Engineer’s Enigma #2 – Ownership and Growth
Every time I find someone who is dissatisfied with their career after being in it for 15+ years, they all have two things in common. One is they stopped growing in their Career. They stopped attending conferences, they stopped tackling big projects, the stopped trying. The reason behind this could be many things, maybe they hate their Boss or they think their Boss hates them. Maybe they were passed over for a promotion and feel too jaded to continue on so they “quiet quit”.
The second thing they all have in common is they always blame something or someone else. They had an interview for their dream job and they were angry because they were passed over because a hiring manager decided on someone else. Or there was a younger, superstar genius coder who knew more than they did who got the job and they blame ageism.
Both of these can be overcome with one action, and that’s adopting an Owner’s Mindset. Extreme Ownership is a Book by Jocko Willink (Summary is available here). It’s about how Navy Seals became the premier military organization in the world. A quote from the Book:
“On any team, in any organization, all responsibility for success and failure rests with the leader. The leader must own everything in his or her world. There is no one else to blame. The leader must acknowledge mistakes and admit failures, take ownership of them, and develop a plan to win.”
You not only need to take ownership of others you lead, but you got to take ownership of yourself and your progress in life. You are not liable for the outcomes, but you are 100% liable for the inputs you make and actions you take.
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You see a lack of ownership everywhere in corporate America. Bosses blaming their subordinates, Employees blaming their Boss. Executives blame an Employee who made a mistake, and makes HR deal with it. Executives get bonuses because they made “The Right Decision” to lay off a bunch of their staff, turning around the company by cutting costs. But are any of those taking ownership of your actions? Heck No, and we are all furious because they happened.
If we could design a program or service which renders the true owner of a problem with great accuracy, that could turn around corporations for good. KPI’s are currently the best system out right now to quantify this. KPI stands for “Key Performance Indicator” and basically it’s just the goal with which you are judged against if you are doing job or not.
But really what you need to do is be you’re own Boss when it comes to your Career Progression. Unfortunately, know one will do it for you. (Unless your willing to pay a lot of money for a Coach) You need to determine what will be your Career long KPI and adjust it if needed, depending on your situation. It could be a “attain a certain percentage raise in salary every 2 years”, or “Score a Title change every 2 years”. They need to be small goals, but scalable as to be able to use throughout your entire career.
To achieve this, I suggest you use my “Why Not Both Theory”. My Theory states that you should always be tackling the two problems simultaneously, Two Birds, One Stone. You should always be growing and you should always be taking responsibility for your own progress. The best way I know how to do both well is by building your Personal Brand online, no matter how great a job you currently have.
This theory has helped me progress amidst drastic career uncertainty. I quit my boring job almost 6 years ago and dedicated my whole life to finding out what I was missing. It was the main reason I started this newsletter. I wanted to provide a chance for me to grow outside of my career and to take ownership of something that was my own. Now, I’ve dedicated myself to post something online each and everyday for the rest of my life to better help those who will come after me, and this post is now my #375 consecutive post since that goal was set, and I won’t be stopping here.
If you are feeling like you’re not growing in your Career, you’re most likely right, as I said before, no one knows your Career better than you, no one cares about your Career more than you.
While you’re working in your lab or at you coding job, remember to try and participate in professional work outside your company. By doing this, your experience won’t reset when you quit or get fired or laid off. You’ll always have something to fall back on, even if only temporarily, and you won’t seem desperate when your grasping at interviews, afraid about how you’ll be paying the mortgage next month (a fearful employee is not great employee).
So get out there and write something, contribute to an open source project or just be a Mentor to other people. But do it in public and do it out in the open so other people can see what you are doing. You’ll find rather quickly that you might just find out along the road what it is you want to do for the rest of your life after you’ve moved on from your “Dream Job”
Until Tomorrow,
Jason Ziebarth (Founder Club255)
JZ#375