How to know when it's time to go

I'm walking away from my job.

Yes, it's frightening.  The assurance of a dependable amount of cash magically appearing in your bank account at the end of the month is a difficult thing to put at risk.  Those banks can be so pesky about demanding mortgage payments …

But a job is about so much more than the money.  If you're not inspired, you probably need to go.  Here are three signs it's time to call the headhunters.

ONE.  Do they remember my CV?  Corporations spend a fortune recruiting people, then often manage to forget everything you did before you started.  Your horizons may narrow as you get pigeon-holed into the things you've done best for your current employer.  Rather than looking at your big picture, they see you as the safe, familiar pair of hands that can keep your current plates spinning.  That's a dangerous path to professional atrophy.

TWO.  It's deja vu all over again.  You're presented with a challenge.  Do you instantly start thinking of ways to tackle it?  Or does your brain jump back to the all the times you've already tried to fix this, and why it didn't work?  A sure sign you need to be banging your head against another wall.

THREE.  Pulling the duvet tighter.  It's the most basic human indicator.  Do you happily rise from bed with the anticipation of the new day?  Or do you linger, snuggle deeper, and wish for just 10 minutes more.  If you find it easier to get up on weekends and holidays than you do on working days, it's a clear indicator you need a new job.

I'm fortunate enough to work for a company that values its people.  I have some time to look for something different inside before I'm faced with the even bigger decision of complete change.  Whether I stay or go, one thing's for sure:  it's time for something new.

Learn from breast cancer, without ever getting it

I was deeply honoured earlier this week to speak at the BT-Cisco women's network on a topic near to my heart (literally) … breast cancer.  I was first diagnosed in 2006 and dealt with a recurrence in 2011. Both times were manageable, and not life-threatening, thanks to early detection and a fantastic medical team.

But, as any brush with mortality tends to do, it made me think.  It changed my life.  And, I believe, it made me a better person both in and out of the office.  Excerpted from my talk, here are three life lessons I hope you can embrace without the dubious "benefit" of cancer.

ONE.  Live each day like it's your last.  So much easier said than done.  But, let's face it, we all take life for granted.  We all let the average in, and cope with things we wouldn't if we knew our time was limited.  Your time is limited.  Whether you check out tomorrow or in 20 years, every day is precious.  So make sure you do a job you love.  Don't put up with the mediocre.  Take risks.  Have fun.  Don't hide your opinions.  Take advantage of change.  Carpe diem.  You'll be a better person, and a better professional, for it.

TWO.  Get your work and life in balance.  Leading up to the first diagnosis, I admit it:  I was a workaholic consumed by stress who rarely stepped away from the corporate melee.  I was doing a great job.  But a more balanced, less stressed me did an even better one.  After contemplating the possibility of never getting to retirement, I adjusted things.  Draw lines.  Take time to think.  Exercise.  Have hobbies.  Volunteer.  Craft a social life away from work (where all you'll do is talk about the job).  All of these things will make you more well-rounded and less stressed … and your professional performance will be better as a consequence.

THREE.  Find and embrace your coping style.  Everyone deals with challenges in a different way.  When I was going through cancer, kind people deluged me with books on the topic and asked detailed questions about my particular diagnosis and treatment.  That may work for some people, but not for me.  My style was to ignore the disease as much as possible and get on with life.  I trusted my medical team, I let them do their thing, and I focused on things that made me feel competent, in control and well.  By being more aware of how I cope … and that everyone copes in different ways … I became a better leader and delegator.

I hope that's some help, and that you never need to learn those lessons in the way I did.  But, statistically, one in eight women in the UK will.  (Numbers vary in other countries, but the chances are still high.)  Early detection is the best protection.  If you're a woman over 40 reading this, make sure you have a mammogram scheduled.

My home town team sets a model for stakeholder communications

These are the dog days of the American baseball season.  With almost four months gone, all newness has worn off.  It's becoming clear who isn't going to be a contender.  Pennant races, however, won't heat up for another month.  Though every game counts, it often doesn't feel that way in early August.

