A few people have asked me recently, “When do I know it’s time to make a change?” In this post, I propose some criteria that I hope you will find relevant.

The context of the question above usually relates to role change. Typically, when someone asks me this question, it is because they have identified reasons to consider new roles and are trying to confirm or challenge their thought processes.

Several drivers show up in these discussions, which I like to frame as questions:

• Am I still learning and growing?
• Do I feel fulfilled by my work?
• Is my work considered valuable by key stakeholders?
• Do I think I’m being fairly compensated?
• Is there a next step or trajectory to this role?

Growth typically requires a level of challenge in the role – we learn most effectively when we are uncomfortable. The corollary to this is that staying in “the velvet rut” of the known and comfortable leads to stagnation and a lack of growth. A quote I like on the subject of change is attributed to John C. Maxwell: “Change is inevitable. Growth is optional.” We are going to be constantly subjected to change – environmental, organisational, personal – and it is up to us to determine whether we learn and develop from it.

One of the major reasons that people look to change roles (apart from having unsupportive or difficult managers) is reward and recognition. People can get hung up on monetary elements when it comes to compensation without considering other aspects. For example, am I being given new growth opportunities as a result of my delivery? Is my work getting publicised? Am I given the chance to be seen as a subject matter expert in my field?

We all have different criteria for what constitutes fair compensation. While the monetary aspect is key (very few of us turn up to work for the camraderie and challenge alone) it is not the only way to be rewarded for doing our jobs well.

I use a Pareto principle calculation to help people categorise the type of work in their current role. Am I spending 80% of my time on things that matter to me and others and that have value? If 20% of my time is spent on administrative work and noise, that’s probably okay. If the percentage grows closer to 50%, that probably indicates that a change (either within or outside the organisation) is required.

I have made a significant number of changes in my career and continue to do so, with an eye to continuing growth and challenge. Sometimes this works out, and the timing is right, personally and professionally, and sometimes it doesn’t. Each time I learn from the experience, and each time I refine and improve my criteria for when role change is necessary for me. One additional criterion that can be useful for you to consider is “What is my tolerance for risk at this stage of my life?” Younger people or those without attachments may have have higher risk tolerance because they don’t have dependents. For those of us with families to support and possibly aging parents as well, our risk appetite may be lower. Either way, it is important to consider if your current role is providing you the right answers to the questions above, and to other criteria that may be relevant to you.

As a final note, I came across a quote recently that made me smile – “You are not a tree. If you don’t like where you are, move.” It is important for all of us to remember that our constraints are often less restrictive than we think!

Neuroscience-based coaching, which I practice, teaches us that every brain is different. We have the same basic structures, but our experiences shape the physical structures of our brains over time. What we focus on shapes our brains. For example, studies on London taxi drivers showed their hippocampus grew substantially due to learning “the knowledge”. Our brains establish and strengthen connections based on what we consciously or unconsciously place a value on.

We all operate, in addition, with a set of filters and biases which help us make sense of the world quickly. Our brains are expensive to run, so we use these forms of biological shorthand to lessen the cost. If we don’t have to engage “system 2” thinking per Daniel Kahneman, we can save resources. Cognitively demanding thinking is more expensive from a glucose and oxygen perspective.

The result is that we often accept the world as it appears to us. We believe that our perception of reality is reality. This is known as “naive realism”. This is an easy mistake to make – we are primarily visual and have learned to accept the evidence of our eyes and other senses. If we take that visual reality to start, mine will always differ from yours. Depending on my age and optical quality, I may see more or less detail in the world than you. Does that make my visual reality different to yours? Absolutely. Throw in something like red/green colour blindness, and suddenly, my perception of reality is very different to someone without that visual challenge.

Perception is the core of our reality. What I perceive and what you do can be entirely different based on our position in a room, our experiences, our height, gender, and attitudes to life. I may witness precisely the same thing you do, but my experience of that event and my memory of it may be totally different. We do not make good crime scene witnesses as a result. The car was blue, or maybe red. The man was tall, fat or perhaps a powerfully built woman.

Why does this all matter? Because when someone has a different viewpoint from us, it is entirely possible that what they perceive or recall is more accurate (or at least just as valid) than our viewpoint. In addition, the introduction of “realistic” AI-generated imagery or textual output can be sufficient to fool our senses. We must question our perceptions of the world and understand that reality is not a fixed concept – it is fluid, contextual and personal. Some things are objectively real, but even determining those can be challenging. Using the philosophical thought experiment that we may exist in a simulation or one universe of a multiverse of parallel universes should be sufficient to raise questions about our macro-reality.

Being willing to question ourselves and to openly question others to determine why they believe certain things can be helpful for us to ground ourselves. It can also help us develop more diverse ways of thinking about our challenges. And it can help us avoid becoming stuck in believing that our ideas are the best ones and allow us to understand that what we “know” is largely illusory.

