Career Success

In the past, you all knew the formula for career stability and success, if you worked smart your career would be pretty much guaranteed in your company. The rules have changed significantly in business and some of you have not adjusted. You are often abandoning your jobs at a rate that is alarmingly too high. In an effort to justify your lack of career planning, you use excuses such as lack of upward mobility or philosophical differences with management. What is often happening is a self fulfilling prophecy and you are making it too easy for your companies not to include you in their plans.  

Your Career Success

Your career should be a planned series of focused positions to achieve a goal that you control. The operative words are planned and control. If you allow your career destiny to pass from your hands to your company, you are taking an inordinate amount of unnecessary risk.  

You must acknowledge that you are completely on your own when it comes to your career plan. I think you know by now that most companies can no longer offer you a career plan just based on you doing a good job. Most companies are not the villains in this career plot. It's just the economic uncertainties that cause them to focus on their bottom line. Companies tend to view you as similar to any asset on their balance sheet. If that asset (you) ceases to give them a R.O.I, they will dispose of it.  

Career Paralysis

It's vital that you avoid career paralysis. If you occupy one position in your firm for too many years, watch out. Your superiors may have raved about you in the past, however, that asset is depreciating every day, and your career could be in severe jeopardy. Be interested and learn about important change initiatives so that you can continue to broaden rather than deepen your background. When it comes to the issue of who stays and who goes, the employees that really power the engine (change initiative advocates and champions) will stay.      

If you do follow all the steps for proper career management, will it guarantee you stability in one firm? Of course not, companies are in a war today. However, at least you will be increasing your odds of staying with your company and you will be increasing your career net worth if you must move to another firm. 

Taking Control of Your Career

How do you really take control of your career? You first realize that the paradigm of the past, get a good education, work hard, be competent and get along with others isn't your ticket to career fulfillment. What's left? The issue of career management is something that you must do alone. It is crucial that you add to your professional expertise. It is up to you and you alone for your career's well being. 

Your job focus often keeps you isolated from your peers and other external sources. As a result of this internalizing, you are limiting your chances for career growth. One of the most critical elements in career growth is the issue of who you know, rather than what you know. It is important to build strong interpersonal relationships throughout your company. Joining a group or clique would be a gamble, especially if certain individuals were not seen in a positive light and you might become guilty by association.  

It is better to encourage communication on a genuine basis with all levels of management. It can be as simple as a five minute telephone call where you might share some company information or an article that you recently read. Or you might have breakfast with someone in marketing to discuss a production issue. The key is if you build a relationship first, you will have their trust and will often be able to work out delicate issues with them should the need arise. In addition and more important, you will ask for their opinions on projects that you are working on and probably broaden your knowledge base.  

Am I doing my best to reduce my lead times? How can I reduce my process bottlenecks? Is lean enterprise for my company? Who can I talk with who has launched a supplier certification program? Every day each of you should add to your body of knowledge on these and many other organizational and professional subjects. You must constantly be searching for methods to improve personal and your company's performance. But where do you get the answers? Most of you try to figure it out yourselves, but the winners use their external sources to constantly share their ideas with and act as coach and mentors for one another.  

Your Professional Reputation

To further your professional reputation, you should be willing to share your knowledge and ideas with others in your field. Whether through speaking or writing you will meet with many people quickly and you will continue to enhance your career network. The concept is to broaden your circle, learn and share new concepts and develop a broad support structure. If you’re a member of APICS, you are involved with one of the most effective educational organizations in the world. Use the power. Join a few more organizations and serve on boards and committees—you will add immeasurably to you career net worth. 

A Demanding Career

Most MBBP readers have chosen a most demanding operations career. You are the last ones to touch the ball in your firm. R&D can take years to develop a product, engineering months to bring it to drawings, marketing can ponder and do their test studies to determine acceptability. Then you finally get the product and what does management say? Well, to the purchasing department "get those raw materials delivered" in an impossible time frame. And the manufacturing and material's departments have to deliver it to the customer yesterday. I rest my case.  

A career is further defined as a path or course. You often don't give your path much thought. You have picked a profession that is often described as a state of constant volatility and almost impossible to please more than a few people at a time. This condition underscores the importance of developing strategies to take control of your career. If you do, you will win your career battle. And finally, post this in your computer and look at it every day: 

*   Take charge of your career

*   Life is a series of revisions

*   Be positive

*   Stay in control.