Moving to a New Blog

I have created a new blog and will be using it as my primary blog going forward. I have also re-posted a number of my favorite posts from this blog to the new blog to get it started. I will no longer be updating this blog so if you subscribe to this blog, you will want to change your subscription to the new blog:

Peak Portfolio

Game Changing

“The only winner in the game is the one that walks away from the game”–Pee Wee, Superfly: The Untold Story of Frank Lucas the American Gangster

Here’s a quote that I can relate to. Are you playing a game you can be successful at? If you do become successful at the game you’re playing, will you be happy with the outcome? I’ve talked myself out of many new business ventures because I took the time to consider what my life would be like if I was successful. There are some games in life in which the participants are all losers. Are you playing in any of those games? If yes, maybe it’s time to change the game you’re playing.

Resume Rules

There must be thousands of books, articles, and blog posts focused on how to write a resume. So why write another one? There’s a saying that the best way to learn something is to teach it. I have found this to be true in writing as well. It’s a great way to structure your research on a topic and organize your thoughts. So that’s what this is, a compilation of my thoughts on resume rules. Some are based on advice I have heard or read from others I don’t recall and therefore can’t give credit. Others are based on my own preferences from reviewing hundreds of resumes in past hiring efforts.

1. Heading: State name, city/state, phone, and email. Don’t put “phone:” or “email:” in front of the contact info. Just put 555.123.4567 and john@johndoe.com. Minimize the info to just the essentials. Don’t include a fax number or full address. You don’t care about responses by mail since they are typically standard “we received your resume” responses from HR. Fax numbers label you as “old school”.
2. Simplify: Eliminate clutter. Tighten up sentences (see Elements of Style). Use the least amount of words and information possible to get your point across. Look at each title, sentence, and word in the resume and determine if the information is redundant or unimportant.
3. White space: Ensure adequate white space by having a minimum of 1 inch margins on the sides, .75 on the top, and .5 on the bottom.
4. Graphics: No lines. No pictures. No fancy anything.
5. Fonts: Stick with one font throughout. Use size 11 font. Use Times New Roman or Arial only. Strategically use bold font to structure the resume and guide the eyes through the resume.
6. Bullets: limit bulleted lists to 3-6 bullets.
7. Proofreading: Make sure there are no spelling errors or grammatical errors. This seems obvious but you’d be surprised at how many people have mistakes in their resumes.
8. Paper: If mailing the resume, use plain white paper of good quality. Colored or textured paper is too risky. This is kind of like the advice to stick with a white dress shirt with no patterns if you aren’t a fashion genius. You’re better off just sticking with what you know will leave an impression of professionalism.
9. Relevance: Put yourself in the hiring manager’s shoes. What are the key things they are looking for when scanning a resume? For example, years of experience, type of experience, education, past employers, titles. On first pass, they are looking for signs that they should read the entire resume. By skimming through your resume, the hiring manager should be able to determine “at a glance” that you have the experience, education, and professionalism to warrant more of their time.
10. Content: First, forget the standard BS about roles and responsibilities or job descriptions in your resume. Focus on the key things that a hiring manager cares about. Have you managed people? How many and for how long? What did you accomplish in the job? If you list a project, what was your role on that project? Were you in the driver seat or were you just along for the ride? Second, focus on quantifying the benefits of your accomplishments. For example, “renegotiated the contract, saving 35% ($2 million) annually” or “eliminated dead weight, increasing sales per employee by 27%”.
11. Summaries: If you add a summary at the beginning of your resume, it should be 3-4 bullets. It should concisely characterize you in a few bullets. For example:
    - 20 years of project management experience with Fortune 500 companies
    - 10 years experience managing 10-15 employees
    - Harvard MBA
    - Project Management Professional (PMP)
    If I was looking for a very senior project manager, I wouldn’t need to read the rest of the resume to know I want to interview this person. The goal of this section is to characterize yourself in a few bullets so that a hiring manager will decide to interview you without reading any further. If your bullets can’t do that, don’t include them.
12. Length: My recommendation is to stick with 1-2 pages. Often the hiring manager will be scanning through dozens of resumes. It’s refreshing to find a quality 1-2 page resume when digging through a pile of 4-6 page resumes that go on and on.
13. Categories: Use “Experience” instead of “Professional Experience”. It’s cleaner and less flashy. My recommendation is to use the following categories: Summary (see 11), Experience, Publishing (only if published. This could also be added to the Personal category), Community (only if significant role), Education, and Personal (see 14).
14. Personal: I recommend adding a few sentences at the end of the resume that bring out your personality and show that you are a real person.
15. LinkedIn: LinkedIn is another place to house an online version of your resume. One thing I like about LinkedIn resumes over standard resumes is the ability to solicit referances and incorporate them into the resume under each position.

