Thursday, September 1, 2016
I like using the word "Legend" with a capital L to describe what people who don't know you – or don't know you well, know about you. When your name is mentioned in some circles; whether it's work related, or 1st grade teachers, or little league baseball parents or cosplay golfers, whatev…; what picture ends up in the listeners head, although they haven't met you? The business folks call it "personal branding" but that's, totally less cool than Legend, so it isn't enthusiastically embraced!
So lets focus on the company and what it does. We as a company, sell the collective knowledge of our employees. There are senior people in whatever discipline, from project managers to structural steel to ground stability to degradation rates of dissolved benzene in a clay soil with some oxygen supply at northern latitudes (half-life of 3 to 30 days – largely sensitive to oxygen transfer rates, if you care), who represent and embody that knowledge - or could represent and embody that knowledge.
For selling to clients it's a way easier sell if there is some Legend around some of those staff. It is represented in dry, boring paper form in resumes and professional history, but people are emotional beings and strive to know the people involved more. It is, of course, better if that knowing is somewhat positive or at lease spin-able (sure he was responsible for that little "bridge falling down" incident, but that just provided extra motivation to make sure the next one is stable!)
The Tender Process intentionally puts up barriers to personal links with the decision makers for the very purpose of minimizing the effects of Legend, or heaven forbid, actual personal knowledge of the parties being considered in the process. That just reinforces that Legend effects the decision process and can be "gamed" a bit. And for our staff evaluating Tenders, be cognizant of what Legend is (and how close that Legend relates to reality), for the bidders in question!
So, we aren't selling cars, or refrigerators or real estate or whatever, we are selling Legend. It sounds so much cooler that way, no?? Many parts of modern corporate culture have a component of "it's always about the company, not the individual" built into the How Things Are Done book by lawyers who are trained to protect against any conceivable harm (boring) – not to maximize opportunity (FUN!!).
Diminishing Legend reduces the risk to the firm of any individual leaving - and taking his Legend with him. Sucks to build a guy up his whole career, and then he takes that good name and profits off it somewhere else. But individual people ARE the product for us, we don't sell cars or fridges. It doesn't matter how much you want it to be more controllable faceless entities like departments. When was the last time you saw a Tender request that didn't ask for resumes? And how much time is spent massaging those resumes for the Tender in question?
We try to pretend that divisions and department within the company could continue to work the same way without any particular individual, but that's just silly. Each group has key leaders that control the output more than others in every field - the functional technical leads (which may or may not be titled as a technical lead, but are in fact)
When a more senior technical lead changes jobs, the whole industry is abuzz at conferences and pub/coffee shop conversations for months. Clients and colleagues both spread the rumors faster than light, so why bother trying the practically impossible containment of the very real reputational impacts of that change? You can't. I'll say that again in capitals cus people sometimes resist reality when it tells them something they don't want to hear, YOU CAN'T - people talk.
You might minimalize it fractionally, but,at least in my subfields, the industry is small and close nit enough that everybody knows everybody else at a couple degrees of Kevin Bacon - and everybody has Legend, whether or not the company actively sells it or recognizes it. From schools to former employers to conferences and client/consultant/engineer relationships, we know our own crowds; nobody is ever going to change that (although lots of people keep trying to anyway – you'll stay saner if you try to do possible stuff, just saying).
What if we instead harness and deliberately build, shape and focus the Legends around key staff, and then treat them well so they stay? Take staff, particularly staff that show promise, and start name dropping them intentionally into various contexts. Outfit BD role folks (which is any of us, when the stars are aligning, and need meets access, or when we're making "is there anything else we might help with, are you aware we do X type of work" calls) with elevator versions of the key staff, warts and all. The key to keeping those Legends believable is not to sugar coat or spin them much, just tell the client why you keep that person employed (if there is not enough sugar around to sell a particular Legend without piling on the BS, then don't sell that Legend and look to why you still employ them…) . These Legends absolutely need to be mostly truths and no falsehoods - or part of the future Legend becomes "liar" pretty quickly. For me - mostly cus it avoids the Hassle of getting some other person's permission to use them, and I'm a bit tired - ok, lazy, and privacy isn't really one of my "things" I'll use me as the personified example - what's my Legend?
