Career Opportunities with Douglas E. Welch

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We have all seen them in nearly every place we work — employees that should have retired years ago. They do their work as if they are living in another era. They are left to plod along  in the same way they have for years while others have to work around them. What is odd is they are often old before their time. They might still be in the 40’s, but their ideas, preconceptions and actions are old, tired and ineffective. Worse still, what if you are the employee that everyone wishes would just retire? What does it say about you, your attitudes and your work? What can you do about it?

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It is human nature that we can all become set in our ways. Over the years we discover our likes and dislikes — what food we want to eat, what movies we like to see, what music we listen to. In many ways, that is not an issue. We are all allowed our likes and dislikes. In work, though, change is more intrusive. We are presented with new ideas, new methods, new systems and expected to embrace them, use them, understand them. This is simply part of working as part of a group. We have to find a balance between our own desires and the goals of the company. For many, though, change becomes a battle of wills. They cling to the old ways and refuse to adopt the new. In the worst cases, they actually sabotage efforts to adapt to change.

For many people, change threatens their place in the world. New technology may route around the hard manual labor they once did. New accounting systems may reduce the importance of their day-to-day work. New computers may require the learning of a new set of skills and software. This is where rebellion and rejection sets in.

So, how do you make sure you don’t become the person that everyone wishes would retire? First and most importantly, you must understand that change will be constant no matter what work you do or where you do it. Sometimes it will be dramatic change and at other times it will be slow and steady, but change is not something you can avoid. Embrace change in your life and your work and you will be happier and more effective. Stress rises when we try to ignore or sabotage change in a misguided effort to protect our position.

In the workplace, there are several important ways of addressing change. First, do everything you can to keep your skills and knowledge current and useful. No matter what you do, certain parts of your skills and knowledge will be made obsolete on a regular basis. This isn’t something to fear or hate, but rather accept. It is simply part of today’s work and life reality.

Take myself as an example. With each new version of Mac OS X or Windows, huge swaths of my knowledge are no longer as useful or necessary as they once were. Add in the slow decline of other software, Internet services and social media sites and I would say that perhaps 10% of my knowledge or more is rendered obsolete each month. While I have my preferences in what technology I use in my personal world, life (and technology) moves on — at an ever faster rate.

Next, when presented with change at work, see it as an opportunity to grow your knowledge and your career. If you are involved early in the process you can have a great effect on how it is implemented and spot any potential problems. You’ll be seen as someone who is ready to take on new challenges instead of being one of those known for resisting the change (and probably complaining about it loudly in the break room.) It is easy to see on which side of that equation lies advancement, pay raises and promotion.

Third, take on the role of advisor, not adversary when presented with new change. Show clearly and unemotionally where the change may cause additional problems, but do not become a roadblock. After my 30+ years in the work world, I can tell you that roadblocks always suffer 2 fates. They are either driven over or they are routed around. Either way, you will be left behind as change passes you by minimizing your productivity, your effectiveness, and very likely, your career. Roadblocks are the most common type of people that fellow employees and managers would like to be rid of.

Finally, if you find yourself resistant to change because it means too much work, too much energy, too much new learning or simply too much of anything — maybe it is time you did everyone a favor and retire. If you are too young to retire, then perhaps you simply need to move on to another job or career that is more adapted to your wants, needs and desires. Whatever you do, don’t be the person everyone else is talking about and wishing they would simply retire. Eventually you will “retire” in some way, whether you want to or not.

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This is the audio from my talk A Year of Visibility at BarCampLA-5 on March 1, 2008. 

One of the most important career moves you can make today is to “Show people what you do and how well you do it!” This call for visibility began in 2008 and continues as one of the main tenets of my carer building to this day.

Listen: A Year of Visibility

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More on Visibility…

• Video: Visibility and Your Career from LaidOffCamp LA
• Audio/Text: Raise your visibility to protect and enhance your career - Visibility in a down economy
• Video: A Year of Visibility from BarCampLA-5
• Visibility for You and Your Career from Career Opportunities Column
• A Year of Visibility Talk from BarCamp San Diego
• Douglas appears in “NewsHour with Jim Lehrer” Segment

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There can be many reasons for choosing a particular career. It might meet with your intellectual interests and native talents. It is an area of work that is becoming more necessary and more in demand. It has a large impact on your community and the world at large. It is satisfying to you personally and helps you to accomplish your personal, family and community goals. If these are some good reasons to choose a career, what is bad reason for choosing a career? Choosing a career because you think it will make you rich, famous or a combination of both.

