Time to go All in

I've spent the last couple of nights trying to answer a few questions that will guide conversations with my leadership about where I want to go in my career. I seem to view this opportunity to talk about my career plans as an opportunity to lay out my vision for a new function in the organization and the steps that I would take to make that vision a reality. That's too big of a bite at this point. The first step is to get a leadership position. I want a role where I can influence the organization by developing our science, our scientists, and a culture that embraces exploration and discovery as critical components of the product development process. I strive to make that impact in my current role, but my effect on these areas is limited by other responsibilities. I want a role where my focus is on enhancing our scientific capabilities by gaining greater insight into our products and methodologies while developing the research capabilities of other scientists.

The shift in emphasis is where I see the biggest evolution in my role. I want the things I do on the side in my current job to be my primary responsibility. Big organizations are rife with group think. Somebody states what's going on and everybody just follows along. I want to lead a group whose purpose is to root out these limits on our thinking before they lead us into trouble. Did you try this? What would happen if you did it this way instead? Why did you do it that way? Finding these holes in the development of new products would be our gateway to mini-research projects. These would be the leads that we need to build our knowledge, knowledge that we could use to come up with the Next Big Thing.

My trouble has clearly come about because I'm reading the question as an opportunity to write the job description of the job that I would like to have. Forget picking a role that already exists. I'm going after what I want. In rereading what I wrote above, I did a pretty good job of laying out the broad outlines of that vision. My concern going into this meeting with my manager and his boss is that I may be too ambitious for this stage of my career. Linking what I want to do with what I've already done may help my leadership see that what I'm proposing is the natural progression from where I am now. There's also the concern that it just may be too different from what is already in our organization.

I can see why big organizations develop a certain character and retain that character for as long as the company sticks around. The early leaders set the tone and culture. People who want to progress in the organization seek to become like their leaders because people like people who are like them.  New hires tend to have similar characteristics as the people in charge of hiring. Hiring is done by managers who have internalized the organization's norms. People who are predisposed to shake things up, those who see things a little differently, typically fail to reach a position where they can shift the organization because they either get fed up with status quo and take off (which was a place that I was very close to a couple of years ago) or are passed over for leadership roles because they're too different from the people who are above them.

This fear of being passed over for being too different is a very real fear for me at the moment. To quote a director that I spoke to earlier this week, my stock is high. Is this the time for me to throttle back and stick closer to the party line as I pursue a management role (new opens being posted soon, or so we've been told)? But my stock got high in the first place because I tend to deviate from expectations. Being a bit of a maverick (who makes an effort to present his outside perspective in a way that is friendly and not threatening) got to where I have a shot at making the move to management (which I'm convinced is where I need to go to do the things that I want to do). Will it keep me from taking that next step? I must not fear that possibility too much. I pretty much proposed developing a group that is intentionally counter-culture and oppositional in my little spiel above. If it's been working, why stop now? Must be a sign that it's time to go all in.