Personal Branding Made Easy
Whenever you come into contact with others, be that by email, telephone or in person, you will be making an impression. Trouble is, what impression are you making?
Four Reasons Why You Struggle to Engage Stakeholders
Few things are possible in large or complex organisations without buy-in from stakeholders. To get that buy-in, you have to engage them.
So, you diligently reach out to them to bring them up to speed, get their input and elicit their support for your initiative. Naturally, you are convinced that it is in their very best interests to pay engage with you, they have a great deal to gain from this exciting project.
And that is when the problems start.
Your Read More
The CXO Guide to Influence
Although originally stimulated by the CIO Legacy Report, this guide will be of value to any CXO, or aspirant CXO in need of boosting their capability to influence stakeholders, especially internal stakeholders.
Right now, I don't intend to address the critical need for high levels of influencing skills, except to say that the less you have by way of natural sources of power, the more you need to be able to influence. And by influence, I mean getting genuine buy-in from key powerful stakeholders who can help or hinder your progress.
Based on my work with many executives and directors over the last 10 years, there are five key areas you need to focus on. All successful CXOs will score highly on each of these.
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Influencing Internal Stakeholders Checklist
A little while back I wrote and published the CXO Guide to Influence. This was born out of a report last year by Deloitte which found that the largest gap in CIO/CTO skills was their capability to influence internal stakeholders.
Since influencing stakeholders is a subject I'm quite passionate about, I wrote the CXO Guide and a companion checklist for those who are interested in learning how to make sure they are doing all they can to influence appropriately. Read More
A Rather Important Lesson about Influence
During a recent interview I was asked an interesting question:
"Colin, what one thing, above all else, do you want people to learn about influence?"
Having been working in this field for a great many years, there were an awful lot of ways that I could answer this. The subject is huge, and I'm still learning. Which means, I've got plenty of things to choose from.
But it didn't take very long, because in fact the answer is pretty central to my whole approach to influence, and why I am different from many others who work in this arena. Read More
Project Managers: What You Need to Know
You probably don't know this, but when I first started out I worked for a branch of the intelligence services. Nothing terribly exciting, just a communications and IT specialist. Well okay, some of the time it was very exciting, but I can't go into that.
Embedded in the culture was the concept of "need to know." To minimise the risk that secrets would leak, you were only told things that were essential to perform your role. Nothing more, nothing less. For this to work, we all had to rely on someone at a more senior level making an accurate judgment about what we needed to know. Only they were allowed to see the bigger picture.
In fact, it was Read More
Seventeen Actions for Influence
You know, the only way you are going to become more influential is if you get moving. Action has to happen in order for things to start changing for you.
The list below is intended to stimulate your thinking and lead you to action. Behind all of those is the serious intent that you do something that will help you to become more influential, gain more buy-in from your stakeholders, and start to move quickly towards your goals.
As you read each suggestion, make sure Read More
Making a BIG Impact in Your Organisation
If you want to make it big in your organisation, especially if it is a really busy place, you've got your work cut out.
The competition is intense. Hundreds, if not thousands, of ambitious and talented people all jockeying for position. Trying to get their voice heard. Clamouring for attention so they can push forward their ideas and land their results. Talent hoping to get spotted.
Many give up, using the excuse that they don't do politics. Or, that their sense of integrity prohibits self-promotion. Instead, they settle in to their professional discipline. They develop ever greater technical or subject matter expertise. After all, this is what they really enjoy.
Yet, behind the myriad and convincing excuses lurks, a doubt, and a wish. Read More
How to Learn the Politics
Do you understand the politics around your role? Can you respond confidently when someone makes a move against your interests?
No?
Well, you're not alone. I'm starting to think that the most significant factor contributing to failing to deliver in a large organisation, is the inability to understand and manage the politics. Lack of leadership skills doesn't come close.
A couple of days ago I was talking to Kate. She is an ambitious and talented senior project manager. Hard working and with a reputation for making things happen and getting things done that reaches far across the senior management community in her bank.
Despite this track-record, she keeps getting surprises. Project get knocked off course because of the political manoeuvring by powerful people. No amount of technical capability can help her to prepare for these moves. Yet she hasn't got a clue how things are working.
Not only is this causing her grief now, she is also beginning to realise it could be career limiting.
At a high level, my FOUR key suggestions to overcome this problem were::
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Igniting Your Ambition
"If you were really talented, you wouldn't need to be here, and you wouldn't need us."
This is how I opened the first event of a group of our company's brightest and best, joining our top talent development programme. To say my colleagues on the organising team were shocked was an understatement. Not to mention the jolt it gave the audience. Not what they were expecting.
Although this was many years ago, the principle still resonates with me. My belief is that really talented people are extremely good at developing themselves.
They are highly motivated, have a good Read More
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