Maximize Career Discovery - Windows

There are many valuable methods of discovering the job that fits you like a glove. I like to call one of these methods “Career Windows”. They are views in to your talents, desires, and how God has wired you to meet a specific set of needs in the world.
There were seven or eight valuable insights, ideas, and tools I picked up in my Psych 101 class over 30 years ago. They include Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, Pavlov’s Dogs, and this one... the “Johari Window” model which was developed by American psychologists Joseph Luft and Harry Ingham in the 1950s, while researching group dynamics. Johari is just a combination of Joseph and Harry.

As you can see in the diagram, there are 4 boxes or windows.

The first window represents the things that you know about yourself and are readily available for all to see. This might be things like height, approximate weight, and muscularity. If you are 7 foot tall, chances are you know this and other people have noticed it too. Further, I’m betting a career in basketball has crossed your mind and probably others have made the suggestion.

The second window are things that for some reason are hidden to you, but can be seen by others. If you lack self confidence or you have lived or worked for an extended period of time in an environment where your strengths and desires weren’t valued, you may have become blind to them. In this case it may be helpful to get around someone who has the talent of seeing and calling out strengths in others.

The third window would include strengths, desires, or needs that you may know but for some reason may be completely invisible to most other people.

And the fourth window called “unknown” represents the strengths, desires, or needs that are buried or so obscure that only God can see them.

Marcus Buckingham has suggested that you are the best expert on yourself with regard to your strengths and desires. I tend to agree with where he’s coming from on that, but I’ve also watched him work with someone who needed a lot of help uncovering their top talents and buried desires. Many of us can benefit from someone else’s insight, especially as I already mentioned, if they are talented in doing this. I am also a big believer in prayer. I’m convinced that if we ask Him, God is all too willing to help us discover what He created us to be and do.

Pull out your notebook and set up one page for each of the windows. As you begin to fill out the second window, enlist the help of those closest to you. When you get to the fourth window, ask for God to give you insight in what He created you to do.

You might also consider setting up a section on each of the four pages including one for strengths including talents and skills. Set up another for desires including passions, interests, and things you enjoy and value. And set up a third section for needs to be met, especially noting those needs that you find particularly motivational. Blend these findings with the previous post on “Pointers”.
Get your notebook and start writing!

Maximize Career Discovery - Pointers

Pointers are sort of like bird dogs. My Grandpa Cobb had bird dogs all of the time I knew him. At one period he had two… Hap and Sis. They were both German Short Hairs and great dogs. I don’t remember as much about Sis but Hap was all energy and absolutely no sense. In reality his energy level was far beyond any creature I have ever known. How he ever contributed to my grandfathers shooting one bird is still a mystery to me. If Hap got out of his spacious backyard pen he would run all night chasing who knows what in the orange groves across the street. I'm not sure he knew what he was chasing. If you managed to get Hap on a rope or leash you better be wearing a good pair of leather gloves or rope burns were guaranteed. With the gloves, you better have good shoulder sockets and stay very aware of the tension on the leash. If there was much slack and Hap decided to run he would pull you right off your feet. Hopefully at that point you had the good sense to let go. I’m quite sure Hap could have pulled up two water skiers on a shore start if he had been given the opportunity.

With careers and callings, pointers are anything that point you in the right direction. They don’t shoot the bird, bag it, clean it, or cook it. It would be similar to a fish finder. As my Dad would tell you, these high tech gadgets don’t catch fish… of course you use dynamite for that….

Here is a short list of career discovery pointers:

1.  Experience - Awareness of strengths, passion, and need develop over time by involvement and observation of daily experiences. This usually requires reflection as well. My observation is that most callings or dream jobs come at least in some measure from this pointer.

2.  Clarifying Moments - A single pivotal experience can drop kick you into the right place. We often call these moments change, crisis, challenge, and even tragedy. But it doesn’t have to be something negative. It might just as well be an intense pleasure.

3.  Intuition - Some people just get an inner knowing of what they are supposed to do with their life. This nudge doesn’t always come young.

4.  Classes and Course Work - This is the biggest benefit of college from my perspective and why everyone should go for at least a couple of years… and probably go back every few years through out a lifetime. College has so many more electives and options than high school. A good liberal arts education is a good way to find out what turns you on. Start with Junior College and save money. Kick in the big bucks only as needed if there is really the benefit for a specific career.

5.  Job Shadowing - Go spend a day or two following someone around while they do their thing. This gets you past the glamour and into the trenches where the actual work takes place.

6.   Parallel Career or Volunteer Work - At one point I was taking course work toward a career in counseling. I found the course work riveting and could see I had some talent. For two years I volunteered with a crisis hot-line doing telephone counseling. I also spent a lot of time with those working on counseling degrees. At the end of the day I realized that counseling meant working with a lot of people that didn’t really want to get better. They went to counseling to feel like they were trying and show others they were trying…. But they weren’t really trying. I have a relative by marriage that is currently working as a medical tech with an ambulance company before he spends boat loads of money to go to medical school. This is a smart guy.

7.  Coaches and Counseling - Career Coaches and Counselors can be a big help. They don’t have to be professional or trained. They need to have the gift of insight with a little background and experience. Check out the Crossroads Career Network for some referrals. If you like what you see in this blog, I would be happy to explore working with you.

8.  Questions and a Notebook - A good set of questions with reflection over time is invaluable. You’ll get some of my favorites here.

9. Career Assessments, Indicators, and Tests - I’m going to review a bunch of these in the following pages and posts. Several are linked to the right. I am a big believer in the value of assessments. I actually recommend taking and even re-taking some over the course of a lifetime. Plan late December, early January, or your birthday to take a couple of new tests. These assessments also have limitations. They are one category of tool. Most people need a set of tools and rarely is one tool a magic wand or a magic key that opens the door all by itself.

10. Mastermind Career Group - Many people benefit greatly from an inner circle or personal board of directors. This might start out with some sort of networking group. Here again Crossroads Career Network has affiliated groups all over the country. Most people benefit from some kind of outside perspective, encouragement, and support.

Maximize Discovery - Dream Jobs

Richard Bolles writes, “This phrase “dream job” is widely misunderstood. It is commonly understood as a ‘cushy’ job: one with a large income, little responsibility, and loads of freedom to choose what you do day to day. What a dream job!


In real life, a dream job is not that, at all. It is not like a suit off the rack, one dream job fits all; rather, it is like a suit custom tailored for you, and only you. Your dream job is work that flows from, and has an essential connection to, who you are. It is a marriage of doing and being. It is work that fits you like a glove.

Last week (April 21, 2010) Oprah Winfrey interviewed Jenna Lyons, a creative director for J. Crew clothing stores, Buddy Valestro who is a Cake Artist know for his television show the Cake Boss, and Jeff Leatham, known as the Rock and Roll Florist. All three are “insanely great” at their jobs. Check out the link:

http://www.oprah.com/oprahshow/Go-Inside-the-Most-Glamorous-Dream-Jobs/1

After reflecting on the show I was struck by how well what they said matched Richard Bolles description. It was obvious all three worked their tail off with long hours. They all had large incomes but the jobs weren’t cushy and they each had loads of responsibility and pressure. They were passionate about what they did, they were talented, and they each served real needs for real people.

How they got these jobs were as different as the jobs themselves. Jenna loved fashion, knew it and landed an introductory job at J. Crew at age 21. She worked her way up. Buddy’s dad made him come to the cake shop and work as punishment for playing with matches at age 5. It was love at first sight. Jeff who was trained as model had a friend working at the Four Seasons Hotel, Los Angeles in the flower shop. He walked in one day and was so awestruck at the artistic aspect of the floral arrangements that he said, “I have to be a part of this”.

So here is three questions based on the above interviews:

What do you love?

What have you been exposed to where it was “love at first sight”?

What have you experienced and said to yourself, “I have to be a part of this!”

As we move through the next few days of posts, set up a binder or notebook. Jot down your thoughts and ideas. Invite God into the process…. And prepare to take action!

Maximize Your Career Discovery Process

I’m going to spend the next couple of weeks looking at different paths and places to look for an ideal career uniquely suited to you. I don’t believe there is any one best universal method. For most people this is a process and in some cases a lengthy one. In some career paths the discovery process will take place multiple times. You probably aren’t going to play professional baseball your entire span of working years. In fact, the chance that you will have one well thought out unified career path out of high school, college, or even post-graduate work is growing to be slim and none. The odds are it’s going to be messy.

