“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times; it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness; it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity; it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness; it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair; we had everything before us, we had nothing before us; we were all going directly to Heaven, we were all going the other way.” (Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities)

Raise time is a conundrum for managers, eagerly anticipated and anxiously dreaded. As both givers and receivers, managers are at once the brokers and the broken. That’s because, except at the senior-most levels, what applies to their employees, generally applies to them as well. Stature changes scale, not principle.

By intent or by accident of position, raises are a way of exerting power over staff and yet, for many supervisors tied up in a complex merit raise process, it is a disempowering and frustrating exercise, fraught with the potential to enhance the discontent and cynicism of that very same staff. Raises are necessary evils, barely satisfying long-standing wants with, at best, short term returns. At the end of the day, the positives are fleeting while the negatives linger in the fridge like a left-over tuna salad sandwich.

I have been asked by a number of readers to discuss raises… more precisely, how to ask for them.

There is a difference between unionized and non-unionized staff raises, the former governed by negotiated collective agreement, the latter essentially by management fiat. I will focus on the second.

Asking for a raise is a little art and a little science. But with timing so much a factor (as we will see), it is also a lot of luck. It shouldn’t be, but it is.

So, here below, are four things to take into account when asking for a raise.

1. Consider the Context.

Put your desire (need?) for a raise in context. It may be the best of times to ask for a raise, but it may also be the worst of times. Every company goes through stuff and even those that try to benchmark the industry and that try to maintain a proven, disciplined, meritocratic process regardless of economic volatility and market vagary will take a step back when things get tough. Despite policy, companies are at different places at different times and, as your mother probably told you, there is a right time and a right place for everything. In your specific company, division or even department, the timing may simply not be right for a raise.

Yes, you say, but yours is a special case. You have taken on additional responsibilities or have achieved something truly special over the course of the past year. There is an old English proverb that goes: Circumstances alter cases. So, indeed, yours may be a special case, but, if the company is having financial issues, if there are confounding circumstances, you may have to rethink your timing or, at least, your approach.

Under stress, companies don’t always behave in a consistent or fair manner. Asking for a raise creates stress. Your boss may be under pressure. Perhaps, an important deadline has been missed, a performance target missed by a mile. Your messenger is no longer in a position to be helpful.

That does not mean you shouldn’t bring up the issue at all. As negotiation guru Chester Karras has wisely declared, you do not get what you deserve, you get what you negotiate. Most likely, if you don’t ask, you don’t get. So if you realize the timing is bad but feel you are truly deserving of additional recognition and remuneration, discuss it with your supervisor, tell him or her that you understand the situation and do not wish to add pressure to the system but, all that said, you would like this to at least be acknowledged in your appraisal and at least mentioned to senior management. It might just get you to the next level. At the very least, it will be appreciated and be added to the bank of good will from which a raise could be drawn when the timing is more propitious.

Bottom line: Look around. Listen hard. Be wise.

2. Be honest with yourself. Do you really deserve special consideration?

Did you have an extraordinary year or did you ‘merely’ do excellent work or extra work. Because, frankly, excellence and hard work are not causes for reward. They are, in tough times especially, the minimum acceptable standards for performance.

Most companies of size have a raise policy and raise period, likely in the first quarter. Pretty much the only way to get a raise outside this period is to get a promotion or, at least, a notable increase in responsibilities. In cases where an employee had a significant achievement, the likely reward is not a raise but a bonus.

You’ve got to stand out. You have to take leadership on high visibility projects and then execute perfectly. You have to turn around disasters that have been hanging like albatrosses around the corporate neck. Perhaps you have revitalized a fading brand. Or saved a plant slated for closure because of poor productivity. Perhaps you have come up with a groundbreaking technology that opens up a new and highly lucrative market or dramatically reduces costs. If you show you can spin straw into gold, you have a claim on some of that gold.

Conversely, if your request comes as a surprise, don’t be surprised if it is rejected.

3. Be prepared.

So you have your supervisor’s attention. Set up a formal meeting expressly for the purpose. Nothing dampens the mood like an unwelcome surprise. As with any meeting, you must go in prepared. Remember, this is your meeting so you must take control.

By now you should have looked through all the salary calculators and know what is appropriate for your position, in your industry, in your area. These calculators always have a range. Find your place in the range based on your level, experience, and scope of responsibilities. Fudge for qualifications and skill set. By defining a range, you are not only helping yourself, you are giving your manager a negotiation strategy and wiggle room. Present your accomplishments – the ones that are the foundation of your request and put a present and future value on these accomplishments. How much money have you saved or earned or will be saved or earned for the company now and down the road? By giving him a range and the ammunition to use, you have done half his work for him. He can calculate in his mind the ceiling suitable for the circumstances and he knows the minimum you will find acceptable. That minimum number should be one at which you will come away satisfied.

