Whitney Johnson, author of How to Build an A Team covered how an S-curve can be utilized to depict career development trajectories in a recent People and Projects podcast. This knowledge can be used to manage your own career, hone your hiring practices and optimize your team.

Briefly, the bottom of the curve is when you are new in a role and are working hard to gain knowledge and get your feet under you. This part of the curve lasts between 6 months and one year. The spot in mid-curve is when you become competent in the role. You are productive and creative in this sweet spot that lasts between 1 and 3 years. The top of the curve is when you reach mastery of your role. After a year this top point becomes a precipice in which you leap off to another S curve in a new role or it becomes a plateau you can stagnant on. The risk if you lounge too long on the plateau is that you will get pushed off. While those in mastery hold valuable corporate and tacit knowledge it is not the place where people are most productive or creative. Sometimes these masters become the “this is the way we have always done it here” person.

Johnson is a clear proponent of career disruption, advocating the strategically planned successive transition between S curves before stagnation, boredom and complacency sets in. She believes that your teams should include very few Masters – if you need someone at the top of the curve you hire a term specific consultant for that expertise. Your focus in hiring is on potential and not proficiency. This ensures your teams are optimized in terms of creativity, productivity and engagement for a longer period of time. She also reminds employers to listen to the observations of those at the lower end of the curve – they have fresh eyes and their curious questions can help highlight opportunities within your business.

As a Consultant and a Project Manager each new project brings a new S curve. The journey along the S-curve is one I am very aware of and very much enjoy. Where are you on the curve?

The Toad and I recently added a new member to our family – Hamelin the Syrian Short-Haired Hamster! When we got home with Hamelin and all his accessories – 2-story habitat, house, water bottle, bedding, food, chew sticks etc. we discovered that the bottom of the plastic cage was cracked all the way across. Worried about leaving Hamelin in a cardboard box for too long I raced back to the store to replace it. I left the Toad home on his own (for the first time ever) to take care of his pet.  

To paint the picture – I had just done 2 round trip into town in 90 minutes, I had left my boy home alone in the house, I had a rodent now living in my house and I hadn’t eaten lunch yet and now I had to assemble a hamster habitat with tubes and wheels and compartments! Cue the daunting music – Da! Da! Da! Cue the internal voice that tells me I am not good at reading instructions and assembling things.

It is not just an internal voice but a truism. I put Ikea furniture together backward the first time – every single time. Like most people, I have turned my weakness into a self-deprecating joke. But the humour does not silence the inner critic.

The Toad knows about my internal negative narrative. I shared it with him quite a while ago when I was trying to assemble a toy for him and was getting very cranky and snappy. With tears in my eyes, I admitted to my boy that I was very intimidated by assembly instructions and I was afraid I would fail him when he needed me to build something for him. I told him in moments like this there was pressure for me in performing and being both Mom and Dad. My boy with the wise old soul reassured me that if we worked on it together we could do anything.

As I sat with the hamster cage and instructions in front of me my sweet child put his hand on my shoulder and suggested we grab a quick lunch before tackling the assembly because “our brains will work better if they have food”.  It was a wise decision to pause and breathe and eat. We tackled the assembly with only a few frustrated growls and not a signal temper flare, a tear or a swear word!

I have not vanquished the narrative but it has less power over me now that someone else knows about it and helps me stand up to my internal bully.

“All meetings are transformations, what brings you here?” Kwakwaka’wakw saying

This quote made me stop and think. My first thought was that the meetings I attend at work are far from transformational. I bet you can even picture the eye roll that accompanied my first thought. Much has been written about how to make meetings more effective but I have yet to see many of those tactics be sustainable. This includes my own meetings. This is a pretty damning admission given my previous roles and experience as both an Organizational Development Consultant and a trainer/facilitator.

As I gave second thought to the quote I thought of the other definition of a meeting  - an act or process of coming together– and realized that a) my head space was clearly preoccupied with work and b) this more personal definition of a meeting also happened at work and in those other types of meetings but I had not considered my professional relationships in this profound way. I wonder if doing so will make all my meetings transformational?

Toad and I were fortunate to spend a week this summer with my friend and her family from Italy. My friend was an exchange student who lived with my family 30 years ago (my sister spent several months in Italy hosted by her family). In the ensuing 30-years, we have kept in touch by mail and social media and there have been a couple of trips back and forth for weddings.

