3 simple principles for permanent career velocity

Disclaimer and proviso: "The postings on this site are my own and don't represent Amazon's position in any way whatsoever".

Several years ago, while leading a Mentoring Ring, I elected to have the members in attendance pick a theme of their choosing to discuss that day. Very quickly, the topic that emerged as the clear winner was how to increase your career velocity. As competitive, career-conscious individuals, most people desire faster upward mobility, rapid advancement and greater rewards. We are coached by our managers and mentors that acting a certain way, or doing certain things, such as showing initiative, having bias for action, working hard, and so on, will lead to great career progression. Certainly, all this is true, but also practiced by virtually everyone else - these behaviors are fundamental to being "good employees" and are merely the price of admission for many companies.

I focused the discussion on 3 particular differentiators that work without fail, at least for me, and many successful people I've encountered. Since that Mentoring Ring session, I have received many notes of thanks from those in attendance, with details on how these 3 simple principles have helped them accelerate their career growth. I truly hope you find these useful as well.

1) It is not the job of your manager to find work for you. Ever

I remember exactly where I was when this realization hit me. Thankfully, it was early in my career. I was a database developer at the time, and part of a small team that was mostly sitting idle. We had wrapped up a major release several months back, and our manager was in transition to another product group. Review time was coming, and everyone was jockeying for position over the few remaining projects in the pipeline. This was a pretty bureaucratic environment, and the juiciest projects were either assigned by seniority or based on one's personal relationship with management.

I was the most junior person on the team, and quite frankly, I thought I was screwed. I figured I would get stuck with leftover work with little or no impact, and desperately hoped I would get a new manager quickly that would surely recognize my many talents and assign me something meaningful. The first part came true almost immediately. I was assigned database backup validation, which was akin to Chinese water torture. A week in, I was ready to dive head-first out of a window from the 47th floor.

Suddenly, I had a moment of clarity: here I was, with tons of free time on my hands due to my meaningless project - why didn't I come up with something that could save the business some time and money on my own? After all, I knew the space well, certainly there had to be an area of opportunity that had been overlooked. Who would stop me? The investigation lasted no longer than 45 minutes. We had a massive database with lots of duplicate, erroneous and otherwise "phantom" data that didn't relate to anything and caused all kinds of problems. Getting it all cleaned up landed on every project roadmap, and landed off just as quickly. There was never enough time, resources, or magical pixie dust to put this problem to bed. I made a commitment to myself that I'd take care of this problem once and for all.

And I did. I worked evenings, nights and weekends. I wrote tons of code that worked, and tons that didn't. I asked my peers for guidance, and people started taking notice. "Nick's Data Cleanup Project" suddenly had a fan club, and Director-level interest. And a month later, the project that, for reasons unknown, kept falling off a cliff, was finished. The financial impact was significant (literally millions of dollars that never existed and the company no longer had to account for in bad debt fell off our backlog). I was praised for both my initiative and success, and ended up with a stellar review.

I hear so many people complain about how they're not assigned sexy or impactful projects, therefore they cannot succeed. My response to this self-defeating attitude is always the same:

"It is never your Manager's job to assign you work. It is your job, your responsibility to have the drive and initiative to get to know your group, organization, and company, and seek out opportunities to make things better."

Whether it's developing a new application, creating a new set of reports, introducing some sort of innovative best practice, delivering automation, whatever it may be, keep this in mind: every space is fraught with opportunity for improvement, whether this is readily visible or not. Take advantage of this at all times.

Don't ever wait for your boss to give you work. It's even worse to go into your manager's office, hat in hand, and tell them you are out of work to do, and could they please assign something to you to keep you busy. Instead, be the person that has the drive and initiative to constantly and consistently seek out work on their own, without ever being prodded or asked to do so. Always ask yourself: "How can I make my space better? What can I do to improve my team/group/organization that no one else is currently doing?" Be the person that places a nice and unexpected surprise on your boss's desk, out of their own initiative, and your stock value will skyrocket accordingly.

