February 2008 Newsletter
Dear Subscribers,
Welcome to the "Super Bowl Sunday" edition of Own Your Life!
Today is the Super Bowl, the championship game of the National Football League. It’s the day when two NFL teams attained one of their top goals for the season: prevailing through the playoffs for the opportunity to compete in the biggest game of the season. Of course, each team has it’s aim set on walking away with the Vince Lombardi Trophy – but at least they earned the chance to compete.
Although sports metaphors have tended to be overused, the Super Bowl is a great backdrop for considering goals and achievement, especially career-related ones. So, it’s a great time to consider what you want to achieve in your career. Being reasonably close to the beginning of a new year, the first question is what are your career goals for the year? As long as you’re considering your career, you might consider where you see yourself in three to five years. Consider how this year’s goals relate to the long term. For example, the road to the Super Bowl (the ultimate goal) is achieved one game at a time. So, every game throughout the regular season and the playoffs relates to the overall goal.
Beyond goals, successful teams need to take it a step further to think about the internal goals of each game, such as controlling the clock, avoiding turnovers, and scoring more than opponents. These are the measures that add up to ultimate victory in each and every game, including the Big One! So, reaching a goal also means paying attention to the metrics that drive ultimate success. If either Super Bowl team were solely focused on the championship game, neither would have gotten there. Similarly, in your career, you need to know the measures that will move you along toward your ultimate goal.
Working in outplacement, I see too many people that are focused on winning the Big One: getting that prized job offer. They become so focused, in fact, that they forget about playing all the games and attending to all the metrics related to moving the ball (sorry, couldn’t help myself) and winning. So, what are some of the metrics you need to attend to in transitioning your career? Since relationship building drives business and career success generally, and since networking drives more than 70% of job search success in particular, let’s consider networking metrics.
According to research of one major career services firm, on average, a job seeker will need to have 300 conversations before getting a job offer – and this includes connecting with an average of 25 individual decision makers. Now, it’s probably no surprise that job seekers are driven to connect with lots of people in the course of their search, and many do. Unfortunately, many rack up contacts on LinkedIn without awareness of a critical metric. According to the information provided by Wendy Kinney, head of Metro Atlanta’s PowerCore, it takes 5 to 11 “touches,” before a prospect will be willing to buy from you or refer you to others. Basically, according to Wendy, a “touch” is anything that gets your name in front of the person you are building a relationship with and will usually involve a mix of face-to-face or phone conversations, e-mails, or other media that get the person to remember you – and ideally help them associate you with value you can deliver.
Again, drawing on football, we know that it’s not enough to focus on putting up big numbers. Successful teams have a game plan. And so should you. If you are in job search or simply managing your career to get to the next level, you need to figure out a plan for meeting people, having all those conversations, creating all those touches, building relationships and getting referrals to others that you help you expand your network.
Perhaps you have a plan, but if you’re not experiencing the success you’d like, you probably need to refine it. And as you do, consider ways to balance your approach. Establish your running game by getting out there to interact with others person to person. Balance that with effective use online tools such as LinkedIn and Facebook; they become your passing game allowing you to connect with more people (cover more yards) more quickly. Finally, like every effective game plan, you need to pay attention to team work: you need to find ways support others as you build your network. As Keith Ferrazzi said in Never Eat Alone, he discovered early in life that “…real networking was about finding ways to make other people more successful [emphasis his].” Put another way, your network is your team – making them successful makes you successful.
No matter where you are in your career, you can achieve more success. You don’t need a perfect season to be a champion. As the New York Giants have shown us, you can achieve success as a “wild card.” On Super Bowl Sunday, their website proudly proclaimed that they are “thriving as underdogs” – a demonstration of spirit that transcends what actually happens in today’s game. Even if they leave without the Trophy, they walk away as winners. Imagine the success you can achieve by combining that spirit with a great game plan that includes practical ways to put up your numbers while supporting your team.
So, when the Super Bowl is a just a recent memory, take a look at your career goals. And get your game on!
Go Giants! What a spectacular game! Thanks for the best upset since Super Bowl III! And congratulations to the New England Patriots on a terrific season!
Posted by: Walter Akana | February 15, 2008 at 10:19 PM