Instead of letting your to-do list get in the way of career advancement, it’s time to take charge and show you’re an impact player. Photo: File.
Stuck in a necessary but uninspiring role, and want to do more? May Busch has some advice on how to use that job to get noticed by senior management.
Even the best of jobs has its share of uninspiring projects and repetitive tasks, but if most of your time is taken up by tactical and unrewarding work, it’s hard to demonstrate your value to senior management.
That’s a problem if you want to advance in your career.
Instead of letting your to-do list get in the way of career advancement, it’s time to take charge and show you’re an impact player – someone who is proactive in finding ways to make a difference for the organisation.
Here are three strategies for demonstrating your value, even if you’re only given tactical projects.
Show up and speak up: It’s hard to be seen as strategic while you’re sitting at your desk, opting to skip meetings and networking events to get your work done.
Train yourself to ‘show up’ a little more often. You don’t have to make a sudden sweeping change. Start small and grow your ‘show up’ muscles from there.
When you do show up, speak up and contribute your ideas.
For example, if the conversation turns to the challenge of meeting a tight deadline and you know your team can help, you could say: “I see a way we can speed up the process”.
Then pause briefly to give people a chance to pay attention before telling them your idea.
When you talk about the tactical work you’re doing, see if you can frame it in the context of the bigger strategic impact to which it contributes.
Let’s say you and your team prepare the dashboard of numbers for the weekly management meeting.
You could report on it by saying something like: “Keeping in mind the bigger goal of substantially enhancing the client journey, we’ve included a new metric so management can anticipate potential issues before they become complaints”.
Create your own work: Most managers are busy trying to get through their own to-do list and looking after their own careers, just like everyone else.
If they’re not assigning you the big important projects, then it’s time to create your own work.
Think about your best strengths and skills and the kind of projects that excite and challenge you.
For me, I loved to teach and train others, but that wasn’t part of my job, which was mostly crunching numbers and preparing presentation books.
Every year, we had new MBAs joining the firm and I volunteered to run the induction program for them.
This gave me visibility with the senior managers who sponsored the program and were speakers for it.
Because it was fun for me, the project didn’t feel like extra work. In fact, it energised me so much that I was able to get my regular work done or delegated in a much more efficient way.
Another way to create work is by telling people you’re interested in learning more about the strategic side of things in your organisation.
That way you can be top of mind when something comes along.
Go upstream: Another way to expand your horizons and develop opportunities to work on meaningful projects is to look upstream.
Trace back from your ‘downstream’ tactical work to where it becomes strategic further ‘upstream’ and see how you can get involved.
For example, if you’re responsible for collecting budget numbers from every team and preparing a PowerPoint for your manager to present, think about the ultimate users of that information.
Who are they and how are they leveraging that data to make decisions or improve results?
If you don’t know the answers, start by talking to people you do know and network your way up from there.
A great way to get to know those more senior managers is by expressing interest in understanding the bigger picture.
Having been a senior leader, I can tell you it’s exciting to know there are people coming up through the ranks who are highly engaged, thinking strategically and hungry for ways to learn, grow and add value.
Then, whether it’s during your conversation or as a follow up, see how you can add value by providing your perspective on what would make things more efficient or deliver bigger results based on your downstream insights.
Through this exploration you’ll develop the knowledge and connections to help you get involved at a more strategic level where you can show you’re an impact player.
If you want to be an impact player, be prepared to act like one by taking the lead and putting yourself out there.
It’s tempting to wait for someone else to recognise you can and want to do more, but everyone else is busy.
If your managers aren’t making it their priority to put you in situations where you can make a bigger impact, it’s time to act.
Even if you’re only assigned tactical work (for now), take heart. It may take some time, but it’s never too late to become visible and be seen as an impact player. The important thing is to begin.
May Busch’s mission is to help leaders and their organisations achieve their full potential. She works with smart entrepreneurs and top managements to build their businesses. She can be contacted at [email protected]. This article first appeared on May’s blogsite.
