“Change is inevitable, growth is intentional.” — Glenda Cloud

The field you’re in can slow you down or it can speed up your career success.

It’s easier to be a success in some fields than in others.  Some fields are rapid growth, in which case, you can ride the bandwagon.  In other fields, you might find a way to play to your strengths in a novel or unique way that works for you.

If you’re making all the right moves, and doing all the right things, it just might be that the container that you’re in is a slow-growth field, or over-crowded, or too competitive for your success to shine through.

For me, I chose a high-tech field because of the growth potential.  In an information age, it seems to be full of opportunities and rapid change.  Interestingly, I work with a lot of musicians who would otherwise be starving artists, but instead they fund their life style by working in a high-tech field, and then carve out time for their musical talents, or even find ways to bring their creative talents to the job, or bring high-tech to music..

The beauty is, you don’t have to necessarily be a perfect fit for a rapid growth field.  You can always find a way to use your talents or experience as a differentiator.  For example, I don’t need to be the best software developer.  Instead, I can leverage my ability to lead high-performance teams or execute projects or create information models.  In fact, it’s this last skill that helped me win in competitive assessments, and to file patents.

5 Ways to Leverage a Rapid Growth Field
In the book, Tactics: The Art and Science of Success , Edward de Bono shares ways to leverage high-growth fields for improving your career success:

1. Follow the Growth.  de Bono writes, “The computer industry is a growth industry, and within that industry software is a growth field.  The steel industry is not a growth industry.  Clearly is it easier, as I write, to be successful in the computer industry than in the steel industry.  Property has always been such a promising field.  So is insurance.  The oil industry has its ups and downs but it has also been an area in which individuals could make fortunes.  It is both the growth of the field that matters and the nature of the transaction within that field.  It is easier for a person to make his name in investment banking than in retail banking.  It is easier to make a name as a journalist than as a school-teacher.”
2. Ride the Bandwagon.  de Bono writes, “If the field is really growing rapidly, then any person in that field may simply be carried along with the growth and not have to contribute very much to his his or her own success.  Riding the bandwagon had always been one road to success.  There is usually room for several people on the bandwagon.  The pioneer in the field may or may not be successful, but those who come in very soon after the field is established can be carried along by its explosive growth.”
3. When luck doesn’t work, make it by design.  de Bono writes, “Getting a rapid growth field may be a matter of luck or choice.  You may simply happen to be in a field that starts to grow rapidly.  You may choose to get into a field that you think may start to grow.  You may choose to move smartly into a field as soon as you spot the field is on the move.  In show-jumping you can be a brilliant rider who gets the very best out of a difficult horse.  Or you can make sure that you choose for yourself the very best horse around and then just hang on and let the horse do it for you.  There is a certain heroism in the first approach and more sense in the second.”
4. Find the ways you can be in a field.  de Bono writes, “What if your temperament and talents are suited to a field that is not growing?   What if the growing field demands talents you do not have?  What if you are no good at writing software, should you get into that field?  You could always market the software or finance software companies or hire people to write the software for your company.  It is well worth looking around to see the many ways you can be in a field.  The real estate world has deal-makers, developers, financiers, lawyers, contractors, etc.”
5. Beware the talent trap.  de Bono writes, “Sometimes there is a sort of ‘talent trap.’  A youngster is good at maths at school so he or she gets channeled into a career that uses mathematics.  But that youngster may have been almost as good at organization and might have become a chief executive of a major organization instead of a professor of mathematics.  Talent in one direction does not mean that there is no talent in the other direction.  If you are suited to a slow-moving field, it is only too easy that you will not be able to shift to another field that is growing more rapidly.  Far too many youngsters who showed some aptitude for art have had their lives ruined by that small talent which has lead them into a field that is so difficult even for the most talented.”

The key is to play to your strengths while following the growth, or creating growth.

Photo by pastanaut.

“Busy does not equal important. Measured doesn’t mean mattered.” – Seth Godin

There’s a hidden message in this post – it’s your free prize inside.  Whether you find the free prize or not, this post will make you think.  About your life.  About work.  About just about everything.  Why?  Because it’s a distillation of lessons from a man named Seth.  Seth Godin is an author, an agent of change, a meaning maker, and an Idea Merchant.

I have to say, this was my most challenging “greatness distilled” post to date.  Seth is a fountain of insight, and I wanted to do more than show the tip of the iceberg.  At the same time, I wanted to take the balcony view, look across his forest of ideas, and make a map of the most meaningful insights.  I won’t claim victory, but I smile inside as I think in the spirit of Seth, I won’t let perfect get in the way of the good.  I’m hoping people will share their lessons from Seth with me, and the map will go beyond my sketch and take a life of its own.  For now, this is my “Seth on a page.”

As you explore Seth’s work, find what you can use for the business of life, or the game of work.  If you walk away with the goal of finding 3 ah-has, you’ll change your frame … and a key to life is that if you change your frame, you change your game.