There is not even universal agreement on how to describe this career thing you are looking for. For some it may be a dream job. For others a passion. Some are strength, talent, and aptitude oriented. Coming from a Christian faith perspective. I resonate with the idea of “Calling” and a belief that God calls us to complete a specific mission that He conceived before we even born. Our Scriptures talk about being knit together in our mothers womb and that we are God’s Workmanship created to do good works that God designed in advance for us.

Even if you believe that God calls like I do, I can’t offer a tidy formula. In the Bible God called Abraham, Sarah, Joseph, Moses, Joshua, Deborah, Ruth, David, Solomon, Elijah, Elisha, Esther, Nehemiah, Hosea, Daniel, Mary, John the Baptist, Peter and Paul in unique ways. In fact, for the most part the method of call was as unique as what they were called to do. God seems to love variety. I also think it’s fair to say that most of these people had calls that were developmental. They had steps or mini-calls that added up over time to a big call. Rarely was the path all mapped out clearly in advance either. In the book of Genesis, Joseph got his call in a couple of dreams but he wasn’t shown in advance how the fulfillment of those dreams would lead him through years of slavery and then prison.

Some people seem to have multiple careers over time that fit within their calling. Others have simultaneous mutually supportive parallel careers. By all accounts, the apostle Paul, who was responsible for the world-wide spread of Christianity supported his ministry by sewing together tents. Jesus was probably a carpenter until He was around age 30. Who knows, your real calling may not ever pay you a dime.

After having said all that, I’m convinced it is extremely valuable to continue growing in knowledge and awareness of what your good at and what you’re passionate about. As I’ve said in earlier posts I love to ask people what they are “Insanely Great” at. The answer is surely always at some intersection of talent, desire, and serving the real needs of those around you.  And because it's messy doesn't mean you can't work and re-work a plan.  You can bring order and clarity out of the chaos.  Keep reading!

Re-Charge Day

Deception #11 Bonus! - Depressing Job Statistics

In some countries, the number of job seekers is reaching unheard-of proportions. Ireland and Spain, two of the worse cases, are on their way to a 20% unemployment rate. Some American Counties face the same grim statistics. Merced County in California is just up the road from me. They found themselves a lead story in USA Today last month with unemployment figures hovering around 19%. In fact most of the counties around me including my own are at least in the 15% category. As part of Crossroads Career Network we had a booth set up at our local career fair yesterday. I only spent a few minutes because I had appointments set up on the coast. But just that few minutes almost hurled me into a panic attack. The convention center floor was wall to wall people looking for jobs.


The depressing job statistics deceive many people into believing that no one is being hired in this economy. But 162,000 Americans got hired in March alone: http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm

According to Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke 1.8 Million Jobs come open in this country every month!

If you have work, count your blessings even if it’s not your ideal gig!!!! If you are un-employed at the moment don’t panic. As the above numbers show, thousands of people are still being hired, just make sure you are doing everything you can to be one of them. Mass un-employment is a phenomenon that results from major economic shifts. Don’t take it personally. Just get into action.

How you handle the job statistics will somewhat governed by your unique goals, needs, and circumstances as well as the unique conditions in your area. Are you looking for Cash, a Career, or a Calling in this season of your life? I love to work with people around the whole "Calling" piece and ideally these all come together in one nice job package but in the real world you sometimes have to pull them in one at a time.
Here are some thoughts:
1.  Go Where The Jobs Are!  While jobs are being lost in certain areas and sectors of the economy, go to the places where you stand a better chance. Don’t waste a lot of time trying to find work in companies that are falling apart.
2.  Be Relentless In Your Search!  Don't post your resume in two places, try ten or twenty. Call up ten to twenty companies per day, ask to talk to their human resources manager, and present your skills.
3. Package Yourself Perfectly!  Polish your resume and your shoes. Polish everything.  This is a time to “Kick It Up A Notch”. Ask for feedback on your presentation.

4. Make Special Offers!  Offer to work the swing shift. Go to the location nobody wants. Propose a reduced introductory salary.
What ever you do… make sure you have made it very clear when you really want to work somewhere. This is not a season to be coy.  Follow up... and follow up again even a few weeks after you didn’t get the job. Often an employers first choice doesn’t work out the way they’d hoped. If you are waiting in the wings and easily accessible you might get a shot just because the person in charge of hiring doesn’t want to go through whole publicizing and interviewing process again.

If you want further advice in the form of a short, inexpensive game plan I reccomend The Job-Hunter's Survival Guide by America's top career consultant Richard Bolles.  He is the author of the best-selling career book of all-time titled What Color Is Your Parachute.  It comes out in a new addtion every year and I highly recommend it.  But this little book was written with the specific challenges of 2010 in mind!  It's less than 100 pages and designed to get you into action quickly.  Chapter titles include:

There Are Always Jobs Out There
How To Find Hope In The Midst of a Brutal Downturn
The Best and Worst Ways to Look for a Job
A Plan of Action, When Your're Out of Work

Buy it here or I'm seeing it at a many of the Fed X Kinkos locations!

Deception #10 - Depreciation and False Humility

Humility in our culture is often mistaken as thinking poorly of ourselves. This poor self-esteem translates into all kinds of destructive behavior in and out of the work place. In reality, humility is thinking highly of others. And really it’s kind of a package deal. If we genuinely look at ourselves grounded in a healthy self image we will think highly of others too.


7 Habits author Stephen Covey is collaborating with Jennifer Colosimo on a book that is just about to hit the stores called Great Work, Great Career. In the book they suggest: keeping track of accomplishments. Ask yourself and others, “What did you produce? How did your work translate into clear value for the company?” And regularly update a summary of what you do that combines your strengths and passions, along with what you’ve done to make a clear contribution.

If you have an iphone or ipad you might consider downloading the application based on the book. It has sections titled, “Know Your Strengths”, “Define Your Contribution”, and “Contribution Statement”. It is has some great video teaching segments and prompts you to answer questions like:


What unique knowledge, talents, or skills do you have that can help you make a contribution?

What job-related opportunities are you passionate about?

What is your real responsibility to your organization, to your customers and co-workers?

Deception 9: Seperating Work and Play

Most of us tend to separate our lives into life stages of playing, learning, earning, and playing again as we move into retirement. The most successful people I know collapse it all together and never stop.  The Pikes Place Fish Market in Seattle has built a whole workplace culture that turns a very tough job into play.  In the last few years they have taken that philosophy and exported into hospitals, classrooms, and nearly every type of work environment you can imagine.  I've personally visited the market several times and then had the opportunity to watch people's eyes light up as they see the possibilities for their own work place after going through a workshop based on this fish market.


Nicholas Lore is the creator of The Rockport Institute Career Choice Program in Rockville, Maryland. In his book The Pathfinder - How to Choose or Change Your Career for a Lifetime of Satisfaction and Success he shares a very useful Career Satisfaction Scale. Lore suggests there are generally 5 categories of career satisfaction which he also loosely places on a 0-10 Scale. What you see here is a description of the work as play people:

Level 10: Work Occurs As Passionate Play. His experience is that only about 10% of the U.S. Population fall into this category, not much different from the Gallop findings presented by Marcus Buckingham.

General Description: Looks forward to going to work. Work is seen as a vehicle for full self-expression, fun, and pleasurable. Difficulties are interpreted as positive challenges. Considerable personal growth and contribution to self-esteem is linked to work. There is very little distinction between work and the rest of life. Sense of purpose and making a difference. Uses talents fully. Work fits personality. Usually exhibits eagerness and alacrity.

Effect on Personal Life: Self-Actualized lifestyle. Generous with self, often participates in “service” to others. Loves life. Active participant in all aspects of life. Goes for the gusto, playful, high level of personal integrity. Self-esteem is very rarely an issue. Very significant increase in longevity and disease resistance.

Contribution to Workplace: Work is an expression of a clear personal purpose. Self generating. Does not need supervision. Very trustworthy. Will persist until objective is reached. Almost always contributes and is appropriate. Takes correction as an opportunity. The presence of a person living at this level raises others with whom he or she works.