The need for self-advocacy isn’t always apparent, particularly in the early stages of our careers. When our work is highly task-focused, tied to a delivery schedule or otherwise clearly bounded, it is easier to see how well or poorly we are completing it. To an extent, the work does speak for itself. As we move further along the career path and opportunities become more contested, the people who deliver good quality work and are known and visible for the right reasons are the ones who are more likely to advance. When the challenges become difficult to quantify, and deliverables can be multi-year, it can be much harder to tell the superstars from the outside. People need to raise their own profiles, either directly or indirectly, to stand out.

One person I’m coaching at the moment has put the situation this way:

I have done everything I’m supposed to. I have put in the work, I’ve studied. Even with all of that, I’m not getting the results I expect in my career.

This feedback is common, not just with coachees, but also with people I’m mentoring at work.

I have been in this situation myself. I put a lot of time and effort into my day job. I want to be known for high-quality work. I want to be known as a good manager. I previously held five roles simultaneously, delivering across the board on all of them. Yet, despite this, not only was I not advancing, I wasn’t being acknowledged, compensated or even thanked for it by the people I reported to.

This sort of situation can be deeply demoralising. In order to have different results, we need to be clear firstly on what we want to achieve. We need to have outcomes to aim for, so we can adjust our approach to get there. This clarity of thinking is the basis of self-advocacy and coaching. Without clear goals, we cannot have a point of aim.

Once we are clear on what we want, we have to have an approach to get us there. In my case, I wanted to be doing exciting work with supportive colleagues and be compensated for it. To achieve those aims, I had multiple, straightforward conversations with my leadership and senior leaders in other parts of the organisation. I also explored options outside of the company. Then, when I chose my next role, I continued the transparent conversations with my new management on what I wanted to achieve and what outcomes I wanted to deliver for myself and them.

These conversations can be deeply uncomfortable if we are not used to making it clear what we want to achieve. It can be helpful to use your network to challenge you when you have a position you want to advocate for. Having people who help you practice saying what you want and how to say it can take much of the fear and discomfort out of the “real” discussions. Note that the focus is not on self-promotion but self-advocacy. While rabid self-promoters often do advance quickly in certain cultures, I believe it is ultimately a self-limiting behaviour.

As managers and leaders, we have to make it easier for people to have these sometimes difficult conversations with us. We must provide the time and space for our teams to be clear about what they want and ask them often. We also have to advocate for others – particularly those who are not as practised or as empowered to advocate for themselves. The funny thing is, by advocating for others, we are also advocating for ourselves. Supporting the growth of others helps both us and the organisations we work for achieve our overall goals.

We often think of habits as falling into “good” or “bad” buckets – but what are they, really? Habits are patterns of behaviour that we engage in unconsciously or semi-automatically. Our brains are incredibly good at conserving energy, which is a good thing for an organ that represents less than 2% of our overall body mass but consumes 20% of the energy we take in. By deploying habits and other energy-conserving mechanisms like System 1 thinking (see Danny Kahneman’s work), our brains allow us to navigate through the world without constant decision-making. If you’re a database administrator, you could think of habits as human versions of stored procedures.

Habits operate based on a cue or a trigger. First, we encounter the trigger, an established routine executes and we get a reward. Charles Duhigg’s book “The Power of Habit” describes this in more detail, but there’s a short form of the structure of habits with examples on how to change them here.

A simple example might be that I walk into the kitchen, pass the “treat drawer”, grab a biscuit/cookie and eat it – cue, routine, reward. The clear downside of this habit is that if I execute it regularly, I will a) get fat and b) end up with blood sugar issues.

Another example, this one work-related, might be that I present an idea during a meeting, someone dismisses it, and I become defensive. This time the reward is a little harder to judge but it could be that I feel like I didn’t allow someone to walk all over me. This habit can be just as damaging, but this time to my career. I shut down dialogue by behaving this way and don’t learn anything new.

Neuroscience tells us that it is very challenging to dislodge habits once they are established. When our brain encodes a habit into our neural pathways, those connections are pretty “sticky”. It takes a difficult-to-quantify number of pattern executions before the brain says to itself – “this one’s a keeper!” Once embedded, it is a lot easier to form a new habit than to “remove” an old one. Intensely pleasurable habits become embedded more quickly, and simple habits are easier to form than complex ones. For example, coming in from a long day at work, it is far easier to fall onto the sofa and immediately turn on the TV than get into your gym gear and drive straight to the gym to exercise.

In thinking about my habitual behaviours, I have realised that it isn’t inevitable that when I encounter the cue I have to execute the pattern. Duhigg writes about replacing the routines we execute when we meet the cue. For example, instead of taking a cookie when I go into the kitchen, I can take an apple. I still get the sugar hit, but with the added benefit of feeling virtuous for not eating the cookie. This approach doesn’t mean that I can’t ever eat treats – just that I can be more intentional than habitual about it.

Over time, by executing the replacement routine, we weaken the original programming. Simply knowing this can be beneficial in a range of negative behaviours, but can also lead to deliberate decisions to build new, more positive habits. While I am a collection of habits, I don’t need to give in to my negative ones – habitual badness isn’t inevitable!

