Managing Up: How to Do It Effectively

Face it: You need to manage up. At least if you want to succeed in corporate America. It’s as important as getting the job done. Managing up gives your leaders a way to see the work you do in a way that will benefit you. It also creates job security. And let’s be honest: When layoffs hit, the boss’s favourites never gets cut, regardless of their skills and talents.

Here are five ways to manage up that will put you in line for raises, security, and a fulfilling career.

1) Don’t blame your boss for anything. There is no point. Your boss is in charge and you are not. Make a note of what annoys you and tell yourself you won’t do it when you are boss. (Although beware, there are no perfect bosses. Just like parenting, you will suck as a manager in your own special way.)  When you manage up properly you will be able to turn your bad boss into a good boss. For you. Because you can work around your boss’s foibles if you stay focused on your goals. And yes, this is even true for bosses who micromanage.

2) Don’t wait for your performance review to fight for a raise. Find out the salary politics way before your performance review. What’s your boss up against when it comes to approving a raise for you? What do you need to do for him to help? Who are the influencers?  Start managing all of them. Your salary review will need to be approved by a bunch of people. Make sure they love you BEFORE performance review time. By the time approvals come around, it’s too late to ingratiate yourself. And, if it should come down to your boss really having no power over the purse strings, ask for nonfinancial compensation, like conferences and gadgets or whatever it important to you.

3) Find out what your boss is being measured on. Your boss definitely cares more about his own salary review than about yours. The more you help your boss to meet his goals, the more likely he is to go to bat for you to meet your own goals. If you do lots of work but it’s all outside the parameters of your boss’s goals, your boss won’t notice.  Do the work that matters, and then translate that strong performance into action from your boss. This means that the person who puts their head down and gets all their work done perfectly is not smart. There is no point in being the hardest worker in the office because all work is not equal. The work that is important is the work that gets noticed. Do less work so you have more time to understand what work matters?

4) Get benchmarks early, but be open to them changing. Your boss just wants you to make a difference on the team. He doesn’t really care about your performance goals, per se. He cares about his own, his team’s, and your participation to meet those goals. So help your boss to keep track of you by shifting your goals to be in sync with the company’s goals. Your boss will be surprisingly open to shifting goals in the name of helping the company. And you’ll find that shifting makes you look more like a team player, and like your irreplaceable to your boss.

5) Be nice. Really, there is no better way to ensure a good performance review if you are well liked by your boss. People get hired for hard skills to get the job. But they get fired and promoted because of their soft skills that make people like them. So really, the performance review is a great time to solidify your relationship with your boss after a year of hard work creating that relationship.

Key to Success? Stop Being So Cheerful

So, it turns out that people who were really happy as children tend to not pay attention while crossing the street and die young, or something else just as miserable.  (I made up that part about cars because I’m cranky and I’m feeding into my bad attitude in the hope of living longer.  If you die young, you never get to be one of those crabby old ladies that do whatever they want because they are old and I so want to do that.)

But seriously, they did find out that happiness isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.  The Longevity Study began tracking a group of kids when they were 10, in 1921. (They didn’t track them continuously–the study picked up again in the early 1990s.)

“We came to a new understanding about happiness and health. One of the findings that really astounds people, including us, is that the Longevity Project participants who were the most cheerful and had the best sense of humor as kids lived shorter lives, on average, than those who were less cheerful and joking. It was the most prudent and persistent individuals who stayed healthiest and lived the longest.”

Part of the explanation lies in health behaviors – the cheerful, happy-go-lucky kids tended to take more risks with their health across the years, Friedman noted. While an optimistic approach can be helpful in a crisis, “we found that as a general life-orientation, too much of a sense that ‘everything will be just fine’ can be dangerous because it can lead one to be careless about things that are important to health and long life. Prudence and persistence, however, led to a lot of important benefits for many years. It turns out that happiness is not a root cause of good health. Instead, happiness and health go together because they have common roots.”

Patience and persistence.  I think the big difference is focusing on long term happiness rather than just immediate pleasure.  If you are thinking about the long term, you look before you cross the street and you eat your green vegetables.  If you’re all about the pleasure, you’ll find reason to pass up that broccoli in favor of brownies.

They also found out that it is the productive among us who live the longest.  Those with good family and friend relationships also tend to thrive.

So, what does this mean for your career?  Don’t worry about seeking out the coolest job possible.  Work steadily.  Keep your relationships up.

And be just a little bit cranky.

How CEOs Really Spend their Time

Does your CEO seem to spend a lot of time meeting with people you’ve never heard of? And should it matter to you?

