Agility Myths

Most people are fascinated with the idea of agility; however, in my conversations with individuals about the Agility Factor Project I have discovered that there are also a lot of myths and misconceptions about what agility actually looks like on the job.

Agility Myth # 1 - Job Hoppers

After giving The Agility Factor presentation recently at a CEO Roundtable, the first response I received was from the host CEO who had inherited a manufacturing business from his father. “I don’t want or need agile employees!” he said emphatically. None of the other CEO’s agreed with him, at least not out loud, but I could guess what they were thinking. “I want my employees to do what I tell them to do, when I tell them to it, until I tell them to stop.” That’s the way the business world operates doesn’t it? “Who needs agile employees?”

Until recently the highly valued backbone of the industrial world was the corporate tortoise, plodding, methodical, hardworking and loyal and widely perceived as the ideal employee. In many organizations they still are. Nobody wants a job hopping hare! Unfortunately, even though tortoises are certainly dependable, they tend to resist change, any change, and quickly fall out of step when an industry experiences market swings that require quick responses and new behaviors.

What the CEO didn’t understand was that today’s race is not between the job-hopping hare and the hard working tortoise. In the 21st century marketplace the race belongs to swift and agile corporate cheetahs capable of navigating a wireless jungle at the speed of light. Cheetahs not only win the race; they drag home the trophy! Surviving change is not good enough. Thriving in today’s market is the ability to turn change into profit.

Contrary to popular opinion, I was not able to find any evidence that highly agile individuals are particularly prone to job hopping. They are better described as productive rather than restless. If you continually prevent an agile employee from being productive, they probably aren’t going to stick around. However, some of the most agile executives I interviewed have survived multiple mergers, acquisitions and leadership changes while remaining with the same organization for twenty years or longer. By staying open to change and continually finding new ways to add value, corporate cheetahs continue to feed the organizations they work for as long as those organizations allow them to do so.

Agility Myth # 2 - Only for Leaders

Another persistent myth is that agility may be necessary, even important at the executive level, but it is not very practical at a staff level. One executive told me that if everyone was agile there would be too many chiefs and not enough Indians. In my opinion that’s a lot like saying if everyone was friendly we wouldn’t need sales executives. (I’ll let you think on that one.) The 2006 bestseller Built to Change maintains that, “a strong human capital base with change-related knowledge and skills is a major source of competitive advantage.” In my study highly agile and innovative individuals making significant contributions to their organizations included administrators, bean counters, technical geeks and support personnel in addition to marketing directors, sales executives, and CEOs. Agility is a cross functional skill in a competitive organization.

Agility Myth # 3 - Agility is Slippery

Highly agile individuals are sometimes viewed as Machiavellian players in the business arena, quick to take advantage of a situation even it means bending the rules or turning on their co-workers. In reality highly agile individuals are well liked and dependable. They tend to have a broad interpersonal network that includes people from all walks of life and at every level within the organization. One of the characteristics that make them agile is their ability to build cross-departmental business coalitions. They do this by consciously lending support to the pet projects, agendas and careers of those around them. A highly agile professional is a great friend to have!

Tom Williams, a healthcare executive in Chicago gives a uniquely agile perspective on business relationships. “I am the only employee who has survived the organizational changes of the past twenty years,” he says, “I’ve worked with several CEOs. I have liked some better than others, but I go out of my way to treat everyone from the secretary to the CEO as if they are personally very special. Even difficult people have some likeable qualities. I’m the guy that notices what they are. I have found that if I find ways to like people, they like me back. I’m not saying I won’t get a pink slip someday; if or when that happens, I intend for it to be a very hard decision for someone to make.”

The business world has its share of slimy players but they cannot be described as agile. John Kotter, Harvard’s change management guru, refers to these individuals as “snakes” that quickly kill teams tasked with change initiatives. Ultimately their inability to build a base of trust and support among their peers hampers their ability to respond quickly when change comes at them unexpectedly. The business landscape is littered with the destroyed careers of unprincipled business players.

“It’s easy to mix up agility with lack of principle, lack of direction,” warns Bryan Oliver, a government consultant and retired Lieutenant Colonel who specializes in military training and tactical decision games (TDGs) for both military and business clients. “When you do that you lose the sense of mission,” he cautions. Highly agile individuals are principled and mission focused. They can’t afford to be Machiavellian because it contributes too much drag on their ability to move swiftly.

Opposed to the myths and misconceptions, highly agile professionals are not the stereotypical job hopping, opportunists who are constantly restless. Highly agile professionals tend to be loyal, principled and can exist at every level within an organization not just at the leadership level. What sets the agile player apart from their coworkers is their ability to not only survive change but to thrive in change-driven environments, turning changes into opportunities. How does an organization go about finding and hiring these individuals?

It's Not Work Until...

A lot of working people I know live for the weekends. What are we doing on the weekend that’s so much more interesting than the rest of the week is what I’d like to know! Is that a duh, question? Maybe, but I don’t think so.

