Welcome
Welcome to the Foresight Newsletter, a free monthly publication of Prevoyance Group Inc. This newsletter shares tips for high performance IT organizations and observations that we hope will prove informative and enjoyable.
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Contents
CONTENTS
Foresight is published by the Prevoyance Group, and this month contains four sections:
Work
Life
Heard in the Hallways
Travels with Patrick
Work
As the calendar turns to a new year, some thought should be put into succession and ascension planning, both above and below your position. Advancement is quite literally a two way street, you need a plan to move into a more interesting and challenging position, while you also need an “heir apparent” who has the experience and motivation to take over your role.
Upward movement is not something that should come as a surprise one fine day, or be a mere function of having been around long enough to outlast your superior, rather you should discuss what skills will be necessary to tackle a more difficult role, and determine how to acquire them. Perhaps the best example of this is looking at CEOs of leading corporations. Reading the resume of a new CEO makes one think they were born for the role; they have international experience, time served in a sales role, a few years of operational experience and perhaps most telling, the candidate was identified as a potential CEO many years ago.
Unfortunately in most corporations, this level of planning does not extend beyond the CEO position. However, we could all take a lesson from this and apply it to our own careers. Notice how CEO candidates will take jobs far outside of their historical areas of experience in order to gain new skills, jumping from sales to finance positions when they cannot get the right exposure in a particular position, each new role building the candidate’s experience and credentials.
In addition to this upward movement, CEOs spend years handpicking potential successors, evaluating them constantly and having a pool of qualified candidates ready the moment the CEO needs to be replaced. Missing this aspect of succession planning can prevent you from moving into a new position should it open unexpectedly.
A few hours spent formulating a personal ascension and succession plan and sharing it with the appropriate parties can set you up for new opportunities, or building your depth of experience in the New Year.
Life
For many, January is a rather difficult month. The holidays in December are often a period of excess: frequent visits with family and friends, generous portions of food and drink, and freedom from the travails of work. After all this abundance, January awaits like an unpaid and temporarily forgotten bill. Work, the penalties of overindulgence and in the northern hemisphere, dark and cold days await.
Despite all this, January can be a time of renewal. While others lament missed opportunities from the past year, or having “just one more” glass of wine or second helping of dessert, you can focus on the future unburdened with past failures and sins. Long nights provide time for quiet reflection by the fireplace with a loved one, and while others engage in self-flagellation you can embark on healthy introspection, overtaking the pack while it wallows in the quicksand of the past.
Heard in the Hallways
Compromise seems to be a lost art, in business and in life. As the calendar turns to an election year in the United States, the maneuvers of each candidate grow increasingly interesting as November’s election approaches. Candidates on the left try and “out left” each other, while candidates on the right do the same, each trying to be a staunch supporter of the issue du jour, and vehemently agree with the position of whoever is within earshot, changing directions like a windsock on a stormy day.
Compromise is frequently seen as weakness, or selling one’s beliefs short. Done well however, compromise is a joint undertaking; an intellectual journey that leaves each party improved, with the concerns of each appropriately aired. Rather than a game of chess played towards a temporary stalemate on the way to checkmate, compromise should be the transition from armed conflict to joint resolution.
Travels with Patrick
I spent the first week of December in Paris for work, and decided I would rent a car to get around. For some odd reason, I rather enjoy driving in foreign cities. First, there is the difference in vehicles, with most countries having vastly smaller cars than the US, from the go-cart like machine we rented in the Caribbean, to the standard European car, which is sized like US “compact” cars. Secondly, there's a sense of adventure. Signs are different, rules of the road are different, and there is mystery around each corner.
This was especially the case in Paris. I've spent years driving in Boston and New York, generally considered quite bad by US standards, so driving in a major city is not particularly intimidating. It was quite fun to drive in Paris… there are essentially no rules that I can ascertain, except that every possible space must be filled at all times. In the roundabouts, space that in the US or UK would hold 5 cars driving next to each other is completely devoid of any lane markings, and has about 9 cars in all manner of configurations. Some are sideways, some are going from the innermost lane to the outermost, and there are motorcycles and scooters going every which way in the midst of all the madness. Any unfilled space will soon have a car or motorcycle in it, and while it seems very aggressive, people let you merge or move where you need to be without much fuss, remaining calm in what would result in violent road rage in New York or Boston.
The last point was the most interesting. The driving seemed amazingly aggressive, yet everyone was as calm as could be, almost as if it was all a well choreographed show put on for a foreigner, and everyone was trying to maintain a steady face just before bursting into laughter.
A flick of the turn signal would result in a space magically appearing as someone waited for you to merge, and while there was never a polite wave of acknowledgement, neither was there a "one finger salute" should you cut someone off. Somehow in all the madness there was a sense of respect and amusement, rather than rage and frustration.
Perhaps the best part of Parisian driving was that getting lost would result in suddenly happening upon some marvel of architecture, or building from childhood history books. Missing the entrance to my hotel for the fourth time (it was in a 9 lane roundabout, again with no lane markers), I randomly turned onto the Champs d'Elysse, with l'Arc de Triomphe staring me square in the face. On the commute home from my client site, rounding a curve in the highway brought me a beautiful vision of the Eiffel Tower.