DailyPost 1135
NAVIGATING YOUR ECOSYSTEM
The harsh reality is that large number of professionals don’t develop the capability of navigating their ecosystem even till the end of their professional life. The ecosystem includes besides the organisational nuances of the enterprise, the external interfaces which we face on a regular basis and which impacts our functioning and results as much as our internal systems, if not more. Unfortunately, this mindset has not evolved and we feel that the our job is to fulfil our job description in a cut and dry manner and be done away with it.
As you grow up in the organisational ladder, this becomes the main part of your job and every element gets dependent on this great skill. A huge challenge. Lots of academicians are not ready to take up administrative jobs in the educational institutions as they claim they are interested in academics. The crux of matter is they don’t know how to navigate in their own ecosystem and lose the opportunity to do wonders to academics, the institution and to themselves. Professionalism and being a techie is taken as an ideal cover for not getting into this tough and unchartered territory.
If you achieve this trait, the results can be very rewarding and you would succeed in whatever you do in that domain. How do you inculcate this trait / skill / attitude? Facing as it comes, taking additional responsibilities and new ones too, with or without additional resources and delivering the right quality and on time, puts you under situations which are extraordinary. You learn to connect to people you would generally not do, look and find resources where it doesn’t seem to exist and do sensible multitasking in connected issues for simultaneous results.
This is the first step, a sensible matured comfort level with the ecosystem and some confidence to play around with it gainfully. The expertise on an expanse of the jobs increases. When crisis hits, you are more likely to respond. You are more likely to succeed too. If you do it again and again, you learn the trick; expertise, confidence and grit. Ready to learn and expand. The final step is that you develop a knack to find an opportunity where it does not exist and prove it. Finally, you navigate in the ecosystem for specific tasks and results with the ease of a musician with his instrument.
ENTERPRISE LEVEL DELIVERY CANNOT HAPPEN WITHOUT DEVELOPING THE EASE TO NAVIGATE THROUGH THE ECOSYSTEM.
Sanjay Sahay