In the real world, people who know how to make themselves and their contributions seen (without being annoying about it) get ahead of their higher-performing peers all the time. As the work world shifts from an hours-worked mentality to a work-accomplished one, remote workers need to master the subtle art of “managing up” and be proactive in making sure their work is seen.

Managing Up For Remote Workers

If you’re a motorcycle mechanic, a rack of repaired motorcycles is a clear indicator you can point to after a hard day’s work. Similarly, the h-index is a grading score given to professors at research universities that ranks their impact in a chosen field. Both a high h-index and a rack of repaired motorcycles are easy metrics to point to that demonstrate your value.In a business environment, if the metrics that determine success for your position are unclear, it’s difficult to figure out where you stand in the organization or know if you’re doing a good job.

The Metric Black Hole

In the absence of clear indicators of what it means to be productive and valuable in their jobs, many knowledge workers turn back toward an industrial indicator of productivity: doing lots of stuff in a visible manner.These vanity metrics might include how quickly you respond to an email or Slack DM or how many meetings you’ve attended over the past week. Those things constitute “work”, but they have next to no correlation to how much value you’re building for the company.

Pretending To Be Busy

Intensive value is derived from a specific skill you’ve developed over time.  You’ve established yourself as the domain expert in a specific part of the business.Extensive value is derived from your relationships with others. You’re viewed as a connector within an organization. You’re involved in moving multiple projects along. Team members depend on you to execute on a daily basis in order to keep things running smoothly.

Intensive Vs Extensive Value

Here are three steps knowledge workers can follow to naturally build and demonstrate value in their organizations (without coming off as arrogant jerks)<ul><li>Step 1: Understand the difference between intensive and extensive value.</li><li>Step 2: Build your own scorecard.</li><li>Step 3: Send regular updates.</li></ul>

How To Promote Yourself and Your Work

If your goal is to develop intensive value, you want to build clout around a specific area:<ul><li>Take classes and read books about the topic.</li><li>Take on extra side projects to tinker and experiment until you know virtually everything there is to know.</li><li>Join conversations within your organization and outside communities.</li><li>Reach out to influential people in your field and build mentorship relationships with them.</li></ul>

Developing Intensive Value

If your goal is to develop extensive value, relationships are key. Extensive value is built through getting involved in multiple areas throughout the organization.<ul><li>Build a thorough understanding of each department, how they’re interlinked, and the key projects going on at any one time.</li><li>Take the time to get to know people within your organization. Grab a cup of coffee with them and get to know what their strengths and goals are. What things at work naturally get them the most excited?</li><li>Offer to help colleagues out whenever you can. It’s a natural way to build strong connections at work.</li></ul>

Developing Extensive Value

Once you’ve decided which type of value you’re looking to build, you need to determine how you’re going to track your progress. Many positions come with built-in metrics that can be used to measure impact. If you’re a support professional, you might look at how many emails you have sent in a given day. Similarly, developers might look at the number of issues closed. These metrics can work, but they’re rarely sufficient to demonstrate the full value you bring to the table.

Building Your Scorecard

At the start of the year or quarter, identify the progress you want to make and how you’re going to measure success. Here are some tips:<ul><li>Select metrics that are easy to measure and highly valuable. You should be able to gauge progress from week to week.</li><li>Build a consistent narrative. If you’re changing up the scorecard each week, you’re not creating an easy narrative to follow. Consistency is key. Each week should build on the next.</li><li>Tie your metrics into the larger company picture. What are the top goals of your organization or team and how does what you’re working on move those forward?</li></ul>

Mapping Your Work

<a href="https://todoist.com/productivity-methods/okrs-objectives-key-results">Objectives and Key Results (OKRs)</a> is a popular framework for teams and individuals to set goals and measure progress. It’s a great way to build a concrete narrative around your accomplishments and the value you’ve created for the team.

Your OKRs

Each month, complete your own monthly performance review. Your scorecard should provide the foundation, but you can add in answers to questions:<ul><li>What major projects did you move forward with in the past month? How does that impact the overall business?</li><li>In what ways did you go above and beyond your normal responsibilities?</li><li>Looking back over your quarterly goals, where did you make progress?</li></ul>

Self Performance Review

You could send in a quarterly update to HR or send over a weekly email to your supervisor with a recap, or both. The cadence and medium will differ; the goal is still to keep everyone updated with our progress.There’s a fine line between demonstrating your value and overly boasting about your accomplishments. This fine line leads many to downplay their contributions in fear of coming across as a braggart.

