Now that you have hopefully started your Rosetta Stone Swahili speaking course, we can continue our look at Career Limiting Moves (CLMs). Last week we looked at Culture, Late-coming, Whining and Weekend Sick days, and if you missed it, the Rosetta Stone reference above will hopefully entice you to go back and read part 1.

This week lets’ start with…

5. BOOZE

This one can get really tricky as you often end up in the horrible middle ground between all or nothing, but as usual, the answer is balance. If your colleagues and bosses are having a beer after work, you have an opportunity to spend an hour or two after a long day’s work getting to know your colleagues in a more relaxed setting. Outside of work, we are all almost equal, so here’s your chance to develop common ground, particularly with your superiors. Once you develop friendships with higher ups, your survival rate shoots through the roof.

In terms of your Clients, it only takes a one-hour lunch to significantly improve a relationship, especially if you pay. Your clients will respond to your e-mails and calls quicker, and business gets that much easier.

BUT, in either situation DON’T GET DRUNK! Nobody ever gets promoted because of a great party. There is only downside if you get hammered and start blabbering on about how you find Y colleague hot, and how you find X boss annoying. An ex-colleague of mine got sloshed at a Managing Director’s house and was fired two months later. Coincidence? Of course not. He was a potential blight to the firm.

6. OFFICE ROMANCE

Dating a colleague is risky business, and you both need to seriously consider the realities associated with it. There are often strict HR policies that either forbids interoffice dating entirely, or that if a relationship occurs, it must be reported for liability and other reasons. If you can’t deny love, make sure you are aware of your company’s stance and policies, and if they don’t have any, or there is any uncertainty, discuss the situation with your immediate superior to ensure that you do not cross any boundaries unknowingly. And if it’s not the real thing, don’t do it. Extra marital liaisons may be perceived as cool by your drinking buddies, but your bosses will often see only the deceit and breakdown of trust that is always associated with these situations, and that will not reflect well on you.

And if none of those points deter you, consider the statistics – sadly, nearly 50% of marriages end in divorce, and even more relationships don’t even get to the mariage point. The chances are more than even that eventually the relationship will backfire, and the fall-out in the office has the potential to cause all kinds of repercussions.

7. FIND THE ROCKETSHIPS

There is always a star in your office that is going places fast, and they won’t always be senior to you. Marissa Mayer is the CEO of Yahoo at age 37, and she’s hiring plenty of her old colleagues from Google to be her lieutenants. It’s important to identify the rocketship in your company so you can also go along for the ride. If your friends ascend to powerful places, they will make sure they take care of the people who helped to get them there.

8. DON’T JUMP SHIP

There’s an inherent desire for all of us to want more now, if not sooner! If you are underappreciated and a genuinely better opportunity comes along, then absolutely make the transition. But if you are on track but simply lack patience, then you are shooting yourself in the foot because you will have to redevelop all your existing relationships in your new environment, and that could end up slowing your progress down significantly. Make sure you make, and carefully weigh up, a list of the things to consider before quitting your current job. Everything always seems greener on the other side, but that is often because of the amount of manure on the other side.

So there you have the second bite at this subject, and I have kept the most important CLM for last. Next week we will unpack holidays, volunteering for extra work, overestimating your abilities, and the most important CLM of them all ……….

I had such an amazing response to last week’s offer that I’ve decided to repeat it! If you need some help with career planning, or would just like an objective look at your existing plans, I’m offering 5 FREE 45 minute Career Path Tune Ups to the first 5 people who use our Contact Form on our website to ask for one of them. These will help you assess where you are now, where you want to get to, and how to go about getting there as smoothly as possible. The sessions would normally cost AU$ 150.00 each, so grab a free one while it is available.

Who knew that not spitting on your hand before shaking your boss’s hand could seriously affect your chances of promotion???

If your boss happens to be a Maasai elder (see point 1 below), you should know that as a mark of respect, Maasai warriors spit on their hands before shaking the hand of an elder! So this week we take a look at Career Limiting Moves.

