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Business Career Entrepreneurship Generation Y Inspiration Leadership Management Networking Workplace

Advice from top Executives, Presidents, and CEOs

We won’t all be Steve Jobs, but many of us will be the top executives in our respective cities. I recently met with seven of the top Executives, Presidents and CEOs in Madison, Wisconsin. Here are their keys to business and leadership success—

Share your success. It is incumbent on the person being promoted, according to Mark Meloy, President and CEO of First Business Bank, to pull others along with them. Make sure that as you become more successful, your leaders feel that their careers are moving forward as well.

Network to problem-solve. Finding groups that help you problem-solve will save many a headache, according to Brett Armstrong, CFO of the IT company Trident Contact Management. Like if you’re being audited, the group will have your back. But choose your involvement wisely, Armstrong advocates, since you only have a certain amount of time and need to spend it wisely. If you’re only half-involved then that is how people will know you.

Balance… well, it’ll all even out in the end. First, you have to decide if you want a job or a career, according to Mark Meloy. If it’s a career you decide upon, make sure you’re engaging in a two-way street. Work and life won’t always balance out that day, week, or month, but equilibrium will be found. Eventually. Meloy walks the talk at First Business Bank. When his employees go on vacation, they are not allowed access to email and have only limited access to voicemail. The company gives vacation, he says, for a reason.

A vision can’t just be a pie in the sky. A vision must be a concrete vision, according to Donna Sollenberger, President and CEO of UW Hospital and Clinics. To create the right vision, you must find the right direction for your organization to take. To do this, look at the industry trends and listen to your market. Then build a case, a good solid argument, and back it up with data to demonstrate where you need to go.

Entrepreneurs – socialites, control-freaks, risk-takers, and self-promoters. So says Curt Brink, a successful real estate developer. You must not only deal with a wide range of people in entrepreneurship, he argues, but you must also follow through on getting things done. Don’t be afraid to try something new, because once you’ve done it, you then understand how to do it better. A successful entrepreneur likes being in control, but can delegate fully. If you don’t, no one will grow. By the way, Brink was unconsciously promoting his current and past projects the entire time he was talking. That’s called passion. Get some.

Do a lot, and make sure everyone knows. Don’t let anyone pigeon hole your talents, says Annette Knapstein, Vice President of Office Administration at American Family Insurance. Stretch yourself, develop new talents and volunteer for different committees. And then, make sure everyone knows it. If they don’t know, it doesn’t exist.

Leadership is lonely sometimes. A good leader and manager makes effective decisions and communicates clearly, while putting the right people in the right spots. Not always easy, according to Gary Wolter, President and CEO of MGE. To illustrate his point, Wolter told a story about a receptionist he saw year after year. Each morning, the receptionist would say, “Hello, Gary.” Yet, when Wolter was promoted to CEO, the next morning was different. “Hello, Mr. Wolter,” the receptionist said. Leadership fundamentally changes relationships and people expect different things of you. People who were your peers, you now supervise, and while you can still be friendly, you can’t talk about the boss anymore because you are the boss. The support group that you had developed, who had remained loyal to you, and helped you along your journey has changed. Be prepared.

Throw an open door party daily. Reaching out to younger people for fresh air is essential, according to Richard Lynch, President of J.H. Findorff & Son, who had a great sense of the upcoming workforce. He recognizes that young workers are entrepreneurial, and need a flexible and honest environment to work in. He has an open door policy for this purpose and subsequently attracts the brightest young workers.

Speaking of honesty… Surround yourself with people who will tell you that you’re an idiot, says Gary Wolter. Look both inside your organization, and outside, for individuals you can bounce ideas off of, and who can communicate with you effectively and honestly.

Follow the Leader.

Categories
Career Entrepreneurship Generation Y Knowing yourself Networking Women

I met Penelope Trunk today

I got to meet Penelope Trunk, of Brazen Careerist fame, in person today. That’s because Penelope lives where I live, in the great city of Madison, WI, and I thought the least stalkerish way to meet would be to invite her to come to one of my networking events. She graciously did just that, and spoke to a small group of us over ravioli and stale breadsticks. And when I say spoke, I mean she almost made somebody cry.

Penelope is tough.

Authentically tough, blatantly honest, and wearing some of the dirtiest shoes I’ve seen at a networking event in a long time. I loved every second of it. We all did. Trying to figure out what you want to do in life? Try stuff out. Shop around. Think you’re content? Content is boring; there’s probably something wrong with you. Found your passion already? Set crazy ambitious goals. People like to be pushed to their limits and that’s what Penelope did. She pushed each and every one of us to go farther, reach deeper and come out triumphant. Except for the woman who almost cried.

