Importance of networking

I have been reading and surfing a lot lately, as you can imagine, and one of the common themes is the importance of networking. This has nothing to do with Ethernet or Cisco you IT geeks out there, but concerns maintaing relationships throughout your professional and personal life. It is something I realize I don't do exceptionally well, and will definitely be improving on, not only during this job search, but as I move forward in my career.

It is hard to try and maintain contact with people you meet as you cruise through life and work, and we are all very busy. That is an easy excuse to use when we don't network effectively, even when we know we should. Think about it, how many high school or college friends or acquaintances do you keep in touch with? What about people from you very first job? I know there are not very many in my case. Actually since I have joined Facebook, it is amazing the people that find you on there.

But all of these people, no matter when or how you met them, can be connections to your next career. That sounds mercenary, and it is one of the reasons that networking is difficult for me personally. I hate just calling people out of the blue only when I "need their help". And that is exactly the reason why networking is so important! You have to constantly maintain these contacts so they are mutually beneficial, to you and the rest of your network. Think of it as your personal web, all those people you know, well of course they know people, who know people, etc etc etc. Like that shampoo commercial from the 70's I think it was.. they tell two friends, and so on and so on...

A great example of someone who does it well just contacted me yesterday. He has reached out to me almost constantly since he left our last job together, with little emails and updates, asking how things are going. When he heard I left my former company, he reached out, discussed updates of where he was and gave me some pointers on how he had been conducting his job search. When he emailed me yesterday, he requested an introduction with someone in my network, at a company where he is interested in a position. He found the connection on LinkedIn, the Facebook for business contacts. And of course I am going to give him an introduction. Not only is he a great guy, and did well when he worked for me, but has stayed in contact and worked his network.

For all of you in my network, I apologize if I contact you out of the blue, but I promise to do better in the future :-)

By the way, you can find me here on Facebook and here on LinkedIn. feel feel to reach out and add me on either site!

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Increase in Risk Adverse Cultures in IT

I was reading an interesting article on InformationWeek.com, and it spurred some thoughts on risk adverse cultures in IT organizations. You can find the original article here.

I don't think it is just CIOs that are becoming more risk adverse, but IT departments in general. Even when CIOs encourage their reports to take risks, and even when they have the right attitude when people take risks and they don't work out, it still seems that senior folks below the level of CIO are not taking risks. Why is this?

I can think of a couple of reasons:

1. They have gotten burned or have seen others burned in past lives taking risks. This is where the CIO may encourage risks, but then takes punitive measures when the risks don't pan out.

2. They don't believe the CIO when he says that calculated risk taking is acceptable. They have to have confidence that when the CIO says it is acceptable, he means it.

3. They don't know how to measure risk, so the thinking becomes every risk is too big, or just big enough to get them in trouble. This is a lot more common then I believe people understand. I have watched many projects where there isn't even a pause to consider if there ARE risks, never mind to measure them. And even when risks are put down on paper, there is no contingency planning.

4. They truly just don't know how to take a calculated risk, it just isn't in their psyche. These are the people who have to have everything planned and exactly right before they will move on to the next step. There is a corollary to this, called "analysis paralysis", that I will hold for another blog post :-)

Of course, taking a lot of risk is just as bad, if not worse, to taking no risk at all. Those people that just throw caution to the wind and jump right in are just the "b" side of a bad record.

So how can a CIO encourage calculated risk taking? I think there are several ways:

- Lead by example - this is the best and most obvious answer. He needs to also take risks, with his organization, with his strategy, and with his interactions with other parts of the business. And he needs to make sure his directs see these risks, and understand how he came to the conclusion that this was a calculated risk worth taking.

- Add it to the goals and objectives of his department and his direct reports. Yes this can be subjective (did you take the right number of risks and were they well calculated) but it will certainly encourage people to think about risks at the very least.

- Celebrate risk successes and discuss risk failures openly. Both need to done to show that you can succeed when you take risks, and that risks sometimes do fail and here are examples of how they do.

- Be supportive, not vindictive, when well calculated risks do fail. There is a reason it is called a risk. No matter how well you think you have covered all the contingencies, sometimes it just doesn't work out. This is when the CIO has to show his backbone, correct the mistake, and perhaps even take the fall for the risk taker.

Taking calculated risks, in technology, in projects, and on people, are what in my opinion seperate out good IT organizations from great IT organizations. And by stretching what we can do, and how we use technology, we help the business move forward faster. Which after all is what a great IT organization can bring to the table...

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Motivation and Leadership

Finally cleaning up from the mess of the move, my office is pretty well straightened out, and somewhat organized. (Rest of the house.. not so much LOL) Yesterday was my birthday (thanks for all the Facebook happy birthday messages everyone!), and I had a good day cleaning up the office, and having dinner with the family. This is the first time in a long while that I was actually home for my birthday, and that was a nice bonus. Donna and kids as always were very generous and right on target with my gifts, getting me a gift certificate for golf lessons for my time off from work, as well as a new laptop to replace the one I had to give back when I left Discovery. (you don't realize how attached you are to that laptop until you are continually looking around for it!)