Sending Regular Updates

<ul><li>If your annual performance review isn’t until December, it’s easy to forget what you worked on in March. This practice ensures nothing falls through the cracks.</li><li>You’ll get better at identifying and communicating your contributions.</li><li>Depending on the size of your organization, it can be difficult to keep track of everyone’s work. This helps out your supervisor and Human Resources department by keeping them up-to-date throughout the year and providing a paper trail to fall back on during a performance review.</li></ul>

Benefits Of Sending Recurring Updates

Make sure "out of sight" doesn't mean "out of mind". Learn the subtle art of managing up and be proactive in making sure your boss knows your value.

remotework

Remote Work

career

Career

teamwork

Teamwork

leadershipandmanagement

Leadership & Management

The Remote Worker's Guide to "Managing Up"

The way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing.

"The way to get started is to quit talking and..." - Walt Disney quotes from BrainyQuote.com

personaldevelopment

Personal Development

Walt Disney Quotes

Flexibility has tremendous <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0003122415622391">benefits</a> for employees, including reduced burnout and greater job satisfaction. However, it can also result in spiralling coordination costs for managers, untenable amounts of wasted effort, and the inability to respond quickly to client requests. If employees want the benefits of flexibility, they’ll also need to shoulder some of the responsibility that goes with it, like autonomous problem-solving and providing and checking for updates.

Flexibility And Responsibility At The Workplace

To increase employee flexibility on their teams, managers need guidance and support — otherwise, they could <a href="https://hbr.org/2021/01/do-you-know-burnout-when-you-see-it">burn out</a> on the job or check out to find a new one.To increase flexibility for employees without losing productivity — or sanity — managers will need to think differently about when employees work together, who works together, how to share information and with whom, all while being careful to stay abreast of any changes and rapidly communicating changes in priorities.

Increasing Employee Flexibility

For complex tasks that require teamwork, managers will need to think differently and deeply about project requirements and schedule accordingly.For project-based workflows, managers should carefully chart out the project tasks and timeline and issue an advance request for employees to block a specific set of days for overlapping work during <a href="https://hbr.org/2017/09/the-overcommitted-organization">key project phases</a> (e.g., kickoff, mid-point, finalization).For less predictable workflows, consider aligning scheduling bursts with calendar time.

Rethink When Employees Work Together

In workplaces with less physical and temporal overlap between employees, managers may also need to reorganize their larger teams into <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/0149206315601184">multiteam systems</a> of smaller, empowered, and interconnected groups. These smaller teams improve flexibility and adaptability.This reconfiguration reduces the coordination costs placed on the manager without dumping them all on the most accommodating employee(s). Each employee is only asked to help coordinate with a couple of other individuals rather than everyone in the larger team.

Rethink Who Works Together

When employees were co-located and working roughly similar hours, it was easier to keep everyone on the same page with meetings and learn about important issues by walking around. Giving or receiving an important update only required a few steps (or perhaps a brief elevator ride).Long waits for status updates or answers to questions can kill productivity. Thus, information availability is critical for flexible workplaces.

Rethink Information Sharing

Combining and expanding on the previous three steps, managers must think more deeply than ever about the structure of their employees’ tasks and priorities. Map out each part of the task and how they’re connected to one another to determine when scheduling bursts will be needed and when you can assign discrete pieces of the project to smaller subgroups. Record and update all of this information in a shared location.

Revisit What Employees Are Working On

If employees want the benefits of flexibility, they’ll also need to shoulder some of the responsibility that goes with it, like autonomous problem-solving and providing and checking for updates. However, that doesn’t mean setting them adrift in the storm. Managers are still responsible for making sure everyone is rowing to the correct location in the same direction — even if they’re rowing at different times.

The Bottom Line

Keep everyone working together — even if they’re working at different times.

productivity

Productivity

corporateculture

Corporate Culture

4 Ways Managers Can Increase Flexibility Without Losing Productivity

It is a concept in game theory in which every participant in a noncooperative game can optimize their outcome based on the other players’ decisions.Nash equilibrium is achieved in a game when no player has any incentive for deviating from their own strategy, even if they know the other players’ strategies.In economic theory, it is used to illustrate that decision-making is a system of strategic interactions based on the actions of other players. It can be used to model economic behavior to predict the best response to any given situation.

What is Nash Equilibrium?

A man and a woman are hoping to attend an event together, but they must choose between a prizefight or a ballet.They cannot communicate where they will go beforehand, and the man in this story would prefer to go to the prizefight while the woman in this scenario would like to go to the ballet.This game has two unique Nash equilibrium strategies: one in which they both go to the prizefight and one in which they both go to the ballet.

