Experiencing Career Success

Organizational Dynamics, Vol. 34, No. 4, pp. 376–390, 2005 ß 2005 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. www.organizational-dynamics.com

ISSN 0090-2616/$ – see frontmatter doi:10.1016/j.orgdyn.2005.08.005

Experiencing Career Success PETER A. HESLIN Kurt Timken grew up wealthy, the son of the chief executive officer (CEO) of a family-run Fortune 150 corporation. He went to the finest schools and received a Harvard M.B.A. Despite his wealth and success, after seven years training to eventually take over the business, the long hours had destroyed his marriage and he was miserable. As Kurt put it, ‘‘I was at great, innovative companies, with super management, not trapped in layers of bureaucracy. I . . . was always challenged and given responsibility. And I was still not hopping out of bed in the morning, excited to get to work.’’ Fern Holland of Bluejacket, Oklahoma, wanted to make the world a better place. She left her six-figure job as a successful U.S. attorney to voluntarily advocate for Iraqi women’s rights and establish women’s centers across post-Hussein southern Iraq. The sheer joy of empowering Iraqi women with education about human rights and democratic processes made Fern unconcerned about being reviled by conservative Iraqis. On March 12, 2004, just hours after persuading an Iraqi judge to authorize bulldozing the home of an ex-Ba’ath Party official who had illegally built on the land of two Iraqi widows, 33-year-old Holland was fatally shot. A year after Betty Ford planned to retire from her difficult and undistinguished career as a Congressional wife, she

became the First Lady of the U.S.: ‘‘I was an ordinary woman who was called onstage at an extraordinary time. I was no different once I became First Lady than I had been before. But, through an accident of history, I had become interesting to people.’’ Ford has since been widely honored for her outstanding humanitarian contributions related to cancer, alcoholism, disabled people, and women’s health, during the ensuing three decades. How successful is your career? How successful are the careers of Kurt Timken, Fern Holland, and Betty Ford? What predicts career success? People differ in how they answer the first two questions. On the other hand, scholars have largely converged in their answer to the third question, concluding that ‘‘career success’’ is driven by a range of factors such as education, intelligence, personality, motivation, family status, gender, career strategies (e.g., networking), and mentoring relationships. Emerging insights about the essence of career success, however, provide reason to rethink our conclusions about what leads individuals to experience their careers as successful. In contrast to the multitude of studies predicting career success, curiously little attention has been devoted to exploring and understanding the nature of career success. With little understanding of what people consider when they evaluate their careers, how can we have confidence in the results of research predicting when people will experi-

Acknowledgments: The author gratefully acknowledges the helpful insights provided by Amy Wrzesniewski, Belinda Malpert, Bob Rasberry, Don VandeWalle, and John Slocum on an earlier draft of this manuscript. 376

ence career success? Careers research has typically predicted ‘‘objective’’ career success (e.g., pay level and rate of promotion). Over the last couple of decades, studies have also begun to investigate what leads to ‘‘subjective’’ career success (i.e., people’s reactions to their own careers), most often indicated by their job satisfaction. The problem is that both approaches ignore a range of factors that people consider when assessing their careers. For instance, within each level of wealth and occupational status, some people view their careers as much more (or less) successful than do others. This variation seems to reflect different perspectives on what amounts to a ‘‘successful’’ career. In light of the considerable time, effort, and self-concept many people invest in their careers, the degree of success they realize in this domain is highly consequential. This paper reflects the view that increased knowledge about the nature of career success may help you to discover and take initiatives that make your career feel more ‘‘successful.’’ After discussing the nature and limitations of prevailing conceptions of objective and subjective success, initiatives are offered for potentially increasing your experience of career success.

OBJECTIVE CAREER SUCCESS With money in your pocket, you are wise, and you are handsome, and you sing well too. – Jewish Proverb While many people aspire to high pay, status, and regular promotions, attaining these things does not necessarily make them feel successful. In fact, such ‘‘successes’’ can cause alienation both at work and home, as well as depression. For many, rising through the ranks of the organization brings more demands on their time, energy, and talents, even as it brings external markers of success. Those who cannot delegate adequately can soon become overwhelmed and depressed, potentially leading to both subjective and objective career failure. Corporate high-flyers,

