Thoughts on Career

After recently obtaining an MBA from Cornell University, I have taken some time to reflect on my beliefs when it comes to my career. As with most pursuits in life, there comes a moment when you look back and think about what “you wish you knew.” In addition, sometimes you recognize habits and events that serendipitously took you to unforeseen places. I am writing this article to synthesize my learnings and to document my current thoughts on professional development and career progression. Also, I hope to help others who are in the first phase of their career. Please feel free to share and comment.

The First Career Move (applicable to recent graduates)

Like some, after college I had a difficult time finding a legitimate job. I thought I had done everything right but soon realized that no one in the business world cared about my academic and athletic accomplishments. I set aside my pride and took a minimum-wage job. Fortunately, this job was the first step into an exciting industry, which in hindsight was one of the best choices I have made. What I learned, who I met, and the experiences I could talk about set me up for unforeseen opportunities.

Lesson: The first move is the foothold from which all other opportunities will come. If you are a recent graduate, take a job in the industry you want. Title, responsibilities, and pay are not important (unless it’s an unlivable wage). What matters is what you learn, who you meet, and the experiences you can talk about. Long term, the right first move will pay off in both happiness and income.

Business Strategy Concepts Applied to Career: Strategic Tradeoffs and Sustainable Competitive Advantage

In business, there is a concept called sustainable competitive advantage. A sustainable competitive advantage is when a company’s assets, attributes, and abilities are difficult to duplicate or exceed. In turn, this gives a company a long-term advantage over competitors. For a company to effectively obtain this advantage, it must make strategic trade-offs. The idea behind strategic trade-offs is that a company can’t be all things to all people and should focus on competences. Building a sustainable competitive advantage requires strategic trade-offs. For example, Walmart made the strategic trade-off of selling high-end fashion to sell low-cost fashion. This trade-off contributes to Walmart’s competitive advantage, the ability to supply a large selection value products at low cost.

The ideas of sustainable competitive advantage and strategic trade-offs can be applied to your professional career. In my situation, I first decided where my sustainable competitive advantage would be: the healthcare industry. I consciously made a strategic trade-off by passing up opportunities in other industries, e.g., banking, telecommunications, etc. Next, I started to build a sustainable competitive advantage by developing an array industry specific skills.

One way to think about it is like this:

A hiring manager is looking to recruit the “ideal candidate.” They want someone with relevant industry experience, an MBA, and a unique set of technical skills. It is easy to find someone with one qualification (e.g., an MBA), but it is difficult to find someone with an array of interlocked qualifications and experiences that make for the ideal candidate.

Consider this example. The probability of finding a candidate with industry experience is 20%. In addition, finding a candidate with an MBA has a probability of 30%. The probability of finding someone with both qualifications is now 6% (20% x 30%). Now let’s say 10% of the population has the required technical skills and 50% of the population fits the company culture. The probability of finding an ideal candidate now becomes 0.3%; the supply of people with this combination of attributes would be very low, making the ideal candidate extremely valuable. From the candidate’s perspective, the only way to build combinations like this is through learning – discussed next.

Lesson: After making strategic trade-offs with your career (e.g., deciding on an industry or job function), you can begin to build a sustainable competitive advantage by stacking skills and qualifications. Your personal attributes and abilities will become increasingly difficult to duplicate, therefore making you increasingly more valuable.

Thoughts on Learning (Warning: Sports Analogies)

• The Challenges and Rewards of Learning

Everyone wants to look good, but it's generally not enjoyable to constantly work out and eat healthy. Sometimes this is how you must think about professional development. To become highly capable in business, you must do things you don’t want to do. This might include sacrificing a Sunday brunch with your friends to read “Understanding Financial Statements.”

Luckily, the process of learning can become self-reinforcing and extremely enjoyable. In fitness, hours of training make people look and feel better, and the results encourage more fitness training. Some people become so encouraged by the results, they become obsessed – think of those on Instagram who post gym pictures, daily. This process of self-reinforcement is also possible for professional development. Putting in effort to learn will positively impact your performance and your work relationships. In turn, you will enjoy work more, get promotions, and receive pay raises, resulting in encouragement to learn more -- a positive feedback loop will be established.

