Sean Johnson :: Intentionally - Live on Purpose » Business

Entitlement and the rule of economic well-being

Sean Johnson — Fri, 21 May 2010 02:38:07 +0000

When I was in high school, my step-dad bought into a startup and became the CEO. The company had an amazing opportunity to bring enterprise software to a mid-market that had been eager to implement it for years. As the sole provider in the Rocky Mountain region, they had a wide open market.

For a variety of reasons, the opportunity turned out to be less lucrative than anyone had anticipated. Eventually the company’s entree into the mid-market was abandoned and the company was shut down.

The thing I remember most about this wasn’t the company itself. It was how he responded to its collapse. He didn’t get upset. He didn’t beat himself up about it. The day after he shut the doors he picked up the phone and started getting his old consulting clients back.

His response was to move forward.

The rule of economic well-being

When I asked him about it a few years later, he told me about a rule of thumb that he’s operated by for most of his professional career that helped him recognize the situation for what it was, and helped him move forward with relative ease.

He told me that no one is responsible for his economic well being except for him. And that the key to maintaining your economic well being is to constantly provide immense value.

It might sound simple, and the connection might not be obvious. But understanding this idea can have profound implications in how you view the world.

Understanding this rule is why he didn’t get upset when the company folded – there wasn’t enough value to potential customers, or the value wasn’t communicated effectively. It was a learning opportunity.

It’s why he didn’t lash out at the larger organization they were partnering with. They didn’t “owe” him anything – it wasn’t their job to take care of him.

It’s why he was able to jump right back into consulting so easily. He recognized that his value isn’t a function of a particular company or opportunity – it’s something he has available to him at all times. He can bring people immense value regardless of the situation.

Putting the lesson into practice

Three months ago, the startup I was working for took a dramatic step in a different direction. Matt, my business partner for many years, and I were both let go. It was a sudden change of events, one that coincided with my wife deciding to work part-time, us starting to put our son in daycare, and the decision to buy our condo. When it rains…

When it happened, the temptation was to throw a pity party. A part of me wanted to get the emotional high that can come from feeling you were wronged, the sick pleasure one can get from worrying about something even though there’s nothing you can do about it.

But then I remembered what my step-dad taught me.

Rather than hold a grudge or feel sorry for myself, I decided that what we had worked on, however clever or promising it might have been, simply didn’t create enough value in the minds of the people who mattered. If it had, we’d still be there and the product would be taking off.

Sure, having more time might have helped the situation, but we didn’t have more time. That’s not wrong, that was just the reality of the situation.

So Matt and I decided to put our energies into finding consulting work, while we figured out what to do next. We turned our outsourcing company into a product development shop and started doing what we did at Brill Street for others. Rather than stay indoors with the lights off staring at our computers while eating Cheetos and feeling sorry for ourselves, we hit the streets and started selling.

A couple of opportunities fell into our laps right away thanks to the help of our friends (and I’d like to think a little bit of providence.) We gathered some momentum, picked up some additional business, brought on some new guys. In the last three months, we’ve picked up more business than we were projecting for the year.

It’s been a crazy 90 days. Who knows if we’ll do the consulting thing in the long term – it certainly brings with it its fair share of stress. But for now we’re working hard, having fun, learning a ton and meeting a bunch of great people.

And none of it would have happened if I didn’t remind myself about my step-dad’s rule of economic well being.

Rejecting Entitlement

It’s a lesson that I think we should all keep in mind.

There is a large portion of the population that operates as though they are owed something. Because they got a degree, they deserve a job. Because they logged the hours, they deserve a raise. Because they didn’t screw up, they deserve a promotion.

Your company isn’t obligated to take care of you. They have an obligation to their shareholders and to maximize value. If you provide immense value, they’ll bend over backwards to keep you.

You don’t have to sit and hold a grudge because you got passed over for a raise. You don’t have to do less than your best work because you and your boss don’t get along.