Feel free to suggest your own resume rules in the comments as I know there are many who would disagree with me on #12.

Lastly, resumes are a standard selling tool for job searching but they shouldn’t be your primary selling tool. Networking is a much more effective way to find a job and resumes are secondary if you already know the hiring manager or, better yet, have worked with them in the past. And you know you have arrived when your reputation and body of work (accomplishments, keynotes, books, articles, blog, etc…) is substantial enough that you don’t need a resume.

Are You Ready to be Fired Tomorrow?

”The cemeteries are full of people who couldn’t be replaced” — Michael Gartenberg’s grandfather

This quote doesn’t just apply to life, it also applies to business. Everyone can be replaced in business. This is especially true in big companies. It’s easy to get caught up in thinking you will never be let go as it would take several people to replace you and your subject matter knowledge is too valuable. If you think this, think again. Everyone can be replaced. And it doesn’t matter if the company has to hire several people at a greater cost to fill in void if you left. Nobody will ever admit “you know, we should have given John Doe a 10% raise instead of paying 100% more to hire two people to do his job.”

The other thing to consider is the lack of loyalty companies have to their employees today. It’s no wonder that employees jump companies every few years for more money or a better title.

Given that you can be replaced, the question you should ask yourself is: Are you ready to be fired tomorrow? If not, what should you be doing today to make sure you’re prepared in the event that you become a casualty of a re-org, lay-off, or a bad boss? Here are a few things to consider:

• Networking: People wait until they need a job to start networking. At this point it’s too late. See my last post on Networking to Develop Friendships for more on how to network effectively.
• Benefits: Consider getting personal health insurance. My experience has been that it cost me less money to get my own personal health insurance plan for me and my wife than it did to pay extra to have her on my past employer’s insurance plan. One benefit of having your own insurance is you don’t have to change insurance every time you change jobs. I’ve also heard of some people negotiating a higher salary if they elect to get their own insurance.
• Savings: As the saying goes, save money for a rainy day. You should have no less than 6 months of your current salary in savings. 12 months is even better. You should never let yourself be 1-2 paychecks away from losing everything. Be ready so you don’t have to find a job in desperation in the case that you’re ever surprised by a lay-off or firing.

These are just a few things you can do to prepare for the possibility of being fired. I’ve been a solo consultant for the past 3 years and I like to tell people I get let go every 3-6 months by design. That’s part of being a consultant. For this reason, I plan ahead for it and it’s not a big deal if I don’t have a new consulting engagement lined up immediately following completion of another.

Bottom line: Prepare to be fired so you will be ready if/when it eventually happens to you.

Networking to Develop Friendships

I was talking with one of my friends yesterday about networking and how most people seem to approach it looking at what other people can do for them. I came across this quote today that applies:

“The true measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do him absolutely no good.” –Ann Landers, American advice columnist

I think we should consider this in our approach to networking. Instead of looking for people who can help you, just look for good people. Then focus on developing a friendship and more importantly, being a good friend. This approach may or may not result in people helping you succeed but it will result in new friendships and that can be more rewarding anyway.

Suggestion 1: Set a new rule for yourself not to ask anyone for help unless you have met them in person multiple times and have been in contact within the past 3 months just to catch up. If you haven’t invested the time in a relationship, you probably shouldn’t be asking for help.

Suggestion 2: Focus on helping your friends. My experience has been that friends will return the favor without you even having to ask.

