Winning on the Job

Rules Are Made to Be Broken // Summary of Francesca Gino’s ‘Rebel Talent’

August 9, 2021 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Rebels have a bad rep. When you think of them, you imagine trouble. However, all rebels really do is take the habits that could hold the rest of us back and break them.

Instead of leaning toward the comfortable and the familiar, rebels ask questions and look at problems from unexpected perspectives. They aren’t afraid to question assumptions, stick their necks out, make themselves vulnerable in front of others, or experiment and fail.

Harvard social scientist Francesca Gino’s Rebel Talent: Why it Pays to Break the Rules in Work and in Life (2018) aims to explain the merits of breaking the rules and showing how to see challenges from new perspectives.

When we challenge ourselves to move beyond what we know and can do well, we rebel against the comfortable cocoon of the status quo, improving ourselves and positioning ourselves to contribute more to our partners, coworkers, and organizations.

The anecdotes and case studies that Gino pulls together to illuminate her “rebel talent” narrative are hardly convincing. In fact, they’re no more than examples of creative—perhaps unconventional—thinking. To take a prominent example Gino cites in the book, Captain Sully Sullenberger (of the US Airways Flight 1549 incident) did nothing rebellious. With 40 years of flying experience and situational awareness, he made lightning-quick decisions to land in the Hudson and not return to a nearby airport.

Recommendation: Read the introduction of Francesca Gino’s Rebel Talent, and skim the rest. The book’s introduction has a few useful concepts that merit an article, but the book lacks the rigor and utility to be expected from a Harvard Business School professor. The key takeaways (codified as the “eight principles of rebel leadership”) are relatively clear-cut: be curious and open-minded, never be satisfied, embrace discomfort, think unconventionally, and break established norms.

Five Ways … You Could Elevate Good to Great

March 18, 2021 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Don’t be too self-critical. If you must dissect your faults, do so with a mirror, not a magnifying glass. For instance, reframe “I’m buried in debt” as “I owe $800 on credit cards and $10,000 in student loans.”
Set easy-to-meet, incremental goals. You’ll feel so good about the results that taking the next step will be much easier. The best plans are only good intentions unless you set deadlines for yourself and achieve results. Keep a written list of all your accomplishments, however small, and celebrate your progress.
Don’t try to do everything. Continuous learning on a few areas will help you pin down and sharpen the essential skills to move up.
Make the most of mentors. Bring together a range of experts and tap into their knowledge and experience. Watch and learn how those you admire got to where they are now. Take responsibility for your own development and placement. Map out your own journey.
Seek out opportunities. Join cross-team projects. Get involved with all aspects of your job. Keep your eyes and ears open to everything up for grabs. Ask for what you want and take risks—you’ll accomplish more and feel good about being brave.

Bonus: Come to terms with your limitations and deal with problems deftly before they metastasize.

Five Ways … You Could Score Points with Your Boss

March 15, 2021 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Know that your job is to help the boss win. If you’re not sure what exactly represents success for your boss, ask. Keep her goals in mind when presenting ideas. Minimize your use of her time and resources.
Keep track of everything your boss puts on your plate. Let her realize that if she assigns something to you, it’s either going to be handled, or you’ll bring it back up with her for a follow-up.
Size up your boss’s style. Is she a delegator (don’t overwhelm her with detailed updates) or a hand-holder (involve her in making decisions—even if to ask, “Does that sound right to you?”)? Match up your boss’s communication preferences.
Identify your boss’s pet peeves. Is it being late to appointments, dropping by unexpectedly, bringing a problem to her without suggesting a remedy, or coming to a meeting unprepared? Avoid them like land mines.
Take upon yourself any aspect of your boss’s job that she doesn’t find particularly interesting. You’ll improve her work-life quality. (And you’ll broaden your experiences and become noticeable to other leaders.)

Bonus: If she’s a good boss, tell her. Few people think to say it. Praise, but don’t flatter.

Leadership is Being Visible at Times of Crises

February 25, 2021 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Leadership is Being Visible at Times of Crises It’s terrible optics for an elected official to leave his constituency while it’s in the midst of a crisis.

