Moving Up and To The Right in your Career

A couple months back, after much procrastinating, I finally got around to writing an initial advice article on LinkedIn, curious if I would ever do it again: https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/path-taken-purposefully-kevin-davis/ (Do we think this link gives SEO value?)

Well, there was enough positive reinforcement that I have decided to write two more, related articles. The first one is for those individuals that longer term want to move up in terms of responsibility, knowledge, and compensation in their career. This is not a goal of everyone, because with moving up comes, well, a lot of challenging situations and responsibilities -- re: potential stress. Additionally, along the way, you may take lateral moves, steps back based on personal life, and the like, but long term, perhaps you still want the glory/power/fame/big title/other adjective that sounds great but isn't always (but that's for another time).

So how do you get there and what are the key development areas you should focus on?

1) Focus on your strengths

I'm not going to belabor this as it is well established and in general, I would agree. Figure out where you might have a comparative advantage (an econ term), and then make your advantage even greater, particularly where those skills and your passions overlap -- that will make coming to work a lot easier each day. If you want to figure out your passions / what you like doing, well... see my previous article. If you want to figure out your strengths, StrengthsFinder 2.0 is a interesting book / test you can do to see where you gravitate.

And as for your weaknesses or growth areas, just make sure they're not a show stopper. Everyone needs some baseline skill level in key areas like communication, organization, problem solving, etc. Make sure they're not holding you back from where you plan to focus.

2) Learn to make great decisions

People often ask me "what does it take to get ahead?" or make statements like "I think I need more vision like those bigwig VPs to move up". At Amazon, that latter statement can be equated to our leadership principle of "Think Big", which is often a default growth area for people as they look to the next level / promotion. But, I would argue, it's far from the most important one. Yes, you do need to think at a higher level, consider a broader context, and in general, expand your world view at higher levels, but that's ultimately not what will let you get ahead.

What is? Learning to make great decisions. Why? Well consider this -- say I have a team of 100 people, which in general can be thought of as resources (as can dollar budgets and time), in need of a new leader. And I have two candidates I'm considering to run that team. One person has an amazing vision for the future with grandious ideas, but questionable results in the past when entrusted to make key decisions. The other candidates is more of an operator, not as big on vision, but has efficiently delivered for customers time and time again with what they've been given. Which one are you going with? I know my answer -- #2. I can work with them on the vision part, but if I'm about to give them 100 people that they're responsible for getting the most out of, I need them making good decisions, day in and day out.

At Amazon, we embody this in our leadership principle "Are Right, A Lot". When we first joined Amazon, I thought that seemed like sort of a pompous title for a leadership principle. But it's really the text that follows that explains it -- it's not that you make great decisions in a vacuum. It is key that you consider many sources of information -- metrics, anecdotes, team input, peer input, etc and then distill this into a decision-making process that yields strong results. And then, when you make a decision, you... "Are Right, A Lot".

3) There is no 3

At least not in this article. I'm sure there are other things to consider -- hard skill development, networking, etc. But really, I think working on your strengths, mitigating any weaknesses, and learning to make GREAT decisions is what is most correlated with success. Learning to make great decisions is hard though and takes practice / situational opportunities to do so. In my next article, I'll outline how one can go about practicing this skill. I think this is a very valuable thing to do as it will have a disproportionate impact on your overall career, and probably your personal life too.

Agree / disagree? Comment below and let me know what you think. Wow I feel like a real blogger now schilling for social algorithm points to boost the score of this article. Let's see what happens. Ciao for now.