Welcome to May, the start of what I call “The Hidden Golden Quarter.” May through July is usually a period of great autonomy. A period when you have the most control over your time and resources to implement changes, work on priorities, and deliver results.
Why focus on this time period? August is traditionally a time for vacations, when team members focus on family and relaxation, making it difficult to make progress on cross-departmental initiatives. By September, organizations refocus on large corporate initiatives that deliver profits and value to key stakeholders. If your individual goals tightly align with big corporate initiatives, then you will not notice any change in your routine or focus. If, however, your goals are less aligned, you will experience interference with your daily routines, getting pulled into initiatives and taskforces that monopolize your time. Even more frustrating, at the end of the year come evaluation time, your efforts may be forgotten as your manager asks why you did not focus more attention on the goals originally assigned.
Use The Hidden Golden Quarter to focus on two areas:
- 80/20 Rule – view this three-month period as representing the 20% of your effort where 80% of your individual results are achieved. Be selfish and ruthless in the pursuit of your objectives and key results; and
- Expand Your Spheres of Influence – make helping others a keystone habit.
80/20 Rule
Also known as the Pareto Principle, it is a belief that 80% of outcomes (or outputs) result from 20% of all causes (or inputs) for any given event. In business the goal it to identify inputs that are the most productive and make them the priority.
The Hidden Golden Quarter is a time-based productivity input for the reasons I outlined above. Use this along with other key inputs – collaboration, investment of budget dollars, etc. to produce outsized outcomes.
Expand Your Spheres of Influence
Journalist Charles Duhigg, and author of the book The Power of Habit coined the term keystone habits. They are changes or habits that people make, and when adopted and nurtured, trigger a domino effect of positive changes in various areas of one’s life.
Intentionally expanding your sphere of influence is a keystone habit that will accelerate your career. The best way to accomplish this is to work with a colleague or team outside of your department or area and help them achieve a major goal. The Hidden Golden Quarter provides the opportunity and flexibility to take time from your daily routine to help others. Great careers are built on expertise, connections, and visibility. Helping others outside your area checks all three aspects at once.
First, by working with colleagues in other areas you share your expertise, while gaining new knowledge and understanding from them. It increases your business acumen and enterprise mindset. Second, it expands your connections, making you more valuable to the organization. Finally, it increases your visibility throughout the organization making you a more attractive promotion candidate. Imagine two equally qualified candidates are up for a promotion. The first is a subject-matter-expert who has worked only within their department. They are well liked and highly spoken of by colleagues. The second candidate is also an expert, but they have the reputation of consulting with other departments on their initiatives. In this case, people from across multiple departments speak highly about their work. Who do you think gets promoted faster?
May is a good time to identify the right department and project to work on to expand your influence. Below are a few tips to guide your search:
- Natural extension / connection: look for people who use the outputs of your area as inputs to their work. Example: you work at the manufacturing plant producing products. You volunteer to work with a retail team focused on increasing the sales of those products in stores.
- Flip the coin: there are two sides to a coin and you can signal maturity and an enterprise mindset by learning how to see both sides. Example: if you are in sales, work on a cost cutting or operations initiative. If you work in finance, work on a human resources project. Or if you work in the corporate office, work on a field project.
- Go up one level: in my book Develop, I highlight three levels of influence, the organizational level, industry level, and world level. Work on a project that takes you to the next level up. If your influence is primarily within your organization, work on a project that exposes you to others across your industry. If you are a reginal influencer, work on a country-wide project, or work in another country.
Bottom Line
May is the start of driving for results and expanding your spheres of influence. With a little planning and concentrated effort, you can achieve the results you desire while preparing for future success.