When I was 22 years old, I was fortunate to join the biggest consumer goods company in the world– Procter & Gamble. I spent almost five years there working with the best professionals from whom I have learned a lot about business, management, and how to succeed in a corporate environment. Today, you can find many books, trainings and experts’ opinions that guide people to climb the corporate ladder. However, put aside tons of pages and just memorize the simplest formula of career success - P.I.E. that stands for P – performance, I – image, E – exposure. The basic concept is that by focusing on these three pillars (Performance, Image and Exposure) in the right proportion you can accelerate your career and build a consistently strong personal brand within the organization. At the same time, P.I.E is the unwritten rule applied by senior managers when they make decisions about promotions and salary increases. If you start to use it proactively than you will position yourself for success. This concept isn’t something new, probably, you are familiar with it and may disagree with the interpretation I provided below. Even so, I decided to share my personal experience and reveal this concept in the form that I had learned it. At the end of the day, it’s up to you to decide whether the model is applicable in your situation, and, if so, how to leverage it for the best of your career. Let’s see how it works…
Performance (60% of P.I.E)
When you join a company the only thing that you should focus on at the beginning is – How to demonstrate the outstanding Performance. High performance is a “ticket to entry”, it is the key element that occupies 60% of the P.I.E concept. Without consistent high performance, Image and Exposure doesn’t help you achieve your long-term career goals. A manager will hire you because he believes you will utilize your skills and abilities to contribute to the company’s strategic objectives. Therefore, do the best to demonstrate your potential by consistently over-delivering manager’s expectations and constantly raising a bar to a new level. It is easier said than done but below are a few recommendations that, I believe, if followed, can help enhance your performance:
· Focus on key priorities first
Very often we are overwhelmed with emails, phone calls and meetings – all these take a lot of time and energy but does not necessarily add value to business. Therefore, it is very important to ask yourself – What are my do-or-die key priorities, tasks, projects that contribute to the company’s strategic goals? What extra work can I do to merit a high-rating in my performance, not “average” or “good” but “outstanding”? The person who is paid to answer the prior questions is your direct manager. In fact, he wants you to succeed because your success may merit him a promotion. Hence, do not be afraid to have an open conversation with manager about what key goals should be achieved that would guarantee the highest rating for you. Once your goals are aligned, make sure to dedicate 80% of time to deliver upon them keeping only 20% for routine tasks - which are important but are less value-adding. Believe me, it is better to miss a few phone calls or meetings but execute projects that bring real value to the company rather than do the opposite. To sum up, your role is not to keep yourself busy with routine, your role is to do a job that actually adds value to shareholders – always keep this mindset, execute accordingly and it will bring you to where you want to be.
Be open for feedback, ask for it and learn from it
Feedback is a very powerful tool that allows us to leverage strengths but also to identify opportunities areas. Top-performing employees are at the top because they search for ways to make their best even better. If you want to stand out from competitors (your peers) you should ask: What do I do well? What can I do better? What should I stop doing? Where do I stand versus expectations? What should I do to exceed expectations? The best person who can answer these questions is, again, your direct manager, but do not be afraid to ask your colleagues, customers, and suppliers for feedback. Nevertheless, I want to emphasize that your direct manager is the one who is responsible to guide you and ultimately make you a better professional. However, the person who is responsible for your career is You, thus it is your responsibility to take charge of regular feedback sessions. My advice is to schedule a regular semi-monthly meeting with your manager where you would have a structured conversation about priorities alignment, short and long-term career interests, training plan, work and life balance and current performance versus expectations. At least once per two months you should engage in open dialogue with your manager where he provides a constructive feedback about your performance. If you follow your manager’s guidelines you will ongoingly perform better and better and build a reputation of high-performance employee.
· Make a difference and innovate on every job
By constantly finding inefficiencies in the processes and proposing ideas for improvement to your higher managers, you position yourself as a very effective professional. In most cases companies’ cultures encourages employees to innovate and not be afraid to come up with fresh ideas that serve in the best interest of business. However, the majority of employees don’t have the mindset of innovators; they don’t have this inner motivation to seek for improvements and they aren’t courage enough to challenge the status quo. When I mention, “innovate” I don’t mean to invent a new product or breakthrough technology, I mean to identify something that can: A. Save money for the company B. Save time for employees C. Serve customers better. In fact, the beauty is that regardless of your role and seniority in organization, you are able to make a difference on every day job. For example, you can:
- Automate something that is done manually now (e.g even simple Excel Macros can eliminate manual input of data thus save time in longer term).
- Propose to do something internally rather than paying to outsourced company or vice-versa ( e.g do you really need a travel agency to book your flights and hotels?).
- Propose small changes that lead to savings without hurting the business and people (e.g one of our corporate finance managers when walking around the office came up with an idea to change the layout of office space. As a result, he proposed to fit all employees from two floors in one floor. It saved tons of money and he was promoted for this idea. Yes, everyone felt a little squeezed, but nobody felt uncomfortable).
The idea is that being hungry for improvements you demonstrate high ownership, in other words – willingness to treat company’s business and assets as if they are yours. High ownership combined with innovative ideas (regardless of their size and impact) and perfect execution of those would significantly enrich your performance and boost your career. In fact, Performance is fundamental but is not enough for a successful career; there are two other factors – Image and Exposure - that you should take care of after you had demonstrated the capacity to maintain a solid performance.
