How to Figure Out Your Next Move

So, assuming that you’re a good performer, and you’ve met your company’s requirements to be eligible for a mobility move, how does one go about figuring out what their  next move should be?

Here’s a framework I suggest to people:

1. Assess yourself.  Two categories of skills: capabilities and product/technical knowledge. Make a list of what you have in both these categories NOW. Capabilities are broad: people management skills, business requirements documenter, presentation skills. Product/technical is the deep detailed knowledge, like knowing a particular product. This is what you bring to the new job.

2. What do you love, what not so much? Write the elements down. If you don’t want to manage people, you need to write that down. This is what you want your future job to have.

3. Show your assessment to your manager and have a conversation to narrow down the options. If you don’t want to manage others, you’re not going to run a line. If you hate strategy, you’re not going to want to be in a planning function. The purpose of this is to narrow down all the options to the best few.

4. Once you’ve narrowed down the list of functions/areas, ask your manager for 3 names of people you can talk to. Often, the next move is about timing. You want to do your due diligence as well as make sure people have you in mind when an opening does come up.

5. When you interview for the role, there are 3 people you need to talk to: the hiring manager (but take it with a grain of salt since they’re selling you), your current manager (they probably know you the best, so their opinion is important), and someone who works for the hiring manager (“What are the 3 things you love about the job? What frustrates you?”) They’re most likely to be honest with you.

Lastly, be patient. It’s better to take longer to find the perfect next move, than move too fast and jump into the fire.

The Devil’s in the Details

One of my favorite sayings…particularly when I’m working on a project. While it’s important to have the big picture, the strategic view, the long term perspective, what trips people up is the detail.

Why? It takes a long time to figure out that someone’s strategy is wrong. It can take years….and perspectives can shift dramatically depending on the circumstances.

But details can trip you up immediately. And visibly. So as you progress in your career, never forget that the details matter.  I have found many times that if you spend 3 hours now, you’ll save 60 hours later. Mistakes are much harder to rectify the further you’ve gone down the road.

When Your Heart Breaks

Stanford neurosurgeon Paul Kalanithi died March 9th of lung cancer at the age of 37. So many things about his situation made him unique: being a doctor, being diagnosed with metastatic lung cancer, being a new father. But most importantly, the kind of man he was.

In his article, “Before I Go“, he leaves this message for his infant daughter:

“When you come to one of the many moments in life when you must give an account of yourself, provide a ledger of what you have been, and done, and meant to the world, do not, I pray, discount that you filled a dying man’s days with a sated joy, a joy unknown to me in all my prior years, a joy that does not hunger for more and more, but rests, satisfied. In this time, right now, that is an enormous thing.”

Work is important. But it’s not what’s most important.

Optics

I use the term “optics” to describe when we don’t do something because of the way it looks. Not whether or not there’s a rule we’re in violation of. It goes above and beyond the written rules and is a higher standard.

There will never be a rule for everything. And situations change. But the ability to exercise good “optics” awareness is key in a career.

Good optics awareness requires you to ask yourself constantly, “Could this be construed negatively?” No one ever intentionally wants an optics problem. It’s almost always an unintended consequence.

It can be as big as auto makers flying on corporate jets while asking for a billion dollar bailout. It can be as small as a team going out for drinks three times a week, a manager appearing to favor one person over another, having a big party when the company just let people go.  No rules were technically broken…but it probably shouldn’t have happened.

Optics matter. If you’re not sure, ask someone you trust. It’s a 30 second conversation that can save you a lot of damage control cleanup.

 

 

Making It Easier

One thing people have shared with me is that they like to post the Lessons Learned list on their work wall, as a reminder. I’ve included an easy to print version for those of you who’d like to do the same. Go to “My Lessons Learned List” under Pages on the top right hand corner to find it.

Enjoy!

Instincts

You can learn a lot through reading, school, on the job classes. But unless you couple it with experience, it’s like a free floating fact in your brain…interesting, but what do you do with it?

If you haven’t had the experiences yet, listen to your instincts.

A good friend who astonishes me in his ability to size people based on very little information explains his prowess this way:

“I grew up in a tough neighborhood in Brooklyn. So when a guy’s walking down the street towards you, you need to be able to size up pretty quickly whether or not he’s going to shake your hand, or knock you out. Are they a friend, or a hustler?”

Our ability to rationalize and over-think things often gets in the way of our instincts. When your instinct kicks in, listen.

How to Hold Great Planning Sessions/Offsites

At some point in your career, you might be asked to organize a planning session, 2 day offsite, something that a group of people will attend. You will be in charge of what they do for those 2 days. Having planned many, and attended many, here are my top 5 lessons learned.

1. Schedule the subjects and speakers in an order that makes sense. Think of it like organizing chapters in a book. If you’re going to have a discussion about strategy, make sure the key subjects are teed up ahead of time.

2. Schedule 30 minute breaks. 15 minutes turn into 30 minutes anyway. People need to return calls, read blackberry. If you don’t give them sufficient breaks, they’ll do it during the meeting. I always schedule a mid-morning, and a mid afternoon break and order snacks, coffee, water to keep the energy up.  Sometimes it’s a working lunch, but they always get the breaks.

3. Be available to review decks and provide feedback, but don’t get too hung up on form over substance. Now some meetings, you won’t have a choice and will need to follow clear guidelines.  But I like to let people reuse materials they may have already created. Be clear about deadlines, and let folks know: miss the deadline, you’re walking in with copies for everyone. Most people want to avoid showing folks that they were late. Don’t cut production time too close.

4. Make sure someone is keeping track of key questions, subjects, and follow ups. I keep notes during the session, and will type them up at the end of the day, and distribute them the next morning for comments from the team. It keeps the material fresh, the group focused, and makes it a lot easier to remember the takeaways post meeting.

5. Leave room for the unexpected. If it’s a large group, and a controversial topic, I’ll give the speakers 30 minutes, but I’ll schedule an extra 30 minutes for “buffer time” in the agenda. Nothing’s worse than having to cut off a great conversation because of time. I’ll also schedule a few “free-floating” topics which can be moved around if we go over.

The point of the offsite is to bring the group together to be updated and informed, but also to enable the group to make decisions in a short period of time. The best ones accomplish both.

Enough

Another powerful word. What is enough for you?

A story: two writers, Joe Heller and Kurt Vonnegut meet at a party. Kurt tells Joe “Our host made a billion dollars. More money than you made on your best seller.” Joe responds “Yes, but I have something he’ll never have.” “What’s that?” Kurt asks. “Enough.”

Think about what enough looks like for you. Does it mean vacations twice a year? Not worrying about retirement? Paying for your kid’s tuition?  Being able to sleep at night without worrying about bills?

Define it for yourself and put a plan in place. No matter what, you’re going to want enough.