Waiting

10 months into the job, one of my peers got promoted. I was shocked as to how a 22 year old guy out of college can be a manager so fast. Of course he was not my friend during our training period which further aggravated my misery. So next 8 months I waited , working hard, showcasing my results, projecting myself more during meetings, poking bosses about what next.

It was difficult to accept that I was waiting in a company that openly encouraged promotions of their young workforce in a systematic way. 8 months down the line came the promotional interview. Some 14 of us attended and 3 of them got promoted. I was told I did well but those 3 were better than me at that moment. I was told I was next in line, this “wait” was even more frustrating. A month later when I got promoted it was more of a relief to get out of my “waiting” than being happy to get my first promotion in life!

Do you think organizations make talent “wait” and need to improvise on their harvesting methodologies? Yes and no, I believe large organisations have an organised way of doing and entrepreneurs have an adhoc but timely way of nurturing careers. But in a long career I believe, there are moments of long “wait” which costs organisations precious talent.

My reasons for this “waiting”
  1. Organisations have leaders who are disconnected to their talent reality. For me this means
  leadership team assume that organisation’s brand is bigger than their talent strength.
  2. Leader’s arrogance that they have created talent and can continue creating it.
  3. The lack of foresight of the HR team on talent requirements of tomorrow and the deficits in
   today’s talent.
  4. Leader’s belief that their best talent will forever be loyal. How untrue, isn’t our best
  talent always going to be aware of their capabilities? Even if they don’t, the competitors and
  head hunters will tell them!

Waiting can be pretty frustrating to talent and detrimental to organisations productivity as we might have pool of talented people who are under-deployed with lowering quotient of loyalty.

Waiting is depressing!

I have waited many times in my career; as I would like to think based on my own assumptions that I had to grow, or get a new role, promotion or new designation. Every time I was on the verge of thinking of leaving when the “waiting” gets frustrating, the organizations/bosses would spring a surprise by offering me something new. Sometimes, the “something new” could just be an assurance, but it worked!

Below are my reasons for “waiting” phenomenon to continue:

 There is no immediate opportunities within an organization or an organization is in a difficult phase;
 1. The bosses and HR have not set the right expectations with us about our capabilities and
 future with the organization nor do we have transparency of what’s happening around us
 2. There’s a mismatch between our aspirations and the available opportunities within the
 organization;
 3. The external market is moving faster than our current employer in terms of opportunities
 that match our skills and aspirations;
 4. It is our personal opinion that we ripe for promotion and are overlooked in view of the fact
 that some of our peers are getting better opportunities at a faster rate!

Well, some waiting is inevitable throughout a long career journey but we can’t wait forever!

Sometimes my trains have come fast like this bullet train but many times I have waited. And when I had to wait, I wasn’t in a mood to click!