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What Advice Would You Give Your Friends and Family From your Career Experiences?
A friend had a very trying day at work and posted some advice based on what she had seen. I got to thinking about it, and while my professions and careers are hardly matters of life and death, I realized that I had similar advice for people. I am sure we all do, whatever our profession or job. I am not seeking the level of information in some of our posts like Everything You Ever Wanted To Know About Concrete* (But Were Afraid To Ask). It’s simply a request for pithy advice from the front lines of working.
I used to program computers, and when I started my first consulting firm I offered some computer-related services. Advice I rapidly found had to be given was, “Don’t go on the Internet if you don’t have anti-virus software.”
As a process management guy, my advice is, “Don’t bother documenting them if you don’t know how you’re going to use that documentation to change things.” Also, “Don’t expect most of your people to have any idea what those diagrams mean unless they are engineers and you have given a class in reading them.”
So, what do you have, Ricochet?
Published in General
This is 100% true.
Totally true. Good managers are busy and often manage numerous people. Sometimes they don’t see all the good things you are doing. Don’t wait until the end of the year to share what you are doing, by then it could be too late.
If you want to become a consultant, don’t quit your day job until you have a business plan, contacts and lots and lots of drive. Or have lots of money in the bank. It can be enormously rewarding and satisfying–the only people who can tell you what to do are your clients (and you can always ignore or drop them). But unless you are driven, ready to make cold calls, network with everyone and everything but the kitchen sink, and take responsibility for your success, forget it. I did it for 30 years, loved it, and am now retired. Yes!
Management does things the way they do for a reason. Sometimes that reason isn’t to maximize profitability. It may be to protect their jobs, line their own profits, sandbag results, etc. Suggesting changes or improvements is often a good way to stall your own career.
You have three choices:
If you want to make money, learn to do something that (1) people need and (2) that’s painful to do (because it’s hard or the subject matter is boring).
People are unlikely to pay you much for things they can easily do themselves.
Also, when you work for others, don’t be a jerk.
Being the boss is not as much fun as you think it will be. And traveling may look glamorous from the outside, but from the inside it will grind you down to nothing.
The most important advice I would give anyone is to set your own goals for your work. And always strive to achieve those goals.
Having your own clear goals will free you from the distraction of worrying about what other people think.
It is so easy to get sucked into the dysfunctional relationships of our daily work life. The way to avoid that is to be the captain of your own ship.
There’s no tougher person to please than yourself, but at least you’ll be rational and consistent.
And when things go wrong, as they sometimes will, you will know in your heart what your motivations were and probably that you succeeded even if it doesn’t look like it at the moment to someone else. And you can always fix what you can analyze.
As a professional, the most important skill you have is to remain calm. And the best way to stay focused is to always have your own goals in front you.
I’m glad that you could ignore or drop them – that makes you really valuable!
The old saw about consultants is that managers hire them when they need to make a tough decision. The manager tells the consultant the program, the consultant listens to everyone, and then pitches the manager’s program. If the program works, the manager looks great for hiring the consultant. If it fails, the consultant is blamed.
Been there, done that.
Don’t lie to your doctor or nurse practitioner about the drugs, alcohol, or tobacco that you supposedly have never used. We will find out (we always do), and then we won’t trust you anymore.
Oh, and don’t do weed. People think it’s benign because it’s a plant (well, vincristine is also from a plant, and that’s a chemotherapy drug so…), but studies are showing it to be much more damaging than we thought before.
The key here is finding yourself working for a detractor of your talents rather than a magnifier of them. Move away from the detractor, the cause for most unhappiness.
Understand that having responsibility without authority is having no real responsibility.
First, ask yourself: What is my authority? Second, ask yourself: What authority do I need to do this? If you find you haven’t been given the authority, or enough authority to act, then take it. Beg forgiveness later. Remember though, management is looking for good talent, for people who make good decisions about things. The last thing any organization needs is a ‘loose cannon’, the definition of which is ignorance in action, (the technical term for which is Trouble).
