Category Archives: career

working for free, and links

As usual I’m a bit behind in posting a link roundup - for some reason the roundup, which I originally meant to post on Fridays, has slowly drifted to Sundays or Mondays, or in this lamentable case, Tuesdays. At this point, it’s almost next week’s roundup with posts from the previous week. It’s ridiculous, I know. I have no writing schedule, which I’d highly recommend to anyone who doesn’t want to be a successful writer. I get on little “hot runs” from time to time, but keeping to a schedule appears to be difficult for me.

I’ve also taken on organizing two fairly large professional events. Combining that with Bubelah joining the board of directors of a local not-for-profit and my family’s taking on a lot of (unpaid) work. It’s a mental shift for us to engage in this type of ‘work’. I’ve always thought you should expend no effort on work-related activities unless you see a clear and direct path to compensation; maybe not direct compensation, but at least some idea how it might pay off. That’s been a big part of my contract consultant mindset: make sure you give value, but also carefully guard against clients or others trying to push “non-work work” onto your plate.

But one of the things I’ve realized as I shift further and further from the traditional time-for-money work model is that you have to create and provide value sometimes without ANY clear connection to compensation. Let’s face it: the reason is mainly that if you’re doing your work well enough, that connection will force itself on you. An example I like is Adam Carolla. The former ‘Man Show’ host has built a fairly sizable entertainment network around his extremely popular (and free) podcast. He did it without a clear plan for monetization, but it’s clear now that he’s gaining traction, picking up advertisers and getting some attention from the non-techy parts of America. I imagine he’ll do quite well as podcasts become more and more the norm. I can already listen to podcasts via my Roku* and Mediafly. I’m sure the next generation of cars will have 3G connections and allow streaming audio content, too (and in the future, video, no doubt). So Carolla will make some money down the road. And that’s how I’m trying to force myself to approach it.

The links:

  • New Toyota Commercial Reinforces Materialism: I detest this commercial. It’s tone-deaf considering the economy, and just annoying style-wise.
  • What We Buy: Purposeful or Passing Time?: I realize more and more that although I’d like to think I’m shopping for a reason, it’s FAR too often just to pass time.
  • What’s in Your Wallet?: A late entry in our Money Writer’s group writing project.

And more:

* Amazon affiliate link

6 things to study for the well-rounded mind

smart-drug

What are the best subjects to learn for business - and life - success? If anyone sat down to identify the perfect secondary (and maybe college) education, I doubt they would come up with today’s average American curriculum. While there are plenty of courses in basic skills (reading, writing, mathematics, and so on) many other just as critical basic skills are overlooked (personal finance, homemaking, health/physical education). What are some of the critical components missing from our national curriculum?

From my own personal experience, I can suggest a few, but there are probably many more you can think of easily. I could also bash a few courses I took, but an argument can always be made for “knowledge for knowledge’s sake.” I believe that sincerely. I have never, for example, “used” A Tale of Two Cities in my day-to-day life, but I’m glad I was forced to read it, stuck with it and finished it. Experiences like that created a love of reading for me. Other subjects I guess can be chalked up to “generally good to know although not terribly useful.” For me this included subjects like biology and mythology (one semester of “English” was actually spent studying mythology, which apparently means “Greek mythology” since we didn’t study anything else (not even the excellent D’Aulaires’ Book of Norse Myths). While those subjects were sometimes interesting, I didn’t learn much from either except that I don’t like biology and that you shouldn’t steal fire from the gods.

Here are a few subjects that are very useful, and why:

1. Typing. Out of all of the courses I’ve taken in my life, this one has made the most profound difference in my daily life. I took a typing course in high school, back when it meant learning to pound out “the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog” 500 times on a MANUAL typewriter. However, the experience taught me how to type, and very, very well, which means I can blaze away typing even while carrying on a conversation or reading something else. I doubt I have to explain to anyone who uses a computer why lightning-fast typing speed is useful.

2. Speech. I took a public speaking class that changed my life. Before that class, like everyone, I was nervous about speaking. After it, I was still nervous, but I learned that it was a temporary nervousness and that anything was possible. We had to give speeches to groups, recite monologues, debate, take questions and almost any type of “speaking in front of a crowd” activity you can think of. To this day I am relaxed and confident speaking to any group; I have addressed 2000 people or 10 board directors or 1 interviewer with equal calm.

