Your Career Action Plan
Mastering Behaviors, Outcomes, and Skills to Thrive in the Age of AI
The Recap
In the last post, I covered the 3 things that employers always value:
1. Behaviors
2. Outcomes
3. Skills
Although the value of these expectations stays the same, expected outcomes and skills change over time.
Consider the case of a software engineer getting promoted from one level to another. As a result of the promotion, the engineer must:
Deliver more outcomes and/or more impactful outcomes.
Learn new skills to take on the extra responsibilities.
Now consider the impact of AI on software engineering roles. Software engineers are expected to use AI code assistants to increase coding velocity. This means:
More output is expected from them.
They must learn how to use AI code assistants effectively.
Most people drift through their careers waiting for a promotion. The top performers treat their careers like a business. Because it is. Use the Behaviors, Outcomes, and Skills framework to assess and treat your career as a business.
The Behaviors Audit
Don’t think that your work speaks for itself. People are usually busy and will only notice when you do not meet an expected behavior. The goal of the Behaviors Audit is to check that you are demonstrating the expected behaviors noticeably.
The Audit: Prepare a list of behaviors your employer lists as part of the company culture. Reflect on how you demonstrated these behaviors in your last project or task.
After Audit Action #1: Demonstrate a specific behavior.
Pick one company value (e.g., “Urgency” or “Collaboration”) that you did not explicitly demonstrate and intentionally demonstrate it 3 times this week.
After Audit Action #2: Ask for Feedback.
Seeking feedback will show that you are taking them seriously. Asking for feedback will also ensure that people notice that you are demonstrating the expected behaviors.
Don’t ask: “How am I doing?” (Too vague).
Ask: “In our last project, did you feel I acted with urgency?”
Specific questions get specific answers.
The Outcomes Audit
The goal of this audit is to ensure that you don’t confuse “being busy” with “delivering results.”
The Audit: Review the last 3 months of your work.
Ask yourself this... Did my work:
Contribute to future revenue?
Save the company money?
Save the team time?
Improve quality/reduce errors?
If you can’t quantify the impact, it wasn’t a significant outcome; you were just doing a bunch of tasks.
After Audit Action: Redefine priorities to deliver more impact.
If you are in the early-career stage, your manager or a tech lead may be the one assigning tasks to you. If you seem to be doing just a series of tasks, please talk with them. Discuss if the tasks collectively lead to an impactful outcome. In some companies, your quarterly assessment must show the impact of your outcomes. If there are no impactful outcomes, your manager won’t be able to justify your promotion when the promotion cycle comes around.
The Skills Audit
The goal of this audit is to make sure you don’t waste time learning random things. And help you focus on learning new skills that help your career.
The Audit: Look through the three lenses:
The currency lens: Identify skills gaps developing in your current role. Include any AI-related changes happening in your workflow.
The promotion lens: Look at the job description for the role one level above yours to identify missing skills.
The obsolescence lens: Review if AI will obsolete the skill you spent years honing. In this case, you need to identify the new skills that will help you become relevant in the job market.
Identify 2 hard skills and 1 soft skill you are missing based on your skills audit.
After Audit Action: Move fast and up-skill:
Take a focused and consistent approach to up-skilling when you see a skills gap developing. You need momentum in building skills, and consistency is essential. So dedicate 1 hour per week to the skills identified in your Skills Audit.
Own Your Growth
Check your progress every Friday. Take 10 minutes to answer the following questions.:
Behaviors: Did I show the behaviors I planned to? Did I get specific feedback on how I work?
Outcomes: What tangible result did I ship?
Skills: Did I put in my 1 hour of learning?
Take corrective action if you are not keeping up with your intentions.
The world is moving fast, but the fundamental expectations - behaviors, outcomes, and skills remain the same. Watch the outcomes and skills trends in your current and future roles and skate to where the puck will be.
Save this post to run your own career audit this week.
Share this post with a friend who needs to stop overthinking and start taking action.
The road ahead is yours to shape!
Suresh 😊