Re-building Your Career Momentum!

As I have written in my previous blogs your career momentum is the currency you leverage to move ahead in your role and to get what you want. What is career momentum? It is an indication of how you are moving forward in your job and how that translates into your bargaining power for yourself to get better title, salary, or assignments. If you remember your high-school physics you can equate it to your first time-derivative of your position where you are in your career; it is an indication of how you are moving in the right direction to increase your value and to secure your next station in your career growth.
Many prospects, when they first come to me, are suffering from poor career momentum. They are stuck in the same role or job for longer than they expected; they are not getting promoted to the next title, despite better than average performance reviews; their salaries have tanked; etc. In some cases they have regressed in their roles because they showed no promise of growth. Some are out of work and looking for new jobs to land, but as their job search drags on from weeks to months they get nervous about how to present their rsum when their most recent several monthsor even yearsshow no impactful entries in their chronology.

So, what are some of the ways you can re-ignite your career momentum and make yourself more marketable? Id like to share some recent examples of clients during this year (2016), where, by focusing on their career momentum the course of their career changed for the better:

1.Taking on a customer-centric initiative: One director-level client responsible for a large UI team at an F-100 company was feeling severely limited by the leadership of his boss. In our sessions it became apparent that the company needed a much broader attack on unifying its myriad product offerings through a common UI to make it seamless for customers to go from one product to another.

So, we fashioned a company-wide initiative to propose this to his management, but because of the leadership limitations of his immediate boss the initiative tanked. This, in turn, severely limited my clients activities, preventing him from exploiting a great opportunity to build his momentum. Luckily, in some meetings with the higher-ups my client was able to present the unifying vision and how he could operationalize it. When the senior management saw that his boss was getting in the way, he was taken out, giving my client a mandate to take the company-wide initiative reporting to his skip-level boss. The initiative is now back on track, which is helping my client rebuild his career momentum. Lesson: If you have a clear vision for helping your customerand your companydo not let your boss stand in your way!
2.Re-purposing a failed initiative: A client at a social media company got tired of merely crunching numbers despite her PhD in Data Science. Her team had taken on an initiative to understand member behavior and how to leverage that to further increase member engagement. Because of team politics that important initiative went nowhere and was soon shelved as impractical. In the process my client was spending most of her time doing stultifying tasks that did not require her level of expertise and was looking to get out. Since she lacked career momentum to make a productive exit, we decided to take a closer look at the shelved initiative. With some re-thinking we were able to bring new life to that shelved initiative, proposing a recovery plan to her boss. Since a large effort was now shelved with no prospects for success her boss agreed to the recovery plan she proposed. She took charge, quickly mobilizing the effort with a different set of parameters, running many tasks on her own. Her boss had allowed her freedom to use resources as needed, but now it was her project. Soon, she was able to make a breakthrough and the initiative was expanded to several hundred million users, making that a significant accomplishment for the year for both, her and her boss. Now that she has great momentum and loves what she is doing she does not want to leave. Lesson: Do not discard failed initiatives if you can breathe new life into them for your benefit (and your companys).
3.Expand your horizons: Yet another director-level client was shepherding a company-wide inter-ops initiative. This required for all the companys products to operate with each other much more easily than was currently possible. As my client embarked on the ambitious initiative he found out that unless all product teams adopted a unified design philosophy and guidelines it would be much more difficult to bring all future products under a unified operating system. So, rather than fighting the development teams, which were resisting this regime, we decided for my client to go a few steps up the chain of command and get him the mandate to oversee how the design teams operated. Soon, he was given the mandate to guide the design teams with a unified approach, which made his original initiative much more workable. This client now has a much bigger responsibility with a larger teamand a charterto support his role. Lesson: Do not limit yourself by the scope of your assignment if you can be more effective in increasing the scope of your responsibilities.
4.Expanding your skillset: With the exploding new technologies and expanding skill requirements for new jobs it is a good idea to pick an area of work that you want to grow you career and identify some courses that you can take from online offerings. Coursera, Udacity, and MOOCs have countless offerings that are available without having to leave your home. Getting some meaningful certifications and then engaging yourself in assignments that leverage those skills is a good way to enrich your rsum as you do your everyday job. In just one such case a client, who wanted to migrate from high-tech to biotech was able to translate his Big-Data and analytics expertise into biotech by taking some courses in data visualization and bioinformatics. Lesson: Keep growing your skills repertoire to keep yourself marketable.
5. Quickening your job search: This happens to those out of work and looking. As their seniority increases its gets harder to land a job and the job search can drag on for months or even years. Often, looking for a new job can itself become a full-time job. So, when an out-of-work candidate gets in front of an interviewer it is difficult for them to explain what they have been doing in the recent months/years. This can become a showstopper in your getting the job offer. To obviate such a showstopper it is prudent to have some productive engagements during your job search. As a volunteer at some non-profit that is in the same field as your work would be a good place to engage yourself for some meaningful entries on your rsum. This also has the benefit of your networking with those who are involved with the organization. Often, well-connected people are involved in such civic organizations, who can help you in your job search. Working for a start-up for equity is yet another option worth exploring. Lesson: When out of work and looking, do not be consumed by just looking for a job.
So, here are some suggestions on how you can improve your career momentum by taking some initiatives on your own. See if these offer you some insights by looking at these successes and focus on your career momentum to get what you want from your career.

