Listen to the voice of the marketplace and it will tell you what to do? →

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“Listen to the voice of the marketplace and it will tell you what to do” is a phrase that you may here in answer to a variety of needs. This sounds like great advice but what does it really mean? Yes it obviously suggests listening closely but for what? Will you recognize the voice?

Perhaps you are wondering what new product your menu items you need to add to your restaurant or what type of business you should try to work for. Some try to find the answer by asking their customers or business associates. This can be good advice if your already in sales and it can teach you to think of your customers as resources and from whom you can learn rather than just valuing them for your financial transactions.

The marketplace is full of businesses that buy from and sell to people you are not familiar with. Sometimes you can find out about things that you could buy or sell that would improve your business needs by asking about those transactions.

The suggestion to listen might really mean to go out and get to know more people so that you can listen. Expanding your contacts opens doors for new information flow and allows more opportunities to listen

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Start Looking For Your Next Job While Still Employed →

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Your employed, so why should you start looking for a job now? If your skills are a good fit for the job you currently have, and if you, your employer, and your supervisor, all see you as a long-term good fit, then you probably don’t need to answer this question. If you do see the need for a change coming, even if it is not for a while, then there are a lot of very good reasons to start the job search now.

The majority of those looking for jobs are passive job seekers and they can take their time to do research and to reach out to their networking contacts. According to LinkedIn a passive candidate is employed, but not currently looking for a new opportunity and this group accounts for 75% of the workforce.

You need as much time as you can get to be selective, finding the best match for your job skills and strengths and learning about the jobs that aren't listed yet. ,

Potential employers, for the same reasons as you, want to find strong candidates whose experience, strengths, and skills match up with the job description and often they take their time passively looking. Good companies know that good matches result in motivated, happy, employees who help build the company so it really pays to take some time with this decision. Use this time to really look at yourself and be honest about your strengths, abilities and what you enjoy and the dividend you will gain is better job satisfaction and perhaps a better fit in the job you find. 

Potential employers often see a candidate that is employed as a stronger potential employee, still valued by his past employer, not someone who was pushed out considered weaker. As unfair as this is, being in a position where you don’t have to take an offer is an advantage.

Employers will bend to reach out for someone with the best job skills, experience, and knowledge so find the best matches and be sure your resume shows skills and strengths that match those asked for on the job listing. 

Unemployed candidates can easily seem too eager just in trying to sell their experience and skills even in some cases when they aren't the best match. Passion and excitement displayed for the new job can be misinterpreted as just needing a job rather than a genuine belief that a real contribution can be made.

Being actively employed puts you in regular contact with your network and information about changes in the marketplace is often more timely and easier to get. 

A poor hiring decision is a costly mistake, for both the employer and employee so both sides will likely take some time to do their research. 

Can a Machine have or Respond to Emotions? →

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Machines are now being programed to learn how and when to display emotional feelings. This approach suggests that the circumstances where an emotional response is appropriate are always predictable. The behavior manifested or the feelings are assumed to be definable enough to be programable?

Is that all that feelings are? Does the same set of circumstances always produce the same set of feelings? Emotions cause feelings but do all feelings trigger an action?

Artificial intelligence systems do not distinguish the world around them from the what is inside of their intelligence in the same way that humans do.

Humans can learn to identify emotional triggers and also how to manage them. This would mean that the outcome of that emotional trigger might be negative if not managed, but positive if it was managed.

Humans can box up an emotion and decide not to act on it but machines, even if they could make that choice, would likely have different motives. If machines are programed to react to emotions then can they be programed to have a choice in the reaction an emotions triggers?

Imagine a mechanical hand programed to play the piano. The human hand doing the same thing can change the touch that is applied to the keys based on moods and feelings. Could a machine be programed to do that? A better question is could it vary the mood without programing?

Best Job Hunting Approach is alway a Rifle with a Scope vs’s the Shotgun? (Don’t just Spray & Pray) →

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When you look for a job, zoom in on it like a rifle with a scope rather than using a shotgun to spray the target, just trying to hit anything you can. Some call the shotgun approach the “spray and pray” approach. Why shouldn’t you aim for the best jobs? Employers are still hiring when job openings are few, but even then, they will demand the best fit for the jobs they have and will have plenty of applicants.

