Mind the Gaps: Organizational Changes and Your Career Lifecycle with Ryan Conley

Ryan Conley: Foreign.

John White: Welcome to the Nerd Journey Podcast. Our goal is to help you, the technology professional, accelerate your career progression, increase your job satisfaction, and be more effective in your existing role.

Nick Korte: We want to bring listeners like you the career advice we wish we'd been

Narrator: given earlier in our careers.

John White: I'm John White, journeyman on Twitter, sharing co host duties with nick Cordyce at NetworkNerd.

Nick Korte: We're two former IT operations guys who have moved on to pre sales roles with technology vendors. We have our opinions, but we also like to highlight the journeys of others and see what we can learn from them.

John White: We'd also like to ask for your feedback. To make this a conversation, not a one way broadcast. Email us at nerdjourneypodcastmail.com or DM US Erdjourney on Twitter. So come join us on our Nerd journey.

Nick Korte: Let's take a trip.

Narrator: Episode 355 if you don't think organizational change affects you, think again, my friend. When companies make change, it impacts the people at those companies. I think organizational change might just be the phrase of the year for me. We've talked about trends like organizational flattening, layoffs in tech, and larger individual contributor to manager ratios. This week I wanted us to back up and look at this from a broader lens of organizational change. Our guest this week is Ryan Conley, a global field principal working for a technology vendor and someone with plenty of experience when it comes to organizational change. I'll give you a warning before we get started that this episode is a

Nick Korte: little bit longer than normal, but we

Narrator: wanted to put it all in a single episode so you have all this information Together. We've structured our conversation in two distinct parts. In the first part of the discussion, we're going to pick apart the patterns of organizational change. How have we seen it play out in different companies, and why might this be happening in general? And then the second part of our conversation, we're going to get into practical tips for working with a new boss, joining a different team, and changing roles entirely. As you listen through this episode, pay close attention to our discussion of the corporate life cycle and how we reframe that to give you something Ryan calls

Nick Korte: the career life cycle.

Narrator: And we'll weave in our, uh, personal experience and anecdotes along the way. So let's talk organizational change with Mr. Ryan Conley. I want to welcome Ryan Conley to the Nerd Journey podcast. Hey Ryan, can you take just a second to introduce yourself to our listening audience, please?

Ryan Conley: Hello, my name is Ryan Conley.

Ryan Conley: I'm, um, a Global field principal. Uh, I've been in this space for the last 11 years, but prior to

Ryan Conley: that I had a completely different life as a Systems admin for 13 years, working in education, finance, and consulting.

Ryan Conley: And I'm looking forward to today's discussion. Thank you.

Nick Korte: In a recent discussion, Millen Desai actually said that organizations are living, breathing organisms that change over time. And boy, do they change. I think that maybe we see headlines in the news or read people's status on LinkedIn, and maybe we just don't think about those changes coming to impact us. But even if they're small or seem like they don't impact us, when it's our company, there is some impact to us, I think. Yeah.

Ryan Conley: And I'm reminded of an author. He's actually a, uh, NYU Stern of Business professor, Aswath Damodaran. And he speaks about organizational change through a different lens, or at least a

Ryan Conley: frame of mind, which is a corporate life cycle.

Ryan Conley: And I feel like we can relate both in how is your individual company? Where are they at in that life cycle? But as you an individual, maybe you're personally being impacted by a layoff, or maybe you're personally being impacted with a new manager or, uh, a team change. So where are you at in your career life cycle?

Nick Korte: Now, let's talk first, Ryan, about the ways we see organizational change play out. What are some of the things that you have seen that you would classify as an organizational change?

Ryan Conley: I think we skip past the current headlines and just take a step back. Look at the bigger industry. Companies are either growing in different ways, growing inorganically through a merger and acquisition, or they're growing organically through investments in R and D or other items. And what we have now found ourselves and what we've seen in the industry is some companies grow by acquisition. I personally work for some companies where

Ryan Conley: they grew by acquiring two companies every year.

Ryan Conley: And if you are on the acquiring side, particularly in it, there's a lot

Ryan Conley: that comes with that. Uh, how are you integrating the different email systems, for example, how are you connecting the networks?

Ryan Conley: How are you getting, you know, two

Ryan Conley: CRMs merged into one just to get the business data out of it? So there's a lot of change that

Ryan Conley: just comes with that.

Ryan Conley: But then also, how do you get

Ryan Conley: two teams working together? Let's say you had, you know, one's

Ryan Conley: on Gmail and the other's on Office365. On the surface, that's just a technology change. But if you're like me and you've used Outlook for longer than I want to admit. And all of a sudden you want me to use Gmail. It's a big adjustment just to my daily workflow.

Ryan Conley: So I think there's a lot of change to come with that, both technically,

Ryan Conley: but then also people and with a

Ryan Conley: new team, a new organization.

Ryan Conley: In this case, they might have a completely different culture.

Ryan Conley: And I think sometimes businesses, uh, have

Ryan Conley: a different set of due diligence.

Ryan Conley: And in some cases they very much prioritize culture matches. And then other times they're like, no, we want the ip, we're going to make this work. And, um, I think that can be

Ryan Conley: its own kind of organizational change and challenge in itself. What do you think?

Nick Korte: IP being intellectual property, right?

Ryan Conley: Yes.

Nick Korte: We want the technology that they own or the way they've manufactured and built this thing, that they're selling this product or service? Yeah, absolutely. I actually think that depending on whether you're on the acquiring side, you work for the company that acquired another company or you work for the company that got acquired, it can be a very different experience. And I'll tell you, I worked for a manufacturing company for about nine years in it. I saw them acquire a lot of different companies. And what you would see is we would go and learn about the systems, integrate the systems, as you said, try and find the right approach to service all the internal users. But you would eventually start to see people on the acquired company side would either integrate with the business or they would not be there anymore. So I can see how it could be a little bit unnerving depending on which side of the fence you're on.

Ryan Conley: And as you noted earlier, when we were kind of planning the session out,

Ryan Conley: far too often, like, some of the

Ryan Conley: key assets are the people that IP that we mentioned earlier.

Ryan Conley: The people are just as much of,

Ryan Conley: uh, the intellectual property as a company as in many cases, the actual assets themselves. And in some cases that culture just isn't a fit.

Ryan Conley: In the San Francisco Bay Area, it's

Ryan Conley: very rare that you are the smartest person in the room. I knew someone, he's both the smartest

Ryan Conley: guy in the room. He's also the most humble. And I think of him because he

Ryan Conley: was kind of a loss when he left after an acquisition. I think that's a good example of, like, how do you protect that ip? The people that come through an acquisition,

Ryan Conley: And I think of him because he

Ryan Conley: actually didn't use email.

Ryan Conley: He was slack only. So coming into an organization that had acquired his organization, people would email him

Ryan Conley: and then they would see him and

Ryan Conley: be like, hey, did you get my email.

Ryan Conley: He's like, oh, I don't use email.

Ryan Conley: But that was his team's culture.

Ryan Conley: They use Slack first and foremost.

Ryan Conley: They talk to their customers on Slack.

Ryan Conley: And so that's just a small but important example of differences in, uh, just the optimization of their work. But also as that team started to peel apart, you get into a new challenge that we haven't m mentioned, which is a revolving door, as I call it. And so when a key leader, or a key, in this case key, uh, subject matter expert on the team leaves,

Ryan Conley: other people may want to follow suit.

Ryan Conley: Maybe they follow that same person to a new company or maybe they just start looking themselves and then all of a sudden you have a flywheel. So how do you protect the culture internally? How do you integrate a different culture in. But also how do you kind of protect the long term viability of the team as individuals first and foremost, but then also the organization long term?

Nick Korte: Sure, depending on what the intellectual property was that the acquiring company wanted to gain from that transaction. You don't always know what kind of research was done into who the critical folks to have are or how much control your leadership might have over what critical folks impact the intellectual property the most. So that people know that, oh, that's a, that's a big loss for the company. That's going to cost some dollars down the road even if we can't see it right now.

