Career Opportunities with Douglas E. Welch

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Silence

If you want to anger, frighten or infuriate someone, often the only thing you need to do is remain silent. Failure to respond to questions, support requests or complaints allows the client/customer to think the worst about you, your skills and your services. Yet, this is exactly how some companies, and their workers, function from day-to-day. For the sake of your own career, you need to avoid the silence or you may just find yourself out of a job.

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If you visit my web site (http://welchwrite.com) to read my blogs, you may have seen mention of the web hosting problems I was having recently. In fact, just yesterday, I moved to a new company in the hope of finally solving my problems. Having been on both ends of the telephone during my career, both providing tech support and utilizing it, I am always quick to notice when things are not quite right. Of all the issues I have had with this company, though, silence is probably the worst.

When you are in the depths of a technical problem, silence is the last thing you want to hear. Even bad news is better than no news at all. Think of the extreme example of waiting for a doctor’s diagnosis when you are ill. In the most recent case, my web site was down for over 36 hours. During that time, email requests for information were ignored and calls to the support phone lines only provided the information that “They are working on it.” There was no further information — no estimate for how long until service could be restored nor even an explanation of what had happened. Left to my own devices, I did what most people would do in this situation — I thought the worst. This is quite natural in the absence of any information. We start to worry that we will lose all our data or that service might never return. We start spinning scenarios of all the work we will have to do to get us set up and running once more.

As a worker or business owner, you need to be aware of this behavior and how it can damage your relationship with your customer or your management, sometimes irreversibly. I know, we think to ourselves sometimes, “Do they want me wasting time on keeping them informed or do they want me to fix the problem?” The truth is, though, you must do both. You must fix the problem AND do as much as possible to preserve your relationship. It is a simple fact that the customer won’t care if you solve the problem or not, if they are no longer your customer.

As I sat waiting to hear about my web hosting issue, I began to develop the idea for this column. What was my biggest problem, as a customer? What would have been their best response to me as a company? For myself, the best action the company could have taken was to open the lines of communication.

No one says that the network admin themselves has to communicate with the customer, only that they communicate with someone who can share the information with the customer. If it were my job, I would have taken one operator from the telephone support group and given them direct access to the admin. I would have instructed them to get regular updates from the admin and report that information to all customers whose sites were on the effected servers. They would have provided, at the minimum, hourly reports as to the cause of the problem and the steps being taken to restore those services. I know for me as a customer, this would have gone a long way towards limiting my concern and my dissatisfaction. I wouldn’t have been happy the site was down, but the regular communications would have allowed me to monitor the situation and gain some idea as to the severity of the problem. It is the “not knowing” that causes stress and anger.

The only communication I ever received from the company regarding this issue was this:

” I apologize for any inconvenience this issue may cause on you. The administrators are updating the machines and servers that is why your website are not working. But everything is back to normal now and your website is now working fine.”

In this case, solving the problem was not nearly enough, nor will it ever be if you don’t communicate quickly, clearly and regularly with your manager or customers. You may have solved the problem, but, through your silence, you will have left a wake of damaged expectations and relationships that may never recover.

***

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An Interview with barista, Kate Schroeder

Links mentioned during this interview:

• CoffeeGeek.com
• Alt.coffee newsgroup via Google Groups
• World Barista Championships

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Listen: An Interview with barista, Kate Schroeder

Videos: Latte Art – via YouTube

Photos: Latte Art via Flickr

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We have all seen them in nearly every place we work — employees that should have retired years ago. They do their work as if they are living in another era. They are left to plod along  in the same way they have for years while others have to work around them. What is odd is they are often old before their time. They might still be in the 40’s, but their ideas, preconceptions and actions are old, tired and ineffective. Worse still, what if you are the employee that everyone wishes would just retire? What does it say about you, your attitudes and your work? What can you do about it?

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It is human nature that we can all become set in our ways. Over the years we discover our likes and dislikes — what food we want to eat, what movies we like to see, what music we listen to. In many ways, that is not an issue. We are all allowed our likes and dislikes. In work, though, change is more intrusive. We are presented with new ideas, new methods, new systems and expected to embrace them, use them, understand them. This is simply part of working as part of a group. We have to find a balance between our own desires and the goals of the company. For many, though, change becomes a battle of wills. They cling to the old ways and refuse to adopt the new. In the worst cases, they actually sabotage efforts to adapt to change.

For many people, change threatens their place in the world. New technology may route around the hard manual labor they once did. New accounting systems may reduce the importance of their day-to-day work. New computers may require the learning of a new set of skills and software. This is where rebellion and rejection sets in.

