My really short summary is that the book talks about how most promises are perceived as light weight or meaningless, and that businesses that take the risk of making deeper promises also buy credibility at the same time. Lots of interesting examples of it in the book, and it feels like a good analysis. As consumers we’re trained to expect fine print and conditions on everything, the rare business that just makes a simple and direct promise stands out of the crowd easily.

It’s got me thinking more, because I’m deep believer in trust and credibility, and in truth there’s nothing I like better than the kinds of things that stem from living and working that way. When you know you’re good at something, willing to cover the loss or mistake if it happens, why not make sure customers know that?

It’s a small book, only about 150 pages, maybe a 30 minute read. I think my only negative was that I wish it was longer, but in fairness it does a good job of covering a fairly narrow topic. The real value is taking the idea and seeing what you can do with it personally or professionally.

As always we have a busy agenda, and perhaps the most interesting item for me is a chance for us discuss what changes we want to make to the by-laws. The goal is to agree on the main changes, and leave the final language for a follow up discussion. I’m going to mention some ideas I hope to get support for below, but I hope you’ll read our by-laws and send me (or any other board member) your ideas on changes you would like to see. Changes are hard, as they should be, and it’s often tough to figure out what belongs in the by-laws and what should be a matter of our standard procedures. Come up with ideas, and we’ll sort it out.

Now, the changes I hope to put out for discussion:

• Removing the concept of the Executive Committee (President, both VP’s, Past President, and Exec Director). Officers would remain, the committee would not.
• Elect officers directly from the board – removing the officer nomination committee.
• Require all board members to be elected/re-elected, right now officers are appointed by the board and not longer run for re-election
• Change the term of officers to one year
• Clarify and simplify the term limits
• Move the date of the election to mid summer so it doesn’t conflict with the Summit, and thus would get the full attention of our members
• Add language authorizing officers to speak and write without presenting an official position of PASS (much as I do here)(not sure how we do this legally, maybe just require a disclaimer)
• Require meeting minutes to be published with 10 business days
• Limit companies to no more than 3 employees/representatives on the board, and to no more than one serving as an officer

We’re also going to be discussing transparency, an area where I think we still do badly. Transparency is also hard, it means showing our members that we don’t always agree, that we make mistakes, and in general makes you feel a bit vulnerable. Yet, without transparency, PASS seems devoid of life and interest. Not all board members are bloggers, and we can’t expect them to just start – how do we get them to communicate better? Or said differently, how we can show you what they are doing in a way that’s helpful to all?

I like the suggestion from Jack Corbett that we should consider everything open by default, and only mark a very few things as confidential (an example would be a sponsorship package we negotiate with a vendor for the Summit). We really have relatively few areas like this, and it would remove the fear of ‘saying something wrong’. I think everyone who reads my posts like this one understands that it’s my own view, not an official ‘position’, and that i have my own ideas and biases. Should I run for re-election, you’ll have a lot of information to support your decision to vote for or against me – I think that’s largely not true for most of the other board members.

One final point on that. It’s not enough to just do. Our members have to understand what we do and how long it took, and if it worked. From time to time we’ll show them a failure, and in my experience being willing to admit failures is a requirement of good leadership, and pragmatically, failures almost always smack of truth, lending more credence to the times we write about our successes.

Let me know what you think.

The starting point for this is that many good employees feel under appreciated, under paid, and are often passed over for interesting assignments and promotions. Why? Their boss just doesn’t know what they have done for the company.

How can that be you ask?

Most managers are busy, and they have an expectation that when a task is assigned it will get done. They may see you working late or through lunch (and appreciate it), but even with a small team it’s easy to lose track of who is working hard and effectively versus those that just work hard, and then again those that just spend a lot of hours at the office.

Now you may think that isn’t fair. Perhaps not, but it is the reality. That leaves you with a fork in the road:

• Work hard and do things that need to be done without being asked, and hope someone notices
• Do the above, but make sure you track it and share it with your manager at some point.

