Creating a Personal North Star

This talk will provide information to help emancipate the employee from broken or non-existent career development processes so they can take charge of their career path.
In this talk we will discuss the following topics:
Engagement and fulfillment at work is your right!
How to take an introspective look at ourselves and better understand our strengths and values.
Create a future vision of our career based around what you want to experience.
How to have meaningful career conversations with your manager
How to build out our own career action plans

Transcript

1. @mountzcjr CREATING A PERSONAL NORTH STAR – TAKING OWNERSHIP OF YOUR CAREER PATH DevOpsDays Montreal 2019 Chuck Mountz, Jr Sr Manager, Product Development Engineering Comcast @mountzcjr chuckmountzjr
2. @mountzcjr @mountzcjr BACKGROUND 1. Lead a shared services team at Comcast! 2. Network and Internet Services – Xfinity Voice, Xfinity Wifi, B2B services, Xfinity mail. 3. Co-founder and co-lead for Comcast’s internal DevOps Events 4. Passionate about leadership and people development.
3. @mountzcjr TODAY, WE WILL COVER • Engagement and fulfillment at work • Take an introspective look at ourselves and better understand our strengths and values. • Create a future vision of your career. • Build out career action plans • Engage and have meaningful career conversations
4. @mountzcjr Kaye, Beverly. Help Them Grow or Watch Them Go (p. 79). Berrett-Koehler Publishers. Kindle Edition. Hindsight Foresight Insight
5. @mountzcjr
6. @mountzcjr ENGAGEMENT AND FULFILLMENT AT WORK
7. @mountzcjr CAREER GROWTH AND MANAGEMENT IS IMPORTANT TO EVERYONE! “..Disengaged employees cost the U.S. $483 billion to $605 billion each year in lost productivity.” (Https://www.Shiftboard.Com/blog/real-cost-employee- disengagement/) “Each employee that is not engaged costs 34% of their salary.” (Gallup, State of the American workplace)
8. @mountzcjr THE COSTS Employees who are engaged… 17% higher productivity 21% higher profitability 10% higher customer satisfaction 24% less turnover (in high-turnover organizations) 59% less turnover (in low-turnover organizations) 40% fewer defects and quality issues Cost of employee turnover = 1 year salary cost --Gallup- State of the American workplace
9. @mountzcjr ENGAGEMENT Engagement is ultimately about being happy, the whole person.
10. @mountzcjr MINDSET FLIP "Climbing Wall in Hamburg" by Julienne_SG is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 "Ladder" by Matt Peoples is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0
11. @mountzcjr "Emancipation is fundamentally different from empowerment. With emancipation we are recognizing the inherent genius, energy, and creativity in all people, and allowing those talents to emerge. We realize that we don’t have the power to give these talents to others, or “empower” them to use them, only the power to prevent them from coming out.” Marquet, L. David. Turn the Ship Around!: A True Story of Turning Followers into Leaders (pp. 212-213). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition. EMPOWERMENT VS EMANCIPATION
12. @mountzcjr OUR STRENGTHS AND VALUES
13. @mountzcjr FOCUS ON YOU • Think about your life, decisions, jobs, school, activities. If you were talking to someone, how would you describe your journey? • Think about why you made the decisions you made. • Identify some events that stood out to you and note down some of your values and strengths associated with those situations. OUTCOME à list of key moments and associated values/strengths
14. @mountzcjr A VISION OF YOUR CAREER
15. @mountzcjr QUESTIONS TO ASK YOURSELF • Where do you see yourself at the pinnacle of your career? • If you could work on anything, without time restrictions, what would it be? • What industry excites you? • When you get out of bed every day, what are your motivations , passion?
16. @mountzcjr VISION Engineering Leadership
17. @mountzcjr SKILLS - PRIORITIES People Technology Process Business/Product People Business/Product Process Technology
18. @mountzcjr FOCUS ON EXPERIENCES • Multiple experiences ok!!! • Focus on strengths vs weaknesses • Prioritize skills to get you there! OUTCOME à Your career vision(s) and prioritized skills needed for those roles
19. @mountzcjr ACTION PLANS
20. @mountzcjr ACTION PLANS • Network • Role • Skills and Training
21. @mountzcjr NETWORK • Mentoring program (mentor or mentee) • Coach – Be one or seek one! • Build your own multi-disciplinary advisory board • Connect at conferences • Connect at local meetups • Connect through open source initiatives • Build bridges at work, break down silos!
22. @mountzcjr IN YOUR CURRENT ROLE • Stretch tasks, assignments • Special and/or new projects • Job shadowing • Job rotations • Inner source projects • Do presentations – brown bags, demos, etc. • Pair programming/swarming/pairing
23. @mountzcjr SKILLS AND TRAINING • Classroom • Online training • Brown bag lunches • Demos! • On the job • Hackathons • Open source projects • Personal projects
24. @mountzcjr ACTION ITEMS OUTCOME à One to three action items per category.
25. @mountzcjr CAREER CONVERSATIONS
26. @mountzcjr
27. @mountzcjr VALUES AND STRENGTHS - ASTRID Initiative and leadership – Astrid during college worked at a coffee shop. Her manager was disengaged and she often would open the store and ensure the team was focused and executing all the jobs needed for the day. Compassionate – Astrid often would help out her aging grandparents by getting them groceries, helping them with appointments and spending time them on the weekends. Collaboration and innovation– Astrid often created external projects with small businesses and organized hackathons at her college and also organizes hackathons at work now.
28. @mountzcjr VISION Engineering Leadership
29. @mountzcjr ACTION ITEMS - EXAMPLE Networking • Seek out mentor who transitioned from engineer to manager in her company. • Seek out an external mentor at a conference. • Connect with Product Owner Skills • Book – learn about transition from individual role to manager role • Leadership training courses in your company. • Communication – one on one’s, feedback, self assessments like DISC. Role • Peer-to-peer discussions – focus on asking for feedback and giving feedback • Sign up to be a mentor to jr engineers
30. @mountzcjr PREPARED FOR CAREER CONVERSATIONS AND TRACKING YOUR PLAN • List of strengths and values • List of potential future roles • List of opportunities and action items • Opportunity for partnership and ask for feedback Who? Your manager, mentor, coach, manager’s manager.
31. @mountzcjr https://trello.com/b/lQHKwmkn/career-dev-tracking
32. @mountzcjr https://trello.com/b/lQHKwmkn/career-dev-tracking
33. @mountzcjr Maximize Employee Lifetime Value Maximize Your Organization’s Opportunities and Learnings
34. @mountzcjr YOUR NORTH STAR IS YOUR GUIDE Know yourself Invest in yourself In times of “FUD” stay on course Be authentic - live your values and purpose "compass" by samwilliamson99 is licensed under CC BY 2.0
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36. @mountzcjr ADDITIONAL RESOURCES
37. @mountzcjr COMCAST IN THE COMMUNITY Techstars.Com/comcast (MONTREAL 1/22) Https://www.Eventbrite.Com/e/meet-the- comcast-nbcuniversal-lift-labs-techstars-team- in-montreal-registration-54615585687 • Open Source Program Office https://comcast.github.io/ • DOES19 London, DOES19 Vegas • Sponsors - DevOpsDays DC & Philadelphia
38. @mountzcjr "careesma summerday: happiness at work Barcelona" by careesma_group is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0
39. @mountzcjr