3. Personal finance. I didn’t ever take a personal finance course, and I wish I had. Everything I learned about finance before college came from my parents, my grandparents about money, part 1 | brip blap or my own reading. A course that taught me things they weren’t as familiar with or not as proficient with - real estate dealings come to mind - would have been a great learning experience for me. That having been said, I’m sure personal finance would use textbooks sponsored by Capital One and tout the benefit of home equity loans to consolidate credit card debt.

4. Physical education. As a varsity athlete I was exempt from physical education, but I wish I hadn’t been. Learning to do some very basic “normal” training would have been helpful. I focused all of my energy on preparation for one sport (tennis) rather than general fitness. This had disastrous results later in life.

5. Homemaking. Don’t laugh. I think learning how to cook could save this country billions in health care costs. Imagine if people could actually prepare healthy food at home. My mother is a terrific cook, and I never had any motivation throughout high school to learn how to cook. I went straight from there to a fraternity house where meals were provided. When I finally started living on my own, my gourmet best was frozen pizza…

6. Civics. I took a civics course, but it was ridiculous. My wife, who is an immigrant, was required to undergo detailed testing before she obtained US citizenship on the Constitution, US history and civic life. Now, it may not be necessary for everyone in this country to know how many Congressmen there are or how many Supreme Court justices there are (although they should) but everyone should know the Bill of Rights and their civic duties (jury duty and so on).

Optional Bonus #7: A foreign language. Now, many people might disagree with me on this suggestion, and of course many people feel a certain nationalistic need to defend English as “America’s language” or French as “Belgium’s language” or whatever. I don’t really think most people need to become fluent in a foreign language, and I’ve been a great proponent of the world agreeing on a true lingua franca – a second language everyone would learn. As of today, that language might be English – it’s fairly easy to learn and already quite widespread. But 100 years from now it might be Portuguese, or Spanish. Who knows, who cares. The point is that foreign languages open up your mind. Studying a foreign language helps you understand that different people think differently. That’s invaluable, in my opinion. My life so far has taken a vastly different direction than it might have thanks to my study of foreign languages – especially Russian. You can see why by reading an old post of mine, “boosting your career with an overseas stint“.

You could go on, but these are some basic courses that would make a big difference in the US population. They are not taught often enough, and it’s a shame they aren’t. I am amazed to this day when I see people hunt-and-peck on the keyboard - not because I blame them, but because that’s not a basic required course for graduation from high school today. The same goes for the other 5 subjects up there. It’s hard to say when they will be required - or if they ever will be - but we can hope.

3 Strategies to Increase Your Lifetime Earning Potential

Life is all about choices. One of the areas in life that the effects of the choices you make will quite possibly be some of the most pronounced is when it comes to income - making moola! Sure, we all know that determining to be a sidewalk artist is quite different than setting out on the career path to be a Doctor and choices made while one is young often have long lasting effects BUT are there different things that we can do at any age to improve our lifetime earning potential? I say yes. Here are 3 different strategies that if executed properly will almost always lead to an increase in your lifetime earning potential:

#1 Start a Business

Uh-oh. I can already hear the excuses starting to roll in: “Starting a business is just so risky!” Well, entrepreneurial risk might not be all that much riskier than employment risk - especially if you go about it in a way that minimizes risk (i.e. continuing to work your “day job” and starting your business on the side). “Starting a business just costs so much money!” Well, maybe if you are starting a company that manufactures things and needs a large warehouse and lots of expensive materials BUT it doesn’t have to. Many companies can be started with very little startup capital. Starting a business is a great strategy for potentially increasing your lifetime earning potential significantly. Don’t let excuses stand in your way.

