Cubicle Warrior

Since this blog was introduced, I’ve written quite a few series on Career Management for the Cubicle Warrior. This page is dedicated to those series, giving readers old and new a place to review the writing on particular subjects.

Here’s the list, added to as our journey continues:

Cubicle Warriors — What it Takes. A series on the fundamental Cubicle Warrior Characteristics

The Interview Gauntlet. Points to consider for interviews

Leadership for Individual Contributors. Leadership in the trenches

Creativity and Innovation. Innovation and corporate culture.

Cubicle Warrior E-mail Tips. Tips on the second worst time waster out there.

Working with Management. What Cubicle Warriors need to work with the boss

30 Career Management Tips for Cubicle Warriors:

  1. Formalize your networking. An article about the need to have a systematic way of maintaining contact with your network.
  2. Save for a layoff day. The need to have enough savings so that being laid off doesn’t restrict your choices in taking the next position.
  3. Separate Career Management from a company. Do not depend upon a company to plan your career.
  4. Know why you work where you work. Unless you know why you are working where you are, you won’t be able to evaluate opportunities.
  5. Owning your mistakes. Just do it.
  6. Give credit to others. It takes a village and a team to make things happen — acknowledge the work done by others.
  7. Provide personal communication. Twitter is not personal communication. Talking to people is.
  8. Marketing AND delivery support our Personal Brand. It’s not just creating a personal brand, it’s delivery that confirms your personal brand attributes.
  9. Brilliant information filtering. Given information overload, a critical skill is learning how to brilliantly filter information to get to the right data at the right time for the right thing.
  10. Have a mentor. Having a safe place to learn about business and evaluate your opportunities.
  11. Understand your task requirements. Tips to ensure that what you think is your task deliverable really is your task deliverable.
  12. Watch what people do, not what they say. You will find you can adjust your work behavior with a person by watching what they do and make the adjustment, not what they say.
  13. Find your mud. Embrace your work by proactively looking for what is late, what’s going wrong, and what needs improving — before fixing something simple turns into a blowup.
  14. Review your interview with a friend. You are too close to your interview; a friend can help you see what worked well and what could have been improved.
  15. Document your accomplishments. You have an annual review, right? Documenting your accomplishments as you complete them will help with this critical review.
  16. Provide your updated resume to your new manager. Changing managers every six months due to reorganizations means your new manager doesn’t know your past. Providing your updated resume enables your manager to know your strengths and kicks off career management discussions.
  17. Update your resume. Your resume is current right now, right?
  18. Network through change. Don’t pull back on your networking because of changes in your life. Networking during this time is more important than ever.
  19. Manage E-mail. The tool you love — and hate.
  20. Have a work management system. Too many tasks, not enough time…you need a system to manage it.
  21. Do something proactive every day. You fight fires all day. You will continue to do so unless you do something proactive to get some of those fires out.
  22. Define your work. The challenge of all knowledge workers is to define the work. It’s not easy.
  23. Monitor your own goals. If you aren’t monitoring your progress against your goals, you’ll end up someplace else.
  24. Manage your meetings. The greatest decision making forum — and the biggest waste of time on the planet.
  25. Have a digital reference system. With so much information coming in to knowledge workers, managing the information is a skill needed for your career.
  26. Prototype your work. Check with your customer early in creating your deliverable so that you are on track with their expectations.
  27. Control distractions. Look — a chicken! What was I doing?
  28. Resumes don’t lie. So don’t.
  29. Cubicle Warriors are Leaders. Individual leadership counts.
  30. Enjoy your work. Otherwise, what’s the point?

Laid Off

In December, 2007, both my wife and I were laid off from our company. This series is about what we have learned and experienced in that time.

Goal Setting

The most used goal setting process in corporations is SMART Goals, for Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-bound. Here are your challenges as Cubicle Warrior:

There are other methods of goals setting. My favorite: WIG’s, or Wildly Important Goals:

More will come, of course. I hope you find these series helpful in your work.