25 Lessons Learned from Seth Godin
Seth is full of lessons and insights.  Here are 25 lessons to chew on:

1. Have a bunch of good runs before the sun sets. Seth says — “Life is like skiing.  Just like skiing, the goal is not to get to the bottom of the hill. It’s to have a bunch of good runs before the sun sets.”
2. Be remarkable.  Boring is invisible.  Remarkable products and remarkable people get talked about.  Seth on remarkable — “How can you squander even one more day not taking advantage of the greatest shifts of our generation? How dare you settle for less when the world has made it so easy for you to be remarkable?”
3. Success is a skill.  Seth’s philosophy on success is — “it’s possible to enjoy your job, to do the right thing, to be transparent, to give more than you get and to be successful, all at the same time.”  It takes work.   Surround yourself with people who are succeeding.   You become who you hang with.  By surrounding yourself with people who are succeeding, you’ll learn what’s working and what’s not.  You can model their success and open doors that you might otherwise not see.  Seth on successful people – “”Successful people rarely confuse a can-do attitude with a smart plan. But they realize that one without the other is unlikely to get you very far.”
4. Being the best is the best place to be.  It’s better to be the best.   People pick the market leaders and they narrow their choices to the top.  Seth says, “Being the best in the world is seriously underrated.”   According to Seth, best in the world is relative – “It’s best for them, right now based on what they believe and in their world, the one they have access to.”  In the Dip, Seth shares 7 reasons why you might fail to become the best in the world:  1.) You run out of time, 2.) you run out of money, 3.) you get scared, 4.) you’re not serious about it, 5.) you lose interest or enthusiasm and settle for being mediocre, 6.) you focus on the short term instead of the long, 7.) you pick the wrong thing at which to be the best in the world.
5. Be missed.  Seth on how to be missed — “Connect, create meaning, make a difference, matter, be missed.”
6. Everybody is an expert about something.  You’re an expert at something.  Make meaning.  A SQUIDOO lens is a way to make meaning for others.  Seth on lenses – “A lens gives context. When it succeeds, it delivers meaning.”
7. Success is a hierarchy.   Seth teaches us the hierarchy of success: 1.) Attitude, 2.) Approach 3.) Goals 4.) Strategy 5.) Tactics 6.) Execution
8. Don’t do A as a calculated tactic to get B.  Do A because you believe in it.  Seth on success – “If we define success as the ability to make a living doing what I do, I’d say the following: 1.) No ulterior motive. I rarely do A as a calculated tactic to get B. I do A because I believe in A, or it excites me or it’s the right thing to do. That’s it. No secret agendas, 2.) I don’t think my audience owes me anything. It’s always their turn, 3.) I’m in a hurry to make mistakes and get feedback and get that next idea out there. I’m not in a hurry, at all, to finish the “bigger” project, to get to the finish line, 4.) I do things where I actually think I’m right, as opposed to where I think succeeding will make me successful. When you think you’re right, it’s more fun and your passion shows through, 5.) I’ve tried to pare down my day so that the stuff I actually do is pretty well leveraged. That and I show up. Showing up is underrated.”
9. Be in it for the long haul.  Things rarely come easy.  Make the journey worth it.  Chip away at success.  Seth says — “Listen instead to your real customers, to your vision and make something for the long haul. Because that’s how long it’s going to take, guys.”
10. Quit the right things and lean into the right Dips.  Winners quit the right things all the time.  Recognize when you’re in a Dip.  Pick the right Dips.  In the Dip, Seth teaches us 3 curves: 1) the Dip, 2) the Cul-De-Sac, and 3) the Cliff.  The Dip is the long slog between starting and mastery.  The Dip is where success happens.  Stick it out, only if you’re going to get the benefits of being the best in the world.  The Cul-De-Sac is where you work and work and work, but nothing much changes.  These are dead-end jobs.  The Cliff is a situation where you can’t quit until you fall off.  If you’re in a Cul-De-Sac or Cliff, you need to quit.  You need to quit these so you can refocus on something with promise.
11. Decide if you’re a freelancer or entrepreneur.  In the Bootstrapper’s Bible, Seth teaches us that a freelancer sells their talents.  While they may have a few employees, they’re doing a job without a boss, but not running a business.  There’s no exit strategy or pot of gold, but they make their own hours and be their own boss.  Examples include layout artists, writers, consultants, film editors, landscapers, architects, translators, and musicians.  Seth writes that an entrepreneur is trying to build something bigger than themselves.  They take calculated risk and focus on growth.  An entrepreneur is willing to receive little pay, work long hours, and take on great risk in exchange for the freedom to make something big, something that has real market value.
12. It’s like walking through a maze.   Seth on building a business from scratch — “Learn as you go.  Change as you go.  Building a business from scratch is like walking through a maze with many, many doors.  Once you open one, 100 new doors present themselves.  As you move your way through the maze, you need to stop and check your location.  Look at a map.  If you’re in the wrong place move.  But if you’ve discovered a new place, there’s nothing wrong with exploiting it.”
13. Everyone is not your customer.  Seth teaches us the key to failure – “the key to failure is trying to please everyone.”  Listen to your real customers.  It’s not the media, the investors, or the early adopters.  Seth on everyone is not your customer – “The media wants overnight successes (so they have someone to tear down). Ignore them. Ignore the early adopter critics that never have enough to play with. Ignore your investors that want proven tactics and predictable instant results. Listen instead to your real customers …”  Seth on figuring out what your customers really want — “Most people have no clue what they want, and if you ask them, you’ll get a lame answer. Most people don’t know they want Pretty Woman or Slumdog Millionaire. They don’t know they want Purple Cow or one of your killer articles. So if you want to have an impact, all you can do is lead. You can’t ask.”
14. Feed, grow, and satisfy the tribe.  Build your tribe.  According to Seth, “You can lead a tribe of people, connect them, commit to them and create a movement.”  Seth on building your tribe – “It adds to that the fact that what people really want is the ability to connect to each other, not to companies. So the permission is used to build a tribe, to build people who want to hear from the company because it helps them connect, it helps them find each other, it gives them a story to tell and something to talk about. Everything the organization does is to feed and grow and satisfy the tribe.”
15. Small is the new big.  Focus on relevant, specialized, and unique.  It’s the difference that makes the difference.   According to Seth, small helps you be remarkable – “Small means that you will outsource the boring, low-impact stuff like manufacturing and shipping and billing and packing to others, while you keep the power because you invent the remarkable and tell stories to people who want to hear them.”
16. Find the new scarce.  Where there’s scarcity, there’s value.
17. It’s the FREE PRIZE INSIDE.  Seth teaches us how to create a remarkable product – “The thing that makes something remarkable isn’t usually directly related to the original purpose of the product or service. It’s the FREE PRIZE INSIDE, the extra stuff, the stylish bonus, the design or the remarkable service or pricing that makes people talk about it and spread the word.”
18. The third century is about ideas.  We went from farms to factories to ideas.  Seth on the third century – “Fact is, the first 100 years of our country’s history were about who could build the biggest, most efficient farm. And the second century focused on the race to build factories. Welcome to the third century, folks.”
19. Spread your ideas. Be an idea merchant.  Spread your ideas.  Seth on being an idea merchant — “If you can get people to accept and embrace and adore and cherish your ideas, you win. You win financially, you gain power and you change the world in which we live.”   According to Seth, spreading is a formula of 8 variables: Sneezers, Hive, Velocity, Vector, Medium, Smoothness, Persistence and Amplifier.
20. Don’t wait for perfect. Test your ideas.  Learn and respond.  Don’t wait for perfect to land in your lap, and don’t let it get in the way of sharing a good idea.  Seth on testing ideas – “I’m in a hurry to make mistakes and get feedback and get that next idea out there.”  Seth on perfect — “Waiting for perfect is never as smart as making progress.”  Seth on doing it well now, is better than perfect later — “The minute you start walking down a path toward a yak shaving party, it’s worth making a compromise. Doing it well now is much better than doing it perfectly later.”
21. Don’t get paid to alter your behavior.  Be authentic.  There are two types of sneezers – the promiscuous sneezers and the powerful sneezers.  Promiscuous sneezers can be motivated by money and rewards to sell ideas to a hive.  Powerful sneezers have authority by setting a trend and can’t be bought.  A powerful sneezer can be worth many more times a promiscuous sneezer. Seth on staying a powerful sneezer — “After I left Yahoo!, I had many opportunities to serve on boards and do endorsements. I  chose not to. Why? Because I didn’t want to squander the powerful sneezing points I’d earned by writing my last book. … In every case, you’re getting paid to alter your behavior. That makes you more promiscuous and less powerful.”
22. The goal of reading is to choose what to change.  Find 3 take aways when you read a business book.   Seth on how to read a business book – “Decide, before you start, that you’re going to change three things about what you do all day at work.  Then, as you’re reading, find the three things and do it. The goal of the reading, then, isn’t to persuade you to change, it’s to help you choose what to change.”
23. The world changes whether you like it or not.   The world’s getting bigger and smaller.  Seth on how the world is changing – “The world’s getting bigger because you can look everywhere, but it’s also getting smaller because categories are getting specialized.”
24. The game of marketing has changed.  It’s not price – it’s relevancy, difference, and value.  Marketing is now tribal leadership.  Small is the new big.  Fire customers that aren’t right for your business.  Attention is an asset.  Permission marketing works better than spam – “Selling to people who actually want to hear from you is more effective than interrupting strangers who don’t.”  You take word-of-mouth marketing to the next level with IdeaViruses.  Tell the stories people want to believe.  Products that are remarkable get talked about.     Be authentic.  You can’t fool people.  According to Seth — “You can’t fool all the people, not even most of the time.  And people, once unfooled, talk about the experience.”  Marketing is an investment.  Seth says, “If you are marketing from a fairly static annual budget, you’re viewing marketing as an expense.  Good marketers realize that it is an investment.”
25. Feed, grow, and satisfy your business.   Plan for the money.   If there’s no money, you’re out of the game.  In the Bootstrapper’s Bible, Seth shares 9 rules to take care of your business: 1.) find people who care about cash less than you do, 2.) survival is success, 3.) success leads to more success 4.) redo the mission statement and the business plan every three months, 5.) associate with winners, 6.) beware of shared ownership, 7.) advertise, 8.) get mentored, and 9.) observe those little birds that clean the teeth of very big hippos.

