GWU PMSA

Be the CEO of your Career

I recently finished an article in an older issue of the Harvard Business Review entitled What Only the CEO Can Do (May 2009, by A.G. Lafley)  As I read it, I realized, like many HBR articles, that the principles described can be applied in another way.  In the article, then Proctor and Gamble CEO A. G. Lafley suggests a company’s CEO is the link between the operation inside the company and the world outside.  In this capacity, there are four tasks that only the CEO can perform.

I’ll paraphrase the four tasks because they’re slightly out of context here, but I highly recommend reading the article (Reprint R0905D):

1. Define the what’s important to the company in the outside world.
2. Decide what business the company is in.
3. Balance short term and long term goals.
4. Shape the values and standards by which the company operates.

If you think of yourself as the CEO of your own career, you can translate these four tasks into crucial activities that only you can do:

1. Define what is meaningful to you
2. Decide what you’re going to do with your career
3. Balance the immediate needs of your life with long term goals
4. Determine your personal values and standards and hold yourself to them

Let me break these down.

Define what’s meaningful to you

Lafley says the CEO must decide which stakeholders are the most valuable and what results are the most salient.  In other words, on whom will the company focus and what are the key measures of success?  When the needs of multiple stakeholders conflict, decisions are made in favor of the key stakeholder.

Translating this to your career means more than simply saying your focus is your employer and the measurement is your salary.  We all have stakeholders in our lives (even the unattached can count themselves as a stakeholder) and they tend define our priorities.

Let me rephrase that- you define your priorities by deciding which of your stakeholders are most important.  This, in turn, defines the choices your make regarding your career.  Is you primary stakeholder your family?  Then maybe your career choices should maximize the time you can spend with them.  Is your main stakeholder your start-up?  Then make choices designed to grow the business.  The key is to identify all the stakeholders, decide which are the most important, and manage your career in such as way as to favor those stakeholders.

It may sound funny, but my dogs are key stakeholders in my life.  When I decided to adopt them, I chose to do so knowing I would be limiting myself.  I don’t feel it’s right to pull them out of one kennel only to place them in another if I take a position that requires a lot of travel.  This conscious decision actually points to task four, determining values, which I’ll discuss later.

Once you’ve determined which stakeholders are important, the next step is turning those priorities into quantifiable results.  Statements like “having a good work-life balance” are meaningless phrases common to business today.  What is the balance?  40 hours a week with a lot of vacation?  Working from home?  Maybe you are your primary stakeholder (which isn’t necessarily bad) and your results include new opportunities every 2 years.

To recap, decide who your primary stakeholders are, identify which career “results” are most important for them, and make decisions based on the idea that, if you run into a conflict, you decide in favor of the primary stakeholder.

Decide what you’re going to do with your career

In Lafley’s article, the CEO must decide which products or services the company will offer.  For example, if you run a management consulting company, are you focused on project management, executive coaching, or business process improvement?  What does your company do and what does it not do?

This same thing applies almost verbatim to your career.  Imagine you are a one-person company and your job is the company’s product or service.  Are you in the right business?  Are you in too many businesses?  When you’re offered new opportunities, do you think about how they align with your “core business?”

I was once offered a promotion that I turned down because accepting it meant leaving my chosen field (IT).  If I think of myself as a company, I’m in business to improve management decisions by applying technology, statistics, and design principles to data (“business intelligence” is the common term for it.)  The new opportunity would have meant more money but it wouldn’t have played to my strengths.  While this decision set me back a little, I have no regrets.  Accepting the job would have made me a little more financially comfortable but ultimately frustrated and unhappy.

Balance the immediate needs of your life with long term goals

Lafley speaks of the balance CEO’s must strike between short term gains such as stock price improvements with long term strategy such as investing in the future 10 or 15 years away.

I imagine this to be similar to riding a bike.  If you spend all your time looking a few feet in front of you, you’ll avoid hitting things but you’re likely to wander off course.  On the other hand, if you are only watching the horizon, you may not see a ride-ending pothole.  The trick is to balance the two, alternating between watching the road in front of you and looking ahead to make sure you’re on track.

This is certainly one I struggle with.  The demands of work, school, the PMSA, and volunteer activities push career development activities like networking and researching new opportunities “down the road.”  Naturally, if I continue to go from short term goal to short term goal, I run the risk of losing my way or worse, simply going in circles.

Obviously, you have to deal with what’s coming up now but take time to check your progress against the map you create with the other steps.  Maybe your goal is to make program manager in 5 years.  Are the projects you’re accepting taking you along that path or are you accepting what’s easy or what makes your co-workers happy?  If your primary stakeholder is your family, are you making decisions that afford you time with them or has “occasional overtime” become the norm?

I’ve started to set aside an entire day periodically to focus on planning this task.  For me it’s easier than mixing it in with everything else.  You may find it easier to spend a few hours a month checking your map against your current trajectory.  Be sure to think about your post-career goals; I’ve discovered through this process that I have goals for retirement (even optimistically, more than 20 years away) that require action today.

Determine your personal values and standards and hold yourself to them

Values, says Lafley, are about identity and behavior.  They determine how the company behaves and, therefore are connected to the other four activities.  Standards are how the company measures its performance in the marketplace.

In some ways, this activity might make more sense as number 1 because it ties in so closely to the others, especially identifying stakeholders.  If your primary stakeholder is your family, you must value family over money or climbing the corporate hierarchy.  If you’re primary stakeholder is an aging parent, you may value flexible hours and working remotely more than being challenged or getting new assignments.

Of course, your values aren’t necessarily tied to stakeholders alone but I think if you consider the values you hold, you’ll see a stakeholder behind most of them.  For example, let’s say you believe protecting the environment to be so important that you avoid investing in companies that do not employ sustainable business practices.  The environment is your stakeholder- does it make sense to work for a company that conflicts with this value?

Standards are similar but they tend to drive your day to day work.  Let’s say your company holds a standard of all projects being no more than 10% over budget.  You may hold yourself to a standard of completing projects within 10% of the budget, over or under.  Adhering to this standard makes is harder to pad your estimates, a tempting approach to meeting company targets.

Consider writing your values and standards down and referring to them frequently.  I think a lot of people have a vague idea of what their values are but when they are stored only in your head, it’s easy to fudge them or confuse them when conflicts arise.  Specifically defining your values and standards will also help identify stakeholders and assist in making decisions, especially the small decisions that compound over time into larger dilemmas.

Putting it together

I’m probably not telling you anything new.  If you’ve spent any time in management or career development training, chances are you’ve heard advice like this before.  The challenge is in taking the time to plan.  I recently heard it takes 27 weeks to find a new job in this economy but the statistic applies to the unprepared.  These steps will certainly help you prepare but they will also help keep you on the path to your goals.  By making time to work through these activities periodically you will be better equipped to make decisions, even small ones, that could profoundly affect your career.