So, how do you make sure you don’t become the person that everyone wishes would retire? First and most importantly, you must understand that change will be constant no matter what work you do or where you do it. Sometimes it will be dramatic change and at other times it will be slow and steady, but change is not something you can avoid. Embrace change in your life and your work and you will be happier and more effective. Stress rises when we try to ignore or sabotage change in a misguided effort to protect our position.

In the workplace, there are several important ways of addressing change. First, do everything you can to keep your skills and knowledge current and useful. No matter what you do, certain parts of your skills and knowledge will be made obsolete on a regular basis. This isn’t something to fear or hate, but rather accept. It is simply part of today’s work and life reality.

Take myself as an example. With each new version of Mac OS X or Windows, huge swaths of my knowledge are no longer as useful or necessary as they once were. Add in the slow decline of other software, Internet services and social media sites and I would say that perhaps 10% of my knowledge or more is rendered obsolete each month. While I have my preferences in what technology I use in my personal world, life (and technology) moves on — at an ever faster rate.

Next, when presented with change at work, see it as an opportunity to grow your knowledge and your career. If you are involved early in the process you can have a great effect on how it is implemented and spot any potential problems. You’ll be seen as someone who is ready to take on new challenges instead of being one of those known for resisting the change (and probably complaining about it loudly in the break room.) It is easy to see on which side of that equation lies advancement, pay raises and promotion.

Third, take on the role of advisor, not adversary when presented with new change. Show clearly and unemotionally where the change may cause additional problems, but do not become a roadblock. After my 30+ years in the work world, I can tell you that roadblocks always suffer 2 fates. They are either driven over or they are routed around. Either way, you will be left behind as change passes you by minimizing your productivity, your effectiveness, and very likely, your career. Roadblocks are the most common type of people that fellow employees and managers would like to be rid of.

Finally, if you find yourself resistant to change because it means too much work, too much energy, too much new learning or simply too much of anything — maybe it is time you did everyone a favor and retire. If you are too young to retire, then perhaps you simply need to move on to another job or career that is more adapted to your wants, needs and desires. Whatever you do, don’t be the person everyone else is talking about and wishing they would simply retire. Eventually you will “retire” in some way, whether you want to or not.

***

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This is the audio from my talk A Year of Visibility at BarCampLA-5 on March 1, 2008. 

One of the most important career moves you can make today is to “Show people what you do and how well you do it!” This call for visibility began in 2008 and continues as one of the main tenets of my carer building to this day.

Listen: A Year of Visibility

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More on Visibility…

• Video: Visibility and Your Career from LaidOffCamp LA
• Audio/Text: Raise your visibility to protect and enhance your career - Visibility in a down economy
• Video: A Year of Visibility from BarCampLA-5
• Visibility for You and Your Career from Career Opportunities Column
• A Year of Visibility Talk from BarCamp San Diego
• Douglas appears in “NewsHour with Jim Lehrer” Segment

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There can be many reasons for choosing a particular career. It might meet with your intellectual interests and native talents. It is an area of work that is becoming more necessary and more in demand. It has a large impact on your community and the world at large. It is satisfying to you personally and helps you to accomplish your personal, family and community goals. If these are some good reasons to choose a career, what is bad reason for choosing a career? Choosing a career because you think it will make you rich, famous or a combination of both.

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While being rich and famous are certainly not inherently bad, using them as the sole, driving criteria in your career choices is nearly a sure road to failure, frustration and financial ruin. When you are chasing the rainbow of fame and fortune, you ignore the better reasons for choosing a career. You begin to make choices based on dollars and cents instead on fundamental human needs like happiness, security and health.

A far better approach is to a choose a career you truly desire and seek out fame and fortune within that career. If you have a deep love and interest in a career, then you will produce your best work and increase your chances of success. You’ll work longer, harder and better than you ever would — or even could — on a lesser career. When you don’t love your career, you are simply putting in time, doing what you think needs to be done and not really accomplishing anything beyond providing for your basic monetary needs.

I am sure you know people personally who have decided that a job or career they hate is worth the money (and perhaps, notoriety) they gain. Look closely, though, and you will notice that they always complain about being too busy, too tired, or too fat. They themselves know that something is wrong, but they have no idea how to change things or escape the cycle that traps them in a career they dislike. It is obvious that they know their situation because they are constantly talking about the bad aspects of their career and talk very little about the enjoyable parts. They use vacations to exotic locales as an escape from their career — a place to avoid their work entirely for a short period of time. They try to escape, but quickly find that their work invades every aspect of their life, including their vacations.

