Career Advancement: The Simplest Way to Fast-Track Your Career
Career advancement can be simple! You only have to do two things. Click play to hear George & Mary-Lynn share what they are on The BIGG Success Show Podcast.
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Career advancement can prove difficult. Some conclude it’s just a matter of luck. Others think it’s about sucking up. Still others believe you have to sell out.
They’re all mistaken. However, there’s a hard way and a simple way to advance in your career. A while back, we shared the simple secret to a successful career:
Do your best doing what you do best.
Doing your best is part of our favorite definition of success. It comes from the late great John Wooden. But it’s hard to push yourself to give your all if you’re not good at it. It’s much easier if you know your strengths. Then it’s just a matter of matching your strengths to a career opportunity.
The power of this simple saying (Do your best doing what you do best) is that it puts career advancement into your own control. You only have to do two things.
#1) Rocket ships launch career advancement
There’s just one problem with our simple secret to career success. It ignores the marketplace.
In a speech at Harvard, Lean In author Sheryl Sandberg recalled meeting with Google’s CEO, Eric Schmidt. It was early in her career and she had a job offer from Google.
She had serious reservations; Google wasn’t Google yet. They were still really young. Few people saw much potential. She expressed her concerns to Schmidt.
He said, “Don’t be an idiot. Get on a rocket ship.”
In slow growing companies, careers stagnate. But in a fast-growing company, your career will take care of itself.
He concluded: “If you’re offered a seat on a rocket ship, don’t ask what seat. Just get on.”
You see, you can do your best and run right into a brick wall. You can play to your strengths and find it doesn’t pay. You get laid off. Opportunities for career advancement dry up.
Unless you’re on a rocket ship.
#2) Career advancement depends on the company you keep
You may be familiar with the old saying, “You’re only as good as the company you keep.” If you’re like us, you’ve probably always thought it was talking about human relationships.
Of course, that was its original intention. However, there’s a lot of wisdom to applying it to career advancement.
We’ve talked before about the three influencers of career success: your occupation, your industry and your company.
BIGG success is life on your own terms. It’s about taking control to design and build the life of your dreams.
Sometimes, the best way to take control is to accept what you can’t control. Stop bucking the trends and hop aboard a rocket ship, whether you’re an employee or an entrepreneur.
Where there’s growth, there’s opportunity. It leads to BIGG success!
Direct link to The Bigg Success Show audio file | podcast:
http://traffic.libsyn.com/biggsuccess/00900-091714.mp3
Image in the post from Flickr
