Millennial - Why I'm Staying in my Job

Being a Millennial I was always Open For Opportunities, like any other ambitious hungry professional.

Then, my current company went into few positive sturdy cultural and organizational transformations and I realized that for the last one year I wasn’t interested into going to any interviews.

Did I lose my ambitions? Did I get old? Did I get too much into my comfort zone? Am I scared of the greener grass out there?

The researcher at heart in me started analyzing what just happened. In the last year, I didn’t get a promotion, but, I got below:

1.      Servant Leader

I had a manager who was working for his team rather than his team working for him. Always available, never too busy for a call, responds promptly to every email. If I need anything small or big, I know 100% that he will either make it happen, or find alternatives or convince me otherwise.

I never heard from him “No, because I said so”.

2.      Mentor from different region and department

I am based in Singapore managing post-sales teams of customer success management, services, cloud and support. I haven’t been a sales person in my career.

My mentor is the Super-star Sales GM in the company. This is to provide me the other perspective from the sales side and help me see the full picture. We meet every two weeks and discuss many aspects of my work life including trivial conflicts or work-life balance. He never discarded a silly question or ignored a tricky one.

Being a busy manager in his region, he made sure to have the mentorship calls outside of his office in a quite undisturbed environment, so that I have his full focus every time.

3.      Empowerment and Accountability

When I took over the APAC services management, I wasn’t micromanaged to do it the same way as my predecessors. I could do it my way.

I had guidance, framework and KPIs about margin, revenue, budget and utilization rates. But how to do it was up to me.

Being a brand-new mother at that time, I put my focus on the people (recognition, promotion, trainings, enablement, communication, and transparency).

With above, results came naturally and all KPIs were met because when you are empowered and you empower your teams, the numbers are just that, numbers.

Empowerment was also key in another episode when I shared with my manager that we needed to change the way we drive the cloud business and the way we engage our partners. I had his go ahead to do it otherwise, and again we are flourishing in the cloud this year with optimistic portfolio.

4.      Company Transformation

Customer Centricity is at the heart of what we do this year in Axway. We are building a Customer Success Organization and we have a dedicated Chief Customer Officer who lives and breathes customer success.

We have a team of Customer Success Managers which their sole objective is to ensure that their valued customers are well served.

So, after changing jobs four times in ten years, I realized that it wasn’t about money or job title. It was about servitude, empowerment and customer centricity.

I don’t know what the future holds for me. But Axway is a great lesson in my professional career.

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