The Critical First Years Of Your Professional Life

Robert L. Dilenschneider, Mary Jane Genova

• Publisher: Citadel Press
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9780806536767
• Topic: Desarrollo personal
• Subtopic: Carreras

"Dilenschneider has guided thousands of highly successful people through the world of business." —Maria BartiromoFaced with an unstable economy, recent college grads need more expert guidance than ever to land that dream job and make it rewarding and meaningful. This invaluable guide—revised to meet the specific challenges of today's fast-evolving job market—shows how you can use your talent, originality, and initiative to sharpen your competitive edge. The first years of your professional life are critical to long-term success in any field. The skills you acquire, the contacts you make, and the lessons you learn will help you remain involved, adaptable, and always ahead of the curve. Now a seasoned veteran of the workplace shares his insights, tips, and experiences in a thoroughly updated edition of a career-planning classic. Praise for Robert L. Dilenschneider and The Critical First Years of Your Professional Life "Offers practical advice on how young people can take charge of their careers and develop independently both the skills required to excel in any environment and the savvy to know when to move on." — Norman R. Augustine, former Chairman and CEOof Lockheed Martin Corporation"An insightful, idea?laden, practical guide that will be valuable to young professionals seeking to advance their on?the?job lives." — Stephen A.Greyser, Richard P. Chapman, Professor of Business Administration Emeritus, Harvard BusinessSchool"Bob Dilenschneider has the right recipe for coping in an era of stunningly rapid change." — Allan Goodman, President, Institute of International Education

1

GOOD PROFESSIONAL FITS, BAD PROFESSIONAL FITS

This chapter is must reading IF:

• You don’t feel comfortable at your organization

• You wonder why certain “types” at your organization keep getting ahead

• You got a job offer, but your instincts say not to take it

• You feel abused at work

My father was a newspaperman. Whenever I run into an ex-newsman in my line of work, I feel an immediate rapport. One day, I was at another public relations agency visiting a friend, who brought me in to see an old newsman I’ll call Tim, whom my friend knew I would enjoy meeting.

Well, Tim’s office was a pigsty. There were piles of everything everywhere, from candy wrappers to old copies of the New York Daily News. While I certainly did feel an emotional rapport, I wondered how Tim was perceived at the agency and by its clients.

After we left Tim’s office, my friend started in on the “poor Tims” of the world and how Tim kept getting passed over for promotions. NEWS FLASH: Tim made a bad impression. He didn’t fit in with the buttoned-down organizational culture of the agency. He was never going to get a promotion unless he cleaned up his act—literally—or moved on to a more laid-back organization.

The work world is filled with “poor Tims” who don’t fit in with the organizational culture. Year ago, when many organizations were quite rigid and had little tolerance for individuality, there might have been an explanation for the bad fit. But not now. Organization cultures vary wildly today, from the loose environment of a high-tech start-up to the conservative atmosphere of an old-line bank. It’s up to you to find a fit that’s right for you. If you wander into the wrong corporate culture, you could be shunned, demoted, passed over for promotion, underestimated, underpaid, and even fired. Organizational life has never been kind to misfits, and it isn’t now.

This chapter is an important one. In it you’ll learn about good professional fits and bad professional fits. You’ll also find out how to differentiate yourself from your colleagues and stand out in an effective way, even as you fit into the organizational culture.

A HOT TOPIC

Organizational culture is a hot topic right now because we have learned that there’s a correlation between growth in earnings and a strong organizational culture—one that adapts to changing circumstances, encourages leadership from all levels, and values input from employees, stockholders, and customers. An eleven-year study by John Kotter and James Keskett found that companies with strong organizational cultures increased revenues by 682 percent over that period versus 166 percent for companies with weaker cultures. And the “strong-culture” companies increased their stock prices 901 percent as opposed to 74 percent.

But organizational culture is also a hot topic for another reason. We now realize that to succeed in an organization, you have to fit in with its culture. I remember the days when only tall, white, Anglo-Saxon males could get ahead. We called them “Organization Men.” That era is over, but organizations still recruit and promote certain types of people—people who fit well into their organizational culture. Lady Gaga wouldn’t have been able to get a job at Citibank, but HP’s Meg Whitman could easily have gotten ahead there. Specific organizations are interested in specific types. Organization A may want a very different type of employee than organization B.

WHAT IS ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE?

What exactly is “organizational culture?” In Transforming Company Culture, David Drennan says that organizations have personalities and attitudes. Some banks have stodgy personalities. From the beginning, Microsoft has had an “in your face” attitude. Your challenge is to find an organization that fits with your personality and attitude. Unlike when I was starting my career, there is a lot of diversity out there in how organizations operate. It’s possible to find a good fit for yourself no matter who you are, what you look like, or what you value. So there’s no excuse for winding up with a bad fit.

