April 3, 2013 karencatlin

Start as you mean to go on

I was surprised by the response to my post about how hard it can be to shed past reputations. Many people emailed me directly to share their personal experiences of having to leave a company to reinvent themselves. It happens more often than I’d imagined.

Since then, I’ve been thinking of how people go about recasting themselves…for a new job, as they join a new community or school, or to meet a personal goal. Is it different for children and adults? And what is the role of a parent in helping their children adapt to change?

Then I heard the phrase, “Start as you mean to go on.” It means:

Make the effort to get things right at the beginning and develop good habits to follow going forward.
Approach something new by acting as though you were already a success.

I love it. This phrase embodies both the practical and the psychological aspects of recasting yourself, of starting over.

Did I follow this advice when starting my new consulting business? Yes and no. I’m a goal oriented person and a disciplined list maker, so I’ve done well with my goals for how much networking to do each week and how often to post on my blog. These have become habits I can easily continue. The more difficult aspect of “starting as I mean to go on” has to do with my confidence. I’ve never been a consultant before, and I need to regularly tell myself that I have deep expertise and skills that are in demand. It’s just so hard to get past my inner critic who prevents me from acting as though I’m already a success.

So, I’m reaching out to you, my readers. How have you started as you meant to go on? Do you have ways to ignore your inner critic? Have you helped a child or an employee make a fresh start? What worked? I’d like to hear from you!

–Karen

March 28, 2013 karencatlin

The value of a dollar

When my kids were about 10 & 12 years old, they spent a week at my sister’s house. One night, when I called to talk with them, my brother-in-law answered the phone and told me he couldn’t believe what had happened that day. They had visited an aquarium, where he offered to buy them a souvenir from the gift shop. My kids, after walking around the shop, politely told him they didn’t need anything. This place was chock full of stuffed sea animals, books, t-shirts, and toys, and they didn’t want anything! To this day, my brother-in-law still can’t believe it.

By contrast, I wasn’t surprised. Over the years, when my husband and I took them to museums or zoos, we would tell them they could buy something from the gift store, but they need to spend their own money. Like many parents, we gave them a modest allowance to help them learn the value of a dollar. And it seemed to work. Sometimes they would buy something at a gift shop, but more often than not, they wouldn’t.

As you can imagine, hearing this story my children at the aquarium was a crowning moment for me as a parent. I was raising frugal kids who treated someone else’s money like it was their own. At the time, I gave myself a big pat on the back. And I silently thanked my friends and family who, by sharing their thoughts on allowances and spending money for kids, helped me figure out my approach.

In hindsight, I also realize how much I was influenced by a colleague, who spent hours and hours every week tracking the contractors in her department. She maintained a large spreadsheet, entering line items for each person’s hours and knowing, down to the penny, how much she could still spend each month. When her staff requested more hourly help, she would prioritize the request against the others she received, review the budget, and decide what they could afford. This system worked for her, but I vowed to never spend that kind of time on my work budget. Instead, I would delegate budget responsibility as much as possible.

As my professional responsibilities grew, so did my budget. But, keeping to my vow, I took every opportunity to push budget ownership to the mangers on my team. I’d make decisions each year about how much total budget we needed and how to divide it between my groups. But, once it was divided, I let my managers decide how to spend their budget.

Sure, my managers would come to me with expenses that they hadn’t anticipated, or opportunities that popped up that would require more budget. With each request, I’d prioritize it and see if I could support it. The requests were all reasonable, and only came to my attention when my team couldn’t figure out how to fund them from their budgets.

When my children move on to college, I want to push more budget responsibility to them. While they use their allowance today to pay for meals out, movies, gifts for friends, and so on, moving forward I want them to propose a budget for living expenses above and beyond tuition, room and board. I want them to think about their needs for books, clothing, over-the-counter medicine, and travel. I want to delegate managing this budget to them so that they learn this critical life skill. And, just like with my experience with budgeting at work, I expect that my kids will have unanticipated needs and will ask me for more money. Given their frugal experience early on, I have a feeling that these requests will all be reasonable.

I bet many of you have pushed budgeting to your teams or to your kids. Please share your strategies. I’d like to hear from you!

