How long should you stay in a position ?

It has been one of my haunting question through my career. How long should we stay at a specific position ? Always torn between dedication, patience and clairvoyance of not listening to the wrong advise. This is not an easy one to answer, always being a good student can overtime make you over give yourself for a cause that isn’t in your best interest, not being patient enough can make you miss a once in a lifetime opportunity.

?

Why it is important to stay in the position long enough ?

We often hear the importance of the 100 first days in a new position. And indeed they are important these first days, it is within these days that you define yourself as the professional in the newly acquired responsibility. You get to absorb knowledge and at the same time build your network and relationship (or reinforce it). The pace in which you are able to achieve these two things will likely determine whether you are perceived successful at this job or not. It will not mean that you factually already have made an impact. You would have been judged by this time by your peers, colleagues and associates. This perception will determine how much anchor you have or weights you will be able to lift forward. This will subsequently determine your pace of change or performance. More you failed to assert yourself within this time frame, more you will have to stay in the new acquired position to prove yourself or more precisely : to reveal yourself. If the initial perceptions are wrong it will take time to be the person who you want to be in this role.

Another angle is this one: if you think you have been long enough and there is nothing more to learn you are probably wrong. We can always be surprised how the Dunning Kruger effect can play tricks on us. The Dunning-Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which people wrongly overestimate their knowledge or ability in a specific area. This happens because of our lack of skills to recognize our own incompetence and our overconfident about our own perception. Thinking we know the 80% and that we are not interested in the last 20, where in fact we know the 20% only and we have a long way to go… you will ask me how to counteract this phenomenon which failed so many of us ? The answer is simple: ask. Ask anyone that can have a certain view about your work for example: the previous holder of the position, you peers, your manager, your associates, your work buddy, or your companion of life. More importantly, ask yourself the proof of your success and how you can measure it. If nothing is tangible or factually measurable, you have a risk to have an high self-esteem that you cannot prove to anyone but yourself.

Whether you indeed achieve this 80% , the feeling of you feeling stuck or the need to move on, only prove one thing: you have been incapable to timely act accordingly to your needs of development. Then here is your final learning before being ready to move. What have you missed? Have you focused too much on the "what" and not enough on the "how" ? Did you get blinded to achieve without asking yourself of the why? All the answers to these questions will be valuable learnings that you will be able to take to the next step of your journey.

Mastering is an art only attained in relation to set ambition. If you are truly ambitious it will never be fully reached.

?

Why should you not stay in a position?

For the exact same reflection when you know where you want to go (nobody will truly know for you). You are the true leader of your destiny. Embrace learning but also constantly weighted with clarity the ratio below:

?

When the contribution appears largely overweighted versus your personal retribution all other form of reward, be aware that motivation might be eroded overtime. The question of “what is in for me” is deeply personal. For some it can be learning, balance of personal life, contribution or support to once family, financial stability or again supporting the so cause you personally believing.

On the other end whenever you gain more than you provide to your group or society you are engaged with, the unbalance will pull you under stress and at risk to sustain this position. It might also be in this particular case wise considering moving yourself from where you are. Feeling and being perceived as an individual that is not meaningfully contributing to the group, is as harmful as feeling undervalued. However in the second case much more risky or dangerous as the evaluation of your performance is out of your hand.

It is important to say as well that any work or professional activity with negative effect on your mental or physical health should not be considered as an activity to be kept. Without entering too much the topic I am fully aware that some ?difficult life situation might unfortunately bind more than we can imagine a person to a negative well-being activity. These reflections below and above do not apply obviously in this cases.

?

Other considerations

I believe the seniority of the roles and your ambition for impact should have an influence in this reflection as well. Larger are your responsibilities, longer it takes to make an impact. Longer it takes to create and to use influence for full cycle off your role. This cycle is of course relative to the business and industry you are in.

As an exemplification, we can for example take a manager versus a chief HR officer. For the single team manager his sphere of influence will faster be reached as the full cycle of his role will be relative to his direct team and connected to one business cycle of his area. In the other end for the CHRO that wants to have an impact on the strategy related to hiring and the company culture will reply on an extensive period of time proportionate to the natural attrition of the full scale of the company as well as the endorsement progressively acquired by all the managers within his sphere of influence. In this second case the “cycle” of the role from the identification of the pain points to the realization of an evolution, it will take several cycle of the single team manager.

??

This simplistic representation does not contain the multidimensional aspects of an individual modern career. This dry linear carrier exist but is rare as a diamond. To build yourself ready for the highest needs of tomorrow leadership, it would require a lot of twists, probably some up and down as well. There is a beauty in complexity and in the curve of learning. Indeed to reach your highest personal potential it will require a lot of self-introspection as well as a creation of your own path far from the linear representation of the corporate ladder then once has been told as a tales as the only path of success.

Geoffroy DECHANET