You don’t have to blame the company if they let you go. Instead, you can step back and use it as an opportunity to learn. In what ways were you not providing immense value? What could you have done differently to make yourself indispensable? What lessons can you take with you to your next opportunity?

Most importantly, you can keep moving forward. The world is so full of opportunities if you’re willing to look for them. All you have to do is remind yourself that at the end of the day, no one owes you anything. And then go create value.

Microvation and the radical transformation of your job

Sean Johnson — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 05:49:56 +0000

One of the more common complaints about one’s job is the inability to “get your ideas heard.” At every company I’ve been a part of, there was a large faction of people who lament over drinks about how they have good ideas, and the only thing keeping them from making those ideas a reality is their lack of power or clout in their company.

And they’re probably right, although not for the reasons they think.

The reasons they think their ideas aren’t heard have everything to do with the company. Their boss is trying to keep them down. The head of the company is too disconnected from the day-to-day to see a good idea for what it is. And everyone else is too lazy to implement it.

But in reality I think the problem is threefold, and all of it rests on the shoulders of the budding innovator.

Pooping your idea

The typical way in which these folks share their ideas is through what I call “pooping your idea” out there. Pooping your idea basically involves opening up Outlook, cc’ing a minimum of 10 people, outlining the basics of your idea, pressing send, and then patting yourself on the back, waiting expectantly for your boss or colleagues to tell you how brilliant you are. What usually ends up happening instead?

Nothing. The idea gets ignored, and ends up forgotten. The person who pooped the idea in the first place adopts an outlook that “no one listens to me” and decides to be an emotional drain on the company. If they aren’t going to listen to me, why should I work hard for them?

The two problems with most people’s approach to sharing ideas

They Bite off bigger ideas than the organization is ready for them to take on.
It’s not that the company isn’t interested in changing for the better, or doesn’t value innovation. In all likelihood, the company got to where it is because it learned at some point to do something better than most other companies. Rather, it’s that they don’t think that the employee is the person who can get it done. They’re trying to tackle problems that are out of their pay grade.
They don’t do a thorough analysis of the problem. Instead, they take 10 minutes to write out their thoughts and send – no review, no evidence to back it up, no consensus of opinion, no massaging the argument and proposed solution until it’s just right. They seriously expect everyone else to figure that part out.
They have no clue how to handle the internal politics involved in making something happen. The reality is that until you’ve earned a reputation as someone who can make things happen, very few people will listen to you. And even then, no one is going to take a memo you write and turn it into the reality you desperately want to see on their own. They’re busy – they have their own projects and problems they’re dealing with.

In short, since no one cares as much about your idea as you do, since you haven’t thought it out that well, and since no one trusts you to make it happen, your brilliant idea is immediately discarded.

The good news is that there’s a solution. And it’s easy to do. It costs nothing but your time. And it addresses all three problems above.

Microvation

Microvation is the principle of innovating on a smaller scale. While very few people in an organization have the power to make the kinds of decisions that can make or break a company, everyone can microvate in their respective areas of responsibility, no matter how small.

What does a microvation look like? Microvation is looking at a way to improve an expense report. It’s adding a “10% discount if you pay in 10 days” coupon to invoices. It’s building an extra 1-2% margin into a proposal and sending that amount back in the form of a check with a note about how you got the work done under budget. It’s setting up Salesforce or SugarCRM to handle client records. It’s creating a Basecamp account and training your colleagues on how to use it. It’s sending out a monthly email newsletter about your department’s progress on critical projects. It’s organizing a lunch and learn series, bringing in smart people in the industry to talk. It’s sending a Valentine’s Day or Thanksgiving card to your clients instead of the usual Christmas card.

By approaching your job through the lens of microvation, everything becomes an opportunity to practice the art of innovation (and more importantly, the art of execution.) By getting really good at small things, you earn the right to talk about larger things over time. It replaces cynicism about your job with excitement. Instead of pooping ideas, you take initiative. And instead of lamenting on what could have been, you get increasing responsibility as word spreads that you’re the person improves things and gets things done.

