No one is going to develop you.
What’s your battle plan?
I was talking to one of my podcast guests last week, about how challenging the market is for business and jobs. She had been talking to someone about to make 40 people's jobs redundant, and had also heard that a large organisation in New Zealand had just hit 500 redundancies this year.
Maybe you have lost your job this year?
Did you have a plan if you lost your job? Have you been developing yourself and your network in case this happens?
I had a really good experience when I first joined the Corporate world. The CEO recruited me because I had a good attitude and great energy. When was the last time you were recruited on this basis alone?
For that first job, I did have some retail experience and a degree but not much that related to my new job. The HR Manager I worked for was interested in me being successful and spent lots of time and energy ensuring I was learning and developing. This is unusual people.
Pretty much every job I have had after that first one, I felt like I was on my own. I had to work out my own stuff. I had to work out the best way of doing things. I made lots of mistakes and had lots of success and I learnt that you shouldn’t rely on anyone to develop you, or take interest in your career, or mentor you. There are people who will do this, but there are many many many who don’t. Not because they aren’t good people, though some aren’t. Not because they aren’t good managers and leaders, although some aren’t but there are a whole heap of reasons that get in the way.
Organizations are super busy with little redundancy in their systems. There’s just no fat anymore. Does someone do your job when you go on holidays? I bet not. Many organisations have lost their way and have forgotten their true purpose, instead focusing on budgets and sales and shareholders.
Many organisations, in times of cost cutting have reduced their budgets on learning and development for leaders (to teach them how to develop others) and put their priorities elsewhere. Often there just isn’t the time and space, or leaders don’t make the time and space to spend with their people.
Most big organisations have talent management and succession processes, which act to identify the people they want to develop for the future and ensure they have successors in place for key roles. These processes also identify any capability gaps in the organisation and will usually put a plan in place to fix it over time. For example, if a company identifies that there are not enough engineers coming up through the company, (and having engineering capability is crucial to the success of the company), they might invest in hiring more graduates.
I have been part of these in ‘got it together’ and ‘not got it together’ companies. Got it together companies usually have good systems to track their talented people (including performance and potential ratings) and what successors they have for each of their key roles. They have huge annual and bi-annual processes where leaders are tied up in meeting for a few days reviewing this data, which is a huge investment on people.
So you know what? You have to look after your own development! You can’t wait for your manager, or some big (or little) company to do this for you. YOU JUST CAN’T! If you do you will be in the same job year after year (if you are lucky enough to still have a job). And I’ll let you in on a secret. If you are not identified as ‘talent’ or a successor for a role within a company, just get on with your own career.
One company I worked for, who had a well embedded talent review system, had assessed me on performance and talent, squarely in the middle. My manager, who I had a lot of respect for and who I learnt a lot from, took the time to explain my rating. I appreciated him for his honesty and courage. What he couldn’t do was explain to me what I needed to do differently to be rated differently. I wanted to be seen as a great performer (everyone does and everyone thinks they’re a great performer) with lots of potential (I’m ambitious). How should I do this? Well he couldn’t explain to me. And this is another flaw in the process.
As I went on to more senior and more interesting roles which gave me lots of development, I realised that just because one company looks at you a certain way, doesn’t mean others won’t think you are great. I learnt that while I worked on some great projects in that company, the work and the environments I went on to work in, better suited me, and I thrived.
So much so that colleagues that I worked with and highly respected back at that company, asked to meet with me to discuss their careers (that had stalled) and to find out what I had done differently. You can’t be defined by one manager’s or one company’s view of you. You have to own and look after your career because nobody else will, particularly when economies are doing it tough, and when organisations continue to restructure and make roles redundant.
Lisa xx