With economic prospects as an excuse or a reality, many companies are choosing to replace full time benefited careers with part-time or contract non-benefited jobs. Today, the average young person faces the prospect of having to make between seven and eleven job changes in his or her career. In today’s work environment being average means being hired and fired over and over again. Being fired and then scrambling to be rehired is stressful and rarely career advancing. It’s not fun if time and time again, as you get older and older, you have to be the new guy or gal.
As a Master of Success, it is important that you remain in control of your own career. This means that you work in a growth industry for a good company that appreciates your superior productivity and you receive commensurate compensation. If not, get out. Start actively planning your move to a better situation. A Master of Success is not going to sit around nervously dreading the coming day when someone you thought was your friend or some anonymous bureaucrat decides that you should be reassigned, relocated, merged, downsized or simply fired.
When you are alert and aware at work and you don’t like what you see or feel, you have three alternatives: find a better job, be your own boss as a commissioned salesperson or start your own business.
Alert and aware, you are sensitive to the corporate power centers. Who is really running the show? Is it the president, vice-president or general manager? Maybe it is a board of directors or a principal investor.
Perhaps the boss’s secretary, assistant or wife wields thumbs up or thumbs down influence. If there is a tangled web of internal politics over promotions and dismissals, are you willing to curry favor with the right forces? To advance your career, you might have to decide to play ball or find another job. Eyes and ears open, you decide before they decide.
