniuses who express themselves in ways that will fly in the face of grammatical rules. They could then go on to hire their peers, or their juniors, based on a whole new set of criteria having to do with what each party gleans about the other through a complicated series of visual and social cues that have nothing to do with the proper use of “your” versus “you’re.” 

And, take heed, sticklers: the words “selfie” “twerk” and “buzzworthy” are among the most recent additions to the Oxford English Dictionary Online. No matter what we do, culture will also be continuously defined by clever people who experiment with usage and create a lexicon that may offend the sensibilities of purists to the core. I don’t know about you, but if a truly original candidate appeared across my desk and smartly incorporated the word “selfie” into his or her resume, I might just take a second look at who I am dealing with. Even if that last sentence I wrote did end in a preposition.

As with any criterion applied to the search for the best candidate, some flexibility may be required in order to let someone’s gifts shine through. Keeping an open mind could, for example, make you more likely to consider someone who brings his mom’s chicken soup to an interview as a good will gesture. Or answers the question “where do you see yourself in five years?” with a rap song.  Or uses the natural bonding qualities of golf by challenging you to an office putting competition. 

That being said, all prospective candidates would probably do well to keep extraneous commas in check, and understand the difference between “your” and “you’re” and “their” and “they’re” and “it’s” and “it’s” before throwing their hats in the ring. A lot of people in the position to hire you have come up through rigorous training, and if they took the time to navigate the minefield of proper English usage, you would do well to at least not tweak them out with some obvious, sloppy error. Get familiar with the most common mistakes, and don’t make them.

The last thing you want is for your application to be stalled in its infancy. (Sic.)

 Mr. Wiens’ blog can be found here: http://blogs.hbr.org/2012/07/i-wont-hire-people-who-use-poo/

A Kick In The Career: Testing, testing....

A recent post in the Harvard Business Review asserts that the process of reviewing resumes and deciding whom to interview should require prospective job applicants to first take psychometric tests. Since resumes can be padded and interviews are really about first impressions, wouldn’t it be beneficial to see how sharp the tools are before they’re added to your work bench?

It seems like a sound approach, one that could easily cross over into the recruiting field. But what standard of psychometrics should we use to sniff out those employees who will prove most reliable and beneficial to our clients?

Since I cannot afford to employ a giant research firm to come up with a sampling of pertinent inquiries, I will simply rough out a few sample items from the pre-screening questionnaire I would like to see:

1. You have been told that you will have a leg-up on the competition because your uncle owns the company. Do you:

a)    Show up at the interview shirtless?

b)    Work the word “uncle” into the conversation at least eleven times?

c)     Emphasize your own merits and perhaps even publicly slander your uncle to further demonstrate your individuality?

2. You are the CEO of a multinational corporation being asked to do damage control on “Meet the Press” for the first time. Prior to your appearance, you decide to:

a)    Pick out the right tie.

b)    Employ a hacker to disable the DVR devices on every television in the world.

c)     Assure everyone that there is nothing to worry about.

3. A vendor is threatening to discontinue his business with your company, and inform your manager that it’s because of a personality conflict with you. To restore his good faith, you:

a)    Promise to publicly crush him in a series of hostile Tweets.

b)    Point out that you are blameless, and politely suggest that he look deeply into his own troubled psyche.

c)     Get down on your knees and beg to be returned to his good graces. Plus lunch.

It’s an intriguing idea to pre-test prospective candidates. With these kinds of metrics, I believe we could certainly begin to separate the wheat from the chaff.  Or, from the staff, as it were.

The Harvard Business Review post can be found here:

http://hbr.org/2013/11/when-hiring-first-test-and-then-interview/ar/1?goback=.gde_3044917_member_5803140100447547393#!

A Kick In the Career: Heads Will Roll

Headhunter:  Noun

1. A recruiter of personnel 

2. A savage who preserves the heads of enemies as  trophies

                                Source: The Free Online Dictionary

I’ve sometimes wonder how the term headhunter evolved from its violent original meaning into what I do for a living, which is mostly talking on the telephone. I think I’ve figured out how that happened. Let’s face it: if I seek you out in the hopes of hiring you away to a new position, you don’t tell your friends that you have been contacted by an executive recruiter -- you say you’ve been contacted by a headhunter.  Why? Because it sounds so much cooler! 

