Factor V: Organizational Positioning Skills Cluster M: Managing Up V – M
For me life is continuously being hungry.
The meaning of life is not simply to exist, to survive,
but to move ahead, to go up, to achieve, to conquer.
Arnold Schwarzenegger – Austrian-American bodybuilder, actor, businessman, and politician
Unskilled
Unsure what he/she wants out of a career
May be bored or in the wrong career or the wrong organization
May not want to make sacrifices to get ahead
May not understand how careers really work and how people get ahead
A poor marketer of self; doesn’t know how to get noticed
Hesitant to speak up on career wants and needs
Stuck in his/her career comfort zone; won’t take a career risk
Select one to three of the competencies listed below to use as a substitute for this competency if you decide not to work on it directly.
SUBSTITUTES: 1,4,8,9,15,24,28,43,46,48,49,53,57
Skilled
Knows what he/she wants from a career and actively works on it
Is career knowledgeable
Makes things happen for self
Markets self for opportunities
Doesn’t wait for others to open doors
Overused Skill
May make unwise career choices
May only select jobs in the can-do comfort zone
May be seen as excessively ambitious
May not pay enough attention to the job at hand
May not take career advice comfortably
May not trust the career decisions others make for him/her
Select one to three of the competencies listed below to work on to compensate for an overuse of this skill. COMPENSATORS: 16,17,30,32,33,42,46,48,50,51,53,55,58,63,66
Some Causes
Bored
Don’t trust organization
Don’t want to make sacrifices
Don’t know how to market self
Don’t like to blow own horn
Examine things to death
Not career knowledgeable
Too deep in your comfort zone
Wait for things to happen
Will only take a promotion
Won’t take a chance
Leadership Architect® Factors and Clusters
This competency is in the Organizational Positioning Skills Factor (V). This competency is in the Managing Up Cluster (M) with: 8. You may want to check other competencies in the same Factor/Cluster for related tips.
The Map
Being here on this page means someone or a number of people have told you that you are not ambitious enough. That means they think you have more going for you than you are aware of or want to sacrifice to get. They think you are undermanaging your career. The keys to career management are finding out how successful careers are built, figuring out how far you can and want to go, analyzing what’s getting in your way, exposing yourself to new tasks that build your skills, and getting noticed by decision makers.
Some Remedies
1. How good are you? Take stock of your value. How good could you be? Are you underselling yourself? You may be too critical of yourself. Get a good, confidential 360°. Are your ratings lower than those of others? Sit down with an experienced facilitator. The process should be, ―How good could I be with this foundation of
strengths? What do others think are my strengths that I don’t see? What should I work on next to progress?‖ Build up your confidence. Take a course or work with a tutor to bolster your confidence in an area. Behave as if you were confident and successful. Reward yourself if you’re a doubter. Master a skill. Prepare for meetings better than anyone else does. And learn how to cope with your mistakes. Acknowledge them, inform everyone affected, learn from them, and then move on. Remember you don’t have to be good at everything or mistake free to succeed. More help? – See #55 Self-Knowledge.
2. Need a sounding board? Get and use a career Board of Directors. Since you’re not—at this time—your best career advisor, seek out one or more people who could be. A mentor. Boss you respect. Friend down the street. Spouse. Parent. Clergy. Consultant. Professional colleague. Periodically, pass your career thoughts, assumptions, concerns and opportunities by them for an objective opinion. Listen to them.
3. Bought into career myths? Learn the facts about successful careers. Many people don’t know how careers are built. Most are put off by the popular myth of getting ahead. All of us have seen How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying or something like it. It’s easy to get cynical and believe that successful people are political or sell out, suck up, knife people in the back, it’s who you know, and so on. The facts are dramatically different from this. Those behaviors get people in trouble eventually. What has staying power is performing and problem solving on the current job, having a few notable strengths, and seeking new tasks you don’t know how to do. It’s solving every problem with tenacity while looking for what you haven’t yet done and getting yourself in a position to do it. Read The Lessons of Experience by McCall, Lombardo and Morrison for the careers of men and Breaking the Glass Ceiling by Morrison, White and Van Velsor for the careers of women to see how successful careers really happen.
