082: Why You Might Not Need to be a Manager with Mark Allen

Pete Mockaitis
Mark thanks so much for joining us here on the How to Be Awesome at Your Job podcast.

Mark Allen
I’m happy to be here Pete.

Pete Mockaitis
So you teach at Pepperdine and I have beheld the campus and it is one of the most gorgeous campuses I’ve ever witnessed. The water, the hills, and the weather – I’d love to know how do you take advantage of that scenery and your beautiful surroundings.

Mark Allen
Well you know the Malibu can’t be beat but we tell employers that if our students can thrive with the distraction of being on the Pacific Ocean in Malibu they can succeed in any environment. But my dirty little secret is I teach for the Business School at Pepperdine which means I work out of an office building near LAX. It’s a nice office building but it ain’t Malibu.

Pete Mockaitis
How far is the distance then, the travel?

Mark Allen
It’s about eighteen miles which in Los Angeles traffic is an hour and a half.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, well sorry. But I hope you get out there from time to time with the different events and such.

Mark Allen
Yes, they let me come up a couple times a year for graduations and things like that.

Pete Mockaitis
I would also want to chat right up front, I know that we chatted earlier, one of your kind of hot button topics is when it comes to young professionals thinking that they want to be managers but they haven’t actually thought through it in so much detail and it’s just sort of the default setting so maybe you could orient us a little bit. How would you tee up how young professionals might think about the becoming a manager question?

Mark Allen
I think the reason so many people start out in their career saying they want to be a manager is because naturally starting entry level positions and you see managers or people who have authority, who make more money than you, that are higher up on the org chart, more prestige, more status and they think that’s the way to go. Manager is actually a job with specific roles and responsibilities and the first thing that you should think about is do you actually want to do that job? Do you want to manage people? Do you want to spend your career doing the job of manager which is very different from doing the job of actually doing something?
When I say manager I’m not just talking about some organization where a lot of people have the title of manager, when I say manager I mean people manager – someone who has responsibility for hiring people, for supervising them, for evaluating them, occasionally for disciplining or firing them. That is a very distinct job and just because you might want more status and more money in an organization the real question is do you actually want to do that job?

Pete Mockaitis
That sounds like an important question and a fundamental question. I think that for many it doesn’t even occur that there are alternative means of rising in status, power, and influence without managing people. What are some of those alternatives look like?

Mark Allen
Well there’s two ways of looking at it, in one way you’re actually looking at building a career outside of a large organization so you could be an independent contractor or a consultant or a trainer but there are also other jobs where people can enjoy professional success without managing people – professors are one of them, podcast hosts might be another. But there are certainly lots of ways to make money in the world without managing people in large organizations. If you do want a career in a large organization, many organizations now have a dual career track so there’s the traditional management track which is what we’ve always called the corporate ladder and up until recently it was the only career track. It was a one way street you would go up as high as you could starting at an entry level position and work your way up to Supervisor, Manager, Senior Manager, Director and every step of the way getting more responsibility, more money and frequently more people reported to you and more people that you’re responsible for. Increasingly, organizations are setting up a second career ladder – a practitioner track.
If you do in fact want to go on the management track – you’re asked early in your career and there are points in your career where you can certainly change tracks, if you want to go on the management track you can go on that track. If you want to go on the practitioner track, maybe you’re an Engineer and you’ve gone to school to study engineering and you don’t really want to manage people or you’re an accountant or finance manager and you like the accounting function but don’t really want to manage people.
Increasingly organizations have the practitioner track where you move off and be a Senior Engineer, Master Engineer, Senior Accountant, have more responsibility for managing projects, have more responsibility for doing work at a higher level but not necessarily managing people.
In those organizations that have the dual tracks you can enjoy titles, prestige, status and money commensurable with the managerial track and another advantage to this is it not only gives people a chance to do what they like and what they’re good at, it gives the organization a chance to develop people around where they want to head. So if you choose the management track then they develop you and actually teach you the skills of managing people before you’re thrown into that role and if you choose the practitioner track, your development will focus on being more adept at your chosen career.
So the organization benefits by leveraging the strengths of employees and employee’s benefits by actually getting to actually do what they want and what they’re good at.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, that’s a compelling case. So given now that our minds are expanded like there are routes different to the management what might be some key acid tests or questions to think through to make an informed decision? Do I want to position myself and chase after opportunities that are of the traditional management track or do I to tackle the track of the elite practitioner, if you will. What are kind of the key things to look at to make the wise choice there?

