Undocumented Features

Reputation.  It takes years to build, and seconds to destroy.  It’s also one of the primary building blocks of your career.  Perception is reality; you are to your coworkers and superiors what you appear to be.

How does one go about building a quality reputation?  Whole stacks of books could be and have been written on the subject, but for our purposes, I am going to stick the basics.  Below are the six simple things you can do to build a reputation that means something to others:

• Meet your deadlines.  Business is time-sensitive.  You miss deadlines, you look bad.  Worse than that, you make someone else look bad.  The next person in the project’s chain, the project manager, the business owner, your boss, the business owner’s boss… if you trip up the project, you trip up everyone.  They won’t like it.
• Own your mistakes.  If you do miss a deadline, tell someone. Tell your project manager, your boss, and the next person in the chain.  They will communicate things out from there.  Be honest, admit the situation, and negotiate for a new deadline that you can meet.  If you screwed something else up, do the same- tell the people it matters to and negotiate how you will fix the situation, and by what time.
• Fix Your Messes.  Again, if you messed up, fix it yourself if possible.  Don’t bring people problems; bring them solutions.  This is especially true if you are responsible for the problem.
• Don’t Make Excuses.  Do tell people why things went wrong.  Do not use it as an excuse.  Tell them what went wrong, and what you think you can do within your control to prevent it in the future.  If it’s out of your control, ask for a meeting with the parties involved to find a fix for the process that led you here.  Own the problem and solve it.
• Share Credit.  When you succeed, solve a problem, clean up your mess, or whatever, be sure to give credit to everyone who helped you. This recognizes the work of others; people appreciate that, and they will remember it.
• Blame the Right Thing.  People screw up.  Things go wrong.  When these things happen, take the time to find out why, then, once again, take steps to solve the problem.  Did someone screw up because they weren’t properly trained?  Did they not have the right info to make the decision they made?  Did something fail?  Was it properly maintained?  What could have prevented it?  Anyone can see a problem and assign blame.  Step up to the plate and solve the problem for the long term.
• Communicate.  Never leave people in the dark regarding things they need to know.  If they get blindsided or screw up, and you could have prevented it by simply sharing information, they will remember it.  A very, very long time.

There is a lot more to building integrity and reputation, but in a nut shell, this is it.  If you do these six things consistently, people will recognize you as someone with integrity, who is helpful, dependable, and reliable.  Start here, and your career will thrive.

No matter what you do in business, there are a key set of things you must focus on to do your job well.  If you are a CEO, a project manager, a sales executive, software developer, working as a cashier at the kwik-e mart… no matter the job, these things matter.

1.  People Skills Matter
The number one key in business is trust.  Money is at stake.  People’s careers are at stake.  Entering into business with any unit outside your control- a partner, a client, a vendor, another department even- is scary business.  Winning trust is not just important for making a sale- it’s important for the ongoing process.  If the business owner trusts you, they may buy your product, but what about their IT staff?  Their project manager?  If these folks don’t trust you, they will make your implementation a nightmare, as they try to make certain that your implementation is successful in your organization- by calling all the shots to ensure you do things their way, even if they have no expertise on your software.  If their support organization does not trust you, they will seek their own solutions to problems rather than working with you to make their implementation better.  Trust is needed all the way across the board.

This is where people skills matter most.  Your organization must be able to establish an ongoing rapport at all levels.  Your sales people must be able to reach a good rapport with their business decision makers.  Your implementations and technical people have to be able to establish a good rapport with their IT staff.  Your support organization must establish a good rapport with theirs.  From department to department, this principle still applies- you must have good rapport at all of the contact points in your organization.  This even applies the other way- if the people who you have communicating with your customers and partners can’t establish trust with the people inside your organization, they will be seen as ‘pandering to the clients’, and you’ll face internal problems.

People skills are invaluable in building trust.  Building trust is one of the most important skills in business, and one of the most difficult to teach.  Your ‘face time’ people in your organization should be chosen as much for the ability to make friends with anyone and exhibits good trust-building and trust-maintaining skills as any other skill needed for the position.  Relationships matter.

2.  Initiative Matters
A good rapport is the beginning of any business relationship.  Now that you have the relationship started, though, you have to deliver.  Friendship is about many things.  Business is not.  It’s about the bottom line.  Making money.  Creating value.  Promise what you can deliver, work hard, and follow through.  Anyone involved in communicating who says “Well, I lined them up, now you guys take care of them” is not the following through.

