lorian lipton

Thanks for the Attitude: Turning a Page

/ Lorian Lipton / Leave a comment

surround-yourself

The Previous Chapter

You know when you finish reading a great chapter in a book and you can’t wait to get to the next one because there is so much more you want to know about the story?  My departure this week from IBM, after 17+ years, is definitely like that.

IBM and I have grown and changed in so many ways.  As a global thought leader on multinational teaming, and complex program management, and an expert on developing project leadership, social project management, and digital eminence, I am so excited to have the opportunity to now take my story in a new direction.

The Acknowledgments

There are so many people who have influenced me over the years that it is impossible to thank them all by name. It was the people who I interacted with, both in and outside IBM, that made all the difference.  They will always be family.

I have been lucky enough to work with global teams almost all of my time at IBM and the places I’ve been and the people who I have worked with have all taught me so much and have left their marks on the memory of my total recall forever.

Thank you to my first IBM family at Amtrak.  As an IT Architecture consultant in Washington, DC, on local and wide area networking and program management, they taught me how to navigate the complex waters of a huge corporation and how IBM worked with the Federal government. Coming from being a private consultant into this very different world took some major shifts for me, and they were gentle.

Thank you to my HealthVillage Team. As a loaned project executive in Global Industries to healthcare clients, leveraging my background as a network architect and engineer, I got the opportunity to be on the ground floor of what IBM was calling at the time ‘Network Services’ (then e-business and today social business). What a great team we had creating one of the first healthcare web applications with our new family at Lotus, and being one of the first to use IBM’s newly built Atlanta Innovation Center for Web development.  Hey, guys, I still have the coffee mug from our launch.

Thank you to the IBM Project Management Center of Excellence and the Curriculum Steering Committee.  I was lucky enough to be in the right place at the perfect time as Lou Gersner, IBM’s CEO at the time, strategized to ‘projectized’ IBM.  Using my computer training experience, my technical capability, and my passion for people, it was awesome to help build the award-winning Project Management Curriculum.  I will never forget our fantastic curriculum development meetings with members from all divisions and all countries of IBM.  And thanks to all my friends on the PM Certification Board and the PM Professional Development Board.

How blessed I feel to be one of the first people to work with Standford University’s Center for Professional Development and IPS Learning to turn their classroom courses into e-learning for IBM’s advanced knowledge need.  Thank you to all the co-authors, curriculum developers, trainers, and pilot students, who made the work so interesting.  And to all my colleagues who have come and gone creating the Project Management Center of Excellence, if Carol Wright were still alive she would be very proud,

Thank you especially to Debi, Chrys, Sandy, Shirley, Scott and Steve, in the States, and Toula in the Outback.  It is not so hard to leave the work, but it is, the people. And thank you to Liam, Theresa, and Som in Dublin, knowing that you will carry on the good fight.

Thank you to all my PMI volunteers: Over a decade ago, I say the need for IBMers to have a low-cost and time effective way to study and pass the PMI Project Management Professional exam without taking a week-long class.  The PMP is mandatory for IBM certification.  This drove me to create the very successful PMI Exam Study Group.  I designed and produced a 55 page website complete with a full study guide programs, originally for US Public Sector, but today worldwide, through which over 6,000 IBMers have studied the PMBOK in 5 different languages.  Thank you to all the volunteer facilitators who did an outstanding job over the years, many of you still holding groups year after year.  Keep up the good coaching.  (And thanks to many of you for the nice notes on my way out the door.)

Thank you to my global project teams. Through the years of advising global clients on project leadership, professional development, organizational effectiveness and maturity, as well as implementing internal performance measure systems (like my PM Match which was reported all the way to the Chairman), I was humbled to learn first hand how challenging it is to implement a consistent competency process across 199 countries.  My team in India is outstanding and rose to every curve ball that I could throw them.  Thank you for all your efforts, Mohan, Soumitra, and Yamuna.  You will do great things.

To all the people that I have mentored, coached, and just plan prodded through their project management professional development over the years, you have made me a better human, please do link up with me on the outside.  And to my mentors and coaches over all these years, I am, who I am today because of your support.

And finally, a thank you to the incredible people in IBM doing fantastic things in the area of social collaboration and social project management.  They know that the great thing about the social web is that even though I am outside of the IBM Firewall, I am still as loud and social as I ever was.

I could go on and on, but you know who you are, and hopefully you know what you all mean to me.

The Next Chapter

Of course, I will continue blogging on The Digital Attitude and on my petblog, DogDaz.com.  I love writing the blogs and it is just such a great way to summarize knowledge and share and collaborate with others.

newroad I am in the process of starting up my own consulting company. It will take me some time to package my diverse experience and passions into a consulting practice, but I know that I have several things in my bag of knowledge to help client’s solve critical challenges. Look for the launch of THE DIGITAL ATTITUDE Consulting coming soon.

I plan to continue speaking at conferences and events, both national and international, especially on the topics of Social Project Management, Global Teaming, and Digital Eminence.  I am trying to put together a calendar for fall and winter and will share it as soon as I can.  If you would like to contact me about speaking at an event contact me at:  thedigitalattitude@gmail.com

Personally, my adjunct teaching at Anne Arundel Community College will continue in the fall with a monthly series I just created focused on women in business.  And my work on the executive board of the Anne Arundel County Commission for Women is always fulfilling.

But first, the family and I are off to the beach, because, it is always, always, about the people.

Thank you for keeping up with my attitude.

——————————————————————————-

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See you next blog.

– Lorian

Email: thedigitalattitude@gmail.com

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lorianlipton/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/LorianL

(All the Social Butterfly’s views are her own)

Self-Worth Starts With These 5 Steps

/ Lorian Lipton / 6 Comments

confidence

I am a people pleaser.  That’s right – I admit it.  Right here – in front of all of you.  I spend waste a great deal of time worrying about what other people think of me.  My parent’s told me that I should always play nice and then people would like me. Winning approval from others is was important to me; partly because of how I was raised, and partly because of how I am wired.  It took me many years to realize that I was basing my self-worth on what other people thought of me instead of what I thought of myself.

