You are in debt

I remember this week a conversation that reminded me the importance of being grateful for what you have and where you are. In a world that is constantly pushing you to revolve about your next big thing or to benchmark with the folk next door, you may risk to neglect such an elemental attitude as staying grateful for what you are able to do today.

- o -

A quick stop by a supermarket in a rural town while on vacation, for one reason or another I was wearing the corporate t-shirt with the small logo on it. It didn't go unnoticed for the young man serving as cashier. 

- Do you work there, sir? 

- Yes, I do. 

- Gee… I would love to work in a place like that someday. It is kind of my dream, You know? I love computers and I’d like to go to the capital and study something related. 

- If you really are into it you should definitely pursue that. Though you don’t have to go that far, you have the TEC or INA quite near. 

- Thanks, Sir! Here is your bill, have a nice day. 

- Good day for you too. Make sure you follow-up on that dream. I mean it. 

Let’s not mention right now the fact that I live in a Country that, despite its challenges and misadventures I usually complain about, allowed me such an answer for this young man. A fine university and a good technical school (both state run) with branches actually close to the rural place we were at. That in itself should be a motive of reflection and gratitude. 

Let’s mention that I feel good about the things that I have been able to achieve, but I don’t consider them particularly exceptional. I am not Bill Gates nor Linus Torvalds. I haven’t started my own business. I am not yet at the C-level of my company and I don’t have a PhD. So I am not really used to think that what I do for living could be an inspiration nor a dream for someone else. Yet that day I learned in the least expected place that it certainly was. 

Here is my point. Most of the time we are too busy thinking about tomorrow, the opportunities to come, the positions to pursue or the folks whose path we should follow. But we seldom take time to value today, the opportunities that took us here, and the folks who would like to follow our path. 

If you haven’t thought about it yet, I challenge you to do that today. 

Because your debt is not only with yourself, your family, your future opportunities or your own dreams. Your debt is also with the folks that would sincerely like to make it as far as you have in your path. Because whether you know it or not, you have both a chance and an obligation to inspire someone, most likely someone younger than you, every day. It comes with the journey.

- Sergio Calvo

How to get the most of your Work from Home

Working from Home is here to stay. Even aggressive moves like the one taken recently by Yahoo’s CEO, asking her entire workforce to come back to the office, are not going to revert this tendency. As more companies adopt this model as an advantage to their employees, more people face the challenges associated with it. This week I discuss 4 points to make the most of this way of work.

Plan ahead – working from home removes most of the routine involved in going to work at the office. The boundaries between work and life tend to become a bit blurry. So it is useful to define some rituals to help you keep those boundaries and stay healthy and productive. Define a specific space to use as your home office, comfortable enough to stay there long periods. Ideally in a room where you could close the door and stay focused while others do their chores as usual. Try to stick to a specific start time and end time for your work related duties. This is easier said than done, but having at least a rough time frame, will help you keep your balance. You may want to get fully dressed as you would usually do when going to the office. And also to define a contingency plan on what to do if there is a power or connectivity failure. 

Stay flexible and professional – nothing will help you the most than staying flexible and professional while working from home. If there is an important assignment, meeting or activity, pack your stuff and go the office. If the connection got broken at home, move to another place so you can continue your duties, or make the actual trip to the office if possible. This will show your commitment and judgment to your peers and managers. You will be showing that you are accountable for your results at all times and that you deserve the kind of confidence that is given to you in a work from home model. 

Stay connected and engaged – if you are at the office it is pretty easy to walk some steps and talk to your colleagues about an urgent matter or a new idea. You can use a conference room or a blackboard to clarify something. People can notice if you are there but not are your desk because of your belongings or something like that. If you are at home you sacrifice that to some extent. So take the time to connect with your colleagues and costumers through the phone, conference calls and chats. If you will be out for a while, don’t forget to update your status in your communication tools. Make your cell phone number and your home number available at least to your closest colleagues and customers. 