Everybody needs a little down time to “vege” out in the hammock or read a book but beyond that if I’m only really engaged two days out of seven it’s easy to see that I don’t have much of a life.

This week I was interviewed by Bev Darr, a newspaper reporter from the Hannibal Courier Post. After about an hour of intense conversation and dialog I remarked, “You really seem to enjoy your work.”

“I love my work!” was Bev’s enthusiastic reply. “I’m 64 years old. I didn’t join the newspaper staff until I was forty. If I die at my desk I’ll be the happiest person in the world!”

Like a lot of women in her generation, Bev postponed her career dreams to raise a family. Bev admitted that being a small town reporter doesn’t pay much and certainly doesn’t include overtime but she spends several more hours each week at her desk than she’s paid for.

“People are always telling me to stop working so hard and go home. I finally put up a sign that said:

‘It’s not work until I’d rather be doing something else!’

Wow! What a perfect way to describe what it truly means to be working in the zone to be living your passion. My husband, who taught English and Drama for 35 years bought a theater three years and ago and is putting in twice the hours that he once did. Old friends and former colleagues who come to visit can’t help remarking on how much younger he looks! It’s not work until you’d rather be doing something else!

Are you working in your passion? If you're not you should really give it a try. It's your life, live it passionately!

Geeks & Geezers

The cross-generational workforce is getting a lot of buzz. I personally love the title of Warren G. Bennis and Robert J. Thomas, book on leadership styles, GEEKS & GEEZERS.

At a human resource meeting this week the topic of managing the new cross-generational workforce came up and the table nearly erupted in spontaneous outburst. It went something like this.

“They’ve hired this know-it-all baby boomer to work in our group and he’s driving us bonkers! He thinks he’s the only one that knows anything.”

“Our baby boomers aren’t retiring, they’re all looking for ‘less stressful’ work. In other words they don’t want to work at all.”

“It’s this new ‘generation-Y’ that we’re having difficulty with. They have such an attitude!”

“Better a ‘Y’ than an ‘X-er!’ We finally told our ‘X-er’ to please work from home. The rest of us who are there to work got tired of his constant harping on life balance and personal space.”

Obviously a nerve had been hit and everybody at the table, from Gen A to Z had an opinion.

It’s not surprising, really. For years head-hunters have been aware that the hiring manager is most likely to select a candidate within ten years of their own age. Trying to get them to consider someone even fifteen years older or younger is an up-hill battle and a task most professional recruiters consider a waste of their valuable time.

So what if you’re not forty to forty-five and you’re looking for a job? Suppose you’re twenty five or fifty-five? Do you have a shot? The answer is yes, you have a shot but you have to aim carefully.

For instance, if you’re a boomer trying to impress the thirty-something hiring manager with your wealth of experience and expertise you will probably bomb. On the other hand if you’re a new graduate and you so much as ask a boomer what the hours of a normal work week are you are likely to get a frosty reply.

The biggest mistake interviewees make is thinking that the interview is about them. It never is. An interview is always about the interviewer. It’s their problem that needs to be solved. So whether the boss is thirty-something or sixty-something, the best strategy for getting an offer is expressing appreciation for their issues. This requires more listening, less talking

Nothing new here! Great listeners always seem to find the best opportunities.

A Must Read!

Business consultant, Tom Peters has compiled an awesome list of random observations about being a good sales person. You can find the list online at: http://www.changethis.com/21.01.111ThoughtsOnSelling

I ran across his list of 111 Thoughts on Selling in the wee hours of the morning during a little midnight surfing. Trust me when I say it was worth losing sleep over! If you think that this list wouldn't apply to you because you're not a sales person think again. Every career professional is a salesperson. If you can't sell your ideas, your expertise, your point of view, you're career is either already circling the drain or it has no hope of ever getting off the ground.

Peters' observations on what it takes to be a good salesperson mirrors in many ways what it takes to stay extremely agile in today's changing market place. His pithy advice on relationship building and contingency planning were particularly reflective of the most successful agile executives I've interviewed to date.

Read & enjoy!

Building a Business Coalition

Whenever I mention that extraordinary networking skills are one of the key characteristics of highly agile professionals, people assume that I mean you have to be an extrovert to be highly agile. Not true. Many highly agile success stories are in fact very low key.

Building an effective business coalition is not about how many business cards you have in your rolodex, it's about who would pick up the phone if you called.

Every successful executive will tell you that they’ve gotten where they’re at because at least one professional ally or mentor took an interest in their career and helped them when they needed it most. The most important thing to understand about building a business coalition is that the web of support is reciprocal. It requires genuine interest.

Even if you aren't in a position to provide important business leads or favors at the moment, you can begin to build strong business relationships by being supportive and interested in other's agenda. Today you may be the one accepting favors. Tomorrow you will be the one lending a helping hand. It's how business gets done.

