The 5 Patterns of Extraordinary Careers: The Guide for Achieving Success and Satisfaction

262 Pages·2003·1.54 MB·English

by  James M. Citrin

THE FIVE PATTERNS OF
EXTRAORDINARY CAREERS
THE GUIDE FOR ACHIEVING SUCCESS AND
SATISFACTION
James M. Citrin & Richard A. Smith

CONTENTS
Title page
Dedication
INTRODUCTION: The Five Patterns of Extraordinary Careers
Why those who rise to the top and prosper follow five simple
patterns that can be harnessed and used by everyone.
PATTERN 1 Understand the Value of You
People with extraordinary careers understand how value is created
in the workplace, and translate that knowledge into action, building
personal value over each phase of a career.
PATTERN 2 Practice Benevolent Leadership
People with extraordinary careers don’t claw their way to the top,
they are carried there.
PATTERN 3 Overcome the Permission Paradox
People with extraordinary careers overcome one of the great Catch-
22s of business: You can’t get the job without experience, and you
can’t get experience without the job.
PATTERN 4 Differentiate Using the 20/80 Principle of Performance
People with extraordinary careers storm past their defined jobs to
create breakthrough ideas and deliver unexpected impact.
PATTERN 5 Find the Right Fit (Strengths, Passions, and People)
People with extraordinary careers make decisions with the long
term in mind, and they move toward positions that fit their natural
strengths and passions and work with people they like and respect.
The Patterns of Extraordinary Organizations
Companies with extraordinary performance records do not merely
recruit successful people, they create them.
CONCLUSION: Putting the Patterns into Practice
SPECIAL SECTION: The Spencer Stuart Job Survival Guide