Help your family to adapt – if you are working from home, you are physically at home but you are not really there. You are at work. You can’t play with the kids or the dog anytime they want. You can’t answer every question your loved one makes you right away. This is a change that doesn't happen auto magically. You should talk with your family about it and set some ground rules to help them adapt to the fact that they have you close but not necessarily there in all the sense of the word. For example you can decide to use the door closed when attending meetings and asking them to quietly knock on the door before going into the room where you are working. 

Til next week, 

- Sergio Calvo.

I Got a Transformer!

A few days ago I got a small transformer toy as a gift from the executives on the program we've been working all year long. As the end of the program came this week, our upper executives wanted to provide the Program Team with small metaphors to remind all of us about the type of role we've played for the team and for the success of the overall program. 

In my case the transformer comes to remind that I played different roles during the year as the needs appeared. I shared my main role with a colleague to balance the workload of planning and leading execution between ourselves, since the effort was more than a single Project Manager could handle alone. However since the load had some ups and downs, whenever it was a little down I didn't mind to jump into secondary projects requiring attention, or to do a little bit of management over ongoing operations, while my colleague stayed on top of our main effort.

Another of the Project Managers on the account team got a Batman. In this case it intended to remind all of us about the very heavy amounts of time that he devoted to our Program. Literally working day and night around the clock managing his assigned duties, which were the most challenging of the entire effort. Of course he was also working with another colleague, she worked the same kind of crazy hours that he did.

Our Program Office Manager got an 8-ball game, one of those that provides you with "magical" answers to the questions you make. In his case this reflected the fact that at any given time he was able to provide a very accurate picture of every Project which was Part of the program, managing the numbers and statistics with very good certainty. To do that he invested important amounts of time and thought to provide the Team with the tools required to keep those statistics up to date.

This one has bee one of the most challenging professional experiences I have ever had. And also one of the best teams I've had the pleasure to work with. It is very rewarding to reach its end with the satisfaction that we were able to deliver on time, on budget and with very kind words from our customer about the quality of our job. 

As I let it go let me ask you this: what kind of metaphor/toy do you think you could get by looking into the role you have been playing lately in your team?

Best,
Sergio.

Let's Follow the Sun!

My Saturday this past weekend started at 3:45 am local time to do some cool Project Management for the day. I had to take over at 4:00 am from a fellow Project Manager that started our weekend’s work the day before. It would have been very hard for her to stay overnight, however it was more manageable since she was working from a time zone a couple of hours behind me. For the next 8 hours I was the main point of coordination between our customers, located in a time zone a few hours ahead of me, and our technical teams split in three different continents. After my shift, another fellow Project Manager would continue with our work and then I would came to work for another 4 hours and finish our agreed deliverable for the weekend, by the end of the day.

This model of work is called follow the sun and it is the de facto work model in any global corporation nowadays. Such a name reflects the fact that at any given time is daytime somewhere around the world. So if you have people from all over the world working together, you can take advantage of it by having someone making progress at all times; without the need to burn any team member. Even if you work in a medium or small business, you are very likely to come across this type of situation if your customer is a company of certain size, or is based in a different time zone. This involves a series of challenges that are not to be taken lightly. 

As I rest from the very demanding journey I had yesterday; I share here a few tips to help you meet that kind of challenge. 

Wait a second! – You may be thinking something like: ok, why should I care about joining such a thing that you call a model of work? Well there are different factors. First, if you work for a corporation or in an industry where you interact a lot with customers from around the world, this is the usual model. Whether you know it or not, whether you like it or not. If you really want to advance your career, you wont be able to avoid this kind of project forever. 

Then there is the nature of the project; there are cases like the project we are undertaking  now in which you deal with the information systems of big companies, systems that keep their operations running. There is no other time to work with them other than the weekend, following very specific protocols and executing to a very demanding and complex schedule. If we want to be successful in doing this kind of project, we need to align with its nature and inherent constraints.

Water in the Dessert – In this global setting you will work with lots of people doing several different things. Inside your company, with your customer and with the many third parties which are very likely to be involved. A fully developed and comprehensive contact list, including every team and every team member involved in the effort is like having water in the dessert. Without such a list the amount of time and energy that you will waste looking for the right folk that you require to perform a task is endless. 

