Building Your Career Curriculum: The Early Years

Back-to-school is a great time of year in which to think about new learning. It’s not just for kids! Commitment to lifelong learning is one of the critical building blocks of a good career. As with new calendar years, new school years conjure up changes and growth. This is a time when lots of working people consider what they need to do in order to reach new levels in their working life. If we look at our careers as if they were a school career, our early years are like elementary school: the years in which we leverage the basics.

If there is a “reading, writing, and arithmetic” equivalent for an early-stage career, it’s “work hard, work well with others, and work focused.” Just like you can’t advance in school without understanding how to read and analyze information, you can’t advance in a career without learning how to work hard. It is mission-critical to get good at what you do, and that requires dedicated commitment of time and attention. A talented person who rises in their career quickly might not be the smartest person in the room but, rather, the most hard-working. Degrees, GPA, and other credentials means nothing if you don’t come in with a can-do, will-do, open attitude. No degree or grade is a predictor of how you will perform at work.

While great study habits may carry over to work when there is a need to learn new things, work takes a lot more than that kind of an individual effort. Learning to navigate communication with others early and gracefully, including taking credit for your work while also giving credit to others, is important. Working well with others also includes inviting feedback regularly. Get to know your management by scheduling time for assessment, and use that as an opportunity to present what you’ve done well and to ask for guidance on anything with which you’re struggling. Doing the same with your peers invites positive engagement and builds a sense of community. Better work is achieved when it’s done for the good of the whole. At work, a career fallacy is thinking that, like school, you are getting an individual grade in the form of a review or a bonus -- but, really, you’re getting a “team grade,” as your work is considered in context of your team and company. Those who can’t work well with others aren’t going to be the A-players and will be hindered from career advancement opportunities.

What will get you ahead is working focused. Working focused means that you invest your time in getting really good at what you’re doing. It’s important to focus only on the right thing: what you’re trying to learn. The wrong focus for anyone early in their career is on money and titles. This is a mistake I repeatedly see people make. The fact of the matter is that, especially in high tech, you’re not going to make millions on day one -- and, if you focus on money, you won’t make millions on day two, either. People who make it big are people who are driven by passion and vision, deeply committed to their goals, relentless in their perseverance, and work tirelessly to succeed, and then money becomes one of the outcomes and recognized success factors. If you focus on money early-on, you’re likely to make choices that will constrain you. Don’t start off your career with expensive habits like houses and expensive cars. Retain agility. Your best money is spent investing in yourself, traveling, and staying nimble for ultimate career flexibility.

While you’re setting yourself up for that flexibility, though, it’s important not to jump from thing to thing early on, either. The grass may seem greener somewhere else, but your investment of time early on to one dedicated job and company is important. After you get good at something, then you ask for your next step and for a higher pay grade. It is pointless to ask before you’re credible, and you gain that credibility by showing that you work hard, work well with others, and can stay focused and committed.

If you take the right steps to master an early career curriculum of working hard, focused, and well with others, your management will see that you have a certain fire, and they’ll reward it. Successful people don’t get there by accident. They arrive by good old fashioned hard work.

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Building Your Career Curriculum: Mid-Career

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The Five Tools of an Innovator