The next time you notice a habitual behaviour, ask yourself – “how does this serve me?”. If the answer is that it doesn’t, take a look at Charles Duhigg’s work and think about what you might want to adjust to get a better outcome. And persist with the new routine – over time, it will stick and help you become a better version of yourself.

I took a long walk today by the seafront in Malahide, a charming coastal town in Dublin. The sun was shining, and there was a cold easterly wind. I wasn’t in top mental form – I’ve been in a good deal of pain following a recent surgery, and frankly, I was feeling grumpy. I thought the walk would do me good, and I had a podcast for company – Jocko Podcast 174. If you’re interested in leadership principles, I would strongly recommend a listen.

I’ve written about Jocko before, but for those of you who aren’t familiar, he’s a decorated ex-Navy Seal who, apart from many other accomplishments, was responsible for training West Coast Seal Teams as part of his career. He now runs a leadership and development training company called Echelon Front with a fellow ex-Seal, Leif Babin. His podcasts, which he co-hosts with Echo Charles, discuss leadership lessons from military history and writing, and current military doctrine.

The primary focus of episode 174 was the way in which Marines are evaluated, but the discussion was much broader than that. I spent a lot of the time I was walking laughing to myself, probably to the concern of some of my fellow walkers. The reason was not that the podcast was particularly funny, although Jocko can be amusing in his way. I was laughing at the many “a-ha!” moments in the Marine evaluation approach, and how far short of the bar I can fall in so many of the described areas.

If you’ve been working for any length of time in any industry, you’ve been through some form of performance-based evaluation system. The systems that have been used in my career have varied from the verbal to the highly-detailed, multi-page written template, to the web-based SaaS offerings that are in use in many firms today. One of the more interesting systems that I’ve read about, but never experienced, is the “Dots” mechanism described by Ray Dalio in Principles, where individuals are rated on a behavioural scale by their peers, subordinates and managers for the duration of their career with Bridgewater Associates.

The key thing about many evaluation systems is that they are administered by humans to other humans. This can give rise to a range of challenges. People are often unwilling to have hard conversations with their staff about performance issues. This can result in everyone being rated as a top performer, a problem Jocko described as being rampant in the Navy before forced-distribution curves were introduced.

Jocko then went on to provide a short review of the new Navy evaluation approach, which is based on a 1.0-5.0 scale, but which he felt was less capable than the Marine Corps “Commandant’s Guidance” evaluation form. The Marines use the same scale, but go into much more detail in the evaluation criteria, and set the bar very, very high. They force a distribution using a graph that looks like a Christmas tree.

I couldn’t possibly summarise the full two-hour podcast here, and I don’t want to, but I will pull out some of the highlights of how Marines are evaluated.

In the section on leadership, which has subsections on Leading Subordinates, Developing Subordinates, Setting the Example, Ensuring Well-being of Subordinates and Communication Skills, the 1.0 (satisfactory rating) sets a higher bar than many of us achieve in our daily lives.

For the highest levels, I will put out a few quotes to illustrate just how high the bar is set for an Exemplary Marine. In the 5.0 rating for Leading Subordinates:

Achieves highest levels of performance from subordinates by encouraging individual initiative. Engenders willing subordination, loyalty and trust that allow subordinates to overcome their perceived limitations.

The above reminds me of the approach described in David Marquet’s Turn the Ship Around – and not something that I had traditionally associated with a “command and control” style of leadership.

On Developing Subordinates:

Widely recognized and emulated as a teacher, coach and leader. Any Marine would desire to serve with this Marine because they know they will grow personally and professionally.<..> Attitude to subordinate development is infectious, extending beyond the unit.

On Ensuring Well-being of Subordinates:

<…>Widely recognized for techniques and policies that produce results and build morale. Builds strong family atmosphere.

Again, a family atmosphere not being part of what I would have associated with a requirement for a Marine leader to develop, but it is clearly part of how Marines are evaluated.

And on Judgement, which is part of the section on Intellect and Wisdom:

Decisions reflect exceptional insight and wisdom beyond this Marine’s experience. Counsel sought by all; often an arbiter. Consistent, superior judgement inspires the confidence of seniors.

It’s hard to argue that these are very high standards to aspire to. It is clear to see why at the top of that Christmas tree-like graph, there is a single representation of an individual Marine – the Eminently Qualified Marine.

Jocko went on to say that setting standards and then applying discipline to try to live up to those standards every day is what helps us in our attempts to be better humans. We have to take action (“you can’t think things better”) to raise your game. If we were ever able to hit all of the marks above a very high bar, we might even become exemplary (although that’s a very temporary position, and could only be achieved in one area at a time, I suspect :)).

I came home from my walk in a completely different frame of mind than when I set out. Jocko and the Marine Corps’ evaluation gave me just the kick in the mental pants that I needed to break out of my funk. It also reminded me that I need to more explicit about the standards I expect from myself in my life and be more disciplined in applying those standards.

In Jocko-speak – “time to get after it.”