Chapter 8
Make It a Career Positive—Find Opportunities Amid the Chaos
In This Chapter
- 10 rungs on your career ladder
- a career crossroads story
- climbing the 10 rungs of your career ladder exercise
Change can put you in unusual situations. It can also interrupt your career’s upward progress and prevent you from reaching your goals. It may not be clear right away. Your first thought may be that you are not in control of your own destiny. In some significant ways, organizational change is out of your control. But with the right attitude and the practical advice from this chapter, it is possible to have a surprising amount of control over what happens to you during organizational change.
First, before you start any big initiatives to take charge of your career following organizational change, it is best to let things settle down. If your career at least survived the initial changes, count yourself lucky and think of reorganization as a wake-up call. If you don’t do something, you may not be so fortunate next time. The first step is to take ownership of your career. No one else can do this job for you. After all, you have the greatest vested interest in your career.
The second step is to avoid feelings of victimization. It is unlikely the change initiators bear you any ill will personally. They were just trying to design a new organizational structure to react to a change event. Sometimes organizational change is like trying to fit tiny pieces into a giant jigsaw puzzle. If pieces don’t fit, sometimes they get forced into positions where they don’t really belong. But they’re still part of the puzzle. Often things don’t become clear until you learn something new. This is why it is so important for you to be in charge of your career’s direction. You must make sure your personal goals stay aligned with those of the organization.
10 Rungs on Your Career Ladder
The following are 10 rungs on your career ladder that will make change work for you rather than against you. Be careful not to get stalled on any single rung that might prevent you from reaching your ultimate career goals.
Figure 8.1. The Success Ladder
Rung 1: Add Value to Your Position
Your job, like your home, is your castle. If you don’t see value in it, why should anyone else in the organization perceive it this way? You need to recognize the value of your new position. After all, there must have been some reason why the change initiators put this position in their organizational design. To devalue your job would be an insult to management.
Consider what happens when a certain organizational function gets the attention of top management. For example, before the 1970s, quality functions in organizations didn’t have much respect. But when the market demanded more focus on quality, companies reorganized around quality improvement and many people who thought they had been marginalized by their organizations suddenly became the stars with a seat at the decision-making table.
No matter how insignificant your assignment may feel, you should view your responsibilities as critical to your business’s success. An attitude of just meeting the minimum requirements is likely to sentence you to a very long stay in a dead-end job. You need to prove to everyone in the organization that you can do more than what you are presently being asked to do. If you belittle your assignment, you also belittle your accomplishments in that role. This can become a vicious circle. Regardless of how you may feel about where you are assigned, you need to approach your job as if it were the most important one in the organization.
Rung 2: Let Others Know What You Want to Do
The better you perform your present job, the more interested other people (particularly the change initiators) will be in hearing what you want to do in the future. If you distinguish yourself in your current role, people will ask you what you want to do in your next assignment.
The greatest risk in your current assignment is that you may become stereotyped in this role. It is like an actor who can never shed a defining role he played earlier in his career. No matter what part he is in, the audience still perceives him as that former character. Sometimes it is best to stop fighting this image and try to build on it instead. An actor could begin to take similar roles that expand the dimensions of the character yet remain consistent with the audience’s image of him. Similarly, you may need to build on the role you are currently assigned. In which directions could you progress? What are the requirements for moving up to the next rung of this career ladder?
Even if you are not interested in this career path, you still need to perform at a top level. Excellent job performance is usually seen by decision makers in an organization as being transferable from one assignment to the next.
Rung 3: Ask Others for Their Support
Most people like to help others—particularly when we feel the other person is highly deserving. This principle leads us to the next rung on the ladder: asking for help. Don’t be afraid to ask others to help you reach the next level in the organization.
A word of caution before you set out and ask others for this help. When asking others for help, you often have to pay some kind of price. There is no such thing as a free lunch. Those who help you may also expect something in return. Sometimes people simply want you to remember them when you get where you are going in your career. There is nothing wrong with this. Every political process is based on this type of reciprocal support. After all, everyone wants something. But beware of help that comes with too many strings attached. Don’t get so caught up in your desire to get ahead that you make promises that will ultimately compromise your collective image or, worse, your principles.
Remember, too, that the help you receive usually brings with it a bit of advice. Sometimes the advice can be useful. Most of the time it is confusing and contradictory. Take such advice with a grain of salt. Not all advice is good advice. Also be prepared for unsolicited feedback about yourself. Getting negative or surprising feedback when you are not prepared for it is like having ice water splashed in your face. The challenge is to use this feedback to change in a positive direction.
