Are You Willing to Move Carts?

The real reasons why some people progress and others don't

I have been looking for years to separate out the reasons why some people progress in their careers and others don't. Trying to understand what causes some people to be successful by most definitions and others to stay stagnant in their lives. On this quest of over ten years, I of course had my break through revelation in the most logical and classiest of places; the WalMart Parking lot.

As much as I live for wally world shopping trips, I declined to go in and volunteered to stay with two of our three children in the car. My wife, Alyssa,  took our youngest son, Grayson into the store on a life or death mission for M & Ms, which all parents know are a necessity for potting training at least one of your children (whether you want to admit it or not.) While she spent a solid five minutes in our shopping destination of choice (or lack there of), I got down to serious high quality observation and research on success that would make Malcolm Gladwell jealous.

Naturally the one parking spot that was open had carts near the front of it. Two carts in fact, pushed haphazardly up against the gold Mitsubishi in front of me as I pulled into the space. My first thought was to get out and put the carts back in the cart return that was only two stalls over but just then the people who belonged to the vehicle next to the carts came out of the store and delicately tried to get into their car without touching nor moving the carts. This was challenging because one of the two was right in front of the passenger car door. They successfully found their way into the vehicle and eventually pulled away. At this point, I thought, I am going to sit here and just watch what happens.

How to REALLY prep for an interview!

What do you do leading up to the interview? prep for a few questions, practice in the mirror, work on your smiling. All great but as they say this can potentially be "putting lipstick on a pig" if you don't have great experiences to draw from.

So what really preps you for an interview?

Good quality experiences are the basis for really good stories. Stories that of course have a great situation leading up to it, show what stellar behavior you chose to exhibit, and display how you achieved an award winning outcome. How you took on an extra project that changed not only the way your department does business but other departments throughout the company. How you had an idea for cost savings, that really didn't take any extra time but simply required you and your coworkers to start to work in a different way, and oh yes… this one saved your organization $27,000 in short order and lead to you getting a raise. People with experiences like these are the ones employers want to hire. These are even the type of people that are likely to get several job offers and have the ability to negotiate both salary and other terms of the position.

"But Scott" you say "I don't have any of these fancy schmancy experiences but I still want that Finance Manager job in that sweet office building down the road with a view." Maybe so but guess what? someone else who has great experiences actively improving her organization and getting results also wants that job. You will be competing against this person. Going up against someone who has great experiences in an interview is a little like the person who swims a couple of times a week in the pool at the YMCA, competing for a single spot in the olympics. Even if you get through the "elimination rounds" you will be able to tell very quickly by the rapidly expanding gap of water, who the star performers are.

Having great experiences can help you change career fields. One common language in many job interviews is leadership and influence around focused improvement. That is something all organizations are looking for and those are always transferrable skills and experiences. In fact what often stands out

Let's dig a little deeper to determine how we get there. How do you start noticing opportunities or problems for improvement in your organization?

Caring about what happens where you work is a start. Now before you launch into your martyr story about how much you care about this or that, I would challenge you to think about this: Does everyone else that you work with feel the same way about you; That you put yourself behind the needs of the organization and the people in it? That's where you start to notice opportunities to get an interview story. You get miffed a little bit when paper gets wasted or we are giving the customer a less than stellar experience. You start to cringe when you see that that since "we have always done it that way" it has lead to no shortage of missed opportunities and  extra expenses.

Another place you can start is by volunteering for projects, more responsibility, additional workload, to work with other departments, channels, or vendors. We have one person on our team right now that was promoted into position a year ago. Since then he has taken on the most challenging projects that nobody else wanted. He has since been very successful with each project. Through these he has achieved some amazing exposure working closely with other teams and at the same time stretched himself outside his comfort zone. Because of this he now has other experiences working with some of our senior leaders and at the same time has given himself a competitive advantage compared to other people in similar level positions. He will likely be very successful when a position comes open for promotion or if he wanted to go someplace else could probably get numerous job offers.

Think about it this way: If you were your own marketing or sales department for the company of You Inc, wouldn't you want to sell products or services that have significant differentiation from your competitors? That is exactly what you are doing here. Creating competitive advantage in the labor marketplace through the accumulation of the best stories is the best way to ensure that you can have the career you want. 

So remember before you get anywhere close to the actual interview the best way to prep is to say yes to experience.

The rest is as simple as just telling stories!

The Happiness Avoidance Problem

We all want happiness, right? So why is it that so many people are unable to get it?

It is remarkably sad that so many people end up devoting their life to things that don't make them happy. They don't intend to of course. It just ends up happening that way through decision after small decision.   I have worked with hundreds of people who have changed jobs because they felt like they weren't happy there. They have even gone so far as to identify what made them unhappy (the hours, the flexibility, the boss, the strange policy about beards and shaving). They then having felt good about saying "yes these things are what I don't want" make a jump to a new job and over the next 6 to 18 months, slowly feel the same way again. Only this time it might be new things, maybe this time you didn't anticipate there would be annoying coworkers or you got the inner cubicle where you had a sweet office all to yourself at your previous job. You think to yourself "unghh! If this  job just didn't have ____________________"

Many years later people have woken up and at that point devoted a lifetime to running away from something instead of defining what they want and going after it.

To understand how and why this happens, think about it this way. Each choice you make regarding your career can be for one of two purposes, It can be made with the intention of trying to do something that will remove something making you unhappy (like all of the reasons someone might leave a job after identifying what has made them unsatisfied). The other purpose for the choice can be to make a move to the things you have identified that will make you happy (this might be by clearly understanding what does make you happy and cause you joy)

When you read those last you sentences you might at first think "isn't that the same thing?" I thought this too for years. Here is why they are different:

• There are infinite possibilities to do things that avoid making you unhappy. If you successfully avoid a few of these that you have identified it does not necessarily mean you will be working in a role, company, environment, or situation that will make you happy.
• In contrast, there are a smaller and finite number of conditions that will make you really happy. Once you have Identified these the rest becomes less important.

I discovered this when my wife, Alyssa, and I had been having little catfights over the course of a few weeks. This was odd for us and I kept thinking "why is she doing this" it seems like I am doing everything possible to avoid her getting mad at me. I have done the dishes, I have vacuumed the house so she didn't have to, I got home early… And the list went on of things that potentially could make her unhappy.

After several very loud and somewhat less than polite discussions, we finally came to what she really wanted: conversation after spending all day with little kids at home. Adult conversation and feeling a connection with her husband was what really made her happy day after day. Both she and I hadn't realized this at the time and I obviously had been focused on eliminating the things that she didn't want.

After we discovered this, I began calling her and having conversations with her on the way home from work, then getting home and taking over dinner and attempting to continue the conversation with the kids hanging around my legs. All of a sudden, even though the dishes and all of those other things were still getting done, they just didn’t matter as much. She was getting what made her happy after having identified it.

Don't get caught up in this trap in your career. Focus in on the things that truly make you happy and NOT on avoiding the things that make you unhappy. You can do this by determining the things in the past that you have enjoyed at work or at home and not on the things you haven't. Make a list keep it and continue to add to it as you discover more about yourself. In short order you will have a better perspective on what really makes you happy. Which is all we really want anyways, right?