In a grave slip-up for an ambitious politician, Texas Senator Ted Cruz’s giving a lame excuse initially for his Cancún joint made him look insensitive. He was expected to stay and endure alongside his constituents, who were suffering from Texas’s recent freezing temperatures and blackouts.

Of course, Cruz didn’t do anything that hurt anybody, apart from drawing police resources away to shepherd him through the airport. Cruz’s argument—sensible in its own way—was that all he could do was be in regular communication with state and local officials who’re spearheading the crisis response. After all, Cruz has no formal power in the state administration.

As a comparison, King George and the Queen Mother declined to leave London as bombs shattered their city during World War II. As an expression of concern, and commitment to the Allied cause, they even visited sites destroyed during The Blitz of 1940.

Idea for Impact: Leadership means serving as an anchor during crisis times and being available, connected, and accessible during a crisis. Leaders can’t do everything, and they need to delegate responsibilities. However, entrustment should not entail emotional detachment.

The #1 Clue to Disruptive Business Opportunity

January 28, 2021 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

When most folks encounter a problem, an inconvenience, or an unpleasant situation, they’ll assume these problems are “facts of life” and go on with their lives. At the most, they may even lament about it to others.

Not attentive entrepreneurs. They tend to identify problems and construe them as opportunities.

Miki Agrawal - Disruptive Entrepreneur

Serial entrepreneur Miki Agrawal tells the story of how she started WILD, New York City’s first gluten-free pizzeria, after becoming increasingly intolerant to processed foods:

It all started in 2005 when I started having recurring stomachaches. I realized I was intolerant to all of the additives, hormones, and pesticides that were being put in American mass-produced food. At the time, I had given up my favorite comfort food, pizza. In 2006, I opened WILD in New York City to offer people the best version of a pizza: made with organic, gluten-free flours & tomato sauces, and hormone-free cheeses & meats.

During that time, everyone thought “gluten-free,” “farm-to-table,” and “organic” meant “must taste like cardboard,” so it took a lot of education to get people to “get” it.

Embedded in Agrawal’s narrative is a great entrepreneurial thought lesson: You, too, can become better at recognizing unrevealed opportunities by learning to spot the subtle clues all around. The key question to ask is, “This product should already exist, why doesn’t it?”

Learn to Spot Hidden Business Opportunities

Besides WILD, Agrawal has applied the same ingenuity to found two other successsful businesses called THINX underwear and TUSHY bidet accessories.

Learn to spot hidden, disruptive business opportunities

Answer the following questions to check if some problem you’re aware of serves as a business idea worth exploring:

What’s appalling in your personal or professional world?
Is this thing so terrible that you want to do something about it?
Does this bother any person but you just as much?
Your proposed solution should already exist, but why doesn’t it?
Could this solution be worth something for others who are dealing with similar problems?

Idea for Impact: “Fix-What-Sucks” Business Opportunities are Everywhere

All you have to do is look around your own life and find something that has been broken, and then fix it. Extend and expand. The world is always seeking better, faster, cheaper, and smarter ways to solve its problems.

Five Rules for Leadership Success // Summary of Dave Ulrich’s ‘The Leadership Code’

January 22, 2021 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

The key to success in any discipline is to figure out the few things that must be done really well and to get those basics right. But so many leaders fail on the fundamentals—and don’t even realize it.

The real implication of leadership has been buried deep over the years: leadership isn’t about the position but about who you are and the responsibility you can undertake. Leadership consultants Dave Ulrich, Norm Smallwood, and Kate Sweetman’s The Leadership Code: Five Rules to Lead By (2009) argues that everything you ever need to know about leadership comes down to five straightforward rules.

If you understand these rules and put them into practice, you can’t fail to spur others and enrich teams, organizations, or communities.

Rule 1: Be A Strategist. Deliberate leaders answer the question “Where are we going?” and mull over multiple time frames. They institute a great enough sense of urgency and remove impediments to the new vision. They anticipate the future and work with others to determine how to advance from the present to the desired future. Shape the future.

Rule 2: Be an Executor. The “executor” aspect of leadership focuses on the question, “How will we make sure we get to where we are going?” Effective leaders understand how to make change happen, assign accountability, assess plans, coordinate efforts, and share information that should be incorporated into strategies. Make things happen.