When you decide to run the rat race that is fame and fortune, you are also in danger of becoming what we in the writing world describe as a person that doesn’t want ‘to write’ but rather wants to ‘have written.’ This person wants all the trappings of success while doing as little as possible. They will often admit to actively hating the work that their career requires. They will dream of future success, but yet do little to actually accomplish that success. They will talk for hours about “the book I’m going to write” but then fail to write even one page. For them, dreaming of the successful career they want to have is much more pleasurable than actually accomplishing it.

While I may see more than my fair share of this type of person here in Los Angeles, I believe they exist everywhere and in every possible type of work. Years ago, when IT was “the place” to have a career, I would often talk with people from all aspects of life who would tell me they were going to move into IT. When I questioned them about whether they actually liked dealing with technology, most responded that they didn’t care. They were going where the money was. They didn’t want to learn about DOS, network servers, Internet routers or deal with angry customers whose computer wasn’t working. They instead saw themselves as the manager (or even better, owner) at a large company with many minions at their control to deal with the “real work.”

I am fond of saying that, “Money should never be the sole reason for doing anything” and it applies to your career, too. Your potential earning, your potential fame, your potential power should never be the sole reason for choosing a career. Careers take hard work, a lot of learning and, at their core, a certain amount of love for the work. Without these, it is very likely you will wake up in 10-15 years poor, unknown and bitter that you never achieved the career your desired so much. Spend your time working towards a great career doing something you love and avoid the terrible career hangover you might experience down the road.

***

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Originally appeared on BiggSuccess.com

Career Success with New Media

We were happy to visit with Douglas E. Welch today on The Bigg Success Show today. Douglas is an expert on building the career you deserve and spreading the word about your talents using social media. Among other things, he’s the host of two great blogs and podcasts: Career Opportunities and Careers in New Media. Here’s a recap of the conversation:

Read Douglas talks with George & Mary-Lyn on The Bigg Success Show! with complete text transcript.

Listen to Douglas talk with George & Mary-Lyn on The Bigg Success Show!

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How long are you willing to wait for your company to get its collective “act” together? How long will you suffer through hiring freezes and a moratorium on raises? How long will you suffer a company whose planning, and treatment of their workers, is abysmal at best? How long will you wait before you look for a better job and a better company? You might be surprised at the answer.

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When?

Your problem is, when most companies propose a hiring or salary freeze they have no idea how long it will last. You never know if or when the next layoff is coming and the company will do everything in its power to keep that information from you. You never know when you might see a raise again. When faced with situations like this, where no deadline is given, you need to insure that you establish your own deadlines. How long are you willing to wait? When does a temporary setback turn into a long, slow slide to the bottom?

It has been said that those who are caught up in a layoff are actually the lucky ones. They are given a clear cut reason to go off in search of new work and, hopefully, new opportunities. It is the one’s left behind that really suffer. Workload increases as fewer people are expected to do more work. They worry about when the next layoff is coming and whether they, or their friends, will be on the list. The can foresee that raises and promotions will be a long time coming. Still, they hold on. They listen to every word hat comes out of the executive suite, trying to find meaning where there is often little to be found. They want to believe so badly that this is the last layoff and they convince themselves it is true, even when there are clear warning signs. Don’t fall into this trap and let your career stagnate or collapse along with your company.

What?

The next time you are faced with a layoff or other setback, start the clock running. Set your own internal deadlines. Will you look for a new job if there is another layoff in 3 months? 6? 12? How long will you go without a raise or promotion. A year? More? It might be a firm deadline to leave the company or a softer deadline to re-evaluate in x number of weeks or months. The truth is, there are no hard and fast rules about how long you should wait. You have to decide for yourself, based on your knowledge of the company and its current situation. This means that you have to revisit your deadlines again and again. New information will allow you to re-evaluate your position and adjust your deadlines accordingly. Anything is better than ignoring the problem and hoping it goes away.

What you want to avoid, at all costs, is simply moving from day to day and week to week with no idea when or if you need to find another job. I have known people who have survived 4 and 5 layoffs who still express surprise when their turn comes. How could they not see the writing on their friends’ pink slips? They, and many like them, simply chose to ignore the oncoming storm. They found it more frightening to contemplate a job or career change than face the reality of a faltering, and perhaps even failing, company. They simply waited until they were engulfed and only then started thinking of a way out.

How?

