Liu - Work smarts what CEOs say you need to know to get ahead

Contents

Cover image: Dave Cross Photography, Inc.

Cover design: C. Wallace

Copyright 2014 by Betty Liu. All rights reserved.

Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey.

Published simultaneously in Canada.

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ISBN 978-1-118-74467-3 (Hardcover)

ISBN 978-1-118-74798-8 (ePDF)

ISBN 978-1-118-74493-2 (ePub)

Even if youre on the right track, youll get run over if you just sit there.

Will Rogers

Introduction

Youve just graduated college...

You want to get to a promotion...

... or youve just been laid off.

Whatever the case, youre looking for some advice. Real advice. What does it really take to succeed? How do you get started? How do you pick yourself back up if youve fallen? What if I need to jump-start my career and its not enough that my spouse or mother is telling me Im the greatest person in the world. Thats not actually getting me to my goal. I need real advice from the street, so to speak.

If you feel any of the above, this book is for you.

Its also a book for me.

I interview people for a living who are at the top of their careers: CEOs, economists, policy thinkers, entrepreneurs. Inevitably, I began to wonder, how did they get there? Why cant we get beyond the follow-your-passion advice and really find out what it takes to forge a career that maximizes all your interests and skills. What holds people back? What gets them ahead?

No career is perfect. Mine is riddled with mistakes and rejections. Thats why I had in the back of my mind that this book is also written for me. Have you ever lain awake at night, rehashing a conversation or a meeting? Yep, thats me. Maybe I didnt convey what I wanted to in the right way, I think. I shoulda and I coulda are common phrases that pop in my head. When I head into the boss office to pitch an idea, I fret about it beforehand. How do I say it right? Surely, I think, others go through this too. How do they find the advice?

Theres a joke that there are more therapists in Manhattan than police. If you widened that out, according to data extrapolated from the International Coaching Federation, theres now about one life coach for every 3,200 people in the United States. A decade ago, who even heard of a life coach? Clearly, people are looking for guidance, especially when they keep hearing about a jobs market thats scarily getting smaller and tougher.

About 9 million people lost their jobs during the latest recession that began in 2007. As of this writing, things have improved. Firings are at their lowest level in five years and job openings are, conversely, at the highest level in five years. But the situation is a lot tougher. Some jobs in manufacturing, autos, and finance may never come back. Our salaries have pretty much gone nowhere in the last 10 years, which means weve got less money to spend because prices keep going up. And while the jobs are coming back, a good number of them are part-time or lower paying jobs which helps bring down the jobless rate, but doesnt do much in the great scheme of getting ahead.

Okay, Im not trying to depress you. Im just giving you a reality check. Many people bury their heads in the sand when it comes to their careers. They hope things will just work out. But careers are not a lottery tickettheyre not made out of luck. One CEO told me one of his biggest regrets is not managing his career better when he was younger. And this is coming from someone who is now a multi-millionaire with his own business. He says the biggest mistake he sees others make is that people are too passive about their careers. Im a big believer in everything happens for a reason, but at the least, you want to make sure youre doing everything you can to put the odds in your favor.

Im not only talking about big ideas like: How do I start my own business? Im talking about the small things that add up to a successful career:

Men and women both have problems with the above. Around the time I was writing and researching, Sheryl Sandbergs book Lean In sparked a national debate about equality of women in the workplace. I was glad to see all the attention the Facebook chief operating officer brought to the topic but I also felt the impression was that women did everything wrong in the workplace. The fact is, both men and women commit similar blunders. Both feel deficient in many of the topics Sheryl pointed outnetworking, mentorship, salaries. I have a male friend who constantly complains he is not well paid. The problem is not his gender but because hes just not very good at asking for a raise.

So if you want to know whats the best way to do this, read this book. If youve ever wanted to get inside a boss head, this is as close as youll get. If youre curious to know how the best in business got where they are, read on. If you want to know how even the most successful CEOs out there made mistakes and got fired, thats all in this book, too. Take your head out of the sand and go out there with your eyes wide open and only good will come out of it.

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People ask me all the time how I got into television.

The reason why they ask is because I got into television mid-career. I made the switch at the worst possible time, when I had left my job to have children. Not only was I leaving my current job but I was also attempting to get into a new, competitive career after having kids.