I would argue that by microvating, starting with the most insignificant project and working your way up, you can transform your job in a year. It was the exact process I followed when I moved to New York, in which I went from Account Manager to Director of User Experience to Creative Director in 12 months. It requires a lot of work, humility and patience. But the payoff in job satisfaction and professional growth is astounding.

A twelve month microvation plan

Months 1-2: Start with yourself. You want to start as small as possible, and the smallest organizational unit you can impact is yourself. So start thinking about how you can improve your efficiency. Think about improvements you can make to your own processes. Think about how to improve the look and feel of your desk. Think about ways you can become more organized at the office.

During this period, focus most of your effort on the process of microvating. Focus on your analytical skills – have you defined the problem thoroughly, have you developed a mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive list of potential sources of the problem? Have you brainstormed (for longer than you usually would) potential solutions? Have you analyzed thoroughly your strongest candidates? Have you received any second opinions?

Also focus on execution. A great idea poorly executed is worthless. Learn how to define what success looks like, how to break the project into discrete action steps, and learn how to avoid procrastinating and get to work making things happen. At the end of two months, you’ll have made yourself considerably more effective and have developed the skills you’ll need later.
Months 3-9: Think about your department as your own small business. Once you get good at making things happen for yourself, you can turn your attention to your department. Again, focus on the smallest possible impact and work your way up.

One effective way to spend this time is to think about your department like a small business, or professional service firm. Think about what its “product” is. Think about the way it markets and communicates that product to its “customer” (internal team members, actual customers, etc.) Think about how well it manages expenses and profitability. Think about the systems that are in place. Spend a day just brainstorming in each of these areas. You’re bound to come up with dozens of ideas that can have an impact on the company.

Prioritize by the easiest to tackle first – you want to get some easy wins to build momentum. This means things that can be tackled with no money, limited time, and without anyone else’s assistance. Once you’ve knocked these off the list, you can start to address microvations that require small amounts of company investment or time, increasing slowly as you get better and start to build your reputation.

During this phase, it’s important to focus on how you communicate and manage the politics of the organization. Learn how to build consensus, recruiting people to your cause one at a time. Learn how to organize work and manage others. Learn how to set expectations with people who hold you accountable, and develop a reputation for beating those expectations regularly.
Months 10-12: Step up to the plate With six months of projects under your belt, your boss is probably loving you at this point. Now is the time to attempt something a little larger. Again, you want to focus on something that is as small as possible, but is larger than just the confines of your department.

Your boss is your most important ally in this, and it’s critical that you use all the skills you’ve learned in the preceding 9 months. You need to have an airtight analysis of the problem, the proposed solution, its benefits and drawbacks, etc. You need to have a concrete action plan in place. You need to arm your boss with what they need to go to bat for you effectively. And again, you need to build consensus one person at a time. Under no circumstances should you go into a meeting and try to sell a dozen people on an idea – it won’t happen. If you win them over individually, addressing their unique concerns and hitting the points they resonate with most, the likelihood you’ll get the chance to implement your idea will go up considerably.

And when you get the green light? Go after it. Do whatever it takes to make it happen, ahead of schedule, under budget, and with your own special flourish.

And then do it again. And again. And again.

A year to a changed professional life

The plan above might take more than 12 months. Not all of your projects will be successful. You might have superiors that genuinely don’t care, or do think you’re a threat. And you’ll probably get dirty looks from at least one peer who thinks you’re making them look bad.

But if you spend a year doing what I’ve outlined above, your career will take a drastic turn for the better. You’ll earn the right to talk about big ideas. You’ll have the respect and admiration of your boss and most of your colleagues. And you’ll have acquired a skillset that will make you invaluable to any organization lucky enough to have you.

The one-step servant leadership test

Sean Johnson — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 05:35:16 +0000

The servant leader is a unique and rare animal. Anyone who’s been blessed to work with a boss who demonstrates servant leadership knows what a dramatic impact it can have on employee morale and company performance.

