Your Next Promotion Won't Come From Your Past
Happy Friday,
You're a leader in an engineering organization. Let’s talk career strategy.
Skills and experience got you where you are, but don't assume those alone will get you where you want to go.
AI will transform how engineering services get delivered, and someone in your organization needs to lead the transition. That someone should be you.
Mid-level leaders are perfectly positioned to shape their organizations’ future. Close enough to the work to understand it, and senior enough to change how it gets done.
Your goal should be to accelerate your own career and those of your team. Do that, and your organization will benefit too. Here’s what I’d focus on:
Start using an agent. If not at work, then do it at home. Productivity = Human Expertise × AI × Agents. AI makes people more productive. Agents multiply what productive people can accomplish by using AI to do work on their behalf. You need firsthand experience with the technology that's changing your profession. Reading about it won't cut it. Do it now.
Make your team AI fluent. Encourage experimentation. Share discoveries. Make accelerated learning the central theme of your team’s culture. The objective isn't simply to use AI. It's to become exceptionally good at using it, and soon.
Accelerate your team’s professional development. Entry-level engineering tasks appear likely to be the first ones automated. Last will be those requiring judgment, communication skills, and trust: Project Leadership.
Over time, one could easily imagine every position in an engineering organization, including the CEO, being largely/fully automated by ai/agents. But someone still has to earn the client's trust, exercise judgment, and take responsibility for results. That's the Project Leader.
Project leadership is the organization. Everyone and everything else exists to support that. So that's where you and your team want to be.
Upskill your team to become competent project leaders as quickly as they can responsibly handle. The sooner they have the skills to lead, the more valuable (and secure) their futures become.
Note: The firms that automate entry-level work without reinventing how they develop future project leaders may be creating their next big problem.
Make yourself replaceable. Sound like terrible career advice, but it's not. Leaders who make themselves indispensable are more difficult to promote. Develop people who can do your job and free yourself to take on the bigger challenges.
Measure your success differently. Your value isn't how many people report to you. It's how capable, productive, adaptable, and successful your team becomes. Focus squarely on maximizing that.
Punchline: The next generation of leaders won't necessarily be the people with the most years of experience. They'll be the ones who best prepared themselves, their teams, and organizations for future success. Let's go!
Have a greaaaat weekend!
Dave
Feedback, blowback, and suggested topics are always welcome: dave@goodnewsfriday.com
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