What’s a brand worth? People have been debating that for years. The hard core business types often poo-poo any hint that their hard won achievements alone do not qualify them for sainthood. And I am not here to say they aren’t important. But they need to be integrated together along with all of the other social assets of a business into a seamless whole that works. That’s my definition of a good brand.
Case in point – Ford.
Ford sold more cars last month than GM. First time in a very long time. Over the last quarter their sales have been dramatically up year over year, where as GM, Toyota (even before the latest crisis) have been down.
Why Ford?
Quality? – to some degree – yes. But those quality improvements have existed for several years.
What I say is the reason is the fact that they didn’t need a bailout from the US Government to survive. Mention a Ford today and people won’t wince in the same way the did back 10 years ago when the image of Ford that came to their mind was the quality problems they had in the 80’s and 90’s. (remember the Ford Explorer – Firestone quality issue).
People like winners. They like people who can stand on their own.
The same goes for you. What do you stand for? When people hear your name, what image goes through their mind? That’s your brand.
I always feel a tug in my work-life from opposite directions this time of year. My normal mode is best described as task focused. If you ask me unawares, I will commit to working through every weekend, with barely considering taking off Christmas and New Years. But then I will reflect and remember how good it can be to spend some time and relax with my family and so I will turn into something of a hermit and crash at home.
The challenge is the work still goes on and I end up being pulled back into doing some work despite being “on vacation”. I should know better and discipline myself and tell the work to wait. The reason is I end up frustrated with the work and the situation. Without being careful, that can end up planting a seed of resentment and that is never good. That has cost me in numerous ways and I have learned over the last year the critical importance of guarding my heart.
The slogan printed on my coffee cup is “Life is Short. Stay awake for it.” It is a registered trademark of Caribou Coffee. As a fan of coffee in general, I thought it was pithy.
But in this moment, I am thinking back to a more familiar refrain – “Life is Short. Do something you love to do and you’ll never work a day in your life.”
It’s meant to remind you that when you do something you love, time flies, and you are happier.
So often, we make our career decisions based on money. The career counselors, and parents – both well meaning, mind you – point you to the higher paying jobs. They don’t want you to become poor and destitute. They want you to be able to provide for a family and have a better life than they did.
But if you pursue a career that isn’t interesting to you, while you may be able to technically do the work, enthusiasm suffers. You are there in body and mind, but not in spirit. And when enthusiasm suffers, so does creativity, and that lack of creativity shows in the quality of the work. You are clocking in to get the paycheck, and a bad transactional process follows.
What follows next is you justify why you are behaving the way you are, and you compensate for that lack of joy with stuff – being toys (large and small), or self medications ( food, drugs, alcohol) or whatever. In time, you will show the effects of your lifestyle. And you probably won’t be happy.
Rather I would suggest what you should be doing something you love to do. The money is just money. Once you hit a basic level of provision – food, shelter, clothing – the rest is gravy. And is it worth trading your soul and your happiness for misery?
The company I work for is a startup. It began a couple years ago in someone’s garage and now there are 20+ names on the phone directory. Several of the people on the phone directory are listed as “consultants”. They are actually retirees looking for a way to leverage their talents into a part time gig that has the potential to provide a nice return.
And it makes perfect sense to me. With the baby boomers reaching retirement in record numbers, and yet with many years of life expectancy ahead of them, there is only so much golf one person can play. And in each of us there is a desire to create and contribute that recreational activities like golf and travel cannot fulfill.
Being in mid-career, I have the perspective to see the benefit of their mindset. Early on in my career, I brought energy and a willingness to learn. Now, after having been knocked around enough, I know how to avoid the mistakes and to focus on what will have the most impact. And in the future I hope to continue to learn and evolve my skills and bring a profound level of wisdom and a patience that I see our “consultants” display on a regular basis.
It has been a while since my last post. It’s not that I didn’t want to post, it’s that this September and October were really tough for me physically. I had the crud (they said it wasn’t H1N1) for what seemed like an eternity.
So about the first of November, I started feeling back to normal and thankfully to some unusually warm November weather here in Minnesota, I started to get caught up on all of the chores I had been neglecting. Those are now done and with some time to gather myself over the Thanksgiving break, I will reset on my blogging here and share my experiences in the new job.
This may seem a bit off topic, but, bear with me, it is going somewhere.
One of my favorite stories in the Bible is from Genesis 2. It tells the story of how God made Man, and put him in the Garden of Eden. God commanded man to take care of the place. If you are familiar with the story, you probably know too that God gave Man the responsibility to name the animals.