Unfortunately, they’re hard to come by, partially because the traits that mark servant leadership are rarely what people identify as prototypical leadership characteristics. Young people aren’t taught about what it even means to be a servant in leadership or why it would be beneficial.

And, if we’re honest, the patterns of behavior that mark a servant leader are hard to do. It’s easy to act like one when you’re conscious of it, but when the pressure is on who you are naturally tends to come out. To practice servant leadership on a consistent basis requires a level of character, self-confidence and discipline that many of us simply haven’t developed.

What does a servant leader actually look like?

Servant leaders accept the role of leadership humbly – they approach it as something they’re called to do vs. something they have a right to do.
They spend considerable time focusing on building up their team, motivating them, coaching them, giving them the freedom to experiment and fail and grow and get better.
They will get their hands dirty when necessary – because they don’t approach their role as one of power or superiority, they are more than happy to pitch in and do whatever it takes to get the job done.
Their priorities tend follow this pattern: 1) Family, 2) Employees, 3) Customers, 4) Profits, 5) Self. (I would argue that for many leaders, the pattern they follow is exactly the opposite.)

How to tell if you’re a servant leader

Human beings are fantastic at self-deception, at convincing ourselves that we have more virtues and fewer flaws than are really there. And I bet if you asked 100 leaders, the majority of them would say they demonstrate the above traits on a regular basis. But is it true?

The best way I’ve heard to tell if you are genuinely a servant leader is to ask yourself the following question:

If someone came along who was legitimately better equipped to lead your organization than you were, and if you had the opportunity to bring that person into the fold, would you voluntarily share responsibility with them or step down and take on another role in the organization?

Just as the best way to test your attachment to money is to give it away, the best way to see if you approach leadership as a calling and not a right is to ask yourself if you’re willing to give it up.

For many leaders, if they’re honest, the answer to this question would be no. It certainly was for me when I first heard it, and I still grapple with it today.

What about you? If you knew that someone could take your organization to the next level if you were willing to get out of the way, would you do it? After making it to the leadership summit, would you have the humility to return to a role of followership if it were the right thing for the organization and the team?

Leaders, Followers, and Admirers

Sean Johnson — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 13:02:14 +0000

Lots of people want to be leaders. A lot fewer people want to be followers. Being a follower isn’t sexy. No one will invite you to speak at a conference or write a book about how to be a good follower.

But followers help drive most organizations. A leader can’t be a leader unless they have followers.

Most people aren’t leaders or followers – they’re admirers.

Admirers sit on the sidelines. They do what they’re told, and they punch out at 5. They don’t think about how to make things better, just about how to avoid screwing up. They worry more about politics and who’s getting ahead, and don’t spend much time doing the hard work of making their company better.

Followers get their hands dirty – they co-create the future with the leader. They work with the leader to develop the strategy, to execute it, to see it made manifest in the world. And while they might not share in the public glory, they have the satisfaction that only comes from working hard and seeing it pay off.

If you choose to be a follower and not simply an admirer, you probably won’t make more money, won’t have a better title, might not have more responsibility – at least not at first. But what you will have is the opportunity to develop discipline, focus, problem solving.

If you choose, you can have more than a job – you can have an apprenticeship. You can embrace your role in creating your organization’s future, and use it as a training ground to create bold ideas and make them happen. And by making your boss look good, you earn their trust.

Someday in the future, when you’re a leader yourself, you’ll remember the days you spent following, and will be grateful you weren’t simply an admirer. And you’ll be extremely thankful for the followers that now work and stretch and achieve for you.

If you want to be a leader, learn to be a follower first. Admirers who become leaders are the folks people hate working for – the folks who steal ideas, hate giving credit, play games to get ahead. They might have the title and trappings of a leader, but they’re simply an admirer with a better suit.

