May | 2013 | Bhavin Gandhi's Blog

How to quickly move up the corporate ladder? (Part 2)

This post on moving up the ladder is a continuation to my last post. So in this post I will provide you with few other ideas through which you can quickly move up the corporate ladder.

Keep learning: This sounds really simple, but it should be very important part of your life, if you want to continuously grow in your career. With organizations, technologies and laws changing every day, you need to keep yourself up-to-date with the current knowledge. I know, it becomes really tedious to handle work, family, and other things at the same time in your busy working life, but it is very important to grow with the world. Thus, you need to always find opportunities to learn new things, it can be learning new stuff to become a subject matter expert at your work, or to diversify your knowledge. If possible, try to get new certifications. If you already have few certification in one subject area, try to diversify (depending on your work needs). Most of the companies pay for tuition reimbursement, so make the best use out of it. Investing in yourself is never going to go to waste. At the least, your manager will get aware of your learning aptitude and your capabilities. I am sure, it will help you in one way or other.

Change your job: Unfortunately, sometimes you might be working in the wrong company. There might not be as many promotion opportunities as you would like. If your primary motivation to get that next promotion is the salary increment, then you might have to change your company, if your company doesn’t have those opportunities available. If you are not one of the person like me, who is looking for challenging opportunities with a minimal pay raise, then this might be your best bet. There is nothing wrong about it. Everyone have their own motivation criteria, so if moving up the ladder is one of your criteria, then go for it. If you can get an opportunity somewhere else that you deserve, then why not? If I were you, I would keep my LinkedIn up-to-date, have my updated resume on job portals, etc. You are not actively applying here, but you are also not invisible to the whole world. So, if people will like you then they will call you. And yeah! Since you are already satisfied with your current job, always apply for the job which you want to have, instead of a replacement job. In this way, if you don’t get any job, no issues. But if you do get one, then you will get the dream job that you have always wanted.

If you have additional suggestions on how you would quickly move up the corporate ladder, then please let me know. I would love to hear your thoughts. All your comments are very welcome and appreciated. Thanks – Bhavin Gandhi

Leadership DON’Ts: Learn from leadership mistakes in the Benghazi attack

13 May

Recently, I have been seeing a lot of news stories about the attack on the US consulate in Benghazi. This issue is definitely older, but how the White House handled this issue can teach us few things about leadership. In this blog, I am going to view this incident through the leadership glasses, and provide you with few tips on “what not to do”.

Don’t act on partial information: Through different news conferences, e-mails, and the number of congress hearings, it had become clear that the White House spoke too soon about the attack on the US consulate in Benghazi. If White House was trying to hide this issue, then its a different story; but let’s assume that the conspiracy about White House lying to the public is wrong. Even then, it is clear that White House had changed its talking points multiple times. If they didn’t have the complete information at that time, then they shouldn’t have spoke anything about that issue at all. Sometimes, its ok to give no answer, if you don’t have the correct information. Though there will be an eagerness to get those answers quickly, by not giving those answers on partial information, you (as a leader) will be avoiding lot of confusion in the future (like Obama administration is dealing with currently).

Take the first hand feedback: I am not a proponent of the theory that Hillary Clinton lied to the american public. But it doesn’t require a rocket scientist to figure out that the communication protocols defined for the disastrous situation like this were poorly implemented. Transparency was definitely missing in the equation. Talking points about the event were made by people, who didn’t have any idea on what was going on. Even if those points were made by administrative people, they should have been reviewed by the people on the ground. Let’s take this for an example……as a leader you implement a completely new process in your organization, and never care to see how it is going. Will that be acceptable? If so, how will you measure your success? Since there was no feedback loop attached to this action, of course the results from this new initiative won’t mean anything to you, since you can’t compare it with any baseline. And hence, there won’t be any mechanism through which you can find out the success/failure of this new process.

Find the root cause first: When Hillary Clinton said “What difference does it make?”, I was stunned by her response. Even if I neglect the fact that no one can do anything about the people who have died in that attack, how they died makes a huge difference in this case. Let’s look at this from a different perspective. Remember the famous example of “iPhone 4 antenna problem”? Initially it was thought to be the network issue with ATT, and then they realized that the issue was due to the new metal cover of iPhone 4. And hence, they produced a workaround on the iPhone side, instead of trying to strengthen the ATT network worldwide or changing the carrier through which iPhone was provided exclusively. What would have happened, if they didn’t identify the real issue, and kept blaming on the ATT network? In that case, the issue wouldn’t have resolved, and future customers would have kept seeing the same issue. Similarly, if we don’t find out the root cause of this Benghazi issue, we can’t secure our US consulate in other countries in the future.

Well……there are various other leadership “not to do” lessons that you can learn from this incident, but I would like to stop here for this particular blog. If you think that you have few other examples/points that you would like to share here, then feel free to drop your comments.

