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Career Genie
Imagine that you are walking on your private beach on your personal island. It is a beautiful day; it is warm, but not hot. There is a gentle breeze from the south across the crystal clear ocean. The sun is high in the sky, but there are some broken clouds that shade you enough for your skin to feel comfortable. The palm trees are blowing in this warm wind and they are full with coconuts, ready for the harvesting. You are in a very good place. You wonder how lucky you are to be in such an idyllic setting. You start questioning: How did this happen? What preparation did I do? What decisions did I make? What lucky breaks did I receive? What accomplishments and subsequent rewards did I earn to get me here? This is a very nice place, but maybe there is an island that is nicer; you begin to ponder. You know, the island could be bigger. The sand could be a finer grain and with less shells. Now that I think about it, some pineapples or mangos would be nice. As you are deep in this hypothetical thought, you stumble on an old bottle that has washed ashore on your island. It looks exotic. It has layers of sea salt on it, so you try to rub it off. Before you know it, out of this bottle emerges a magical genie. This is not the same genie that we have all heard the fairytales of; rather, this is a “replay a part of your career” genie. You see, this island is your career island. It is the one you have created over the years. You earned it with hard-work, taking advantage of opportunities, surviving and thriving in adversity, and delivering results. But, now this genie is going to give you an opportunity to play some of those events over. You only get three things to do over. What would they be? Not take the job, that role? Finish off your PhD? Take that stretch assignment that you were afraid to engage in or was it too difficult for you to do at that point in your personal life? What would it be? This is the topic of my newest blog.
Wish #1 - Broader Company/global perspective earlier
I was born in the U.S., but traveled abroad a great deal early in my life (military family). Unfortunately, I do not recall much as I was too young. Just after my 30th birthday I was given an opportunity to spend 3 years in Europe on a temporary rotational assignment. My wife was against it as we had our first child and she was only 9 months old and we had just bought our first house. I knew it would be a great career opportunity. I did not know where it would lead, but I knew the company wanted me to do this and they were willing to make a serious investment in me. So, after much conversation and debate my family agreed to go. Those 3 years really changed my perspective of the world, business, and myself. I came back far more accepting, understanding and a more effective global business operator. In short, they had given me global context. After that one experience, I have not lived outside the U.S. again. I have run consulting businesses from the U.S. with responsibility for Canada, South America, and even the South Pacific. But these opportunities came much later in my career, and were not as intimate, since the U.S. business due to scale always dominated my thoughts. I see this now as a CLO, that I would be far more effective if I had a greater global business context.
So, my first wish is to have taken on a leadership position in Asia or Europe in my early 40s while I was at Microsoft or Avanade. If this had been the path, then I could have leveraged this broadened global experience for a senior global leader for sales, delivery, or consulting. Also, this pivotal experience would have helped if I ever desired to be a CEO of a global company.
Wish #2 – More Crucible experiences to accelerate my learning
When I look back on my career, I really did not do many career directional changes. Most of my experiences have been the next logical step (I like to call N+1 moves). Only a few times did I have the opportunity to try something totally different. Something that I have only rudimentary skills for, something that someone is making a bet or taking a risk on. These non-sequential career moves are sometimes called “crucible” experiences; they are ones that are totally outside your comfort zone. If you survive and thrive when given one, then you turbo-boost your career. You accelerate faster per unit time. I never looked for these crucible experiences and luck would only offer me a few of these opportunities over my career. I took two of them.
1. Product Manager to Consulting Manager – I was a computer science major, then programmer, then designer, then engineering manager, and then a product manager. I earned a M.S. in computer science and electrical engineering. Well, as my product was building its customer base, we had sales, then support and then associated advisory consulting services. This led me to an E.M.B.A. program to expand my knowledge on non-technical, business topics. I was then approached and asked to take on the southeast U.S. government consulting business for Digital Equipment Corporation. I was energetic, but clueless. It was a rude awakening the first years, and I discovered how little I knew. But, in the end I was firmly grounded into the understanding and leading of this business. This exposure led me to the opportunity at Microsoft and MCS, which eventually got me to Avanade.
2. Consulting leader to CLO – I have written in prior blogs about my journey to become Avanade’s first CLO. I had spent approximately 24 years as a consulting manager at various levels (Director, Senior Directory, Vice President, etc.). I spent almost 9 years running the Avanade North American business. Then Adam Warby gave me the CLO opportunity. What did I know about being a CLO? But after some thought, I decided to jump all-into the challenge. What did I discover? I discovered that I could still re-invent myself and learn an entirely new area. I discovered that I could have another angle on helping this company grow. I discovered that teaching is fun. I discovered that I wish I had this perspective while I was a consulting leader; I could have been an even better one.
So for my second wish, I would like to do my CLO crucible experience 3-5 years earlier. This would allow me to still have time left in my career where I could back into a P&L role and really apply my newly acquired skills with what it takes to run a high-performance business for today, while also building all the talent we need for our business 3 years from now. But, as a company we had not realized the need for a CLO function 3-5 years ago; maybe the genie would not allow it. Then I would ask the genie to permit me one more crucible experience. I would recommend that each of you should target 2 or 3 crucible experiences in your career.
Wish #3 - Mentor / Coach earlier (both receiving and giving)
I, like all of you, have always had a manager. Sometimes this person would also act as my career manager, sometimes they would act as a mentor, and sometimes as a coach. A manager has responsibilities that sometimes make it challenging to be an effective coach or mentor (promotion, salary adjustments, next assignments, etc.). I never had the opportunity to be assigned an outside the chain of command coach or mentor. As CLO, I am working closely with an outside expert on leadership development. I would put this person in the “coach” category. Also, as part of my CLO role, we have engaged a small set of external coaches for a select set of our Avanade leaders. The rationale was to assist them through a new challenging role or crucible experience. The results of these matches have been impressive. However, this investment cannot scale broadly. I am convinced that effective coaching and mentoring is a powerful tool for leadership development.
So for my third and final wish, I would like to have had a coach, mentor, or trusted colleague available to me along my journey. Instead of me trying to figure it out on my own or asking my manager for help, it would have been great to play a set of scenarios, decision trees, etc. to an unbiased and skilled person that has only my development as their primary goal and regards all conversation completely confidential. I am convinced that with this wish granted, I would have progressed further/faster as well as removing some extremely stressful moments. Interesting to note that one of the development areas that we are looking into for FY14 is whether we can design and deploy a pilot for an Avanade coaching framework and a tool to help match mentors with mentees. We cannot afford an external coach for all, but we can help each other by leveraging our core value of “Building the Avanade Experience” and our leadership competencies of “Grow our People and Scale our Organization” and leadership behavior of “Contribute to Company Success/Progress beyond your span of control”. If we as a company understood the necessity for our leaders to teach and coach and they were effective at it, then we could all effectively get wish #3 by default.
My career spans almost 38 years, and I still have not seen the end. It started with straight computer science study which led to programming, design, engineering manager/product manager, consulting manager, consulting leader, and now leadership development. I have been lucky to work at some fantastic companies and with some amazing people and inspirational leaders. I never really managed my career towards an end-game, because I never really had one. I took my career steps one at a time with maybe a horizon of 2 years. In short, I was doing a random walk through my career, playing checkers and not chess. Even with this as an approach, my career island is quite nice. But, I still am hungry for some of those pineapples or mangos J
So what about you? What are the three career wishes or mulligans (redo wishes for golfers!) that you wish you had experienced along the way? Or that you hope to experience in the future? Just add them in the comment section on this blog and let the conversation begin!
Till next time, have continued experiences and success in your Avanade career.