The Painful Unraveling of Lifelong Dreams

     I worked one final year, from the date of my first operation until that time when physical pain and the distraction of my discomfort had shortened my day from my regular 12 to 14 hours, to a little more than five.  I wish I'd had a couple more years.

     Two decades before I'd began my career with one goal in mind:  establish my reputation in a field that highly values honesty, loyalty, work ethic, intelligence, and creativity.  All of these qualities are within everyone's reach.  The trick is to not fall short in any of these characteristics.

     Total loyalty, meant that you'd never say a bad thing about the client, boss, firm or peers.  The rule was to walk away from any conversation that violated this rule.  I don't know how many bright, honest, hard working people failed this, the easiest test, and lost their jobs.  For example if someone at the Christmas party said your boss was an idiot and you stood around chatting about that because he might have been, you'd lose.  This nugget would get back to your boss quicker than news that you were a pedophile.  It's a career ending mistake.

    Let's say you establish that you're loyal, a stand-up guy.  The next test might be honesty.  This is uncovered, conclusively, in the easiest of ways.  Anyone who was so insecure that he or she would embellish their past was a liar.  Again a career ender.  Honesty runs deep, you either are or you aren't.  There are of course many other ways one might show dishonesty, and as bosses, we knew most of them.  The trick was to find among a group of people the honest ones.  Anyone, for example, who would admit to a career ending blunder, was honest, thus probably saved their career, maybe even advanced it upon such an admission.  An honest person shares credit; an honest person accepts blame.

     It's just like your Granny told you.  I was hired in Sept.,1981 with about 120 other people.  Two years later more than half of that group was gone.  Considering that the hiring process was pretty rigorous, that's a lot of falling, highly qualified bodies.

     What people don't understand about work ethic is that most people work hard, no matter what job they have.  Americans work hard.  "Work Ethic"  in the context I use it is working hard, and working smart.  My industry is task oriented, so work ethic includes the notion of working until a task is completed.  We begin our workday early, but not extraordinarily early:  at your desk by 7:00AM and finishing when a task is complete.  The rule when I was learning the business was, "if you're at your desk, you're on your phone."  So, if there was no reason to be on your phone, you'd get up from your desk and take a break, say a 5 or 10 minute walk.  Most people can only work effectively for about an hour at a time.  I used to enforce breaks by kicking people out of the office for a few minute about every 90 minutes.  I also required vacations.  Work ethic should be renamed, "Task Ethic". FYI, there aren't many people in the country who could (or would) do the tasks required of a Sr. Executive despite the money.

     Want to build your intelligence?  Read, read, read.  Then ask questions until you become a source for other people's questions.  Admit ignorance, then commit to finding answers.  The dumbest question is the unasked question.  Most people are flattered by questions, even from total strangers.  It's rare that a knowledgeable person, asked politely, won't answer a question.  It takes about an hour of asking questions to become comfortable with a topic about which you knew nothing; in a day, your questions will become so specific that you will rapidly find yourself running out of sources.  That's when you start a blog.

     Creativity is taking information, which I've called intelligence, and molding it into an action, something that to be done now.  The truly creative jump right from information assimilated to action, so keep a pen handy to begin roughing out your plan once action has begun.  Creative people are able to spot the finish line pretty quickly, and knowing where you are, and where you want to be are the 2 essential elements to creating a plan.  The smartest thing a boss can do with people who are taught to work these skills, is to get the hell out of their way unless they need help.

     You can imagine that anyone who can do these 5 things will be an enormous success.  That's true.  Of the 120 people who were hired with me by my firm 2 decades ago in September, around 5-10 of us remained when I went out.  Getting there, over that period of time, puts a lot of money in the bank...a real lot.

     So why doesn't everyone do it.  It is simple, what I didn't mention is that it's not easy.

     I became what I did, and the past required that I come to terms with a final excruciating loss of identity; there's a final unraveling of lifelong dreams and hopes.  For the first time in my life, I had to just accept what it was, and pray that God had something else in mind for me that I'd have the strength to do. 

     "God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change;  the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. "  Yeah, the Serenity prayer.  I offer this to you Nickie.  You can make your life whatever you want.  Nickie is a blind teen who publishes, Nickie's Nook, http://puppybraille.livejournal.com/432258.html

God bless, Colin

 

    

Comments

[dave gershner]

Thanks, Colin, for including me in the delicio.us tags, which are really cool. I like the idea and the way you formatted them.
Keep up the good work.
Terrific blog.
dave