4. Your New Results Profile
When you completed your Results Profile on your current job (Exhibit 10-4), you were able to identify the results, skills, actions, and support that you needed in order to be truly successful and deliver meaningful results. Now you will complete a Results Profile for your next job. This will require some research, some observation, and some guesswork.
Find a copy of the job description for the position you have identified as your next step. (Ask your human resources department or your boss.) True, the job description will probably give you only the activities to be undertaken and not the results required, but it is a launch pad for identifying the gap between where you are right now and where you want to be next.
Once you have reviewed the job description, talk with people who are already in the position you have targeted, even if this means talking to your boss. You might say, “I’ve been thinking about my career plan, and I’d like to investigate the skills required for the X position. I thought you’d be a good person to help me.”
Then formulate a list of questions that will help you identify what it will take for you to get that job. You will certainly want to know about the desired results, but you may also want to know
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What is the most challenging and fun part of that job?
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What is the most frustrating part?
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How do you see this position growing in the next 5 years?
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What advice would you give to someone in my position?
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What are some of the interim steps necessary for a person to reach that position?
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Good leaders will welcome your inquiry as a sign of your forward-thinking career planning. Some bosses will be less accommodating, however, perhaps because they are fearful of your possibly outperforming them. You will have to make the call here, but if your boss is not willing to discuss your promotability plans with you, you will have to work around him or her—a difficult task. If this is your experience, also read “When All Else Fails” in Chapter 13.
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Once you have your answers, complete a new Results Profile for your target position based on the job description and the discussions you have had with people who are already in the job, your boss, his boss, Human Resources, and people at peer level with the target position. Focus on the first four columns of the worksheet: Desired Results, Technical Skills Required, Behavioral Skills Required, and Support or Assistance Needed.
For each desired result, you either will or will not have the qualifications, experience, education, and skills. If you do not, you should include in the Actions to Take column the actions you will take in order to gain the experience, skill, or education needed. Be certain to list your target dates, and to enter the date when you complete each action (see item 5).
The following are some actions you might consider for your target position:
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Increase or enhance your internal network in order to gain information and visibility (for instance, to learn if there’s a job possibility coming up).
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Learn new skills. If your promotability is slowed by the absence of a skill that you have not yet mastered, take action. Find a way to audit a class, get a certificate or degree, or even volunteer for a nonprofit in the area you are seeking.
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Demonstrate initiative. Sometimes an obvious candidate for a promotion is seen as doing “only what is expected” in her or his current role, and so is quickly out of the running. Make sure you are seen in your current position as qualified, competent, and resourceful.
If you already have the required qualifications, your entry in the Actions to Take column will be proof sources: What proof can you offer that you do in fact have the required background? Look for ways to present your skills and qualifications in numbers—dollars saved, percent of increased sales, number of units processed, size of budget managed. (You will use this later.)
