I understand that Mondays can be a dread. And you might think that the weekend is a far far away place that seems impossible to reach. I am going to provide you with a day to day guide on how to make your week more fun and interesting. Start by looking in the mirror in the morning and decide that this week is going to be great!
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(Short comment from me: I needed to re-post this as I managed to delete it, do not ask me how…)
I can’t say it too often. You are hired to provide value at work. You are not hired to make money or to have an relaxing life. You are hired because the top management can’t make all the money by them selves. So here is the deal. I will pay you to make more money for me. At least make more value than I invest in you. That is the basic reason why anyone hire anybody.

So this brings me to how you can provide value at work.
I do believe that most people like to work hard, feel appreciated and they like to feel like a part of something bigger. The problem is that you will not be part of anything unless you give something in return. I have two small illustrations that I use over and over again when I try to make people understand how to provide value at work.

As you can see from this illustration even doing a good job, might not provide value to the company, or growth for you and your fellow co-workers. A lot of people work in this way today. “I won’t work harder until I get more pay”. “I do a lot more around here than Pete, why is he making more money?” “Finally five of clock. I am going home” – Sorry lads, I am not impressed.

How to really make a difference
So what is a hard working Homo Cubicle Sapiens need to do around here to get some attention? To be adding some value you need to add and share. Take a look at the illustration below

You need to refuel with new knowledge, new abilities and skills, you need to get inspiration from somewhere. You need to insert some goals into your “mind-drive”. When you have learned something you will be able to do one of the most meaningful things in the world, you can share and teach others. You can mentor, you can inspire. You have the power to influence other people. Imagine that you learn how to motivate people to increase productivity, and you increase productivity 5 % among all your 20-40 co-workers? You can produce 10 % less, and still make more money for the company because you increase the productivity among the others. That is why Pete gets more pay than you. Yes he completes less tasks, but he makes everybody else produce more. And when you do share, teach, inspire and want to make the best out of people, you suddenly care about others.

The best way to lose weight is to help other people lose weight. You might fail to diet on your own, but if you decide to help someone else diet, you will feel more committed. You will more likely succeed. At work it is just as simple, become an engaged employee, help others and experience that you will start to love your job.

Do you want to read more posts like this? I want to invite you to subscribe to my blog so that I can send you a copy of my next article after I write it. Subscribing to my blog is completely free, and it only takes a second. After you subscribe, you’ll immediately start to receive copies of my articles sent to you by email. Your email address is never shared and you can unsubscribe anytime.

So you have read part one and two, and feel ready to chase the job of your dreams? You know your values and you know what jobs to apply to. Great for you, here is a reality check that you need to do first. Is your dream job right under your nose? Have you done whatever you can do to create the dream job right where you are? I once heard about a ball point pen tester, writing the letter L all day long, and have done this job for several years. – The staying power is based on the fact that someday someone important needs to sign an important contract, and their pens should work when that happens. Read more… »

Job applications and interviews

This is part 2 in my “how to get your dream job”-series. If you missed part one, you can read it here. You should read part one before further reading. In part one I wrote about finding your own values and interest. The form used in part one will come to great use in this part as when you are looking for your dream job, you should be checking it against the form provided in part one. Read more… »

So you want to find your dream job? The satisfaction of working your dream is a great feeling and since we spend a lot of time at work, there is no need for us to be miserable. This short series about how to get your dream job might have a surprise ending, so I am urging you to read all three parts before chasing your dreams. The first thing we need to do is to define our dream.

A lot of people do not know what their dream job is in the first place. I am going to help you to define your dream.

Read more… »

Online Networking

I have been lucky enough to experience an “a-ha moment” lately. I did know it from before, but I have not been aware enough to put the knowledge into good use.
A while back I joined David Zinger’s Online community; The Employee Engagement Network. All I did was to register and create a profile. I was hoping that it would create more readers to my blog. But I was wrong, deadly wrong, until I had an eye-opening dialogue with Craig Althof about online networking. He said:”The more I think about it, the more participation / contribution on the EEN and other forums is a classic manifestation of engagement. People must feel motivated to contribute, which involves setting aside a portion of their scarce discretionary time. They must put forth extra effort, but must also get something out of the effort—personal satisfaction.” – A valuable lesson suddenly landed in my lap. In order to get something out of a network, you need to contribute and participate, It makes logic sense.

500 Baseball Cards or 5 Friends for Life?
“There are a lot of joiners who collect network and group affiliations and “personal” connections like they were cheap baseball cards” – Craig Althof. This is also an interesting view. The size of your network is not important at all. So why do you want to network in the first place? This is a question that you need to answer, what are you looking for? What can you do for them? And what people do you need to interact with and why? If you can define this you can be more specific when looking for online buddies. I for one would love to find, fellow leaders with passion for writing, a leadership mentor or other call center managers.

1. Join an Online Network Where You are Most Likely to Meet Peers
   Spend some time to search for your favorite network. You do not need to be in ten different networks, as it would be impossible to be equally engaged in all of them. You might ask around if someone knows of any specific network where you can find matching interests with a group of people.
2. Read the ContributionFrom Others and Engage
   Start by reading what other people are writing, if you find someone with similar interests you might find your first friend. Or you can posts your interests in the “Here I am” – post. A lot of networks have designated areas where you can introduce yourself. Why not put the poster up right away.
3. Do Not Go Maniac Friending Everybody
   Yes I am guilty as charged, this is one of the mistakes I have done so far, but it stops here. In every network there is someone that adds everybody to their friend list, most likely because they think it will drive traffic to their blog or web service. I thought people would be curious about who is this bugger, friending me for no reason at all. Resulting in them visiting my blog to fall in love with my amazing content. Well here is the stone cold fact: This method does not work! A while back the numbers of visitors became unimportant anyway. I would rather write for five people that get something out of my writing and give me feedback, then to write for 1000 people marking my e-mail as spam.
4. You Can Just Read
   There is no rule stating the obligation to contribute with writing. You might learn a lot from a many great ongoing discussions. You do not need to write if you do not feel that you want to or have anything to contribute with. But sure it is a great benefit to write for a bunch of other reasons, not needed to be mentioned here.
5. Greet Your Friends
   I got a personal note from my first interacting friend on The Employee Engagement Network, and it made me smile. I felt that I was accepted for real. You should also great your friends. Maybe it is a good idea to create a two way interview, to get to know each other.

So to fully enjoy an online community or network, you need to participate. You need to step forward beyond just adding a friend. Start caring about the person and the people. Create friendship and dialogue. Engage and interact and you will be spending many good quality moments in front of your computer, and even in real life.

A special thanks to Craig Althof for an interesting discussion – Here is Craig’s blog.
And also a special thank you to David Zinger for the creation of the Employee Engagement Network.

Also read this:
- Phil Gerbyshak’s 10 commandments