5 Ways to Expand Your Opportunity At Work

not to be totally heartless, sympathizing with anyone possibly offended by the last post, we know it’s hard to embrace change; especially when senior management isn’t on your side. here’s another “From Impossible” excerpt to help you carve out your path whatever road you’re on.

Dear Executives (From Employee):

I enjoy working for this company. I like the people, culture, and I believe in the product! I want to succeed here – in big ways. And make a name for myself. I want to grow here and build my career further with you. I want to help the company, but I’m not always sure how.

I frequently get frustrated. It’s hard to get time with you to have real conversations. I feel like you don’t listen to myself or the other employees – we have ideas too. I’ve tried to share mine, but after the third time where nothing happened and no one cared or listened, I just gave up.

It’s so hard to change anything here (even little things), and I don’t know where my career is going with you, or have any confidence you even care about it or me. While, I make decent money, I don’t feel valued – that makes me feel like I don’t have a future here. So I’m only motivated to do the minimum to get by here, instead of going above and beyond – because what’s the point? I use my extra time reading up on topics like finding dream jobs, starting a business and online marketing.

I often feel trapped in my role, not allowed to try anything new or experiment. But I want to use my role here as a springboard to discover what else I can learn and how I can make a bigger contribution. The more I learn about other parts of our business and market, the more ways I can contribute.

I know I need to perform in my ‘day job’ (what I was hired for), but aren’t there ways that I can also keep learning in other areas, including in making the company more money? Don’t look at these other interests as distractions from my role, but rather as possible complements.

The career path here seems like a mystery, or worse – arbitrary, where executive favorites get all the attention and promotions, even when more than a few don’t seem that great, and even include some disasters.

5 Ways To Expand Your Opportunity At Work

The same lessons outlined in From Impossible to Inevitable apply to “Nailing A Personal Niche” at your company, based on what you’re great at, creating opportunities for yourself, specializing your time, looking for bigger deals, and doing the time. Here are 5 ways how to kick-start your own growth so you can bloom where you’re at:

1. Make a list of what you want to do or most interests you –whether it’s related to business or not. Then add to the list at least 3 ideas around revenue that you could or should be interested in, such as (learning how to sell). From this list, look for ways to learn any at work, to get paid to learn what you want to do.
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2. Interview people in your company, partners, prospects and customers
Can you find a problem that requires you to learn or do something from your list? What problem do you want to solve? If it’s not something that your leaders care about, how can you reframe it from a nice-to-have into a need to have for them?
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3. Find a mentor, coach or champion internally to get advice from, to support you – and to be painfully honest with you about where you need to improve (everyone does).
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4. Create a Forcing Function to deliver tangible results: a prototype, analysis, presentation, blog post, event… (If you’re not sure what that is, pick a date and tell some people you’re doing “something”on it. There’s no better way to pull yourself forward in life or business than to publicly commit to doing something specific by a date, even before you know how you’re going to do it.)
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5. Do The Time. Repeat steps 1-4 (especially the Forcing Function step) over and over and over and over again…because, chances are, its going to take a lot longer than you want or expect to turn any idea first into proven results, much less recognition, career and money. Keep updating your want to do/learn list to keep yourself interested.
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Executives want you to take the initiative and make the most of your opportunity. At least the confident ones who aren’t threatened by others succeeding do.) It makes their jobs much easier! As long as you don’t go rogue. Go to them for guidance and mentorship, not handholding for every little step. Holding your hand at every step makes more work for them. Make it easy on them and others to understand why your idea or project is important, how it’ll work, and your plan.