Elevating YOU: National Customer Service Week

Happy Thursday team! 

If you are taking Monday, October 2 off to celebrate Gandhi Jayanti, I join you in celebrating the work he did for India's liberation movement.  This celebration reminds me that I should be thankful, live with humility, follow his teachings of truth and non-violence, and most of all endeavor to live more meaningfully.   

Happy Gandhi Jayanti! 

Elevating YOU:  National Customer Service Week

You may have missed the headline news on Teamworks this weekend, but it was on celebrating YOU and National Customer Service Week.   

While we pride ourselves on creating an environment where every week is customer service week, the story was about using the week to highlight and celebrate the excellent service so many of us provide to our customers and partners every day.​

What caught me when reading the article, was the reminder that every day we can celebrate amazing customer or partner success stories using our very own eCards and Spotlight Awards. 

eCards have so many designs and can be used to say thank you, celebrate a holiday or recognize one of the Wells Fargo competencies.  

Spotlight Award allows managers to recognize team members who go up and above.  If you would like to nominate someone for the Spotlight Award, send me an email with a brief overview.  If I have questions, I will grab time on your calendar. 

Happy Thursday!

-srt

Self Evaluation

Happy Thursday!

I was digging into information on “belonging”.  I didn’t find exactly what I was looking for, but did find some great materials online.  So many great learning opportunities to help you champion belonging and bring it to your day-to-day work. 

Very close to my heart, the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention (AFSP) recognizes the entire month of September as National Suicide Prevention Month.  AFSP’s mission is to educate the public on suicide prevention awareness and to encourage more people to learn how they can help save lives.   It is a great reminder to start with self and to manage our own mental health and work–life balance.  It is also important to know what signs people considering suicide typically exhibit.   To learn more, click here.   

Self Evaluation

Harvard Business Review in an article called Don’t Underestimate the Power of Self Reflection introduces self-reflection and evaluation as a skill necessary for employees to thrive in the workplace and are qualities of great leadership. 

The authors, James R. Bailey and Scheherazade Rehman go as far as saying this capability is “the key to making yourself indispensable – not just now but far into the future.” 

It is interesting that this critical capability is seldom talked about.  Rather we hear often about communication, compassion, adaptability, communication, and emotional intelligence as key leadership traits.  Nevertheless, self-reflection and evaluation are important as they offer the individual the ability to learn.  Looking back on the day or month (without bias or regret) and evaluating the successes, obstacles, attitudes, behaviors, and all that goes with it to obtain an outcome.  The authors continue in the article and discuss the honest moment of reflection and how important it is “to seriously think about what transpired, what worked, what didn’t what can be done, and what can’t”.  They even say that the process requires courage.   I agree.

Taking this and applying it to the self-evaluation can reap rewards if only the ability to articulate your progress towards objections for the year.  It does require consistency and making the documenting a habit.

So how to make it a habit?   First, block time for self-reflection. Next, have a tool set up so you can document it.  I use One Note, but the tool isn’t important.  Truthfully, you can document in any of the available Wells Fargo products.  Just document!  Finally, don’t just add things to the list and forget them.  Go back to entries and add additional thoughts/learnings. 

Don’t forget that the self-evaluation isn’t only about what you knocked out of the park.  It is also about the times you were off track or missed the mark.  All are important items to reflect on, learn, and grow from.

Happy Thursday all,

-srt

REFERENCE:

James R. Bailey and Scheherazade Rehman.  Don’t Underestimate the Power of Self-Reflection.  Harvard Business Review 

Never, Ever, Ever Stop Learning

Happy Thursday!

What an amazing Q3 CCIBT Global Town Hall on 9/12.  With coffee in hand at 5am, I was mesmerized by the Q3 Global Technology Town Hall, broadcast live from Charlotte, NC!  The highlight was the guest speaker, Rich Diviney, talking about the attributes of leadership (Leading Superheroes:  The 5 Secrets to High Performing Teams) using his background as a US Navy Seal (20+ years of experience as a Navy SEAL Officer where he completed more than 13 overseas deployments – 11 of which were to Iraq and Afghanistan).  He was simply WONERFUL.   If you were unable to attend or would like to listen again, a replay can be found here.

[see picture]

Sharing a picture of the remodel progress with the good news that I have been told October 19 is our new move in date.  Cross your fingers as trailer living has gotten to be a little much!  😊  Pics of front of house (top), master bath tile (middle left), concrete pour (middle middle) and more tile (middle right, kitchen cabinets in (bottom left), floors in (bottom bottom) and more floors (bottom right).