Another way of looking at organizational or corporate culture, says Drennan, is analyzing “how things are done around here.” That’s probably the most useful definition of organizational culture. Everything in an organizational culture has an operational function, including its language, values, procedures, and traditions, no matter how seemingly minor. Coffee breaks serve as an opportunity for networking. An annual picnic can bolster a sense of identification with the company. Free trips to exotic places for salespeople who make their quotas deliver an unmistakable message: This is the kind of behavior we value. Humiliating firings deliver a message, too: This is behavior we don’t want at this organization.

THE MIRACLE AT CHRYSLER

Let’s go back in time to one of the strongest cultures in the history of American business. That was the unique culture Lee Iacocca and his turnaround team created in the late 1970s, a culture that helped save a company ready to go belly up. When Iacocca came to Chrysler, the auto company was hemorrhaging red ink. Japanese competition had become a new fact of life. Just down the road was a severe recession that would hurt new car sales badly. At the same time, Chrysler was fighting a public relations battle, trying to tell the nation that the loan guarantees it had received from the US government were justified.

In the late 1970s, most of corporate America was still quite stodgy. Iacocca changed that at Chrysler, and those changes trumpeted the news about the “new” Chrysler. Here are some of the ways Iacocca transformed Chrysler.

• Physically, Chrysler no longer looked like the traditional corporation. To save money, trash collection was cut back, so wastebaskets often overflowed. There was no time to file papers, so piles of paper were all around. The carpet in the executive suite was old and worn. Unlike the case of “poor Tim,” or one slovenly individual in a buttoned-down office environment, this overall clutter sent the message that Chrysler was focused on the business, not the cosmetics, of corporate life.

• Iacocca downsized before it became a trend. That told the world, including the government and taxpayers, that Chrysler was serious about getting its cost structure under control.

• Like radicals of the 1960s who staged theater in the streets, the Chrysler turnaround team used drama and entertainment to get their message out to the American public. Iacocca insisted that executives give a certain number of speeches, and those speeches were bold and candid, very unlike the typical corporate speeches at that time. Because Chrysler’s approach to presenting itself was so different, the company got plenty of media attention. That helped sell cars.

• Employees worked long hours, and they bragged rather than complained about that.This work ethic helped Chrysler save money on compensation.To keep its break-even point down, Chrysler had to keep its employee head count down.

• Many meetings, memos, and other traditional corporate procedures were scrapped. More decisions were made in the hallways than in the conference room.This showed the world that Chrysler was serious about cutting costs. It also made employees proud that they were different from all those other complacent companies.

• The pace was fast. This helped communicate the urgency of the situation. It also saved money—since time is money.

Iacocca, a master builder, built an organizational culture that would accomplish what he needed to get done. Across town, Ford Motor Company established an equally effective organizational culture to support their quality mission.

FITTING IN

The most exciting, most effective organizational culture will be irrelevant to your career if you don’t fit in with it. In Built to Last, James Collins and Jerry Porras observe that the process of trying to make it in strong cultures is binary: Either you fit in, or you are ejected. As I see it, that “either/or” applies to many cultures today, not just strong ones. Downsizing has eliminated many of the corners where people who are bad fits could once hide. As a result, misfits now stand out—and are generally tormented for being different.

THE ELEMENTS OF ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE

When you apply for a job, much about the organizational culture is right out there for you to see and judge. How the receptionist in the main lobby looks, whether the interviewer offers you a beverage, whether human resources seems suspicious of you: All are clues for decoding the organizational culture.

How do you decide if you’ll fit in?

In Organizational Culture and Leadership, Edgar Schein presents the eight components of an organizational culture. Let’s look at them in terms of you.

1. Patterns of behavior when people interact. These include the language, idioms, and jargon people use and the customs, traditions, and rituals they observe. I went to a large computer company in the 1980s looking for business. I noticed that the staff members addressed one another formally and seldom made eye contact. I knew immediately that that wasn’t the account for me. Would it put you off if your coworkers were excessively guarded all the time?

Corporate customs tell us a lot about an organization. If the custom is to give all employees stock options, that’s a fairly egalitarian company. If the organization still has a tradition of giving turkeys to employees at Thanksgiving, you can assume that the organization tends to be paternalistic and old-line. If there are many rituals at an organization celebrating individual initiative, you can probably conclude that the culture of the organization is a meritocracy where performance is rewarded.

