By: George Montgomery
I am writing this letter to a younger George who has just graduated from University and will soon start his working career.
Success
You achieved success in the academic world and now it’s time to think about success in the working world as well as life in general. Until now you have been too focused on short-term success, you need to set some lifelong goals and principles. Yours will be based on career, family, friends, financial stability and adherence to the Golden Rule. Dream big as you will someday become a CEO; you need to prepare yourself for the challenges you will face. Envision your future and work hard to achieve it, life is not a dress rehearsal so get the most out of it and don’t waste time.
There is not much use in settling for mediocre goals, you don’t get much career satisfaction from them. Challenge yourself. Once you have established goals, then establish specific steps to get you there. This is the action plan that you will focus on most of the time – daily, weekly or monthly activities. Keep accomplishing these specific steps and you will eventually achieve your goals. Don’t be afraid to change these action plans, remember they are only steps in the process and not an end in themselves.
Keep your mind focused, your motivation high and your goals in sight. Hope is not a strategy, set a goal and a plan to achieve it. Don’t get distracted by day to day activities, keep an eye on the long game.
Your first job
Don’t just think about finding your first job, think about starting a career. Look for a growing sector; it is much easier to have success in a growing market. Every business has a life cycle so try to join a company in the early stages of growth, not in the mature or shrinking phase. You will have to work hard whatever you do; you will get much more back from a growing business.
Every job is a training ground; your first job is only the first step in a long career ladder. It is more important to get on the right ladder than to worry about starting on a low step on the ladder.
If you like what you do on a daily basis, if you like the people you work with and if you feel good about your accomplishments then you have a great job. Life is too short to work for assholes. You will never be successful working in an unhappy environment.
Lifelong learning
Never stop learning, the technology of today is not the technology of tomorrow. Stay on top of technology trends and continually refine your expertise. Use your company’s performance review process to identify opportunities for personal improvement and commit to continuous improvement. Their perceptions of your performance are more important than your perceptions. A company will use customer surveys and employee surveys to keep a finger on the pulse of the market. You need to develop your own feedback loops so that you understand where you stand with a company. Are you in line for a promotion? Are you in a dead-end?
You will have a tendency to stay with one company for too long, enjoying the experience and relationships. You will have to challenge yourself and switch jobs whenever you stop learning.
Most people will change jobs about every five years but there is no magic timeline. Change if you are bored, stop learning or if you don’t have an opportunity to advance. Just don’t get caught in a cycle of looking for a bigger, better deal by changing jobs too frequently. You need some time to prove yourself in a company and sometimes you have to wait for the right position to open. A company will usually want to know they can count on you before they promote you. But changing jobs can be the best way to get ahead.
Innovate
Find new ways to do your job. This is critical to improvement and critical to success. If you always do the same thing in the same way, don’t expect improvement. Think through cause and effect, it will help you find ways to innovate. Identify opportunities and chase after them.
You will enjoy part of your career in new product development, this is all about creativity. Try new things and take risks, there is a fine line between a breakthrough “a-hah” moment and a “ha-ha” moment. You have a very creative mind, use it.
Collaborate
No one person is as smart as a group. No one person can accomplish as much as a group. We all have something to contribute, find out how other people can help you. Find a mentor, someone who can spend time and give you specific advice. Build a good network of friends who can help you. You have a tendency to keep problems to yourself, you need to open up and listen to advice from your trusted friends.
Surround yourself with talented people and establish a process to foster communication and collaboration. When I joined Taylor Made Golf, there were a lot of talented people but no process for new product development. As a consequence, new product launches were not always successful. We reengineered the process, established formal roadmaps and immediately started launching market leading products.
Make good choices
Use data as much as possible to make informed decisions but remember that behind every number is a story, so make sure you know the story. When I was young and green, I made a decision to fire a sales representative who was not performing (real data). As I got older, I now know that I should have spent more time understating the causes of this underperformance. He may have been responsible or there may have been circumstances out of his control. Don’t make this same mistake.
Use a balanced scorecard to review the outcomes of every decision; very seldom is a decision all good or all bad. Understand the tradeoffs so that you can make nuanced decisions.
Once you make a decision, have the courage of your convictions. In your time Thomas Jefferson was revered as one of the Founding fathers, he will later become reviled for owning slaves. I saw a hand written draft of the Declaration of Independence by Thomas Jefferson that called for the abolition of slavery in the US. Jefferson was eventually overruled and this clause was stricken from the final version. Imagine how different the world would be if Jefferson had stuck with his convictions.
Don’t let other people get to you: you are neither as smart or as dumb as some people will call you. Have a sense of humor and remember the golden rule; then people will like working with you.
Compensation
You don’t want to be in a position to always get paid by the hour. You want to eventually get paid for your contribution, not just your time. This can come from a bonus or sales commissions or hopefully from equity. Equity in a growing company will almost always give you much more wealth than any paycheck. This is not always a guarantee, as I did not make any money on stock options in two companies but I made good money with stock options in other companies.
Work hard
Everyone will fail at some time but not everyone will succeed. Why? Sometimes it’s as simple as keep trying. “Failure is never fatal and success is never final, giving up is what makes it permanent.” Hard work is almost always required; it will not come easily but it will come.
Personal finances
Be careful and wise with your money. Save and invest some money in growth stocks every year, you will be surprised how it adds up over time.
Buy a home as soon as you can and don’t be afraid of mortgage debt. House prices will increase dramatically in the next 40 years, start now. Keep trading up to better homes when you can afford it, take advantage of the tax code to shield capital gains on your primary residence. Learn to maintain and fix things in your house and know when to call in experts.
Attitude
I learned that “Attitudes are Contagious, make sure that yours is worth catching”, please remember this and keep composed and positive in your professional life. Always believe in yourself, this can-do attitude is the first step towards success.
Call it karma, the golden rule, or whatever you want; it is imperative not to have a habit of judging others or it will simply bring that negativity back to yourself. Negativity will only sabotage you as you strive to achieve your goals.
We all blame others to a degree. Blame is tied to success in reverse proportions. The lower your degree of blame-the higher degree of success you’ll achieve. Take responsibility for your actions and decisions. Successful people take responsibility for everything they do and everything that happens to them.
Opportunity
The world is constantly changing and change creates opportunity. Opportunity often appears as adversity, sometimes the biggest challenges give you the biggest opportunities to move ahead. First, recognize it. Second, act on it. Opportunity is elusive. This means taking risks because you are seeing opportunity before other people see it. No risk, no reward is the biggest understatement in the business world. It should be stated as: no risk, no nothing.
You will have a successful and happy life, but you will also make mistakes on the way. Learn from them. Keep pushing to make the world a better place and having a positive influence on your friends.
