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What is OpenID?Reinventing myself
My position was eliminated. For the first time in many years, I'm job hunting. The blog will document the process of letting go of the old and reinventing a new work self.
I'm reading Power Resumes by Ron Tepper. He says that there are three kinds of organizations:
1) Entrepreneurial and developing organizations
2) Growing and professional organizations
3) Mature and administrative organizations
There are three kinds of managers who can be found in these companies:
1) The entrepreneur - a strong individual contributor - someone who can handle little formal structure with ease
2) The outstanding, integrated team player - a consensus builder
3) The organization person - the spoke of the wheel
A mismatch of manager type to organization type can lead to problems.
I can see how this typing can be more broadly applied - not just to managers. Someone who wants autonomy on the job may chafe at the requirements of a mature, rule-driven organization. Someone expecting clear rules may get lost in a developing organization.
I'm not sure how I would type myself. Early in my career, I thrived in an entrepreneurial setting. Even at EMC, I enjoyed a great deal of autonomy with the documentation group I managed. I also know what kind of effort is required to build a team and appreciate what a well-formed team can produce.
It does seem useful to be able to type your organization, so that you can avoid a clash between it and your behavior.
1) Entrepreneurial and developing organizations
2) Growing and professional organizations
3) Mature and administrative organizations
There are three kinds of managers who can be found in these companies:
1) The entrepreneur - a strong individual contributor - someone who can handle little formal structure with ease
2) The outstanding, integrated team player - a consensus builder
3) The organization person - the spoke of the wheel
A mismatch of manager type to organization type can lead to problems.
I can see how this typing can be more broadly applied - not just to managers. Someone who wants autonomy on the job may chafe at the requirements of a mature, rule-driven organization. Someone expecting clear rules may get lost in a developing organization.
I'm not sure how I would type myself. Early in my career, I thrived in an entrepreneurial setting. Even at EMC, I enjoyed a great deal of autonomy with the documentation group I managed. I also know what kind of effort is required to build a team and appreciate what a well-formed team can produce.
It does seem useful to be able to type your organization, so that you can avoid a clash between it and your behavior.
I've not had to hunt for a job in years. As I embark on this journey, I'm taking a hard look at where I've been and giving careful thought to where I want to go. I hope that, through this blog, I can be of service to others who want or need to make a change in their career path.
I started work with Data General as a Senior Technical Writer, responsible for TCP/IP and X.25 manuals. I became manager of my group a few years after starting. EMC acquired Data General in 1999. Some years I could hire, other years I had to let go. By the time I departed, I was the only one in my group who had been there when I started. I'm told that these days it is unusual for someone to be with one company for as long as I'd stayed with mine.
As a manager, I had to face writers and deliver the message that their position was being eliminated. This year, I got that message.
I have been meeting folks for lunch, networking, asking for advice, gathering information about other companies, what they do, how they do it, what they foresee for the future. I've been studying how to fine tune a resume and prepare for interviews. I've reached out to new groups, like TriUPA, and to familiar ones, like STC. I'm running for STC chapter president again, an office I held in 2000. I'm building Michael Harvey 2.0.
As I wrote in an article for the STC Carolina newsletter in the fall of 2006, technical communicators need to revise their job descriptions - in other words, reinvent themselves:
I..foresee (printed documents and help panels) becoming a commodity, and their production being shipped to lower cost workers. We'll continue to write, but our value will be in designing interactive scripts or shaping the repositories of information tapped when using sites like Amazon, Pandora, or (EMC's) UPD. We'll be doing more developing content re-use and single-sourcing strategies and less employing various authoring and desktop publishing tools to produce printed or electronic publications and integrated online help systems. And that's fine with me — learning and doing new things should be second nature to anyone whose career is in technology.
Learning and doing new things is second nature to me. As I reinvent myself, I will be putting those proclivities to work.
I started work with Data General as a Senior Technical Writer, responsible for TCP/IP and X.25 manuals. I became manager of my group a few years after starting. EMC acquired Data General in 1999. Some years I could hire, other years I had to let go. By the time I departed, I was the only one in my group who had been there when I started. I'm told that these days it is unusual for someone to be with one company for as long as I'd stayed with mine.
As a manager, I had to face writers and deliver the message that their position was being eliminated. This year, I got that message.
I have been meeting folks for lunch, networking, asking for advice, gathering information about other companies, what they do, how they do it, what they foresee for the future. I've been studying how to fine tune a resume and prepare for interviews. I've reached out to new groups, like TriUPA, and to familiar ones, like STC. I'm running for STC chapter president again, an office I held in 2000. I'm building Michael Harvey 2.0.
As I wrote in an article for the STC Carolina newsletter in the fall of 2006, technical communicators need to revise their job descriptions - in other words, reinvent themselves:
I..foresee (printed documents and help panels) becoming a commodity, and their production being shipped to lower cost workers. We'll continue to write, but our value will be in designing interactive scripts or shaping the repositories of information tapped when using sites like Amazon, Pandora, or (EMC's) UPD. We'll be doing more developing content re-use and single-sourcing strategies and less employing various authoring and desktop publishing tools to produce printed or electronic publications and integrated online help systems. And that's fine with me — learning and doing new things should be second nature to anyone whose career is in technology.
Learning and doing new things is second nature to me. As I reinvent myself, I will be putting those proclivities to work.
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