Mark Allen
So number one if you’re contemplating do I want to be a people manager the first question is: Do I like dealing with people? Do I like dealing with people issues and people problems? Anyone who you know who’s ever managed people says that sometimes there are issues, problems, personal issues that go on that’s part of the art and science of managing people and so the first question is do I like dealing with people and people issues? The next question is: Do I think I’d be good at hiring people and developing people, engaging them and retaining them because the primary function of a good people manager is hire good people, develop them, coach them, engage them and retain them.
So if you’re thinking of going into that track do you think you would be good at those things? And then I think the ultimate question is: Do you have a passion for it? Because almost anyone I know who is awesome at their job is doing something they’re passionate about, they’re not doing something they just kind of landed in and they’re showing up for a paycheck. The best talent managers I know are really passionate about hiring good people, about developing them and coaching them. So those are the questions to ask and if you’re answering no to all of those perhaps managing people isn’t for you and then one caveat to that is even if you’re in an organization with a dual career track these are not etched in stone, these are not decisions that go on your permanent record and are there for life. There are various points in your career you can switch and you can make direction changes in your career and move from one ladder to  the other. Ideally within a company you love or into a different company.

Pete Mockaitis
It’s interesting how when you ask those questions they seem fundamental and I’m wondering if some folks almost feel sort of guilty or they’re anti-social or a sociopath or something if the answers are no to some of those questions.
I guess I don’t really like working with people, I don’t enjoy dealing with them, so maybe could you correct us or offer some comfort there. What proportion of folks do you think are suited to enjoy and honestly the management stuff vs. truly in their heart of hearts just don’t?

Mark Allen
I can’t really put a percentage to it but I would say if you’re asking that if the majority of people in the workplace like managing and dealing with people issues I would say the majority don’t.
I don’t feel the need to correct you I think you’re right, there is a little bit of a stigma in raising your hand and saying “You know what, I don’t really like people.” In private conversations I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard people, sometimes managing people sometimes just practitioners, say ‘you know I really like my job the thing I don’t like is the other people’. The problem is hermit isn’t an especially high paying job, the big hermit firms just aren’t hiring these days.

Pete Mockaitis
To be a hermit you’ve got to like produce literature of great insight but then you got to get a publisher and work with them and all that stuff.

Mark Allen
Yeah, I didn’t think there’s a very lucrative career path in monk anymore. So essentially we all have to work with people but the question isn’t getting along with people. The question is dealing with people as the primary focus of your job. I think in an organization that’s honest about running dual career paths I don’t think there should be any stigma about saying look I’m an engineer, I love doing engineering or I really like keeping the books and I just don’t see myself as being the best choice for someone to manage other engineers or accountants.

Pete Mockaitis
I’m wondering about careers like sales because often that’s like the quintessential example of this like you’re a rock star salesperson but then you’re promoted to being a Sales Manager then you’re not so great at that. So it’s a bit of a different game but sales is a people activity yet it is distinctive from managing people to do that activity.

Mark Allen
Absolutely, you’ve hit upon the primary example of why promoting top performers into management roles, people management roles is I believe one of the biggest causes of organizational dysfunction.
I used to think this was a mistake and then I realized I was wrong, it’s two mistakes because first of all we’re taking someone who’s good at sales and is there any real belief in the assumption that if someone is really good at sales or engineering or accounting or nursing that they’re likely to be really good at managing other people who do that function?
I think we know that there really isn’t really any truth to that assumption.
If look at professional sports typically the best athletes do not become the best coaches or managers become recognized as the best coaches or managers are more likely the role players guys like Pat Riley or Phil Jackson guys who weren’t superstars and when superstars like Magic Johnson or Michael Jordan tried their hand at coaching they weren’t necessarily the best at it.
So I don’t there’s any truth in the assumption that just because someone’s really good at a function they would be good at managing other people by doing that – some are, but not all.
The reason I say it’s two mistakes is number one we’re creating a manager out of someone who probably doesn’t have the aptitude or possibly not the desire to do it and so the skills you need to be a good manager are good people skills, good communication skills, the ability to hire, develop, engage and retain good people and yet we put people in that world based not on their competencies from doing the role we’re putting them in. We’re putting them in based on their competencies on doing a different job, called sales and to me one of the most frustrating things is manager, a vital and important position, that’s higher up on the org chart and is typically paid more money we typically select people for that role based not at all on their competency to do that role. It seems to be the one position in an organization where we ignore competencies when we select for the role.
The second mistake which is a little more insidious is we’re taking our best salesperson and saying you’re so good at sales now we want you to do something different and stop doing the thing you’re really good at. So we’re not only creating a bad manager we’re subtracting our best salesperson.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay that’s a potent argument and I guess it’s interesting. I wonder in practice it’s almost maybe the halo effect or now I’m wondering psychologically why do we such things. It’s like ‘well you’re a high performer and therefore you will succeed at this as well’ maybe is sort of the logic spoken or unspoken. Why do you think leaders fall for that trap?

