Alexandra Levit's Water Cooler Wisdom

My Visit to Google Chicago

Upfront disclosure:  I don’t work for Google…yet.

Thanks to my new friend Sally Anderson, a human resources partner at Google Chicago, I recently had the opportunity to tour the office and see for myself why Google is one of the most desirable employers in the world.  I wasn’t disappointed.

The Customer is King

While I sat in the brightly lit, colorful lobby and sucked on a lemon Jolly Rancher, I watched the front desk receptionist field several calls from prospective summer interns.  Did he turn up his nose and scoff?  No sir.  Google understands that when a call comes into the organization, you never know who’s on the line and what kind of influence that person might have – so its receptionists are helpful and friendly to everyone.

Diverse Work Spaces Promote Concentration and Collaboration

Google generally favors an open office environment, but the organization is very creative in its use of space.  If you need a moment to relax alone, you head to the porch swings by the windows.  You can brainstorm with colleagues in a room decorated like a garden.  Want to impress a new client?  Take her over to the speakeasy-themed conference room.

A Wellness Focus is Everywhere

Google serves up gourmet, healthy breakfast and lunch to its Chicago employees so they won’t rely on the plethora of fast food options in the area.  And if you don’t have time to hit the in-house gym or massage chairs, you can meet with colleagues as you walk around the office track – 12 laps equals one mile.

For more reasons why I love Google, head over to Intuit's Fast Track blog.

How to Cope When Your New Job Is a Bust

According to a new survey by staffing firm Robert Half, 41 percent of workers said the role they accepted at a company was different than what had been outlined to them during the interview process.

If you find yourself in this situation, what’s the most productive way forward? To gain insights into this unfortunately common scenario, I tapped Paul McDonald, senior executive director at Robert Half.

Paul, from the company’s perspective, why might a job not be what was originally intended? Where is the disconnect?

Companies don’t set out to trick candidates who might not be a good match for the position. Sometimes the needs of the company may change during the hiring process or soon after an employee joins the team. A project may change, goals may shift, team resources may vary – and or all of these could impact a new hire’s job duties.

Or…the company didn’t really know what it wanted in the first place! If you are a new employee and you’ve realized after a few weeks that your actual job is nothing like it was described in your interview, what is your immediate recourse?

Request a meeting with your manager to review the job description as it was discussed in the interview process, as well as your goals and expectations of the role and how they differ with reality. Your manager might be able to address your concerns and adjust your duties. Many times, professionals don’t address things that are bothering them at work, which lowers their morale and makes the situation worse.

For more advice from Paul, check out the full post at Intuit's Fast Track blog.

What Sets High Performers Apart?

Were you born to succeed? Not necessarily. As it turns out, even if you’re mid-career and feel you’ve never shined in school or work, you can completely transform your ability to contribute.

I recently had the opportunity to meet David Sturt, author of the book Great Work: How to Make a Difference People Love. As he describes in his piece for Forbes, last year Sturt’s firm the O.C. Tanner Institute conducted a fascinating study on high performance work. The organization studied 1.7 million people across all industries, positions, and pay-grades and illustrated that high-performance is less an outcome of traits, but more an outcome of activity.

What sets high performers apart isn’t a set of innate traits like perseverance, ambition, or intelligence, although those certainly help. Rather, high performers simply do things differently at work. O.C. Tanner found five specific activities high performers do to drive better results. These are:

Ask the right questions

Instead of adopting prevailing assumptions, high-performers pause and ask provoking questions that open up new lines of thinking. These questions include: “Why does this take so long?” “Why can’t we…” “What if we could…”

See how things work

High performers look at business and work in ways others haven’t. They always want to understand what’s working and what isn’t – and why. High performers enjoy taking a creation apart, searching for clues, and teasing out value.

For the full post, please see Intuit's Fast Track blog.

Getting a Sponsor For Your Project

Depending on your organization, your project may have an official or unofficial sponsor. Most people seem to have a vague idea of what it means to be a sponsor, but in the event that you are one or need one, I thought it might be helpful to zero in on some specifics.