My Italian sister brought her husband and two children to vacation with us in BC. What a delight it was to watch the kids learn to communicate across languages (English, Italian and French) and run and laugh and play together like they had known each other their whole lives and not just one week.

 Our family traveled together and explored together. We learned about new foods, new worldviews and new ways of being. The whole world expanded for the Toad and I this week just like our hearts did. We spoke about our children bringing their children together in 30 years to continue our tradition of family vacations.

As the car was being packed for our family’s departure, my sweet boy observed that the kids were struggling with goodbyes as much as he was. As our family drove away Toad remarked how sad he was that there would be four empty chairs at our table. I agreed but reminded him how rich we were to have so many people in our “family of choice”. We spent some time talking about how many people we have chosen or who have chosen us to be family. What a truly blessed life we have.

“By choice, we have become a family, first in our hearts, and finally in our breath and being. Great expectations are good; great experiences are better.” Richard Fischer

According to the HBR article, How Consultants Project Expertise and Learn at the Same Time, Consultants and Managers face the prospect of taking on new roles, projects or tasks while needing to portray competence and confidence to their clients or teams. This creates the feeling of being an imposter.

To successfully manage this situation the article suggests you need to embrace the learning-credibility tension and reframe it from a liability to a valuable skill. This skill keeps you sharp and on your toes as you work hard to create relevance (maximum impact in minimum time), resonance (using knowledge to gain acceptance and acquire new information) and substance (information and ideas) in your work and in your relationships.

As a Project Manager, I am continually in the position of leading projects and teams in functional areas or businesses that I have little or no technical knowledge of. I have always had success in honouring and respecting the technical expertise of those in the area I am working in and I utilize my “layperson” status to ask strategically dumb questions to surface issues and propose radical ideas. The learning-credibility tension is one of the things I love the most about being a Consultant and a Project Manager.

I recently listened to an interview with Morten Hansen, author of Great at Work: How top performers do less, work better and achieve more. Hansen conducted a 5-year study of 5000 managers across many industries looking for the how top performers differed from others. It was a great interview with some very interesting and provocative ideas.

Hansen purports that their top performers follow 7 principles that make them outstanding. Although all insightful there were 3 that particularly struck me. They were:

1.       Knowing the difference between being busy and being successful

We live in a culture where lots of kudos are given to you if you are working crazy hours at work and have a gazillion emails and back-to-back meetings. None of these busy metrics are a proxy for success. In fact, the metrics may demonstrate that you are not attending to the things that bring success. See #2 below.

2.       Knowing the difference between working towards a goal and bringing value

This is really the difference between focusing on what is mission critical and what other work you spend your time doing. You could be accomplishing all the goals you set for yourself but if those goals are not bringing value to your organization than really you are just staying busy. See #1 above.

3.       Reframing resiliency as “smart grit”

Resiliency is the “capacity to recover quickly from difficulties”. This is a very valuable quality to have. You can amp up resiliency into “smart grit” by utilizing and learning from people and situations that are in opposition to your idea or position. This skillful learning will allow you to gain understanding to either persuade someone to change their mind or will allow you to formulate a solid plan to forge a path around that opposition.

I will definitely be adding this book to the summer reading list.

I was listening to a podcast based on the book Decisive: How to Make Better Choices in Life and Work by Chip and Dan Heath and was struck by one central theme – when we are making decisions the research is clear that we often do not think about enough options.

The podcast suggested that if we pay attention to our language we can sometimes catch ourselves getting boxed in our thinking about the options. When you hear yourself say (or think) – “ I am not sure whether to do (a) or (b)” you need to stop and look for more options to choose from. One of the ways to force your creative hand is to do the vanishing option thought experiment.  In this experiment, you make the assumption that your first 2 options are not available to you. You don’t need to dwell on why – they just are not available. Now what will you do? When you are thinking of options use the 10-10-10 rule (what will this decision mean in 10 days, 10 months or 10 years) to ensure you consider both the short and long-term implications.

Once you have outlined several options it is important to make sure you fall in love with more than one of them. This allows you enough emotional distance from your decision to ensure you are not overly invested to allow for a course correction if it is warranted.

