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.

-
Sourav

Transitions

We usually use terms induction and onboarding in context of new joiners to companies. But these terms do have relevance to even employees transitioning across roles.

What all might be important to look at when we consider employees transitioning across roles?

There needs to be a focus on:

·         Effective transitioning off from current role:

o   There needs to be a focus on effective hand over of responsibilities to new/stand-in incumbent.

o   Every team also needs to re-center itself when there is a change in team member.  

·         Effectively onboarding into new role:

o   There needs to be a focus on role readiness. This will be a combination of learnings required, contributions (early successes) that give a boost to confidence, and establishing networks required for role.

·         Effectively inducting into new team/org sub-cultures – need for team to re-center itself with new team member.

All of these steps can be facilitated through processes.

How is this different from onboarding and inducting a new joiner to company? It is different in sense that in second case one also needs to factor in ‘inducting into company’.

-

Sourav

Value Chain!

Should we look at only role content when charting out our career plans? What other factors should we consider?

I feel we should also consider what is portfolio of contexts we are building for ourselves.

We can look at life stage of an organization- start up, high growth, mature, or declining.

We can also look at where in value chain is context? Is it

• Closer to customer- pre-sales, sales, delivery, post sales service?
• A little higher up in Supply chain? - secondary distribution (to customer)?
• Much higher up in supply chain-primary sourcing/distribution to factories.
• Product design/R&D?
• Central function -governance of value chain?

 

I have worked in a central org, manufacturing org, sales org, and delivery org.

 

Why is working across different points of value chain important? Well, for one as we see different points we understand the value chain better. For another, different parts of value chain hold different values.

Some values a central org may hold are integration, standardization, bet practices, etc.

In a manufacturing set up values may be Right First Time (no errors), predictability, reliability, process orientation, etc.

In a sales org values may be outcome orientation, resourcefulness, etc.

A delivery org might have values similar to a manufacturing org - focus on processes, quantitative orientation, large scale implementation, etc.

I've worked in mature and high growth phases. I've worked in HQs , with sales orgs, with manufacturing orgs, and with delivery orgs. I’ve worked in HQs as well as in subsidiaries. I've started experienced handling international markets.

What are some of contexts I have not experienced? Service (should be about customer orientation/delight) and R&D (creativity, knowledge); start up and declining phase orgs; and regional and HQ (international) roles.

These are some lines I am thinking on, along with content of next roles, as I plan my next career steps.

-
Sourav