Career Mud Puddle

When I was in my late twenties, I had a mentor who would pontificate about how young people that got stuck in their career was the same as a truck getting stuck in a mud puddle. That when you are young, you just keep pressing down the gas and the wheels just spin and you get more stuck. Let me say that growing up in the south that a lot of sage advice involves animals, vehicles and bodies of water.
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One of the scariest Sundays to have is the one where you realize that your career journey hasn’t stood up to what you hoped. I call it a career journey because career trajectory implies that everyone wants to have a career rocket ship. For the longest time, I never understood people without career ambitions. I would say as I have gotten older, I still don’t understand it, but I do accept it.

For many of you that I have a relationship with, you will hear me talk about vectors a LOT. This, Venn Diagrams, Dave Grohl and a few other quirks means that you have been in my gravity at some point of your career. Oh, and analogies. I love analogies and am pretty good at breaking down the complex with analogies.  For those of you that are not math nerds.. a vector is both magnitude and direction.

Side Note for the nerds: I am thinking about getting back into Dungeons and Dragons. I haven’t played since I was a kid, but I have some of the fondest memories of playing. Assuming that at least 2 of my subscribers are DND folks, any advice would be appreciated.

Sorry for the ADHD segue. Your career journey and the vectors to consider. I decided to make
all the themes start with C. Seems like a good marketing approach.

The 6 C’s of Managing your career journey.

1. Competency- In our early and mid career we focus a lot on building technical competency. If you are an Accountant, you focus on taking your competency to mastery. Then you stop. To quote the worst Andy Samberg movie “Never Stop Never Stopping.” The key is to continue to build deep competency in the new responsibilities that come your way. For example: Managing people. Are you taking training and building mastery to manage people? You make partner and sales is now part of your job. Did you go take sales training? Mastery doesn’t stop at the alphabet soup at the end of your name on your business card. Honestly, those are a commodity and no one actual cares that you are a PE or AIA in your late career, except you and your terrible boss.
2. Capacity: Are you staying “fast” at doing the tasks that progress your career? For me, I have been wanting to take typing classes, but with AI that seems like a waste of time. Like my 2 year old says at the top of a hill on his trike, “Go fast..”. Get better at being faster at your work. Not just through leveraging knowledge and experience to take short cuts, but just faster.
3. Connections: “It’s now what you know, it’s who you know.” says people that ignore 1. and 2.  Unfortunately, they are half right. Make a conscious effort to make connections. Not just LinkedIn connections but meaningful ones for advice, support and accountability. Someone once told me that they only use LinkedIn when they are looking for a job or hiring people! What?! LI is just one place but build connections, nurture them and stay plugged in. Skip events that have become routine (except mine, of course).  More Architects should go to World of Concrete and more Civil Engineers to Dreamforce.
4. Complacency: Not all vectors are positive in direction. I have an investor that loves exotic plants. To maintain them, they have several daily protocols that they follow. When they travel, there are people that have been trained to take care of them. The reason I call them protocols and not routines/habits is because things happen inexplicably. While habits are great (Love me some Atomic Habits), habits have a way of creating complacency. This leads to disappointment. Ever been in a job where you “did everything that you were supposed to do” and still got passed up for a promotion?
5. Courage: if you haven’t read Dave Grohl’s autobiography, put it on the list. He recorded every track of the Foo Fighters debut album because he was afraid to let anyone hear his work. Now he is so big that he can afford to pick fights with Taylor Swift. Take risks in your career. I’m not saying quit your job and join a startup. There are daily and weekly opportunities to jump out of your comfort zone. Take the chances.
6. Cash: what?!? Hoard your cash. There will be opportunities that appear in front of you. Whether it’s joining a startups, taking a lateral move into a different functional area or taking on the CEO job of a dumpster fire company seeking a turnaround. I know that this easier said than done. Early career kids- live with your parents, take the subway, don’t buy a house, take a flask to clubs.. you know the routine. You were a college student not too long ago. Hoard your cash. Cash doesn’t make you happy, but it sure does create some space to take some unconventional career paths.

Today’s Sunday Scaries is a little longer, the long weekend gave me some space to think. Also, being in Asheville for the month just helps me breathe differently.

Do me a favor? If this resonated, please React, Comment and Repost. I get paid Zero Bucks to write this and since I’m not a life coach, Im not selling anything. The AI posts, I’m clearly trying to sell books and talks. :)

BTW- What prompt can you put in ChatGPT to produce this lux content?