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While being rich and famous are certainly not inherently bad, using them as the sole, driving criteria in your career choices is nearly a sure road to failure, frustration and financial ruin. When you are chasing the rainbow of fame and fortune, you ignore the better reasons for choosing a career. You begin to make choices based on dollars and cents instead on fundamental human needs like happiness, security and health.

A far better approach is to a choose a career you truly desire and seek out fame and fortune within that career. If you have a deep love and interest in a career, then you will produce your best work and increase your chances of success. You’ll work longer, harder and better than you ever would — or even could — on a lesser career. When you don’t love your career, you are simply putting in time, doing what you think needs to be done and not really accomplishing anything beyond providing for your basic monetary needs.

I am sure you know people personally who have decided that a job or career they hate is worth the money (and perhaps, notoriety) they gain. Look closely, though, and you will notice that they always complain about being too busy, too tired, or too fat. They themselves know that something is wrong, but they have no idea how to change things or escape the cycle that traps them in a career they dislike. It is obvious that they know their situation because they are constantly talking about the bad aspects of their career and talk very little about the enjoyable parts. They use vacations to exotic locales as an escape from their career — a place to avoid their work entirely for a short period of time. They try to escape, but quickly find that their work invades every aspect of their life, including their vacations.

When you decide to run the rat race that is fame and fortune, you are also in danger of becoming what we in the writing world describe as a person that doesn’t want ‘to write’ but rather wants to ‘have written.’ This person wants all the trappings of success while doing as little as possible. They will often admit to actively hating the work that their career requires. They will dream of future success, but yet do little to actually accomplish that success. They will talk for hours about “the book I’m going to write” but then fail to write even one page. For them, dreaming of the successful career they want to have is much more pleasurable than actually accomplishing it.

While I may see more than my fair share of this type of person here in Los Angeles, I believe they exist everywhere and in every possible type of work. Years ago, when IT was “the place” to have a career, I would often talk with people from all aspects of life who would tell me they were going to move into IT. When I questioned them about whether they actually liked dealing with technology, most responded that they didn’t care. They were going where the money was. They didn’t want to learn about DOS, network servers, Internet routers or deal with angry customers whose computer wasn’t working. They instead saw themselves as the manager (or even better, owner) at a large company with many minions at their control to deal with the “real work.”

I am fond of saying that, “Money should never be the sole reason for doing anything” and it applies to your career, too. Your potential earning, your potential fame, your potential power should never be the sole reason for choosing a career. Careers take hard work, a lot of learning and, at their core, a certain amount of love for the work. Without these, it is very likely you will wake up in 10-15 years poor, unknown and bitter that you never achieved the career your desired so much. Spend your time working towards a great career doing something you love and avoid the terrible career hangover you might experience down the road.

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Originally appeared on BiggSuccess.com

Career Success with New Media

We were happy to visit with Douglas E. Welch today on The Bigg Success Show today. Douglas is an expert on building the career you deserve and spreading the word about your talents using social media. Among other things, he’s the host of two great blogs and podcasts: Career Opportunities and Careers in New Media. Here’s a recap of the conversation:

Read Douglas talks with George & Mary-Lyn on The Bigg Success Show! with complete text transcript.

Listen to Douglas talk with George & Mary-Lyn on The Bigg Success Show!

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How long are you willing to wait for your company to get its collective “act” together? How long will you suffer through hiring freezes and a moratorium on raises? How long will you suffer a company whose planning, and treatment of their workers, is abysmal at best? How long will you wait before you look for a better job and a better company? You might be surprised at the answer.

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When?

Your problem is, when most companies propose a hiring or salary freeze they have no idea how long it will last. You never know if or when the next layoff is coming and the company will do everything in its power to keep that information from you. You never know when you might see a raise again. When faced with situations like this, where no deadline is given, you need to insure that you establish your own deadlines. How long are you willing to wait? When does a temporary setback turn into a long, slow slide to the bottom?

