Tag Archives: career

My Advice for a Soon-to-Be Marketing Graduate

By Dr. Laura Hills, Blue Pencil Institute, www.bluepencilinstitute.com

This week, a marketing student from a local university wrote to me to ask for my thoughts about entering the field. Here’s what I told him. See if you agree:

Marketing is a fast moving train — a field that constantly evolves. What worked yesterday won’t necessarily work today and what worked today may not work tomorrow. So to do well as a marketer, you’ve got to keep your finger on the pulse of what’s going on and be willing and quick to change strategies.

Social media has been a game changer. Not all that long ago you needed loads of money to get people’s attention. Today anyone with an Internet connection who is smart and works at it is in the position to create marketing buzz and scoop up market share. That’s both exciting and scary.

There is creativity in marketing. But marketing relies on being very observant and cool-headed too. Past performance, focus groups, surveys, and other marketing tools can help you predict future outcomes. But these are only predictions. That’s where the creativity comes in. Every now and then someone comes along who breaks all the rules and captures the market. There is science to marketing. But there is also art.

A marketer can never sit on his or her laurels. You’re only as good as your latest effort. Marketing with passion is key to a long and successful career. Care about what you’re marketing, to whom, and why you’re marketing it. Otherwise you’ll spend your life selling more widgets no one needs and not living your passion.

I’m a Role Model? When Did that Happen?

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By Dr. Laura Hills, President, Blue Pencil Institute, www.bluepencilinstitute.com

In the past week, three different younger professionals have told me that they look up to me as their role model. These have been unsolicited comments from younger people I know in different fields and who don’t know one another. It strikes me that somewhere along the line I have morphed into being a person who younger people respect and even want to emulate. Does this mean that I am now a sage? A Wise Woman? Perhaps.

I have learned a thing or two over the years, I suppose. I have accomplished some things too. I’ve raised daughters who have blossomed into remarkable young women. I am married to a man who adores me and who is the love of my life. I live comfortably. I’ve made contributions to my community. And despite the usual bumps and bruises along the way, I’ve managed to keep my sense of humor and even all of my own teeth. I’m no spring chicken. So, I guess it does seem plausible that I am now a role model.

This is a humbling realization. The weight of that responsibility is just hitting me, and I am awed by it. It turns out that my own success and the way I’ve carried myself through my life has mattered more to the younger people around me than I’d ever realized or imagined.

Being Excellent in the Age of Mediocrity

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By Dr. Laura Hills, President, Blue Pencil Institute, www.bluepencilinstitute.com

Excellence – it’s what we admire in others and what we strive for every day. But what does it mean to be excellent? Are we excellent because we achieve excellent results? Does how we achieve those results matter? Do excellent efforts and intentions make us excellent, regardless of the outcome? Must we strive for excellence in everything we do? Can we justify being excellent in some areas of our work and our lives and not in others?

If you’ve already achieved a high level of excellence, you may be further concerned about whether and how you can sustain your excellence day after day, year after year, or even, decade after decade. You may wonder how you can prevent that all too common “whatever” or “good enough” attitude that creeps into place when we fall prey to inertia, boredom, arrogance, and complacency. How do we remain excellent when it seems that no one notices or cares what we do, when we are surrounded by others who don’t share our value of excellence, when we are operating in a time that others have dubbed the “age of mediocrity”?

Excellence is a hungry mouth. It clamors for constant feeding. And it can vanish in an instant. That means that we must be vigilant about our excellence. It’s not enough to have been excellent at one time. We can’t rest on those laurels. We’re only as excellent as we are right now, in this moment, in these circumstances. Consider Colin Powell, who says, “If you are going to achieve excellence in big things, you develop the habit in little matters. Excellence is not an exception; it’s a prevailing attitude.” That sounds a lot to me like Aristotle, who is attributed as having said, “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, therefore, is not an act, but a habit.”

What I’ve learned working with career professionals for more than 30 years is that the best way to become and remain excellent is to develop excellence as a habit. Excellence, therefore, must become not only what we think or what we want to be, but who we are. That means three things: that excellence in small things does indeed matter, that we must surround ourselves with individuals who can support our excellence, and most of all, that we must repeat excellence again and again and again — until excellence becomes engrained in us.