Some companies cap promotion raises at 5%. Some companies will try to limit the ‘damage’ by splitting the raise over two years. Know your company and, again, know the context in which your raise will find itself.

Do not threaten. Under any circumstances. If an employee lays down an ultimatum and threatens to leave should the ultimatum not be met, a good company man will say, “Good bye. Send a postcard.” A poor manager will succumb, look bad to his boss and resent you for it. Rightly so.

4. Have a sponsor. Have two.

You’ve heard the expression: It’s not what you know; it’s who you know. Well, I would amend that to: It’s not who you know; it’s who knows you. It is good if your supervisor is supportive, better if he is mentoring you, better still if he is managing your career. But it help immeasurably if your supervisor’s boss knows and likes you, wonderful if the CEO knows who you are and has heard good things.

Outstanding performance gets noticed. Heading up a project of import can put a spotlight on your work, especially if the outline, progress and/or conclusion of said project are formally presented to senior management. Three times blessed. It is an opportunity not to be missed.

It also does not hurt to be friendly to senior people in the Human Resources department. Yeah, I know. But some of them are actually human. HR specialists can be pretty good at structuring a deal that works for the company and employee. They would know precisely what can and can’t be done, given the financial climate and salary structures under which they have to operate. They know how to work the system because they are the system.

Conclusion

There is no bulletproof way to ask for a raise. But, if it is truly merited and it otherwise doesn’t seem forthcoming, ask you must. Put the odds in your favor. Get your timing right, get your support in place, be prepared and make your case calmly and forthrightly. It may just be the smartest thing you did all year.

Good luck.

“Just because everything is different doesn’t mean anything has changed.” (Irene Peter)

If I have learned anything over the past 30 years, both as an experienced practitioner and keen student of business strategy, it is this: Those who run companies have one basic responsibility. No, it is not to make money. It is to keep their respective companies running. The core of any strategy must, therefore, be sustainability.

Too often, you will hear the same answer, told smugly, when asked about the essence of business enterprise. Business, it will be knowingly explained, is about making money…the more, the merrier. In fact, greed is about making money, the more the merrier. Business is about building an enterprise that is capable of making money over the long haul. Strategies that yield unsustainable profits are short-sighted, short term and doomed to failure. Greed is short-sighted and almost never sustainable.

So, more than just building a profitable organizations, business leaders must be focused on building sustainable ones. A company must be able to withstand economic volatility, a hyper-competitive market, lengthy supply chain disruptions and, yes, catastrophic events. It is easy to make money when your boat, like those around it, is rising with the tide. But can your boat survive a tsunami? Can it survive a protracted industry slump? Can it survive the Chinese? How about new technologies? Sweeping regulatory changes? What would happen to your organization in the event of a major acquisition?

Sustainability in the management context is about ensuring that a company’s product or service offering responds to the needs of its customer base and that it will continue to do so in the foreseeable future. It is about its operations being as productive and as low cost as its competitors. It is about having a strong and stable customer base and a reliable supply chain. It is about having a stable cash flow and not having bank covenants that could strangle it when things become volatile. And, yes, it is about being prepared for catastrophe.

So, what is the first step in becoming a company from which investors can count on reliable, consistent returns well into the future? How does an organization become sustainable?

The answer is somewhat paradoxical. To be sustainable, a company must change. To change, the company must begin by strengthening the status quo.

Sustainability strategies require leaders to take a long-term view of their business. Getting the future right, however, first requires getting the present right. You cannot attract good people unless you take proper care of your current people. You cannot attract new customers unless you are adept at keeping the ones you have. You cannot usefully leverage a weak product portfolio. You cannot successfully expand a weak geographic base. Jim Collins writes Good to Great because you cannot go from Bad to Great. Without a strong foundation, you cannot get to there from here.

Sustainability, therefore, begins with understanding what you are doing right and then doing it better. Build from the foundation up, not the roof down. In other words, do not change. Evolve.

In a fast changing world, where most advisors would say that to succeed you must learn to change, it’s a paradox, to be sure.

“Instead of giving a politician the keys to the city, it might be better to change the locks.” (Doug Larson)

As my career wound down, I found myself becoming wiser in the ways of office politics and less willing to tolerate them. It is remarkable how much energy is wasted by those engaged in political chicanery and by those who become its victims.

How do you keep a lid on office politics? How do you keep people focused on what is important so that everyone benefits? I do have a few insights I can share based on years of observing the nonsense and nuisances of politics and - in the interest of full-exposure - becoming an adept politician in my own right.

I will focus here on vertical politics, including sucking up to and putting up with superiors. Future posts will look at horizontal or peer politics and political correctness (which is a whole ‘nuther thing).

