Professional Invisibility: A fun way to get covered with moss from boredom
The other day we completed our research about working with people . More than 6,000 people gathered responses and published the results .
The results, frankly, made us think. Well, for example:
There is a feeling that many items are related. We had the idea to write several articles on the subject of why situations arise that we described in this survey, and what to do about it if you were the main character of the situation.
')
We decided to devote the first article to the fact that:
A professional career is the sum of decisions about what you will do and by whom you will work, which other people take for you.
Of course, you choose where to work. Of course, you can “slam the door” and go out all offended, in order ... to look for another place of work again. In other words, the “out of the company” movement is almost always in your control zone. But the movement “within the company”, or even better simply “upwards” (by position, by area of ​​responsibility, by the complexity of the decisions made), is almost always 80-90% a decision that other people take for you. Yes, you must be prepared. Yes, you must be willing. These are necessary, but not sufficient conditions for your professional growth.
Let's see, who in the company makes a decision about your professional career?
The answer is not as obvious as it seems at first glance. We used to think that your boss is the person who decides to trust you with a project, team or relationship with a customer or not. Is it always like this?
In an established organizational structure, where everyone is in the right position, from a functional point of view, positions — that is, they can carry out the tasks assigned to them and take the decisions required for this — movement upwards is possible in a very limited number of cases. Sudden and rapid expansion is a new project that fell down, for example. This option does not happen often to bring it into a separate discussion: often the person who brings the project to the company one way or another becomes its leader. A subset of such situations is the expansion of the project into 2-3 smaller ones, which also happens not so often. We are not discarding these options, as we consider below - in these cases, the very same people will decide who will be in charge of “sudden fallen joy”.
Quite often - up to 70% of cases - the reason for the vertical growth is the departure of the employee’s immediate supervisor. Leaving either further up the vertical stairs inside the company, inside a corporate transfer to another office or country, or leaving a person from the company.
Now you need to raise someone. In isolated cases, at the time of transition or care of the head he has a replacement ready. It is simply extremely difficult to arrange - to prepare a full-fledged replacement manager and keep him in second role for an indefinite amount of time until something happens to the manager. People do not sit like that, for the most part. If I grew up and is ready to replace my chef, then let's make a decision with my beloved. And, basically, companies understand this and are not engaged in growth and development solely for reasons of "having a backup manager." Cool, but it is not clear how to implement. Quickly pull out a person for replacement and “pump” him to the minimum necessary state, and then hope that he will pull - a more familiar pattern of behavior.
And it is good if the outgoing chief is able to approve a person to his place before his departure. After all, working with the manager who replaced him is no longer him. And to whom? Right, your current boss's boss. This he chooses with whom he will continue to work. After the transition, you change not only the position, but also the manager, and it is he who often thinks how he will continue to manage this branch of the department or this project. He chooses the means and functional tool for managing the area of ​​his combat unit. And in his hands "switch" decision maker.
What does your manager know about you now? Are you on the list of potential candidates for growth or how?
An absolutely similar question will be in the head of the head of a department or department of several projects if the time comes for cuts.
- Let's see who gets in your department in the list of "happy 6% under reduction"
- Well ... this is Ivanova, she wrote scripts, constantly offers something for work, and generally a clever girl.
- So, okay. And this?
- This is Petrov. He develops the application architecture in our country and in general without it no change will be made, a very intelligent and competent comrade.
- Okay. And this?
- This is Kuzkin.
- And who is this?
- He is a very intelligent specialist with us ...
- If so sensible, then why have I never heard anything about him. Putting it aside for the time being, you still need to choose from someone ...
Our congratulations to the winner of the contest “the most modest employee with a small compensation package after the reduction”. A person can really do his job, no one argues with this. The question is different: IS IT WHO? That is, in the head of a person who makes a decision about who will work with us and who will not - there is emptiness opposite this name. What works is understandable, everyone works. But how is it different? What is unique? Put it aside for now. If we don’t find anyone else, the problem is to look and decide in such a simple way. And sometimes it’s difficult for your supervisor to explain to your boss or customer why you are so cool and irreplaceable.
…………….
Expand the picture?
In the new role, after the happy moment of promotion, you not only change the leader you are working with, you also change the team in which you will interact. Your yesterday's colleagues become your subordinates - and this is a separate question how much they are glad about it. But you also belong to the management team or heads of related departments. Your team, with their habits and agreements. With its history of working relationships. Who promised whom and what? Who will have the deadlines and bonus all over the department, if tomorrow your subordinate is “nosy” with the terms and you delay “rolling out” for a day or two? How will you share with your new colleagues the budget for training, business trips, new tables or space in a new office?
