MY MASTERCARD JOURNEY PART 3 (MAKING CHOICES AND ACCUMULATING VALUE)
A-ha. I have disappeared for a few months. Yes, unfortunately the new job and its responsibilities are just that hectic… and I’ve also been spending too much time at the bowling lanes. But in light of the Labor day weekend, it felt appropriate to write an article about work so we shall continue and wrap up the series on how the Mastercard journey came to an end. We will deal with two things – how I made the decision to move to Acceptance, how to identify value and leverage on that value.
Having come to the end of my first 3 months in my new role at Mastercard, I was offered a decision – do I want to rotate or do I want to stay in the Merchants team? As usual, every opportunity comes with its set of pros and cons, so how do you make that decision?
Sometimes, you’ll hear people say that: “Your manager is the most important in your early career”. Some say: “Your role is the most important”. Other say: “the pay and the promotion is important”. Well, they are all important, but the extent of their importance depends on you. It’s much more useful to understand why these other people are telling you these things, then deciding which of these factors are the most important.
Why is your manager important? Your manager is going to be the one you interact with day-to-day. Your manager will be the one pushing you for a promotion. Your manager will be the one empowering you to do your best work.
Why is your role important? Your role determines where you can go next, what your expertise will be, and the total potential of your super long term career plans.
Why is your pay and the promotion important? Unfortunately, we live in a pragmatic world where we’re not supposed to be benchmarking salary, but we still do. And despite best efforts, people still look at your title externally and internally, especially in an MNC. It shouldn’t be this way, but unfortunately, reality doesn’t often shift at the same pace as our ideals.
So keeping all these non-exhaustive factors in mind, you make your decision. My point here is: no one can tell you what the right decision is. But you can make a decision that you won’t regret by mapping out what you really want within the job and paying the necessary price to achieve your goals.
I’ve never believed that the 3rd factor is truly important, so I could discount that. This is my personal opinion. My belief is that if you accumulate sufficient value and demonstrate the ability to make consistently good decisions, you will be eventually paid a fair wage for your capabilities. I use eventually because it may not be in your current role. Some people also overestimate their worth (I’m sure we all do at times, haven’t heard anyone complain they are being paid too much before). In due course, your salary should be on parity with your value.
Since that was my belief, I decided to focus on value instead of the potential of a near term promotion (I personally didn’t expect to be promoted in a year after I joined the new role but I had great managers above me). My manager in the merchants team was great – she always had my back and we still meet up for coffee to have a laugh and a good time, but when it came to making a career decision, I decided to move for two key reasons:
1) I came into Mastercard to learn about payments, and Acceptance is the core of payments
2) The more niche the knowledge, the more valuable you are
Know why you came into the job. It will help you in your decision making.
So how do you accumulate knowledge and prove value?
I think as an analyst (regardless of what team you’re in), it’s important that your analysis is robust. That means that you should know the levers of the business (how the data works, how the business works, have some basic knowledge of technical flows, who to talk to etc). Your immediate value comes from providing support and often times, the more senior people don’t have the time to do what you do. I’m not saying that all senior people can do what you do – there are those that probably haven’t extracted data from any data base before, but their inability should only make you more valuable, not more disgruntled. If you acknowledge and embrace your role within the team, the opportunities will come. Contrary to what most people would think, I actually liked doing the data analysis because I always learnt something about the payments industry and its trends. I liked doing the strategy decks because I got direct feedback on how upper management thought about such issues. I enjoyed doing a support role because I know that one day, these skills would be useful even if I became an account manager and didn’t have to handle these myself anymore. Because I would know what questions to ask and how to think about certain issues. Of course, that is not to say you’ll enjoy everything you do. There are times when you’ll be doing certain pieces of work and wondering what is the point of it all. Don’t be afraid to question the purpose of your work politely. If it has to be done, do it happily because your team is counting on you to fill that gap. If you do your job and fill in the gap you’re supposed to fill, your team can’t afford to lose you. When they can’t afford to lose you, you’re valuable.
In any good team, opportunities will come eventually because as you accumulate more knowledge and the ability to run workstreams independently, your time will eventually be spent better doing something else than pulling data. My eventual conversion to account manager wasn’t because I asked, but because I was needed. Checkout.com was coming into APAC and my team was so stretched that they couldn’t manage the account. My manager suggested to his manager that they let me do it – sink or swim. Baptism by fire. Baptism in a sea of fire where you’ll have to swim or flounder and drown in a sea of flames. (Ok, enough with the terrible analogies). In any case, as you’d imagine, the change in job scope entailed new challenges – whereas my manager would front interactions in my support role, as the account manager I now had to navigate the organization myself. And I think anyone can tell you that aligning mutual interests with other stakeholders can be challenging. The good news is, if you’ve done a good job supporting your team, you’re likely to know most of the stakeholders already and you’re likely have a reputation (be it good or bad) in your company. All your previous work is meant to help you cope with your new role and increased responsibility. If you really feel that you’re not being rewarded or recognized for your good work, then it’s time to explore other opportunities. Before you jump the gun though, ask yourself honestly if it’s the case that you’re not being recognized, or you’re just not ready. No one’s going to read your mind, so perhaps it’s a good idea to have a chat with your current manager first to figure out where you stand.
All in all, if words are too much to bear, then why write essay when 3 points do trick:
1) When making important career decisions, identify why certain factors are important and how they align with your initial motivations for choosing such a career path
2) Don’t look down on your own role. If you do your job well, you’ll be filling a gap. The more gaps you fill, the more valuable you are.
3) Be patient. The opportunities will come and it’s better to wait for an opportunity that will put you on track to fulfill your career aspirations than succumb to short-term temptation and jump to another role which may cause you to take a detour.
Part 1 here
Part 2 here