1. You ain’t that smart

First of all, understand that most people are not that adept at the game of politics. You don’t need the thud and thwack of shoulder pads to know the game is on. The methods employed by those engaged in office politics are not so devious most of the time that they are not also obvious…especially to their superiors. It’s a case of been there, seen that.

People are, for better and too often for worse, people and, as such, there will always be those whose best and most subtle work has nothing to do with real work. So I don’t expect office politics to go away any time soon. I do, however, expect bosses to keep it from having an impact. At the end of the day, politics is about wending your way into the good graces of a superior or avoiding slipping into his or her bad books by hook if possible and by crook if necessary. That is why it is at the level of the superior that the opportunity to nip silly politics in the bud resides.

Bosses should be wary of any employee who claims all the credit for the successful execution of a complex project. Conversely, they should not accept finger pointing as an answer when things go wrong. Finger pointing is the reddest of red flags and one of the behaviors for which I have always had zero tolerance.

Employees could have legitimate beefs with the behaviour or output of colleagues, but how he or she deals with it is telling and will distinguish between those staffers worried about productivity or those about politics. I have actually had an employee twice removed come to me and ask why she had to work for a boss who was obviously not as smart as she was. Apart from the fact that it was not the case, what could she possibly have expected the outcome to be? How undiscerning did she imagine I was? Where did she imagine my loyalties lay? Sometimes, you really have to wonder.

Unless their noses are so far up in the air that their eyes can no longer face straight ahead, bosses should be able to smell toadies a mile away; they should make it obvious at the first whiff that they find the fumes noxious. Bosses should also slam the door in the faces of tale-bearers and gossip-mongers.

Politics take many forms. Few of these are attractive. Few escape notice.

2. Looking Good

There are two issues where the political and political correctness seem to overlap; there is making your boss look good; and there is arguing with your boss, where at least one of you will likely come out looking bad.

I once way-overspent on a bid to secure a major new account. A fairly low-ranking member of the marketing team at the time, I was given the assignment of putting the presentation package together. I had decided that we were being too timid as a company and nothing short of going all-out would do the trick. I figured that it would be easier to ask for forgiveness than ask for permission. I was only partially right. We got the account, but when the company president got the bill, he was beside himself (and, based on the heat from his breath, not too far from me). The manager of the Division that would benefit from the new business willingly took the hit for me. I went to see him and told him he should not have done that. I said that I would go to the President and say that he was covering for me and that I, indeed, knew exactly what I was doing. The manager replied that he, too, knew exactly what I was doing and, by saying nothing, was equally complicit. As well, he could survive the hit much more easily than me. “And anyway”, he said with a smile, “we got the account, right? I’m more than happy to take the business.” In truth, of course, by taking the blame he also got the credit. Not too long later, I became his Marketing Manager and my career was on its way.

Was I being a suck-up? Was my offer being political? Was the willingness to fall on my sword the politically-correct way to behave? I didn’t think about any of that at the time. I was ready to take responsibility because I felt that the ends justified the means. I wanted that account and I knew that I could get it. I was young, overly zealous and just a tad too righteous. I was, I suppose, an ass, though it all managed to work out.

Should you try to make your boss look good? Why not? The fact is, if you do your job properly, your boss will get credit anyway…for selecting good employees and for giving them the opportunity to excel. Win-win. What’s wrong with that?

3. Argue Me Elmo

You are a manager attending a meeting to review a large and rather important project. Other managers are present. Your boss makes a decision you know is wrong. Taking your role seriously, you decide to speak up. In the politest voice you can muster, you say that, in your opinion, an alternative approach might be more appropriate. Your boss says he disagrees and in the firmest and politest voice he can muster, thanks you for your input. What do you do?

Now, I’ve always been a bit argumentative and history will note that, in these very same circumstances, I reiterated my objection, reinforcing it with broader and ever more cogent reasoning. My boss, unfortunately, disagreed for a second time, with a considerably more pointed response. I knew it was time to stop arguing. At least time to stop arguing then and there. If I were to continue, it would force a showdown, an outcome with a winner and a loser. Both of us would, in this situation, come out losers. If I wanted to continue the debate, it would have to be in his office, out of sight and out of earshot. I would not necessarily win the argument (I did not, in fact), but no one would lose face.

So, did I compromise my principles? Did people see me as a hypocrite for backing off, if not a coward for backing down? To quote Sun-Tzu in The Art of War, “He will win who knows when to fight and when not to fight.” There was no win there and, frankly, what I was fighting for was not worth the fight. Best advice: pick your battles.

The End Game

If you are going to play politics, you had better be good at the game. And you had better be able to back up your politics with performance of equal or greater measure. In the end, though, if the performance is there, politics merely serves to clutter up the playing field. It will get in your way.

The bottom line is: do the right thing. Even better, go about doing it the right way. Don’t worry about The Politics. Because, somehow, one way or the other, they always manage to take care of themselves.