How to define your success in vague roles?

As someone who is joining an innovate team for the first time fresh out of college or having just done a major career change it can be very frustrating to not be given specific instructions on what is expected of you and what you should do to succeed in this role. From a managerial point of view, defining this specificity is pretty hard as the world of work in the technical and innovative era is often driven by your personal super power, how can you bring value to currently existing team operations and output, how can you embody less micromanagement and more autonomy and most importantly the hope that you are great observer, you have the ability to assimilate and are confident in taking initiatives.

I am not sure if there is truly an organizational way to get over this lack of specificity, because even in companies like Microsoft who attempt to provide career roadmaps for the different levels in your role that you should aspire to, the guidance is often fluffy or high level. And it is duly so, as in our industry, there are so many pathways for success, endless options :)

As such, I have accepted that it is the norm for roles, success metrics, key performance indicators (KPIs) to be loosely defined in innovative roles such as software engineering, business development and any “make it work for you and based on your super powers” role in technology and it is on you to navigate this space and create your own definition of success, iterate on it as you get your manager’s feedback and then mutually agree that this is what you will be measured against in a given time period (quarterly, bi-annually or annually) for constructive feedback and promotions.

Easier said than done. I have written this blog to capture various strategies and questions you can utilize to paint your personal definition of success.

The easiest place to start is looking internally before venturing out asking others their opinion, you want to have a clear understanding of:

• Why did you choose to join this company?
• Why did you choose to join this specific team?
• Did you ever meet any senior person in a similar role as this? What inspired you about who they are/what they do that made you also want to be in a role such as this?
• What exactly do you want to see yourself grow in over the next year, 3 years, 5 years, 10 years?
• When you leave this team, what tangible skillsets and accomplishments do you want to carry with you?
• What do you personally want out of this company? What can this company do for you?

These questions are introspective and therefore should be done iteratively as your knowledge of yourself, desires and the world changes over time. I usually reflect on these questions annually.

Armed with the awareness of your needs, the next thing you can do is research on the artifacts your company do have around promotions, rewards, and past celebrated successes. In this space, you are looking for company or team wide documents that clearly outlines the following:

• What is expected out of you at different levels? For example, a year 1 Software Engineer is expected to acquire a working knowledge of the product or service their team specializes on.
• What are the categories under key results management looks at? For example, a category for aSoftware Engineer may be quality code and validation.
• What are the core and professional competencies that are effective in doing a great job and management pays attention to? For example, collaboration, adaptability and customer obsessed.
• Have there been any recent emails or messages from your manager or organization celebrating the work of others? What were the key highlights or reasons why they were celebrated? Does it fit under any of the categories you previously extracted?
• Past team reports shared with leadership.

At the end of this exercise you will want to have a table compiled that captures, High Level Category, Suggested Activities for this Category, Exceptional Activities for this Category, Examples of Employees doing this well.

With the aforementioned table under your tool belt, you can then start interviewing your manager, their manager, and colleagues of different experienced levels. In these interviews you want to ask questions about their own definition of success and also questions that help you flesh out each high level category you have even further.

Understanding other’s definition of success:

• How does this company work for you? Is there any specific initiative, or opportunity you get through this company that you value tremendously?
• How are you funneling your passion and learning in this team?
• What contributions did you make this period and what was the resulting business impact?
• What could you have done differently for even greater business impact?
• What are your key deliverables and the expected business impact for the upcoming period?
• What will you do in the upcoming period to learn and grow?
• What past activities have been celebrated and enabled you to be promoted?
• What are the various ways you impact our team or organization?
• What is our team’s mission in the company’s big picture?
• Who are your mentors? What do you learn from each? How do you gain the most value from your interactions? Why did you choose them?
• What does success look like for you on a daily, quarterly annual basis?
• How can I help you?
• How do you choose what to delegate?
• What does your manager care about?
• Can I see questions you may enter a meeting with your manager or director?

Fleshing out each high level category further:

• Am I meeting your expectations by doing this activity for this category?
• Who are the stakeholders invested in me doing this category / activity well?
• Whose opinion should I rely on in our team to give solid feedback for promotion?
• Who are you listening to to build my promotion story?

With all of the above data compiled, you can take a step back and create your success criteria for the next quarter, year, year and a half. Present it to your manager, get their feedback and agreement, and each meeting with your manager whether that occurs weekly, bi-weekly or monthly, you want to use that ledger, highlight at least one area, share your understanding of the progress you made, ask for their constructive feedback and agreement and iterate.

By promotion time, you will have your promotion story captured incrementally across progress and deliverables made, and you would have had real time feedback from your manager so all you need to do is present the overall document and ask am I up for a promotion, if not, why. What areas across these categories I fell short on? If the reason why is outside of these categories, you now have a case of true ignorance because that was not relayed to you. In this situation, it can go either two ways:

• You get the promotion because you defend your position respectfully. We agreed that once I delivered this I will be successful and can be promoted, but now I am hearing this feedback that has nothing to do with any of the outlined categories that you state is important for our team. What should I do if I did not have insight from you at anytime on this? I feel as if it is unfair to be blocked on promotion because of something I had no insight from you on at any given time, and I have been proactive in ensuring that I understand explicitly what you need from me.
• You don’t get the promotion and you need to ensure this doesn’t happen again. You can raise the fact that this was never discussed, and enter a brainstorming session of how does this fit into your current categories outlined. Is this a new requirement? Does it fall under an entirely new category? How sure can I be that if I amend my success criteria this time, after working diligently over a year, requesting consistent feedback that this does not happen again when I am blindsided by another unknown criteria that was never discussed.

I hope this helps and good luck paving your road to success!