“You have to pay the price for success” is still the mantra heard across America. But author/speaker Zig Ziglar wisely points out that “you actually pay the price for failure”. I think one of the biggest deceptions adults in particular labor under is that:

Play = Energizing
Work = Depleting

This is probably what most people experience at work. Some of us with church backgrounds actually justify this Biblically. We believe that work was introduced after the fall of Adam and Eve. But if you read the Biblical account closely we see that Adam was working quite happily before the fall. And if you believe that Jesus came to reverse what happened at the fall, then it must follow that we have a good shot at turning work into something that is energizing and fulfilling. That’s what this blog is about… How we can extend much of the mission of Jesus and make work the joy that God intended.

Deception #8 - Developing Weaknesses Into Strengths

Once upon a time, the animals got together and decided to start a school. They adopted a full curriculum that was easy to administer and designed to develop a well-rounded animal. There were classes in running, swimming, climbing, jumping and flying.

The duck was a very good swimmer… actually even better than his instructor. He passed flying but only barely, and failed running. Before long he was asked to drop swimming and stay after school so he could practice running. The running practice caused problems with his webbed feet to the point he became only average in swimming. Average was acceptable, so no one worried too much… except the duck.

The rabbit started at the top of his class in running, but he was asked to drop that and stay after class and work harder on his swimming. He developed a nervous twitch from so much swimming, and that negatively impacted his running.

The squirrel was naturally a fantastic climber, but he was constantly frustrated in flying class because his teacher wanted him to start from the ground. He regularly got cramps from over exertion and ended up with only a C in climbing and a D in running.
The eagle was always in trouble for being a non-conformist. In climbing class he beat everyone else to the top of the tree, but he used his own methods for getting there.

Then one day, a wise old owl came to be the new headmaster of school. He re-arranged the curriculum so that ducks could spend most of the time swimming, rabbits could spend most of their time running, squirrels could spend most of their time climbing, and eagle’s could spend most of their time flying.

The animals went on to get very good high paying jobs doing what they loved and were good at.


The End

I’m guessing your time in school may not have ended that way.

This is so ingrained in our culture. We absolutely believe that the path to success is more about fixing our weaknesses than amplifying our strengths. This has been verified by Gallup Polls and Surveys and can be confirmed in most families where a report card is brought home. Marcus Buckingham regularly tells the story about the proverbial kid who brings home 2 A’s, 1 C, and an F. Then he rhetorically asks which grade gets the most parental attention. In most every family the answer is the F. Buckingham suggests that the parents role is not to ignore the F but most of the attention should be placed on the A’s. My experience is that this suggestion is hugely counter-cultural. 80% of American families would place most of the attention on improving the F.

Leadership author and speaker John Maxwell has good way of explaining this. He will draw out a graph that looks something like this:

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

And then he asks if 1 is poor and 10 is great, where should you spend most of your time trying to get better. He recommends focusing on your 7 and 8’s because that is where you can make enough improvement to move into the circle of greatness. Maxwell maintains that most people can’t improve much more than two numbers on the scale. If you are a 3, the best you’ll probably ever be is a 5 no matter how hard you work. My experience and work in corporate America confirms this. My experience with golf actually suggests that if I am 5, if I work really hard I might actually regress to a 3. In an area of non-talent, hard work might actually send you backwards.

Note: The Animal School story is now in the Public Domain.  The above is an adaptation of a version by Don Clifton.

Deception #7 Demand Jobs

Some career advice revolves around pushing job seekers toward "In Demand" Jobs.  Sounds great on the surface but my advice is this...

Forget about the “hot jobs” and get in touch with what burns inside you!

Here is one of many such lists found in newspapers, magazines, placement offices, and the internet:

Career possibility #1:   Personal/Home Health Aide
Career possibility #2:   Medical Assistants.
Career possibility #3:   Mental Health Counselors/Social Workers.
Career possibility #4:   Network Systems and Data Communications Analysts.
Career possibility #5:   Computer Software Applications Engineers.
Career possibility #6:   Teacher.
Career possibility #7:   Paralegal/Legal Assistant.
Career possibility #8:   Financial Services.
Career possibility #9:   Accountants and Auditors.
Career possibility #10: Employment Services.

The problems with using this type of list are many but let me share just two:
1. By following the educational career path suggested to reach some of these jobs they may no longer be in demand once you complete school. In fact, if enough people follow this strategy that career may actually be over supplied with applicants once you are job ready.

2. For our purposes there is an even greater reason. This Strategy/Deception relies heavily on Trap # 5… that anyone can do anything. You may not have the talent to excel in one these areas. And if you do have the talent, you may not have the passion which drives the commitment to get really good.
Let me repeat:

Forget about the “hot jobs” and get in touch with what burns inside you!

It's Re-Charge Day!

Deception #6 - Degrees, Diplomas, Generalized Intelligence, Academic Scorecards, and College

Each of these could be considered an individual deception but they so often come packaged together that I will treat them as a connected group. I’m going to start with what I consider to be a wise quote from Warren Buffet. “Never ask a barber if you need a haircut”. Of course the implication is that they will always say yes because they have a vested interest in the answer.

By most accounts inside and outside, our educational system is broken. Forty years ago the United States had the number one educational system in the world. Today we stand at nineteenth. Approximately 6,000 kids drop out of high school every day. I have had numerous friends that work as educators. The reports of chaos and fighting are frightening… and that’s just the administrators. What they have to deal with in the classroom in beyond belief. What should be environments of help and hope toward a better future have become dungeons of discouragement and despair. And these are the people that claim to hold the keys to our children’s future.

The system is so flawed it’s hard to know where to start. There are pockets of greatness springing up all over the country. A teacher here, a school there, and even occasionally we see a whole school district excelling. But I want to address 3 flaws that we rarely here discussed in any forum on educational reform.
The first is generalized intelligence testing that has often come packaged as the Stanford-Binet which I believe is now in it’s 5th version. Although it is designed to access 5 areas including Fluid Reasoning, Knowledge, Quantitative Reasoning, Visual-Spatial Processing, and Working Memory it still cuts a very narrow swath in terms of possible talents that can be productively applied in ways that could make both a contribution to society and earn substantial income. As Harvard Professor Howard Gardener likes to point out, the Stanford-Binet and tests like it tend to erroneously ask, “How smart are you?” instead of the more helpful question, “How are you smart?” This simple reorganization of 4 words has enormous implications. The solution, which is already showing up in the more progressive learning institutions is the adoption of “Multiple Intelligence” concepts and methods in the classroom. I’ll talk more about this in later posts, but if you have children of any age, don’t wait to develop a working knowledge of these ideas. A good primer for the uninitiated is Thomas Armstrong’s Seven Kinds of Smart.

The second is Academic Scorecards, specifically the SAT, which is a college entrance exam. Educator Jennifer Fox reports:

“Since 1983, U.S. News and World Report magazine has ranked America’s 100 Best Colleges. This publication has changed the way parents and students choose institutions of higher education, leading them to believe that the value of a college degree is only as good as its brand name. For the past twenty-five years, this annual ranking system has almost guaranteed that SAT scores are considered the most important factor in college admission. In reality, SAT scores remain a notoriously poor measure of both student ability and likelihood of success in college.”

For a more thorough discussion of SAT’s I recommend Chapter 3 of Fox’s book Your Child’s Strengths. But my main concern is that the SAT like general intelligence testing focuses way too narrowly and leaves many children out who are very talented in ways not measured by this instrument.

My third topic of this education trap drives back to Buffet’s comment about “never ask a barber if you need a haircut.” Let me cut to the chase. The snobbery in education is appalling. We see it in many forms. There are Public School Snobs who insist that they are necessary. There are Private School Snobs who insist that only they provide a superior educational experience that will catapult your child forward to a place that will insure success.  And there are the College and University Snobs who consistently suggest that you can’t succeed or be a productive member of society without jumping through there often ridiculous ceremonious hoops.

Don’t misunderstand what I’m saying here. I believe a good education is critical in establishing the foundation for success. I’m just suggesting that our institutions aren’t as good or as necessary as they think they are in providing this foundation. And in many cases they actually confound, confuse, and destroy initiative and hope.

