Managing Steep Professional Change
Sometimes, we do well and then suddenly, we go through a significant change in career or life and then we lose the success momentum but cannot point out what really caused the problem. You might do very well in one department and as a result, you get promoted or transferred to another section as a way of developing you further for bigger challenges but then you fail to exploit the opportunity. What is going wrong? How can you fix this? Or, better still, what can you do to proactively avoid such challenges?
Let us look at what one can do to ensure that they successfully drive uphill without the car engine stalling on the way. You need to come with the right gear and right speed from the bottom of the hill if you are to have a guaranteed chance of successfully climbing the hill. Having the right momentum is fundamental for successful climbing. Momentum itself is a function of mass and velocity which means that with a heavy car, you can still have a lot of momentum with very little speed or velocity and at high speed, you can have big momentum even if the mass of the car is small. Either way, you need a significant amount of momentum in order to have a good chance of climbing the hill without the engine stalling.
What if the engine stalls half way the hill? What do you do? If the hill is not that steep, you can do ‘hill start’, which is one of the toughest sessions in any test for qualifying for a driving licence. Hill start is where you carefully start the engine and move the car forward without rolling back. But, if the hill is very steep, then even hill start, cannot really help. You have to do something more drastic. The last resort is to drive back to the bottom of the hill or better still a little further back and then restart the challenge with more power, higher speed and greater momentum.
We can relate the above analogue of climbing a hill with a car to what happens in our real life and in particular in professional careers. When you change jobs, you need a good amount of momentum in order to ensure that you successfully get through the first few months until you stabilise in the new job. That momentum will be a function of your professional stature and your capability to learn new things quickly. As with the momentum of a car which depends on mass and velocity or speed, your momentum to climb the career hill will depend on the combination of your professional stature or experience and the capability to master new stuff quickly. If you have vast experience but with little capability, you will be almost as good as one with little experience and vast capability.
What happens if midway your settling into a new role, you stall completely? Then you have little or no chance at all of succeeding on that job or role – that is the sad news, or bitter pill! If you are pragmatic enough then just as a clever driver goes back to the bottom of the hill to restart the climb, you will want to change roles, or find a way of restarting the role. In practice, you are better off to start afresh completely.
The success strategy suggested here makes sense as it confirms what you will observe from successful career people. When they change departments or jobs, they work far harder than when they are established in the job or department. During the first days in their new role, they start work very early and knock off very late. They are building big momentum to ensure their new job climb does not stall half way through the climb.
Next time you change jobs or transfer across departments, remember the proven technique for guaranteeing a car climb up a steep hill. Apply that to your new role and you will surely rise and shine.Good luck!!