As my St. Petersburg colleague Alexander Orlov (@eagleson) says:
- How sultry is he?
I will translate it into Russian :) How much will a person “choke”, be greedy about the allocation of resources? Would it be possible to ask him for another person’s help if another manager on the project has a blockage? Will not a simple, penny purchase be dealt with at the stage of agreeing, because something is bought in another department, and not in it, but he so long ago wore this dream of a new table or coat hanger in his team's office deep in the soul?
And a competent boss who manages managers or a group of projects is well aware of the fact that he introduces his appointment to the management team of a new person. The person with whom other managers will work. And how quickly and how well they work together generally depends on the number of “smut” that tomorrow will fall on his head in the form of complaints and problems in the interaction space of production units or project teams.
Not every chief will request information about a candidate for the role of a project manager or team from the managers of neighboring units. Can not ask, of course. Will make the decision himself. He likes to carry on all the risks of administrative decisions, right? But if you still ask. Just to make sure you don't assign a potentially conflicting person to the role of team leader? With what probability he will hear from the managers of the neighboring teams the same sacramental question: “And who is this at all? ..” Sad?
A short summary and a brief summary of the findings:
Good and interesting work for everyone and let no one be covered in moss from boredom in the corner of our office.
Want to deal with this and other topics that directly affect your enjoyment of work?
We made an online conference "ProPeople" .
I will talk live about this topic in more detail, with pictures.
Come. It's not expensive.
Good luck to us, colleagues!
-
Respectfully,
Slava Pankratov
Managers School Stratoplan
The results, frankly, made us think. Well, for example:
- 65% of managers either do not hold 1: 1 meetings with their employees at all, or do it for a tick
- More than 50% of people do not receive information about why certain decisions are being made in the company.
- More than 50% of people do not get pleasure from work
There is a feeling that many items are related. We had the idea to write several articles on the subject of why situations arise that we described in this survey, and what to do about it if you were the main character of the situation.
')
We decided to devote the first article to the fact that:
A professional career is the sum of decisions about what you will do and by whom you will work, which other people take for you.
Of course, you choose where to work. Of course, you can “slam the door” and go out all offended, in order ... to look for another place of work again. In other words, the “out of the company” movement is almost always in your control zone. But the movement “within the company”, or even better simply “upwards” (by position, by area of ​​responsibility, by the complexity of the decisions made), is almost always 80-90% a decision that other people take for you. Yes, you must be prepared. Yes, you must be willing. These are necessary, but not sufficient conditions for your professional growth.
Let's see, who in the company makes a decision about your professional career?
The answer is not as obvious as it seems at first glance. We used to think that your boss is the person who decides to trust you with a project, team or relationship with a customer or not. Is it always like this?
In an established organizational structure, where everyone is in the right position, from a functional point of view, positions — that is, they can carry out the tasks assigned to them and take the decisions required for this — movement upwards is possible in a very limited number of cases. Sudden and rapid expansion is a new project that fell down, for example. This option does not happen often to bring it into a separate discussion: often the person who brings the project to the company one way or another becomes its leader. A subset of such situations is the expansion of the project into 2-3 smaller ones, which also happens not so often. We are not discarding these options, as we consider below - in these cases, the very same people will decide who will be in charge of “sudden fallen joy”.
Quite often - up to 70% of cases - the reason for the vertical growth is the departure of the employee’s immediate supervisor. Leaving either further up the vertical stairs inside the company, inside a corporate transfer to another office or country, or leaving a person from the company.
Now you need to raise someone. In isolated cases, at the time of transition or care of the head he has a replacement ready. It is simply extremely difficult to arrange - to prepare a full-fledged replacement manager and keep him in second role for an indefinite amount of time until something happens to the manager. People do not sit like that, for the most part. If I grew up and is ready to replace my chef, then let's make a decision with my beloved. And, basically, companies understand this and are not engaged in growth and development solely for reasons of "having a backup manager." Cool, but it is not clear how to implement. Quickly pull out a person for replacement and “pump” him to the minimum necessary state, and then hope that he will pull - a more familiar pattern of behavior.
And it is good if the outgoing chief is able to approve a person to his place before his departure. After all, working with the manager who replaced him is no longer him. And to whom? Right, your current boss's boss. This he chooses with whom he will continue to work. After the transition, you change not only the position, but also the manager, and it is he who often thinks how he will continue to manage this branch of the department or this project. He chooses the means and functional tool for managing the area of ​​his combat unit. And in his hands "switch" decision maker.
