Progressing At A Job  Advancing Yourself or Advancing Your Company ?

If you see this choice as the alternatives facing you then you are probably in the wrong job and possibly in the wrong company.  If you are ambitious to develop your capabilities, as opposed to simply developing your position, then you need to take every opportunity to advance your knowledge through relevant training and experience. If this in turn places you in the position of compromising the interests of your company, then the sooner this situation is identified and hopefully openly discussed and rectified, the better.  There will be instances, even with the best of wills on both parts, that an individual's ambitions cannot be accommodated in the current job, or even the current company.   However, if personal development is the primary objective then both parties should agree to the necessary change of circumstances in an atmosphere of goodwill, even if employment with a new company beckons.  This is the extreme case though, and it is normal for 'suggestions' and 'grievances' to arise during most people's employment, and for them to be amicably adopted or settled in the majority of instances.  There is no point in spending the bulk of one's waking hours discontent at the progress of your company if you have never made any constructive suggestions to improve matters.  It is equally pointless to continually bemoan one's misfortune, if one has never taken the time to constructively point out the source of your problem.  The key in both of these situations is to try to be constructive without letting ones emotions come ostensibly into play.

Most people's first promotions are based on the development of their basic skills and qualifications, plus relevant experience.  This raises two important issues in progressing your career and/or your position in a company, namely your training and your work-exposure.  Some who are particularly good students may be capable of training themselves with the minimum in the way of company-organized training, but even those fortunate enough to have this disposition may suffer if they are in the wrong job to advance their talents or their aspirations.  If one can quickly recognize this situation, then a lot of frustration can possibly be avoided on everyone's part if you are also prepared to take some control over your own employment destiny by tactfully and constructively raising the issue.  As an example, when 'serving my apprenticeship' as an engineering undergraduate during the summer break, I found myself in a position of daily transcribing hundreds of project activities to computer input forms, by hand.  After two weeks of this highly repetitive exercise, I asked the department manager if I could be assigned some new tasks to further my 'work experience'.  He informed me that unfortunately this was not possible, and I think unintentionally I had put him in an awkward position because he had full-time graduates spending the bulk of their time performing the same routine exercise that I was obviously already bored with.  The reasons qualified graduate engineers were content to do this work, was not my immediate concern, although perhaps more recent experience suggests that their 'commendable attitudes' may have eventually resulted in promotions to more senior management positions in the company concerned.  (It does appear contradictory that while technology, and our lives in general, change at an increasingly rapid pace, some larger corporations and government bodies insist on maintaining structures that can only discourage changes in senior personnel, and new views and ideas.  Within the context of the global economy, this lack of progressive thinking is likely to be a major handicap in the long-term development of both, and in the section of this book headed Role of The Government, it is suggested that recruiting policies should be reviewed.)  Keen and eager to advance my knowledge though, any such thoughts at the time of filling out more forms would have been dismissed contemptuously with the statement "Life's too short!"  Luckily for me, and in spite of already being labeled as a "trade-unionist" by some who were not used to receiving the unsought opinions of a young undergraduate, the manager responsible for overseeing my training at the time had me transferred to another department.   In this next department I quickly and enjoyably made my way up the learning curve, an experience I would have missed out on if I had resigned myself to further testing my patience and the patience of those working close to me.  (I must admit that my stars must have been well positioned at the time, because I even managed to win my one and only cash draw with a ticket I bought from one of my new colleagues - the prize of fifteen pounds was equivalent to nearly two weeks wages and was very welcome.)  As the saying goes, 'nothing ventured - nothing gained', but you first have to recognize that your current employment position may not be advancing your career objectives, whither through the work directly, or through the associated training.

For some, 'technical training' and the development of their basic skills will be a life-long process.  For others, the possibility of taking on a management position will arise, even if it was not part of the original plan.  Whether one should accept the challenge posed by the offer of a first management position or opt to continue in a position 'free' of the many responsibilities of management, depends largely on one's confidence and one's long-term career objectives.  However, this decision is perhaps more complicated than it appears at first sight.  A decision to shun an initial management position could be interpreted as a rejection of management (and perhaps your bosses), while accepting the challenge could lead to disappointment and even the loss of your job altogether.  The well-worn adage that 'the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence' can lead to undervaluing the rewards of your current position in favor of another.  This may happen even if there is not a significant rise in earnings associated with the increase in responsibility.  Unfortunately though, if you make career decisions on this basis, then not only is failure likely, but the job that you took for granted may no longer be available to you should you subsequently want it back.  The decision to enter management should be based on a clear understanding of what management is about.  An essential pre-requisite for any manager is the ability to efficiently communicate with others in the transference of knowledge and ideas.  'Strong inter-personal skills' are frequently identified in recruiting advertisements as critical, but their true relevance to management still appears under-appreciated in some quarters where 'best practice' is understood to mean 'more practice required'.  While some managers succeed in surviving in an 'ivory tower' issuing edicts via matron-like secretaries cum 'personal assistants', few without influential relatives, unnatural hand-shakes or 'school tie chums' can rely on climbing the management ladder in this fashion.  Assuming then that you have reasonable inter-personal skills, the next question to ask is whether you are truly comfortable with taking responsibility for the actions of others.  The best way to assess the answer to this question, is to examine your own life history to date, and ask yourself how much responsibility have you voluntarily assumed on behalf of others?  If the answer is none then your management baptism may be akin to jumping in at the deep end of a pool without even the barest knowledge of the 'doggie-paddle' to get you to a depth at which you can stand with your nose above water.