For many years I took that to mean Man had the task of naming the animals, and that was that. Man had a God given task to do, and like most tasks, Man was to take care of it by himself. But if you read it more closely you will see in there that not only did Man have the responsibility to name the animals, God was so interested in it, he went out and brought the animals to Man for him to name.
Think about that for a moment – here you have God, the all powerful creator of the Universe, and what does he do? He facilitates the process for Man to do his work. He wants to see what Man names the animals. He wants to see the job is done. He is interested in the results.
And today, God still cares that the job gets done, and wants to see you be successful in your work too.
After I updated LinkedIn to show I had started working somewhere, I received numerous notes of congratulations. I was also asked by someone if I had any advice about finding a job. I don’t know where that person was coming from exactly but I could identify with the question. I had made a practice of asking the question of people who got jobs the same question.
Looking back now, I can say asking the question helped me in two ways. It was helpful and it was humbling. Helpful because I always took away one or two things that I knew I needed to change or that would improve my job search efforts. Humbling because it would put me face to face with someone who had accomplished something I had not. The humbling part was very important because it forced me to summon the courage to re-evaluate my approach from the ground up to make sure I wasn’t just falling into a rut and losing focus on the results I wanted to achieve.
Take this for what it’s worth – how often are you asking people how they got to where they are? If it’s at least not once a month, preferably more, you could be falling into a rut.
I started a new job on August 1. It is with a startup. I am grateful to have a job.
I un-learned one very important thing while finding this job. One of the behaviors that I had to un-learn during the process of looking for a job was a tendency of normal big company non-listening. After getting out and meeting with people, I realized in big companies very often people have their own agenda and are on their own empire building campaign, and as a result, people would not listen. They weren’t really interested in helping you or solving the right problem, they were interested in proving how smart they were (the engineers) or how powerful they were (the business people). Or both. In order to survive, at times I got caught up in that way of thinking. But it left me very empty inside. I think more people feel that way than they will admit. When you are under stress, you can become very myopic in your behavior.
I un-learned this tendency by becoming more open to what I was actually feeling when I met with people. I had sincere desire to build relationships but I saw that my non-listening was leaving me out of many opportunities to understand people and what made them tick. It was easy to sacrifice my non-listening behavior when I understood what I could get out of it.
I am still human and no one is perfect so at times I may let my own viewpoint get in the way. But on the whole, I do find myself learning more, and feeling happier about life.
I think the single most disregarded job search principle is “Know what you want.” I admit when you’re faced with the situation of having no income, and providing for yourself and your loved ones, you will do anything. That’s as it should be. But so often people become desperate and they flop around into varied strategies without giving them much thought. And it’s that lack of thought as to why they are pursuing that path that ends up hurting their job search.
When I’ve been talking with prospective employers, very often they will ask me questions about why I am interested in that particular position. Most people understand that most people can do just about any job if they put their minds to it. The question is the motivation to do the job and without a cogent explanation, they will wonder. If I hire this person, will I invest my time and effort into training this person, integrate them into the organization, and then they’ll leave if something else comes along? Not a really good return on investment.
So my suggestion to you is to spend some time writing out your goals. What makes you tick? What gets you out of bed in the morning? And check those against where you’re looking for work. Are they aligned? If so, great! If not so much – maybe you need to re-assess your strategy or re-assess your goals. In the end, pursuing a position that is rewarding to you (beyond the pay) you will likely be happier and more productive in your work. And that’s a good thing too.
I wish you best of luck in your job search.
One of my favorite poems is “The Road Not Taken” by Robert Frost. The audio version at this site is very good.
There are two lines in the poem that I think are particularly relevant for job seekers.
The first is when the author says “knowing how way leads on to way”. Each and every day represents a decision – a fork in the road. Not that every decision has to be perfect – to extend the metaphor a bit – roads can connect back to other roads. But just as when you are traveling you need to have a destination in mind to guide you, in your job search you need to have a set of goals – beyond “getting a job” I would add – that will help guide your day to day efforts.
The other line – “I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference” – is probably the best known line from the poem. The key there is to recognize that venturing out of the crowd and standing on your own will lead you to an opportunity that is better suited to you and your passions long term. In the end, you will be more productive and happier there. While it may cost you some time and pain in the short run, as I’ve commented before – “it’s not where you start, it’s where you finish.”
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