Impact accelerates your growth and career trajectory and can lead to:
- Recognition: You are more likely to be recognized for your achievements by your leaders, peers and other stakeholders, leading to opportunities for promotion, raises or other rewards.
- Reputation: Building a reputation for excellence and impact can help you stand out in your field and make it easier for you to advance your career.
- Networking: Creating impact can also help you build your network, leading to new opportunities for collaboration, mentorship and career advancement.
- Personal growth: Pushing yourself to create increasingly more impact, you can develop new skills, take on new challenges and grow.
To unlock these benefits you must first understand what is essential to the organization, function, team or your job and then recognize how you impact that. For example, if one of the current key growth strategies of your company is digitalization, assess how you impact that strategy and what kind of contributions you can make towards the success of the digitalization strategy to increase your impact.
Don’t restrict yourself to a job description. Volunteer for projects or assignments related to that strategy. Seek opportunities to contribute to the top five strategies of your company, function or team.
Impact in action
In 2002, the Gillette Company was undergoing a worldwide transformation. A new CEO had been appointed and he identified three strategies that would deliver the transformation over the following three years or so. I was new in my post of VP of Corporate HR at the corporate headquarters in Boston, and my role supported five leaders in the C-suite reporting to the CEO.
My job obviously had the opportunity to impact the three critical transformation strategies. I knew this was my opportunity to create the highest level of impact thus far in my career, working with the senior executives of the iconic global company and having exposure to the company’s CEO. I made those three strategies the most important part of my job, understanding what they meant for each of the five functions I supported and how I impacted them.
Needless to say, this exposed some learning and development areas for me, but it also gave me unbelievable exposure and visibility. I developed an excellent web of networks across the leadership team and the various parts of the organization. At the time, this was precisely what career success and fulfilment meant for me.
How can you increase your impact at work?
- Identify and understand the critical strategies of your company. You have to then determine how you can impact these strategies.
- Always start with stepping back and understanding what outcome is expected of any strategy the company has deemed important. If possible, talk to leaders in the organization and ask them questions so that you have clarity. Do not jump to undertaking activities without a clear understanding of what outcome the company is seeking. To have an impact, you must enable the outcome.
- Think broadly about how your work contributes to teams or individuals outside of your team or function. Can you enable their success? An employee who connects the dots broadly across the organization is valued because that employee likely understands how their role enables success for others.
- Take Initiative: Don’t wait for opportunities to come to you—proactively seek out ways to make a difference. Look for areas where you can add value, whether it’s by identifying inefficiencies and proposing solutions, taking on additional responsibilities, or spearheading new projects. Demonstrating initiative shows leadership potential and can significantly enhance your impact and visibility within the organization.
- Continuously Learn and Grow: Invest in your own personal and professional development to continually enhance your skills and knowledge. By staying abreast of industry trends and emerging technologies, you can position yourself as a valuable asset to your organization and increase your capacity to drive meaningful change and innovation.
As once you make yourself more relevant to the business, the more impact you will have, and the more significant your impact, the higher chances you will have of having an extraordinary career.