Mark Allen
I think the main reason is we want to reward our top performers and we have this mindset that the greatest form of reward we have in our organizations is promotion and promotion is not a reward for doing your job well. It’s actually a shift to a different job.
So promotions should not be rewards, promotions should not be given for doing a different job well. The promotion should be given to the person who demonstrates the skills and competencies to do the job. The great performer should be rewarded in other ways like money, good work assignments, prestige, status, recognition but in some cases the reward is actually punishment because somebody doesn’t even want to do the job.

Pete Mockaitis
You know I’m thinking about Captain Jean-Luc Picard right now, to bring out my nerdy Star Trek – The Next Generation, but the outstanding Captains knew don’t let them make you an Admiral and take you out the Captain’s chair.

Mark Allen
Yes, number one.

Pete Mockaitis
Well played, engage.
Tell us it sounds like you’ve made a really great distinction when it comes to that top performer-manager piece that sounds perhaps what you might call an Aha Moment in Talent Management the name of one of your books, are there any other particularly relevant aha moments that you think a young professional should get their arms around?

Mark Allen
The book has thirteen talent management principles, thirteen chapters each one ending in an aha moment and I’m happy to share with you number one. Which is it starts with the idea that if you were to ask any CEO what is your most valuable asset in your organization what’s their answer? It’s our people also I actually always ask when I meet a CEO very interestingly and half the time they answer before I’m even done with the question “it’s our people, they teach it on the first day at CEO school, if anybody ever asks you have to say it’s our people.”

Pete Mockaitis
“It’s our portfolio of proprietary patents.”

Mark Allen
You never hear that one. The tougher question is when they say it’s our people and they really mean it and many of them do, some don’t but most do. But even if they mean it the real question is does the organization behave everyday as if they truly believe that people are their most valuable asset?
Because just as I ask that question to CEOs I ask a lot of employees does your organization actually behave as if it believes people are its most valuable asset and sadly the vast majority say no. So the first aha moment in the book is people are your organization’s most valuable asset but behave as if you believe it to be true every day. You know we’re not careless with the way we treat the money in our organization or the technology but sometimes we don’t manage our people asset with the same level of care.

Pete Mockaitis
Right on, that’s good and so when you start to make that kind of extra real does that kind of have some key implications about some basic “hey you really have to do this and you really shouldn’t do that” and yet these behaviors happen all the time. So are there any particular actions you can shine the light on there?

Mark Allen
Well there’s a couple that are just recurring themes every time I talk to people in organizations. Number one is work-life balance and people who you would already suppose work for some organizations that say value work-life balance?

Pete Mockaitis
They say probably almost all of them.

Mark Allen
Yes, it’s close to a hundred percent but what percent of organizations do you suppose actually behave as if they value work-life balance?

Pete Mockaitis
You know it’s funny I’m just thinking Netflix and a couple others. I don’t know. Have you done some research on this good professor?

Mark Allen
I have anecdotal research whenever I ask people does your organization say it values work-life balance? Yes and then I say do they really and they say about fifty-fifty, I mean there are a lot more organizations now that value work-life balance. I talk to people and they say you just use the phrase forty hour work week and they laugh at you. We only time we have a forty hour work week is Thanksgiving week when it’s only Monday through Wednesday. But with people working six days or twelve hours a day or sixty hours a week that’s the opposite of work-life balance. When you ask them why they do that it’s either well it’s expected here or it’s the only way I can get my work done because I just have too much stuff. Well that means we haven’t designed the jobs appropriately. The other piece that fits in with the idea of really behaving as if people were the most valuable asset is this constant cycle of layoffs and we’ve come up with so many euphemisms, it used to be layoffs then it was downsizing, then it was right-sizing now it’s reduction in force.

Pete Mockaitis
At Bain we called it an SG&A rationalization.

Mark Allen
A rationalization.

Pete Mockaitis
That happened from time to time and sometimes it’s true. It makes sense, it’s rational for the levels of overhead functions to be here but the hard reality is yes some positions decisions are going to be eliminated in those projects.

