I'm leaving Discovery/Vitality

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Morning friend ☕️ 

How was your weekend?

Last week, I shut down my Discovery laptop for the last time after nearly a decade.

Almost five years at Vitality Life, and then another five at Vitality Global.

What an intense period of personal and professional growth!

I worked with the most amazing and driven people.

People, imbued with purpose and energy.

I touched multiple areas from:

IT Operations, to Software Development & Delivery to Program Management.

This gave me exposure, experience and confidence across all the main business functions.

Now it’s time to say bye to Discovery and move to the next adventure.

But what are my top 3 pieces of advice/learnings?

My biggest mistake? (cost me a promotion)

Grab your coffee.

Let’s chat!

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My Top 3 pieces of Advice to Succeed at Discovery

1. Own your Shit (Ownership mindset and values-driven)

At Vitality Global, my boss’s advice was “Own your shit”.

This was said in a motivational way, and is a critical mindset to advance to senior levels of management. By demonstrating ownership, you show you are accountable and responsible, and build trust. Trust gets you opportunities.

Related to this idea is Discovery’s concept of “The Ideal Discovery Person”. 

This is a list of competencies that encourage high-impact. Tightly coupled with this, is values-orientation. All companies have their own values.

These values act as a compass for it’s employees as it starts to grow from startup to corporate. It’s key to retain what made it successful when smaller as the company scales.

Learn your company values and role-model them at all times.

Combine these two ideas and you will Own Your Shit.

Be the ideal person for your company.

2. Deliver, Deliver, Deliver (Results and Impact Orientation)

At Vitality Life, my boss’s advice to me was Deliver, Deliver, Deliver.

Discovery has a strong results orientation, and to succeed, you need to consistently deliver excellent results. And they need to be seen.

Busynesss is a trap though.

Your results need to add value and impact.

I followed my boss’s guidance and started to deliver the right results with my teams. My responsibilities and portfolio started to grow.

As my portfolio grew, my results increased.

A virtuous cycle.

He ultimately promoted me from Manager to Divisional Manager.

3. Build Relationships & Advocacy (Soft Skills and Synergy)

One principle I am a firm believer in:

Be easy to work with.

This does not mean you need to be nice all the time.

But be strategic about interactions, commitments etc in working with others - you want to build long term relationships that lead to frictionless results. And when there is friction, you can still move forward and get things done.

The more strong relationships you have at various levels, the easier it is to get things done. When people start to notice that you can get difficult things done easily through others, you will start to see opportunities and projects coming your way.

And when you can consistently deliver on these opportunities, you start to build advocacy:

People will speak for you in rooms you are not in. They will want you on their projects and teams.

The Big Mistake That Cost Me a Promotion

Years ago, I made a big decision that led to reputational damage.

For my team, my boss, the company, and of course - myself.

I should have handled this more carefully.

The fallout was managed of course,

But I lost leadership trust.

This was a tough lesson to learn, but an important one for me: Your reputation and that of the company is of great importance.

I’ll dive deeper into the Reputation topic in another newsletter soon.

Mistakes are good - even big ones like this. If you are not making mistakes, you are probably not taking enough risks and not growing.

Are you stagnating?

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Key Takeaway

I really enjoyed my time at Discovery/Vitality.

It’s an amazing place to do purposeful work and filled with some of the smartest people I ever met.

My advice for succeeding there (and in fact any corporate)?

1. Own your shit. An ownership mindset shows seniority.

2. Deliver relentlessly. Have an impact on the company KPIs and OKRs.

3. Build relationships. Your network is leverage to get things done easily.

I’m excited for the next adventure (announcement coming soon on LinkedIn), and will carry these lessons with me.

Hope this was insightful, and I’m looking forward to diving deeper on some of these ideas in upcoming Scary Management newsletters.

PS: Are there any other lessons you think are more important than these 3? Reply and let me know!

See you next week! ☕️ 

Vaugan

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Black to mate in 3 moves…

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