Winning: The Answers: Confronting 74 of the Toughest Questions in Business Today (13 page)

W
ithout doubt, the majority of the questions we receive, both by e-mail and in person, are about career management, or put less euphemistically, getting ahead. Some questions concern straightforward blocking-and-tackling issues, such as whether an MBA really matters and how to make an impact in a job interview. But others are more nuanced than that, involving complex life choices and sensitive situations with colleagues and bosses. Regardless, almost all career questions share one characteristic: emotional intensity. The drive to succeed is both deeply powerful and entirely personal. People want to move forward in life and in work—and as we say in the following group of answers—with the right mind-set, there’s always a way.

W
e can mainly help by telling you that you are not alone.

Many young people feel overwhelmed at the beginning of their careers. They see all their friends and classmates getting great fast-track jobs with big salaries—or at least it seems that way. They hear their parents telling them to work here or there, or get some graduate degree or other. And like you, they read books and take part in programs designed to help them with the “What should I do with my life?” question—but the abundance of answers only confuses matters more.

It’s enough to make you panic, which sort of sounds like your state of affairs. And that’s OK; it’s natural. But it won’t really help you move forward.

For that, you have to come to terms with the fact that most careers are not launched by a grand decision about where you want to end up and a clever game plan on how to get you there. No, most careers are iterative. They start with one somewhat appealing job—that is, a job that feels like it
might
be a pretty good match for your skills, interests, and goals. That job typically ends up being not exactly right, so it leads to a job that has a somewhat better fit, which leads to yet another job with an even better fit. And so on and on, until one day—often years from the starting line—you find yourself in the job you have actually been waiting for all your life, the one that gives you meaning and purpose. The one you wished you had known about back when you started but
couldn’t
—simply because you hadn’t started working yet.

But you know what? Even that “perfect” job will not be without its trials and tribulations. You may be at it for six months and then get a lousy new boss. Or your company may be acquired and your job may change or go away entirely. And your journey will need to start again.

Our point is, careers are long and unpredictable. They are rarely linear. They zig and zag, stop and start, and take many unexpected twists and turns. Hard work and talent matter, and luck will play a role too.

The key for you at this point is just to start. Learn about growing companies, emerging market trends, influential people, and new cultural phenomena. Talk with people in different professions and with varied life stories. Go on interviews. Ask questions. Mull it all over, with both your head and your heart. And incidentally, the latter will probably tell you at least as much as the former.

Then act—take a job. Remember, it doesn’t have to be
the
job. It just needs to be a job that feels good enough to get you going.

The job that
calls
you—the career you were meant for—will come. And it will be part of a life journey that you will follow, like most people, one step at a time.

Y
ou’re onto something with Portuguese, since it will give you a leg up in several markets with good potential, such as Brazil and some emerging African nations. But for our money, Chinese is the language to learn. In the span of your career, China could become the second largest economy in the world. Any European who can do business there with the speed and intimacy that fluency affords will be way ahead of the game.

As for what to study, if you want to be where the action is now and for the next several decades, learn everything you can about the confluence of three fields: biotechnology, information technology, and nanotechnology. For the foreseeable future, the therapies, machines, devices, and other products and services that these fields bring to market will revolutionize society—and business.

That said, when it comes to picking an educational field and ultimately a career, absolutely nothing beats pursuing the path that truly fascinates your brain, engages your energy, and touches your soul. Whatever you do, do what turns your crank. Otherwise your job will always just be work, and how dreary is that?

Y
our question reminds us of the time one of us was part of a hiring process where a highly qualified young job candidate strutted into the room and started his interview with the words, “So, let me get this straight. Do you ask me questions in this event, or do I ask you?” His bravado, needless to say, did not exactly win over any hearts.

You don’t have a bravado problem—quite the opposite. But it sounds as if you’re not winning over any hearts, either. We would guess that’s because you’re too tied up trying to win over brains with perfectly crafted answers.

That’s off track. Your résumé should speak for your credentials. Of course, you can use the interview to elaborate or fill in any blanks on your expertise. But based on your question, it seems more important that you show your potential boss who you really are. That is, a leader who cares about his work and his team passionately. A colleague who can laugh, listen, and worry. A real person with outside interests and friends, maturity and self-awareness, and the ability to connect emotionally.