Thanks – Bhavin Gandhi

How to quickly move up the corporate ladder? (Part 1)

09 May

I had a conversation a few days ago with somebody about how to get that next promotion. Her company had a huge hierarchical structure, and it seemed almost impossible for her to grab that next promotion. So, what does it take to get that next promotion or getting to the next level? I am not an expert on the subject, but I have had some insight through my personal experience and few internal promotions, which I would like to share with you here.

Communicate: By communicate, I am not recommending you to butter-up your Boss. I am rather suggesting you to display your work to your team members and your Superior. I might be doing an excellent job of coding (programming), but if I am poor in communicating my achievements to my team, my work won’t get the credit it deserves. Communication is not that difficult as you see. Consider these simpler techniques……..schedule a bi-weekly meeting with your manager to discuss about your progress and what you can do to improve myself. This meeting will not only serve the purpose of your achievements advertisement, but it will also give you an opportunity to get some quality counselling session with your manager. If you don’t get anything out of it, you will at least be able to develop some personal relationships. If you find communicating with your manager is intimidating in-person, then you can also send an e-mail to your manager, and your team members about your bi-weekly accomplishments. You don’t want to spam them with e-mails every day, but you need to shoot them couple of e-mails by showing what you have finished in past 2 weeks, what you are going to do in next 2 weeks, and any concerns (if you have any). This practice will definitely help you a lot in keeping your team informed about your work, and letting them know about your potential.

Be helpful: We are all passionate about helping others. But most of the times our juniors are not the one who will have our promotion done, so many people don’t help their juniors that often. If you think that, then you are completely wrong. If you are helping your juniors then you need to make sure that your effort of leading (helping) your juniors is visible to your manager through your one-on-one meetings or bi-weekly e-mails. Don’t treat your juniors any differently, consider them same as you. You never know, someday someone can become your manager, and they might be the reason for your next promotion. The key here is…….always be positive, and demonstrate your helping nature to your everyone. Whenever you have a discussion with your team, try to add some value to the conversation, instead of being a silent listener all the time. Be friendly, it will take you a long way. You will not only earn respect from your team members, but you will also demonstrate your leadership qualities to your superiors as well.

See my next post for the rest of the advice….

Thanks – Bhavin Gandhi.

1 Comment

Posted by Bhavin Gandhi on May 9, 2013 in 21st Century, Leadership, Management

Tags: Be the change, Career growth, Career improvement, Corporate ladder, Grow with the company, Market yourself, Next promotion, Self awareness, Self improvement, Self learning, Self-initiative, Sell yourself, take action

How can you cultivate a team of innovative employees by modifying your behavior?

02 May

In order to change your employee’s behavior, your behavior should change as the manager. I am a strong believer of “Lead by example”. And hence, in this blog post, I will provide you with few tips on modifying your behavior to encourage innovation in your team.

Listen to your employees: Listening intently to your people is sometimes the most sincere compliment you can give to them. By listening to them, you are signaling them that their feedback is very important to you, and you are willing to experiment with their ideas. This behavior will not only accelerate innovation in your team, but it will also give you some insights that you might otherwise miss. I know, it is very difficult to listen to someone, when you don’t agree with them. I would suggest you to note down those disagreements in your notepad or OneNote, while having these conversations. By doing this, you can clearly understand their viewpoint, and still be able to address your disagreements after they are done talking.

Withhold judgment: You can’t cultivate a team of innovators without cultivating your trust relationship with them. Your employees will stop coming to you with their ideas, if you hold their poor performance in their past projects against this new idea. Listening with an open mind will encourage your people to generate and evaluate their own solutions. So, next time when you hear a new idea from a poor performer, keep an open mind. First listen to his/her idea before neglecting it. Even if you don’t agree with their idea, disagree respectfully by clearly laying out your concerns. In this way, they can understand the clear reasoning behind your decision, instead of making up some story of their own regarding this rejection.

Ask questions: While listening to your employee’s ideas, make sure to ask lot of questions. Asking appropriate and effective questions will typically result in less defensiveness and resistance from them. These questions will not only give you an opportunity to understand their idea better, but it will also provide them an opportunity to reassess their idea from a different perspective. And make sure to take longer pause, while asking this questions. This behavior will provide your employee with some time to respond, and it will help you to show them you are listening to their input.

Embrace failures: Obviously, with highly innovative projects, your frequency of failures will increase. After all, not every innovation will work out, and give you positive results. Right? During these situations, you need to embrace your failures. I would recommend you to have a post project meeting to address these concerns for the future projects. During this meeting, you need to ask your employees some questions like……”What have you tried?”, “What worked?”, “What have you learned so far?”, “What would they do differently next time?”, etc. These questions will not only give you the perspective for the failure, but it will force your employees to rethink their strategies for the future innovations. I am sure, this self-realization will help them in the future. And hopefully, they won’t come to you with their ideas, unless they find out a way to deal with these concerns in their future projects.

By encompassing above changes in your behavior, you won’t be just improving the trust relationship with your employees, but you will be encouraging them to think on their own to become better innovators. So……..what else would you modify in your behavior to encourage innovation in your team?

Thanks. – Bhavin Gandhi.