If you have a dispute with your supervisor, understand that talking to the higher-ups will do no good. They will always side with your supervisor. It doesn’t matter if you have truth and justice on your side.
I’ve gotten supervisors fired. The key is not to give higher ups your reasons for wanting them fired but give them their reasons for wanting to fire. Most people aren’t very bright so you just need to sneak ideas into their head for them.
The time has come for people to stop going over a coworker’s head when that coworker has said something that hurts your tender sensibilities. (It’s time to stop giving HR more and more power over our lives.) Go to that person directly and diplomatically express your concerns. Failing that, inform that person you’ll rip his head off and make him carry it around in a bag.
Note: I don’t do him/her…
I’ve had employees, does that mean I’m a pimp?
When I was applying to grad school, I was told that I should beware of faculty mentors who use their grad students to do their work for them. However, I had the opposite problem. My mentor had me work on my own project separate from his. I really wish he had used me to help him with his work and his publications. I wasn’t ready to do research and publish on my own yet. If I had to help him with his research, I would have learned how to do what he did (and I would have finished my degree, I imagine).
I did learn how to teach, because I was used as a teaching assistant, but teaching doesn’t get you a degree.
So, if you’re going to pursue a doctorate (and of course you better think hard about that first), you shouldn’t be afraid to do work for your faculty mentor. You will learn how to do his job that way.
No, it makes you a john.
The temp agency is the pimp.
I had fun with my first answer, but to be a little more serious, you write about what you know and get it out everywhere you can. If an editor calls and says, “I need an article of 750 words about X by 2:00 PM,” and X is one of your areas of expertise, you write it. You may write a hundred articles about X in a year, but they are going to different audiences. Or maybe your expertise covers a very broad topic and the articles written focus on one narrow aspect each. There is also the fact that you won’t reach everyone every time. It can take several repetitions to get information across. So, if they read something in Magazine #1 and something else in Newspaper #2 six weeks later, it’s just part of the educational process for one’s audience. Fiction? There are really only a handful of plots. Just ask Clive Cussler.
One other thing: I’ve worked from the bottom up to where I am now. I started working on the floor, third shift, in manufacturing. If you want to get a good start, take a turn in manufacturing. In fact, if your company allows it, move around and take other assignments, stretch or otherwise. Get to know people and listen to them when they talk about what works and what doesn’t. Use this information in other assignments. Learn about your company, not just your job.
Don’t continue cutting when the x-acto blade has gotten dull. Throw it out & put in a new one. If you don’t, there will either be ragged edges or blood.
This is not a metaphor. It applies to x-acto blades.
I thought the client would be the “john” and the employer the “pimp” if the empolyee is the “prostitute.”
I believe this this metaphor has just broke down.
Never underestimate associates, colleagues, support personnel. Don’t put them in simplistic categories. Instead, introduce yourself and start getting to know them over time. Given time, or even a few minutes, they will surprise and impress you. We all have layers.
Yes. Treat your admin support–as well as your bosses’, clients’, and vendors’–well.
Fix problems within your capacity to do so, even if it isn’t your job. Many times people are waiting for the “person in charge” to take care of it when a) that person isn’t aware, or b) that person doesn’t exist.
To go along with treating admins and support people well, when it comes to gossip, rumor and so forth, be a vault. If people realize they can tell you secrets and they won’t be revealed, you can end up knowing all sorts of things that you shouldn’t or wouldn’t.
Two things:
These two have served me well over the years. mal
And even if you’re outside your core area of expertise, if you have a good idea, don’t assume that someone smarter than you (or more familiar with the subject) has already thought of it. Sometimes a fresh perspective is exactly what is needed, and you might well think of something that the experts missed. There really is such a thing as being “too close to the problem,” and a naive question can often offer crucial insights.
Good advice, and while I would never wish to take away the specificity of x-acto blades, it applies to other things to. More generally:
Disposable things are usually disposable for a reason. Hanging on to them one whit longer than necessary for cost savings will usually cause larger problems.