The long jump over the mid-career chasm

I was having this interesting conversation with a friend whom I was meeting after a long time. And as expected, the discussions turned around from weather, traffic (Bangalore!), family, friends and finally at career. He was a product of a top ranking institution and was one of the brightest engineers I had worked with in my career. He seemed pretty disillusioned with the monotonous nature of his work and was feeling bored and stuck at his role for the past 6+ years (with an overall experience of 14+ years). He was trying his best to make his (& his team’s) work faster and efficient and that didn’t seem to do the trick for him to move any forward career-wise.

My immediate reaction was to ask him to read Marshall Goldsmith’s best seller. However, it would have been a Band-Aid solution and that seemed to be an injustice to our friendship. That led to a very long conversation in the afternoon between us. Below are the highlights of the conversation that I thought is relevant to share.

Why does a good percentage of talented IT professionals get stuck at a middle-management/technology/functional positions?

I have observed that the stagnation of talented folks happens due to mainly two reasons

1. Illusion of “I am happy with what I am doing today”

2. I am doing more and more (faster and efficient) of my scope of work. While it worked in the past, it has stopped working now.

For the benefit of this article, I will skip the folks in (1). And I hope they wake up from their ‘fool’s paradise’ soon to follow the folks in the category (2)

When you embark upon a career — be it technical, functional or even process/people management you would notice that the initial few months/years are the hardest since you have a steep learning curve to conquer, the results are yet to show in your career advancement and you end up putting a lot of effort to conquer the beast before you start seeing results. Success/Results could be defined as anything — recognition, job progression, knowledge acquisition, pay package — whatever is appropriate in your respective value system.

After a few years of spectacular growth, you hit a plateau on the results. The same amount of learning, effort, efficiency would start giving you lesser results than it has given you in the past. Typically referred as the “next S curve” by a few management experts. Individuals who are tuned into the environment they operate in are quicker to identify the ‘plateauing effect’ and rediscover themselves and they quickly climb on to the next phase, whereas a few others see it only after it becomes very obvious. And another few totally fail to see it and fall off the cliff (and in the process, becomes the potential candidates to be let off if the business is rough)

The first few cycles of rediscovery happens very seamlessly because there is enough food for everyone at the bottom of the pyramid and success is relatively linear. Add to the fact that un-learning and re-learning is relatively easier at younger ages. Over a period of time, before you know it, you are caught before the very large chasm of making the transition from a middle management position (technology/process/people) to a senior leader of the organization. Make no mistake, true to the comments you read in Goldsmith’s masterpiece, what got you here will not take you there.

While the job design of middle-management is to bring order to chaos, senior management is primarily focused on growing and thriving in chaos while leading the organization forward. Behaviors like driving breakthrough change, intelligent risk taking, courage and stamina to challenge status-quo becomes valuable assets for a professional at this stage. The focus quickly shifts away from individual talent (techno/functional/people skills) to leadership mindset and attitude. Talent can get you there, but the mindset and attitude is what keeps you there. The trick to cross the chasm is to start understanding the bigger picture of organizational strategy and align your actions to get closer to that goal, or even better achieve them.

Another common mistake that some of the folks make while transitioning to leadership/management positions is to assume that they can detach themselves from technology/functionality because they are a manager now and they are just expected to manage! This is one of the biggest blunder you can make in your career. Human brain is the most complex and efficient, self-learning, neural network ever known and it will be a shame not to use your learning from one scenario in another. When you imagine this in terms of the ‘S curve’, think of your ‘next S curve’ starting all the way at the bottom of the pyramid of success/results! The real trick is in correctly identifying when to use your experience and when to unlearn and re-learn.

Originally published at https://www.linkedin.com.