Rule 3: Be a Talent Manager. Leaders who engage talent now answer the question, “Who goes with us on our business journey?” They select the right people for the right job and ensure that people have the right tools and autonomy to succeed. Leaders foster an inviting organization, create a high level of performance and passion, and continuously monitor problems that need to be fixed. Engage today’s talent.

Rule 4: Be a Human Capital Developer. Leaders who are talent developers answer the question, “Who stays and sustains the organization for the next generation?” Leaders take the time to become aware of how future trends could affect their organizations. They position their teams to win by bearing in mind the longer-term competencies required for future strategic success. Build the next generation.

Rule 5: Be Proficient. Leadership demands are more daunting than ever, and the pressure to perform is relentless. Create regular timeouts to review where you invest your time and energy to ensure that you remain capable of self-managing your personal strengths and weaknesses and generating new behaviors to deal with new challenges. Invest in yourself.

As with most “rules-for-success” books, the authors tout their assessment of “hundreds of studies, frameworks, and tools.” But their work is no more than a distillation of notable leadership thinkers’ experiences. Nonetheless, the rules sound right. The five rules are simple, but they aren’t easy. They are sensible and practicable. They’re what you can focus your effort on for maximum return.

Recommendation: Quick read The Leadership Code. It makes a great early book choice for new leaders. It provides a grounded approach to the fundamentals.

Never underestimate the power of key leadership principles that can be well executed. Complement The Leadership Code with Peter Drucker’s The Practice of Management (1954; my summary) and Julie Zhuo’s The Making of a Manager (2019; my summary.)

How to Own Your Future

January 14, 2021 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Self Directed Learning: How to Own Your Future Work seems to be shifting faster than ever. The New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman provides a particularly emblematic example of the profound changes in the way people work and the way organizations design jobs and work environments:

Work is being disconnected from jobs, and jobs and work are being disconnected from companies, which are increasingly becoming platforms. A great example of this is what’s ha ppening in the cab business. Traditional local cab companies own cars and have employees who have a job; they drive those cars. But, now they’re competing with Uber, which owns no cars, has no employees, and just provides a platform of work that brings together ride-needers and ride-providers.

Adaptivity via Self-Directed Learning

Dramatic economic, social, and technological changes necessitate professionals at all levels to be almost continuously trained and re-trained just to keep abreast of all facets of working life.

The career implication of this continuous transformation is the increasing need for ongoing learning. You’ll have to equip yourself to stay ahead of changes. In other words, you’ll need a growth mindset to learn, apply, reorient, and keep learning.

More Will Be Now on You

You’ll need to be self-directed. You’ll need to take the initiative and responsibility for the learning process. You’ll need to recognize training needs and choose how you’ll meet these needs rather than rely on your organization to tell you what to learn and how to do it. The smarter organizations out there are enabling and promoting individual choice and self-directed and self-determined learning.

What will set successful professionals apart in the future is that they take responsibility for their continuous learning. They proactively explore what they may be interested in and what the future will demand instead of indifferently waiting for options to present themselves.

Idea for Impact: Own Your Learning

Set your sights on a long career with multiple stages, each involving ongoing training and re-skilling. If you want to achieve career greatness, you will likely find your current skill sets obsolete in less than five years without self-directed learning.

Develop a growth mindset that’ll help you grow, expand, evolve, and change.

Not Everyone is Chill About Tattoos and Body Art // Workplace Norms

December 10, 2020 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Over the last decade or so, body art has gained more acceptance as a form of personal expression—akin to clothing, jewelry, or hairstyle. Workplace attitudes toward body art have slowly shifted.

Certain trades—especially arts and media—value individuality, especially in creative roles. Visible tattoos and body piercings are common and acceptable. However, consulting, law, management, recruitment, and other “traditional” trades are likely to find body art less compliant with the industry norms. Having a tattoo can even be seen as unprofessional and defiant—even intimidating.

You have the right to express yourself as long as you are respecting the company’s norms

For some conservative people, visible art suggests that you may have a problem with authority. One study showed that tattooed people are perceived to be less honest, motivated, and intelligent.