Rung 4: Develop a Strategy for Success
A success strategy doesn’t have to be an elaborate plan but it does need to provide some real guidance. This plan should have both short-term as well as long-term objectives. You can include estimated timetables to accomplish milestones along the way. But don’t chisel this plan in stone. Things change. Missing a milestone is not necessarily an indication of failure. It simply means you need to adjust your strategy and establish new goals and timetables.
Your success strategy should also have built-in flexibility. If one strategy doesn’t work, then you need to implement another. Even plans you have been working toward for years sometimes need adjustment. The most successful people are those who are unfazed by challenges to well-laid plans.
Rung 5: Learn New Skills
Learning new skills adds value to your position in the organization and demonstrates your commitment to ensuring the organization is successful. In fact, the ability to learn a new job or skill is valued at most future-focused organizations. The more value you add to your services by learning new skills, the better everyone will feel about your future—including you. It is a sound investment, which would determine whether you continue to work in your reorganized company.
Rung 6: Make Yourself Indispensable
Making yourself indispensable in your organization can be accomplished in many ways. If a new computer program has great potential for the organization, you should learn this program. If your organization is introducing a new product, become an expert on it as soon as possible. Think of it as taking out an insurance policy on your career.
Another way to become indispensable is to persuade the organization to increase its investment in you. Organizations don’t like to walk away from large investments before they have had a change to realize a return. Take advantage of as many opportunities as you can to have the organization make investments in your development. Participate in tuition reimbursement programs, special training, and managerial and executive development programs in which the organization makes a significant financial investment. Taking advantage of these learning opportunities becomes a win/win for you and the organization.
Rung 7: Don’t Underestimate Your Competition
Underestimating your competition is a serious mistake. Even though you may not always think of it this way, there is always competition for your job. Try this simple exercise to identify potential competition. Imagine that your organization plans to reorganize. Who might reasonably replace you? Why might the change initiators decide to replace you? Think about aspects of your performance you could improve to prevent this from happening.
There’s no need to get paranoid. The point is simply this: There is more competition for your job out there, both internally and externally, than you might realize. A certain amount of competitiveness can be helpful in an organization. Too much, however, can become destructive. Find the balance. Because if you ignore the competition for your job or you underestimate their ability, you can get stuck on this rung of the ladder.
Rung 8: Keep on Networking
You shouldn’t underestimate your friends or supporters either. They too play a key role in your career and its development. And don’t limit your search for allies to current contacts. Think about people you were once close to that have slipped from your immediate circle of contacts. It is not only nice to get back in touch with former colleagues but also potentially valuable to your career.
Networking is a great source of information about anticipated change in your organization. And don’t forget the most obvious path to expand your networked circle of contacts: social media tools such as LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter.
Rung 9: Enhance Your Personal Image
What image do you have of yourself? How can you enhance it? The last chapter talked a great deal about your collective image and how to improve it. Image can be personal as well. Your personal image is what you think about yourself. Much of this image is determined by the messages you send and receive about yourself. Do you hear messages like this: “I’m going to do a great job on that new assignment”? Or do you hear this: “I just know I’m not going to be successful in this new job”? The messages you send yourself can have a significant impact on the results you achieve.
This principle of sending yourself positive messages is frequently used by sports psychologists. Their goal is to help athletes perform at their highest level in competition. They teach the basketball players to visualize making every basket before releasing the ball. They teach golf professionals to visualize the perfect swing and to put bad shots out of their minds.
Your personal image is a mental exercise, but it can be physical as well. How do others see you? Do you project the physical image that is consistent with your goals? This is not a beauty contest or a wardrobe makeover. But do you look and dress the part you want to play in the organization? We’re talking about the image you project. If you want to be perceived as a professional, then look and act like one. If you want to be perceived as an executive, then look and act like one. The way you feel about yourself determines how others see you. Even the way you carry yourself can influence the organization’s collective impression of you. If you display confidence in yourself and your abilities, then others will perceive you that way. If you look and act without any confidence in yourself, that is how others will feel about you. You need to believe in yourself. If you don’t, no one else will.
Rung 10: Embrace Change
Embracing change means that you not only accept it but actually look forward to its arrival. In order to accomplish this objective you need to end your war on change. You need to begin thinking of change not as the enemy but as part of your allied forces to help you deal with the future. You really have no other choice.
For example, think about how the electronic age has profoundly changed our lives in ways that would have been unimaginable just a few years ago. Resisting these technological innovations would have been a losing position.
The following is a story about a manager who had experienced many changes during his years working for his employer and was truly at a career crossroads.