–Karen

March 20, 2013 karencatlin

My Lean In Story

A few months ago, the Anita Borg Institute asked me to write a story about a time I chose between fear and leaning in to my career. They wouldn’t tell me why, except that they were working on a confidential project about women leaning in, and that it would be announced in March. Right away, I knew the project was for Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In movement. And I was thrilled. I wanted to show my support for the movement, and I now had the opportunity.

Here’s the guidance I received for writing my story:

A Lean In Story is a tension point in one’s career that offers two possible outcomes: “leaning in” or “leaning back.” Examples are: asking for a raise and getting it, realizing a need to switch departments and doing it, motivating yourself to reach a difficult work goal, etc.

And here is the structure I should follow:

First-person account that follows a traditional story arc, in 500 words or less.

a) Set the stage – offer a short account of details leading up to the tension point

b) Introduce the tension point – this is typically when fear, vulnerability and doubt appear. Make sure to outline what the paths of leaning in and /or leaning back looked like

c) Decide to lean in or lean back – stories are more likely to be about leaning in but they could also be about leaning back

d) Share the resolution – how did you feel after the decision was made? How did the situation play out?

e) Show the future – how did your decision impact you, both personally and professionally. Share a positive ending about what you learned from the experience. Don’t be afraid to weave in some closing advice or words of wisdom.

While I have dozens of examples of both leaning in and leaning back over my career, I knew immediately which story to tell: when I decided to move from a great part-time job into a full-time role with a lot more responsibility. It wasn’t an easy decision to make, and I wanted to share all the reasons I didn’t think I should lean in, and why I finally did.

You can read my story at http://leanin.org/stories/karen-catlin/. While there, be sure to read some of the other stories. Each one is a pocket of inspiration in 500 words or less.

If you have a story you would like to share, visit the Lean In site and follow the steps to submit your story. I look forward to reading it!

–Karen

March 14, 2013 karencatlin

Interview with Charlene Li

To bring additional perspectives to the intersection of leadership and parenting, I interview talented professionals who are also parents. This month’s interview is with Charlene Li, founder of the Altimeter Group. She will now tell you more about herself and her views on leadership and parenting.

1) Welcome, Charlene! Please tell us about yourself.

I’m the founder of the Altimeter Group where I’m a consultant and independent thought leader on leadership, strategy, social technologies, interactive media, and marketing. Formerly, I was vice president and principal analyst at Forrester Research and a consultant with Monitor Group. I was named one of the 100 most creative people in business by Fast Company in 2010 and one of the most influential women in technology in 2009.

I’m the author of The New York Times bestseller Open Leadership. I’m also the coauthor of the critically acclaimed, bestselling book Groundswell, which was named one of the best business books in 2008.

I graduated from Harvard Business School and received a magna cum laude degree from Harvard College. I serve on the Board of Directors of the Harvard Alumni Association, as well as The Poynter Institute.

My husband and I met in business school, and we’ve been married for almost 18 years. I agree with Sheryl Sandberg that your most important career decision is your choice of a life partner. In fact, when I wrote “Open Leadership”, I thanked my husband before anyone else in the acknowledgements. I couldn’t have written it without his support.

We have two children, a son who’s in 8th grade and a daughter in 7th grade. Partly because my son is dyslexic, I left Forrester Research (after 10 years) to look for new opportunities that would allow me to spend more time with him. While it was emotionally challenging to leave, I firmly believe you should evaluate your career every 18 months. I took this advice to heart, realizing that the worst thing that could happen would be having to ask for my job back. Instead, I became an independent contractor and then decided to start my own consulting business.

2) Your latest book, Open Leadership, is about how leaders must let go to succeed. What inspired you to write it?

After I wrote my first book, Groundswell, many CEOs told me that while they understood the importance of giving up control, they didn’t want to. I would then ask them if they thought they really were in control. This idea can be traced back to Peter Drucker, who talked about breaking down hierarchy and getting away from a command and control approach to leadership. I decided to write “Open Leadership” to expand this dialog.

My primary audience for “Open Leadership” was business leaders, but I had two other audiences in mind as well: churches and families. In congregations, leadership control and hierarchy are shared between ordained leaders and lay people. They are tied by passion and belief. In families, you are tied by genetics. Regardless, the role of leadership is the same in all of these environments. You lead through the relationships you form. You have to remember that the people around you have choices; they aren’t forced to follow you.

