Professional Savvy

According to Forbes’ , the 100 Most Power Women list isn’t about celebrity or popularity; it’s about influence. In assembling the list, Forbes looked for women who run countries, big companies or influential nonprofits. Their rankings are a combination of two scores: visibility–by press mentions–and the size of the organization or country these women lead.  Some well-known professional savvy women include:  Indra Nooyi, Chief and CEO of Pepsi,  Andrea Jung, CEO of Avon,  Ursula Burns, CEO of Xerox, Hillary Rodham Clinton,  US Secretary of  State, Michelle Obama,  First Lady of USA,  Oprah Winfrey, Chairman of HARPO Productions and Sonia Sotomamayor, US  Supreme  Court Justice.

Click here to see the full list.

By William Arruda and Kirsten Dixson

The ladder is certainly the most enduring metaphor for career advancement, but nowadays it’s no longer constructive to think of your career progression as climbing a ladder (sorry, TheLadders.com – we still love your name!). In the ladder metaphor, you ascend one rung at a time, progressing in your career through a series of milestones. At each rung, you work hard on what you’re doing at that specific moment. You forget about that next step because you’re sure you’ll get there when the right time comes without encountering any obstacles. You fall into complacency until something happens.
Maybe you…

• Realize one day that you feel bored and unchallenged. You know that there must be more to your job and crave greater fulfillment.
• Want more responsibility. You find what you are doing to be routine and know you are capable of a greater challenge.
• Decide you want more pay. After all, if you are going to work 60 or more hours a week, you might as well gain greater compensation for your efforts.
• Feel an urge to try something new. You know it’s now or never if you’re going to make a change.
• Realize that you’ve had your fill of a nasty boss or an uncomfortable organizational culture. Life’s too short to deal with an environment that stomps all over your personal values.

Outside your control…

• Your company decides it’s time to “right-size.” We know all too well that mergers and acquisitions, soft markets, shareholder pressure and more make layoffs a common part of today’s work world. Even companies that are doing well feel the need to “resize” from time to time.
• The product you’re working on gets cancelled. Let’s face it; we live in a disposable economy. What’s hot one day (think of the low fat diet) is replaced by the latest craze (like eliminating “evil” simple carbohydrates, for example). Who would have ever thought that IBM would sell their Thinkpad business to Lenovo?
• The industry you work in is hit by a destructive scandal. Think Enron, Arthur Anderson, Airbus, etc.
• Your manager leaves the company, taking several team members with her, and the company decides to eliminate your job.

Only when that something happens do you think about that next rung in your career ladder. You revise your resume, which you probably haven’t even looked at since you got your current job — months, maybe years ago. You begin to reconnect with lost professional contacts. You expend enormous effort connecting with recruiters, writing cover letters, refining your career marketing materials, searching through job boards — all the fallback methods that people used back when the work world was predictable.

Start the Steady Climb
In today’s dynamic knowledge economy, the sporadic, effortful approach to career management discussed above isn’t the most effective. Instead, you have to kick over the ladder and start viewing your career climb as a steady ramp. When you’re ascending a ramp, you don’t stop and relax — you’re constantly advancing in perpetual motion toward your professional goals. In this scenario, you don’t wait for one specific trigger to move you to the next step in your career: you manage that movement yourself, every day of your life.

Consistent Steps for Success

• You update and revise your resume in real time.
• You maintain networking contacts, rather than letting them fade away.
• You seek out tasks and activities that will move you closer to your goals.
• You apply your strengths and unique talents to every task you undertake.
• You stay connected to the job market, understand your worth and factors that are affecting your job function.

These steps ensure that you’ll always be prepared for any eventuality.
Perhaps you’re thinking, “This sounds like a lot more work than climbing a ladder.” Well, in fact, perpetual career management is a lot less work. That’s because you’re constantly building momentum.
Once you adopt this mindset and make the corresponding behaviors part of your regular routine, you never have to make a focused effort to work on your career advancement again. Instead, you’re always thinking about it and tweaking it as a matter of course. It’s like brushing your teeth in the morning: career management becomes something you just do.

TheLadders.com

Renee Weisman, a career expert for WomenCo, has summed up the top proven success strategies to what she terms PPFF:

• Performance
• Persistence
• Flexibility
• Fun

To read the full article, click here.

Here are  several ways you can learn to capitalize on your authentic self to get ahead in 2009 , from Robin Fisher Roffer from Intent.com

Let go of last year’s fears. Think about the toll your fears took on you last year. What did they keep you from achieving? Did a colleague get a promotion instead of you because you were afraid to put yourself in the hot seat? Did you lose a client because you didn’t speak up when you knew they were going down the wrong path? When you let your fears squelch your true nature, you lose your creative spark and become a pale shadow of yourself. And if you fear losing your job in 2009, your first instinct might be to retreat to your office and “shut down.” This is the exact opposite of what you should be doing right now, not just to save your job but to help keep your company viable in tough times.

Remember, being authentic as an employee isn’t about self-expression for its own sake; it’s about bringing all your unique gifts to the table in order to benefit your company. You have to put yourself out there completely and fearlessly in order to keep your organization alive and growing.