At some workplaces, your insistence on leaving large earrings and nose piercings on or dressing in short sleeves that reveal your tattoos signals to that employer that you don’t care about norms. You may be judged as a willful person insistent on exerting your individuality rather than fit in and belong.

Your appearance and behavior are expected to reflect your workplace’s values and culture, particularly in customers’ presence.

Employers are free to impose dress codes and grooming guidelines. Discrimination law does apply to matters related to age, gender, sexual orientation, race, ethnicity, nationality, and religion—but not your sense of fashion.

Idea for Impact: Offensiveness is subjective, and everyone draws their lines differently

Don’t put yourself at a disadvantage. Consider the micro-cultural stereotypes concerning body art.

Seek a happy medium between personal style and dressing for work. Cover up and limit the number of visible piercings.

If you’re starting a new job and aren’t sure how body art will be perceived, consider a pilot. Instead of going “all in,” test the waters by displaying a little body art and see what sort of response you get.

Don’t Be Friends with Your Boss

October 16, 2020 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Don't Be Friends with Your Boss Develop a cordial, constructive, and trusting relationship with your boss. But don’t extend that connection into a chummy friendship.

A boss-employee friendship comes with complications and tensions that don’t exist in other relationships. The boundaries in friendships are softer and more diffuse. In a boss-employee relationship, the boundaries are more pronounced, and rightly so.

When you’ve got a great rapport that comes with a friendship, it’s easy to start expecting to be treated a bit better than everyone else on your team. You’ll be disappointed when some special consideration—a plump assignment or a flexible vacation schedule—doesn’t come your way. Your boss will expect you to abide by the same standards and rules as everyone else.

You also have to be more vigilant about how your friendship appears to other people.

Idea for Impact: Boss first, friend second. Don’t mix the two. Sure, be friendly with your boss, but don’t expect to be treated as a friend.

I’m Not Impressed with Your Self-Elevating Job Title

October 12, 2020 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Ben Horowitz of the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz discusses giving employees ego-boosting new job titles to appease them for not receiving a promotion or a pay increase:

Should your company make Vice President the top title or should you have Chief Marketing Officers, Chief Revenue Officers, Chief People Officer’s, and Chief Snack Officers? There are two schools of thought regarding this.

Marc Andreessen argues that people ask for many things from a company: salary, bonus, stock options, span of control, and titles. Of those, title is by far the cheapest, so it makes sense to give the highest titles possible… If it makes people feel better, let them feel better. Titles cost nothing. Better yet, when competing for new employees with other companies, using Andreessen’s method you can always outbid the competition in at least one dimension.

And, as a counterpoint, the pitfalls of job title inflation:

At Facebook, by contrast, Mark Zuckerberg… avoids accidentally giving new employees higher titles and positions than better performing existing employees. This boosts morale and increases fairness. Secondly, it forces all the managers of Facebook to deeply understand and internalize Facebook’s leveling system which serves the company extremely well in their own promotion and compensation processes. He also wants titles to be meaningful and reflect who has influence in the organization. As a company grows quickly, it’s important to provide organizational clarity wherever possible and that gets more difficult if there are 50 VPs and 10 Chiefs.

It’s become trendy to create and bandy about outlandish job titles and inflate career profiles.

I’m never impressed with self-elevating titles (e.g., Revenue Protection Officer for a Train Ticket Inspector, Director of First Impressions for a Receptionist) that make you sound like a pretentious, egotistical, and obnoxious person.

Your job title is supposed to help me understand what you do without having to open up the dictionary.

Yes, vague and puzzling job titles surface partly because the world is changing, and so are trades and occupations. Some new job titles are going to be needed.

But it’d be great if we could get by with a much smaller and simpler inventory of descriptive job titles.

Idea for Impact: Avoid bogus grandeur—challenge job title inflation. Don’t assign senior-sounding job titles to those with middle-ranking wages.

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Winning on the Job

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Learn to Spot Hidden Business Opportunities

Idea for Impact: “Fix-What-Sucks” Business Opportunities are Everywhere

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Adaptivity via Self-Directed Learning

More Will Be Now on You

Idea for Impact: Own Your Learning

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You have the right to express yourself as long as you are respecting the company’s norms

Idea for Impact: Offensiveness is subjective, and everyone draws their lines differently

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