Good luck!

About Author

Dilip has distinguished himself as LinkedIn’s #1 career coach from among a global pool of over 1,000 peers ever since LinkedIn started ranking them professionally (LinkedIn selected 23 categories of professionals for this ranking and published this ranking from 2006 until 2012). Having worked with over 6,000 clients from all walks of professions and having worked with nearly the entire spectrum of age groups—from high-school graduates about to enter college to those in their 70s, not knowing what to do with their retirement—Dilip has developed a unique approach to bringing meaning to their professional and personal lives. Dilip’s professional success lies in his ability to codify what he has learned in his own varied life (he has changed careers four times and is currently in his fifth) and from those of his clients, and to apply the essence of that learning to each coaching situation. After getting his B.Tech. (Honors) from IIT-Bombay and Master’s in electrical engineering(MSEE) from Stanford University, Dilip worked at various organizations, starting as an individual contributor and then progressing to head an engineering organization of a division of a high-tech company, with $2B in sales, in California’s Silicon Valley. His current interest in coaching resulted from his career experiences spanning nearly four decades, at four very diverse organizations–and industries, including a major conglomerate in India, and from what it takes to re-invent oneself time and again, especially after a lay-off and with constraints that are beyond your control. During the 45-plus years since his graduation, Dilip has reinvented himself time and again to explore new career horizons. When he left the corporate world, as head of engineering of a technology company, he started his own technology consulting business, helping high-tech and biotech companies streamline their product development processes. Dilip’s third career was working as a marketing consultant helping Fortune-500 companies dramatically improve their sales, based on a novel concept. It is during this work that Dilip realized that the greatest challenge most corporations face is available leadership resources and effectiveness; too many followers looking up to rudderless leadership. Dilip then decided to work with corporations helping them understand the leadership process and how to increase leadership effectiveness at every level. Soon afterwards, when the job-market tanked in Silicon Valley in 2001, Dilip changed his career track yet again and decided to work initially with many high-tech refugees, who wanted expert guidance in their reinvention and reemployment. Quickly, Dilip expanded his practice to help professionals from all walks of life. Now in his fifth career, Dilip works with professionals in the Silicon Valley and around the world helping with reinvention to get their dream jobs or vocations. As a career counselor and life coach, Dilip’s focus has been career transitions for professionals at all levels and engaging them in a purposeful pursuit. Working with them, he has developed many groundbreaking approaches to career transition that are now published in five books, his weekly blogs, and hundreds of articles. He has worked with those looking for a change in their careers–re-invention–and jobs at levels ranging from CEOs to hospital orderlies. He has developed numerous seminars and workshops to complement his individual coaching for helping others with making career and life transitions. Dilip’s central theme in his practice is to help clients discover their latent genius and then build a value proposition around it to articulate a strong verbal brand. Throughout this journey, Dilip has come up with many groundbreaking practices such as an Inductive Résumé and the Genius Extraction Tool. Dilip owns two patents, has two publications in the Harvard Business Review and has led a CEO roundtable for Chief Executive on Customer Loyalty. Both Amazon and B&N list numerous reviews on his five books. Dilip is also listed in Who’s Who, has appeared several times on CNN Headline News/Comcast Local Edition, as well as in the San Francisco Chronicle in its career columns. Dilip is a contributing writer to several publications. Dilip is a sought-after speaker at public and private forums on jobs, careers, leadership challenges, and how to be an effective leader.

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