If you missed it and are lucky enough to live in Madison, WI, come to the next event I invited Penelope to speak at, the Madison MAGNET Networking Breakfast. You can skip the coffee that morning.

Don’t forget to read my related post: Personal branding, accountability, and how to just be yourself already.”

Categories
Business Entrepreneurship Generation Y Leadership Women

Women are the new men

This post was also published at Damsels in Success.

I know a lot of awesome Gen X and Gen Y women. In fact, the city of Madison, WI ranks in the top ten of both female creative class, and female super-creative class percentages in the nation (Charlottesville, VA and Bakersville, CA, rank first).Generation Y women, Hannah Seligson argues, are “making one of the fastest and unprecedented career ladder ascents in history.” Here are some observations about one of the most powerful groups of women in history:

Women are more business-minded than men… Springboard Enterprises reports that “women in the United States have an ownership stake of 50 percent or more in nearly half of all privately held businesses.” In fact, women are starting businesses at a rate of twice that of men, attracted to the flexible lifestyle of being your own boss.

And we’re successful at it. The gross sales of women-led companies grew 39 percent compared to 34 percent for all firms. Barron’s predicts that by 2010 a woman has a one in seven chance of having a powerful job post. In Australia, studies show that “women-led companies on average outperform those where there is no female leadership at the top,” while “law firms with more female partners have a higher per partner income than those with fewer.”

… but women don’t always want a man, or children. While men in leadership positions often have a family to support them, Gen X and Gen Y women put careers ahead of settling down. While this can be a lonely proposition, many Gen X and Gen Y women are not in a huge rush to find a man, get married and start popping out children.

In relationships, the men increasingly stay at home or hold a less stressful position. If we’re even in a relationship. Many of us are doing just fine without a man as a result of our highly independent lifestyle.

A lot of us aren’t even sure we want to have kids. And if we do, we want to adopt (anything to avoid having a foreign object pop out of our fitness-club bodies). The vast majority of women that do plan on having kids also plan on staying in the workforce.

Women are natural leaders. The millennial woman brand of leadership is more about changing the world than our own egos. Moreover, we’re change makers willing to defy the traditional structures of “command and control” leadership for a more collaborative and inclusive model.

Anna Quindlen writes, “by its very nature women’s leadership is about redefinition, while men’s leadership has been about maintaining the status quo… You’re less wedded to the shape of the table if you haven’t been permitted to sit at it.”

I’m not surprised to learn that women and men are switching roles. I see examples all around me of women embracing the power of now to lead the next generation. The more young women that get others to not only look past their age, but also any perceived inequities, the better off our world will be.

One last note. Over in the UK, academics have dubbed young women leaders as “’the Monstrous Army on the March’, women who cannot, will not be stopped.”

Well then. March on ladies.

These boots are made for leading.

Categories
Entrepreneurship Generation Y Inspiration

Millennial confidence and failure go hand-in-hand

I just spent the last twenty-four hours (and months of thinking and planning), working on this website. Not just this blog, but an events calendar that is far from going “live.” Creating this blog was fun for me. I know enough HTML to make some creative design decisions in order to create a clean modern site, with enough whimsy that expresses my style and brand.

The events calendar, however, sounds simple enough, but my desire to create something that fully expresses my brand got me in trouble. For some reason, I thought that since I could build this blog on my own, with a few tweaks, that I could build the events calendar as well, with just a few tweaks. Never mind that I only understand basic HTML and CSS, and that AJAX and MySQL remain distant acquaintances in the long line of tools I’d like to meet. Never mind too, that when I spoke with real web developers they estimated months of work to achieve the quality I was speaking of, and tens of thousands of dollars. I thought I could create a stellar web application. With no web development expertise whatsoever. In a few short days. In fact, I was sure of it.

It’s arrogant, certainly. And a little cocky as well. Along with the rest of my generation, my mother told me I could be whoever I wanted, do anything. What I want for this website is to engage the next generation. A lofty goal, sure. But I am confident that I will succeed. I have a lot of ideas, buckets of enthusiasm and energy, and a drive to get things done.

So, do I buy into the hype that Generation Y is arrogant? Yes, sirree. And proud of it.

Then again, I could fail.

I already discovered I was (way) over my head when I decided I could learn developer code in just a couple days. I have an events calendar that I could link to, but I don’t like it and it’s not up to my standards. But I’ve learned from doing, instead of just talking. While I couldn’t take my idea past a certain point without help, I gave it my all, tried my best, and built up my base of knowledge. I now know more then when I’ve started. For full millennial effect, our confidence needs to be combined with the assertion that it’s okay for us to fail. That allows us to turn challenges into opportunities, failure into success. Here’s to the success of this blog (or possible failure). I hope you stay tuned – cheers!

Be cocky. Fail like you mean it.