Raise Your Hand

Volunteer to work on the weird projects. Jump at the chance to take lead on a boring project. Step up and say you’ll pull together some research or be the main presenter at an executive meeting to deliver a report. Raise your hand and raise your profile and your perceived value within your company and within your client relationships.

I’ve been in far too many meetings to mention where someone suggests an idea and the people in the room agree it’s something worth pursuing — but no one will accept the responsibility to do the pursuing.

It quickly becomes a rapid fire game of hot potato, passing the onus of doing a little extra work on a project that everyone just agreed would be of value. You can almost hear the individuals within the group thinking “Not it!”.

Sometimes they’ll even try a little psych-out on their peers and suggest they will personally take on the second phase if someone else will do all the pre-work in the first phase. They might as well say something like…

“If Joan does the research, gets the pricing, puts together the sales proposals, and calls to schedule the appointment to pitch the client — I will be happy to go and pick up the signed contract and cash the commission check.

Did you ever read “The Little Red Hen“?

In this classic Little Golden Book written by Diane Muldrow and illustrated by JP Miller, the Little Red Hen wants some help planting wheat, so she asks her animal brethren if they’d like to help – but they say no. She asks if they will help harvest the wheat and they say no. She asks if they will take the wheat to the mill and grind it into flour, and they say no. She asks them to help her every single step of the way and they all say no… until they smell the cake she’s just baked with the flour now it’s time to eat the cake. All of a sudden every single one of her animal friends has some open time in their schedule to “help”.

• If you want to reap the benefits in business…
• If you want to secure your relationships with your customers…
• If you want to profit from innovative ideas…

You need to be willing to raise your hand and take on the extra work that makes all those extra rewards possible.

I highly recommend you buy yourself a copy of The Little Golden Book version, but here is a video version you can watch right now…