[Alice] was a little startled by seeing
the Cheshire Cat sitting on a
bough of a tree a few yards off. . . .

“Would you tell me, please, which
way I ought to go from here?”

“That depends a good deal on
where you want to get to,”
said the Cat.

“I don’t much care where—”
said Alice.

“Then it doesn’t matter
which way you go,”
said the Cat.

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland,
Lewis Carroll

TO ALL WHO FEEL STUCK
IN THEIR CAREERS AND DON’T
KNOW WHERE TO GO.

I HATE MY BOSS.

 

MY COWORKERS ARE FROM MARS.

 

NO PROMOTION
AND NO RAISE IN SIGHT.

 

IT’S DEATH BY
MEETING IN THIS PLACE.

 

CAREER DEVELOPMENT
IS A JOKE.

 

I CAN’T WAIT FOR
JURY DUTY—OR PERHAPS
JAIL TIME WOULD
BE BETTER.

 

MAYBE I’LL BE LUCKY
ENOUGH TO GET THE FLU!

I BEG YOU …

CAN YOU
GET ME
OUTTA
HERE?

You may think that getting ahead is 90 percent what others can do for you. Wrong! That 90 percent is what you do for yourself and for others.

Too many people today are helplessly passive when it comes to their careers. Maybe they think the company will develop them or they’ll be plucked out of the sea for some fabulous new opportunity.

The truth is, you get hired for what you can do but fired for who you are. So if you want to get ahead, start there—figure out who you are and the value you bring.

Job tenure today is a whole new ball game. These are the days of the career nomad, traveling from one opportunity to the next, whether inside or outside the company.

The numbers tell the story. On average, people spend about four and a half years in each job. Think about it—that’s barely the time you spent in college, and less than the life span of most TV sets. Tenure for younger professionals, who for a variety of reasons aren’t interested in hanging their hat at one place for too long, is even shorter: as little as one or two years. To put this in context, I will have about four jobs in my career. My five millennial children will each have about 30.

It’s no surprise, then, that the term “job-hopper” is no longer a pejorative. Being a “free agent” is the new reality. Two years in a job equates to two old-school annual performance reviews. That’s hardly enough time to be passive. To thrive, you need to take control!

Long gone are the days when success meant dutifully sticking to one company and moving up the ladder slowly, with a retirement party and a gold watch at the end. That’s what companies used to encourage. In those days, companies rewarded folks who were loyal, dishing out better pay, bigger bonuses, and corner offices with each promotion.

Today, there is no office. And the career development ladder has been mostly yanked away.

Careers are more like labyrinths. Sometimes moving ahead involves looping around first with lateral assignments to add breadth and depth. Don’t fight it—embrace it, because this dynamic is here to stay. This shift dramatically changes the parameters of how to manage careers.

But the fact is, people spend more time doing research when buying a flat-screen TV or a washing machine than thinking about how to get ahead in their careers.

It’s time to take control! No one is coming to your rescue.

10,625 days looking at a digital device

7,709 days sitting down

1,769 days socializing

240 days laughing

180 days exercising

90 days on the toilet

1 day crying

9,490 days sleeping

730 days commuting …

But not nearly enough time thinking about a career.

From where I sit, as the CEO of a global consulting firm that develops 1.2 million people every year and puts someone in a job every three minutes, I believe everyone can take control of their career—if they’re willing to do the hard work.

I wrote this book because the world of work is going through these dramatic changes, but the traditional career advice to guide people hasn’t kept up. There are millions of people like you who feel stuck and don’t know what to do. Or else they move from job to job, without a real plan of where they’re going.

In the following pages, I draw on my own experience as well as the perspectives and intellectual property of Korn Ferry, which has more than 50 years of expertise in recruiting and developing talent. Those five decades have allowed our researchers and scientists to compile more than six million data points on what behaviors get people ahead and which don’t. And we have a very unique resource, Korn Ferry Advance (KFAdvance.com), which acts like a gym membership for your career, providing constant care and nurturing to advance professionally.

