Best piece of work advice you got?

I think that when companies are private, part of the draw for employees is a share of the company and the hopes of cashing in when it goes public. I 100% get that. Many times people are paid lower than their peers at start-ups, but are paid in shares with the promise of future gains.

However, it publicly trades, established companies, I definitely see the wisdom. I have worked for DEC (gone), Intel (huge stock run-up, then extended stock decline), Motorola (basically gone), Freescale Semiconductor (gone) and now my current employer. So, many of my peers used to use "stock funds" in their 401k and companies used do profit sharing in the form of company stock rather than cash (before the tax code changed on options and bonuses) and were wiped out when DEC, Motorola, Lucent, AT&T, etc....disappeared.

But to your point, the situation matters.

 

It matters more that the powers that be like you than that you be super competent at your job.

 

First rule of business: Don't be an a**hole. This puts you ahead of 50% of your competition.

And, a corollary: exit gracefully. I've had many clients leave thinking the grass was greener and I did everything to make their exit smooth. When they realized they had made a mistake there was no animosity to come back (and no "I told you so's") Clients who leave and return are generally lifetime clients.

 

A leader once told me that everyone has an emotional equity piggy bank. Never miss an opportunity to give out some recognition, tell someone they did a good job, give them a high 5 or a quick “thank you” email. Each time you do it’s like depositing a quarter into that piggy bank.

But, when you have to come down on someone, give some constructive or negative feedback it was like withdrawing a dollar from that piggy bank.

I reflect back on that often. Every time I have to sit down with someone and tell them something they probably aren’t going to want to hear or pass on some news to my team that I know won’t be received very well, I ask myself - “have I made enough deposits to cover this withdrawal?”

It stuck with me and served me well for many years.

 

That’s good advice. I retire tomorrow and one regret I have is that over the course of my career I have had high expectations for my subordinates and I rarely gave out attaboys unless they were way above and beyond expectations. To my knowledge this never bit me on the butt, but don’t be like me. Make those attaboy deposits more often than I did.

 

And there are some people that want only to be told what they want to hear.

 

And yet there are people high up in management who can't give up the micro managing to let go of the details.

 

Congrats on your retirement!

 

Thx

 

There is truth to this. Though you cannot be incompetent...

 

This is great stuff right here.

Managing different personalities is harder than managing the job at hand.

 

"You're too ugly to sleep your way to the top, so find another way"

 

My basketball coach once gave me not so much work advice but general rules for living. He said, "There are three rules that I live by: never get less than twelve hours sleep; never play cards with a guy who has the same first name as a city; and never get involved with a woman with a tattoo of a dagger on her body. Now you stick to that, and everything else is cream cheese."

 

Go GATORS!
,WESGATORS

 

As Prime Minister, your boss would have been the King (or possibly the Queen). Were you talking about invading another country? Because that can get hairy.

 

Ah, the use of acronym humor. I tell people there's a reason why Multi-Factor Authentication starts w/ MF

 

It’s OK to send good news via email, but always deliver bad news via phone or in person.

If you’ve just banged out a wall of text email complaining about something, save it and let it sit for a day and read again.

Good advice that I didn’t always follow, to my detriment.

 

In many admin type jobs there is a lot of excess. People try to look busy but don’t want to ask for work too many times. This often happens when organizations are flat and bosses really have no idea what their 10 or 15 employees are doing.

I had a smart friend who was a master of taking maybe 5 hours of work and spreading it out over 40 hours. Then he brought me on as a contractor and gave half of it to me.

 

My dad gave me the best advice and taught my brother and myself great work ethics. Always be on time, always tell the truth and no matter what you choose for a career strive to be the best you can be. Try to learn every aspect of the business.