“Self-worth comes from one thing – thinking that you are worthy.” Wayne Dyer

When you make choices based on other people’s expectations (sometimes explicit and sometimes assumed) most of the time, you regret them because they are not coming from inside you. You probably know someone who has made important choices like where to go to school, what career to pick, even who to marry, not for their personal benefit really, but because they wanted the ultimate approval from their ____________ (choose one or many) parents, spouse, friend, business associate, etc.

Living up to someone’s image of you instead of your own makes you invisible.  In the end it erodes your feeling of personal value – of self-worth.  There are many people who do not value their own self-worth and this shows up in their work, in their level of happiness, and in their brand.  If you build your personal brand with no self-confidence, it is like a house of cards, it will fall as soon as the wind blows.

Here are 5 things to work on to improve your view of you:

1.  You can’t please everyone all the time.  This is a hard pill to swallow for us people pleasers, but it is reality.  The sooner you stop wasting time trying to make everyone happy the better you will start feeling about yourself.  Someone is always going to not like something, so just be true to yourself and don’t waste time trying to fix it.  “I am thankful for all of those who said NO to me. It’s because of them I’m doing it myself.” – Albert Einstein

2. We all make mistakes.  One of my favorite quotes is by Mary Pickford: “If you have made mistakes, even serious mistakes, you may have a fresh start any moment you choose, for this thing we call “failure” is not the falling down, but the staying down.”  The past, is gone.  Free yourself by leaving the past, in the past.  My daughter rode horses when she was little, and when she fell off (which you always will sooner or later), I picked her up and put her back in the saddle.  We all fall off from time to time, it’s how you continue the ride that makes the difference.

cat.lion3.  Find what inspires you.  Only you know what makes your heart beat a little faster when you think or talk about it.  Listen to yourself.  Self-worth is not a one time thing, it’s about constantly improving who you are, about continually reinventing yourself.  The more you tap into the things that make you feel fulfilled, the greater your self-confidence will be.  “The only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle.” – Steve Jobs

4.  Take responsibility for who you are.  You are in control of your attitude, how you react to situations, and your sense of self-worth.  Eleanor Roosevelt said, “no one can make you feel inferior without your consent,”  so don’t let them.  It is your job to prove to yourself that you matter.  We can not always control the things that happen to us, but we can control how we handle them.

seuss5.  Value yourself. “Self confidence is the most attractive quality a person can have. how can anyone see how awesome you are if you can’t see it yourself?” – Unknown   I bet you could write out a nice list of all your faults right now, but what I want you to do is write down your skills and abilities.  A big part of valuing yourself is stopping the negative internal talk and focusing on the positive things.   Everyone is good at something – be real with yourself.  Just name even one or two things that you enjoy doing.

Walk tall because, as Dr. Seuss said, ” you have brains in your head – you have feet in your shoes – you can steer yourself – any direction you choose.”

What have you learned about your self-worth?  Have you reinvented yourself lately?

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Keep up the good attitude. See you next blog.

– Lorian

Email: thedigitalattitude@gmail.com

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lorianlipton/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/LorianL

(All the Social Butterfly’s views are her own)

References

Want Team Engagement? Embrace Ambient Awareness

/ Lorian Lipton / Leave a comment

team1Project Management, by its nature, is social. Communications is at the heart of what we do as project managers. We project managers are constantly talking to people. influencing, proposing, negotiating, mediating and, our favorite, updating. We are über communicators, and that will not change – but HOW we communicate, at least on my projects with my team – has.

Liz Pearce, CEO of LiquidPlanner, recently wrote a post on “How social tools work for project management, saying “Good project managers communicate, build consensus, persuade, and influence others to achieve goals. With the rise of social software platforms, many of them are coming to believe that transparent collaboration and planning make for faster work flow, better results and happier teams.”  And at the end of the day, adopting social project management practices means more engaged and happier teams which translates into better delivery and happier clients.

Using social software with your project team makes a difference. Mostly because of what the psychologist’s call  ambient awareness. User experience designer, Leisa Reichelt, says that ambient awareness “is about being able to keep in touch with people with a level of regularity and intimacy that you wouldn’t usually have access to, because time and space conspire to make it impossible.”[1] If you missed it, I first talked about ambient awareness in my post on Solving the Project Managers Social Dilemma – Part 2.

Using social software on projects allows teams to experience a level of connectivity never before realized, even in physical co-location.  Reality theorist Sheldon Renan calls it “loosely but deeply entangled.”  It reminds me of the Jungian psychology concept of ‘collective unconsciousness,” where a part of the unconscious mind is shared by a society, a people, or all humankind.  I’ll call what happens to the project team. the ‘collective present.‘  Everyone on a project collectively participates in the dynamic flow of the information and is accountable for their parts in a way they never were before.  They are responsible for creating and keeping up the data flow.  And, as part of this ‘collective present’ on a project, the connections are wider and contain more possible touch points for interaction.  The team, the client, the stakeholders, all those that are part of the collaborative process through social media, now are part of the ‘collective present’ of the project and have data-driven information (and accountability), elevating the project knowledge to a new level of engagement.

teensTo help you visualize this concept of ambient awareness, think about young people today and how they use their mobile devices.  They are in constant contact with their cohort.  They know where everyone is almost all the time because they ‘check in’ on social networks[2], they ‘Geo-tag,’ and they Tweet. No one has to update anyone on the who, what, where, and how, because ‘they just know.’ This new awareness is bringing back the dynamics of small-town life; where everybody knew your business and therefore, you had to be genuine and honest.  Think about it: you probably know more about your Facebook friends than you do the neighbor down the street, unless of course, the neighbor is on Facebook.  You know what is going on from your News Feeds [3], and you can pick and choose what to act on (“Gee, I need to call my sister about that”) or not (“Do I really care that Howard’s kid winning the science fair?”).

Incorporating the work styles of the digital generation into the more traditional business models, even into project management, is showing good rewards.  Ambient awareness improves the communications and project knowledge of the team, which in the end, translates into better delivery of the project. Being ‘in’ the project versus being ‘told about’ the project, changes the speed of understanding and the sense of personal engagement.  Seems like a ‘win’ to me.

