Vicky Farrow, Director of Executive and Work Force Development at Sun Microsystems gives workers the following advice for assuming career responsibility:
- The overarching principle: Think of yourself as a business.
- Define your product or service. What is your area of expertise?
- Know your target market. To whom are you going to sell this?
- Be clear on why your customer buys from you. What is your ‘value proposition’ – what are you offering that causes him to use you?
- As in any business, drive for quality and customer satisfaction, even if your customer is just someone else in your organization – like your boss.
- Know your profession or field and what’s going on there. What is ‘best of breed’ in your area? Is your profession, just possibly, becoming obsolete?
- Invest in your growth and development, the way a company invests in R&D. What new product or service will you be able to provide?
- Be willing to consider changing your business or starting a new one.
Kiechel, Walter, “A Manager’s Career in the New Economy, Fortune Magazine, April, 4, 1994, pp. 68-70.