#2 Load Up on Degrees and Credentials

We have all heard the oft bandied about stat that people with a college degree will make somewhere close to $1,000,000 more than their counterparts without a college degree but setting aside whether that is accurate or not the Wall Street Journal recently published an article highlighting the fact that college graduates are much more likely to KEEP their job in tough economic times than those without a college degree. How’s that for an increase in lifetime earning potential? Increased future earning potential studies aside for just one moment - no matter whether you are an entrepreneur who is your own boss or someone looking for a job - having credentials and degrees is one sure fire way to at least get your foot in the door. Degrees and credentials alone won’t earn the money for you but they may just earn you that interview with a potential employer or that business meeting with that potential investor in your business. Quiz! Answer quickly - if I am introduced to you as “Joel Ohman is a Certified Financial Planner™ with an MBA… blah blah” do you think differently about me (and what I might be about to say/write) than if I were simply introduced as “Joel Ohman is a computer nerd that owns a website … blah blah” ? Chances are that learning my credentials and advanced degree certainly won’t impress you or cause you to believe anything I say carte blanche but it will at least likely cause you to want to give me the time of day and potentially listen to what I might have to say in the areas of business, financial planning, etc. … right? … maybe? … is anyone still there? guys? :)

#3 Get Some Specialized Training

It’s pretty common sense that as your career progresses you should have the mindset of always wanting to be learning new things (yes, “Mr. I’m-still-learning-how-to-use-the-fax-machine”, I’m looking at you) but to take it a step further be sure and attempt to learn some kind of specialized skill set that will see an increased demand in the future. Easier said than done? Maybe, but a lot of things you can spot coming if you just pay attention. If your company is making the switch to a new computer system then be sure that you are soon seen as one of the experts in the new system. If you notice that your bosses, managers, and other superiors all have taken certain classes and you haven’t then - sign up for those classes!

What do YOU Think?

What are some other ways that one can increase their lifetime earning potential? About the Author: Joel Ohman is a CFP® and serial entrepreneur. In addition to the car insurance website mentioned earlier he also has been spending time lately working on a website with information on finding the best business credit cards. He is a first time writer at Brip Blap and recommends that you check out the recent post by Steve titled “How to Develop Good Habits”.

knowledge versus credentials, and links

A few links below got me thinking. I’ve written about this before, but it’s amazing how much our society – particularly corporate society – values credentials, versus knowledge. I have done enough phone interviews with clients to realize that they are far more interested in my credentials than what I actually know. They want to know that I worked for a Big 4 firm, or have a master’s degree. Very seldom am I asked about specific technical knowledge. I can only recall one call, about five years ago, when a client quizzed me on an accounting standard.

That’s fine, of course: most companies like to use your work history as “shorthand” for knowledge. A certain body of knowledge can be assumed based on the company. Or can it? Credentials can be misleading. I know CPAs who don’t know thing one about taxes, for example, but many people would assume that having “CPA” tagged after your name means you are up-to-date and knowledgeable about taxes. And I’ve ridden my master’s degree for years, even though it’s a body of knowledge frozen in time in the early 90s; there have been huge changes in the field of accounting since I got my imitation sheepskin.

But until the day comes when someone with no college degree but an impressive volume of self-taught knowledge can get a good white-collar job – or even get in the door for an interview – having a few “good names” on your resume will make a big difference.

Are there Alternatives to College Careers?: Of course there are. I’m always surprised at how dismissive people can be of careers that don’t require a college degree, especially considering the cost of a degree these days (see The Educated Indentured Servant). But as I said above, even if I worked my way through thousands of hours of self-taught education (books, online resources and even free TV lectures, etc.) on accounting, I doubt I could get in the door for an interview in a corporate accounting department.

The Incredible Value of the Local Library (A Visual Tour) versus Books. If you read both articles, you’ll notice there is a big gap out there between people who love libraries and frequent them often, and those who simply never go to one because so much free information is available online. My suspicion is that the people who value libraries the most are parents of small children. Before I had kids, I had probably been to a library three times in ten years. Nowadays, though, it’s not out of the question for me to go two to three times a week.

should I take a pay cut?

While discussing consulting rates with two companies recently, I was forced to face an interesting question - when times are bad should I be willing to accept reduced rates? Should people who work for salaries be willing to accept pay cuts for new jobs - or even worse, pay cuts in their current job? Could you justify making 75% (or less) of what you once made, just to keep making money? Or is it better to grit your teeth and keep searching for - at least - pay equal to your previous position?

This question first of all depends on whether you’re in a position to weather a long downturn. If you’re living paycheck-to-paycheck, this question is answered with a resounding “yes, take the pay cut, just keep money coming in.” If you have some money set aside, you may be able to hold out longer for a better rate.

