How to Deal with Uncertainty in Organisational Changes?

In my 18 Years career in the industry, I got about 20 Bosses. The company I worked for changed the owners and names for four times. Yesterday I made a friend and what he told me broke all my records, he got this year alone already 6 bosses in a row.

I asked him: “How do you deal with the uncertainty of the organisational changes?”

He smiled and answered with a lightness: “I do not really deal with it. The uncertainty just does not exist any more.”

I was bluffed: “What do you mean, exactly?”

He smiled again and said: “Well, in the past I was always seeking for advices from my boss, when there is an organisational change. Recently, I realize that it was just not possible. My boss lived in uncertainty himself, and his boss does not really know what his next job will be and if he would have a job himself within the company at all.”

“So you lost completely the orientation.” I added.

He responded: “Until I changed my strategy. I set my own goals. There are two parts. First from what I know in the current situation what should I do to add value for the company, this is related to create either more sales or to reduce more cost. And second, what should I do to create for me more career chance within the company and outside.”

I said: “That sounds interesting. What is the outcome of that strategy?”

“The results are that I know at any given time of organisational change what I should do and feel really empowered.”

Darwinism in Job Hunting

In current down turn of job market the employers can enjoy the luxury to find the right candidates with nearly 100% FIT of a given profile. And a lot of people apply for jobs which do not FIT well to their profiles with the hope that if they send CVs to a large enough number of companies, some one might consider them. This is the wrong strategy.

What is the right strategy? First you need to define your own species. You need to make yourself clear enough what exactly you are good at. Are you an elephant with a long nose or a hippo with a big mouth. If you do not know, then do not apply for any jobs. We say do not compete, if you do not have competitive advantages.

The next step is to find job offerings which exactly require those unique strengths. Apply for jobs only where you will land on the short list, meaning you are one of the top three candidates. How can you land on the short list? I have a couple of head hunting friends they all told me that the key word for head hunting is FIT.

The same applies for you as job hunter. Study the job description very carefully and try to understand each and every sentence. Your job is to rewrite your CV such that exactly FIT to the job description. Certainly you should not lie. However, you can emphasize your experiences which is relevant to the job and leave things out which is irrelevant. Since you only apply for jobs you can be short-listed you have more time to prepare your CVs. So take time.

If you are invited for an interview, the firs step is done. Now the focus is to prepare a list of potential questions your interviewers would ask. Put your feet into the shoes of your interviewers. Then think exactly how you would answer those questions. Some times I prepared 100 potential questions and answers. Usually only 10% of those questions were asked.

Experienced interviewers always ask some follow up questions such as

- How did you do that exactly?
- Can you please tell me an example?
- Tell me about the person you were dealing with?

If you hesitate, they might think you did not tell the truths. Be prepared for follow up questions. Here again, since you only focus on few job application, you have time to prepare. Take the time.

Job hunting is a not a battle, it is a war. You enter into a war only, if you see a great chance to win, because if you lose there you may die. It is about the survival in a tough job market. The evolutionist Charles Darwin said: "In the struggle for survival, the FITtest win out at the expense of their rivals because they succeed in adapting themselves best to their environment."

How to Raise Children Effectively? Continued

Last Friday we went to an India Restaurant at the Hong Mei Entertainment Street to celebrate for my second daughter Katharine receiving the school certificates. We are all very proud that she ended up with the second best student at her level. We are proud because she was not always liked that as her sister.

After she graded from primary school to high school (Gymnasium), she was pending between the score of 2 to 4 (with 1 the best and 6 the worst). My wife tried to help her to be better and educated her to be more disciplined. We knew that she is intelligent and talented in many ways. But my wife and she struggled for a long time. And one day I decided to try a new method that I learned from leadership training: making the change seems to be easy.

One day in a very casual atmosphere I spoke to Katherine: “Look. Would you try one thing for me? Try to improve only one point in only one subject, what ever subject you would like to chose, while remain the scores for all other subjects the same during the next semester.” It sounded for her to be easy to achieve, so she promised: “I will try.”

By the end of the semester, she improved one point not only in one subject, but in three subjects. We were very happy. We did not make more ambitions goal for her, but told her: “That is great achievement. For the next semester, would you try only to improve one point for only one subject you chose, based on your current performance.” She confidently said: “Yes. I will try.”

During all the semesters she continuously put more efforts. And the result today is really impressive with the average score of 1.3. In addition she has a great interest and talent in music and playing well guitar.

I believe that because of the pressure in the industries the management often set too high goals for people to fail, not to achieve. And while people fail, they develop a habit of failing and lose confidence in achieving. Since they can not meet the goals anyhow, why should they bother even to make any efforts?

What we can learn from Katharine is to make changes or improvements seem to be easy, so we can succeed and we have the ambition to overachieve, not because of the pressure coming from outside, but because of the inner drive to be the best we can be!

How to Raise Children Effectively?

On Friday 12, my first daughter Sophia finished the high school (Abitur) at the German School Shanghai. The whole family went there for the celebration. Sophia got the best scores at the school and received in addition three awards in Physics, in arrangements for different activities and for the competition of best foreign schools.