Ryan Conley: We're talking about being acquired at the moment. But you can think about, um, I'm

Ryan Conley: the CEO, I'm the coo.

Ryan Conley: You obviously have your influence within the large organization under you. But also if you're the CTO and below you're, you're the VP of Research and Development, for example, you are driving the direction of the technology investment today, but then also strategically, multiple years in advance, all of a sudden you're swallowed up by presumably a larger company. And maybe you were CTO before and now you drop down to VP or Senior Director. So there's a little bit of just

Ryan Conley: title shock, for lack of a better word.

Nick Korte: Mhm.

Ryan Conley: I can only imagine how difficult that is.

Ryan Conley: Just mentally you're like, hey, I worked my way up to be CTO or I worked my way up to be vp and I'm having to swallow my

Ryan Conley: pride a little bit.

Ryan Conley: So I think that's, that's a challenge worth acknowledging. I haven't been through that myself, but I can imagine that's difficult.

Nick Korte: Sure, that's leadership change as a result of an acquisition, but there could be leadership changes in an organization without that, a new position could be created for some function that needs to have a critical voice. Let's just say at the leadership table that maybe hasn't been there before, or that leadership position is eliminated or shifted down a little bit. And as you said, each of those

Narrator: folks, when there is a leadership change

Nick Korte: that has an impact on everything downstream. Because down at the individual contributor layer, like us, you see that change and you go, oh, I wonder what that means.

Ryan Conley: Now, I know we're talking about the negatives here, but many times this can be positive.

Ryan Conley: For example, I remember when a prior

Ryan Conley: manager made senior manager, and then I later learned that meant he could hire a manager under him. Or, uh, for example, uh, someone close to me is working towards a promotion, but it will require their boss to be promoted to then fill the gap so that they can be promoted, and then they can then promote someone under them and then they can hire the backfill. So it's kind of wonderful when almost like positive, uh, train is moving forward, everyone, you know, rising tide, so to speak. The downside of that is without mobility, everyone's kind of frozen in place. But it's really great to see opportunity when it comes up.

Nick Korte: And it's a great point that leadership changes aren't always bad things. They can be very, very good things. Maybe a boss that was really hard for you to work for leaves the company your immediate manager, and you get a different boss and it totally changes your work life for the better. And maybe you can take a whole new set of lessons from this new boss that you never would have otherwise learned if that former boss hadn't left. Or it could be other way around. Could be a great boss that you worked for leaves or gets promoted or takes on a different team and you work for a manager that's different, that you have trouble getting along with and you have to learn that lesson or learn what you can from that person.

Ryan Conley: I'm fortunate. I've worked just for some, really. I, uh, call leaders leaders for a reason and managers managers for a reason. But in this case, uh, they're one of your prior hosts. But it was really wonderful when they got promoted and I was able to get promoted even though I was an individual contributor reporting to them. Us being able to have more strategic conversations because we were more equalized in the ranking to where we could have team level discussions of like, where do we want the team to be in

Ryan Conley: 6, 12, 18 months?

Ryan Conley: Who should we start mentoring now so that when an opportunity comes up, they're

Ryan Conley: able to take that and I think that can be another fun opportunity that comes out of structural change.

Ryan Conley: Whether you're growing within the team or

Ryan Conley: whether around you there are openings that could be coming down the pipeline.

Ryan Conley: So change can be good.

Ryan Conley: Obviously there's a lot of turbulence in the market right now, but uh, it's

Ryan Conley: good to think about with change comes opportunity.

Nick Korte: Yes, 100%. And there could be changes in terms of the overall company's priorities. Maybe they want to operate differently than they have before. And that's going to require a lot of different changes, not only to people, but processes, technology, whatever it is, logistics. Is this still the way we want to operate? Millen Desai talked a lot about constrained planning a few episodes ago. And what worked well or was the best way to operate a couple years ago may not be now. And so leaders have to constantly look at that and decide, is this the best way to operate? So as you said, could be an opportunity, could be, maybe not an opportunity.

Ryan Conley: I actually love that mindset.

Ryan Conley: Uh, just the idea that you're reevaluating

Ryan Conley: on a regular basis, you're reassessing what was true, is it still true today? Or in this case, this could be

Ryan Conley: the technology decision within your team. This could be the direction of your team, the direction of your larger business unit or even the company. If that was best two years ago, is it still best today? I can speak probably more intimately on the, on the subject than, than most just having lived through it the past year. But the idea of reassessing like what is our core focus? What should our core focus be?

Ryan Conley: And I think there's a lot of examples on the larger business ecosystem right now of companies divesting out of a space.

Ryan Conley: Maybe they're trimming down answerly items to go back to focusing on what is

Ryan Conley: their core that they deliver, uh, from an outcome for their end customers.

Ryan Conley: And I think as a team it

Ryan Conley: can be a relief to have less on your plate and just focus and deliver better if you have that focus. So I love the mindset of what

Ryan Conley: was best, why did we do it?

Ryan Conley: And why was it best then? And then the follow up question is, is that still best today?

Ryan Conley: And it's okay if the answer is

Ryan Conley: no, because then it leads to the next question. How should we be doing it today?

Nick Korte: And why?

Ryan Conley: And why? Yes, thank you.

Nick Korte: And to your point, it could be focusing on the, the core business. It could be that we're going to go after this new emerging emerging market and we've created this entire new business unit to go do that. And there's an opportunity for a lot of people to go take on those roles. Or it could be we're going to shut this division down.

Ryan Conley: And we've been talking a lot about just larger organizational change. But I think if we go back to the analogy that I read about earlier, which is the corporate life cycle,

Ryan Conley: but reframing it from the career life

Ryan Conley: cycle, I personally had opportunities to try

Ryan Conley: new things and go deeper, and I

Ryan Conley: think your analogy there is a perfect example. Where are you at in your individual career journey? Where are you at in that life cycle?

Ryan Conley: There's some people right now that have told me, you know, I'm going to

Ryan Conley: retire in two to five years. This is my focus.

Ryan Conley: Uh, I'm not going to do anything else. I'm just going to focus on doing the best I can in this current role.

Ryan Conley: There are others. You know, maybe they're fresh out of college, maybe they're five to 10 years out of college, they want to do more, and they're willing to go deeper. I was chatting with, uh, a peer last week. It was always great to reconnect with someone who is fresh out of college when you first meet them, and then you reconnect five years later and find out they're halfway through a master's program in AI. And it's like, that's awesome.

Nick Korte: That is awesome.

Ryan Conley: How can I help you? A keep closing it out, but think about when a shift happens. You gave a good example of a new business unit gets formed, or in other cases, a business unit gets closed. I think that's an opportunity. With challenge comes opportunity. So do you want to try something new? And it's okay if the answer is no, but if there is an opportunity to try something new and you're willing to invest in yourself and in your company, I think that's worth considering.

Nick Korte: Absolutely. We've talked to a lot of guests on the show who have gotten in at, uh, let's just say the right time in a new technology wave. And that led them to all kinds of new opportunities that changed their career direction. If you're someone who's heavily invested in those emerging technologies that could create opportunities for you inside your company, maybe you're on the technical team that gets to influence the technology decisions about what we're going to do with generative AI or how we're going to implement that into our workflows, and you can really get in there and make a difference. But it would all be because you deepened your expertise there and you stepped into that new area, whether it's an adjacency or it's a total leap in a slightly different direction.

Ryan Conley: This is where I apologize because I was the first one to mention AI or a buzzword with AI.