If you believe a college degree is a pre-requisite for success let me drop a few names on you. Each of the following either dropped out or never attended college in the first place:
Bill Gates, Paul Allen, Richard Branson, Lawrence Ellison, Kirk Kerkorian, David Geffen, John Richard Simplot, Theodore W. Waitt, Wayne Huizenga, Ralph Lauren, Joseph Albertson, Michael Dell, Stephen Spielberg, Harrison Ford, Harry Truman, Frank Sinatra, Tony Robbins, Erik Erickson, Eric Hoffer, Andy Rooney, Peter Jennings.

Many of them are billionaires. All of them have been off the charts successful. And this is only a partial list of some of the more famous names. I have quite a file going on these people. I could go on by telling you about the University of Chicago study that reports that those with college degrees have less sex and that those with post graduate degrees have the least sex of all. I could tell you about the 500,000 you would have in the bank at age 50 if you took your college $120,000 college education fund and invested it in a meager municipal bond paying only 5%. I could tell you about the fuzzy math educrats use to convince you that your earnings will be higher if you get a college degree. But I won’t...

Again, I’m not saying don’t go to college or don’t get a degree. In many cases college is a very useful step. In some cases like medicine it is a necessary step. College can also be a great place to explore and discover your passion. Use school and college as one tool in your bag on the road to a good education built around your unique talents.

Deception #5 - Dream It - Do It and Playing Checkers in a Chess World

I'm going to wade into a raging debate with this post. It's one that is going on in the background under the conscious radar of most Americans. Yet it really is raging in our boardrooms and classrooms leaving frustration and confusion in it's wake. In fact, everytime you hear an American President or some other respected person claim we are fallling behind in math and science, they are in some measure staking a position in this debate.

This deception also often comes disguised as “The American Dream”. It is the idea that most anyone can do anything they want to. It’s roots are deeply imbedded in Tabula Rasa (Latin: blank slate)which refers to the thesis that individual human beings are born with no built-in mental content, in a word, "blank", and that their entire resource of knowledge is built up gradually from their experiences and sensory perceptions of the outside world. It is supported by many psychological theories including American psychologist-educator-inventor-poet B.F Skinner who established his own philosophy called Radical Behaviorism.

Skinner believed and taught immediate positive and negative reinforcement and supported the idea that with proper behavioral objectives and feedback everyone should be able to learn anything and everything. Strengths in Education expert Jennifer Fox suggests, “this philosophy permeates education today and given the right amount of learning in a small enough dose, everyone can master the entire curriculum.”

It only follows that this idea is also deeply imbedded in the work place. Motivational experts now espouse a program called Nuero Linguistic Programming (Brain Language Programming) which canonizes a primary pre-supposition, “If one person can do something, anyone can do it”. It is rampant in all kinds of sales organizations and network marketing organizations that often teach that with hard work, anyone can be successful at selling.

A new brand of behaviorism is being led by Florida State psychology professor K. Anders Ericcson with authors Geoff Colvin, Daniel Coyle, David Shenk lining up behind him with books more suited for the masses. If you want to study their positions more closely I recommend:

The Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance by K. Anders Ericcson
Talent Is Overrated by Geoff Colvin
The Talent Code by Daniel Coyle
The Genius In All Of Us by Daniel Coyle

It is also well articulated in Malcolm Gladwell's recent work "Outliers".

If you want a free quick primer of the philosophy try the Harvard Business Review article:
http://www.coachingmanagement.nl/The%20Making%20of%20an%20Expert.pdf

They take positions that are extremely well reasoned, thought out, and articulated. The research is so extensive it seems to present almost incontrovertible evidence for the conclusions presented. Much or even most of the work has a strong factual and even in many cases helpful basis. But it is woefully incomplete more than it is wrong!

The problem in my opinion is that they seem to be ignoring loads of evidence and research that balance and complete the conclusions they present. Let me sum up this new body of work on behaviorism: “Talent and innate aptitude is of very little or no importance when it comes to world class performance. Desire, deliberate practice, and supportive environments over time alone lead to world class performance.”

In other words, they take a checkers position in a chess world! In some ways this simplifies management and throws us back into a world of “If you’re not performing, you either have a bad attitude or aren’t working hard or smart enough”. The problem is that this line of thinking is simply incomplete and will lead millions to frustration and often failure.

I believe that scholars Skinner and Ericcson, along with a host of motivators have significant value in inspiring people to reach their full potential and I am indebted to many of them. But we must move from the checkers mentality to a chess mentality. What is the essential difference between checkers and chess? Many would answer, “Chess is more complicated than Checkers”. Surely this is one right answer but why? One reason is that there are multiple pieces in chess with each one having different abilities to move on the board. The Rook moves in straight lines. The Bishop moves diagonally and the Knight moves in an “L” shape. In checkers all the pieces are the same. We live in a chess world and always have.

Motivator Zig Ziglar acknowledged this in some of his talks around the country. Often Zig has shared, “I don’t believe I could get in the ring with Mohammed Ali and win a boxing match no matter how hard I train… I’m too old, too slow, and too fat.” Most of us recognize this truth in the realm of physical talent. We don’t try to put 7 foot basketball players on horses and make them jockeys. We don’t try to make basketball centers out of 5 foot jockeys. We just need to realize that it extends far more widely than most of us realize. Zig rightly inspires us:

“Man is designed for accomplishment, engineered for success, endowed with the seeds of greatness.”
I couldn’t agree more. But we are designed differently, engineered uniquely, and each endowed with seeds that bloom in different shades and colors and hues.

My position is aptitude and talent based but completed and summarized well by the title of John Maxwell’s book, Talent Is Never Enough. Over the next few weeks we’ll be working through this critical foundational philosophy I first heard simplified by Dallas Theological Seminary Professor Howard Hendricks many years ago. It is generally supported by scores of leading edge educators including massive research by Harvard University Professor Howard Gardner, business authors Stephen Covey, Jim Collins, Marcus Buckingham, and Tom Rath,  the Gallup Organization and the father of Strengths Psychology Don O. Clifton.  It has deep spiritual roots in the Bible and deep historical roots in the writings of Buddha, Aristotle, Plato, Seneca, Rumi, Balthasar Gracian, Benjamin Franklin and P.T. Barnum himself.

 It simply states “Success comes when we:


1. Discover our unique gifts, talents, aptitudes, and abilities


2. Develop those gifts, talents, and aptitudes with attitudes,  skills, training, coaching, and supportive environments

3. Deploy or Deliver those gifts and abilities to a place that intersects with a need in the marketplace

It is actually in step two that the work of Anders Ericcson and the others becomes extremely useful. When built solidly on the foundation of step one and flowing into step three they have identified the “heart” of performance.... insanely great performance!

But first, we’ll look at a few more deceptions...

Deception #4 - Experience

When I was a manager responsible for hiring on the west coast, the two things we were taught to look for in the interview process was industry experience with the industry we were selling into and sales experience with a slight emphasis on the later.  But the truth was that some of our best people came with very little of either.

I’ll get help from Marcus Buckingham along with Co-Author Curt Coffman on this one from their management book, First Break All The Rules. This book is based on Gallop interviews with over 80,000 managers in over 400 companies. Buckingham and Coffman comment on the ill advised strategy of managers who select based solely on experience:  “Manager’s who place a special emphasis on experience pay closest attention to a candidates work history. They pore over each person’s resume, rating the companies who employed him and the kind of work they performed. They see his past as a window to the future.”

Buckingham and Coffman agree that experience can teach valuable lessons… but it fails to take into account the many kinds of talents required to get a job done. Conventional wisdom often suggests that somehow managers can teach talent, or at least teach skills that might somehow make up for talent.

From my perspective in managing for several years in a well known national company, this is acerbated by the fact that few organizations prepare their managers with tools that give any kind of a window into a perspective applicants actual talents. Work sampling would be one possibility. Having an applicant perform same or similar task simulations would be one way to get additional helpful insight. Strength oriented behavioral interviewing strategies would be another.

There is a lesson here if you in charge of hiring, but there is also a lesson when you seek work, promotion, or lateral movement.  What you've done isn't necessarily what you should keep doing even if you have been fairly successful at it.

