Ken Langdon - Cultivate a Cool Career: Guerrilla Tactics for Reaching the Top

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Table of Contents

Brilliant features

Each chapter of this book is designed to provide you with an inspirational idea that you can read quickly and put into practice right away.

Throughout youll find four features that will help you to get right to the heart of the idea:

Try another idea If this idea looks like a life-changer then theres no time to lose. Try another idea will point you straight to a related tip to expand and enhance the first.

Heres an idea for you Give it a tryright here, right nowand get an idea of how well youre doing so far.

Defining ideas Words of wisdom from masters and mistresses of the art, plus some interesting hangers-on.

How did it go? If at first you do succeed, try to hide your amazement. If, on the other hand, you dont, this is where youll find a Q and A that highlights common problems and how to get over them.

Introduction

Your career needs the sort of care and attention that a passionate gardener gives to her plants. As highfliers perform their day-to-day activities, they also keep an eye on their careers. They cultivate good relationships with powerful people who can help them and they cultivate the skills and techniques that improve performance. That way they bring their careers to glorious fruition at the top of their chosen organization.

SO what distinguishes those who Make it to the top from those who languish in a job that doesnt stretch them Or give them the rewards they crave? Yes, OK, its skills and knowledge, but its also flairand you can develop flair.

Flair increases with the number of times you exercise it, so take risks and think outside the box. Throughout my conversations with top people I have found this to be a theme. Remember this mantra:

It is easier to ask for forgiveness than it is to ask for permission.

Ambitious people do not wait for a sluggish management to come around to their way of thinking. They make things happen, and then if the risk goes wrong they own up and ask for forgiveness. The risk-averse and craven manager asks for permission to act. If this is denied, he is screwed. Either he goes ahead anyway against specific instructions or, more likely, he leaves well enough alone and misses out on a chance to shine.

Just think for a moment about how much of your career is left to chance. It depends on who happens to be your boss when you get promoted, for example, and who likes or dislikes him or her. It depends on the exigencies of the products and services you deliver and the markets you deliver them into. It depends on the economic climate and even who is in political control of the country. All of these are, to say the least, unpredictable. You have some control over some of these elements, but certainly not over them all.

So what do you do when youre seeking to achieve a difficult business objective with a fair degree of uncertainty? Why, you make a plan of course. You look at other peoples experience and develop a career strategy.

This book is about such a strategy and how top people have found the key to different aspects of building careers. It does not pretend that the world is just, or that it owes you a living. Rather, it takes on the world as it is. It looks at how you get as much control as you can over a world where life is mostly chance and happenstance.

I do not ignore the fact that success is built on success. If you want a promotion you have to perform to expectations in your current role. Some of the ideas, therefore, have to do with improving performance; but they are all illustrations of how others have nurtured a humble acorn into a mighty oak standing head and shoulders above the rest of the forest.

1. Face it, you are you and they are them

Take a positive, practical, but skeptical attitude toward your organization. Dont expect to spend your whole career in one organization and dont trip over internal politics.

Are you in the right place? People are happier and work better when they can identify with the Objectives Of the organization they work for.

It is hard to get up in the morning with energy and enthusiasm if you feel that your work contributes to something you couldnt care less about. Make sure you are working for an organization that is doing something worthwhile and is likely to be successful. You are much more likely to build a career there.

If right now youre working toward a goal that neither interests you nor inspires you, youve got to make a change. Its up to you. Your career is a key element in your way of life and your general happiness; if you are in the wrong place, get out of it.

Heres an idea for you...

It is best for your boss to think that other people believe your good ideas are his. You, on the other hand, should ensure people know that your ideas and your bosss good ideas are both yours.

Defining idea...

Success has many fathers, failure is an orphan.

ANONYMOUS

YOU HAVE OUR UNDIVIDED LOYALTY until it doesnt suit us

Now lets look at the other side of the cointhe organization itself. Your organization is probably chaotic, either all the time, sometimes, or in places. This is both a problem and an opportunity for the career minded. This chaos means that whatever it says about looking after you and your career, your company may very well not be able to live up to its promises. Organizations, for example, have to take technological change on board if they are to survive, even if it costs careers. In short, the organization has to look after itself in a businesslike way, so you need to look after yourself in a similarly objective and professional way.

And circumstances change. A promise made to a staff member in good faith may suddenly become impractical. In this environment, the safest view to take of your organization is that you owe it your loyal support only for as long as your objectives and the organizations can coexist. Career planning is now a question of a number of jobs rather than a simple progression up a single organization. Companies dont offer jobs for life and most successful careerists will change employers from time to time. Keep an open mind and dont get so set in your ways that you get surprised by a reorganization in which you find yourself Coordinator of Long-term Planning. Such a position almost certainly means that you are no longer part of those long-term plans. Im certainly not encouraging you to be dishonest yourself. But be warned that others are sometimes going to use their best intentions to meet their obligations.

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