Simply put, why not take advice from the ultimate insiders? If you do, it will make a real difference in how you think, act, and interact, so you can take control of what will become an amazing career.

Surely you can invest time in your career. You have the time, so why not use it wisely? William Penn said it best: Time is what we want most, but what we use worst.

So if you’re ready, let’s begin.

IT STARTS WITH YOU …

1. Awareness awakens! Before you do anything else, you need to look in the mirror. What are your values, motivations, strengths, and blind spots? Know yourself and manage yourself first so you can make a bigger and better impact. You must have a plan.

… BUT IT’S NOT ABOUT YOU

2. Unless you’re a sculptor working alone in your studio, chipping marble or molding clay, you aren’t a solo performer. Despite all the technological advancements of the past few decades, we still need to work with others. Doing that requires emotional intelligence and interpersonal skills—especially when dealing with that boss you hate and those annoying coworkers.

TO EARN MORE
YOU NEED TO LEARN MORE

3. It isn’t like microwaving popcorn on high. Advancing your career takes time and effort. That only happens by being a lifelong learner, driven by insatiable curiosity. You need to be learning agile—the number one predictor of success.

You get hired for what you can do but fired for who you are. So if you want to get ahead, start there–figure out who you are and the value you bring.

Awareness awakens!

I’ll never forget the date: September 4, 1984. There I was in my Brooks Brothers suit and my shiny new wing tips, carrying the hard-sided leather briefcase that was empty except for a handful of pens and pencils. Having grown up in a small town in Kansas, I’d never been in a skyscraper office building before I went on job interviews. But as a graduate of the University of Southern California and having passed the CPA exam, I was fortunate enough to receive several job offers from accounting and consulting firms. When I walked through the heavy oak door of Peat Marwick Mitchell (today’s KPMG), I felt like I’d arrived—until I met all the others.

There were 125 of us in that year’s class of new hires, and that was just in the Los Angeles office. Then they gave us the speech: Within two years, 50 percent of us would be gone—and even more within four years. Only one or maybe two of us would ever make partner.

Things started to change with the first assignment: Global merger? Massive restructuring? Takeover attempt? Nope—moving boxes.

I heard others complain, but I had worked summers in college as a mover—although not in a suit that I couldn’t afford to get dirty. I moved boxes all week, from office to office and between floors. When I was done with the boxes, I was given a phone book and a 10-key calculator and told to add the rows of phone numbers to sharpen my 10-key skills. Ridiculous busywork? For sure. But I did it without complaint because that’s what I was asked to do.

EARLY ON, I NOTICED HOW CERTAIN PEOPLE AT THE CONSULTING FIRM STOOD OUT BECAUSE THEY JUST “DID IT.” THEY HAD “HUSTLE.”

Early on, I noticed how certain people at the consulting firm stood out because they just “did it.” They had “hustle.” Over the years, I’ve noticed how hustle and hunger quash pedigree every time—even if someone is an Ivy League graduate or has a PhD. It’s been shown that people who have to scramble in their careers not only do well (and often better than their pedigreed peers), but they learn from their failures and end up in a career that yields greater satisfaction. If things are too easy or if privilege opens all the doors, the result can be misery and discontent—no matter how much money you earn.

All my young life, I hustled: delivering newspapers, painting houses, working construction—you name it. It wasn’t that we were poor; it’s just that we didn’t have any money. There is something about seeing, as a kid, all the furniture being repossessed and taken from the house that chills your bones. That image reminds me daily of where I came from and, more importantly, who I am.

My first real assignment at KPMG was doing inventory in a cavernous warehouse. My trial by fire was accepting (and drinking) a cup of coffee from the warehouse manager in a dirty mug he pulled straight out of the sink. As if to sanitize it a little, he ran the mug under the faucet for two seconds and used his fingers to wipe off the dirt. In doing this, I earned the respect of that warehouse manager, who saw that I wasn’t just another college grad who wouldn’t get his hands dirty. I had done this type of work before, from crawling over pallets to scaling piles of boxes.

