Growth Requires Cultivation, Germination, Timing and Attention

I love the advent of spring, on many levels.  Foremost is the miraculous emergence of flora and fauna after months of a hard and cold winter: the chirping of the peepers down in the river shallows at night and the sprouting of snow drops through sleet.   Logic would dictate that the extreme cold would kill all life, but it always comes zooming back as the temperature holds above freezing.

Last year, I bought a strawberry pot kit on sale, later in the summer, and followed the directions to germinate strawberry plants from seed.  The directions warned that it would take 30 days for the strawberry seedlings to sprout.  "30 days," I thought.  "It can't take that long!."  I monitored the pot on my warm and sunny back porch every day for 3 weeks, got discouraged and gave up.  It probably didn't help that I gave up watering the strawberry pot as well.  Not even a sprout emerged.  Nothing like growing peas:  you drop 'em in the ground, and bang, a few days later, they start sprouting.

Here's the answer, from GardenGuides.com:

Strawberries are cold germination plants. They require a minimum of a 2-week period of freezing temperatures followed by cool temperatures in order to break dormancy. The seeds require temperatures between 40 and 60 degrees Fahrenheit in order to germinate. Light requirement is minimal until the seedling emerges from the soil, then full sunshine is required for it to thrive. The seed must remain moist for the entire period of germination or the embryo will die of thirst once dormancy is broken.

Got it:  my timing (late summer) and the conditions:  temperature, sunlight, moisture and attention (read:  the need for immediate gratification) - were all sub-optimum.  Of course nothing grew.  Even in optimal conditions, the germination period is long, and a lot of progress is made underground before the seedling finally emerges.

I think of my failed strawberry gardening experience when I listen to the frustration of job-seekers and entrepreneurs in my network:

• It's been 3 weeks since I applied online to the job, and I've heard nothing;
• It's been so quiet these last few weeks, and I'm getting discouraged;
• I've submitted 5 proposals over the last 3 weeks, and no response;
• There are no jobs out there for me, I'm not qualified for anything that's advertised;
• I've networked with everyone I can think of, there's just nothing out there;
• The economy sucks.

I've mentioned several times in previous posts my Daddy's mantra:  if you make 30 calls and get one sale, you're doing great.

A pivotal distinction in that mantra is the necessary germination / gestation period after you make the 30 calls:  depending on the product you're cultivating with potential clients / employers:  whether it's a system, a widget or you, there is a necessary germination (or gestation) period that occurs after you cultivate the client.  The timing needs to be right, the need for the product needs to be yesterday, your attention to the client's needs during both the cultivation and the germination periods needs to be constantly crisp and spot-on.  Depending on several factors and various internal and external environmental conditions, the germination period for closing a perspective client, sale or job can be minutes, hours, days, weeks, months or even years.

In my career, I've been hired on the spot; and I've been hired 3 months later and one year later, respectively.  I've acquired clients after just a 1-hour conversation, and I've also acquired clients 7 months after a 2-hour conversation and a 3-hour proposal. 

The product one of my dear colleagues sells, due to its complexity and cost, typically takes 2 years to sell, after requisite long cultivation and germination periods.

Another dear colleague called me last week, frustrated after a quiet 2 weeks.  "I've put out all these feelers, and I'm hearing nothing back," they said.  "You need to keep putting out new feelers, and stay in touch with the existing feelers, until one or more germinate," I replied.  They called me back a week later, much happier, reporting 4 leads from their cultivation efforts.  "How did you know??"  they asked, amazed at the results.  "Every prospecting effort has a gestation period," I replied.  "Some efforts will fail the gestation period:  however, before there can be a breakthrough, there must be a breakdown:  which drives renewed and new cultivation efforts on your part, which in turn increase the chances of your success."

My best wishes for a fertile season, and a fruitful harvest.

Pick Yourself Up, Dust Yourself Off, Start All Over Again

My dad loves Frank Sinatra.  He would play Sinatra's albums on the weekends during my childhood, and I remember this song fondly:

Here are the lyrics:

Pick Yourself Up

 (Lyrics by: Dorothy Fields / Music by: Jerome Kern)

Now nothing's impossible, I've found for when my chin is on the ground,

I pick myself up, dust myself off, and start all over again.