such as Kurt Timken, often report regretting the high price they paid for their success, in terms of family relationships, health, and other neglected aspects of their lives. Organizational trends over the last two decades – such as downsizing and outsourcing – have also lessened the potential for hierarchical progression through promotion. This applies even to M.B.A. graduates: those who have earned a degree widely promoted as the credential for access to a ‘‘successful’’ managerial career, characterized by mobility up a corporate ladder. For instance, Frieda Reitman and Joy Schneer recently reported that out of the managerial careers of 116 M.B.A. graduates studied over a 13-year period, two-thirds of them had not followed this prototypical career path of managerial promotion(s) within a single organization. They also had not paid a price in terms of their income, career satisfaction, or job security. A 2004 survey by Burson-Marsteller found that 60% of senior executives at Fortune 1000 companies say they have no desire to hold the top job at any company. That’s more than double the 27% who said ‘‘no’’ to the CEO spot in the firm’s 2001 survey. With decreasing emphasis on promotions, objective markers of success are increasingly career-specific. For instance, both school teachers and academic mentors often frame their career success in terms of the learning and other attainments of their students and prote´ge´s. Similarly, bus and taxi drivers base their career success, at least in part, on their years of driving without an accident, industrial designers on peer recognition of their creativity, and doctors on the proportion of patients’ lives they improve or save. Even when continual attainment of these objective outcomes does not lead to an increase in pay, promotions, occupational status, or rank, their value as indicators of career success is not necessarily diminished. Attainments don’t need to be valued by others to make people feel successful. Taking time to celebrate and be truly proud of your objective achievements, regardless of how much (or little) they mean to others, is one way to increase your experience of career success. 377

SUBJECTIVE CAREER SUCCESS I don’t know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody. – Bill Cosby Subjective career success has typically been defined as how satisfied you are with your job. But there are many reasons why being satisfied with your job does not necessarily equate to believing that you have a successful career. For instance, a prototypical miserable millionaire, such as Kurt Timken, may still consider his career to be successful even if he is no longer satisfied with the job itself. Second, a contented contributor, such as Fern Holland, gains such inherent satisfaction from her work that she gladly walks away from the traditional trappings of career success. Third, a late bloomer, such as Betty Ford, could be highly satisfied with her current ‘‘job,’’ though dissatisfied with the career attainments that preceded it. Fourth, aspiring apprentices may dislike what they are doing (e.g., working as taxi drivers to finance their graduate study), but be happy with the state of their careers because of the exciting prospects that are on their horizon. Finally, contented drifters may have gratifying jobs (e.g., working as a lifeguard), though their limited prospects for future career opportunities could invoke minimal feelings of career success (see Table 1). Many people have careers that do not neatly map onto any one of the five career prototypes in Table 1. These prototypes, nonetheless, illustrate three important lessons about the experience of career success. Specifically:

TABLE 1

Even illustrious career attainments do not necessarily lead people to enjoy their daily work. People engaged in deeply satisfying work do not necessarily consider themselves to have a ‘‘successful’’ career. Career success reflects reactions to both previous and anticipated career-related attainments across a broader time frame than one’s immediate job satisfaction. These can also include a wider range of outcomes, such as the sense of identity, meaning, and worklife balance afforded by one’s career. Scholars have often measured subjective career success by assessing satisfaction with areas such as one’s income, advancement, and skill development. However, several recent large scale studies conducted in the U.S. and other countries have concluded that managers and professionals tend to ultimately value things such as work-life balance and contributing to a worthwhile cause, much more than their satisfaction with either their job or the objective outcomes of prestige, power, money, and advancement.

FOSTERING YOUR CAREER SUCCESS Eighty percent of success is just showing up! – Woody Allen People clearly differ in how they construe and evaluate their career success. In addition, the elements that lead to the experience of career success tend to evolve over time. Changes may be driven by personal developments (e.g., illness or the birth of a

POTENTIAL DISCONNECTS BETWEEN SELF-PERCEIVED CAREER SUCCESS AND JOB SATISFACTION

CAREER PROTOTYPE Miserable millionaire Contented contributor Late bloomer Aspiring apprentice Contented drifter

378 ORGANIZATIONAL DYNAMICS

PERCEIVED CAREER SUCCESS High Low Eventually high Prospectively high Low

JOB SATISFACTION Low High High Low High

child), one’s career-stage (e.g., exploring a new career vs. having become established in a career), or organizational change (e.g., technological innovations or organizational restructuring). The ‘‘new deal’’ of increasingly transitory and transactional employment relationships requires individuals to be proactive in defining and realizing their success. Given the multifaceted and dynamic nature of career success, what can you do to increase your experience of career success? Three potential avenues are to discover your work orientation, find a good fit between yourself and your work, and develop your adaptability to career changes.

DISCOVER YOUR WORK ORIENTATION It’s only work if you’d rather be doing something else. – 79-year-old football legend George Halas, speaking about when he planned to retire. Most people have one of three distinct orientations to their work: seeing it primarily as a job, a career, or a calling. People with a job orientation focus mainly on the financial rewards they receive from work. People with a career orientation exhibit a deeper personal investment in their work, focusing on advancement within their occupation and the accompanying social status, power, and prestige. Finally, people with a calling orientation focus on the fulfillment they experience as a result of performing their work, often by construing it as helping to make the world a better place. For people with a job orientation, work is viewed as a means for acquiring the financial resources needed to enjoy time away from the job, rather than as an end in itself. As the main goal of those with a job orientation is to make a good income, they do not seek many other rewards from their work. A career orientation may draw people into the pursuit of a limited number of superstar

