The need to identify your career success drivers

Ensuring a successful and rewarding career is not simply about gaining some specific piece of knowledge and then taking on a role that appears to be appropriate. Knowledge is only one component of any career role that you have to take care of and manage - no matter what it is. Depending on the role itself others components (to varying degrees) include;

1. Ongoing demand for that role in the economy/organization

You cannot assume you can continue to perform your current role, in its current form, forever and gain the same financial reward. You need to determine why your role is in demand and ensure you move along with what is and will be required.

2. Leadership and management ability and understanding

This is just not about being a leader or managing others - it's about understanding and having empathy with those who lead and manage you. There are many styles of leadership and management and both as a leader and someone being lead you need to comprehend what is best and how to adapt to the varying styles with which you will be faced.

3. Time and stress management

Put simply, if you do not manage or your time or stress levels then your career performance will suffer. Two key drivers of performance are focus and dedication - being stressed and not allocating time to important tasks will not allow you to be either.

4. Networking

More and more careers are requiring some kind of networking to be undertaken - even if it's inter-departmental. Don't shut yourself off in your cubicle, home office...These days it's very much who you know as much as what you know.

5. Personal presence and confidence

Personality plays a large role in career success, no matter how knowledgeable you are in your role. If you want to progress and develop in and beyond your current role you have to be confident (not cocky or bragging) that you can handle your role and more. This is just not about ensuring promotion in your career. If you wanted a flexible work arrangement for say family reasons, there is even more reason to appear that you are confident you can perform in this situation.

6. Health and well-being

More and more evidence points to the fact that if you are strong physically it will allow your mental capabilities to be fully utilized. Mental health and well-being is also a critical component of performance and you must ensure meditation and relaxation is scheduled into your week.

7. Identification of re-education required

Associated with Point 1, experience will only take you so far - as the world changes, the economy changes and thus demand for goods and services changes. Your knowledge of today will not suffice for what is required tomorrow and you have to ensure you keep yourself up to date - this can mean subject matter knowledge, marketing and sales techniques, IT etc. If you don't, then you run the risk of becoming redundant in terms of skills on offer and career options will be limited.

8. IT ability

You need to assess the basic level of IT skills required now and in the future. This basic level will continue to rise so don't think being young means you automatically know everything required.

9. Perseverence and drive

This is one of the most important components. You need to work hard and smart and don't regard failure at any point as the end of the journey but as part of the journey. Success is not achieved overnight and you cannot assume that once you have achieved one thing that it will not disappear if you don't continue to perform. You need to understand your motivations and values for performing.

If it was only knowledge that was important then those with the highest IQ would have the most successful careers - and this is not the case. Aspects of emotional and social intelligence play a major role in success apart from IQ.

The next three important steps are the following; (1) identifying the rank and percentage of the total current role related to the above components, (2) produce a plan on how to improve your performance of each and (3) do the last two things for your next planned career moves. It's no good finding out you don't know how to drive or drive well when given a car....you have to plan in advance.

How can I optimize my employees’ strengths to increase sales?

If you're thinking this when it comes to improving an organisation's performance then I'm happy to say you are on the right track. Performance improvement, whether that be at the organisation or individual level, is better served through utilizing strengths rather than reinforcing weaknesses. That is not to say that areas for improvement shouldn't be given attention, just that the focus should be on the strengths.

Now, when it comes to optimizing strengths you first have to be able to assess your employee's strengths. If you haven't already done this it is better to assess the components underlying a certain role and then assess the employee against these. For example, if you're looking at a sales role, you might consider; communication, determination, product/technical knowledge, relationship building and networking as key categories.

After you have done this then you will have a fair idea of where your employees are strong. Some employees may have stronger technical knowledge whilst others are stronger communicators, whilst others are better at establishing new relationships. To increase sales you will then need to align your sales channels with your employees' competencies. For example, telephone sales might be undertaken by the employees with stronger technical knowledge and communication skills, whilst new business through meeting clients could be undertaken by employees stronger in relationship building and networking.

What is crucial is that you understand the sales performance drivers in respect to the required skill competencies and then aligning the competencies to the strengths of your sales team.

A business or career begins with a dream...but succeeds from a solid foundation

I'm not sure if it's due to the recent economic crisis...actually let me say economic events as I don't want to be another conveyor of doom and gloom, but I have been reassessing my own skills and personal resources recently. Purpose? To discover what I actually know and what value I provide to society. What I have found in fact is a bit of a wake up call in that whilst I do know certain things I perhaps thought I know more than I actually do.

I'll be the first to admit I have some great career goals in respect to the businesses I want to develop. Lots of goals and objectives supported by motivations but the one thing I needed to do was assess whether I had the ability, knowledge and experience to achieve the goals I wanted when I wanted. Let me tell you it's an interesting exercise to undertaken, particularly when you are brutally honest with yourself.

Let's take for example you want to run a consulting business and you think you know enough to succeed. Can you answer the following questions in a positive way:

1. Do you know more than 80% of competitors?
2. Have you validated the knowledge you need to know to succced?
3. Have you confirmed the above with your potential customers?
4. You might have 'consulting' knowledge but do you have 'financial performance' management knowledge? (that is, the knowledge to run your company finances)
5. Have you undertaken a risk assessment on the impact to your business of negative events e.g. economic downturn. Has this been validated?

