“We are what we repeatedly do; excellence then is not an act but a habit.” | ||
| --Aristotle | ||
You are valued for your contribution and were promoted on the basis of your accomplishments. You’ve gone from team member to team leader. Your sights are set on the next level or the one after that, and maybe the executive suite someday. In other words, you feel as if you’ve made it.
Does that mean you can stop learning, growing, and developing? Hardly. Lessons to be learned can be found at every stage, from Day One to retirement and beyond. Many of those lessons have very little to do with your career per se but have a major impact on your success. Those lessons have to do with how well you achieve balance—between your personal life and your professional life, between what you do and who you are. The more balance you have, the better you can reevaluate circumstances, seize opportunities that arise, and recover from the setbacks you didn’t foresee.
Throughout your career, you will find that certain skills, habits, attitudes, and behaviors have been helpful to you in the past. You will identify areas that you need to develop and practice more. Some will be on the edge of your radar screen but not fully in focus yet.
You may find someday (or perhaps you’ve already experienced it) that you are not 100 percent happy in your current career or job choice. Perhaps you were attracted by a job’s financial rewards without giving adequate thought to what the work demands would be. Or maybe you’re working in an area that, honestly, doesn’t interest you or spark your enthusiasm.
“I encounter so many recent graduates who are quite unhappy in their first or second jobs because they’re doing what somebody else wants them to do. Maybe it was for reasons of job status. They have an appointment with a large law firm or consulting group, and the money is good, but the work is frustrating and dissatisfying,” commented William G. Bowen, president of The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and former president of Princeton University. “The question then becomes, how do you get restarted because what you are doing doesn’t give you enough satisfaction. If you don’t have that satisfaction, whether it’s from your paying job or volunteer work, then every day is going to be a long day—and it’s not going to be a good day.”[68]
The good news is that any day can be “Day One” when you recommit to your goals and vision. Throughout your career you will have many “Day Ones,” some externally driven by new jobs, promotions, and career changes, and some internally sparked because of a recommitment to your personal goals. You may even have a “Day One” because of changes in your personal life and the corresponding change in your professional life as well.
Life, after all, is not linear. It is a series of surprises, disappointments, opportunities, deadends, U-turns, and unplanned excursions down paths that bring tremendous satisfaction. So how can you plan for a life like that? The answer is, you can’t. It’s fine to have objectives and goals that lead you forward, as long as you understand that circumstances will change, sometimes for the better and sometimes for the worse. Keeping an open mind as well as a healthy, balanced life will help you cope with the unexpected and take advantage of the fortuitous.
“While you should be thinking ahead—where step A leads you to step B and so forth—it’s awfully important not to overplan,” Bill Bowen added. “You can’t think that you can control things that you can’t control. As a wise friend of mine says, ‘Life is what happens when you are planning something else.’ It’s important to be open to new things, perhaps changes in perceptions or new opportunities, and not to stay with some plan that you developed in the absence of such information. You should have a plan, but it should always be subject to revision.”[69]
As you move along your career path, keep in mind that your job isn’t the only source of your success and satisfaction. When you read those words, do you really believe them? Or do you think that, for you, the directional arrow points one way: up? Even if you’re a high achiever, know that a job title and salary alone won’t bring you satisfaction—not for the longterm, anyway.
Having enjoyed a successful corporate career, and now in the midst of a post-retirement career as a professor, I can tell you that true success is the result of having a balanced life. Only you can decide what makes up that balance in your life. It may be career and family. It may be career, friends, and outside interests. It may even include a spiritual practice. Whatever provides you with greater balance will enhance your life and help you achieve more satisfying and longer-lasting success. If all your satisfaction is derived from one place—your career—you may very well find that your life is out of balance. Moreover, a major disappointment in your professional life can be devastating, and all because you don’t derive enough pleasure and satisfaction from other areas of your life. However, if you are fully engaged in several different areas of your life, if you experience a disappointment in one, you have the others to fall back on.
“What I have come to believe very much is that it’s a matter of encouraging each individual to march to the tune of his or her own drummer,” Bill Bowen added. “Here’s an example from my current situation. I am an incorrigible seven-day-a-week worker. I enjoy what I do. I am very privileged that there is no line between work and play for me. However, I have a wonderful young colleague who is extremely able and talented, who has a young family and strong interests in his church and community. So I’ve gone to great pains to explain to him not to work my schedule, but rather to work the schedule that suits him and his family. That is a crucial point, because there is no one-size-fits-all solution. You need to find the balance that works for you based on your life, your age, your family responsibilities, and your interests. You can’t be mechanical about it, because there isn’t one formula.”[71]
For Andrea Jung, chairman of Avon Products and the mother of two, balance is not accomplished day by day, but rather over time. “You can’t have it all in a day,” she reflected. “There are absolutely days that Avon loses, and there are absolutely days that my children lose. But it’s never on the most important days for Avon or on the most important days for my children. I will always be at the most important meeting for Avon and at the most important recital or game for my children. You can’t do it 10 days out of 10. You do it 6 out of 10—but make sure that it’s the right 6.”