Ryan Conley: But jokes aside, if we go back to the analogy you gave is what was best then, what is best now? I think as technologists, um, whether you're a business leader over technology, whether you're day in, day out in technology as an individual contributor, emerging technology brings new challenges just with the learning curve you're having to actually test. I mean there's hard skills that have to be learned. You get beyond the education it's then also sharing with the peers around you. Should you be doing this thing manually today or should you throw it in a prompt and get the business analysis back in two minutes and then read and reassess and understand? So I think it's a great example of a single piece of technology to use as an example. But this will be the next thing tomorrow. So what was best yesterday? Is it still best today and tomorrow? Uh, we'll ask the question again and

Nick Korte: even back to what you said before about integrating different systems. If you work for a company that has to do systems integration, you might get to learn a whole new technology stack in that same area. And that is, that's an opportunity. That's an opportunity that came from an organizational change. If you have to go figure out what's going To Be Better, Microsoft 365, Google Workspace, or is there some kind of use case to do both? And if so, how do I make them work together? What's the transition plan from one to the other? Who manages the licenses and all that good stuff, Lots to be figured out just with that alone.

Ryan Conley: Yeah, I think that's a fun example of there's a problem, there's a gap as the analogy I use. And if you see a gap, you fill it. If you want to be just a long standing contributor to the team and the uh, and your individual organization, I think it's worth calling out like those who stick around longer and get promoted faster are the ones who, who see a gap and they plug it. A personal story of mine, if we go back 15 years ago, uh, we were manually creating images just for like laptops and desktops and a pyramid paid out of pocket to go to a Microsoft conference, came back and essentially whipped out, I think it was Windows Deployment toolkit.

Ryan Conley: But I'm, I'm aging myself here and this was before I even knew to quantify this stuff. But saving hours per imaging down to

Ryan Conley: 10 to 15 minutes he came back and worked in a weekend to set it up, and then on Monday was just showing us all how this thing worked and how much time he could save us. And I just think that's a beautiful example of a, uh, technologist learning something new and sharing it.

Nick Korte: You're going to see a lot of organizational change over the course of your career. Maybe we should all do a better job of documenting the things we're working on so that we can understand and know how we changed as the organization changed. Hold that for searching for new opportunities or even conversations with your leader. Uh, one other thing that I wanted to mention. Another form of organizational change that I've seen is outsourcing specific business functions. Daniel Puluzic, a, uh, former guest on

Ryan Conley: the show, talked about how a lot

Nick Korte: of businesses think about outsourcing as something they can use for items that are outside of the core business. If it is not your core business, you might decide to outsource it. It doesn't mean that's the right answer, but it is an answer for some organizations could be that you outsource payroll or you outsource specific components of the HR process. But those are changes, right? If those were internal functions before, and all of a sudden they become outsourced, that affects some people. The other way is true as well. If it's insourced, it was once outsourced. Now we're going to hire people to do this thing, and we have to figure out how many people we're going to hire to build out this team that an outsourcer used to do. Again, we're not debating which one's better. It's just more about these are forms of change that you could see.

Ryan Conley: No, I think it's a good example of, uh, focusing. And I think in some cases change can be difficult. I haven't said this yet, but one

Ryan Conley: thing I really learned personally over the last couple of years is some people

Ryan Conley: respond to change better and some people are less adaptable to change, shall we say. And it's not just looking at the silver lining, it's recognizing the change. Maybe there's a why, and maybe there

Ryan Conley: isn't a why, or maybe the why hasn't been clearly articulated to you.

Nick Korte: There you go.

Ryan Conley: Being able to understand what does this mean to me as an organization? Do I still believe in them? Do I still believe in, like, the technology? As a technologist, um, do I still enjoy the people I work with? Those are all questions that come up, but ultimately you have to decide of, is this a change I want to roll with. And is this change I don't want to roll with an example of a peer. He didn't like what he saw, but he wanted to continue on his career, life cycle, so to speak. He wanted to get away from being more operations centric. He wanted to try a little bit more of what some might call like site reliability, engineering, learning, some of the tooling of writing, his own APIs and kind of automating. And there was an opportunity outside the organization and he said, hey, I'm going

Ryan Conley: to take this, I'm, uh, going to go with this.

Ryan Conley: And I think that's totally.

Ryan Conley: We talked about the change of people getting promoted, people just finding something else.

Ryan Conley: And I think that's a wonderful thing to embrace.

Ryan Conley: I think it's difficult as a teammate, it's difficult as a manager to backfill

Ryan Conley: and hire, but when there is a change, I think it's an opportunity to reassess, reevaluate. Do I still want to be here, be on this team, be on this, you know, business unit, et cetera. And then there's other cases where like, yeah, I still believe in this technology. Maybe switching to a different email provider or CRM is annoying, but ultimately I know what we can focus on. I'm going to distill down what I need to focus on as an individual. I can relay that back to my team and let's make sure the culture and the overall camaraderie stays high, particularly for those who do not respond to change. Well, it's been surprising to work at a technology company. And then some people, I'm, um, talking about technologists themselves, they have to hear it three times.

Ryan Conley: And I myself, I have to do something three times. If I'm installing something, I have to do it three times. And then I know all the little gotchas in between.

Ryan Conley: And I think in some cases it's just, how do you learn? Are you a visual learner? Do you need to listen, do you need to watch, et cetera. And I think in some cases, some people don't. It's not that they don't respond or react, shall we say, it's just they take a little bit more time to process and then kind of distill that down and an attribute I've just learned about myself, I'm very fortunate I can

Ryan Conley: respond to change well, but I'm empathetic to those who take a little bit

Ryan Conley: more time or maybe need to read it, need to watch a video on it, need to hear, uh, it a

Ryan Conley: couple of times, et cetera.

Nick Korte: Most definitely. And I actually think there's a lot we can learn if we pay attention to those who leave the company. As you said, if you were close to that person, what interested them outside the company, hey, maybe that's a direction I haven't seen someone take. That gives me an idea for later on, or that sounds like it'd be something I could pursue one day. And then, all right, somebody left my team. That's a change. Sometimes that gets backfilled by a new person. Sometimes it may not. So if it does, maybe you can learn from a new team member. Uh, if it doesn't, then maybe that's your opportunity to. Though you would have to add some responsibility to your plate, most likely. Can you pick the thing that would be most valuable to you and your company as the responsibilities of those who left get divvied up?

Ryan Conley: I think that's a great example. Me personally, when I was at the hedge fund, the senior vice president left. We were a small team, but finance has their titles. In this case, the senior vice president was over backups.

Ryan Conley: Um, it was just something he enjoyed

Ryan Conley: doing personally, coming from the consulting practice before joining the hedge fund, we had just different standard operating procedures. And so when he left, it opened up an opportunity to do more. In that case, I was like, hey, I've done this before. I'm, um, by no means saying it's anyone's favorite job to look at backup reports of test fail, et cetera, but in this case, I was able to quickly identify that this is a serious problem. And what I mean by a serious problem. Yes, we were doing backups.

Ryan Conley: Yes, the SEC at the time required tape backups. And if you're in it, um, I'm sure you're chuckling now, but if you

Ryan Conley: think about the business where minutes matter

Ryan Conley: and all of a sudden we're talking about restoring from tape, which has its own risks, but also buying servers to then restore from tape. Even in a virtualized environment. All of a sudden we're not talking about minutes or hours or even days, we're actually talking about weeks. And so in this case, the hardware appliances for the backups wasn't going to be sufficient. Restoring for tapes was never going to be sufficient. And it was able to raise my hand and be like, hey, I actually know of some technologies, I know some different disaster recovery techniques that will ultimately increase the continuity of the business, and

Ryan Conley: was able to write up a business

Ryan Conley: plan, speak one on one with the

Ryan Conley: coo, and ended up being a half

Ryan Conley: million dollar check to make it happen. But all that was an opportunity that came out of seeing a problem, thinking about it, and then making the decision,

Ryan Conley: like, yes, maybe this was best.

Ryan Conley: I'm not going to say it was best at the time. Um, but someone made a decision that that was the best technology decision. I mean, this is probably 15 years ago now, but I was able to come and be like, hey, what was best may not be best today. I can absolutely tell you this. The owner of this company will not support being down for two weeks. So let's make a decision, and here's the outcome.

