Success Strategies

The New Rules For Career Success
By Galen Tinder

Michelle has an undergraduate degree from a distinguished university, but in the sixth year of living in the "real world," she has begun an executive MBA program. She knows that even this degree will not position her for life. Her career success depends on her commitment to lifelong learning.

Brent has carefully selected a company with which he can happily see himself remaining for his entire career. He has absorbed the lesson that moving around between employers hinders career success because organizations reward loyalty and longevity. Brent has not even considered shifting his career emphasis or direction. "Career changers," in his mind, are people who cannot make it in their chosen profession.

When she graduated from college, it did not enter Michelle's mind to find a company with which she would want to remain her entire career or even for ten years. In fact, she chose her first employer partly because of the opportunity it offered to gain considerable experience and knowledge in two to three years. She plans to stay with this company for about four years and then take her expertise into a more diversified organization that will foster her growth in other ways. Michelle defines "employer loyalty" as providing the highest quality of work she can at whatever company she is working for.

Brent is not familiar with the term "career niche." But he is aware how important it is to carve out his domain, his sphere of expertise, and to protect it from the encroachment of ambitious co-workers.

Michelle knows that to make herself indispensable to the marketplace she needs to develop a high level of expertise in her field of specialty. But she also recognizes that her ultimate value is measured by the effectiveness with which she interacts with other specialties and brings general skills, sometimes called soft skills, to the mix.

· Brent is interested in other departments which are minimally necessary to function on his own. As he guards his turf he tries to respect the domains of other managers. Brent sees his value to the company in terms of fulfilling the requirements of his job title to the best of his ability.

Michelle spends as much time outside her department as she does within it. She is a woman of cross-functional comfort. Although her own bailiwick is engineering, she enjoys crossing functional lines because the interaction with other departments sparks her creativity. In fact, her job requires her to interact constantly with professionals from IT, marketing and production.

The first time Brent heard the term "people skills," he thought it referred to how skillful he was at being a person. He believes it is important to be fair to those he supervises but with the emphasis on discipline, not nurture. He has begun to hear whispers in the company corridors about teamwork, but thinks of this as several people cooperating to do as they have been instructed.

Michelle in some ways fits the stereotype of the typical engineer. She values precision and is most naturally comfortable with tangible realities that she can measure and quantify. She likes problems that have a clear solution. But to be an effective manager she needs to understand and motivate people. It is not enough to tell them what to do. She must also show them and inspire them with her own example. She needs to establish an atmosphere in which people comfortably collaborate with each other both within and between departments.

Brent knows about computers because he has seen them on the floor below him where a collection of unusually fanatical employees seem to have set up 24 hour a day work station. Whatever they are doing down there, Brent is glad they are doing it so he doesn't have to.

Michelle met her first computer in junior high school. Her niece, Jessica, a third-grader, already knows her way around a keyboard. Michelle needed several computer courses in college to fulfill the requirements of her major. At work, the computer is an essential tool of her trade. The capabilities of computers and their applications to engineering are expanding so quickly that she laughingly calls herself a perpetual student.

Brent dislikes change because it disrupts the normal flow of work and distracts people from sticking to business. He sees it as part of his responsibility to protect the people under him from change.

Michelle, though conservative in temperament, recognizes that the only constant in the contemporary economy and marketplace is the constancy of change. She knows that for she and her department to succeed she needs to adapt to change and often initiate it herself.

The rules for career success have probably changed more in the last 20 years than they did in the previous 80. Nobody can predict the changes that will take place. It is safe to expect, however, that those who are thriving in 20 years will be those who welcome and initiate change.

The author is Galen Tinder. Galen is a senior consultant and manager for Ricklin-Echikson Associates, Inc.

Ricklin-Echikson Associates, Inc., (REA) delivers customized programs to address the diverse needs of Expatriates and Repatriates. REA consultants, located throughout the world, are International Human Resource professionals who have lived and worked abroad and have been specially chosen for their expertise in career counseling and their experience in handling the unique challenges of international relocation. Services assist the spouse and family in acclimating to the new host country and culture. For additional information about REA's International Services, contact Susan Ginsberg at 800-593-3311 or srgreacareers@worldnet.att.net or visit http://www.r-e-a.com