Followers who become leaders are the people you love to work for – they’re creative, share responsibility, give their team opportunities to grow and learn, and love to see their people succeed.

Great followers make amazing leaders. Admirers just make more expensive admirers.

Recession-proof yourself, part two: care more

Sean Johnson — Sat, 26 Sep 2009 15:09:39 +0000

Most people think that they care about what they do – they want to do a good job, want to be a valuable member of the team. But I haven’t met a ton of people who I’d say want to be the best. Not the best in the world, mind you – simply the best version of themselves.

We wouldn’t admit this, of course. We’d say that we do our best all the time. Perhaps we even believe it. But I think it’s a lie.

Think about your last week at work. Of the 40 or 50 hours you spent working, what percentage of that time would you say consisted of you doing your absolute best? What percentage was you doing a “good enough” job? And what percentage, if you were honest, were you merely coasting?

How many meetings have you been in where your mind wandered, where you didn’t try to get the most out of it? How many assignments did you rush through to complete as quickly as possible? How many times did you cut corners?

If we were to look at my working lives honestly, the ugly truth would likely be that we spend far too little time investing ourselves fully in our work. If pressed, we could come up with excuses like “I don’t have the energy” or “they don’t pay me enough” or “it doesn’t really matter anyway – work to live”.

But if you’re someone who wants to not just survive but thrive during the recession, a sure-fire way to do so would be to invest yourself fully in what you’re doing. Simply put, to care more.

Care more

One of the most interesting things about programmers (and one of the reasons I’ve gravitated towards their circles in spite of not being a programmer myself) has been their pursuit of the craft. You can go out for drinks with programmers and be virtually certain that a debate will erupt at some point about the best way to solve a particular programming problem, or about the merits and demerits of certain languages or practices.

When you talk to many programmers, it’s not hard to get them excited about what they do. Their eyes light up as they talk, and they start throwing around words to describe code that might sound ridiculous to you – words like “pristine”, “beauty”, “elegance.”

How many people who work with you use language like that about their work? Do you? Why not?

The fact is, it takes the same amount of time to do something with passion as it does to do something without. It takes the same amount of time to create a beautiful report as an ugly one, the same amount of time to create a compelling presentation as a boring one, the same amount of time to contribute and take notes in a meeting as it does to space out.

And here’s the neat thing – it’s self-reinforcing. As you make the decision to care more about what you’re doing, you find yourself energized, and you find your work to actually be more interesting. Caring more begets caring more.

People who care more get noticed. People who care more get recommended. People who care more inspire others to do the same. And people who care more are rarely considered dispensable – because they’re so hard to find, most organizations would be nuts to eliminate your position, or to replace you with someone who’s dispassionate like everyone else.

So what would it look like to care more in your job? What would it look like for an account manager, or a salesperson, or someone in human resources? What would it look like as an intern? As a manager?

I bet that if you spent 15 minutes thinking about it you could come up with a clear, articulate picture of what your day would look like if you were fully present and engaged. And if you were to actually do it, I bet you’d get a lot more work done. I bet that the work you chose to do would be a reflection of your priorities and the priorities of the organization. I bet that work would be more inspired.

And I bet the people around you would notice.

Recession-proof yourself, Part 1: Work Harder

Sean Johnson — Tue, 05 May 2009 23:16:14 +0000

It seems as though everywhere you go people are looking for work. Sending out resumes to anyone who even hints at a potential opportunity. There are literally thousands of candidates competing for very few positions.

While most people are aware that things are bad, it seems to me that very few people understand that things are different. This isn’t your typical downturn – when investment bankers are becoming baristas and engineers are child care technicians, you know things are different.

I believe that the next few years will be increasingly hard on an increasingly larger group of people. There will be more unemployment, not less.

And unlike any downturn before it, you’re not just competing with your peers. You’re competing with the guy with 30 years experience who is looking at a much more distant retirement. You’re competing with the former Vice President who’s willing to take a big pay cut and your job. And you’re competing with the billions of people in India, Asia and Latin America who are now an instant message away and a third of the cost.

