The Telephone Lineman And The AT&T CEO: How To Rise Beyond Your Expectations
Recently, I was captured by the true story of two brothers who started working as linemen at AT&T.
Older brother Kevin Stephenson landed a job at the telephone giant first and then found a way to get his kid sibling on board. That was decades ago. Much has happened in the intervening years.
Most notably, the older brother is still on the line, so to speak, but the one-time kid a yearabove him on the family tree is now AT&T's chairman of the board.
This is far more than a story of two brothers and their paths in life/careers. The marvel is, how this happens. How some rise far beyond their roots, the world's expectations, even their own vision of how far they can go.
This boils down to the fact that there are basically three types of employees:
*The highly promotable
* The barely tolerable
* The invisible
The question is, in which category are you and how do you elevate yourself to the highly promotable? I cannot talk with certainty about the AT&T chairman, but I do know from my own experience how to get there. How to rise metaphorically from lineman to the sky's the limit.
It takes three qualities to move into the top tier, regardless of how and where you start your career or find yourself now:
*Abandon the idea that you are an employee. That someone else (a person, shareholders, etc) owns the business. By adopting the attitude that it is your business, your reputation and your money at stake, every move you make will be different. And will get noticed as such.
*Use your roots -- humble as they may be -- not to define your future but to drive it. The truth is, when you perform like a shooting star, no one asks or cares what side of the tracks you hail from.
*Don't set goals. That locks you into a silly and often limited path. Instead, be curious about everything. When someone tells you to do something or to think in a certain way, ask "Why." This seemingly simple mindset and action plan will lead you through paths of discovery others will never even see.
No one is born a lineman it a chairman: they simply allow a natural flow of events to keep them locked in a certain and often limited space or soaring beyond it.
You don't need to be liked, loved, appreciated or any of the other Hallmark niceties.
You simply need to be promotable.
Enterprise app implementation and integration. Straight answers focused your priorities. | Founder, COO - Consulting Operations, Free Agent Source Inc. | Get your people. Get it done.
9 年Thanks, Mark. I like your posts. The idea of becoming promotable is for people who are willing to entrust their future to someone else in an arbitrary position to judge. While it is possible to go from lineman to chairman, the corporate organizational pyramid guarantees there will never be enough positions at each level above for everyone who has made herself / himself promotable. Ironically, this competitive pyramid scheme creates corporate feudalism and waste. [Related - Margaret Heffernan's TED talk "Why it's time to forget the pecking order at work."] The future of work will not be a corporate pyramid. It will look more like a peer-to-peer network, a marketplace, within the boundaries of a company where reputation and stature are earned by contribution to the group, not by promotions into fewer and fewer positions at each level above. This will happen, not for moral or ethical reasons, it will happen because it's more efficient and productive than a corporate pyramid.
Founder at Be Inspired, Author Reclaiming JOY, Owner Bronxville Wellness Sanctuary
9 年Yes - be curious. Beginners mind. Open to possibility. Staying in the questions. As adults when we think we know or have all the answers we miss the larger opportunity that awaits. This is where we learn from children- be curious- ask - be in awe with all of it!