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256 Part 3 • Organizing
lot of deliberate practice—consistently engaging in repeated activity specifically designed to
improve performance beyond your current comfort and ability level.
Stay Up to Date
In today’s dynamic world, skills can become obsolete quickly. To keep your career on track,
you need to make learning a lifetime commitment. You should be continually “going to
school”—if not taking formal courses, then reading books and journals to ensure that you
don’t get caught with obsolete skills.
Network
Networking refers to creating and maintaining beneficial relationships with others in or-
der to accomplish your goals. It helps to have friends in high places. It also helps to have
contacts who can keep you informed of changes that are going on in your organization and in
your industry. Go to conferences. Maintain contact with former college friends and alumni.
Get involved in community activities. Cultivate a broad set of relationships. And in today’s
increasingly interconnected world, join online business networking groups such as LinkedIn,
Spoke, and Talkbiznow.
Stay Visible
Networking can increase your visibility. So, too, can writing articles in your professional
journals, teaching classes or giving talks in your area of expertise, attending conferences and
professional meetings, and making sure your accomplishments are properly promoted. You
increase your mobility and value in the marketplace by keeping visible.
Seek a Mentor
Employees with mentors are likely to have enhanced mobility, increased knowledge of the
organization’s inside workings, greater access to senior executives, increased satisfaction, and
increased visibility. For women and minorities, having mentors has been shown to be particu-
larly helpful in promoting career advancement and success.
Leverage Your Competitive Advantage
Develop skills that will give you a competitive advantage in the marketplace. Especially focus
on skills that are important to employers, skills that are scarce, and areas where you have lim-
ited competition. Try to avoid a worst-case scenario: You have a job that anyone can learn in
30 minutes. Remember that the harder it is for you to learn and develop a highly prized skill,
the harder it’ll also be for others to acquire it. Generally speaking, the more training necessary
to do a job and the fewer people who have that training, the greater your security and influence.
Here’s an insight from many years as a student and a professor: To succeed in school,
you have to be a generalist and excel at everything. For instance, to earn a 4.0 GPA, you need
to be a star in English, math, science, geography, languages, and so on. The “real world,” on
the other hand, rewards specialization. You don’t have to be good at everything. You just need
to be good at something that others aren’t and that society values. You can be lousy in math
or science and still be a very successful opera singer, artist, salesperson, or writer. You don’t
have to excel in English to be a computer programmer or electrician. The secret to life suc-
cess is identifying your comparative advantage and then developing it. And as we’ve noted
previously, you need to invest approximately 10,000 hours in honing your skills to achieve
optimum proficiency.
Don’t Shun Risks
Don’t be afraid to take risks, especially when you’re young and you don’t have much to
lose. Going back to school, moving to a new state or country, or quitting a job to start your
own business can be the decision that will set your life in a completely new direction. Great