Top 10 Seth Godin Quotes
Here are my top 10 favorite quotes by Seth:

1. “Expectations are the engines of our perceptions.”
2. “Ideas in secret die. They need light and air or they starve to death.”
3. “Go ahead, do something impossible. “
4. “You can’t shrink your way to greatness! “
5. “Don’t try to please everyone. There are countless people who don’t want one, haven’t heard of one or actively hate it. So what?”
6. “Instead of wondering when your next vacation is, you ought to set up a life you don’t need to escape from.”
7. “Why waste a sentence saying nothing? “
8. “If you could do tomorrow over again, would you?”
9. “Change is not a threat, it’s an opportunity. Survival is not the goal, transformative success is.”
10. “Are you a serial idea-starting person? The goal is to be an idea-shipping person.”

Quotes Organized by Category
I’ve included some of my favorite Seth Godin quotes below.  For simple scanning, I’ve organized them using the following categories: General, Business, Change, Greatness, Ideas, Leadership/ Management, Marketing, Mediocrity / Status Quo, Strategy.

Catalog of Seth’s Resources (Sites, Books, Videos)
Seth has a wide range of resources, from blog posts to books.  For simple scanning, I organized Seth’s collection of resources into the following buckets: sites, books, eBooks, videos, and popular posts.

My Related Posts

• Lessons Learned from the Dip
• Lessons Learned from the Bootstrapper’s Bible
• Lessons Learned from Tony Robbins
• Lessons Learned from Guy Kawasaki

Photo by jurvetson.

“Your willingness to wrestle with your demons will cause your angels to sing. Use the pain as fuel, as a reminder of your strength.” – August Wilson

As a parting gift at the end of one of my projects, I wanted everybody to walk away with their list of personal strengths.  Not just a list that I made up, or their own list, but a list of strengths through the eyes of the team.

I wanted everybody to know exactly how the other team members valued them.  I wanted each person to have a new lens on their strengths that they could carry forward for their future adventures.  I’m a fan of focusing on strengths, but part of that means knowing what your strengths are, as you see them, and as others see them.  I know too many people with hidden talents, simply because they just don’t know how valuable their skills and strengths are to the situation or to other people.

I kept the process simple.  I sent an email to my distributed team around the world, and then compiled the results, and shared with the team.   It was nothing fancy, but it meant a lot to each person on the team because it was real.

The Request
Here is the simple mail I sent to my team:

For today … Take 15 or so minutes to …
… send me 3 unique strengths for each person, you’ve seen demonstrated during the project.

The Results
Here are the results:
(I’m included in the results, but for privacy I used “teammate” as a place holder for each team member)

J.D.

