Dangerous Beliefs

Beliefs that are more optimistic than realistic can cloud your vision and harm your career. Here are a few:

Job requirements have been carefully analyzed and established. Not so. For many positions the most accurate part of the job description is "Other duties as assigned."

Organizations want the best qualified person for the job. Wrong. They want a reasonably qualified person who is trustworthy, will get along with others, and won't cost too much.

Procedures must always be followed. Part of career success consists of determining where this rule applies. Many procedures are routinely ignored with no repercussions.

People admire candor. People may admire candor but they love discretion.

You should carefully consider how you would react if a colleague behaved in a particular manner toward you. No, you should carefully consider how others - not you - will regard your behavior. Your standard is not the only one.

If you produce great work, that will inevitably be acknowledged. If only that were true. In reality, the only thing you can be sure of is that if you produce great work, then you have produced great work. On the other hand, reliability often trumps brilliance.

It's not what you know, it's who you know. It's both. Contacts may get you in the door but they won't keep you in the room.

If you are technically proficient, you can let your people skills slide. In some jobs, that is true, but those occasions are becoming increasing rare.

Organizations have clear paths of progression for all jobs. Unfortunately, there are some jobs that provide no opportunity for advancement. Sometimes, that is formally acknowledged. In other cases, that is informally understood.

Organizations have human qualities. Ascribing human characteristics to an organization is tempting but unwise. Organizations are not fair, logical, or ethical. Only the people in them can ensure those qualities.

The Long and Winding Road

I'm paraphrasing but a close friend of mine once described his career as follows:

Get a scholarship to study agriculture in college. Attend college and get your agriculture degree but then, rather than getting a standard agriculture-related job, decide to go to law school. Discover that you hate law school but persevere nonetheless and get your J.D. Now be sure not to practice law but instead go to work for a large agri-business firm in Arizona. Get laid off, then get a job with a land bank in California. Work there for several years, then leave for a financial job in Florida. Have health problems and take a job as a county air pollution inspector in Arizona while you're recovering. Once you've back on your feet, leave that job to take a position in Texas and Louisiana researching land rights for oil companies. Learn that you are not only very good at that work, but that you love it. Get your realtor's license along the way.

A straight shot, right?

There are people who have careers that seem to move along a super-highway. God bless them. But a sizable number of talented people will take long detours and a few muddy country roads. This is not always bad. An alert individual can pick up a lot of insight while hauling a career out of a ditch or two and those fortunates who have never known such set-backs can risk becoming a tad complacent.

The reality that many a career encounters "Bridge out" is seldom communicated to young people. Those innocents are asked, "What do you want to be when you grow up?" by elders who know that some of those hope-filled answers will be sucker-punched by life.

As brutal as that seems, there may be no way around the process. Many of us don't know what we want to be until life shows us what we don't want to be.