Don't lose your confidence if you slip, be grateful for a pleasant trip,
And pick yourself up, dust off, start over again.

Work like a soul inspired until the battle of the day is won.
You may be sick and tired, but you be a man, my son.

Will you remember the famous men who have to fall to rise again,
So take a deep breath, pick yourself up, start all over again.

You gotta work like a soul inspired until the battle of the day is won.
You may be sick and tired, but you’ll be a man, my son.
Will you remember the famous men who have to fall and then to rise again,
So take a deep breath, pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and start all over again.

Once again now:
Will you remember the famous men who have to fall and then rise again,
So take a deep breath, pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and start all over again.

Those of us detoxing from the employment Kool-Aid are slowly learning what entrepreneurs and inventors have known for centuries:  before there can be a breakthrough, there must be at least one, if not more, breakdowns / failures.  

I won't exhaustively list examples here:  however, I think of Thomas Edison's multiple versions of the light bulb before he hit on the right combination and changed the world forever.  Think of it:  all of those previous versions were failures. Surely Edison must have worn a hair-shirt at times, wondering what the hell he was thinking and doing.  It didn't stop him for long, though.  I think Edison, in all of his creative genius and fervor, was a glass half-full guy of a particular sort:  I believe that when his laboratory in Menlo Park caught fire and burned to the ground, he called his wife to come and watch the beauty of the myriad chemical rainbow flames.

Just as the modern economy continues to remove us even further from our agrarian and journeyman roots, the increasingly passe' employment paradigm also makes a mediocre vacuum of the research & development experience of experimentation and failure.  Failure is implicitly and explicitly not an option as part of an employee innovation process, if innovation is welcomed at all in an organizational culture.

It is an unnecessary compounding layer to the already stressful experience of entrepreneurs who most recently were only laid-off employees.  As a culture and as individuals we are programmed to be at least satisfactory employees who should avoid errors.  I wholeheartedly support that level of perfectionism when it comes to human and environmental health and safety.  However, I wholeheartedly believe that everything else is up for grabs from an innovation standpoint.  And in order to innovate:  to create new products, to fill needs in the economy that are unmet either as a vendor or an employee:  the creative process of trial and error to both drive profit and change the world must be engaged, again and again.  

Bottom-line:  if you define being laid-off as a failure, great!  Keep trying:  working for yourself, or working towards your next position, or both:  the breakthrough is coming.  None of us can predict how many tries it will take, but if you persevere, you will achieve breakthrough.  More often than not, you will need to try options you have never tried before:  you will need to innovate to achieve breakthrough, and experience failure on the path to breakthrough.  You will need to embrace the joy and rewards of risk, and abandon the fear and shame of failure that has been hammered into us, one of several generations of employees.

I had a conversation with a colleague who recently started their own business "until they get their next job."  Their business is growing; and they're trending to earn 30% more than in their traditional career position working just 4 days a week than the 5+ days they worked for their former employer.  They're already doing it:  it just feels weird to them not to be an employee, and there's grief and loss around that, as well as anxiety and fear.  Not surprising:  we don't have a strong cultural or economic context for new entrepreneurs, or a good support system.  It's like bush-whacking in a wilderness into which you've been dumped unceremoniously.   It's okay.  It will start to feel normal, and believe it or not, even better.  My best advice is to stay connected to a support system of other entrepreneurs and colleagues, and build your own new self-determined economic context.

Once again now:
Will you remember the famous men who have to fall and then rise again,
So take a deep breath, pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and start all over again.

Reputation Makes Recruiting, PR and Marketing Ring True (Or False)

One night earlier in my recruiting career, I was uncharacteristically awake past 10 PM.  When I'm up this late with nothing interesting to read or watch, I turn on the t.v. for background noise and catch up on my work email.

A new email pinged in at 10:25 PM, not from a colleague but from an executive-level candidate responding to a query email I had sent earlier that day.  Here's what it said:
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Good evening:

There's no amount of money you could pay me to come and work for your company.  The (hiring manager) is a flaming asshole and everyone in the industry knows it.  Good luck with your search, your (sic) going to need it.

Sent from my BlackBerry
Please forgive any typos
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It startled me.  My husband Joel heard me gasp and woke up.  "What's wrong?" he asked, startled himself.