Ryan Conley: And so, fortunately, they never needed it, at least in my time. But being able to see a gap

Ryan Conley: and fill it, I think is the central theme. And that came from change.

Ryan Conley: You know, I could have just kept my head down. And I think it's okay if you just want to keep your head down, but for those who want to do a little bit more, I think there are rewards for sticking your neck out, even in Taipei leadership environments. I just think it's worth seeing a

Ryan Conley: gap and fill in.

Nick Korte: Change creates gaps. Will you be the person that fills them? I guess that's up to you. I like that. And I just want to say a little disclaimer here. Everybody we talked about at the beginning, there are byproducts of change. Things like layoffs flatter organizations, where you have managers who have more direct reports than maybe they had before. I, uh, want you to know we're not sidestepping the layoff train, but we're not going to 100% focus on that necessarily today. But I do want to share something with you that was shared with me by Megan Wills. When a layoff hits, it's important to remember it's extremely rare that that's going to be personal. Once it's firmly accepted, look for the opportunity in a forced career change. It's there. So if you've been impacted by a layoff or this organizational flattening has put you in a difficult spot, you're not alone. Number one, we do have the Nerd Journey Layoff Resources page where where you can find the most impactful conversations on the topics of layoffs that we've had on the show. We also have our Career Uncertainty Action Guide that details the five pillars of career resilience and some reusable AI prompts to walk through finances, managing your mindset and overwhelm, and even navigating a layoff. Now, let's get into the second section of our discussion. Ryan, when we're talking about organizational changes that impact us, what are some of the things that we can do. So if you're still at the company after some sort of period of change, let's talk through some of those scenarios and our uh, tips for taking control, taking action, and succeeding as best you can. So I want to share a thought with you from former guest Daniel Amir. Companies are the most complicated machine that man has ever built. We build great machines to accomplish a set of goals, objectives or outputs. The better you can understand the value the company delivers. Kind of like what Ryan was saying before about what was valuable to the organization as far as uptime. The faster you can understand the value a company delivers, the faster you can understand where you fit in that equation. If you don't understand where you contribute to that value, there's work to be done. That work may be on you, maybe on your skills, or perhaps it's your understanding of where you fit into that equation. Let's say that you are impacted by an organizational change and you're going to have to work for a new boss. What do you do? What can we control? How do we make a positive impact?

Ryan Conley: I think that's a good question to think about. One is who is this new boss? As a person, just as a relationship level, beyond a good working relationship, but uh, particularly as a one on one, it's someone I want to get to know and be able to ask difficult questions. I want them to be able to ask me different questions. So I think meeting face to face is important. I recognize it's very difficult if they live in another state, for example. But also I think there's a good question of what's the organization's focus. And really what I mean is what

Ryan Conley: is the mission statement?

Ryan Conley: I think far too often individuals lose sight of the larger organization's mission statement. And so if that is important to the team and the culture, I think it's worth making sure you're aligned with that. I think it's worth understanding your direct manager's alignment towards that and then having

Ryan Conley: that kind of fuel the discussions you

Ryan Conley: have of what are you expecting of me? Here are my expectations of you as my manager. Where do you see change in the next 6, 12, 18 months? Maybe you don't have that much leeway, but if you're a new manager, maybe you're inheriting a new to you team because of organizational change. I would want to meet with them 101. Just understand how can I help. That's a specific phrase that I learned from a prior manager, uh, who's also been on this show every one on one that we had, he closed with,

Ryan Conley: is there anything else I can do to help?

Ryan Conley: And if you want to be an asset to the team and ultimately drive towards the larger business goals, I think it's good to understand the mission statement, but then also just connect with the new manager one on one, on a personal level, but then also just on a, uh, working relationship level.

Ryan Conley: How can you help?

Nick Korte: Maybe they can contextualize that mission of the overall organization for you a little bit better than you can do for yourself. Maybe they have personalized it for the team. What's the mission of our team? Based on the mission of the organization? Here's what we've been tasked to do. Especially if your team's focus has changed in some way, hopefully the new manager comes in and sets that tone for you. All the things you said stood out to me as seeking to learn and understand how your manager operates. When Brad Pinkston was a guest on the show, one of the things he said about new managers was he wanted to first find out how they like to communicate. Are they a phone person? Do they prefer email, text, instant messenger? It's good to know that a. I'm,

Ryan Conley: um, smiling because I haven't talked to Brad in a very long time, but I always enjoy talking to him.

Ryan Conley: But it brings up a really strong point.

Ryan Conley: Not just communication, but how do they prefer to communicate.

Ryan Conley: And that almost is imparting an expectation. They might be really brief in text, for example, and just them communicating. Hey, I'm in a lot of meetings, so if I text you, if it's just a simple yes or no, it's not that I'm short short with you,

Ryan Conley: it's just I'm, I'm multitasking or I'm, um, very brief in my responses. I remember there was, uh, an executive at our former employer who would have simple emails and it would just be wire in for sometimes these very lengthy

Ryan Conley: like, hey, can we do this?

Ryan Conley: And he'd be like, why? And that was just his method of communication. So I think there's some really sound advice there and I think you can

Nick Korte: also do some research. You go look at their LinkedIn, what's their background. That's a good way to do some research. You could talk to other people you work with inside the company and see what they know about this person. It's probably not a bad idea to talk to some folks who have worked for that manager to get a perspective. They might be able to provide some of the context you just shared. Hey, this person may give you a short response or they may call and say they need something quickly and it may not be a long conversation. It doesn't mean they're mad at you, it just means that they're busy and they need something. And if you don't know them really well, you might not know this or how they like to run one on ones that maybe this person had to figure out and they're giving you the cheat code.

Ryan Conley: I think it's good to put yourself in their shoes too. You're reminding me that with organizational change, maybe some orgs have been flattened, maybe

Ryan Conley: they're now a manager and maybe they used to have three managers below them and now they have three former managers who are now ICs and you know, it can be a 15 to 1.

Ryan Conley: So their time might be stretched thinner and they're just trying to navigate this new leadership organizational change with you.

Nick Korte: Yeah. And I mean, how is your boss measured?

Ryan Conley: Yes.

Nick Korte: How are they measured by their boss? And how can you help them hit those metrics? I don't know that you would necessarily come out of the gate with asking about those in the first one on one. I think it would be good to ask those questions.

Ryan Conley: I think that's a key item, is

Ryan Conley: like, hey, what would success look like for you? You're inheriting this team. Or maybe their patch has grown, so

Ryan Conley: to speak, or they went from having

Ryan Conley: five, six, seven direct reports, now they have 15. Maybe they wanted this, maybe they didn't want this. And it's just as silly as it sounds, just asking dumb questions, whether it be how can I help? Or also like, how do you see

Ryan Conley: success for the team in a year? What will it take to get there? And maybe it means we have less one on ones, but the one on ones we have are more in depth. You're more independent than you want, or maybe it means you have a little bit more responsibility, but ultimately you're helping the team be more successful.

Nick Korte: A hundred percent. You want your boss to know that you're a competent member of the team. So knowing these things about what success looks like gives you the ability to communicate and let them know you're doing a good job. Right. Some of the one on one will be sharing some of the work that you're doing and the things that you've completed. Not all of it necessarily, but there will be some communication that is going to touch on how are you doing with the uh, with the work, meeting deadlines being excellent at what you do. And a good book recommendation again from Daniel lemire. The First 90 Days by Michael Watson. It is actually an excellent read for new leaders. I recommended it to someone I met the other day who was taking on a higher level leadership role, but also gives you some pretty good perspective, even if you're an individual contributor. I thought it was good.

Ryan Conley: I have not read that, but I'll add it to the list.

Ryan Conley: I think 90 days is a good

Ryan Conley: frame of mind too.