Still don’t believe me?  Think about the traditional project manager – usually the single point person that updates the plans and milestones, creates Gantt charts, holds endless status meetings, and updates the team and client, maybe weekly. Now think about the social project manager – whose team collaboratively updates the milestones and activities as part of the project process, reducing the need for status meetings (since status is known by all ambiently) and where team members follow what each other are doing, subscribe to each others feeds, and basically, work in the ‘collective present’ in a new and improved way.  Team time is now for greater collaboration and development.  Even clients could be updated through the social process.

communications 2In Social Project Management, the project itself becomes the center of all things. It is the ’email hub,’ the ‘inbox,’ the ‘file archive.’  All data and information flows through the digital project center.  And, since every team member is working in this transparent way, the personal accountability is very visible.  How perfect for project management!  How refreshing to really be projectized and have everything organized around the actual work tasks and not the tools used to communicate (email) or store information.  When using social software for a project, the work assignments are clear to everyone, each team member sees what other team members are doing, the team gets out of ’email jail,’ tasks are maintain and supported in a collaborative manner, and, most importantly, working this way allows people to determine the appropriate level of engagement that they need to get their job done.

When I managed traditional co-located teams on projects, I noted that we would build a certain team awareness.  We were in constant communication and sharing mode.  We ate lunch together.  We spent time white boarding and brainstorming and sharing ideas, good and bad.  We moved as a team.  We had shirts and hats with our team logo. We knew the state of the project because we lived and breathed it every day, sometimes 7 days a week. But even in this scenario, we only knew the information that we shared with each other in status meetings or in the elevator.  Communications depended on physical meetings or emails.

As team size grew and my projects became global, multicultural, and more and more complex, I noted that time and distance between team members started to become a problem.  The co-located dynamics that made us feel like a team of course were gone.  I also noted that communications started to become more and more compartmentalized.   People only paid attention to their tasks and were less concerned with the whole project.  Information flow was a battle and email overload started to become a nightmare.  Many good virtual tools became available, but getting the dispersed teams to perform at the high level that was needed to deliver on time and with quality, got more complicated.

Enter Social Media.  I feel like Social Media has given me back team spirit and team vitality. Ambient awareness, which is only recently being applied to distributed teams and work flow, has given my teams and my clients, a sense of connection to the end goal, and to each other. This is not your old project management process translated into something social – social project management is a way of working that you and your team have never experienced before.  Once you take the leap into the collective present of project management, I assure you, you will never go back.

Are you connecting with your teams and clients using Social Media? How are you leveraging your ‘collective present?’

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Keep up the good attitude. See you next blog.

– Lorian

Email: thedigitalattitude@gmail.com

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lorianlipton/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/LorianL

(All the Social Butterfly’s views are her own)

References

  1. Disambiguity — Leisa Reichelt’s Professional Blog. October 2011
  2. “Three Best Ways to Use Location-Based Social Media”. Riva Richmond, The Wall Street Journal. Dow Jones & Company, Inc., September 10, 2010
  3. Brave New World of Digital Intimacy, Clive Thompson, The New York Time Magazine, September 5, 2008

Laid Off? 5 Attitude Adjustments To Make

/ Lorian Lipton / 12 Comments

change“To up the odds of survival, leaders at all levels, must become obsessive about change.”  “Change must become our norm, not a cause for alarm.”- Tom Peters, Thriving On Chaos, 1987

These were the opening lines of a speech I gave in 1988 on Change.  Funny, I must not have been listening to my own words.

I pride myself on being an innovator, a thought leader: of seeing where transformations are needed and helping others through their change process.  But, I, like so many of my colleagues, have gotten caught in this whirlwind of economic downturn.  I could rant here and say “why me?”  But, truthfully, it is not about me.  It is… just business as usual.  An expected norm.

Tom Peter’s said that being excellent is no longer enough; that companies people (my word change) need to be perpetually ready to innovate. They must be willing to make continual improvements because the business environment is so competitive. Rather than focusing on cost-cutting efficiencies, these improvements must stress providing customers with value. He predicted, in 1987, that this rapidly changing world – fueled by new technology – would be unpredictable, so companies people must learn how to “thrive on chaos” to survive the turbulent times ahead.  And he was right and these are those times.

As I have just learned on Wednesday, even when you do the ‘right’ things, make those constant improvements, show your value, and keep innovating, you can still get caught up in the undertow of corporate unpredictability.  So this Social Butterfly, me, has now been tossed aside, or given freedom, depending on how I chose to look at it, from my corporate parent after almost 18 years of service.  Ah, the lessons.

Though a constant change agent in my work, I question maybe I was not bold enough, loud enough, social enough, or something, to be of right value to the corporate machine.  Every day, in every way, I challenged my coworkers, my company, and myself, to move forward, just like Peter’s told me too. But the truth is, it had very little to do with me.  I was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Once the shock and the fuzziness of being laid off subsides (it has only been a couple days but I am not the wallowing type so I hope it is soon), I will get grounded and get going. So, let’s look at several steps I plan on taking over the next week:

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1.  Don’t lose focus

Remember that ‘it is just business, to them.’  Yes, it ticks me off!  But it is true. In most cases, when laid off, it is not personal. (That sounds so stupid doesn’t it? Because it sure feels that way right now.)  In my case, I think it is about the stock price and how they balance bad sales numbers – they’ve cut and cut everything else, so now all that is left to cut are the workers. There is absolutely nothing I can do about a corporate strategy from where I sit.  It is what it is. My job moved to a lower cost country and now, I need to move forward for me.

I need to really get down to the nitty gritty activities that are going to move me into my future and not wait until the dust settles.  I think that the key to staying focused is to create a very detailed ‘to do’ list that provides me with practical details and priorities.  Spending time every day designing my future is now my priority.  That IS my job (and shame on me, it always should have been.)

2.  Talk about it

That’s right.  It may be embarassing, but I can’t get caught in what the psyhcologist’s call “the dance of denial.”  Luckily, I have some trusted friends to listen to me.  It is important to engage in conversations with others in similar situations (heck, we don’t know the real numbers but there are about 6,000 of us just this week).  Be social. Seek out support both on and off line. (30 Websites to Visit When You Get Laid Off)  Find ‘healthy’ vehicles for catharsis, whether exercise, gardening, walking the dogs (that is mine).  I think it is best to focus on MY feelings about the lay off and not rant on about the ‘bad’ company (though that is easy to fall into).  This needs to be about me – not them.  Burning bridges, because of being upset or angry, is not the best path to the future – especially when you are a blogger.  Having an outlet is critical to moving on though.  This is a loss, it takes time to get over that: anger, fear, depression even, are all normal reactions.  I need to be gentle with myself (which isn’t easy for me).

