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Self-Managed Careers
for Smart People: A Guide for All Of Us
To everything there is a season. A time to get;
a time to lose.
That well-known line from Ecclesiastes might sum
up the events of last year. A time when stock options were the "Holy
Grail" and countless thousands left brick and mortar companies
to join the brave new world of e-commerce and the Internet. For
some, dreams of growth, prosperity, and change were realized; for
many, disillusionment and disappointment led them back to a previous
job or to no job at all.
The seemingly invincible new economy taught us some
old lessons the hard way, and companies, established and new, are
again rethinking their approach to the marketplace and rewriting
their value propositions. The rapid-hire practices of last year's
frantic recruiting market have taken their toll, and the word, outplacement,
hardly uttered by HR professionals last year has made a remarkable
comeback. But what can we learn as workers in this new, new economy?
Perhaps one of the greatest lessons is to adopt a self-employed
attitude, one where we, as employees, take greater responsibility
for our career path, choosing independence and interdependence over
dependence, and creativity and innovation over doing things the
"old way." According to Cliff Hakim, author of We Are
All Self-Employed, a self-employed attitude involves the following:
- Knowing your strengths - articulating your skills
and values and putting them best use within your company.
- Clearly defining how you add value to the organization
- what is it you know that can have an impact on the top and bottom
line? What expertise of yours do customers pay for?
- Being flexible and open to change - as the company
changes, learning to change and adapt with it.
- Committing to continuous learning - engaging
in learning activities that teach you new skills, increase your
productivity, and improve your performance.
- Joining, not working, for your organization and
customers - taking the initiative to solve problems and come up
with creative ideas, rather than waiting for direction and looking
to others for answers.
- Creating meaningful work - using your creative
resources to see meaning in your work, taking responsibility for
your job satisfaction and career mobility, and periodically reassessing
your career needs and goals.
To everything there is a season. A time to break
down; a time to build up.
The dependent employer-employee mindset of the last
century no longer has a place in a technologically-driven, global
marketplace. Maybe the time has come for the new employer-employee
contract to finally take hold - for workers to view themselves as
business partners and organizations to commit themselves to providing
employees with career enrichment tools that will help them realize
their full potential and worth. Is your company ready to meet the
challenge? Are you?
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