Whether you’re striking the balance between work and family, a personal life, or an outside interest, it’s all about making the right choices for the quality of your life. “That is the glass being half full,” Andrea continued. “Yes, there will be things that you will miss. But at the end of the day, it becomes a freedom, knowing that I don’t have to do 10 out of 10.”[72]
While a diversified life requires a balancing act, it does make you a more interesting person whom others will want to get to know. Some of the most boring people you’ll ever meet are workaholics who can only talk about what they do. If you feel like you run the risk of having a one-dimensional life in which you derive all your joy and satisfaction from one source—be it your job, your marriage, your hobby—take note. A little balance goes a long way, helping to alleviate stress and provide you with a different perspective that can even make you more effective in your life and work. With balance also comes the opportunity to enjoy longterm, enduring success in many areas of your life.
Nell Minow leads a diversified life, wearing two distinctly different hats: as editor of The Corporate Library, an independent research firm providing corporate governance data, and as a movie critic for Yahoo.com. An attorney by training who spent many years working in government, Nell says her two jobs are “actually one vocation.”
“They are both just different kinds of systems analysis. Even before I had these two jobs, when I was in government, I was looking at regulatory programs—when they work and when they don’t. I have always been interested in why things didn’t work,” Nell commented.
Both her jobs, she’s quick to add, also met the three criteria that have governed her life and career for more than 20 years, ensuring that she kept a vitally important balance between work and her personal life.
“The first thing for me, which was absolutely nonnegotiable, was that I work no more than three days a week. If I did not do that, I could not have a happy family,” explained Nell, now the mother of two college-age children. The second consideration, she said, was “to learn something new all the time. I like to multitask.” Third, “I had to feel like I was on the side of the good guys. I need to help make the world a better place. So I needed to have fun and work at something that makes a difference.”
In addition to her two busy careers, Nell has been very active as a volunteer in various community organizations, which she calls “indispensable” at any stage of life. “If you don’t do that (volunteer work), you don’t have a full life,” she observed. “I think you should do a range of things, some that is very community-oriented; I did Cub Scouts and Girl Scouts. Later, consider some volunteer work that has a broader reach. I think that’s crucial.” If you’re still in college or just launching your career, volunteering and doing “good works” may be something you envision doing later, after you’ve established your career. Who knows! Maybe you think you won’t do that until you retire. Right now you are just too busy to do anything beyond your job. The problem, however, is that if you aren’t careful, your work life can absorb you to the exclusion of everything else. That won’t make you more successful; in fact, it could work against you. Having meaningful outside interests will make your life more balanced and will give you a richer context and a break from the nose-to-the-grindstone routine of work.
“Deciding to do volunteer work later? That’s baloney. You have to do it all the time. That was a lesson I learned from my parents, who were extremely busy people, and yet who were involved in every good civic work in Chicago—and we still had dinner together every night. I could see that it was their volunteer work that made their eyes light up. They set a good example,” Nell said.[73]
The value of volunteer work extends beyond just doing “good work” to knowing that you have really made a difference to your community, an organization, or a cause that you feel very strongly about. This can lead to enormous satisfaction, helping to balance the disappointments that you may face in your professional life, and amplifying the success you reap over the long run in your career. Success, like happiness, does not come from a single source. Rather, enduring success comes from a life well lived.
Laura Nash, a senior research fellow, and Howard Stevenson, the Sarofim-Rock Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School, researched the components of what they called “real, enduring success,” which they defined as “rewards that are sustainable for you and those you care about.” Through interviews and observations, Nash and Stevenson concluded that success is “more than a heart-pounding race to the finish line.”
“Our research uncovered four irreducible components of enduring success: happiness (feelings of pleasure or contentment about your life); achievement (accomplishments that compare favorably against similar goals others have strived for); significance (the sense that you’ve made a positive impact on people you care about); and legacy (a way to establish your values or accomplishments so as to help others find future success),” they wrote.[74]
Of these four components of success, happiness and achievement are the ones that draw most people, especially early in their careers. They want to be happy (who doesn’t, after all?), and they want to achieve their goals and reap rewards. These are normal and healthy motivations. But they are not the only definitions of success, even for the young professional. The other two components—significance and legacy—are important at any age or stage of your career.
