As I See It: Citizen CEO
June 9, 2008 Victor Rozek
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Think of yourself as the CEO of your life. Your budget, like that of your competitors, is 8,760 hours per year. How do you vote with your time, money, and energy? What do you say “yes” to, and what do you say “no” to? Given all of your different personas (the goof-off, the responsible one, the dreamer, the provider, the visionary, the critic, the good child, etc.), which has controlling interest of the enterprise that is you? Who are the stockholders you are obliged to please? Who sits on your board of directors; and who has veto power? And, if you’re not fully enjoying your work, whose dreams you are living? Essential questions for anyone wandering erratically on the vocational path. It’s not uncommon to get waylaid–often for a great many years–while seeking the path that best suits us. So for the purpose of this discussion, let’s assume there are two kinds of people in the world: those who manage their careers and those who let their careers manage them. To be sure, there are external factors that influence the trajectory of a career, and we have assorted names for them ranging from luck to market fluctuation. These labels invariably have one thing in common: They are deterministic–which is to say, beyond our control. Still, in spite of the randomness and unfairness of life, there are those who manage to find the job they want, the compensation they need, and the fulfillment they crave. Resenting them (until you join their ranks) may be therapeutic, but it is far more useful to discover just how they mange it. To begin with, people who get what they want typically have a pretty good idea of what that is. They develop a clear set of criteria for employment and measure opportunities against them. “Criteria” are specialized beliefs about what’s important, which are used as a standard for judgment; and the more specific the criteria, the better the chance of finding a job that reflects them. At their most useful, criteria are based on values and therefore vary with context and individual. If, for example, I value freedom, travel, and environmental stewardship, my criteria for employment will be different than that of a person who values family, community, and making a contribution. In IT, criteria for a desirable job might include: the opportunity to use leading-edge technology; the chance to work with leaders in the field; having the choice to develop rather than maintain systems; being able to select projects that interest you; having the opportunity for promotion; attaining a management position; acquiring a high level of compensation; working for a socially responsible company; and doing meaningful work. Career choices, however, are often made by a secondary set of criteria that are held outside our conscious awareness and subvert our most deeply held personal values. Generally, people have both professed values and operational values, and they frequently sacrifice the former to the latter. Professed values tend to be abstractions, while operational values address more practical needs. And although the soul’s desire is to live in congruence with our professed values, we often make choices based on pragmatic considerations. Think of professed values as higher-level values, the ones we would publicly claim as being important: love, integrity, compassion, freedom, and so forth. Operational values are lesser values that influence our choices and frequently run our lives; values such as convenience, comfort, status, approval, and security. Conflicting values create turmoil because a huge source of our unhappiness is living out of resonance with our professed values. Therefore, before identifying job criteria it is useful to ask: Under what conditions do I sacrifice my professed values for my operational values? And how does that manifest in my career choices? For example: It is common to value creativity and sacrifice it to a paycheck. Or to value autonomy, and yet make career choices based on our parents’ desires for us. Many doctors report choosing medicine as a career because it was expected of them. Others work in the family business because they can’t say no. Thus, fulfillment is sacrificed for approval. In other cases, the desire for adventure is forfeited for stability, or time with family is sacrificed to ambition. Which is not to say that a paycheck, or approval, or stability, or ambition are unimportant. The trick is to build our operational values into our professed values so that we have a better chance of living them. If my family is among my highest professed values, and getting ahead is one of my secondary values, what job choice allows me to exercise my ambition while still offering me sufficient time for family? If I value creativity, what can I do that will pay me for being creative? So let’s say my job criteria are:
Given that list, it’s quite probable that few jobs will offer everything I want. The question then becomes: If I can’t get my first choice, is having my second choice enough? If I can’t have my second, but could have my third, is that enough? Unless there is compelling reason to do so, sacrificing the more important criteria for the less important will simply hasten job dissatisfaction. With financial pressures and family expectations, the choices are sometimes difficult and require the ability to say the word “no.” With all its negative connotations (implied rejection, disapproval, disappointing someone, appearing to be uncooperative), “no” can be a troublesome word; but the inability to say it renders one a prisoner. Saying no to others–or to opportunities that don’t align with our deepest values–is another way of saying “yes” to ourselves, yes to what we really want. Taking charge of our careers may also require unburdening ourselves of “tolerations,” those things that we tolerate getting in the way of what we want. Examples might be: having a messy, disorganized office; failing to keep up with technology; or not completing a degree. Of course, living intentionally just improves our odds, and no one has yet figured out how to account for–much less control–the X factors. There’s an ancient proverb that says, If you want to make God laugh, tell Him your plans. Hard as we try for control, there’s always a wildcard in the deck. Call it God, or happenstance, or fate, or random luck, or being in the right place at the right time; regardless of how the moment is later debriefed, sometimes the direction of a career is set in an unpredictable instant. Occasionally, people fail or get ahead through no fault or credit of their own. And whether we live our lives by default or with purpose, it certainly helps to have influential friends. Take Vern Orr. In the 1940s, Orr was an unemployed car salesman living in Los Angeles. In those days, to get your unemployment check, you had to go to the unemployment office and stand in line with other unfortunates. Since the queues were long, and the bureaucracy was ponderous, Orr found plenty of time to chat with the people in line, one of whom happened to be an unemployed actor. They became monthly acquaintances and over time developed a friendship. Thirty years later, when that unemployed actor became the governor of California, he apparently thought that Orr, the unsuccessful car salesman, was qualified to become the head of the California Department of Highways, and appointed him to the post. A decade after that appointment, a friend of mine, who was then a colonel in the United States Air Force, delivered a plane load of cargo to Asia. He was preparing to return home in the behemoth C5 transport when he was instructed to wait for a VIP passenger. A civilian and his wife, along with a sizeable entourage eventually arrived, and my buddy quickly realized he was playing chauffeur to the Secretary of the Air Force. During the long flight home, he had an opportunity to speak with the Secretary and knowing that the man had never served in the military and had no aviation background, asked him how he managed to become one of the highest ranking member of the U.S. military. That’s when he found out that the Secretary had been an unemployed car salesman, who had the good fortune of meeting Ronald Reagan. When Reagan left the governor’s mansion for the White House, he promoted Orr from overseeing California’s blacktop to managing the wild blue yonder. I guess the moral is: If you happen to be buddies with the President, career criteria matters less.
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