{"id":5723,"date":"2010-12-29T11:56:35","date_gmt":"2010-12-29T18:56:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/?p=5723"},"modified":"2010-12-31T11:22:19","modified_gmt":"2010-12-31T18:22:19","slug":"career-lessons-765-leaders-pragmatism-reflection","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/?p=5723","title":{"rendered":"Career Lessons 7,6,5 \u2013 Leaders, Pragmatism, Reflection"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Seven<\/a>
Seven - courtesy 'Fotolia'<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

We are counting down my top 10 career lessons of the past decade.\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0Here are the next set of memorable lessons\u2026<\/p>\n

7\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Follow the leaders<\/strong><\/p>\n

Over the last decade, I have switched jobs a number of times.\u00a0 Some were good, and some were bad.\u00a0 They were all great learning experiences, with their own sets of challenges and rewards.\u00a0 Looking back, what would I have changed?\u00a0 I would have been much more careful about which opportunity to accept, based on who the leaders are in the organization.\u00a0 The jobs that were most rewarding were those where the leadership team had a common set of values and shared mission \u2013 and were supportive of my role in the team.\u00a0 The jobs that were least rewarding were those where the leadership team was weak, and dysfunctional.<\/p>\n

My guidance to anyone looking for a new job is \u2018Follow the leaders\u2019 and make sure that they share values and a mission that align with your own beliefs.\u00a0 How can you do this?\u00a0 Talk to people who already work there, or who have worked there and find out more about the team culture and the backgrounds of the key leaders in the group.\u00a0 In today\u2019s environment, your job will change continuously.\u00a0 If you are in a team with great leaders, you are more likely to be tackling the right set of problems and be supported in your role.\u00a0 It will make a huge difference to your career ROI.<\/p>\n

6\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u201cDon\u2019t let the perfect be the enemy of the good\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

We have all worked on projects where \u2018the end always seemed to be another month away\u2019.\u00a0\u00a0 I pride myself on my pragmatism today.\u00a0 But, there was a time when I would not compromise on ideals and led my teams on quests for \u2018project perfection\u2019.\u00a0 Let me give you an example.\u00a0 About 9 years ago, I was on a project where we had to make a call on whether to proceed with a release or fix a few more bugs.\u00a0 The bugs were relatively moderate and would occur only in corner cases.\u00a0 Nevertheless, my senior technical team was pushing to get the bugs fixed.\u00a0 They were a proud bunch and did not want to release anything with bugs.\u00a0 On the other hand, upper management was pushing me to compromise and get the release out the door next week.\u00a0 You can guess what I did\u2026. I buckled in and decided to bravely conquer the last few bugs.\u00a0 We worked all weekend.\u00a0 By Monday morning, the problems were still not solved.\u00a0 Worse, we had introduced new bugs into the system which were far more severe.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s when a colleague of mine called me aside and said \u2018Don\u2019t let the perfect be the enemy of the good\u2019.\u00a0 It really resonated with me.\u00a0 We quickly backed out our changes and reverted back to the \u2018moderately buggy\u2019 version of our release.\u00a0 Out it went \u2013 on time.\u00a0 Not perfect, but good enough.<\/p>\n

My lesson learned?\u00a0 Balance between getting things done well and getting things done perfectly.\u00a0 It has served me well to this day and has enabled me to release numerous high quality releases on time (although none were perfect!).<\/p>\n

5\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Know when to leave and when to stick it out<\/strong><\/p>\n

Sometimes we get so caught up in the day to day routine of getting our jobs done, we forget to look at the big picture.\u00a0 This is what happened to me a few years ago.\u00a0 I had led a team to successfully release some cool functionality over the course of a number of years.\u00a0 The energy from that success drove me to expand the scope of team.\u00a0 What I completely missed was that the world had changed in the span of 3 years.\u00a0 There were new technologies, and new opportunities outside my immediate field.\u00a0 It was when I took some vacation; I finally had the time to reflect on what was really going on.\u00a0 I could either stick it out in my area of comfort, or move to a new expanding area where there were more potentially new opportunities.\u00a0 I decided to move on.\u00a0 By moving to a new area, I opened greater career opportunities for myself, increased my marketability and value to the business.<\/p>\n

My lesson learned?\u00a0 Take time to step back periodically, and evaluate what you gain by staying vs. leaving.\u00a0 Although you may be invaluable in your current role \u2013 there may be something far better and more rewarding waiting for you.\u00a0 Given the rate of change these days, it becomes more important than ever to ask ourselves \u2018what else is there for me?\u2019 Just by asking you may stumble upon something far more interesting that you currently have.\u00a0 Or you may stay.\u00a0 But, at least you make a conscious decision to do so.<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We are counting down my top 10 career lessons of the past decade.\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0Here are the next set of memorable […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1494,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"give_campaign_id":0,"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5723","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-miscellaneous"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5723","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1494"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5723"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5723\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5723"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5723"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5723"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}