How to Get Ahead Without Murdering your Boss (18 page)

To date, the arrangement has worked well: Paul’s technical capability has been maximised, while giving him the flexibility he sought, and Bob has been able to allocate more time to manage the workload and increase the profitability of his business.

Career Options

1. Continue working for Bob Sandbourne as a contractor

2. Attempt to re-establish his own business

Paul acknowledged that, after a difficult few years as a result of leaving the security of a well-paid job and struggling to establish his own business, he was very happy with his current work situation. The problems he experienced in running his own business started to make sense when he considered his skills set and personality preferences. Asking Bob and a couple of his old customers what they thought of him, Paul was pleased they praised his trade skills and his friendly, laid-back approach. As expected, they indicated his time management was poor; he was often late for jobs.

Paul discussed his results with Lou. She was keen for him to spend more time at The Edge, but acknowledged Paul wanted to maintain a level of flexibility and independence in the early stages of their relationship.

Paul identified three short-term goals:

1. Focus on improving his reliability. While time management wasn't one of his strengths, he didn't want to be regarded as "slack" and "unreliable". Paul bought a work diary and started to review his day and week in detail. Lou bought him a new watch that kept accurate time. In his personal time, Paul ensured he had flexibility and wasn't tied down by too many plans and deadlines.

2. Maintain his trade qualifications and ensure he was up to date with any new industry standards. Although Paul enjoyed the simpler handyman tasks, he acknowledged the need to keep his electrical qualifications up-to-date. He realised he needed to read trade magazines and maintain an awareness of new developments in his area of specialty.

3. Investigate working opportunities at The Edge and consider committing to a permanent part-time role, for example, ten hours a week, while continuing to work for Sandy's Handyman Services the rest of his work time.

A year down the track…

Paul tried hard to improve his reliability and time-management skills. Although he occasionally ran over time on jobs and took the odd day off when the surf was up, he became greatly improved in this area, and Bob and his customers noticed the difference.

Paul recognised the need to maintain his skills and spent more time reading technical journals. Even though he found this painful at times, he took a renewed pride in his work, and with Bob's encouragement, he was happy to help train a new apprentice in the coming year.

When Paul started working at the resort, he was nearly driven crazy by Lou's high standards and strict timetables. However, after some heated arguments, they compromised and found a way forward: Lou learnt to trust Paul and let him complete jobs without constantly checking and criticising him, and Paul learnt to communicate more around priorities and timeframes.

Lou and Paul recently married. Lou has written, with Paul's encouragement, a self-help career-development book linked to the traumatic events at The Edge on the weekend of the Medivalue conference.

Kylie Humann

Career review

Kylie wasn't sure what she wanted to do when she left school. Her favourite subjects were English and Geography and neither presented her with an obvious career path. She took a year off to work as a waitress, as well as volunteering for two months as part of a young people's program to build a school in Thailand. It was then that Kylie developed her interest in working with people. She started university studies the next year, undertaking a business degree majoring in human resources.

After completing university, Kylie began work as a Human Resources Officer (graduate) with a government-owned corporation, where the program allowed her to rotate through different allied areas. She left after three years to join a multinational manufacturer of fast moving consumer goods as a Human Resources Officer. After a year in that role, her boss left and endorsed Kylie as her replacement. Kylie believes this opportunity came through her performance, for example, her ability to deliver on deadlines — she describes herself as a naturally organised person — and to develop rapport with people from all walks of life, shop floor to senior executive. She recognises that her boss leaving gave her a lucky break because she would normally have struggled to win a senior role at such a young age. Kylie worked hard to build her profile in the HR industry. She attended industry functions and volunteered to be on external conference committees.

She was headhunted to join Medivalue and was attracted by the opportunity of having decision-making power at the executive table. Arnold Strong was a hard taskmaster, but she admired his business acumen and learnt a lot from him. Kylie was beginning to consider a career in general management, outside HR, and Medivalue offered promotional prospects in this regard.

Career options

1. Senior HR role within Medivalue or outside

2. General management role within Medivalue or at another organisation

3. Consulting

Kylie agreed she is extroverted, self-confident and reasonably organised. Her top three values of leadership, wealth and challenge have been evident in her career to date, which leads to her desire to achieve a general management, and ultimately CEO, role in the future. Personally, Kylie has a boyfriend who is building his career as a financial planner, so both are career-orientated at this time in their lives.