positions in winner-take-all markets. These markets are characterized by huge rewards for exceptional performance, relative to that exhibited by other people, as well as small differences in attainment resulting in massive differences in rewards. For instance, compare the fame and fortune of Olympic gold medalists with those whose almost identical performance earns second, third, or fourth place. Intense and often televised competition within the global village is substantially increasing the stakes of winning, relative to being in second place, within many industries (e.g., acting, music, movie-making, celebrity-watching, reality-TV, sports, fashion, etc.). The draw of becoming a wealthy star in one of these winner-take-all markets is probably decreasing the number and talent of those pursuing careers in other less glamorous, though more socially useful sectors, such as engineering, manufacturing, civil service, child care, and teaching. Despite these substantial societal, as well as personal costs, many factors attract and retain participants in winner-take-all markets. For instance, aspirants consistently and notoriously over-estimate their chances of winning contests for highly prized occupational roles, such as being a super-model, a CEO, a probasketball player, or a star banker on Wall Street. Also, people can feel entrapped in winner-take-all markets, believing they must continually invest heavily in things they believe will improve their chances of success (e.g., expensive clothes, cosmetic surgery, steroid consumption, continual coaching, etc.). Given such investments, participants in winner-take-all markets are liable to experience career success only with the slight odds that they will excel vis-a`-vis virtually all their peers. Al Dunlap’s insatiable desire for income and the status of being a superstar turnaround CEO exemplifies an (albeit extreme) career orientation. Dunlap’s demise and the derision he now incurs, along with other ex-superstars such as Kenneth Lay and Dennis Kozlowski, also illustrate the potentially ephemeral nature of success in terms of income, status, and power – especially when they are the prime drivers of one’s career. 379

People commonly associate a calling orientation with having a cool job, working in areas such as the arts, the caring professions, or nonprofit work. Because organizations offering such jobs typically have less difficulty retaining their employees and replacing those who leave, they have little incentive to offer decent pay, working hours and conditions, or opportunities for learning. In light of the role these factors generally play in the experience of career success, there may be little association between (a) following one’s calling orientation in a cool job, and (b) experiencing career success. Indeed, people in all kinds of jobs can view their work as a deeply fulfilling way to make the world a better place. It’s not just those who work in community service organizations who get a deep charge from their work; gardeners, accountants, and administrative aides have all reported seeing their work as a way to contribute to the greater good in ways they find personally meaningful. While it may seem that this way of viewing work might not relate to finding career success, those with calling orientations report higher job and life satisfaction than those with job or career orientations. They are also more productive and less often absent from work. Having and working in accordance with a calling orientation is not so much about the type of work that you do, but rather, how you approach it. For instance, some hospital cleaners from a large Midwestern hospital reported viewing their jobs as a mission to facilitate the comfort and health of all who enter their hospital. Another example is Peter Oates, who has spent 19 years working (without success) on Pfizer Inc.’s effort to find a new drug to treat diabetes. Peter considers his lab a ‘‘holy space’’ and stated that: ‘‘When you look at a glowing cell under a micro-

scope, you’re looking at life itself. It’s a mystical experience. That stuff transports me.’’ Finally, remember Kurt Timken, the miserable millionaire who would have inherited a Fortune 150 company? He left it all behind to become a police officer, reporting that his new job is what he lives for. The careers of Fern Holland, Betty Ford, the hospital cleaners, Peter Oates, and Kurt Timken illustrate that people can find and pursue their calling in both the public and private sectors, in paid and unpaid work, with varying degrees of status and education, as well as across a wide range of industries. People can pursue a particular line of work that they feel called to do. But they can also come to see the work that they currently do in a different light, and learn to focus on the elements of it that are most fulfilling and that contribute to making the world a better place. In either case, perhaps the common thread connecting these calling oriented careers is a transcendent sense of success attained by addressing what Martin Luther King Jr. suggested is life’s most persistent and urgent question: What are you doing for others? Almost any job can be approached in a manner that addresses this question. Pursuing your calling can also entail examining your beliefs about what you feel you were born to do. That is, addressing the perennial career question: What should I do with my life? It is a quest to resolve any conflict that exists between who you really are and what you do. This quest often involves some serious self-examination and revision of your assumptions about yourself and your career, together with the courage to do whatever is required for you to have a personally fulfilling career that you feel contributes to the wellbeing of those well beyond yourself and your family (see Following Your Calling).