The good news is that there is still work to get done, and the need for smart, capable people to do it. But you have to stand out – being good enough is no longer enough. You have to transform yourself into a superstar – someone who generates so much value, someone so indispensable that your organization would be crazy to let you go.

What follows is the first in a series of discussions on recession-proofing yourself. My hope is to equip you with the skills you need to become one of those superstars.

It’s important to remember that nothing in here is meant to be a blanket set of rules. There are many people who don’t work in hyper-competitive organizations, or companies that aren’t facing stiff cutbacks. Similarly, there are people who would honestly welcome the change if they were let go. And there are folks who feel as though they’d rather not change their habits and are willing to risk facing the consequences. This isn’t written for you.

It’s written for folks who are worried they might not have a job in six months, who love what they do, and want to prepare themselves for the increasingly competitive world we’re entering into. I hope those who fit this description find this useful in some way.

Part One – Work Harder

I’m sometimes asked by new colleagues how I was able to rise from Account Manager to Creative Director in a year, and to Vice President in three. And while I’d chalk the majority of it up to simply being in the right place at the right time, I also worked harder than most people who were in the organization at the time.

While there are no foolproof strategies to survive and thrive in a recession, the closest “sure thing” I know of is to simply work harder.

You might be saying to yourself, “but I already work hard.” Notice I’m not saying work hard – I’m saying work harder.

Work harder than you usually do. Work harder than anyone else in your company. Become known as the guy or girl who hustles the most and you create for yourself not just protection but opportunity.

Show up early

It’s very difficult to get things done in a typical office environment. A typical worker is bombarded with meetings and other interruptions throughout the day, each of which takes you away from the truly high-value work that will make your company succeed.

Our company was no different – finding even 20 minutes of uninterrupted time was always a challenge. I wanted to make sure I got the things done I needed to get done, and knew that would be tough during the day.

So I started getting up early and heading to the local Starbucks. A few days a week, from 6am to 9am I was sending out emails, planning my day, getting a head start on the week. It was the most productive time during my week.

You don’t have to show up at 6am – even an hour early is great. By focusing on the most important thing you need to do that day, free of distraction, you’re able to start your day off on the right foot.

Leave late

Similarly, the end of the day is a good time to tackle the meaty, important work. Most people start to check out around 5 and is out the door by 6.

If you’re willing to stay an hour later you’ll be amazed how much you can get done. You can take your notes from the day’s meetings and ruminate on them, turning scribbles into coherent, potentially game-changing ideas. That’s a nearly impossible undertaking when you’re running back and forth between meetings and conference calls.

Be fully present during meetings

By tackling your most important work earlier and later in the day, you’re actually able to embrace the chaos of the bits in the middle. You can sit in a meeting with your laptop closed and your notebook open, taking notes and offering ideas, knowing that your work isn’t piling up with every passing minute.

You’re able to work on the more mundane things during in-between times (expense reports, etc.) and eliminate the clutter, since you’ve cleared your deck of your most critical tasks that day.

Embrace the natural current

Ultimately, these things are all helping you do the same thing – using the inherent cycles of a typical work day to be as effective as possible.

By leveraging the times when you don’t have distractions to get your most important work done, you’re able to make progress where previously there was inertia. Which frees you up to tackle administrative details and be truly creative in meetings, since the most important work is being handled when it can realistically be tackled.

And people who consistently get the most important things done, who don’t constantly appear frazzled and out of control go a long way towards recession-proofing themselves.

Maximize revenue in one easy step

Sean Johnson — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 20:06:56 +0000

This one took me years to figure out.

There is very little difference between a residential real estate agent and a commercial real estate agent. They both show properties. They both depend on word of mouth to grow their businesses. They’re both in hyper-competitive industries. They both work the same amount of hours. But on average, successful commercial brokers make more than residential brokers do.

