Hear this now. No one inside a company is entitled to anything. Not one thing. Not ever.
If you think you are entitled to keep your job, you are not.
If you think you are entitled to a promotion, you are not.
If you think you are entitled to more money, you are not.
If you think you are entitled to a big office, you are not.
Business has nothing to do with entitlement. Business is about achievement. If you consistently deliver the goods, your rewards will come.
I am not in favor of staff programs that reward seniority. The stakes for a new employee should be the same as those for a long-term employee. You deliver, you move ahead. You also get paid more.
I take a similar position with tenure. In some countries, for instance, teachers have a job for life once they survive a tenure period. Thatâs crap! I couldnât care less about tenure. Under tenure arrangements, employees can coast. No way. That will never be allowed in a successful company.
If you donât perform, you canât keep your job!
You canât become a senior executive inside a large company today if you do not have a robust ego. The work that it takes to drive success at the elite level is too tough, too complex, and too demanding for a person who is not somewhat egocentric to survive.
Your ego can drive in you a need to achieve results and a blinding fear of failure. Every senior executive position is highly visible. It is no different from being the coach of any sporting team in the world today. Emmett Davis, head coach of menâs basketball at Colgate University, once told me: âMy results are in the newspaper every day.â These comments were echoed by Australian Olympic basketball coach and Sydney Kings boss Brian Goorjian: âEveryone knows how my day in the office was. It was on radio and TV.â Itâs the same inside a company, where the scorecard is the annual reportâand lots of people read it. Coaches and managers with losing records donât get to keep their jobs. Fear motivates.
Money also motivates. You can make plenty of money at the top of many large companies. The salary packages that are offered are often massive, because the impact an executive has on an organization is likewise massiveâgood or bad. Companies pay for both talent and performance. If money is a motivator for youâfantastic, you have a shot at moving up quickly.
If you are looking for a rewarding career that does not involve huge money, you can choose many professions that compensate you with âpsychological income.â For example, social workers are usually unsung heroes; they help people resolve enormous problems, their work is usually very difficult, yet they make very little money. However, they do get the opportunity to make a difference in peopleâs lives, which can be hugely rewarding. That said, psychological income does not motivate people who want to run big companies.
Ego and money can be good. Letâs not pretend otherwise.
You canât cheat the clock. You are not going to get ahead without a very major commitment to your job in terms of pure hours. I have worked all over the world over the past twenty years and have found this to be universally true. Some cultures require more than others. North America is the toughest. Ted Marzilli, vice president of corporate development of VNU, recalls his early days at a top consulting firm in the United States.
âWe used to laugh when we had to complete a timesheetâthe maximum we could âbillâ per week was forty hours (eight hours per day)âwhereas in reality there were weeks when that forty-hour total we wrote down represented only half of the hours we spent at work. But that was the environment; we had to deliver for our clients and you, personally, had to maintain your internal reputation. Time spent on the job was certainly not the only measure of performance, but if the team was ordering a dinner delivery at 8 P.M., and you said, âNo thanks, I plan to leave shortly,â well, you could only get away with that once in a while, and your teammates certainly took notice. Leaving âearlyâ was definitely not the typical path to success.
âThere is no shortage of work to be done on any consulting project. Itâs a rare occasion when your project manager or project partner might say, âGee, you have been working too hard lately, why donât you leave early tonight?â The environment is up or outâif you do not perform, you will be asked to leave the firm. You are always under pressure to perform, regardless of how senior you are in a company; every project is a new âprovingâ ground. You can never rest on your laurels.â
Whether itâs by recording billable hours or setting up an environment where long hours are the expectation, professional service firms use time spent at work as an important way to measure an individualâs commitment and contribution. And it isnât just about the number of hours; itâs about squeezing every bit of productivity possible out of every minute of the day. And you can forget lunch breaks. You canât make money for a company while youâre eating lunch.