Flash-forward nine years after that first job: I was among fewer than a handful of people from my Los Angeles “class” at the firm who made partner. Flash-forward 23 years to 2007: I became CEO of Korn Ferry. So much has changed in that time—successes and failures, all lessons I’ve embraced.

At the top of the lesson list: take control. You can’t expect others to get you ready for the next job or open the door to the next opportunity. You have to do it yourself. Second, stay humble, because humility supports lifelong learning. Third, you gotta have hustle.

THE PATH TO HUSTLE: TAKING CONTROL

Here’s the caveat: I can’t teach you hustle. If you don’t have it, if you’ve never had it, there’s nothing I can do for you. (And nobody else can, either.) That may sound harsh, but the brutal truth is, nobody can put in what nature left out. And even if you have it, hustle is hard to sustain throughout your entire career. People sometimes slow down at certain points and then have to get their mojo back later.

So, to keep that fire in your belly, you’ll need a plan—you’ll need to take control of your career. Here’s an obvious analogy: if someone told you that within two years you’d have a heart attack, you’d probably make some big changes immediately. It’s a no-brainer, because that kind of prognosis isn’t just a wake-up call, it’s a “shake-up” call. Nothing is as important as your health.

But what about the health of your career? What if you knew you were going to be fired in a year? Surely you’d make some big changes.

Too often, though, people get complacent. They settle into a rut until one day they wake up and discover that their company has been acquired, their boss has been fired, or they’re being downsized. They’re out of a job—and out of luck, because they have no idea what to do.

Or they do the opposite. While job-hopping is no longer a negative, they’re making leaps without looking. They’re bored, they want a change, something pays a little more—so they move. But they never stop to ask: Am I really learning anything?

Whether you’re lethargic or you’re constantly moving, you need to take control. Think of your career as a long game composed of many short moves. No one is going to do it for you, making sure that you’re progressing with each step and job change along the way. It’s all on you.

WHAT DRIVES YOU?

Let’s be honest here: taking control of your career is hard work—and you’re doing it largely on your own. You can’t wait for your employer to guide your career development. And if you’re making job changes every few years, even if your employer had a development plan for you, you probably aren’t staying anywhere long enough for it to take root and pay off.

To keep learning and expanding on your own, you need to be highly motivated. Otherwise, it’s too easy to get complacent and coast. The antidote is to be truly energized by what you do.

“Gus” had spent his whole life on the circus crew. For 60-some-odd years, Gus cleaned up after the elephants, a sweaty, dirty job that involved some (pardon the pun) heavy lifting. One day, the circus owner stopped by the elephant yard.

“Gus,” he said, “isn’t it time you retired?”

“What?” Gus replied with a shocked expression on his face. “And give up show business?”

Every job involves some degree of shoveling you-know-what: the problems, challenges, and difficulties (people and otherwise) that are endemic in any workplace. As a CEO, I can tell you there’s as much shoveling at the top as there is at the bottom; it’s just different “stuff.” Nobody escapes it. The daily grind, though, is really just the dues we all have to pay to do what we truly love—like Gus, shoveling behind the elephants to be part of the show.

So ask yourself: What motivates me? Don’t say money. Research shows time and again that it really isn’t most important. Don’t get me wrong, compensation matters, and it must be fair. (We have a whole chapter devoted to how to ask for more money.) But there is so much more to consider than just your current title and salary.

