Managing A Career Podcast Por Layne Robinson arte de portada

Managing A Career

Managing A Career

De: Layne Robinson
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I help you navigate the path to professional success. Whether you're a recent graduate still searching for your place or a seasoned professional with years of experience, the knowledge and insights I share can show you how to position yourself for growth and career advancement.2024 Economía Exito Profesional Gestión Gestión y Liderazgo
Episodios
  • A Keg of Ketchup Will Make You Rethink Your Career

    A Keg of Ketchup Will Make You Rethink Your Career
    Feb 3 2026
    I was reading a post on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7423016998617473025/) by Jason Feifer (https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasonfeifer/), the Editor in Chief of Entrepreneur Magazine. In a recent article, Jason was interviewing Gary Vaynerchuk (https://www.linkedin.com/in/garyvaynerchuk/) about how marketing has changed, specifically through a redefinition of the mid funnel. The traditional idea of a funnel still exists, but where and how momentum is created has shifted. In the post, Jason shared a story that stuck with me. Heinz once posted a simple image on Instagram about a fictional keg of ketchup. It wasn't clever. It wasn't polished. It wasn't even particularly strategic. It was, by most standards, a "stupid" idea. But it caught. The post went viral, and instead of ignoring that signal, Heinz leaned into it. They took what worked, refined it, and eventually turned that one throwaway idea into a full marketing campaign tied to the Super Bowl. A joke became a brand moment. What really hit me was this; the exact same approach can unlock your own career growth. I've talked about marketing yourself before, all the way back in Episode 018, Selling Yourself (https://managingacareer.com/18 ). At its core, marketing is about understanding the needs of your customer and aligning your product to those needs. In your career, the "customers" are the leaders who influence your advancement, and the "product" is you. Traditionally, career growth follows a familiar funnel. You build awareness through visibility (Episode 081, Visibility - https://managingacareer.com/81 ), you demonstrate value over time, and eventually that narrows down to the "purchase" decision; a promotion, a bigger role, or expanded scope. But this is where Gary's insight becomes so useful. The traditional funnel doesn't work the same way anymore. In the modern world, social has become the mid funnel. That means you don't have to start with a perfectly crafted brand or a fully formed strategy. You can start by testing ideas. Simple ideas. Rough ideas. Even ideas that feel dumb or unfinished. If an idea hits, you work it in the lower funnel; executing, refining, and proving it delivers results. Once it's proven, you expand it upward, where it becomes part of your reputation and your brand. That's exactly what Heinz did with a silly idea about a keg of ketchup…and it's a playbook most professionals never realize they can use. When it comes to their careers, most people have traditionally focused on the ends of the funnel; either the upper funnel or the lower funnel. In the upper funnel, the goal is recognition. You bring big ideas to meetings. You look for moments to contribute something bold. You try to get your name and your thinking in front of leaders who matter. There's an element of performance here; a desire to stand out. At its worst, this looks like jumping up and down and shouting, "NOTICE ME!" In the lower funnel, the belief is almost the opposite. You expect your work to speak for itself. You execute…and you execute well. You hit deadlines. You deliver quality. You take pride in being reliable and consistent, trusting that results will eventually turn into recognition. In reality, both ends of the funnel matter. Living exclusively in the upper funnel without execution comes across as fluff and self-promotion. Living exclusively in the lower funnel without a personal brand (Episode 043, Personal Brand - https://managingacareer.com/43 ) feels invisible, no matter how good the work is. But in a modern marketing world, it may be time to try something different. Instead of starting at the top or grinding endlessly at the bottom, start in the middle. Work the mid funnel first. Test ideas in low-risk ways. Put thoughts, perspectives, and small experiments into the world and watch how people respond. If something resonates…if it creates pull rather than push…then you scale it. In marketing, Gary's point was simple. Organic social media is where you test ideas cheaply and quickly. You don't overthink them. You don't turn them into million-dollar campaigns. You post, you watch, you learn. At work, your mid funnel works exactly the same way…it's just not called social media. At work, it's the water cooler; real or virtual; where you run an idea by a peer. At work, it's a small demo shown to a single stakeholder. At work, it's an informal focus group that pokes holes in a broken process. At work, the mid funnel is small experiments and low-risk initiatives you try before you ask for permission and before you allocate real resources. Mid-funnel career moves aren't about being loud. They're about being observable. For an individual contributor, this shift can look subtle but powerful. Upper-funnel you says, "We should completely rethink how our team reports metrics." Lower-funnel you ...
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    13 m
  • Fast to Decide, Slow to Act - MAC125