LinkedIn helps you see what your resume and profile attract, enabling it to be tightened up and focused to do the best job. Connect with your connections. Pay it forward. Offer suggestions and ideas. Take some online courses. Find temporary options to help you cover bills and provide extra time in your search. If you haven’t applied for unemployment benefits, get in line and do it.

Always make yourself so valuable that your employer will not want to lose you. Could you do more than is asked? Volunteer for extra work even if it is without pay. Be the best employee possible. Reach out and learn where others who may have left the firm are working. Who are the contacts at your suppliers and customers? Build you network now. One of the best networking tools is LinkedIn but talking to people may be better. Get to know the people in your industry.

Finding a job always has been, or should have been, a full-time job but don’t just “spray and pray”

To Fight Job Burnout, Become a Student of Your Industry

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I was talking with an old friend about his successful career and he told me that he felt his longevity in the industry was seen as a negative, not as a positive, by some in the industry and it appeared also by him? I had to ask myself why this could be? His vast experience should be viewed by himself and others as “added wisdom”, gained by trial and error.

His viewpoint spoke loudly to his own “Burnout,” but is that really what years of work have to lead to?

The dictionary definition of burnout is “the end of the powered stage in a rocket’s flight when the propellant has been used up.” With people, a lot of energy perusing various goals is used up- and when people are burned out they feel somewhat used up and complacent. You can hear the burnout in someone saying, “We tried that once before and it didn’t work so it won’t work now.”

     The foodservice industry, like many industries, is dynamic: customer preferences change. That should present challenges to all of us, “forcing us to rethink what we “always knew”. My advice to my friend in this industry is this, "you need to become a student of your industry. Think of new approaches or new ways to use old products and concepts. This will provide you renewed energy. As a veteran you shouldn’t worry about making a mistake. You of all people should know that a failure or setback really becomes an opportunity.

     When any of us start worrying about burnout, we should stop thinking about the past and look to the future. As business analyst and author, Peter Drucker, has said, "The best way to predict the future is to create it."

Own you career path but look ahead at what might be coming →

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Perhaps you see a hill coming in your career path and don’t know what will happen next? It could be a job change? Today facing job changes is a matter of if you will but when you will.

Use LinkedIn to search for options and ideas and if you have a job that is the time to start. Employers are checking you out.

In todays world some employers cut whole departments at the same time while expanding others. A trained, long-time loyal employee is let go and often at the same time, a new untrained and unproven staff is hired for another new department. The longer some departments exist the more likely it is that the department, along with its employees, have become dated and not up to speed with the fast-moving technology that will replace them.

What has changed is that employers don’t see their employees as lifelong commitments and they don’t continue to invest in them or build on what they have achieved as much as they did in the past.

The best companies say they value each employee, but is that enough?

You must understand your career direction and take the initiative to get the training and experience for the next steps. Keep your ears open and build on your network while you’re still working. Be active on your network with give and take. Start out early in your career and build and maintain your network.

Connect and network with those people who have the jobs you would like and study them. What was their career path? LinkedIn will show you the career history of those you want to learn from: do a little research and see the payoff.

The years ahead are shifting where an employee has more responsibility for continued employment and in addition, more advancement to the employee.

Project Manager is a Weak Title →

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Recently I was discussing a job listing with an associate who was trying to match his skills to a job posting and was feeling a little confused by the terminology. He had worked in the software industry for several years and said that his overall skill set strongly aligned with his past firm’s focus on client connections ensuring data was dealt with in a timely way. His job title was “Project Manager” and he felt it was a problem for him to use that title in finding like jobs.

It seems like the business vernacular tied to this job title would have common threads, but they just didn’t connect to what he had done. One posting job posting said the position would “utilize established project and program methodology to develop project plans for assigned projects”. Other listings said that the positions would “ensure adherence to quality standards, reviews project deliverables, and partner with managers to evaluate, strategize and evaluate creative project process.”

Even if I had understood what my associate had done in his prior work, aligning his past employer’s client connections job descriptions to the job posting just left us confused. I looked at the job search platform, Indeed, on the internet and typed in “Project Manager”. The site told me that they had 36,000 + jobs with that title. Managers in software development, engineering, landscaping, aerospace, patient assistance, construction and many more had open positions with this title.