Ryan Conley: And what I mean by that is if you're working for someone new and

Ryan Conley: something that was taught to me, so

Ryan Conley: I'm going to try and share it

Ryan Conley: now, is to keep track on a

Ryan Conley: yearly basis, keep track of your wins and have a journal. And you need to start in January

Ryan Conley: if reviews are in October.

Ryan Conley: So you need to have a frame of mind walking in and you create your journal and it's very important.

Ryan Conley: This is also impressed upon me by another peer of ours, an oop, which is like keep track of the metrics.

Ryan Conley: So it's not only that you did

Ryan Conley: it, but what were the outcomes? So you did it and what did that deliver?

Ryan Conley: We're going to circle back to culture for a moment, but the organizational culture is going to be different within uh, I know of one employer where they're

Ryan Conley: very big on I, I did this, I did this, I did this. And then it led to X, Y, Z. That is not personally my, my style internally as an individual. And I was happy that the companies I've worked with have not been as focused. There's definitely been use cases where I

Ryan Conley: needed to be explicitly, but I grade

Ryan Conley: myself from a success and particularly from an outcomes. I didn't want to be the only person who could do it. I'd rather learn it and then enable five other people to do it and then those five people go do it and then that is a much bigger outcome.

Ryan Conley: Keep in mind, just have a journal. What did you do? You can call it your kicking butt folder, so to speak, but just have it somewhere. It could be a screenshot, it could be a journal. I did this and these 50 leads came out of it. I did this and then there was 50 people in the room. What are the metrics that you should be tracking? And mentally think about that because come October, when you have your annual review,

Ryan Conley: you're going to miss something, you're going

Ryan Conley: to miss a detail, you're going to miss an entire line item versus if you started in January and you just get into the practice of I did this. And then when you're having your first annual review with this brand new manager, it's far easier to have a more Successful conversation. We're going to go back to AI real quickly. Highly encourage you. Mark Cuban did an interview recently, um,

Ryan Conley: that just impressed upon me as like,

Ryan Conley: OpenAI is definitely a leader for personal use. And then Anthropic and Gemini have like

Ryan Conley: great numbers for business use cases with coding and life science and mathematics.

Ryan Conley: The point is, do both. So if you're prepping for an interview, you're prepping for an annual review, you have your journal, put it into one and then put it into another and cross reference the two. So have someone check your work.

Ryan Conley: And this is coming from someone whose mother was an English teacher.

Nick Korte: There you go. I would also say don't just document, but document and keep a copy so that if you do get impacted by some kind of change, you have your documented accomplishments and don't have to rewrite them. Because if they're sitting in your OneDrive Google Drive Cloud storage that you just got your access cut from.

Narrator: Oops.

Ryan Conley: Oh, we're back to having a disaster recovery conversation. I love it.

Nick Korte: It's just something that I've thought about as things have happened. The new boss is probably going to have team calls of some kind. I don't know that it necessarily goes this way everywhere, but the way I've seen it go is when a new manager takes over, usually there's some sort of team call before the one on one start so that the leader can introduce themselves and give an idea of what they want for the team, a little bit about how they operate, maybe something about how they do one on ones. And my advice would be listen really carefully when this happens and maybe you can write down some really good questions to follow up on the information you hear on this first team call and use that in your first one on one to get the conversation going. Now, I think a good manager will probably have to lead that conversation with the new team that they're taking over when they start to do one on ones, because it's not going to be as familiar for you if it's a new boss, but there's nothing wrong with having that list. In fact, that's probably going to be way easier than trying to think of stuff on the spot.

Ryan Conley: Yeah, the kickoff call, what does it look like? How do they operate?

Ryan Conley: What did they expect? So I think that's good, particularly if

Ryan Conley: there's questions that aren't answered. There's some simple ones like how do

Ryan Conley: you want to handle time off? Do you have a shared team calendar? And we all just put it in there. Is this a, uh, formal request process? Having had unlimited PTO for 11 years, it's very different both in my frame of mind.

Ryan Conley: Also, how do they want to handle that conversation? Is it carte blanche?

Ryan Conley: Um, in some cases, a, ah, prior manager is like, hey, this week of this quarter, every year, go for it. But this other week and this other

Ryan Conley: quarter, everyone wants that week and it's a really busy week for us, so we have to talk about it.

Ryan Conley: So it's just the simple stuff I think is worth having the conversation early.

Ryan Conley: Um, particularly how do they operate? What are their values?

Ryan Conley: I think another good one I learned far too late is how do they handle promotion, raise, just career growth and general conversations. I've had one manager in particular, and he would set a quarterly checkpoint, but the expectation is I did the agenda. If there was no agenda, we just had a quick chat. If I made the agenda, he came ready to talk about each agenda point.

Ryan Conley: So ask that question if that's something you want.

Ryan Conley: Hey, I'd like to have an annual

Ryan Conley: or twice, uh, a year or quarterly career conversation.

Ryan Conley: I think it's okay to ask.

Ryan Conley: Maybe they're too busy.

Ryan Conley: If they have, you know, 15 direct reports and then you just do a different cadence.

Ryan Conley: But how do they want you to come prepared so that they know and they come prepared.

Nick Korte: Oh, I like that. Yeah. Especially taking ownership of the agenda. I had a manager who in the. The calendar invites for the one on ones he sent in the body of the calendar invite. He put, this is a time to talk about any of these things, problems you're having, career stuff. You know, he, he had a list of like five to 10 things so

Ryan Conley: that it gave you.

Nick Korte: Oh, okay, here are the areas that we should talk about when we have these calls. And, and I like that it sets the tone for you and helps you see, okay, this is what I'm supposed to do. And it's a, uh, collaborative conversation. And to your point, if you want to have a career conversation, you can ask for that. Or maybe you are able to take a specific one on one if the manager's really busy and use it for that thing. I heard a really good idea on the Unicorns in the Break Room podcast recently with Amy Lewis and Saravella. Amy was talking about this idea of a shared document between you and your manager where you might write down some questions or notes from the discussions to just keep each other accountable for you as the individual contributor bringing something for, for the agenda. Can't say I've implemented it, but, uh, I like that idea.

Ryan Conley: I like it if it's Something long, long lived I think on a more little bit of a sidestep. But if you think about a new manager, they're coming in I think going back to how can I help being hungry. An easy example is how do you want to manage team calls when you're on vacation? Mhm.

Narrator: Yeah.

Ryan Conley: Do we cancel them or do you want to have someone lead it? And I think that's an opportunity if you're looking to do more. I myself was able to work up to a team lead at one point. That was part of my responsibilities when

Ryan Conley: the manager was on pto it was my job to lead the team calls. I did the notes, I did all the meeting minutes, follow ups. It's just an example of if you see a gap and you want to fill it, maybe you want to lean in, maybe you want to try learning some experience that uh, like a leadership role would be in charge of.

Ryan Conley: That's an opportunity to step up.

Nick Korte: Yeah, I think that's great. I think another thing you should ask the new boss about pretty quick is if you have anything that's time sensitive like you are supposed to complete this project, it has a drop dead deadline and there's a financial impact to the company like automatically renew this subscription for this thing and maybe they don't know about it, you should probably tell them or if we don't get out of this data center in time then our lease is up and we're going to lose access. That kind of stuff.

Narrator: Yeah.

Ryan Conley: I'm reminded of just a personal like

Ryan Conley: it story is the CFO was like hey can you.

Ryan Conley: I want to say it was add like 15 or 20 people to our exchange server like it was something trivial like that. But because we were already at the top end I was like hey I this isn't uh, just a licensing challenge. This actually means procuring hardware to support this and load balancers and as responsive then as I wasn't as clear as I needed to be but it was just all of a sudden it was like hey, we're on a small vsphere license.

