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FIND THE RIGHT JOB & EXCEL
chapter 19
imperatives for success
As you progress to higher levels of responsibility in your career, there are ten additional overriding principles to follow to maximize your professional success, even when you become the CEO of your organization.
These important principles are:
- Be passionate about your work whatever it is. Be fully engaged in what you are doing. Be committed to excellence and high work standards. The more you love what you are doing, the better you are going to perform your job. When you are passionate about what you are doing, you inspire others to be passionate also.
- Conduct yourself with total integrity. This means being completely honest and trustworthy in all your dealings with others.
- Exercise the awesome power of focus and concentration whenever you have to address any issue of consequence. If you focus all of your mental, emotional and physical faculties mightily on the subject at hand, there is almost no limit to what you can accomplish. As Bill Gates, Microsoft’s co-founder, stated, “I’ve learned that only through focus can you do world-class things, no matter how capable you are.” The trumpeter Bobby Hackett said of Louis Armstrong,“He taught me by his example that the key to music, the key to anything in life, is concentration.”
- Think creatively, in particular about how to develop entirely new markets for your products and services, including utilizing the Internet to do so, and how your organization can partner with others to achieve greater impact and expand its “reach”. As Jeff Jarvis states in his book What Would Google Do?, one of the most important new rules of our Internet age is: “Enabling customers to collaborate with you — in creating, distributing, marketing, and supporting products — is what creates a premium in today’s market.”
- Foster a culture of genuine tolerance in both the workplace and the community. As Thomas Friedman wrote in The World Is Flat, “When tolerance is the norm, everyone flourishes — because tolerance breeds trust, and trust is the foundation of innovation and entrepreneurship.”
- Refrain from becoming self-absorbed and impressed with your own importance. Take the time to give credit for “a job well done” to the other members of your TEAM on a regular basis. Write lots of small thank-you e-mails and notes. Always acknowledge the role of your co-workers whenever you receive recognition for your own accomplishments.
- Step up and take responsibility for your mistakes. When you goof or blow it, do not try to hide or ignore it. Admit your mistake, apologize if it is appropriate for you to do so, learn from the experience, and make sure you do not repeat the same mistake in the future. Once you have acknowledged your mistake, however, push yourself on to positive ground and move on.
- Quietly take the time on a regular basis to really THINK about the big picture and what is really important. Shut off the computer and phones, close your door and insist on no interruptions or disturbances. Allow several hours at least once a month for this purpose. Countless executives boast about how hard they work and being busy 100% of the time. But, working hard and long without really stopping to truly think on a regular basis is a guarantee of mediocre results. When Bill Gates was at Microsoft, twice a year he would engage in his “Think Week” where he spent seven days by himself in a secluded location reading reports and thinking about the future of technology and his organization.
- Be authentic. Be who you are. Live in your own skin. Do not try to be someone else or play the role of someone other than who you really are. Be comfortable in having people say of you, “What you see is what you get.”
- Recognize that there is a huge difference between the word and the deed. In every field of endeavor, what counts is the quality and speed of execution, creativity, and delivering high-performance results. Good intentions are meaningless unless they are followed by actions and accomplishments.
Peter Drucker, probably the most profound business consultant and writer of all time, always emphasized that there is a critical difference between efficiency and effectiveness. Being efficient is doing things right. Being effective is doing the right thing, and that is what really makes a difference to the success of any organization or enterprise.
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CONTENTS
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