Moving On & Moving Up

For the past two years I've been the Global HR Manager in a multi-billion dollar product division of an international Korean contractor.

Today though, it was finally confirmed that I will be moving up to join the corporate HR function within this week. I will be assuming GHR, training, and senior recruitment responsibilities for our entire $10+ Billion business.

Things move slowly until they happen fast.

One of my best mates will fly down to Singapore tomorrow to take over a senior management position on one of our metro projects with a contract value of $800 Million. As his HR manager, this move has been many months or - depending on how you look at it - perhaps over a year in the making. And tomorrow it's finally happening.

Behind both of these big changes were hundreds if not thousands of incremental steps leading up to their respective new beginnings. Sometimes these steps follow a clearly lit, well worn path.

Such was the case with my mate. I needed to liaise with several stakeholders, negotiate, gain consensus, tick boxes that set various processes in motion, and check on the progress of every step to make sure everything came into alignment in the end. The road was far, but I could essentially see the end from the moment I embarked upon it.

Sometimes though, as in my case, the path is decidedly less worn and considerably darker. That's where orienting oneself towards loosely defined goals comes in handy. At least within larger, more hierarchical firms, timing and luck have as much to do with career progression as individual work performance and experiences.

Instead of simply ticking a pre-determined number of boxes, a combination of meeting and getting to know the right people, fortuitous corporate re-organizations, strategically scheduled meetings with certain high level figures to get out of comparatively lower-level meetings, and selectively showing off unique skills when the situation allowed all contributed to putting me in contention for this jump up to corporate. Of course I selectively communicated this desire to key figures along the way and kept it in mind as short-term goal.

Whether scheduled or not, when change happens it hits quick. The difference is whether or not you are ready for that change. My mate sure as hell is. I have been ushering him towards that change for awhile. And I am too, thanks to being able to piece together the right string of experiences over that difficult to handle rope of timing and luck.