Understanding Executive Search: How it Really Works, and How
You Can Influence the Process
Notes
Supplemental Reading
Acknowledgments
Index
About the Authors
Also by James M. Citrin
Praise for The Five Patterns of Extraordinary Careers
Copyright Page
To my brother, Jeffrey Citrin, and my sister, Nancy Lane, and their beautiful
families.
JMC
To Lori, Arden, Adam, and Laine Smith, for their unwavering love and support.
RAS
INTRODUCTION:
The Five Patterns of Extraordinary Careers
You don’t just luck into things as much as you’d like to think you do. You build
step by step, whether it’s friendships or opportunities.
—Barbara Bush
We must believe in luck. For how else can we explain the success of those we
don’t like?
—Jean Cocteau
T
he Five Patterns of Extraordinary Careers reveals the subtle yet powerful
factors that determine career success: why some people ascend to the top and
prosper, while others who are equally talented never reach their expectations.
The latter was a fate Timothy Reynolds suddenly feared might have fallen upon
him.
For many years, Tim Reynolds had every reason to think he was on the path
of an extraordinary career. After all, he seemed to have it all—three kids, a
beautiful wife, a four-bedroom house in a leafy Chicago suburb, and a good job
as vice president of marketing at a leading consumer-products company, all
before the age of forty. But standing beside his classmates at his fifteenth college
reunion on an unseasonably warm spring day, Tim began to feel a little
unsettled.
That’s no surprise. Reunions are famous for making ordinary people feel
rather unsure of themselves. Especially disconcerting is facing the former
classmates who have somehow blossomed into the next generation of leaders.
But Tim wasn’t just one of those people who always see the grass as greener on
the other side. He was someone everyone admired and considered successful and
put together. Yet over the course of this particular weekend, Tim found himself
going into a full-scale reexamination of where he was with his career and life
and what he had accomplished.
Early in his career, Tim had been a star in his corporation’s management
training program, which led to rapid promotions and increasing responsibilities.
Throughout the first dozen years of his working life, he was spontaneous,
optimistic, energetic, and confident, feeling that continued professional success
was almost inevitable. But now that he thought about it, he realized that more
recently, he wasn’t feeling quite as sure of himself—or of his professional
direction. He had survived two rounds of layoffs at the company, but it was
always possible that more were to come. The prospect of being forced into the
job market in a difficult economy was a grim scenario for Tim to consider.
Even more disquieting, however, was a growing sense that he was on a path
that wasn’t leading him exactly where he wanted to go. He had never even
thought about this consciously before. After all, Tim had been on a well-defined
career track and he had progressed steadily, achieving many of the milestones
for position and compensation that he had set for himself. But as he reflected, he
found that the responsibilities, daily activities, and politics associated with his
job were increasingly debilitating. Whatever happened to his starry-eyed dreams
of becoming an ambassador, a university professor, or a public servant?
Tim had suppressed these feelings, but now that he’d let them out of the
cage, he was beset with a sense of being ensnared in a direction that he could not
change. He was actually unsure if he even wanted to be promoted again, fearing
that this might move him still further away from the things that mattered most to
him—a strong family, making a positive impact on society, being passionate and
proud about his work, and continuing to develop a broader set of skills and
knowledge.
On that particular spring day at the reunion, all of this pent-up anxiety
surfaced as Tim was reunited with old friends and classmates. The alumni
association had organized a panel, “Career Success and Satisfaction,” that
included some of Tim’s most successful peers. The star-studded panel went
something like this:
• John recently had been appointed the president of a television group
• John recently had been appointed the president of a television group
for one of the major broadcast networks after a five-year run
developing critically acclaimed and commercially successful
television shows. John had begun his career as a lawyer and migrated
into the entertainment business by coming to represent actors,
directors, and writers in Los Angeles.
• Martha was a professor of law and history at an Ivy League
university, specializing in the areas of property, religion, and legal
history in the university’s law school. Before joining the faculty,
Martha had served as a clerk in the United States Court of Appeals,
which she joined after having been an associate at a Washington,
D.C., law firm.
• Stephen was a senior vice president of the National Association of
Securities Dealers, with the responsibility to develop programs,
services, and technological innovations to benefit the entire securities
industry. He had joined the industry trade association after the
emerging technology company that he co-founded in 1999 ran out of
capital and was liquidated.
• Todd was the founder of a small specialty restaurant company in
Chicago that was generating profit in each of its seven locations.
Previously he had co-founded and built a natural foods supermarket
company over seven years into a twenty-store chain serving five
metropolitan areas, which he sold to a major food company. Before
moving into the food business, he had been an account executive with
a major Wall Street brokerage firm.
• Lynn was a doctor of audiology and president of the parent-teacher
association at her daughters’ private school in Manhattan, now
working three days a week. She had worked full time in private
practice for twelve years after medical school.
As Tim listened to each of their stories, he wondered why these folks had
met with such good fortune. Thinking back to school, he realized that none of
them were necessarily smarter, more energetic, or more charismatic than he, nor
did they seem to have any special connections. This certainly wasn’t the group
the graduating class would have predicted as most likely to succeed. But they
seemed to have it nailed.
While Tim thought that his career seemed to have become more complicated
and difficult to manage, this group seemed not only successful, but also fulfilled
by their personal and professional lives. Somehow they had apparently gained
control over something Tim increasingly believed was uncontrollable—their
careers.
As his peers told their stories on the panel, Tim took copious notes. He
wanted to find clues into the surprising success of his classmates. Each panel
member discussed how, over time, he or she had gained command of the job and
became valuable within his or her organization or profession. John, Stephen, and
Lynn all pointed out how they had benefited from working with exceptionally
talented mentors and co-workers. All the panelists hinted at having found
themselves in the right place at the right time and having gained access to the
kinds of opportunities that mattered most. Todd and Martha articulated how they
never took their job descriptions too literally and had always found ways to
expand their responsibilities within their organizations. And slowly it became
apparent to Tim that each of these individuals was not only highly skilled in his
or her chosen field, but also truly passionate about their work. Together, the
enthusiasm for their jobs was undeniable, and seemed to provide each with a
sense of purpose, belonging, and power that Tim longed to attain. Each had
gained a level of control over his or her career direction that Tim so desperately
sought.
Just then Tim had an epiphany. As he listened closely, he came to the
blinding insight that the key was not the uniqueness of the panelists’ careers, but
their surprising similarity. Although their careers were completely different,
each of his successful classmates had followed a path that twisted and turned,
had setbacks and accomplishments and changes of direction. But somehow, each
of them kept getting closer and closer to the mark—employing similar strategies
and actions to achieve success.
Intrigued, Tim wondered whether the similarities were just coincidence. Or
rather, was what he was observing actually the result of cause and effect? And if
so, was there specific knowledge that could be harnessed and actions that could