3.  Focus Matters
An important part of being able to deliver is not over-promising and under-delivering. To get there, you have to focus on the right things.  Out of all the markets, all the customers in that market, all the ideas we have, all the projects we have on deck, which ones most deserve my resources?  What has the best bang-for-buck?  If you take on more work than you can execute on, you will fail at all your commitments.  The more different customers you involve when you finally fail, the more customers you will lose because of your lack of focus.  You will constantly be tempted to reach for the next ring.  You will be tempted to enter new, additional markets.  To paraphrase the old wine commercial, attack no market before it’s time.  Focus.  Complete the job at hand before you start a new one.  Identify your most important targets and knock the ball out of the park.  Everything that you promise, commit to it and fulfill that commitment.

If you do this, once you conquer the market at hand, once you please the customer or partner at hand, you will receive recognition and help when you proceed to your next challenge- help in form of income from clients, word of mouth, reputation, all the things that matter and reinforce why you are the best choice out there.

4.  Responsibility Matters
When you make a mistake, own that mistake.  Make it right with the customer.  Acknowledge the customer’s concerns with your mistake and the possibility of more mistakes.  Fix the problem, identify how to prevent it in the future, and communicate.  Most importantly, do it in that order.  Don’t promise that “it will never happen again” if you have no idea what you are going to do to prevent it yet.  Failing, promising, then failing again just ruins your reputation.  Now you’re a failure *and* a liar.  Don’t panic when you make a mistake; mistakes happen.  Resolve the mistake and move on.

5.  New Opportunities Matter
Expansion is always easiest down the path of least resistance.  Your existing customers are the easiest to sell additional products to.  Your existing markets are easiest to sell in.  Your existing products are easiest to expand.

Look for synergies between your products and offerings.  When possible, increase them.  Yes, I am as tired as anyone of the word synergy- but, in this case, it applies.  If you are remotely focused, your existing products, projects, process improvements, projects… they should all have a crossover somewhere, or be near having a crossover.  Look for ways to take advantage of these things to increase revenue and increase the value of your products.  Product A may not have any value to people who buy Product B as is, but there may be something you can enhance about either Product A or Product B that brings them together and makes them both more valuable.  Voila, you’ve created a new market for your products for a small amount of effort, and in an area where you have a high chance of success- with existing customers, in a market where you have a presence already.

How does this apply to your internal departments?  In many ways, it is the same thing- you probably have existing products, processes and projects that increase productivity and value to your company.  Look for ways to marry these up to increase value to the company with less effort than having to create whole new projects from scratch.  Keep your maintenance down and your focus high as you expand.  Familiarity with the existing product also helps you drive internal adoption easily.

6.  Service Matters
Everyone is in the service business in some way.  If your job in the company is to do something that you can identify no customers for, then I would suggest that what you do for the company has no value.  If you maintain something, there are people who depend on that something- those people are your customers.  If you write documentation, you have two customers- those who distribute it, and those who use it.  Put your customers first and deliver.  If you are in management, make sure all of your employees are delivering.  Everyone should be focused on their customers.  At the same time, the customer is *not* always right.  If maintaining a customer is costing you more than the value that the customer is bringing to you, then sometimes the right business decision is to reduce your market and let that one go, so that you can focus on your value customers.

Just what the internet needs, another list of time management tips- still, it never hurts to review and think about how we use our time.  I was thinking about it today and came up with these tips to improve myself and my team:

1.  Do what matters most first.
2.  Eliminate “shoulds” and “coulds”.  If it can’t go, put it on your ‘someday’ list.
3.  Don’t plan your time too tightly.  There’ll be a crisis or a surprise, your schedule will get off because you didn’t leave enough slack, and you’ll waste even more time recovering.
4.  Live in the Now.  The past is gone – whatever went wrong then went wrong.  How you deal with what went wrong is what matters.
5.  Before you invest your time in it, weigh your ROI (return on investment).  If you’re not gaining anything of value from it, perhaps you shouldn’t do it.
6.  Always finish your task completely and permanently.  Coming back to it later is asking to waste time as you deal with figuring out where you left off, redo some work, cope with the incomplete parts, and so on.
7.  If it isn’t vital, say no.  If someone doesn’t truly need your help, don’t give it.  You may be building a relationship by helping, but then again, you may be building a dependency.  Enpower and move away.
8.  Under-promise. You never know when disasters will step in and change the rules.
9.  Don’t associate with people or join anything that wastes your time.  Delegate or disassociate yourself.
10.  Solve your own problems.  Let others solve their own problems.
11.  Multitasking wastes time and lowers quality.
12.  Take a break when you need it.  Reorganize when you need it.  Resetting and recovering will give you what you need to do more, better.

Have any other tips?  Toss them in under the comments!