Unleash those marketable parts of your personality you normally keep bottled up. Let’s say you’re highly creative or a great problem solver. Have you really been making these traits work for you? Or do you just come to work every day, head for your office, and complete your projects the way your higher-ups have taught you to—even if you’ve come up with a better way of doing things that will save you time and the company valuable dollars?  

Stifling these personality traits at work will only harm you in the long run. Sure, to your higher-ups you might be known as the guy who does a good enough job and stays out of the drama, but think about how pleased your boss would be if you came to him with a money-saving idea right about now.

Pick a boundary. Resolve to push it this year. Have you morphed from warm and outgoing to rigid and back biting simply because you think that’s what the business world demands? Or have you become bland and businesslike just because your boss operates that way? If you’ve been hiding a part of yourself just to fit in—whether it’s your flair for the dramatic, your offbeat sense of humor, or your uncanny ability to get people to open up to you—you should take a hard look at what you’re giving up to fit into the accepted mold and make 2009 the year you break out of it.  

If you’re convinced you’d accomplish more by taking an active role with customers rather than toiling behind the scenes, for example, approach your boss with the idea. It may seem scary to make such a bold move in tenuous times, but leaders will appreciate any innovation that will get business moving right now.

Take your talents straight to the top. Don’t keep your ideas for the business within your department. Ask your higher-ups for a chance to share them. Point out to them how your ideas align with those aspects of the business they care about. And if you’re working for a stratified corporation, don’t despair—there are ways for savvy employees to penetrate the boundaries of the organizational chart.

Read the company website. Listen carefully to team pep talks from higher-ups. If you can manage it, introduce yourself at company events and ask at the appropriate juncture in your conversation, “What’s keeping you up at night?” The answer should reveal the challenge they need to meet or the special project they want to put into motion. You could be the person to support their efforts.

Speak the language of benefits. It’s easy to get so wrapped up in your own ideas that no one can relate to you. It doesn’t matter how clever you are if those in power don’t “get” what you’re trying to do. As a fish out of water, it’s your job to find a common language that allows you to communicate your thoughts and ideas. You must take the time to understand what’s important to the person you’re trying to influence. It’s all about preparation and performance.  

While there isn’t exactly a wrong way to be at the office, there is a wrong way to express your ideas. Sometimes an idea that seems perfectly clear to you might not be so obvious to those around you. A successful fearless fish will stand in the shoes of the person she is pitching and explain with visual words and concrete examples how the idea will benefit the business.

Don’t wear a mask or manipulate.When you unleash your inner fearless fish, make sure you’re being the real you and not wearing a mask or manipulating your personality in order to steal attention or get along with everyone from Joe in the mail room to Bob the CEO.   

Fearless fish are comfortable in their own skin and know that they can’t please everyone. And rather than avoiding or resenting those who are different from them, they accept and even enjoy the differences. If, in 2009, you use your own fearless fish nature to start nurturing the unique qualities of everyone around you, I think you’ll find that at your office problems are solved more quickly and with better results and that the general mood is lifted.

Let your style shine, not shock. If you’ve deliberately adopted an unusual form of dress to stand out at work, you may be coming across as contrived rather than unique. Instead of wearing torn jeans in a workplace filled with tailored suits, simply adapt your look for the most harmonious collaboration. Show your style by the colors you choose and by how you accessorize. Something as small as an interesting watch or a fashion-forward pair of shoes or tie can say, “I’m so much more than what you think I am.”  

Dressing provocatively just to stand out isn’t the proper course for a fearless fish. People will see right through and will start thinking of you as someone who is desperate for attention. It’s not authentic, and you’re not fooling anyone.

Find (and be) a fearless advocate. It helps to have someone around who “gets” you, especially when it’s someone you admire. Such people can help strengthen your trust in yourself and show others you’re someone to notice. If no one advocates for you now, look for the person in your office or your field with whom you can establish a connection. Communicate your interest and admiration, and open yourself up to that individual. Both of you can gain from it.  

Once you’ve found an advocate, you should start advocating for someone as well. Be a leader to the newly arriving fish out of water at your office. Compassionate leadership benefits everyone. Learning from younger or less experienced people spurs evolution and creates staying power for the senior members of the team. For the fish out of water, an added benefit is that by generously sharing your own expertise, you become involved and integral.

Be different. Make a difference. It’s not the wallflower who’s going to help a company go green, or the conformist who will invent the new business model or product. As a fish out of water, you can create change—and be an inspiration—because you don’t blend in, you do get noticed, and when you put the tools for being a fearless fish into practice, you’ll also be heard.  

Robin Fisher Roffer is the author of The Fearless Fish Out of Water: How To Succeed When You’re The Only One Like You. An acclaimed speaker and CEO of Big Fish Marketing—one of the entertainment industry’s preeminent brand marketing and digital advertising agencies—she fearlessly advises clients like A&E, Bravo, CNN, Comedy Central, FX, MTV, NBC Universal, and Sony Pictures.  For more information, please visit fearlessfishoutofwater.com  and www.robinfisherroffer.com