Make More of Your Job

Learn to Love Failure

I know it sounds strange, but I absolutely, positively love failure. 

Don’t get me wrong, I hate losing. But in my opinion losing and failure are only vaguely related.  Whether you win or lose, failure happens along the way...and it’s always a chance to get better at what you do.

I played a lot of baseball growing up. Nearly every time I walked up to the plate, I knew I was bound to experience failure in some form.  Every time I swung at a good pitch and didn't hit the ball, I had failed at what I set out to do. In no way did any one of these small failures mean that I would end up losing the game, but each provided me with an opportunity to improve.  Every swing taught me about my timing, the pitchers toolbox, the umpire's strike zone and myriad other variables.  Each failure, if noted and analyzed with a positive attitude, brought me a step closer to my short term goal of hitting the ball and my long term goal of winning the game.

Life is no different. Unfortunately, individual failure gets a bad rap outside of sports.  It’s too easy to get distracted by the negative press that failure brings and miss the opportunity to grow from it. At work, I see people take all sorts of absurd steps to deny, excuse or explain their failures rather than owning them and committing to growth through the experience.

Think how comical it would be if a baseball player stepped away from the plate after missing a swing and blamed his failure on the bat, or the ball, or the pitcher.  Yet in the working world we see these excuses everyday: it was the market, the product, the boss, not me.  In my personal experience, I know that the better I get at admitting when I’ve failed, the quicker I can be at correcting that failure and ultimately succeeding as planned.

We all take crappy swings now and again; in fact, it’s part of the game.  But the ability to embrace your failures in life will define the level of success you will be able to attain down the road.  Try to take a little pressure off of yourself, enjoy the ride a little bit more and learn from your experiences.  Making the most of your job is a messy process full of mistakes, setbacks, and challenges, but also glorious, uplifting wins.  Each failure along the way is a change to become better, faster, stronger.  Don’t miss that opportunity because you’re worried about what people will think about these failures, they’re all a part of the human process.

Just like in baseball, if you approach your life with good sportsmanship, personal ownership and most of all a sense of passion and fun, you’ll be hitting the ball out of the park in no time.

Random Acts of Kindness

I am constantly amazed by how frequently life provides valuable lessons when we least expect them.  I’m currently traveling for work. After a particularly long day of flights and driving recently, I arrived at my destination, checked into the hotel, lugged my bag to the room, opened up the door and ran smack into a couple who had already checked into the very same room.

Needless to say, all three of us were startled, but they kindly offered me the use of their phone to avoid walking back to the front desk to sort out the issue.  The front desk clerk informed me that someone would meet me in the hall with a new set of keys and a new room.  I thanked the couple and retired to the hall to meet the bellman.

A few minutes later, I was still waiting. One member of the couple left the room in search of ice.  On his way back, he said “Are you still here? Don’t just stand here in the hall, come in while you wait.”

Assuming he was just going through the motions, I politely declined. He then said, “Don’t be silly! Come on in and let’s get you a cocktail.  There’s no point standing in the hall.”

At that moment, it occurred to me that such random acts of kindness (and generosity) are often lost in our modern world. It was a nice change of pace to have someone extend that kind of hospitality with no underlying motive.  I accepted his offer and entered the room for a drink.

Here’s where the point of the story comes in.  In just the few minutes that I spent waiting for the bellman, I learned that not only had the couple once lived in my hometown, but one of them had worked for a company literally blocks away from my front door.  How strange that such a chance encounter would introduce me to not one, but two interesting people who I had so many things in common with.  Though we didn’t speak for long, I left the room with 2 more connections than I had when I’d checked in.  That’s the point of here: performing random acts of kindness can provide you with amazing chances to network and build your professional and social circle.

So many of us are singularly focused on our jobs while at the office that we forget how many other interesting, creative and relatable people work alongside us everyday.  While you may not find yourself in the position of offering a stranger a cocktail in your hotel room, remembering to be kind and courteous to those around you will provide you with countless opportunities to meet and get to know people who you might otherwise have missed.