Mark Allen
Sometimes you do have to do that it’s become so routine that a reduction of force has been reduced to a RIF and I think people say well we’re doing another RIF and they say it with the same pleasure as if you’re saying well we’re doing our quarterly inventory or we’re closing our books or we’re doing a RIF. Now if people are your most valuable asset how come we never say we’re cutting assets? I understand you have to cut costs but at least acknowledge you’re cutting assets. I don’t think we would be as cavalier about doing RIFs if we called it causing great harm to employees and their families.

Pete Mockaitis
So that’s powerful, that is a provocative statement and it makes some good sense. So I guess in practice in terms of folks who are not in the senior echelons of leadership are able to implement that kind of stuff but in the kind of rank and file or the manager of a couple of direct reports. What are some key practices that they can invoke?

Mark Allen
If you’re a first line supervisor think of your job as you’ve been entrusted with the organization’s most valuable asset. Whether it’s a large group or a small handful of talented people, that is an asset to your organization and you’ve been entrusted with it and take it very seriously and realize, let’s face it the number one reason why people would leave organizations is their immediate supervisor so as a supervisor are you doing things to get your people to want to stay and produce for the organization or are you in fact driving talent out the door?
And then for the rank and file if you’re in that position and you’re one of those people who tells me “my organization doesn’t treat it’s people well” I do have some advice for you – get the hell out of there.
Because there are so many organizations that do in fact treat their people well and the sad truth is we spend more time at work with the people we work with than at home with the people we love and so if you’re going to spend that time, the companies that treat their people really well they will also give you a paycheck.
The worst reason to stay on the job is “well they pay me and I need the paycheck.” Well your crappy company isn’t the only one that offers that benefit. The companies that treat people well also treat them well and give them paychecks.

Pete Mockaitis
Straight talk, very good. So I’m curious when you talk about treating people well are there any kind of key practices in terms of means of doing the recognition, the appreciation and getting those strengths to come alive from folks?

Mark Allen
That’s a great question. Your questions just cut right into the important issues and now to answer your question praise is cheap.

Pete Mockaitis
In that it doesn’t mean much or it doesn’t cost much to do?

Mark Allen
It doesn’t cost much and in that case I might’ve sounded insincere but I was in fact being sincere. But it didn’t cost me anything to say that and it probably made you feel better and sadly I can’t pay you more Pete but I can praise you more.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, keep it coming. Okay but there’s a lot of meta level examples unfolding over those last few seconds so I’m with you. So praise it’s easy, it’s free, you can do it, feedback as well. It’s helpful, it’s the breakfast of champions I’ve heard it said, it enriches people and it strengthens their professional capabilities for the current organization or a next. Praise and feedback are there any others?

Mark Allen
Treat them like a human being and it almost goes without saying that I don’t know about you but I’ve been on jobs where I had bosses that treated people like they were expendable commodities and not human beings. Just basic human decency and respect goes a long way.

Pete Mockaitis
So I guess I just had a quick final piece, unless there is something else you want to make sure we cover. Since you also teach creativity, innovation I know that it’s a popular topic amongst our podcast guests and listeners. Any quick tips you would suggest for folks who would want to generate more quantity and quality of ideas during the course of the workday?

Mark Allen
It’s an interesting topic because we say creativity and innovation like they’re the same thing but in fact creativity is the ability to generate new ideas or solve problems in new ways whereas innovation is the ability to implement new ideas and if we were to come from definitions then creativity the ability to generate new ideas would typically describe an individual whereas innovation the ability to put new ideas into practice would describe and organization. I would venture to guess that the majority of your listeners are creative, they are people who can generate new ideas so the real question is are they working in an organization that’s innovative?
What distinguishes innovative organizations is not that they have more creative people because if we do define creativity as coming up with new ideas most organizations are full of creative people but there are two things that organizations do that hinder their innovation. One is creative employees are and I’m sure many of your listeners go through this say ‘hey boss I’ve got an idea’ and then there’s a whole litany of creativity killer answers the bosses give and I’m sure you know some of these ‘we’re short, we don’t have the money for that, we don’t have the time, we tried it before and it didn’t work, that’s not how we do things around here, it’s not your job to come up with new ideas, it’s not your job to think, when we want your opinion we’ll get back to you’. I have heard some of these answers at various firms and so there’s pretty long way towards killing innovation but the even more insidious way is the boss says ‘hey that’s a good idea let’s give it a try’ and we give it a try and for whatever reasons it fails. It could be a good idea bad implementation, good idea bad timing, good idea not enough resources, good idea bad luck and so we try and it fails. The big boss says ‘hey we lost money this was a failure and somebody’s got to be punished’ and the person who came up with the idea gets ridiculed, demoted or fired. The next day another employee has a really good idea but they see what just happened to the other guy and they keep their mouth shut.
Then the company comes up with the realization that we’re not innovating and the solution they come up with is we’ve got to hire more creative people and the fact is you’ve just fired one creative person and silenced another. So the one hallmark about big organizations they don’t punish failure. Innovation which is trying a new idea involves somewhat of a risk and if you’re going to take a risk that means you have to be willing to accept failure. One company that I’ve worked with has it as one of its’ core values they say we will not punish intelligent business risk taking. So they are valuing the idea of intelligent risk taking regardless of outcome.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s nice, very clear. So there is a key distinction between definitions and you’re saying many folks are just creative pretty much naturally just the way our brain operates. Any tips or tricks or tactics to throw on the gas and let it rip?

