Category: Ask The Bent

This week, we’re tackling three questions about getting what you need.

We’re tackling two questions this week!

I’m wondering how you might go about defining a career path in a diagonal direction. I have identified a senior managing role I would love, that I think I would excel at, in an industry I have zero experience in (journalism). I have a sense of how I can progress in my current field (UX research) and how I might break into an entry- or mid-level position in another field, but the idea of working toward a senior position in a new field leaves me with a head full of question marks.

The first: How do I figure out if my report’s lack of productivity is my fault or theirs?

The second: My team is working with a contractor who is spending about three times as long as we all predicted to do his work. The quality of the work is fine, and he’s not missing any deadlines, but he’s burning through hours like crazy. How do I ask him to work faster?

Let’s see if we can answer both of these at once. 

Those 10-minutes at the end of the interview where you try to learn as much as possible if this new opportunity is right for you.

This is such an excellent question. We will, naturally, write over 700 words answering it, but in short: You can’t know.

I’m a director for a super small company that has some super big accounts, and it’s still run like a small mom-and-pop company. As in: no processes, few resources to help me do my job easier, too many cooks in the kitchen, no accountability, no alignment across the org.