Example: Battle of the sexes

To find it, share each player’s strategy with every other player. If the players do not change their strategies, you have found the Nash equilibrium.For eg, in the battle of the sexes scenario, draw a table with two rows and two columns. The vertical axis represents the woman’s options: ballet/prizefight and horizontal axis represents the man’s choices: also ballet /prizefight. In the top left quadrant, they both choose ballet (Nash Equilibrium). In the bottom right quadrant, they both choose prizefight (Nash Equilibrium). This table illustrates there are two possible Nash equilibria.

How to Find Nash Equilibrium

strategy

Strategy

Nash Equilibrium: Definition and Examples

“Great ambition is the passion of a great character. Those endowed with it may perform very good or bad acts. All depends on the principles which direct them.”

Here are some of the greatest quotes of Napoleon Bonaparte. Soundtrack: Classical, Piano [ BatchBug - Playing In The Wind

motivationandinspiration

Motivation & Inspiration

Here are some of the greatest quotes of Napoleon Bonaparte. 

Soundtrack:  Classical, Piano [ BatchBug - Playing In The Wind

Just a bit of daily inspiration to keep us going. 

Wakeup Mind

Greatest Quotes of Napoleon Bonaparte.

Doing is very good, but that comes from thinking. Little manifestations of energy through the muscles are called work. But where there is no thought, there will be no work. Fill the brain, therefore, with high thoughts, the highest ideals, place them day and night before you, and out of that will come great work.

Take up one idea. Make that one idea your life -- think of it, dream of it, live on that idea. Let the brain, muscles, nerves, every part of your body, be full of that idea, and just leave every other idea alone. This is the way to success.

Power of thought

If you have assimilated five ideas and made them your life and character, you have more education than any man who got by heart a whole library.

It is thought which is the propelling force in us. Fill the mind with the highest thoughts, hear them day after day, and think them month after month.Never mind failures; they are quite natural, they are the beauty of life, these failures.What would life be without them? It would not be worth having if it were not for struggles.

The only remedy for bad habits is counter habits; all the bad habits that have left their impressions are to be controlled by good habits. Go on doing good, thinking holy thoughts continuously; that is the only way to suppress base impressions.

Always remember that each word, thought, and deed, lays up a store for you and that as the bad thoughts and bad works are ready to spring upon you like tigers, so also there is the inspiring hope that the good thoughts and good deeds are ready with the power of a hundred thousand angels to defend you always and forever.

Let positive, strong, helpful thought enter into their(children's) brains from very childhood.

Evil thoughts, looked at materially, are the disease bacilli.

The body is made by the thought that lies behind it. The body politic is thus the expression of national thought.

If we make ourselves pure and the instruments of good thoughts, these will enter us. The good soul will not be receptive to evil thoughts. Evil thoughts find the best field in evil people; they are like microbes which germinate and increase only when they find a suitable soil.

Those who are always down-hearted and dispirited in this life can do no work.

I found a small book called way to success by Vivekananda when I was 14 years old. I have just copied the text from there, I have not interpreted the text in any way. It is archaic but shows a way of thought. This is the first chapter. I hope to do the rest of them gradually.

A collection of his books, letters, and poetry in 8 volumes. Regular edition sells for $79.60. Does not include Volume 9.

philosophy

Philosophy

books

Books

Swami Vivekananda

The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda

The true secret of happiness lies in taking a genuine interest in all the details of daily life.

"The true secret of happiness lies in taking a..." - William Morris quotes from BrainyQuote.com

William Morris Quotes

Becoming a <a href="https://www.inc.com/marcel-schwantes/want-to-be-a-smart-leader-in-hybrid-work-age-start-by-doing-these-4-things-daily.html">smart leader </a>is ultimately an inside job -- it's who you are at the core of your being, not what you "do" from a prescribed list found in the latest <a href="https://www.inc.com/marcel-schwantes/3-business-books-you-need-to-read-in-2022.html">management book </a>.To lead smartly means leading with emotional intelligence, which may be surprising and rare in itself. It takes skill, heart, and head, but any leader willing to learn and grow is capable of it. Here's a quick roadmap to starting on your path of practicing smart leadership:

Smart Leader

Research has found it to be a solid framework for acquiring knowledge. We all know having a growth mindset is a good foundation to keep learning, and it takes curiosity to do that.Not only is curiosity key to the learning process, it's also great for overall life satisfaction, according to science. In fact, other people are more easily attracted and feel socially closer to individuals that display curiosity.

