How to Learn From Your Experience When Leaving a Job

Listener Quentin writes in:

"I’ve just left my job. I followed the advice in your episode on how to leave a job, so I’m leaving a good impression. What else I should do to wrap up myself?"

Quentin, your timing is perfect! Because while you search and search for a job that isn’t going to be taken over by robots within six months of your start date, you have an unprecedented opportunity to milk your former job for everything it’s worth.

Long ago, early in my career, I disagreed with a senior person at my job. I was informed in no uncertain terms that he had “30 years of experience” and thus he must be right.

Nope. I was right. He had 30 year’s experience, but it was one year, repeated 30 times. Experience only counts if you learn from it.

When leaving a job, while it’s still fresh in your mind, it’s the perfect time to use it a learning experience. No, really. Breathe. In… Out… And now say to yourself, “It wasn’t a mistake, it was a learning experience. It wasn’t a mistake, it was a learning experience.” Also, polish that oil lamp you got at the garage sale and a Genie will come out. BOOM! But seriously, you actually can learn from your experience. Set aside an hour or two for reflection and get down to it.

Make a list of all the relevant events

Start by getting a piece of engineering graph paper with a wide first column, and five narrow columns. Visit http://ift.tt/2o13Xsr to download a free PDF. In the first column, list all the major failures and conflicts you can remember from the job. No one but you will look at this, so you can abbreviate. You’ll list things like “conference hotel,” “corporate logo fiasco,” “landed the huge deal,” “the promised raise,” and “whipped cream incident.”

Some things are unknowable

Now consider each item in turn. “Conference hotel.” My friend attended a conference. Wanting to have everything prepared, he asked the front desk, “I’m planning clients up to the room. Can I make arrangements to get them let into the elevator?” The clerk asked, “Are you with the conference?” “Yes,” he replied. “We’re sorry sir, if you’re with the conference, then you’re not allowed to have business guests up to your room.”

Yes, this actually happened. If he hadn’t been at the conference, it would have been fine. But somehow as a conference guest, he couldn’t. And that wasn’t stipulated anywhere in any of the paperwork.

Put a checkmark in the first narrow column. Label that column, “WTF” which stands for “What the frack?” Any time an incident was caused by something you didn’t know, but no reasonable person could possibly have known, it gets a WTF checkmark. 

Read WTF items and remember them for the future. But don’t beat yourself up for them. There’s no way you could have known.

Some things are your fault

Next is “corporate logo fiasco.” So it’s true, you jokingly told the graphic designer “why don’t you just use a silhouette of Taylor Swift eating a banana as our corporate logo.” The graphic designer took you seriously, and Taylor Swift was not amused.

This gets a checkmark in the second column. Label it “my bad.” These are things you need to consider seriously, and decide how you’ll change your behavior next time. In this case, the solutions is obvious: make sure to tell people when your suggestion is a joke, and just to be safe, only joke about celebrities for whom the statute of limitations has expired.

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Stranger in a strange land

“Landed the huge deal.” Well, it turns out that you did, in fact, land the deal to supply brains for the zombie general’s army. What you didn’t do is recognize that the zombie general was not in your sales territory. Oops.

At your last company, salespeople were very relaxed about territory, and a cross-territory sale would have been dealt with by simply splitting the commission. At your new company, however, cross-territory sales is considered slightly worse than giving fire to the humans. Just be thankful you aren’t chained to a rock having your liver eaten by crows. 

Put a checkmark in the third column. Label this column “cultural fit.” These are things that might be fine depending on a company’s culture. Anything with this checkmark is worth checking out when you enter a new job.

The promised raise

When the Big Boss promised you a raise if you met your sales quota, you assumed that meant, well, you’d get the raise. But after hitting your numbers, your boss explained, “I meant you got the raise if we didn’t need the money for something else.” Oops. 

Sometimes we make assumptions about what a promise means, or how a contract works. It’s super-important to clarify these things by asking good questions, and then confirming the answers in an email, so you have a paper trail. Checkmark the fourth column, and label it “Shoulda asked.”

The boss is guano crazy

Then there’s the whipped cream incident. This is a g-rated podcast, so we won’t go into details. But it’s the incident that made you realize that your boss is crazy. Not like, figure-of-speech-crazy, but like, seriously bat guano crazy. Like, this-person-shouldn’t-be-allowed-to-walk-their-dog-without-a-chaperone crazy. Put a checkmark in the fifth column and label it, “Wacko boss.”

Identify successes, too

We often learn more from our failures than our successes, but success is a great teacher as well. Add one more column, label it “Success!” Any incidents that were especially good, or which had explicit lessons about what worked get a checkmark in this column. 

Categorize all of your major incidents using this grid. And now, you have your learning agenda. Review the WTF items for ad hoc things to remember in the future that you just hafta learn from experience.

The Wacko Boss items are great ideas for your first novel.

The “my bad” and “I shoulda asked” items are genuine opportunities to learn. Review them. Learn. Decide what you’ll do differently next time.

The “culture learning” become part of your due diligence checklist. When you start a new job, these highlight questions you can ask, and things that you should know early on to avoid screwing up.

The “Wacko boss” items get stored away in your idea file for your first novel, because sometimes life is genuinely stranger than fiction.

And the “Success!” column becomes a list of things you want to keep handy in the future.

Quentin, when it’s time to leave a job, make sure take everything you can. Not the stationery supplies, but the learning. Use an explicit process where you review major events. Categorizing them will help you think through which are lessons you can take with you anywhere, which will apply some places and not others, and which only apply to your prior company or boss. And when all else fails, keep a spare can of whipped cream in your bottom desk drawer. I’m sure I don’t have to tell you why.

This is Stever Robbins. Follow GetItDoneGuy on Twitter and Facebook. I run programs to help people develop the kick-ass business skills they need to create an extraordinary life. If you want to know more, visit http://ift.tt/1l2uWN6. 

Work Less, Do More, and have a Great Life!