Moving Up Quickly, Early in Your Career...

Lots of people are changing jobs, taking new positions and developing more ambitious goals. If you're in that group, you're likely also thinking, "How do I get where I want to go, sooner?"

Each year I mentor a group of early career professions through two years of professional development time at The University of Michigan. I recently shared our introductory slides here: https://twitter.com/AndrewMIbrahim/status/1548697339275141120?s=20&t=8wdcqZc8YS0ffZWG3h6YFw

The overwhelming response has been, "You may have written that for developing your academic research career early, but it really applies to any professional. Especially those early in their career." It's true. Many of the lessons come from both my time in academics as well as private industry. The principles are generalizable to any early career individual in a new role. In that spirit, I'm resharing the content below framed around, "Moving Up Quickly Early in Your Career..."

[In case you (like me) are crunched for time and just want TL/DR version: each section has a short visual summary with key points.]

Early Career Goals

Your early career goals should fall into three buckets:

1. Transferable Tools & Skills: This will vary from industry to industry, they may involve data analytics, writing, presenting. One industry mentor told, "If you can learn how to manage money and people, you have a skill for every career moving forward." While the initial reason you're learning each tool may not be your dream project or assignment, focus on honing in the skills that you carry with you to your next project, next position or even next job.
2. Developing a Mission & Vision: No one has a sustained push in a meaningful career without a mission and vision. Often in early career positions you are "rotated" through several different types of work, content areas and environments. As do you do that, take stock of the ones you gravitate toward and want to learn into further. You want to develop at least 3 projects you can arc together that start to tell your story. They may share a similar theme, methods or problem and reflect the arc of work you're moving toward. As soon as your vision starts to take shape, ask to be put on on projects that align with vision going forward.
3. Building Community: One major benefit of a new role or new employer is the chance to grow your community. Make a concrete goal your first year to meet at least 1 new person a week. Learn their story, what they care about, and (if you did a project with them) what skills you might learn. If your employer allows you an opportunity to attend conferences or industry events, go! Look at the list before hand and email 3 people ahead of time you want to meet.

Each of these goals are unpacked a bit more in the next three sections.

Moving Forward When You Don't Know You'e Going

Often times you start a job or position with a lot of momentum, but when a boss or mentor asks you, "What do you ultimately want to do?" you freeze. It not because you're not thoughtful or don't care, but you just need more time and experience to build that vision. So what do you do? Focus on transferable skills and tools.

My first research project was to evaluate surgical care at critical access hospitals. If you are like me a decade ago, you probably have never heard about them. They are small, often rural hospitals, with <25 beds and more than 35 miles from another hospital. More than 60 million Americans can their care primarily in these settings. The first project took over a year. Buzz kill, right? Actually, it was great because it taught several transferable skills: how to handle Medicare Claims Data, understanding healthcare billing, efficient ways to code millions of patients using STATA, how to write for a generalize audience, proper approaches to apply econometric technique to policy evaluation. In short, this project became the backbone for my research skillset. The next year? I completed 16 projects using the same tools and skills.

Your tools and skills will vary at each job. It may be technical writing, budgeting, coordinating events, corporate presentations, team building, etc. But focus on the ones that are transferable beyond that project.

Going Faster Once You Know Where You're Going

At some point you will have find your north star and realize, "That's where I want to go!" and then ask, "How do I get there faster?" It is a great feeling, but if not reigned in, can lead you astray.

And well, there are two types of people in the world at this point...

#1 Super motivated, energy charged: "I'm working on 4 projects in 6 different datasets."

#2 Super Motivated and focused, energy charged: "I'm working on 4 projects in 1 dataset."

Early on, be the 2nd.

There is so much up front investment to learn a new skill or tool (e.g. new dataset, method, cohort, content area.) For whatever reason, once we learn one dataset, we love trying to conquer a new on .... It slows down your productivity. Instead, compound your advantages. Look for ways to re-use and amplify the tools and skills you've already developed to consistently be more productive. Here is how it looks in the research world by projects:

Ideally, you can you use each new skill or tool in 2 or 3 projects in a row before taking on the learning curve of a new approach. As you develop more depth in selected areas, you'll get more efficient and have the extra time to branch out.

Scaling Impact Alongside Others

Eventually, you will build up the needed skills and have a clear vision for your work. At this point, mentees often ask, "How do I scale my work for more impact?"

Scaling impact has a lot of approach. For those of you in the research world, creating a #VisualAbstract ( www.SurgeryRedesign.com/resources ) can lead to your work being read nearly three times more often.

But the other important strategy to scaling your work is working alongside others with humble curiosity. This gets harder as you develop your expertise. You may already known a lot about a specific topic or content area, and at your company even be the "go to" person for it. But rest reassured, someone elsewhere knows more. And if can collaborate with them with humble curiosity, you'll go further.

I have spent a good part of my career studying access to healthcare. So much, in fact, I tried to write a grant to the National Institutes of Health asking for >$2million to study it further. I thought I had the issues sorted and need resources to delivery an answer. Well, the first submission did not even get past initial screening. The NIH gives you a one liner, "Not Discussed" meaning it was not good enough to even be considered. I subsequently met a colleagues (and now good friend) at my institution who was new and at his prior institution, the "access to healthcare" person. Lots of tough brotherly love, but he graciously schooled me up. We went from a single author not-worth-discussing grant to a way more robust model (initial paper in Health. Affairs here: https://healthaffairs.org/doi/abs/10.1377/hlthaff.2021.01615… ) and a Dual-Author fundable grant.

This framework has already developed a fair bit of discussion on Twitter , look forward to the discussion below.

What other advice do you give others taking on new roles early in their career?