Blending Career Building with Operations

In my experience while serving in operational roles from NOC to Tier 3, work in those areas has rarely led to new and interesting skill set building. The work tends to be monotonous, repetitive and keeps you pretty busy. How can you break out of this routine and ensure you are building new skills while doing more for the company?

Learn how to solve the work you are presented with each day to be automated alerts or even fixes.

Gaining Perspective

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The first step is to try and look at your day to day as though you were an outsider. Try some of these exercises to help gain this needed perspective:

Journal your days and review a week later. If you don't already track the issues you work on each day as part of your job, jot down the major tasks you are accomplishing each day or even hour. Wait a week, let that work fade from your memory, then review it. Think back on what made you need to do those tasks and why they were important.

Ask others what it is they see you doing each day. Your peers will give you some interesting feedback on what it is they see you doing each day. It might be not what you think you are doing, but what they value about your work. See if this aligns what what you know you are actually doing. Is all of your work going noticed or is some of it hidden?

What is it you really want to be doing? Don't consider what it is you do every day, what do you want to be doing in the company? What would make you most happy and make you more excited to get up and start work that day?

Take Action

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Now that you have better perspective on what the high level things you are doing each day and want to be doing, lets blend those together to change up your day to day.

Some questions to ask: Where are your biggest time-sinks? What can you do to fix these processes? How can this work be automated? How can things be re-architected so no one has to do this anymore? Take some proactive steps to communicate to others the need, and take it upon yourself to see what you can do to solve the issues.

How does solving these tasks align with what you want to be doing? What new skills could you learn which would compliment making these things go away? Taking the initiative may be more effort at first but in the long run will pay off in the things you have fixed. Your job will be less about doing these manual tasks and more about moving yourself and the company forward.