3.  Let go of the past as quickly as possible

Generate small, success assured activities, even if it is just grocery shopping.  Right now, my self esteem is rocky.  I need to know that I can get stuff done.  I just read in some magazine that Sheryl Sandberg (Miss Lean In) writes down her  ‘to dos’ on a sheet of paper and then when done, tears it out of the notebook and throws it away.  I like that, because it is a physical act that celebrates completeness.  It is important to create rituals and celebrate closure on things so that I can start to embrace a new future.  Just keep putting energy into the future state (this may be a ‘fake it, until you make it’ statement, but I can do it, I have to do it!)

4.  Push the limits

Truthfully, I just lost my job and things (other than health) don’t get much worse than that for bread winners.  So why not experiment.  Identify next steps and go for them.  I need to find my moxie, my guts, and push myself to envision that which I really want.  Now is the time that I have to forge in a new direction: go back to school or maybe get The Digital Attitude consulting business off the ground ?  If not now – when?  If not me – who?  This could be a great gift – right?  As Dorie Clark says in her book Reinventing You: Define Your Brand, Imagine Your Future, ” To survive and thrive, you have to reinvent yourself and move on.”  Which takes me to my last point…

Shift-Happens-You-Are-The-Key-To-Change-300x2335.  Reflect and then move on

The one thing we know for sure is change is going to keep coming.  I will look back for a moment, do my lessons learned and move on.  Integrating this experience into the fabric of my life.  Give myself the time and space to reflect and review all the things that got me here and then articulate my vision for what will get me there.

How have you dealt with some of life’s major changes?  Any advice?

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Keep up the good attitude. See you next blog.

– Lorian

Email: thedigitalattitude@gmail.com

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lorianlipton/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/LorianL

(All the Social Butterfly’s views are her own)

References

Thriving On Chaos: Handbook for a Management Revolution, Tom Peters, Harper Books, 1987

Life Changes: A Guide to the 7 Stages of Personal Growth, Adams and Spencer. Paraview Press (November 12, 2002)

Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead, Sheryl Sanberg, Knopf; First Edition edition (March 11, 2013)

Reinventing You: Define Your Brand, Imagine Your Future, Dorie Clark, Harvard Business Review Press (April 9, 2013)

6 Ways To Cure Social Media Resistance

/ Lorian Lipton / 2 Comments

fishAre you feeling like a fish out of water?  Do you feel overwhelmed by the social web revolution?  Well, if you do, you are in good company.  I have talked to many people lately, both non-technical and technical, who are avoiding using social media as much as possible, and have a long list of reasons why.

How does one keep up with all the changes and the new speed of social interaction on the web?  What if you don’t want to spend all your time on-line?  How does one deal with the onslaught of information and social networks?

Bisnode reported that 90% of the worlds data has been generated in only the last two years, no wonder people’s heads are swimming.  Here are some thoughts on what we should all be doing to deal with natural social media resistance.

1.  Give Up to Keep Up

Sometimes I think that I am the only person in the universe experiencing overload from all this digital data that is flowing into my computer, my smartphone, my TV, and my head.  Then I realize that no one, and I mean NO ONE, can keep up with this data flow, unless you are a machine.  So, first thing to understand is that you need to give up trying to keep up with the data flow, because you can’t win that one.

The internet has significantly changed the way we do business.  And social media has changed the way we manage information.  The rules have changed.  This is part of the reason so many of us are uncomfortable.  Take email, for example, something that has been around now for many years and is probably a significant part of your life.  You know what is expected of you around email rules and etiquette. If someone sends you an email, they expect an email back.  If they don’t get one, they send a reminder.  But, if someone ‘likes’ your comment on Facebook or Twitter, no response is required or expected.  Today’s social media moves much faster and uses different rules. You need to give up your old rules because they don’t apply to the new platforms.  To keep up, you need to give up your old rules.

2.  Pull up the shade at least half way.

tompetersAlmost daily, people over the age of ____ (fill in the blank), are asking me about the seemingly blurred lines between professional, public and personal privacy online.  It feels a little like getting undressed with the shades up. We were warned for years about privacy on the internet and now all those rules are being brought into question.  No wonder we’re feeling assailed.   The rules about privacy appear to be changing daily.  I don’t think anyone really knows the answers on this topic just yet.  And not knowing something as intimate as the privacy of our information is unsettling.  But right now, you need to be internet smart but also give yourself some room until the patterns of interaction sort themselves out.  There is no right answer in this case, at least not yet. But as Tom Peter’s said “When the window of opportunity appears, don’t pull down the shades.”  Though I won’t open mine 100% yet, I think we miss a tremendous opportunity if we lock ourselves out because of the privacy rules.

3.  Less is more

There are so many different social media networks out there now, that it is easy to be overrun and overwrought with what to join and participate in. I recommend that you pick one personal, like Facebook, and one professional, like LinkedIn. (For more info check out 4 Steps To Decide What Social Media Network To Join).   Ignore the millions of other social networks screaming for your participation because, less participation is more sanity.  Spend your valuable few minutes a day in one place where you can get to know others and have meaningful interactions.

4.  Show up, occasionally

You don’t have to be everywhere on the internet, but you do need to be somewhere, consistently, if you ever want to be known.  Once or twice a week on Twitter or commenting in a community, is enough to start building a rapport with others.  You do need to show up but it does not have to be 24X7.  Pick two days to make your ‘show up’ days and spend a little time building your online presence.