I know a bunch of SEO consultants. They all do the same things – they write content, they optimize title tags and meta tags, they work aggressively on link-building campaigns. Most of them have moderate success. But in a year, one of my buddies has built a multi-million dollar SEO business, working only with attorneys who are willing to pay a premium to be first.

You could offer two clients the exact same service, the exact same amount of work, the exact same results. But the value of the service is worth considerably more for some customers than for others.

Now, there are certainly other factors to consider when drafting a marketing plan or defining your target market. Would you enjoy talking to attorneys all day? Perhaps not.

But it’s important to remember that in just about any industry, there are segments of the market that are more attractive than others based on their temperament and their pocketbooks. My buddy, for example, has found that attorneys are actually great to deal with. They are bottom-line focused, don’t get wrapped up in details, and will generally leave you alone as long as you’re getting them results. And they pay on time, which is always a plus.

Contrast that to a venture I worked on in a former life that went after bed & breakfasts. The price point had to be low because they didn’t have a lot of money. Because it was their baby, they were extremely hands on with all aspects of the process.

In the years since, I’ve worked on projects with major universities that were worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, had giant committees, etc. And in comparison, the university clients are a walk in the park relative to the clients we had in the B&B industry (this isn’t to say that they all are, but enough of them were to convince us in fairly short order to get out of the industry.)

The point is that there is a segment of the world who will love what you do, will pay you well, and will offer a minimum of headaches. And there’s a segment that will cost you significantly more in time, money and energy, with less upside. Same amount of effort, dramatic differences in revenue and general well-being.

The choice is yours.

Why it pays to leave money on the table

Sean Johnson — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 21:25:07 +0000

Many companies think they understand the concept of positioning, but when it comes time to execute on their positioning strategy they find the results to be lacking. And I think that’s because they violate the number one rule of having an effective position.

You have to be willing to turn some people off. You have to be willing to step out on a ledge and say “I’m sorry, we don’t do that.”

Unfortunately, a lot of companies (and freelancers) seem unwilling to do that, particularly in the tech and design communities. They’ll reach for any opportunity they can get, whether or not they have an ability to execute on it.

Even though the economy is in poor shape, chasing money in areas outside your expertise is often a recipe for bad things – you do a mediocre (or terrible) job on it, and it takes you away from what you’re best at.

It’s tempting to be known as a graphic designer or programmer or consultant or whatever.

But I think it’d be better to focus and leave a lot of money on the table. Become the best display advertising designer in the world. Or logo designer. Or environmental designer. Or “peat moss packaging” designer.

Become known for that – charge a premium for being the best. Pursue only the projects that you’ll knock out of the park consistently. And send any other requests for work to your network of people who are the best at what they do, taking a small cut for sending them the work.

You’ll be walking away from lower margin, higher risk projects and taking a much smaller piece of the pie on work you refer out. But you’ll build goodwill with your partners (and your prospects), receive some revenue without losing your focus on what you do best, and will likely find the favor returned.

Be willing to say “I don’t do that.”

5 things your dad can teach you about business

Sean Johnson — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 19:49:31 +0000

Reading through old notebooks this weekend, I stumbled on some notes from my old mentor. Notes about how to do business – how to carry oneself, how to set priorities, etc.

I roll in young, tech-savvy circles, and I’ve noticed that a lot of those things my mentor told me about business aren’t present in folks my age (myself included). In the hurry to put everything online, I worry that we’ve abandoned some of the old-school ways of doing business in the interest of progress.

Below are some of the things my mentor told me – most of them might sound obvious at first, but I’d challenge you to seriously consider whether you do these things consistently.

Show up on time

A lot of folks my age schedule meetings or appointments, only to show up late (or not at all, leaving a voicemail at the last second.) Respect other people’s time and attention by showing up when you say you will.

Do what you say you’ll do

It’s shocking how often people make commitments lightly, without considering their other demands (I’d definitely put myself in this category unfortunately.)