Who is awake right now? – You must have some certainty about who is working or is ready to work at any given time. Given all the different time zones involved in a project you can’t take for granted that your colleague on the opposite corner of the world will be up and running at the very same time that you are. Plan ahead. If there are different shifts involved, you should require each team to confirm the team members that will be taking ownership of every shift. You should also get in touch beforehand with any colleagues from which you need participation, so they are aware and properly aligned when you require them to be. If you forgot about something, solved it inmediately.

Effective communication – You should manage communication effectively. Making sure that the message reached the other end, was understood as you intended to communicate it. More important you need to make sure that the message will trigger the pertinent action on time. Let's put it this way: sending an email or putting a request in a system has nothing to do with getting something done. An email sitting in an inbox, or a request aging in some system doesn’t do things. People do things. For the normal course of business you may have the luxury to wait some time to know if the email arrived or not, or to know if the request was attended or not. If time is constrained or if whatever you need to be done is important, at least use the chat. Ideally pickup the phone and talk to the person to make sure that both of you are on the same page. You need to use your judgment carefully to differentiate each situation. If you are not fully positive about something, communicate until you are positive. 

Emotional Intelligence – working long hours during the weekend, early in the morning or in the middle of the night is not something easy. No matter if you like to work hard or if you don’t need too much sleep. It is likely that you come into the need to wake someone up, or to call at a bad time, etc. Some people have flexible personalities and will be responsive to your requests; others are very structured and won’t react very positively to something like that. You need to have this reality present at all times and act with empathy in any interaction. 

Your work life balance – This kind on effort definitely has an impact in your work life balance, and in the life or your loved ones. Be mindful of their needs and align them with the efforts you are undertaking as part of the project. Remember that your team members and their the families will be also impacted. It is your responsibility to advocate in their favor in as much as possible. Plan ahead of time both your working time and your personal time. It is a very demanding pace that you will be required to accommodate, arrange with your employer and your management to get back some of the time you have invested. It would not be realistic to pretend to get back all of your time, but the goal is a healthy balance. Even if you don’t work in a global company, if you are involved in Project Management you will face this kind of situation at some point.

- Sergio Calvo

Do you know a Good Mechanic?

Have you stop to notice how people usually get a good mechanic for their car? 

When was the last time that you asked for the professional certificate of a Mechanic? 

We do not ask that kind of question, do we? Most of the time getting a mechanic is a matter of word of mouth. Nothing speaks better than a running engine with a smooth and consistent sound. If your friend got her car up and running by the time you asked, that mechanic would likely get a recommendation, and another customer. A bad sound on that engine and both the reference and the new customer may fly away. 

However, at first sight the IT industry may seem to revolve in a pretty different way. There are certifications for every technology you can imagine under the sun. There are Microsoft certifications, Oracle certifications, SAP certifications, Cisco certifications, Governance certifications, I.T.I.L certifications, Project Management certifications, Security certifications, C.O.B.I.T certifications, you name it. The path to a new position usually seems to stop by at least one of those tiny little papers. 

Professional certifications are indeed a widespread method to demonstrate knowledge in a given field today, to provide a common jargon which facilitates professional interaction, and to achieve recognition from peers and upper managers. However we shall not forget that their ultimate goal is to demonstrate professional exercise and practice hours. 

Similar to the analogy about mechanics, a professional certification can work pretty well on top of a respectable expertise and a proven success track in your field. But a professional certification may not succeed covering up an expertise which falls short to the demands of a given position, or a poor field performance. 

In fact, attempting a certification in such situations is an effort prone to failure, potentially causing yourself and your company loses in terms of time and money. Even if you achieve it, you will find out soon that the actual practice provides insights and a learning process that the hours of study and practice tests simply cannot provide. 

So, this doesn't mean that you should not pursue a professional certification. This means that you should keep it in perspective, focusing on the expertise and professional knowledge that it demonstrates or that it should demonstrate. 

