Eight Career Tips {Life lessons}

I received an e-mail yesterday if I could share some of the roles I have undertaken and then provide career tips.

I thought for a minute and complied this list of a few background experiences:

  1. Hardware: technical papers, designing; since 1965

  2. Software: systems, design, development; since 1970

  3. Teaching: IT and business; since 1980

  4. Writing: technical papers, articles, books, blogs; since 1970s’

  5. Speaking: regional, national, international; since 1970s’

  6. Marketing: regional, national, international; since 1980s’

  7. Consulting: since the 1970s’

  8. Strategic planning: since the 1970s’

  9. Executive management and boards: since the 1980s’

  10. Entrepreneurship and starting companies: since the 1980s’

  11. Working and volunteering with a variety of non-profit and professional groups such as CIPS: since the 1980s’ ; the latest is with the Canadian IT Managers forum

Here are my career tips or life lessons:

  1. Have a pure motivation for your work…provide and make meaning for others: it is not about money. Strive to make it better for others. Your career goals and money will come.

  2. Differentiate and provide value: This basic principle in starting a company and consulting also applies to careers. I had a meeting with a senior executive and he the talked about how this made a substantial difference in his life. You will see these principles in talks given by Guy Kawasaki and on his blog.

  3. Do not worry about being 100% ready before starting a new career move: try, and try again—be persistent. Colin Powell talks about this too with his P40-70 rule where you start considering taking something on when you have 40% of the information. It is easy to get into preparation paralysis where you put something off since you are not 100% ready. I use a mountain analogy sometimes to describe what I mean. Imagine it’s dark and you have to get to the mountain top. You can’t see the entire path but you can make out the next 50 meters which is the extent of your flashlight. So go the 50 meters and you will see the next 50 along the path to the top. You will get there if you are patient and keep trying!

  4. Make continual incremental improvements from the feedback that you actively solicit. I always ask for feedback on how I can improve and in the process I learn a lot from others. I recommend doing a constant environmental assessment of your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (a personal SWOT analysis). I blogged about doing a SWOT analysis in response to a question from the Mike Stonebraker blog and about a personal SWOT analysis in a response to a question from the Versatilist blog (there’s also a lead-up blog called: Most Wanted: a Multi-Specialist with Business Acumen or I.S.P.).

  5. It is all about relationships and continual communications. Endeavour to build relationship networks. I had a discussion last year with a noted entrepreneur who has founded a number of companies. His latest is shaping to be a very large company [I believe $1B+] due to the technical innovation years ahead of the industry. He did graduate studies at Harvard and I asked him about the biggest benefit from going to Harvard. The course work was great but he felt the greatest value was from the relationships he formed. They helped him then and throughout his long and successful career. Two other successful business people I talked to this year took their MBAs for the relationships—they already had one MBA but took another from the US just for the relationships. The Canadian Information Processing Society (CIPS) is an ideal place to grow your relationships. This Canadian IT Managers (CIM) forum is another. The more you collaborate and exchange with others, the more you will learn and grow.

  6. Keep a list of goals and review them once a day. Ask yourself, have I moved closer to my goals today? What have I done to direct this improvement? I find this keeps me focused.

  7. 93% of any engagement is perception and 7% is content. Surprising, right? It’s all about the message delivery. One international expert I talked too this year indicated, you can have the greatest technical competency but if you can not communicate it, its value is hidden. I recommended taking every opportunity to speak, teach, write, or volunteer to sharpen your messaging skills.

  8. Look for opportunities to take on a wide range of roles. It is something that Gartner recommends. In fact, one way to gain a variety of skills is to do work for a non-profit group. I found throughout my career it has made a difference to take on different roles and challenges. My motto is that you succeed by trying and meeting added goals are just nice extras! It is about continually learning and improving.

Cheers,

Stephen Ibaraki, I.S.P., sibaraki@cips.ca