I was sitting in my office this morning, after having a good day yesterday, and I found it very hard to get myself motivated to do much. I don't know how much the weather is contributing to it (raining fairly hard right now, been almost constant for 2 days), but it was hard to get going today.

Which got me thinking about motivation in general, and specifically what motivates me. I spent some time (since I wasn't motivated) thinking about this, and I came up with a couple of characteristics of a perfect job:

- Opportunity to contribute to a goal or objective (sounds obvious, but not all jobs contribute to a goal, they are just "work")
- Leading others to a goal or objective
- Developing a good team, as well as good individuals, and seeing them get ahead.
- Opportunity to learn and stretch myself, past what I have done before, looking for challenges and completing them.

And the last but not least, if I accomplish all of those above: get rewarded by advancing my career or completing one of my personal goals.

I will readily admit, I enjoy being a leader, as I think you can tell by what motivates me. Not necessarily a manager, but a leader. I know that some folks can't, don't or won't separate the two, but they are different. I don't have to be 'in charge of people", although that is a bonus. But I do like to have influence, authority, and accountability. It is hard to be a leader when one or more of these is missing from a position, especially if you are NOT the manager or head of the department. Sometimes these need to be earned, sometimes they are delegated to you, but without all three, you cannot lead effectively in my opinion.

See this link for a great explaination of the difference between leadership and management.

Now I need to go out and find that job that will motivate me and let me lead!!

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Resume Critique

So I signed up for TheLadders.com, "The Most $100k+ Jobs". Figured it couldn't hurt to see whats posted, not that I really expect my dream job to show up on a web site, but you never know. One of the "freebies" they give is a critique of your resume. Free is something that every unemployed person can use, so I submitted my resume..

Now I say freebies in quotes because there is almost always a catch. In this case, the goal is to hook you with the free critique, and then reel you in to their professional resume writing service. Now I haven't really used my resume to get a job for over 9 years (joined Cablevision in 2000, didn't really need a resume to join Discovery), so I know the resume was rusty.

Put all this together and I was imagining that I would get some negatives from the resume critique, but I thought it wouldn't be all that bad. After all, I have senior level, significant experience at top notch companies, so how bad can what I put down on paper really be?

Here are some quotes from the person who did the critique:

"Before I begin the critique, I would like to warn you about my style because my comments can seem frank. But the reality is that the job market is very competitive now, so I find it beneficial to help you develop your resume by being direct."

Ok, anyone familiar with my style knows I am direct, and like folks who deal in a similar fashion, so give it to me straight. Sounds good.

"First things first, lose the objective heading! This comes across as too low level! This is a bad marketing tactic plus an OLD resume technique that is not used today. Objectives aren't used anymore because they don't speak to the needs of the employer but rather to your needs. It’s a weak marketing message."

That's fine, this resume was made up 10+ years ago, probably just using a dated technique.

"Your job descriptions are much too BLAND and unexciting as an executive-level candidate."

"Another problem with this resume is its’ structure. Employers are looking for a specific format when they pick up a resume, and this one does not follow suit. Unfortunately, you have EVERYTHING bulleted - resulting in NOTHING standing out to the eye of the reader. Nothing CAN stand out in your resume because everything is formatted the same. Too many bullets and you lose the IMPACT that bullets were meant to achieve."

"While on the topic, some of your bullet points are simply too long to be effective."

"Way too long, and this isn’t even the worst one!"

"I would strongly recommend a more attractive or reader-friendly design to the document to provide a better first impression and better readability."

"Considering your career experience and target jobs, your resume is definitely not marketing you at ALL. It does not convince the reader of your qualifications, instead merely having faith the reader will make assumptions about your performance and read between the lines – definitely NOT what you want."

WOW.. and there are about 3 pages in total, just tearing my resume into shreds..

And you know what.. they are absolutely correct. I went back and critically looked at the resume, after doing some research on the web and reading a book or two, and they are spot on. My resume doesn't position me for where I want to be, and with things as difficult and tight as they are in the job market, I can't afford not to have a professional spend time with me and make this document more reflective of where I am. And more importantly, relate how I can be a unique and significant resource to a prospective employer.

For anyone looking for some help, I can honestly say that TheLadders.com did a fine job of taking a look at my resume, understanding where I want to position myself, and giving me free advice on how to better market myself. And they certainly weren't afraid of telling me all the gory details either.

Now I just need to go heal my bruised ego and get some help re-writing this!

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First Post!

Well by now I think most anyone reading or remotely interested in this blog is aware, my last day at Discovery Communications was Wednesday. The parting was mutual and amicable, and I think was handled well by both sides. Donna, my wife, suggested it might be a good idea to start a blog about the job search, I think to give me something to do :-). So I will post here all the trials and tribulations of my adjustment to moving back home full time, starting the job search, re-connecting with past colleagues and friends, networking with past co-workers and vendors/consultants/partners/just about anyone.

So if you have a job lead, want to network or reconnect, or just generally want to comment, feel free to respond to any of the postings, or contact me direct at dprill1@gmail.com

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