Four Stages of a Role

On a Friday afternoon in the second week of January sitting in our cafeteria, I was gathering my thoughts for the normalization discussion that I was going to the next day.

It was that time of year where you need to summarize your 12 months of achievements in 30 minutes and still impress your boss. That part, probably, is easiest because your boss knows about you anyway. The tough part of annual review discussions is the normalization exercise that our talent management team runs annually where I need to impress 10 other guys about my team members in 5 minutes.

So, as I was thinking about sellable points of my team members, I heard someone.

“Hey Sekhar, can I join you?” I saw Pasha standing in front of me as I was sipping my hot chai.

Pasha, my good old buddy in this organization. As I saw him, I realized his face was a little gloomy, a little ecstatic, and a little confused!

Even before I could respond, Pasha occupied the seat opposite mine.

“What’s up, buddy?” I was happy to see him after almost a week or two.

“Man…just coming out of my annual review,” his eyes were rolling all over!

“Already done with it? How did it go?” I asked casually.

“Don’t ask me…I am totally confused! In summary, my boss says, I have done extremely well in what I am supposed to do, but I haven’t done a good job in what I was expected to do,” he replied.

“What?” Now, it was my turn to be confused.

“You heard me right!” he said with a weird smile on his face.

“Okay, let me guess. What you were supposed to do was perhaps the delivery and your boss is pleased with you there. So, what else was she expecting you to do?” I asked.

“You are right. She says I have done very well in delivery. Apparently, she was expecting me to take my role to next level. She says I haven’t done much in that space. The frustrating part is, she doesn’t tell me what the next level is. Once in a while, she keeps bringing up that I have to go to next level, but I have no clue what that next level is!” His frustration was evident.

“Well, I am not a management expert by any means, and I also don’t know what she might have really meant by that ‘next level’ of your role. However, I do have a theory called ‘Four Stages of a Role’. I am happy to share my views if you are interested,” I paused.

“Four Stages of a Role…? Sounds interesting… You know, after I came back from my review discussion, I did a search on Google about next level of role but couldn’t find any thing except Role theory and HIPO (High Potential) role transition. They seem more about moving from one role to another role, but my situation is that I need to go to the next level within my current role. So, do share what you know!” he inquired.

“Well, my theory is that every role goes through four stages, namely ‘Exploring’, ‘Engaging’, ‘Enhancing’ and ‘Exiting’.  So, once you identify what stage you are currently in, you can probably define the next stage of your role.” I waited for him to react.

“Four Es…huh…sounds interesting…elaborate more!” He was curious.

Consider this table:

Role Stage	Description	Exit criteria
Exploring	This is the discovery phase. You have recently taken a position/role and need some time to understand that role, boundaries, RACI of the work space, expectations, your team, your manager, your partners, your customers, so on and so forth. The theme of this phase is “Learn and Absorb”	You have a good view of your job description You understand the boundaries You have clarity on stakeholders’ expectations You understand the organization’s policies and  procedures
Engaging	In this stage, you start delivering. You work with and/or manage the team to deliver what is supposed to be delivered. Your focus is on meeting expectations. In this phase, you are 80% focussed on delivery and 20% on improvements. The theme of this phase is “Consistent Delivery”	Your delivery is 100% in compliance with SLAs, expectations, policies and procedures Your manager believes that once an activity is given to you, he/she doesn’t have to follow up because you will get the job done Stakeholders (more importantly customers) have confidence in you, your team and the deliverables. To all of your customers, you and your team consistently deliver quality output. You have established a feedback mechanism that helps you receive feedback from various stakeholders, including your peers, regularly to help you identify the opportunity areas in your and your team’s delivery space You have built good relationships not only with the folks connected to your work but also with folks connected to your domain You have identified and initiated the dialogue with the folks who are SMEs in the domain that you are part of, to take their inputs in enhancing your and your team’s skills and attributes You regularly touch base with domain experts/SMEs to get your share of mentoring and coaching
Enhancing	This is where you start developing the role. Your focus here should be delivering what you are supposed to deliver faster, cheaper and better. Here you are 50% focussed on delivery (because you have already stabilized it), 30% on improvements and 20% on forward thought process. The theme of this phase is “Simplify, Automate and Improvise”	You have  broken down your responsibilities and identified the automation/simplification opportunities You quite regularly consider “I used to do this activity ‘this way’, what can I do to simplify or enhance it now?” When you look at any task/activity, your thought process always revolves around faster (Time), cheaper (Cost) and better (Scope/Quality) You believe in the ‘Metrics by Maturity’ concept and you regularly review and recommend opportunities to improve the maturity of your team and the work that they do You no longer look at metrics as just numbers, rather you take ownership of them and identify what metrics make sense to you and your team. You consider metrics as the indicator for your journey For the work that you and your team do, you constantly keep yourself and the team updated about the trends in the industry For the work that you and your team do, you understand the best practices in the industry You have defined the gap between where you/your team stands and the highest industry standard, and you have a planned approach to get there Where there is opportunity, you thoughtfully identify potential successors to you and your key team members, and begin equipping them Your team has development plans in place Domain experts/SMEs that you have been in touch with, believe you have shown great progress in reaching the next level
Exiting	You and your team are performing at a superior level and there isn’t much you need to achieve or prove in your work stream. So, it is time for you to move to a different role. The theme of this phase is “Redundancy”	You have built a team or process that runs almost independently. Even if you are out for 3 weeks, there isn’t much impact because you and your team have well-defined processes for: Review Governance Communication Change control Escalation Your team runs like a well-oiled machine and hence you are now redundant! Your successor has successfully completed the “Exploring” phase Your team members are progressing well with respect to their development plans

“Sekhar, this sounds good enough, but I have lot of questions. To start with, is the Enhancing phase the most important one?” he asked.

“I don’t think we could say any one phase is more important than the other. The way I see it, this is the maturity cycle of a role. So, every one of us would go through these phases,” I replied.

“Fair enough! But I meant more seems to be happening during the Enhancing phase, right?” He asked again.

“Well, yes…Enhancing is the critical phase because you are trying to add more meat to your role. But that could only happen if your Engaging phase works out well. If you have basic delivery challenges, it is hard to enhance your role. So, each phase has its own role, but Enhancing probably is the longest of the phases,” I reasoned.

“You know what…let me buy what you are saying for a moment. Let’s say, Mr. X joined an organization and has gone through all these phases. After 4 years, he moves to a different department. When his replacement joins the team, based on what you said, he or she has to go through the Exploring and Engaging phases. I am okay with that.  However, the replacement may have not much to do in the Enhancing phase, right? I mean, if Mr. X has done a good job, there shouldn’t be much for the replacement to do, should there?” He was dissecting my theory.

“You are right. There may not be much, but that could only happen if the organization (and the business that the organization does) becomes stagnant. At that point, the team would be in more of ‘Lights-on’ mode. However, if there is enough flexibility in the organization and the business that they do, then there would be new objectives, new expectations and newer challenges to the team. In other words, what Mr. X has achieved would become ‘Given’ and newer objectives and expectations would weave the path for ‘Enhancing’. So, it’s a cycle and the show would go on,” I put forth my case.

“Sounds fair enough. But if everyone religiously follows such maturity cycle, shouldn’t all companies be doing great?” he asked

“You are right again. But the question is back to you. Does everyone follow this cycle religiously?