Other attributes that may make the difference between succeeding in management with a company and not, are professional ethics, multi-task planning/organization, efficient/effective delegation, customer service attitude, financial prudence, time-awareness, safety-mindedness and perhaps technical competence (particularly in a company delivering technical products or services).  Attributes such as leadership, innovativeness, marketing acumen, economic understanding and overriding absolute confidence, are essential to an entrepreneur attempting to create a new company, perhaps in a new field.  These qualities however, are not necessarily required by the bulk of managers in large companies where their roles have been clearly defined through the course of employment of their many predecessors.  In fact, to many whose most innovative thought occurred the day they sought a more enlightening atmosphere outside of their mothers' wombs, entrepreneurs and independent thinkers represent a serious threat to their own survival in a struggle that the most competent individuals in a dynamic world market should ideally win, but often don't.  This conclusion may be considered by some a sad indictment of modern company practices or by others an idealistic and naïve objective in the real business world of today.  The truth is that further thought on this contentious issue is probably not directly relevant to the question under consideration of what makes a good manager?  As indicated above, the exercising of 'entrepreneurial flair' is not a prerequisite to becoming a highly successful manager.   Rather, that if you recognize that you lack 'entrepreneurial flair', or any other business attribute, then you should work hard to create a team supporting your role in the company so together you can bring the influence of such attributes into consideration in your decision making.  Much of good management and good leadership is about finding the optimum balance of the ideas of others in taking the company forward as opposed to imposing one's personal opinions on all issues. 

Every job is different because every individual is different.  We all must determine our own confidence levels and if we do rise beyond the limit of our competence, recognize it and make the necessary adjustments to allow us to feel comfortable, but perhaps extended, in our work environment and in sufficient control of our own futures.  Assuming you want to keep your job, or perhaps progress further, here are some other thoughts:

Suggestions On Progressing At A Job 

There are many aspects of starting a job that are peculiar to the job itself or you as an individual, but there are some words of advice that appear to universally apply:

	Be constructive in your suggestions or say nothing at all - it is always much easier to be critical, and sometimes destructive, than endeavor to be constructive, but try to rephrase every critical thought as a constructive suggestion.  Often it may be better to simply keep your mouth shut, but this option should not be adopted in support of apathy or a personal 'shoulder affliction'.
	Don't take lack of response to your suggestions or ideas as a personal insult - while everyone should be encouraged to submit suggestions, one should remember that the larger the company and the longer the company has been established the less the likely-hood that you will present a totally novel idea.  However, every improvement in the work-place and in working procedures helps those concerned so if necessary be satisfied with small progressions instead of huge leaps because in total the former may represent a significant change in some people's lives.
	Avoid use of emotive words - words such as "ridiculous", "oppressive", "inconsiderate", etc, generally add little of value to any business communication, whether it may be an inter-office memo or your resignation letter, save to express your passion and perhaps lack of objectivity on the subject in question. One should also be wary of over-emphasis with words such as "definitely", "extremely" and "absolutely" which may have the opposite effect to that intended in undermining the case you are presenting.
	Don't stand still in respect of your own development - some people are so concerned with the training of others they forget that they also must continue to develop their own work skills and knowledge, others are simply complacent and believe in spite of changes they see around them that their job will remain and that they will remain in that job, indefinitely.  More and more people in the so-called 'developed world' are discovering every day that to stand still is in practice to go backwards and that this eventually results in losing one's job.
	Don't depend on a life-long future in any industry, it may be dying faster than you think - it is bad enough to make the mistake of following a parent into an industry that has no long term future, but you will have no one but yourself to blame if you not only lose your current job but are unprepared for any other job because you have made no effort to advance your skills beyond the minimum required.  In the past, industries that gradually declined because of more competitive infrastructures elsewhere, such as ship-building, steel producing, coal mining etc, were readily identifiable, even though some through force of circumstances felt they had no choice but to persist with the only work they had ever known.  But, tomorrow, the global economy will allow the less community-oriented multi-nationals to transfer jobs and perhaps whole industries, almost instantaneously by comparison, from one part of the world to another.  The only insurance you can take out against this possible outcome is to do the best you can at your current job while progressing your skills in readiness to do another job, unless of course you are successful enough or lucky enough to afford to retire early.

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