A Year As Director @ Artefact

Today it is one year since I started as Director in Artefact, a leading Data consultancy with a global presence. I will share how I made the most out of the past year, where things stand today and also set some goals for the coming two years. I hope this helps others in that enter their first year in leadership, and people in general that are looking to make a meaningful step forward.

MAKING THE MOST OUT OF MY FIRST YEAR

When taking on a new role a million things appear that may be worth spending time on. What really helped me stay focused was defining three focus areas in which I wanted to quickly learn and to which I also wanted to contribute.

In my previous article there is a detailed ramp-up plan. Though I stopped actively tracking the plan after two or three months I am glad to see that I actually managed to cover everything within the first six months. Here are the highlights and key tips & tricks:

People: Getting to know the team, become part of it and expand it.

• Make sure to not only check what people currently do, but also understand their historical experience and things they are trying to learn
• Always try to join social events when you can. People will get enough room to breathe when you leave or are unable to join so there is probably rarely a need for planned absence.
• Recruiting can take a lot of time, try to filter agressively and check for aligned expectations and delegate the start of the process. This also avoids situations where you state that a candidate seems good and then ask junior colleagues for their opinion, as they will think twice before opposing yours.

Content: Understanding the company and its core offerings, the unique strenghts of the team, and helping the team develop.

• Of course there are always one or two things that should become core offerings, but a pragmatic way to understand the true core offerings for the past year is by looking into the revenue generated by them, or otherwise the number of people working on them. (Opposed to from where they are positioned on the website for instance.)
• It is certainly good to have and measure individual team members against a capability framework, but beware of relevant skills that may be 'off the menu'
• If your team is small enough, it can be nice to identify personal development points by combining the direction that people want to go with how much a development choice will likely help the company in the coming 0.5 - 2 years.

Process: Figure out how to get things done in the company, and how my peers succeed. Bring in best practices from my past experience.

• Expect to run into processes that "shouldn't work" or that have great conceptual implications. At that point realize that somehow the company that you joined is (hopefully) thriving, and that the only way to find out why may be to simply hop on the running train.
• People that have ideas about how everything should be better are generally the most annoying people. I am lucky to have landed in an environment that was quite open to suggestions, but if you are not seeing your suggestions being picked up then take a step back and pick your battles and plan on how to drive the improvement.

WHERE THINGS STAND TODAY

There are many ways in which I look at the current situation and the natural future state. I will mention a few and try to add some practical thoughs that may help you think about your situation.

Team size: My team grew 300% in the past year!

• My gut feeling is that the team can grow to about 1.5x of what it is now without needing to restructure or compromise on individual attention. So I will try to move here as fast as circumstances permit.

Team skills: In the past year almost everyone got certified in either Cloud or CDP.

• Every 6 months we evaluate and set personal goals. Team members bring in several things they want to focus on and I will make sure that if there is a new or expanded skillset needed this is included in the goals of enough team members.

Team morale: People seem happy to join and be in the team

• Every 1-2 weeks people talk to their manager, personal matters are always first on the agenda. Every 3-4 weeks I catch up with people that are in my team but not managed directly by me. The primary purpose is making sure that everyone is well, but if you can prevent just one significant inefficiency in a quarter that may save you more time than what it takes to do all meetings within a quarter.

Running projects: All projects that I am involved in have stabilized

• If your technical consulting project is not going well, it will often look like the technical delivery is the problem. However 99% of the time the solution lies in the broader context and you need to review the end-to-end process. Some key steps are stabilizing the requirements (e.g. features), stabilizing the context (e.g. source data), stabilizing the development capacity (e.g. fixed team FTE) and stabilizing the deployment cadence (e.g. develop every day, release once a sprint).

Growing the business: Past year the business grew well, but the market is big

• What went well in the past year is that when people have a need they clearly see the value that me and my team can bring. However now that we have a strong track record and team I want to help more customers, or perhaps teams in existing customers that have not been in touch with us before. A structured approach will be vital as well as finding out what works. Fortunately Artefact offers its leadership access to externals coaching specialists with expertise in this area, so I hope to see great results this year.

GOALS FOR THE COMING TWO YEARS

Though I am very happy with where I am today and how I got there, I am not quite feeling like I hit my personal ceiling. So, that means it is time to look ahead! I will briefly mention the goal as context, followed by steps for achieving it that should be relevant for everyone that wants to work towards a next step.

THE GOAL: PARTNER WITHIN 2 YEARS

Sometimes it can be difficult to define the next step, fortunately in my case it is very easy. Artefact follows a typical structure that is seen in consultancies I am currently a Senior Director and the way up is Partner. It is unlikely that I can make it this year so my plan is built for next year.

HOW TO ACHIEVE THE GOAL

Everybody understands that putting your feet up is not the best way forward, however simply 'working harder' also does not help. We must not only move fast, but also move towards the goal, which brings me to the following steps. I learned the importance of these one by one through painful experiences so I hope you will find a smoother way forward.

1. Understanding the finish line

In retrospect it is so obvious, but the capabilities needed for your new role will not be the same as the capabilities needed for your current role. Perhaps it will be a different mix of the same capabilities, but most likely it will be expected that you are able to do more than you can do now. As such the criteria for qualifying for the new role may not be met if you simply do your current role extremely well. Typical examples of things that become more important as you go up in seniority are people management and making commercial impact.

• Action: Check what the required capabilities are, and align on how these are measured

2. Understanding the process

Once companies reach a certain size, there will be processes in place. These can be quite lengthy. Typically it is a matter of your manager aligning upwards at the right point in time based on your documented performance. However perhaps the company got more creative and requires you to write a full case on why you are amazing. I personally ran into this once a long time ago where I mentioned to my manager that I was ready to step up in the new year, and he responded with a sad face 'yes but actually the deadline for requests was in October'.

• Action: Understand the process and timeline

3. Understanding the decision

Perhaps you assume that if your manager is 2 levels above you, they can grant you a promotion when they feel like it. However, that is in fact not often the case. You will definitely want to have them on board, but it is good to understand how the decision is really made. Is your manager going to check with their boss, or perhaps there is a committee of peers or others that do an evaluation. It is also possible that there is a limited number of spots, hopefully greater than zero!

• Action: Understand how the decision is made

Though I definitely do not recommend you to start sucking up to everyone that may be involved, a part of promotions is going to be based on their judgement of whether you made siginificant impact in the company. As such you should avoid a situation where they have two choices in front of them and you are the person they never heard of before...

• Action: Try to be somewhat on the radar of the key decision makers

CONCLUSION

It has been an exciting year and I expect there will be many more great moments to come. I hope this helps you either have a great first year after entering a new role, or in planning a road ahead with minimal surprises!

If you have an extra tip you can leave it in the comments for other readers, otherwise perhaps schedule a moment to make your own plan!