Larkland Morley’s Professional Blog

This inspiration for this blog post came out of seeing so many good talent getting stifled at the mid-senior technical levels and such bad experience with poor management.

What I can say for myself, is that I have been very attracted to technology to the point where I have made lateral moves in my career which leaves my at level thats less than what my experience could justify. Today, I will use the framework SFIA (Skills For the Information Age) guidelines on general levels of responsibilities in any organization to explain my points.

In SFIA, you have 7 basic levels and each level has its own attribute. For example each would have: Autonomy, Influence, Complexity and Business skills for that level.

The general levels are as follows:

1. Follow

2. Assist

3. Apply

4. Enable

5. Ensure, Advise

6. Initiate, Influence

7.  Set Strategy, Envision

Notice this approach is not about specific knowledge at each level, even thought that is a critical part of the overall competency framework. It does focus on how the knowledge is applied in each case regardless of your job family whether its software development or pure project management.

In respect to accelerating your career to the next level . Here is the challenge, you may very well, have great skills for level 7 but maybe stuck at level 4-5 in your career. how do you break the deadlock?

Here are some general ideas you could explore.

1. Research the level you are after and gain as much knowledge as you can.

2. Confront your Manager to set clear deliverables and rewards to match your effort going forward. Asking for tasks that would allow you to demonstrate certain skills.  Ask for feedback.

3. Find people at the level desired and develop relationship with them in order to learn how they go about work. This could turn into a full time mentor.

4. If your current job does not have any good prospects,  start looking for another company or department.

On the personal skill side there many things you can do help your credibility on the relevant subject. Some of those I have are.

1. Start a blog to provide your opinion on the relevant topic. Link this your social networking profiles such as linkedin.com, facebook.com and many others. Also visit other blog in that market and comment on relevant postings.

2. Look for respectable training and/or certification in the relevant field. Some fields may not have certification per se, but a post-graduate course in the area could help.

3. Get proactive and talk to people on the topic in forums (online or in person). Maybe you could setup a mastermind group around the topic with like minded individuals.

4. Join online groups on the topic, then read and provide comments as appropriate on topics that is of interest to you.  This is also a great way to publicize your blog or website.

In summary, the whole idea of this post is to first find out what you want, second develop a plan to get it and third,  execute on that plan. There are lots of ways to acquire knowledge for free nowadays, but I think what you always need is guidance. In closing, the best way ever is to have a mentor in the specific area of interest.

Now, a word of caution is that some mentors will teach you short cut ways that can be good in some ways, but what you want is to really contribute value not just have a position. There are lots of people in high level positions whom do not have the qualities we discussed earlier, however wearing your moral hat, you will succeed long term even if  it takes longer to get what you really wanted.

Again, not to lose this point, get a mentor or advisor.

I have been considering a netbook for my daughter to use for her general computing needs. I did not realize that things have changed so much in this arena. I guess sleeping at the switch.

Anyway, this article has some great insights on the trends in this space. Read here.

This will be a short blog post but had to mention since I ran into this great article on one of those high flying guys that have fallen. He made the right choice and humbled himself and I am sure it will be a change for the better for him.

Humility can go with confidence actually, it does not mean you have to be cocky to be confident either. Most times it means understanding any given situation, get the facts and present your honest opinion. How many times you deal with people that presents an opinion that’s wrong which they know but will not back down? This is where humility comes in.

Here is the article again – Enjoy

Here is a great video that discusses some Social Media. Very informative.

Well, plan to discuss a lot about business on this blog, since thats the mode that I am in right now. There is a lot of information out there that’s useful and can take you to the next step. Here is one from the SBA.

I had several posting on my last few weeks at Nortel and the week after. Since my previous blog hosting got complicated. I will just do a quick update on what happen and looking to the future.

1.  I have been with Nortel exactly 10 years, in fact today would make it 10 years exactly since I started March 15, 1999.  With Vacation from my layoff date I can definitely count these days easily.