Monday, the contractors got a big surprise when they went to use their tractor and found that our chickens had been using it.  The workers asked me if I had left the eggs there for them.  To which I replied, I normally give eggs in a carton.  Apparently the ripped up seat made for a good nest?  Crazy chickens.   It is a good reminder that around here, you should always watch where you sit as this could have been very messy. 

Never, Ever, Ever stop learning

We have spent much of the year talking about technical learnings in programming languages or cloud engineering/architecture.

I was reminded after listening to the Ask Me Anything this week, that sometimes the best learning is something we can digest while getting our mind off of something else.

Enter Ted Talks as not only are they free, but you can listen to them anywhere and they give free access to the world's best mentors and coaches. 

While it is easy to go to the most viewed Ted Talks, I want to suggest a few others that might help you advance your career or think differently about a topic.

1. Perspective is Everything by Rory Sutherland     Big takeaway:  Things aren’t what they are; they are what we think they are AND things are what we compare them to. 
2. Embrace the Near Win by Sarah Lewis     Big takeaway:  There is a difference between success and mastery.  Mastery is not the same as “excellence”
3. The Happy Secret to Better Work by Shawn Achor     Big takeaway:  happiness boosts productivity.
4. Your Body Language Shapes Who you Are by Amy Cuddy     Big takeaway:  confidence can be seen in body language.  Body language says a whole lot sometimes even can contradict words!
5. How to Let Go of being a “Good” person – and Become a Better Person by Dolly Chugh     Big takeaway:  Set aim on be the best version of self.
6. The Career Advice You Probably Didn’t Get by Susan Colantuono     Big takeaway:  Why do women get mired in middle management and how to break free to move up the ladder.

Now, truth be told, I wish I had found these by myself … but these were all recommended by friends and colleagues as great, unexpected finds. 

These six have pulled me in and really made me think, which is always a great thing.

Take a listen, let me know what you think and if you take anything away as a learning.

And, do you have a favorite Ted Talk that you want to share?  Send it over and I will give it a listen.

Happy Thursday all,

-srt

Prioritize What’s in YOUR Control

Happy Thursday all,

Last week, I mentioned a “prioritization process” I use each morning to help me focus in on what has to be delivered that day, that week, and the following week, and so forth. 

Sharing a post I did a few years back to try to motivate some toward better prioritization.  Hope you don't mind the "repeat" post.  

Prioritization saves time and money.  If we can all start to plan and sequence our work better, over time, we will save ourselves time to free up and do other things and save money. 

Efficiency and effectiveness should not be a reactionary trigger, it should be our normal mindset.  In order to achieve that mindset, we must prioritize our work and how we go about doing it.

Previously, I would have never-ending to-do lists with 12, 20, 30+ items on them.  Most days, it would start with a manageable number, say ten, but soon another great idea ;) or a fire drill and the list would go beyond control and I would find myself staying late or coming in early.  I admit, many an all-nighter has been pulled into order to cross everything off the list.   As we all recognize, that is not manageable and certainly not sustainable. 

“Lots of times you have very good ideas,” said Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg when describing ruthless prioritization. “But they’re not as good as the most important thing you could be doing. And you have to make the hard choices.”

So, having an unmanageable amount of items on your daily to-do list is a losing battle. How are we able to focus on tasks that are in our circle of control and add value?

I realized I needed a way to prioritize my work on things that 1) add value, 2) that I control, and 3) on importance.   

Enter Stephen Covey and his book First Things First. 

This is how it works

Objective:  Prioritize your to-do list based on what you can control and then what is important (or not important) and then what is urgent (or not urgent). 

1. Grab your list of items you need to work on. 
2. What is on the list that you can control?  Mark those things with CV (Control - Value)   
1. Prioritizing what you can control.  Focus on tasks that are in your circle of control. 
2. Recognize that when you spend time in the outer circle, your circles of influence and control shrink.
3. The more time you spend in the middle two circles, the larger they get.
3. Using a basic prioritization matrix or the Not so Basic - Covey model (examples below) to determine if your item is low/high and high/low

 

	High Impact	Low Impact
Low Effort	Yes	Maybe
High Effort	Yes	No

And, remember prioritizing is not a one-time exercise. It is essential to weekly review and adjust the prioritization matrix.  Use the roadmap to ensure leadership is in agreement with prioritization and then report to the team to keep everyone’s priorities aligned.

And, yes, I use the extended model (see below with my markup)

To all celebrating Janmashtami, I hope that you dance, eat, fly kites, and celebrate the goodness of his birth!  For my family, I ordered a plate of sweets that we will be enjoying during the movies tonight. 

Happy Thursday all,

-srt