"Look at this email!  I've never seen anything like it from a candidate before," I replied, offering the laptop screen for him to view.  Joel smirked.  "I'm sure he's drunk," he concluded. 

I shook my head, bewildered at the candidate's carelessness.  "Friends shouldn't let friends email drunk.  Doesn't this guy care about his reputation in the industry?"  Joel arched a sage eyebrow at me.  "Well, is the hiring manager an asshole?"  I smirked my reply back.  Joel went back to sleep.

Just a few weeks after the drunken candidate email, I was networking on the phone with another industry executive to solicit candidates for the same job.  He was coldly cordial and (I presume) soberly to the point.  "I hear nothing good about your leadership team.  Your company doesn't have a great reputation out in the market.  Your sales have sucked for the past few years, and I predict you'll be out of business in the next 3 - 5 years."  I thanked him for his time and hung up.

Now, I love recruiting.  However, I listened to these two poignant and juxtaposed data points and came to the conclusion that no matter how good a recruiter I am, including but not limited to how positive an ambassador I am for my organization, no amount of recruiting lipstick was going to make the organization's reputational pig pretty. 

As the job market and the overall economy continue to rev up in fits and spurts, it's important to engage in organizational listening, in social media and other channels, to understand what your customers, candidates, vendors, etc. are saying about your organization.  And more importantly, to incorporate that listening into both your external and internal customer interactions, to ensure that the communication is consistently authentic.

Have a lot of open positions to fill and not getting a lot of candidates?  What's the word on the market about you and/or your organization?  What does my girlfriend Google say?  Or surely, you should have some inkling:  could it be the 20% of your workforce that you shed during the worst of the recession?  Or the chronic complaints from your customers about your service?  Whatever the facts are for your organization, consider addressing them proactively, factually, productively and future-facing.  And ensure that the recruiting, public relations and marketing streams are integrated, singing the same authentic message about your people and your products.

What's the word on the market about you and your organization?  And what are you proactively doing to address the message authentically?

Thank You Fer Teh Job Oppertunity

Gentle reader:  whether you are looking for a new job, or you're looking to be retained and/or promoted in your current organization, I beseech you, I beg you, I implore you.  Please proof what you send to hiring authorities and decision-makers.  Emails, documents, etc.  It's so sad and tragic when you don't.  Repeatedly.  

Seriously, stop it.  You need a job.

Speaking of which:  I'm not going to repeat verbatim in today's blog post my blog post from last August, Write Your Life, Write Your Career.  Read my advice as a hiring authority and a decision-maker to you there.  Not learning to write and proof to minimal business standards is, at the very least, a career-killer.

Those of you who don't proof your work and are subsequently not hearing back from the job applications you submit:  I'm going to give you some brief yet poignant examples as to why:

• state university of ny, albany ny

(Hint: it's not proper grammar, and since I know for a fact that e.e. cummings is dead, you're definitely not hearing back from me);

• Shift Manger, Ruby Tuesday's

(I love mangers, especially at this time of the year:  what does this have to do with your management experience?);

• Sent From My Verizon Wireless mobile phone

(Not as impressive as it was a few years ago; now it's definitely just lazy.  Not a real signature.  You can change this default signature yourself, just check the Verizon Wireless website or ask Tech Support at your local Verizon Wireless store);

•  Subject:  Your Career Oppertunity

(Big ouch.  You misspelled the email subject line.  I don't even open up your email, I just move it from my email Inbox to the Candidate Regret folder); 

 

• Education:  Saratoga Springs High School        

(I know font formatting in emails can get messed up in web transit; that's why you should attach your C.V. as well as cut and paste your C.V. into the body of the email.  Otherwise, it's like receiving an anonymous ransom note from a serial killer with a lack of attention to detail);

•  Hi:  I'm interested in teh job.

 (Hi.  You don't know me, therefore "Hi" is inappropriately too familiar for a cover letter salutation.  And you misspelled "the."   As the hiring authority, two strikes against you as the candidate.  We won't be familiar any time soon).

Note: please consider any typos you find in this blog post as a pop quiz.

Happy education; happy hunting; and happy holidays to you and yours!      