(Karen’s two cents: With teenagers, who start looking to their peers for advice more than their parents, this idea is especially true. No one can force your kids to respect you, to listen to you, or to follow you. You need to have a solid relationship with your kids to “lead” them through their teenage years.)

3) As a parent, have you practiced a form of open leadership? Have you had to “let go” so that your children can reach their full potential?

Absolutely! All the time! One concept in my book is the “sandbox covenant,” which is about delegating responsibility by defining how big the “sandbox” is and how high its walls are. In essence, it’s about creating a safe environment for employees to practice taking on risk. This concept was very much informed by my personal experience as a parent and through my research in companies. It’s all about how to encourage people to take risks so that they can grow. After all, grit and resilience in both families and organizations is important.

When my kids were little, it was important to give them a lot of structure. As they grew, I changed the structure so that they could have more opportunities to learn. For example, when my daughter was four years old, she hated brushing her teeth. One day, I saw her looking at her toothpaste and then at the liquid soap dispenser next to the sink. I told her, “I don’t think you should do that.” But, she didn’t listen to me, started brushing her teeth with the soap, and immediately spit it out. I didn’t stop her because I wanted her to learn (and I knew she wouldn’t hurt herself). To this day, we still talk about the time she washed her mouth out with soap.

I’ve also evolved the sandbox to accommodate online activities and electronic gear. I closely monitor my kids’ online games, and one time I was concerned that another player was going to try to scam gold coins from my daughter. I warned her about it, but let her decide what to do. Well, she ignored me and ended up losing all of her hard-earned gold. Since then, I’ve seen her be more careful and aware of the people she connects with online. Even so, we have a rule that she can only accept online friend requests from people that she already knows.

My favorite chapter in “Open Leadership” is about dealing with risk and failure (Chapter 9). At work, we need to encourage people to take appropriate risks. At home, the same is true. When my son was in 7th grade, he got Cs on his report card. This was a wake up call for him, and since then he has been an A student. I’m thankful this happened to him in 7th grade, when it wouldn’t have much of an impact on high school and his college choices.

We believe in giving our kids opportunities to try a lot of things, but there are always limits. For example, they each get one hour of computer time per day, and I monitor all their incoming email and their social media accounts. While my kids may not always agree with the rules, they comply. And they talk about how they appreciate the opportunities we give them.

4) What advice would you give about developing skills as both leaders and parents? Is there a person, a book, or a course that has particularly influenced you?

The ability to listen and communicate as a leader is so critical, especially in how you scale and do it all the time. Leaders think their primary job is to talk, but they need to get input from so many places (employees, customers). With kids, we often think our job is to tell them what to do. Really it is to understand where they are and to guide them. To understand my kids’ world, I play all their games, I use their apps, and we talk about new apps we’ve heard about. It’s a way to build relationship. It takes time, but it’s so worth it.

One tool that has influenced me is the Situation-Behavior-Impact (SBI) Feedback Model. I apply it at work and at home, especially for resolving conflict. One of its mantras is, “If you have a problem, you need to tell me about it.” Recently, my daughter and I had a misunderstanding about her phone usage, and she lost her computer privilege because of it. She went off and thought about what she had done, and she came back with a written proposal for resolving the situation. She showed me that she understood my concerns, that she was committed to not repeating the situation, and what should happen if she did it again. This is an example of clearly communicating what we agreed to and who’s going to do what, which together build trust. And I firmly believe that both families and businesses are built on relationships and trust.

Thank you, Charlene, for taking the time to share your thoughts with us. I enjoyed hearing how you practice open leadership at home by providing a safe environment for your kids to take appropriate risks so that they can learn and grow. Your approach to parenting is filled with respect and strong communication, and your children must be learning valuable leadership skills that will serve them well in their academic and professional careers. How wonderful!

–Karen

March 7, 2013March 26, 2013 karencatlin

It’s a new dawn, it’s a new day

Photo of sunrise — Photo courtesy of my friend Sherry Page, who took it on an early morning walk in Sausalito, California. © 2013 by Sherry Page.

Sometimes when I write, I find myself singing a song over and over. Often it’s just a refrain, loosely connected to the topic I’m thinking about. Today, it’s the refrain from “Feeling Good” by Muse, which includes “It’s a new dawn, it’s a new day….for me.” (For those of you who are fans of Nina Simone or Michael Bublé, yes, they recorded this song as well.)