Don’t Conform, Succeed

I’m giving special consideration to this quote as I think it applies by my business as a solo consultant and my strategies as an investor:

No one can possibly achieve any real and lasting success or get rich in business by being a conformist.” –J. Paul Getty, industrialist, oil tycoon

First, as a solo consultant, it’s easy to fall in line with the crowd and achieve a modest level of success. The standard model for solo consulting is to become an hourly contractor. This model is the path of least resistance as there are contractor agencies everywhere looking to broker relationships between the clients and consultants. This is ideal for a new consultant who doesn’t already have a network of contacts. After a few years of success as a contractor, the consultant will hit a ceiling on the hourly rate that is possible as a contractor. The only way to break through this ceiling and achieve real success as a solo consultant is to be a non-conformist and start charging based on value. I’m currently focusing on making this transition myself so I really appreciated this quote.

Second, I believe this to be true of investing. In order to be a real success in investing, you have to be a non-conformist. Think about it, if you conform with the crowd, you will only match the market’s performance (which represents the crowd). Achieving a different result requires you to go against the crowd. The challenge is in determining when the crowd is right and when it’s wrong. Warning: being a non-conformist can also mean you do worse than the crowd. I have found my most successful investment picks to be when a great company’s stock is punished for the wrong reason. For example, the whole market tanks due to a panic but you can’t find a single bit of bad news about a great company’s performance that would justify a lower stock price. Going against the crowd during a panic takes courage but in my experience it can definitely payoff. I’ve also lost big on a stock because I didn’t agree with the crowd and watched it nose-dive to the tune of 50%. All I can hope for is to be right more times than I’m wrong when going against the crowd.

How about you? How are you conforming to the crowd today and how might your chances of success be improved by taking a non-conformist approach?

Should PMs become Portfolio Managers?

Anand Sanwal poses an interesting question on his blog, investiledysfunction:

why are project managers running portfolio management efforts within their organizations if it is a different skillset altogether

This is a question that should be considered when defining career paths for project managers. Project managers are often execution focused and not cut out for the more strategic work of defining and optimizing portfolios. Anand describes this later in his post: 

Picking the right projects as part of a portfolio is a strategic, financial and risk discipline and very different than the skills possessed by project managers. If you are in the handful of project managers who can do it all, please don’t write to tell me this. You are awesome and a rare gem. I’m talking about the average project manager who doesn’t have the project management + strategy, finance, risk, etc skills.

I agree completely. Portfolios are often defined based on the scope of an executive’s area of accountability within a company. These executives need portfolio managers to assist them in determining what the organization should be doing while a project manager is more focused on how they should be doing it. In other words, portfolio management is a business-focused leadership function and project management is a project-focused management function. I agree with Anand that the majority of project managers do not have the business strategy and planning experience to perform this function well.

Are You a Micro-managing Control Freak?

“The best executive is the one who has sense enough to pick good men to do what he wants done, and self-restraint to keep from meddling with them while they do it.” Theodore Roosevelt, 26th president of the U.S.

This is a great quote and one that new managers should consider. Often, new managers try to control everything in their organization due to fear of failure in their new responsibilities. What they eventually learn is that they can’t succeed as a manager if they are caught up in the details of doing the work and not focusing on managing others doing the work. Also, everyone hates working for a micro-manager. Once you get a reputation for micro-managing, you will not attract the best people and will therefor limit your potential for success.

A better approach is to focus on leading by providing direction on the results to be achieved. Once your people have proven their trustworthiness on small things, give them big things and let them run with them. Encourage your team to bring problems to you early enough that you can help resolve them before they jeopardize the overall objective. As long as you keep your eye, and their eyes, on the end result desired, there’s no need to micro-manage every detail about how they get the job done.

If you can’t rely on your people to get the job done, then that brings us back to the quote. One of your most significant responsibilities is to pick good people. That makes leading and managing a whole lot easier. I know I’m just restating what hundreds of management books have already said but it’s surprising how many new managers don’t understand this.