Following Your Calling In preparing to write What Should I Do with My Life? The True Story of People Who Answered the Ultimate Question, Po Bronson conducted in-depth analyses of 55 careers from a range of social classes, professions, and age groups. Resulting insights for following your calling are: 380 ORGANIZATIONAL DYNAMICS

Realize that no job is inherently ‘‘cool.’’ Some people in highly bureaucratic organizations and bland industries feel deeply fulfilled in their careers. On the other hand, Bob Dylan felt so disconcerted with his fame and ‘‘success’’ that he spent decades deliberately sabotaging his career in order to become less popular and more anonymous. False starts often precede discovering your way. For instance, Marcela Widrig only discovered her calling to be a deep-tissue massage therapist after working in her modem sales role to the point of misery and illness. Insight can be born of adversity. The tougher the times, the more clarity you can gain about the difference between what really matters to you and what you only pretend to care about. Money doesn’t fund dreams. Making big money often takes longer than people expect, can change them, and can be addictive. There is a better, less risky alternative to the make my fortune then follow my dreams route. It is to develop the confidence that you can experience career success and happiness while living within your means. Don’t confuse stimulation and passion. Those who have found their calling don’t describe how exciting, challenging, and stimulating their work is. Rather, they beam with how meaningful, significant, and fulfilling it is. Discover what you are truly passionate about. A calling is not a self-indulgent privilege. Although wealthy and highly educated individuals have more job options and mobility, working class people, such as construction workers, machine operators, and the hospital cleaners mentioned earlier, also have substantial options about how they construe and approach whatever work they do. ‘‘Keeping your doors open’’ is a trap. Continually accumulating a record of impressive positions and qualifications can seem like a wise way to develop ever more options until you realize what you’d really like to do. But it can also be an endless excuse to not become deeply involved in discovering and living out your calling. Many roads lead to Rome. Following one’s calling is not a conquest or a particular destination. Rather, it is an ongoing process of discovering and performing work in a way that makes you personally feel truly alive and fulfilled.

FIND A GOOD FIT If you find a job you love, you’ll never work another day in your life. – Confucius This maxim is far from new, though far less prevalent is the ability to systematically discern the type of organization in which one is most likely to experience career success. While doing the kind of work you love is a promising way to achieve career success, where you do this work is also likely to have a powerful effect on how you construe your success and feel about your work. Career success tends to be viewed quite differently in prototypical market versus clan organizational cultures. Within a market culture (e.g., PepsiCo Inc., Daewoo, and Enron Corp.), the relation-

ship between the individual and the organization is contractual. Short-term mutual obligations, resting on a premise of self-interest, are specified in contracts that explicitly define the nature of the exchange relationship between the organization and its members. Interactions with peers are minimal and there is little pressure from peers to conform. Symbols of status and relative rank are not emphasized. Rather, large monetary bonuses are paid for meeting or exceeding explicit, objective performance targets. Independence and individual achievements are given far greater credence than the ‘‘collective good’’ or feelings of belonging to a social system. Clan cultures (e.g., J. C. Penney Company Inc., SAS Institute, and Southwest Airlines Co.), by contrast, are characterized by a more fraternal and committed relationship between the individual and the organization. Mutual long381

term interests and fate are emphasized, as are the organization’s history and traditions. Extensive collegial networks are marked by pride in membership and peer pressure to conform to the organization’s culture. In exchange for loyalty, senior managers in clan cultures show a greater concern for individuals’ employment security and career development, emphasizing promotion from within, a practice that is much more common in clan cultures than in market cultures. Compared to market cultures, financial bonuses are a small part of total compensation, while rituals and patterns of interaction that signify and cultivate a sense of belonging, status, and contribution play an important role in clan cultures. Owing to their desire for financial and other external rewards, people with a job or a career orientation are most likely to find a good fit and thereby experience career success within a market culture. In contrast, clan cultures emphasize symbolic and other rewards from the work, which represent a better fit for those with a calling orientation (see Table 2). Having a work orientation that is a misfit with the culture of your organization can have numerous negative consequences. These include, for instance, job dissatisfaction, demoralization, poor working relationships with your peers and boss, increased stress, burnout, and a greater likelihood that you will voluntarily or involuntarily leave the organization.

TABLE 2

FINDING FIT


IN A

DEVELOP YOUR ADAPTABILITY When I told my father I was going to be an actor, he said, "Fine, but study welding just in case." – Robin Williams For many years, people assumed that they could pursue a continuous linear career within one occupation, perhaps working for one or two organizations, without major disruptions or redirections. Over the last few decades, people have been forced to change jobs at an increasing rate. Managers and professionals, who had previously been more shielded from layoffs, have also experienced greatly diminished job security. Besides the trauma of unemployment, a person’s sense of career success can also be seriously deflated by the underemployment and career plateauing that these changes have also brought. People who are underemployed either perform jobs requiring significantly less education and work experience than they possess, involuntarily work in a field unrelated to their education, or are unable to find permanent, full-time employment in their field of interest. Career plateauing can involve hierarchical plateauing – where future promotions are unlikely – or job content plateauing, where increases in responsibility in the current job are unlikely. The flattening of organizational structures has

