The ServiceNow Career Time-Machine Series - Maik Skoddow
ServiceNow is rocketing along with explosive growth and significantly impacting the world of work. The ServiceNow community is also growing, and it is being led by pioneers dedicating their time to pursue a joint passion for nurturing and cultivating its people.
This article asks: "If you could travel back in time to the start of your ServiceNow career, what would you advise yourself?" And we have the pleasure of hearing from community leaders. Together they have inspired, set standards, solved countless community challenges, promoted knowledge sharing, and published books and guides.
Presenting your time-traveler advisors: @Chuck Tomasi, @Maik Skoddow, @Pradeep Sharma, @Uncle Rob, @Jeremy Duncan, @Kali Alexander, and @Tim Woodruff.
As a cherry on top, you get a description of traits that will propel you toward success in the ServiceNow world, as seen from ServiceNow recruiters Erkan Ozlav and Cathy Allen.
If you are just now picking this series up, you have the opportunity to read:
The ServiceNow Career Time Machine - Chuck Tomasi.
Maik Skoddow
I recently spoke with Maik, an experienced ServiceNow user who has gained an excellent reputation in the industry. When asked what advice he would give his younger self starting in his career, he reflected on the importance of building relationships. He wishes he had focused less on corporate and career tasks and more on cultivating connections.
Technologies, vendors & projects come [and go], but what remains are the relationships with other people.
Maik continues to explain that we are all social beings living in codependency and that relationships are what will carry you through difficult times - be it in a private or professional context. Being part of a professional setting is much shallower and more superficial if not regarded as a social exercise, and the professional aspects will fade long before healthy relationships cultivated throughout a career.
To Maik, a realization dawned on him later in his career. You must cultivate meaningful relationships in a business context to perform your function efficiently. Or as Maik puts it: "With such a demanding role as an Architect, you are the intersection of most types of relationships in an IT project. Without cultivating relationships, you will fail right from the beginning."
Interestingly, Maik is a person of sincere self-reflection, which becomes apparent when speaking about his relational challenges in his earlier years and how he has overcome them. For Maik, and me as well, for that matter, building meaningful and productive relationships is a conscious effort requiring the utmost attention. We all want to be heard and feel valued, and our surroundings will help us achieve this through feedback of different types. For Maik being receptive to feedback is fundamental in cultivating healthy relationships and ultimately being efficient in your professional role.
When reaching the technical acumen of peers such as Maik, you are no longer held back by your competence as an engineer. Something that all people who want to excel must learn is to be able to accept criticism. Or as Sally Hammonds, Senior Director of Customer Success EMEA, put it in an internal ServiceNow session about managing feedback: "Show me the ugly," meaning there is little growth in praise without constructive criticism. Actual growth comes from extreme candor with yourself.
Approaching a sincere and personal note, Maik elaborates that he only learned the mechanisms of feedback and relationships too late in his career. As he puts it he "never had any problems being an expert on anything. But that's worth nothing because most of my life I stumbled from one relationship conflict to the next, and it took me many years of hard work to train my skills and sensors regarding interpersonal relationships."
The above speaks volumes of Maik's personality, as his vulnerability towards us - me as the interviewer and you as the reader - should not be taken lightly. Today Maik finds great value in passing on his own experiences and lessons through mentorship, and for him to open up for us all to learn from is highly commendable.
As a positive biproduct of mentoring, he explains that mentoring and sharing allows you to re-learn your lessons over time and that his matured perspective on cultivating healthy relationships is not isolated to the professional realm. Maik also has built stronger connections on the private front, even with his close family.
Another simple piece of advice from Maik would be to practice the English language:
Hearing myself speak English awkwardly and haltingly was strange enough, and the feedback from my daughter about how awful I sounded wasn't very helpful either.
In Denmark, we have a saying about candor: "From children and drunks, will you hear the truth." It sounds like a bit of Danish wisdom was forced upon Maik here.
Like many others working in the realm of ServiceNow, English is not their first language. Nor is it for me. However, for Maik, it became a challenge as he largely was unaffected by the need to express himself in the English language until later stages in his career when he started working in global teams. Through practice and hard work, Maik built his confidence and ability to express himself in English, which he mentions as essential to professional success as he needs to communicate broadly as an architect. Also, the ability to express thoughts and feelings seamlessly is key to communicating and thus building relationships - speaking to his prior point.
Lastly, when asked what advice Maik would give himself today, he continues:
Concentrate on getting things done instead of constantly opening new construction sites.
This hits too close to home for me, and I am guessing many of you are readers.
The world is abundant with ideas and potential; however, as Salvador Dali puts it, "Intelligence without ambition is a bird without wings," which loosely compares to a situation where ideas without execution is a drawer full of unfinished projects.
At the end of the article, propped full of Maik's insights, I will leave you with Maik's hopes for the next generation of ServiceNow professionals:
Always be curious. Never stop asking. Dare to look behind the scenes.
At this moment, hammering the nail on the head when presenting important traits for the 'good ServiceNow-professional.'
More from Maik
True to his initial introduction Maik has created a veritable indexed library brimming with knowledge and guides.
If you bookmark his articles Knowledge Sources to Go and Overview of all my Articles you will get access to all his material.
Coming Up: Pradeep Sharmar
A great thanks to all readers and especially Maik, for opening up.
Next time, look forward to hearing insights from our very own Pradeep Sharmar!
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