The podcast covered many other points and the book is steeped in research about decision-making with tangible strategies for improving your decisions. I have already decided I am going to read it from cover to cover.

Practical Advice for the Axiom Working Smarter Not Harder

I recently listened to an interview with Morten Hansen, author of Great at Work: How top performers do less, work better and achieve more. Hansen conducted a 5-year study of 5000 managers across many industries looking for the how top performers differed from others. It was a great interview with some very interesting and provocative ideas.

Hansen purports that their top performers follow 7 principles that make them outstanding. Although all insightful there were 3 that particularly struck me. They were:

1.       Knowing the difference between being busy and being successful

We live in a culture where lots of kudos are given to you if you are working crazy hours at work and have a gazillion emails and back-to-back meetings. None of these busy metrics are a proxy for success. In fact, the metrics may demonstrate that you are not attending to the things that bring success. See #2 below.

2.       Knowing the difference between working towards a goal and bringing value

This is really the difference between focusing on what is mission critical and what other work you spend your time doing. You could be accomplishing all the goals you set for yourself but if those goals are not bringing value to your organization than really you are just staying busy. See #1 above.

3.       Reframing resiliency as “smart grit”

Resiliency is the “capacity to recover quickly from difficulties”. This is a very valuable quality to have. You can amp up resiliency into “smart grit” by utilizing and learning from people and situations that are in opposition to your idea or position. This skillful learning will allow you to gain understanding to either persuade someone to change their mind or will allow you to formulate a solid plan to forge a path around that opposition.

I will definitely be adding this book to the summer reading list.

Sielmaisema – your soul landscape, the landscape that “hits you in the center of your chest; the one you always carry with you; the one the immediately feels like home”

I have a few soul landscapes but as I write this on a plane heading east, the one that is in my mind’s eye is the view the moment we crest the hill out of Beaver Valley and look over Georgian Bay and my home town below.

I only get home once a year now but even when I went home every weekend to spend time with my Gran I would experience sielmaisema as I came over the hill. Each season holds its own special scene – the huge expanse of snow and ice in the winter, the lush greenery of spring, the sparkling blue waters of summer and my favourite multi-colour explosion of leaves in the fall.

In about 6 hours from the time I write this, the Toad and I will crest that hill and together will take a big deep breath and remark how great it is to be home.

We celebrated Canada Day on Sunday with festivities across the country. I spent a quiet day on my own but the day never passes without being grateful for living in this country and thinking about all the treasures of this land and its peoples. I also remember where I was when I truly and viscerally learned what it meant to be a Canadian.

As part of my MBA program, our class embarked on a two-week whirlwind trip to Europe. The purpose of the trip was to learn about international business and about being a Canadian living and working abroad. We toured German factories and banks, visited Government House in London, and NATO in Brussels. The highlight of the trip for me was the stops we made at Vimy Ridge and Dieppe.

The spirit of Canada could be felt as soon as you drive into Vimy and wind your way through the 11,285 trees representing the Canadian soldiers lost in battle – a battle that can still be seen in the scarred landscape. It is so hauntingly real it takes your breath away. When you finally arrive at the monument and run your hand over the names of the fallen and look at the figure representing Canadian mothers mourning their loss you can hardly breathe. During my visit, I met a French couple who were visiting the site. This lovely older couple shook my hand and with tears in their eyes thanked me for our sacrifices on those fields - sacrifices made 50 years before I was even born. I spent time in the tunnels under the battlefield where you can see names and hometowns etched into the rock walls. Most of those young med never saw their hometown again. I lifted my head above the trench where the horrific battles were waged and looked eye to eye with someone in the trench on the other side of the battlefield. The small strip of land being fought over where so much blood was spilled is smaller than most backyards - it takes your breath away. After climbing out of the trench I stood in the military cemetery with rows upon rows upon rows of white graves stones as far as you can see, all of them engraved with the maple leaf – it takes your breath away.

I was aware that every breath I took at Vimy was because a young man took his last to fight for the life we have today. I wept through a good deal of my time on that sacred ground but I left there with a better understanding of what it meant to be a proud Canadian. I will make sure that the Toad stands on that ground so he understands too.