For most of us, our career is our primary, if not only, way of creating income. We then need to generate more income than we expend, and that allows us to create financial wealth, which is (only) one of the elements of an outstanding, and full spectrum life. This makes our career an extremely important element of our lives, and our ability to plan and execute appropriate strategies (TYJ) relative to our career, the fundamental task we should all be regularly focused on.

 The danger in not planning and executing appropriate strategies goes way beyond the obvious. If you do not grow your income to a level that allows you to achieve the goals you have set for yourself, the chances are that a little thing called bitterness will start to grow, and you will start to begrudge other people the successes they are achieving. The fruits of bitterness are extremely unpleasant, and are definitely to be avoided, so let’s work at the necessary planning and execution required to keep us well away from that particular orchard! As an example, bitter people happily vote to raise taxes on the people who already pay the most taxes, as long as they don’t have to pay any more themselves! Is this ringing any bells yet?

 Now that you have some understanding of the wider importance of doing well in your career, let me share with you a list of Career Limiting Moves (CLMs), that I have both exhibited, and observed over my working life.

 1.     NOT SPEAKING SWAHILI
If your boss is from Kenya, then you need to know about the culture, language, customs, economy, and areas of pride and tradition in Kenya!  Now that I have your attention I’m sure you realise that I’m actually talking about your boss’s culture, irrespective of his actual nationality. By learning about your boss’s culture, it shows you care. Don’t bust out your Swahili to show off. Instead, you are simply prepared to speak and act in appropriate fashion when the inevitable culture bias reveals itself. Take a look around your office – people employ people who talk, behave and resemble themselves, in one or more ways. This cuts across things as obvious as race, and includes the full bouquet of nationality, level of education and gender. This may be perceived as nepotism to some degree, but I suspect that it is rooted in the simple fact that people trust people who are like they are. Now, other than a series of visits to a tanning salon, it may be difficult for some of you to look Kenyan, but you can certainly take the time to learn and understand somebody else’s culture.

 2.     PERPETUAL LATECOMING
One of the easiest things you can do is get in to work early, but for some reason very few of us do! If you perpetually arrive after your boss, you run the risk of being seen as disrespectful to him, and your senior colleagues. If it looks like you don’t really care then why should they care? Promotions and pay raises will start to take a lot longer than necessary, and that is the last thing we want. Oh, and by the way, the same thing goes for those who perpetually leave early. You do not know everything yet, so make the effort to put in that little bit of extra time, and it will pay serious dividends in the long run.

 3.     CONSTANT WHINING
Whiners, wingers and complainers are always at the top of the list when it’s time to let people go. Nobody likes a whiner, especially the ones who complain constantly about their work conditions, or even worse, their colleagues, subordinates, and bosses. When tempted to complain, keep in mind that there are people dying from starvation who can’t even get a minimum wage job! A complaint moving around the office will soon become gossip, because nobody is able to keep their mouth shut. Office gossip is like a cancer that cannot be stopped, and the person you are telling probably can’t resolve the issue anyway, so rather do not engage. And while I’m on the subject of a cancer, constant complaining will get your boss wondering why you stick around if things are so bad, and if he/she than finds out it’s because you are too nervous, or unqualified, to move, he is going to treat you like one and surgically remove you as soon as he can. Offer positive solutions to the problems that you encounter, go looking for opportunities to be noticed in a positive light and you will naturally ascend.

 4.     FRIDAY OR MONDAY SICK DAYS
OK, I know you can actually get sick just before, or during a weekend, but the odds are at best 1 in 7, or a 15% chance. And if it really happens, you will be much better off if you don’t already have a track record of it. Because so many people do it, most bosses automatically assume it is a way of creating a long weekend, which will never stand you in good stead when performance review time comes around. If you call in sick repeatedly on Fridays or Mondays, start looking for another job, as the statistical probability of your reasons being genuine, is stacked against you.

 So there you have the first batch of CLM’s for this week. I will add to the list next week with a few more that will include some of the more saucy options like alcohol, office romances, and rocketships!