After the celebration some parents came to my wife and me and asked: “How do you raise your children?” This was a very good question. Honestly we never thought about it before. It is like to ask a slim person, how she keeps her body slim. Most likely she just does not know, because she was slim for the entire life. Sophia got always the best scores.

But when we reflected our experience with Sophia’s education, we may want to mention one thing that contributed most to her success. Sophia tried to do a lot of things in early years including writing creative texts, designing web sites, playing theatre, playing piano, participating technical camps and participating reading competitions.

During the course of years, she some times shifted the interests. What so ever jumped into her mind, we always encouraged her to do. When she was successful, we were happy with her. When she wanted to do something else we said that’s fine to try something new. For selection of university and subjects we never had any preoccupation and instead asked her to explore herself what she really likes.

So what did we really do in her development? Not much. We leave her in free run, encourage her to try new things and play some role models ourselves. And we are extremely happy with the results and the little time we have invested.

Leaders, Experts and Running Dogs

In a large company, there are three eminent ways to position yourself: leader, expert or running dog. And there are other 80% of people who positioned themselves some where in between, they can be put in any position, moved around, sent to any location and laid off, when necessary.

Leaders
Definition: one who influences a group of people towards the achievement of a goal.
Advantages: Leaders live up their dreams, they create constantly gaps between themselves and their followers. They are innovative, positive, full of energy. They drive themselves, others and the company to some places where they never have been before.
Risks: Some times they can drive other people crazy and themselves to get a heart attack. Another risk is described by a Chinese proverb: we can not have two tigers on one mountain. I have seen again and again: a new leader stepped in and the old one have to leave. As a leader, you often have to be prepared for new challenges.

Experts
Definition: one with the special skill or knowledge representing mastery of a particular subject (Merriam Webster Online)
Advantages: who ever the leader is in a group, experts always have the save harbor, because all leaders need people to work, to produce results, to develop products, to create marketing materials, to sell and to deliver. And experts do not form any threats to a leader. They have no chance or ambition to replace the leader.
Risks: When market or technology shift, expertise can become obsolete. So open your eyes and mind and continuously renew and improve your expert areas.

Running dogs:
Definition: one who blindly follows someone else's orders (Merriam Webster Online)
Advantages: Running dogs are much better off than their reputation. As long as the leader is in charge, running dogs are more than save. Since they usually do not have strong characteristics, they are protected by the leaders. Running dogs have usually high level of skills. They are generalists who can do any type of works pretty well.
Risks: When the leader leaves, running dogs are likely to lose their jobs, since they did not develop skills to survive without the leader. And some times they have opportunity to be promoted, when their leader step up. In this case, there is a chance of failure, since they never know how to lead and drive others.

How are you positioned in your company, a leader, an expert or a running dog? Or some where in between? Do you want to change your positioning or do to want to strengthen your positioning? See also Your Value as Expatriate.

Worst and Best Case Strategy for Any Change

There is a strategy you can apply as a manager for any change in your professional and private life. I called this Worst and Best Case Strategy. It starts like this:

1) Ask yourself, what would be the worst case in this situation. Then find a person whom you know as the most negative, pessimistic one. Ask his/her view. Also a negative person has a great value here.

2) Accept that the worst case can really happen. When it happened, in which way can you accept it and re-organize your professional/private life in peace with it? How can you get out the most from this case?

3) Then use all your imaginations to define the best case. Talk with a most positive, creative, dreaming friend you know. Ask his/her view. Ask what all you can do to achieve the best case.

4) Your job is to do everything to improve the worst case and do everything to get as close as possible to the best case.

5) What finally comes out by your efforts might be some where between the worst and the best case. So you can be happy that the worst case did not happen and you are motivated to continue your efforts, because you have still room for improvements.

6) The best thing here is that you always focus on the actions and do not worry about uncertainties and possibilities.

A smart strategy, isn’t it?

Effective Working Time

Last Saturday I had lunch with some friends and their families, most of them had studied at RWTH Aachen during the same time I studied there. Few of them were very successful and became the heads of China operations of large/medium German or other foreign companies.

I had an interest to understand how hard they work and threw a question on the round table: “How many effective hours do you guys work per day in average?”

One friend asked back: “How do you define effectiveness?”

“Adding value to your company.” I answered.

He smiled and responded: “I am happy, if my work does not destroy values.”

And another friend said: “Maximum three to four hours.”

That is exactly the phenomena I observed by discussions with other professionals. The higher you climb to the corporate latter, the un-clearer is it to determine the value of your work and therefore your effectiveness. Most people, yes, most people are focusing to protect their current positions. The best way to do it is to orientate to what the bosses require. And it is important too.

But is that all a leader like you should do? Obviously not.

You have an obligation to continuously increase the assets of your team, organization or your company, e.g. hire the best people, let the low performers to find other opportunities, develop your people as a team and as individuals, improve the working process, make sure that your team to stop doing things that either destroy value or do not create values.

If you have done all these perfectly, then the next step is for you to extend the responsibility of the team or create new business scope. As a leader you have always to move a step ahead for others to follow.