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Personal Reputation

The Management Pocketbooks Pocket Correspondence Course

Pocketblog has gone back to basics. This is part of an extended management course.


A career in management is built on the reputation you create for yourself.  This is not about arrogantly promoting yourself at every opportunity, but it is about managing the opportunities you seize and your personal PR.

Exercise 1: 15 Minutes of Fame

‘In the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes’ said Andy Warhol.  What will you be famous for?  Take some time to note down what you are good at, what you want to become good at and how this can help you make a positive name for yourself.

When you have done this, keep an ear open for projects and initiatives that you can participate in at work and in your community.  To increase your chances of finding good opportunities, increase your network.

Exercise 2: Expand your Network

Make a list of all of the people you know in your organisation who could help you develop a strong reputation.  Classify each as a major or minor player (you will need to review this list and these classifications from time to time).  Now look at each and decide whether you need to strengthen your relationship with them, through meeting for coffee, offering support on one of their projects, or having lunch with them.

Exercise 3: Review your CV

We looked at preparing a CV in a blog called ‘New Job’.  It is time to review your CV and to give it a little more impact.  Work on your CV to make sure:

  1. It is absolutely clear what you do and why you are the best person to do it
  2. It demonstrates why I should trust you with the best, most challenging role
  3. The quality of its presentation, layout and production reflects the quality you want to portray for yourself

Exercise 4: Who are you?  What do you do?

These are two questions that often throw people.  Yet they ought to be the ones we really know the answer to.  So write each question at the top of a sheet of paper and start jotting snippets, phrases and words that will start to answer the question.

Gradually shape those gobbets into a coherent and concise answer.  Now word craft your answer to give it real impact.

Finally, practise it, until you can say it clearly and correctly without referring to your notes.  Make sure you have the final version properly recorded in your notebook and, from time to time, review and update it.  When you do that, always start from scratch.

Further Reading

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Being Organised

The Management Pocketbooks Pocket Correspondence Course

Pocketblog has gone back to basics. This is part of an extended management course.


No matter how good you are at your job, you will never be as good as you can be until you organise your work effectively.  This means making time for things like filing and time management.  Here are ten top tips:

  1. Keep a To Do list, but never let it be your primary time management tool.  At the end of each day, look at the things on your to do list and decide which ones will be on tomorrow’s To Day list.  Put any things that are substantial in terms of complexity, duration or importance into your diary.
  2. Follow President Eisenhower’s advice and always distinguish what is important from what is merely urgent.
  3. Keep a day-book – a notebook that lives on your desk and in which you record any conversations in person or over the phone.  As soon as the phone rings, or as soon as you decide to make a call, open your day book, write the date and note the person that you are speaking with and their affiliation.  You are now ready to record any comments or agreements.
  4. Use a multi-part folder to plan your work a week ahead.
    Weekly Work Planning folder
  5. Periodically make time to clear the clutter and do your filing.  Better still, embrace the principles of the 5S Methodology:
    – Sorting – only what you need
    – Set in order – a place for everything
    – Shine-up – tidy and clean
    – Standardise – uniformity
    – Sustain – make tidying up a routine
  6. File papers in themed folders.  If your filing system isn’t working for you; start a new one.  But don’t waste time transferring all your old papers into the new system.  Instead, just transfer any papers you access in your day-to-day work.  Very soon, your old system will become an archive of the materials you don’t need.
  7. If you need to make a lot of calls, keep a call sheet, on which you record the person and purpose (and number if it isn’t in your organiser.  Fill gaps in your day with a call – or take the sheet with you when you travel.
  8. You probably keep a to do list.  Do you keep a list of things you have done?  Specifically, things you did that should result in something happening: a book you ordered should turn up, a message you left should be returned, a request you made should be fulfilled.  Keep a ‘waiting for…’ list so that you never drop the ball by forgetting something.
  9. Do one thing at a time.  Multi-tasking is not as effective nor as efficient as focus.
  10. Redundancy: if it’s important, have a back-up plan.  Have spares, have alternatives.  Stash a bit of spare cash in every bag you have – and spare pens.  Leave early and plan to have a coffee before a meeting.  Take reading or work wherever you go.

Further Reading

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Type A and Type B

The Management Pocketbooks Pocket Correspondence Course

Pocketblog is going back to basics. This is part of an extended course in management skills.


Are you a ‘rush-rush-got-to-get-things-done’ sort of a manager, or are you a ‘take my time; want to get things right’ type?  Or are you nicely balanced.  Doctors Mike Friedman and Ray Rosenman identified these two styles as, respectively, Type A and Type B personalities.  When I tell you they were cardiac specialists, you might start to worry.  There is no need.  Take the test and then I’ll explain.

Exercise

For each of these nine statements, score yourself 0 to 10 according to how close you lie to the first statement (a low score) or to the second statement (a high score).

Type A-B Thermometer

.

Casual and relaxed 0 … 10 Often feel on edge

Slow and deliberate 0 … 10 Always rushing

Dislike deadlines 0 … 10 Love working to deadlines

Patient 0 … 10 Impatient

Express your feelings 0 … 10 Suppress your feelings

One thing at a time 0 … 10 Lots of things at once

Ready in advance 0 … 10 Just in time

Plan and prepare 0 … 10 Just do it

Enjoy relaxing 0 … 10 Feel guilty when relaxing

.

Interpretation

Friedman and Rosenman predicted that strong Type A personalities would be prone to heart disease and die young.  They were wrong.  Many of their patients did have a cluster of personality traits that they characterised as Type A, but only a few of them were truly predictive of illness – and not the ones relating to rushing about.

However, both Type A and Type B personalities each have their own challenges in operating in an organisation.  Let’s look at some.