And yet … The St. Louis Cardinals manage to keep packing Busch Stadium.  At a time when many other teams have banks of empty seats, it's a packed house under The Arch.  It's a situation that gives a clear home field advantage, with commentators talking about the crowd at the "10th man" on the team.

You don't get many better examples of the power of customer advocacy.  How does my home town team do it?

ONE:  Be a winner.  It always helps to have a good product.  More World Series titles (11) than any team but the Yankees, 19 National League titles and they've made it to post season play eight of the 13 seasons so far this century.  They've built an expectation of quality.  And the distribution of their excellence over more than a century means quality wasn't an ephemeral blip in one decade.  If they're down, a fan always expects them to come back.  Giving us a reason to stay through thick and thin.

TWO.  Transcend your market.  Baseball is so much more than sport in St. Louis.  It's practically a religion.  Children have their growth measured with annual photos in front of the Stan Musial statue.  Every important local company has a box in the stadium and regularly does business there.  Local businesses theme their own campaigns in alignment, while a large percentage of the population seems to be in branded clothing regularly.  Pre- and post-game activities are long-standing family rituals, with some … like the visit to Ted Drewes for frozen custard on the way home … stretching back for generations.  This all happens because the team works hard to be a member of the community, not just a sports franchise.  Players are expected to get involved with local charities; many of the greats settle in town permanently and become local legends.  Student discounts and special events grab 'em while they're young.  Regular charity nights bring the less fortunate in for free, and celebrate good deeds on the field before the game.  All good sports franchises try to accomplish this, but I've never seen it work as well as in my home town.

THREE.  Stoke up good will.  You need to treat people just as well in the bad times as in the good.  I grew up in the 70s, one of the Cardinals' rare stretches of mediocrity on the field.  But all of the community outreach continued.  I remember regularly meeting players at local events, entering the Fredbird colouring contest every year (for a chance to win free tickets) and receiving all sorts of incentives to come to the stadium.  If only I'd kept my Ted Simmons bobble head.  In the '90s … another stretch without post-season play … excellent PR efforts put the management with the public, having open and honest discussions about how they were changing the team and building for the future.  And they were good on their words.

Wouldn't it be amazing if corporate internal comms departments could build up just a fraction of the passion that ardent fans feel about their sports teams?  Looking at how some of the great franchises do things is fine place to start.

What gardening teaches us about people management

My garden is at its lush height right now.  To get it there, of course, it's also the season where I invest a big part of my free time into it.  As I prune, mow, deadhead and water, it occurs to me that plants aren't so different from people.  They can be prickly and problematic, but get them in the right place and figure out how to care for them, and they reward you with glory.

Here are three ways gardening mirrors leadership.

ONE:  The right growing conditions.  Different plants need different things.  The hardiest lavender, thriving in chalky, free-draining soil, won't last long if you move it to waterlogged clay.  Every plant is different; sometimes they even surprise you by thriving where, technically, they're not supposed to.  There's something about the tiny micro-climate around them that works.  The longer I garden, the more I'm convinced that … no matter how much you research … there's an element of trial and error until a plant is happy.  And then, once it is, leave it there and let it thrive.  Let the plant tell you where it wants to be.  Its much the same with people. Everyone needs something different, adds different things to the team.  If you try to make everyone the same, "plant" them into the same rules and working conditions, you'll destroy as many as you allow to thrive.  Experiment, work to understand individual needs, and get them where they need to be.

TWO:  Fertilise.  Some of the strongest performers of the plant world need a lot of energy to strut their stuff.  They suck it from the soil around them and, if you don't top up that soil with more nutrients, their performance will decline year-on-year.  So it is with human motivation.  And, often, it's the stars of the team that need the most love and encouragement.  Don't assume they'll just keep delivering "because it's their job".  Figure out what they need to thrive, and make sure you're topping it up.