Ryan Conley: Like this is going to kick us

Ryan Conley: up in more ways than one. But just being able to clearly articulate

Ryan Conley: this is a simple ask. You want the answer to be yes, but I'm going to give you more

Ryan Conley: context into why there is a deadline. I want to make sure we hit it as a team. But there's some implications to your ask. I want to make sure you're fully

Nick Korte: aware and maybe you have three or four different things in flight with a specific stack rank Priority, you might need to ask if the priorities change because the leadership has changed. And if you need to provide more context, as you said, then definitely do that to help them understand what's going on and what's in flight. So that was things focused on a new boss and working with a new boss, but you might actually become part of a different team. When you're on a team, you generally work with a bunch of different people, sometimes under the same manager, sometimes not. Let's assume that we're talking about a team of peers who work for the same boss. Maybe an organizational change changes the team you work for. So you work with a different set of peers now. Maybe some of the same, maybe some that aren't the same. What do you do then?

Ryan Conley: I think it's a good question.

Ryan Conley: Having lived through it, I can smile a little bit because you and I

Ryan Conley: go back where there was a very large reorganization. And with that we found ourselves going

Ryan Conley: from one division, so to speak, landing in a new division, same geographical context

Ryan Conley: of like us for you, central, um, Iowa's west. But all of a sudden it was a new organization, so to speak.

Ryan Conley: And I think the takeaway for me, or kind of a little bit of the tough lesson, as you go into

Ryan Conley: a bigger pond and you had your

Ryan Conley: Rolodex in a small pond and you knew who to. Who was in the zoo, so to speak, or who was in the pond, I think it's okay to take a moment and pause. For me, I had to kind of reassess and kind of figure out, okay, what are these changes? What, what are the new best ways to operate within this new division, so to speak. Mhm. And just working through a whole new set of teams, had a new leader,

Ryan Conley: had a new, in my case, um,

Ryan Conley: peer that I was directly assigned to. And then I think in my entire

Ryan Conley: team at that point, it was new

Ryan Conley: leadership structure, new peer that I was directly paired with and within my team.

Ryan Conley: No one on my prior team was on my team. So it was like this whole new world. Me being a technologist, I'm motivated by technology. And so when there was an opportunity to go deeper into tech, I ultimately took a different role, but notably had

Ryan Conley: a new manager like we were just talking about.

Ryan Conley: I think he was a very good leader. Clinton, if you're listening. And he fought for me and he was very supportive of my next step

Ryan Conley: and took care of me the whole

Ryan Conley: way from a sponsorship standpoint to help with the transition.

Ryan Conley: So if you do good work even

Ryan Conley: through change, if, again, if you're identifying Gaps, you're filling it. You're stepping up where the team needs you to step up. You're aligning with the business direction to stay focused. I think there can still be good outcomes. Even if the interim, um, period, you're not a hundred percent happy.

Nick Korte: Yeah. And if you are the stranger in the new land and you don't know anyone else on your team, you just gained a whole bunch of people that you can learn things from. And because you join this new team, whether by choice or by organizational change, does your job function or overall role change? Are you focusing on different things? Like you said, bigger customers, bigger projects? Maybe I'm just focused on the technology projects of this one business unit inside my company, rather than the corporate financial systems and other things we would put into corporate it. For example, it's a different division. Or maybe you are now focused on storage and architecture and you were focused on maybe just virtualization before. So you have to learn some new things, go deeper in different areas. Make sure you understand that as part of this new team, hopefully you will be told the delineation between different members of the team and what they're supposed to be doing. As we talked about, did the function of the overall team change? You know, are you part of a technology team that really primarily manages the outsourced pieces of the technology stack for your company? So you're working with consulting firm X and vendor Y to make sure everything gets done instead of maybe just internal people.

Ryan Conley: And you mentioned this in preparation too, which is being intentional, particularly with relationships.

Ryan Conley: My journey was I was trying to get onto a new team intentionally.

Ryan Conley: There's a funny story behind it, but someone had tried to hire me, and I was just very loyal to my leadership. And I said, no, I'm going to stay here. And then post reorg, I was, I

Ryan Conley: was ready to make that change. They were a leader that I respected and I wanted to go work for and effectively helped his team for six

Ryan Conley: months while someone was on paternity leave. And then the wreck just didn't happen. It wasn't within their control.

Ryan Conley: It was a larger M and A that happened.

Ryan Conley: And they were very transparent. They communicated with me. They said, hey, if you want to

Ryan Conley: move Seattle, I got you.

Ryan Conley: If you want to stay where you're

Ryan Conley: at, I don't know.

Ryan Conley: But if you're patient, you're right there.

Ryan Conley: And I think the nice thing about that is the transparency, the communication as

Ryan Conley: we talked about, and just keep your head down and do your job. And I think that's easier said than done. Particularly when you're in a difficult position, whether it be a manager that you don't get along with, maybe there's a strategy shift top level, and you're kind of sifting through it and evolving with that change.

Ryan Conley: In some cases, there's some politics involved.

Ryan Conley: I've gone through that personally at my first IT job, where I just had to do my job for six months and then found out someone was just talking trash for a long time. And when they left, suddenly everything got better. In my case, uh, the opportunity did come around, but they weren't a believer. They didn't know me. You're rarely praised for being overly humble, shall I say? But in my case, they weren't impressed with the first round interview. They said, no, thanks, and I didn't get any feedback. And then he actually advocated for me with the hiring manager.

Ryan Conley: He said, call him again.

Ryan Conley: Ask him any technical question you want. And if he doesn't pass, he doesn't pass. But he's too humble. So I think there's two lessons. There is have good relationships, and those

Ryan Conley: are intentional, as you said. It's an ongoing effort. It's not just checking in once a year, so to speak, or when you change teams, just keeping that communication alive.

Ryan Conley: But I think there's also, there's a time to be humble. And then when you're interviewing, um, which I'm very empathetic to those who are interviewing right now, it's a difficult landscape. Um, maybe be a little bit more vocal. Pat yourself on the back in a concise way again, go back to your journal, know your metrics and stick by them.

Nick Korte: And to your point about building relationships and the intentionality, this goes of course, to the boss, new boss, or existing boss, but also to those new teammates. If you're working with a new team, build those relationships. What are the strengths? What, what can you learn? Who's somebody who is always volunteering to help? Who's somebody who asks really good questions when somebody won't?

Ryan Conley: And I think there's a good takeaway.

Ryan Conley: Um, there's like the classic Italian table scene with the two parents. Uh, as an American from Tennessee, we

Ryan Conley: would say they're yelling at each other, But I think it's overlooked at, uh, two peers that I worked with, and one's no longer here. And I can tell the other one misses it's not combative discussions, but misses someone advocating for the other side. Not because they want to dig in, but because they walk away smarter.

Ryan Conley: When someone challenges them, and they either

Ryan Conley: walk away smarter because they learned Something from the other person or they gain

Ryan Conley: more confidence that, okay, this is correct, yes, there's a gap here. Or actually, I was completely wrong. I learned something new or.

Ryan Conley: So you're either like confirmed in your position or you walk away with a new position. And so it's kind of a net net win.

Ryan Conley: But I think it's worth, like having

Ryan Conley: like, who on the team think a certain way. Maybe they're a Type A, maybe they're not. What kind of questions do they ask in these team calls? Or far too often, who's just the

Ryan Conley: loudmouth who does all the talking?

Ryan Conley: And as, uh, someone who wants to

Ryan Conley: uplevel the peer next to you who

Ryan Conley: may be more quiet, they're still super

Ryan Conley: sharp, but they're just not as outspoken. Can you pass them the mic from the other person?

Nick Korte: Yeah, I like that. Up leveling other people. And maybe there's a chance to do that very thing on the new team, as you said. But also maybe you can uplevel some former teammates that have just gone to other teams by keeping in touch with them and keeping up to date on what are they working on, how are they doing and keeping those connections strong inside your company or even if they move to a different company.