 In the meantime, if you need some help with career planning, or would just like an objective look at your existing plans, I’m offering 5 free 45 minute Career Path Tune Ups to the first 5 people who use our Contact Form on our website to ask for one of them. These would normally cost AU$ 150.00 each, so grab a free one while it is available.

As usual, feel free leave us a comment below, or on our Facebook or Twitter feeds, whichever is easiest for you.

Vision and Mission Statements are a waste of time! Or are they ….

Recently, vision and mission statements have become so watered down in the corporate world that they are basically meaningless. If your company’s mission statement is anything like “we will constantly exceed our customer’s expectations”, having your business development team arrive at a sales call with a marching band will probably “exceed customer expectations”, but not necessarily increase sales, or assist your business achieve its goals. Because of this, vision and mission have been largely painted with negative connotations. When used properly though, vision and mission statements can be very powerful tools, especially for developing firms. Just as a sports coach has a vision for putting a dream team together and plans for winning games, vision and mission provide direction for a business, without which it is difficult to develop a workable plan. A workable plan allows the business to engage in activities that lead the organization forward and avoid allocating resources to activities that do not.

Vision Statements

Vision statements and mission statements are different. A vision statement spells out goals at a high level and should line up with the owner's goals for the business. The vision should state what the owner ultimately wants the business to be, in terms of growth, values, staff, contributions to society, and so on; therefore, self-reflection by the owner is a vital activity if a meaningful vision is to be crafted. Once the owner(s) have defined the vision, you can begin to develop strategies for moving the organization towards that vision, and part of this process would include the development of the company mission statement(s).

Mission Statements

The mission statement should be a concise statement of business strategy, developed from the customer's perspective and it should fit with the vision for the business. The mission should answer three seemingly simple questions:

1.    What do we do?

2.    How do we do it?

3.    For whom do we do it?

1.What do we do? 

This question should not be answered in terms of what is physically delivered to customers, but by the real and/or psychological needs that are fulfilled when customers buy your products or services. Customers make purchase decisions for many reasons, including economical, logistical, and emotional factors. An excellent illustration of this is a business that imports hand-made jewellery from East Africa. When asked what her business does, the owner replied, "We import and market East African jewellery." But when asked why customers buy her jewellery, she explained that, "They're buying the story behind where the jewellery came from." This is an important distinction and answering this question from the need-fulfilled perspective will help you answer the other two questions effectively.

2. How do we do it? This question captures the more technical elements of the business. Your answer should encompass the physical product or service and how it is sold and delivered to customers, and it should fit with the need that the customer fulfils with its purchase. In the example above, the business owner had originally defined her business as selling East African jewellery and was attempting to sell it on shelves of boutique retail stores with little success. After modifying the answer to the first question, she realized that she needed to deliver the story to her customers along with the product. She began organizing wine parties that included a slide show of East Africa, stories of personal experiences there, and pictures and descriptions of the villagers who make the jewellery. This method of delivery has been very successful for her business.

3. For whom do we do it? The answer to this question is also vital, as it will help you focus your marketing efforts. Though many small business owners would like to believe otherwise, not everyone is a potential customer, as customers will almost always have both demographic and geographic limitations. When starting out, it is generally a good idea to define the demographic characteristics (age, income, etc.) of customers who are likely to buy and then define a geographic area in which your business can gain a presence. As you grow, you can add new customer groups and expand your geographic focus.

An additional consideration with mission statements is that most businesses will have multiple customer groups that purchase for different reasons. In these cases, one mission statement can be written to answer each of the three questions for each customer group or multiple mission statements can be developed.

As a final thought, remember that your vision and mission statements are meant to help guide the business, not to lock you into a particular direction. As your company grows and as the competitive environment changes, your mission may require change to include additional or different needs fulfilled, delivery systems, or customer groups. With this in mind, your vision and mission should be revisited periodically to determine whether changes are needed.

Version 8 would love to help you develop a clear vision and mission statement for your business or team. Leave us a comment below, or head on over to www.version8.com.au and fill in the Contact Form, and we will get back to you ASAP.