Career progression - a mix of timing, luck and most crucially identifying opportunities when they arise?
On this week’s We Are InsurTech Women podcast I was joined by Nika Lee, Chief Underwriting Officer at Wakam and Hattie Armstrong, Lead Go-to-Market Consultant at FinPro. where we talked about how insurance technology innovation doesn’t just happen in Insurtechs, how to prepare to ‘downsize’ to upscale your career and when to activate luck and timing to capitalise on career opportunities.
Hattie, Nika and I discussed how best to prepare to ‘downsize’ when moving from a large corporate to a start-up to scale up whilst embracing a faster paced more agile and rapid decision making framework. Nika’s key advice includes
⇝be willing to get your 🖐️hands dirty - you may take on new roles and responsibilities outside of your official JD but it will expand your skillset and your future career options
⇝be prepared for a ⏩faster pace environment and be willing to pivot where necessary
⇝don’t loose your 🤯growth mindset - embrace challenges as opportunities,
⇝invest in relationships and your network 👪
Nika and I discussed how career progression can often look like luck but actually ‘even luck is about timing’ ⌛and even more crucially it is about doing your homework so you are clear on what an ‘opportunity’ looks like so you can then quickly leap into it.
⇝she gives gave us three point plan 📃to help understand if you are ready for a new opportunity (👇listen below to learn more)
Looking for advice on making a start up journey more sustainable? Nika suggests three things:
→prioritising - saying yes ✅by design but accept you might not be able to do everything immediately or yourself… so its important to understand the best ‘bang’ for your effort
–>being willing to ask for help 🆘- accept that some things might need to be delegated including upwards (👇listen below for Nika’s honest experience of this)
→reframe failures as a learning opportunity🎒
Tune into this conversation via the links below 👇