5 things a junior Chief of Staff can do to have an impact

Leader (comics) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Sometimes, in a Chief of Staff role,  you question how to be that go-to person and really make an impact.   And if you aren't involved enough with your leader and your team, they won't think about you... which means you become less involved.  A vicious circle.  Here are some things I have done as a Chief of Staff  to add value to the team and stay involved. 

Read articles/listen to talks/ attend online seminars on the relevant topics of the group.  Then take action on what you learned.  The internet has so many great reference sites:  TED Talks, Wikipedia, special interest websites, Points of view, etc.  Search for relevant topics and get smart on them. This does 2 things: 1) it helps you get more knowledgeable in the topics relevant to your team's responsibility and 2) it may help your team members have fresh (external) views.  Many times experts in a company don't look outside for fresh perspectives.   Also do this for your leader and what interests her/him: read articles about leadership, management styles, etc – these can help him directly and are good ways to give him feedback on what he can work on to be more effective. 

Suggest you go to key meetings that keep you in the know.  Assuming you have access to your team's calendar, you can see the meetings that your team is attending.  Don’t be shy about asking whether it makes sense for you to attend some of these meetings and let them know the reason you believe it is important that you be there.   Worst case they say no but will appreciate your initiative.

 Spend time with team members. Make sure you spend time with team members and ask if they can use help with something.  Even better, if you see something that is not getting done, volunteer to do it.  It may not be completely in your wheelhouse, but you will learn by doing.

Talk regularly with people outside your immediate team.  Talking with people outside your team will give you new perspectives and insights into your team.  Improvements, things being done well, missed opportunities, etc... and you can take these back to the team in the form of suggestions, actions and recommendations. 

Above all, think like a leader.  If you were in your leader's shoes, what would you do?  If you were in a team members role, what would you do differently?  How can you help team members succeed with your leader?  Ask yourself what you should be doing now if you were the leader, and do it (or if it feels too risky, talk with your leader about it).  You may also find one of the team members is a good mentor to you - build that mentoring relationship to work better with your leader and your team.    

Practicing these 5 things will keep you involved and valued member of the team. 

..Brian..

My Take: Chapter 6 of Maxwell's 15 Invaluable Laws of Growth - The Law of Environment

Zen (Photo credit: Josefe aka Hipnosapo)

The summary of this chapter is really that it is impossible to grow without changing. However, it is possible change without growing.   Therefore, the focus is growth.  And to grow, we need the right environment.  Six steps are recommended for growth. 

1. Assess your current environment. There are a number of ways to do this, so figure out what works for you and do it. You may ask a set of questions like, "What ideas speak to me?", What music lifts me?", and "what dreams inspire me?".  If you are not getting what you need in your current environment then make some changes - this is not easy.
2. Change yourself and your environment. Change both for maximum growth and more successful growth. Define your growth environment.  List the key points of your environment, and mark each one with true or false for your current environment.  If you answer false to more than five of these statements,  your current environment may be hampering your growth.  My key environment points list is a variation of the authors:
• Others are ahead of me.
• I am challenged at the right times.
• My focus if forward.
• The atmosphere is affirming.
• I am often out of my comfort zone.
• I wake up excited.
• Failure is not my enemy.
• Others are growing.
• Growth is modeled and expected. 
3. Change who you spend time with. The most signficant factor in a person's environment is the people.  If you change nothing else in your life for the better, change that and you have increased your chances of success.  This is not an easy thing to do, but face the facts and clean house if needed, and things will change. 
4. Challenge yourself in your new environment. Make your goals public, pick a growth opportunity each week, etc.  A post by Bruce Kasanoff about how to help structure your week is a great start at this, and I have added to his one page, weekly activity list by putting my quarterly goals in the same document. This enables me to review my quarterly goals each week and then plan my week with my goals in mind, knowing what I have achieved previously.  By the way, I have posted my quarterly goals up on bathroom mirror as well so I see them every day. This is a huge step - much bigger than you realize until you do it. 
5. Focus on the moment. The only moment we have control over is the "now".  "Today is when everything that is going to happen from now on begins".  Do what you can do in each "now". 
6. Move forward despite criticism. "Growth always comes from taking action, and taking action almost always brings criticism." Reach for what you want, make your own decisions, and then stick with them no matter what people say.  

