Your Job
Your job description is not a life sentence – you can change it. You need to change it.
If you want to make more progress in your career, (and suffer less along the way), you need to rethink how you work.
I had an opportunity to speak about this at the Design Automation Conference in Anaheim this week, to the Women in Electronic Design Group.
My talk was on Managing your Career on Purpose.
Add value to the business
Something that has been on my mind lately is how important it is, for people at any level, to take control of re-defining their job so they can put themselves in a position to add more value to the business.
The only reliable way to advance your career is to understand what the business needs and make sure your work is impacting it.
Working hard is not enough
In fact, working too hard, trying to do everything that is asked of you, is what gets you stuck. You need to understand what the business values, and then tune your job to deliver more value, not just deliver more work.
You need to refuse to burn your time, energy, and career capital working too hard, the wrong way, on the wrong things.
What I find really interesting about this when I work with companies, is this gaping disconnect:
- The Employees: When I talk to the employees and mid-level managers, they tell me they feel like they are working themselves to death, and their work is not being appreciated or recognized.
. - The Executives: Then when I talk to the executive management, they tell me that they are frustrated that their people are stuck in the details and not stepping up to deliver at a higher level of value, and failing to drive the strategy forward.
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What this implies, is that improving your career is not just good for you. It’s good for your company. They are waiting for you to step up.
The secret:
- Your management doesn’t just want you to do what they ask of you.
- They want you to do the job that needs to be done, not just the one they gave you.
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Think about it this way. If your job as a manager was just to get your team to do everything that is asked of you, your manager wouldn’t need you. They could just assign all the work directly to your team.
You need to change the game
You need to catch all the work, but not try to do it all as it comes across the table at you. You need to step above it, analyze it, sift through it, prioritize it, and recommend a better way to do it.
Your management wants you to think strategically about the workload that is dumped on you. It’s up to you to figure out how to change the game, figure out what the most important stuff is, and find the best way to do it.
Don’t wait to be asked
The people who figure this out and do it without being asked or instructed to do so are the ones whose careers advance.
They are not burned out, working tirelessly, without recognition, on everything. They have figured out a way to be less busy, but add more value to the business.
Good for business
From the perspective of the business, having more people and managers who are personally motivated and capable to step up, the better the business strategy will be executed.
Execution stalls happen when managers and employees are so overwhelmed with activities and demands of their current jobs, that they don’t even have time to think about how to do things in a better way, or implement a new strategy.
Stepping Up
Make sure you know what it means to lead at the right level and manage talent and team performance, not just projects and work output. Increase the reach and breadth and significance of your impact.
Communicate better. Build a strong network of support. Delegate better, and always raise the bar. You need to step up and pull your people up. It is what your business is expecting of you.
Individuals: If you’d like some help to step up, check out these resources.
Executives: If you’d like to discuss how to give your managers tools and support to step up, contact me:
