We are faced with many types of questions and challenges throughout our careers. Some are easy to answer, because we already have made up our own opinions. Others are more difficult and require an approach with more concentration. Usually these questions involve thinking about the future or a big change that we have to consider. Over my career I have used a framework that allowed me to approach these types of questions with ease. Once you internalize it should also be easier for you to approach any kind of change. Let’s get started!
I usually use an example of a hypothetical promotion that an employee asks for a manager. This request usually kicks off a dialogue to discover whether indeed the employee is qualified. Even though these types of conversations happen all the time, they are not easy ones. In large organizations there is sometimes an existing description of a role for the next level and that helps as a guideline. Yet, the exercise becomes more about allocating the person into the predetermined buckets, which might not be suitable at all for a given individual. In smaller companies it is typically a bit of a wild west and very dependent on a specific manager, but yet gives a flexibility to uniquely tailor the role to the employees wishes.
The framework is divided into 5 steps.
Where are we currently at? (Current state)
o This could be the state of the project, current role or existing resource allocation.
Where are we going? (Future State)
o This could be future vision of the project, future role or the ideal circumstances.
What activities, actions or experiences will help us cross the gap? (State Change)
o This could be trying new responsibility, creating proposals, having conversations, etc
What is required to enable the activities? (Resources)
o This could be financial allocation, agreement with the management, contract with the clients or schedule change.
How to prioritize the activities? (Change Priority)
o Given the additional bandwidth that the activities will take away from other projects it is important to understand how all of them will fit with already existing priorities. Despite being the last step, it is an equally important one. It tells us what we can do now to move our plan along but a little bit.
Let’s apply it to our example and see how it fits.
Where are we currently at? (Current state)
There are a few ways to assess our current state. We can go to the definition of the role that both you and the employee have in mind. While the definitions will likely be slightly different, it is an important part of the conversation to have as it gets you both on the same page and aligns understanding of the circumstance. Coming up with a role definition from just your head is very difficult, our brains are not organized as easily-queryable databases. You can both refer to the job spec from the time when the employee was either hired or assumed the role. That could act as an initial template. It probably filled with all of the responsibilities and activities that the company thought the role would be about and is too detailed. In order to reduce the context of the template, have a conversation about what were the actual things that employee was doing and either modify the template accordingly or just have that bullet point list of responsibilities. This will act as your Current State.
Where are we going? (Future State)
This is another alignment exercise. What is the goal of the conversation? Is it getting more responsibilities? Is it about getting a different title? Is it a higher pay dialogue? Getting more flexible hours? You should focus on getting all of the details on the paper. Don’t worry about whether it is fair or proper or expected. As long as that vision is written down the real conversation can start with molding the path. When you feel that everything has been written down, now it is time to apply some of the constraints. Either refer to the definition of the next role, budget restrictions, timing or other circumstances to mold the state into something plausible. It is a conversation and a negotiation at the same time. There are many other articles on negotiation that you can refer to for accomplishing this step, but the goal is to settle on something that you both agree on.
What activities, actions or experiences will help us cross the gap? (State Change)
This step is about figuring out how to bridge the gap between the Current and the Future states. Sometimes the gap is negligible and the decisions are easy. The other times the gaps are significant and will require a detailed plan on what activities will be helpful for changing the state. Since the example I am using is about a promotion, those activities might be something along the lines of taking additional training, taking up a special responsibility from the Future State and trying it on. It also could be just exposure, perhaps sitting in on the meeting that employee was not in before. The goal is to either advance an employee's skills or to simulate the Future State through temporary exposure. This way it can be measured whether the role is a good fit or not or perhaps you can then have a different conversation about readjusting the Future State.
What is required to enable the activities? (Resources)
Depending on your own position in the organization and the state company, not every activity will be easily executed. You will probably require readjusting expectations of other people from the employee, changing team structure and of course re-aligning the calendar. This all could be done under the auspices of “temporary” adjusting the environment and it will give you the reversal in case the employee ends up being not a good fit for the Future State.
How to prioritize the activities? (Change Priority)
This step enables progress on the plan. I think humans are really good broad thinkers and dreamers, but when it comes to prioritizing, we are the worst. The step requires saying a lot of Nos, clearly understanding the capacity for action and doing really deep thinking when comparing sometimes very disparate list items (the literal oranges and apples). Once done though, this process enables immediate first steps to closing the gap between Current and the Future states.
And this is how one may approach using this framework to a case of an employee's promotion. It also easily applied to many other types of changes like product map, project, personal growth etc. Hopefully it will be of value!