Make It Work

Navigate Your Career Without Leaving Your Organization

Joe Frodsham

• Publisher: Davies-Black
• Year: 2011
• Print ISBN: 9780891062080
• eBook ISBN: 9781473643970
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Customs & Traditions
• Index: Social Sciences

Learn how to stay where you are and do what energizes and engages you with this sophisticated yet profoundly practical guide to career fulfillment. Make It Work delivers expert advice and dozens of smart, easy-to-use tools to help you discover your passions, choose a direction, practice new skills, and do what you love to do—every day.

Part 1
Your Career Foundation

Four Steps for Starting on the Inside

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I respect the man who knows distinctly what he wishes…. Mischief … arises from … men not sufficiently understand[ing] their own aims. They … build a tower, and spend no more labor on the foundation than would be necessary to erect a hut.

—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

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All structures, whether they are physical or intellectual, have to rest on something. They need a guiding force and foundation. Whether it be the housing structure you live in, or your own personal operative thinking pattern, the foundation sets the pattern of behaviors and ultimately the level and pattern of results. As in trying to transform the fundamental shape of a building, you can’t transform your career without exploring and reconstructing the foundation upon which it is built.

Establishing a career foundation begins by defining career success, what we have termed career wealth. Throughout this book, when we refer to career we do not mean a formal set of roles and titles that an organization may bestow. Instead, career is used to describe your life’s work, plus the ability to bring the things you love into your daily work and find deep fulfillment. As stated, this book rests on the principle that the degree to which your work is aligned with your loves will directly determine your career wealth and fulfillment. Achieving career wealth does not mean your work will always be fun or easy; in fact at times it may be very challenging. When you have achieved career wealth, you are working on all cylinders as your organization supports you, and you are passionate about what you do. Your energy and success feed off each other, generating better-than-expected rewards and ever-increasing opportunities. When this happens you begin each day excited to begin work, and the work itself brings out the best in you.

You will find truly successful people in your organization who have achieved this form of career wealth, where personal passions are fully supported and rewarded. They realize that they don’t have to give up what they love to be accepted and successful. Instead, they have clarity about what they love, which has been at the center of their career success. Career passion, fulfillment, and success go hand-in-hand.

The examples of people who have achieved and sustained career wealth are endless and represent all types of organizations and career pursuits. Whether it’s Bill Gates, Colin Powell, Carly Fiorina, or the less public yet successful people you know, they all got there by achieving two things: a deep awareness of the things they love to do and key skills for navigating effectively within an organization. In other words, they find what they love and effectively work within their organization so that they are rewarded for constantly doing what they love.

In part 1, you’ll find that the journey to real career wealth starts with a deep connection with your passions, those things you find most fulfilling and most want to achieve. Aligning these passions with your work leads to a career of personal meaning, fulfillment, and great rewards.

Achieving real career wealth requires you to explore your passions, identifying those things you love and most care about. This comes from scratching below the surface and discovering the source of your passions, what we call the passionate core. When you discover your core, it can have a profound impact on your life and career, as you better understand what you need and love, and bring that deliberately into your work.

Figure 2: Your Career Foundation

Most people never pursue this deep inner territory. Instead they settle on the external symbols of success such as the job title, compensation, and perks. These organization rewards should instead be a manifestation of the pursuit of your own passions, not the driving reason you go to work every day. Titles and rewards, when not grounded in your passions, are hollow and will leave you unsatisfied. It is like looking at the picture of the steak rather than tasting it—it may appear delicious but you are still left hungry.

As described earlier, discovering your passionate core and finding your career fit are the two important components of your career foundation, which together will enable you to find what you love (see figure 2). To help you establish your personal career foundation, we will guide you through a four-step process for finding and defining the career you will create for yourself. Completing these four steps will set the foundation upon which you ultimately will achieve career wealth.

• Step 1: Identify Your Passions

• Step 2: Discover Your Core

• Step 3: Find Your Career Fit

• Step 4: Declare Your Career

Establishing your career foundation is personal work. You will accomplish it primarily on your own. After you have completed this first part of the journey, you will move on to six practices described in part 2 to help you take action. Adopting any one of these practices will increase your influence and capability. However, if they are not based on a firm career foundation made up of these four steps, you will not realize sustained career wealth. So resist the temptation to go straight to the second part of the book. Once you are clear about what you love to do, your career expectations increase exponentially. Learning and using the six practices will enable you to fulfill your passions within an organization. But again, do the internal work in this part first.

Step 1
Identify Your Passions

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In order to create there must be a dynamic force,
and what force is more potent than love?

—Igor Stravinsky

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At the heart of your energy, power, and life are the things you love—the source of your passions. Uncovering and aligning with what you love brings passion into your life and career, resulting in career wealth. This simple truth, coupled with the concept that you can do it in your present organization, is the core premise of this book. In this chapter you will take the first step in establishing your career foundation by identifying your passions.

Career Wealth from Unleashed Passion

Identifying your passions and aligning with them is a requirement for true sustained success in a career or any endeavor in life, and it is profound and deeply personal. Everyone has unique passions. But rather than explore what is really important to us, we often adopt and conform to the desires and expectations of our managers, teachers, parents, and those we admire and are closest to. In doing so, we trade passions for conformance, acceptance, and predictability. This is done without our even knowing it. As a result, we never find the true meaning, fulfillment, and success we so want in our work and life.

Expressing Passion in Different Ways

People often confuse passion with open and frenetic expression. We have all seen and known the “creative types” who are constantly open with their feelings and passions and bring this into the work they do. But passion can also be manifested through quiet and intensive resolve. The truth is, passion is the force behind bringing into being what we love. It is attached to the core of who we are and what we want to achieve in our lives. It is intense. And how it translates into life and work will vary from person to person.

Our loves bring out the best in us. When we love something, it conjures up real passion and emotion and we want to share it with others. Whether we are passionate about opera, reading, cabinetmaking, computer programming, or sailing, it is something we look forward to and gladly do for no financial reward.

Don’t confuse love with lust. When we lust for something, we constantly reach for that elusive “thing” while never fully realizing a sense of fulfillment or success. Whether it is an organization title, acclaim, or money, once achieved it rarely delivers happiness. Once on the lust-driven career track, it’s often hard to get off because of the false belief that the goal is just over the hill.

In most organizations, the formal career planning and compensation systems are based on the assumption that bigger titles, fatter paychecks, and more strokes from the boss are all that is needed to motivate people. There is nothing inherently wrong with titles, money, and recognition; however, if that is the only way for people to be motivated, it underestimates what’s required to unleash the power of people’s spirit and passions.

People in organizations commonly don’t question this, instead focusing on the rewards and recognition the organization has to offer, without asking themselves and the organization to align with their passions. Unfortunately, the lust-driven career path has become the norm.

A few cutting-edge companies understand that people need more than titles, money, and recognition. They understand that people need to bring what they love to work. These companies have processes for helping people explore and build their passions and for helping employees fueled by their unique passions to bring greater value to the company. Many of these companies find themselves on the lists of top companies to work for. Tapping into people’s natural energ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Introduction
• About the Authors
• Don’t Leave Your Organization
• Uncovering Career Myths and Truths
• Part 1: Your Career Foundation Four Steps for Starting on the Inside
• Part 2: Your Career Navigation Six Practices for Taking the Inside Out
• Epilogue: Your Commencement
• Index