• “Continuous Learners”

In the workplace, everyone says they are “continuous learners,” but the truth is most are not. Continuous learning is not something that happens passively; it can only happen actively. In other words, you are not a continuous learner by simply existing and working in a job that is “new and challenging.” You are a continuous learner if you continuously reflect on the limits of your knowledge, and actively seek out ways to expand those limits. The simplest means of actively expanding knowledge is through reading. And continuous means you must do this over a long period of time (years or decades).

• Focus on learning and let accomplishments be a side-effect

“Give me six hours to chop down a tree, and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.” – Abraham Lincoln

Professional athletes spend thousands of hours perfecting their sport. On game day, all they do is show up and play – simple.

In business, you will encounter many people who will occasionally have a strong desire to win – maybe they want a raise or a promotion – but they are unable to play at the required level. Why? Because they haven’t yet put in the time to perfect their game. The person who has put in the time to learn can effortlessly make huge positive impacts within an organization, resulting in rewards such as promotions and opportunities. Accomplishments, promotions, and pay raises simply happen effortlessly when someone shows up and plays after spending significant effort perfecting their abilities in business.

• It is possible to be better than everyone at everything

The decathlon is a track and field event where the world’s greatest athletes compete in 10 different track and field events over two days. One of the greatest Olympic decathletes is currently Ashton Eaton. In 2012, Eaton set a world record in the decathlon. He is so talented, he could compete against almost any NCAA Division I Track and Field specialist (pure 100m sprinter or pure pole vaulter) and easily win.

Within a track and field team, decathletes are always the first on the track and the last off, daily. They train hard. Overtime, many decathletes can become better than event specialists, yet they still compete in 10 different events for the title of “World’s Greatest Athlete.” Some, like Eaton, become so good they can beat specialist in the Olympics. In June 2012, Eaton jumped 27.0 feet in the long jump during the Olympic Trials. This would have placed him second in the long jump during 2012 London Olympics.

Let Eaton serve as inspiration. In business, most specialists (e.g., finance, operations, marketing professionals) are not “training” as hard as high-level college or Olympic athletes in the sport of business. Put in the time and effort, and it is possible to become better than everyone at everything within an organization.

A word of caution. Just because it’s possible to be better than everyone at everything, you should never view your job as competing with your peers. In business you should only view competition as competition with yourself – track athletes are far are more concerned about beating their personal best time than beating the person next to them. Becoming better than your former self will result in added value for yourself, your peers, and the company. This will ultimately get you to where you want to go. Competition with peers makes you unpopular, and it distracts you from the true path of reaching career goals: continuously learning and applying what you learn to make an impact. That said, competition can be healthy viewed from the scope of your company vs. market competition.

Lesson: Actively pursue learning if you want to progress in your career and get more out of life. Also, if you want to be the best, learn the hard stuff -- most others will not even attempt to learn what is difficult to understand. 

Corporate Environments Breed Complacency

Human nature makes you want to socially conform. It is biology. Depending on your career goals this can be dangerous. It is important to be conscious of this.

In the business world, there are two types of people: 1) people who work for a pay check, and 2) people who work to make an impact. Most employees fall in the first category, especially in large corporations. This is not necessarily a bad thing – these people serve as the backbone of most businesses.

If you want to be in the second category, you must be conscious of the biological instinct to socially conform to the first category of employees. One way to combat this is by building habits. For example, read an hour in the morning before work. No matter what happens, you will always be progressing your abilities by maintaining this habit. You will never stagnate your growth. Another way to combat complacency is to choose your friends wisely. Surrounding yourself with better people, will make you conform to their high standards -- use the biological tendency to conform to your advantage.

Lesson: Fight complacency by: 1) building learning habits to guarantee your professional growth, and 2) striving to surround yourself with the best people to conform to the highest standards.

Conclusion

If I had to summarize, my current belief is that career progression boils down to three things: 1) strategic decisions about your career path; 2) relentless pursuit of learning and applying learning to create value; and 3) developing positive relationships. Everything else is mostly outside of your control. It’s best to accept this, control what you can, and always maintain a positive and optimistic attitude. 

Success is all relative, but I’m proud of what I have achieved in my career thus far, and I feel confident in attributing my success to the beliefs I have outlined above. I am hoping to hear what others think and to look back at this in the future to see how I update my thoughts.