A Seat at the Table

There is so much value to be had in fighting for your spot at the table and finding your voice in a strategic conversation. I had the pleasure of being able to sit at the table with a my department, the COO and the CEO every Friday to talk strategy. I was an idiot for taking it for granted for even a second. I learned so much about personalities, work styles, leadership styles, the reasoning behind decisions whether logical or not, how my leadership makes decisions, how much of their decision making is influence by their own biases. I figured out what it took to get them to say yes to an idea, and saw how easy it was for them to say no to even the greatest idea if it was presented poorly.

Now, I don't even know where the table is. In a larger company, it could takes years - even decades - to find a place at that table. I feel like the teen who got stuck at the kids table for Thanksgiving and will be there forever, pending a larger table or a family members absence - neither of which are in sight. 

So what do I do now? Do I kick and scream until they slide to the side to make room for me? If anything, it might just prove my placement at the kids table.

Instead, I plan to take an approach that has been trending lately in resume writing and job-finding (really since 2009, but even more so since Millennials hit the job scene hard in all of our innovative spirits) - I will identify the space that is empty, the gap that needs to be filled and argue that I am the only obvious choice to sit in that spot at the table.

But how?! Well I haven't done it yet, but I'll tell you how I'm going to start:

1) Identify the other members at the table that would and could advocate for my placement there.

2) Gather intel from resources in #1: how are the meetings are run, what's talked about, who's involved, what kind of decisions are being made, do they find the meeting effective, do they come away with action items to be delegated to me. 

At this point, I might discover that I have no place at the table and then I need to figure out if it would make sense for learning purposes to be involved in a limited way - for example is the table is really a conference call, I would see if it would be worth it to listen in but maybe not necessarily participate. If even that is not necessary, maybe it's time for me to find a different table.

After all the information is gathered, I can build my case and present it to my advocates. From there, I will ask for their opinions, feedback and see if it's something 1) They can take to the decision maker and advocate for, 2) I need to take to the decision maker, and use them as references if necessary, or 3) It's time to give up the fight. 

No matter what happens, when I do finally get a seat at the table, I will know that I earned the right to be there and can speak with confidence. 

_____

Update: Executed perfectly on plan. Got some great feedback, felt like my voice was heard and I have some great advocates. Still... time to find a different table.

It's that #EntryLevelLifeStruggle

A Lesson on Patience: The Newest Diet Fad

In a world of instant gratification, one of the hardest lessons to learn (and to keep learning) for me is patience. This morning my daily planner, which is themed after the book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, had this quote:

"We must not, in trying to think about how we can make a big difference, ignore the small daily difference we can make which, over time, add up to big differences that we often cannot foresee." ~Marian Wright Edelman

This is a hard concept worth grasping but makes the whole patience thing a lot more tolerable and a lot less painful. I first experienced this principle about two year ago when I finally decided to change my mind about losing weight and being healthy.

It was a 10 second clip I overheard on the TV one morning when listening to a health segment on a talk show - something I almost never do! The health expert explained that when first starting out to get healthy more often then not people go balls-to-the-wall getting in the gym and going on a fad diet - literally shocking their system into becoming a health nut. The problem is, that doesn't work! 

Our minds are very powerful and after one or two balls-to-the-wall sessions you start to think a certain way:

• This is too hard to maintain
• I'm not seeing any results yet/This isn't working
• It was a lot easier to not do anything and ignore the body shaming or negative self image talk

And then in a few months/weeks/days it's back to the couch.

The health expert suggested a simple solution: just do what you can, when you can and eventually a little will turn into a little more and then a lot! (This is all my translation, if you didn't catch that).

So two years ago I paid $10 to join a small gym, hopped on the treadmill and walked as fast as was comfortable for 25 minutes and then left. For the longest time I thought you had to spend at least an hour in the gym 5 days a week to be healthy, but after 3 months of going to the gym for 25 minutes a day for 3 days and pushing myself to walk a little faster than the day before, I started losing weight. It wasn't extremely difficult to add an extra 40 minutes into my day (with travel) to get in more than 0 minutes of working out, because that's what I was doing before. 

In that time I gave up my first love, television. I realized I would get sucked in to watching 2-3 hours of prime time TV on a nightly basis and for me I couldn't just watch one episode. Now I could fill that time with more active activities like cooking, playing outside, going for walks, anything! And the 40 minutes I spent getting exercise felt like chump change in my day.

After the exercise went from foreign to habit, I started focusing in on my diet which had not changed at all during the added exercise except for adding more water and craving less salt during which I still lost weight!

So I introduced vegetables into my diet in the form of green smoothies which helped acclimate my taste buds to veggies and I soon started valuing them far and above what I had before. I very, very slowly cut back on my portion sizes in a way that I almost didn't feel the difference from one day to the next. After some time I cut out fast food and minimized my juice/soda intake (coffee was off limits!).

This whole process was slow, spanning over a year and a half, only making one small adjustment at a time and letting my body acclimate to it's new lifestyle - and that's just what I did. I didn't decide to lose weight or get fit. I decided to live healthy and if it took 5 years to get healthy, I would still have the rest of my life to be healthy and that was good enough for me.

Through a lot of personal transition I lost some of my focus on living this healthy lifestyle, but I'm still 50 pounds lighter than what I weighed at my heaviest. I'm no longer afraid of the gym or vegetables. I cut back on ice cream in favor of chocolate. I still keep fast food to a minimum and I love my green smoothies. 

I am two years closer to feeling the success of a healthy lifestyle for the rest of my life and I'm working on applying the principles I learned in having patience through getting healthy to my financial situation, my career goals and contributing to making this world a better place.

For you entry-levelers it may seem impossible to reach your career goals or even life goals, but if you start with one step today, you'll be miles ahead in no time. Each day counts and when your patience is wearing thin, remember to do just one thing to move you one step closer to your greater goal.