Dealing with other People

Inevitably, we deal best with people who are like us.  We find them easy to understand and their habits agreeable.  Type As readily get impatient with Type Bs.  They want the B to hurry up and despair that the B has no sense of urgency about things.  Type Bs find Type As’ hurry annoying; they would rather the A would slow down and do things properly and are concerned about quality standards.

Dealing with Admin

Type Bs will take on the organising and admin tasks as another thing to do carefully and well.  Type As – unless they really value it – will rush through it, wanting to move quickly onto ‘proper work’.  They will then get angry when they can’t find what they need or get what they want.

Dealing with Interruptions

Type Bs may not welcome an interruption – especially when they are engrossed in something – but when they accept it has happened, they will turn their whole attention to you.  This is great for the interrupter and can lead to positive outcomes.  But when the interrupter has a non-critical issue, Type Bs can lose valuable time on the work they were doing.  Not so Type A’s.  The interruption may be unwelcome or a welcome distraction when they are starting to feel bored, but the Type A will soon be tapping their foot, keen to get on.

Managing Time

Type A personalities get masses done; often just in time and at breakneck pace.  Quality can suffer, especially when they try to multi-task, but it is Type As who are at the heart of the (perfectly true) cliché: ‘if you want it done; ask a busy person.’  Type Bs focus on one thing at a time and do it well.  They plan well and execute effectively, as long as they don’t get held up by an interruption or by finding a problem and working deliberately to solve it.

Exercise: Balance is Everything

The most successful people inevitably balance both personality types.  Look at your weak points and note them down.  What strategies can you use to neutralise them?

Further Reading

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Self-Help: Therapy for the DIY Age

Self-Help

Self-HelpSelf-help wasn’t always a multi-million dollar industry. Its origins go way back to when the first caveman or cavewoman got up off the floor, brushed themselves down, and got back on with it.

So what is there to say about a Big Idea that’s been around forever and is almost certainly wired into our genes?

For me, it is the self-help industry that is the story. It’s a story of:

  • academic rigour and genuine solutions, alongside
  • mindless credulity and outright charlatanry

Continue reading Self-Help: Therapy for the DIY Age

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Strengths: Character Strengths and Signature Strengths

Strengths

StrengthsStrengths are the things we are naturally good at. Everyone knows that. And it has become something of a commonplace that:

We should play to our strengths

In fact, that seeming truism has been underpinned by a lot of academic research over the last 20 years or so, since Martin Seligman formally kicked-off the discipline of Positive Psychology.

So it is in the Positive Psychology sense that we shall examine what strengths are, and why they matter to us.

Continue reading Strengths: Character Strengths and Signature Strengths

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Best Year Ever

Best Year Ever

It’s January the First. Happy New Year. And wouldn’t it be great if you could make this year your best year ever?

Best Year EverWell this is the mission of one of the biggest names in today’s self-help industry, Michael Hyatt. His ‘Your Best Year Ever’ online program has been running for a number of years now. And last year, he published it as an ordinary book. No more are we reliant on a high-priced wait-listed program. For a few pounds or dollars, you can read his guidance and follow his plan.

2019 promises to be a difficult year, globally. So, let’s find out how you can have your best year ever.

Continue reading Best Year Ever

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Grit: Perseverance and Passion

Grit

GritEvery few years we seem to get a new aspect of psychology that is ‘more important to success than intelligence’. In the 1990s it was Emotional Intelligence. In the Twenty-teens, it’s Grit.

So what can we learn from a woman whose father told her that she was no genius? Well, when that woman has a string of academic, commercial, and social successes to her credit by her early 40s, perhaps we should listen to her.

Continue reading Grit: Perseverance and Passion

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Marginal Gains: The Magic 1 per cent

Marginal Gains
Marginal Gains
Marginal Gains

There is one idea that can increase your effectiveness exponentially. And that’s not a boast: it’s mathematically precise. It’s the concept of marginal gains.

Sometimes a big idea seems new, because lots of people are talking about it. But in fact, this one is a very old idea. Everyone is talking about marginal gains because this old idea has had one more recent and stunning demonstration.

What makes the idea of Marginal Gains so interesting to us, is the way it ties together a number of other big ideas.

Continue reading Marginal Gains: The Magic 1 per cent

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Ikigai – the Japanese route to a good life

Ikigai

IkigaiWhy do you get up every morning? Is it out of a sense of obligation, duty, or even compulsion? Or is it ikigai?

In Japanese culture, ikigai is a reason for getting up in the morning. it is the meaning to your life and your reason for being. It is your ‘raison d’être’, but in a more profound sense than English speakers commonly use that French phrase.

Ikigai is a big idea for English speakers, because we don’t have our own word, but the concept is important.

Ikigai is pronounced: ih-kee | guy-(ee)

Continue reading Ikigai – the Japanese route to a good life

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10,000 Hours and Deliberate Practice

10,000 Hours and Deliberate Practice
10,000 Hours and Deliberate Practice
10,000 Hours and Deliberate Practice

How do you become an expert at something, and truly master it? The answer, some will tell you, is with 10,000 hours of practice.

The so-called rule of 10,000 hours originated in a best-selling book, ‘Outliers’, by journalist, Malcolm Gladwell. He based the ideas at the core of his book on research that Anders Ericsson carried out, along with Ralf Krampe, and Clemens Tesch-Römer.

Then, he was a Professor at the University of Colorado. Now he’s at Florida State University. But here is the thing… Ericsson has been openly critical of the 10,000 hours formulation. And that offers both good news and bad for any of us who want to become world-class masters of any field.

Continue reading 10,000 Hours and Deliberate Practice

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