Stages in Professional Life

I read somewhere a few years ago, that professional life goes thru' the following stages...

ASSOCIATE >> INVOLVE >> SUPERVISE >> MANAGE

Initially, I read this again and again to understand more, but was unable to understand the concept. When I read each word independently, it made sense, but when I put it all together, it was more complex than the individual words. After many hours of thought, I was able to decipher the meaning of the words when read together and it all started making sense.

Here's my understanding...

My company makes creative content products. When I joined this company as a Manager, I was not having a deep understanding of how the product was made and the kind of effort that went in to deliver a product that the CEO was so proud of, the team was thrilled developing and customers loved it (the Forums section in the company website talked all about it).

How am I to get an greater understanding of these awesome products? I thought.

The only was for me was to ASSOCIATE with the product development life cycle. So, I talked to each member in the team to understand how the products were developed, I documented each stage, created a workflow, defined the quality control processes, got these documents reviewed and approved, and published this as a handbook. I was proud of this document because this helped me understand and was used in all the induction programs in the next 5 years. To achieve this, I had to ASSOCIATE with the process, I had to spend time to understand what the team was doing and not worry about how it was being done.

The next stage was INVOLVE. Another tough one. I concluded, to INVOLVE means to CONTRIBUTE. I had to make a contribution to the Product Development Lice Cycle. I did not possess the skill required to develop the product, I was supposed to Manage this team, so the skill was not important, I had planning skills, but this was only appreciated by the Management and not the team. This set me thinking again, how to I CONTRIBUTE? I looked thru my Process Handbook again to figure out how I can make that contribution. I got my answer, Quality Control, this did not need any special skill, but an eye for detail, I could do it, so I started my discussion with some of my senior team members, to understand what an error is and ways to catch it. I got started with testing each piece of creative content, each time I had a doubt on an error, I would take that up for a discussion with the senior team members and they would confirm if it was actually an error or a special effect. 500 animations later I was acting independently, logging bugs with animations and team members would accept these bugs as "bugs". From the team perspective I was CONTRIBUTING, from the management perspective, I was contributing with the production plan, schedules and status reporting.

Now that I had passed thru' the ASSOCIATE and INVOLVE stage, I moved naturally to SUPERVISE stage. I could talk the team's language, I could understand when the CEO described the new product, and could teach a bunch of new joinees how to test the product and catch defects. In short, I was able to earn some respect from the team, new team members would respect me because I had interviewed them and also trained them. I had demonstrated my potential to the management of my company.

After having gone thru' the ASSOCIATE, INVOLVE and SUPERVISE stages with multiple teams, it was time for me to MANAGE. I was managing multiple teams and processes, I was orchestrating the delivery of multiple products simultaneously...... finally, I was the MANAGER.

This is not the end....

After a few months, I realized that I was performing at the SUPERVISE stage and the MANAGE stage at the same time, I was having issues with meeting my goals and targets. I thought, I am the Manager, so why should I supervise?

I had 2 choices to solve this problem: 1) go to the management and complain that I need more resources to do the Supervise role and 2) train up one of my current resources to take on that responsibility.

I chose option 2 because, it was easier for me to elevate someone from within the team instead of hiring a new resource and have him go thru' the ASSOCIATE, INVOLVE and SUPERVISE stages. Now, I can get a resource within the team, who has already gone thru' the first two stages, so I have a ready made solution on hand. This results in one more problem, loss in productivity. To resolve this, I can hire two new resources at the bottom of the Pyramid. Each of these new resources will contribute 50% of the lost of productivity and will cost 1/3rd the cost of the more experienced resource. This is results in making up for the lost productivity completely at a net saving of 1/3rd the cost of the experienced resource.

This worked well for me as well as the company.

Every professional/employee must go thru' these stages during his/her career. This is applicable to every individual from a trainee to the CEO.