Communication

General mentoring advise..

/ prabasiva / Leave a comment

I was asked by many mantes that how they can get a promotion in the organization. Well, it is a difficult question to answer. For anyone in an organization with any responsibility to move to the next level is contextual. In most of the organization, the organization structure is hierarchical, that is a pyramid, and higher you climb the pyramid, the lesser the growth opportunity. The top most of the pyramid is a point which is a person like CEO, CIO based on the organization you are in.

How to go to next level?

In an organization, generally, no body is going to tap your shoulder and ask you to move on in your career step. There are lots of opportunity exist in an organization and it is up to an individual to learn and grow in an organization. It is generally true. Luck is also a factor and persistent hard work creates luck.

Key principle to keep in mind before anyone consider to go to next level.

  • Be great in what you are currently doing (master the subject and be evangelist in that subject)
  • Let everyone know that you are really great in what you are doing. Do it shamelessly.

If you follow the above two principle and you consistently do it over a period of time (time depends on your position and organization) AND you need to ask this question to yourself. Are you ready for the next level? You need to honestly answer this question to yourself. Do NOT answer yes because of power, money, prestige etc. Honestly and truthfully answer to yourself. If the answer is yes because you think you are qualified to the next level then start build the network through mentoring. Perform mental shadowing. Observe the members in the organization who is in your to be level and analyze how they are performing their daily operation, how they deal their situation in a daily manner and position yourself in their shoes. How they did certain things, how they answered few questions asked in the town hall, deparment meeting, staff meeting etc and position yourself how you would have done it if you were in their position. Perform a variance analysis. The key is to select the top successful person in your next to be level. A role model.

If you keep doing this, I’m confident you will get where you want to be.

Enterprise Collaborative Quotient

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Better collaboration within IT will

  • fetch more innovation
  • improve team building
  • improve effectiveness & efficiency
  • reduce the over all IT residual risk
  • improve organization attitude

The above are top 5 value added imperatives a better collaboration will bring to an IT organization. Each one of the above adds value to the core business, saves IT G&A and minimizes the IT risk exposure.

How the CIOs and other senior executives will manage and measure the collaboration within their organization. We all familiar with Intelligent Quotient (IQ) and it is a measure how smart a person is? Likewise, an organization must have a metric to measure the collaboration  within their organization.

I was searching to find out what kind of metric is available to measure it in the industry. Based on my research, I could not find any metric to measure it. So I innovated a metric called enterprise collaborative quotient (ECQ)

What is collaboration?

Group of people working towards the same goal.

Why collaboration is needed?

IT has an organization goal every year (which is aligned to the IT strategy which supports the business strategy which supports the competitive strategy) and every member of the organization works towards the goal (Strategy focused organization). When a group of people working towards the same goal, to avoid duplication and ensure full coverage, collaboration is required within the organization.

What is the Enterprise Collaborative quotient?

Even though I prefer to have more mathematical way to calculate it, in reality, the formula approach will not work in management science. My famous saying is, it is not \pi r^2

However, a methodical approach is proposed to calculate the enterprise collaborative quotient. Let me make sure we understand why are we measuring this? To measure how the organization is working together towards the organization goal.

The structure to the problem is, what are the factors involved in measuring it. The factors are

1. Understanding of

  • the organization goal (theme),
  • the overall IT strategy (targets, performance measure,strategic objectives),
  • who is who (theme managers, initiative owners)
  • overall business bottom line
  • core values and company’s mission and vision

2. Frequency of

  • formal face to face meetings/discussion
  • informal face to face meetings/discussion
  • Impromptu face to face/phone/chart meetings/discussion
  • proposal of new suggestion/ideas for a target set for a different team
  • brown bag sessions
  • huddle meeting
  • skip level meetings
  • team meeting
  • town halls
  • 1:1 meeting with direct reports
  • special interest groups (boat club, motor cycle club, quantum cafe club,womens forum)
  • lunch meetings
  • dinner meetings
  • group activities (like community services)

3. Willingness to

  • Share knowledge
  • Listen
  • Challenge the obvious
  • care for others
  • be open

Based on types of the organization, the above factors can be used and information can be garnered by interview or survey. The weight factor can be applied based on the core function IT supports.

Communication & Leadership skills

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Communication and leadership go hand in hand. Better leaders are better communicators and better communicators are better leaders.

Communication and leadership skills are most essential skills for almost every job. The degree of the requirement may vary. No one ever mastered these two skills. I read in a leadership book, Franklin D Roosevelt had a book about leadership under his pillow during his last days. Even he felt that he could learn more about the leadership during his last days in the planet earth.

When it comes to public speaking, as per old statistics, almost 75% of the people are scared of public speaking. As some of you have already seen in one of the Jerry Sienfeld episode, people who were asked to give eulogy would rather prefer to be in the casket since the public speaking is more fearful than the death.

Public speaking and general communication are key skills required for any position in executive management (for eg. sales director, IT director, financial officer, etc). How to improve it to improve the self confidence? There are many solutions like training available.

I came to know that there is an non profit organization called toastmasters who wants to help professionals to improve the communication and leadership skills to foster personal growth.

I went to the first orientation class and met great people in my community who are also interested to improve their leadership and communication skills. I met members who work for company like Microsoft.

I started writing blogs to improve the writing skills and toastmaster for my communication & leadership skills. I thank my mentor to bring toastmaster to my attention.