Finally, leaders can take responsibility for creating an environment that helps people achieve what they are striving for.  Take the features of your environment and create that environment for the people you lead.  It will be one of the most important investments you will ever make.  If you have children, create it for them.  This is my goal as a leader and a father. 

Thoughts? Comments? 

Please repost this if you think it is worth it!  

..Brian..

Social media - more personal power than ever before

Psy (Photo credit: Eva Rinaldi Celebrity and Live Music Photographer)

Diesel has a new ad campaign called #dieselreboot.  You can find it at dieselreboot.  Very creative and some would say "weird", but that is what diesel apparently wants to be.  What is really compelling about this campaign and what I want to focus on is the message that social media gives power to the individual.  This, I believe, is a new "power" that will change our world.  The essence of this change is that this is the first time in the history of the world that an individual can so quickly become "recognized" because they are giving something that people want. 

Having the ability to individually become recognized globally (whatever your definition of global is) is truly brand new for the human race. Think about the evolution of "recognition".  Before newspapers, people were recognized in their community, primarily face to face interactions that enabled us to tell our story and be "recognized".  Then newspapers came along and as the newspaper became well known and shared around the world, people were recognized... if the paper felt the information about you was "news worthy" (good or bad).  However, the newspaper people were in control of our recognition.  Then news (from newspapers) migrated to the internet via websites and the recognition happened faster and more globally, but it was still controlled by the newspaper.  Then people became more active on the internet, creating websites and then blogs, tweets, and facebook posts.  This was the turning point... when people published what they wanted to publish.  The last component required to complete this transformation was that there were enough people "listening" that the individual could have a following and be recognized.  Today, if we have the drive and the ability to give people what they want, we can become recognized, quickly and globally, and simply because enough people are listening and recognizing the value.

Some good examples of this new phenomenon range from the popularity of Psy, a Korean singer that had a number 1 hit single sung in Korean (more or less :-)) to my cousin Adele who has a following of about 75 people on Facebook and she posts almost every day about her life and travels.   Diane Nyad, the swimmer that is attempting to swim from Cuban to Key West, is another good example.  She has taken on the challenge to push herself as well as encourage others to do the same. None of these people would have the impact they have today without social media helping them get their message out, and people listening and responding.  It is truly a new (and mostly wonderful) world if you ask me.

This ability has a whole new set of challenges for us as a society, and I have not yet spent time thinking through these challenges.  I do believe this new world makes us more responsible as individuals because we can no longer blame a newspaper or a company for what we "hear" and make popular.  We listen to and promote who and what we want, so we have the power and responsibility to promote "responsibly".  Sounds like a new tag line, doesn't it? "Promote responsibly". In my opinion we should adopt this mantra because we don't have a choice - social media is here and it will change our life whether we participate actively or not.

Your thoughts?

..Brian..

Related articles

• #diesel Reboot
• TED Talk: Extreme Swimming with the World's Most Famous Jellyfish

Barnes & Noble at The Shops at Tanforan mall in San Bruno, California. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Barnes and Noble appear to be working hard on defining their future.  It seems to me they need to refocus on their retail power and become great at using technology in the store.  How about  letting people browse books, read books, talk about books in the store (the physical environment) and they provide the best network and downloading capability ever so a person can get the book in the most desirable form when they are ready to buy?  After all, it boils down to selling books, right?

What is your answer if you were Riggio?

..Brian..

Related articles

• Bookstores Not Dead Yet as Riggio Bets on Barnes & Noble - Bloomberg

My Take: Chapter 5 of Maxwell's 15 laws of Growth - The Law of Consistency

Consistência / Consistency (Photo credit: lucas_f)

Motivation gets you going - Discipline keeps you going!  This is the point of Maxwell's 5th chapter.  John says he used to think his mission was to motivate people, but discipline and consistency is what really creates the wins and makes a difference in people's lives.  And, as we all know, it is not easy.  Human beings are not naturally prone to consistency - just the opposite.  In fact, we are only complete consistent when we are dead!

The key is to work to improve ourselves, not our job, or others or our position.  Our purpose to improve ourselves will help us do what we don't like to do, but, as Maxwell says, "our dislike in doing the best thing is subordinated to the strength of our purpose". The way to do this can be assisted with some simple rules laid out in this chapter.