See the thing is, it doesn't matter if you are smart as a 'subject matter expert' and have a great dream to go out on your own - if you don't build a solid business foundation behind you then you will not succeed. Likewise, you definitely need a great dream to succeed but it is only the start. Failure is achieved by being under-prepared and it is not hard in this fast-paced world to indeed be caught short.

Why you need to identify each of the 'components' of your career

Ensuring a successful and rewarding career is not simply about gaining some specific piece of knowledge and then taking on a role that appears to be appropriate. Knowledge is only one component of any career role that you have to take care of and manage - no matter what it is. Depending on the role itself others components (to varying degrees) include;

1. Ongoing demand for that role in the economy/organization

You cannot assume you can continue to perform your current role, in its current form, forever and gain the same financial reward. You need to determine why your role is in demand and ensure you move along with what is and will be required.

2. Leadership and management ability and understanding

This is just not about being a leader or managing others - it's about understanding and having empathy with those who lead and manage you. There are many styles of leadership and management and both as a leader and someone being lead you need to comprehend what is best and how to adapt to the varying styles with which you will be faced.

3. Time and stress management

Put simply, if you do not manage or your time or stress levels then your career performance will suffer. Two key drivers of performance are focus and dedication - being stressed and not allocating time to important tasks will not allow you to be either.

4. Networking

More and more careers are requiring some kind of networking to be undertaken - even if it's inter-departmental. Don't shut yourself off in your cubicle, home office...These days it's very much who you know as much as what you know.

5. Personal presence and confidence

Personality plays a large role in career success, no matter how knowledgeable you are in your role. If you want to progress and develop in and beyond your current role you have to be confident (not cocky or bragging) that you can handle your role and more. This is just not about ensuring promotion in your career. If you wanted a flexible work arrangement for say family reasons, there is even more reason to appear that you are confident you can perform in this situation.

6. Health and well-being

More and more evidence points to the fact that if you are strong physically it will allow your mental capabilities to be fully utilized. Mental health and well-being is also a critical component of performance and you must ensure meditation and relaxation is scheduled into your week.

7. Identification of re-education required

Associated with Point 1, experience will only take you so far - as the world changes, the economy changes and thus demand for goods and services changes. Your knowledge of today will not suffice for what is required tomorrow and you have to ensure you keep yourself up to date - this can mean subject matter knowledge, marketing and sales techniques, IT etc. If you don't, then you run the risk of becoming redundant in terms of skills on offer and career options will be limited.

8. IT ability

You need to assess the basic level of IT skills required now and in the future. This basic level will continue to rise so don't think being young means you automatically know everything required.

9. Perseverence and drive

This is one of the most important components. You need to work hard and smart and don't regard failure at any point as the end of the journey but as part of the journey. Success is not achieved overnight and you cannot assume that once you have achieved one thing that it will not disappear if you don't continue to perform. You need to understand your motivations and values for performing.

If it was only knowledge that was important then those with the highest IQ would have the most successful careers - and this is not the case. Aspects of emotional and social intelligence play a major role in success apart from IQ.

The next three important steps are the following; (1) identifying the rank and percentage of the total current role related to the above components, (2) produce a plan on how to improve your performance of each and (3) do the last two things for your next planned career moves. It's no good finding out you don't know how to drive or drive well when given a car....you have to plan in advance.

Building wealth...and understanding what you're truly worth in the new economy.

Whether you choose to be wealthy or not is completely up to you - but all of us require a certain level of wealth to live. Food, shelter, education, giving to charity and providing for the family...this is the basic expenditure each of us will face during the course of our lives. If you want to live a different lifestyle, assuming the basics are the minimum you will require more wealth - by this I include additional education costs, asset costs (houses, cars), additional health costs etc. So we all know a ballpark figure how much wealth we might like to have...the difficulty is calculating exactly what you will need and then knowing what it will take to achieve it.

The danger around wealth is the concept of having 'too little or too much'. This is pretty much a rule of thumb based on what we think we need, what life costs, what others around us tell us and what we hear on the media. Even going to financial planners (note that I do not consider all planners to be experts) doesn't help that much in this regard because again the use heuristics (fancy word for 'rule of thumb') to assess Rate of Return on assets, life expectancy, inflation etc etc. So I would advise everyone to take a hard, long look at what they think they'll need for the future and calcuate a number in detail.

However one of the biggest disconnects I see around wealth management is knowing how to achieve the wealth number you have calculated in the step above. There are many ways to make money - own business, working for a corporation, investing but there are no guarantees in any business venture, return on investment or career earnings. One of the problems created is that the wealth target is not going to be obtained because the initial calculation was incorrect and the earnings estimate is also not correct. Which gets me to the main point I wish to make - you need to carefully assess your 'economic value' and what that means in respect to potential revenue to be earned. I want to focus initially on those who career is within a corporation, where a role title and framework of responsibility is quite often the basis for an earnings estimate. No one looks at their own individual skills, the ability to undertake a role effectively, how useful that role is to the company's future and bottom line. We assume so much and validate so little around what our abilities are truly worth - and the impact on your overall wealth is potentially immense.

We will see fallout from what I have spoken of above from the recent financial market events - many people will find their once high-paying jobs not existent and come to realize that their current skills are no longer relevant for the transformed financial or economic environment. For some this will impact their medium and long wealth assumptions and situation. My hope is that the wealth management industry and individuals in the future challenges some of the current financial heuristics in effect but pay closer attention to the forever changing economic value of one's skills and knowledge - and what that has in the wealth creation process