Teaching My 9 Year-Old Son How to Sell (Or Interview. Or Recruit. Or Date.) Resiliently

Our family had a wonderful time last Sunday afternoon volunteering for Spotlight Players Community Theater during the last performance of their Broadway-quality production of the musical murder mystery "Curtains." After experiencing their award-winning production of "Parade" earlier in the year, which we attended for free thanks to a grant obtained by the Spotlight Players, our friend Mike, who is a member of their Board, invited us to volunteer as ushers at one of the "Curtains" performances in exchange for free admission.

These experiences with the Spotlight Players have re-awakened our family's long-standing interest in theater, closely related to our passion for movies. And I suspect that our 9 year-old son Noah, who likes to sing in Junior Choir; who is completely comfortable speaking in front of large groups thanks to the inclusive culture at The First Unitarian Society of Schenectady (FUSS); and who is the recipient of some sales DNA, might at some point be interested in performing in a theatrical production.

Enough gifts for a family's Sunday afternoon, yes? There were more gifts to come in the form of the volunteer assignment that Noah and I shared.

When we arrived before the show, Joanne, the volunteer coordinator, had enough ushers. "Are any of you interested in selling tickets to the performance or running the 50-50 raffle?" Joel, my husband, Noah's father and the ying to Noah's and my yang, volunteered to sell tickets for last Sunday's matinee to last-minute arrivals at the lobby table.

Noah wanted to do the 50-50 raffle by himself. "You do need an adult to help you with the money, it can get quite busy," Joanne gently informed Noah. I chimed in. "It will be fun, we'll do it together -- it's just like the 50-50 raffles we do at FUSS luncheons after Sunday services -- half of the money goes to the winner, and the other half goes to FUSS." Noah agreed.

Armed with a plastic bucket full of change and a roll of raffle tickets, Joanne gave us our instructions. "$1 for one ticket; $2 for 3 tickets; and $5 for an arm's length of tickets. You'll sell the raffle tickets until the show begins, and then during intermission. The winning ticket will be drawn at the end of intermission, before the second act begins." She smiled down at Noah. "However, it would be two arms' length for Noah." Noah outstretched his arms in a "T" formation, and smiled back. "Okay, we're all set," I said. "Now, as the customers come in, approach each one of them after they're done with Daddy, ask them if they'd like to buy a 50-50 raffle ticket, and tell them how the raffle works."

The first couple left the lobby table and on cue, Noah approached them. And then he choked a bit. He looked back at me sheepishly. "I forgot what to say." I smiled back at him. "Not to worry -- why don't you listen to Mama a couple of times and then you can try again?" Noah nodded. I then smiled at the couple and explained the raffle, emphasizing the $5 option included the length of both of Noah's arms. They took the $5 option, enjoying the additional performance of Noah grinning and outstretching his arms as I measured the strip of tickets against them. "Okay, I'm ready to do it," Noah asserted.

The next couple approached, and Noah ran his pitch like a pro. Amused, they also chose the $5 option and Noah's brief lobby performance. "This is fun!" Noah exclaimed to me as they walked into the auditorium.

He approached the next couple, who appeared a bit harried. "No thank you, we're not interested," the woman said, unsmiling, to Noah. He turned to me, a bit crestfallen. "They said no."

What a great coaching moment. "Not everyone is going to say 'yes,' and you can't take it personally," I said. Noah nodded, listening. "They seemed to be in a hurry. We can try them again during intermission. And I'd like you to remember what Grandpa Howard taught me a long time ago: if you talk to 30 people and you get one 'yes,' you're having a great day."

Noah brightened. He got it. "We're already doing better than that," Noah calculated. "So we're already doing a great job!" Noah then proceeded to approach every person who entered the lobby both before the show and during intermission. And when he received the occasional "no, thank-you," he looked back and me and reasserted: "We have a lot of 'yeses,' so we're doing great!" I completely agreed, reveling in bearing witness to the lesson he was learning so positively and so early in his life.

Just before intermission ended, Joanne and the director counted our take for the 50-50 raffle. "Noah, you raised the most money of any performance for this show," the director informed us. We were both proud. The director invited Noah up on stage to pull and announce the winning ticket.

In front of an audience of strangers, Noah pulled the ticket and confidently announced the winning number.

However, in this coach's (mother's) opinion, there was more than one winner that day.

A wonderful and prosperous week to you and yours!