This has been frequently requested of me ever since my earlier post about ‘The Six Month Conversation’ resonated with so many people. This follow up is about the framework Alexis and I devised with hopes of guiding our life journey together independently and as a couple. I know this post is arriving several years late, after tons of requests, so thanks everybody for your patience!
As I've been pushing hard on pursuing new opportunities lately and working through a handful of challenging projects, I've been pondering the question, "What is truly worth striving for?" in considering how to allocate my limited resources of time and energy.
This is the list of things I keep circling back to:
Excellence
Integrity…
It is important to know one's value/worth as a worker.
A quick reality check of evaluating oneself in the broader organization is to ask the question: Do I Add, Subtract, Multiply, or Divide value to the social fabric which I am woven into? Do not be a subtracter and divider. Best is to be a multiplier (Note on multipliers: they amplify their environment, so they make sense in positive constructive environments).
Your compensation needs to be relative the value you provide for a business and you need to take ownership of negotiating the compensation you want. Nobody knows your situation as well as you do and nearly everybody is more worried about their situation than yours.
A few rules of thumb:
In the public sector:
Ones 'market value' increases by between 3k-5k per year for the majority of roles
Individual Contributor roles cap at 75k-110k, depending on skills requirements
For specialist roles, compensation is usually 70-80% of private market rate
In the private sector:
Ones 'market value' increases by between 3k-7k per year
For specialist skillsets, market value increases by between 8k-15k per year
Individual Contributor roles cap at 90k-130k, and then one is required to contribute to business development (i.e. originating sales, generating net new revenue, fundraising)
The sectors that do not subscribe to the above are those which contribute value in a scalable manner or are poorly understood (note: this is fleeting): Business Development, Management Consulting, Capital Markets, and Technological Specialists (non-operational roles).
This is a Shitty First Draft post that I never got around to completing. Coming back to it now cause I've been having mentoring calls every week for a while now. Same things KEEP coming up. So, here I am, writing a post about it so I can point to it.
Are you doing what you do to meet your personal expectations, or the expectations of your parents/society/tribe? It's your life, dude. Live it as you see fit.
It's great to be excited ("passionate") about a particular industry, but how much do you really know about it? I hear far too many people who were sold on the 'sexy' of a particular field of work, where the majority of their understanding came from marketing efforts by industry associations or people who've themselves been sold on an idea…
Ever since I went to university, I've been thinking about writing more in a public manner. Finally pulled the trigger in 2016 after years of deliberating. Here's a post I found that I'd written an entire draft for back in August of 2013.
I enjoyed reading this because it offered me an interesting look into how I've developed concepts and workflows since then. Sharing this in all of its original glory because it's rather funny and still pretty relevant!
----
This post is an ongoing attempt to create a universal checklist for the preparation of presentations. Note that I am assuming that the presentation deck and demo product are already complete after considering objective, available time, time of day, audience, and so on. This checklist is a combination of actions and reminders with some definitions included after the checklist...
Digitizing a thought I had written in a journal back in 2010 around the idea of a Centre of Influence (COI). I had defined COIs as those people we have relationships with who possess a level of influence over our decision-making. The influence is exerted by virtue of their primary relationship dynamic with their network. These are people trusted & networked as an influencer, and their advice is often taken with little further thought.
It's apparent that my then knowledge of personal/professional relationship dynamics was much more limited than it is today, but interesting nonetheless...
Having attended about dozen events as a guest speaker / professional delegate since 2017 started, I've noticed a pattern that feels like it should be talked about: people do not ask for what they want and do not follow up properly.
I am reminded of this quote, which I first saw at 14 years old on a poster in my highschool hallway, and which I have tried to live by ever since: You miss 100% of the shots you don't take in life...
In the beginning of February, I announced that I would begin a search to find the next chapter of my journey. The most important part to me is finding the right organizational values, direction, and fit. Secondary to that would be getting my bum in the right role, which I see as a matter of growing into from within.
It has been 45 days since this search began...
I've recently taken to finishing up notebooks with incomplete pages that are strewn about the home.
The notebook I am currently using to chronicle my dreams was one that I used sporadically throughout 2011-2014. In this journal, I found to-do list I'd written in 2012 while pondering and planning the future. Reading this today, in 2017, I am surprised by how many of these items I have actually completed.