Mark Allen
So it’s not a manager’s or organization’s job to make you more creative but it their job to create an environment in which people can be creative. Sometimes that the physical environment, sometimes that’s the culture and so the question isn’t making people more creative it’s managing the creativity that the people have. So for frontline employees when they feel that they work for an organization where they can say ‘hey boss I’ve got an idea’. Again if you don’t you’re maybe working at the wrong place but if you think you can then go ahead and be creative, throw out the ideas. Not every idea is adopted, not every idea works but you want to have the freedom to be able to express yourself.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s a lot of good stuff here, Mark you tell me is there anything else you want to make sure we cover off before we shift gears and get to some of your favorite things?

Mark Allen
No, I think as I said earlier your questions are spot on and you’ve really hit my areas of interest.

Pete Mockaitis
Thank you well I’m glad to hear it. I’m interested too and I’m also interested to hear can you start us off by sharing a favorite quote?

Mark Allen
It comes from the world of HR and Pepperdine recently launched a Master of Science in Human Resources program and I kick off that program with a quote from a man named Tony Parasida who’s the Senior Vice President of Human Resources at the Boeing Corporation and Tony says if you focus on engineering you’ll have a great engineering section, if you focus on finance you’ll have a great finance section but you focus on human resources you’ll have a great company.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay and how about a favorite study or experiment or piece of research?

Mark Allen
You know in tying right in with what we’ve been talk about there’s a study a year or two ago that was published in Harvard Business Review that said fifty percent of Americans don’t aspire to leadership positions and that’s especially powerful because here we are with people climbing that ladder, moving their way up to get money and on the other side of the organization we’re doing these super secret succession planning meetings and mind boxes for identifying high potentials and it turns out half of them don’t even aspire to leadership positions. So I think the typical mind box looks at performance and potential – high, medium and low, I think we need to add a third dimension which is aspiration. Which might give us a twenty seven box Rubik’s cube.

Pete Mockaitis
Three dimensions how can you put it on a PowerPoint slide?

Mark Allen
That’s the problem isn’t it?

Pete Mockaitis
Well interesting thank you and how about a favorite book?

Mark Allen
For a shameless plug I would say Aha Moments in Talent Management published by ASTD and available at Amazon but I wouldn’t do that so I’m going to go with a book by Marcus Buckingham wrote called The One Thing You Need to Know and I think it’s such a powerful book. First of all it’s a bargain because it gives you three things you need to know for the price of one. It what’s what you need to know to succeed at being an individual contributor, what you need to know to succeed at being a manager and being a leader.
In each case it’s a variation of what Marcus Buckingham has being preaching for over a decade which is focus on your strengths, don’t try to fix the one little thing you’re not good at, and work on that. People won’t pay you to be well rounded but to be really good at something so try to get better at what you’re really good at.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s connecting for me they’re not going to pay you for being well rounded, I’m reminded of the book The Smartest Guys in the Room which was riveting about the Enron scandal and I guess McKinsey and Jeffrey Skilling, the CEO, said ‘I’m looking for guys with spikes’. Which is like the opposite of what you wanted but that’s noteworthy how excellent you are at that even if you are kind of embarrassingly bad at several other things.

Mark Allen
If only he said we’re looking for guys with spikes and decent ethics.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s right not ethical, spikes and ethics. So you tell me about a favorite tool, something that you find helpful and you’re doing your job.