My son loves Muse, and he’s been learning to play “Feeling Good” on the piano. So, I’ve been hearing it a lot lately, and I’m not surprised to find myself singing it as I go about my day.

What is my new dawn, my new day? Turns out I entered a new phase of parenting recently: mentoring my teens about how to interview for jobs.

On Saturday, my son had an interview to be a teaching assistant for a summer program for kids from under-resourced communities. Before the interview, I told him to be prepared to ask some questions and to share why he was excited about the program. And, because the teaching assistants can propose an extra-curricular activity to lead, I asked my son what he would say in the interview if this came up. While I half expected him to say “Muse Sing-alongs”, his answer was even better: “Improv.” How fun!

The next day, my daughter wanted to talk about her upcoming interview for a summer internship at a non-profit that supports women computer scientists. What should she wear? I said to stay away from ripped jeans and hoodie sweatshirts. (We live in Silicon Valley where workplaces tend to be very casual, but I think it’s nice, even for a high school student, to look pulled together for an interview.) What should she bring? I told her to leave her heavy school backpack in the car, and bring in just a purse and a notebook. We also made sure she had driving directions, her contact’s phone number, and a list of questions to ask about the internship. Check, check, and check!

This experience made me think about what lies ahead for me as a parent. Will I rely even more on mentoring and other leadership skills to be the parent my kids need? I hope so. I feel I have a lot to share with my kids as they become adults, and so much more still to teach them. I’m thrilled they respect me enough to want to learn from me. And (humming along to the Muse tune), it fee-eels goo-oo-ood…

For those of you with college-age or adult children, I’d love to hear about the parenting skills that are important to you today. How much do they overlap with your leadership style? Please post a reply in the comments.

–Karen

March 4, 2013March 7, 2013 karencatlin

Five Reasons Why My Husband Was My Most Important Career Decision

I’ve been following Sheryl Sandberg for a few years now, starting with her TED talk in 2010. While all of her messages are powerful, I think my favorite is: “I truly believe that the single most important career decision that a woman makes is whether she will have a life partner and who that partner is.”

I’m so very thankful for my husband, and I whole-heartedly believe marrying him was the most important career decision I ever made. Here’s why.

1 – He makes me less fearful. Our daughter, who is now looking at colleges, recently asked me how I decided which college to go to. I told her I chose the closest one to home that had a great reputation. I really wasn’t adventurous back then. Since marrying my husband, however, I’ve grown less fearful of change. As a young married couple, we moved from my life-long home of Rhode Island to England, where I got international work experience. From there, we decided to relocate to the San Francisco Bay Area to pursue our careers in technology. This morning, I joked with him that we should apply to be the middle-aged married couple to go on the 501 day journey to Mars. Knowing we’re in it together, I’d do almost anything!

2 – He helps me when the going gets tough. The most stressful job I ever had was when I was 30 years old and just started at a new company. I was a localization project manager, a job I had never done before, and I was the only person in this role at my company. I had more work than I could possibly do, which caused an overwhelming amount of stress. Over dinner one night, I started crying as I told my husband about my day and how far behind I was. He then helped me think differently about my work, and how to justify I needed some more people to help me. He helped me create a model for estimating how many hours any given project would take, and therefore how many additional people I needed to get it all done. He spent his whole evening helping me. And it paid off. The next day, I presented the model to my manager, and who agreed that we needed to hire another person. My stress level dropped overnight.

3 – He shares in parenting responsibilities. Like most working moms, I complain about having to shoulder most of the parenting responsibilities for our family. However, when I needed it the most, my husband equally shared the duties. Just before having my second child, I interviewed for a new position at my software company. I got the job, even though I was about to go on maternity leave for three months. When I went back to work, I knew I would need to put in some extra hours to learn the ropes and show my commitment to this new team who were putting in long hours on a software release. So, my husband and I took turns being home by 6pm to feed and bathe our kids. Knowing I could work late, if I needed to, every other day made all the difference.