Is Your Attire Hurting Your Career?

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By Dr. Laura Hills, President, Blue Pencil Institute (www.bluepencilinstitute.com)

Here are five signs that what you wear to work may be hurting your career:

Your boss has told you explicitly that you need to wear more professional attire.
Someone in your office feels compelled to remind you to “dress nicely” for important meetings and special events.
A coworker with equal or lesser skills but a nicer wardrobe was promoted over you.
On those odd days when you do take a little extra time with your professional attire, your coworkers want to know if you’re going on a job interview or if something else is happening to you.
You keep asking to be considered for a more visible role in your organization but you are not offered those opportunities.

Does any of this sound familiar? If so, your attire may be having a negative effect on your career. Whether you like it or not, you may have to make some wardrobe changes in order to achieve your career goals.

Tip: Notice what the most successful people in your organization wear to work and emulate them. Dress for the job or level of position you want, not the one you have now.

The Barista with the Blank Face: Three Hallmarks of Professional Excellence

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The other day I stepped into a local coffee shop where I smiled and said hello to the barista behind the counter. The young woman neither responded verbally nor smiled, but rather, stared at me blankly waiting for me to tell her the next monotonous coffee order she’d have to fill. While her response was obviously far from what any employer would hope for in a customer service representative, what struck me most about my barista was how apparently miserable she was in her job. I felt sorry for her.

The barista with the blank face clearly wasn’t happy, and because of that, I have to say that she wasn’t excellent in her job. Getting a cup of coffee should be a pleasant experience, not one where the customer feels that his or her order is a burden. Because of my barista’s poor response, my overall experience in the coffee shop that day was lackluster, even though the coffee was hot and delicious. I thought more broadly about the excellent customer service experiences I’ve had elsewhere and the excellent individual performance I’ve witnessed. While professional excellence may vary from one person to the next, it struck me that there are three hallmarks of personal excellence that are always in place – and that this unfortunate young woman lacked. Excellent career professionals:

1. Sincerely want to better the business. Have you ever come up with a solution to a problem in your company or suggested a better way of doing things or of providing better service to your clients? Do you treat the company you work for as though it is your own? If you love what you do and you are committed to excellence, you’ll be constantly on the lookout for ways to improve your business, whether it’s your “coffee shop” or someone else’s. If my barista owned the shop, I doubt that she’d have behaved as she did. Or certainly, if she did, the shop couldn’t survive long.

2. Are constantly learning and enlarging their expertise. Do you read books, professional journals, and newsletters pertaining to your work? Do you attend conferences of your professional association and participate in courses, either face-to-face or online? Do you know and regularly visit several blogs and/or websites that help you keep abreast of your field? The career professional who is passionate about gaining new knowledge is better equipped for the future and has more to contribute. It’s a likely guess that my unfortunate barista hadn’t learned anything new on her job or about her work since her initial training.

3. Get in the “flow” of their work. Flow occurs when we lose track of time and are 100% engaged in what we’re doing. Do you find yourself staring at the clock and waiting for each break or the end of the day? As the day is winding down do you find yourself counting the minutes until you can bolt out the door? If you’re just punching a clock at work, like my barista, you’re most likely not performing excellently. Notice the times when you’ve gotten lost in your work and were fully present in the moment. Strive to have more and more flow times like those.

Career professionals who are truly excellent don’t put on a set of behaviors and act the part (though in this case, I’d have preferred that to my barista’s blank stare). They are excellent from the inside out, making their excellence genuine.

Are you looking for more ways to increase your personal and professional excellence? Or, would you like to use an interesting tool to help your employees to increase their personal and professional excellence? If so, check out my Pinterest board, “25 Rules for Being Excellent” at http://pinterest.com/drlaurahills/25-rules-for-being-excellent/. And the next time you encounter excellence – or the opposite of excellence, like my barista with the blank stare — think of the three hallmarks of excellence I’ve identified and look for other lessons that you can apply to your own life and career. And remember, your client’s experience will suffer if you’re not excellent – even if your coffee is hot and delicious. – Dr. Laura Hills, President, Blue Pencil Institute, www.bluepencilinstitute.com.