So I Got Promoted, Now What? Stop Doing Your Old Job

[This is part two in a series of posts about how to effectively transition to your new role after being promoted.]

Series Outline

• So I Got Promoted, Now What?
• Stop Doing Your Old Job
• Employ the Same Successful Tactics
• Get to Know Your Peers
• Get a Trusted System
• Manage Your Email
• Manage Your Calendar
• Start Having Weekly One-On-Ones
• Recognize the Tendency to Revert

Your Hard Work Has Paid Off

You’ve work hard over the past few years, going the extra mile to make sure that everything in your charge has gone well. You’ve managed your individual and team projects well; you’ve organized your work and developed a personal discipline so that nothing has fallen through the cracks. And now your hard work has finally paid dividends. You’ ve been recognized with a promotion. So now what do you do?

This is a question that many highly skilled, highly technical people ask themselves once the euphoria of increased pay and acknowledgement has worn off.

Unfortunately, many don’t pursue the answer long enough to find it. Instead they get mired down into the daily routine of their new role and never explore how they could better prepare to succeed. Many languish in mediocrity at best, and fail at worst.

So what’s the first thing you need to do?

Stop Doing Your Old Job

Stop doing your old job. To many, this may sound too obvious to mention. If you are promoted to a new position, why would you want to continue doing your old job as well as the new one? Isn’t one job enough?

Unfortunately, in many cases it’s just not that discrete. Often the promotion is a “working promotion.” You’ve been promoted to Senior DBA, to Development Team Lead, to Manager of the Administration Team, or to Director of Operations. The promotion comes with a new title, an increase in pay, and some new responsibilities. However, you find that in addition to your new duties, you are still accountable for many of the same tasks you had before your promotion.

To be successful in your new role, you will need to approach it with the same fervor and dedication that led to your promotion. You won’t be able to do that if effectively if you are spending a significant amount of your time doing your old job. Something has to give and it had better be the old job.

“But, It’s Not My Job”

To be clear, I’m not advocating that you tell your boss “It’s not my job anymore.” when he asks you about something that was your direct responsibility prior to the promotion. They don’t want to hear that. And besides, unless your promotion has moved you to a completely new department, that task still falls under your purview. And it’ll remain your responsibility until you’re told specifically otherwise or your replacement can be found.

So, in order to stop doing your old job, you’ll need to identify people who can successfully step into the role you once occupied, or at least take on many of the responsibilities. This can be done through a series of progressively larger and more impacting steps: assign immediate tasks, delegate small projects, and create a growth plan for your team.

Assign Immediate Tasks

Many of us have daily, weekly, or even monthly tasks that require our time and attention. There are backups to verify, meetings to attend, status reports to create, numbers to run, and logs to review, to name but a few. None of these are particularly urgent. Many are not high profile. But all need to be done.

In your prior role, you probably handled each of these at part of your job. Those responsibilities were commiserate with your level. In your new role, however, many of those activities will drain one of the most precious resources you have: your time. If you can safely offload those discrete yet repetitive tasks to one or your team members, you’ll potential free several hours per week.

Delegate Small Projects

The next step is to begin delegating some of the projects for which you are responsible. Start small and work your way up. Don’t begin with a large, complex project with multiple moving parts requiring input from numerous colleagues. Start with a small, fairly self-contained project that can be accomplished without  much outside input. Expect to work closely with the team member to whom you’ve delegated the project.

Initially, delegating will not free up your time. On the contrary, it will likely consume more of your time in the short-term than if you just did it yourself. But the payoff is just around the corner, just a few months down the road. As you get better at delegating and your team learns how to run with the delegated projects, you’ll be able to do more and more. Delegation is a force multiplier once you pay the initial start up costs in time.

Create a Growth Plan for Your Team

The best people have a knack for bringing out the best in other people. They somehow get others to perform and exceed even their own expectations. You want those kind of people on your team. And if you want them on your team, you can bet that your boss wants them on his team, too.