Ryan Conley: I actually really like that. As an example, like when I first

Ryan Conley: joined this, this ride that I've been on the last 11 years, I was

Ryan Conley: coming from classic IT background windows and Cisco and Microsoft Exchange and early days of just going from vsphere to NSX and beyond. And there was a lot of lessons to be learned, technology that I had never touched. But it's very different being face to face as a consultant, face to face as a vendor. And I had a buddy. He started going back 11 years, uh, almost to the day here. And we were each other's lifeline. And what I mean is he would have a bad day and he would call me and most of the time I was just there to listen. And then other times he's like, hey, what are you seeing on this? Because I have no idea. I've never seen this before. I've never been asked this question before. And then the next week it was my turn, I would call him and I'd be like, hey, this is what's going on. This is too much. I can't learn all this. And so having a buddy in these change situations, like you said, I think is a great piece of advice.

Nick Korte: It's a little bit harder to keep in touch with when you're not interacting with those people every day like you once were. It's very easy to fall out of touch. So it definitely takes effort. I've talked to people who try to set up a one on one with somebody in their professional network once a week, maybe once every couple weeks. Not a bad goal.

Ryan Conley: Well, credit to you. I try to be pretty good. I feel like you've been better reaching

Ryan Conley: out to me than I have to you, so thank you.

Ryan Conley: I also have just an enormous amount of empathy for everyone who's had a child.

Ryan Conley: Cause I'm going on 13 or 14

Ryan Conley: months and I have no idea how

Ryan Conley: anyone ever spent time with me when they had a small child.

Ryan Conley: So I've learned a whole new set of empathy for, for new parents. If you have one on your team, buy them a coffee because they are, they're working hard.

Ryan Conley: I'm getting terrible in my, my view at communicating, but it does take me longer to respond. So more empathy, more patience.

Nick Korte: But it's good though as you, as you buddy up with people, people who have maybe life experience and professional experience where you might need guidance or vice versa to level someone up or you level yourself up by pairing up with someone else.

Ryan Conley: I think relationships are important, particularly as you build out your alumni network, staying close to the people that you really enjoy staying close to. But then also if you want to do mentorship, I think in many cases it's far less work than you think it is. Sometimes it's you just meet with them a couple times and that's all they needed. They just had a situation they were going through, maybe they were applying for a new role. Other cases, it could be a workshop and you're meeting with the one to many. Uh, which has been my case for five or six years. I had an opportunity to really, I say educate, but really just kind of establish relationships with fresh out of college grads. But I'll tell you, it's been so inspiring to see what they've done over the last five, six years. You know, one went from top of their team to being promoted, top of the next team, being promoted to manager, being promoted to senior manager in rapid succession. Another made, you know, staff, which was very difficult. And um, probably one of the quickest that I've seen.

Ryan Conley: Others have gone on, yeah, they've left

Ryan Conley: the company and now they're doing success in new organizations. So I think those relationships are fun

Ryan Conley: from a long term. Kind of like you keep up with them, um, just be like, hey, you're crushing it. So proud of you. And I think that's a nice measurement of your, of your ripple effect. Within your organization as well.

Ryan Conley: Not to pat your own back, but

Ryan Conley: just to give back and just see the fruits of those impacts.

Nick Korte: You can mentor people on your team. If there's a gap there and people need mentorship, you can certainly do it well beyond just as you said. But I think it's also important to understand when we're talking about new bosses, is the active mentoring something that is valuable to highlight for your eventual promotion? Maybe you want to be a team lead eventually. Maybe you want to be a, uh, people leader eventually. Can you bring that up to your boss as you have those career conversations of how you're building those skills already in your mentorship conversations?

Narrator: I agree.

Ryan Conley: That's a good point to call out. So, like in the one on ones A, you're asking like, hey, how am I doing holistically?

Ryan Conley: But also, what can I do better? A prior leader taught me it's like, do this more.

Ryan Conley: So keep doing what you're doing.

Ryan Conley: But here's your gaps. You need to start doing this. And that journal is a good example of you're taking specific notes of, this is what I did, and this was

Ryan Conley: the outcome of what I did.

Ryan Conley: And then with these career, uh, discussions, it's the same thing. Specific notes of, uh, this is what I'm doing. These are the outcomes. These could be specific metrics that are relevant to your individual job performance as well as your ultimate team performance. But also, what should you be doing more? And then how are you going to track that you're doing it the way that your direct manager is asking you to. And mentorship could be one.

Ryan Conley: Some easy examples are help me with hiring. Interviews are very time intensive.

Ryan Conley: So maybe it's writing a grading scale, maybe it's writing the interview questions so that they're consistent, you know, other ways, you know, how can you help?

Nick Korte: We kind of already talked about this a little bit about finding gaps. There may be a gap on your team and an expertise you have that can fill that gap. Or maybe you want to be the person who skills up to fill that gap for the team to widen your impact. But I think you also want to do some observing before you declare that there is a gap, especially when joining a new team, because you might find that somebody else already has that skill and they may be way better at it. So just do some observation before you go and try fill. Fill the gap. Yeah, stay humble.

Ryan Conley: But it's a good discussion. I think I agree with the raising the question of your manager. Like, hey, we have one person and they're a rock Star. But what if they leave?

Ryan Conley: Or can I pair with them so

Ryan Conley: that when they're on vacation that they can actually enjoy their vacation? I think it goes back to recognizing

Ryan Conley: and cannot learn at all and then reevaluating what do I need to learn. So there's certain functions that you have to know how to do and that's where your manager is going to help you set those expectations.

Ryan Conley: But also we're in technology. So as a technologist, what do you want to learn? So what do you want to do more of? And that could be a gap that

Ryan Conley: you see and you have that conversation and hopefully your manager's like, yeah.

Ryan Conley: And if they don't then that's a whole nother topic of like, okay, well do your job, keep learning this in your side time and hopefully there's an

Ryan Conley: opportunity that comes up. And if not then you can reevaluate long term.

Nick Korte: Absolutely. Other situations you could potentially find yourself in. We talked about this a little bit. Moving to a different role. Maybe you stay individual contributor, maybe you move up into leadership, maybe you move down from a high level leader to a individual uh, contributor or a lower level leader.

Ryan Conley: Well I think when you change your daily role, for example, like you and I, we came from being highly technical, internal it to then being intervendor facing. There's changes that come with that, there's expectations you put on yourself to succeed, there's new expectations that are being communicated to you. There's also opportunities or challenges, uh, in both cases. So whether you're going from being a manager and there's an org change to individual contributor, but really from my personal journey is I've been approached with opportunities to lead a team ah a couple times and not the humble bag, but really each time I've assessed what I wanted. So going back to my career ladder, going back, what motivates me, what do I want to focus on? And ultimately leading people is not something that I want to currently focus on. I know what I'm motivated by.

Ryan Conley: I'm a technologist at ah, heart. I want to keep learning and I personally like the technology that I'm focused on right now.

Ryan Conley: And it's not that leadership would necessarily remove technology entirely and remove the technology education. It's just it would be a different focus area. And I think in your kind of career journey it's worth just keeping tabs on where you're at in your career.

Ryan Conley: Uh, the ladder change that we keep

Ryan Conley: mentioning that life cycle of do you want to go up the ladder as part of your life cycle and get into a management role. I think mentorship can be very fulfilling. I think leading people can be very fulfilling. But in my case, I've decided I still want to stay an individual, individual contributor. There's still aspirations that I have there and so I'm going to keep doing that. It's okay to say no is really what I'm getting at. I've been approached a couple times, I've said no. And maybe even saying no to like uh, a non management position. Maybe it's a different role entirely. Like maybe it's in technical marketing, for example.

Ryan Conley: I've uh, I've had some peers who've changed and they've been very successful on that. I was approached and ultimately I said I know what I'm good at, I know what I'm not good at. I'm not good at writing, having never really blogged under a deadline. And that's just something that I don't think I'm going to do well at. So I'm going to say no.

Ryan Conley: But also I was motivated by this pursuit. I had a goal and that pursuit was to get through the principal program

Ryan Conley: and I didn't want to detract from that goal.

