2010 Resolutions January 6, 2010

Wow, another year started. They just keep coming; and that’s a good thing.

I define New Years resolutions as a planned effort to intentionally alter how I approach life. Keeping the list short enables me to maintain focus.
Here’s my list for 2010, in no particular order. They are all important to me, or they wouldn’t have made the short list.

• Create a legacy of programming excellence for Villanova University Association of Entrepreneurial Executives (VUAEE) by 2011. (the name was developed by taking 5 of the longest words in the dictionary and stringing them together-instant need for an acronym) VUAEE is a new organization and I am VP of Program Management. The goal of the organization is to provide ongoing learning for business execs in the areas of entrepreneurism and leadership. Here’s a link to the Facebook page, the web site will be released soon. My charter as VP of Programming is to create structure around the learning situations and drive membership. Initially 3 have ideas for programming: coaching calls, bi-monthly webinars on entrepreneurial topics, and Panel Reviews where members can present in front of business execs to test ideas, gain guidance on next steps and practice their pitches. Next step is make these events happen.
• Visit Arcadia National Park in ME before Labor Day. It is part of a larger strategy to spend the new decade exploring N. America, and National Parks specifically. It was inspired by last springs National Parks series on PBS-breath taking.
• Play golf with my daughters 2 times before the end of summer. Requires they learn to play.
• Write 104 blog posts before year-end. Two a week, so stay tuned. Any topics you’d like me to tackle-post in comments.
• Take the next career step by March. This is a biggie, considering the economy. Not letting that stand in my way. My specialties are relationship management and social media. At this moment the combination is a perfect storm as we have entered the era of community and relationships. If you have ideas on oppty’s for me, let me know.

Keep me honest, check on my progress throughout the year. It will refocus my attention.

Happy New Year!

Nine Interviews March 22, 2009

Thursday I had a series of interviews for a position I am pursuing.  There were nine interviews.  (Yes, 9)  One interviewer called it speed dating.  He was so right!  The schedule became congested as conversations ran a bit over time.  One interviewer split her time with me between two buildings:  one at 10:30am and another at 4:15pm.  We had a hard stop at 4:30; I had a conference call scheduled.  Fortunately, she noticed I still had energy left by our second meeting.  When she mentioned it, I had not noticed, and she was right, I did still have plenty of energy.  (9:00pm was a different story!)

One question asked was in regard to personal development.  Here’s what I am working on now:

• • Being in the moment (instead of thinking about the next moment)
  • Reflecting on and capturing thoughts immediately after conversations instead of moving onto the next thing on the agenda
    
  • Taking a bit of personal time-work out, read for fun, listen to my kids practice piano instead of doing email while they practice
    
  • Stating the obvious, “it” is not obvious to everyone
    
  • Spelling-it has been a struggle for me since 1st grade, TG for Spell Check

The benefit of a nine interview day is it allows a full picture of the role to emerge and uncovers the needs of key stakeholders.  By 4:00 I had begun to craft a 60 Day Plan.  Reviewing the details of the plan with the prospective new boss in our recap meeting gave him a sense of how I prioritize initiatives from the constituencies involved.

Moving to Fulfill My Life’s Mission January 25, 2009

During summer semester one of the classes at Villanova EMBA was Performance Measurement.  Class was designed around establishing systematic strategies for setting, monitoring and attaining goals.  Our professor was Tim Monahan, a perpetual overachiever and natural leader.  He commanded attention whenever he was around.  Whatever he talked about was designed to accomplish a specific mission and he had a strategy and goals for driving toward that mission.  He was clearly an obvious choice to teach this class.  He took us through a variety of tools for moving strategies forward and driving the understanding of strategies throughout the organization and measuring and rewarding success through compensation systems.  One of our projects was development of Balanced Scorecards.  Prof. Monahan is a great believer in work/life balance.  Therefore our assignment was not business role specific, but was to reflect and support both our career and personal goals.

The outset of the project seemed straightforward enough:  come up with some career goals and personal goals.  How about find a new job and graduate.  Maybe lose 5 pounds as a bonus personal goal, too?  Buhhhhp-Wrong answer.  Too simplistic.

In classic Monahan fashion, we couldn’t just lay out a strategy and a couple of goals for success.  Tim argued that strategies are worthless if they do not further progress toward your overall mission.  To that end, we each needed to explore our mission in life, articulate it and then develop the strategy and goals which support the mission.  That is alot of self reflection and introspection.  Especially during a summer when the financial markets were beginning to collapse, my kids wanted to go to the pool during every free moment, I needed to study and Greg’s company was beginning to implode as a result of the failing economy.  I was just trying to survive, not find inner peace.  Inner peace could wait until after I had a diploma.

My rational brain took over.  One of my summer strategies was to front load my GPA so I could survive fall semester and still have enough GPA to graduate in May.  Villanova requires a 3.0 or better for graduation.  Ahead of me was fall.  Fall’s  module was Derivatives, Valuation, Enterprise Risk and Crisis Management.  GPA killers if you ask me.  Alumni had been warning us about Module 4:  hard, intense, heavily financial in both execution and analysis.  Not exactly my strengths.  I could not afford to slough off on the Balanced Scorecard assignment.

The result of effort on the assignment has been valuable.  Yes, I got a good grade from Monahan.  And the exercise has helped be focus on what is truly important to me, not others.  It actually allowed me to maintain perspective throughout Fall as I crawled through the intensity of Module 4.  It was wicked.

Both the Professional and Personal Balanced Scorecards point to achieving goals that support larger strategies.  And the strategies support what is most important in my life.  They don’t need to make sense to other people, because someone else has a different life’s mission.

I just updated both scorecards, iteration 2.  Summer’s version was outdated.  Both are below.  This seems to be a good place to leave them as a sort of digital memory of how they evolve.

balanced-scorecard-mission-in-life

personal-bsc-2009

professional-bsc-2009