Image (20% of P.I.E)
The truth is that if you do not proactively shape your personal brand, others will shape it for you and you might not like the perception that is created. Even having the outstanding performance, you might face with situation when you compete with strong candidates for promotion or assignment. In this case, your Image (or Personal Brand) can be a trigger point and it is your responsibility to solidify it, and, eventually, make it work for you.
What is Image? In the P.I.E concept - it is your reputation, including how others in your organization perceive you. In other words – What is said about you when you are not in the room. Undoubtedly, you want people to form a positive opinion about you even though they have never met you before. As mentioned before, consistent high performance helps you develop a reputation for delivering results, but your image is also being built based on your collaboration with people (are you positive, arrogant, supportive, directive?), work style (are you confrontational or open for new ideas, prefer micromanagement or trustworthy, perfectionist or follow 80/20 principle?), and your agility (are you willing to take a challenging new role and move forward or you are not flexible?). In my opinion, described below three points can help to shape a winning image.
· Be positive but serious
Indeed, every interaction counts – make sure it is all positive. Nevertheless, it is important to stay serious, focused and professional, being careful with jokes and anecdotes. Definitely, there is nothing wrong with making jokes occasionally, but you should know the limit, because your goal is to build a reputation of qualified specialist rather than a comedian.
· Be external focus
Regardless of your role, I would recommend you to be externally-focused which means to be familiar with key trends happening in the industry. Learn about competitors of your company, read news about the sector, read macroeconomic statistics and etc – all these help you become an expert in the business you are operating, and, moreover, help to build the image of employee who is passionate about this industry. Eventually the management will notice your broad horizon of knowledge, and when a discussion about promotion comes this will give you an advantage over others.
· Be open for challenges, say “I’m ready”
If you want to have a skyrocketing career than be courageous enough to raise your hand when others keep silence. Particularly, be open to take assignments that seem too challenging and too problematic for everyone, even for you, but you are brave enough to take a risk. The point is that if you are consistently open for challenges it positions you as high potential professional who is ready to go beyond a comfort zone, make breakthrough progress in the field where nobody could and leaves heritage afterwards. Definitely, you have to prove your courage via solid performance reflected numerically in a scorecard thereafter (Do you still remember that performance is key?).
Exposure (20% of P.I.E)
I believe you would agree with me that it’s no good doing wonderful work if no one knows who you are or what you’re doing. How well are decision makers aware about your capabilities and value you bring to organization? Does executive management interact with you directly or know your accomplishments? Exposure is visibility to those individuals that can influence your career. That means getting proper visibility with leadership team and career sponsors, networking with them effectively, because you never know who will be your next boss, or who will decide on your promotion. Ideally, good managers have to help you to get some exposure, but don’t rely on them. It’s really something for which you should take personal accountability. Often you will have to make the first move, but remember, once you are exposed, maintain a reputation for knowing what you are doing.
· Speak up in meetings
Remember – people cannot read into your minds! Don’t be afraid to speak up in meetings. If you decide to stay in your comfort zone and sit quite in a chair while others share their perspective to senior managers, then don’t be surprised if they are the ones who receive promotion or take a role that you deserve, simply because they were more active in discussions. To increase visibility you must be willing to take a risk and express your point of view during official business meetings.
· Use opportunity to present
Almost in any organization communication skills (including business writing, public speaking, formal and informal presentations) are crucial for successful career. Presentation skills, in particular, play very critical role, but almost all of us afraid of public speaking or, at least, feel nervous to speak in front of the people. However, the sooner you start to present the sooner you are exposed to career sponsors. Start small – volunteer to represent your department at meetings, on regular monthly catch ups or on projects. A proactive approach will be noticed by bosses and will work for you when promotion opportunities become available. Keep in mind that a known employee has the advantage over the one who isn’t known.
· Use opportunity to talk to senior managers
Indeed, your habit to hang around the water cooler or have lunch with the same people every day should be broken. Try to get to know senior managers and volunteer for opportunities that will give you a chance to interact with them. For example, during formal dinners, when the entire organization is invited, sit next to your boss’s boss and share your perspective about the business, tell him what works well and what, based on your opinion, can be improved in organization in order to grow the business. So the trick is definitely not to become a political animal, but there is nothing wrong to share your ideas and demonstrate your ownership, winning spirit and loyalty to the company.
DO NOT MAKE A HUGE MISTAKE!!!
Having said that, we all know people who have been promoted beyond their real contributions or skills simply because they were masters at building Image and Exposure. I agree that personal brand (Image) and visibility (Exposure) will make you noticeable in the organization and it can bring benefits, however, the practice shows that it works only in short-term. If you focus on image and exposure at the expense of performance than you will be in trouble very soon. During my career I’ve seen new hires who, when they joined a company, started to build relationships with bosses and senior managers since day one. They used any opportunity to speak up in order to demonstrate their potential, solid expertise, skills and abilities. However, one year later all these “image builders” were fired, because they had achieved nothing. At the end of the day, business leaders would ask one simple question: “What did you do to grow this business? Show me results, I don’t need words.” Ideally, your real contribution should speak for itself.
Therefore, long-term sustainable career can be built if it is based on solid performance, strong personal brand and balanced visibility. Focus on the entire P.I.E in the right proportion and you will succeed today, tomorrow and years to come.
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