Day: December 18, 2007

business, career, dreams, happiness, work

Getting real to get "unstuck"

Christa Avampato

“With lies you may get ahead in the world — but you can never go back.” ~Russian proverb

It’s likely that the Russian who coined the phrase above was thinking about lies people tell one another to get ahead – in business, in relationships, in life in general. When I read it, I considered the lies we tell ourselves and how they distort our perception because if we lie long enough, we actually begin to believe the lies are true. And not only can you never go back; you also may have a very difficult time moving forward. Through lies, we get stuck.

Jim Collins has said that if we want to get great, first we have to get real. So how do we start on this path to real that will lead us to great? I try to start with a vision of where I want to be, regardless of where I am right now. And little by little I work my way back from the vision to my current situation, one very small step at a time. If I want to own my own business, I have to consider the actual tasks I’d be doing when owning the business, and then I’d have to envision what kind of people I want to work with, and then I’d have to think about what kind of service or product I’m supplying and how it’s being supplied, and on and on, until I get to my current work situation.

Getting real is much easier to handle when we break down reality into bite-sized pieces. And when we aggregate all of those small pieces together, we’re able to build a road that leads us exactly to where we want to be.

career, creativity, discovery, work

Rule breakers by nature

Christa Avampato

Every once in a while, I hear a broad, sweeping generalization that stops me in my tracks. Today, I was talking to someone about corporate recruiting at large companies and how much effort and funding they spend on recruiting and branding events at top universities. The trouble with recruiting the best and brightest to corporate America is that corporations don’t know how to keep them. Students from top universities don’t want to work for someone else. When placing bets, the students will bet on themselves. They’re bred to have a tremendous amount of self-confidence and they firmly believe that they know best. So, when confronted with a rigid corporation that can’t flex, they flee.

There are a few key qualifiers with this generalization. There are bright people at all schools, not just those with a high rank. I went to two fantastic universities, and I was very lucky to be a part of both. And while I met a slew of very smart people in both places, I also met a fair number of people who made me question the admissions standards. And to be certain, large corporations are not devoid of bright people. On the contrary, there are often many intelligent people rising through the ranks.

I don’t think it’s intellect that separates the different tiers of schools, nor the students who attend them. My belief is that it is all about attitude. From the time I was 18, I was held up to a ridiculously high standard in my academic life. Those without self-confidence didn’t make it through – the system beat them up and then beat them out. What top schools are left with are a student body who truly believes they can do ANYTHING so long as they work hard enough and want it bad enough.

And this circles back to the tough part for corporations: they don’t give the vast majority of team members the opportunity to do anything they want. Their rigid rules and love of processes stifle the very talent they worked so hard to get. A word to the wise: if large companies want talent that will drive growth and move the company forward, that talent must be given the latitude to do exactly what they were hired to do – think different and act accordingly.

The photo above can be found at http://picasaweb.google.com/kathryn.davidson/Penn/photo#5103173644839047218