The overall role of a project sponsor, first off, is to provide executive management ownership of and oversight over an initiative intended to accomplish a major business goal. An effective sponsor is placed high enough in the organization to smooth the way for timely decision making and appropriate resource allocation. She typically works behind the scenes, allowing the project manager to run things on a day to day basis. Her main responsibilities include:

Minding the big picture

Project sponsors understand why and how this project is critical to business operations and the relationship it has with other parts of the company. They make sure the initiative is always well-aligned with the organization’s major goals and direction.

Getting buy-in

The project sponsor persuades the higher-ups that the project is worth supporting – before, during, and after the project is completed. He sustains organizational commitment and keeps the project top of mind when more pressing issues threaten to bury it.

For more project sponsorship tips, have a look at the full post at Intuit's Fast Track blog.

How to Rescue Your Time

By now, you probably have an idea of how I feel about wasting time at work. Last year, I even went as far as to write that I thought we shouldn’t spend a minute of work time on personal tasks because it’s a slippery slope.

Well, according to Salary.com’s 2013 Time Wasting Survey, 69 percent of employees copped to wasting time at work every single day. And I suspect the real number is actually higher because, just like all people think they are good drivers, all people also think they are maximally productive.

Thirty-four percent of survey respondents said they routinely waste 30 minutes or less each day while on the clock. That’s not so bad. Unfortunately, a quarter waste between 30-60 minutes daily and 11 percent waste several hours daily on non-work related items. Bad habit.

Since I run my own business, I thought I would be more likely to waste time because I wouldn’t feel as guilty as someone who gets paid for every hour they waste at the office. But a recent experiment puts me squarely in the 30-60 minute range. And I know that number is accurate. How, you ask?

Introducing RescueTime

RescueTime is a nifty little program (and no, I’m not a company spokesperson) that runs in the background of your electronic devices and tracks the time you spend on individual applications and websites.

For more about RescueTime and how to use it effectively, check out the full post at Intuit's Fast Track blog.

Easy Wellness Ideas to Put in Place Right Away

Check practically any list of trends for this or next year in business and you will find that everyone is worrying over Obamacare’s impact on the workplace. The concerns are not unfounded.  After all, healthcare costs in the U.S. are astronomical, with total spending expected to reach $4.8 trillion in 2021. To put that in perspective, it’s about a fifth of the U.S. economy.

What’s even more surprising is how little most organizations do to manage healthcare costs among their employees. Fortunately, you don’t have to be a HR professional or benefits specialist to have an impact in this regard. Kelly Walsh, owner of consulting firm 1 Smart Life and companion business 1 Smart Career (pictured above), offers individual managers these five wellness tips for encouraging their teams to feel better, reduce stress, bolster work/life integration, and increase productivity.

OUT with beer and free snacks, IN with healthy snacks and water

Saying that you are committed to wellness while plying employees with free chips, soda, and beer to get through the long hours is sending the wrong message. Let that apple a day keep your employees’ doctors away. Make items like fruit, yogurt, and protein bars readily available.

OUT with sedentary jobs, IN with reminders for those sitting to get up and stretch or walk for a few minutes

There will always be jobs that require sitting for long hours, but help your people get up from their desks as much as possible. There are apps that tell us to stretch and move (try Stretch Clock, a break reminder app), and what about handing out step counters? Pedometers can be had for $10 each and a friendly competition will have staff fighting for the farthest parking spot in the lot.

OUT with eating at your desk, IN with line dancing in the cafeteria

I nearly laughed when I heard this one, but apparently it’s actually working for one large pharmaceutical. The program started small with a few women and an iPod amp. Now it’s a large group of men and women doing an old school “Electric Slide” or a “Cupid Shuffle” and a “Wobble.” They are easy, fun and everyone goes back to their afternoon work with a smile.

For more ideas, head over to the full post at Intuit's Fast Track blog.

How to Use Incremental Planning to Your Advantage

Take a look at most current research on the most necessary business competencies and you’ll see adaptability. In most organizations, conditions change on a dime and you must be prepared to shift course accordingly. So although some long-range planning is still desirable, incremental planning is equally if not more important.

According to Patti Johnson, author of the new book Make Waves, incremental planning is:

• Future focused
• Flexible
• Short horizon, with long-term goals in mind
• Collaborative

Incremental project planning assumes you make adjustments as you go and still reach your overall goals, even if they change over time. It’s a fine line to walk, though, between having no plan and having so much structure that you can’t react nimbly in the face of unpredictable challenges.

