Twenty - Twenty

Twenty - Twenty

While you mostly would have started thinking about a cricket match, its not about cricket but for sure about your innings in your professional career. Let me start with 3 basic question for you -

# How long is your professional Career ? 

# Where do you see yourself when you have 30+ years of experience ? 

# What is the high hanging fruit you have been targeting, have you found one 😏 ? 

I am sure it must have already triggered your #thinkingcap and also may be you just said to yourself, "Shit, i never thought of them" 😃

Well, that's what happened to me a few months back as well and when i answered them i realized ones professional career has always to be planned in two innings, the first half (first 20 years) and the 2nd half (next 20 years); That's how I started calling it the twenty-twenty career planning ! 

I remember when i started my career as an engineering graduate and in interviews if someone asked me,  "Where do you see yourself 10 years down the line ?",  it really stood a tall question to answer back then. The best i could get to answer this question was, "I see myself as a Manager, an Architect etc.". I am pretty sure your story must have been similar and probably your answers were similar too. But wonder if someone would have asked you then "Where do you see yourself 30 years down the line ?",  what would you have thought, probably  it was too early then to answer the question, but the real question is do you have the answer now ?

Anyone's professional career is roughly 40 years long, however very less people plan for the 40 years. Most of us, really don't even realize that our professional career is 40 years long and we keep running after the low hanging goals which will give us what we think "Success" for the first 20 years. This is also one of the key reasons why lot of people get more dissatisfied, feel downplayed, dip passion for their work in the later part of the first 20 years of their career. The real gap is, we keep focusing on the low hanging goals and look for high satisfaction / reward of them.  As you already realize there is a miss match of the input and the output, hence we are bound to feel downplayed and not feel content. 

Well, if you are already in near 20s for your career or even further, its never late - start planning now for your 2nd innings; The reason why i call it the 2nd innings (i.e. the 2nd 20 years of your career) is because you need to plan and approach it very differently that your first innings. The first 20 years are going to be about going and achieving low hanging goals, which you will be able to see ahead of you, be able to meet them in 1-2 years of a time lap & feel rewarded for achieving them. Not to demean your effort of achieving these goals, they will be complex and hard to achieve but will be low hanging. You will need to identify high hanging goals for your career for your 2nd innings; These goals will be ambiguous, will require multi facet skills to achieve, will take long time lap - 3-5 years to achieve and be differently rewarded (e.g. may not be a promotion but a bigger responsibility). 

Talking through lot of people who are in their 2nd innings of their career, what i realized is really 2nd innings is going to be the game play you will be know For & As;  Your grand children are not going to know you as a Software Engineer you were when you started your career in XX company.  So its really worth planning for your 2nd innings.

Thinking Cap ?

I don't think its hard to plan for your 2nd innings, my mantra to get started is asking some questions on an ongoing basis to yourself -

a) What is the high hanging goal I want to target next, how long will it take (should not be promotion, salary hike etc.) ?

b) What is the growth I want to see in myself in next 5 years (should be something like a qualification, new leadership persona for your self, new professional dimension etc.)?

c) What are the things I need to do in a phased manner to achieve my goal ? 

I guess one should ask these questions once every year to themselves and retrospect as they move along playing their 2nd innings. 

                              

                                 Whats in your Thinking Cap on this topic, do share / comment ?

   

The Demise of the COOs

The Demise of the COOs 

Traditionally the key leadership positions for organizations has been modeled between a CEO (Chief Executive Officer) and COO (Chief Operating Officer) function. In a traditional setup COOs is a hands on leader who oversees all operational and administration functions, builds robust operation controls for operations and internal functions & responsible for all programs. Well you must be thinking if COOs are doing all this, what are the CEOs doing 😏

Traditional CEOs were organization heads with total control on the organization and responsible to make all key decision for the organization. The CEOs also acted as a main point of contact for any communication, decision or review by the board (of directors). CEOs were also expected to the public face for the company for any PR (Press) or announcements.

If you look closely on the dimension of engagement between the CEO and the COO, it is designed to be a bureaucratic engagement. The CEOs made decisions which were supposed to be proved right & successful by the COOs. Most of the time COOs proved to be the scapegoats for the CEOs for any decisions going wrong, it always turned out to be the execution of the decision rather than the decision.  

