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

Execution and Results

You have started an initiative. You have laid down initial plans for executing it. You now go ahead and execute the plan.

Will you necessarily have success now?

You may or may not! Execution of plans does not necessarily ensure success.

So what kind of execution or what other elements are necessary to ensure success?

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Let us first look at our perception of execution.

Will you call execution a series of steps or an iterative process? Usual image might be it is a series of steps. If you require follow ups and iteration- well that might seem as process inefficiency!

Surprisingly, I have hardly come across initiatives that have not required follow up, iterations, or some kind of course correction.

Execution of plans is important. But plan needs to factor in 3 things mentioned above.

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Secondly you need to have contracted beforehand with relevant stakeholders on definition of success and timing and process of success measurement.

This is important because success maybe interpreted differently by different stakeholders.

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So execution of plans seems to be a pre-requisite but not a guarantor of success! – a necessary but not a sufficient condition for success J

 

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Sourav

Focussed Group Discussions

The week gone by was a week full of FGD’s J.  I have already written a few posts about these FGD’s. Here’s another one! In this post I have penned some of my thoughts, observations, and reflections on the week gone by.

I love the word ‘we’. Someone stands up and says ‘We feel this way!’. I am left wondering ‘Who is the we out here? I saw no-one even nodding his/her head in acknowledgement of what you were saying?’. So finally I had to tell someone ‘I acknowledge the concern you have but would you please use the word ‘I’. Let others speak for themselves.’

How does one hijack a conversation from someone else - make someone else stop dead in his/her tracks and veer the conversation towards what one wants to discuss? In Group Discussions at college, it is common to hear ‘conversation hijackers’ like ‘Taking forward your point….. ‘, ‘I agree with you… ‘, ‘Let me flesh that out a bit more…’.  In the week gone by, I heard another version of a conversation hijacker.  ‘He is right. Let me illustrate through an example……..’ ; by the time the hijacker finished enumerating the example I was left wondering ‘Where was the linkage between the example given (which in some cases was not an example) and what the first person was trying to say?’

‘Let me tell you what happened to me once…’ statement is a conversation diverter. Well if I really had to know what happened to you once, I would ask you so.  We are attempting to look at what is our current state and how can that be improved. Events in the past that have no or little bearing on the present don’t help us improve the present.

‘Let me tell you what happened to someone …’ statements is another conversion diverter.   We are here in FGDs to explore your experiences. Let everyone take responsibility for sharing their experiences.

Whenever I talked about concepts to participants, I found them discussing issues.  But whenever I started asking them specifics, they could easily latch on to the same and discuss. Maybe when one works with an hourly focus, one’s mindset becomes very ‘event specific’ and ‘here and now’.

I managed to put together a HR toolkit for these discussions. I went in and said ‘We can discuss processes or we can discuss networks. Specifically, we can choose 1/2 processes and discuss how we can improve them; or we can choose 1/2 stakeholders and discuss how do we improve the ‘conversations’ between you and these significant stakeholders.’ The toolkit did provide a structure/framework for the discussion.

There was one particular conversation that has stood out in my mind.  During one of FGD’s, the group was insistent on understanding what my role would be when it came to process escalations.  Every few minutes the conversation would veer towards this point. After some time I realized that this was becoming a stumbling block – if I didn’t address this the discussion would just not move forward. I was not sure if I could make a commitment. I myself am learning the ropes - the way things ‘currently’ get done here. But I also realized the group was looking for answers. I told them ‘I don’t think I can make a commitment at this point of time on what my role in process escalations’ would be. But I am committing that I would come back to you with an answer. Would this commitment do?’. The group accepted the commitment and we could make progress on a number of other things we wanted to discuss.  I realized ‘Sometimes a group is not necessarily looking for an immediate resolution. What they are looking for is a commitment that a resolution would be reached.’

I was told, People Manager for the group should not be present in FGD’s. I am not sure why – somewhere you would need to get both the parties face to face and make them talk. So I did do the FGDs without the people manager being there in the room, but I also am aware that in some form or the other the people manager would need to be, and s/he would need to feel, involved in the process.

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Sourav

Establishing Connect!

So here I am, trying to understand the ecosystem i work in and establishing 'connect' with my stakeholders.

Hey, but first hold on! Who are my stakeholders?

Only after you have figured out who your stakeholders are, do you get to the next stage. This next stage is about establishing working connect with each stakeholder.

I have been wondering - what does a 'working connect' mean?

I have been going through these series of introduction rounds. Yes, you are supposed to be in a listening mode, and get 'inducted'. But should getting inducted only be a passive process - a one way street?

So after having had a few of these introduction/induction sessions with stakeholders, I came up with a model for structuring these discussions.

With every stakeholder, in the first meeting, I am:

• establishing a 'connect' frequency - an agreement on how frequently should we meet in a structured fashion. The question is 'We will meet once in -- weeks/days/months?'

• contracting the first thing we would work jointly on and make a difference in. It may be a low hanging fruit or an easy win. But that is okay! The essence is to have this mutual feeling of having worked on something together and achieved success (Think of a football team. Would you expect them to build team spirit only by sitting on the bench or playing in the field too?)

'Getting our hands dirty together' is a visual that comes to mind.

I am intrigued to see how 'outcomes' shape up.

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Sourav