Gaining Responsibility During Company Change

There is a lot of corporate downsizing happening right now.  In a future episode, I may go into more detail on that subject, but this week, I would like to talk about how you can take advantage of the downsizing to increase your responsibilities within the company.

If you are one of the ones that remains when a company goes through any sort of organizational change, it is an opportunity for you to increase your sphere of influence and position yourself for increased visibility.  Adding responsibilities strategically can provide a measure of security and even accelerate your career growth.

The first key is to understand the primary drivers of the reduction.  By understanding why each area is being impacted, you will have insight into where the opportunities will be.  Next, you need to determine which areas were impacted the most and whether the work they performed is important to the business going forward or not.

• Cost Reductions - If a company is downsizing in order to cut costs, there will be opportunities in increasing the efficiencies across the company.  Look for ways that you can help people do more with less.  As an individual, look for processes within your larger organization that you can streamline.  As a leader, look for cross-functional processes that you can bring under your control.
• Divesting unprofitable functions - If a company is cutting a business unit that is underperforming or is not considered part of the company's future, you will want to determine what aspects of the business unit will still need to be performed and have those functions assigned to your team.
• Mergers and Acquisitions - When two companies combine, there will often be overlap in certain organizations; usually the ones that are more for business support such as Human Resources or Accounting.  In these instances, the duplication of roles leads to elimination of redundancies and streamlining of costs.  In these instances, the opportunities will be in owning the process of aligning the competing processes into a single process.
• Technological Advancements or Improved Efficiency - Another reason that a company will downsize is when roles have been made obsolete due to improved technology or efficiency.  Can you become an expert in the new technology or processes in order to be best suited for leading efforts in its adoption?
• Restructuring - Sometimes, a company will just make general cuts across every area.  In these instances, teams will have to prioritize their efforts on the most important work and let everything else go.  Are there areas within the company that you can focus on picking up their slack?

Knowing where the gaps are and how they align with the company vision going forward will allow you to assess their value potential.  You should also consider how those functions align with your current responsibilities, however, that is less important than the value of the work to the company.  Additionally, consider which of the opportunities align with your current skills or the skills you are looking to develop.  Focus on areas that provide the most value to the company as well as lead to the most career growth for you.

Once you have identified which areas you would like to target, start to develop a plan for drawing that work to your team.  Start by evaluating your network for any connections to the impacted areas.  If you can reach out and offer your help, you can begin to suggest your name as a potential candidate to take over those responsibilities.

Next, have a conversation with your leader on how you would like to take on this additional work.  Be prepared to provide justification on how that additional responsibility aligns with your skills or how it can expand your capabilities going forward.

If you have enough warning, work to build any skills you will need to take on the additional work.  This is what is happening with Generative AIs such as ChatGPT today.  Those who are learning everything they can about AI and how they can incorporate it into their work are getting ahead and those who aren't are falling behind.

The last step to take is to evaluate your current workload and figure out what aspects of your job you can delegate in order to free up the time you will need for the additional responsibilities that you take on.

As I mentioned in Episode 013 - A Little Bit of Luck, luck is when preparation meets opportunity.  Any time there is change, there is opportunity.  Are you going to be in position to make your own luck and take advantage of the change, or are you going to fall behind those that are already prepared?

If there are any topics that you'd love for me to cover in the future, why don't you drop me a note via the contact form on my web page at ManagingACareer.com?