Monday, November 26, 2012

A Reason to Grow Your Skills

I suspect more companies will start to look for new opportunities in business by reducing the amount of resources they spend on tasks that can be easily outsourced. The CIO of Toyota, North America, talks about that a little in this piece.
It’s not just technology, however. I suspect that more and more companies are looking to hire someone else to manage pieces of their business, which are outside their core competency. I can imagine that every business, from paralegals to nurses, from supply chain analysts to architects might find some of their job being outsourced or automated. The easy, simple, tedious parts that can be handled in a simpler way by another person or process.
That means you should be looking to tackle the more creative, or thoughtful, or interesting parts of your job. You should learn to improve your skills so that you are not focused on the easier parts of your job, which can be outsourced, but on the most difficult parts.
As you improve those skills, make sure they are a part of your brand. Whether that’s in a blog, a document, or something else, keeping your brand up to date can pay off in the future.

Monday, November 19, 2012

Refreshing

DadDelaney_ski_Mar2012I hope everyone has a great week this week. I’m off, trying to recharge and refresh after a rough speaking schedule this fall.

My family has a tradition of spending Thanksgiving up in the mountains skiing. There isn’t a lot of snow, but I look forward to skiing, dominos, ping pong, and more with my wife and kids.

You should be sure that you take a break periodically from work and make sure you refresh and recharge. All too often I see people skipping vacation, which isn’t good your mental health.

Wednesday, November 14, 2012

The Modern Resume at the PASS Professional Development VC

I gave the Modern Resume/Branding presentation today for the PASS Professional Development Virtual Chapter. It was recorded and if you are a PASS member, you can access it.
I’ve also updated the slide deck and it’s available here: BrandingDreamJob - v16.ppt

Monday, November 12, 2012

Measuring Your Career Success

“Life is a lesson, you learn it when you’re through.” - Limp Bizkit

There are things in life we can’t judge until we go through them, perhaps even get near the end of the process. Retirement, long term health, and even the measure of your career success.

There was a piece in the CNN Money that interviewed Clayton Christensen from Harvard Business School. It’s about a new book, “How Will You Measure Your Life?” and it talks about the work you do in career and in life and how they should relate.

In the piece, there’s a great paragraph:

“I believe that the source of our deepest happiness comes from investments we make in intimate relationships with our spouse, children, and close friends. But if you measure your life by how much money you make or where you go in a hierarchy, you invest more and more to maximize those things and less and less of your time and energy on family. Even though you think family is important, you invest in things that are counter to what you had intended to do in your heart. ”

There’s more about career and what you should think about as you try to grow your career and move forward.

This site, and the talk I give focuses on the things you can do to improve your career and find happiness, but I’m not sure I emphasize the balance enough.

I think it’s important that you continue to work on your career, in almost any field. Find time to work on professional development, learn more, but keep it in balance.

Life is short.

Remember that you want to focus on what’s important, and often the really important stuff isn’t in your career. It’s outside of work.

Monday, November 5, 2012

Bad Jobs or Bad Marriages

I saw a great quote recently from David Brooks’ commencement address that said:

“If you have a great career and a bad marriage, you’ll be miserable. If you have a great marriage and a bad career you’ll be happy.”

I often advocate to people that they find a good job, and a good fit for them as a career to enjoy their life. However your career isn’t everything. I do think that you can have a not-so-great job or career and have a great life. There are people that work in jobs they don’t love as garbagemen, as blue-collar workers, even as CPAs or lawyers, but they have great marriages or great families and enjoy their lives.

They key is having more that excites you in life than your career, and being able to view your job as just a job and leave it behind when you go home.

If you can do that, you might need fulfillment in your career. If you can’t, you might need a new job.

However in either case, if you have a job that wears you down, you feel abused, or you feel no sense or purpose, you probably need a new job. Or a new career.

Professional Development on PASS TV

I’ll be live on the PASS TV broadcast on Wednesday, Nov 7, at 11:40am PST. The Professional Development group asked me to do a short (15 minute) talk, and I’ve put together a set of quick blogging tips with a few slides.

If you’re not at the PASS Summit, you can watch this. If you are, I’m sure the recording will be available later.