Sharing the thinking

In addition to reflecting about what I'm seeing, hearing and experiencing, I want to share back with others. There's a selfish reason for this - it allows me to test my thinking and theories, but also because I want to help others as I go. This comes directly back to this evolving sense of purpose of 'people first'.


The past 2 days have been interesting. On both days I've spent time with people who are new in grade and struggling to make sense of things. For the 2 new partners it is how they can better define their focus and boundaries to be successful while balancing the other demands on their time. For the new director it was about purpose and goal setting - recognising the next promotion is likely to be long way off - how to remain motivated and define different measures of success which are relevant and meaningful over this longer timeframe.


What was interesting in each of these conversations was that there was initial hesitation about whether it was an appropriate conversation to have with another partner, and some relief that on braving the subject I was willing to spend time on it. In all cases the originally intended subject matter got put to one side to spend time listening and sharing experiences and thoughts.


Measuring success gets harder as you get more senior. In the world of professional services your early career is marked by quite rapid climbs up the ladder and you can easily tick off progress. You may also be taking professional exams which help to mark out progression along the way. Once you reach the middle ranks of leadership however it becomes more difficult. Your role becomes less well defined and the link between performance and reward - financial and otherwise - can be more tenuous. If you make partner it's generally true that you'll spend more years with this title than you did getting there. On paper you are clearly successful, but what about a clear sense of regular achievement? I suspect this is why many successful people are into competitive sport - for most of us it's far easier to measure progression through a physical achievement than a professional one. 


I had a moment of clarity last week when talking to one of my team. Having come from a very different type of business she was making the point that those in the middle ranks spend a lot of time delivering and far less time managing the business and our people, particularly on coaching and development. If you are a technical expert then this is probably very acceptable. If however you are someone who wants a more balanced set of objectives then it can feel relentless and, more importantly, disconnected from the purpose led organisation we hold ourselves out to be. The reality for most of us below the executive leadership is that linking the sense of a purpose led organisation to our day to day myopic, short term operating model feels very difficult.


The question then to answer is what do I value? I know that yesterday's client call on a report where we are now on version 18 and I feel like giving up is about as demotivating as it gets (apart from picking through the utilisation stats on a week by week basis - hate that too). Today's client meetings where I felt I brought some insight were better but not as energising as the development conversations I had with people who needed an outlet to share their thoughts and concerns. The fact that big rand organisations, complex global companies, are interested in my point of view still blows my mind, but it generally feels a bit superficial because I'm mostly broad rather than deep.


So one of next my to do's is to ask a few people what they value about me. Needless to say I'm a bit nervous but will be good to hear a different perspective.