Don't Wait!

The last Wednesday of the month…

Which brings to mind the old Pink Floyd line: “Is there anyone out there?”

Then we wonder why we still feel in the dark – left wondering when the lights will magically turn on.

Jump! Don’t wait for something to happen; create it.

Everybody has one…

I hate commencement speeches. Actually I loathe them. I’ve attended three graduations, of which one was mine (from high school).

What really puts my panties in a wad are all those pundits, prognosticators, talking heads, newspaper journalists, magazine editors, opinion piece writers, etc. who think they are giving the commencement speech no graduate has ever heard or relating things the commencement speaker should, but won’t tell you.

What I’ve learned over the years is that these guys suffer from belly button syndrome – everybody has one and they all stink but mine.  

The most recent one is from the Wall Street Journal – “10 Things Your Commencement Speaker Won't Tell You.”  A couple of them floored me, but the most egregious was “Don’t try to be great.” The author further elaborates that being great is luck, beyond our control. In other words being great is serendipitous and as long as we don’t think about it, it will happen.

Stop the presses! I can be a couch potato and still be great. Really?

No, not really.

Being great is just like being creative, building relationships, or communicating well. It takes time and practice. And you need to understand your overarching lifelong goal. Define it and the steps you believe it will take to get you there.  Review it with your mentor, who can help refine those steps and help you achieve your goal.

There are some skills to acquire before we leave college. Unfortunately, these skills are not taught in college or at home anymore. Amanda Haddaway, author of Destination Real World: Success After Graduation, details 25 things we should have learned such as dealing with stress, transitioning from school to work, developing a personal brand and more. It’s a good guide for those young professionals just starting out.

Oh, and my belly button advice to the class of 2012 – Don’t Wait!

I’d love your feedback – and would love your help in sharing questions and comments about being a young professional. If you have a question, comment or feedback, please send me an email to [email protected].  The blog on the last Wednesday of each month will be a question and answer session from those that I receive from you, my audience. If I use your question, I will send you a free copy of a book mentioned in that month’s posts.

 

[Image: Belly button by Ragnhildur Guðrún via Flickr]

Relationshipping

My mentor: How many business cards did you get at the networking event last night?

Me: 28… I’m a powerhouse rock star networker!

My mentor: That’s good… let’s go through each card and tell me something you learned about them.

Me: Huh?

Several years ago my metric for networking was simply the number of business cards I got while at an event. I would set a goal to collect a specific number of cards at each event. It wasn’t until my mentor asked me to relate one thing I learned from each person I met did I realize the number of cards collected wasn’t a a very good way to measure success.  It was myopic. So, I went back to school to develop a better method.

When I first started networking, it was a visceral act. You shake a hand, give a 30 second pitch on why you’re cool, collect a card and then meet someone new. Much like speed dating in the movies.

Until my mentor pointed out the flaw, I had no clue why I was not successful. I didn’t try to connect with each individual. It was not the number of people I met at the event, but how I connected and re-connected with them once the event ended.

Did I follow-up by the next morning?

• Add in a particular note from the discussion I had with them.
• Send a quick email to say, “Hi – It was great meeting you. Let’s keep in touch. I’d love to hear about some more new wines I should try!”

Did I deliver what I promised during our conversation?

• Follow-up with next steps. If you mentioned an article or book they should read, send a link to it.

Set up a time to get together at some future point?

• “Hey There – I’m going to be in town next week and would love to get together. Let me know if you’re available for lunch or coffee!”

Send “love notes” every month or two, something along the lines of… “Hey There – I saw this article and thought it might help with your WMS implementation project. Just remember you’re not alone! Look forward to talking soon.”

Never Eat Alone by Keith Ferrazzi is a great book to help you move from networking to relationshipping.

Networking is so 1980s -- like Depeche Mode, MTV, cassette tapes, big hair, metallic jumpsuits and stirrup pants. Relationshipping is twenty-first century. And that metric… I call it “Relationshipping” and calculate it as the percentage of people I met at an event that I have continuous contact with over the year.

I’d love your feedback – and would love your help in sharing questions and comments about being a young professional. If you have a question, comment or feedback, please send me an email to [email protected].  Every fourth blog will be a question and answer session from those that I receive from you, my audience. If I use your question, I will send you a free copy of a book mentioned in the previous four posts. 

