Does it sometimes feel like you're climbing the corporate ladder but
it's leaning up against the wrong wall and that you have some stellar
achievements, outstanding achievements, and you've done some good
work, but for some reason it's not getting you up until executive
levels that you desire?
Well, in this video, what I wanna share with you is a five-part
framework, the CATCH framework, C A T C H.
This is gonna give you five parts for consideration on how you can
achieve executive level positions.
The first part of the framework is C, and C stands for congruence.
Congruence really is the most important first step to be successful in
order to elevate to the executive levels.
Congruence is the very first consideration.
Congruence means what's on the inside is congruent with what's on the
outside.
Congruent means I am congruent and consistent every step along the
path because what it means is that you are wanting to progress
professionally, professional growth, executive level, getting up to
the executive level, being promoted into the executive level.
That is professional growth.
But professional growth starts with personal growth and you are moving
that personal into professional.
So there's a move, there's a directionality, personal and
professional.
So here's what this means.
The best analogy that I could share with you is that of a seed.
The seed, right?
When you plant a seed, the seed that you plant is dictate exactly the
tree that is get produced.
For example, I have here an apple.
If I were to take an apple seed and I were to plant that into fertile
soil, nurture the soil, I would get an apple tree and the apple tree
would produce more apples.
Now, the by no means there is not a single circumstance out there that
if I were to plant an apple seed, that I would grow a pear tree or an
orange tree.
We can all agree that that's not gonna happen, right?
So here's the thing about seeds.
The seed on the inside will produce the fruit that is on the outside,
right?
So the seed on the inside of this apple is an apple seed, and the seed
of the apple produces the fruit on the outside, the apple that we can
see, that we can touch and that we can taste, right?
So when it comes to the seed, the seed on the inside of you, the seed
that is nurtured within you is the seed that produces the fruit of
your life, right?
Being promoted into the executive levels is the fruit of the life that
you wanna produce, and that production of that fruit depends on the
seed on the inside, right?
So Carl Young, let me introduce Carl Young.
Carl Young was an ancient psychiatrist and he was an ancient, uh, very
pioneer in the fields of psychology and anthropology, and he was very
well known for his philosophies.
Now, Carl Young once had a quote and he said that it is very important
to move until you move your unconscious to the conscious.
Until you make that movement from unconscious to the conscious, then
your patterns will run your life and you're gonna blame it on
everything else.
And so what I say in with respects to how does that relate to your
career path, the way that this relates to your career path is that
until you understand your unconscious patterns of behavior, until you
understand your unconscious patterns of thought, beliefs and
behaviors, right?
Until you understand that and you bring them to your conscious
awareness, until you are able to do that, then until you are able to
understand your behaviors in the teams, in your teams into in your
industry and so on, until you're able to do that, your behavior is
going to run your career growth and you're gonna blame it on every,
everything else around you.
You're gonna blame it on your circumstances, you're gonna blame it on
the economy, you're gonna blame it on the opportunities, you're gonna
blame it on nepotism, you're gonna blame it on the industry
marketplace or you're gonna blame it on the organization.
The org structures, the situational circumstances, and so on and so on
and so on.
So in congruence means how do you move the unconscious to the
conscious?
And it is a process.
It is a journey.
So that is the very first step of the framework in terms of having
your achievements match your progression into the executive levels.
That is achieved through step number one congruence.
The second part of this framework starts with the letter A and A
stands for achievement creates unconscious assumptions.
So when you are in your company and you have a desire to grow your
career path, you have a deep desire, a burning desire to become an
executive.
And this is your purpose.
And you understand this is, this is something I'm congruent with and
this is something I truly wanna become eventually an executive.
What happens is that up until now, you have excelled in your career
path and you have once been an individual contributor and you have
once been really good at what you do.
You have, you've built around an intellectual subject matter knowledge
and you have built around you a reliability, a dependency on being
able to be good at what you do.
And as a result of that, those achievements that you have on your
resume, those achievements that you had in your individual contributor
and even in as an early manager and a mid-level manager as well, those
achievements create assumptions in your higher ups.
So here's what I mean by that.
There are three key assumptions when it comes to higher ups looking at
you and saying, you know, congratulations, well done.
You've been good as an individual contributor, we can depend on you.
You're very reliable at this job level.
Now keep in mind you are thinking, I wanna get ahead.
I wanted to get to the next level.
They're looking at you saying, you're really good at what you do.
You're very dependable and reliable here.
You're really good.
Keep doing what you're doing because your performance metrics are
great, right?
So that's the feedback, that's the observation.
So that produces three assumptions.
The first assumption is that you are at the skill level, your ideal
skill, skill level at what you do.