That’s right, the concept of being pursued by a headhunter gives one much more street cred than simply being wooed by a flimsy little ‘search consultant.’ But what does that say about prevailing attitudes not only business, but also throughout our culture?  It implies that aggressiveness is an authorized, impressive, and respected technique for engaging with a potential new hire. Who would you want working to take your life to the next level: a boring old executive recruiter or someone who, in a previous etymology, commemorated a new, ahem, acquisition by decapitating and displaying it for all to see? Just try walking by that booth at a convention.

This universally accepted perception of what I do does give me a little vicarious thrill. Yes, I know that my website has to identify me as an executive recruiter. Labeling myself as a headhunter on my business card would not look right. The term has a negative connotation for those who want to preserve the respectability and dignity of this profession. But it’s a bit of a smokescreen, isn’t it? We know that everybody likes to call us headhunters, and we know that it is actually far from demeaning. It indicates, far more than any staid little definition of what we do, that we are prepared to come at your career with both machetes blazing, doing whatever is necessary to present you as the prized trophy to your new employer, and with your head still intact on your shoulders. But we are, no doubt about it, taking you into a new environment. We aren’t doing it without losing a little blood, although we end up sweating it.

So please, come to me for all your executive recruiting needs. But tell your friends you’re working with a damn fine headhunter.

Your Inner CEO: The price is NEVER too high

                          

Every conversation takes place on two levels. Externally, there are two people talking. But there’s also an internal dialogue that silently tracks the outer one. Your internal dialogue includes what you’d like to say, what you wish you had said, what you wish you hadn’t said – plus all the emotions that accompany those categories. Regardless of whom you may be physically talking with, the internal dialogue is always between the mental and emotional aspects of yourself as your Inner CEO.

And if you’re in any sort of a marketing encounter, nothing gets the mind and heart of an Inner CEO more agitated than these five little words: “the price is too high.”

The late Jim Rohn was one of the most interesting writers on all aspects of entrepreneurship, management, sales, and related topics. He was especially insightful about one of the most frequently heard objections in any marketing encounter. I’m sure you’ve heard it many times, and I’m confident you’ve used it many times as well.

The objection can be stated in lots of different ways, both long and short, but in the fewest possible words it comes down to this: “The price is too high.”

There’s a good reason why this objection is so popular: it happens to be very effective. It strikes right at the foundation of any and all interactions between a buyer and a seller. That foundation, of course, is money. Sellers want to make as much money as they reasonably can, and buyers want to save just as much. Once the encounter has gotten past the bluffing stage, if a buyer says that the seller’s final offer is too high that would seem to be the end of it. If the seller can’t lower his price and the buyer can’t pay it, there’s nothing left to talk about.

Over the years Jim Rohn developed a personality that was persuasive and also refreshingly prickly. It wasn’t happy talk. He wasn’t aggressive, but he was straightforward and challenging. Jim Rohn’s response to the “price is too high” objection was a good example: “The price isn’t too high. You just can’t afford it.”

That’s a good comeback and I’m sure there are many situations where using it could be fun. But it’s also more of a putdown than an attempt to move a negotiation forward, and I wonder how often this has actually resulted in a deal. But at least it’s not a sorrowful admission of defeat, and it’s a good example of why Jim Rohn’s material was so popular.

Today Seth Godin covers the same territory as Jim Rohn but with a slightly less confrontational edge. In a recent posting on his blog Godin addresses the “price is too high” objection and came up with a different response – and one that I think is likely to be more productive in the real world: “The price isn’t too high. You just don’t think it’s worth it.”

What exactly does this mean? Well, suppose your phone rings late one night just after you’ve gotten into bed. A voice you don’t recognize asks you to run down to the supermarket, buy a dozen eggs, and deliver them to an address on the other side of town. You’re puzzled. Chances are you just hang up or, at most, you ask, “What’s in it for me?” If the voice says that you’ll receive a visit from the Easter Bunny, you’ll definitely hang up (I hope.) And you might turn off the ring sound on your phone.