Another New Owner
Ken Jameson was in a difficult situation. The small company he worked for was recently bought by another larger corporation. This was the third time in the past 10 years that the company had changed hands due to acquisition. The workers joked that if you wanted to know who you were working for that day, you needed to go out front and see whose name was now on the building. Each time, the new owner would come in full of promises about how much better the future would be under her leadership. And each time these promises would be broken as the parent organization lost interest in the company and looked for another buyer to take it off their hands. It wasn’t that the acquisition was a bad investment. It just required more attention and resources than anyone seemed willing to commit.
Ken had been put in charge of operations several times during these transition periods between owners. Maybe this is what kept him from moving on to some other employer. He enjoyed this leadership role and was very good at it as well—a fact acknowledged by everyone who worked for him during these periods. Unfortunately, these opportunities always ended much too soon. The new owners would bring in their own management team to run the operation even though they usually didn’t know the first thing about the business. Ken would again be pushed back into the shadows of the decision-making process.
This time, Ken was determined not to let the same thing happen that had always occurred in the past when the new management team arrived on the scene and took over. He was not going to get stalled again on this rung of his career ladder.
Once the new management team was in place, the first thing Ken did was look at his role in the organization and decide what contributions he wanted to make. He pledged to himself that he would not become just a minor player. This time he would be a valued and contributing member of the new management team. He met with the parent company’s leadership to let them know his goals and aspirations and to explain how he could help make the acquisition succeed. He asked for their support in achieving these goals and, in turn, pledged his support to them in their new endeavor.
Ken developed a detailed plan to help them avoid the problems of the past. He was able to show the decision makers how they could not only maintain the gains he had achieved during the past year but increase them as well. This certainly got their attention. In this plan Ken demonstrated how he could be an integral part of this success and make the greatest contribution. His overall objective was to impress on his new bosses just what a valuable asset he was to their organization. He also wanted to make it clear that he was better qualified than anyone else they might select to play such an important role in their new acquisition.
He was amazed by how receptive the new management team was to his proposal. In fact, they requested additional details and asked him to explore several other strategies his ideas had generated among their group. Ken had outlined several new processes he thought would give the company a competitive advantage. When he suggested that he be assigned to learning more about the technology, they agreed—and asked him to learn as much about these processes as possible.
In addition to doing research on his own, Ken also attended a number of seminars and classes about this technology. This effort required a significant commitment— of Ken’s time as well as the company’s resources—but it turned out to be a very worthwhile investment for everyone. Before long, Ken was recognized as the most knowledgeable person in the company concerning this new technology. He had accomplished his objective: being perceived as a valuable and contributing member of the new management team rather than just a link to the company’s past.
Most important to Ken was how he began to feel about himself. The previous acquisitions had taken a toll on his self-image. Each time a new owner came in and took control, he watched his role diminish. These feelings caused him to lose confidence in himself and in his ability to be an effective manager. But this time he had decided to look at things differently and gained a new perspective on the situation. He decided that he was going to stay in control of his goals and ultimately his career.
Instead of sitting back and simply hoping that this would happen, as he did in the past, this time he decided to make sure it did. In fact, several of his closest friends thought he seemed more confident and assertive in promoting himself and his ideas. They liked what they saw, and so did Ken.
Ken had finally learned to stop fighting change and instead looked for ways to make it work for him. In the past he had invested so much energy resisting the changes sweeping the organization that he had nothing left for his own growth and development. This time he decided to change the way he perceived change and aligned his personal goals with those of the new organization. With his energies focused in the same direction as the organization, he didn’t meet the stiff resistance he had in the past. In fact, he was amazed how much easier change could be when he began looking at it in a more positive way.
Tools, Techniques, and Exercises
How will you climb up the 10 rungs of the career ladder and not be distracted by the chaos that often surrounds a major change event? The following exercise will help you think through your strategy.
Another New Owner Exercise
In this story, Ken Jameson learned to climb his career ladder to eventual success. Briefly describe how Ken used each of these steps to reach the highest rung on his career ladder.
- Rung 1: Add value to your position.
- Rung 2: Let others know what you want to do.
- Rung 3: Ask others for their help and support.
- Rung 4: Develop a strategy for success.
- Rung 5: Learn new skills.
- Rung 6: Make yourself indispensable.
- Rung 7: Don’t underestimate your competition.
- Rung 8: Keep on networking.
- Rung 9: Enhance your personal image.
- Rung 10: Embrace change.
What’s Next?
With the chaos under control and your career climb planned out, how do you prepare for future changes? The next chapter is about how to prepare for the next change.