I recently walked this line myself when I engaged in a research project that was impacted by evolving market conditions. On the one hand, we had to develop a clear hypothesis, a relevant audience analysis, and a sound methodology. But on the other, we knew that our results might be unexpected and affect the recommendations that would be derived from the research.

Even while our data collection was in process, we weren’t entirely sure of our final product. We knew what we needed to accomplish from a business perspective, but we didn’t know how it would look just yet. Some of the higher-ups were more comfortable with this approach than others, but we were able to share just enough concrete planning to satisfy them.

Johnson suggests these steps to infuse your project management with more incremental planning.

Have very clear outcomes

Even if you eventually move in another direction, know where you are headed. Keep your goals simple and achievable and revisit them frequently.

Balance specific plans with flexibility

Plans are essential in order to be in a state of perpetual action. However, making changes to plans doesn’t mean you’ve made a mistake or taken the wrong path. You aren’t necessarily changing your destination, just how you get there.

For more tips from Patti, head over to Intuit's Fast Track blog.

Career Learnings from Kindergarten

Some of you know that my firstborn is six years old and in kindergarten. He’s learning all the basics – how to add, how to read, how to tie his shoes. But he’s also mastering some great lessons that it would behoove all of us to remember as we slog through the work week and attempt to advance our careers. Here they are: in my son’s words:

 “Always try to do it yourself before you ask the teacher.”

The kids in my son’s class, especially the boys, have challenges putting their coats on and getting out the door at the end of the day. Yet, they are required to work their zippers themselves or ask a classmate before going to the teacher. Similarly, at work you should exhaust all avenues for resolving an issue on your own before taking it to your boss.

 “You have to show what you know.”

There is a lot going on in the head of a kindergartener. It’s difficult, though, for them to translate what they’re thinking to what they’re writing – and if they don’t learn this skill quickly, they will score lower on assessments than they should. It’s the same thing in the professional world. You will not get ahead unless your stellar work is visible to the right people.

“You can only get good at something if you practice hard.”

At the beginning of the year, my son could barely hold a pencil correctly. He despaired, thinking he’d never be able to write. But after months of drilling sentences every day at school, his handwriting is fantastic. He has learned that practice makes great (if not perfect). The next time you expect yourself to be an instant pro at a new work skill, remember Malcolm Gladwell and the 10,000 hours of practice required for proficiency.

For the rest of my son's kindergarten lessons that apply to us at work, have a look at the full post at Intuit's Fast Track blog.

Why Companies Can't Keep Millennials

China Gorman, a consultant who helps organizations connect HR operations to the bottom line, gave a presentation not long ago that shocked everyone in the room. She had cited a statistic from the Aberdeen Group’s Strategic Talent Acquisition Report.

Millennial employees go into new jobs expecting to stay at least 5 years, and yet they depart after an average of 1.5 years. The 1.5 years stat surprises no one, I’m sure. After all, everyone knows that Millennials are the most disloyal employees out there. They are known to use their free-wheeling twenties and thirties to pop in and out of organizations all over the place. Before you even have the chance to get a nameplate on their cubicle, they’re gone.

It was the first part of the Aberdeen stat that had us all aghast. Apparently, Millennials like and anticipate stability more than we thought. They look forward to staying at a company long enough to make their mark, develop professionally, and move up. So what’s going wrong between that initial acceptance of the job offer and the resignation that comes far sooner than anyone planned? Allow me to speculate on some potential causes.

Their expectations are too high

A Millennial goes into a new job – particularly a first job after college – believing it will be the be all, end all of career satisfaction. They will wow the higher-ups, save the company if not the world, and achieve stardom in a single bound. Unfortunately, this is not exactly how it works out, and they are gravely disappointed.

Companies have great branding

In the recruiting world, there has been a major emphasis on employer branding as of late. Organizations are pouring lots of effort and resources into showcasing why they are the best places to work. The only trouble is, often the reality doesn’t live up to the hype. Millennials jump ship because what the career experience they’re getting is vastly inferior to the experience they were promised.

For more reasons, check out the full post at Intuit's Fast Track blog.