You’ve begun a new step in your career or maybe this is the first step. You ran the HR gauntlet, found out where your desk is, managed to…

You’ve begun a new step in your career or maybe this is the first step. You ran the HR gauntlet, found out where your desk is, managed to finally get your voice mail configured, and you’ve put in a good two months of productive time at work. But something isn’t right. Your workplace has lost that “new job smell” and now you’re starting to realize this isn’t all wine and roses. There are parts of this job that are frustrating, annoying, and down right a pain in the posterior. What do you do?

In my article, “How to be a corporate entrepreneur” I talk about treating your job as your own business. This after-the-work-honeymoon-ends time is a great opportunity to start putting that corporate entrepreneur mindset into action. Let’s think about where you stand and what you can do to make the most of what is happening around you.

After 60 days on the job it’s safe to say you have a decent idea of the lay of the land. You’ve got a solid understanding of the operational processes around you and you’re able to execute the requirements of your job description with a high level of success. (If not, you have other things to worry about aside from being a corporate entrepreneur.) This is the time to start one of the greatest tools a C.E. (corporate entrepreneur) can have…a work journal.

As your understanding of internal operations, strategy, and process grows you’re going to spot opportunities for improvement. It’s a natural instinct to want to fix what is obviously (to you) broken. Here’s where I challenge you. Rather than running to management and making suggestions right away, capture the thought process in your work journal. At a minimum, do the following:

1. Define the problem clearly and completely

2. Find out if others are aware of the problem

3. See if attempts were made to solve the problem have been done in the past and if so what caused them to not be successful

4. Determine what the impact on the organization is from the problem

5. Put together multiple strategies on how you think the problem could be resolved

6. Identify what could cause your strategies to fail

7. Determine how to mitigate for those liabilities to your strategy

8. Write it all down

9. PUT IT AWAY

Now wait a second. After all that work I’m telling you to just put it away and not do anything with it? All those thoughts? All those plans? They could be the next big thing! Why shouldn’t I share my ideas with everyone? They’d be fools to not see how brilliant the ideas (and by association, I am) and how much the company could benefit!

Yes, I’m telling you to put it away. Here’s why…you’re not at a point yet where you have established the credibility to be taken at your word. You may be the greatest ever at your job but you’re still the new guy. People place a great deal of value (warranted or not) on tenure within an organization. Being the new person who is pushing change without knowledge of the institutional history and legacy of past works is just begging for trouble.

Using the work journal you have a private sounding board to think through and tinker with your ideas, massaging and fine-tuning them more and more until they are almost bulletproof. That process takes time. Give yourself the benefit of time by leveraging your work journal. Find the problems that truly need solving. Gather your evidence. Work out scenarios. Formulate your pitch not only around the topic, but the audience and timing as well. A good entrepreneur doesn’t take every idea to market, nor should a good C.E. try to make every idea happen. Pick and choose your battles, letting the work journal be your treasure trove as well as your sounding board for the good as well as the frustrating.

As you build your “professional capital” inside the organization you will come to opportunities where doors open for you to recommend change and improvement. It’s at that moment all the work you put into your work journal will bear fruit. Being a C.E. is a matter of knowing when the internal market is ripe for your ideas. But as any good gardener can tell you: if the ground is ready but the seedlings aren’t, you’re not going to grow a thing.

This article was originally published on LinkedIn:

What to do when the new job honeymoon ends
What to do when your momentum is gone. You’ve begun a new step in your career or maybe this is the first step. You ran…www.linkedin.com