But suppose when your phone rang it was not some unknown voice, but a man who sounded exactly like Warren Buffett. He tells you a few little-known facts about himself to verify his identity. Then he explains how, in his later years, he enjoys phoning people at random and offering them a million dollars if they’re willing to go just a little out of their way for it – by going to the supermarket, buying a dozen eggs, and delivering them to an address on the other side of town.

What would you do? At the very least, your calculation of the benefits and rewards would be more complicated than for the first call. While the Warren Buffett call is almost certainly a prank, is worth going to the supermarket on the slight chance that it’s not a prank? Does the tiny possibility of a huge payoff justify getting out of bed in the middle of the night?

One thing is for sure: if Warren Buffett himself appeared at your door with a suitcase full of money, it wouldn’t matter what time it was. You’d be heading for the supermarket.

The lesson is this: no matter how it may seem, money is almost never the real issue in business decisions. Don’t let anyone tell you that it is, and don’t tell it to yourself either. Some things really aren’t worth the price, other things are worth any price you might have to pay, and most things are spread out in the middle. The decision is yours.

Seth Godin link:

http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2014/03/what-does-its-too-expensive-mean.html

Your Inner CEO: Who says so besides you?

 Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People has sold more copies than almost any other book in the history of publishing – and deservedly so. Carnegie explains the essence of successful human interactions in terms of a few simple principles. The most important principle of all is this one: people want to talk about themselves.

There’s also an important corollary to that principle. In the business world, you have to talk about yourself – but there’s a right way and a wrong way to do it.

You have to talk about yourself because, if you don’t, the people around you will be glad to take up the slack with their own personal narratives. They’ll tell you about their triumphs and their tragedies, and how they turned their tragedies into even greater triumphs. They’ll tell you about how much money they’ve got. They’ll drop names. If they can’t think of anything new to say about themselves, they’ll repeat what they’ve already said. And if you choose to just sit there while this is going on, you have only yourself to blame.

So what’s the best response? Is there a way to assert yourself in a business conversation without simply turning yourself into another narcissist? Is there a way of blowing your own horn without actually blowing it?

In fact, there is a way. There are two ways. The easiest is to have a partner who will brag on your behalf. Someone who will declare, “My friend here would never say this about himself, but he (or she) is a genius. She (or he) is also a money-making machine. It’s a privilege just to know him (or her.) Don’t pass up this opportunity to work with us!”

Lots of successful enterprises have worked this way. There’s an outside person and an inside person. An extrovert and an introvert. Very rarely, there have been two people who were both extremely talented, but in very different ways. Steve Jobs the marketer and Steve Wozniak the programmer were a great example.

If you’re not fortunate enough to have someone who can brag on you, there’s still a way to invoke the high esteem in which others hold you. Who are the clients you’ve worked with that a new client might know about? Who are the people who would be eager to give you an over-the-moon endorsement?

As your career progresses, you should create a mental highlight reel of your most impressive clients and projects. Any given industry is a much smaller world than you might imagine. You will almost certainly have an acquaintance in common with a prospective client, or at least you will be aware of the same industry leaders. What example can use to reflect that mutual relationship?

Your basic purpose is answering to the classic (but often unspoken) question: “Who says so besides you?” Mention your work with other clients to show that you’re a player in your industry. Prove that you’re not out there all by yourself. Show that you’re in circulation. Drop some names. Unless you go totally overboard, nobody will hold it against you. Successful people want to be associated with other successful people and the best way to show that is through the successful people you’ve already worked with.

Sometimes even your setbacks can be valuable, as long as they involve impressive clients and you can laugh about the experience now. Did you ever lose a client in a memorable way? Did you ever miss a deadline and still somehow keep the account? Those stories can be as effective as your successes if you present them the right way. You’re showing how resilient you are and how much you can survive.

One caution: be very hesitant to say anything negative about people in your industry. The temptation can be great. You may imagine it will magnify yourself in a new client’s eyes. But this can burn by it sooner or later. If you need to put someone down, make it yourself. But building people up is a much better choice. Just be a good storyteller, with a good plot and great characters. No one will object to your saying how great they are, and they may even say the same thing about you.