So the next time you’re in the office (or anywhere else) and you see someone who looks lost, confused or even overburdened, don’t ignore them.  Engage them, even ask if there’s any way you might be able to help.  If you make this a practice in life, you’ll be amazed how many people you meet and what you might have in common.  The more opportunities you give yourself to socialize, the more opportunities you’ll have to make the most of your career, and even your life.  By practicing random acts of kindness you’ll be keeping yourself engaged in the most important act of any successful career: networking.  Remember: it’s not what you know, it’s who you know.

Follow the Unwritten Rules

When I was just starting out in my career, I always appreciated a wide amount of latitude when it came to decision making.  For me to be at my best, it was important that I have the broad authority to determine the direction of my own career, and too many rules and regulations would have made that journey more difficult. We all value having the freedom to make the choices we want in our lives and careers, but to borrow the common phrase, with great freedom comes great responsibility.

Let's say that a law was made that strictly forbade anyone from punching each other. However, no other laws were written that forbade kicking, though kicking was still considered poor form by society. Would we all go around kicking each other to get our points across without getting in trouble with the law? Most likely not.

We all know the difference between right and wrong, and we have to acknowledge that there are "unwritten" rules that we must decide whether or not to follow. When making decisions, we also have to consider the spirit behind the rule’s creation in the first place.  In our punching/kicking example, the rule was probably brought about in the spirit of diminishing violence. Simply switching to kicking, while technically not against the rules, was contrary to the spirit of the rule itself.

This principle applies to decision making at work, as well. Good companies value their employees' opinions and stylistic differences. Otherwise, companies would never evolve and grow. If you're lucky enough to work for one of these companies, there probably aren’t a million rigid rules in place that dictate your every move.  However, some companies are forced to clamp down on their employees simply because a select few misbehave (and, in some cases, behave illegally) when given too much slack.  Unfortunately, a few bad apples can ruin the whole bushel.

Now that I am an employer, I struggle with this same issue every day.  While I want to provide as fluid an environment as possible for my employees (I owe them the same respect I desired when I always had to follow someone else's rules), I also want to make sure that the company's best interests are protected.  I am constantly walking the fine line between giving my employees too much freedom and too many rules. Straying too far in one direction or the other can result in a chaotic atmosphere or a stifled one. I've found the key to striking the perfect balance with established rules is asking that employees learn to follow the unwritten rules of the organization, as well.

When explaining this to my employees, I give them a few examples:

• Employee A's company allows him to expense $20 for dinner while traveling and he only spends $9. When filing his expense report, he knows that he can take the maximum $20 without being questioned, so he does. The rule is in place to make sure your costs while on the job are covered, not to award you an extra $11 because you were thrifty.
• Employee B's company requires that she give a month's advance notice to take a vacation. She knows about her upcoming vacation three months in advance. She waits to file the request for her vacation until the 30-day mark anyway.

Though both examples show employees who were technically following the rules, they weren't acting in the best interests of the company. Employee A should realize that his company's rules are in place to make sure his costs while on the job are covered, not to award him an extra $11 because he was thrifty. Employee B should realize that it is beneficial to her company to let them know as far in advance as possible of her absence in order to make more informed decisions about what to do without her. To refer to my first example, the employees were asked not to punch, and they didn't. But by not following unwritten rules, they are still doing what the kickers would do.

Every one of us needs to do our part to help ensure that our company keeps the rules loose, but that means requires that we're all making consistently productive decisions.  The best unwritten rule you can follow is this: when making any decision, behave as though the company’s money and time is your own.  If your choices are made with respect for the company and ownership of your actions, it will show.  Not only will it help your company from throwing a new 30-pound rule book at you every year, but it will earn you a reputation as honest, thoughtful and trustworthy.  That’s precisely the reputation you’ll need to make the most of your career.

Quit Playing Games

Do you really want to move up in the corporate world?  If so you’re going to have to make the commitment to literally quit playing games.

As a manager, I like a good video game, or stock price, or forwarded email as much as the next guy. But chances are most workers letting these digital distractions sap their productivity.  I am often surprised by the brazen openness with which people sit at their well-paid corporate gigs and openly waste the company’s time on Instant Messenger or MySpace.