Tom Rath in his wonderful book Strengthsfinder 2.0, shares an old Mark Twain story about a man who passed away and met Saint Peter at the Pearly Gates of Heaven. Believing that Saint Peter was very wise, the man asked a question that he had wondered about throughout his life.
He began, “Saint Peter, I have been interested in military history most of my life. Who was the greatest general of all time?”

Saint Peter responded, “Oh, that’s an easy one. It’s that man right over there.”

Confused, the man said, “You must be mistaken, I knew that man on earth, and he was just a common laborer.”

“That’s right,” assured Saint Peter. “But he would have been the greatest general of all time… if he had been a general.”

Rath goes on to comment, This story illustrates a truth that is, unfortunately, all too common. Far too many people spend a lifetime headed in the wrong direction. They go not only from the cradle to the cubicle, but then to the casket, without uncovering their greatest potential.

I don’t know about you but this story sends an uncomfortable chill down my spine. How many of our kids, spouses, friends, employees, or co-workers are currently spending most of their days engaged in those activities God designed them for. As I look around my world, I’d have to conclude, not very many.

Figure out ways to try new stuff...you might stumble across the your world class arena!

Deception #3 - Dollar Myths

Many would question or affirm the wisdom found in the lyrics of Country and Western Music probably depending on their appreciation of the style. With all do respect to Willie Nelson who sings Don’t let your babies grow up to be cowboys… make ‘em be doctors and lawyers and such… maybe we need to rethink that verse.


Both The Millionaire Next Door by Thomas J. Stanley and William D. Danko and the follow up book The Millionaire Mind penned only by Stanley were well researched, well-documented material on the background and behaviors of the wealthy in the United States. They both had a number of good useable principles and clearly communicated that most wealth is generated by great work as opposed to good investments.

But two points jumped off the pages at me. In The Millionaire Mind Stanley did the homework on how millionaires in this country selected their careers and line of work. Overwhelming, when given all kinds of options they said they chose based on aptitude or talent. In other words their own understanding of their individual strengths drove their decision far more than any other factor.

The second point was the shear number of different types of businesses the self-employed millionaires came from. Our culture would have us believe that only a few kinds of work really offer an opportunity for economic success. Look at the different kinds of businesses that produced substantial wealth and millionaire status:

Accountant, Accounting/Auditing Services, Advertising Agency, Advertising Specialty Distributor,
Advertising/Marketing Advisor, Aerospace Consultant, Agriculture, Ambulance Service, Antique Sales,
Apartment Complex Owner/Manager, Apparel Manufacturer-Sportswear, Apparel Manufacturer-Infant Wear, Apparel Manufacturer-Ready To Wear, Apparel Retailer-Wholesaler-Ladies Fashions, Artist Commercial, Attorney, Attorney-Entertainment Industry, Attorney-Real Estate, Auctioneer. Auctioneer-Appraiser, Audio/Video Reproduction, Author-Fiction, Author-Text Books/Training Manuals, Automotive Leasing, Baked Goods Producer, Beauty Solon(s) Owner Manager, Beer Wholesaler, Beverage Machinery Manufacturer, Bovine Semen Distributor, Brokerage/Sales, Builder, Builder/Real Estate Developer, Business/Real Estate Broker/Investor, Cafeteria Owner, Candy/Tobacco Wholesaler, Caps/Hats Manufacturer, Carpet Manufacturer, Citrus Fruits Farmer, Civil Engineer and Surveyor, Clergyman-Lecturer, Clinical Psychologist, Coin and Stamp Dealer, Commercial Laundry,Commercial Real Estate Management, Commercial Laboratory, Commercial Property Management, Commodity Brokerage Company, Computer Consultant, Computer Applications Consultant, Construction,
Construction Equipment Dealer, Construction Equipment Manufacturing, Construction-Mechanical/Electrical, Construction Performance Insurance, Consultant, Consulting Geologist, Contract Feeding, Contractor, Convenience Food Stores Owner, Cotton Gin Operator, Cotton Farmer, Cotton Ginning Owner/Manager, CPA/Broker, CPA/Financial Planner, Curtain Manufacturer, Dairy Farmer, Dairy Products Manufacturer, Data Services, Dentist, Dentist-Orthodontist, Department Store Owner, Design/Engineering/Builder, Developer/Construction, Diesel Engine Rebuilder/Distributor, Direct Mail Services, Direct Marketing, Direct Marketing Service Organization, Display and Fixture Manufacturer, Donut Maker Machine Manufacturer, Electrical Supply Wholesaler, Employment Agency Owner/Manager, Energy Production Engineer/Consultant, Energy Consultant, Engineer/Architect, Excavation Contractor, Excavation/Foundation Contracting, Executive Transportation/Bodyguard Service, Farmer, Fast Food Restaurants, Financial Consultant, Florist Retailer/Wholesaler, Freight Agent, Fruit and Vegetable Distributor, Fuel Oil Dealer, Fuel Oil Distributor, Fund Raiser/Consultant, Funeral Home Operator, Furniture Manufacturing, General Agent Insurance Agency, General Contractor, Grading Contractor, Grocery Wholesaler, Grocery Store Retailer, Heat Transfer Equipment Manufacturer, Home Health Care Service, Home Builder/Developer, Home Repair/Painting, Home Furnishings, Horse Breeder, Human Resources Consulting Services, Import-Export, Independent Investment Manager, Independent Insurance Agency, Industrial Laundry/Dry Cleaning Plant, Industrial Chemicals-Cleaning/Sanitation Manufacture, Information Services, Installations Contractor. Insurance Agent, Insurance Agency Owner, Insurance Adjusters, Investment Management, Irrigated Farm Land Realtor-Lessee, Janitorial Services Contractor, Janitorial Supply-Wholesaler Distributor, Janitorial Contractor, Jewelry Retailer/Wholesaler, Job Training/Vocational Tech School Owner, Koolin Mining-Processing-Sales, Kitchens and Bath Distributor, Labor Arbitrator, Labor Negotiator, Laminated and Coated Paper Manufacturer, Land Planning, Designing, Engineering, Lawyer-Personal Injury, Lecturer, Liquor Wholesaler, Loan Broker, Long-term Care Facilities, Machine Design,  Machine Tool Manufacturing, Managed Care Facilities Owner, Management Consulting, Manufactured Housing, Manufacturer-Woman’s Foundation Wear, Marina Owner/Repair Service, Marketing/ Sales Professional, Marketing Services, Marketing Consultant, Mattress/Foundation Manufacturer, Meat Processor, Mechanical Contractor, Medical Research, Merchant, Micro-Electronics, Mobile-Home Park Owner, Mobile-Home Dealer, Motion Picture Production, Motor Sports Promoter,
Marketing Consultant, Mattress/Foundation Manufacturer, Meat Processor, Mechanical Contractor, Medical Research, Merchant, Micro-Electronics, Mobile-Home Park Owner, Mobile-Home Dealer, Motion Picture Production, Motor Sports Promoter, Moving and Storage, Newsletter Publisher, Non-Profit Trade Association Manager, Nursing Home, Office Furnishings, Office Temp Recruiting Service, Office Park Developer, Office Supply Wholesaler, Oil/Gas Company Owner, Orthopedic Surgeon, Oversize Vehicle Escort Service, Owner/College President, Paint Removal/Metal Cleaning, Patent Owner/Inventor, Paving Contractor, Pest Control Services, Petroleum Engineering Consulting Services, Pharmaceuticals, Pharmacist, Physical and Speech Therapy Company, Physician, Physician-Anesthesiologist, Physician-Dermatologist, Physicist-Inventor, Pizza Restaurant Chain Owner, Plastic Surgeon, Poultry Farmer, President/Owner Mutual Fund, Printing-Self Storage-Farming, Printing, Private Schooling, Property Owner/Developer, Public Relations/Lobbyist, Publisher of Newsletters, Publishing, Race Track/Speedway Operator, Radiologist, Rancher, Real Estate Agency Owner, Real Estate Broker, Real Estate Developer, Real Estate Investment Trust-Manager, Real Estate/Broker/Developer/Finacier, Real Estate Auctioneer, Real Estate, Restaurant Owner, Retail Jeweler, Retail Chain-Women’s Ready-to-Wear, Retail Store/Personnel Service, Rice Farmer, Sales Agent, Sales Representative Agency, Salvage Merchandiser,
Sand Blasting Contractor, Sand and Gravel, Scrap Metal Dealer, Seafood Distributor, Seafood Wholesaler,
Service Station Chain Owner, Ship Repair-Dry Dock, Sign Manufacturer, Soft Drink Bottler, Software Development, Specialty Steel Manufacturer, Specialty Oil Food Importer/Distributor, Specialty Tools Manufacturer, Specialty Fabric Manufacturer, Speculator in Distressed Real Estate, Stock Broker, Store Owner, Tax Consultant/Attorney, Technical Consultant/Scientific Worker, Technical/Scientific Worker,
Textile Engineering Services, Timber Farmer, Tool Engineer, Tradesman, Trading Company,
Transportation/Freight Management, Travel Agency Owner/Manager, Travel Agency Owner, Truck Stop(s) Owner, Trustee Advisor, Tug (Boat) Services Owner, Vegetables Farmer, Vehicle Engines & Parts Wholesaler, Water Supply Contracting, Welding Contracting, Welding Supply Distributor, Wholesale/Distribution, Wholesale/Distributor, Wholesale Grocery, Wholesale Produce, Wholesale Photo Franchiser, Xerox Sales/Service