    Fast to Decide, Slow to Act - MAC125
    Jan 27 2026
    "Be quick to decide…but slow to act." This isn't just a pithy saying you nod along to and forget; there's real weight behind it. It's a quiet strategy that shows up again and again in fast career growth and strong professional reputations. If you've ever watched someone get promoted and thought, That seemed sudden, there's a good chance this was part of the story. From the outside, it looks like an overnight decision; behind the scenes, it's anything but. They were making clear decisions early, then deliberately working the back-channels; socializing ideas, pressure-testing assumptions, and building confidence in the outcome before taking visible action. This week, we're taking a deeper look at how this strategy actually works…and how you can apply it at any stage of your career. Most professionals make the mistake of reversing the adage. They sit with a decision; weighing possibilities, scanning for trouble spots, and searching for more data to increase confidence in the "right" answer. This approach feels responsible. Thoughtful, even. The intent is good; no one wants to make a bad call; especially one that's visible. So the decision gets pushed later and later; right up to the point where it can't be delayed any further. Then something subtle but costly happens. Once the decision is finally made, the switch flips. Action has to be immediate because there's no runway left. The plan is announced in an email or unveiled in a meeting; fully formed and already in motion. Almost instantly, resistance shows up. Concerns are raised. Questions surface. The data gets analyzed and reanalyzed. Stakeholders ask why they weren't involved sooner. From the perspective of the decision-maker, this feels like friction or second-guessing. From everyone else's perspective, it feels abrupt. And even when the decision itself is solid, it's now at risk; not because it's wrong, but because people haven't had time to absorb it. This resistance isn't politics in the way most people mean it. It's not sabotage, or ego, or a hidden agenda suddenly emerging at the worst possible time. It's a predictable organizational response to surprise. Humans don't resist decisions; they resist being surprised by decisions that affect them. When a fully formed plan appears without warning, people instinctively shift into evaluation mode. They ask questions not because they oppose the outcome, but because their brains are trying to close the gap between what just happened and how did we get here. The more consequential the decision, the stronger this reaction becomes. What feels like friction is often just the organization doing what it always does when it's caught flat-footed; slowing things down to regain a sense of understanding and control. Back to the adage. "Be quick to decide, but slow to act." The first thing to internalize is that deciding is not the same as announcing. Many professionals conflate the two; assuming a decision only exists once it's public. In reality, the decision is simply the moment you stop debating and start moving forward. It's the point where second-guessing ends. Where hesitation fades. Where you stop asking should we and start asking how do we position this. Deciding early creates internal clarity; and that clarity is what allows everything that follows to be intentional rather than reactive. Once that decision is made, action doesn't mean immediate implementation. There is a critical phase between the decision point and the execution point; and this phase is where careers quietly accelerate. Instead of rushing to roll something out, high performers use this time to socialize the decision with the people who have influence over whether it succeeds. They invite pressure. They ask for pushback. Not to abandon the idea, but to strengthen it. They win over influencers early. This signals competence. It signals leadership. It builds momentum before anything is formally announced. And when the decision finally reaches the wider group, it no longer feels abrupt; it feels inevitable. That's when things take off. Before going further, there's one detour worth taking. Jeff Bezos popularized the idea of one-way door and two-way door decisions. One-way door decisions are difficult or impossible to reverse. Two-way door decisions are easier to unwind. Both types should be decided quickly; but one-way door decisions demand a longer, more deliberate socialization phase. This is where assumptions get challenged, risks get surfaced, and the decision gets reinforced. When a decision can't easily be undone, that strengthening process isn't optional; it's what makes the eventual action durable. Let me offer a concrete formula you can use at any career level. It's deliberately simple; because complexity creates hesitation. Decide. Seed. Shape. Act. First; Decide. This is internal work. No audience. No deck. No Slack message. You decide what you believe should happen and why. Not perfectly...
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    10 m
  • How to Partner with AI instead of being replaced by it - MAC124

