Six Career Lessons That Changed My Life
At different stages in your career, there are different lessons to pay attention to. I recently retired from a 40-year career (well, sort of retired – I’m writing a book now). Here is a bit of reflection on some of the most valuable lessons I learned along the way.
Career Lesson #1: Spend some quality time on the front line.
My first consequential job was at Macy’s in retail while going to college. At the time, Macy’s was the job to have. Great training, flexibility, convivial co-workers, discounts on clothes. It was here that I cut my teeth on the nuances of business and how to be an employee. I learned how to be managed (and to manage – I got my first management job here), to handle inevitable politics, to enjoy the confidence of your own paycheck and credit rating (all employees got a credit card). I also learned to sell, to serve customers, and handle their problems. I’ve since managed hundreds of employees and the best ones have almost always spent a few years in service work. Those gut-level experiences change the lens in which you see the world and, I believe, make you a better everything.
Career Lesson #2: Bad experiences can open up new doors.
I have a Bachelor of Fine Arts in design. I still use design skills and design thinking all the time. However, the one and only full-time job I had as a designer was not a good experience. Working for a small manufacturer, I faced harassment, discrimination, dirty working conditions, and worst of all, boredom. For me, basic design work was way more tedious than I had envisioned. At design school I worked on cool projects. Not so in that first job. I struggled to fill up my day with meaningful projects. I also had to face the fact that creative jobs (at that time) were few and far between and frankly, I was just not as good at design as others (maybe that’s why I didn’t get a great job). But the boredom gave me time to reflect on my next steps. A chance lunch introduced me to marketing and an Apple IIe PC showed up on the bookkeeper’s desk. I fell in love with both, opening a critical pivot toward a much more rewarding career.
Career Lesson #3: Skate to where the puck is going.
My Dad’s advice was to get into a rising industry. Boy, was he right! It’s a fact of economics that leaders get an unusually large piece of the pie and laggards get the crumbs – even if they do the same amount of work. Therefore, I echo my Dad - get into whichever industry, job role, company, specialty or whatever is growing. Let the rising tide lift your boat. For me that was technology. I leveraged my retail and design experience into a job with a tech reseller called Infomax that was one of Apple’s and IBM’s biggest dealers and in tech marketing I found my tribe (an extra bonus - I met husband, Bill!). Smart, interesting, people who wanted to launch an industry and do big things. Infomax got acquired by ComputerLand which became Vanstar. I ran the marketing function throughout these 13 years of growth, eventually becoming CMO. I met wonderful life-long friends, got my MBA, and learned something new every day.
Career Lesson #4: Choose the bigger life.
In keeping with my philosophy of leaning into growth, I moved into software. Working for Cadence Design Systems was the hardest job I ever had. The technology was alien to me and hard to learn (although I finally understood why even marketers might need to learn the periodic table of elements). The company was filled with ambitious rocket scientists (literally for many), on an amazing innovation run. That job was one amazing experience after another. World travel, a huge consulting project that resulted in economic benefit of an entire state, a catapult into the early web, an amazing social network that is still paying off. The steep learning curve was stressful but exhilarating. I’ve had many mentors in my career and the ones at CDS were some of the best. The job expanded my life in so many ways, pushing me well beyond what I thought I was capable of. Take at least one of these kinds of really hard jobs at some point.
Career Lesson #5: Maintain a beginner’s mind.
I got to Sybase when the company was at the beginning of a (successful) turnaround. After years of constant stretching and learning, it was now time for me to help others stretch. At some point in everyone’s career, they become “the expert”. The state of expertise is a dangerous place. You think you know things. You (kind of) do. But always on the horizon shimmers what will eventually change everything. Experts can miss these inklings. At Sybase, I ran product marketing and pioneered marketing operations. The turnaround experience was a parade of reminders that some things that shouldn’t work sometimes do and things that seem like a slam dunk sometimes fail. And what you need to expect - even welcome – is the unexpected, the uncomfortable, and the weird. Life is like a puzzle missing a few pieces. And those pieces, when you find them, change everything.
Career Lesson #6: Enable the next generation to take big dreams forward
Which brings me to my role as a research analyst at IDC, the job I just retired from. The career advice I take from here is still where I intend to invest and develop. Life has more meaning when you hook your wagon to a purpose that is too big to be achieved in your lifetime. IDC gave me the privilege to use what I had found along the way is my superpower – to ask the right questions, be curious about the truth and the ability to explain things. To make the world of marketing, of technology, and business more understandable, more useful, more civil. At the end of his career, Abraham Maslow (of the famous hierarchy of needs) left academia and began to help business leaders with their organizations. He came to believe, as I do, that the best place to help individuals was within the context of “the good community, the good organizations, the good teams” because “everybody works”.