Take note of what is happening around you. Are your expense reports taking longer and longer to process? Are small perks like coffee and tea going away? Are there news stories of lost contracts, failed initiatives and executive turmoil in the newspapers? Are new projects being delayed or cancelled? There are more warning signs than I can possibly list here, but you already know what they are. If something feels bad, then it probably is, regardless of what spin the company might put on it. You must always remember that your company’s first purpose is to perpetuate itself. You need to behave in the same way. You must do what is best for yourself, based on the best information you have. Will you make mistakes? Will you abandon a company too soon? Possibly, but it has been my experience that companies that falter so badly that they need to layoff large parts of their workforce take years to recover, if they recover at all. Action is always preferred over inaction. Often you will find a better job than your current one, even if your old company does recover.

Don’t allow your career to drift along, hoping beyond hope that your company will somehow turn itself around. Too often, companies struggle along for years, promising their employees that things will get better, only to struggle for even longer. You need to direct your career and one way to do this is to be aware and thoughtful about your company’s promises. If you company isn’t offering you the career you deserve, find one that will.

***

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As you get to be older — I just turned 49 myself — there is a problematic thought process that can creep into your daily thinking. When you are faced with a new career challenge, a new career idea, a new career thought — you balk. You think about all the work that this new thought is going to require and you wonder if it is really worth the time and trouble. To use an older term, you get “set in your ways.” You find the status quo is a much easier place to live. In some cases, you might even be thinking, “Well, I’m not going to be around in this job (or at all) for much longer, so why bother with all this new work?”

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As you might imagine, thoughts like these can hinder your career at a time when it should be experiencing the most success. Let’s call it an advanced form of “senioritis.” I am sure you are familiar with that problem when it occurs with high schoolers and college students. They reach that final semester of their school career and they just stop trying. They want to simply coast to graduation. As you know, of course, this can often lead to some dramatic failures and a semester of Summer school — or worse.

Don’t let senioritis damage your mature career. You need to be as engaged in your career today as you were when you first started. In fact, you should be even more engaged, as you probably have a better position, better pay and, definitely, more power than when you started. It’s true that you might feel you have earned a chance to relax, a chance to coast for a little while. Unfortunately, as much as we might like to believe that this can happen, anyone who “coasts” — at any time in their career — could find themselves without a job. The world continues moving at high speed even if we are coasting, so if you fail to engage in your career you could find yourself falling further and further behind.

While you can’t just disengage and take your “senior year” off, there are ways of modifying or tweaking your career as you get older. First, you can use the power, prestige and goodwill you have created over your career to unload the most unpleasant tasks of your job. If you once had to travel tens of thousands of miles a year, perhaps you can bring in a newer, younger person to handle that aspect of your work. You can then be free to focus on higher-level issues like further building of the business that ensures it will long outlive your retirement and, hopefully, even you. While you can never earn the ability to coast, you can earn the ability to pick and choose the aspect of your job that you most prefer and concentrate your time and energy there.

It might seem counterintuitive, but you can, and should, find new areas of interest and possibility in your career and pursue those, as well. Remember, you aren’t “coasting” in your career, you are simply fine turning it to match your needs and desires as you grow older. Maybe you have always thought that a particular methodology or technology could greatly assist you or your company. Now is the time to dig deeply into an investigation of that methodology while others concentrate on the day-to-day operations.

Finally — and it all might sound a tad cliche — you can also focus more on becoming the wise old sage of your company or industry. The fact is, you will have seen a lot in your long career and those memories can be tremendously important and useful to others. This isn’t a call to stand in the corporate equivalent of your front yard shouting, “Hey you kids! Get off my lawn!” Rather your past knowledge, combined with new ideas, new thoughts and new, eager people, could create something entirely new and amazing. Your knowledge can help your co-workers avoid common pitfalls along the way to their own career success and help them move onto greater work more quickly.

No one gets to coast in their career, no matter what their age or seniority. Even more, you shouldn’t be seeking to coast out the remainder of your career. The later years of your work life are where you can have the most effect, the most benefit for both yourself and your company. Don’t be the senior in high school who didn’t graduate because they flunked that last chemistry class. Work hard developing new thoughts, ideas, businesses, successes so that you can move on to the next stage in your life confident that you have done your best work. Both your career and your life will greatly benefit.

***

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Dr. Rosanne Welch speaks on “Presenting Yourself Well on Paper” for CareerCamp Online 2009.

More video from CareerCamp and Douglas E. Welch

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From the archives, here is a video of Douglas E. Welch presenting on “A Year of Leadership” for the very first CareerCamp, CareerCamp Online 2009.

Can’t see the video above? Watch “A Year of Leadership” on YouTube

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