5.   Forget ‘transparent,’ go for ‘authentic’

privacyI have trouble with the term ‘transparent’ that is being used for social collaboration.  I think that is another reason that people are uncomfortable with the medium.  Transparent makes me think of that window shade being up again and everyone seeing into my dressing room. It is not about sharing every little bit of information about me on the internet, it’s about being in relationship to other people, in such a way as I can be real and speak from my heart.  When I write this blog for example, I don’t fill it with hype and fluff.  I share with you my genuine thoughts – the real me.  OK, I admit, I’m an extrovert and I am comfortable sharing a lot of my life story, but even if I was more private, or more introverted, as long as the stuff I share is authentic, then I think the connection will be there.  You don’t have to violate your privacy to be connected, but you do have to share something to make the connection, whether physical or virtual.

6.  It’s up to you

It is like the wild west out there on the internet highway.  Full of possibilities and “there is gold in them there hills.”  You just need to filter through some dirt to find it.  What does that mean, you say?  It is up to you to decide how you want to be on the internet. Then you can learn some of the tricks to keep out the unwanted noise.

What is it that you want your connection to social media to be?  Do you want to increase your digital reputation?  Do you want to build your business by using social media?  What are the positive things that social media can bring to your life and your work?

You have a lot to offer, really you do, or you wouldn’t be reading this.  Share a little of who you are on the internet, in your profiles, in your comments, and though I know it may be uncomfortable at first, you will find the virtual connections not only uniquely rewarding but surprisingly freeing.

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Keep up the good attitude. See you next blog.

– Lorian

Email: thedigitalattitude@gmail.com

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lorianlipton/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/LorianL

(All the Social Butterfly’s views are her own)

Increase Your Brand: Know Yourself, Choose Yourself, Celebrate Yourself

/ Lorian Lipton / 1 Comment

The Golden Brand

Why care about your brand? 

Because if you don’t, who will?

You’ve been working hard for years and feel you deserve rewards for your thought leadership and expertise – am I right?  How do you think you’re going to get those rewards?  Reality is you can wait and take your chances at success or you can make things happen.

Have you Googled yourself lately?  Does the first page of results represent who you are and what you want people to see about you?  It is up to you to tend your reputation on-line.  You don’t get noticed by accident.  You are the brand of YOU and you need to be presenting you OUT LOUD and SOCIAL for everyone to see.

My Father’s Advice Was Right For Then – But Wrong For Now

My father always told me that if I worked hard for a company for 25 years, kept my ‘nose to the grind stone,’ and showed my loyalty, I would have a successful career.  That made sense 60 years ago.  You see, my Dad was born to immigrant parents, in New York City, in 1912.  He was the first reinvented person I knew.  He was unemployed and penny-less during the Great Depression, and found meaningful employment as part of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal program, the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC).  (The CCCs put thousands of unemployed young men to work on public projects.)  After World War II, my Dad returned as a wounded veteran and became a dress salesman.  By the late 1950’s he owned his own dress manufacturing business in New York’s garment district.  My Dad know nothing about self branding or reinventing himself (though he did attend the original Dale Carnegie seminar – I have the first printing of the book to prove it). Only movie stars, musicians, and artist branded themselves.  (Think Picasso or Liberace). The advice he gave me in the ’70s, when I graduated college, was true at the time: join a company and become part of a big family. The company will take care of you. And, if you are a good girl, and waited patiently, when the time is right, you will move up the corporate ladder, position by position. That, of course, was then and this is now.

In 2013, your work life is about your value as an individual. You are not seeing many people staying in one company forever anymore.  The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that in January 2012, the median number of years that wage and salary workers had been with their current employer was 4.6. The fact is that people are staying in companies for shorter periods of time because employees are focused on building their personal skills/capabilities (resume) and then, when their current assignment is complete, selling themselves to the highest bidder.  The philosophy of one-company loyalty, or living the ‘company life,’ for one’s whole career, is a thing of the past.   Most people I work with at IBM have been in the company less than 5 year.  It is a new day, Dad.

Know Yourself

BeckhamPersonal Branding doesn’t work if you don’t believe in yourself.  I am not talking about a ‘fake it until you make it’ self talk.  You need to have confidence in your skills and in the you that you’re presenting to the outside world.  On the internet, fakery is exposed in seconds. You need to know the keywords that make up YOU.  That’s something my Dad never had to think about.  He was a keen salesman and walked the streets of Manhattan for years with a sample bag under his arm.  His business, like all business, was about relationships.  Everyone knew his values and what he stood for before he even walked in the door.  You could say, “his reputation, preceded him.”   But that can only happen when you know who are you are.

Your personal brand should be as clear in the minds of others as it is in your own.  For example, what comes to your mind when you think of:  Modonna, Donald Trump, or David Beckham? I think Modanna – rockstar, musical innovator, and sexy bras; Donald Trump – big buildings, return from bankruptcy, strange hair, and The Apprentice TV show; David Beckham – footballer (soccer), Spice Girl Victoria, Manchester United, and tattoos.

Why do these people stand out in your mind?  What unique things are the identifying features of their brand?  What are your unique identifying features?

Choose Yourself

cheer2If you are not cheering for yourself, why should anyone else?  Like I said above, you need to believe in your capabilities.  Do a good job with knowing what you have to offer and then have confidence in those qualities.  If you are a Baker, but you think you make lousy cupcakes, who is going to buy them?  In today’s day and age, those who wait to be selected, rarely are.  The winners are not the ones that wait nicely and ask permission to move ahead.  They are the people who took the moment into their own hands.

“The real trick is to not wait, but to pick yourself. To “turn pro” in your head. To believe you can do what you’re asking others to believe about you.” [Jeff Goins, Stop Waiting To Be Picked]

Celebrate Yourself

Are you your own worst enemy?  I have watched many people, especially women, make light of their accomplishments.  It is hard sometimes not be self-depreciating but it is important to learn to accept praise sincerely without belittling your accomplishments.  When someone gives you a compliment, do you ever say “Oh, it was nothing,” when it was really a good piece of work?  You should take the credit – even for the small stuff.

I want you to notice how young people have no trouble showing all their life’s tiny moments in the open on Facebook or Twitter?  Taking a lesson from the kids, the power of showing the world positive little accomplishments builds up into a wonderful celebration of achievements and, when viewed from the outside, a nice portfolio of accomplishments. You probably have no trouble Facebooking your kid’s minor accomplishments: “Sally got the role of the lobster in the Christmas play” or “Fido rolled over.”.  But when it comes to ourselves we tend to be self-defeating and we undervalue what we have done. Don’t lose the importance of the small stuff.  Celebrate your wins in the open and let people know how awesome you are.