This quote also reminded me of an article I read several years ago. It talked about management progression and highlighted four transitions a manager must make to climb the ladder to the executive level:

1. Transition from doing the work to managing the people doing the work
2. Transition from managing people doing the work to managing managers
3. Transition from managing managers to managing an organization
4. Transition from managing an organization to managing a business

Each transition is very difficult to make as it requires letting go of the things that were required to be successful at the previous level. I see this all the time with project managers. They can’t make the transition from doing the work to managing the people doing the work. They keep getting too involved in doing the work because that is what they were good at before becoming a project manager. I imagine it is just as difficult to transition from managing an organization to managing a business.

Bottom line: Climbing this ladder of management progression is much easier if you take Theodore Roosevelt’s suggestion above.

Book Review | Boone by T. Boone Pickens, Jr.

My favorite type of book is the autobiography as it gives me a chance to learn from other’s experiences. This book is one of the better business autobiographies I have read. Boone Pickens Jr. is an entrepreneur who started out in the 1950s with $2500. Over the next 30 years, he built Mesa Petroleum, America’s largest independent oil company, worth close to $3 billion at the time this book was published. 

The most interesting thing about Mr. Pickens is that in addition to being an entrepreneur who has built successful businesses, he is also a dealmaker who has attempted hostile takeovers of some of the world’s largest companies, including Gulf Oil, Phillips, and Unocal. In each of these cases, he was unable to gain control of the companies but walked away with significant amounts of money as the management and boards of these companies spent enormous amounts of money and influence to keep their largest shareholder from taking away their control of the companies. Here is an interesting excerpt from the book:

“I pointed out that the managements and directors of the two hundred Business Roundtable companies owned less than one one-tenth of 1 percent of the stock in their own firms. A recent study revealed that 387 of the S&P 500 companies had adopted anti-shareholder proposals. Some 170 companies had changed their bylaws to restrict their shareholders’ ability to make charter changes. Forty-three had instituted poison pills, and more than two hundred had classified boards.” –Boone by T. Boone Pickens, Jr (p.285)

I find it interesting that an executive team and board of directors can have more control over a company than the owners. It definitely makes me realize the importance of evaluating the management teams and boards of companies I invest in to make sure they have a significant ownership position to ensure their objectives are aligned with the rest of the shareholders.

If you’re interested in studying big businesses and understanding how they operate at the top level, I highly recommend this book. It will give you an education, entertain you, and give you a glimpse into the world of hostile takeovers. 

Negotiating Leverage: 15 Factors that Determine Positional Advantage

I’m convinced that leverage is the most significant factor in determining the outcome of a negotiation. Mastering leverage is an art. The negotiator who understands leverage, can identify it accurately, and can use it to their advantage will often beat the more skilled and experienced negotiator.

Your goal as a negotiator is to know the reality of who has the leverage and then create the perception in the mind of your opponent that you have all the leverage. One way to do this is to explore the factors that determine leverage in a negotiation. I have identified 15 factors that play a role in determining who has the leverage advantage in a negotiation.

1. Time: who has a greater incentive to complete the deal rapidly?
2. Competition: competition can be one of the most effective ways to generate leverage in a negotiation.
3. Marketability: who is more marketable as a customer, supplier, or partner?
4. Opportunity: who has more to gain in the long-term if the deal is completed?
5. Investment: who has more invested in completing the deal?
6. Environment: home field advantage?
7. Information: how much do you know about your opponent and how much do you control what they know about you?
8. Need: who needs the deal more?
9. Importance: how important is the deal to your opponent and their company?
10. Pressure: how much pressure is your opponent getting from their management to complete the deal and how can you help to increase that pressure?
11. Composure: who is more composed emotionally and who is controlling the agenda in the negotiation?
12. Precedence: what negotiating precedence has been set in past negotiations with your opponent and what precedents are you setting for future negotiations?
13. Emotions: how are fear, greed, and pride part of the negotiation?
14. Limitation: what are the true limitations and perceived limitations for each term in the negotiation?
15. Policy: what policies does your opponent have to operate within and how can you use policies to your advantage?

Determining who has the leverage in a negotiation (by considering each of these 15 factors) will put you in a better position to strategize ways to generate leverage and perception of leverage. To learn more about these 15 factors that determine leverage in a negotiation, check out my white paper on the topic:

Negotiating Leverage: 15 Factors that Determine Positional Advantage (pdf)