• Driving project forward
• Providing vision for the end result
• Making decisions quickly and efficiently
• Effective leadership
• Drive to execute
• People management
• Vision for customer impact and results
• PM ability to manage multiple threads and bring them together at the right time
• Framing out new areas, new chapters, guide structure, etc. So that the team can follow behind.
• Management
• Vision
• Architecture
• Keeping things on track
• leadership/ mentoring
• Political interference for team
• Visionary
• Great networking skills
• Good mentor
• Always knows what he wants. Driven by a vision.
• Has a positive vibe that infuses confidence in the team
• Very vocal

Teammate 1

• Reliable
• Consistent
• Pragmatic
• Seems to be knowledgeable about architecture
• Consistently working on updating docs
• Work ethic and speed
• Persistence
• Discipline
• Technical
• Feedback
• Writing
• Good at reviewing and asking questions
• Good at filling out documents to get something to start with
• Eye for details
• Committed
• Strive for Project Goals
• All round performer.
• Does a good job with the tasks assigned to him.

Teammate 2

• Fast
• Reliable
• Consistent
• Writing skills
• Accuracy of details
• Team player
• Video creation
• Ability to learn new tech areas
• Familiarity with MS and p&p
• Editing
• Writing
• New Technologies
• Rewording and editing
• Starting documents.  Getting something going.
• Video creation
• Fast in execution
• Resourceful
• Focused on task at hand
• Very articulate.
• Knows how to express practice in words.

Teammate 3

• Fast
• Results focused
• Solution-oriented
• Managing project when required
• Steering others and confirming tasks and requirements
• Technical skills
• Perfectionist
• Technical
• Writing
• Architecture
• Pruning down text
• Security experience
• Team leadership
• Knows to reduce the flab (compressor)
• Quick at task in hand
• Great sounding board
• Frames crispier sentences from long-running paragraphs.
• Driven by vision.
• More or less knows/expects a given outcome from a task.

Teammate 4

• Knowledge and experience of architecture
• Fluent writer
• Willing to provide assistance when required
• Robust thinking
• Great experience
• Open to new ideas
• Technical skills
• Influential
• Problem-solving ability
• Architecture knowledge
• Patterns knowledge
• Technical ability and information in head
• Application development experience and wisdom
• Standing up for useful over “marketing speak”
• Good at technical knowledge
• good reviewer
• can talk in architecture lingo
• Highly knowledgeable.
• High motivation.

Teammate 5

• Managing day to day activities
• Planning and executing the plan
• Producing and refining content
• Hard working
• Results focused
• Solution-oriented
• Motivation
• Interpersonal skills
• Big picture thinking
• Understanding of the quality bar
• Driving releases
• Retains knowledge of old areas and can synthesize new knowledge into his existing framework
• Collaboration
• Writing
• Technical
• Only doing what needs to be done
• finishing and shipping
• positive attitude on how to deal with pressure
• Gets stuff done one way or another.
• Prioritizes tasks well.
• Precise. Doesn’t like beating around the bush.

Teammate 6

• Consistent work on improving content
• Pragmatic
• Ability to be wrong / no ego
• Solution-oriented
• Detail oriented and thorough
• Customer focus, understands the right quality tradeoffs for customer impact
• A good writer, his suggestions and changes are almost always very high quality
• Feedback
• Technical
• Architecture

Teammate 7

• Finding and maintaining contacts with reviewers and advisors
• Maintaining consistency and eye for detail
• Willing to help when required
• Due diligence
• Teamwork
• Eager to learn
• Networking
• Team player
• Willingness to do whatever is necessary or needed of him
• Growing SEO knowledge
• Interaction with and management of reviewers/contributors outside the team
• SEO
• Collaboration
• Writing
• Great passion and energy
• Good marketing skills
• Striving to improve himself
• Great team player
• Wants to be involved in everything.
• Process based.
• Loves Visio and drawing figures.:)

Some people were surprised by the strengths that others saw in them.   Some were deeply touched.  Everyone felt stronger with a clear picture of what they brought to the table and how they were valued for their contribution.

Photo by kevinpoh.

When i first joined Microsoft, I felt like I had joined an elite team of smart people that gets results.   Microsoft is a big place, and I had joined the Developer Support Team.  It was an interesting team and I was surrounded by people who worked smarter, harder, faster, and more effective than anything I had ever seen before.  There were people that built robots and people that built rockets.  There were former accountants and former professors.   The intellectual horsepower was stunning and so was the passion.

I was curious how I too could become a skilled Softie.

As a new Softie, I was assigned a mentor and a buddy.  My mentor was for technical skills and learning the ropes, while my buddy was for helping me simply get acclimated to life at Microsoft.   While it was great to have a supportive team to help me learn how to spread my wings and fly, what I really wanted was a map for becoming a skilled Softie and improving my effectiveness in this amazing environment.  After all, I didn’t join Microsoft to just hang out.  I joined it to make impact and learn the ways of successful Microsoft employees.

Success Factors
Ask and ye shall receive, right?  I was given a competency framework organized by success factors and core competencies.  This was the map I was looking for.  The success factors included the following:

• Customer Feedback
• Individual Excellence
• Long-Term Approach
• Passion for Products and Technology
• Results
• Teamwork

It was a simple but powerful set.  I really liked the fact that it stressed teamwork, results, and excellence.

Core Competencies
The success factors organized the core competencies.   Here is a map of the core competencies based on my old notes:

While the competency map is old, I think it’s pretty timeless.  Periodically, I scan the competencies and look for areas of growth.

Photo by eviltomthai.

Editor’s note: This is a guest post by Dan Schawbel. Dan’s super skill is personal branding and he has an impressive set of credentials.

Dan is the bestselling author of Me 2.0: Build a Powerful Brand to Achieve Career Success, an award winning blogger at Personal Branding Blog, the publisher of Personal Branding Magazine, a national speaker and consultant on branding, and a BusinessWeek columnist. He’s been called a “Personal Branding Guru” by The New York Times and has been featured in over 150 media outlets.

In this guest post, Dan outlines some common mistakes when it comes to branding yourself online and what to do about them. Without further ado, here is Dan on the top 5 lessons learned in personal branding …

In the past three years, I’ve noticed a lot about how people behave online and how people are building their brands. Most of the time, people aren’t very self-aware of what they are publishing online and are actually hurting their brands in the long-term. Everyone has a personal brand whether they like it or not, so the focus should always be “how do I manage my brand.” In the online world, perception is much more important than reality, but if you don’t deliver on that brand promise offline, you will fail. There are five common mistakes that I’ve seen and that you should not only be aware of, but you shouldn’t make them.

