Career Intensity: Business Strategy for Workplace Warriors and Entrepreneurs

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Chapter One

Compete in the Individual Economy

If you reap satisfaction, fulfillment, and financial rewards from your current job, congratulations! If, on the other hand, you feel overwhelmed and under-compensated at work, you’re not alone. According to The Conference Board’s Consumer Research Center, only half of the working population in the United States expressed satisfaction with their current jobs, and job satisfaction – regardless of income bracket – has been in decline for the past nine years. Similar trends have been noted for the workforces in Europe, Asia, and South America. Much of this dissatisfaction is explained by the increase in demand for individual productivity as a result of rapidly advancing technology.

By taking a strategic approach toward your career development and capitalizing on the shifting focus to individual productivity, your career will continuously increase in value. When you proactively market yourself to your company or clients, the demand for your services will increase. In essence, you will have employed the strategies of the traditional economy to position yourself as a leader in the Individual Economy. Your value to your current employer and to the world at large will increase exponentially, and you will gain an extraordinary amount of career satisfaction, fulfillment, and financial rewards.

Shifting Loyalties

There are two types of heroes in this world: Those who die nobly for a cause and those who live humbly for a cause.

My father is the second kind of hero. He worked for IBM for 40 years and his career was a model of loyalty, persistence and durability.

Loyalty is an important quality that was instilled in me by my parents. In growing up, my sister and I were taught to be loyal to God, Country, and IBM – in that order. Our family relocated on a couple of occasions so that my father could improve the scope of his career opportunities within the organization. Of course, decisions were always made in the context of what was best for our family, but nary a harsh word was spoken about the company that put the food on the table for so many years.

Twenty years ago, people would have accepted the longevity of my father’s career as significant but unremarkable. Such tenure symbolized a solid company that had the interests of its employees at heart. Today, when I tell people about my father’s 40 years at IBM, they are astonished. In the twenty-first century, a long career with one company symbolizes the staying power of the individual.

Over the past two decades, we have witnessed a seismic shift in loyalty, in terms of both the loyalty employers show their employees and the loyalty employees feel toward their employers. In effect, both the needs of individuals and the needs of companies have evolved over the years.

The best businesses in every industry are focused not only on how to succeed today, but also how to sustain growth and profitability for the long term. They realize that what works today may not work tomorrow, and that their currently successful strategy may be their competitor’s strategy in the near future. To maintain a competitive advantage, they must have the ability to nimbly move from one approach to another that will be even more effective down the road. Companies live and die by their ability to differentiate from one another and maintain that point of differentiation.

At the same time, the demands thrust on individuals in the corporate world have dramatically increased during the course of the past five decades. As technology advanced the ability to accomplish more with less effort, individuals have been called upon to perform tasks that previously required a team to complete. Processes such as Lean Management, Six Sigma, and Total Quality Management, along with millions of consultants, have streamlined processes to the point where maximum departmental or workgroup productivity can be identified and rapidly replicated. More recently, companies have realized that improvement at the workgroup level is not enough. Improvement or value creation must be taken down to the level of the individual. Throughout this process, the focus has shifted from businesses balancing the needs of their employees against the needs of their bottom lines to a nearly exclusive focus on how the individual can best serve the needs of the company.

Who, then, is ensuring that the needs of the employee are met? Whenever I interview a company executive, I ask him, “Who helps you manage your career and makes certain it is on the right track?” The person whose career has peaked at or below the mid-management level tends to provide an answer that references someone else – human resources, a boss, a mentor, and so on. The highly successful senior manager gives a strikingly different answer – one that reflects an entrepreneurial spirit. He invariably says, “I focus on my own career and development. My future is too important to leave in the hands of someone else.”

When it comes to managing their careers, today’s successful businesspeople – even those in corporate America – are thinking like entrepreneurs. They don’t wait for a roadmap to guide them or for a supervisor to tell them what to do. They work to increase their individual value and differentiate themselves from their competition by staying out in front of the latest initiatives. As a result of their self-analysis, they continuously adjust and improve their performance. In two words, they implement the practice of Career Intensity. In using this approach, they are rewarded with promotions and advancement. In effect, they are building equity in themselves – and that equity is portable. Unlike my father’s reciprocal loyalty to IBM, these individuals are committed to the companies for whom they work, but their ultimate loyalty is to themselves. This is the reason that, today, a successful individual’s 40-year career is likely to include tenure at multiple companies and a personal competitive advantage gained from focusing on value creation through continuous individual improvement.