And you're really good at what you do because this is your, your
advancement.
This is your highest level.
So that's the first assumption is it's assumption based on skills,
this is you, this is your wheelhouse.
So that's the first assumption.
The second assumption that they make is, well, you must be fully
aligned in your life purpose because obviously you're passionate about
what you do.
Obviously this is something that you are comfortable with and we can
depend on you and your teams really like you, your direct reports
really have a great time in your leadership.
So there's an assumption based on purpose that this is a good
alignment with your purpose, your purpose and career direction.
That's the second assumption.
And the third assumption is based on value.
So what do we mean by that?
The value is, well, if you have been adding value to the company so
far, you've been a great manager, you've been dependable leader to
your teams and you're great in on the implementation side of things,
the technical knowledge side of things, then now you've been adding so
much value to the company.
What are they gonna do without you?
What are they gonna do if you wanna move forward and upwards?
And how are they going to be able to have the bandwidth and the
personnel and the capacity to be able to replace you if you were to
move forward?
So that an assumption, that's an assumption based on value.
These are key considerations.
They might happen unconsciously, they might happen behind the scenes,
they might happen in without your presence.
But these are assumptions.
Your achievements creates these assumptions.
So when it comes to why are my over outstanding achievements holding
me back, why are they still not getting the promotion?
That's the second consideration is achievement creates these
unconscious assumptions.
So that's why it would be important for you to be able to communicate
on those three levels, those three levels I just mentioned, skills,
purpose, and value you to be able to articulate very clearly in terms
of the skills, the values, and your purpose towards the next level,
the executive level that you desire.
So you have catch C A T C H.
So the next letter is t and T stands for tactical Competence is
different from strategic competence.
You wanna become an executive, you are amid their senior level manager
right now, or maybe you are a senior implementer and one day
ultimately your goal is to become an executive.
As at the executive level, strategic competence is key and just very
different from tactical competence.
Of course, you're good at what you do and at the implementation level,
the technical knowledge, that's your pros, it is your forte.
So when it comes to that transition is going to be key.
Transitioning from tactical strategic means one of them on the
tactical side that is more instructional on the strategic side, that
is more innovative.
So that is the key difference.
So when it comes to moving to strategic, it will be important for you
to develop that str, that foundational skillset and that foundational
understanding as well.
And more importantly, the emotional challenges involved in becoming
more strategic.
And keep in mind, when you are tactically competent at the tactical
level, you are involved in a lot of processes.
Your day-to-day accountability is in carrying out these processes and
you have a ton of information coming at you.
The information could be data, the conf information could be
historical, the information could be situational, but you have a lot
of information that you are navigating to be able to follow through on
processes.
Now that's at the tactical level, at the strategic level is completely
different.
At the strategic level, you are going to be demanded in order to make
decisions with less and less information.
There's gonna be less and less information available to you, but your
accountability is on making key decisions.
Your accountability is gonna be be making decisions that be able to
produce the results and the outcomes that are desirable with less and
less information on hand.
So that's navigating through that ambiguity, which is why the movement
from Strat tactical to strategy is really one of instructional to
innovation.
Remember the acronym is catch C A T c H.
We have talked about C A T and now we are on the second last C and C
stands for company growth dictates the path to positional growth.
Now your growth into executive position is a positional growth.
That's the position you wanna grow into.
And your company growth really does dictate the path.
So here's what I mean by that.
When a company is growing, when a company is expanding in, there's
growth and more importantly, that that growth is sustainable, it is
sustainable into the foreseeable, the future.
That growth really creates new positions because as a company is
growing, it demands new positions to be created.
It demands new positions.
At the decisional authority level, it demands new positions at the
leadership levels, it demands new positions at the implementation
level, and it demands sometimes restructuring as a result of that.
So when it comes to company growth and your desire to move into
executive level positions, it'll be really important for you to
understand two things.
The first thing is to understand how do I navigate the politics of the
organization?
Politics means how power and authority is distributed.
And the second thing to understand is how do I navigate through
culture and culture?
Yes, I'm referring to cultural backgrounds.
For example, if you work in a team with a lot of diversity or maybe
you work on remote teams and some of your teams are in different
countries all around the world, and yet we need to have a cohesive
strategy.
But culture involves both of those things.
Culture also involves the different ways people think.
There are different perspectives, there are different backgrounds on
how they were brought up as well, and what that brings to the table.
So if you can understand how to navigate through the cultural and
political aspects of your organization, this is how you can take the
company's growth to whole new levels in your own positional growth as
well.
You see, the company's growth necessarily will move people from
tactical to strategic positions.
And the reason why is because when it comes to company's growing,
there are more expansive positions.
