Been a long time folks…I sorta fell away for a moment there. I’m back, no worries. Today, I want to chat about being a change agent. If one examines the environment they work in, they’ll notice they have several of these people around them. These individuals are usually “all-in” on the experience or service that they are supporting and believe in it enough to take risks to make it better. Not risks for the sake of taking risks though, these people match their passion for their product with an unwittingly exact ‘risk vs reward’ evaluation and execution muscle.

You don’t need to strive to be one of these people.

In fact, forcing yourself into this role can ultimately be a career-limiting decision. In my experience (and yours may be different) – people grow into this mindset or pseudo-role. In general, I’ve seen the following attribute to this role:

1. They’ve been in trouble and successfully navigated to success (multiple times) – This is a way of saying is they’ve been “in the hell-fire” of their skill set and they didn’t back away. They are able to accurate investigate and define a problem, establish workstreams and teams to get back to a stable state, and work with others to make sure it doesn’t happen again. This isn’t by accident, this is trial by fire. They’re good at this only because they’ve been subjected multiple times and built the skills to survive.
2. They contribute to others success, without others attributing them – They generally want to see people succeed. As such, they help whomever they can, whenever they can. This might be with simple reviews of plans to indepth solution brainstorming sessions. They enjoy working with others and the problem solving process, so this is “enjoyable” to them.
3. They have enough context and ‘political capital’ to negotiate – With everyone 🙂 – What does this mean? From leadership to the engineers writing code, they have trust and capital to spend. The nature of the two items above has given them credibility for ‘the benefit of the doubt’. This is absurdly powerful. It’s the difference between “No” and “Explain to me what you want to do here” – which are essentially the same underlying answer of “this makes no sense, you’re nuts” – but phrased a bit differently.

So what does this all mean – It means when someone in this position says “Yeah, We’re going to do that…” you can probably assume that it is go time. Even if they don’t have the authority to make the decision, even if they don’t have the resources, even if they don’t have the time. That statement from one of these “do-ers” means, this is important enough that I’m going to make it one of my priorities.

One thing people know about this person’s priorities is –

They get done.

You should leverage (even exploit) this. Because convincing these people to move forward or invest in a project or solution can be as fruitful as getting LT buy-in (maybe even more so). But you shouldn’t overuse these people, you should recognizing their abilities and involve them when they are needed – its your initiative not theirs right? So you should do a majority of the work?

So that’s great, but what the hell do I do with this information?

Well – If you’re one of these people, use your superpower. You need to recognize that you have the ability to affect change in a way some of your coworkers only dream about it. Help them with the experiences listed above, give them the opportunity to grow into an “agent of change.” Remember, if you ever want to move “up” or “out” of your current role, someone needs to be ready to step in. Do your part to help others grow in the same way someone helped you.

If you’re not quite to the “Agent of change” notch yet, ask yourself – what part am I missing? Identify the people around you that have this status. There are likely only a few (maybe 1 or 2) that truly exhibit this skillset. Become friends with them, ask for their opinion. Find a reason to interact or be on the same project as them. Just working with them on a common goal will give you exposure and experiences that will be valuable for you moving forward. Chat with them about ideas you have, and changes you personally want to pursue. Remember, these people don’t typically want credit for the change, but want the effect of the change on “their passion.”

For a career and skills development perspective, the diversity of your experiences exponentially increases your value as a resource. Be willing to try new things, be willing to fail (and learn of course), have a backup plan for every step. Identify and define failure protocol. Become an agent of change :). Anybody can search for a technical answer online, so learn the why’s and how’s – versus the what. Be a learn it all.

Thats enough unsolicited IT advice…

Sorry for the hiatus – It won’t happen again 🙂

Until next time….