Rituals are always symbolic. They mean something. Once, on a corporate jet, I reached over to get some peanuts from the bar. A hush fell over the group I was traveling with, and I saw the chief executive’s administrative assistant turn pale. I looked at the assistant and asked, “Am I doing something wrong?” He said that no one ever ate or drank anything before the CEO did. This observance symbolized the huge importance of the pecking order to that company. If you didn’t like a fanatically strict hierarchy, you didn’t belong there.

What kind of organization is the best fit for you? There are no perfect fits. But you will be more comfortable in some than in others.

2. Group norms or unwritten rules. Organizations usually don’t hang up a sign reading THE FOLLOWING STANDARDS AND VALUES ARE WHAT WE’RE ALL ABOUT. Since the rules are primarily unwritten, you have to be alert. You might, for example, suspect that profits are more important than quality at your organization. Listen to how people talk about those two concepts. Do the two seem mutually exclusive? Maybe your mentor or a trusted ally can answer some questions for you.

3. The espoused or announced values. Sometimes values are made explicit. These are usually contained in the organization’s mission statement or statement of values. This is supposed to tell you what the organization is all about. At Zappos.com, the online shoe store, the official motto is “Powered by Service.” They famously take customer service to unprecedented heights. As a result, 75 percent of their sales are to repeat buyers. Focusing on the organization’s stated values can help you discover its heartbeat.

4. Formal philosophy. This includes the written policies and ideologies that determine how the firm will deal with all its constituencies, from stockholders to employees. This will tell you a lot about the organization. For instance, if the organization has declared that it puts shareholder interests before all else, it might do any number of things—such as downsizing or even selling the company—to boost its stock price. For most of the last century, IBM had a philosophy of not laying off its employees. Because of that policy, security-minded people went to work for IBM even though they might have made more money elsewhere.

5. “Climate.” If an organization were a restaurant, “climate” would be defined as “ambiance.” This includes the physical surroundings and the ways in which people treat one another.

The old-style corporation used to be a large, institutional-type building in which you didn’t hang up too many Dilbert cartoons. People treated one another cautiously, with outward respect and reserve. Today, if you want, you can find organizations with warm, friendly, and casual climates. People can be quite expressive. Friendships spring up easily. And instead of dressing up, people dress down.

I once applied for a job where the receptionist had the icy look of a model on the cover of Vogue. I didn’t feel comfortable in that chilly climate and beat a hasty retreat.

6. Habits of thinking. At some organizations thinking is done slowly and carefully. There’s no jumping to conclusions, and whatever is decided will be reviewed by committees. At other organizations discussion is lively, and employees are ready to take risks. Which one is for you? Problems are solved very differently at the new IBM than they were at the old IBM.

7. Shared meanings. At Disney, employees believe that they bring their guests happiness. During the Iacocca turnaround at Chrysler everyone, from executives to security guards, recognized that if they didn’t band together to make things work, they could wake up the next morning and their jobs might be gone. Both at Disney and at Chrysler, a shared perception bound the employees together, helping them feel part of something that was bigger than themselves and their individual careers.

8. Symbolism. That includes everything from the style of architecture chosen for headquarters to how the building is decorated for the holidays. A consumer products company on the East Coast was housed in an ornate building. When the company was acquired, the new parent company viewed that building as symbolizing all the excesses in the subsidiary’s organizational culture.

Many human elements in an organizational culture can also be interpreted symbolically. If human resources and the job interviewer treat you well, that can symbolize the respect the organization has for its human capital.

Whenever I go to visit a new account, I make sure that I see everything symbolically.

YOUR TOP TEN LIST

Many young people tell me they’re not sure what they want, so how can they make a decision about their fit with an organizational culture?

The best way to dig down to your inner core is to make a list. On that list write the...

Table of contents

• ALSO BY ROBERT L. DILENSCHNEIDER
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
• FOREWORD
• INTRODUCTION
• 1 - GOOD PROFESSIONAL FITS, BAD PROFESSIONAL FITS
• 2 - GETTING INSIDE
• 3 - ON YOUR OWN
• 4 - YOU AND YOUR BOSSES
• 5 - WORKING THE GRAPEVINE
• 6 - NETWORKING
• 7 - MAKING ALLIES OF YOUR ELDERS
• 8 - IMAGE
• 9 - HAVING INFLUENCE AT ANY LEVEL
• 10 - SCHOOL
• 11 - YOUR WORK AND YOUR PERSONAL LIFE
• 12 - THE RIGHT THING TO DO
• 13 - AFTER A SETBACK
• 14 - MENTORS
• 15 - MOVING ON
• CONCLUSION
• ABOUT THE AUTHORS
• Copyright Page