Assuming that you are taking the latter option, how do you do it? I’ve seen three main strategies:

• Log your accomplishments, times you came in on a weekend, extra hours, great ideas, etc, and share them at review time (note that sounds a lot like a private blog!). Sound technique, the only downside is that you only get to alter perception once a year.
• Do somewhat the same, but in less formal fashion – perhaps dropping in to see the boss once a week to ‘check-in’ and casually mention any extra effort. This often goes along the lines of ‘I had a heckuva time getting up Saturday morning for stuff with the kids after leaving here at 2 am’. Or you can be more direct, as fits you.
• Letting everyone know that you did something extra – lunch with colleagues, team meetings, chance encounters with others

You can combine those as you want, and many use all three. You might see those as pushy, or even devious, but it all comes down to how you deliver it AND how it’s perceived. This often depends on the person you’re working for – do they get and appreciate the value of you sharing your accomplishments, or do they see it as sucking up or worse?

As a manager, I like to hear about times when an employee has done something well, because I don’t always know and I want to make sure to keep the rankings of who delivers up to date in my head. At the same time, as soon as it starts to feel like they over emphasizing every line of code they did, I start to apply a filter, which comes close to zeroing out the value. The same if I see it as taking credit for work or ideas that weren’t really theirs (and that does happen – especially if the ‘other guy’ isn’t speaking up).

As a manager, I want the insight, within these rules:

• Never exaggerate
• If all I hear is good stuff, then you’ve moved into self serving. Share some missteps too.
• Never take credit for work done by others
• Plus points for making sure I know about good work done by someone else on the team
• Don’t try to manipulate me, but do learn what I value and what I don’t

Maybe you start to see that how you deliver is as important as what you deliver, and for those that are just giving up on the idea that the boss is all knowing, the first attempts are usually painful and awkward. Remember that it’s to be expected. Just keep working on it until you find a method that works (and remember to adjust when you get a new boss).

It’s amazing to me how much difference being good at this can make. Many years ago I worked for a company with many offices, most staffed about the same and doing about the same work for their area. There was a manager at a nearby office that was seen as being very, very good, but I had seen him and my own manager work, and in my view my boss was as good, if not better. Why was he perceived as so much better, when in fact the tasks were either done or not done? It came down to two things:

• He was co-located with the next level manager, giving him plenty of ‘hallway opportunities’ to share that he had just completed a task a couple days ahead of schedule, etc, etc
• He made it a point to make sure people knew when he did anything ahead of schedule

Said differently, he was the only one talking, so the assumption was that no one else was going anything exciting or trying to excel. That was far from the case, but most of those others dismissed it as ‘politics’ – and that was my own view as well. Looking back now I see that he was just playing the game better than the rest (which is mildly negative, but it is a competition), and that the people he worked for weren’t very good managers or they would have done more to compensate.

Some managers will work hard at seeing accomplishments (good ones), and many think (different ones) that if you don’t get it and do your own marketing that you truly don’t get it, and that in itself moves you down the list of good to great employees.

Changing focus some, as a reader/consumer of content I tend to look at it exactly the same way as I would as a manager. If every post and tweet is a ‘look what I did’, I will probably filter you out. On the other hand, if you take time to post about stuff that is just interesting and not about you, I read that and appreciate your effort (and by implication, your knowledge and skill that let you write it) and then I’ll also read with interest/patience about things you do that you want to share.

For example, yesterday I posted some notes from the South Florida Code Camp. Part of that was to share that I did a couple presentations – demonstrating competence and participation. But instead of just writing that, I tried to share more thoughts about the trip. Arguably that just means more about me, but for me blogging is first person. I could write it as more of a report, but I think that is less interesting to most people, and definitely less fun to write. Think about that for a minute – was it useful, did you find it interesting to hear about the trip, or did it just smack of shameless self promotion?

I prefer a low key approach, others tend to more aggressive (blatant?), and it’s interesting to me that people often accept a style of marketing from some people that they wouldn’t from others, in effect adjusting for the personality of the one doing the messaging. I can’t say that one is right and the other is wrong, but can say that the more conservative strategy is to err on the side of caution. Hard to undo the damage if you cross that line (which you can’t see).

Have you found a way to effectively market yourself at work?   Or seen a technique that really worked well? Or a technique that just seemed over the top?