Some of it is the personal story around overcoming health challenges and stoically carrying on (LOL, doesn't seem a big thing from inside the problems...what else am I going to do?); some of it is sufficient personal arrogance to be able to write this sort of thing at all (I prefer abundance of self-confidence, but mileage may vary); some of it is the unreliability that comes from the health challenges I don't always stoically carry on during; some of it is I'm good with people and a good lunch companion; some of it is good problem solver who knows, really quite a lot in my field, and think I know even more!; some of it is an active imagination and openness to outside the box thinking (come on, using horses to access the springs reconnoitered by drones is totally awesome – something from old tech, something from new – whatever works – can we fly the drones from horseback?!!); some of it is a fair amount of self-honesty and an expectation of some amount of that in others (and no, self-promotion isn't something I have a problem with, I'm a bloody consultant!). There is a bunch of other stuff stuck in there, but we'll work with that.
So how do we package that into an elevator speech for BD role person??…
"So, you have a quadilinolite spill that the regulator is all over, give this guy a call. He nails this stuff and knows more than anybody on how quadilinolite behaves in Alberta tills [editors note: it needs to be truthy and defendable, not perfectly true - but no outright falsehoods ever}]. His health's a bit flaky - he's been hit twice in the same crosswalk!! - but he's been like that foryears and keeps bulling through it – a bit stubborn and he may have had his entire, lifetime allocation of bad luck used up, so he'll at least be a good luck charm! He knows (some of) his weaknesses and we've set up a great team to back him up (and sometimes pass him by, but don't tell him that). He's willing to think outside the box, ok – sometimes he loses sight of the box, but that great team keeps him from floating too far away, and he's actually big on practical, if not conventional solutions. You should have lunch with him, you'd get on"
If the elevator speech audience has been in the industry in Alberta for long, there's a good chance I've worked with them in the past (20+ years of staying still, and something like a third of the industry has floated by at some point), and a better chance that they've heard of me, or know somebody who I've interacted with. As I'm of an age to be in the cohort of many of the decision makers, I know a greater percentage of them.
That is certainly not always a positive, there are a couple of clients that the elevator speech would be more of a "yeah, he still works for us, but he's sort of busy in his own world and won't get anywhere near this project – he's been in place for so long he's kinda furniture so we can't manage to get rid of him…" or "he's the right guy for the job, a bit wordy and pretends he's all Brainiac, but he'll do the work in the background and you won't have to deal with him, so it's best of all worlds". It's even more useful in those cases (bad blood from past interaction, or wrong personality type to mix well) that the BD role person knows the history that has led to the bad blood/personality's that won't mix, so they don't put their foot in it.
Again, the product we sell is the knowledgeand (more importantly) the understanding of fields that our senior folks both represent and embody – selling personal services helps if there is a blurb on the person giving the service. WE ARE LEGEND!! It's our bloody product.
If the key Legend person the company has built up, and stroked the ego of, and focused the credit to his group through, turns out to have so little loyalty as to leave, talk about how they trained an excellent staff who have caught up to and somewhat surpassed the old master and they'll keep on with quality work – build on the exiting Legend and refresh it. Not seeing a downside here.
If the key Legend in a field left, and took the key underlings with them, then you totally screwed up and probably should have treated them/their underlings better; but deliver the elevator speech in favour of whoever it is that's left behind, or has been poached from some other company to fill the gap, or whatever, can do the work…or we can lose the opportunity because we can no longer deliver the product -in which case, Legend or not, same outcome…
It's weird that people who talk so much about "branding", and "selling the brand" and all that, don't seem to get that our "model number" is some particular expert and they need branding the same way a Ford Focus or Mercedes SLK does. Hopefully not like a Volkswagen diesel, but it's an equivalent comparison, and it's easier to jettison an expert, and their tarnished Legend, then a legacy like Volkswagen now has. And it's not just "the top expert" that needs the brand. The back room represents the classmates/colleagues/personification etc of future "top experts" or "'clients" and stuff. Our more junior peoples' Legends amongst their contemporaries is this companies future. Start molding those Legends from day one.
The "somewhat important" businessy people have to come to terms with their product having Agency, and that it means they can only conform so far – note that's can, not will. Interactions with tippy top people in several same and similar industries that I've had the pleasure/misfortune to engage with (mostly pleasure – at least from my side, just can't resist the cheap gag, and they may include a bit of misfortune from their viewpoints), show that they generally both get, and are good with that fact.
