New Year, New Me - New Discipline?
This is the time of New Year’s Resolutions when people resolve, after reflecting over the Festive Season, to increase their sense of satisfaction in a current role or to transition into a new one.
Like any New Year's Resolution however, the hard part is the follow-through. What are the desired short- and medium-term objectives? What does an actionable strategy look like, to improve a situation in a current role or transition into a new one? Who are the best people to ask for advice and support? What is the ideal timing? Difficulty answering these questions often leads people to give up early on, and the result is another year of frustration and underachievement.
The key to success lies in a disciplined approach which recognises that improving an existing role (or transitioning into a new one) requires substantial commitment. Success also requires support from third parties: it is difficult for someone in the thick of it to appraise their own situation.
Ideal sources of support are people who do not have a vested interest in the outcome; this rules out immediate family members and work colleagues. Support also needs to be sustainable over an extended period of time, since changes do not happen overnight.
Our experience is that sustainable changes can take around a year to implement: a lot of patience and resilience is required to tackle the highs and lows along the way and it is better not to do this alone. At AGM Transitions, we are used to advising clients from the moment they decide that they need support, either in-role or in transition, to the point where they land a new internal or external role. One of our key differentiators is a focus on practical implementation, using our own experiences of similar situations as well as those of our clients.
As one of our clients recently put it: "they are very much alongside you in the right-hand seat of the cockpit rather than in the control tower giving you instructions".