4 – He often believes in me more than I do. In the mid-2000’s, I was working part-time for a software company, and we were acquired by a larger company. As part of the acquisition, I was offered a significantly larger role, if I agreed to work full time. As I considered the new role, I started thinking of all the reasons I shouldn’t accept it. I’d have less time with my children. I‘d never managed a group of that size. I’d have a longer commute and would get less exercise. I’d have to lay off some people. I lacked experience in some of the technical areas that I would be managing. The list went on and on. My husband helped me recognize that I could and should seize the opportunity. He convinced me that we could handle the logistics of our both working full-time. He reminded me that I had the foundation to learn new technologies and that I was a talented leader. Thanks to his support and encouragement, I was able to set aside my fears. I allowed myself to envision succeeding in the new position, and I got really excited. I found the confidence to say yes.

5 – He provides balance to my aversion to risk. I’m now building a consulting business from ground zero, something I’ve never done before. My husband, bless him, is telling me not to worry about paying clients right now. He believes it’s okay to take some risks, that the money will come, and we’ll be fine in the meantime. His support and confidence is encouraging me to explore options, to invest time in networking, and to attend many events. And I’m feeling more confident every day that all of these activities will pay off.

I’m so very grateful for my husband and his unwavering support of me and my career.

Tim, for these reasons and so many others, I love you.

–Karen

March 1, 2013March 7, 2013 karencatlin

There is no secret sauce

Earlier this week, I spoke on a panel hosted by She Talks, a new forum for women entrepreneurs. The event was held in conjunction with Fashion Tech Week 2013 in San Francisco, and the other panelists were from the fashion technology industry. I felt like a fish out of water! I’m not a fashion blogger, I’m not developing innovative fashion apps, and I’m not working on wearable technology. Yet, here I was on a panel to speak about using social media, the future of the fashion tech industry, and work-life balance. And I enjoyed it!

The panel moderator, Lili Balfour of Atelier Advisors, asked me the following: We see many working moms in the media. From Marissa Mayer to Rebecca Minkoff. What do you think the secret sauce is to ‘having it all?’ Can you give us some tools to achieving success and balance?

With my 17 years of experience of being a mom while growing my career to the executive level, with a husband who is addicted to tech start-ups, I’ve had my fair share of work-life balance challenges. I could have talked all night about this topic! However, I had only a few minutes to answer, during which I did my best to provide just a few practical tips to the audience. Here is a summary of my points:

It’s important to note that work-life balance is not just a concern of working parents. We tend to push ourselves into challenging, rewarding careers. Whether you have kids, are taking care of aging parents, going back to school, or doing anything outside of work that is time consuming, it’s hard to get it all done.

But, it is the working moms in the media, like Marissa Mayer, Sheryl Sandberg, and Anne-Marie Slaughter, who are bringing a lot of attention to this issue. With their success, we can only imagine that they are in a different economic situation than we are. They can use their financial resources to address work-life balance in ways the rest of us can’t.

Even with their wealth, I don’t think they have a secret sauce for achieving balance. But, don’t lose hope! There are some ingredients we all can afford:

Outsourcing

There are many options for hiring people to help you with running your household. Depending on your budget and your personal values, outsource as much as you can. I emphasize making sure you keep in mind your values. If I had all the money in the world, I wouldn’t hire a chauffeur to drive my kids to school. Others might decide to do this, but I enjoy spending time with my kids in the car. By contrast, if money weren’t an issue, I would hire a personal chef!

Here are some ideas for outsourcing:

Housekeeper?
Catered or partially-prepared meals?
Dry-cleaning pick up and delivery?
Wash & fold service?
Grocery delivery?
Auto pay as many bills as possible?
Personal shopper?
Gardener?
Bookkeeper?

Family Chores

Your partner needs to do his or her part. Many women feel we have to do it all. Yet, our partner can and should share the household responsibilities. I know someone who split the chores by whether they were inside or outside of the house. She handled all the inside chores (cleaning, laundry, cooking, etc), and her husband took care of all the outside work (gardening, running errands, etc). While this approach might not be right for you, I share it as one example of how chores can be divided.

Your kids need to keep learning new responsibilities as they grow. One tip I got from a friend is to teach my kids, when they turned 12, to do their laundry. Sure, initially it’s going to take more time than doing it yourself, like when my daughter left lip gloss inside a pair of white jeans and I then spent about an hour treating stains. But, eventually it will be more efficient than if you were to do it all yourself.