As my associate and I lamented about the confusion, he showed me a book he had bought hoping to find better answers on where he should look to find the best job options for himself. The book was “Bare Bones Project Management, What you can’t not do, by Bob Lewis” so I decided to read it and even post it on my book review site if it offered some useful answers.

It was clear from the book that the term Project Manager was very generic. It has no industry certification and was a process the was tied differently to the skills needed for various jobs. Searching for this job was going to have to be tied to skills. The book did offer some helpful items.

Lewis tells us in his book that the word project is intended to mean a “collection of tasks, involving multiple individuals, organized to deliver well-defined products within a defined period of time.” He refers to what these results are as “deliverables” and what starts falling into place is the unique vernacular or “project parlance” that is part of being a Project Manager. The words that are of commonly used in project management are important if this function is to have stand-alone credibility in the organization. It just might be that the unique vernacular is why the job title seems to be creditable.

Stakeholders are those very important people in the organization that have an interest in the project and who the Project Manager will likely depend on for success. The projects metrics plan will be is very important and is about knowing what measurements will be used to determine a project’s success. You will likely be tasked with developing and using plans for communication, culture change, training and employee involvement.

The book has 7 chapters: Sponsorship and Governance, Understand the Project, Project Staffing- Defining “We”, Planning the Work, The Launch, Managing the Project and Declaring Victory.

In the first chapter the question “What’s the Point” of a project is answered telling us: “The point of any business project is to deliver business improvement of some kind - a different, better way of doing things” This is summed up saying “Business can improve in just three ways- they can increase revenue, reduce cost, or mitigate risk. Everything else is technique.

Lewis said that anyone who has volunteered, asked, or been hired to lead a project as a Project Manager, despite having no training or experience in the discipline can benefit from the book. He points out that most businesses have lots of great ideas, even more than they have executives who are willing to commit to the value of what may become a project. A project deserves a sponsor and stakeholders before it is assigned a project manager. A project can succeed without a sponsor, but the odds are much less than when it has a sponsor who has the authority to authorize more time and resources and who can declare success.

Good projects will come to an end. Of equal importance is what will you do when it is done.

What happens when mission statement conflict with business practices? →

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“With correct policies and procedures along with a mission statement, most problems just don’t happen.” Do we really believe that?  To start with, let's delve into the significance of aligning a mission statement with the policies and procedures. Understanding the problems the Human Resources Department deals with regularly might be a good start in this enlightening journey.

At times, employees' interpretation of policies and procedures can lead to conflicts when it clashes with their understanding of the business's goals and objectives. It's crucial for us to be aware of these potential conflicts.  

If the mission statement is not directly related to policies and procedures, it can be easier to resolve conflicts when people believe they understand the goals. For example, management and employees might view the same rules and procedures but believe in different objectives and results.

Consider an employee being disciplined for excess French fry waste who justifies it with an interpretation of the company’s goals, that the company wants the customer to "enjoy their food.” The employee knows that fries are enjoyed hot, not cold, and disposes of the cold fries, increasing the waste rather than serving them. If the mission statement reflects the goal of having the customer enjoy their food, then it should override the policy on waste and shift the focus to why the fries are getting cold.

Mission statements, however, often go way beyond things that relate to the function of the business where the employees put their efforts. Coca-Cola’s mission statement is: “To refresh the world…To inspire moments of optimism and happiness…To create value and make a difference.” Hyatt’s mission statement is: “To provide authentic hospitality by making a difference in the lives of the people we touch every day.” Nike’s mission statement is:” “Bring inspiration and innovation to every athlete globally. * If you have a body, you are an athlete.” John Doe’s Burgers & Fries Restaurant’s hypothetical mission statement could be: “To have their customers enjoy their food and always get hot fries.”

Do any of these mission statements effectively guide the employee in making daily job decisions? John Doe’s Burgers & Fries mission statement does. This highlights the practical relevance of mission statements in the daily operations of a business.

Maybe the message is that when problems are brought to your attention, listen and don’t kill the messenger.