Knowing the Value Your Company Rewards!

You must not judge a fish as stupid by its inability to climb a tree!Albert Einstein

Recently, a highly talented and compensated client in the technology space came to me frustrated and defeated despite his stellar contributions during the past year. He was working as a technologist in a company that provides R&D solutions to its manufacturing business and the company is a leading vendor of state-of-the-art technology products. What my client had done during the past year was to take few of its shelved technologies and created a business that catapulted the companys BU into a new space to be seen as the first-mover of that product, a first for that company, not just for its BU. Although this company has been a leading provider of technology products, it was not seen as the leader in offering new technology to the market. But, in this case it changed that.

Yet, when the Annual Performance Review was given, my client did not score so high in how he was rated, let alone singled out for a promotion to the next level with a generous bonus to boot that he was expecting. He was dinged for not having technical depth, not making original technology contributions, and for not filing any patents, etc. during that year, despite the roaring success of the product he brought to market.

Here is the classic case of how someone who brings a different cluster of skills is berated because in the context of the company the person did not bring what the company valued more. This company valued original research and advancing the technology envelope more than it did being first to market with the existing portfolio of its technology assets that were otherwise languishing.

This episode got me thinking!

Clients often come to me wanting to know how to engage their skillset to advance their career and to find joy in their work. Some are PhDs with deep knowledge of certain technology areas, some are engineers at heart, who like to tinker with things and make new gadgets with the knowledge of how things work, others are more focused on pushing the technology envelope to make smaller, cheaper, and more efficient devices regardless of where their application lies. Yet others with MBAs are more focused on creative business models that disrupt the status quo, not because of their technology or engineering prowess, but because of how they see their business going in new directions with their unique insights and execution skills in the application of technology, engineering, and products. Here, they create a disruptive force in the business world that changes the business paradigms, as my client did in this above story.

The purpose of this blog is to shed some light on the different flavors of companies, each holding one single driving purpose behind their ethos and subordinating other factors to that purpose. I want to make my case with some paragons of each type to highlight how they focus on their core mission and how you, as someone pursuing a career can view what they do in light of what stirs your passions. I am going to do this by giving you examples of a few well-known companies that I consider to be the best players in each field. Of course there are other companies playing in other fields of pursuits, similar to these, but I have not identified or labeled them or their missions. I am sure that the list is quite a bit longer than what I have here, but I merely want to make my point with this limited illustrative cluster of companies and their missions.

Technology company: Intel, Space-X, Tesla
Engineering company: Google,
Product company: Apple, Facebook
Business company: Amazon

This list is my own take on how each company dominates in its space with special emphasis on its core competency that I have listed next to it. What this means is that the Intel-class companies drive the core technology frontier to make smaller and smaller (and cheaper, faster) devices as its main thrust. Of course, it has top-notch engineers, product makers, and business leaders to make it all work as a successful business. But, its first and foremost focus is on pushing the technology envelope. Keeping this singular focus on technology alone is how Intel lost big in the new business areas provided by mobile platforms, communications (Qualcomm and others took that away from Intel).

The same can be said about Google, which is mainly an engineering company. It is constantly pursuing ways to access information in the most efficient ways. Although Google will engage in technology endeavors to explore new vistas to grow its business, at its heart it is an engineering company.

Apple and Facebook, on the other hand, are archetypal product companies. Their focus is to make products that attract people to use them with engagement and devotion. Does it mean that they are not managing their business right? No, what that means is that their main focus is to make their products wow their users and let the business models and all other aspects of how they run their companies be driven by other considerations and factors that stem from making such products that gives them that market advantage.

Amazon sees itself more as a business-first-and-everything-else-second company. This is why it has come up with business models using existing technologies that have disrupted the status quo on many fronts. For example, on AWS (its $7B/Yr. Amazon Web Services business) front, it is now celebrating 10 years as the #1 cloud services provider. To provide a glimpse of how this relentless focus on business (Vs. on engineering, technology, or product) works can be gleaned from a recent interview by the person in charge of Amazon Cloud technology. And in the process, AWS has sent shockwaves through the traditional enterprise sector and through those who make systems and hardware.

In an interview with Business Insider, Werner Vogels the CTO of Amazon in charge of AWS explained why hardware companies are going to face serious market headwinds as a result of its thrust to develop its own hardware and systems to optimize its cost-performance curve for such installations. His argument is that vendors such as HP, IBM, Cisco, and others make generic gear that does not provide the best cost-performance factors AWS is looking for. So, Amazons decision in this caseas it is also in all other such casesis purely driven by business considerations and not much by anything else.

