MaXIMIze - Taking Charge of Your Career

As I wrote this post out longhand (as I do with all my posts), I realized there is a lot to cover in this topic!

As I considered this topic, two images came to mind. The first was of a boat bobbing along on the water without direction. The second was of a boat with its sails being adjusted to compensate for the storms and calms, but definitely heading in a particular direction.

You can either take charge of your career (the second boat) or let it take charge of you (the first boat).

Some of you know that I work for the Federal government as a civil servant. I spent the first nine years of my career moving from administrative assistant job to administrative assistant job, through two closing bases and moving from working for the Air Force to working for the Army. I didn't have a true career path, even though I enjoyed my work.

In 1997, I decided that to move forward I needed at least a business degree, so I started going to community college with that aim in mind. Shortly thereafter, I was intrigued with the design of websites, and started to follow that path in my education until that industry tanked in the late 1990s-early 2000s. My supervisor at the time was a woman who had moved up in Federal service from a GS-1 or 2 (the lowest grades in civil service) admin clerk to chief of our contracting division - a GS-14 (the second highest grade in civil service without moving to a political appointment-type position). And she did this all without a college degree.

This supervisor saw the potential in her employees and encouraged them to grow, even though it meant she might lose them to another part of the organization or to another organization altogether. She saw in me the ability to run an office budget and basically be an office manager, taking care of the day-to-day administrative issues so the contract specialists could deal with, well, getting contracts out the door. Her encouragement, as well as comments from others in the budget analyst field about my abilities in that area, and of course the opening of an upward mobility position as a budget analyst in our resource management office culminated in me heading off on the budget analyst career path 13 years after entering Federal service.

Now, I was still a bit like the boat bobbing along on the water, but at least now I had an oar or two to use for steering. And I had a path to move down - becoming a budget analyst working with overhead funds and operating budgets.

I learned a lot working for our resource management office about how funds came into the organization and the various colors of money we dealt with and what those colors meant during the course of the year.

Two years or so after I became a budget analyst, I got to work with our planning division on their operating budget and learned how our project budgets (we are a project-funded organization) and schedules affected the operating budget for that particular division. I did a lot of workload and workforce analysis, and wanted to know more about the programs and project side of the house.

Within two years after I started working with our planning division, a budget analyst position came up on the programs and project side of the house,which I applied for and got. So, now I was working with project funds and learning about the three-year cycle of the Federal budget process. Wow!

My ship was growing from a rowboat to a sailing ship!

Within a year or so, the opportunity to be a program and project manager for a program that ran our smaller projects came available, and I took the chance and applied for it - and got it.

If someone had told me back in the days when I was a GS-2 military admin clerk that I would become a budget analyst let alone manage a program and all the projects in it, I would have called them crazy!

I have since done an eight-month stint as the supervisor of our project budget analysts - during which I discovered I am a much better worker-bee or project manager/team lead than a true supervisor. It can be very challenging to deal with the sometimes complex issues of adult children that other people raised.

I am currently back to being a budget analyst, working with several complex and interesting projects, and I'm happy with the work and the people I work for and with.

There are some that would say I caught a lot of lucky breaks to get where I am today. I disagree.

Did I have people recognize my potential and encourage me along certain paths? Yes! And I bet if you look at your own life and/or career, you have people who do this for you, too. They are called mentors.

Am I sorry I gave up on designing websites? No! I have a very fulfilling career and I've been involved with projects that helped communities with their flood risk reduction, ecosystem restoration, and water supply issues.

Was I willing to take chances, seeing a need and/or a job I thought I could fill and do well? Yes!

Was I scared of failure and disappointing those who believed in me and hired me? Yes! That has just fueled me to do the best job as I saw it.

Yes, I said "as I saw it." The best way to move up is to truly serve - not please, serve. And the best way to do that is to understand the truly unbendable parameters of your job in your organization and then do that job to the best of your ability. This means not saying no without a compelling and valid reason, never saying that something is not your job and just leaving it at that, and truly doing your best at whatever you are hired and assigned to do.

Was I always looking for that next promotion? No! I did the best job I could do in the job I was in until I saw a need to be filled somewhere else that called to me with a siren song. That is how I moved from budget analyst to program and project manager to supervisor - not because I was simply looking for the next promotion.

Now the topic of this post is taking charge of your career, and - as I hope you've seen in the examples from my own career above - the best way to do this is by knowing your strengths and weaknesses, your personal boundaries, and the boundaries of the organization and the position. If the job you are in is not a good fit, find another one keeping those parameters in mind.

What you end up with as your career should be your passion, your calling, your vocation. It should fulfill that part of your life, not just be a J.O.B.

Next week, we will discuss mentoring - helping others find and walk their best path or finding someone to help you find and walk yours.

Until then, Namaste!