But what about taking that lower rate when you move on to the next job? Do you think the excuse that “it was just a filler” will work? Do you think the next company will bump you back up? When you’re working as a consultant or freelancer that might be the case - rates do fluctuate a bit. If you’re working for a salary, though, it’s going to be harder to justify returning to the salary you had before you took a cut.

And what about titles, or responsibilities? Does it appeal to you to work your way back up the line? For most people it is not desirable if avoidable. Nobody wants to be the 40-year old supervised by a 23-year old.

It’s not always easy. I know plenty of people who, for one reason or another, have had to make the decision to scale back in their careers, either salary-wise or responsibility-wise (or both). People do it out of fear or desperation or sometimes simply out of a desire to work, no matter what the level.

Many people may see this as an analytical question: should you accept an X% reduction in pay during economic hard times? I think this is a question that can only be answered by the individual in each case - finding a balance between pride and the need to work. Can you be effective knowing you’re working as hard (or harder) for less? Can you make do? In the end, it’s not something a career blog or a coach can help you with; you need to know whether you can handle the reduction, and live with the consequences.

when is enough enough, and links

Here’s a tough question: when do you look at your industry or profession and admit it’s on a downward slope? I’ve worked with a number of people from the Midwest, for example, who realized that the jobs were gone and they weren’t coming back, so they relocated. I’ve worked with people who worked in a certain industry and realized it was a dying industry, and moved on. I’ve worked with people who were in declining job functions, in which their roles were increasingly outsourced, sent overseas or made redundant because technological efficiencies allowed one worker to do to the work of two.

One of the toughest things to judge in a career is when this point has been reached (or passed). I felt it once, on Wall Street, when I - along with a lot of other consultants - realized that at least in the short term the fat days were over. Trying to identify the point at which increased effort is no longer a benefit, but simply effort ejected out the window, is a tough exercise.

On to the links:

  • Do Your Kids Have Too Many Toys?: Yes, they do. A few good tips about reducing that ugly number.
  • Ignore Your Personal Finance Guru: I’ve mentioned before that I really “woke up” about personal finance when I read Robert Kiyosaki’s “Rich Dad, Poor Dad”, but I’d hardly recommend it as a good personal finance primer. It’s got some insights, but anyone who follows a personal finance guru lockstep is just begging for disaster.
  • Why the Long Term Growth of the Economy is Not Relevant to Investing
  • An Ode to My Son’s Piggy Bank: Good lessons on teaching kids about money. My family’s headed in the right direction on this subject, but we still have plenty of work to do.
  • Scraping by on $110,000?: FAM’s got the right idea here: 110K is a lot of money in small-town Mississippi (where I grew up). It’s nothing in New York City. I lived in both places, and one of the things I often lamented about was that the cost of living was not proportionately higher, it was exponentially higher in NYC. Sure, I got to live in NYC, but spending $3000 a month on a tiny apartment means that 110K salary is not “rich.” There should be a cost-of-living adjustment for taxes (or a fair tax…)
  • Don’t Like That Political Ad? Click On It.: Hah. Funny idea.
  • Money Smarts Changes: Well, having changed the blog name and adding an author and then dropping him, yes, I’d say there be some changes a-brewin’.

A few more good posts:

The Pros and Cons of Being Self-Employed

Owning your own business can be both challenging and rewarding. There are some things that you will want to consider before taking the plunge and opening your own business, especially if you are new to working for yourself. Here are some of the basic rewards and concerns that most new business owners have experienced.

Becoming the Boss

Working as your own boss is one of the pros of owning your own business. You may find that you like going to work every day when you are the one in charge of running the operation. Being the boss is also challenging, no matter what the size or type of business you are working in. You will be the person that has to deal with any problems and will need to multi-task throughout the day to ensure all of the details are taken care of. It does take a lot of commitment to become the owner of a small business.

Business owners are among the busiest of all employees. You are the person that deals with customers, employees, production, and may be in charge or hiring and firing employees. If you are just beginning a small business, it does take a little time to adjust to all of the demands of owning a business. Of course, being your own boss and making all the decisions are also very rewarding, as well.

Work Ethic

Owning your own business can be very time consuming. As the boss, you may find that you need to spend more hours at work than ever before. being able to make most of the decisions does mean that you are responsible for the outcome, but it also means that you are able to enjoy the rewards, too. If you think that owning a business will allow you to just hire someone to do your work, the truth is that you will be disappointed. Working hard is the key to making your business successful.

