A Funnelweb World

I have been very lucky throughout my working life to have worked for some excellent managers.

Right the way back to the various managers I had when working in the book trade all those years ago, who gave me the scope and freedom to do everything from establishing new branches to refurbishing stores ( re-building the shelves myself - fun, as I once considered becoming a carpenter).

And of course the various managers I worked for, even as recently as at Royal Mail - where Dennis once said to me “just keep doing what you think needs doing”, giving me an open ticket to sort out any areas I figured needed tuning in order to drive service improvements in the online space. A brilliant opportunity to shape my own role, keeping me flat out busy and hopefully helping Royal Mail at the same time.

The interesting thing is that my role turned out to be very different to the job description for the role I was employed for (Development Manager). It made the job the best one I’ve ever had in the UK.

And it was accidental. I had little idea what a “dev manager” should do so I just got in and did what I figured was needed.

Same with PwC.

When I joined the internal IT Department, I really had no idea what a typical “relationship manager” should do. It sounded interesting but at the time I was a little worried I wouldn’t be able to do it. However, another great manager simply advised me to do “whatever it takes to keep the customer happy”. Simple enough guidance and it helped define the scope of the role for me - and certainly kept me engaged and busy.

Again, I loved it.

And so to M & S.

This time around it was different. I had much more of an idea of what to expect in the role, as I had done various programme / project manager type jobs in the past.

I have to say in all honesty that from the outset I was a little worried that there wouldn’t be the volume of work or scope in the role to keep me challenged, engaged and busy.

I even said at my interview that I get bored very easily. I had come to understand it about myself, finally, and wanted to be honest with potential employers.

And yesterday was my 8th week at M & S, and yep, I was getting bored.

So I had a heart to heart with my manager. After clearing up some misunderstandings (yes, I still wanted to do PM work - the issue was that I needed more to get my teeth into), I basically got a similar message to the one from Dennis.

“Make the role my own, get involved wherever I think I can add value.” ie. don’t be limited by the job title.

Music to my ears.

I’ve already started to get myself involved with the biz dev guys around innovative uses of technology - way ahead of them becoming projects. Stuff which could help drive up revenue for the business. And started to share best practice information e.g. yahoo patterns stuff.

Yet again, I’ve been lucky to get another great manager.