Sooner or later you will come into a colleague that for a reason or another may not be certified, but which still will be a top notch practitioner of the discipline. You will also come into a colleague whose certification will not do very much to favor a lack of real life skills or the lack of drive truly required to thrive in the professional field. 

Till next week,

- Sergio Calvo.

Unleashing a Virtuous Circle

I didn’t hear about a Virtuous Circle until a classmate mentioned it during our MBA program. I was much more familiar with its distant cousin: the Vicious Circle; which unfortunately seems to enjoy greater popularity. On both of them there are series of actions or events where one of them reinforces or triggers the next one, in a chain that develops its own synergy. The Virtuous Circle, unlike his counterpart, deals with a constructive synergy. So, how can we develop a positive environment which reinforces itself through actions from ourselves and those from of our team members? How can we unleash a virtuous circle?

Set the ground rules – Authentic leaders determine values to which the team sticks no matter what happens. They communicate them clearly and use them to direct. These principles are a powerful force to align the team and to set ground rules for a path of increasing performance. I remembered this once again when I was confronted by my boss’s boss when we started working together. I was delivering a status report and I didn’t have details on every deliverable. So when he started asking tough questions, I candidly said what I thought the status would be. He replied: I don’t need your thoughts right now; at this time I need the facts; do you have them? I hesitated for a minute trying to elaborate something but then I changed my mind: I don’t have them right now. He closed: That’s ok, make sure to get them and come back to me as soon as possible. After providing him with the full status, I reviewed the subject with my boss to get his feedback. He said that it was one of the core principles of that executive: be hard on issues, be soft on people. I identified immediately with such a principle and I was onboard, eager to demonstrate my commitment by the next status meeting.

Get out of your comfort zone – virtue cannot be cultivated if we keep sitting all they long in our old desk doing the same boring things over and over again, or by doing nothing at all. So we can pick a specific action which is small enough to score us a win with some certainty, but significant enough to force us out of our comfort zone. The idea is to stick to it until it becomes a habit. This will allow us to increase our performance in a consistent manner and it will keep us motivated to try new things. Staying some minutes late at work to plan the next day or entering some minutes early to read an article or to take some training would work pretty good. 

Be sincerely proud of your colleagues – an environment of healthy competence is a good thing, but to stay healthy it should be kept greed free. Sometimes we are too busy thinking about ourselves and our own success, that we take away all the air around us. Take some time to analyze your colleagues and find out the things they are particularly good at. This will prove useful when the team faces new challenges. Don’t be afraid to praise a good decision or a significant contribution when you see it. This will reinforce a positive environment where people we’ll feel recognized and would like to contribute often with their abilities.

Learn from your mistakes – There are certain questions durin a job interview that aim to uncover how a person deals with its own mistakes or weak points. Unless you are a super hero you have a few of those, right? However some candidates have a peculiar ability to remove themselves from the scenery whenever they talk about things that didn’t went good on the assignments for their teams. Placing dirt under the carpet serves no purpose to anyone. Whenever you do something wrong, be prompt to acknowledge it, review what caused it and take the necessary steps to correct it. In this way you will take real advantage of the price that you will pay for a mistake anyway. It will also set a tone for the team to assume mistakes and failure in an adequate manner, which they will need to face sooner or later.

- Sergio A. Calvo

You work hard, get paid right!

A few weeks ago an add on the Atlanta subway called my attention. It was from a small law firm offering  advice for claims on people's salaries. Its heading was atractive: You work hard. Get paid right! Who doesn't want to get paid right? Ok, but what do we mean when we say to get paid right? The answer on top of mind could be a very high amount on the payment form. However most of the time there will be someone else earning more than us, and most of the time there will be somebody else earning less than us. A good salary for someone could be average or even poor for another person. Even for the same person it can change at different times. 

Wait a second! It is not all about the money, right? Again, that would depend. But in general terms yes, that is not necessarily all about the money. That's pretty much what Abraham Maslow proposes in his theory about motivation: Different people have different needs and interests, and these are complex in nature. Usually a higher need can't be really covered until a more basic one has been covered. In a similar way, we´ll probably be more interested in a good balance among all our needs, than we would be about getting all in a single category (money) and nothing in all others.

