How do you navigate a large company to ensure others know your work, no matter what level you are at?

I’ve been incredibly fortunate to have had internal sponsors both as my direct manager as well as stakeholders. These sponsors would go to bat for me to help me progress in my career. But there are things I did to make it easy for them to do it, and it makes all the difference in getting recognized for your impact. As awkward as it is, you have to advocate for your work and career progression. Here are some exercises that have worked for me to get my work seen by stakeholders and superiors: 

• Operationalize your passion: If there is something you are really passionate about, create a program around it and find a way to tie it back to business goals. When I was at Twilio, I cared deeply about customer insights (my passion). As part of my role, I created programs that helped our team get a deep understanding of our customers. We needed this to inform our product roadmap, marketing strategy, and product messaging. On a quarterly basis, I would host a Customer Insights Read-Out, and share everything we learned from customer interviews, surveys, sales data, etc., and presented it out to my stakeholders across sales and product. This helped both my manager and superiors across the business see the value of my work. Pro-tip: make sure your stakeholders will get value out of whatever you’re presenting to them. The goal is to impact the business; the positive influence it has on your career is secondary but valuable. 

• Leverage the internal “road show”: When you complete a project that works really well, put together a brief 10-min presentation explaining the problem you solved, how you did it, impact on the business, and next steps or recommendations. Pro-tip: Quantify the outcomes! Take the same presentation and pick a few relevant teams that would benefit from hearing your message. 

• Share regular “proud moments”: Select key people across the organization and keep them updated on projects you're working on. When you get a win, even a small one, share it! You have to do this on a regular basis. I suggest bi-weekly. Mentors and managers are great for this one! There are other ways you can accomplish this, for example, via weekly/by-weekly email progress updates or asking to be on the agenda of stakeholder meetings to update status on your work if it’s relevant. 

• Write your “next job” description: Write out your dream “next job” (not necessarily your ultimate career goal, but the next step in your path) and share it with your manager and any internal mentors. Be direct and ask for their help in identifying opportunities that will help you get there. 

You should always feel compelled and empowered to take ownership over your role, work, and the impact you make. At more senior levels, there may be more opportunities presented to you, however, no matter your level, there are many ways you can control and increase your own visibility.

Here are several ways to increase your visibility and show your impact:

Internal roadshow and feedback: Whether you're just starting at a company or have been there for a while, it's always a good idea to walkthrough your vision, role, goals / OKRs, upcoming projects, and how you can support cross-functional teams. For example, sharing your upcoming projects for Q2 and getting feedback from sales, customer success, product, marketing. You can do this by setting up meetings with groups of stakeholders, and frame it as an opportunity to discuss how you can support them and where your work intersects.

Project look back and results: It's always a good idea to do a look back and review of your short-term and long-term OKRs and goals. If it's a longer-term initiative such as an integrated campaign it could be a quarterly cadence and share-out, if it's shorter-term such as a sales play, weekly or bi -weekly, or if you just had an event or product launch - keep folks updated on the performance and any learnings. You can share these via email, Slack, an All Hands call, or a meeting.

Personal brand: Another way to bring visibility to your work is to post about it on your social media such as LinkedIn. Talk about a project you're proud of or something you learned. Not only do you show colleagues and leadership the work you've done, but you also build your personal brand.

Mentors and sponsors: Having a strong network of mentors and sponsors at your company is critical. These are people who can help bring you into more visible projects and conversations. If you want work that has higher visibility or greater impact, ask for it. Then apply the approaches above to make sure your goals, successes, and learnings are known.