Gary Burnison - Advance: The Ultimate How-To Guide For Your Career

COPYRIGHT 2020 BY KORN FERRY. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

PUBLISHED BY JOHN WILEY & SONS, INC., HOBOKEN, NEW JERSEY.

PUBLISHED SIMULTANEOUSLY IN CANADA.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise, except as permitted under Section 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without either the prior written permission of the Publisher, or authorization through payment of the appropriate per-copy fee to the Copyright Clearance Center, Inc., 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, (978) 750-8400, fax (978) 646-8600, or on the Web at www.copyright.com. Requests to the Publisher for permission should be addressed to the Permissions Department, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030, (201) 748-6011, fax (201) 748-6008, or online at http://www.wiley.com/go/permissions.

Limit of Liability/Disclaimer of Warranty: While the publisher and author have used their best efforts in preparing this book, they make no representations or warranties with respect to the accuracy or completeness of the contents of this book and specifically disclaim any implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. No warranty may be created or extended by sales representatives or written sales materials. The advice and strategies contained herein may not be suitable for your situation. You should consult with a professional where appropriate. Neither the publisher nor author shall be liable for any loss of profit or any other commercial damages, including but not limited to special, incidental, consequential, or other damages.

For general information on our other products and services or for technical support, please contact our Customer Care Department within the United States at (800) 762-2974, outside the United States at (317) 572-3993 or fax (317) 572-4002.

Wiley publishes in a variety of print and electronic formats and by print-on-demand. Some material included with standard print versions of this book may not be included in e-books or in print-on-demand. If this book refers to media such as a CD or DVD that is not included in the version you purchased, you may download this material at http://booksupport.wiley.com. For more information about Wiley products, visit www.wiley.com.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:

ISBN 9781119641773 (Paperback) / ISBN 9781119641780 (ePDF) / ISBN 9781119641766 (ePub)

[Alice] was a little startled by seeing
the Cheshire Cat sitting on a
bough of a tree a few yards off....

Would you tell me, please, which
way I ought to go from here?

That depends a good deal on
where you want to get to,
said the Cat.

I dont much care where
said Alice.

Then it doesnt matter
which way you go,
said the Cat.

Alices Adventures in Wonderland,
Lewis Carroll

TO ALL WHO FEEL STUCK
IN THEIR CAREERS AND DONT
KNOW WHERE TO GO.

I HATE MY BOSS.

MY COWORKERS ARE FROM MARS.

NO PROMOTION
AND NO RAISE IN SIGHT.

ITS DEATH BY
MEETING IN THIS PLACE.

CAREER DEVELOPMENT
IS A JOKE.

I CANT WAIT FOR
JURY DUTYOR PERHAPS
JAIL TIME WOULD
BE BETTER.

MAYBE ILL BE LUCKY
ENOUGH TO GET THE FLU!

I BEG YOU

CAN YOU
GET ME
OUTTA
HERE?

You may think that getting ahead is 90 percent what others can do for you. Wrong! That 90 percent is what you do for yourself and for others.

Too many people today are helplessly passive when it comes to their careers. Maybe they think the company will develop them or theyll be plucked out of the sea for some fabulous new opportunity.

The truth is, you get hired for what you can do but fired for who you are. So if you want to get ahead, start therefigure out who you are and the value you bring.

Job tenure today is a whole new ball game. These are the days of the career nomad, traveling from one opportunity to the next, whether inside or outside the company.

The numbers tell the story. On average, people spend about four and a half years in each job. Think about itthats barely the time you spent in college, and less than the life span of most TV sets. Tenure for younger professionals, who for a variety of reasons arent interested in hanging their hat at one place for too long, is even shorter: as little as one or two years. To put this in context, I will have about four jobs in my career. My five millennial children will each have about 30.

Its no surprise, then, that the term job-hopper is no longer a pejorative. Being a free agent is the new reality. Two years in a job equates to two old-school annual performance reviews. Thats hardly enough time to be passive. To thrive, you need to take control!

Long gone are the days when success meant dutifully sticking to one company and moving up the ladder slowly, with a retirement party and a gold watch at the end. Thats what companies used to encourage. In those days, companies rewarded folks who were loyal, dishing out better pay, bigger bonuses, and corner offices with each promotion.

Today, there is no office. And the career development ladder has been mostly yanked away.

Careers are more like labyrinths. Sometimes moving ahead involves looping around first with lateral assignments to add breadth and depth. Dont fight itembrace it, because this dynamic is here to stay. This shift dramatically changes the parameters of how to manage careers.

But the fact is, people spend more time doing research when buying a flat-screen TV or a washing machine than thinking about how to get ahead in their careers.

Its time to take control! No one is coming to your rescue.

10,625 days looking at a digital device

7,709 days sitting down

1,769 days socializing

240 days laughing

180 days exercising

90 days on the toilet

1 day crying

9,490 days sleeping

730 days commuting

But not nearly enough time thinking about a career.

From where I sit, as the CEO of a global consulting firm that develops 1.2 million people every year and puts someone in a job every three minutes, I believe everyone can take control of their careerif theyre willing to do the hard work.

I wrote this book because the world of work is going through these dramatic changes, but the traditional career advice to guide people hasnt kept up. There are millions of people like you who feel stuck and dont know what to do. Or else they move from job to job, without a real plan of where theyre going.

In the following pages, I draw on my own experience as well as the perspectives and intellectual property of Korn Ferry, which has more than 50 years of expertise in recruiting and developing talent. Those five decades have allowed our researchers and scientists to compile more than six million data points on what behaviors get people ahead and which dont. And we have a very unique resource, Korn Ferry Advance (KFAdvance.com), which acts like a gym membership for your career, providing constant care and nurturing to advance professionally.