3 Giant Steps to be a Student of the Game
In order to move ahead in your career, it’s not enough to do your job well. You are one of many players competing to reach long- and short-term goals. Before you start promoting yourself, you need to be in the game, engaged in your profession, your organization, and maybe your industry.
Strategize
Your career takes place in a larger world, and if you’re not in tune with that world, it’s hard to make a good decision about whom to connect with, what information to share and what you need to be learning in order to stay relevant. You also need to clarify the general direction that you want to go. For example, if you’re a lawyer or an accountant, do you want to stay in law or accounting, or do you want to branch into broader business. If you want to stay in your field, you probably need to be concerned about certifications and perhaps a specialized advanced degree. If you want to broaden, then perhaps an MBA is a good choice, along with thinking about the types of organizations you should work for.
It’s your job to do this – you can’t count on your company to steer you in the right direction. You’re in charge, so you need to decide to be in the game.
Strategize
Your career takes place in a larger world, and if you’re not in tune with that world, it’s hard to make a good decision about whom to connect with, what information to share and what you need to be learning in order to stay relevant. You also need to clarify the general direction that you want to go. For example, if you’re a lawyer or an accountant, do you want to stay in law or accounting, or do you want to branch into broader business. If you want to stay in your field, you probably need to be concerned about certifications and perhaps a specialized advanced degree. If you want to broaden, then perhaps an MBA is a good choice, along with thinking about the types of organizations you should work for.
It’s your job to do this – you can’t count on your company to steer you in the right direction. You’re in charge, so you need to decide to be in the game.
Stay Fresh and Current
Doing your job well is important, but you also need to build skills that will be needed in the future, even if your company isn’t telling you to do so. Stay current on emerging technologies as well as best practices in your profession.
Richard learned this lesson decades ago when he was a career coach in Silicon Valley. As he toured a big microchip manufacturer, he walked into a giant room (he claims it was the size of a football field) full of drafters – yes, drafting tables, pencil sharpeners and pads of paper. And row after row of desks. Now, they were fantastic employees, the best of the best, loyal, long-term, wonderful team playing manual drafters. Although not in that field, even Richard knew that AutoCAD was on the way in and manual drafting would soon be a thing of the past.
As changes started coming within months, large numbers of jobs were eliminated – some of the drafters were shocked, but they shouldn’t have been. They weren’t looking up from their desks long enough to see where their profession was going. Others had been paying attention and taking classes at night, on their own time, to stay current in their field.
It’s easy to get focused on your job and forget to look at the larger trends and the skills they’ll demand in the future.
Here are a few ideas for staying on top of important trends:
- Join a LinkedIn group. Pay attention to conversations. What questions are people asking? What are people concerned about?
- Subscribe to an online journal in your field.
- Join a professional association and read their materials (from both local and national chapters).
- Follow your industry’s thought leaders online. What are they writing about in their blogs and social media? Follow them on Twitter to see what they are posting.
- Set up Google Alerts to send you notices when things related to a specific trend appear in the news.
If you put just to hours a month into tracking trends, you’ll be far ahead of others. Even better, you’ll be expanding your network – something you read about in many of our Tactful Self-Promotion newsletters.
Connect Your Learning to Your Company’s Needs
Success at a company is not just about staying current in your profession and industry – it’s about applying that knowledge to help your organization accomplish its goals. What trends do you see? What are the implications for your company? Your department? What does that tell you about where you might add the greatest value? The key here is to think about how you can connect the emerging trends to the challenges your company or industry is facing.