It has been said that those who are caught up in a layoff are actually the lucky ones. They are given a clear cut reason to go off in search of new work and, hopefully, new opportunities. It is the one’s left behind that really suffer. Workload increases as fewer people are expected to do more work. They worry about when the next layoff is coming and whether they, or their friends, will be on the list. The can foresee that raises and promotions will be a long time coming. Still, they hold on. They listen to every word hat comes out of the executive suite, trying to find meaning where there is often little to be found. They want to believe so badly that this is the last layoff and they convince themselves it is true, even when there are clear warning signs. Don’t fall into this trap and let your career stagnate or collapse along with your company.

What?

The next time you are faced with a layoff or other setback, start the clock running. Set your own internal deadlines. Will you look for a new job if there is another layoff in 3 months? 6? 12? How long will you go without a raise or promotion. A year? More? It might be a firm deadline to leave the company or a softer deadline to re-evaluate in x number of weeks or months. The truth is, there are no hard and fast rules about how long you should wait. You have to decide for yourself, based on your knowledge of the company and its current situation. This means that you have to revisit your deadlines again and again. New information will allow you to re-evaluate your position and adjust your deadlines accordingly. Anything is better than ignoring the problem and hoping it goes away.

What you want to avoid, at all costs, is simply moving from day to day and week to week with no idea when or if you need to find another job. I have known people who have survived 4 and 5 layoffs who still express surprise when their turn comes. How could they not see the writing on their friends’ pink slips? They, and many like them, simply chose to ignore the oncoming storm. They found it more frightening to contemplate a job or career change than face the reality of a faltering, and perhaps even failing, company. They simply waited until they were engulfed and only then started thinking of a way out.

How?

Take note of what is happening around you. Are your expense reports taking longer and longer to process? Are small perks like coffee and tea going away? Are there news stories of lost contracts, failed initiatives and executive turmoil in the newspapers? Are new projects being delayed or cancelled? There are more warning signs than I can possibly list here, but you already know what they are. If something feels bad, then it probably is, regardless of what spin the company might put on it. You must always remember that your company’s first purpose is to perpetuate itself. You need to behave in the same way. You must do what is best for yourself, based on the best information you have. Will you make mistakes? Will you abandon a company too soon? Possibly, but it has been my experience that companies that falter so badly that they need to layoff large parts of their workforce take years to recover, if they recover at all. Action is always preferred over inaction. Often you will find a better job than your current one, even if your old company does recover.

Don’t allow your career to drift along, hoping beyond hope that your company will somehow turn itself around. Too often, companies struggle along for years, promising their employees that things will get better, only to struggle for even longer. You need to direct your career and one way to do this is to be aware and thoughtful about your company’s promises. If you company isn’t offering you the career you deserve, find one that will.

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As you get to be older — I just turned 49 myself — there is a problematic thought process that can creep into your daily thinking. When you are faced with a new career challenge, a new career idea, a new career thought — you balk. You think about all the work that this new thought is going to require and you wonder if it is really worth the time and trouble. To use an older term, you get “set in your ways.” You find the status quo is a much easier place to live. In some cases, you might even be thinking, “Well, I’m not going to be around in this job (or at all) for much longer, so why bother with all this new work?”

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As you might imagine, thoughts like these can hinder your career at a time when it should be experiencing the most success. Let’s call it an advanced form of “senioritis.” I am sure you are familiar with that problem when it occurs with high schoolers and college students. They reach that final semester of their school career and they just stop trying. They want to simply coast to graduation. As you know, of course, this can often lead to some dramatic failures and a semester of Summer school — or worse.

Don’t let senioritis damage your mature career. You need to be as engaged in your career today as you were when you first started. In fact, you should be even more engaged, as you probably have a better position, better pay and, definitely, more power than when you started. It’s true that you might feel you have earned a chance to relax, a chance to coast for a little while. Unfortunately, as much as we might like to believe that this can happen, anyone who “coasts” — at any time in their career — could find themselves without a job. The world continues moving at high speed even if we are coasting, so if you fail to engage in your career you could find yourself falling further and further behind.

While you can’t just disengage and take your “senior year” off, there are ways of modifying or tweaking your career as you get older. First, you can use the power, prestige and goodwill you have created over your career to unload the most unpleasant tasks of your job. If you once had to travel tens of thousands of miles a year, perhaps you can bring in a newer, younger person to handle that aspect of your work. You can then be free to focus on higher-level issues like further building of the business that ensures it will long outlive your retirement and, hopefully, even you. While you can never earn the ability to coast, you can earn the ability to pick and choose the aspect of your job that you most prefer and concentrate your time and energy there.