Attitude Adjustment Homework: Blowing Your Horn

  1. Make a list of accomplishments you are proud of.  They don’t all have to be related to work.  You should include goals that you have met, skills you have cultivated, and problems that you have solved.
  2. Select 1 or 2 of the accomplishments on your list.
  3. Create a plan to publish highlights of your accomplishments across your social channels over the next 30 days.  [Note:  Having a plan keeps you from drowning your audience with too much of your good thing – which can be a turn off.]

Would you rather be the pickee or the picker?

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Keep up the good attitude. See you next blog.

– Lorian

Email: thedigitalattitude@gmail.com

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lorianlipton/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/LorianL

(All the Social Butterfly’s views are her own)

References

Exercises modified from About.com Small Business: Canada – Blow Your Own Horn: Business Success Program: Business Success Lesson 9 by ,

Doing Project Management, Socially

/ Lorian Lipton / 2 Comments

duck_family

At some point, everybody is a project manager.

From planning a birthday party for a 3 year old to delivering a complex application for a banking client, the way you get the tasks done is called project management.  But just because humans are social, that does not make the application of project management to your tasks – Social Project Management.  It is clear that few people know what Social Project Management is yet or how to use it.

The other day I found a perfect example of the misuse of the term Social Project Management. While doing my daily internet reading I stumbled on an article called Social Project Management: A Necessary Element for Success. It was about managing a social media strategy by using project management (which is a great idea). They were applying traditional project management to a project whose product was a social media strategy.  That is not Social Project Management but project management of something with content, that just happens to be about something social .  Obviously, when a concept is very new, it can easily be misunderstood.

As business moves more and more into the social spaces, and with downsizing, rightsizing, the push to a ‘results only work environment [1]‘ and the advent of ubiquitous computing power in the hands of all employees, people are becoming what I call ‘accidental project managers.’  It is not their job title, or even something they knowingly pursue, but employees are personally managing a broader range of tasks in their work assignments and the flow of the information they use and create now sits in their hands more than ever before.  Team sizes are shrinking and practitioner work load is increasing and each person is taking on the responsibility for self-directed delivery.  Everyone is doing mini-projects and becoming an accidental project manager.

Not that accidental project management is bad at all, I think it is perfect for adoption of Social Project Management.  In response to the shift in business priorities and organizational transformations, project management has been becoming more agile over the last few years, and it should.  By leveraging the good work being done in social design, a few early adopters are starting to break down the silos, streamline collaboration, and drive transparency into the dynamism that characterizes a project. [2]  This is enabling collaborative productivity across small teams, empowering small-scale projects to leverage the transparency of social media, keeping  everyone up-to-date and engaged.

projectclipBig projects, complex and multinational programs, program management offices (PMO) and large-scale operations may always need the more traditional PM methods and the dedicated delivery professional.  There is a long history of solid governance and successful practice in strong project management methods.  But traditional ways of doing project management are not very social. Today’s social tools allow us to break away form the traditional methods of delivering projects and incorporating new, more collaborative ones. Do you remember the infographic on The 5 Laws of Social Project Management. I showed you in my post, Solving the Project Manager’s Dilemma – Part 2?  I agree withLiquidPlanner‘s rules that collaboration, team participation benefits, transparency, personal autonomy, and realistic scheduling, will allow for new thinking when it comes to getting the job done. (Note: this is not a pitch for their software one way or the other, since I have not used it, but I like some of their ideas.)

The new self-directed and open social project team (made up of Millennials, GenXers, and maybe some of us dinosaurs (me)), is hungry for a social way to collectively participate on their projects and in the success of the business.  When you give people a deeper understanding of the process in which they are involved, a greater appreciation of the context in which they work (and make them part of creating it), and the opportunity to be directly engaged with the outcome, they will be more productive and more motivated.  All that, from a little socialization.

I am transforming my teams every day to work socially. Are you?  Tell me what changes you are making with your teams to go social.

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Keep up the good attitude. See you next blog.

– Lorian

Email: thedigitalattitude@gmail.com

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lorianlipton/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/LorianL

(All the Social Butterfly’s views are her own)

References

  1. Results-Only Work Environment is a management strategy where employees are evaluated on performance, not presence. In a ROWE, people focus on results and only results – increasing the organization’s performance while creating the right climate for people to manage all the demands in their lives . . . including work.
  2. Accelerate the Flow of Work with Social Project Management, CIO White Paper by VMWare
Related articles

Your Image Matters: 10 Tips for the Right Profile Picture

/ Lorian Lipton / 5 Comments

It takes just one-tenth of a second for us to judge someone and make our first impression.[1] Like my mother always told me, “you don’t get a second chance to make a first impression,” and, in the case of social networking, your profile picture is the number one biggest visual impression that you make, every day, with every contact.

Your profile picture may be THE most important piece of information about you on the internet.  Really – just think about it!  It is the visual key to your digital brand.   It is the only visual connection that internet contacts may ever have with you.  Are you sure that the picture of you at your family picnic 30 years ago, or the one where you are making that weird face, is really how you want people to know you?

Your images matters.  And because we have less opportunity to be in each others physical space, the image of you in your little tiny profile picture matters even more. That digital representation of you is all that your colleagues, employer, prospective new employer, clients, followers, and so on, may ever see.

I’ve noticed that my profile picture shows up everywhere these days:  when I comment on someone’s posts, when someone sees me on Twitter or LinkedIn, when I send an email – it is that little ‘Lorian-head’ that people relate to first, before my text.

C.G. Lynch, writer of Social Media Matters for CIO magazine said: “Truth is, this photo may be used by people whom you don’t know very well as they try to size you up – personally or professionally. So it matters.”  You may not get a second chance to show them your face.

