Mike Lally

Watch and Enjoy

Where the Hell is Matt? (2008) from Matthew Harding on Vimeo.

How to Have an Excellent Review/Evaluation

After almost a year of being dark, John Porcaro from Microsoft is back to blogging. One of his first posts back is employee reviews. More specifically, he focuses on those of required to fill out our own reviews.

Beyond all of this, he provides some excellent thoughts around personal brand management.

Key Point #1: If you show up, do your job, make all your commitments and are generally doing a decent job, congrats, you just earned your paycheck. You did not earn a raise or a promotion. Deal with it. John provides a tip:

"...you should do your job in 80% of your time at work, and spend 20% of your time doing the job you want next."

Key Point #2: Don't wait to year end to write your evaluation. I look at this as a continuous process. You should always be evaluating yourself through the eyes of your manager. Everyone decision you make should be based on how it will add value to yourself and to your boss...maybe to the company after that. :)

KP #3. Be visible. Make sure people know who you are and what you do.

KP #4. Moments are more important than hard work. John says:

"Make every interaction you have count, especially with senior managers. If you're only in a few meetings a year with your VP, you have more to lose by keeping your mouth shut than any risk you might fear of saying something stupid....don't ever go into a meeting where you don't make a solid, hopefully memorable contribution."

KP #5. Ask for the promotion before your review. PLEASE do not be sitting in the chair being all mad that you didn't get the raise/promotion. Come on! You should have a very clear idea of what is going to transpire. YOU CONTROL IT. You should be clearly communicating personal goals with your manager. It is about communicating and expectation setting people.

Welcome back, John!

Sales, sales, sales, sales, sales, sell, sell, sell, sell, sell. Period.

Tom Peters has been doing a series of video blogs, vlogs, vimeos for a current competitor. His latest is:
Yes, You Are in Sales! It resonates with me. It is something I have been telling everyone that has worked for me. From the first help desk tech to my current process engineer. If you are going to get ANYWHERE, you need to be selling. It is a 24/7 thing. Or you can stay in your veal fattening pen and wither and die.

Tom Peters on Yes! You Are in Sales! from Tom Peters on Vimeo.

From the transcript:

"You’re an engineer, you’re an accountant, you’re an MBA, you’re a person involved in the technical stuff. Oh no, you aren’t. If you’re going to be remembered for having gotten things done, you are a salesman in the morning, you are a salesman in the afternoon, you’re a salesman at lunch, you’re a salesman at dinner. And then you dream about it at night. Sales, sales, sales, sales, sales, sell, sell, sell, sell, sell. Period."

Go check out the video. It is worth the 3 minutes of your time.

Gamifying Your Work Environment

Concluding my exploration of the HBR article I wrote about last week. The authors conducted a study on leadership in MMORPGs trying to gain insight into business environments of the future. Today I want to dive into their second conclusion: The business environment is a factor in successful leadership. (As opposed to the thought that leadership expertise lies within the individual - leaders are born or made.) There are 2 elements:

• Non-monetary incentives
• Hypertransparency of Information.

"Players know exactly what they should be doing and, to a large degree, have the tools they need to manage themselves. This suggests organizations can benefit by selectively "gamifying" the work environments in order to improve the quality of leadership..."

Nonmonetary Incentives: The authors recommend companies find a way to adapt MMORPG incentive systems to their environments to improve leadership effectiveness and "shorten the lag time between successful outcomes and the monetary compensation for those who contribute to them." Scrap the end of year bonus and reward me on a project by project basis.

Hypertransparency of Information: Warcraft for example makes a TON of information available on my character to anyone with a web browser. Check my hunter out at his Armory page. All info about me as a player is readily available to anyone. Imagine that in a work environment. Suddenly, being the bosses friend doesn't hold any water. You need to produce.

"Player data is constantly and automatically updated. They thus provide a kind of streaming video of a player's resume, including information about what he or she is like right NOW." Imagine your HR database behaving like THAT.

Distinctive Leadership Characteristics from Games Will be Relevant in Tomorrow's Business Environment

I want to dive a little deeper into the HBR article I wrote about last week. The authors conducted a study on leadership in MMORPGs trying to gain insight into business environments of the future. Today I want to dive into their first conclusion: Distinctive leadership characteristics from games will be relevant in tomorrow's business environment. These characteristics are:

• Leadership demands speed
• Risk taking is encouraged
• Leadership roles are often temporary.

Let's break them down.

Leadership Demands Speed: Leaders will continue to need to make decisions based on rapidly changing and often incomplete data. This is already happening. Corporate culture will have to adapt. Planning is nice. Contingency planning is nice. But we are going to have to prepare ourselves to change direction quickly.

Risk Taking Is Encouraged: Leaders will be forced to meet risk with a high degree of calmness. Failure in games is a CONSTANT. Yes, yes, I know...if you make a mistake in a game and die you can always start over. Lighten up. OF COURSE it is not the same in business. HOWEVER, balance will have to be found between mitigating risk and tolerating failure. Something we don't do so well.

Leadership Roles Are Often Temporary: Leadership in games is a TASK. "Not an identity." I love the profoundness of this statement. I am a full blown Type A, high D, aggressive, whatever you want to call it/label it. But I play a very flexible character in Warcraft that can take on leadership roles in certain situations. This is COMPLETELY contrary to how corporate America approaches leadership development. We try to identify "potentials" early and then begin moving them up the hierarchy. As the world changes, it will be IMPOSSIBLE for a single "leader" to be an expert in every area of the business.

Next time we will look at the authors' other conclusion in more depth.

WoW is Building The Leader's Of Tomorrow

The May issue of HBR has a great article about leadership in MMORPGs. The authors conducted a study on leadership in "guilds" (groups of gamers that join together to tackle games' larger challenges) under the premise that online games offer a sneak peak into the business universe of tomorrow. The authors speculated that the future business environment can be expected to feature:

• Fluid workforces
• Self-organized and collaborative work activities
• Decentralized, non-hierarchical leadership

The authors came to two sets of conclusions:

1. Distinctive leadership characteristics from games will be relevant in tomorrow's business environment. These characteristics are:

• Leadership demands speed
• Risk taking is encouraged
• Leadership roles are often temporary.

2. The business environment is a factor in successful leadership. (As opposed to the thought that leadership expertise lies within the individual - leaders are born or made.) There are 2 elements:

• Non-monetary incentives
• Hypertransparency of Information.

Over the next few days I will explore both of these conclusions. MMORPGs are in the Harvard Business Review people. Better start paying attention.

Why is Your Boss Managing Your Career?

My friend, Hannah, sent me a link to a posting from Cathy Kraft at CFO-Coach.com. Kraft provides an excellent summary the kool aid that I am handing out these days. Kraft strongly advises that you should be taking over the management of your career and not leaving it up to your boss or HR or your caseworker at the Labor Board.

Kraft advises you to: "Develop a sustainable strategy that positions you as an invaluable asset, and people will come looking for you." Easier said than done, I know. But that is what I am here to help you with!

Kraft provides a plan that is well covered ground here.

1. Know Thyself. Socrates, Heraclitus, Pytagoras, etc was right. It's been true for several thousand years. Do it.

2. Know Who Needs You and Why. If you don't have a marketing plan, email me and I will put you in touch with Hannah. She will charge you money but it will be worth it. Then you can thank me.

3. Get a Solid/Consistent Online Brand. No pictures of you doing keg stands ANYWHERE. What is your google page rank?

4. Network. Seriously, with all the tools available if you're not doing this stop reading this blog.

5. Identify and Articulate Your Unique and Compelling Brand. Be a hammer! Hannah can help you with this as well.

Get busy.