Moving on

In most jobs, there comes a moment when you come to the realization that it isn’t a fit for what you want to be doing. When this happens, we start thinking about moving on from the opportunity and often need to figure out how to approach a possible transition. In this post I’m going to be outlining some of the ways that I approach a possible job transition and if I choose to transition, how i believe it can be done with integrity.

Before giving notice, there are a number of things that I strongly recommend doing to make sure you have a successful dialog with your manager about your role and the opportunities available to you within the organization. Having regular 1:1s with your manager is a great way to discuss what are you excited about, constructively provide feedback and any frustrations and how things are generally going for you. If you aren’t satisfied with your job at the moment, 1:1s are the best forum to have an open and honest discussion about what you’d like to see changed about your role or other circumstances. This active dialog will help you to deal with pinches as they come along and prevent things from developing into a crunch. Smaller frustrations accumulate over time and can lead you to a resentful place where you are so overwhelmed or upset about the work environment that you would make rash, emotional decisions because they weren’t dealt with earlier. This is not only unhealthy but also counterproductive to your ultimate goal of building a strong dialog about your career with your manager.

It is imperative to have a good sense of the type of role you are seeking. This will help guide you in your conversations by being ‘solutions-oriented’ when discussing some of your current problems with a mentor, friend, or your manager. Figuring this out is key to making sure that conversations about your ideal job and how to get there can be fruitful. This is especially important because if you don’t know what you are seeking, how will you know when you arrive at it? Ultimately, if you don’t what you want, have a productive conversation of what you’d like to be different, how you’d like to grow, or even how others can help you achieve your goal.

Once you’ve gone through the process outlined above and still feel like you have gotten to a place where you want to move on from your current company, I’ve outlined a few best-practices to assist you in the process:.

Do it in person

Sit down with your manager and have the conversation in person. You’ll be able to communicate more effectively and be able to share more about why you want to transition and will demonstrate professionalism. Difficult conversations like resignations over Slack, text message or some other method end up removing the ability to have an honest conversation where body language and other communication ‘keys’ are just as important as the words being said.

Tell your manager first

Your manager should be the first person to know that you are transitioning. You may be talking to friends and others about it but when you are serious about possibly transitioning you should have the conversation with your manager first. You don’t know what other opportunities you might find through the conversation and you can work with your manager to make sure your transition plan works well for you and the organization. By talking to your manager first you may find there are opportunities that are really exciting for you that you weren’t aware of. Regardless they can help to make sure the transition process works well for you as well as the company.

Give lots of notice

Give a lot of notice to make sure you can transition well. You’ve built a ton of relationships at the company and these will keep moving with you as your career progresses. People will remember if you left them high and dry or if you built a solid transition plan, and worked well with your coworkers. Set things up for who comes next so they can help the company and your co-workers be as successful as possible. Traditionally, the standard “notice” window for most roles is two weeks. However, if your role impacts many others in different parts of the organization, perhaps a longer transition-time is appropriate. Even just an extra week could go a very long way. Typically the more senior you are the more notice you end up giving to the organization.

Own building a transition plan and get it done

Don’t wait for someone to hand you a transition plan. This will help everyone be clear on who learns what when. It will allow roles and responsibilities to transition effectively and help capture all of the things that only you know in a way that can be used by someone else in the organization. Make sure the plan that you build can be executed. Often I’ve seen transition plans get created and then not updated or followed through on. Use it as an active document, marking things off when they get completed and adding more context where needed.

Stay positive

Regardless of why you are leaving, stay positive. People pay attention to how you leave and you joined the organization for a reason, don’t sabotage all that on your way out. It isn’t helpful to your career or character to go negative in your last few days with your coworkers. If you are feeling highly negative, think through it. How did you get to a point where you disliked your environment to this level? What could you have done differently to help keep yourself from seeing the company and team in such a dark way?

Following this set of tips you would be well on your way to having a fruitful transition out from your company. Best of luck!