2) Run, don't walk, towards the road filled with land mines

The second principle is often intertwined with the first one. Notice how the "opportunities" in spaces that are fraught with opportunity are mostly things no one wants to touch? I've lost count of how many times during my career I heard things like the following:

- I would never want to work for this team, it is too disorganized
- Everything in this group is broken
- There is so much red tape on this team
- There is no automation here, and technology is so behind

And so on. The majority of people run from situations such as these as quickly as possible. However, a few savvy individuals run towards them. Mind you, no one is advocating something as drastic as you finding a company on the verge of bankruptcy and submitting your CV there. Rather, here are a few examples of situations where positive impact carries an order of magnitude more importance:

- Teams/groups/organizations that are starved for talent
- Teams/groups/organizations with razor-tight deadlines and slim chance of delivery
- Teams/groups/organizations in desperate need of process or technology innovation
- Teams/groups/organizations with high attrition rates and leadership gaps

There is little question that the work will be harder - much harder, in fact. Gauge the sacrifices you are willing to make carefully. However, if you have the talent, willingness and leadership skills to turn around an undesirable situation and create a series of wins where they are needed, your positive contributions will be immediately recognized. Everyone loves a turnaround story, especially Senior and Executive Leadership. People I know, some extremely well known in industry, have made their careers as turnaround specialists. For the past 6-8 years of my professional career, I have always insisted on the toughest assignments. Sure, you work a little harder, but reward level is always equivalent to sweat equity. And there is little downside. Working in situations where your back is against the wall, you exercise and develop much needed skills such as innovation, agility, calm under pressure, the ability to execute on a dime, failing fast, and most of all, professional leadership, in a much more intense manner than you would on a team where everything is, for the most part, normal.

Should you fail, you learn from your mistakes and move on. But when you succeed, and you often will, the rewards are much greater than normal. Suddenly, you develop a reputation as the ultimate "fixer", someone Leadership trusts to send into the toughest situations and turn them around. You experience the worst and know what to do to avoid it. Your employees, peers and colleagues respect you. And best of all, your Leadership rewards you.

3) Start with "I Can"

This is the single best piece of advice I have ever been given throughout my professional career. I remember the day it was received as if it were yesterday. I was in a middle of a "passionate disagreement" with my boss, who was and continues to be one of my closest friends. We were discussing something that seemed to me, at the time, impossible, and I was certain that I was right. As he kept trying to come up with solutions, I kept telling him "This will never work.. too many dependencies.. this is impossible.. we can't do this".

Finally, he stopped me, looked me right in the eye, and with a calm, assertive voice, said the following four words:

"Nick, start with 'I Can'".

The impact of that statement hit me like a sledgehammer. I tried to respond, but so many bits had flipped in my mind that nothing I wanted to say made sense. Immediately, I realized how wrong I had been. Finally, I said "I will find a way to make this work". And I did.

Ever since that day, I never look at anything as impossible, because nothing is impossible (we put a man on the Moon, after all, and that was almost 45 years ago). On an almost daily basis, I encounter situations where someone says "such and such thing is impossible", or "we can't do this", and my response is always a variant of "What can we do?". If the optimal solution can't be reached, I look for a temporary bridge or stop-gap. Lacking that, I find a compromise, an alternative, anything else other than "It can't be done". Whatever the impossible is, find a way to turn it into reality - if not all at once, bit by bit, one piece at a time.

When you have ingrained the 3 principles listed above in your professional DNA, and you can leverage them along with your other many valuable skills, your career velocity and trajectory will increase faster than ever before. Moreover, when you can coach and mentor others to use these principles for the benefit of their own careers, and the benefit of their respective companies, you will become a invaluable leader to any company lucky enough to have you.

What do you think of the 3 principles? Your input and feedback is valued and appreciated, and thanks for reading!