Become Good at Saying No

If you've ever taken an Intro to Economics class, you would have probably heard of the concept of "Opportunity Cost". Briefly, the opportunity cost of making a choice are the missed benefits of choosing one alternative over another.

Because everyone has limited time, energy and resources, that means that when you agree to do something, you will miss out on other things. By saying "Yes" to do one thing, you're indirectly saying "No" to doing other things.

This is why one of the most important (and difficult) skills everyone needs to develop is how to say "No". Whether it's a business opportunity or friends and family members asking you to do them favours, you will receive requests that will require you to give up a combination of your time, energy and resources.

When thinking about saying "Yes" to any of these requests out of guilt, an unhealthy need to please others or perhaps a miscalculation of financial gain, remember what you're potentially giving up. Just ask yourself how much whatever you're being asked to commit to is going to cost in terms of your sanity, time away from loved ones, your physical health and/or your financial well-being. Then you'll realize why "No" can be one of the most valuable words in your vocabulary.

Never be Afraid to Quit

We've all heard the adage: "Winners never quit.  Quitters never win."

Nothing could be further from the truth.

The better adage is: "You gotta know when to hold 'em. Know when to fold 'em. Know when to walk away. And know when to run."

Yes, persistence and perseverance can get you far.  You can become very successful by sticking to something for a long time while trying to improve.  It's a skill that can help you in life.

However, knowing when and how to quit something is actually equally important.  At some point, we have to recognize when we're no longer able to improve on a situation despite the amount of resources you've sunk into it.

We all need to recognize the point when, despite any additional effort, failure is inevitable. When that happens, learn from your failure, quit, then divert your remaining resources and energy on other endeavours (or a modified version of the failed one). This is how quitting will lead to future success.

Go Take an Actual Vacation

Vacation mode: ON !!!

A recent article from QZ was discussing how our one or two-week vacations are way too short for people to decompress and relieve the stress from work-related burnout.  Some are even suggesting that you should just take longer breaks for every two hours of work during your day to be less stressed out.

Sure we can't be all like the Europeans who work for companies that allow 4 to 6 week vacations.

Instead, how about we, as North Americans, change the way that we treat vacations?  One of the worst things that I see are email "out-of-office" replies saying that the person is on vacation but that they will "monitor their emails and cell phones in case there's an urgent matter".

No wonder people are feeling stressed out.

Instead of keeping yourself electronically tethered to your desk, why not disconnect from work and spend time with your family and friends? What's the point of spending money on a flight, on hotels, museums and on booze on the beach if you're not even going to try to temporarily escape the pressures of your job?

Maybe you legitimately like your job and you don't really want to go on vacation.  Maybe you feel like you're pressured by your employer and the company's culture to stay connected almost 24/7.  Maybe the company's culture has no respect for work/life balance. Maybe you're a control freak who thinks that if you leave, people backing you up won't be competent enough to cover you for a couple of weeks.  Or worse, maybe you're scared that your colleagues won't notice that you're gone because you secretly think that your job is not really that valuable to the company in the first place.  Maybe you're just a really nice person who doesn't want to leave their colleagues hanging out to dry if something goes wrong while you're away.

Sadly many of us see taking vacations as a source of stress. Many people feel stressed before they leave because they do double duty to complete things in advance before they leave.  They also feel stressed immediately after coming back because of the work that's piled up while they were away.

This is why you have people backing you up. In all likelihood, unless your employer sucks at hiring, there should be enough competent and intelligent people who can help pick up the slack while you're away. Trust these colleagues of yours because they'll be trusting you to do the same for them when they go away for vacation.

And for high-achievers who really think that vacations can be detrimental to their businesses, just remember, you can't perform at your optimum level if you're not rested.  Vacations are meant to recharge your batteries so you can push even harder to succeed.  Unless your job has life-or-death consequences, you really shouldn't be allowing anyone to interrupt your vacation.

So enjoy the beach, the lake, the woods, the new city that you're visiting, the taste of the new foods you'll try and/or the historic monuments that you'll see.  You're allowed to leave work for a while and actually enjoy your life.

An Executive’s Guide to Looking Effective (Without necessarily being effective)

Originally published on Medium:

The cool thing about getting a job as an executive is that because it can pay so well, you can leave a company or a department after a couple years with a lot of money in your pocket. In all likelihood, the long-term consequences of your short-term decisions won’t be too apparent. This is especially true if you’re in a publicly traded company where “performance” is measured every 3 months instead of years or decades.

If you’re an executive, your ability to make effective strategic decisions is secondary. Actually having knowledge of how the business works is tertiary. After all, you don’t really need to stay there that long if you’re good at negotiating salaries and bonuses and you’re smart with your money.

To show your value to shareholders and investors what’s more important are the optics. What you actually accomplish isn’t necessarily as important as what it looks like you’re doing to improve the business on a quarterly basis.

Here are a few tips to help you look like you’re worth the large amount of money they’re paying you.