CLAN

OR

MARKET CULTURE

decreased opportunities for being promoted. Realizing his fact of modern organizational life can make hierarchical plateauing less troubling than job content plateauing for your sense of career success. While some people don’t mind being plateaued, it can seriously undermine the sense of success felt by those who desire career progression, either through the ranks of the organization or in the kind of work they do. Beginning a new work role tends to require transitioning through a cycle of preparation (acquiring relevant skills and expectations), encounter (exploring and making sense of a new role), adjustment (fine-tuning one’s role, performance, and relationships), and stabilization (characterized by high effectiveness). Changing roles can require repeating this process. Actor Amy Ting provides an example of this dynamic. Despite having become stabilized to the point of completing an acclaimed film (Miss Wonton) in which she played the starring role, Amy’s perspective on life changed after she narrowly survived the September 11th attacks. She abandoned her investments in becoming an actress for a ‘‘real-life, honorable role’’ in a medical career

with the U.S. Air Force. Such transitions require a new round of preparation, encounter, adjustment, stabilization . . . potentially followed by renewed preparation, if and when another substantial career transition is undertaken. Given the turbulent and uncertain nature of the 21st century economy, unintended career disruptions and transitions are increasingly common, making adaptability a key ingredient for enduring career success. Developing your adaptability can help insulate your career from unemployment, underemployment, and career plateauing, as well as smoothing your transition into new roles. Career theorist and practitioner D. Tim Hall recently highlighted the importance of addressing how people may be helped to become more adaptable to changes in their careers. In response, five potential routes to greater career adaptability will now be outlined. One way to be more adaptable is to proactively engage in the process of becoming socialized into the new roles that you undertake (see Proactive Organizational Socialization).

Proactive Organizational Socialization How can you proactively adapt to a new organization? Research by Susan Ashford and Stewart Black identified the following proactive socialization tactics for organizational newcomers: Information-seeking. Systematically seek information regarding the official (and unofficial) structure, policies and procedures, politics, and culture of the organization and department: what really matters and how do things actually get done. Feedback-seeking. Solicit frank feedback about your performance during and after assignments from your boss(es) and others able to provide useful feedback. Relationship-building with your boss. Try to spend time with your boss, get to know and understand what makes her or him tick. Negotiating job changes. Seek opportunities to innovate, negotiate, and craft your job in ways that make you feel most alive, while also adding value to your organization. Positive framing. Strive to ‘‘see’’ opportunities rather than problems, and to maintain the assumption that others are intelligent and driven by noble motives . . . at least until you have irrefutable evidence to the contrary! Cautionary note: While potentially helpful, these tactics are best applied in a manner that is guided by your comfort level and sense that both your boss and organizational culture are receptive to you adopting a proactive approach to your socialization. 383

Beyond engaging in proactive socialization, four other ways to increase your career adaptability are to: believe you can change; recognize and reduce your defensive reasoning; understand and nurture your network; and find your balance.

Believe You Can Change Life is a process of becoming, a combination of states we have to go through. Where people fail is that they wish to elect a state and remain in it. This is a kind of death. – Anais Nin Do you believe that you can’t teach an old dog new tricks? Or that a leopard never changes its spots? If so, you may hold the implicit, perhaps unconscious assumption that you have a fixed capacity in certain areas relevant to your career success. Many people believe that, for instance, they are able to develop their technical competencies, though cannot substantially change their interpersonal style or communication effectiveness. Viewing certain capabilities as largely fixed can undermine your career success by reducing your belief that you can respond effectively to events or feedback suggesting that you need to change. People tend to become rigid and defensive when given feedback about aspects of themselves that they perceive they can’t change. The resulting reluctance to invest in developmental initiatives leads to a self-fulfilling prophesy, whereby believing that you cannot do something effectively, such as conquering your career challenges, makes it become true! There’s a way to break this vicious cycle. Reflect on how you developed your capacity to do things (e.g., play golf, use a computer, give a speech, read a balance sheet, etc.) that you can now do proficiently, though initially could not do very well. Your developmental process probably entailed a combination of trial-and-error attempts to master the task, soliciting feedback, revising your strategies, and exerting persistent effort to raise your performance. Why wouldn’t such a process 384 ORGANIZATIONAL DYNAMICS

increase your effectiveness in an area where you doubt your ability to improve? Although people vary in the ease with which they pick up certain skills, believing that you can develop and systematically striving to do so can enhance your ability to successfully adapt to virtually any career challenge you tackle. This logic applies just as much to how you approach your current job as it does to challenges encountered during career transitions. For instance, if you are feeling stuck, unmotivated, and disengaged from the work at hand, think about how you can make changes within the boundaries of your job that will redefine what you are doing. Remember the hospital cleaners who felt that their mission was to care for all who entered their hospital? Despite there being no change in their compensation or formal status, these cleaners had effectively changed their jobs, doing all of their required tasks, but tackling them in a way that led them to see the impact of their work on the organization and society quite differently from before. Think about all of the many things you do at work, for yourself, others, and the organization. Which areas are most exciting for you? How can you craft your role and/or approach it with a greater focus on those elements of your job that you find most rewarding? Believing that you can personally change, before discovering ways to develop new skills and recraft your job with greater emphasis on those elements that most inspire and motivate you, are powerful ways to develop your adaptability and increase the satisfaction you derive from your career.

