You're finally in charge. Now what?

Although I'm an advocate for leading without authority, I've recently acquired a fair bit of 'authority' through new roles both within my company and for an industry association. The thought of being in a position to finally have greater power to enact change for my passion projects is overwhelming, in a great way. It's counterbalanced by a sense of dread at seemingly having power in many different varied areas, all equally important and all things that I want to do but there's no way that I have time to dedicate to them all with sufficient focus.

So, in order to be effective in any of these areas, in either role, it's time to get tough. I HAVE to whittle the list down into something manageable to start with and pace myself. It's important to view things as a long game and not solve all of the world's problems in month.

So what's the plan? How am I going to come up with a plan that will tick all the boxes that I need to, those being 1) external satisfaction from stakeholders i.e. association members and my employer; 2) satisfying my own passions and interests; and 3) making a meaningful difference.

• Find your tribe

There's a saying, 'If you want to go quickly, go alone. If you want to go far, go together". Well unfortunately, with time at an absolute minimum, if you go alone, you may go NOWHERE! Never underestimate just how keen people are to help you. Find the enthusiastic, driven, creative people out there and give them something to do. The trick is to find something that they can be passionate about too and put their own stamp on. No one likes to just do what they're told unless you're in the army, so loosen the reigns a bit with people you trust.

• Understand your customer

Both of my roles are essential servant roles to provide value to the customer (for the industry association, it's to members and the industry at large; for my work role, it's to the members of the water discipline). In order to serve these customers, it's vital to understand their needs.

For the first month in my new work role, I've been on the phone A LOT. I've been meeting with colleagues at all levels to learn more about what they do, what drives them and how I can best meet their needs and work together. By distilling their feedback, I now have a much better understanding of any needs which may already be present and know better how to serve them in the year ahead.

Without understanding your customer, it's a little like trying to train an athlete without knowing which sport they play!

• Find your funding

It can be a lot easier to get help in a workplace setting if there's a job code to put on the timesheet at the end. That's just reality in consulting. So find out the funding options available. This likely won't just come from your overhead or admin codes so look to see what funding is available to you whether this is through business development budgets, training budgets, internal research budgets (if you don't have one of these, join Arup!) or somewhere you don't even know about yet.

Talk to the people who have had the role before you. Talk to your boss. Talk to other people around the office who are involved in similar activities. Take it all onboard.

For the industry association, it's almost exclusively based on volunteer time. In this instance, perhaps it's a matter of identifying the most willing and efficient people on the team!

• Link to existing priorities

For my day job, there are countless plans already in place. There's no need to reinvent the wheel here by undertaking that prioritization all over again. By tying my initiatives to existing priorities of the company, it will be easier to show alignment with company values and direction and also easier to get funding. Get some easy wins on the board and then you can have a little more leeway to adjust the priorities as you see fit.

For the industry association, there is more discretion available here to put my own agenda into the plan but it's still important to fit within the broader context of the association. This is a state association so I'll check out any previous planning / strategy documents as well as documents at the national level to ensure alignment of values and support.

• Prepare and publish a plan

I received a good tip from a colleague at work to choose your focus areas for year one and PUBLISH THEM. By publishing your plans, it can help you to stay on track as you're publicly accountable. That said, I'm an advocate of the saying 'Show them your results, not your plans" so don't give everything away. Just give the high level focus areas and key deliverables.

I prefer an annual plan broken down into quarterly actions. This allows me to get more frequent feedback as to progress. It also helps to ensure a steady flow of events and actions rather than achieving objectives 'university style' on an over-nighter the day before the due date.

The added benefit of locking down a plan in this way, is that it can provide you the mood boost of feeling as though you're doing something tangible and achieving your goals when the 'to do list' is seemingly never ending. Focus on the positives that you're doing rather than all the things that you're not. There is always the next year's plan!

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Now to go and turn this talk into action. Time to develop define initial priorities, find my tribe, understand my customers, find my funding and develop some plans!