1. Don’t over-promote.  Don’t over-promote by tweeting about your products and achievements all the time. Instead you should have a careful balance of value contribution and self-promotion, so that you are helping your followers, having them spread your message, while letting them know what you’re all about in the process.
2. Be mindful of your blog comments.  Be mindful of your blog comments, not only because bloggers moderate comments but because people will only click through to your blog if you’re added value to the post. Many people will cite their name, their company’s name, and multiple URL’s, when that subtracts from the comment and positions you as a spammer. You should add your opinion when commenting on blog posts and let interested readers click through to your blog.
3. Discover your brand before you communicate it. It’s very easy to start using social tools to communicate with the general public, but it’s not very effective unless you’ve discovered your brand first. By having a clear understanding on what you want to be known for, your positioning in the marketplace (taking a niche), and the overall design and message you want to communicate, you will be much more successful when you’re actually on social networks.
4. Use the same picture, name, and messaging .  Be consistent with everything you do, so people are viewing the same picture, name and messaging wherever they see you online or offline. Your Twitter avatar should be the same as your Facebook picture and the picture on your blog bio page. If you position yourself as the top salesman for baby boomers in Texas, then make sure that branding exists everywhere as well.
5. Get your name out there.  Don’t just pump out content on your blog and pray that people find it. If you build it, they probably won’t come, unless they know to come. You want to get your name out there by networking with the right people, not the entire world. Use services like Twellow.com to narrow down your search to people who would be interested in what you have to say. Comment and guest post on blogs to attract more attention and build readership. Put your blog or website URL on your business card, in your presentations, on your resume, and everywhere else.

Here’s a post that I originally published on my work blog, but I thought the readers here would benefit from it too.  It’s a simple model for thinking about your career growth.  With things like a “jobless economic recovery,” careers ending, and a “skills-for-hire” economy, it’s even more important to focus on growth while managing your career.  At the end of the day, YOU play the most important role in your career growth – own it.

This past year reminded me of a very valuable lessons – follow the growth.  This means follow your own growth and growth in the marketplace.  When there’s no growth, make some.

Career Development, Professional Development, and Personal Development
Steve Elston, our print and web publications manager on our patterns & practices team, shared this simple frame with our  team for differentiating and thinking about development paths:

• Career Development – Become a stronger leader.
• Professional Development – Become a better craftsmen.
• Personal Development – Become a more capable person.

I think an effective way to think of this is …

“Are you the person, the professional, the manager, or the executive you want to be?”

Make Yourself Bigger
In terms of personal development, I think “become a more *capable* person” is a great distinction over something like “become a better person.”   Rather than question self-worth or value, you put the focus on improving your effectiveness and capabilities.  It reminds me of a quote …

“You don’t overcome challenges by making them smaller but by making yourself bigger.” — John Maxwell

Career Growth, Professional Growth, and Personal Growth
Steve shared some quick ways to think about who you can leverage for your growth and what sort of awareness you need for effective growth:

As you can see from the table, the key to career growth is awareness of the business, the key to professional growth is awareness of organizational trends, and the key to personal growth is self-awareness.

What, Who, and How

Steve also shared a sample way to think about contributing factors to overall job satisfaction.

• What You Do – The industry, the company, the organization, the manager, and the job.
• Who You Do It With – Co-workers, partners, customers, and mentors.
• How You Do It – Technology, process, philosophy, organization culture.

Steve provides some cutting questions for thinking through these concerns:

• What matters most to you?
• Who has the power to improve the situation?
• How can you influence your job satisfaction?

Knowledge, Attitude, Skills and Habits (KASH model)
Steve shared the KASH box model with our team:

• Knowledge – what you know.
• Attitude – your attitudes, along with your underlying values and beliefs.
• Skills – your capabilities.
• Habits – what you actually do.

The KASH box is a performance coaching tool and it’s a simple way to look at the gap between knowing and doing and the “transfer of training” problem.  People know what to do, but they don’t do it, or don’t want to.  A lot of people are hired for “skills” and “knowledge,” but fired for “attitude” and “habits.”  In other words, it’s easy to focus on knowledge and skills but often it is people’s attitudes and habits that limit them.

Interestingly, if you know what to do, but you’re not doing what you know, it’s one of the simplest and most effective ways to unleash your growth.  Just start testing your results.

There’s a video on the KASH box at Kashbox Coaching.com.

Mentors are the Short-Cuts
The right mentors can help you avoid the chutes and climb the ladders more effectively.  John deVadoss, our patterns & practices team Product Unit Manager, shared his key tips on how to effectively leverage mentors:

• Know what you want and what you want from the relationship.
• Be proactive – you need to drive the meetings and ask the right questions.
• Keep an open mind regarding who this person might be.
• Think about people who have been your mentors in the past.
• You can have more than one mentor.

This reflects a lot of my own experience.  One of my most important lessons learned is that mentors really are the short-cuts.  If you find somebody who’s “been there” and “done that,” it’s like having a tour guide.  Their maps from experience can save you a lot of wasted time and help you avoid obstacles, as well as find shorter paths to your destinations.

A mentor can also be great for helping you find your blind spots as well as giving your more objective feedback on your attitudes and habits that might be limiting you.  This means finding mentors that are committed to your success and you trust their feedback and perspective.  Usually a good place to look is in your past.  You can draw from people that have helped you before.

I make it a habit to use a sounding board of multiple mentors for growth in different areas.  I have a few vital mentors for ongoing growth, and then I supplement with mentors for specific things I need to learn.

I also give back and I mentor others to help them optimize their growth and get results.   A lot of times, life is like Chutes and Ladders. You can climb up ladders only to slide back down.

Who’s Job Do You Want?
One of my mentors uses the question, “Who’s job do you want?” as a great forcing function:

• Do you know what you want?
• Is there a proven path?
• What experiences and skills do you need to get there?

The other beauty of this is it gives your managers and support network a good mental model for your career path, starting with the end in mind.