So, what can be embedded into what the management jargon calls a "compensation package"? How can you assess what your job really has to offer you? How to assess if your job offer is truly appealing to your team members? How can you fairly compare what your current position offers against a potential opportunity?

Alignment, first and foremost

Before asking if you are getting paid right or not, there is a more important question. A question that asks if you are working in a place which is a good fit for you, and a place where you can fit properly. Answering that can look tricky at first, but it is worth the effort. There are some direct questions that can help to clarify that. What drives you? What are your values? What are your professional goals and aspirations? What's the organizational culture of your company? What are their values? How do they do things? Is there a match between both sets of answers? Even if we have answered them before, it is useful to ask them from time to time; they allow us to understand where we are, where do we come from and where do we want to go.

That is what alignment is all about! There are organizations with poor performance, and there are employees with poor performance. However,  something that happens more often is an employee with an adequate performance working for a company performing well, but with poor alignment between one another. You can have an extremely good salary, but if you do something that at the end of the day you don't like, or in a place that you don´t like, your satisfaction will decrease sooner or later. The questions above will provide you with the insights you need when assessing your current company, position and compensation package. Or the degree to which your organization fits a current team member or potential team member.

Cash is King

While it is true that cash is not the only thing to consider when thinking about a professional position, it is also true that in our society money is an important part of everything we do. Wether we like that fact or not. This means that the salary is an important part of what we do. So, you should be interested not only in getting the pay check every month, but in some other aspects that can save you headaches if you put them to play on your side.

First is to know if you are getting paid what was agreed, on time and every month. If you work for a serious company that´s probably a redundant question, but not necessarily. If you are not, I suggest you to start looking for a company which cares more about the needs of their people. You don´t need to join a global corporation to ensure it is a place that does right the basic things. Many small or medium companies are well managed. A similar question is if the company has a reputation of honoring its tax duties and other pertinent laws, if they don´t, they can get in trouble; if they get in trouble, your pay check or even yourself may end up in trouble.

If you are looking into an oportunity, it is important to make sure that you are comparing oranges to oranges and not oranges to apples. You need to make your due dilligence to understand what´s behind the number you have in front of you, and behind the overall compensation package. A higher number doesn´t necesarily mean that you will do better. Also there is the question about how much higher is the number; and how your costs will change if you decide to make the change.


Benefits in Kind

Your needs can be very different from those or another person. They can also be very different for yourself from one season to another. Depending on what your needs and interests are, you can certainly value benefits which are different from money, or at least different from a number in your pay check. Because of the nature of such benefits, companies are usually good at determining what these are (or they should be good at it), so they can craft their compensation packages in an appealing way for their employees.

These packages can be really diverse, for example they can range from policies around time off and holidays, medical and life assurance, budget for team activities, professional training and development, performance bonuses for employees, etc; all the way up to car assignment and usage, relocation assistance and bonuses for executives.

So understand what is included in the package, how much it aligns with your current needs and how much value that represents for you. This is even more important if you are assessing a potential opportunity. Keep also in mind that these conditions can change from one business unit to the other, even in the same company. So take the time to ask the appropriate questions to make your decisions in an appropriate manner. Also make sure that you do not take for granted the benefits that you currently have. For some of us the decision to pursue a different opportunity relies on a minimum threshold we set to justify the effort that going to another place requires. Even if the threshold is positive and favors a new place, if it is too low it may just not be worth it.   

Overall Perspective

Your job can offer you, or should offer you, more benefits than just your salary. The set of benefits that you get is the so called compensation package. These benefits change from company to company and from industry to industry. As the name implies it, they are a package. If you want to get the most of it, you should have very good clarity on what those are, how they translate into actual money and, more important, how much do you value them as an overall set; depending on your circumstances and interests. By following this process you can discover that you are getting paid better than you think, or that it is time for you to pursue other opportunities. It is too risky to take those decisions without an apropriate decision making process.

- Sergio Calvo.
Weekly Article #2