Career Rocket Episode #1: William Thomas
My hope for the Career Rocket series is to make an impact on people’s careers through the sharing of wisdom by amazing folks. If you can just take one piece of advice and apply it to your career to make a difference, hopefully your time reading or listening would have been well worth your time.
You can listen to our conversation here.
Target audience for this episode: aspiring folks in the consulting world, from just starting their careers through senior managers
Today’s guest: William Thomas. Consultant and thinker of big things. I wanted to bring William on because of his work experience, career path and his big picture perspectives can be of value to the listeners and readers.
Career background: 20 years in IBM strategy and transformation consulting working on large scale projects with the Global 2000. A recent assignment was the North American Lead for thev Apple+IBM Alliance. Currently, WIlliam is working on creating transformational thinking, white papers, and a podcast with Empathetic Machines and NextCurve.com.
How many people have you managed (includes direct reports and their teams) over your career? Up to 12 direct reports for career. Smaller and larger teams across strategy, technical development & implementation, transformation, functional experts, and creatives over the past two decades.
In your opinion, what characteristics defined the exceptional players vs the not so much? Another way to think about it. What propels certain people forward in their career faster than others?
Note, the first bullet point in bold is the point that William picked as the most important one of all.
Entry level: 1-3 years (7:35)
Use this time to determine which mountain you want to climb. The danger is you are so determined to move up that people can start climbing the first mountain that comes their way and later on find out it’s the wrong mountain. They end up falling backwards only to climb another mountain.
A big challenge William has seen for people just starting out on a consulting team is finding the right balance between the desire to move up and desire to experience where you are and learn
At this level, you have more time to experiment different avenues. Enjoy this time to soak it up and learn as many different things as possible.
Find something that you can own, even if it’s a small aspect of the project and own it. Become an expert in that and use that as your currency.
Mid career: 3-5 years (14:25)
Become an awesome operator in teams. Ex: developer must have exceptional technical skills as well as how to work well in teams
Find great mentors. Challenge you, guidance and advice on your career, someone you can be open with, someone well respected
Start thinking about your majors and minors in skill set and continue to craft your technical skills in the majors
Begin to dabble in leading projects or parts of projects and
Senior level: 6+ years (14:25)
You have to become comfortable with the uncomfortable. Everything is a stretch at this point
Defining challenges properly. At this level you can’t wait from problems to be handed to you in a neat bundle to solve.
Take stock of your reputation. Are you who people think you are?
Mgr/Directors: (22:30)
Be aware of the type of manager you are and what you are doing. It’s difficult to get a good feedback loop
Spend type analyzing past managers and other managers.
Read books and whitepapers critically. Are they right for you? Do they have wisdom you can use?
Mentors who you can have a frank conversation and get outside perspective
What are habits you have built over the years that have contributed to your success? (29:35)
Daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, and annual goals and planning
Schedule time to do nothing and get grounded. William tries to get in one hour a day! Very difficult to do regularly. Even with a crazy schedule as a consultant.
Take what you can get to make it work. For example, take that 45min flight, use the Bose Noise Cancelling headphones and make that your time.
What does living abundantly mean to you? (34:26)
Taking action from what emerges from the time spent on nothingness. Doing the things I choose to do
Time for self, time for family, time for everyone else