There's a greater demand on leadership, there's a greater demand for
those types of skills that can navigate through ambiguity.
There's a greater demand for individuals who have that level of skill,
interpersonal intrapersonal skill, who can make decisions with less
and less information.
There's a demand for people who can see the future clearly, who can
direct layers of leadership beneath them.
There's a demand for visionary capacities and there's a demand for
communicators who can represent the vision to the whole corporation.
So there's a net demand for these things.
So when it comes to growth, growth will move individuals for TA from
tactical to strategic.
It depends.
Are you prepared for that?
Are you prepared when the opportunity knocks?
Are you prepared to answer the call of opportunity?
Are you prepared to look at opportunities that come when a company is
growing and to be able to position yourself there strategically, but
also at the same time to prepare for your, to prepare yourself
internally.
And that goes back to the first point I talked about congruence.
Are you prepared for those things?
So growth will necessarily take people from tactical to strategic, but
it's the people that are prepared mentally, people who are prepared
skillfully, the people who are par prepared purposefully, and that
people who are prepared on a values level as well.
Now we're down to the last letter of the acronym catch.
The last letter is H.
And what does H stand for?
It stands for harvest precedes a period of gestation.
Now this takes us back to our apple, the apple, the seed of the apple.
I mentioned in step number one, the consideration, the first step of
the framework is that the seed on the inside produces the food on the
outside.
So you have a seed, you plant that seed and that is putting the seed
into the ground and you are nurturing that seed.
Now, by the time you get to harvest the apples, wouldn't you agree
that there's a timeframe, there's a period of gestation.
There's no avenues in farming where you put the seed in and you can
harvest the seed right away.
There's a period of gestation, a period in which the seed goes into
the ground, it puts out its roots planted in, and then it starts to
resurface out of the ground.
And then it grows into the beautiful fruit that you are, that you have
put in there.
So there's a period of gestation.
So the period of gestation is what I wanna talk about because that is
the most important.
We come down to this framework, right?
So the period of gestation, what that means is that you also have a
period of gestation.
The moment that you planted a seed in your mind that I want to become
an executive, that you planted a seed in your mind, that in your
vision of the future you wanna create for your life, that I wanna have
a meaningful impact.
I wanna grow my legacy contribution.
I wanna be a thought leader.
I want to be an industry expert, right?
That is a seed that is planted.
And then you communicate that vision and you plant that seed into the
minds of people, individuals who have a key professional influence on
your life.
Maybe your manager, your boss, your colleagues, some collaborators as
well that had that professional influence on you.
So you plant the seed out there, it's planted.
Now there's a period of gestation.
That period of gestation is different for everyone.
But the most important thing that you can do in that period of
gestation is to nurture that seed, just like the F farmer nurtures
that seed.
Your nurturing is to be able to invest in yourself.
The nurture that you can do with the seed that is planted is for you
to invest in that growth, to invest in your personal development.
This goes right back to the first seed in my framework of catch the
cong to achieve that congruency.
Cuz a seed on the out inside produces the fruit on the outside.
So how are you nurturing your seed?
So if you're listening to this and you're nodding and you're feeling,
yes, there is a period of gestation, but you know what?
My period of gestation has been far too long.
I've been, I've had the seed for a long time and I don't want this
gestation period to be a long time.
I don't want this gestation period to be years.
I wanna condense my timeframes and I know that I can because I know I
have a lot of potential.
If you're listening to this and that's what you're saying to yourself,
then I invite you to speed up your timeframes.
Below this video, there is a description and there is a link to talk
to either myself or a member of my team.
And this is where I'm going to explore and share with you exactly how
I can support you to shorten that gestation period.
And this is where when you have someone coming in with experience, you
have someone that has helped a lot of other people to shorten that
gestation period.
I'm gonna lay the ground for you in saying this is the blueprint that
you follow then, then that way you don't have to figure out things
yourself.
You don't have to spend time in trial and error every step of the way
of career growth.
This is where on the catch framework, C A T C H.
Then I'm gonna give you the training and the support, the coaching and
the mentorship that you need to get and graduate from C all the way to
H.
So that's you and only if that's you because you're serious about
investing, then click on the link below and I look forward to working
with you on the inside.
Now I've created a previous video where I talked about why experience
doesn't get to the to the top.
Now this provides a different set of insights in terms of promotion
into executive positions.
So if you wanna, if you've had that question like I have a lot of
experience, how come I'm not getting promoted?
And why are my colleagues who seem, appear to be less experienced than
me, how come they're getting promoted?
So I provide my insights there.
So if you are curious about that, that video is coming right up next.
I'll see you there.