Putting It All Together
Steve outlined a simple roadmap for putting it all together:

1. Know what you want.
2. Get a mentor.
3. Build your plan.
4. Ask for support.

Every day, is the perfect day, to become more of the person, professional, manager or executive you want to be.  Enjoy the process and remind yourself it’s the journey and the destination, and remember to periodically check that the ladder you’re climbing is up against the right wall.

Photo by Photos8.com.

“A leader is one who knows the way, goes the way, and shows the way.” — John C. Maxwell

How can you become a leader in your field?  A colleague shared a link to How to Be a Leader, which I found interesting.   I think the key takeaway is that to be a leader in your field, you help move the ball forward. 

You Need More Than the Skills You Got In School
Philip writes:

“To succeed in your career, you need more than the skills that you got in school — you need to be the world expert in something. Knowledge is global, it’s growing exponentially, and nobody can pack all of the necessary knowledge into their head. So everyone’s going to specialize.  I think there’s a lot to be said for focus and specialization.  The trick is picking what to specialize in.  Personally, I like to specialize in skills that compound over time versus flavor of the day.”

I think that’s a great reminder that your grow in your career by spending time in it.  You don’t just learn it all up front.

Summary of Steps
In the article,  Philip E. Agre presents a six step recipe for becoming a leader in your field:

• Step 1. Pick an issue.
• Step 2. Having chosen your issue, start a project to study it.
• Step 3. Find relevant people and talk to them.
• Step 4. Pull together what you’ve heard.
• Step 5. Circulate the result.
• Step 6. Build on your work.

Step 1. Pick an issue
For this step, I would recommend picking something that is underserved.  It should be a meaningful problem that solving would have a significant impact and move the ball forward.  In the article, Philip gives an A-Z list of how to pick which ball to move forward.
In this step, pick an area in your field that is underserved. 

Step 2. Having chosen your issue, start a project to study it.
A project is a great way to focus.  A simple recipe for a project is to have a vision of the end in mind, and chunk up the outcomes you want to accomplish, and the steps and actions to get there.  Having a project will help keep you on track.

Step 3. Find relevant people and talk to them.
Involve the right people.  You need a sounding board for your ideas and to help you find the right issues and focus.  Every domain has a pocket of experts that are in the know.  For your work to be credible, you need to be inclusive of existing work, and including the voices of the experts in your field, adds to your credibility.  Being connected in your field takes you further.

Step 4. Pull together what you’ve heard.
Consolidate and synthesize your learnings into a useful artifact.

Step 5. Circulate the result.
Share your work with people in the field. 

Step 6. Build on your work.
Use the feedback to improve your work, and to take it further.  Building on your work will help turn good ideas into a strong foundation and platform for additional work.

Photo by [177].

“What you are comes to you.” –  Ralph Waldo Emerson

I’m a fan of lenses to help me get a better perspective or vantage point.  If you’re looking for a job or thinking about your career, you can use Holland’s theory of career choice to help you find a better fit.

John L. Holland identified 6 personality and work environment types.  According to Holland, if you can match your personality type and your work environment, you can improve your success and satisfaction.  The idea is that “birds of a feather, flock together,” and that people with the same personality type tend to enjoy working with each other.  For example, Artistic people enjoy working with other Artistic people.

Additionally, people with the same personality type tend to create a work environment that rewards thinking and behaving like that type.  For example, an Artistic environment rewards creative expression.  The result? …  When you’re in an environment that supports you, you act and feel more effective.  The thing to remember is that personality types are really just lenses on behavior.  Rather than assume you’re just one personality type, Holland suggests that you have interests with each of the 6 personality types, in descending order, effectively creating 720 different personality patterns.

In the book The Truth About Managing People…And Nothing But the Truth , Stephen R. Robbins writes about the six personality and work environment types.

6 Personality and Work Environment Types

 Here are the six personality and work environment types based on Holland:

1. Realistic
2. Investigative
3. Artistic
4. Social
5. Enterprising
6. Conventional

Here is a summary of the six personality and work environment types based on Holland:

1. Realistic (Do’er) – Prefers physical activities that require skill, strength, and coordination. Traits include genuine, stable, conforming, and practical.  Example professions include architect, farmer, and engineer.
2. Investigative (Thinker) – Prefers working with theory and information, thinking, organizing, and understanding. Traits include: analytical, curious, and independent.  Example professions include lawyer, mathematician, and professor.
3. Artistic (Creator) – Prefers creative, original, and unsystematic activities that allow creative expression. Traits include: imaginative, disorderly, idealistic, emotional, and impractical.  Example professions include: artist, musician, and writer.
4. Social (Helper) – Prefers activities that involve helping, healing, or developing others.  Traits include cooperative, friendly, sociable, and understanding.  Example professions include counselor, doctor, and teacher.
5. Enterprising (Persuader) – Prefers competitive environments, leadership, influence, selling, and status.  Traits include ambitious, domineering, energetic, and self-confident.  Example professions include Management, Marketing, and Sales Person.
6. Conventional (Organizer) – Prefers precise, rule-regulated, orderly, and unambiguous activities.  Traits include conforming, efficient, practical, unimaginative, and inflexible.  Example professions include accountant, clerk and editor.

Match Personalities and Jobs

 People are happiest when they are put in jobs that match their personality.  Robbins writes:

“The evidence indicates that employee satisfaction is highest and turnover lowest when personality and occupation are in agreement.  social individuals, for instance, should be in social jobs, conventional people in conventional jobs, and so forth.”

Holland’s Hexagon

Holland created a hexagon view to show the relationships of personality types.  Personality types closer to each other are more alike.  Personality types further away are least alike.

For example,  artistic is least like conventional, but closer to investigative and social.

Compatible Work Environments

The following table summarizes the compatibility of personality type with work environments:

Additional Resources

Here are some additional resource to explore the Holland Codes:

• Holland Codes (Wikipedia)
• Browse jobs by personality and work environment types (O*Net Online)

My Related Posts

• Improving Job Satisfaction
• Thinking About Career Paths
• Choose Your Jobs Based on Strengths

Photo by dawvon.

