Transitions

Currently I am in midst of a ‘transition’ at work.  I have been thinking about ‘how do I ready myself for next role while keeping focus on current role’.

Then I realize we face a related challenge throughout our work lives and possibly our lives itself - ‘How do you manage current while preparing base for future?’. There might be some additional elements involved in a role transition – building up new relationship networks, understanding a new context, etc. But more or less approach should be similar.  It also with right focus should be doable.

Here are few thoughts on how to approach a significant role transition at work:

·         Build a short term plan – 30/60 day plan – with milestones.

·         Focus on how you could ready yourself better even before landing in role. So an element of pre-work might be necessary.

·         Keep aside time periodically (possibly every week in the first month) to reflect on what you achieved against milestones and where you need to course correct.

·         Remember 3 quadrants of onboarding – networks (trust and working partnership with stakeholders), contribution (early successes), and learning (nuts and bolts of job).

·         Prepare for being uncomfortable. In first few months, you may be passing through zones of Unconscious Incompetence (you don’t know what you don’t know) to Conscious Incompetence (you know what you don’t know) to Conscious Competence. Be intentional, stick to your efforts, and don’t let uncertainty impact you too much. It should pay off.

·         As for current role, contract with your current stakeholders on what you will achieve in your remaining few weeks/months in current role. It is important that you leave still feeling on a high.

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Sourav

Response time, readiness, and experiments

All of us will prefer adequate time to learn ropes of a role.  But is that always possible?

Sometimes turnaround time expected in a role is very small- response to situation has to be immediate and effective almost from day/week 1.

How do you prepare for such roles? - when you are unsure of what's going to come your  way and when, and additionally responses are expected almost immediately.

Forming tentative hypothesis, and experimenting may be way to go in such cases.  

You create tentative hypothesis (even around territorial scope of your work), define a problem statement, and then go about trying to find a solution.   

You do this in your free time and even possibly before you have taken on the role.

Through this way you give yourself a better chance of performing from day/week 1 in such roles.

I am reminded of something I had found once relevant – we may not be able to control the situation we are in but we surely can control our response – as long as we know what is it that we are trying to achieve!

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Sourav