Now, if you read that list carefully I already know what you’re thinking… especially if you are a Willie Nelson fan. No where on that list of millionaires did you see cowboy. But if you did read the list carefully, right there at the end of line 7…. Horror of horrors, you’ll find Bovine Semen Distributor. I have to believe if you can make a million doing that, you can make it on anything.

Next time your son or daughter comes and tells you they want to go into some line of work that makes you raise your eye brow a bit… say bring it on.

Deception #2 - "Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up To Be Cowboys... Desire Of The Parents

We continue our discussion of culturally popular deceptions that might keep us from becoming world class at work or what I call "Insanely Great".  The last few days we've been looking at a deception called "Dead End Jobs".  Today I'm using a Willie Nelson song to cue up a deception I call the "Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up To Be Cowboys" or "Desire of the Parents" trap.  I don't remember being pushed into any particular career choice by my either of my parents.  As I've said in earlier posts, my dad owned a construction business and it would have been easy for him to have pushed me in that direction but he didn't.

Jack and Suzy Welch tell a story in their book Winning that represents this trap very well. A student was about to graduate from Harvard and he set up an appointment to get career advice from one of Jack’s friends who was very familiar with investment banking and management consulting. His friend reported that she answered each question the young man had very thoroughly and he took good notes but that he wasn’t especially curious about anything. After about 30 minutes he thanked her politely and stood up to leave. As he did this, he stuck his note pad inside a folder and she noticed that it was totally covered with very detailed drawings of cars.

“Wow, those are amazing! Who did them?” she asked.

In the blink of an eye the student was full of energy as he said, “I did—I’m always drawing cars… my dorm room is covered with posters and paintings of cars—I subscribe to every car magazine! I’ve been obsessed with cars since I was five years old. My whole life, I’ve wanted to be a car designer. That’s why I’m always going to car shows and NASCAR races. I went to Indianapolis last year—I drove there!”

Jack’s friend tried to convince the student that he actually belonged in Detroit or working for a car company. But she said he deflated just as quickly as he had come to life a few minutes earlier.

“My dad says the car business is not what I went to Harvard for.”

She wasn’t surprised when she bumped into the father a few months later and he proudly told her that his son was working 80 hour weeks at a Wall Street firm.

Jack Welch continues, “I know someone who literally became a doctor because his entire childhood his mother—a Polish Immigrant who loved the American Dream—introduced him by saying, “And here’s my doctor!” He didn’t hate the profession, but you’ve never met anyone more eager to retire. Welch summarizes his thoughts with this, “Working to fulfill someone else’s needs or dreams almost always catches up to you.”

Issac Newton followed his inner pull and became a world class physicist, mathematician, astronomer, and theologian. Imagine if he had followed his mother’s desire that he run the family farm. Dvorak and Handel were world class composers. Dvorak’s father wanted him to become a butcher and Handel’s father hoped that he would pursue law.

If you are a parent, your role should be one of objectively trying your best to help your child discover their own unique design, passions, talents and then support them relentlessly in their pursuit. If you are a child of a pushy parent, adult or otherwise, it’s critical that you respectfully listen to their viewpoint and then go on to be about following the trail of gifts and desires God has placed deep inside.

I love the Amplified Bible’s Translation of Proverbs 22:6

“Train up a child in the way he should go [and in keeping with his individual gift or bent], and when he is old he will not depart from it.”

Deception # 1 Part 3 - The Dead End Job

I never worked in fast food or as a clerk in retail but I spent many years working with my hands. My grandfather on my dad’s side was a truck driver, produce broker, and ag realtor who I remember as being quite handy with a set of tools. My grandfather on my mom’s side was a farm worker who approached his employer with the idea of planting cotton between the walnut trees he tended and parlayed the meager earnings into 4 ranches of his own. He was also an inventor of ag related equipment with a number of patents to his name.

My dad tore apart every nut and bolt from his first car and spread it all over the garage floor before rebuilding it as a teenager. He owned a gas station at age 19 and built his first house at 23. He is zeroing in on age 80 and just built a computer estimating program from scratch.


I worked hard, mostly with my hands, first in my dad’s construction business, then in my own small plaster/stucco business, and finally as a wall covering contractor. The last gig went on for almost 10 years until I reached my early 30’s. I was surrounded with talent, some of it world class, and I sought some of them out as mentors and coaches. One of them was Larry Spitler, an insanely great wall covering installer who traveled all over the country putting together teams that did installations on huge Las Vegas Hotels, commercial buildings, and high end homes. Once he came and helped me install a 300 dollar per roll hand screened silk from Thailand.

However the reality was that I seemed to inherit almost none of the aptitude for the environment I was planted in although it seemed so rich with opportunity. I left working with my hands in 1991 and never looked back. One thing I learned is there is abundant opportunity to build a lucrative career working with your hands if you have the aptitude and passion for it. But the opportunity is never enough. Another thing I learned is that there is a considerable bias in this culture against working with our hands regardless of the opportunity it may afford those so wired. I could feel this bias viscerally in the smallest interaction with the bank teller on days I made deposits and withdrawls in my stellar white wall covering uniform. The days I banked in nice casual clothing or even a suit brought slightly different but discernably better treatment.

Matthew Crawford digs into this bias deeply, first in an article he wrote for New York Times Magazine… http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/24/magazine/24labor-t.html and then in the book Shop Class as Soul Craft. Crawford writes:

“High-school shop-class programs were widely dismantled in the 1990s as educators prepared students to become “knowledge workers.” The imperative of the last 20 years to round up every warm body and send it to college, then to the cubicle, was tied to a vision of the future in which we somehow take leave of material reality and glide about in a pure information economy. This has not come to pass. To begin with, such work often feels more enervating than gliding. More fundamentally, now as ever, somebody has to actually do things: fix our cars, unclog our toilets, build our houses.

When we praise people who do work that is straightforwardly useful, the praise often betrays an assumption that they had no other options. We idealize them as the salt of the earth and emphasize the sacrifice for others their work may entail. Such sacrifice does indeed occur — the hazards faced by a lineman restoring power during a storm come to mind.

But what if such work answers as well to a basic human need of the one who does it? I take this to be the suggestion of Marge Piercy’s poem “To Be of Use,” which concludes with the lines “the pitcher longs for water to carry/and a person for work that is real.” Beneath our gratitude for the lineman may rest envy.


This seems to be a moment when the useful arts have an especially compelling economic rationale. A car mechanics’ trade association reports that repair shops have seen their business jump significantly in the current recession: people aren’t buying new cars; they are fixing the ones they have. The current downturn is likely to pass eventually. But there are also systemic changes in the economy, arising from information technology, that have the surprising effect of making the manual trades — plumbing, electrical work, car repair — more attractive as careers. The Princeton economist Alan Blinder argues that the crucial distinction in the emerging labor market is not between those with more or less education, but between those whose services can be delivered over a wire and those who must do their work in person or on site. The latter will find their livelihoods more secure against outsourcing to distant countries. As Blinder puts it, “You can’t hammer a nail over the Internet.” Nor can the Indians fix your car. Because they are in India.

