We should always be ready for the next job, even if we don’t know what it is.
I often tell people that I never really got the job I wanted or planned for, but that I got many others that were great for both me and my career.
It’s impossible to know what the next job is, but I think there are two ways to make certain you’re always ready:
- Do a great job in your current job, and
- Continue to learn and grow yourself, your skills and your knowledge.
Do a great job now
I can’t stress enough how important focusing on your current job is. Too many associates worry about what their next job is and spend too little time and energy on achieving success in their current job. Like it or not, no one is going to give a promotion to someone who isn’t outstanding in their current job.
This reality escapes the ambitious all too often. No matter how small, insignificant, or boring you might think your current job is, achievement is the key to promotions…not dreams about the promotion itself.
Learn and grow for your next job
Always be on the lookout for obtaining new knowledge and skills. This age of increasingly rapid change has made me a passionate believer that it’s essential that you continue to grow. By grow, I mean grow intellectually and practically. You need to learn about the broad range of factors impacting you in your current job as well as those things impacting your organization. The old phrase “knowledge is power” may seem trivial and overused, but it’s very true.
Growing also means gaining new skills – some of which may have no apparent link in the short run to what you do – but that can transform your life in the longer term.
Let’s look at an example. An individual with a degree in literature takes a course in accounting. That single course helps the associate to better understand how a company makes money and what can be done to improve the profits. That new knowledge might just change how the literature major sees her role in the company. In fact, it could lead to taking several more courses, all of which might transform a literature major into an accountant.
On the other hand, an accountant takes a literature course, and by doing so, improves his writing skills to the point where he is asked to write the management reports about the financial condition of the company.
Learning improves our minds, enriches our personal and professional breadth and depth, and gives us the power of greater knowledge and skills. All this can transform our career.
Two more examples:
- If you weren’t born in the last 15 years, chances are you aren’t a “digital native.” As such, you must constantly be learning about technology and adapting your skills to the new digital age. If you don’t, you’ll fall behind.
- If you don’t understand the principles of economics, you may never really comprehend the political process and how it impacts you, your business, and ultimately your career because the economic system is influenced by political decisions. You live and work in an economic system, so knowing how it works gives you a leg up on those who don’t understand it.
Be ready to embrace all growth opportunities. With new knowledge and new skills, we can always be ready for what comes when the next door opens.
Today’s guest author is Gerry Czarnecki, author of Take Two and Call Me in the Morning: Prescriptions for a Leadership Headache, and serves as the Chairman & CEO of the Deltennium Group, which helps organizations achieve peak performance through effective leadership.
Image courtesy of author
