Use Your Head to Get Your Foot in the Door (15 page)

They need to be strategic visionaries.

They must be able to organize the business against the strategy and to lead through their key direct reports to make things happen.

In a public company, they have to manage the key external constituencies such as the analysts, banks, and shareholders.

The irony is, what enables a manager to become CEO is having demonstrated great operational and commercial effectiveness. But these skills aren’t necessarily what will make them a great CEO. What makes an exceptional CEO are the abilities to organize the business against a meaningful vision and to formulate and articulate decisions.

 

Today’s emerging workforce is a multicultural, multigenerational workforce, but we have gone backward in America on some issues. We don’t yet have the new diversity of thought always represented at senior manager and board levels. This disconnects top management from the people they are trying to motivate. Asia probably has the most dominant female executives. There are likely more female CEOs in Europe than in America—many of them generational appointments in family-dominated businesses.

 

Since executives are more mobile, the challenge is to demonstrate sustainable success for a business once they have left one job for another. It’s one thing, for example, to have been head of a division, but did you actually lead it to operational success? If you’re moving every two years, that can be more a reflection on you, the executive, than the company. There isn’t enough time to really leave an imprint, a legacy. Either you made poor choices in choosing the companies or you haven’t been able to successfully execute. Bottom line: You’re leaving before they get to you first.

When Britannia ruled the waves, the British used to send battleships steaming up and down the harbors of lesser powers as a way of ensuring that their opinions would be respected. It was called “showing the flag.” Usually, it spared the British the trouble of kicking sand in the little guy’s face.

Making others aware of your presence is still an effective job-hunting and job-holding tactic, and you can use it without firing a single shot.

In fact, if you
don’t
have a presence, that sends signals in itself, especially on the Web.

Assume that you will be Googled by any potential employer. Maybe you’re not at a level where you have given a major speech or written an article for your industry or firm, but you should look for opportunities to develop your presence on the Internet. Perhaps you write something for a volunteer community organization or your church. Maybe a distinguished mentor of yours has passed away and the Web site dedicated to him or her asks for people who have known or been influenced by this person to send a tribute that would be posted on the Web site. As I indicate elsewhere, the Web is not an adolescent playground—a cyber “Animal House”—where you highlight goofball antics to impress your pals. It’s serious business, and the sooner you treat it that way, the better it will serve your career.

More and more jobs are being filled these days by headhunters, politely known as management recruiters. It pays to make yourself known to them. If these potential gatekeepers could be influential at some time in your career, shouldn’t you be digging your well before you’re thirsty and trying to lay some groundwork with them?

Here’s how to make contact and to make the contact pay off:

 

 

 

Should you grow your network throughout your life? Absolutely.

Should your network grow untamed and unpruned? Absolutely not.

A network should be regarded as a robust and diverse garden, not an equatorial jungle. A thriving rain forest may be good for the ozone layer, but it’s not the best model for cultivating a personal network. As artist and author Lou Erickson once said, “Gardening requires lots of water—most of it in the form of perspiration.”

When you’re faced with a watershed event like a job or career change, it’s a good time to reassess your network. If your network is a sprawling maze, it’s very hard to give regular attention to your highest priority contacts. It’s also easy to waste time on people who do little to further your career or enrich your life in any meaningful way.

As you spin through your personal contact list, ask yourself these questions:

What were my last three contacts with this person? What happened as a result of the interaction? How did I or the individual benefit from the contact?

Remember that it’s perfectly OK to have a series of one-way contacts with certain powerful individuals—or their gatekeepers—who may someday be of great benefit to you. It’s also justifiable to keep in contact with people whom you are helping out. It’s less defensible to spend a lot of time with people who are constantly asking for favors, who are not individuals you have a personal commitment to helping, and who don’t reciprocate in an evenhanded way. The horticulturist Luther Burbank maintained, “A flower is an educated weed.” You are well advised to keep your network balanced toward members well educated in traditional terms or in the hard knocks of life.

Draw a mental map. Which other people have I met through this contact? Is this individual continuing to introduce me to worthwhile new additions to my network? Have I kept my “account” current by giving this individual new personal leads, information, etc.?

Has my list of network contacts kept pace with my life? Is it up to date with my latest job and career changes? It’s very easy to anchor a network in a comfortable crowd of old school and neighborhood buddies. This may make you feel good from a loyalty standpoint, and it might produce a surprise benefit when an unexpected situation arises, but it’s no way to run a railroad. Not if that railroad is supposed to be your high-speed network to achieving your life goals.

It’s often useful to separate your network into two groups—active and inactive. There are people who are clearly part of your day-to-day professional and personal life. There are also people who you may not be in touch with for several years who could still quite plausibly be part of your world in three to five years. Before you toss the entry that Jacques likes Tiffany glass, or the note that Geri is mad about the New York Mets, consider logging these entries in the inactive file. With the storage capacity of modern laptops and notebooks, there’s no shortage of space to keep these records. You just have to make the time to keep them well organized. Also, spend an hour, at least once each year, scanning the inactive file to see if someone has suddenly come back to life as a premium contact, due to changes in your life or career.

When you assess your present network, consider adding five or ten names—“my top ten”—that you would die to have as part of your present network. Who in your present network could help establish those contacts? Also, what are your personal goals in three to five years? Which people would likely be part of your network if you were to attain those objectives? I call this
aspirational networking
. We all work with a fixed amount of time for networking. For most of us, it should be a bigger slice of our time budget, but it is what it is. It’s just that most people do a poor job of managing their networking time. If you concentrate on upgrading your network, less important contacts will either merit fewer interfaces or may entirely deactivate themselves.

If you’re facing a job search, then you need to identify a select group—perhaps ten or fifteen people—whom you can count on to ride out the storm with you. I call this my personal top ten. Perhaps one or two are recruiters. It’s likely several are former bosses or career mentors. Maybe another couple are industry association contacts you made at firms that may now be job prospects for you. One could be a powerful CEO in your community whom you befriended in a volunteer project. It would be wise if one is a skilled communicator who can help you sharpen your résumé and prepare answers for interviews. Getting a job is more of a team effort than one usually thinks, and it’s up to you to recruit that team from within your network. By the way, all the team members don’t need to know about the other players, but you certainly need to have a clear grasp of who they are and how you are relying on them.

In case you think that the social skill of networking is superficial compared to your “hard” professional qualifications, bear in mind what management expert Peter Drucker once said: “More business decisions occur over lunch and dinner than at any other time, yet no MBA courses are given on the subject.”