THREE:  Clear the weeds.  A weed is, quite simply, any plant that grows where you don't want it to be.  It's often a native, well adapted to your conditions, and a thug that crowds out everything else if you don't control it.  Dock is my current nightmare.  Incredibly useful if you're looking for relief from stinging nettles, but otherwise a leafy monster with a taproot that's tough to eradicate.  Corporate weeds can be anything that grabs an unfair proportion of time and thus sucks the life out of the office.   These can be people who throw off the balance of the team, unpopular projects, or too much process and admin thrown on a team without explaining why it's necessary.  Your job, as the head gardener, is to spot those weeds and stop them before they have a chance to flourish.

Watch the tap roots.  They can be nasty.

Simple steps for improving project briefs

A good brief is the foundation for a good project. Yet, too often, we give them little attention.  Or, worse, have a quick phone call with an agency and let them get on with it.  Not good. 


Thanks to a new process in our department I've been reviewing a lot of communications briefs, and certain problems pop up throughout.  Here's what people could do to make them stronger.


1.PURPOSE
Every piece of marketing communications content should do a specific job. We see far too many proposals for things that seem to be initiated because somebody wants to tick a box for a video, or an infographic, or whatever ... rather than because they have a comms plan and they need this particular tactic to move people along it.  We try to match all our content to a sales journey, which goes as follows:  awareness to consideration to preference to closure to advocacy. You can't do everything with one piece of comms.  Plot your point on that journey and craft your piece to address that specific need.  If it's consideration, for example, you're going to be all about exploring a particular area your company can do well, and showing all the reasons you're so credible they have to put you on their bid list.  If you've done the job properly, then you're tipping your audience over into preference after they've read, viewed or interacted with your work.


CONTEXT
How does your piece fit in to a broader marketing communications mix?  Integrated communications is increasingly important; no piece of marketing collateral should ever stand alone.  And yet we consistently see briefs that make no mention of how the item proposed works within a bigger picture.  This is critically important for the people who take that brief and turn it into a piece of marketing.  Something created in isolation will never do the job as well as something crafted in concert with its partners.


DIGITAL FIRST
Every survey I've seen in the past few years indicates that customers are now turning primarily to the Internet for the awareness and consideration parts of the sales journey, and dip in and out of that "self service" options for the others.  Everything should be created online first, with other options following.  And that doesn't just mean putting a page of copy up on a website. It means thinking about the whole experience of finding (search engine optimisation is critical), viewing and linking.


I have no doubt the owners of most of the content proposals I see already have this stuff in mind, but it doesn't make it into their briefs.  Skipping the formal inclusion boosts the chance someone will forget it.  Be safe ... get it in there.

Femininity doesn't always mean a better boss

On this International Womens' Day, I pause to consider some of the negatives of women in communications.

This is a pink ghetto; women far outnumber men in internal communications, PR and marketing communications.  And most women do a great job.  But there is a dark side.  When professionalism gives in to being nice girls who make people happy, nobody wins.  

So let's look at the three biggest "girly" mistakes of female marcomms leadership, and what you can do to avoid them.

ONE  Don't sizzle.  There's a fine line between charismatic and sexy.  Stay on the right side of it.   Show your expertise, not your hemline.  Go for the respect of all, not the inappropriate attentions of the men who might promote you.  The sexy route might get you promoted, but it will lose you the respect of all the women who work for you ... and that's most of the marcomms workforce.  

TWO.  Don't be a biddable yes girl.  Top female mistake I've seen amongst my senior leaders over the years.  You want to make people happy.  You want to get ahead.  You want your department to be popular.  So you agree to whatever the senior executives want, whether or not it's a good idea.  Eventually, this will catch up with you.  Usually when the leaders you supported get booted out, and marketing takes the blame for their stupid decisions.  You could have said no.  Advise what's right, not what's popular.

THREE.  Don't be one of the boys.  The opposite mistake to the one above, which seems to be more typical of older women who were on the front lines of the equal rights battles of the 70s, is to be a complete hardass.  Cutting out all female characteristics and being as tough and heartless as the hardest man will not only alienate your employees.  It denies natural strengths that your essential femininity brings to the table.

Sadly, I've worked under or with women who have shown all these traits.  And it makes you pine for the easy (if disorganised and a bit uncaring) openness of a male boss.

Bottom line:  be yourself.  Don't use your sexuality.  Use your brain and your experience.