Recognize and Reduce Your Defensive Reasoning Learning begins with the statement that ‘‘I don’t know.’’ – Herb Kelleher Most people state that they are ready and willing to admit their mistakes and learn from their experiences. When things go

wrong, however, people often get defensive, screen out criticism, and blame others. A series of leadership debacles culminated in Walt Disney Co. CEO Michael D. Eisner being stripped of his chairmanship following a 45% no-confidence vote by shareholders. He was also cited by Business Week as one of the Worst Managers of 2004. Yet he reputedly is reluctant to admit any personal fault or a need for change. Chris Argyris has shown that people typically act in a manner indicative of fairly universal, strong desires to: 1. Remain in unilateral control. 2. Maximize winning and minimize losing. 3. Suppress negative feelings. 4. Be as ‘‘rational’’ as possible. The defensive reasoning that results can prevent people from learning to adapt to the changes and challenges they encounter in their careers. By keeping their premises, inferences, and predictions either private or implicit, people avoid potentially being proved ‘‘wrong’’: a psychically painful precursor to adaptive change. This dysfunctional dynamic can be difficult to discontinue, as people often vehemently resist examining how their faulty assumptions and behaviors have contributed to the undesirable events they experience. Some hallmarks of defensive reasoning are certainty about the nature of the problems/challenges being encountered, as well as being drawn to easy and sure solutions that could readily be attained, if only other people would change. Productive reasoning, on the other hand, is much more self-reflective. It involves asking yourself questions such as: Have I identified the real problem/challenge here? Are my assumptions about the nature of this problem/challenge correct? How could I be inadvertently contributing to this problem/challenge? For instance, after realizing that he initially under-estimated the potential of the Internet, Bill Gates commented that each day it’s his job to ensure that Microsoft does not miss another fork in the road. Warren Buffett similarly observed that: ‘‘You’re neither right nor

wrong because others agree with you. You’re right because your facts and reasoning are right.’’ Despite potentially needing to put a positive public spin on one’s greatest errors to keep one’s job, becoming personally comfortable with being vulnerable and imperfect are helpful for having the courage to sincerely ask the abovementioned questions. Many powerful insights, enhanced effectiveness, and greater career adaptability can stem doing so.

Understand and Nurture Your Network You can get anything you want if you just help enough other people get what they want! – Zig Ziglar Networking involves developing and maintaining mutually beneficial relationships with others who have the potential to assist your career. Successful networking can enable you to gain information, visibility, feedback, career advice, friendship, social and emotional support, business leads and partnerships, as well as access to developmental, job, and promotion opportunities. Your adaptability within your current role, as well as your potential mobility to move to other roles, can be substantially enhanced by understanding and nurturing your network. To understand your network, you need to examine its size, structure, and strength. While the size of your network (i.e., the number of people in it) is important, this is less crucial than its structure and strength. Structure is a function of the extent to which the members of your network know each other. Somewhat counter-intuitively, it is preferable to have people in your network who do not know each other. That way, they are able to provide less redundant information and access to a broader array of contacts and opportunities. The strength characteristic reflects the level of emotional connection, reciprocity, and fre385

quency of communication you have with the members of your network. Classic research by Mark Granovetter discovered that of several hundred white-collar workers who had landed their jobs from ‘‘personal connections,’’ four-fifths of these barely knew their benefactors. Granovetter called this phenomenon ‘‘the strength of weak ties’’ (i.e., people with whom you do not have a strong relationship). While establishing weak ties can broaden the structure of your network – thereby giving you access to a much wider range of contacts and opportunities – Granovetter later warned that: Lest readers of (‘‘The Strength of Weak Ties’’) . . . ditch all their close friends and set out to construct large networks of acquaintances, I better say that strong ties can also have some value . . . (as) strong ties have greater motivation (than weak ties) to be of assistance and are typically more easily available. (1982, p. 112) Thus, to optimize your adaptability and experience of career success, it is useful to strive to cultivate a network that includes a suitable balance of both weak and strong ties. In A Balanced Scorecard Approach to Networking: A Guide to Successfully Navigating Career Changes, Monica Forrett and Sherry Sullivan provide many useful suggestions for networking in your organization, your profession, and your community. These include to volunteer your services, investigate how some members of your network could potentially help others, and always update and thank those who help you. In addition to their advice, a useful thing to keep in mind when networking is to constantly seek elegant currencies – things that you can give easily that are of value to others (e.g., providing an article or a contact that may help them out), as well as things that others can easily provide that are of value to you. As John Maxwell once observed, people don’t care how much you know, until they know how much you care. Building authentic relationships and giving people things they 386 ORGANIZATIONAL DYNAMICS

value clearly requires taking the time to explore what others care deeply about and need, before exploring how they can help you.