“To Stop” List

We all have a to-do list, what about the to-stop list? Here are some of the things on my list: I stopped sending Christmas holiday letters. I stopped worrying about cleaning out the garage so I can park my car in it. I stopped one of my volunteer activities because I wasn’t getting enough satisfaction from it. Having a “To Stop” list can be liberating!

What are your ingredients for work-life balance? I’d like to hear from you!

–Karen

February 27, 2013March 7, 2013 karencatlin

My “Lean In” Checklist

There’s hype, there’s controversy. Personally, I’m ready to be part of Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In movement! Are you interested as well? Here are some things you can do to participate today:

Pre-order a copy of “Lean In” from Amazon or your favorite bookseller.
Clear your calendar for March 11, when your book will arrive. You know you will want to read it right away.
Join the movement. Enter your email address at http://www.leanin.org/.
Show your friends that you are leaning in by liking the Lean In Facebook page.
Contribute to the professional conversation by joining the Lean In LinkedIn group.
Tweet with the hashtag #leaningin.
Share your personal story of a time you chose between fear and leaning in. Post it on the Lean In site.

My next steps, once I read the book:

Write about the intersection (or perhaps collision?!) of parenting and leaning-in.
Start or join a lean-in circle.

What ideas do you have for contributing to this movement? I’d like to hear from you!

–Karen

February 25, 2013 karencatlin

Parenting Skills DO Translate to the Office

Last week, Rosabeth Moss Kanter, an author and professor at Harvard Business School, published an HBR blog post titled Why Running a Family Doesn’t Help You Run a Business. If she wanted to generate controversy, she was successful! Based on the comments, readers were incensed by her assertions about stay-at-home moms who were looking to return to the workforce. Some of her more controversial statements were that stay-at-home moms would be too focused on compassion vs. hiring the right people, and that their time spent in limited-vocabulary conversations would impact their ability to think strategically. I’m still shaking my head over that last one.

While I don’t think anyone should go into an interview thinking their stay-at-home experience will be 100% relevant, I do believe that Ms. Kantor’s article was short-sighted. To counter it, I think we need to share stories about successful re-entries into the workforce. In fact, here’s one about a former colleague of mine:

After spending ten years at home raising her three kids, Ann, a talented engineer, decided to return to the software industry. She reached out to her network of professional contacts and heard about a great job opportunity. Because of her past reputation, Ann was invited to interview for the position. Knowing she would be scrutinized for the long hole in her resume, she did a very clever thing. Using software developed by the company, Ann created a digital presentation about a home remodeling project she had recently done. Not only did she demonstrate her technical abilities, she showed that she was willing to learn and work for something she wanted, and that she had been honing her project management skills at home. As you might imagine, she got the job.

Do you know about someone who was a stay-at-home parent and successfully re-entered the workforce? Please click “Leave a reply” to share your story. I’d like to hear from you!

–Karen

February 21, 2013 karencatlin

You know how I am

My friend Liz started laughing as she read her email. Another friend had sent her a screen shot of text messages where she asked her son where he was going after school. He wasn’t happy having to keep her in the loop, but he did it. And her text back to him? “Thanks. You know how I am.”

Liz chuckled at the phrase “You know how I am” because it showed her friend being honest with her son, and having the self-awareness to realize that wanting to know his whereabouts was her concern, not his. “You know how I am” is a firm message delivered in a self-deprecating wrapper. Liz’s friend realized her son might poke fun at her for using those words, but they made it clear that she needed to know where he was going. She wasn’t going to change just because it might be inconvenient for her son.

Assuming your kids listen, they may even remember “how you are” even when you don’t explicitly say so. A few days ago, my daughter went to a cafe with a friend after school. She sent me a text message saying where she was, along with “I know you like to know where I am.” I responded with a “You know how I am. Thanks :)” I was definitely smiling.

I think this phrase is equally useful in a professional setting. Imagine working with your team on an important presentation. You might insist on numerous rehearsals before the big day, even though your team feels they can manage without them. Or you might ask your team to submit expenses a few days before the deadline so that you have time to review them. Delivering these messages with a “You know how I am” firmly states your expectations while acknowledging that you are asking them to do something because of the values or concerns you have.

The next time you need to share values or change behaviors, would using “You know how I am” help deliver the message? I’d like to hear from you!

–Karen