THE THREE COMPONENTS OF MOTIVATION

Motivation has a deeply scientific basis. One of our firm’s early thought leaders, the late David McClelland, published seminal books that addressed motivation: The Achieving Society (1961), Human Motivation (1973), and several others. In his breakthrough work, McClelland identified three motivators that have the biggest effect on behavior in the workplace:

Which of these three describes you? Does the desire for achievement (mastery) get you out of bed each morning? Is it affiliation (relationships and belonging to a group)? Or is it the desire for power (influence)? You may feel a mix of all three, but one is probably more prominent than the others. Plug into that motivation and find opportunities to experience it in what you do every day. This will increase your engagement as you take control of your career development. (And in the role of a manager, as we’ll discuss in Chapter Eight, “Managing for the First Time,” knowing which of these components motivates your team members will help you inspire them.)

As you tap into your intrinsic motivators, you’ll naturally feel more engaged and inspired. It will show in what you do every day. People will gravitate toward you. Your attitude will lift the altitude of the entire team—or maybe even the entire organization. People will want to engage with you and be part of your team, because let’s face it, everybody wants to be around a winner. And you will advance along the career path of your own design.

What Gets You Up Without the Alarm?

It’s 4:30 in the morning, and you’re so excited about your job you’re up before the alarm. In the darkness before sunrise, you’re furiously scrolling through texts, emails, and news on your smartphone as the java brews. If all goes well, you tell yourself, you’ll be in the office a good two hours ahead of everyone—not because you’re trying to impress the boss, but because you love your job.

Or maybe the alarm isn’t set for 4:30 at all. It’s more like 6:30, because you can’t think of any reason to get up early for, of all things, work! Even then, you aren’t out of bed. You hit snooze a half dozen times and roll over, dreading the cheerful looks you’ll get from your colleagues later this morning—that is, if you can convince yourself to get up.

So which sounds better?

To take control of career, you need to generate that inner pre-dawn drive—Google-mapping the fastest route to work instead of inventing ways to “legitimately” come in late. And you’ll need this sense of hustle day in and day out.

YOUR INSIDE AND OUTSIDE STRATEGIES

Over the course of your career, you’re going to pursue numerous opportunities, both inside and outside your company, and in all kinds of business climates—from strong demand for people with your skills and experience to more difficult times when companies are downsizing and competition is more intense.

But when you take control, it doesn’t really matter what’s happening “out there.” At all times and in all conditions, you must have both inside and outside strategies to keep your career on track.

It comes down to two words: indispensability and insurance. Inside your company, you want to be indispensable, especially to your boss. That buys you job security during downsizing, because you’re the last person your boss wants to let go of—you’re simply indispensable! On the outside, you have the “insurance” that comes from building relationships in your network and continuously looking outward as youtarget opportunities elsewhere.

When the opportunity is rightorwhen you need to make a move, you’re poised and ready. Most importantly, you never make a move because you’re panicked. Avoiding those desperate job changes is the number one thing you can do for yourself to keep from derailing your career progress.

YOU WANT TO BE INDISPENSABLE, ESPECIALLY TO YOUR BOSS. THAT BUYS YOU JOB SECURITY. YOU’RE THE LAST PERSON YOUR BOSS WANTS TO LET GO OF—YOU’RE SIMPLY INDISPENSABLE!

THE BRUTAL TRUTH

Be honest: As you read this advice, did you automatically think “I do that … and that … and that one too”? Really? If you do, then you probably are advancing regularly in your career. If that’s not happening, then you might want to reconsider what’s really your truth.

The problem is, people lie all the time, especially to themselves. They convince themselves that they’re go-getters, but the truth is that the last thing they went out and got was probably lunch. They’re complacent, walking around in a state of comfortable numbness. They think that time in a chair and doing a “decent job” will eventually get them noticed. The phone will ring, and a new job will await them—like they’ve won the lottery or one of those radio call-in contests.

That’s nothow it works. If you don’t wake up to this brutal honesty with yourself then you don’t have hustle. You’ll just keep hitting the snooze button on your career (and probably, literally, every morning). But it doesn’t have to be that way. You can become more engaged and motivated to perform at a consistently high level that leads to advancement.