If you donât put in the hours, someone just as smart and just as clever as you will. Fact of life: The strong survive. My own policy is to avoid working weekends. Frankly, it is good to get the break, but sometimes it canât be helped. Iâve always allowed the company to really own me from Monday to Friday. I pound out the hours: never less than sixty a week, and sometimes way more. But Iâve always said, âPreserve the weekend.â You wonât perform well if you work all the time. It is important to stay fresh. Work like a dog during the week, but try not to work at all on weekends. You need two days to rest, relax, and have fun. You will be more productive when you are working if you have had a break.
Preserving the weekends is not as easy as it soundsâitâs very easy for one or two work tasks to really encroach on your free time. I always tell my coworkers that I donât check e-mail or voice mail on the weekends, and pretty soon they realize I mean it.
You do need to be prudent, though: Sometimes there will be an emergency and you will need to workâjust ensure that you make working on the weekends a rare exception to your usual rule. Your body and brain need to rest so they can perform on game days.
But talent without major commitment wonât get you to the top. As you work your way up in any organization, there will always be lots and lots of equally talented executives. The tie always goes to the harder worker.
Find out who is in the office before and after you. Take a walk around early and late in the day. Those who are working harder than everyone else consistently are chasing the title. They are your competition.
I can tell you, having been the CEO of several companies, I have always made a habit of walking around early and late to personally see whoâs pumping it out. If they are getting results and working harder than everyone else, I promote them. They are the âRock Starsââthe money players.
Couples who are trying to balance serious careers with raising a family have to consider how they can put in the hours needed while caring for their children. I have seen it work, and I have seen it fail. Quite simply: It works when you have a very flexible child-care situation; it fails when you donât. You have to be available for last-minute meetings with the CEO that may run overtime. You canât go running out the door at 5 P.M. if your work isnât done. If you are determined to maintain your career at the elite level, pay the money to have a flexible and high-quality child-care situation. Lots of couples do it. You can, too.
Criteria for promotions inside companies are often thought to be black-and-white. Candidates who get promoted are often thought of as the perfect choice. Nothing could be further from the truth. Choices are muddy and difficult. In fact, sometimes the person who gets promoted is simply the least objectionable candidate. Honest, that happens!
No matter what your job is, do it a little harder and a little longer each and every day. Finish an extra report, call on one more customer, ask one more questionâŚset yourself apart.
James Carville, a political strategist, perfectly summed up what it takes to succeed on a winning team during an appearance on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno.
Carville explained to Leno that whenever he is interviewing a prospective candidate, if he or she says they wonât âsuck upâ to get ahead, the interview is over. He wants people on his team who are prepared to do whatever it takes to win.
Succeeding often means you have to be a chameleon. It doesnât mean being dishonest or false; it does mean finding a legitimate way to achieve your goals. Sometimes it requires you to do things that are uncomfortable or unnatural to you. Stretch out and go for it. Donât compromise your values, but find a way to win.
If you canât make that total and complete commitment to winning, you wonât make it to the top; too many othersâyour competitionâdo have that drive and desire. Dig deep and see if you have it.
A friend of mine, Andrew Michael, works in the clothing business. He told me how he was once desperate to meet the then new managing director of a leading department store, Dawn Robertson. Frustrated after several attempts, he phoned her assistant and literally begged for an appointment, but to no avail. He then asked the assistant when Dawnâs next flight was, and said: âI donât care where or when, ask her if I can sit next to her.â They took a flight together and the rest is history. Dawn thought Andrew was crazy but liked his persistence. They both laugh about the story now and have continued to do business together. A flight to nowhere can lead to somewhere!
In business you are always selling: sometimes to external customers, sometimes to internal employees. When you leave home in the morning, turn on your charm. Be upbeat, be happy, smile, be interesting, and be helpful.
Successful people sell themselves every minute of every day. This doesnât mean you should come across as a slick salesperson, smarmy or insincere. The trick is to simply be sincere and charming. It is not terribly hard to doâit should just come naturally to most people.
Look closely at the leadership above you and try to find a great boss to work for. Itâs no different from when you attended high school or college. Think back. There were gre...