 

[Image: Speed dating by photochiel via Flickr CC]

Dealing with Creativity

For those of us who see the world from the left side of the brain, where most everything can (or should) be explained with the right formula or equation, creativity can seem like an illusion.

Some young professionals—and older ones for that matter—have a problem with the creativity thing. They feel they were left out when the gods went down the line endowing creativity on those select few – Steve Jobs, Bob Dylan, and Michelangelo for example. Or that there is a special gene, the ‘Creativity Gene,’ inherited from past generations. Nothing could be furtherer from the truth.

Creativity is a talent to nurture and hone. Just as you developed other talents and skills, creativity is something you can develop and improve. John Lehrer recently wrote an article, “How To Be Creative” in the Wall Street Journal, based on his book Imagine: How Creativity Works. His premise is simple:  a change in scenery, a quick walk around the office, a beer with friends or changing the interior of our office might be all we need to spark that creative impulse.   

What if you don’t have an immediate answer? Lehrer makes a great suggestion when the answer is not within your head: increase the volume and diversity of information. Expose yourself to audio books, podcasts from TEDTalks, Freakonomics, HBR IdeaCast and any others that may interest you during the daily commute instead of listening to music.

Reading and listening to the ways others have solved problems is a great way to learn and to expose you to new ideas. Attend a local professional organization’s roundtable or council meeting. Find your local AST&L Chapter, WERCouncil and your local CSCMP Roundtable.

Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner, who co-wrote two books Freakonomics and SuperFreakonomics, have used their creative talents in ways that even a left-brainer can appreciate.  In each book, they look at how two unrelated things are related though economic data, such as sumo wrestling and real estate agents. Both books are a treasure-trove of fascinating ideas and connections that may give your brain the creative spark it needs.

I’d love your feedback – and would love your help in sharing questions and comments about being a young professional. If you have a question, comment or feedback, please send me an email to [email protected].  Every fourth blog will be a question and answer session from those that I receive from you, my audience. If I use your question, I will send you a free copy of a book mentioned in the previous four posts. 

 

[Image credit: Creativity by Sean McEntee via Flickr CC]

Karmic Benchmarking

Feel like a boulder in the middle of savage rapids? Every time you look up, you're in the same spot while those around somehow have magically moved forward. It's as though standing still has caused you to move backwards.

If you are waiting for the spring floods to bring a log to knock you out of your current position, you're waiting for the wrong thing. It’s the same as having an idea of what you want to achieve professionally, but you are not sure, or don’t know, how to get there. And you're not measuring progress towards your goals and the milestones you thought you would achieve by now are not happening.

Yeah, I've been there as well. By this point you lose confidence, motivation and the will to move forward. That’s why I’m introducing this blog for young professionals in logistics.

The blog will take many shapes over the coming months, but the main focus is on young professionals between the ages of 24 – 35 years with 2 – 5 years of work experience. But I think many of you will find the information in each blog useful regardless of age.

To kick things off, I would like to talk about sharing. I like to call it “Karmic Benchmarking,” which simply means good things will come by sharing our information, knowledge, and experiences. Fellow DC Velocity blogger Kate Vitasek illustrates a great point of what I mean by sharing with her Bad Warehouse blog. Another fellow DC Velocity blogger, Art Van Bodengraven, has a great post defining karma in his post titled “Now Boarding: Last Train to Karma.”

It’s important for us to share information, knowledge, and experiences. That’s how we learn and become better at what we do. By sharing we better understand the conditions that created success, instead of what is success. One caveat though: NEVER share proprietary information about your company, business place or employer. That’ll create some real bad mojo.

Malcolm Gladwell’s bestselling book Outliers has great insights about understanding and finding the conditions that allow for success.

I’d love your feedback – and would love your help in sharing questions and comments about being a young professional. If you have a question, comment or feedback, please send me an email to [email protected].  Every fourth blog will be a question and answer session from those that I receive from you, my audience. If I use your question, I will send you a free copy of a book mentioned in the previous four posts.  

 

[Image credit: Rapids by Dshalock via Flickr CC]