It might seem counterintuitive, but you can, and should, find new areas of interest and possibility in your career and pursue those, as well. Remember, you aren’t “coasting” in your career, you are simply fine turning it to match your needs and desires as you grow older. Maybe you have always thought that a particular methodology or technology could greatly assist you or your company. Now is the time to dig deeply into an investigation of that methodology while others concentrate on the day-to-day operations.

Finally — and it all might sound a tad cliche — you can also focus more on becoming the wise old sage of your company or industry. The fact is, you will have seen a lot in your long career and those memories can be tremendously important and useful to others. This isn’t a call to stand in the corporate equivalent of your front yard shouting, “Hey you kids! Get off my lawn!” Rather your past knowledge, combined with new ideas, new thoughts and new, eager people, could create something entirely new and amazing. Your knowledge can help your co-workers avoid common pitfalls along the way to their own career success and help them move onto greater work more quickly.

No one gets to coast in their career, no matter what their age or seniority. Even more, you shouldn’t be seeking to coast out the remainder of your career. The later years of your work life are where you can have the most effect, the most benefit for both yourself and your company. Don’t be the senior in high school who didn’t graduate because they flunked that last chemistry class. Work hard developing new thoughts, ideas, businesses, successes so that you can move on to the next stage in your life confident that you have done your best work. Both your career and your life will greatly benefit.

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Dr. Rosanne Welch speaks on “Presenting Yourself Well on Paper” for CareerCamp Online 2009.

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From the archives, here is a video of Douglas E. Welch presenting on “A Year of Leadership” for the very first CareerCamp, CareerCamp Online 2009.

Can’t see the video above? Watch “A Year of Leadership” on YouTube

Subscribe to Douglas’ YouTube Channel | Watch the Career Opportunities YouTube Playlist

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What do you need to have a successful career? I think one of the most important parts of any career is finding work that you love to do. Great careers are not built on work you don’t mind doing or work you can do without any effort or work you can tolerate. Great careers are built on doing work that you love to do — work that you can’t imagine not doing — and work that excites you, invigorates you and gets you out of bed each morning ready to tackle whatever comes your way. 

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Does this sound like a fantasy? Does it make you think, “There can’t possibly be work like that for me!” The fact is, though, that everyone can and should find work that they love to do. Your future — indeed our future as a people — rests on more people finding life’s work through which they can dramatically heighten their effect on the world. The past is past and will not serve us anymore. America — and many other industrialized countries — are no longer worlds of manufacturing and hard, physical labor. The work world is now one of thinking and dreaming and acting to make those dreams come true. If you want to find your place in this new world, finding work you love can be an important first step.

I know, many of you might be thinking, “but work is meant to be onerous, dull and difficult. That is the way it has always been.” While that may have been true in the past, I don’t think it is a requirement for the future. Sure, you can stunt your career growth by failing to develop skills, failing to find your niche in the work world or failing to understand how the work world has changed. If you do these things it is nearly assured that you will have the type of career that was prevalent in the past. A career that is “nasty, brutish and short” to quote Thomas Hobbes. Today, though, you have a choice. You can work hard for someone else or you can work hard for yourself and your career.

If you believe that your work and career must be onerous, dull and difficult, then that is exactly what you will achieve. We are all burdened with concepts from the previous generations — and previous centuries. Some parents and other elders might explain to us that work is meant to be unpleasant — something you merely tolerate — rather than a place to find fulfillment. While this might have been more true in the past, here and now in 2013 there is no need for this to be true. We have more freedom and more ability to develop the careers — and lives — we deserve than ever before in history. We only need to reach out and grasp the opportunities we are given and stop trying to develop a career with a 19th Century mindset.

How do you find work that you love?

First, you have to discover what work you are most capable of doing. You’ll need to do some hard thinking about what natural skills you bring to the table. Are you good with mathematics, spatial concepts, logic, empathy, interpersonal skills? Then you need to think about how you might apply your natural skills to your life’s work. If you are empathetic and have good interpersonal skills, you might go into caregiving, psychology, medicine or a host of other people-related careers. Do you excel at logic and math? Careers in statistics, investing, and programming might hold interest for you.