Mark Allen
One thing that I really like to see is Prezi which is a presentation software. What I like the most about it is that it isn’t PowerPoint and we’ve all been power pointed to death.
Prezi moves a little better, it’s easier to use and it’s different and presentations with Prezi tend to be a little bit more dynamic and its greatest advantage is it’s not PowerPoint.

Pete Mockaitis
How about a favorite habit or personal practice of yours that’s been pretty handy?

Mark Allen
I love to have zero emails in my inbox. Now some people are very jealous of this because they have just an endless stream but I go by and there’s extra stuff in my inbox I’m thinking that’s a lot of stuff I’ve got hanging over me. So typically an email comes in I respond to it quickly and then I can delete it, if I don’t reply then it’s sitting there. I wake up feeling pretty good everyday knowing that I’ve gone to bed with I have no emails in my inbox.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s sparking all kinds of follow-ups. If you feel comfortable divulging, how many emails do you get in a day roughly?

Mark Allen
I would say well over a hundred, a good half of them are things I don’t need to read or attend to – they’re junk or not really pertinent.

Pete Mockaitis
So the remainder might take on average one, two, three, four, five minutes for a response?

Mark Allen
Most of them it’s a thirty second response, it’s thirty seconds to read it and thirty seconds to type one or two sentences but the point is I’m not saying I achieve the zero inbox every day, I aspire to that. The point is I get where you’re going with this, I get a few dozen ones that will take a few hours a day of work but if I don’t do it it’s not like it’s going to take any less time to respond to it tomorrow or next week or next month when I have a hundred of them so it’s really just a question of not deferring what I have to do to another day.

Pete Mockaitis
You’re right, well the quest continues. I’m battling that thing and it’s like I get to zero maybe every other week or so and I’m usually coasting between twenty and fifty, like that’s going to take six minutes and I don’t have that six minutes right now.

Mark Allen
Well it’s going to take that six minutes at some point, you’re not saving when you’re done with it. You’re saving something today and I get that because some days are busier that others and so as I said I don’t achieve it every day I just aspire to it and it’s a good feeling when you get there.

Pete Mockaitis
It is, it’s liberating, it’s like I’m flying. Thank you and how about a favorite nugget or piece that you share in articulation of one your core messages that really seems to give and resonate with folks?

Mark Allen
It coincides with that Marcus Buckingham theory that I mentioned earlier which is to leverage your strengths.
What I advise people is to do what you want and I know it sounds like a cliché, your dad said that to you in high school. It really comes down to we spend so much time at work and sometimes we have jobs we hate but sometimes we have jobs where we’re just not bringing our passion to it and the really sweet spot in life is spending your time doing something you enjoy and someone gives you money for it. That’s the realization and for me it took a few decades to firstly figure out what I’m what doing and then to figure out how to get people to pay me for it. So it takes a while first of all figure out if you really enjoy doing it and if you can and if you’re good at it then you’ll be able to find a way to have people pay you for it.

Pete Mockaitis
Thank you and how about a favorite way to be contacted if folks want to reach out and learn more or see what you’re up to?

Mark Allen
As much as I hate to put more things in my inbox, I always respond quickly to emails. I like being contacted by email and my email address is very simple – mark.allen@pepperdine.edu

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, thank you and do you have a final call to action or parting words challenge you would issue to those seeking to be more awesome at their jobs?

Mark Allen
Just last week I was reading my student evaluations for the course I taught last summer and there’s a section on there that says do you have any suggestions to make this course better and one student wrote N/A: dude is awesome. Even though we might hope our MBA students are a little more articulate I think dude is awesome is one of my favorite pieces of feedback I’ve ever gotten. So the challenge I would submit to people early in their careers is not to do what I did and basically the challenge is don’t wait. So if you’re in a job that isn’t your destiny don’t wait. I spent a lot of my time waiting for the next thing to come along and the next thing doesn’t just come along you’ve got to find it or make it and so you have a very valuable inventory in your career which is your time. So don’t wait if you’re not in the right spot, find the right spot.
My second favorite quote is the CEO of Farmers Insurance Jeff Daily says we want our own place to have the career they’re destined to have and we want to help employees get it. My advice don’t wait, figure out what career you’re destined to have and make it happen.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, brilliant. Thank you Mark, it’s been a lot of fun and I hope that you get to enjoy some more of the beautiful part of Pepperdine Campus more often and this has been a real treat.

Mark Allen
I would love to chat more but I’ve got to get some stuff out of my inbox.