Don’t skip out on commitments you’ve made, don’t leave people in a jam, don’t come up with excuses for why you didn’t do something. Just do it, or don’t commit in the first place.

Work hard

A lot of folks my age work hard, as long as it’s something they think is “fun.” But the second their interest wanes, they decide to procrastinate, or try to get out of doing what they promised they’d do. And in the interest of “Four Hour Work Weeking” everything, they’ve tried to come up with clever ways of getting out of doing stuff.

We’re created to work. The natural state of man is to build, create, organize, do. When it’s time to rest, by all means rest. But when you’re supposed to be working, work as hard as you can.

Say please and thank you

One of my big problems with traditional networking has always been the ungratefulness of it all. People ask for something immediately, often rudely, and very often without having a genuine relationship in place first. And rarely, if ever, do you receive a thank you.

In the history of my company (to my knowledge, but I know most of what happens), there have been exactly two people who’ve sent a hand-written thank you card after a job interview. Both of them got the job. One of them became the Creative Director a year later :)

Saying please and thank you pay tremendous dividends in your professional career.

Dress the part

I get a hard time when I go into the office these days, because I tend to try and dress it up a bit. Part of that might be because I work from home most of the time and wear sweatpants and my “John Tesh rules” headband.

But part of it is because dressing up makes people think of you differently. It demonstrates that you respect them, that their opinion is important to you, that you took the time to actually get out an iron and clean your slobby self up before meeting with them.

It may sound superficial, but people really do treat you differently when you dress like someone who belongs at the conference table vs. the poker table.

How many of these things do you do (honestly?) What areas might it make sense to work on? What other rules from the old school do you think would be helpful to remember?

Why you should destroy your HR department

Sean Johnson — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 06:11:54 +0000

The phrase “human resources” pretty much encapsulates everything that is wrong with a traditional HR department. It implies impersonal, cold, calculating. It suggests that a company’s employees are resources to be utilized as much as possible, and discarded when their useful life is up. Kind of like a copy machine, except with dreams and goals and kids.

The ever brilliant Tom Peters long ago suggested changing the name to “Talent Department”. Imagine what would happen if you did that.

True, the typical HR professional would still have to spend considerable time dealing with legal issues, making sure the company doesn’t put itself in a position to be sued or taken advantage of. The necessary contracts and policies would still need to exist. But I’d like to think that a subtle psychological shift would take place.

I’d like to think that the folks in the Talent Department would come to realize that there is a world of difference between a good worker and a great one. They’d figure out that Bill Gates was right, that one fantastic engineer or programmer or account manager or accountant is worth 15 mediocre ones.

Once they figured that out, they’d probably bend over backwards to keep those folks. They’d throw out the talk about pay being consistent with market value and pay those people what they’d pay three of their crappy counterparts. They’d get over the old Prussian-based notions that suggest that people can work effectively in tiny cubes for 9 hours a day. They’d realize that one’s ability to work from a coffee shop or a park bench or a home or Maui isn’t a liability but for the right person is a key unlocking tremendous creative potential.

Tom Peters also predicted that within 10 years, 90% of white collar jobs would either be eliminated (via outsourcing and technology) or dramatically changed. He might have been a few years off, but it’s not hard to see much of that happening today.

The implications of that for a company is that many of those functions lose their competitive advantage. As the technology becomes ubiquitous and a truly global organization becomes a reality, the functions those white collar jobs used to perform become commodities.

What remains is a (most likely much smaller) group of highly competent, highly creative, driven, passionate people doing the imaginative, daring work that can never really be outsourced. And the pursuit of those people will become the most important thing that any HR department could do to.

But if the mindset of the department doesn’t change from one of fitting cogs into proverbial wheels… if it doesn’t decide to focus most of it’s energy into finding the most startlingly talented people and doing what it takes to keep them… then the most buttoned-up contracts and policies in the world won’t make a difference.

In the next 10 years, the Talent Department will likely become one of the primary sources of value generation in a company. At least for the ones that figure it out.