Indeed, in any interview, your best selling point can be your authenticity. So, stop performing, and be yourself. The positive impact you long for is probably right inside you, if only you’ll let it out.

T
here is no question that an MBA puts a stamp of approval on your forehead. People like credentials, and although some MBAs have more prestige than others, any MBA separates its owner from the pack. A puzzling phenomenon to you, maybe, but nothing new.

But you have to understand something—the impact of an MBA is really good for only a year or so. It helps a graduate get a higher starting salary or land a better job out of the gate, or both. And it creates something of a halo effect. MBAs are presumed to be intelligent and capable; their bosses watch them hopefully and, in many cases, give them extra opportunities to contribute and grow.

In short order, however, an MBA’s
performance
kicks in, and in the vast majority of organizations, that is all that comes to matter. The MBA excels or sinks—and the advanced degree becomes forgotten either way. In business, your only real credential, ultimately, is your results.

So, when you see those MBAs around you who appear to be “automatic winners,” look beyond their diplomas. We would bet that they are doing a lot more than carrying around a piece of paper. Most likely, they are overdelivering on performance and buying into the values of the company, demonstrating them with their everyday behaviors. On top of that, they are very probably exuding a positive, can-do attitude, taking on tough challenges with a healthy mixture of optimism and realism. Finally, they are almost certainly making the people around them look good too, by sharing credit and building the team. In other words, we would bet they’re moving the company forward in some meaningful way. They’re making a difference.

Don’t get us wrong. We’re definitely not discouraging anyone from getting an MBA. It’s a credential with heft—it does help critical thinking and introduce you to important managerial concepts best taught in a classroom by a smart professor and debated by high-powered peers. It does get you a better starting salary and more early visibility. But an MBA’s leg up lasts for only a finite period, after which performance takes precedent.

So, look again. The “automatic winners” you see around you probably aren’t automatic at all. They’re successful not just because of a credential they received graduation day, but because of their performance ever since.

F
irst of all, forget some of the most basic habits you learned in school. Once you are in the real world—and it doesn’t make any difference if you are twenty-two or sixty-two, starting your first job or your fifth—the way to get ahead is to overdeliver.

Look, for years, you’ve been taught the virtues of meeting specific expectations. And you’ve been trained that it’s an A-plus performance to fully answer every question the teacher asks.

Those days are over. To get an A-plus in business, you have to expand the organization’s expectations of you and then exceed them, and you have to fully answer every question the “teacher” asks,
plus
a slew of questions he or she didn’t even think of.

Your goal, in other words, should be to make your bosses smarter, your team more effective, and the whole company more competitive because of your energy, creativity, and insights.

And you thought school was hard!

But don’t panic. Just get in there and start thinking big. If your boss asks you for a report on the outlook for one of your company’s products over the next year, you can be sure she already has a solid sense of the answer. So, go beyond being the grunt assigned to confirm her hunch. Do the extra research, legwork, and data crunching to give her something that really expands her thinking—an analysis, for instance, of how the entire industry might play out over the next three years. What new companies and products might emerge? What technologies could change the game? Could someone, perhaps your own company, move production to China?

In other words, give your boss something that shocks and awes her, something new and interesting that she can report to
her
bosses. In time, those kinds of ideas will move the company forward and you upward.

But be careful. People who strive to overdeliver can quickly self-destruct if their big, wonderful, exciting suggestions are seen by others as unfettered braggadocio or not-so-subtle ladder scaling—or both.

That’s right—personal ambition can backfire.

Now, we’re not saying to curb yours. In fact, you should have it—have tons. But the minute you wear career lust on your sleeve, you run the risk of alienating people, in particular your peers. They will soon come to doubt the motives of your hard work. They will see any comments you make about, say, how the team could operate better, as political jockeying. And they will eventually see you as a striver, and in the long run, that’s a label that all the A-plus performing in the world can’t overcome.

So, by all means, overdeliver—but keep your desire to distinguish yourself as a winner to yourself. You’ll become one faster.