How to Prepare for a Career Change

I’ve spent my entire career at Lockheed Martin, and throughout that time, I’ve held various roles, spanning from intern to executive vice president of Missiles and Fire Control (MFC). Each position holds its own responsibility to help make our customers, the company, and our teammates successful.

I’m now moving to a different role within the company to lead the Rotary and Mission Systems (RMS) business area. With every new role, it’s important to prepare to leave your previous role, as well as prepare to start your new role.

Preparing to Leave Your Previous Role

Assess

Think about what needs to happen before you move to your new role. In preparing for my transition, I have an ongoing list of projects covering new business, operational improvements, culture initiatives, personnel and key customer interfaces. This will help the person coming into my role know exactly where to start.

Arrange

Put a plan together so that the transition from one role to the next can be seamless. My successor and I have met several times to review the list of priority items and to talk through my rationale behind them. Of course, my successor will chart the course going forward, but it’s important that continuity and momentum is maintained in areas where we are agreed, and these discussions help to ensure that happens.

Admire

Be proud of what you’ve accomplished during your time in that role. It’s important to leave knowing you made an impact on your team, the business and your career. I am proud of all we’ve accomplished at MFC, but as I reflect on the past years, the thing that brings the most satisfaction is the people and their experience with me as a teammate and leader. Last week we had a chance to say goodbye and many people shared words of encouragement with me about how my leadership had a positive impact on their career. That was more rewarding to me than any programmatic, product or business-related accomplishment.

Starting Your New Role

Listen

Always go into a new role with the intention to listen and learn. One of Stephen Covey’s Seven Habits of Highly Effective People is “seek first to understand, then to be understood.” My new assignment is a highly diverse and complex business with more than 35,000 teammates delivering products and services across a broad array of market segments around the world. The people, products, processes and customers are new to me, so my first objective is to rapidly come up to speed and not slow progress while I’m learning.

Lean In

Lean into your team. Your team is your biggest asset when you start a new job. Many years ago, I coined a phrase “tools don’t work, people do,” and it’s served me as a constant reminder that regardless of the business processes and modern information tools at our disposal, the primary focus of leadership must be engaging and aligning the people around the vision and strategy. I must learn the new business, but most importantly I need to learn my team as a whole and as individuals. Just as important, I also need to be transparent and candid with them so they can learn about me, as well.

Lead

Start your new job being the leader you intend to be from start to finish. President Eisenhower said, “the supreme quality of leadership is integrity.” Leadership involves the mastery and practice of many skills like strategy, communication, delegation and feedback. But, beyond those and more importantly, good leadership is about your character. Are you humble, are you passionate about the mission of your team, are you compassionate and readily serve your teammates, and do you have the moral courage to make hard decisions? These marks of character will define your leadership effectiveness, because people aren’t going to follow your plan as much as they are going to follow you.

Leaving the comfort of your current role means leaving what you know. Maybe it’s time to take a risk and see what else is out there to learn. Often when I address groups of early career employees, one of my pieces of encouragement to them is when an opportunity out of their comfort zone presents itself, they should say yes and enjoy the process of growing and broadening their experience.

I have greatly enjoyed and will always treasure the many years at MFC, and I will miss the people greatly. However, I've learned over the years that the heart of leadership is found in leading by personal example so I’m stepping out of the comfort zone into a new opportunity at RMS. I’m looking forward to serving there and providing leadership for our customers, our shareholders and our teammates.