10 Tips To the Right Profile Photo

Here are a bunch of tips that I put together to help you pick the right photo for your online accounts:

  1. Use a current photo.  When I went to buy my house, I picked a real estate agent who looked about 35 years old in her advertising photo.  When we met face to face, she was in her 60’s.  It made me a little concerned about trusting her.  Realize that someday you may actually meet the people who see your profile picture, make sure that you are as recognizable as possible.
  2. Use a human photo of YOU — not an object – not an avatar. (Though I do love my avatar because she is eternally young and she may be the right version of me on my personal Facebook page, but not professionally.)

    mywebfaxe

    Lorian’s Avatar

  3. Use a photo of ONLY you – no pets – no children – no vehicles – no drinking buddies.  Also, make sure that there are no errant body parts in the photo – like someone’s hand from an arm that you cropped out (that would be tacky).
  4. Smile! Your face should radiate warmth and approachability.  Smiling gives a positive signal, even in one-dimensional viewing.
  5. Make eye contact with the camera.  People want to see your eyes – it’s a trust thing. Look directly at the camera.  Don’t take pictures with a webcam, they just don’t look right.
  6. Create visual contrast.: There should be equal balance of dark areas and light areas. Take note of what you’re wearing, along with your hair color, when choosing what will be in the back drop.
  7. Chose your best clothes colors.  Think about other pictures that you look good in – what color were you wearing near your face then?  Wear clothes based on the professional appearance you want to present.  For most of us that is no t-shirts, busy patterns, or Hawaiian shirts.  Black and blue outfits always work well.  Photo experts say avoid white.
  8. Have a quiet background.  The less you have in the background of the photo the less visually distracting.
  9. Take a head and shoulders shot.  Look at other people’s profile pictures and see how much of their upper body they show.  A shoulder is always good.  But the profile shot is very small, so you want to be able to really see your face.
  10. You don’t need a professional photographer (though it would be nice), but take multiple shots.  Then ask people for their opinion on which one makes you seem most “approachable.”
President Barack Obama: Inauguration Day 2009

Not to get political here,  Just a good example of a profile picture,  And, if you must have a building in the background, the US Capitol would be one to have. – President Barack Obama 2009

“The goal is for your photo to reflect how you will look when you meet a customer, not how you looked at that killer party in Key West four years ago. The best profile photo isn’t necessarily your favorite photo. The best photo strikes a balance between professionalism and approachability, making you look good but also real.” – Social Ben Martin from his Social Media business blog

Do you have more profile tips to add to the list? What has worked or not worked for you when it came to your profile picture?

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Keep up the good attitude. See you next blog.

– Lorian

Email: thedigitalattitude@gmail.com

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lorianlipton/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/LorianL

(All the Social Butterfly’s views are her own)

References

  1. Willis, J., & Todorov, A. (2006). First impressions: Making up your mind after 100 ms exposure to a face. Psychological Science, 17, 592-598.
  2. Image @ Trevor Aston Photography Bad Profile Pictures Are Like Limp Handshakes
  3. What Does Your Social Networking Profile Picture Say About You? How you portray yourself on social networks like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn matters. June 17, 2009 by C.G. Lynch
  4. Careerealism: Because Every Job is Temporary ,11 Tips For Choosing Your LinkedIn Photo,
  5. Analogue Chic, How To Look Better In Pictures: The Profile Pic, January 19, 2011
  6. Ben Martin, 6 Steps to a More Marketable Linked Profile
  7. BrandYourSelf, 5 Ways To Make Your Website Profile Photo Work For Your Personal Brand Image, July 15, 2009
  8. NJ Ledger, Allan Hoffman: Does that profile picture make you look like a schlub online?, May 10, 2013
  9. Photo from “President Barack Obama: Inauguration Day 2009“

Your Personal Strengths Matter

/ Lorian Lipton / 1 Comment

Work posterWe live in interesting times.  Whoever thought that so many professionals would be worried about corporate restructuring, layoffs, and downsizing. Keeping your job in today’s unstable business climate takes new ideas and new ways to present yourself  – it takes personal branding.

Career opportunities have become as competitive as the market itself.  Knowing how to differentiate yourself from the pack will make all the difference in your career progression.

Personal Branding demands that you put your best foot forward. Taking a lesson from product marketing, you need to find and show your unique value.  You must clearly articulate what unique skills and strengths you possess.  Your online profiles and  resume represent your value statement – what you bring to the table – so it needs to be crisp.  Focusing on your strengths can provide you with a strong identity which is uniquely you.

”Most Americans do not know what their strengths are. When you ask them, they look at you with a blank stare, or they respond in terms of subject knowledge, which is the wrong answer”. – Peter Drucker

Selling your expertise has always involved putting your education and experience on paper (your resume or curriculum vide (CV)).  It usually was not until you were face to face with a client, or prospective employer, that you were able to impress them with your point of view. But today you rarely get the chance to have that face moment.  You need to wrap your point of view into your social presence.  Your online profile needs to not just talk about what you have done, but highlight your point of view, and what you can and want to do for others.

A few weeks ago, I wrote a post about identifying your soft and hard skill sets (2 Steps to Understanding Your Hard and Soft Skills).  To understand your soft skills, you really need to look at your CORE STRENGTHS.  These are the attributes of your personality that drive your ability to excel in certain soft skill areas, and the same one’s that drove your choices in selecting your hard skills (technical training and knowledge).

If you look around on LinkedIn or Twitter, you will see that many people define themselves by their titles (VP of Important Things), or the technical and business hard skills that they have (Network Engineer, Physicist), rather than the strengths of their personality (Leader, Innovator). But your core strengths, not your job title, will keep you moving forward in your business career.

Core Strengths

Core, or personal, strengths, unlike skills, are based on who you are, not what you know.  For example, one of my personal strengths is ‘Analytical.’  People with this strength search for reason and causes in things. They think about the factors that might affect a situation. (Gallup StrengthFinder)  It is important, as you focus on what makes you unique, to think about what your natural abilities are; the innate talents you were born with.

Attitude Adjustment Assignment – Define Your Core Strengths:

Looking at the list below, pick out 5 or 10 attributes that describe your top strengths.  Put them in an order from strongest to weakest.

strength chart(Chart adapted from Myrko Thum’s blog, Personal; Development That Transforms, March 2013)

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Differentiate Yourself

When you build your brand around your unique value, your authentic self, you start to standout from others.  Knowing and appreciating what makes you different from your peers and your competitors gives you a handle on what unique qualities you have to offer your team or your employer.  And it is in the knewing, that you are able to build a better online presence.

