Having stayed over last night in Cardiff, I headed out to work in the morning. I decided to work from the head office this time so I could network. The thing with working in a small corporate incubation arm that is intentionally set at a distance physically, financially etc is that you lose out on the network in the head office! And people in the head office rarely know who you are and what you do. It can be hurtful to your career as the opportunities are proportionate to the size of the organisation therefore more opportunities tend to open up in the head office than in the incubation arm. So it's important to put extra effort to bring yourself in front of people where you can.
With that mindset, I've lately been spending time in the head office as and when I can and so far has been going well I must say. Every time in, I have come across at least couple of colleagues or senior leaders that I normally wouldn't speak to if not for bumping into them. This morning, I head into the office, fire up my laptop and take a casual look to my side and guess what - one of the senior leaders is sitting there and I get a chance to say hi and casually bring him up to speed with what I am doing! isn't that nice! Not just that, I was a bit disappointed that last evening, I organised an internal event for which I anticipated quite a few head office people to turn up including this individual and he hadn't showed up, so I kinda reminded him on that lol.
And I also had the chance to bump into another senior leader with whom I applied for a role but didn't convert. He said that I was more suited to a startup or incubation arm than a corporate, interesting I thought as my manager at the incubation arm tells me I need to be more entrepreneurial to suit her team. I realised either people didn't know what they wanted or I was really not going after the opportunities that suit my profile. Let's see. I'm giving myself another 6 months to learn and discover.
Sadly a close colleague shared her frustration as she also tends to be in a similar situation of not finding a good role to move into next. The organisation is not growing and the company doesn't pay as much to afford MBAs so I'm witnessing the downsides of such scenarios for past 2 yrs. I want to learn and grow and give my best but I find limited avenues to do that in the company. I'm trying multiple approaches and I'll share more about them in a separate post.