 

Adopt an “executive persona”

Think of the most iconic, charismatic leaders in the business world. They’ve all got a persona (whether it’s real or not):

• You can be the tough, all-nighter-pulling, Alpha executive in a well-tailored power suit.
• The supermom exec who successfully finds the balance between crushing board meetings and coaching her kids’ hockey team
• You can be the quirky, hoodie-wearing Silicon Valley CEO.
• An executive who wears the same outfit on a daily basis to “save their mental energy” for more important decisions.
• You can pretend that you’re the rebellious, “think-outside-the-box”, jet-setting, risk-taking, jeans-wearing, entrepreneurial exec.

Here’s a persona that many an executive in the financial industry has adopted almost too well.

It doesn’t matter which persona you pick. You just have to make sure that the persona you pick follows these two criteria:

1. It just has to be different enough from the person you replaced. This will give both employees and shareholders the impression that you’re there to shake things up and make some sweeping changes for the better of the company.
2. It has to be believable enough to show off your authenticity. For this, I would do what the most successful WWE professional wrestlers do. They take a real quirk in their personality and just exaggerate it to a point that it becomes a new character.

WWE Hall of Famer Donald Trump using his created “executive persona” in the ring alongside Stone Cold Steve Austin, Vince McMahon and Bobby Lashley.

Be “helpful”

Always present yourself to your employees (preferably when in a group setting) as someone who is willing to provide executive help for any “roadblocks” they might face in their day-to-day. Don’t actually help them, though. You’re busy. Actually helping takes time and effort that you don’t necessarily want to get mixed up in. We’re talking optics here. You need to project an image that you’re willing to help.

Remember, you must only ask how you can help when you’re in a public setting. That way, whoever actually wants to ask for help will have to do so in front of the entire company. Putting people on the spot like that will reduce the likelihood of them asking for anything for fear of looking foolish, weak or incompetent in front of the rest of the company. At the extreme, they risk asking something inappropriate from the high-level executive and get themselves fired.

Either way, the result is that you look like the benevolent leader with an “open door” policy, but because everyone’s so scared, you won’t actually have to do the work of making any changes.

Make your micro-management and bullying tactics look like you’re just “hands-on” and “getting shit done”

Yes, we all teach our kids that bullying is wrong. In this case, since you’re the boss, it’s not really bullying. No, not really. You’re simply showing employees that you’re forcefully getting things done. You’re not ineffectual like the last exec. As the new leader, you don’t want to get bogged down by useless processes. You are simply “passionate” and can get emotional when it comes to making sure that the business succeeds under your tenure.

To make it look like you’re getting things done, make sure that all emails you send to your middle-managers get marked as “Important” or “Urgent” or “Priority”. Ensure that cons

equences for employees who don’t respond to these emails on time are made clear.

You might be seen as micro-managing, but really, you simply want to make sure that your employees are staying focused on the strategic tasks at hand. You’re simply showing that you’re “hands on” and interested in how the business functions. It’s part of “being helpful”.

Of course, the most important thing if you get called out on your aggressive behaviour is to never apologize. Employees should just be grateful that you are sharing your wisdom and helping them succeed in their day-to-day.

Offer your employees “training opportunities”

Offering skills training to employees looking for both lateral and upward moves in the company is necessary. That should be standard in any good company.

However, if you want to look like you’re a great executive going above and beyond, you need to sponsor mandatory training programs that will make your company look like it’s also socially conscious and woke.

Here are some examples, in no particular order:

• Diversity training courses
• Anti-bullying classes
• Mindfulness training
• Anti-harassment training
• Business ethics
• Environmental consciousness training
• Employee engagement initiatives
• Et cetera…

Sure, those types of training programs can have some inherent value, especially if your company has a history of harassment, bullying or even employee burn-outs. However, the biggest value that they bring is really how good it makes the executive (and the company) look to employees, shareholders, the media and even the general public.

Let’s face it. The courses themselves can be empty or simply lip service. But for a relatively low investment, an executive can now have a great PR talking point. Now, his HR minions can brag about the company’s commitment to “preventing harassment in the workplace”, for example. Whether this actually stops sexual harassment in the company is irrelevant. The executive can now wash his or her hands when wrongdoing is reported because current employees have already received the training. If future harassment happens, the exec can always point to this training and say that the company isn’t to blame for the inappropriate behaviour of a few “bad apples”.

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Being an executive can be a great, but difficult job opportunity. Latest studies of the S&P 500 companies show that the median tenure of a CEO for example is about 5 years. In that short a time, could you really make a huge difference to justify the bonuses and salary that you negotiated so well? If you’re exceptional, sure. If you’re able to ride an upward trend and make it look like it was your leadership instead of luck, maybe. If you can turn a company around from the brink of bankruptcy, of course.

The truth is, making a difference in a company is difficult. Sure you can make strategic decisions, but for the most part, results of those will take a lot of time to actually show. You can only be shown to be effective by what you look like you’re doing during the quarter, not by what you’ve done. So instead doing the actual heavy lifting with results that won’t be seen until after you leave, just do the noisy, but ineffectual things that everyone will see. If you’re good, you can sell them on the value that you added to the company as you leave laughing to the bank and on to a new executive job at a different company to start the process over again.