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It’s also important not to confuse strengths with likes. What you like to do is not necessarily what you do best. It can be, but it’s not a given. Of course, for a successful career you want to combine these two in order to overlap your strengths with your passion.

Over time, my core strengths guided me in making choices around work and also my personal life.  I chose jobs that felt comfortable and ‘right’ for me – not because I really knew why, but because I tend to ‘trust my gut’ (I am not sure that is a core strength, but it should be).

What I have learned over the years is that when my core strengths and my technical and business skills support each other, I tend to really shine in my work (and in my life), and I am the happiest.

Leverage your strengths as part of your personal branding process is a must for professionals today.  Companies are expecting employees that desire career growth to know who they are and to manage their own eminence.

What are your personal strengths and what makes you unique?

animationfinalKeep up the good attitude. See you next blog.

– Lorian

Email: thedigitalattitude@gmail.com

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lorianlipton/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/LorianL

(All the Social Butterfly’s views are her own)

Grow Your Digital Reputation – 5 Ways

/ Lorian Lipton / 6 Comments

community sketchI’m a social butterfly and like most people, I prefer to participate in groups with other people who hold similar interests to me.  It gives me a sense of trust when I interact with people and groups with common values and beliefs to my own (Meyers, 2011). I find comfort with ‘like minded’ individuals, and obviously, I am not alone in this feeling since, one of the main motivators for people to use social media in the first place, is their desire for community.  Social Media allows us to be a part of community, not dictated by space or location, and it also comes with a sense of family and unity  (Mueller, 2010).

This social connectivity, this common ground, can help you build a strong digital reputation. Just as you are attracted to people and communities that you have something in common with, people will be attracted to what you have to say in return.  You just need to be genuine and authentic in your digital communications.

According to Dorie Clark, one of my favorite Branding gurus, there are 3 main ways to get noticed by other people when building your reputation online:

  1. through the content you create,
  2. by social proof provided by others, and
  3. by having someone recommend you directly.

Based on the first 2 ways above to get noticed, I have put together 5 suggestions on how you can grow your digital reputation.  The third way, having someone recommend you directly, speaks more to your physical network than you virtual one, but if you are getting them to recommend your social presence loudly, at let’s say a cocktail party or business conference, by all means, you should be using that tactic as well.

1. Promote Yourself and Your Ideas on Facebook

Facebook is, hands down, the largest social network being used today.  It is not just for your kids and connecting with your high school buddies anymore.  Many people have set up professional profiles that highlight their knowledge and expertise.  For example, check out Chocolate for Breakfast. This is the business page for Sue Ann Gleason, a culinary nutritionist and marketing strategist.  This page has over 19,845 Likes, which translates into fans following it, with outstanding engagement in the Facebook world (over 60% of the fans are talking about the page according to the Social Media Examiner).  It uses photos really well, has inspiring posts (particularly the recipes),and is entertaining and educational.

pm-choc-for-breakfast

Personally, I have a page on Facebook ( DogDaz ) that I use to connect with my followers that prefer that social network and to promote my PetBlog, dogdaz.com.   The goal is to connect with other animal lovers, promote animal rescue and remind my Facebook followers to read today’s blog posts.  This has worked great in the last year and I have over 40,000 hits on the blog (which is huge for me).

dogdaz fbWhat you will find is that people will start recommending your content to other people, who will recommend it to other people, and building your reputation.  In the Facebook world, the number of people (FANS) that LIKE your page, the higher the rating and stronger your reputation.  These ratings act as SOCIAL PROOF that your page (you) has value.  If someone agrees (thumbs up) that what you are saying, or selling, or doing, has value, that social proof leads others to see greater value in your stuff.  Dorie Clark says that “basically, [social proof] means that people look to others around them to judge the value of something. (If a book has 1,000 five-star Amazon reviews, it must be good.)”  Can you see how you might leverage this to help build your reputation?

2. Connect to Other Professionals with LinkedIn

LinkedIn is definitely ‘the place’ to connect to people professionally.  Just like with Facebook you set up a profile, but the power of LinkedIn comes through your participation in groups that interest you.  This is where you show your smarts.  You build a following on LinkedIn by following other people and groups, and commenting on their ideas, or in forums, with your ideas.  This gets your name out there.  As you comment, you build your credibility as an expert in a particular area, and your reputation increase.

3. Write a Blog

Though blogging is not for everyone, blogs are a great way to let the world know what you are thinking on a particular subject and why you are an expert. It takes time to build an audience, but if your posts are on interesting topics and you take the time to research and write clearly, the benefits to your digital presence is worth it.  I use this blog (thedigitalattitude.com) as a way to pull all my thoughts together about digital eminence, personal branding, and social project management, and then I link my posts to Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and IBM Connections, to make sure that those people who are following me on different platforms, know what I am thinking today.  (Don’t be overwhelmed by the media connections, you can manage the feeds with tools like HootSuite or feedly – but that is for another blog post.)

4. Comment on Other People’s Posts and in Relevant Communities

Being helpful and answering questions in forums and communities is a great way to get known.  This may sound like a tease, but you can give just enough information in your answer and then encourage people to contact you through your email, blog, website or other links, so that you start to build a direct relationship.  The more you put yourself out in front, the more digitally social you are, the more will come back to you.  Trust me – it works (your reading my blog, aren’t you?).

5.  Be a Regular On Your Social Media Sites

If you are going to use any of these suggestions to build your digital reputation, do them consistently.  I hate when I come upon communities, groups, forums, and blog sites that are woefully outdated.  If you are going to have a presence in social media, you need to post regularly or it does you little good.  People will lose interest in your posts if your site, or blog, or Twitter feed is outdated.  You don’t need to post everyday, 2 or 3 times a week is fine, but you should be doing it regularly.

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The internet provides the ability to grow your reputation exponentially,  And, based on the concept of Six Degrees of Separation (or the Small World theory) “millions of people are connected by just a few short steps.” (Lovgren, 2010)  So what are you waiting for? How are you leveraging your connections?

Tell me what you are doing to grow your reputation?

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Keep up the good attitude. See you next blog.

– Lorian

(All the Social Butterfly’s views are her own)

References