Category: Learning

Career Development, Change, Development, Engagement, Learning, Models, Strengths

4 Stages of Contribution

A common area of opportunity to help many of the technically brilliant people I enjoy working with – scientists, engineers, supply chain experts, even financiers – is career development.  These colleagues become frustrated with their perceived inability to engineer and control career advancement when transitioning beyond individual contributor roles where relationships, interest-based negotiation and influence skills become important to get results. In my experience, this results in a presenting problem like (generalized examples):

Career paths are not established and communicated clearly enough…

The organization doesn’t value the technical skills that create value here…just look at who gets promoted…

There doesn’t seem to be any opportunity for me in this organization…

each of which may be true. The problem with these beliefs is that they are totally passive and the expectation is to fix “them” or change how “they” do things. These are difficult expectations to fulfill. However, there is a change that each person can make that is totally under our control and with a much higher probability for success.

A model that I have found helpful is Novations’ 4 Stages of Contribution. I first saw this model in a conference session jointly presented by one of Novations’ consultants and a learning & development manager from Intel. It has influenced the career development processes and tools I have designed and implemented. Since the model focuses on the contribution or performance of an individual rather than position, it integrates well with strengths-based approaches, which I advocate.

Careers are moving from position focus to contribution focus to increase impact and influence. Flatter organizations and critical individual contributor talents need not mean career ceilings. High-performance is achieved by aligning talent with opportunities to deliver greater contribution in-position, laterally, through advancement, or in a role that’s currently undefined. In fact, it is this ability to mine the greater contribution that can be made from each role that truly differentiates top talent and their organizations from the status quo.

Change, Learning

Learning = Change

It isn’t obvious that learning and change are synonymous; learning = change is apparent to very few. Helping more leaders and their staff to realize this paradigm will yield great benefit. We will be more agile, effective and competitive. Most of the people I interact with pursue learning activity without a clear outcome in mind. Similarly, when changes are made, how the change impacts stakeholders in a legitimate cause and effect sort of way (i.e., what will people need to start / stop / do differently as a result of this change) is an afterthought. Worse is that the necessary investment of time and resources to learn to perform in a new state are underestimated, resisted, and short-cuts are attempted.

Three useful lines of questioning that have served me well in helping people begin to plan personal and group-level change are:

1. What will you (we, they) know, do and / or value different if this (intervention) is a huge success? By when? Why are these changes and timing important?

2. When we’re meeting six months from now and you’re explaining how elated you are with the outcomes of the work we’ve done together and the changes that have been made, what will be different? Why are these changes and timing important?

3. Who will need to change? What will they change from and to? What is our interest in making this change? How will making this change benefit them (from their perspective)? Why would they resist making the change desired?

We’re creatures of habit but we are motivated to serve our own interests. Until it is clear in the mind of an individual what to change, it’s unlikely we will deviate from our norms. We’re much more likely to work to maintain stasis. With defined outcomes and interests for change defined, we can involve stakeholders, build an impact map and allow learning and transition as needed to realize our desired future state.