About 18 months ago, I was in Monterey, California. I had to visit one of my business units. My team supports their customer-facing web applications. It helps customer relationships when I as the team leader spend time with the customer’s leadership teams. By coincidence, the Senior Vice President [SVP] of my corporate IT department was also in Monterey at this same time.
My dotted-line boss [DLB] invited me to dinner with our SVP. I felt fortunate to be invited since these types of dinners are usually exclusive to the executive management. But my DLB is keen on providing opportunities for exposure [one of the unwritten rules of effective corporate management].
My DLB told me that he was nervous before dinner because the SVP was a new hire from outside the company. At this time, he had only been at the firm for about 15 months. He was brought in by the recently-promoted-from-within CIO to be a change agent. The SVP got the lucky task to consolidate a bunch of smaller IT teams into one large team that would support our company as a shared service - not a fun assignment.
Unfortunately, consolidation usually means layoffs. During the 10 months prior to this Monterey meeting, about 100 people lost their jobs. Some were sent to India to the outsourced help desk and others were simply laid off. My company was generous with layoff packages, but everyone was anxious about their future.
I was a director by title and was 4 grade levels lower than the SVP. The SVP has an aura of leadership that was a mix of a forceful personality and a no-nonsense, action-oriented outlook. Within the corporate power structure, this was a significant chance for me to get exposure to an executive leader.
I decided that I would deliberately spend time with the SVP. I wanted to observe him first-hand to see if he was the person that people assumed him to be [he was not]. I also thought it would be exciting to be at an intimate dinner with executives - something I had not experienced to this point.
My strategy going into the event was to be myself. I decided not to let his position influence my behavior. I followed my Dad’s advice: everyone has to put their pants on one leg at a time. It is great advice as it taught me that we are all more alike than we pretend, regardless of our position in life.
I am sociable and like to talk to people so an event like this turns out to be a comfortable setting for me. I did not want to misrepresent or sell myself. I wanted to be as genuine as possible, given I was not with a group of personal friends.
As we met at an oceanside restaurant, I made sure I introduced myself as we spoke over pre-dinner drinks to be polite. We started talking about various things and I was surprised that we had many things in common. He seemed friendly enough and I was a bit surprised as he asked me to sit next to him as we took our positions at the dinner table.
There were 8 people at the table but the proximity was such that he and I had a lot of interaction between only the two of us. We talked about a number of things both personal and business. He threw me some interesting questions about the state of IT. I took opportunities to share my philosophy on IT with him. We got to know each other.
When we left the restaurant three hours later, I thought the evening was a success. By this point, we were making those stupid jokes people make after a few bottles of wine. I figured that if I were to be laid off, at least the SVP would know my name and I had the chance to pick the brain of a successful corporate executive.
But something else happened. I did not get laid off. In fact, I think meeting this SVP was a turning point in my career. To this point, I toiled in happily off the radar of the executives in my organization. I would learn later from my VP that I received a vote of confidence from the SVP as my life at this job changed dramatically over the next 18 months.
The next February, this SVP invited me to his 2 day off-site goal planning session. This session was reserved for his direct reports and their direct reports. There were a couple of slots, among the 30 managers for some ‘up-and-coming’ leaders. I remember this particularly well as his director of communications called me on a Thursday and said, ‘SVP wants you in New York on Monday for his off-site planning session’.
This planning session was an incredible experience. We listened to the presentations from the CEOs of our three business segments and the CFO. I observed vastly different leadership styles and perspectives from these 4 individuals. This was worth the price of admission.
In March, I was given 5 more staff and responsibility to repair a broken application support team, based in NY. As part of this assignment, I had to provide two updates directly to the SVP in his staff meeting. In May, I was promoted for the second time in two years. In June, I was given my own $9M budget for 2008. In October, I started attending the staff meeting of my VP.
All of these incredible career opportunities occurred not because I had an enjoyable experience with the SVP over dinner. I think that I was in the right place at the right time. I went into the dinner with a plan and I executed it. Most importantly, I remained true to myself.