Once you business has become successful, however, you may find you get to work less and enjoy more time away from work. Having a business that runs smoothly is the ultimate reward, since you have less to worry about and more time to enjoy the profits of your business.Since you are in charge, however, you also get to determine your earnings.

Profits

Along with being your own boss, you also get to decide how important profits are. While you may not get a traditional salary when you own your own business, you do get to determine how much money you make. With a successful business, the profits can quickly become surprisingly high. If you are committed to making your business successful, you can easily meet your goals to earn more profits than you have ever imagined. With the right business plan and some hard work, you can see a small business blossom into a booming enterprise.

The more profits that you earn, the more you have to enjoy. While you do have to pay the overhead for your business establishment and your employees, the profits are all yours to keep. You can decide where your profits go, too, whether you choose to expand your business or you want to begin saving for retirement. All of the responsibility are yours when you own your own business, but so are all the profits. You may decide that running a small business is something that pay off well in long-term rewards, despite the many challenges that you face.

Your Personal Beliefs

Another benefit of owning your own business is that you can meet and exceed your personal expectations for running a business. For example, if you are concerned about the environment you can begin selling eco-friendly alternatives to products that are popular on the market today or you can use Earth friendly manufacturing practices. Owning your own business is a wonderful way to ensure your personal expectations for quality and customer service are met. You also get to decide the type of business you own, with choices that range from service based to manufacturing.

Making all of the decisions takes some time to become accustomed to, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t own your own business. After a few weeks of running your own business, you will find that it becomes much simpler and less time consuming than you may have expected. There are many benefits to owning your own business, so don’t be intimidated by the challenges that you will face along the way. You will eventually be able to relax and enjoy more profits for much less work than you could have ever anticipated.

Miles Walker is a freelance writer and blogger who usually compares car insurance deals over at CarinsuranceComparison.Org.

teaching and being taught, and links

I don’t know if I’ve ever mentioned this on this blog or not, but I spent a fair amount of time as a part-time schoolteacher for both middle school and college freshmen as a substitute teacher and later as a graduate assistant. I taught intro to calculus and accounting in grad school and substituted for math, gifted ed and other subjects when I was still chasing my starry-eyed dream of becoming a math professor. I was good. My students liked me and I don’t recall if I’ve ever had a negative review or bad experience teaching (I don’t think I have). I continued my teaching/training throughout my corporate career, leading new employee classes and training in software for over 15 years. I like training and teaching. Nowadays I do little of that as a corporate consultant - nobody wants me to train, they want me to DO. And now, if not yesterday.

Well, I get glimpses of the past and flashbacks now that I have kids. I spent a couple of days at my children’s preschool/pre-K school where Little Buddy attends pre-K and Pumpkin goes to daycare (or preschool or whatever you’d like to call it). I do realize from time to time, when I self-analyze my abilities, that I do have one ability if nothing else: kids like me. I can engage them in learning and don’t make them nervous as some other parents do. I probably would have made a decent grade school or middle school teacher if I could have supported a family on that salary. That’s a sad observation, frankly, but one for another post.

I’ll make one other observation, too, unrelated to personal finance or careers: my children’s school concentrates heavily on play, and I like it. Not learning, but play - directed, but not with any intention towards teaching any specific subject. It’s interesting as a parent to process the conflicting emotions that arise from watching this: you want your kids to learn but I also (mentally) slap myself and say “Pumpkin’s not even 3 yet - she deserves play time.” I’m a firm believer in the concept that kids need play time - creative time, self-directed - to develop themselves. They’ll have plenty of time to be crammed into desks and forced to learn times tables later, I guess. Just my parental opinion, I guess.

MonaVie Blackmails Me?: Stunning that a company, or a rep for a company, would stoop this low. Read the article to see how low a supposedly ‘legitimate’ company can stoop. You can also read MonaVie: Multi-Level Marketing Gone Haywire for more idiocy. I can’t believe anyone falls for MonaVie’s crap after I’ve read stuff like this.

Blue Cash Rewards Increase: I’ve owned a Blue Cash card for years, so this is good news. I’ll take it…

Social Lending Arbitrage Beats Projections: I still think Lending Club is a good bet - if you’re interested in trying it they have a $25 signup bonus right now. I’d treat it like any other investment - it has its ups and downs, but it can serve as a reasonable diversification strategy versus the market.

