How to make the most of the situation when the nature of my work changes?

Question

My manager recently asked me to switch gears on the nature of my work. The core deliverables of our team, the bread-n-butter, are in domain, say X. I had been working in domain Y for the past year and a half, where my manager (& skip level) were invested and trying to expand the scope of our team.

However, a couple of people working on X recently left our team and so now my manager told me that we will decrease our efforts in Y, and will need me to work on X too. We won't completely be abandoning Y though, he said.

I have mixed emotions about this change. I am happy that I will now be involved in the core work of my team. I am also sad because I had just started to make an identity and started being recognised as the go-to-guy for domain Y. I feel the case for my promotion from mid-level to senior would also weaken with this change since I wouldn't have very solid contributions in any domain (i.e. no compound interest).

How should I make the most out of this situation?

Rahul Pandey · Accepted Answer

There are a few factors to consider when it comes to deciding what to work on:

What are the needs of your team/manager? In this case, it looks like X is more urgent, so that's a perfectly valid reason to shift over there.
What areas are growing fastest? This can sometimes come into conflict with the needs of your team: you could be doing maintenance on a critical system that doesn't have much growth.

We won't completely be abandoning Y though

It sounds like Y wasn't that important to begin with? Since the team decided that the area is fine with only your part-time attention.

Could you make an argument for why Y is very important, or make a change so that it becomes more important? If you could argue that this is an area where the team should be investing more, you can allocate more time toward it, and benefit from keeping it as your primary focus.

I talk about creating scope in the Senior to Staff course.

How to make the most of the situation when the nature of my work changes?

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