I was asked recently when my ah-ha moment happened when I knew I wanted to be in management.
I had to think moment, and then I realized that my career has actually been a series of revelations, not just a single one. So bear with me as I back up for a second and have my little moment, much like Miriam Maisel during her wedding speech…
When I was younger I wanted to know how everything worked. No, I didn’t take things apart and try and reassemble them. Instead I built things. My parents still have the wind chimes I made out of metal conduit and a metal junction box… It was this building and experimenting that made me have my first ah-ha moment. I knew that I wanted to study Physics.
So off to college I went. A B.S. in Physics, and an M.S. in Electrical Engineering later it was time to find a job. Not the kind of job I had all throughout school building websites (I kinda enjoyed it and seemed to have a knack for it), but a real one where I had to go in to an office and do something. I liked the science side of things, but I liked the programming side too, so two resumes went out. Each one highlighting a different set of skills.
Wouldn’t you know it, the programming resume got some good traction, and off I was programming websites. Not just any site mind you, but the e-commerce site for Nokia in the US, nokiausa.com. It was there that I honed my skills and put all that education to use by solving problems in unique and creative ways. It was there that I had my next ah-ha moment. I know that I truly enjoyed programming, enjoyed seeing the instant results of things working, and that there were thousands of people who were using something I had helped to build. You could say I was hooked.
Several promotions and companies later I found myself in a slightly different role; the role of team lead. There was still programming, but there was a lot of mentoring the more junior members of the team as well as being one of the points of contact for senior management to know what was going on with the project. I saw that by helping the other members of the team to grow and collaborate better allowed our team to deliver more than we could have individually. That excited me. As I shifted my role more I was able to help multiple teams deliver larger projects with less defects, and that excited me even more. It was during this time that I had my latest ah-ha moment: Being a successful manager was helping your team or teams to achieve more, both in their jobs, and as people in general. There are a few individuals I still keep in touch with as I greatly enjoy knowing how they are continuing to achieve greatness with (hopefully) some of the foundations I helped set down.
And that’s where I am now. Following my latest revelation that I enjoy managing teams and helping them to achieve greatness.
So that’s my string of ah-ha moments to date. I’m sure I’ll have more as I continue to grow in my career. And don’t worry, there’s really no shrimp in the egg rolls…
How often do you find those ah-ha moments in a reflective state (which is the sense I get from this post) rather than “in-the-moment”? I typically find myself reaching ah-ha moments when I am conflicted or engaged in a meaningful conversation. I am either “enlightened” to a new point of view during a deep discussion or am able to articulate my point better than ever before, because I have had a “light-bulb” come on that I really and truly believe my stance.
I’d say the bulk of the big ah-ha moments are indeed from a reflective state; times when I purposefully sit down and look at what has happened in the past which has formed me into who I am. However, there’s been plenty of other “smaller” enlightenment moments where I am in a discussion with someone and suddenly something clicks for me (whether it’s something I remembered which adds deeply to the conversation, or an extra revelation where I have a deeper belief in my stance). Those little light bulbs have helped lead to the bigger ah-ha moments when I stop and recap things later on.