By Henry Su
In the summer of 2019, I packed my bags after spending 1 year in management consulting at McKinsey, moved to a new country, and joined a 60-person startup working to build autonomous semi-trucks. While this path is fairly accepted in Silicon Valley , it was anything but normal coming from a midwestern Canadian city. I distinctly remember a former colleague asking me unabashedly: “What on earth are you thinking?”. Feeling almost ashamed, I muttered something about how I thought self-driving technology was the future. What I wanted to tell him is what I’ll share with you now: my mental model for choosing a meaningful operating role.
Taking off the Advisor hat
First, let’s explore my decision to leave consulting. I believe the two most compelling reasons to leave a job are:
Your growth plateaus.
Your impact isn’t obvious.
My reason was the latter. As an individual contributor in a massive firm, my impact was muted by my limited latitude to make decisions. As an advisor to clients instead of an operator, I was restricted from execution, where real impact is felt. I vividly remember a consulting engagement in which we spent weeks on workflow reviews, staff interviews, and powerpoint deck iteration—only to see the whole project axed because a C-Suite client who was less-than-fond of consultants finally got his way. I left that project feeling like my work was meaningless.
Parallels between consulting and startups
Why join a startup? One reason was so I could leverage my existing skillset. I saw a lot of parallels between consulting and startup business generalist roles. Consultants are trained to:
Provide structured problem solving approaches to ambiguous challenges.
Deliver recommendations in environments with constant context switching.
Serve people of all layers in client organizations.
This skillset is high leverage for startup business generalist roles because:
Early startup practices are often unscalable (you may interact directly with your first few users). As the startup scales, there is a growing need for repeatable processes and structured frameworks for problem solving.
Roles aren’t neatly delineated. As a business generalist, you’re often moving between building, selling, recruiting, etc.
Company structures are generally flat enough that you get to work with people across the entire organization.
In a business generalist role at a startup, a consultant can create value by developing playbooks to help the company scale, seamlessly switching between different functional responsibilities, and acting as the connective tissue to solve problems across the organization.
Objective value and subjective fulfillment
A deeper reason for wanting to join a startup was my desire to be in a meaningful role. I believe the degree to which a role is meaningful is calibrated across two dimensions:
The extent to which the role creates objective value for the world.
The extent to which the role elicits subjective feelings of fulfillment.
The objective value or impact of a role is a combination of:
The role’s impact on the organization.
The organization’s impact on society.
The subjective feeling of fulfilment can be elicited by:
A mission that is personally inspiring.
Professional growth and development.
Empowerment to make an impact
The first element to a meaningful role is the extent to which it creates objective value for the world. Startups arguably provide the most empowering environment for individual impact. Their flat organizational structures enable decision making responsibilities at the individual contributor level. Further, employees are encouraged to act entrepreneurially given the pace at which startups move.
I took on a Chief of Staff role at Embark Trucks, a company building self-driving semi-trucks. This particular business generalist role serves as a force multiplier to the CEO and leads the implementation of new processes to ensure the organization scales smoothly. I felt this role positioned me to make a lasting individual impact given it’s latitude to shape the organization.
In thinking about whether an organization could change society, I invented a framework that I’ll refer to as the ‘time machine test’:
If I were to take a time machine and travel 5, 10, or 20 years into the future, are there elements of society that might be manifestly different, in a good way?
Can the organization under consideration help shape one of those future elements? The sharing economy, meat substitutes, and autonomous vehicles are all phenomena that pass the ‘time machine test’.
In my specific case, I fervently believe self-driving will be one of the most important paradigm shifts in transportation and the broader economy this century—and Embark Trucks has a shot at being a contributing player.
Finding fulfillment
The second element to a meaningful role is the extent to which it makes me feel fulfilled. I believe fulfillment can be drawn from two properties of work. The first property is the extent to which the work aligns with my personal mission or passions in life - how much the work resonates with my core values and personal interests. The second property is the extent to which the work enables my professional growth by building my skills and network. This property is valuable because it equips me with the resources I need to later pursue work aligned to my personal mission. I believe the perfect role is rich in both properties - it enables professional growth and serves a mission I care about.
Robotics has always been an area of deep interest for me—when I was 13, I joined a competitive robotics team that went on to win a world championship in its first year. For me, working in self-driving combined the allure of engaging in an intellectual hobby with the promise of delivering profound social, environmental, and economic impact. Hence, I felt I was joining an organization with a mission I was passionate about. Further, I was joining in a role that operates closely in tandem with the CEO and executive team, providing a unique opportunity to learn from experienced business leaders.
Places to look
Everyone has a different interpretation of what makes a role meaningful. I will share some examples that fit my personal mental model. The following contexts can offer meaningful opportunities:
Earlier stage startups - Individual contributors have more decision making responsibilities given flat organizational structures. The pace of change creates an evergreen roster of opportunities.
New product or service line - Regardless of company size, the creation of a business unit to manage a new product or service line heralds an opportunity to grow an organization from the ground up.
New geography - The expansion of a business into a new geography creates opportunities to build new teams, processes, and infrastructure.
From a role perspective, the following types of business generalist jobs can provide a meaningful experience:
Chief of Staff (CoS) - In larger organizations, the CoS acts as a confidante, gatekeeper, and right hand to an executive (often the CEO). In smaller organizations, the CoS can own ‘everything’ non-technical including branding, marketing, business development, product, etc. In either case, CoS roles demand a versatile toolkit of skills and have the seniority to influence strategic business decisions.
Special Projects - Special Projects roles often tackle a variety of high priority strategic projects. These could include building new teams/functions, growth planning, partnerships, fundraising, etc. Special Projects positions can be fulfilling as they are plugged into important company initiatives and are inherently results-oriented.
BizOps - BizOps roles often act as ‘COO’ to a product or vertical, providing operational and strategic support. These roles can be meaningful given the broad array of project exposure and high degree of responsibility and autonomy.
Parting thoughts
Many people who work in client services inevitably face the question of: Where next? I believe the next role should be chosen based on how much objective value and personal fulfillment potential there is. My interpretation of this model led me to consider a variety of business generalist roles in high growth environments that enable personal impact and professional development. Ultimately, I hope this mental model can inspire you to find a role that is truly right and meaningful for you.