Find Your Balance You cannot really be first-rate at your work if your work is all you are. So . . . the best advice I could give anyone is pretty simple: Get a life. A real life, not a manic pursuit of the next promotion, the bigger paycheck, the large house . . .. – Anna Quindlen Widespread job dissatisfaction and burnout have been driving an increased concern with work-life balance. Recent research by Laura Nash and Howard Stevenson provides a useful model for improving your adaptability and success by finding your balance. Based on interviews with several hundred Harvard Business School students and graduates, Nash and Stevenson discovered that no matter how noble your work may be, succeeding at a single endeavor almost never amounts to feeling successful. Rather, building on their work, experiencing enduring career success appears to be a function of attaining an adequate combination of, for instance: 1. Happiness: feelings of pleasure or contentment about your life. 2. Achievement: accomplishments that facilitate achieving your financial, status, and other traditional career-related goals. 3. Significance: the sense that you’ve made a positive impact on people you care about. 4. Legacy: a way to establish your values or accomplishments so as to help others find future success. 5. Spirituality: quiet time spent getting in touch with the eternal source of wisdom and power in your life. Without regularly addressing each element, even the most spectacular success in one domain is ultimately unlikely to truly satisfy you. When the thrill of success quickly fades or fails to feel like a success at all, this is

a sure sign of a lack of attention to one or more of these elements. Most people are pressed for time in their work lives, making it tough to routinely touch on all these elements of success. Further complications stem from the fact that striving to simultaneously achieve in multiple domains can lead you to fall short in all of them! For instance, expecting continual happiness or contentment during the process of striving for achievement can seriously impede your performance. As well, an excessive focus on achievement-striving can soon lead to broken family relationships and burnout, as experienced by Kurt Timken, regardless of what you achieve. There are numerous ways to find your balance. These include: Periodically clarify what is most important in your life. Try to structure your aspirations based on a view of success as a broad dynamic experience of accomplishment in all five categories, rather than as revolving primarily around one or two events or realms of your life. Draw a circle and divide it up into portions representing the most important aspects of your life, including such things as: (1) happiness, (2) achievement, (3) significance, (4) legacy, and (5) spirituality. Jot down your valued goals and successes in each area. Are some domains too empty and others too full? Given your current career and personal commitments, what personally meaningfully activities should you introduce and routinely devote more time and energy to? Which do you need to scale back in order to have a more balanced and satisfying career? Identify how each task fits into a broader context of helping you to grow and experience a fulfilling life. This can help you to more readily identify areas needing more attention and feel justified interrupting some activities (e.g., work) in order to attend to others (e.g., childcare). Consider achievements of varying magnitude as real successes. Rather than setting maximum goals in each category, include and value small-scale goals (e.g., growing a few vegetables or helping your

nephew with his homework), as well as others that require more sustained effort (e.g., losing 20 pounds, acquiring a graduate degree, or volunteering one day per month at a local charity). Strive to focus 100% of your attention on the activity at hand. The potentially enriching value of life experiences – whether they be work-, family-, recreational-, spiritual-, or community-related – is rarely obtained when your mind is elsewhere. Learn to be wholly satisfied with what you define as enough with regard to each of your aspirations. Doing so can prevent falling prey to the widespread, insatiable need for perfection; feeling like what you’ve done in any area is just never enough. Experiment with your goals and how they are achieved, realizing that variety is the spice of life. Continually identifying new ways to use your unique talents to add value at work, in your family, in your spiritual and broader community, and to those in your network, can be a great source of career satisfaction. Success is less about excelling in all five domains than achieving a proportional mix with which you are personally satisfied. The effort devoted to each area can enhance your adaptability, provide renewed energy to fuel your achievements in the other areas, and contribute to a deeply satisfying overall experience of career success.

CONCLUSION Recent technological and organizational changes have dramatically altered the composition and values of the work force, as well as the meaning of career success. Suggestions have been offered throughout this paper for increasing your experience of career success by identifying and following your work orientation, finding a good fit, and developing your adaptability. You can realize your capacity to reinvent yourself by engaging in proactive socialization, cultivating the belief that you can change, recognizing and reducing your defensive reasoning, 387

understanding and nurturing your network, and continually seeking to find your balance between your work and the other important facets of your life. Some of the ideas offered could appear unrealistic. For instance, you may wonder how you can simultaneously pursue your calling to help others if you have discovered you are stuck in a job that you view as just a job in an organization with a market culture. In light of the inherently individual and personal nature of career success, the key to resolving such a bind is to selectively draw upon the collection of perspectives offered on career success that most resonate with you at this particular stage of your career. As the constellation of factors that culminate in ‘‘career success’’ tend to evolve over the course of a career, a different set of ideas for increasing your experience of career success may seem more useful and meaningful at future points in the unfolding of your career.

PROLOGUE A Zen monk wandering the countryside found a beautiful opal worth a year’s pay


to the average worker. Later in his travels he showed the opal to a farmer. The farmer was so overwhelmed by the beauty and value of the jewel that he begged the monk to give it to him. The monk casually tossed the opal to the farmer and did not give the jewel another thought as he continued on his travels. A few weeks later the monk was surprised to see the farmer, who had been looking for him. The farmer handed the monk the opal and said, ‘‘I have realized that I don’t really want the opal. What I REALLY want is whatever it is you have that enabled you to give it to me so easily.’’ Feelings of success not grounded in actual achievements and meaningful contributions are likely to be hollow and shortlived. On the other hand, as frantically seeking success can make finding it elusive, perhaps a key to experiencing a deeply fulfilling sense of career success is not being overly obsessed about doing so.

