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🚀 Play Chess in Your Career, Not Checkers (Issue #574)
- 2024/07/10
- 再生時間： 35 分
- ポッドキャスト
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サマリー
あらすじ・解説
“I’m putting in long hours and working harder than ever. Why am I not getting promoted?”Do you know how many times I’ve heard that complaint? Sure, working harder than your peers can get you promoted during the early years of your career. But you will soon find that what got you where you are today won’t get you where you want to be tomorrow. Most people play checkers with their careers. They hop around the board, marching ahead, step by step, and don’t think more than one step ahead. The game board looks similar. In the early days of your career, you and the other pieces are making the same moves—trying to get head, space by space. But you eventually find out that strategy won’t cut it. Your career growth is limited when you behave like a checker piece on the corporate chess game board. Unfortunately, many people experience that. They think more of the same will continue to move them ahead. * Working harder * Working longer hours * Taking on more workSadly, that is the path to stagnation and abuse. Yes, abuse. I’ve watched many people get used by their employers. Many managers love dumping work on the people who work hard, don’t complain, and never ask for raises or promotions. So, if you want to avoid being stuck in checker mode, there are five things you must do:* Become a valuable chess piece* Use strategic long-term planning* Leverage pattern recognition* Make sacrificial moves when necessary* Play leadership chess, too1. Become a valuable chess pieceIf you want to play chess, you must qualitatively change how you work and transform the value you deliver. Leaders don’t get promoted because they work harder than their peers. They get promoted because they think differently, add unique value, get results, and know how to make 1+1=3. World-class chess players don’t randomly flail away moving pieces on the board. They never think one step ahead and hope things work out. So, stop behaving like an interchangeable checker piece. In the game of checkers, every individual piece has the same capabilities (i.e., hopping one space forward). You can easily be replaced if you are a commodity with the same skills as everyone else. Heck, maybe they can even find a cheaper piece to replace you! And if they can do that, they will. I watched that happen many times over the decades of my career. A senior employee was often replaced with a more affordable junior employee who could do the same work. I remember an executive saying, “Why should we pay this much for a U.S. employee? I can hire three designers in country XYZ for that salary.” A basic U.S. checker piece was often replaced with more affordable international pieces. Basic pieces were also frequently put on the inevitable layoff lists about every six months. However, the employees who had leveled up to provide unique strategic value were never replaced. Their cost was never questioned. Instead, they were assigned the best and most challenging projects. They were the ones promoted when the review cycles rolled around every year. I often ran into the unfortunately common belief that tenure will eventually lead to a promotion. Some employees thought they would keep moving up the career ladder if they stayed with the company long enough. I’m sorry, but higher-level promotions simply don’t work that way. A pawn that has been with the company for 5 years—but still acts and performs like a pawn—won’t be promoted to knight simply because of tenure. Level up and transform yourself, or be stuck where you are forever. 2. Use strategic long-term planningProfessionals who end up succeeding in their careers are thinking many, many steps ahead. They aren’t simply focused on their next career move. They have a vision for where they want to be several years from now—sometimes even decades. Every move they make is intentional and sets them up for the next move and the next. They use strategic thinking instead of scattered and mindless hopping. One of my old colleagues and friends had a clear vision for where they wanted to end their career—as a C-level executive in a public company. Every move they made was deliberately planned to help them advance toward that goal. * New projects* New connection in their network* New skills and experiences* New domains* New jobs with the right employers* Seizing new opportunities when they appeared Over the years, I watched them make smart moves until they finally did land that C-level role. It was definitely a clever game of corporate chess, not checkers. 📞 Schedule a free strategy call with me if you’d like to work on your long-term career plan. 3. Leverage pattern recognitionMy grad school advisor was really into chess, and I mean really. He was an excellent player, but he was also a psychologist who researched expert players. Great chess players have a stronger conceptual knowledge of the game and are better at recognizing familiar patterns. Similarly, successful professionals master the ...