On changing roles…
A few times in your career, you might be given an opportunity to pivot into a role that is outside of your comfort zone. I’ve had this opportunity at several points throughout mine.
I started out as a volunteer systems administrator and eventually moved to a paid role in the same. Over the years, I’ve been a quota bearing sales representative, a sales engineer, a software engineer, an operations engineer and then a manager and leader within many of these disciplines.
Every time I’ve been given an opportunity to try something new, I’ve run through the following exercise to help determine if this role was right for me at this given time.
Why change roles?
This is the first question that anyone should ask themselves. I believe that when evaluating a new role, you need to first determine if you are running towards the new role or running away from your current situation. I don’t personally believe in running away from something. I try and ensure that when moving on, I do it at a time when I can be proud of the accomplishments that my team has achieved. This often coincides with the successful completion of a large project or the successful launch of a new product.
I’m a fundamentally curious person, and I enjoy learning new things about how a business operates. When evaluating my desired career path, in a future state I see myself as a Chief Product Officer, or possibly even a Chief Executive Officer in a product focussed technology company. To facilitate this journey, I need to learn as much as possible about the various aspects of successfully running a business. When evaluating new opportunities, I map them back to my career goals and determine if they will help me along this path.
In my most recent move, going from leading DevOps practices at SugarCRM to heading up the Product Management organization, I saw a great opportunity. Over the years, I’ve built up my personal brand around tactical execution, differentiating myself by challenging the status quo. I’ve shown the ability to drive organizational change and a desire for continuous improvement. In an operations and engineering leadership capacity this has served me well and allowed me to progress further than I would have thought possible early on in my career.
As I look to where I would like to grow and ultimately showcase different capabilities, the vision, mission and strategic aspects of Product Management present a wonderful opportunity for personal growth and to explore new challenges.
What does the new role entail?
Before taking on something new, I try and understand, as much as possible, the nuances of the role and the things that others would be expect of me. In the case of Product Management, fundamentally, your job is to solve the right problem for the right people at the right time.
I use a combination of research techniques here to try and get a better understanding. I often start by reading several books that are highly regarded in the field. I talk to my peers about their expectations and I talk the people who are currently in the role about how they view the role and what challenges they are facing. I also look to people external to the organization for guidance on how they perceive the world. All of these tools are helping me to build out the mental model of where I would ultimately play. They also help me to identify key allies that I should be working to foster relationships with.
What will it take to be successful?
Beyond just understanding what the role entails, it’s critical to consider what it will take for you to be successful in your particular circumstance. These are things that you will want to discuss with your peers and your hiring manager. These findings will help you to build a success plan to ensure that you don’t get mired down in the minutiae and are able to also manage the big picture.
For a product management, I’ve come up with the following list of lenses through which the Product Management organization will be viewed and upon which, my performance will ultimately be judged.
- Developing market insights
- Crafting strategy
- Launch and execution planning
- Product line performance management
- Driving alignment and action across the organization
- Using organizational and work management skills
In addition to understanding your new role, it’s important to consider your old role. As you transition, it’s essential to make space for the person who is stepping into your old role. How can you set them up for success? What steps can you take to help them feel empowered. In times of change, it’s incredibly easy to snap back into your old role. It often gives you that boost of endorphins that come from mastery of a specific task or job function, however, it’s taking an opportunity away from the new person to establish their position and to take the role in the direction that they feel is important. Do your best to support this person in the transition but don’t assert yourself in ways that hurt their credibility or mission.
Find a mentor
No matter where you are in your career journey, there are people who have been there before. Mentors are great sounding boards. They have years of experience and can help you to navigate around the countless pitfalls that they have already experienced. They can be people who exist within your organization or people from outside the company.
If you have been building up a network for years, you probably already have some ideas for who you could to turn to. If you are newer in your career or have not been good about fostering your network, you might want to turn to an external service. I’ve been a mentor with Plato for a while now and I have regularly received positive feedback for the actionable advice I am able to provide. Mentorship in general is a great opportunity to share knowledge and to give something back to the industry that has likely been quite good to you.
Come up with a success plan
Now that you’ve synthesized a number of inputs and come up with a list of ways that you will be judged for success, it’s time to build a success plan. I’ll usually start with a mind map around each of the lenses identified above. The mind map allows me to get a list of all of the things I could be doing in each of the different areas. I then use that as a basis for prioritization. Unfortunately, we can’t often tackle everything we wish we could at once.
Now that I have a sense of the desired end state as well as a prioritized list of things under each lens, I once again, turn to old faithful, the tried and true work back plan. The plan should focus on outcomes and lay them out in way that shows continuous progress towards your goal. I also like to time box the milestones so that when I move into execution mode, I can get a sense of how I’m doing towards my plan.
Garner support from your peers and team
Like most things in life, you are unlikely to be able to succeed if you go it alone. You need to share your plan with the people you work with. Give them the opportunity to suggest refinements. You ultimately want everyone to be bought into plan so that they are personally invested in your success as well as the success of your team.
People often miss this step. Communicating your goals clearly in both verbal and written form ensures that people with different learning styles understand where you’re trying to go. Don’t hesitate to over communicate in this step.
“The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.” — George Bernard Shaw
Any time you’re instituting change, it’s bound to be an ongoing communication. Consider how to establish a drum beat. A simple example of this that I like is to kick off meetings by reiterating organizational goals. This helps keep everyone grounded in the big picture.
Retarget your personal brand
As you transition to your new role, you, of course, should not throw away all your old experiences. They are what allowed for you to be considered for the new position in the first place. Unfortunately, people still regularly pigeon hole each other into categories that they are familiar with.
As such, it’s important that you refine your personal brand around the current role. Show people that the change is not in title alone but has also influenced your though process and your value structure. Over time this will change how they think about you and your contributions to the organization. This change in perception will help you to be more successful.
Track your effort against the plan
I once read that a leader that embarks on a journey with no followers is just taking a walk. The best laid plans can easily be ignored when you get into the dirt and grime of the day to day.
Make time to review your plans regularly. Are you tracking to your goals? Do the goals still make sense? Should they be recast or recalibrated given your knowledge today. Don’t hesitate to update the plan if it no longer makes sense or if priorities are changing. You should always have a plan that represents where you are going or you’ll end up walking in circles.
👋🏻Hey there — I’m Zac
And I’m on a mission…
To help 1 million people become more impactful leaders. I do this by speaking, writing and mentoring on the topic. Do you want to be a better leader — you must know how to use your passion and to create space for those around you. Join other leaders and sign up for email updates.
