Clients often come to me complaining about their deserved raise they did not get in their job. They lay before me all their accomplishments during their year of hard work, and some even monetize their contributions to their company by putting value and by tallying the revenues, profits, or the savings their company enjoyed as a result of their work. Then they stake their claim for a 3-5% raise that everyone else in their group got, but bemoan that they came out empty at the end of their review cycle.
When they ask for my advice on what they should do to get the raise they deserved, or to get at least what everyone else got in their group—the proverbial 3% increase—here’s my refrain in each case: They are barking up the WRONG tree! Instead of fighting for a puny raise why not explore an entirely different path to increasing their salary in multiples of their current income and put themselves on a path to a career moonshot. This is not just an admonition or an empty challenge, many have gone on to take such career moonshots and have achieved a quantum jump in their income with a career path that puts them on a very different track to boot. One such recent “use case” is at the end of this blog.
So, what are the approaches to taking such career moonshots? Here are some lessons I have learned from coaching my clients and by helping them take and succeed in such moonshots. The beauty of this approach is, unlike, going after a start-up, where you have to give up your day job, risk it all, and sacrifice your life, you can keep getting your paycheck as you pursue this moonshot.
1. The first step in planning for a career moonshot is to take the inventory of where things are for you and where the job market is if you re-invented yourself to re-define a job that can be and must be done differently. So, going after the job-boards and responding to open jobs in your own field is NOT going to give you that moonshot opportunity, but taking a stock of where you are in your field and where things can benefit from what you have to offer can. For this to work you must first learn how to package what you have differently.
2. Identifying companies that are aggressively going after a market already conquered by the incumbents and challenging the status quo is a good start to see how you want to target your “job search.” This search is not limited to just the technology companies, but also to any and all companies pursuing their own moonshots by challenging the incumbents in their own markets.
3. Approaching someone within such target companies, who can provide you opportunity and who can champion you internally is the next step in the process. Approaching such a person with a prospect letter and making a compelling case with careful research and insight will help get attention of such a person for an in-person meeting.
4. At this point your focus must be on their mission to conquer the market with the vision they have using the talent and ideas (used and unused so far) that you present to make that possible for them. If the focus is on your mission—I want a lot of money NOW to make this work—you may kiss this opportunity good-bye.
5. Your initial engagement must be framed as a trial to show how what you have proposed will work and how it will change to course of their approach to get them to displace the incumbents and to claim the market that they are after, and then some.
6. In staging yourself to engage during a trial period your mission must be to show what you can do to make your idea practicable for them in their environment and how you would execute to succeed.
7. Your secret sauce must be a combination of idea, its implementation, and your ability to execute and deliver results. If you are merely showing them an idea and fail to execute then your trial will end without any further engagement, which is where your focus must be.
8. During this trial period you must develop keen insights into their operations and show them that without your leadership they will fail to accomplish the mission on their own.
9. During these discussions of your trial engagement you must accept what will mutually work for your compensation, with the caveat that once your meet your milestones this part of your engagement will be re-visited and re-negotiated (with a large up-side).
10. Once you are on track with your commitments and you are able to deliver what you promised and show the value of your efforts you must start negotiating your package that will re-define how you will be compensated for your ongoing work and what you will deliver in your continued engagement. At this point you are likely being made a full-time employee with specific responsibilities, duties, and outcomes.
To some, the above framework may read as theoretical with little practical use. Some may also assume that it applies only to very high-level professionals who bring rare—even unique skills—to their jobs that they are so pursuing. Nothing could be further from the truth.
In a recent case one such client was fed up with her situation at work where even a modicum of raise was denied despite her hard work and significant contributions. Going through the above process, which took about one year, as she kept her current job, to start engagement with the right company and another six months before she was made a full-time employee when the target company recognized her value through what she promised and then delivered, she was able to nearly triple her salary to earn a near seven-figure income. Not a bad outcome for someone who complained about not getting even a 3% raise, which prompted this moonshot.
So, if you are fed up with groveling for a 3% raise during your next review cycle, take a deeper look at yourself and see if you can take a leap and design your own career moonshot. It is easier than you think.
Good luck!
Note: The topic for this blog was inspired by an article by Astro Teller, Google-X Head, with the title: Moonshots: Why 10X is easier than 10%.