If the goal is to earn a living, then, maybe it isn’t really true that 18-year-olds need to be imparted with a sense of panic about getting into college (though they certainly need to learn). Some people are hustled off to college, then to the cubicle, against their own inclinations and natural bents, when they would rather be learning to build things or fix things. One shop teacher suggested to me that “in schools, we create artificial learning environments for our children that they know to be contrived and undeserving of their full attention and engagement. Without the opportunity to learn through the hands, the world remains abstract and distant, and the passions for learning will not be engaged.”

A gifted young person who chooses to become a mechanic rather than to accumulate academic credentials is viewed as eccentric, if not self-destructive. There is a pervasive anxiety among parents that there is only one track to success for their children. It runs through a series of gates controlled by prestigious institutions. Further, there is wide use of drugs to medicate boys, especially, against their natural tendency toward action, the better to “keep things on track.” I taught briefly in a public high school and would have loved to have set up a Ritalin fogger in my classroom. It is a rare person, male or female, who is naturally inclined to sit still for 17 years in school, and then indefinitely at work.

The trades suffer from low prestige, and I believe this is based on a simple mistake. Because the work is dirty, many people assume it is also stupid. This is not my experience. I have a small business as a motorcycle mechanic in Richmond, Va., which I started in 2002. I work on Japanese and European motorcycles, mostly older bikes with some “vintage” cachet that makes people willing to spend money on them. I have found the satisfactions of the work to be very much bound up with the intellectual challenges it presents. And yet my decision to go into this line of work is a choice that seems to perplex many people."
The article continues. I encourage you to follow the earlier article link and even pick up the book.

....And his web site is… http://www.matthewbcrawford.com/

Re-Charge Day - Follow the 1 In 7 Prescription

Deception #1 Part 2 - The Dead End Job

We are talking about how to become World Class or what I like to call "Insanely Great".  Specifically, we're looking at obstacles in the form of career deceptions that tend to be very pervasive in our culture.  Yesterday we began delving into the dead end job dececption and how it manifests itself around fast food jobs.  Close behind flipping burgers would be the almost equally maligned “retail store clerk”. Marcus Buckingham shares the inspiring story of Tami Heim in his fantastic book, The One Thing You Need To Know. Buckingham begins:

Tami always had a fascination with stores. So great was her fascination that by the age of twelve she knew she wanted to go into retail. Actually, that not entirely true. She started playing store with her friends much earlier than that. But it was only as she reached age twelve that she started talking about it seriously.

She was urged by her uncle, at age sixteen, to test out her fascination by apply at a local department store. She applied at Lazarus in her home town of Indianapolis. She was told they weren’t hiring any part timers, but because she was unclear what part-time meant she sat in the waiting room all day in hopes she would get hired. She was finally granted an interview with the operations manager and her passion won him over.
At first she got all the tough jobs to show her that retail in real life wasn’t all fun and games. But Tami says she was addicted from the get go. She loved the immediate feed back of retail where if you change or move a display you can see right away if it worked. She loved the theater of it, the drama of every day putting on a show for thousands of customers. As she puts it, “I just couldn’t imagine anything more exciting than coming in every day and having a chance to do that.”

She worked at the store all the way through high school and through her years studying retail management at Purdue University. After graduation she was placed in a management training program and steadily moved up through the ranks from department manager, to manager of a small store, then manager of a larger store. There were setbacks along the way. Her parent company went into bankruptcy but through it all she maintained her passion.

Then one day Borders called. She was first hired as one of there territorial vice-presidents responsible for the western U.S. Only two years later she was asked to assume the role of company president. During her tenure profits shot up and the stock price grew 66%.

Patrick McCarthy arrived at a then small regional seven-store retail chain in 1971 at the age of 26. He had found his former job as a prison counselor frustrating and mentally draining and was looking for something he might have a better aptitude for.

Unfortunately he was ill-prepared for the job and as he says, “I made every mistake in the book”. As a beginner in the men’s clothing department he knew nothing about clothes and had no personal style. He wore his shirts too big, he didn’t know how to fold garments for display, and knew nothing of how to coordinate color and texture. Worse...after working at Nordstrom for less than two years, he had developed a reputation for being uncooperative, hard to manage, and not a team player.

But then things began to shift. He found a mentor by the name of Ray Black. A manager by the name of Patrick Kennedy took McCarthy under his wing and began to develop him. McCarthy says, about his 7th year his business started to come together an take off. At one point his client list included 40 lawyers from one firm alone.

After 30 years Patrick McCarthy retired in 2001 as Nordstrom’s All-Time Top Salesman. In fact… for 15 consecutive years, he was the number one salesperson through out the entire chain. If you feel a tug toward retail, I can think of no better primer than a book he co-wrote with Robert Spector titled The Nordstrom Way.
Let’s continue to establish, the only dead end job is the one you are not talented for and passionate about.

Deception #1: The Dead End Job

The Dead End Job Myth is pervasive in today’s American culture. We believe that certain jobs have no future. But as cultural architect, Erwin McManus states, “your future is within you”.

Probably no job is more maligned than working at a fast food restaurant. Most of us assume this job is beneath us and in many cases beneath our kids. With this in mind I clipped a lengthy article from my local newspaper back in 1996 and saved it away in a file. The article described the soaring career of Susan Steele:

“When Susan Steele began her climb up the corporate ladder, there was one question she repeated day after day: “Do you want fries with that?” That’s because the first rung on her climb was a job at a McDonald’s fast-food restaurant in Phoenix in 1972. Today, as vice president in charge of the chain’s Bay Area region she sits in her headquarters office in north San Jose, responsible for 500 corporate-owned McDonald’s outlets and 5,000 employees. Her question: ‘Why all the put-downs of fast-food jobs?

We resent it when people say, 'You don’t want to end up flipping hamburgers all your life.’

Steel started out after graduating early from high school making milk shakes and from there moved to the front counter. She gently pushed to work the grill which was in those days a male dominated job. She enjoyed it so much she changed her plans to pursue literature in college and put her initial career goal of teaching school on hold.

By age 19, she was newly married and supervising workers. She bootstrapped her way to swing manager and then moved into the salaried assistant manager ranks. “I made the decision not to continued community college when I was promoted to first assistant manager. I was thinking, ‘I really like this. I’m going to do this for a while.’” Five years after she mixed her first milk shake she was given her own restaurant to manage. Successful there, she was then asked to open a new McDonald’s. She was promoted to field supervisor over seeing relations with owner-operated restaurants in the region and then went to Chicago to teach classes at Hamburger University.

Then came a move to San Diego working as director of operations and then the move to San Jose overseeing the entire Bay Area. At that juncture she had become an officer of the company. Steele states, “I finally made that, in the time frame I’d set for myself. All the way along I had precise goals. I wanted to be at a certain place by a certain date, and I wanted to be very good at it when I got there, not just have a title.”

What are you insanely great at?  What could you be?  Be very careful you don't overlook a giant segue into an arena you have maximum aptitude for and might even love once you tried it just because it's not glamorous or culturally esteemed.  This is true at any age in life.  Check out the book by Michael Gate Gill who at age 60 had a mansion in the suburbs and a six figure job....then he lost it all.  He went from drinking lattes in his Brooks Brothers suit to serving them in a green apron.  After 25 years as a creative director with J. Walter Thompson Advertising, Michael walks to the Starbucks where he works in Manhattan and says, "I have no plans to retire".

Can you say Mcopportunity?  Can you say Star "BUCKS"?  Sure you can!  There are no dead end jobs… only dead end approaches and dead end attitudes!

Insanely Great... It's A Counter Cultural Idea

Why aren't you great right now?  Why do most people work in jobs and careers they are not very good at and even despise? 

It's great to be insanely great!
All the money is in being insanely great!
All the job security is in being insanely great!
All the fun is in being insanely great!
All the contribution and benefit to others is in being insanely great!

What's holding you back?  Often it's not what we don't know that hurts us... It's what we know that isnt' true!

