Does it feel like you could contribute so much more to the organization that you work for if you just had the chance ? This seems to be a challenge for both new and seasoned employees in many companies, with individuals at all levels often feeling like they may as well be working in the mailroom for as under-utilized as they feel. For this reason, I'm often asked to repeat the story of The Mailroom CEO as a metaphor and model for self-leadership along with the five attributes that comprise The Mailroom CEO Mindset. The full story can be found as part of this article, http://bit.ly/1fau6pA, but here's a quick summary:
The Mailroom CEO story is about Jill, a recent college grad who took a job in the mailroom at a rapid package delivery company for lack of better employment prospects. One morning, she overheard a conversation in a coffee shop and realized that a disruptive technology developed by a competitor is likely to threaten the stability of her employer. After her apathetic supervisor refuses to escalate her concerns, she leverages her personal network to gain a better understanding of the risks that the company is facing, while she still continues to move throughout the building delivering the mail. Through this process of assumed leadership, Jill also gains support from several of her key contacts to help her raise the alarm. Ultimately, she leads this coalition of individuals from key areas of the business to bring this threat to light, along with possible responses.
The Mailroom CEO mindset is a little different from the cheesy-maze runners of 20th century conventional wisdom, which involved waiting for "higher-ups" to set out incentives for their underlings to chase after. Instead, The Mailroom CEO Mindset is about understanding your business environment for yourself and exercising self-leadership, Intrapreneurship, and relational collaboration. These characteristics that are ideal for the organic, non-heirarchical organizational design models that are emerging in the 21st century (i.e. #holocracy, Teal orgs, etc.) that downplay positional authority and a chain of command (i.e. Zappos, Gore-Tex, etc), but are equally effective in traditional hierarchies. Here's what these characteristics look like:
- Self-leadership in action - What if you didn't have a boss - Is that even possible? If you didn't have a boss, you would have to take on the responsibility to understand the bigger picture that surrounds your work. You would need to identify the most important tasks to complete and monitor your own progress against these objectives. You would also have to celebrate and censure your own successes and shortcomings. In effect these are all actions that you can perform for yourself.
- Self-leadership through natural rewards - What do you love most about your job? What is it about your work that you find enjoyable or rewarding? While you might be thinking that there isn't much, it is likely that you could identify tangible and intangible rewards you experience through your work if you give it some consideration. Self-leadership through natural rewards is mentally zeroing-in on these when you must complete tasks that you aren't that excited to do.
- Self-leadership through self-talk - It isn't crazy to talk to yourself, especially if you are doing it with a purpose. Self-talk is about coaching yourself through difficult challenges, mentally rehearsing conversations in advance, or visualizing yourself succeeding - all as ways to help yourself achieve your best results.
- Intrapreneurship - You read that right, it isn't a spelling error. Intrepreneurs are a lot like entrepreneurs, but they work as employees of a company rather than on their own. The characteristics are similar though - create innovative products/service, or perhaps, new ways to do things that will give the organization a competitive advantage. Being a successful intrepreneur involves developing new ideas, gaining support through collaboration, and securing funding and other resources to turn ideas into a reality.
- Relational networking - Whether through personal contact, social media, team interactions, etc. relational networking is about being known by and respected by a lot of people. There are lots of ways to go about this, but the most important thing is to be authentic, take an interest in people, and look for ways to help others accomplish their goals.
For Jill, self-leadership and collaborative leadership of others was not about using authority to get things done. Instead, she combined a keen understanding of the business she was in, she was alert to changes in the environment, and she leveraged strong relationships to affect meaningful change. These characteristics mindset are available to all of us, regardless of the job title on our business card.
Be a Mailroom CEO!
Twitter: @jhwilsonphd @themailroomceo
References:
Business without bosses: How self-managing teams are building high-performing companies, by Charles Manz & Henry Simms
Intrapreneuring: Why you don’t have to leave the corporation to become an entrapreneur, by Gifford Pinchot III
Never eat alone: and other secrets to success, one relationship at a time, by Keith Ferrazzi