4. Doing the same old thing? Break out of your career comfort zone. Maybe you haven’t seen enough. Pick some activities you haven’t done before but might find exciting. Take a course in a new area. Task trade—switch tasks with a peer. Volunteer for task forces and projects that are multi-functional or multi-business in nature. Read more broadly. More help? – See #46 Perspective.
5. Can’t figure out the keys to success? Find out what it takes. Think of five successful people in your
organization/field whom you know well and ask what drives them? What sorts of jobs have they held? What are their technical skills? Behavioral skills? Use the Leadership Architect® Sort Cards to determine what the 10 key skills of each person are; compare this list with your own self-assessment and feedback. Ask Human Resources if they have a success profile for some of the jobs you may be interested in. Make a list of what you need to work on next. If you want to be a star, figure out what is important about your job to higher management. If you’re an accountant, help management pinpoint high costs; if you’re a chemist, find a cheaper way to do what you’re now doing. Learn to love the details that affect your field. If your strengths are not technical, help out coworkers or look for a management or organizational problem around you to solve.
6. Not comfortable marketing yourself? Create a successful career brand. You don’t know how to get promoted. You dislike people who blow their own horns. Here’s how to do it. Build a performance track record of variety—start up things, fix things, innovate, make plans, come under budget. This is what will get you promoted. All organizations are looking for broad thinkers to give fresh opportunities to. Start by thinking more broadly. 7. Low profile? Get noticed by top decision makers. Top managers aren’t as interested in glitz as many would
have you believe. They’re interested in people who take care of problems, spot opportunities, ward off disaster, and have a broad repertoire of skills. They are looking for bold performers. But a better mousetrap alone is not enough. Volunteer for projects that will require interacting/presenting with higher management. Focus on activities that are the core of what your organization does. Find a business opportunity and make a reasoned case for it. Pick a big problem and work maniacally to solve it. You need to be seen and heard—but on substance not fluff.
8. Not willing to make sacrifices? Make the difficult moves. Many people turn down career opportunities based upon current life comforts only to regret it later when they have been passed by. Studies indicate that the vast majority of moves successful general managers had to make during their careers were not seen as right for them at the time. They tried to turn them down. We all have the problems. Children in school. A house we like. A parent to take care of. A working spouse. A medical issue to manage. A good neighborhood. Most successful careers require moving around during the years that are the most inconvenient and painful—when we have kids in school, not much extra money, and aging parents to manage. Read The Lessons of Experience by McCall, Lombardo and Morrison for the careers of men and Breaking the Glass Ceiling by Morrison, White and Van Velsor for the careers of women to see how successful careers are really built. Set your mind to it. You must move to grow.
9. Waiting for your boss to retire so that you can get the big promotion? Take an alternate path. It’s hard to understand, but a promotion to your boss’s job is about the least developmental promotion you can receive. Same issues. Same people. Same customers. Same products and services. Variety is the key to career building. Take laterals. Bury the ego. Work for the long term. Turn down a straight line promotion and ask for a like level job elsewhere.
10. Blindly following your passion? Diversify your talents. Most of us make a very human error in career management. We pursue what we most like to do. Our parents and counselors told us to find something you like and that makes you happy, get really good at it, join a big company who will take care of you and provide you a nice pension. While that may have been good advice in the past, it doesn’t fit today very well. Lifelong
employment is dead. Layoffs. Virtual corporations. Chaos. Employability is the new term and concept. You have to be good at a lot of things. You will change organizations several times. You will have to move around to where the opportunities are.
Some Develop-in-Place Assignments
Manage the outplacement of a group of people.
Write a speech for someone higher up in the organization.
Volunteer to fill an open management job temporarily until it’s filled.
Do a study of failed executives in your organization, including interviewing people still with the
organization who knew or worked with them, and report the findings to top management.
Do a study of successful executives in your organization, and report the findings to top
management.
High expectations are the key to everything.
Sam Walton – American businessman and founder of Wal-Mart and Sam’s ClubSuggested Readings