- Ask for additional work in an area of the company that interests you or join a project that is already established.
- Do internal research to provide additional visibility or insight into some aspect of company operations. Then share it. As a new arrival I once setup a dashboard of sales by product and salesperson which surprisingly we didn’t have. Over time as I built up history I added in more and more depth. I casually showed it to one of the sales managers and soon they all wanted one.
- Do an external or industry research project around something of interest now or in the future to the company. Do a survey of the competition. List all the things that are up and coming that your company is not doing with pros and cons for getting involved.
These things (and there are many others you could do) are like gym workouts, but for your career: they force you to use skills you should be honing anyway, they keep you up to date, they keep you relevant, they force you to practice.