2. Early February, 2009, Nortel announce that they would discontinue the mobile WiMAX program which is where I was posted. We were all put on notice to find a job since there is very little room on the 3GPP/LTE project.

3. Consequently, Verizon, Nortel’s main customer for LTE decides they wanted to announce which vendors will build their LTE network. At this point for most employees, this was not optimistic as very unlikely a company would work with another company in bankruptcy. Eventually, the news was not good, so even the chances of getting a new job on that project was in more danger.

4.  The afternoon of February 25th, we got the expected e-mail to meet with the WiMAX director in one of the bigger rooms the next morning. At that point, it was clear that things are basically done from my side at Nortel. Fortunately, with the usual pretending from management that they had a selection process, I could tell it was not working out for me so I had taken home all of my valuable items and clean my desk.

5. February 26, was finally my last day at Nortel.  Based on the Bankrutpcy decisions that Nortel made. There would be no severance and your notice day is your last day totally. At the end of that day you are deleted from Nortel. Incidentally, I was leaving at about 3:30 or so to get home. I went to the main building to catch the bus home.  Missed the first bus so I had to wait for the next one and I wanted to use the rest room but I did not have a badge anymore, so I ask the security to let me walk up to the rest room. He claimed I could not be allowed except with an escort. Of course, it was sad for a company you work with for 10 years, but you know I am bigger than that.

Summary

Its about 2 weeks now since I leave Nortel, and while there is the threat of economic challenge of no severance, a small Employment Insurance payment, I feel so relieved actually. I have accumulated very good skills in life and do believe that I will do well and much better than I was doing there.

The interesting thing is that the bad news continues for Nortel and instead of trying to renew management to re-build the company, they are fighting to pay bonuses to the same people that brought it down. It seem we are living in an era of real greed and selfishness. Its not just Nortel, you can see the behaviors on Wall Street which is why the world economy is not doing well.

I have to reflect and say that this is the point where one has to look forward to the messiah as we are going through a period of real rapid ethical and moral decay. Only the messiah will have the credibility to lead this world and restore some sense of love in society.

My prediction which is unfortunate is that Nortel will not come to much actually.  I am hoping that the remaining employees will get some relief with a take over or something but the indications for the company is not looking very good.

I will still be a Nortel person in spirit as I really do not plan to work for anyone for 10 years again. The focus will be building a business and moving into a more independent approach to life with a plan of course.

More interesting post will be coming very soon…

Traditional thinking would have us think that having a job working for someone is the basic essential of life itself. As we have seen in the last few years this model is changing rapidly especially in North America. Don’t get me wrong, you can work for someone and enjoy life to the fullest but there are ways to approach that scenario to make it more fulfilling too.

There are several ways to have a business. One way is to invest such as buying stock or a little more active such as participate in the strategy and significant part of the funding. The other option is to actively run a business and this can have different models to consider. Case in point is that you could be the Chairman making major strategy decisions while getting others to execute or it could be the case where you are a one man show.

In the investor type business approach, you could keep your regular job for the fun of it or you could now do some other activities while your investment continues to grow with the company.

I am planning to provide as much research as I can on the business building side of things and I have developed a new blog to cover most of this called the Business Start-up Guide Blog.

It could be much easier to start a business than you may think. For example if you are a technical professional, you could incorporate a company for $220 or more then seek technical contracts in the company name (lots of tax advantages). As things grow you could get others to help under contract while you look at more long term strategies. I will cover some of these scenarios in the blog.

One of the most sticky point is financing. I have a cool idea of how to get very good financing for your business through your company. Can’t wait to share that and I am testing it out as we speak.

Until next time…

Well, I have been getting some issues with WordPress lately in regards to their policy with links. I decided to host my own blog on an existing hosting server that I am using. This gives me more flexibility long term anyway.

Watch out for more interesting and useful postings.