Personal Finance the Krav Maga Way: Since I’ve seen all the Krav Maga signs up around my neighborhood, I thought this was an amusing - and timely - post.

Small but Alarming Indicator: This is unpleasant - but not unexpected - anecdotal news. On the other hand, Bubelah just attended a small business workshop where they barely had enough room for the interested attendees, and I remarked that it must have been all of the laid-off people thinking about launching small businesses (and good for them if they were)…

Life After Debt: What It’s Like in the Third Stage of Personal Finance: Just an interesting read, on many levels (fitness, travel, etc.)

and more…

  • The Downside of Owning REITs
  • Talking about Deflation
  • The Key to Effective Budgeting – Master The Yes/No Factor
  • Book Review of Leah Ingram’s Suddenly Frugal
  • How Much Mortgage Can I Afford?

how to become a successful consultant

I’ve preached the gospel of “going it alone” for years on this blog, and I stick by it. I’ve seen far too many of my colleagues hung out to dry by the corporations they work for to think that being an employee is a good career path. But being a consultant has one ugly secret, deep down at its core: in order to be a successful consultant (monetarily, not actually effective) requires that you first spend your time in the dirty, ugly trenches as an employee.

I’d like to say it isn’t true. I’d like to think a really gifted, talented person with an eye for change could leap out of college and start helping people as a consultant. I’d like to think that the tools for communication would naturally be there for some of these people: comfort speaking in front of large groups, the ability to write clearly and directly, the personal confidence to sell products and relate to decision makers without trepidation.

In my experience: nope, doesn’t happen.

I’m a good public speaker. I can sell. I can work a technical presentation and apply complex principles to difficult problems. I couldn’t have done any of this, in my opinion, without the years in the trench: the years I spent hammering away, unrewarded, at Big 4 firms and multinational corporations. What they gave me was, at the same time, invaluable and a curse. They let me work hard. They put me in front of very senior management or executives at clients before I might have been ready to deal with them. They asked me to navigate politics, presentations, negotiations and calculations without a net. I sweated a lot of 11 pm nights at the office working on presentations so I’d be relaxed and able to throw them off without much trouble today.

If you’d like to be a consultant - a REAL consultant - with a grasp of your subject and the sort of calm, unhurried patience you see in the most polished advice-givers, let me give you a tip: spend a decade getting your brains beaten in by a consulting firm or a corporation. There’s no better training for confidence than to have your confidence challenged, pushed and tortured for years. It’s sad but true. If you work out, the true muscle-building activity takes place on the rep where you “fail” - the rep where you can’t lift the weights one more time. That’s the point at which new muscle mass - scars, really - build up your muscles and increase your strength. Being pushed to prepare that presentation or asked to analyze that acquisition on short notice is what will make you a better consultant.

There is no shortcut. When I was hiring for a multinational corporation, I didn’t look to independent consultants two years out of MBA school. I looked to the Big 4 and other consulting firms. Why? Not because I had any love lost for them (I didn’t, at all) and not because they had the best prices or even the best people. I did it because I knew these were people who had been pushed since day 1 at their firms to fail. The “upwards or out” mentality is useful even if you’re not in a corporate position. You’re either increasing your skills and widening your contact pool or you’re heading out. This is the philosophy of the Big 4. Up or out. It makes sense, even while it’s a sad way to live.

So if you think about becoming a consultant, think about putting in a long time in your chosen profession as an employee first. Get that job at an engineering firm, or hospital, or accounting firm, or whatever. Make sure you can cut it. Once you’ve stopped failing, or struggling, maybe you’re ready to sell yourself as a consultant. Just don’t ever make the mistake of thinking that there is no job bigger than you or tougher than you; as a consultant, you have to be constantly aware that eventually “the one” project will arrive where you can’t quite keep up. And that’s when those ugly skills and pathetic abilities - staying up late and working while everyone else is out at the local bar - will come in handy.

learn one lesson: who is the client?

Whether you work as an employee, a consultant, a small business owner or an entrepreneur you probably find yourself in a client relationship from time to time. In my case, I’m always serving a client. Over time I’ve realized that a good question to ask yourself, as someone in client service, is “who is the client?” I’ll approach this question as a consultant, but I think it applies to almost anyone who works with clients or even works in a company where they have to treat other employees as clients.

