How far can Instructional Design take you? Part 2 By Sonia Sant

If you are on the ID path, it is not the end of the road…

This is where we left the last article. The intent of this article is to bring forth key factors to consider and plan for in order to reach the ultimate of C’s and G’s---a CEO, COO, GM (CCG) in an organization. The assumption is that you want to go all the way up and that you have made up your mind. To go all the way up, you cannot live accidentally and hope it will happen and someone else will define the journey and way up for you. You need to live life consciously, make intelligent moves on the chess board. In all awareness, figure out what are those 4-5 areas that make an impact, play to your strengths and fix your weaknesses. Yes, you got it, you need to plan for the journey and pack your bags with relevant items. However, when you reach there and to grow from there you may need different items.
Let’s first look at the first part of the journey and critical items to plan. While making your choices in an organization,
1. Determine the engine of the organization
2. Obtain cross-functional experience
a. Pick skills in finance and budget management
b. Manage people and a P&L
3. Network
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1. Determine the engine of the organization. By engine I mean the function/business that fetches the bread and butter--the dollars. It is the function that is core to the business. It is this core function that attracts and draws all resources and focus in terms of expansion. Being here will give your growth the necessary and a natural acceleration.
For example, development is core to content business; manufacturing is core to computer manufacturing. Design and development is core to a content development company.
Within the core function, you can choose to be a specialist or a generalist. Traditionally, the generalist path that is the management path offers numerous opportunities and exposure required to grow on the CCG path.

Apart from the core, finance function is one that also offers opportunities for becoming CEO’s…
4. Obtain cross-functional experience: To gain experience in the core function is not sufficient. You must gain experience in different functions of the organization, such as finance, marketing, sales, etc. This widens and deepens your skills and experience in the organization. Managing a P & L is one such area in which it is critical to gain experience.
5. Along the way, an important skill and behavioral aspect to learn is people management. A leader is only as good as her/his team. You must learn how to manage people related issues-motivation, retention, growth prospects. Lot many leaders who meet numbers are unable to motivate teams, maintain a happy culture, leading to attrition and loss of skilled work force. They fail to walk the talk and respect their teams.
6. Network: This is the most important. Just being a high achiever and no presence is like trying to sell a good product without marketing. No one will know about the product.
You will work hard, do well but the right people will not know about you. If people do not know what you can do then you are bound to lose some good opportunities to grow. The right people need to be aware of your skills and achievements and have to trust you. Both good work and good word of mouth are necessary to ensure that you pop up in people’s mind as the woman/man for the job.
To this end, you must network; interact with leaders, peers, in your function and across the organization. Go beyond your organization to interact with leaders from other organizations, businesses, and entrepreneurs.
Find out who are the influencers and decision makers. Always, make sure you catch a few minutes with them in parties or all hands or professional forums. Do your homework about what business they run, what are their challenges, find out about their professional interests. This will help you to find a common topic to connect with the person. If you do not know anything then say hello and talk about the weather. People like to talk – get them talking and u listen...

Destiny is in your hands. Live your life in a state of consciousness and not as an accident. Success lies in the way you define and design your path. Spend at least 20%of the week to take stock and align the moves on the chess board, fix the pits and look for the kings.
It is ok to not know where you want to be and where to go or wonder what to do now. You can seek answers for free by writing to learningcollage@gmail.com.