The best thing about starting with this approach is that when you discover and think about your natural skills, it often points the way to your desires, too. If you have natural skills in one area, you may find that that is also work that you would love to do on a daily basis. This isn’t always true, of course, but following your natural skills certainly leads you in the right direction. Too many of us never think about our skills and our desires when building a career and we often end up in jobs that go against our own interests.

Once you have discovered your natural skill set, you can begin to look for work that builds on those natural skills as much as possible. While looking, think about ways that your skills and work might have great effects on the people, companies and world around you. Where can you do the most good for both yourself and the world? Where can you have the most impact? This is where you should focus your attention. In fact, that becomes a great early decision factor for accepting or rejecting any individual job. Is this a job/company where you can have great effect or will you be just another cog in the machine? Effective people build a career where “cogs” are simply replaced with another, similar cog, when the need arises.

If you need help in discovering your natural skills — and your career likes and dislikes, please take a look at my book, Career Compass: Finding Your Career North. There I detail a method of discovering the work that you love to do and also the work you most dislike. With this knowledge you can begin seeking out and accepting jobs that will lead to your great career and not some poor duplicate of your parents’ — or even worse, grandparents’ — careers.

I believe that you might do adequate work in a job or career you do not love. You might even, on occasion, do good work. I also believe, though, that you can never do GREAT work at a job or career that you do not love. Love is an essential ingredient in any great career. Love allows you to grow. Love gives you the energy and drive to work hard — perhaps harder than ever before. Love drives you to acquire new skills, new knowledge and new insights so you can have even more effect on the world. Love is what keeps you working when faced with difficult challenges. Love is what helps you build the career you deserve!

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When we are working, we often think about what those hours will buy. Is this part of a new car, a new HDTV, a new house? We think in terms of money — how much per hour, how much we need to cover our credit card bills, how much to pay the mortgage? I believe, however, that we are buying something much more important with our work hours — something much more precious. We are not just making money or buying “things”, we are actually purchasing little pieces of freedom. When you think about work in this way, it takes on even greater importance in our lives.
Not money or things

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While we might like to believe we have unlimited freedom in today’s society, if you look at your life you will see that that is not quite the case. We have to make compromises every day. We have to make enough money to support ourselves and our families. We have to live where there are sufficient jobs. We have to live in houses that look like all the others. We systematically sell pieces of our freedom so that we may live.

That said, we also need to consider the possibility of buying back some of that freedom every day. Saving money, under-consuming and focusing on those things that are truly important to us can take back moments of freedom that money alone cannot buy. Sometimes we even have to sacrifice money and possessions to regain large chunks of freedom that our friends and neighbors only dream about.

The freedom to…

So what are these moments of freedom?. I will use a few examples from my own life. Over that last 10 years, both my wife and I have “sacrificed” a more “normal” lifestyle in order to achieve a large degree of personal freedom. Sure, we have to work. We have to make money. We have to pay our pills, but we do this more as necessity rather than a focus of our lives. We have given up the stability, prestige and monetary benefits of corporate jobs, but we have gained much more. We gain the freedom to be available to pick up our son each day at school. Since we establish our own work schedules, we can decide to go to the beach on a Wednesday when it’s less crowded and work on Saturday. To a large degree we can choose who we work for and the work that we do. Each hour I spend working yields even more hours of freedom.

We also gain the freedom to be able to work wherever we might be. Sure, my computer consulting business mainly ties me to the city, but I often support clients who travel all over the country. I am also confident that, if necessary or desired, I could reestablish my business in any city of significant size. I have the freedom to work for one person, one company or many, which keeps me from depending on any one source for my income.

Too often, people give lip service to the concept of a balanced career. They complain that they want more time with their family, but they aren’t prepared to give up the 100 inch plasma TV in order to have that time. They feel trapped in their jobs because they have so over-extended their income in buying the trappings of a good life. They HAVE to go to work, otherwise what little outside life they have will falter. It doesn’t have to be that way. If you want to have more time with your family, then you have to work fewer hours, not more. Working more hours, to make more money, actually reduces your free time. Instead, you need to decide to spend less, so you can work fewer hours, and then spend that time with your family. You need to buy freedom, not things.

You cannot buy freedom with money, no matter how hard you work. You can only buy freedom by reducing the amount of money you need to make to support your lifestyle. Once you achieve this, your time with family, the time to explore your interests and the time to live the life you wish will arrive. Remember, you are not simply getting a paycheck each week for your labors. You are buying your freedom.

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