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Career post.
Jan. 15th, 2011 04:58 pmAnnual performance appraisal process which always happens in January makes everyone think about current status and goals.
I just had an observation. Through most of my career (11 years), I had a clear idea what my bosses were doing. They did not make secrets of it any way (mostly). I usually understood 80%-100% of their objectives and current tasks, knew 80%-100% of stakeholders and their agendas, and grasped 80%-100% of projects my peers were doing and what their strength were.
Knowing everything was (and is) fun. However I also never planned to move to people management role going away from engineering role, and made this statement clear. This all made me a perfect acting manager/team lead when a boss had longer holidays. I've been doing that for a while.
But not at my last job. In spite of working in this team for more then three years, I would not feel comfortable if I was asked to cover my boss for more then 1 week. It is not that my manager hides any information - quite the opposite. He sends me to US to network with core teams. He is always eager to explain who in out 90000ppl organization is an expert in what, what are his goals and strength and how to cooperate. It is my soft skills that limit my own network so it grows slower.
As a result, I know only around 40% of our team's stakeholders and key contacts in other business groups. I understand around 60% of the projects my colleagues are doing. There is an objective reason for this of course too. Our team's consulting expertise spans across several markets that are quite different from each other: industrial automation, telco, consumer electronics, automotive embedded, graphics, J2EE, embedded healthcare appliances, desktop/notebook/netbook mass market software. However this is a bad excuse, as there are (very few) people I know who are able to cover all our projects if needed.
I just had an observation. Through most of my career (11 years), I had a clear idea what my bosses were doing. They did not make secrets of it any way (mostly). I usually understood 80%-100% of their objectives and current tasks, knew 80%-100% of stakeholders and their agendas, and grasped 80%-100% of projects my peers were doing and what their strength were.
Knowing everything was (and is) fun. However I also never planned to move to people management role going away from engineering role, and made this statement clear. This all made me a perfect acting manager/team lead when a boss had longer holidays. I've been doing that for a while.
But not at my last job. In spite of working in this team for more then three years, I would not feel comfortable if I was asked to cover my boss for more then 1 week. It is not that my manager hides any information - quite the opposite. He sends me to US to network with core teams. He is always eager to explain who in out 90000ppl organization is an expert in what, what are his goals and strength and how to cooperate. It is my soft skills that limit my own network so it grows slower.
As a result, I know only around 40% of our team's stakeholders and key contacts in other business groups. I understand around 60% of the projects my colleagues are doing. There is an objective reason for this of course too. Our team's consulting expertise spans across several markets that are quite different from each other: industrial automation, telco, consumer electronics, automotive embedded, graphics, J2EE, embedded healthcare appliances, desktop/notebook/netbook mass market software. However this is a bad excuse, as there are (very few) people I know who are able to cover all our projects if needed.
