By Jeff Altman, Big Game Hunter
I’m a boomer. When I grew up, TV was like today part of the propaganda machine.
I watched TV and because I lived in New York City, I had the luck to have more channels to watch than most – 7! They all show the same type of crap. The large networks offered game exhibitions in the morning, soap operas in the afternoon and a version of repeated TV show after another in the evening.
Everything was formal, but there was less of it at the time than today. Today’s TV, like the movies, feels like there is a software program that generates plot lines and scripts. How many seem unique to you? Very few seem like that for me.
In the Stone Age there was a simple message that was in any plot about work – go to your job, do well, have the boss like you, and maybe you move up. That was the message from men. The message for women was that you will always be secretary of your dopey boss. You are smarter than him and without you would you be a loser.
There was a system.
You went to work and did what you were told. If you are a man you can move up the ladder. If you are a woman you move up the ladder if he did.
The way the story ended was with him eventually getting Gold Watch at the retirement party where he was toasted by colleagues and the manager he worked for. He had been a good slave for a long time and was now time to enjoy your life. It was common for men to die not long after retirement. I have never heard the stories of women except those of her dedication to her boss hid her actual love for him. Many women became spinters (punch it up. We don’t use that word anymore) because they really love their boss and gave their lives to him.
The myth of the story is “the ladder.” You are working your way up “the ladder.” Eventually you will be promoted. Eventually you will be promoted to a good job where you tell people what to do.
I spent a lot of my career working in a bullpen with other sales people who “call for dollars” looking for the ladder I have never found. I was the guy in an enclosure that earned another money. I graveled for sales. I miss the transition from the ladder where you could move up to the ladder, where many of the runners over me were cut away with me on a lower ring that was unable to extend to the next.
I was caught, just like many of you are.
Like many of you, I trusted that my employers should look for me and move up if I was a good boy.
I didn’t understand for a long time that I was really independent, but collected a paycheck. My success is based on my performance and I could take it elsewhere. And I should have it.
In the world after 9/11, it called the jerk I worked for me on 9/13 to blow me up because I hadn’t thought about signing one of the company’s victims on that day for a disaster regenement contract, even though our company had no experience, not to say expertise in this field.
At another company, I was denied a paycheck because I had not sold any business for 3 months. I was recently divorced, my ex-wife died within 3 weeks of the divorce finally I had to work in a taxi after tipping my Achilles-sen. Tell me how you would do with that hanging over your head.
It would take years before I got the message wherever I worked. In the last place I worked remote and they refused to pay my insurance premium.
I wasn’t as smart as I thought I was.
I still fell for BS, like each company, just like many of you do with a promise, you have great opportunities with amazing teams of people.
“It will be like working with the family,” they tell you. Maybe the families in Thanksgiving and Christmas movies mean where getting together for the holidays means arguing and throwing things against each other.
Have you found the ladder yet?
Yes, you may have been given small campaigns for job titles that include the term “level” as part of your title as Financial Analyst Level III.
Many of you have even become leaders. But you are managed by someone entitled Director and they are managed by someone with the title VP, and they are managed by someone with the title Senior Vice President.
And you know you can dispose of like a razor blade because you have either been disposed of earlier or know many people who have been.
You have abdicated responsibility for your career to your employer.
Bad decision.
Their job is not to look for you except to give you a placebo, I am lovely words from time to time to put you, just as a baby is with a napp.
As in the school system, where we learned to hold a chain and do what we ask you to do when we ask you to do it and restore the right answers when asked otherwise work will be the same.
Yes, there are days that feel good. Yes, there are days when I feel a huge achievement.
But if you give your power away to your employer, if you abdicate responsibility for your career to those as many of you dedicated employees do, you are eventually convicted like millions before you.
You are responsible for your career. On a regular basis, do or are you of your abilities and marketability. Be prepared to write checks to learn what you need to learn to stay in demand. Don’t expect your employer to pay to college you. They may have talked a good game about training at the time they hired you, but somehow it is forgotten when it is time to do so.
You are chairman of the board of directors of your organization. You have a board that reports to you – your wife/husband/partner/children. Even your pets are part of the board. For many of you, your big family is too.
You have a liability of trust to them. Do not give your authority away to climb up the ladder that does not exist.
Your skills will protect you, not your employer.
Your ability to draw opportunity for you will protect you, not your employer.
Your brand/reputation will affect what others think of you, not your employer.
Developing a public face to the world where others know about you is critical of your future, rarely your employer.
Remember that the person who comes ahead is not always the smartest or works most difficult, even if it is great qualities to have. People move on by paying attention to the possibilities. Rarely are they internal in the organization. They are typically external.
Lesson one that someone calls but cultivates an acute BS detector to protect yourself.
Like when they go out, all the truth decorate. You are BS detector is your protection, just as it was under dating.
Be amazing!
Ⓒ The Big Game Hunter, Inc., Asheville, NC 2021, 2024
Overcome age in your job search as experienced professional
About Jeff Altman, Big Game Hunter
People hire Jeff Altman, Big Game Hunter to give no BS Job Search -Coaching and Career Counseling globally because he is doing job search
Error failure of billions of dollars
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Error of billions of dollars by hiring part II
He hosts “No BS Job Search Advice Radio”, # 1 podcast in iTunes for job search with over 2900 episodes over 13+ years.
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