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY A holistic conception of career success and how to achieve it is provided by Zig Ziglar in Over The Top (Santa Cruz: Nelson Books, 1997), as well as by Laura Nash and Howard Stevenson in ‘‘Success That Lasts’’ (Harvard Business Review, 2004, 82, 102–109). In ‘‘What Do Employees Really Want? The Perception vs. the Reality’’ (Paper presented to the 2001 annual meeting of the World Economic Forum, Davos, Switzerland), David Finegold and Susan A. Mohrman discuss how among 4,500 knowledge workers and managers from eight countries, work-life balance was rated as the most important facet of their careers. Further evidence of the decreasing relative importance of objective career outcomes to business professionals, as well as useful insights for better managing your work-life balance, are outlined by Stewart D. Friedman and Jeffrey H. Greenhaus in Work and Family: Allies or Enemies? (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000). ‘‘The Promised Path: A Longitudinal Study of Managerial Careers,’’ by Frieda Reitman and Joy A. Schneer (Journal of Managerial Psychology, 2003, 18, 60–75), outlines how an M.B.A.’s objective and subjective success is no greater if his or her career involves the increasingly rare uninterrupted climb up a corporate ladder. For a review of the evidence regarding the consequences of having a job, a career, or a calling work orientation, see ‘‘‘It’s Not Just a Job’: Shifting Meanings of Work in the Wake of 9/11,’’ by Amy Wrzesniewski (Journal of Management Inquiry, 2002, 11, 230–234). Anecdotes and ideas for discovering your calling, as well as more on Kurt Timken’s story, can be found in Po Bronson, What Should I Do with My Life? The True Story of People Who Answered the Ultimate Question (New York:

Random House, 2002). A more scholarly though still practical perspective on discovering your calling is provided by D. Tim Hall in ‘‘The Protean Career: A Quarter-Century Journey’’ (Journal of Vocational Behavior, 2004, 65, 1–13). In The Winner-Take-All Society (New York: Free Press, 1995), Robert H. Frank and Philip J. Cook persuasively outline how the intense appeal of winner-take-all markets draws talented individuals away from more socially useful sectors of society. The nature of clan and market cultures, as well as the managerial implications of each, are described by Jeffrey Kerr and John W. Slocum in ‘‘Managing Corporate Cultures Through Reward Systems’’ (Academy of Management Executive, 1987, 1, 99–108). Various ways in which newcomers proactively attempt to gain feelings of personal control during organizational entry are outlined by Susan J. Ashford and J. Stewart Black in ‘‘Proactivity During Organizational Entry: The Role of Desire for Control’’ (Journal of Applied Psychology, 1996, 81, 199–214). Methods for cultivating the belief that you can develop your effectiveness are identified by Peter A. Heslin, Gary P. Latham, and Don VandeWalle in ‘‘The Effect of Implicit Person Theory on Performance Appraisals’’ (Journal of Applied Psychology, 2005, 90, 842–856). ‘‘Crafting a Job Revisioning Employees as Active Crafters of Their Work,’’ by Amy Wrzesniewski and Jane W. Dutton (Academy of Management Review, 2001, 26, 179–201) contains useful insights for crafting your work to make it more meaningful work. ‘‘Teaching Smart People How to Learn’’ (Harvard Business Review, 1991, May–June, 5–15) by Chris Argyris, discusses how to overcome defensive reasoning. 389

The value of weak ties is explained and clarified by Mark S. Granovetter in ‘‘The Strength of Weak Ties: A Network Theory Revisited,’’ in P. V. Marsden and N. Lin (Eds.), Social Structure and Network Analysis (Beverly Hills, CA: Sage, 1982, 105–130).

Practical insights for assessing and improving your network are provided by Monica Forrett and Sherry Sullivan in ‘‘A Balanced Scorecard Approach to Networking: A Guide to Successfully Navigating Career Changes’’ (Organizational Dynamics, 2002, 31, 245–259).

Peter A. Heslin is an assistant professor of management at the Cox School of Business, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, TX. He received his Ph.D. in organizational behavior and human resource management from the Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto. Heslin teaches graduate courses in organization behavior, managing across cultures, and leading organizational change. He has consulted in these areas to a wide range of corporations such as Citibank, IBM, Zurich Insurance, KPMG, and Procter & Gamble. Heslin has authored or co-authored over a dozen articles on topics such as management development, coaching, and the nature of career success, published in journals such as Journal of Applied Psychology, Journal of Organizational Behavior, and Applied Psychology: An International Review (Tel.: +1 214 768 4170; fax: +1 214 768 4099; e-mail: [email protected]).
