I am sitting in a recurring meeting with an ex-supervisor, alone. I think he has forgotten we have this in the calendar, even though he organized it originally. What I like about this company though in general, is that there is a lot of internal opportunity to grow a career, or change a career direction. But even when people change, there is still a lot of interaction with "past" colleagues and there is still the will to help each other develop.
While this person was my supervisor for a time, this session is set up more to help them develop. I have "some" experience helping key individuals in an organization improve their outcomes and build their presence internally, and I get leveraged for this too. Even my current supervisor and I talk about these things from time to time also. I like that despite me not being in a mentoring or people leader role, I still get a chance to utilize my experience.
I don't get paid for this work.
Which I don't mind, because there is still a reward for it, as it leads to having in-depth discussions on all kinds of topics, whilst also building into people's lives somewhat. It becomes a network process that builds value into our relationships and provides conduits of information flow across the organization. It also develops social capital, which could be leveraged in the future, for instance, where I have something I am trying to develop they can help me with.
I got interrupted. They joined the meeting.
And, it was a good conversation, mostly about work and building some collaboration together between our teams. Someone from his team is helping me develop a Proof of Concept for a tool I want to implement across the organization. If it works, I think it might have the potential to revolutionize our internal communication processes, and provide an additional product item, with multiple usecases for customers.
If it works.
It should work, but it changes processes for key people and requires additional development work, as well as organization alignment work - this always creates pushback, because no one has time for more internal process development, even if it is high value. So, doing the ground work myself to build the idea to a presentable form, means that if key people see value in it at that point, they will provide it resources.
I don't get paid for this either.
Funny, isn't it?
Or not.
But I have generally lived my life in a way where I don't mind adding value, even if I don't get paid for it directly. And for the most part, where I am adding value isn't actually in my core work, but because I range so wide with my interactions and network, I am able to see "bigger picture" trends, or combinations of technologies that aren't immediately linkable. For the thing I am working on now in my spare time, it is a repurposing of a tool for a different usecase, making what it was far more valuable. Especially since it is one of our proprietary tools.
I am a bit excited.
If it works.
And, while it "isn't my job" to develop tools, having this tool would make parts of my job easier, because it enables my stakeholders to better do their job, as well as making their job easier, and the most boring and disliked parts of their job, more automated. Lots of wins involved - if it works.
The challenge is that it isn't my job to do, which means I still have to make sure that what is my job is getting done, otherwise I am taking a risk with a high possibility of failure. It would be far easier to just do the job I get paid for and get the accolades for doing it well, but if I do that, I fall into the trap of hindering career growth.
A lot of people think that if they do their job well, they will get advanced, but that is not actually the way it works. Or at least, it isn't enough just to do the job well. Essentially, a person has to prove themselves and build their track record through their job, but they also have to show that they have the ability to do other tasks to close the skill gap to another role. If this doesn't happen, the risk is often too high to move a person from a job they do well, into a job where it is very unsure if they can perform. But, closing that gap a bit mitigates the risks and makes a supervisor more willing to roll the dice.
As I have said recently, I am not a strategic thinker when it comes to the way I operate in an organization, but I can be when it comes to the way others operate. What I have to start doing is to better mentor myself in a similar way I would mentor others in the organization, or key customers I have through my own business. I know that they get good results, so why wouldn't I do it myself?
Well, in the past when I was working only for my own company, there was nowhere for me to advance to - I was the top and the bottom of the organization. It didn't matter how I performed, there was no promotion, and any career development was just a change in direction of where I spent my time and attention.
But, working for a company as well now means that I have the possibility to build a career, but it depends on other people in the organization and whether they see the potential in developing me. This means that internal relationships matter and if I am able to do my job well, help them build their career, and add value to the organization through side developments, they will hopefully see it as a no-brainer decision to give me more opportunity, or, reward me to keep me performing in-house.
What I do believe though, paid opportunities to grow ourselves, are few and far between. So, instead of waiting for it to happen, I'd rather be active and see if I can influence outcomes, as even if it doesn't work, at least I have agency and some control over the directions I take each day. For my job, the daily tasks are already known, they are already defined and they need to be done. There is no control other than do them, or don't.
That isn't very exciting.
Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]