I would argue that being great is a counter cultural even subversive idea and there are at least 11 deceptions or myths pervasive in our culture that are holding us back.  In order to advance to world class it's helpful to at least be aware of them.  Heres my list:

Deception # 1: Dead End Jobs Myth
Deception # 2: Dont' Let Your Babies Grow Up To Be Cowboys Myth (Parental Desire)
Decepton #  3: Dollar Myths
Deception # 4: Done It Before Experience Myth 
Deception # 5: Dream It Do It Potential Equality Myth
Deception # 6: Degrees: Generalized Intelligence, Academic Scorecards and College Myths
Deception # 7: Demand: Hot Careers Myth
Deception # 8: Development  - Weakness to Strength Myth
Deception # 9: Delineation Work/Play Myth
Deception #10 Depreciation  -  False Humilty
Deception #11 Depressing Job Statistics

Over the next few days, let’s look at them one at a time.

World Class, World Famous, Joe The Plumber, and Joe The Welder

I started a discussion yesterday about the importance of finding that niche where you are "Insanely Great".  By "Insanely Great" I mean "World Class" but not necessarily '"World Famous".  I have a meaning in mind much more like Dr. Martin Luther King who said, "Everyone can be great because everyone can serve".  We live in a culture that often values "World Famous" over "World Class".  But....after having said that, Proverbs 22:29 in the Bible tells us "people who are very good at their work will be honored by kings".

I’m writing this after the presidential election with Barack Obama facing off against John McCain. Toward the end of that campaign there was a big deal made about “Joe The Plumber”. In Mihály Csíkszentmihályi’s book “Flow” he talks about “Joe The Welder”. I actually prefer this story.


Joe is in his early sixties, a welder in a South Chicago plant where railroad cars are assembled. About two hundred people worked with Joe in three huge, dark, hanger like structures where steel plates weighing several tons move around suspended from overhead tracks, and are welded amid showers of sparks to the wheel bases of freight cars. In the summer it is an oven, in the winter the icy winds of the prarie howl through. The clanging of metal is always so intense that one must shout into a person’s ear to make oneself understood.

Joe came to the United States when he was five years old, and he left school after fourth grade. He had been working at this plant for over thirty years, but never wanted to become a foreman. He declined several promotions, claiming that he liked being a simple welder, and felt uncomfortable being anyone’s boss. Although he stood on the lowest rung of the hierarchy in the plant, everyone knew Joe, and everyone agreed that he was the most important person in the entire factory. The manager stated that if he had five more people just like Joe, his plant would be the most efficient in the business. His fellow workers said that without Joe they might as well shut down the shop right now.

The reason for his fame was simple: Joe had apparently mastered every phase of the plant’s operation, and he was now able to take anyone’s place if the necessity arose. Moreover, he could fix any broken down piece of machinery, ranging from huge mechanical cranes to tiny electronic monitors. But what astounded people most was that Joe not only could perform these tasks, but actually enjoyed it when he was called upon to do them. When asked how he had learned to deal with complex engines and instruments without having had any formal training, Joe gave a very disarming answer. Since childhood he had been fascinated with machinery of every kind. He was especially drawn to anything that wasn’t working properly: “Like when my mother’s toaster went on the fritz, I asked myself: ‘If I were that toaster and I didn’t work, what would be wrong with me?’” Then he disassembled the toaster, found the defect, and fixed it. Ever since, he has used this method of empathic identification to learn about and restore increasingly complex mechanical systems. And the fascination of discovery has never left him; now close to retirement, Joe still enjoys work every day.

Joe has never been a workaholic, completely dependent on the challenges of the factory to feel good about himself. What he did at home was perhaps even more remarkable than his transformation of a mindless, routine job into a complex, flow-producing activity. Joe and his wife live in a modest bungalow on the outskirts of the city. Over the years they bought up the two vacant lots on either side of their house. On these lots Joe built an intricate rock garden, with terraces, paths, and several hundred flowers and shrubs. While he was installing underground sprinklers, Joe had an idea: What if he had them make rainbows? He looked for sprinkler heads that would produce a fine enough mist for this purpose, but none satisfied him; so he designed one himself, and built it on his basement lathe. Now after work he could sit on the back porch, and by touching one switch he could activate a dozen sprays that turned into as many small rainbows.

But there was one small problem with Joe’s little Garden of Eden. Since he worked most days, by the time he got home the sun was usually too far down the horizon to help paint the water with strong colors. So Joe went back to the drawing board, and came back with an admirable solution. He found floodlights that contained enough of the sun’s spectrum to form rainbows, and installed them inconspicuously around the sprinklers. Now he was really ready. Even in the middle of the night, just by touching two switches, he could surround his house with fans of water, light, and color.
Joe is a rare example of what it means to have an autotelic personality, or the ability to create flow experiences even in the most barren environment – an almost inhumane workplace, a weed-infested urban neighborhood. In the entire railroad plant, Joe appeared to be the only man who had the vision to perceive challenging opportunities for action. The rest of the welders we interviewed regarded their jobs as burdens to be escaped as promptly as possible, and each evening as soon as worked stopped they fanned out for the saloons that were strategically placed on every third corner of the grid of streets surrounding the factory, there to forget the dullness of the day with beer and camaraderie. Then home for more beer in front of the TV, a brief skirmish with the wife, and the day – in all respects similar to each previous one – was over.

Lessons:

Joe discovered during his childhood that he like to fix things.

Joe got a job that he thoroughly enjoyed fixing things.

Joe developed his skill until he became the indispensable “go to guy” at his plant.

Joe continued to grow but declined promotions that would have taken him out of his area of success and enjoyment.

Joe refused to become a workaholic. He developed his time at home and with family in the same wise way he did at work.

Joe is my hero. I hope he becomes yours. The purpose of becoming “insanely great” doesn’t have anything to do with getting a glamorous high powered, high paying job. The purpose is to help throw you into the process of figuring out what your creator put your here to do. I’m still in process. I haven’t reached “Joe The Welder” levels of success, satisfaction, or significance in my day job. But I can see it on the horizon. It’s getting clearer. Stay with me as we move together through the process.

What Are You Insanely Great At?

Bruce Lee was great in the martial arts.  He had a physical gift and went on to develop it as the above clip suggests...almost beyond imagination.
 
One of my hobbies is collecting and asking questions that lead people to richer more fulfilling places in their lives. One of my favorites is “What are you insanely great at?” It is designed to get people to think about their strengths, talents, and gifts and how often and how well they are utilizing them in life and business. I believe we each have a unique contribution to make, something we were designed by our creator to do that is unique to each of us as individuals. He molded and shaped and formed us to fulfill a unique destiny, to play a special role in making this world a better place.
 

Getting a firm grasp on the answer to this question and regularly implementing it can literally transform you. Your satisfaction and significance will skyrocket and in many cases so will your income.Dr. Srully Blotnick did a study involving a cross section of 1500 people analyzing the common denominators of those who became wealthy. Out of that group 83 became millionaires. He found that the only common denominator was that they patiently and persistently worked in a vocation doing things they liked to do and were very good at. He outlines his findings in the book, Getting Rich Your Own Way. The book didn’t suggest that these people were ecstatic every hour of every day but that they were regularly and consistently absorbed, engaged, and enthralled with their work.

From a time management point of view or an income point of view, the biggest waste of your time is to consistently spend it on something you dislike and aren’t very good at. Usually they are the same thing. If by chance you are good at something you don’t enjoy, you will never be great at it. You won’t spend the time necessary to develop your talent. So find the strengths you enjoy using and pour your heart into those. This should be great news to those that have been exposed to the myth that successful people are those that spend time doing things they don’t like.

Leadership expert John Maxwell has a theory I completely subscribe to: On a scale of 1-10 with one being awful and ten being insanely great the most you can probably hope to improve is two notches. If you are 4 you probably have potential to be a 6. If you are a 7 you probably have potential to be a 9. So focus on the investing your time in places you are at least a 7 or 8 on natural ability alone. These are the places you can be insanely great by applying the necessary effort.

How can you know what you’re great at? The best advice I can give you is try stuff, notice results, get some feedback, and pay attention to what you enjoy. By the way, don’t focus only on feedback from others. History is paved with geniuses in every discipline who were initially thought to be very untalented. On the other hand if you are the only one that thinks you’re great, you may have a problem.

In the coming weeks we will also look at some "Strength Indicators".  These are resources designed to get you thinking about your talents, aptitudes, and gifts.  Most aren't tests in the purest sense but vehicles to point you in the right direction.