If you’re not good at something, is it a weakness?  If you’re good at something, is it a strength?  No, it’s not that simple.  There’s a difference between natural talents or strengths, and things that you learn over time by building skills and knowledge.  There are many things that when you start out, you will be unskilled.  That’s not a weakness.  I’ll pause right there, to let that sink in.  It’s a key concept when you’re trying to figure out your strengths and weaknesses.  While I wish there was one simple way for you to just figure out your strengths, in my experience it’s not that simple.  There are many great lenses, but at the end of the day, you really own figuring out what your strengths are.  Tests, lenses and feedback provide the clues, but you have to test what works for you.  You spend time with yourself 24×7, so the least you can do is figure yourself out, if you haven’t already

Key Points
Here are some key points that can help you identify strengths and weaknesses vs. skills:

• Start with some simple self-awareness.   Some tools such as the Myer’s-Briggs Type Indicator or NLP Meta-programs can help you find your core preferences and patterns for thinking, feeling, and doing.   They’re just lenses, but they can help you see your durable and pervasive strengths.  For example, do you recharge by spending time alone or with others?  If you recharge by spending time alone, you might be an introvert.  Just knowing that can help you tease out some strengths vs. weaknesses vs. skills.
• Distinguish between strengths and weaknesses.  Strengths are your dominant thinking, feeling, and doing patterns that come naturally for you.  You grow stronger when you spend time in your strengths.  A weakness drains you and you no matter how much you work at it, you don’t really improve.  It’s like going against the grain.  Another way to think of this is, know what kind of bike you’ve got.  If you take your street-bike off-road, you can make it work, but you’re not making the most of it.  Keep in mind that one person’s strength is another’s weakness.  For example, I know some people that can do, but can’t teach, and others that can teach, but can’t do.
• Distinguish between weaknesses and skills.  Some things require skill, knowledge, and experience.  Don’t write things off as a weakness, just because you aren’t good right now.  Consider whether you’ve had the right training, put in enough right time, or have the right coach.
• Distinguish between strengths and skills.  Skills are a learned ability to do something with competence.  For example, I’m good at drilling into details in a spreadsheet.  It’s not a strength, it’s a skill.  It makes me weak and I don’t enjoy it.  On the other hand, I can whiteboard all day.  It’s a strength and I leverage my ability to share information visually.
• Distinguish between information, knowledge, and experience.  Information is just raw facts, figures, and data for a given situation.  Knowledge is putting that information to use.  Experience is you’ve been there and done that. Information transfer is easy.  Knowledge transfer is tough.  I’m a fan of mentoring, apprenticeships and first-hand experience for that.
• Distinguish between intellectual, emotional, and physical stages.  You can read about a diet and regurgitate the information.  That’s at the intellectual level.  You can experience it first hand, and have an emotional reaction to the information.  If you adopt new habits, eventually it’s burned in physically (your basal ganglia and muscle memory.)  Think about this when you first learn something new.  You have stages to go through before you’ve burned it in intellectually, emotionally, and physically.
• Know the continuum from unconscious incompetence to conscious competence.  When you don’t know what you don’t know, you have unconscious incompetence.  When you know what you don’t know, you have conscious incompetence.  When you can think your way through it, you have conscious competence.  When you can do it without thinking, you have unconscious competence.  For example, you can probably drive your car or ride your bike without thinking, but it didn’t start off that way.  This is similar to going through the intellectual, emotional, and physical stages of learning.
• Distinguish between motivation, skills and feedback.  There’s a difference between wanting to do something and having the right technique.  If you need to find your motivation, change the why or change the how, and that just might lead to your next break through.  If the problem is your technique, find a mentor that helps you find the right technique for you.  For example, everybody can take martial arts and learn how to punch and kick, but a great instructor can help you find and perfect the technique that works for you.

Examples
Here are a couple of examples that might make this real for you:

• Learning an instrument.  When I was younger, I took saxophone lessons.  I didn’t have the passion at the time.  I also had no idea how to practice right.  If I hit a note, I figured I was done.   Why practice if I already proved I could hit the note?  Well, it’s one thing to hit a note while concentrating, it’s another to hit it without thinking.  I never practiced enough to reach a flow state.  I assumed I had no talent, when really I never even gave myself a chance.
• Learning martial arts.  When I was younger, my Dad introduced me to a lot of martial arts and I picked up some heroes to model from.  One of them was Bill “Super foot” Wallace.  He’s kicking speed was clocked at more than 60 MPH, give or take.  I decided I would kick like him.  Long story short, after a lot of wicked stretching and leg training, I could kick my foot above my head and snap my leg against my upper chest in the fraction of a second.  It was as if I could make my legs do whatever I wanted.  I remember one incident really surprised me.  I was walking through a parking lot with friends.  I picked up a soda can, threw it up in the air, and with perfect timing, jumped in the air, spun around and sent the can flying.   I had unconscious competence and could just do it.

My Related Posts

• 3 Myths About Strengths and Weaknesses
• Finding Your Strengths
• Strengths and Weakness vs. Personality Profiles
• Spend 75 Percent on Your Strengths

Photo by Jordan Cole.

I got an email from a GM (General Manager) at Microsoft, who will be giving a presentation at Microsoft on “How To Be an Effective IC (Individual Contributor)” and he’s collecting best practices.  Scott Hanselman shared his thoughts and I thought I would share mine.  For this post, I attempted to boil down some of the best lessons I’ve learned for myself, that I mentor others, and that I see others put into practice.

Before diving in, I think it’s important to make two points.  First, I’ve seen people completely change their game.  It’s always the ones that focus on growth.  They take action, they learn and respond.  This adds up over time.  While I know this pattern, it never ceases to amaze me how dramatic some of the changes can be.  It’s like watching somebody go from the last pick of the litter to first choice, and that’s a big deal.  Meanwhile, other people slide down.  They get lazy, stop following their passions, and they lose their skills.  Continuous growth is the key.  Second, you can’t just be smart.  As one of my mentors put it, Microsoft rewards “smart and gets results.”    I’ve taken this to heart.  What I lack in smarts, I make up for in results   There are plenty of smart people with lots of capability.  At the end of the day, they need to show results.  Smart and gets results is the time-tested, mother approved formula for making an impact, and unleashing your best.

