Life Meets Work Blog

In Bulletproof Your Job, author Viscusi suggests arriving at work early and leaving late. Not too early or too late, mind you—just five or ten minutes before and after your boss. After all, he writes, “much of what you need to do is create a perception that makes you more visible.”

Is he channeling George Costanza? (Seinfeld, season 7, episode 12)

Without increased productivity, such subterfuge will become apparent. Managers don’t want to be manipulated. Cut out the smoke and mirrors and focus on the work.

Ethics count.

Posted by Jaime

It goes without saying that you should be adding value at work. Unlike Viscusi who seems to believe that facetime = merit, it is those employees who contribute meaningfully to the bottom line who’ll be asked to stay.

Whatever your role, look for ways to quantify your results. Did you add 10 new customers last month, cut supply costs by 15%, or negotiate a new supplier discount? Measure your results, not your time. Demonstrate a results-oriented work style and you’ll earn lasting favor. Plus, you’ll have quality resume fodder in case new job interests come along.

Read about results-based job descriptions at the Life Meets Work main site.

Posted by Jaime

“You must understand your job is your most valuable asset, and your primary objective is to protect it,” Viscusi writes. And in a nod to Sun Tsu…”Work is war.”

When work becomes a battlefield and the primary objective is self-preservation, everyone suffers—including your employer. As competition increases, productivity decreases. As cooperation disappears, so does creativity as well as the valuable internal vetting that comes from debating and evaluating new ideas.

Ignore Viscusi. Be generous with the knowledge and information you have. Share contacts, new ideas, and resources. You can’t build a network without cooperation and you can’t build a career without a network.

Posted by Jaime

Attend seminars, keep up with market press, read the top bloggers in your industry, and try out the latest technologies. Smart, well-informed employees are always an asset. Even if your current employer can’t keep you, you’ll be well positioned for another opportunity.

Set yourself some goals (like these, for example):

• Find four industry blogs to visit daily and try to comment on at least one every week. You develop critical thinking skills when you process a post and respond with a relevant opinion.
• Subscribe to one print publication and set aside time to read it. Keep some reading material in the car and plan to arrive at meetings 5-10 minutes early. You’ll always be on time and you’ll have industry news top-of-mind.
• If you don’t already IM and text, find someone to communicate with—for the sake of learning.
• Get a page on LinkedIn, and try out Facebook and Twitter.

Make a habit of continuing education. If you are informed and capable, you’ll not only survive—you’ll thrive.

Posted by Jaime

With collapse in our financial sector and jobs on the line, some large name media outlets felt it was appropriate to give Stephen Viscusi’s new book Bulletproof Your Job some valuable press space.

Viscusi offers four rules for weathering a touch economy at work: Be Visible, Be Easy, Be Useful, Be Ready. Admittedly, there’s merit in many of Viscusi’s suggestions, such as be a mentor, dress well, and build your network.

Those are well and good, but unfortunately Viscusi peppers his book with reckless throwback suggestions like these:

“Don’t stay late, just stay later. Leaving a mere ten minutes after your boss has gone reinforces the impression that you’re the world’s most committed employee.”

“It doesn’t matter if your company pays for your health club membership or even provides an on-site health facility—that’s to make it look good, not to help you lower your cholesterol… admire those perks, brag about them to your friends, but don’t get caught using them.”

Apparently Viscusi doesn’t believe that having a good opinion of your employer or respect for your managers will get you anywhere. And the idea that companies offer wellness programs simply for PR purposes shows a concerning lack of corporate insight.

Viscusi provides some short-sighted suggestions to save a job. We wonder, though, whether some of his recommendations could do more harm than good.

In the next few posts, we’ll respond to more of Viscusi’s advice and offer suggestions to bulletproof your career.

Posted by Jaime

Some people like to bash the idea of work-life balance, complaining that it’s a either not possible or simply not good enough. Julie Morgenstern over at Business Week disagrees. She writes,

“Work-life balance is not about the amount of time you spend working vs. not-working. It’s more about how you spend your time working and relaxing, recognizing that what you do in one fuels your energy for the other.”

By Julie’s definition, we can accept that a 60+ hour work week “works”—for some people. But just as we can recognize that some folks are fueled by an intense professional life, we must acknowledge that others are fueled by full personal lives.

To get the most out of our employees (and ourselves), we must expand our notion of how and when work gets done. By creating more opportunities for flexibility, people can work when they are the most energized and creative.

We did an interview with Rebecca Ryan of Next Generation Consulting recently. She prefers the term “life-work” balance to “work-life,” and shared a personal life-work balance story to illustrate her point.

I think the key is, balance is possible, as long as we’re open to individual interpretations of what that is.

Posted by Jaime

If I’m reading him right, Steve over at Brip Blap is trying to disabuse his readers of the notion that work-life balance is a worthy goal. The true objective, he suggests, is a blended life. He writes:

“The key is not to strive for balance, but to find work you enjoy and can integrate with your “life,” . . . . . Figuring out a way to do it in a blended way is better than trying to figure out a balanced way - because if you sell your time for money, there will never be balance.”

I think he asks for much. Blending is certainly something to strive for, but recognize that balance will continue to be the more realistic goal for much of the working world. We’re not all part of the creative class, and there are plenty of people who would be happy just being able to knock off early for an art class or their kid’s soccer game.

There’s a danger in dismissing work-life balance as we strive for a utopia. The danger is that we’ll end up moving backward as we reach for an ideal.

As the fortunate among us strive to blend our own life-work situations, we must remember to do what we can as coworkers and employers to help people achieve balance. By that I mean

1. Modeling healthy work behaviors,
   
2. Choosing comments and attitudes that support balanced choices, i.e. no glancing at your watch when a coworker leaves before five o’clock,
   
3. Providing flexible work hours, and
4. Promoting people who choose to work flexibly.

Posted by Jaime

Fan of Suze Orman or not (when did she start yelling?), she has some good words of advice for self-employed women: charge what you’re worth.

In Orman’s Q&A column in the August issue of Oprah magazine, she counseled a real estate agent who’s been coaching families through the foreclosure process—for free.

Orman credits her good work, but says this: “You need to make money, and you don’t have to apologize for it.”

She writes,

“List the services you provide, decide on a fair fee—then add 20 percent. Why the bump? Because the thousands of self-employed women I’ve spoken to have a tendency to ask for less than what they want and deserve. Economically that unacceptable. How can you do your best work if you don’t feel properly compensated?”

It’s a solid message for the self-employed and those negotiating salaries.

I’ve sooo been there myself. I got over it (well, mostly) by talking with other people in my industry—all of whom were generous with advice—and looking to a couple of good mentors who helped me recognize the value of my skills.

Here are some more tips for figuring out what you’re worth. Now, have the courage and the conviction to ask for it!

Posted by Jaime.