    How to Partner with AI instead of being replaced by it - MAC124
    Jan 20 2026
    When it comes to AI, a lot of professionals are still telling themselves the same story; "I'll get around to learning it when I get the chance." That mindset made sense when AI felt like a curiosity…or a distant threat that might someday take everyone's jobs. But that phase is already over. AI is no longer a hypothetical technology sitting on the sidelines; it's being quietly woven into daily workflows, baked directly into the tools you already use, and increasingly embedded into what managers and companies expect from their employees. At this point, AI isn't going away. The real question isn't whether you'll work alongside it; the question is whether you'll treat it like an adversary…or learn how to turn it into a coworker, even a partner. This isn't about becoming an AI expert or reinventing yourself as a technologist. It's about learning how to incorporate AI into the way you already work. The most useful way to think about AI is as someone you delegate to. You hand it the mundane, repetitive, and energy-draining tasks…the first drafts, the summaries, the pattern-spotting…so you can spend more time on work that actually creates value. When you stop seeing AI as a threat to your job and start treating it like a member of your team, something important happens. You gain leverage. And that leverage is what allows you to move faster, think more strategically, and quietly leap ahead of peers who are still hesitating. Over the past year, companies have been quietly recalibrating roles. The expectation is shifting; humans are being asked to focus on judgment, problem-solving, and relationship-building…while AI handles more of the foundation work underneath. We've seen this pattern before. It happened when spreadsheets replaced manual accounting ledgers; when email replaced the fax machine; when cloud storage replaced file cabinets. No one lost their job because of the spreadsheet. They lost their job because they never learned how to use it. What we're watching now is simply the next version of that same cycle. Here's the shift most people still haven't internalized. AI isn't replacing jobs wholesale; it's replacing tasks. And careers are usually built on task mastery. If the bottom half of your tasks can be automated, then the only way to stay competitive is to own the top half at a higher level. That's why treating AI as a coworker is so powerful. You become the supervisor; the editor; the critical thinker; the strategist. AI becomes the junior analyst, the assistant, the execution engine underneath you. And this is where promotions actually come from. Leaders notice the people who produce more, produce better, and produce strategically. Increasingly, AI is how you get there. If you're early in your career, AI becomes a force multiplier. It allows you to deliver senior-level polish while you're still learning the job itself. The people who rise fastest in entry-level roles over the next few years won't be the ones trying to "prove themselves" by doing everything manually. They'll be the ones using AI to create leverage. Your real focus should be on understanding the why behind the work; then learning which tasks actually matter, when they matter, and how to guide AI to do the execution underneath you. If you're mid-career, the expectation shifts toward breadth. Your company assumes you can operate outside your narrow lane…but that's often where burnout begins. AI gives you a way to expand without drowning. It can help you run competitive analyses, prepare presentations, review data, or draft communications so you can show cross-functional value. The classic mid-career stall comes from being overworked and under-leveraged. AI addresses that directly. You already understand the core of your role; AI helps you stretch into the edges without losing control. If you're senior or managing a team, this may be the most important category of all. Leaders who learn to orchestrate both humans and AI will outperform those who don't. If your team is using AI but you personally aren't, you'll eventually lose credibility in how you model productivity, judgment, and decision-making. Senior leaders don't need to be the most technical person in the room…but they do need to demonstrate how human insight and automated support work together at scale. Every career stage benefits from this shift. The risk only appears when someone ignores it and hopes it will blow over. Once you recognize that the world is changing, the next step is obvious. You start looking for where AI can actually help you in your day-to-day work. A simple way to do this is to borrow the same filter leaders use when they delegate to junior team members. Ask yourself three questions. First; is this repetitive? If you've done a task three or more times this month, AI can probably handle eighty percent of it without much effort. Repetition is a strong signal that delegation makes sense. Second; ...
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    12 m
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