Lead with curiosity

One of the cornerstones of emotional intelligence, self-awareness may be the most important skill for a leader to master. <ul><li>And it's arguably the most important attribute for a leader who wants to create a culture of growth and development.</li><li>With self-awareness, you can probe your emotions in any given situation to understand what you're feeling and why. </li><li>This is key for understanding how to appropriately respond, rather than impulsively react to a situation going south.</li></ul>

Lead with self-awareness

The tendency for many leaders is to hear the good ideas and opinions of others but only truly consider their own. It is a theme that points to a lack of good listening skills. <ul><li>To reverse course, the path starts with accepting feedback.</li><li>Every good business leader has a coach who will give them honest feedback and help them improve and push themselves. </li><li>It helps to create a culture of openness and transparency, and to establish trust and awareness at the organizational level.</li></ul>

Lead by accepting feedback

3 surprising secrets of smart leadership✓

problemsolving

Problem Solving

communication

Communication

3 Surprising Secrets of Smart Leadership (Which Many Don't Practice)

When organizations take time to recognize the hard work that went into the completion of a release or even a bite-sized milestone, this helps employees recharge and stay motivated.

Big launches and milestone achievements deserve to be celebrated

Are these failures discussed? Do employees feel comfortable talking about what went wrong with their manager and team? Does your team take the time to reflect upon these situations through sprint retros or post-incident reviews? Does your team explore ways to overcome these mistakes in the future with a different path forwards or approach?

But what happens when a team fails? 

A psychologically safe work environment encourages team members to speak up with ideas, concerns, or recent failures instead of choosing to remain silent.

What is psychological safety?

e belief that the environment is safe for interpersonal risk-taking. It is a belief that one will not be punished or humiliated for speaking up with ideas, questions, concerns, or mistakes.

Psychological safety in the workplace

Qhen employees work in a psychologically safe environment, the discretionary effort can improve up to 24%.

2017 Gartner Culture Workforce Survey

By having a psychologically safe environment, employees perceive risk as a good thing, and there is an understanding that employees won’t be seen as ignorant, incompetent, or invalid.

Psychological safety and high-performing teams

There is a tolerance for mistakesEmployees are open about the mistakes they made instead of avoiding them or, worse yet, covering mistakes up. Micro-moments of learning occur regularlyLeaders model curiosity by sharing their ignorance on a topic and asking questions. Employees are empowered to ask questions, poke at proposals.Space is created for reflection and reviewThe team takes time to learn from past performances to help with future improvements. Retrospectives allow teammates to discuss what went well and what didn’t go so well.

Evaluating your organization’s psychological safety

Employees voice radical business and technical ideas. They’re willing to take interpersonal risks by speaking up in meetings, voicing their concerns, and never settling without asking “why.”

Risk-taking is encouraged

Creating a workplace environment that promotes psychological safety is an art, and there is no silver bullet. There are unspoken agreements, company-wide values, leadership qualities, and technology to help support this ongoing work. 

Psychological safety is critical for high-performing teams

Communication is the fundamental cornerstone for any successful relationship. Whether it be personal, or business.We have countless interactions throughout our day, but often fail to realise the impact it can have to others around us.Specifically in leadership, setting the tone can either exponentially improve your company or tank it completely.

Communication For Leaders

Gratitude is a subtle nuance when it comes to leadership. Too much, and you wont appear as a leader anymore. Too little and your team will consider you a dictator.So what works best?"We could not have done it without your hard effort"With this, you show gratitude to the person for their contribution to the team, and how pivotal their role.Some other key phrase which leaders can use to help their team."How can I help?""What do you need from me?"(so that I can help you perform better)Effective leaders serve the needs of others , and it all starts with care and concern.

Gratitude 

Involving your team in decisions being made is essential for teams being humble and honest. It shows that you value their opinion and know how to ask for help"I could use your advice on which direction to take"Leaders need to extend trust first, instead of earning it which goes against conventional wisdom"I trust you"In situations where you aren't sure about decisions , be comfortable about it to your team"Honestly, I dont know."Your team might give you more ideas out, and chances are they're ones that you've not thought about. And if not, it shows that you're comfortable with the unknown.

Team Building

Communication is an underrated tool. It's easy to notice why a team works well when you see them talk, but when a team doesn't work it's not easy to see why they don't work well , even if they're a stellar team

They may not be what you expect, but using them often will help increase trust.

entrepreneurship

Entrepreneurship

If You Use These 6 Phrases a Lot, You're a Better Leader Than You Think

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