What does this all mean when you are seeking the right career path for yourself? First you must be clear in the space in which you want to dominate. If you want to play in the engineering sandbox, Google is your employer of choice. If you want to leverage your MBA to create innovative business models and rely on technology to provide that edge then Amazon is your employer of choice. If you want to advance technology and pioneer new vistas of performance envelope in technology for its own sake then Intel is the place where youll find most growth opportunities. I am sure one can sift through other companies playing in different verticals to find their main focus and decide if their career path provides them the best opportunities for how they want to grow their career.

So, the next time your boss dings you in your performance review, do not wage a fight and try to convince them that your contributions helped the company to be seen as a leader in a new area of market that it had not pursued before and that you need to be rewarded for it commensurately. Instead, look for a company that holds such contributions as valuable and pursue your next job in such companies.

Good luck!

About Author

Dilip has distinguished himself as LinkedIn’s #1 career coach from among a global pool of over 1,000 peers ever since LinkedIn started ranking them professionally (LinkedIn selected 23 categories of professionals for this ranking and published this ranking from 2006 until 2012). Having worked with over 6,000 clients from all walks of professions and having worked with nearly the entire spectrum of age groups—from high-school graduates about to enter college to those in their 70s, not knowing what to do with their retirement—Dilip has developed a unique approach to bringing meaning to their professional and personal lives. Dilip’s professional success lies in his ability to codify what he has learned in his own varied life (he has changed careers four times and is currently in his fifth) and from those of his clients, and to apply the essence of that learning to each coaching situation. After getting his B.Tech. (Honors) from IIT-Bombay and Master’s in electrical engineering(MSEE) from Stanford University, Dilip worked at various organizations, starting as an individual contributor and then progressing to head an engineering organization of a division of a high-tech company, with $2B in sales, in California’s Silicon Valley. His current interest in coaching resulted from his career experiences spanning nearly four decades, at four very diverse organizations–and industries, including a major conglomerate in India, and from what it takes to re-invent oneself time and again, especially after a lay-off and with constraints that are beyond your control. During the 45-plus years since his graduation, Dilip has reinvented himself time and again to explore new career horizons. When he left the corporate world, as head of engineering of a technology company, he started his own technology consulting business, helping high-tech and biotech companies streamline their product development processes. Dilip’s third career was working as a marketing consultant helping Fortune-500 companies dramatically improve their sales, based on a novel concept. It is during this work that Dilip realized that the greatest challenge most corporations face is available leadership resources and effectiveness; too many followers looking up to rudderless leadership. Dilip then decided to work with corporations helping them understand the leadership process and how to increase leadership effectiveness at every level. Soon afterwards, when the job-market tanked in Silicon Valley in 2001, Dilip changed his career track yet again and decided to work initially with many high-tech refugees, who wanted expert guidance in their reinvention and reemployment. Quickly, Dilip expanded his practice to help professionals from all walks of life. Now in his fifth career, Dilip works with professionals in the Silicon Valley and around the world helping with reinvention to get their dream jobs or vocations. As a career counselor and life coach, Dilip’s focus has been career transitions for professionals at all levels and engaging them in a purposeful pursuit. Working with them, he has developed many groundbreaking approaches to career transition that are now published in five books, his weekly blogs, and hundreds of articles. He has worked with those looking for a change in their careers–re-invention–and jobs at levels ranging from CEOs to hospital orderlies. He has developed numerous seminars and workshops to complement his individual coaching for helping others with making career and life transitions. Dilip’s central theme in his practice is to help clients discover their latent genius and then build a value proposition around it to articulate a strong verbal brand. Throughout this journey, Dilip has come up with many groundbreaking practices such as an Inductive Résumé and the Genius Extraction Tool. Dilip owns two patents, has two publications in the Harvard Business Review and has led a CEO roundtable for Chief Executive on Customer Loyalty. Both Amazon and B&N list numerous reviews on his five books. Dilip is also listed in Who’s Who, has appeared several times on CNN Headline News/Comcast Local Edition, as well as in the San Francisco Chronicle in its career columns. Dilip is a contributing writer to several publications. Dilip is a sought-after speaker at public and private forums on jobs, careers, leadership challenges, and how to be an effective leader.

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