Behind the Scenes of a Shut-Out

Have you ever gone on a great job interview, sent out all the appropriate thank you notes and never heard from the company again? If this hasn’t personally happened to you yet, I bet it’s happened to someone you know. When I talk to my clients about the difficulties and frustrations of the interview process, this confusing lack of response almost always tops the list. Why are some companies so totally lacking in basic follow up courtesies?

Before I discuss some reasons why the corporate stonewall is so prevalent, let me say that I do not think it reflects well on any organization. When you are sitting on the other side the desk, I hope you treat applicants with the timely consideration and respect you would appreciate yourself.

Receiving the silent treatment after an interview feels awful, but it probably isn’t personal. It’s possible that you screwed up the interview so badly that the hiring manager would rather entertain an IRS investigative team than ever speak to you again, but in most cases the cold shoulder is a result of factors beyond your control and has very little to do with you personally.

Behind the Scenes of a Communication Shut Down

1. Urgency Changed - The most common reason for not getting a response after an interview is that the urgency for making a hire has changed. Perhaps a huge project or other crisis cropped up and the hiring manager simply is not going to deal with filling the position until he gets it under control. Sometimes an external change like the loss of a major client casts doubt on whether there is a need to fill the position. Sometimes it occurs to the hiring manager that his staff is pitching in pretty well and perhaps he can make it through the summer before having to hire someone. Technically the job is still open. Technically the hiring manger is still looking, but for all intents and purposes the position is on hold and the hiring manger is unlikely to rule anybody in or out until the need to fill the position either disappears entirely or becomes urgent again.

2. Internal Candidate Surfaced – You would think that companies would search out any viable internal candidates before starting the interview process, but in more cases than you would imagine an internal candidate surfaces half way through. The reasons are legion. An internal candidate will finally get up the nerve to put their name forward. An employee from another region unexpectedly decides to relocate to the area. An employee planning on relocating decides to stay, etc. When an internal candidate surfaces, the hiring manager is usually obligated to go through the motions and may remain difficult to reach until the internal candidate is ruled in or out.

3. Position Changed - This is another common reason contact cools. Again you would think that companies would figure out what they want before they start interviewing, but this is often not the case. Part way into the process, one of the interviewers will say, “I think what we really should be looking for is…” and it’s back to the drawing board. And until everybody is able to figure out what the new position will look like and how the candidates already interviewed fit into the new picture, it is unlikely that any communication will take place.

These are just a few of the reasons why communication after an interview can come to a screeching halt. The reasons have nothing to do with the candidate, but it is a problem none the less. And if you have enjoyed a particularly good interview, it is natural to start getting emotionally invested in the possibility of a new job and lose both focus and valuable time in your search process.

One of the most basic tenets of interviewing is to understand that time kills all deals. The reason for the communication breakdown doesn’t matter. Unless you are able to re-establish communication, you will quickly become a vague memory and lose any opportunity you may have had to proceed forward. It's important to stay pleasantly persistent until you get either a yes or a no or you have no chance at all.

Secret to Long Term Employment---A Great Exit Strategy

I've been interviewing highly agile executives regarding personal career agility for a research project I've dubbed, "The Agility Challenge." In over forty interviews so far with HR directors, corporate VPs, CEOs, CFOs, COOs I've learned a lot about how highly agile professionals use change to advance their careers. They have a basic underlying belief that change is almost always good for somebody so it makes sense to them to proactively position themselves to be that somebody.

As an executive career coach I can tell you that most professionals view workplace change as a nuisance, sometimes a disaster but rarely an opportunity. That some of the top-ranking executives have figured out how to use change opportunistically is not a huge surprise.

What has surprised me, however, is how many long-term , highly-placed executives have well developed, current and very specific exit strategies that have very little to do with what color their parachute is. Some of these executives have been with their current employer for 8, 12, 17, even 20+ years which means that their exit strategies have remained dormant, but dormant doesn't mean neglected. Following are some of the advantages highly successful, executives have cited for keeping their exit strategies current:

1. They take on high-risk/high-visibility projects. One senior executive with over 17 years experience in a Fortune 500 corporation attributed her rise to the very top echelon in the organization as an ability to take on high risk/high visibility projects. "I go to work every day with a Plan B, Plan C and Plan D in place. If I get a pink slip today I know where I will be working tomorrow.
2. They work because they want to. One key-executive shared that early on in her career she built what she colorfully termed a 'Screw You Account.' "I know that I can pick up and walk out the door at any time without being financially compromised. I'm less resentful and I think more productive because I show up to work every day because I want to not because I have to."
3. They make it easy to get promoted. One executive told me that the first thing they do when they accept a new position is to identify someone to take over their job. Actively mentoring a successor sounds counter-intuitive to job security. But they explained, "The first time I applied for a promotion in another department I was told they would love to have me but they were told that there was no one to take over my position. I've never made that mistake again."

Who would have guessed that a great exit-strategy is one of the best kept secrets to long-term employment?