The External image feedback was challenging for Kylie. She was pleased she was regarded as a hard worker who is well-presented and has a good reputation in the HR industry. She was shocked to learn she was perceived as extremely ambitious and as not afraid to "use" people for her own benefit. Ed Senior, having worked through his own personal career-development strategy, was very open with Kylie and said she needed to be careful she didn't alienate too many people, who might then work against her to thwart her next promotion. He also said she was perceived within Medivalue, including by CEO Arnold Strong before he died, as very good at HR but not skilled enough in operations, sales, international business and financial management to take the next step to general management. Kylie's own assessment of her skills in these areas was high. He suggested she readjust her goals to consider a project role outside HR, for example, managing the expansion into the US, before targeting a general manager position.

Kylie was satisfied with her position at Medivalue and recognised her track record made her extremely employable as a senior HR practitioner. She knew, however, a move into general management would be more challenging. Kylie analysed the market and concluded that making the move into a general management role in a new company in her geographic area would be difficult because her career history was all HR. An internal promotion with Medivalue was her best option. Her fallback was to move interstate, where there would be a greater number of opportunities.

Kylie identified three short-term goals:

1. Complete her MBA. She had three subjects to go, including a mini-thesis. Choose a topic for her thesis that would be relevant to Medivalue and improve her general business capability.

2. Change her networking pattern to move away from purely HR associations to ones with a broader business focus.

3. Push hard for lateral movement into a business role in the next twelve months, possibly overseas, to give her international experience.

A year down the track…

Much to Kylie's disappointment, she wasn't considered for the CEO role at Medivalue. Arnold Strong's replacement was Tom Packer, who took several months to get to know his team and the business before sitting down with each of his employees for a career discussion. Tom was familiar with the SEEFAR methodology having employed it in another organisation.

At first Kylie was wary of Tom. She was surprised at the way he referenced the methodology, asking her questions about her values, identity, future options, etc. But she was impressed he took a listening-and-questioning approach and found herself opening up to him more than she planned to, discussing her goal to move into a general management position. Tom admitted he was surprised Kylie wanted to move out of HR. He also realised he needed to find a way of offering Kylie what she wanted in terms of skill development that worked for the business, or Kylie would leave. She was a valued employee, and given the current skills shortage, Tom wanted to ensure she stayed with the company.

Ultimately, they agreed on a plan that she would stay in the HR role for another nine months to help Tom put in place various people-development strategies. Tom promised Kylie that, as long as she continued to perform well during this period, he would allow her to head an offshore project to develop her international business and strategy skills. Kylie was impatient for this opportunity to be available sooner. However, Tom convinced her to be patient, documenting their discussion and his promise, which gave Kylie faith he would deliver.

While Kylie was pleased with this outcome, she continued to implement the other actions of her short-term career strategy to ensure she had other options if, for whatever reason, the Medivalue plan did not materialise. Kylie completed her MBA , met her performance goals and was rewarded with a transfer to the United Kingdom to head up Medivalue's push into this new market. Her respect for Tom grew and he actively mentored her. She also worked with an executive coach so that she was ready to lead a team overseas.

Louise Able

Career review

Lou has a degree in business, with a minor in psychology. She started her career fifteen years ago with a major hotel chain. She progressed quickly through the ranks, accepting several international transfers, as well as changing employers three times within the hotel industry. Lou became dissatisfied with her last role, running a large hotel in Egypt where she had to work seventy hours a week. She yearned to return to Australia and investigated several job opportunities in Brisbane but believed them to be a step backwards career-wise.

Her father was a successful businessman, running his own accountancy practice. He had a client in the tourism industry who was selling a resort. Speaking to Lou one night, he ignited an interest that, after a long research and analysis process, resulted in Lou purchasing the resort.

Lou used the SEEFAR methodology as part of her research and analysis process in deciding to purchase the resort. A year down the track she revisited her results as follows.

Career options

1. Managing Director of The Edge

2. Managing Director of The Edge — less operational hands-on responsibilities

3. Hotel management in general