⚡️🧠Impact = Environment x Skill

A framework for making big career decisions by @iambangaly (Reforge Partner, Former Instacart, Instagram)

Full post -> https://t.co/dU0l7e0BWR

🧵 Thread...

1/ Career decisions about your next role/opp are the most impactful decisions you might make in your career. As an operator, all of your eggs are in one basket at a time, and we get a limited number of swings at the plate. So getting good at these decisions is important...
2/ At FB, Bangaly managed Rotational PM's. At the end of a rotation, he'd have the same convo: How are you going to choose your next rotation/role?

As a result, Bangaly got a lot of reps guiding this type of decision and created a framework to help with it...
3/ The framework is Impact = Skills x Environment

The goal is not to try and boil this type of decision down to a spreadsheet of inputs that spits out the answer, but rather it helps with 4 things...
4/ It can help with:

- Identify individual variables that are inputs into the decision.
- Evaluate each individual variable in a structured way.
- Understand the relationship between each variable.
- Narrow the decision down to the most important variable

...
5/ This helps avoid mistakes like

- Choosing to work on the shiny object
- Thinking you just need to improve your skills to progress
- Short-term thinking
- Solving only for brand
- Mixing perception and truth
6/ Impact = Environment x Skills means:

a. Impact fuels career progression. It is the thing you need to solve for.
b. Impact is the product of Environment and Skills
c. If our skills are great, but the environment is wrong (or vice versa), then we aren't set up for success.
7/ Environment = Everything that enables you to do great work that is outside of your direct control. This breaks down into:

a. Your manager
b. Resources
c. Scope
d. Team
e. Compensation
f. Company culture
8/ Skills = things that are within your direct control that enable your success. This breaks down into:

a. Communication
b. Influence/Leadership
c. Strategic Thinking
d. Execution
9/ Bangaly likes to give each of these a score from 0 to 2.

0 = Major Bottleneck
1 = Neutral
2 = Major Amplifier

...
10/ Here is an example of what evaluating your Manager on this spectrum might look like...
11/ Here is another example of what evaluating Resources might look like...
12/ In all of these cases, Bangaly recommends after evaluating each variable, to do a few things:

a. Identify the variable that matters most
b. Evaluate your ability to change each variable
c. Understand the time horizon it will take to change each variable.
13/ Throughout all of this, Bangaly (@iambangaly ) has a few keys. The first is that the most important variable in the equations is your manager. Here is why...
14/ "A great manager can influence your scope, advocate for more resources, help you develop your skills, guide you to better execution, and more. So even in situations where other variables are low if your manager is a major amplifier (1.5 to 2) give them time to figure it out."
15/ Also "Great execution with poor communication limits your impact over time. You could be doing great work, but without great communication then it won't receive the attention that it deserves. Embrace that communication is more influential than the other skill variables."
16/ We are doing a @joinClubhouse event with @iambangaly, @JoannaLord, @AKGrenier and other Reforge EIR's on making big career decisions Wed night at 7:30pm PT

https://t.co/iN0M6eCjPI
17/ Get the step-by-step framework from @iambangaly here -> https://t.co/dU0l7e0BWR

Or learn more from Bangaly as a Reforge Member -> https://t.co/uzfVcrSzOy

More from Tech

So we had to develop technologies like this to barely manage control over limited areas in Iraq's few urban centers. Only ~8 in 100 Iraqi adults owns a personal vehicle. That rate is > 1 car/adult in America yet I have never seen any doctrine paper or work of fiction address this


We've seen and struggled in civil conflicts with instant, local, universal, distributed communications (cell phone era, basically every conflict since 2000). We've seen and struggled in conflicts with instant, global, universal distributed communications (everything since 2011).

The world's most overfunded military and glow in the dark agencies struggle and largely fail to contain conflicts where fhe vast, vast majority of people are locked into a ~5mi radius of their home.

How can they possibly contain a conflict in a nation with universal car ownership and the most developed road network in the world? The average car can travel over 400 miles on one tank of gas, how can you contain the potential of that kind of mobility?

I think that's partially why the system was so freaked out by 1/6. Yes, most of it is histrionics but you don't decide to indefinitely turn your capital into the Baghdad Green Zone with fortifications and 25k troops over histrionics alone.

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Just added Telegram links to
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