1. Keep it simple. A good example is in playing soccer.  You can make the amazing pass through 3 defenders to the open striker, or you can make the simple pass to your team mate who is 15 feet away and he can make the pass to the striker.  Simple is better. 
2. Be patient.   "All things are difficult before they become easy". 
3. Value the process.  A section of this chapter is entitled, "Maybe it is time to Stop setting Goals".  John suggests instead of setting goals we think about growth.  It is not totally clear to me how to tactically execute this, but the idea is that a goal actually limits us because it puts a "cap" on the activity.  Growth on the other hand does not limit us - it simply allows us to keep moving forward as far as possible. 
4. Know why you you want to improve. Keep these reasons in front of you daily.  I think distractions are the biggest reason we don't achieve what we want to achieve because there are so many things that we can do at any one time.  Again, consistency and discipline are key.  One really good suggestion in the book is what is called the Compound Effect from a writer named Darren Hardy, who writes, "The compound effect is the principle of reaping huge rewards from a series of small, smart choices.  What's most interesting about this process is that, even though the results are massive, the steps, in the moment, don't feel significant." For example, I just posted my 3 month goals on my mirror this week and it is amazing how much more focused I am in the day to day work because I see those goals when I brush my teeth in the morning and at night.  This is a good example of a small step that makes a big impact. 
5. Know when we are supposed to improve. This is somewhat strange, but the point is that we accomplish great things by doing something that gets us closer every day.  John makes the point that we don't decide our future ultimately; we decide our habits and our habits decide our future.  Habits are things we do frequently and are part of our "being". 

Another great point of this chapter is that we need to figure out how to be consistently productive. The premise is that we typically can't be inspired to work, but we work and in the process we get inspired which keeps us working.  You can read the book for details here, but the point here is that people who have accomplished a lot don't do great work everyday, but they do their work consistently, sometimes good, sometimes not so good, and they keep at it. 

Motivation gets us going, but discipline and consistency keeps us going. 

My Take: Chapter 4 of Maxwell's 15 laws of Growth - The Law of Reflection

Time for reflection! (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

After reading this chapter multiple times, the key takeaway from this chapter is that reflection is necessary to learn from our past activities.  And, as we get older there is more to learn. Basically, allow growth to catch up to us.   A quote from the book is, "If we pause to allow growth to catch up to us, it makes our lives better, because we not only better understand the significance of what we have experienced, but we can implement changes and course corrections as a result".

When we do pause there are a few steps that are suggested: Investigate, Incubate and Illuminate and then Illustrate. For example, I just went through a pretty grueling interview process that ended with a rejection. Painful, but enightening, and reflection has given me some new insights on myself as well as the actions of a company that I want to work with.

This sounds like a signficant commitment of time and energy, right? It is, and that is why people don't do it and why it puts us ahead of the game if we do.  And, it becomes even more important as we get older since there is more to learn to effectively direct our lives for the later part of our life.  Reaching our potential is a direct outcome of reflection on our life lived so far.

Financial Services Collaboration and content management

English: Infographic on how Social Media are being used, and how everything is changed by them. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I attended the Financial Services Collaboration and content management summit put on by Business Development Institute (BDI) yesterday (May 14th) in Philadelphia.  A really good mix of presenters and presentations (mostly about social media) that gave just the right level of detail (IMO).  The talks generated some good questions and for me some new insights into making social media and collaboration successful in Financial Services (and most other industries as well).

Here are my take-away and confirmations:
1. Rolling out social media takes serious planning and in the best case a clear idea of what will be achieved by doing it.
2. Having senior management buy-in is key to the success of social media deployment
3. With respect to marketing, weaving social media into the overall marketing plan typically makes the most sense
4. Social media is not a destination, it is a place you live.  So, to be effective you have integrate it into your overall work, plans and life!
5. Social media monitoring can be used for at least 3 areas of business:
    - detecting issues with your company, products, etc
    - finding leads for your company, products, etc
    - Better customer services e.g., Creating "Wow" moments for your clients where you go the extra mile
6. Be selective about who you empower with social media, E.g., Kelly Hoffman at Janney Montgomery Scott selected advisors to be part of the social media rollout program that they believed would be active and would represent the company well
7. The power of social is very effective if you think of your company as a group of individuals who have a circle of friends that trust your employees more than your brand or your marketing.

And, of course, it is always nice to be in Philly on a sunny spring day in the historic part of town. After the conference I had a great Amber Ale at the Triumph Brewing company with my friends Victoria Khazan and Todd Weidman.

Have an outstanding day!