What does your manager know about you now? Are you on the list of potential candidates for growth or how?
An absolutely similar question will be in the head of the head of a department or department of several projects if the time comes for cuts.
- Let's see who gets in your department in the list of "happy 6% under reduction"
- Well ... this is Ivanova, she wrote scripts, constantly offers something for work, and generally a clever girl.
- So, okay. And this?
- This is Petrov. He develops the application architecture in our country and in general without it no change will be made, a very intelligent and competent comrade.
- Okay. And this?
- This is Kuzkin.
- And who is this?
- He is a very intelligent specialist with us ...
- If so sensible, then why have I never heard anything about him. Putting it aside for the time being, you still need to choose from someone ...
Our congratulations to the winner of the contest “the most modest employee with a small compensation package after the reduction”. A person can really do his job, no one argues with this. The question is different: IS IT WHO? That is, in the head of a person who makes a decision about who will work with us and who will not - there is emptiness opposite this name. What works is understandable, everyone works. But how is it different? What is unique? Put it aside for now. If we don’t find anyone else, the problem is to look and decide in such a simple way. And sometimes it’s difficult for your supervisor to explain to your boss or customer why you are so cool and irreplaceable.
…………….
Expand the picture?
In the new role, after the happy moment of promotion, you not only change the leader you are working with, you also change the team in which you will interact. Your yesterday's colleagues become your subordinates - and this is a separate question how much they are glad about it. But you also belong to the management team or heads of related departments. Your team, with their habits and agreements. With its history of working relationships. Who promised whom and what? Who will have the deadlines and bonus all over the department, if tomorrow your subordinate is “nosy” with the terms and you delay “rolling out” for a day or two? How will you share with your new colleagues the budget for training, business trips, new tables or space in a new office?
As my St. Petersburg colleague Alexander Orlov (@eagleson) says:
- How sultry is he?
I will translate it into Russian :) How much will a person “choke”, be greedy about the allocation of resources? Would it be possible to ask him for another person’s help if another manager on the project has a blockage? Will not a simple, penny purchase be dealt with at the stage of agreeing, because something is bought in another department, and not in it, but he so long ago wore this dream of a new table or coat hanger in his team's office deep in the soul?
And a competent boss who manages managers or a group of projects is well aware of the fact that he introduces his appointment to the management team of a new person. The person with whom other managers will work. And how quickly and how well they work together generally depends on the number of “smut” that tomorrow will fall on his head in the form of complaints and problems in the interaction space of production units or project teams.
Not every chief will request information about a candidate for the role of a project manager or team from the managers of neighboring units. Can not ask, of course. Will make the decision himself. He likes to carry on all the risks of administrative decisions, right? But if you still ask. Just to make sure you don't assign a potentially conflicting person to the role of team leader? With what probability he will hear from the managers of the neighboring teams the same sacramental question: “And who is this at all? ..” Sad?
Short lyrical digression for 1 minute
Doesn't anything move inside you when you see a car without wheels at the curb? Or a good, but abandoned technique? Old, but still very fighting server in the rack, on which nothing is spinning useful for a common cause? My heart beats like a master. How is that? Somewhere people huddle on one server, sharing the rest of the RAM for virtual machines, and here it is worth something in the corner, gathering dust. A mean male tear went over the manly cheekbone of the protagonist in the frame.
A few years ago I had a small consulting practice: I advised on career development in IT. Now people are coming after speaking at conferences or after trainings. And everywhere I see smart and intelligent people (stupid and limited do not fit or sit at home, apparently), who sit in their cubicles or cabinets and do nothing so that their work is elementarily noticeable to someone other than their immediate, tired from this fuss, chef.
Sad gentlemen. On this lyrics and finish.
A short summary and a brief summary of the findings:
- If your boss’s boss knows nothing about your work and successes, you are in a very unstable zone.
- If you keep a low profile, you are the first candidate for a reduction and the last one for promotion.
- If your professional career over the past couple of years is more like the implementation of the “sit on the pope exactly” strategy than constant professional growth, which is accompanied by interesting tasks and complex projects - I have news for you: you are most likely just invisible to those who decide who develops, and who just to be and sit. On the pope. Smooth.
Good and interesting work for everyone and let no one be covered in moss from boredom in the corner of our office.
Want to deal with this and other topics that directly affect your enjoyment of work?
We made an online conference "ProPeople" .
I will talk live about this topic in more detail, with pictures.
Come. It's not expensive.
Good luck to us, colleagues!
-
Respectfully,
Slava Pankratov
Managers School Stratoplan
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/242079/
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