The resistance seems to come from the more, what do we call them? Level 4 or something? Anyway, the younger, less certain managers, that are uncomfortable giving up some of their perceived Agency in achieving their responsibilities' and not yet aware that it comes with the territory. Yes, some of the things you are responsible for, you have little to no Agency over - life's like that. Sometimes you need to just trust that other people will come through for you - make sure those people have the tools they need and hopefully don't hate you, and let go. And it certainly isn't all managers, and not all staff fit into a Legend-able, or manageable, place anyway.
As an example, the Andrew Woods and C-Suite folks in general, have very little of the control over their own successes, and are mostly just trying to not get run over while providing the most cost efficient infrastructure to allow the company to succeed. They are responsible for the success of an organisation they have very little agency over. An army is run by its Sergeants, the Generals just steera bit. Every (successful) army in the world has that as an underlying truism and effectively it's a motto - our Sergeants need all the help they can get from the corporation, but the C-Suite guys have little direct control over their own responsibilities. The Generals are about logistics and training and stuff - the Sergeants succeed or fail with their allotment of those resources.
I have a extrovertic (it should be a word) tendency to not care about putting stuff out there, and intellectually understand that other people don't feel that way, (even if I can't really understand it) - so I'm not thinking that this part of the job is everyone's cup of tea.
If you've accepted a more client facing role, then I do view it as part of the responsibility you've accepted, so you really should come up with a Legend of some type – at least in part because a Legend will form on it's own accord – they happen spontaneously with any group of humans and recognizing that truth provides an opportunity to examine your Legend and mold it a bit, instead of leaving it strictly to chance.
Wrapping some of more introvertic people's skills under a more extrovertic person's banner also works. Part of the extrovertic person's legend is "….herding the cats of his department into providing the answers…" or "…acts as the face for their awesome, less vocal team…" while the introvertic experts are more of a "does fantastic work and is totally devoted to his craft, but doesn't like people much. They are, however, the linchpin of the team functions and they've achieved tons together."
Please note, that just because a person doesn't want to be placed front and centre in discussions of their group, doesn't mean they don't want credit for their importance to the team. Dialog is required to avoid a valid complaint of "I got that work and I figured out the key innovations and just because I don't want to be the face of the team and Kim does, they gets all the credit - totally unfair."
The challenge, if you choose to except it, is for each technical specialty/technical delivery group in the company to deliberately write out the Legend of their top few people – the technical leads for any project - and sketch out ideas for everyone . An example Legend would be:
"They doen't really like people much, so we'll keep you away from them unless you make us, but they're world class in this stuff and, funny story, have a weird affinity for medieval children's doll's. In fact, ask them about dolls if you do talk to them, and they'll work all the harder to deliver on time".
Medieval Dolls are a quirky, not mainline, hobby that can set a person apart. That kind of story is a fantastic, memorable narrative that may be a bit of a positive view on the reality, but must not contain any outright falsehoods - and the client will never forget that you've got the "Medieval Doll Expert" who is world class at [fill in the blank] field. Half the industry probably knows about the dolls anyway (and there isn't anything remotely wrong with it - if an expert's hobby is getting wildly drunk and blowing all his money on the horses, you may want to keep it quiet), so capitalize on the parts that make you, you - like making a hobby a plus to your business role!
The professional in question may hate the idea of being known as the Doll Expert, and refuse to go that route, which is totally fine, not at all suggesting to make anybody uncomfortable here. But I am suggesting taking positive advantage of quirks and diverse personality traits as what draws engagement from others, and those types of quirks are gold for being remembered. I mean, I was hit twice in the same intersection, so have a great narrative to hook stuff onto, and some of you may think this whole thing is a dumb idea and I just like it cus it works for me and, come on, I like it AND it works for me :), but whatev...
I can imagine a response where people say "I don't want to be remembered for my hobby, I should be remembered because I'm verygood at my job and that should be enough." I totally agree that it should be enough, and totally believe that reality doesn't agree with that particular "should".
We are people. People who you don't know are abstract bodies. People who's Legend you've heard are (somewhat ironically) real. People can trust and engage with real people. Legend forms spontaneously if left untended. We should think about what we want our Legends to be, and deliberately shape them as much as we can.
If you chose not to accept said challenge, you almost certainly haven't read this far anyway, or are just playing drinking games for every time I write whatev, but whatev…and for those shaking your heads thinking "he wrote this whole convoluted thing, just so he could talk about himself" - it isn't "just" – there is a point in there as well, give me some (not all that much admittedly) credit. Whatev…whatev…whatev…those drinking game folks are losing it a bit, and I haven't thrown in an "at least it's not boring" for ages…whatev…whatev...