As the industry evolved and workplace philosophies like open environment, flat organizational structures, transparency, ownership became organizational realities, the dimension of CEO and COO function  changed as well. Not only boards tuned their expectations with CEOs, but also the new generation CEOs aspired and desired to have deeper organizational insights, having more controls at their end to drive-measure organizational efficiencies and show larger accountability quotient. One of the primary reasons for  the shift was also because most of the COOs as part of succession became CEOs, but never went and hired a COO😉 . The COOs always perceived themselves as "CEO in waiting". Also the board always saw them in the same way, which made the CEOs fairly insecure a lot of times. So the new CEOs started owning the decisions and its results and also slowly diminished the need of COOs. 

New generation CEOs take their decision and own them, they are the new operational leaders for all external and internal functions. COO role is more and more getting merged with CEO role and we are seeing less and less of COOs. While some big organizations still hold COO positions in their leadership as legacy, the phenomena is more picking up across all industries and very common now with new organizations where the CEO is the new COO.   

Few Facts

Amazon never ever had one COO. Jeff Bezos holds the CEO position for the company and his second layer in the organization are business CEOs and Sr Vice Presidents for different functions.

Kevin Tuner was the first and the last COO Microsoft ever had. He led the COO function for Microsoft for 11 years, 2005-2016. Satya Nadella, CEO for Microsoft manages all operational function within his portfolio. 

Thinking Cap ?

While i don't have an opinion yet to have a COO or not, the bigger takeaway for me is a plus for a non-bureaucratic responsibility matrix and flattened organizations. Leaders today are brave as never before,  own their decision and want to take more responsibility, so why should not organizations have their CEOs be the new COOs as well !

Whats in your Thinking Cap on this topic, do share / comment ?

Being A Mentor

Being A Mentor 

One of my favorite topics, what does it mean becoming a mentor. While the simple answer people would give is , Experience 😊, but is it just that.

Story: I have always been truly inspired by William Campbell, the great coach / mentor of the era. Once a employee in Kodak, later became VP of Marketing and board director for Apple Inc. , CEO for Claris, Intuit, and GO Corporation. Campbell coached some of the greatest leaders of the generation, Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Eric Schmidt, Jonathan Rosenberg and Sundar Pichai at Google, Steve Jobs at Apple, Brad Smith at Intuit, Jeff Bezos at Amazon, John Donahoe at eBay, Marissa Mayer at Yahoo, Dick Costolo at Twitter, and Sheryl Sandberg at Facebook. 

Did Campbell had a magic pill for everyone to succeed 😊, what was the real deal ? If you go through his journey with all these leaders, one thing that you would notice, all these leaders are different, very different. 
So what was the secret sauce for his success as a mentor,  One thing he truly believed was mentoring is never about putting greatness in someone, it always about recognizing greatness in someone and helping it emerge. That's what he did with all the people he coached.

Being A Mentor is not about replicating yourself as you are great in something & the other is not. Its also not about giving something to someone - its about getting something out from someone. Most of times today, when we look for a mentor for a engineer , a manager etc, we try to find a great a great engineer or a great manager to mentor believing the mentor will make the mentee as good as him/her. You must differentiate between a trainer vs a mentor, lot of times leaders tend to have expectation of a trainer from a mentor, which may give you tactical wins in a particular setup but sadly does not actually serve the purpose of having a "mentor". It's always about getting someone realize their own greatness and your experience helping him /her to discover and use it appropriately to ones success. 

One of the key aspects for a mentor-mentee relationship to succeed is trust, lot of times i have personally seen the mentor-mentee relationship failing just because there was lack of trust between them. Its the foundation for the overall engagement to succeed.

Morale: Being a mentor is a loaded responsibility, don't take it casually. Its not about your greatness, its about him/her realizing their own greatness with your help. 

Tips:

Myths to Mentorship -

• I will help when he/she asks for it
• I need to make his strengths as of mine
• Mentoring is easy
• My goal is to get him / her hired - promoted

As Mentor, Its always about leaning forward to help!

What does it truly mean -

• Mentoring is helping the individual discover his / her strengths and not understanding your strengths
• As a mentor one needs to also help discover persons weak links and help him/her to offset with strengths he/she has. No one can be good on everything
• Being a true Mentor is not a transaction, it’s a relationship, build affiliation
• Try to learn from your mentees, they can prove to be great teachers for you to be better. We call this reverse mentorship