One way to bring out the best in other people is to consciously and intentionally create a growth plan for each of them. Talk with them. Learn their aspirations. Discover their likes and dislikes. Create a plan to help  them grow professionally, technically, and interpersonally. In short, you’d eventually like for them to easily step into your shoes once you get promoted again.

Ifs, Ands, and Buts

But isn’t all this risky? Won’t one of your team members take your job? Or won’t they get promoted out from under you?

Fostering an environment where you can be more effective while growing your people is not “risky.” In fact, a good argument can be made for just the opposite. Not growing your team is risky. Creating an environment where personal growth is not evident, where the same old routine is done day in and day out, is far riskier to you than growing your team. The best people won’t want to stay in that environment. You’ll be left with the mediocre.

One of the best compliments you can be paid as a manager is to have one of your team members promoted to a new position. It’s speaks well of the environment you’ve created. And when that happens again and again, senior management will recognize your role in producing highly effective people.

And when you get promoted, you’re next transition will be easier because you’ll have already cultivated your replacement.

“So I Got Promoted, Now What?”

“In a hierarchy every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence.” That’s the premise of Dr. Laurence Peter in his 1969 book, The Peter Principle: Why Things Always Go Wrong My first thought when I read a statement like that is: I wonder if Dr. Peter worked in a hierarchy and if so would his premise still apply?

Nevertheless. I think we’ve all seen instances where someone who is very good with technology is promoted and flounders. Horribly. And the worse they do, the more stress they feel. And they flounder even more. So what happens? The don’t make changes in their daily work required by the new position.

This is the first in an nine-part series on how to do your job better once you’ve been promoted. Hopefully the next eight posts in the series will help you to be aware of the new dynamics required by your new role so you adjust and excel.

Stop Doing Your Old Job

At first blush, this may sound too obvious to be worth mentioning. But there’s a reason it’s first on the list. This is far more prevalent than you may think.  If you don’t address this shortly after your promotion, it can set you up for failure down the road. [more...]

Employ the Same Successful Tactics

In your prior role, you approached your job, your responsibilities, and your preparation in a certain way, one that eventually led to your promotion. And while you don’t want to simply repeat the “what” you were doing before, you can most definitely leverage the “how” that got you the promotion. [more...]

Get to Know Your Peers

Far too often, IT professionals believe, mistakenly in my opinion, that they are paid to be good with technology. To be sure, that’s a part of it. In some jobs it may even be the majority of it. However, none us work in a vacuum and it’s important to know your colleagues before you need them. [more...]

Get a Trusted System

In your prior role, your may have had little difficulty managing your  workload and tasks. But now things are more complex. You are responsible for for work that you assign or delegate to others. You had better find a good system for managing that work.

Manage Your Email

Email is a great way to communicate, however when you receive scores or even hundreds of emails every day, it can quickly become unwieldy and detrimental to your productivity. A considerable portion of your day, or even night, can be consumed by email. You’ve got to find a good technique for managing your email inbox.

Manage Your Calendar

This could just as easily be called “Protect Your Time”. The collaborative world of shared calendars can be great for people who’s job it is to coordinate and plan meetings. However, for those of us who must attend meetings as well as doing work, shared calendars can be quite a disruption our days. You must take steps to ensure you have time to work.

Start Having Weekly One-on-Ones

As a new supervisor, team lead, manager, director, or even executive team member, it’s critical to build a trust with your team that can weather the storms that are sure to come. A great way to do this is to conduct a weekly, one-half hour, one-on-one meeting with each of member.

Recognize the Tendency to Revert

When push comes to shove and the pressure really begins to mount, many new managers tend revert back to their comfort zone, to their strengths, to what made them successful in their prior role. But that only makes matters worse. Being aware of this can help you to avoid it.

Questions:

• What were some of the unforeseen challenges that you faced after your last promotion?
• How did you cope with the new challenges?