the 5 o’clock test

Scribbled by Steve on March 15, 2010 - Comments

You’ve probably heard the saying that “we’re all in business for ourselves.” This statement resonates with me.  Everyone is, in effect, an entrepreneur.  You may be an entrepreneur with a narrow set of expertise and only one client:  an employee, in other words.  Yet you are not a permanent part of your employer’s company.  As you move on through life, you will be an entrepreneur of your own brand, seeking to move from one client at a time to another.  You may become increasingly specialized in your services, but the brand – you – is still something you’ll attempt to promote and improve upon as you move from client/employer to client/employer.

Even if you buy into this mindset, though, it can be tough to think like an entrepreneur in a 9-to-5 job. An employee has a fundamentally different way of viewing the world than an entrepreneur does.  One of the main ways you can tell if you’re an employee with an entrepreneurial mindset versus an employee with an employee mindset is this:  do you worry about being at your desk at 5:00 PM (and also, 9:00 AM)?

If you have the employee mindset, you’ll want to make sure you’re a team player. You’ll have a contract specifying a minimum of 40 hours per week, and you’ll watch that clock to make sure you are in your seat 40 hours (at a minimum).  The employee mindset says that the “where” (sitting at your desk) is more important than the “what” (getting results).   The employee is banking on ‘face time’ being the critical measurement of success.  If you have ten hours of work to do or two hours, the hours will be the same.

The entrepreneurial employee’s mindset is different. If you’re in at 10 and leave at 3, it doesn’t matter as long as you get the job done.  If you need to be there at 5 (or 6, or 7), fine.  If you can leave early, also fine.  The employee with the entrepreneur’s approach knows that his or her “brand” is based on whether or not goals were met.  Whether you sat in your desk an extra two hours after your work was done for the day, just so you were there at 5, doesn’t matter.

Has anyone in a professional career has ever bragged in an interview about how they could always be counted on to stay in the office until 5:00?   Employers don’t care.  Clients don’t care, either.  Skills and results are the only thing that matters, right?

Unfortunately that’s not true. A lot of lip service is given in the corporate environment to work/life balance and the idea that only results matter, but anyone who spends more than a day or two in a cubicle knows this isn’t true.  Whether or not you have butt firmly planted in chair at 5:00 matters nothing to your next job, true.  But in office politics – the business of surviving in and flourishing in your current job – ‘face time’ is critical.  Look around the office and see how many people are coasting, working at less than full potential, simply so they have their tired face visible when 5:00 rolls around.  These people may understand, deep down, that there is no real reason to be adhering to a 9-to-5 schedule, but that’s the corporate culture and it seems unlikely to change.

If you feel the desire to be in your seat at 5:00, fine. Many people are more comfortable not rocking the boat.  But if you feel that you NEED to be in your seat at 5:00 or you’re going to be disciplined, you’re not in an organization that values results.  You’re being paid to fill a budgeted position so a manager can move up the corporate ladder by pointing to his management of a team of 20.   And before you think you can just coast along showing up at 5:00, remember this:  managers with that mindset weren’t born.  They were sitting in your seat 20 years ago, waiting for the clock to move past 4:59…

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linklings, small business energy edition

Scribbled by Steve on March 12, 2010 - Comments

I’m jumping the gun on something I’ll write about more next week, but I attended a very interesting function this week. It was a launch party for a magazine in which I was a contributing writer, and most of the attendees were entrepreneurs, small business owners or reps of banks and other service companies (payroll, etc.) who served small businesses.  The energy and enthusiasm of people with an entrepreneurial bent versus a similar gathering of corporate types was stunning.

I’ve been to entrepreneurial gatherings before, and attended more corporate events than I can count, but this event reminded me how different the energy is between the two. And I’m not bashing corporate types out of hand; even though I’m not a corporate employee I’m still firmly embedded in corporate life, and consider myself part of corporate culture rather than entrepreneurial culture.  I was impressed by the people I met and made a resolution to start spending more time at networking events for entrepreneurs and less mixing with corporate types, even though that’s where I get my work. Sometimes it’s about inspiration, not trolling for clients.

On to the links:
Census Pre-Notice: Government Waste At Its Finest.:  This letter absolutely appalled me, as well.  This letter, in fact, is the type of thing that makes me sympathize for a few seconds with the ’small government’ crowd.  Whoever the moron is who decided to send out this letter
Implementing PAYGO Rules For Personal Finances:  Don’t buy something until you either make more money or save on something else.  Radical concept.  I don’t approve of the politics behind the recent shenanigans to block the extension of unemployment benefits, but why this is such a radical concept for DC explains a lot about the mess our country’s in.
How to Negotiate Remote Work With An Employer:  This is the holy grail for me.  Sometimes I manage to convince clients to let me do this, but more often than not they are stuck in “facetime” mentality.
How to Waste $55 in Washington D.C. (Hint: Take a Bus Tour):  I have to be honest – all of the monuments and memorials and whatnot in Washington bore me, with two exceptions:  the Vietnam War memorial (which is deeply moving) and the World War II memorial, which – for me, at least – was “off-the-charts” moving.  Seeing that and seeing the eternal flame outside the Kremlin, which honors the dead of what they call “The Great Patriotic War” is overwhelming when you think of the number of Soviet and Allied forces who died defeating the Axis.  Chilling stuff, particularly given that my head is stuffed full of World War II stories from my mother’s father, ranging from the noble to the horrific.  My father’s father refused to speak one bit about it – being a German-American, speaking German at home and being sent to the German front was apparently not something he ever felt like discussing with anyone.

A few other good reads:

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