42-15230517

Asking this question might seem stupid, but I think that it’s easy to confuse yourself. As an example, I usually have two (or more) people who might be THE client. The first is a day-to-day manager, who lets me know what he or she needs and expects. The manager might not be just one person, but for the sake of argument we’re just talking about a single person (I’ll call him or her or them The Manager). The second person who might be THE client is the person who signs the invoices and - basically - pays me. Usually the second person is the manager’s manager (or even a couple of times removed). I may have some minimal relationship with that person (I’ll call him or her The Executive) and probably don’t get much daily direction from them.

So when conflict arises between The Manager and The Executive, who do I need to worry about? I know that my first instinct is to guarantee that The Manager is happy, since he’s the guy I have to deal with on a daily basis. He has a better chance to judge whether the product of my work meets requirements or not, and if I don’t meet his requirements I’m going to be in trouble.

On the other hand, The Executive pays the bills. If she’s not happy with something I’m doing, or something The Manager is passing on to her that I’m doing, I may not have that client on my list much longer. The Executive is the one hobnobbing with other executives and influential people in my industry, and a bad word here and there could really hurt me (and a good word could help me). The Executive may not understand what I’m working on and may not be in a position to judge my work fairly, so a lot of my interaction with The Executive is probably brief presentations at high level meetings where a smile and a confident speaking tone make a bigger difference than the details of the work.

The easiest answer is to say “take care of both of them.” The truth is that in many consulting relationships (and this goes for employees, entrepreneurs, etc.) the consultant is usually swimming in turbulent waters. The desire of The Manager to look “more useful” to The Executive than the consultant is often eddying just under the surface. The Executive is often more concerned about how the consultants present in a meeting - can they sell the project? make it look snazzy? - than whether the i’s were dotted and the t’s crossed.

So given that you can’t please everyone all the time, what’s a poor consultant to do?

Early on in my career, I worked with a senior accountant on a difficult project - in the example above, he was The Manager. I didn’t see eye to eye with her most of the time. However, I was lucky to form a friendly professional bond with the overall project manager, who became a mentor to me and was The Executive. I had some tough times with The Manager, and The Executive heard about it. The Executive, however, knew me well enough to push me forward to other higher-profile projects and laud me to other executives.

In retrospect I was probably unfair to The Manager but I learned my lesson - please The Executive. Or did I learn my lesson? At various times in my career on other projects I got carried away with the day-to-day tasks and forgot about The Executive. When the project ended, The Manager looked like a star and The Executive barely knew who I was. Again and again, I realized that the consultant who won the next project was not the detail guy, or the smartest guy, but the guy who forged the best relationship with The Executive.

That’s not to say that you can get by schmoozing without doing good work, but good work won’t do much for you without schmoozing. The relationship with The Executive is always critical to landing the next client. The Manager may be able to help you as well, but chances are good that they won’t talk you up TOO much, fearing a reduction of their own image.

Identifying your client won’t always be easy, but it’s a part of the job that can’t ever be overlooked. If you can please everyone, congratulations - you’ve found an easy client. If you can’t, make sure you know who The Executive is, and make sure they know who you are. I think you’ll find that it makes all the difference - not just now, but in the future, too.

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

average career salaries

If I could travel back in time and give myself a little bit of career advice, I’d spend some time talking to young Steve about earnings over a lifetime of work, or average career salaries. The median elementary school teacher salary in the US, for example, makes about $51,000 a year. The median attorney salary is closer to $91,000. The median auditor is closer to $58,000. Here is the difference, though: a median is just a median, meaning that half of the people with that profession make more than that figure, and half make less.

The school teacher population is going to be made up of a lot of teachers making between $40,000 and $51,000 a year – maybe younger teachers, or lower-cost-of-living areas. The other half might make $51,000 to $70,000 or so. There might be a few outliers in expensive areas – New York or San Francisco – but there will not be teachers making $450,000 a year. The system is not designed to allow anyone to escape into a significantly higher pay bracket (and we’re talking about teachers, not teachers who become administrators – that’s a different job).