Your company pays you to act in ways that advance the bottom line, and with very few exceptions, futzing around on the internet probably isn’t one of them.  I get it, if you want to read a funny email or two or play a quick round of an online game during a quick break, it’s probably not the end of the world.  But for many of the workers in today’s offices, these digital distractions are not a mere diversion attended to for a handful of moments each day. They are chronic time-wasters that add up to hours of wasted potential.

You know which category you fall into.  Do you watch that latest YouTube video every once in a while, or are you the guy who has IM open all day long?  If it’s the latter, don’t be shocked if you’re sitting in the same dead end job 15 years from now (if you even have a job at all).

Wasting time on the internet isn’t just about wasting time, it’s about respect.  When you are sitting at your desk, most likely within view of coworkers, clicking away at your iTunes, you’re sending a strong message that your work is unimportant or boring to you.  Again, if you’re the type who only logs on to chat when you’re really out of work for the moment it’s probably not a huge problem (though, if I were your manager, I'd love it if you asked me for more work). But if you’re wasting time entertaining yourself and you have work that isn’t done, you might as well be screaming “Screw you!” to the entire company.

If you’re one of those people who is wasting a lot of time on digital distractions, and you know who you are, be warned that you're probably not as fast at minimizing those distractions when your coworkers walk by as you think you are. In my experience, trying to minimize your digital distractions before you are seen is the biggest career limiter of all.  As an employer, when you quickly minimize your screen as I walk by it tells me one of two things:

• You were wasting time, not taking a break from work that you've completed.
• You might have been doing something inappropriate or offensive.

By trying to minimize the screen you are showing that you know what you were doing was wrong, but you did it anyway. If you're that willing to demonstrate to others that you're doing things that might be damaging to your company's bottom line, and that easily caught by your coworkers, you're probably wasting more time and money than any manager would like to know.

So think about it, if you’re distracting yourself more than you’re actually working you need to ask yourself some tough questions.

• Am I bored by my job?
• Do I have poor work ethic? 
• Can I reduce the distractions that keep me from being productive? If so, how can I reduce those distractions?

At the end of the day, admitting you have a problem might be just what you need to improve, or if you even want to improve. For me, the bottom line is simple: if you expect me to increase your compensation or give you a promotion, quit playing games.

Declare Independence at Work

In honor of this Independence Day week, I decided to focus this entry on creating ways to become more independent at work.  If you’re looking for a raise or promotion, it’s important that your employer sees you as someone who can add value on your own at all times.  In order to do this you need to display independent thinking and proactive behavior.  All employees should be able to get their basic job done, but great employees should be able to address deeper problems and optimize their ROI (return on investments) to the company at all times.  Here are some ideas for adding that kind of independence to your resume:

• Never ask a question without a proposed solution – A common complaint from managers is that their employees ask them too many questions that have readily available answers.  Falling into this category will guarantee that you appear dependant and unmotivated to your boss.  Every time a question comes up, or a problem needs solving, research the issues before you bring it to your manager.  Come up with the best solution you can and then speak with your manager.  When you’re able to say “Here’s the problem and I think what I should do is _____. Is that what you’d do?", it shows that you’ve put in the time and thought even if you’re solution isn’t perfect.  This will help your employer see you as proactive and interested in growth.
• Always stay active – Just because your boss hasn’t given you an assignment doesn’t mean you should be sitting at your desk twiddling your thumbs or surfing the internet.  Keep a checklist of all of the activities you perform for the company and when you have down time look over the list to find something to do.  As a manager, when an employee comes into my office and says “I was finished with my other work early, so I went ahead and prepared ______,” it always makes me smile.  It’s a great way to prove you’re committed to delivering value for the firm.  If all else fails and you can’t come up with anything to do, just ask.  Chances are your employer will be pleasantly surprised by the extra help.
• Provide suggestions for improving the business – Once or twice a quarter, hand your boss a written sheet with a couple of suggestions for how to improve the productivity of the business.  These ideas should not be about how to improve your life, but how to drive profits, save time or reduce expense.  Don’t limit your observations to your role, but make suggestions about any area you think the company could get better.  This will prove that you care about the company’s best interests and are constantly thinking about ways to make it a better organization.  Make sure you stay humble with your suggestions, since you may be commenting on other departments. However, you're well within your bounds as an employee and steward of the company if you make an informed suggestion that could improve the business in the long run.