Top 10 Keys to Individual Contribution
While it’s tough for me to boil down to the bare minimum, I started by identifying the key patterns I see across successful individual contributors.  I then tested against my own experience.  Here are my results:

• Lesson 1. Focus on strengths, limit liabilities.
• Lesson 2. Scale yourself.
• Lesson 3. Know what’s valued.
• Lesson 4. Follow the growth.
• Lesson 5. Model the best.
• Lesson 6. Balance the hot spots.
• Lesson 7. Manage your plate.
• Lesson 8. Stay in the game.
• Lesson 9. Drive or be driven.
• Lesson 10. You’re the sum of your network.

Keys to Individual Contribution Explained
Here is my elaboration of each of the lessons:

• Lesson 1. Focus on strengths, limit liabilities.  This is the opposite of focusing on your weaknesses.  Instead, find a way to use your super power at work.   This is your staying power. It will be a differentiator for you.  It’s also a way to stay passionate and keep your energy strong.   You don’t have to turn your weaknesses into strengths, but limit your liabilities.  My strength at work is getting results.  On the technical side, it’s application architecture with a focus on quality attributes (security and performance.)
• Lesson 2. Scale yourself.  Have a system for results.  I use Monday Vision, Daily Outcomes, and Friday Reflection as a weekly results pattern.   I also build a lot of reusable assets, including templates and checklists for things I have to do time and again (I think of it as productizing myself).  I also hack away at the unessential, Bruce Lee style, and I push my bottleneck around (part of unleashing your best results, is eliminating your worst bottlenecks, such as perfectionism or procrastination or analysis paralysis.)   See Rituals for Results and How To Use Timeboxing for Getting Results.
• Lesson 3. Know what’s valued.  Value is in the eye of the beholder.  You might be doing all the right things, according to you … but maybe not to the business or the people that are funding you.  A simple sanity check goes a long way.   Ask your manager what’s on their radar.  Know what the business objectives are.  Connecting the dots goes a long way for maximizing the results of the time you’re spending, and always be ready to correct course.  The difference between off-track and on-course makes all the difference in the world.  Nothings worse than climbing the ladder to find it’s up against the wrong wall.
• Lesson 4. Follow the growth.    Take on projects that grow your skills.  Life’s not static.  The year goes by quick.  Next year, you can have another win under your belt with some new skills, or you can be another year older, and rusty.  This also applies to following the growth in your industry.  For example, if I want to follow the growth in software, I look to mobile or Cloud or green … etc.  Always assume there’s more time ahead of you than behind you.
• Lesson 5. Model the best.  Learn the best, from the best.   Find the people with results and use them as mentors.  You can use an NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming) technique to elicit a strategy and model excellence.  Also remember that mentors are the short cuts.
• Lesson 6. Balance the Hot Spots.  Your career is one part of your life.  While it’s an important part, there’s a bigger picture.  For me, I think in terms of life hot spots: mind, body, emotions, career, financial, relationships, and fun.  I use it as my heat map and I balance across my portfolio.  See Life Hot Spots.
• Lesson 7. Manage your plate.  When you go to the buffet, you can pile your plate until it over-floweth, or you can carry a lighter load and make multiple trips.  My Mom always told me take two trips and eventually I learned she was right.  You’ll be faster, lighter weight, more energy, and you’ll accomplish more in the long run.  Don’t get bogged down.  Push back, focus on the vital few, clear your plate fast, and take on more.  This teaches about your capacity.  It also follows a simple principle that you should reduce open work for more effective results.  Task switching kills your productivity.  Also, when you are constantly over-loaded, you can’t respond to change, and you’ll be less friendly with people, for fear that everybody you see will either knock your plate over or will have just a little more something to add.  Know your capacity, keep a buffer, and focus on completing work quickly.  This builds momentum and you can snowball your success.
• Lesson 8. Stay in the game.    Don’t become a has been who never was.  If you feel like you’re out of the game, you probably are.  It’s way to easy to fall into the trap of delegating or outsourcing the wrong things, where over time, instead of improving you’ve declined.  This goes back to follow the growth.  This is also where knowing your role is important.  Are you the coach or the quarterback?  If you’re the coach, then be a great one.  If you’re the quarterback, make sure you’re learning from every play.
• Lesson 9. Drive or be driven.  The mindset for this is “own it.”  When you own the problem, you drive it.  It’s the difference between being the driver or a casual passenger.  Your awareness goes up and so does your commitment level.  When you drive things, you’ll find that you become more proactive and less reactive.  This is self-starter at its finest.  This means driving your results, driving your career, and making things happen.  People like to help people who make things happen.  If they have to light a fire under you just to get you started every time, people will find ways not to carry the dead weight.
• Lesson 10. You’re the sum of your network.  You are who you hang with.  As one of my friends put relayed to me, “you’re the average of the 10 people you spend time with.”  It’s true.  You end up modeling your friends.  I think of this as your inner circle.  It’s your immediate sphere of people who make you better or bring you down.  Then there’s your extended network.  This is where it gets fun.  Your network is a set of capabilities.  It helps you get things done.  There are 3 keys here.  First, build your network before you need it.  Second, build a useful network.  Third, bring extreme value to the table.  At work, I pair up, team up, and trade my skills with others to get things done.

There is a lot more I could say on this topic.  In fact, I’m actively summarizing my results system in a guide.   I will add that you can think of your improvement as an individual contributor with a simple frame: motivation, skills, and feedback.  Where there’s a will, there’s a way.  You can find the skills and skills do make the difference.  Feedback is also your friend.  Always fail forward and find the lessons.  The other thing I’ll add is to chop the distractions.  There are so many ways to get distracted.  To stay on track, focus on your outcomes and results.   Just a simple check can help you know whether you’re moving towards or away from your goals.  It’s that simple daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly check that will help you move mountains.

Oh yeah, one other lesson that is just too important not to put out there … lead by example!  Actions speak louder than words.

Photo by thenails.