Dodo Loves Marketing

Everyone has talents—recurring patterns of thought, feeling, and behavior that can be applied productively. Simply put, everyone can probably do at least one thing better than ten thousand other people. However, each person is not necessarily in a position to use her talents. Even though she might initially have been selected for her talents, after a couple of reshuffles and lateral moves, she may now be miscast.

If you want to turn talent into performance, you have to position each person so that you are paying her to do what she is naturally wired to do. You have to cast her in the right role. ..more

• Read More »

Sooner or later every manager is asked the question “Where do I go from here?” The employee wants to grow. He wants to earn more money, to gain more prestige. He is bored, underutilized, deserves more responsibility. Whatever his reasons, the employee wants to move up and wants you to help.

What should you tell him? Should you help him get promoted? Should you tell him to talk to Human Resources? Should you say that all you can do is put in a good word for him? What is the right answer? ..more

• Read More »

Law firms are rarely considered cutting-edge organizations, but with their use of graded levels of achievement, they are far ahead of most companies. Although all lawyers are free to choose more conventional career paths—moving into the management of other lawyers, perhaps, or becoming a legal generalist for a corporation—these levels of achievement provide lawyers with an alternative, but equally respected, path to growth. It is a path that offers them both the opportunity to become experts and a simple way to track their progress. ..more

• Read More »

Even if you thoughtfully examine the match between the employee and the role, you’ve still got a problem. No matter what conclusion you come to, the employee will invariably want to move up. The employee will want to be promoted. Every signal sent by the company tells him that higher is better. A larger salary, a more impressive title, more generous stock options, a roomier office with a couch and a coffee table, all this and more awaits the lucky employee on the next rung on the ladder. No wonder he wants to move up. ..more

• Read More »

These levels of achievement will certainly help redirect an employee’s focus toward becoming world class. However, the manager’s efforts at career redirection will be forever hindered if all of the pay signals are telling the employee to look upward.

Although each of us is motivated by money in different ways, the fact of the matter is that few of us are repelled by money. All of us may not hunger for it, but only a tiny minority of us find money positively distasteful. Therefore the simple truth is that it will be much easier for managers to redirect employees toward alternative career paths if some of those paths involve a raise in pay. ..more

• Read More »

Great managers have to survive in a hostile world. Most companies do not value excellence in every role. They do not provide alternative career paths for their employees. And they do not give their managers the leeway to design graded levels of achievement or broadbanded pay plans. If you find yourself living in this restricted world, what can you do? ..more

• Read More »

The conventional career path lacks forgiveness. As the employee climbs from rung to rung, the rungs are burned behind him. If he climbs onto a rung and struggles, he knows that his reputation will suffer and his job will be in jeopardy. There is no turning back. By punishing career missteps so severely, this path discourages everyone from taking bold career steps. In conventional wisdom’s world, taking bold career steps in order to discover a latent talent or to refine an existing one is almost as foolhardy as volunteering to learn the trapeze without a safety net. ..more

• Read More »

At some point during your performance planning meetings, the employee may want to talk about his career options. He may want to know where you think he should go next. A healthy career discussion rarely happens all at once. Instead it is a product of many different conversations, at many different times. However you choose to handle these conversations—and each will be unique, according to the potential and the performance of the individual employee ..more

• Read More »

Women bring their own particular strengths to any meeting. I have found that women are particularly sensitive to interpersonal relationships and emotional undercurrents in meetings.

Feminine intuition is alert to those hidden agendas, secret coalitions and potential conflict situations. We read non-verbal messages accurately, the raised eyebrow or the sideways glance, especially when they are sent by aggressors or allies! ..more

• Read More »

“Joe will be leaving us soon and we want you to fill his role for a while. You will, of course, maintain your present responsibilities as well.”

Directives like this are becoming increasingly common, as organizations embark on acquisitions, mergers and downsizing to meet competition. Salaries are often the first costs to be cut, and middle managers are asked to double up on responsibilities, assuming the dual roles of first- and second-line manager.

What are some of the prime difficulties of maintaining these two responsibilities simultaneously? Among them are: ..more

• Read More »

When your network grows big, you can’t do it all. Don’t even try to, or you’ll run yourself ragged. The secret of success is to ‘grow’ your own people and, by doing so, let them handle their own affairs. Your role becomes more one of monitoring what is going on, leaving you free to spend more time looking for prospects. Never forget to build, build, build.

If you have well-developed and trained distributors in your downline you can, with confidence, leave them to build their own businesses. To be sure, always make yourself available to handle a crisis or to give expert advice, but don’t hinder your downliners with a ‘telling’ management style. Once you’ve given them a head start, push them from the nest and they’ll fly! ..more

• Read More »