Significance can be defined as the ability to make a difference to those around you. In your work life, you may achieve this by being a team player who genuinely cares about others, or as a manager who truly wants to challenge and develop the people on his or her team. In the thick of things, however, it is so easy to get caught up in the process of running a business. With project deadlines, production schedules, goals, and initiatives, your job can consume your attention. The need to stay focused on what is happening now may keep you from stepping back and thinking about the proverbial big picture. Nonetheless, if you only think about getting the job done—even doing the job well—you have missed the chance for significance. Production quotas, quality control standards, project deadlines, and so forth are vitally important, and they may be the measure of your productivity. They are not, however, the source of your significance. That is reserved for the people you help, influence, and inspire along the way.
The fourth component of legacy may seem like a topic that’s best left for your retirement. It may seem difficult or even absurd for a young professional to contemplate the legacy that he or she will leave behind. It’s never too early, however, to consider the legacy that you build day by day. Throughout your career, you will also benefit from the legacy that others have left behind for you. It may be a person you’ve admired, or a lesson that someone took the time to teach you. It may be an experience as a young professional that you carry with you the rest of your life. It may be something so profound that, many years later, it continues to have an impact.
Your actions, decisions, and interactions with others will compose the legacy you leave behind. With forethought and purpose, you can ensure that your legacy from Day One reflects your commitment to do your best for the organization and for others who work with you and for you. This is a longterm investment in others that will pay rewards to you over time. Even if you leave an organization, the impact you leave behind is the legacy that lives on. If an organization can operate better because you were there, you have made a powerful impact. Others’ legacy to you is the lasting influence they have on your life.
Thomas O. Ryder is a success by anyone’s standards. Chairman and chief executive officer of The Reader’s Digest Association, Inc., Tom attributes his success to three simple statements, which he calls “Ryder’s Rules for Guaranteed Success.” (See Chapter 7, “Developing Your Career.”)
In addition to the first two rules, “Work harder than anybody else” and “Do the dirty jobs no one else wants to do,” Tom’s third rule is “Smile more than anybody else.” Tom learned that lesson many years ago from a man named Shorty Morris, who worked with him on the Missouri Pacific Railroad back when Tom was entering college.
“Our job was tearing up concrete with jackhammers. It was an eight-hour job,” Tom recalls. “I was playing football at the time and was in good condition. Shorty was 62 or 63 years old. When I came on the job, I lasted about 30 minutes before I had to take a breather. Shorty was the kind of guy who didn’t stop, and he smiled all through the job.”
Working with Shorty that summer before going off to college, Tom learned the value of hard work, setting and keeping commitments, and smiling all the while. “Shorty used to say, ‘If you take a man’s money, you give him a day of work.’ He would never cheat on the breaks. It was a 15-minute break and then back with the hammer,” Tom explained. “This was a guy who worked all his life for minimum wage, and he had an impeccable ethical sense about his work.”[75]
That was the legacy Shorty Morris left for young Tom Ryder, who never forgot the lesson and applied it throughout his career.
The legacy you reap from others may also be the result of someone taking the time to mentor you. That was the experience of Frank LaFasto, who today is senior vice president of organizational effectiveness for Cardinal Health. Back in the late 1970s, when Frank was on the second day of his job at American Hospital Supply (which was later bought by Baxter Healthcare), he met one of the top executives. He was, as Frank recalled, “my boss’s boss’s boss!”
Frank walked up and introduced himself. “Please call me Brien,” the executive said, and eagerly engaged Frank in conversation. “I told him that I was new with the corporation and wanted to know if he had any suggestions of how I could best make a contribution,” Frank recalled.
The executive’s advice was to find a drugstore nearby, stand by the entrance, and hold the door open for 10 people. “He told me, ‘I’d like you to observe a couple of things: how many people say thank you and how many don’t. Then observe the people themselves. What do you notice about those who say thank you and those who don’t?’ When I finished this assignment, he told me to call him,” Frank explained.
Frank did as Brien suggested then called him. “I told him that six said thank you and four did not,” Frank continued. “Those who said thank you seemed to be smiling. They were better groomed, and they didn’t appear to be preoccupied with themselves. Those who didn’t were more rough around the edges and seemed a little into themselves.”
Asked about how he felt about the ones who said thank you, Frank said that he obviously felt better about those who did.
