Career Management for Cubicle Warriors

Career Management Monday, December 15, 2008

When I took my first real job - you know the one you have to explain to people when you get out of college - I was pretty excited. Finally out of that school environment, past the theory, now on to the real world feeling.

My first manager asked me to act as if my area was my own business. So that’s what I did.

And that’s where the trouble started

When I acted on my own in what I thought were the best business interests, I got called into his office. It was explained to me that I couldn’t act on my own. I couldn’t make those decisions by myself; I also needed to consult with him and he needed to approve my decisions before I could implement them.

When I naively noted that he told me to act as if my area were my own business, he told me that I should act that way - only after consulting with him.

In other words, I had to have the “own your business” mindset, but “only follow my orders” implementation.

I never learned about managers

Growing up, my father owned a law firm. It was the largest law firm in the town I grew up in back in Wisconsin. Consequently, I never heard the after-work conversations about poor managers, lousy reviews, poor decisions, possible layoffs, great teams, big projects, new processes or multiple reorganizations.

Instead, I heard about working hard to bring in business, the need to work Saturdays to catch up on the billing hours for the week, problems of the associates and their work, signing over future income to the bank to make payroll at the firm, and how tough it was in August and January because people don’t pay attorneys those months - they go on vacation or recover from the holiday bills.

After I was told to “own my business” but “do what I say,” I realized I had never learned any lessons about working with managers. Because my father never had any.

Learning to stay employed

You might laugh, of course. But think about it: if you grew up with parents working for managers, you absorbed the problems managers cause and some tactics for how to work with them.

I never did. I had to learn how to stay employed - while I was employed.

It has resulted in life-long learning about surviving — and thriving — in a cubicle.

Career Management is about staying employed, not just finding a job

Too many people believe career management is about finding the next job. Most career sites will tout their expertise on resumes, interviews and learning new job skills. All of that is important, of course. But all of that is only a small part of career management.

The full picture of career management is staying employed. That means working with management. Working with teams. Understanding the politics of the situation. Working with people to get stuff done despite obstacles. Figuring out how long a position will last. Calculating the probability of layoffs. Putting one year’s take home pay in the bank to prevent stress from a layoff. Watching the company fortunes to decide if your employer will succeed in the marketplace. Watching other companies to discover new ways of doing work that will impact your career. Seeing layoffs your industry and determining when they might happen to you.

And a host of other skills too many to name.

It’s about staying employed

You’ll find some articles here on Cube Rules about resumes and finding jobs, of course. But most of the focus of the site is on all the rest of the stuff that goes into managing your career by staying employed.

It’s the next level of career management. The right level.

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