That’s a real difference from some other professions. Take the Big 4 firms – Ernst & Young, Deloitte, PricewaterhouseCoopers and KPMG. An auditor in a Big 4 firm probably makes less than a schoolteacher to begin with (particularly on an hourly basis). These lower-level auditors make up the majority of the employees of the firm. For every partner, there might be five managers, each of whom might oversee ten staff (for example). So 6 of every 56 people are managers or above, and only 1 in 56 are partners (I made up those ratios, but based on my experience that’s a fair guess). So the median’s lowered to account for the huge number of lower-level staff.

But in an environment like that, the chance for exceptional rewards for exceptional performance exists. Now, if you’ve worked in a corporate environment or read my last post on stupidification, you know that exceptional performance is not always the requirement for getting rewarded. Sometimes it’s being the CFO’s nephew. But as compared to the teachers above, there is a chance that earnings can grow far, far beyond their starting levels. A teacher can’t, even if they win an award as the greatest teacher in their state. An outstanding diplomat can’t break out of the government pay grades.

What all of this means is that not only do you have to consider the starting salary for your career, but you have to look at what the possibilities for exceptional earnings are. I know earnings are not everything. Many people can also fall into the trap of believing that they will be the exceptional performer, but in a bottom-heavy organization far more people will quit or be fired than will make partner or executive.

So consider average career earnings, and then think about whether you are willing to be the exceptional performer. If you aren’t, maybe the average career earnings aren’t that critical. If you don’t plan to excel, a career where everyone can be expected to be compensated within a narrow range is fine. If you do plan to excel, make sure it’s in a profession where that excellence might result in reward. That’s not to denigrate teaching or praise public accounting. I realized early on in my career in public accounting I wouldn’t be a partner; I didn’t have the drive to be an exceptional auditor. So I joined the lower level of the median salaries and might have been happier – and done better over the course of my first 10-15 years of working – had I done a job search and chosen a different career path, with a narrower bank of average career salaries.

Note: I haven’t read Seth Godin’s Linchpin: Are You Indispensable? yet, but I gather that’s what that book is all about – the idea of making yourself into an “artist,” which Godin believes makes you deeply committed to becoming indispensible to your organization. Maybe I should read it…

stupidifying the corporation

I grind my teeth at work when I hear the phrase “dumbing it down.” I heard it once when an employee of my client, a Fortune 500 company, said he was making a presentation to a division CEO. My coworker, a middle manager, had to explain some accounting issues to the CEO and said in order to do so he’d need to “dumb it down.”

A person hearing this phrase could take it one of two ways. The first, more relaxed way to understand it would be that it’s a friendly gesture. If I’m talking to a rocket scientist who is trying to explain how they shot down a spy satellite last week, I’m not going to understand much about thrusts and vectors and attitudes and so on. That rocket scientist is going to have a lot more success explaining it to me by drawing a picture or waving his hand around in the air and making explosion noises.

But I suspect the way my coworker delivered it was that he believes himself superior to this division CEO. Now, I am the last person who believes success in a corporation indicates intelligence (and you only have to read the headlines from the Dennis Kozlowski fiasco to see why) but at the same time for a middle manager to loudly and cheerfully tell a conference call of a dozen people that he’s going to condescend to explain something to a successful corporate divisional CEO just because that CEO isn’t a CPA seems, well, dumb. To assume someone gets to that level of a corporation without a fairly solid understanding of finance seems somewhat naive to me.

People have a hard time understanding the difference between summarizing, simplifying and stupidifying (my word). Learning to choose the right one is important:

Summarizing: This rocket will deliver 10,000 pounds of explosives at 543 mph directly into the satellite, vaporizing all of the dangerous toxic fuel prior to reentry of the debris and the potential dispersion of the fuel in gaseous form, causing mild harm to nearby people.

Simplifying: This rocket will destroy the satellite and eliminate the threat of harm.

Stupidifying: Boom!

Too often people choose to stupidify advice instead of simplifying it or summarizing it. I think stupidifying happens as a matter of course in corporations as a political move - an effort to keep specialized knowledge as “leverage” - and is the enemy of teamwork. Stupidifying something is also much easier than putting in the effort to write a clear and concise summary. If the subject you’re explaining isn’t important enough that you feel the need to clearly summarize it, or simplify it, then most likely the “dumbing down” is not for the benefit of the recipient, but for you.

(photo by psd)

1 2 3 4 5 6 … 13