Ryan Conley: So in summary, it's okay to say no. Trust your gut, not to stick your finger in the air and just blindly follow it, but really think about the job that you're in, the company that you're in, what are the opportunities within, what motivates you and stay true to that. And there could be a really great opportunity. It might have just a very flashy title, maybe it comes with more pay, but are you going to be happy in a year, two years from now? And I think it's okay to say no. And in other cases it could be a really exciting opportunity. Friend of mine who was just promoted, I uh, owe them a text right now and I think it's really exciting when those opportunities come as well.

Nick Korte: I like everything you just said. Uh, I'll play the other side of the coin. Everything you just said was if given the choice right, that's the condition we put on it. I think you can recognize where you are in the career life cycle and be hit with this organizational change and not be given a choice, just told you're going to do this thing, so find out what the thing is and how can you align it with where you are in the career cycle, with the goals you have with the things you want. I, uh, had someone say that we should seek to align our greater purpose, life purpose to the role or assignment we're in, and that in doing that, it'll be easier to not intertwine your identity with the job you're in today or tomorrow. As tightly as maybe it might be

Ryan Conley: if you hadn't done that.

Nick Korte: My thought is you could be, you could have something forced upon you that wasn't your decision. And like you said before, you may have to put your head down and just do it for a little while and get through it. But maybe there is some sort of opportunity, some way to align it with the things that you want, the type of work you like to do, that you can't see when it's first presented to you until you actually do it. So viewing the change as an opportunity, even if you can't see the opportunity when the change is forced upon you, I think is what I'm saying. Uh, it's the kind of market where, hey, if you have a job, be thankful you have a job and do a good job.

Ryan Conley: I think that's actually very sage advice, Nick.

Ryan Conley: Good wisdom to chew, process, share.

Ryan Conley: I agree.

Nick Korte: And it's not meant to come from a place of entitlement or anything like that. It's a, uh, place of gratitude. And look at the bright side, what

Ryan Conley: goes back to with, with challenge comes opportunity. And I hope listeners can think about some examples where something changed that was

Ryan Conley: unexpected, but six 12 months later, that change led to new opportunities. So I think it's good. Pause, recollect.

Ryan Conley: Align your focus with your new manager. Align your focus with either the changing mission statement or the current mission statement. But you also said something that I think is, you know, the sage part is what is fulfilling you personally like your own internal values. And if they're being conflicted, then I think there's a greater answer to some of your challenges. But if they're not being conflicted, how can you be your best self in a company without the company being all of yourself?

Ryan Conley: And I think as someone who's been doing this a while, it's definitely, uh, the cultural identity of the workplace and the home can sometimes be a little

Ryan Conley: too close and a little too entertain intertwined. And maybe that's just a natural byproduct of being very close relationship with the people you work with. Or maybe you're just way too invested emotionally in your day job and it's just a good moment to reset. So I think there's some sage advice in there of what is your value system, why? And then how can you be your

Ryan Conley: best self in your workplace? And I think far too often we want to have our dream job. But I've had friends who are very

Ryan Conley: passionate about cars and they've been in the racing industry. But a great quote from a good friend is a dream job is still a job. There are going to be days where it is just a really difficult day because it's a really difficult job. It's still your dream job. But every job is going to have a difficult day.

Nick Korte: It absolutely is. And every job is going to be impacted by some kind of organizational change multiple times throughout your career. If you really need help decoupling your identity from the job you're in, organizational changes coming to help you with that in some form or fashion at some point in your career, I think that pretty much covers it. Ryan, anything else you want to add before we close it out?

Ryan Conley: Just to end on a funny story as we're talking about organizational change, and once upon a time I was on a team and we were remotely, uh, distributed. And in this case, there's someone who was on my team for like over a year. And we would have these events where we get together. Despite working with this individual for like two years, we never actually met. I met everyone else on the team and so it was just becomes a joke.

Ryan Conley: So I think it's, it's funny to

Ryan Conley: recognize that we have people who are remote and they had come through reorg, they landed on the team. I worked with him for like 18 months. We would have events where we were in the same physical space, but he was never there.

Ryan Conley: And it's because he kept the relationships

Ryan Conley: better with his old team than with his new team.

Ryan Conley: So I just think it's a funny joke that we carry forward today. Maybe the lesson there is lean into your new team while also staying connected with your old team. But just look for the, for the

Ryan Conley: fun jokes when you can have them.

Nick Korte: And if you're somebody who's out there looking for a role, hopefully we gave you some things to think about as you onboard to that new role, or maybe even to ask as part of the interview process. Maybe you can take something that we've talked about here. How often are, uh, reorgs happening at the place where you're applying? Yeah.

Ryan Conley: And if you've recently been impacted, I think it's worth taking, uh, a moment

Ryan Conley: to reflect where you're at and understand that this was not personal. There's just so much happening in the larger ecosystem today. I think if you haven't been impacted,

Ryan Conley: you have a bigger role to play. Leading with empathy. You collectively have a large Rolodex I

Ryan Conley: have some people I need to reach

Ryan Conley: out to after this. And just again, how can you help?

Ryan Conley: Um, if you know someone shared network who's now at another company, they had a similar role. You've seen a job, I call them job alerts that I share on LinkedIn. Just trying to make those dots just because it is so difficult to now.

Ryan Conley: I think it's been great to see these alumni groups form for different organizations on LinkedIn, things like that. So leverage your Rolodex and just help people connect the dots. Leading with empathy.

Nick Korte: Well, listen, Ryan Conley, I want to say major thank you to having this discussion with me. Where can people find you if they want to follow up on this discussion?

Ryan Conley: Thank you for having me. I feel humbled to be here.

Ryan Conley: I would say I'm on LinkedIn these days. I hop on every so often. So find me on there. Just, uh. Ryanconley. I guess so.

Nick Korte: Good luck, everybody. Navigating those changes because they are coming at an organization near you. SA.

John White: M.

Nick Korte: I just want to take a second to give a special shout out to Daniel Amir, a former guest on

Narrator: our show, and Megan Wills for taking the time to send us some thoughts on organizational change that we could include as part of our discussion. Those are both great additions and we really appreciate it. You heard Ryan during the end of that discussion. Lead with empathy. How can we lead with empathy when we're trying to help people who are looking for jobs? Ryan talks about posting job openings on LinkedIn. That's a great way to do it, whether you're talking about someone in your immediate professional network or your extended professional network. I think we're also leading with empathy when we ask people how we can help. Whether you're asking a new boss, whether you're asking a new teammate, or just someone you're working with in that moment, I think that's empathy at work. If you're someone who's looking to build more empathy and bring that to the workplace, go back and listen to episode 278 with our guest, Marnie Coffey. Because her greatest skill is empathy. Definitely some great nuggets to learn from there.

Nick Korte: I tried to put together a list

Narrator: of recommended episodes that might give you more perspective from our guests on organizational

Nick Korte: change, if that's what you're looking for.

Narrator: In episode 210, Shalvi Vauclu tells us about an organizational change that found her in a completely different role. That change actually ended up being quite the opportunity for her as time moved on. Even if it didn't seem like that at the moment. Episode 168, Hired and Acquired with Mike Wood. He tells the story of his company getting acquired and the focus of his job changing considerably, where the amount of travel was just way more than he wanted. And then in episode 169, the episode that follows that with Mike Wood, he talks about a different acquisition that left him deciding to take a sabbatical. And then episode 84 with Brad Pinkston, he talks about adjusting to a new manager and some of the things that he likes to do when he starts working for a new manager I hope you enjoyed this discussion with Ryan. I've probably said this before on the show, but some of my favorite discussions are those focused on the principal title and principal engineers. Ryan said it at the beginning. He is a global field principal and in my mind he has the heart of a principal engineer. So I hope this discussion was helpful to you and I hope that navigating those organizational changes can get easier for you, even if they're not your choice.

John White: Farewell listeners. Tune in next time as the journey continues. I'm John White at BE Journeyman for Nick Kordy, Network Nerd signing off.

Nick Korte: Adios.

John White: Mhm.