Given how much CEOs are paid, how your CEO spends his or her time should have some impact on how profitable or productive his or her company is. But at companies with weak governance, nobody’s really keeping an eye on the CEO, and it seems the CEO knows it.

According to research from four professors-Oriana Bandiera and Andrea Prat, of the London School of Economics, Luigi Guiso of European University Institute, and Raffaella Sadun, of Harvard University–at those companies, CEOs spend much more time on activities that are personally beneficial to them and less time on activities that help their companies thrive.

To figure out how CEOs spend their days, the researchers enlisted 94 Italian CEOs and their personal assistants. The assistants kept a diary of everything the CEO did during the week. Some time outside the office and on weekends wasn’t counted, so if the CEO had dinner every night with a big client or supplier, the researchers didn’t know about it.

What exactly are they doing?

As you might suspect, CEO’s go to meetings. A lot.

• Some 60% of CEO time was taken up in meetings
• CEOs spent 25% of their time on phone calls and at public events
• Only 15% of CEO time was spent working alone.

The researchers then split CEO time into three categories: Time spent with outsiders, time spent with other employees of the company, and time spent working alone.

On average:

• CEOs spent 42% of their time with insiders-other employees
• CEOs spent 25% of their time in groups that included both insiders, such as employees, and outsiders, such as suppliers.
• CEOs spent 16% of their time as the only company representative with one or more outsiders.
• Among insiders, the finance department got the most time, or an average of 8.6 hours per week. Human resources got the least CEO time, or 5.5 hours per week.
• Among outsiders, consultants dominate CEO time, getting an average of 4.7 hours per week. Suppliers get the least attention, or only 1.3 hours per week.
• As CEOs worked more hours, those extra hours went to meetings with people inside the company, so the hardest-working CEOs spent more time with their own people.

More Productive CEOs Spend More Time With Employees

Time spent with insiders seemed to improve firm performance, while time spent with outsiders didn’t seem to make much difference. A 1% increase in the amount of hours a CEO spent with his or her own people correlated to increase in productivity of 2.12%. It appears, instead, that the time a CEO spends with people outside the company mostly enables him or her to build their network with other business leaders. This flies in the face of the theory that says a CEO is the public face of a company and therefore should be out meeting, greeting, and golfing as much as possible.

Another factor leading the researchers to suspect that these outside meetings did more for the CEO personally than they did for the company is that these meetings were more common companies that had lax accountability or weak governance. CEOs with smaller boards of directors spent less time alone with outsiders, as did CEOs whose boards included at least one woman. So did CEOs who were hired into a family-run firm.

What do you think your CEO is doing with his/her time?

8 Easy Rules for Cold-Calling Customers

I’ve been getting a lot of emails about cold-calling lately, so I thought it might be a good time to revisit the art of using a telephone to generate new leads.  Here are some quick tips:

• Rule #1. Set the right goal. A cold call can be used to sell outright, to set up a face-to-face meeting, to set up for a longer telephone conversation, or even just to nurture a relationship.  Make sure that your script and your attitude match the goal that you’re trying to reach.
• Rule #2: Do your research. Find the “hot buttons” that will motivate the prospect to take the next step (whatever that is). For example, if the prospect is a CFO, your best opening is to point out difference between the financials of the prospect’s firm and other firms in the same industry.
• Rule #3: Never try to wing it. Knowing what you’re going to say ahead of time helps ensure that your message will be heard. Have a script that maps out the basic conversation, potential objections, and the “close” on whatever action would fulfill the goal of the call.
• Rule #4: Rehearse until its second nature. Rehearsal transforms the script into a more natural dialog. You must internalize the rhythm of the call, so that your statements and questions flow more naturally. Rehearsal will also reduce the anxiety that you may feel about making the call.
• Rule #5. Assume the prospect needs you. Approach the call as if you have information and perspective that the prospect truly needs. Emphasize in your own mind that you can contribute to both the success of the prospect and the success of the prospect’s business.
• Rule #6. Differentiate yourself within 15 seconds. You have fifteen seconds (more or less) to communicate to the prospect that you’re somebody worth talking to. This is not enough time to convey much information.  See the links below for advice on scripting a cold call.
• Rule #7: Don’t sell prematurely. There will be times when a cold call might engender an in-depth conversation.  Even so, you must remain aware of the intended outcome of the cold call (like setting up another meeting). Without being pushy, move the conversation towards that goal.
• Rule #8: Every cold call is a victory. A cold call that eliminates a prospect is just as good (better maybe!) that a cold call that puts a prospect into your pipeline. Therefore, every cold call is a victory and should be celebrated as such.

The above is based upon a conversation with the brilliant and fascinating Wendy Weiss, aka “The Queen of Cold Calling”.