Then Brien gave him advice that Frank took to heart: “He told me, ‘Whatever you decide to do, I want you to remember the two most important words in the world—thank you. People who know those two words go further.’ That was a piece of feedback about what I could do to make a contribution that made an indelible impression on me. I can tell you that I’ve raised five children, and I’ve taught them that lesson. It’s made a difference in how I approach humanity.”[76]
Don’t overlook the value of lessons you’ll gain in your day-to-day interactions with your peers. Even a competitor vying for the same promotion can teach you about true leadership and healthy competition. One of the lessons that Tom Ryder learned through the course of his career was “help your rivals.” Although it seems counterintuitive, this lesson increased his contribution both inside and outside the company. In his early 20s, Tom and another young professional named Fred were rivals for their mentor’s attention and for the next job. They were pitted against each other to goad them into better performance. Tom, however, wasn’t comfortable with the dynamic and decided to do something radically different.
“I decided that if I helped Fred, the rivalry could not exist. I bent over backwards to help him achieve things that were part of our common goals. It changed the relationship,” Tom recalled. “What had been a rivalry became an intense friendship. Let me tell you, that was one of the best organizations that I ever worked in. There is a team of people who still have an annual reunion every year—that’s how close we were.”[77]
As you build your legacy, be conscious of the things of which you are the most proud. It may be the project that was on time and under budget, or the initiative that you championed from concept to completion. Or it may be the potential “star” you spotted on your team whom you coached and developed, who later went on to a high-level position in the organization.
In your life and career, the people you influence and those who leave a lasting impact on you should be many and varied. They should be like flowers in a garden, perennials that bloom and grow year after year, each beautiful and unique in its own way.
As much as you’d like to focus on your achievements and accomplishments, you will have your share of disappointments, setbacks, and missed opportunities. With the passage of time, you may find yourself lamenting the missed opportunities, the bad decisions, and the wrong turns you’ve made along the way. No one is exempt from these feelings. If you—or someone else—can learn something from your mistakes, even if they had disastrous consequences, it’s not a total loss.
Know that you can only make decisions based on the knowledge and perspective you have at the time. If you turn down something that ends up being a big winner, well, that’s life. Know what your reasons were and why you made that decision at the time. If nothing else, you’ll have a good story to tell.
When you are faced with personal and professional setbacks, look for the big picture in terms of longterm, broad-based goals. shortterm, specific goals are pretty meaningless, because circumstances are always changing. Focusing on them can mean one disappointment after another. But if you have a vision of where you want to be, which is less specific about the steps along the way, you have a greater chance to achieve what you set out to accomplish.
While it’s easy to become absorbed in the tasks at hand and the responsibilities you shoulder, you can gain the necessary psychological or spiritual perspective only by taking a step back and away from work. Nell Minow recalled that, while she and her husband were law students at the University of Chicago, they decided to “play hooky” to enjoy a beautiful spring day. Upon returning to campus, they ran into a classmate, one of the top students, who was coming out of the library, where he had spent the entire day. “When we told him what we had done, he said, ‘There will be beautiful days when I become a partner.’ That was so sad. If you believe that, then you give away part of your soul,” she commented.
“You have to be a complete person, to make space for friends and family and volunteer activities, for going to the theater and to concerts. In addition to fulfilling your life, they will make you better at what your job is,” Nell added. “There is a terrible trap out there about working long hours. The truth is, most people manage their time very badly and they are not that effective. If you are working seven days a week, you’re not an effective worker or a complete person.”[78]
Disappointments can also have their own positive payback, in ways that you may not have initially anticipated. It may be that, in taking a risk to try something that did not work out as you planned, you gained insight into yourself.
Herman Cain—successful businessman, author, and motivational speaker—was encouraged to seek public office, and he became a candidate for the U.S. Senate from Georgia. He had already proven himself to be unafraid of taking risks, such as when he made a dramatic career change at age 34. Running for the Senate, he was willing to take a risk again. While he was not ultimately victorious, his first foray into politics was hardly a failure, as Herman sees it. “That race has become a springboard to things I never considered before. Other opportunities have come about that are just as important as having won the race,” he observed.[79]
He is now in a position to consider those opportunities because he was willing to take a risk and embrace another Day One at an age when many successful executives would be glad to rest on their laurels and retire quietly.
At some point in your career, you will need to consider your obligation to give back. This will be part of your legacy as well. You can accomplish this in small ways, such as mentoring a new colleague, or in big ways, such as becoming actively involved in community work or a charity.
For you too, every time you recommit to your personal and professional path, every time you revisit your priorities and evaluate the contribution you are making, it is a new Day One.